HEY! FOR FRANCE.
During the time which elapsed between the eventful proceedings of that
day and the time when my Lord Fordingbridge--agitated by receiving no
news in Cheshire from his wife--returned to London, all those whom
this history has principally to deal with met together with
considerable frequency.
For, whether the clue was lost to the whereabouts of Elphinston and
the Sholtos, or whether the Government was growing sick of the
wholesale butchery of Jacobites which was going on in Scotland and
England--though it would scarce seem so, since two of the lords in the
Tower and some score of other victims were yet to be executed and
their remains to be brutally used--at least those three friends were
still at large. Archibald Sholto was in hiding at James McGlowrie's
lodgings in the Minories, in the neighbourhood of which that honest
gentleman was much engaged in the grain and cattle trade between
London and Scotland and also Holland and France. Farther east still
was Bertie Elphinston, he being close to the spot where the unhappy
Lady Balmerino, his kinswoman, was lodged; while in the West End, or
rather the west of London, at the Kensington Gravel Pits, and under
the roof of no less a person than Sir Charles Ames, Douglas had found
a home and hiding place.
As for Kate and her father, they were in Hanover-square, the guests of
Lady Belrose, and were to remain as such until the former had had an
interview with Fordingbridge. "For," said Kate to her friend who,
although a comparatively new one, was proving herself to be very
staunch, "then I shall know, then I shall be able to decide; though
even now my decision is taken, my mind made up. Who can doubt that it
is he who has done this? He and no other. No other!"
"Indeed, dear," replied her hostess, as she bade her black boy--a
present from her devoted admirer, Sir Charles--go get the urn filled,
for they were drinking tea after dinner, "indeed, dear, no one, I
think, from all that you have told me. Yet if you leave him, what is
to become of you and Mr. Fane? You have, you say--pardon me for even
referring to such a thing--no very good means of subsistence. I," went
on her ladyship, speaking emphatically, "should at least take my
settlement. I would not, positively I would not, allow the wretch to
benefit by keeping that. No, indeed!"
"If," replied Kate, "'tis as I fear--nay, as I know it is, I will not
touch one farthing of his. Not one farthing. I will go forth, and he
Shall be as though I had never seen or spoken to him."
"But," asked the more practical woman of the world, "what will you do,
dear? You cannot live on air, and--which is almost worse--you cannot
marry someone who will give you a good home. And you so pretty, too!"
she added.
"Marry again!" exclaimed Kate, her eyes glistening as she spoke.
"Heaven forbid! Have I not had enough of marriage? One experience
should suffice, I think."
"It has indeed been a sad one," answered Lady Belrose, who had herself
no intention of continuing her widowhood much longer, and was indeed
at that moment privately affianced to Sir Charles Ames. "But, Kate, if
your monster were dead you might be happy yet."
"No, no," the other replied, "never. And he is not dead, nor like to
die. I am, indeed, far more likely to die than he--since the doctors
all say I am far from strong, though I do not perceive it."
"But what will you do?" again asked the practical hostess. "How live?
Mr. Fane has, you say, no longer sufficient youth or activity to earn
a living for you at the fence school--can you, dear, earn enough for
both?"
"I think so," Kate replied, "by returning to Paris. That we must
do--there is nothing to be earned here. But, in Paris, Archibald
Sholto has much influence in the court circles; he knows even the King
and--and--the new favourite, La Pompadour, who has deposed Madame de
Chateauroux. Also he is a friend of Cardinal Tencin, who owes much to
the exiled Stuarts. It is, he thinks, certain that some place either
at the court, or in the prince's household--if he has escaped from
Scotland, which God grant!--or in the Chevalier St. George's, at Rome,
might be found for me--a place which would enable me to keep my old
father from want for the rest of his life."
"Kate, you are a brave woman, and a good one, too, for from what you
have told me your father himself has behaved none too well to you,
and----"
"I must forget that," the other replied, "and remember only how for
years he struggled hard to keep a home for us, to bring me up as a
lady. I must put away every thought of his one wrong to me and
remember only all that he has done for my good."
Meanwhile Kate's determination to part from her husband--if, as no one
doubted, he it was who had endeavoured to betray the others to the
Government--was well known to her three friends; and therefore, with
them as with her and her father, preparations were being hurried on by
which they also might return to France. For them there was, as there
had been before the invasion of Scotland and England, the means
whereby to exist; Douglas and Bertie had not sacrificed their
commissions in the French regiments to which they belonged, and
Archibald was employed by the Stuart cause as an agent, was also a
member of the College of St. Omer, and was a priest of St. Eustache.
That Bertie Elphinston would ever have left London while his kinsman
and the head of his house, Arthur, Lord Balmerino, lay in the Tower
awaiting his trial and certain death was not to be supposed, had not a
message come from that unhappy nobleman ordering him to go. Also, he
bade him waste no time in remaining where he was hourly in danger and
could, at the same time, be of no earthly good.
"He bids me tell you, Bertie," said Lady Balmerino, in a meeting which
she contrived to have with the young man on one of those evenings when
both were lodged in the Eastend, and while she wept piteously as she
spoke, "he bids me tell you that it is his last commandment to you, as
still the head of your house and the name you bear, to flee from
England. The rank and title of Balmerino must die with him, but he
lays upon you the task of bearing and, he hopes, perpetuating the name
of Elphinston honourably. Also he sends you his blessing as from a
dying old man to a young one, bids you trust in God and also serve the
House of Stuart while there is any member of it left. And if more be
needed to make you fly, he orders you to do it for your mother's
sake."
After that Elphinston knew where his duty lay--knew that he must
return to France. It was hard, he swore, to leave England and also,
thereby, to leave the scoundrel Fordingbridge behind and alive, still
he felt that it must be so. Fordingbridge merited death--yet he must
escape it!
But he had one consolation, too. Ere long Kate would be
back in Paris--it was not possible that her husband could be
innocent--therefore he would sometimes see her. A poor consolation,
indeed, he told himself, to simply be able to see the woman who was to
have been his wife yet was now another man's--no power on earth, no
determination on her part to sever her existence from Fordingbridge
could alter that!--yet it was something. Consequently, he with the
others set about the plans for their departure.
Now, to so arrange and manage for this departure, they looked to James
McGlowrie, who had both the will and the power to help them.
An old acquaintance of his in Scotland, when both were boys who had
not then gone forth into the world, McGlowrie had kept up an
occasional correspondence with Archibald Sholto until the present
time, and thereby had been able to afford him assistance and had
proved himself invaluable when Fordingbridge informed against them.
Indeed, had McGlowrie not known where Archibald Sholto was living when
in London, Geordie McNab's information derived from the Scotch
Secretary's Office could never have been utilized, and Archibald
Sholto must at least have been taken. And now he was to be even more
practically useful than before--it was in his cattle-trading boats
that all were, one by one, to be conveyed to the continent. "Though,"
said Jemmy, as he arranged plans with them one night in a little inn
at Limehouse where they were in the habit of meeting, and where there
was little danger of their being discovered, "I can give none of ye
any certain guarantee, so to speak as it were, of ye getting over in
safety. Infernal sloops o' war and bomb-ketches, and the devil knows
what else, are prowling about the waters looking for rebels, and as
like as not may light upon the one or other of you."
"We must risk that," said Bertie. "Great heavens! what have we not
risked far worse?"
"Vary weel," replied McGlowrie; "then let one of you begin the risk
to-morrow night. And you it had best be, Mr. Elphinston. My little
barky drops down the river then, and once you're round the North
Foreland you will be safe, or nearly so, to reach Calais. Be ready by
seven to-morrow night."
"Why do you select me to go first, Mr. McGlowrie? I have quite as
many, if not more, interests in England than either Douglas or
Archie."
"Um!" muttered honest Jemmy, who did not care to say that he thought a
man who was philandering about after a married woman was best got out
of the way as soon as possible, though such was, indeed, his opinion,
he being a strict moralist. "Um! I thought the noble lord had laid his
commands on ye to be off and awa' at anst. The head of the family must
be obeyed."
"Also," said Archibald Sholto, "you have your mother to think of. We
have no mother. Bertie, you had best go to-morrow night."
"And you have seen Kate," whispered gentle Douglas Sholto, who took,
perhaps, a more romantic view of things--for he had known of their
love from the first and, from almost envying them at its commencement,
had now come to pity them, "have made your farewells. If you get safe
to France you must of a surety meet again--for Fordingbridge is a
villain, and she will keep her word and part from him--is it not best
you go at once?"
"You and I have always gone together, Douglas, hand in hand in all
things," his friend replied; "I like not parting from you now."
"Still let it be so, I beg you. Remember, once we are back in Paris
all will be as happy as it has been before, or nearly so, and there
will be no Fordingbridge there. He, at least, will not be by us to set
the blood tingling in our veins with the desire to slay him."
"So be it," said Bertie, "I will go."
This being therefore decided, McGlowrie gave his counsel as to what
was to be done. The "little barky" of which he had spoken was in the
habit of taking over to Calais good black cattle in exchange for
French wines (what did it matter if sometimes the bottles were stuffed
full of lace instead of Bordeaux?), silks, and ribbons, and it was as
a drover he proposed Elphinston should go. The duties would be
nothing, and the assumption of them would be a sufficient explanation
of his being on board.
"And then," said he, "when once you set your foot on Calais sands you
can again become Captain Elphinston of the regiment of Picardy, and
defy King Geo--hoot! what treason am I talking?"
It was the truth that he had seen Kate again since the night of the
conflict at Vauxhall, and then, stung to madness by the renewed
villainy and treachery of her husband, he had pleaded to her to let
him seek out Fordingbridge and slay him with his own hands. But,
bitterly as she despised and hated the man who had brought them such
grief and sorrow, she refused to even listen to so much as a
suggestion of his doing this.
"No, no, no!" she exclaimed, shuddering at the very idea of such a
tragedy. "No, no. What benefit would it be to you or to me to have the
stain of his blood on our hands?"
"It would remove for ever the obstacle between us," he said; "would
set you free; would place us where we were before."
"Never, never," she replied. "I have been his wife--though such by
fraud and trickery--and if he were dead, God knows I could not mourn
him; yet I will not be his murderess, his executioner, as I shall be
if I let you slay him. If he fell by your hand, I could never look
upon your face again. Moreover, even were I hardened enough to do
so--which I am not--do you not know that the French law permits no man
to become the husband of a woman whose first husband he has slain? We
should be as far apart then as ever--nay, farther, with his death
between us always."
"I know, I know," he said, recognising, however, as he did so that
there was no possibility of his taking vengeance on Fordingbridge,
since by doing so he would thus place such a barrier between them.
"Yet there are other lands where one may live besides France and
England. There is Sweden, where every soldier is welcome; there
is----"
"Cease, I beseech you, cease! It can never be. If in God's good time
He sees fit to punish him, he will do so. If not, I must bear the lot
that has fallen to me. Meanwhile be assured that once I find he has
done this act of treachery, I shall never return to him."
"And we shall meet in Paris--that is, if ever I can get back there?"
"Yes," she answered. "We shall meet in Paris; for it is there I must
go. There, at least, I must find a means of existence; though, since
now we understand, since we have forgiven each other--is it not
so?--'twould perhaps be best that we should not meet again."
"No, no," he protested. "No, no. For even though this snake has
crept in between us--so that never more can we be to each other
what--what--my God!--what we once were; so that there must be no love,
no passing of our days, our lives, together side by side--yet, Kate,
we can at least know that the other is well if not happy; we can meet
sometimes. Can we not? answer me."
"Oh, go!" she exclaimed, breaking down at his words and weeping
piteously, as she sank into a chair and buried her head in her hands.
"Go! In mercy, go! I cannot bear your words; they break my heart.
Leave me, I beseech you!"
So--because he, too, could bear the interview no longer, and could not
endure to see her misery--he left her, taking her hand and kissing it
ere he departed, and whispering in her ear that soon they would meet
again.