Servants of Sin: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

"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."