The Noble Rogue

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

He had not seen the departure, but had heard glowing accounts of it all from one or two of the spectators whom he had closely questioned.

There was no doubt that it had been a fine departure: romantic and epoch-making. No fear now of the scandal being in any way hushed up. "Milor the Englishman," as that rascal Michael had been universally called in that quarter of Paris wherein his prowess had been witnessed, was a magnificent horseman, so the gossips declared with one accord. The way he had jumped on his horse, using neither stirrup nor bridle, was a sight good for sore eyes, then two of his English serving-men had raised the bride to his saddle bow, and after a lusty shout of farewell milor had ridden away with her, and soon his horse was head galloping at maddening speed. Never had such a spectacle been witnessed in the streets of Paris before; the gaffers were still agape at the remembrance of it, and it had all seemed more like a vivid and exciting dream than like sober reality.

But no sooner had milor and the bride disappeared round the bend of the narrow street than the first breath of gossip rose—apparently from nothingness—in their wake. Whence it originated nobody knew, but sure it is that within an hour the whole of the quarter was agog with the scandal. Cousin John prided himself on the fact that he had contributed more than his share in spreading the report from one end of Paris to the other that the daughter of the mightily rich and highly-respectable tailor-in-chief of His Majesty the King of France had eloped with an adventurer, who was even kinsman to her own husband, my lord of Stowmaries and Rivaulx.

"The scandal is quite immense, fair Cousin," quoth Cousin John lustily, and with a merry guffaw the while he sat sipping sack-posset in Mistress Peyton's elegantly furnished boudoir. "Personally I see naught for the tailor's wench but the inevitable nunnery, although Michael—but of this more anon. In the meanwhile Mme. de Montespan dotes on the adventure. Lord Rochester retailed it all to her outside the church porch, and you may well believe that it hath lost naught in the telling. She quite fell in love with Michael's handsome presence, and His Majesty the King of France vows that English gentlemen are the primest rogues on this earth; and even sober diplomatists aver that Michael's prowess and Michael's romantic personality have done more to cement international friendship than a whole host of secret treaties. From the Court the scandal hath reached the lower classes of Paris, all thanks to your humble servant, so I flatter myself; the tailor and his family are the butt of every quip-maker in the city. There is a rhyme that goes the round which—nay, your pardon, fair Cousin, I could not repeat it for fear of offending your ears, but let me assure you that the heroine thereof is not like to petition Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris or His Holiness the Pope to assert her rights to be Countess of Stowmaries—Countess of Stowmaries," added Sir John with another prolonged guffaw, "Countess of Stowmaries! Odd's fish! In Paris they sing of her: 'Une vertu ingulière—' your pardon—your pardon again, dear Coz, I was forgetting—"

And Cousin John had indeed to stop in his narration, for he was choking for very laughter and the tears were streaming down his ruddy cheeks.

Mistress Peyton had listened to the cheerful tale with but ill-repressed impatience, and had not Sir John been so absorbed in what was his favourite topic of conversation—the tearing to shreds of a woman's reputation—he would not have failed to notice that his kinswoman was far from sharing his own hilarity.

Of a truth, the fair Julia's impatience soon gave place to great anger, for it was by now quite clear to her that Daniel Pye had failed in his trust, that he had not only lied like a consummate rogue, but had actually by his unforgivable delinquency caused his mistress' most cherished and carefully-conceived counter-intrigue to come absolutely to naught.

Michael Kestyon had carried off the bride and Lord Stowmaries could not now as a man of honour refuse to pay him that final seventy thousand pounds; a fortune, forsooth, wherewith the adventurer, the wastrel, the haunter of brothels and booths could now make good his claim to the title and peerage of Stowmaries and Rivaulx.

Given a dissolute, money-grabbing king on whose decision the claim for the peerage rested, given this adventure which rendered Michael interesting to those who had the ear of Charles Stuart, and what more likely than that the present lord of Stowmaries should find himself in the terrible position of having paid for his own undoing?

And all because a fool of a serving-man had failed in doing what he had been ordered to do, and this in despite of the most carefully thought-out plans, most ardent wishes and most subtle schemes. We may take it that visions of a terrible retribution to be wreaked on that rascally Daniel Pye already found birth in his mistress' inventive brain; and whilst good Cousin John was wiping the tears of laughter which his own narrative had called to his bulgy eyes, his fair cousin was meditating on the best pretext she could employ for ordering Pye to be lawfully and publicly flogged.