The Scourge of God

CHAPTER V

'TWIXT THEN AND NOW

When Martin Ashurst bent over her who had borne for over forty years the title of Princesse de Rochebazon, and saw that, at last, the light had gone out of her eyes forever, he recognised how her dying words had changed his whole existence. Not only was he no more the heir to the wealth she had put by for him-his honour never halted for one moment in telling him that, or in dictating the renouncement of every sol that was hers-but also there had arisen before him a task which, his honour again speaking clear and trumpet-tongued, he must devote his life to fulfilling. He had to find the true Prince de Rochebazon, or, which was more likely, if he ever succeeded in his search at all, to find that man's children and put before them a plain account of all the wealth which was theirs, even though they should not be induced to accept it.

That if he could discover the missing de Rochebazon, even though he were still alive, he would find him willing to reclaim what was his, he doubted. A man who could for more than forty years renounce one of the most brilliant positions in France because of his religious convictions was not very likely now to alter those convictions, he knew. Also Martin Ashurst's acquaintance with the land over which the Grand Monarque reigned was amply sufficient to tell him that here, and under the all-powerful domination of the self-righteous De Maintenon, Louis would never allow a hated Protestant to step into the wealth and titles of so Romish a family as that of the de Rochebazons. Between these two stumbling blocks, therefore-the Protestantism of the lost man on one side, and the bigotry of the arbiter of France on the other-it was scarcely to be hoped that even though he should find him whom he sought, he should succeed in his endeavour to restore to that man what was his.

Yet, because he was honest and straightforward, he swore to at least make the attempt.

Regaining his own room, in which the lights had been placed-even with the mistress and last ruler of the great house lying dead in it, the major domo had deemed it fit that waxen candles should blaze from girandoles in every passage and room of the hotel, and that naught should be omitted which testified to its sumptuousness and magnificence-he recollected that he was still grasping in his hand the packet which the dying woman had directed that hand to, for he had forgotten almost that he had received it from her, so agitated was he during her last moments; now that it recalled its presence to him, he determined that he would as soon as might be discover what it contained.

But first he knew that there were other things to be done: Orders to be given that due proclamation of her death should be made; that, above all, the heads of her Church should at once be communicated with, since the monk now praying by her side would not, he was aware, quit the house, even though he had to leave the body while it was prepared for the grave; that a courier should be sent to Marly, where the king was; that the seals should be put on everything.

There was much to do still ere he could open that packet which might tell him all-or nothing.

Yet by midnight, before the great bell struck the hour from St. Eustache, as much was done as possible. Aurora, Princesse de Rochebazon, lay, not in her coffin; that, with its emblazonments and silver feet and coronets at its corners, as well as the great silver plaque telling of all the rank and honours and titles she had borne-unrighteously, if her own dying words were true-could not be prepared hurriedly. Instead, upon her bed, now transformed into a temporary bier, as the great room in which she had died had been transformed into a Chapelle Ardente. Also the courier was gone, the Church apprised of the death of its open-handed benefactress; already the Abbé Le Tellier (confessor to the king and all the royal family, and titulary bishop and coadjutor of Reims) was here, he having arrived from St. Cloud as fast as his chaise roulante could bring him; also the place swarmed with priests-Theatines, Dominicans, Benedictines, and Augustines; the seals, too, were on doors and coffers and bureaux.

Likewise, Samuel Bernard, traitant and banker to the haut monde, had paid a visit and been closeted for an hour with the clergy. For the Church was the principal inheritor of the de Rochebazon wealth, and the time had come for it to grasp its heritage.

Yet now, at midnight, the great house was at last quiet; the monks prayed in silence in the room where the dead woman lay; the Suisse sat behind the high closed gates refreshing himself with the flask of yellow muscadine which the butler had brought him, and discussing with that functionary what legs each were like to get; some women servants who had loved their dead mistress wept in their beds.

All was still at last.

Martin opened the packet in that silence-he had dismissed his own servant an hour before-and inspected its contents.

They were not numerous-half a dozen letters and a lock of hair, golden, fair as the ripening cornfield, long, and with a curl to it. But, except that and the letters, nothing else. Whose hair it was that had thus been preserved in a piece of satin Martin never knew, yet perhaps could guess.

The letters lay one above the other in the order they had been written. The first and uppermost had the upper portion of it torn away, possibly by accident, or perhaps, instead, by the recipient who, it may be, was not desirous that the place whence it was dated should be known. At least such, Martin Ashurst fancied, might be the case. The paper it was written on was yellow with age, the ink faded, yet the words still clear and distinct, the writing firm. Because the top of the sheet was torn away some of the first lines of the communication were themselves missing, therefore the letter ran thus:

"… her fault upon me. Soit! I bow to what you say. Yet, if disinheritance of all that should be mine is your determination, my place in the world you can never disinherit me from; I myself alone can renounce that. The pity is great that you have it not also in your power to deprive me of the qualities of mind and heart which you have transmitted to me. Yet I pray God that I may find in myself the strength to do so, to cast away from me the pride of race, the fierce cruelty of heart, the intolerance of all that is not within my own circle of vision. Also your power of hating another for the fault committed, not by himself, but an unhappy mother-a mother driven to sin by coldness from him who should have reverenced her; the victim of a gloomy, morose nature, of a self-esteem that would be absurd even in the king himself, of a pride that might rival the pride of Lucifer.

"To reproach you, however, for sins which I may myself have inherited from you-since even you do not deny me as your son-would be useless. Therefore it is better for me to write at once that I do not oppose the disinheritance with which you threaten me. Nay, rather, I go hand in hand with you, only, also, I go to a greater extent. You tell me that if I embrace the Reformed Faith no sol or denier of the de Rochebazon wealth shall ever be mine, that I shall enjoy a barren title. This you can not force me to do. I will support no title whatever. Henceforth, neither de Rochebazon, nor d'Ançilly, nor Montrachet, nor Beauvilliers have aught to do with me. I cast them off. I forget that the house which bears those titles is one with which I have any connection. I go forth into the world alone, under a lowly name. The roof that covers me, the food for my mouth, the clothes to cover my nakedness, will be earned by my own hands. Moreover, so do I steel my heart that henceforth even my brother, Henri, will be lost to me forever. He becomes, therefore, your heir; may he find in you a better father than I have ever done. Consequently, for the last time on this earth, I sign myself,

Martin laid the paper down on the table before him and sat back musing in his chair. "A stern, fierce determination that," he muttered to himself, "arrived at by a man who would keep his word. Let us see for the next."

As he read this next one it was easy to perceive what course the rupture between the father and son had taken; how the iron will of the one had beaten down that of the other. Already the elder had sued for reconciliation-and had failed.

"What you now desire," the man wrote, who had once been Cyprien de Beauvilliers, "is impossible. First, on the ground of religion, and secondly, because of yourself. I am now of the Protestant faith, have embraced that faith in Holland, to which country you appear to have tracked my steps, I know not how. Yet that you shall never be able to do so in the future, I leave it at once, and from the time when I quit it I defy you to ever discover my whereabouts. Let me remind you that this change of faith alone is a bar to my ever reassuming my position as your successor; if it were not such bar I would proceed to even other extremes to deprive myself of the succession; would draw my sword against France if by doing so I could more utterly sever myself from you and all connected with you.

"You ask me if I hate you? I reply that I hate the man who drove my mother to evil by his intolerant and contemptible pride, and, fallen as she became, I love and adore her memory. But my heart is not large enough to find space in it for aught else. Not large enough-"

There was no more. The sheet of paper turned over at the word "enough," and no other succeeded to it.

Again Martin lay back musing.

"He was firm," he murmured. "Firm. The years which have rolled by and become forgotten since he wrote these lines, now so faded, prove that; otherwise she would have known of his existence, his whereabouts. And-and-she was a just woman in spite of the deception of her life. If she had known that he was still alive she would never have consented to usurp all his rights. Nay, not though every priest in France bade her do so."

As the word "priest" rose to his mind he started with a new thought.

"Who were the others," he whispered, "she said who knew of it? Louis, the king! Almost it seems impossible. Then, next, the woman-his wife-Madame! Also La Chaise and Chamillart. La Chaise, a bigot-Chamillart, the man they speak of as une fine lame! They all know it, and will keep the secret well. What was it she said? 'They will never tell.'"

Once more from St. Eustache close at hand the hour rolled forth; almost it seemed as if the deep boom of the great bell echoed in his ears the words he had repeated to himself, "They will never tell."

"Will they not?" he mused again. "Will they not? Neither Louis, nor his wife, nor the priest, nor the scheming politicians. Will never tell! Therefore all search must be unavailing. Yet-yet-we will see. Only, even though I should find him, even though I forced from one of them the acknowledgment that he still lived, was the true heir, would he himself consent to take what is his? The man who wrote that letter in bygone years will not have grown softer, more easily persuaded by now. Yet I will make some attempt."

He sought his bed now, and once there, still lay awake for some time longer, musing and meditating on the secret which had been confided to him; wondering, too, if what he was doing was owing absolutely to a determination to right a great wrong, or, instead, was only the outcome of that strong, latterly-embraced Protestantism of his, which, through this embrace, now caused him to desire to outwit these scheming papists. Yet he might have found the answer by studying his own feelings, his own resolves, arrived at the moment he learned of the hidden secret of the great family to which he was allied. For if he held his tongue now it was easily enough to be supposed that all which he had inherited from the dead woman would at once be made over to him. If he spoke on the subject of the lawful inheritor, not one jot of the fortune that woman had left him would ever come his way.

Only he did not so reflect, did not remember, or, remembering, did not hold that he was ruining himself in his determination not so much to outwit the Romish Church and its principal adherents as to set right the horrible wrong that had been committed-committed, in the first place, by the real de Rochebazon himself toward his children by the renunciation of all that he should have guarded for them; in the second place, by those who were only too willing to assist in depriving him, whom they doubtless termed the heretic, of what was his.

He rose the next morning with his mind made up as to what should be his future course, as to what, from this very day, he would set about doing. Rose, calm and collected, knowing that he had undertaken a task that must deprive him of that inheritance which by his silence alone might easily be his; a task that might, in the state of autocratic government which prevailed in France, lead him to a violent end.

Yet his mind was made up. He would not falter. Never. Even though he should find the last de Rochebazon still as firmly set in his determination as he had been in long-past years; even though when found, if ever, he should spurn him from his threshold with curses for having unearthed him, still he would do it. To right the wrong! To repay in some way all that he had already received from this family-his education, the luxury that had accompanied his earlier days, the profusion of ease and comfort showered on him by one who, in very truth, had no right to appropriate one crown or pistole of that family's wealth. He would do it! To right the wrong!

"Where," he said, sending for the maître d'hôtel, who presented himself at once before him, already clothed in decorous black, "where, do you know, is Madame de Maintenon now?"