Читать книгу A Joyous Adventure - Baroness Orczy - Страница 12

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The next day, by the time the beautiful Lady de Genneville had dismissed her coiffeur, her milliner and her maid, the news was all over the Town.

It was yet another prank of that madcap, Saint-Denys, so they all said.

“Have you read it, my dear fellow?”

“Gad! I nearly died seeing those toothless gaffers staring at it open-mouthed.”

“Already at seven o’clock, I am told, there was a regular crowd round the Exchange. The police had to charge...”

“The man’s mad, I say. Stark, staring mad.” That is what most of them said.

“But what’s he done now?” These were the ones who had not yet heard the news.

“Don’t you know?”

“Haven’t you seen?”

“My dear fellow, I’ve only just...”

“Those placards all over the town?”

“What placards?”

“Come and I’ll show you. Will you come along, too, Hastings?”

“Rather!”

“And I.”

“And I.”

“We’ll all come.”

And the merry throng of young dandies, forming fours and linking arms, followed their leader up the lane and through the narrow streets which debouch on the Strand. Avoiding Covent Garden Market, where hustling, bustling, busy life would have impeded their progress, they stepped along at a brisk rate, chattering, gesticulating, laughing like a troop of schoolboys, charging head down into anything that barred their way. Those who were in the know vowed that never in all their born days had they seen anything to equal Saint-Denys’s latest monkey trick.

It was close on eight o’clock of this cold March morning, and the lively throng had trooped out of Drury Lane. They had trooped out because the orchestra had played its last tune and the ball had come to an end. They also trooped out because one of them had come running in from outside and scattered the news of Saint-Denys’s amazing exploit.

Close on eight o’clock, and broad daylight! Busy Londoners, tradesmen and ’prentices had long since been astir. Some of these, at the corner of Villiers Street, stared open-mouthed at these merry-andrews dressed in motley, some as ferocious pirates, others as gay Pierrots or grotesque Pantaloons, or more soberly in silk dominoes. A murmur went the round.

“What a crowd of wasters!”

“Idlers! fops! ne’er-do-wells!”

“They’re all over the place,” muttered a gaffer through his beard, “now that there’s no more fighting to keep them busy.”

“If this is peace,” declared another, “then give me war and Boney all the time.”

But the noisy, chattering crowd went on regardless until, reaching Bedford Street, their leader came to a halt. He it was who was dressed as a pirate, with a red scarf wound round his head and huge pistols stuck in his belt. His arms and chest were bare and stained with walnut juice, his feet were thrust in immense cavalier boots. With a dramatic gesture he indicated a printed placard which had been posted up at the corner of the street.

“There you are!” he exclaimed, with the pride of a showman conscious of the attraction of his wares.

Here, too, a few quidnuncs had gathered; they had to be somewhat roughly thrust into the gutter to make way for these exquisites. Apparently these placards, of which there were a hundred all over the town, had been posted up during the night and had created a regular stir. Curiosity was on the qui vive. Comments ran freely, some in mild amusement, others not altogether free from contempt.

“These macaronis!”

“Pity Boney did not knock more of them on the head.”

“A madman in truth,” muttered the seedy solicitor’s clerk to the out-at-elbows chemist’s assistant.

“Would I could earn that reward,” sighed the medical student in the ear of his sweetheart, “for then we could be married on the morrow.”

“Bah!” ejaculated the elderly attorney. “You don’t believe that anyone is going to get that money, do you? Why, the fellow, if he paid it, wouldn’t have a bean left.”

Yet there it was, almost incredible in its amazing proposal, but nevertheless printed in bold letters for everyone to read, and signed with one of the most honoured names in the land.

£5,000 REWARD

BE IT KNOWN to all those whom it may concern that I, Martin Leroy Charles Saint-Denys, Baron Saint-Denys and Brune in the peerage of the United Kingdom, do hereby undertake to pay the above sum of money to whomsoever will deliver me from an incurable disease known as boredom, which is sapping my vitality, impairing my physical health, and slowly dragging me down to a premature grave.

Whosoever will provide me against that devastating malady with a remedy which, on application, shall prove efficacious, will receive, together with my gratitude, the sum of £5,000.

But for the guidance of those interested in this scientific problem I would warn them that sundry remedies have at different times been tried by me and found wanting, such as:

Piracy on the high seas;

Highway robbery;

The loss of a fortune at faro.

Note also that I have had ten years of soldiering, campaigning and of Bonaparte’s artillery, and that these are now barred owing to this begad peace.

Also that I draw the line at:—

Card-sharping;

Rape and

Assassination.

My life being worthless, I’ll take any risk of ending it, anywhere and anyhow, save on the gallows.

GOD SAVE THE KING

“Well!” exclaimed those who had been led hither to read this remarkable effusion. “Well!”

“Of all the...”

“Well!” they all exclaimed again.

“No one but Saint-Denys could have thought of such lunacy!”

“I didn’t think he had £5,000 left.”

“I suppose he means it, though.”

“Of course. He signed every one of the hundred placards with his own hand.”

“I’ve a good notion to suggest to him...”

“And I.”

“I, too, have an idea....”

That is what a good many of them said, and then fell into thoughtful silence. Most of these young jackanapes were up to their eyes in debt, for this was the age when young men had little else to do to amuse themselves save gambling and drinking. A remnant of Puritanism in the English blood has at all times prevented the theatre from becoming really popular; and these last ten years of strenuous warfare had disaccustomed them from frequenting old Drury Lane or the Italian opera. Dancing was no longer greatly in vogue. The minuet was complicated and rather slow, and the new Viennese waltz not thought to be altogether bon ton.

There was nothing for it but gambling—gambling in every form: hazard, dice, cards, betting—betting above all—just a futile way of losing money—anything for excitement in the intervals of fighting Bonaparte. M. Otto had been quite right when he averred that Lord Saint-Denys, that prince of gamblers, had lost a fortune one night, and another a year later. Probably the £5,000 which he was offering as a reward was the last remnant of what had once been a princely income. It was just like him to throw away that last remnant on such a foolish prank.

But Saint-Denys was a man of his word. He had promised the reward and he would pay it, even if it meant parting with his last shilling. And his young friends—just such madcaps as he was himself—nursed, at sight of those placards, happy thoughts of how to earn £5,000 without undue hard work. £5,000 would come in so handy for satisfying one or two importunate creditors, or for the price of a diamond necklace coveted by that pretty dancer at the opera.

No wonder that they all fell to musing until suddenly the ferocious pirate, who was none other than the young Duke of Flint, exclaimed suddenly:

“And now let’s go to bed!”

Whereupon they all realised that the morning was no longer young, that the gaffers round them appeared more and more hostile, and that they themselves were dead with sleep, having danced and revelled, drunk and gambled and shouted themselves hoarse for twelve hours on end. So they set up a mighty cheer and turned in several directions to regain their homes, just as the clock of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields struck eight.