Humphrey West had sought his bed some time before La Truaumont had
descended to speak to Fleur de Mai and his companion, and,
consequently, ere that adventurer had obtained admission to Emérance's
salon he was fast asleep.
Fast asleep and sleeping well and softly, too, when gradually there
crept into the cells of his brain, heavy with sleep though they were,
the drowsy fancy that he was carrying on a conversation with some
other person. This idea, however--as consciousness became stronger and
stronger--especially after he had rolled over once in his warm, soft
bed, and, once, had thrown out his arms after rubbing his eyes--was
succeeded by a second. The idea, the fancy that, instead of being
engaged in conversation with another person, that person was himself
engaged in talking to some one else.
A few moments more and Humphrey was wide awake and sitting up in his
bed, while wondering more particularly whence the sound of those
voices proceeded than what the purport of the conversation might be.
For, as was customary with all travellers in these days of insecurity
of life and property, when no one slept in undoubted safety outside
their own particular houses--if they did so much even there!--Humphrey
had, before proceeding to rest, made inspection of the room in which
he was. That is to say, he had peered behind the tapestry that hung
down all round the room over the bare, whitewashed walls; he had
looked behind the bed and its great hangings, full of dust and
flue--to look underneath it was impossible since the frame of the
bedstead was always at this period within an inch or so of the floor,
and only high enough to permit of the castors being inserted
underneath it. In doing all this he had also made sure that there was
no door in the wall by which ingress might be obtained from another
room--other than that in which the Duchesse de Castellucchio was now
sleeping. Consequently, he was at once able to decide that it was not
from her room that the voices proceeded, while, at the same time, his
ears told him also that they were not the voices of either the Duchess
or Jacquette.
Yet still he heard them. He heard the deep tones of a man subdued
almost to a whisper; the softer, gentler tones of a woman, itself also
subdued.
Now, Humphrey was no eavesdropper, while, since he had no knowledge of
the existence of Emérance de Villiers-Bordéville, he ascribed the
voices which reached his ears to the conversation of some husband and
wife who were occupying the next room, and, if he felt any curiosity
still on the subject, was only curious as to how he should be able to
overhear them at all.
Suddenly, however, he heard a word, a name, uttered that caused him
to, in common parlance, prick up those ears and listen with renewed
alertness to what was being said.
For the name mentioned was that of "De Beaurepaire."
"Yet, foregad," said Humphrey to himself, "'tis not so strange either.
In the next room to me is the woman who left her husband's house under
his escort to the gates of Paris; the woman who, if all reports are
true, seeks principally freedom from that maniac to thereby become the
chevalier's wife. But, still, who are these who talk at this hour? The
woman's voice, low as it is--and sweet and soft also--is neither the
voice of Jacquette nor of her mistress, and we have no other woman in
our _cortége_. While for the other--ah!" Humphrey exclaimed beneath
his breath, for now a word, uttered in a louder tone than usual by the
man who was speaking, smote his ears. "Ah! 'tis the captain of our
band, La Truaumont! So! So! Yet what does he do in that room when he
sleeps at the farther end of the corridor, and who is the gracious
lady with whom he converses?"
For, now, that word, the word which Humphrey had caught was
"_Sangdieu_," and _Sangdieu_ was the principal exclamation ever on La
Truaumont's lips.
Being no eavesdropper, as has been said, Humphrey decided that this
was no discourse for him to be passing his night in listening to. It
concerned him not that the worthy captain should be sitting up towards
the small hours discussing De Beaurepaire and his doings with some
strange woman who, for aught he, Humphrey, knew, was an accessory to
the flight of the Duchess towards her family in Italy. A woman who, he
reflected, might have come from Italy by order of the Duchess to
escort her across the Alps and to assist her in scaling the rugged
pass of the St. Bernard as easily as might be: perhaps a _gouvernante_
who would take all trouble into her own hands and see her charge
safely delivered into those of her relations.
"Yes, doubtless that is so," Humphrey said, as he lay back on his
pillow and prepared to continue his night's rest. "Doubtless. And
to-morrow I shall know all. Likewise, by daylight, I will discover how
it is those voices penetrate so easily into this room."
He turned, therefore, over on his side again and once more prepared to
continue his night's rest, when, almost ere he had closed his eyes in
that vain hope, he plainly heard the word "Louise" uttered, followed
by the sibilant "Hsh" from the woman, this being followed in its turn
by the words, "The man you admire may rise even higher yet than the
proud position of a De Beaurepaire."
A moment later he heard La Truaumont exclaim clearly and distinctly,
"He may become a king."
Listening eagerly now--for this was indeed strange matter to stumble
on in the dead of the night, he next heard the low clear voice of the
woman in that room exclaim:--
"A king! A king of France! Oh! it is impossible."
After which there was silence for some moments; a silence followed by
other words uttered so low that Humphrey could not hear them, they
being shortly followed by the sound of a door opened softly and shut
equally softly an instant later, and then by the stealthy, cautious
step of a man passing along the passage. The step of, as Humphrey
understood very well, La Truaumont going to his room at the farther
end of that passage.
That Humphrey West should find sleep again after overhearing this
conversation was scarcely probable. In listening to it, in being
forced to listen to that conversation when once awakened by it, he had
indeed become possessed of strange knowledge.
He had become possessed, firstly, of the knowledge that some other
woman than the Duchess admired De Beaurepaire, namely, the woman who
had been in that next room but a short time before, and not the one
who was in the next room on the other side; not the woman whom the
Prince had seen safely through the gates of Paris when escaping from
her cruel husband's house.
That alone was startling, since, if De Beaurepaire did not love the
Duchesse de Castellucchio, why and wherefore had he jeopardised his
own great position in helping her in such an attempt! Humphrey West
knew well enough the power, often enough exerted, against those who
assisted women of position, girls who were wealthy heiresses, or wards
of _La Grande Chambre_, by _La Grande Chambre_ itself. Were there not
men detained in the Bastille, in Vincennes, in Bicêtre at this very
moment, ay, even in far off Pignerol, for similar actions, while in
their case they had, or pretended to have, the one great, the one
supreme excuse that they loved the women whom they had assisted in
evading their lawful custodians. Yet, he told himself, this excuse was
not available by De Beaurepaire. For here, next to his own room, but a
little while ago, was a woman whom La Truaumont had spoken of as an
admirer of his; one who was doubtless admired by him. Here in the very
same house, under the very same roof, not forty paces from that other
woman!
"What does it mean?" Humphrey asked himself a dozen times. "What?
While, strange as it all is, it is nought beside this other strange
news. This news that he may be a king. A king! Yet how--and king of
what? Of what. Of what other land than France could he, a De
Beaurepaire, have dreams of becoming king! And by what means? Ah!
great heavens, by what means? In what way but by the most bitter, the
blackest treason! By introducing, by helping to introduce, some
foreign power into the land to--dethrone the present lawful king! Oh!
Oh! it is too awful, too terrible to think upon."
Yet the young man did think upon it far into the night and until, at
last, through the heavily curtained windows of his room there stole
the first grey streaks and rays of the approaching dawn. He thought of
it unceasingly; he thought of the terrors that must threaten this man
whom he now befriended and helped; this man who, haughty, cruel,
hostile as he often was to others, had never been aught but gentle and
kind to him--this man whom he had learnt to admire and think well of;
whom he was proud to serve in serving the Duchess.
Yet Humphrey was old enough to know, to remember, that of all the
treacheries and conspiracies which had surrounded the life and throne
of _Le Dieudonné_ since, as a child, he had ascended that throne
thirty years ago, not one of them had ever approached even near to
success. Not one had had any result but a death shameful and ignoble
for the men who had been concerned in those treacheries and
conspiracies.
"Five years ago," he murmured to himself as he tossed in his bed
where, until he heard those whispering voices, he had been sleeping so
peacefully, "five years ago Roux de Marsilly perished on the wheel for
such a crime as this talked of in that next room this very night. This
very year the Comte de Sardan has suffered in the same way; there have
been a dozen attempts all ending in disaster. And, oh! the wickedness
of it, 'specially in him, the playmate of the King in childhood, his
Grand Veneur, the head of his Guards. In him who, of all men, should
guard his master from treachery."
The young man thought over all this even as he still sought sleep,
while understanding and acknowledging to himself that he could hope
for little farther rest that night; and, since sleep would come no
more, he endeavoured to arrange some plan of action whereby, if
possible, he, simple gentleman though he was, might be able to prevent
De Beaurepaire from rushing on his ruin.
But first he must know something further. He must discover more from
those two plotters whom he had chanced to overhear this night. In some
way he must make himself acquainted with who and what this woman was
who harboured in the very house where was now reposing the woman he
had to help escort across the Alps. He would know, if possible, every
thread of the plot now in hand, every ramification of it, every person
concerned in it.
And then, if he could do that, it would be time for action.
At last, however, he was enabled to obtain some little rest; at last,
when daylight had come, the workings of his brain ceased, and, for an
hour or so, he slept.
He did so until the hour of nine was striking from all the clocks in
the city, when he was aroused by a clatter beneath his window not
unlike that which, over night, had aroused Emérance from her
meditations in front of the hearth in her salon. Yet this clatter on
the cobble-stones of the _place_ heralded no such arrival as that
which the woman had witnessed, no handsome travelling carriage
escorted by soldiers and adventurers as represented by La Truaumont,
Boisfleury, Fleur de Mai and even Humphrey himself; no descent at the
inn of a beautiful woman whose wealth and position made her one of the
foremost aristocrats in France, nor any pretty young girl such as
Jacquette.
Instead, the noise alone testified to, as Humphrey saw when he
approached the window, the arrival of the French public coach
which was, in truth, a vehicle something between the _patache_ of
the time, the diligence of later days, and the various lumbering
travelling-waggons of the period, while being a combination of all. A
frouzy, evil-smelling, dirty thing it was, in which men and women were
huddled together and even thrown into each other's arms and across
each other's knees as the wheels of the cumbersome and almost
springless vehicle jolted into ruts and then jolted out again, yet one
in which travellers compassed hundreds of miles when too poor to pay
for a carriage or to ride post--or when they desired to escape
observation and remark!
From this conveyance there stepped forth now, amidst the howls of the
driver to his horses who were anxious to be unharnessed and reach
their stalls, and the cries of the ostlers and other noises, a
venerable-looking old man of about seventy whose head was still
enveloped in the cloth in which he had bound it up over night for the
journey.
An old man who was received by the bowing landlord--the landlords of
those days bowed appreciatively to all and every who arrived at their
doors, no matter whether they were likely to spend one pistole or a
hundred in their houses--with much courtesy. An old man who at once
said:--
"I desire accommodation for some nights if it is obtainable. I desire
also that Madame la Marquise de Villiers-Bordéville shall be informed
that her father has arrived."
"Her father!" the landlord exclaimed, perhaps in some astonishment at
the difference in appearance, as well as in the mode of travelling,
between this old man and his daughter, the illustrious Marquise who
had arrived in a handsome coach. "The father of Madame la Marquise!
But certainly, monsieur, madame shall be apprised. Though I fear she
still sleeps. Nevertheless, her maidservant shall be told."
"That will do very well. I myself require rest. Later in the day I
will visit my daughter." After which the old man entered the house
and, consequently, was seen no more by Humphrey West.
Yet what Humphrey did see was that, before this venerable personage
entered the inn preceded by the landlord, he cast his eye suddenly up
at a window which the former had no difficulty in feeling sure was
that of the room to the left of his own. Humphrey saw, too, that he
gave a grin as he did so, while appearing at the same time to thrust
his tongue in his cheek as he slapped a large wallet, or bag, which he
carried slung round him.
All of which things, added to the fact that the young man had heard
rapid footsteps pass from out of another room into the one where the
conversation with La Truaumont had taken place over night, and the
feet glide swiftly across the floor towards where the window was,
caused Humphrey West to feel sure that the woman occupying that room
had run to the window of the salon to greet the new arrival.