Читать книгу The Red Mass - Valentine Williams - Страница 5
ОглавлениеMR. GRAY
In years to come, Hector Fotheringay was wont to look back upon that glittering May morning as the virtual beginning of his life. As he strolled forth into the sunshine, despite the brave weather, he was conscious of a quick feeling of unrest. It was as though the imminent change that, before another day should dawn, was to overtake his fortunes, had cast its lengthening shadow across his mind.
In truth, the times were unsettled enough. Great events were stirring. England was at death grips with an ancient foe in new and terrifying shape, and, only three days from London, the deadly machine of the regicides day by day in Paris was swamping history in seas of blood. And he was out of all these historic doings, Fotheringay reflected, condemned of his own volition to be a mere pawn in a red coat and march behind a band or drink and lounge and gamble through the long summer nights which, in Flanders and in Paris, were witness to such deeds of high adventure.
At the door of his lodging he stopped and surveyed Saint James's Street. From the windows of the clubs and coffee-houses, thronged with rich and well-fed loungers, his gaze descended to the filthy beggars that swarmed over the pavement. How their numbers had increased since the war with France and how many old soldiers and sailors trailed their ragged uniforms in the mire of the kennels! Even as he stood a grotesque figure in stained and faded scarlet, who, with dog and bell, tapped his way along the pavement rolling his sightless eyeballs and screaming, 'Pray remember the blind man!' sought to clutch his fine lace coat with grimy hand, while an old sailor with tarry pigtail and face the colour of mahogany, who wheeled himself along in a little carriage, clasped him about the legs. When Fotheringay shook him roughly off and bade him begone, the fellow cursed him roundly for an 'aristocrat.'
A new spirit was abroad in the land, infection spread like a murrain from France, the young Guardsman angrily reflected. Even his own servant was not free from it. He noted the dense crowd that, as every day, thronged the pavement before Humphrey's shop where Mr. Gillray's disgraceful caricatures were exposed for sale. The fellow spared no one with his pencil and the common people made a god of him. Mr. Pitt who, thank Heaven, and none too soon, was taking action against the agitators, should lay an information against the ruffian. The filthy doctrines of the regicides were poisoning old England. One could scarcely contemplate the old Palace at the foot of the street without wondering whether it, like the monarchy it stood for, was as solid as it looked.
As he descended the street, the tap of a drum from the interior of the Palace again came to his ears. The brassy roll stirred him strangely. The sound of the drum always carried his thoughts to Paris. His mother had been French—he was glad now that she had not lived to see disaster overwhelm her beloved France—and her brother, the Marquis de Sainte-Valentine had perished, but eight months before, on the scaffold, the last of his line. To tap of drum the tumbril had borne him to the Place de la Révolution, and, as he and his companions met their death, the letter from Coblence had told him, the drums had beaten again lest the victims should have been tempted to address the mob.
Fotheringay crossed the street in front of the Palace, past the Yeomen of the Guard, resting on their halberds, to the Saint James's Coffee-House. A prodigious buzz of conversation greeted his ears as he entered. The ground-floor room was densely crowded and every newspaper was the centre of an eager and animated group.
A big man in the undress uniform of the Horse Guards, who was breakfasting at a table against the wall, beckoned Hector over.
'Good-morning, Maxeter!' said Hector, stopping at the table.
'Join us, Fotheringay,' invited the big man, his mouth full. 'Let me present you to my friend, Mr. Gray.'
He indicated a natty little ant of a man of middle-age, very neatly dressed in sober brown with spotless linen of the finest texture at neck and wrists. He was clean-shaven and wore a brown wig.
'I am honoured, Mr. Fotheringay,' said Mr. Gray, rising and bowing.
Hector saluted him punctiliously. He remembered having seen him at odd times at the coffee-house.
'The luck was against you at the Thatched House last night, Fotheringay,' observed Maxeter.
'Yes, curse it,' Fotheringay agreed. 'Nine hundred guineas, wasn't it? You'll have to wait a day or two for your money, Max. I've got to journey down to Somersetshire to that old skinflint, my uncle, and see if I can raise the wind!'
Maxeter laughed.
'There's no hurry about it,' he said. 'But why don't you marry, man, and get rid of the leading-strings? Mr. Fotheringay here,' he explained to Mr. Gray, 'is, under his late father's will, deprived of the full control of his fortune until such time as he marries. Sir John Fotheringay, his uncle, is his guardian and controller of the purse ...'
'Sir John Fotheringay?' said Mr. Gray. 'He was with the Army in America, I think? Aye, I know him!'
'Then you number among your acquaintance a damned old skinflint, sir,' Fotheringay broke in hotly. 'Four times a year have I to travel down to the wilds of the West Country and weary myself to death in the set of fox-hunting country squires with whom my uncle delights to pass his time. Each time I must stay a fortnight, for so he will have it, and of that a week at least is spent in the stormings and blusterings, the reproaches and reprimands, which the mention of my debts invariably calls forth!'
'Sir John has the reputation of belonging to the old school,' observed Mr. Gray sedately.
'He has stayed in it too long, sir,' replied Fotheringay severely. 'He thinks that an officer of the Guards may do with a hundred pounds a year as he could in the days of Corporal John. Why, dammit, Maxeter here pays his valet de chambre as much!'
'And he's worth every penny of it, curse me!' heartily vociferated Maxeter. 'Peyraud has not his equal in London for the tying of cravats. The Prince would have taken him from me, but I protested to His Royal Highness that it was unfair, "for you, Sir," I told him, "are, so to say, hors concours!" He was devilish amused!'
An excitable voice that cried out suddenly in French now drew their attention to the next table. Three men, all dressed in the height of fashion, but with certain niceties that stamped them as foreigners, sat there, an open newspaper before them. One of them, a dark young man with a passionate face, who wore the riband of the Order of Saint Louis on his breast, was exclaiming excitedly:
'Ils se moquent de nous! Ils se moquent de nous!'
One of his companions, a foppishly attired youth of about twenty-five, who was drinking sherry, nodded his head in approval.
'What can one expect of a government that bows always to the will of the people?' remarked the third man, whose large and fleshy face wore an undoubted air of authority. He had narrow eyes and thin lips that shut with a snap.
'Is there bad news from France again?' asked Fotheringay in a low voice of Maxeter. 'The émigrés seem very excited.'
'The Duke of York has had a drubbing at Tourcoing by Lisle,' Maxeter answered. 'And, if Mr. Gray's information be correct, he owed his safety only to the swiftness of his horse.'
'I had the news from Mr. Secretary Dundas himself,' replied Mr. Gray. 'The Marquis d'Aligre seems mightily put out about it!'
'Which is he?' asked Fotheringay.
'The old man with the fat face. He brought a vast fortune out of France with him and steadily declines to give a sol to aid the grievous distress among his fellow émigrés. The one with the riband is the Vicomte de Solesmes: the young man I do not know.'
Meanwhile the conversation among the émigrés had been resumed.
'They are all shopkeepers,' declared the Vicomte. 'They are not a race of soldiers as we. They have the strength and the determination of which soldiers can be made, but their soul is in their shop!'
Fotheringay flushed up.
''Fore God,' he said to his companions, 'their impertinence is intolerable. Do you know what they say?'
Maxeter yawned.
'I have said all the French I know,' he remarked cheerfully.
Mr. Gray leaned forward.
'I see you know French, Mr. Fotheringay,' he said. 'My advice to you is to turn a deaf ear to the political arguments of these gentlemen. They are of the type of French nobleman which, to my way of thinking, is one of the few excuses for the conduct of the Jacobins.'
But the Vicomte, who waxed more excited with the warmth of his eloquence, was speaking again.
'Look around us!' he exclaimed. 'The town is full of idle officers. They look brave enough in their red coats now, but when it comes to fighting they run ... like their famous Duc d'Yorck!'
With a crash Fotheringay's chair fell over. The young Guardsman had sprung to his feet. He strode to the Frenchmen's table.
'You and your friends,' he said, addressing the Vicomte in polished and exquisite French without a trace of English accent, 'will take yourselves out of this coffee-house and will return only at the risk of receiving the chastisement which your impertinence merits.'
He had spoken in a ringing voice and a dead hush fell upon the room. Very white the Vicomte rose to his feet.
'By what right, Monsieur, do you interfere in a private conversation?'
'By the right conferred by respect for the uniform which I have the honour to wear. You will permit me to add, Monsieur, that it would be more fitting for you and your friends to be in the field seeking to liberate your country than to seek shelter here to criticise those who are doing it for you!'
The Vicomte's eyes blazed. He was about to speak when the Marquis rested a pudgy hand on his laced sleeve. He fixed his small eyes, dulled with years of vice, on the Guardsman's hot and angry face. He did not rise.
'Monsieur, you insult us!'
Fotheringay shrugged his shoulders.
'My remarks were addressed to your friend,' he said. 'But you can accept them for yourself if you wish!'—he paused—'they will cost you nothing!'
The hand of the Marquis d'Aligre flashed to his sword; but now the room fell into an uproar. A party of officers stepped between the adversaries.
'I shall kill you for this!' exclaimed the Vicomte over a barrier of restraining arms. Then to the Marquis: 'No, no, Marquis, he is my man!'
'My friend, Lord Maxeter, will be glad to receive any friend of yours!' Fotheringay retorted. 'Max,' he went on, 'I count on you!'
Some one handed him his hat. It was Mr. Gray, looking at him curiously with his keen eyes. Fotheringay bowed to him stiffly and strode out of the coffee-house.
