Servants of Sin. John Bloundelle-Burton
ears of the man before her; and, as he heard the words, he started. Yet, because-although he was still very young-the life he had led, the people he had mixed among in Paris, had taught him to steel himself against the exhibition of all emotion, he said very quietly:
"Mademoiselle is, if I may say it, a little difficult. She appears to reject all honest admiration offered to her. To-to desire to remain untouched by the love of any man?"
"The love of any man! Does Monsieur Clarges regard the love of the Duc Desparre as worth having? Does he regard the Duc Desparre as a man? As one whose wife any woman should desire to become?"
Monsieur Clarges shrugged his shoulders, then he said:
"There have been others."
"Yes," she answered. "There have been others."
"And they were equally unfortunate. There was one-"
"There was one," she replied, interrupting, and with her glance firmly fixed him, "who desired my love; who desired me for his wife. A year ago. Is it not so? And, Monsieur Clarges, what was my answer to him? You should know. Recall it."
"Your answer was that you did not love him; that, therefore, you could be no wife of his. Now, Mademoiselle, recall yourself-it is your turn-what he then said. It was this, I think. That he so loved you that, without receiving back any love from you in return, he begged you to grant his prayer; to believe that he would win that love at last if you would but give yourself to him; while, if you desired it, he would so show the reverence he held you in-that, once you were his wife, he would demand nothing more from you. Nothing but that he might be by your side; be but as a brother, a champion, a sentinel to watch and guard over you, although a husband in truth. That was what he said. That was all he desired. Mademoiselle, will the Duc Desparre be as loyal a husband as this, do you think?"
"The Duc Desparre will never be husband of mine."
The Englishman again shrugged his shoulders. He had learnt the trick well during a long exile in Paris-an exile dating from the time when the Pretender's cause was lost by the Earl of Mar, and he, a Jacobite, had followed him to France after the "'15."
"But how to avoid it now?" he asked. "The time draws near-is at hand. How escape?"
"Is there not one way?" she asked, with again an upward glance of those eyes.
"No no no!" he replied, his calmness deserting him now. "No! no! Not that! Not that!"
"How else? There is no other."
As they spoke the play still went on at the tables; women shrieked still, half in earnest half in jest, as a card turned up that told against them. Still Vandecque crouched over the board where he held the bank and where his greedy hands drew in the stakes, for he was winning heavily. Already he had twenty thousand livres before him drawn from the pockets of Mirabel, Sainte Foix, the stockbrokers of the Rues Quincampoix and Vivienne, and from the female gamblers. And, gambler himself, he had forgotten all else; he had forgotten almost that the niece whom he guarded so carefully until the time should come when he would hand her over to her purchaser, was in the room.
"It is an accursed law," the Englishman murmured; "a vile, accursed law which gives a father or a guardian such power. In no other country would it be possible. Yet Lau-Mademoiselle-that which you meditate must never be. Oh! to think of it! To think of it!"
He buried his head in his hands now as he spoke-he had taken a seat beside her-and reflected on the terror of the thing, the horror that she, whom he had loved so madly-whom, alas! he loved still, though she cared nothing for him-should be doomed to one of two extremes-marriage with Desparre, or a convent. Or, worse-a third, a more fearful horror! That which she meditated-death!
For that, if she had taken this resolve, she would carry it out he did not doubt. She would never have proclaimed her intention had she not been determined. She had said it was the only way!
But, suddenly, he looked up at her, bent his head nearer to hers, whispered a word. Then said aloud:
"There is your safety. There your only chance. Take it."
As he spoke, she started, and a rich glow came into her face while her eyes sparkled; but a moment later her countenance fell again, and she drew away from him.
"No! no!" she said. "No! no! Not that way. Not that. Not such a sacrifice as that. Never! never never!"
CHAPTER III
THE ROMANCE OF MONSIEUR VANDECQUE
An evening or so after the meeting between Laure Vauxcelles and Walter Clarges at the gambling hell kept by the Demoiselles Montjoie, Vandecque sat in the saloon of his apartments in the Passage du Commerce. Very comfortable apartments they were, too, if bizarre ornaments and rococo furniture, combined with the most gorgeous colours possible to be obtained, could be considered as providing comfort. Yet, since it was a period of bizarrerie and whimsical caprice in furniture, clothing, and life generally (including morals), it may be that, to most people-certainly to most people with whom the once broken-down but now successful gambler was permitted to associate-the rococo nature of his surroundings would not have appeared particularly out of place. And, undoubtedly, such a warm nest must have brought comfort to the heart of the man who paid at the present moment 250f. a week for the right of occupying that nest, since there had been a time once when he scarce knew how to find one franc a day whereby to pay in advance for a night's lodgings in a back alley. Also, he had passed, previously to that period of discomfort, a portion of his life away from Paris in a condition which the French termed politely (whenever they mentioned such an unpleasant subject) "in retreat," and had been subjected to a process that they designated as "marqué," which, in plain English, means that he had been at the galleys as a slave and had been branded. "For the cause of religion," he said, if he ever said anything at all on the subject; "for a question of theft and larceny with violence" being, however, written in the factum of the eminent French counsel who appeared against him before the judges in Paris.
His life had been a romance, he was in the habit of observing in his moments of ease, which were when the gambling hells were closed during the day-time, or the stockbrokers' offices in the Rues Quincampoix and Vivienne during the night-time. And so, indeed, it had been if romance is constituted and made up of robbery, cheating, chicanery, the wearing of blazing scarlet coats one month and the standing bare-backed in prison yards during the next, there to have the shoulders and loins scourged with a whip previously steeped in brine. A romance, if drinking flasks of champagne and iced tokay at one period, and water out of street fountains at another, or riding in gilt sedan-chairs one week and being flogged along at a cart tail another, formed one. For all these things had happened to Jean Vandecque, as well as the galleys in the past, with the carcan, or collar around his neck, and the possession of the gorgeous apartments in the Passage du Commerce at the present moment-all these, and many more.
With also another romance-or the commencement and foundation of one. That which has now to be told.
Struggling on foot along the great road that leads from the South to Paris, ten years before this story begins, Jean Vandecque (with the discharge of a liberated convict from the galley Le Requin huddled away in the bosom of his filthy shirt) viewed the capital at last-his face burnt black by the Mediterranean suns under which he had slaved for five years, and by the hot winds which had swept over his nakedness during that time. God knows how he would have got so far, how have traversed those weary miles without falling dead by the wayside, had it not been for that internal power which he possessed (in common with the lowest, as well as the highest of beasts) of finding subsistence somehow; of supporting life. An egg stolen here and there along the country roads; a fowl seized, throttled, and eaten raw, if no sticks could be found wherewith to make a fire; a child robbed of a loaf-and lucky that it was not throttled too; a lonely grange despoiled; a shopkeeper's till in some hamlet emptied of a few sous; a woman cajoled out of a drink of common wine; and Paris at last. Paris, the home of the rich and well-to-do; the refuge of every knave and sharper who wished to prey upon others. Paris, into which he limped footsore and weary, and clad in dusty rags; Paris, full of wealth and full of fools to be exploited.
He found his home, or, at least, he found the home in which his unhappy wife sheltered; a garret under the roof of a crazy, tumble-down house behind Notre