Chapter 28 Scaramouche The Kingmaker by Rafael Sabatini
LÉOPOLDINE
The Baron de Batz came back to the Rue de Ménars, to find André-Louis in shirt sleeves, writing the closing words of his encomium on Chabot. He was in high spirits, the result of fruitful concentration.
"I have endowed François Chabot with all the virtues of Brutus, Cicero, and Lycurgus." There was a sparkle in the dark eyes, a flush on the lean face as he flung down his pen. "A great morning's work!"
But de Batz accounted his own labours of greater consequence. "Whilst you have been merely praising Chabot, I have been marrying him."
With a touch of pride he reported his transaction with the Freys. He was met by stark dismay.
"You have done this? Without consulting me?"
De Batz was not only disappointed of the praise for which he had looked; he was piqued.
"Without consulting you? Am I to consult you upon every step I take?"
"It would be more prudent, and more courteous. I have consulted you at every step."
There was argument upon this, and it began to assume a tone of acerbity. De Batz set himself to point out all the advantages which this marriage must bring to the campaign they were conducting. André-Louis broke in upon these indications.
"I know all that. I perceive it all. But the means! It is with the means that I am quarrelling. There is a limit to those we may employ. A limit imposed by decency, which no cynicism may overstep.
"On my soul, this comes well from you. You shrink from cynicism? You? Why, what the devil ails you?"
"We'll play this game without using that unfortunate child as a pawn in it."
De Batz passed from amazement to amazement. "Of what account is she?"
André-Louis smote the table with his open palm. "She has a soul. I do not traffic in souls."
"I could tell you of others who possess souls. Others whom you hound relentlessly. Has Chabot no soul, or Delaunay, or Julien, or the Freys, or that fellow Burlandeux whom you sent to the guillotine without a twinge of conscience? Or Julie Berger, with whom you would have dealt in the same way?"
"Those persons are vile. I give them what they seek. Burlandeux wanted blood. He got it. His own. But why quibble? Will you compare the beasts we are engaged in exterminating with this poor inoffensive child?"
And now de Batz, remembering a moment in the courtyard of the Rue d'Anjou, broke into laughter and derision.
"I see, I see! The little partridge, as Chabot calls her, was to be preserved for you. I am sorry, my friend. But we are the servants of a cause that admits of no such personal considerations."
André-Louis came to his feet. He was white with anger. "Another word in this strain, and we quarrel, Jean."
Swift as lightning came the peppery Gascon's riposte: "That is a thing I never avoid."
Their breathing slightly quickened, they eyed each other with defiance whilst a man might count to twelve. André-Louis was the first to master himself. He turned aside.
"This way lies madness, Jean. It is not for you and me, surrounded as we are by dangers any one of which may at any moment send either of us to the guillotine, to set up a quarrel."
"The word was yours," said the Baron.
"Perhaps it was. You stung me with your imputation of base motives. It seemed an offence less against me than against someone who is to me an inspiration. To imply that I should be wanting in fidelity..." He broke off. De Batz was surveying him with a surprise that was faintly cynical. "It is the thought of her, who is pure and spotless, as I am sure is this poor child of the Freys, that makes the prospect horrible. If there were any such conspiracy against my Aline! I contemplate the agony to her, and grow the more conscious of the agony involved for little Léopoldine. She must not be a pawn in this game, Jean. She must not be a victim of our intrigues. She must not be part of the price at which we are to purchase the head of Chabot for the advancement of the House of Bourbon. We are on the fringe of infamy. And I will have no part in it, or countenance it."
De Batz heard him out with tightening lips and narrowing eyes, his Gascon temper roused by this unexpected opposition, this hostility to a piece of strategy in which he had been taking pride. But he curbed his feelings. As André-Louis had said, the circumstances surrounding them were too dangerous to admit of their quarrelling between themselves. The matter must be settled by argument. De Batz must adopt conciliation.
"No need to harangue me at such lengths, André. I am sorry if my thought offended you, and I am relieved that your interest in the girl is not personal. That would have been a serious obstacle."
"Not more serious than it is."
"Ah, wait. You have insufficiently considered. You have lost sight of the aim. Great ends are not to be served without sacrifice. If we are to let emotion or sentiment govern us, we should never have set our hands to this task. It is not for ourselves that we labour. We are here to rescue a whole people from damnation, to recover a throne for its rightful owners, and to bring back to France the best of her children who have been driven into exile. Are we to boggle over the sacrifice of an insignificant little foreign Jewess in the course of a scheme which may send a hundred heads to the guillotine? Can we be nice? Will you remember that we are kingmakers?"
André-Louis knew that there was no answer save on the grounds of sentiment. But so repugnant was the vision of that pure, innocent child being flung in prey to the loathsome, crapulous, blood-stained ex-capuchin, that André-Louis could not harden himself against it.
"It may all be as you say," he answered. "And yet this thing shall not be. It will recoil upon us. Evil will come of it. I have been ruthless, as you say. At moments my ruthlessness has left you aghast. But I am not ruthless enough for this. It is too foul."
Still de Batz kept a tight grip upon his restive patience. "Oh, I admit the foulness. But there are other foulnesses to be combated, to be avoided. We want no repetitions of the September massacres, and such horrors. For that you never hesitated to lay a train that will end in bringing a score of Girondin heads under the knife of the guillotine. They are fine heads, too. Yet you quibble about this child of no account. We cannot be selective in our means. This is the only certain way, and I have taken it."
"It is not the only way. Others would have been found as effective. It was only a question of patience."
"Patience! Patience, when the Queen is languishing, tortured and insulted in prison, and may at any moment be haled forth to trial and ignominious death, together with her children? Patience, when the little King of France is in the hands of assassins who are ill-treating him and brutalizing him? Don't you see that it is a race between us and the forces of evil that are at work to destroy those sacred members of the royal family? And you can talk of patience! You yield to gusty emotion over a negligible girl, to whom we do no worse wrong than thrust her into a wedlock to which she may at first be reluctant. Where is your sense of proportion, André?"
"In my conscience," he was fiercely answered. "I am not responsible for the sufferings of the Queen, and I..."
"You will be responsible for their protraction beyond what is necessary if you neglect any means to curtail them."
"The Queen herself would not desire her freedom, her safety, at this evil price."
"As a mother and a queen she must desire that of her children at any price."
"It remains that this price is one which my conscience will not suffer me to pay. It is idle to argue with me, Jean. I will not suffer it to be done."
"You will not suffer it? You?" And then, quite suddenly, de Batz broke into a laugh. He had seen something to which anger had been blinding him.
"You will not suffer it!" he cried yet again, but on an entirely different note, a note of unalloyed derision. "Prevent it then, my friend."
"That is my intention."
"And how will you accomplish it?"
"I shall go to the Freys at once."
"To ask for Léopoldine's hand in marriage for yourself? Not even so would you prevent it, unless you could inspire them with a faith in yourself greater than their faith in Chabot. Why, you fool, André! Do you dream that those avid Jews, faced with destitution and starvation unless they take prompt measures to entrench themselves, are going to allow any scruples about Léopoldine to check them? Faith! You are amusing, do you know? You are moved to a tenderness for their sister greater than that which they feel themselves, and this with no intention to make her either your mistress or your wife. Do you begin to see that you are ridiculous?"
"It does not make me ridiculous simply to be less foul than those about me."
"In which you include me, no doubt. Well, well, I'll suffer it. I must allow something to your knight-errant's chagrin."
"I'll prevent it somehow, God helping me."
"It will tax your quixotry, short of murdering Chabot, which would merely bring you to the guillotine. You are beating your head against a wall of sentiment, mon petit. Leave it. Ours is a serious mission. Sacrifices there must be. At any moment we may be sacrificed ourselves. Does not that justify us of everything?"
"It cannot justify us of this. And I will have no part in it." He was vehement.
De Batz ill-humouredly shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
"So be it. There is no need why you should have part in it. The train is laid. Not all your efforts could now stamp it out. Salve your conscience with that. The rest will happen of itself."
It was true enough. It was happening even then. For in his panic Junius allowed no time to be lost. And Fate conspired with de Batz by sending Chabot to dine with the Freys that day after the sitting of the Convention.
Léopoldine was in her usual place at table, flushing and uncomfortable, her pudicity affronted by the increasingly ardent oglings of Chabot, her flesh creeping when he pawed her soft round arm and leered into her eyes as he called her his little partridge. Once before Emmanuel, observing this amorousness in the ex-capuchin, had proposed to his brother that Léopoldine should not be brought to table when Chabot was present, and Junius had been disposed to adopt the suggestion. But to-day things were different. Symptoms which previously had dismayed Emmanuel and annoyed Junius were now not welcomed.
When the meal was done, and Chabot sat back replete and at ease, his greasy redingote unbuttoned, Junius opened the attack. Léopoldine had gone about her household duties, and the three men sat alone. Emmanuel was nervous and fidgety. Junius stolid as an Eastern idol for all his inner anxieties.
"You have a housekeeper, Chabot."
"So I have," said Chabot with disgust.
"She is dangerous. You must get rid of her. One of these days she will sell you. She has been to demand a present from me, as the price of her silence upon our transactions with the corsairs. That is not a woman to retain about you."
Chabot was disturbed. He cursed her roundly and obscenely. She was a vile baggage; insolent and ill-natured. It was only wanting that she should turn blackmailer as well.
"But, after all, what can I do?"
"You can send her packing before she is in a position seriously to compromise you. Such a woman is unworthy of association with a republican of your integrity."
Chabot scratched his unkempt head and grunted. "All that is very true. Unfortunately the association has already gone rather far. You may not have observed that she is about to become a mother."
It was a momentary set-back for Junius. But only momentary.
"All the more reason to get rid of her."
"You don't understand. She asserts that I am the father of this future patriot."
"Is it true?" came the quavering voice of Emmanuel.
Chabot blew out his cheeks, and raised his shoulders; he inflated his chest. The impeachment was not one that in any case would have disturbed him. "I am like that. What use to inveigh against it? It is no more than human, I suppose. I was never built for celibacy."
"You should take a wife," said Junius sternly.
"I have thought about it."
"At the moment it would afford you a sound pretext for ridding yourself of that squinting beldame. You cannot keep a wife and a mistress under the same roof. Even the Berger must recognize that, and so she may be less vindictive than if you put her in the street for any other reason."
Chabot was scared. "But you've said that she is blackmailing you with her knowledge of that corsair transaction." He got up, upsetting his chair in his perturbation. "May God damn me, I knew I was engaging in a dangerous business. I should have sent you all to the devil before ever I—"
"Calm, man! Calm!" Junius thundered. "Was ever anything achieved by panic? Of what can she accuse you, after all? Are you so poorly regarded that the breath of a vindictive woman can blow you away? Where are her proofs of what she asserts? You have but to say that she lies, and the National Barber will do the rest. A little firmness, my friend. That is all you need. Show her plainly what will be the consequences of denouncing you."
Chabot took courage.
"You are right, Junius. A patriot of my integrity, a servant of the nation, a pillar of the Republic such as I am is not to be dismissed upon the word of a jealous harridan. If she dares to attempt such a disservice to France, it will be my duty to immolate her upon the altar of Liberty."
"Spoken like a Roman," Junius commended him. "Yours is the true spirit, Chabot. I am proud to be your friend."
The egregious ex-capuchin bolted the outrageous flattery. He threw back his head in proud consciousness of his worth.
"And I'll be guided by you, Junius. I will take a wife."
"My friend!" Junius rose, and went to enfold the representative in his powerful arms. "My friend! It is what I have hoped and desired. Thus the spiritual fraternity that already unites us through the republican sentiments we share will be strengthened by this carnal bond." Symbolically he tightened an embrace which was already rendering the flabby Chabot a little out of breath. "My friend! My brother!" He loosed him and turned to the younger Frey. "Embrace him, Emmanuel. Take him to your heart in body as you have already done in spirit."
The lanky Emmanuel complied. Chabot's breathlessness was increased by astonishment. Something here seemed to have been assumed, and he did not discern what.
"Our little Léopoldine will be overjoyed," said Junius. "Overjoyed."
"Your little Léopoldine?" Chabot was in a dream.
Junius, his head on one side, was smiling benignly upon the representative.
"Millionaires and noblemen have asked for the hand of my sister, and they have been refused. The ci-devant Duke of Chartres might sue for her, and even if he were a patriot, instead of a vile aristocrat, he should not win her. If you do not take her, Chabot, nobody in France shall have her."
Chabot's amazement became stupefaction. "But..." he stammered. "But I...I have no fortune...I—"
Junius interrupted him. The rich voice was raised in vehemence.
"Fortune? If you had that, you would not be the pure patriot that you are, which is why I account you worthy of my sister. She will be well dowered, Chabot. Two hundred thousand livres, so that there may be no change in the mode of life to which we have accustomed her. And on her wedding day we will give up to her these apartments. You shall come and live here with her. Emmanuel and I will remove ourselves to the floor above. Thus all arranges itself."
Chabot's eyes looked as if they would drop from his face. Here, at long last, was the reward of virtue! Not for nothing had he trodden the flinty path of duty. Not for nothing had he set his hand to the plough of reform and toiled in such self-abnegation for the good of humanity and of France. His labours were at last to yield the wages due. Two hundred thousand livres, a handsome lodging, and the little partridge, so plump and soft and meek.
When, the shock of surprise being spent, he was able to assure himself that all this was real, that he was not passing through a dream, he had an impulse to fall on his knees and return thanks to the betrayed God of his early days. But his stout republican spirit saved him in time from such a heresy against the newly-adopted Goddess of Reason who governed this enlightened Age of Liberty.