“You must be quite strong enough before we undertake the journey,” Antonia insisted.
“I intend to walk in the garden after I have rested this afternoon,” the Duke said, “and my masseur assures me that my muscles are in perfect trim. It is just a question of not reopening the wound on my shoulder.”
He did not add, Antonia noticed, that each time he got up out of bed he felt rather dizzy.
He resented any form of weakness, fighting against it with a determination which in part was the reason why he had recovered so quickly.
At the same time she knew that once they returned to England she would lose him, and she wished that whatever might happen in Paris they could stay on at least for a little while.
The Duke was resting after luncheon at which he had eaten quite a decent meal, having no idea how difficult it had been to procure, when the manservant announced that Monsieur Labouchere was in the Salon.
Antonia went in to him and he lifted her hand to his lips, holding it longer than necessary and looking at her in a manner which made her feel shy.
“You look a little tired,” he said in concern. “Are you still nursing your importunate invalid at night?”
“No, of course not,” Antonia replied. “I sleep peacefully and my husband has a bell that he rings if he requires anything. He has not woken me for several nights now.”
“Yet subconsciously you listen for it,” Labby said perceptively.
Antonia smiled.
“You are not to worry about me. My husband wishes to go home.”
“He told me so yesterday,” Labby replied. “It is not going to be easy.”
“He says that he will see the British Ambassador tomorrow.”
“That will be impossible,” Labby answered. “He left this morning with the last of the British Corps Diplomatique.”
“I do not believe it!” Antonia exclaimed.
“I am afraid it is the truth,” Labby replied. “I was told that had happened, and because I was thinking about you I called at the Embassy on my way here.”
Antonia drew in her breath as he went on:
“There is no official left now in the British Embassy, save a concierge whose duty, I gather, is to shrug his shoulders to all enquiries and say parrot-wise ‘I cannot give you any information’.”
“I have never heard of anything so extraordinary!” Antonia exclaimed. “I thought the British Ambassador would stay as long as there were any English in Paris.”
“There are some 4,000 still in the City,” Labby told her.
“If the Ambassador has gone, then I feel we should go too,” Antonia said in a frightened voice. “Are there any trains running?”
“I think it unlikely you will be able to get on one even if there were.”
Labby paused and Antonia knew that he was keeping something from her.
“Tell me the truth,” she begged.
“I have only just learnt that a train which left the Gare du Nord on September 15th was seized by Prussian outriders at Senlis, which you know is only 27 miles north of Paris.” Antonia gasped but did not speak, and Labby went on: “I think it was that which must have persuaded Lord Lyon and the British Consul to leave this morning.”
“Why did the French Government not insist on all the British leaving earlier?” Antonia asked despairingly.
“The Government and the Council of National Defence has said that large groups of foreigners leaving the City would be ... demoralising to the Army and the citizens.”
“But we are nothing but useless mouths,” Antonia persisted.
“That is what a number of British have already said to me,” Labby replied, “but I can assure you the French Government will not listen and in my opinion they are making a mess of everything.”
He spoke almost savagely and then said:
“I will get you away somehow, I promise you that. At the same time, if I followed my own wishes, I would keep you here.”
Antonia glanced at him enquiringly and saw the look in his eyes and quickly looked away.
“I love you, Antonia,” he said very quietly. “You know that by this time.”
“You must not ... say such ... things.”
“What harm can it do?” he asked. “I know what your feelings are where I am concerned.”
He gave a sigh which seemed to come from the very depths of his being as he said:
“I realise that I am much too old for you. Had I been ten years younger I would have done my damnedest to seduce you. As it is, I will leave you as I found you, perfect and unspoilt—perhaps in a long list of conquests, the only woman I have ever really loved.”
There was something in Labby’s voice which made Antonia feel curiously near to tears.
There was nothing she could say. She was only perturbed that she should have brought unhappiness to someone who had been so kind.
As if he knew what she was thinking, Labby went on: “Perhaps one day when you are older you will understand how difficult it has been these past weeks, when we have been so much alone together, for me to behave with an unaccustomed constraint and control.”
“It has meant so ... much to me to have your ... friendship,” Antonia faltered.
“It is not friendship, Antonia,” Labby contradicted, “it is love! A love so different from anything I have known or felt in the past that sometimes I think I must be dreaming and you do not really exist, except in my imagination.”
“You should not talk to me like ... this, as you ... well know,” Antonia said.
But she wondered even as she spoke why she should prevent him from doing so.
The Duke would not care if another man made love to her. After all he was in love with the Marchioness. When they returned to England she would have nobody in her life, neither the man she loved, nor the man who loved her.
She had half turned away and Labby, as he was speaking, put his hands on her shoulders to turn her round to face him.
“What is it about you that is so different to other women?” he asked. “You are not outstandingly beautiful, and yet I cannot be free of the fascination of your face.”
She saw the pain in his eyes as he went on:
“I hear your voice in my ears, your figure makes any other woman look coarse and ungainly, and I find it almost impossible to think of anyone else but you.”
There was a depth of passion in his tone which made Antonia feel shy and a little afraid.
Then he released her and walked across the Salon to stand at the window looking into the garden.
“When you leave,” he said, “all I shall have are my dreams. I have the uncomfortable feeling that they will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Antonia made a little helpless gesture.
“What can I ... say?” she asked. “You know I do not wish to ... hurt you.”
“It is banal to say ‘it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’,” Labby replied in the tone of a man mocking at himself. “In my case it happens to be true. You have done a wonderful thing for me, my sweet Duchess.”
“What is that?” Antonia asked.
“You have restored my faith in women. I have watched the manner in which they defamed and prostituted in every possible way the Second Empire. I saw their greed, their hypocrisy, their perfidy! You have shown me that women can be pure and faithful, true and uncorrupted.”
He gave her one of his cynical smiles as he said:
“I have always thought that each woman a man loves, leaves a tombstone in his life. On yours will be written—‘She gave me faith’.”
“Thank you, Labby,” Antonia said very softly.
Then without waiting for him to say good-bye she went from the Salon and left him alone
“I do not believe you!” the Duke ejaculated angrily.
“It is true,” Henry Labouchere replied. “The Uhlans from two Prussian armies joined hands yesterday, September 20th, near Versailles which surrendered without a shot.”
&n
bsp; There was silence for a moment. Then the Duke said: “That means that Paris is now severed from the rest of France. I can hardly believe it!”
“What do the people feel?” Antonia asked.
“At the moment the mood is ‘Let them come, Let the cannon thunder! It has been too long!’ ” Labby replied, “but retribution has been enacted violently upon the wretched deserters.”
“If they desert, they deserve all they get!” the Duke said in a hard voice.
“I cannot help being sorry for them,” Labby answered. “According to reports they were not only badly led, but many of them were without arms. The young Zouaves panicked the first time they were shelled by a well-trained Prussian field-gun battery.”
“What is happening to them now?” Antonia enquired.
“Montmartre is full of them and an angry mob was spitting in their faces and threatening to lynch them until the Garde Nationale escorted them with many prods of their rifle butts into the centre of the City.”
“And what else is taking place?” the Duke enquired.
“The great difficulty is going to be to get news out of the City,” Labby replied. “A possible solution may be balloons.”
“Balloons!” the Duke exclaimed in surprise.
“A number have been located,” Labby replied, “unfortunately most of them in various states of disrepair. It is however an idea, though not where passengers are concerned.”
“I was not thinking we should fly from Paris!” the Duke said sharply. “What I am considering is whether it could be any use appealing to the French to negotiate with the Germans for a special pass.”
“I thought of that,” Labby answered. “The Duchess has already requested me to find some way in which you could leave.”
“Is it possible?” the Duke enquired.
“This morning I watched four Britons who I happened to know, climbing gaily into a carriage loaded with hampers of provisions, luggage and with an English flag flying.”
“What happened?” the Duke asked.
“They got as far as Pont de Neuilly where they were seized and taken before General Ducrot. He said to them, ‘I cannot understand you English: if you want to get shot, we will shoot you ourselves to save you trouble’.”
Labby paused for a moment and then went on:
“My friends swear they will try again to-morrow, but I should think it unlikely they will get through.”
“Then what can we do?” the Duke asked.
“Give me a little time,” Labby begged. “The Prussians are bringing up their big guns. The bombardment will not start yet.”
Antonia looked frightened.
“You think they will bombard us?”
“Naturally,” Labby replied. “It is the obvious thing to do if they want a quick surrender.”
That night, Antonia lay awake wondering if she would hear the shells thudding and exploding in the centre of the City, but everything was quiet and she thought that perhaps Labby had exaggerated the danger.
There was however no doubt that the Duke took him seriously and in the next few days he became more and more restless.
He was only prevented with difficulty from going out of the house to see for himself what was occurring.
It was Antonia who finally managed to dissuade him by saying she would be frightened if she were left alone.
“I cannot stay here like a caged animal,” the Duke said irritably.
“S ... suppose you were ... killed, or ... arrested,” Antonia said. “What would happen to ... me?”
It was an unanswerable argument, and the Duke had listened to Labouchere when he said that if he went to the French Authorities and declared who he was, they could take two courses of action.
They might consider an English Duke so important that they would give him no chance of ever leaving Paris in case he fell into the hands of the Prussians.
“Or else,” Labby went on, “they will arrest you on some trumped up charge merely to force the British Government to pay more attention to the siege of Paris!”
Both, the Duke realised, were quite viable arguments, but he was now more determined than ever that they must leave Paris somehow without anybody realising who they were.
However, when he had suffered nearly a week’s inactivity, while getting stronger day by day, he said to Antonia:
“You know I would not wish deliberately to take you into danger, but I am quite convinced that the siege is going to get very much worse before the French surrender.”
“You think they really will surrender?” Antonia asked in surprise. “Surely someone will come to their rescue.”
“Who is likely to do so?” the Duke asked, and she knew there was no answer.
“But if Paris holds out without relief from outside, the siege might last indefinitely.”
“It can only last as long as there is enough food to eat,” the Duke replied.
“But surely there will be enough for a very long time?” Antonia thought as she spoke of all the animals in the Bois.
“Tour has told me,” the Duke replied, “that people are talking, if things get really bad, of slaughtering the animals in the Zoo. And there is no doubt that cats and dogs will be in danger of their lives as soon as what meat is obtainable in the Butchers’ shops is priced beyond the purse of the very poor!”
Antonia gave a little cry.
“I cannot bear to think of it.”
“Nor can I where you are concerned,” the Duke said. “And that is why I have to decide whether it would be best to risk our being caught or shot by the Prussians outside Paris, or to stop here and starve, as undoubtedly the Parisians will do eventually.”
Antonia did not hesitate.
“I know what you would prefer,” she said, “and I am prepared to take any risk that you wish.”
“Thank you, Antonia,” the Duke said. “I knew I could rely on you to show courage.”
He smiled at her in a way she found irresistible as he added:
“Perhaps it will be no more frightening and no more dangerous than leaping over the high hedges and the water-jump on The Chase!”
The soldiers guarding the Port de St. Cloud watched a wooden cart trundling towards them drawn by a frisky young mule.
It was driven by a woman muffled in shawls despite the heat and with a dirty cotton handkerchief tied under her chin.
As the cart drew near to the gate she began to cry out loudly and defiantly:
“La Verole!”
“Danger!”
“Contagieuse!”
The Corporal in front of the gate held up his hand and with a little difficulty she drew the mule to a stand-still.
“What is all this?” he asked.
“La Verole,” she replied, jerking her thumb backwards to where he could now see a man lying on the straw of the wooden cart.
“Smallpox!”
The Corporal took a step backwards.
“I have my papers if you want to see them,” the woman said speaking in argot, “but I should be careful how you touch them.”
She held them out to the soldier who made no effort to take them.
“Where do you think you are going, Madame?”
“We’ve been turned out,” she answered. “There’s not a man amongst the sniffling cowards in this City who’ll touch a smallpox case as bad as his!”
Without moving his feet the Corporal peered over the edge of the cart. He could see the face of the man lying on the straw was covered with flaming red pox-marks and shuddered.
“Go on, get out of here!” he said harshly, “and the quicker the better!”
The woman whipped the mule, the gate was opened and they proceeded until they came to the Prussian out-post just outside the town of St. Cloud.
Here the same explanation was given, but the papers signed by the doctor were inspected and there was some delay while a junior Officer was produced.
“The man you are conveying, Madame,” he said in guttural but just intelligible F
rench, “may have smallpox, but that is no reason why you should leave the City with him.”
She did not answer, but pulled back a ragged cuff that covered her wrist. On her skin he could see two flaming red pox-marks! Hastily he handed her back the papers.
“Go away as far as you can from Paris,” he ordered.
“We’re going to Nantes, Mein Herr,” the woman said. “That’s if we reach it before we die!”
The German officer was however not listening, as he hurried away to wash his hands after touching her papers. The soldiers watched them go with a look of relief on their smileless faces, and one of them said:
“I would rather die from a bullet than that disease.”
“For such filth it would be a waste of ammunition,” the other answered.
Antonia’s back was very straight as she drove away, and it was an effort not to look behind her.
She touched the mule with her whip and made him go faster. Only when the Prussian out-post was out of sight did the Duke sit up from the floor of the wooden cart and say:
“I am being rattled to bits!”
“You can come up here and drive,” Antonia replied over her shoulder.
“It is certainly what I would prefer,” he answered.
Antonia slackened the speed of the mule a little, but she did not pull up to a stand-still.
The Duke climbed into the front of the cart and took the reins from her.
“Is it safe to wipe this blasted paint off my face?” he asked.
“I should leave it for the moment,” she replied. “There will be, as Labby warned us, Germans all over the place and whatever happens we must not get captured.”
“I am aware of that,” he said, “but according to reports they have not yet reached Amiens.”
“Can we trust the reports?”
“Tour will get to Le Havre all right,” the Duke said.
The valet had left two days earlier in the company of some Americans who had managed by some extraordinary good luck to obtain permits both from the French and Germans.
There had been no chance however, even if they had wished to do so, of taking anyone extra with them. The pass was merely for themselves and their servants.
The Incredible Honeymoon (Bantam Series No. 46) Page 12