Denounced

"Curse you both, curse you all," again muttered Fordingbridge impotently.

"Now," continued Sir Charles, "I propose to accompany your lordship as far as the door of your own house. Once I have seen you safe there, care will be taken that you shall find no means of communicating in any way with those who have it in their power to injure our friends. When, however, they are beyond your reach you will be free from observation, and will be quite at liberty to devote yourself to making another peace with the Government and with the-Order of the Jesuits. My lord, shall we now proceed to Kensington-square?"

"Have a care," said Fordingbridge, with an evil droop of his eye at him, "have a care, however, for yourself. If they escape me, you may not. A harbourer of Jacobites, an abettor in their escape from England and from justice, I may yet do you an evil turn, Sir Charles Ames."

"I do not doubt it if you have the power. But, Lord Fordingbridge, you have so much to think of on your own behalf, you will be so very much occupied in you own affairs shortly-what with the State on one side and the Church (your Church) on the other-that I am afraid you will have but little time to devote to me. And I think, my lord, I can hold my own against you. Now, come."

Douglas shook hands with Sir Charles as they stood apart once more from the wretched man, and after one hearty grasp strode away through the park, leaving the other two alone. Yet he did not hesitate to acknowledge the truth of the baronet's last whispered words to him.

"Lose no time," that gentleman said as they parted, "in putting the sea between you and England. Also induce your brother to go at once. I have frightened the craven cur sufficiently to keep him quiet for a day or so-alas! mine are but idle threats. The Government must find out his villainies for themselves, while for his Church you must put them on the scent, but afterwards I cannot answer for what he may do. Once he finds that they are but idle threats he may go to work again. Begone, therefore, both of you, and let me hear when you are safe in France."

"Have no fear," Douglas replied; "by to-morrow, if all is well, we may be in Calais. McGlowrie sends another vessel to-night. If possible, Archie and I, Kate and her father, may be in it. But the day grows late, there is much to do. Again farewell, and thanks, thanks, thanks for all."

"He is safe from you," said the baronet, turning, after Douglas was gone, to Fordingbridge. "Now, my lord, I am ready."

"I will not go with you," replied the other, some spark of manliness, or perhaps shame, rising in his breast at the manner in which he was dominated by this man whom, until to-day, he had never seen nor heard of. "I will not go with you."

And he drew back from him and laid his hand upon the hilt of his sword.

"No?" inquired Sir Charles, with his most polished air. Then he continued: "I am sorry my enforced society should be so unwelcome." As he spoke he glanced his eye round the grassy slopes of the park and across the low brick wall which at that time separated it from Piccadilly. "I regret it very much. But, my lord, I must not force myself where I am disliked. Therefore, since I see a watchman outside who appears to have little to occupy him, I will, with your lordship's permission, ask him to accompany you and see you safely home. Or, stay," and again his eye roved over the grass, "there is a sergeant's guard passing towards Buckingham House-your lordship can see their conical caps over the bushes-I will summon them and relieve you of my presence, since it is so distasteful."

"Oh!" exclaimed Fordingbridge, "if ever the time should come-if ever the chance is mine!"

"It is not at present," replied the baronet. Then, with an air of determination which until now he had not assumed, he stamped his foot angrily and exclaimed: "Come, sir, I will be trifled with no longer. Either with me, or the watch, or the soldiers. But at once. At once, I say!"

And Fordingbridge, knowing he was beaten, went with him.

A coach was found at the park wicket, into which they entered and proceeded to Kensington, no word being uttered by either during the drive. Then, when they had arrived outside Fordingbridge's house, Sir Charles, with a relaxation of the courteous manner that he had previously treated the other to, said, coldly and briefly:

"Remember, for two days you will have no opportunity of injuring anyone. That I shall take steps to prevent. Afterwards, you will have sufficient occupation in consulting your own welfare," and, raising his three-cornered hat an inch, he entered the coach again. Only, he thought it well to say to the driver in a clear, audible voice which the other could not fail to hear:

"Drive to Kensington Palace now; I have business with the officer of the guard."

With those terrifying words ringing in his ears-for Fordingbridge knew how, at that time, soldiers quartered in the neighbourhood of suspected persons acted as police act in these days, and were employed often to make arrests of persons implicated with the State-he entered his house, locking himself in with a key he carried. Then he proceeded at once to ring the bells and shout for the deaf old servitor, Luke, but without effect. There was no response to the noise he made, no sound of the old man's heavy, shuffling feet, and he began to wonder if he, too, had taken flight like the rest of the servants. Yet, even if he had, his master meditated, it would matter very little now. He was himself about to take flight. London was too hot to hold him.

A coward ever from his infancy, there could have been no better plan devised to frighten this man from doing more harm to those whom he wished to injure than the one adopted by Sir Charles Ames; while the latter's statement that he had business with the officer of the guard at Kensington Palace was the culminating point to the other's fears. Moreover-although his mind appeared to him to be strangely hazy and distraught now, and unable to retain the sequence of that day's events-he recognised the fearful weapon he had drawn against himself in suggesting that he was a Jesuit priest. Upon that statement, testified to by Sir Charles, a man of responsible position, he would certainly be arrested at once; while, if proof could be obtained that he was in truth a priest, or had ever been trained to be one, the most terrible future would lie before him.

As he thought of all this in a wandering, semi-vacant manner, he set about doing that which, since the interview in the park, he had made up his mind to do. He would fly from England, he would return to France. Yet, he reflected, if in France, Paris would still be closed to him. There the Jesuits were in possession of terrible authority, although an authority not recognised by the Government; if they knew what he had done, even in only betraying Archibald Sholto to the English authorities, their vengeance on him would be sharp, swift, terrible. And in Paris also-he could not doubt it-would soon be Bertie Elphinston and Douglas, even Archibald himself. No, it must not be Paris. Not yet at least!

But he must be somewhere out of London, out of England, and he set to work-still in a dazed, stupefied manner-to make his plans.

He went first to his own bedroom, to which was attached a small toilet or dressing-room, and, unlocking an iron-bound strong box, took from it some money-a small casket of Louis d'ors and English guineas, a leather case stuffed full of bills of exchange and several notes, among them a large one drawn by a Parisian money-lender on a London goldsmith. Then, next, he opened a false tray, or bottom, in the strong box, and from it took out several shagreen cases which he slipped into his pocket. These contained all his family jewels.

Yet the man's fear was so great that he might even by now have been denounced by Sir Charles Ames to the officer of the guard at Kensington Palace, that more than once he rose from the box and, on hearing any slight noise in the square, ran to the window and peered out of it and down into the road, and then came back to his task of packing up his valuables. And all the while as he did so he muttered to himself continually:

"The notary must see to all-I will write to him from France. He had best sell all and remit the money. England is done with! Neither Hanoverian nor Jacobite now. Curse them both and all." Then he laughed, a little sniggering, feeble laugh-it was wondrous that, in the state his mind was and with the ruin which was upon him, he could have been moved by such a trifle! – and chuckled to himself and said:

"If Luke comes back now he will find the door barred forever. A faithful servant! A faithful servant! Well, his home is gone. Let him go drown himself."

He fetched next all the silver which he could find about the house, and which had been brought forth on his return from the coffers where it had lain since his father's flight into France years ago-candelabras, old dishes and baskets and a coffee pot, with a tankard or so-and hurled them into the strong box and locked it securely.

Then, after once more peering into the square and seeing that all was clear, he descended to the hall, opened the door an inch or two and again glanced his eye round, and, a moment later, drew the door to and went forth into the night.

CHAPTER XV

UNITED

All through Picardy, from Artois to the Ile de France, from Normandy to Champagne, the wheat was a-ripening early that year, the trees in the orchards and gardens of the rich, fruitful province had their boughs bent to the earth with their loads, and, so great was the summer heat, the cattle stood in the rivers and pools for coolness, or sought shelter under the elms and poplars dotted about by the river's banks.

Yet, heat notwithstanding, the great bare road that runs from Calais through Boulogne, Abbeville, and Amiens, as well as through Clermont and Chantilly and St. Denis to Paris, had still its continuous traffic to which neither summer nor winter made much difference, except when the snows of the latter belated many diligences and waggons-for it was the high road between the coast and the capital. And thus it was now, in this hot, broiling June of 1746. Along that road, passing each other sometimes, sometimes breaking down, sometimes, by the carelessness of drunken drivers or postillions, getting their wheels into ditches and sticking there for hours, went almost every vehicle that was known in the France of those days. Monseigneur's carriage, drawn by four or six stout travelling roadsters-wrenched for the occasion from the service of Monseigneur's starving tenants-and with Monseigneur within it looking ineffably bored at the heat and the dust and the inferior canaille who obtruded themselves on his vision-would lumber by the diligence, or Royal Post, farmed from Louis the well-beloved-so, loved, perhaps, because he despised his people and said France would last his time, which was long enough! – or be passed by a desobligéant, or chaise for one person, or by a fat priest on a post-horse, or by a travelling carriage full of provincials en route for Paris. Also, to add to the continuous traffic on this road in that period, were berlins à quatre chevaux, carriers' waggons loaded with merchandise either from or to England, countless horsemen civil and military, and innumerable pedestrians, since the accomplishment of long journeys on foot, with a wallet slung on the back, was then one of the most ordinary methods of travelling amongst the humbler classes.

Seated in the banquette, or hooded seat, attached to the back of the diligence from Calais to Amiens, on one of these broiling days in June of 1746, were Kate Fane-as now she alone would describe herself or allow herself to be styled-and her father. They had crossed from England in the ordinary packet-boat a day or two before, and were at this moment between Abbeville and Amiens, at which latter place they proposed to remain for the present at least. To look at her none would have supposed that, not more than a week or two before, this golden-haired girl, now dressed in a plain-checked chintz, with, to protect her head from the heat, a large flapping straw hat, had been discarded by the man whom she had imagined to be her husband; had been told that she was, possibly, no lawful wife. For she looked happier, brighter at this time than she had ever done since she went through a form of marriage with the Viscount Fordingbridge, because-though not in the way that he had falsely insinuated-she was free of him.

"What was it Archie said to ye?" asked her father as the diligence toiled up a small hill, the road of which was shaded by trees from the burning sun. "What was it he said to ye in the letter you got at Calais? Tell me again; I like not to think that my daughter has been flouted and smirched by such a scoundrel as that. Lawfully married, humph! Lawfully married, he said, eh?"

"Lawfully married enough, father," Kate replied. "Lawfully enough to tie me to him for ever as his wife. But," she went on, "lawful or not lawful, nothing shall ever induce me to see him, to speak with him again."

"Read me the letter," said Fane; "let me hear all about it."

"Nay, nay," answered his daughter, "time enough when we get to Amiens, when we shall all meet again. Oh, the joyful day! The blessed chance! To think that to-night we shall all of us be together once more! All! all! Just as we used to be in the happy old times in the Trousse Vache," and she busied herself with taking a little wine and water from a basket she had with her, and a bunch of grapes and some chipped bread, and ministering to the old man.

So, as you may gather from her words, those who had been in such peril in England were back safe in France. Bertie Elphinston had crossed, disguised, of course, as a drover, unmolested by "infernal sloops o' war and bomb-ketches" – to use honest McGlowrie's words-or anything else. And, also, the Sholtos had come in the same way, finding, indeed, so little let or hindrance in either the river or on the sea, that they began to think the English King's rage and hate against all who had taken part in the late rebellion were slacked at last. They were, in truth, not nearly glutted yet, and the safe, undisturbed passage which they had been fortunate enough to make was due to that strange chance which so often preserves those who are in greatest danger.

Still, they were over, no matter how or by what good fortune, and that night-that afternoon, in another hour's time-all would meet at the Inn, La Croix Blanche, in Amiens.

At Calais Kate had learned the welcome tidings; a letter had been given into her hands by no less a person than the great Dessein himself-hotel-keeper, marchand-de-vin, job-master, and letter of coaches, chaises, and post-horses, and plunderer of travellers generally! – and in it was news from Father Sholto, as he might safely be called here in France, and from Bertie and Douglas.

Sholto's letter told her all she desired to know, viz., that Fordingbridge's suggestion of his being a priest was a lie, "the particulars of which," the Jesuit wrote, "I will give you at Amiens when we meet." Bertie's, on the other hand, told her-manfully and, of course, as a woman would think, selfishly-that he regretted that it was an implied lie. "Because," wrote he, "had it been the truth, we might have become man and wife within twenty-four hours of meeting, and now we are as far apart as ever." Some other details were also given, such as that Father Sholto was in residence for the time being at the Jesuit College, and that Bertie had rejoined his regiment and was now on duty at the Citadel. Douglas was at the Croix Blanche, and would take care that suitable rooms were kept for them, though, since it happened to be the great summer fair-time, the city was full of all kinds of people, and rooms in fierce demand at every hostelry.

These letters, received by Kate as they landed from the packet-boat in the canal at Calais, were sufficient to prompt her to lose no time in hastening onward-north. The diligence, she found, left the hospitable doors of Monsieur Dessein at five o'clock on summer mornings, and did the distance of sixty miles to Amiens in eleven hours, which Dessein spoke of approvingly-and falsely-as being the fastest possible. Still they could not afford anything that was faster-for they had little money in their purse these days. Therefore, at dawn, they clambered into the banquette, which happened to be vacant, and set out upon their road.

And now, as the diligence skirted the river Somme, and drew near to Picquigny, the towers of the cathedral Nôtre Dame d'Amiens came into sight, and the ramparts of the city. And, because it was fair-time, the roads were full of people of all kinds streaming towards it; of market people, with their wares, and waggons of fruit and vegetables, and poultry, of saltimbanques and strolling actors, strong men, fat women, dwarfs, and giants-since in those days fairs were not much different from what they are now, only the play was a little rougher and the speech a little coarser even among the lowest.

Nevertheless, amidst the ringing of the cathedral bells, as well as those of the Collegiate Church and Amiens' fourteen parish churches, the diligence arrived at last, and only one hour late, at the office of the Poste du Roi, and there, walking up and down in front of it, were Bertie and Douglas, both in their uniforms, and waiting for them.

"How did you know, Mr. Elphinston," Kate asked, glad of the bustle and confusion in the streets caused by the fair and by the arrival of the diligence, "that we should come to-day? We might not have crossed from England for another week-nay, another month, for the matter of that."

"We should have been here all the same," Bertie replied. "I am not on duty at this time in the day, and Douglas would have come every afternoon. We have watched the arrival of the diligence, Kate, for the last week-since-ever since you wrote to say you were about to set out."

"I did not know I told Archie that."

"No, but you told me. Have you forgotten all you wrote to me, Kate?"

"No," she said, in a low voice, and with her soft blush. "Yet, remember, Ber-Mr. Elphinston-we are as far apart as ever. Archie says I am, in truth, that man's wife."

"I remember," he replied; "I must remember," and he led the way into the inn, which was close by the Poste du Roi.

The young men had been fortunate enough to secure a room for themselves and the new arrivals, where they could sit as well as take their meals apart, in spite of the inn being crowded. Nay, those who crowded it now were scarcely of the class who require sitting-rooms, nor, in some cases, bedrooms even; many of them being very well satisfied to lie down and take their rest in the straw of the stables. For among the customers of La Croix Blanche were horse-dealers from Normandy and from Flanders; the performers at the booths, the strolling actors, mendicant friars-if friars they were! – vendors of quack medicines, and all the olla-podrida that went to make up a French fair. These cared not where they slept, while of those who sought bedrooms there were commis voyageurs, ruffling gentlemen of the road, bedizened with tawdry lace, and with red, inflamed faces beneath their bag-wigs à la pigeon-on whom the local watch kept wary eyes-large purchasers of woollen ribbons and ferrets, serges, stuffs, and black and green soap for the Paris market, in the production of all of which things Amiens has ever been famous, as well as for its pâti de canard. Nor did any of these people require private rooms for the consumption of their food, but, instead, ate together at the ordinary, or fed in the kitchen among the scullions and their pots and pans.

Therefore, undisturbed, or disturbed only by the cries that arose from below, as evening came on and the guests' table became crowded, Douglas and Bertie ministered to the wants of Kate and her father, and compared notes of the passages they had made across from England. Also they spoke of their future, Kate's being that which needed the most discussion.

"Prince Edward is safe," said Bertie, "of this there is no doubt. He is known by those of this country, though by none in England, to be secure with Cluny in the mountain of Letternilichk, near Moidart. Off Moidart is the 'Bellona,' a Nantes privateer, with three hundred and forty men on board, and well armed. She will get him away, in spite of Lestock's squadron, which is hovering about between Scotland and Brittany. Now, Kate, when he arrives in Paris, as he will do shortly, his household will be a pleasant one. Your place must be there."

"In the household of the prince!" exclaimed Kate.

"Ay! in the household of the prince. Nay, never fear. You will not be the only woman. The Ladies Elcho and Ogilvie will be with you; also old Lady Lochiel. Oh, you will be a bonnie party! While, as for Mr. Fane, some place must also be found."

"But who is to find these places?" she asked.

"Archie," replied Douglas. "He has interest enough with Tencin to do anything. Indeed, from finding a post at court to obtaining a lettre de cachet, he can do it."

"Why," said Bertie to him aside, noticing that he turned pale as he spoke, "did you shiver then, Douglas, as I have seen you do before now? You do not fear a lettre de cachet for Vincennes or the Bastille-and-and-we are not talking of the man at whose name I have seen you shiver before."

"I-I do not know," his companion replied. "It must be that I am fey, or a fool, or both. Yet, last night I dreamt that Archie was asking the minister for a lettre de cachet to consign someone-I know not whom-to the Bastille, and-and-I woke up shivering as I did just now."

"It could not be for you, at least," answered the other.

"Perhaps," replied Douglas, moodily, "for someone who had injured me. Who knows?"

Whatever reply his stronger-minded friend might have made to this gloomy supposition, which was by no means the first he had known Douglas to be subjected to, was not uttered since at that moment Archibald Sholto himself entered the room.

His greetings to Kate were warm and, at the same time, brotherly. He, too, remembered how for years the little party assembled now in La Croix Blanche had all been as though one family; he remembered the black spot that had come amongst them; that to Fordingbridge, whom he himself had introduced into Fane's house, was owing most, if not all, of the evil that had befallen them. Also he recalled that, but for Fordingbridge's treachery, neither he, nor Bertie, nor Douglas would have been forced to flee out of England for their lives; that Kate would never have forfeited her position nor have had the foul yet guarded suggestion hurled against her that she was no wife, but only a priest's mistress. Then, when their first welcomes and salutations were over, he spoke aloud to her on the subject that, above all, engrossed their minds.

"Kitty," he said, "is Fordingbridge gone mad? For to madness alone can such conduct as his be attributed."

"I do not know," she replied. "I cannot say. All I know is that he is a villain and a traitor-that I have done with him for ever. Yet he must be mad when he throws out so extraordinary a hint as that he is a priest. He could not have been a priest, and you not know it-could he?"

Up from the guests' room below there came the hubbub of those at supper, the shouts of the copper captains for more petits pigolets of wine, mixed with the clattering of plates and dishes, the calls of other travellers for food, and the general disturbance that accompanies a French inn full of visitors, as Father Sholto answered gravely:

"My child, he might have been a priest and I not know it; God might even have allowed so wicked a scheme to enter his heart as that, being one, he should go through a form of marriage with an innocent woman. But, my dear, one thing is still certain, he was not, is not, a priest-I know it now beyond all doubt; you are as lawfully his wife as it is possible for you to be."

"What-what, then, was the use of such a statement, such a lie, added to all the others which-God forgive him! – he has already told since first he darkened our door?"

"The gratification of his hate, his revenge against you and all of us. He hated you because you had never loved him, and had at last come to despise him; he hated Bertie because you had always loved him" (as he spoke, the eyes of those two met in one swift glance, and then were quickly lowered to the table at which they sat); "he hated me because I knew him. And, remember, until he had put himself in the power of Douglas and Sir Charles Ames by insinuating himself to be what he was not-a priest-he thought that I should soon be removed from his path for ever. Once in the power of the English Government, my tongue would have been silenced; it would have been hard to prove, perhaps, that he was not a priest; that you were a lawful married woman."