Having set his mind at rest on that, his final conclusion was that he would be mad to risk his life again in France. His bank balance must be over £5,000, which would keep him in comfort for a long time to come; and he could send a message by a member of the League, recalling Dan. He had served Mr. Pitt well with his reports; so he had every reason to expect from him another mission, to a country less dangerous than France, when he felt like going abroad again.
In the meantime it would soon be spring, and he had acquired a new mistress. He knew that he would never feel the passion for her that he had for Athénaïs; indeed, he was perfectly well aware that Adèle was a strumpet at heart, and had not suddenly fallen in love with him any more than he had with her, but that did not affect the fact that she was a beautiful and witty woman whom anyone might envy him. Her charming companionship would do a lot to fill the gap that Amanda had left in his life, although he would miss Amanda terribly—he knew that now. All the way from Majorca he had been looking forward to making up their quarrel and enjoying a good spell at home with her. But, after all, for seventeen months out of the past twenty they had been forced to live separate lives; so he would manage to get on without her. Whether he actually divorced her would largely depend on how bad a scandal she had created at Lymington; but Georgina would find out and could be depended on to tell him the full truth about that. Meanwhile no scruples on Amanda’s account need prevent his openly living with Adèle in London.
Droopy Ned arrived home at seven o’clock, and the two friends settled themselves in his sitting-room with their usual delight at seeing each other. Roger had few secrets from Droopy, and, now that his own mind was more settled, he told him about Amanda. His lordship did not laugh, as Georgina had done; but at the implications of the affair he was as greatly distressed as she had been, and took the same view.
Peering at Roger with his shortsighted blue eyes, he said, “ ’Tis a wretched business, but I beg you to do nothing in a hurry. Lymington has become a headquarters for the French émigrés, who use the port to keep in touch with the Royalists in La Vendée; so ’tis full of them and de Batz’s presence there will not have been remarked upon by your neighbours, as it would have been had he taken lodgings to be near her in some small Midland town. You’ve no proof yet that she has brought disgrace upon your name, or ever had any intent to do so; and few couples that I know are better suited to one another. For a woman, divorce is a terrible disgrace, and you owe it to your past fondness for her to think most seriously before branding her with such a stigma.”
Roger nodded. “Yes, I realise that, and have no wish to be unduly harsh; but if there is a scandal it will be entirely her fault; so even if I don’t divorce her I doubt if I’ll take her back to live with me. Meanwhile, as I have ample funds and have got me a pretty mistress overnight, I do not mean to return to France. Instead, I’m looking forward now to a gay time in London.”
“You’ll certainly not lack the means to buy her gewgaws,” Droopy grinned. “The packet you sent over in October came safely to my hands, and your investments lying at Hoars must now be worth close on £6,000. But what of that man of yours; did you succeed in getting him out of prison?”
“Man!” Roger started forward. “You . . . you can’t mean Dan Izzard?”
“Why, yes; who else? Your packet reached me by way of a member of the League. He told me they had been surprised one night when they were taking some refugees off from a beach near Boulogne. There was a fight with the National Guards and several on both sides were killed or injured. Our people were greatly outnumbered. They already had some women in the boat, and all would have been captured had they not pushed off when they did. Izzard was among the wounded and had to be abandoned, but he managed to throw your packet into the boat.”
“God’s death! Poor Dan in prison all this time, and I knowing nothing of it.”
Droopy spread out his elegant hands with a helpless gesture. “I had believed you knew all this and would have long since acted on it. There was naught the League could do but send a message to you in Paris, and my informant told me that was already being done. It was assumed that with your influence you would have no great difficulty in securing Izzard’s release.”
“He left Paris in mid-November and I left there myself on the 27th; so there would scarce have been time for a message to reach me. Was he badly wounded?”
“That I do not know.”
“What of my despatch to Mr. Pitt, and a letter I sent by him for Amanda?”
“There was but one packet, as far as I am aware, and neither were in that handed to me.”
Roger groaned. Gone at a stroke were all his fine plans, made only that morning, for forgetting his troubles and having a gay time with Adèle in London. To leave Dan a prisoner in the hands of the Revolutionaries was unthinkable. He must return to France at the earliest possible moment.
The League could put him over there secretly; but they might not be able to do so for ten days or more, and would have to land him at some prearranged rendezvous, which might be in Brittany or even further down the coast. Unquestionably, the swiftest way to reach the scene of action was to be dropped off by some naval vessel which could be ordered to take him to a spot chosen by himself. That meant making a personal request to Mr. Pitt.
Until a combination of Georgina’s gracious home, carefree London and the charming Adèle had caused Roger to think again, it had been his intention to take a two months’ holiday, then return to France; so there had seemed no great urgency about reporting his presence in England to the Prime Minister. Now, he realised that if he did not mean to resume his work in Paris, he owed it to his master to tell him so without delay.
His future hung upon Mr. Pitt’s goodwill, so he could not possibly afford to quarrel with him. With fresh dismay, he saw that he could hardly ask for special transport on his own affairs, and at the same time refuse to compile another report on the latest developments of the Revolution. Mr. Pitt would have a right to expect that of him. Moreover, he would have to go to Paris in any case. As a private individual he stood no better chance of getting Dan out of prison than an ordinary member of the League would have had; to procure his release he must get back his old position and authority. Alas for the dreams he had cherished only that afternoon!
Half an hour later he was at No. 10, Downing Street. There, he learned that the Prime Minister was at Walmer Castle and was not expected to return to London for some days. But Walmer was only a few miles from Dover; so little time would be lost by going there on the way to France. Roger at once decided to take the night mail down into Kent, then hurried back to Arlington Street.
Not knowing at what hour Droopy would be home, he had made no appointment with Adèle for that night; but he had arranged to call on her again the following afternoon. Now, he quickly scribbled a note, telling her that quite unexpectedly most urgent business necessitated his going abroad at once, and it was probable that he would be away for some time. He went on to say—although he did not really feel it—that the sweet sensibility he had found in her would prove a greater spur to hasten his return than any other he could imagine; and he added that, having no time to buy a trinket for her, he wished her to buy one for herself, so that she might have some trifle which would call him to mind while he was away.
This last was an excuse to send her some money, as she had made no secret of the fact that she was hard put to it to make ends meet. Droopy willingly agreed to act as his banker, and promised to see that the note was delivered by a safe hand, together with a nice little rouleau of twenty guineas.
As the hour was now getting late, they had time to sup only lightly off a lobster and a duck, and to consume only a single bottle of Cháteau Lafite; so Droopy, much concerned that his friend should have to face a night journey on such an ill-lined stomach, insisted that Roger should take with him a bottle of Madeira to drink in the coach. The February night certainly justified this sensible precaution, for it was cold, windy and raining; the rich wine bo
th warmed him and, by the time the coach rumbled through Sidcup, sent him off to sleep.
Next morning he hired a barouche to take him from Dover over to Walmer, where, right on the beach, stood the great round castle of which Mr. Pitt enjoyed the tenure by virtue of his office as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and where, having taken a fancy to the place, he now lived, often for quite lengthy periods. It was eleven o’clock when Roger sent in his name, and, after a wait of about only ten minutes, he was led up to the battlements, where he found the Prime Minister, muffled in a greatcoat, taking the sea air.
To Roger’s bow the tall, austere, autocratic Premier returned only a chilly nod, and said, “I have wondered on several occasions during the past few months what has become of you; but no doubt you have been too occupied chasing some young woman half round Europe to give any time to my affairs.”
The reference was to certain deviations from the strict path of duty of which Roger had been guilty in the past, but it annoyed him that the Prime Minister should, apparently, not even have considered the possibility that his dangerous work might have landed him in prison or even in a grave; so he replied with some asperity:
“Nay, sir, you overrate my intelligence. This time I was fool enough to get myself half-killed and thrown into a Spanish jail, through an attempt to enable my Lord Hood to prolong the defence of Toulon.”
A faint smile twitched the Prime Minister’s thin lips. “You ever had a ready answer, Mr. Brook. Let us go down into the warm and you shall tell me of it.”
As they settled themselves in front of a roaring fire with a decanter of port between them, Roger asked when his master had received his last despatch, and learned that it was one he had sent early in October. That was extremely disturbing, for it meant that the one carried by Dan had not arrived; so it might have fallen into wrong hands. If so, a third and even more dangerous fuse had been lit beneath the powder barrel on which he must sit directly he set foot in France; but it was no time to have a fit of nerves about that now, and he proceeded to give an outline of his activities for the past four and a half months.
When he had finished, Mr. Pitt shook his head, and murmured: “ ’Twas a sad pity that we had to abandon Toulon. We could have had no better sally port on the Mediterranean, and had the Austrians not failed us in their promise to send 5,000 men from Tuscany we might by this time have overrun the whole South of France.”
Roger looked at him in amazement. “It surprises me, sir, that you should think so. I fear you greatly underrate the numbers and determination of our enemy.”
“Oh come, they are but a rabble!” replied the Prime Minister airily. “The successes they have achieved so far are due only to the incompetence of our Allies’ Commanders, and to unfortunate jealousies between their Governments. The Austrians failed to support the Prussians, as they should have done, upon the Rhine; then the Prussians in turn excused themselves from sending the 30,000 troops they had promised to Coburg, to aid him in his campaign in the Low Countries. We came to the rescue there by diverting the forces of His Highness of York from Holland to his assistance; but we cannot be everywhere, as we would wish, owing to the smallness of our army.”
“Surely,” said Roger, “we would do better, sir, were our forces concentrated in one place, rather than scattered about in ha’p’orths as they are at present?”
“Some people advise me so, Mr. Brook, but they fail to appreciate the many demands that policy makes upon us. As you will be aware, the Habsburgs have long cherished a project of exchanging the Austrian Netherlands for the Electorate of Bavaria. That would not suit our book at all, and our best way of preventing it is to help to secure them in their present Belgian possessions: hence it is vital that we should maintain forces to operate with them. A similar argument applies to the Dutch. Then there are the West Indies. At least, while at peace, I was able to ensure for us the command of the seas in the event of war; but when war came, not unnaturally, the monied interests of the city of London pressed me to use our sea power to seize the valuable islands in the West Indies that still belonged to France. That project is well under way, but it has taken a large percentage of our troops.”
“Speaking as one who has seen the other side, sir, I can vouch for it that one brigade thrown into La Vendée last summer would have brought us nearer victory than will the capture of all the Sugar Islands that litter the Caribbean Sea.”
“That was His Grace of Richmond’s opinion, and he pressed me strongly to it; but we had not the troops to spare. At the outbreak of war we had only eighty-one battalions, and near half of them were on foreign service in India, the Indies and elsewhere. ’Twas for that reason that when war came I had to send the Brigade of Guards to Holland, as the only force readily available. However, we shall soon be in better trim, for this autumn I have raised eight new regiments.”
Roger forbore to comment. Eight regiments! What could such an infinitesimal force do against the terrible concentration of power that Carnot’s terrific energy was creating in Paris? He was mobilising fourteen armies.
After a moment, the Prime Minister said, “The measure of my annoyance, Mr. Brook, at having heard nothing from you for these past four months is, by contrast, the measure of my appreciation of the reports you sent me before misfortune overtook you. I found them invaluable, and your predictions about future political happenings in Paris were almost invariably correct.”
Roger bowed. “I am happy to hear that, sir, for I badly need a rest.”
Mr. Pitt’s eyebrows went up. “Indeed! But you are fully recovered from your wound, and it is now three months since you left Paris; I sincerely trust you have not come here to tell me that I may no longer count you as in my service?”
Mentally, Roger groaned. Matters were going just as he had feared, and he replied, “No, sir, I have in any case to return in order to procure the release of a friend; so I will willingly furnish you with another up-to-date report. But, that done, would you not consider allowing me a few months’ leisure, then employing me elsewhere?”
The Prime Minister’s glance was not unkind; but he was by nature hard on himself, and was similarly hard on others where the nation’s business was concerned.
He shook his head. “With the years, Mr. Brook, you grow in my esteem, and you may count upon me to have a good care for your future; but for the present you are too valuable to me in Paris for me to think of giving you other employment. There is, too, a matter that we have spoken of several times before. I considered your efforts to rescue King Louis and his Queen most audacious, and deserving of better fortune. In view of the initiative and courage you displayed, I believe that if you set your mind to the task you might yet rescue the Dauphin. I confess that your reports about the change in the boy positively made me shudder; but, nonetheless, the possession of his person would still be of incalculable value to us.”
Roger gave a wry smile. “I had not forgotten the matter, sir, and will make a new investigation of the prospects of getting him away.” Then, as his last despatch had never arrived, he described the final efforts to rescue the Queen from the Conciergerie and the hideous misery in which the Convention had condemned her to drag out the last seven weeks of her life. When he had told how he managed to get a confessor to her, he added, “Her health having been so sadly undermined, she had been suffering from serious haemorrhages for some time. Wishing to go decently to her death, she asked the guards to withdraw while she put on a clean shift, but they would not; so she had no alternative but to strip with only the cook-girl, Rosalie, standing between them and her. That, sir, may give you some idea of the brutishness and malice of these Revolutionaries.”
“Such barbarity sounds almost incredible,” Mr. Pitt sighed, “and what you tell me of these massacres in Lyons makes me almost sick with horror. In time this terrible madness must burn itself out, but is there no way in which its end could be hastened?”
“Lacking half a dozen Charlotte Cordays, I see none, sir; unless . . . yes, unless it could b
e done by setting these fiends at one another’s throats.”
The Prime Minister gave Roger a sharp glance. “That idea has but this moment occurred to you; am I not right? But it is a good one; I beg you do anything that may be possible to that end.”
For a time they talked about the war. Everything that Mr. Pitt said about it showed him to be lacking in military knowledge, muddled in his strategy and hopelessly unrealistic about the problems involved. As Roger already knew, the Prime Minister’s genius lay in the arts of peace, and he was so aloof and certain of himself that he would listen to no one except the few intimates who thought as he did. He was a financial wizard, a skilful reformer and a brilliant diplomat; with Dundas and Grenville to assist him he had performed miracles, but not one of them knew the first thing about war. They were determined and courageous, and had more integrity than all the statesmen on the Continent put together; but they had not the least idea how to grapple with the hydra-headed monster that now menaced the established order in every country in Europe, or even an inkling of its frightful power. The three of them, with the backing of the King, now dominated the nation absolutely; and the only other Minister who, as Secretary of the Admiralty, might have influenced their decisions was Pitt’s pompous, incompetent elder brother, Lord Chatham. For Britain it was a tragic situation and one far beyond Roger’s powers to alter.
An hour later he left the castle, with his master’s blessing and an order on the Admiral commanding at Dover to place a sloop at his disposal for special service. He was greatly depressed, both by what he had now learned for himself about the mismanagement of the war, and by his own future prospects. He was now fully committed again, and the thought of the lost despatch caused him acute anxiety. The information it contained covered such a wide range that a careful analysis of it must lead to his identification as its writer; so if it had reached either the Great Committee or that of the Sûreté he would receive short shrift on his arrival in Paris.
The Man who Killed the King Page 57