Put to the test; a novel

Front matter

SC l:

t> ^ V vfc x0ox. • vTs^. ^

CN <o

Chapter I. A Sunset Scene

CHAPTER IL

CHAPTER HI.

A BIT OF FAMILY HISTORY, .

CHAPTER IV.

THE IDIOT AND HIS MASTER, .

CHAPTER Y.

CHAPTER VI.

Vlll

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VII.

A SUIT OF HEARTS, . . . 0 .76

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XHL

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

THE VIVANDIERE, 165

CONTENTS,

IX

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVIL

A SINGLE RAY OF SUNSHINE,

CHAPTER XVIII.

• •

CHAPTER XIX.

• •

CHAPTER XX.

ALMOST A RIVAL, .....

CHAPTER XXL

THE WORK OF A PRUSSIAN SPY, .

CHAPTER XXIL

• •

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE IDIOT’S MISSION, ....

CHAPTER XXIV.

. 176

. 187

. 197

. 205

. 216

. 223

. 236

. 244

. 255

X

CONTENTS,

CHAPTER XXV.

CHAPTER XXVI.

CHAPTER XXVH.

DUPREz’s UNCERTAIN VISITOR,

CHAPTER XXVIII.

CHAPTER XXIX.

WHAT A SPY DISCOVERED,

CHAPTER XXX.

AN ESCAPE NOT COUNTED UPON, .

CHAPTER XXXI.

CHAPTER XXXIL

A DEATHBED SECRET, . .

CHAPTER XXXIIL

THE RETURN TO ALSACE,

. 262

. 274

. 281

. 286

. 296

. 305

. 313

. 320

CONTENTS.

XI

CHAPTER XXXIV.

A COUNCIL OF THREE, .

CHAPTER XXXV.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE, .

CHAPTER XXXVH.

. 332

. 340

. 346

. 353

V

' ,1 .

*

*

» ft ra

.

* •

' I /iV.

PUT TO THE TEST.

o

CHAPTER L

A SUNSET SCENE.

A pretty Alsatian peasant was tapping upon the pane of a half open window. She was trying to attract the attention of a woman who was lazily resting in an old-fashioned, high-hacked rockingchair. Neglected knitting had partly fallen from her lap, and the ball of yarn had quietly rolled away and stopped full half way across the floor.

Failing to arouse the sleepy dame, the girl ceased her tapping upon the diamond-shaped panes, and throwing open the sash, caught the woman’s face in her hands, and kissed her.

The widow aroused herself, rubbed her eyes, while her face was still held in the girl’s embrace as she leaned through the window. It was a pretty

PUT TO THE TEST.

picture in the warm glow of an early Autumn sunset.

“Nodding, mother, as I live, and the sun not yet gone down behind the mountain ! ” exclaimed the girl, releasing the woman’s face, and standing beside the window-sill, turning her cheek to the sunset ; “ am I so late, that you have grown tired waiting for me ? ”

“No, child; but all the girls came down from the mountains an hour ago. Come in.”

Without an answer, the girl closed the window, and then stood for a moment leaning on the lower half of the cottage door, watching the sun go down and the wood-cutters toiling up the hill, each with his bundle of faggots across his shoulder with a heavy woodman’s axe passed through them as a handle.

The short silence was broken by the widow, who closed the window, stooped to pick up the ball of yarn, and then joined her daughter at the doorway.

“ Have you seen Pierre, Marie ? He is late this evening, and he went away almost at daybreak.”

The girl started as the woman spoke to her, and stood in silence, looking down the steep and stony -path leading towards the mountain.

“ He may have had ill-luck — the chamois, he says, have been wild lately, and that may have detained him.”

“ Then the sooner he should find his way home

A SUNSET SCENE.

again, Marie. Come in ; the air is chilly, and you must be tired after your walk. I was half asleep, I do believe, and almost dreaming.”

“ You are always ‘ almost dreaming,’ mother, when the sun goes down. Your dream to-day has been a pleasant one, I hope.”

“ It was of you, my child — and Pierre. I hope nothing has happened to him.”

The girl trembled for a second only, and still continued to look anxiously towards the mountain where the shades of brown and green, alternate rock and verdure, were fast changing color from the fading sunlight, and where the shadows were deepening as the daylight passed away.

“ I was dreaming,” she continued, quite heedless of the girl’s abstracted air, “ of the night when I found Pierre ; and I saw the storm, and the flood, and the broken trees rushing down the stream, just as plainly as though it were but yesterday. But he will soon be back, my child, and then he will have some tale to tell us of a hard chase after a chamois, and he will be tired and hungry.”

“Then he shall have a supper ready, mother, and I will get it for him.”

Marie closed the door and began her preparations for their supper, working in the twilight, and humming the refrain of a mountain song as she fanned the fire into a blaze and stood in its ruddy light before the wide, tiled fireplace.

It was an unpretending cottage, and an unpre-

PUT TO THE TEST.

tending room, quite comfortable for tlieir own immediate wants or shelter, and Julie Lascour was proud of her lithe and joyous daughter.

They were simple peasants of the Canton Alsace, and lived as all the peasants did throughout the wildly beautiful regions of Northern France, where the Rhine formed the boundary on the eastern limits, and the peaks of the Yosges served as a hiding place for the setting sun upon the western borders.

Their cottage lay, as if by accident, snugly nestled down in a patch of green sward, and the low, pointed roof marked it as one of the prevailing style in the times of the Bonaparte ascendancy in 1806-7, before the sun of the great man’s glory had verged to its decline.

“ I have heard you tell of that storm so often, mother,” said the girl, as she spread the tablecloth and set the dishes for their meal, “ that I can almost see it myself, with poor little Pierre lying by the roadside ready to be picked up and brought home and nursed by you.”

“ 1 sometimes wish that I could forget it, Marie,” sighed the widow, “but God gave him to me just where I found him, lying at the foot of the Travelers’ Cross in the Southern Pass. All that he had about him was a little crimson cloak, with a great large letter “P” worked in silk upon the corner, and a fine gold chain about his neck. I found him in the snow ; that letter must have stood for Pierre, and so I called him Pierre Niege, and that is all I know about him.”

“ Not all , mother! You know that he is brave, and good, and generous, that he loves you as his dear good mother, and he loves me — ”

“ With a little more than a brother’s love, my child. But tell me, Marie, what news is stirring at the inn — what of Napoleon and the war ? ”

“Why always of the war, mother? That is a long way off from us. Nobody seemed to know anything about it except Jean Duprez. He talked of Austerlitz and heavy losses.”

“ And what does Jean Duprez know of this war more than other people? Did he speak with you ? ”

“ Only a few words, mother. He was at the inn with Gaspard and others, and he walked part of the way with me. He says they will be coming here for conscripts, and asked me what had become of Pierre. I wonder why he seemed so anxious — do you know ? ”

“Yes, my child, I do, and you should know it, too. That man, Duprez, loves you and he knows that you love Pierre. A conscription in Alsace and Pierre sent off into the army, would please him only too well.”

“But Pierre cannot go; and if Jean Duprez asks me again about him, I will tell him so. I hate that man, mother, and I sometimes think there

PUT TO THE TEST.

must be some awful crime banging over him with its shadow ! ”

She shuddered as she spoke, and dropping her work, stood scanning the pathway with an earnest gaze. Then turning suddenly towards her mother, she placed her arms about her, and sobbed bitterly in her girlish sorrow.

“He cannot go, mother! He shall not go, 1 say ! He is all the world to me, and you love him so — ”

She turned pleadingly to the widow as she spoke, as if to seek some consolation from her grief.

“ The grand army cares nothing for a woman’s love, Marie, when the call is made for soldiers. But time enough for that, my daughter, when the trouble comes. See, there is some one coming down the mountain now, and it must be Pierre. There, dry your tears, and go to meet him, child, and tell him we are waiting supper for him.”

There was a tone of deep and earnest sadness as the widow spoke, and it seemed that Marie knew its meaning. She struggled a moment with herself, and then brushing away the tell-tale tears, she went out into the warm glowing light of the sunset, and walked briskly towards the mountain to meet the man who seemed so dear to her.

The widow watched her as she sped away, and then, tired, it seemed, of her weary watching, sank into her chair, her eyes listlessly following Marie’s retreating form as she toiled up the pathway.

A SUNSET SCENE.

“Ah, well,” she murmured, “they love each other, and I suppose that it is right. And yet, I wonder who Pierre is ? ”

She could find no answer to her query. He was a snow-drift foundling. Twenty years before, when Jacque Lascour was living, they had been at the bedside of a dying neighbor and were hurrying homeward, when they found the child, lying close upon the edge of the narrow mountain road. The wild fury of the storm was just gathering, and the hand that placed the boy upon the roadside, had counted upon the rushing of the water to carry him down into the valley, and hide forever either the evidence of some fair, trusting woman’s shame, or to remove the obstacle to some one’s pride or heritage.

And so Jacque Lascour took him in his sturdy arms and kept him from the storm, and by the dim light of their cottage lamp, scanned the features of the foundling.

He was a pretty, helpless baby — nothing more. Ho trinket, excepting a thin chain of fine gold about his neck, no parchment gave him a title to their sympathy — nothing but the letter, worked upon the cloak in which he had been wrapped, and he was almost frozen with the dampness and the cold.

And so they nurtured him and cared for him — a kindly neighbor aided in his care, and when at last the young wife found her own child, Marie, given

PUT TO THE TEST.

to her, the boy had grown to be a prattling, toddling little one, and she loved the children, giving them both a shelter and a home. f

A few years later — only a short space of years it seemed — and the dark shadow of death crossed her cottage threshold. Poor Jacque Lascour was brought home to her one day, all cut and mangled by the falling trees, and scarcely lived to give her one fond kiss, or look up into her tearful eyes, as he faded away and left the world, it seemed, alone to her.

Scanty was, at best, the store of the world’s goods which Jacque Lascour bequeathed her. A purse of silver only, and their little cottage not free from mortgage liens, and the boy and girl to struggle and to live for. All the assistance which her kindly neighbors could afford was given her ; but her cares increased, and at last at the solicitation of her friends, and under the persuasion of the good friars of the convent, Pierre was given to them and educated at the convent chapel. A few years previous to the opening of our story, he had been sent back to her, to find Marie a handsome, winsome peasant girl, the sunshine of the widow’s house, the belle of the village when the merrymakings were in vogue, and queen of all their festivals.

It was not strange, then, that he grew to love his foster-sister. And the girl learned to love him, until the history of his being found by the way-

A SUNSET SCENE.

side had caused whispers in the Canton, and the neighbors spoke to Julie of her daughter’s love for the foundling. And then, in her guileless woman’s heart she only loved him more, and pledged herself to be his wife, when the good friars would give them both a blessing and consent.

PUT TO TI1E TEST.

CHAPTER n.

AN OUTLINE OF A CHARACTER.

Jean Duprez, whose quick words and ventured opinions of Napoleon and the war, had caused the busy talkers at the inn to wag their tongues and rack their brains that day, was one of the noted characters of the Canton Alsace. He was one of the main springs of the little mountain village, claiming his ascendancy from being called the richest man in the neighborhood, and from having once been the steward to the Marquis De Brieiyies, a feudal magnate, long since dead.

Master Jean Duprez had grown to be a man of power. However doubtful his record as a steward may have been, the whispers in the Canton which concerned the administration of his late office, were often conveniently smothered by his presence, and were, in default of his personal attentions, often silenced by fear of his hard-dealing enmity.

Years before, when its owner counted nearly all the laboring and vintage people as his tenants, Jean Duprez had full control over the affairs of the castle. A lazy lord at best, the old marquis had trusted all to him, and to his discretion or his will.

J ulie Lascour — then J ulie Marchaud — was handmaid to the only daughter of the marquis ; and so it came that Duprez and the widow were old friends.

Rumor had currently reported even more than ancient friendship between them. They were suspected of even more than casual regard ; and one of the female servants had once whispered that the steward had made love to the pretty waiting-maid and had been refused.

Still the pretty Julie kept her place, and was the almost constant attendant of the daughter — a fair young creature who had been a poor sickly girl, and did not live to see her eighteenth year ; then the marquis took to himself a second wife, whom he had wooed and won somewhere among the mountains of Spain. He brought her home to live at the castle a few months after the death of his only child.

The Spanish woman who had come to live in Alsace, was a dark-eyed, high-tempered beauty, differing widely in years from the marquis. She had claimed the privilege of bringing with her from her Spanish birth-place, all the mannerisms of her country, and ruled it over the castle with

PUT TO THE TEST.

a high hand, perhaps as an equivalent for having given herself to the owner.

Whether the kindred spirits of the new corps of servants suited the temper of the ex-steward or not, it became a matter, of comment that the only women who could abide in comfort at the castle, were the half-breed servants of the new marquise. Julie Marchaud soon left, and found her home farther down in the Canton, receiving occasional visits from Jean Duprez. Then, for a time, the visits of the steward ceased altogether, and Julie Marchaud became lost to the acquaintance of those at the castle, excepting Gaspard Jarome, one of the attendants, a chum of Jean Duprez, but a man much better liked by the people of the Canton.

As time wore on there were days of merrymaking at the old grey pile. J ean Duprez made frequent visits to the village inn, and there was news of a christening to take place in the grand hall. All the village people were assembled to see the twin boys lately born to the marquise. The turrets of the grim old towers were lit with bonfires, and church service was said in the chapel at the convent for the mother and the new heirs to the De Briennes estates ; prayers for their safety and for the long life of the marquis and his pretty Spanish wife. And so, while things were drifting lazily along with the good people of the Canton, the new marquise was seldom seen, except in her traveling carriage, and Julie Marchaud, having lost her

AN OUTLINE OF A CHARACTER.

identity as one of the attendants at the castle, settled quietly down among the peasant women, and busied herself with her own affairs, while the visits of Duprez became too infrequent to be a theme of comment to her neighbors, or an annoyance to herself.

Then Jacque Lascour, a promising young wood-cutter, blithe, handsome, and generous, became her suitor. Soon after, there was a peasant wedding, a peasant greeting of flowers, and a bridal wreath was sent up to the castle. The new marquise sent the intended bride a pretty little present, and Julie Marchaud became the wife of Jacque Lascour.

For a time there was nothing new to be talked of, till there were lights seen at night in the rooms of the eastern wing of the castle De Briennes. Swift-mounted couriers were sent abroad, and stealthy visits to the distant city were made by Jean Duprez, and sometimes by Gaspard Jarom .

But the messengers went away in silence, and returned in silence, till finally, it became known that the marquis was very ill, and that the persons sent for were some of the dark-browed Spanish family of the new marquise.

At last the chapel walls were hung with mourning, and there were preparations for a funeral. The day of the burial was made almost a holiday in the Canton, and one by one the villagers trudged up the narrow road. They we;e admitted inside the castle walls, where, in the ancient ban-

PUT TO THE TEST.

quet-hall, there were prayers said for the repose of the old man’s troubled soul, and the weeping widow followed her liege lord to his lonely grave.

Duprez, then, was sole master of the estate. In a few days the relatives of the Spanish lady went away as stealthily as they came, for it soon became known that the estate was much encumbered, and that a fear of confiscation for some old alleged political offence, cut short their generous expectations; and so the steward ruled it with a high hand, and did as he pleased with land and tenant, with only the marquise to check him in his expenditures. As for the lady, she was scarcely familiar enough with the workings of the estate and castle to inquire into the management.

With no easy hand Duprez wandered among the tenants, each day adding new tithes and taxes to their rentals, and each month adding to the hatred which they felt for him. The marquise was seldom seen abroad, and there were frequent whispers among the tenantry that matters were not progressing as they should be, within the limits of the castle or without. Duprez was, as usual, sullen and exacting. Gaspard Jarome seemed in thorough fear of him, and when questioned, carefully avoided all successful inquiry by flimsy prevarication. Even the more curious of the people in the village looked up at the towers of the old castle, as though each had secrets of its own, and caught at rumors as they came from the lips of some of the incautious under-servants, with avidity and doubt.

Among this latter class of retainers there were some captious ones who did not fear to tell the truth. Their miserable stipend of wages had been from time to time reduced, and then again cut down. Duprez, on being pressed for settlement, told them in his sullen way, that the estates were mortgaged and in debt ; and so the servants left the marquise, and she was seldom seen beyond the castle walls.

Then scarcely a month after, there were rumors of her sickness, and Gaspard was heard to say that Madame la marquise was very ill, that her physicians had forbidden her staying at the castle, that she was going back to Spain, and intended to take her children with her.

It was a matter of no surprise, then, when Duprez was making his preparations for the departure. When the snows were beginning to fall, he came down to the inn and told the women that they must prepare to bid farewell to Madame la marquise and the twin boys ; and all the servants excepting old Lisette, the housekeeper, and Gaspard Jarome were discharged and sent away.

Early one morning, before people were fully awake, there was a rumbling of wheels upon the stony road, and a heavy traveling-carriage, with outriders by the windows, came down from out the castle gates. The grim face of the steward

PUT TO THE TEST.

was seen at the carriage window, and a dark-eyed lady, wrapped in a heavy traveling shawl, put her pale cheeks close to the glass as they hurried by, and passed away from Alsace.

It was a matter of comment only for a few days, a month, perhaps, and then even curiosity grew threadbare, and people merely wondered when, if ever, Duprez was coming back.

Gaspard and Lisette knew nothing — at least, they said so ; except that the marquise was ill, and that they feared that neither she nor the children would survive the journey. It was a cold and stormy season, and they were but poorly provided for their route. But the young widow had insisted on taking the journey, and so it would be her own folly, and not their fault, or Jean Duprez’s, if harm should befall her.

At last the steward showed his face to them again. At the close of the day, in the early Spring time, he came slowly up the narrow road, mounted on a jaded horse. He was tired, he said, after a long journey, and sent for Gaspard Jarome to meet him at the auberge at the foot of the mountain.

Both Gaspard and the steward seemed gloomy . and foreboding after their long interview. They were closeted in one of the upper rooms for the better part of the night, and a notary from the adjoining Canton was sent for by a courier. He came, and went away again, carrying with him a bundle of heavily sealed papers, given him by

AX OUTLINE OF A CHARACTER. 29

Gaspard, and securely fastened in a poach behind his saddle.

And then the story of the twin boys’ death was told ; and how the young and feeble mother, unable to endure the grief of their demise, had found an early grave in a small town just over the Spanish border, and had sent her faithful steward home to discharge the debts of the estate, with what there should remain to pay them with.

Papers of great value to the empire had been found among the records and parchments hidden away in the strong, iron-bound boxes of the old marquis, and the estates were, for some political offences of long standing, confiscated and ordered to be sold.

Before the sale, however, and while Duprez was away pleading with the officers of the state to release their hold upon the castle, and while old Lisette and Gaspard were keeping vigil at its gates, a fire occurred, and all of the northen wing and turrets were destroyed.

There was but little left to purchase, so Duprez contrived to arrange a settlement, and took the ruins in his own hands, living in them for a time, and finally, with Gaspard Jarorne as comrade, and old Lisette as housewife, he had left the crumbling pile and established himself in a cottage down among the people in the valley.

A few words concerning this cottage and its occupants will be essential, as a necessary link in

PUT TO THE TEST.

the chain, explanatory of Jean Duprez’s relations toward Gaspard Jarome.

Master and servant they were, and yet sometimes companions. They lived pent up within the narrow circle of their own home. If they fought and quarreled no one cared, and Lisette was doubtless used to their eternal growling at each other.

Besides themselves, there was one other occupant of the cottage. Franz, an idiot boy, a protege of Jean Duprez, to whom he had given a home and took good care to give but little else. The story of the lad’s life was a mystery. He had wandered into the castle a few years before, with a band of gypsies, so the villagers had been told, and Duprez had given him a shelter.

If there was any secret connected with his history, no one knew of it, for Gaspard as a general thing, and Lisette, when any one dared to question her, were commendably reticent.

Once, and once only, Lisette had mentioned that before the fire at the castle, the lad had lived with them, but who his parents were, she either would not, or could not divulge. He had run away, they said, and they were glad to escape the infliction of his presence till he came back again with the wanderers, and then Duprez had given him a home, either from caprice or possible necessity.

Whatever mysteries there may have been at the old castle, they were either obliterated by the fire, or hidden away in the forbidden precincts of Duprez’s house, and they were thoroughly safe in the keeping of Gaspard,. Duprez, and their sombre and snarling old companion, who wandered about at a respectful distance and was cheerfully allowed to maintain her reserve intact.

The homely stone-foundationed house in which they lived was scarcely more inviting within than its outside appearance would suggest. Jean Duprez, however, well as he may have lived at the castle, where tne purse of its careless and confiding owner paid the reckoning, was by no means lordly in his hospitality at home.

They lived frugally and carefully. Duprez at best was a man of uncertain nature and peculiar habits ; and had, moreover, imbued those living with him with the same odd fancies.

Lisette was a fitting helpmate to the worthy twain. She seemed to have some affection for the idiot boy, only. Gaspard was scarcely a shade better than Duprez, watching and waiting for the ex-steward’s return from his daily walk or business, for he seldom rode, and had a habit of coming home just when it pleased his fancy or suited his convenience to do so.

He expected a welcome also, from his other lodgers, and while they lived in such seclusion, Duprez was a lord of wide means but small domain it seemed, and had less than a guard of honor for his tenantry, to whom his social relations were rather more of a problem than a certainty.

PUT TO THE TEST.

Chapter III. A Bit Of Family History

At the cottage door of Master Jean Duprez, just as the sun went down, there was an ill-natured couple ; Gaspard and Lisette were ugly towards each other, perhaps because they dared not be ugly towards Duprez.

“Jean is late to-day,” the woman said, as she crouched with her shoulders bent low and her head resting on her hands. “ Have you seen him yet, or do you know where he has gone ? ”

Her inquiry was a mild but decisive one, and, being addressed in quick tones to Gaspard, he turned lazily, as he sat smoking in the doorway, and curled the smoke up at her, leaning back familiarly towards the chair in which she happened to be sitting.

“ No — but I am getting hungry.”

“And not the first time either, Gaspard, that we have both been hungry. I wish that we were clear of Duprez and his house together.”

Then why not rid yourself of the burden ? It’s

A BIT OF FAMILY HISTORY.

a very easy thing for you to do,” suggested Gaspard in a mocking tone, as if insinuating that there was some hidden relationship with Duprez, which the woman would gladly sever if she dared to do so.

“ And have you tattle on me, I suppose,” she growled in answer. “You love him no better than I do, my man, but you have not the courage to show your hate.”

Lisette was not wide of the truth. Why she remained so constant to Duprez, was a secret from Gaspard; and why Gaspard seemed almost inseparable from the ex-steward was a secret from Lisette. All that she cared to acknowledge, was that she submitted to growlings and grumblings from them both, and moved about the house in a shadow of uncertainty as to her life and actions.

The taunt she gave him kept him quiet for a few moments, and then, with a hasty leer at her, he quietly remarked :

“ Why, marry him, Lisette — you’re old enough, and then adopt that half-witted lad for a step-son, and make him the heir to all your large estates. He’d be an ornament to your household, and a match for some gypsy girl who fancied such a fellow for a husband.”

There was a biting, keen-edged sarcasm in the words, and the woman glared at him like a tigress.