CHAPTER XI.
THE MARQUISE TELLS A STORY
It was a vastly different repast from that of the Bishop of Lodève's which was offered to St. Georges, although the difference consisted more, perhaps, in the manner of cooking and serving than in aught else. The wine, which was excellent – though no better than that last bottle from the old Clos – did not come in at the end, but cheered the fasting and wayworn man from the commencement; the viands were in good condition and properly prepared; the soup was not dishwater, but of a good, sufficient quality. Moreover, here, as in the great salon, a cheerful fire blazed on the hearth, instead of the spluttering, snow-soaked logs that had hissed and smoked in Phélypeaux's house. Also, he had for company two women, each beautiful according to her time of life – women soft, gentle, and well bred – instead of the cynical bishop of whom all France told strange tales.
Sitting there, his eyes resting sometimes on the budding loveliness of Aurélie de Roquemaure, sometimes on the mellowed sweetness of the face of the marquise, St. Georges forced himself to discard from his mind the thought which he had now come to deem unworthy – the thought that treachery lurked in their bosoms against him – that, though the present marquis might be the man who had led the foul and despicable attack on him in the graveyard at Aignay-le-Duc, they had had part or share in it. For, he told himself, to believe this was to believe that there was no faith nor honesty in womankind.
Yet one thing, at the commencement of the meal, and when the old servant and another had withdrawn from the room, had almost served to keep his suspicions alive. The marquise – as far as a woman of rank and high breeding might do so – had asked him many questions about himself, while Aurélie, following the rigidness which prevailed in French life of the time, sat by, a silent listener, scarce joining in the conversation at all.
And St. Georges, moved perhaps by the company in which he found himself, and, soldier-like, scorning to conceal any part of his history except that which he deemed absolutely necessary – he making no reference whatever to the name of De Vannes – told them much of his existence. His career in Holland until the peace; his lonely life in garrison; his marriage with a young girl, a daughter of the middle classes; her death, and the little child she had left to his care, were all touched upon by him and listened to attentively – indeed, absorbingly. And so, at last, he came to the summons to Paris, to his setting forth, to his stay at Dijon, and the attack made upon him and Boussac.
To both women this portion of his narrative caused great excitement. For, stately as the marquise was, environed, so to speak, by all the dignity of the haute noblesse of the days of the Great King, she could not prevent her agitation from being apparent to him. Her white, jewelled hand quivered as she raised it to her breast; her eyes sparkled as they might have sparkled when she was her daughter's age; while, as for that daughter, her bosom rose and fell with her rapid breathing, her colour came and went – once she was as pale as death, the next moment her face suffused.
"The cowards!" exclaimed the marquise; "the base, cowardly dogs, to attack two men thus, and one hampered with a defenceless child! Quel tour de lâche! Oh! sir, I would to God your brand or that of your brave companion had struck the poltroon, the craven who sheltered himself behind his visor, his death blow! I would to God one of your swords had found out his heart as they found out the hearts of his mercenaries!"
The sympathy of this graceful woman – sympathy that roused her from the well-bred calmness which was her natural state, to one of almost fury – earned the deepest respect and gratitude of St. Georges; yet he looked at her almost with amazement as he bowed and murmured some words of appreciation. For there was no acting here, he knew; yet she was De Roquemaure's stepmother, the kinswoman of the man whom he believed to be his and his child's attempted assassin!
And Aurélie de Roquemaure, too – what of her? A glance from under his eyes showed him that still the beauteous face was agitated as it had been before, that all which her mother had said was re-echoed by her.
Again the marquise spoke, though now she rose from the table as she did so.
"Sir," she said, "never rest until that man and you stand face to face, point to point; since, until that happens, your child's life will not be safe. For you, a man, a soldier, it matters not – is best, indeed, that you should meet him and end his miserable existence forever. I pray you may do ere long. And, when you do meet him, slay him like a dog! It is the only way."
Still astonished, almost appalled, by her vehemence, St. Georges took the hand she extended him and bent over it, and next, that of her daughter, ere the two passed out of the room.
"Forgive," said the marquise, "that I should feel so strongly. I – I – have a child myself." Then, after a pause, and turning round as she reached the corridor, she added: "If we do not meet to-morrow ere you return to the city to fetch your child, remember, sir, I pray you, that my answer to the king or his minister is precisely different from that of the bishop. It is 'No.'"
"I will remember, madame."
Then, with a last glance from each, both were gone. And St. Georges, standing in front of the great fireplace waiting for the old servitor to come and escort him to his room, was more overwhelmed with amazement than he had been at aught which had occurred since he set out from Pontarlier.
"What does it mean?" he whispered to himself. "What does it mean?"
In a room at the opposite end of the corridor from that where the apartment was situated which had been bestowed on St. Georges, the mother and daughter sat. It was the sleeping-room of madame la marquise, large, vast, and sombre – save that here, too, a fire burnt in the grate, and that there were many candles alight in the sconces set about the room.
And the marquise, lying back in her deep fauteuil before the fire, her face white and drawn, and with tears upon her cheeks, was speaking to her daughter who knelt by her side.
"The wolf!" she said, "the wolf! How know it? How find out? God! I thought that I alone, of all living people, knew, until I divulged my story to you, until I wrote to Louis asking him to do justice to a much-wronged man. Who – who has betrayed my confidence? Not the king, surely. Oh! not he, not he! Nay, more, I doubt if the letter ever reached his hands."
"Mother," Aurélie said, as she stroked her hand, "there must be some other who knows."
"There was no living soul on earth. Listen, even you do not know all."
The girl seated herself against her mother's knee and gazed up into her face. Then she whispered: "Tell me all now, mother. From to-night let me understand exactly with what he is encompassed. Tell me, I beg."
"You know," the marquise said, "for I have told you often, that the Duc de Vannes and I loved each other when we were young – yet that we never married. No matter for the reason now – it was my fault! Let that suffice. And we parted – he to go his way, I mine. Then, some years later, not many it is true, but still long enough for us to have forgotten what had separated us, we met again, and once more he asked me to be his wife, to renew the love vows we once had made. But it was then impossible. I was affianced to your father – the day was fixed, and I had come to admire him, to respect him; in no case would I have gone back from my plighted word. So again we parted to meet only once more in life."
The girl touched her hand – perhaps – who knows? – in admiration of her mother's strength in keeping her vow to the man who was not her first love and in discarding the man who was. And the marquise continued:
"It was one night a few weeks before he set out to join Turenne in the Palatinate. A great fête was given by Louis to celebrate his birthday at St. Germain-en-Laye, his birthplace, and it was there we met again. Presently, when both of us were able to escape from the great crowd of courtiers, marshals, and ministers who surrounded the king, he told me that he was glad he had met me once more – that he wished to confide a secret to me if I would hear it, a charge if I would accept it. At first I hesitated, then – when I found it would not thrust against your father's honour" – again the girl stroked her mother's hand – "I told him he might confide in me. Aurélie, he told me that, embittered by having lost me, he had married in private an English lady, daughter of a refugee, that he had learned to love her, and that death had parted them after a few years of marriage. Also, he told me, she left him a son, whom he had brought up in ignorance of the position that must be his, but that – should he return from the Palatinate – he meant to acknowledge him. He never did return, and his son has never been acknowledged."
"Why, my mother?" asked Aurélie, with an upward glance. "Why?"
"Nay, child," the marquise replied. "Think no evil of me. No base thoughts entered my mind. No remembrance that his son stood in the way of your half-brother's inheritance – he and your father being ostensibly De Vannes's heir. No! no! no! But in that hurried interval both he and I had made one fatal slip – had committed one hideous act of forgetfulness. He had forgotten to tell me – I to ask – where this son was, and in what name he was known."
The girl dropped her hands with a despairing action into her lap; then a moment later she turned the soft hazel eyes up again toward her mother's face and said: "Yet now you know! You have found out!"
"Yes, I have found out. That son is the man who sleeps beneath our roof to-night – Lieutenant St. Georges."
"But how? How? How?"
"Again, listen. For years I sought to find him, made inquiries in every quarter I could think of, asked – quietly and cautiously – of all who might by chance possess any information. Then, at last, it came – from the quarter least to be imagined. From your half-brother."
"Raoul?"
"Ay, Raoul, your father's heir – also heir to the fortune of the Duc de Vannes, as all the world thought and still thinks. He came to me one day – three months ago – when he had been privately to Paris; for what reason I know not, although I know that his visit was a secret one, since he had not been presented to the king. He came in, I say, and standing before me, he said, 'Madame, who is Monsieur St. Georges?' I answered that I had never heard of the gentleman before, to which he replied: ''Tis strange, madame. He is an officer of the Régiment de Nivernois. And his commission was given him by the king at the request of your late – friend, shall I say? – the Duc de Vannes!'
"Aurélie, I fell to trembling then, for I thought to myself, 'I have found his son.' De Vannes had told me that son was being educated for his own profession of arms – nay, more, that he sought for him a commission from the king. Meanwhile, Raoul was watching me carefully, so that I disguised as best I could my agitation, while I replied: 'It seems to me you need not to demand information of me. You know of Monsieur St. Georges's existence – of the calling he follows. On my part, I have never heard of him before!' 'Nor perhaps,' he replied, 'ever will again!' and with that he left me."
"It must be the man," Mademoiselle de Roquemaure murmured. "It must be he."
"It is he," the marquise replied emphatically. "It is he. As he stood before me to-night I saw his father in his eyes, in his glance – nay, in his bearing. That man is the son of De Vannes – is the De Vannes himself. And if more proof was wanted, is it not forthcoming when we have learned that not only his life, but the life of his child, is thrust against? His father died without a will, without naming him; your father was therefore the heir, and – after him – your brother Raoul. In another year, when he is thirty, De Vannes's wealth is his, if – if," and her eyes glistened as she spoke, "no direct heir bars the way. You understand?"
"Yes," the girl said slowly. "Yes, I understand."
CHAPTER XII.
LOST
A considerable hubbub outside the manoir – the crying of a woman, and the voices of various men all talking together – aroused St. Georges from his sleep as the wintry dawn broke through the fogs and mists of the night.
"Fichte," he heard the old servitor say, "you are a fool, my girl, to come here and thrust your head in the lion's jaws. Better make off another way; he will kill you, I warrant, when he hears how you have kept your promise."
"Let him," he heard next a woman's voice reply, a voice all broken and rendered indistinct by her tears and sobs, "let him. O mon Dieu!" she wailed, "have pity on me! I would have shielded the little thing with my life. I left it but a few, nay, not ten, minutes, and then – then it was gone. Oh, pity me, pity me, mon Dieu!"
With a bound St. Georges had flung himself from out of his bed, and was hastily putting on his clothes. For the words of the weeping woman in the roadway, as they rose to his ears – above all, the voice which he recognised – told him the worst. The child, his child, was missing; the woman below was the one to whom he had confided Dorine overnight.
Huddling on his garments, therefore, while still he heard arising the voices from a short distance below him (for the first floor of the manoir, on which his room was situated, was not more than twelve or fourteen feet from the ground) and the girl's sobs and weeping as she exclaimed, "Not more than ten minutes did I leave it alone, not more, while I regarded the troops coming in," he descended rapidly to the great hall below. He met no one on his way as he did so – doubtless, neither the marquise nor her daughter were yet risen – and finding the door in the tourelle with little difficulty, he emerged into the roadway.
Standing in it were those two whose voices he had already heard – the old servitor and the girl from the inn in Troyes – and by them was the youth, Gaston, his arm this morning being bound up in a sling, as though he had met with some hurt. He was gazing silently at the girl as she sobbed and wept before the old man, listening evidently with interest to all she said, and with a look of sympathy on his face for the evident distress of mind she was in.
But now, as St. Georges appeared before her, his face stern and fierce – though already there was on it a look of misery and foreboding – she flung herself upon her knees before him in the hard, frost-bound road, and lifting up her clasped hands she cried:
"Oh, monsieur, forgive me, pardon me! I did but leave the child for ten moments, and – "
"And," said St. Georges, his face growing almost darker than before, "it is stolen, or dead! Is that what you have come to tell me?"
"Alas! alas!" she moaned, "that it should be so. Stolen, not dead, thank God. Oh, monsieur," and again the coarse, hard-working hands were clasped and lifted up before his face, "ayez pitié, je– "
"Be brief," the chevau-léger interrupted, taking no heed of her wailings, while the old and young man started at the misery revealed by the changed tones of his voice. "Be brief. I confided my child to you, and you have failed in your trust. Tell me how. Then I may know how to act. Proceed."
"Oh, monsieur," the poor creature said, wondering that, ere now, he had not torn her to pieces or thrust his sword through her, as would likely enough have been done by many of her own kind under a similar breach of faith – "oh, monsieur, my heart is broken, my heart – "
"No matter for your heart," St. Georges interrupted her peremptorily again; "tell your story at once. At once, I say!" And again the two standing by wondered that he could master himself so, in spite of his grief; while the girl, seeing that she had best obey him, told with many sobs, which still she could not repress, what had happened.
It was in the early morning, she said, and she and the little thing had slept warm and peacefully together – oh, so peacefully! – and the time had come for her to arise; the hostler had come to knock on her door, for she slept heavily. Then he told her, as he stood outside, that a troop of the Vicomte d'Arpajou's regiment was come in and seeking billets in the town; and she, because she was une malheureuse, and also because she had a cousin who rode in the ranks, got up and ran downstairs to get news of him. For his mother had heard nothing of him for many months; they were anxious – oh, so anxious! But it was not his troop, and so, gleaning no news, she had returned to her bedroom, meaning to finish her dressing and to prepare the child. And then, she went on, sobbing again, and with more wringings of her hands – and then, oh! horror, she found the bed empty and the child gone. Gone! Gone! Gone! Oh, it was terrible! She aroused the other servants with her screams; high and low they sought for it – it might have crept even from the bed – but, no! it was gone. And after half an hour's further search, she, feeling demented, had told her master all and how she had taken charge of the child, and had begged him to let her come to the manoir to see its father. Perhaps, it might yet be found, might, because God was good, have been found since she had come away. Who knew? Oh! she prayed it might be so – on her knees she prayed —
"My horse!" exclaimed St. Georges, turning to the younger man, Gaston, still standing close by, "my horse, I beg of you! Lose no time in saddling it. I must go back to the city at once." And turning his head away from them he murmured: "My child! My little lonely child! Oh, my child!"
They heard his moan, those three standing there – for now the woman had risen to her feet – and they pitied him. The old man shook his head sadly; he was a father and a grandfather himself; the girl sobbed afresh, and Gaston moved off at once to obey his behest. "My arm is injured," he stammered, seeing that the soldier's eye was on it now; "one of the horses kicked it last night in the stable; but – but – I can still saddle your animal. In an instant, monsieur, in an instant," and he moved away.
Seeing that he was in pain – indeed, the lad's face was bloodless and also drawn with suffering – and being himself devoured with eagerness to return to the city and seek for his child, St. Georges followed him through the courtyard to where the stables were. And then, noticing that Gaston could not use his wounded arm at all, he saddled his animal with his own hands while the young man stood by helpless, or only able to render him the slightest assistance with his uninjured arm. And when this was done he led the horse forth to the front of the manoir and mounted it.
"There is no time for me to pay my respects to madame la marquise," he said to the servitor – "she will understand my lack of courtesy. Yet, since it is impossible I can continue my journey to Paris – even the king's commands must wait now! – I will endeavour not to quit Troyes without bidding her farewell. Will you tell her that, my friend?"
The old man said he would – that he knew madame would understand and sympathize with him – and – and – but ere he could finish whatever he intended to say, St. Georges had put spurs to his horse and was speeding back to Troyes, while following him along the road on foot went the unfortunate servant from the inn, still weeping and bemoaning.
The hostler was standing in the gateway of the auberge as he rode in, his horse already sweating and with foam about its mouth from the pace it had come; and throwing himself off it St. Georges advanced to the man and asked him if he had heard any news of his missing child.
"Nay," he replied. "Nay. No news. Mon Dieu! I know not who could have stolen it. 'Tis marvellous. 'Twas none of D'Arpajou's troop, to be sure. And there were no others."
"None lurking about the inn last night – none sleeping here who might have stolen into the girl's room when she quitted it? Oh! man, I tell you," he cried, almost beside himself with grief, "there are those who would have tracked it across France to get at it!" And then, overcome with remorse at having left the child in any other custody but his own, though he had thought it was for the best when he did so, he murmured: "Why, why, did I not keep it with me? My arm sheltered it when the attack was made at Aignay-le-Duc; no worse than that could have befallen it."
"None lurking about," the man repeated, looking up at the great soldier while he chewed a straw. "None lurking about. Mon Dieu! why did I not think of that before?"
"There was one!" St. Georges exclaimed, "there was one, then? You saw some man – I know it; I see it in your face. For God's sake, answer me! Who? Who was it?"
But the hostler was a slow man – one whose mind moved cumbrously, and again he muttered to himself: "No! No, it could not be he. It – "
"Could not be whom? Oh, do not torture me! Tell me! Tell me!"
"There was one," the other replied, "who rode in last night, seeking a bed for himself and a stall for his horse. Yet he could have neither here. We were full, and we knew too that D'Arpajou's horse were on the road. So we sent him away to the Cheval Rouge, yet I saw him again late at night in the yard, and, asking him his business, he said that he had lost his glove when here – "
"My God!" St. Georges exclaimed, more to himself than the man. "Was it De Roquemaure?"
"De Roquemaure!" the other exclaimed. "De Roquemaure! Par hasard, does monsieur mean the young marquis?"
"Yes, yes. You know him – must know him, since his mother's manoir is so near here. Answer me," and in his fervour he grasped the man's arm firmly, "was it he?"
The hostler wrenched his arm away from the soldier's nervous grasp; then he answered emphatically – scornfully indeed: "Was it he? He! De Roquemaure? Mon Dieu, no! Not he, indeed!"
"You know him?"
"Know him? Yes. And hate him. A wild beast, un sauvage. See here," and he pointed to his face, on which was a long, discoloured stain or bruise, "he gave me that a week or so ago, as he rode out of the inn, because I had not brought his horse quickly enough to please him. Know him? Oh, yes, I know him. And some day, great and strong and powerful seigneur as he is, he shall know me. The seigneurs do not lord it over us always. We shall see!"
"Not De Roquemaure," St. Georges mused aloud. "Not De Roquemaure. Great God! have we more enemies than one? Into whose hands has my little babe fallen, then?" And again he murmured to himself, "Not De Roquemaure!"
"No, not De Roquemaure," the man replied, overhearing him. "Nor one like him. Instead, a stranger to the town – a sour, dark-visaged man, elderly. None too well clad nor mounted either, and both he and his beast well spent as though with long travel."
"Who could it be?" St. Georges muttered. "Who?" Yet, think as he might, no light broke in upon him. But, if this man was indeed the one who had kidnapped his child, he felt sure of one thing: he was an agent of De Roquemaure's. It was in the latter's light alone that he and Dorine stood!
Again he questioned the hostler, but all that he could glean was that the lurking traveller, the fellow who, after being refused the hospitality of the inn, was yet prowling about the stables at midnight, in search – if his story were true – of a worthless glove, was undoubtedly a stranger in the city. Than that the hostler could tell him no more.
"But," said the latter, "why not inquire at the Cheval Rouge? – there, if anywhere, monsieur may glean tidings of him."
Clutching at the suggestion he went toward that inn, which was but in the next street – a place that turned out to be a frowsy, dirty house, frequented by the humblest travellers only. And here, after describing the man he sought, he gathered the following facts, the stranger's actions since he had put up at the Cheval Rouge being indeed enough to set the tongues of the landlord and landlady wagging directly they were questioned about him:
For, strange circumstances in connection with a traveller who appeared to be, as he stated he was, dead beaten with a long journey – whence he had not said – he had not been in all night. His bed was still unslept in, his horse still in the stable. He had supped at the ordinary with one or two others, and the landlady noticed he had eaten ravenously, as one might who had fasted long; had drunk copiously, too, of petite Bourgogne, and had then gone out, saying he would be back shortly. Also, one thing was curious. "Mon Dieu!" the woman said, "it was remarkable!" He had given orders that, after his horse was rubbed down and fed, it was to be kept saddled. He might, he said, have to set forth again at any moment; he was on important business. Yet now, the woman stated, the horse was still in its stall and the man had never returned.
"And his necessaries?" St. Georges asked, after he had told the people of the house as much as he deemed fit. "What of them? His bags, his holsters, where are they? Were they taken to his room or left with his horse?"
"Necessaries! bags!" the landlord replied, "he had none. And as for pistols – well – the holsters were empty; doubtless he had them about him. Perhaps monsieur would like to see the horse?"
Yes, monsieur would like to see the horse, and was consequently taken to the stable to do so. It was a poor beast, not groomed properly for some days; at least, it looked poor and overstrained now, though perhaps a good enough animal when fresh. It showed signs, too, of having been hard ridden. For the rest, it was an ordinary animal of the most usual colour – a dark chestnut.
As to the holsters, they were empty, and in none of the horse's trappings was there aught to give any hint as to who its owner was or whence he had come.