Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source: Google Books
https://books.google.com/books?id=8YtBAQAAMAAJ
(Library of the University of Illinois)
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
SERVANTS OF SIN
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
ROMANCES
IN THE DAY OF ADVERSITY
ACROSS THE SALT SEAS
THE CLASH OF ARMS
DENOUNCED
THE SCOURGE OF GOD
THE HISPANIOLA PLATE
FORTUNE'S MY FOE
A GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER
THE DESERT SHIP
NOVELS OF TO-DAY
A BITTER HERITAGE
HIS OWN ENEMY
THE SILENT SHORE
THE SEAFARERS
SERVANTS OF SIN
A ROMANCE
BY
JOHN BLOUNDELLE-BURTON
"HOW DOTH THE CITY SIT SOLITARY THAT WAS
FULL OF PEOPLE! NOW IS SHE BECOME AS A
WIDOW! SHE THAT WAS GREAT AMONG THE
NATIONS AND PRINCESS AMONG THE PROVINCES."
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
1900
_Dramatised and produced for copyright purposes in London, May 1st_,
1900. _Licensed for production by the Lord Chamberlain, and entered at
Stationers' Hall as a Drama in IV. Acts_.
TO
MY FRIEND
ERNEST FOSTER
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."