But, on second thoughts. Roger decided that now was not the time to reveal to Fouché how he had been tricked. He might have a pistol or a dagger on him and, in a fit of ungovernable rage, attempt to use it The close darkness of the coach was no place to invite a fight, and it would be folly to risk death or serious injury to no purpose. So, after a moment, he said:
"I waited in Paris to learn the results of the elections to the Directory, although I had little hope that they would provide us with a possible opening; and so it his proved. Letourneur is a man of straw. Larevelliere-Lepeaux is so intense an atheist that he would die rather than assist in the re-establishment of the Church, without which a Restoration is unthinkable. Carnot, Rewbell and Barras are all regicides. Their past deeds pledge them to fight to the last ditch for the continuance of a Republic. And behind all five now stands Buonaparte with his cannon. Surely you can see that the executive power aving been given into the hands of such men renders any attempt by us to use our Royal pawn more hopeless than ever."
"To that I agree; but you could open negotiations about him with the Bourbon Princes."
"No. When last we talked of this, you said yourself that the Comte de Provence having had himself proclaimed Louis XVIII blocked our prospects in that direction. It is certain that he would repudiate the child and declare him to be an impostor."
"That is possible, but not certain," Fouché argued. "And I am in desperate straits. Nearly all our old associates have been more fortunate than myself. They have succeeded in burying their pasts, and are now accepted as honest men who did only what they were compelled to do for the safety of the Republic in the days of its danger. I. too, could have whitewashed myself had I remained a member of the Convention. But having been expelled from it makes me a marked man, and no one will give me employment. Will you not please consider approaching the Comte de Provence?"
The drive from the Luxemburg to the Passage Pappilote, where Fouché had his little house, was a short one, and as the coach pulled up at its entrance, Roger said firmly:
"To do as you ask would be to show our hand prematurely, and with little chance of gaining anything from it. I think you should consider yourself lucky not to have been sent to the guillotine with Carrier, or despatched to Cayenne with Billaud and Collot In any case, no man with a brain as good as yours is likely to starve. Meanwhile, I can only suggest you should be patient until some new turn of events here decides me that the time has come to return to Paris with a good prospect of our being able to use the little Capet to the best advantage."
Reluctantly Fouché got out, and, not very cordially, they wished one another good night
Early in the morning Roger bade good-bye to the faithful Blanchards, and mounted a good bay mare that had his valise strapped to the back of her saddle. He had decided to travel by horseback so that no coachman could later give away the direction he had taken. He also took the precaution of leaving Paris by its southern gate and riding some distance along the road to Melun before making a great detour via Rambouillet to Mantes, where he spent the night. Thence he followed the road north-west to Elbeuf, but then left the Seine and branched off to Pont Audemer. There he spent the second night, and soon after noon on the third day arrived at Harfleur.
Dan Izzard had many friends among the smugglers on both sides of the Channel, and through him Roger knew how to set about finding one who would run him across. The war had caused a huge boom in smuggling, as the demand in England for French wines and brandies was as great as ever, and, now that luxury goods could again be sold in France, there were eager buyers there for Yorkshire cloth, Lancashire muslins and Nottingham lace. A few tactful enquiries soon produced the Captain of a lugger who was waiting only for better weather to run a cargo.
The lugger was lying in Trouville, a little fishing village a few miles down the coast; so Roger moved to the inn there. Next day the weather eased a litde, so the skipper decided to sail on the night tide. It proved a horrible crossing, and Roger hated every moment of it, but the smugglers set him safely ashore twenty-four hours later not far from Deal. On the evening of November the 12th he reached London.
There, one of the surprises of his life was waiting for him. At Ames bury House he found two letters from Amanda. Opening the one of the earlier date he saw from its first few lines that she was going to have a baby.
She wrote that she had already been five months' pregnant when he had left Martinique, but had wished to keep her secret as long as possible. Then in the desperate rush of his departure there had been no suitable opportunity to tell him. Her health was excellent and she expected her child to be born about Christmas. He need have no fears for her, as Cousin Margaret was being more than a mother to her and had already engaged a French doctor of the highest reputation in such matters to attend the accouchement. She was plagued with no longings, except the natural one to have him near her when his child was born, but with the ocean between them she had resigned herself not to hope for that, though she did hope that his duty to Mr. Pitt would not detain him so long in Europe as to deprive her of the joy of presenting his first-born to him while still an infant.
The second letter contained assurances of her continued good health and general news about social life in Martinique, including several paragraphs about Clarissa, who continued to be the toast of the island, but would give preference to none of her beaux for more than a few weeks apiece, and had now refused at least a dozen offers of marriage.
Roger had hardly digested Amanda's great news when Droopy came in from a meeting of the Royal Society of Arts; and over supper together the two old friends drank far more than was good for them in healths to Amanda and her precious burden.
Next morning Roger went round to Downing Street and sent up his name to Mr. Pitt His master kept him waiting for the best part of two hours, but then received him with a smile and said: "I feel sure you have much to tell me, Mr. Brook; so I have despatched my most urgent business and am now free to listen to you with an easy mind. You will, I trust, join me in a glass of port?"
With a word of thanks, Roger accepted the wine the Prime Minister poured for him and sat down on the far side of the document-strewn table, then proceeded to give a lucid account of his doings for the past seven weeks. He ended by saying:
"So you will appreciate, Sir, that for several months at least our plans must lie dormant Without assurances of support in Paris, Pichegru will not move; and I am convinced that there is no hope of such support being forthcoming until some fresh turn of fortune's wheel displaces the rogues who have recently secured to themselves the supreme power in France. That I should have failed you in this I deeply regret but..."
The Prime Minister held up his hand. "Say no more, Mr. Brook. I was always confident that once you set your mind to it you would manage to re-establish yourself in Paris, and that you should have succeeded so completely makes it all the harder that the events of 13th Vendemiaire should have robbed you of the chance to achieve a coup of the first magnitude. Yet you have returned to me far from empty handed. Your handling of General Pichegru was positively masterly, and is already having most excellent results."