Lord Tony’s Wife Baroness Orczy (story read aloud .TXT) 📖

by brute force away from that husband’s care and had landed her⁠ ⁠… where?⁠ ⁠… A shudder like acute ague went through the unfortunate man’s whole body as he thought of the future.

Nor did Yvonne Dewhurst attempt to make reply to her enemy’s delirious talk. She would not give him even the paltry satisfaction of feeling that he had stung her into a retort. She did not fear him⁠—she hated him too much for that⁠—but like her father she had no illusions as to his power over them both. While he stormed and raved she kept her eyes steadily fixed upon him. She could only just barely distinguish him in the gloom, and he no doubt failed to see the expression of lofty indifference wherewith she contrived to regard him: but he felt her contempt, and but for the presence of the sailors on the deck he probably would have struck her.

As it was when, from sheer lack of breath, he had to pause, he gave one last look of hate on the huddled figure of the duc, and the proud, upstanding one of Yvonne, then with a laugh which sounded like that of a fiend⁠—so cruel, so callous was it, he turned on his heel, and as he strode away towards the bow his tall figure was soon absorbed in the surrounding gloom.

III

The duc de Kernogan and his daughter saw little or nothing of Martin-Roget after that. For awhile longer they caught sight of him from time to time as he walked up and down the deck with ceaseless restlessness and in the company of another man, who was much shorter and slimmer than himself and whom they had not noticed hitherto. Martin-Roget talked most of the time in a loud and excited voice, the other appearing to listen to him with a certain air of deference. Whether the conversation between these two was actually intended for the ears of the two unfortunates, or whether it was merely chance which brought certain phrases to their ears when the two men passed closely by, it were impossible to say. Certain it is that from such chance phrases they gathered that the barque would not put into Nantes, as the navigation of the Loire was suspended for the nonce by order of Proconsul Carrier. He had need of the river for his awesome and nefarious deeds. Yvonne’s ears were regaled with tales⁠—told with loud ostentation⁠—of the terrible noyades, the wholesale drowning of men, women and children, malefactors and traitors, so as to ease the burden of the guillotine.

After three bells it got so bitterly cold that Yvonne, fearing that her father would become seriously ill, suggested their going down to their stuffy cabins together. After all, even the foul and shut-up atmosphere of these close, airless cupboards was preferable to the propinquity of those two human fiends up on deck and the tales of horror and brutality which they loved to tell.

And for two hours after that, father and daughter sat in the narrow cell-like place, locked in each other’s arms. She had everything to forgive, and he everything to atone for: but Yvonne suffered so acutely, her misery was so great that she found it in her heart to pity the father whose misery must have been even greater than hers. The supreme solace of bestowing love and forgiveness and of easing the racking paroxysms of remorse which brought the unfortunate man to the verge of dementia, warmed her heart towards him and brought surcease to her own sorrow.

Book II Nantes, December, 1793 I The Tiger’s Lair I

Nantes is in the grip of the tiger.

Representative Carrier⁠—with powers as of a proconsul⁠—has been sent down to stamp out the lingering remnants of the counterrevolution. La Vendée is temporarily subdued; the army of the royalists driven back across the Loire; but traitors still abound⁠—this the National Convention in Paris hath decreed⁠—there are traitors everywhere. They were not all massacred at Cholet and Savenay. Disbanded, yes! but not exterminated, and wolves must not be allowed to run loose, lest they band again, and try to devour the flocks.

Therefore extermination is the order of the day. Every traitor or would-be traitor⁠—every son and daughter and father and mother of traitors must be destroyed ere they do more mischief. And Carrier⁠—Carrier the coward who turned tail and bolted at Cholet⁠—is sent to Nantes to carry on the work of destruction. Wolves and wolflings all! Let none survive. Give them fair trial, of course. As traitors they have deserved death⁠—have they not taken up arms against the Republic and against the Will and the Reign of the People? But let a court of justice sit in Nantes town; let the whole nation know how traitors are dealt with: let the nation see that her rulers are both wise and just. Let wolves and wolflings be brought up for trial, and set up the guillotine on Place du Bouffay with four executioners appointed to do her work. There would be too much work for two, or even three. Let there be four⁠—and let the work of extermination be complete.

And Carrier⁠—with powers as of a proconsul⁠—arrives in Nantes town and sets to work to organise his household. Civil and military⁠—with pomp and circumstance⁠—for the son of a small farmer, destined originally for the Church and for obscurity is now virtual autocrat in one of the great cities of France. He has power of life and death over thousands of citizens⁠—under the direction of justice, of course! So now he has citizens of the bedchamber, and citizens of the household, he has a guard of honour and a company of citizens of the guard. And above all he has a crowd of spies around him⁠—servants of the Committee of Public Safety so they are called⁠—they style themselves “La Compagnie Marat” in honour of the great patriot who was foully murdered by a female