Servants of Sin

"Madame Jasmin!" he repeated to himself, but to himself only-"Madame Jasmin!" How long it was since he had heard that name! Ages ago, it seemed; ages. "Madame Jasmin!" The name his wife had borne as a young widow of twenty, the name she had parted with for ever, on the morning when she gave herself to him at the altar of St. Vincent de Paul. Yet, now, of late years, she seemed to have used it again for some reason, some purpose, and had probably done so during his retreat. Only-what was that purpose? He must know that.

"Madame Jasmin," he said in a subdued voice-a voice that was meant to, and perhaps did, express some sorrow for the worn, broken helpmate and drudge who had gone away and left him, "Madame Jasmin is dead. A year ago. My poor wife was delicate; our circumstances did not conduce to-"

"Ah! your wife. You are, then, Monsieur Jasmin? She doubtless, therefore-you-you understand why I am here? That I have brought what was promised."

Understanding nothing, utterly astonished, yet with those consoling words, "I have brought what was promised," sinking deep into his mind, Vandecque bowed his head acquiescingly.

"I understand," he said. "Understand perfectly. Will not Madame give herself the trouble to enter my poor abode? We can talk there at our leisure." And he opened the door and ushered her within.

CHAPTER IV

A SISTER OF MERCY

Some betterment of his circumstances must have come to Vandecque between the time when he had returned from the South and now (how it had come, whether by villainy or honest labour, if he ever turned his hand to such a thing, it would be impossible to say), since the garret, though still poor and miserable, presented a better appearance than it had previously done. There were, to wit, some chairs in it at this time; cheap common things, yet fit to sit upon; a table with the pretence of a cloth upon it; also a carpet, with a pattern that must once have been so splendid that the beholder could but conclude that it had passed from hand to hand in its descent, until it had at last' reached this place. A miserable screen also shut off a bed in which, doubtless, Vandecque reposed, while a large cupboard was fitted up as a small bedroom, or closet, in which possibly the child slept.

In one of these chairs the owner of the room invited his visitor to be seated, in the other he placed himself, the table between them. Then, after a pause, while Vandecque's eyes sought again and again those of the sister's, as though their owner was wondering what the next revelation would be, the latter recommenced the conversation. She repeated, too, the purport of her former words, if not the words themselves.

"Doubtless Madame Jasmin told you that you might expect my coming. It has been delayed longer than it should have been. Yet-yet-even in the circumstances of my-of the person for whom I act-money is not always quite easy to be obtained," and she looked at Vandecque as though expecting an answer in assent.

"Naturally. Naturally," he made haste to reply, his quick wits prompting him to understand what that reply should be, while also they told him that this explanation, coupled with the presence here of the visitor, gave an almost certain testimony to the fact that the money mentioned had been now obtained. "Naturally. And-and-it was of no import. Since my poor wife passed away we have managed to struggle through our existence somehow."

Yet he would have given those ears which had so often been in peril of the executioner's knife to know from what possible source any money could have become due to his late wife. Her first husband had died in almost poverty, he recalled; they had soon spent what little he had had to leave his widow. Then, even as he thus pondered, the sister's voice broke in on him again.

"It is understood that this is the last sum. And that it is applied, as agreed upon with your late wife, to the proper bringing up and educating of the child, and to her support by you. You understand that; you give your promise as a man of honour? Your wife said that you were a 'sailor'-sailors are, I have heard, always honourable men."

"I-I was a sailor at the time she took charge of little Laure. As one-as a man of honour-I promise. She shall have nought to complain of. And I have come to love her. I-believe me-I have been good to her, as good as, in my circumstances, I could be."

And, knave as Vandecque was, he was speaking the truth now. He had been good to the child. These two, so strangely brought together, had grown fond of each other, and the vagabond not only found a place in his heart for the little thing, but, which was equally as much to the purpose, found for himself a place in hers. If he had ever seriously thought, in the first days of finding her in his garret, of sending her to the home for abandoned children, he had long since forgotten those ideas. He would not have parted with her now for that possible sum of money which it seemed extremely likely he was going to become the possessor of for having retained her.

"I do not doubt it. Yet, ere I can give you the money, there are conditions to be complied with. First, I must see the child; next, you must give me your solemn promise-a promise in writing-that you will conform to my demands as to the bringing of her up. You will not refuse?"

"Refuse!" said Vandecque. "Refuse! Madame, what is there to refuse? That which you demand is that which I have ever intended, not knowing that you were-not knowing when to expect your coming. Now you have brought the money-you have brought it, have you not?" speaking a little eagerly (for the life of him he could not help that eagerness) – "my dearest desire can be accomplished."

"Yes, I have brought it," the woman answered. "It is here," and she took from out her pocket a little canvas sack or bag, that to Vandecque's eyes looked plump and fat. "It contains the promised sum," she said, "and it is-should be-enough. With that the child can be fed, clothed, educated, if you husband it well. Fitted for a decent, if simple, life. You agree that it is so, Monsieur Jasmin?"

Vandecque bowed his head courteously, acquiescingly, while muttering, "Without doubt it is enough with careful husbanding." Yet, once more he would have given everything, all he had in the world-though 'twas little enough-to know what that small canvas bag contained. While, as for acquiescing in its sufficiency, he would have done that even though it contained but a handful of silver, as he thought might after all be the case.

"Take it then," she said, passing it across the table to him, while the principal thought in Vandecque's mind as she did so was that, whosoever had chosen this simpleton for his, or her agent, must be a fool, or one who had but little choice in the selection of a go-between, "and, if you choose, count the gold; you will find it as promised."

Count the gold! So it was gold! A bag full! Some two or three hundred pieces at least, or he, whose whole life had been spent in getting such things by hook or by crook, in gambling hells, or by, as that accursed advocate had said who prosecuted for the King, theft and larceny, or as a coiner, was unable to form any judgment. And they were his, must be his, now. Were they not in his own room, to his hand? Even though this idiotic Sister of Charity should decide to repossess herself of them, what chance would she have of doing so. Against him, the ex-galley slave. Him! the knave.

Yet he had to play a part, to reserve his efforts for something more than this present bag of louis'. If one such was forthcoming, another might be, in spite of what the foolish woman had said about it being the last; for were there not such things as spyings and trackings, and the unearthing of secrets; would there not be, afterwards, such things as the discovery of some wealthy man or woman's false step? Oh that it might be a woman's, since they were so much easier to deal with. And then, extortion; blackmail. Ha! there was a bird somewhere in France that laid golden eggs-that would lay golden eggs so long as it lived; one that must be nourished and fed with confidence-at least, at first-not frightened away.

He pushed the bag back towards the Sister, remembering he could wrench it from her again at any moment. With a calm dignity, which might well have become the most highbred gentleman of the Quartier St. Germain hard by, he muttered that, as for counting, such an outrage was not to be thought upon. Also he said:

"Madame has not seen the child. She stipulated that she should do so. Had she not thus stipulated, I must myself have requested her to see her."

Then he quitted the room, leaving the bag of money lying on the table, and, descending one or two of the flights of stairs, sent a child whom he knew, and whom he happened to observe leaving another room, to seek for little Laure and bid her return at once. At one moment ere he descended he had thought of turning the key (which he had left outside when he and his visitor entered the apartment) softly in the lock and thereby preventing her from escaping; but he remembered that he would be on the stairs between her and the street, and that he did not mean to go farther than the doorstep. She was safe.

He returned, therefore, saying that the child would be with them shortly. Then to expedite matters (as he said), he asked if it would not be well for him to sign the receipt as desired? The receipt or promise, as to what he undertook to perform.

"That, too, is here," she replied, while Vandecque's shrewd eye noticed, even as she spoke, that the bag of louis' lay untouched as he had left it. "Read it, then sign."

He did read it, laughing inwardly to himself meanwhile, though showing a grave, thoughtful face outwardly, since his sharp intelligence told him that it was a document of no value whatever. It was made out in the form of a receipt from Madame Jasmin-who had had no legal existence for twelve years, and was now dead-to a person whose name was carefully and studiously omitted from the paper (though that, he knew, would afterwards be filled up) on behalf of a female child, "styled Laure by the woman Jasmin." A piece of paper, he told himself, not worth the drop of ink spilt upon it. Or, even though it were so, not ever likely to be used or produced by the individual who took such pains to shroud himself, or herself, in mystery. A worthless document, which he would have signed for a franc, let alone a bag of golden louis.'

Aloud, however, he said:

"To make it legal in the eyes of his Majesty's judges, the name of my dear wife must be altered to that of mine. Shall I do it or will you?"

"You, if it pleases you."

Whereon Vandecque altered the name of "la femme Jasmin" to that of "le Sieur Jasmin," householder, since, as he justly remarked aloud, he was no longer a sailor, and then, with many flourishes-he being a master hand at penmanship of all kinds-signed beneath the document the words, "Christophe Jasmin." Christophe was not his name, but, as he said to himself saturninely, no more was Jasmin, wherefore he might as well assume the one as the other. Moreover, he reflected that should the paper ever see the light again, it might be just as well for him to be able to deny the whole name as a part of it.

As he finished this portion of the transaction, the door opened and little Laure came in, hot and flushed with the games she had been playing with the other gamines of the court, yet with already upon her face the promise of that beauty which was a few years later to captivate the hearts of all who saw her, including the Duc Desparre and the English exile, Walter Clarges. Only, there was as yet no sign upon that face of the melancholy and sorrow which those later years brought to it as she came to understand the life her guardian led; to understand, too, the rottenness of the existence by which she was surrounded. Instead, she was bright and merry as a child of her years should be, gay and insouciant, not understanding nor foreseeing how dark an opening to Life's future was hers. As for externals, she was well enough dressed; better dressed, indeed, than those among whom she mixed. Her little frock of dark Nimes serge-the almost invariable costume of the lowly in France-was not a mass of rags and filth, her boots and thread stockings not altogether a mockery.

"Madame sees," Vandecque remarked, as the child ran towards him with her hands outstretched and her eyes full of gladness, until she stopped, embarrassed at the sight of the strange lady with the solemn glance; "Madame sees; she recognises that she need have no fear, no apprehension."

"I see." Then, because she was a woman, she called Laure to her and kissed and fondled the child, muttering, "Poor child; poor little thing," beneath her breath. And, though she would have shuddered and besought pardon for days and nights afterwards on her knees, had she recognised what was passing through her mind, she was in truth uttering maledictions on the mother who could thus send away for ever from her so gentle and helpless a little creature as this; who could send her forth to the life she was now leading, to the life that must be before her.

The interview was at an end, and the sister rose from her seat. As for Vandecque, he would willingly have given half of whatever might be in that bag of money still lying on the table-his well-acted indifference to the presence of such a thing preventing him from even casting the most casual glance at it-could he have dared to ask one question, or throw out one inquiry as to whom the principal might be in the affair. Yet it was impossible to do so since he was supposed to know all that his wife had known, while actually not aware if she herself had been kept in ignorance of the child's connections or, on the contrary, had been confided in. "If she had only known more," he thought; "or, knowing more, had only divulged all to me."

But she was in her grave now, and, rascal though he had been, he could not bring himself to curse the poor drudge lying in that grave for having held her peace against such a man as he was, and knew himself to be. If she knew all, then, he acknowledged, it was best she should be silent; if she knew nothing-as he thought most likely-so, also, it was best.

But, still, he meant to know himself, if possible, something about the child's origin. He, at least, was under no promised bond of secrecy and silence; he had never been confided in. For, to know everything was, he felt certain, to see a comfortable future unroll itself before him; a future free from all money troubles-the only discomfort which he could imagine was serious in this world. The person who had sent that bag of louis'-the woman had said it contained gold! – he repeated to himself, could doubtless provide many more. He must know who that person was.

With still an easy grace which seemed to be the remnant of a higher life than that in which he now existed, he held the door open for his visitor to pass out; with equally easy politeness he followed her down the ricketty stairs and would have escorted her to the end of the court, or alley, and afterwards, unknown to her, have followed the simple creature to whatever portion of Paris she might have gone, never losing sight of his quarry, but that, at the threshold, she stopped suddenly and bade him come no farther.

"It must not be," she said. "Monsieur Jasmin, return. And-forget not your duty to the child."

For a moment he paused dumfoundered, perceiving that this simpleton was, in sober truth, no such fool as he had supposed her. Then he bowed, wished her good day, promising all required of him as he did so, and retired back into the passage of the house. Nor could any glance thrown through the crack of the open door aid him farther. He saw her pause at the entrance to the court, and, standing still, look back for some minutes or so, as though desirous of observing if he was following her; also, he saw her glance directed to the window of his room above, as though seeking to discover if he was glancing out of it; if he had rushed up there to spy upon her.

Then, a moment later, she was gone from out the entrance to the court. And, creeping swiftly now to that entrance, and straining his eyes up and down the long street, he observed that no sign of the woman was visible.

He had lost all trace of her.

Amidst the hackney coaches and the hucksters' carts, and, sometimes, a passing carriage of the nobility from the neighbouring Quartier St. Germain, she had disappeared, leaving no sign behind.

CHAPTER V

THE DUKE'S DESIRE

Vandecque never discovered who that woman was, whence she came, nor where she vanished to. Never, though he brought to bear upon the quest which he instituted for her an amount of intelligent search that his long training in all kinds of cunning had well fitted him to put in action. He watched for days, nay, weeks, in the neighbourhood of the Hospital of Mercy, to or from which most of the Sisters, who were not engaged in nursing or other acts of charity elsewhere, passed regularly-yet never, amongst some scores of them who met his eyes, could he discover the woman he sought. He questioned, too, those in the court who had been dwelling there when first his wife came to occupy the garret in which he had found her later, as to whether they could remember aught of the arrival of the child. He asked questions that produced nothing satisfactory, since all testified to the truth of that which the poor woman had so often told him-namely, that the child was brought to her before she came to this spot. Indeed, he would have questioned Laure herself as to what she could remember concerning her earliest years, only what use was it to ask questions of one who had been but an infant, unable even to talk, at the time the event happened.

At last-and after being confronted for months by nothing but a dense blackness of oblivion which he could not penetrate-he decided that the woman who had appeared to him as a simple and unsophisticated religieuse, capable only of blindly and faithfully carrying out the orders given to her by another person, was, in truth, no Sister of Charity whatever, but a scheming person who had temporarily assumed the garb she wore as a disguise. He came also to believe that she herself was Laure's mother, that she had bound herself in some way to make the payment which he had by such extreme good fortune become the recipient of, and that, in one thing at least, she had uttered the actual truth-the actual truth when she had said that those louis' would be the last forthcoming, that there could never be any more. Had she not, he recalled to mind, said that such a sum as she brought was not easily come by, as an excuse for her not having paid them before? Also, had she not wept a little over the child, folded her to her bosom, and called her "Poor little thing"? Did not both these things most probably point to the fact that, judged by the latter actions, she was the girl's mother, and, according to the statement which preceded it, that she was not a woman of extraordinarily large means? Had she been so, she would have been both able and willing to pay down more than five hundred louis' for the hiding of her secret, and would, to have that secret kept always safely (and also to possess the power of seeing the child now and again without fear of detection) have been prepared to make fresh payments from time to time.

For five hundred louis' was what the canvas bag had contained. Five hundred louis', as Vandecque found when, on returning to the garret after losing sight of the woman at the entrance to the court, he had turned them all out on to the table. Five hundred louis' exactly, neither more nor less, proving that the sum was a carefully counted one; doubtless, too, one duly arranged for. Louis' that were of all kinds, and of the reigns during which they had been in existence-the original ones of Louis the Just; the more imposing ones of Le Roi Soleil, with the great sun blazing on the reverse side; the bright, new ones but recently struck for the present boy-king by order of the Regent; all of which led the astute Vandecque to conclude that the pile had been long accumulating-that the first batch might be an old nest egg, or an inheritance; that the second batch was made up of savings added gradually; that the third had been got together by hook or by crook, with a determination to complete the full sum.

"Yet, what matters!" he said, to himself, as he tossed the gold pieces about in his eager hands, and gloated over them with his greedy eyes; tossing, too, a double louis d'or of the treacherous Le Juste, which he had come across, to the child to play with-"what matters where they come from, how they were gathered together to hide a woman's shame? They are mine now! Mine! Mine! Mine! A capital! A bank! The foundation of a fortune, carefully handled! Come, child; come, Laure; come with me. To the fournisseur's, first; then to the dining rooms. Some new, clean clothes for both of us, and then a meal to make our hearts dance within us. We are rich, my child; rich, my little one. Rich! Rich! Rich!"