 
Transcriber's Notes:
SERVANTS OF SIN
BY THE SAME AUTHORROMANCESIN THE DAY OF ADVERSITY NOVELS OF TO-DAYA BITTER HERITAGE
SERVANTS OF SINA ROMANCE
BYJOHN BLOUNDELLE-BURTON
"HOW DOTH THE CITY SIT SOLITARY THAT WAS
METHUEN & CO. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CONTENTS | |
| CHAP. | |
| I. | Monsieur le Duc. |
| II. | Les Demoiselles Montjoie at Home. |
| III. | The Romance of Monsieur Vandecque. |
| IV. | A Sister of Mercy. |
| V. | The Duke's Desire |
| VI. | The Duke's Bride. |
| VII. | Man And Wife. |
| VIII. | The Street Of The Holy Apostles. |
| IX. | Alone. |
| X. | The Prison of St. Martin des Champs. |
| XI. | The Condemned. |
| XII. | Marseilles. |
| XIII. | "My Wife! What Wife? I have no Wife." |
| XIV. | Where is the Man? |
| XV. | The Pest. |
| XVI. | "I had not Lived till now, could sorrow kill." |
| XVII. | An Aristocratic Resort. |
| XVIII. | "The Abandoned Orphan"--Prologue |
| XIX. | "The Abandoned Orphan"--Drama |
| XX. | "The Way to Dusty Death" |
| XXI. | A Night Ride. |
| XXII. | The Stricken City. |
| XXIII. | Within the Walls. |
| XXIV. | A Discovery. |
| XXV. | Face to Face. |
| XXVI. | "Revenge--Bitter! Ere Long Back on Itself Recoils!" |
| XXVII. | "I Love Her!--She is my Wife." |
| XXVIII. | The Walled-up Doors. |
| XXIX. | Asleep or Awake. |
| XXX. | "If after Every Tempest come such Calms!" |
SERVANTS OF SIN
CHAPTER I
MONSIEUR LE DUC
Lifting aside the heavy tapestry that hung down in front of the window of the tourelle which formed an angle of the room--a window from which the Bastille might be seen frowning over the Quartier St. Antoine, a third of a mile away--the man shrugged his shoulders, uttered a peevish exclamation, and muttered, next:
"Snow! Snow! Snow! Always snow! Curse the snow!" Then he turned back into the room, letting the curtain fall behind him, and seated himself once more in a heavy fauteuil opposite the great fireplace, up the chimney of which the logs roared in a cheerful blaze.
"Hard winters, now," he muttered once more, still thinking of the weather outside; "always hard winters in Paris now. 'Twas so when I rode back here after the campaign in Spain was over. When I rode back," he repeated, "a year ago." He paused, reflecting; then continued:
"Ay, a year ago. Why! so it was. A year ago to-day. A year this very day. The last day of December. Ay, the bells were ringing from Notre Dame, St. Roch--the Tour St. Jacques. To welcome in the New Year. Almost, it seemed, judging by the events of the next few weeks, to welcome me to my inheritance. To my inheritance! Yet, how far off that inheritance seemed once! As far off as the love of those curs, my relatives, was then."
He let himself sink farther and farther into the deep recesses of the huge fauteuil as thus he mused, stretched out his long legs towards the fire, stretched out, too, a long arm and a long, slim brown hand towards where a flask of tokay stood, with a goblet by its side; poured out a draught and drank it down.
"A far-off love, then," he said again, "now near, and warm, and generous. Bah!"
Looking at the man as he lay stretched in the chair and revelling in the luxury and comfort by which he was surrounded, one might have thought there was some incongruity between him and those surroundings. The room--the furniture and hangings--the latter a pale blue, bordered with fawn-coloured lace--the dainty ornaments, the picture let in the wall above the chimney-piece, with others above the doorway and windows--did not match with the occupant. No more than it and they matched with a bundle of swords in one corner of it; swords of all kinds. One, a heavy, straight, cut-and-thrust weapon; another an English rapier with flamboyant blade and straight quillon; a third of the Colichemarde pattern; a fourth a viperish-looking spadroon; a fifth a German Flamberg with deadly grooved blade and long-curled quillons.
Surely a finished swordsman this, or a man who had been one!
Looking at him one might judge that he was so still--or could be so upon occasion.
His wig was off--it hung upon the edge of an old praying-chair that was pushed into a corner as though of no further use; certainly of none to the present occupant of this room--and his black-cropped hair, his small black moustache, which looked like a dab stuck on his upper lip--since it extended no further on either side of his face than beneath each nostril--added to his black eyes, gave him a saturnine expression, not to say a menacing one. For the rest, he was a thick-set, brawny man of perhaps five-and-forty, with a deeply-tanned complexion that looked as though it had been exposed to many a pitiless storm and many a fierce-beating sun; a complexion that, were it not for a whiteness beneath the eyes, which seemed to tell of late hours and too much wine, and other things that often enough go with wine and wassail, would have been a healthy one.
Also, it was to be noted that, in some way, his apparel scarcely seemed suited to him. The satin coat of russet brown; the deep waistcoat of white satin, flowered with red roses and pink daisies and little sprays of green leaves; the white knee-breeches also of satin, the gold-buckled shoes, matched not with the sturdy form and fierce face. Instead of this costume À la RÉgence one would have more expected to see the buff jerkin of a soldier, the brass spurs at the heels of long brown riding-boots, and, likewise, one of the great swords now reclining in the corner buckled close to his thigh. Or else to have seen the man sitting in some barrack guardroom with, beneath his feet, an uncarpeted floor, and, to his hand, a pint stoop, instead of finding him here in this highly-ornamented saloon.
"The plague seize me!" he exclaimed, using one of his favourite oaths, "but there is no going out to-night. Nor any likelihood of anyone coming in. I cannot go forth to gaze upon my adorable Laure; neither Morlaix nor Sainte Foix are likely to get here."
And, after glancing out at the fast falling snow, he abandoned himself once more to his reflections. Though, now, those reflections were aided by the perusal of a packet of letters which he drew forth from an escritoire standing by the side of the fireplace. A bundle of letters all written in a woman's hand.
He knew them well enough--by heart almost; he had read them over and over again in the past year; it was perhaps, therefore, because of this that he now glanced at them as they came to his hand; it happening, consequently, that the one he had commenced to peruse was the last he had received.
It was dated not more than a week back--the night before Christmas, of the year 1719.
"Mon ami," it commenced, "I am desolated with grief that you cannot be with me this Christmastide. I had hoped so much that we should have spent the last New Year's Day together before our marriage."
"Bah!" exclaimed the man, impatiently. "Before our marriage. Bah!" and he rattled the sheet in his hand as he went on with its perusal. "I imagine that," the letter continued, "after all which has gone before and has been between us it will ere long take place----."
"Ah!" he broke off once more, exclaiming, "Ah! you imagine that, dear Marquise. You imagine that. Ha! you imagine that. So be it. Yet, on my part, I imagine something quite the contrary. I dare to imagine it will never take place. I think not. There are others--there is one other. Laure--Laure--Laure Vauxcelles. My beautiful Laure! Yet--yet--I know not. Am I wise? Does she love me? Love me! No matter about that! She will be my wife; the mother of future Desparres. However, let us see. To the Marquise." And again he regarded his letters--flinging this one aside as though not worth the trouble of further re-reading--and took up another. Yet it, also, seemed scarcely to demand more consideration than that which he had accorded its forerunner in his hands, and was also discarded; then another and another, until he had come to the last of the little packet--that which bore the earliest date. This commenced, however, with a vastly different form of address than did the one of which we have seen a portion. It opened with the pretty greeting, "My hero." And it opened, too, with a very feminine form of rejoicing--a pÆan of delight.
"At last, at last, at last, my soldier," the writer said, "at last, thou hast come to thine own. The unhappy boy is dead; my hero, my Alcides, is no longer the poor captain following the wars for hard knocks; his position is assured; he is rich, the inheritor, nay, the possessor of his great family title. I salute you, monsieur le----."
As his eyes reached those words, there came to his ears the noise of the great bell pealing in the courtyard as though rung by one seeking immediate entrance. Then, a moment later, the noise of lackeys addressing one another; in another instant, the sound of a footfall in the corridor outside--drawing nearer to the room where the man was. Wherefore he came out of the tower with the window in it, to which he had vainly gone, as though to observe what might be happening in the street--knowing even as he did so that he could see nothing, since, whoever his visitor might be, that visitor and his carriage, or sedan-chair, had already entered the courtyard with his menials.
Then, in answer to the soft knock at the door, he bade the person come in.
"Who is below?" he asked of the footman, thinking some friend had kindly ventured forth on this inclement night to visit him--perhaps to take a hand at pharaon or piquet.
"Monsieur, it is Madame la Marquise----"
"La Marquise?"
"Grignan de Poissy."
For a moment the man addressed stood still, facing his servant; his eyes a little closed, his upper eyelids lowered somewhat; then he said quietly:
"Show Madame la Marquise to this apartment. Or, rather, I will come with you to welcome Madame la Marquise." While, suiting his action to his words, he preceded the footman to the head of the great staircase and warmly welcomed the lady who, by this time, was almost at the head of it. Doubtless, she knew she would not be denied.
That this man had been (as the letter, which he had a few moments ago but glanced at, said) "a poor captain following the wars" was no doubt the fact; now, however, he was becoming a perfect courtier, and testified that such was the case by his demeanour. With easy grace he removed from her shoulders the great furred houppelande, or cloak, which the ladies of the period of the Regency wore on such a night as this, and carried it over his own arm; with equal grace he led her into the room he had but now quitted, placed her in the great fauteuil before the fire, and put before her feet a footstool, while he, with great courtesy, even removed her shoes, and thus left her silk-stockinged feet to benefit by the genial warmth thrown out by the logs.
"I protest it is too good of you, Diane," he whispered, as he paid her all these attentions, "too good of you to visit thus so idle an admirer as I am. See, I, a soldier, a man used to all weathers, have not dared to quit my own hearth on such a night as this. Yet Diane, adorable Diane, why--why--expose yourself to the inclemency of the night--even, almost, I might say, to the gossip of your--and of my--menials."
"The gossip of your menials!" the lady exclaimed. "The gossip of your menials? Will this fresh incident expose us to any further gossip, do you suppose? It is a long while since our names have been coupled together, Monsieur le Duc."
"Monsieur le Duc!" he repeated. "What a form of address! Monsieur le Duc! My name to you is--has ever been--Armand."
"Ay, 'tis so," she answered, while, even as she continued speaking a little bitterly to him, she shifted her feet upon the footstool, so that they should get their full share of the luxurious warmth of the fire. "'Tis so. Has been so for more years now than a woman cares to count. Desparre," she said, addressing him shortly, "how long have we known each other--how old am I?"
For answer he gave her a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders, as though it were impossible such a question should be asked, or, being asked, could possibly be answered by him; while she, her blue eyes fixed upon his face, herself replied to the question. "It is twenty years," she said, "since we first met."
"Alas!" with another shrug, meant this time to express a wince of emotion.
"Yes, twenty years," she continued. "A long while, is it not? I, a young widow then; you, Armand Desparre, a penniless porte-drapeau in the Regiment de Bellebrune. Yet not so penniless either, if I remember aright"--and the blue eyes looked steely now, as they gazed from beneath their thick auburn fringe at him--"not penniless. You lived well for an ensign absolutely without private means--rode a good horse, could throw a main with the richest man in the regiment."
"Diane," he interrupted, "these suggestions, these reminiscences are unseemly."
"Unseemly! Heavens! Yes, they are unseemly. However, no matter for that. You are no longer a poor man. Armand Desparre is rich, he is no more the poor marching soldier, he is Monsieur le Duc Desparre."
"More recollections," he said, with still another shrug. "Diane, we know all this. The world, our world, knows who and what I am."
"Also our world knows, expects, that there is to be a Duchess Desparre."
"Yes," he answered, "it knows, it expects, that."
"Expects! My God!" she exclaimed vehemently, "if it knew all it would not only expect but insist that that duchesse should be the woman who now bears the title of the Marquise Grignan de Poissy."
"It does not know all. Meanwhile," and his eye glanced towards the heap of swords in the corner of the room, "who is there to insist on what my conduct shall be--to order it to be otherwise than I choose it shall be? Frankly, Diane, who is there to insist and make the insistence good?"
"There are men of the De Poissy family," she replied, and her glance, too, rested on those swords. "Desparre is not the only master of fence in Paris."
"Chut! They are your kinsmen. I do not desire to slay them, nor, I presume, will they desire to slay me. And, desiring, what could they do? De Poissy himself is only a boy."
"He is the head of the house. He will not see the wife of the late head slighted." Then, before he could make any answer to this remark, she turned round suddenly on him and exclaimed, while again the blue eyes looked steely through their heavy lashes:
"Who is Laure Vauxcelles?"
This question, asked with such unexpectedness, startled even the man's cynical superciliousness, as he showed by the way in which he stammered forth an answer that was no answer at all.
"Laure--Vauxcelles! What--what--do you know of her? She is not of your--our--class."
"Pardon. Every woman who is well favoured is--of your class."
"What do you know of her?" he repeated, unheeding the taunt, though with a look that might have been regarded as a menacing one.
"Only," she answered, "that which most of those who are of your--our--class know. The gossip of the salon, the court, the Palais Royal. Armand Desparre, I have been in Paris two days and was bidden to the Regent's supper last night--otherwise I should have been still at the Abbaye de Grignan dispensing New Year hospitality with the boy, De Poissy. Instead, therefore, I was at supper in the oval room. And de ParabÉre, de Sabran, de Noailles, le Duc de Richelieu--a dozen, were there. One hears gossip in the oval room, 'specially when the Regent has drunk sufficient of that stuff," and she nodded towards Monsieur's still unfinished flask of tokay. "When he is asleep at the head of his table endeavouring to--well--sleep off--shake off its fumes ere going to his box close by to hear La Gautier sing."
"What did you hear?" Desparre asked now.
"Gossip," the Marquise answered. "Gossip. Perhaps true--perhaps idle. God knows. The story of a man," she continued, with a shrug of her shoulders, "no longer young, once very poor, yet always with pistoles in his pocket, since he did not disdain to take gifts from a foolish woman whom he had wronged and who loved him."
"Was that mentioned?"
"It was hinted at. It was known, too, by one listener, at least--myself--to be true. A man," she continued, "now well to do, able to gratify almost every desire he possesses. Of high position. The story of a man," she went on with machine-like insistence, "who, finding at last, however, one desire he is not able to gratify--the desire of adding one more woman to his victims, and that a woman young enough to be his daughter--is about to change his character. To abandon that of knave, to adopt that of fool."
"Also," interrupted Monsieur le Duc, "a man who will demand from Madame la Marquise Grignan de Poissy the name of her gossip. It is to be desired that that gossip should be a man. Otherwise, her nephew the Marquis Grignan de Poissy will perhaps consent to be Madame's representative."
"To adopt the rÔle of a fool," she continued, unheeding his words. "To marry the woman--the niece of a broken-down gamester--who refuses to become his victim. A creature bred up in the gutter!"
"Madame will allow that this--fool--is subject to no control or criticism?"
"Madame will allow anything that Monsieur le Duc desires. Even, if he pleases, that he is a coward and contemptible."
CHAPTER II
LES DEMOISELLES MONTJOIE AT HOME
Outside the snow had ceased to fall; in its place had come the clear, crisp, and biting stillness of an intense frost, accompanied by that penetrating cold which gives those who are subjected to it the feeling that they are themselves gradually freezing, that the blood within them is turning to ice itself. A cold, hard night; with the half-foot long icicles cracking from the increasing density of the frost, and falling, with a little clatter and a shivering, into atoms on the heads or at the feet of the passers-by; a night on which beggars huddled together for warmth in stoops and porches, or, being solitary, laid down moaning in their agony on doorsteps until, at the end, there came that warm, blissful glow which precedes death by frost. A night when the well-to-do who were abroad drew cloaks, roquelaures, and houppelandes tighter round them as they shivered and shook in chariots and sedan chairs; when dogs were brought in from kennels and placed before the blazing fires so that their unhappy carcases might be thawed back to life and comfort, and when horses in their stalls had rugs and cloths strapped over their backs so that, in the morning, they should not be found stretched dead upon their straw.
Inside, except in the garrets and other dwellings of the outcasts, who had neither fuel to their fires nor rags to their backs, every effort was made to expel the winter cold; wood fires blazed on hearths and in Alsatian stoves; each nook and cranny of every window was plugged carefully; while men, and in many cases, women as well, drank spiced Lunel and Florence, Richebourg and St. Georges, to keep their temperatures up. And drank copiously, too.
It was the coldest night of the winter 1719-20; the coldest night of that long spell of frost which had gripped Paris in its icy grasp.
Yet, in the salons of the Demoiselles Montjoie that frost was confronted--defeated; it seemed unable to penetrate into the warmed and scented rooms, over every door and window of which was hung arras and tapestry; unable to touch, and cause to shiver in touching, either the bare-shouldered women who lounged in the velvet fauteuils or the group of men who, in their turn, wandered aimlessly about.
"Confusion!" exclaimed one of the latter, a well-dressed, middle-aged man, "when is Susanne about to begin? What are we here for? To gaze into each other's fascinating faces or to recount our week-old scandals? The fiend take it! one might as well be at home and have been spared the encounter with the night air!"
"Have patience, Morlaix!" exclaimed a second; "the game never begins until the pigeons are here. Sportsmen fire not into the air, nor against one another. Do you want to win my louis-d'ors, or I yours? No, no! On the contrary, let us combine. So, so," he broke off, "there come two. The Prince Mirabel and Sainte Foix."
"Mirabel and Sainte Foix!" exclaimed the other. "Mirabel and Sainte Foix! My faith, all we shall get out of them will not make us fat. Sainte Foix cannot have got a thousand louis-d'ors left in the world, and those which he has Mirabel will attach for himself. Mon Dieu! that one of the Rohans should be one of us!"
The other shrugged his shoulders; then he said:
"Speak for yourself, mon ami. Meanwhile, I do not consider myself the same as Mirabel. I have not been kicked out of the army. I am no protector of all the sharpers in Paris. Speak for yourself, my friend. For yourself."
"Now, there," said the other, taking not the slightest notice of his acquaintance's protestations, which he probably reckoned at their proper value. "There is one who might be worth----"
"Nothing! He would have been once, but his money is all gone. La Mothe over there has had some of it, Mirabel also; even I have touched a little. Now, there is none to touch. They even say he owes the respected Duc Desparre twenty thousand livres, and cannot pay them."
"Desparre will expect them."
"That is possible. But I have great doubts--as to his ever getting them, I mean. Yet he is a gentleman, this Englishman; it may be he will find means to pay. It is a pity he does not ask his countryman, John Law, for assistance. He might put him in the way of making something."
"He might; though that I also doubt. Law has bigger friends to help than dissolute young Englishmen; and they are not countrymen, the financier being Scotch. Meanwhile, as I say, Desparre will expect his money. He will want it, rich as he is, for his honeymoon."
"His honeymoon! Faugh! the wretch. He is fifty if an hour. And, frankly, is it true? Has he bought Laure Vauxcelles?"
"Ay, body and soul; from her uncle Vandecque. She is his, and cannot escape; she is in his grip. There is no hope for her. Vandecque is her guardian; our law gives him full power over her. It is obedience to the guardian's orders--or--you know!"
"Yes, I know. A convent; the veil. I know. Ha! speak of the angels! Behold!" and his eyes turned towards the heavily-curtained doorway, at which a woman, accompanied by a man much her senior in years, appeared at the moment.
A woman! Nay! little more than a girl--yet a girl who ere long would be a beauteous woman. Tall and supple, with a figure giving promise of ripe fulness ere many months should have passed, with a face of sweet loveliness--possessing dark hazel eyes, an exquisite mouth, a head crowned with light chestnut hair, one curl of which (called by the rouÉs of the Regent's Court a "follow me, young man") fell over the shoulder to the fair bosom beneath. The face of a girl to dream of by night, to stand before by day and worship.
No wonder that Desparre, forty-five years of age as he really was, and a dissolute, depraved rouÉ to whom swift advancing age had brought no cessation of his evil yearnings, was supposed to have shown good taste in purchasing this modern Iphigenia, in buying her from her uncle, the gambler, Vandecque--the man who entered now by her side.
In this salon there was a score of women, all of whom were well favoured enough; yet the glances they cast at Laure Vauxcelles showed that they owned their superior here. Moreover, they envied her. Desparre was thought to be enormously rich--had, indeed, always been considered so since he inherited his dukedom; but now that he had thrust his hand into the golden rain that fell in the Rue Quincampoix and, with it, had drawn forth more than a million livres--as many said!--there was not one of them who, being unmarried, would not have sold herself to him. But he had elected to buy Laure Vauxcelles, they understood; and yet Laure hated him. "She was a beautiful fool!" they whispered to each other.
The tables were ready by the time she and her uncle had made their greetings. The "guests" sat down to biribi, pharaon (faro), and lansquenet. It was what they had come for, since the Demoiselles Montjoie kept the most fashionable gambling-house in Paris--a house in which the Regent had condescended to play ere now. A house in which, many years later, a milliner's girl, who was brought there to exhibit her beauty, managed to become transformed into a king's favourite, known afterwards as Madame du Barry.
Soon the gamblers were at it fast and furious. The stockbrokers of the Rues Quincampoix[1] and Vivienne--not having had enough excitement during the day in buying and selling Mississippi shares--were now engaged in retrieving their losses, if possible, or losing their gains. Even the greater part of the women had left the velvet lounges and fauteuils and were tempting fate according to their means, with crowns, louis-d'ors shares of the Royal Bank, or "The Louisiana Company"; gambling in sums from twenty pounds to a thousand.
And Vandecque, Laure's uncle, having now his purse well lined, though once nothing rubbed themselves together within it but a few beggarly coppers, was presiding at the lansquenet table, had flung down an important sum to make a bank, and was--as loudly as the manners of good society under the Regency would permit--inviting all round him to try their chance. While they, on their part, were eager enough to possess themselves of that purse's contents, though he himself had very little fear that such was likely to be the case.
Two there were, however, who sat apart and did not join in the play--one, the ruined young Englishman of whom Morlaix and his companion had spoken, the other, Laure Vauxcelles, the woman who was to be sold in marriage to Desparre. Neither had spoken, however, on Laure's entrance with Vandecque. The man had remained seated on one of the velvet lounges at the far end of the room, his eyes fixed on the richly-painted ceiling, with its cupids and nymphs and goddesses--fitting allegories to the greatest and most aristocratic gambling hell in Paris! The girl, on entering, had cast one swift glance at him from those, hazel eyes, and had then turned them away. Yet he had seen that glance, although he had taken no notice of it.
Presently, the game waxing more and more furious while Vandecque's back was turned to them (he being much occupied with his earnest endeavours to capture all the bank notes and the obligations of the Royal Bank and the Louisiana Company, and the little piles of gold pieces scattered about), the young man rose from his seat, and, walking to where Laure Vauxcelles sat some twenty paces from him, staring straight before her, said:
"This should be almost Mademoiselle's last appearance here. Doubtless Monsieur le Duc is anxious for--for his union with Mademoiselle. When, if one may make so bold to ask, is it likely to take place?"
For answer, the girl seated before him raised her eyes to those of the young Englishman, then--with a glance towards Vandecque's back, rounded as it bent over the table, while he scooped up the stakes which a successful deal of the cards had made his--said slowly:
"Never. Never--if I can prevent it."
She spoke in a low whisper, for fear the gambler should hear her, yet it was clear and distinct enough to reach the ears of the man before her; and, as he heard the words, he started. Yet, because--although he was still very young--the life he had led, the people he had mixed among in Paris, had taught him to steel himself against the exhibition of all emotion, he said very quietly:
"Mademoiselle is, if I may say it, a little difficult. She appears to reject all honest admiration offered to her. To--to desire to remain untouched by the love of any man?"
"The love of any man! Does Monsieur Clarges regard the love of the Duc Desparre as worth having? Does he regard the Duc Desparre as a man? As one whose wife any woman should desire to become?"
Monsieur Clarges shrugged his shoulders, then he said:
"There have been others."
"Yes," she answered. "There have been others."
"And they were equally unfortunate. There was one----"
"There was one," she replied, interrupting, and with her glance firmly fixed him, "who desired my love; who desired me for his wife. A year ago. Is it not so? And, Monsieur Clarges, what was my answer to him? You should know. Recall it."
"Your answer was that you did not love him; that, therefore, you could be no wife of his. Now, Mademoiselle, recall yourself--it is your turn--what he then said. It was this, I think. That he so loved you that, without receiving back any love from you in return, he begged you to grant his prayer; to believe that he would win that love at last if you would but give yourself to him; while, if you desired it, he would so show the reverence he held you in--that, once you were his wife, he would demand nothing more from you. Nothing but that he might be by your side; be but as a brother, a champion, a sentinel to watch and guard over you, although a husband in truth. That was what he said. That was all he desired. Mademoiselle, will the Duc Desparre be as loyal a husband as this, do you think?"
"The Duc Desparre will never be husband of mine."
The Englishman again shrugged his shoulders. He had learnt the trick well during a long exile in Paris--an exile dating from the time when the Pretender's cause was lost by the Earl of Mar, and he, a Jacobite, had followed him to France after the "'15."
"But how to avoid it now?" he asked. "The time draws near--is at hand. How escape?"
"Is there not one way?" she asked, with again an upward glance of those eyes.
"No no no!" he replied, his calmness deserting him now. "No! no! Not that! Not that!"
"How else? There is no other."
As they spoke the play still went on at the tables; women shrieked still, half in earnest half in jest, as a card turned up that told against them. Still Vandecque crouched over the board where he held the bank and where his greedy hands drew in the stakes, for he was winning heavily. Already he had twenty thousand livres before him drawn from the pockets of Mirabel, Sainte Foix, the stockbrokers of the Rues Quincampoix and Vivienne, and from the female gamblers. And, gambler himself, he had forgotten all else; he had forgotten almost that the niece whom he guarded so carefully until the time should come when he would hand her over to her purchaser, was in the room.
"It is an accursed law," the Englishman murmured; "a vile, accursed law which gives a father or a guardian such power. In no other country would it be possible. Yet Lau--Mademoiselle--that which you meditate must never be. Oh! to think of it! To think of it!"
He buried his head in his hands now as he spoke--he had taken a seat beside her--and reflected on the terror of the thing, the horror that she, whom he had loved so madly--whom, alas! he loved still, though she cared nothing for him--should be doomed to one of two extremes--marriage with Desparre, or a convent. Or, worse--a third, a more fearful horror! That which she meditated--death!
For that, if she had taken this resolve, she would carry it out he did not doubt. She would never have proclaimed her intention had she not been determined. She had said it was the only way!
But, suddenly, he looked up at her, bent his head nearer to hers, whispered a word. Then said aloud:
"There is your safety. There your only chance. Take it."
As he spoke, she started, and a rich glow came into her face while her eyes sparkled; but a moment later her countenance fell again, and she drew away from him.
"No! no!" she said. "No! no! Not that way. Not that. Not such a sacrifice as that. Never! never never!"
CHAPTER III
THE ROMANCE OF MONSIEUR VANDECQUE
An evening or so after the meeting between Laure Vauxcelles and Walter Clarges at the gambling hell kept by the Demoiselles Montjoie, Vandecque sat in the saloon of his apartments in the Passage du Commerce. Very comfortable apartments they were, too, if bizarre ornaments and rococo furniture, combined with the most gorgeous colours possible to be obtained, could be considered as providing comfort. Yet, since it was a period of bizarrerie and whimsical caprice in furniture, clothing, and life generally (including morals), it may be that, to most people--certainly to most people with whom the once broken-down but now successful gambler was permitted to associate--the rococo nature of his surroundings would not have appeared particularly out of place. And, undoubtedly, such a warm nest must have brought comfort to the heart of the man who paid at the present moment 250f. a week for the right of occupying that nest, since there had been a time once when he scarce knew how to find one franc a day whereby to pay in advance for a night's lodgings in a back alley. Also, he had passed, previously to that period of discomfort, a portion of his life away from Paris in a condition which the French termed politely (whenever they mentioned such an unpleasant subject) "in retreat," and had been subjected to a process that they designated as "marquÉ," which, in plain English, means that he had been at the galleys as a slave and had been branded. "For the cause of religion," he said, if he ever said anything at all on the subject; "for a question of theft and larceny with violence" being, however, written in the factum of the eminent French counsel who appeared against him before the judges in Paris.
His life had been a romance, he was in the habit of observing in his moments of ease, which were when the gambling hells were closed during the day-time, or the stockbrokers' offices in the Rues Quincampoix and Vivienne during the night-time. And so, indeed, it had been if romance is constituted and made up of robbery, cheating, chicanery, the wearing of blazing scarlet coats one month and the standing bare-backed in prison yards during the next, there to have the shoulders and loins scourged with a whip previously steeped in brine. A romance, if drinking flasks of champagne and iced tokay at one period, and water out of street fountains at another, or riding in gilt sedan-chairs one week and being flogged along at a cart tail another, formed one. For all these things had happened to Jean Vandecque, as well as the galleys in the past, with the carcan, or collar around his neck, and the possession of the gorgeous apartments in the Passage du Commerce at the present moment--all these, and many more.
With also another romance--or the commencement and foundation of one. That which has now to be told.
Struggling on foot along the great road that leads from the South to Paris, ten years before this story begins, Jean Vandecque (with the discharge of a liberated convict from the galley Le Requin huddled away in the bosom of his filthy shirt) viewed the capital at last--his face burnt black by the Mediterranean suns under which he had slaved for five years, and by the hot winds which had swept over his nakedness during that time. God knows how he would have got so far, how have traversed those weary miles without falling dead by the wayside, had it not been for that internal power which he possessed (in common with the lowest, as well as the highest of beasts) of finding subsistence somehow; of supporting life. An egg stolen here and there along the country roads; a fowl seized, throttled, and eaten raw, if no sticks could be found wherewith to make a fire; a child robbed of a loaf--and lucky that it was not throttled too; a lonely grange despoiled; a shopkeeper's till in some hamlet emptied of a few sous; a woman cajoled out of a drink of common wine; and Paris at last. Paris, the home of the rich and well-to-do; the refuge of every knave and sharper who wished to prey upon others. Paris, into which he limped footsore and weary, and clad in dusty rags; Paris, full of wealth and full of fools to be exploited.
He found his home, or, at least, he found the home in which his unhappy wife sheltered; a garret under the roof of a crazy, tumble-down house behind Notre Dame--found both home and wife after a day's search and many inquiries made in cellars and reeking courts and hideous alleys, into which none were allowed to penetrate except those who bore the brand of vagabond and scoundrel stamped clear and indelible upon them.
Also, he found something else: A child--a girl eight years old--playing in a heap of charred faggots in the chimney; a child who told him that she was hungry, and that there was no food at all in the place.
"Whose is the brat?" he asked of his wife, knowing very well that, at least, it was not hers, since it must of a certainty have been born three years before he went "into retreat" on the Mediterranean. "Whose? Have you grown so rich that you adopt children now; or is it paid for, eh?"
"It is paid for," the patient creature said, shuddering at the man's return, since she had hoped that he had died in the galley and would never, consequently, wander back to Paris to molest her. "Paid for, and will be----"
"Badly paid for, at least, since its adoption leads you to no better circumstances than these in which I find you. Give me some food. I have eaten nothing for hours."
"Nor I; nor the child there. Not for twenty-four hours. I have not a sol; nor anything to sell."
The man looked at his wife from under bushy black eyebrows--though eyebrows not much blacker than his baked face; then he thrust his hand into his pocket and drew forth five sols and weighed them in his hands as though they were gold pieces. He had stolen them that morning from the basket of a blind man sleeping in the sun outside St. Roch, when no one was looking.
"Go, buy bread," he said. "Get something. I am starving. Go."
"Bread--with these! They will not buy enough for one. And we are so hungry, she and I. See, the child weeps for hunger. Have you no more?"
"Not a coin. Have you?"
"Alas! God, He knows! Nothing. And we are dying of hunger."
"How is it you are not at work, earning something?"
"They will trust me no more. They fear I shall sell the goods confided to me. Who entrusts velvets, or silk, or laces to such as I, or lets such as I enter their shops to work there?"
"What is to be done, then?"
"Die," the woman said. "There is nought else to do."
"Bah! In Paris! Imbecile! In Paris, full of wealth and food! Stay here till I return."
And he went swiftly out. Some hours later, when the sun had sunk behind the great roof of the Cathedral, when the children were playing about beneath the spot where the statues were, and when the pigeons were seeking their niches, those three were eating a hearty meal, all seated on the floor, since there was neither chair nor table nor bed within the room; a meal consisting of a loaf, a piece of bacon, and some hard-boiled eggs. The woman and the child got but a poor share, 'tis true, their portions being the morsels which Vandecque tossed to them every now and again; while of a wine bottle, which he constantly applied to his mouth, they got nothing at all. Yet their hunger was appeased; they were glad enough to do without drink.
* * * * * *
The passing years brought changes to two of these outcasts, as it did to the wealthy in Paris. Vandecque's wife had died of the small-pox twelve months after his return; the adopted child, Vandecque's niece, Mdlle. Vauxcelles, was developing fast into a lovely girl; while as for Vandecque--well! the gallows bird, the man who had worn the iron collar round his neck and who bore upon his shoulders the brand, had disappeared, and in his place had come a grave, sedate person clad always in sombre clothes, yet a man conspicuous for the purity of his linen and lace and the neatness of his attire. While, although he had not as yet attained to the splendour of the Passage du Commerce, his rooms in the Rue du Paon were comfortable and there was no lack of either food, or drink, or fuel--the three things that the outcast who has escaped and triumphed over the miseries and memories of the past most seeks to make sure of in the future.
He was known also to great and rich personages now, he had patrons amongst the nobility and was acquainted with the rouÉs who circled round the Regent. He was prominent, and, as he frequently told himself, was "respected."
He was a successful man.
How he had become so, however, he did not dilate on--or certainly not on the earlier of his successes after his reappearance!--even when making those statements about his romantic life with which he occasionally favoured his friends. Had he done so, he would not, perhaps, have shocked very much the ears, or morals, of his listeners, but he must, at least, have betrayed the names of several eminent patrons for whom he had done dirty work in a manner which might have placed his own ears, if not his life, in danger, and would, thereby, probably have led to his once more traversing the road to Marseilles or to Cette--which is almost the same thing--to again partake of the shelter of the galleys.
Yet he would never have found or come into contact with these illustrious patrons, these men who required secret agents to minister to their private pleasures, had it not been for a stupendous piece of good fortune which befell him shortly after his return to Paris from the Mediterranean. It was, indeed, so strange a piece of good fortune that it may well be set down here as a striking instance of how the Devil takes care of his own.
From his late wife he had never been able to obtain any information as to who "the brat" was whom he had found playing about in the ashes on the hearth in the garret, when he returned from his period of southern seclusion; he had not found out even so much as what name she was supposed to bear, except that of "Laure," which seemed to have been bestowed on the child by Madame Vandecque on the principle that one name was as good as another by which to call a child. She had said herself that she did not know anything further--that, being horribly poor after Vandecque had departed for the south, she had yielded to the offer of an abbÉ--now dead--to adopt the girl, twenty-five louis-d'ors being paid to her for doing so. That was all, she said, that she knew. But, she added (with a firmness which considerably astonished her lord and master) that, especially as she had come to love the creature which was so dependent on her, she meant to carry out her contract and to do her best by her. To Vandecque's suspicious nature--a nature sharpened by countless acts of roguery of all kinds--this statement presented itself as a lie, and he believed that either his wife had received a very much larger sum of money in payment for the child's adoption than she had stated, or that she was surreptitiously receiving regular sums of money at intervals on its behalf. Of the two ideas, he inclined more to the latter than the former, and it was owing to this belief that he did not at once take steps to disembarrass himself of the burden with which he found himself saddled, and send the child of at once to the Home of the Foundlings whence she would eventually have been sold to a beggar for a few livres and trained to demand alms in the street, as usually happened to deserted children in the reign of Louis the Great. Later on he was thankful--he told himself that he was "devoutly thankful"--that he had never done anything of the sort.
He was one day, about a year after his wife's death, mounting the ricketty stairs which led to the garret in which he had found the woman on his return, when, to his astonishment, he saw a Sister of Charity standing outside the door of his room, looking hesitatingly about her, and glancing down towards him as he ascended to where she was. And it was very evident to him that the woman had been knocking at his door without receiving any answer to her summons. This was a thing certain to happen in any case, since it was Vandecque's habit on quitting his shelter during the day-time to send Laure to play with all the other vagrant children of the alley, and to put the key in his pocket. At night, the plan was varied somewhat when he went forth, the girl being sent to her bed and locked into the room for safety.
"Madame desires--?" he said now, as he reached the landing on which the sister stood, while taking off his frayed hat to her with an inimitable gesture of politeness which his varied and "romantic" career had taught him well enough how to assume when necessary. "Madame desires----"
"To see the woman, Madame Jasmin," the sister answered, her grave solemn eyes roving over the man's poor clothes as she answered. Or, perhaps, since his clothes in such a spot as this would scarcely be out of place, examining his face with curiosity.
"Madame Jasmin!" he repeated to himself, but to himself only--"Madame Jasmin!" How long it was since he had heard that name! Ages ago, it seemed; ages. "Madame Jasmin!" The name his wife had borne as a young widow of twenty, the name she had parted with for ever, on the morning when she gave herself to him at the altar of St. Vincent de Paul. Yet, now, of late years, she seemed to have used it again for some reason, some purpose, and had probably done so during his retreat. Only--what was that purpose? He must know that.
"Madame Jasmin," he said in a subdued voice--a voice that was meant to, and perhaps did, express some sorrow for the worn, broken helpmate and drudge who had gone away and left him, "Madame Jasmin is dead. A year ago. My poor wife was delicate; our circumstances did not conduce to----"
"Ah! your wife. You are, then, Monsieur Jasmin? She doubtless, therefore--you--you understand why I am here? That I have brought what was promised."
Understanding nothing, utterly astonished, yet with those consoling words, "I have brought what was promised," sinking deep into his mind, Vandecque bowed his head acquiescingly.
"I understand," he said. "Understand perfectly. Will not Madame give herself the trouble to enter my poor abode? We can talk there at our leisure." And he opened the door and ushered her within.
CHAPTER IV
A SISTER OF MERCY
Some betterment of his circumstances must have come to Vandecque between the time when he had returned from the South and now (how it had come, whether by villainy or honest labour, if he ever turned his hand to such a thing, it would be impossible to say), since the garret, though still poor and miserable, presented a better appearance than it had previously done. There were, to wit, some chairs in it at this time; cheap common things, yet fit to sit upon; a table with the pretence of a cloth upon it; also a carpet, with a pattern that must once have been so splendid that the beholder could but conclude that it had passed from hand to hand in its descent, until it had at last' reached this place. A miserable screen also shut off a bed in which, doubtless, Vandecque reposed, while a large cupboard was fitted up as a small bedroom, or closet, in which possibly the child slept.
In one of these chairs the owner of the room invited his visitor to be seated, in the other he placed himself, the table between them. Then, after a pause, while Vandecque's eyes sought again and again those of the sister's, as though their owner was wondering what the next revelation would be, the latter recommenced the conversation. She repeated, too, the purport of her former words, if not the words themselves.
"Doubtless Madame Jasmin told you that you might expect my coming. It has been delayed longer than it should have been. Yet--yet--even in the circumstances of my--of the person for whom I act--money is not always quite easy to be obtained," and she looked at Vandecque as though expecting an answer in assent.
"Naturally. Naturally," he made haste to reply, his quick wits prompting him to understand what that reply should be, while also they told him that this explanation, coupled with the presence here of the visitor, gave an almost certain testimony to the fact that the money mentioned had been now obtained. "Naturally. And--and--it was of no import. Since my poor wife passed away we have managed to struggle through our existence somehow."
Yet he would have given those ears which had so often been in peril of the executioner's knife to know from what possible source any money could have become due to his late wife. Her first husband had died in almost poverty, he recalled; they had soon spent what little he had had to leave his widow. Then, even as he thus pondered, the sister's voice broke in on him again.
"It is understood that this is the last sum. And that it is applied, as agreed upon with your late wife, to the proper bringing up and educating of the child, and to her support by you. You understand that; you give your promise as a man of honour? Your wife said that you were a 'sailor'--sailors are, I have heard, always honourable men."
"I--I was a sailor at the time she took charge of little Laure. As one--as a man of honour--I promise. She shall have nought to complain of. And I have come to love her. I--believe me--I have been good to her, as good as, in my circumstances, I could be."
And, knave as Vandecque was, he was speaking the truth now. He had been good to the child. These two, so strangely brought together, had grown fond of each other, and the vagabond not only found a place in his heart for the little thing, but, which was equally as much to the purpose, found for himself a place in hers. If he had ever seriously thought, in the first days of finding her in his garret, of sending her to the home for abandoned children, he had long since forgotten those ideas. He would not have parted with her now for that possible sum of money which it seemed extremely likely he was going to become the possessor of for having retained her.
"I do not doubt it. Yet, ere I can give you the money, there are conditions to be complied with. First, I must see the child; next, you must give me your solemn promise--a promise in writing--that you will conform to my demands as to the bringing of her up. You will not refuse?"
"Refuse!" said Vandecque. "Refuse! Madame, what is there to refuse? That which you demand is that which I have ever intended, not knowing that you were--not knowing when to expect your coming. Now you have brought the money--you have brought it, have you not?" speaking a little eagerly (for the life of him he could not help that eagerness)--"my dearest desire can be accomplished."
"Yes, I have brought it," the woman answered. "It is here," and she took from out her pocket a little canvas sack or bag, that to Vandecque's eyes looked plump and fat. "It contains the promised sum," she said, "and it is--should be--enough. With that the child can be fed, clothed, educated, if you husband it well. Fitted for a decent, if simple, life. You agree that it is so, Monsieur Jasmin?"
Vandecque bowed his head courteously, acquiescingly, while muttering, "Without doubt it is enough with careful husbanding." Yet, once more he would have given everything, all he had in the world--though 'twas little enough--to know what that small canvas bag contained. While, as for acquiescing in its sufficiency, he would have done that even though it contained but a handful of silver, as he thought might after all be the case.
"Take it then," she said, passing it across the table to him, while the principal thought in Vandecque's mind as she did so was that, whosoever had chosen this simpleton for his, or her agent, must be a fool, or one who had but little choice in the selection of a go-between, "and, if you choose, count the gold; you will find it as promised."
Count the gold! So it was gold! A bag full! Some two or three hundred pieces at least, or he, whose whole life had been spent in getting such things by hook or by crook, in gambling hells, or by, as that accursed advocate had said who prosecuted for the King, theft and larceny, or as a coiner, was unable to form any judgment. And they were his, must be his, now. Were they not in his own room, to his hand? Even though this idiotic Sister of Charity should decide to repossess herself of them, what chance would she have of doing so. Against him, the ex-galley slave. Him! the knave.
Yet he had to play a part, to reserve his efforts for something more than this present bag of louis'. If one such was forthcoming, another might be, in spite of what the foolish woman had said about it being the last; for were there not such things as spyings and trackings, and the unearthing of secrets; would there not be, afterwards, such things as the discovery of some wealthy man or woman's false step? Oh that it might be a woman's, since they were so much easier to deal with. And then, extortion; blackmail. Ha! there was a bird somewhere in France that laid golden eggs--that would lay golden eggs so long as it lived; one that must be nourished and fed with confidence--at least, at first--not frightened away.
He pushed the bag back towards the Sister, remembering he could wrench it from her again at any moment. With a calm dignity, which might well have become the most highbred gentleman of the Quartier St. Germain hard by, he muttered that, as for counting, such an outrage was not to be thought upon. Also he said:
"Madame has not seen the child. She stipulated that she should do so. Had she not thus stipulated, I must myself have requested her to see her."
Then he quitted the room, leaving the bag of money lying on the table, and, descending one or two of the flights of stairs, sent a child whom he knew, and whom he happened to observe leaving another room, to seek for little Laure and bid her return at once. At one moment ere he descended he had thought of turning the key (which he had left outside when he and his visitor entered the apartment) softly in the lock and thereby preventing her from escaping; but he remembered that he would be on the stairs between her and the street, and that he did not mean to go farther than the doorstep. She was safe.
He returned, therefore, saying that the child would be with them shortly. Then to expedite matters (as he said), he asked if it would not be well for him to sign the receipt as desired? The receipt or promise, as to what he undertook to perform.
"That, too, is here," she replied, while Vandecque's shrewd eye noticed, even as she spoke, that the bag of louis' lay untouched as he had left it. "Read it, then sign."
He did read it, laughing inwardly to himself meanwhile, though showing a grave, thoughtful face outwardly, since his sharp intelligence told him that it was a document of no value whatever. It was made out in the form of a receipt from Madame Jasmin--who had had no legal existence for twelve years, and was now dead--to a person whose name was carefully and studiously omitted from the paper (though that, he knew, would afterwards be filled up) on behalf of a female child, "styled Laure by the woman Jasmin." A piece of paper, he told himself, not worth the drop of ink spilt upon it. Or, even though it were so, not ever likely to be used or produced by the individual who took such pains to shroud himself, or herself, in mystery. A worthless document, which he would have signed for a franc, let alone a bag of golden louis.'
Aloud, however, he said:
"To make it legal in the eyes of his Majesty's judges, the name of my dear wife must be altered to that of mine. Shall I do it or will you?"
"You, if it pleases you."
Whereon Vandecque altered the name of "la femme Jasmin" to that of "le Sieur Jasmin," householder, since, as he justly remarked aloud, he was no longer a sailor, and then, with many flourishes--he being a master hand at penmanship of all kinds--signed beneath the document the words, "Christophe Jasmin." Christophe was not his name, but, as he said to himself saturninely, no more was Jasmin, wherefore he might as well assume the one as the other. Moreover, he reflected that should the paper ever see the light again, it might be just as well for him to be able to deny the whole name as a part of it.
As he finished this portion of the transaction, the door opened and little Laure came in, hot and flushed with the games she had been playing with the other gamines of the court, yet with already upon her face the promise of that beauty which was a few years later to captivate the hearts of all who saw her, including the Duc Desparre and the English exile, Walter Clarges. Only, there was as yet no sign upon that face of the melancholy and sorrow which those later years brought to it as she came to understand the life her guardian led; to understand, too, the rottenness of the existence by which she was surrounded. Instead, she was bright and merry as a child of her years should be, gay and insouciant, not understanding nor foreseeing how dark an opening to Life's future was hers. As for externals, she was well enough dressed; better dressed, indeed, than those among whom she mixed. Her little frock of dark Nimes serge--the almost invariable costume of the lowly in France--was not a mass of rags and filth, her boots and thread stockings not altogether a mockery.
"Madame sees," Vandecque remarked, as the child ran towards him with her hands outstretched and her eyes full of gladness, until she stopped, embarrassed at the sight of the strange lady with the solemn glance; "Madame sees; she recognises that she need have no fear, no apprehension."
"I see." Then, because she was a woman, she called Laure to her and kissed and fondled the child, muttering, "Poor child; poor little thing," beneath her breath. And, though she would have shuddered and besought pardon for days and nights afterwards on her knees, had she recognised what was passing through her mind, she was in truth uttering maledictions on the mother who could thus send away for ever from her so gentle and helpless a little creature as this; who could send her forth to the life she was now leading, to the life that must be before her.
The interview was at an end, and the sister rose from her seat. As for Vandecque, he would willingly have given half of whatever might be in that bag of money still lying on the table--his well-acted indifference to the presence of such a thing preventing him from even casting the most casual glance at it--could he have dared to ask one question, or throw out one inquiry as to whom the principal might be in the affair. Yet it was impossible to do so since he was supposed to know all that his wife had known, while actually not aware if she herself had been kept in ignorance of the child's connections or, on the contrary, had been confided in. "If she had only known more," he thought; "or, knowing more, had only divulged all to me."
But she was in her grave now, and, rascal though he had been, he could not bring himself to curse the poor drudge lying in that grave for having held her peace against such a man as he was, and knew himself to be. If she knew all, then, he acknowledged, it was best she should be silent; if she knew nothing--as he thought most likely--so, also, it was best.
But, still, he meant to know himself, if possible, something about the child's origin. He, at least, was under no promised bond of secrecy and silence; he had never been confided in. For, to know everything was, he felt certain, to see a comfortable future unroll itself before him; a future free from all money troubles--the only discomfort which he could imagine was serious in this world. The person who had sent that bag of louis'--the woman had said it contained gold!--he repeated to himself, could doubtless provide many more. He must know who that person was.
With still an easy grace which seemed to be the remnant of a higher life than that in which he now existed, he held the door open for his visitor to pass out; with equally easy politeness he followed her down the ricketty stairs and would have escorted her to the end of the court, or alley, and afterwards, unknown to her, have followed the simple creature to whatever portion of Paris she might have gone, never losing sight of his quarry, but that, at the threshold, she stopped suddenly and bade him come no farther.