“And he hates Michelle, and she hates him. And he provides the Prince with money—scamps need a deal more than honest gentlemen. And it is not likely that the English and Dutch are giving him money for nothing; so I am mightily afraid the twenty-four guns are gone.”
The old lady talked on vivaciously, and Roger heard every word, but as in a dream. And presently he rose to go, and made Madame de Beaumanoir a handsome compliment, and kissed her little withered, jewelled hand, and walked back to the palace, by way of the terrace, still like a man in a dream.
Michelle ill, wretched, defiant, badly used,—poor, poor unfortunate! The knowledge of her misery, however it pierced his heart, did not make him forget that he should give Berwick the information Madame de Beaumanoir had given him—and so he went straight to Berwick’s apartments in the Palace and told him.
Berwick’s comment on the Prince of Orlamunde was simple: “The Scoundrel!” Then he added: “I was going to Marly to-night to say farewell to the King of France, and I will go at once. It is important that he should know of Orlamunde’s treachery, if it has really occurred.”
And in ten minutes Roger saw him start off, in his black riding-suit, for Marly.
Before night he returned. Roger was walking up and down the courtyard with the little Prince of Wales, telling him stories about England, while the boy’s governor, Lord Middleton, walked on the other side of the lad. Berwick rode into the courtyard, dismounted, threw off his black riding-cloak, and after ceremoniously greeting the little Prince and his governor, said to Roger,—
“We ride for Orlamunde to-morrow, at sunrise, by order of the King of France. All, and more, is true, of what Madame de Beaumanoir told us. And the man who is working against us, the man who is the agent of William of Orange at Orlamunde, the man we are ordered to have flung out of that wicked place, wicked as its rascal Prince, the man we are to take the vengeance of the King of France on,—is Hugo Stein, sometime known as Sir Hugo Egremont, of Egremont.”
“And I shall take my private vengeance on him,” said Roger, in a quiet voice, but his comely countenance growing ugly, in the way Michelle had often noticed when wrath possessed him.
And at sunrise next morning they took the road to Meaux, to Épernay, to Châlons, to Vitry, to Bar, and through the country of the Vosges, just as they had done five years before. It was at the same season of the year, and the face of the country was so little changed that Roger had the strange feeling of having made the journey, not once, but a myriad of times before. He could see, as they passed along the highways, through fields and forests, and past towns and villages, Michelle’s airy figure on her horse; he could hear her voice as plainly as if she were speaking then. He went into the great cathedral of Meaux and knelt in the same spot where he had knelt with her, and the merry birds sang with glee under the eaves, just as they had done on that morning when he had been with her in the church. He saw the old castle of Vitry, bathed in the spring sunshine, so like—so like what it had been before. When they entered the passes of the mountains, Roger determined to go by the charcoal-burner’s hut. Berwick asked no questions; he knew well enough why Roger Egremont should go over every step of that former journey. The hut was gone, the place desolate. Roger dismounted, while Berwick, with his two servants, rode on. In half an hour Roger rejoined him, and spoke not a word until they reached their lodging for the night.
So much was the same; and yet they, Roger Egremont and the Duke of Berwick, were changed inexpressibly. Each had known a grief which marks an epoch in every life; one of those sorrows which wring the heart and leave a blood stain on the book of life. They spoke little of this, being both of them valiant men, not given to mouthing their misery; but this sad, sad change was ever present with them.