The Rising Storm

by Dennis Wheatley

  Roger was twelve years younger than Madame Marie Antoinette, but he remembered the stories of the earthquake that had still been current in his childhood. The shock had been so terrific that it had been felt at places as far distant as the Baltic, the West Indies, Canada and Algiers. The greater part of Lisbon had been thrown to the ground. The great marble quay sank down with hundreds of people on it; every ship in the harbour was engulfed, and neither wreckage nor bodies ever came to the surface. In six minutes 40,000 people had perished.

  For a moment there was silence, then the Conde Fernanunez spoke. “If she is adamant in her determination not to leave, the only course open to us is to endeavour to concert measures to restore some degree of the royal authority.”

  “That is my own view, Excellency,” nodded de Mercy-Argenteau. “And it seems to me that our only hope of doing so lies in winning over to the Court some of the popular leaders.”

  “But who?” asked Fersen pessimistically. “All the honest leaders who incline to support the monarchy no longer carry any weight with the masses. For the rest, the Assembly is made up of little men, who would be useless to us, or rogues.”

  “Then let us buy a rogue,” suggested the Spaniard. “What does it matter, provided that he be a man with great enough prestige to sway the people?”

  “I believe there is only one man big enough to do this thing,” put in Roger, “and that at heart he is by no means a rogue. The Comte de Mirabeau.”

  “I agree with you,” said de la Marck quickly. “He is the very man I have myself long had in mind for such a role.”

  Fersen turned and looked at Roger. “Think you he would agree to such a proposal? Are you shooting in the dark, or do you know him personally?”

  “I dined with him three nights ago. Like many others who took a hand in stirring up this hornets’ nest, he is much perturbed by the way events are trending. He came out most strongly in favour of an absolute veto for the King and deplores the weakness of the present Ministry. One remark he made struck me particularly; he said: ‘The Queen is the only man the King has about him.’”

  De Mercy-Argenteau was now leaning forward, listening to Roger with the greatest interest. “If de Mirabeau said that,” he murmured, “it is certainly a good indication that he would be willing to serve Her Majesty. But please go on, Mr. Brook.”

  “I would only add, Your Excellency, that I believe it would be a mistake to ask too much of him. I think that he would willingly cooperate with Their Majesties in an effort to give the country a sound Liberal Constitution, and enforce the restoration of order in it. But I feel certain that, dubious as his private life may have been, where the welfare of his country is concerned he has a conscience; and neither promises nor bribes would induce him to assist the Court in an attempt to re-establish an autocratic Government.”

  De la Marck nodded vigorously. “That is exactly my opinion; and I have taken some pains to get to know de Mirabeau well. He is of course, always in need of money, and under the guise of literary patronage I have allowed him a small monthly pension ever since I came to appreciate his worth. But no amount one could offer him would tempt him to betray his political ideals. If he accepts a salary from the King it will be only on his own conditions, and then because he would feel that he was just as much entitled to it as any other Minister.”

  “If the King made him a Minister he would lose his seat in the Assembly,” objected the Conde Fernanunez. “Then more than half his value would be lost to us. His power to influence the decisions of the Chamber is his main asset.”

  “I fear I did not make myself plain, Excellency. I meant the salary he would receive if he were a Minister; not that he should be made one. The suggestion is that he should be asked to formulate a secret policy for Their Majesties and be paid a retainer for advising them on every stage of it; but himself continue as a deputy, and do all he can to forward the programme in the Chamber.”

  After some further discussion it was agreed that in a secret alliance such as de la Marck suggested lay the best hope of preventing the extremists from becoming absolute masters of the State, and it was decided that he should sound de Mirabeau upon it. De Mercy-Argenteau then thanked everyone present for the advice they had offered, and asked them to keep in touch with him.

  Christmas fell two days later, but as it was not kept up in France with the gaiety and good cheer traditional in England Roger hardly noticed its passing. As he enjoyed full liberty to come and go as he pleased, he had thought of taking ten days’ leave to go home for it, but had decided against doing so for a variety of reasons. It was highly probable that Amanda would be at Walhampton and meeting her again at all the local parties would be awkward after their affaire in the summer. During his last visit to Lymington he had been driven half crazy by his longings for Isabella; and, although he was well on the way to freeing his mind of thoughts of her, he feared that such an early return to the scene of his misery might bring them flooding back. But the decisive factor was that he felt he was now really getting to grips with his mission, and that the reports he was sending to Mr. Pitt must be too valuable for him to be justified in losing touch with his contacts even for a matter of ten days.

  On the 30th of December he made his first appearance at the Jacobin Club. It had been started while the National Assembly was still at Versailles by a few Breton deputies who wished to discuss overnight the measures that were to be brought before the Chamber on the following day. Since the removal to Paris it had enormously increased both its membership and its influence. Men of all shades of opinion, other than declared reactionaries, went there, but it was tending more and more to become an unofficial headquarters of the Left. As a club-house the ex-Convent of the Jacobins, off the Rue St. Honoré within a hundred yards of the Place Vendôme, had been taken over, and thus gave the Club the name by which it had now become generally known.

  Roger kept de Mirabeau to his promise to take him there and the Count said that there would be no difficulty about his becoming a member of the Club if he wished to do so. Anyone could join provided they were introduced by an existing member and had either published some work expressing Liberal sentiments or were prepared to make a short speech which met with the approval of the members present at the time. Colour, religion and race were no bar to election, as the spirit of the Club was “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” for all; and British subjects always received a particularly warm welcome on account of their having been the first people in the world to throw off the “tyranny of Kings”. The Count added that only a few days before Christmas an English gentleman-farmer of Suffolk, named Arthur Young, who was staying in Paris with the Duc de Liancourt, had been elected a member with much enthusiasm.

  The great hall of the Convent was already famous in French history, as it was here that the Catholic League had been formed in the reign of Henri III, to resist the armies of the insurgent Huguenots. When de Mirabeau led Roger into it a further chapter of French history was being written, but by a very different type of man from the great nobles who had once stuck white crosses in their feathered caps and sworn an oath there with drawn swords. It was crowded with democrats of all classes and over a hundred deputies were present, debating the policy they should pursue in the Assembly the following day. After listening to them for a while it was soon clear to Roger that Barnave, the Lameths, Pètion and other enragés, as the most violent revolutionaries were called, were much the most popular speakers.

  In due course a halt was called to the debate to elect new members, and de Mirabeau introduced Roger as an English journalist of sound Whig convictions. Roger then spoke briefly, saying several things in which he fully believed, with regard to the liberty of the subject, and ending with a peroration in which he did not, concerning the imperishable glory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was elected with acclamation and afterwards signed the book as a member.

  On January 1st he celebrated the opening of the year 1790 by buying himself one of the new hats. Three-cornered hats were now rap
idly going out of fashion and being replaced by two new types of headgear. The first, now being worn by more sober men of substance, was a round beaver or felt with an insloping crown, like a steeple that had been cut off short. The second, affected by the fashionable youth of the new era, was a sickle moon-shaped cocked hat of moiré silk, worn on the back of the head with its points sticking out level with the ears; which could be folded flat for holding under the arm more conveniently than the old three-cornered type. Roger chose one of the latter and had just completed his purchase when he ran into de la Marck.

  Somewhat to his surprise the young Austrian told him that he had been seeking to use the Comte de Provence as a medium for negotiations between de Mirabeau and the King. Louis XVI had not considered it necessary to send his younger brother abroad, as, unlike d’Artois, he had not incurred the hatred of the mob. On the contrary, he had pandered to it and, on the removal from Versailles, come to live at the Palais du Luxembourg, on the south side of the river, where he now enjoyed a faint replica of the popularity that the Duc d’Orléans had had while living at the Palais Royal.

  De la Marck explained that he had been influenced in the course he had taken by knowing that although the Queen had never met de Mirabeau, all she had heard of him had led her to dislike and distrust him intensely; so he had feared that a direct approach to her might result in the project being killed at birth, and had decided to attempt to interest the King in it through his brother.

  However, he felt now that he had been something of a simpleton to count on family loyalty, and had probably underestimated de Provence’s jealousy of the King and hatred for the Queen, as the pompous Prince had merely temporised, and was proving of very little help.

  Roger strongly advised a direct approach to the Queen, and some days later he was gratified to hear from de la Marck that the move had proved successful. At first Madame Marie Antoinette had proved extremely difficult to convince that de Mirabeau would observe any pact loyally; but in the end she had been won round, and an agreement had been reached by which the King was to pay de Mirabeau’s debts and allow him 6,000 livres a month; and the great demagogue was now busy compiling in secret a long paper on innumerable questions, for the future guidance of Their Majesties.

  The rest of January and the first half of February passed for Roger in a round of intense activity. There were outbreaks of disorder in Versailles and the Provinces, and rumours of plots of all sorts, to be investigated. He continued to attend the Queen’s public receptions occasionally, went frequently to the National Assembly and spent several evenings each week at the Jacobin Club. He kept in close touch with de Périgord and, now fully convinced of his fundamental loyalty to the Crown, confided to him the secret alliance that had been entered into between de Mirabeau and the Sovereigns; in exchange for which he received much valuable information. In turn he dined with de la Marck, Fersen, de Cazalès, Barnave, de Mercy-Argenteau, Desmoulins, and many other men of all shades of opinion.

  He was quieter, graver and much more sure of himself than when he had come to Paris in the spring; but he was enormously interested in his work, had regained much of his old natural cheerfulness, and now rarely thought of Isabella.

  It was on the afternoon of February 14th that he received a note by hand from Lord Robert Fitz-Gerald. It read simply: A certain person requires your immediate presence in London.

  That night he was in the fast diligence, rumbling along the road towards Calais. The weather was filthy and the diligence an ice-box, the straw on its floor barely keeping the feet of the passengers from freezing; and he thanked his stars that he had decided against making the trip home for Christmas, when it had been even colder. But only a moderate sea was running and the wind was favourable, so on the 17th the Dover coach set him down at Charing Cross.

  Tired as he was, he went straight to Downing Street; and only ten minutes after he had sent up his name he was ushered into the Prime Minister’s room.

  After greeting him pleasantly and offering him a glass of Port, Mr. Pitt came to the point with his usual directness. He said:

  “Mr. Brook, I recalled you from Paris because I wish you to proceed at once to Spain.”

  Chapter XXI

  On the Beach

  For a moment Roger was silent. A mission to Spain could only mean that the Prime Minister was sending him to Madrid. It would take him a fortnight or three weeks to get there. Isabella’s baby was due to be born in little over a month. The Condesa Fernanunez had said that after Isabella’s lying-in the Sidonia y Ulloas would be certain to spend some months in Madrid making their court to the new King and Queen. So if he went there it was a virtual certainty that he would see Isabella again within six or seven weeks.

  “I am sorry, sir,” he said. “But I cannot go to Spain.”

  “Cannot!” Mr. Pitt repeated, raising his eyebrows in astonishment. “That, Mr. Brook, is a word which I do not permit those I employ to use to me.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Roger, “much as I regret to have to do so, I fear I must use it now. I am extremely sorry, but I cannot go to Spain.”

  “Why?” asked the Prime Minister coldly. “Have you committed some crime which would make you non persona grata at the Court of Madrid?”

  “No, sir. It is a purely personal matter. I will willingly go anywhere else that you may choose to send me, but not to Madrid.”

  “But I do not wish to send you anywhere else. I have special work of urgent importance that I wish you to undertake for me in the Spanish capital.”

  “Then, greatly as it distresses me to refuse you, sir, I fear you must find someone else to do it.”

  The Prime Minister’s long, thin face paled slightly, and he said with extreme hauteur: “Mr. Brook, your personal affairs cannot be allowed to interfere with the business of the State. Either you will accept the orders that I give you or find another master.”

  Roger’s face went whiter than Mr. Pitt’s. He had been shocked into an abruptness that he did not intend. “I—I pray you, sir, reconsider this matter,” he faltered. “I now have excellent contacts in Paris, and have good reason to believe that I am serving you well there. I beg you to send somebody else to Spain and allow me to return to France.”

  “On the contrary,” replied Mr. Pitt sharply, “I am by no means satisfied with your activities in Paris. In my opinion you have become involved with the wrong type of people. On the one hand you have entered on what may be termed a conspiracy with the Austrian Ambassador to forward the reactionary projects of the Queen in opposition to the new democratic Government; and that is contrary to the interests of this country. On the other you have entered into an alliance with Monsieur de Talleyrand-Périgord. Having met him when I was in France I have a great admiration for his intellectual gifts; but he has proved himself to be an iconoclast of the most dangerous description, and as he is completely unscrupulous it is certain that he will use you for his own ends.

  “Lastly, there is this story of yours about a rapprochement between Monsieur de Mirabeau and the Queen. One might as well try to mix oil and water, and I do not believe there is one grain of truth in it. Except upon purely general matters the information you have been sending is in complete contradiction to that furnished by the British Embassy, and I can only conclude that you are being made a fool of by de Périgord and your other friends.”

  Utterly flabbergasted, Roger stared at him in dismay. Then he burst out angrily: “ ’Tis the British Embassy that is being fooled, not I; as time will show.”

  “You must pardon me if I doubt that. In any case, I have decided to send another man to Paris. But in the past you have shown much courage and initiative, and I had hopes that you would recover them by a change of scene. Are you, or are you not, prepared to receive my instructions for this mission to Madrid?”

  “No!” declared Roger firmly. “I am not.”

  The Prime Minister stood up. “Very well then, Mr. Brook. It only remains for me to thank you for your endeavours in the past, and to
wish you success in some other career. This evening I will have a word with His Grace of Leeds and request him to have your accounts looked into. If you will wait upon His Grace some time next week he will see to it that you receive any monies that may be due to you.”

  Five minutes later Roger found himself in the street. He was utterly bewildered at the course events had taken, and wondered now if he had acted like a fool in refusing the mission to Spain. But, almost at once, he decided that he had been right to do so. Both Isabella and he had suffered too much from their affaire for it to be anything but madness to renew it, and that would have been inevitable if he had given way to Mr. Pitt and gone to the Court of Madrid. She would soon have her child about which to build her life, and for the past two months the vision of her had ceased to obsess him; so of two evils he felt sure he had chosen the lesser. Yet the price he had had to pay filled him with dismay. He could hardly realise it yet, but he was now, as his father the Admiral would have said, “on the beach”. No, worse! For him there was no chance at all of another ship; he was a man without a future.

  Mr. Pitt, meanwhile, was much annoyed at Roger’s refusal of his mission, as he had counted on him for it. In less than three years Roger had been instrumental in checking two serious foreign aggressions that threatened to lead to war, and the Prime Minister had felt that his peculiar flair for such situations might help in arresting another.

  Having become Prime Minister at the age of twenty-four, Mr. Pitt naturally did not share the common belief that a man must reach middle-age before he could be entrusted with discretionary powers in matters of high policy. There had been no British Ambassador at Madrid since the previous June, so, until a new one could be appointed, he had intended to send Roger there with Letters of Marque which would have given him wide scope for his talents, and he felt aggrieved both at the upsetting of his own plans and that his young protégé should have missed such an excellent chance to distinguish himself. On the other hand, as he knew much more about Mr. Brook’s private affairs than that young man supposed, he was not altogether sorry that his insubordination had offered the opportunity to give him a sharp lesson.