Part 22

"That, at least, is a good thing." Both were silent a little while. Mrs. Swanwick had been long used to defer to the German's opinions, but looking far past love's limited horizon, the widow thought of the certain anger of the mother, of the trap she in her pride would think set for her son by designing people, her prejudices intensified by the mere fact of the poverty which left her nothing but exaggerated estimates of her son and what he was entitled to demand of the woman he should some day marry. And too, René had often spoken of a return to France. She said at last: "We will leave the matter now, and speak of it to no one; but I should say to thee, my dear, that apart from what for thy sake I should consider, and the one sad thing of his willingness to avenge a hasty word by possibly killing a fellow-man,--how terrible!--apart from these things, there is no one I had been more willing to give thee to than René de Courval."

"Thank thee, mother." The evil hour when the vicomtesse must hear was at least remote, and something akin to anger rose in the widow's mind as she thought of it.

René came in to supper. Mrs. Swanwick was as usual quiet, asking questions in regard to Margaret's errand of charity, but of a mind to win time for reflection, and unwilling as yet to open the subject with René.

When, late in the evening, he came out of the study where he had been busy with the instructions left by Schmidt, he was annoyed to learn that Margaret had gone up-stairs. There was still before him the task of speaking to his mother of what he was sure was often in her mind, Carteaux. She had learned from the gossip of guests that a Frenchman had been set upon near Bristol and had been robbed and wounded. Incurious and self-centered, the affairs of the outer world had for her but little real interest. Now she must have her mind set at ease, for René well knew that she had not expected him to rest contented or to be satisfied with the result of his unfortunate duel. Her puritan creed was powerless here as against her social training, and her sense of what so hideous a wrong as her husband's murder should exact from his son.

"I have something to tell you, _maman_," he said; "and before I go, it is well that I should tell you."

"Well, what is it?" she said coldly, and then, as before, uneasily anxious.

"On the twenty-ninth of November I learned that Carteaux had started for New York an hour before I heard of it, on his way to France. I had waited long--undecided, fearing that again some evil chance might leave you alone in a strange land."

"You did wrong, René. There are duties which ought to permit of no such indecision. You should not have considered me for a moment. Go on."

"How could I help it, thinking of you, mother? I followed, and overtook this man near Bristol. I meant no chance with the sword this time. He was unarmed. I gave him the choice of my pistols, bade him pace the distance, and give the word. He walked away some six feet, half the distance, and, turning suddenly, fired, grazing my shoulder. I shot him--ah, a terrible wound in arm and shoulder. Schmidt had found a note I left for him, and, missing his pistols, inquired at the French legation, and came up in time to see it all and to prevent me from killing the man."

"Pre--vent you! How did he dare!"

"Yes, mother; and it was well. Schmidt found, when binding up his wound, that he was carrying despatches from the Republican Minister Fauchet to go by the corvette _Jean Bart_, waiting in New York Harbor."

"What difference did that make?"

"Why, mother, I am in the State Department. To have killed a member of the French legation, or stopped his journey, would have been ruin to me and a weapon in the hands of these mock Jacobins."

"But you did stop him."

"Yes; but I delivered the despatch myself to the corvette."

"Yes, you were right; but what next? He must have spoken."

"No. The threat from Schmidt that he would tell the whole story of Avignon and his treachery to me has made him lie and say he had been set upon by unknown persons and robbed of his papers. He has wisely held his tongue. He is crippled for life and has suffered horribly. Now he goes to France a broken, miserable man, punished as death's release could not punish."

"I do not know that. I have faith in the vengeance of God. You should have killed him. You did not. And so I suppose there is an end of it for a time. Is that all, René?"

"Yes, that is all. The loss of the despatch remains a mystery, and the Democrats are foolish enough to believe we have it in the foreign office. No one of them but Carteaux knows and he dare not speak. The despatch will never come back here, or if it does, Carteaux will have gone. People have ceased to talk about it, and now, mother, I am going away with an easy mind. Do not worry over this matter. Good night."

"Worry?" she cried. "Ah, I would have killed the Jacobin dog!"

"I meant to," he said, and left her.

At dawn he was up and had his breakfast and there was Pearl in the hall and her hands on his two shoulders. "Kiss me," she said. "God bless and guard thee, René!"

XXV

While Schmidt was far on his homeward way, De Courval rode through the German settlements of Pennsylvania and into the thinly settled Scotch-Irish clearings beyond the Alleghanies, a long and tedious journey, with much need to spare his horse.

His letters to government officers in the village of Pittsburg greatly aided him in his more remote rides. He settled some of Schmidt's land business, and rode with a young soldier's interest over Braddock's fatal field, thinking of the great career of the youthful colonel who was one of the few who kept either his head or his scalp on that day of disaster.

He found time also to prepare for his superiors a reassuring report, and on July 18 set out on his return. He had heard nothing from his mother or from any one else. The mails were irregular and slow,--perhaps one a week,--and very often a flood or an overturned coach accounted for letters never heard of again. There would be much to hear at home.

On July Fourth of 1795, while the bells were ringing in memory of the nation's birthday, Fauchet sat in his office at Oeller's Hotel. He had been recalled and was for various reasons greatly troubled. The reaction in France against the Jacobins had set in, and they, in turn were suffering from the violence of the returning royalists and the outbreaks of the Catholic peasantry in the south. Marat's bust had been thrown into the gutter and the Jacobin clubs closed. The minister had been able to do nothing of value to stop the Jay treaty. The despatch on which he had relied to give such information as might enable his superiors to direct him and assure them of his efforts to stop the treaty had disappeared eight months ago, as he believed by a bold robbery in the interest of the English party, possibly favored by the cabinet, which, as he had to confess, was less likely. He was angry as he thought of it and uneasy as concerned his future in distracted France. He had questioned Carteaux again and again but had never been quite satisfied. The theft of the despatch had for a time served his purpose, but had been of no practical value. The treaty with England would go to the senate and he return home, a discredited diplomatic failure. Meanwhile, in the trying heat of summer, as during all the long winter months, Carteaux lay for the most part abed, in such misery as might have moved to pity even the man whose bullet had punished him so savagely. At last he was able to sit up for a time every day and to arrange with the captain of a French frigate, then in port, for his return to France.

Late in June he had dismissed Chovet with only a promise to pay what was in fact hard-earned money. Dr. Glentworth, Washington's surgeon, had replaced him, and talked of an amputation, upon which, cursing doctors in general, Carteaux swore that he would prefer to die.

Chovet, who dosed his sick folk with gossip when other means failed, left with this ungrateful patient one piece of news which excited Carteaux's interest. Schmidt, he was told, had gone to Europe, and then, inaccurate as usual, Chovet declared that it was like enough he would never return, a fact which acquired interest for the doctor himself as soon as it became improbable that Carteaux would pay his bill. When a few days later Carteaux learned from De la Forêt that his enemy De Courval was to be absent for several weeks, and perhaps beyond the time set for his own departure, he began with vengeful hope to reconsider a situation which had so far seemed without resource.

Resolved at last to make for De Courval all the mischief possible before his own departure, with such thought as his sad state allowed he had slowly matured in his mind a statement which seemed to him satisfactorily malignant. Accordingly on this Fourth of July he sent his black servant to ask the minister to come to his chamber.

Fauchet, somewhat curious, sat down by the bedside and parting the chintz curtains, said, "I trust you are better."

The voice which came from the shadowed space within was weak and hoarse. "I am not better--I never shall be, and I have little hope of reaching home alive."

"I hoped it not as bad as that."

"And still it is as I say. I do not want to die without confessing to you the truth about that affair in which I was shot and my despatch stolen."

Men who had lived through the years of the French Revolution were not readily astonished, but at this statement the Minister sat up and exclaimed: "_Mon Dieu!_ What is this?"

"I am in damnable pain; I must be brief. I was waylaid near Bristol by Schmidt and De Courval, and when I would not stop, was shot by De Courval. They stole the despatch, and made me swear on threat of death that I had been attacked by men I did not know."

Fauchet was silent for a while, and then said: "That is a singular story--and that you kept the promise, still more singular."

"I did keep it. I had good reason to keep it." He realized, as he told the tale, how improbable it sounded, how entirely Fauchet disbelieved him. If he had not been dulled by opiates and racked past power of critical thought, he was far too able a man to have put forth so childish a tale. He knew at once that he was not believed.

"You do not believe me, Citizen."

"I do not. Why did you not tell me the truth at first?"

"It was not the threat to kill me which stopped me. I was of the tribunal at Avignon which condemned the _ci-devant_ vicomte, the young man's father. To have had it known here would have been a serious thing to our party and for me ruin. I was ill, feeble, in their hands, and I promised Schmidt that I would put it all on some unknown person."

Fauchet listened. He entirely distrusted him. "Is that all? Do you expect any reasonable man to believe such a story?"

"Yes, I do. If I had told you at the time, you would have used my statement at once and I should have suffered. Now that both these cursed villains are gone, I can speak."

"Indeed," said Fauchet, very desirous of a look at the face secure from observation within the curtained bed, "but why do you speak now! It is late. Why speak at all?"

"For revenge, Monsieur. I am in hell."

Fauchet hesitated. "That is a good reason; but there is more in this matter than you are willing to tell."

"That is my business. I have told you enough to satisfy my purpose and yours."

"Rather late for mine. But let us understand each other. This man, then, this De Courval, had a double motive--to avenge his father's death and to serve his masters, the Federalists. That is your opinion?"

"Yes, his desire for revenge made him an easy tool. I cannot talk any more. What shall you do about it?"

"I must think. I do not know. You are either a great fool or a coward or both. I only half trust you."

"Ah, were I well, Monsieur, no man should talk to me as you are doing."

"Luckily for me you are not well; but will you swear to this, to a written statement?"

"I will." Whether it was to be a truthful statement or not concerned the minister but little if he could make use of it. Upon this, the consul-general and a secretary, Le Blanc, being called in, to their amazement Carteaux dictated a plain statement and signed it with his left hand, the two officials acting as witnesses.

The minister read it aloud:

OELLER'S HOTEL, July 4, 1795.

I, George Carteaux, being _in extremis_, declare that on the 29th of November, about 5 P.M., near Bristol, I was set upon and shot and a despatch taken from me by one Schmidt and a Frenchman by name De Courval. No valuables were taken. By whom they were set on or paid I do not know.

GEORGE CARTEAUX.

_Witnesses_:

LOUIS LE BLANC, JEAN DE LA FORÊT.

The two members of the legation silently followed the minister out of the room.

"That is a belated story," said De la Forêt. "Do you credit it?"

"It is not all, you may be sure; a rather lean tale," replied Le Blanc, whose career in the police of Paris had taught him to distrust men. "He lied both times, but this time it is a serviceable lie."

"A little late, as you say," remarked Fauchet. "Once it might have helped us."

"Ah, if," said the consul-general, "he could tell who has your despatch!"

"Not Mr. Randolph," said Le Blanc.

"No," returned Fauchet; "or if he has, it will never be seen by any one else."

"Why?" asked Le Blanc.

The minister, smiling, shook his head. "If ever it turns up in other hands, you will know why, and Mr. Randolph, too."

The minister later in the day assured Carteaux that he would make such use of the deposition as would force the administration to rid itself of a guilty clerk. He was in no haste to fulfil his pledge. Two or three months earlier, when the general opposition to the English treaty promised to delay or prevent it, this damaging paper would have had some value. Apart, however, from any small practical utility the confession might still possess, it promised Fauchet another form of satisfaction. Being a man of great vanity, he felt injured and insulted by the coolness of his diplomatic reception and by the complete absence of pleasant social recognition in the homes of the great Federalist merchants. He would give Carteaux's statement to the Secretary of State and demand that De Courval be dismissed and punished. He felt that he could thus annoy and embarrass the administration; but still, distrusting Carteaux, he waited. His delay was ended by the gossip which began to be rumored about in regard to the attack on Carteaux, and concerning the mysterious loss of Despatch No. 10.

Chovet had been abruptly dismissed, unpaid, and the German having gone away in some haste with no thought of his promise to pay, none knew when he would return. The little doctor was furious. His habit of imprudent gossip had been controlled by Schmidt's threats and still more surely by his pledge of payment. By and by, in his exasperation, he let drop hints, and soon the matter grew. He had been cheated by Carteaux, and if people only knew the truth of that story, and so on, while he won self-importance from holding what he half believed to be a state secret.

At last, increasingly uneasy about his fee, it occurred to him to ask Miss Wynne if it were certain that Schmidt would not return. If not--ah, there was the young man who must pay, or the whole story should be told.

That Miss Gainor kept him waiting for half an hour he felt as a slight and regarded it as an addition to the many wrongs he had suffered at the hands of a woman who had learned from time and experience no lessons in prudence.

Increasingly vexed at her delay, when she came in he was walking about with reckless disregard of the priceless china with which she delighted to crowd her drawing-room. As she entered he looked at his watch, but Mistress Gainor was to-day in high good humor, having won at piquet of Mrs. Bingham the night before enough to make her feel comfortably pleased with Gainor Wynne.

"Bonjour, Monsieur," she said in her fluent anglicized French. "I beg pardon for keeping you waiting; I was dressing." Chovet had rarely been able to sacrifice his liking to annoy to the practical interests of the moment, and now, disbelieving her, he said, "If you will speak English, I may be able to understand you." This was a little worse than usual.

"Sir," she said, with dignity, "your manners are bad. Never do I permit such things to be said to me. I might say something such as you have said to me in regard to your English and there would be an end of our conversation," upon which she laughed outright. "What makes you so cross, Doctor, and to what do I owe the honor of a visit?"

Then he broke out. "I have been cheated by Mr. Carteaux. He has not paid me a cent. He has got another doctor."

"Wise man, Mr. Carteaux; but what on earth have I to do with that Jacobin?"

In his anger the doctor had quite lost sight for the moment of the object of his visit, which was to know if Schmidt had gone never to return, as was freely reported. Now he remembered.

"I desire to know if Mr. Schmidt will come back. He promised to pay if Carteaux did not. Oh, it is a fine story--of him and De Courval. A despatch has been stolen--every one knows that. I am not to be trifled with, Madame. I can tell a nice tale."

"Can you, indeed? I advise you to be careful what you say. Mr. Schmidt will return and then you will get some unusual interest on your money. Have you no sense of honor that you must talk as you have done?"

"I do never talk," he said, becoming uneasy.

Miss Gainor rose, having heard all she wished to hear. "Lord! man, talk! You do nothing else. You have been chattering about this matter to Mrs. Byrd. If I were you, I should be a bit afraid. How much money is owing you?"

"Three hundred dollars, and--I have lost patients, too. I have--"

"Sit down," she said. "Don't behave like a child." She went to her desk, wrote a check and gave it to him. "May I trouble you for a receipt?" He gave it, surprised and pleased. "And now do hold your tongue if you can, or if Mr. Schmidt does not beat you when he comes home, I will. You have no more decency than you have hair."

This set him off again. "Ah you think it is only money, money. You, a woman, can say things. I am insult," he cried. "I will have revenge of Schmidt, if he do come. I will have blood."

"Blood, I would," she said. "Get your lancet ready." She broke into laughter at the idea of a contest with the German. "I will hear no more. These are my friends." When in one of her fits of wrath, now rare, she was not choice of her words. Both were now standing. "A flea and a bear, you and Schmidt! Lord, but he will be scared--poor man!"

He too was in a fine rage, such as he never allowed himself with men. "Oh, I am paid, am I? That will not be all of it." He rose on tiptoe, gesticulating wildly, and threw his hands out, shaking them. There was a sudden clatter of broken china.

"Great heavens!" cried Gainor. "Two of my gods gone, and my blue mandarin!"

For a moment he stood appalled amid the wreck of precious porcelain, looking now at Miss Wynne and now at the broken deities.

The owner of the gods towered over the little doctor. Wrath and an overwhelming sense of the comic contended for expression. "Two gods, man! Where now do you expect to go when you die--"

"Nowhere," he said.

"I agree with you. Neither place would have you. You are not good enough for one and not bad enough for the other." She began to enjoy the situation. "I have half a mind to take away that check. It would not pay, but still--"

"I regret--I apologize." He began to fear lest this terrible old woman might have a whole mind in regard to the check.

"Oh," she laughed, "keep it. But I swear to you by all my other gods that if you lie any more about my friends, I shall tell the story Dr. Abernethy told me. In your greed and distrust of men whose simple word is as sure as their bond, you threaten to tell a tale. Well, I will exchange stories with you. I shall improve mine, too."

"Ah," he cried, "you do promise, and keep no word. You have told already Schmidt of me."

"I did--and one other; but now the whole town shall hear. You were ingenious, but the poor highwayman was too well hanged."

Chovet grew pale. "Oh, Madame, you would not. I should be ruined."

"Then be careful and--go away. I sometimes lose my temper, but never my memory. Remember."

He looked up at the big woman as she stood flushed with anger, and exclaiming under his breath, "_Quelle diablesse!_" went out scared and uneasy.

Looking from the window, she saw him walk away. His hands hung limp at his sides, his head was dropped on his breast; not even Ça Ira looked more dejected.

"Good heavens! the man ought to have a bearing-rein. I much fear the mischief is done. The little brute! He is both mean and treacherous."

She turned to look down at the wreckage of her household Lares and rang the bell.