CHAPTER XIX.
"A NEW LIFE."
From the frigate there floated at the maintop-gallant-masthead the flag of a rear admiral; on the poop of the frigate herself there stood, surrounded by his officers, Admiral Rooke, the brilliant seaman, soon to win his knighthood and other honours.
The galley had disappeared – was gone forever – and with her had disappeared most of the sufferers from the cruelty of France, and also all those who had inflicted that suffering. Of her survivors there were but a dozen all told, who, some wounded and some untouched, were being brought on board. Among the latter was No. 211, who, in spite of the thanks he had given to God for having brought the end of all his miseries to him, now stood dripping on the deck of the Englishman.
"Send them down to the cockpit to be attended to," the admiral said, "and let them be well cared for. Poor wretches! they all seem to be galley slaves; they have suffered enough, God knows, if all accounts be true!" Then he called to his own men attending to the rescued, and asked if any were unhurt.
"Only two, sir; this man standing here," and he pointed to 211, "and one other. He has just fainted."
"Let that man come up to me; I wish to know something of the – the late galley."
To his surprise the man himself instantly turned and advanced toward the poop ladder, and slowly mounted it. Then, as he reached the poop itself he saluted Rooke, raising his hand to his dark, matted hair, and stood silent and dripping before him and the officers round.
"My man," the admiral said, while his eye roved over the torn and lacerated bare back and shoulders, saw the old and new cuts and bruises, and observed the half-starved flanks through which the bones were plainly visible – "my man, you understand English. Are you an Englishman?"
"My mother was an English woman," No. 211 replied, in a deep, hollow voice.
"That any English woman's son should suffer this!" exclaimed the other, again glancing at the worn, bruised body with warm and manly indignation. "And that!" pointing out to his officers the fleur-de-lis roughly branded on his shoulder; sure sign of the forcat. Then, continuing, he asked, "What was your fault?"
"Nothing," 211 answered, as he had answered his brother galérien an hour before. Only now he lifted his eyes and looked at the admiral, as though by that straight glance he would force him to believe. "No crime, no fault. I was – oh!" he broke off, "not now; not now! The story is too long to tell now."
His tone and bearing – sad and miserable as both were – told all who stood around him that this was no common man, no malefactor flung to the slave ship for an ignoble crime, no wretched printer sent to the galleys for producing Protestant pamphlets, or chapel clerk for assisting in a Protestant service.
"You are of gentle blood?" the admiral asked kindly. "Followed, doubtless, the calling of a gentleman? What are you?"
"I was a cavalry officer of King Louis. But broken and ruined for – for – " and again he broke off.
"Will you tell me your name?"
"Georges St. Georges."
The name conveyed nothing to any on board the frigate; the rank he had borne, when stated by him, stirred them all. They knew one thing, however – namely, that the cavalry officers of France were all gentlemen of birth, and many of great position. Could this be true, or if true was it possible that the man before them had not perpetrated some hideous crime? Louis had the reputation of encouraging and treating good officers well; surely no man of that position could have been condemned to this awful existence but for some great sin. Rooke, however, thought he knew the clew, and continued:
"You are, perhaps, a Protestant? The King of France still wages bitter war against them. Is that your crime?"
"I am a Protestant; but that was not my crime."
He shivered as he spoke, although he stood in the full glare of the July sun, the burnt face whitened beneath its bronze, and the lips became livid and ghastly, then he reeled and staggered against the gun tackle on the poop.
"Take him below," Rooke said, turning to one of the subaltern officers at his side; "let him be seen too and carefully tended and those sores dressed. Also find some proper apparel for him. And – treat him as a gentleman. It is more like that he has been sinned against than sinned himself."
So the fainting man was carried below in the brawny arms of the sailors, a spare cabin was found for him – it had but a few weeks before been occupied by a lieutenant who was killed in the disastrous battle off Beachy Head – and he was put into a clean, comfortable bunk. The release which he had prayed for from the galley's slavery had come, though not in the only way he had dared to hope for.
"So!" exclaimed Rooke as he helped himself to a glass of Calcavella and passed the bottle to the man whose life had been saved – "so the wanton stabbed you in the back just as you had the fellow at your mercy. The deuce is in it that you missed his heart and could only pink him in the arm. But go on – go on. Faith! 'tis a wondrous story of wrong and cruelty."
They were seated in the admiral's cabin on another such hot July day as that on which St. Georges had been dragged out of the sea with still a portion of his chain attached to the ring round his ankle, and which was rapidly sinking him, but the latter was looking in very different case now. The burnt face was still very black and hollow, the lines of suffering still plainly marked, as they would be for many a day, but otherwise all was changed. He was dressed as a gentleman once more, in a plain but neat suit of blue clothes, guarded with white cotton lace – it had been the unfortunate lieutenant's. His hair, which was combed and brushed now, was, although still somewhat short – it being the custom in the galleys to crop it close to the head for those days once a month – no longer thick and matted.
St. Georges went on as the admiral bade him; he was telling the whole story of his life to his host.
"Yet, sir," he continued, "she was no common wanton either, as I heard afterward, but a lady of Louis's court who loved De Roquemaure. Doubtless her hate and anger were roused by the words I addressed to her. And I must have wronged her in one instance at least; it could scarce have been she who stole my – my poor little babe." And, as ever, when he mentioned that lost one, his eyes filled with tears. She was gone from him now, he feared, forever – he had been in that accursed galley for two years! – how could he hope to see her again on this earth? No wonder that the tears sprang to his eyes!
The seaman opposite to him certainly wondered not at their doing so; instead, he passed his own hand before his eyes, as he had done more than once before in the course of the narrative. Countless men had been sent to their doom by that hand and by his orders, but that was in battle; now, as he thought of St. Georges's little lonely child and wondered if it still lived, his memory wandered back to Monk's Horton, a pleasant seat in Kent, where his own children were doubtless playing at their mother's knee, and his brave heart became as tender as a woman's.
"Poor babe!" he said, "poor babe! Pray God the other woman, the one who did steal her at Troyes, has some bowels of compassion! Surely she must have, however base in other respects."
"I pray so night and day," St. Georges said. "O God! how I pray so." Then again, at the admiral's desire that he should not fret too much, but hope ever for the best, he went on with the account of all that had befallen him.
"When my wound was nearly healed," he said, "there came to the room in the inn, where I was closely guarded, a small body of exempts who carried me to Paris to the prison of La Tournelle, a place from which, as I shortly afterward learned, a chain of condemned galley slaves was to set out, all winter as it was, for Marseilles."
"'But,' I cried to the man who fed us morning and night like animals, while we lay each with an iron collar round our necks by which we were chained to a beam that traversed the dungeon – "
"In a Christian country!" exclaimed the admiral – "a Christian country!"
"Ay! in a Christian country! Yet I cried, I say, to the man who guarded us: 'But these companions of mine are condemned – I am not. I have undergone no trial!'
"'Bah!' he replied, 'your trial is made and done. Bon Dieu! the courts cannot wait until criminals feel themselves in sufficient good health to assist at the séances. Your trial is over,' and the wretch made a joke therewith. 'Your trials have now to commence. Keep a good heart!' 'Show me my sentence, then,' I exclaimed, 'produce it.' 'À la bonne heure,' he replied. 'To-morrow I will obtain it from the governor. You shall see.' And the next day he showed it to me. It was not so long but that I remember every word of it now. It ran: 'To Georges St. Georges. For that you, a cashiered officer of his Majesty's forces, have drawn sword upon and threatened assassination to his Majesty's chief of the army, Monsieur de Louvois, in his Majesty's own palace of the Louvre; for that, also, you attempted the assassination of his Majesty's subject, le Marquis de Roquemaure, appointed captain of his Majesty's Regiment of Picardy, and of a lady of his Majesty's court, you are condemned to the galleys in perpetuity. Signed, Le Marquis de Vrillière.'"
Again the admiral exclaimed, "In a Christian country!" and again St. Georges continued:
"A week afterward we were on the road, chained together two and two by the neck, while all along the line through our chains ran another, joining the first couple to the last. The snow lay on the ground until we reached Avignon, six weeks later; at night we slept in barns, in stables, sometimes in the open air. Some – the old and sickly – fell down and were left by the roadside for the communes to bury; more than fifty were left thus ere we reached Marseilles. There we were distributed to the galleys that were short of their complement, though not before the bishop of the province gave us the Roman blessing, saying that thereby the heretic spirit of the devil could alone be driven out of those who were Protestants. From then till now my life has been what my appearance, as you saw me naked, testifies."
"What," asked the admiral very gently, "can you do now? To live is easy enough. You have been both soldier and sailor" – though he uttered the last word with an expression of disgust as he thought of what manner of sailor this unhappy man had been – "your existence is therefore easy. You can serve the king," and he touched his hat with his finger as he spoke. "Many Huguenots are doing so now, and some other old ones who followed Charles back to England. But" – and he leaned forward across the table as he spoke earnestly – "that will bring you no nearer to regaining your poor little babe; will scarce enable you to thrust your sword at last through the villain De Roquemaure's breast; to obtain the dukedom you believe to be yours."
"Obtain the dukedom, sir!" St. Georges replied, looking at him. "Nay, indeed, that is gone forever. You know what befalls the man in France who has been condemned to the galleys for life?"
"What?"
"He is as dead forever in the law's eyes as though he were sunk to the bottom of the sea. He can never inherit, can never dispose of aught that is his; if he is married, his wife is not considered as a married woman, but a mistress – every right has gone from him forever!"
"Is there no pardon?"
"Never. Unless he can by some wild chance prove a wrongful condemnation. And for me, how that? Louvois, the all-powerful minister, is my judge and executioner; and, further, when once I set foot on English ground I shall become an English soldier or sailor."
"But the child! At least" – and the sailor spoke more softly even than before – "you must know her fate. And – De Roquemaure's punishment! How obtain these?"
"Heaven alone knows! May it, in its supreme mercy, direct me! Yet this is what I have thought, planned to do since you, sir, have taken pity on me. England and France are now most happily, as I think it, plunged in war once more. There is much to do – "
"Ay," interposed the admiral, while his handsome face flushed and his eyes glistened, for he was smarting over his and Torrington's recent defeat. "There is. There is Beachy Head to be wiped out – oh, for our next encounter with them!"
"Thereby," continued St. Georges, "my chance may come. For I may meet De Roquemaure. The sentence on me said he was appointed captain in one of the northern regiments; there have been stranger things than foes to the death meeting on the field, on opposite sides. Then for the child!"
"Ay, the child."
"For that I must go back to France, disguised it may be; nay, must be! That will be easy. The language is mine – though because of my mother's memory I have perfected myself in yours – in hers – there is nothing to reveal who or what I am but one thing" – and he made a gesture toward his shoulder where the hateful fleur-de-lis was branded in forever – "and that thing you may be sure none shall ever see again until my body is prepared for the grave. But – which to do first? To become a soldier or a sailor fighting for England, or travel disguised to Troyes and find out if – if – my child still lives. That would be my desire – only – only – "
"Only?" repeated the admiral, looking at him.
"Only," the other said – then broke off.
And Rooke knew as well as though St. Georges had uttered the words what he would have said. He knew that the man before him was beggared, that he had not a crown in the world to help him perform such a journey.
CHAPTER XX.
"HURRY, HURRY, HURRY!"
St. Georges was lodged in an old inn on Tower Hill now, in a large room that ran from the front to the back of the house and with, on the latter side, a lookout upon an old churchyard, which in the swift-coming spring of 1692 – for it was now April of that year – was green and bright with the new shooting buds. Here he worked hard to earn a living, spending part of his day in translating a book or so from French into English – at beggar's wages! – another part in giving lessons in fencing and swordsmanship – he knowing every trick and passade of the French school – and a third in giving lessons in his old language. And between them he managed to earn enough to support existence while waiting for that which through the interest of Admiral Rooke had been promised him – namely, permission to volunteer into the first vessel taking detachments of recruits to sea with it.
Meanwhile, there were many about the court who had heard his story and who knew he was a man who had once worn the red dress of the chiourme– when his back was not bared to the lashings of the comites! – that he had slaved at the galley oar in summer and been put to road-mending and road-sweeping in the winter, and that he nourished against France a deep revenge. And among them was the king himself.
Rooke had told William his history, over long clay pipes and tankards at Hampton Court, and the astute Dutchman had not hesitated a moment in promising him employment – would, indeed, have taken a hundred such into that employ if he could have found them. He had learned how the exile hated France – as he did himself, his hatred being the mainspring of his life; moreover, that exile knew more about Louis's regiments and whole military system than almost any one else whom the English king could discover. That was sufficient for him.
So St. Georges went on his way, waiting – waiting ever for one of two things to occur: either that the marine regiment should call for volunteers and be sent out again to France, or that he should be able to return disguised to that country and recommence his search for Dorine.
During the period that had elapsed, however, since he was rescued by Rooke, one thing had happened that had brought great happiness to his heart: he had heard more than once from Boussac, now a lieutenant of the Mousquetaires Noirs, and in so hearing had gained news of his child, who was still alive, and, as Boussac believed, well treated.
"Mon pauvre ami," that gallant officer had written, in reply to a letter forwarded him by St. Georges and addressed to Paris, where he imagined the Mousquetaires might be, "how shall I answer yours, since, when I received it, I had long deemed you dead? Ah! monsieur, I was desolated when we came into Paris at the tidings I gleaned. I sought for you at once, inquired at the Bureau Militaire, and learned – what? That you had threatened to murder the minister – had, indeed, almost murdered the Marquis de Roquemaure; and that for this you were condemned to the galley L'Idole, en perpétuité. Figure to yourself my dismay – nay, more, my most touching grief – for, my friend, I had news for you of the best, the most important. And I could not deliver it, should never now deliver it to you in this world. Monsieur, I had the news to give you that I had seen your child – had seen it well, and, as I think, not unhappy."
It was St. Georges's habit to sit sometimes in the little, old city churchyard beneath his window, and there to muse on his past and meditate upon the future. It had an attraction for him, this old place, more, perhaps, for the reason that scarce any one ever came into it on week days, except himself and a decrepit gravedigger to occasionally open old graves or prepare new ones, than for any other; but also because there was one tombstone that interested him sadly. It bore upon it a child's name, "Dorothy," and told how she had died, "aged three," in January, "in the yeare of Oure Lorde" 1688. And below the scroll of flowers, with an angel's head in their midst, was the quotation from Kings: "Is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well."
To his seared and bruised heart some sad yet tender comfort seemed to be afforded by this stone, which marked and recorded the death of one whose very name partly resembled the name of her he had lost – whose little life had been taken from her almost at the very time Dorine was snatched away from him. And the question of the prophet was the question that he so often asked in his prayers. The answer was that which so often he beseeched his Maker to vouchsafe to him.
He was seated opposite to this stone on the day he first received Boussac's letter, having brought it out with him to peruse in quiet. He was seated on it now, many months later, as he reread the mousquetaire's words which told him that Dorine was well, and, he thought, not unhappy. And he raised his eyes to the words of the Shunamite woman and murmured, "It is well with the child," and whispered, "God, I thank thee!" as he had done on the day when first the letter came to him. Then he continued:
"We passed through Troyes, monsieur, three months after you, and I saw her. She was a little outside the town, with an elderly bonne, hand in hand. I obtained permission to quit the ranks for a moment – I was not then promoted, you will understand – and, dismounting and leading my horse toward them – you remember the good horse, monsieur? – I said to the woman, 'Whose child is that, madame?' She drew away from me, gathered the petite to her, and answered, 'Mine,' whereon I smiled; for I could not be harsh with her – the little creature looked so well cared for – "
Again St. Georges lifted up his eyes, again he murmured, "I thank Thee!" and again went on with the letter:
"'And the father,' I demanded, 'where may he be?' 'Dead,' she answered. 'You know that?' I asked hurriedly, and she replied, 'Ay, I know it, monsieur.' But," Boussac continued, "I could see that she repeated a story she had been taught, that she was a paid gouvernante. Yet, what to do? Already the troop was out of sight; I might not linger. Had I been alone, it may be I would have snatched the child from her, jumped on my horse, and carried it away as once you carried it, guarded it as you – as we, monsieur – guarded it. Helas! that could not be. Therefore, on your behalf, I kissed the little thing, and I emptied my poor purse into the woman's hand. 'Keep it well,' I said, 'keep it well, and thereby you shall reap a reward greater by far than any you now receive. I know – I know more than you think.' Then the bonne replied to me: 'So long as I am able it will be guarded well. No danger threatens the child at present' – she said 'at present' – I am unhappy that I have to mention those words. But she spoke them. I knew not what had happened then; I know now from your letter. But, monsieur, what does it mean? De Roquemaure tried to slay the child when you had her in your keeping. Now that he has her in his own – for who can doubt it? – he treats her well. Monsieur, again I say, what does it mean? And the 'at present' – what, too, does that mean?"
St. Georges was no more able to answer that silent question than the far-distant writer of it. Instead, he repeated to himself again and again, as he had often done, the same words, "What did it mean?" And as a man stumbling in the dark, he could find no way that led him to the light.
"How can I answer him?" he mused. "What answer find? The villain tried to slay her, as Boussac says, when we were there to guard her; now that he has her in his charge, now that his hate is doubled, must be doubled and intensified by my determination to slay him, as I almost succeeded in doing, he stays his hand. What does the mystery mean?" And one answer alone presented itself to him. De Roquemaure might have discovered that that which he once suspected to be the case was in reality not so. He might have found that, in truth, he, St. Georges, was not the Duc de Vannes.
"Thus," he reflected, "he would hesitate to murder the harmless child. His vengeance on me is glutted; he must have known, even so early as Boussac's passage through Troyes, that I was as good as dead in that vile galley; if he knew, too, that I am not really De Vannes's heir, the child no longer stands in his light. And devil though he is, even his tigerish nature may have halted at the murder of so helpless a thing."
Also he knew, by now, that both De Roquemaure and Louvois must be perfectly confident that not only was he practically dead but actually so. The galley was gone – sunk; and of the few saved none had gone back to France. And the other galleys – those which had chased the Dutch merchantman – would take the news back; none would suppose that he and a few more were still alive.
As he reflected on this month by month – while often his eyes would rest now on the words before him, "It is well with the child" – another light came at last to his mind: he saw that, almost without any danger, he might return to Troyes. He was a dead man; none would be on the watch for him.
"Return to Troyes!" he repeated. "Return to Troyes!" And starting from his seat he walked hurriedly away after one more glance at the consoling words. He would go at once, find the child, and then return to England forever. Yes, he thought, he would do that. He had money enough now to reach that city.
Excited by this determination, he strode toward his lodging, determined to set out directly. Months had passed, no fresh volunteers had been called for, and although he knew that Louis was massing together a large number of troops in the north of France – with the intention of once more attempting to put James II on the throne he had fled from – nothing had yet been done. It seemed as if nothing would be done beyond endeavouring to guard the shores of England from a French invasion and securing suspected persons and sending forces to the seacoast. But for himself he heard nothing from any source. Perhaps, he mused, he was forgotten.
Yet as he entered his room he learned that the time had not yet come for him to take that solitary and dangerous journey to France. There was something else to be done first.
Lying on his table were two letters: one, with a great seal upon it, from Admiral Rooke; the other, addressed to a firm of merchants in the city, but with – since its arrival in London – St. Georges's name written over theirs, from Boussac. He read the latter first; before all else it was the child he thought of – then threw it down almost with impatience. He looked eagerly for these letters; they were indeed the anxiety of his life, and now that this had come it told him nothing that he cared to hear.
Yet there was one piece of intelligence in the letter that once would have interested him. The mousquetaire had seen Aurélie de Roquemaure, had spoken with her.
"I met her, mon ami," he wrote, "entering the gallery of audience at Versailles where I was in attendance, and she looked, although pale, for she wears no paint like the other grandes dames– I know not why, since his Christian Majesty expects it – "
"She wore enough when I saw her last!" St. Georges muttered.
" – most beautiful. Mon Dieu! what eyes, what a figure! I knew her only from seeing her pass in to audience before, while as for me she had never deigned so much as a glance. Yet now, figurez vous, mon ami, she spoke to me while waiting for the others to pass before her. 'I have heard,' she said, speaking very low, 'that you are Monsieur Boussac.' I answered that that was my name. Then, after a glance around to see that no eyes were upon us, she went on: 'You did a service once to an unhappy gentleman – a chevau-léger– now dead?' What she was going to say further I know not, since I interrupted her so by the slight start I gave that she paused in her intention, whatever it may have been, raised her eyes to mine and regarded me fixedly. Then she approached her face nearer to mine and whispered: 'Why do you start? He is dead – is he not?' Mon ami, what could I reply? She is the sister, by marriage, of your foe; if I told her you lived, who knows what evil I might work? Therefore, I answered briefly, 'Madame, the galère L'Idole was sunk, and he was in it.' Still she regarded me, however —mon Dieu! it seemed as though her eyes would tear the secret from out of my brains. Then – for now the throng was moving on and she had to go with it – she whispered again: 'If – if by any hazard – he was not sunk with the galley – if he still lives, there is news for him that would make him happy.' Then she passed on with the others, and so out by the main gallery, and I have not seen her since."
There was more in the letter, but at that time St. Georges read no further. Once this news would have stirred every fibre in him, for once he had believed that Aurélie de Roquemaure was his friend – was on his side! He had long ceased, however, to do so; had, instead, come to believe that she and her mother were as inimical to him as their cowardly brother. And long months of meditation had brought him to the belief also that the marquise's scorn against the man who had attacked him and Boussac, and endeavoured to slay the child, was simulated; that they regarded his and Dorine's existence with as much hatred as did De Roquemaure himself. And now, now he felt sure that she knew he was alive and was only eager to discover if he was anywhere near them – near enough to work vengeance on them. As for the news which would "make him happy!" – well, any scheming intriguer might endeavour to hoodwink so simple a soldier as Boussac with such a tale as that! He was only too thankful Boussac had had sufficient discretion not to betray his existence to her. To have done that would be to have put her and De Roquemaure on their guard against that return to France which should yet be made, against that revenge which should yet be taken.
He opened Sir George's letter now, quietly and without excitement, for he had grown used to occasional communications at long intervals from that gallant sailor, telling him that at present it was not in his power to be of service to him; but as he hastily ran his eye over the lines he uttered an exclamation of delight. They ran:
"Namesake, if you are still of the mind you were, the time has come. There is a big muster at St. Helens, for Tourville puts to sea to invade us. A place shall be found for you, though maybe not in my ship. Hurry, hurry, hurry!"