In The Day Of Adversity Part 29

"Pardon, my lady," the man said--he knowing the look well, and remembering also that, before to-day, it had boded punishment for him and his fellows--"but there is a man lying in the road, almost under the hoofs of the horses. And his own stands by his side."

"Well! What of that? Thrust them aside and drive on. Am I to be broiled here?"

"Pardon, my lady," the man again ventured to say submissively, "but it is not a peasant. He looks of a better cla.s.s than that."

"What is he, then, a gentleman of the _seigneurie_?" And she deigned to lean out of the _caleche_ somewhat, as though to obtain a glance of the person who had barred her way. "Has he been drinking?"

"I do not know, my lady. But his head is hurt. He may have been attacked or injured by his fall. He is plainly dressed, but carries a sword. He is young, too, and wears a mustache like an officer."

"I will see him. Open the door."

The lackey did as he was bidden, his fellow jumping down also from behind, and each of them offering an arm to their imperious mistress to aid her descent from the high vehicle; then madame la baronne advanced to the front of her horses' heads and gazed down at the unconscious man lying in the dust.

"Turn his face up," she said, "and let me see it." The servants doing as she bade them, and parting also the long hair that fell over the face, the woman gave a start and muttered under her lips, "My G.o.d!"

And at the same time, beneath her patches and powder, she turned very pale. "Is he dead?" she asked a moment later, in a constrained voice, while still she gazed at him.

"I think not, my lady," one of the men said who was kneeling beside the man in the road. "His heart beats. It may be a vertigo or the heat of the sun. Certainly he is not dead."

"Take him up," she said, "and carry him, you two, into the town.

Attach his horse, also, to the carriage and lead it in. Follow at once;" and she re-entered the _caleche_.

"Where, madame, shall we place him?" the lackey asked, who had first spoken. "With the _corps-de-garde_, my lady?"

"No; bring him to my house. He shall be attended to there. He--he may be a gentleman, and the _corps-de-garde_ are rough. We will attend to him. Now bid the coachman drive on, and follow at once; do not lag with him, or you shall be punished."

Slowly the carriage proceeded, therefore, into Rambouillet, and Madame la Baronne de Louvigny, lying back in it, white to her lips, pondered over the face that a few minutes before had been turned up to her gaze.

"Alive," she said to herself. "De Vannes, and alive! And in my power; another half hour and he will be in my house. So--he was not lost in the galley that those vile English sunk! And Raoul is no nearer to the wealth he needs than ever--no nearer. And, my G.o.d! the man lives who called me 'wanton' in the road that night, the man whom I tried to slay, the man through whom came my exposure. And in my house! In my house!" And she laughed to herself and showed her teeth again. Then she muttered to herself: "But for how long! Oh, that Raoul was here to advise with!"

Late that night St. Georges opened his eyes and glanced around him, wondering where he was and endeavouring to recall what had befallen him. Yet, at first, no recollection came; he could not recall any of the events of the day--nothing. All was a blank. He had sufficient sensibility, however--a sensibility that momentarily increased--to be able to notice his surroundings and to observe that he lay in a large-capacious bed in a commodious room, well furnished and hung with handsome tapestry representing hunting scenes; also that at the further end of the room by a hugh fireplace--now, of course, empty--there stood a lamp with, by it, a deep chair in which a female figure sat sleeping--a female whose dress betokened her a waiting maid.

"Where am I?" he asked feebly, trying to send his voice to where she sat. "And why am I here?"

The woman arose and came toward the bed and stood beside him; then she said:

"You were found lying in the road outside the town."

"What town?"

"Rambouillet."

"Ah!--I remember. Yes."

"By my mistress, La Baronne de Louvigny. She had you brought here."

"She is very merciful to me, a stranger. A Christian woman."

To this the waiting maid made no reply; in her own heart she had no belief in her mistress's mercy or Christianity--she had served her a long while. Then she said:

"You had best sleep now. You are bruised and cut about the head. But the doctor has bled you, and says you will soon be well. Where are you going to?"

"To--I do not know. I cannot remember."

"Sleep now," the woman said, "sleep. It is best for you," and she left the bedside and went back to the chair she had been sitting in when he called to her.

The comfort of the bed combined with the feeling of weakness that was upon him made it not difficult to obey her behest; yet ere he did so he had sufficient of his senses left to him--or returned to him--to raise his hand and discover by doing so that his clothes were not removed; to satisfy himself that the brand upon his shoulder had not yet been observed. Being so satisfied, he let himself subside into a sleep once more.

Meanwhile, in a room near where he lay, La Baronne de Louvigny, sometimes seated in a deep fauteuil, sometimes pacing the apartment which formed her boudoir or dressing room, was meditating deeply upon the chances which had thrown this man into her hands.

"_Mon Dieu!_" she muttered to herself, as she had done once before while her _caleche_ had borne her back into the town of Rambouillet, "if Raoul were but here! What shall I do with him? What! What! After that horrible night when the prefect examined us at Versailles, p.r.o.nounced that I was an attempted murderess--Heaven! if Louvois had not stood our friend with Louis, what would have been the consequence!--Raoul told me all: That this man was in truth the Duc de Vannes; that, if he once knew it, or Louis guessed it, it meant ruin; that all his father's vast estates would go to him instead of to Raoul, who had long felt secure of them; that, worse than all, Louis would never pardon the attack upon his friend's son, would know that he had been struck down from behind by a foul blow, not fairly in a duel. And now he is here, alive in my house--has crossed our path again; is doubtless on his way to the king to tell him the truth, prove his false condemnation to the galleys, claim all that is his.

G.o.d! if he does that I shall never be Raoul's wife--never, never, never!"

As she had once drunk feverishly of the wine standing on the inn table, while it seemed that to the man who ought, even then, to have been her husband his doom was approaching from St. Georges's avenging sword, so she now went to a cabinet and took from it a flask of strong waters and swallowed a dram. The habit had grown on her of late, had often been resorted to since the night when she--hitherto a woman with no worse failings than that of lightness of manner and with, for her greatest weakness, a mad, infatuated pa.s.sion for Raoul de Roquemaure--had struck her knife deep between his shoulders, and had become a murderess in heart and almost one in actual fact.

Then, having swallowed the liquor, she mused again.

"What best to do? I can not slay him here in my own house--though I would do so if I could compa.s.s it. He called me 'wanton'; read me aright! For that alone I would do it! Yet, how? How? And if he goes free from here 'tis not a dozen leagues to Louis; doubtless he knows now his history, he will see him--Louvois is dead and gone to his master, the devil--he is a free man."

Yet as she said the words "a free man" she started, almost gasped.

"A free man!" she repeated. "A free man! Ha! _is_ he free?"

Through her brain there ran a mult.i.tude of fresh thoughts, of recollections. "A free man!" Yet he had been condemned, she knew, to the galleys _en perpetuite_; there was no freedom, never any pardon for those so sentenced. Once condemned, always condemned; no appeal possible, their rights gone forever, slaves till their day of death; branded, marked, so that forever they bore that about them which sent them back to slavery. If he bore that upon him, he was lost; the galleys still yawned for him--yawned for him so long as Louis did not know that the escaped _galerien_ was the son of his friend of early days.

"I know it all, see it all," she whispered to herself. "The galley was lost, but he was saved--saved to come back to France and ruin us. Yet he bears that about him--must bear it, since all condemned _en perpetuite_ are branded--which, once seen, will send him back to his doom. Let but the _prefet_ see that, or any officer of the garrison or citadel, and the next day he will travel again the road which he has come; go back to Dunkirk or Havre, back to the _chiourme_ and the oar.

They will listen to nothing, hear no word or protest, grant no trial.

He is mine--mine!" and again she went to the cabinet and drank. "Even though he has found proof of who he is, they will not listen to nor believe him."

One fear only disturbed her frenzy now. That he was the man who had called her "wanton," the man who stood between her lover and his wealth, and consequently between her and that lover, she never doubted. Those features, seen first by the lamp in the parlour of the inn--seen, too, when apparently he lay dying from her murderous stab--were too deeply stamped into her memory to ever be forgotten.

And as he lay there, looking like death, so he had looked as he lay in the dust outside Rambouillet. He was the man!--and this was her fear!

But was it certain that the galley mark was branded into him, the mark which proclaimed him as one doomed to those galleys forever, that would send him back without appeal, and would make all in authority whom he might endeavour to address turn a deaf ear to him?

She must know that, and at once. She could not rest until she knew that upon his shoulder was the d.a.m.ning evidence.

All was quiet in the house, it was near midnight, the domestics were in their beds by now: she resolved that she would satisfy herself at once. Then, if the brand was there, as it must be, she could arrange her next steps--could send for the commandant of the _chateau_, deliver the man into his hands, be not even seen by him. If it was there!

Leaving her room, she crept to the one to which he had been carried, and, pus.h.i.+ng open the door, looked in. The waiting maid, who had received orders not to quit him under any pretext, was sleeping heavily in her chair; on the bed at the further end of the room lay the man.

Then swiftly and without noise she advanced toward him, carrying the taper which had been burning by the watcher's side in her hand, and gazed down upon him.

He was sleeping quietly, his coat and waistcoat off--for they had removed these in consequence of the warmth of the day, though nothing else except his shoes--his s.h.i.+rt was open at the neck. If she could turn it back an inch or two without awaking him, her question would be answered.

Shading the lamp with one hand, with the other she touched the collar of his discoloured s.h.i.+rt, her white jewelled fingers looking like snowflakes against it and his bronzed skin; lower she pressed the folds back until, revealed before her, was the mark burned deep into his neck, the fatal iris with, above it, the letter _G_.

"So," she said, "the way is clear before me;" and softly, still obscuring the light with her hand, she stole from the room quietly as she had come.