The Mississippi Bubble Part 29

The dying man muttered uneasily. His mind was clouded, his eyes saw other things. He turned back to earlier days, when life was bright, when he, Louis, as a young man, had lived and loved as any other.

"Louise," he murmured. "Louise! Forgive! Meet me--Louise--dear one. Meet me yonder--"

An icy pallor swept across the face of the arch hypocrite who bent over him. Into her soul there sank like a knife this consciousness of the undying power of a real love. La Valliere, the love of the youth of Louis, La Valliere, the beautiful, and sweet, and womanly, dead and gone these long years since, but still loved and now triumphant--she it was whom Louis now remembered.

Maintenon turned from the bed-side. She stood, an aged and unhappy woman, old, gray and haggard, not success but failure written upon every lineament. For one instant she stood, her hands clenched, slow anger breaking through the mask which, for a quarter of a century, she had so successfully worn.

"Bah!" she cried. "Bah! 'Tis a pretty rendezvous this king would set for me!" And then she swept from the room, raged for a time apart, and so took leave of life and of ambition.

At length even the last energies of the once stubborn will gave way. The last gasp of the failing breath was drawn. The herald at the window announced to the waiting mult.i.tude that Louis the Fourteenth was no more.

"Long live the king!" exclaimed the mult.i.tude. They hailed the new monarch with mockery; but laughter, and sincere joy and feasting were the testimonials of their emotions at the death of the king but now departed.

On the next day a cheap, tawdry and unimposing procession wended its way through the back streets of Paris, its leader seeking to escape even the edges of the mob, lest the people should fall upon the somber little pageant and rend it into fragments. This was the funeral cortege of Louis, the Grand Monarque, Louis the l.u.s.tful, Louis the bigot, Louis the ignorant, Louis the unhappy. They hurried him to his resting-place, these last servitors, and then hastened back to the palaces to join their hearts and voices to the rising wave of joy which swept across all France at the death of this beloved ruler.

Now it happened that, as the funeral procession of the king was hurrying through the side streets near the confines of the old city of Paris, there encountered it, entering from the great highway which led from the east up to the city gates, the carriage of a gentleman who might, apparently with justice, have laid some claim to consequence. It had its guards and coachmen, and was attended by two riders in livery, who kept it company along the narrow streets. This equipage met the head of the hurrying funeral cortege, and found occasion for a moment to pause. Thus there pa.s.sed, the one going to his grave, the other to his goal, the two men with whom the France of that day was most intimately concerned.

There came from the window of the coach the voice of one inquiring the reason of the halt, and there might have been seen through the upper portion of the vehicle's door the face of the owner of the carriage. He seemed a man of imposing presence, with face open and handsome, and an eye bright, bold and full of intelligence. His garb was rich and elegant, his air well contained and dignified.

"Guillaume," he called out, "what is it that detains us?"

"It is nothing, Monsieur L'as," was the reply, "They tell me it is but the funeral of the king."

"_Eh bien_!" replied Law, turning to one who sat beside him in the coach. "Nothing! 'Tis nothing but the funeral of the king!"

CHAPTER II

EVER SAID SHE NAY

The coach proceeded steadily on its way, pa.s.sing in toward that quarter where the high-piled, peaked roofs and jagged spires betokened ancient Paris. On every hand arose confused sounds from the streets, now filled with a populace merry as though some pleasant carnival were just beginning. Shopkeeper called across to his neighbor, tradesman gossiped with gallant. Even the stolid faces of the plodding peasants, fresh past the gate-tax and bound for the markets to seek what little there remained after giving to the king, bore an unwonted look, as though hope might yet succeed to their surprise.

"Ohe! Marie," called one stout dame to another, who stood smiling in her doorway near by. "See the fine coach coming. That is the sort you and I shall have one of these days, now that the king is dead. G.o.d bless the new king, and may he die young! A plague to all kings, Marie. And now come and sit with my man and me, for we've a bottle left, and while it lasts we drink freedom from all kings!"

"You speak words of gold, Suzanne," was the reply. "Surely I will drink with you, and wish a pleasant and speedy death to kings."

"But now, Marie," said the other, argumentatively, "as to my good duke regent, that is otherwise. It goes about that he will change all things.

One is to amuse one's self now and then, and not to work forever for the taxes and the conscription. Long live the regent, then, say I!"

"Yes, and let us hope that regents never turn to kings. There are to be new days here in France. We people, aye, my faith! We people, so they say, are to be considered. True, we shall have carriages one day, Marie, like that of my Lord who pa.s.ses."

John Law and his companions heard broken bits of such speech as this as they pa.s.sed on.

"Ah, they talk," replied he at last, turning toward his companions, "and this is talk which means something. Within the year we shall see Paris upside down. These people are ready for any new thing. But"--and his face lost some of its gravity--"the streets are none too safe to-day, my Lady. Therefore you must forgive me if I do not set you down, but keep you prisoner until you reach your own gates. 'Tis not your fault that your carriage broke down on the road from Marly; and as for my brother Will and myself, we can not forego a good fortune which enables us at last to destroy a certain long-standing debt of a carriage ride given us, once upon a time, by the Lady Catharine Knollys."

"At least, then, we shall be well acquit on both sides," replied the soft voice of the woman. "I may, perhaps, be an unwilling prisoner for so short a time."

"Madam, I would G.o.d it might be forever!"

It was the same John Law of old who made this impetuous reply, and indeed he seemed scarce changed by the pa.s.sing of these few years of time. It was the audacious youth of the English highway who now looked at her with grave face, yet with eyes that shone.

Some years had indeed pa.s.sed since Law, turning his back upon the appeal of the wide New World, had again set foot upon the sh.o.r.es of England, from which his departure had been so singular. Driven by the goads of remorse, it had been his first thought to seek out the Lady Catharine Knollys; and so intent had he been on this quest, that he learned almost without emotion of the king's pardon which had been entered, discharging him of further penalty of the law of England. Meeting Lady Catharine, he learned, as have others since and before him, that a human soul may have laws inflexible; that the iron bars of a woman's resolve may bar one out, even as prison doors may bar him in. He found the Lady Catharine unshakeable in her resolve not to see him or speak with him.

Whereat he raged, expostulated by post, waited, waylaid, and so at length gained an interview, which taught him many things.

He found the Lady Catharine Knollys changed from a light-hearted girl to a maiden tall, grave, reserved and sad, offering no reproaches, listening to no protestations. Told of Sir Arthur Pembroke's horrible death, she wept with tears which his survivor envied. Told at length of the little child, she sat wide-eyed and silent. Approached with words of remorse, with expostulations, promises, she shrank back in absolute horror, trembling, so that in very pity the wretched young man left her and found his way out into a world suddenly grown old and gray.

After this dismissal, Law for many months saw nothing, heard nothing of this woman whom he had wronged, even as he received no sign from the woman who had forsaken him over seas. He remained away as long as might be, until his violent nature, geyser-like, gathered inner storm and fury by repression, and broke away in wild eruption.

Once more he sought the presence of the woman whose face haunted his soul, and once more he met ice and adamant stronger than his own fires.

Beaten, he fled from London and from England, seeking still, after the ancient and ineffective fashion of man, to forget, though he himself had confessed the lesson that man can not escape himself, but takes his own h.e.l.l with him wherever he goes.

Rejected, as he was now, by the new ministry of England, none the less every capital of Europe came presently to know John Law, gambler, student and financier. Before every ruler on the continent he laid his system of financial revolution, and one by one they smiled, or shrugged, or scoffed at him. Baffled once more in his dearest purpose, he took again to play, play in such colossal and audacious form as never yet had been seen even in the gayest courts of a time when gaming was a vice to be called national. No hazard was too great for him, no success and no reverse sufficiently keen to cause him any apparent concern. There was no risk sharp enough to deaden the gnawing in his soul, no excitement strong enough to wipe away from his mind the black panorama of his past.

He won princely fortunes and cast them away again. With the figure and the air of a prince, he gained greater reputation than any prince of Europe. Upon him were spent the blandishments of the fairest women of his time. Yet not this, not all this, served to steady his energies, now unbalanced, speeding without guidance. The gold, heaped high on the tables, was not enough to stupefy his mind, not enough though he doubled and trebled it, though he cast great golden markers to spare him trouble in the counting of his winnings. Still student, still mathematician, he sought at Amsterdam, at Paris, at Vienna, all new theories which offered in the science of banking and finance, even as at the same time he delved still further into the mysteries of recurrences and chance.

In this latter such was his success that losers made complaint, unjust but effectual, to the king, so that Law was obliged to leave Paris for a time. He had dwelt long enough in Paris, this double-natured man, this student and creator, this gambler and gallant, to win the friendship of Philippe of Orleans, later to be regent of France; and gay enough had been the life they two had led--so gay, so intimate, that Philippe gave promise that, should he ever hold in his own hands the Government of France, he would end Law's banishment and give to him the opportunity he sought, of proving those theories of finance which const.i.tuted the absorbing ambition of his life.

Meantime Law, ever restless, had pa.s.sed from one capital of Europe to another, dragging with him from hotel to hotel the young child whose life had been cast in such feverish and unnatural surroundings. He continued to challenge every hazard, fearless, reckless, contemptuous, and withal wretched, as one must be who, after years of effort, found that he could not banish from his mind the pictures of a dark-floored prison, and of a knife-stab in the dark, and of raging, awful waters, and of a girl beautiful, though with sealed lips and heart of ice. From time to time, as was well known, Law returned to England. He heard of the Lady Catharine Knollys, as might easily be done in London; heard of her as a young woman kind of heart, soft of speech, with tenderness for every little suffering thing; a beautiful young woman, whose admirers listed scores; but who never yet, even according to the eagerest gossip of the capital, had found a suitor to whom she gave word or thought of love.

So now at last the arrogant selfishness of his heart began to yield. His heart was broken before it might soften, but soften at last it did. And so he built up in his soul the image of a grave, sweet saint, kindly and gentle-voiced, unapproachable, not to be profaned. To this image--ah, which of us has not had such a shrine!--he brought in secret the homage of his life, his confessions, his despairs, his hopes, his resolutions; guiding thereby all his life, as well as poor mortal man may do, failing ever of his own standards, as all men do, yet harking ever back to that secret sibyl, reckoning all things from her, for her, by her.

There came at length one chastened hour when they met in calmness, when there was no longer talk of love between them, when he stood before her as though indeed at the altar of some marble deity. Always her answer had been that the past had been a mistake; that she had professed to love a man, not knowing what that man was; that she had suffered, but that it was better so, since it had brought understanding. Now, in this calmer time, she begged of him knowledge of this child, regretting the wandering life which had been its portion, saying that for Mary Connynge she no longer felt horror and hatred. Thus it was that in a hasty moment Law had impulsively begged her to a.s.sume some sort of tutelage over that unfortunate child. It was to his own amazement that he heard Lady Catharine Knollys consent, stipulating that the child should be placed in a Paris convent for two years, and that for two years John Law should see neither his daughter nor herself. Obedient as a child himself he had promised.

"Now, go away," she then had said to him. "Go your own way. Drink, dice, game, and waste the talents G.o.d hath given you. You have made ruin enough for all of us. I would only that it may not run so far as to another generation."

So both had kept their promises; and now the two years were done, years spent by Law more manfully than any of his life. His fortune he had gathered together, amounting to more than a million livres. He had sent once more for his brother Will, and thus the two had lived for some time in company in lower Europe, the elder brother still curious as ever in his abstruse theories of banking and finance--theories then new, now outlived in great part, though fit to be called a portion of the great foundation of the commercial system of the world. It was a wiser and soberer and riper John Law, this man who had but recently received a summons from Philippe of Orleans to be present in Paris, for that the king was dying, and that all France, France the bankrupt and distracted, was on the brink of sudden and perhaps fateful change.

With a quick revival of all his Highland superst.i.tion, Law hailed now as happy harbinger the fact that, upon his entry into Paris, the city once more of his hopes, he had met in such fashion this lady of his dreams, even at such time as the seal of silence was lifted from his lips. It was no wonder that his eye gleamed, that his voice took on the old vibrant tone, that every gesture, in thought or in spite of thought, a.s.sumed the tender deference of the lover.

It was a fair woman, this chance guest of the highway whom he now accosted--bronze-haired, blue-eyed, soft of voice, queenly of mien, gentle, calm and truly lovable. Oh, what waste that those arms should hold nothing, that lips such as those should know no kisses, that eyes like those should never swim in love! What robbery! What crime! And this man, thief of this woman's life, felt his heart pinch again in the old, sharp anguish of remorse, bitterest because unavailing.

For the Lady Catharine herself there had been also many changes. The death of her brother, the Earl of Banbury, had wrought many shifts in the circ.u.mstances of a house apparently pursued by unkind fate. Left practically alone and caring little for the life of London, even after there had worn away the chill of suspicion which followed upon the popular knowledge of her connection with the escape of Law from London, Lady Catharine Knollys turned to a life and world suddenly grown vague and empty. Travel upon the continent with friends, occasional visits to the old family house in England, long sojourns in this or the other city--such had been her life, quiet, sweet, reproachless and unreproaching. For the present she had taken an hotel in the older part of Paris, in connection with her friend, the Countess of Warrington, sometime connected with the emba.s.sy of that Lord Stair who was later to act as spy for England in Paris, now so soon to know tumultuous scenes.

With these scenes, as time was soon to prove, there was to be most intimately connected this very man who, now bending forward attentively, now listening respectfully, and ever gazing directly and ardently, heard naught of plots or plans, cared naught for the Paris which lay about, saw naught but the beautiful face before him, felt naught but some deep, compelling thrill in every heart-string which now reaching sweet accord in spite of fate, in spite of the past, in spite of all, went singing on in a deep melody of joy. This was she, the idol, the deity. Let the world wag. It was a moment yet ere paradise must end!

"Madam, I would G.o.d it might be forever!" said Law again. The old stubborn nature was showing once more, but under it something deeper, softer, tenderer.

A sudden panic fear called at the heart of her to whom he spoke. Two rosy spots shone in her cheeks, and as she gazed, her eyes showed the veiled softening of woman's gentleness. There fell a silence.

"Madam, I could feel that this were Sadler's Wells over again," said Law a moment later.

But now the carriage had arrived at the destination named by Lady Catharine. Law sprang out, hat in hand, and a.s.sisted Lady Catharine to the curb. A pa.s.sing flower girl, gaily offering her wares, paused as the carriage drew up. Law turned quickly and caught from her as many roses as his hand could grasp, handing her in return half as much coin as her smaller palm could hold. He turned to the Lady Catharine, and bowed with that grace which was the talk of a world of gallants. In his hand he extended a flower.

"Madam, as before!" he said.

There was a sob in his voice. Their eyes met fairly, unmasked as they had not been for years. Tears came into the man's eyes, the first that had ever sat there; tears for the past, tears for that sweetness which once might have been.