THE WRONG THAT WAS DONE
"Tell me all, Philip," Andrew Vause said to his brother some two or
three evenings later, as he sat in the sick man's room, "tell me all.
I must know what has brought you to this." While, as he spoke, there
came a frown upon his face that did not pass off for a while--not,
indeed, until he had taken two deep draughts from a tankard that stood
by his side, and which old Bridget ever brought in and placed near to
his hand when he went to spend an hour or so with Philip.
Full of excitement as this man's life had been for years--since the
soldier of fortune had fought at Candia, and at Choczim with Sobieski,
and taken part in many other frays, to say nothing of countless
skirmishes--he was now as gentle a companion as Philip could have
desired. Nay, sometimes, old Bridget would almost grow jealous as she
observed how softly he could turn and smooth a pillow, or sit
patiently by his brother listening to many of the querulous complaints
usual to some invalids, or, to while away the dreary hours of that
poor invalid, would tell him of courts and camps and strange doings in
other lands. So jealous, indeed, did the old woman grow--or think she
had grown--that she would forbid Andrew the sick room except at stated
hours, and, pretending that it was not good for him to pass his days
there, bid him go off and ride upon the downs, or attend the hawking
parties of a neighbouring squire, or take a rod and catch a dish of
trout in the stream.
And Andrew would obey the old nurse, who had brought him and his
brother up from boyhood and domineered over them, as meekly as though
he had never roared orders to squadrons and troops in the face of
hordes of Turks and Imperialists, or taken the word of command from
Condé and Turenne; and would wander idly forth until the hours came
round when he might go and sit by Philip's side.
Yet he found those hours pass slowly and leaden-footedly along, being
unable to take much pleasure from the simple country amusements he was
surrounded by. His horse was his chief companion, and, since he saw
always to its food and litter and its careful grooming, found him some
occupation, while he had made friends with two old half-bred watchdogs
who roamed about the place, and, at last, attached themselves so to
him that they ever attended at his heels when he went on foot.
One day, too, he nearly frightened the sexton of the village church to
death by suddenly bursting through the half-open door and tramping
down the aisle to a large yawning pew beneath the pulpit, and entering
therein.
"Good sir," the old man quavered, looking almost in fear and trembling
at the swarthy cavalier before him, "this is the pew of the Vause
family from the Grange hard by; none enter it----"
"Ay, 'tis, James," the intruder answered the astonished old man.
"Wherefore I am here." Then he thrust his hands through his thick
matted hair and put it aside from his brow, and went on: "Because I,
too, am a Vause. Hast forgotten me, James?"
"Lord sakes!" the old man piped through his toothless gums, while he
regarded the brown face and noticed the scar that ran adown his cheek,
"'tis Master Andrew. And so it is. I mind me I did hear that you were
back from foreign lands." Then, because some cheery, pleasant memory
rose to his mind, his wrinkled old face broke into a smile, and he put
out a gnarled hand and placed it on the buckskin sleeve of the
adventurer, and said, "You take me back a twenty year and more, Master
Andrew, and I recall how, when I looked not, or was a-digging of some
grave, you pelted me with mine own windfalls. And how brave you look,
and great and strong. Hast none of thy great strength to spare for
Master Philip?"
"I would I had," said Andrew, "in very truth I do. He is sore
pressed." Then he took the old hand in his own and shook it--leaving
in it a shining new silver crown--and said:
"Leave me here awhile, James. It comes not oft that I can sit beneath
my mother's monument--may never come again. Leave me awhile."
The windows of the church were open this bright May day, and through
them he heard the dronings of the bees, the bleat of growing lambs and
all the sweet country sounds, as he gazed above upon the quaint
monument which his brother had had put up to their parents, Philip and
Alice Vause. And back to his memory there came again his boyish days,
his own turbulent youth and the gentle boyhood of his brother, and how
the latter had ever interceded 'twixt him and their father--a stern,
disappointed cavalier--saving him many a welting from the paternal
cane. And again he thought of the mother he had loved so dear,
recalled how she, too, had protected him from many a chastisement,
and, as he did so, bent his head forward to the pew rail and said some
kind of prayer. Perhaps he prayed for Philip's life to be spared,
perhaps----
Yet the days passed very slowly with him; he grew sick and weary of
the trout stream and old Squire Giles's hawkings, and the village
greens to which he would wander and take a part in quarter-staff with
the yokels, or, stripping off his jacket, would, with their simple
foils, show them some passes which set them gaping wide with wonder
and musing on where Master Andrew had learnt such tricks of fence.
Sick and weary, yet he knew he must not go away. Not yet, at
least. Philip grew weaker day by day; the warm end of May and the
coming of the leafy June brought no access of strength, but rather
greater lassitude. And Andrew, though used to seeing sudden death
only--death dealt out by shot and fire and ball, death swift and
instantaneous--knew that, when the great summer heats had come, Philip
would be no more. The village chirurgeon had told him this, had said
that the end drew very near; the lungs were growing weaker day by day,
the heart-beats becoming more feeble. Yet he needed no telling--he
could see for himself.
But still he did not know who it was who had treated his loved brother
so cruelly--and the time was slipping by! Then, at last, on this
night, when he said, "tell me all, Philip. I must know what has
brought you to this pass," the other seemed disposed to begin his
story; perhaps because he, too, knew the hour was near at hand when
there would be no more opportunity for the telling thereof. It was so
warm that the lattice was open, and Philip, lying on the couch, was
opposite to his brother sitting by the open window and inhaling the
perfume of the swift-flowering woodbine, and watching the laburnum
branches as the soft south wind beat them gently against the casement.
Then suddenly, as though nerved all at once to confide in him he
loved, the sick man began:
"I was in London when I met her first: attending the Court, seeking to
get from the restored King some recognition of our father's services
to his father and his cause. Enough of that--you understand the reward
of the Cavalier and the Cavalier's children! A well-bred bow, acquired
in courts and cities such as you have seen and know, a winning smile,
a gracious greeting, and a blessing--from his lips! a promise--never
fulfilled."
"Put not your trust in princes," muttered Andrew, who had not
forgotten the regularity with which his mother had taken him to the
village church in days gone by.
"Ay; in him least of all. But you know him, you saw him a while ago;
perhaps he gave you a promise too--if so, believe it not. Unless it be
for his own purpose it will not be fulfilled."
Andrew shrugged his shoulders, and the other went on.
"She was there, fresh come from Dorsetshire, attached to the Duchess
of York. Andrew," and he raised himself a little on his elbow as he
spoke, "even now, sometimes, by day and night, as I think of it, it
seems impossible she could have been so false to me. For, that
falsehood should lurk behind her pure innocent eyes, be hidden under
her gentle manner, appears incredible. Yet--yet--she was as false as
hell."
Andrew shifted his seat a little, crossed the other leg, and said, "Go
on."
"Not much to tell. I loved her; she said that she loved me. So--we
were engaged to be married. She came here on a visit--she and a friend
of hers--and I was very frank with her; told her this must be her
home, that our life would be easy, but not luxurious, and she
answered, 'It was enough. She cared nothing for Courts, and was only
in the suite of the Duchess at her father's desire.'" He paused a
moment, then he repeated, "We were engaged to be married."
"Humph!" said Andrew.
"Engaged to be married--the day was fixed. Then--then--oh! Andrew, I
never heard from her nor saw her again."
"What had befallen?" asked his brother, gazing, as it seemed, almost
listlessly out at the laburnum branches swaying against the diamond
panes. "What?"
"Treachery of the deepest, blackest kind. I could have borne very well
that she should not love me, but that she should treat me thus--flout
and despise me, leave me without a word of regret--that I cannot bear.
It has broken my heart."
"Did it do that?" and Andrew's voice was low--thick--as he asked the
question.
"Ay, it did. I learnt afterwards from the friend who came with her
here, also from her father--who cursed her name as I stood before him
in his Dorsetshire home, to which I had gone to seek for her--that for
some time, some weeks, she had been much with a Frenchman, a man who
had come over with the woman now made Duchess of Portsmouth; that soon
'twas thought they were lovers. And then, one day, they were gone--to
France."
"Her name?" asked Andrew, briefly.
"Marion Wyatt."
"And his--this Frenchman's?"
"De Bois-Vallée. He was termed the Vicomte de Bois-Vallée. They said
of him that he was a discarded lover of the Frenchwoman, who threw him
over when she learned that she was to be the favourite of a King--also
that he had fought many duels and was so good a swordsman that he
might have been a _maître d'armes_."
"So, so!" muttered Andrew, nodding his head gently. Then he muttered
inwardly, "Perhaps some day we will see for this. Make trial of the
Vicomte's skill." Aloud he said:
"You knew that they had gone to France? For sure you knew it?"
"Beyond all doubt. De Bois-Vallée was a bully, it seems, cared for
none, vaunted himself as a Frenchman. There was a scene 'twixt him and
the woman, De Kéroualle--it was overheard and brought to me--they say
even that Charles broke in on him--was insulted, too. And he told the
Frenchwoman that, though an Englishman had deprived him of her, he was
yet about to be revenged, he would not return to France alone. Tit for
tat was fair play--an Englishwoman should replace her. And they say,
too, that the King and the Duchess laughed at him, the former telling
him he was very welcome, so that he left De Kéroualle behind."
"He kept his word?"
"Ay, he kept his word. The night he left for France she was missing.
She had gone out to walk in the garden that gave on the Mall; she
came back no more. And he had been seen, this Vicomte, up and down the
Mall for some time ere night fell, a coach waiting for him. Seen
peering over into the garden, and with some of his countrymen near at
hand--ready, no doubt, to interfere if any came to prevent her going
with him."
"Has he married her, think you?"
"Heaven knows! Yet almost I think it must be so. She jilted me, but,
but--'tis hard to believe she was a wicked, wanton woman. She would
not have gone with him unless they were married--or, at least, were
soon to be married."
"And this was--when?"
"Three years ago, soon after the Frenchwoman came first to England,
brought over in the suite of the Duchess of Orleans."
"'Tis pity you never told me all," said Andrew, "specially since I
might have made my way to Paris after Candia!"
"Andrew, I was ashamed, ashamed that even you should know it.
And--and--what could you have done?"
"What!" exclaimed his brother. "What! Well! tested the skill of this
_maître d'armes_--perhaps avenged you."
"It might have made a widow of her, left her alone and defenceless in
a strange land."
"Possibly!" Andrew replied to this, with the careless shrug of the
shoulders which he had learnt unconsciously in his foreign travel.
"Possibly!" And again he spoke inwardly to himself, saying, "As I
shall do yet--if he has married her."
There was silence after this for some time as they sat in the now
gathering darkness, a silence only interrupted by Bridget bringing in
the lamps. But when she had left them alone once more, after telling
Andrew he was sitting too long with his brother, who by now should be
abed, and that she would be back to assist him to it, the former spoke
again.
"Bridget hinted a word," he said, "when first I came here, made
suggestion that you yourself nourished hopes of punishing this
man--this Vicomte de Bois-Vallée," and he pronounced the name clearly,
as though to make sure he had learnt it aright--"would have done so
had your health been stronger, and you more fit to cope with him."
"I--I would have done so then," poor Philip said, "had I been able to
discover he had wronged her as well as me. I was mad, furious, at
first. Poor swordsman as I am, I would have tried to find him out;
have hurled myself against him; have, even though he had run me
through and through, striven to kill him."
"So, so!" said Andrew, "you would have done that had you kept well and
strong?"
"God help me! I fear I should."