LOST.
A considerable hubbub outside the manoir--the crying of a woman, and
the voices of various men all talking together--aroused St. Georges
from his sleep as the wintry dawn broke through the fogs and mists of
the night.
"_Fichte_," he heard the old servitor say, "you are a fool, my girl,
to come here and thrust your head in the lion's jaws. Better make off
another way; he will kill you, I warrant, when he hears how you have
kept your promise."
"Let him," he heard next a woman's voice reply, a voice all broken and
rendered indistinct by her tears and sobs, "let him. O _mon Dieu_!"
she wailed, "have pity on me! I would have shielded the little thing
with my life. I left it but a few, nay, not ten, minutes, and
then--then it was gone. Oh, pity me, pity me, _mon Dieu_!"
With a bound St. Georges had flung himself from out of his bed, and
was hastily putting on his clothes. For the words of the weeping woman
in the roadway, as they rose to his ears--above all, the voice which
he recognised--told him the worst. The child, his child, was missing;
the woman below was the one to whom he had confided Dorine overnight.
Huddling on his garments, therefore, while still he heard arising the
voices from a short distance below him (for the first floor of the
manoir, on which his room was situated, was not more than twelve or
fourteen feet from the ground) and the girl's sobs and weeping as she
exclaimed, "Not more than ten minutes did I leave it alone, not more,
while I regarded the troops coming in," he descended rapidly to the
great hall below. He met no one on his way as he did so--doubtless,
neither the marquise nor her daughter were yet risen--and finding the
door in the tourelle with little difficulty, he emerged into the
roadway.
Standing in it were those two whose voices he had already heard--the
old servitor and the girl from the inn in Troyes--and by them was the
youth, Gaston, his arm this morning being bound up in a sling, as
though he had met with some hurt. He was gazing silently at the girl
as she sobbed and wept before the old man, listening evidently with
interest to all she said, and with a look of sympathy on his face for
the evident distress of mind she was in.
But now, as St. Georges appeared before her, his face stern and
fierce--though already there was on it a look of misery and
foreboding--she flung herself upon her knees before him in the hard,
frost-bound road, and lifting up her clasped hands she cried:
"Oh, monsieur, forgive me, pardon me! I did but leave the child for
ten moments, and----"
"And," said St. Georges, his face growing almost darker than before,
"it is stolen, or dead! Is that what you have come to tell me?"
"Alas! alas!" she moaned, "that it should be so. Stolen, not dead,
thank God. Oh, monsieur," and again the coarse, hard-working hands
were clasped and lifted up before his face, "_ayez pitie, je_----"
"Be brief," the _chevau-leger_ interrupted, taking no heed of her
wailings, while the old and young man started at the misery revealed
by the changed tones of his voice. "Be brief. I confided my child to
you, and you have failed in your trust. Tell me how. Then I may know
how to act. Proceed."
"Oh, monsieur," the poor creature said, wondering that, ere now, he
had not torn her to pieces or thrust his sword through her, as would
likely enough have been done by many of her own kind under a similar
breach of faith--"oh, monsieur, my heart is broken, my heart----"
"No matter for your heart," St. Georges interrupted her peremptorily
again; "tell your story at once. At once, I say!" And again the two
standing by wondered that he could master himself so, in spite of his
grief; while the girl, seeing that she had best obey him, told with
many sobs, which still she could not repress, what had happened.
It was in the early morning, she said, and she and the little thing
had slept warm and peacefully together--oh, so peacefully!--and the
time had come for her to arise; the hostler had come to knock on her
door, for she slept heavily. Then he told her, as he stood outside,
that a troop of the Vicomte d'Arpajou's regiment was come in and
seeking billets in the town; and she, because she was _une
malheureuse_, and also because she had a cousin who rode in the ranks,
got up and ran downstairs to get news of him. For his mother had heard
nothing of him for many months; they were anxious--oh, so anxious! But
it was not his troop, and so, gleaning no news, she had returned to
her bedroom, meaning to finish her dressing and to prepare the child.
And then, she went on, sobbing again, and with more wringings of her
hands--and then, oh! horror, she found the bed empty and the child
gone. Gone! Gone! Gone! Oh, it was terrible! She aroused the other
servants with her screams; high and low they sought for it--it might
have crept even from the bed--but, no! it was gone. And after half an
hour's further search, she, feeling demented, had told her master all
and how she had taken charge of the child, and had begged him to let
her come to the manoir to see its father. Perhaps, it might yet be
found, might, because God was good, have been found since she had come
away. Who knew? Oh! she prayed it might be so--on her knees she
prayed----
"My horse!" exclaimed St. Georges, turning to the younger man, Gaston,
still standing close by, "my horse, I beg of you! Lose no time in
saddling it. I must go back to the city at once." And turning his head
away from them he murmured: "My child! My little lonely child! Oh, my
child!"
They heard his moan, those three standing there--for now the woman
had risen to her feet--and they pitied him. The old man shook his head
sadly; he was a father and a grandfather himself; the girl sobbed
afresh, and Gaston moved off at once to obey his behest. "My arm is
injured," he stammered, seeing that the soldier's eye was on it now;
"one of the horses kicked it last night in the stable; but--but--I can
still saddle your animal. In an instant, monsieur, in an instant," and
he moved away.
Seeing that he was in pain--indeed, the lad's face was bloodless and
also drawn with suffering--and being himself devoured with eagerness
to return to the city and seek for his child, St. Georges followed him
through the courtyard to where the stables were. And then, noticing
that Gaston could not use his wounded arm at all, he saddled his
animal with his own hands while the young man stood by helpless, or
only able to render him the slightest assistance with his uninjured
arm. And when this was done he led the horse forth to the front of the
manoir and mounted it.
"There is no time for me to pay my respects to madame la marquise," he
said to the servitor--"she will understand my lack of courtesy. Yet,
since it is impossible I can continue my journey to Paris--even the
king's commands must wait now!--I will endeavour not to quit Troyes
without bidding her farewell. Will you tell her that, my friend?"
The old man said he would--that he knew madame would understand and
sympathize with him--and--and--but ere he could finish whatever he
intended to say, St. Georges had put spurs to his horse and was
speeding back to Troyes, while following him along the road on foot
went the unfortunate servant from the inn, still weeping and
bemoaning.
The hostler was standing in the gateway of the auberge as he rode in,
his horse already sweating and with foam about its mouth from the pace
it had come; and throwing himself off it St. Georges advanced to the
man and asked him if he had heard any news of his missing child.
"Nay," he replied. "Nay. No news. _Mon Dieu!_ I know not who could
have stolen it. 'Tis marvellous. 'Twas none of D'Arpajou's troop, to
be sure. And there were no others."
"None lurking about the inn last night--none sleeping here who might
have stolen into the girl's room when she quitted it? Oh! man, I tell
you," he cried, almost beside himself with grief, "there are those who
would have tracked it across France to get at it!" And then, overcome
with remorse at having left the child in any other custody but his
own, though he had thought it was for the best when he did so, he
murmured: "Why, why, did I not keep it with me? My arm sheltered it
when the attack was made at Aignay-le-Duc; no worse than that could
have befallen it."
"None lurking about," the man repeated, looking up at the great
soldier while he chewed a straw. "None lurking about. _Mon Dieu!_ why
did I not think of that before?"
"There _was_ one!" St. Georges exclaimed, "there was one, then? You
saw some man--I know it; I see it in your face. For God's sake, answer
me! Who? Who was it?"
But the hostler was a slow man--one whose mind moved cumbrously, and
again he muttered to himself: "No! No, it could not be he. It----"
"Could not be whom? Oh, do not torture me! Tell me! Tell me!"
"There was one," the other replied, "who rode in last night, seeking a
bed for himself and a stall for his horse. Yet he could have neither
here. We were full, and we knew too that D'Arpajou's horse were on the
road. So we sent him away to the _Cheval Rouge_, yet I saw him again
late at night in the yard, and, asking him his business, he said that
he had lost his glove when here----"
"My God!" St. Georges exclaimed, more to himself than the man. "Was it
De Roquemaure?"
"De Roquemaure!" the other exclaimed. "De Roquemaure! _Par hasard_,
does monsieur mean the young marquis?"
"Yes, yes. You know him--must know him, since his mother's manoir is
so near here. Answer me," and in his fervour he grasped the man's arm
firmly, "_was it he_?"
The hostler wrenched his arm away from the soldier's nervous grasp;
then he answered emphatically--scornfully indeed: "Was it he? He! De
Roquemaure? _Mon Dieu_, no! Not he, indeed!"
"You know him?"
"_Know him?_ Yes. And hate him. A wild beast, _un sauvage_. See here,"
and he pointed to his face, on which was a long, discoloured stain or
bruise, "he gave me that a week or so ago, as he rode out of the inn,
because I had not brought his horse quickly enough to please him. Know
him? Oh, yes, I know him. And some day, great and strong and powerful
seigneur as he is, he shall know me. The seigneurs do not lord it over
us always. We shall see!"
"Not De Roquemaure," St. Georges mused aloud. "Not De Roquemaure.
Great God! have we more enemies than one? Into whose hands has my
little babe fallen, then?" And again he murmured to himself, "Not De
Roquemaure!"
"No, not De Roquemaure," the man replied, overhearing him. "Nor one
like him. Instead, a stranger to the town--a sour, dark-visaged man,
elderly. None too well clad nor mounted either, and both he and his
beast well spent as though with long travel."
"Who could it be?" St. Georges muttered. "Who?" Yet, think as he
might, no light broke in upon him. But, if this man was indeed the one
who had kidnapped his child, he felt sure of one thing: he was an
agent of De Roquemaure's. It was in the latter's light alone that he
and Dorine stood!
Again he questioned the hostler, but all that he could glean was that
the lurking traveller, the fellow who, after being refused the
hospitality of the inn, was yet prowling about the stables at
midnight, in search--if his story were true--of a worthless glove, was
undoubtedly a stranger in the city. Than that the hostler could tell
him no more.
"But," said the latter, "why not inquire at the _Cheval
Rouge_?--there, if anywhere, monsieur may glean tidings of him."
Clutching at the suggestion he went toward that inn, which was but in
the next street--a place that turned out to be a frowsy, dirty house,
frequented by the humblest travellers only. And here, after describing
the man he sought, he gathered the following facts, the stranger's
actions since he had put up at the _Cheval Rouge_ being indeed enough
to set the tongues of the landlord and landlady wagging directly they
were questioned about him:
For, strange circumstances in connection with a traveller who appeared
to be, as he stated he was, dead beaten with a long journey--whence
he had not said--he had not been in all night. His bed was still
unslept in, his horse still in the stable. He had supped at the
ordinary with one or two others, and the landlady noticed he had eaten
ravenously, as one might who had fasted long; had drunk copiously,
too, of _petite Bourgogne_, and had then gone out, saying he would be
back shortly. Also, one thing was curious. "_Mon Dieu!_" the woman
said, "it was remarkable!" He had given orders that, after his horse
was rubbed down and fed, it was to be kept saddled. He might, he said,
have to set forth again at any moment; he was on important business.
Yet now, the woman stated, the horse was still in its stall and the
man had never returned.
"And his necessaries?" St. Georges asked, after he had told the people
of the house as much as he deemed fit. "What of them? His bags, his
holsters, where are they? Were they taken to his room or left with his
horse?"
"Necessaries! bags!" the landlord replied, "he had none. And as for
pistols--well--the holsters were empty; doubtless he had them about
him. Perhaps monsieur would like to see the horse?"
Yes, monsieur would like to see the horse, and was consequently taken
to the stable to do so. It was a poor beast, not groomed properly for
some days; at least, it looked poor and overstrained now, though
perhaps a good enough animal when fresh. It showed signs, too, of
having been hard ridden. For the rest, it was an ordinary animal of
the most usual colour--a dark chestnut.
As to the holsters, they were empty, and in none of the horse's
trappings was there aught to give any hint as to who its owner was or
whence he had come.