In The Day Of Adversity Part 13

"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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sistance 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 G.o.d's sake, answer me! Who? Who was it?"

But the hostler was a slow man--one whose mind moved c.u.mbrously, 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 G.o.d!" 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 G.o.d! 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 circ.u.mstances 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 _pet.i.te 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.

CHAPTER XIII.

DE ROQUEMAURE'S WORK.

The weather had changed, the frost was gone, and the night was hot and murky, while rain was falling, as alone, now, alas! St. Georges mounted the summit of a hill that rose close above Troyes on the road to Paris.

He had commenced his journey again.

It was a gruesome spot to which he had arrived on this night--an elevation that surmounted a billowy country, over all of which, in the summer time, the vines and corn grew in rich profusion, but which now looked bare and melancholy as the southwest wind swept the rain clouds over it beneath a watery moon. To the left of him there swung, upon the exact crest of the hill, a corpse in chains, with, perched upon its mouldering head, a crow--looking for the eyes long since pecked out by others of its brood! To the right there rose a little wood, through which the wind moaned and sighed onto his face, bringing with it warm drops of rain.

Involuntarily he glanced up at the thing swinging above his head--heartbroken as he was at having had to leave Troyes with his child still unfound, he could not refrain from doing that!--and wondered who and what the malefactor had been who was thus exalted.

And as he lowered his eyes from the ghastly ma.s.s of corruption, he saw against the gibbet a thicker, darker thing than the gallows tree itself--a thing surmounted by a white, corpselike face, from which stared a pair of large gray eyes at him--eyes in which, as the clouds scurried by beneath the moon, the moon itself shone dazzlingly, lighting them up and showing their large pupils.

The horse saw them too, and started forward a pace or so until reined in by his master's hand, and then whimpered and quivered all over, while its rider, with his own flesh creeping, bent over his saddle and peered toward the dark form surmounted by the pallid face and glaring eyes.

"Who in Heaven's name are you?" St. Georges whispered, "and why select this ghastly spot to stand in and affright pa.s.sers-by? What are you, man or woman?" and he leaned still further over his demi-pique to gaze at the figure, though as he did so his right hand stole to his sword hilt.

"A woman," a voice answered. "A woman who comes here to weep her husband's death. He"--and she cast the staring gray eyes upward to the object swinging with each gust of the wind in its chains--"was my husband. Pa.s.s on, and leave me with his murdered remains."

"Murdered! Rather, poor soul, say executed. Murderers slay not thus."

Slowly the figure left the foot of the gibbet as he spoke, so that he saw she was a tall young woman of the peasant cla.s.s, clad in dark, poor clothes, and slowly she advanced the few yards that separated them, whereby he could observe her features and notice more plainly the awful whiteness of her face.

"Murdered, I say!" she replied, still with the glare in her eyes.

"Murdered! Wrongfully accused, foully tried, falsely condemned. Done to death wickedly as a _braconnier_. But he was none--yet there he swings. O G.o.d! that life can be so easily torn from us by the powerful!"