War Zone

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"If this is true, the position will be even more serious than it is at the moment. What we have got to find out is if this is true, and also what steps can be taken in the matter. Napoleon's armies are widely dispersed. "Will he be strong enough to force the position on the Portuguese and the Spanish? And what about the other countries with whom we are still in communica tion?

"These questions have got to be answered and we have no one in France at the moment on whom we can rely for the information."

Lord Morden ceased speaking and there was a long pause. Lord Sheringham did not move or stir from the position of languid relaxation in which he had thrown himself. His eyes were nearly closed and he might have been asleep except for a sudden tightening of his lips. "Well?"

Lord Morden made the single word a question. Lord Sheringham opened his eyes. His father waited but he did not speak. After a few seconds the tension was too great for the older man.

"Speak, boy," he said testily. "What have you got to say for yourself?"

Lord Sheringham looked surprised. "I thought your decision was final, Sir, and that any protestations on my part would be useless."

For a moment it seemed as if Lord Morden was going to burst out into angry abuse, then the expression on his face changed and his eyes softened.

"Armand, my boy," he said in a quieter tone than he had used hitherto, "it has not been an easy thing for me to do, to suggest that you, my only son, should undertake such a mission. It was not entirely as a pun ishment or should I say as a penalty?-that I sug gested it, but for other reasons which you know only too well.

"Your mother was French. You are very like her and you speak French as fluently as you speak English. In France no one would question your being anything else but a Frenchman. You had also, before you took up with this tomfool set you are in now-a brain.

"Only last night I was looking over some of your reports from Eton and Oxford. There was not one but spoke of you as having an exceptionally brilliant future. As I read them, I wondered if I had failed in some way to develop those talents which in the last five years you have managed to conceal most effectively." Lord Sheringham sat up in his chair with a sudden jerk.

"No, Father," he said sharply, and for a moment he forgot to drawl. "You are not to reproach yourself. If I have behaved badly in the past five years, it is not in the slightest degree your fault. I think the explanation lies in the fact that I have been so damned lonely and excessively bored."

At his words Lord Morden rose from his chair and walked towards the window. He stood for some seconds with his back to his son, then in voice strangely unlike his own he said:

"You sounded very like your mother then. I have heard her use those very same words. 'I am bored, Bruno,' she would say to me-remember how she called me 'Bruno' because I was so big and she was so small? 'I am bored, Bruno! Life is too tedious to be endured!' Then she would go away and do something utterly outrageous."

Lord Morden's voice died away. He still stood star ing out into the garden and was suddenly startled to feel his son's hand on his shoulder. He had not heard him move from the chair.

"I, too, have been outrageous, Sir," Lord Shering ham said quietly, "and now to make amends I will go to France and get the information you require."

"It will not be easy," Lord Morden said. "I know that." "It may indeed be very dangerous."

"Would you have me admit to being afraid of a few Frogs?"

Lord Morden turned his head and the two men looked at each other, then they both laughed. "God bless you, my boy! I was not mistaken in you,"

Lord Morden said a little unsteadily. Lord Sheringham linked his arm through that of his father.

"Let us discuss my plans," he said. "Have we any contacts that I can make in France?"

"There are one or two in Paris," Lord Morden re plied, "but we are sure of none of them. Canning thinks, and I agree with him, that it would be best for you to strike out entirely on your own. Find out what you can, discover all that it is possible for you to dis cover and then return to us.

"When we are not certain whom to trust, to send you armed with letters or introductions may merely be to put your head into a noose. We can, of course, give you a certain amount of information, but it would be wisest for you to distrust everybody until they have proved themselves and even then to be cautious." "I understand, Father," Lord Sheringham said.

"What arrangements have you made to get me there?" "You will cross the Channel in a Man-Of-War," Lord Morden replied. "You will be rowed ashore and put down on the coast of Normandy. You will be provided, of course, with plenty of money.

"You can buy yourself a horse or carriage and pro ceed leisurely towards Paris. Canning is making inquiries among his agents about the families of Normandy who have lived in comparative obscurity since the Revolu tion.

"There is certain to be one among them who has a son about your age who is either dead or incapacitated in some way. You will assume his name and, appear ing as him, you should cause little or no comment in Paris.

"A good plan," Lord Sheringham approved, "provided it is well done. It would be uncomfortable to encounter at a dinner party the gentleman whose name and pedigree I had filched without apology."

"We will see that that does not happen," Lord Mor den said. "Well, Armand, what do you think of the proposal? And have you any views as to the method of its execution?" Lord Sheringham smiled.

"It is decent of you to ask my opinion, Father. I am willing to go. As you told me a little while back, I have spent five years in London, dissolute and raffish years if you like to put it that way. I am twenty-six and so far I have achieved nothing and learned little save that women are desirable until they surrender, and that gambling is an expensive and artificially stimulated excitement."