"Break his jaw before he can yell for the police," admonished one of the men from the rear, "before he can save his own skin."
But those who shouted loudest had only their fists by way of weapon and Paul Friche had mugs and bottles, and those sabots of his kicked out with uncomfortable agility.
"Break my jaw, will you," he shouted every time that a blow from the mug went home, "a spy am I? Very well then, here"s for you, Jacques Leroux; go and nurse your cracked skull at home. You want a row," he added hitting at a youth who brandished a heavy fist in his face, "well! you shall have it and as much of it as you like! as much of it as will bring the patrols of police comfortably about your ears."
Bang! went the pewter mug crashing against a man"s hard skull! Bang went Paul Friche"s naked fist against the chest of another. He was a hard hitter and swift.
The Lemoines from behind their bar shouted louder than the rest, doing as much as their lungs would allow them in the way of admonishing, entreating, protesting--cursing every one for a set of fools who were playing straight into the hands of the police.
"Now then! Now then, children, stop that bellowing, will you? There are no spies here. Paul Friche was only having his little joke! We all know one another, what?"
"Camels!" added Lemoine more forcibly. "They"ll bring the patrols about our ears for sure."
Paul Friche was not by any means the only man who was being vigorously attacked. After the first two or three minutes of this kingdom of pandemonium, it was difficult to say who was quarrelling with whom. Old grudges were revived, old feuds taken up there, where they had previously been interrupted. Accusations of spying were followed by abuse for some past wrong of black-legging or cheating a confrere. The temperature of the room became suffocating. All these violent pa.s.sions seething within these four walls seemed to become tangible and to mingle with the atmosphere already surcharged with the fumes of alcohol, of tobacco and of perspiring humanity. There was many a black-eye already, many a contusion: more than one knife--surrept.i.tiously drawn--was already stained with red.
IV
There was also a stampede for the door. One man gave the signal. Seeing that his mates were wasting precious time by venting their wrath against Paul Friche and then quarrelling among themselves, he hoped to effect an escape ere the police came to stop the noise. No one believed in the place being surrounded. Why should it be? The Marats were far too busy hunting up rebels and aristos to trouble much about the Rat Mort and its customers, but it was quite possible that a brawl would bring a patrol along, and then "ware the _police correctionnelle_ and the possibility of deportation or worse. Retreat was undoubtedly safer while there was time. One man first: then one or two more on his heels, and those among the women who had children in their arms or clinging to their skirts: they turned stealthily to the door--almost ashamed of their cowardice, ashamed lest they were seen abandoning the field of combat.
It was while confusion reigned unchecked that Yvonne--who was cowering, frankly terrified at last, in the corner of the room, became aware that the door close beside her--the door situated immediately opposite the front entrance--was surrept.i.tiously opened. She turned quickly to look--for she was like a terror-stricken little animal now--one that scents and feels and fears danger from every quarter round. The door was being pushed open very slowly by what was still to Yvonne an unseen hand. Somehow that opening door fascinated her: for the moment she forgot the noise and the confusion around her.
Then suddenly with a great effort of will she checked the scream which had forced itself up to her throat.
"Father!" was all that she contrived to say in a hoa.r.s.e and pa.s.sionate murmur.
Fortunately as he peered cautiously round the room, M. le duc caught sight of his daughter. She was staring at him--wide-eyed, her lips bloodless, her cheeks the colour of ashes. He looked but the ghost now of that proud aristocrat who little more than a week ago was the centre of a group of courtiers round the person of the heir to the English throne. Starved, emaciated, livid, he was the shadow of his former self, and there was a haunted look in his purple-rimmed eyes which spoke with pathetic eloquence of sleepless nights and of a soul tortured with remorse.
Just for the moment no one took any notice of him--every one was shrieking, every one was quarrelling, and M. le duc, placing a finger to his lips, stole cautiously round to his daughter. The next instant they were clinging to one another, these two, who had endured so much together--he the father who had wrought such an unspeakable wrong, and she the child who was so lonely, so forlorn and almost happy in finding some one who belonged to her, some one to whom she could cling.
"Father, dear! what shall we do?" Yvonne murmured, for she felt the last shred of her fict.i.tious courage oozing out of her, in face of this awful lawlessness which literally paralysed her thinking faculties.
"Sh! dear!" whispered M. le duc in reply. "We must get out of this loathsome place while this hideous row is going on. I heard it all from the filthy garret up above, where those devils have kept me these three days. The door was not locked.... I crept downstairs.... No one is paying heed to us.... We can creep out. Come."
But at the suggestion, Yvonne"s spirits, which had been stunned by the events of the past few moments, revived with truly mercurial rapidity.
"No! no! dear," she urged. "We must stay here.... You don"t know.... I have had a message--from my own dear milor--my husband ... he sent a friend to take me out of the hideous prison where that awful Pierre Adet was keeping me--a friend who a.s.sured me that my dear milor was watching over me ... he brought me to this place--and begged me not to be frightened ... but to wait patiently ... and I must wait, dear ... I must wait!"
She spoke rapidly in whispers and in short jerky sentences. M. le duc listened to her wide-eyed, a deep line of puzzlement between his brows.
Sorrow, remorse, starvation, misery had in a measure numbed his mind.
The thought of help, of hope, of friends could not penetrate into his brain.
"A message," he murmured inanely, "a message. No! no! my girl, you must trust no one.... Pierre Adet.... Pierre Adet is full of evil tricks--he will trap you ... he means to destroy us both ... he has brought you here so that you should be murdered by these ferocious devils."
"Impossible, father dear," she said, still striving to speak bravely.
"We have both of us been all this while in the power of Pierre Adet; he could have had no object in bringing me here to-night."
But the father who had been an insentient tool in the schemes of that miserable intriguer, who had been the means of bringing his only child to this terrible and deadly pa.s.s--the man who had listened to the lying counsels and proposals of his own most bitter enemy, could only groan now in terror and in doubt.
"Who can probe the depths of that abominable villain"s plans?" he murmured vaguely.
In the meanwhile the little group who had thought prudence the better part of valour had reached the door. The foremost man amongst them opened it and peered cautiously out into the darkness. He turned back to those behind him, put a finger to his lip and beckoned to them to follow him in silence.
"Yvonne, let us go!" whispered the duc, who had seized his daughter by the hand.
"But father...."
"Let us go!" he reiterated pitiably. "I shall die if we stay here!"
"It won"t be for long, father dear," she entreated; "if milor should come with his friend, and find us gone, we should be endangering his life as well as our own."
"I don"t believe it," he rejoined with the obstinacy of weakness. "I don"t believe in your message ... how could milor or anyone come to your rescue, my child?... No one knows that you are here, in this h.e.l.l in Nantes."
Yvonne clung to him with the strength of despair. She too was as terrified as any human creature could be and live, but terror had not altogether swept away her belief in that mysterious message, in that tall guide who had led her hither, in that scarlet device--the five-petalled flower which stood for everything that was most gallant and most brave.
She desired with all her might to remain here--despite everything, despite the awful brawl that was raging round her and which sickened her, despite the horror of the whole thing--to remain here and to wait.
She put her arms round her father: she dragged him back every time that he tried to move. But a sort of unnatural strength seemed to have conquered his former debility. His attempts to get away became more and more determined and more and more febrile.
"Come, Yvonne! we must go!" he continued to murmur intermittently and with ever-growing obstinacy. "No one will notice us.... I heard the noise from my garret upstairs.... I crept down.... I knew no one would notice me.... Come--we must go ... now is our time."
"Father, dear, whither could we go? Once in the streets of Nantes what would happen to us?"
"We can find our way to the Loire!" he retorted almost brutally. He shook himself free from her restraining arms and gripped her firmly by the hand. He tried to drag her toward the door, whilst she still struggled to keep him back. He had just caught sight of the group of men and women at the front door: their leader was standing upon the threshold and was still peering out into the darkness.
But the next moment they all came to a halt: what their leader had perceived through the darkness did not evidently quite satisfy him: he turned and held a whispered consultation with the others. M. le duc strove with all his might to join in with that group. He felt that in its wake would lie the road to freedom. He would have struck Yvonne for standing in the way of her own safety.
"Father dear," she contrived finally to say to him, "if you go hence, you will go alone. Nothing will move me from here, because I know that milor will come."
"Curse you for your obstinacy," retorted the duc, "you jeopardise my life and yours."
Then suddenly from the angle of the room where wrangling and fighting were at their fiercest, there came a loud call:
"Look out, pere Lemoine, your aristos are running away. You are losing your last chance of those fifty francs."
It was Paul Friche who had shouted. His position on the table was giving him a commanding view over the heads of the threatening, shouting, perspiring crowd, and he had just caught sight of M. le duc dragging his daughter by force toward the door.
"The authors of all this pother," he added with an oath, "and they will get away whilst we have the police about our ears."
"Name of a name of a dog," swore Lemoine from behind his bar, "that shall not be. Come along, maman, let us bring those aristos along here.
Quick now."
It was all done in a second. Lemoine and his wife, with the weight and authority of the masters of the establishment, contrived to elbow their way through the crowd. The next moment Yvonne felt herself forcibly dragged away from her father.
"This way, my girl, and no screaming," a bibulous voice said in her ear, "no screaming, or I"ll smash some of those front teeth of yours. You said some rich friends were coming along for you presently. Well then!
come and wait for them out of the crowd!"
Indeed Yvonne had no desire to struggle or to scream. Salvation she thought had come to her and to her father in this rough guise. In another moment mayhap he would have forced her to follow him, to leave milor in the lurch, to jeopardise for ever every chance of safety.