Roger was very tired, and slept through most of the day. When he awoke in his bed at the Cushion and Keys, Marie Antoinette had already been dead for several hours. To the last her courage and dignity never faltered; but once the spectacle was over things soon returned to normal. There were a thousand more important things to think of than that the once most beautiful neck in France had, at half-past seven that morning, been severed by a knife, and that later a painfully thin body had been thrown into quicklime. The work of the Revolution, as decreed by the Comité, must go on.
That evening Roger had a meeting of his Section; so he went as usual. On such nights he never went out to Passy, as the meetings were rarely over before twelve o’clock, and sometimes lasted well into the early hours of the morning. On this occasion the meeting ended soon after midnight and, having slept most of the day, he was still wakeful. He was also terribly depressed, and when in such moods he always turned, if it were possible, to Amanda. She would be going home in a few days’ time now, as there was no longer any reason for her to remain in France, although he did not wish to hurry her unduly, as he had decided to refuse to let her make the journey with the unpredictable Lady Atkyns, and, instead, to send her home with Dan. She, too, he felt, would be frightfully depressed at the news of the Queen’s death; so perhaps they could cheer each other up a little, and over a picnic supper in their bedroom he would tell her about last night’s happenings.
After he had walked a little way, he hailed a night-hawk coach and drove out to Passy. The house was in darkness; but he had expected that, and quietly let himself in with the key that he had carried since Amanda had been living there. Taking off his boots in the hall, he went softly upstairs and opened the bedroom door a crack. No sound came, so she was evidently fast asleep. He tiptoed over to the big bed and, in the faint moonlight that percolated between the curtains, could just make out her curled-up form. Bending over her, he touched her cheek with his lips to lightly rouse her. She murmured something and turned over; so he kissed her again.
Suddenly she started up, shook back her hair, flung her arms round his neck, and cried in French, “Oh, Rojé, Rojé, you are back; and I had given up hoping for you till tomorrow!”
He was instantly transfixed, as though suddenly rendered incapable of movement by some witch’s spell. The woman in his wife’s bed was Athénaïs.
CHAPTER XXIII
BARREN VICTORY
For the space of three heartbeats Roger remained rigid. His mind told him that he positively must be dreaming, or seeing a ghost; although the soft, warm arms that clasped him were anything but ghostly. Could his ears have played him a trick? No; he might have been momentarily deceived in the semi-darkness, but the fervid, hungry kiss that closed his mouth told him it must be Athénaïs whom he was embracing.
A moment later his last doubts were resolved. Jerking her head back, she looked up at him and sighed, “Oh, Rojé, how heavenly to be with you once more! Did you worry greatly over what had become of me?”
“I was utterly distraught,” he cried; then, in his relief at knowing her to be alive, he embraced her again with a violence equalling her own, and covered her face with kisses.
When they drew apart they were breathless and trembling; but already, for him, the joy of their reunion was troubled by wild speculations about Amanda, and he stammered, “But how . . . what . . . what happened?”
“I was caught,” she replied. “I was anxious to know what had become of my friend Marguerite de Damville; so on my way to Paris I decided to go to her château and find out. It lies a few leagues to the south of Evreux. The château had been sacked, but she was living with her children in a farm near by. She had been there unmolested for nearly a year, and I should have been quite safe there too, had it not been for the civil war. General Wimpffen’s headquarters were at Evreux, and when the Federalists were defeated we hid some of their officers in the barn. The Reds found them and took us all off to Mantes. Marguerite and I were shut up with a lot of other women in a convent there, and she, alas, is still a prisoner; but a young National Guard fell in love with me and smuggled me out in an empty hamper. That was the night before last, and I fear the poor boy was much disappointed when he failed to find me at his lodgings. Naturally, the moment I was free to do so I came straight here.”
“Yes,” muttered Roger, “yes. I feared you dead; or, if not, certainly a prisoner. But when you got here? What . . . what happened then?”
Athénaïs gave a hard little laugh. “Why, what do you expect? Finding another woman in my husband’s house, I threw her out.”
Roger could feel the blood draining from his face. “You do not mean that?” he gasped.
“Not literally. As we were both persons of breeding, the matter was conducted with perfect decorum.”
“But . . . but you cannot have realised——”
“What? That she was your English wife? Oh yes; but we are in France, and you cannot have forgotten our understanding. Here, as your French wife, I considered myself entitled to act as she would have done had we been in England.”
At the thought of the shock his poor Amanda must have sustained, and this callous treatment of her, Roger was seized with a cold fury. Controlling himself with an effort, he said, “I pray you tell me exactly what took place.”
Athénaïs shrugged her bare shoulders. “I judge from your voice that you are annoyed; but I assure you I did not go out of my way to be unpleasant to her. Since you brought her to live here, while knowing that if I was still alive I should come here as soon as I could, things could hardly have happened otherwise. If her pride is hurt, you have only yourself to blame.”
“Yes, yes, I am well aware of that; but tell me what occurred between you.”
“Very well, then. The door was opened to me by the old manservant. I told him that I was your wife and asked for you. He looked somewhat disconcerted and said you were from home, then suggested that I should leave a message and call again tomorrow. I said that by arrangement with you I was to join you here, but that my arrival had been delayed, and that I would like to be shown to my room at once. By then he was obviously much embarrassed, and asked me to wait for a few moments in the hall.
“After leaving me for a while, he returned to say that Madame Godfrey wished a word with me in the drawing-room. At that, coupled with the poor old man’s obvious perturbation, I naturally jumped to the conclusion that, thinking me lost to you for good, you had installed a mistress here to console you. When I entered the drawing-room your wife was standing in front of the fire. I thought her a fine creature, if somewhat on the large side, and I have never been partial to red hair, even of that subdued shade. Her teeth, too, are a little prominent, and, although I did not know her to be English at the time, from that and her big feet I might have—”
“Pray spare me these trivialities!” Roger burst out; “I desire to know what took place.”
“And you shall,” Athénaïs replied a trifle tartly. “This encounter was entirely due to your mismanagement, and I have no wish whatever to conceal my part in it. As she did not invite me to be seated, I bobbed her a curtsy, then sat down without being asked, and said:
“‘Madame, I must apologise for arriving unannounced; but it seems that M. de Breuc has done us both the discourtesy of neglecting to inform you that he has been expecting me to join him here since early August.’
“‘Indeed, Madame,’ she replied, ‘this is the first I have heard of it: and I am still at a loss to understand why he should have done so, or by what right you claim to bear his name.’
“‘Then, Madame,’ said I, ‘allow me to enlighten you. It is because I am his wife.’
“At that her eyes grew round as berries; but she was quick to recover herself, and exclaimed somewhat sarcastically, ‘How very peculiar! In that case one of us must be sadly deluded; for I was under the impression that he is married to me.’
“By then her accent and attitude had given me more than a suspicion of her identity, but I
had no intention of giving you up to her; so I remarked, ‘Your impression can hardly have been a very strong one, seeing that he does not permit you to use his name, and that you are living here with him as Madame Godfrey.’”
Roger dug his nails into the palms of his hands. Internally he was fuming; but his anxiety to know the worst checked his impulse to interrupt, and Athénaïs went on:
“That upset her somewhat, and she launched forth on a rather muddled explanation about using her maiden name in France for special reasons; then she insisted that she had been married to you for over three years, and that I must be either wrong in the head or the victim of a cruel deception. It was upon the last I took her up and, I fear, caused her some distress: but I saw no other way to end the matter.
“‘Madame,’ said I, ‘it would be discourteous in me to disbelieve you, so mayhap we have both been deceived; but it seems that your case is the more deserving of condolence, for I at least have been told about you, whereas it appears that you were unaware of my existence. I feel sure you must be the lady with whom my—perhaps I should say our—husband lives at Richmond when he is in England. You speak of three years, but I can go back ten. I knew Rojé when he was a young lawyer’s clerk in Rennes, and when I was of an age to marry we lived in my father’s house in Paris. Later, a cruel fate separated us for several years; but, on our meeting again some months ago, both of us realised that the loves we have known since are of no moment compared with the passion of our youth, and we swiftly renewed our vows.’ ”
“Do I gather that you caused Amanda to believe that you and I were actually married?” asked Roger hoarsely.
In the faint light to which his eyes were now accustomed he saw the lovely curving shoulders shrug again. “She took it that way, and I’ll not deny that I meant her to. Why should I not use such ingenuity as God has given me to defend the thing you gave me by your oath? I then played my final card and said, ‘Should you doubt me, Madame, let us both remain here until our gay deceiver arrives upon the scene, and see which of us he prefers to retain.’
“As I expected, she refused the challenge, and exclaimed, ‘Nay, I’ll not stay to suffer any such indignity.’
“On that I administered the coup de grâce. Standing up, I opened the door, curtsied to her, and said, ‘You have my sympathy, Madame, in that you lack the prior claim. I pray you be at your leisure in collecting your belongings; but the coach that brought me is still at the door, and when you are ready it can take you wherever you desire.’”
“And where did it take her?” asked Roger quickly.
“How should I know?” replied Athénaïs. “All that concerned me was that she departed bag and baggage twenty minutes later.”
“You devilish jade!” roared Roger, now losing all control of himself. “How dare you put such a cheat upon my wife? How dare you make me appear a bigamist? Have you no sense of decency? Do the accepted canons of well-bred behaviour mean nothing to you?”
“Who should know better than I how to behave à la grande dame?” Athénaïs flared, jerking herself bolt upright in the bed. “Did you expect me to slink from the house like a serving-wench who had been caught seducing the master’s son? For shame, Monsieur! ’Tis you who should grovel for having placed a woman of my birth in such an intolerable position. On that I have yet to listen to your excuses. I warned you, though, that first night at Bécherel, that did your wife ever cross my path I would fight her for you. Well, owing to your bungling, she has done so. Although much provoked by this unforeseen encounter, I treated her with perfect civility. I kept both my dignity and my head, and used only my wits to triumph over her.”
“So be it, Madame!” Roger snapped back. “But allow me to inform you that you have scored a barren victory, for I’ll be no party to this shameful deceit.”
“Rojé!” she gasped, falling back upon her pillows as though he had struck her. “Surely . . . no, I cannot believe that you love her better than myself.”
“It is no question of love, but of honour, decency, right feeling. Were she the veriest drab whom I’d married while drunk in a brothel, I’d still stand by her in this.”
“You should have thought of that before you swore your oath to me. In any case, ’tis useless now, for she is gone.”
“Not so far that I cannot overtake her.”
“No, Rojé! No!” Athénaïs stretched out her arms. “You cannot mean that because I have driven her away you intend to pursue her, instead of remaining here with me?”
“That is exactly what I mean! ’Tis not the fact, but the way in which you did it. Be pleased to remain here as long as it suits your convenience, but do not expect to see me again.” Turning on his heel, he blundered out of the room and slammed the door behind him.
Down in the hall a lamp had been lit. Their voices had roused Antoine and, wrapped in a dressing-gown, he was patiently standing there. As Roger descended the stairs the old butler picked up a silver salver on which there was a letter, proffered it with a bow, and said, “Madame Godfrey asked me to give you this, Monsieur le Chevalier.”
Roger ripped the letter open and read:
My mind is still in a turmoil. I do not yet know what to believe. Only one thing is clear—the reason that you have been so anxious to be rid of me ever since early August. Well, now you have your wish; and should I not receive your prompt assurance that I have been told a tissue of lies, it will be for good.
Amanda.
“Thank you, Antoine,” he said. “At what time did Madame leave?”
“Soon after four o’clock, Monsieur.”
“Did she say whither she was going?”
“No, Monsieur. She was clearly much upset, and seemed in a great hurry to be off. As Monsieur knows, she had little baggage. When she came downstairs she sent me for my wife and gave her a diamond brooch; then . . . then she kissed me on the cheek, snatched up her bundle, ran out to the coach and drove away.” A tear ran down the old man’s cheek as he added, “Monsieur will permit me to say that my wife and I were greatly distressed: we had become much attached to Madame Godfrey.”
“And I,” said Roger bitterly, giving Antoine’s arm a sympathetic squeeze. Then he went on, “With regard to Madame . . . Madame de Breuc—she will be here for a while, but I think she will soon decide to return to Brittany. For her journey she will probably need money, so I wish you to offer her on my behalf the hundred louts d’or that I asked you to keep here for me against an emergency. I shall not return as long as she is here, but will send Dan out in a few days’ time to learn from you if she has departed, or is about to do so. In the meantime, I am sure I may count on you and Marie to show her every civility.”
Antoine bowed. “Monsieur le Chevalier may rely upon us, as always.”
It was now nearly three in the morning and very chilly. Going into the dining-room, Roger poured himself a wineglass full of old brandy and tipped it down his throat. He gasped, shuddered and shook himself, then the mellow spirit began to do its work; as its warmth coursed through his veins, he thought glumly how typical of Amanda her departure had been.
In her brief note she had said that her mind was in a turmoil; yet she had not forgotten to take leave of the Velots fittingly, and to reward them for their loyal service. On the other hand, while the note amounted to a declaration that she was leaving him for good unless she received a prompt assurance that she was his legal wife, she had left no address or indication how he could communicate with her. And the devil of it was that, although it was a hundred to one that she had gone to Lady Atkyns, he had not the faintest idea whereabouts de Batz’s house at Neuilly was situated.
After a few moments’ thought, he decided that he would not get very far with the type of enquiries he wished to make at Neuilly as long as he was dressed as a Commissioner; so he went out to the stable, saddled a horse that he always kept there, and rode back to Paris. The city was not yet astir; so he had to knock up the Cushion and Keys. By the time he had done so, his first fury had worn off; but he
felt terribly tired, jaded and depressed, and, knowing that he had a long day before him, he ordered a hot bath to be prepared up in his room. At times of stress that was a luxury in which he permitted himself to indulge; so the staff had become used to this eccentricity of his, and, seeing the black mood he was in, hastened to obey him without their usual jocular comments.
While he was bathing he had a meal cooked and brought up, ploughed through it without noticing what he was eating, then dressed himself in civilian clothes and rode out to Neuilly. It was a fashionable suburb on the Seine to the west of Paris, a few miles north of St. Cloud. In happier times hundreds of well-to-do families had either lived there, or owned villas with pleasant gardens which they occupied during the summer months; so the task of finding the house in which de Batz had lodged Lady Atkyns was an extremely difficult one. It was quite certain that the wily Baron would never have contemplated taking the Queen to a property associated with his own name, or one suspected by the local Municipals of harbouring Royalists; and such loyalists as knew of it would, with equal certainty, not give its location away to a stranger.
After stabling his horse at an inn called Le Cheval Pie, Roger went for a walk round the little town, as experience had taught him that when he had no definite plan such an open approach sometimes brought him inspiration; but it did not prove so that morning. By half-past eight he was back at the inn with no more promising idea than to go from house to house enquiring for a mythical personage in the hope that Amanda would see him from one of the windows and come out to listen to any explanations he had to offer. Mounting his horse again, he rode up the drives of every worthwhile-looking property along the river bank and, instead of dismounting at their doors, remained in his saddle, shouting until somebody came, in order to attract as much attention to himself as possible. In the afternoon he continued the same wearisome business in the environs to the north of the Seine, but with no success and with ever-increasing despondency, since innumerable small properties, any one of which might be the Baron’s secret retreat, stretched away almost cheek by jowl to Puteaux, Courbevoie, La Garenne and Colombes.
The Man who Killed the King Page 49