Читать книгу Franks: Duellist - Ambrose Pratt - Страница 5

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THE main point was that I was quite a rich man. Ten thousand pounds! I doubt if Devenac himself could have placed his hand on such a sum without considerable effort. I paid for the lunch. It cost me just thirty-eight shillings, for the Prince ordered one quart of old port and then another, but every mouthful made him more good-natured and more friendly-disposed towards me so I did not regret the prospect of this expenditure. He was then engaged fighting the King and Addington to try and wring from them a position in the army at least equal to that of the Duke of York, considering it far below his royal dignity to longer remain a paltry colonel of Dragoons. I had never mixed much in politics but I was quite conversant with the ordinary affairs of the day, and the army was a sore point with me. Five times during the present campaign I had attempted to obtain a commission for active service in Spain, but my applications had been contemptuously disregarded. I had been each time referred to the fact that after that little affair at Goa at the end of Wellesley's campaign in India (through which I had fought with honour) I had been dismissed the service in disgrace for the paltry matter of shooting Lord Melville's brother-in-law, in defiance of the edict forbidding duels. It will be readily perceived therefore, that political influence I had none, for the excuse was trifling, and Melville was then on the eve of being impeached for malversation of State funds, yet he was able to veto my ambitions. I was all the more ready on that account to sympathise with the Prince, and my comprehensive damnation of the Government against which he was striving placed us on the most amicable terms. I fancy I could have gained his influence in my favour, and was actually on the point of asking it, when an untoward accident occurred.

In the course of my life the most of both my best and worst fortune has come to me through the hands of that incomprehensible creature—woman. But I am a philosopher and have schooled myself to offset the good against the bad, so I bear but little of ill-will against the sex. However, I confess in this instance I was inclined to resent the sending of the fates, although their ministress was fair enough. The room in Bidewell's in which we sat opened upon a passage hung on each side with mirrors. Unfortunately the door stood wide, and as I was modestly about to set forth my aspirations to the Prince, I noticed his eyes wander to the doorway, and suddenly his whole demeanour change. His nostrils quivered with excitement, his lips were closed tightly over his teeth, his eyes sparkled.

Following his glance I caught a glimpse of a surpassingly handsome woman's face reflected in the mirror on the side of the passage opposite the door. She was pausing to arrange her hat or veil (a well-placed mirror is, as I have frequently observed, an irresistible stumbling-block to the march of womankind), and with an air of fascinating coquetry she smiled with dazzling sweetness at her own reflection, or rather, as we beheld it, her reflection smiled at her. She was a trifle below the average height, perhaps, petite and dainty, with an admirable figure, admirably displayed by the rich, creamy velvet drapings that encompassed her. Her eyes were big and blue as violets; her hair a wonderful deep golden colour tinted with russet flashings; her nose, lips and chin the perfection of bewitching beauty and roguish innocence; while her skin was white as snow and smooth as satin. ''Fore Gad,' cried the Prince, presently, 'Pysche incarnate! How devilish well she'd look naked, Franks.'

I had sometimes heard that it was His Highness's custom to commence acquaintance with errant damsels by some such brutally open expression of admiration. The girl turned a rosy, startled face in our direction, then vanished.

But the Prince was on his feet in a second and after her. I heard a scuffle in the passage, and in a moment he returned, dragging the lady with him, one arm around her waist, his free hand over her mouth to suppress all outcry.

His Royal Highness had drunk himself by now to a pitch of lusty recklessness, and he slammed the door behind him right noisily. 'Help! help!' cried the girl, wildly, as soon as her mouth was free. Her voice had a slightly foreign ring, but even so used, it was bell-like and silvery-toned.

There is nothing in man or woman which gives me greater pleasure than a beautiful voice. I felt attracted towards this damsel at once, for hers was singularly perfect. The Prince laughed boisterously at her screams.

'Whom do you expect?' he guffawed. 'Bidewell?' and he slapped his thigh with his left hand at the joke, for Bidewell was noted as his satellite and procureur. His right arm still encircled the girl, and he now attempted to buss her.

But he had caught a Tartar; she struggled, bit and screamed, and then in a flash slipped from his grasp, and the door being blocked by his form she darted behind the table and seized a dinner-knife. I watched the affair, disgusted beyond words at the Prince's method of wooing, but it seemed none of my business. I wondered, however, at her resistance; for a woman who visited Bidewell's unprotected, she exhibited an inexplicable inclination to defend her honour.

The Prince drew back from the knife. 'Ho! a vixen,' he growled; 'come, sweetheart, no need to be coy with your Prince.'

'Princes or peasants, you are brutes! cowards!' cried the girl. 'You to insult me, you' (this to me with a glance of passionate contempt) 'to allow a lady to be thus hatefully assaulted. Oh, you will pay for it yet; I say so, I—Clarisse d'Arras.'

I sprang to my feet amazed.

'What?' I thundered.

But the Prince, taking advantage of the girl's momentary attention to me, sprang forward and cleverly wrested the knife from her grasp.

'And now, sweetheart,' he growled, 'you'll pay me usuriously for those scurvy names.'

But the girl, though caught in his embrace, thrust herself from him, and leaning back appealed to me with a look which, should I live a thousand years, I shall not forget.

It fired every fibre of my body and sent a thousand lightnings coursing through my veins.

Next moment she was free and I bending over the Prince, who lay stunned upon the floor with the mark of a livid bruise fresh upon his forehead. It was the work of a second and regretted as soon as complete.

I stood for a while dazed, almost panic-stricken by my folly.

I, Caryl Franks, had dared to strike to earth the Son of my King, and to gratify the capricious coyness of a wanton. Before this my other escapades sank into insignificance. Half desperate, wholly wretched, I turned to the girl. She was regarding me with eyes half fearful, half admiring, and now that she felt herself safe, a trace of coquetry was also manifest.

I was not a man had I not been charmed, in spite of the terrors of fifty high treasons. She came to my side and took my hand with the prettiest air of innocence imaginable.

'Ah, monsieur,' she murmured, 'you prove to me that I have made one mistake; at least you are an honourable gentleman.'

She was certainly a Frenchwoman; she spoke so much like a lady that I hesitated, then said, 'You jested when you called yourself D'Arras, mademoiselle? Is it not so?'

'Why should you think my words a jest?'

'Your presence here,' I answered gravely. 'This house is not the place for a maid to visit unattended.'

She flushed crimson and eyed me haughtily a while, then glanced at the Prince, who still lay like a log.

'Evidently so,' she sarcastically observed; but her face quickly softened, and she murmured, 'I came hither with my maid, who has, it seems, deserted me, in search of my brother. Needless to say my business was urgent.'

'A thousand pardons, mademoiselle,' I urged. 'I am your very humble servant.'

'Indeed you have befriended me,' she cried, 'and I were an ungrateful creature not to be obliged to you. May I not know my preserver's name, so that my brother may express our thanks befittingly to you.'

'Caryl Franks, I am called, and if you will deign accept my escort to where you wish, I am at your service.'

She thanked me prettily, and we proceeded to the street, but there we found the maid awaiting her mistress, pale and terrified.

Mademoiselle rated her soundly for the cowardly desertion, then rather abruptly, it seemed to me, declined my further escort. 'I am quite safe now,' she declared, and with a charming smile tripped away. The ingratitude of women! She apparently completely disregarded the strait into which she had brought her protector.

As for me, I debated whether or not I should get out of England with all possible despatch, and so try and save my neck, or return to the Prince and throw myself upon his mercy. The bolder course seemed the best, and I made my way upstairs again, sheepishly enough, to be quite truthful. I found His Royal Highness both conscious and wrathful, seated at the table before a glass of port. He gave me a scowl as I entered. 'I hope your Royal Highness is quite recovered,' I ventured recklessly.

''Fore Gad, no thanks to you if I am,' he retorted. 'What made you leave me? and who the devil struck me that coward's blow?'

'Heavens!' thought I, 'he doesn't know 'twas me.'

I seized my chance, however, like a true soldier of fortune. I breathed hard and pretended to have just returned from violent effort of some sort. 'God knows, sir,' I gasped. 'Your Highness must forgive me for deserting you, but I tried to run the rascals down. Three men they were with masked faces, and they all but knifed you as you lay. They could run like the devil, too, and slipped me in a maze of alleys. Thank God your Highness is unhurt. I returned the instant I could, running all the way.'

He swallowed the lie without a question.

'And the wench?' he demanded.

'She vanished like a sprite, sir, where I cannot say.'

He extended to me his hand good-humouredly enough. 'Well, you've saved my life likely enough, lad,' he cried, 'you won't find me ungrateful.'

I pressed his fingers fervently. 'Would I could have done more,' I muttered, and bent my head to smother a laugh. 'Indeed,' I pursued, 'your Highness should never permit yourself to be without a guard. Luckily in this instance my blade was a match for three knives, but I say without boasting few men are my equals with the sword;' and I concluded, with the unction of a courtier, 'you should remember that your Highness's life is the hope of England.'

''Fore Gad,' answered George, 'I commence to think you are right. I've had, thanks to you, a narrow escape. But whom think you those rascals were?'

I bent forward and whispered mysteriously, 'Napoleonic agents, I make no doubt. They spoke no word, but one who felt my point let drop a French oath and in the voice of a gentleman.'

The Prince turned quite pale and rose unsteadily to his feet 'Let us get out of this, Franks,' he muttered, 'I feel shaken; and, lad, if you love me, keep your sword loose. You've a pretty hand with the sword, Franks.'

I had, it seems, succeeded in putting the fear of God into the Prince's heart, but then all the Georges were cravens. It suited my book, however, to keep him on tenter-hooks, and I filled the way to the street with dark hints of royal assassinations, plots and all manner of bloody conspiracies afoot. And also I sang my own praises without stint, until presently, meeting a half score of his cronies, I left him, thinking me the bravest, the cleverest and the most loyally unscrupulous swashbuckler in England. I bore with me his earnest request to join him in a rout that very evening, and he muttered in my ear as we parted,—

'Don't fail me, lad; I won't feel safe without you're by me.'

On the road to my lodgings I chuckled frequently, except when I thought on Mademoiselle d'Arras. Against her I could not avoid nourishing a certain resentment. She had treated me curtly and shabbily, I thought, and I was not used at that time to aught but pestering attentions at the hands of women. I had, however, still much to learn on many subjects, and this I realised no later than when I turned the lock and passed through the door of my chamber.