Lord Tony's Wife Part 8

"To-morrow morning!" exclaimed Martin-Roget in a pa.s.sion of fury. "And what the d----l am I going to do in the meanwhile?"

The woman reiterated her offers of a seat by the fire in the coffee-room.

"The men won't mind ye, zir," she said, "heaps of 'em are Frenchies like yourself, and I'll tell 'em you ain't a spying on 'em."

"It's no more than five mile to Chelwood," said the man blandly, "and maybe you get a better shakedown there."

"A five-mile tramp," growled Martin-Roget, whose wrath seemed to have spent itself before the hopelessness of his situation, "in this fog and gloom, and knee-deep in mud.... There'll be a sovereign for you, woman,"

he added curtly, "if you can give me a clean bed for the night."

The woman hesitated for a second or two.

"Well! a zovereign is tempting, zir," she said at last. "You shall 'ave my son's bed. I know 'e'd rather 'ave the zovereign if 'e was ever zo tired. This way, zir," she added, as she once more turned toward the house, "mind them 'urdles there."

"And where am I goin' to zleep?" called the man from Chelwood after the two retreating figures.

"I'll look after the man for you, zir," said the woman; "for a matter of a s.h.i.+llin' 'e can sleep in the coffee-room, and I'll give 'im 'is breakfast too."

"Not one farthing will I pay for the idiot," retorted Martin-Roget savagely. "Let him look after himself."

He had once more reached the porch. Without another word, and not heeding the protests and curses of the unfortunate man whom he had left standing shelterless in the middle of the yard, he pushed open the front door of the house and once more found himself in the pa.s.sage outside the coffee-room.

But the woman had turned back a little before she followed her guest into the house, and she called out to the man in the darkness:

"You may zleep in any of them outhouses and welcome, and zure there'll be a bit o' porridge for ye in the mornin'!"

"Think ye I'll stop," came in a furious growl out of the gloom, "and conduct that d----d frogeater back to Chelwood? No fear. Five miles ain't nothin' to me, and 'e can keep the miserable s.h.i.+llin' 'e'd 'ave give me for my pains. Let 'im get 'is 'orzes back 'izelf and get to Chelwood as best 'e can. I'm off, and you can tell 'im zo from me. It'll make 'im sleep all the better, I reckon."

The woman was obviously not of a disposition that would ever argue a matter of this sort out. She had done her best, she reckoned, both for master and man, and if they chose to quarrel between themselves that was their business and not hers.

So she quietly went into the house again; barred and bolted the door, and finding the stranger still waiting for her in the pa.s.sage she conducted him to a tiny room on the floor above.

"My son's room, Mounzeer," she said; "I 'ope as 'ow ye'll be comfortable."

"It will do all right," a.s.sented Martin-Roget. "Is 'the Captain'

sleeping in the house to-night?" he added as with an afterthought.

"Only in the coffee-room, Mounzeer. I couldn't give 'im a bed. 'The Captain' will be leaving with the pack 'orzes a couple of hours before dawn. Shall I tell 'im you be 'ere."

"No, no," he replied promptly. "Don't tell him anything. I don't want to see him again: and he'll be gone before I'm awake, I reckon."

"That 'e will, zir, most like. Good-night, zir."

"Good-night. And--mind--that lout gets the two horses back again for my use in the morning. I shall have to make my way to Chelwood as early as may be."

"Aye, aye, zir," a.s.sented the woman placidly. It were no use, she thought, to upset the Mounzeer's temper once more by telling him that his guide had decamped. Time enough in the morning, when she would be less busy.

"And my John can see 'im as far as Chelwood," she thought to herself as she finally closed the door on the stranger and made her way slowly down the creaking stairs.

CHAPTER III

THE a.s.sEMBLY ROOMS

I

The sigh of satisfaction was quite unmistakable.

It could be heard from end to end, from corner to corner of the building. It sounded above the din of the orchestra who had just attacked with vigour the opening bars of a schottische, above the brouhaha of moving dancers and the frou-frou of skirts: it travelled from the small octagon hall, through the central salon to the tea-room, the ball-room and the card-room: it reverberated from the gallery in the ball-room to the maids' gallery: it distracted the ladies from their gossip and the gentlemen from their cards.

It was a universal, heartfelt "Ah!" of intense and pleasurable satisfaction.

Sir Percy Blakeney and his lady had just arrived. It was close on midnight, and the ball had positively languished. What was a ball without the presence of Sir Percy? His Royal Highness too had been expected earlier than this. But it was not thought that he would come at all, despite his promise, if the spoilt pet of Bath society remained unaccountably absent; and the a.s.sembly Rooms had worn an air of woe even in the face of the gaily dressed throng which filled every vast room in its remotest angle.

But now Sir Percy Blakeney had arrived, just before the clocks had struck midnight, and exactly one minute before His Royal Highness drove up himself from the Royal Apartments. Lady Blakeney was looking more radiant and beautiful than ever before, so everyone remarked, when a few moments later she appeared in the crowded ball-room on the arm of His Royal Highness and closely followed by my lord Anthony Dewhurst and by Sir Percy himself, who had the young d.u.c.h.ess of Flints.h.i.+re on his arm.

"What do you mean, you incorrigible rogue," her Grace was saying with playful severity to her cavalier, "by coming so late to the ball?

Another two minutes and you would have arrived after His Royal Highness himself: and how would you have justified such solecism, I would like to know."

"By swearing that thoughts of your Grace had completely addled my poor brain," he retorted gaily, "and that in the mental contemplation of such charms I forgot time, place, social duties, everything."

"Even the homage due to truth," she laughed. "Cannot you for once in your life be serious, Sir Percy?"

"Impossible, dear lady, whilst your dainty hand rests upon mine arm."

II

It was not often that His Royal Highness graced Bath with his presence, and the occasion was made the excuse for quite exceptional gaiety and brilliancy. The new fas.h.i.+ons of this memorable year of 1793 had defied the declaration of war and filtrated through from Paris: London milliners had not been backward in taking the hint, and though most of the more starchy dowagers obstinately adhered to the pre-war fas.h.i.+ons--the huge hooped skirts, stiff stomachers, pointed waists, voluminous panniers and monumental head erections--the young and smart matrons were everywhere to be seen in the new gracefully flowing skirts innocent of steel constructions, the high waist line, the pouter pigeon-like draperies over their pretty bosoms.

Her Grace of Flints.h.i.+re looked ravis.h.i.+ng with her curly fair hair entirely free from powder, and Lady Betty Draitune's waist seemed to be nestling under her arm-pits. Of course Lady Blakeney wore the very latest thing in striped silks and gossamer-like muslin and lace, and it was hard to enumerate all the pretty debutantes and young brides who fluttered about the a.s.sembly Rooms this night.

And gliding through that motley throng, bright-plumaged like a swarm of b.u.t.terflies, there were a few figures dressed in sober blacks and greys--the _emigres_ over from France--men, women, young girls and gilded youth from out that seething cauldron of revolutionary France--who had shaken the dust of that rampant demagogism from off their buckled shoes, taking away with them little else but their lives.

Mostly chary of speech, grave in their demeanour, bearing upon their wan faces traces of that horror which had seized them when they saw all the traditions of their past tottering around them, the proletariat whom they had despised turning against them with all the fury of caged beasts let loose, their kindred and friends ma.s.sacred, their King and Queen murdered. The shelter and security which hospitable England had extended to them, had not altogether removed from their hearts the awful sense of terror and of gloom.

Many of them had come to Bath because the more genial climate of the West of England consoled them for the inclemencies of London's fogs.

Received with open arms and with that lavish hospitality which the refugees and the oppressed had already learned to look for in England, they had gradually allowed themselves to be drawn into the fas.h.i.+onable life of the gay little city. The Comtesse de Tournai was here and her daughter, Lady Ffoulkes, Sir Andrew's charming and happy bride, and M.

Paul Deroulede and his wife--beautiful Juliette Deroulede with the strange, haunted look in her large eyes, as of one who has looked closely on death; and M. le duc de Kernogan with his exquisite daughter, whose pretty air of seriousness and of repose sat so quaintly upon her young face. But every one remarked as soon as M. le duc entered the rooms that M. Martin-Roget was not in attendance upon Mademoiselle, which was quite against the order of things; also that M. le duc appeared to keep a more sharp eye than usual upon his daughter in consequence, and that he asked somewhat anxiously if milor Anthony Dewhurst was in the room, and looked obviously relieved when the reply was in the negative.

At which trifling incident every one who was in the know smiled and whispered, for M. le duc made it no secret that he favoured his own compatriot's suit for Mademoiselle Yvonne's hand rather than that of my lord Tony--which--as old Euclid has it--is absurd.

III

But with the arrival of the royal party M. de Kernogan's troubles began.

To begin with, though M. Martin-Roget had not arrived, my lord Tony undoubtedly had. He had come in, in the wake of Lady Blakeney, but very soon he began wandering round the room obviously in search of some one.