The Incredible Honeymoon (Bantam Series No. 46) Page 10

  “He did, Your Grace, and he is very pleased indeed with the wound. He said His Grace must have been in the pink of condition to be healing so quickly.”

  “You should have awoken me, Tour, I would have liked to talk to the doctor.”

  “You must sleep sometimes, Your Grace. You cannot be up all night and all day.”

  “I am all right. There are many more important things to worry about rather than my health.”

  “You have to think of yourself, Your Grace. Remember I cannot cope without you, especially when His Grace is in one of his restless moods.”

  “No, that is true. Will you sit with him a little longer, Tour? I am expecting Mr. Labouchere.”

  “Yes, of course, Your Grace, and afterwards I think you should take a little fresh air.”

  “I will go into the garden. You will call me if His Grace wakes or is restless?”

  “I will do that, Your Grace, I have given my promise and I won’t break it.”

  “Thank you, Tour.”

  The Duke wondered what it was all about but he was too tired to make the effort of trying to find out. He fell asleep.

  Antonia waited in the Salon for Henry Labouchere.

  She was sure that when the Duke regained consciousness he would think it strange that the only friend she had in Paris was a journalist.

  Henry Labouchere, as it happened, owned a quarter share in the London Daily News, and had appointed himself to the Paris office.

  An Englishman with Huguenot ancestry, ‘Labby’ as all his friends called him, was a character. While many people hated him for his sharp and caustic articles, he was many other things as well.

  A wit, cynic, stage manager and diplomat, he had filled all these roles and had been elected to Parliament as a Radical and a Republican in 1865.

  He had however lost his seat at the same time as he had inherited £250,000 and he now devoted himself to increasing the circulation of the Daily News.

  Henry Labouchere had come to interview the Duke, having heard rumours of the duel which had taken place in the Bois.

  He had found instead a white-faced and very frightened Duchess who told him quite frankly that the Duke’s life was in danger and pleaded with him not to write about it in his newspaper.

  Henry Labouchere, who had been the lover of a great many attractive women, found Antonia’s pleading, worried eyes irresistible.

  He not only promised to keep the duel a secret, but as the days passed he became her friend, confidant and adviser when she had no-one else to turn to.

  It was Henry Labouchere who kept her up to date with the fantastic events which were happening in Paris.

  At first, when everyone expected the war to be over almost immediately, the French went on enjoying themselves without a thought that there might be anything to disturb their pleasure but a celebration of French victories.

  On July 28th, the Emperor had taken command of his armies with the Empress’s words “Louis, do your duty well,” ringing in his ears.

  But as he passed through Metz he was in constant pain from the stone in his bladder and to many of his Generals he gave the impression of a man who was utterly worn out.

  The Germans had 400,000 men in supreme fighting trim and 1,440 guns concentrated on the far side of the Rhine, while Louis Napoleon had only been able to muster 250,000 soldiers.

  His strategic plan was to advance rapidly eastwards into Germany in the hope of swinging the South German States and eventually the reluctant Austrians into war against Prussia.

  The gay uniforms of the French army, the joyous fanfares, the confident and dashing officers with their smart ‘imperials’ worn as a compliment to their Emperor, all made a striking contrast to the Prussian disdain for any kind of ostentation.

  On August 2nd, the French captured Saarbriicken from the weak German advance forces and all Paris revelled in the triumph.

  A telegram was read out on the Bourse reporting the capture of the Prussian Crown Prince. This caused a famous tenor to sing the Marseillaise from the top of a horse-drawn bus!

  Henry Labouchere had related to Antonia the wild scenes that took place in the streets.

  She had heard and seen nothing as she nursed a delirious and restless Duke who was running a high fever after the bullet had been extracted from his wound.

  At first she was not particularly interested in the news and, although she thanked Mr. Labouchere for coming to see her, she made it obvious that she could only spend a few minutes with him.

  All her thoughts were concentrated on the sick-bed.

  However, as the week went by and the Duke, though his wound was improving day by day, did not regain consciousness, she found it was impossible to shut her mind to the events occurring outside.

  She therefore found herself looking forward to Mr. Labouchere’s visits even though he brought her little but bad news.

  Stories of terrible inefficiency drifted back to Paris; of weary troops reaching their destination to find their tents had been mislaid; of gunmen separated from their guns; of magazines discovered to be empty.

  After two defeats at Spicheren and Woerth, a long and disheartening retreat began. Orders and counter-orders were issued from a panic-stricken Paris.

  A German attack at St. Privat on August 18th inflicted 20,000 casualties on the French and during the night the army fled back in disorder to Metz from where they had started.

  The disastrous news had staggered Paris into a state, which was, as Mr. Labouchere put it ‘bordering upon madness’.

  “I have just seen three or four Germans nearly punched to death,” he told Antonia. “Several of the larger cafes have been forced to close! Excited mobs are attacking them because their proprietors are supposed to have German sympathies.”

  What seemed to Antonia to distress him even more was when he told her that the beautiful trees in the Bois were being felled.

  “Is everyone leaving Paris?” she asked a few days later.

  “On the contrary,” he replied. “The French authorities are insisting that it is safer to be in Paris than anywhere else, and people are flooding into the City.”

  “Then things cannot be too bad,” Antonia smiled.

  “I do hope you are right,” he said. “At the same time I would have liked you and your husband to go home while it is possible.”

  “It is quite impossible at the moment,” Antonia replied, “and surely we are completely safe being British?”

  “I expect so,” he answered. “But I do advise you against going outside the house except into your own garden. People are arrested on the most trivial suspicions of being a German and there has been a certain amount of dissension on the Boulevards.”

  “In what way?” Antonia asked.

  “When the despatches arrive and they are not favourable, the crowds start shouting: ‘Down with the Emperor!’ and ‘Decheance!’ ”

  “Abdication!” Antonia exclaimed. “Can they really be asking that?”

  “The French are very intolerant of failure,” Henry Labouchere replied.

  Because she felt that it might be a long time before they could return to England and therefore they must not be extravagant with what money they had, Antonia, after consultation with Tour, dismissed the majority of the servants in the house.

  She kept two who had been there with its owners, a middle-aged couple who were quite content, as there was no entertaining, to do everything that was required.

  Antonia found that Tour was a tower of strength. Not only could he speak French fluently, but he knew exactly how to handle the Duke and was, in his own way, she thought, an even better nurse than she was.

  It was Tour who told her of the animals massed in the Bois and for the first time Antonia faced the suggestion that the Germans might reach Paris.

  “So much food will not be necessary?” she asked Tour in surprise.

  “One never knows, Your Grace,” he replied in a tone which told her he did not wish to make her nervous. “They say it
would be impossible for anyone to take Paris, it is so heavily fortified.”

  “That is true,” Antonia agreed. “I was reading in the Guide Book how the whole City is surrounded by an enceinte wall, 30 foot high and divided into 93 bastions. Besides, there is a moat and at varying distances a chain of powerful forts.”

  She thought of the animals again and said:

  “But of course all the trains will be needed to convey food to the troops at the front and I quite understand that in the City we should be self-sufficient.”

  She asked Henry Labouchere for further news when he next came to see her and in reply he handed her an article he had written for the Daily News in England.

  She read it, her eyes widening with surprise at the incredible story.

  “As far as the eye can reach over every open space, down the long, long Avenue all the way to Longchamps itself, there is nothing but sheep, sheep, sheep! In the Bois alone there must be as well as 4,000 oxen.”

  “Can this really be true?” she enquired.

  “We are getting ourselves prepared,” Henry Labouchere had laughed, “so you need not be afraid that when the Duke gets better he will not be able to build up his strength with plenty of good meat.”

  Tour however was not prepared to rely entirely on the Bois. He brought into the house quite a lot of food which would not deteriorate, telling Antonia gloomily that it was getting more expensive every day.

  The Duke stirred and instantly Antonia rose from a chair at the open window and came to the side of the bed.

  She knelt down beside him and said in the soft voice which he had grown used to hearing these past weeks:

  “Are you hot? Would you like a drink, my darling?”

  She spoke, he thought, as a woman would speak to a child she loved.

  He remembered that when he had been delirious he had thought that his mother had her arms around him and that she was telling him to be good and go to sleep.

  He felt very weak and yet for the first time his brain was clear. He knew who he was and remembered that he was in Paris.

  Then, as he tried to move he felt a sudden pain in his chest. He recalled the duel and that it would account for what he now knew had been a long illness.

  Antonia had lifted him very gently; now she was feeding him with a soup that he thought must be extremely nourishing as it tasted of beef, or was it perhaps venison? He could not be certain.

  She placed it against his lips, giving him small spoonfuls, waiting between each one so that he had time to swallow.

  There was again the fragrance of flowers coming from her, and when he had taken quite a considerable amount of the soup, she held him close for a moment.

  He found that the softness he had felt beneath his cheek so many times before had been the softness of her breast.

  “You are better,” she said and there was a note of elation in her voice. “The doctor will be very pleased with you tomorrow and now my dearest one, you must go back to sleep again.”

  He felt her hand cool against his forehead.

  “No fever,” she said as if she spoke to herself. “How wonderful it will be when it is all gone and you are yourself again.”

  She laid him down against the pillows, moving them comfortably behind his head. Then she moved away and after a little while he opened his eyes.

  He had not realised before that it was night time. There was a candle lit beside his bed, the curtains were drawn back and the windows were open. He thought he could see the sky and the stars.

  He lay trying to focus his eyes, and then, as if she knew instinctively that he was awake, Antonia came back to the bed.

  She looked down at him and said in a voice that was a little above a whisper:

  “Athol, can you hear me?”

  He found it impossible to speak but he turned his eyes to look at her.

  She made a little sound that was a cry of delight.

  “You are awake!” she exclaimed, “and I think you can understand.”

  She knelt down beside him taking his hand in hers and said softly:

  “Everything is all right. You are going to get well and there is nothing to make you afraid.”

  Henry Labouchere, looking rather raffish, Antonia thought, came to call at four o’clock in the afternoon.

  Tour had let him in and Antonia came into the Salon wearing one of her elegant Worth gowns which revealed her exquisite figure.

  “You look happy,” he said and raised her hand to his lips.

  “I am,” she replied. “My invalid has eaten a proper meal today for the first time. He is sitting up in bed and being rather irritable, which Tour tells me is a good sign.”

  Labby laughed.

  “Well, that is a relief at any rate! Perhaps now you will be able to give me more attention.”

  Antonia looked at him in surprise as he went on:

  “I do not think I have ever spent so much time with a woman who would not even know I existed, had the news I brought her not in some way concerned her husband.”

  Labby spoke resentfully and Antonia laughed. Then she said seriously:

  “You know how grateful I am. I should have known nothing of what is happening and been very much more afraid if you had not proved such a very kind friend.”

  “Friend!” Labby ejaculated. “That is not what I wish to be, as you must be well aware! This friendship, as you call it, will ruin my reputation as a lady-killer!”

  “It is a ... friendship I value very much,” Antonia said softly.

  She was used by this time to Labby’s protestations of love to her, even while he realised better than she did how hopeless it was.

  He had never met a woman who concentrated so fiercely on a man who could neither see nor hear her and who from all accounts was not particularly interested anyway.

  Labby knew of the Duke’s liaison with the Marchioness and his reputation with beautiful women. It did not need Antonia to tell him—which she would not have thought of doing—why the Duke had married.

  Labby had at first been touched by Antonia’s youth and inexperience.

  Then as he saw her day after day, calling at first because he told himself she was a countrywoman whom he must help and if possible protect, he found himself falling in love.

  He could hardly believe it possible that at the age of thirty-nine he should find himself as idealistically enamoured as he had been when in his youth he had once joined a Mexican Circus in pursuit of a lady acrobat.

  Yet there was something about Antonia which told him she was different from any of the women he had pursued so ardently in his varied career.

  At one time Queen Victoria had referred to him as ‘that viper, Labouchere!’ She would have been surprised how controlled, gentle and considerate he was to Antonia.

  Labby did not only bring Antonia the news, he also made her laugh, something she had almost forgotten to do in her anxiety over the Duke.

  Because the eyes of the world were focused on France, inquisitive British and Americans were flooding into the city. Labby had related that enterprising Estate Agents were circulating advertisements which read:

  Notice for the benefit of English gentlemen wishing to attend the Siege of Paris: comfortable apartments, completely shell-proof, rooms in the basement for impressionable personages.

  “The Siege of Paris!” Antonia had repeated apprehensively. “Can it possibly come to that?”

  “No, of course not,” Labby had said confidently. “The Germans will be driven back long before they reach Paris. But there is no doubt that the Army is somewhat disorganised and has retired to the small citadel town of Sedan.”

  He paused before he added:

  “Things cannot be too bad. I hear the French Cavalry blades gave a ball at Douzy last night. It was attended by all the ladies from Sedan who are to watch a triumphant victory tomorrow.”

  There was no triumph! Two days later Labby had to tell Antonia that the army was trapped, with two powerful Prussian armies moving in
.

  There was only enough food in Sedan for a few days. What Labby did not relate to Antonia, even if he was aware of it, was that there was chaos inside Sedan reaching catastrophic proportions. Cannons were jammed wheel to wheel with refugee wagons, while shells from 400 Prussian guns burst in their midst.

  Then on September 1st came the bombshell. After Louis Napoleon had ridden amongst his wavering troops outside the walls of Sedan, his face roughed in order to hide how ill he was, he finally had to order a white flag to be hoisted over the citadel.

  It was two days later before the contradictory rumours, and there were many of them, reached Paris.

  Labby told Antonia that the Empress had flown into a terrible Spanish rage and then retired to her room to weep.

  In the streets now there was no doubt of the menacing roar of the crowd or the cry that was heard everywhere:

  “Decheance! De-che-ance! De-che-ance!”

  “What is the news today?” Antonia asked nervously on September 4th.

  It was difficult, because she was so pleased about the improvement in the Duke’s health, to force herself to attend to the troubles which were happening outside the house.

  She felt sometimes as if they were alone on an island, surrounded by a hostile sea and yet somehow protected from it.

  “Paris has learnt that the Emperor has offered up his sword,” Labby replied. “And the Empress at last has consented to leave.”

  Antonia started. She had felt that as long as the Empress stayed in Paris, things could not be too bad.

  “Her Majesty has stayed on at the Tuileries until the servants began to desert her, flinging off their livery and pilfering as they went. It was nearly too late,” Labby told Antonia. “The mob were accumulating outside and she must have heard the clatter of their muskets in the courtyard and their voices on the main staircase.”

  “Did she get away?” Antonia asked quickly.

  “She left by a side door accompanied by her Lady-in-Waiting. She was heavily veiled and I have learnt that the two ladies went first to the house of the State Chancellor in the Boulevard Haussmann, but he had already gone. Eventually, after finding the same thing at the house of her Chamberlain, Her Majesty found shelter with her American dentist, a Doctor Evans.”