Lord Tony's Wife: An Adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE ROAD TO PORTISHEAD

  I

  It was not until Bath had very obviously been left behind that Yvonne deKernogan--Lady Anthony Dewhurst--realised that she had been trapped.

  During the first half-hour of the journey her father had lain backagainst the cushions of the carriage with eyes closed, his face pale andwan as if with great suffering. Yvonne, her mind a prey to the gravestanxiety, sat beside him, holding his limp cold hand in hers. Once ortwice she ventured on a timid question as to his health and heinvariably murmured a feeble assurance that he felt well, only verytired and disinclined to talk. Anon she suggested--diffidently, for shedid not mean to disturb him--that the driver did not appear to know hisway into Bath, he had turned into a side road which she felt sure wasnot the right one. M. le duc then roused himself for a moment from hislethargy. He leaned forward and gazed out of the window.

  "The man is quite right, Yvonne," he said quietly, "he knows his way. Hebrought me along this road yesterday. He gets into Bath by a slightdetour but it is pleasanter driving."

  This reply satisfied her. She was a stranger in the land, and knewlittle or nothing of the environs of Bath. True, last Monday morningafter the ceremony of her marriage she had driven out to Combwich, butdawn was only just breaking then, and she had lain for the mostpart--wearied and happy--in her young husband's arms. She had takenscant note of roads and signposts.

  A few minutes later the coach came to a halt and Yvonne, looking throughthe window, saw a man who was muffled up to the chin and enveloped in ahuge travelling cape, mount swiftly up beside the driver.

  "Who is that man?" she queried sharply.

  "Some friend of the coachman's, no doubt," murmured her father in reply,"to whom he is giving a lift as far as Bath."

  The barouche had moved on again.

  Yvonne could not have told you why, but at her father's last words shehad felt a sudden cold grip at her heart--the first since she started.It was neither fear nor yet suspicion, but a chill seemed to go rightthrough her. She gazed anxiously through the window, and then looked ather father with eyes that challenged and that doubted. But M. le ducwould not meet her gaze. He had once more closed his eyes and sat quitestill, pale and haggard, like a man who is suffering acutely.

  II

  "Father we are going back to Bath, are we not?"

  The query came out trenchant and hard from her throat which now felthoarse and choked. Her whole being was suddenly pervaded by a vast andnameless fear. Time had gone on, and there was no sign in the distanceof the great city. M. de Kernogan made no reply, but he opened his eyesand a curious glance shot from them at the terror-stricken face of hisdaughter.

  Then she knew--knew that she had been tricked and trapped--that herfather had played a hideous and complicated role of hypocrisy andduplicity in order to take her away from the husband whom she idolised.

  Fear and her love for the man of her choice gave her initiative andstrength. Before M. de Kernogan could realise what she was doing, beforehe could make a movement to stop her, she had seized the handle of thecarriage door, wrenched the door open and jumped out into the road. Shefell on her face in the mud, but the next moment she picked herself upagain and started to run--down the road which the carriage had justtraversed, on and on as fast as she could go. She ran on blindly,unreasoningly, impelled by a purely physical instinct to escape, notthinking how childish, how futile such an attempt was bound to be.

  Already after the first few minutes of this swift career over the muddyroad, she heard quick, heavy footsteps behind her. Her father could notrun like that--the coachman could not have thus left his horses--butstill she could hear those footsteps at a run--a quicker run thanhers--and they were gaining on her--every minute, every second. Thenext, she felt two powerful arms suddenly seizing her by the shoulders.She stumbled and would once more have fallen, but for those same strongarms which held her close.

  "Let me go! Let me go!" she cried, panting.

  But she was held and could no longer move. She looked up into the faceof Martin-Roget, who without any hesitation or compunction lifted her upas if she had been a bale of light goods and carried her back toward thecoach. She had forgotten the man who had been picked up on the roadawhile ago, and had been sitting beside the coachman since.

  He deposited her in the barouche beside her father, then quietly closedthe door and once more mounted to his seat on the box. The carriagemoved on again. M. de Kernogan was no longer lethargic, he looked downon his daughter's inert form beside him, and not one look of tendernessor compassion softened the hard callousness of his face.

  "Any resistance, my child," he said coldly, "will as you see be uselessas well as undignified. I deplore this necessary violence, but I shouldbe forced once more to requisition M. Martin-Roget's help if youattempted such foolish tricks again. When you are a little more calm, wewill talk openly together."

  For the moment she was lying back against the cushions of the carriage;her nerves having momentarily given way before this appallingcatastrophe which had overtaken her and the hideous outrage to which shewas being subjected by her own father. She was sobbing convulsively. Butin the face of his abominable callousness, she made a great effort toregain her self-control. Her pride, her dignity came to the rescue. Shehad had time in those few seconds to realise that she was indeed morehelpless than any bird in a fowler's net, and that only absolute calmand presence of mind could possibly save her now.

  If indeed there was the slightest hope of salvation.

  She drew herself up and resolutely dried her eyes and readjusted herhair and her hood and mantle.

  "We can talk openly at once, sir," she said coldly. "I am ready to hearwhat explanation you can offer for this monstrous outrage."

  "I owe you no explanation, my child," he retorted calmly. "Presentlywhen you are restored to your own sense of dignity and of self-respectyou will remember that a lady of the house of Kernogan does not elope inthe night with a stranger and a heretic like some kitchen-wench. Havingso far forgotten herself my daughter must, alas! take the consequences,which I deplore, of her own sins and lack of honour."

  "And no doubt, father," she retorted, stung to the quick by his insults,"that you too will anon be restored to your own sense of self-respectand remember that hitherto no gentleman of the house of Kernogan hasacted the part of a liar and of a hypocrite!"

  "Silence!" he commanded sternly.

  "Yes!" she reiterated wildly, "it was the role of a liar and of ahypocrite that you played from the moment when you sat down to pen thatletter full of protestations of affection and forgiveness, until like averitable Judas you betrayed your own daughter with a kiss. Shame onyou, father!" she cried. "Shame!"

  "Enough!" he said, as he seized her wrist so roughly that the cry ofpain which involuntarily escaped her effectually checked the words inher mouth. "You are mad, beside yourself, a thoughtless, senselesscreature whom I shall have to coerce more effectually if you do notcease your ravings. Do not force me to have recourse once again to M.Martin-Roget's assistance to keep your undignified outburst in check."

  The name of the man whom she had learned to hate and fear more than anyother human being in the world was sufficient to restore to her thatmeasure of self-control which had again threatened to leave her.

  "Enough indeed," she said more calmly; "the brain that could devise andcarry out such infamy in cold blood is not like to be influenced by adefenceless woman's tears. Will you at least tell me whither you aretaking me?"

  "We go to a place on the coast now," he replied coldly, "the outlandishname of which has escaped me. There we embark for Holland, from whencewe shall join their Royal Highnesses at Coblentz. It is at Coblentzthat your marriage with M. Martin-Roget will take place, and...."

  "Stay, father," she broke in, speaking quite as calmly as he did, "ereyou go any further. Understand me clearly, for I mean every word that Isay. In the sight of God--if not in that of the laws of France--I am thewife of Lord A
nthony Dewhurst. By everything that I hold most sacred andmost dear I swear to you that I will never become Martin-Roget's wife. Iwould die first," she added with burning but resolutely suppressedpassion.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  "Pshaw, my child," he said quietly, "many a time since the world beganhave women registered such solemn and sacred vows, only to break themwhen force of circumstance and their own good sense made them ashamed oftheir own folly."

  "How little you know me, father," was all that she said in reply.

  III

  Indeed, Yvonne de Kernogan--Yvonne Dewhurst as she was now in sight ofGod and men--had far too much innate dignity and self-respect tocontinue this discussion, seeing that in any case she was physically theweaker, and that she was absolutely helpless and defenceless in thehands of two men, one of whom--her own father--who should have been herprotector, was leagued with her bitterest enemy against her.

  That Martin-Roget was her enemy--aye and her father's too--she hadabsolutely no doubt. Some obscure yet keen instinct was working in herheart, urging her to mistrust him even more wholly than she had donebefore. Just now, when he laid ruthless hands on her and carried her,inert and half-swooning, back into the coach, and she lay with closedeyes, her very soul in revolt against this contact with him, against thefeel of his arms around her, a vague memory surcharged with horror andwith dread stirred within her brain: and over the vista of the past fewyears she looked back upon an evening in the autumn--a rough night withthe wind from the Atlantic blowing across the lowlands of Poitou andsoughing in the willow trees that bordered the Loire--she seemed to hearthe tumultuous cries of enraged human creatures dominating the sound ofthe gale, she felt the crowd of evil-intentioned men around the closedcarriage wherein she sat, calm and unafraid. Darkness then was allaround her. She could not see. She could only hear and feel. And sheheard the carriage door being wrenched open, and she felt the coldbreath of the wind upon her cheek, and also the hot breath of a man in apassion of fury and of hate.

  She had seen nothing then, and mercifully semi-unconsciousness haddulled her aching senses, but even now her soul shrunk with horror atthe vague remembrance of that ghostlike form--the spirit of hate and ofrevenge--of its rough arms encircling her shoulders, its fingers underher chin--and then that awful, loathsome, contaminating kiss which shethought then would have smirched her for ever. It had taken all thepure, sweet kisses of a brave and loyal man whom she loved and revered,to make her forget that hideous, indelible stain: and in the arms of herdear milor she had forgotten that one terrible moment, when she had feltthat the embrace of death must be more endurable than that of thisunknown and hated man.

  It was the memory of that awful night which had come back to her as in aflash while she lay passive and broken in Martin-Roget's arms. Ofcourse for the moment she had no thought of connecting the rich bankerfrom Brest, the enthusiastic royalist and _emigre_, with one of thoseturbulent, uneducated peasant lads who had attacked her carriage thatnight: all that she was conscious of was that she was outraged by hispresence, just as she had been outraged then, and that the contact ofhis hands, of his arms, was absolutely unendurable.

  To fight against the physical power which held her a helpless prisonerin the hands of the enemy was sheer impossibility. She knew that, andwas too proud to make feeble and futile efforts which could only end indefeat and further humiliation. She felt hideously wretched andlonely--thoughts of her husband, who at this hour was still serenelyunconscious of the terrible catastrophe which had befallen him, broughttears of acute misery to her eyes. What would he do when--to-morrow,perhaps--he realised that his bride had been stolen from him, that hehad been fooled and duped as she had been too. What could he do when heknew?

  She tried to solace her own soul-agony by thinking of his influentialfriends who, of course, would help him as soon as they knew. There wasthat mysterious and potent friend of whom he spoke so little, whoalready had warned him of coming danger and urged on the secret marriagewhich should have proved a protection. There was Sir Percy Blakeney, ofwhom he spoke much, who was enormously rich, independent, the mostintimate friend of the Regent himself. There was....

  But what was the use of clinging even for one instant to those feeblecords of Hope's broken lyre? By the time her dear lord knew that she wasgone, she would be on the high seas, far out of his reach.

  And she had not even the solace of tears--heart-broken sobs rose in herthroat, but she resolutely kept them back. Her father's cold, impassiveface, the callous glitter in his eyes told her that every tear would bein vain, her most earnest appeal an object for his sneers.

  IV

  As to how long the journey in the coach lasted after that YvonneDewhurst could not have said. It may have been a few hours, it may havebeen a cycle of years. She had been young--a happy bride, a dutifuldaughter--when she left Combwich Hall. She was an old woman now, asupremely unhappy one, parted from the man she loved without hope ofever seeing him again in life, and feeling nothing but hatred andcontempt for the father who had planned such infamy against her.

  She offered no resistance whatever to any of her father's commands.After the first outburst of revolt and indignation she had not evenspoken to him.

  There was a halt somewhere on the way, when in the low-raftered room ofa posting-inn, she had to sit at table with the two men who hadcompassed her misery. She was thirsty, feverish and weak: she drank somemilk in silence. She felt ill physically as well as mentally, and theconstant effort not to break down had helped to shatter her nerves. Asshe had stepped out of the barouche without a word, so she stepped intoit again when it stood outside, ready with a fresh relay of horses totake her further, still further, away from the cosy little nest whereeven now her young husband was waiting longingly for her return. Thepeople of the inn--a kindly-looking woman, a portly middle-aged man, oneor two young ostlers and serving-maids were standing about in the yardwhen her father led her to the coach. For a moment the wild idea rushedto her mind to run to these people and demand their protection, toproclaim at the top of her voice the infamous act which was dragging heraway from her husband and her home, and lead her a helpless prisoner toa fate that was infinitely worse than death. She even ran to the womanwho looked so benevolent and so kind, she placed her small quiveringhand on the other's rough toil-worn one and in hurried, appealing wordsbegged for her help and the shelter of a home till she could communicatewith her husband.

  The woman listened with a look of kindly pity upon her homely face, shepatted the small, trembling hand and stroked it gently, tears ofcompassion gathered in her eyes:

  "Yes, yes, my dear," she said soothingly, speaking as she would to asick woman or to a child, "I quite understand. I wouldna' fret if I wasyou. I would jess go quietly with your pore father: 'e knows what's bestfor you, that 'e do. You come 'long wi' me," she added as she drewYvonne's hands through her arm, "I'll see ye're comfortable in thecoach."

  Yvonne, bewildered, could not at first understand either the woman'ssympathy or her obvious indifference to the pitiable tale, until--Oh!the shame of it!--she saw the two young serving-maids looking on herwith equal pity expressed in their round eyes, and heard one of themwhispering to the other:

  "Pore lady! so zad ain't it? I'm that zorry for the pore father!"

  And the girl with a significant gesture indicated her own forehead andglanced knowingly at her companion. Yvonne felt a hot flush rise to thevery roots of her hair. So her father and Martin-Roget had thought ofeverything, and had taken every precaution to cut the ground from underher feet. Wherever a halt was necessary, wherever the party might comein contact with the curious or the indifferent, it would be given outthat the poor young lady was crazed, that she talked wildly, and had tobe kept under restraint.

  Yvonne as she turned away from that last faint glimmer of hope,encountered Martin-Roget's glance of triumph and saw the sneer whichcurled his full lips. Her father came up to her just then and took herover from the kindly hostess, with the ostentatious manner of
one whohas charge of a sick person, and must take every precaution for herwelfare.

  "Another loss of dignity, my child," he said to her in French, so thatnone but Martin-Roget could catch what he said. "I guessed that youwould commit some indiscretion, you see, so M. Martin-Roget and myselfwarned all the people at the inn the moment we arrived. We told themthat I was travelling with a sick daughter who had become crazed throughthe death of her lover, and believed herself--like most crazed personsdo--to be persecuted and oppressed. You have seen the result. Theypitied you. Even the serving-maids smiled. It would have been wiser toremain silent."

  Whereupon he handed her into the barouche with loving care, a crowd ofsympathetic onlookers gazing with obvious compassion on the poor crazedlady and her sorely tried father.

  After this episode Yvonne gave up the struggle.

  No one but God could help her, if He chose to perform a miracle.

  V

  The rest of the journey was accomplished in silence. Yvonne gazed,unseeing, through the carriage window as the barouche rattled on thecobble-stones of the streets of Bristol. She marvelled at the number ofpeople who went gaily by along the streets, unheeding, unknowing thatthe greatest depths of misery to which any human being could sink hadbeen probed by the unfortunate young girl who wide-eyed, mute andbroken-hearted gazed out upon the busy world without.

  Portishead was reached just when the grey light of day turned to agloomy twilight. Yvonne unresisting, insentient, went whither she wasbidden to go. Better that, than to feel Martin-Roget's coercive grip onher arm, or to hear her father's curt words of command.

  She walked along the pier and anon stepped into a boat, hardly knowingwhat she was doing: the twilight was welcome to her, for it hid muchfrom her view and her eyes--hot with unshed tears--ached for the restfulgloom. She realised that the boat was being rowed along for some littleway down the stream, that Frederick, who had come she knew not how orwhence, was in the boat too with some luggage which she recognised asbeing familiar: that another woman was there whom she did not know, butwho appeared to look after her comforts, wrapped a shawl closer roundher knees and drew the hood of her mantle closer round her neck. But itwas all like an ugly dream: the voices of her father and ofMartin-Roget, who were talking in monosyllables, the sound of the oarsas they struck the water, or creaked in their rowlocks, came to her asfrom an ever-receding distance.

  A couple of hours later she came back to complete consciousness. Shewas in a narrow place, which at first appeared to her like a cupboard:the atmosphere was both cold and stuffy and reeked of tar and of oil.She was lying on a hard bed with her mantle and a shawl wrapped roundher. It was very dark save where the feeble glimmer of a lamp threw acircle of light around. Above her head there was a constant and heavytramping of feet, and the sound of incessant and varied creakings andgroanings of wood, cordage and metal filled the night air with theirweird and dismal sounds. A slow feeling of movement coupled with agentle oscillation confirmed the unfortunate girl's first wakingimpression that she was on board a ship. How she had got there she didnot know. She must ultimately have fainted in the small boat and beencarried aboard. She raised herself slightly on her elbow and peeredround her into the dark corners of the cabin: opposite to her upon abench, also wrapped up in shawl and mantle, lay the woman who had beenin attendance on her in the boat.

  The woman's heavy breathing indicated that she was fast asleep.

  Loneliness! Misery! Desolation encompassed the happy bride of yesterday.With a moan of exquisite soul-agony she fell back against the hardcushions, and for the first time this day a convulsive flow of tearseased the superacuteness of her misery.