Roger dressed quickly, and, Dicky having already settled with Madame Michot, the two kinsmen set out toward Clermont. The town of St. Germains and the forest too were in dishabille after the orgy they had passed through; everything had a more or less day-after-the-ball air.
As the two Egremonts walked along, Roger was not in the least distrait, nor did he love Dicky one whit the less; but the whole world, including himself, had changed since the same hour the day before. He had not, at noon yesterday, met Michelle. They parted on the farther edge of the forest, Dicky saying,—
“Roger, if I could but go back to Egremont a priest, and live in my grandfather’s cottage, and minister to the poor people in the village, and see you master of your own, if even for a single year, I would cheerfully go to gaol, and even to the gallows.”
“You shall go to neither,” cried Roger, warmly, “but one day, when the King returns, we shall go back in honor, and there will be no gaol for either of us, and no gallows for you.”
Then they parted, and Dicky trudged merrily onward toward Clermont. He had no money to ride in the post-wagon nor would he take it from Roger—who, after buying himself some decent clothes, had ten pounds left of the fifty which William of Orange had given him in lieu of Egremont.
Roger trudged back, not merrily, to St. Germains. He thought, as he traversed the road he had so lately trod with Dicky, how essentially manly and upright was the boy’s character; for Roger still thought him, although all of twenty-two, a boy. And Dicky had in him, strongly, the spirit of self-sacrifice. Roger could not but note it in little things concerning their joint occupancy of Madame Michot’s attic. Dicky quietly and silently gave Roger the best bed, the best of everything; rose at four o’clock in the morning without disturbing the sleeping Roger; looked after his comfort as tenderly as a woman, and offered what little money he had.
“Honest Dicky,” thought Roger, “when I come into my own I will repay thee well.”
But though he had spoken so confidently of coming into his own, he was by no means as sure of it when he had arrived at St. Germains as when he was shut up in Newgate. The thought that, after all, he might not come into his own, nor might the King come into his own, staggered him; and he perceived with secret alarm that the certainty he had entertained up to the time he had left England had declined into a hope since he had arrived in France. And then that sweet vision of Michelle, which haunted him every sleeping and waking hour since he had met her, came back with gentle persistence; and he gave himself over to a revery full of delight and of pain.
It was Roger’s duty, as one of the King’s secretaries, to repair to him daily at four o’clock in the afternoon. And so four o’clock found him in the King’s closet, writing away doggedly at the King’s dictation; but the fair eyes of Mademoiselle d’Orantia came between him and the written page, and her voice so rang in his ears that he had more than once to ask the poor, patient King to repeat his words. He had done much writing for the King in the two weeks he had been at St. Germains, being the readiest man with his pen of all those about the palace; and James Stuart, like all exiled kings, thought to write himself back into his kingdom. This endless writing was very irksome to Roger, although he did his duty manfully in the matter. As he was essentially a man of action, it was the dearest hope of his heart to find something to do. He wanted to be fighting, to be riding, to be counselling about some daring deed. Instead, he found himself seated at a table, surrounded with paper, ink, and quills, where sometimes from early in the morning until late in the evening he drew up memorials for the King, and wrote prosy letters, and threshed over old straw, and concocted pièces justificatives, and did all the writing that an industrious incapable like James Stuart could find for him to do. It wearied him more on this sunny afternoon than it had ever done before. He even caught himself regretting that he had learned to write so fair a hand in Newgate gaol.
At last, however, his tiresome task was over; but it was candle-light by that time, and also time for supper to be served to the gentlemen-at-arms in a mess-room adjoining the Hall of Guards. Roger, although he had met the love of his life only the day before, and had unconditionally surrendered to her, was yet ravenously hungry, and thirsty too. As he passed out of the King’s closet he met the devoted and beautiful young Queen of this elderly, unfortunate King, as she was going to the King. Roger bowed respectfully, and stood against the wall to let her pass. Instead of going on, she stopped and smiled sweetly on him, and said,—