by G. A. Henty
“I was farther behind than I intended to be,” the man said; “but we were obliged to keep in hiding some little distance behind them. There were four parties of them. We kept them in sight all yesterday, and last night they assembled a mile or two away. I had men watching them all night, and this morning we followed them here, and saw them take up their position on both sides of the road. We crept up as closely as we dared without being observed, but you had for a couple of minutes to bear the brunt of it alone.”
“I thank you most heartily,” Ronald said. “My mother will thank you herself” So saying, he led them to the door of the carriage, which he opened.
“Mother, I told you that if we were attacked I relied upon help being near at hand. We owe our lives, for I have no doubt that yours as well as mine would have been taken, to this brave man and his followers.”
“I thank you most sincerely, sir,” the countess said. “At present I feel like one in a dream; for I have been so long out of the world that such a scene as this has well nigh bewildered me.”
“I am only too glad to have been of service,” the man said as he stood bareheaded. “I am not a good man, madame. I am one of those whom the necessities of the times have driven to earn their living as they can without much regard to the law; but I trust that I have not quite lost my instincts as a gentleman, and I am only too glad to have been able to be of some slight assistance to a persecuted lady; for your son, the other night, related to us something of the treatment which you have had to endure.”
With a bow he now stepped back. His followers were engaged in searching the pockets of the fallen, and found in them a store of money which spoke well for the liberality of their employer, and well satisfied the robbers for the work they had undertaken. After a few words with her son the countess opened a small bag she carried with her, and taking from it a valuable diamond brooch, called the leader of the band up and presented it to him.
Ronald and his party then remounted their horses —the robbers had already overtaken and caught those of the fallen assailants —the driver mounted the box, and after a cordial farewell to their rescuers the party proceeded on their way to Blois.
CHAPTER XI: Free.
It was late at night before Blois was reached, and having alighted at the Aigle d'Or they engaged a private room.
“Even the Duke of Chateaurouge will be satisfied,” Ronald said, “that his schemes have failed, and that no more can be done just at present. It will be a bitter blow to him when those scoundrels, on their return to Paris, report their utter failure, for he must have considered it impossible that we could escape from the toils he had laid for us. I only wish that we had clear evidence that he is the author of these attempts. If so, I would go straight with Marshal Saxe and lay an accusation against him before the king; but however certain we may feel about it, we have really nothing to connect him with the affair, and it would be madness to accuse a king's favourite unless one could prove absolutely the truth of what one says. However, I hope some day that I shall get even with him. It will not be my fault if I do not.”
That night Ronald and his mother debated what would be the best way to proceed in the morning, and finally they agreed that Malcolm should present himself at the prison with the order of release, and that they should remain at the hotel, to which Malcolm should bring Colonel Leslie, after breaking to him the news that his wife and son were both awaiting him. The shock, in any case, of sudden liberty, would be a severe one, and the meeting with his attached comrade would act as a preparation for that with his wife.
Mother and son sat hand in hand after hearing the carriage drive off with Malcolm next morning. In the hours they had spent together they had come to know each other, and the relationship had become a real one. They had scarce been able to make out each other's features at their midnight meeting on the terrace, and at that meeting, rejoiced as they both were, there was still a feeling of strangeness between them. Now they knew each other as they were, and both were well satisfied. The countess was less strange to Ronald than he was to her. Malcolm had already described her to him as he knew her eighteen years before, and the reality agreed closely with the ideal that Ronald had pictured to himself, except that she was younger and brighter. For in thinking of her he had told himself over and over again that she would have grown much older, that her hair might have turned gray with grief and trouble, and her spirit been altogether broken.
She on her part had been able to form no idea as to what the infant she had last seen would have grown up, and was not even sure that he was in existence. She had hoped that if he had lived he would have grown up like his father, and although she now saw but slight resemblance between them, she was indeed well satisfied with her son.
He was not, she thought, as handsome as his father, but he bade fair to surpass him in strength and stature. She was delighted with his manly bearing; and when he laughed he reminded her of her husband, and she thought that she read in his gray eye and firm mouth a steadfastness and depth of character equal to his. They spoke but little now. Both were too anxious, Ronald for his mother's sake rather than his own. He was prepared to find this unknown father a man broken down by his years of captivity; but although his mother said that she too was prepared for great changes, he could not but think that the reality would be a sad shock to her. In little over an hour the carriage drove into the courtyard.
“Be brave, mother,” Ronald said, as he felt the hand he held in his own tremble violently. “You must be calm for his sake.”
Steps were heard approaching. The door opened, and Malcolm entered with a man leaning on his arm. The countess with a cry of joy sprang forward, and the next moment was clasped in her husband's arms.
“At last, my love, at last!” she said.
Ronald drew aside to the window to leave his father and mother to enjoy the first rapture of their meeting undisturbed, while Malcolm slipped quietly from the room again.
“Why, Amelie,” Leslie said at last, holding her at arms' length that he might look the better at her, “you are scarce changed. It does not seem to me that you are five years older than when I saw you last, and yet Malcolm tells me that you too have been a prisoner. How much my love has cost you, dear! No, you are scarce changed, while I have become an old man —my hair is as white as snow, and I am so crippled with rheumatism I can scarce move my limbs.”
“You are not so much changed, Angus. Your hair is white and your face is very pale; but you are not so much changed. If I have suffered for your love, dear, what have you suffered for mine! I have been a prisoner in a way, but I had a certain amount of freedom in my cage, while you —” And she stopped.
“Yes, it has been hard,” he said; “but I kept up my spirits, Amelie. I never lost the hope that some day we should be reunited.”
“And now, Angus, here is our boy, to whom we owe our liberty and the joy of this meeting. You may well be proud of such a son.”
“I am proud,” Leslie said as Ronald advanced, and he took him in his arms. “God bless you, my boy. You have performed well nigh a miracle. Malcolm has been telling me of you. Call him in again. It is right that he to whom you owe so much should share in our happiness.”
Ronald at once fetched Malcolm, and until late at night they talked of all that had happened during so many years. Colonel Leslie had passed the first three years of his confinement in the Chatelet. “It was well it was no longer,” he said; “for even I, hard as I was with years of soldiering, could not have stood that much longer. My cell there was below the level of the river. The walls were damp, and it was there I got the rheumatism which has crippled me ever since. Then they moved me to Blois, and there my cell was in one of the turrets, and the sun shone in through the window slit for half an hour a day; besides for an hour once a week I was allowed to take what they called exercise on the wall between my turret and the next. The governor was not a bad fellow, and did not try to pocket the best part of the money allowed for the keep of the prisoners. Fortunatel
y I never lost hope. Had I done so I would have thrown myself over the parapet and ended it at once. I felt sure that you too were shut up, Amelie, and I pictured to myself how they would try to make you give me up; but I never thought they would succeed, dear. I knew you too well for that. Sometimes for months I lay as if paralysed by rheumatism, and I think I should have died if I had not known how my enemies would have rejoiced at the news of my death. So I held on stoutly, and I have got my reward.”
But the hardships had told their tale. Although but the same age as Malcolm Anderson, Colonel Leslie looked fully ten years older. His long confinement had taken every tinge of colour out of his face, and left it almost ghastly in its whiteness. He could with difficulty lift his hands to his head, and he walked as stiffly as if his legs had been jointless. His voice only had not lost the cheery ring his wife remembered.
“No, Amelie,” he said when she remarked this. “I kept my tongue in practice; it was the one member that was free. After I had been confined a few months it struck me that I was rapidly losing the power of speech, and I determined that if I could not talk for want of someone to answer me, I could at least sing, and having a good store of songs, Scottish and French, I sang for hours together, at first somewhat to the uneasiness of the prison authorities, who thought that I could not be so merry unless I had some communication from without, or was planning an escape; but at last they grew accustomed to it, and as my voice could not travel through the thick walls of my cells, it annoyed no one.”
“And did you never think of escaping, father?”
“The first few years of my confinement I was always thinking of it, Ronald, but nothing ever came of my thought. I had no tools to burrow through a four foot wall, and if I could have done so I should have tried if it had only been to give me something to do, had it not been that I hoped some day to obtain my release, and that any attempt at escape would, if discovered, as it was almost certain to be, decrease my chances.”
Not a word was said that evening as to their future plans, all their thoughts being in the past; but the next morning Colonel Leslie said at breakfast:
“And now what are we going to do next? How do we stand?”
“I know no more than you do, Angus. I do not know whether the king has gifted my mother's estate to others, as assuredly he has done my father's lands. If he has, I have been thinking that the best plan will be to ask the king's permission to leave the kingdom and return to your native Scotland.”
“I am very fond of Scotland, Amelie; but I have also a fondness for living, and how I should live in Scotland I have not the most remote idea. My estate there was but a small one, and was forfeited thirty years ago; so unless I become a gaberlunzie and sit on the steps of St. Andrews asking for alms, I don't see how we should get porridge, to say nothing of anything else. No, Amelie, it seems to me that we must stop in France. For very shame they cannot let the daughter of the Marquis de Recambours starve, and they must at least restore you a corner of your parents estates, if it be but a farm. How are we off for funds at present?” he asked with a laugh. “I hope at least we have enough to pay our hotel bill.”
“We have forty louis in cash, father; the remains of the hundred you committed to Malcolm with me.”
“Is that so?” he exclaimed. “All I can say is that that money has lasted longer than any that ever passed through my fingers before.”
“We have plenty of money,” the countess said quietly. “I have all the jewels which came to me from my mother, and their sale will keep us for years, either in Scotland or France.”
“That is good indeed,” the colonel said cheerily.
“Yes; I took them all with me when I was sent to the convent, and have parted with none save the diamond necklet which I gave to the girl who brought Ronald and me together, as a parting keepsake, and a brooch with which I rewarded the men who aided us in the forest; but seriously, Angus, we must settle upon something.”
“I quite agree with you, Amelie; but what is that something to be?”
“I should think, Angus, that the proper thing would be for me to write to the king thanking him for our release, asking his commands, and petitioning him that my mother's estates may be restored to me. I will also ask permission to retire to some southern town where there are waters which may do good to your rheumatism.”
Colonel Leslie frowned.
“I suppose that is the right thing to do, Amelie; though, for my part, I cannot thank a sovereign whom I have served well after such treatment as I have received. I would rather beg my bread from door to door.”
“No, I would not ask you, Angus, and of course you are differently placed; but I have my rights as a peeress of France; besides I have on my own account no complaint against the king. It was my father who shut me up in the convent, not the king.”
“By the way, Amelie,” her husband said, “you are not yet in mourning.”
“Nor do I intend to be,” she said firmly; “unless I have to go to court no thread of mourning do I put on. My father behaved like a tyrant to me, and I will not feign a grief at an event which has brought us happiness. Well, Ronald, what do you think had best be done? You and Malcolm have managed so well that we had best leave it for you to decide.”
“I think what you propose, mother, is best. I think you had better travel down to some place near where your mother's estates lay, and then write your petition to the king. I will leave you there and return with it to Paris, and will there consult Colonel Hume and Marshal Saxe as to how it should be delivered to the king.”
This plan was carried out. The party journeyed together to Poitiers, and there having seen his parents comfortably settled in a small house near the town, and remained with them a few days, Ronald with Malcolm returned to Paris, bearing with him his mother's memorial to the king.
Ronald was glad to find that Colonel Hume was now recovered from his wound. Marshal Saxe too was better; the latter at once took charge of the petition, and said that he would hand it to the king on the first opportunity. Ronald accompanied the marquis several times to Versailles, but the latter had no private audience with the king, and thought it better not to present the memorial in public. One day, however, he was called into the king's closet.
When he emerged with the king, Ronald thought from his expression of countenance that things had not gone well. On leaving the palace he mounted his horse —for he was now well enough to ride —and as he set out he called Ronald, who with other gentlemen had accompanied him to ride beside him.
“Things have not gone well,” he said. “Your father's enemies have evidently been at work, and have been poisoning the king's mind. He read the memorial, and then said harshly, 'The Countess of Recambours has forfeited all rights to her mother's estates by marrying an alien. The lands of France are for the King of France's subjects, not for soldiers of fortune.' This touched me, and I said, 'Your majesty may recollect that I am an alien and a soldier of fortune, and methinks that in time of war the swords of our soldiers of fortune have done such things for France that they have earned some right to gratitude. In a hundred battles our Scottish troops have fought in the front ranks, and had it not been for the Irish Brigade we should not have had to write Fontenoy down among the list of French victories.”
“You are bold, marshal,” the king said angrily.
“I am bold, sire,” I replied, “because I am in the right: and I humbly submit that a brave soldier like Colonel Leslie deserves better treatment than he has received at the hands of France.”
The king rose at once.
“An answer to the petition will be sent to you tomorrow, marshal.”
“I bowed, and without another word the king left his closet and entered the room of audience. However, lad, you must not look so downcast. We could perhaps expect no more the first time. Of course every man who has a hope, or who has a relation who has a hope, of obtaining the grant of your mother's estates is interested in exciting the king's displeasure against her; besides which there
is, as you have told me, the Duc de Chateaurouge, who may be regarded as a personal enemy of your father, and who has the king's ear as much as anyone about him. However, we must have courage. I consider my personal honour is touched in the matter now, and I will not let the matter drop till justice is done.”
At the appointed time Ronald again called at Marshal Saxe's hotel, and watched the gay crowd of officers and nobles who were gathered in his reception rooms. An hour later a royal attendant entered and handed a document to the marshal. The latter glanced at it and looked around. As soon as his eye fell upon Ronald he nodded to him.
“Here is the judgement,” he said in a low tone, as he handed him the paper. “You see it is directed to the countess, to my care. I suppose you will start with it at once.”
“Yes, marshal; the horses are saddled and we shall leave immediately.”
“Don't hurry your horses,” the marshal said with a slight smile; “from the king's manner I think that the contents are such that a few hours' delay in the delivery will cause the countess no pain. However, I do not anticipate anything very harsh. In the first place, although the king is swayed by favourites who work on his prejudices, his intention is always to be just; and in the second place, after granting the release of your parents as a boon to me he can scarcely annul the boon by any severe sentence. Will you tell the countess from me that I am wholly at her service, and that, should any opportunity offer, she may be sure that I will do what I can to incline the king favourably towards her. Lastly, Leslie, take care of yourself. The change in the king's manner shows that you have powerful enemies, and now that you have succeeded in obtaining your parents' freedom you have become dangerous. Remember the attack that was made upon you before, when there seemed but little chance that you would ever succeed in obtaining their release or in seriously threatening the interests of those who were looking forward to the reversion of the family estates. Their enmity now, when it only needs a change in the king's mood to do justice to your parents, will be far greater than before.