CHAPTER XIV

WHERE IS THE MAN?

When Walter Clarges was left lying on the footway of the Rue des Saints Apostoliques, on that cold, wintry night after Vandecque's rapier had struck through his left lung, there was not an hour's life left in him if succour had not been promptly at hand. Fortunately, however, such was the case, and, ere he had been stretched there twenty minutes, his prostrate form was found by a number of soldiers of the "Regiment of Orleans," who happened to pass down the street on their way to where their quarters were, near the Hôtel de Ville. All these men had been drinking considerably on this night of lawlessness and anarchy, they having, indeed, been sent forth under the charge of some officers to restore, if possible, peace and tranquillity to the streets, and to prevent the archers and exempts from continuing the wholesale arresting and dragging off to prison (after first clubbing and beating them senseless) of many innocent persons. And, for the rescues which they had made of many such innocent people, they had met with much gratitude and had been treated to draughts of liquor strong enough and copious enough to have turned even more seasoned heads than theirs, and were now reeling back to their quarters singing songs, yelling out vulgar ribaldries, and accosting jocosely, and with many barrack-room gallantries, the few women who ventured forth, or were forced to be abroad on such a night.

"Body of a dog," said one, a big, brawny fellow, whose magnificent uniform shone resplendent under the rays of the now fully risen moon, as they flashed down from the snow upon the roofs, "is our Regent turned fool? What will he gain by this devil's game of arresting all the people who object to lose their money in his cursed schemes. 'Tis well De Noailles sent us out into the streets to-night to stop it all, or the boy-king might never sit on the old one's throne. By my grandmother's soul, our good Parisians will not endure everything, and Philippe, who is wise, when he is not drinking or making love, should know better than to play such a fool's game. 'Tis that infernal Dubois, or his English friend, the financier----"

"La! la!" said another, equally big and brawny, "blaspheme not Le Débonnaire. He is our master. Ho! le Débonnaire!" Whereon he began to sing a song that everyone sung in Paris at this time, in which he was joined by all his comrades:

"Long live our Regent, He is so débonnaire."

Then he broke off, exclaiming while his comrades continued the refrain, "Ha! What have we here? Ten thousand thunders! Is it a battlefield? Behold Look at this Dead men around! The house-wall splashed with blood! How it gleams, sticky and shiny, in the moon's rays! Poor beasts!"

"Beasts in truth!" exclaimed a third. "Archers, exempts! _Fichtre!_ who cares for them. Dirty police, watchmen essaying the duties of soldiers--of gentlemen, of ourselves. Bah!" and he kicked a dead archer lying in the road with such force that the thud of his heavy-spurred riding-boots sounded hideously against the corpse's ribs. "Let them lie there till the dogs find them."

"Ay! ay!" exclaimed the first of the speakers. "Let them lie. But this other, here; this is no exempt nor archer--instead, a gentleman. Look to his clothes and lace, and his hands. White as De Noailles's own. Also, he is not dead yet."

Meanwhile, he who thus spoke was bending over Walter Clarges and had already run his great muscular arm beneath the wounded man's shoulders, thus lifting him into a sitting position, whereby a stream of blood issued swiftly from his lips, and, running down his chin, stained the steinkirk and breast lace beneath.

"That saves him," he exclaimed, "for a time, at least. The red wine was choking the unfortunate. And observe; you understand? This is a gentleman. Set upon by these sewer rats either for robbery--or--or--or," and he winked sapiently, "by some rival."

Whereon, as he spoke, the man who had kicked the dead fellow lying in the road looked very much as though he were about to repeat the performance. Yet he was arrested in the act by what the other, who was supporting Walter's still inanimate form, said:

"Nay, fool, kick not the garbage. They cannot feel. Instead, scour their pockets. Doubtless the pay of Judas is in them. And, if so, 'tis rightly ours for saving this one. To the soldier and gentleman the spoils of war. To the gentlemen of Monseigneur's guard the perquisites of those wretches."

Meanwhile, even as he spoke, the gentleman of Monseigneur's guard was doing his best to restore the victim of Desparre and Vandecque to life. Half a handful of snow was placed on the latter's burning forehead; his vest was opened by the summary process of tearing the lace out of it and wrenching the sides apart. Gradually, Clarges unclosed his eyes, understanding what was being done.

"God bless you!" he murmured as well as the blood in his mouth would let him. "God bless you! My purse is in my pocket. Take----" Then relapsed into insensibility.

"Bah! for his purse. This is a gentleman. We do not rob one another. The dog eats not dog, as the Jew said to the man who unhappily looked like one. Instead, despoil those carrion, and, you others, help me to bear him to the Trinity. 'Tis close at hand. Hast found aught, Gaspard?"

"Ay!" the other gentleman of the guard replied. "A pocketful of louis-d'ors. Ho! for Babette and Alison and the wine flask to-morrow."

"Good! Good!" the first replied. "The wine cup and the girls to-morrow. Yet, not a word of anything to anybody. We found this Monsieur stretched on the ground wounded. As for the refuse here," and he looked scornfully at the dead men, "poof! we do not see them. They are beneath the notice of sabreurs. Lift him gently; use your cloaks as bands beneath his body. So away to the Trinity. Forward! _Marchez, mes dragons!_"

* * * * * *

The days drew into weeks, and the weeks into months. The winter, with its snows and frosts was gone; the spring was coming. Yet, still, Walter Clarges lay, white as a marble statue, in the hospital bed, hovering 'twixt life and death. But, because he was young and healthy, and had ever been sober and temperate, his constitution triumphed over the thrust that had pierced his lung and gone dangerously near to piercing his heart; his wound healed well and cleanly both inside and out, his mouth ceased at last to fill with blood each time he coughed or essayed to speak. Recovery was close at hand.

That he was a gentleman the surgeons recognised as plainly as the good-natured swashbucklers of Monseigneur's guard had done. His clear-cut, aristocratic features and his delicate shapely hands showed this as surely as his rich apparel (he had put on the best he had for his wedding), his jewelled watch by Tompion (which his father had left him), and his well-filled purse seemed to testify the same. But they did not know that what the purse contained was all he would have in the world after he had made provision for the woman he had married in the morning, and had paid every debt. At last, one day, the surgeon spoke to him, telling him that he was well and cured. If he had a home he might go forth to it, nothing now being required but that he should exercise some little care with his lung, while endeavouring to catch no chill--and so forth.

"Yes," he said, "I have a home, such as it is. An apartment in a back street, yet good enough, perhaps, for an English exile--an English Jacobite."

He had told them who he was and his name, while contenting himself with simply describing the attack upon him as one made by armed ruffians on that night of confusion, and thinking it best that he should say no more. To narrate the reason why he had been thus attacked, to state that he had taken a woman away from her lawful guardian, and married her on the morning when she was about to have become the wife of a prominent member of the noblesse--prominent in more ways than one!--would, he knew, be unwise. It might be that, even now, Desparre or Vandecque could set the law upon him, in spite of their base attempt at murder. If such were the case, and he should become a prisoner in the Bastille or Vincennes, his chance of being of further help to his wife would be utterly gone. And, for the same reason, he had not, during the last two weeks that he had been enabled to speak or write, sent any message to the custodian of the house where he lived, nor to his wife. He imagined that, since he had not returned on that night as he had promised to do, she would continue to remain on in the apartments in the Rue de la Dauphine until she heard from him. He had shown her his strong box and had told her that it contained four thousand livres, enough to provide her with her subsistence for some time to come. Surely she would not fail to utilise the money--would not forget that she was his lawful wife, and, though caring nothing for him, was therefore fully entitled to do with it what she chose. He would find her there on his return. And then--then they would make their arrangements for parting. He would force himself to bury, in what must henceforth be a dead heart, the love and adoration he had for her. Nay, he would do more. He had told her that, in days to come, he would find some means of setting her free from the yoke of their marriage, that yoke which must gall her so in the future. He could scarcely imagine as yet how this freedom was to be obtained, but, because of that adoration, that love and worship of his, it should be done. He had saved her from Desparre; soon she would need him no more. Then she could fling him away, if any means could be devised to break the bonds that bound her to him.

What he did find when he reached the house in the Rue de la Dauphine has been told, and how, when there, he learned that his thoughts of setting her free had long since been anticipated. She had waited for no effort on his part. She had escaped and left him the first moment that a chance arose, after having availed herself of the sacrifice he had made, all too willingly, for her.

"So be it," he said at last, as he sat before the burning logs, thinking over all these things, while that letter, written in some unknown woman's handwriting, lay at his feet "So be it; she is gone. I have no wife. Yet, yet"--and he gazed down as he spoke at the paper--"had she known this story which it tells--if it is the truth, she should have thanked me five thousand times over for the service I did her. To have saved her from Desparre as her husband was, perhaps, something worth doing--to save her from the awful, hellish union into which she would have entered unknowingly, would surely have entitled me to her everlasting gratitude--even without her love."

And, again, he shuddered as he glanced at the letter lying there.

"Now," he exclaimed, springing to his feet, "that is over; done with; put away for ever. One thing alone is not--my vengeance."

"Vandecque's abode I know," he muttered, "though not the address of that double-dyed scoundrel, his master. That I must learn later. Now for the jackal."

He seized his roquelaure and was about to throw it over his shoulder when he paused, remembering that he was unarmed--since the last sword he had worn, that one which had been broken in the affray of the Rue des Saints Apostoliques, was left where it had fallen. Then he went into his sleeping room and came forth bearing a strong serviceable rapier, which he passed through his sash.

"It has done good work for me before now," he mused; "'twill serve yet to spit the foul creature I go to seek."

Whereupon, putting the letter from his unknown female correspondent in his pocket, he went forth and made his way to the spot at which he had met his wife on the morning of their ill-starred marriage; the "Jardin des Roses," out of which the Passage du Commerce opened.

The roses were not yet in bloom, the spring flowers were only now struggling into bud; yet all looked gay and bright, and vastly different from what it had done on that cold wintry morning when Laure had stolen forth trembling to the arbour in which he waited for her, and had gone with him to that ceremony which she then regarded as but a lesser evil than the one she fled from.

"What hopes we cherish, nourish in our hearts," he thought, as he went swiftly over the crushed-shell paths to the opening of the Passage. "Hopes never to be realised. Even as I married her, even as I vowed that never would I ask her for her love, nor demand any consideration for me as her husband, I still dreamed, still prayed that at last--some day--in the distant future--she might come to love me. If only a little. Only a little. And now! And now! And now! Ah, well! It must be borne!"

He reached the house in the Passage as thus he meditated; reached it, and summoned the concierge to come forth from his den. Then, when the man stood before him ready to answer his inquiries, he said:

"I seek him who occupies the second floor of this house. Your tenant, Vandecque."

"Vandecque!" the man exclaimed. "Monsieur Vandecque! You seek him?" and the tones of the man's voice rose shriller and shriller with each word he muttered. "You seek Monsieur Vandecque?"

"'Tis for that I am here. What else? Where is he?" Then, seeing a blank look upon the man's face, he suddenly exclaimed: "Surely he is not dead?"

"Dead; no. Not that I know of. Though, sometimes, I fear. But--but--missing. He may be dead."

"Missing! Since when--how long ago?"

"Since the night of the--the--catastrophe. The night of the day when mademoiselle threw over the illustrious duke to marry an English outcast. They say--many think--that it broke his heart; turned him demented. That he drowned himself, poor gentleman, plunged into the Seine to hide----"

"Bah!" exclaimed Walter, "such fellows as that do not drown themselves. More like he is in hiding for some foul crime, attempted or done. If this is true that you tell me" (he thought it very likely that the man was lying by Vandecque's orders) "what of his companions, his clients--the men who gambled here. The 'illustrious duke' of whom you make mention; where is that vagabond?"

The man rolled up his eyes to heaven as though fearing that the skies must surely be about to fall at such profanation as this, and would have replied uncivilly to his interrogator only--the accent of that interrogator showed him to be an Englishman of the same class as the man who had stolen the Duke's bride. And he remembered that Englishmen were hot and choleric; above all that they permitted no insolence from inferiors. He did not know but that, if he were impertinent, he might find himself saluted with a kick or a blow. But, because he had as much wit of a sub-acid kind as most of his countrymen, he muttered to himself, "Apparently, Monsieur knows Monsieur le Duc." But, aloud, he said, "Monsieur le Duc is extremely unwell. He is no longer strong; in truth, he has lived too well since he removed himself from the army. They say," and the fellow sunk his voice as though what he was now about to impart was of too sacred a nature to be even whispered to the vulgar air, "they say that Monsieur fears a little fluxion, a stroke of apoplexy. His health, too, has suffered from the events of that terrible morning, and that----"

"No matter for his health. Where is he? Tell me that. If I cannot find Vandecque I must see him." Then, taking a louis from his pocket, he held it out, while making no pretence of disguising the bribe. "Here," he said, "here is something for your information. Now, answer, where is the man?"

"He is," the concierge said, slipping the louis with incredible rapidity into his breeches' pocket, "at or near Montpelier. The doctors there are the finest in the world, while the baths are of great repute for such disorders as those of Monsieur le Duc."

"This is the truth? As well as that Vandecque has disappeared?"

"Monsieur, I swear it. And, if Monsieur doubts me, he can see Monsieur Vandecque's apartments. They will prove to him that they have not been occupied for months. Also, if Monsieur demands at the Hôtel Desparre he will learn that, in this case as well, I speak the truth."

"I take you at your word. Let me see the apartments. Later, I will verify what you say as to the absence of Desparre."

"Ascend, Monsieur," said the man, pointing to the stairs. "Ascend, if you please." Walter Clarges did as was suggested, yet, even as he preceded the concierge, he took occasion to put his hand beneath his cloak and loosen his sword in its sheath. He did not know--he felt by no means sure of what he might encounter when he reached those rooms upon the second floor.