Part 15 (1/2)
”Go on.”
”Swiftly they came behind him, yet silently, too, the man ahead of the woman, each on different sides of the way, the former outstripping the latter, so fast did he come. Then, at last, the hunted one, this dead one here, knew that it was so; he turned and saw he was pursued. At first he made as though about to run for it; then, because, may be, the burden he bore was heavy, he paused. Next he placed the child upon the ground--for now I knew, I saw, what it was as he did so--and he drew his sword with one hand, took a pistol from his belt and held it in the other, and so awaited his pursuer.”
Again St. Georges said beneath his breath, ”Go on.”
”The other came swiftly up, paused once himself--perhaps he feared the doubly armed man--then looked round at the masked woman, who seemed to say something. Doubtless she urged him on, and again he came forward until he and the fugitives were face to face.”
”Yes,” came from St. Georges's close-set lips.
”What they said I know not; I was too far away. But their action was swift. De Roquemaure's man made as though he would seize upon the child lying at the roadside--the disguised woman creeping ever nearer--when the other fired his pistol at him, and missed. I saw that as the smoke cleared away, for when it had done so they were closely engaged with their swords. Some pa.s.ses they made; once it seemed as if the fugitive won upon the other, for I saw his blade go through his left sleeve; then, ere he could recover himself, the other had thrust his sword through his body--I heard him shriek; I saw him fall! A moment later the woman had s.n.a.t.c.hed up the child and was hurrying back to the city, the man following after her, his left arm hanging straight by his side, as though still from pain. And I ran to this one here and saw that he had got his death. 'Tis strange he died not sooner than to-night. Strange he should linger so long.”
”How got you him here?”
”My brother, who hates the De Roquemaures as I do--as G.o.d knows I have cause to do--works near here on his farm. I dragged that dead creature, all insensible as he was, into the copse, then fetched Jean, and so, together, we brought him. Say,” the woman continued, leaning forward under the lamp to regard the soldier fixedly, ”you are a gentleman, an officer of some regiment. You can tell me. Is not so foul a crime as this enough to doom De Roquemaure, if brought home to him?”
”If brought home to him, perhaps. But the n.o.bles are powerful. You say that he is so, especially in this neighbourhood.”
”Curse him, yes!” she replied, her livid lips drawn tight together.
”Yet not forever. There are those who will set the snare and trap him yet.”
”I pray G.o.d!” St. Georges replied. ”He has wronged many; surely justice will yet be done.”
CHAPTER XIV.
”I MUST SPEAK!”
The Epiphany--called in old France, under the Bourbons, _la Fete des Rois_--was drawing to a close, as St. Georges, his handsome face looking very dejected and his heart heavy as lead within him, rode into Paris by the Charenton gate.
Not so entirely over, however, but that the streets were still crowded with holiday makers of all kinds, with those who were there solely to enjoy and amuse themselves, and also with those who sought to make profit out of the others. Moreover, still from all the towers and steeples the bells rang in honour of those who had died during the past year, so that, as Boileau sneeringly remarked, ”_Pour honorer les morts ils font mourir les vivants_,” while from the dark, sombre-looking houses--of which the same writer observed that they must have been built by philosophers instead of architects, so filthy were they without and so brilliant within--were still hung paper lanterns, flags, banners, and all kinds of devices and decorations.
St. Georges had found it difficult to pick his way through the many obstacles with which the streets were enc.u.mbered from the time he left the Bastille and the Rue St. Antoine, and began to approach the more fas.h.i.+onable part of Paris, the vicinity of the Pont Neuf. Richly gilt carriages of the _n.o.blesse_ and the _nouveaux riches_ pa.s.sed each other frequently, the inmates of the former disdaining to notice the inmates of the other--human nature was the same then as now--and threw the January mud upon an extraordinary crowd of foot pa.s.sengers--a crowd composed of ladies with mirrors in their hands; men with huge blonde or white wigs, who would stop suddenly to take a comb from their servants' hands and arrange their false locks; others of the commoner sort selling coffee and chocolate on the footway, another drawing teeth in the open street, two men fighting a duel with short swords, a woman and a child picking pockets.[5]
[Footnote 5: See engravings of Della Bella, done at the time and representing such scenes.]
Because it was the Epiphany--the King's Fete--Louis and the court were at the Louvre this year, occupying the vast and stately palace on which the Grande Monarque had spent since 1664 the sum of ten million seven hundred thousand francs; and high festival was being kept. All the court had come with him, including the wife who was still suspected by some of being the mistress; the d.u.c.h.esses and countesses who had been mistresses if they were so no longer; the bishops who were not in disgrace and under the displeasure of De Maintenon; the numerous offspring by various mothers; the ministers and officials--including Louvois. And it was to present himself to the latter first, and afterward to seek audience with Louis, that St.
Georges now rode toward the palace.
”Surely,” he thought to himself as he directed his course through the heterogeneous ma.s.s in the streets, ”surely when I relate my tale, tell of the terrible blow that has fallen upon me, I shall be forgiven for having halted on my route. I am more than a week behind, have lagged on my road, yet for what a cause--what a cause! Oh, my child, my little Dorine, that I should have had to come away and leave you behind! My child! My child!”
Never for a moment since he had left the peasant's hut had his thoughts been absent from that child, never had they ceased to dwell upon the conspiracy that existed without doubt against both him and her. Moreover, so intricate, so entangled did all appear that the mesh seemed incapable of being unravelled, and his brain whirled as he endeavoured to pierce the darkness of it all.
”Let me reflect,” he had pondered to himself, as day by day he drew nearer to the capital, ”let me try to think it all out, see it clearly. G.o.d give me power to do so!”
Then he had endeavoured, by going over his life from the commencement, to reduce matters to something short of chaos.
”That I am De Vannes's son--his heir--must be!” he thought; ”it gives the cause, the reason for what follows. This is clear. Also the attack on me, the stealing of Dorine, proceeds from a like cause. And if all that was the duke's--his t.i.tle, his wealth--is mine, and, after me, hers, in whose light can we stand, against whose interest thrust, but De Roquemaure's? All this is as clear as day; it is here the mystery begins. For, first, how does he know this? Next--which is more strange--how know that on a certain night I should be on the road between two such remote places as Pontarlier and Paris? How know, too, that I have my child with me, as he must have known, since he mentioned it to the myrmidons he enlisted at Recey? If I could discover this--should ever discover it, a light might break in upon what followed--more mysterious still.”
When he had turned this over and over again in his thoughts as mile by mile and league by league he drew nearer the end of his journey, he endeavoured to arrange and piece together the further, the newer, and fresher mystery of all that had happened since the night he rested under the roof of the De Roquemaures' house. And here his perplexity was even greater than before.
”He acts alone,” he reflected; ”at least without a.s.sistance from his kinswomen--his stepmother and half-sister. For if such is not the case, then viler wretches than they never bore the shape of womanhood.