The Red City Part 45

"Sit down, dear child."

The girl sunk on a cushion at her feet, her head in the mother's lap. "I could not help it," she murmured, sobbing.

"I saw this would come to thee, long ago," said the mother. "I had hoped thou wouldst be so guided as not to let thy heart get the better of thy head."

"It is my head has got me into this--this sweet trouble. Thou knowest that I have had others, and some who had thy favor; but, mother, here for two years I have lived day by day in the house with Rene, and have seen him so living as to win esteem and honor, a tender son to his mother, and so respectful to thee, who, for her, art only the keeper of a boarding-house. Thou knowest what Friend Schmidt says of him. I heard him tell Friend Hamilton. He said--he said he was a gallant gentleman, and he wished he were his son. You see, mother, it was first respect and then--love. Oh, mother, that duel! I knew as I saw him carried in that I loved him." She spoke rapidly, with little breaks in her voice, and now was silent.

"It is bad, very bad, my child. I see no end of trouble--oh, it is bad, bad, for thee and for him!"

"It is good, good, mother, for me and for him. He has waited long. There has been something, I do not know what, kept him from speaking sooner.

It is over now."

"I do not see what there could have been, unless it were his mother. It may well be that. Does she know?"

"When he comes back he will tell her."

"I do not like it, and I dislike needless mysteries. From a worldly point of view,--and I at least, who have drunk deep of poverty, must somewhat think for thee. Here are two people without competent means--"

"But I love him."

"And his mother?"

"But I love him." She had no other logic. "Oh, I wish Mr. Schmidt were here! Rene says he will like it."

"That, at least, is a good thing." Both were silent a little while. Mrs.

Swanwick had been long used to defer to the German's opinions, but looking far past love's limited horizon, the widow thought of the certain anger of the mother, of the trap she in her pride would think set for her son by designing people, her prejudices intensified by the mere fact of the poverty which left her nothing but exaggerated estimates of her son and what he was ent.i.tled to demand of the woman he should some day marry. And too, Rene had often spoken of a return to France. She said at last: "We will leave the matter now, and speak of it to no one; but I should say to thee, my dear, that apart from what for thy sake I should consider, and the one sad thing of his willingness to avenge a hasty word by possibly killing a fellow-man,--how terrible!--apart from these things, there is no one I had been more willing to give thee to than Rene de Courval."

"Thank thee, mother." The evil hour when the vicomtesse must hear was at least remote, and something akin to anger rose in the widow's mind as she thought of it.

Rene came in to supper. Mrs. Swanwick was as usual quiet, asking questions in regard to Margaret's errand of charity, but of a mind to win time for reflection, and unwilling as yet to open the subject with Rene.

When, late in the evening, he came out of the study where he had been busy with the instructions left by Schmidt, he was annoyed to learn that Margaret had gone up-stairs. There was still before him the task of speaking to his mother of what he was sure was often in her mind, Carteaux. She had learned from the gossip of guests that a Frenchman had been set upon near Bristol and had been robbed and wounded. Incurious and self-centered, the affairs of the outer world had for her but little real interest. Now she must have her mind set at ease, for Rene well knew that she had not expected him to rest contented or to be satisfied with the result of his unfortunate duel. Her puritan creed was powerless here as against her social training, and her sense of what so hideous a wrong as her husband's murder should exact from his son.

"I have something to tell you, _maman_," he said; "and before I go, it is well that I should tell you."

"Well, what is it?" she said coldly, and then, as before, uneasily anxious.

"On the twenty-ninth of November I learned that Carteaux had started for New York an hour before I heard of it, on his way to France. I had waited long--undecided, fearing that again some evil chance might leave you alone in a strange land."

"You did wrong, Rene. There are duties which ought to permit of no such indecision. You should not have considered me for a moment. Go on."

"How could I help it, thinking of you, mother? I followed, and overtook this man near Bristol. I meant no chance with the sword this time. He was unarmed. I gave him the choice of my pistols, bade him pace the distance, and give the word. He walked away some six feet, half the distance, and, turning suddenly, fired, grazing my shoulder. I shot him--ah, a terrible wound in arm and shoulder. Schmidt had found a note I left for him, and, missing his pistols, inquired at the French legation, and came up in time to see it all and to prevent me from killing the man."

"Pre--vent you! How did he dare!"

"Yes, mother; and it was well. Schmidt found, when binding up his wound, that he was carrying despatches from the Republican Minister Fauchet to go by the corvette _Jean Bart_, waiting in New York Harbor."

"What difference did that make?"

"Why, mother, I am in the State Department. To have killed a member of the French legation, or stopped his journey, would have been ruin to me and a weapon in the hands of these mock Jacobins."

"But you did stop him."

"Yes; but I delivered the despatch myself to the corvette."

"Yes, you were right; but what next? He must have spoken."

"No. The threat from Schmidt that he would tell the whole story of Avignon and his treachery to me has made him lie and say he had been set upon by unknown persons and robbed of his papers. He has wisely held his tongue. He is crippled for life and has suffered horribly. Now he goes to France a broken, miserable man, punished as death's release could not punish."

"I do not know that. I have faith in the vengeance of G.o.d. You should have killed him. You did not. And so I suppose there is an end of it for a time. Is that all, Rene?"

"Yes, that is all. The loss of the despatch remains a mystery, and the Democrats are foolish enough to believe we have it in the foreign office. No one of them but Carteaux knows and he dare not speak. The despatch will never come back here, or if it does, Carteaux will have gone. People have ceased to talk about it, and now, mother, I am going away with an easy mind. Do not worry over this matter. Good night."

"Worry?" she cried. "Ah, I would have killed the Jacobin dog!"

"I meant to," he said, and left her.

At dawn he was up and had his breakfast and there was Pearl in the hall and her hands on his two shoulders. "Kiss me," she said. "G.o.d bless and guard thee, Rene!"

XXV

While Schmidt was far on his homeward way, De Courval rode through the German settlements of Pennsylvania and into the thinly settled Scotch-Irish clearings beyond the Alleghanies, a long and tedious journey, with much need to spare his horse.

His letters to government officers in the village of Pittsburg greatly aided him in his more remote rides. He settled some of Schmidt's land business, and rode with a young soldier's interest over Braddock's fatal field, thinking of the great career of the youthful colonel who was one of the few who kept either his head or his scalp on that day of disaster.

He found time also to prepare for his superiors a rea.s.suring report, and on July 18 set out on his return. He had heard nothing from his mother or from any one else. The mails were irregular and slow,--perhaps one a week,--and very often a flood or an overturned coach accounted for letters never heard of again. There would be much to hear at home.

On July Fourth of 1795, while the bells were ringing in memory of the nation's birthday, Fauchet sat in his office at Oeller's Hotel. He had been recalled and was for various reasons greatly troubled. The reaction in France against the Jacobins had set in, and they, in turn were suffering from the violence of the returning royalists and the outbreaks of the Catholic peasantry in the south. Marat's bust had been thrown into the gutter and the Jacobin clubs closed. The minister had been able to do nothing of value to stop the Jay treaty. The despatch on which he had relied to give such information as might enable his superiors to direct him and a.s.sure them of his efforts to stop the treaty had disappeared eight months ago, as he believed by a bold robbery in the interest of the English party, possibly favored by the cabinet, which, as he had to confess, was less likely. He was angry as he thought of it and uneasy as concerned his future in distracted France. He had questioned Carteaux again and again but had never been quite satisfied. The theft of the despatch had for a time served his purpose, but had been of no practical value. The treaty with England would go to the senate and he return home, a discredited diplomatic failure. Meanwhile, in the trying heat of summer, as during all the long winter months, Carteaux lay for the most part abed, in such misery as might have moved to pity even the man whose bullet had punished him so savagely. At last he was able to sit up for a time every day and to arrange with the captain of a French frigate, then in port, for his return to France.

Late in June he had dismissed Chovet with only a promise to pay what was in fact hard-earned money. Dr. Glentworth, Washington's surgeon, had replaced him, and talked of an amputation, upon which, cursing doctors in general, Carteaux swore that he would prefer to die.

Chovet, who dosed his sick folk with gossip when other means failed, left with this ungrateful patient one piece of news which excited Carteaux's interest. Schmidt, he was told, had gone to Europe, and then, inaccurate as usual, Chovet declared that it was like enough he would never return, a fact which acquired interest for the doctor himself as soon as it became improbable that Carteaux would pay his bill. When a few days later Carteaux learned from De la Foret that his enemy De Courval was to be absent for several weeks, and perhaps beyond the time set for his own departure, he began with vengeful hope to reconsider a situation which had so far seemed without resource.

Resolved at last to make for De Courval all the mischief possible before his own departure, with such thought as his sad state allowed he had slowly matured in his mind a statement which seemed to him satisfactorily malignant. Accordingly on this Fourth of July he sent his black servant to ask the minister to come to his chamber.

Fauchet, somewhat curious, sat down by the bedside and parting the chintz curtains, said, "I trust you are better."

The voice which came from the shadowed s.p.a.ce within was weak and hoa.r.s.e.

"I am not better--I never shall be, and I have little hope of reaching home alive."

"I hoped it not as bad as that."

"And still it is as I say. I do not want to die without confessing to you the truth about that affair in which I was shot and my despatch stolen."

Men who had lived through the years of the French Revolution were not readily astonished, but at this statement the Minister sat up and exclaimed: "_Mon Dieu!_ What is this?"