Servants of Sin

John Bloundelle-Burton

Servants of Sin / A Romance

CHAPTER I

MONSIEUR LE DUC

Lifting aside the heavy tapestry that hung down in front of the window of the tourelle which formed an angle of the room-a window from which the Bastille might be seen frowning over the Quartier St. Antoine, a third of a mile away-the man shrugged his shoulders, uttered a peevish exclamation, and muttered, next:

"Snow! Snow! Snow! Always snow! Curse the snow!" Then he turned back into the room, letting the curtain fall behind him, and seated himself once more in a heavy fauteuil opposite the great fireplace, up the chimney of which the logs roared in a cheerful blaze.

"Hard winters, now," he muttered once more, still thinking of the weather outside; "always hard winters in Paris now. 'Twas so when I rode back here after the campaign in Spain was over. When I rode back," he repeated, "a year ago." He paused, reflecting; then continued:

"Ay, a year ago. Why! so it was. A year ago to-day. A year this very day. The last day of December. Ay, the bells were ringing from Notre Dame, St. Roch-the Tour St. Jacques. To welcome in the New Year. Almost, it seemed, judging by the events of the next few weeks, to welcome me to my inheritance. To my inheritance! Yet, how far off that inheritance seemed once! As far off as the love of those curs, my relatives, was then."

He let himself sink farther and farther into the deep recesses of the huge fauteuil as thus he mused, stretched out his long legs towards the fire, stretched out, too, a long arm and a long, slim brown hand towards where a flask of tokay stood, with a goblet by its side; poured out a draught and drank it down.

"A far-off love, then," he said again, "now near, and warm, and generous. Bah!"

Looking at the man as he lay stretched in the chair and revelling in the luxury and comfort by which he was surrounded, one might have thought there was some incongruity between him and those surroundings. The room-the furniture and hangings-the latter a pale blue, bordered with fawn-coloured lace-the dainty ornaments, the picture let in the wall above the chimney-piece, with others above the doorway and windows-did not match with the occupant. No more than it and they matched with a bundle of swords in one corner of it; swords of all kinds. One, a heavy, straight, cut-and-thrust weapon; another an English rapier with flamboyant blade and straight quillon; a third of the Colichemarde pattern; a fourth a viperish-looking spadroon; a fifth a German Flamberg with deadly grooved blade and long-curled quillons.

Surely a finished swordsman this, or a man who had been one!

Looking at him one might judge that he was so still-or could be so upon occasion.

His wig was off-it hung upon the edge of an old praying-chair that was pushed into a corner as though of no further use; certainly of none to the present occupant of this room-and his black-cropped hair, his small black moustache, which looked like a dab stuck on his upper lip-since it extended no further on either side of his face than beneath each nostril-added to his black eyes, gave him a saturnine expression, not to say a menacing one. For the rest, he was a thick-set, brawny man of perhaps five-and-forty, with a deeply-tanned complexion that looked as though it had been exposed to many a pitiless storm and many a fierce-beating sun; a complexion that, were it not for a whiteness beneath the eyes, which seemed to tell of late hours and too much wine, and other things that often enough go with wine and wassail, would have been a healthy one.

Also, it was to be noted that, in some way, his apparel scarcely seemed suited to him. The satin coat of russet brown; the deep waistcoat of white satin, flowered with red roses and pink daisies and little sprays of green leaves; the white knee-breeches also of satin, the gold-buckled shoes, matched not with the sturdy form and fierce face. Instead of this costume à la Régence one would have more expected to see the buff jerkin of a soldier, the brass spurs at the heels of long brown riding-boots, and, likewise, one of the great swords now reclining in the corner buckled close to his thigh. Or else to have seen the man sitting in some barrack guardroom with, beneath his feet, an uncarpeted floor, and, to his hand, a pint stoop, instead of finding him here in this highly-ornamented saloon.

"The plague seize me!" he exclaimed, using one of his favourite oaths, "but there is no going out to-night. Nor any likelihood of anyone coming in. I cannot go forth to gaze upon my adorable Laure; neither Morlaix nor Sainte Foix are likely to get here."

And, after glancing out at the fast falling snow, he abandoned himself once more to his reflections. Though, now, those reflections were aided by the perusal of a packet of letters which he drew forth from an escritoire standing by the side of the fireplace. A bundle of letters all written in a woman's hand.

He knew them well enough-by heart almost; he had read them over and over again in the past year; it was perhaps, therefore, because of this that he now glanced at them as they came to his hand; it happening, consequently, that the one he had commenced to peruse was the last he had received.

It was dated not more than a week back-the night before Christmas, of the year 1719.

"Mon ami," it commenced, "I am desolated with grief that you cannot be with me this Christmastide. I had hoped so much that we should have spent the last New Year's Day together before our marriage."

"Bah!" exclaimed the man, impatiently. "Before our marriage. Bah!" and he rattled the sheet in his hand as he went on with its perusal. "I imagine that," the letter continued, "after all which has gone before and has been between us it will ere long take place-."

"Ah!" he broke off once more, exclaiming, "Ah! you imagine that, dear Marquise. You imagine that. Ha! you imagine that. So be it. Yet, on my part, I imagine something quite the contrary. I dare to imagine it will never take place. I think not. There are others-there is one other. Laure-Laure-Laure Vauxcelles. My beautiful Laure! Yet-yet-I know not. Am I wise? Does she love me? Love me! No matter about that! She will be my wife; the mother of future Desparres. However, let us see. To the Marquise." And again he regarded his letters-flinging this one aside as though not worth the trouble of further re-reading-and took up another. Yet it, also, seemed scarcely to demand more consideration than that which he had accorded its forerunner in his hands, and was also discarded; then another and another, until he had come to the last of the little packet-that which bore the earliest date. This commenced, however, with a vastly different form of address than did the one of which we have seen a portion. It opened with the pretty greeting, "My hero." And it opened, too, with a very feminine form of rejoicing-a pæan of delight.

"At last, at last, at last, my soldier," the writer said, "at last, thou hast come to thine own. The unhappy boy is dead; my hero, my Alcides, is no longer the poor captain following the wars for hard knocks; his position is assured; he is rich, the inheritor, nay, the possessor of his great family title. I salute you, monsieur le-."

As his eyes reached those words, there came to his ears the noise of the great bell pealing in the courtyard as though rung by one seeking immediate entrance. Then, a moment later, the noise of lackeys addressing one another; in another instant, the sound of a footfall in the corridor outside-drawing nearer to the room where the man was. Wherefore he came out of the tower with the window in it, to which he had vainly gone, as though to observe what might be happening in the street-knowing even as he did so that he could see nothing, since, whoever his visitor might be, that visitor and his carriage, or sedan-chair, had already entered the courtyard with his menials.

Then, in answer to the soft knock at the door, he bade the person come in.

"Who is below?" he asked of the footman, thinking some friend had kindly ventured forth on this inclement night to visit him-perhaps to take a hand at pharaon or piquet.

"Monsieur, it is Madame la Marquise-"

"La Marquise?"

"Grignan de Poissy."

For a moment the man addressed stood still, facing his servant; his eyes a little closed, his upper eyelids lowered somewhat; then he said quietly:

"Show Madame la Marquise to this apartment. Or, rather, I will come with you to welcome Madame la Marquise." While, suiting his action to his words, he preceded the footman to the head of the great staircase and warmly welcomed the lady who, by this time, was almost at the head of it. Doubtless, she knew she would not be denied.

That this man had been (as the letter, which he had a few moments ago but glanced at, said) "a poor captain following the wars" was no doubt the fact; now, however, he was becoming a perfect courtier, and testified that such was the case by his demeanour. With easy grace he removed from her shoulders the great furred houppelande, or cloak, which the ladies of the period of the Regency wore on such a night as this, and carried it over his own arm; with equal grace he led her into the room he had but now quitted, placed her in the great fauteuil before the fire, and put before her feet a footstool, while he, with great courtesy, even removed her shoes, and thus left her silk-stockinged feet to benefit by the genial warmth thrown out by the logs.

"I protest it is too good of you, Diane," he whispered, as he paid her all these attentions, "too good of you to visit thus so idle an admirer as I am. See, I, a soldier, a man used to all weathers, have not dared to quit my own hearth on such a night as this. Yet Diane, adorable Diane, why-why-expose yourself to the inclemency of the night-even, almost, I might say, to the gossip of your-and of my-menials."

"The gossip of your menials!" the lady exclaimed. "The gossip of your menials? Will this fresh incident expose us to any further gossip, do you suppose? It is a long while since our names have been coupled together, Monsieur le Duc."

"Monsieur le Duc!" he repeated. "What a form of address! Monsieur le Duc! My name to you is-has ever been-Armand."

"Ay, 'tis so," she answered, while, even as she continued speaking a little bitterly to him, she shifted her feet upon the footstool, so that they should get their full share of the luxurious warmth of the fire. "'Tis so. Has been so for more years now than a woman cares to count. Desparre," she said, addressing him shortly, "how long have we known each other-how old am I?"

For answer he gave her a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders, as though it were impossible such a question should be asked, or, being asked, could possibly be answered by him; while she, her blue eyes fixed upon his face, herself replied to the question. "It is twenty years," she said, "since we first met."

"Alas!" with another shrug, meant this time to express a wince of emotion.

"Yes, twenty years," she continued. "A long while, is it not? I, a young widow then; you, Armand Desparre, a penniless porte-drapeau in the Regiment de Bellebrune. Yet not so penniless either, if I remember aright" – and the blue eyes looked steely now, as they gazed from beneath their thick auburn fringe at him-"not penniless. You lived well for an ensign absolutely without private means-rode a good horse, could throw a main with the richest man in the regiment."

"Diane," he interrupted, "these suggestions, these reminiscences are unseemly."

"Unseemly! Heavens! Yes, they are unseemly. However, no matter for that. You are no longer a poor man. Armand Desparre is rich, he is no more the poor marching soldier, he is Monsieur le Duc Desparre."

"More recollections," he said, with still another shrug. "Diane, we know all this. The world, our world, knows who and what I am."

"Also our world knows, expects, that there is to be a Duchess Desparre."

"Yes," he answered, "it knows, it expects, that."

"Expects! My God!" she exclaimed vehemently, "if it knew all it would not only expect but insist that that duchesse should be the woman who now bears the title of the Marquise Grignan de Poissy."

"It does not know all. Meanwhile," and his eye glanced towards the heap of swords in the corner of the room, "who is there to insist on what my conduct shall be-to order it to be otherwise than I choose it shall be? Frankly, Diane, who is there to insist and make the insistence good?"

"There are men of the De Poissy family," she replied, and her glance, too, rested on those swords. "Desparre is not the only master of fence in Paris."

"Chut! They are your kinsmen. I do not desire to slay them, nor, I presume, will they desire to slay me. And, desiring, what could they do? De Poissy himself is only a boy."

"He is the head of the house. He will not see the wife of the late head slighted." Then, before he could make any answer to this remark, she turned round suddenly on him and exclaimed, while again the blue eyes looked steely through their heavy lashes:

"Who is Laure Vauxcelles?"

This question, asked with such unexpectedness, startled even the man's cynical superciliousness, as he showed by the way in which he stammered forth an answer that was no answer at all.

"Laure-Vauxcelles! What-what-do you know of her? She is not of your-our-class."

"Pardon. Every woman who is well favoured is-of your class."

"What do you know of her?" he repeated, unheeding the taunt, though with a look that might have been regarded as a menacing one.

"Only," she answered, "that which most of those who are of your-our-class know. The gossip of the salon, the court, the Palais Royal. Armand Desparre, I have been in Paris two days and was bidden to the Regent's supper last night-otherwise I should have been still at the Abbaye de Grignan dispensing New Year hospitality with the boy, De Poissy. Instead, therefore, I was at supper in the oval room. And de Parabére, de Sabran, de Noailles, le Duc de Richelieu-a dozen, were there. One hears gossip in the oval room, 'specially when the Regent has drunk sufficient of that stuff," and she nodded towards Monsieur's still unfinished flask of tokay. "When he is asleep at the head of his table endeavouring to-well-sleep off-shake off its fumes ere going to his box close by to hear La Gautier sing."

"What did you hear?" Desparre asked now.

"Gossip," the Marquise answered. "Gossip. Perhaps true-perhaps idle. God knows. The story of a man," she continued, with a shrug of her shoulders, "no longer young, once very poor, yet always with pistoles in his pocket, since he did not disdain to take gifts from a foolish woman whom he had wronged and who loved him."

"Was that mentioned?"

"It was hinted at. It was known, too, by one listener, at least-myself-to be true. A man," she continued, "now well to do, able to gratify almost every desire he possesses. Of high position. The story of a man," she went on with machine-like insistence, "who, finding at last, however, one desire he is not able to gratify-the desire of adding one more woman to his victims, and that a woman young enough to be his daughter-is about to change his character. To abandon that of knave, to adopt that of fool."

"Also," interrupted Monsieur le Duc, "a man who will demand from Madame la Marquise Grignan de Poissy the name of her gossip. It is to be desired that that gossip should be a man. Otherwise, her nephew the Marquis Grignan de Poissy will perhaps consent to be Madame's representative."

"To adopt the rôle of a fool," she continued, unheeding his words. "To marry the woman-the niece of a broken-down gamester-who refuses to become his victim. A creature bred up in the gutter!"

"Madame will allow that this-fool-is subject to no control or criticism?"

"Madame will allow anything that Monsieur le Duc desires. Even, if he pleases, that he is a coward and contemptible."

CHAPTER II

LES DEMOISELLES MONTJOIE AT HOME

Outside the snow had ceased to fall; in its place had come the clear, crisp, and biting stillness of an intense frost, accompanied by that penetrating cold which gives those who are subjected to it the feeling that they are themselves gradually freezing, that the blood within them is turning to ice itself. A cold, hard night; with the half-foot long icicles cracking from the increasing density of the frost, and falling, with a little clatter and a shivering, into atoms on the heads or at the feet of the passers-by; a night on which beggars huddled together for warmth in stoops and porches, or, being solitary, laid down moaning in their agony on doorsteps until, at the end, there came that warm, blissful glow which precedes death by frost. A night when the well-to-do who were abroad drew cloaks, roquelaures, and houppelandes tighter round them as they shivered and shook in chariots and sedan chairs; when dogs were brought in from kennels and placed before the blazing fires so that their unhappy carcases might be thawed back to life and comfort, and when horses in their stalls had rugs and cloths strapped over their backs so that, in the morning, they should not be found stretched dead upon their straw.

Inside, except in the garrets and other dwellings of the outcasts, who had neither fuel to their fires nor rags to their backs, every effort was made to expel the winter cold; wood fires blazed on hearths and in Alsatian stoves; each nook and cranny of every window was plugged carefully; while men, and in many cases, women as well, drank spiced Lunel and Florence, Richebourg and St. Georges, to keep their temperatures up. And drank copiously, too.

It was the coldest night of the winter 1719-20; the coldest night of that long spell of frost which had gripped Paris in its icy grasp.

Yet, in the salons of the Demoiselles Montjoie that frost was confronted-defeated; it seemed unable to penetrate into the warmed and scented rooms, over every door and window of which was hung arras and tapestry; unable to touch, and cause to shiver in touching, either the bare-shouldered women who lounged in the velvet fauteuils or the group of men who, in their turn, wandered aimlessly about.

"Confusion!" exclaimed one of the latter, a well-dressed, middle-aged man, "when is Susanne about to begin? What are we here for? To gaze into each other's fascinating faces or to recount our week-old scandals? The fiend take it! one might as well be at home and have been spared the encounter with the night air!"

"Have patience, Morlaix!" exclaimed a second; "the game never begins until the pigeons are here. Sportsmen fire not into the air, nor against one another. Do you want to win my louis-d'ors, or I yours? No, no! On the contrary, let us combine. So, so," he broke off, "there come two. The Prince Mirabel and Sainte Foix."

"Mirabel and Sainte Foix!" exclaimed the other. "Mirabel and Sainte Foix! My faith, all we shall get out of them will not make us fat. Sainte Foix cannot have got a thousand louis-d'ors left in the world, and those which he has Mirabel will attach for himself. Mon Dieu! that one of the Rohans should be one of us!"

The other shrugged his shoulders; then he said:

"Speak for yourself, mon ami. Meanwhile, I do not consider myself the same as Mirabel. I have not been kicked out of the army. I am no protector of all the sharpers in Paris. Speak for yourself, my friend. For yourself."

"Now, there," said the other, taking not the slightest notice of his acquaintance's protestations, which he probably reckoned at their proper value. "There is one who might be worth-"

"Nothing! He would have been once, but his money is all gone. La Mothe over there has had some of it, Mirabel also; even I have touched a little. Now, there is none to touch. They even say he owes the respected Duc Desparre twenty thousand livres, and cannot pay them."

"Desparre will expect them."

"That is possible. But I have great doubts-as to his ever getting them, I mean. Yet he is a gentleman, this Englishman; it may be he will find means to pay. It is a pity he does not ask his countryman, John Law, for assistance. He might put him in the way of making something."

"He might; though that I also doubt. Law has bigger friends to help than dissolute young Englishmen; and they are not countrymen, the financier being Scotch. Meanwhile, as I say, Desparre will expect his money. He will want it, rich as he is, for his honeymoon."

"His honeymoon! Faugh! the wretch. He is fifty if an hour. And, frankly, is it true? Has he bought Laure Vauxcelles?"

"Ay, body and soul; from her uncle Vandecque. She is his, and cannot escape; she is in his grip. There is no hope for her. Vandecque is her guardian; our law gives him full power over her. It is obedience to the guardian's orders-or-you know!"

"Yes, I know. A convent; the veil. I know. Ha! speak of the angels! Behold!" and his eyes turned towards the heavily-curtained doorway, at which a woman, accompanied by a man much her senior in years, appeared at the moment.

A woman! Nay! little more than a girl-yet a girl who ere long would be a beauteous woman. Tall and supple, with a figure giving promise of ripe fulness ere many months should have passed, with a face of sweet loveliness-possessing dark hazel eyes, an exquisite mouth, a head crowned with light chestnut hair, one curl of which (called by the roués of the Regent's Court a "follow me, young man") fell over the shoulder to the fair bosom beneath. The face of a girl to dream of by night, to stand before by day and worship.

No wonder that Desparre, forty-five years of age as he really was, and a dissolute, depraved roué to whom swift advancing age had brought no cessation of his evil yearnings, was supposed to have shown good taste in purchasing this modern Iphigenia, in buying her from her uncle, the gambler, Vandecque-the man who entered now by her side.

In this salon there was a score of women, all of whom were well favoured enough; yet the glances they cast at Laure Vauxcelles showed that they owned their superior here. Moreover, they envied her. Desparre was thought to be enormously rich-had, indeed, always been considered so since he inherited his dukedom; but now that he had thrust his hand into the golden rain that fell in the Rue Quincampoix and, with it, had drawn forth more than a million livres-as many said! – there was not one of them who, being unmarried, would not have sold herself to him. But he had elected to buy Laure Vauxcelles, they understood; and yet Laure hated him. "She was a beautiful fool!" they whispered to each other.

The tables were ready by the time she and her uncle had made their greetings. The "guests" sat down to biribi, pharaon (faro), and lansquenet. It was what they had come for, since the Demoiselles Montjoie kept the most fashionable gambling-house in Paris-a house in which the Regent had condescended to play ere now. A house in which, many years later, a milliner's girl, who was brought there to exhibit her beauty, managed to become transformed into a king's favourite, known afterwards as Madame du Barry.

Soon the gamblers were at it fast and furious. The stockbrokers of the Rues Quincampoix1 and Vivienne-not having had enough excitement during the day in buying and selling Mississippi shares-were now engaged in retrieving their losses, if possible, or losing their gains. Even the greater part of the women had left the velvet lounges and fauteuils and were tempting fate according to their means, with crowns, louis-d'ors shares of the Royal Bank, or "The Louisiana Company"; gambling in sums from twenty pounds to a thousand.

And Vandecque, Laure's uncle, having now his purse well lined, though once nothing rubbed themselves together within it but a few beggarly coppers, was presiding at the lansquenet table, had flung down an important sum to make a bank, and was-as loudly as the manners of good society under the Regency would permit-inviting all round him to try their chance. While they, on their part, were eager enough to possess themselves of that purse's contents, though he himself had very little fear that such was likely to be the case.

Two there were, however, who sat apart and did not join in the play-one, the ruined young Englishman of whom Morlaix and his companion had spoken, the other, Laure Vauxcelles, the woman who was to be sold in marriage to Desparre. Neither had spoken, however, on Laure's entrance with Vandecque. The man had remained seated on one of the velvet lounges at the far end of the room, his eyes fixed on the richly-painted ceiling, with its cupids and nymphs and goddesses-fitting allegories to the greatest and most aristocratic gambling hell in Paris! The girl, on entering, had cast one swift glance at him from those, hazel eyes, and had then turned them away. Yet he had seen that glance, although he had taken no notice of it.