"IT IS TRUE."
The windows of the _salon_ giving on to the crushed-shell path of the
Hotel de Louvigny had been open all day to let in the air, and the
handsomely apparelled young officer of the Regiment de Grance,
stationed at Rambouillet, was enabled therefore to at once enter the
room, leaving his men outside. Yet as he did so he seemed bewildered
and astonished at the sight which met his eyes.
Lying fainting, gasping, on her couch was Madame de Louvigny--_la
belle Louvigny_ as they called her, and toasted her nightly in the
guardroom--standing over her was a man, white to the lips, his hands
clinched, his whole form and face expressing horror and contempt.
"_Pardie!_" the young fellow muttered between his lips, "I have
interrupted a little scene, _un roman d'amour_! _Bon Dieu_ the lover
has detected madame in some little infidelity, and--and--has had a
moment of vivacity. Yet 'tis not my fault. _Devoir avant tout_," and
as he muttered the motto of the noble house to which he
belonged--perhaps as an aid in that _devoir_--he advanced into the
room after bidding his men remain where he had stationed them.
"Madame la baronne will pardon my untimely appearance," he muttered in
the most courtly manner, and with a comprehensive bow of much ease and
grace which included St. Georges, "but my orders were--what--madame
herself knows. Otherwise I should regret even more my presence here."
She, still on the lounge, her face buried in her Valenciennes
handkerchief, was as yet unable to utter a word--_he_, standing before
her, never removed his eyes from her. The officer's words had
confirmed what he suspected--what he knew.
"But," continued the lieutenant, "madame will excuse. I have my orders
to obey. The man she mentioned to the commandant has not yet
endeavoured to pass the barrier--is it madame's desire that her house
should be searched?"
She raised her head from the couch as he spoke, not daring to cast a
glance at him whom she had betrayed to his doom. Then she said, her
voice under no control and broken. "No. He is not here. He--has
escaped."
"Escaped, madame? Impossible! Rambouillet is too small even for him to
be in hiding--he----"
"Has not escaped," St. Georges said, turning suddenly on the officer.
"On the contrary, he has been betrayed. I am the man."
"You! Madame's----" and he left his sentence unfinished. "You! Here
alone with her, and a _galerien_!"
"Yes--I."
It was useless, he knew, to do aught than give himself up. Escape was
impossible. It was known, must be known in this small town, that he
was the only stranger who had entered it lately; nor did he doubt that
when the treacherous creature had informed against him she had
described him thoroughly. Even though now she lied to save him, it
would be of no avail. He could not remain in her house, hide in it as
she had suggested, take shelter from her. From her! No! even the
galleys--or the gallows--were better than that.
"I regret to hear it," the officer said, "since monsieur appears to be
a friend of madame la baronne. Yet, under the circumstances, monsieur
will not refuse to accompany me."
"I will accompany you."
Whatever the young fellow may have thought of the man who was now in
his custody--and what he did think was that he was some old lover of
la belle Louvigny who had either cast her off, or been cast off by
her, and had reappeared at an awkward moment, so that she had taken an
effectual manner of disposing of him--he at least did not show it. But
for her he testified his contempt in a manner that was unmistakable.
He motioned to St. Georges to precede him to the open window where his
men were, and, putting on his hat before he had quitted the room, he
strode after his prisoner without casting a glance at the woman.
But as they neared the window, and were about to step on to the path,
St. Georges stopped and, addressing him, said: "Sir, grant me one
moment's further grace, I beg of you. Ere I go I have a word to say to
madame."
Courteous as he had been all through--to him--the young fellow
shrugged his shoulders good-naturedly, raised no objection, and
lounged by the open window, while St. Georges returned to where she
still crouched upon the lounge. Yet, as she heard his footsteps
nearing her, she looked up with terror-stricken eye, and shrunk back
even further into its ample depths. The officer had not demanded his
sword, it hung still by his side; her craven heart feared that in his
last moment allowed to him he might wrench it from its sheath and
punish her for her treachery. But, as she learned a moment later, he
had a worse punishment in store for her than that.
"You have sent me to my doom," he said, gazing down on her, "yet, ere
I go, hear what has been the doom of another--as vile as you
yourself----"
In an instant she had sprung to her feet, was standing panting before
him, one hand upon her heart, the other by her side in the folds of
her dress. "Vile as she herself," he had said. "Vile as she herself!"
To whom else but De Roquemaure could such words apply when issuing
from that man's lips?
"The doom of another!" she hissed, repeating those words; "the doom of
another--of whom?"
And again on her face there was now the look--the _canine_ look--that
had been there before--the lip drawn back, the small teeth showing,
the threatening glance in the eyes.
"Of whom but one! Who else but your vile partner"--the young officer,
of noble race as he was, and steeped in good breeding, could scarce
refrain from being startled at those words--"the man you say you love?
Well, love him! Only learn this, you have nothing but his memory to
love. He is dead!----"
With a scream that rang not only through the _salon_, but the house
also, and penetrated out into the cool garden beyond--a scream that
caused the lieutenant to start toward them, and his men to peer into
the room--she sprang at him, her right hand raised now, and in it the
dagger she had so long concealed.
"Beware!" the officer cried. "Beware, she is dangerous!" And, even as
he spoke, she struck full at St. Georges's breast with the knife.
"Bah!" he exclaimed, thrusting aside her upraised arm with the hand in
which, all through the interview with her, he had held his
hat--thrusting it aside with such force that she almost staggered and
fell. "Bah! you mistake, woman. Did you think it was my _back_ again
at which you struck?"
The room was full of servants now; her own waiting maid and one or two
of the lackeys busy about the house, preparing a little supper madame
had intended giving that night to a few admirers, had rushed in at her
scream; and now the former stood behind and half supported her while
she muttered incoherent sounds amid which the words only could be
caught, "You slew him!--at last!"
"Nay," he said, standing still in front of her, calm and sinister;
"such satisfaction was not granted me, nor so easy an ending to him.
The English who drove Tourville's fleet to its doom at La Hogue did
their work effectively. Each ship, each transport, found by them was
blown out of the water; in one of those transports, named the Vendome,
he was blown up, too. I was there but a little while before it
exploded; I saw its fragments and all within it hurled into space. I
think, madame, my doom is scarce worse than his."
With another shriek, as piercing as the first, she threw her arms
above her head, then fell an insensible mass into the serving woman's
arms. And St. Georges, turning to the young officer, said:
"Sir, I am at your service."
* * * * *
They took him that night to the Chateau de Rambouillet, he marching
with three of the soldiers in front of and three behind him, the young
officer by his side. And this scion of nobility, one of the De
Mortemarts, testified by his actions that night that the French good
breeding of the great monarch's day was no mere outward show. He
permitted his prisoner to still retain his sword, and he walked by his
side instead of ahead of his men, because he did not desire that those
whom in his mind he considered the _canaille_ should make any
observations upon that prisoner as they passed through the streets.
Moreover, wherever a knot of persons were gathered together in any
corner he affected a smiling exterior, so that they should be induced
to suppose that St. Georges was an ordinary acquaintance accompanying
him.
"Sir," said the latter, observing all this, "you are very good to me.
You make what I have to bear as light as possible."
"It is nothing, nothing," the lieutenant replied. "I only wish it had
not fallen to my lot to undertake so unpleasant a duty. By the way, I
suppose it is true, as she told the commandant! You have,
unfortunately known--been--at the galleys?"
"It is true."
"_Tiens!_ A pity. A thousand pities! Above all, that you should have
encountered that she-devil. Well, I am glad you had those hard words
with her. _Ma foi!_ she is a tigress! I only hope you may escape
from--from other things--as you did from her dagger."
The commandant--who was also the colonel of the Regiment de
Grance--was, however, a different style of man from his lieutenant--a
man who from long service in the army had become rough and harsh;
also, like many men commanding regiments under Louis, he had risen
solely by his military qualifications, and owed nothing to birth or
influence.
He listened, however, very attentively to all De Mortemart told him of
the scene that had taken place, and especially as to how the Baronne
de Louvigny--to whom he himself was paying court, as has been
told--had evidently had some lover whose existence he had never
suspected; and then he sent for St. Georges, who was brought into his
presence by De Mortemart himself.
"So," he said, "you are an escaped _galerien_, monsieur. Well! You
know what happens to them when retaken!"
"I know."
"What was your crime?"
"Nothing--except serving the king as a soldier."
"As a soldier!" he and De Mortemart exclaimed together, while the
former continued, "In what capacity?"
"As lieutenant in the Chevaux-Legers of Nivernois."
"_Mon Dieu!_" exclaimed the commandant. "A picked regiment, and
commanded by De Beauvilliers--_n'est-ce pas?_"
"He was my colonel."
"Come," said the other, relaxing his stern method of addressing St.
Georges, and warming toward him, unknowingly to himself by the fact
that this man in such dire distress was a comrade and had served in a
_corps d'elite_--"come, tell us your history. We cannot help
you--there is but one thing to do, namely, to send you to Paris for
inquiry; but until you go we can at least make your existence here
more endurable."
So St. Georges told them his story.
All through it both his listeners testified their sympathy--De
Mortemart especially, by many exclamations against De Roquemaure and
his sister, and also against la belle Louvigny--while the colonel
spoke approvingly of the manner in which St. Georges had almost
avenged himself on his foe in the inn. The description, too, of his
existence in the galleys moved both young and old soldier alike; it
was only when he arrived at the account of the destruction of
Tourville's fleet that they ceased to make any remark and sat
listening to him in silence.
It was finished, however, now, and when the colonel spoke his voice
was more cold and unsympathetic.
"You have ruined yourself by the last month's work," he said. "I am
afraid you can never recover from that. Did you not know that his
Majesty has made it a rule that none who have served him shall ever
take service under a foreign power and dare to venture into France
again?"
"I know it," St. Georges said, "and I must abide by my fate. Yet, my
child was here. I was forced to come, and there was no other way but
this."
One thing only he had not told them, the story of what he believed to
be his birth, the belief he held that he was the Duc de Vannes. Nor,
he determined then--had, indeed, long since determined--would he ever
publish that belief now. Had he kept his freedom until he had once
more regained Dorine, it was his intention to have repassed to England
and never again to have recalled that supposed birthright, or, as the
child grew up, to have let her obtain any knowledge on the subject. He
would work for her, slave for her, if necessary become tutor, or
soldier, or sailor, as Fate might decree; but it must be as an
Englishman, and with all connection with France broken forever.
And now, a prisoner, a man who would ere long be tried as an
ex-_galerien_, as--if De Mortemart and the colonel did not hold their
peace--a Frenchman who had joined England and helped her in
administering the most crushing blow to France which she had suffered
for centuries--he would never see his child again; what need,
therefore, to publish his belief?
The hope that had sustained him for years was gone; the prayer he had
uttered by night and day, that once more he might hold his little
child in his arms and cherish and succour her, was gone, too; they
would never meet again. Let him go, therefore, to his doom unknown,
and, so going, pass away and be forgotten. And it might be that, with
him removed, God would see fit to temper to his child the adversity
that had fallen to his own lot.