Of the long and bitter journey from the Iroquois towns to Lake St. George, down the Richelieu and thence through the deep snows of the Canadian winter, it boots little to make mention; neither to tell of that devotion of Raoul de Ligny to the newly-rescued lady, already reputed in camp rumor to be of noble English family.
"Thatsous-lieutenant; he istête montéeregarding madame," said Pierre Noir one evening to Jean Breboeuf. "As to that—well, you know Monsieur L'as. Pouf! So much for yon monkey,par comparaison."
"He is a greatcapitaine, Monsieur L'as," said Jean Breboeuf. "Never a better went beyond the Straits."
"But very sad of late."
"Oh,oui, since the death of his friend, Monsieurle CapitainePembroke—may Mary aid his spirit!"
"Monsieur L'as goes not on the trail again," said Pierre Noir. "At least not while this look is in his eye."
"The more the loss, Pierre Noir; but some day the woods will call to him again. I know not how long it may be, yet some day Mother Messasebe will raise her finger and beckon to Monsieur L'as, and say: 'Come, my son!' 'Tis thus, as you know, Pierre Noir."
Yet at length the straggling settlements at Montréal were reached, and here, after the fashion of the frontier, some sort ofménagewas inaugurated for Law and his party. Here they lived through the rest of the winter and through the long, slow spring.
And then set on again the heats of summer, and there came apace the time agreed upon, in the month of August, for the widely heralded assembling of the tribes for the Great Peace; one of the most picturesque, as it was one of the most remarkable and significant meetings of widely diverse human beings, that ever took place within the ken of history.
They came, these savages, now first owning the strength of the invading white men, from all the far and unknown corners of the Western wilderness. They came afoot, and with little trains of dogs, in single canoes, in little groups and growing flotillas and vast fleets of canoes, pushing on and on, down stream, following the tide of the furs down this pathway of more than a thousand miles. The Iroquois, for once mindful of a promise, came in a compact fleet, a hundred canoes strong, and they stalked about the island for days, naked, stark, gigantic, contemptuous of white and red men, of friend and foe alike. The scattered Algonquins, whose villages had been razed by these same savage warriors, came down by scores out of the Northern woods, along little, unknown streams, and over paths with which none but themselves were acquainted. From the North, group joined group, and village added itself to village, until a vast body of people had assembled, whose numbers would have been hard to estimate, and who proved difficult enough to accommodate. Yet from the farther West, adding their numbers to those already gathered, came the fleets of the driven Hurons, and the Ojibways, and the Miamis, and the Outagamies, and the Ottawas, the Menominies and the Mascoutins—even the Illini, late objects of the wrath of the Five Nations. The whole Western wilderness poured forth its savage population, till all the shores of the St. Lawrence seemed one vast aboriginal encampment. These massed at the rendezvous about the puny settlement of Montréal in such numbers that, in comparison, the white population seemed insignificant. Then, had there been a Pontiac or a Tecumseh, had there been one leader of the tribes able to teach the strength of unity, the white settlements of upper America had indeed been utterly destroyed. Naught but ancient tribal jealousies held the savages apart.
With these tribesmen were many prisoners, captives taken in raids all along the thin and straggling frontier; farmers and artisans, peasants and soldiers, women raped from the farms of the Richelieucensitaires, and wood-rangers now grown savage as their captors and loth to leave the wild life into which they had so naturally grown. It was the first reflex of the wave, and even now the bits of flotsam and jetsam of wild life were fain to cling to the Western shore whither they had been carried by the advancing flood. This was the meeting of the ebb with the sea that sent it forward, the meeting of civilized and savage; and strange enough was the nature of those confluent tides. Whether the red men were yielding to civilization, or the whites all turning savage—this question might well have arisen to an observer of this tremendous spectacle. The wigwams of the different tribes and clans and families were grouped apart, scattered along all the narrow shore back of the great hill, and over the Convent gardens; and among these stalked the native French, clad in coarse cloth of blue, with gaudy belt and buckskins, and cap of fur and moccasins of hide, mingling fraternally with their tufted and bepainted visitors, as well as with those rangers, both envied and hated, the savagecoureurs de boisof the far Northern fur trade; men bearded, silent, stern, clad in breech-clout and leggings like any savage, as silent, as stoical, as hardy on the trail as on the narrow thwart of the canoe.
Savage feastings, riotings and drunkenness, and long debaucheries came with the Great Peace, when once the word had gone out that the fur trade was to be resumed. Henceforth there was to be peace. The French were no longer to raid the little cabins along the Kennebec and the Penobscot. The river Richelieu was to be no longer a red war trail. The English were no longer to offer arms and blankets for the beaver, belonging by right of prior discovery to those who offered French brandy and French beads. The Iroquois were no longer to pursue a timid foe across the great prairies of the valley of the Messasebe. The Ojibways were not to ambush the scattered parties of the Iroquois. The unambitious colonists of New England and New York were to be left to till their stony farms in quiet. Meantime, the fur trade, wasteful, licentious, unprofitable, was to extend onward and outward in all the marches of the West. From one end of the Great River of the West to the other the insignia of France and of France's king were to be erected, and France's posts were to hold all the ancient trails. Even at the mouth of the Great River, forestalling these sullen English and these sluggish English colonists, far to the south in the somber forests and miasmatic marshes, there was to be established one more ruling point for the arms of Louis the Grand. It was a great game this, for which the continent of America was in preparation. It was a mighty thing, this gathering of the Great Peace, this time when colonists and their king were seeing the first breaking of the wave on the shore of an empire alluring, wonderful, unparalleled.
Into this wild rabble of savages and citizens, of priest and soldier andcoureur, Law's friends, Pierre Noir and Jean Breboeuf, swiftly disappeared, naturally, fitly and unavoidably. "The West is calling to us, Monsieur," said Pierre Noir one morning, as he stood looking out across the river. "I hear once more the spirits of the Messasebe. Monsieur, will you come?"
Law shook his head. Yet two days later, as he stood at that very point, there came to him the silent feet of twocoureursinstead of one. Once more he heard in his ear the question: "Monsieur L'as, will you come?"
At this voice he started. In an instant his arms were about the neck of Du Mesne, and tears were falling from the eyes of both in the welcome of that brotherhood which is admitted only by those who have known together arms and danger and hardship, the touch of the hard ground and the sight of the wide blue sky.
"Du Mesne, my friend!"
"Monsieur L'as!"
"It is as though you came from the depths of the sea, Du Mesne!" said Law.
"And as though you yourself arose from the grave, Monsieur!"
"How did you know—?"
"Why, easily. You do not yet understand the ways of the wilderness, where news travels as fast as in the cities. You were hardly below the foot of Michiganon before runners from the Illini had spread the news along the Chicaqua, where I was then in camp. For the rest, the runners brought also news of the Big Peace. I reasoned that the Iroquois would not dare to destroy their captives, that in time the agents of the Government would receive the captives of the Iroquois—that these captives would naturally come to the settlements on the St. Lawrence, since it was the French against whom the Iroquois had been at war; that having come to Montréal, you would naturally remain here for a time. The rest was easy. I fared on to the Straits this spring, and then on down the Lakes. I have sold our furs, and am now ready to account to you with a sum quite as much as we should have expected.
"Now, Monsieur," and Du Mesne stretched out his arm again, pointing to the down-coming flood of the St. Lawrence, "Monsieur, will you come? I see not the St. Lawrence, but the Messasebe. I can hear the voices calling!"
Law dashed his hand across his eyes and turned his head away. "Not yet, Du Mesne," said he. "I do not know. Not yet. I must first go across the waters. Perhaps sometime—I can not tell. But this, my comrades, my brothers, I do know; that never, until the last sod lies on my grave, will I forget the Messasebe, or forget you. Go back, if you will, my brothers; but at night, when you sit by your fireside, think of me, as I shall think of you, there in the great valley. My friends, it is the heart of the world!"
"But, Monsieur—"
"There, Du Mesne—I would not talk to-day. At another time. Brothers, adieu!"
"Adieu, my brother," said thecoureur, his own emotion showing in his eyes; and their hands met again.
"Monsieur is cast down," said Du Mesne to Pierre Noir later, as they reached the beach. "Now, what think you?
"Usually, as you know, Pierre, it is a question of some woman. It reminds me, Wabana was remiss enough when I left her among the Illini with you. Now, God bless my heart, I find her—how think you? With her crucifix lost, cooking for a dirty Ojibway!"
"Mary Mother!" said Pierre Noir, "if it be a matter of a woman—well, God help us all! At least 'tis something that will take Monsieur L'as over seas again."
"'Tis mostly a woman," mused Du Mesne; "but this passeth my wit."
"True, they pass the wit of all. Now, did I ever tell thee about the mission girl at Michilimackinac—but stay! That for another time. They tell me that our comrade, Greysolon du L'hut, is expected in to-morrow with a party from the far end of Superior. Come, let us have the news."
"Tous les printemps,
Tant des nouvelles,"
hummed Du Mesne, as he flung his arm above the shoulder of the other; and the two so disappeared adown the beach.
Dully, apathetically, Law lived on his life here at Montréal for yet a time, at the edge of that wilderness which had proved all else but Eden. Near to him, though in these guarded times guest by necessity of the good sisters of the Convent, dwelt Mary Connynge. And as for these two, it might be said that each but bided the time. To her Law might as well have been one of the corded Sulpician priests; and she to him, for all he liked, one of the nuns of the Convent garden. What did it all mean; where was it all to end? he asked himself a thousand times; and a thousand times his mind failed him of any answer. He waited, watching the great encampment disappear, first slowly, then swiftly and suddenly, so that in a night the last of the lodges had gone and the last canoe had left the shore. There remained only the hurrying flood of the St. Lawrence, coming from the West.
The autumn came on. Early in November the ships would leave for France. Yet before the beginning of November there came swiftly and sharply the settlement of the questions which racked Law's mind. One morning Mary Connynge was missing from the Convent, nor could any of the sisters, nor the mother superior, explain how or when she had departed!
Yet, had there been close observers, there might have been seen a boat dropping down the river on the early morning of that day. And at Quebec there was later reported in the books of the intendant the shipping, upon the good bark Dauphine, of Lieutenant Raoul de Ligny, sometime officer of the regiment Carignan, formerly stationed in New France; with him a lady recently from Montréal, known very well to Lieutenant de Ligny and his family; and to be in his careen voyageto France; the name of said lady illegible upon the records, the spelling apparently not having suited the clerk who wrote it, and then forgot it in the press of other things.
Certain of the governor's household, as well as two or threehabitantsfrom the lower town, witnessed the arrival of this lady, who came down from Montréal. They saw her take boat for the bark Dauphine, one of the last ships to go down the river that fall. Yes, it was easily to be established. Dark, with singular, brown eyes,petite, yet not over small, of good figure—assuredly so much could be said; for obviously the king, kindly as he might feel toward the colony of New France, could not send out, among the young women supplied to the colonists as wives, very many such demoiselles as this; otherwise assuredly all France would have followed the king's ships to the St. Lawrence.
John Law, a grave and saddened man, yet one now no longer lacking in decision, stood alone one day at the parapet of the great rock of Quebec, gazing down the broad expanse of the stream below. He was alone except for a little child, a child too young to know her mother, had death or disaster at that time removed the mother. Law took the little one up in his arms and gazed hard upon the upturned face.
"Catharine!" he said to himself. "Catharine! Catharine!"
"Pardon, Monsieur," said a voice at his elbow. "Surely I have seen you before this?"
Law turned. Joncaire, the ambassador of peace, stood by, smiling and extending his hand.
"Naturally, I could never forget you," said Law.
"Monsieur looks at the shipping," said Joncaire, smiling. "Surely he would not be leaving New France, after so luckily escaping the worst of her dangers?"
"Life might be the same for me over there as here," replied Law. "As for my luck, I must declare myself the most unfortunate man on earth."
"Your wife, perhaps, is ill?"
"Pardon, I have none."
"Pardon, in turn, Monsieur—but, you see—the child?"
"It is the child of a savage woman," said Law.
Joncaire pulled aside the infant's hood. He gave no sign, and a nice indifference sat in his query: "Une belle sauvage?"
"Belle sauvage!"
On a great bed of state, satin draped, flanked with ancient tapestries, piled sickeningly soft with heaps of pillows, there lay a thin, withered little man—old, old and very feeble. His face was shrunken and drawn with pain; his eyes, once bright, were dulled; his brow, formerly imperious, had lost its arrogance. Under the coverings which, in the unrest of illness, he now pulled high about his face, now tossed restlessly aside, his figure lay, an elongated, shapeless blot, scarce showing beneath the silks. One limb, twitched and drawn up convulsively, told of a definite seat of pain. The hands, thin and wasted, lay out upon the coverlets; and the thumbs were creeping, creeping ever more insistently, under the cover of the fingers, telling that the battle for life was lost, that the surrender had been made.
It was a death-bed, this great bed of state; a death-bed situated in the heart of the greatest temple of desire ever built in all the world. He who had been master there, who had set in order those miles of stately columns, those seas of glittering gilt and crystal, he who had been magician, builder, creator, perverter, debaser—he, Louis of France, the Grand Monarque, now lay suffering like any ordinary human being, like any common man.
Last night the four and twenty violins, under the king's command, had shrilled their chorus, as had been their wont for years while the master dined. This morning the cordon of drums and hautboys had pealed their high and martial music. Useless. The one or the other music fell upon ears too dull to hear. The formal tribute to the central soul for a time continued of its own inertia; for a time royalty had still its worship; yet the custom was but a lagging one. The musicians grimaced and made what discord they liked, openly, insolently, scorning this weak and withered figure on the silken bed. The cordon of the white and blue guards of the Household still swept about the vast pleasure grounds of this fairy temple; yet the officers left their posts and conversed one with the other. Musicians and guards, spectators and populace, all were waiting, waiting until the end should come. Farther out and beyond, where the peaked roofs of Paris rose, back of that line which this imperious mind had decreed should not be passed by the dwellings of Paris, which must not come too near this temple of luxury, nor disturb the king while he enjoyed himself—back of the perfunctorily loyal guards of the Household, there reached the ragged, shapeless masses of the people of Paris and of France, waiting, smiling, as some animal licking its chops in expectation of some satisfying thing. They were waiting for news of the death of this shrunken man, this creature once so full of arrogant lust, then so full of somber repentance, now so full of the very taste of death.
On the great tapestry that hung above the head of the curtained bed shone the double sun of Louis the Grand, which had meant death and devastation to so much of Europe. It blazed, mimicking the glory that was gone; but toward it there was raised no sword nor scepter more in vow or exaltation. The race was run, the sun was sinking to its setting. Nothing but a man—a weary, worn-out, dying man—was Louis, the Grand Monarque, king for seventy-two years of France, almost king of Europe. This death-bed lay in the center of a land oppressed, ground down, impoverished. The hearts and lives of thousands were in these colonnades. The people had paid for their king. They had fed him fat and kept him full of loves. In return, he had trampled the people into the very dust. He had robbed even their ancient nobles of honors and consideration. Blackened, ruined, a vast graveyard, a monumental starving-ground, France lay about his death-bed, and its people were but waiting with grim impatience for their king to die. What France might do in the future was unknown; yet it was unthinkable that aught could be worse than this glorious reign of Louis, the Grand Monarque, this crumbling clod, this resolving excrescence, this phosphorescent, disintegrating fungus of a diseased life and time.
Seventy-two years a king; thirty years a libertine; twenty years a repentant. Son, grandson, great-grandson, all gone, as though to leave not one of that once haughty breed. For France no hope at all; and for the house of Bourbon, all the hope there might be in the life of a little boy, sullen, tiny, timid. Far over in Paris, busy about his games and his loves, a jesting, long-curled gallant, the Duke of Orléans, nephew of this king, was holding a court of his own. And from this court which might be, back to the court which was, but which might not be long, swung back and forth the fawning creatures of the former court. This was the central picture of France, and Paris, and of the New World on this day of the year 1715.
In the room about the bed of state, uncertain groups of watchers whispered noisily. The five physicians, who had tried first one remedy and then another; the rustic physician whose nostrum had kept life within the king for some unexpected days; the ladies who had waited upon the relatives of the king; some of the relatives themselves; Villeroy, guardian of the young king soon to be; the bastard, and the wife of that bastard, who hoped for the king's shoes; the mistress of his earlier years, for many years his wife—Maintenon, that peerless hypocrite of all the years—all these passed, and hesitated, and looked, waiting, as did the hungry crowds in Paris toward the Seine, until the double sun should set, and the crawling thumbs at last should find their shelter. The Grand Monarque was losing the only time in all his life when he might have learned human wisdom.
"Madame!" whispered the dry lips, faintly.
She who was addressed as madame, this woman Maintenon, pious murderer, unrivaled hypocrite, unspeakably self-contained dissembler, the woman who lost for France an empire greater than all France, stepped now to the bed-side of the dying monarch, inclining her head to hear what he might have to say. Was Maintenon, the outcast, the widow, the wife of the king, at last to be made ruler of the Church in France? Was she to govern in the household of the king even after the king had departed? The woman bent over the dying man, the covetousness of her soul showing in her eyes, struggle as she might to retain her habitual and unparalleled self-control.
The dying man muttered uneasily. His mind was clouded, his eyes saw other things. He turned back to earlier days, when life was bright, when he, Louis, as a young man, had lived and loved as any other.
"Louise," he murmured. "Louise! Forgive! Meet me—Louise—dear one. Meet me yonder—"
An icy pallor swept across the face of the arch hypocrite who bent over him. Into her soul there sank like a knife this consciousness of the undying power of a real love. La Vallière, the love of the youth of Louis, La Vallière, the beautiful, and sweet, and womanly, dead and gone these long years since, but still loved and now triumphant—she it was whom Louis now remembered.
Maintenon turned from the bed-side. She stood, an aged and unhappy woman, old, gray and haggard, not success but failure written upon every lineament. For one instant she stood, her hands clenched, slow anger breaking through the mask which, for a quarter of a century, she had so successfully worn.
"Bah!" she cried. "Bah! 'Tis a pretty rendezvous this king would set for me!" And then she swept from the room, raged for a time apart, and so took leave of life and of ambition.
At length even the last energies of the once stubborn will gave way. The last gasp of the failing breath was drawn. The herald at the window announced to the waiting multitude that Louis the Fourteenth was no more.
"Long live the king!" exclaimed the multitude. They hailed the new monarch with mockery; but laughter, and sincere joy and feasting were the testimonials of their emotions at the death of the king but now departed.
On the next day a cheap, tawdry and unimposing procession wended its way through the back streets of Paris, its leader seeking to escape even the edges of the mob, lest the people should fall upon the somber little pageant and rend it into fragments. This was the funeral cortège of Louis, the Grand Monarque, Louis the lustful, Louis the bigot, Louis the ignorant, Louis the unhappy. They hurried him to his resting-place, these last servitors, and then hastened back to the palaces to join their hearts and voices to the rising wave of joy which swept across all France at the death of this beloved ruler.
Now it happened that, as the funeral procession of the king was hurrying through the side streets near the confines of the old city of Paris, there encountered it, entering from the great highway which led from the east up to the city gates, the carriage of a gentleman who might, apparently with justice, have laid some claim to consequence. It had its guards and coachmen, and was attended by two riders in livery, who kept it company along the narrow streets. This equipage met the head of the hurrying funeral cortège, and found occasion for a moment to pause. Thus there passed, the one going to his grave, the other to his goal, the two men with whom the France of that day was most intimately concerned.
There came from the window of the coach the voice of one inquiring the reason of the halt, and there might have been seen through the upper portion of the vehicle's door the face of the owner of the carriage. He seemed a man of imposing presence, with face open and handsome, and an eye bright, bold and full of intelligence. His garb was rich and elegant, his air well contained and dignified.
"Guillaume," he called out, "what is it that detains us?"
"It is nothing, Monsieur L'as," was the reply, "They tell me it is but the funeral of the king."
"Eh bien!" replied Law, turning to one who sat beside him in the coach. "Nothing! 'Tis nothing but the funeral of the king!"
The coach proceeded steadily on its way, passing in toward that quarter where the high-piled, peaked roofs and jagged spires betokened ancient Paris. On every hand arose confused sounds from the streets, now filled with a populace merry as though some pleasant carnival were just beginning. Shopkeeper called across to his neighbor, tradesman gossiped with gallant. Even the stolid faces of the plodding peasants, fresh past the gate-tax and bound for the markets to seek what little there remained after giving to the king, bore an unwonted look, as though hope might yet succeed to their surprise.
"Ohé! Marie," called one stout dame to another, who stood smiling in her doorway near by. "See the fine coach coming. That is the sort you and I shall have one of these days, now that the king is dead. God bless the new king, and may he die young! A plague to all kings, Marie. And now come and sit with my man and me, for we've a bottle left, and while it lasts we drink freedom from all kings!"
"You speak words of gold, Suzanne," was the reply. "Surely I will drink with you, and wish a pleasant and speedy death to kings."
"But now, Marie," said the other, argumentatively, "as to my good duke regent, that is otherwise. It goes about that he will change all things. One is to amuse one's self now and then, and not to work forever for the taxes and the conscription. Long live the regent, then, say I!"
"Yes, and let us hope that regents never turn to kings. There are to be new days here in France. We people, aye, my faith! We people, so they say, are to be considered. True, we shall have carriages one day, Marie, like that of my Lord who passes."
John Law and his companions heard broken bits of such speech as this as they passed on.
"Ah, they talk," replied he at last, turning toward his companions, "and this is talk which means something. Within the year we shall see Paris upside down. These people are ready for any new thing. But"—and his face lost some of its gravity—"the streets are none too safe to-day, my Lady. Therefore you must forgive me if I do not set you down, but keep you prisoner until you reach your own gates. 'Tis not your fault that your carriage broke down on the road from Marly; and as for my brother Will and myself, we can not forego a good fortune which enables us at last to destroy a certain long-standing debt of a carriage ride given us, once upon a time, by the Lady Catharine Knollys."
"At least, then, we shall be well acquit on both sides," replied the soft voice of the woman. "I may, perhaps, be an unwilling prisoner for so short a time."
"Madam, I would God it might be forever!"
It was the same John Law of old who made this impetuous reply, and indeed he seemed scarce changed by the passing of these few years of time. It was the audacious youth of the English highway who now looked at her with grave face, yet with eyes that shone.
Some years had indeed passed since Law, turning his back upon the appeal of the wide New World, had again set foot upon the shores of England, from which his departure had been so singular. Driven by the goads of remorse, it had been his first thought to seek out the Lady Catharine Knollys; and so intent had he been on this quest, that he learned almost without emotion of the king's pardon which had been entered, discharging him of further penalty of the law of England. Meeting Lady Catharine, he learned, as have others since and before him, that a human soul may have laws inflexible; that the iron bars of a woman's resolve may bar one out, even as prison doors may bar him in. He found the Lady Catharine unshakeable in her resolve not to see him or speak with him. Whereat he raged, expostulated by post, waited, waylaid, and so at length gained an interview, which taught him many things.
He found the Lady Catharine Knollys changed from a light-hearted girl to a maiden tall, grave, reserved and sad, offering no reproaches, listening to no protestations. Told of Sir Arthur Pembroke's horrible death, she wept with tears which his survivor envied. Told at length of the little child, she sat wide-eyed and silent. Approached with words of remorse, with expostulations, promises, she shrank back in absolute horror, trembling, so that in very pity the wretched young man left her and found his way out into a world suddenly grown old and gray.
After this dismissal, Law for many months saw nothing, heard nothing of this woman whom he had wronged, even as he received no sign from the woman who had forsaken him over seas. He remained away as long as might be, until his violent nature, geyser-like, gathered inner storm and fury by repression, and broke away in wild eruption.
Once more he sought the presence of the woman whose face haunted his soul, and once more he met ice and adamant stronger than his own fires. Beaten, he fled from London and from England, seeking still, after the ancient and ineffective fashion of man, to forget, though he himself had confessed the lesson that man can not escape himself, but takes his own hell with him wherever he goes.
Rejected, as he was now, by the new ministry of England, none the less every capital of Europe came presently to know John Law, gambler, student and financier. Before every ruler on the continent he laid his system of financial revolution, and one by one they smiled, or shrugged, or scoffed at him. Baffled once more in his dearest purpose, he took again to play, play in such colossal and audacious form as never yet had been seen even in the gayest courts of a time when gaming was a vice to be called national. No hazard was too great for him, no success and no reverse sufficiently keen to cause him any apparent concern. There was no risk sharp enough to deaden the gnawing in his soul, no excitement strong enough to wipe away from his mind the black panorama of his past.
He won princely fortunes and cast them away again. With the figure and the air of a prince, he gained greater reputation than any prince of Europe. Upon him were spent the blandishments of the fairest women of his time. Yet not this, not all this, served to steady his energies, now unbalanced, speeding without guidance. The gold, heaped high on the tables, was not enough to stupefy his mind, not enough though he doubled and trebled it, though he cast great golden markers to spare him trouble in the counting of his winnings. Still student, still mathematician, he sought at Amsterdam, at Paris, at Vienna, all new theories which offered in the science of banking and finance, even as at the same time he delved still further into the mysteries of recurrences and chance.
In this latter such was his success that losers made complaint, unjust but effectual, to the king, so that Law was obliged to leave Paris for a time. He had dwelt long enough in Paris, this double-natured man, this student and creator, this gambler and gallant, to win the friendship of Philippe of Orléans, later to be regent of France; and gay enough had been the life they two had led—so gay, so intimate, that Philippe gave promise that, should he ever hold in his own hands the Government of France, he would end Law's banishment and give to him the opportunity he sought, of proving those theories of finance which constituted the absorbing ambition of his life.
Meantime Law, ever restless, had passed from one capital of Europe to another, dragging with him from hotel to hotel the young child whose life had been cast in such feverish and unnatural surroundings. He continued to challenge every hazard, fearless, reckless, contemptuous, and withal wretched, as one must be who, after years of effort, found that he could not banish from his mind the pictures of a dark-floored prison, and of a knife-stab in the dark, and of raging, awful waters, and of a girl beautiful, though with sealed lips and heart of ice. From time to time, as was well known, Law returned to England. He heard of the Lady Catharine Knollys, as might easily be done in London; heard of her as a young woman kind of heart, soft of speech, with tenderness for every little suffering thing; a beautiful young woman, whose admirers listed scores; but who never yet, even according to the eagerest gossip of the capital, had found a suitor to whom she gave word or thought of love.
So now at last the arrogant selfishness of his heart began to yield. His heart was broken before it might soften, but soften at last it did. And so he built up in his soul the image of a grave, sweet saint, kindly and gentle-voiced, unapproachable, not to be profaned. To this image—ah, which of us has not had such a shrine!—he brought in secret the homage of his life, his confessions, his despairs, his hopes, his resolutions; guiding thereby all his life, as well as poor mortal man may do, failing ever of his own standards, as all men do, yet harking ever back to that secret sibyl, reckoning all things from her, for her, by her.
There came at length one chastened hour when they met in calmness, when there was no longer talk of love between them, when he stood before her as though indeed at the altar of some marble deity. Always her answer had been that the past had been a mistake; that she had professed to love a man, not knowing what that man was; that she had suffered, but that it was better so, since it had brought understanding. Now, in this calmer time, she begged of him knowledge of this child, regretting the wandering life which had been its portion, saying that for Mary Connynge she no longer felt horror and hatred. Thus it was that in a hasty moment Law had impulsively begged her to assume some sort of tutelage over that unfortunate child. It was to his own amazement that he heard Lady Catharine Knollys consent, stipulating that the child should be placed in a Paris convent for two years, and that for two years John Law should see neither his daughter nor herself. Obedient as a child himself he had promised.
"Now, go away," she then had said to him. "Go your own way. Drink, dice, game, and waste the talents God hath given you. You have made ruin enough for all of us. I would only that it may not run so far as to another generation."
So both had kept their promises; and now the two years were done, years spent by Law more manfully than any of his life. His fortune he had gathered together, amounting to more than a million livres. He had sent once more for his brother Will, and thus the two had lived for some time in company in lower Europe, the elder brother still curious as ever in his abstruse theories of banking and finance—theories then new, now outlived in great part, though fit to be called a portion of the great foundation of the commercial system of the world. It was a wiser and soberer and riper John Law, this man who had but recently received a summons from Philippe of Orléans to be present in Paris, for that the king was dying, and that all France, France the bankrupt and distracted, was on the brink of sudden and perhaps fateful change.
With a quick revival of all his Highland superstition, Law hailed now as happy harbinger the fact that, upon his entry into Paris, the city once more of his hopes, he had met in such fashion this lady of his dreams, even at such time as the seal of silence was lifted from his lips. It was no wonder that his eye gleamed, that his voice took on the old vibrant tone, that every gesture, in thought or in spite of thought, assumed the tender deference of the lover.
It was a fair woman, this chance guest of the highway whom he now accosted—bronze-haired, blue-eyed, soft of voice, queenly of mien, gentle, calm and truly lovable. Oh, what waste that those arms should hold nothing, that lips such as those should know no kisses, that eyes like those should never swim in love! What robbery! What crime! And this man, thief of this woman's life, felt his heart pinch again in the old, sharp anguish of remorse, bitterest because unavailing.
For the Lady Catharine herself there had been also many changes. The death of her brother, the Earl of Banbury, had wrought many shifts in the circumstances of a house apparently pursued by unkind fate. Left practically alone and caring little for the life of London, even after there had worn away the chill of suspicion which followed upon the popular knowledge of her connection with the escape of Law from London, Lady Catharine Knollys turned to a life and world suddenly grown vague and empty. Travel upon the continent with friends, occasional visits to the old family house in England, long sojourns in this or the other city—such had been her life, quiet, sweet, reproachless and unreproaching. For the present she had taken an hôtel in the older part of Paris, in connection with her friend, the Countess of Warrington, sometime connected with the embassy of that Lord Stair who was later to act as spy for England in Paris, now so soon to know tumultuous scenes. With these scenes, as time was soon to prove, there was to be most intimately connected this very man who, now bending forward attentively, now listening respectfully, and ever gazing directly and ardently, heard naught of plots or plans, cared naught for the Paris which lay about, saw naught but the beautiful face before him, felt naught but some deep, compelling thrill in every heart-string which now reaching sweet accord in spite of fate, in spite of the past, in spite of all, went singing on in a deep melody of joy. This was she, the idol, the deity. Let the world wag. It was a moment yet ere paradise must end!
"Madam, I would God it might be forever!" said Law again. The old stubborn nature was showing once more, but under it something deeper, softer, tenderer.
A sudden panic fear called at the heart of her to whom he spoke. Two rosy spots shone in her cheeks, and as she gazed, her eyes showed the veiled softening of woman's gentleness. There fell a silence.
"Madam, I could feel that this were Sadler's Wells over again," said Law a moment later.
But now the carriage had arrived at the destination named by Lady Catharine. Law sprang out, hat in hand, and assisted Lady Catharine to the curb. A passing flower girl, gaily offering her wares, paused as the carriage drew up. Law turned quickly and caught from her as many roses as his hand could grasp, handing her in return half as much coin as her smaller palm could hold. He turned to the Lady Catharine, and bowed with that grace which was the talk of a world of gallants. In his hand he extended a flower.
"Madam, as before!" he said.
There was a sob in his voice. Their eyes met fairly, unmasked as they had not been for years. Tears came into the man's eyes, the first that had ever sat there; tears for the past, tears for that sweetness which once might have been.
"'Tis for the king! They weep for the king!" sang out the hard voice of the flower girl, ironically, as she skipped away. "Ohé, for the king, for the king!"
"Nay, for the queen!" said John Law, as he gazed into the eyes of Catharine Knollys.
"Only believe me, Lady Catharine, and I shall do everything I promised years ago—I shall lay all France at your feet. But if you deny me thus always, I shall make all France a mockery."
"Monsieur is fresh from the South of France," replied the Lady Catharine Knollys. "Has Gascon wine perhaps put Gascon speech into his mouth?"
"Oh, laugh if you like," exclaimed Law, rising and pacing across the great room in which these two had met. "Laugh and mock, but we shall see!"
"Granted that Mr. Law is well within his customary modesty," replied Lady Catharine, "and granted even that Mr. Law has all France in the hollow of his hand to-day, to do with as he likes, I must confess I see not why France should suffer because I myself have found it difficult to endorse Mr. Law's personal code of morals."
It was the third day after Law's entry into Paris, and the first time for more than two long years that he found himself alone with the Lady Catharine Knollys. His eagerness might have excused his impetuous and boastful speech.
As for the Lady Catharine, that one swift, electric moment at the street curb had well-nigh undone more than two years of resolve. She had heard herself, as it were in a dream, promising that this man might come. She had found herself later in her own apartments, panting, wide-eyed, afraid. Some great hand, unseen, uninvited, mysterious, had swept ruthlessly across each chord of womanly reserve and resolution which so long she had held well-ordered and absolutely under control. It was self-distrust, fear, which now compelled her to take refuge in this woman's fence of speech with him. "Surely," argued she with herself, "if love once dies, then it is dead forever, and can never be revived. Surely," she insisted to herself, "my love is dead. Then—ah, but then was it dead? Can my heart grow again?" asked the Lady Catharine of herself, tremblingly. This was that which gave her pause. It was this also which gave to her cheek its brighter color, to her eye a softer gleam; and to her speech this covering shield of badinage.
Yet all her defenses were in a way to be fairly beaten down by the intentness of the other. All things he put aside or overrode, and would speak but of himself and herself, of his plans, his opportunities, and of how these were concerned with himself and with her.
"There are those who judge not so harshly as yourself, Madam," resumed Law. "His Grace the regent is good enough to believe that my studies have gone deeper than the green cloth of the gaming table. Now, I tell you, my time has come—my day at last is here. I tell you that I shall prove to you everything which I said to you long ago, back there in old England. I shall prove to you that I have not been altogether an idler and a trifler. I shall bring to you, as I promised you long ago, all the wealth, all the distinction—"
"But such speech is needless, Mr. Law," came the reply. "I have all the wealth I need, nor do I crave distinction, save of my own selection."
"But you do not dream! This is a day unparalleled. There will be such changes here as never yet were known. Within a week you shall hear of my name in Paris. Within a month you shall hear of it beyond the gates of Paris. Within a year you shall hear nothing else in Europe!"
"As I hear nothing else here now, Monsieur?"
Like a horse restless under the snaffle, the man shook his head, but went on. "If you should be offered wealth more than any woman of Paris, if you had precedence over the proudest peers of France—would these things have no weight with you?"
"You know they would not."
Law cast himself restlessly upon a seat across the room from her. "I think I do," said he, dejectedly. "At times you drive me to my wit's end. What then, Madam, would avail?"
"Why, nothing, so far as the past is to be reviewed for you and me. Yet, I should say that, if there were two here speaking as you and I, and if they two had no such past as we—then I could fancy that woman saying to her friend, 'Have you indeed done all that lay within you to do?'"
"Is it not enough—?"
"There is nothing, sir, that is enough for a woman, but all!"
"I have given you all."
"All that you have left—after yourself."
"Sharp, sharp indeed are your words, my Lady. And they are most sharp because they come with justice."
"Oh," broke out the woman, "one may use sharp words who has been scorned for her own false friend! You would give me all, Mr. Law, but you must remember that it is only what remains after that—that—"
"But would you, could you, have cared had there been no 'that'? Had I done all that lay in me to do, could you then have given me your confidence, and could you have thought me worthy of it?"
"Oh, 'if!'"
"Yes, 'if!' 'If,' and 'as though,' and 'in that case'—these are all we have to console us in this life. But, sweet one—"
"Sir, such words I have forbidden," said Lady Catharine, the blood for one cause or another mounting again into her cheek.
"You torture me!" broke out Law.
"As much as you have me? Is it so much as that, Mr. Law?"
He rose and stood apart, his head falling in despair. "As I have done this thing, so may God punish me!" said he. "I was not fit, and am not. Yet I was bold enough to hope that there could be some atonement, some thing—if my suffering—"
"There are things, Mr. Law, for which no suffering atones. But why cause suffering longer for us both? You come again and again. Could you not leave me for a time untroubled?"
"How can I?" blazed the man, his forehead furrowed up into a frown, the moist beads on his brow proving his own intentness. "I can not! I can not! That is all I know. Ask me not why. I can not; that is all."
"Sir," said Lady Catharine, "this seems to me no less than terrible."
"It is indeed no less than terrible. Yet I must come and come again, bound some day to be heard, not for what I am, but for what I might be. 'Tis not justice I would have, dear heart, but mercy, a woman's mercy!"
"And you would bully me to agree with you, as I said, in regard to your own excellent code of morals, Mr. Law?"
"You evade, like any woman, but if you will, even have it so. At least there is to be this battle between us all our lives. I will be loved, Lady Catharine! I must be loved by you! Look in my heart. Search beneath this man that you and others see. Find me my own fellow, that other self better than I, who cries out always thus. Look! 'Tis not for me as I am. No man deserves aught for himself. But find in my heart, Lady Catharine, that other self, the man I might have been! Dear heart, I beseech you, look!"
Impulsively, he even tore apart the front of his coat, as though indeed to invite such scrutiny. He stood before her, trembling, choking. The passion of his speech caused the color again to rush to the Lady Catharine's face. For a moment her bosom rose and fell tumultuously, deep answering as of old unto deep, in the ancient, wondrous way.
"Is it the part of manhood to persecute a woman, Mr. Law?" she asked, her own uncertitude now showing in her tone.
"I do not know," he answered.
Lady Catharine looked at him curiously.
"Do you love me, Mr. Law?" she asked, directly.
"I have no answer."
"Did you love that other woman?"
It took all his courage to reply. "I am not fit to answer," said he.
"And you would love me, too, for a time and in a way?"
"I will not answer. I will not trifle."
"And I am to think Mr. Law better than himself, better than other men; since you say no man dare ask actual justice?"
"Worse than other men, and yet a man. A man—my God! Lady Catharine—a man unworthy, yet a man seized fatally of that love which neither life nor death can alter!"
As one fascinated, Lady Catharine sat looking at him. "Then," said she, "any man may say to any woman—Mr. Law says to me—'I have cared for such, and so many other women to the extent, let us say, of so many pounds sterling. But I love you to the extent of twice as many pounds, shillings and pence?' Is that the dole we women may expect, Mr. Law?"
"Have back your own words!" he cried. "Nothing is enough but all! And as God witnesseth in this hour, I have loved you with all my heart-beats, with all my prayers. I call upon you now, in the name of that love I know you once bore me—"
Upon the face of the Lady Catharine there blazed the red mark of the shame of Knollys. Covering her face with her hands, she suddenly bent forward, and from her lips there broke a sob of pain.
In a flash Law was at her side, kneeling, seeking to draw away her fingers with hands that trembled as much as her own.
"Do not! Do not!" he cried. "I am not worth it! It shall be as you like. Let me go away forever. This I can not endure!"
"Ah, John Law, John Law!" murmured Catharine Knollys, "why did you break my heart!"