"Percy, if you don't leave off . . ." one of them threatened, and shied a mouldy piece of cheese at his chief.
"What will you do if I don't?" Sir Percy countered, and successfully dodged the missile, "for I am not going to leave off. I must get this demmed tune right, as we surely will be made to play it presently."
He went on scraping the opening bars of the new "Marseillaise."
"We are in for some fine sport, I imagine, what?" Lord Anthony Dewhurst remarked, and dug his teeth into a hard apple, which he had just extracted from his breeches' pocket.
"Tony," one of the others demanded-it was my Lord Hastings, "where did you get that apple?"
"My sweetheart gave it me. She stole it from her neighbour's garden . . ."
My Lord Tony got no further. He was attacked all at once from three sides. Three pairs of hands were stretched out to wrest the apple from him.
They were just a lot of schoolboys on the spree, these men, enjoying this life of voluntary penury and intense discomfort, sometimes even of starvation and always of short-commons, for it was not always thought advisable for the type of ragamuffin that they appeared to be to buy sufficient food in the markets, in places where the movements of every man, woman and child were known and reported to the police. But they didn't mind. They loved it all. It was such sport, they said, and all in the wake of their chief whom they would follow to the death.
"We are in for some fine sport!" Lord Tony had declared, before the attack on his apple was launched. He held it up at arm's length, trying to rescue it from his assailants who made grabs at it and invariably got in one another's way, until a firm hand finally seized it and Blakeney's pleasant drawly voice was raised to say:
"I'll toss you all for this precious thing . . . what there is left of it."
Sir Andrew Ffoulkes won the toss, and the apple, which had suffered wreckage during the fight, was finally hurled at the head of the revered chief, who had resumed his attempts at getting a tune out of his cracked fiddle. A distant church clock had struck eleven a few minutes ago. The man on the watch outside put his head in at the door and announced curtly:
"Here he comes."
And presently Devinne came in. He was dressed in his ordinary clothes with dark coat, riding breeches and boots. His face wore a sullen look and he scarcely glanced either at his friends or at his chief, just flung himself on the ground in front of the fire and muttered between his teeth:
"God! I'm tired!"
After a moment or two while no one else spoke he added as if grudgingly:
"I'm sorry I'm late, Percy. I had to put up my horse and . . ."
"Listen to this, you fellows," Blakeney said with a chuckle as he scraped his fiddle and extracted from it a wailing version of the "Marseillaise."
Young Devinne jumped to his feet, strode across the floor and snatched the fiddle out of Blakeney's hand.
"Percy!" he cried hoarsely.
"You don't like it my dear fellow? Well I don't blame you, but-"
"Percy," the young man rejoined, "you've got to be serious . . . you have got to help me . . . it is all damnable . . . damnable . . . I shall go mad if this goes on much longer . . . and if you don't help me."
He was obviously beside himself with excitement, strode up and down the place, his had pressed tightly, against his forehead. The words came tumbling out through his lips, whilst his voice was raucous with agitation.
Blakeney watched him for a moment or two without speaking. His face through all the grime and disfigurement wore that expression of infinite sympathy and understanding of which he, of all men, appeared to hold the secret, the understanding of other people's troubles and difficulties, and that wordless sympathy which had so endeared him to his friends.
"Help you, my dear fellow," he now said. "Of course, we'll all help you, if you want us. What are we here for but to help each other, as well as those poor wretches who are in trouble through no fault of their own?"
Then, as Devinne said nothing for the moment, just continued to pace up and down, up and down like a trapped feline, he went on:
"Tell us about it, boy. It is this La Rodière business, isn't it?"
"It is. And a damnable business it will be, unless . . ."
"Unless what?"
"Unless you do something about it in double quick time. Those ruffians in Choisy are planning mischief. You knew that two days ago, and you have done nothing. I wanted to go up to La Rodière to warn them of what was in the wind. I could have done it yesterday, gone up there this morning. It wouldn't have interfered with any of your plans: and it would have meant all the world to me. But what did you do: You took me along with Stowmarries to drive that old abbé as far as Vitry, a job any fool could have done."
"But you did it so admirably, my dear fellow," Sir Percy put in quietly, when young Devinne paused for want of breath. He had come to a halt in front of his chief, glaring at him with eyes that held anything but deference; his face was flushed, beads of perspiration stood on his forehead and glued his matted hair to his temples.
"Percy . . . !" he cried, not trying to disguise his exasperation. But Blakeney went on still quite quietly:
"You did the fool's job, as you call it, as admirably as you have always done everything the League set you to do; and you did it because you happen to have been born a gentleman and the son of a very great gentleman who honoured me with his friendship, and because you have always remembered that you swore to me on your word of honour that, while we are all of us engaged on the business of the League, you would obey me in all things."
"An oath of that sort," the young man retorted vehemently, "does not bind a man when-"
"When he is in love, and the woman he loves is in danger . . ." Sir Percy broke in gently. "That is what you were going to say, was it not, lad?"
He rose and put a kindly hand on Devinne's shoulder.
"Don't think I don't understand, my dear fellow," he said earnestly. "I do. God knows I do. But you know that the word of honour of an English gentleman is a big thing. A very, very big thing and a very hard one sometimes. So hard that nothing on earth can break it: but if by the agency of some devil, that word should get broken, then honour is irretrievably shattered too."
"Now tell me," he resumed more lightly, "did you on your way back from Vitry call on Charles Levet and tell him that the Abbé Edgeworth is by now safely on his way to the Belgian frontier?"
Devinne looked sullen.
"I forgot," he said curtly.
The others-Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, Lord Anthony Dewhurst, my Lord Hastings-had not spoken one word since Devinne had come into the room. Sir Philip Glynde (he was the son of the head of the great banking firm Glynde & Col, of Throgmorton Street), who had been on the watch outside, was leaning against the door-jamb, whilst keeping an eye on the road. He too was silent like the others and, like the others, his face expressed something like horror. It is a little difficult to estimate in these less romantic times, the depth of feeling that all these young men had for Percy Blakeney. It was a feeling akin to reverence, and the love they bore him had no resemblance to any love that any man has ever felt for another . . . and this because that love had its foundation in admiration for the character of the man: his extraordinary selflessness, his perfect disregard of personal danger and the cheerfulness with which he sacrificed everything, his personal comfort, even his love for his wife, in the cause of suffering humanity. And now to think that this boy . . . this . . . this young muckworm daring to . . . to what? . . . to defy their chosen chief . . . ? It was unthinkable. Sir Andrew thought it sacrilege, Lord Tony unsportsmanly; Hastings would have struck him in the face, and Glynde would have taken him by the scruff of his neck and thrown him out into the road.