Servants of Sin: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

"He rides apace," Desparre muttered; "hot and swiftly. He presses his hat down upon his head as the morning breeze catches it and hurries forward. It is some courrier du Roi who posts rapidly. One who rides with orders."

Observing how well the man sat his horse, his body appearing as though part of the animal's own, and how, thereby, the creature skimmed easily along the road and overtook the berceuse more and more every moment, he decided that this was some cavalry soldier, young and well trained, whose skill had been acquired first in the schools and then, mayhap, on many a battlefield. Whereon he sighed, recalling how he himself, in other days, had ridden fast through summer nights and dewy dawns, with no thought in his mind but his duty and--his future! And now--now!--he was a broken-down invalid; a man whose soul was black and withered with an evil past. Would he ever----?

He paused in his reflections, scarcely knowing why he did so or what had caused their sudden termination. Yet he realised that something quite different from those reflections had come to his mind to drive them forth--some idea totally removed from them. What was it? What was he thinking of? That--he comprehended at last, after still further meditation--that this form following behind, enshrouded in its long riding-cloak, was not strange to him; that he had seen those square shoulders, which that cloak covered but did not conceal, somewhere before. Yet, what a fantasy must this be! There were thousands of men in France with as good a figure as this man's, as well-knit a frame, as broad and shapely shoulders.

Perhaps he was going mad to imagine such things; perhaps madness sometimes preceded that paralysis with which he was threatened and which he feared so much! Yet, at this moment, when now the sun rose up bright and warm from beyond where the Rhone lay, and threw a long horizontal ray across the road that both he and the horseman were travelling at a rapidly decreasing distance apart, the rider put up his hand, unfastened the hook of his cloak, and, taking the latter off, rolled it up and placed it before him on the saddle. Whereby he revealed a well-shaped, manly form, clad in a dark riding suit passemented with silver galloon. Yet, still, his face was not quite visible since the laced three-cornered hat was now tilted well over it to keep the rays of the bright morning sun from out his eyes, into which they now streamed as the road made another turn.

"I am not mad," Desparre whispered to himself. "I have seen that form before. Yet where? Where?"

This he could not answer. He could not even resolve in his own mind whether the knowledge that he was acquainted with that on-coming figure disturbed him or not, yet he turned his glance away from the eyehole of the carriage and cast it on a shelf above the couch. A shelf on which lay the box wherein reposed his silver-hilted pistols.

Then he returned to the little window, holding the leathern flap so lowered with a finger raised above his head, that he could gaze forth while exposing to view little more of his features than his eyes.

The horseman was overtaking him rapidly, he would be close to him directly, so close that his face must then be plainly discernible; he would be able to discover whether he had been deceived into that quaint supposition that the figure was actually known to him, or whether, instead, he was cherishing some strange delusion. Doubtless the latter was the case! Yet, all the same, the finger let down the flap a little more, so that there was now only a slit wide enough to enable his eyes to peer through the glass.

At this moment the road took still another turn and, in an instant, the rider was lost to his view. Then, next, that road rose considerably, whereby the berceuse was forced to creep up the incline at a pace which was less than a walk. The man behind him must, therefore, come up in a few minutes; even his horse would, at a walking pace alone, overtake his own animals as they struggled and dragged at the heavy lumbering carriage behind them.

But still he kept the flap open with his upraised hand, and still he peered forth from the window, it being darkened and blurred by the moisture from his nostrils. Then, suddenly, the carriage stopped, the horses were doubtless obliged to rest for an instant from their labours, and, a moment or so later, the horseman had come round the corner and up the inclined road at a trot, he reaching almost the back of the berceuse ere pulling up. At which Desparre dropped the flap as though it had been molten steel which seared his hand; dropped it and staggered back on to the couch close by, whiter than before, shaking, too, as if palsied! For he had not been deceived in his surmise as to recognising the horseman's figure; he knew now that he had not. He had seen the man's face at last! And it was the face of the man whom Desparre thought to be long since lying buried in some Paris graveyard, the face of the man who had married Laure; the husband of the woman he had caused to be sent out an exile to the New World. That man, alive--strong--well!