In the Day of Adversity

"It is I, my friend."

Then, as St. Georges's senses came fully back to him, he seized the other's hand and murmured: "You! It is you have done this! Through you that I am saved."

"You are saved, my friend. That is enough. What matter by whom?"

CHAPTER XXXIV.

"I WILL NEVER FORGIVE HER."

Once more St. Georges was on the road, heading straight for Troyes, and by his side once more rode a friend, as he had ridden over four years ago – Boussac!

When he had thoroughly recovered from the swoon into which he had fallen on hearing that he was free, he had again and again overwhelmed the mousquetaire with his gratitude – all of which the latter had refused to accept, and had, indeed, gently repudiated. Also it seemed to St. Georges that he avoided the subject, or at least said as little as possible.

"If," he said, when at last they were seated in an inn off the new Rue Richelieu to which he had led St. Georges, "there is anything to which you owe your freedom more than another, it is to the fact that the king must recognise that you are in truth le Duc de Vannes, the son of his earliest friend. Yet – yet" – he continued in an embarrassed manner – "he would not even allow that that should influence him – when – I pleaded for you."

"But it did – it did, Boussac, it did. He must have pondered on it afterward – perhaps reflected on how unjustly I had been treated by his vile minister, Louvois – you say he died in disgrace? – and that may have – nay, must have, turned his heart. O Boussac! how am I ever to repay you? Without your thought and exertions what should I have been now?" and he shuddered as he spoke.

"Oh! la! la!" said Boussac, "never mind about me. The question is now what do you intend to do in the future?"

"Do!" exclaimed St. Georges. "Do! Why, that which I returned to France to do, fought against France for – obtain my child. Boussac, where is that woman now?"

"Woman! – what woman?"

"Ah! Boussac, do not joke. You know very well to what woman I refer. That young tigress – in her way almost as vile as the woman Louvigny! – the woman who stole my child."

"Mademoiselle de Roquemaure?"

"Ay, Mademoiselle de Roquemaure! That is the name. Oh Boussac! you have given me more than my life, far more. The power to wrench my child away from her keeping, to stand before her a freed man, the king's pardon in my hand, and tax her with her treachery."

"You will do that?"

"Do it! What am I going to Troyes for – to-night?"

"Ay, true! True! What are you going to Troyes for? Yet I should have thought, if you recover the child, it is enough. Why – say – bitter words?"

"Boussac, you – but, there, you are not a father; you cannot understand all I have suffered in these four years past. Why! man, the galleys, my exile, the death that yawned for me this morning, were easier than the loss of my little one. And, with her dying brother's own confession ringing in my ears still, as it will ring when I stand before her to-morrow, as I hope, you ask me what need I have to reproach her – to utter bitter words?"

The mousquetaire shrugged his shoulders; then he muttered something about the recovery of the child being everything, and that reproaches brought little satisfaction with them; and after that he again asked St. Georges when he meant to set out for Troyes?

"To-night, I tell you – to-night. Yet" – and he paused bewildered – "I – I have no money. Not enough to get me a horse, at least. They have given me back all they took from me after my condemnation, but there were only a few guineas left."

"Where is the horse you rode to Paris on when De Mortemart brought you?"

"Ah!" exclaimed St. Georges, "a good horse – though, alas! at a moment when my life was in danger and a horse alone could save me, I – I stole it. Oh, if I can but get that again!"

"Why not? It is doubtless in the stables behind the cours criminel, where the guard stable theirs."

It was there; so that difficulty was soon solved, no objection being offered by the authorities to giving up the property of a prisoner who was so distinguished as to be acquitted by the king's order an hour before his execution; and then, when St. Georges had recovered it, he announced his intention of at once setting forth. He was impatient to be gone now he was so near; he calculated that by midday on the morrow he would have forced from Aurélie de Roquemaure a confession of what she had done with Dorine. She was at Troyes he knew; Boussac, who professed himself well acquainted with her movements, having told him that such was the case.

"She is much at court now," he said; "I often see her. And she must be back at Troyes by now – I mean – that – she has been absent from there of late. But – but she would be back by now – she – told me – she was – "

"What?" asked St. Georges, looking at him and wondering why he seemed so incoherent about the woman's movements; wondering also how he came to know so much about them, especially her recent ones – "what did she tell you when last you saw her?"

"That – she has been paying a visit – to – to – assist a friend – but – "

"Her friendship seems as strong as her hate – and greed," muttered St. Georges.

"But that," Boussac continued, still floundering a good deal in his speech, "she would be at the manoir last night – yes, last night."

"So. Then she will doubtless be there to-morrow also; she will require rest after rendering her friend so much assistance. I shall find her there."

"We shall find her there," Boussac answered. "I am going with you."

"You! Why?" Then he laughed – for the first time for many a day. "Do you think I am in danger now, with Louis's protection in my pocket, or," and his brow darkened a little, "do you fear that she is in danger from me?"

"Mon ami," Boussac replied, "I think neither of those things. The king's permission has made you safe – your manhood makes her so. Yet, let me ride with you. Remember" – and again he halted in his speech, as though seeking for a suitable reason for accompanying him – "we rode together when la petite was about to be lost to you; let us do so now when, I hope most fervently, she is about to be restored to you. And, my friend, I have obtained leave – we Mousquetaires are always fortunate in getting that. Do not deny me!"

"Deny you! – you! The man who saved me! I am an ingrate even to question you," and he seized the black gauntleted hand of the other and wrung it hard.

After that there was no more to be said or done ere they set out – or only one thing. Boussac had mentioned that he had a friend, a dragoon officer, who was proceeding to La Hogue to join his regiment which was still there under Bellefond's command, and by him St. Georges sent twenty pistoles to be given to Dubois, the man who owned the horse which saved his life. He borrowed the money of Boussac, described the inn where he had seized the animal, and then mounted it for the first time with a feeling of satisfaction. "'Tis a good beast," he said, "and has done me loyal service; also it has well replaced another good one – that on which I rode from Pontarlier to Paris and never saw again. How long ago that seems, Boussac!"

"Ay," replied the other, "but it was winter then and the clouds were lowering over your life and her you loved – now 'tis summer, and all is well with you."

"I pray God! I have suffered my share."

All through that summer night they rode – resting their horses occasionally at country inns, then going on again, though slowly, and at dawn changing them for others and leaving them to rest until they should return that way. And so at last they neared Troyes, passing through the little town of Nogent, and seeing, ten miles off, the spire of the cathedral glistening in the rays of the bright sun.

"She will not know me," St. Georges had said more than once, as he thought of Dorine. "She was a babe when I lost her, now she is a child possessing speech and intelligence. May God grant it is not too late; that she is not too old yet to learn to love me!"

"Courage! mon ami, courage!" exclaimed Boussac, repeating a formula he had adopted from the first; "all must be well."

But – it was natural – as they approached their destination, the goal from which St. Georges hoped so much, his nervousness increased terribly and he began to speculate as to whether the child might not after all be dead; if, perhaps, she might not have lain in her little grave for long. "And then how will it be with me, Boussac? Oh! if she is dead how shall I reckon with the woman who possessed herself of her?"

"Courage!" again repeated the mousquetaire, "I do not believe she is dead. And if mademoiselle did seize upon her – well, she is a woman! a better nurse than the bishop's servant."

"Ah! the bishop's servant! That too has to be explained. What was he doing with her? I have wondered all these years – De Roquemaure's dying words told nothing. 'He had got her safe,' he gasped at the last. But why he? Why he! Oh! shall I ever know all?"

"Ere long, I hope, my friend," said Boussac, "ere long now."

As he spoke, they mounted the last hill that guarded the capital of Champagne and approached the summit. When there, they would be able to look down upon the old city – nay, more, from there they would scarce be a musket shot from the manoir, surrounded now by its ripening vineyards and its woods. She, the kidnapper of his child, would be in his grasp, must answer his demand!

Upon the summit of that hill still stood the gibbet on which the peasant woman's husband had swung, but the body was gone – long since, doubtless – and the gallows tree was bare. "Perhaps," said St. Georges, "the poor thing obtained him decent burial at last. I hope so." Then, seeing a peasant coming along the road, he spoke to him, and asked him what had become of the corpse that hung there four years ago? The fellow looked up at him sullenly enough and stared hard for some moments; then he said:

"You are not De Roquemaure?"

"Nay."

"What affair is it then of yours?"