The Scourge of God

But the dying woman was unshaken. Even the other, whose influence terrified all France, could not affright her-perhaps because the princess knew that henceforth she had to answer to a greater than she.

"I must confess it to him-I must-I must!" she murmured faintly. "I must. I can not die with such a secret in my heart."

CHAPTER II

THE TRAVELLER FROM ENGLAND

A great Berline à quatre chevaux halted at the North Gate outside Paris, and the young man seated within the carriage let down the window and prepared to once more answer all the questions that would be put to him. Yet he also thanked Heaven, in a somewhat wearied manner, that this must be the last of it. After that he would be in Paris, with nothing before him but to drive as fast as might be to the Rue Champfleury, known long ago as La Rue Honteuse.

Then the formula began once more, was repeated and gone through with, precisely in the same manner as it had been gone through with at Boulogne, where he had landed, at Amiens, Abbeville, and half a dozen other towns and villages.

"Monsieur's name?" asked the guet, respectfully enough, while as each answer was made he glanced at the passport handed to him and countersigned by the Ambassador to England from "Louis, Roi de France et de Navarre, etc."

"Martin Ashurst."

"Country?"

"England."

"Position?"

"Gentleman. Also-"

But here he found that no more explanation whatever was required from him. Precisely as he had found it all along the road, whenever the inquiring eyes of warders or guets or gatekeepers (in some cases soldiers) had lit upon one of the many statements appended to his passport-the statement that Monsieur Ashurst was nephew to "Madame la Princesse de Rochebazon."

"Passez, monsieur," said the man, as all the other men had said on seeing this, and saluting as all the other men had saluted; after which, with a direction to the coachman to proceed, he retired into his room in the gatehouse.

"The last, thank God," the occupant of the Berline muttered, "the last. It has been wearisome, but, well, it is over. Now for my aunt."

In spite of his weariness incurred by an unhalting journey from London, in which sleep could only be obtained by snatches here and there, in spite of the dust along the highroads both of England and France having discoloured his scarlet coat and tarnished his gold lacings and rendered dirty his Valenciennes cravat, as well as having turned the whiteness of his wig to a dirty yellowish brown, Martin Ashurst presented an attractive appearance. His features were handsome and manly, clear-cut and aristocratic-Madame la Princesse de Rochebazon, once Aurora Ashurst, had herself possessed the same features when young-his figure was slight, yet strong and well knit, his whole appearance satisfactory. Also he bore about him those indefinable traits which mark the gentleman, which, perhaps, it may be said without offence to others, mark and distinguish the English gentleman particularly. A certain calm, a self-contained air, a lack of perception of the existence of those who were unknown to him, and thereby without his ken, distinguished Martin Ashurst as it has always distinguished so many of the well-bred of our land.

Yet his life had not been all passed in England, the first fifteen years of it being, indeed, spent in France under the patronage of the aunt to whom the Berline à quatre chevaux was now bearing him as fast as four heavy Flanders roadsters could drag it.

Gabriel Ashurst, his father, and Gabriel's sister Aurora, had been two among the hundreds of Royalists who, in the year 1647, were taken by their parents to France as soon as it was possible to escape out of England and from the clutches of the Parliamentarians. Then, in France, in Paris, had begun for them that long career of exile against which so many of the followers of the Stuarts had repined so much at first, and which, in due course, so many had come to like and, in some cases, to appreciate. Also there had come to this exiled family a splendid piece of good fortune, the like of which did not fall often in the way of English exiles. Aurora Ashurst, a girl of twenty, had won the heart of Henri de Beauvilliers, then Baron de Beauvilliers, but with, before him in the near future, the titles and wealth and great positions of Comte de Montrachet, Marquis du Gast d'Ançilly, and Prince de Rochebazon, for the head of the house who held them all was near his end; they were almost within the grasp of Henri, as he stood at the altar with his English bride. Three months after their marriage they were his.

Time passed. Gabriel married, as well as his sister, his wife being a countrywoman of his own, also in exile with her family. Cromwell died, the Stuarts were restored. Then Gabriel and his wife returned to England, but the lad, Martin, was left in charge of the Princesse de Rochebazon, who had become by now a childless widow-was, indeed, almost adopted by her. It was true she could not make him heir to the great titles-those must die out! – but at least she could provide for him, and she set about doing it. The whole control of the de Rochebazon wealth was hers to do what she pleased with; she might, if she had desired, have left their châteaux, their woods and forests in half a dozen provinces, their hotel in the Rue Champfleury-everything, to him. Only, because she was a just woman and a religious, she would not do that, recognising that the wealth accumulated by generations of French nobles ought not in common honesty to go to one who had no tie of blood with them and who belonged to a land which was almost always at war with France. Therefore, urged partly by the promptings of her own heart and deep Catholic feelings, partly by the promptings of a priest, and partly by those of the De Maintenon, as well as by a whispered hint in the soft courtly tones of le Roi Soleil, now cowering under the awful terrors that too often assail the self-righteous, she left all the wealth of the heirless De Rochebazons to the Church, reserving only for Martin Ashurst the fortune she had saved out of her private purse.

Yet 'twas a fortune which would make him rich for life, place him on a high pinnacle in either France or England, cause women either at St. James's or Versailles to angle for him, and throw aside forever, as commodities too expensive to be indulged in, the men whom they loved; a fortune that would buy him a peerage in England, obtain for him the justaucorps à brevet in France, and orders and decorations, the command of regiments, the governorships of provinces, embassies, stars and ribbons, surround him with parasites and flatterers! Half a million pistoles! In English money nigh upon five hundred thousand guineas!

As the berline rolled through St. Ouen and Aubervilliers, the wheels sometimes sticking in a rut of the ill-kept roads-whereby the great, cumbersome vehicle lurched so heavily that the young man expected to be overturned at every moment-sometimes, too, scattering a flock of ducks and fowls before it as they sought for subsistence amid the dust and filth, while the coachman and postillion hurled curses at all and everything that came in their way, and the English man servant in the banquette roared with laughter, Martin Ashurst thought of what lay before him in the future. For he knew well enough to what he went-the princess had long since apprised him of the inheritance that was to be his-he knew that future. Yet he was not particularly enamoured of it.

"The conditions," he muttered more than once to himself, "are irksome. To live in France, yet with my thoughts ever cast back to England, to London, to St. James's and the suppers at Locket's and Pontac's, the merry nights at Chaves's and White's. And-and-to be banished from England! Faugh! whatever my aunt has to leave me can scarce be worth that."

In sober truth, although he knew he was heir to Madame la Princesse, he did not know how great the inheritance was to be. In thinking it all over, in talking it all over, too, with his father and mother, he had imagined with them that there might be some thirty or forty thousand pounds which would be his, and that, owning this sum of money, he would thereby be a rich man. But that any such sum as that which his aunt had really put aside was ever likely to come to him had never entered his thoughts.

"Also," he mused, "how serve Louis, be subject to him when my own country may require me? And though we are at peace, how long shall we be so? Marlborough, the Dutch, are restless; they itch to fly at this French king's throat. It will come again. It must. No treaty ever yet put an end to our wars for any considerable time. Also-also-there is the other thing. In honour I must tell her that, even though by doing so I cause her to renounce me, to disinherit me. To leave me not so much as will pay the score at Locket's for suppers. She must know it."

Down the Rue de la Boucherie the berline rumbled, the dry fetid smell of the blood of slaughtered beasts being perceptible to the young man's nostrils as he passed through it, since it was still the shambles of Paris; down the Rue des Chants Poulets and past the Rue des Mauvais Garçons it went, with still the driver hurling curses at all who got in his way, at children playing in the road and at a cordelier telling his beads as he walked, yet glinting an evil eye at the coachman and muttering maledictions at him under his breath, and with the English servant still laughing as now he donned his drugget coat and put on his puff wig. For the driver, in between his curses and howls and whoops at the animals, had found time to mutter that the next street was La Rue Champfleury, though, diantre! few flowers grew there now, except in the gardens of the great Princesse de Rochebazon.

"Sir," said the man servant, glancing down through the open window in the back of the great vehicle, "we are nearly there."

"I know it," Martin Ashurst replied. Then asked suddenly, as they passed under the Beau Dieu stuck in a corner house of the street, "Why does he roar afresh, and why pull up with such a jerk?"

"There are red cords stretched all about the street, sir, in front of a great house; also the road is half a foot deep in tan to deaden sounds. And a fellow with a three-cornered hat as big as a table waves a gilt stick to him to stop. What shall we do?"

"Why, stop to be sure. Also I will alight. We have arrived."

Whereon he descended out of the berline, bidding the man follow with his sword, as well as pay the driver and see to the necessaries being taken off the roof. After which he passed through the cords, and addressing the Suisse, said:

"How is it with Madame la Princesse?"

"Madame la Princesse still lives, monsieur," the man replied, his eye roving over the scarlet coat and richly laced hat of the traveller; noticing, too, the rings upon his fingers and the silver-hilted rapier carried by the servant. "Doubtless monsieur is the nephew of Madame la Princesse, expected to-day."

"I am he."

With a bow the man invited Martin Ashurst to follow him, and led him through a cool vestibule to where some footmen stood about, then ordered them to conduct monsieur to his apartment, saying that possibly he would desire to make his toilet.

"The rooms prepared for monsieur are those he has occupied often before, I hear," this man of importance said. "Upon this étage, giving on the garden, if monsieur pleases."

And now, left alone with only his servant to attend upon him, monsieur made a hasty toilet, washing from off his hands and face the dust and dirt of the journey, discarding, too, his scarlet coat and waistcoat for others of a more suitable colour, changing his wig and shoes and stockings. Then bade the man go say that if the princess would receive him he was ready to attend upon her.

Sitting there waiting to be summoned to her presence, his eyes glancing out through the long open windows on to the fresh, green garden with its banks of roses, now drooping with the advent of autumn, he thought of all that she had done for him since first he could remember. Of how, as a child, when he lived in this great house, or went with her in the summer heats to fair Touraine-where was a castle of the de Rochebazon's embowered in woods-or to that other great château in Perche, or to still a third one which hung over the golden sands of La Gironde, she seemed to live almost to shower gentle kindnesses upon him, her brother's child. To do all for him that she would have done had he been her own; to surround him with luxuries far too good and dainty for one so young as he; to provide him with tutors and keepers, with horses and carriages and rich silks and satins, and gold pieces in his pockets to fling to beggars as other men flung sols and deniers, because she loved him, and in her love had but one regret-that he was not a de Rochebazon to succeed to all they owned.

Also, when they were separated, he in England, she at Versailles, how much she had done for him as he grew to manhood! How much! How much! Money sent over for his pleasures because she desired that, in all things, he should have the best, should be able to hold his own with those who were in the court circle and the fashion. That his early years should never know any narrowness of means which in after life might cramp him as he recalled it; also that, as he stepped over the threshold of youth and reached manhood, he should do so with ease and comfort.

"I owe her all, everything," he mused to himself as still his eyes gazed out upon the trim-kept and still luxurious parterres of the great gardens. "All, all! My father, beggared as he was by his loyalty, could have done naught beyond equipping me for some simple, unambitious calling, beyond, perhaps, obtaining me a pair of colours in some marching regiment. I owe her all-the clothes upon my back, the food I eat, the very knowledge of how to wield a sword! And-and-God forgive me! I have deceived her for years, kept back for years a secret that should not have existed for one hour. Still, she shall know now. She shall not go to her grave without knowing that I have no right to own one single livre that she has put aside for me."

As he finished his reflections the door was rapped at, and the footman, entering at his command, told him that the Demoiselle Manon was without and waiting to escort him to the bedside of Madame la Princesse.

CHAPTER III

A PARTING SOUL

Looking down upon her as she lay in the great bed whereon had reposed so many of the de Rochebazons for generations-when they had been the head of the house-Martin Ashurst told himself how, except for the reason that he was about to lose the kindest benefactress and kinswoman any man had ever had, there was no cause for the tears to rise to his eyes.

For never was a more peaceful parting about to be made, to all external appearances; never could a woman have trod more calmly the dark road that, sooner or later, all have to pass along, than was now treading Aurora, Princesse de Rochebazon. Also it seemed as if death was smoothing away every wrinkle that time had brought to her face, changing back that face to the soft, innocent one which, in the spring of life, had been Aurora Ashurst's greatest charm; the face that had been hers when, as a winsome child, she played in the meadows round her father's old home in Worcestershire-demolished by Lambert; the face that, but a few years later, had won Henri de Beauvilliers away from the intoxicating charms of Mancinis, of Clerembaults, of Baufremonts, and Châtillons, and a hundred other beauties who then revolved round the court of the young king, now grown so old.

"You do not suffer, dear and honoured one," Martin said, bending over her and gazing into the eyes that were still so bright-the last awful glazed look and vacant stare, which tell of the near end being still some hours off; "you do not suffer, dear one. That I can see, and thank God for so seeing."

"No," the princess said, "I have no pain. I am dying simply of what comes to all-decay. I am seventy years of age, and it has come to me a little earlier than it does sometimes. That is all. But, Martin, we have no time to talk of this. Time is short-I know that." Then, suddenly lifting the clear eyes to his own, she said, "Do you know why I sent a special courier to London for you?"

"To bid me hurry to you, I should suppose, dear one. To give me your blessing. Oh!" he exclaimed, bending a little nearer to her, "you are a saint. You would not part from me without giving me that. Therefore bless me now!" and he made as though he would kneel by her side betwixt the bed and the ruelle.

"Wait," she said, "wait. I have something to tell you. After I have done so I know not if you will still deem me a saint, still desire my blessing. Bring that chair within the ruelle; sit down and listen."

Because he thought that already her mind was beginning to enter that hazy approach to death in which the senses lose all clearness, and the dying, when they speak at all, speak wanderingly, he neither showed nor felt wonderment at her words. Instead, because he desired to soothe and calm her, he did as she bade him, drawing the chair within the rail and holding her hand as he did so.

"Whatever," he said softly, "you may tell me can make no difference in my love and reverence for you-make me desire your blessing less or deem you less a saint. Yet-yet-if it pleases you to speak, if you have aught you desire to say, say on. Still, I beseech you, weary not yourself."