THE MARQUISE TELLS A STORY.
It was a vastly different repast from that of the Bishop of Lodeve's
which was offered to St. Georges, although the difference consisted
more, perhaps, in the manner of cooking and serving than in aught
else. The wine, which was excellent--though no better than that last
bottle from the old Clos--did not come in at the end, but cheered the
fasting and wayworn man from the commencement; the viands were in good
condition and properly prepared; the soup was not dishwater, but of a
good, sufficient quality. Moreover, here, as in the great _salon_, a
cheerful fire blazed on the hearth, instead of the spluttering,
snow-soaked logs that had hissed and smoked in Phelypeaux's house.
Also, he had for company two women, each beautiful according to her
time of life--women soft, gentle, and well bred--instead of the
cynical bishop of whom all France told strange tales.
Sitting there, his eyes resting sometimes on the budding loveliness of
Aurelie de Roquemaure, sometimes on the mellowed sweetness of the face
of the marquise, St. Georges forced himself to discard from his mind
the thought which he had now come to deem unworthy--the thought that
treachery lurked in their bosoms against him--that, though the present
marquis might be the man who had led the foul and despicable attack on
him in the graveyard at Aignay-le-Duc, they had had part or share in
it. For, he told himself, to believe this was to believe that there
was no faith nor honesty in womankind.
Yet one thing, at the commencement of the meal, and when the old
servant and another had withdrawn from the room, had almost served to
keep his suspicions alive. The marquise--as far as a woman of rank and
high breeding might do so--had asked him many questions about himself,
while Aurelie, following the rigidness which prevailed in French life
of the time, sat by, a silent listener, scarce joining in the
conversation at all.
And St. Georges, moved perhaps by the company in which he found
himself, and, soldier-like, scorning to conceal any part of his
history except that which he deemed absolutely necessary--he making no
reference whatever to the name of De Vannes--told them much of his
existence. His career in Holland until the peace; his lonely life in
garrison; his marriage with a young girl, a daughter of the middle
classes; her death, and the little child she had left to his care,
were all touched upon by him and listened to attentively--indeed,
absorbingly. And so, at last, he came to the summons to Paris, to his
setting forth, to his stay at Dijon, and the attack made upon him and
Boussac.
To both women this portion of his narrative caused great excitement.
For, stately as the marquise was, environed, so to speak, by all the
dignity of the _haute noblesse_ of the days of the Great King, she
could not prevent her agitation from being apparent to him. Her white,
jewelled hand quivered as she raised it to her breast; her eyes
sparkled as they might have sparkled when she was her daughter's age;
while, as for that daughter, her bosom rose and fell with her rapid
breathing, her colour came and went--once she was as pale as death,
the next moment her face suffused.
"The cowards!" exclaimed the marquise; "the base, cowardly dogs, to
attack two men thus, and one hampered with a defenceless child! _Quel
tour de lache!_ Oh! sir, I would to God your brand or that of your
brave companion had struck the poltroon, the craven who sheltered
himself behind his visor, his death blow! I would to God one of your
swords had found out his heart as they found out the hearts of his
mercenaries!"
The sympathy of this graceful woman--sympathy that roused her from the
well-bred calmness which was her natural state, to one of almost
fury--earned the deepest respect and gratitude of St. Georges; yet he
looked at her almost with amazement as he bowed and murmured some
words of appreciation. For there was no acting here, he knew; yet she
was De Roquemaure's stepmother, the kinswoman of the man whom he
believed to be his and his child's attempted assassin!
And Aurelie de Roquemaure, too--what of her? A glance from under his
eyes showed him that still the beauteous face was agitated as it had
been before, that all which her mother had said was re-echoed by her.
Again the marquise spoke, though now she rose from the table as she
did so.
"Sir," she said, "never rest until that man and you stand face to
face, point to point; since, until that happens, your child's life
will not be safe. For you, a man, a soldier, it matters not--is best,
indeed, that you should meet him and end his miserable existence
forever. I pray you may do ere long. And, when you do meet him, slay
him like a dog! It is the only way."
Still astonished, almost appalled, by her vehemence, St. Georges took
the hand she extended him and bent over it, and next, that of her
daughter, ere the two passed out of the room.
"Forgive," said the marquise, "that I should feel so strongly.
I--I--have a child myself." Then, after a pause, and turning round as
she reached the corridor, she added: "If we do not meet to-morrow ere
you return to the city to fetch your child, remember, sir, I pray you,
that my answer to the king or his minister is precisely different from
that of the bishop. It is 'No.'"
"I will remember, madame."
Then, with a last glance from each, both were gone. And St. Georges,
standing in front of the great fireplace waiting for the old servitor
to come and escort him to his room, was more overwhelmed with
amazement than he had been at aught which had occurred since he set
out from Pontarlier.
"What does it mean?" he whispered to himself. "What does it mean?"
* * * * *
In a room at the opposite end of the corridor from that where the
apartment was situated which had been bestowed on St. Georges, the
mother and daughter sat. It was the sleeping-room of madame la
marquise, large, vast, and sombre--save that here, too, a fire burnt
in the grate, and that there were many candles alight in the sconces
set about the room.
And the marquise, lying back in her deep fauteuil before the fire, her
face white and drawn, and with tears upon her cheeks, was speaking to
her daughter who knelt by her side.
"The wolf!" she said, "the wolf! How know it? How find out? God! I
thought that I alone, of all living people, knew, until I divulged my
story to you, until I wrote to Louis asking him to do justice to a
much-wronged man. Who--who has betrayed my confidence? Not the king,
surely. Oh! not he, not he! Nay, more, I doubt if the letter ever
reached his hands."
"Mother," Aurelie said, as she stroked her hand, "there must be some
other who knows."
"There was no living soul on earth. Listen, even you do not know all."
The girl seated herself against her mother's knee and gazed up into
her face. Then she whispered: "Tell me all now, mother. From to-night
let me understand exactly with what he is encompassed. Tell me, I
beg."
"You know," the marquise said, "for I have told you often, that the
Duc de Vannes and I loved each other when we were young--yet that we
never married. No matter for the reason now--it was my fault! Let that
suffice. And we parted--he to go his way, I mine. Then, some years
later, not many it is true, but still long enough for us to have
forgotten what had separated us, we met again, and once more he asked
me to be his wife, to renew the love vows we once had made. But it was
then impossible. I was affianced to your father--the day was fixed,
and I had come to admire him, to respect him; in no case would I have
gone back from my plighted word. So again we parted to meet only once
more in life."
The girl touched her hand--perhaps--who knows?--in admiration of her
mother's strength in keeping her vow to the man who was not her first
love and in discarding the man who was. And the marquise continued:
"It was one night a few weeks before he set out to join Turenne in the
Palatinate. A great _fete_ was given by Louis to celebrate his
birthday at St. Germain-en-Laye, his birthplace, and it was there we
met again. Presently, when both of us were able to escape from the
great crowd of courtiers, marshals, and ministers who surrounded the
king, he told me that he was glad he had met me once more--that he
wished to confide a secret to me if I would hear it, a charge if I
would accept it. At first I hesitated, then--when I found it would not
thrust against your father's honour"--again the girl stroked her
mother's hand--"I told him he might confide in me. Aurelie, he told me
that, embittered by having lost me, he had married in private an
English lady, daughter of a refugee, that he had learned to love her,
and that death had parted them after a few years of marriage. Also, he
told me, she left him a son, whom he had brought up in ignorance of
the position that must be his, but that--should he return from the
Palatinate--he meant to acknowledge him. He never did return, and his
son has never been acknowledged."
"Why, my mother?" asked Aurelie, with an upward glance. "Why?"
"Nay, child," the marquise replied. "Think no evil of me. No base
thoughts entered my mind. No remembrance that his son stood in the way
of your half-brother's inheritance--he and your father being
ostensibly De Vannes's heir. No! no! no! But in that hurried interval
both he and I had made one fatal slip--had committed one hideous act
of forgetfulness. He had forgotten to tell me--I to ask--where this
son was, and in what name he was known."
The girl dropped her hands with a despairing action into her lap; then
a moment later she turned the soft hazel eyes up again toward her
mother's face and said: "Yet now you know! You have found out!"
"Yes, I have found out. That son is the man who sleeps beneath our
roof to-night--Lieutenant St. Georges."
"But how? How? How?"
"Again, listen. For years I sought to find him, made inquiries in
every quarter I could think of, asked--quietly and cautiously--of all
who might by chance possess any information. Then, at last, it
came--from the quarter least to be imagined. From your half-brother."
"Raoul?"
"Ay, Raoul, your father's heir--also heir to the fortune of the Duc de
Vannes, as all the world thought and still thinks. He came to me one
day--three months ago--when he had been privately to Paris; for what
reason I know not, although I know that his visit was a secret one,
since he had not been presented to the king. He came in, I say, and
standing before me, he said, 'Madame, who is Monsieur St. Georges?' I
answered that I had never heard of the gentleman before, to which he
replied: ''Tis strange, madame. He is an officer of the Regiment de
Nivernois. And his commission was given him by the king at the request
of your late--friend, shall I say?--the Duc de Vannes!'
"Aurelie, I fell to trembling then, for I thought to myself, 'I have
found his son.' De Vannes had told me that son was being educated for
his own profession of arms--nay, more, that he sought for him a
commission from the king. Meanwhile, Raoul was watching me carefully,
so that I disguised as best I could my agitation, while I replied: 'It
seems to me you need not to demand information of me. You know of
Monsieur St. Georges's existence--of the calling he follows. On my
part, I have never heard of him before!' 'Nor perhaps,' he replied,
'ever will again!' and with that he left me."
"It must be the man," Mademoiselle de Roquemaure murmured. "It must be
he."
"It is he," the marquise replied emphatically. "It is he. As he stood
before me to-night I saw his father in his eyes, in his glance--nay,
in his bearing. That man is the son of De Vannes--is the De Vannes
himself. And if more proof was wanted, is it not forthcoming when we
have learned that not only his life, but the life of his child, is
thrust against? His father died without a will, without naming him;
_your_ father was therefore the heir, and--after him--your brother
Raoul. In another year, when he is thirty, De Vannes's wealth is his,
if--if," and her eyes glistened as she spoke, "no direct heir bars the
way. You understand?"
"Yes," the girl said slowly. "Yes, I understand."