The Reckoning by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Read Free Book Online

night before last, Heathcote and Boden's mill at Loughborough was broken into, and all the machines broken – fifty or more, they're saying. Thousands of pounds' worth of damage – my lady? Are you all right?'
    ‘ Take the reins,' Héloïse said. 'Drive home as quickly as you can.’

    *
    As Edward was hurrying out, Héloïse stopped him. 'Ned – you won't arrest Batty?' He looked at her questioningly, surprised. 'Our weaver Batty. He hasn't done anything wrong.'
    ‘ He knew about it. He should have reported him.’
    ‘ But he's his brother,' she protested.
    ‘He should have given him up.’
    James stood beside her. 'Would you give me up?’
    Edward looked from her to him and back again. Then he grunted and turned away. 'Don't wait dinner for me.’
    When he was gone, James looked at his wife's troubled face, and put his arm round her shoulders. 'Don't worry, he knows his own people.' She didn't appear comforted, and he drew her with him to a chair, to sit down and take her on his lap. 'Come, come here, that's right. What is it, Marmoset? You don't mind so very much about Batty, do you? I expect Ned will let him off with a caution.'
    ‘ Oh no, James, it isn't that.' She was silent for a while, and he waited, seeing that she was marshalling her words. At times of deep emotion, she sometimes had difficulty thinking in English. 'It was the things he said – they took me back. Reminded me of Olivier – my first husband. I've heard it all before, you see – this talk of a new world.’
    She had lived through the Revolution in Paris. She had seen it grow from its earliest days, from the salons of her father's mistress, where the philosopher had talked about the Condition of Man – as though there were only one man, and one condition!
    ‘They played with words, you know, like children tossing a glittering ball back and forth. That's how it starts, always, with words.’
    But words were dangerous, words had power – they were the progenitors of deeds. They broke down barriers, accus tomed men to thinking the unthinkable. You could make even the most beastly crime sound noble if you were clever with words. And if you spoke of it often enough, it ceased to be something no decent man would contemplate.
    ‘ I've heard them before, all the fine, resounding phrases, the clichés, the rhetoric, the promise of better days to come. But first there must always be suffering – that's always part of the plan! Suffering and bloodshed, so that a new and better world might be born. He didn't say much, but I could see it in his eyes, James, that black passion.'
    ‘Yes,' James said, holding her.
    ‘ The gutters of Paris ran with blood – literally ran with blood. Thousands of ordinary people were butchered – bewil dered, you know, like cattle. And Olivier and his friends – they said it didn't matter! People must die so that the new world could be born. But if the people didn't matter, what was the new world for? Who did they do it for, if not for people?'
    ‘I don't know,' James said.
    She held him tighter. Her mind was full of images, pictures burned into her brain that would never leave her, no matter how long she lived in peace and safety. 'He had my best friend arrested – Mathilde's mother. She was executed. Poor Lotti, who knew nothing of politics, who never thought about anything but horses. And my father ... So many people died, James, but there was no new world.'
    ‘ There never is, my love. Just the same old one, a little more battered than before. Yet change does happen.'
    ‘ Yes, but not like that. When it comes, it comes gradually, so that you hardly notice. You look back, only, and see that it has come, like the growth of a tree. Women know that – why don't men? Why do they delude themselves, generation after generation?'
    ‘ I don't know, my darling. But don't be afraid, it won't happen here. There won't be a revolution here. This is England.' He smiled. 'More than that, this is Yorkshire.’
    She could not