The Rising Storm rb-3

by Dennis Wheatley

  The good-looking young lawyer listened to his proposal with interest but vetoed it. "Mon ami," he said. "It is true in theory that anyone who has been accepted as a member here has the right to address the meeting; but in practice they have to get themselves a hearing. I know you as an English journalist of sound Liberal opinions, but that is not enough. You have made no contribution towards the Revolution either by writings published in France or by deeds. Your countrymen were most popular here as speakers up to a month or so ago; but now, the very fact that you are an Englishman would damn you from the start. You would be howled down for a certainty. It might even be thought that you were a spy of Mr. Pitt's, who was endeavouring to influence us against our true interests, and you would then find your­self in grave danger of a lynching. Since you have no qualifications as a true Revolutionary, what you suggest is absolutely out of the question."

  With his last hope gone, Roger had to sit there listening to Mirabeau arguing in sonorous, well-reasoned phrases that popular assemblies were subject to the same passions as Kings, and not subject to any responsibility as were Ministers; that if one country was prepar­ing fast for war it was madness for another, against whom those prepara­tions were aimed, to waste weeks while hundreds of its citizens of all shades of opinion argued whether counter-preparations were to be made or not; that for a country that was attacked, either itself or through its allies, to await the word of the representatives of the whole nation before drawing the sword in its own defence, was suicidal; and that in consequence it was sheer lunacy to suggest that such powers should not remain vested in the King.

  At a little before noon next day Roger was hurrying towards the Spanish Embassy. A sullen, muttering crowd of some two hundred people was gathered in the street in front of it, but he pushed his way through them and ignored the insults they shouted after him as, seeing him run up the steps of its porch, they took him for a Spaniard.

  When the door was answered by a footman, he asked gruffly if Don Diego was in. On the man replying that he was not, Roger thrust the astonished servant aside, dashed up the stairs and burst into the salon.

  Georgina and the Condesa Fernanunez were sitting there. Both of them started up from their chairs at his precipitate entrance, and stared at him with startled eyes.

  He was white as a sheet, breathless and trembling. After standing rigid for a moment he gasped out:

  "Where is he? Where is Don Diego? I must see him at once!"

  "You know?" Georgina's voice came in a hoarse whisper. "You have heard?"

  He nodded. "Where is he? I tell you I must see himl Don't dare to hide him from me. I want the truth."

  "He is not here," she faltered. "He has gone out. We expect him back at any moment. But Roger; I beg you control yourself. It was no-fault of his. 'Twas the mob ..."

  With a set face he strode past her, through the french windows-and out on to the balcony. As he appeared he was greeted with cat­calls, hisses and insults from the crowd below.

  Georgina ran after him and clutched his arm from behind. "Roger, Roger! Are you gone crazy to act like this? 'Tis terrible, I know. Wha could guess that such an awful thing would happen; even with Paris in the state it is. But Diego is as innocent in this as myself. I implore - you to come in and let me do what I can to calm your distraught mind."

  Without a word in reply he tore his arm from her grasp. He had suddenly seen Don Diego coming up the street and just entering the fringe of the crowd

  He waited for another minute, then, leaning over the ironwork of the balcony, he thrust out his arm. Pointing it at the Spaniard, he cried at the top of his voice:

  "Seize him! Seize him! That is Don Diego Sidonia y Ulloa! He is the Spanish Envoy who has been sent from Spain to drag France into war! He is an intriguing aristocrat and the enemy of you all! With Spanish soldiers at his back he plans to rebuild the Bastille, A la Lanterne! A la Lanterne! A la Lanterne!"

  For a heart-beat the mob was surprised into complete silence. Then with a howl of hate and rage it flung itself upon the wretched man he had denounced.

  "Roger!" Georgina's cry was a wail of mingled amazement, anger and horror. "Roger, you are in truth gone mad! Stop them! Stop them! Oh, my God! My God!"

  Thrusting her away from him, Roger kept his eyes fixed upon the terrible scene below. For a few moments Don Diego disappeared from view as his body was kicked and trampled on by the bloodthirsty sans­culottes; then, torn and bleeding, it was forced up again. Some of the ruffians had run to the nearest lamp-post, hauled down the lamp and detached it from the rope. Next minute the rope was about Don Diego's still-writhing neck. A score of hands grasped the free end and hauled upon it. The battered body was hoisted high above the crowd for all to see, and a yell of savage glee echoed down the street;

  Roger loosened his sword in its scabbard, ready to fight his way out of the Embassy if the servants attempted to prevent his leaving.

  Georgina was still standing beside him, frozen dumb with horror. He turned his bloodshot eyes upon her, and said hoarsely:

  "I deeply regret this on your account. But it was an act of justice."

  Suddenly she clenched her fist. Then she struck him again and again in the face, as she screamed: "I will never forgive you for this! Never! Never! You beast! You brute! You swine!"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THREE KINDS OF WINE

  ONE week later, on Wednesday the 26th of May, at a quarter-past six in the evening, Roger was at No. io Downing Street and in the presence of his master.

  Mr. Pitt sat behind his table. It was littered with papers and, as usual, there stood on it a decanter of Port with some glasses, from one of which he was drinking. But he had not offered Roger a glass or asked him to sit down; although he was standing there tired, dusty and travel-stained, just as he had come from Dover.

  The Prime Minister's thin, worn face was even graver than its wont, and when he spoke his voice held all the chill vigour and cutting scorn with which at times he crushed his opponents in the House.

  "Mr. Brook. That you should have the impudence to show your face here, I find a matter for amazement. But your having done so will spare me the necessity of sending for you at some future date, to require you to return to me the Letter of Marque with which I fur­nished you when last we met; and to inform you that should you at any future time represent yourself as an agent of the British Crown, you will do so at your dire peril.

  "Two years ago I believed you to be a young man of great promise, but my judgment was sadly at fault. You must be aware that your reports are very far from being my only source of information regard­ing what takes place on the Continent; and when I last had the occa­sion to reprove you I spared you the full disclosure of my knowledge. For the past thirteen months I have been following your activities with ever-increasing disapproval and ever-decreasing lack of faith in your ability—or even loyalty.

  "In the spring of '89 you left your post in Paris ostensibly to get into the good graces of the Queen of France. But I later learned that the prime cause of your departure was to accompany one of her Maids of Honour to Italy. There, only the intervention of the young woman's family prevented your eloping with her and thus provoking a first-class scandal.

  "In the autumn you again left your post; this time without even notifying me of your intentions. You simply decamped, leaving me for a month without what I then considered a valuable source of in­formation on events in Paris. In due course I learned that you journeyed to Naples to renew your love affair in the absence of the lady's husband.

  "On your belated return you had nothing to report but the failure of another mission, which you say you undertook for the Queen of France. You then proceeded to involve yourself with the reactionary intriguers who surround her, and entered into a pact with that dangerous and unscrupulous apostate, Monsieur de Talleyrand-Perigord. I re­called you, in order to get you out of the clutches of these most un­desirable people, and offered you another mission in a field that I con­sidered might p
rove more suited to you. But, in the place where I thought I could use you to advantage, you refuse to serve me.

  "In March, to seek out the woman who has bedevilled you, as I am now informed, you decide to go off to Madrid; but first you make your peace with me and, when I reinstate you, give me your solemn assurance that you will place the King's business before all else. In­stead, with the object of getting your mistress to Paris, where you could pursue your intrigue with her more easily than in the rigid atmosphere of the Spanish Court, you persuade King Carlos to send her husband on a mission to France—utterly regardless of the fact that the object of that mission was to strengthen the alliance between France and Spain.

  "From that point I can only attribute your acts to a lesion of the brain. It is not enough that in the Spanish affair you have betrayed your country's interests for your personal ends. You abuse my con­fidence in the most shameful manner, by using the Letter of Marque

  I gave you in a way that you knew I never had the remotest intention of its being used. Without one tittle of authority you give yourself the pretensions of a Minister Plenipotentiary accredited to the Court of France. Then, some further aberration of the brain leads you to throw away such influence as you have acquired with the Queen of France by openly espousing the cause of the Revolutionaries.

  "In defiance of my Lord Robert Fitz-Gerald's order you remain in Paris, and consort with the demagogues at the Jacobin Club. You next bring about the foul and brutal murder of your mistress' husband by the mob. Then you go to the Jacobins and proceed publicly to glorify your abominable act. You proclaim yourself the enemy of all Kings, including your own, and incite these bloodthirsty terrorists to further acts of violence.

  "Had you committed your crime in England, justice would have seen that you hanged for it; and I warn you, should the French Govern­ment ask for your extradition to call you to account for it in Paris, I intend to give you up to them."

  As the cold, hard voice of the Prime Minister ceased, Roger gave a weary shrug, and said:

  "I admit many things with which you charge me, sir; upon others I am prepared to defend myself. How long is it since you had news out of France?"

  Mr. Pitt frowned. "I have heard nothing since Saturday; when my agent arrived with the tale of your infamies. Owing to bad weather in the Channel no packet boat left after his until the one from which you must have landed this morning."

  "Then you will not have heard the result of the sittings of the National Assembly on the twenty-first and twenty-second."

  "No. What of them?"

  "Only that another great blow has been struck against the Royal Prerogative, by the passing of a new Revolutionary measure that I inspired."

  "And you have the insolence to announce this to me as a matter of which you can be proud?"

  "I do. The manner of Don Diego Sidonia y Ulloa's death is a matter that lies only between myself and God. Let it suffice that by seizing the opportunity to denounce him when I did I gained the end I had in mind. To save myself from arrest I placed myself under the protection of the Jacobin Club. It was voted that he was an enemy of the people, and that by my act I had served their cause in putting a swift end to his intrigues to drag France into war. You need not con­cern yourself about any request for my extradition. There will be none. No French official would dare to lay a finger on me; for in Paris I am acclaimed a national hero.

  "That night I spoke in the Jacobins as has been reported to you by your ineffectual creature Miles. I spoke again the following night, and yet again the night after that. I declared myself the bitter enemy of monarchy in all its forms, and the Jacobins hung upon my words. In the matter of Nootka Sound I urged them to repudiate the Spanish alliance. I said that it was made by two effete Royal Families for their own aggrandizement, without thought of the horrors that war brings to the common people. I argued that no treaty was binding upon a nation unless it had been entered into with the full knowledge and assent of the people's representatives. I demanded that all existing treaties should be declared null and void, and that in future France should consider herself bound only by treaties made by the nation.

  "What the Jacobins decide by night now becomes law in the National Assembly the following day. Mirabeau attempted to sway the Club against me, but he was howled down; Desmoulins, Lameth, Robespierre, Dupont, Petion, all supported me. And Mirabeau was again defeated in the debates that followed in the Assembly, by Barnave using my arguments against him.

  "I have betrayed the Queen and all my better instincts. I caused a man to be done to death in a manner that will trouble my soul for years to come. I brought about the death of a woman who was very dear to me by remaining on in Paris, when I might have come away with her ten days ago. I have lost a friendship that I value more than life itself. And all this as the price of getting a hearing in the Jacobin Club. I have branded myself as a sans-culotte—a brutal murderer from whom all decent people will shrink. But I have served you and England well.

  "You can cancel your preparations in the ports and demobilize your levees. On your own word Spain will not fight alone; so there will be no war. A year ago you asked me to devise means which might assist you to break the Family Compact. I have broken it for you. On Saturday the twenty-second, by the law of France, it was declared null and void. It is as dead as yesterday's sheep that is now mutton. More; without resorting to war, I have made possible your dream, that all Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, should henceforth become a dominion of the British Crown."

  Mr. Pitt remained quite silent for a moment, then he said: "Mr. Brook. I owe you an apology. I—er—omitted to offer you a glass of Port."

  When Roger left No. 10 Downing Street dusk was falling. A few yards from the entrance a closed carriage was drawn up. As he walked past it a voice that he knew well called him by name. Turning he saw Georgina's lovely face framed in the carriage window. Beckoning to him she threw open the door. After only a second's hesitation he got in, slammed it behind him and sat down beside her. As he did so the carriage drove off.

  After an awkward pause, he asked: "How comes it that you knew I had returned to London?"

  "I had word from Droopy Ned," she answered in a low voice. "As soon as Papa and I got back I asked Droopy to let me know the instant that you arrived. He sent me a message an hour ago that you had dropped your baggage at Amesbury House and gone on to Downing Street."

  Again there was a long, strained silence; then she said with a sob: "Oh Roger 1 All this past week I have been near dead of grief."

  He turned away his face. "I know how bitterly you must feel, but I beg you to spare, me your reproaches. The memory of that awful scene and the manner in which I brought about his death is as much as I can bear."

  "Nay," she replied quickly. "Fond as I was of him, it was not his death that has driven me half-crazy. 'Twas the thought of the breach between us. You are so much a part of me that I could not reconcile myself to cutting you from my life without an attempt at explanation. I had to find out if you had some shadow of justification for the awful thing you did, or if I am condemned to regard you henceforth as a monster. Why did you do it, Roger? Why?"

  "It is a long story," he murmured. "But I too have been more distressed by your threat never to forgive me than all else put to­gether. Where can we go to talk alone in comfort?"

  "I am taking you to my studio on Campden Hill. I must know the truth, and whether after tonight I may ever look you in the face again without a shudder. Let us say no more till we arrive there."

  As they drove on through Hyde Park and down to Kensington village, Roger recalled the many times that they had taken the same drive together in very different circumstances. Georgina had a natural talent for painting, and Gainsborough and Reynolds had entered on a pleasant rivalry in giving such a ravishing pupil lessons, in her studio-villa on Campden Hill; but she also used it as a petit maison, and when she felt inclined to play the wanton took her most-favoured beaux there to sup with her. With a sad pang Roger thou
ght again of the wine, the laughter and the love that had united them when he had last accompanied her there in the early hours of the morning, after a ball.

  But that was long ago; "and no hideous Paris street scene centring round a battered, bloody corpse lay between them then.

  When they arrived at the quiet villa, secluded among its grove of trees, Jenny, Georgina's faithful maid, who knew all her secrets, let them in. Roger had not seen Jenny in Paris and only once in Aran­juez; so after she had bobbed him a curtsy he talked to her for a few minutes as an old friend; and that served to relieve a little the tension between Georgina and himself. Georgina then told Jenny to bring them a bottle of Canary wine and, as the maid left them to fetch it, asked him when he had last fed.

  "I have not eaten all day," he replied; "but am more tired than hungry. What I need most in all the world, after your forgiveness, are a hot bath and a few hours' sleep."

  She kept her eyes away from his. "The issue cannot now be al­tered; so I will contain my impatience yet a while that you may have both, and be the better man to justify yourself—if you can. 'Tis not yet eight o'clock. Jenny shall boil some water up for you while we drink a glass of wine and you undress. You can sleep in my bed and later I will have some cold food ready for you."

  In silence they drank two glasses each of the Canary, then he had his bath and flopped into Georgina's big square bed. As its black silk sheets caressed his naked limbs he thought of the last time that he had lain there, with her burbling with laughter beside him, and won­dered if he would ever again know such perfect contentment. Then he dropped asleep.