I Will Repay | Page 5

to do anything for the boy whom
he had so unwillingly sent to his death.
As before, no one took much notice of him. Silence, the awesome
silence caused by the presence of the great Master, fell upon all those
around. Only in the far corner a shrill voice was heard to say:
"I hold you at five hundred louis, Marquis. The parvenu is a good
swordsman."
The groups parted as Déroulède walked out of the room, followed by
the Colonel and M. de Quettare, who stood by him to the last. Both
were old and proved soldiers, both had chivalry and courage in them,
with which to do tribute to the brave man whom they had seconded.
At the door of the establishment, they met the leech who had been
summoned some little time ago to hold himself in readiness for any
eventuality.
The great eventuality had occurred: it was beyond the leech's learning.
In the brilliantly lighted saloon above, the only son of the Duc de
Marny was breathing his last, whilst Déroulède, wrapping his mantle
closely round him, strode out into the dark street, all alone.

II
The head of the house of Marny was at this time barely seventy years
of age. But he had lived every hour, every minute of his life, from the

day when the Grand Monarque gave him his first appointment as
gentleman page in waiting when he was a mere lad, barely twelve years
of age, to the moment - some ten years ago now - when Nature's
relentless hand struck him down in the midst of his pleasures, withered
him in a flash as she does a sturdy old oak, and nailed him - a cripple,
almost a dotard - to the invalid chair which he would only quit for his
last resting place.
Juliette was then a mere slip of a girl, an old man's child, the spoilt
darling of his last happy years. She had retained some of the
melancholy which had characterised her mother, the gentle lady who
had endured so much so patiently, and who had bequeathed this final
tender burden - her baby girl - to the briljant, handsome husband whom
she had so deeply loved, and so often forgiven.
When the Duc de Marny entered the final awesome stage of his gilded
career, that deathlike life which he dragged on for ten years wearily to
the grave, Juliette became his only joy, his one gleam of happiness in
the midst of torturing memories.
In her deep, tender eyes he would see mirrored the present, the future
for her, and would forget his past, with all its gaieties, its mad, merry
years, that meant nothing now but bitter regrets, and endless rosary of
the might-have-beens.
And then there was the boy. The little Vicomte, the future Duc de
Marny, who would in his life and with his youth recreate the glory of
the family, and make France once more ring with the echo of brave
deeds and gallant adventures, which had made the name of Marny so
glorious in camp and court.
The Vicomte was not his father's love, but he was his father's pride, and
from the depths of his huge, cushioned arm-chair, the old man would
listen with delight to stories from Versailles and Paris, the young
Queen and the fascinating Lamballe, the latest play and the newest star
in the theatrical firmament. His feeble, tottering mind would then take
him back, along the paths of memory, to his own youth and his own
triumphs, and in the joy and pride in his son, he would forget himself

for the sake of the boy.
When they brought the Vicomte home that night, Juliette was the first
to wake. She heard the noise outside the great gates, the coach slowly
drawing up, the ring for the doorkeeper, and the sound of Matthieu's
mutterings, who never liked to be called up in the middle of the night to
let anyone through the gates.
Somehow a presentiment of evil at once struck the young girl: the
footsteps sounded so heavy and muffled along the flagged courtyard,
and up the great oak staircase. It seemed as if they were carrying
something heavy, something inert or dead.
She jumped out of bed and hastily wrapped a cloak round her thin
girlish shoulders, and slipped her feet into a pair of heelless shoes, then
she opened her bedroom door and looked out upon the landing.
Two men, whom she dit not know, were walking upstairs abreast, two
more were carrying a heavy burden, and Matthieu was behind moaning
and crying bitterly.
Juliette dit not move. She stood in the doorway rigid as a statue. The
little cortège went past her. No one saw her, for the landings in the
Hotel