In the Day of Adversity

by John Bloundelle-Burton

Never for a moment since he had left the peasant's hut had his thoughts been absent from that child, never had they ceased to dwell upon the conspiracy that existed without doubt against both him and her. Moreover, so intricate, so entangled did all appear that the mesh seemed incapable of being unravelled, and his brain whirled as he endeavoured to pierce the darkness of it all.

"Let me reflect," he had pondered to himself, as day by day he drew nearer to the capital, "let me try to think it all out, see it clearly. God give me power to do so!"

Then he had endeavoured, by going over his life from the commencement, to reduce matters to something short of chaos.

"That I am De Vannes's son—his heir—must be!" he thought; "it gives the cause, the reason for what follows. This is clear. Also the attack on me, the stealing of Dorine, proceeds from a like cause. And if all that was the duke's—his title, his wealth—is mine, and, after me, hers, in whose light can we stand, against whose interest thrust, but De Roquemaure's? All this is as clear as day; it is here the mystery begins. For, first, how does he know this? Next—which is more strange—how know that on a certain night I should be on the road between two such remote places as Pontarlier and Paris? How know, too, that I have my child with me, as he must have known, since he mentioned it to the myrmidons he enlisted at Recey? If I could discover this—should ever discover it, a light might break in upon what followed—more mysterious still."

When he had turned this over and over again in his thoughts as mile by mile and league by league he drew nearer the end of his journey, he endeavoured to arrange and piece together the further, the newer, and fresher mystery of all that had happened since the night he rested under the roof of the De Roquemaures' house. And here his perplexity was even greater than before.

"He acts alone," he reflected; "at least without assistance from his kinswomen—his stepmother and half-sister. For if such is not the case, then viler wretches than they never bore the shape of womanhood. The excitement of the marquise, the noble sympathy of that girl expressed in every glance of those pure eyes, were not, could not have been assumed—false! If so, perish all my belief in woman's truth and honour! Yet from that very manoir over which she, his mother, rules more than he, for the present at least, came forth two—one a man in his garb, the dress of his house—the other a woman. For her, though, it is not so difficult of explanation! The murdered peasant's wife spoke of him as having female instruments at his beck and call, and although her companion wore his livery she might be any creature in the city over whom he possessed influence."

And now, as he reflected, he knew that he had come to the most difficult of all knots to untie, the hardest of all the mystery to be solved. For, arrived so far in his endeavours to unwind the plot with which he was surrounded, he found himself at fault, groping helplessly in the dark, when he stood face to face with the memory of the man who had been assassinated by De Roquemaure's vassal—face to face with Pierre, the Bishop of Lodève's servant, who at the time he was set upon was in possession of Dorine!

One thought alone rose to his mind at first, one only which would have explained his presence on the scene, his possession of the child—the thought that the cynical Bishop of Lodève, the man of whom the whole of France spoke so ill, might in truth have known of some deep-laid scheme for kidnapping that child and have sent Pierre forward—or after him—to rescue it at all costs, thinking, perhaps, that if abstracted by him, it could be better kept in safety than even by its own father. A wild and visionary idea, in truth, to have entered St. Georges's mind, yet, perhaps, not too remote to suggest itself to an unhappy parent so bereft as he was. But, in a moment, another reflection chased it away.

"No!" he exclaimed to himself as the second thought arose. "No! no! More like that the fellow Pierre was the messenger from Dijon who put the ruffians on their guard; who warned them that I was accompanied by the Mousquetaire Noir; that they would have two soldiers to contend against instead of one. The fellow who had tracked us all day, then passed us, and who, masked like the others, had stood out of the fight in the graveyard. So! so! That vile bishop is in it, too. Fool that I am to have thought that that sneering, evil priest had ever a kindly thought in his heart. Yet why in it also? Why? why?"

He could follow his chain of reasoning no more—against all his thoughts a blacker wall of impenetrable mystery rose than ever. He was forced to desist from thinking, or go mad in doing so. For if this man Pierre was De Roquemaure's auxiliary—if, as was undoubted from the peasant woman's story, he had possessed himself of Dorine on behalf of De Roquemaure—why had two other of that villain's myrmidons slain him and possessed themselves of her? His mind could find no answer to this; his reasoning ceased; he could go no further through the maze.