In the Day of Adversity

CHAPTER XXXV.

AT LAST

It seemed almost as if he had been expected from his appearance being received in so matter-of-fact a way. Yet, he reflected, why should it be otherwise? Aurélie de Roquemaure could scarce know of all that had happened to him of late – above all could not be aware that he had become possessed of the information that she was the kidnapper of Dorine.

He had, however, but little time for reflection since Boussac was by his side, and, when they dismounted from their horses, had followed him into the large sombre hall to which the old servant had led the way. Yet, when the man had gone to seek his mistress, the latter took one more opportunity to plead that he should be gentle with her.

"Remember," he said, "remember, I beseech you, that you have but her brother's word for what you suspect her of; he was a villain, he might have lied in his last moments for some reason – perhaps did not even think those last moments were in truth at hand; might have hoped to escape after all and profit by the lie. Remember! Oh, remember!"

"I will remember," St. Georges said. Then, with one glance at Boussac, he added, "But the villain did not lie then!"

The domestic came back, and St. Georges learned that the hour for his explanation, long sought and meditated upon, was at hand. "His mistress would see monsieur," he said. He would conduct him to her.

In the same room where he had first set eyes on Aurélie de Roquemaure he saw her again – the old man ushering him in and then swiftly leaving the room. They were face to face at last! As it had been before, so it was now – her beauty as she rose on his entrance was strikingly apparent, compelled regard. And the four years that had passed since that first meeting had done much to increase, to ripen that beauty; instead of the budding girl it was a stately woman who now met his eyes. And the contrast between them was great, was all to her advantage so far as exterior matters were concerned: he travel-stained, worn, and with now in his long hair some streaks of gray; she fresh and beautiful in the long black lace dress she wore, a rose in her bosom, her hair undisguised by any wig and swept back into a huge knot behind. "How beautiful she is!" he thought, as he gave her one glance, "yet how base and contemptible!"

With a swift movement she came toward him from the further end of the room, her hands extended and her eyes sparkling, exclaiming as she advanced: "You are free! you are free!" But her greeting met with no response from him. Could she have expected it, he wondered? Then he stepped back and coldly said:

"Yes, Mademoiselle de Roquemaure, I am free," while to himself he said: "So she knew that too. That I was trapped! God! That womankind can be so base!"

Staggered at the coldness of his first words, affronted at his refusal to take her outstretched hands, she drew back and looked at him calmly. Then she said, quietly, "I rejoice to know it," and, pausing, looked at him again.

"Mademoiselle de Roquemaure," he said, "I have not ridden here from Paris, from a prison which at one time I scarce thought to leave except for the wheel, to interchange idle compliments. I have come here with one set purpose, to learn what you have done with my child – the child you stole from the Bishop of Lodève's servant on the morning that your servant gave that man his death wound."

His eyes were intent upon her as he spoke, watching her eagerly. Yet, to his surprise, she neither started nor paled at his accusation. Instead, she said quietly:

"You know that?"

"Yes," he replied; "I know it."

"And your informant was – ?"

"Your brother, or half-brother. With his dying words."

"He was slain at La Hogue; ah, yes! you were there! I remember. Was it you who slew him?"

"No; but, pardon me, it is not about Monsieur de Roquemaure that I have come here. The De Roquemaures and I have had enough intercourse." And now he saw that he had touched her, since she grew pale as death. "There will be no need of any further when once my child is restored to me. Mademoiselle, I have come to demand that child of you. Where is she – what have you done with her?"

For answer she advanced to a bell rope, and, pulling it, said to the servant when he appeared, "Send Mademoiselle de Vannes to me."

"Mademoiselle de Vannes!" he exclaimed, "Mademoiselle de Vannes! You call her that – you know – "

"I know."

He raised his hand to his forehead with a gesture of bewilderment, then said, "And you keep her here?"

"She is here, monseigneur," as the door opened once more; "here is your child."

Even as she spoke a bright-haired child ran into the room and, rushing toward Mademoiselle de Roquemaure, caught her by the hands and buried her face in her dress, while she whispered:

"Aurélie, dear sister Aurélie, why do you send for me now when I am so hard at work with Père Antoine? And who is this stranger? What does he want?"

"Who is this stranger?" At those words St. Georges's heart gave a throb – he said afterward that he thought it would cease to beat – and the room swam round with him. He had found the child of many longings – and he was a stranger! A moment later he heard Aurélie speaking.

"Dorine, this is no stranger. Give him your hand; kiss him."

Reluctantly the child advanced to where he stood, and obeyed her in so far that she held out her hand; but, either from coyness or some other cause, she did not offer to lift up her face for him to kiss. And he, standing there, looking down on her, felt as if his heart would break. Then, overcome by all that was struggling within his bosom, he dropped upon one knee beside the child and drew her toward him, she seeming terrified at his embrace.

"Ah, little one!" he said, "if I tell you how I have longed for this hour, prayed for it to come, surely you will say some word of greeting to me. Dorine, do you not know me? Dorine, Dorine!"

For answer, the child, still seeming frightened, drew further away from him and whispered that she did not know him, that she desired to go to Aurélie.

"You love her?" he whispered, too, for now his voice seemed to be failing him – "you love her? You are happy with her? I hoped you would have come with me – "

"With you!" – and now the tears stood in the child's eyes as she shrank still further from him – "and leave Aurélie?"

"Why not?" he asked almost fiercely, his despair driving him nearly to distraction. "Why not? Who is she? What share has she in you? You are mine, mine, mine! O child, I am your father!" And suddenly overwrought by his emotions, by the broken hopes he had cherished, the vanishing of the future to which he had looked forward, he sprang to his feet and turned to Mademoiselle de Roquemaure. "I see it all," he said; "understand all. Your brother uttered the truth at last. You stole my child because she stood in your way; you won her love afterward because – "

"Stop!" exclaimed Aurélie de Roquemaure, and as she spoke she drew herself to her full height and confronted him, while the child, trembling by her side, could not understand why her sister had changed so. "Stop and hear the truth since you force me to tell it. I stole your child because in that way alone could her life be saved, her safety at least be assured. My brother would – God forgive him! – have hidden her away forever; even then, as I learned afterward, the bishop's servant had stolen her from the inn in the city and was hastening to meet him. There was no time to lose; it was that man's life or hers, and – and – I acted by my mother's orders. Now, Monseigneur le Duc – "

But he whom she addressed thus had fallen on his knees before her, had endeavoured to seize her hand, and, failing that, was kissing the hem of her dress.

"Forgive, forgive, forgive!" he moaned; "I have been blind – blind! Let me go in peace and offend no more. She is yours, not mine; yours by your womanly grace and mercy – the love she has to give belongs to you by right of your womanly mercy. Better that I had died in Paris yesterday than live to repay you as I have!"

But now to the child's mind there seemed to come some gleam of light as to what was passing between the stranger and her mother; the words, "Better I had died in Paris," awakened her intelligence.

"Aurélie," she cried, "was this the gentleman whom you hurried to Paris to save?"

"To save!" St. Georges exclaimed, "to save! My God! do I owe my life to you as well?"

And Aurélie – her eyes cast down, her frame trembling from head to foot – murmured: "I could not let you die, knowing what I did, knowing the evil the De Roquemaures had wrought you. When Monsieur Boussac sent me word you were doomed, I determined to tell the king all."

So she had saved him! She, whom for four years he had regarded as a treacherous enemy, had saved not only his child but him. And ere the day was over he had learned all that she had done besides.

She told her tale to St. Georges and to Boussac as they sat in the grounds of the old manoir, and made at last all clear to the former that for so long had been dark and impenetrable.

"The man who was your worst enemy," she said, "was that vile Bishop of Lodève; the next was Louvois – for without them my unhappy brother would have known nothing and could have attempted no harm against you. He regarded himself as the heir of the Duc de Vannes, and did not know of your existence until Phélypeaux told him of it. And at the same time the bishop said that he had another formidable rival in the Romish Church – "

"The Romish Church!"

"Yes, your father had become converted to it and was received into it by Phélypeaux himself, the example of Turenne having much influenced him. At first, on being received, he had, with the fervour of many converts, bequeathed half of his great fortune to that Church, the other half remaining a bequest to his heir – my father, and after him my unhappy half-brother. But, ere he set out on the campaign in which both he and Turenne were to lose their lives, he wrote to the bishop and told him that he had a son by an unacknowledged marriage; that he could not deem it right that he should be deprived of what was properly his, and that he had made a will leaving all his property to him. Then the search for you began, though my brother was not concerned in it, being still a child. But the bishop sought high and low, first for proofs of the marriage and next to discover where the duke's son was. And Louvois helped him because he had hated your father, who despised him, as Turenne and many of the other marshals did."

"But you, mademoiselle," exclaimed St. Georges, "how do you know all this? And did you know it when we first met?"

"No," she replied, "but my mother suspected. By this time my brother had heard something from Louvois, who had found out all when the effects of the Duc de Vannes, which he had taken with him on his last campaign – his private papers and other things – were brought back to Paris by the Comte de Lorge, Turenne's nephew; had discovered that the son was named St. Georges, his English mother's name having been St. George, but could not discover where the duke had bestowed him. Nor did he discover it until long afterward, when, happening to once more refer to the papers brought by the comte, he discovered one he had overlooked addressed to my mother; and he read it and discovered thereby that the officer, who was serving in the Regiment of the Nivernois, under the name of St. Georges, was, in truth, the lawful Duc de Vannes. Then in his cold, brutal manner he informed the bishop where the man was who stood in the light of the Church's gains, and alas! he told that other who expected so much, my unhappy half-brother. Also he told them both that this man was to be transferred to another regiment, and that he would set out from Pontarlier on a certain night. They might care to see him, he continued; therefore he should receive orders to call on the bishop at his family residence in Dijon, where he happened to be then, and on my brother in this house – though, not to arouse any suspicions, he was to present himself as a visitor to my mother. Also he told them that which neither dreamed of until then – namely, that Monsieur St. Georges was a widower, but had a child whom he would doubtless endeavour to bring with him. You must be able," she concluded, "to understand the rest."

"Ay!" said the Duc de Vannes, "I can understand. Only still, mademoiselle, I cannot conceive how you know all this."

"Yet the answer is simple. By one of those marvellous coincidences which happen as often in our everyday life as in the romances of Mademoiselle de Scudery, or the fables of Monsieur de La Fontaine, my brother had once asked my mother if she had ever heard of you, if your assumed name was known to her; the bishop supposing that she was greedy as he himself, had sent to warn her that you were on your way to Paris, and that it would be well if she could recognise in you any traces of your father and would send a word to Louvois saying whether she thought you were the man. But he overreached himself," Mademoiselle de Roquemaure added; "my mother's sympathies were with the son of him she had once loved so dearly, not with him who was the son of the man she had married. And as for Phélypeaux – she despised him!"

"Heaven bless her!" exclaimed the duke. "Yet still I know not how she unravelled all – how found out my birthright – my mother's name."

"That, too, is simple. Louvois died suddenly, as you know, in disgrace with the king. Some said by poison administered by himself, some from fear of the king's displeasure. Be that, however, as it may, his son, Barbézieux, was not allowed to touch any of his papers and all were handed to Louis intact. He confided them to De Chamlay, who refused Louvois's vacant post as minister of war but consented to go over his state affairs, and in those papers he found all; a copy of your father's letter to the bishop, the letter to my mother which had never been delivered – telling her everything and begging her to see you righted – his will and his marriage certificate, as well as that of your birth. Monseigneur, I have them upstairs – I showed them to the king the night before last – they are now at your disposal."

Boussac had strolled away ere the narrative was done – his delicacy prompting him to leave them alone – and as she concluded the Duke de Vannes dropped on his knee by her side, and, taking her hand, murmured:

"Forgive, pardon me! Bring yourself to say you forgive the evil I have thought, and let me go. Unworthy as I am to ask it, yet, if you can, forgive me and never more in this world will I offend your sight. And, for expiation, I give my child to you – you who have been so much more to her than I."

But Aurélie de Roquemaure, bending toward the kneeling man, said: "Nay. Why say that I forgive – I, who have naught to pardon? Only – do not go! Stay, rather, and win the love of the child whom you have loved so much through all your grief, through your long separation."

CONCLUSION

The Peace of Ryswick brought about many changes in both France and England. It opened each country to the other – for a time, though but a short one! – it enabled the refugees of each to return to their own lands, and for a few years England and her neighbours were not at open enmity.

Yet one refugee there was who never returned to France, but who, in the country of his adoption, and with his beautiful wife by his side and at his knee his children, took no part in the strife between the two lands or in their politics. Instead, he dwelt upon the estate he had bought in the heart of Surrey – with the money he had realized by the sale of his property in France – and there, a prosperous gentleman, passed life easily and well.

But there was no longer any Duc de Vannes in France – that old title was never revived after the death of the late owner of it on the plains of Salzbach – and in Surrey the handsome grave gentleman, who was known to be a wealthy emigré from across the Channel, was invariably spoken of and addressed as Mr. St. George.

And he was very happy thus! – happy when he thought of all the dangers he had passed through safely – though sometimes in the night his wife would hear him mutter in his sleep, "At dawn, at dawn!" and know that in his dreams his mind had gone back to that summer morning on the Place de Grève, when, putting out her hand, she would softly wake him; happy, too, in his children – in the one whose love had come back to him as he had prayed so long it might; happy in those others whom God had sent him: in the bright, handsome boy who bore his own name; and in the delicate, beautiful girl who bore her mother's – Aurélie.

And happy beyond all thought and early expectation when she, that mother, was by his side, or when, rising from her place near him, and stroking back the long hair from his forehead – now streaked with silver – and kissing him, would murmur:

"'If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small,'" and then falling on her knees beside him would whisper, "But your strength was great, my love, and in that strength you were able to endure."

1

The various chevaux-légers had not as yet been put by Louis into uniform, as was the case a few years before with most of the French regiments.

2

Cheval-léger is a modern rendering of the old term.

3

"Les mousquetaires tiraient leur noms de la couleur de leur chevaux." —St. Simon.

4

"Le roi donner à manger à ses chiens toujours soi-meme." —La Fare, St. Simon, and others.

5

See engravings of Della Bella, done at the time and representing such scenes.

6

The description of the galley is taken from Mémoirs d'un Protestant condamné aux Galères de France, and written by one Jean Marteidhe. It was published in Rotterdam in 1757, and again in Paris, by the Société des Écoles du Dimanche, in 1865 and 1881, and is perhaps the best account in existence of the sufferings and terrible existence of French galley slaves. It is also well known in the translations by Oliver Goldsmith, a reprint of which, edited by W. Austin Dobson, has just appeared.

7

William was fighting on the Continent, and, as usual, being defeated.

8

In those days none possessed naval uniform, and, from admiral downward, all wore what they chose.

9

The distich ran: