INNOCENT.
When the roll was called that night in the French army it was seen how
hardly the victory had been bought, if victory it was! A doubtful one,
indeed, since Turenne had not been able to pursue the enemy for long
with his weakened army, and, as he fell back upon the position which
he had previously occupied, so De Bournonville did the same. The enemy
was, therefore, still in Alsace, and Brandenburg was drawing nearer
day by day. Over France there yet hovered the impending shadow of
further invasion and defeat.
Amongst those who were wiped off for ever from the roll were the
bearers of such noble names as De Pizieux, De Reveillon, and the
Comte d'Auvergne; whilst among the English the Earl of Hamilton was
wounded--mortally, it was thought. Also, there were many missing whose
absence could only be accounted for by the supposition that they had
been slain in the short pursuit made of some portion of the enemy.
Amongst these was the Vicomte De Bois-Vallée, whose disappearance was
not explained by the time Turenne fell back on Hagenau and Saverne;
and was not, indeed, generally known until the French army was once
more quartered in that neighbourhood.
It was there that the news of this disappearance reached Andrew
Vause's ears, as he watched over Debrasques and tried to nurse him
back to life. It seemed, however, that there was little enough hope he
would succeed in this; the brain had received some injury which the
surgeons who had accompanied the army appeared unable to understand,
and, while it was perfectly apparent that he comprehended much that
was said to him, he was utterly unable to make himself intelligible.
No wonder, therefore, that Andrew, while he bemoaned the fate of the
brilliant young soldier whom he had come to love as a comrade, cursed
at the same time the fate which had chosen to thus visit the one man
who, as he had shown by the last coherent words he uttered, alone knew
the greater part, if not the whole, of his cousin's guilt.
"Missing! missing!" he said to Colonel Churchill, who told him the
news of the man's disappearance on the second night they were back at
Hagenau, and while they sat together in a room of the house which
served as the headquarters of "The Royal English Regiment." "Missing,
eh? 'Tis strange!"
"Why?" asked the other, in the quiet, well-bred tones in which he
always spoke. "Why? There are many others not accounted for who
followed the Imperialists out of the little wood. Doubtless they
followed them too far!"
"Maybe," said Andrew reflectively. "Yet this man followed the enemy
not at all."
"How know you that? Were you acquainted with the person of the
Vicomte?"
"Ay, very well. I knew him." And he told Churchill of how he had been
attacked by the boors on the night ere the whole army set out towards
the Breusch, though, naturally, he made no reference to the duel.
"Ah! I heard something of that, too. Yet, tell me, Vause--how is it
you know he did not follow those who chased the enemy out of the wood?
He may have done so to deliver the orders of recall. He was sent out
with others of the Marshal's guard to give such orders."
"I saw him pass the other way--when the fight was over. Returning
towards Holtzheim where our base was. His cousin, Debrasques, who is
lying above wounded, spoke to him. It was the man."
"Strange!" reflected Churchill. "Strange! What harm could come to him
between the wood and Holtzheim, and with the battle over, too, and the
enemy driven out of the former and in full retreat? He was not
wounded?"
"No. He was not wounded."
And thus the matter remained as it had been--a mystery from the first.
De Bois-Vallée had disappeared at the very moment when he was out of
danger, with the battle finished and he safe in the French lines.
Yet, to Andrew Vause, meditating hour by hour on his disappearance as
he watched and tended Debrasques, it came to be no such mystery as it
was to Turenne and the companions of the absent man, his brethren of
the _garde du corps_.
For he discovered that Debrasques was not astonished at his
disappearance--discovered it when he told him that it had taken place.
"You understand what I say to you?" he asked, bending gently over the
half-paralysed man the next morning--and none who had not seen Andrew
in his gentler moments could, perhaps, have guessed how good a nurse
the great soldier could be. "You understand, my friend? De Bois-Vallée
is missing. Yet he was unhurt when he passed us, returning to our
ranks. What can have befallen him?"
Debrasques, wounded and lying there, fixed his blue eyes on the other,
while it seemed to Andrew that there was a glance in them which showed
that, if he could speak, he would say that the news caused him no
surprise; and a moment later his lips moved as though muttering some
word, but no sound came from them.
"What--what is it?" whispered Andrew.
And again the lips moved, though with the same result, while still
from Debrasques' eye shone the look of intelligence--of comprehension.
Andrew tried now another method. Debrasques could not tell him what
was in his thoughts, but, at least, he could make signs, though with
his eyes alone; he would question him, and, by a lucky chance, might
hit on some suggestion--strike some chord that would fathom the
other's meaning.
"You are not surprised at--at this disappearance?" he asked therefore.
Then the eyes of the other told him by the bright glance that shot
into them that here, at least, he had questioned aright. The Marquis
was not surprised!
"You do not think he is dead?" And again, as he watched the other's
face, he saw that he had surmised correctly. The eyelids closed over
the eyes for a moment, and, next, the latter looked out brightly at
him from beneath the re-opened lids. It was not death that, to
Debrasques' mind, had caused his cousin's disappearance.
"What then? Why go? Oh! Valentin," for so he sometimes now addressed
the young man, "if you could but speak one word, only one."
But this he could not do, try as he might. So that Andrew, seeing how
painful the effort was to him, desisted from his questioning almost as
soon as he had commenced it.
Yet, even as he busied himself about the room, making his pillows more
comfortable, arranging the bed clothes, and doing other kindly
services, he observed that the Marquis seemed struggling to regain his
speech--that he had something to tell him.
Suddenly, as still he mused on what Debrasques might mean, there came
back to his memory the manner in which De Bois-Vallée had received the
wild shout of his cousin, the words: "Traitor! Scoundrel! I have told
him all." He recalled the look on the Vicomte's face, the glance of
hatred he had darted at that cousin, followed by the look of fear
which had seemed to blanch his countenance, as, digging his spurs into
his already jaded horse, he had ridden off towards Holtzheim.
The look of fear! Ay! that was it. It must be. For, not knowing that
Debrasques was delirious from his injuries, he had believed that,
whatever revelations he had to make, had in truth been made. Vause, he
doubtless thought, now knew as much of some mystery that lay beneath
his own conduct as Debrasques knew himself. And, dreading him more
than before, had therefore disappeared. Andrew felt certain that, in
this surmise, he had hit the mark. He knew it; it was borne in upon
him!
"Valentin," he said, returning to the bed and gazing down at the young
man who lay there with his eyes still open, "Valentin, I think I
know--think I have penetrated your meaning. You believe De Bois-Vallée
has disappeared, because, now--since you told him that I knew all--he
fears me more than ever. Is it not so?"
To his amazement--his utter amazement--he had not, after all, hit the
mark; it was not this that Debrasques meant. It was no increased fear
of him that had prompted his enemy to disappear.
"What then? What then?" muttered Andrew. "What, if not that?"
But from the sick man nothing came that could assist him--only, once
more, the look of grief at being unable to make himself understood.
Yet, unsatisfactory, disheartening as this was, it told Andrew one
thing at least--there was in truth no mystery about the man's
disappearance. It was plain that he had a reason for so removing
himself.
"Still," pondered the soldier, musing over what such reason could be,
or what powerful motives could have urged him thus to disappear from
the army in a time of war, and to, thereby, incur the necessity of
giving a thorough explanation of his conduct when he should reappear
or be for ever disgraced, a ruined and a broken soldier; "still it all
hangs, must hang, on Debrasques' words shouted to him in delirium, yet
near enough unto the truth to fright him; the words, 'I have told him
all.' Would that he had! Would that he had!"
And again at night, as he turned restlessly on his bed, which was
placed in the same room as his friend's so that he might be near to
minister to him if required, he asked himself, "What more was there to
tell? What villainy that even I do not know of?"
Also he remembered that, when he first found Valentin amidst the heap
of dead and dying dragoons by whom he was surrounded, he had said
something about the woman, Marion Wyatt--had exclaimed that she
was--what? Oh! that he had been able to finish that speech; to say
what Marion Wyatt was, or had been, in connection with this matter, in
connection with the bitter treachery that had broken Philip's heart.
"I would almost believe," he thought, "that he meant to say
'Innocent,' were it not that such must be impossible. Innocent!
innocent! How could that be? She who stole down the garden to the gate
that led to the Mall, who disappeared for ever from my brother's and
her father's knowledge; from whom no word ever came after that night.
It is impossible! How could she be innocent and he guilty?"
Nevertheless, he decided now, that, as he had put other questions to
Debrasques in the hopes of hitting on some suggestion which might
prove to be the right one, so he would put this one--"Did he intend to
say that Marion Wyatt was an innocent woman?" Yet, even though that
answer should be Yes, it would bring him no nearer to understanding
why De Bois-Vallée had fled from the army! Only, if it could be proved
so--if, by any chance under heaven, it should be so--his determination
to be avenged on De Bois-Vallée for the wrong done his weak and
helpless brother would be intensified by a further determination to
avenge the wrong done also to that brother's affianced wife.
But, how--how could such be the case? Though Debrasques should testify
to it he might still be mistaken.
In the morning, however, he put his doubts to the proof. Bending over
the now awakened man, who, all through the night, while he had watched
near him, slept heavily, he asked the question, and, a second
afterwards, the look in the other's eyes showed that he had surmised
truly. Rightly or wrongly, with either clear or clouded brain,
Valentin believed the woman innocent.
"You do believe it--think it? Nay," noticing the intensity of the
other's gaze, "you know it. You mean to signify that?" and, overcome
by his emotion at this new development, he returned the intensity of
that gaze. "There is no doubt?"
From the speechless man there flashed back the answer of his eyes--as
eloquent as any words. There was no doubt.
Yet, still, he could scarcely bring himself to believe; again through
his mind there flashed the thought, "how, if the man was guilty, was
the woman innocent?"
Carried away now, however, by an overwhelming rush of ideas, he went
on:
"And if innocent--Heavens! if innocent--does harm threaten
her--threaten her more, since he thinks I know all, than before?"
Again he saw that he had struck the mark, had divined aright. Once
more the eyes of Debrasques answered "Yes."
"Harm that may come to her through his fear of what he imagines I
know? Harm that may be averted, perhaps, by me if I can find her--or,
again, find him?"
And still once more--none could have doubted it who saw the face over
which he bent!--the answer was in the affirmative.
"You counsel me, you bid me go, you warn me to avert this harm? It is
so, Debrasques, even though I leave you?"
"So be it," he continued, as still the other with his eyes endorsed
all he suggested. "So be it. I will go. Will find him and slay him, or
her and protect her. You agree with that?"
And, as before, the other showed that he agreed!
"An innocent woman! An innocent woman!" Andrew muttered once again.
"An innocent woman, and in his power! A power that will be doubly
exerted against her since he thinks I know all. I must lose no time."
Yet, because he would make no mistake--because now, if he set out in
this further quest, he was resolved that it should have but one
ending--should, indeed, never end until he had accomplished his
determination, he repeated his questions again and again; he made
doubly sure.
After which, and seeing that Debrasques adhered to all he had hitherto
conveyed to him, his resolution was taken. He hesitated no longer.
Wherever De Bois-Vallée was he would find him; wherever Marion Wyatt
was he would serve her. And, once more face to face with the man who
had done what he now knew was a double wrong, he would slay him like a
dog.
For that Debrasques had been deceived it was impossible to believe.
Marion Wyatt must be--incredible as still it seemed--a deeply-wronged
woman. Also, a woman who now stood in dire peril. Well! he would
defend her from that peril if he were not too late.