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

“The Loire for you⁠—you blackmailer! liar! traitor!” shouted some of the women who, bolder than the men, thrust shaking fists at Paul Friche as closely as that pewter mug would allow.

“Break his jaw before he can yell for the police,” admonished one of the men from the rear, “before he can save his own skin.”

But those who shouted loudest had only their fists by way of weapon and Paul Friche had mugs and bottles, and those sabots of his kicked out with uncomfortable agility.

“Break my jaw, will you,” he shouted every time that a blow from the mug went home, “a spy am I? Very well then, here’s for you, Jacques Leroux; go and nurse your cracked skull at home. You want a row,” he added hitting at a youth who brandished a heavy fist in his face, “well! you shall have it and as much of it as you like! as much of it as will bring the patrols of police comfortably about your ears.”

Bang! went the pewter mug crashing against a man’s hard skull! Bang went Paul Friche’s naked fist against the chest of another. He was a hard hitter and swift.

The Lemoines from behind their bar shouted louder than the rest, doing as much as their lungs would allow them in the way of admonishing, entreating, protesting⁠—cursing everyone for a set of fools who were playing straight into the hands of the police.

“Now then! Now then, children, stop that bellowing, will you? There are no spies here. Paul Friche was only having his little joke! We all know one another, what?”

“Camels!” added Lemoine more forcibly. “They’ll bring the patrols about our ears for sure.”

Paul Friche was not by any means the only man who was being vigorously attacked. After the first two or three minutes of this kingdom of pandemonium, it was difficult to say who was quarrelling with whom. Old grudges were revived, old feuds taken up there, where they had previously been interrupted. Accusations of spying were followed by abuse for some past wrong of blacklegging or cheating a confrère. The temperature of the room became suffocating. All these violent passions seething within these four walls seemed to become tangible and to mingle with the atmosphere already surcharged with the fumes of alcohol, of tobacco and of perspiring humanity. There was many a black-eye already, many a contusion: more than one knife⁠—surreptitiously drawn⁠—was already stained with red.

There was also a stampede for the door. One man gave the signal. Seeing that his mates were wasting precious time by venting their wrath against Paul Friche and then quarrelling among themselves, he hoped to effect an escape ere the police came to stop the noise. No one believed in the place being surrounded. Why should it be? The Marats were far too busy hunting up rebels and aristos to trouble much about the Rat Mort and its customers, but it was quite possible that a brawl would bring a patrol along, and then ’ware the police correctionnelle and the possibility of deportation or worse. Retreat was undoubtedly safer while there was time. One man first: then one or two more on his heels, and those among the women who had children in their arms or clinging to their skirts: they turned stealthily to the door⁠—almost ashamed of their cowardice, ashamed lest they were seen abandoning the field of combat.

It was while confusion reigned unchecked that Yvonne⁠—who was cowering, frankly terrified at last, in the corner of the room, became aware that the door close beside her⁠—the door situated immediately opposite the front entrance⁠—was surreptitiously opened. She turned quickly to look⁠—for she was like a terror-stricken little animal now⁠—one that scents and feels and fears danger from every quarter round. The door was being pushed open very slowly by what was still to Yvonne an unseen hand. Somehow that opening door fascinated her: for the moment she forgot the noise and the confusion around her.

Then suddenly with a great effort of will she checked the scream which had forced itself up to her throat.

“Father!” was all that she contrived to say in a hoarse and passionate murmur.

Fortunately as he peered cautiously round the room, M. le duc caught sight of his daughter. She was staring at him⁠—wide-eyed, her lips bloodless, her cheeks the colour of ashes. He looked but the ghost now of that proud aristocrat who little more than a week ago was the centre of a group of courtiers round the person of the heir to the English throne. Starved, emaciated, livid, he was the shadow of his former self, and there was a haunted look in his purple-rimmed eyes which spoke with pathetic eloquence of sleepless nights and of a soul tortured with remorse.

Just for the moment no one took any notice of him⁠—everyone was shrieking, everyone was quarrelling, and M. le duc, placing a finger to his lips, stole cautiously round to his daughter. The next instant they were clinging to one another, these two, who had endured so much together⁠—he the father who had wrought such an unspeakable wrong, and she the child who was so lonely, so forlorn and almost happy in finding someone who belonged to her, someone to whom she could cling.

“Father, dear! what shall we do?” Yvonne murmured, for she felt the last shred of her fictitious courage oozing out of her, in face of this awful lawlessness which literally paralysed her thinking faculties.

“Sh! dear!” whispered M. le duc in reply. “We must get out of this loathsome place while this hideous row is going on. I heard it all from the filthy garret up above, where those devils have kept me these three days. The door was not locked⁠ ⁠… I crept downstairs⁠ ⁠… No one is paying heed to us⁠ ⁠… We can creep out. Come.”

But at the suggestion, Yvonne’s spirits, which had been stunned by the events of the past few moments, revived with truly mercurial rapidity.

“No! no!