CHAPTER IX

Humphrey West had sought his bed some time before La Truaumont had descended to speak to Fleur de Mai and his companion, and, consequently, ere that adventurer had obtained admission to Emérance's salon he was fast asleep.

Fast asleep and sleeping well and softly, too, when gradually there crept into the cells of his brain, heavy with sleep though they were, the drowsy fancy that he was carrying on a conversation with some other person. This idea, however--as consciousness became stronger and stronger--especially after he had rolled over once in his warm, soft bed, and, once, had thrown out his arms after rubbing his eyes--was succeeded by a second. The idea, the fancy that, instead of being engaged in conversation with another person, that person was himself engaged in talking to some one else.

A few moments more and Humphrey was wide awake and sitting up in his bed, while wondering more particularly whence the sound of those voices proceeded than what the purport of the conversation might be. For, as was customary with all travellers in these days of insecurity of life and property, when no one slept in undoubted safety outside their own particular houses--if they did so much even there!--Humphrey had, before proceeding to rest, made inspection of the room in which he was. That is to say, he had peered behind the tapestry that hung down all round the room over the bare, whitewashed walls; he had looked behind the bed and its great hangings, full of dust and flue--to look underneath it was impossible since the frame of the bedstead was always at this period within an inch or so of the floor, and only high enough to permit of the castors being inserted underneath it. In doing all this he had also made sure that there was no door in the wall by which ingress might be obtained from another room--other than that in which the Duchesse de Castellucchio was now sleeping. Consequently, he was at once able to decide that it was not from her room that the voices proceeded, while, at the same time, his ears told him also that they were not the voices of either the Duchess or Jacquette.

Yet still he heard them. He heard the deep tones of a man subdued almost to a whisper; the softer, gentler tones of a woman, itself also subdued.

Now, Humphrey was no eavesdropper, while, since he had no knowledge of the existence of Emérance de Villiers-Bordéville, he ascribed the voices which reached his ears to the conversation of some husband and wife who were occupying the next room, and, if he felt any curiosity still on the subject, was only curious as to how he should be able to overhear them at all.

Suddenly, however, he heard a word, a name, uttered that caused him to, in common parlance, prick up those ears and listen with renewed alertness to what was being said.

For the name mentioned was that of "De Beaurepaire."

"Yet, foregad," said Humphrey to himself, "'tis not so strange either. In the next room to me is the woman who left her husband's house under his escort to the gates of Paris; the woman who, if all reports are true, seeks principally freedom from that maniac to thereby become the chevalier's wife. But, still, who are these who talk at this hour? The woman's voice, low as it is--and sweet and soft also--is neither the voice of Jacquette nor of her mistress, and we have no other woman in our cortége. While for the other--ah!" Humphrey exclaimed beneath his breath, for now a word, uttered in a louder tone than usual by the man who was speaking, smote his ears. "Ah! 'tis the captain of our band, La Truaumont! So! So! Yet what does he do in that room when he sleeps at the farther end of the corridor, and who is the gracious lady with whom he converses?"

For, now, that word, the word which Humphrey had caught was "Sangdieu," and Sangdieu was the principal exclamation ever on La Truaumont's lips.

Being no eavesdropper, as has been said, Humphrey decided that this was no discourse for him to be passing his night in listening to. It concerned him not that the worthy captain should be sitting up towards the small hours discussing De Beaurepaire and his doings with some strange woman who, for aught he, Humphrey, knew, was an accessory to the flight of the Duchess towards her family in Italy. A woman who, he reflected, might have come from Italy by order of the Duchess to escort her across the Alps and to assist her in scaling the rugged pass of the St. Bernard as easily as might be: perhaps a gouvernante who would take all trouble into her own hands and see her charge safely delivered into those of her relations.

"Yes, doubtless that is so," Humphrey said, as he lay back on his pillow and prepared to continue his night's rest. "Doubtless. And to-morrow I shall know all. Likewise, by daylight, I will discover how it is those voices penetrate so easily into this room."

He turned, therefore, over on his side again and once more prepared to continue his night's rest, when, almost ere he had closed his eyes in that vain hope, he plainly heard the word "Louise" uttered, followed by the sibilant "Hsh" from the woman, this being followed in its turn by the words, "The man you admire may rise even higher yet than the proud position of a De Beaurepaire."

A moment later he heard La Truaumont exclaim clearly and distinctly, "He may become a king."

Listening eagerly now--for this was indeed strange matter to stumble on in the dead of the night, he next heard the low clear voice of the woman in that room exclaim:--

"A king! A king of France! Oh! it is impossible."

After which there was silence for some moments; a silence followed by other words uttered so low that Humphrey could not hear them, they being shortly followed by the sound of a door opened softly and shut equally softly an instant later, and then by the stealthy, cautious step of a man passing along the passage. The step of, as Humphrey understood very well, La Truaumont going to his room at the farther end of that passage.

That Humphrey West should find sleep again after overhearing this conversation was scarcely probable. In listening to it, in being forced to listen to that conversation when once awakened by it, he had indeed become possessed of strange knowledge.

He had become possessed, firstly, of the knowledge that some other woman than the Duchess admired De Beaurepaire, namely, the woman who had been in that next room but a short time before, and not the one who was in the next room on the other side; not the woman whom the Prince had seen safely through the gates of Paris when escaping from her cruel husband's house.

That alone was startling, since, if De Beaurepaire did not love the Duchesse de Castellucchio, why and wherefore had he jeopardised his own great position in helping her in such an attempt! Humphrey West knew well enough the power, often enough exerted, against those who assisted women of position, girls who were wealthy heiresses, or wards of La Grande Chambre, by La Grande Chambre itself. Were there not men detained in the Bastille, in Vincennes, in Bicêtre at this very moment, ay, even in far off Pignerol, for similar actions, while in their case they had, or pretended to have, the one great, the one supreme excuse that they loved the women whom they had assisted in evading their lawful custodians. Yet, he told himself, this excuse was not available by De Beaurepaire. For here, next to his own room, but a little while ago, was a woman whom La Truaumont had spoken of as an admirer of his; one who was doubtless admired by him. Here in the very same house, under the very same roof, not forty paces from that other woman!

"What does it mean?" Humphrey asked himself a dozen times. "What? While, strange as it all is, it is nought beside this other strange news. This news that he may be a king. A king! Yet how--and king of what? Of what. Of what other land than France could he, a De Beaurepaire, have dreams of becoming king! And by what means? Ah! great heavens, by what means? In what way but by the most bitter, the blackest treason! By introducing, by helping to introduce, some foreign power into the land to--dethrone the present lawful king! Oh! Oh! it is too awful, too terrible to think upon."

Yet the young man did think upon it far into the night and until, at last, through the heavily curtained windows of his room there stole the first grey streaks and rays of the approaching dawn. He thought of it unceasingly; he thought of the terrors that must threaten this man whom he now befriended and helped; this man who, haughty, cruel, hostile as he often was to others, had never been aught but gentle and kind to him--this man whom he had learnt to admire and think well of; whom he was proud to serve in serving the Duchess.

Yet Humphrey was old enough to know, to remember, that of all the treacheries and conspiracies which had surrounded the life and throne of Le Dieudonné since, as a child, he had ascended that throne thirty years ago, not one of them had ever approached even near to success. Not one had had any result but a death shameful and ignoble for the men who had been concerned in those treacheries and conspiracies.

"Five years ago," he murmured to himself as he tossed in his bed where, until he heard those whispering voices, he had been sleeping so peacefully, "five years ago Roux de Marsilly perished on the wheel for such a crime as this talked of in that next room this very night. This very year the Comte de Sardan has suffered in the same way; there have been a dozen attempts all ending in disaster. And, oh! the wickedness of it, 'specially in him, the playmate of the King in childhood, his Grand Veneur, the head of his Guards. In him who, of all men, should guard his master from treachery."

The young man thought over all this even as he still sought sleep, while understanding and acknowledging to himself that he could hope for little farther rest that night; and, since sleep would come no more, he endeavoured to arrange some plan of action whereby, if possible, he, simple gentleman though he was, might be able to prevent De Beaurepaire from rushing on his ruin.

But first he must know something further. He must discover more from those two plotters whom he had chanced to overhear this night. In some way he must make himself acquainted with who and what this woman was who harboured in the very house where was now reposing the woman he had to help escort across the Alps. He would know, if possible, every thread of the plot now in hand, every ramification of it, every person concerned in it.

And then, if he could do that, it would be time for action.

At last, however, he was enabled to obtain some little rest; at last, when daylight had come, the workings of his brain ceased, and, for an hour or so, he slept.

He did so until the hour of nine was striking from all the clocks in the city, when he was aroused by a clatter beneath his window not unlike that which, over night, had aroused Emérance from her meditations in front of the hearth in her salon. Yet this clatter on the cobble-stones of the place heralded no such arrival as that which the woman had witnessed, no handsome travelling carriage escorted by soldiers and adventurers as represented by La Truaumont, Boisfleury, Fleur de Mai and even Humphrey himself; no descent at the inn of a beautiful woman whose wealth and position made her one of the foremost aristocrats in France, nor any pretty young girl such as Jacquette.

Instead, the noise alone testified to, as Humphrey saw when he approached the window, the arrival of the French public coach which was, in truth, a vehicle something between the patache of the time, the diligence of later days, and the various lumbering travelling-waggons of the period, while being a combination of all. A frouzy, evil-smelling, dirty thing it was, in which men and women were huddled together and even thrown into each other's arms and across each other's knees as the wheels of the cumbersome and almost springless vehicle jolted into ruts and then jolted out again, yet one in which travellers compassed hundreds of miles when too poor to pay for a carriage or to ride post--or when they desired to escape observation and remark!

From this conveyance there stepped forth now, amidst the howls of the driver to his horses who were anxious to be unharnessed and reach their stalls, and the cries of the ostlers and other noises, a venerable-looking old man of about seventy whose head was still enveloped in the cloth in which he had bound it up over night for the journey.

An old man who was received by the bowing landlord--the landlords of those days bowed appreciatively to all and every who arrived at their doors, no matter whether they were likely to spend one pistole or a hundred in their houses--with much courtesy. An old man who at once said:--

"I desire accommodation for some nights if it is obtainable. I desire also that Madame la Marquise de Villiers-Bordéville shall be informed that her father has arrived."

"Her father!" the landlord exclaimed, perhaps in some astonishment at the difference in appearance, as well as in the mode of travelling, between this old man and his daughter, the illustrious Marquise who had arrived in a handsome coach. "The father of Madame la Marquise! But certainly, monsieur, madame shall be apprised. Though I fear she still sleeps. Nevertheless, her maidservant shall be told."

"That will do very well. I myself require rest. Later in the day I will visit my daughter." After which the old man entered the house and, consequently, was seen no more by Humphrey West.

Yet what Humphrey did see was that, before this venerable personage entered the inn preceded by the landlord, he cast his eye suddenly up at a window which the former had no difficulty in feeling sure was that of the room to the left of his own. Humphrey saw, too, that he gave a grin as he did so, while appearing at the same time to thrust his tongue in his cheek as he slapped a large wallet, or bag, which he carried slung round him.

All of which things, added to the fact that the young man had heard rapid footsteps pass from out of another room into the one where the conversation with La Truaumont had taken place over night, and the feet glide swiftly across the floor towards where the window was, caused Humphrey West to feel sure that the woman occupying that room had run to the window of the salon to greet the new arrival.