Servants of Sin

For, to the whilom beggared outcast and galley slave, five hundred louis' were wealth.

Time passed; in truth it seemed that Vandecque was indeed rich, or growing rich. The garret was left behind; four rooms in the Rue du Paon preceded by a year or so that apartment in the Passage du Commerce at which he eventually arrived. Four rooms, one a dining-room, another a parlour, in which at midnight there came sometimes a score of men to gamble-women sometimes came too-and a bedroom for each. He was growing well-to-do, his capital accumulating as capital will accumulate in the hands of the man who always holds the bank and makes it a stipulation that, on those terms alone, can people gamble beneath his roof.

Meanwhile Laure was fast developing into a woman-was one almost. She was now seventeen, for she was within a year of the time when the exile, Walter Clarges, was to whisper the words of suggested salvation in her ear in the saloon of the demoiselles Montjoie-suggested salvation from her marriage with Monsieur le Duc Desparre, from his embraces. A beautiful girl, too, with her sweet hair bound up now about her shapely head, her deep hazel eyes full and lustrous, calm and pure. Una herself passed no more undefiled amidst the horrors of Wandering Wood than did Laure Vauxcelles amidst the gamblers and the dissolute roués who surrounded the court of Philippe le Débonnaire, and who, ere the games began at night-when occasionally permitted to see her-found time to cast admiring glances at her wondrous, fast-budding beauty.

The name Vauxcelles was, of course, no more hers than was that of Laure, which had been given to her by poor Madame Vandecque when first she took the deserted and discarded waif to her kindly heart. But as Vandecque had elected to style her his niece, so, too, he decided to give her a name which would have been that of an actual niece if he had ever had one. He recalled the fact that he had once possessed an elder sister, now long since dead, who had married a man from Lorraine whose name was Vauxcelles, and, he being also dead, the name was bestowed on his protégée. It answered well enough, he told himself, since Laure had come to his late wife far too early in her life to remember aught that had preceded her arrival under the roof of the unhappy woman's earlier garret; and it formed a sufficient answer and explanation to any questions the girl might ever ask as to her origin. In sober fact, she believed that she was actually the child of his dead and gone sister and her husband.

She would have loved her uncle more dearly than she did-she would have loved the grave, serious man who had suffered so for his "religion," as he often told her, but for two things. The first was that she knew him to be a gambler; that he grew rich by enticing men to his apartments and by winning their money; that several young men had been ruined beneath their roof, and that more than one had destroyed himself after such ruin had fallen upon him. She knew, too, that others stole so as to be able to take part in the faro and biribi that was played there; to take part, too, in the brilliant society of those members of the aristocracy who condescended to visit the Rue du Paon and to win their stolen money. For there sometimes came, amongst others, that most horrible of young roués, the Duc de Richelieu and Fronsac, from whom the girl shrank as from a leper, or some noisome reptile; there, too, came De Noailles, reeking with the impurities of an unclean life; and De Biron, who was almost as bad. Sometimes also, amongst the women, came the proud De Sabran, who condescended to be the Regent's "friend," but redeemed herself in her own eyes by insulting him hourly, and by telling him that, when God had finished making men and lackeys, He took the remnants of the clay and made Kings and Regents. Laughing La Phalaris came, too, sometimes; also Madame de Parabère; once the Regent came himself; leaning heavily on the arm of his Scotch financier, and, under his astute mathematical calculations, managed to secure a large number of Vandecque's pistoles, so that the latter cursed inwardly while maintaining outwardly a face as calm and still as alabaster.

An illustrious company was this which met in the ex-galley slave's apartments!

What to Laure was worse than all, however, was that her uncle sometimes desired her to be agreeable to occasional guests who honoured his rooms with their presence. Not, it is true, to the dissolute roués nor the Regent's mistresses-to do the soiled and smirched swindler of bygone days justice, he respected the girl's innocence and purity too much for that-nor to those men who were married and from whom there was nothing to be obtained. But he perceived clearly enough her swift developing beauty; he knew that there, in that beauty, was a charm so fresh and fascinating that it might well be set as a stake against a great title, an ancient and proud name, the possession of enormous wealth. Before loveliness inferior to Laure's, and purity not more deep-for such would have been impossible-he had known of, heard of, the heads of the noblest houses in France bowing, while exchanging for the possession of such charms the right to share their names. What had happened before, he mused, might well happen again.

Laure, the outcast, the outcome of the gutters and the mud, the abandoned child, might yet live to share a ducal coronet, a name borne with honour since the days of the early Capets. And, with her, he would mount, too, go hand in hand, put away for ever a disgraceful past, a past from which he still feared that some spectre might yet arise to denounce and proclaim him. If she would only yield to his counsel-only do that! If she only would!

Suitors such as he desired were not lacking. One, he was resolved she should accept by hook or by crook, as he said to himself in his own phrase. This was the newly succeeded Duc Desparre, the man who a year before had been serving as an officer on paltry pay in the Regiment de Bellebrune, and taking part in the Catalonian campaign-the man who, in middle life, had succeeded to a dukedom which a boy of eighteen had himself succeeded to but a year before that. But the lad was then already worn out with dissipation which a sickly constitution, transmitted to him by half-a-dozen equally dissipated forerunners, was not able to withstand. A cold contracted at a midnight fête given by the Regent in the gardens of Madame de Parabère's country villa at Asnieres, had done its work. It had placed in the hands of the soldier who had nothing but his pay and his bundle of swords (and a few presents occasionally sent him by an admiring woman), a dukedom, a large estate, a great rent-roll.

It was six months before that snowy night on which the Marquise Grignan de Poissy paid her visit to Monsieur le Duc, that Desparre, flinging all considerations of family, of an ancient title and a still more ancient name, to the winds, determined that this girl should be his wife, that he would buy her with his coronet, since in no other way could she be his.

"I desire her. I love her. I will possess her," he said to himself by night and day; "I will. I must marry her. Curse it, 'tis strange, too, how her beauty has bound me down; I who have loved so many, yet never thought of marrying one of them. I, the poor soldier, who had nothing to offer in exchange for a woman's heart but a wedding ring, and would never give even that. Now that I am well to do, a great prize, I sacrifice myself."

Yet he chuckled, too, as he resolved to make the sacrifice, recognising that it was not only his love for and desire of possessing this girl which was egging him on to the determination, but something else as well. The desire to retaliate upon his numerous kinswomen who had once ignored him, but who now grovelled at his feet. To wound, as he termed them, the "women of his tribe," whose doors were mostly shut to the beggarly captain of the Regiment de Bellebrune, but who, in every case, would have now prostrated themselves before him with pleasure-the elder ones because there was much of the family wealth which he might direct towards them and their children eventually, if he so chose, and also because rumour said that his acquaintanceship with the Regent and John Law was doubling and trebling that wealth; the younger ones because there was the title and the coronet and the great position ready to be shared with some woman. Yet he meant to defeat them all, to retaliate upon them for past slights. The only share which they should have in any wedding of his would be the witnessing of it with another woman, and that a woman of whom no one knew anything beyond the fact that she belonged to the inferior classes, and was the niece and ward of a man who kept a gambling-house.

It would be a great, a stupendous retaliation-a retaliation he could gloat over and revel in; a repayment for all he had endured in his earlier days.

One thing alone stood in the way of the accomplishment of that retaliation. Laure Vauxcelles refused absolutely to consent to become the Duchesse Desparre-indeed, to marry anyone-as Vandecque told Monsieur after he had well sounded his niece on the subject.

"Refuses!" Desparre exclaimed. "Refuses! It is incredible. Is there any other? That English exile to wit, the man Clarges? If I know aught of human emotions, he, too, loves her."

"She has refused him also."

"Yet the cases are widely different. He is a beggar; I am Desparre."

"She avers she will marry no one. She has also strange scruples about this house, about the establishment I keep. She says that from such a home as this no woman is fit to go forth as a wife."

"Her scruples show that she, at least, is fit to do so. Vandecque, she must be my wife. I am resolved. What pressure can you bring to bear upon her? Oh! that I, Desparre, should be forced to sue thus!" he broke off, muttering to himself in his rage.

"I must think, reflect," Vandecque replied. "Leave it to me. You are willing to wait, Monsieur?"

"I must have her. She must be my wife."

"Leave it to me."

Monsieur did leave it to him, and, as the autumn drew towards the winter, Vandecque was able to tell his employer-for such he was-that all scruples were overcome, that the girl was willing to become his wife. One thing, however, he did not tell-namely, the influence he had brought to bear upon her, such influence consisting of the information he had furnished as to her being an unknown and nameless waif and stray, who, as he said, he had adopted out of charity. For, naturally enough, he omitted all mention of the bag of louis' d'or which he had received on her behalf, and also all mention of anything else which he imagined his wife had previously received. So, when his tale was done, it was with no astonishment that he heard Laure Vauxcelles announce that she was willing to become the Duchesse Desparre, since he concluded that, as she had now learnt who she was-or rather who she was not-she was willing to sink all trace of what she doubtless considered was a shameful origin in a brilliant future. It never dawned upon his warped and sordid mind that this very story, while seeming to induce her to compliance, had, in truth, forced her to a determination to seek oblivion in a manner far different from that of marriage; an oblivion which should be utter.

As for Desparre, he asked no questions as to how Vandecque had brought her to that compliance. It was sufficient for him to know, and revel in the knowledge, that the girl, who moved his middle-aged pulses in a manner in which they had never been stirred for years before by any woman, was now to be his possession; sufficient for him also to know that, in so becoming possessed of her, he would be able to administer a crushing blow to the vanity as well as the cupidity of the family which had so long ignored him; a blow from which he thought it was very doubtful if their arrogance could ever recover.

CHAPTER VI

THE DUKE'S BRIDE

The Duc Desparre was making his toilette for his approaching marriage-about to take place at midday at the church of St. Gervais, which was conveniently placed between the streets in which his mansion and Vandecque's new apartments were situated.

Strange to say, Monsieur was in a bad temper for such a joyous occasion, and, in consequence, his valet was passing an extremely bad time. Many things had conspired to bring about this unfortunate state of affairs, the foremost of which was that there had been a great fall in the value of "Mississippians" or "Louisiana" stock, owing to the fact that adverse accounts were reaching France as to the state of the colony. Some of the settlers, who had gone out within the last two or three years, had but recently returned and given the lie to all the flourishing accounts so assiduously put about. There were, they said, neither gold mines nor silver to be found there, as had been stated; the Indians, especially the Natchez, were in open warfare with the French and slaughtering all who came in their way; the soil was unproductive, marshy and feverous-the colonists were dying by hundreds. Law, the great promoter of the Louisiana scheme, was a liar, they said, while, La Salle and Hennepin, the Franciscan monk who had sent home such flourishing accounts to the late king, were, they added, the same; and so were all who held out any hopes that Louisiana could ever be aught to France but a suitable place to which to send its surplus population, there to find death. It is true these wanderers had been flung into the Bastille for daring to return and promulgate such statements-but, all the same, those statements had their effect on the funds, and "Mississippians" had fallen.

Wherefore the Duc Desparre was a poorer man on this, his wedding morn, than he had been yesterday, by one-half his newly acquired wealth, and he was in a great state of irritation in consequence. While, also, he remembered at this moment that Vandecque had had a deal of money from him, none of which he was ever likely to see the colour of again. So that, altogether, he was in a very bad humour-and there were other things besides to annoy him.

"Have you sent this morning to enquire how Mademoiselle Vauxcelles is?" he asked of his valet, who at this moment was affixing a patch to his face. "She has not been well for four days, and has been invisible. I trust her health is restored. What is the answer?"

"Mademoiselle is better, Monsieur," the man replied, "much better."

"Is that the answer? No message for me?"

"None was delivered to me from her, Monsieur le Duc. But Monsieur Vandecque sent his compliments and said he expected you eagerly."

"Did he? Without doubt! Perhaps, too, he expects a little more money from me." This he whispered to himself. "Well, he will find himself disappointed. If he requires more he may go seek it at the gambling tables, or of the devil; he will get nothing further from me. Henceforth it will be sufficient to have to support his niece."

Then, his toilet being completed, he asked the valet if the company were below and the carriages ready to convey them to the church where the bride was to be met?

"They assemble, Monsieur le Duc, they assemble. Already the distinguished relatives of Monsieur are arriving, and many friends have called to ask after Monsieur's health this morning, and have proceeded to the church," while, as the little clock struck eleven in silvery tones, the man added, "If Monsieur is agreeable it will be well to descend now, perhaps."

"So," said Desparre, rising, "I will descend. Yet, before I go, give me my tablets, let me see that everything has been carried out as I ordered," while, taking from the servant's hand a little ivory notebook, he glanced his eye over it.

"Yes," he muttered. "Yes. Humph! Yes. Rosina's allowance to be paid monthly-ha! – curse her! – yet, otherwise, she would not hold her tongue. The exempt to sell up the widow Lestrange if she pays not by the 31st. Good! Good! The outfitters to be told that I will not pay for the new furniture until the end of the year; ha! but I shall not pay it then, though." And, so, he read down his tablets until he had gone through all his notes. When, bidding his man perfume his ruffles and lace pocket-handkerchief, he descended to the salon to greet his relatives and guests; those dearly beloved relatives, who, he strongly believed and hoped, were cursing themselves and their fate at this very moment.

In spite of their intense disapproval of the union which Desparre was about to enter into, a union with the niece of a man whose reputation was of the worst-which really would not have mattered much had he belonged to the aristocracy! – those relatives had not thought it altogether advisable to abstain from gracing the impending ceremony with their presence. For Monsieur was the head of a great house, of their great house, he had interest unbounded. And he was the Regent's friend. He was almost one of the most prominent of the roués. What might he not still do for them, in spite of this atrocious misalliance he was about to perpetrate, if only they kept on friendly terms with him? Then again, he was, as they supposed, enormously wealthy, rumour saying that he had made some millions over Law's system-in which case rumour, as usual, exaggerated-and, above all, he was approaching old age; he was, and always had been, a dissolute man; there was little likelihood that he would leave any heirs behind him. And, if so, there would be some fine pickings for the others. Wherefore they swallowed their disapproval and disgust of this forthcoming mésalliance and trooped to his house to wish him that joy which they earnestly hoped he would never experience, notwithstanding that it was a cruel, bitter winter and that, unfortunately, wedding ceremonies took place at an hour when most of them were accustomed to be snoring in their beds.

These relatives formed a strange group; a strange collection of beings which, perhaps, no other period than that of the Regency, five years after the death of Louis XIV., could have produced. There were old women present, including his paternal aunt, the Dowager Duchesse Desparre, whose lives had been one long sickening reek of immorality and intrigue under The Great King; women who, as she had done, had struggled and schemed for that king's favours-or for what was almost as good, the reputation of having gained those favours. Women who had betrayed their husbands over and over again, women who had sinned against those husbands with the latters' own consent, so long as the deception had aided their fortunes. Yet, withal, their manners were those of the most perfect ease and grace which the world has ever known, and which are now to be found only amongst dancing mistresses and masters of ceremonies.

Amidst them all, however, the battered, half-worn-out roué moved with a grace equal to theirs, he having become a very prince of posturers; while bowing to one old harridan in whose veins ran the blood of crusading knights and-some whispered-even of Henry of Navarre; kissing the hand of another who had tapped the late Dauphin on the cheek with her fan when he asked her if she liked hunting, and had made answer that "innocent pleasures were not pleasure to her;" leering at a younger female cousin in a manner that might almost have made the Duc de Richelieu himself jealous, but which did not disturb the fair recipient of the ogle at all. And he kissed the hand of the Dowager Duchess with respectful rapture (though once she had refused to let the impoverished soldier into her house), while he regretted that such a trifle as his marriage should have brought her forth from her home that morning; he carried a glass of tokay to one aunt and ordered his servant to hand a cup of chocolate to another-the distinction being made because the rank of this latter was not quite so exalted as that of the former.

He was revelling in his revenge! And then, suddenly, his face dropped and he stood staring at the door. Staring, indeed, with so ghastly a look upon that face that a boon companion of his began to think that, after all, an apoplectic fit was about to seize him, and that leeches to his head and a cupping would more likely be his portion than a wedding on that day.

For, at the door, was standing Vandecque, alone-and on his face was a look which told the Duke very plainly that something had happened.

"What is it?" he muttered, as he came close to him, while lurching a little in his gait, as the boon companion thought-as though he had fetters about his feet-and while his words came from his mouth with difficulty. "Speak. Speak. Curse you! speak. Why are you here when-when-you should be with her-at-the-church?"

And all the time the eyes of the old and young members of his family were looking at him, and the Dowager Duchess was wondering if the bride had committed suicide sooner than go to his arms, while the battered hulk who had been drinking the chocolate was raising the wrinkles in her brow as much as she dared do without fear of cracking her enamel, and leering at the other worn-out wreck whose shaking hand held the glass of tokay.

"There is no Duchess yet," she whispered to a neighbour, through her thin lips, "and my boy, Henri, is second in succession." And again she leered hideously.

"Speak, I say," Desparre continued. "Something has happened. I can see it in your face. Quick."

"She-she-is-gone. Escaped. Married," Vandecque stammered. "Married!" And Desparre's face worked so that Vandecque turned his eyes away while he muttered. "Alas! Yes. This morning."

"To whom? Tell me. Tell me. I-did-not-know-she had a lover."

"Nor I. Yet it appears she had. She loved him all the time. That Englishman. Walter Clarges."