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Title: The Yellow Poppy
Author: Broster, D. K. (Dorothy Kathleen)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Yellow Poppy" ***
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THE YELLOW POPPY
BY
D. K. BROSTER
AUTHOR OF MR. ROWL, ETC.
DUCKWORTH
3, HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON, W:C:
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_First Published_ — 1920
_Second Impression_ — 1925
_Third Impression_ — 1926
TO
GERTRUDE SCHLICH
MOST GENEROUS AND INSPIRING OF CRITICS
THIS BOOK
WHICH IS SO MUCH HERS ALREADY
“I love you, loved you . . . loved you first and last,
And love you on for ever . . .
. . . I had known the same
Except that I was prouder than I knew,
And not so honest. Aye, and as I live
I should have died so, crushing in my hand
This rose of love, the wasp inside and all,—
Ignoring ever to my soul and you
Both rose and pain,—except for this great loss,
This great despair . . .”
_Aurora Leigh._
CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE WEDDING GIFT
I. “WHAT IS MIRABEL?” 11
II. THE GIFT IS OFFERED 19
III. THE GIFT IS RECEIVED 29
IV. A VERY YOUNG MAN 41
V. _TU MARCELLUS ERIS_ 49
BOOK II
MIRABEL
I. M. THIBAULT IN CONVERSATION 63
II. LE PALAIS DE FAIENCE 71
III. NINE YEARS—AND BEYOND 78
IV. JADIS 88
V. THE JASPER CUP 99
VI. THE ROMAUNT OF ROLAND 111
VII. CHILDE ROLAND COMES TO THE DARK TOWER 119
VIII. HIS SOJOURN THERE 126
IX. HIS DEPARTURE THENCE 135
X. THE KNIGHT’S MOVE 141
XI. CHECK TO THE KNIGHT 155
XII. THE ROOK’S MOVE: CHECK TO THE ROOK 165
XIII. THE BISHOP’S MOVE 177
XIV. PLOTTER AND PRIEST 184
XV. UNDER THE SEAL 191
XVI. THE QUEEN’S MOVE 198
BOOK III
LE CLOS-AUX-GRIVES
I. THE COURT OF CHARLEMAGNE 209
II. M. DE KERSAINT ANSWERS FOR A KINSMAN 215
III. M. DE KERSAINT ANSWERS FOR HIMSELF 225
IV. A MOONLIGHT WALK IN THE FOREST 236
V. WHAT THE ABBÉ THOUGHT OF IT 246
VI. _MEMINI ET PERMANEO_ 253
VII. THE CHURCH MILITANT 260
VIII. THE PAWN RETURNS TO THE BOARD 267
IX. THE CHOICE 278
X. “AFTERWARDS” 286
XI. AMONG THE WATCHERS 295
XII. THE CENTRE OF THE LABYRINTH 304
BOOK IV
THE YELLOW POPPY
I. FULFILMENT 315
II. THE YELLOW POPPY 324
III. THE COST OF ANSWERED PRAYER 331
IV. WAR . . . AND TREATIES 340
V. ALONE IN ARMS 353
VI. “SWORD, THY NOBLER USE IS DONE!” 362
VII. HOW AT THE LAST THE WINE WAS NOT DRUNK 371
VIII. WHAT WAS LEARNT AT VANNES 381
IX. THE RUBIES OF MIRABEL 387
X. THE LAST CONFLICT 398
XI. GASTON GIVES UP THE YELLOW POPPY 411
XII. FOR SOME THE WORLD IS EMPTY 421
XIII. TO THE UTTERMOST 432
BOOK I
THE WEDDING GIFT
“And so, self-girded with torn strips of hope,
Took up his life, as if it were for death
(Just capable of one heroic aim),
And threw it in the thickest of the world.”
_Aurora Leigh._
NOTE
Any reader familiar with the figure of the gallant and unfortunate Louis
de Frotté will realise why neither he nor the Normandy which he led so
well play any part in these pages—not indeed that he has served as
prototype for any character in them, but because to have introduced him
also would have been to overblacken the reputation of Bonaparte. Yet
that which is here laid to the First Consul’s charge is no libel, for
the deeds done at Alençon and Verneuil in mid-February, 1800, are
written in history.
CHAPTER I
“WHAT IS MIRABEL?”
“I wish I had been taught how to make a bed!” complained Roland de
Céligny, as he wrestled with his blanket in the half-darkness of the
attic.
“You may think yourself lucky to have a bed to make!” retorted a comrade
who sat cross-legged on a neighbouring pile of sacking. “Mine cannot be
‘made,’ though a careless movement will reduce it to its component
elements.”
“The devil! If I tuck in the blanket this side, it won’t reach to the
other!” pursued the young grumbler, fiercely demonstrating the truth of
his accusation, where he knelt by a mattress placed directly on the
floor.
“From this, my paladin, learn that the gifts of Fate are evenly
distributed,” returned he of the pile of sacking. Since one of his arms
was in a sling, it is possible that he would not have been capable even
of the Vicomte de Céligny’s unfruitful exertions, but he did not say so.
On the contrary, he looked at his friend’s performance with the air of
one who in a moment will say, “Let me do it!”
“If you would only take less——” he began.
“For Heaven’s sake be quiet, you two!” entreated a third voice. “One
cannot count, much less think, in your chatter . . . Two
tierce-majors. . . .”
The owner of this voice, a man of about forty-five or fifty, sat at a
table in a corner playing piquet by candlelight with another. There is
no reason why you should not play piquet, even if you are a Chouan
officer in the late April of the year of grace 1799—or, if you prefer
it, which in that case is unlikely, Floréal of the year VII of the
Republic—and are concealed at the top of an old house at Hennebont in
Brittany with a bandage on your head, and an ache within it which may
well justify a little impatience to noise. When, in addition, your
partner refuses to play for money, the game becomes so harmless as
almost to be meritorious.
To the appeal of the piquet-player—his superior officer into the
bargain—the wounded critic on the sacking made no reply save a grimace.
The time selected for bedmaking by the very good-looking young man who
was engaged in it was not, as might be guessed, a morning hour; it was,
on the contrary, nine o’clock in the evening. Two candles stuck in the
necks of bottles gave the card-players their requisite illumination;
another, standing on a dilapidated chest of drawers, shone on the book
which a third young man, sitting astride a chair, had propped on its
back and in which he appeared to be immersed.
The attic thus meagrely lit was spacious, and full of odd corners, but
crowded with tables and chairs and cupboards, for it was the top floor
of a furniture dealer, where he stored his old or unfashionable goods,
many of which had been piled up on the top of each other to make more
room, and where two or three huge old wardrobes, jutting out like dark
shadowy rocks from the walls, still further reduced the space available
for occupation. Yet though it was, patently, a refuge, it was also a
rendezvous.
In this spring of 1799 the Directory, the cruel and incapable, was still
prolonging its dishonoured existence, and after ten years of torment the
French people were still enslaved—to an oligarchy instead of to a
monarchy. The liberty dangled so long before their eyes, the liberty in
whose name so many terrible crimes had been committed, seemed further
away than ever. Inert and exhausted, pining under a leprosy of political
corruption, her credit and trade almost ruined, the mere ghost of what
she had been, France was sighing for the master that she was impotent to
give herself, the man who should overturn her new tyrants and raise her
up once more to her full stature. And to most minds in the West, that
home of loyalty, only one master was conceivable, and that was Louis
XVIII., the King who had never reigned.
In the West, moreover, at this moment, the Chouannerie, that sporadic
guerrilla warfare of profoundly Royalist and Catholic stamp, indigenous
to Brittany, Anjou, and Maine since the overthrow of the great Vendean
effort in 1793, was showing signs of reviving—under persecution. It had
indeed been temporarily stamped out at the pacification of three years
ago, but that pacification had left the Royalists of Brittany and the
neighbouring departments in a position which gradually proved to be
intolerable. They were not at war, yet they lived in continual peril,
not one of them sure of his liberty or even of his life. After the
scandalous _coup d’état_ of Fructidor, ’97, the promised religious
freedom was not even a name, and political freedom, especially in the
western departments whose elections had been so cynically annulled, was
a mere farce. It came, in fact, at last to this, that the Minister of
Police could recommend that the Royalists of those regions should be
“caused to disappear” if necessary; tyranny unashamed had replaced
oppression.
Naturally enough, in 1798 the Chouan began to make his appearance once
more. At first he merely robbed couriers and diligences of public money.
But this not very creditable activity was on the surface; underneath, in
the hands usually of gentlemen, the work went secretly forward of
organising that indomitable and tenacious peasantry, at once pious and
cruel, and of transforming brigandage into real war; and so, throughout
the West, might be found wandering Royalist leaders with their little
staffs, striving to keep effective the Chouans who had once fought, and
to enrol and arm fresh volunteers. To such a band, commanded by the
Marquis de Kersaint, an _émigré_ distinguished in Austrian service who
had not long come over from England, belonged these five men in the
furniture-dealer’s attic.
They were not, at this moment, in very enviable case, for besides that
two of them were wounded, they and their handful of peasants—since
scattered—had yesterday come off second best in an unexpected collision
with Government troops in the neighbouring department of Finistère, and
they were now beginning, moreover, to be anxious about the safety of
their leader, who, with a guide, had taken a more circuitous route to
Hennebont in order to gather certain information. And his presence here
was urgent because it had long been arranged that he and his two elder
subordinates should meet and confer in Hennebont with Georges Cadoudal,
the famous peasant leader of the Morbihan, concerning the better
organisation of the wilder and more westerly region of Finistère, which,
it was whispered, M. de Kersaint was eventually to command in its
entirety. Yesterday’s misfortune had made such a meeting more, not less,
necessary; and so here, half-fugitive, M. de Kersaint’s officers were,
having had the luck to slip unobserved into the little town in the dusk.
But now there were rumours of a _colonne mobile_ on the road which their
leader would probably take; and in any case there was always
danger—danger which the three young men who formed a sort of bodyguard
of aides-de-camp to him considered would have been lessened for him had
they shared his odyssey. But M. de Kersaint had apparently thought
otherwise.
* * * * *
The game of cards in the corner came at last to an end, and the
opponents added up their scores.
“You have won, Comte,” said the bandaged player’s adversary, leaning
back in his chair. The candle-light which threw up his companion’s
somewhat harsh features shone in his case on a nondescript round face
with no salient characteristics. By this and by his peasant’s attire he
might well have been a small farmer; but on the other, him addressed as
“Comte,” the gaily embroidered Breton vest and short coat sat less
naturally.
“Yes, I suppose I have,” returned the latter. He drew out his watch and
frowned. “They ought really to be here by now,” he observed.
“I doubt if it is quite dark enough outside,” replied his late
adversary. “Le Blé-aux-Champs would hardly risk bringing M. de Kersaint
into Hennebont while light remained.”
“I wish he had not gone to Scaër,” muttered the other.
“You do not think that anything has happened to M. le Marquis, do you,
sir?” asked Roland de Céligny.
“No,” replied M. de Kersaint’s second-in-command. “I will not believe in
misfortune; it is the way to bring it about.”
“Perhaps this is they,” suggested Artamène de la Vergne, the youth with
his arm in a sling, as a step was heard on the echoing stairs. And even
the silent reader lifted his head from his book to listen.
But the moment of suspense which followed was not lightened when the
door opened and old M. Charlot, the furniture-dealer, himself appeared
on the threshold, candle in hand, tinted spectacles on nose. In a
silence of expectancy he came in and shut the door carefully behind him,
while five pairs of eyes stared at him uneasily.
“Gentlemen,” he began in a cautious voice, looking round on the forms
ensconced among his shadowy furniture, “is not one of you a priest?”
The second piquet-player bent forward. “Yes, I am,” he surprisingly
admitted. “Do you want me?”
“There is an old lady very ill next door, Monsieur l’Abbé, an old Mlle
Magny, who has been a respected inhabitant of this town for many years.
It is not that she wants a confessor or the Last Sacraments, because she
had them two or three days ago; it is that to-night she is wandering so
much that her niece, who looks after her, came in to me about it just
now in great distress. The old lady seems to have something on her mind,
and Mme Leclerc thought that if she could get a priest, an _insermenté_,
of course——”
The Abbé who looked so little of an Abbé interrupted. “I am quite ready
to go to her, Monsieur Charlot, if it is necessary, but I should have
thought that, rather than summon a stranger, the poor lady’s relatives
would have had recourse to the priest who confessed her the other day.”
“Yes, mon père,” replied the old man, “but you see he lives very retired
outside the town since Fructidor, and there is always a certain risk for
him in coming, and seeing that you were on the spot, and not known here
for a priest . . .”
The word “risk” appeared to have decided the question, for at it the
Abbé in the peasant’s dress had risen.
“I will come at once,” he said without more ado, and walked round an
intervening barrier of upturned chairs.
“That is very good of your reverence,” said M. Charlot in a tone of
relief, moving towards the door. “She has been an excellent Christian in
her time, that poor lady, and shrewd enough too, but now she lies there,
so her niece says, talking continually of some place—or person,
maybe—called Mirabel, and of a wedding. And nothing——”
“_Mirabel!_” ejaculated the Abbé, stopping short.
“O, Monsieur l’Abbé!” exclaimed M. Charlot, struck by his tone, “if you
know something about this Mirabel, then surely the good God has sent you
to the poor soul! I will take you there at once.”
He opened the door for the priest, who went through it without another
word. None of the three young men, all watching these two protagonists,
noticed that the wounded piquet-player also had risen abruptly from his
seat at the mention of the name which had so affected his companion, had
stared after them a second or two, and that he now let himself fall into
his chair again with a despondent gesture, and took his bandaged head
between his hands.
“Now the Abbé’s got a job to occupy him,” said Artamène de la Vergne in
a sleepy voice. “I wish I had; or that M. de Kersaint and Le
Blé-aux-Champs would arrive quickly, so that I could go to sleep without
the prospect of being waked up again immediately.”
“The true campaigner can sleep at any time, and for any length of time,”
remarked Roland complacently. “It is early yet, at least I think so. My
watch has stopped.”
“And mine is lost,” responded the Chevalier de la Vergne. “Lucien is
sure to have his, and it is sure to be correct. Ask him the time.”
“Lucien!” said Roland. No answer from the reader.
“Lucien, deaf adder!” supplemented Artamène.
“I believe he is asleep,” muttered the Vicomte de Céligny, and by a
snake-like elongation of body and arm he contrived to reach a leg of the
student’s chair and to shake the same.
“I wish _you_ were asleep!” exclaimed his victim, lifting a mildly
exasperated face. “What in Heaven’s name do you want?”
“The time, dear friend.”
Lucien du Boisfossé pulled the watch from his fob. “A quarter—no,
seventeen minutes past nine.”
“What are you reading?” demanded Artamène.
“The _Æneid_ of Virgil,” replied Lucien, his eyes on the page again.
The questioner gave an exclamation, almost of horror. “Ye gods! He is
reading Latin—for amusement!”
“A quarter past nine,” remarked Roland reflectively. “This time
yesterday I was——”
“Don’t chatter so, Roland le preux! You disturb our Latinist . . . and
also,” added Artamène in a lower tone, “run the risk of breaking into M.
de Brencourt’s meditations. Look at him!”
The bandaged piquet-player, who still sat by the table, seemed indeed
sunk in a profound abstraction, letting the idle cards fall one by one
from his fingers. It was plain that he did not know what he was doing.
“I wager he is thinking of a woman,” whispered Artamène, bringing
himself nearer to his friend. “It seems a quieting occupation; suppose
we think of one too! But on whom shall I fix my thoughts . . . and you,
Roland?”
A slight flush, invisible in the poor light, dyed young de Céligny’s
cheek as he answered, with a suspicion of embarrassment, “I will think
of that poor old lady next door. Will the Abbé exorcise her, do you
think, from the spell of . . . what was it—Mirabel? And, by the way,
what is Mirabel?”
“The name of a kind of plum, ignoramus,” replied Lucien du Boisfossé
unexpectedly. He yawned as he spoke.
“Plainly our Lucien has been studying the Georgics also,” commented
Artamène.
“An encyclopaedia would be more to the point!” retorted Roland. And
raising his voice, he said, “Comte, what is Mirabel?”
The older man heard, even with a little start. He laid down the cards
and came out of his reverie.
“Mirabel, gentlemen, is the name of a property and château near Paris,
the château that was begun for François I. You may have heard of it. It
belongs, or belonged, to the Duc de Trélan.”
“Trélan,” observed the young Chevalier de la Vergne reflectively. “I
seem to remember the name in connection with the prison massacres in
September, ’92. He was killed in them, I think?”
“No,” replied the Comte de Brencourt sombrely. “He was never in prison.
He had emigrated. It was his wife who was butchered—with Mme de
Lamballe.”
“Morbleu!” exclaimed Artamène. “And the Duc is still alive, then?”
“I believe so,” replied M. de Brencourt, even more sombrely.
“Where is he now?” asked Roland.
“Somewhere abroad—in England or Germany.”
“Worse than being dead!” observed Artamène, lying down and pulling the
covering over him.
CHAPTER II
THE GIFT IS OFFERED
And next door, in a tidy but overcrowded bedroom, the Abbé Chassin,
without any of the marks of his office, sat and listened to the babbling
of an old spinster lady who was to terminate an uneventful and
singularly respectable life as the messenger of destiny to not a few
people.
The heavy curtains were pulled back from the side of the small
fourposter by which the priest sat, and the candlelight fell soft and
steady on the old, old blanched face within the neat capfrill, itself
scarcely whiter than the visage it surrounded. On the waxlike
countenance, amid all the signs of nearing death, was the imprint of
that masterfulness which sometimes descends with age upon a certain type
of old lady. And Mlle Magny was talking, talking continuously and
pitifully, her eyes fixed, her shrivelled fingers pleating and plucking
the edge of the sheet in the last fatal restlessness. Those hands were
the only things that moved.
“I ought to have had it ready . . . but I did not know in time, I did
not know! All these years to have had it in the family, and not to have
known that it was there! But perhaps I shall be in time after all—they
cannot have come back from the chapel yet, surely. But I must be quick,
I must be quick! . . . and when the bride gives round the sword-knots
and the fans to all the fine company I shall offer my gift to the young
Duc. But I must be quick . . .”
And the withered hands, abandoning the sheet, began to fumble over the
bed as if searching for something.
The Abbé bent forward and laid one of his own gently on the nearer.
“Cannot I help you, my daughter—cannot I do something for you?”
The eyes turned a moment; the brain, deeply absorbed in the past though
it was, seemed to grasp this intrusion from the present, even to the
pastoral mode of address.
“You are a priest, Monsieur? That is good—that is good! Yes, you can
open this casket for me,” and she made as if she held it. “And inside
you will find the wedding gift for the young Duc de Trélan—but you must
be quick, quick! They will be back from the chapel! . . . Ah, I cannot
find the key—I cannot turn the lock! My God, if I should be too late
after all! Mon père, mon père, help me! . . . But, mon père, you are
doing nothing!”
The Abbé looked round in desperation. He could see nothing that at all
resembled a locked casket among the little treasures of the old lady’s
room, the pincushions, the images of devotion, all the prim collection
of a blameless lifetime. But in a moment the struggle with the imaginary
lock came to an end, and as the tired hands relaxed a smile crept about
Mlle Magny’s indrawn mouth.
“How handsome he is, Monseigneur Gaston!” she said in a tone of
admiration. “My dear lady will be proud of him to-day! They will dance
to-night after the wedding, and I shall see it all, as my lady wishes.
But none of the fine ladies there will have given the bride such a gift
as I shall give the bridegroom, though I am only his dear mother’s
maid. . . . But why does the Abbé not bring it to me? When the bride
gives round the swordknots and the fans——”
“Madame,” gently interrupted the priest, “if you will tell me where your
gift is, I will bring it to you instantly.”
A look of cunning swept over the dying old woman’s face, and a faint
sound that was like a chuckle came from her lips.
“Ah, no, I have hidden it well!” she replied unexpectedly, “hidden it
nearly as securely as the treasure of Mirabel itself. You will not find
it in a hurry, Clotilde!”
Who was Clotilde, wondered the priest? The niece with whom she lived,
probably. But what was this about a ‘treasure’ in Mirabel?
“To think,” went on the old voice musingly, “that the precious paper was
all these years in Cousin François’ dining-room, and all those scores of
years before that, since the time it was stolen. And all the dead and
gone Duchesses might have had the rubies to wear. I might have clasped
the necklace round my sainted lady’s own neck. Now the new Duchesse will
be the first to put it round her pretty throat.”
The priest gave a little shiver. Still that wedding eight-and-twenty
years ago! . . . Since then the pretty throat of which she spoke had
known a very different necklace . . . but of the same colour . . .
“But if you have hidden the rubies, Madame,” he hazarded, bewildered
between the ‘treasure’ and the ‘paper,’ the ‘gift’ and what was
concealed, “you will not be able to give them to the bride.”
“It was not I who hid them!” responded Mlle Magny impatiently. “It was
the first Duc, in the days of Mazarin, who hid a great store of money
and jewels at Mirabel. And no one was ever able to find them again.
Stolen . . . hidden . . . hidden . . . stolen . . . they make a
beautiful couple, and when Monseigneur de Paris has married them and the
nuptial mass is finished. . . .”
A long pause. Then the old lady whispering, “Sainte Vierge, how tired I
am!” clasped her hands on her breast. The Abbé got up and bent over her.
Her eyes were closed, and he heard her murmur indistinctly, “_Mater
amabilis, virgo prudentissima_, grant me soon to see my sainted lady!”
To be on the brink of so important, so long-lost a secret—too late for
it to be of use . . . yet, after all, perhaps, not too late—and to be
baffled at the very moment of discovery! When such an extraordinary
coincidence had brought him, of all men in the world, to this bedside,
for its possessor to take the secret unrevealed out of life with her! It
was hard!
Yet, as M. Chassin was a priest, he put away regret, and tried to think
only of the needs of this soul about to pass through the great door.
Mlle Magny had had the last rites, that he knew. Was the moment come for
the commendatory prayer? He slipped his fingers round her wrist. But the
pulse, though feeble and irregular, was not at the last flutter. And
slowly, as if his touch had roused her, the old lady opened her eyes
again. The look in them was different; meeting it, the priest knew that
she was no longer wandering in the mists of nearly thirty years ago. She
was back in the present; so much so, indeed, that she was capable of
astonishment at seeing this unknown man in peasant’s dress bending over
her—more, of resenting it.
“Who are you, Monsieur, and . . . what . . . what are you doing here?”
she demanded, in a tone which, if scarcely more than the frailest of
whispers, yet conveyed some of that masterfulness which was written on
her face.
“I am a priest, Madame, an _insermenté_, and M. Charlot, your neighbour,
brought me here, at your niece’s desire.”
“Clotilde always . . . takes too much upon herself,” said the thread of
a voice in a tone of displeasure. “I have already had . . . the Last
Sacraments.”
“Yes, Madame,” assented M. Chassin, realising that Mlle Magny’s recovery
of her senses was not advancing him much. “It was not for the purpose of
administering you that I came.”
Her look asked him what his purpose was.
“Because, my daughter, you were speaking of—Mirabel.”
“Nonsense!” retorted Mlle Magny quite sharply. “I am not in . . . in the
habit of . . . discussing my past life with strangers!”
“You have been ill, Madame,” said the priest gently. “And has not
Mirabel something to do with your present life too?” Then, being a man
who knew how to wait, he took his seat beside her again, and exercised
this power.
“Have I been wandering?” asked the dying woman, suddenly turning her
eyes upon him.
“A little, yes.”
“I have been very ill . . . and they tell me I shall not get
better. . . . Is that so, Father?”
“It is what I have been given to understand, my daughter. But you have
made your peace with God.”
“Yes,” said she. “But there is something else that I desire to do . . .
before I die . . . yet God knows how I am to do it.”
The priest bent forward. “God does indeed know, my daughter, and it was
doubtless He Who sent me here to-day. You wish, do you not, to give into
the hands of the Duc de Trélan a paper now in your possession concerning
a treasure which has been for many years hidden in his château of
Mirabel.”
A flush rose in the ivory face. “I talked of that?”
“Of that—and of a wedding at Mirabel.”
Mlle Magny put a trembling hand over her eyes. “Indeed, you must forgive
me! . . . All these years I cannot forget it—the lights, the jewels,
the beauty of that couple, my lady’s happiness. For I was tirewoman, mon
père, during many years, to the Duchesse Eléonore, the Dowager Duchess,
a saint on earth. God rest her soul! She only lived for a short time
after her son’s marriage.”
The priest nodded, as one who knows already. “I, too, have cause to say
‘God rest her!’—And the paper you spoke of?”
“What paper?” demanded the old voice, suddenly suspicious again.
“The paper containing the secret of the hoard hidden at Mirabel in
Mazarin’s time, which has come into your hands, Madame, and which you
were wishing that you could have given to the Duc de Trélan on his
wedding day so many years ago.”
There was silence from the bed. “Well,” said the old lady at last, with
more animation, “if I told you . . . all that . . . I may as well tell
you the rest.”
And slowly, with pauses for breath, she told him how the Duc de Trélan
of Mazarin’s day, implicated in the rebellion of the Fronde, and not
knowing which party would finally triumph in that kaleidoscope of civil
conflict, buried gold and jewels in his once-royal château of Mirabel
and made a memorandum of the hiding-place for his son, then away
fighting with Condé. The Duc himself had to flee before Mazarin’s
vengeance and died in exile; Mirabel was for a space confiscated, and
when the next Duc was reinstated the treasure could not be found. The
memorandum of its hiding-place had been stolen by the late Duc’s
steward, who offered to sell it for a large sum to the successor to the
title. Suspecting a hoax the latter refused; yet, as was not difficult
for a great noble in those days, he procured a _lettre de cachet_
against the offender, who dragged out the rest of his life in prison.
Before his arrest, however, he had placed the memorandum in the hands of
a friend; but the friend never took any steps to utilise it, and merely
preserved it in such a manner that it was to all intents and purposes
lost—for he pasted the parchment, face downwards, against the back of
his wife’s portrait. Probably, said the old lady, he was waiting till
the man who had confided it to him came out of prison; but this the
steward never did, and a short time before his death in captivity his
friend, Mlle Magny’s great-great-grandfather, died too. And there,
gummed against the picture of the flourishing bourgeoise dame of Louis
XIII.’s day, the parchment had remained for nearly a hundred and fifty
years, till, some two years ago, on Cousin François’ death, the portrait
had come into Mlle Magny’s possession, and the old lady herself, in
examining it, had lighted on the parchment, and realised of what irony
Fate was capable.
“Ah, if only I had had it earlier!” she concluded wistfully. “What a
gift to have made my sainted lady, who was sometimes pressed for money
for her charities, since, like all the Saint-Chamans, both her husband
and her son spent their means royally. And now these two years that I
have had it it is useless! Where is the Duc de Trélan now? Alas, we know
where his wife, the Duchesse Valentine, went! . . . And what is Mirabel
to-day?”
“No, Madame,” said the priest, as the voice ceased exhausted, “two years
ago you could have done nothing. But to-day, as Heaven has so ordered
it, you can give that paper to the Duc de Trélan, if you wish.”
She turned her sunken eyes on him again. The lustre was already fading.
“And how is that, if you please?”
“Because I am . . . in close touch with the Duc. If you commit the paper
to me he shall have it before—before I am many days older.”
“But—if he is still alive—he is an émigré . . . has been an émigré for
many years!” objected Mlle Magny incredulously.
“Nevertheless I am in close touch with him.”
The failing eyes of the sick woman searched his face—that commonplace
visage out of which looked neither good nor evil. It was difficult to
read.
“I have nothing but your word for that,” she said, while suspicion and a
wistful desire to trust him strove together in look and tone.
The priest put his hand into a pocket of his embroidered vest and pulled
out an ornate rosary of ebony and silver. Taking one of the silver
paternoster beads between his finger and thumb; he bent over Mlle Magny
and held it near her eyes. “Can you see what is engraved on that bead,
Madame? It is not a sacred emblem.”
The old lady put up her feeble hand and tried to push his a little
further off. “You are holding it too near, mon père,” she said
irritably. “I am not so blind as that. . . . It looks like . . . it is
very worn . . . yet it looks like a bird of some kind, with wings
outspread. What is that doing on a chaplet? Is it on the rest of the
beads?”
He showed her. “Victor, Cardinal de Trélan, in the early days of the
century, seems to have had a strange fancy for his family crest on his
rosary. There is his monogram on one bead. That bird, Madame, is the
Trélan phoenix, and the present Duc gave me this old rosary at my
ordination.”
Instantly she seized his hand. “The Trélan phoenix! Let me look again!
Yes, it is, it is! Ah, to see it once more after all these years!” And
as the priest relinquished the chaplet, the Duchesse Eléonore’s
tirewoman, almost sobbing, put it to her lips.
The Abbé waited, and after a moment she turned on him moist eyes and
said, puzzled, “But . . . but . . . I seem to remember . . . ordination
. . . the Cardinal’s rosary . . . it was surely to the young Duc’s
foster-brother, a Breton peasant, whom I never saw . . . that it was
given . . . when he took orders?”
“You remember quite rightly, Madame. And I am that foster-brother, that
Breton peasant, Pierre Chassin.”
Had he suddenly revealed himself as Louis XVIII. or the Comte d’Artois
the devoted old spinster could scarcely have shown more emotion.
“God be praised! God be praised for this mercy!” she quavered. “His
foster-brother! Yes, I remember hearing from my lady all about your
mother. Six years before I entered her service it was . . .”
“—Remembering then, Madame, what I too owe to your lady of blessed
memory, and to the Duc, who, as you probably know, had me educated and
gave me a cure on his estates in the south, you may trust me, may you
not, with the document?”
“Yes, indeed!” returned the old lady, and there was no shadow of doubt
in her tone now. But the shock of joy, her devotion to the great family
with whom her life had been bound up, and the advent of this man who, if
he were not himself the rose, was almost a graft from the tree—all
these seemed to have benumbed her faculties, for she lay quiet, tears of
weakness and happiness stealing from under the closed lids. Presently
she said,
“He is in France again then, the Duc?”
“I am afraid I cannot tell you that, my daughter. But, on the faith of a
Christian and a priest he shall have the secret in his hands very
shortly.”
“He will not be able to make use of it now.”
“Who knows? And if not now, when happier days come, perhaps. If he can
make use of it, it will be of immeasurably greater service to him to-day
than it would ever have been a quarter of a century ago. For this much I
can tell you, Madame, that, wherever he is, he is fighting for the
King.”
“As a Trélan should!” she murmured with a smile. But the smile had gone
when she added, “And the terrible fate of his wife, the Duchesse
Valentine?”
“It broke his heart,” said the priest briefly.
“My lady was spared much,” murmured Mlle Magny. She passed a shaking
hand over her eyes. “So much blood . . . and Mirabel deserted. . . . Are
the candles going out, mon père, or is it my eyes? N’importe—you can
still find the parchment . . . that little closed frame by the mirror
yonder. If you open it you will know the face.”
He did. It was a little pastel drawing of the Duchesse Eléonore, his
patroness, wearing the widow’s weeds in which he best recalled her. He
came back to the bed holding it.
“It was to have been buried with me, that little picture . . . it still
shall be. Clotilde knew how fond I was of it—but she would never have
guessed anything else, poor fool . . . I took a lesson from my forbear
. . . Tear off the paper at the back, mon père.”
M. Chassin obeyed, and as he peeled off the pinkish, speckly paper
recently pasted there, a piece of yellow parchment doubled up against
the real back of the picture was disclosed. It was folded in four, and
on it was written in brownish ink the single word, “Mirabel.”
“Open it!” said the voice from the bed, grown very weak now.
The priest obeyed. As he unfolded the parchment with no very steady
hands, his eyes were greeted with a sort of rough sketch-map of some
complexity, underneath which was written, in a crabbed seventeenth
century hand:
“Plan de l’endroit dans mon chasteau de Mirabel où j’ay fait enterrer
plusieurs milliers de pistoles et divers parements de pierreries de feu
ma femme, à cause des troubles sévissant en ce royaume.” And he caught
sight of “Item, 10 sacs contenant chascun 2,500 pistoles . . . Item, un
collier de rubis des Indes fort bien travaillé . . . Item, une coupe en
or ciselé dite de la reyne Margueritte” . . .
The whole was inscribed “Pour mon fils hault et puissant seigneur Gui de
Saint-Chamans, Marquis de la Ganache, Vicomte de Saint-Chamans,” and
signed, “Fait par moy a mon dit chasteau de Mirabel ce six avril de l’an
mil six cent cinquante-deux, Antoine-Louis de Saint-Chamans, Duc de
Treslan.”
“This is indeed——” began the priest as soon as he could find voice,
when, glancing off the parchment, he saw the change which, in the brief
space of his study of the document, had come over the face on the
pillow. Mlle Magny had used her last reserve of strength over this
matter; it was gone now, and she was going too.
“Promise me, Father!” she gasped out as he bent over her.
“I promise you, my daughter, as I hope myself for salvation!”
The drawn lips smiled. “I can say my _Nunc Dimittis_ . . . Bless me,
Pierre Chassin!”
He raised his hand. “_Benedicat te_ . . .” and passed straight on to the
“Go forth, O Christian soul . . .”
By the end she was unconscious, and a quarter of an hour later, the
weeping Clotilde on one side of the bed and the proscribed priest
praying on the other, Mlle Magny, her last thoughts on earth occupied
with the house of Trélan, went through the great door to meet her
sainted lady, leaving on its hither side the secret of Mirabel to bring
about results undreamt of.
CHAPTER III
THE GIFT IS RECEIVED
All this while the occupants of M. Charlot’s attic, which the Abbé had
so abruptly quitted, were taken up with their own anxieties, and though
they had at last fallen silent, the chiaroscuro of their abode was
fairly throbbing with uneasiness. What made their leader, with a guide
above suspicion, so late in finding his way from Scaër?
At last, just about the moment that M. Chassin, next door, had finished
the _Proficiscere_ and was calling for “Clotilde,” the Vicomte de
Céligny exclaimed, not for the first time, “This must be they!” The four
men strained their ears, for a noise could certainly be heard on the
staircase.
“Dame! it sounds as though Le Blé-aux-Champs were drunk!” observed
Artamène.
“Or hurt!” added the Comte de Brencourt, listening uneasily.
The heavy, shuffling footsteps which they had heard ascending the stairs
paused outside the door. Roland sprang up and opened it, drawing back
instantly with a little cry. Two men, both in Breton costume, stood on
the threshold, the elder and taller supporting the other, a young
saturnine-looking peasant, whose face was sulky with pain, and whose
unshod left foot was enveloped in a stained and muddy handkerchief.
“Monsieur le Marquis!” cried Roland and Artamène together, “What has
happened?”
“Nothing very serious,” replied the elder newcomer cheerfully. “We
startled a _colonne mobile_ in the dusk, that is all, and our poor
Blé-aux-Champs has a ball through his foot.”
“But you yourself are unhurt, de Kersaint, I hope?” asked the Comte de
Brencourt, not without anxiety, as he came forward from his corner. “We
were getting very uneasy about you.”
“I am untouched, thank you. But this lad of mine——”
“Let him lie down on my mattress, sir,” suggested the Vicomte de
Céligny, and, as it happened to be the nearest to the door, the young
Chouan, after vain protests, hobbled towards it, his arm still round his
leader’s neck.
“Yes, lie down, mon gars,” said M. de Kersaint, lowering him to the
pallet, “and we will see what can be done for this foot.” He looked
round. “Where is our surgeon-in-chief, the Abbé?”
“Confessing or otherwise ministering to a dying woman next door,”
replied M. de Brencourt. “M. Charlot came in for him.”
The Marquis de Kersaint raised his eyebrows a trifle, but made no
comment. “I am afraid that we are somewhat of an infirmary here
altogether,” he remarked. “What of your injuries, Comte—and yours, La
Vergne?”
“I do not deny that I have a headache,” returned M. de Brencourt. “But,
as for the cause, the Abbé dressed the scratch this afternoon, and
reported that it was doing excellently. My wrist” he showed a bandage
“will, he says, take a little longer to heal.”
“And your safe arrival, Monsieur le Marquis, has done even more for my
arm than the Abbé’s ministrations,” said Artamène.
M. de Kersaint smiled at him and shook his head, as he knelt down by the
prostrate guide and began to take the handkerchief off his foot. He
would have been more or less than human if he had not known that he was
idolised, as well as feared, by these well-born young followers of his.
“Let me do that, Monsieur le Marquis!” now begged Roland, while the
thoughtful Lucien produced from the recesses of the attic a bowl of
water and some torn linen.
But the Marquis de Kersaint, asking Roland when he had ever dressed a
gunshot wound, went through the process with a deftness which suggested
that he himself had dressed not a few. The young peasant, who had lain
with his face hidden in the pillow, caught his hand as he finished and
carried it dumbly to his lips.
“There, mon gars,” said his leader kindly, as he withdrew it. “Lie there
and be as comfortable as you can under the circumstances. The ball has
gone clean through, which is a great mercy. Roland, put a covering of
some kind over him.—Thank you, Lucien; yes, I should like some fresh
water. You can put it on that convenient chest of drawers yonder.”
As he stood there, washing the blood off his hands, it was not difficult
to understand the attraction that the Marquis de Kersaint might possess
for either sex or any age. As a young man he must have been
superlatively handsome, and now the grey at his temples only served to
emphasize his appearance of extreme distinction. Just as his dark,
slightly rippling hair gained by contrast with that touch of Time’s
powder, so the peasant’s dress which he wore merely set off the natural
air of command that hung about him—an air of which it was plainly
impossible for him to divest himself, even for purposes of disguise. It
was innate in the whole poise of his tall figure, in the aquiline nose
with its delicate nostrils, in the imperious glance of the fine grey
eyes. Yet there was a measure of geniality about the mouth—of the kind
that it is not wise to presume upon. Everybody in the attic knew that.
“Well, my children, and what have you been doing since you arrived?” he
asked, looking round as he dried his hands. “Lucien, I see, has got hold
of a book as usual. What have you been reading, Lucien?”
“This is what he has been reading, Monsieur le Marquis!” cried the young
Chevalier de la Vergne, snatching up du Boisfossé’s Virgil whence he had
laid it, face downwards, on his chair. And holding the book with the
hand which rested in the sling, of which he still had the use, he
flourished his other arm at Roland, who was standing near, and began to
declaim at him the famous lament out of the sixth book for the untimely
dead Marcellus—
_“Heu miserande puer! si qua fata aspera rumpas,_
_ Tu Marcellus eris. Manibus date lilia plenis_
_ Purpureos——”_
He had got no further when, to his enormous surprise, the book was
gently but firmly taken out of his hand.
“Do not repeat those lines, boy, over anyone young, as you are doing at
this moment,” said M. de Kersaint quietly looking, not at him, but at
Roland. “I always think they are unlucky. . . .”
And before the two young men had time to recover from their astonishment
he had walked over to the other side of the attic, and joined his second
in command at the little table to which the latter had returned.
“I have some papers here, de Brencourt,” he said, sitting down, “which
we could look at till the Abbé returns. Undoubtedly our attempt was
premature . . . but unless we can get money it always will be premature.
I have seen ‘Sincère’; he could join us with at least two hundred and
fifty men if we could only provide arms for them.”
“Always the same cry—insufficient arms and ammunition,” remarked his
lieutenant rather bitterly. “How is anything considerable going to be
done in Finistère if there is always this lack? And we could get both in
plenty from England if we only had the money to buy them with.”
“Exactly,” said the Marquis. “But where the money is to come from I do
not know—beyond the not very generous subsidy which the British
Government has promised me for the summer.—Well, we must take counsel
with Georges when he comes. Now, look at these figures.”
And he and the Comte de Brencourt were still bending over the papers
which he had spread out on the table when the three young men, who had
withdrawn themselves as far as possible from the conclave of their
superiors, became aware that the priest was once more in their midst. He
had entered among the shadows very quietly.
“A la bonne heure, Monsieur l’Abbé!” said Roland de Céligny. “Monsieur
le Marquis has arrived.” And he indicated the other side of the attic.
“And have you been to the wedding at Mirabel?” enquired Artamène
mischievously.
The Abbé Chassin quickly turned on him with a frown, putting his finger
to his lips. But he was too late; the words were out, and, though the
culprit had moderated his voice, they had been heard. And Artamène,
roused at once to interest and alertness by the priest’s gesture, was
somehow aware of a sudden stiffening of M. de Kersaint’s whole figure,
ere he said, turning round from the table, “What is this about . . .
Mirabel?”
The Abbé seeming in no great haste to answer, it was M. de Brencourt who
replied, “The old lady whom the Abbé has been visiting next door is,
apparently, suffering from delusions about Mirabel—that château of the
Duc de Trélan’s near Paris. That is what M. de la Vergne means.”
“This is interesting,” observed the Marquis de Kersaint, turning further
round to look at the little priest, who had not advanced a step since
Artamène’s jest. “And did you learn anything fresh about Mirabel, Abbé?”
“Yes, I did, Monsieur le Marquis,” answered the priest rather shortly.
“May we hear it?”
M. Chassin was silent, and seemed to be considering this request.
Artamène saw his face, and it was oddly perturbed.
“We are not, I hope, inviting you to reveal the secrets of the
confessional?”
“No.”
“Why may we not hear it, then?”
“Because,” said the Abbé gravely, “it is more suited for your private
ear, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“Why?” asked M. de Brencourt, instantly, looking from one to the other,
“why for M. de Kersaint’s private ear?”
This question the Abbé seemed totally unable to answer, and after a
second or two the Marquis de Kersaint said carelessly to his
subordinate, “Because M. Chassin knows that I am a kinsman of the Duc de
Trélan’s, I suppose.”
“A kinsman of the Duc de Trélan’s—you!” exclaimed the Comte de
Brencourt in obvious surprise. “A near kinsman?”
“No, no, very distant,” replied his leader quickly. “And that is why I
cannot conceive how a disclosure affecting his property can possibly be
destined for my ear alone. So let us all hear it, if you please,
Monsieur l’Abbé.”
M. de Brencourt, still under the empire of surprise or some other
emotion, continued to look at this kinsman of M. de Trélan’s very
fixedly; so, from where he still stood near the door, did the priest. A
better light would have revealed entreaty in his eyes.
“Well, Monsieur l’Abbé, I am waiting!” said the Marquis de Kersaint
rather haughtily, and in the fashion of a man who has never been used to
that discipline.
The Abbé set his lips obstinately. “It will keep well enough till
to-morrow, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“What, a communication from the dying? And who knows whether we shall
all see to-morrow? Come, Abbé, I command you!—Roland, a chair here for
M. Chassin.”
Whether the priest could have stood out, had he willed, against that
masterful voice and gesture, at any rate he did not.
“Very well, Marquis,” said he, and Artamène, thrilled to the core,
thought, “‘Tu l’as voulu, Georges Dandin!’ That’s what he would really
like to say, our Abbé!” And since their leader had intimated that the
matter was not private after all, he applied himself to listen with all
his ears. Roland, looking rather troubled, set a chair at the table for
the priest and stood back.
“You must know then, Monsieur le Marquis,” began the Abbé in a low
voice, “that the old lady whom I have been visiting had been present at
the festivities in 1771, when the . . . the young Duc de Trélan married
his bride.”
“That beautiful and most unfortunate lady!” commented M. de Brencourt
under his breath.
The Marquis glanced at him for the fraction of a second, and the priest
went on, nervously rubbing his hands together, and rather pale:
“It seems that there is a legend of a treasure hidden in Mirabel since
the days of the Fronde, a treasure whose whereabouts no one has ever
been able to discover. Since you are a kinsman of M. de Trélan’s,
Monsieur le Marquis, it is possible that you have heard of the legend?”
M. de Kersaint nodded thoughtfully. “I believe I have heard of it. Yes?”
“The story appears to be true. The document describing the hiding-place
of the treasure was stolen at the time—nearly a hundred and fifty years
ago—and came into the possession of this old lady’s family, but in such
a way that it was only recently rediscovered by the old lady herself.”
“What an extraordinary tale! Well?”
“Since then she had desired to give it to the Duc, but could not, as he
was not in France. And in her delirium just now, fancying herself back
at the wedding, she was talking so persistently of offering to the . . .
the young couple, as a wedding gift, this paper, which would help them
to what was after all their own, that M. Charlot——”
“A wedding gift for de Trélan and his wife!” interposed the Comte de
Brencourt with a laugh. “Bon Dieu, what irony, considering how their
wedded life ended!”
“Surely that need not concern us now, Monsieur de Brencourt!” said his
leader coldly. “Go on please, Abbé.”
“By the most curious coincidence,” pursued M. Chassin, his eyes fixed on
the Marquis, “M. Charlot asked me, as a priest, to see if I could not
set the old lady’s mind at rest by some means. She did at last regain
control of her senses, and I was able in the end to assure her that I
could and would despatch the document, if she entrusted me with it, to
the proper quarter.”
“And she gave it you?” asked the Marquis, bending forward with some
eagerness.
“I have it here now,” answered the priest, touching his breast.
M. de Kersaint drew back again, and Artamène was struck with his
resemblance to a chess player who is meditating the next move. But only
the Marquis de Kersaint himself and the man whom he had forced into
playing out this gambit with him, fully realised the awkward position
into which his insistence had got them.
“So I must make it my business to despatch it, somehow, to M. le Duc,”
finished the Abbé. “It was of course my knowledge that you were kin to
him, Monsieur le Marquis, which made me accept the trust, as I knew I
could rely on your assistance.”
But the Marquis was looking down at the table and said nothing.
“The document will hardly be of much use to M. de Trélan when he does
get it,” remarked the Comte de Brencourt. “Mirabel, I have heard, is now
a museum or something of the sort; at any rate it is in government
hands. And M. de Trélan—where is M. de Trélan? In England still? No,
hardly. One never hears of him. Perhaps he is dead.”
“No, he is alive,” replied his kinsman briefly, lifting his eyes for a
second.
“Ah! But how is he going to profit by this treasure, even if it is still
there?”
“Nevertheless, I must fulfil my trust,” observed M. Chassin, looking
across the table at M. de Kersaint’s lowered head.
“Oh, undoubtedly, Abbé, though I do not know how you are going to do it
even with M. de Kersaint’s cousinly . . . is it cousinly? . . .
assistance. What do you yourself think of the problem, Marquis?”
The Marquis de Kersaint raised his head. “I think,” he said slowly,
looking hard at M. Chassin, “that the Abbé is right. M. de Trélan must
be informed, somehow. But at the same time, since it is practically out
of the question for him, in exile, to take any steps in the matter—and
would be difficult and dangerous even were he in France—and since our
need for money is so pressing at this moment, I would propose——”
“What?” asked the Comte.
“To ask, as his kinsman, for his authorisation to use the treasure, if
we can come at it, for the needs of Finistère—that is to say, for the
King’s service.”
“O sir, do you think we could!” cried Roland eagerly, starting forward.
“O, Monsieur le Marquis, send us to Mirabel!” cried Artamène.
“You are going too fast, gentlemen. We must first get the Duc’s leave to
pillage his property, even though it be confiscated.”
“Do you think you will have difficulty in getting it?” asked the Comte
de Brencourt, narrowing his eyes.
“No, I do not think so. As you have yourself pointed out, Comte, how is
M. de Trélan going to profit, in any case, by this suddenly revealed
hoard?”
“Well, when the King comes into his own again, it would be of no small
service to the Duc, a fund in his own château! I expect his financial
resources, great as they once were, are much embarrassed. He could
hardly have been accused of husbanding them!”
“You seem to know a great deal about the private affairs of M. de
Trélan, Comte!” observed M. de Kersaint drily, turning and looking at
him. “I might observe that no honest man has gained by the Revolution,
and that those with much to lose have lost proportionately. However, if
my kinsman takes the view that you suggest—which I do not think he
will—he must be induced to look upon our present proposed use of the
money as a loan to His Majesty. After all, it was never of any advantage
to him as long as he was unaware of its existence or of its whereabouts,
and of these, apparently, he never would have known but for the
extraordinary coincidence of which the Abbé has just told us.”
“But,” suggested M. de Brencourt, “before approaching him on the
subject—through you—might it not be as well to get a sight of this
precious document, so that we may form some idea as to whether the
amount will repay the risking a man’s neck to find, and whether it will
prove easy to come at?”
The priest and M. de Kersaint looked at one another. “Yes. I think we
might do that without indiscretion,” said the latter, after a moment’s
hesitation. “Do not you, Abbé?”
M. Chassin made no reply in words, but drew out from his coat the
parchment received from the dying woman and gave it into the hands of
his leader. The Marquis de Kersaint spread out the ancient memorandum on
the table, moved the candles in their bottles nearer, and the three men
studied in silence the rough diagram and its legend. Nor were Roland and
Artamène, in the background, innocent of craning their necks to see
likewise.
“Ten bags—two thousand five hundred pistoles in each,” murmured the
Comte reflectively. “How much is that, I wonder, in modern money? And
there are jewels too, apparently.”
The Marquis de Kersaint’s lips were compressed, his face an enigma. “It
certainly appears to be worth taking risks for,” he said at last. “Money
is what we most need in the world now for Finistère. We can get the men;
the last few months have shown me that clearly, but of what use are
unarmed men?”
“Less than none,” observed his second in command. “This document,
therefore, seems singularly like a gift from heaven.”
“I shall certainly communicate with M. de Trélan without delay,” said
the Marquis. “May I keep this parchment, Abbé?”
“I had hoped that you would charge yourself with its despatch, Monsieur
le Marquis,” replied the priest, and M. de Kersaint without more ado
folded it up and put it in his breast.
“It seems to me, de Kersaint,” said the Comte de Brencourt reflectively,
playing with the cards which still strewed the table, “that, considering
all things, the exceptional circumstances, our pressing needs, the
possibility that you may never succeed in communicating with the
Duc—wherever he may be—that we could hardly be blamed if we took the
law into our own hands, and did not wait for his authorisation. After
all, the risk would be ours.”
“That solution had already occurred to me, I admit,” said the Marquis,
with the ghost of a smile, while mute applause from MM. de Céligny and
de la Vergne greeted the Comte’s suggestion. “But the affair is in a
sense the Abbé’s, and entrusted to him.”
“I am quite content to abide by your decision, Monsieur le Marquis,”
replied the priest sedately.
“But, de Kersaint,” objected the Comte, evidently struck by a sudden
idea, “have you not some reversionary interest in the treasure yourself,
if you are kin to M. de Trélan? Should we not ultimately be robbing you,
perhaps?”
“No, I am not sufficiently nearly related to the Duc for that,” returned
the Marquis quickly. “I am connected with him by marriage only—a
distant kinsman.”
“Perhaps you will allow me to congratulate you on that, then,” said M.
de Brencourt in a sombre tone. “For myself, I should not care to think
that I had near ties of blood with a man who, in safety himself, left
his wife to perish as he did!”
An electric shock seemed at these words to communicate itself to the
other two men. M. de Kersaint’s right hand, which rested on the table in
the ring of candlelight, was seen instantly to clench itself. The next
instant the Abbé, by a sudden clumsy movement, sent the candle nearest
to him to the floor where, with a crash of the bottle, it was
immediately extinguished.
“Pardon me, Monsieur le Comte!” he interposed quickly, bending forward.
“—Dear me, how awkward I am!—Pardon me, but you do the Duc de Trélan a
great injustice, surely! How could he, an émigré to whom France was
closed, possibly rescue a woman immured in a Paris prison? The thing is
preposterous. Besides, he probably knew nothing about her being there
till all was over. I have heard that Mirabel was not sacked till August
the thirtieth, and the prison massacres, you will remember, began on the
second of September.”
“You seem very much the champion of M. de Trélan, Abbé!” remarked the
Comte, looking at him hard. “You have wasted a candle over him.”
“One should try, surely, to be just to those who cannot answer for
themselves,” retorted the priest. “Moreover, I am certain M. de Kersaint
would bear me out in what I say.”
“He does not seem to be in any great haste to do so,” observed the
other, half to himself, and his eyes suddenly moved to the clenched
hand.
“I am too much amazed at your attack on my kinsman,” retorted the
Marquis, in a voice unlike his own. “It is incredible that such a thing
should be said in France of M. de Trélan—that he could have saved his
wife and did not!”
The Comte shrugged his shoulders. “I do not know that it is what others
say, for I imagine that few people trouble their heads about de Trélan
now-a-days. But it is what I think—though as a matter of fact you are
putting more into my words than I actually uttered. Perhaps I am
prejudiced. I knew that lady many years ago,” he went on, with lowered
eyes, fidgeting with the cards again, “the most gracious of God’s
creatures, and to remember that she went, abandoned by everybody,
through _that_ door, saw, as her last glimpse of life, those obscene
faces, that gutter running with blood, that mound of——”
The priest jumped up and seized him by the arm. “For God’s sake, stop,
Monsieur de Brencourt!” he whispered. “Do you not know that most of M.
de Kersaint’s family perished in the massacres!”
And at that the Comte did stop. After a moment M. de Kersaint removed
the hand with which he had covered his eyes.
“I should indeed be glad if you would spare me that subject,” he said,
in a scarcely audible voice, not looking at either of them. Even the one
remaining candle showed him to be frightfully pale. “I . . . I cannot
. . . perhaps we should finish this discussion . . . in the morning. It
is already very late.”
“Yes, it is very late,” agreed the Comte, plainly rather horrified. He
leant over the table. “Can you forgive me, Marquis? Of course I was not
aware, and I regret——”
“I knew that,” said M. de Kersaint with a palpable effort, and touched
the hand which the other held out. And so ended the reception of Mlle
Magny’s wedding gift.
CHAPTER IV
A VERY YOUNG MAN
Roland de Celigny, waking with a start, wondered for a moment where he
was. Then he raised himself on his elbow and looked about him.
The dawn was slipping a slim, cool hand into the strangely populated
attic, and the grey light invested furniture and sleepers alike with
quite a different appearance from last night’s. Roland himself had
insisted on giving up his pallet permanently to Le Blé-aux-Champs,
because of his hurt, and had ensconced himself at the other side of the
attic. Over in his old place Chouan and noble, alike young and alike
wounded, lay side by side, the only difference in their condition being
that the peasant, for all his protests, had the better couch. But, like
M. de Brencourt, huddled on the little sofa of worn, gilt-striped rose
brocade, and the Abbé, of whom he could see only the feet projecting
round a wardrobe, they both appeared to be asleep, despite their
injuries; and Roland knew that Artamène’s gave him no slight pain at
times.
But he could not be altogether sorry for his friend’s wound. For, since
it was M. de la Vergne’s right arm that had suffered, it had fallen to
the Vicomte de Céligny to write at his dictation a line of reassurance
to his mother and sister in Finistère. And thus Roland’s own fingers had
formed, if his brain had not originated, the words which would
undoubtedly have the happiness of penetrating into the little ears of
Mlle Marthe de la Vergne, even, probably, that of being read by her
brilliant dark eyes. And she would know, too, from the contents of the
letter who had penned it. The question whether she would care was one
which he did not like to press overmuch, for he had very little to go
upon, poor Roland, since Marthe had grown up—one meeting under the eyes
of Mme de la Vergne in the wide, cool salon of the château with its
shining floor, and Mlle Marthe rising from tambour work at its farther
end; and one brief message of good wishes with which his friend
Artamène, her fortunate brother, was found to be charged when Roland met
him a few weeks ago at the rallying-place.
Roland could have wished that his friend’s flesh wound were his own,
that he also had something with a tinge of suffering and heroism about
it, of which Mlle Marthe could have been informed, to which she might
even have given a moment’s regret. Or, better still, if it could have
been, that the injury had happened so near the Château de la Vergne as
to leave no alternative but to take the sufferer in and tend him there.
Alas, Roland neither possessed the requisite damage, nor had the Château
de la Vergne the desired proximity to the scene of the little defeat at
la Croix-Fendue.
Besides, if anything untoward happened to him, he was under promise to
return, if possible, to his grandfather, with whom he lived.
Roland did not remember his mother, and of his father, though he had
died only about a year and a half ago, he had seen extremely little.
Three years after Mme de Céligny’s death he had been committed, a child
of five years old, to the care of his maternal grandfather, the Baron de
Carné, and by him he had been brought up at Kerlidec, in Brittany,
separated by the breadth of France from his patrimony near Avignon. He
had seldom visited this, or his morose parent, though when he did, M. de
Céligny had always made a point of initiating him, young as he was, into
the management of the estate which would one day be his—for the
Vicomte, unlike so many landowners in those troubled years, had never
been dispossessed. But Roland was much fonder of the stern and
passionate old man who had brought him up, and who had for him such
exquisite tendernesses; and he had become too much accustomed to living
with a grandfather rather than with a father to find the arrangement
surprising. He had, moreover, few friends of his own age to comment on
its unusual character, since his education had been entirely conducted
at Kerlidec by his grandfather and a tutor or two. Artamène de la
Vergne, who lived at no very great distance, was, in fact, his only
intimate.
Yet in the end, through no fault of the Vicomte de Céligny’s other than
an unfortunate choice of the moment of his death, his estates did not
come to Roland at all. He died very suddenly of heart disease just after
the coup d’état of ’97, and the Directory at once seized the property on
the specious pretext that the heir was an émigré. Because the events of
Fructidor had revived the legislation against that unfortunate class, it
had taken a year and a half and very cautious moves indeed on the part
of the Baron de Carné even to get his grandson’s name removed from that
inauspicious list on which, like many another, it wrongly figured, and
Roland was not yet in possession of his inheritance. His present
proceedings, if the Government became aware of them, were still less
likely to hasten that event.
And these proceedings had been entered into against M. de Carné’s
wishes; another had overborne that strong will of his. To this day
Roland could not quite understand how it had been done. For a moment he
lived again through the episode of his quasi-abduction from Kerlidec
last February;—that strained interview (at part of which he had been
present) between his grandfather and the tall, commanding visitor who,
turning out, to Roland’s surprise and delight, to be the Marquis de
Kersaint, the hero of the lost day of Rivoli, enlisting likely young men
to fight for the King later on in Finistère, had asked M. de Carné if
Roland might come with him——provided Roland himself were willing. Of
Roland’s willingness—rather, rapture—there could be no question, but
M. de Kersaint had insisted on the Baron’s formal consent; and this, on
the understanding that Roland was to be regarded strictly as a loan, and
returned, had been given . . . but given with such palpable, almost
venomous hostility that the youth could not imagine why it should have
been vouchsafed at all.
The end of the episode, too, just because it puzzled him, was bitten
into his memory. Grandfather and grandson were on the perron watching
the unbidden guest ride away down the dripping avenue—for Roland was to
join him, with Artamène, a few days later—and Roland, boylike, had
exclaimed at his admirable seat on a horse.
“As you say, Roland, a damnably good seat!” M. de Carné had returned
harshly. “A damnable air of assurance altogether! Quite enough to turn a
young man’s head, or for that matter a——” He checked himself, and said
with bitterness that they must begin to think of Roland’s preparations.
And when the young man remorsefully replied, “Not yet, grandpère! It is
growing dark; let us think of our game of chess!” his grandfather
retorted, looking at him in a way that he could not fathom, “Chess! Poor
little pawn, you have been taken!”
But if it were so, the pawn certainly had no objection.
And now, indeed, feeling a sense of elation, almost of importance, at
being apparently the only one awake in this company, Roland looked past
the intervening furniture towards the two large chairs in which M. de
Kersaint had elected to spend the night. Well, he was still stretched in
them, long and rather shadowy in outline, but Roland doubted if he were
asleep, for as he gazed at him he heard the Marquis move and sigh.
The adoration tempered with awe which Roland felt for him had received,
if it needed it, a fresh impetus through last night’s happenings. An
eager and interested witness of the scene’s beginning, an unwilling and
indignant one of its close, Roland had felt, and still felt, that he
hated M. de Brencourt for the torture to which, even unwittingly, he had
put him, as anyone could see. And why, as Artamène had whispered to him
afterwards, had M. de Brencourt displayed such an aversion to the Duc de
Trélan?
What was M. de Kersaint going to do, he wondered, about this business of
Mirabel? The name seemed to have a faintly familiar sound, though he
could have sworn that he had never heard it before. As he strove to
recover the connection a glorious thought shot suddenly into his mind.
If only M. de Kersaint would let _him_ go to Paris in search of this
treasure! There—if his search were successful, as of course it would
be—shone in truth a deed worthy to lay at the feet of Mlle Marthe de la
Vergne!
Wrapped in the warm and rosy imaginings which this idea brought to him
Roland dropped off to sleep again—a light slumber in which he had a
distinct impression that M. de Kersaint came and stood for some time
looking down on him, and from which he woke to find the attic grown
considerably lighter, and M. de Kersaint’s sleeping-place, to which he
instantly glanced, empty. Everybody else seemed to be slumbering as
before.
It was a moment or two before Roland’s eyes found his leader, in the
farthest corner of the attic, seated sideways at a little table,
writing—at least, with a pen between his fingers. His chin was propped
on his fist, and the young daylight as it entered silhouetted his fine
profile with sufficient clearness for the observer to be sure that his
thoughts were not pleasant ones.
“All his family massacred!” sprang into Roland’s mind. “He is thinking
of that—or of how to retrieve la Croix-Fendue, or perhaps how to get
the treasure from Mirabel . . . How handsome he is!” And on Roland,
himself as unconscious of his own good looks as it is possible for a
young man to be, came the resolve to use this Heaven-sent opportunity
for the furtherance of his own desires.
Rising very quietly from the floor, he picked his way, half dressed as
he was, among furniture and sleepers till he came to the window.
“Monsieur le Marquis!”
M. de Kersaint started and looked round. “Roland, what are you doing?”
he asked in a whisper.
“I have been awake before,” said Roland, as if that were a reply.
“Well?”
“I want to ask you something, sir.”
“If,” said M. de Kersaint, studying him as he stood there in his shirt
and breeches, “if it is to repeat La Vergne’s request of last night
about Mirabel, I may as well tell you at once, my boy, that it is of no
use.”
The youth’s visage so manifestly fell that his leader could not help
smiling.
“I see that I guessed right. No, my dear boy, this business, if ever it
gets itself done at all, is work for a much older head than yours.”
“I am not so young, Monsieur le Marquis,” pleaded the aspirant, in the
same discreet tone. “I shall be twenty this year.”
“Yes, but not until the very end of it,” retorted M. de Kersaint with
promptitude.
The child of December was first taken aback, then flattered, that the
date of his obscure birthday should be known to his hero, who was now
looking at him half-teasingly, a mood in which Roland especially adored
him. Then the petitioner recovered himself.
“But even if you think me young, sir,” he went on with fervour, “nobody
here, however much older he is——”
“Has any experience of house-breaking,” he was going on to say, when the
words were cut short by a grasp on his arm. He turned, and M. de
Kersaint, who had momentarily lowered his gaze, lifted it at the same
instant so that they both beheld the Chevalier de la Vergne, sling and
all.
“What, another!” exclaimed M. de Kersaint. “Morbleu!”
“I felt sure that he was trying to steal a march on me, Monsieur le
Marquis,” explained Artamène. “If anyone is to go to Mirabel——”
“It would certainly not be you, La Vergne, with that arm,” interposed
his leader. “However, there is no question of Mirabel for either of
you.”
“But——” began both the candidates.
“If you want to know my plans, gentlemen,” said M. de Kersaint then,
with a touch of impatience, real or assumed, “they are, as far as
regards yourselves, these—a return, for the present, to your own
firesides.”
“We are to go back home!” ejaculated the horror-struck Artamène.
Amusement shot again into M. de Kersaint’s eyes at the tone, but because
of its pitch he laid his finger on his lips. “It is not designed as a
punishment, believe me, my children. But our drawing of the sword was
premature; I always feared it, and I have resolved, for the present, to
disband. It will only be for a month or two, probably.”
“But—but you will send for us again, sir?” stammered Roland. All the
brightness seemed suddenly to have departed from life.
“Most certainly. I could not get on without my aides-de-camp. Now go
back to your beds and leave me to finish what I am doing.”
It was two exceedingly dispirited young men who returned to their
couches. “To be sent home like schoolboys!” whispered Roland, who had
left his with such hopes. But they were too dejected to discuss the
catastrophe. Happy Lucien, who had slept through its announcement! They
sat side by side on Artamène’s blanket, and looked at each other, while
close by the young Chouan, who was awake, moved restlessly. What, if
they were going to separate, was to become of him? Perhaps this unspoken
query gave Artamène his great idea.
“I am not fit to take the journey to La Vergne alone,” he whispered
suddenly in Roland’s ear. “Will you escort me?”
“Will I not?” responded his friend, his eyes sparkling again.
* * * * *
With the full advent of morning came the good M. Charlot and a servant,
bringing coffee and rolls to the unaccustomed guestchamber. To this
welcome refreshment he joined the more than welcome news that the troops
who had nearly intercepted the Marquis and his guide last night had
marched out at dawn, and in an hour or so it would be quite safe to
depart. Also, the wounded man could now be moved downstairs to a bed and
cared for until his foot was healed.
“Excellent, my dear Monsieur Chariot,” said the Marquis de Kersaint.
“And—the other matter?”
“I have already sent to the place, Monsieur, and a message has come back
that the person your honours are expecting has not yet arrived.”
Artamène and Roland looked at each other over their coffee-bowls. They
cherished a faint hope, now rapidly withering, that they might catch a
glimpse of this famous person ere departing.
But very shortly afterwards, as it seemed, the three of them had put
together their small belongings, had received their last instructions,
and had learnt how, when the summons came to them again, it would
probably be to a more lasting campaign. The Marquis de Kersaint hoped by
the summer to have a regular headquarters at least—to keep always on
foot an army of Chouans was impossible—in short, to be in a larger way
of business. But even these bright predictions did not cheer ‘les
jeunes,’ as the Abbé called them, very much.
“All I can do, mes enfants,” said their leader to them in conclusion,
“is to wish you a safe return and a better meeting. Remember my
recommendations as to prudence in your journeys.—I am not sure that I
ought to let you travel in that condition, Artamène.”
And when the youth hastened to inform him that he would have the
advantage of Roland’s care and company M. de Kersaint smiled and said,
“Very well. But, Roland, remember that your real destination is not La
Vergne, but Kerlidec. My honour is engaged, as you know, in sending you
back to your grandfather. Good-bye, Lucien; you will now have leisure to
proceed with your study of the Mantuan.”
The Abbé had already given them his blessing; the Comte had gone to the
place appointed to await Cadoudal. Even Le Blé-aux-Champs had been
carried downstairs. So when the Marquis had shaken hands with them there
was nothing for the three young men to do but to go. And they went.
But they had not got beyond the next turn on the dusky staircase before
they heard M. de Kersaint’s voice on the landing above them.
“Roland,” it called down, “come back a moment, will you? I have a
message for M. de Carné.”
Wondering, the young Vicomte went up again, nearly to the top, where the
tall figure was standing.
“I only wish you to point out to him,” said the Marquis, “that I am
fulfilling my promise. That is all.”
Then he added, in a different tone, “May God keep you, my boy!” and
stooping, kissed him on the forehead.
CHAPTER V
_TU MARCELLUS ERIS_
“And so, _exeunt_ ‘les jeunes,’” said the Marquis de Kersaint, coming
back into the attic and shutting the door after him.
Its only remaining occupant, the Abbé Chassin, looked up from his
breviary where he sat on the old brocade sofa.
“I could wish,” he observed, “that they had departed earlier—or at
least that young La Vergne had done so, before he brought about what
happened last night, by his mention of the word ‘Mirabel.’ But what,
Gaston, in the name of all the saints, possessed you to force me to give
you the memorandum like that, before everybody? Of course I only meant
to put it into your hands when we were alone!”
The Marquis de Kersaint, seeming to find it perfectly natural to be
addressed thus familiarly by his inferior, shrugged his shoulders. “Why
then, my dear Pierre, did you, in your turn, say before everybody that
your information was for my private ear? A slip of that kind is unlike
you. How could I possibly accept for my private ear any news about the
place?”
“No, perhaps not, but your persistence, if you will forgive my saying
so, rather drove me into a corner. However, I dare say we were both
equally to blame, I for not being readier-witted, and you for—well, for
taking the bull a little too much by the horns.”
M. de Kersaint, evidently not at all resenting these criticisms, looked
down at the priest. “Above all things I did not want to create a
mystery,” he said.
“And instead of that you created a kinsman,” observed the Abbé with a
half smile, and then became grave again. “It was very unfortunate, the
whole thing, but naturally we had neither of us any idea of what it was
going to lead to.”
The Marquis de Kersaint’s face darkened. He turned away, and began to
walk up and down. “You made a fine holocaust of my imaginary family,” he
said after a moment.
“I had to stop him somehow,” replied the Abbé briefly. He had closed his
book, and was watching the pacing figure.
“So that,” said M. de Kersaint after another silence, “that is how a
Frenchman, an émigré himself, judges the conduct of the Duc de Trélan! I
thought it was only in England that they did not understand.”
The priest had risen. “Gaston,” he said firmly, “as I said to the Comte
last night, and as I would repeat it at my last hour, in the matter of
Mme de Trélan’s death I hold that no one was to blame—save her
murderers. She could not have been saved. Did his Highness the Duc de
Penthièvre save his daughter? We know that he tried. Not an archangel
could have saved Mme de Lamballe. So with Mme de Trélan that day. You
know that as well as I, and M. de Brencourt, if he were not ridden by
some demon of spite, knows it too.”
“She went through that door, as he said,” continued M. de Kersaint. He
had come to a standstill; his face was ashen. “She saw . . . all that
. . . before——And she might have taken the road to England and safety
two years earlier.”
“It is true,” answered the priest. “She had the chance.”
“Yes,” said his foster-brother, looking at him as if he did not see him,
“she had the chance . . . and refused it. I cannot tell de Brencourt
that. But, O my God, what a tragedy of mistakes!”
He was backed now against a huge old wardrobe, motionless, almost as if
he were nailed to it, voice and eyes alike full of that seven years’ old
horror and anguish.
“It was but a mistake, a misunderstanding, then, Gaston,” said the
priest quickly. “You acknowledge that, you see!”
The man against the wardrobe gave a laugh. “But what is worse than a
mistake, Pierre? Not a crime, certainly. Mistakes appear, at least, to
be more heavily visited in this world. It seems to me that I am about to
begin a fresh series of payments for mine. . . . As for her, if she made
any, she paid—how much more than paid!—in that moment of martyrdom
that does not bear thinking of, that I still dream about, it seems to
me, almost every night. . . . Now, if it is to be dragged out as de
Brencourt dragged it yesterday, I shall wish you had not turned me from
my purpose seven years ago.”
Dear saints, thought the priest, looking at him compassionately, are we,
after all he has suffered, to go once more through the inferno of those
dreadful days in England? For a moment he saw again that lofty,
richly-furnished room in London where the proudest man whom Pierre
Chassin had ever met or read of sat with his whole existence fallen in a
day to ruins about him—his honour tarnished and his self-respect in the
dust. For he had that day received the appalling news of his wife’s
butchery in prison—not having known, even, that she was a prisoner—and
he had heard also that he was in consequence being talked about in no
flattering terms throughout those same London drawing-rooms where he had
been so courted. Indeed—not then knowing why—he had that very morning
been cut in St. James’s Street by two of his most intimate English
acquaintances. . . . The candlelight on his escritoire, running over the
darkly shining mahogany before him, had showed the weapon ready to his
hand when the shabby little émigré priest, who had come hotfoot at the
news, succeeded in forcing his way past the terrified servants into that
forbidden room . . . only to be ordered, in a voice that made him quail,
to depart instantly. He had sometimes wondered himself what had given
him the courage to disobey, and to stand, as he had done, for a whole
night between the Duc de Trélan and suicide. Even to-day he could
scarcely bear to think of the naked agony and conflict of that vigil,
and it was very rarely referred to by either of them.
He went up to him and put his hand on his shoulder. “O my brother, if
you would only cease to torment yourself! You have not, you never have
had, a shadow of real responsibility for your wife’s death.”
“Easy to believe, is it not?” remarked the other with a ghastly smile,
“when men speak still as de Brencourt spoke last night!”
The Abbé made an almost impatient movement. “It is quite impossible that
the Comte really thinks what he says! Why, thousands of men emigrated
without their wives,—just as some wives without their husbands—and no
one thought it anything but natural and right in those days . . . a duty
even! All the noblesse were equally blinded as to what was coming. And
can you seriously maintain that any blame attaches to you for what
happened two years later, because you were no clearer-sighted than the
rest—the rest who, like you, were in exile?”
“But the rest,” said the Marquis de Kersaint, staring down before him at
his locked hands, “were not, in 1792, merely amusing themselves in
exile, whatever they may have been doing in 1790. . . . Even though I
had not been by her side, if I had been where I ought to have been long
before, in the army of the Princes or with Condé, do you think that de
Brencourt would say . . . those things? Or that they would be like death
to me, if he did? . . . You see you cannot answer that, Pierre!”
“Mon frère,” said M. Chassin quietly, “that delay has been expiated. The
question for the moment is, whether M. le Comte suspects your identity.”
M. de Kersaint moved a little. “Do you think he possibly can? I never
remember seeing him before in my life, until he was assigned to me last
December in Jersey as my lieutenant.”
“And if he had ever chanced to see you before the Revolution,” went on
the priest musingly, “this bitter resentment he seems to have would have
shown itself ere now. No, he could have had no grounds for suspicion of
any kind before last night and the business of Mirabel. It was evidently
only the mention of that name that roused him. If he begins to have
. . . ideas . . . my advice to you, Gaston, is to tell him who you are.
He knows, as most people do, about the part you played at Rivoli, not to
speak of what you are doing now, so he would not continue——”
“Never!” broke in the Marquis, making a violent gesture of negation. “I
desire never to hear that old name of mine again in this life! And I
forbid you once more to tell anyone in the world—_anyone_—whatever you
might think would be gained by it! Is it a promise?”
“You have had my promise once for all, Gaston.”
“I will never see you again if you break it!” said his foster-brother
with vehemence.
“Have I kept it so ill these seven years, then, that you think a threat
is necessary?” asked the priest gently.
“Oh, my dear Pierre, forgive me!” cried the other instantly, and he held
out his hand. “When a man starts threatening the best friend he ever
had, to whom he owes not only his life but his sanity, it looks rather
as if that sanity was leaving him!”
“I do not see much signs of that,” said the priest, with a smile, as he
took the proffered hand. “And last night’s business was horrible. I have
always thought,” he went on reflectively, “that M. le Comte was an
embittered man.”
“If I had known,” said his foster-brother in a low voice, “that he had
ever met her, I would never have consented to work with him. . . . But I
never should have known save for this strange business of Mirabel.”
“And that is a business which must be attended to, I suppose,” the
priest reminded him.
“Yes, I suppose so, too,” said M. de Kersaint rather wearily. He went to
the nearest table, and sitting down pulled out the parchment and
flattened it out on it. The Abbé came and studied it over his shoulder
for a while in silence.
“Well, what do you think of it, Gaston?”
“I have very little doubt that it is genuine. As a child, I once heard
my grandfather speak of the legend, but he dismissed it as being only a
legend. In those days I thought the idea romantic and fascinating. Did I
never mention it to you when I came to Rosmadel?”
“Never,” said the priest, suddenly seeing himself as he was in those
days, a little barefooted boy going birdsnesting with a young prince in
velvet whom he had the right to call brother. “Had you done so I should
not have forgotten it.”
“I do not believe that I ever gave it a thought after I came to man’s
estate,” went on the Marquis musingly. “It must have gone back to the
region of fairy stories. And this old lady—what was her name?—you did
not mention it, I think.”
“Purposely so,” replied the Abbé, dropping into a chair beside him. “Her
name was Magny, Mlle Magny. She was for years, she said, tiring-woman to
Mme la Duchesse Douairière.”
His hearer clasped his hands over his eyes. “I remember the name,” he
said after a moment. “I recall her too, I think. She must be well
advanced in years now.”
“She was yesterday,” agreed the priest. “To-day—who knows?”
The Marquis looked up. “She is dead then? I did not gather that.”
“She died while I was with her.” They both fell silent, M. de Kersaint
fingering the parchment—gone back also, thought the priest, to a
distant wedding-day.
“Gaston, give me your hand!” he said suddenly, stretching out his own.
“No, not that one, the other.” And when the Marquis in surprise had
complied, the Abbé, holding the so dissimilar fingers in his own, tapped
with a forefinger on the signet ring that one of them bore, and said,
“Are you wise to wear _that_?”
M. de Kersaint looked down at the crest cut in the emerald. “I have
always worn it—without reflecting, I suppose—when I gave up everything
else. One is inconsistent, no doubt. I never use it, of course.”
“But anybody—anybody interested—can make out what the device is,
though oddly enough it never struck me till last night when your hand
was on the table and the candlelight fell on it.”
“It means nothing to _him_ probably.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said the priest, releasing the hand.
The Marquis slipped off the ring. “Very well. I will give up wearing it
then.—Though, indeed, I might use it to support my claim of being akin
. . . not that I am likely to wish to do that again!”
“Your kinship is by marriage, remember. You would never use the same
arms. And, Gaston, having once declared yourself a kinsman of the Duc de
Trélan’s you will have to keep it up, in order to get at the money.”
The Marquis, putting the ring in his pocket, frowned at this obvious
truth.
“I suppose I shall. Let us think about this business then, before de
Brencourt comes back, as he may do any moment. Now, am I to take on
myself to give permission for the further rifling of my ‘kinsman’s’
property, or shall I go through the farce of writing him a letter?”
“If you do that, a certain time must be allowed to elapse before you
could . . . receive a reply.”
“Precisely,” said the Marquis de Kersaint. In spite of everything a
gleam of rather grim amusement flitted over his face. “And I need not
point out to you that the money would be like manna from heaven at this
moment. So large a sum, absolutely at one’s own disposal—why, one might
organise and arm Finistère almost as well as Cadoudal is arming the
Morbihan. There is no time to lose, for, as it is, when we get
possession of the treasure—if we ever do—it will be useless in its
present state—coin of the time of Louis XIII. and Henri IV. It would
have to go to England. Bertin would see to that, of course.”
The Abbé nodded. “But Bertin is not the man to get it out of Mirabel.
What staff, if any, do you suppose the Directory maintains in the
place?”
Mirabel’s owner shook his head. “I have no idea. I only know that it is
a museum, which implies a guardian of some sort. I had rather for our
purposes that it was empty and falling into ruins. Make a note, Pierre,
to write to Bertin or someone to find out the dispositions there.”
The Abbé nodded again. “I imagine, then, that you will not write the
letter to M. de Trélan—you will take the responsibility on your own
shoulders, as you hinted at doing last night.”
“Yes,” said M. de Kersaint, leaning back in his chair. “And I shall
probably go to Mirabel myself.”
The priest jumped. “Gaston, that would be madness!”
“Why?”
“Why? You know that as well as I. It is a great risk for anyone to run,
and for a general himself to incur a hazard which he should assign to a
subordinate is not only folly, but culpable folly. What would happen to
all the plans for Finistère if you got laid by the heels? And think of
the self-betrayal! Could you wonder if those quick-witted young men of
yours, if M. de Brencourt, if all who got to know of it asked themselves
why you did such an extraordinary thing as to go on this quest in
person?”
M. de Kersaint looked at him musingly. “You have a terrible habit of
being in the right, mon frère. I believe you want to go yourself!”
“Well, I think I should not do amiss, though I do not know Mirabel.”
“I wonder if you know what a good opinion of yourself you have!” said
the Marquis, smiling. “No—though I dislike sending him there—I think
that de Brencourt is the man to go.”
“Has he ever been there, do you think?” asked the priest, hesitating a
little.
The Marquis looked away. “No, I should doubt it,” he said after a
moment. “I shall have to ask him, I suppose. But here is my ancestor’s
plan, and naturally I can give him all necessary details.”
“You must be careful how you do that—remember that you are only a
distant kinsman.”
“I am not likely to forget it,” retorted the Marquis. “I would far
rather not, but I think I must send the Comte. He is the man I should
naturally have sent.”
“Roland de Céligny was dying to go, was he not?”
“Harebrained boy, yes! But I told him and La Vergne that I would have
none of it. It is no work for children. He will be safely out of the way
with his grandfather till I send for him again—though to be sure I
should have preferred to keep him with me.”
“I hope his grandfather will be grateful to you for your self-denial.”
“Highly improbable, I should think,” observed the Marquis sardonically.
“I can do no good thing in that quarter.”
“I can understand that it is not work for Roland,” pursued the priest
meditatively, “but, as far as risk goes, he ran enough of that with us
at la Croix-Fendue the day before yesterday.”
“Of a soldier’s death, perhaps, but not of any other. Not _that_ again,
please God!” A look of bitter regret passed over his face. “O Pierre,”
he said in a low voice, “if only that boy had been born . . . at
Mirabel!”
“Yes, yes!” assented the priest sadly. Things might indeed have been
otherwise if Mirabel had not in its last days been a childless house.
“When I see his grandfather again——” the Marquis was beginning—and
was cut short by the sound of steps on the stairs. In an instant he was
the man who had entered the attic yesterday evening, not the man who for
the last three-quarters of an hour had been talking without reserve to
his only intimate.
“De Brencourt—and Georges,” he said, and rising, stood waiting to
receive the most notable of all the Royalist leaders, and that a
peasant. In another moment the latter stood on the threshold, a massive
Breton of about thirty, bull-necked, wide-shouldered, with short and
very closely curling reddish hair.
The Marquis went forward and held out his hand. “Monsieur Cadoudal, I am
honoured to meet the bravest of the brave.”
The Chouan’s great grip engulfed the strong, slender fingers. “And I in
my turn,” he said, with a natural dignity, “salute the hero of Rivoli.
You bear a Breton name, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“I have—or had—property in Brittany,” replied M. de Kersaint,
hesitating for a moment, “but I am not a Breton.”
Georges Cadoudal _was_ Breton—to the backbone—and in the discussion
which followed Pierre Chassin had leisure to realise the force and
unswervingness of his countryman’s personality, his warlike and (on a
small scale) his administrative genius, and his justness of political
outlook. For he knew perfectly well that as long ago as last summer,
when Cadoudal had come back from his refuge in England to reorganise the
Morbihan, he had urged the Bourbons to immediate action, pointing out
that Hoche was no more, Bonaparte shut up (as he still was) with his
best troops in Egypt, and the Republican armies being drawn off to the
frontiers to face other foes. It was the hour to seize. But the advisers
of the King and of his brother the Comte d’Artois, who was more
particularly concerned with the affairs of the west, were, as usual,
swayed by the evil genius which always seemed to haunt their counsels,
and did nothing. Against that ineptitude Cadoudal, like all the Royalist
leaders, past and present, had continually to struggle—as if there were
not enough difficulties and more than enough dangers, without
instructions from overseas that were always either futile or too late.
If only, thought the Abbé, they do not trip Gaston’s feet in the future
. . . He watched him now, listening to Cadoudal’s explanation of his
system of “legions” in the Morbihan and in Loire-Inférieure, and how he
had brought it about.
“But Finistère, Monsieur le Marquis,” finished the Breton, looking at
the keen patrician face opposite him, “will be a much more difficult
matter, because it is almost fresh ground. And you will find there many
fewer arms stored away than is the case in my command, where we have
been fighting on and off for six years.”
“I know it,” returned Finistère’s destined leader gravely. “I know I
have a very hard task before me. But I have just received good news,
Monsieur Cadoudal. I may be able to supply a good proportion of the
necessary arms myself. There is something equivalent to 12,000 louis
awaiting me in a kinsman’s château if I can secure it. As to
organisation, here is my scheme, if you will be good enough to glance at
it. Though I can never look to have a force like yours, I should hope in
the event of hostilities to be able to support your rear—though indeed
that would by no means counterbalance the immense benefit to me of
having you as a bulwark in front of me. Against the tide of attack we of
Finistère should at best be only a few pebbles—behind a rock.”
“At any rate, Monsieur le Marquis,” said ‘Georges,’ gazing at him hard
out of his deepset eyes, “I can tell, without even looking at your
scheme, that I should not have _sand_ behind me!”
* * * * *
An hour later Cadoudal, escorted by M. de Brencourt, having departed as
secretly as he had come, M. de Kersaint stood collecting the papers
strewn on the table. “I should have been happy to serve under that man,
instead of being his colleague,” he said musingly. Then he went and
looked out through the attic window at the remains of the mediaeval
fortifications of Hennebont, with their memories of the indomitable
spirit which had once defended them, housing in the breast of the
Comtesse Jeanne de Montfort.
“Pierre,” he said suddenly, “before we leave I have a fancy that I
should like to see the giver of this strange and belated wedding gift of
mine. Would it be possible, think you?”
“I do not suppose the niece would object, if you give me leave to
concoct some reason for the request,” replied the Abbé.
The Marquis gave a sort of smile. “You can say what you like. I am
afraid you must be getting inured to deception on my behalf. At any rate
I cannot betray myself to Mlle Magny now.”
No, one cannot betray oneself to the dead. And yet, who knows? . . .
Perhaps the old lady’s spirit, still hovering round the habitation it
had so recently quitted, could realise and be glad that her offering had
thus quickly found its goal. But candles burnt now at the head and feet
of that empty dwelling, and the face looked austere, and remote from
those old desires and admirations. M. de Kersaint took the holy-water
sprinkler which the priest handed to him, and shook a few drops on the
dead servitress of his house.
“Yes, I remember her,” he said in a low voice. “My mother always thought
so highly of her . . . I wish now that I had seen her alive, for I
should like to have thanked her for this great gift of hers, with its
possibilities for France. Could she have chosen a better time to make
it?”
He stooped over the bed, and, reverently lifting one of the old hands
folded over the crucifix, put a kiss on its icy, shrivelled surface,
while the priest gazed at him, full of sorrowful thoughts.
Eight-and-twenty years ago, when those closed eyes had looked on him in
his springtime, what might he not have become? Lucien, who had been
struck by it, had told him how M. de Kersaint had objected to last
night’s use of the _Tu Marcellus eris_, and the sad and lovely lines
rushed into the priest’s mind anew. Yes, more poignant than the lament
for youth cut off and blighted promise, was that for youth spent to no
end and promise wasted. _Tu Marcellus eris!_ At twenty-three he might
have been . . . at fifty-one? . . .
For what the man who stood there with him by the dead had since done to
redeem the light and sterile past he could not claim in his own name,
and she—the bride of Mlle Magny’s memories—to whom this late
justification of her faith in him would have been life’s supremest
happiness, was no longer on earth to see it.
Truly, as the great Latin knew, there was a bitter sense of tears in
human things.
BOOK II
MIRABEL
“And so, cold, courteous, a mere gentleman,
He bowed, we parted.
Parted. Face no more,
Voice no more, love no more! wiped wholly out
Like some ill scholar’s scrawl from heart and slate,—
Aye, spit on and so wiped out utterly
By some coarse scholar! I have been too coarse,
Too human. Have we business, in our rank,
With blood i’ the veins? I will have henceforth none;
Not even to keep the colour at my lip.”
_Aurora Leigh_.
CHAPTER I
M. THIBAULT IN CONVERSATION
In spite of the bare six miles which separated it from Paris in spite of
its position only a little off the high-road there-from to
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a great peace reigned this afternoon over the
hamlet of Mirabel-le-Château, those few dwellings which had grown up,
for its convenience or by its favour, round the vast oblong mass of the
Renaissance palace from which they took their name. It was the light,
warm peace of early April sunshine, of occasionally rising April dust,
and of trees all brightly and freshly arrayed, but, whatever its
ingredients, it was a tranquillity entirely unappreciated by the one
human being in sight of Mirabel, the sentry in his box outside that
deserted palace. He was so bored with being sentry there!
Years ago, in the bad old days, as he was accustomed to regard them, if
he had been in Mirabel-le-Château at all—which was improbable, for he
was a Parisian—the village would not have been so deathly quiet, for,
vassal though it were of the great house which it was now his untoward
lot to guard, it beat at least with the life radiating to it from that
centre and reason of its being. But if all the remaining inhabitants of
Mirabel-le-Château could boast, in theory, of a glorious liberty, of
bowing the knee no more to M. le Duc de Trélan, nor even to the King of
France—but only to France’s five kinglets, the Directors, to the
military authorities who bled them by incessant conscription, and, in a
measure, to that member of the _Conseil des Anciens_ who had charge of
the château, Georges Camain—they certainly could not congratulate
themselves on the possession of overmuch gaiety or even of bread. In
those same bad old days the tyrannical owners of Mirabel had given them
work, or bread, or both; no one to-day gave them either, for there was
none to give. Besides, there were not now many inhabitants left in the
hamlet to receive. The village boys who, as boys will, had cheered on
the Paris mob which sacked Mirabel in the summer of 1792 lay, many of
them, as quiet as the bodies round which they had unthinkingly
danced—corpses themselves in the blood-stained soil of Flanders or
Switzerland or Italy or Syria. Those who lived were far away. In
Mirabel-le-Château now only the old and the women remained.
Certainly, in the bad old days, Mirabel-le-Château had been a more
cheerful and a more populous village; but then it had not been free.
Certainly, in that time of oppression, such of its inhabitants as were
so minded could flock on Sundays at the sound of the bell to the little
church and hear the white-haired curé say Mass and admonish them—two
proceedings which some of them found, strangely enough, to be of
assistance in their daily lives. Now that old man was slowly dying, a
deportee in the swamps of Cayenne, there was no one to say Mass, and
even the bell, the symbol of a cult, might on no account be rung. Yet
every tenth day these freed citizens were all but hounded into the bare
and desecrated church to hear a discourse on patriotism or the social
virtues. But were they not delivered from “the imbecile liturgy of the
priesthood” and all the superstitions of Catholicism? Was not Sunday
replaced by the more enlightened if penetratingly dull Décadi? And
whereas, in the bad old days, the master of Mirabel had all but owned
them, now, on the contrary they, or at least the French nation, claimed
to own Mirabel. It was true that singularly little benefit had accrued
to them from the change.
And thus the village of Mirabel-le-Château was less than half animate,
and the sentry from the guard-house opposite the Temple of Reason
(formerly the church) had to bear his dreadful affliction of ennui
unsolaced. Only a wooden barrier and some acres of gravel separated him
from the château behind him, for the great wrought iron gates, of the
finest Italian workmanship, had been destroyed when the present
proprietors entered so tempestuously on their new acquisition seven
years ago. These gates had been very economically replaced, all the time
that the deceased Convention was in power, by a cord bearing a knot of
tricolour ribbon and the legend, “Défense d’entrer,” written on a card
in violet ink that had run and paled with the rain. But now, under the
Directory, a neat wooden barrier spanned the wide space between the
stone gateposts with their mutilated shields and lions, a barrier
bearing a painted notice which, headed “Ci-devant château de Mirabel,
Bien National,” went on to state that since the Government intended
eventually to turn the château into a museum of art treasures, citizens
were already at liberty to visit it twice in the “décade,” on payment of
a fee. Practically nothing, as yet, had really been done towards the
formation of the proposed museum, and if the Directory, always pressed
for money, depended for this consummation on the payments of visitors it
could have amassed very little towards that object. Meanwhile it had
locked up such of the rooms as had not been entirely stripped of
pictures and furniture, installed a female concierge with power to
summon relays of _femmes de journée_ to her aid, and kept what seemed to
be a rather unnecessary sentry till nightfall at the entrance.
And this sentry, fixed bayonet and all, lounged to-day in his box as
though he had never known the meaning of drill, as though he were not a
National Guard from what had been one of the most turbulent sections of
Paris. He sighed as he sat there, his musket between his knees, he
fidgeted with his white cross-belts, he drummed with his heels; a member
of a free people felt himself very much in bondage this afternoon. He
would not be relieved till another hour and a quarter had dragged by.
For a few minutes’ conversation with some human being of whatever
station, sex, or age, he would have given almost anything that he could
think of. But the village, round the corner to his right, seemed
uninhabited as well as invisible; even the cabaret on his other hand,
between him and the high-road at right angles some half-mile away, might
as well have been shut, for all the company it was receiving or
emitting. Though he could not betake himself thither, sheer boredom was
making the Citizen Grégoire Thibault altruistic. To see anybody go in,
even. . . . And it was in looking dejectedly along the poplar-bordered
road to the Café du Musée that he became aware of a cloud of dust
settling down in the distance.
A little interest sprang into his veiled eye; he leant forward out of
his box and spat upon the ground with a return of vigour. That dust must
betoken the passing of the diligence from Paris to Saint-Germain. Now,
had it set down any one for Mirabel-le-Château? Very improbable; but if
it had the traveller would be obliged to pass him to get to the
hamlet. . . . There was nobody, of course, and, as to talk, only the
conversation of the poplars with the breeze. “Oh, sacré métier!” groaned
the Citizen Grégoire, and took out his pipe as a last resource. There
was no one to report him to the sergeant.
He pushed down the coarse tobacco by means of a handsome gold and
bloodstone seal with a coat of arms, loot from the great pillage, which
he had bought last year for ten sous on the Quai de la Mégisserie, began
to feel for his tinderbox, and stopped. The diligence _had_ set down a
passenger after all!
Down the sunlit road under the poplars was advancing the figure of a
woman, carrying a little covered basket in her hand. By her gait she was
young. So much the better. Thibault rose to his feet; it seemed too good
to be true.
It must be conceded that, as the godsend came nearer, he suffered a
measure of disappointment. The woman was not young—but neither was she
old. She was walking rather slowly, with her eyes on the ground, but
when she was quite near she lifted them and looked at him, and M.
Thibault perceived that she was about to stop of her own accord.
“Good-day, la femme!”
“Good-day, citizen sentry,” she returned. “This is the only entrance to
the château, is it not?”
Her voice was very sweet—though indeed any voice would have fallen like
music on the ears of Grégoire just then. The eyes which she raised to
him were noticeably well-set; under her decent black bonnet he saw fair
hair turning grey. She was tall and generously made; he took her to be
about forty-five. Then her little covered basket and her air of having
business there suddenly recalled to him a fact he had totally forgotten.
“Name of a pipe!” exclaimed he, slapping his musket. “Is it possible,
citoyenne, that you are the new concierge?”
The woman nodded. “Yes, citizen sentry. I was instructed to come this
afternoon. My baggage, a small trunk, should have arrived already.”
“I don’t believe it has,” said M. Grégoire Thibault musingly, and he
rubbed a rather bristly chin. “If I had seen anything of it, I shouldn’t
have forgotten that you were coming. But perhaps it arrived this morning
before I was on duty.” He appeared to be ruminating on this possibility,
but in reality he was thinking to himself, “She has been a fine woman,
that, once!” Aloud, he said, “I knew, of course, that Mère Prévost was
giving up her job, but I had forgotten that she was to leave to-day. Her
man has come back from the wars, I believe, short of an arm. And so you
are the new caretaker, citoyenne?”
He took another look at her. “Le diable m’emporte,” he thought this
time, “if she is not a fine woman still!”
Resting his musket against the sentry-box he went slowly, fishing out a
key, to the movable portion of the barrier. But having got there,
instead of unfastening the padlock he turned round again, leaning
against the bar.
“I’m sure I hope you’ll like this business, citoyenne,” he began
conversationally. “Pretty dreary, I take it, living alone in that great
house there, full of nothing but memories of the time of the Tyrant, and
of the bloodshed the day the people took it. If one believed in ghosts,
now——”
“You don’t believe in them, evidently, Citizen?”
“I hope I am a better patriot,” responded the National Guard with
dignity. “Ghosts, the so-called saints, prayers for the dead, the
Republic has done away with all that nonsense.”
“Yes, there has been a good deal done away with these last ten years.”
The tone of this remark a little puzzled Grégoire, but he continued
nevertheless, “Still, I must confess that Décadi doesn’t often see me at
the Temple, unless there’s a wedding. It’s just a little
wearisome. . . . But my wife in Paris goes to the Temple of Genius
regularly—the late _edifice Roch_, as you know—and says she likes it,
especially since they have instituted recitations by the children, and
our youngest took a prize. But what were we speaking of?—ah, the
château. Well, if I were not a good patriot, and disbelieved in saints
and angels and all that rubbish, I might be tempted to think that the
ci-devant Duchesse walked there o’ nights without her head, or maybe
with it, looking in her silks and satins as she did before they stuck it
on a pike, for I have heard that she was a famous beauty.”
“Yes, I have heard that,” said the newcomer with a shade of impatience.
“But I have also heard that it is incorrect,” she added.
“Well, beauty or not, it was all the same to her, poor wretch, when she
came out of La Force that day,” observed Grégoire, comfortably leaning
back on his elbows on the barrier. And having thus dismissed the subject
he went on, “The ci-devant Duc now,—supposed to be alive, he is. So you
won’t meet him walking there. Instead of Monseigneur we have M. le
Député Camain; he often comes, and sometimes the Citoyenne Dufour, who
used to be at the Opera, with him. She acts at the Ambigu-Comique now.
They say he’s going to marry her. Curious world, isn’t it, Citoyenne?
Think, if the Duc and Duchesse could see Mirabel now!” He laughed.
The new caretaker drew her shawl round her as if the April breeze caught
her. “I think I had better——” she began, making a fresh move towards
the barrier. And then she said abruptly, “You spoke just now of the Duc.
Has anything been heard—here in Mirabel-le-Château, I mean—about him?”
M. Grégoire shook a waggish finger at her. “No, no, nothing more is
known about him. And take care, citoyenne concierge!” he added grinning.
“It doesn’t do, since Fructidor, to be too much interested in
aristocrats as high up as that, especially when they are still émigrés.
But I believe from what I have heard, that Monseigneur le Duc could turn
any woman’s head. I don’t suppose, however, that you ever saw him, did
you?”
“I am from the provinces,” was the new concierge’s reply. “I only came
to Paris after the tenth of August.”
“Ah, you missed something!” said the National Guard regretfully. “I
wasn’t at the storming of the Tuileries, but I saw the place afterwards.
And this nest of ci-devants, as I daresay you’ve heard, was rushed two
days later, by patriots from Paris. Not so much fighting, of course, as
in the Place du Carrousel, since there were no troops here, but they
barricaded the place as well as they could, and the Duchesse’s maître
d’hôtel was killed outside her boudoir, and two or three servants on the
stairs and so on. Then the house was pretty well looted; I’ve heard the
citizen Camain regret that.”
The concierge looked away from him at the great façade. “And how was it
that the Duc escaped?” she asked.
“How did he escape! He did not need to escape!” retorted the sentry. “He
wasn’t there. He had emigrated long before that. That’s what saved him.”
“But he could not know, long before, what was going to happen in 1792,”
said the woman, almost as if she were defending M. de Trélan.
“Maybe not,” returned the National Guard indifferently. “All I know is
that he wasn’t here. But she was—the ci-devant Duchesse—and that was
the end of her, after a few days of La Force. Myself, I don’t approve of
murdering prisoners, especially those of the sex, though the woman
Lamballe, being such a friend of the female Capet—as we used to call
her before Thermidor—doubtless deserved what she got. But as for this
Duchesse, I have heard that she was always kind to the poor, here and
elsewhere. But what would you have? Mistakes happen.”
“Yes,” agreed the concierge, looking at him. “But, no doubt, she is well
out of this world. It is not too merry a one, Citizen, even, perhaps,
for a Duchesse.”
M. Thibault, who was in reality a sympathetic soul, and by no means the
blood-boltered patriot he liked to paint himself at times, said to this,
“You have known trouble, Citoyenne?”
“I have known what it is to lose my husband, my home, and every penny I
had. But I am not faint-hearted; do not think that! One goes on to the
end, does one not, citizen sentry—till the relief?”
“Sacré tonnerre, yes!” asseverated the citizen sentry, struck. “I see
you are a good-plucked one, Madame. Well, I shall like to think of you
behind me in the château there, and if ever there’s anything you want
doing for you, I’m your man. Grégoire Thibault is my name.”
The new concierge thanked him with a smile which caused a sensible
warmth to flow over the Citizen Grégoire, and made him regret still more
that he could not decently keep her waiting any longer. He fitted the
key slowly into the lock, saying, “You’ve got your warrant with you, I
suppose, Madame?”
The woman held it out at once—an official document duly stamped and
sealed, appointing the widow Vidal, sempstress, of the Rue de Seine,
concierge of the ci-devant château of Mirabel, in room of the woman
Prévost, resigning that charge. The document was signed by the Deputy
Camain, the administrator of Mirabel, and countersigned by one of the
five Directors, Larevellière-Lépeaux.
“‘Vidal,’” murmured the sentry, studying it. “Parfaitement.” He returned
the paper and at last unfastened the barrier. “Do you see those two bits
of balustrading, Madame Vidal, on either hand of the great steps? When
you get there you will find that there is a stairway the other side of
them, going down to the basement storey. The left-hand one has
‘Concierge’ on it. You go down there. Mme Prévost will probably be on
the look-out for you. Good-luck to you, Citoyenne!”
She bent her head again with that smile which had charmed him.
“Thank you, Citizen. I think I shall find my way. . . . Ah, there is one
thing I forgot. I have lived in Paris for some years with my niece Mme
Tessier, and it is probable that she may come to see me soon—that she
will come regularly, in fact. She will have a pass from M. Camain
himself. I suppose therefore that there will be no difficulty?”
“No, that will be all right. No need to bother about that,” replied M.
Thibault heartily.
And Mme Vidal passed through the barrier. As she did so she not
unnaturally glanced up at the broken stone lion on one of the gateposts
which still held between its paws the defaced shield of the Ducs de
Trélan. The man, who saw the movement, made a gesture of half-tolerant
contempt.
“Those watchdogs won’t bark at you now—nor at any one!” he remarked.
But Mme Vidal seemed not to have heard him; nor did he, on his side,
observe that she had caught her underlip between her teeth like one in
sudden pain. Then she began to walk steadily towards the great house.
CHAPTER II
LE PALAIS DE FAIENCE
A trifle of agitation might easily have been excused in any prospective
caretaker confronted for the first time by the château of Mirabel. Since
there was, on this side of it, no half-concealing avenue, nor, indeed,
trees of any kind whatever, but only the prone skeletons of what had
been a series of formal gardens, the whole towering extent of the façade
broke in one oppressive moment upon eye and brain. And that, no doubt,
was why Mme Vidal, walking at first with fair speed towards it over the
wide gravel approach, suddenly came to a standstill, and, gripping
tightly the handle of her basket, stood like a statue, gazing, across
its forlorn parterres, at the overpowering bulk of her new home.
Forty-two years had gone to the making of Mirabel. Begun in 1528 for
François I., at the same time as that other palace of Fontainebleau, it
had risen under the eyes of successive Royal architects, de l’Orme and
Primaticcio, till it became the great château reckoned, in that day of
the French Renaissance, so wonderful a novelty—a residence not built
round courtyards one or many, but constructed in a solid mass, a
parallelogram of great length and height, whereof the north side exactly
reproduced the south and the east the west. And Girolamo della Robbia,
brought from Italy, had ornamented it in every part with details of
many-coloured majolica.
So it stood, this great pile, before the eyes of Mme Vidal—its
five-storeyed façade cut, as it were, into three portions by the two
square-faced towers which ran up it, and which were repeated, something
larger and more aspiring, at the corners. Along both of the two lower
storeys, making a sort of colonnade or loggia in front of the tall
windows, went richly decorated arcading, fifteen bays of it, lofty and
round-arched. Interrupted by similar towers at intervals the colonnading
ran, in fact, round the entire building. But the five bays of the
central portion were more deeply recessed than the others, for at their
pillar bases stretched, from tower to tower, twelve immensely long, wide
and shallow steps. Save for the absence of these steps and of the great
entrance door to which they led—and for a difference, also, in the
frieze over the arches—the second storey exactly reproduced the first.
But the third and fourth gained a measure of variety from the absence of
the colonnading; though on the third there was still an uncovered
terrace or balcony. Here too the windows, no longer so lofty, showed
differing schemes of ornamentation, the frames of the lower row being
supported by a sort of winged design, the upper accompanied by flat
columns.
Yet, despite these devices to break monotony, it was with relief that
the eye, travelling upwards over this regular assemblage of colonnades
and windows, came at last to the high-pitched roofs, with their
agreeably different levels, their dormer windows, and their tall, ornate
chimney-stacks. The roof of the midmost portion of the château, between
the two central towers, was the lowest; yet even this, after putting
forth two great decorated chimneys, suddenly soared up at each end into
a peak higher even than those of the towers. And on either hand of it
sprang the great pointed pavilion-roofs of the side wings, much higher
again, and blossoming, they also, into the most intricately ornamented
chimneys and dormer windows.
And everywhere there was this astounding many-hued, glazed and
highly-modelled decoration, lavished in frieze and medallion from the
richly diapered soffits of the arcading on the ground floor to the very
crests of the roofs themselves. It was true that it did not glitter so
brightly in the sun of 1799 as in that of 1570, that more than two
centuries of exposure to northern weather had dimmed—not perhaps to its
disadvantage—something of the Italian’s lustre and colouring, and that
the far more destructive human agencies of the last seven years had
obliterated some of his ornaments altogether, yet Mirabel still was a
“palais de faïence,” still supported the enthusiastic testimony of a
Renaissance contemporary that its mass was “fort éclattante à la veue.”
And even if the decoration were too exuberant, even if the whole
building were imposing rather from sheer size than from any other
architectural virtue, it was undeniably a great house, with a majesty
and a history of its own, a house that bore out the proud motto of its
vanished owners, _Memini et permaneo_—‘I remember and I remain.’
Such was the château of Mirabel, built for the first King of the
Valois-Angouléme branch, whose salamander still in places adorned it,
and given by the last to his favourite, César de Saint-Chamans, Marquis
de Trélan. Up and down those great steps, in the last two hundred years,
had gone many a prince and warrior and statesman and courtier, many a
great lady and fair. Mirabel with its colonnades and majolica had known
much revelry, much wit, much evil; some good deeds, no little patronage
of art and letters, now and then a liberal charity; once or twice, in
brides of the line, some approach to saintliness. And it had sheltered
always a brilliant courage, a brilliant egoism, an astoundingly
tenacious self-will, and a pride as great as the Rohans’. For these last
qualities it had been no unfit setting.
Now it was . . . as it was; and a poor semptress from Paris, whom the
warrant of that little hunchbacked, cross-grained Angevin attorney, the
Director Larevellière-Lépeaux, had appointed its only tenant, stood in
front of the blind, shuttered mass and gazed at it. The sun might strike
on the majolica, but how eyeless looked those great lofty windows of the
lower storeys, through that empty colonnading where no one ever now
walked or talked! The glass was gone from some of them. Everything was
dead, ruined, deserted—a pulseless body. Only, over the level central
roof, against the clear sky of afternoon, voyaged with light heart a
feather of an April cloud, and the April breeze shook cheerfully the few
self-sown flowers that flaunted haphazard in what was the mere chart of
the formal gardens. But Mme Vidal’s eyes were on the house, and the
house only.
Presently a lively discussion of sparrows took place near her on the
gravel. The angry cheeping appeared to rouse her, and she began to go on
again towards the château, while the victor of the affray, hopping to
the basin of a sunken fountain, drank delicately of that water with
which the spring rains, and they alone, had filled it.
Very soon the new concierge was close enough to the house to distinguish
plainly the winged beasts, like dragon-headed horses, that went in
couples, face to face, all along the frieze running above the
colonnading of the ground floor, and the medallions of classical heads
that filled the spandrils below the frieze, and the Doric entablature of
the next storey. Walking now like an automaton, she came nearer and
nearer, and stood at last at the foot of the great steps, and, looking
up, saw, over the blotched and discoloured marble, through which the
grass was pushing triumphant fingers, how the great door, visible now
through the richly diapered archway, was roughly mended and yet more
roughly boarded up. It still wore the scars of that August day seven
years ago when, for the first time in all its proud history, it had been
opened to a will that was neither its master’s nor the King’s. At it,
too, the concierge stood a moment or two gazing, then, as she had been
directed, she turned to her left hand, and began to descend the steps
which led from the ground level at the foot of the tower towards the
basement offices. These steps, at the base of either tower, were
invisible till one was close to the house, since they were screened by a
line of stone balustrading, but, as the sentry had said, a board with a
legend and a downward-pointing hand directed the feet of the visitor to
this subterranean entrance. Mirabel had been greatly admired once for
the possession of this very thing.
Just as Mme Vidal got to the bottom of the steps the door at right
angles to them opened, and revealed the outgoing caretaker, a dry,
thin-lipped woman dressed in rusty black, with a fairhaired child of
three or four clinging to her skirts.
“I hope, Madame,” said her successor apologetically, “that I have not
inconvenienced you? I fear I am a little late; the diligence was not
punctual.”
“You’re not later than I expected,” replied Mme Prévost unemotionally.
“I saw Thibault chattering to you at the gate; I know what he is, so I
don’t blame you. From the way his tongue goes, it’s a pity he’s not a
woman.”
Without more ado she led the way in, the child’s hand in hers, and Mme
Vidal followed her along a short passage into a smallish living-room,
clean, bare, and distinctly stuffy with an accumulated rather than a
recent smell of cooking. Facing the door, high up, were two tall
windows, which came just down to the level of the ground outside,
itself, naturally, higher than that of the floor. They gave sufficient
light, but it was not very easy to see out of them, for they were
heavily barred. In the middle of the room, covered with a nightmare of a
cloth, stood a round table. On the left hand was the stove, with a few
shelves and appurtenances; on the right a press, two chairs and another
door.
“Here is the bedroom,” said Mme Prévost, opening this door, and
affording a hasty glimpse of a still smaller room, where the chief
object to be seen was a short, wide, wooden bed, covered with a
patchwork quilt of various shades, and situated in a recess.
“You’ll find these rooms quite comfortable,” said the woman. “The
Government provides all necessaries, down to pots and pans, as I expect
you’ve been told, so you’ll have what you want for cooking. And I will
come again in the morning to show you round the château; I can tell you
your duties then. I have left you enough provisions for your supper and
breakfast, in case you did not think to bring anything with you. There
is a small trunk of yours arrived, however; I put it in the bedroom. I
suppose you know that people come to see the place occasionally, though
a good portion of it is shut up? There’s keys—a mort of keys. Look,
Madame!” She unfastened a small door in the wall, and showed them
reposing in a sort of cupboard.
“It will take me time to learn all those,” said Mme Vidal, resting her
hand on the table. She had a look, suddenly come upon her, of great
fatigue.
“Oh, they are all labelled,” returned Mme Prévost complacently. “Well,
I’ll come and show you in the morning, about nine. Yes, ma petite”—for
the child was tugging at her skirts—“we are going to see Papa. She
hardly knows what the word means; born in Germinal of the year IV, she
was, and he away in Germany with General Moreau. . . . I hope you will
find everything you want, Madame. I can assure you it’s all clean and as
it should be.”
“I am sure it is,” answered Mme Vidal. “But may I not pay you this
evening for the provisions you have been kind enough to leave me?”
“Very well, Madame, if you wish,” replied the other, who was gathering
together some small possessions. “There’s the bread and the coffee, and
a couple of eggs—not so easy to come by in these hard days. The
milk-woman comes at half-past six in the morning.” Reflecting a moment
she named a sum, and Mme Vidal, pulling out a shabby purse, paid it with
reiterated thanks.
“But I see that you have left me some wood too,” she added. “Do I not
owe you for that also?”
“No, no,” said Mme Prévost, waving away the proposal. “There’s never any
lack of wood here, and the Government lets the concierge have it free.
It would be hard indeed if they were stingy with it, considering that it
costs them nothing, as it is all off the estate. This lot is
particularly good, you’ll find; it comes from the pine avenue, I fancy.”
Mme Vidal took a step backwards. “They are not cutting down the pine
avenue, surely?” she exclaimed in a sharp, sudden voice.
A great astonishment dawned in the meagre visage before her. “Why, do
you know Mirabel already!” she asked. “I thought—the Citizen Deputy
said you came from the provinces.”
“So I did—so I do,” stammered the new concierge. “But even in the
provinces . . . one had heard of the pine avenue at Mirabel. My late
husband had seen it in his youth.”
“I see,” said Mme Prévost slowly. “Well, I will leave you to settle in,
Madame, for you look tired. I’ll come in the morning about nine then.
The stairway up to the ground floor is a little to the left out there;
not that you will need to go up before I come. The key of the door I let
you in at is in the lock; everybody, visitors and all, comes by that
door, and you are not responsible for any other; in fact the rest are
nearly all barred up. You had better lock that door behind me now. Come
along, Mariette.”
Almost in silence Mme Vidal went with her into the passage, and when Mme
Prévost and the child had passed through, and she had responded with a
pale smile to the outgoing concierge’s “A demain, Madame!” she turned
the key and pushed the bolt. Then she went back to the living-room, and
locked that door behind her also.
Back in Mirabel! back in Mirabel! Was it possible? Back in
Mirabel—though, to be sure, in a region of it that she had never even
seen before. Some of the swarm of servants had lived here in old times.
Had she betrayed herself about the avenue? How foolish, after all these
years of self-repression! She looked slowly round. Yes, this odd couple
of rooms was no doubt some lesser steward’s in the past. But, if
unfamiliar, it was at least situated within the shell of what had been,
what still was, Mirabel—Mirabel the loved, Mirabel the hated, Mirabel
the enchanted palace, Mirabel the purgatory. . . .
She went suddenly to the cupboard in the wall, and putting in her hand
drew out the keys. Yes, she was once more, in a sense—but in what a
sense—the châtelaine of Mirabel.
And, flinging them back clashing into their seclusion, she sat down at
the table, buried her face in her hands and began to laugh. There was
never a laugh more mirthless, yet the situation had its humours. At her,
indeed, the “watchdogs” on the disfigured gateposts, as the sentry had
termed them, would never even have growled. The new concierge of
Mirabel’s fallen estate had once been the mistress of Mirabel’s
magnificence, for Mme Vidal the caretaker was Valentine de
Saint-Chamans, was the Duchesse de Trélan in person.
CHAPTER III
NINE YEARS—AND BEYOND
(1)
The general belief that the Duchesse de Trélan, thrown into prison when
Mirabel was sacked, had shared the terrible fate of the Princesse de
Lamballe, though it was unfounded, had a large amount of probability to
justify it. Valentine de Saint-Chamans had come very near to being cut
down by the weapons of the killers in that shambles of a street outside
La Force on the 3rd of September, 1792—so near it indeed that her
entire disappearance from that hour was assigned to that cause and to no
other.
But she had been saved on the very brink by a man almost unknown to her,
acting under a stimulus not commonly as powerful in this world as it
might be—gratitude.
Years and years before the Duchesse de Trélan had discovered in Paris,
precariously situated, a former steward of Mirabel, had pensioned him
from her own purse, and had continued the pension after his death to his
granddaughter, Suzon. Suzon in due time wedded one Alcibiade Tessier, a
young watchmaker with ideas—the Duchesse, who was fond of her for her
own sake, contributing her dowry. After that Valentine lost sight of her
protégée, and for some years before 1792 she had seen nothing of Mme
Tessier, so that no one had less idea than she in what good stead her
own past generosity was to stand her.
The first intimation of it was the sudden appearance, at one o’clock in
the afternoon of that third of September, in the little courtyard of the
prison of La Petite Force—where only an hour and a half earlier Mme de
Trélan had seen and spoken to the Princesse de Lamballe, now gone to her
doom—of a man whom she seemed to have seen before. This man approached
her, looked her in the face, said with meaning, “Do not be afraid! I
shall be there!” and walked rapidly away again. It was Alcibiade
Tessier, now an important member of his “section,” and, as such,
decorated with a badge of authority commanding respect, though
meaningless to the Duchesse de Trélan.
Sure enough, when a little before three o’clock several men came to take
her before that mock tribunal in the adjoining prison of La Force, he
was at their head. Still Mme de Trélan had not recognised him, and
thought his remark merely ferocious irony. But a measure of
enlightenment as to his aim, at any rate, came when she found him
confidently taking the words out of her mouth, and answering for her to
those questions that she only half understood. It was he who at the end
of that rapid interrogatory caught her arm and, raising it, said, “See,
she cries ‘Vive la nation’”; it was he who, on the pronouncement of
acquittal, went out in front of her through the door of death into the
swimming Rue des Balais, he who, with some more under his orders,
hurried her up the length of that swirling red gutter into the worse
carnage of the Rue St. Antoine, and finally he who, when one of the male
furies there, with dripping sabre, tried to get her to kneel on the
hillock of corpses and shreds of corpses to swear fealty to the nation,
pushed her by, covering her face with his hat, asseverating that she was
not a friend of the Lamballe, and that she had already sworn.
But it was only when she sank down, half dead, in Alcibiade’s little
shop in the Rue de Seine that the Duchesse de Trélan began fully to
realise the harvest which she was reaping. In the Tessiers’ attic,
where, more or less indisposed, she was hidden for a month, she knew it
better still. For Suzon had quite decided that her benefactress was to
instal herself there for the present, until she could safely get away,
and she and Alcibiade so wrought upon Mme de Trélan that in mid-October
she openly appeared as Suzon’s aunt from the provinces, arriving one
evening, for the benefit of the neighbours, with a trunk—Suzon’s.
She was then able to attempt to communicate with her émigré husband, and
wrote a very guarded letter addressed to his last direction in London.
Suzon, who was anxious for her to join him, contrived to get it conveyed
somehow across the Channel. Cautiously as (for the Tessiers’ sake) the
letter was worded, it showed that Mme de Trélan was waiting for a lead
to join the Duc in England. No answer came. The obvious explanation of
the silence was that her letter had never reached him. That was quite to
be expected. After Christmas she wrote again; fresh difficulties of
conveyance, fresh uncertainties as to its arrival. And again no reply.
“The reason is,” Suzon would say, “that M. le Duc is coming himself to
take you away. One of these days he will turn up in the Rue de Seine,
you will see!”
But Valentine knew—indeed, hoped—that that was out of the question. In
that early spring of 1793, after the King’s execution, how could a
proscribed noble possibly get into Paris without incurring the most
terrible risks? She was haunted sometimes by the thought that he had
come, and had paid the penalty. That thought made her hesitate too about
fleeing on her own account to England—always supposing such a course
were possible without compromising the Tessiers—for her husband might
meanwhile be searching for her in Paris, since she had not dared (again
for their sakes) to give her address plainly. She would wait a little
longer.
And then, in that April, the bloody thundercloud of the Terror broke
over France. Ere the first spattering red drops had swelled to the
stream which was to run so full Valentine found herself once more in
prison—this time in a much obscurer place of detention than La Force. A
piece of her underclothing, incautiously sent to be washed out of the
house, was found to bear a compromising mark; the washerwoman denounced
this widow from the provinces who had a coronet on her shift. The marvel
was that the Tessiers themselves were not included in this catastrophe,
but they put up such a good defence, Alcibiade’s character for
patriotism stood so high, and Suzon affirmed so stoutly that the garment
in question belonged to a ci-devant in the country whom her aunt had
once served as maid, that in the end Valentine was imprisoned as a
suspect merely. And as a suspect she remained in her mean captivity for
more than a year, unrecognised—for there were none of her acquaintance
there—and forgotten.
The Gironde fell, Marat was murdered, the Queen executed, Vendée
defeated. The year 1793 closed; the next began; Hébert’s, then Danton’s
head went the way of the rest, and at last the long suspense was ended,
when on a May morning of 1794 the widow Vidal stood before Dumas and his
assessors in their plumed hats, in that hall of so many anguishes in the
Palais de Justice, to find acquittal on an unforeseen ground. There was
no evidence against her; the zealous washerwoman was dead, and even
Fouquier-Tinville himself, demanding his quota of heads a day, was
intent on nobler quarry than this country widow. Her trial only lasted
ten minutes. One was quickly lost or saved just then.
The fishwives on the other side of the barrier acclaimed the acquittal,
little guessing whom they were applauding. Some of them insisted on
accompanying the Duchesse home—to all the home she had. Henceforward
she was more or less sacred. But never, now, while that orgy of blood
and denunciation lasted, could her real identity be suffered to reveal
itself, or the Tessiers would be lost indeed. Moreover, Mme de Trélan
was herself beginning to be uncertain of it. And, though her position
was improved by her official acquittal, the months of prison and
privation had left their mark on her character in a kind of inertia and
indifference very foreign to her nature. In common with many others in
those days of superhuman strain, the love of life was running low in
her. Existence was almost a burden. She was ill, indeed, for months.
Then at last, in that stiflingly hot and cloudless Thermidor, the spell
of terror was snapped, and the guillotine came back from its ceaseless
work in the east of Paris to the centre for Maximilien Robespierre
himself.
In the reaction Valentine roused herself to write again to her husband,
more because she felt she owed it to him than because of any great wish
to do so, or of any hope that he would receive the letter. She did
seriously contemplate leaving France, or at least leaving Paris, but the
days went on, and she took no steps. . . . It was better to think that
Gaston was dead. She did think it at last. If he were not, she was too
proud to make an appearance in the world of emigration as a deserted
wife. And the few family ties she, an only child and early orphaned, had
possessed were all broken now, by nature or violence. She was happy,
too, in a sense, with the Tessiers, who had risked so much for her, and
to whom, since Thermidor, her presence was no longer a menace—though
she was still very careful not to betray herself. She began to earn
money by embroidery, which she had always done exquisitely; she began,
too, to enjoy the new sensation of earning. And when in ’97 Alcibiade
died very suddenly, and his widow, keeping a journeyman to attend to the
clocks and watches, turned half the shop into a lingerie, Mme de
Trélan’s skill helped to support the new venture.
So—unbelievably when she looked back at their added months—five years,
almost, had passed since her release, and she was still in the Rue de
Seine, having reached an indifference to outward circumstances which
might, on the surface, have earned the commendation accorded by
spiritual direction to “detachment.” Yet this state of mind was not in
the main the fruit of the astonishing change in her fortunes, of
captivity and indignities or suspense—not even the fruit of her
husband’s strange silence. It sprang from a tree of older growth than
these, though no doubt these conditions, and especially the last, had
ripened it; it was the lees of a cup more deadening, even, than that
which the Revolution had set to her lips—the cup which she had begun to
drink years before, when her heart had been slowly starved amid the
luxury and state of Mirabel.
(2)
The marriage of Geneviève-Armande-Marie-Valentine de Fondragon with
Gaston-Henri-Hippolyte-Gabriel-Eléonor de Saint-Chamans, Duc de Trélan,
had been arranged, as often happened, when the bride was a child in the
convent. But Mlle de Fondragon had seen her betrothed before the
ceremony rather oftener than fell to the lot of most highborn young
girls in her day, and no match, in the end, had been more one of love
than hers with the singularly attractive young man who came sometimes,
as was permitted, to the parlour of the great aristocratic nunnery of
the Panthémont where she was being educated. She was seventeen,
beautiful and accomplished, when she was wedded with all imaginable pomp
in the chapel of Mirabel to a bridegroom of twenty-three, and began with
him an existence out of which custom and the demands of fashion, rather
than anything more menacing, were so quickly to suck not only the early
enchantment, but the more lasting affection that might have replaced it.
For the splendid and handsome young patrician whom she had married went
his own way in life—and it was not hers.
It was indeed expected of a man of rank in those days that he should
either keep a mistress or be assigned as lover to some married lady of
his own world, and that he should see only as much of the society of his
own wife as a certain standard of good usage demanded. After a few years
of marriage the young Duc de Trélan was conforming most faithfully to
both these requirements. And Valentine, formed in that corrupt and
polished society which grew up so early, was even at twenty-one too much
of her rank and epoch ever to utter reproaches, or even to feel very
keenly that her husband’s far from unusual conduct was reprehensible in
itself. Practically the whole of the highest society was an amazing
_chassé-croisé_ of such arrangements. But she did feel it in another
way, and that sharply enough; for there was a factor not always present
in like situations—she loved her husband passionately. And so, just as
an ordinary woman, she suffered.
Not that Gaston de Trélan was by any means a profligate. He was
difficult in his preferences, and she knew well how violently—and for
the most part unsuccessfully—he was run after in society.
“Saint-Charmant” was the current play on his name in the salons of the
Faubourg St. Germain and of the Marais. Nor did he ever fail in
attentions to her; nay, as the years went on, she knew that she had his
respect always; intermittently, perhaps, almost his love. Of the
freedom, not to say licence, which a lady in her high position could
claim, she herself had not taken the shadow of an advantage. And yet,
though she was herself so unsullied, and though she was also a very
proud woman, she would have passed over in her husband what her world,
so far from censuring, almost demanded. As youth fell away from both of
them she certainly felt it less, and the Duc’s love affairs, never
scandalously frequent, became almost negligible. It was not that trait
in him which had cut the deepest; it was the gradual conviction that the
high promise of his character and gifts would never be fulfilled. Her
love for him, which had survived unfaithfulness, was ambitious, and not
without reason. More than most of his line Gaston de Trélan had
capacity, but unluckily there ran in his blood far more than his share
of the indolent pride of the Saint-Chamans. If he could not do a thing
supremely well, he would not do it at all. Indeed, he appeared to see no
reason why he should trouble to do anything, in a world where all was at
his feet, but be uniformly charming, gay, keenwitted—and supremely
wilful. Like most young nobles he had had a military training, and had
been given a colonelcy at the age of twenty; but not one second more
than the obligatory four months of the twelve would he ever spend with
his regiment. Indeed he resigned the burden of this command a few years
after marriage. In later life the coveted position of First Gentleman of
the Bedchamber had been almost forced upon him; fortunately that only
entailed a year of service. Valentine, a Dame du Palais herself at the
time, had no love for the long and tiring ceremonial of Court
attendance, and if only he had accepted the post of ambassador to Sweden
which was offered him about the same period, or that of governor of
Provence for which he was proposed, she would have forgiven him had he
refused the honour at Versailles. But there existed no influence strong
enough to make him shoulder responsibility against his will.
Yet the slow disillusionment had not killed her love. After all, when
the crash came in 1790 they were neither of them old. And she herself,
as she felt bitterly at times, had failed to do the one thing which was
really demanded of her. She had not given her husband an heir—and
Gaston de Trélan was the last of his line.
It was a shattering blow to a house which dated from the eleventh
century. The name would be extinguished altogether, and the property
broken up. Mirabel would go to a cousin, the Duc de Savary-Lancosme, who
would also inherit the great estates in Berry. Saint-Chamans, that
cradle of the race in the South—which for some reason Valentine had
never liked and rarely visited—would fall to another branch. So the Duc
de Trélan was pitied, as she knew, for what, to a man of his rank,
possessions and ancient lineage, was indeed a profound misfortune.
Things might indeed have been very different if Mirabel had not been a
childless house—not in the accepted sense that the birth of a son would
have drawn husband and wife together, for this was doubtful—but because
the Duchesse de Trélan would not have felt always, as the hope of one
died, the sense of an irremediable shortcoming, and because a certain
fatal retort could never have been made.
For her husband’s entire abstention from reproach on that score
Valentine had always borne him gratitude. And indeed no one in the world
ever counted up more greedily than she his good qualities—his
generosity, his courage, his strict regard for honour, his contempt of
anything petty or mean. It was nothing but that undying wish of hers to
see him openly what he really was which led, after the years of partial
estrangement, to their final rupture, when, in July, 1790, the Duc
announced his intention of emigrating.
He assumed as a matter of course that his wife would accompany him from
a France grown, as he said, insupportable. Most people of their rank had
already gone, for with them it had become practically a principle; M. de
Trélan was inclined to blame himself for having remained so long. But
Valentine did not approve of the principle, and said so; for a man of
any weight and authority to leave France at this juncture seemed to her
like deserting one’s country in her hour of need—though the opinion was
not fashionable. Her husband listened to her, as he always did, with
courtesy, but replied that by remaining he regarded himself as tacitly
countenancing the growth of theories and practices, both in politics and
religion, which he most cordially detested. And the Duchesse on that had
frankly told him that, having for so many years refused to take any part
in politics, or diplomacy, or military affairs or indeed anything, he
had hardly the right now to complain of present developments. Never
before had she been within even measurable distance of such plain
speech.
And M. de Trélan, who could never brook criticism, was plainly more than
annoyed, but he had controlled himself, and recurred more insistently
still to the question of his wife’s accompanying him into exile. Once
more the Duchesse had refused, saying finally, when pressed for a
reason, that she “did not like running away.”
It was true that she had hastily added “from responsibility”—since she
knew, none better, that the last weakness on earth of which her husband
could be accused was physical cowardice—but it was too late. The Duc
was on his feet, quite white. “Madame,” he said, “God made you a woman;
you may thank Him for it. Do you stay here then, with your
responsibilities. They are doubtless great; and if I do not return”—he
took no notice of her as she tried to break in—“if I do not return, you
can superintend the bestowal of my property on its legal heirs.
Savary-Lancosme and the rest will have cause, _as ever,_ to be grateful
to you. I have the honour to wish you good-day.” And he walked out of
her boudoir.
She never saw him again. Within an hour he had quitted Mirabel for ever,
leaving her to reflect, wounded to the soul as she was, on those two
little words “as ever” and what, after all, they revealed.
But in a few days there came a letter from him begging her, not without
a certain stiffness, to forgive him for what, in the heat of the moment,
had passed his lips, and offering her, if she had reconsidered her
decision, his escort to Coblentz, or, if she preferred it, to England.
Otherwise, for the short absence which he proposed to make, she would
find that his affairs were sufficiently in order not to incommode her,
and he prayed her to remain at Mirabel or wherever seemed good to her.
Except for an absence of feeling the letter was perfect, but Mme de
Trélan knew that it was the letter of a man who wishes to set himself
right in his own eyes for what he considers a lapse from good taste. She
thought emigration foolish and unpatriotic—the day had not yet come
when it was the only chance of safety for the wellborn—and she could
not bring herself to accept an amende prompted less by affection for her
than by a desire for rehabilitation. And if it was to be a short
absence, why leave France at all? Down at her country house in Touraine
she was, besides, interesting herself in a certain philanthropic scheme
of her own. So she answered the Duc’s letter in much the same spirit,
asked his pardon also for her hasty words—and refused.
The Duc de Trélan never came back. From Coblentz he went to England, and
though he and his wife at first kept up a desultory correspondence on
matters of business, for five or six months before the sack of Mirabel
she had not had a line from him. Intercourse with England was by that
time becoming uncertain, but she had news of him through less direct
channels. By all accounts Gaston de Trélan was much too popular in
English society to find time for writing to the wife who so deeply
disapproved of his having taken refuge there.
CHAPTER IV
JADIS
(1)
But the strange twist of Fortune’s wheel which, nine years after her
husband’s departure, had brought the Duchesse de Trélan as concierge to
her own palace, was first set in motion when M. Georges Camain,
originally a builder at Angers, was returned at the elections of 1795 as
Deputy for Maine-et-Loire, and, coming up to Paris to take his seat,
received, after a time, from the Director Larevellière-Lépeaux—like him
an Angevin and the quasi-pontiff of that new and arid creed which M.
Camain also professed, Theophilanthropism—the charge of Mirabel. For M.
Camain was a cousin of Suzon Tessier’s, though they had not met since
Suzon was a child.
Nor indeed did the Deputy discover Suzon’s existence till the year that
Alcibiade Tessier died; but after that he was pretty assiduous in his
visits. Valentine sometimes wondered if he had a vision of consoling the
little widow. She herself met him occasionally at meals—a person of
forty-five or so, large, high-coloured, good-humoured, inclined to a
florid style in dress and a slightly vulgar gallantry. Report said that
down at Angers in ’94 he had been a Terrorist, but Suzon discreetly
refrained from making enquiries on that point. Now he seemed so moderate
in his politics that it was hard to understand how he had escaped being
_fructidorisé_ with the other moderate and Royalist deputies in the
_coup d’état_ of 1797.
M. Camain found, of course, that Suzon’s “aunt” had already lived with
her for years, and he was not sufficiently conversant with his cousin’s
relations by marriage to contest any statements which Mme Tessier chose
to make about her kinswoman’s past history. Even her neighbours in the
Rue de Seine scarcely remembered now, so fast did events move, that Mme
Vidal had begun her residence with the Tessiers at a very significant
date in 1792, and had passed more than a year in prison since. Besides,
M. Camain did not frequent any house in the street but Suzon’s.
One afternoon, therefore, in March, 1799, the Deputy, dropping in, in
his genial way, to his cousin’s little shop, said, after some casual
conversation, “By the way, ma cousine, how would you like to live in a
château?” and when Mme Tessier, who was sewing behind the counter,
replied that she had no such ambition, her kinsman admitted that she
might find Mirabel lacking in cosiness.
Mme Tessier’s work left her fingers. “_Mirabel!_” she exclaimed, in a
tone not to be described.
Camain cocked his eyebrow at her. “Yes, Mir-a-bel! The present concierge
is leaving, her husband having come home discharged from the army, and I
always refuse to have a married couple there. Do you fancy the job?”
“God forbid!” said his cousin fervently.
“Of course, I was forgetting your grandfather. His ghost would certainly
walk to see you installed there as the employee of the present régime.”
“Mirabel is full of ghosts,” said Mme Tessier, half unconsciously, her
eyes suddenly fixed. Yes, had the Deputy but known, the ghost of ghosts
was not even so far away as Mirabel.
As if, startlingly, her cousin had read her thoughts, he said, looking
from one counter with its array of clocks to the other with its piles of
linen garments, “No, I suppose you would not want to leave this singular
union of science and . . . er . . . art which you have created. But what
about that aunt of yours? She is very badly off, isn’t she,—and a
charge to you, I suspect? How would it suit her? She would have
assistance, you know, for the cleaning—she need never touch a brush
herself—but she would have to live in the place, and be responsible for
its condition. She has always struck me as a notable woman. What do you
think of that, Cousin Suzon? You see that I am determined to do you a
good turn, whether you will or no!”
And not all Suzon’s hastily found arguments about Mme Vidal’s
unwillingness and unsuitability could turn him from his purpose of at
least offering her the post. Moreover, during the discussion the Deputy
unwittingly gave vent to a number of _doubles entendres_, such as
“Nothing like keeping Mirabel in the family!” and, “It only wants a
woman with a head on her shoulders,” so that by the time his threat to
go and interview Mme Vidal in person had driven her perforce to
undertake the office Suzon Tessier was almost hysterical, and went up
the staircase wringing her hands. Never for one wild second did she
imagine that the offer would be accepted.
At first, indeed, Mme de Trélan had seemed to see in it an insult thrown
at her by Fate—but by Fate’s hand only, for Suzon was certain that the
Deputy had no suspicion of her identity. “Caretaker of my own house!”
the Duchesse had exclaimed. And then she had begun to laugh, saying that
it was so preposterous as to be amusing. Yet the next moment, to Mme
Tessier’s horror, she had exclaimed, “Dear God! why should I say it is
preposterous, _now_! Tell me, Suzon, what I should have to do as
concierge of Mirabel?”
And when Suzon, brokenly, had told her, hoping against hope that she was
only playing with the idea to feed the little vein of ironic humour
which she had sometimes observed in her, Valentine said gravely, “Since
this strange thing has come to me, Suzon, perhaps it is meant, for some
reason, that I should do it.”
“Madame, think what you are saying!” cried the poor Tessier, all her
fears back again. “You a concierge!”
“But what am I now, Suzon—a sempstress, almost your pensioner.” She
said it without bitterness.
“But at _Mirabel_—and you its Duchess!”
To that the Duchesse only said calmly, “I could resign, I suppose, when
I wished. And you would come to see me sometimes, would you not? I
should still have leisure, perhaps, to sew for you. . . . Yes, Suzon, if
your good Deputy wants an immediate answer you can give it to him. Tell
him that—I accept.”
And as Suzon’s horrified protests against this—to her—monstrous and
sacrilegious compliance were broken into by the none too patient
benefactor himself tapping on the door, Mme de Trélan was able to tell
him in person that, if he really thought her suitable for the post, she
should be pleased to take it.
“There!” said Georges Camain triumphantly to the overwhelmed Suzon. And
to her “aunt” he announced with a bow, “Madame, one has only to look at
you to know that Mirabel is fortunate!”
It was in this manner that the Duchesse de Trélan came to accept her
own, and to pass, some three weeks later, into a sort of possession of
it.
(2)
Now, at eight o’clock the morning after her entry, she was already going
up the stairway to the ground floor, the keys of Mirabel in her hand,
for during her night under the patchwork quilt she had discovered that
there was one thing about which she had miscalculated her strength. She
could not endure to make re-acquaintance with her violated home in the
company of Mme Prévost. True, she would probably be obliged to retrace
her steps with the ex-concierge when the latter came to instruct her in
her new duties, but it would be less desecration of her pride and of her
memories if she revisited Mirabel for the first time alone.
But at the top of the stairs she hesitated. What was she going to find?
She knew only too well what desolation might greet her. Paris had long
been a vast pawnshop for the sale of the plundered goods of noble owners
exiled or murdered. She had but to go into the once aristocratic
Faubourg St. Germain to see a whole street of empty palaces, stripped,
many of them, not only of furniture, mirrors and balustrades, but even
of the very lead from the roofs.
And outside Paris it was the same. Where were the galleries and
_faïence_ pavements of the château of Ecouen, Mirabel’s contemporary?
And Anet, that palace of love, fruit of the same brain as Mirabel, where
every door and window bore the interlaced monograms of Henri II. and
Diane de Poitiers? Of that jewel of stone, set in its woods in the
valley of the Eure, nothing but its walls remained. Its costly canals
were rotting mud and rotting water, its parks cut down, the kneeling
statue of Diane in pieces, her mausoleum a horse trough. Chantilly,
stripped of its marble columns, of its _jaspe fleuri_, of its panels of
agate, had become a manufactory. Bellevue, that haunt of the Pompadour,
was a barracks; Marly, a field and four walls.
And Versailles itself? Versailles was the museum of the department. The
avenue under whose fourfold ranks of elms had passed Turenne and Colbert
and Corneille existed no longer. In the chapel the very marble itself
had been split and hacked to get rid of the encrusted Lilies, and the
Virgin over the altar still held a pike in her hand. The beds in the
park were covered with brambles and weeds, the borders of the Grand
Canal were a grazing ground for goats and donkeys, the Pièce des Suisses
was muddy, the Naiads were covered with dust. Trianon was for sale. The
rooms, said Suzon, who had been there, smelt damp, like a cellar, and
the dining-room was full of a strange lumber which Valentine recognised
from her description as the remains of those sledges on which the young,
laughing Court of 1788 had sped over the ice. . . .
How should she find her house of Mirabel?
The morning sun, at least, knew nothing of change of ownership nor of
desecration. It came stooping in through the outer arcading just as it
used to do. In room after room, as she went onwards from one to the
other, it accompanied her, the only habitual thing left in that
desolation. But, though these rooms were stripped, they were not
damaged—only, in their aching bareness, very strange.
She came at last to the midmost point of the ground floor, the great
banqueting hall, or Salle Verte, a vast apartment so closely resembling
in decoration the Salle d’Hercule at Versailles as almost to suggest
that it was a copy of it. There was the same effect of green relieved
with gold on a white background, the same green marble pillars and
heavily gilded cornice. Triumphal deities swam across the ceiling, and,
just as at Versailles, two great pictures, set in elaborately carved
frames, formed part of the integral scheme of decoration. As Valentine
entered and looked down the vista of pillars she was confronted by the
same huge canvas, saw that Æneas was still toilfully bearing Father
Anchises on his shoulders from the burning town—the huge canvas which
had witnessed the dancing on her wedding night and much beside. She
turned almost unthinkingly to look at the companion picture which used
to face it at the other end of the great room, over the hearth, and was
met by a large blank space. Dido surveying the Trojan ships, with
Carthage’s proud towers behind her, was gone. Why? A rude scrawl of _Les
reines à la lanterne_ on the blank space answered her. Dido was a queen;
Æneas probably considered to be the very model of a virtuous and filial
Republican. The Duchesse smiled; not a smile of amusement.
One thing the removal of the enormous canvas had brought into
prominence, and that was the coat of arms in relief on the stone hood of
the chimney. It was blazoned in colour, and gilt to boot; and though it
had been partially defaced, among so many quarterings there were still
decipherable enough roses and besants and castles and ermine to show the
great alliances of the house. And at the top the phoenix of the
Saint-Chamans still soared undefeated from the flames, while below was
yet clearly to be read their arrogant motto, doubly defiant in this
pillaged and ownerless dwelling, charged, too, with a double irony:
_Memini et permaneo_—‘I remember and I remain.’ She, who had lived with
it for one-and-twenty years and knew that it proclaimed even more than
that—‘I hold out, I stay to the end,’ shivered now as she looked at it.
She turned away at last, and walked half the echoing length of that
deserted splendour with a steady step. Small risk of losing foothold now
on that once slippery parquet!
The room which next she entered had much more of the Renaissance about
it, designed as it had been as a withdrawing-room for Mirabel’s first
royal owner. The great feature of this apartment—known always as the
“sallette”—was the vast chimneypiece, behind which ran a staircase
mounting to a kind of tribune or gallery, as in a chapel. The tapestry
representing the history of St. Louis of France, which had clothed the
walls of this room since the reign of Louis XIII. at least, had never
been removed till the Revolution, nor the furniture of the same epoch,
for the “sallette” had always been something of a curiosity, and here
the phoenix of the house of Trélan had never replaced the crowned
salamander of the Roi Chevalier. But now the place was despoiled alike
of the furniture and of the woven story of the royal saint—all but one
strip a few feet long, whose scorched edges testified to the passage of
fire upon it. It was part of King Louis’ embarkation at Aigues Mortes
for the Holy Land, and over his armour, as Valentine remembered, he had
worn a mantle sown with fleur-de-lys—indeed, some were still
visible. . . .
Mme de Trélan did not spend much longer on the ground floor. On the
next, whither she now mounted, were rooms she had preferred, the little
Galerie de Diane, for instance (large enough in any smaller house) where
most of the older tapestry used to hang. She supposed it would not be
there now. But it was: Brussels and Gobelin and Mortlake and some old
Arras. Yes, there was the piece of Arras she had loved as a bride—a
little world of leaves with its small merry woodland creatures
interminably roaming and leaping about in it. And there was the piece of
English tapestry, Soho or Mortlake, of which the Duchesse Eléonore had
been so fond. Here, too, in a sixteenth century piece from the looms of
Paris, was the deathless bird of the Trélans rising from a perfect sea
of flames, and surrounded very oddly by a quantity of angels and
martyrs, the device floating in a wind-borne scroll from its beak. Oh,
what crowds of memories!
Valentine de Trélan passed on. She went through the ante-chamber, where
the crimson velvet curtains were embroidered in twisted columns of
silver, and came to the jewel of the house, the Galerie de Psyché, for
which Mirabel was famous. It was indeed a place of stately beauty, and
she, once its possessor, found herself marvelling at it anew, seeing for
the first time with a gaze not that of ownership the perfect harmony
between its delicate ornament and its splendid proportions, and the
charm of Natoire’s beautiful paintings of the story which gave the place
its name.
And the Galerie de Psyché seemed to have been purposely preserved as a
show-room, for here were gathered together some of the best specimens of
furniture from other parts of the house. The Duchesse recognised, for
instance, the magnificent Boule escritoire from her husband’s private
apartments, with its wonderful marquetry of tortoiseshell and copper,
and a little green vernis-Martin cabinet of her own, acquired when
vernis-Martin of that shade was the rage, and other things. This
assemblage of objects seemed to her more insulting than spoliation, and
she stayed for a little by that cabinet of hers. Had she been betrayed
into an undertaking which, after all, she had not strength to carry
through?
But, having come so far, she would at least go on to her own apartments.
She did not think of them with any special affection; she had loved more
her less magnificent rooms in her country house near the Loire.
She came first to her bedroom. Much earlier in the century chamber music
must have sounded in this room, for all its decorations were trophies of
musical instruments, lutes and pipes and tambourines knotted together by
fluttering ribbons. All these were carved; there was no painting here,
save the delicate ivory paint which covered these and the panelled walls
alike. The elaborate bed of gilt and inlaid tulipwood was still there,
projecting from the wall, but stripped of its green silk coverlet
fringed with gold. This bed stood on three raised steps, outside which,
as usually in the bed-chambers of the great, ran a gilt balustrade. Half
of it was still there. So was a large armchair of green satin and
gilt—but nothing else.
The Duchesse de Trélan stood outside the broken fence and looked at the
bed where she had often lain. But it seemed certain to her that it was
another woman who had rested under that canopy—a woman, on the whole,
unhappier than herself.
She passed into her cabinet de toilette. This room was somewhat famous,
for it had been decorated by Huret in the second quarter of the century,
when “chinoiseries” and “singeries” were all the fashion, and on the
jonquil-coloured paint of its walls, patterned with gold arabesques,
queer little apes frolicked in a thousand antics, while sedate Chinamen
walked under umbrellas or fished unendingly in bamboo-foliaged streams.
Save for these, its fifty years old occupants, the room was empty. Gone
was the great toilet table with all its appurtenances where the Duchesse
de Trélan had been obliged to spend so much of her time, had sat so
often watching her hair being piled up into some elaborate erection _à
la candeur_ or _à la victoire_, and listening, half against her will, to
the compliments and small talk of some male visitor. All that was left
was the great full-length swinging mirror, mounted by Caffieri, with its
couple of doves playfully pecking each other at the bottom, and its
coronet at the top—the mirror which had so often reflected the Duchesse
de Trélan, majestic in the spreading, festooned hoop and close-fitting
square-cut bodice of traditional Court costume, the _grande robe parée_,
pearls lying in a rope on her white breast and pearls across her
towering headdress of powder and curls and feathers . . . and which now
showed Mme Vidal, the concierge of Mirabel, in a plain black dress with
a rather old-fashioned fichu about the shoulders, and above it a
courageous, sensitive face with a beautifully modelled brow, surmounted
by masses of fair hair going grey—the concierge of Mirabel with the
keys in her hand.
Valentine de Trélan looked at her image a moment and then walked to the
door. The room opening out of this was her boudoir, where she had been
sitting on the day which had put an end to all this life. Two years
before that, something else had come to an end there too. Here, for the
first time, she knew a real hesitation; but after a second or two she
fitted the key into the lock and entered.
When, as a bride, Mme de Trélan had made the acquaintance of this room,
she had fallen in love with its decorations, of the purest style of the
Regency, and she had ever afterwards refused to have it redecorated—had
refused to exchange Pineau’s shells and arabesques and fantastic birds
and cornucopias either for the prettinesses of Van Spaendonck’s doves
and rose-wreaths and forget-me-nots, or for the thin Pompeian style of a
later fashion. And thus the room was very much as it had appeared to her
at her first sight of it—and at her last.
For her boudoir with its furniture was quite untouched; its complete
preservation seemed almost to argue some cynical purpose. The door
giving on to the corridor, which had been broken down by the torrent of
bodies that had poured through it, had been carefully put back in place.
Perhaps the same care had obliterated the stains on its other side,
where her maître d’hôtel had died for her in vain. Here were all the
chairs and footstools of rose-coloured taffeta and silver, and the Boule
secrétaire that her husband had given her, and the commode made for her
on her marriage by Riesener. She had never thought to gaze again on
those familiar half-blown roses of its beautiful inlay, all amaranth and
laburnum and tulipwood.
Her breath seemed to stop; it all became so real again. Just here, where
the mirror with its framework of garlanded palm-stems still hung on the
walls between the windows, here she had faced that river of violence and
had thought, half hoped, to die. She could see now the door crashing
inwards, the evil and stupid faces, the menacing gestures, the bare
arms, the eyes alight with the lust of plunder and carnage . . . but the
cries, the oaths, that spume on the tide of invasion, she could hear no
longer—not even the scream of her murdered servant, which once she had
fancied would ring in her ears for ever. No; though she could see the
catastrophe, it was like a painting, fixed, and lacking the vitality of
sound and motion—more frozen, a good deal, than the tapestry in the
Galerie de Diane. In this room only one voice sounded, where it had
sounded in her hearing for the last time, and it said only one thing.
The room was full of it. . . . Very pale, Valentine turned from looking
at the doorway by which Destiny had entered to look at that other,
through which all her heart had gone out, with Gaston. The scene to
which that exit had been the close had none of the quality of canvas or
tapestry; it was alive, burning, as vivid as of yesterday. How had they
ever come to it? But that she had asked herself a thousand times in the
years between. And regret was so vain and so weak, and tore so terribly.
She would not often visit this room again. . . .
As Mme de Trélan locked the door by which she had entered, she noticed
that even her work-table was still here—an oval thing of marquetry and
ormulu, poised on slender curving legs. Without thinking she opened it,
to see inside on the gathered brocade of the lining a few odd skeins of
embroidery silks, a tiny pair of scissors and a golden thimble, and
wondered whether, since it did not seem to have been examined, any one
had discovered the little false bottom that it had. There was nothing in
it, she knew; yet her fingers sought it out. And she was mistaken! There
in the recess were a couple of brooches and an old locket on a
chain—things outworn, ornaments of no value which she did not recollect
having placed there. The locket bore her maiden monogram in pearls and
garnets, but it was empty, and she could not even remember what it used
to hold. She slipped it into her pocket.
A moment later she was hurrying down the great staircase. A glance at
her watch had shown her that Mme Prévost was almost due. She did not
wish to be found up here. Then she remembered that the ex-concierge
could not get in unless she admitted her. Truly she was the châtelaine
of Mirabel!
CHAPTER V
THE JASPER CUP
The morning that the Duchesse de Trélan was led through the show
portions of her own mansion by the former caretaker, to be initiated
into what she was to point out to others, was naturally an initiation
into a strange kind of discipline as well. Valentine had anticipated
this. But that first morning’s experience was the most painful;
afterwards she was to find that to accompany visitors herself was not
nearly so trying. To that, she thought, she would become almost
accustomed in time.
It was certainly one drop less in the cup of desecration that the family
portraits were not displayed to the public view. Their absence, which
had puzzled Mme de Trélan at first, had been explained by Mme Prévost.
They were all hung in a small locked gallery on the second floor,
together with what was left of the collection of china and other objects
of rarity, and the Deputy Camain kept the key himself. “And he won’t so
much as let you put your nose inside,” had concluded the ex-concierge
sourly. “Often have I offered to dust them cups and saucers, and he
won’t have it. Afraid of their being broken, I suppose—much more likely
to break them himself with that feather brush he keeps in there.”
“And the family pictures are there too, you say?” asked Valentine.
“Every one,” returned Mme Prévost, “except the last Duchess’s, that had
a pike stuck through it, and was spoilt.”
But for that pike’s activities, of which she was aware, Mme de Trélan
would scarcely have ventured to ratify the assent which she had so
precipitately given to Camain’s proposal. There was no other portrait of
her at Mirabel, though she had often been painted.
In a week Mme de Trélan had settled down to the strange, lonely,
monotonous life in a manner that amazed herself. The days began to
follow each other in a regular routine, so many in the _décade_ for
cleaning, two for visitors. She contrived to secure her provisions
without ever entering the tiny village, lest some of the older
inhabitants might recognise her, in spite of her altered appearance.
Suzon Tessier, resigned, yet always anticipatory of ill, had been twice
to see her. M. Georges Camain had not yet made his appearance, but that
he would soon do so Suzon had warned her. Valentine only trusted that he
would not bring with him that Mlle Dufour mentioned by the sentry, of
whose intimacy with the Deputy she had then heard for the first time,
for there were memories connected with the actress which she did not
wish revived.
When the bell jangled, therefore, about three o’clock one fine afternoon
on a day devoted neither to cleaning nor to visitors the Duchesse felt
convinced that it announced her employer. Sure enough, when she opened
the door there stood M. Georges Camain, deputy of Maine-et-Loire,
debonair even in the bottle-green habit with mother-of-pearl buttons,
cut by Heyl and therefore the _ne plus ultra_ of that strange mania
which afflicted the fashionables of the Directory for wearing purposely
ill-fitting coats. Muffled in approved style to his very underlip in the
voluminous folds of his neckcloth, he swept off his hat with a rather
exaggerated politeness.
“Ah, our new guardian of the Hesperides! Not that I should wish, Madame,
to compare you to a dragon! Have I your permission to enter?”
“You are master here, Monsieur le Député,” replied Mme de Trélan,
standing back. She disliked his exuberant politeness.
“Not I, Madame Vidal,” retorted he, coming in, however, with an air of
possession somewhat at variance with his words. “I am but the servant of
our five kings. Well, I hope that Suzon considers you sufficiently
comfortable here? She is always so solicitous about her
relations—except about me!”
The Duchesse, still standing in the passage, assured him that she had
nothing to complain of. He asked her a few more questions: whether her
scrubbers were willing and obedient, whether she found the
responsibility too much, and finally revealed what he had more
particularly come for—to look over the collection of porcelain before
putting it into her charge. And on that he preceded her up to the second
floor, talking as he went.
“You observe, Madame Vidal,” he said, when at last he stopped before a
door and fitted the key into the lock, “that I preferred the china in
here to get dusty rather than to give the breaking of it to your
predecessor’s fingers. But needlework keeps the hands fine, does it
not?”—he gave as he spoke a glance at hers—“and I feel sure that those
of yours could be trusted about the most fragile porcelain. I shall make
over this key to you without uneasiness.”
Mme de Trélan followed him into the room with the tiny thrill of
distaste which any personal remark from him always raised in her . . .
and was instantly confronted, over the glass cases, by the eyes of her
husband, looking down at her with a smile from his frame on the grey
panelling of the wall.
Drouais, the King’s painter, had depicted him at three-quarter length in
the twenty-third year of his age and in a primrose satin coat. His left
hand rested lightly on his hip, just above the silver swordhilt which
showed below the silk. A signet ring of emerald gleamed on the middle
finger, and through the guard of the sword was stuck a yellow rose. And
in the pastel the very assurance of the highborn, smiling face beneath
the rime of its powdered hair was as seductive as the beauty of its
lines. If this young prince with the rose in his swordhilt possessed so
obviously everything that life had to offer, who could grudge him those
gifts? He would always use them with ease and exquisite taste.
The blood rushed to Mme de Trélan’s heart. She had forgotten that the
pictures were here. For a moment she did not hear what the Deputy was
saying . . . Gaston de Trélan was not without company on the walls. His
father was there, and the Cardinal of Louis XV.’s days, a mixture of
sensuality and inscrutability in his lace and scarlet, and Antoine de
Trélan, the marshal of France under the Roi Soleil, greatly bewigged and
cuirassed, and François de Trélan, the mousquetaire, his hand on his
sword, and the first owner of Mirabel, César de Trélan, by Clouet, in
his tilted cap and earrings and little pointed beard. That imprisonment
was shared by the ladies of the house also, and Diane de Trélan in her
great ruff hung side by side with the kind and saintly-visaged Duchesse
Eléonore. Only Valentine’s own picture seemed missing.
She hoped that Camain would make no reference to the personages by whom
they were surrounded, of whose eyes she felt herself so conscious. And
he did not, for his thoughts were set on the porcelain he had come to
see, and he went the round with her, taking up with his careful plebeian
fingers a fragile little two-handled cup out of which a queen might have
drunk, touching a green Sèvres dish affectionately, calling her
attention to a biscuit group, tendering her morsels of elementary
ceramic information. And she began to see that this self-made,
self-educated son of a small Angers builder had really learnt something
about the least durable of all the arts, and seemed to appreciate the
ephemeral loveliness of its productions.
And thus she went round half the room with him, listening to his
commendations, and felt her husband’s eyes watching her.
“This has a crack, I’m afraid,” said the Deputy ruefully, taking up a
teapot of yellow Sèvres covered with gold spots. “Hardly wonderful, when
one thinks of the risks they have run. Some was smashed that night, I
know. The People when inflamed with zeal is not remarkable for
discrimination. Now, isn’t that Meissen candlestick delicious, Mme
Vidal?”
He went on. As was perhaps natural, the ancient and prized but much less
sophisticated Henri Deux ware did not appeal to him. Some of the old
Rouen he approved, for it was gay, and some of the Chinese porcelain,
but not all.
“I can’t think what the ci-devants could see in some of this foreign
stuff!” he declared, stopping before a large bowl of dark blue Chinese
pottery, over which crawled sinuous dragons of lighter blue and cream
faintly tinged with pink. “I call that coarse!” Valentine, who knew that
her father-in-law had prized the bowl because it was early Ming, did not
venture to dispute this dictum.
“I like a thing with some work in it,” went on M. Georges Camain. “Now I
feel I could have done those beasts myself; look at the rough, raised
outline they have. It may be old—I believe it is. Give me something
more modern and delicate, like the setting of that jasper cup over
there—Gouthière, I fancy. You have a good look at it afterwards, Mme
Vidal.”
The jasper cup was still here then! Yes, she would have a good look at
it—afterwards, not now.
From the cup, under its glass shade, M. Camain’s eyes strayed up to the
portraits.
“It would be strange, would it not, if all these painted gentry round us
could really see us in this sanctum of theirs,” he said suddenly, giving
voice to Valentine’s own thoughts. “That old lady yonder—she looks a
terror!—rather reminds me of my aunt Fourrier, who used to keep the
bric-à-brac shop in the Rue St. Julien at Angers.”
And he indicated the portrait of the Duchesse Charlotte-Elisabeth, a
voluminous dame who had flourished in the Regency.
“The last Duchesse of all isn’t here,” went on M. Camain, raising his
spy-glass again as if, after all, he were not sure. “They destroyed her
portrait the night the château was taken—again that undiscriminating
zeal of the Sovereign People, more undiscriminating than usual in this
case, for I understand that the Duchesse was known for her charities.
And I have often regretted the destruction on other grounds, because
since Mirabel has been under my charge I wanted to see what she was
like, and why the Duc deserted her.”
“Deserted her!” exclaimed Valentine, in a voice that made the Deputy
drop his glass and turn and look at her. Then she added faintly, “I
never heard. . . . Did he desert her, then?”
“Perhaps that’s putting it rather strongly,” said Camain smiling. “We
all know that the aristocrats who hopped so gaily across the frontiers
in ’90 and ’91 thought they were coming back again in a few weeks. I
daresay the Duc de Trélan had the same delusion. But I have heard it
said that he never even gave his wife the chance of going with
him—hooked it without her knowing . . . I believe they hardly ever saw
one another. So she stayed behind—more fool she!—and lost her life in
consequence.”
Fire swept over Valentine’s pale visage. “Ah no, no, but he did——” she
broke out, and then, finding a difficulty in speaking, pulled herself
together. “I mean, surely he must have given the Duchesse the chance of
accompanying him!” She looked down at the floor as she spoke; she was
aware how deeply she was discomposed, and how hot an indignation
possessed her at this false accusation which she had not the right to
deny. And she went on, feverishly, “In any case did not a great many
. . . ci-devants . . . emigrate without their wives?”
“Yes—sometimes with other people’s!” retorted the Deputy with a wink.
“However, I never heard that the Duc de Trélan did that. Mademoiselle
. . . the . . . er . . . lady to whom he was assigned as admirer at the
time—untruly as I believe—would certainly never have gone with him;
she was too good a patriot for that! That’s Monseigneur himself yonder,
over the green console. What do you think of him? He must have been much
younger when that was painted, of course.”
Valentine was forced to turn and look with him at the young man in
primrose satin. “I . . . I think he must have been very handsome.”
Surely that remark was both safe and natural!
“Oh, you women!” exclaimed the Deputy, showing signs of a return to his
jocular manner. “That always takes you—never fails! They say the
Duchesse herself was not insensible to it. Well, if it is any
consolation to you, Madame Vidal, no doubt he is handsome still, for
that matter . . . more than can be said for that old boy next him. Who
is it?” He put up his glass again to make out the name of Gaston de
Trélan’s neighbour, a very early dark portrait of a Knight of Malta.
“And I cannot believe,” went on Valentine with a thrill in her voice,
“that he never invited his wife to go with him.”
“‘Raoul de Saint-Chamans, Vice-Commander of the Order,’” read out
Camain. “What Order, I wonder?—I beg your pardon, Madame Vidal; you
were saying? . . .”
Mme de Trélan ran a finger nervously along the edge of one of the cases.
“I was wondering, Monsieur le Député, from what you said, whether you
knew anything of the Duc’s present whereabouts.”
“I? Dame, no, nothing at all! Why should I?”
Valentine tried to perpetrate a jest. “He might appear at Mirabel some
day.”
“I shouldn’t advise him to,” returned the Deputy rather grimly. “Not, at
all events, till he has made his peace with the Government. . . . If he
should turn up I shall expect you to tell me,” he added lightly. “It is
part of your duties as concierge. But of course he will never come. Why
should he, after all these years? Much too comfortable where he is, I
expect—probably married again to some rich English lady. . . . Look
here, Madame Vidal, I must be going. No, leave the shutters open,
please, because I should like you to go round and have a good dust here
when I am gone. I keep a feather duster in the drawer of that console,
under Monseigneur the ex-Duc. After you, if you please!”
He held open the door for her.
“Do you know, Madame,” he said abruptly as they went down the great
staircase together, “what I should like to do with Mirabel? It is mere
extravagant nonsense trying to turn it into a museum. There’s the
château of Versailles already for that, and at the Louvre those
cart-loads of pictures and statues that General Bonaparte sent from
Italy the year before last. No, I should like to see Mirabel made into
something like an orphanage,—run by the State, of course, not by
nuns—for the children of dead soldiers. If our wars go on much longer,
they will need it—poor little devils!”
He spoke with genuine feeling. Valentine was astonished, and listened
with a sort of unwilling respect while he developed the theme a little.
By this time they were outside her own modest quarters in the lower
regions, and here the Deputy, asking if he might come in, entered
practically without permission. Once inside, he pulled from his pocket a
leather case.
“Permit me, Madame, since I am here,” he said, “to discharge the office
of paymaster. The concierge of Mirabel is usually paid on the first of
every month, but you have no doubt had to disburse something, and will
be glad not to wait till the beginning of Prairial.” And he counted out
assignats on to the cloth.
Valentine de Trélan flushed. Although she knew that there was a salary
attached to the post she occupied, it was a different thing to receive
it in concrete form from the hand of an authority whom she did not
recognise. She instantly renewed her resolve of giving it in charity
through Suzon Tessier.
“Now I will leave you the key of the china gallery,” said Camain,
bringing out the object in question. “None of the cases are locked, as
you saw, so do not admit any visitors there at present. Keep everything
carefully dusted, Madame Vidal, if you please, the pictures as well. I
daresay you will like to give an extra flick now and then to the last
Duc’s portrait, as you have evidently constituted yourself his champion
against detractors such as myself—No, I like the sentiment; I wish the
concierge of Mirabel to identify herself with Mirabel, and I am
fortunate in having found one who is capable of it. Madame Prévost, good
woman, was not. . . . I fear I must trouble you to accompany me to the
door, in order to fasten it after me. . . . Au plaisir de vous revoir,
Madame!” He made a sweeping bow and went up the steps.
So Valentine de Saint-Chamans, Duchesse de Trélan, went back to her
room, found the assignats, the price of her services, lying on the
table, and, with an expression of distaste, locked them away. Then she
began to search for a cloth to supplement the feather duster.
No one in the world—that just-foundered world to which she
belonged—had had unquestioned right to her services save the Queen of
France, but to serve her (as she had done) was the crown of honour.
Perhaps for that reason Mme de Trélan found a savour in the
situation—commanded to dust her own china! There was even a faint smile
on her lips as she entered the gallery again—but she kept her eyes
averted from her husband’s portrait.
The Sèvres now was in hands such as it had been made for. She went over
it slowly and carefully. Was it hers, or was it Camain’s, or the
property of those who had ravished Mirabel? Not for the first time since
’92 the thought of the problem of property came over her. How could
anything material be really owned? She, who had had so much of the
world’s goods, was now stripped of everything, and all but constrained
to accept a pittance from the plunderers. Were the only things that
remained to one then, the mind, the heart, what one had learnt and
suffered? She had begun to think so. And still the problem remained:
were the rights of property inalienable, as it was in her blood to
believe them, or was this little Dresden figure in her hand not hers by
right any longer because she had no means now to enforce that right?
“Really, I am becoming a Jacobin, or a philosopher,” she said to the
little shepherdess. “In any case, my dear, the roses round your hat are
very dusty.”
After the Sèvres and Meissen and Vienna she dusted and wiped the
Oriental ware; the great Chinese vase that Camain had pronounced
“coarse,” and that frail and marvellous eggshell porcelain which must be
held to the light before one can see that dragons and clouds and waves
live within its walls of moonbeam. Then she came, among the other
treasures of ivory and crystal and enamel, on the jasper cup to which
the Deputy had directed her attention. As if she did not know it!
The low sun, pleased to find for once an entry at the rarely opened
shutters, danced in shafts and motes of brightness over the dull golden
mounting that had made of it so costly a thing. Round the curve of the
red-brown, half translucent jasper ran a wreath of tiny golden laurel
leaves gemmed with pearls; delicate little vine branches laden with
grapes were woven together at the bottom to form a framework for the
cup, and the whole rested on three faun-headed supports. Underneath, a
golden serpent with eyes of topaz wriggled its way towards the vine
clusters.
That jasper cup was the last thing which her husband had given her, not
long before his emigration. But money could not buy what Valentine de
Trélan wanted then. Gouthière, when he designed and mounted the goblet,
had not done ill in placing the little snake underneath. Valentine had
thought so at the time, and had almost disliked the precious
thing—symbol, so it sometimes seemed to her, of her life and Gaston’s,
that might have been so different if they had not been born to such idle
greatness, a cup too richly set to drink out of.
She gazed at it now with compressed lips, aware that vine and laurel
leaves were becoming blurred by the slow, hot tears that were rising to
her eyes. Suddenly she turned away from it, and walking at last to the
young man over the console looked up at him.
Yes, he had been like that! Yes, he had had that expression—once! “How
could I have kept your heart, Gaston?” she asked, gazing at the smiling
eyes. For he had a heart as undoubtedly as he had charm and distinction
and courage and wit . . . as well as riches and a great name and
Mirabel. Yet one thing was lacking always—and after all these years it
was hard to be sure what it was.
Or—as she had often and often thought—was it not rather she who
lacked? Yet what could she have given him that she had not? That other
men in those days of universal gallantry had been so ready to call her
cold and heartless, was that a reason for reproach? If she could have
the past again, what would she have done differently?—till that last
fatal taunt. She did not know. Had it all been inevitable tragedy then,
fixed for them before ever they met, from the moment they had been born?
It was double tragedy too. Gaston’s indifference to her love was his
wife’s private sorrow, and not his fault, for how could love come at
bidding? But his lifelong indifference to the claims of ambition—of
duty even—how was that to be condoned or explained? No, he was like
some tall ship, gallantly furnished and manned, that had never made the
great voyage for which it had been built, but had drifted always with
light airs, till drifting was no longer possible . . . at least on a
summer sea. Where was it now?
She could not take her eyes from the picture, though the glance the
canvas gave her back was like a blade in a wound. But Gaston could not
be like that now—nor like the Gaston who had left her presence so
mortally insulted. Yet if he knew exile and material loss he had not
known the hard discipline of prison and contumely. He, she was sure, had
never been reduced to earning his bread. What was he doing—if he lived?
Married again, perhaps, to some rich lady, as the Deputy had suggested,
for if he had taken the trouble to make enquiries about his wife’s fate
he must indubitably, like all her world, believe her dead.
_Taken the trouble!_ Unjust, unjust! She knew that he must have done all
he could; she never doubted that. And back leapt the memory of that
plebeian’s unworthy accusation—that he had deserted her, had not given
her the chance of accompanying him. Had he not! twice over, once
repulsed by that utterance of hers which had wounded him so deeply as to
betray him into an unforgettable retort, and then, generously, by his
letter. And the Deputy had said. . . . Perhaps others had said too—for
even Suzon, if she had not told her the truth. . . .
And so, for the first time in all these years, it occurred to Valentine
de Trélan that her refusal to accompany her husband into voluntary exile
had done him wrong. It was on his head, in this slander, that it had
recoiled. It was not that she still did not think his judgment mistaken.
But, of the two obstinacies set in the lists against each other that day
was not hers, after all, the more culpable? As she could not turn him,
ought she not to have stayed by his side? Even though he were wrong it
was hardly a crime that he was committing. . . . Deserted her? Was it
not rather she, who, remaining against his will, had deserted him?
And again it struck at her, Camain’s accusation. How dared he, an
upstart, a man of the people, how dared he throw mud at the Duc de
Trélan, as far above him in character as he was removed in rank! But
whose action was it that had given him the opportunity of throwing mud?
Ah, if they had not separated . . . if she had done what he
wished. . . .
* * * * *
The sun had left the window. A blackbird in the overgrown park outside
was proclaiming rapturous things. Inside, among the Sèvres and the
portraits, the Duchesse de Trélan, her arms outstretched on the cold
malachite of the console beneath her husband’s picture was weeping
bitterly. She had not known that it would be like this! The life of long
ago, sunk for ever beneath those whirlpools of fury and carnage—regret
for that was past. She was strong enough to face its cold relics without
faltering. But Mirabel held, after all, not only the phantom of a dead
existence, but of a love slowly slain . . . and not dead. Oh, if only
Gaston were back in Mirabel again!
But there was no living creature in the great house save herself. The
young man on the wall, with his indefinable air of charming assurance
and good society, looked out into the room over the faded head of his
wife, and the blackbird in the garden continued to assert that spring
was come. Yet for his only hearer spring would never come again.
CHAPTER VI
THE ROMAUNT OF ROLAND
It may be doubted whether, after all, Roland de Céligny really regretted
exchanging Ares for Aphrodite. He hardly knew himself, as he journeyed
with his injured friend by discreet routes back to Finistère and that
friend’s home near the sea. His heart was certainly sore at leaving the
clash of arms, and he still resented the summary separation from his
leader. Yet, to balance the sword half drawn and all too quickly
sheathed, were the curls of Mlle de la Vergne, enshrined in the château
whose tourelles rose, on the third day, from a screen of chestnuts to
greet the travellers.
What, in that blest abode, would Marthe be doing when they came on her?
Involuntarily Roland pictured their meeting as a replica, and saw her
again at embroidery in the salon with its Indian hangings. But one
always paints these things wrong. The reality was even better. For there
was no duenna of a mother with her, merely a rustic groom, when, mounted
on a beautiful black thoroughbred, she suddenly trotted round a bend of
the road. . . .
“If that is not my little sister!” exclaimed Artamène spurring forward;
and Roland, uncovering, pulled up his horse.
In the dappled sunlight, under the chestnuts, brother greeted sister,
bending from the saddle. Roland thought he had never seen anything more
beautiful. He was near enough to hear the joy and the anxiety in Mlle de
la Vergne’s voice, her stream of enquiries. Then Artamène looked back
and beckoned.
“Let me present M. le Vicomte de Céligny, whom you have already met, ma
sœur, in a new rôle—that of the trusty garde-malade. Since I cannot
dispense with his services he comes to stay with us for a few days.”
The little hand which Marthe, pulling off her gauntlet, surrendered with
a smile to his salute, was it not even more shapely, more satin-soft to
the lips than when it had dropped the embroidery needle to submit to the
same reverential greeting? And she herself, in her long blue habit, her
man’s high-crowned buckled hat, seemed even more desirable than in
high-waisted white, yellow-sprigged muslin of that afternoon in the
salon!
“Tell Séraphin to gallop back and tell Maman,” suggested Artamène.
And so they rode slowly along, Marthe in the middle, and talked of their
adventures. The wind blew a fold of the long habit against Roland’s
foot. Except on the day when he had joined the Marquis de Kersaint, M.
de Céligny had never been so happy in his life—for his rapture on the
occasion of the Marquis’s appearance at Kerlidec had been clouded by his
grandfather’s hostility. Now there was nothing to stain this perfect
joy, and Roland was too deeply enthralled even to envy the solicitous
glances which Marthe threw at her brother’s be-slinged left arm.
Sad that out of happiness may spring trouble! If the seeds of Roland’s
escapade were not exactly sown during that short ride the ground was at
any rate prepared for their reception.
Mme de la Vergne, warned by the herald, was on the perron to greet them.
Artamène flung himself off his horse and ran up the steps, and, while
the good lady embraced her son, Roland had the bliss of dismounting Mlle
de la Vergne—of receiving her for one brief second in his arms as she
slipped like a feather from the saddle. Then followed his own reception
by Mme de la Vergne, small and fair and so unlike her daughter; and he
found himself being thanked—_thanked!_—for accompanying her son
hither.
“_Maman_,” sang Marthe to the harpsichord that evening, “_Maman,
dîtes-moi ce qu’on sent quand on aime, Est-ce plaisir, est-ce tourment?
Je suis tout le jour dans une peine extrême, Et la nuit je ne sais
comment!_”
Was she? No! But Roland, that night, could not sleep for exaltation.
* * * * *
Artamène, by his mother’s desire, remained in bed next morning. A
surgeon had been summoned to view his arm.
“Come and feed the poultry, Monsieur de Céligny—or are you too proud?”
suggested Mlle de la Vergne after breakfast. “We are very rustic here,
you must know, for we are short of farm servants.”
Roland, who would have swept a pigsty at her bidding, followed her as to
some high festival. The hens who drove clucking round his feet might
have been the doves of Venus. And the pigeons did indeed sweep in a
cloud over Marthe, and ate out of her hand. Roland feared they pecked
too hard.
When Artamène appeared he found them sitting in the lime arbour.
“Is our paladin telling you of his adventures?” he enquired, sitting
down beside them.
“I have none to tell,” answered Roland. “It is you, mon cher, with your
wound and your sling and your surgeon, who have the beau rôle.”
“And all wasted on a sister!” observed the hero with a grin.
“M. de Céligny has been telling me,” said Marthe, “the strange story
about the old lady and the treasure of Mirabel. Do you believe it?”
“I believed it sufficiently to try to get sent after the treasure,”
replied her brother. “So, taking a mean advantage of my slumbers, did
Roland.”
Marthe turned her brilliant dark eyes from one to the other. Artamène
shook his head.
“Our request was not favourably received.”
“O, what a pity!” sighed Mlle de la Vergne.
Flecks of sunlight came through the linden-leaves on to her dark hair,
bringing out unsuspected warmth in its ebony, and on to a red stone on
her finger.
“There is a ruby necklace there,” said Roland suddenly, his eyes moving
from her ringlets to her hand. “And hundreds of louis in pistoles of the
time of Louis XIII. So the plan said. Oh, if we could only have gone!”
“And is all that hoard to lie there, then, unused, while the Cause goes
short of money?”
“Oh, no!” said both the young men together. “Presently, when M. de
Kersaint has got the authority of the Duc de Trélan, wherever he may be,
he will send some one after it.”
“Some one—whom?”
“I should think very probably M. de Brencourt,” replied Roland.
“And he must wait—perhaps for weeks and weeks—before he can start?”
“Yes,” said her brother, “unless the Marquis, who, as M. de Céligny will
have told you, is a kinsman of M. de Trélan’s, decides to act without
his authorisation, which, from what he said, it is quite likely he may
do.”
“So that M. de Trélan’s authorisation is not indispensable?”
“No. Only a matter of form, I think. Being an émigré and Mirabel
confiscated—he can neither prevent nor forward such an attempt.”
Mlle de la Vergne was silent, pushing at the gravel with a little shoe
and looking down at it. “Where is Mirabel, did you say?”
“Quite near Paris, I gather,” replied Artamène.
“I wish,” said Marthe pensively, “that I were in Paris—quite near
Mirabel!”
“My dear little sister, what would be the good of that?” asked Artamène,
amused.
“I have relatives in Paris,” announced Roland, with sudden and apparent
irrelevance, “two old cousins of my father’s—quiet, unsuspected,
unsuspicious old gentlemen.”
The little silence which followed this statement was broken by a whirr
of wings as one of Marthe’s pigeons alighted on the gravel outside the
arbour, and, looking hard and hopefully at them out of one round,
red-circled, unemotional eye, began to walk slowly up and down, jerking
its burnished neck.
“O, if I were only a man!” exclaimed Mlle de la Vergne, abruptly,
springing to her feet with kindling eyes.
“If I only had two arms!” said her brother, following her example, but
more slowly.
“But I _am_ a man, and both my arms are sound!” cried Roland, almost
brandishing those members.
“And you have relatives in Paris who could help you!” said Marthe,
turning her eyes on him.
“Well, no, hardly _help_,” said Roland slowly, thinking of his ancient
and peaceful kinsmen. “But they could give me a roof. . . .”
“And I could give you money to bribe anyone who needed bribing,”
declared Marthe. “At least, I have my pearls.”
“Oh, curse this arm!” muttered the wounded hero. “Yet, after all, I do
not see why I also——”
“No! no!” exclaimed both the others. “No, we know what the surgeon said.
That would be the sheerest folly”—as if what they had in their own
inflammable heads were cold wisdom.
Artamène leant dejectedly against the side of the arbour. “I don’t see
how you could do anything, Roland. You have not the plan of the late
lamented of the time of Mazarin. You could not go and dig all over a
place of that size on chance, even if the Directory gave you permission,
which it certainly would not!”
“But I saw the plan!” retorted the Vicomte de Céligny. “I saw it
perfectly clearly over the Abbé’s shoulder that night. Why, I could draw
it now, if I had a pencil. Nobody has one? Well, look here!”
He broke off a twig from the lime-tree and began a series of scratches
on the gravel, just as a bell clanged from the house to summon them to
the midday meal—scratches which Séraphin diligently raked out during
that repast.
* * * * *
By sunlight and by twilight and by lamplight, under the arbour, on the
lawn, in the salon, the rough plan made from that fleeting glimpse of
the original was constructed and reconstructed and discussed. So much
were their young heads bent over it the next evening that Mme de la
Vergne said they looked like conspirators.
“Ma mère, you are perspicacious,” replied her son. “We _are_
conspirators.” But, not really believing him, she did not pursue the
question, and indeed, before she could revert to it, Artamène looked
very hard at his sister and asked her if she were not going to sing to
them.
Roland added his entreaties, and attended Mlle de la Vergne to the
harpsichord.
“What shall I sing?” asked she. “No, I do not need any music, thank you.
You must join in the chorus, then, Monsieur, you and Artamène.” And with
a mischievous smile she broke into the old children’s ronde of _La
Double Violette_:
“_J’ai un long voyage à faire,_
_Je ne sais qui le fera;_
_Si je l’dis à l’alouette_
_Tout le monde le saura!_
_La violette double double,_
_La violette doublera!_
“_Si je l’dis à l’alouette,_
_Tout le monde le saura:_
_Rossignol du vert bocage_
_Faîtes-moi ce plaisir-là!_”
and when she got to
“_Rossignol prend sa volée,_
_Au château d’amour s’en va,_”
she looked at Roland.
Afterwards they sang other songs.
* * * * *
Next day the conspirators met again in the arbour for a final council of
war. They could not improve upon the map which the two young men had
made—indeed, the question rather was whether they had not already
improved it out of all resemblance to the original. Roland’s immediate
movements were now under discussion. Though it must shorten his visit,
they all, even Roland himself, felt that no time was to be lost. M. de
Céligny was supposed, of course, to be on his way to Kerlidec and his
grandfather.
“But it will be wiser,” said he, “not to go there now. When I
return. . . . You see, he might make difficulties about my visiting
Paris at all. So I will write to him. . . .”
He would not accept Mlle de la Vergne’s pearls, though he thought it
sublime of her to offer them. He had plenty of money, he said. And he
settled to start next day. Artamène tried to salve his own fierce
dejection by resolving to accompany him part of the way.
But, perhaps from the excitement of these deliberations, the Chevalier
de la Vergne’s arm became unexpectedly painful during the night. It was
out of the question for him even to leave his bed next morning, and, for
once in his life, he did not seem wishful to do so. Roland’s offer to
delay his departure was, however, declined by him. Mme de la Vergne,
supposing their young guest to be setting off for Kerlidec—a point on
which he did not undeceive her—hoped that he would visit them again,
and when he asked if he might pay his parting respects to Mlle de la
Vergne (having already taken a bedside farewell of her brother), replied
rather absently that she was probably in the poultry-yard, and that if
M. de Céligny would give himself the trouble. . . . For her thoughts
were not at the moment with an unchaperoned daughter and what a
susceptible young man might say to her ere he rode away, but with her
son in pain upstairs, and whether the surgeon really understood his
case, and if the constant poulticing he had ordered were right.
Besides—though this even the inquiring mind of Artamène had never come
near guessing—there existed a certain understanding between her and M.
de Carné on the subject of Roland and Marthe.
Roland was off before the permission could be revoked. But Mlle de la
Vergne was not in the poultry yard, though matters connected with her
pensioners had drawn her to the spot where he found her, the miniature
bridge which spanned the little stream winding through the grounds. From
this she was watching with some anxiety the first voyage of a brood of
ducklings down that St. Lawrence. Roland was stabbed to the heart. He
was going to danger, to prison perhaps, for her—and her mind was set on
ducklings!
Erect and noble (so he hoped—at any rate booted and spurred) the young
man walked towards the bridge. Directly she turned, the surprise and
concern on her face healed him.
“What! you are going already, Monsieur de Céligny! I thought it was not
to be for another hour, and that you were closeted with Artamène . . .
and I might have missed wishing you Godspeed because of these wretched
little adventurers!”
“Ah no, Mademoiselle!” said Roland. “Do you think I should have gone
like that? I have need of all the benedictions you can give me.”
And what she gave him satisfied him fully—only a look, but a look so
charged with meaning—and both her hands. There on the tiny bridge he
raised them with reverence and joy to his lips. Her silence, her faint
flush, her movement of surrender, whether it were ultimate or no, dubbed
him indeed her knight, going to the ogre’s castle with her colours on
his helm—invincible indeed, and supremely blest to serve at once his
lady and his King.
And unregarded, in that high moment, went the indignant comments of the
little yellow navigator under their very feet, who was finding the
stream on which his inexperience had embarked of an unlooked-for
strength and volume.
CHAPTER VII
CHILDE ROLAND COMES TO THE DARK TOWER
Valentine de Trélan was kneeling before her crucifix ere retiring to bed
when she heard the first shot. The report broke so sharply across her
prayers that, like a noise heard in sleep, its first demand on the
senses was the question whether it were real. The second shot brought
her to her feet in some concern. Who could be firing so late, and at
what? The sentry, at some marauder? But, as far as she could judge, the
sound came from the great garden at the back, where no sentry was. Her
first impulse was to go out in that direction to investigate, but she
supposed she must not leave her post, in case she were summoned for any
reason. She dressed again, and went out to the passage and listened.
Sure enough, some ten minutes later, there came a knocking on one of the
more distant doors that gave on to the garden front. She fetched her
keys, and hastening along the lengthy corridor, opened it. Outside were
two National Guards, her friend Grégoire Thibault and another. Grégoire
had a musket over his shoulder.
“Sorry to disturb you, citoyenne,” said he, half apologetically. “You
have not seen anything of a man prowling round here, I suppose?”
“Nothing,” answered Mme de Trélan with perfect truth. “Was that what you
were firing at?”
“Jacques here,” said Grégoire, “was going along the road when he saw—or
thought he saw—in the distance a man climbing over the wall that goes
round the park. He was off duty, so he had not his musket, and instead
of going after him he came to tell me, as I was nearer than the guard
house.”
“Not being quite the figure for climbing walls either, citoyenne,” put
in Grégoire’s companion with reason.
“So we separated, and each went round a different side of the château.
The light was getting bad, and the first time I fired at something
moving it was comrade Jacques here. Luckily I didn’t hit him. Then a few
minutes later I saw my gentleman for a second by a big bush of
something, but, parbleu, he slipped round one of those heathen goddesses
or whatever they are. I sent a remembrancer after him from
this”—Grégoire slapped his musket—“and I am almost sure I hit him; but
do you think I could find him anywhere in the garden? No!”
Valentine, who knew the extent of the garden—park, rather—so much
better than he, was convinced that the time which had elapsed between
the second shot and his appearance at the château was not a quarter long
enough for a thorough search, especially in the rapidly failing light,
so that the odds were the intruder, if wounded, was still there. She
said as much.
“Well, he can stay there till daylight,” announced the Citizen Grégoire
composedly, “and reflect on his crimes. If he isn’t there he has made
off, and won’t be likely to return in a hurry. You are not nervous, are
you, Madame Vidal?”
“Not the least in the world,” the Duchesse assured him. “Did you see
what this man was like, or have you any idea why he should come into the
garden?”
“From the way in which he slipped over that wall,” remarked Jacques, “I
should say he was young.”
“I daresay,” put in Grégoire consolingly, “that it was only some
inquisitive lad wanting to see inside the garden. You will be all right,
Madame Vidal; he can’t possibly get into the house. If I wasn’t sure of
it, parbleu, I would stay the night here.”
If Grégoire Thibault, in the days of the Terror, had been a hunter of
suspects, as he gave himself out to be, his zeal had sadly suffered
eclipse since that time. It was clear that he wished to minimise the
seriousness of the inroad in order to get home to his bed, and for the
same reason, had no intention of turning out the rest of the guard.
Valentine was not in the least anxious to keep him from that haven, and
so after a few reassuring words the twain departed, and Mme de Trélan
was free to resume her interrupted orisons, with a conviction that some
man, with purpose unknown, was lurking in the precincts of Mirabel.
The affair indeed was a strange interruption to the almost cloistral
quiet of the last few weeks, into which news of the outer world came
only through Suzon Tessier or Toinon the _laitière_, or by the
unencouraged gossip of the scrubbers. For, since she never went into the
hamlet, Valentine might almost have been a recluse living the
contemplative life with brief intervals of the active. Sometimes,
already, it seemed to her that she had never known Mirabel under
conditions any different.
She did go to bed, and after a time went to sleep, but woke about
midnight, and remained awake, for she found that she could not well bear
the idea of a fellow-creature lying out all night in the dark and lonely
park, perhaps in agony to boot, even though he were a thief or something
of the kind. But it was useless looking for him before daylight. The
thought that he might try to effect an entry she dismissed. At dawn she
rose, dressed, and slipped out behind Mirabel.
It was three o’clock, and the first thrush was singing in that vast
desert of a garden. Along the weed-infested paths went the Duchesse, and
through bosquet after bosquet, tended groves no longer, but thickets so
overgrown that some were almost impassable. Nettles, burdocks, thistles,
briars, those raiding colonists were everywhere, waging war against the
smothering advances of the unclipped ivy. But the little lake in the
distance mirrored no tall pines now on its tarnished surface. Of that
aisle of scent and murmurs the nearer pillars were but stumps; the
farther stood lonely and condemned against the sky. Valentine did not
look this morning at those distant martyrs; she kept her gaze on the
ground as she made her way between the bushes or skirted the long,
dripping grass of some once-shaven little lawn. Such terms and sylvan
deities as still had heads looked at their former lady with cold and
curious, in some cases with leering eyes. Had she been wandering there
without an object she might have had leisure to taste the infinite
sadness of that place, made only for pleasure and good company, or to
remember, perhaps, certain passages of its light past. But she was
searching for an unfortunate; and that the unfortunate, when found,
might prove to be a very undesirable person indeed, that, in fact, she
was disposed to picture him as such, did not greatly trouble her. The
last few incredible years had given her a sympathy with the hunted.
Full though her mind was of her quest, the first indication that it was
on the way to prove successful gave her something of a shock. She had
come to the head of the flight of shallow marble steps that led from one
little terrace to the next, when she suddenly perceived on each a small,
reddish, star-shaped splash. She bent down; yes, it was blood—the trail
of the pursued. On the grassgrown gravel at the foot of the steps it was
more difficult to follow, but the track began again, clearer and larger
than before, on a short flight that led once more upwards. On one step
there was even a smear, that looked like the print of a hand, as though
the wounded man had stumbled and recovered himself.
And thus, finally, in what had been known as the Bosquet de Mercure, she
found the invader, fallen sideways at the foot of the bronze statue of
Mercury—a young man, pale as marble and as beautiful as the god
himself, and so unlike what she had expected that she stood a moment as
still as he. That he was a gentleman was plain without the evidence of
his clothes; and he wore, as further and indeed defiant proof, the black
coat-collar which marked the aristocrat and reactionary, the _collet
noir_ which had caused so many pitched battles in the streets of Paris.
One arm lay out on the gravel, crushing a little company of that
innocent and joyous flower, the speedwell, which had rooted there,
intruding in the garden like him, and, like him, shut-eyed. The other
hand held a red ball of a handkerchief which had probably, during
consciousness, been pressed against the dark patch on the left side of
his grey coat.
And Valentine, her heart alight with compassion, began to stoop over her
quarry . . . stopped, raised herself again, and put out a hand to the
base of the statue for support. In the unconscious face at her feet she
suddenly saw. . . . Whence came that resemblance? She was carried back a
hundred years, to a morning in her young wifehood here at Mirabel, to an
early wakening, to the thrush, just heard, like this, in the summer dawn
. . . while by her side lay the husband who still summed up all her
dreams, on whom she had looked down with the yet untroubled eyes of
love, and whose sleeping visage had been the very counterpart of this.
But in a moment the illusion was fled, and she did not know how it had
ever come. Leaving the statue she knelt down by the fallen youth and
felt for his heart. It was beating. She began to unfasten his neckcloth.
But how was she to convey him into the château? She could not carry him.
Besides, how badly was he hurt? Could she possibly get him into that
damp little pseudo-classical temple of Ceres on the other side of the
grove? But the first thing was to try to revive him. When she had been a
fine lady she would have had a vinaigrette or something of the sort
about her; now there was nothing for it but to scoop up in her hollowed
palms a little stagnant water from the basin at the foot of the statue,
and to dash it, greenish as it was, over the white face. Three times she
did this without any result but temporary disfigurement, and then set to
work to rub the intruder’s hands, long patrician hands like her own,
like . . . But that was folly.
“Grandpère!” said the young man suddenly, “Monsieur le Marquis! . . .
Artamène . . . Where am I, then?” He opened his eyes, tried rashly to
raise himself, and relapsed with a groan, his hand to his wounded side.
“What has happened to me? . . . Is this a garden?”
Valentine slipped her arm under his head. “Do not try to move yet,
Monsieur,” she said in her beautiful voice. “You are in the park of
Mirabel—with a friend.”
He stared up at her, utterly perplexed. (But his eyes were brown, quite
unlike that dark grey.) “I am so thirsty,” he said, like a child.
“You cannot drink this stagnant water,” replied Mme de Trélan
compassionately, and then, looking closer and seeing how dry and cracked
his lips were, bethought her of a spring that flowed, or that used to
flow, through a lion’s mouth in the grotto of Latona, a few seconds
away. “Wait,” she said, gently withdrawing her arm, “I think I can get
you some fresh water.”
She rose and hastened off. Yes, the spring was still flowing, and even
the stone goblet that served it, though very green, was still there. The
Duchesse brought back that water from the past; and, aided by her, the
boy drank long and eagerly, and thanked her.
All this while the dawn was growing brighter, and the solitary thrush
now become one of a choir, and, though Mercury was battered and green,
he held out the _caduceus_ over the two figures beneath him with an air
at once sprightly and benedictory. And the one bright buttercup at his
feet, moved by the morning breeze, bent towards them too.
“My child,” said Valentine gently, as she set down the goblet, “I do not
know what you were doing here last night, but I suppose you do. At any
rate you were shot at by the sentry, and I see that you are hurt in the
side, but not, I hope, seriously. The question is, how to move you so
that I can do something for your wound.”
The invader was perfectly sensible now. “But, Madame, who are you?” he
asked.
“The concierge of Mirabel—of the château,” said she.
“I shall never find it now,” murmured the young man dejectedly.
“Instead, I suppose I shall have to go to prison.”
“Yes, in the château,” said Mme de Trélan encouragingly. “And I will be
your gaoler.”
He understood. A look of alarm came over his face. “Oh no, Madame, that
would never do! The Directory——”
“I am afraid that I care very little for the Directory,” broke in the
Duchesse calmly, beginning to unfasten the fichu from her neck. “Now
first, Monsieur, I am going to tie this muslin of mine very tightly
about you, for I think there has been no bleeding for some time, and
then we must see whether you can get to your feet, and whether, with my
help, you can walk as far as the château.”
And five minutes or so later, with infinite precautions, the youth
trying to put as little weight on a woman as he need, and to stifle the
expressions of pain that came to his lips, they were actually
progressing very slowly from the Bosquet de Mercure into that of Ceres.
And in the pillared shrine of the goddess Mme de Trélan had a moment’s
impulse to instal her protégé, seeing his extreme pallor and the
possibility of his being unable to reach the house. But the little
temple was eminently unsuitable for a hospital, she would find it very
awkward to get away to tend him there, and he would be liable to
discovery. So, since he assured her rather breathlessly that he was all
right, they went forward.
On the edge of the great fountain, however, exposed though it was in its
open parterre, he was obliged to sit down and rest a moment or two. The
Duchesse sat beside him with her arm round him, lest he should fall
backwards off the stone rim into the dark and viscous water behind him.
And he, his eyes on the great house, seemed to be realising the extent
of his prospective refuge. “I could not see it properly last night,” he
murmured.
But Valentine told him not to talk. He did not altogether obey her, and
his intermittent remarks as they went onwards in the growing light amid
the increasing vociferations of the thrushes were now and then
unintelligible. Once he called her “Marthe,” and then apologised.
Certainly there were no eyes to watch them at that early hour save those
of the birds, no place for them to watch from but the overgrown
thickets. And so Mme de Trélan got Roland de Céligny unobserved into
Mirabel by the basement stairway at the back, and along the dark
passages to her room. By the time they reached her parlour he was mute
and unresisting, and when she had steered him to the bed (left just as
she had slipped out of it) and had somehow assisted him on to it, her
youthful visitor, as she fully expected, quietly fainted away again.
CHAPTER VIII
HIS SOJOURN THERE
(1)
When the _laitière_ came at half-past six that morning she was sorry to
hear that Mme Vidal was indisposed, but not ill-pleased to sell her, in
consequence, a double portion of milk. So indisposed indeed was the
concierge that she requested Toinon, when she returned to the village,
to get conveyed to Paris a note to her niece Mme Tessier, asking the
latter to make a few purchases and to visit her.
The sympathetic Toinon gone, Mme de Trélan went back to her patient.
Long before this he had come to himself for the second time, and she had
fed him with the milk she had reserved for her morning coffee, in a
spoon. He took it drowsily, like a child, and dropped off to sleep
again.
She thought him asleep now when she came in, and went about noiselessly
putting the dark little bedroom to rights, preoccupied all the time with
one thought, this boy’s safety. The thought divided itself into two
parts; how to secure proper attention for his wound, and how to get the
boy himself away without discovery. Her unpractised investigation of his
hurt had already led her to suppose that it was a glancing flesh wound
off the ribs, probably not dangerous, save from the amount of blood he
seemed to have lost. Why he had risked coming by it she had not even a
guess.
But though she thought him asleep she saw, after a minute or two, as she
passed by the bed, that his eyes were open and that he was looking at
her. He was very flushed.
“Is there anything you want, mon enfant?” she asked, stopping.
He continued to look at her mutely, then made these brief statements:
“My name is Roland de Céligny. I ought not to have come. Now I shall be
endangering you. Madame, I implore you to let me go!”
“Chut!” retorted Valentine, laying her hand for a second on his
forehead. “How could you go, even if I would let you? There is no need,
I assure you, to trouble about me. Besides, why should I not care for a
wounded man whom I find in the garden. You are not a malefactor,
Monsieur de Céligny!”
“Mais si, Madame,” replied Roland earnestly. “In intention, at least
. . . that is just what I am. . . . You ought to give me up.”
“If we all did what we ought to do!” exclaimed Valentine lightly, and
stood looking down at him, convinced now that that momentary likeness
was a trick of the dawn, some enchantment of the garden, anything but
fact.
She felt that to ensure silence she ought to leave him; unused as she
was to caring for an injured man she was certain that he ought not to
talk. In romances the wounded hero was always adjured not to do so, and
the boy looked feverish. But not to know a little more about him were to
waste the chance of arranging some plan which the faithful Suzon’s
arrival would bring her. So, contrary to all romantic tradition,
Valentine sat down by the bed and said in a business-like way,
“Tell me, Monsieur de Céligny, as shortly as possible, what you came
into the garden to do, and if you know anyone in Paris with whom it
would be safe to communicate. I ask you this because I have a trusted
friend coming to see me to-day, and through her something might be
arranged. Your personal safety is the first thing to consider, your
wound—which I believe is not serious—the second.”
“I have cousins in Paris,” said Roland. He gave their address. “I was at
their house for three or four days before I came here.”
“Do they know where you are?”
“No, Madame.”
“They will be very anxious about you, then?”
“Yes,” murmured he rather shamefacedly, and sighed.
“Are they likely to track you here?”
“I don’t think so,” said the adventurer. “No, I do not believe it
possible.”
“But the sentry saw you; fortunately it was too dark to distinguish your
face. They are sure to search again. I think the moment has come,
Monsieur de Céligny, if I am to help you further, for you to tell me a
little more. You see that I am your friend, and that I am not . . . in
fear of the Directory. You need not name anyone unless you wish, but I
think you had better tell me for what reason you were in the park of
Mirabel last night.”
“Madame,” replied Roland with emotion, “after what you have done for me
I should indeed be foolish and ungrateful if I kept back anything from
you. I came to Mirabel to find the hidden treasure.”
The Duchesse de Trélan stared at him. “But, my child, there is no such
thing!”
From the pillow the young man’s look said as politely as possible, “How
can you be sure of that, Madame la concierge?”
“I have known the château for many years,” said Valentine, “and I assure
you. . . .” She broke off, puzzled.
“But I have seen a plan of its hiding-place,” said Roland eagerly.
“Where did you see such a thing?”
“When I was in Brittany with M. de——” some remnant of caution checked
him, “—with a Chouan leader.”
“A Chouan leader had a plan of a treasure hidden in Mirabel!” exclaimed
Mirabel’s mistress, strongest amazement in her tone. “What was his
name—no, I will not ask you that. Did he send you here, then?”
“No, Madame,” admitted Roland, with a return of shamefacedness. “He will
be very angry with me—if ever I see him again.” He gave a second or two
to inward contemplation, presumably, of this anger, and went on, “The
money was hidden here during the Fronde by the Duc of those days, but
the paper describing its whereabouts was stolen, and came into the hands
of an old lady who was dying in the next house to . . . to where we
were. Our aumônier went to see her, and she gave him the paper to convey
to the Duc de Trélan, who, I believe, is in England, or somewhere of the
sort. At any rate he is an émigré—as I suppose you know, Madame.”
Valentine forced herself to remain quietly sitting there. “Well?” she
said, and her voice, from sheer self-restraint, sounded quite stony.
“And the aumônier brought it in to give to M. de Kersaint, because he
knew that the Marquis was a kinsman of the Duc de Trélan.”
“What name did you say?” asked Valentine, more and more amazed.
“The Marquis de Kersaint,” replied Roland. Then he stopped. “I did not
mean to mention the name.”
“De Kersaint—a kinsman!” exclaimed Valentine, from whom all thoughts of
encouraging prudence in the fugitive were now miles away. “I never heard
the name in my life! A kinsman of——”
And now Roland was staring at her.
“Well, never mind,” said she. “We must keep to the point, which is, how
to get you away, Monsieur de Céligny. You saw this . . . this
extraordinary plan, then, and—since you say that you were not sent—I
assume that you thought that you would like to come on your own account
to hunt for the treasure. Had you any accomplices?”
“Not in Paris,” replied Roland, reddening faintly.
“And your cousins know nothing?”
“No, I merely said that I was leaving Paris for the day and might be
back late. You see, Madame, I meant to have got here earlier, but it was
light so long. I only had a sight of that plan for a moment,” confessed
the treasure-hunter with engaging candour, “yet I remember that it
looked as though there were an entrance from the garden to a passage
leading under the house to the banqueting hall, I think. But I did not
realise that the garden was so large.”
Again Valentine stared at him. It was making her dizzy to learn these
facts—if they were facts—about her own house after all her years of
acquaintance with it.
“You must be crazy, my child,” she said conclusively, “or the plan was a
hoax. But to return to these cousins of yours, and how to get you
restored to them. The point is whether it would be better to try to
smuggle a surgeon in to you, or to smuggle you out. And what to say to
them? It is not over safe to tell the exact truth in a letter. It might
endanger the bearer also. Let me think.”
She put her shapely, slightly roughened hand over her eyes, and Roland
gazed at it.
“Monsieur de Céligny,” she said after a moment, uncovering her eyes,
“have you ever fought a duel?”
“No, Madame.”
“Should you object to having come to the park of Mirabel for that
purpose last night?”
Roland took her meaning, with a little smile. “There is nothing I should
like better.”
“It is the best I can devise for the moment. As I say, it would not do
for you to tell the truth in writing. If, to-morrow night, you could
walk with my assistance as far as a little door in the park wall that I
know of, and if your cousins could procure, with all secrecy, for a
carriage to be there. . . . You see, it will be impossible for you to
get out of the place you have so rashly entered save in some such
clandestine fashion, and even then any mischance——”
“Mischance to me matters not, Madame!” cried the young man. “But if it
were to you!”
The Duchesse de Trélan smiled. “Reassure yourself, Monsieur de Céligny.
No mischance is likely to come to me. If you feel able I must urge you
now to write a line to your cousins about your duel. It might be thought
a trap of some kind if I wrote. They must see your hand.”
She fetched him pencil and paper, and together they concocted a letter
to his elderly kinsmen, she holding the paper. At the end she fed him
again, for the conversation and the effort of writing had exhausted him
rather alarmingly. It was no more than was to be expected. But at that
price Valentine had the main threads of the affair in her hands now.
(2)
In the early afternoon arrived, as she had been desired, the faithful
Tessier, with a basket containing medicaments and comforts.
“I knew the place would not suit you, Madame,” she said, almost as soon
as she set foot inside the little parlour. “Ah, I see that you are
indeed indisposed!” For Mme de Trélan, to give colour to her statement
to Toinon, had wrapped herself in a shawl.
“Suzon, I was never better in my life,” said she, and looked it. “But
there is someone ill here. That was really why I sent for you.”
“Someone—in there?” ejaculated Mme Tessier, pointing to the bedroom
door.
“Yes, a young man, suffering from a gunshot wound in the side,”
responded the Duchesse calmly. “You can give me help and advice.”
For the moment Suzon looked little capable of either. Her eyes turned
wildly from Mme de Trélan to the bedroom door.
“But—did he fall from heaven, or through the chimney?” she managed to
get out.
“Neither. I found him in the garden at three o’clock this morning. He
was shot by the guard last night.”
Suzon sat down heavily on a chair. “Mercy on us! What is his name,
Madame, his business?”
“His name—no, I will not tell you his name. And as for his business,
suffice it to say that it has not succeeded. I want to keep him here no
longer than is necessary for his wound, lest he should be discovered and
taken.”
“But you yourself, Madame?”
“My reputation, do you mean?” asked the Duchesse, laughing. She seemed
in a mood of unusual exhilaration. “I think, at my age, that will take
care of itself.”
“Your safety is what I mean, Madame,” said Suzon reproachfully. “You
ought to give him up, whatever he was doing.”
“That is just what I am going to do—to his relations if they will come
and fetch him.” And Valentine explained her plan. When she had heard it,
poor Suzon, breathing a sigh of relief at the prospect of getting rid of
the refugee, almost clamoured to take the compromising letter to its
destination.
“And I think I had better see these gentlemen and bring back the answer
to-morrow,” she volunteered.
“I hardly like to ask you to do that,” said Valentine, hesitating.
“Then how are you going to know, Madame, whether the carriage will be
there or not,” objected Mme Tessier. “It will be difficult enough as it
is to bring it all off without a hitch. And I am only too anxious for
him to be gone. Cleaning day or visiting day, what might happen—Heaven
preserve us!”
“My bedroom is not on show to the general public,” observed Valentine
lightly. “And I can always lock Louise out.” (Louise commanded the
brigade of cleaners.) “However, I am not anxious to keep the boy, for
his own sake. Now, what have you brought me for him, Suzette?”
Mme Tessier watched her as, alert and interested, she unpacked the
basket. Now and again there would peep out, in this tragically fated
lady, whom she worshipped and protected with equal fervour—this lady
who for all her lifetime of authority was so wonderfully humble and
contented—some trait of those older days when her lightest wish had
been a command. Despite her extraordinary consideration for others, and
those her inferiors, she did sometimes demand services without counting
the cost, and accept devotion as a right. And Suzon loved her for it.
“This is excellent, ma fille,” said the Duchesse in a moment, setting
out Suzon’s purchases on the table. “I think that as a reward I must
tell you, after all, about this young man’s errand—a wild-goose chase
if ever there was one. Did you ever hear, Suzon, from your grandfather,
of a treasure hidden in Mirabel from the time of the Fronde?”
“Why, bless you, yes, Madame,” replied Suzon. “Grandpère used often to
talk of it. There were supposed to be jewels too. But I never believed
it myself.”
Valentine was taken aback at this unexpected reply. “You did know of it!
It is extraordinary that I should be the last to hear of it, then.”
And in both their minds, as each guessed, was the unuttered question,
Had the Duc known of it too? But for years now Mme Tessier had never
mentioned M. de Trélan unless the Duchesse did so first.
“It is very strange,” went on Mirabel’s mistress reflectively. “And
stranger still that the man who possesses a plan of the spot where this
treasure is supposed to be hidden should be a Chouan leader calling
himself—with what truth I cannot tell—a kinsman of . . . of the
Duc’s.” A swift, tiny flush ran over her face. “I have never heard his
name. I think it must be a false assertion.”
“And that is why the young man is here, then?” interrupted Suzon despite
herself. “—sent by this Chouan to secure the treasure! He is a
Royalist, therefore!—O, Madame——”
“Not _sent_, I gather,” corrected the Duchesse. “Yes, a Royalist, a
_collet noir_.”
“A _collet noir_—one of those hotheads! And the guard—you say they
shot him! Did they not search for him? Will they not search again?
Really, Madame, I must say it, your imprudence . . .”
“The search, if you can call it so, is over,” said Mme de Trélan with
composure, opening a pot of jelly. “It was very perfunctory last night,
and little better this morning, when the sergeant and three men came. I
of course knew nothing—may Heaven pardon me!”
“Heaven needs to watch over you!” murmured Suzon.
“They think he got away—the obvious conclusion. So now we have nothing
to do but to make that surmise a fact.” Suddenly she turned her head.
“What, in heaven’s name, is the poor boy doing in there now?”
He was singing; and as the two women went hastily in, it was apparent
that his choice was that gay little air, _La Double Violette_.
“Suzon,” said the Duchesse in alarm, after a moment, “he is
light-headed. Is he worse? What ought I to do?”
“I expect,” replied Mme Tessier, “that a surgeon would say he should be
bled.”
“Bled! when he has lost so much blood already!”
_“Rossignol prend sa volée,_
_Au château d’amour s’en va,”_
chanted Roland, more and more out of tune.
“Oh, poor nightingale!” exclaimed Valentine, half laughing. “‘Château
d’amour,’ indeed!”
_“Trouva la porte fermée,_
_Par la fenêtre il entra,”_
was the songster’s next equally appropriate announcement.
“I will go at once to the village and get a febrifuge of some kind,”
said Suzon, making for the door. “I will not be long.”
And Mme de Trélan was left, to be greeted with the nightingale’s
message:
_“Bonjour l’une, bonjour l’autre,_
_Bonjour la belle que voilà!_
_Votre amant m’envoie vous dire_
_Que vous ne l’oubliez pas!”_
“Child,” she said, sitting down and laying her hand on the hot forehead,
“you could put your strength to so much better use!”
And at her voice or touch the minstrel suddenly ceased his strain, while
his fingers, moving over the bed, found and closed on her other hand.
Thereafter he was at least quiet.
CHAPTER IX
HIS DEPARTURE THENCE
Thus it was that Roland de Céligny’s exit from Mirabel was not so
speedily effected as his hostess had planned. And without Suzon Tessier
it is doubtful whether it would have been effected at all. For if Mme de
Trélan was cast for the romantic part in this drama of deliverance, it
was Suzon who played the indispensable go-between with MM. de Céligny
_aînés_, she who brought in the additional and choicer provisions
required for the invalid, she who supported, on cleaning-day, the
fiction of Mme Vidal’s not being able to leave her room, and personally
enforced, in consequence, a surprising quiet among the myrmidons of
Louise. But Roland hardly realised his debt to Mme Tessier; the ardour
of his gratitude glowed at the feet of Mme de Vidal—as he persisted in
calling her.
But on the fourth evening he was well enough to go, the two women
thought; and, for his part, well enough to be sorry to go.
It had been arranged that at ten o’clock a carriage should be in waiting
outside a certain little door in the park wall at the end of the
lime-tree avenue known as the Allée des Soupirs—a door which the
Duchesse had already investigated, and from which, when she oiled the
rusty bolts, she had torn away in readiness the plastered ivy. This door
was some distance down the park, and, therefore, to accustom him to the
use of his legs, Valentine had caused her patient to walk several times
round the room with the assistance of Suzon and herself. It was already
getting dark; Suzon had gone back to Paris, and, since Mme de Trélan
dared not have her patient in her living-room in case of a surprise, she
had taken her armchair into her bedroom and ensconced him in it, to eat
his supper before he faced the journey to the door, and herself sat down
to bear him company.
And while he ate Roland talked; or, to be more accurate, when he was not
talking, he ate. Propped up with pillows in his chair, bright-eyed, with
a varying colour, he appeared, as he was, excited, and not the less
attractive for his condition. His wound was not, Suzon said, doing very
well, but he seemed free from fever, and it was too dangerous for him to
stay longer. Both Valentine and he knew that. So he utilised the last
remaining half-hour in converse, and not being of a suspicious nature,
never considered that this woman who was saving him could quite easily
betray him afterwards when she had gained from him all the information
she wanted, nor even that it might be worth her while letting him slip
for the sake of that information. The concierge’s extraordinary kindness
and generosity had earned, besides his undying gratitude, his
whole-hearted confidence. Moreover, as he told himself, however she came
to her present position, it was not a position natural to her. Apart
from her voice, her bearing, what concierge ever had filbert nails like
that? Yes, Roland wished he were not going out of Mirabel with the
prospect of never seeing its guardian again.
So he chatted unrestrainedly about the little band in Brittany. Chiefly
he dwelt upon M. de Kersaint, and manifested astonishment when he learnt
that his hostess did not know of the heroic part that gentleman had
played in the great Austrian defeat at Rivoli two and a half years ago.
“You forget, Monsieur Roland,” observed Valentine, smiling, “that I do
not live in Royalist circles. But I think I do remember hearing at the
time that one of the Austrian columns was commanded by a French émigré,
but I never learnt his name.”
“It was M. de Kersaint. He has the cross of Maria Theresa for it.”
“Indeed! I am afraid the Directory would give him a very different
decoration if they had him in their hands.”
“They are not likely to have him there,” asserted Roland confidently.
“But I remember hearing M. de Brencourt say that Masséna in
particular—not to speak of General Bonaparte——”
“Whom did you say?” asked Valentine, struck.
“General Masséna. He came up during the night, you know, to Joubert’s
assistance, Bonaparte being of course in supreme command——”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted the Duchesse again, less interested in the
battle of Rivoli (on which this young man seemed to be an expert) than
in something else. “I mean—what name—whom did you say you overheard?
. . . M. de Brencourt?”
Roland nodded. “The Comte de Brencourt is M. de Kersaint’s
second-in-command. He said that Masséna was furious——”
“Tell me, what is he like, this M. de Brencourt?”
Roland, surprised, described him. “Why, do you know him, Madame?”
“It cannot be the same,” said Valentine hastily. “I did not mean to
interrupt you, Monsieur de Céligny. Go on, pray, with what you were
telling me about M. de Kersaint and Rivoli.”
But she did not listen. Pictures were floating in her head of her stay
at Spa in 1787, of her first meeting at that fashionable resort with the
Comte de Brencourt, whose admiration had almost amounted to persecution,
who had threatened once to shoot himself because of her coldness, and
who had followed her against her bidding to her country house.
It was the same man, of course. Dimly she heard about Lucien and
Artamène and the “Abbé,” of the disbanding, of greater plans for the
future, and it was not for some moments that she came back entirely to
her room and her attractive refugee, and found that the young man,
leaning slightly forward in the big chair, was asking her a question.
“Do you not think, Madame de Vidal, that you might add to your
never-to-be-forgotten kindness by telling me in your turn, something
about yourself? You—pardon me—you are no concierge! You are as gently
born as I!”
“You think so? Well, the world has been upside down these ten years, has
it not? Ten years ago—if you were old enough then to give a thought to
the future—you would not have expected to grow up a house-breaker,
Monsieur Roland!”
But from the way he looked at her then she could almost see his young
and romantic mind working, and probably making up wild stories about
her. She decided to present him with one ready-made, and not so far from
the truth.
“Yes,” she said quietly, “it is useless to deny that I am gently born,
but I trust that my employer, the Deputy who has charge of the château,
is not aware of the fact. For him I am the aunt of his cousin, Mme
Tessier. My late husband, an émigré, died abroad, and I was obliged to
earn my living, like many a better woman. I used to earn it by
needlework; now I do so by looking after Mirabel. There you have my
history in the proverbial nutshell. And now”—she glanced at the little
clock on the shelf, “it is nearly time to start for the Allée des
Soupirs.”
The colour leapt into Roland’s face. “You have been so divinely kind,
Madame, that I dare ask one more kindness. Something—the merest
trifle—as a memento of what indeed I shall need no memento to keep in
lifelong memory!”
It was a long time since young men had asked Valentine de Trélan for
souvenirs. That they had asked in vain was neither here nor there.
“But, my child,” she responded with a maternal air, “I have nothing to
give you . . . unless you would like a thimble or a pair of scissors!”
“I should like anything,” said the petitioner humbly.
“I suppose,” said she, rising, “that what you would like best would be
some of this semi-mythical treasure.—Roland!” she said, struck by a
sudden thought, “promise me that you will not come back after it when
you are better! Promise me!”
The boy had flushed with pleasure at the sound of his unprefixed name.
“Alas, the treasure will probably be gone before I am well enough for
that, Madame. The Marquis de Kersaint will send somebody—but not one of
us. He said it was work for an older and wiser head, and I suppose he
was right. I suspect he will send M. de Brencourt, if he can spare him.”
“Oh!” said Valentine, and was silent all at once.
“But,” went on the youth, unregarding, “if I am to promise not to
return, Madame de Vidal, you must give me a remembrance of you to take
away with me. Otherwise——”
“I think you are threatening me,” observed Valentine, recovering
herself. “For my part I can ill spare my thimble, but if it will prevent
your climbing that wall again—Stay, I believe I have something after
all.”
And going into the outer room she came back with the locket she had
found in the work table in her boudoir.
“If you care for this, Monsieur de Céligny,” she said, “you are welcome
to it. It has no value. It was mine as a girl, before my marriage.”
But she need not have said that, for the V, which alone stood out
clearly among the twisted pearls and garnets of the monogram, he could
easily take for “Vidal.” Getting with some difficulty to his feet the
young man reverently received the trinket, looked at it, and having
kissed it slipped the worn chain about his neck. Mme de Trélan brought
some garments from the bed.
“It is really time to go, mon enfant. You will need all your courage for
the journey. Here is your hat; I brought it in afterwards from the
guardianship of the statue; and you must put on this cloak, for it is
raining hard. All the better, for rain drowns noises—though I hope
there is no one to hear in any case. Now, you must lean on me hard, for
I am very strong.”
It was indeed raining from a light spring sky which somehow concealed a
moon. On the limes of the Allée des Soupirs, when they got there, the
drops pattered heavily. The journey had been slow and trying, but at
last they reached the door. Roland, panting, leant against the wall
while Valentine opened it.
It was lucky that she had oiled bolts and hinges, for even then it
protested as she pulled at it. The last ivy tendril gave. Mme de Trélan
went through and heard an unseen horse blow out its nostrils and a bit
jingle, and then saw two dim forms waiting in the lane. One of them
touched her on the shoulder.
“He is there?” asked an educated man’s voice.
“Just inside,” she answered. “Be quick, for he can scarcely stand.”
The two men went through the door, and in a moment Roland came out
between them, stumbling a little but not so spent that he did not try to
stop as he passed her. His supporters very properly would have none of
this, but she heard the boy’s low, broken words of gratitude and
farewell before the three had vanished in the shadows.
She turned to go in. And then the same man’s form loomed through the
darkness again.
“This is for your inestimable services, and your discretion, my good
woman,” he whispered. “You can guess whence it comes.” And, seizing one
of her hands in the obscurity, he thrust something into it and closed
her fingers round the gift.
Very shortly afterwards the Duchesse de Trélan stood alone in the rain
under the wet limes of the Allée des Soupirs in her park of Mirabel. Her
arm was lightened of the burden she had supported down the avenue, but
her heart, although it knew a great relief, beat to an odd little ache
that was almost regret. And she stood there between tears and laughter,
because of what she held in her hand as an exchange for Roland de
Céligny—a considerable bundle of assignats.
CHAPTER X
THE KNIGHT’S MOVE
(1)
May had given place to June before Valentine de Trélan had quite got
accustomed to the departure of the handsome boy whose presence had been
such an anxiety and yet such a pleasure to her. The five thousand francs
which she had in his place—not nearly so large a sum as it appeared
owing to the enormous depreciation of paper money under the incapable
rule of the Five Kings—she had at first thought of returning to his
relatives by Suzon Tessier. But Suzon, by pretending to wish for her own
sake to avoid further intercourse with that house, had persuaded the
Duchesse to keep their bounty, at least for the present.
Since the evening when she had wept under her husband’s portrait
Valentine had never again felt any disposition to tears. Reaction had
come after that outburst. If Gaston were alive—and she could not rid
herself of the conviction that he was—it was difficult not to draw the
conclusion that he was indifferent to her fate. Seven years, and no
sign! Then she told herself again, as she had so often done, that her
letters had never reached him, that he had not the slightest reason for
supposing her to be still in life, since everybody of her world who had
survived the tempest believed her murdered, that she had no evidence of
his not having made enquiries after her, or unsuccessful efforts to find
her. Only of a successful effort would she have heard. But none of these
reasoned considerations could remove the sting of that long silence.
Yet, if Gaston were suddenly to appear before her, would she be able to
greet him with that unconcern which she had almost persuaded herself
that she felt—and that she ought to feel? She knew she would not. Down
in the depths of her soul all the time was the emotion which had pierced
her in the picture-gallery—the intense longing to see him again. It was
Mirabel which had first made her conscious of this longing, and it was
Mirabel which had insensibly fed it. And there were times when she
cursed the impulse which had brought her here, for under the crust of
indifference which she had hoped was forming over her heart she could
feel the stirring of that desire, growing daily not less strong, but
stronger.
And then one day it occurred to her that if this Chouan chief of Roland
de Céligny’s spoke of writing to the Duc de Trélan about the treasure he
must know, or think he knew, Gaston’s whereabouts. More, if he were to
send someone to Mirabel after the hoard, as Roland had appeared to think
certain, she might communicate at least with this self-styled kinsman of
her husband’s by his emissary, whoever he were. Yes, even if he were the
Comte de Brencourt; for although that mad passion of his must be many
times dead after all these years—and, perhaps, just because of its
death—he would surely bear a letter for her back to Brittany . . . even
as Roland might have done, had she thought of it in time.
This idea grew in her to an impatience for the coming of the next
treasure-seeker. But June went on, and he did not come. Paris celebrated
(with insufficient enthusiasm to please the Government) the obsequies of
the envoys murdered at Rastadt; commerce continued to decline,
discontent and lethargy to become more marked, and Republican feelings
suffered outrage at the first performances of the opera of _Adrien_,
wherein the stage emperor made his entry with undue pomp. On the
eighteenth came a minor revolution, the _coup d’état_ of the 30th
Prairial, with a consequent change of ministry. Valentine heard of it
with calm, and June slid presently into July.
(2)
Among the few sightseers who passed the sentry on the 20th of Messidor,
a visiting day, was one who, though M. Thibault was too much engrossed
in conversation to observe it, never entered the château at all, but
strolled round to the garden front. There was nothing to prevent this,
though it was hardly ever done. The really remarkable fact about this
enterprising visitor was that he did not reappear again at leaving time;
but this also passed without remark. Yet he had not vanished into space;
he was seated, when twilight came, in that very grotto of Latona whose
spring had refreshed Roland, waiting with some impatience for completer
darkness. He had already seen as much of the garden front of Mirabel as
he wished—a window on the ground-floor with a badly-broken shutter.
Problems connected with the recruiting and organisation of Finistère had
kept the Comte de Brencourt longer in Brittany than the Marquis de
Kersaint had bargained for, but he was here at last on his mission.
Since a detail of the ancient plan had proved susceptible of two
interpretations, he hoped to-night to make a preliminary search; after
which he would arrange his plan of campaign with the Royalist agents in
Paris with whom he was in touch.
More than the question of his difficult enterprise, however, was
occupying M. de Brencourt’s mind as he sat in that fantastic relic of
the dead and gone world of which he also was a survival. It was
impossible to be at Mirabel, even for the first time in his life,
without thinking of Mme de Trélan, and, as his refuge darkened, he found
himself thinking of little else, and of the extraordinary chance which
had thrown her tragic and sacred shadow across his path again. On the
windings of that chance Artus de Brencourt, while he waited, had time to
meditate profoundly, and sitting there in the July twilight, his chin on
his hand, staring at the arbutus which almost blocked the entrance to
the grotto, he was asking himself two questions. Why had the Marquis de
Kersaint, that kinsman of the Duc de Trélan’s, ceased, after that night
at Hennebont, to wear his emerald signet ring; and why had that ring
borne, as he then distinctly saw for the first time, the phoenix of the
Saint-Chamans? For M. de Kersaint had stated that he was a connection of
that house by marriage only. That he was a connection seemed obvious
from the minute instructions he had been able to give M. de Brencourt on
the topography of Mirabel. This business of the ring intrigued the Comte
not a little. He was quite conversant with the device of the great house
of Trélan, and over the troop of strange surmises born of the presence
of that device on M. de Kersaint’s finger and its abrupt disappearance
he was still frowning when the time came for him to make his stealthy
entrance into Mirabel.
* * * * *
For all that she had half looked for his arrival, it was chance, of a
kind, that directed the Duchesse de Trélan’s steps that evening towards
the invader; chance that caused her to have left the special key in the
door of the portrait gallery; chance that made her set out, somewhat
unnecessarily, to fetch it before she retired for the night—and chance
that led her returning footsteps through the great dark spaces of the
Salle Verte . . . to hear, as she passed along between the pillars and
the wall, a slight muffled noise of tapping—coming whence?
Valentine stopped dead, lamp in hand. The gentle and recurrent sound did
not come from the banqueting hall itself, that was plain. From the
“sallette,” then?
No more than when she had searched the garden for a possible malefactor
and found Roland did she dream of danger to herself, though had she
paused to think of it she might have guessed that the intruder would be
armed, and, if surprised, might use his weapon. She walked back and
softly opened the door of the sallette; her surmise was right.
Her own lamp cast in its beams, but there was light there already—a
lantern standing on the floor, making a pool of radiance by the feet of
a man who stood in front of the great hearth with his back to her. In
this pool, pinned down by the lantern, was an outspread sheet of paper,
a plan of some sort. Her eyes were able to take in these details before
the man, turning quickly, saw her standing there with her lamp. His one
hand went to his breast, doubtless in search of a weapon, but he never
produced it, and the tool which he held in the other fell clattering to
the floor.
“_God in Heaven!_” he exclaimed sharply, and recoiled a step or two.
“Who is it?” asked Valentine a little uncertainly. “Is it—is it
Monsieur de Brencourt?”
The intruder did not answer—did not even seem to hear her question. He
remained literally as if turned to stone, his eyes burning cavernously
in his pale face, on which the upcast light of the lantern at his feet,
crossing with that of Valentine’s lamp, cast odd shadows. After a
moment, moving like a man half stunned from a fall, he came a little
towards her. Then he stopped again, and passed his hand over his eyes.
“That light dazzles me . . . you are not real!” he muttered. Stooping,
he picked up his own lantern, and held it high in a hand that shook.
“Is it really Madame de Trélan?” he asked huskily. “Was it untrue then
. . . September . . . La Force?—Speak, Duchesse, for God’s sake!”
In the matter of astonishment Valentine had the advantage of him, since
she had been led to think his coming possible. But she too was shaken by
the encounter, the first with anyone of her own world who had known her,
for seven long years. And she found herself unable to do more than give
a sort of pale acquiescence to his agitated questions by bending her
head and saying, “Yes, it was untrue.”
“It is she!” said de Brencourt to himself, his harsh features showing
his profound emotion. Suddenly he lowered his lantern. “Give me your
lamp, Duchesse, and sit down and tell me—tell me, unless I am to take
leave of my senses, how it comes about . . . where you have been all
these years . . . what you are doing now? My God, to think—Permit me!”
He deposited his own lantern on the floor and took the lamp from her
unresisting grasp, looking round the plundered sallette in vain for
something to put it on.
“Give me back the lamp, Monsieur le Comte,” said Valentine, finding
speech. “We cannot talk here. Let us go to my room. It is safer also.”
“You have a room here?” he exclaimed. “You are . . .” For the first time
he seemed to become aware of her attire, so different from anything
which he had ever seen her wear.
She held out her hand for the lamp. “Come,” she said, “unless your
business here——” She indicated the tool and the map.
“Oh, that can wait now!” said the treasure-hunter with an accent of
scorn. He picked up the chisel and the plan and followed her.
So, beneath the cavernous half-seen gilding of the great Salle Verte,
down the basement stairs and along the bare prison-like corridor below,
carrying the lamp, went the Duchesse de Trélan in her respectable black
dress and fichu, and behind her walked, still half stupefied, the man
who had once made such persistent and unavailing love to her. And it was
in this guise, very exactly that of a thief in the night, that the Comte
de Brencourt came for the first time to her house of Mirabel.
The thought penetrated his stupor with some force during the transit.
For, once arrived at Valentine’s little parlour, as she put down the
lamp on the table he said abruptly:
“I have never been in Mirabel in my life. And I find you here to greet
me!” He gave a sudden laugh.
Valentine did not answer. She was much more moved than she wished to
betray. She sat down in a chair near the table and motioned to him to do
the same. But he put his hands on the table and remained leaning over
it, staring at her with a half-wild eagerness.
“_Are_ you alive, Duchesse? Or am I dead, too?”
“The Duchesse is not alive,” responded Valentine with a faint smile.
“You are speaking to Madame Vidal, the concierge of Mirabel.”
“Good God!” exclaimed the Comte de Brencourt, springing upright.
“How else do you suppose I could be here?”
“You are jesting!” cried he, still incredulous. “You . . . you . . . a
concierge! Does no one know you? Then you are poor—in want! Madame,
Madame! . . .”
Valentine lifted a hand. “Please, Monsieur de Brencourt, do not agitate
yourself! I am not in want. There is no one left at Mirabel to recognise
me—my portrait had a pike put through it. I came of my own free will,
and I am not unhappy here.”
At this, as if it were the most stunning news of all, he did, perhaps
unconsciously, subside into a chair, and, leaning his elbows on the
table, took his head between his hands.
“Tell me what happened?” he said after a moment. And Mme de Trélan told
him, shortly, the history of those seven years.
“Everybody thinks that I was killed,” she finished.
“I thought so,” said he without moving. “I thought so. . . . God pity
me, I have carried that picture of your death about with me all these
years. Oh, why did you not let me into the secret?”
She looked at him with a sort of maternal regret, a kinder look indeed,
had he but met it, than he had ever won from her during all the period
of his fruitless passion. “In the beginning I could tell no one, lest I
should endanger the Tessiers. I disappeared, Comte, without exactly
intending it. In the end I was glad to disappear. No one but Mme Tessier
knows to this hour of my identity; I do not mean anyone to know. Believe
me, I have not been unhappy with these good friends of mine. After being
twice so near death, to see the sky and the green leaves in the spring,
to know affection, as I have known it, and faithfulness. . . . But I am
sorry if I have caused you so long a pain. . . . I had no news of
you—for all I knew you had gone the same road.”
“I nearly did—in another way,” said the Comte briefly, raising his
head. He drew a deep breath and gazed at her anew. “Do you know,
Duchesse, that this is like—No, I cannot yet grasp that this is you,
Valentine de Trélan, not only alive, but in this mean room, this
bourgeois dress——”
She interrupted him with a warning. “Comte, this mean room of mine is
not too safe a shelter for you! And how did you get into Mirabel?”
Plainly this subject had ceased to interest him for the moment, yet he
answered that it were better for her not to know, adding, “But you do
not ask me why you found me where you did?”
“No,” said Valentine composedly. “I know why you broke in. You are come,
are you not, on behalf of the Marquis de Kersaint, to secure the
treasure supposed to have been hidden in the château during the time of
the Fronde?”
Again M. de Brencourt stared at her. “Are you a witch, Madame, or has
some Royalist agent——”
“Neither,” said she smiling. “It is no mystery how I know. You have been
preceded in your quest here, Monsieur de Brencourt. Let me tell you of
the doings of a very rash young man.”
And astonished, annoyed, but half envious in the end (for had she not
nursed the boy for four days) the Comte de Brencourt listened. But
Valentine had to hear some very trenchant comments on her protégé’s
insane proceedings—so her hearer characterised them.
“And where is the treasure really supposed to be?” she asked.
“As far as can be made out,” said her guest, “behind the great hearth,
under that curious sort of gallery, in the room where you found
me.—Duchesse, I should perhaps ask your permission for my work there;
indeed, should I find anything, what right have I to take it?”
“The right of conquest,” answered Valentine. “But, as for my permission,
if I thought that withholding it would keep you from going on with your
search, I believe I would withhold it. You risk your life, Monsieur de
Brencourt—or at least your liberty. Is it worth it?”
His look said as plainly as speech, “So you do care a little for my
life—even for my liberty,” but what he replied was, “The King’s cause
in Finistère is in desperate need of money.”
“And your leader is determined to secure it,” finished Valentine. She
went on, “Who is this Marquis de Kersaint who . . . who sent you?” It
was not the way in which she had meant to end the sentence.
Her question had rung in the Comte de Brencourt’s own head pretty often
of late. If he could have answered it . . .
“M. de Kersaint, Madame, as his ardent admirer, young de Céligny, will
probably have told you, is the émigré who commanded that forlorn hope of
an Austrian column at Rivoli. He had been in Imperial service, I
believe, for some years, but left it at Campoformio. Monseigneur le
Comte d’Artois and his council offered him the post of organising
Finistère, where he will, if all goes well, be the general commanding
for the King this summer. I was assigned to him as his second-in-command
and came over to Brittany with him in January. I know no more of his
personal history than that—except that all his family, so I understand,
perished in the massacres.”
There was a little pause, and Valentine, with an effort, said, “I hear
that in addition he calls himself a kinsman of . . . my husband’s.”
The Comte made her a little bow. “He does claim that honour.”
The blood mounted to Mme de Trélan’s cheek, but she took no notice of
his tone, somewhat at variance with the phrase he used.
“I do not remember ever having heard his name.”
M. de Brencourt was silent.
“But,” she went on, “as his kinship is . . . quite possible . . . I
shall ask you, Monsieur de Brencourt, to do me a favour.”
“A favour! You have only to ask, Duchesse.” But he bit his lip; for he
feared what the request might be.
“There is,” said Valentine, looking down, “a certain family matter on
which I should be glad of information. It is possible that M. de
Kersaint can supply this. I will, therefore, write him a letter, and ask
you to be good enough to convey it to him when you return, Comte. Will
you do this for me?”
“Any least service that I can render you, Madame——” said the Comte,
but rather formally this time. His brain was still dazed with shock, but
it was beginning to wake to other activities, and he suddenly saw with
immense distaste a picture of himself delivering a letter from this
woman, loved and mourned and now given back to life, into the hand of
the man who wore the crest of the house of Trélan, who knew Mirabel so
well, who had been so agitated at the mention of her death. . . .
“But do not, Duchesse,” he continued hastily, “do not give me the letter
till I have finished or all but finished my quest, for, should I have
the mischance to be taken with it on me, you will involve
yourself—involve us all,” he added, guessing that any threat of danger
to herself alone would probably go unregarded.
Valentine bent her head. “Yes, I understand. And I thank you, Comte. How
long will your investigations take you, do you think?”
“It is the getting the gold away that will be the difficulty,” replied
the adventurer. “When I have satisfactorily located it I shall concert
measures with an agent in Paris. See, Madame, here is a copy of the
original plan. But I fear it will not mean much to you, for steps have
been taken to render it unintelligible to anybody else.”
He spoke truth, for of the scrawl now under her eyes Valentine could
make nothing. Yet she kept her gaze long on it, making up her mind to do
a thing she shrank from, with this man of all others, and that was, to
bring her husband’s name into the conversation once more. For the Comte
had been with this “kinsman”; he might even conceivably have heard
something himself.
“Did I understand,” she began, her head still bent over the plan, “that
M. de Kersaint communicated with my . . . with the Duc de Trélan before
undertaking this search? M. de Céligny said something about such a
project.”
“No,” replied M. de Brencourt sharply. “No, there is nothing of M. de
Trélan in this. M. de Kersaint soon abandoned that idea. He had to
dispense with his kinsman’s authorisation.”
“He could not, perhaps, get into touch with the Duc?” suggested
Valentine faintly. Oh, how she hated this! Yet he might hold some clue.
“No,” said the Comte again. “He judged it to be impracticable, after
all.”
“The Duc is no longer in England, perhaps?” pursued Valentine, in
torture at having to show him that she herself did not know.
“No, Madame, not in England, nor——”
He stopped abruptly. As a man who is fording a river may come
unexpectedly on a deep and eddying current that threatens his balance,
so did Artus de Brencourt find himself losing foothold in the wholly
unlooked for temptation which suddenly assailed him. Could it be blamed,
the lie which should rid this beloved lady of the ghost of that
worthless husband who had left her to this, the husband who in effect
had been dead to her for years—and who probably really was dead by this
time? For those suspicions as to de Kersaint’s identity were
absurd. . . .
And though it was unpremeditated, nothing could have served him better
than his hesitation. The Duchesse’s eyes were on him.
“Do not be afraid to speak, Monsieur de Brencourt,” she said, slowly
turning ashy pale. “If you mean that the Duc is dead—tell me so!”
How could he resist the statement, put into his very mouth like that?
Once again those arguments flashed past him: nothing had been heard of
de Trélan for years, the Marquis had _not_ communicated with him—and as
for those surmises about de Kersaint himself, which till this moment he
had done nothing but encourage, he mentally stamped on them. Then,
taking a long breath, he let himself be sucked down, dizzy but
open-eyed, into the torrent.
“Madame . . . I regret to be so fatal a messenger,” was all he said, and
bent his head.
* * * * *
At least he would not look at her to see how his arrow had sped. He
heard her catch her breath, heard her rise from her place opposite him
at the table and go away. Glancing up, after a moment, he saw her on the
edge of the circle of lamplight, leaning against the high shuttered
window, her hands over her face.
Now, after the stroke he had dealt her, it were the part of a gentleman
to leave her. Even though her husband were nothing to her now, there was
shock in the news. De Brencourt was very conscious of it, but the
circumstances were exceptional, for he stood in peril of never seeing
her again. And now, perhaps, after these wasted, unhappy years she would
listen to him.
He got up and went towards her, but something in her attitude or in his
own soul restrained him from speaking to her just then. He paused, stood
looking desperately at her stricken figure for a moment, then, going
back to his former place at the table, buried his face in his arms.
After a little he heard her voice say, falteringly, from where she was:
“Do you know any details, Monsieur le Comte—any place . . . when it
was?”
He raised his head but did not look at her. “No,” he said slowly,
gripping his hands together before him on the table. “M. de Kersaint
said no more than this, that it was useless to write to the Duc de
Trélan, because he had just heard that he was dead—had been dead . . .
some time.”
When, at the repetition of that word “dead” he heard her catch her
breath again, he felt as though he were bludgeoning her. But no—it was
only a surgical operation . . . and better so for her. The man he was
murdering was dead already. And it was too late to go back now.
“I do not know how M. de Kersaint was aware of this,” he went on. “He
keeps his own counsel always. But that is what he said, Madame. I . . .
I . . . .” He tried to add some formal words of sympathy, but that
falsehood would not come, and he remained staring before him.
“But I must know more!” said the Duchesse to herself in a quick,
breathless voice. “He will know, this M. de Kersaint, this kinsman. Oh,
I must write to him at once—before you go, even, Comte!” She put her
hand to her head. “Where—how shall I address the letter?”
He saw that he must give a direction that would never find its
destination. How unexpectedly dark and tortuous it was beginning to be,
this path! Suddenly realising that he was seated while she was standing
he got up, and for the first time since the utterance of his lie, looked
her in the face for a second. But he could not bear the sight, and it
was with downcast gaze that he responded,
“It will be better for me to take the letter myself, Madame.”
“But I cannot wait . . .” she answered faintly, so faintly that he saw
she was on the point of swooning. He sprang round the table to her, and
catching her in his arms held her a second or two. The scarf had fallen
from her hair, and her head, grey and golden, rested against his
shoulder. Her eyes were shut, but he did not think she had quite lost
consciousness, or the kiss, reverent as it was, which he put on that
pathetic hair might have found another goal, for his heart was beating
furiously. Then he lowered her into a chair, looked round for water,
and, seeing a pitcher and a cup, poured some out with shaking hands and
held it to her lips.
He was right; the Duchesse had not lost consciousness entirely. She
drank some water, contrived to thank him, and put her head back against
the chair.
“Are you better? Are you better?” he got out. (“Brute, brute, brute!” he
said to himself. But he was not repentant.)
“You were right to tell me . . . I asked you,” said she almost
inaudibly. A little colour was creeping back to her face.
He waited a moment, gave her the cup again, gently took one hand when
she had finished, and gently rubbed it. “And now that I have told
you—Valentine, my only love, I have been faithful to your memory all
these years—now that I have told you, you will let me take you away
from this dreadful place, this intolerable existence, for ever.
Valentine . . . Valentine . . .”
He was at her feet now, clutching at the hand he had been chafing,
breathless, almost sobbing in the extremity of his pleading:
“Valentine, I implore you! It breaks my heart to see you here! Come with
me; be my wife! let us take what remains to us in this sorry world! And
if I speak so soon, when my hand has just dealt you this blow, it is
because the time is so short, as you know. Indeed, I would not press you
for an answer now, even after all these years, but that we are in the
midst of perils. Say you forgive my importunity—and say you will come
with me!”
She gently withdrew her hand.
“Comte,” she said with an effort, “I . . . I thank you, but it could not
be. I am an old woman now . . . I thank you, I thank you indeed for your
faithfulness, but I could not.”
“At least then, let me take you away as a brother might! You cannot
remain here—it is impossible to leave you to this!”
“You will have enough to do,” said she, with a tremor of the lips, “to
get your gold away without encumbering yourself . . . with a sister.”
“Curse the gold!” answered the Comte de Brencourt. “No, after all, it
brought me here.”
He had got to his feet and stood looking down at her, his eyes kindling.
Then he made a great effort over himself, and, stooping, took her hand
and kissed it as he might have done amid the gaieties where first he met
her.
“To-morrow night I will come again for an answer, Duchesse. I will leave
you now; I have given you, I know, a very great shock. And I regret
. . .” Again the words stuck. “You must forgive me . . . And, lest you
should be anxious, I will not return to the sallette to-night. Indeed, I
think it must be getting near dawn.”
“I have given you my answer, Monsieur de Brencourt,” repeated Valentine.
There were black rings under her eyes. “Believe me, I do appreciate your
devotion. If I could accept, I would.”
“I cannot take that answer,” said Artus de Brencourt gravely. “But I
will take an assurance that when you have duly mourned the man to whom
you have been so nobly faithful . . . that then, even if I have to wait
a year, two years——”
“I can give you no hope,” she said once more.
“You do not love me, Madame, that I have always known. But all I ask is
the right to be spent in your service.”
“I had rather, Comte, that you were spent in a worthier.”
He made a gesture. “There exists no worthier,” he said with quiet
conviction, and bowing, went towards the door.
But at the door he paused. “One thing more, Duchesse. Since I would
sooner die a thousand deaths than implicate you in this attempt of M. de
Kersaint’s, I wish to say that should any mischance happen to me within
these walls, you may be well assured that I shall give no sign of ever
having seen you before. And you, Duchesse—for your own sake, not for
mine—will do the same by me, will you not? Promise me that!”
Half by gesture, for speech was getting beyond her, she promised.
“I have the honour to take leave of you,” said the Comte de Brencourt,
and he went out.
* * * * *
There was night in Mirabel—cold night and loneliness.
CHAPTER XI
CHECK TO THE KNIGHT
It is doubtful if the Comte de Brencourt realised how his false tidings
about her husband would sweep out of Mme de Trélan’s head almost all
thought of himself, his proximity and his enterprise; and quite certain
that he would not have been pleased had he known where she spent the
greater part of the following morning. For she had deliberately gone up
to a part of the château which she had not yet entered, a part shut to
visitors—the Duc’s private apartments.
Stripped, dusty, neglected, they were yet the rooms which Gaston had
inhabited, and she wandered there too miserable, too self-reproachful
even for weeping. _Mort!_ the word with its hollow vowel seemed to go
echoing through the emptiness that had once been so different. No chance
now of reconciliation; no chance of that ultimate meeting somewhere,
somehow, to the hope of which, in spite of herself, she knew at last
that she had been desperately clinging—which had even, perhaps unknown
to her, been the determining factor in her acceptance of the post at
Mirabel. Whatever unsubstantial edifice she had been rearing was all in
ruins now, and neither in pride and resentment, nor in the love that
forgives everything, could they meet again on earth.
Now she knew the truth: she had always loved him, she always would. And
since, in its own surroundings, there was not a single possession of his
remaining, she went to the Galerie de Psyché, and, under the paintings
of that wife of fable who also lost her mate, she knelt down by Gaston’s
beautiful escritoire, and bowing her head upon it, kissed the place on
the tortoiseshell where his hand had used to rest. He was dead—so what
did it matter that he had long ceased to love her? He was dead; he was
hers now; she could love for both.
It was neither a cleaning nor a visiting day, and Valentine could not be
too thankful that, with these tidings fresh upon her heart, she would
not be obliged to act just yet the intolerable part she had so lightly
taken up. But, to her utter dismay, she heard, about two o’clock in the
afternoon, voices on the steps leading down to her room, and then the
sound of the entrance door opening, which showed that the arrivals must
include her master Camain, who now used the key he had had, it appeared,
all the time. And when Valentine went out unwillingly into the passage
she found him in the midst of a whole cortège of visitors, mostly
feminine. Hanging on to his arm was a pretty, plump woman of about
thirty-five, whom she recognised at once from the frequent prints of her
in Paris. It was Rose Dufour, the actress of the Ambigu-Comique.
A violent gust of repulsion went through the Duchesse de Trélan. True,
she had never been able to believe that her husband had really admired
Mlle Dufour, but nine or ten years ago rumour had certainly linked their
names for a space, and to see her in person to-day, of all days . . .
“Ha, here is our good friend, Mme Vidal!” said Camain, advancing. “Rose,
if you wish to leave your wrap in her care——” And without waiting for
permission he removed from the nymph’s very scantily attired shoulders a
handsome pelisse of violet satin edged with ermine.
“Good God, Camain, do you want me to die of cold in your old tomb of a
château!” exclaimed she, snatching at it.
“Well, it is true that you will not be suffocated without it. You might
almost as well have nothing on,” observed her admirer frankly, looking
at her transparent white muslin gown of classic cut, worn slightly damp,
according to the insane fashion of the day, to make it cling. Even Mlle
Dufour’s arms were bare to the shoulder, for the actress was not of
those who had to endure the accusation launched at the wearers of
sleeves, that they feared to show those members. And her mythological
garb, slit for a considerable distance up the side, revealed the golden
fastenings of the buskin clambering half-way up her leg, where a gilded
acorn clasped them. For that reason, presumably, she was not wearing,
like one of her companions, a jewelled thong around her ankle. But upon
her fair coiffure—probably a wig, for which the rage was extreme—rose
a confection of lilac crêpe, adorned with two rows of pearls and
surmounted by a rose and a pansy.
Valentine had turned her back, pretending to be busy. For nothing on
earth would she touch any of that creature’s belongings! However, the
dispute about the pelisse resolved itself into the lady’s decreeing that
her swain should carry it over his arm, lest she should wish to resume
it, and presently the whole party, laughing and talking, swept up the
stairway to the ground floor. Mme de Trélan, conscious of jangled
nerves, would fain have stayed behind, but Camain insisted on her
accompanying them, as was indeed her duty. He did not present her to his
mistress, but his affability stopped short only of that mark of
distinction.
In the great Salle Verte, for which they presently made, he acted
showman, while many remarks were passed on its size and decorations, and
surmises made as to what scenes (“orgies,” one of the male members of
the party termed them) had occurred in it.
“And there is an inner room, somewhat curious,” said the Deputy. “It was
designed, I believe, to be a sort of retreat for the prince—since the
château, as I daresay you know, was originally built for King François
I. It is worth looking at, Mesdames.” So the company obediently followed
him along the Salle Verte.
Valentine was conscious of a violent wish that they should not enter the
sallette. Till this moment she had been too much absorbed in the thought
of her dead husband to give much consideration to the Comte de Brencourt
and his doings. Now, although she knew that he had not attacked the
masonry, and although he would surely not be so rash as to attempt
anything in daylight, she had a premonition of disaster. But Camain
waved his hand towards the door, and there was nothing for it but to
open it.
However, to Mme de Trélan’s great relief—for she had somehow, against
her better sense, expected to see de Brencourt standing where she had
found him last night—the sallette was empty. And the company were
called on by the Deputy to admire the _cheminée royale_, with its
carving of Apollo and Daphne, and its nymph and pipe-playing satyr on
either side, but some of the ladies, unversed in mythological lore,
despite their present attire, were intrigued by the main subject, and
among these was the Citoyenne Dufour.
“What on earth is happening to that woman, Camain?” she demanded. “Her
arms are sprouting at the ends. And who is the man?”
“That, ma belle,” responded her admirer, “is the nymph Daphne, turning
into a laurel to escape the attentions of the god Apollo—a pretty
prudery not likely, I fancy, to find many imitators in these days, eh,
ladies?”
Violent protests from the ladies of the party.
“Oh, oh, Citizen Deputy, you have left some fleur-de-lys on the wall!”
observed one of them. “Is that to be on the safe side—in case a Bourbon
should return?”
“Fleur-de-lys? Nonsense!” returned M. Camain, putting up his spy-glass
to look at the poor scorched remnant of tapestry hanging there. “Those
things you see round that bit of border are . . . humming-birds,
heraldic humming-birds!”
Much laughter greeted this sally. “And what is this queer long beast
over the hearth?” demanded another voice.
“With a crown on its head, too! Oh fie!”
“It is not, at any rate,” said one of the two youngish men of the party,
in the extraordinary lisp cultivated by the would-be fashionable, “the
strange fowl to whose nest some one has set fire just as she was going
to lay, which we saw in the Salle Verte!”
So it went on, the flow of humour; and after visiting most of the
apartments on the first floor, where M. Camain tripped badly as an
expositor of the story of Psyche, and where Valentine’s own apartments,
though arousing much interest, were voted horribly old-fashioned in
decoration, they came to the second, to the door of the locked gallery
with the china and portraits. Mme de Trélan had hoped that she might
have been spared that—for how should she look upon that portrait in
primrose satin to-day?—and sick at heart as never before, she had
contrived to trail behind. She heard Camain’s voice explaining what was
in the room while he waited for her to unlock the door. Then she
realised that the key, being a special one, was not on the concierge’s
bunch, and that she had in consequence forgotten to bring it with her.
She came forward and said so. “But I will go and fetch it instantly,
Monsieur le Député.”
“Do, pray,—though I regret to put you to the trouble,” said her
employer. “Meanwhile, ladies, come out on to this balcony, and you will
see——”
Valentine hastened down the nearest stairs. Better to get it over as
soon as possible, the visit to that room, for it had to be gone through
with, and she had no one but herself to thank for that fact.
She had come down a minor staircase which deposited her at some distance
from her own quarters, and having arrived on the basement floor she
began to run, for she was still as light-footed as a girl, and she had a
constitutional dislike, for all her upbringing, to keeping people
waiting. And thus, round a corner, she almost collided with a man
hastening in the opposite direction. A second of stupefaction, and she
saw that it was the Comte de Brencourt.
“What!” she stammered out. “M. le Comte—what madness! Camain is here
himself!”
“I know!” returned he rather breathlessly. “They are after me—never
mind what happened—a folly of my own. I am trying to get as far away
from your rooms as possible.”
“But for God’s sake go back there!” said the Duchesse, seizing hold of
his arm, and all but pushing him. “Go to my room—you will be safe
there. They will not go in!”
“Never!” he exclaimed. “The last thing I should do—compromise you in
this affair!” And breaking away from her he disappeared without another
word, and was out of sight or hearing before she could even think of
some spot in which he could hide. And since her quick wit told her that
any delay in returning with the key might lead to Camain himself
descending to investigate, she ran on to her little parlour, snatched it
up and set off again with all haste. Terrible though it was to leave the
Comte to his fate, or at least to his own devices—for she heard no
sounds of pursuit yet—it was out of her power to help him now.
From what she caught, as she returned to the little group of persons on
the second floor, it seemed that Camain had been singing her praises in
her absence.
“I am afraid that you have hurried, Madame Vidal,” he said in a tone of
concern as he took the key from her. She was indeed very obviously out
of breath. “You should not have done so. These ladies seized the
opportunity of taking a breath of air on the balcony, and having a peep
from there at the park, which they tell me I ought to keep in better
order.”
“Indeed, Monsieur le Député,” put in one of the critics in an affected
voice, “you ought to be scolded! It seems, as far as one can judge from
up here, to be in the state of the tangled wood which surrounded the
castle of the Sleeping Beauty.” She pulled her gauze scarf about her
with a still more affected air, acquired with a good deal of pains above
her husband’s shop, and the five blue feathers in her turban quivered.
“Now that remark, Madame Constant,” said the Deputy, stooping and
fitting the key into the lock, “gives me an opening, does it not, for a
pretty speech about the Sleeping Beauty herself? However, Mme Vidal
doesn’t like pretty speeches, so I won’t make it.” He opened the door,
invited the ladies to enter, and after casting upon Valentine a glance
which could only be described as ogling, followed the bevy, who had
already fluttered in with exclamations—two of them also casting glances
of another nature upon the concierge as they passed.
Mme de Trélan, every sense on the alert, remained outside. Dared she run
down the stairs again, and could she do any good if she did? She had not
long to hesitate, for in an instant Camain’s voice was heard summoning
her within, and she obeyed, anxiety as to what was going forward
downstairs swallowing for the moment every other feeling.
“You might show these gentlemen the pictures, Madame Vidal,” said her
master, looking up from his favourite Sèvres. And as the three men of
the party attached themselves to her, the Duchesse began to move slowly
along the line of Trélans, starting as far as possible from her
husband’s portrait. She heard, before beginning her own unwilling
exposition, Camain saying, “You see this plate, ladies; I believe it was
one of a service painted for the late Duchesse on her marriage.” And she
guessed to what he was directing the attention of those fair and envious
vulgarians, to the plate of green Sèvres with the alternate medallions
of cherubs on clouds, baskets of flowers, and green wreaths, round the
rim whose extreme edge was of dark blue hatched with gold.
“That must be the poor woman’s monogram in the middle, then,” said one
of them, and Valentine knew that she was looking at the gold T in the
centre, intertwined with a V of roses and forget-me-nots, and surmounted
by a coronet. “T for Trélan, of course—I wonder what the V stood for?”
“I don’t know,” said Camain. “Victoire or Victorine, I expect. Do you
know, Mademoiselle Dufour?”
“Why on earth should I?” asked Rose Dufour indifferently. “Let me look
at it, Georges—I’ll take it in my own hands, thanks . . . Great God,
how clumsy you are!” For the sound of a smash told that the late
Duchesse de Trélan’s plate now existed only in fragments.
Through the ensuing recriminations between the Deputy and his
_innamorata_, and the expressions of concern from everybody else in the
room, including her own three prospective picture-gazers, Valentine’s
ears were strained to catch other sounds. And as she still did not hear
them she began to entertain a faint hope. The château was so large that
a man might lead his pursuers a good dance and elude them in the end.
Unfortunately M. de Brencourt was not familiar with its topography.
“If you say you dropped it because you were carrying my pelisse I’ll
take the pelisse myself!” Mlle Dufour’s voice emerged again, sounding
less good-humoured than usual. “No, I’m not going to carry it on my
arm—Heaven forbid. You can put it on my shoulders, only don’t drop it
also—Bon Dieu, what’s that?”
For a loud knock had come at the door, which stood ajar—a knock that
sounded to Valentine like the summons of Fate. Moving a trifle, she was
able to see the soldier outside, whose approaching footfalls the recent
scene had drowned. A sensitive lady gave a little scream.
“Who’s there?” asked Camain, the violet satin held above Mlle Dufour’s
bare shoulders. “Excuse me, ma mie!” He dropped the cloak upon its
destination without much ceremony, and strode to the door, where the
National Guard was seen to salute and to say something in a low voice.
“Tut, tut!” said the Deputy. “Well, I suppose I had better come down and
ask him a few questions.”
“What is it, Georges?” asked the Dufour, who had glided to the door
after him, the ermine slipping half off her shoulders.
“The guard have captured a man who has just made an entrance into the
building, and they would like me to have a look at him before marching
him off.”
“How interesting!” cried the actress. “What a coup de théâtre! Do not go
down to him, Georges! Let them bring him up here! This might have been
arranged for us. What was he doing?”
Nobody could answer that question but Valentine, and she only in part.
Camain hesitated a moment, but only a moment. “Very well,” he said.
“Tell them to bring him up here,” he added to the National Guard.
A hot flame of indignation ran over the Duchesse. The Comte de
Brencourt, a gentleman, was then to be made a show for the passing
curiosity of a courtesan and her friends! But what had he been about, in
daylight too? The same question no doubt was exercising the Deputy, for
he turned round, his look seeking her out; and, being half a head taller
than any one else in the room, he easily found her.
“Here is a pretty find to be made on your domain, Madame Vidal!” he
said. The voice sounded jocular, but she was not sure of the genuineness
of that jocularity. She was saved the necessity of a reply by a remark
from one of the ladies, winged by a malicious side-glance at her, the
shabby, middle-aged caretaker; “Perhaps it is the Prince come after the
Sleeping Beauty!”
Half ashamed, the men sniggered too. Valentine’s anger, lit in spite of
her contempt, served usefully to steady her. “It is more likely,
Monsieur le Député,” she said coldly, “that he has come after something
in this room—there are valuables here, are there not?”
“At the moment, most certainly!” cut in one of the youngish men, bowing
with a fatuous air in the direction of Rose and the others.
“But in the daytime!” said Camain musingly. His eyes strayed to the
jasper cup. “I’ll have the room made surer.”
“And I shall beg leave to give up the key,” said Valentine, her head
high. Anything to foster the idea of ordinary theft.
“I shall not ask you——” Camain was beginning, when the tramp of feet
in the corridor interrupted him. “Ah, here is our adventurer. Yes, bring
him in, men.”
If the Comte de Brencourt felt the indignity of his position, he did not
show it. His chief preoccupation, Valentine could not but feel, was to
avoid looking at her. He had not been secured without a struggle, that
was evident, for there was a cut on his forehead, and his neckcloth was
wrenched half off. His arms were bound to his sides by a pipe-clayed
cross-belt. Valentine could not keep her eyes off him, but the Comte
himself looked nowhere but at Camain. And Camain, advancing a little,
studied him for a moment, his hands behind his back, his rather
prominent blue eyes suddenly grown searching.
“Your report, corporal?” he said abruptly, still running his gaze over
the captive.
The National Guard related a story to which no one in the room listened
more fixedly than the concierge of Mirabel: how the sentry—apparently
neither Grégoire nor Jacques—happening to look round at the château not
very long after the entry of the Deputy and his party, had seen a man
getting in at one of the ground-floor windows, how he had summoned the
guard and they, selecting the same window, as the quickest mode of
entrance, had at last run the intruder to earth on the basement floor
and, after a lively resistance, captured him.
“Very smart work, corporal,” said the Deputy. “But that window—what
window was it?”
“We found ourselves when we got in, Citizen Deputy, in that room they
call the ‘sallette.’”
“The sallette!” echoed Camain in surprise, and Valentine suppressed an
exclamation. How nearly right her presentiments had been, then! But to
enter by the window, in broad daylight, in view of the sentry; it
sounded crazy!
“And what had he in his pockets?” went on the Deputy.
“These small tools, Citizen Deputy, a handkerchief, and a case with
assignats; we have not counted them yet.”
(He must have had time to get rid of the plan, then.)
“Well, my fine fellow, and what have you to say for yourself?” The words
were careless, but the tone was so different from anything which Mme de
Trélan had yet heard him use, that, for the first time, she realised how
Georges Camain might have been a Terrorist.
To this the prisoner was understood to mutter, in a strong patois, that
he hoped the citizen would not be too severe on a poor man, that the
times were bitter hard—no work, no food—and he had thought he might
light on something or other in Mirabel that nobody would miss . . .
His dishevelled appearance, the blood trickling down one cheek, and a
certain amount of dirt that M. de Brencourt had somehow accumulated,
went really a good way to obliterate the marks of race. Perhaps he would
succeed in carrying it off that he was a common thief. The Deputy seemed
inclined to believe it.
“I rather think, my man,” he said, with a smile which had in it nothing
of amiable, “that you have known the inside of a gaol already, from the
look of you. However, we shall hear all about that later. You had better
take him to the guard-house for the present,” he remarked to the
corporal, “and make arrangements for having him conveyed to Paris.”
By the end of this little speech Valentine had realised where the
captive’s eyes, which had already removed themselves from his
inquisitor’s, were now fixed—on the portrait of her husband as a young
man which faced him all the while.
CHAPTER XII
THE ROOK’S MOVE: CHECK TO THE ROOK
(1)
If, owing to the slackness of the once fire-eating Grégoire and his
superior, Roland’s apparition in the gardens of Mirabel had produced but
little stir in official quarters, it was not so with the actual capture
of a delinquent made within the château, and practically under the eyes
of the Deputy himself. For two days Mirabel was turned inside out, and
Camain, the outwardly easy-going, piqued by this daring intrusion,
superintended much of the search in person. What the soldiers and police
agents expected to find appeared doubtful; and indeed there was actually
little for them to discover, since, already aware of the strangely open
method of ingress selected by the invader, they paid no attention to the
broken shutter at the back of Mirabel which had originally admitted him.
The one genuine discovery which they made intrigued them a good
deal—the lantern lying in the colonnade not far from the windows of the
sallette—for why should a man want a lantern in the daytime?
It puzzled Valentine also when she came to hear of it; but, after
thought, she came to the conclusion that the lantern was, for her at
least, the key to the whole mystery of the Comte’s arrest—as indeed it
was. She recalled that he had had a lantern when she found him in the
sallette that evening; on searching her memory was fairly sure that he
had not brought it with him to her room, and supposed that next morning,
suddenly remembering having left it where its presence, if discovered,
might prove very awkward for him—or for her—he had gone, at a most
unfortunate moment, to retrieve it, had nearly been trapped in the
sallette by the advent of Camain and his party, and in desperation had
climbed with it through the window, trusting to the colonnading outside
to hide him. But on returning, after an interval, by the same way, he
had had the ill-luck to be seen. For all she knew, that had been the
road by which he had originally entered Mirabel.
It was not until a day or two had elapsed that Valentine realised how
fortunate for her was the fact that M. de Brencourt had been found
breaking in, apparently for the first time, during the presence of
visitors. It occurred to no one that it was not his first invasion, and
had there been complicity on the part of the concierge it was plain that
he would never have chosen such a time. That M. Camain himself
entertained no suspicions of her was proved by the frankness with which,
coming daily during this period of turmoil, he kept his subordinate
posted up in the course of events.
“The authorities can make nothing of the man,” he admitted in her little
room, on the third morning. “They cannot even discover his name. But,
chiefly because he turned out to have too large a sum of money on him
for a common malefactor, he has been clapped into the Temple, on the
chance of his being a political offender.”
“Political!” ejaculated Valentine. “What political object could be
served by breaking in here!”
“I confess I cannot imagine,” responded the administrator. “But the
Royalists are up to all sorts of games. If he had been better-looking,
now, one might have put forward a theory that he was the Duc de Trélan
himself, come back to have a peep at the place . . . as you once
suggested to me that he might, Madame Vidal!” He laughed, as at
something equally preposterous and amusing, but all the colour went from
Valentine’s face. That surmise, made in utter and desperate jest as it
had been, could never know fulfilment now!
“But,” went on the Deputy, unobservant, “I am relieved to find that
there is no question of the Minister of Police wanting to confront you
with this man, as I was afraid, at one point, that there might be. It is
possible, however, that he may require some sworn statement of
conditions here, a deposition, in short, such as one makes before a
notary. And I also should be glad of it for the sake of my reputation,
for though this man was fortunately seen and captured at once, you will
imagine, Madame, that I am not pleased to learn about that other
marauder who escaped from the garden a while ago, though that has been
kept very quiet—too quiet, in fact. Will you believe, Madame Vidal,
that I was only a few days ago informed of that episode?”
Valentine stared at him, disconcerted. “But I thought you knew of that,
Monsieur le Député!”
“Naturally. I ought to have known of it. Well, there is a more zealous
sergeant at the poste de garde now, and there will henceforth be a
sentry on duty here all night. So I hope that your peace will not be
molested again. Now, Madame, if you will kindly give me writing
materials. . . . Thank you. Be seated, pray. I shall ask you to give me
an account of the early part of that day?”
“But there is nothing to give an account of,” said the Duchesse. If he
had asked for the preceding evening!
“So much the better,” returned Camain, trying the nib of the quill on
his finger-nail. “Still, you can tell me how the day was passed, from
your rising in the morning; and what, if anything, you observed of
unusual. I take it, of course, that you had not seen this man lurking
about the place before?”
“No, of course not,” lied Valentine gallantly. After all, it was not for
herself. But she was glad she had not to meet his eye, as he glanced up
for a second.
“I was sure of that,” said he, beginning to write. “Now, although I am
not a notary, we will observe the forms. . . . ‘Je soussignée. . . .’
What is your baptismal name, Madame Vidal?”
Hastily Mme de Trélan put forward the least aristocratic sounding of her
names. “Marie,” she answered.
“‘Marie,’” repeated the scribe, in somewhat lingering tones. “‘Marie.’
‘I, the undersigned, Marie Vidal.’ Widow, of course?”
“Yes,” said Valentine rather faintly, for the question stabbed her. The
Deputy looked up, and she had an impression that he was going to ask her
how long she had been a widow, and that she would be mesmerised into
answering that she did not know, that it was just what she was seeking
to know. . . . But he did not; he settled to business instead—and was
very business-like too. Valentine had to account for every hour of that
morning, and as she really had no right in the Duc’s apartments she did
not find it too easy. When it was finished, and she had signed, he
thanked her, and looking at his watch left somewhat precipitately.
Valentine came back rather thoughtful from accompanying him to the door,
which she always conceived it her duty to do. He was kind; she did not
like deceiving him—though indeed she had no hand in this enterprise of
the Comte de Brencourt’s any more than in Roland de Céligny’s. All she
was doing was to hold her tongue about the Comte’s identity, and to wish
him well out of the Temple. His sudden capture, however, had profoundly
affected her own affairs, for he could not now be the bearer of her
intended letter to the Marquis de Kersaint, nor—since he had left her
that night without giving her his leader’s address—could she send it by
any other means.
Unless, indeed, she thought, standing by the high barred window and
looking out, she were to discover M. de Kersaint’s whereabouts by
communication with Roland de Céligny, if he were still with his cousins.
No, to approach Roland might be very inauspicious for him just at this
juncture; moreover, she must hope, for his own sake, that he had left
Paris by now. She must wait a little; and, after all, the initial shock
was over. Gaston was dead, and details of the how and when of his death
could not help him to life again. She hoped he had not died in poverty.
She could not bear that thought. . . .
Nor could she bear, just now, the consciousness that M. Georges Camain
was beginning to look upon her with an eye more beaming than that of an
employer. Even his consideration, for which she had been grateful, was
coming to displease her, for surely it exceeded what was due to a
concierge. Not being born to that estate she could not feel certain
about this, but she did know that a demeanour in the Deputy which even
as Mme Vidal she disliked, as the Duc de Trélan’s widow she abhorred.
* * * * *
And she was troubled next day, when M. Camain appeared again, in a shirt
of fine batiste fastened with a golden butterfly, bearing a bunch of
roses in his hand. He laid them down on the table.
“I am happy to tell you, Madame Vidal, that the deposition was quite
sufficient. You will not be molested in any way.”
“Really, Citizen Deputy, I am most grateful to you,” said the
Duchesse—and meant it.
“You are more than welcome,” returned her benefactor with a bow. “It is
a pleasure to serve you in anything. Besides, I look upon you as a
colleague in the preservation of Mirabel.”
It was well said, if, again, an unusual sentiment. However, the look
which followed its enunciation gave Valentine a sudden presentiment that
his next words were going to be less well chosen, and she became acutely
conscious of the red roses on the table. But at that very moment the
door burst abruptly open, and Louise, with a bucket of water and a mop
tied up in a cloth, clanged into the little room.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Madame Vidal, I thought you were upstairs, and I
was going to wash the. . . . Oh, Monsieur le Député!” She was struck
speechless.
“I will go,” said Georges Camain at once. “No, remain, my good woman,
and do your work.” Her he did not address as colleague.
“Pray, Monsieur le Député——” began the Duchesse, for form’s sake,
though in reality she could have embraced that bucket-bearing form.
“No, no,” said he quite good-humouredly. “I would not for the world
interfere with your wise dispositions. Do not come to the door, I beg.”
He disappeared, only just avoiding a second bucket which Louise had left
outside in the passage, and Valentine turned away to hide a smile, but
not because of the bucket, for that anyone should fall over such an
object was not a form of humorous incident that appealed to her. Her
mirth, however, was of a very fleeting nature, since the situation had
elements which did not amuse her at all.
“Look what beautiful flowers M. le Député has brought, Madame!” said
Louise, suddenly seeing them. “He doubtless brought them for you. A very
affable gentleman, M. Camain!”
Mme de Trélan glanced at the roses, still lying on the table. Impossible
to tell, since the bearer had been so hastily routed, whether they were
intended for her or no. On the whole she feared they were. Then the idea
of another destination occurred to her. The affable gentleman was
probably on his way to Mlle Dufour.
“You can take them away with you when you go, Louise,” she said,
indifferently. “M. le Député must have forgotten them. But it is a pity
that they should be wasted.”
“But surely Madame will keep them?”
“I dislike the scent of roses,” was Madame’s quite curt reply.
But Rose—_the_ Rose—she had made up her mind about that ornament of
the theatre. There could never have been anything between her and
Gaston, fastidious as he had been to his finger-tips. Mlle Dufour had
not enough mind even to have amused him. But there was such a thing as
claiming for lover a man who had on one occasion, or perhaps two, paid a
woman some slight, half careless attention, especially when that man’s
admiration was in itself a distinction. The Duchesse de Trélan had known
it done in far higher circles than those in which Mlle Dufour moved.
Something told her that in 1790 the actress had employed that useful
method of self-advertisement, and who was there then—or ever—to
gainsay its truth? To-day that man’s wife, having seen the claimant,
felt with every instinct that the claim was false. But she did not
detest Rose much the less.
(2)
Camain did not come again for several days. The little sprite which
dwelt in Mme de Trélan’s brain, even in the cloud of sorrow and remorse,
suggested that he was trying to find out and avoid a day when minor
“colleagues” might come charging into her room. And luck served him, for
he arrived one beautiful afternoon when she was quite alone. But he
seemed in a very business-like mood, and while he apologised for
interrupting her sewing, he told her the reason for his visit; he was
thinking of having the garden put in better order, though, as he said,
the ridiculous sum which the Directory placed at his disposal would not
admit of much being done.
“But I know very little about gardens,” he concluded. “Now, a woman’s
taste . . . Will you come out with me and give me the benefit of your
advice, Madame Vidal?”
“But, Monsieur le Député,” objected Valentine, “I am not a Lenôtre. It
is gardening on a grand scale here—landscape gardening. I suppose,
however, that you could begin by putting the Italian garden in the front
a little in order. Shall I come out there with you?”
M. Camain shook his head. “I should prefer to do something to the
wilderness at the back—for a wilderness it is fast becoming. You would
be doing Mirabel a real service if you would come out there with me
now.”
Valentine had to acknowledge to herself that, assuming his sudden
anxiety about the garden to be genuine, this was certainly true. And the
state of the park had long afflicted her. Nevertheless she went
unwillingly.
But the Deputy’s business-like mood continued, and from the great
terrace at the top the two took a general survey of the rioting
vegetation. Nodding spires of foxgloves pierced it now, and the stately
candles of the mulleins were lit, while round the rose-trees, turned
once more to briars, the bindweed stretched her strangling arms, and
trumpeted her victories from a thousand mouths. And arbour after arbour
was nothing but a mantle of the white stars of the wild clematis.
Into this jungle the administrator and the concierge of Mirabel
descended after a little, and pushed their way along the paths,
discussing the pruning and lopping of laurel and arbor vitæ, and the
possibility of re-shaping the yews that once had been ships or peacocks.
But it seemed very hopeless.
“Indeed, I can hardly wonder that that marauder escaped the other day,”
commented M. Camain, standing at the top of a flight of steps not very
far from the scene of the invader’s mishap. “It would need an army to
make any impression on this. I almost think that you are right, Madame
Vidal, and that, with the meagre means at my disposal; I shall have at
present to content myself with the front garden.”
“There is only one saving clause,” he remarked suddenly over his
shoulder as he led the way back, “and that is, that to put order into
this tangle would destroy its character of the Sleeping Beauty’s
enchanted forest, on which Mme Constant remarked so aptly the other
day.”
Valentine, annoyed, bit her lip and, answering nothing, followed him at
a slackening pace. But M. Georges Camain, having arrived at a seat in
the bosquet through which they were passing, turned round and waited for
her.
“Shall we sit down a moment after our walk?” he suggested.
It was a curved stone seat which the honeysuckle had so invaded as to
leave little room. But one end was still clear. On this the Duchesse
unwillingly sat down, and her employer did the same.
“It only occurred to me the other day,” he began in a conversational
tone, looking at her profile, “that I might in some sort claim
relationship with you, Madame Vidal.”
“Indeed, Citizen Deputy! How is that?”
“Well, as I have the happiness to call Mme Tessier cousin, it appears to
me that, since you are akin to her, I might have the even greater
happiness of thinking of you as——”
“As your aunt, were you going to say, Citizen?” interrupted Mme de
Trélan with, a gleam. “But I am afraid that I cannot aspire to that
honour. It is only by marriage that I am related to Suzon.”
“I fear you are mocking me, Madame,” said Camain in a tone of relish.
“You must be well aware that I do not conceive of you as my aunt.” His
hand was creeping towards her along the back of the seat, over the
tangled honeysuckle.
“I am nearly forty-five years old, Monsieur le Député,” said Valentine
in a very repressive voice. “Old enough to be a grandmother.” She rose.
“Now, if you will excuse me, I must be getting back to my work.”
“But that is just what I do not wish you to do, Madame Vidal,”
interposed Camain, getting to his feet with even greater alacrity.
“Oblige me by sitting down a moment, and by listening to what I have to
say.”
As his not inconsiderable bulk blocked the only egress from the seat
there was nothing for it but to comply, and this, after a momentary
hesitation, Mme de Trélan did.
“You must by this time,” began Camain, clearing his throat, “have become
aware, Madame, of my profound admiration for you.”
“I know that you have shown me great consideration, Citizen,” responded
Valentine, “and I assure you that it has been appreciated.”
“It would be impossible for me to do too much to show my regard for
you,” said the Deputy earnestly. “Your talents, Madame, your character,
your gifts of heart and brain—you must forgive me if I point out (what
you must surely know) that they are thrown away upon your present
situation.”
“Is that a kind way of intimating, Monsieur le Député, that you wish me
to resign it?” enquired Valentine, immensely relieved at the goal
towards which, after all, the conversation appeared to be making.
“You have hit the nail on the head,” replied M. Camain with a peculiar
smile. “I do wish you to resign this post, so unworthy of your
sensibilities and your education. I wish to remove you, with your
consent, to another, which I dare to flatter myself will be less
unworthy of you.”
Mme de Trélan looked at him mutely.
“All this, Madame,” pursued the Deputy, waving his hand to include not
only the garden but the château itself, “all this, over which you
exercise so wise a regency, is but a dead kingdom. You are but the
guardian of a cenotaph. But imagine yourself,” he went on, warming to
his trope, “imagine yourself ruling with a real authority where all is,
on the contrary, alive, where every subject is your—I should say, every
wish is your subject, every project laid at your feet for approval,
every——”
But Valentine broke in rather ruthlessly by saying, “I cannot imagine to
what kingdom you refer, Monsieur Camain.”
“You do not divine?” said he, and the smile became more marked. “You
must guess—’tis your adorable woman’s modesty which dictates that
reluctance! Madame . . . _Marie_ . . . the kingdom which I invite you to
enter—ah no, not to enter, for you are already enthroned there, but to
sway absolutely—is at your feet this moment, is, in short, this heart!”
finished M. Camain, transferring himself very neatly from the bench
beside her to one bended knee, and clasping both hands to the
neighbourhood of the organ he had named.
Valentine surveyed him there on the gravel with stupefaction and a spice
of malicious amusement.
“Am I to understand, Monsieur le Député, that you are good enough to
offer me the post recently occupied by Mlle Dufour?”
Her suitor reddened. “Good God, no, Madame! I must have expressed myself
but ill if I gave you to suppose that! No, Mlle Dufour and I have
parted. It is my hand, in all respect and honesty, of which I have the
honour to ask your acceptance.”
“In short,” said the Duchesse, unable to resist, “vous allez vous
ranger. Please get up, Citizen. I am very much honoured by your offer,
but it is impossible for me to accept it.”
Her wooer kept his countenance very well. Possibly he had expected this
refusal, as a further manifestation of the modesty to which he had
alluded. He did get up, and, dusting the traces of the greenish gravel
off the knees of his small-clothes, stood before her, rather a fine
figure of a man, who probably carried off better than most the
ridiculous red toga _à l’antique_ which the members of the Conseil des
Anciens had to wear at their assemblies.
“I am too sudden, perhaps, Madame?” he enquired, his head on one side.
“I recognise and bow to your superior delicacy. A flower should never be
plucked in a hurry. And yet, the encouragement I have received——”
“Encouragement, Monsieur?” exclaimed the Duchesse. “Whence did you
derive that?”
The Deputy made her a bow. “You have been—unintentionally, no
doubt—kinder than you knew.”
“Do you mean to say that I—_I_—gave you encouragement, Monsieur?” All
the Duchesse de Trélan was in the astonishment of that emphasized
pronoun.
“Not openly, Madame, I admit—but in a way you were unconscious of.”
“Most certainly I was unconscious of it!” said Valentine, in a tone of
the strongest indignation. “Your imagination, Monsieur le Député, runs
away with you!”
“Madame, I only used my eyes,” pleaded Camain, undeterred by her
displeasure—seeming, indeed, rather to enjoy it. And he sat down again
on the seat. “You would not, naturally, be aware of it, chère Madame.
But cast your mind back a week—to the day of the arrest. It was on that
day that I first received hope. . . . I see you do not believe me. Must
I convince you then?”
“You cannot, Monsieur.”
Camain bent nearer. “Do you challenge me? Ah, Madame Marie, but you will
be angry with me! It was, then—you remember that day, Mlle Dufour was
with me—it was the way you looked . . . in which I saw you looking
. . . the hostile way, in short, in which you looked at poor Rose.”
“_Rose_ . . . the way I looked . . . you think—is it possible that you
imagine, Monsieur Camain, that I was jealous of your mistress?” A white
and royal anger possessed the Duchesse, and she got up from the stone
bench more like a queen than a concierge.
“I knew you would be angry,” said Camain plaintively, gazing up at her.
“But as I live, I saw you looking at her once or twice in a manner which
seemed to me to admit of only one explanation.”
Mme de Trélan gasped. She had no words before a supposition so
monstrous. What had begun by resembling farce had turned to something
else. Here, in her own garden, to be subjected to the insolent fatuity
of this man of no breeding! And Rose Dufour, of all women. . . .
“It is impossible for me to remain at Mirabel to be insulted, Monsieur
Camain,” she said very haughtily. “Will you kindly relieve me of my
charge here, and replace me as soon as you can? I should prefer to leave
to-morrow.”
M. Camain stooped and picked up his cameo-headed cane. With this,
rising, he poked the ground for a few seconds.
“I am obliged by the terms of my appointment, Madame Vidal,” he said at
the end of them, “to receive notice of resignation in writing.”
“Then you shall have it in writing at once,” returned she. “If you will
kindly let me pass——”
He stood aside. “Send it by post, Madame, to-morrow, if you are still of
the same mind. Though why my most respectful admiration should be
construed——”
“That is enough, Monsieur,” said Mme de Trélan as she might have spoken
to a disobedient servant, and walked straight past him out of the grove.
M. Camain, deputy for Maine-et-Loire, did not follow her. After a moment
he reseated himself on the stone bench, and, crossing one blue and white
striped leg over the other, rubbed his ankle thoughtfully. Then a sort
of smile passed over his well-shaven face, he put a finger and thumb
into a waistcoat pocket, and drew forth a little almanac, which he
consulted. This done, he rose and sauntered towards the lower end of the
park, to a certain little door in the outer wall which, to his
knowledge, had not been used for years. It had, as he knew, bolts only
on the inside, so the absence of a key need not deter him from leaving
Mirabel by that way . . . unless indeed long disuse should have rusted
those bolts in their sockets, or the ivy have bolted it in another
fashion.
CHAPTER XIII
THE BISHOP’S MOVE
(1)
It was not until Valentine’s letter of resignation had gone that she
realised what, in the heat of her anger, she had done. She had shut
herself out of Mirabel for ever. To-morrow would probably be the last
day she should ever spend there. Was it really only a week ago that,
fresh from the shock of the Comte’s news, she had wondered how she could
possibly have put herself into such a position? Well, she had still more
indignant reason for wonder at herself to-day, yet—she had suddenly
discovered that she did not want to quit Mirabel. But it was too late
now.
Next afternoon a messenger brought her a letter addressed in Camain’s
large, sprawling hand. Out of it fell a spray of young ivy. Mme de
Trélan looked at it distastefully—some sentimental afterthought, no
doubt, of her bourgeois wooer’s—and letting it lie on the table read
his regrets at her decision to resign, his surprise at the resentment
aroused by his “deeply respectful addresses”—and his reminder that by
the terms of her appointment she had agreed to give thirty days’ notice
of resignation, and that she was not therefore legally free to leave
Mirabel till the 27th of Thermidor next. But the rejected suitor pledged
his word that, unless obliged, he would not enter the château again
during her stay, so that she might feel at liberty from the menace of a
devotion which was evidently distasteful. “And perhaps,” the letter
concluded, “in that period the rest of this torn ivy, which you will no
doubt recognise, may have time to grow again over the little door near
the Allée des Soupirs.”
The letter dropped from Valentine’s hand. Was it a threat—this about
the door? Could he know anything about Roland, from some unsuspected
source, or did he perceive no more than that the door had recently been
used? But, as Roland must surely have quitted Paris by now, the sprig of
ivy moved her not, and the most potent emotion roused by her employer’s
letter was probably the last he intended—relief. Through that forgotten
thirty days’ warning she had a respite; she need not leave Mirabel yet.
She had never dreamed that she could be so deeply thankful.
For she would have fuller leisure now to think of Gaston, whose widow
she was—whose widow she had been, perhaps, for long enough already,
even though this Chouan leader had only recently learnt the fact of his
death. Yes, she had known that all along. That was why Gaston had never
answered her letters, never sought for her. It was not indifference, but
a gaoler far more implacable who had held him captive; and the
reflection that he had possibly been dead for years held a terrible kind
of comfort in it.
She was Gaston de Trélan’s widow, in Gaston’s violated home. And it
seemed to her that these twenty-nine days had been given her to go over
their life together, and to pray for him. Afterwards, when she, too, had
left that home for ever, she would take steps to communicate with the
Marquis de Kersaint in the hopes of hearing more. So, before the empty
tabernacle in the cold, half-pillaged chapel, where in the presence of
such a brilliant company the Archbishop of Paris had made them one, she
prayed for him every night and morning, at hours when no one was likely
to summon her. Suzon was indisposed and could not come to see her.
Camain had sworn not to come. And more than half the allotted respite
slid by—too quickly.
Mme de Trélan had not mentioned her approaching departure to Louise and
the rest of her minions. A faint hope began to stir in her, as time went
on, that the Deputy would ask her to reconsider her decision. Her anger
against him had measurably died down; it seemed to her now rather absurd
that she had been so hot. The man knew no better; and, had not Rose been
involved in his amazing “proof” she might even have seen the ludicrous
side of it. But despite her conviction about her, nothing connected with
Mlle Dufour could be to her amusing—only hateful. Yet, if M. Camain did
ask her to stay on as concierge, how was she to regulate their
intercourse in future?
So July went on, with reverses abroad and discontent at home, and
Valentine saw now the use to which she would put the money, the price of
Roland’s safety, for when she was free she would find some priest who
would say Masses for Gaston’s soul, and she would herself go to her
duties, as she had done now, regularly but surreptitiously, for years.
For she felt on her own soul a deadly sin of pride; and if Gaston had
contracted a sacrilegious marriage before he died, the fault was partly
hers. What were those few letters which she had sent compared to the
more active steps which she ought to have taken to find him—steps
which, now that it was too late, she could not conceive why she had not
taken?
And she longed so intensely for the comfort of the Mass that she thought
she would have asked Suzon, had she not been indisposed, to take her
place at Mirabel for a night, to allow her to attend in Paris one of the
churches where, in a half clandestine fashion, it was celebrated. Then
she would remember that in a couple of weeks she would be free to do
this, since—Camain having given no further sign—Mirabel would shortly
know her no more. Her desire changed its goal a little then, and became
a longing that the chapel of Mirabel itself which had witnessed their
union might know once more the offering of the holy mysteries, for
Gaston’s soul and for her grave shortcomings too. Alas, there appeared
small chance of that.
(2)
“I see you have got a gardener, Madame Vidal,” observed Louise one
morning as she came in. “He seems very busy out in the front there. An
oldish man for all that work, though.”
She was right. Later on, when Valentine looked out, she did indeed
descry an elderly man busy with what had been the flower beds in the
Italian garden. Then she remembered that Camain, on that memorable day,
had spoken of his intention of having the beds attended to. Still, one
man could not accomplish very much in so absolute a desolation.
The gardener did not come near the château, nor did she take any notice
of him till two days later. It happened to turn extremely cold for the
beginning of August, and at midday, as she saw this industrious elderly
person sitting eating on a barrow, she thought he might like to conclude
his meal under the shelter of the colonnades, with the addition,
perhaps, of a cup of coffee. She went up the steps, crossed to the bed
by which he was sitting, and suggested it.
Without his hat, which the gardener removed as he rose on her approach,
his face was seen to be round and comfortable. He seemed about fifty,
hale and vigorous, with a twinkling eye. He thanked Mme de Trélan
warmly, very warmly, for her kind thought, left his barrow, and betook
himself up the great steps to the shelter of the colonnade, while she
returned to her own quarters to make him some coffee.
By the time she brought it out to him he had finished his meal, and was
standing in front of the boarded-up door looking at it. He turned round,
took the cup from her with a little bow, and said,
“Madame, you do more in offering me this cup of coffee than you know. I
am thirsty, it is true, but I am even more thirsty for talk with you.”
The Duchesse stared at him. He spoke with a slight accent, but his
speech was educated.
“I have dug,” went on the gardener, sipping the coffee, “for three days
in the garden, and I desire presently, with your permission, to dig in
the château itself.”
“What, are you another of them?” cried Valentine involuntarily.
He smiled. “Even so, Madame. And since the arrest of M. de Brencourt
has——”
“You know M. de Brencourt?”
“We are under the same orders.”
“Those of this Marquis de Kersaint?”
“Precisely,” said the gardener, and he now gulped down the coffee.
“But,” objected the Duchesse, puzzled, “how is it that you confide in me
so readily? With M. de Brencourt”—“it was different,” she was going on
to say, but stopped, realising that she was on the verge of an
indiscretion.
“Because in the first place,” said the new treasure-seeker, “I went, on
the receipt of certain information, to those old MM. de Céligny to whom
you so cleverly restored their interesting young relative; and from
them—since the boy has returned to his grandfather—I learnt all that
Roland had told them of your devotion.”
“Roland has gone, then?” said she, relieved. “He was well again?”
“Very nearly. The wound was not serious.”
“And the second gentleman—he who was arrested, M. de Brencourt?”
“He is still imprisoned in the Temple, but soon to leave it, I hope. He
has found a venial guard, and . . . one has agents in Paris, you know,
Madame. It is from them that I have learnt the facts about him.”
“I hope that you may not follow him to the Temple, Monsieur,” said
Valentine, rather troubled.
“I hope so too,” said the newcomer composedly. “But since I hold a
certain position here, having—no matter how—procured the post of an
accredited gardener, I shall set about matters quietly. I propose,
therefore, to go on attending to my horticultural duties for a space
before beginning my investigation.”
Mme de Trélan studied the little man a moment. He seemed an extremely
unhurried plotter—either a very cool hand, or one who was inclined to
take things too easily. It was impossible for her to judge. It suddenly
came to her, however, that the means of communication with M. de
Kersaint were restored. When she knew rather more about him she could
ask this emissary to bear her letter.
“You want me to help you, Monsieur, I suppose?” she suggested. “But what
if I have scruples—I am not sure that I have not? I did not help either
of the others, you know.”
“I shall respect your scruples, Madame. Unless you carry them so far as
to denounce me, I can do what is necessary without claiming your active
assistance. All I shall ask is that you remark on it to no one if I
transfer the scene of my labours, in a day or two, from the front garden
to the park behind. And now, if you will excuse me,” he concluded, “I
will return to my wheelbarrow.”
“Before you go, Monsieur, may I know your name?” asked Valentine. Then
she caught herself up. “No, I think I know too many names. I would
rather not hear it. It is better for your sake that I should know you
only as the gardener of Mirabel.”
Now this abstention of the concierge’s suited M. Chassin admirably.
Although he had never been at Mirabel (just as he had never seen its
Duchess) it was as well that his name, undistinguished though it were,
should not be whispered there. So he bowed a little and said, “As you
please, Madame. But possibly you know it already from one of the other
gentlemen—from M. de Céligny, perhaps, if he talked to you much about
M. de Kersaint, whose aumônier I have the honour to be.”
“You are a priest, then?” exclaimed Mme de Trélan, surprised.
“_Presbyter valde indignus_,” replied M. Chassin.
“I had not guessed it,” said Valentine. “Though indeed why should
I?—Yes, M. de Céligny did refer to the aumônier, now I come to think of
it, in connection with the plan of the treasure, but he did not mention
the name.”
“Then I will remain the aumônier, or the gardener, according as you
please, Madame,” said M. Chassin briskly. “What shall I do with this
cup—besides thanking you a thousand times for its contents?”
The Duchesse took it from him. “If you care for another to-morrow at the
same hour, Monsieur l’Aumônier, it will be at your disposal.”
“You are too good, Madame,” replied the priest. “You are sure my
presence—our conversation—will not bore you?” There was a little
twinkle in his eye.
“On the contrary,” responded Mme de Trélan. “I find all this
passionately interesting. I feel that I am assisting at a romance. Is it
not in the old fairy-tales that three sons of a king come after a
treasure, or to slay a dragon, or free a princess?—and it is always the
third and last who succeeds.”
“Alas, Madame,” said the third and last adventurer, “I am no king’s son.
That description may serve for MM. de Céligny and de Brencourt, but my
father was a shoemaker. I should not be worthy to free a princess.
Besides, as I have told you, I am a priest.”
“Moreover there are no princesses here,” added Valentine hastily,
annoyed with herself for having chosen just that illustration.
“Nor a dragon?” enquired the treasure-seeker.
“No, unless it be the Deputy or the sentry.”
“The latter, indeed, may be wondering at our conversation now, if he can
see us in here,” observed the gardener, and he began to move towards the
steps. “By the way, Madame, is it true that the Deputy Camain does not
come here much now? I heard from . . . a source of information . . .
that his visits, at one time very frequent, have practically ceased of
late. Is that so? It is somewhat important for me to know.”
“Yes, that is quite correct,” answered the Duchesse, and was again
annoyed with herself because she felt the colour rising to her face.
CHAPTER XIV
PLOTTER AND PRIEST
(1)
Not until that evening did Roland’s exact words about the aumônier recur
to Mme de Trélan’s memory. Who could she have been, the dying old lady
who possessed this mysterious document? It was all but clear now that
some treasure really did exist in Mirabel; but its existence, as a
matter of fact, interested Mirabel’s mistress less than the means by
which it had come to light after all these years. She had no intention
of claiming the hoard.
And more amazing than all was the fact that this third treasure-seeker
was a priest. It seemed almost as if her fervent wish of the last days
were on its way to be granted. Could she ask him to say Mass in
Mirabel—would it be safe? She knew nothing about him personally, but he
could not be a man to shrink from risks, or he would not be employed on
his present mission. He must equally be an _insermenté_, one who had not
sworn allegiance to the State, or he would never be aumônier to a
Royalist division.
The desire to feel her way towards this great question of a Mass at
Mirabel, as well as to satisfy her curiosity about the plan, was the
reason why next day, at the same time, as the Abbé-gardener was making
with a handkerchief of provisions towards the colonnades, she went up
the great steps and intercepted him.
“Your coffee is awaiting you in my room, Monsieur l’Aumônier,” she
suggested, “if you will give yourself the trouble to descend thither.”
He thanked her and followed her down, unrolled his comestibles, took the
plate she put before him, and with little ado set heartily to work.
Valentine placed the coffee pot at his elbow and herself sat down
opposite him.
“I hope you will pardon my rustic manners, Madame,” he observed after a
moment or two, “but this digging gives a man a fine appetite.”
“I trust they feed you well where you lodge in the village, Monsieur
l’Abbé,” said she in reply. “Where do you lodge, by the way?”
“At the little house next the church—I beg its pardon, the Temple of
. . . what is it the Temple of, Madame, Age, or Genius, or Fame, or
what?”
“I have never enquired,” returned the Duchesse, with a shade of
contempt. “The Temple of Lunacy, I should think.—Who lives in that
little house now? It used to be . . . let me see—Nicole, the locksmith,
and his family.”
“Nicole the locksmith?” repeated the priest, ceasing to masticate. “He
has not lived there for seven years, I understand, since Mirabel was
sacked.”
“Is that so?” asked Valentine. “What happened to him?”
“I do not know,” answered the Abbé. “I only know the bare fact from the
old man who lives there now.—Did you then know Mirabel-le-Château as
long ago as that, Madame Vidal?”
“Yes, I have known Mirabel a long time,” said Valentine, after a slight
hesitation. If she were going eventually to ask him to say a Mass here
for the Duc de Trélan, she must give him some sort of ground for making
the request.
“You have lived here before, perhaps?”
“Yes,” admitted Mme de Trélan. “How I have come to live here again,
under such different auspices, is the result of circumstances with which
I need not trouble you. But, since I knew the château before it changed
owners, perhaps you will not think it strange that I should show
curiosity as to how you came into possession of the plan of which M. de
Céligny spoke, and of which I saw a copy in M. de Brencourt’s
possession. M. de Céligny said something about an old lady who was
dying, whom you visited. But how did she come to have this paper, and
why did she desire to give it to . . . to M. de Trélan?”
M. Chassin wiped his mouth. “It is a long story how it came into her
possession, Madame, but a much shorter one why she desired it to go to
its rightful owner. She had been tiring-woman to M. de Trélan’s mother,
the Duchesse Eléonore.”
“What was her name?” demanded Valentine, a little breathlessly.
“Magny, Mlle Magny,” said M. Chassin.
Valentine got up from the table and went over toward the stove. The past
seemed suddenly to crowd upon her almost suffocatingly. Behind the other
ghosts in Mirabel she often felt the gentle spirit of the mother-in-law
who had welcomed her with such affection, and now here was another
shadowy inmate. Then she was aware that the priest was watching her out
of his placid, shrewd little eyes with a good deal of interest, and that
she must walk warily.
“You knew Mlle Magny, I see?” he remarked.
“Yes,” said the Duchesse de Trélan. She remembered now her first sight
of that prim, devoted attendant as it were yesterday. The best thing for
him to suppose would be that they had been fellow-servants years ago. So
she added, “I was here for the last two years of Mlle Magny’s service,
when, as you say, she was maid to Mme la Duchesse Douairière.”
“Were you here, then, Madame, under the Duchesse Valentine?” was the
priest’s not unnatural question.
Mme de Trélan much disliked lying, although her whole life recently
might have been called a lie. She clung to the literal truth underlying
her statement when she said, “No, I never served the Duchesse
Valentine.” And then, to turn him away from a dangerous topic, she said,
“I need not ask you, Monsieur l’Abbé, if you are an insermenté priest.
You must be, to hold the position which you do, and to have received any
trust from so good a Catholic as Mlle Magny.”
“No, Madame, naturally I have never taken the oath,” responded M.
Chassin. He looked at her with fresh interest, and added, “You too,
then, my daughter, are a good Catholic in these times of persecution?”
“I was never a Catholic worth speaking of, I am afraid,” said Valentine
rather sadly, “until these times.”
“And are you able to go to your duties here, my child?” It was
remarkable how the cloak of the plotter and half humorous observer
slipped at once aside, and revealed the priest.
“Not here,” responded Mme de Trélan. “I always did in Paris; it is
possible there. But there is no Mass here, no priest . . . O mon père!”
“What is it?”
“Lately—for a special reason—I have longed for little else, night and
day, but that there might be Mass said once in the chapel here, for
. . . for one who was much connected with Mirabel.”
Her deep earnestness and hardly contained emotion affected M. Chassin.
He was a little puzzled, too. Did she mean Mlle Magny? If so, why did
she not say so? More likely, perhaps, that she was thinking of some
relative of her own. Perhaps she was the widow of a steward or something
of the kind, for she was far too superior to have been an ordinary
servant. However, practical as usual, he saw that the point was not for
whose soul—if she meant that—the Mass was to be said, but whether it
could be said at all.
“Have you the necessaries still in the chapel?” he asked thoughtfully.
“I believe so,” answered the Duchesse. “I could look . . . I know where
they would be hidden. A priest coming like this seems . . .” She broke
off wistfully. “But there would be a certain amount of risk to you,
Father, and so I hardly like suggesting it. Nothing but my very real
need would make me. I . . . I have heard news that would make it just
now the greatest comfort I could look for in this world.”
“My daughter,” said the Abbé, rising, “as a priest, nothing could give
me greater joy, in these times, than to hear that you desire such a
thing. But, as a plotter, I think that I must get on a little further
with my task before I undertake the additional risk—not much, perhaps,
but still to be considered when I am charged with a mission not my own.
An argument, no doubt,” he added with a sort of twinkle, “against the
union of the secular and the sacred characters in one individual.
However, I will think over the best way to fulfil your edifying desire,
if I can. I should begin at once, I think, by starting work earlier than
I have hitherto done, that no suspicion might be excited on the morning
itself, for it would have, would it not, to be a very early Mass? And
you wish, I gather, a Mass of requiem?”
Valentine bowed her head. She was almost too much stirred to thank him,
and looked up with eyes full of tears.
M. Chassin was moved to give her his blessing, and on that departed once
more to his wheelbarrow and his hoe.
(2)
Valentine thought of little else but the priest’s half promise all the
rest of the day. Very early next morning she went and searched in the
chapel for the gem-studded chalice and ciborium, hidden away with all
the more valuable vestments early in 1792, and hidden so securely that
if they had been looked for in the August pillage they had never been
found. That day being a cleaning day she thought it better not to invite
the remarks of her _femmes de journée_ by having the gardener into her
room at all. Moreover at first she thought he had not arrived; till it
occurred to her to look out from an upper window at the back of the
château. The result of her observations was that she took out a bowl of
coffee at noon to the grotto of Latona, and, going in, told him the
reason.
“Much wiser, Madame,” said the priest, wiping a hot brow with his
sleeve. “And did you say that to-morrow was a visiting day? Then I shall
be back in the front, very active, for all eyes to see. I have no
business to be here at the back at all.”
“But you have a good reason for it?” suggested Mme de Trélan.
The aumônier dropped his voice. “There is a sort of underground passage
leading from this grotto—which is of course of later construction—to
the place under the cheminée royale in the sallette where Louis-Antoine
de Trélan hid his money. Once I have unblocked the end of it, now hidden
by those rocks, I hope to find the rest easy.”
“M. de Céligny did not know of that!”
“The misguided youth never got more than a moment’s sight of the plan.”
“And M. de Brencourt?”
“He preferred to attack the other end, in the château, as likely to
prove shorter. The result you know.”
“And when you have got the money?”
“I have to convey it by degrees—or rather, cause it to be conveyed—to
an agent in Paris, and he to England to be melted down. It is of course
useless in its present state. When I reach it I calculate that it will
take me three or four days to get it away, a portion at a time. It will
be too heavy to take all at once, for so much weight in so little bulk
would excite suspicion.”
“I see that you are coming earlier,” said Valentine. “Does that mean
that you will be able to say Mass? I have found all that is requisite.”
“I think I may promise it,” replied the gardener.
Next day, as he had predicted, he was working in the front of the
château, and a Deputy whom Valentine showed round said that he was glad
something was being done to the flower beds, but that he considered M.
Camain rather parsimonious in the matter of labour.
During the next three days, although the priest had returned to his work
in the park, something invariably happened to prevent Mme de Trélan from
getting speech with him. But on the fourth afternoon she had the
curiosity to go and stand by the great fireplace in the sallette. She
most distinctly heard gnome-like activities at work below. Evidently the
miner was advancing in his task.
Next morning she sought him out soon after he arrived, while he was
still in the front of the château.
“Will you come to my room to-day for your coffee, Monsieur l’Aumônier?”
she asked.
“Certainly, Madame,” responded the gardener, and he walked beside her
wheeling his wheelbarrow. “I wanted to speak with you about a certain
arrangement. I shall not be here much longer, I think,” he added
significantly.
“You are—advancing?”
“To-morrow or the next day will see the end, I hope. I will certainly
come at noon.”
And he came, punctually. He was hot and rather dirty. Valentine let him
eat his meal in peace.
“And so it really was true, the tale of the treasure,” she said
meditatively, as he drew to a close.
“Every word, Madame,” replied the priest.
“And you have actually secured the whole of it?”
“Except the jewels—and unless I am prevented from going on to-morrow.”
“Why should you be?”
“One never knows,” said he, and finished his coffee with appreciation.
“And now,” he added briskly, “about to-morrow morning?”
“You will really do it for me? God reward you, Father!”
“I will come at half-past four to-morrow to your entrance here. I
suppose there is a private door to the chapel from the château? You will
have everything ready? Perhaps you have made ready for Mass before?”
“Yes, I have,” said the Duchesse.
“Then that is settled,” observed M. Chassin, brushing the crumbs off his
person. “The sentry is used by now to my industrious early entrances,
and there is no one about to ask why, having entered, I am not to be
seen working. Nor will anybody, I presume, ring your bell at that early
hour. I see no extra hazard at all; and most of my treasure trove is
already in Paris, in good hands.”
At the door he stopped. “There is only one thing more. For whose soul do
you wish this Mass said, Madame Vidal?”
Valentine did not reply at once. She suddenly saw what questions it
would lead to if she said “For the Duc de Trélan’s.” Perhaps he would
even refuse to say a requiem for Gaston at all unless she told him by
what right she demanded it. A desire, very unlike her, to put off the
difficult moment seized her. If she only told him the name to-morrow, at
the eleventh hour, when the candles were lit, and everything ready,
surely he would ask no questions then. Or if it came to it, she might
even tell him who she was. But not now.
“May I tell you to-morrow morning, Father?” she asked.
M. Chassin raised his clumsy eyebrows a trifle, but since he could not
very well pretend that it was of paramount importance to know the name
overnight, he said, “Very well, my daughter,” and departed.
CHAPTER XV
UNDER THE SEAL
The chapel at Mirabel, of later date than the château itself, was one of
those lofty, pompous, rococo edifices abounding in heavy wood-carving,
and puffy-cheeked cherubs, and tribunes with bulged and gilded fronts
almost suggestive of a theatre. But hostile hands, in stripping it of
some of its exuberance, had bestowed the crown of martyrdom on its
floridity, and the light of this early summer morning, streaming in
through the red and purple clad saints of the apsidal eastern window,
seemed a little to dispel its chill—the chill of a building long
disused—though it could not replace the warm memory of incense and the
winking light before the tabernacle.
The candles on the unvested marble altar, and those in the great carved
candlesticks where the bier or catafalque should have stood, were of
brown wax as usage demanded. Valentine had found them, and in another
place the black and gold vestments for the priest, stored away with the
rest, and she had brought out from the sacristy and spread between the
candlesticks on the floor itself—since there was no bier—the black
pall with the arms of the house of Trélan. Everything was ready, and now
she herself, the solitary worshipper, knelt with bowed head on a chair
in the nave, though it wanted yet an hour to the priest’s coming. She
was making her preparation for confession, for she was going to ask for
communion at this Mass. The resolve to do so had come to her during the
night.
* * * * *
Nearly half-past four already. Valentine hurried back to her room. He
was very punctual, the gardener priest, and prudent to boot, for he did
not even wake any echoes by ringing, but tapped upon the outer door.
“Everything is ready, mon père. I will take you straight to the chapel,”
said Mme de Trélan.
M. Chassin paused a moment when he got inside the building. This, then,
was where his foster-brother had married the “beautiful and unfortunate
lady” as M. de Brencourt had justly called her. Little as Mme Vidal had
been able to do, the place had something the air of requiem; he saw the
candles, the pall—and then the arms on the pall. Surely she, a former
domestic, would not have brought that out save for a member of the
house! Then he thought, wondering at his own slow-wittedness, that of
course she wanted a Mass said for the Duchesse Valentine. He was more
than glad to say one here for the repose of that soul.
As he moved forward again Mme Vidal pointed out the sacristy. “I will
light the candles while you vest, Father,” she added. “But, before you
begin Mass, I should like to make my confession, for I wish to
communicate. And then I will tell you for whose soul I am asking for
this Mass.”
M. Chassin, feeling that he hardly needed now to be told, disappeared
into the sacristy. Valentine lit the candles on the altar and those
round the pall. Before she had finished the priest emerged in alb and
stole, tying the girdle of the former round him as he came, for there
was need of haste in all this business. He entered the confessional,
whose elaborate carving bore scars from axe or hammer, and drew the
curtain after him. She went and knelt down at the right-hand grille.
* * * * *
There was absolute silence when Valentine had finished. All through the
priest had hardly said a word or asked her a question, and from the
beginning she had resolved to make no mysteries, but here, under the
seal, to be perfectly frank about her identity. It would have meant,
perhaps, evasions else.
But the silence was so prolonged that at last she raised her eyes, and
could just see through the grille enough to gather that the Abbé had
covered his own eyes with his hand. It was not till then that Valentine
fully recognised how even to this man, unconnected, save as a political
plotter, with the house of Trélan, it must come as a shock to learn, in
the very chapel of Mirabel itself, her identity with its supposedly
murdered mistress. She had not been thinking enough of herself to
realise that; rather of her relations to Gaston. She waited; and after a
moment or two more her confessor seemed to collect himself, and in a
shaken voice named her penance and gave her absolution.
Bent under the weight of freedom Valentine bowed her head, and so
remained—till she suddenly heard the rungs of the curtain in front of
the confessional rattle on their little pole, and it came to her that
the priest, still so strangely silent, was preparing to leave the box.
But there was still something for her to say.
“Father, now you can guess for whose soul I wish this Mass said—for
that of my husband, Gaston, Duc de Trélan.”
Still silence. M. Chassin had, in fact, only drawn aside the curtain
because in the tumult of his emotions he felt that he was suffocating.
He was not thinking of moving at that moment; he was incapable of it.
What was he to do! what, in God’s name, was he to do! And there was no
time to think, that was the terrible part of it. He could not knowingly
enact a sacrilege. . . . And this, this was the murdered Duchesse! It
was incredible—yet obviously true, though his brain could hardly grasp
it yet. . . . But the other side of the business! Of course Gaston’s
repeated injunction to respect his secret to the uttermost, an
injunction laid on him afresh not long ago at Hennebont, did not apply
to this case, which the Duc could not have foreseen . . . no man could
have imagined a resurrection like this! Yet what was it, “nobody in the
world,” “whatever you think might be gained by it.” He must have a
little time to consider. . . . And he must say something now. . . .
“My child,” he managed to get out, “I cannot well say a requiem Mass
unless I have reason to . . . to know the person dead.”
“But I know it, Father,” came the sad voice. “Is not that enough?”
She had heard some rumour, of course. How to convey to her its falsity
without betraying what he knew as fact—and without undue shock to her?
“I suppose, my daughter,” he said gently, “that you have had some
private information. Is it—forgive me—is it reliable?”
Valentine caught her breath. “Only too much so, I fear.” And then a
light broke upon her. “Surely, Father, as you were sent from the Marquis
de Kersaint about this business, and he knew of the Duc’s death, you
know it, too? Or did he keep you in ignorance before he sent you to
Mirabel?”
“What!” exclaimed M. Chassin, thinking he had not heard aright through
the grille. “What did you say, my child? M. de Kersaint knew that the
Duc was dead? Who told you that?”
His astonishment set a mad hope tearing at Valentine’s heart. “M. de
Brencourt,” she answered. “Was he wrong, then?”
But M. Chassin had flung himself out of the confessional, his stole in
his hand. “M. de Brencourt!” he exclaimed. Once out he seemed on the
verge of some expression better befitting his late employment as
gardener or plotter than his present as priest. “M. de Brencourt told
you—my child, do not stay kneeling there . . . M. de Brencourt . . .
here, sit on this chair and let me hear more of this extraordinary . . .
misunderstanding!—May I know this great matter—your identity—so long
as to speak of it a little now?”
His face was mottled with emotions. Valentine, her eyes fixed on him,
had already risen from her knees and did sink down on the chair he
indicated. In front of her the candles burnt round the pall and on the
altar, ready for the funeral Mass.
“Yes, Father—but—_misunderstanding_!” she caught at the word. “Is it
untrue, then, Father, is it untrue?”
“I do not say that, but . . . tell me what M. de Brencourt said to you!”
“But is it untrue—is it untrue?” she repeated piteously. “O God, is he
alive after all?”
The secret knocked so hard at the door of the priest’s lips that it
seemed to him it must force its way out. It was cruelty to keep her in
this tension—and almost absurd, too. But he must have a little time to
reflect if he were justified in breaking so solemn a promise.
“Calm yourself, Madame la Duchesse,” he said, and, sufficiently agitated
himself, sat down beside her. How extraordinary, how dizzying a
sensation to be in the actual living presence of her whose loss had
turned the whole current of his foster-brother’s being. “Tell me first
just what M. de Brencourt said.”
Valentine put her hands to her head in the effort to remember exactly.
“He said that M. de Kersaint had told him it was useless to write to the
Duc de Trélan for permission to search here because he had just heard
that the Duc was dead—had been dead some time.”
“And M. de Brencourt told you that!”
Valentine’s heart seemed to stand still. “It was false then?”
“I cannot say, Madame, whether it was false or true,” responded M.
Chassin, “this only, that M. de Brencourt must have strangely
misunderstood M. de Kersaint, for the Marquis has certainly no grounds
for asserting that the Duc is dead. I do not say that it is not so, but
he has no authority for asserting it . . . and I do not believe that he
ever did.”
What was the mystery? The chapel, the lights, were beginning to dance
round Valentine. The priest guessed it.
“Madame, this is too much for you. And for me, too. . . . To learn that
you are alive—Let us both try to be calm. I will do what I came here to
do, and though cannot say a funeral Mass for the Duc de Trélan because
. . . because I am convinced that he is still alive, I will say one for
his intention and for yours, and for your reunion . . . and for wisdom
to know how to act,” he added almost to himself. “But you will give me
leave to retain my knowledge of who you are, will you not? As you are
aware, I must not, having learnt it as I did, unless you sanction it?”
“But not to use it, Father, not to impart to any third person.”
“Not even to——” He checked himself.
“Not to anyone,” said Valentine firmly. “I am no longer the Duchesse de
Trélan. It was necessary, I thought, that you should know I once was.
Now I am Mme Vidal again.”
“Then,” said the priest very solemnly, “I implore you, as your
confessor, either to write without loss of time to M. de Kersaint,
telling him who you are, and asking for details about your husband which
only he can give you, or, better still,” his voice shook with
earnestness, “to go in person to Brittany to see him. Believe me, you
will be more than thankful all your life if you do. I will give you
directions afterwards. And now I will finish vesting.”
Valentine slipped to her knees, and remained sunk on the kneeling-chair
while M. Chassin hastily rolled aside the pall, put out the great
candles, and went into the sacristy.
Yet in a moment or two he was hurrying out and bending over the kneeling
figure. “Madame, Madame, I think it must be your bell which is ringing
so furiously!”
He had to repeat it again; but, when once she had understood, Mme de
Trélan was in full possession of her wits.
“I will go at once, Father. It must be something unusual at this hour.
But take off those vestments—leave the chapel! You must not be found
here at any cost!”
Fears only for him hurried her out of the chapel and along the corridor.
It was true; her bell was ringing violently, and it could not be much
later than five o’clock.
She expected to find outside the door soldiers, or at least the sentry.
The only being there was a rather indignant small boy, who said
reproachfully that he had been ringing for five minutes, and asked if
the gardener were anywhere about. The child seemed so little the herald
of danger that Valentine said she thought that she could find him, and
asked why he was wanted.
“Tell him, please,” said the small messenger, sniffing, “that his mother
in Paris is very ill—dying—and that he must go at once if he wants to
see her alive.” And as Valentine gave an exclamation he added, “A man
has come from Paris to say this. The gardener must hurry. That’s all.”
And he scampered up the steps again.
Valentine hastened out into the passage, relieved to see in the distance
the form of the Abbé, once more a gardener, coming towards her.
“There is bad news for you, Monsieur l’Abbé, I am sorry to say,” she
exclaimed when he came within hearing. “Your mother in Paris——”
“Is dying, I suppose,” finished the priest with a strange mixture of
concern and irritation. “Do not be distressed, Madame, for I have no
mother. It means something quite different. I will come into your room
for a moment—but I must leave Mirabel at once. . . . It means, in
fact,” he went on, once inside, “that the agent in Paris who has the
bulk of the treasure in his possession by now, and who has the task of
transferring it to England, is in peril of some kind—has probably
fallen under suspicion. There is not a moment to lose if I am to save
the money. Fortunately I had not begun Mass . . . Before I go, however
. . .” He fumbled hastily in a pocket, and bringing out something
wrapped in a scrap of faded silk, slid the contents out on to the
table—a glittering, snake-like heap of blood and fire and tarnished
gold.
“This is yours, Madame, by every right. I cannot take it!”
Valentine stared at it a moment. “But I do not need it, Monsieur l’Abbé.
Take it with the rest!”
“No. It would provide for the journey, Madame, which I implore you to
make,” returned M. Chassin, looking at her hard. “And the directions I
promised you—have you pencil and paper? M. de Kersaint’s headquarters
are now at an old _manoir_ called le Clos-aux-Grives, near Lanvennec in
Finistère. If you journey in person to Lanvennec you should go by the
route which I am writing down. In the end you will be directed to a
little farm called the Ferme des Vieilles, not very far from his
headquarters, and on saying there these words in Bas-Breton all will be
made easy for you.” Standing, he wrote for a moment or two, blessed her,
and remained looking at her, for all his haste, with an expression
Valentine could not decipher—the expression of a man torn by
perplexity. Then he caught her hand, kissed it, and in a very little had
been let out of the door and was hurrying up the steps.
And Mme de Trélan, who had meant to watch him safely past the sentry,
stood oblivious with closed eyes. . . .
CHAPTER XVI
THE QUEEN’S MOVE
Three days later, about sunset, the Duchesse de Trélan, her long dead
predecessor’s rubies heavy, warm, and invisible about her neck, stood in
the great Salle Verte, probably for the last time. Only one more day
remained of her strange tenancy of Mirabel—for Camain had made no
sign—and moreover nothing would have kept her longer now. She was on
fire to get to Finistère . . . if it were possible.
Of the Abbé she had heard nothing—but she could expect to hear nothing,
unless it were news of his arrest. No one had seemed perturbed at the
non-appearance of the gardener; possibly no one knew of it. She could
only hope that he had got the treasure away from Paris, for his coming
had so profoundly affected her that she could not but wish him well.
They would meet again, she supposed, in Brittany, if she ever got
there—for, money apart (and that she had, the reward for Roland) how
was she going to find a means to take her unmolested from Paris into the
furthest fastnesses of the Royalist West?
A mellowed light between afternoon and evening was pouring in, softening
the vista of green marble pillars and the gilt. Would she ever see the
Salle Verte again after to-morrow? Much had happened there. The great
apartment peopled itself for a space with that throng on her wedding
night, one young and splendid figure outshining every other man there;
it held again the later assemblies it had seen, the men of note that the
Duchesse de Trélan had known, the soldiers, the diplomats, the
courtiers, the _grandes dames_ . . . all that scarlet-heeled, powdered,
witty, gallant, vicious world, exquisite, debauched and courteous,
everyone of whom, however reluctant or defiant, had come to the brink of
the red torrent which flowed between that life and this, the torrent in
which most of them had been swept away, with so many of the old
landmarks, good or bad, as well. And for a moment Valentine found
herself wondering what this historic room, still unhurt, unpillaged,
might be destined to witness in the future. No de Trélan, at least,
would ever tread its floor again.
Unless Gaston came back . . . some day. He might—he might! Stranger
things had happened. Only it was certain that he would never come back
under any conditions that involved a pact with the spoilers. No exile,
no hardships, nothing that she could imagine would have changed that
trait in him. . . .
A step, a heavy, hasty step, broke into her reverie—a step that had not
been her way of late. It could only be one person’s. She turned, and saw
M. Georges Camain advancing along the line of pillars towards her,
wearing a face of thunder.
Valentine’s heart sank. She went a few paces to meet him, and he stayed
his advance, and, beckoning to her in a manner quite devoid of his usual
objectionable gallantry, walked back to the great hearth and took up by
his stand by it. Evidently he felt the middle of so vast an apartment no
place for a scene, and that there was going to be a scene was written on
his whole demeanour.
“Well, Madame Vidal?” He threw the words at her like a challenge.
She met his look with composure, and answered, “Yes, Citizen Deputy.”
“Yes, Citizen Deputy,” he mimicked her angrily. “The Citizen Deputy
wants to know what you have done with the gardener who was working here
a few days ago?”
“I have done nothing with him, Citizen. He has not been here for the
last three days.”
“Indeed? And do you know why he left?”
“A messenger came to say that his mother in Paris was dying.”
“_Mother!_” said Camain, exploding. “Mother dying! You have the
impudence . . . Shall I tell you, since you are so persistently
innocent, why he left? His plans in Paris were threatened, and you know
what those plans were, and his work here, too, as well as I—no, by God,
better, since I have not yet had time to investigate his operations at
Mirabel.”
“Plans? Work?” repeated Valentine. “Do you refer to the Italian——”
“Pshaw!” broke in the ex-Jacobin savagely, “don’t trifle with me like
that, woman! I say you know what he came to do, and you helped him to do
it, and to get away with his booty.”
Then he had got away . . . or did Camain only mean from Mirabel?
Valentine made no reply.
“Why don’t you answer me?” barked her late admirer.
“You are so positive, Citizen Deputy, what is the use? It is of little
avail for me to protest—though you must know it quite well—that I had
no hand in the appointment of this gardener who seems to have displeased
you, nor in the carrying out of his ‘work,’ whatever it may have been,
except that I used to give him a cup of coffee with his meal at
mid-day.”
“Yes, just as out of the same pure kindness you opened the door in the
park wall to let one or the other of the rest out or in—just as you
fooled me into saving you from being confronted with the man who broke
into the sallette, your accomplice, whom you invited here, I expect——”
“Never!” interrupted Valentine firmly. “I had nothing to do with his
coming, any more than with that of the gardener.”
Camain would not listen. “Then, like a fool, I gave you thirty days in
which you were assured of my absence—incredible idiot that I was! And
this is the use you have made of them!” His towering rage seemed almost
as much with himself as with her; but his scowl was not pleasant to
sustain.
“Did I appoint the gardener, Citizen?”
“That is not the question. He got his appointment by chicanery, used it
to search Mirabel for hidden treasure in the interests of the Royalists,
and you furthered his researches—you who asked me so guilelessly a
little time ago for what reason that other man could have broken in.”
“I absolutely deny that I furthered his researches in any way,” retorted
Valentine with spirit.
“If you did not actually go and help him dig,” retorted Camain, scowling
worse than ever, “you knew of his purpose, and it was your duty to tell
me.”
“I wonder if it was,” said Valentine reflectively, almost more to
herself than to him.
The irate Georges stared at her a second in amazement. “You are a cool
hand!” he exclaimed. “You wonder if it was . . . when I am paying you to
look after the place”—a flush rose in Valentine’s cheek—“and when now,
in consequence of your silence, if not of your complicity, I am myself
in a most unenviable position!”
“I am sorry to hear that, Monsieur le Député,” said Valentine gravely.
“Deuced good of you! It never occurred to you, I suppose, that I was
responsible to the Government for Mirabel—even when I was taking down
that worthless deposition of yours? Still, you have shown me pretty
clearly once that my concerns are less than nothing to you. But let me
tell you that, if there is an enquiry, someone else—to whom I begin to
think you are under a very heavy debt indeed—will probably come off
badly, and that is Suzon Tessier.”
She turned an alarmed face on him. “Not Suzon! What had she to do with
it?”
“This, that she has had you under her roof for nearly seven years as her
‘aunt,’ and that it was from her house that you were taken off to prison
as a suspected aristocrat. Yes, you see I know that now—not from Suzon,
of course.”
“We are not in the Terror now,” said Valentine uneasily. Could Suzon
really be in danger?
“No, but we may go back to it before long if these crazy young Royalist
reactionaries become more troublesome. There were quantities of _collets
noirs_ in that fracas with the Jacobins of the Société du Manège last
month. _You_ may approve of those antics, but they will lead
to—repression.”
“But what am I to do?” asked Valentine. “I deny complicity with the
persons who came here, but truth or falsehood, as I know, has little to
do with the verdict of a revolutionary jury, and for nothing in the
world would I have Suzon suffer on my account.”
Camain took a turn up and down, his arms folded. “Yes, what can you do?”
he asked sarcastically. “Rather late to think of that now! Well, I think
the best thing you can do, Madame Vidal, is to vanish. If there is an
enquiry, which I shall do my best to prevent for my own sake, Suzon had
better not be able to produce you.”
Valentine’s heart gave a leap. Was it possible that he, of all people,
might be interested in her going to Finistère? A few moments ago her
chances of an interview with the Marquis de Kersaint had seemed very
remote indeed.
“But how can I vanish in a moment?” she asked.
Camain came nearer, and looked down at her with searching, half mocking
eyes. “Have you no friends, no aristocratic kin who would shelter you?
Cannot you go back to that ‘provincial town’ from which you came to be
Suzon’s aunt? Difficult to find again, I fancy! . . . It must be a
complete, a good disappearance—you must not be caught.”
“To fulfil that requirement, Monsieur le Député, there is no place but
the grave. I do not propose to kill myself, nor, I suppose, are you
asking that of me.”
An unwilling smile came over the heavy, angry visage.
“Corbleu, I was right in admiring you! Yes, there is no place but the
grave for that. I am not asking you to journey so far. But you
understand that, if you vanish, you will, in a sense, assume some of the
guilt of these happenings at Mirabel?”
“Yes, I understand. And that is what you want, Citizen, in order to take
it off your shoulders—and Suzon’s?”
“But you can scarcely regard yourself, in that case, as an innocent
scapegoat, can you, Madame Vidal?” he suggested.
She did not answer this, but said, with a beating heart and outward
calm, “There is a place to which I could go—a place far enough away,
where I should not, probably, be found. But how, without a passport or
papers of any kind, am I to get there?”
“Papers!” he said half sneeringly. “Plenty of Royalist agents in Paris
would forge you those.”
“I do not know any Royalist agents in Paris, Citizen.”
“Again so innocent! Do you expect _me_ to provide you with papers?”
“I doubt if you could,” answered Valentine. “I expect nothing—but I do
wish to preserve Suzon from ill.”
“And me?” suggested Camain. “No, I am not much above a bricklayer by
origin—no stewards to the aristocracy in _my_ family! Well, Madame
Vidal, since I am fond of Suzon, and since I was misguided enough to
admire you, and since I am not indifferent to the safety of my own skin,
I can give you a paper . . . at a price. I have here,” he brought out a
pocket-case, “a blank laissez-passer that I once got out of Barras when
he was particularly in need of cash. That would carry you anywhere as
long as the Directory stands, but it cost me a deal of money. The
question is, how much is it worth to you?”
The Duchesse’s hand went involuntarily to the neck of her dress. Was it
for this that the Abbé had left her the necklace?
“I do not mean in money,” said Camain, watching her. “If you really want
this paper—and you ought to want it, for it would be beyond price to a
person in your situation—you will be willing to give me in exchange for
it what I conceive you value most.”
Valentine changed colour a little. “And what is that?” she asked.
“Your secret,” said the Deputy.
She stared at him, bereft of speech.
“By that I mean—your real name,” explained M. Camain. “You cannot
flatter yourself that, by this time, I do not almost know it. Did you
not realise when you refused my suit, when you were for once your real
self, how you betrayed your origin? That scorn——”
“It was not scorn of you, Monsieur Camain,” she broke in quickly. “You
mistook me. I did not resent your offer, but the . . . the grounds on
which you based it. However, it is no good going back to that.”
“No,” said the Deputy, looking at her as she stood there by the blazoned
and defaced hearth, so plainly dressed, yet clothed with the grace and
dignity that never left her. “No, it is no use going back to that. But,
to be frank with you, even after your treatment of me the other day in
the garden, I meant to renew my suit. I told myself that a man,”
involuntarily he drew himself up, “is a man after all, and we are every
one equal in these days. But now, I think you are too clever for the
wife of a bourgeois, and too innately ci-devant after all, in spite of
the life you have lived of late, and your conciergeship and the rest.
There is, as the Scripture says, a great gulf fixed between us. I was
aiming too high, was I not, Madame la . . . what was the title you used
to bear?”
Valentine did not answer, but said very gravely indeed, turning her gaze
full on him. “There is indeed a great gulf fixed, Monsieur le Député,
between such as you are and such as I. It is filled with blood—and
mostly with innocent blood—the blood of my class . . . shed by yours.”
Georges Camain shifted uneasily. “There may have been mistakes,” he
muttered, and Valentine wondered for a second over what private and
accusing memories of his own his mind went glancing as he looked at the
floor. “But come,” he said, recovering himself, “we must keep to
business. I can replace you to-morrow, and you can start to-morrow. You
observe I do not ask your destination. To get there, wherever it be, you
have only to show this paper. It will open any gate to you, for that
dissolute scoundrel’s signature is still all-powerful. You have only to
tell me, Madame Vidal, what you called yourself in the days before you
became Suzon Tessier’s aunt, and it is yours.”
“And,” said Valentine slowly, “if my name should chance not to please
you, you would have me arrested at once, before I had an opportunity of
using your paper.”
“That’s the worst of you ci-devants,” said the Deputy, in something
resembling his former jocular tones. “So suspicious. You won’t trust the
People . . . I do not know what oath I can swear to you. And why should
an oath be needed; it is to my interest and my cousin’s to get you away.
Moreover I am a Theophilanthropist and you, I expect, a Catholic.”
“Then we both believe in a God at least,” said Mme de Trélan. “Swear to
me, Monsieur Camain, by the God we both believe in, that you will make
no use of my name if I tell it to you, that you will betray it to no one
else, that you will give me the paper and not hinder my departure, and I
will tell you my secret.”
Camain raised his hand. “I swear all this, by the God in Whom we both
believe, and by the white head of my old mother down in Angers, who
still prays, I think, to your Catholic Virgin for her son.”
Valentine looked away from him.
“I am the woman who best has a right to be in Mirabel,” she said, with
her eyes on the phoenix over the escutcheon where her own arms of
Fondragon were quartered with all the rest. “This house—this
hearth—knows no name but the name I bear.”
“What the . . . why . . . what in the wide universe do you mean?”
ejaculated Camain, open-mouthed and recoiling.
His protégée turned and faced him. “I mean that I am the Duchesse de
Trélan,” she said simply.
Barras’ signature, turning upon itself in its descent, fluttered from
the Deputy’s paralysed hand to the floor between them.
BOOK III
LE CLOS-AUX-GRIVES
“Why care by what meanders we are here
In the centre of the labyrinth? Men have died
Trying to find this place, which we have found.”
_In a Balcony._
CHAPTER I
THE COURT OF CHARLEMAGNE
Because it was both midday and high summer, the thrushes that gave its
pretty name to the old farmhouse of Le Clos-aux-Grives, near Lanvennec
in Finistère, were not singing; and though the same hour of noon which
silenced them called insistently for some voice from the large iron
cooking-pot that hung over the fire in the living-room, the pot also was
mute. Yet Lucien du Boisfossé, wearing as serious a face as that which
he had bent over the _Æneid_ at Hennebont, was seated on a stool near
it, almost under the deep recessed hearth, and from time to time he
would rise, take off the lid, and peer into its contents.
The youthful cook was not alone in the big, low room—far from it. On
one of the aged black oak settles that ran out at right angles from the
hearth was seated Artamène de la Vergne, leaning forward with his elbows
on his knees and a riding-switch between his hands. He was regarding his
friend’s occupation with much the same amused criticism which he had
bestowed on Roland’s bedmaking in M. Charlot’s attic four months ago.
And at least a dozen other gentlemen, some quite young, some in the
thirties or forties, were also in the room, talking and laughing. For
though the three treasure-seekers who had formed part of the smaller
gathering at Hennebont were still missing, their places, as far as
numbers went, were amply filled.
The projects which had been discussed with Georges Cadoudal on that
occasion were in a fair way of realisation to-day. Finistère _was_ in
process of organisation—at the cost of weeks of unremitting toil and
danger, in which M. de Kersaint had personally traversed all the wildest
districts of the department. As far as the promise of men went, the
harvest was good, but, as usual, the pinch came over arming them—and
Mirabel had not yet yielded up its treasure. The chief source of
encouragement, however, lay in the aspect of the political situation:
the effect produced by the numerous Austrian and Russian victories of
the spring and summer—not yet indeed come to an end, for it was the eve
of Novi; the weariness of the country, still groaning under a detested
but tottering government; the hopes based on the important Royalist
movement centred in Bordeaux, which embraced Toulouse and Languedoc, and
not a little, too, on the revulsion caused by the cruel operation of the
Law of Hostages of July 12, which actually forced recruits into the
Chouan camp.
Of the other Royalist leaders many were still in England. And the
Marquis de Kersaint was not advertising himself; with the means at his
disposal—for in no one place could he hope to get together a really
formidable force—his aim, when the time came, was to surprise rather
than to defy. Weeks, however, would probably elapse before concerted
action was taken, and meanwhile he had still to find most of the arms
and ammunition required. And, though he had his staff round him here,
his men, his _gars_, were, with certain exceptions, going about their
usual avocations, cultivating their farms or preparing for harvest.
Only, one day, when the whisper went round, the hoe and sickle would lie
idle in the fields, and he who had been a small farmer would turn up in
the likeness of a brigand at the rallying-place—Galoppe-la-Frime or
Frappe d’Abord the Chouan.
In one thing alone was M. de Kersaint singular, in that he already had a
regular headquarters and was able to occupy it unmolested. Even Cadoudal
and his subordinates in the Morbihan judged it prudent to leave theirs
by night, and sleep dispersed in the forest. That M. de Kersaint and his
officers could remain with impunity at the Clos-aux-Grives, that
despatches found their way there and that it was the discreet centre of
a continual going and coming of emissaries, as the work of organisation
advanced towards completion, was owing to the fact that it stood in
furthest Finistère, the most remote and untouched part of the
intractable West. It was too difficult for the Blues, as they were
termed, to get at it.
And so, in this large farm-house, once a _manoir_, all but the superior
officers of M. de Kersaint’s staff were awaiting their noontide meal
this August day. The old greenish glass in the tiny panes admitted a
tempered light, but the room was large enough to have windows on both
sides, and it was a pleasant apartment. At night it was used as a
dormitory by the younger officers, who slept on pallets on the floor,
for which reason, and also because it was mainly ‘les jeunes’ who
inhabited it at any time, M. du Ménars, acting second-in-command till
the Comte de Brencourt’s return, had christened it ‘the
nursery’—earning thereby small gratitude from Lucien and Artamène and
their peers. On the long table, dark with the polish of ages, were set
platters, horn spoons and forks, bowls of the cheerful Quimper ware, and
jugs of cider, but the meal, whatever its nature, seemed to be dependent
on the boiling of Lucien’s pot, to which process, indeed, other eyes
than Artamène’s were directed.
M. de la Vergne himself was moved at last to expostulate, though as a
matter of fact he had only come into the ‘nursery’ five minutes before.
Stretching out an arm, he tapped the pot with his switch, and said
gently, “What is in this receptacle, my good Lucien? Stones?”
“I am sure I don’t know,” replied M. du Boisfossé in a rather
exasperated voice. “They brought it in here from the kitchen, and said
it would finish cooking nicely, if I would just see that the fire was
kept up. And I’ve put sticks and sticks on the wretched thing——”
“And blacked your face into the bargain,” finished his friend brutally.
“I expect it is the mortal part of that superannuated cow I have seen
about. . . . Never mind, time conquers all things, even cows. Put on yet
more sticks, and while the old lady simmers I will tell you a piece of
news. M. le Marquis is going to recall—you can guess whom!”
“Not our long-lost Roland?” exclaimed Lucien, starting up.
Artamène nodded. “If you agitate yourself, mon ami, you will knock your
head against the hearth next. Yes, it appears that the convalescent
adventurer has written him so penitent and piteous a letter from
Kerlidec that our leader’s heart is softened, and he is writing to tell
Roland that he may rejoin us. You have heard, of course, gentlemen,” he
went on, addressing a little group of newly-joined young officers who
had strolled over to the hearth, “how our paladin was unhorsed at
Roncesvalles—that is to say, winged by the guard of the enchanted
castle of Mirabel. But he did not fall into the hands of the Saracens,
like M. de Brencourt, his successor, for the princess who inhabits the
same, in other words, the concierge, taking pity on him, nursed and
smuggled him out of Mirabel again to his relatives in Paris. Thence,
when he was sufficiently recovered, the poor Roland returned home to, I
am afraid, a very irate grandparent.—Keep the dowager going, Lucien!”
“And now you say that Charlemagne has relented, and is going to summon
him here?” said Lucien, taking up his friend’s metaphor. “What a mercy!”
“I suppose M. le Marquis has been anxious about M. de Céligny?”
suggested one of the newcomers.
“Yes, very anxious—and more than anxious, exceedingly angry,” replied
M. du Boisfossé. “Isn’t that so, Artamène.”
“Parbleu!” remarked M. de la Vergne, making a face.
“Do you mean angry with you, Chevalier?” pursued the enquirer. “Why?”
“Because I had a hand in M. de Céligny’s enterprise,” explained
Artamène, sighing gently. “I would fain have shared it altogether, but I
was winged myself then. We planned it together in our retirement last
spring—if what we had to leave so largely to chance can be said to have
had a plan. And then, when Roland had set out, his grandfather wrote to
the Marquis to know what had become of him, and M. le Marquis sent to
me, and out it all came . . . at least, most of it. I said that Roland
had gone to visit his cousins in Paris, which was true, but not, I must
confess, the whole truth. If I may venture a counsel, gentlemen, to such
of you as are newcomers, always tell the whole truth when you are
dealing with M. le Marquis.”
“And when did _you_ tell the whole truth, then, La Vergne?”
“When I came here,” replied Artamène. He beat a little tattoo on one
boot with his riding-switch, and added in a feeling voice, but with a
laugh in the corner of his eye, “—a memorable day.”
“_Dies nefas_,” commented Lucien.
“And M. de Kersaint was displeased with you?”
“_Displeased!_” exclaimed the culprit. “Had I possessed the gift of
metamorphosis the shape of a mouse, a spider—of a gnat, even—had
speedily been mine.”
A laugh went round his audience.
“But,” objected someone, “I do not see in your case, Chevalier, the
reason for this excessive wrath at which you hint.”
“Well, for one thing,” returned Artamène pensively, “M. le Marquis had
definitely forbidden either of us to go to Mirabel, whereas I . . . and
my family . . . had certainly encouraged Roland’s expedition. Then the
Marquis seemed to consider also that I had deceived him about Roland by
merely telling him of his visit to those confounded cousins (which of
course I did solely to shield Roland). In fact he characterised my
conduct by a very unpleasant term which I am not going to repeat.
(However, we have since made it up, Charlemagne and I.) And thirdly, to
such of us as have seen them together, it is undeniable that between M.
le Marquis and the Vicomte de Céligny there subsists——”
“Chut!” said the prudent Lucien, holding up a finger.
“Mais, au nom de Dieu, pourquoi _chut_?” demanded Artamène in a voice of
injured innocence. “I was merely going to say that there subsisted
between them a special affection, of which I, for one, am not in the
least jealous. What is the harm in that remark?”
Nobody present either condemned or absolved him, but one or two who in
the spring had seen the couple together turned away to hide a smile.
“I still cannot quite understand,” remarked Lucien judicially, “how this
good fairy of a concierge came to be inhabiting Mirabel. I thought that
the place was in the hands of the Directory, and surely their
nominee——”
“We shall have to wait until the Abbé or M. de Brencourt returns to
discover that,” said Artamène. “I gathered that M. le Marquis expects
the latter any day now; it seems, from what the Abbé wrote, a foregone
conclusion that he would succeed in escaping from the Temple.”
“How?” asked Lucien, his head almost in the procrastinating pot.
“Mainly by the use of the root of all evil, mon cher—in plainer
language, by bribery. I thought you knew that.”
“And M. le Comte did not get the treasure from Mirabel?” asked a
newcomer.
“No, the booty is left to the Church to secure. And, do you know, I
shall stake my money on the Church’s success.”
“I wish Roland could have got it,” murmured Lucien.
“So do I,” said Artamène. “So does . . . my family.” He got up and
stretched himself. “But, dear me, we were very young last spring! I am
older now, and wiser—much wiser. And as for poor Roland, he must have
attained to such a pitch of sagacity that——” He suddenly stopped and
remained fixed, his arms extended, and, staring at an open casement
said, “Morbleu, talk of the devil!”
“What is it?” exclaimed several voices, their owners following his gaze,
while Lucien sprang up and had exactly that encounter with the
overhanging hearth which his friend had predicted.
“May I be shot if that is not the Comte de Brencourt in person, just
ridden into the courtyard!” And Artamène dashed to the window, followed
by almost everybody else.
But in a moment he had turned away again, shaking his head. “Too late!”
he said disappointedly. “He will go straight to M. le Marquis now.
Besides, he did not look as if he would be communicative; he had his
mouth shut like a strongbox.” And he regretfully strolled back to the
fire, which the sedulous Lucien had not deserted. “Good Heavens,
philosopher, isn’t that soufflé of yours cooked yet?”
“I think,” said M. du Boisfossé, prodding about with a fork, one hand
pressed to his head, “that I shall assume the process.”
CHAPTER II
M. DE KERSAINT ANSWERS FOR A KINSMAN
(1)
About the time that the contents of Lucien’s pot were becoming only a
tough memory, the Marquis de Kersaint was standing, with his hands
behind his back, looking out through the casement of the small room on
the upper floor of the Clos-aux-Grives which was set apart for his sole
use, and out of which led a still smaller bedroom. Under his gaze was
the farmyard, still stocked with chickens and pigs, and then, almost at
once, came the outposts of the great forest which stretched for many
miles to the south-west, and whose friendly presence had been one of his
reasons for his choice of headquarters. From the window of the inner
room could be seen also the low bare contours of the lande, studded with
menhirs.
M. de Kersaint, however, was not occupied with the view. He was thinking
about the singularly unsatisfactory interview which he had just had with
his returned chief of staff. For M. de Brencourt would hardly answer any
questions about his doings, seemed to know almost nothing of the unusual
concierge at Mirabel (of whom, and of whose services to Roland M. de
Kersaint had heard from the Abbé) and, when taxed with having written
from the Temple, as he had, a letter dissuading his leader from sending
another emissary after the treasure, could only reply that he supposed,
at his age, captivity was extinguishing to the sense of adventure. And,
when closer pressed as to why he had stated in so many words that the
gold was impossible to get at and the place closely guarded, whereas the
Abbé had just written exactly the opposite, he had made no answer at
all. Decidedly, in view of the effect which Mirabel had had on him, it
would have been better not to have sent him at all.
The Marquis turned at last from the window. He had discarded the
peasant’s dress now-a-days, and wore a dark-green uniform with black
facings, with the little red and white ribbon of the Order of Maria
Theresa on the breast, and a white scarf round the waist. Out of a small
travelling safe near the window he took some letters, and re-read Roland
de Céligny’s ashamed appeal with something between a smile and a frown.
After that, obeying the instinct which so often pushes a man to do what
hurts him, he re-read also the three biting epistles from M. de Carné
which Roland’s action had brought upon him. The first was thus
conceived:
“_Monsieur le ‘Marquis,’_
_I am most reluctant to enter into a correspondence with you,
but as I am confined to my bed with an attack of gout, I cannot
carry out my first intention of coming in person to see you. Six
days have now passed since you disbanded your cohort of young
men, yet Roland has not been sent back to me according to the
promise on which I was weak enough to rely. Where is the boy?_”
This was the first intimation which the Marquis had received that Roland
was missing. Alarmed and angry, he wrote to the old man in that sense,
but his disclaimer did not prevent his meanwhile receiving a second
missive, now in his hand. “_I find by a letter which has just reached me
from my grandson, that instead of sending him back to me, you have
despatched him on a secret and doubtless dangerous mission to Paris, for
that he can really have gone of his own initiative, as he says, I refuse
to believe. I regret that my present infirmity, by making it impossible
for me to offer you satisfaction, renders it impossible also for me to
tell you what I think of your conduct—though, to be frank, that conduct
does not surprise me._”
M. de Kersaint, greatly roused, had answered that for his part he
regretted his respect for the Baron’s grey hairs should prevent his
replying in the strain to which he was tempted, stating, however, that
he did not send Roland to Paris, that on the contrary he had forbidden
him to go, that he had only that day heard of his disobedience, and that
he was at once instituting enquiries after him in the capital. His
anxiety and his displeasure, he added, were not less than M. de Carné’s
own.
To which the old man had replied with brevity and effect:
“_I have only to say that, to my bitter grief, I see at last in Roland
the dawn of those qualities whose appearance I have always so much
dreaded. He is indeed his father’s son._”
Even now the reader flushed as his eyes met this thrust, and he had been
far angrier when he first received it—angry with himself too for having
protected his own honour by revealing the boy’s disobedience. He might
as well have taken the blame on his own shoulders, since the old man had
contrived after all to put the responsibility there—on the score of
that paternity which, during that visit to Kerlidec last February, M. de
Carné had at length been obliged to acknowledge. . . .
Had it not been for the existence of Roland himself that brief amour
with Laure de Céligny, more than twenty years ago, would have seemed now
as unreal as a dream. It had come to pass so suddenly, been over so
soon. Down there at Saint-Chamans, in the south of olives and
nightingales and orange blossom (the south to which, for some reason,
his wife so unwillingly and so seldom accompanied him) passion flared up
quickly. Yet of the Vicomtesse Laure alone, among the many women who had
loved him and the few he had loved, Gaston de Trélan had a particularly
gentle memory. She had seemed to him like a dove in a cypress-tree.
The episode ended. That it had ever been was not discovered till Laure’s
sudden death, coming to light then only through the single letter her
lover had written her, which (of course) she had kept. M. de Céligny
wrote to him. The Duc de Trélan posted down from Paris to the olives and
the nightingales and offered him satisfaction. Very greatly to his
surprise it was refused. The Vicomte de Céligny—the
cypress-tree—intimated that, though he had proof enough that M. de
Trélan had been his wife’s lover, he had none that Roland (now two years
old) was not his own son. He should consider him his own, and a duel,
whatever its result, could only bring disrepute on the name of his dead
wife. Roland should succeed to his estates, and the Duc had no claim on
him whatever. A strange interview.
So it was, and for three years the Duc heard nothing more, and never
visited his possessions in the south. Then he learnt, incidentally, that
the child had been sent to his grandfather in Brittany to be brought up.
The move, after de Céligny’s declaration, puzzled him extremely, and in
the end he went to Kerlidec to investigate the matter. The fiery temper
of the Baron de Carné, who had worshipped his dead daughter, led to the
meeting which his son-in-law had declined, and the fact that Gaston de
Trélan, a singularly fine swordsman, and a much younger man than himself
(being then about six-and-thirty) disarmed him with ease, only increased
M. de Carné’s bitter resentment against him as the seducer—so he termed
him—of his Laure. No more than his son-in-law would he acknowledge the
Duc’s claim on the child, and forbade him, if he had any regard for
Laure’s memory, to see the boy again.
But M. de Trélan had seen the five-year-old Roland at that very visit,
and the sight was enough to explain why M. de Céligny had sent him away.
At that age more than later, his resemblance to his real father was
unmistakable; apparently M. de Céligny had not been able to bear this
speaking witness to his wife’s frailty, though it seemed that he had not
moved from his intention of acknowledging him as his heir. To M. de
Carné the beautiful boy was merely the child of his beloved Laure. . . .
The Duc said that he would undertake not to see him again during his
supposed father’s lifetime; further than that he would not go. He had
kept his word.
But now he could claim, had claimed, if not the full rights of a
father—for he had promised not to reveal his relationship till Roland
was of age—at least some control over his movements. It was doubly
unfortunate then, that Roland had acted as he had about Mirabel. Was it
true that he had handed down to the boy his own bad qualities—left
conveniently unnamed in that stinging remark of M. de Carné’s? At any
rate, he thought now with a bitter smile, “I have not yet seen traces in
the sweet-tempered Roland of being his grandfather’s grandson.” And,
lighting a candle, he burnt the Baron’s three letters to ashes.
But there was a fourth—that which had come with Roland’s—and it was
couched in a milder vein. Roland had evidently succeeded in convincing
his grandfather that the Marquis de Kersaint was far indeed from having
had a hand in his escapade, and the Baron had consequently penned a
rather stiff apology for his former insinuations, and, in addition, an
obviously reluctant request for Roland’s recall to the Royalist colours,
since he was, he confessed, eating his heart out at Kerlidec. M. de
Kersaint had thereupon recalled the culprit.
So, in a week now, he might expect Roland in person. He must do his best
to show him just the amount of severity that he would have done to
Lucien or Artamène, no less and no more. It would not be easy. The boy’s
misdemeanour sprang after all from no worse fault than want of thought,
and its very foolhardiness went far to redeem it. Suppose he had paid
for it with his life!
And as he locked the safe, the Marquis said to himself, “How am I ever
going to repay that woman for saving the child?”
(2)
M. le Général Marquis de Kersaint and M. le Comte de Brencourt supped
together that evening. The latter was no longer a treasure-hunter; he
was M. de Kersaint’s second-in-command, and he had been out of touch
with his leader and the organisation of Finistère for some weeks. He had
to be initiated into the present state of Royalist affairs in the
department, and there were also a quantity of other matters to discuss:
the proposed Anglo-Russian landing at the Texel, and how it would affect
the West, how much weight Pichegru’s name would carry when he appeared
as a Royalist, and as ever, the difficulties created by the vacillating
conduct of the Comte d’Artois’ advisers.
And over their meal they did discuss these, but, as they were neither of
them men to waste words on a situation, they got through pretty quickly,
and towards the end of the repast the Comte was able to gratify the
curious desire he now seemed to have to talk about Mirabel.
“A monstrous fine place, you know, Marquis,” he observed for the second
time, refilling his glass.
“Is it?” said M. de Kersaint with indifference.
“Well, you must realise that it is!” retorted the Comte. “You speak as
if you had never seen it.”
“I have seen it very seldom.”
“If that is so, then, parbleu, you have an astounding memory for
topographical details! The accuracy of the plan of the interior you made
for me was astounding, considering that you had only been there once.”
“I never said, surely, that I had only been there once.”
“Your pardon, then. You gave me to understand as much, I thought, when
you drew me the plan.”
“Did I? I have no recollection of having said so, for as a matter of
fact I must have been there quite three times in my life.”
The Comte smiled curiously. “Your plan becomes less miraculous then. But
even so, the owner or someone must have conducted you into every hole
and corner on the ground floor.”
To this deduction M. de Kersaint made no response. The Comte drank off a
glass of wine, and then, just perceptibly taking a breath as one
addressing himself to a plunge, said, “Did you ever see the Duchesse
during any of your—three visits?”
“No,” replied the Marquis, his eyes on the stem of his wineglass. “She
was not there. She was often elsewhere. They had several other
properties.”
“A great pity,” observed M. de Brencourt meaningly, “that she was not
elsewhere in August, ’92. Why in God’s name did she not emigrate?”
“My dear Comte, how can I say?” retorted M. de Kersaint, twisting the
wineglass round and round. (Had he turned paler?)
“I wonder,” said his companion reflectively, “if her husband ever gave
her the chance of going with him?”
How can a man in mental agony, however proud and determined, suppress
every sign of what he is suffering? Yet only a very close observer could
have seen the throbbing of the vein at the Marquis de Kersaint’s temple.
And this observer, though watching as the proverbial cat the mouse,
missed it.
“You seem to forget,” returned M. de Kersaint rather haughtily, “that my
kinsman is a gentleman. And, for the matter of that, the Duchesse could
have gone at any time between ’90 and ’92.”
“Quite true. And might be alive now had she done so.”
“So might many other people, if it comes to that.”
“It was a wise precaution, certainly, leaving France. I suppose one may
say you owe _your_ life to it, de Kersaint?”
“Possibly,” said his leader shortly. “More probably I owe it to Josef
Schnitterl. Pass me the wine if you have done with it, please.”
The Comte’s glance lit for an instant on the scrap of ribbon on the
speaker’s breast. It was Schnitterl, the Marquis’s Austrian
body-servant—not long ago serving their meal—who, as he was never
tired of relating, had found his master half-dead on the battlefield of
Rivoli.
“If Mme de Trélan had emigrated,” the tormentor pursued, “the Duc would
be spared the burden of remorse which he carries—or does not carry, as
the case may be.” With that he pushed the bottle of wine towards his
companion and looked him full in the face.
But M. de Kersaint, though rather white about the mouth, met the look
quite steadily. “Thank you,” he said, taking the bottle. But he offered
no remark on the subject of the Duc de Trélan’s problematical burden.
“Do you know, de Kersaint,” shot out the Comte suddenly, watching him as
he filled his glass, “that there is a portrait at Mirabel which reminded
me very strongly of you—of what you must have been when you were
younger.”
“Well, you know I am kin to the family.” He had not spilled a drop of
wine.
“But by marriage only!” riposted the Comte like lightning. “You laid
some stress on that once.”
The Marquis shrugged his shoulders. “You forgot that, I expect, when you
thought you saw a likeness. Some people,” he pursued with commendable
sangfroid, “are always seeing resemblances of that sort in relations by
marriage.”
“Indeed! Well, you might have sat for this picture! I saw it when I was
arrested, for I was taken up into the room where all your—I mean your
kinsman’s—family portraits now hang. Camain, the Deputy of whom I have
told you, happened to be there with a party of friends, including his
bonne amie, Mlle Dufour—the actress, Rose Dufour.”
“Yes?”
“It was piquant to see her there, with her great bourgeois admirer,
going round the Duc’s china under the eyes of all his ancestors—_and
under someone else’s, too_,” he added mentally, “and must have been even
more piquant for her—the Duc’s former mistress.”
“His mistress!” exclaimed M. de Kersaint sharply. “That she never was!”
The Comte looked a rather mocking surprise. He had not expected to draw
de Kersaint thus, for he believed what he said. “What, you can answer
for your kinsman’s private life to that extent, Marquis! You must have
known him pretty well, then, after all!”
“I knew him well enough to be sure that that story has no foundation,”
retorted his companion with a frown.
“Ah! Was he then such a puritan, the Duc de Trélan?”
“Certainly not. But every man draws the line somewhere.”
“I see,” observed M. de Brencourt, looking down with a smile at the
tablecloth. “Your noble relative thought too highly of himself to lay
his purse at the feet of an opera singer, yet he did not scruple to
leave his wife to years of penury. The world, as you must recognise,
would have thought nothing of the first—a mere peccadillo—the
second——” He shrugged his shoulders.
Obsessed with the ineffaceable picture of the Duchesse in her shabby
dress, he looked up to see how it was faring with his victim after this
venomous thrust. The latter was gazing at him, sufficiently ghastly
indeed, but with so much astonishment that the Comte realised his slip.
“Years of penury!” said the Marquis harshly. “What are you talking of,
de Brencourt? Mme de Trélan was amply provided for during the two years
of the Duc’s emigration, and at her . . . death” (it was evident that he
could scarcely bring out the word) “she certainly was not poor!”
And at that M. de Brencourt himself went white. Good Heavens, supposing
that in the delight of torturing him he let out something vital, as he
had almost done now. He must curb his tongue. “No, no, that is true, I
suppose,” he stammered. “I ought to beg M. de Trélan’s pardon for saying
that. . . .”
“I think you ought to beg his pardon for a good deal else that you have
said about him,” remarked M. de Trélan’s kinsman stiffly.
“Why, so I would, perhaps,—if he were here,” replied M. de Brencourt,
shutting his eyes.
His leader looked at him contemptuously for a moment, then he said, “It
is perhaps fortunate that he is not.—Well, did you collect any more
_chroniques scandaleuses_ at Mirabel?”
The colour returned to the Comte’s face under the tone.
“No. One item, however, may interest you—as a kinsman by marriage. Her
portrait is no longer at Mirabel.”
“Whose portrait?”
“The late Duchesse’s.” His secret felt safer now behind that adjective.
A moment’s pause. “What had happened to it then?”
“When the mob broke in that day, the mob which she had to face
alone—picture it, de Kersaint!—some ruffian with a pike dashed his
weapon through it. No doubt he would have liked——”
“Who told you that—about the portrait?” interrupted the Marquis,
setting down his glass. He had not drunk; and this time there was a
stain on the cloth.
“Who told me?—The concierge,” replied M. de Brencourt after a second’s
hesitation.
“Ah, this concierge about whom you are so unwilling to tell me anything,
although the Abbé’s success or failure may possibly depend upon her.”
“Unwilling—I!” exclaimed the Comte harshly. “There is nothing to tell.
She did not save me, like Roland.” A sneer crept into his voice. “And
probably in Roland’s case it was merely that he is a taking youth, and
she felt compassion for him, or——” An idea seemed suddenly to come
into his mind that struck him silent for a moment; then with half a
laugh he muttered, “No, morbleu, it could hardly have been that! On the
contrary!”
“You are mysterious,” observed his leader coldly. “And I repeat that,
since you knew this friendly woman to be in charge at Mirabel, I cannot
understand your trying to dissuade me from a further attempt on the
treasure.”
M. de Brencourt looked at the ceiling. “Possibly you cannot,” he
returned very slowly. “But I remembered that one woman had already gone
to prison—and worse—from Mirabel, and I did not——”
The Marquis leant forward. “Do you mean to insinuate,” he said hotly,
“that I wish to make use of a woman and leave her to pay? Because if so,
Monsieur de Brencourt——”
He checked himself abruptly. “Come in!”
The knock at the door had heralded Lucien du Boisfossé, who stood there
saluting and signifying that the _chef de canton_ called ‘Sincèree’ had
sent a messenger who would like to speak to the General at once.
“Show him up,” said M. de Kersaint. “No—wait! I’ll see him downstairs.
Excuse me, Comte.” And he was gone.
M. de Brencourt looked after him with an unpleasant smile; then he
poured himself out another glass of wine and drank it down.
* * * * *
Next evening M. du Ménars and another officer were also at supper.
CHAPTER III
M. DE KERSAINT ANSWERS FOR HIMSELF
(1)
Lucien du Boisfossé and Artamène de la Vergne would not have been
themselves—particularly Artamène—if they had not remarked, during the
next few days, that a state of curious restraint had come into existence
between their leader and his chief of staff, the Comte de Brencourt.
Indeed, apart from any intercourse that he held with M. de Kersaint, no
one could fail to see that the Comte had returned from his mission
another and a much less agreeable person. As Artamène remarked, he had
never been genial in his manners, but at least he had some manners; now
he seemed to have left them with the abandoned treasure at Mirabel. His
moodiness and irritability vented themselves on all his subordinates,
and he would harry gentleman and peasant alike for not saluting with
sufficient precision, or not mounting guard properly. Indeed, the
Chevalier de la Vergne opined that there might be a mutiny among the
Chouans, caused for no other reason than that M. de Brencourt had
something on his mind—was _rongé_ with something or other, as he put
it.
To what it could be that was thus gnawing at him the two young men then
applied their wits, and, suddenly remembering that night at Hennebont,
arrived without much trouble at a theory not very far removed from the
truth. With the facile, half-contemptuous pity of youth, they threw a
hasty crumb of sympathy to the elder man, obliged to return to the house
where had lived the murdered lady for whom he had then confessed his
admiration. Still, they wished it had not made him so unpleasant.
* * * * *
But Artus de Brencourt was to be pitied—and condemned—for reasons more
acute than ‘les jeunes’ had divined.
He had come back to the Clos-aux-Grives after his escape from prison not
only because, in the position he held, it was his plain duty to do so,
but also because even a momentary return to Mirabel, where all his
desire was set, would most certainly have involved Mme de Trélan in
suspicion, or so he considered. Madly as he craved to see her again, his
love was sufficiently unselfish to shrink from that. But he had by no
means abandoned his intention of breaking down her opposition to his
suit. When he got back to Finistère, and found that the Abbé had been
despatched to Mirabel in spite of his letter of dissuasion (which had
been prompted in reality less by fear for her safety than by anxiety
about the preservation of her incognito) he decided that he must wait at
the Clos-aux-Grives till the latter’s return, for, successful or
unsuccessful, the priest would certainly bring some information about
the concierge and the state of affairs at the château. Then he could
make up his mind to his next move.
But there were tormenting elements in this course. If the Abbé proved
unsuccessful in his quest, it was quite likely—having regard to the
issues for Finistère hanging on the securing of the gold—that the
Marquis himself would resolve to go after it, and then. . . . Or again,
suppose that M. Chassin were successful, and that his very success
brought “Mme Vidal” into suspicion? Prison at least would face her
again—possibly deportation. Or, almost worst of all, suppose the
self-contained little priest, anything but a fool, and deep, as he
always suspected, in de Kersaint’s confidence, should discover who she
was. What was there, indeed, to prevent her telling him? It was hardly
surprising that during these days of suspense M. de Brencourt developed
into a martinet.
For he had besides to endure the close daily companionship of the man he
hated, envied, pretended to despise, admired, the man who—so he chose
to put it—had deserted Valentine, the man who nevertheless had had for
nineteen years the rights of a husband and to whom perhaps she was, in
spite of everything, not indifferent. Had she not all but swooned at the
news of his death, though he had so completely cast her off? That she
might conceivably care for Gaston de Trélan still, that was the horrible
doubt which gnawed at the Comte’s heart—almost more than a doubt in the
hours when he allowed himself to realise how little foundation he had
for the charges which he had made against the Duc. But he fed himself on
those accusations till he had come almost to believe in their truth.
They _must_ be true—else why had he found Mme de Trélan under a false
name, in an inconceivable situation, and ignorant whether her husband
were alive or dead? He must have treated her abominably, or she would
long ago have taken steps to join him! And now that, since his visit to
Mirabel, suspicion as to de Kersaint’s identity existed no longer, for
he _knew_, the perpetual craving to wound, to avenge himself—and
her—together with the intoxicating consciousness of the secret which he
held, and which he meant to keep for ever from the one man on earth who
had a right to know it, and to whom it would mean, as he guessed, at the
lowest estimation release from hell, and perhaps much more—all these
were driving him insensibly to a precipice which now he could see gaping
in front of him and that other man almost with joy, for even if both of
them fell over it he cared little, provided they fell together.
The last day or two had lent a more sinister purpose to his gibes. It
began to be clear to him that he could not even wait for the Abbé’s
return, which might take place any day now. For what if he brought the
news of the presence at Mirabel of something far more wonderful and
precious than what he had gone to search for? All would be over then;
_he_ would certainly go to her. . . . The prospect was intolerable; the
only way to render it impossible of realisation was to provoke de
Kersaint—if he could—before the priest’s return. And despite the
astonishing armour of self-control which the Marquis had succeeded in
buckling on, the latter was beginning to lose patience at last.
The Comte saw it, and hugged the knowledge. Everything that he could
say, short of direct personal insult, he had said to him whenever he had
the chance, during the last four days. And he knew that his victim,
unless he revealed his identity, was helpless to do more than resent his
insinuations, since they were all directed against that presumably
absent person, the Duc de Trélan. But the veil was wearing very thin
now. The hour would soon come when the man who had woven it would be
forced to tear it asunder with his own hands.
(2)
It had been a trying day, sultry, and overshadowed by the threat of
thunder without its relief. A despatch had come too from a subordinate
to say that the zeal of the recruits in his region was sensibly
diminishing because only one in four could be armed. As usual for the
last three nights, there had been one or two other officers to supper.
M. de Brencourt could smile, now, at that effort at self-protection on
the Marquis’s part. Hatred, like love, will find out the way. Yet he had
not hoped that he could bring about the explosion that very evening.
After the other officers had withdrawn and the supper dishes were
removed, M. de Kersaint was obliged to consult his chief of staff about
the news which had just arrived. Nor, to do him justice, did the Comte
de Brencourt give to the matter in hand much less attention than he
would have done had their relations been perfectly normal.
At the end M. de Kersaint remarked that unless the gold from Mirabel was
in their hands soon it would come too late to be of use.
“You have not heard further from the Abbé then?” asked his
second-in-command, though he was aware that he had not.
“Not a word.”
“He may be arrested—the whole attempt a failure then, for all we know?”
“Yes,” said de Kersaint with a little sigh. “And with it the best of our
hopes for Finistère.”
De Brencourt shook his head in an affectation of sympathy.
“I wonder you can sleep at night, Marquis, with so much on your mind!”
The proud grey eyes met his. “I do not find it difficult, thanks,”
returned his leader drily, and he got up and went to the window, where
he pulled aside the rough curtain and looked out. Moonlight came in when
he did so.
The Comte made a movement as though to go, but he still lingered, his
eyes fixed on the back turned to him.
“It begins to look as if Mirabel had proved as fatal to the Abbé as to
Roland and myself and . . . its late mistress,” he observed.
“We must hope not,” replied the Marquis after a moment, drumming lightly
on the window pane.
“I feel sure,” went on the Comte, “that, from what I have heard of him,
de Trélan’s remorse over that business—assuming that he felt any—would
be due rather to the damage suffered by his own reputation than to any
affection for his wife. Don’t you think that is probable, de Kersaint?”
The man at the window suddenly flung open the casement as though he
needed air. And indeed there was sweat on his forehead.
“By the way,” pursued his tormentor, as though struck by a sudden idea,
“I don’t believe I ever asked you, Marquis, who was de Trélan’s heir? He
had no _legitimate_ children, I fancy?”
There was a momentary pause.
“No,” said M. de Kersaint, without moving. “The Duc de Savary-Lancosme,
his cousin-german, would have come into most of his property.” And he
shut the window again.
“Is Savary-Lancosme alive?”
“He was guillotined in ’94.”
“Humph. He must sleep more soundly, then, than his cousin.”
The Marquis de Kersaint dropped the curtain over the moonlit casement
and half turned round. “I really do not know why he should,” he said
shortly, yet speaking, as was evident, with the most careful
self-restraint. “Shall we say good-night now, Comte?”
A very little more and he might do it, if he could only hit on the right
thing. So, instead of taking this broad hint, the Comte de Brencourt sat
down carelessly on the table.
“I wonder,” he observed slowly, and with a sort of casual
reflectiveness, “if _that_ was the reason of de Trélan’s . . .
poltroonery.”
He waited, after that last substantive, either for an explosion, or for
a question as to what he meant. Neither came. But, glancing across the
zone of lamplight to the window, he saw the smitten rigidity of his
victim, and was filled with hope.
“I mean,” he explained, “the fact of the late Duchesse’s childlessness
. . . Poor lady!”
Luck had served him far better than he could ever know. He had stabbed
at the rawest wound of all, the most torturing memory. The Marquis swung
round with clenched hands.
“And who gave you the right to make suppositions about the private
affairs of the Duc and Duchesse de Trélan, Monsieur?” he demanded in a
voice of hardly suppressed fury.
The Comte got off the table and looked at him.
“The same Fates, I imagine,” he answered coolly, “which caused the
Duchesse to stand, in her lifetime, so sadly in need of some champion,
by making her husband what he was—what he is!”
And at that the string snapped entirely. M. de Kersaint strode round the
table. “Mort de ma vie! this is insufferable! Monsieur de Brencourt, I
have borne insolence and innuendo from you long enough! I have been far
too patient——”
“The innuendo, Monsieur,” broke in de Brencourt with a grim exultation,
“the innuendo, since you term it so, shall be dropped. God knows I
desire nothing better! Anything that I have said of the Duc de Trélan I
will repeat to the Duc de Trélan’s face. You cannot retort that that is
an idle boast! Have I not recently seen a certain portrait in primrose
satin at Mirabel?”
The original of that portrait put his hand for a second over his eyes.
But it was only for a second; then he faced his enemy, his head high,
and said, with blazing scorn,
“It is an idle boast, and a cowardly! You have insulted me past
endurance—have gone on doing it—and yet you know I cannot demand
satisfaction. Is that chivalry?”
“Cannot demand satisfaction?” cried the Comte de Brencourt with a sneer.
“And why not, pray? Are you still intent on keeping up the farce of the
Duc de Trélan’s being somewhere far away—somewhere _safe_—somewhere
where you have to write letters to him . . . the farce of his not being
in this very room, standing on the identical spot you are standing on
now?”
“You know I do not mean that!” retorted M. de Kersaint, white with fury.
“I mean that you have gone on in your underhand and venomous
persecution, knowing that, placed in such a position as mine, I could
not call you to account for it. You have done a despicable thing knowing
that you were safe from consequences, but some day—some day, by
God,—you shall give me full reparation for your conduct!”
The Comte, darkly flushed, was gripping the hilt of his sword with his
left hand. “I will give it you to-night—with all my heart!” he said
between his teeth.
“Do not be absurd, Monsieur!” said his leader sharply. “You are beside
yourself to suggest such a thing. How _could_ we go out, you and I, the
general and the second-in-command of the army of Finistère! The whole of
the West would ring with the scandal. We must part, that is plain, but
we cannot fight . . . unfortunately.”
The Comte saw the precipice receding. He gathered himself together for a
final effort.
“Then, Monsieur le Duc de Trélan,” he said, “give me leave to tell you
that, my opinion of your past behaviour being unchanged, I must now add
to it what I think of your present. You have not redeemed yourself by
these last years—by that business of Rivoli and the rest. You are, as
you always were . . . _un lâche_!”
He had reached his goal. That intolerable word, delivered moreover like
the sting of a whip, was too much for the determination of the proud
nature at which it was flung.
“Will you fight me now?” asked de Brencourt, watching him.
“Yes!” said Gaston de Trélan with a gasp, and, as though to seal his
reversed decision and make it impossible to withdraw from it, he struck
the Comte with the back of his hand, but quite lightly, across the
mouth.
“Thank you!” said the latter, apparently accepting the formal blow in
the same spirit. “I thought you would see reason in the end.” He passed
his handkerchief across his lips and became business-like. “We cannot
fight here, that is plain. And we must dispense with seconds.”
“There is a full moon,” said the Duc de Trélan curtly. “We must go to
the forest. By that dolmen they call the Moulin-aux-Fées would serve.
There is a level clearing there.”
“Yes, that would serve admirably. We must provide some excuse—say we
are anxious to make a reconnaissance or something of the kind—since I
suppose it is impossible to get out without being seen. Nobody should
suspect . . . unless one of us does not come back. Then it will be—the
work of some lurking Republican.”
M. de Kersaint nodded. “And the weapons? Swords, I presume.”
“I should prefer swords,” said his adversary. “Unfortunately”—he looked
doubtfully at his right hand—“I am afraid that since the affair of la
Croix-Fendue my wrist is still too stiff for anything so delicate as
sword-play.”
“I had forgotten that. It must be pistols then. We shall have to go
further off, that is all. Who is officer of the guard to-night?”
“Young La Vergne, I am afraid,” said the Comte.
The Marquis consulted his watch. “Shall we say in half an hour, then?”
he suggested. “I have one or two matters that I must set in order, in
case I fall; you doubtless the same. And if I fall, Comte, the command
devolves naturally on you—at least till you hear from Edinburgh.
Possibly you would be confirmed in the command of Finistère.” He spoke
quite dispassionately, as if he were one of the seconds in whose hands,
had not the circumstances been unusual, the conduct of the affair would
have rested, and going to the little travelling safe began to unlock it.
De Brencourt picked up some papers he had brought with him and went to
the door.
“You have only to mark anything you wish ‘Private,’ and I give you my
word it shall be burnt unread,” he observed. “I for my part shall rely
on a similar consideration.” On him, too, rested the same forced
composure.
“You may do so, Monsieur,” said the Marquis, without looking round.
“There will be nothing private here, however, but a couple of letters
that I am going to write now. You will find, on the other hand, a number
of papers that will be essential to you if you have to take over the
command. I will just see that they are in order.—Will you come back for
me in half an hour, then?”
“Yes,” said the Comte, and, something impelling him to salute, perhaps
for the last time, the leader he hoped to kill, he did so and went out.
The moment that the door closed behind his enemy Gaston de Trélan drew a
long, almost a sobbing breath, and bending his head stood gripping the
edge of the safe with both hands. He had had such a hard fight of it
. . . and he was beaten after all. But the consuming rage that shook him
left no room now for consciousness of defeat; and that rage, so
overpowering for a moment or two as to make him feel physically faint,
gave way in its turn to a savage gladness. For duty’s sake, and at
almost unbearable cost to himself, he had tried to avoid this thing—but
now that it had come, and he was going to settle the score, what place
was there for anything but a measureless relief? Good God, because he
commanded Finistère, was he to submit to a series of insults without
parallel?
After a few minutes he loosed his hold of the safe, sat down at the
table, pulled writing-materials towards him, and began to write rapidly.
Thrusting his hand inside his shirt when he had finished, he brought out
and slipped over his head something which hung round his neck on a
ribbon. It was a white, gold-edged cross with a red medallion in the
centre surrounded by a border of white and gold—the cross of the Order
of Maria Theresa, never given save for personal valour in the field.
Around the medallion ran the single word, “_Fortitudini_.” He placed the
decoration in the letter, which he sealed and addressed to “Monsieur le
Vicomte de Céligny,” writing underneath, “Not to be opened except in the
event of my death.” This done, he wrote another which he addressed to
the Abbé Chassin, and took them both to put in the safe. Standing by
that receptacle he then sorted through some papers and locked it up
again. Then he took his pistols from their case, oiled them very
carefully, loaded them, and laid them on the table.
There were still five minutes or so before he went out to use them. He
stood looking down at them a little. Then he went slowly to the
fireplace and laid his head on his folded arms on the mantel. It was
bitter to be driven to this, just when he was on the eve of making his
work in Finistère a success. To-morrow, if he lived, he might hear that
the money from Mirabel was truly his—for the Cause—but to-night he
must expose himself to the chance of being killed by this man who had
been trying for days to provoke him. Well, God knew he had done his
utmost that he should not succeed—but there was a limit to what could
be borne by flesh and blood. Would not even _she_ have said so, for
whose memory’s sake he had tried to do something worthy of a man? . . .
But if he fell, what a way to fall—in a quarrel with his own chief of
staff?
Then it came back upon him like a flood that his enemy had dared to use
her sacred name as a cover for his own unspeakable insolence, and regret
and reluctance were gone as though they had never been. He would kill de
Brencourt for that! He went back to the table and took up his pistols.
It was time indeed, for as he pushed the first into his belt there came
a tap at the door, and the Comte reappeared.
“Are you ready?” he asked in a low voice.
The Marquis, with a face like flint, nodded and took up the second
pistol. But M. de Brencourt closed the door behind him.
“Before we go,” he said, “would it not be as well to settle the distance
and the order of firing? We might do that as conveniently here as in the
forest.”
“Certainly,” agreed his adversary. “The less time we spend there the
better.”
“Ten paces, then?” suggested the other. “Moonlight is not daylight.”
(But, even in the moonlight, it would surely be impossible to miss at
ten paces.)
“Very well,” agreed M. de Kersaint indifferently. “Across a
handkerchief, if you like—only there are no seconds to hold it for us.”
“No, and that is the other point,” said the Comte de Brencourt with some
eagerness. “Since there is no one to count for us, or to make any
signal, we cannot with the best will in the world be sure of firing at
exactly the same moment. I suggest, therefore, that we draw lots to
determine who is to fire first.”
There was a second’s pause. The Marquis had not faced this difficulty.
But of course some such reliance on a hazard was inevitable. “That would
certainly be best,” he replied, looking steadily at its proposer. “There
might, too, in that case, be only one shot to attract attention.”
“Quite so. How shall we settle it then?” asked the Comte, looking round
the room.
“I have it,” said his opponent rather grimly, plunging a hand into a
pocket. “A very simple way, if somewhat childish. You see this coin?”
And he held out on his open palm a florin of the last issue of Louis
XVI. “I will put my hands behind my back, and when I bring them closed
into sight again you shall guess which of them contains the florin. If
you guess rightly the first shot shall be yours—if you guess wrongly,
mine. Are you content? Or would you prefer to hold the coin and I will
guess? But I think the odds are just the same either way.”
“No, I am perfectly content that you should hold it,” replied his foe.
So, standing there in the lamplight, the Marquis de Kersaint, commanding
in chief for the King in Finistère, and in past days, when he bore
another name, a very great gentleman indeed, put his hands behind him in
the way that children have done for centuries, with not the fate of a
game but his own, perhaps, hanging on the choice. In another moment he
brought his closed fists in front of him again and looked at M. de
Brencourt.
“I choose the left hand,” said the Comte.
M. de Kersaint opened his fingers. The silver effigy lay in his palm.
His life was M. de Brencourt’s for the taking.
“Let us go, then,” he said, and turned down the lamp.
CHAPTER IV
A MOONLIGHT WALK IN THE FOREST
(1)
Thousands of years before, the ancient and forgotten race, drowned now
in the mists of time, which had set up in those parts the long ranks of
menhirs on the lande, had raised in the forest, over the remains of some
dead chieftain, a great dolmen of granite. The death-chamber had long
ago been rifled of bones and treasure, but it still stood, no different
from what it had been for the last few hundred years, with ferns growing
out of the cracks, and one of its supports prone, and an aged oak,
immeasurably younger than itself, watching over it. And to this spot the
two men, with passions no less primitive in their hearts, made their
way; for on one side of the Moulin-aux-Fées, as the peasants called it,
there was a little clearing.
It was true that M. de Kersaint had said, when pistols were named, that
they must go further than this. But when they beheld the clearing, so
inviting in the cold light that flooded it from a moon well over the
tree tops, its suitability to the work they had in hand struck both of
them so strongly that they agreed it was not necessary to go on. They
had already put a considerable distance between them and the
Clos-aux-Grives, and the little wind that walked the forest to-night had
its light feet set in the opposite direction. They would risk the sound
of a shot carrying back to the farm.
So, under the impassive gaze of the moon, which alone made their
culpable proceedings possible at this hour, they measured out ten paces,
first one of them, then the other, and set each a bit of dead branch to
mark their respective positions. When this was done to their
satisfaction they found themselves standing at the Comte’s mark
examining their pistols for the last time.
“I shall not cock mine until you have fired, Monsieur,” announced the
Marquis. “If there were to be an accident—such things have
happened—you might think I had broken our compact.”
“I have no fear, Monsieur, of an accident of that kind,” returned de
Brencourt, buttoning his coat up to the throat as he spoke. “However, as
you please—But you are surely going to take off that white scarf of
yours?” And as the Marquis looked down a little doubtfully at the white
scarf of leadership round his waist, his opponent added hotly, “Good
God, man, do you think I am going to stand up and fire at you unless you
do? It would be murder! And your sword—the hilt catches the moonlight.”
His own lay already at his feet.
“Very well,” agreed the Marquis, and began, almost, it seemed
reluctantly, to detach the scarf. Having unwound it he paused with it in
his hand.
“I have a request to make of you, Comte, before I go to my place,” he
said, not altogether in the tone of one making a request. “The
disagreement between us being a purely personal matter, I should be glad
to have your word that you intend to respect my secret, whatever the
result of our encounter?”
De Brencourt looked at him. It was some satisfaction to have him begging
for terms—no, begging was certainly not the word for one who spoke like
that.
“Yes, I promise you that,” he answered. “Whatever the result of our
encounter, I will keep your secret as far as in me lies.”
“Thank you,” returned his adversary. And, throwing the white scarf from
him, he turned and walked to his place.
Artus de Brencourt waited a second or two, his pistol by his side. This
was the moment he had hoped and schemed for, and it was sweet. Yet now
that it had come, it suddenly seemed incredible that they two should be
facing each other like this. A few months ago, who would have predicted
it? . . . No use to think of that now, nor, since he was a gentleman,
with his enemy’s life in his hands, did he desire to keep that enemy in
mortal suspense longer than was needful. Best be as quick about the
business as possible. He was a notoriously good shot. . . .
“Are you ready?” he called out.
And the Marquis de Kersaint, standing like a dark statue in the
moonlight, his face merely a pale blur, his arms folded on his breast,
silently nodded.
The Comte de Brencourt drew a deep breath, raised his pistol, and took a
long and steady aim for the statue’s heart.
Yet when he had got the barrel on the mark his hand began to shake. He
bit his lip. If only de Kersaint had his own weapon cocked, were not
standing there defenceless to be shot at by the man who had insulted
him. It took some courage to do that! And he had called him a
coward. . . . Had it not been an affair of honour it had felt a little
too much like murder for his taste after all. Yet he intended to kill
Valentine’s husband. And the iron sanction of the code which kept the
other there as a mere target for his bullet kept him there too,
determined to complete his work.
. . . But—could he complete it? The Comte had no idea how deceptive
even the most brilliant moonlight can be, for now, at a short ten paces’
distance, he found to his mortification that he could not really
distinguish the outline of de Kersaint’s body, though he could see it as
a mass. That scarf would have been useful, yet it did not occur to him
to regret it. Bending all his will anew to the task he succeeded in
steadying his hand, and his forefinger began to close round the trigger.
In another second or two. . . . Would the Marquis spin round, as a man
sometimes did when shot through the heart, or would he fall forward on
his face? . . . Odd that he should think, at such a moment, of the
execution of Charette three years ago at Nantes, when, as the tale went,
the indomitable spirit that dwelt in the riddled body of the Royalist
chief had held him upright for a moment in death, with six balls in him.
De Kersaint would have but one—sent there by a comrade. He, Artus de
Brencourt, was doing the Directory’s work for them! . . . No, he was
doing Valentine’s! One vision of her as he had seen her in her homely
dress at Mirabel, one fleeting thought of those years of neglect before
the storm, of the life she had led since, and those half regrets were
swept aside like gnats before a gale. The baffling moonlight paralysed
him no longer. He corrected his aim for the second time, set his teeth,
and pressed the trigger.
* * * * *
The shot went echoing with startling effect in the silver silence; it
seemed to reverberate even from the empty dolmen. A scuttling of some
frightened creature took place in the undergrowth, and, as the light
smoke cleared away, rising ghostlike towards the moon, the Comte saw
that M. de Kersaint was staggering a little. He took a step backwards,
threw out his left arm and regained his balance somewhat abruptly, while
the uncocked pistol slid with a rustle and a thud into the bracken at
his feet. Either to recover it, or because he could not help himself, he
sank to one knee and appeared to be groping for it with his left hand;
then, abandoning the attempt, he got rather unsteadily to his feet
again, and stood a moment with his head bent, and his right arm still
across his breast, where he had kept it all the time.
“You are hit, Monsieur? Can you not return my fire?” called out de
Brencourt, still standing ready to receive it.
M. de Kersaint shook his head, then, turning his back on him, walked to
the nearest tree and stood leaning against it, always holding his right
arm to his breast, but now supporting it with the other. A doubtless
annoyed owl sailed out of the branches above him with a hoot.
And, after all, his adversary never even paused to ask himself whether
he were sorry he had not succeeded. . . . In a moment he was at his
side.
“Where are you hit, Monsieur le Marquis?”
“In my right arm,” said his opponent briefly. “You have disabled me. I
cannot return your fire.”
“I am sorry for that,” said the Comte rather stiffly. “Are you sure you
cannot—with your left hand?”
“I am sorry too,” said the Marquis de Kersaint, lifting his head.
“Believe me, I should not have done you the poor compliment of firing in
the air! But it would be a farce—my left hand. I am extremely
right-handed; so of what use to risk the noise of another shot. I fancy
my arm is broken. Let us get back.” He did not seem to know that, even
as he spoke, the blood, very dark in the moonlight, was running through
the fingers of the hand which held his wounded arm pressed up to his
body.
“But first,” interposed the Comte quickly, “we must stop this bleeding,
however roughly. It is not from the artery, I trust?—no, I think not.
Can you take your coat off . . . I’d better slit up the sleeve, in any
case. Sit down on this stone, de Kersaint; that will be easier for both
of us.”
And, supporting him under his left arm, he guided his wounded enemy to
the fallen block of the dolmen.
The Marquis sat down obediently, and lent his head for a moment on his
left hand. It was evident, though not a sound passed his lips, that he
was in a good deal of pain.
“No, don’t do that, Comte!” he said suddenly, as de Brencourt, kneeling
by him in the fern, began to take out a knife. “One doesn’t want to make
more . . . parade . . . about this business than one can avoid. Help me
out of the coat instead.” And he began to unbutton it.
“Much better let me slit the sleeve,” objected de Brencourt with reason.
However, seeing that the Marquis was determined, he unfastened his
swordbelt, and as carefully as he could, stripped off the long uniform
coat.
“I suppose you don’t wish to preserve _this_?” he remarked, and, ripping
up the drenched shirt-sleeve, examined the injury. In the outer side of
the Marquis de Kersaint’s forearm, midway between wrist and elbow, was a
small round aperture, from which the blood was welling in a stream so
steady as to suggest that it would never cease.
“The ball is still there, of course,” observed its sender, absorbed in
his examination. “Otherwise——” He came to an abrupt pause, suddenly
realising by how very little his messenger of death had fallen short of
its goal.
“Otherwise it would be in my heart, you were going to say,” finished the
Marquis with composure.
“Perhaps it was stopped by one of the bones,” muttered de Brencourt,
avoiding his eye. “I expect there is a breakage, as you say. . . .
However, I had best tie it up as quickly as possible. I shall need your
handkerchief as well as mine—perhaps your scarf too. It is bleeding
like a fountain.”
Carefully as a surgeon, and with something of a surgeon’s dispassionate
interest, he staunched and bandaged the injury which he himself had
made—no bad exemplar, at that moment, of what there was gallant and
chivalrous in a practice which had little enough to commend it.
“So there was only one shot after all,” observed M. de Kersaint
presently. “Did you mean to kill me, Comte?”
M. de Brencourt, tightening the last knot, looked at him with an odd
expression. “Yes,” he replied.
“I thought so,” returned the Marquis coolly. “I am afraid, then, that
this must have been somewhat of a disappointment. You take it very well.
It was the moonlight, I suppose? In many ways I should have been glad of
your success.”
A dark flush ran over his opponent’s face. He made no reply, and laying
down the bandaged arm gently on its possessor’s knee, began to scrub at
his own bloody hands with a frond of bracken. When he had got them
comparatively clean he threw it away, got up from his knees, took a turn
or two and came back.
“Marquis,” he said, rather stiffly, “I aimed as well as I could.
Evidently it was not to be. . . . And now, if you will allow me, I
should like to take back the term I applied to you this evening. It is
not applicable—and I do not think that I ever believed it was. But I
meant you to fight me. You can guess why . . . and we need not go into
what is done with. . . . And now that we have met, and blood has
flowed—and I sincerely regret, as I said, that it should be yours
alone——” He stopped.
The Marquis de Kersaint, still without his coat, got up from the fallen
stone. To him also a duel was sacramental, and bloodshed, at the risk of
life, did serve, between gentlemen, to wash out enmity. To what degree,
however, that stain was ineffaceable, they could hardly know then, for
they were both moved, little as they showed it, by the near passage of
the dark angel.
“Thank you, M. de Brencourt,” he said quietly. “Allow me to apologise,
in my turn, for the blow I struck you—though I think you understand why
I struck. I am quite willing to take your hand if you are willing to
take mine; indeed, I was going to propose that, as neither of us after
all is to remain permanently beside the Moulin-aux-Fées, we had better
try, for the King’s sake, to forget, if we can, what has passed between
us. I at least am content to try. I do not wish to change my
second-in-command.”
“Nor I to change my leader!” cried the Comte, really shaken by the
generosity which could forget his deliberate campaign of insults. He too
held out his left hand, and they sealed the compact. Perhaps at the
moment he almost forgot how much less complete the covenant was than the
other imagined—forgot what he was holding back and meant to go on
holding back. . . .
“And now,” he said, recovering himself, “if you insist on getting into
that sleeve again.” He picked up the redingote. “It is a long way
back—at least I fear you will find it so, de Kersaint.”
“I only wish it were longer,” said the Marquis, with a little frown.
“They have such sharp ears, those young men of mine—I do not think the
bone is broken after all. Help me into my coat, and lend me your arm,
and I shall do very well.”
(2)
The Clos-aux-Grives at last, white in the moonlight, between the sparser
trees of the forest’s verge. It was high time. But before the duellists
were quite near enough to give the countersign to the sentry, whose
challenge had just rung out, a figure from within the courtyard,
shouting something to him, vaulted the low wall by the Chouan and raced
towards them. So vehement was its haste that the two gentlemen stopped.
It was then seen that the athlete was the Chevalier de la Vergne, in
such a hurry that he had hardly time to pull himself up and to salute.
“I saw you coming, Monsieur le Marquis,” he exclaimed breathlessly.
“There is great news—M. l’Abbé has come back! . . . _What, are you
hurt, sir!_”
(“Damnation!” said the Comte de Brencourt under his breath.)
“Yes, a trifle,” returned the Marquis carelessly. “A stray Blue in the
forest; nothing to worry about. Come, Comte, let us go and welcome the
Abbé. This is indeed good news—if it means his success.” And, loosing
the Comte’s arm, as much, perhaps, to show his ability to do so as
because the Comte displayed a tendency to be rooted to the spot, he
began to walk towards the entrance.
“O, Monsieur le Marquis,” exclaimed the young officer, accompanying him,
“are you sure that it is not much? Why, I can see the blood on your
sleeve . . . and on your breast too! Take my arm, de grâce,—and you
will let me turn out the guard at once, will you not?”
“That is unnecessary, my dear boy,” replied his leader; “so is your
support. M. de Brencourt settled the Blue for me.—Good-night,
Sans-Souci,” he said, as the sentry presented arms.
“But you will not find the Blue, La Vergne—he got away after all,”
added the Comte quickly from behind. To him the duel was a secondary
matter now—and, in itself, the Abbé’s success or failure also. What
other information had the priest brought from Mirabel . . . and how soon
would he divulge it? Would it be possible to see him before de Trélan
did? Hardly . . .
“And where is M. Chassin?” enquired M. de Kersaint directly they got
inside, when the light from the sconce on the wall instantly betrayed to
Artamène’s distressed but ever observant eyes how pale he was—and with
a smear of blood on his cheek too. “In my room?—then I will see him at
once.”
“Let me light you up the staircase, Messieurs!” cried the zealous
Artamène, taking down the sconce.
“Are not the stairs lighted as usual?” asked the Comte irritably. “Yes,
of course they are. No, go to your bed, La Vergne, and don’t harass M.
de Kersaint any more!”
“You forget, La Vergne is officer of the guard to-night,” said the
Marquis with a little smile. “Goodnight, my boy. Don’t bother about that
Blue. As for my arm, the Abbé will do anything further that is
necessary.”
And he went off, followed by the Comte. Artamène looked after them,
uttering wicked words below his breath; then he replaced the sconce,
tiptoed into the “nursery,” and picked his way among the dozen or so
slumbering forms there till he came to Lucien du Boisfossé’s pallet in a
corner.
“Lucien, wake up!” he whispered, stooping over him and gently shaking
him. “I want to tell you something!”
Astoundingly, Lucien opened his eyes at once. “Don’t blow into my ear
like that, officer of the guard!” he returned. “And there’s no need to
poke me so. I was awake. I have not been to sleep.”
“Great Heavens!” ejaculated Artamène. This was indeed an evening of
surprises.
“I was,” said Lucien, complacently, “composing a proclamation in rhyme
to the _patauds_ of this canton. It was to begin——”
“Never mind that,” cut in Artamène ruthlessly. “Two much more
interesting things have happened while you have been asl——I mean
awake. The first is, that M. l’Abbé has returned from Mirabel——”
Lucien sat up in bed. “_Laus Deo!_” he exclaimed. “And has he
got—_it_?”
“He wouldn’t tell me,” said the enquirer, “but I think from his manner
that he has not been unsuccessful. However, the second thing is even
more momentous. M. le Marquis and M. le Comte have just come back from a
moonlight stroll in the direction of the forest, M. le Marquis as white
as a sheet, with blood all over the sleeve of his coat and his right arm
tucked into his breast.”
“Good God!” ejaculated Lucien, bounding upon his couch.
“Chut! don’t wake the others! (It will be impossible to keep it quiet,
though.) It appears that they met a Blue in the forest—or at any rate a
Blue was in the forest, dropped, perhaps like an acorn from a tree, for
I know not how otherwise he could have been there—and he shot at and
wounded M. le Marquis—one doesn’t yet know how seriously—and then,
apparently, M. de Brencourt settled the hash of the Blue. At least, he
fired and hit him; though he thinks the fellow got away. Now, what do
you think of that for a Breton night’s entertainment? Don’t sit on your
bed looking like an owl, Monsieur du Boisfossé!”
“An owl,” replied the young man unperturbed, “is the emblem of wisdom,
also of us Chouans. I am thinking this, my Artamène, that while lying
here engaged in the labours of composition, I heard, far away—so far
away that I did not think it worth while disturbing the slumbers of the
officer of the guard——”
“Well, what did you hear?” asked his friend, kicking him gently in
return for this thrust.
“A shot—one shot,” replied Lucien.
Artamène’s mobile face changed, “Of course you will repeat that I was
asleep, which is a lie. But I never heard it—nor the sentries, I
presume, since none of them reported it.”
“But, my dear friend,” enquired Lucien earnestly, “if I was able to hear
one shot, why didn’t I hear two?”
They stared at each other in the dim light, these two young
investigators, the one sitting up in his shirt on his pallet, the other,
booted and sword-girt, kneeling beside him.
“You mean,” said the latter after a moment, “that if you heard the shot
which this solitary Blue fired at M. le Marquis, why did you not hear
the shot which M. de Brencourt fired at the Blue?”
“That is my meaning,” responded Lucien weightily.
“So that—provided you were not dreaming—there was only one shot fired
. . . and that was fired at the Marquis.”
Lucien nodded. “Obviously, since he has been hit.”
“And that shot could not have fired itself.”
“It is usual to infer a finger on the trigger.”
“The question is, Whose finger?—No, Lucien, we had better not go any
further! As we have already said, there has been storm in the atmosphere
lately. And this desire for exercise in the moonlight! . . . Yet it must
have been all en règle, even though there were no witnesses, since they
came back together on good terms—arm in arm, in fact. But for the
Marquis to proceed to such an extremity!—I never did like M. de
Brencourt!”
“I think you are going too fast, mon ami,” remarked the soberer Lucien.
“They would never have chosen pistols, and risked being heard at
headquarters.”
“They seem to have chosen _a_ pistol, however,” retorted Artamène.
“Whatever has happened, I am convinced that there has been the devil of
a lot of lying done to-night . . . and that there will be even more
to-morrow!”
“And who——”
“Charlemagne, I regret to say,” responded his friend, shaking his head,
“—Charlemagne, who recently read me such a homily on truthfulness!”
CHAPTER V
WHAT THE ABBÉ THOUGHT OF IT
Up in the Marquis de Kersaint’s room M. Pierre Chassin, priest and
plotter, tired as he was, had been for some time pacing uneasily up and
down. He had just returned from the mouth of the Seine and the
successful despatch to England of the gold of Mirabel, which (as the
agent in Paris at whose house it had been accumulating had indeed come
under suspicion) the Abbé had had to pack up with exceeding haste, and
take to the coast himself. But though he had just passed some agitated
days and nights between Paris and Harfleur, the memory of them was as
nothing to that of the shock and emotion he had experienced in the
chapel at Mirabel. So that he was thinking at the moment scarcely at all
of what he had so dexterously got out of the château, but of what he had
left in it. And he was fairly distracted.
For the twentieth time he cursed the contre-temps which had hurried him
away from Mirabel in so untimely a fashion, before he had had
opportunity to decide whether he ought or ought not to break his solemn
promise to Gaston—that promise renewed at Hennebont. Now he saw clearly
that it would have been right to break it, and that if he had only been
granted a little longer there he would have done so. And had not such
grave issues depended on his getting the money into safety he would
willingly have risked his own personal liberty by remaining a few hours
longer near the Duchesse; he would even have returned to Mirabel when
his errand was accomplished, but for the practical certainty of being
arrested and thereby, probably, compromising her. Even now the idea had
visited him of writing to her and revealing the Marquis de Kersaint’s
identity. But that would indeed be confiding his foster-brother’s
jealously-guarded secret to the birds of the air, for he could not use a
cipher to Mme de Trélan, and the letter might be intercepted by the
Government . . . and it might some day mean Gaston’s life if the
Directory knew who he really was. Still, she herself might write to the
“Marquis de Kersaint” to make enquiries. God grant it! Or she might come
in person, as he had so earnestly pressed.
Yet, if only he had learnt her secret otherwise than under the seal of
the confessional, when the knowledge might not be communicated, might
not be used. If only he had had the wit to guess it! But we only see
what we have some grounds for believing that we shall see. . . . Here he
was again, possessed of information he could not impart to the person
vitally interested—only in this case time would never show him that he
ought to disclose it. His lips were shut, absolutely, till eternity.
Some other person must make the revelation—and the only other person
who had the necessary knowledge was the Comte de Brencourt.
And M. de Brencourt had escaped, was already back. Perhaps he had told
Gaston by this time—for what more natural than that the “kinsman” of
the Duc de Trélan should be immediately informed of a fact of such
paramount importance to his relative? Something, however, made the
priest quite sure that M. de Brencourt had not taken this course—the
remembrance of what he knew to be his deliberate lie to the Duchesse de
Trélan. After viewing that lie from every side M. Chassin had come to a
pretty correct estimate of the motive that had prompted it, and it did
not raise his hopes of forcing the Comte to a revelation. Indeed, he
almost wondered why M. de Brencourt had returned to the Clos-aux-Grives
at all.
He wondered, too, with a growing uneasiness, on what conceivable errand
the two gentlemen could have gone out to-night, as, on his own arrival,
the exhilarated Artamène had told him they had done. Why should they
both go, at such an hour, and without the shadow of an escort?
Then he heard steps and voices in the passage, and stopped his pacing.
They were back. His forebodings suddenly seemed ridiculous. The door was
opened a little way.
“Thank you, de Brencourt. Good-night,” said Gaston’s voice, with a ring
of fatigue in it. “No, thanks; the Abbé will do anything that is
necessary.” And he came in.
The light in the room, emanating from a somewhat smoky lamp, did not
instantly reveal his state, and he said, in a quite natural manner, “My
dear Pierre! This is indeed good! And I am to congratulate you, I
think?”
M. Chassin had advanced round the table to take his outstretched left
hand. Nearer, he saw; and he no longer took the hand in question—he
caught at it.
“Gaston! What in God’s name has happened to you? Here—sit down, for
pity’s sake!”
He pulled out the nearest chair from the table, and, far from
unwillingly, the wounded man sat down in it, saying as he did so, “But,
my dear Pierre, why all this emotion at the sight of a little blood?”
The Abbé suddenly made use of a very unecclesiastical expression. “What
has happened to you?” he repeated, standing over him.
“If you must know,” said his foster-brother, leaning back with a little
smile in the chair, “I have had the bad luck to be winged by a Blue who
must have been lurking in the forest, and the wound, slight in itself,
has bled a good deal, that is all.—Sit down, Pierre, and tell me your
news. You have succeeded—I can see it!”
How he could see it on the perturbed countenance gazing down at him was
not easy to guess.
“Yes, I have succeeded,” returned the priest shortly. “But there is
plenty of time to talk about that later. I will see this wound first, if
you please. What in the name of fortune were you doing in the forest at
this time of night? And who bandaged this up—who was the imbecile who
took your coat off you and put it on again instead of slitting up the
sleeve?”
For the Marquis, submitting to the inevitable, had stiffly and painfully
drawn his arm out of the breast of his coat and laid it on the table.
“One question at a time, mon cher,” he said. “M. de Brencourt was with
me, and it was he who was kind enough to do what he could for me. I
myself was the imbecile who insisted on getting into my coat again.”
“And why, may I ask?” enquired the Abbé, rapidly unbandaging. “Do you
enjoy putting yourself to pain?”
“Does anybody?” retorted his patient. “I did not want to cause more
alarm on my return than I needed; that was why.”
“Humph; very thoughtful of you!” commented M. Chassin, glancing at him.
“Tch! tch! a nice business! The ball is still there!”
“I believe it is,” admitted M. de Kersaint almost apologetically.
“Can you move your fingers?”
“I can, but I don’t want to.”
“I wonder where it has got to,” murmured the Abbé, still examining.
“Does that hurt?”
“Yes, infernally,” responded the victim, wincing.
“Very well, I will not do it again. Wherever it is the bullet will have
to come out.”
“Naturally,” said the Marquis resignedly. “But at least tie my arm up
for to-night—and tell me about the treasure.”
“Tell me first about this, Gaston. Was the man near—this looks to me as
if it had been fired from a few yards off only? Did you see him?”
“N . . . no; he was in the shadow under the trees.”
“Whereabouts?”
His foster-brother hesitated. “Not far from the Moulin-aux-Fées.”
“Holy Virgin, what were you doing there?”
“Perhaps foolishly, taking a walk.” And then he went on quickly, “But
are you not going to tie this thing up, or am I to spend the night like
this?”
For his bared arm, streaked with blood and much swollen round the little
bluish orifice, rested before him on the table, and the Abbé had retired
into the bedroom.
“I am going to wash it first,” came his voice from within. The Marquis
put his head back against the chair. He suddenly looked exhausted.
The sound of pouring water was heard. “This solitary Republican had a
musket, I imagine—or was it a pistol? The wound looks to me rather like
a pistol-wound.”
“No, it was a musket . . . at least I suppose so,” replied the duellist
almost inaudibly. The priest came to the door of the bedroom and looked
at him for a second; then he vanished again and reappeared with a glass
in his hand.
“Drink this, if you please, Gaston!” he said authoritatively. His
brother opened his eyes.
“I detest brandy,” he said, almost petulantly. “And you surely do not
think that I am going to faint?”
“That is as it may be,” returned the Abbé, watching the speaker narrowly
as he took and drained the glass. And he washed and bandaged very
speedily, asking not a single further question during the operation.
Perhaps he had come to the conclusion that he were better advised not to
do so, for other reasons than that his patient was not in the most
fitting condition to answer them. After which, refusing in his own turn
to satisfy any enquiries about the treasure that evening, he announced
his intention of acting as the Marquis’s body-servant for the nonce; and
did so.
“You’ll do best with this pillow under your arm,” he observed when the
wounded man was in bed. “We will have the surgeon from Lanvennec as
early as we can get him to-morrow morning.”
“Damnable nuisance, that!” muttered the sufferer impatiently. “Are you
sure that you could not manage to extract the ball yourself, Pierre?”
“Having some small idea of the intricate structure even of the human
arm,” responded M. Chassin, arranging the pillow under the arm in
question, “I am quite sure that I could not, without possibly maiming
you for life. And why should you object to having a surgeon?—Is that
comfortable?”
“Since you succeeded in extracting the gold from Mirabel,” observed
Mirabel’s owner, looking up at him with a rather feverish brilliance in
his eyes, “I should have thought that a trifle like this would be
nothing to you. My God, Pierre, have you really got it all—twenty-five
thousand pistoles? It is almost too good to believe! Why, with half that
amount——”
The priest held up his finger, smiling. “Yes, I got it nearly all away.
And now you must——”
“A moment, Pierre! no, I insist on asking this! That woman at
Mirabel—the concierge; I hope she has not been compromised in any way?
I should be most deeply concerned if it were so.”
“Ah, the concierge,” repeated M. Chassin, and he paused. “—No, as far
as I know, she has not fallen under suspicion at all. But I had to leave
extremely hurriedly, so that I should be very glad if I—if you, rather,
could make enquiries on the point.”
“I shall do so,” said his foster-brother. “Think of what I owe her—the
boy’s safety, perhaps his life. . . . Why are you looking at me like
that, Pierre?”
The priest pulled himself together. “You have asked enough questions for
to-night, Gaston. Just answer me one in return.—Since we parted, has
not M. de Brencourt . . . guessed your secret?”
The Marquis flushed, and his mouth tightened. “I think he guessed it
long ago.”
“But he knows it now, beyond guessing—you know that he knows?”
A pause. “Yes,” said the Duc de Trélan at last, frowning and reluctant.
“I know . . . that he knows.”
He turned his head away on the pillow.
“Thank you,” responded M. Chassin rather grimly. And then, he added, in
a tone astonishingly light-hearted, “I daresay it is as well.”
The Duc bit his lip. “I am glad you think so,” he replied in an
exceedingly cold voice. And from the reply and its manner the priest
learnt what he wanted to learn. M. de Brencourt had made no pleasant use
of his knowledge.
“If you need anything in the night, or cannot sleep, Gaston, call for
me. I shall spend it in your room out there.—Yes, it is necessary. Try
not to make calculations about what Mirabel has given you, but get some
rest if you can.”
“And if I cannot, what pleasanter subject could I have to think about?”
enquired his patient, looking up at him again. The frown was gone. “And
for that, as for so much else, I have to thank you, my brother.” He held
out his left hand.
“And suppose,” said the Abbé in a low voice, as he took it in both his
own, “suppose that I had come back with my news to find you with a
bullet in your heart! Gaston, you might have remembered . . . me!”
The hand in his own returned his grip, but the voice said, with fair
composure, “Yes, it was foolhardy, that walk. But surely, Pierre, you
know that one day or the other you are certain to find me as you say;
and you know, too, that if I have finished my task it is what I should
desire.”
“Yes,” said Pierre Chassin very gravely. “I do not wish you any better
death, when the time comes. But the death you faced to-night was not
worthy of you. Perhaps the prayers of . . . of one who lived at Mirabel
averted it. And I know you must have been tried beyond endurance. . . .
See, I have shaded the candle so; and remember to call me. Good-night,
mon frère.”
CHAPTER VI
_MEMINI ET PERMANEO_
It was soon plain to Gaston de Trélan that, between bodily pain and
mental turmoil, sleep was not likely to visit him much that night. He
would, at least, keep that fact from Pierre if he could. . . . Poor
Pierre! it seemed to be his fate to cause him anxiety! And he owed him
so much, more than a man could ever repay: his life—that was
little—but what measure of self-respect he had also.
That life he had nearly cast away this evening, and, because of his
present position and circumstances, he fully shared the priest’s
reprobation of the hazard, but no other course had been possible, for
not Pierre himself, who had so quickly penetrated the tale of the
“Blue,” could guess the lengths to which he had suffered de Brencourt to
go before he consented to fight him. Even to Pierre he was not going to
repeat the things the Comte had said. . . .
Seven years ago, in London, only the little priest’s affection and
determination had prevented society from saying next day, “You remember
that French émigré, the Duc de Trélan, whom we used to meet everywhere?
Well, he has just shot himself—and small wonder!” And it was not as if
Gaston and his protégé were then on terms of intimacy, for they had seen
little of each other for the previous ten years or so, since his own
visits to St. Chamans had become so much rarer—above all since the
priest had come under his displeasure for something he had ventured to
say to him down there not unconnected with Mme de Céligny. Few people,
even of his own rank, under M. de Trélan’s displeasure cared to have
dealings with him in that condition, and yet this peasant-priest, who
had never approached his patron in his own need (for the Duc afterwards
discovered that he had been living in London for weeks on the verge of
starvation) had the disinterested courage to oppose him in the blackest
hour of his life. And Pierre Chassin had done more than stay his finger
on the trigger, for when, during that dreadful vigil, Gaston himself had
said, out of his agony, that no other path remained open to him, since
neither in England nor in France could he ever look an acquaintance in
the face again, it was the Abbé who replied, “Then change your name. Do
not go to serve with Condé, as you were intending; go where no one knows
you.” And so, as the Marquis de Kersaint, the Duc de Trélan—a soldier
by education and the descendant of soldiers—entered Austrian service
against the French Republic, thinking, mistakenly, that he could soon
throw away his life on the battlefield; as the Marquis de Kersaint he
rose to command, found a certain anodyne in hard work and fighting, and
was in touch by letter during those years with the only man he could
really call friend—his only confidant at least—the humbly-born
foster-brother who had stood by him in his extremity; and had earned the
right to address him more freely than a brother by blood would ever have
dared to do.
But of the two things he sought—forgetfulness or death—M. de Trélan
had found neither. For him the arrogant motto of his race was only too
true—_‘Memini et permaneo_, I remember and I remain.’ It soon became
clear to him that when a man desired extinction he could not have it.
What of the hazards of that Italian campaign, of the fights for Mantua,
of Castiglione, Caldiero, Arcola, through which he had always come
untouched till the day of Rivoli? Even then death had tossed him aside
in the end.
Indeed, that disastrous fourteenth of January, 1797, when the young,
haggard-eyed general from Corsica had beaten the Austrian marshal on
that plateau among the mountains, had brought Gaston de Trélan not death
but honour. At Vienna, when he had recovered from his all but fatal
wound, the Emperor’s hand had bestowed on him the coveted Cross he wore.
So, when the peace of Campoformio had ended Austria’s wars for a time,
and the Abbé Chassin, now an accredited agent of the Royalists of the
West, had deterred him from entering Russian service and persuaded him,
despite his hatred of the place, to come to London, he came, in his
borrowed name—and found himself, to his surprise, no little of a hero
there also. For there had been attached to Alvintzy’s staff at Rivoli an
English officer of discernment, who, greatly struck by the part played
in the battle by “Colonel de Kersaint” and his practically forlorn hope
of a column, while much criticising the higher command for devoting it
to destruction, had not spared in his despatches eulogies of its leader
nor regrets for his supposed fate. And after a little while spent in
London, in very different circles from those in which he moved before,
the “Marquis de Kersaint” was offered by the Comte d’Artois and his
council the post of organising and leading Finistère. He accepted; but
nothing would induce him to go to Edinburgh for the personal interview
which the Prince desired. They had met too often at Versailles for that.
So he had now in his hands the chance to do something that she whom he
had lost would have approved. In those years of self-imposed expiation
he had learnt what he had thrown away, not so much in failing her at the
moment of peril, which he had done in ignorance, but through his insane
blindness in having so little prized, through all the best of life, a
love and a nobility which many a man would have given his soul to
possess. In the great and terrible awakening through which he had passed
in London he had seen himself as he must have appeared to other men, and
that hell was too sharp at first for any consolation to visit him, and
any least thought or memory of Valentine could only be more exquisite
torture. Yet there came a day when, instead of averting his mind from
what he could not bear to contemplate, he found himself gazing at it as
the one hope in the blackness, as a trembling pagan might see the image
of the martyr smile upon him, the martyr his own hands had done to
death. Valentine had loved him; what if she loved him still?
It grew in him to conviction, that first dim fancy; it saved him,
probably, from madness. Lost, sometimes, like a star which the clouds
have blotted out, it always reappeared, and shone at last with almost
the light of an inspiration, a proof of the strong and steady influence
which the dead can wield. So it came about in the end that, for all the
suffering and hopeless regret involved, Gaston, Duc de Trélan, was fast
in love with his wife’s memory—so fast that he who had once been
“Saint-Charmart” in Paris salons had in Vienna the character of a
woman-hater—so fast that he felt, if Valentine knew the depth of his
repentance and his pain, she, with her wide charity, would forgive him
everything . . . as he doubted not that, in the supreme hour, she had.
But to forgive oneself, that was a different matter. His own stark
pride, so interwoven with the fabric of his whole nature, seemed to put
that possibility ever further and further from him as the years went by.
Yet, if he could not himself forget, it seemed at least that others had
done so—till that night at Hennebont when the calumny which he had
believed dead had reared its head for an instant. Afterwards it had
slept again, apparently, through all the directions he had been obliged
to give de Brencourt about Mirabel before despatching him thither, in
which he knew quite well that he was risking having the veil torn from
the wound. His sacrifice, made to get the gold for the cause to which he
had vowed himself, had recoiled on his own head. For days now he had
been at the mercy of the Comte, with his knowledge of that slander which
was half true; and de Brencourt had behaved like a Red Indian with an
enemy at the stake, subjecting him to a deliberate mental torture to
which this night’s hazard and bloodshed had been nothing but a relief.
It was small consolation to know that he, for his part,—till the coming
of the breaking-point—had endured reiterated agony without giving a
sign . . . agony not only to his pride but to his love. For it was
true—by what diabolical instinct had de Brencourt known it?—that his
chief thought when he received the terrible news had been for his own
honour . . . though it had long ceased to be true. But that final remark
about the want of an heir, the very taunt he had thrown at her himself!
Even now, alone and in half darkness though he was, the Duc de Trélan
threw his arm over his eyes and groaned aloud. Ah, that look of mortal
pain on her face when he had spoken those cruel words—the last he was
ever to say to her, the last look he was to carry away. _Memini et
permaneo!_ And had _she_ remembered, when in the same room she had faced
that scene of violence which was but the prelude to the other, the
final, the unspeakable, outside the prison door?
It was more than clear to him now what had reawakened de Brencourt’s
enmity; it was that visit to Mirabel where she had lived. That he
himself in the past had known nothing of his wife’s acquaintance with
the Comte was but natural, seeing how their lives, even before their
final separation, had drifted asunder, and it was the fact that de
Brencourt should have constituted himself her defender against him, her
husband, which had proved so intolerable. His wife’s memory championed
against him by a casual admirer! For the vulgar question as to what
Valentine’s relations with the Comte de Brencourt might possibly have
been had no power over him. It needed not the enshrinement of death to
set her reputation above any suspicion of unfaithfulness. It had stood
there in life, something of a marvel among so many which were otherwise.
He had not that, at least, to rack him.
Now, judging de Brencourt by the standard common to gentlemen, since
they had been out together and blood had flowed, he expected a surcease
of this bitter hostility. Absurd as it might be, the fact that he, the
injured party, had a bullet in his arm signified, by the code, that his
honour was satisfied. Since Gaston de Trélan had been reared in that
code, it did not seem absurd to him—though damnably inconvenient and
painful. Yet, though de Brencourt had shared with him that sacrament of
expiation, and had taken his hand after it, his superior was beginning
to see that he, at least, had undertaken by the dolmen more than he
could carry out. De Brencourt’s conduct had been too deliberate. They
would not be able to work together to any profit. He would be obliged,
after all, to ask him to resign. For a few days, however, in order to
disarm suspicions on the part of his staff, they would have to go on as
before. Then he would appoint du Ménars in the Comte’s place. It would
be best; for now he must concentrate all his energies on distributing
the arms which the treasure would shortly procure from England, where,
as already arranged, the Government would buy the gold as it stood, by
weight.
Yes, at last he had the means in his power to make his difficult task a
success. He would, moreover, have had the satisfaction of having
provided these himself. It meant a great deal to him—more than he had
once thought anything in life could mean. And lying there, more than a
little feverish, he began to be busy with plans and schemes.
Undoubtedly, when the time was fully ripe, as it nearly was, this great
uprising of the West would be no petty insurrection. It might change the
destinies of France. And he would have no small part in that
consummation—he who had wasted all his opportunities, as Valentine had
told him at the last, and only too truly. Yet he could not lay any
achievement, past or future, any expiation, before her now. She was gone
where she could hear neither of Italy nor Finistère.
Gaston de Trélan turned restlessly in the bed. His arm was on fire; he
was already between sleep and fever, and, as sometimes happened still,
the desperate wound he had taken in his side two and a half years ago,
though fully healed, awoke to pain once more. And perhaps because of the
ache of the one and the fever of the other, he suddenly saw, as a
detached spectator might see in a great picture, the heights and
vineyards of Rivoli, the lofty plateau which the French had so
victoriously retained, the snowy slopes of Monte Baldo above it, below,
the zigzag path from the valley choked with a horrible débris of the
slain men and horses and the cannon of Reuss’s pounded column—and under
Monte Baldo, himself, among the dead and dying of his own corps,
sacrificed in an impossible enterprise, lying as he had fallen in
beating off the charge of Junot’s cavalry, the whole side of his white
Austrian uniform one great stain of blood. He saw the picture in this
curious way for a moment, with the sun going down red behind the
mountains of Garda—the next, physical memory caught him up, and he was
back in that still conscious body of his, lying there hour after hour in
the cold, defeated and forgotten. The stars came out in the January
night; down below in the gorge roared the Adige, swollen with the winter
rains; he could hear from the smirched and trampled snow a few groans, a
prayer or two; he was not sure that he was not groaning himself. . . .
And he remembered the three days of that toilsome march round Monte
Baldo on which he had been despatched in order to take Joubert in the
rear—a project ill-conceived and ill-timed, as he was well aware—his
breaking in consequence with his five battalions on the
doubly-reinforced foe when the battle was already lost, the hopeless
conflict against the whole weight of the French army, with its
inevitable close—surrender. But _he_ had not surrendered. . . . The
cold grew numbing; was this sleep, or death . . .
Finistère’s leader came out of this half coma of reminiscence with a
start, and realised where he was, how far removed in time and space from
the great Austrian disaster. He supposed that he was a trifle
light-headed, for he had really felt that the next thing would be the
arrival of those dim, frosty-breathed forms with lanterns, and
Schnitterl’s voice, and he would be lifted to a stretcher and to a
resumption of that life he thought he had done with at last. Josef had
often told him how he had begged to be left there. But no . . . _Et
permaneo_.
After all, he thought now, staring at the moving reflection of the
candle on the ceiling, perhaps it was as well that he had not died there
in the snow. There was a chance to-day of something better than mere
personal heroism. Although nothing, nothing could undo the past nor give
him back the dead, yet, if ever they met beyond the grave, he might have
some guerdon to lay there at her feet—some tiny sprig of laurel that he
could point to and say, “Valentine, I was not wholly what you thought
me. . . .”
And for a moment he fancied that he saw her, shadowy and bejewelled, by
the bed.
CHAPTER VII
THE CHURCH MILITANT
It was Lucien who rode to Lanvennec next morning for the surgeon. M. de
Brencourt considered him discreet, and chose him rather than Artamène
(who had besides been up all night) or any other of the younger men. But
had he known that Lucien, though outwardly respectful and certainly of a
fundamental prudence, was finishing in his head as he rode a short but
very venomous epistle in verse, beginning, “_Artus, le Judas de nos
jours!_” in which, somewhere near the end, “_maître_” rhymed with
“_traître_,” he might have selected another messenger.
However, the surgeon came, concerned but unsuspicious, and, assisted by
M. Chassin, did his unpleasant work with reasonable speed and deftness,
producing at the end of it what he vaguely termed a “projectile” from a
region of M. de Kersaint’s forearm which, on the contrary, he described
with much exactitude. And while he was binding up the arm in question
the Abbé quietly annexed the bullet—“as a souvenir,” he said.
But someone else seemed to be souvenir-hunting that morning. Not long
after the Abbé had left his patient to repose and had established
himself again in the outer room with his reflections and his breviary,
the Comte de Brencourt appeared there.
“Is it out satisfactorily?” he enquired.
“Quite,” replied the priest. “A painful business; but nothing,
mercifully, appears to be permanently injured. Yet the surgeon tells me
that our leader”—he stressed the words a little—“came very near never
having the use of his sword-arm again.”
The Comte looked grave. To do him justice, he had desired last night to
kill, not to maim.
“The curious thing,” went on the priest, “is that the bullet is a pistol
bullet, though last night M. de Kersaint distinctly said that his
assailant shot him with a musket.”
“No, no! The man had a pistol,” said M. de Brencourt. “The Marquis was
mistaken.”
“Obviously the man had a pistol,” agreed M. Chassin with serenity. “And
not an army pistol either.”
The Comte met his look. “I should rather like to see that bullet,” he
observed.
“No doubt,” thought the Abbé, twiddling it in his pocket. “But you are
not going to.” And as he made no audible reply to this suggestion the
enquirer had to let the subject drop.
“To turn to another question, Abbé,” he said, sitting down, “one has not
yet had opportunity to congratulate you on your wonderful success. Allow
me to do so now—most heartily.”
“You are generous, Monsieur le Comte,” said the priest, reaching round
to place his breviary on the table, and not seeming to notice the
proffered hand. “I thank you all the more. Another person ought by
rights, however, to be included in your congratulations.”
“Who—not Roland de Céligny, surely?”
“No. His friend the concierge—your friend the concierge.”
“Why do you call her my friend?” asked the Comte with a frown. “She was
certainly de Céligny’s, but in no sense mine.”
“No? Well, my friend the concierge, then,” said the priest with a little
smile.
De Brencourt’s heart was beating to suffocation as he looked at him.
Now, surely, he should learn whether to M. Chassin she were more than a
concierge—the main purpose with which he had sought this interview.
“Yes, she was of the greatest service to me,” resumed the priest,
“although, indeed, she gave me no active assistance. Poor woman, she had
had a sad history.”
“Did she tell it to you?” demanded the Comte quickly.
“Oh, one did not need to be _told_ it,” replied the Abbé.
But the look of relief which at that most palpably appeared on the
Comte’s features had the briefest stay there conceivable, for the
aumônier went on to say meditatively, “I am glad to think that I was
able to make her some recompense. You remember the ruby necklace
mentioned in the plan, Monsieur le Comte?”
“You are not going to say that you gave her that!” exclaimed his
companion, starting up in his chair.
“Ah, I see you think it an excessive reward?” commented the Abbé,
looking at him enquiringly. “So did M. le Marquis, I fancy, when I told
him. But come now, Monsieur le Comte, do you not think that it really
was no more than her due, that if ever woman had a right to it, she had
. . . and that if M. de Kersaint knew all he would say the same?”
But the Comte was quite speechless. The piercing little eyes held his,
and he could feel them boring into his very soul. “If ever woman had a
right to it” . . . “if M. de Kersaint knew all.” The Abbé knew—he knew!
He would never have given her the necklace else. Had he told the Duc
yet?
“Of course,” went on the priest in a lowered tone, lowering that
uncomfortable gaze also till it rested on his blunt fingers outspread on
his knees, “had there been a Duchess of the house living I should not
have felt justified in giving so valuable an heirloom to a concierge.
But, under the sad circumstances, I hold that I was absolved, do not
you, Monsieur le Comte?”
Oh, curse his maddening and mysterious persistence! Was he playing with
him, or was he ignorant after all?
“That is not for me to say,” muttered the Comte thickly. “The matter
concerns M. de Kersaint.”
“Very true. Everything about Mme Vidal more nearly concerns M. de
Kersaint than anybody else.” He seemed to wait for the Comte to agree or
else to ask why, but the Comte could bring out neither assent nor query.
“Since he is most interested in the treasure,” finished the Abbé with an
amicable air of explaining his statement. “And, speaking of that
treasure, Monsieur le Comte, I feel sure that by now you have penetrated
the disguise. The cloak was bound to sit rather awkwardly after—you
know what I mean.” He looked at him again.
M. de Brencourt changed colour. “Disguise? Whose disguise? No, I do
_not_ know what you mean!” There was sharp alarm in his tone; whither
was this tending?
“Whose disguise?” repeated the priest. “Why, surely, there is only one
disguise in question?” He waited a second and then went on, “The Marquis
has perhaps told you himself who he is?”
“No, he has not!” returned M. de Brencourt angrily. “And I do not wish
to learn any secrets, if you please, Abbé!” For if he could carry it off
with the Abbé and the outside world in general that he had never known
who de Kersaint really was, how could he be blamed for not having told
him that his wife was alive?
“Very well said, Monsieur le Comte,” remarked M. Chassin in a tone of
commendation. “And if I were not sure that, like myself, you know
already, I would not speak to you of the identity of M. de Kersaint and
the Duc de Trélan.”
“But for Heaven’s sake do _not_ speak to me of their identity!” cried
the Comte, his head reeling as he saw this knowledge being openly thrust
upon him. “How do I know—or care—who he is!”
“I am afraid I have done it now,” said the priest placidly “but only
because I was sure you had guessed it.”
“How could you be sure?” growled the other. “Did—surely he did not tell
you? Only last night he asked me to respect his confidence!”
“Ah!” said the priest. “After you . . . saved his life, no doubt! Well,
Monsieur de Brencourt, you can still respect it. And since you do know
it—_I thought you did_—I am sure that as a gentleman you must regret
the expressions you used, in ignorance, of M. de Trélan, that night at
Hennebont. But you have no doubt made that all right with him.”
“That,” said M. de Brencourt, with hostility, “is a matter which
concerns M. de Trélan and myself, not you, Monsieur Chassin.—And as
regards confidences, it seems to me that you were going very near
betraying one yourself just now. If I had _not_ known . . . are you
usually in the habit of doing that?” For now there was a fresh track of
alarm; had the priest betrayed this particular confidence to one at
Mirabel—told the concierge, even without knowing who she was, that he
really came from Mirabel’s master? It was not impossible. He waited in
acute tension.
“No,” said the Abbé composedly, “without wishing to belaud myself, it is
a point I am rather particular upon. But I assured the Marquis—the
Duc—some time ago that he would have to tell you sooner or later. I
wonder he did not do so before you went to Mirabel. Did you not guess it
then, from the knowledge he displayed of the place?”
“Monsieur l’Abbé,” replied the Comte, with more than irritation, “it
does not seem to me to matter much what I guessed or what I did not
guess. Enough that I did not impart my speculations to any living soul.”
“No, I am sure you were very careful not to do that!” said the Abbé
warmly, and he looked at him harder than ever.
M. de Brencourt got up and went to the window. He must know, this man.
And yet . . . did he? He would have told de Trélan at once, if he did; a
bullet in the arm would not have prevented the reception of that news.
The Comte would almost have given his soul to make sure, but it was so
difficult to plumb the extent of the priest’s knowledge without exposing
his own. A sort of fascination caused him to recur to the subject of
Mirabel, but he approached it this time from a safer side.
“When am I to have an account of your securing of the treasure, Abbé?”
he asked, throwing himself down on the window-seat. “It _was_ under the
hearth in the sallette, I suppose?”
And presumably his fellow-adventurer felt he owed him this, for he gave
him, on this invitation, a fairly circumstantial account of his success
at Mirabel and his peregrinations afterwards. The Comte listened from
the window with the closest attention. After all, _she_ did not seem to
have played so much part in the business as he had feared. Perhaps——
“But I was glad to leave Mirabel in any case,” finished the narrator
with a sigh. “It has a tragic atmosphere—a haunted feeling. Were you
not conscious of that, Monsieur le Comte?” And as the Comte, for fear of
giving an opening, did not reply, the priest went on, “If it were M. de
Trélan’s once more and he were free to go there, I am sure he never
would.”
M. de Brencourt could not resist the bait. “No, I should think not!” he
broke out in spite of himself. “He would think always of that night—of
his wife, alone——”
The priest looked up. “Ah yes, I have heard you in that vein before,
Monsieur le Comte,” he interrupted coolly. “Now tell me candidly, for I
want to know, since I am not gently born, and can’t understand the
refinements of you nobles—is it not a fact that all the aristocrats who
emigrated early, as M. de Trélan did, emigrated on a point of honour
. . . mistaken, it may be, but still a principle? Why, if it comes to
that, Monsieur de Brencourt, you are, I think, an émigré yourself, and I
don’t suppose you considered that you were running away?”
“No, that is true,” conceded the Comte somewhat reluctantly. “It
was—before it became a matter of safety—a matter of principle.”
“When the Duc emigrated in 1790 it would have taken a very far-sighted
person to prophesy the extremities to which the Revolution would go
later on. I happen to know, too, that he made a great effort to induce
the Duchesse to accompany him. She refused, as it were on a point of
honour also. She disapproved of the emigration.”
“And dearly enough she paid for that disapproval,” muttered the Comte.
“Quite true. And don’t you think that M. de Trélan has paid dearly for
it too?”
A pause. “He deserved to,” said his companion.
The Abbé made a gesture. “One must make allowances for you, Monsieur. I
know that you had the honour of the acquaintance of that noble and
unfortunate lady—you told us so—and it has biased you against a man
who has been equally unfortunate, and who, for seven years, in the midst
of hardships and dangers of his own seeking, has never ceased to suffer
the pangs of a remorse which, as I hope for salvation, I consider
excessive.”
“You are an eloquent defender, Abbé,” said the Comte de Brencourt,
shrugging his shoulders. “You should be at the bar . . . I happen to
differ from you. I consider, to put it bluntly, that M. le Duc de Trélan
deserves every sting of remorse he has suffered and may still suffer
henceforward. I am not for letting a man off so cheaply.”
M. Chassin leant forward. “That was a figure of speech, I presume?” he
put in like lightning.
“What do you mean?” asked the Comte, startled.
“You spoke of letting him off—as if you had the power to do it.”
The Comte recovered himself. “Do not be absurd, Abbé!” he said
scornfully. “Am I the Judge of all the earth? Of course it was a figure
of speech! How could _I_ absolve him for what is done and can never be
undone? Put his behaviour down, at the best, to mistaken judgment, we
have to suffer for our mistakes just as much as for our crimes.”
The Abbé sat back in his chair again. “Since you know that so well,
Monsieur de Brencourt,” he said gravely, “it might occur to you that it
is a mistake—a dangerous mistake—to play with other people’s remorse.
You might conceivably know that torment yourself one day!”
“I’ll take the risk of that,” said the Comte drily, and got up.
“Especially as I have no idea what you mean about ‘playing’ with other
people’s,” he added, not at all certain what that phrase did mean in the
mouth that had uttered it. It was time, at any rate, to end this
dangerous interview, which had not told him what he wanted to know. One
thing was clear, that if the priest knew Mme Vidal’s secret he would
eventually tell the “Marquis de Kersaint,” and after that, no doubt,
would come the deluge, and either he, Artus de Brencourt, or his late
adversary would really be swept away in it, this time. But if there came
no deluge, then M. Chassin did not know.
“If you will excuse me, mon père,” he said, looking down at him, “I must
quit this interesting conversation for my duties. Ask M. de . . .
Kersaint when you go in to him again, to send for me if he wants me.”
And he left the room.
So the Abbé Chassin knew that he did not mean ever to tell Gaston de
Trélan that his wife was alive, that he meant to go on withholding the
knowledge for his own purpose. And his heart was hardened against M. de
Brencourt.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PAWN RETURNS TO THE BOARD
(1)
Roland had come. He stood in the ‘nursery’ with an overjoyed friend
holding him firmly by either arm.
“But why,” he was now demanding feverishly, “why cannot I see M. le
Marquis at once, and get it over?”
For if his sincere penitence had caused his grandfather to dismiss him
in the end with a sort of blessing—a remark that he was, if crazy and
disobedient, at least no milksop—the youth knew that there was a still
more merited penance to be gone through before he could expect a
blessing _here_. Part indeed of that penance, and perhaps the worst
part, he had already been undergoing at Kerlidec—the ashamed
realisation of the damage his own wilfulness had caused to his hero’s
reputation, in the eyes, too, of one who was always so inexplicably
hostile to M. de Kersaint.
“Why?” echoed Artamène. “Because, four nights ago, our revered leader
met with an accident in the forest. (Roland gave an exclamation.) The
accident took the form of a Blue, who shot him in the arm.”
“But he’s all right,” interpolated the kindhearted Lucien. “They took
out the bullet next morning. The Abbé is very strict, however.”
“—And M. de Brencourt shot the Blue,” continued Artamène, “shot him so
dead that he was, apparently, blown completely off this planet.”
“You forget,” Lucien reminded him, “that the Comte distinctly stated
that he got away.”
“What, after he was dead?” asked Roland.
They looked at him; they drew closer, very close.
“Bend your head, my paladin,” commanded Artamène. And, almost glueing
his lips to the attentive ear, he whispered into it, “The question is,
whether he ever lived, that Blue!”
“Oh!” exclaimed the Vicomte de Céligny, drawing back.
“Oh, and likewise Ah, and many other vocables!” agreed M. de la Vergne,
his eyes bright.
“But that means. . .”
Lucien put a finger on his lip. “We don’t discuss it, Roland. We
don’t—ahem—allow our minds to dwell on it. But——”
“‘Au clair de la lune,’” hummed the Chevalier de la Vergne under his
breath. “Two gentlemen, seized with a sudden desire for a walk at half
past ten at night. I was on duty that evening, and let them out. Also, I
met them returning—in perfect amity, I must confess; most correct. You
see, M. le Comte had been so obliging as to bandage the wound which
he——”
“Don’t go on, Artamène!” cried Lucien warningly. “Remember that we are
here in the region of hypothesis only.”
“Listen to our student. ‘The wound which he so signally avenged,’ was
what I was going to say, mon cher. Now, is that statement in the region
of hypothesis or of fact? If we knew that, we should know all!”
“But, merciful Heavens, why should they——” began Roland, in tones of
horrified amazement.
“My good Roland,” replied Artamène, “though most things are in time
revealed to enquiring intelligences, such as M. du Boisfossé’s and mine,
the reason for that promenade under the goddess of the night has not yet
been disclosed. The infernally bad temper in which M. de Bren—— Chut!
here’s the Abbé, come to summon you to the scaffold.”
But that was not exactly M. Chassin’s errand. He had come to say that M.
de Kersaint desired Roland to sup with them and to relate his
adventures. And if the prodigal should have a little private interview
with him afterwards he, the priest, did not fancy that it would be very
terrible.
“I expect you have been informed of his mishap,” concluded M. Chassin,
glancing at the other young men, neither of whom, by a singular
coincidence, met his eye. “Thank God it was not worse.—Now mind you
tell him, my child, all about Mirabel—especially about the concierge
there.”
(2)
So Roland supped with the gods, as Artamène and Lucien had put it. The
invitation, with its suggestion of pardon for the past, had pleased and
flattered him; the banquet itself he found at first a little
embarrassing. To begin with, he had uneasy anticipations of the
interview afterwards; and then he found the sight of the Marquis with
his arm in a sling oddly shocking, after the revelations made to him
downstairs. That support was as inconspicuous as possible, being of
black silk; still, there was the leader of Finistère, at the head of the
table, unable to use his right hand; and at the other end sat the man
who was . . . perhaps . . . responsible for his condition. The priest
was placed opposite Roland, and Josef Schnitterl, M. de Kersaint’s
bodyservant, waited upon them all; but he was little in the room.
Now if Roland, who possessed only conjectures, felt embarrassed, the
little aumônier, dowered though he was with an appearance of placidity
and a good appetite, had arrived at the point where he could scarcely
bear to see M. de Brencourt in the same room with his
foster-brother—much less because of what had passed at the
Moulin-aux-Fées than because of the deadly wrong the Comte was doing him
now. And, as a matter of fact the Marquis and his chief of staff did not
seem to be seeking each other’s society these last few days, though when
they were together their relations were of such a successful correctness
that speculation downstairs—except with MM. du Boisfossé and de la
Vergne—was beginning to languish. No one could have guessed that the
priest was thinking, as he looked at the handsome and engaging young
face opposite him, “If only Roland knew of her identity!” and that he
was preoccupied every hour of the day with the question, “Will she
come?” or was on tenterhooks at every communication the Marquis
received—for it might be from _her_.
When Roland’s first constraint was over, and the meal had proceeded a
little way, the Marquis enjoined the young man to give a most particular
account of all his doings. Roland assumed the air of obeying to the
full, though as a matter of fact he contrived to make his narrative
begin with his arrival in Paris. But this the Marquis would not have.
“You can only earn my full pardon, Roland,” he said, looking at him
quizzically, “by an equally full confession of your sins—and by
revealing the names of all your accomplices!”
The Comte and the Abbé both exclaimed at this. “No gentleman could
consent to receive his pardon on such terms,” declared the former.
“It is true,” admitted the inquisitor, “that I know Roland’s partners in
guilt already. The one I have already dealt with; the other, I am
afraid, lies outside my jurisdiction.”
“Ah, there was another, was there?” asked the Abbé, looking amusedly
across at poor Roland, who, blushing, was alternately studying the
tablecloth and sending appealing glances at his leader. “I know of one.
Who was the other? Not our staid Lucien, surely?”
“No,” replied M. de Kersaint, smiling, “not Lucien. I have strong
reasons to suspect another member of Artamène’s family, no less daring
than himself, and, presumably, even more inspiring.—But enough that I
know the name of this . . . person.—Go on, Roland; after all we will
dispense with the meetings of the conspirators at La Vergne. Continue
from your leaving that nest of plotters.”
He was in better spirits than he had been for days; and how should
Roland guess with what pleasure he was looking forward to an interview
after supper where, after all, he should let the penitent off rather
easily? Thankfully escaping from the dangerous neighbourhood of Mlle de
la Vergne the young man carried on his narrative up to his falling
unconscious at the foot of the statue of Mercury in the park of Mirabel.
M. de Kersaint leant back in his chair. “We now come, I think, to the
really romantic part of the story, do we not? Enter Mme Vidal, I
believe.”
As Roland embarked on the entry of Mme Vidal into his recital the Abbé
and M. de Brencourt became very silent. (But Roland noticed nothing;
_his_ audience was M. de Kersaint.)
Almost immediately, however, the latter interrupted him. “What was she
like to look at, this good angel?” he enquired, laying down his fork.
“She was not young, that I have gathered.”
Roland was rather at a loss. “I am afraid I am not very good at
description, sir. But M. le Comte or M. l’Abbé”—he turned towards
them—“surely you have heard all about her appearance from them.”
“No, indeed I have not,” replied the Marquis. “Rather remarkably, they
neither of them seem able to describe her.”
“Let us have your attempt, then, Roland,” said the Abbé. A vista of
blest possibilities was opening out before him. The same thing was
happening to the Comte de Brencourt . . . only the possibilities were
not blest.
Roland tried, but possibly through the hostile influence of the
gentleman at the bottom of the table he failed to achieve anything
recognisable.
“‘Tall, fair hair going grey, blue-grey eyes’—that does not advance us
much,” observed M. de Kersaint with truth. “It is like the passport
descriptions, ‘bouche moyenne,’ and the rest. Never mind Mme Vidal’s
appearance, then, Roland. But since you of the three had the most
intimate acquaintance with her, tell us, at least, what impression her
personality made on you. For though M. le Comte does not seem to find
the presence at Mirabel of a concierge with Royalist sympathies
extraordinary, I must say that I do.”
“I said, Marquis, if I remember,” interposed M. de Brencourt rather
hoarsely, “that I thought her sympathies need not have been so entirely
Royalist as you assume. She was a woman, M. de Céligny an interesting
young man, helpless and wounded . . . que sais-je? It was enough to
appeal to any woman’s heart.”
Roland, embarrassed at hearing himself described in these terms, and in
such an unpleasant voice, broke in,
“Oh but, indeed, Monsieur le Comte, she had Royalist sympathies. At
least she was the widow of a poor Royalist gentleman . . . for of
course, Messieurs, you saw at once that she was a lady. Indeed, I could
not quite understand why she accepted the post, for she certainly seemed
out of place in it. Didn’t you think so, Messieurs?”
“I did, certainly,” said the Abbé quietly. The vista was opening out
into a regular Heaven. The Comte was understood to say that he had
hardly seen her.
“It certainly does seem extraordinary,” mused the Marquis, leaning his
head on his hand, his eyes fixed on Roland.
“If you had seen her, sir, you would have thought so still more,” said
Roland with eagerness. “She had a carriage, always, and a way of
speaking when she forgot herself—what I mean to say is, that if it
hadn’t been so patently absurd to think so, one might even have taken
her for a grande dame.”
“And why,” asked the Abbé softly, “would it be so patently absurd to
have taken her for one? Stranger things have happened in the
topsy-turveydom of to-day. I have heard of Chevaliers of St. Louis
working as stevedores at a German port, and we all know how many émigrés
in London earned——”
M. de Brencourt broke in upon him rudely. “Pshaw, Abbé, you are too
romantic, and so is M. de Céligny. You forget, I have seen the woman
too, and though undoubtedly superior, she was nothing out of the way,
and as unlike the paragon of our young friend’s poetic fancy as——”
“As falsehood is unlike truth,” finished M. Chassin, looking straight at
him. “Well, we differ, Comte, in our estimate of what is ‘out of the
way,’ that is all. I am with M. de Céligny’s.—Go on, my son. You think
one might even have taken her for a grande dame?”
“Stuff and nonsense,” muttered M. de Brencourt angrily, pushing away his
plate.
“Really,” said the Marquis, as this little passage of arms ended, “your
Mme Vidal begins to intrigue me so much that I almost wish I had gone to
Mirabel myself!”
“Ah, if only you had!” was drawn in a whisper from the Abbé.
M. de Kersaint heard, though he was not meant to, and raised his
eyebrows. “Why, it was your representations which prevented me from
going!” he exclaimed. “What is the matter, Monsieur de Brencourt?”
“Nothing,” replied the Comte, who had half risen from his seat. “For the
moment I thought—it was nothing.”
“You hear that testimony, Monsieur le Comte?” said the Abbé, turning to
him with a sudden air of combat. “You should be pleased with me—M. le
Marquis acknowledges that it was my wise counsels which prevailed on him
not to go in person to Mirabel!”
“And why the deuce do you suppose I should be pleased at that?” demanded
the goaded gentleman. “M. de Kersaint was welcome to go to Mirabel if he
wished, for all it mattered to me!”
(“How very rude he is!” thought Roland, displeased.)
“You would not, surely, have had our leader run into such danger?”
“Well, _I_ had to run into it!” retorted the Comte.
“Yes—_and succumbed_!” returned the priest with such a world of meaning
in his voice that the Comte changed colour.
“Come, Abbé,” interposed the Marquis, “are you not being ungenerous to a
less fortunate rival? You are surely not casting it up at M. de
Brencourt that he endured a brief captivity for the King’s cause?”
The Abbé shook his head. “M. le Comte knows that I am not,” he replied.
“But I am afraid that we are checking Roland’s interesting recital by
our divergences on the subject of Mme Vidal. If he will forgive our bad
manners . . .”
“Yes, go on, Roland,” said the Marquis. “But you must eat too. You were
telling us about your actual entry into the château.”
“I got as far as Mme Vidal’s room,” resumed Roland obediently, “and then
I suppose I fainted again, for the next thing I remember is finding
myself in bed there, and Mme Vidal bending over me again.—Ah, by the
way,” he cried, suddenly remembering something which might serve as a
contribution to portraiture, “there was one curious little fact about
her which I forgot to mention. It was then that I first noticed it. One
of her eyes, though they were almost blue, had some brown specks in it.
Did you remark it, Monsieur l’Abbé? It was the right eye. You could only
see it when she was quite near you.”
“No . . . I . . . did not observe it,” said the Abbé. He spoke as if a
strong wind of sudden origin had somehow taken away his breath. From the
lower end of the table came the sound of a man drawing his sharply.
“I remember I used to look at it when she nursed me,” went on Roland,
happy at producing some effect in the end. “And I——”
He was interrupted by a voice he scarcely knew. “She had eyes, you say,
almost blue, with brown specks in one?” gasped the Marquis, jerking
forward in his chair. “Did I hear rightly? Blue eyes . . . which one had
the . . . say it again!”
In a dead silence, and much embarrassed thereby, Roland repeated his
observation. The Marquis de Kersaint, leaning forward in his chair, his
left hand clutching the table, looked at him with eyes which seemed as
if they would drive through him, and as the young man, fascinated by
that extraordinary gaze, returned it, he saw his leader slowly turn so
pale that it looked as if every vestige of blood had been drained away
from his face. Even his lips were the colour of paper. Next moment,
without a word, without even a gesture of apology, he had pushed back
his chair, risen from his place, and disappeared into his bedroom.
Roland fell back, smitten dumb with astonishment and, staring at the
door which had just closed, he did not see the black and thunderous look
which the Comte de Brencourt darted first at him and then at the Abbé.
But in a moment the priest, too, was on his feet.
“It must be that wound of his,” he said quickly. “If you will excuse me
a minute, Messieurs?” And he, too, went through the bedroom door. Roland
saw his face as he went; it was not inexpressive now. It wore a most
singular look of mingled gravity and exultation.
The Comte de Brencourt and the unconscious author of this scene were now
alone. And just because the Comte was looking as he did Roland felt that
he must say something.
“I am afraid that M. le Marquis’ wound——” he began timidly.
M. de Brencourt gave a short laugh that was more like a snarl. “His
wound!” he exclaimed. “Well, yes, a wound if you like—a sore, a
festering sore! Mort de ma vie, boy, what made you so observant!”
“Observant!” repeated the puzzled Roland. “I don’t understand you,
Monsieur le Comte. Ought one not to have noticed that M. le Marquis
was—in pain. But the Abbé——”
“Go on with your supper, in Heaven’s name!” broke in the Comte roughly.
He really looked like murder at that moment. “You have done a pretty
evening’s work, on my soul—and I don’t suppose you are through with it
yet, either!” And, laughing again, he poured out and drank off a glass
of wine.
But Roland, almost convinced that he was sitting at table with a madman,
was in no mood to obey him. He merely stared at the second in command.
Fortunately it was only for a moment, for the bedroom door opened again
and the Abbé stood there.
“M. de Kersaint wishes to speak to you, Roland,” he said. Amazing
thing—_he_ looked pleased. Roland got up, utterly bewildered. His
interview—now? He knew not what he had said or done to precipitate it,
and apprehension was so written on his face that M. Chassin put his hand
kindly for a moment on his arm as he passed him, and gave it a little
pressure.
The Comte de Brencourt now addressed the aumônier. “Since your services,
Monsieur l’Abbé, don’t seem after all to be needed for this surprising
seizure of M. de Kersaint’s,” he observed, “perhaps you will be good
enough to sit down and finish your supper. These constant exits hardly
tend to good appetite!”
A flame of anger suddenly ran over the little priest’s face. “It is
_your_ services that have been required these many days, Monsieur de
Brencourt,” he rapped out, “and you know it! I have no wish to sit down
to table with you!” And turning on his heel he marched out of the
sitting-room and slammed the door.
Stupefaction seized M. de Brencourt in his turn. He _did_ know then,
that wily old devil—he had known all the time! Why, in the name of all
his saints had he not told de Trélan? But anyhow de Trélan was in
process of enlightenment at this moment behind that door, for of course
he had had the boy in to question him further. In a few minutes he would
doubtless come out, and then—well, there would probably be murder. For
a little bloodshed would hardly wash away this time what their encounter
the other evening had not availed to bring to light. . . .
For five minutes, perhaps, the Comte de Brencourt sat there with a set
face waiting for this to happen; then, as no one emerged from the inner
room, his fretted nerves drew him to his feet and sent him out in search
of the Abbé.
He found him standing motionless under the moon and stars just outside
the farmyard—not far, to be exact, from the pigsties, as would have
been obvious to anyone less absorbed. The Comte strode over to the
cassocked figure.
“May I ask what you meant by that remark you made just now?” he demanded
without preliminary.
The Abbé drew himself up. “It is no good talking to me in that tone,
Monsieur de Brencourt,” he returned with spirit. “I am neither a
gentleman nor a layman, so _I_ can’t go out with you to the
Moulin-aux-Fées.”
“Certainly no one would ever take you for a gentleman,” responded the
Comte, his voice shaking with passion, “and it takes a priest indeed to
play the part you have played—a spying hedge-priest——”
“Which is worse, Monsieur le Comte, spying or lying?”
“_Lying!_” ejaculated the Comte with vehemence. “Don’t your books of
moral theology tell you that keeping quiet about a thing is as bad as
lying about it? Why was it more my business to tell the Duc de Trélan
that his wife is alive than yours, as you evidently knew it?”
“Dear me,” said M. Chassin, and he smiled. “I was referring to something
quite different—to the occasion on which, in so many words, you told
Mme Vidal that her husband was dead—no tacit lie that! I think you are
rather betraying yourself, are you not, by referring to yet another?”
“Oh, go to the devil!” burst out M. de Brencourt.
“I wish I knew where you were to go, Monsieur le Comte,” was the
priest’s answer. “No, seriously, I do not wish to quarrel with you—even
after the part you have played. The situation that you have brought
about is much too grave for that. You must know that you have done a
thing which God may forgive but which man will find it hard to. Listen
to me, Monsieur de Brencourt, I beg of you, before it is too late, and
remove yourself from the Clos-aux-Grives, from M. de Kersaint’s command
even——”
M. de Brencourt, thus adjured, exploded in an oath and struck the door
of the pigsty so violent a blow that he brought out an enquiring inmate.
“By the God above us, Abbé, you go too far! Do you suppose that I am
going to run away from de Kersaint’s—from de Trélan’s—from any man’s
anger!—Forgiveness—I have not asked for it! And when the Duc de Trélan
wants me he will know where to find me!” He swung off in the direction
of the forest.
“I only wish I could hope he did _not_ know where to find you,” muttered
the Abbé, gazing after his receding figure, “for, short of a miracle,
there will be a terrible day of reckoning for this silence of yours!”
But the flood of joy and gratitude in his heart was too potent; it swept
away alike his disgust and his apprehension, and by the pigsty wall
itself M. Chassin fell on his knees and covered his face, while the
moon, but little declined from her fatal plenitude of four nights ago,
looked down benignantly upon him.
CHAPTER IX
THE CHOICE
(1)
The brief but acrimonious interview of M. de Brencourt and M. Chassin
had scarcely terminated when Roland de Céligny emerged from his leader’s
bedroom to the outer room. He shut the door behind him quickly, and
stood there a moment with his back to it, curiously combining the air of
a sentinel and that of a fugitive. And indeed, breathing rather fast, he
was saying to himself, “No one shall go in—not even the Abbé!”
He had just been witnessing something which, though he did not fully
understand it, he felt no eyes ought to have witnessed; he was hot and
shaken with the thought that his own unwilling but necessary presence
had been an outrage. . . . But since he was there, as he knew, to answer
what he was asked, and since the Marquis de Kersaint could ask anything
of him, even to his life, he had stayed, and averted his eyes through
the storm of questioning, behind which could be divined a man’s very
soul on the rack—till that final bowing of the proud, unhappy head over
the battered trinket that Roland had withdrawn from his own neck and
held out as proof irrefragable . . . yet a proof of what he still did
not know.
He was so agitated that it was only after a few seconds of this
self-imposed vigil that he realised he was facing an empty room. The
Abbé was not there, the Comte was not there. And in a minute or two
more, still hearing no movement from within he thought, “I must not stay
here; he would not like it . . . I must tell the Abbé something. But I
must also contrive that no one else goes in.” And, casting a glance on
the wasted victuals of that supper-table which he had been so
instrumental in breaking up, he went out.
A little later he was knocking at the aumônier’s door. M. Chassin,
barely entered himself, opened it. His face lit up when he saw who stood
there.
“My dear boy, I am glad to see you! Come in!”
Roland still hesitated. “Are you alone, mon père?”
“Absolutely, my child. Come in!” He almost steered him in. “Now sit
down, and we will have a talk. I was hoping that you would come.”
But Roland would not sit down. In his young mind he was afraid, if he
did that, of being led into saying more than he wanted to say. He did
not know how much he ought to reveal. As a matter of fact he hated
saying anything at all about what he had seen, but, bewildered as he
was, he felt that the Abbé had better be told something.
Standing there by the bed, he began at the end. “I . . . I ventured to
tell the officer of the guard that no one was to approach M. le Marquis
to-night except through you—because of his wound,” he said.
“Excellent! Very good indeed!” said the priest, and he clapped him on
the shoulder. Roland wondered a little why he seemed so elated; to him,
fresh from that scene with his leader, it did not seem quite decent.
“You are perhaps going to see him now, mon père?” he hazarded.
“God forbid, my son! If ever a man’s privacy should be respected, his
should be at this moment . . . if you have done what I prayed you might
be doing!”
“But, Monsieur l’Abbé,” besought the perplexed and almost unhappy
Roland, “what is it that I have done? What is it all?”
“Tell me first what you did do?” said the priest. “No,”—for the boy had
instantly turned away and was showing a disposition to go—“I do not
want to hear anything about M. de Kersaint. I can see from your face how
you feel about it. I only want to know this—how did you convince him
. . . if you did . . . that Mme Vidal, who has some brown specks in one
of her eyes, was . . . someone he had known before?”
“I showed him,” said Roland, looking at the floor, “a little old locket
she gave me when I left. And when he saw that——” He stopped dead.
“Yes, yes,” said the priest, putting a hand on his arm. “When he saw
that he was convinced, was he not? That’s all it is necessary for me to
know, my child. Please God the rest will come right now.”
“O, Monsieur l’Abbé, couldn’t you tell me _what_ is to come right?”
“Not just yet,” said M. Chassin, smiling. “But you shall know soon.
Anyhow, my son, you can go to bed, as I hope you are about to do, with
the reflection that you have this evening done the best day’s work you
ever did in your young life. . . . I think you have not yet had your
scolding for going to Mirabel? No! Well, you will never get it
now——from M. de Kersaint.” And adding, “Go to bed! God bless you!” he,
to Roland’s astonishment, bestowed upon him a hearty embrace.
And the author of so much disturbance, somewhat comforted, lay down a
little later by the side of Artamène and Lucien, whose scrupulous
abstention, on his request, from all enquiries about his supper-party
seemed a thing phenomenal, an almost chilly lack. So, also, did the
absence of the little locket and its chain from Roland’s own neck.
(2)
How well inspired M. l’Abbé Chassin, for his part, had been to lie down
to sleep that night almost fully dressed, was proved at about a quarter
to five next morning, when he woke to find M. du Ménars, rather scantily
clothed, standing beside his bed. He blinked up at him a moment, for if
he had expected to be roused by anyone, it was by Gaston himself.
“Do you know where de Brencourt is, Abbé?” asked the Comte’s next in
rank. “He is nowhere to be found, and I must see either him or the
Marquis at once, the Marquis by preference. But for that I want your
permission, as I understand he was not to be disturbed without it.”
“What has happened?” asked the Abbé, getting off the bed.
“Cadoudal has just sent an express to say that the English convoy with
muskets and ammunition for the Morbihan which he was expecting has
arrived—arrived two days ago,” he added, glancing at the open letter in
his hand, “but that, knowing M. de Kersaint to be in need of both, and
that he would probably be in a position to repay him in kind later on,
he detached one ship for us before it unloaded, and directed it to put
in at Sainte-Brigitte, and as the wind is favourable it ought to be
there this evening. Splendid news—provided we can reach the coast
quickly. And of course we shall want every man we can get together to
cover the disembarkation, for the Blues are certain to get wind of it.”
“I will rouse the Marquis instantly,” said M. Chassin. “Only do me the
favour, Monsieur du Ménars, of allowing me to see him first. He was much
indisposed last night. . . .”
* * * * *
And a few seconds later, with Cadoudal’s despatch in his hand, he was
knocking gently on his foster-brother’s door. Receiving no answer he
tried the handle. To his surprise it gave, so he went in, shutting the
door quickly.
It was light, of course; had been light for long enough, added to which
the sun would soon be up. All the eastern sky already expected him. But
in the room there still survived the pale, forgotten ghost of a candle
flame, and the open window was curtained over. And by the window, fully
dressed, his sound arm stretched out along the wide ledge, his head sunk
forward on that arm, sat Gaston de Trélan asleep. At least he did not
move until the priest touched him on the shoulder.
“Who is it?” he asked without moving. “I thought the door was locked.”
“It is I, Pierre,” answered the Abbé, his voice very stirred. “Gaston,
my brother . . .”
And his brother sighed, lifted his head, and pulled himself up from the
sill, stiffly, as if he had been there a long time. In his one available
hand he held something tightly. He looked like a man who has had as much
as he can bear in this world, from whom shock has shorn away everything,
even the power to feel joy.
“I fell asleep, I think,” he said uncertainly. “I suppose you have come
to tell me, Pierre, that it is all a dream?”
“No, thank the ever-merciful God, it is true. Look in your hand!”
The Duc de Trélan obeyed him, opening his fingers with difficulty, as if
they too were stiff. And he gazed at the little locket, at the worn,
dangling chain, as a man sleepwalking or entranced might gaze. Then he
said, in one and the same breath, “_It can’t, it can’t be true! . . . I
must start for Mirabel instantly!_” and rose to his feet.
The Abbé faced him. “Something is asked of you, Gaston, before you meet
her. As a soldier . . . You did not hear a horseman gallop into the yard
a short time ago?”
The sleepwalker shook his head mutely. “Who was it?” he asked with
indifference.
“A messenger in haste from Georges—with great news. He brought this. M.
du Ménars opened it, and is outside now, waiting to consult you.” And he
held out the open despatch.
The wounded man transferred the locket to the keeping of his hampered
right hand, and took it. A quick touch of colour shot into his face as
he read, and he bit his lip hard. Then, even paler than before, he held
out the letter again. “Tell du Ménars and de Brencourt to see to it
then, Pierre. I must start for Mirabel at once.”
The priest said nothing, and made no motion to take the despatch, but
looked at him with some of his own steady colour fading, a most unusual
phenomenon. Ah, was that inherent wilfulness going to ruin this also!
“You do not approve?” said Gaston de Trélan sharply. “But how could you
understand! I would go to her over a world in flames!”
“And over your own honour, too?—Gaston, Gaston, reflect a moment, I
implore you! Do not spoil this almost incredible miracle that God has
wrought for you by snatching at it before the hour! See how she has been
preserved for you all these years, how wonderfully the knowledge of it
has come to light, and have patience a few days longer! For this
unexpected coming of arms—why, it is the fulfilment of your greatest
desire!”
“I have a greater now,” said Gaston de Trélan, looking far beyond him.
“Are you human, Pierre, that you do not realise it?” Cadoudal’s despatch
was almost crumpled to nothing in his clenched hand; he became aware of
it. “Take this, before I—But, my God, that it should have come to-day!”
This time the priest accepted the letter, and retained the hand that
gave it him as well. “Mon frère, consider!” he said pleadingly. “It only
means the shortest of delays. You can hasten to Mirabel afterwards.”
“Yes,” said his brother with an indescribable intonation, “If you will
guarantee that I shall still be alive—_afterwards_!” And he withdrew
his hand.
There indeed lay the hazard, and they both knew it. Disabled, too, as he
was, he might well be killed before that meeting could take place, for
there would be fighting over this business of the convoy. And death, the
long desired, had terrors for him now.
Nevertheless the little priest did not budge. Gaston would thank him for
it, he knew, when his brain was clear of this tremendous shock.
“No, my first duty is to her,” went on the Duc de Trélan with all his
old stubbornness. “I can never offer her sufficient reparation; at least
what I can offer her shall be instant. And—she may be in danger there!
I have plenty of competent officers; de Brencourt, du Ménars can handle
the men as well as I for this affair. It will not amount to more than a
skirmish at most—perhaps there will be no collision with the
Republicans at all.”
“Then why,” said the Abbé very low, looking at the floor, “did you speak
just now of the possibility of your falling yourself before you and she
could meet?”
His shot went home. The tired eyes flashed like steel. “Pierre!” said
the Duc de Trélan in a warning voice.
The priest raised his head. There were tears in his own eyes. “The men
are untried, Gaston, most of them. They will follow _you_, but who
really knows whether they will follow du Ménars? And the Comte de
Brencourt—no one knows where he is. There may be no big engagement with
the Republicans over this business, but it will be no easy task to cover
the disembarkation and get the arms away from Sainte-Brigitte. You are a
soldier; I do not need to tell you that. With these peasants it will
need the most skilful leadership. And . . . to throw away, after all our
prayers, the chance of arming Finistère! My brother, my brother . . .”
But his brother had already turned away and was at the window, his back
to him, and the priest heard him say in a stifled voice, “Finistère,
Finistère . . . O my God, what a refinement of cruelty!”
The sun was up now; the curtain could not withhold it. In the silence
could be heard the tread of M. du Ménars as he walked up and down in the
room outside—waiting. Pierre Chassin looked at the crumpled despatch
that he held, and its characters seemed to him like the writing on the
wall. Yet how natural was the impulse to disregard it—how brutal to
stand in the way of disregarding it . . . . But because he loved the man
by the window so much he struck again at him, and harder.
“You said just now, Gaston, that your first duty was to your wife. Yes,
I think it is, but only because your duty to your King and your position
coincide with it—risen though she be from the dead. Think for a moment
of her—what she would choose—not of your own most natural desires!
Which would she have, that you should be false to your trust in order to
hasten to her, or that you fulfil it first, setting her second . . .
even” his voice shook a little, “even if need be, that you should die in
fulfilling it. O—forgive me, my brother—you know which she would have
. . .”
But Gaston gave no sign.
“Forgive me, too,” resumed Pierre rather brokenly, “for saying things so
harsh _now_! But this is the testing-moment; you will never meet another
more crucial. You could not lay before your noble wife a nobler
reparation than this—to put your fidelity to a trust before the
instincts of your own heart. . . .”
The words died away as his own heart sank. And had he gone too far? He
knew that no other man would have ventured to say a tithe as much to
that haughty and wounded spirit. But he knew, too, with conviction, that
Gaston’s better self must echo every cruel word. And as the tall figure
still stood motionless, the forehead leaning on the bent left arm
against the frame of the curtained window, Pierre Chassin prayed as he
had not prayed even for their reunion, that the man faced with so tense
a choice should not fail.
“Of course, you have seen her,” said the Duc at last, breaking the
vibrating silence, but in a voice that told how slowly mental
circulation was coming back to him. “You have seen her . . . spoken with
her! Pierre, you knew all this then—knew and never told me!—Concierge
at Mirabel! It is like a nightmare!”
Indeed there was much to explain—but not now. “I only knew at the
eleventh hour,” said the priest quickly. “And under the seal, Gaston; so
I could not tell you. My promise to you prevented my telling her before
I had time to consider whether I were justified in breaking it. That
time was never given me; but had I not had to leave in such haste I
should have told her. But—listen, Gaston, for God’s sake—all may yet
come right of itself, for I pressed her so strongly to come to Brittany
in person to see the ‘Marquis de Kersaint,’ giving her full directions,
that I fully believe she will come. And if the sword lies between you
and that meeting she would urge you——”
“To take it up,” said the leader of Finistère. “Yes, yes. You are right.
I don’t see things clearly this morning.” He drew a long breath, jerked
back the little curtain from before the casement, and the risen sun
entered gloriously. Then he turned round, his figure dark against it,
and said, in his voice of everyday,
“Tell du Ménars to come in, Pierre.”
The Abbé went quickly up to him and kissed him.
CHAPTER X
“AFTERWARDS”
(1)
Not Artamène de la Vergne himself had received the command to boot and
saddle, which set the Clos-aux-Grives in such a pleasurable commotion at
sunrise that morning, more jubilantly than Lucien du Boisfossé. None of
the three had been more thrilled than he with the joyful news about the
English frigate and its cargo, and the prospect of a brush with the
Blues before that cargo could be secured.
But alas for those bright anticipations! The youthful philosopher was
destined to have no hand in disembarking barrels of powder on the beach
of Sainte-Brigitte. Because M. de Kersaint considered him the youngest
officer with a head on his shoulders—how gladly would poor Lucien have
foregone that flattering opinion!—he had been left behind with thirty
men or so to guard the deserted headquarters. And there, late the next
afternoon, he still was, trying to read Rabelais in the empty ‘nursery,’
in spite of a headache. For on top of his head, bandaged up like a
mummy’s, there was a fairly extensive sabre cut—though there had been
no fighting at the Clos-aux-Grives. But Lucien had seen some rather
murderous fighting, for all that.
It was M. de Brencourt who was the _fons et origo_ of that headache—M.
de Brencourt who had so mysteriously disappeared, who could not be found
for any searching before the column started on its march to the sea
. . . but who had just as mysteriously reappeared, about four hours
after its departure, to fall into such a paroxysm of rage and despair
when he learnt what had happened as Lucien hoped never to witness again.
It was plain that the Comte feared Lucien and everyone else would
attribute his strange defection (of which he offered no explanation) to
cowardice, an idea which had never entered the youth’s head, and which
he endeavoured tactfully to convey to his superior would enter the head
of no living man who knew him. In the end the Comte did what du
Boisfossé had seen from the first he would do—rode off like a madman
along the road to the sea.
In a couple of hours he was back again, his roan horse a lather. It
seemed that when he had got a certain distance he had heard a piece of
news which had sent him back as hard as he could gallop. The Blues had
got wind of the convoy, and it seemed likely that they would attack the
Chouans in force from the far side of Sainte-Brigitte. That could not
concern M. de Brencourt now, but what had sent him back was the news
that a smaller body—of cavalry, it was said—were probably setting out
to fall upon their rear from the north-east. This contingent would pass
within some six or seven miles of Lanvennec. And, since every available
Chouan in the district who possessed arms had gone with the Marquis de
Kersaint, M. de Brencourt proposed to take the headquarters guard, all
but a man or two, and ambush this column at a certain ford which it must
cross—if he could get there in time.
It was not for Lucien to protest; M. de Brencourt was not merely his
superior officer, but the second-in-command. And the youth was only too
pleased at the prospect of seeing some fighting after all, and perhaps
doing a great service to his departed comrades. For this was how its
originator seemed to regard the enterprise. So they set out, and they
did get there in time, and yesterday, almost at this hour, Lucien had
found himself, musket in hand, kneeling with the rest behind a fringe of
willows on the bank of a broadish stream. And as they waited, and the
willow leaves tickled his nose, M. du Boisfossé, who had only just
learnt from the Comte the numerical strength of the enemy, began to
realise that thirty men, even posted as they were, with all the
advantage of a surprise, could hardly hope to stop or account for two
hundred and fifty horsemen, and that M. de Brencourt was doing something
that was a great deal more than rash. Could it be that he wanted to get
himself killed? If so, he possibly had a right to indulge this fancy,
but hardly to include him, du Boisfossé, and the major part of the
headquarters guard in his desire. However . . .
Now, looking back on yesterday’s mêlée, the young philosopher, though he
had no reason to modify this view of the Comte’s motives when he
remembered how recklessly that gentleman had exposed himself throughout,
knew at least that the second-in-command could congratulate himself on
having caused the foe, after all, something worse than confusion and
delay. For the Republicans, counting presumably on annexing the English
muskets to their own use, had with them, and in the front of the column
too, some empty ammunition waggons, and these were their bane. At the
very first volley, poured into their unsuspecting ranks just as they
were about to ford the stream, the now riderless horses of one of these
waggons had dashed down into the river, and being there instantly shot,
and the waggon overturned by their dying struggles, the narrow passage
was for some time entirely blocked, while a hail of bullets came from
the invisible marksmen on the opposite bank. Undoubtedly the Blues lost
their heads in the surprise of it, or they would have rushed the ford
and discovered how lightly it was held, but in the turmoil many saddles
were emptied before the passage was clear. When at last they splashed
over they were in too much haste to investigate the willows, but their
infuriated rear ranks, without drawing rein, did use the sabre on anyone
they could see—and Lucien happened to be one of these.
He woke up to find himself lying on the trampled, muddy bank, amid a
strong smell of bruised peppermint. M. de Brencourt himself was bathing
his head, and told him that he had had a nasty knock, but that, luckily,
the blade had turned. Two of their men had been less fortunate.
But the ford! Lucien dreamed of it that night; yet what he still saw
with most particularity was none of the slain cavalrymen, but one dead
rawboned chestnut horse, which lay pathetically with outstretched neck
in the stream which was not deep enough to float it, the cut traces
bobbing on the current.
And now the youth, relieved of his command, since the Comte was at the
farmhouse, sat in the nursery and longed for its other occupants. M. de
Brencourt had been unwontedly genial to him, and really solicitous about
his hurt, but his manner was sometimes very strange, he was restless to
an extraordinary degree, and looked as if he had not slept for nights.
And though rumours were beginning to come in of the complete success of
the expedition, rumours indeed that it had beaten off the enemy and was
on its way back with what it had gone to fetch, M. de Kersaint’s chief
of staff seemed in no way uplifted by them. Lucien could not make him
out.
He was in fact thinking about him now when the door of the nursery
opened a little way and a small barefooted boy looked timidly in.
“Hallo!” said the young man. “What do you want, mon gars? Come in!”
“Yes, go in, child, and tell us what you want,” commanded de Brencourt,
appearing at that moment behind him. “Why, you are from the Ferme des
Vieilles, are you not—Le Blé-aux-Champs’ brother?”
The boy, half frightened, half alert, looked up with dark eyes at the
gentleman who had him by the shoulder. “Yes, Monsieur le Comte.”
“You came to see if he was back, I suppose?”
“No, Monsieur le Comte. I came on a message,” said the boy, rubbing one
bare and dirty foot against the ankle of the other. “I knew they were
not back. But soon they will be. There is dust hanging over the road
from the sea.”
“Ah, a good scout already,” observed M. de Brencourt, releasing him.
“How is that head, du Boisfossé?”
“Better, thank you, sir,” responded Lucien politely. “How soon do you
think they will be here?”
The Comte gave an odd little movement of the shoulders, as if to say
that the matter did not interest him. He was certainly very strange.
“Well, and what did you come here for, child?” he asked carelessly.
“Only to say that there is a lady from Paris at our farm,” responded the
small messenger, “and that she wishes to wait on M. le Marquis when he
returns. That is all, Monsieur.”
It seemed, however, to be more than enough for the Comte de Brencourt.
He grabbed hold of the small shoulder again, almost throwing the child
off his balance.
“What did you say! A lady from Paris asking for the Marquis?”
“Yes,” said the boy, wriggling; and his face turned sulky, just like his
elder brother’s.
“Well, go on!” said the Comte, shaking him.
“There is nothing else,” muttered Mercury. “She came yesterday. She is
waiting. And when M. le Marquis returns . . . Let me go, Monsieur le
Comte—I have to drive the cow home.”
Without another word M. de Brencourt dragged the boy out of the room.
The expression on his face was startling. So was the amazement on
Lucien’s.
And about two minutes later the young man was craning his swathed head
recklessly out of the window. There had been a sudden clatter of hoofs
on the cobbles of the yard, but the rider was already gone.
“Well,” thought M. du Boisfossé, “the mysterious lady may have intended
to interview M. le Marquis, but I think it is M. le Comte whom she will
see first. Here, perhaps, is some explanation of—everything! Oh, why
are Roland and Artamène not back!”
(2)
They were not far away. That dust above the road from the sea hung over
a column winding triumphantly along, with a string of country carts in
its midst piled high with the cases and barrels which, since dawn, they
had been receiving from the English sailors on the beach at
Sainte-Brigitte. The Chouans were intoxicated with their success; had
they not yesterday, before ever arriving at the little bay, routed what
seemed to them a huge body of Blues; had not hostile cavalry, too,
broken harmlessly during the night on the covering force which M. le
Marquis had so wisely stationed on the road to protect his operations?
Vaguely they themselves realised that they had been brilliantly handled,
and assented without hesitation to the opinion of hardbitten veterans of
former wars like Sans-Souci and Fleur d’Epine when they said, “We have a
great general—another Charette, perhaps.”
At the head of his victorious array, rather weary from strain and want
of sleep, his right arm still in a sling, but erect and easy as ever,
rode Gaston de Trélan on the beautiful black horse which had once been
Marthe de la Vergne’s. By his side was M. du Ménars, and the two were
already discussing the best method of distributing the muskets and
ammunition through the department, and how far they would meet their
needs till the gold of Mirabel could procure more.
“Still, this is an excellent beginning,” observed M. du Ménars
contentedly. “We shall be in soon now. . . . I wonder if we shall find
any news of de Brencourt when we get back? His disappearance at this
juncture is the most inexplicable thing I ever heard of. Has it occurred
to you, Marquis, that it might conceivably be the result of foul play?”
His leader looked round at him, evidently startled. Du Ménars knew that
he had had very little time for any speculation about his missing
subordinate.
“Foul play?” he ejaculated. “No, I had not thought of that. I know no
more than you why . . . _My God_!”
And his horse suddenly bounded forward as if he had unconsciously driven
in the spurs. Checking him, he turned his head sharply aside, then
addressed his aide-de-camp over his shoulder.
“Monsieur de Céligny, have the goodness to ride back till you come to
the Abbé, and tell him that I must speak to him at once. I will wait for
him here, by the side of the road. Don’t halt the column, du Ménars; go
on and I will catch you up.”
And as Roland turned to obey he rode across to the side of the road, and
sat there waiting while the ranks trudged past. In these, sooner or
later, would come the Abbé, who always marched with the men. At last the
priest came abreast, and stepping aside, stood by the black horse and
its rider, while the loaded carts and their escort passed. When the
embroidered jacket, baggy breeches and wide-brimmed hat of the last
Chouan had gone by, his foster-brother swung off his steed. His face was
fearfully stern.
“Pierre,” he said in a voice unlike his own, “a terrible thought has
just come to me. I cannot understand why I have not had it earlier. As
de Brencourt knew my wife in the old days,” he paused; the priest
guessed only too well what was coming, “—as he knew her personally, he
must have been aware that she was alive—was at Mirabel—and . . .
_deliberately kept the knowledge from me!_”
The priest looked down at the dusty road. “I am afraid that he did,
Gaston.”
“_God!_” said Gaston de Trélan, and smote his fist upon his saddle. The
thoroughbred reared a little, and the Abbé caught the reins.
“I tried to force him to tell you. But my own position was so
difficult,” he began.
“To keep silent after I had consented to meet him,” exclaimed the Duc,
his eyes blazing, “after he had taken my hand . . . it revolts me! I can
hardly believe it—be quiet, Zéphyr!”
“He was mad, I suppose, at seeing her again,” said the priest, shaking
his head. “It has revolted me, too. Perhaps his disappearance—Where are
you going, Gaston?”
For M. de Trélan, already back in the saddle, was turning his horse’s
head in the opposite direction.
“I must get away for a little,” he said, very grim. “This is a
thunderbolt—horrible. I must have time to get accustomed to it before I
can face anybody. Go on after the men, Pierre; do not get left behind.”
He set spurs to his horse in earnest; Zéphyr went half across to the
opposite bank, tried vainly to get his head down, and next moment was
going down the road like an arrow, and, annoyed at his cavalier
treatment, pulling so hard that for a moment or two his rider thought
that he would prove too much for his bridle hand, and regretted his
disabled right arm. The struggle for mastery, however, gave him some
physical relief in the black whirlwind of repulsion and horror that had
broken on him. Between the demands of leadership and the overwhelming
news about his wife, he had had no time or inclination these two days to
think out the part de Brencourt had played—scarcely time, indeed, till
this homeward march, to think of him at all, in spite of his singular
disappearance. And now the realisation of the Comte’s cold-blooded
treachery and deceit, coming on top of his provocations, on top of the
duel, on top of his own sparing of him, despite his resolve to the
contrary—for Gaston de Trélan was no more exclusively right-handed than
another—and, most repulsive of all, on top of their reconciliation
. . . it was surely enough to put any decent man beside himself, and how
much more the man who had been his victim! He turned Zéphyr on to a
track that made for the lande, and for a space, in which time hardly
seemed to exist, galloped him madly over the heather.
Gradually he began to regain control over himself, too. The man had
probably taken himself off for good; though he could never forgive him,
nor forget what he had done, he would not be called upon to meet him
again. And he had not succeeded in his devil’s work. So he himself would
rather think of this tremendous news of Valentine’s survival—if indeed
it were not after all some mistake, some cruel imposture, which he would
discover for such when he got to Mirabel.
—No, the evidence was too strong! She _was_ there—no impostress, but
the real Valentine; not the dead Valentine whom he had grown to love and
look to, but the living. And so their meeting was to be in this world
after all—though he himself in the last few days had so nearly gone to
another. And how would the living Valentine receive him? Perhaps she
would altogether turn from him. Could he blame her if she did?
He rode off the lande by way of the Ferme des Vieilles, Zéphyr by this
time quieted, indeed exhausted. “Poor Zéphyr!” said his master
remorsefully. “Because I have been treated like a brute, I have treated
you like one!”
As he drew near the farm he saw the old mother of the family outside,
violently agitating her arms and crying, “Monsieur le Marquis! Monsieur
le Marquis!”
He drew rein. “What is it, mother? Your sons are safe; Le Blé-aux-Champs
has done very well.”
The old woman’s wrinkled face lighted up. “Ste. Anne be praised! But it
is not that, Monsieur le Marquis. I thought I had better make sure if
you had met the lady out there on the lande—among the Stones, I think
she is.”
“Lady! what lady?”
“You have not come from the Clos-aux-Grives, then? You have not had the
message I sent by Yvot?”
“What message?—No, I have not been there yet. Out with it, in Heaven’s
name!”
“A lady has come from Paris to see you, Monsieur le Marquis; she arrived
yesterday. So we gave her a bed here—poor lying, but the best we could
do till you——”
“Here! Now! With you?” And in a second he was on the road by her side.
“Ma Doué, Monsieur le Marquis, how you startled me, getting off so
quickly! No, she is not here now—she went out on the lande a little
while ago, and I thought I saw her walking in the Allée. Being from
Paris she does not understand how evil they are, the Old Ones, about
sundown, though I warned her . . . Bless us, Monsieur le Marquis, you
look as if someone had put a spell on you!”
For, stricken with an odd silence, and very pale, the leader of
Finistère had taken a step or two backwards, till he was brought up by
his horse’s quarter, and there he was staring at her, his hand to his
head.
“No, it is the breaking of a spell, please God!” said he, recovering
himself. “I will go and find this lady on the lande. It may be that
. . . that she will not return to you, Mère Salaun.”
He took Zéphyr by the bridle, and went back on to the heather. But, once
out of sight, he drew a long shuddering breath, and throwing his arm
over Zéphyr’s crest, pressed his forehead against the warm satin of his
neck, and so remained for a while.
And Zéphyr, convinced by now that the master he knew had returned to
him, put his head round and lipped at his shoulder. Then he cocked his
little ears and listened. Far away, the beat of another horse’s hoofs
was audible on the highroad. His rider gave no sign of having heard it,
but in a moment or two took the bridle again and went forward towards
the Allée des Vieilles.
CHAPTER XI
AMONG THE WATCHERS
(1)
Versailles, Dreux, Alençon, Rennes, Pontivy—like beads on a chaplet
they had slid past Valentine de Trélan, like locks on a smooth river or
canal, opened for her by that bit of paper in Barras’ handwriting. She
was herself amazed by the ease of her journey, that journey which was
really a flight, hardly realising how much things were changed from the
days, for instance, of the Terror, and how many people travelled
comfortably now-a-days and contrived to elude showing their passports if
they were out of date. And she had in her possession something much more
potent than a mere passport. Whether she were taken for a political
power, or for one of the many ladies in whom the raffish Director was
interested—or for a combination of both, like Mme Tallien—Valentine
neither knew nor cared; at any rate whenever she produced the laissez
passer she was shown deference—till she got into the country districts
of that land of the leal, farther Brittany. Here the municipalities
indeed were Republican, but at one or two small places where she had to
halt Barras’ signature commanded anything but reverence, though it had
to be obeyed. Twice she distinctly heard the word “spy” whispered of
her.
But once she had passed Scaër and was in full Finistère it was better,
for here she could use the private directions which the Abbé had given
her. And it was by the employment of these that she finally arrived,
without mishap, at the Ferme des Vieilles, to which the Abbé had
directed her.
The little old farmhouse by the roadside looked at her cunningly and
rather inhospitably, she thought, from its tiny peering windows. Beyond
it was a wide stretch of moorland with heather, and, in one place, long
strange rows of upright stones. She descended from the farmer’s hooded
cart by which she had replaced the diligence at her last stopping-place
and knocked at the open half-door. Inside, a beautiful, grave and dirty
little girl of six or so, dressed in all respects like a grown woman of
the sixteenth century, stuck a finger in her mouth and stared at her.
“Mignonne,” said Valentine, stooping over the half-door “_Ema ar bleun
er balan_—the broom is in flower.”
“_Tremenet er ar goanv_—the winter is past,” responded an old woman,
coming into view. “Enter, Madame!”
* * * * *
Half an hour later Valentine was being served with a rough meal, the
children standing round, awed, and she had learnt all there was to know;
how the Marquis de Kersaint and practically all the officers from the
headquarters, even the aumônier, were gone to the sea to fetch a convoy
of arms, and that to interview the man whom she had come so far to meet
she must wait, probably, till the day after to-morrow. Meanwhile Mère
Salaun offered her hospitality, premising (and justly) that it was not
fit for a lady from Paris.
And indeed Mme de Trélan slept but ill that night in the _lit clos_ put
at her disposal, though she had known in prison much less comfortable
sleeping-places. But it was not only the unwonted experience of passing
the night in a sort of hutch which kept her wakeful, it was partly the
dread lest M. de Kersaint should never return from this expedition—for
she had been told there would be fighting.
No news next morning, but a rumour that there had been a fierce
encounter between the Chouans and the Blues. Valentine was restless. She
would have liked to go to the Clos-aux-Grives, but thought it would be
unfitting; and it was besides unnecessary, since Mère Salaun had
instituted the ten-year-old Yvot as a courier.
So she walked on the lande, where the wind blew over the wide spaces,
and tried to be patient.
“What are those great avenues of stones that I saw in the distance this
morning?” she asked at the mid-day meal. “There seem to be miles of
them.”
“Those, Madame,” said her hostess, pouring out the milk for the
children, “are Les Vieilles, the Old Ones, the Old Women. Some call them
Les Veilleuses, the Watchers.”
“Your farm is, then, named after them?” commented Mme de Trélan.
“Unfortunately,” replied Mère Salaun, compressing her wrinkled lips. And
seeing Valentine’s look of enquiry, she went on, “They are not . . . not
benevolent, Les Vieilles. Do not go among them much, Madame, especially
after sundown, if you want to keep the wish of your heart. For if they
can they will take it from you.”
What a strange idea! “Who set them up?” asked the Duchesse.
Mère Salaun shook her head. “We do not know. Fetch Madame’s crêpe from
the hearth, Corentine.”
Little Yvot fidgeted. “But, Madame,” he broke in, in his shrill voice,
“nobody set them up. A long while ago they were a queen’s ladies, and a
magician turned them into stones. And on one night in the year, on
Midsummer Eve, they leave their places one by one and go to the pool to
drink—because you see, Madame, they were alive once, and they are still
thirsty. Some people think they eat, too, and put food for them. And as
they go in turn to drink you can see the gold underneath, and the rich
ornaments, in the place they have left!”
“And do people go on that night to take it?” asked Mme de Trélan as he
paused for breath.
Yvot’s eyes grew bigger and his tanned little face paled, while his
grimy hand made a rapid sign of the cross over himself. “God forbid!
There was a man once—he went to get the gold—folks begged him not to.
He never came back!”
“Well, what happened to him?” asked Valentine, interested less in the
tale than in the narrator—and somewhat appalled at the gigantic
pancake, nearly a quarter of an inch in thickness, which had appeared
before her.
“The menhir came back from the pond and caught him! He is underneath it
to-day—the one they call La Bossue, the Hunchback. You can hear him
groaning and praying to be let out sometimes. He has been there for
seventy years!”
At this climax one of the smaller children burst into tears, and Yvot
was angrily commanded by his mother to get on with his dinner. But she,
too, signed herself.
Nevertheless Valentine found herself among the stone avenues that
evening. No news had come yet, but the Allée was at such a short
distance from the farm that if it came she could easily be informed.
So she walked among the menhirs, Les Vieilles, Les Veilleuses, and the
menhirs watched her as she went, and she knew it. They were yellow with
lichen, rust-red with it, grey with it; the heather was about their deep
roots, older than the oldest trees. Ancient, terrible, venerable, four
ranks of them, they marched for ever up the rise and over it towards
some invisible goal. Valentine de Trélan with her forty-five years felt
very young, very ignorant beside them.
They had been here—planted by whom, and why?—long, long before the
overturned order of yesterday; long before its pillars had been laid,
long before Clovis and Charlemagne; they would still be here when the
name of the last King of France was forgotten. As she stood among them
she knew that she was in the oldest place of this old land of Armorica.
They were the more living in semblance, the more individual, these grey
shapes, because their slope was not alike, any more than their forms.
Some leant this way, some that; some were grotesque, some more than
grotesque; yet whatever were the purpose that possessed them, it
possessed them even terribly. Valentine wondered which was the
“hunchback” of the evil legend . . . She was afraid of them; and yet
they fascinated her.
And as she walked between their ranks she wondered how much longer she
would have to wait before she saw the Marquis de Kersaint. How calmly,
at the Ferme des Vieilles, they took this fighting—all the men away
with M. le Marquis as a matter of course. Was it true, she had asked,
that Cadoudal in the Morbihan had ordered all his young men not to marry
for the present? Quite true. And they were not marrying? No. What a
people to lead, and what a leader!
What should she do after she had talked with the Marquis? It depended on
what he told her. In any case she was come to the beginning of a new
chapter in what was left to her of the book of her life. Would Gaston’s
name be on those pages—and in what characters would it be written?
It had been a grey day, austere, not unbeautiful. Now, at the approach
of sunset, it was warming into a certain splendour. The shadows of the
watchers began to slant across the avenue like scores of pointing
fingers, and at the other end the pine trees on the rise grew darker
against what would soon be a battlemented glory of cloud. And after
sundown it was sinister here, they said; Valentine could believe it, but
the watchers had some spell to make one linger. . . .
It was as she turned from looking at the distant pines and the sunset
that she became aware she was not alone in the Allée des Vieilles. Some
way off a man was standing by one of the tallest menhirs; indeed, she
almost thought that he was leaning against it. It gave her a start at
first to find that, when she had thought she was alone, she was being
observed. He must have ridden up unheard on the heather, for outside the
double avenue a black horse was bending its head towards that arid
nourishment. All she could see of its rider at this distance was that he
was tall, that he wore a long close-fitting dark redingote, that he had
a white sash round his middle, and a sword.
All at once she thought, “How stupid of me; it is a Royalist, one of M.
de Kersaint’s officers, probably, back from the fighting. Perhaps it is
even M. de Kersaint himself, ridden over from his headquarters, on
hearing that I am here, to wait on me. That is very courteous of him.
But why, since he must see me, does he not move, or come to meet me?
. . . Perhaps, if he is from the fighting, he is hurt.” And then indeed
she saw that he carried his right arm in a sling.
She began in her turn to go towards him. Still she could not see his
face; he had his hat rammed low over his eyes. In the hat, as she now
noticed for the first time, was a white plume. That feather showed her
that it must be M. de Kersaint himself, and her heart beat a little
faster. Yet how strange of him to remain covered when, plainly, he must
see her advancing, and not to move a step to meet her. But she went on
nevertheless, till only ten yards or so separated them.
And the Royalist still stood motionless, the sunset glow falling on him,
watching her so intently that he gave the effect of holding his breath.
Valentine began to be a little frightened; his behaviour was so
unaccountable. And suddenly the old Breton woman’s warning came back to
her. Was the wish of her heart, then, going to be reft from her here
among Les Vieilles; was she to learn from this man, among the covetous
old stones, that Gaston was dead—to learn it this time without
possibility of doubt? Was that why he was so still—because he knew her
errand? She stopped.
Her stopping seemed to galvanise the watcher into life. He moved a
little forward from the menhir which had been supporting him, and put up
his left hand to his hat as though to remove it. But still he did not
take it off.
“Madame de Trélan!”
That voice! . . .
She quivered as though she had been shot and put her hands to her
breast. “Dear God!” she said. “Who is it? Who is it?”
“_Valentine!_” said the voice again.
And in a single movement the Royalist officer uncovered, flung his hat
from him, and was at her feet. But even with the previous warning of the
voice, even with his tardy uncovering, the shock was too much for a
woman who was no longer young. It was as one sees something a long way
off that she saw him kneeling there with bent head; but when he raised
it, and his face was visible, the blood drummed in her ears. The grey
watchers bowed suddenly towards her, the heather began to give way
beneath her feet. “Gaston!” she sighed, putting out her hands helplessly
like a frightened child, “Gaston—I’m falling! . . .” The heather gave
way altogether. . . .
(2)
The cold grey sea on which Valentine had been floating hither and
thither began a little to cease its swaying motion. . . . But how
curious to be on a sea at all! Yet she could hear it . . . no, it was
the wind in the pine avenue at Mirabel. But the pine avenue was nearly
all cut down now . . . It was neither, neither. She was lying in strong
arms that held her close, against a heart whose pulsations she could
hear. It began to come back. That figure by the menhir. O, Christ in
Heaven!—but that was a dream!
Yet kisses, not the kisses of a dream, were being laid on her closed
eyes, her hair, her brow—though none upon her lips—and with them went
passionate words of supplication for forgiveness, and words of a meaning
far transcending that . . . words of love, heartbroken words. But he who
thus addressed her must have thought her still unconscious when he dared
to speak them, for when she opened her eyes and stirred she was very
gently laid down out of his grasp upon the heather, and this Royalist
officer who was her husband knelt silently there beside her, with his
face buried in his hands.
At that relaxing hold Valentine might have thought—a thousand
things—but, dizzy and confused though she still was, she had heard, and
felt. There was no room for surmises or mistakes.
“Gaston,” she said faintly, lingering on the name. “O Gaston . . . if
you are real . . . your arms!”
His hands came down, and she saw his face, ravaged, older, infinitely
changed.
“Dare I hold you in my arms, Valentine?” He was shaking as he said it.
From where she lay she gave him one look, and held out her hands the
second time.
“O my wife, my saint!” said Gaston de Trélan, choking. He stooped and
gathered her once more to his breast.
And, after all, so unbelievable was it, that the long embrace did seem
to belong to another world than this—a far world, but the only
real. . . .
That passed. The heather became heather again, the air the air of earth.
Somehow he was helping the living Valentine whom he held to her feet,
and was leading her towards the nearest menhir—that indeed against
which he had himself been leaning. Directly he saw that she could stand
alone, and could take some support, if she wished it, from the great
granite finger, he threw himself on his knees before her.
“Valentine, this is where I should be!” he broke out uncontrollably,
“here, at your feet, not holding you in my arms. I am not worthy of
that, Valentine—Valentine, how can I even ask for forgiveness? But I do
ask for it—I do ask! For seven years I have sought it, and I have
sometimes felt that you . . . where I thought you had gone, had given it
to me.” His voice broke, and, stooping that proud head of his, he did
literally kiss her feet.
“Gaston, if you love me!” she cried out, trying to stay him. “No, no
. . . and what talk is this of forgiveness? O my darling, I was wrong
too—stubborn and proud. I should have gone with you—and afterwards
. . . you never got my letters, I know it, but I should have written
again, made more efforts. O Gaston, if you love me, don’t do that!”
He lifted his head. “Letters!” he said in a dazed way. “You wrote . . .
you had no answer? I never had them!—Valentine,” and there was anguish
in his voice, “you did not think I received them . . . and left them
unanswered!”
“No, no!” she said. “No, my heart! We will talk of that presently; there
is so much to say. Only now, Gaston—I cannot bear to see you kneel to
me, my husband.”
“But there is more than that,” he said, not without difficulty. “More
than my having left you to face . . . horrors. The years before——”
“I do not remember the years before,” answered Valentine.
“At least,” said he, very low, “the years since have been yours alone.”
And still kneeling there, but with his arms about her, as she stooped to
him he kissed her on the lips.
* * * * *
Afterwards she sat propped against the menhir, and her husband half sat,
half knelt beside her, holding her hands and gazing at her as at what
indeed she was, one returned from the dead. Very briefly, and only under
the pressure of his questions, for she, too, desired chiefly to
contemplate him, she had given him the outline of that past nine years,
sliding as quickly as possible over the massacres and her subsequent
year in prison, because he turned so pale that she feared he would faint
next. And he had been wounded . . . but he said that it was an old
injury—nothing . . .
“And now, Gaston,” she said breathlessly, “you—what are you doing here
with this M. de Kersaint? Is he really a kinsman—is that why you are
here? At first—before I recognised you—I thought you must be he.”
His grasp tightened on her hands, and before he answered he put them to
his lips. “You were not mistaken, Valentine. That has been my name for
seven years, since you . . . died. O, my wife” he almost crushed her
hand, “_are_ you alive—is it not some phantasy, some illusion of this
place——”
“What!” she broke in, the colour rushing over her face and fleeing
again, “_you_ are M. de Kersaint—it was _you_ at Rivoli—it is _you_
who command Finistère for the King . . . that scarf means——”
Quite suddenly she drew away her hands and putting them over her face
burst into tears.
CHAPTER XII
THE CENTRE OF THE LABYRINTH
(1)
From the clump of pines on the rise the view down the Allée des
Vieilles, with the sunset light on it, was extensive, and figures half a
mile away were tolerably clear. The Comte de Brencourt had learnt at the
farm that he was too late, but he had come on nevertheless. He had not
reached his vantage point in time to witness the actual moment of
meeting, but, though faces were of course indistinguishable at that
distance, he had seen enough. And, grinding his teeth, with strange red
spasmodic waves passing across his eyesight, so that from time to time
he could see nothing at all, he still waited in the shadow of the clump.
He had not known why—till a few minutes ago, when they had started to
walk this way.
Yes, he knew now why he had come, and why he had endured that hell. But
they walked so slowly—and he did not want to kill her too. Her
husband’s arm was about her, and her head rested against him. Zéphyr
followed, with his incomparable grace of movement, trying now and then
to twitch a mouthful of something edible from among the heather. They
were only a couple of hundred yards away now. What was this in his own
hand—yes, of course, his pistol. And it was not moonlight this time,
but strong level sunlight, falling in the right direction. A hundred and
fifty yards. His hand must not shake now. But he must be very careful.
If only de Trélan would take his arm away, curse him! A hundred and
twenty yards, a hundred yards. . . .
* * * * *
If Valentine de Trélan had not worn that look, who knows what might not
have happened, whether the menhirs would not have had their wish, and
taken her heart’s desire from her. But what, when she was near enough,
he who loved her in his own fashion could read on her face was both
shield and sword. Crazed though he was at the moment, it smote the
pistol from his hand, the very impulse to use it from his heart. The
glory that she wore was not forgiveness, or reconciliation, or the
transient joy of a great wonder, but absolute, perfect, rounded
happiness, tranquillised ecstasy. Then all those years of desertion were
nothing; all those years when Gaston de Trélan had followed strange
fires were nothing; all the time in Mirabel, then, she had been thinking
of him, had perhaps gone there for the sake of his memory—all her life,
perhaps, she had been a ship beating against contrary winds to a haven
he had not thought existed. And now she was in harbour—no doubt of
that!
“She has the face of a saint in Paradise!” he said to himself,
trembling. At her husband’s he cast no look; he mattered less than
nothing to him.
Vain, then, his own faithfulness to her, that had led him into such
crooked and faithless paths, vain his endeavours, stained with his own
dishonour, to keep them apart. She had loved _him_ all the time, and now
. . .
There was no more to say or do. _Ite, missa est._ Artus de Brencourt
stumbled down the slope, blinded less by the sunset’s exultation as he
turned than by that sight, mounted and rode off, more cold and grey than
the immemorial watchers, with eyes from which not even hate looked out
any more.
No, one thing remained to do, and that quickly. He would have wished to
return to the Clos-aux-Grives for a few moments first, but that was
impossible, for he would risk meeting them—if _he_ brought her there.
Nor did he want to do it too near headquarters. If he could light on a
place with sufficient cover there was a chance that his body would never
be found at all. He would prefer that—not to give de Trélan the
satisfaction of knowing how thoroughly he had worsted him.
And, surely, this oak thicket a little off the road would serve, for the
road was lonely enough. He could not wait to find a better spot, for a
thirst was on him to be gone. He had done a thing for which there was no
forgiveness this side death—a thing for which he had no intention of
asking forgiveness—and, what was far more terrible to him had done it
in vain.
He dismounted at the entry to the copse. What should he do with his
horse, whose presence might betray his own? A moment’s reflection, and
he turned the animal’s head away from the direction of the
Clos-aux-Grives, and, drawing his sword, smote it hard on the flank with
the flat. The beast reared, capered, and bolted down the road. Then,
dropping the sword, M. de Brencourt plunged into the thicket.
It was not as dense as he had thought, but at the foot of this oak tree
he would be quite invisible from the road. He had no last message to
leave other than those he had written on the night of the duel and, as
it happened, left undestroyed afterwards. He had no last thoughts, for
he was incapable of any thought but one, and as for prayer, a man had no
right to it who was doing what he was doing. Nevertheless once familiar
words drifted through his brain and out again as he knelt down by the
oak-tree’s strong old roots, “. . . pray for us sinners now and in the
hour of our death” . . . but they scarcely had meaning, and his mind
seemed only a blank of wreathing fog as he put the pistol to his ear.
The weapon remained there for perhaps eight seconds, then sank.
For there comes a point when the machinery that the brain controls will
not revolve any longer. Artus de Brencourt had come to that point now.
Ridden as he had recently been with the most devastating emotions, torn
with hatred and more than half mad with jealousy, having twice tried and
failed to kill the man he hated, having lived by day on the edge of a
volcano and having scarcely slept by night, he had now to face the most
shattering experience of all—itself the direct outcome of the others.
He lacked the nerve to kill himself.
Only the tiniest muscular action was needed, the pressure of a finger,
and he had not the will power left for it. Kneeling there, the sweat
pouring off his face, he tried . . . and could not. His hand would not
even hold the weapon in position. He who but a little while ago had
tried to steal another man’s life from him had not courage left to take
his own.
The discovery, stark and sickening, broke the violent, passion-tossed
man to pieces, broke him utterly. Never in his life had he known the
taste of physical cowardice till now. A horrible nausea came over him,
and he fell forward on his face at the foot of the oak tree and lay
there, beaten at last—lay there while an oak leaf settled on his hair
and his horse, returning, trotted past again in the direction of
headquarters. But he did not hear it.
(2)
Complicated emotions of some violence had assailed M. Chassin when he
reached the Clos-aux-Grives and heard from Lucien the story of the ford,
and how M. de Brencourt had recently ridden off in haste—and especially
when he learnt why he had thus ridden off. And at that piece of
news—since the “lady from Paris” awaiting the Marquis could be no other
than Mme de Trélan herself—M. Chassin also, abandoning his duties
towards the wounded, rushed out of the farmhouse, a prey at the same
time to he knew not what dire premonitions, and to a joy and
thankfulness beyond words.
Yet where was he to go, and what was he to do? He found himself setting
out as fast as he could go for the Ferme des Vieilles, become now a
species of rendezvous. But he had hardly gone a mile, his soutane well
tucked up, when between heat, fatigue and apprehension he was asking
himself why in the name of all the saints he had not borrowed a horse.
And instantly the saints sent him one. It came trotting leisurely down
the road towards him, its bridle dangling, a riderless horse—more, a
horse that he recognised. It was the Comte de Brencourt’s roan.
The Abbé stood in the dust and smote his brow. What did this portend? At
any rate he would utilise the steed. He caught it as it passed, girt his
soutane still higher, mounted and pursued his road. And as he went he
looked from side to side, but he would not have thought of entering the
oak copse when he came to it, had not his eye been attracted by
something that glinted at the side of the road—the sword that lay
there.
The Abbé dismounted, without grace, and picked it up. He seemed to have
seen it before, though, after all, one sword was very much like another.
Perhaps the thicket would yield some explanation of the mystery. He tied
up the roan and went in.
But, in a sense, the thicket only yielded him another mystery. For, on
the root of an oaktree, with a pistol lying on the ground beside him,
was quietly seated M. de Brencourt, writing something on his knee. M.
Chassin, having expected anything in the world but this sight, stood
speechless, his cassock tucked about his waist and the drawn sword in
his hand. After a moment the Comte lifted his head, looked at him, and
seemed, with an effort—or that was the effect he gave—to recognise
him.
“I was writing to you, Abbé,” he said. “You are the person I want.”
The voice, very flat and monotonous, was unlike his own. So was his
face. His eyes were someone else’s. The Abbé did not like them.
“I have your horse, Monsieur le Comte, and your sword, I think,” he
said, for want of anything better.
“Thank you,” said the stranger under the tree in his dull, slow tones.
“As I am leaving the district at once it will be convenient to have
them. Perhaps I had better give you this.”
And, still seated there, he handed up the piece of paper on which he had
been writing. M. Chassin, advancing, took it, and read, in a nerveless
handwriting, these words addressed to himself:
“_You wanted me to go, and I am going—probably to join M. de Bourmont
in Maine, if he will have me. He is the furthest away. I have tried to
go further still, which would no doubt have pleased you better,
but——_” some words were scratched out here. “_Since I am fulfilling
your wishes, perhaps you will do me the service to report my decision in
the proper quarter, and later despatch my personal effects to me, for I
shall not enter the Clos-aux-Grives again._”
The Abbé, dumbfounded, looked at the writer. Something abnormal had
happened: what was it? And Gaston?
“You mean this?” he stammered.
“Certainly,” responded M. de Brencourt, without moving a muscle of that
expressionless face. “I have tried to shoot the Duc de Trélan”—the
priest gave an exclamation—“and failed . . . he does not know it—you
can tell him if you like . . . and I have tried to shoot myself and
failed. I do not wish to live, but if I cannot kill myself, what other
choice is there for the moment?” He brushed some bits of dead leaf off
his knees, put his pistol back into his belt, and rising, held out his
hand for his sword. “Did I leave it in the road?” he enquired, in the
same emotionless way. “Thank you. I will try to have you informed,
Monsieur l’Abbé, if I am killed when the campaign opens, as I trust I
shall be; I expect you would like to know. But you need not fear that I
shall ever seek to see either of them again.”
He slipped his sword carefully back into the scabbard, made the
petrified priest a sort of salute, and went quietly past him to the gap
in the hedge where his horse was tied.
And M. Chassin, who had come out prepared to fight dragons, turned and
stared after him dumbly, knowing not whether to give thanks or no. For
this time M. de Brencourt had frightened him. But, just as the Comte got
into the saddle, he felt a sudden violent impulse to say something that
would pierce that terrifying calm. He could not let him go like that.
Calling to him, he hurried to the gap and came out into the road beside
him and his horse. The Comte looked down at him with his mask of a face.
“Monsieur le Comte,” said the little priest earnestly, “I have a feeling
that some day, in spite of everything, you will be given an opportunity
of serving that lady you have loved and wronged . . . May God forgive
you and go with you!”
“Thank you; you are most kind,” said the mask politely, and the roan
horse moved forward.
And his whilom adversary, so unexpectedly routed, stood in the road
thinking, “It is not in Maine, but in a madhouse that he will find
himself before he is much older! God pity him! . . . But where can
Gaston be—and she?”
(3)
Could Pierre Chassin but have seen them they were sitting under the
pine-stems, unconscious of the lurking death so recently
withdrawn—sitting there very much as they had walked thither, his left
arm about her, her head on his breast; only now she held, with her own
two hands, that one hand of his fast against her, as if she feared it
would slip away again. Here was grass, a little distance from the pines,
and Zéphyr cropped it, and for a long while the brisk, tearing noise of
his browsing, the jingle of his bridle, and the sough of the wind above
them was all that they could hear . . . since the hour was too solemn,
too wonderful, for further speech.
For they both knew now, if not all, at least the most vital facts about
each other. Now, for Valentine, the seven years’ silence was
explained—and could scarcely have had a more honourable justification.
Now the idea that Gaston had not cared whether she were dead or alive
seemed blasphemy. How false, too, had been all those past conceptions of
what their meeting would be like, if ever they met again! Nothing
remained now of old wrongs, however deep, nothing of old unhappinesses,
however real, nothing of old mistakes. All these were not, before the
miracle of his personal presence, the marvel of being in his arms. It
was as if hoar frost should change, under a stronger sun than winter’s,
into the spring’s diamonds of unimaginable joy.
Here, as she rested on his heart, came on her, after the wonder, the
peace of Paradise. For this the watchers seemed to have been planted; to
this goal under the pine-trees they ran up. Take her heart’s desire from
her! why, they had given it! She would never know how nearly it had been
snatched away as soon as given. . . .
* * * * *
As for the man against whose breast she leant, nothing but what he held
had reality for him . . . and even she was not yet quite real. The few
hours during which he had known the nightmare picture in his mind to be
but a lying canvas were not sufficient to erase its effect. The singe of
his seven years’ purgatory (worse than hers, because it had been purely
mental) would not pass lightly from him, though it would pass. And this
of it burnt hot in his mind now, even in these transcendent moments—the
subtle change in her, the hair tarnished from its glory, the lines on
the delicate skin, not to be accounted for merely by the passing of
time, but his doing, his fault! If she had not fallen, there in the
Allée, he would scarcely have ventured to touch her; had she not been
(as he thought) unconscious he would never have kissed her as he had.
She was too sacred, and too profoundly wronged. Yet here she was in his
arms, willingly, generously—too great in mind to exact what a lesser
woman would have exacted. And before the depth of the love which had
survived all that hers had had to survive he was still, in spirit, on
his knees.
The sunset had burnt out before they stirred, yet the wonderful hour had
to end. Gaston de Trélan got up at last and helped his wife to her feet,
and then remained gazing at her, almost tranced. And she looked at him,
standing there above that strange battle-array of stones, tall and
resolute, with the stains of march and fight still on him, with almost
everything of the young prince of the Mirabel portrait gone. There was
no rose in his swordhilt now. . . . She drew a long breath, and held out
her hand to him, and at the touch he woke, and led her down the slope
towards the black horse, who was to carry her to the Clos-aux-Grives.
But as they went she remembered something.
“Gaston,” she said softly, “I have not come to you empty-handed. I, too,
can give you something for the cause, mon Général!” Withdrawing her hand
from his she brought out from its hiding-place and held out to him the
ruby necklace. “Like the gold, it comes from Mirabel; it was given—I
daresay you have heard by whom—to the concierge of Mirabel.”
Yet her husband, with the jewels in his hand, did not seem pleased. “But
it is the Duchesse de Trélan who will wear it,” he answered, drawing
himself up. “Permit me!” And, a little awkwardly by reason of his
injured arm, he contrived to clasp the heirloom round her neck—then,
catching her to him with a sudden gasp, said vehemently, “Never speak to
me again of Mirabel—of your being there like that! I cannot bear it!”
“But, Gaston,” she said, looking up at him, “when I was there I thought
of you nearly all the time. . . . O my dear, when you ride in triumph
into Paris with the Royalists of Finistère behind you, we two must make
a pilgrimage to Mirabel together. If it had not been for Mirabel—for
the treasure . . .”
She did not finish, for she was strained too closely. And, stooping his
head, her husband kissed her—but not as he had done on his knees in the
heather, like a worshipper. He kissed her like a lover. He was hers at
last.
BOOK IV
THE YELLOW POPPY
“But oh, the night! oh! bitter-sweet, oh, sweet!
O dark, O moon and stars, O ecstasy
Of darkness! O great mystery of love,—
In which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason’s self
Enlarges rapture—as a pebble dropt
In some full winecup over-brims the wine!”
_Aurora Leigh._
CHAPTER I
FULFILMENT
_“When Love comes tapping_
_On the pane,_
_Let not his summons_
_Be in vain;_
_—‘Enter, Sweet, bring thou_
_Sun or rain!’”_
sang Marthe de la Vergne to the harpsichord in her light sweet voice.
The strains floated through the open salon window to Valentine de Trélan
as she sat outside in the September sunshine. The music changed:
_“Should the King honour_
_My poor door;_
_—‘Take, Sire, my sword-arm_
_And my store!’_
_So spake my fathers_
_Long before.”_
There was a thrill in the young voice. Yes, thought Mme de Trélan,
Marthe, if she had been a man, would certainly have given her sword-arm
and her store to-day; in fact she had given them, in her brother,
and—another.
The chords ceased; somebody had come into the room, and Valentine
recognised her hostess’s voice, though she could not hear what she said.
She resumed the embroidery which she had put down to listen to Mlle de
la Vergne’s singing, but in a moment or two that had slipped to her lap,
and her thoughts were miles away—back at the Allée des Vieilles, at the
Clos-aux-Grives. Once more she rode into the courtyard of Gaston’s
headquarters on Gaston’s horse, once more she renewed her acquaintance
with Roland and the Abbé Chassin; once more she lay in the little room
which her husband had given up to her—a soldier’s wife, in a soldier’s
bare environment. And once more she was arranging Gaston’s sling for
him—that sling for which she could not learn the reason, since he
evaded her questions about his wound—and he suddenly caught sight of
her hands, not quite the white and exquisite hands he remembered, and
she perceived that the slight transformation brought home to him almost
intolerably the years of which he could not bear her to speak. He had
broken down at the sight, and before she could quiet him the palms of
those hands, kissed over and over again, were wet with his tears. Yes,
the lover she had never known she had now, and in those short five days
together at the Clos-aux-Grives, interrupted though their companionship
necessarily was, she had lived the only part of all her years that was
worth the living.
Yet, lover though he were, Gaston de Trélan had almost instantly to
sacrifice his happiness and hers. Even with a woman to wait on her he
would not have it said that the chief of Finistère had his wife with him
at his headquarters; would not at any rate permit himself a privilege he
would not have accorded to any of his officers. He sent Artamène to ask
Mme de la Vergne if she would receive his wife for a while—and so the
brief idyll came to an end. For nearly a fortnight now the Duchesse de
Trélan—her identity was no secret here—had been living, for the first
time in seven years, with women of her own class, of whom the younger
was already her slave. And she was happy here, where she was made so
gladly welcome; but her thoughts had an incorrigible habit, as now, of
flying away.
For besides those hours with Gaston there had been conversations with
the Abbé Chassin, in which she learnt what had at first puzzled her, why
her husband had changed his name; and to her Pierre Chassin revealed,
saying he thought he owed it to her as well as to his foster-brother,
something of the utter despair and grief of seven years ago, and its
sequel. He told her indeed, in so many words, that the profound change
in Gaston was due to her—to her memory; but Valentine had both combated
this and said that there was no change—it was but the fruition of what
had been there all the time. . . .
Fruition, yes—fruition of character, fruition of prayer. She had prayed
and longed, and lo, after years, here was the answer! Its symbol lay
across her very knees—the white silk of which she was making a scarf
for the general commanding for the King in Finistère. And that general
was her husband—her husband who loved her.
Could a heart, not very young, break with excess of happiness and
gratitude? Spring’s joy was not like this—not so secure, not so blest.
Surely this, the joy of autumn, was better!
Her eyes were full of tears as she looked at the golden tranquillity
before her, the still trees whence floated the murmur of Marthe’s
pigeons, the late flowers, the windless blue sky behind the poplars. But
they did not fall; and after sitting a moment longer gazing before her
she rose, and going to the window, looked in. Marthe, alone once more,
was still seated at the harpsichord.
“What a charming little song, my child,” said Valentine, “and what a
fresh voice you have!”
Mlle de la Vergne rose and, smiling, made her a curtsey. “Chère Madame,
it is a little song that Artamène unearthed somewhere; we used to sing
it when he was here in the spring recovering of his wound, M. de Céligny
and he and I. There is another verse.”
“Will you not sing it then? Sing it all again, if you will, to please
me?”
She sat down in the room this time, and once more Marthe sang the words,
to the light tripping measure of the first stanza, and the martial
rhythm of the second. For the third, the music changed yet again to more
solemn harmonies:
_“Then, when Death batters_
_At my gate,_
_One boon, I pray thee,_
_Grant me, Fate—_
_Instant to open_
_Ere he wait!”_
The chords ended in the minor.
Looking up, Marthe saw that Mme de Trélan had leant her head on one
hand. She rose, stood a moment irresolute, and then darted to her, and
flinging herself on her knees beside her seized her other hand.
“Madame! Madame! I should not have sung the last verse! You are
thinking—forgive me, but I can guess—that, when the fighting
begins——”
Valentine put her arm round her. “My child, you shame me! You have more
courage than I! Have you not given your brother to the same danger, and
more than your brother?”
Marthe hid her face on the elder woman’s shoulder, and thus, the dark
head and the golden-grey together, they were when the door at the end of
the great salon opened. Mlle de la Vergne drew away at the sound, and
both ladies looked up. On the threshold stood the tall figure of the Duc
de Trélan, with two aides-de-camp behind him; and the aides-de-camp were
Roland and Artamène.
A moment the three invaders stood there, smiling, all three of them;
then the sun-barred parquet rang under a spurred tread as Gaston came
forward to kiss his wife’s hand, and afterwards her cheek. His arm was
no longer in a sling; he was wearing the Cross of Maria Theresa. As he
lifted Marthe’s fingers to his lips she thought—though she had never
been to a court which had ceased to exist by the time she was of an age
to be presented—“One sees, just by his manner of doing this, what a
great gentleman he is. And I wonder if, in all those brilliant
ceremonies at Versailles, in the days when he was first gentleman of the
bedchamber to the King, whether Mme de Trélan ever saw him to such
advantage as here in our drawing-room, in that plain, dark uniform, with
his sword and that air of purpose.”
And the young girl’s reflection was near enough to Valentine’s inmost
thought as, clinging to her husband’s arm, she went with him through the
long window into the sunshine outside, which was so filled with her
thoughts of him. Out there, his arms round her, her hands on his breast,
her eyes closed, she took and gave on the lips a kiss at once grave and
passionate, a kiss like the first kiss of lovers—a salute which had no
special affinity with courts.
“O Gaston, how I have dreamed of this!”
“Not more, my heart of hearts, than I! But I could not well have come,
had I not been leaving my headquarters for a few days in any case.”
“To fight? Not yet, surely?”
“No—to talk!” said he with a little rueful look. “But it will end in
fighting, I trust. I am bound for the château of La Jonchère, near
Pouancé—just over the border in Anjou—where all the chiefs are to meet
on the fifteenth, to take a final decision.”
“And you think it will be war?”
“I hope so. Circumstances have never been so favourable. But you are
standing all this while; let us go and sit down in the arbour.”
They were seated under the linden arch, as yet untouched by autumn, when
she said, “A rumour came yesterday, Gaston, that Vendée had already
risen. But we are so out-of-the-way here; is it true?”
Her husband’s face darkened. “Valentine, it is true. Risen, and risen
unsuccessfully, alas. Forestier—you may remember hearing of him in the
grande guerre—came back from Spain to lead the rising. He was defeated
and, it is feared, mortally wounded, at Civière, on the thirtieth of
August.”
Valentine gave a little shiver. Defeat . . . wounds. . . . “Gaston, why
was it? Surely in Vendée if anywhere——”
“My darling, Vendée is more a name than a power now. That heroic earth
is a desert; half her grown men have perished. Three years have not
nearly sufficed to raise her from ruins. And yet”——He stopped, and
dropped his voice a little. “Yet one thing might have done it. One thing
might even have raised the bones of the slain to life and made soldiers
of them—the coming of a Prince. It is the old cry—Charette’s cry, the
cry of Quiberon.”
She detected bitterness in his tone. “Does so much, then, depend for us
now, in Brittany, on the Comte d’Artois’ coming in person?”
The Duc bent his head. “It is hard to say how much.”
“Perhaps I should not ask this, Gaston,” she suggested, uneasy, “but
does he mean to come?”
“He says so,” replied M. de Trélan gravely. “I have no doubt he means
it. It is that nest of intriguers round him who can never be made to see
the necessity. They put it on the British Government.”
Valentine was silent, thinking of the irresponsible Prince Charming whom
they had both known personally in the vanished days of Versailles; then
she sighed, and changed the topic. But after a little her husband said
that it was his duty to pay his respects to Mme de la Vergne, whom he
had not yet seen. And as he rose, reluctantly, he said, “Could we not
ride together somewhere this afternoon, Valentine—alone?”
It was what she had been hoping for. “To the sea, then?” she suggested.
“I have not been there yet, though you can see it from the upper
windows, and hear it too, when there is wind. Let us go there together.”
“Soit!” said he, and went off in search of the lady of the house.
In the salon, meanwhile, Marthe entertained the aides-de-camp.
“No, you must kiss my left hand to-day, Monsieur de Céligny,” she said,
laughing, and put her right behind her back. “I keep the other
exclusively now for our General.”
She had a flame-coloured ribbon in her hair, and her eyes danced as
always. Yes, she was worth all that Mirabel unpleasantness! But Roland
had already seen her since his return.
“Mademoiselle,” he said with some audacity, “if I am to follow M. le
Duc’s example in salutation to Mme de Trélan, after the hand comes . . .
the cheek. But there, too, I would be content with the left!”
“That also,” said Marthe with dignity, “is reserved for someone else!”
And she provokingly held it up to her brother, who kissed her on both.
“Did I hear you singing _Sur le Seuil_ just now, ma petite?” he
enquired. “That was why you never heard us riding up. You were making
such a to-do among those low notes, for Death battering on the gate,
that he really might have been battering for all you heard.”
But, presently, with a little wise smile, Artamène drifted out of the
salon. He went into the garden and climbed up into an apple tree which
he knew of, where he could lie at his ease in a fork and try some of the
small green apples. “Maman and I,” he thought, “are de trop in this
establishment. M. le Marquis—his pardon, M. le Duc—and his
resuscitated spouse (who is worthy of him) in the arbour, Roland and
Marthe in the salon . . . Je me fais hermite.”
But his departure had not greatly facilitated matters, for presently Mme
de la Vergne came in and carried off Marthe on some business concerned
with the nourishment of the gentlemen who had descended on her, and a
moment or two later, when Roland stood irresolute and alone by the
window, he perceived his leader coming in search of his hostess.
“Go and talk to Mme de Trélan, my boy,” said the Duc. “She is in the
arbour. I imagine you still have memories of Mirabel to discuss.”
So Roland went to the arbour, where Valentine was, and having at her
request fetched her embroidery, sat himself down precariously at her
feet on an overturned wateringpot.
“Madame, I have a grievance against M. le Duc,” he began. “I must lay it
before you, for you are the only person who can do anything for me in
the matter.”
Valentine looked up. “What is it, my child?”
“My locket!” said Roland. “The locket you gave me. He has never returned
it since that night!”
“Have you ever asked him?”
Roland shook his head, and his eyes said plainly who he proposed should
perform that office. Valentine met them—and her needle slipped. The
memory of another garden came back to her. He _was_ like Gaston in just
that light, when he wore just that expression. . . .
“Blood!” cried the young man. “Madame, you are quite pale! If you would
allow me——” And out came his handkerchief.
She shook her head, and twisted her own round the scratch, which had
already flecked the silk of the scarf. Suppose her first impression had
been correct after all? Well, it was part of the pain of the past,
stretching onwards, which she must face. And did it hurt so much in this
wonderful present? But her look was grave when she said lightly, “Is
there not some other person’s locket you would prefer to the
concierge’s, Roland?”
He flushed a little. “Even if she would have me, if Mme de la Vergne and
her brother—and my grandfather—would give their consents, I am more or
less penniless, Madame. My estates were sequestrated when my father died
two years ago.”
His father! Her heart leapt up again. And yet . . . Was it possible that
she _wished_ he were Gaston’s son?
“Sequestrated by the Government, I suppose? You never told me that.
Where are they, Roland—in Brittany also?”
“No, Madame; right down in the south, near Avignon.”
Quite abruptly the Duchesse de Trélan stood up, dropping the scarf; and
the youth, trying to follow her example with the alacrity which
politeness demanded, all but rolled off the wateringcan. And Valentine
apologised. “I suddenly felt it too hot here. I will go under the trees,
I think.”
Near Avignon! So was Saint-Chamans. She really felt faint, and yet it
was not exactly with distaste. But she must know. And since nothing, not
even _that_, had power to come between them now she would ask Gaston
himself at the first opportunity. She did not even feel that she must
have time to reflect on this.
But perhaps Gaston meant to tell her of his own free will . . .
Then she saw him and Marthe coming that way through the sunshine, under
the apple trees, and she went towards him, followed by Roland. And in
his hermitage the Chevalier de la Vergne, making a wry face over a sour
apple, roused himself to peer down at the sound of voices.
“Everything that there is of a family party!” he observed softly. And
with that, judging it time to discover himself, he dropped down from his
tree and joined the quartet.
“Oh, there you are, young gentleman,” remarked M. de Trélan.
“Mademoiselle and I have been looking for you. How far did you say it
was to the sea, Mademoiselle?”
“About five miles, Monsieur le Duc.”
“Then you shall lend me your horse after déjeuner, Artamène, and Mme de
Trélan shall ride Zéphyr. He prefers to carry a lady, does he not,
Mademoiselle?”
“I could not vouch for that, Monsieur le Duc. He has been more honoured
since he ceased to do so.”
“You perhaps have not had time to realise, Valentine,” said Gaston,
addressing his wife with a smile creeping round his mouth, “that, as in
Eastern countries—and not only there, I fancy—where an accused,
fearing an adverse judgment, is prompt to send a substantial present to
the judge beforehand, so Zéphyr (himself of Eastern origin) came to me
as a . . . bribe . . . and my hands, I fear, are somewhat stained by
corruption.”
“How is that?” asked the Duchesse, glancing from her husband to the
laughing girl.
“But my lips, by the same token, are sealed,” finished M. de Trélan.
“Mesdames, Messieurs, le déjeuner est servi,” announced the recently
promoted Séraphin, approaching with the gait of a rustic and the livery
of a major-domo.
CHAPTER II
THE YELLOW POPPY
So Gaston and Valentine rode alone to the sea.
They went at first through deep lanes, scarcely wide enough to ride
abreast, where they lost sight of their goal, then, mounting a rise of
sandy turf, came on it spread gloriously before them. A fresh breeze was
blowing off the land, and the water was of a hundred vivid, changing
hues—the clearest green, purple that was almost rose, and blue that was
more than the blue of heaven. It was flecked with myriad little tips of
foam that looked like sea-birds, for ever vanishing and reappearing, and
the offshore wind ran over it in sudden violent caresses. Far out, it
was the colour of a distant wood of hyacinths.
They checked their horses. Valentine drew a long breath before the
pulsating wonder of it, the freedom and the joy. She stretched out her
hand in silence to her husband, and he took it as simply; so they sat on
their horses hand in hand like two children at their first sight of the
ocean.
Then he suggested their going down to the shore, and they went down
among the shelving dunes, their horses’ hoofs sinking deep in the loose
blown sand. At the verge were the stem and ribs of an abandoned boat,
conveniently embedded there, to which they could tether their horses,
and Gaston, dismounting, did so and held out his arms to her. But Zéphyr
whinnied after them; sand and rotting timbers pleased him not.
Down here, on the shore itself, the sandhills gave some shelter, and
they could walk in comfort, especially when they went nearer to the
water where the sand was firm and ribbed. Despite the offshore wind, the
curling waves shook off from their edges a breeze of their own, the
essence of the sea. Clinging to her husband’s arm, Valentine leant her
head against his shoulder and half closed her eyes.
“Here,” he said softly, looking down at her, “here one forgets wars and
anxieties, the past and the future—everything but the present. We were
right to come.”
The breeze of the sea’s own seemed to freshen. Down here one could not
see in the same way as from the verge above the whole extent of that
moving field of rapture, all the rainbow thoughts that ran over its
surface, but one was nearer to its incommunicable magic.
“You will be cold, my darling. Let us walk along by the waves.”
The little seas, tumbling in foam at their feet, bending in mock homage
before them, racing slily to entrap them, laughed their undying laugh
whose meaning the heart of man is not deep enough to seize. Starfish,
fluted shells, trails of seaweed, all their careless treasures were
displayed there. . . . They would laugh with just the same fresh joy
to-morrow . . . when Gaston would be here no longer . . . O, terrible,
that eternal youth and indifference!
“Gaston,” she said, gripping his arm more closely, “you are not going
alone to La Jonchère, surely? You spoke of sending the young men back.”
“No, my heart,” said he, putting his hand over hers. “I am not going
alone. M. du Ménars and another officer will meet me to-morrow on the
road, with an escort as well. When we meet I shall send my aides-de-camp
back to the Clos-aux-Grives. That was all I meant.”
A few paces more, and he added, “Unless I take one of them with me to La
Jonchère in order to use him as a messenger to you. Which of them, in
that case, would you rather have as Mercury?”
Why did he ask her that? She forgot the sea and glanced at him, but he
was looking at the waves.
She answered as she would have answered in any case. “I would rather
have Roland. He is a charming boy . . . I was already fond of him at
Mirabel.” If Gaston meant to tell her without being asked, which was her
great hope, she would make it as easy as possible for him. She paused,
and went on lightly, “Mme de la Vergne, however, might prefer her own
son. As for Marthe . . . well, I know Roland’s mind at least on that
matter.”
Her husband stopped in his walk. “Valentine,” he said, turning his head
towards her, “I have something to tell you about Roland.”
She stopped too, and loosed his arm. For a moment her heart seemed to
pause also. He had paled a little, his voice was very grave and not free
from difficulty, but he did not try to escape her gaze. On the contrary
he looked straight at her.
(“_I have something to tell you about Roland!_” echoed the waves,
laughing.)
And then Valentine de Trélan knew that she wanted to spare him the
explicit avowal, because she saw how much it would cost him to utter to
her face what was, by implication, an insult to her—though an insult
twenty years old.
“I guessed it, Gaston,” she said, very quietly. “But I hoped that you
would tell me. It is right that I should know . . . but I want to learn
nothing further . . . I only wished it not to lie, unspoken, between
us. . . . Now we need never speak of it again, save as it affects the
boy himself.”
“I hate that you should know it,” he said with emotion. “And yet I hated
even more to keep you in ignorance. I thought, too, that you might
guess, and that was worse . . . Valentine, Valentine, I cannot wish it
undone, because I love him . . . but if only I need not have given you
this pain!”
Yet he was suffering more than she; she knew that. Once again, as in the
arbour this morning, it came to her as strange that she should feel it
so little. And, only eager for the moment to allay the deep distress in
his eyes and voice, she put her hands on his arm. “It does not pain me
now, Gaston. No, no, believe me! I am speaking the truth! It is so long
ago, in that other life which we have forgotten. Why remember it now, in
this?”
He caught her hands and raised them to his lips. “Generous! generous!”
he murmured. “Why must I choose to-day to wound you so?”
“But you have chosen the right day, the right place!” she cried. The
vanishing of the dread that he might not tell her had almost irradiated
her. “The . . . the past—see, it can be forgotten, as a pebble would
be, cast into those great waters . . . and that there is no pain
now—_I_ love him, too. Will not that convince you, my husband?”
Perhaps it did. He bowed his forehead silently upon her hands as he held
them.
“But as for guessing,” she went on, “—O Gaston, my very dear, it is
over now—as for guessing, the first moment that I saw him, lying in the
garden at Mirabel, I was startled . . . but I thought it was
imagination. And I grew so fond of him in those few days, innocent and
gallant as he was. Yet I put the idea away at once because . . . because
he had not your eyes . . . and now, after all . . .” She stopped; speech
was suddenly failing her. “O Gaston,” she said in a breaking whisper,
“Gaston, if only he had _mine_!”
And pulling her hands away she put them before her own face, weeping.
“My darling, my darling!” he cried, and strained her in his arms, saying
no more than that, beyond speech indeed himself, pierced once more by
the memory of his own words at their parting, which came back even now
to stab him. But as, with her face covered, she wept upon his heart, he
knew that it was not of his unworthy reproach that she was thinking.
Hers was a deeper and more mysterious pain. It seemed so to throb
through her as he held her, there on the sandy shore, that the very
waves were full of it; and he could do nothing save hold her more
tenderly still, and kiss the yet beautiful hair.
After a little she ceased to sob, and dried her eyes.
“Only one thing more,” she said unsteadily. “Does Roland know?”
“I gave my word to his grandfather that I would not tell him before he
was one-and-twenty. I have tried to keep it in the spirit as well as in
the letter. I do not think he guesses. What others may guess I do not
know.”
“It is plain,” said Valentine, “that he worships you. But they all do
that, those young men—and with reason.”
They were still standing at the edge of the waves when she put the seal
on her forgiveness. For she said, looking at him with her clear eyes,
“Gaston, when I see him and speak with him I am glad that he is your
son!”
* * * * *
Later on they sat at the base of the sandhills, and spoke of many
things—even of M. de Brencourt, so sore a subject to her husband that,
till now, Valentine had scarcely dared to mention the Comte’s name.
Particularly had this been the case since he had learnt, at the
Clos-aux-Grives, of the lie told at Mirabel about his own death. Most of
the tale of treachery Valentine had gleaned, not from Gaston at all, but
from the Abbé Chassin. Yet it seemed to her a better thing that Gaston
should say openly now, as with cold passion he did, “_He took my hand
after I had gone out with him, and yet went on with the worst treason of
all! It is impossible for a man to forgive an act so absolutely base!_”
than that he should nurse his just resentment in secret and never speak
of it. But though through the Comte de Brencourt she had so nearly lost
him before ever he was found, though now, realising it afresh, she
caught to her breast the arm which the false comrade had pierced, this
day and place seemed to spread healing hands even over that madness and
treachery. And when she looked at him, holding him thus, the frown went
from Gaston’s brow, and adding, “At least, then, I will try to forget,”
he gave her a long kiss.
But soon, too soon, it was time to return. The wind was dropping; the
gulls which had been soaring high on its strength were now beginning to
ride on the little waves, or to stalk along by the edge of the tide. The
brief hour was over, the hour that seemed more particularly set between
the old life and the new, in this place of wild air and rapture, where
the years of pain and surmise were forgotten, and the hazard of the
sword and what the future might bring yet unweighed. It was time to go.
And as, very close together, the two went slowly along the dry sand at
the bottom of the dunes, they saw at a little distance a small patch of
colour there—a pool of faint green, touched with blots of pale, swaying
yellow that caught and held the sunlight. They came to it.
“Flowers even here!” exclaimed Valentine.
It was the bride of the waves, the beautiful yellow sea-poppy, that
blossoms so late, and is so soon scattered. They both stood and looked
down at it, not without wonder, as those who come on a jewel in a dusty
place—at the strong, abundant, deeply-cut foliage, silvery green in the
sunset, fashioned to defy wind and wave, that had yet given birth to
such an ethereal marvel of a flower, whose every petal was a miracle of
delicacy, a flower so frail that a breath could put out its cup of
light. Already the plant at their feet bore the tokens of the passing of
many of its blossoms, in the long curving horns, treasures of next
year’s promise, which had succeeded the fallen petals.
Valentine, who had never seen the horned poppy before, knelt down by it.
“How wonderful to bloom so late, and in so inclement a place!” she said.
“Look how the wind beats on these flowers!”
“And yet they do not fall,” said her husband. “You shall give me one, my
dearest heart, for this our second betrothal.”
So she plucked a poppy and held it up to him. It seemed almost to have
light in itself, like a fragile golden lamp half enclosed between the
open, guarding hands of its leaves. He took it, and bending, kissed the
hand that gave it him. Next moment, either because it was caught by a
puff of wind, or because its brief life was already over, he held
nothing in his hand but the stem with its sturdy foliage, and the pistil
set within its fringe of orange-yellow stamens. The four lovely shining
petals were blown away. One only rested over his heart, caught there on
the cross of white and gold.
Valentine turned pale. What had suggested to her that this wonder was
like their love, so late in blossoming, so little favoured in its
surroundings, so exquisite . . . and, perhaps, so short-lived?
“Wait, and I will give you another,” she said with a rather forced
gaiety. “I will choose a younger flower this time.”
“No, no,” cried Gaston de Trélan. “I want no other.” And, gently taking
off the bright, clinging thing from his breast and closing it in his
hand, he stooped and recovered the other three—two from the sand, the
fourth from Valentine’s habit, and lifted them to his lips. At the base
of each pale golden petal was the faintest stain. Then he put them
carefully, almost reverently away in a little leather case, and replaced
it inside his uniform.
“You look quite white, my darling!” he exclaimed, catching sight of her
face as she rose. “What is the matter?”
But she would not tell him; she only came for the last time in that
place into the strong circle of his arms. Her cheek rested where the
poppy petal had lain, on the guerdon of valour; against her side she
felt the hilt of his sword—a sweet discomfort.
“O Gaston, my heart, my only love! It was worth those years—this hour!
Only, with so much happiness upon me, I think I would rather die
to-day.”
“Are you afraid?” he asked in a low voice, holding her as if he meant to
hold her for ever. “Are you afraid, my saint, my strong saint? I am not.
This place that we have come to, after such bitter wanderings, shall
hold us always now—be sure of it—in life or death!”
And though the yellow poppy shone and shivered at their feet—the
sea-poppy that flowers so late and is so soon scattered—she knew that
it was true.
CHAPTER III
THE COST OF ANSWERED PRAYER
So it was Roland, now openly betrothed to Marthe, who came to La Vergne
a week later, bringing Gaston’s letter announcing that the die was cast,
and it was Roland who told Valentine more fully of the great gathering
of Royalist chiefs at La Jonchère, surrounded by almost inaccessible
forest, and guarded by more than a thousand peasants. The young man,
though not himself admitted to the conferences, had seen some of the
leaders, Châtillon and Bourmont and La Prévalaye and Sol de Grisolles,
and d’Autichamp the Vendean, and Georges Cadoudal whom he had missed at
Hennebont. Their three days of deliberation had resulted in a decision
for a general levy of arms in the West. The date fixed was the fifteenth
of October. “Not very long to wait, Madame!” said Hermes
enthusiastically.
No, for Gaston’s wife the time was all too short till the clash of
arms,—but all too long till his promised visit. For in his letter he
had said that before the hour of action broke he should, please God,
come and show her all that was in his heart for her. And Valentine
looked at the words every day, as September, full of rumours, ripened
towards October.
In the first week in October came the news that fighting had already
begun in Northern Brittany, and with success, for the Chevalier de la
Nougarède, “Achille le brun,” had hardly got back from La Jonchère than
he raised the standard, and beat, at Argentré, the Republican general
Schildt who had come out of Rennes to attack him. And even before that
d’Andigné, the Comte de Châtillon’s very competent chief of staff, had
inflicted a severe little defeat at Noyant on eight hundred of the old,
tried soldiers who had formed part of the garrison of Milan.
On the other hand there was bad news from Holland, where Brune had
defeated the allied Anglo-Russian forces of the Texel expedition on
September 19; and worse from Switzerland, where, six days later, Masséna
inflicted such a severe defeat on Korsakoff at Zurich that Suwaroff,
coming from Italy to join his countryman, had difficulty in saving his
own army. Valentine was uneasy at these tidings of the Republic’s
triumph on a large scale, but neither she nor the other two women fully
comprehended how they isolated the Royalists of the West. And though she
wondered why the forty-five thousand English and Russians could not have
been landed directly on the soil of France, in Brittany or Vendée,
instead of in Holland, she could not foresee that a little later Brune’s
whole army, set free by the capitulation of Alkmaar, would be employed
against the Chouans. She worked at the last golden fleur-de-lys on
Gaston’s scarf, and helped Mme de la Vergne and Marthe in their
household employments and in the orchard, for there were fewer men than
ever, Séraphin and two of the farm boys having gone to join the Lilies.
And once or twice, in that St. Luke’s summer come before its time, she
found her steps turning towards the sea. She went there twice with
Marthe. She would have liked to go there again with Gaston, but she knew
that desire unlikely of fulfilment. And the sea was so changed—calm
with an unearthly calm; shining with a pure, still radiance, and warded
by great slow-moving fleets of cloud galleons like mother-of-pearl, that
were reflected, far-gleaming, in the water over which they sailed. Yes,
this October sea was as far removed from a tranquil blue sea of summer
as from that beautiful September sea, where there had been wind and
rainbow shadows—and the yellow poppy, which bloomed no longer. There
shone instead the golden leaves of the poplars at La Vergne, incredibly
yellow against the distant sea, on the one or two days that the sea had
colour. But mostly it was of that indescribable hue of nacre.
And when would Gaston come?
When he did come Valentine would have given everything in the world that
he had not.
Old Colette, the cook, who had gone to the tiny village for her
marketing, came back on one of these still mornings rather flustered,
reporting that there were soldiers there. It was a most startling as
well as a most unpleasant novelty. In none of the previous risings had
Blues ever been seen at La Vergne. The ancient woman at first reported
the invaders to be about a hundred; later she came down to a dozen.
But half that number could terrorise the place. And why were they there?
The three ladies at the château had nothing to hide—as yet, nothing,
for themselves, to fear; nevertheless they were in a fever. If word
could only be sent to the “Marquis de Kersaint” in case he were on his
road! But word could not be sent. Valentine comforted herself and them
by the assurance that he would not come without an escort, and would
therefore have nothing to fear from a handful of Blues. He would never
come alone.
But that was precisely what her husband did, riding in quietly to the
stable-yard at dusk of that October day, and, finding no one there,
putting up his horse with his own hands. And Marthe, hearing unwonted
sounds, ran out from the kitchen and found him in the act, with Zéphyr
very much at home, and pulling down hay from his old rack.
“O, Monsieur le Duc! Monsieur le Duc!” she cried.
“Mademoiselle,” said Gaston, laughing, “I do indeed apologise for making
free of your provender without permission. May I plead that it is for
your own horse?”
She darted at him while Zéphyr whinnied for recognition. “Why did you
choose to-day to come, Monsieur de Trélan? We have been so praying that
you would not. Do not say that you are alone, unescorted! For . . . did
you not know it? . . . there are soldiers in the village!”
There was a moment’s silence. “No, I did not know it,” said the Duc
quietly. “Had I known, I should not have come alone. But I did not enter
the village, so they will not have seen me.” He paused, passing his hand
once or twice over Zéphyr’s neck, and said in a voice which, despite
himself, revealed how intensely he disliked the idea, “I do not wish to
involve you in unpleasantness. Perhaps the simplest thing would be to
ride away again at once.”
Marthe shook her head. Now that he was here, risk or no risk, he must
see his wife. Perhaps indeed there was greater risk in going back.
“You must stay,” she said. “And we have taken certain precautions. Come
to the house, Monsieur le Duc, and I will show you, even before you see
Mme de Trélan.”
“And Zéphyr—if they should search? He becomes your horse once more, I
suppose? But my saddle, Mademoiselle, what of that? Unless you can
persuade them that you always use a man’s!”
“Here is mine quite near,” she said, pointing to it, “and it fits him,
of course. Yours—it has holsters, too!—we must hide in the loft.” They
hid it, and in a few minutes she was showing M. de Trélan the old
hiding-place in the dining-room. “It is very ingenious, the way one gets
there,” she added.
It _was_ very ingenious. Against the painted panels stood a massive
sideboard which four men could scarcely have stirred from its place. But
when Marthe touched a spring a section of it turned upon itself and gave
access to a tiny room behind, whose door formed part of the panelling.
“A very charming little retreat,” observed the Duc, smiling. “But I hope
that you do not expect me to deprive myself of your society,
Mademoiselle, by spending all my time in there?”
“We should be the last to wish to banish you, Monsieur. But there it is
ready, if you—get tired of us! Yet I think you have run all the risk
you are likely to run . . . unless they _know_.”
“That, I think, is impossible,” said Gaston. And then Valentine,
attracted by voices, entered. Marthe slipped out with the speed of a
swallow.
“O my darling, my darling, why have you come?” was her first word.
“Ma foi,” returned her husband gaily, as he kissed her, “apparently to
be put aside, like the bread, in that sort of garde-manger there—at
least that is the fate Mlle Marthe designs for me. It is not my
intention, however.”
“Gaston, you should not have come!” she repeated.
“Chère amie, what a greeting. Shall I go again?”
“No, no!” She clung to his arm. “You did not know, of course!”
“No,” he said more gravely, “I did not know. It would not have been
right for me to come if I had known.” Then he looked at her and said
with deliberation, “I am only thankful that I did not know!”
They had all of them that in the blood which responds to the stimulus of
danger, and supper, in the room whence the hiding-place was so easily
accessible, was a cheerful meal. During its course news arrived that the
soldiers had left the village altogether. So they went with light hearts
into the salon, and there the leader of Finistère told the three ladies
what in a few days they would divine for themselves, the outline of the
main plan of campaign, and why what seemed the hazardous plan of
attacking large towns instead of small was the better. For in the small
towns, violently anti-royalist as they were, the whole population was
armed, and the walls and palisades loopholed, so that the losses
involved in the capture of such positions, without artillery, would be
too heavy to be worth incurring. On the other hand the large towns were
often insufficiently garrisoned for their size, opinion therein was more
moderate, sometimes secretly favourable, and even an unsuccessful attack
would benefit the Royalists, since it would draw off the Republican
troops from the country districts.
“It is a good thing that we are going to begin fighting in earnest,” he
concluded, “for soon I shall not be able to hold in my followers. Do you
know what Lucien and Roland did the other day for a wager—strolled, in
full uniform, through the streets of Lanvennec in broad daylight! The
Republicans were just changing guard, and were, I fancy, too much
petrified by their audacity to take in what was happening. Anyhow my
young sparks had completed their promenade before the chase began. It
was _I_ who had them arrested.”
He had barely finished the story when steps came flying down the
passage, the door was unceremoniously opened, and Marthe’s maid,
shutting it behind her, stood there panting. “Soldiers!” she gasped,
“they are in the house . . . some in the garden . . . they are coming
here now.” Indeed, through the closed door could clearly be heard
approaching feet and the clank of spurs—feet that cut off the
possibility of swift retreat to the cachette in the dining-room. In
another moment their owners would be in the salon.
Valentine, turning quite white, went to her husband’s side, and Gaston,
who had jumped up, looked quickly round the room. “The window,” he
suggested; but at the same moment came a blow on the shutters outside.
“No, no!” exclaimed Marthe, as pale as Mme de Trélan. “Behind you—the
hangings!” And she all but pushed him to the wall, parted the hangings
of woven Indian stuff, and with her little hands drew them hastily over
him again. Then she ran to the long window, on which repeated blows were
raining. Mme de la Vergne, nervous but collected, went to the door. And
Valentine was left by the hearth to see that Marthe’s work was not
completed. For under the thin gay riot of branches, birds and flowers
that concealed him, were only too plainly visible Gaston’s boots—the
hangings did not quite reach the floor. It seemed to her that in that
second she knew the concentrated anguish of a lifetime—for Marthe’s
quick wit had been right; it was the only possible place in the room.
Yet she had seized a brocaded cushion from the sofa, had cast it down
against the hangings on her husband’s feet as though it had fallen
there, and, placing a low chair in front of it, had herself sat down as
a living screen, all before the door actually opened and the Republican
officer and his men came in.
* * * * *
If the search had been anything but perfunctory, Gaston de Trélan must
have been discovered. But the officer, it was obvious, had no idea whom
the Château de la Vergne was harbouring, nor indeed, that it was
specifically harbouring anybody, and he was almost apologetic at
disturbing the ladies. But—orders were orders. Round the salon,
therefore, he merely took a long glance, and when they had searched the
rest of the house with about the same particularity, the Blues went
away, and the inmates of the château could sleep in perfect security.
But not Valentine. For all her courage and resource she came near
breaking down when she was at last alone with her husband.
“I feel as if I should never sleep again!” she said, pressing the palms
of her hands over her eyes. “I see nothing but those men’s faces and the
way they looked round the room. Gaston, Gaston, I am not fit to be your
wife!”
“Never would I have come,” said he remorsefully, holding her in his arms
as they stood by the hearth in her room, “never would I have come had I
known it would be to put you to such strain!”
“Gaston, is it true that the Royalists have no artillery?”
“Yes,” he replied unwillingly.
“And these Republican victories in Holland and Switzerland—are they not
very unfortunate?”
“They are not fortunate, certainly. But the greater the odds, the
greater the glory.”
“Gaston, I . . . I do not think I can let you go!”
To this he said nothing, but very tenderly kissed her hair, as he held
her. And now she began to see the price that every woman pays who stands
where she did.
“You know,” she said, after a pause, “I think I must be, ordinarily,
without imagination. I think of you and danger always, every moment that
I breathe, but they never seem together, and only to-night, when danger
was in the room with you and I sat there pretending to sew—thank God it
was not your scarf that I had—thinking every moment that one of them
would pick up that cushion and you would be dragged out—it was only
then that I realised what danger is. . . .”
But all night she realised it, and all night, whether she woke, or slept
in snatches, she saw the price that she must pay, although he was safe
for the moment at her side. Gaston, too, lay long awake, and they
talked; but he must rise and ride away before sunrise, and, campaigning
having given him the gift of sleep at will, after a while he slept.
He could sleep, yes; for though reluctant to leave her he was going to
what he desired, to what she—strange irony—had prayed, years ago, that
he might desire—a man’s work, a man’s hazards, a man’s endurances. Long
unanswered, that slow prayer of hers had found ample fulfilment now
. . . and she was beginning to learn the cost of its realisation. His
hand held at last the hilt of a blade that was worthy of him—but its
point was in her heart.
Once in her torment she slipped out of bed and wandered distractedly
round the dark room. She went, without conscious purpose, towards the
deep recessed window, and, feeling her way to the curtains, met on the
window-seat something long and hard and cold. Her fingers told her that
it was Gaston’s sword, which he had laid there. And, hating it and
loving it at once, she knelt down and laid her forehead against the
scabbard. “Bring him back to me! bring him back!” But what could a sword
do against a bullet?
Valentine looked out. The night had been dull and cloudy, but it was now
getting towards dawn. She had a desire to see Gaston more clearly, and,
leaving the curtain half drawn, she went back towards the bed. Then she
wished she had left the window veiled. In that grey light how pale he
looked, lying there motionless in the ancient bed, whose twisted posts
recalled the great candlesticks she had set out at Mirabel for the
requiem mass that was never said. Ah, what horrible presentiments seized
one in this wan, uncourageous hour! She had a yearning to wake him, to
hear him speak; she even pressed her hand over her mouth as she stood
there by him lest she should do it, but all the time she knew that an
impulse such as that had no chance against the deep, protective instinct
which immediately overrode it. He must sleep, because he would have need
of strength to-day whither he went.
Cold and heartsick, she crept back at last into bed and lay there, still
wakeful, in agony. How often in the weeks of tension that were coming
would she not lie and crave for the pain that she had now—the
anticipated pain of parting. For a little time longer she could listen
to his quiet breathing. To have done that to-morrow and the morrow after
would be the whole of bliss, for she would have known that he was safe.
But to-morrow night——
She did fall asleep in the end. A slight sound woke her. Gaston, fully
dressed, was kneeling by her side.
“O, my heart, is it time already?”
“It wants five minutes, beloved.”
In that black night Valentine had determined that, if it killed her, she
would not fail him at the moment of parting. “I must get up, then, and
give you your scarf,” she said, raising herself.
“You must fasten it on for me,” said he.
“No, Gaston, not over your uniform—and you without an escort! It is too
conspicuous . . . I wish now that I had not worked the ends in gold. No;
hide it in your breast, and put it on when you are back!” She had
slipped out of bed, had found the symbol, and was holding it close to
her.
“Very well, most dear,” said he, smiling. “I wanted your fingers to knot
it round me, but perhaps you are right. It is from your hands that I
receive it, which is all that matters.” He knelt and took it from her,
kissed the folded silk, and opening the breast of his uniform, put it
over his heart. She stooped over him suddenly.
“I am not worthy of you, my dearest, for last night . . . if I could
have kept you back, I would. This morning I . . . I desire you to go.
But I am weak, Gaston; only promise me that you will think of me as I
wish to be in this, and not as I . . . as I am!”
Still kneeling, he caught her hands. “Have you then so little knowledge
of what you are to me, Valentine—you, my star, my standard with the
Lilies, my oriflamme itself!”
CHAPTER IV
WAR . . . AND TREATIES
(1)
And now at last the West was really ablaze, and in a few days, as
department after department lit up with the carefully prepared flame,
the Republicans began to suffer more serious reverses than they had
known since the days of the _grande guerre_, the Vendée proper, six
years before. For the Chouannerie which the dying Directory had to face
was very different from what it had been in the days of Hoche and the
Convention; it was no longer a swarm of small peasant uprisings led,
sometimes, by nameless chiefs as uneducated as the men who followed
them. The leaders of this war were gentlemen, returned émigrés, with
enrolled levies at their disposal; with a system of requisition, a
network of espionage and intelligence throughout the country districts;
with, here and there, white-plumed staff officers wearing the cross of
St. Louis, with uniforms, now and then with fifes and drums, and even,
in one or two cases, with a little cavalry.
And their tactics were new and more formidable. No longer did they
content themselves with overrunning the country districts, avoiding the
neighbourhood of towns; on the contrary, as M. de Kersaint had told the
ladies of La Vergne, they were in such force that they threatened—and
did more than threaten—those centres of Republicanism.
At the voice of Cadoudal the country between Vannes and Auray had risen
as one man. Not vainly had he boasted in the spring of his careful
organisation. And while he himself successively took Landévant between
Auray and Hennebont, Port Navalo at the outlet of the inland sea of the
Morbihan, and other places between that and the mouth of the Vilaine,
his lieutenant Sol de Grisolles raised the districts between the mouth
of the Vilaine and that of the Loire. To him fell La Roche-Bernard on
the river itself, Pontchâteau and Guérande with its mediæval walls and
towers, a formidable triangle of possessions above St. Nazaire and the
Loire mouth. And these were only some of the Republican losses in
Brittany.
Maine fought under the young Comte de Bourmont, seconded by the veteran
Chevalier de Tercier, and Chappedelaine, and the Chevalier de
Châteauneuf—who was “Achille le blond.” Another of Bourmont’s
lieutenants, La Fregeolière, pushed as far as Le Lude and La Flèche on
the borders of the Angoumois and Touraine. Anjou obeyed the old Comte de
Châtillon, and, after the brilliant initial success of his chief of
staff, d’Andigné, at Noyant in September, the Angevins made rapid
incursions into the districts of Segré, Candé and Châteauneuf.
Ingrandes, Varades on the Loire, garrisoned towns, were threatened. From
the Loire right up to the Côtes-du-Nord the Republican cantonments and
posts were submerged under a flood of insurgents.
But far more resounding than all these widespread successes were the
audacious _coups de main_ carried out on large towns. St. Brieuc on its
bay in the Côtes-du-Nord was not, it is true, a large town, but it was
garrisoned; yet Mercier, Cadoudal’s young alter ego, and Saint-Régent
took and held it for a night while General Casabianca barricaded himself
in his hotel. The Chouans set free three hundred Royalists imprisoned
there, and took muskets. But, ten days before this, a much more daring
capture had been made—nothing less than the city of Le Mans which, at
three o’clock on the morning of October 15, Bourmont’s forces entered at
five points simultaneously. He held it for three days before he
withdrew. Even more than Le Mans, Nantes, that great city, proud of its
resistance to the Vendean army, might have seemed secure. But while
Grigny, commanding there, went out in the wrong direction to encounter
the Angevins, Châtillon and d’Andigné, under cover of a thick fog,
slipped in at four o’clock in the morning of October 20 with no more
than two thousand followers, of whom only half were accustomed to arms.
The taking of Nantes, though the place had to be evacuated before
daylight, and though it did not give the captors any material advantage
in the way of arms and powder, as did the seizure of Le Mans, had,
equally with that exploit, exactly the effect on public opinion that the
Royalists had hoped, creating such a terror in the large towns that they
could not be left without adequate garrisons, and thus immobilising a
number of Republican troops, and leaving the country districts freer for
the operations of the Royalists. Before either of these feats, however,
the example had been set in Finistère—and was not Valentine proud of
it?—when her husband, with a smaller force than any, seized and held
for two days and nights the pleasant cathedral city of Quimper, the
_chef-lieu_ of the department. Yet she could hardly have been prouder
than ‘les jeunes,’ who played a most conspicuous part in the enterprise.
To the Republicans of Quimper the sudden inroad of a hitherto unknown
phenomenon, Chouan cavalry—not very wonderfully mounted, it is true,
nor smartly equipped, but making a terrific noise on the cobbled
streets—was little short of apocalyptic. The Chevalier de la Vergne,
the commander of this small body, observed to his two intimates that
they had a right to give themselves airs, since the capture of Quimper
was undoubtedly due in the main to “Charlemagne’s Horse,” as he had
christened his corps; but Roland reminded him that, if such were the
case, it was really Mirabel which had taken the town, for Mirabel had
mounted and armed those cavaliers, as it had armed the greater part of
M. de Kersaint’s _gars_.
And, after leaving Quimper, before the troops sent in haste from the
Morbihan could fall upon him, the Marquis de Kersaint was up threatening
Châteaulin, while M. du Ménars with “Charlemagne’s Horse” marched
rapidly towards Carhaix. A force was then ordered out of Brest in the
hopes of catching the Royalists between two fires, but, nobody knew how,
M. de Kersaint and his men slipped through, and, effecting a junction
with his subordinate, plunged into the wild, broken country round
Huelgoat, where the Blues did not dare to follow them. Finally, in
retiring unsatisfied to Brest, the Republicans were fallen upon in the
rear by a perfectly unexpected body of Chouans from the north, which
they had believed quiet. Their leader was one “Sincère.” And the
authorities, completely misinformed as they had been about the supposed
quiescence of Finistère, were at their wits’ end to know where the flame
would next break out in the department.
But south of the Loire things did not go so well. There were no great
generals left there; the majority even of the former officers were
missing. Forestier, the most popular, was still recovering from his
terrible wound of August, and his ill-success then made a new levy still
more difficult. Yet d’Autichamp, Suzannet, and Grignon, who divided the
three Vendean commands, did their best. The Republicans had few forces
on the left bank of the Loire, and one brilliant success might have
raised Vendée from ruins. The success did not come. Suzannet attacked
Montaigu, was beaten off and severely wounded, a misfortune which led
directly to the dispersal of his men. D’Autichamp, who had got together
a rather larger force, fell in at Les Aubiers with two hundred and fifty
Blues whose commander stationed some of them in the church tower, whence
they killed and wounded some forty Royalists. It was proposed to burn
them out, but this would have offended the religious scruples of the
Vendeans, and they were besieged instead. After twenty-four hours
without food or water they were still holding out. Meanwhile the
Republican _chef de brigade_ at Bressuire was on the march. D’Autichamp
went to Nueil to defend the passage of the little river Argenton against
him, left the command there to a peasant subordinate, and returned to
Les Aubiers. He had better have stayed at Nueil. The Vendeans, according
to their incorrigible habit, neglected to put sentries, the Blues from
Bressuire surprised them, and they were put to flight.
The affair did not cost many men, but it had a most unfortunate moral
effect. Five thousand Vendeans had allowed themselves to be surprised
and routed by eight hundred Blues. “Where is Cathelineau?” was the
universal cry. And in fact this miserable affray of Les Aubiers decided
the fate of the whole campaign in Vendée, for after it d’Autichamp could
only skirmish, and Grignon, in the centre, was never able to get
together many men. Much, certainly, had hung on the valour of the Blues
in the church tower and the religious scruples of their opponents.
But the failure of Vendée and the startling successes in Brittany alike
paled before a much greater event. On the 9th of October, the very day
that Gaston de Trélan had ridden away alone from La Vergne at sunrise,
General Bonaparte, abandoning his army in Egypt, landed at Fréjus. On
the 16th, the day after the taking of Le Mans, he was at Paris. In a
month from the date of his landing, the 9th of November, the Directory
lay in the dust, and he was acclaimed First Consul of the temporary
Consulate, and the saviour of France. Across the path of the Bourbons
there no longer sprawled a hydra-headed incompetence. One man of genius,
with a vehement, implacable will stood there, armed.
The road to power had been made easy for him. France was only crying out
for a deliverer to raise her from the state of mud and blood in which
she lay. Attempts had already been made to find one in Joubert or
Moreau. It was conceivable that even had a Bourbon appeared he might
very well have been accepted. But it was too late now.
Yet this moment was the very apogee of the Royalist revival in the West.
Never had they been better organised, better recognised as a military
force. What they had taken or threatened in three weeks was amazing. In
the Morbihan they were entirely masters of the countryside; in
Ille-et-Vilaine they had strong detachments near Rennes, Fougères, and
Vitré; Bourmont in Maine occupied the bourgs and even the little towns
on the banks of the Sarthe and the Loire; and distant Finistère had
become almost volcanic.
On account of these very successes, overtures of peace had already been
made, from the side of the Directory, before the great change of
Brumaire. With them was charged the Republican general-in-chief in the
West, the Comte de Hédouville, a gentleman with the manners and
predilections of his caste, and he, in his headquarters at Angers, was
actually in conference with the chosen go-between—a Royalist lady, Mme
Turpin de Crissé—on the day of the _coup d’état_ itself, so that his
success was announced to a Government already overthrown. For he
naturally directed his powers of conciliation towards the least
victorious wing of the Royalist forces. It was with aversion and
amazement, therefore, that the leaders of Brittany, Maine and Anjou
heard that an armistice had been signed on November 25 for the left bank
of the Loire. And during the cessation of hostilities the Comte de
Grignon was surprised and killed by the Republicans, so that since
d’Autichamp, who had always opposed the taking up of arms, was more than
willing, and Suzannet was _hors de combat_, there remained no obstacle
to the pacification of Vendée. A conference for that object was
imminent.
But a suspension of arms on the left bank of the Loire almost of
necessity brought about one on the right also, whether the leaders were
anxious for it or no. Châtillon indeed was of the former for he was old
and ill. But Cadoudal and Mercier received it with great disfavour. Yet,
whether it were to result in peace or no, the armistice for the purpose
of treating of pacification was promulgated on December 9, and Pouancé
in Anjou was appointed as the place of meeting.
The Marquis de Kersaint, away in unvanquished Finistère, was too
bitterly disgusted to attend these conferences in person. But, unless he
wished to lose touch with the other leaders, he was obliged to be
represented there, and he sent to Pouancé two delegates, his chief of
staff, the Chevalier du Ménars, and the Abbé Chassin.
(2)
=From the Abbé Chassin’s Diary.=
_Pouancé, Christmas Eve, 1799._—A good occasion for reviewing, before I
say my first Mass of the feast, these brief notes that I have been
keeping since M. du Ménars and I came here a fortnight ago. Yet really
all that I can say is that we are still here, discussing, discussing
. . . The energy expended on these conferences might have launched a
battle or a siege. Perhaps in its way it is as usefully spent.
The party for continuing the war is in a minority, that is clear. But it
is a very strong minority—Cadoudal, our mainstay here, Mercier, the
Comte de Bourmont, one or two minor chiefs, and, of course, through our
voices, the “Marquis de Kersaint.” That the Vendean leaders cry for
peace one cannot wonder, for Vendée is exhausted. They say they have not
even enough munitions for a headquarters guard. But the war minority
would more than once have liked to break off the conferences, and it was
only after stormy discussions that M. de Bourmont was named as delegate
to Hédouville at Angers. He has others with him now. I have hardly dared
inform Gaston how things were tending, though I was sent here for that
purpose.
There is this to be said, that we began with a moral victory, since we
obtained that the Government should send no more troops into the West
during the armistice. And our military position—except in Vendée—is so
good that we have every right to hope to gain our points. Moreover the
acts of the new Government, particularly the abrogation of the
abominable Law of Hostages, have disposed many minds towards
conciliation. Some of the more warlike leaders, even, are not opposed to
a respite, provided that they can remain in arms, as they are doing. And
then there is this widespread idea among them that Bonaparte intends to
play the part of a Monk, and use his power for a restoration of royalty.
I must confess I do not share it, but M. du Ménars does. At any rate
time to penetrate the First Consul’s intentions is no loss—we sent the
Chevalier d’Andigné to Paris on December 18 to sound him. Moreover we
want to be certain of Monseigneur le Comte d’Artois’ wishes.
So time is really what we are playing for in these negotiations with
Hédouville. The worst of it is that Hédouville is so accommodating that
he makes this difficult! All our just demands are on the way to being
accepted—complete freedom for religion, no oath or formal submission,
no disarmament, oblivion of the past, and no conscription. If this is
really so then we should lay down—but not give up—our arms on an
honourable peace. But would the terms be observed afterwards by the
Government? Georges, I know, doubts it. . . .
It is time to prepare for my Mass. I shall say all three in a disused
church, with the leaders who are here and our Breton guard for
congregation. The proper season for thoughts of peace. . . .
_December 29._—All those dreams of peace are scattered. Yesterday, like
a thunderbolt from a clear sky, without warning, without justification,
appeared a most violent and provocative proclamation from the three
Consuls to the inhabitants of the West, denouncing our chiefs—who at
the very moment are in treaty with their representative—but professing
a tenderness for those who had been “led astray” by them. The Government
will pardon those who repent, but will strike down those who, after this
warning, dare still to resist.
Everyone is burning with indignation. Most certainly the First Consul is
not going to play Monk! One begins to see him, a menacing figure, behind
the conciliatory form of General Hédouville, who wishes us well and has
always acted as an honourable opponent—and who has written, evidently
with regret, that if we cannot come to an agreement with him by the 15th
(he means of their new-fangled Nivôse, of which to-day is the 8th)
hostilities must begin again, as a result of orders he has received from
Paris.
And, as if Fate had determined that they should, M. de Châtillon has
this very day received a letter from Monseigneur le Comte d’Artois
confirming the instructions he had already sent, not to make peace
unless it were part of a plan for the general pacification of Europe,
and saying that help is on the way, and that he himself will soon be
here. Will he?
If he do come our forces will be doubled in the twinkling of an eye.
Probably the First Consul knows that, and wishes to have done with us
before he could arrive. Bonaparte must know, too, of our division of
opinion, our want of arms and ammunition and artillery. I feel that he
intends to have victory at any price, and that he would prefer to crush
us rather than to placate—it would give him more advertisement.
So ends the conference of Pouancé. Georges has already left for the
Morbihan; La Prévalaye and Bourmont have returned, or are returning, to
their divisions. We hear that the victorious army of Holland, under the
detestable Brune, is on the way to Brittany. M. du Ménars and I start
back on our journey to Finistère in an hour’s time.
* * * * *
_Quimperlé, January 4._—We have taken longer than I expected to reach
the soil of Finistère, but we have gone slowly on purpose, not wishing
to get out of touch with possible developments, for we believe that the
indefatigable Hédouville is trying to get together a new conference in
spite of the shock which slew the first. Yet, if he does, M. du Ménars
and I should not return without an authorisation which we know well
enough Gaston will never give.
And now that we have seen with our own eyes to-day a copy of the far
more violent manifesto, signed by the First Consul, to the Army of the
West, we think that the sooner we are back at the Clos-aux-Grives the
better, for that does not sound like conferences. “The majority of good
citizens,” runs this proclamation, “have already laid down their arms;
there remain only brigands, émigrés, men in the pay of
England—Frenchmen in the pay of England! March against them; you will
not be called upon to display much valour . . . Let me soon learn that
the chiefs of the rebels have ceased to exist!”
Such are a few phrases culled from it. That “Frenchmen in the pay of
England” is a clever and a galling touch. Indeed, it is the great
misfortune of our party to be mixed up so inextricably with the
foreigner. And yet it is not our fault; it is the fault of
circumstances. England alone, with Austria, continues the struggle; she
is rich; it is she who disposes of the persons of most of our princes,
since they live under her protection. . . . Yet it pleases me to think
that epithet does not apply to Gaston, at any rate. The promised English
subsidy amounted to very little; it is his own gold, from his own house,
which has made it possible for him to do the wonders he has done.
I do not like that “Let me learn that the chiefs of the rebels have
ceased to exist”; it savours, somehow, of methods unworthy of a soldier.
* * * * *
_January 6._—Back at Le Clos-aux-Grives. Gaston (as I thought I should
find him) determined to continue the struggle, whatever the rest decide.
He has the advantage of the remotest and wildest country, and Georges,
his nearest neighbour, will certainly do as he is doing. But the forces
of Finistère are pitifully small compared to the enemy’s. If only he
could get help by sea from England!
_January 7._—We hear that there is to be a new conference opened on the
10th at Candé. Gaston refuses to have anything to do with it, and indeed
it would be impossible to get there in time now.
_January 10._—Decidedly we are returning to the worst days of the
Directory. A decree has just come down declaring the departments of the
West outlawed.
_January 15._—Negotiations were reopened two days ago at Candé.
_January 18._—Nothing settled yet at Candé, we hear, but the rupture of
the truce is postponed till January 22. Gaston speaks of sending me to
England.
_January 20._—Most disastrous news. Two days ago, at
Montfaucon-sur-Moine, the officers of Vendée signed a separate peace.
Alas for the glorious shades of La Roche-jaquelein and Lescure!
_January 22._—The truce expires to-day. Anjou is disbanding.
_January 24._—Brune’s army is getting nearer every day, and it is said
that he is to replace Hédouville as general-in-chief. We hear that
Bourmont was defeated two days ago by Chabot at Meslay; unless he can
recover, that means that Maine, too, is gone. Brisk fighting is going on
indeed in the Côtes-du-Nord, but our hopes rest on Cadoudal, the
unbeaten and unyielding. Gaston has sent M. du Ménars with what men he
can spare southwards.
_January 25._—A report that yesterday or the day before Cadoudal fought
an indecisive action with Harty, commanding the troops at Vannes, at
Pont-du-Loc. Georges is not beaten, that is clear, but, if he is not
victorious, it may menace his bold plan of pushing on, after crushing
Harty, to the banks of the Vilaine, and joining hands with Sol de
Grisolles, there to await Brune’s onset—and after that, perhaps, of
joining hands with Gaston.
_January 26._—Only too true. Georges has sent a courier to warn Gaston.
His plan is hopeless. He fears, too, that Sol de Grisolles is not in a
state to defend the passage of the Vilaine. And Bourmont has given in.
Doubtless there _is_ something in race, and ancient blood. The prospect
before us, once so bright, is hourly more gloomy, and I know, none
better, what failure means to Gaston. Yet he keeps his profound
discouragement wonderfully to himself, and his little army is still as
well disciplined as it is possible for a Chouan force to be. It is
already unsafe for us to make the Clos-aux-Grives our permanent
headquarters. We live dispersed in the forest, only meeting there
occasionally by day, never by night. I write this, in fact, seated on a
fallen stone of the dolmen where that memorable meeting—about which I
have never been told—took place last August. I wonder what has become
of that misguided madman, the Comte de Brencourt?
Gaston had a letter from the Duchesse to-day, sent by a stable-boy from
La Vergne. I say to myself still, that whatever happens he can never be
captured, in such proximity to the sea as he will be if we are forced to
retire when Brune enters the Morbihan. He and she can always take ship
for England at the eleventh hour.
_January 27._—The garrison of Quimper has evidently been reinforced. A
hot brush to-day on the Lanvennec road. We have lost forty-three killed
and wounded, among them, alas, two of our few remaining officers. Roland
has got a scratch of which he is rather proud. I have just been dressing
it. Gaston, I could see, was on tenterhooks about it.
_January 28._—Very bad news indeed. Cadoudal has had to disband his
men, for fear of being crushed by Brune’s advance. These disastrous
tidings, getting through by unknown channels as things do here, have
caused some desertions. Rumours that M. du Ménars is killed. It is very
cold in the forest.
_January 29._—Brune entered Vannes yesterday, and made a great
requisition of money, overcoats and shoes for his troops. I _am_ to go
to England. Would I were not!
_January 30._—Last night a party of Blues from Lanvennec sacked and
burnt the Clos-aux-Grives. There was no one there, and it was not worth
throwing away lives in its defence, as it was of little use to us. ‘Les
jeunes’ of course wanted to defend their nursery. The night was red with
the flames of it. Farewell, old house!
It is true about M. du Ménars. He was a brave man and a good officer.
R.I.P. His men no longer exist as a force.
I want Gaston to make for La Vergne. But he will not, principally, I
think, because all his desire is there. But it would be an excellent
headquarters—or more accurately, I fear, place of retreat—for a time.
_February 4._—Cadoudal is reported to be actually treating with Brune,
and the terms, alas, include disarmament. In a day or two Gaston will
find himself literally alone, with his mere handful of men, against
Brune’s whole army. He still hopes for help from England, and for some
outcome of those ambitious plans which—too late—the Prince’s council
have made, and says that so long as he can keep open a part of the coast
of Finistère for that purpose, so long he is doing his duty and not
sacrificing men uselessly; and that it will take Brune considerable time
to advance across the Morbihan into Finistère. This is true. I start for
England with his despatches to-morrow morning. My admiration for him
knows no bounds; he _has_ broken those “_aspera fata_.”
But this evening I had a letter from Paris, from “Paul Berry,” which has
made me very uneasy. He says—and he should know, if anyone—that the
First Consul is furious against the “Marquis de Kersaint,”—“that
insolent without an army who still holds out”—and they say that he has
sworn to make an example of one Chouan leader at least. A horrible fear
possesses me that that example may be made of the last in arms, the
highest in rank, and . . . his foe of Rivoli. Does Bonaparte remember
that, I wonder?
Much troubled by this letter, which I received after seeing Gaston and
getting my last instructions I went to him again. The Allée des Vieilles
has such a bad reputation after dark in the district that we have been
able to use it undisturbed as a bivouac. (It makes a detestable one,
owing to the wind on the lande.) I found Gaston walking up and down in
the darkness by the ghostly stones, muffled in his cloak. I told him
what I had just heard from Paris. He laughed.
“Is the young man from Corsica a bugbear who has frightened even you,
Pierre?” he asked. “I promise you he shall not have me to ‘make an
example of,’ if that is his phrase, till the last possible moment. And
when I have done all I can—what does it matter if he succeeds?”
Seeing him in that mood, and feeling that I was leaving him—with what a
heavy heart!—to I know not what imminent perils, I said, “You need
never fall into his hands, Gaston, whatever of defeat happens. Here the
door is always open behind you. The sea——”
He interrupted me, in that suddenly freezing voice he has when he is
displeased. “I am surprised at you, Pierre,” he said, and turned his
back on me.
I was a little hurt; of course I knew better than to insult him by
suggesting that he should desert his men. I only meant to remind him
that should it come to submission—and in my heart, I can see nothing
else before him—once the formalities over, he can so easily take ship
for England. I explained this, and, though I did not like using this
weapon, I am so afraid of what I may be leaving him to—and most of all
his own indomitable pride—that I added, “Gaston, remember that you
would not sail alone!”
A little quiver went through him, almost as if I had struck him. He said
never a word, but I saw his face for a second in the light of the camp
fire. I presumed, I daresay, for there is perfect understanding between
them on all things—yet, for all that, surely she should have some
consideration shown her! In that thought lies my best hope.
But I wish to God I were not going to England. . . .
CHAPTER V
ALONE IN ARMS
(1)
About midnight on the 14th of February—her name-day, which the ladies
of La Vergne had celebrated, though with heavy hearts, by a little
feast—Mme de Trélan was awakened by a commotion in the hall below. Many
people seemed to be there, and she heard the jingle of accoutrements.
For a moment she thought the invaders might be Republicans; then, with a
leap of the heart, that it might conceivably be . . . someone else. She
opened her door and listened, and, since sounds floated very clearly up
the great staircase, she did catch the sound she craved for. She flung
on a cloak and went out into the gallery.
Down in the hall, in the midst of his remaining staff, her husband was
apologising with great courtesy for taking possession of Mme de la
Vergne’s house without leave. Nothing, he declared, but necessity would
have made him do so. As she must be aware, he had his back fairly to the
wall now; there were only sixty men with him, but it was possible that
by using La Vergne as a centre he might succeed in rallying the broken
remnants of the late M. du Ménars’ force. On the morrow he would lay
before the three ladies the arrangements he proposed for their
conveyance to a place of safety—though he had no intention, he assured
her, of allowing himself to be attacked in the château.
But Valentine heard Mme de la Vergne, a perfectly dignified figure,
despite her hastily donned _déshabillé_, in the little crowd of
uniformed and booted and lantern-bearing men, reply quite calmly that
there was no need to waste time over such a discussion. “My daughter and
I shall have the honour to entertain you in our house, Monsieur le . . .
Marquis, for as long as you require it. All we have is at your disposal.
But we do not intend to leave it.”
Valentine did not wait for Gaston’s reply; she knew he would not argue
the point then in front of his officers, including, as they did, his
hostess’s son. Returning to her room, she began to rekindle the dying
fire there, to warm him when he came. She felt a little stunned. She had
not known that things were going as ill as this.
Half an hour later she heard his knock at her door. As he entered she
saw how his air was changed—for it was not only that his uniform was
worn and stained, his boots covered with mud, the scarf she had
embroidered soiled—and the change went like a knife through her heart.
But all he did, the first greetings over, was to apologise for his
state—the gentleman of the great world ashamed for appearing so in the
presence of a woman.
“I am not fit to be in your room, Valentine,” he said, looking down at
himself with distaste. “I have not had my clothes off for the last week.
You must forgive this unceremonious visit.”
She was sitting in her chair again now, and he stood by her in the
firelight. Pride and anguish strove together in her as she looked up at
him.
“Gaston, I heard what you said in the hall. Tell me the worst, my
darling! We have heard that Cadoudal is treating with the Republicans,
but we cannot believe it. But if it should be true, if he should submit,
would there be no one left in arms at all—no one in the Côtes-du-Nord
even——no one but you . . . no one?”
She could only see his profile. He was fingering a little Chinese figure
that stood on her mantelpiece.
“Where does this mandarin come from, I wonder? It reminds me of one we
had at Mirabel. We had several, I think . . .” Then he looked down at
her. “Yes, Valentine, it is the last act. Cadoudal _has_ submitted. He
signed near Vannes yesterday . . . I _am_ alone in arms; there is no one
else left. Unless help comes from England in the next few days——”
He broke off, turned back to the mandarin, and then, abruptly, his sword
clanking against the floor as he did so, knelt down and buried his face
on her knees. And, fighting back the sob that rose in her own throat,
she folded her arms round his neck and kissed the wet, iron-grey hair.
“My darling, my darling, how tired you are!” She smoothed the bowed head
as she would have smoothed a child’s, terribly conscious all the time of
the restraint he was putting on himself not to break down altogether.
For his hands were gripping the arms of her chair on either side of her,
and every now and again a shudder went through him.
“I will never consent to the disarmament of Finistère,
never—never—never!” he said in a smothered voice. “I will die first!”
Her hand stopped. “Is that what you fear, Gaston? Is that it? O my
knight without reproach, you shall do what you think best. If it is
necessary—if you must in honour—you shall . . . die.”
“I will not hold you back.” But she had no need to add that, and she did
not. Her husband lifted his head, almost frightened at the sublimity of
her self-forgetfulness.
“Valentine,” he exclaimed, “is it possible that you—a
woman—_understand_?”
“I love you,” she said simply.
He knelt there staring at her, the firelight showing, on his sad and
weary features, an expression that was almost awe. Then he made a
movement and caught her to him.
“I said you were my oriflamme. I shall fight to the last as long as I
have the means, and with how much more courage if you give me leave to
die! . . . But I shall not let them attack La Vergne, though you, I
know, would not fear it.”
“Nor would the others,” she answered. “Then will you not make it your
headquarters?”
“I do not know yet. When Brune’s advance begins . . . But though I do
not intend to stand a siege here, I fear I must send you and the other
ladies away.”
Valentine said nothing, but a little shiver went through her in her
turn.
“It is true,” said Gaston, feeling it, “that Mme de la Vergne has
already refused to go. And you, my darling——”
“You must do as you think best,” she said again. She would not give open
utterance to the wild prayer that was ringing through her.
He sighed, and loosing his hold of her hands, got to his feet, drawing
her up with him.
“Gaston, you will sleep now?”
He shook his head. “I must go round the sentries again first. All my
officers—all that are left, that is—are as weary as I. As for a bed, I
have not seen one for weeks. Something harder will be more familiar. I
shall sleep in the hall; there is a bearskin rug there that promises
well.”
“Where did you sleep last night, Gaston?”
His voice changed. “In a very holy place, beloved—the place where you
came back to me from the dead—the Allée des Vieilles.”
He kissed her on the brow and went out.
* * * * *
“I never thought,” said Artamène next day to Roland, with one of his old
flashes of gaiety, not so frequent now as of yore. “I never thought that
I should live to admire my own mother more than Cleopatra or la Grande
Mademoiselle and other determined ladies! Imagine her standing up to M.
le Duc like that—and routing him! It is for you to tremble, Roland, at
these unsuspected qualities, since as your future mother-in-law . . .”
For before the unshakable determination of Mme de la Vergne not to be
turned out of her own house, as evinced in a private interview with the
friendly invader that morning, the determination—perhaps not quite so
strong—of the Duc de Trélan to turn her out was baffled.
“I think,” said Lucien, “that there are disadvantages in being a
gentleman. M. le Marquis is always grand seigneur; had he been one of
these sans-culotte generals he would have bundled her out without
ceremony—excuse the verb, mon cher.”
“There are compensations, too,” observed Roland. “Thanks to the
admirable—or ominous—firmness of Mme de la Vergne, the Duchesse can
remain also.”
“You pointedly omit the advantage to yourself, I notice,” said Marthe’s
brother, “It will be my duty to call you out for that, Roland, to-morrow
morning. There being no . . . no Moulin-aux-Fées handy, I suggest rakes,
in the poultry-yard; but you shall be buried in the arbour of famous
memory.”
“I wonder how long any of us will stay here,” observed Lucien
thoughtfully. “And as to being buried—we may not have much choice in
the matter of locality.”
The other two looked at him with equal thoughtfulness, for in this ebb
of fortune the idea was not by now a new one.
“I make only one stipulation about my death,” announced the Chevalier de
la Vergne with composure, “and that is, to fall at the same moment as M.
le Duc. And you, Roland, have you chosen yours? You look as if you were
selecting it.”
“No, I was thinking about Mme la Duchesse,” answered the young man
rather unexpectedly.
(2)
It is a terrible hour when a man of superlative pride and self-will
learns that Destiny—or another man—has a stronger will than he.
And this hour struck for Gaston de Trélan the very day after his arrival
at La Vergne, when he received an ultimatum from General Brune giving
him twenty-four hours in which to consent to an unconditional surrender,
involving disarmament as well as disbandment. Otherwise the army of
Holland, already on the march, would enter Finistère at several
points—Finistère laid open to them not only by the capitulation of her
more formidable neighbours, the Morbihan and the Côtes-du-Nord, but also
by the dispersal of her own defenders. Never very numerous, they had
quite forsaken the standard now, returning to their farms or going into
hiding, and during the last few days it had become abundantly clear that
all “M. de Kersaint’s” careful organisation was in ruins; despairing
reports from subordinates, gentlemen or Chouans, in the outlying
districts, each said that their little bands had melted away like snow.
His own personal followers were, indeed, more than ever devoted, but the
flame he had lit through Finistère was out, and he stood, a beaten man,
among its ashes.
Yet though he might be overwhelmed by numbers and his men scattered, so
long as the arms he had been at such pains to procure for them were not
given up to the enemy but hidden (as was the case) he had not utterly
failed, since Finistère would not be defenceless for the future. And to
disarmament he had said that he would never consent—he would rather
die. Now it was required of him to give the order for it immediately.
More, within less than ten days he was to surrender his own sword in
person to the Republican commander-in-chief.
On this culminating humiliation Brune—or rather, that intense and
vehement personality in Paris of whom Brune was but the
mouthpiece—insisted absolutely. The Marquis de Kersaint, he wrote
(following his instructions) must not only submit at once, and
effectually disarm his men, but he must also be at Vannes on February 24
to give up his sword and ratify the whole transaction. If not, the
preceding evidences of submission would go for nothing, and Finistère
would be laid waste without the loss of a day: every man known to have
fought under him would be shot, every fifth house burnt in the insurgent
villages. Nothing would avail him unless he regularised the situation by
giving up his own sword; and to that end Brune sent him, with the
ultimatum, safe-conducts for himself and an escort of three or four
persons.
There was no choice, no shadow of a possible alternative. It was not
merely that Gaston de Trélan’s military situation was hopeless—almost
ludicrously so—alone with a few score men not merely against Brune,
but, since the submission of the other leaders, against La Barolière and
Chabot as well; it was that if he refused the terms he was condemning
Finistère to the fate that had been Vendée’s years ago under Turreau’s
_colonnes infernales_. If he had any heart in him, any humanity, he must
drink this bitter cup. The chance of dying had not been granted him; to
kill himself was tantamount to refusing. No help, no word of help, had
come from England; he did not even know whether the Abbé had reached his
destination. Besides, no help could possibly come in time now.
Nothing, nothing was left save the desperate honour of having been the
last to uphold the splendid hopes with which, in the autumn, this
business had begun—that, and a woman’s love and admiration and succour.
It was Valentine who saw the dark waters close above his head and went
down with him to the depths; and, when the moment came that the words
were wrenched from him, as from a man on the rack—“_There is no way out
of it—no possible way out; I must do it!_” it was she who wrote at his
dictation the letter to Brune saying that, for the sake of the lives of
others, he agreed to the terms of surrender, would give the necessary
orders, and afterwards, availing himself of the safe-conduct, would
reach Vannes by the day appointed to give up his sword in person to the
General-in-chief.
(3)
The same night that this letter arrived at its destination, a young
Republican officer was lying in his bed at the Hôtel de l’Epée at
Vannes, not unmindful of his good fortune in having it to himself. The
town was crammed with Republican troops, and was likely to be even
fuller in a few days, when the drafts _en route_ for Finistère were
recalled, as they presumably would be now that the Marquis de Kersaint
had agreed to submit, which recent piece of news was known to the young
officer—his name was Marcel Poulain—because he was on Brune’s staff.
He was nearly asleep when the door was suddenly opened, and the
landlord’s apologetic voice informed him that an aide-de-camp of the
First Consul’s had just come in dead-beat, and, having delivered his
urgent despatches to the General, must be given a bed at once.
Unfortunately there was not a bed in the place which had not two
occupants already except——
“Yes there is,” interrupted the young man angrily, “Next door. Put him
there!”
“I cannot, sir,” retorted the landlord. “The gentleman next door is
indisposed, and is also, I think, a Royalist. And the aide-de-camp has
scarcely drawn rein since leaving Paris. . . .”
“Oh, very well,” groaned Marcel resignedly, and almost immediately the
heavy, stumbling steps of the exhausted courier could be heard along the
corridor, and in another moment he staggered in and fell with a jangle
of spurs and a groan on to a chair. Marcel, on his elbow, scrutinised
him.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “I’m damned if it’s not Adolphe Bergeron!”
“I scarcely know who I am,” returned the other hoarsely. “I only know
that I am absolutely in pieces. I killed one horse . . . and all
for——” He did not say for what.
And presently, his friend having made room for him, he stretched himself
out beside him with more groans, and complaints of the hardness of the
bed.
“Poor devil!” said Marcel sympathetically. “And so you knew what was in
your despatches. I hope it was worth flaying yourself for?”
“I did not know when I left Paris,” answered the rider, moving
restlessly. “Nor when I got here. But Brune has just let it out.”
“Well, was it worth it?”
There was no reply. “Adolphe, you need not be so deuced discreet! I’m on
the staff, you know.”
“Yes, the staff at least will know it to-morrow,” muttered Adolphe.
“—Don’t let anyone guess that you have been told already, that’s all
. . . You know that man who organised Finistère, de Kersaint?”
“I should think I did!” responded Marcel with animation. “The General
has been getting furious despatches about him almost every day of late
from the First Consul, saying that he must be finished with at once, by
whatever means. His being the only one of the Royalist leaders who would
have nothing to do with the idea of pacification—even Cadoudal came
down to it in the end—has, I suppose, enraged Bonaparte. However, Brune
has got him in a cleft stick at last, and he has agreed to all the
terms, including the surrender of his sword. I saw the letter myself
this afternoon—in a woman’s hand it was. Have your despatches to do
with him?”
“They have,” said Adolphe. “Exclusively. He is coming under a
safe-conduct, I take it?”
“Yes. The General sent it some days ago.”
“Well, it . . . it is to be withdrawn. That’s what I have flayed myself
for.”
“_What!_ O, but that’s a mistake; it can’t be withdrawn now. De Kersaint
has accepted it; he is going to use it.”
“To be frank,” said Adolphe, gazing at the still-burning candle, “I only
said ‘withdrawn’ to make it sound better. It really comes to this, that
it will not be observed.”
The other bounded up in bed. “But, great God, man——”
“I know, I know! But I can’t help it—it is the First Consul’s
orders. . . . The fact is, Bonaparte means to have this Marquis de
Kersaint alive or dead—you have said as much yourself—and now, I
suppose, he will get him.”
“My God!” said his friend, and lay down again in silence.
“If I had known what I was carrying,” said Adolphe after a little, “I
might have had—an accident. But I had no idea, and it is done now. The
order will be sent on to Auray and other places to-morrow.”
“_Order!_ But it’s impossible—one can’t send an order like that! Surely
a safe-conduct, once given, is the most sacred thing a soldier knows. If
he does not observe it—O, it’s the dirtiest, most damnable treachery I
ever heard of! Pah! is that the way they do things in Corsica?”
“Chut, mon ami, walls have ears,” said the aide-de-camp wearily. “But
you are right; it is infamous. They say in Paris that _he_ has all along
wanted someone of whom to make an example, for the sake of the
impression. Yet all the other leaders submitted, as you say. But this
man who has held out so, besides that he put Bonaparte to inconvenience
at Rivoli—ah, I forgot, you were there—is also, it appears, a
ci-devant of the ci-devants; no less than the Duc de Trélan, in fact.
Brune let that out too; Fouché, it seems, discovered it. So he would be
worth capturing, and Brune, not being troubled with scruples, will obey
orders. . . . And _I_ brought them!”
“I wish now you had not told me,” said Brune’s young staff-officer.
* * * * *
Another than he had been told also, for walls _have_ ears, and that by
the side of their bed happened to be merely a cracked wooden partition.
The officer of Bourmont’s disbanded army who lay ill in the next room
had, therefore, heard every word of their conversation. He was Artus de
Brencourt.
CHAPTER VI
“SWORD, THY NOBLER USE IS DONE!”
“_Le vin est versé; il faut le boire._” The words of the old adage rang
in Valentine’s head to-night. Not long ago Gaston had quoted them. She
had never before so felt their inexorable quality—for to-morrow he must
set out to Vannes to drink it. . . . He had said farewell to his very
few remaining officers, disbanded, of his handful of men, all but a few
sentries, and wanted to ride alone to his surrender, but ‘les jeunes’
had made such an outcry at this, and begged so hard to be his escort,
that, as the other safe-conducts were blank, he consented.
It was past midnight, and he was still writing, by the light of a couple
of candles, at a table in the embrasure of the large window in their
room at La Vergne. Despite the cold, Valentine was sitting on the seat
in the space between her husband and the heavily curtained window—the
seat where, that October night, she had found and kissed his sword. Now,
that same sword. . . . She looked between the candle-flames at his
downbent face. One hand supported his head as he wrote, the fingers
running up into the thick, rippling hair. The last three months of
strain had aged him a little; but she saw nothing there that she did not
love and honour.
The château was very still. Now and again, even through the closed
window, Valentine could hear the footfall of the sentry on the flags
below. But, after the recent armed occupation, this was like the last
moments before death. To-morrow there would be no sentry—nothing to
guard. It would all be over.
She pulled aside the curtain and looked out. There was a royal moon; she
had forgotten it. The terrace sparkled with thinly fallen snow, and she
could see how it powdered the bare, pleached boughs of the arbour where,
in the spring, Roland and the son and daughter of the house had planned
the invasion of Mirabel. And she saw, too, in the distance—or was it
fancy?—a silver streak, the sea.
Ah, if they were there, embarking—if Gaston could but be spared the
purgatory that lay before him first. She glanced at him again. He had
death in his soul; she knew that. _Le vin est versé_ . . .
It was not merely that he shrank, as any soldier might, from the
personal humiliation of surrendering his sword; it was also that he had
given to this enterprise, so nearly successful, not only his arm, but
his heart. Only lately had she come to see what the overthrow of the
cause meant to him; indeed she had not fully learnt it yet. Was he
writing to the Comte d’Artois, she wondered now—to the Prince who, once
again, had never come? If _she_ had held the pen there were words,
burning words, that she would have written to that royal laggard! O, how
could the man exist who knew that a whole population was sacrificing
itself for him and his family, that for years they had been dying for
him on the battlefield and the scaffold, that his appearance was the one
thing they asked of life, and his presence would cause all that
suffering and sacrifice to be forgotten—how could he know all this
. . . and not come!
Valentine clenched her hands. He whom she loved was driven to this pass
through Charles of Bourbon. He had fought to keep open a harbour for the
sails that never came, and was now left, deserted and alone, to drink
this bitter wine. . . . The tears began to creep down her face—tears of
wrath. She did not want Gaston to see them, and turning away, her
forehead against the cold glass, she swallowed them down, trying to fix
her thoughts instead on that silver gleam of sea, which, when the
surrender was consummated, would bear them both away from the land of
the once more lost cause.
When she had regained her self-control she dropped the curtain and
turned back into the room. Her husband had laid down his pen and was
leaning back in his chair, his hands along the arms. His look was remote
and very grave. She rose from the seat, knelt down beside him and took
his right hand in both of hers. His gaze came from far off and rested on
her—still very grave.
“Gaston, I believe I can see the sea—the moon is so bright.”
“Yes?” said he, with a note of enquiry.
“I wish we were down there now,” she went on rather unsteadily, “—where
the yellow poppies bloomed last autumn. Do you remember?”
“Do I remember? Do I ever forget? I have them safe—what you gave me.”
He touched his breast with his other hand.
“My darling, if they could only bring you forgetfulness—forgetfulness
of to-morrow!”
He shook his head. “They will not easily do that.” From her his glance
strayed to the sheathed sword lying on the table. She could not bear to
see his face when he looked at it, and hid her own.
He seemed then to make an effort to turn his thoughts. “You were
speaking of the sea, beloved. When this . . . this business is over, the
sea shall take us away at last to happiness.”
Valentine raised her head quickly. “At last! Gaston, no happiness over
the sea, in tranquillity, can ever have the taste of this I have known,
in warfare, since last summer! It can never be better, even as this,
come what may, can never be less. If it ended to-morrow, you know that I
have lived to see all that I dreamt of—more than I dreamt of! O, my
knight, when the utmost has been wrought, what matters the broken sword!
Please God there are many more happy days before us . . . but not
better, not happier days!”
Their lips met in silence. Then, as she knelt there, he bowed his head
till it rested on her shoulder. Grief and love were one.
* * * * *
The promise of the serene moon of the night was not fulfilled. Flurries
of sleet were sweeping over the countryside next morning; the strip of
sea was the colour of slate, and the wind howled in all the tall
chimneys.
In this tumult Gaston bade farewell to Valentine upstairs. He and his
escort calculated to reach Quimperlé that night, and Vannes the next, so
that, unless the roads were in very bad condition, she might hope to see
him back on the fourth day.
Downstairs in the wide hall with the young men were Mme de la Vergne and
Marthe, the former as if she clung to the fiction of speeding a parting
guest. But they were all very quiet, looking silently at the staircase
when the Duc de Trélan, pale and upright, came down it pulling on his
gauntlets.
“You have your safe-conducts on you, gentlemen, I hope?” he said as he
descended.
“Have _you_ your safe-conduct, Monsieur le Duc?” asked Marthe
impulsively, coming to the foot of the stairs. Her little hands were
clenched; she hated this business almost as much as he.
But Gaston reassured the impetuous girl, and saluted Mme de la Vergne
while Artamène went down the steps to the horses, already there in
charge of Lucien and a groom. Roland remained, the Duc’s riding cloak
over his arm.
“I hate this day more than any God ever made!” said his betrothed to him
under her breath. Her eyes looked as if she had not slept. Roland took
her hands and drew her to him, but he could not give her any verbal
comfort.
And then, just as M. de Trélan was bending in farewell over Mme de la
Vergne’s fingers, there came with the cold wind through the open door
the sound of a galloping horse stayed at the very perron, expostulatory
voices at the bottom, and feet running up the steps. Next moment,
breathing hard, a man burst into the hall with Artamène behind him.
“Thank God, I am in time!” he jerked out—pulled off his hat as he saw
the ladies, and revealed the features of the Comte de Brencourt.
He was spattered with mud and half melted snow up to his very shoulders;
his riding boots were one cake of it. But he went straight towards the
Duc de Trélan, disregarding every one else.
“Don’t go to Vannes, de Kersaint!” (the old name was evidently still the
more natural). “Don’t go, for God’s sake—there is treachery!”
Marthe gave a cry that went unheeded.
“Treachery!” ejaculated Gaston. His eyes lit up. “You dare to come and
use that word in front of me—_you!_—But, perhaps, as an expert, you
feel privileged?”
The Comte at that terrible rebuff stood a moment rigid, then he reeled a
step backwards exactly as if he had been struck. Encountering a
high-backed chair he gripped it with one hand, steadied himself, and
said, in a voice that the air seemed to dissipate, “Your safe-conduct is
waste paper.” His face was quite grey.
The Duc surveyed him pitilessly for a second or two; then he slightly
shrugged his shoulders and turned away. “I am afraid that you have
ridden very hard to no purpose, Monsieur,” he observed. “Roland, my
cloak, please!”
The Comte flung out his free hand. “You are going to your death!” he
said wildly. “You are mad—I have warned you . . . Where is Mme de
Trélan, she might——”
“Leave my wife’s name out of your fabrications, if you please!” said
Gaston like a rapier thrust, turning on his heel towards him for a brief
instant. “Well, Roland?”
The thunderstruck young man approached with the cloak, and put it on his
leader’s shoulders in the midst of an extraordinary silence which even
Artamène did not dare to break. It was the messenger of destiny himself
who broke it, with something between a sob and a laugh.
“You are all mad here, I think . . . Madame—or you, Mademoiselle,
perhaps you have some influence? As there is a God above us, it is a
matter of this gentleman’s life. Orders have come from the First Consul
to Brune that his safe-conduct is not to be observed, and those orders
have been transmitted at least as far as Auray, and probably further by
this time. Can you not stop him?”
And at that Gaston flung his cloak back on to Roland’s arm, went up to
Mme de la Vergne, said something to her in a low tone which caused her
and Marthe to withdraw to the other end of the hall, motioned Roland and
Artamène also away, and, going up to the Comte, looked him in the eyes
and said in a voice vibrating with anger, “No man or woman living keeps
me from doing what I intend to do—have you not learnt that yet,
Monsieur de Brencourt? And, as for your story, I certainly put more
faith in Brune’s honour than in yours!”
The Comte, livid, swallowed something in his throat. “Your safe-conduct
is waste paper,” he repeated. “I heard it with my own ears.” Then he
broke out with some of his old vehemence, “Good God, de Trélan, why
won’t you believe me?—If this were not true, why do you think I have
ridden nearly eighty miles, ill as I am, in this mad haste?”
The man he had so treacherously used continued to look at him. He had
not raised his own voice at all, and it was low now, unhurried, and
colder than the wind from glaciers. “That is a question which only you
can answer, Monsieur le Comte. I cannot pretend to fathom the motives of
a man so utterly false as you. I can only suppose that having failed in
the past to deprive me of my life . . . and more than my life . . . you
are now trying to take from me something more precious than either, my
honour. But I am not to be frightened by talk of treachery into breaking
my pledged word. You have failed this time also, Monsieur de
Brencourt.—Come, gentlemen, it is time to start.”
He had finally turned his back. The Comte, speechless, bowed his head
against the high chair to which he was holding. What could he do against
this attitude? He had anticipated contempt, hatred, but never disbelief.
He lifted his head once more, tried to say, “For your wife’s sake!” but
the words stuck in his throat, and besides, the Duc was at the door now
with the young men—was descending the steps. All that came to his dry
lips was the old tag, “Your blood be on your own head!” Then his limbs
gave way beneath him, and he collapsed into the chair, hiding his face
in his hands. Outside there were sounds of mounting and of riding away;
then silence.
* * * * *
Marthe and her mother, with rather pale faces, looked at each other, and
then at the mudstained figure huddled in the chair, the elder woman
uneasily, Marthe with distaste. Since the Duc so disbelieved his story,
they disbelieved it too. Then Mme de la Vergne, mindful as ever of the
claims of hospitality, addressed the stranger.
“May I not order some refreshment for you after your ride, Monsieur?”
At her voice de Brencourt roused himself, and rose stiffly. But he
responded by a question.
“This is your house, Madame, I think—not the Duc de Trélan’s?”
“Certainly it is my house,” responded Mme de la Vergne. The gentleman
looked ghastly ill, as she now saw.
“Then I should be very glad of a glass of wine . . . before I ride away
again. My mission . . . has been fruitless, but I am . . . I have . . .”
His voice tailed off into nothing.
“Monsieur, sit down again—you are unwell!” cried Mme de la Vergne
sharply. Whatever the subject of disagreement between him and M. de
Trélan—and it must have been very acute—she did not want to have him
fainting in her hall. “Marthe, go and order something to be brought at
once—and pray give yourself the trouble to come to the fire, Monsieur;
you must be frozen.”
M. de Brencourt obeyed, but with difficulty, and sank into a great chair
that she pushed forward. “You do not object to my being in your house a
little? The treachery—you heard that?—is not what you probably think.
O, my God, my God, why did I come myself? He might have listened to
someone else!”
But he found himself alone. He put his cold hand over his eyes and
groaned aloud. Yes, the desperate fight he had had with himself to do
this thing in person, after his failure to find a trustworthy
messenger—and the result, the reward! Surely, in the few minutes that
had passed, he had paid to the full. But he had paid in vain. . . .
His head was swimming; his body frozen. A tray appeared beside him,
brought by that scornful girl herself. She vanished again. He seized and
drained the glass of wine upon it, and a little warmth stole into him.
He heard a footstep, the flow of a robe; the lady of the house back
again, no doubt. But, when he looked round, there, gazing at him in
astonishment, was the Duchesse de Trélan.
He got up and flung himself towards her.
“I did it for your sake,” he cried, hardly knowing what he said, “—and
he repulsed me like a dog. I was told I should live to do you a service
. . . and I thought the day had come. But he . . . he affected to think
it was . . . false . . . and he has gone, despite my warning.”
“Warning!” stammered Valentine, blanching. “Warning of what? I was
above—I did not know that you were here.”
“I imagine so,” he retorted bitterly. But she had no room in her mind
for any emotion but one.
“You came to warn M. de Trélan?” she said, and he saw that she was
twisting her fingers together. “That was . . . I thank you. But—what is
the danger? . . . _because he is gone!_” The last four words came out
with little less than terror behind them.
He could do her the immense, deliberate, though defeated wrong that he
had done, but, face to face with her again, after all he had sinned and
suffered, he shrank from dealing her the blow his undiluted knowledge
must deal. And it was too late now for any benefit to come of it, for,
as she had said, the Duc was gone.
He dropped his eyes. “I heard a rumour,” he said, “that there was a
regiment of the soldiers from Holland somewhere on the Vannes road, and
that they might not be too particular in the observance of a
safe-conduct. That was all; and no doubt it was false . . . and at any
rate,” he added, his bitterness getting the better of him again, “M. de
Trélan saw fit not only to disregard my warning, but to insult me into
the bargain.”
“Not to observe the safe-conduct!” exclaimed the Duchesse sharply. “But
that is unthinkable!”
(Yes, anything but _his_ peril had passed her by; that was clear.)
“You are right, it is really unthinkable,” he answered wearily. “I was a
fool to come, and I will relieve you of my presence.”
He meant, indeed, on that to walk straight out of the place. But he was
not a young man; he had been ill; he had asked too much of his body. His
head turned once more, and violently; he caught at the arm of the chair
from which he had risen, and, not to fall altogether, slid back into it.
And then the mud, the pallor, the deadly fatigue were all visible to
Valentine, and she realised with a shock the thing he had done—for her.
He saw it in her face as she came to him.
“You do believe me then, Valentine? It may not be true, but I believed
it!” he said confusedly, forgetting that he had not revealed the heart
of the peril. “And I tried to stop him—against my will, yes, against my
will! But you do believe me,—in spite of the past?”
The hoarse words were torn out of him, and when she let him have her
hand as she bent over him, he put his head down on it and broke into a
moment’s strangled sobbing.
CHAPTER VII
HOW AT THE LAST THE WINE WAS NOT DRUNK
(1)
By very hard going the four riders got to Quimperlé that night, despite
the state of the roads. They slept there entirely unmolested; a small
detachment of troops indeed occupied the town, but the mere sight of
Brune’s signature was enough. And the anxiety of ‘les jeunes’ at
least—the Duc would not discuss the matter—‘les jeunes’ who had only
half heard, was much allayed. It did not strike them that they were
still within the confines of Finistère, and that possibly the
disgraceful orders had not yet crossed the Scorff. Yet, all unknown to
their leader, they took that night in the hôtel a certain precaution
which might have remained unknown to him, had he not, waking in the dark
of the early morning, and perplexed by a sound outside his door for
which he could not account, lit a candle and softly opened it; and so
come on his own son stretched out there asleep across the threshold, his
pistols within reach of his hand, and his drawn sword beneath his head.
Gaston looked down, not a little moved, at that embodiment of his own
youth guarding him, and, shading the light, contemplated the sleeping
boy as he had done last year in the attic at Hennebont. Laure’s face,
grown so shadowy now, came back for a moment to haunt him. “I wish I
could tell him,” he said to himself. But there was his promise; and with
a sigh he went in and closed the door again.
The Duc made no reference next morning to his discovery, and thus never
learnt that they had all taken their turns in devotion. When they
reached Pont-Scorff they were already in the Morbihan, but through
Pont-Scorff they rode without even having to show their safe-conducts.
As Auray was rather too long a stage before the mid-day meal, and as the
horses, with the exception of Zéphyr, were now going none too well, they
decided to eat déjeuner at Hennebont, and about noon they drew rein
before the chief inn in the little town which had seen them creep into
it like thieves in the dusk, nearly a year ago. But though they came
openly now they were incomparably heavier-hearted.
As they dismounted, Gaston desired two of them to look after the tired
horses while he ordered the meal. Lucien and Artamène detached
themselves for this duty, and disappeared down a dark entry with the
four steeds. The Duc, followed by Roland, entered the inn.
Evidently Hennebont was full of soldiers; officers of all arms were
lounging outside and inside the door of the hostelry, but, though they
looked with extreme curiosity at the Royalists, no one seemed to find
their presence unnatural, or made the faintest show of asking for some
authorisation of it. Not even to Gaston did it occur that here, in the
Morbihan, they were being taken for officers of Cadoudal’s disbanded
army who had presumably not yet divested themselves of their uniforms,
but who were none the less amnestied. To Roland it was an extraordinary
experience to pass through these throngs of Blues as if they possessed
some charm; they did not even need to show those safe-conducts. But of
course they were safe with an honourable foe; were their enemies not
fellow-countrymen?
The inn parlour, with its small round tables, was crowded with guests,
both civil and military. As M. de Trélan came in, followed by the young
man, not a few looked up at the two handsome Chouan officers, of whom
Gaston’s high rank could only be guessed at by the air of distinction
that never left him, for he was not openly wearing his scarf, and the
little cross on his breast was too rare a decoration to be widely known.
They sat down at the only unoccupied table, one in a corner opposite the
door, and the Duc ordered four covers. The be-coiffed peasant girl who
received his commands asked for indulgence if there were delay, for, as
the gentlemen could see, they were very busy.
“Shall I go out then, and help the others with the horses, Sir?”
suggested Roland. His leader nodded, and Roland got up, still thinking
how odd it was to sit down placidly and eat in a room full of Blues.
There were quite a dozen officers there—hussars, dragoons and infantry.
The eyes of some of these officers followed him as he threaded his way
between the tables. Possibly they also found it piquant to see a former
foe moving about unmolested.
Feminine eyes followed him, too, appreciative of his youth and looks,
eyes set in the face of a youngish, buxom woman wearing an extravagant
bonnet and luxurious furs of marten who sat—strangely enough, with her
back to most of the company—at a table in one of the other corners.
With her was a big florid man over whose air of importance, every time
he looked at his companion, there passed a milder and obscuring gleam,
even as a light cloud drifts over the face of the moon. Any guests who
had noticed them decided that they were probably bride and bridegroom,
and all the more sentimental because they were neither of them in their
first youth. And newly wed in fact they were—M. and Mme Georges Camain,
on their way to Lorient, at which port M. Camain had to inspect some
warehouses for the Government. By taking his Rose with him he hoped to
combine pleasure with business.
Mme Camain’s eyes, therefore, travelled after the young man, as he
entered her sphere of vision just before going through the door. Her
husband thereupon leant over the table and tapped her on the pretty,
plump hand with the new wedding ring.
“Eyes right, please!” he said jocosely. “You are only allowed to look at
me now.”
“He reminds me of someone, that child,” observed the lady reflectively.
“A long time ago . . .”
“Eat your partridge, ma mie, and never mind about the days before the
Flood,” commanded Camain, setting her the example. “Remember, too, that
we have ordered the carriage to be at the door by one o’clock, and that
time is getting on.”
Rose pouted. “I suppose you think you have a right to be jealous now,
vieux monstre!”
“It is not only a right, but a duty!” returned the monster cheerfully,
going on eating, however, with a very care-free appetite.
But Rose was intrigued by the passage of the young man. “I wonder if he
was alone?” she murmured, and, between taking pecks at her partridge,
continually turned her head and craned her neck towards that quarter of
the room from which she divined that he had come. But it was in vain;
for, short of getting up and turning round altogether, she could not see
it.
And Gaston de Trélan, at that table in the corner, his head on his hand,
his thoughts far away, sat waiting for the advent of the meal and the
return of his aides-de-camp. The two nearest officers, dragoons, with
their heads close together over their wine, alternately looked at him
and whispered to one another. Meanwhile people ate steadily.
All at once Rose, whose curiosity, though almost motiveless, was proving
too strong for her, saying to her astonished husband, “I think I must
have dropped my handkerchief from my reticule as I came in,” got up from
her place before he had time to protest, and walked, her eyes on the
floor as though searching for something, till she came to a spot whence
she could conveniently glance at that one table in the corner which she
could not see when seated. Having arrived there, she sped a look at
it—at the Royalist officer sitting there alone who, as she moved across
the room, raised preoccupied eyes in her direction. . . .
Next moment the entire company was electrified to see the pretty little
woman in the marten furs clasp her hands suddenly together, and give a
tiny scream which penetrated through all the clatter of knives and the
babel of conversation. And then, more or less of silence having
descended, she broke out with a name—
“Monsieur de Trélan! Is it possible!”
And not to realise who was the object of this touching recognition was
difficult, for the solitary Chouan officer in the corner, after staring
a moment, rose slowly to his feet and bowed—as a man bows to an unknown
lady. Yet Rose stood there, her face quite white under her preposterous
bonnet, apparently oblivious that every eye was either on her, or on the
man to whom she had drawn attention. Then the wave of mild universal
surprise was broken into and flung aside by a billow of a much more
menacing kind. For, with an exclamation, one of the neighbouring
officers of dragoons leapt to his feet, his chair falling backwards
behind him, and strode in front of the Royalist’s table.
“Monsieur de Trélan—or Monsieur de Kersaint, as you prefer—will you
have the kindness to follow me?”
Gaston, coldly amused, surveyed him for a moment. “No, Monsieur, I must
beg to decline,” he said. “Your zeal is admirable, but misplaced.” And
he laid his hand on the back of his chair, with a view, evidently, to
sitting down again.
“You deny then that you are de Kersaint, the general of Finistère?”
“Not for a moment!”
“Then,” said the officer with a gesture, “it is my unpleasant duty to
arrest you. You will be wise, as you see, not to resist.”
The Duc de Trélan relinquished his hold of the chair and drew himself
up. “You must be dreaming, Monsieur,” he retorted. “You have no power to
arrest me. I am on my way to Vannes under General Brune’s safe-conduct.
You must know that, since you know who I am.”
For all reply the officer turned and beckoned to the rest. But his
companion was already there beside him, and from every quarter of the
room the other Republicans were hurrying, between the tables, to that
table in the corner behind which stood their quarry, alone.
“I have a safe-conduct,” repeated Gaston very haughtily. “Am I not
speaking to Frenchmen?—I have this also!” He took a step or two
backwards, and his sword sprang out.
“You had better come without resistance, Monsieur de Kersaint,” said the
officer of dragoons menacingly. “I have a squadron of my men out there
within hail, and these gentlemen, you can see, are in receipt of the
same orders. As for your aide-de-camp——” He snapped his fingers.
But Camain, pushing his bulky form through the onlookers, here broke in.
“Look here, gentlemen, this officer says he has a safe-conduct. Give him
at least the chance of showing it!”
“Who are you?” asked the dragoon rudely over his shoulder. “A damned
civilian! This is a matter for the military, thanks! The Chouan general
de Kersaint is to be arrested, safe-conduct or no safe-conduct; those
are the orders of the First Consul himself!”
Camain drew up his imposing figure. “I am deputy for the department of
Maine-et-Loire,” he declared in his deepest voice. “(Be quiet, Rose!)
What you are proposing to do is atrocious, and I protest!”
“Go back to your department then, and protest there!” retorted the
officer insolently. “Now that Madame has so obligingly furnished the
identification we wanted . . . Once more, Monsieur de Kersaint, will you
come, or will you have a useless mêlée here?”
Gaston set his teeth. It was true after all, this incredible infamy! If
he had listened to de Brencourt! . . . Valentine—should he ever see her
again? The room, seething now with excitement, swam for a second. . . .
No, they should not take him alive! This, the last, would be a good
fight—one against how many . . . twelve, thirteen? He slipped a couple
of feet further backwards still, till he was almost in the angle of the
wall, the blade he had never thought to use again glittering in his
hand. Then he smiled, not altogether scornfully. His intention was
obvious.
In the ring now round him several other swords slid out. Most of the
guests, vociferating, had already made a bolt for the door, but Rose was
clinging to her husband in a frenzy. “Georges! Georges! don’t let them
do it! It is the Duc, it is indeed! Tell them you had charge of
Mirabel—tell them . . .” But her words, vain in any case, could not
penetrate the uproar. And, even as she spoke, the officer of dragoons
drew and cocked a pistol. “Now, for the last time, Monsieur de Kersaint!
See, we do not want to harm your escort, if you have one—our business
is not with them—but if you drive us to use force, you will certainly
get them killed as well as yourself!”
His escort! that escort for the moment, mercifully, out of hearing. In
the imminent prospect of combat Gaston had forgotten them. Good God,
that was only too true—they would certainly get themselves cut to
pieces for him! Roland—_Roland_!—and those other boys slaughtered for
his sake . . . and uselessly! The idea was too horrible. He must let
them take him—quickly. His face grew sombre, and he lowered his point a
little.
“So this is the First Consul’s honour!” he said, but his voice cut like
a sword, “—and yours, soldiers and Frenchmen! I was warned of this—but
I would not believe such a thing possible!”
“It is orders!” a chorus answered him.
“Swear that you will let my escort go unharmed—no, how can I rely on
your word?” he said, looking contemptuously round, and this time no one
answered him. “At least I shall never give up my sword now, since there
is no one left worthy to receive it.” And before anyone had moved he had
put his left hand to the naked blade, and, bending his knee, snapped the
weapon across. Then he threw the two halves at his feet and folded his
arms. “I am at your disposal . . . _gentlemen_ . . . only be quick about
it!”
They had no desire to be other than speedy. There was a travelling
carriage just drawn up at the inn door; small matter that it belonged to
the Deputy who had tried to interfere. Five minutes later, with fifty
dragoons round it, that carriage had started for Auray and Vannes, while
the remaining officers, having thrust aside the doubly infuriated
Camain, were dealing in the passage with the distracted young men of
their prisoner’s escort, to whom news of the catastrophe had meanwhile
penetrated. The short and furious mêlée was indeed none of the
Republicans’ seeking, but its end was just as inevitable as if it had
been. . . . For Artamène, his head laid open by a sabre, having
stumbled, blinded with blood, into the eating-room, and fallen his
length among the tables, lay there without stirring; while Lucien, his
arm fractured, leant with shut eyes against the doorpost, his uniform
torn on one side from shoulder to waist. And in the now emptied setting
of the drama which she had unwittingly brought about, Rose Camain,
kneeling by the bleeding and unconscious boy on the floor, but not
trying in any way to succour him, her hands to the sides of her head in
approved theatrical fashion, was sending forth shriek after
shriek. . . .
(2)
But Roland, uninjured though almost crazy, was in the yard, his hands
shaking so much as he re-saddled Zéphyr that he could hardly pull the
girths. Even so, he had enough wits left to realise that the large stout
man, himself greatly discomposed, who had, as far as he remembered,
dragged him bodily out of the affray, was right when he said that it was
perfectly useless to follow the vanished carriage along the Auray road.
The best thing that he could do was to hasten back to Finistère and
spread the news. Roland was conscious that his adviser was helping him
now, keeping up, as he put on Zéphyr’s bridle, a running accompaniment
of wrath—“Disgraceful . . . infamous . . . to purloin a carriage
too. . . .”
“Look here, boy,” he said suddenly, throwing the reins over the Arab’s
neck, “—by the way, I suppose you’re his son, are you not?”
Roland, too dazed and wretched to be surprised at the idea, shook his
head, and put his foot in the stirrup.
“You’re devilish like him,” said Camain explanatorily. “Wait a minute—I
want to say something. The Duchesse de Trélan—if you see her, tell her
she can command my services. Camain, my name is; she knew me at Mirabel
. . . I expect you have heard about that. Hôtel du Lion d’Or at Lorient
will find me.”
Roland, in the saddle now, nodded. _O God, O God, they had let him be
taken!_
“I’ll see that your comrades are looked after,” added the Deputy kindly,
looking up at his young, desperate face. “I hope it is all a
mistake—damn it all, it must be! and that they will release him when
they get to Vannes. Yet it is best not to count on it. Good luck to
you!”
Roland bent down and seized the hand of the ex-administrator of Mirabel,
who so little divined in him the “marauder” of last April, and next
moment was out of the courtyard.
But even as he passed under the tunnel leading to the street he heard
this Camain calling after him, and impatiently reined up again.
“Look here, young man,” said the Deputy in a lowered tone, “as it was
owing to my—as I feel a sort of interest in the Trélan family, I’m
damned if I don’t follow those scoundrels to Vannes to-night, just to
keep an eye on the business. Tell the Duchesse that—and should she come
to Vannes in person, tell her to go to the Hôtel de l’Epée, and if I am
not still there myself I will leave a message for her.”
“God bless you!” said Roland, with tears in his eyes. Then he was in the
street, and a moment or two later, riding like mad back along the road
to Finistère.
For some miles he galloped on almost without thought, he was so numb
with misery and incredulity. Zéphyr, the incomparable, seemed quite
fresh, despite the distance he had come since yesterday morning. That
was why he had taken him. . . . A rescue—how was it to be brought
about? It all seemed to rest on his shoulders. A terrible feeling of
helplessness began to wrap him round as he pushed on through the cold
rain which was now beating on him. Was he really acting for the best in
returning like this, and what was to be done when he got back—the men
all disbanded? If only the Abbé were there! And how should he ever tell
the Duchesse? The clouds about him seemed thick with the shame and
anguish in his heart. And Zéphyr was not so fresh after all.
What did they mean to do with the Duc? Hold him as a hostage? They dared
do nothing worse, in the face of that full safe-conduct. Even the First
Consul would not dare. It was a mistake; yes, a piece of bravado. Yet if
only they had listened to M. de Brencourt!
He had covered many miles without drawing rein. The night was beginning,
the early February night. And Zéphyr, the tireless and surefooted, had
stumbled twice. “O Zéphyr, don’t you fail too, as we have failed!” cried
his rider.
Over the border at last into Finistère, and through Quimperlé, where
they had slept yesterday. It was dark now, and snowing a little. He
meant to ride all night, but at Bannalec it was plain that it was an
impossibility both for him and his gallant horse. He tried to get
another; could not, and fell asleep from exhaustion even as he argued
about it with the people of the inn. They carried him up and put him to
bed. He had covered not quite half of the distance back.
It was afternoon of the next day when at last he got to La Vergne, and
he could hardly get out of the saddle, hardly drag himself up the steps.
No sentry now. He lifted the great knocker; the door swung open. Someone
had heard the hoofs. It was Marthe. She caught at him as he stumbled
into the hall. “Roland, what is it? O, what has happened?”
“Bad news,” said he, so weary he could scarcely frame the words. “The
Duc——” A cold mist suddenly drove at him across the hall; when it
cleared he saw Mme de la Vergne hurrying towards him, and that Marthe
had her arms round him, half supporting him. And who was the man rising
from a chair by the hearth? But he saw also the Duchesse de Trélan, who
must have been coming down the great staircase, standing as if turned to
marble in her descent, a few feet from the bottom. . . . And he broke
away from Marthe, for he knew he must tell her at once.
“Madame, they have arrested the Duc at Hennebont—they have taken him to
Vannes . . . it was true about the safe-conduct . . . the others are
hurt—killed, perhaps . . .” And sobbing out, “How can we save him?”
clutching at her dress, he sank forward exhausted on the stairs, his
head against her very feet.
CHAPTER VIII
WHAT WAS LEARNT AT VANNES
Two nights later, in the dark and the cold, they drove into
Vannes—Valentine, Roland and the Comte de Brencourt—having left Mme de
la Vergne at Hennebont as they passed through, to tend her son. All
thought of raising in Finistère a force large enough for rescue had been
abandoned. Indeed they could never have got together enough men to
assault Vannes, held as it now was, and the mere attempt might be
extremely prejudicial to M. de Trélan. Since Finistère had capitulated,
it might indeed be the very consummation at which the First Consul was
aiming, in order to have a good pretext for disposing of Finistère’s
leader, now that he had him in his hands. It was better to hurry to
Vannes and trust to organising a rescue by means of some of Cadoudal’s
Chouans.
So M. de Brencourt had counselled when, the evening of Roland’s arrival,
he had offered Valentine such assistance as a man still sick could give.
That she could accept it as she had done, and could show herself
willing, in this terrible hour, to rely whole-heartedly upon him, was
balm to his scarified pride. But indeed, in contemplating her despair,
he forgot, at moments, his reception by her husband. If Artus de
Brencourt had never arrived at seeing his own past conduct in quite the
same light as a dispassionate observer would have done, there was one
episode on which he could not reflect without tingling shame and
horror—that frenzied vigil in which he had come near to slaying in
Valentine’s presence the man she loved. He had indeed recognised for
months past that he had been practically out of his senses at the
time—perhaps all the time since his return from Mirabel. . . . Not
indeed that this knowledge had helped him much that night at Vannes, in
the struggle he had had to bring himself to render a great service to
the man he had so deeply injured—apprehensive as he was lest he should
seem to be trying to make reparation, yet forced to do the service in
person for lack of a trustworthy messenger. Well, it was certain that
the Duc de Trélan had not suspected him of _that_ motive, when he had
flung back in his face the warning which the Comte had only been driven
to bring by the instinctive feeling that, despite the past, he could not
let his former leader go to his death in such a shocking fashion. But
the Duc had gone . . . and just because of the past.
There was no difficulty in obtaining news of “M. de Kersaint” at Vannes.
The place was ringing with it—and it was stunning. He had been
summarily tried the day before by a military court, and sentenced to
death. The pretext was that he was an émigré a rebel taken in arms who
had never meant to surrender. He was to have been shot that same
afternoon, but at twelve o’clock had come a courier with orders for a
respite and for his immediate transference to Paris. And, in half an
hour from the arrival of the despatch, he had been taken away in a
travelling-carriage under a strong escort. That was yesterday.
So much the Comte de Brencourt, quitting the conveyance, easily gathered
before they got to the Hotel de l’Epée. He had to tell Valentine that
her husband was gone, but he suppressed the fact that, had he not been
removed, she would not have seen him alive; and hoped she would not hear
it. The lamp that lit the interior of the carriage showed him, when he
had finished his brief recital, the tragic face of the woman he loved,
on whom, as if she had not known enough sorrow, this, too, was come. But
she did not weep nor blench; she said, “Then we must follow to Paris
to-morrow morning,” and he assented. It would take them between three
and four days.
They rattled through the dark and tortuous streets and drew up at the
hotel. Valentine put down her thick veil and Roland assisted her to
alight. Just inside the door a large man was standing waiting—Georges
Camain in person. He came forward with an air of profound deference.
“I have ventured to order a private room to be put at your disposal,
Madame,” he said, “and if you will allow me, I will attend you there. I
have a message for you.”
“You have seen him then?” she breathed. And Camain bent his head in
assent.
“I will wait upon you afterwards,” murmured the Comte in her ear. Since
the Deputy had not recognised him there was no point in giving him a
further opportunity. But Roland, obeying his gesture, followed Mme de
Trélan; yet after all, when the room was reached, remained outside the
door. So the ex-administrator of Mirabel and the ex-concierge were once
more alone together.
The moment that she was inside Valentine threw back her veil and turned
to him. There was no need to utter her question.
“I succeeded in seeing M. de Trélan for three minutes yesterday,” said
the Deputy gravely. “It was between noon and half-past, when he left for
Paris. I had been trying in vain all morning to do so. And then, Madame,
the interview took place on the stairs as they were conducting him to
the carriage, so that it was not very satisfactory.”
“But at least you saw him!” said Valentine, and the emotion she was
holding in check showed itself hungrily for a moment. “O, if only I had
been in your place!”
“Indeed, I only wish you had, Madame,” returned Camain gently.
“And you found him——?”
“Quite well, Madame, and perfectly composed, though I think the respite
was a great surprise to him. You know, I expect,” he went on, looking
away for a second, “that the iniquitous sentence was to have been
carried out yesterday afternoon?—Of course,” he added hastily, for her
face told him that she had not known, “this respite has changed all
that. . . . As I say, we had only a moment or two, and the letter which
I understand M. le Duc would have written to you, had this change not
occurred, he had not yet begun, so in that moment on the stairs he
scribbled a line on a page from my pocketbook, which he did me the
honour to commit to me, and I was to explain why it was so short. I was
also charged to ask you to convey to a certain person who had brought a
warning his profound regret for the way he had received it, and to his
aides-de-camp an assurance that they were not to blame themselves in any
way for what happened at Hennebont; that since his arrest was inevitable
he wished it to take place without their knowledge, and that he was only
grieved to hear that in the end it had not done so. . . . Here is M. de
Trélan’s note, Madame.”
He put a tiny piece of paper in her hand, and, clearing his throat,
walked away to the fireplace.
Valentine opened the little torn-off twist. It contained only one word,
and Gaston’s initials. The word was “_Always_.”
She pressed it to her lips. For a moment she seemed to feel his arms
about her. Ah, never again, perhaps. . . . She murmured some words of
thanks. The Deputy turned round.
“I wish to God I could have done more,” he said, surreptitiously
pocketing his handkerchief. “It is abominable—beyond words—this
affair! And to think that it was brought about . . .” he checked himself
and looked at her strangely, but she did not seem to notice anything,
and he went on, “Now, alas, I can do nothing further. I have no
influence with the present Government. I must pursue my journey to
Lorient.”
“If you had done nothing but bring me this,” replied Valentine, rousing
herself, “a world of thanks would be no payment. But you have shown me
besides, Monsieur Camain, the treasure of a kind and generous heart.”
“As long as you live, Duchesse,” said the bricklayer’s son, bending over
the hand she gave him, “you will not lack that offering. It is your own
heart that calls it out. . . .”
* * * * *
A little later the three travellers had made some pretence of eating the
meal which had been brought up to them, and then, seeing that the two
men were restless, Valentine begged them not to consider her but to
leave her if they wished; and they, thinking on their side that she
perhaps desired to be alone, obeyed.
Valentine did desire to be alone, but it was no solace. It seemed to her
that she had touched the lowest depths of human despair. She had never
dreamt that Gaston would be gone from Vannes. The word he had sent her
was warm in her bosom, but that was not he. She felt that it was only
the prospect of seeing him at the end of them, even though it must be as
a captive, which had kept life in her these two dreadful days. And what
had the Deputy said—that if the _sursis_ had not come . . . O no, no,
that was not possible! She would not look at it. . . . But it _was_ true
that he was far away, alone, in the hands of his enemies. It was an
effort to keep herself from calling his name aloud.
She sat in a chair by the fire, the wind howling outside, the tears
dripping through her fingers, and did not hear the door open. Roland
stood on the threshold again, looking at her with a great compassion and
understanding in his young eyes—for if his heart was broken what must
hers be? And half impulsively, half timidly, he went across the little
room and knelt down by her.
“Madame, dear Madame!”
Still weeping, she put out her hand to him blindly, and he kissed it,
kissed her tears on it. And then she turned wholly to him, and as he,
kneeling there, took her tenderly and reverently into his arms, she
shook with sobbing on his shoulder. It was really the first time that
she had broken down since the arrest. Except that he felt he must
comfort her—though he knew not by what means, for what means were
there?—the boy would have liked to sob too.
He said something, and through her misery she thought, “His voice is
getting like Gaston’s. There will be something of Gaston left in the
world after all.”
It was at that moment that the impulse to tell him came to her
overwhelmingly. She was so lonely; it would comfort her—if she could
keep from thinking of Mme de Céligny. He ought to know now, too.
She mastered her sobs after a while, lifted her head from the boy’s
shoulder, dried her eyes and leant back in her chair.
“Stay there, Roland, if you will,” she said, and he sat on the floor
beside her chair, silently looking into the fire. What he saw there was
always the same—the inn parlour at Hennebont; sometimes with his leader
sitting there, as he had last seen him when he went out to the others on
that thrice accursed errand of his own making, sometimes disordered and
sickeningly empty, as it had appeared at his return. . . .
Valentine contemplated his face, quite haggard in the firelight for all
its youth, and the tragedy in his eyes.
“Roland,” she said, putting her hand on his arm, “I want to tell you
something. The Duc sent a message to you and the others through M.
Camain. You were not, he said, to distress yourself about what happened
at Hennebont, for as his arrest had to come he particularly wished it
should take place as quickly as possible, before you could return. He
knew quite well, you see, what you would all have done—what you did,
alas—and he would not have you killed to no end.”
Roland turned that tragic gaze upon her. “In other words, M. le Duc got
himself taken to save us. . . . _I wish I were dead!_”
The tears were in his voice, not in his eyes, which were quite dry. He
turned them on the fire again.
“Do you then love him so much?” asked Valentine softly.
Roland gave her one look; he did not answer in words.
“O my child, my child!” said Mme de Trélan. Her beautiful and expressive
voice held a world of meanings, but Roland was back in the coals and the
inn parlour. He remembered they had not laid the four covers when he
went out of the room; there were only three—or was it two? . . . If he
had stayed, he could have died there at his feet before they took him.
“Roland,” said the Duchesse’s voice again, “I want to tell you something
else. I did not mean to do so yet . . . but I feel I must.” She made a
little pause. “You do not remember your mother, I think?”
He shook his head.
“A long time ago, Roland . . . she and the Duc met . . . and he loved
her——”
The boy turned, startled, from his contemplation of the fire.
“—Too well,” finished Valentine, with a long breath.
He went white, then scarlet; then white again. “Madame—what do you
mean?—I don’t understand. . . . You cannot mean——”
Unconsciously she was pressing her wet handkerchief into a ball. “M. de
Trélan is your father, Roland.”
CHAPTER IX
THE RUBIES OF MIRABEL
(1)
“You really wish to do this, Madame?” asked Suzon Tessier, looking at
the piece of embroidery she had just laid before the Duchesse.
“I must do something, Suzon, to pass the time till I start for the
Temple. I cannot go out; Paris hurts me. And, sewing once more in this
room, I shall feel I am back in the old days.”
“I only wish you were!” thought Suzon as she left the room—a wish
Valentine would never have echoed. Though these days were nothing but
linked hours of anguish and suspense, she would not have changed. Heaven
lay between that time and this.
The day before yesterday she had arrived with her escort in this new,
gay, animated Paris which hurt her so—the Paris which, exhilarated by a
slight frost, under a cheerful winter sky, seemed to have drunk in a new
lease of life with its revivifying change of government. It was a fresh
world to Valentine—and a cruel. So when, after one night at a hotel,
she had sought out Suzon to see how she fared, that faithful soul had
refused to let her face again the curious looks of the hostelry. Since
there was no danger to Mme Tessier in housing her now—and Valentine had
learnt long since that the threatened Mirabel enquiry had never come to
anything—she let herself be persuaded without much difficulty, and she
and Roland were staying in the Rue de Seine. M. de Brencourt was lodging
at an obscure little _hôtel garni_ in the Rue du Vieux-Colombier. Mme de
Trélan had hardly seen him since their arrival; he was too deeply
occupied. For the whole weight of Royalist influence in Paris was at
work to procure the release of “M. de Kersaint” from the prison of the
Temple, where he was in close confinement awaiting the First Consul’s
pleasure. He was still under the sentence of death passed on him at
Vannes, and all attempts, based on the disgraceful means taken for his
capture, to get that sentence removed, or even commuted, had so far been
vain, though Berthier, the Minister of War, was an officer of the ancien
régime, and Lebrun, the Third Consul, actually in relations with the
Royalist party. Protests and clamour having proved unavailing, there
remained therefore nothing, if the prisoner was to be saved, but to
carry him off.
And this was by no means a hopeless enterprise, for in Paris there
existed a whole subterranean population of Chouans and émigrés, of
conspirators and dubious characters. The heads of the secret Royalist
agency, the Chevalier de Coigny and the Baron Hyde de Neuville, knew
well where to put their hands on suitable instruments. Plans were in
fact already well forward for a very promising scheme, to be put into
force the following evening. There would arrive at the prison of the
Temple a carefully forged order for M. de Trélan’s transference to some
other place of confinement; it would be brought by an officer, and there
would be a carriage and a considerable escort—enough to impose on any
jailor in the world. And, once they had the captive out, they would make
for the coast, along the road to which relays would be in waiting.
All this Valentine knew, and it had, till an hour or so ago, been the
one thing which filled her mind. But the arrival of the order to see her
husband, which after reiterated attempts had been procured for her,
absorbed it now. The order was for three o’clock that afternoon.
There was more colour on Mme de Trélan’s face to-day than at
Vannes—more colour and more signs of strain. And the sewing she had
asked for was something of a pretence—as much a pretence, really, as
was Roland’s book, now upside down on his knee where he sat on the
window-seat, his chin on his hand, gazing immovably out of the window.
She put down her needle and gazed at him in her turn.
How like his profile was to Gaston’s—and how unlike! Was she sorry that
she had told him? It had changed him, between that news and the
catastrophe of Hennebont he seemed a boy no longer. For a nature so open
as his he had said extraordinarily little, but she had divined easily
enough the tides of feeling that had met—were meeting still—in his
young heart: the shock of knowing that he had no right to the name he
bore (though since he had been so carefully recognised by the late M. de
Céligny the world need never know that) the shock to his thoughts of the
mother of whom, perhaps mercifully, he had no memory. On the other hand
there was the fervour of his worship for M. de Trélan, which lent so
much reality and poignancy to his frustrated desire to have died to save
him. . . . She did not feel sure that she had not been selfish in the
matter; she had even said so, later on, that dark evening at Vannes. But
when he had cried bewildered, “How can you be so good to me, Madame? You
ought to hate me!” she had answered that he must know she loved him and
was leaning on him then, or she would never have told him. “But I think
you ought to know,” she had ended, “in case he . . .”
Before she got further Roland had come back from the mantelpiece, where
his head lay buried in his arms, and was at her feet, kissing the hands
which were gripping each other in the effort to finish that sentence.
And he said, in a smothered voice, “If it is dishonour . . . I do not
feel dishonoured.—But I cannot grasp it yet; it seems too blinding
. . .”
Valentine remembered all this, looking at him now after six days.
“Roland, my child,” she said suddenly, “I want to consult you about
something. If to-morrow night’s scheme should fail——”
The young man turned his head at once. “Oh, it will not fail,” he
asserted. “But I wish—O, how I wish—that I were in it!”
For, there being secret communication between the Royalist agency and
the Temple, the prisoner had contrived to express a strong desire that
the Vicomte de Céligny should take no active part in the plan of rescue.
“Poor boy, I know you do! But, Roland, I also have to be inactive. Yet I
have a scheme of my own, in case the other fails . . . You know the
Trélan rubies? We had designed them, M. de Trélan and I, for Marthe on
your wedding day. Now I have the thought of giving—of offering—them to
someone else . . . as a price.”
“To whom?” asked Roland, leaning forward as the Duchesse unclasped them
from under her dress.
“To Mme Bonaparte.”
Roland, a little startled, considered. “Would it be of any use?”
“She is said to be rapacious for jewels—and of Royalist leanings.”
“But what could she do?”
“Use her influence with her husband. What do you think of it, Roland?”
The young man on the window seat reflected. “You should consult M. Hyde
de Neuville, Madame, not me. I know nothing of Mme Bonaparte. But——”
He stopped and coloured a little.
“What, Roland?”
“Forgive me, Madame, but would the Duc approve of such a step?”
Her own colour faded a little as she met his eyes. And then with
courage, she answered, “No, Roland, I am afraid he might not. He is, as
you know . . . very proud. But it is not as if he personally would have
a hand in it. A wife’s mortal anxiety will excuse anything. I should go
as one woman—as one wife—to another . . . an independent step.”
“Shall you tell M. de Trélan of it this afternoon?” asked Roland, with
his eyes on the floor.
Valentine did not answer for a moment. “But in that case I could not say
truthfully that he knew nothing of it—which I should wish to be able to
say. Advise me, Roland!”
“O Madame, how can I presume to advise you in a matter that concerns
only you and him. You know so much better what he would wish than I do!”
And Valentine sat silent, looking at him, her face drawn, the red
rivulet of fire across her hands.
“Roland, what you really mean is that I know what he would not wish!”
“Yes, Madame,” answered the boy in a very low voice.
Valentine caught her underlip. “You have your father in you, there is no
doubt,” she thought to herself, and as she bent over the stones a tear
fell on to the possible price of blood. For the worst of it was that she
knew Roland was right.
She lifted her head again. “Then I shall speak of it to him—ask his
permission. . . . And I think, Roland, that I will go and prepare now.
It is very early to start, but it is a long way to the Temple, and we
could walk part of it. It is so hard to sit still.”
As she came downstairs again, dressed for the street, she was thinking
of the man who had put the rubies into her hands that strange day at
Mirabel. Ah, that the Abbé Chassin were here now! he who had always been
at hand in difficulties, and who now, at the most critical time of all,
was over the sea. But even he, as she knew, could do no more than was
being done.
In the parlour she found M. de Brencourt—the first time she had seen
him that day.
“You are setting out already, Madame?” he asked, bending over her hand.
She told him why, thinking how worn and ill he looked, and how possessed
(as indeed he was) by a spirit of restless energy.
“I would beg leave to escort you part of the way,” he said, “but having
missed Hyde de Neuville at his lodging, and hearing he had something of
importance to say to me and was coming here, I must await him. Roland, I
suppose, accompanies you?”
“Yes—but he will not be able to see M. de Trélan, I am afraid. Is there
any message you wish conveyed about to-morrow night?”
M. de Brencourt shook his head. “Communications of that kind, Madame, go
by their own channel. Besides, there is nothing fresh to say. The Duc
knows the attempt is to be made; his part is merely passive.”
She said nothing for a moment. Then, flooding up from the depths, came
the thing she had not yet allowed to escape her. “O, Monsieur de
Brencourt, if only he had listened to you!”
The Comte shook his head. “No, Madame, say rather, If only the warning
had come from other lips! I was the one man in the world who should not
have carried it. . . . Duchesse, we cannot put off our past so easily;
it clings, like the shirt of fable, and poisons everything. . . . You
may tell the Duc, if you will, that I accept his apology in the same
spirit in which he sent it. I cannot blame him for disbelieving my
veracity—however much, being only human, I resent it. But it was
inevitable; and that he is where he is now is Nemesis—the Nemesis I
have drawn down on both of us.”
She could find no words before the sadness of his tone. He opened the
door for her.
(2)
When he had shut the door behind Mme de Trélan the Comte turned and
threw himself down in a chair, his chin on his breast, staring into the
fire. His brain was weary, for he had been up most of the night. He
could not forget (even if Valentine did, as he sometimes suspected) that
the Duc de Trélan was not only a prisoner but a condemned prisoner—not
a man awaiting trial, but one already under sentence of death—and that
his position was very precarious. Any hour might conceivably bring the
tidings that the sentence had been carried out on him; for his own part
he wished the rescue had been fixed for that evening, but it had not
proved possible to have every thread in place so soon.
M. de Brencourt’s whole soul was so set on getting Gaston de Trélan out
of the mortal peril in which he stood, that he did not analyse his
motives over closely. He had entered on the attempt for Valentine’s
sake—and a little, too, for the sake of his own self-respect. And the
Duc had sent a message of regret; from him of all men that was no empty
form of words. Yet Artus de Brencourt was under the impression that he
cared very little about de Trélan’s fate in itself. But it is hard to
know one’s own heart.
He went on staring into the coals. He wished he did not keep seeing that
figure by the dolmen in the forest waiting with folded arms to receive
his fire. It was so very possible . . . He shivered. “How much better it
would be if I could take his place!”
A knock, and the expected visitor was shown in, and the Comte roused
himself. Hyde de Neuville, the newcomer, was surprisingly young for the
position he occupied—only three and twenty in fact—good-looking,
alert, intelligent, well-dressed, a man of good family accustomed to the
best society, and, in some of his activities, to the worst. He had some
astonishingly audacious exploits to his name. When he wrote letters—as
to M. Chassin—he signed himself “Paul Berry.”
“I had gone to see Bertin,” explained the young man, coming over to the
fire. “I was fearing a hitch about the escort. But it is all right. The
two dozen men he had laid his hand on are perfectly reliable, and I am
now quite satisfied. Uniforms, indeed, are more difficult to procure
than bodies to put them on. But we shall manage.”
“You have no doubts about the forged order?”
“Not the slightest. And none of the Temple officials will be surprised,
I think, if M. de Trélan is transferred, the circumstances of his
capture having been so exceptional.”
“So damnable!” interpolated the Comte.
“But I really wanted to speak to you about something quite different,”
went on the young conspirator. “Late last night I had a communication
from my compatriot Bourgoing, who is in relations with Talleyrand. It
appears Talleyrand thinks that, partly owing to the outcry which has
been made about this abominable violation of M. de Trélan’s
safe-conduct, Bonaparte would, after all, be rather glad to get out of
going to the extremity to which he most undoubtedly meant to go when he
sent those infamous orders to Brune.”
De Brencourt stared at him rather incredulously. “I can hardly believe
that of the First Consul. He is entirely without scruples, and very
unlikely to be frightened into turning back once he has started on a
course, however black that course may be. He cannot be magnanimous now;
it is too late. It would only look like weakness.”
“I know that. But Bonaparte, besides getting rid of the odium this
affair is raising in certain quarters in Paris, would demand some kind
of _quid pro quo_—that the Duc should personally ask for his life, and,
I suppose, give an undertaking never to conspire against him. Talleyrand
is almost convinced that in such a case he would be merciful—in fact
that he would secretly be relieved. He could make at any rate some
pretence of magnanimity; it might affect wavering supporters. But he has
gone too far to set the Duc de Trélan free of his own motion; it would
look too much like weakness, as you say. On the other hand if it were
publicly known that the Duc had asked for mercy——”
“I fear, in that case, that the First Consul will not obtain the relief
which he desires,” observed M. de Brencourt drily. “Who that had had any
acquaintance with him could imagine that the Duc de Trélan would, for
any consideration, stoop to sue from Bonaparte—and by so doing serve
Bonaparte’s purpose too! . . . I should scarcely like even to propose
such an idea to him.—But of course it would be only proper to inform
him—as I expect you have already done?”
Hyde de Neuville looked thoughtful. He nodded. “My note must have
reached him, by the usual channel, three or four hours ago.—By the way,
has the Duchesse started for the Temple? I think her interview was for
three o’clock, was it not? I was wondering whether the ease with which,
in the end, the order was obtained, was due to the idea that she might
work on her husband if she knew.”
“Then I am thankful that she does not know,” replied the Comte rather
hoarsely.
“You mean that it would be of no use? Well, we must then stake
everything on to-morrow night’s affair, which promises excellently.” He
brought out a paper. “Now, who of these do you think had best drive the
carriage, and who play the officer commanding the escort? And I have not
yet quite arranged about all the further relays.”
(3)
At that very moment Valentine, on Roland’s arm, had just emerged from
the Rue du Roule into the Rue Saint-Honoré, whence they intended to take
a fiacre to the Temple. In that animated and busy street Roland was
looking round for a carriage when he suddenly exclaimed,
“See, Madame, what is coming. Is it—it must be the First Consul
himself!”
Valentine followed his eyes. From the direction of the Tuileries was
approaching, at a fast trot, a carriage with an escort of mounted
grenadiers. It came onwards in a clatter of hoofs, and on its passage a
roar of cheers went up and hats were waved. Valentine felt a momentary
dizziness, and held Roland’s arm tightly. She was about to see the
master of France, the great general, the great administrator, the genius
with a marvellous brain, an indomitable will, and a petty soul—the man
who had her husband’s life in his hand, to keep or to throw away. But
when the carriage was almost abreast she involuntarily dropped Roland’s
arm and drew herself up, the pride of a long line firing her blood.
And she saw, passing quickly, not, as she had expected, a young hero in
uniform, but, in a grey civilian overcoat, the wide revers crossed
closely over his chest, a little man whose hollow temples and cheeks,
and pallid yellowish complexion, made him look at least ten years older
than his thirty years. Sombre and preoccupied, his head sunk on his
breast, he appeared almost indifferent to the plaudits of the crowd, but
chance, or something in her attitude, drew his eyes in Valentine’s
direction, and for one brief second the Duchesse de Trélan
sustained—and returned—the singular and burning gaze of Napoleon
Bonaparte. Then he was gone.
Trembling a little, Mme de Trélan took the young man’s arm again. She
could not shake off the feeling that the First Consul knew who she was,
and that it was the question of the Duc de Trélan’s fate which was
absorbing his thoughts just then. And he did not look as if he could be
turned from his purpose by any woman. . . .
“Let us get a carriage and go quickly, Roland,” she said in a faint
voice.
The slow horse clanked dully along the interminable Rue du Temple, till
at last Valentine and Roland found themselves standing before the
columned entrance to the Palace of the Temple, once the habitation of
the Comte d’Artois and, before him, of other princes of the blood, such
as Conti of amorous memory. And soon, formalities over, they were
walking, with a soldier as guide, across the great courtyard with its
encircling row of leafless trees, towards the low façade. Except that
this was day, and not night, they saw just what the Royal Family had
seen when they were brought there captives on the 13th of August, 1792,
for the palace itself had not changed its external aspect since, and the
prison itself, the great Tower, stood at some distance behind. Following
their guide they went through the building, emerging finally on the
flight of steps which led down from what had been the great salon to the
palace garden, and saw then, at the end of the deserted pleasances, the
great wall built round the Tower to isolate the royal captives, and over
its bleak masonry the upper storeys and the pointed roof of the massive
donjon of the Temple which was their goal.
Valentine had heard of this wall of Palloy’s at the time of its
construction. It had served its purpose only too well then; it
looked—God help her!—as if it would serve it well now. Yet M. de
Brencourt had escaped—but that was by bribery, and he had not been in
solitary confinement. . . . Now they were at the guardhouse in the wall,
were passed civilly and quietly through, and found themselves facing the
fortress itself, grey, massive, foursquare, with its small satellite
round tower at each angle. Every window in the main building, except
those at the very top, was blinded by a sloping board-work, a tabatière.
And round it the encircling wall, supported on many buttresses, formed a
complete square of desolation. In this were listlessly promenading a few
prisoners.
“That is the entrance, Madame,” said their guide, pointing to the
left-hand of the two smaller towers on that side. “The stairway runs up
that tourelle; they will take you up from the greffe there. I see old
Bernard awaiting you, in fact.”
And indeed, on the small semi-circular perron at the foot of the little
tower was already standing an old gaoler with a bunch of keys.
“Madame de Trélan?” said this old man when they got there. “We were
expecting you. If you will show me the pass there is no need to go into
the greffe. Thank you, Monsieur . . . Madame will be obliged to mount a
good many steps, since M. de Trélan, as she probably knows, is in
solitary confinement, and therefore at the top of the Tower. I will go
first; there are wickets to unfasten.”
The winding stairway of the turret was too narrow for Roland to give the
Duchesse his arm. Light and gloom alternated with each other as they
passed the slit-like windows in the six-foot masonry. And every step
they mounted seemed to drive the blood further from Valentine’s heart.
How could Gaston ever be rescued, even by guile, from a place like this?
And she, who had been twice in prison herself, and thought she knew all
its bitterness, now found that she was tasting a cup incomparably
sharper.
She was so pale when they got to the top that Roland put his arm about
her for a moment.
“Trying, the ascent, Madame,” observed the melancholy gaoler. “One
hundred and twenty-two steps.”
A couple of sentries with fixed bayonets stood before the thick,
nail-studded door. The “Marquis de Kersaint” was well guarded indeed.
“The young gentleman will stay outside,” observed Bernard. “My orders,
as you know, are only for the family. There is a bench yonder,
Monsieur.”
Roland, his heart beating furiously, bent his head in acquiescence, and
when the gaoler had unlocked the door and the sentries had stood aside
Valentine passed in alone.
CHAPTER X
THE LAST CONFLICT
She had no time for thought of her surroundings. Gaston, warned by the
opening of the door, was waiting just inside, and she was in his arms,
strained to him, clinging to him, before ever it had finished closing
behind her.
O, haven where she had thought these last dreadful days never to rest
again! But no, how could God take it from her again so soon? He was too
good! Just to be there once more, to feel Gaston’s lips on hers, to hold
him—the agony of suspense drugged, if not dead—nothing else mattered,
not even that he was a prisoner.
“Beloved, your cheek is cold,” he murmured. “Is it so cold in here?—and
if I hold you all the time will you be warm enough?”
“I am not cold,” she answered in a whisper, “but hold me . . . hold me
. . .” And consciousness of everything but that hold drifted away.
. . . Cold? Perhaps _he_ was cold—neglected? What was this place like?
To see it, in its relation to him, she lifted her head from his breast,
and was conscious for the first time of the small, high room in which
she stood, of the window ten feet up in the wall, so that no view was
possible, and the light came down from it very cheerlessly. On the
ancient walls, blackened in places by the smoke of many a bygone torch,
names were scrawled. She saw a pallet, a table and chair—and a stove,
which was burning.
Then she scrutinised him, with such eyes of anxiety for what she might
discover in his appearance that Gaston smiled at it.
“Do you expect to find, my darling, that ten days of captivity can have
changed me?” he asked. “I have everything I want—everything I can pay
for, that is—except liberty for correspondence . . . and my personal
liberty, bien entendu.”
Indeed he looked younger, less worn, than at her last sight of him. And
his tone, assumed or natural, was so calm. But somehow that very fact
made her a little uneasy.
He took her hands again. “Sit down, my heart. No, not on my solitary
chair; I cannot recommend it. The bed is better; I can sit there too.”
She obeyed him. She did not like to think he slept on that!
“This place makes me shudder, Gaston.”
“Dearest, after La Force and your other prison! It seems to me, now that
you are here, like a palace! And you, what roof in Paris has the
happiness of sheltering you?”
She told him. And then, holding his hand as he sat by her on the little
bed, and turning round and round on his finger, for which it was now too
loose, his emerald ring, she approached the subject so near her lips.
“Gaston, you spoke just now—not seriously, I know—of paying for your
liberty. Suppose this plan for your rescue fails, which God forbid, but
suppose it fails . . . could your liberty be bought?”
He looked at her so hard, so questioningly, that her hopes for the
scheme sank lower still.
“I fear not,” he said very gravely. And then, after another pause, “What
did you imagine could buy it, my wife?”
And by his very intonation she knew that she would never, with his
consent, kneel to Joséphine Bonaparte. Yet she would not give up.
“With the ruby necklace,” she answered, and went on. But he soon stopped
her.
“Valentine, you cannot really be proposing that I should stoop to beg my
life of Bonaparte!”
She winced, for the tone was almost hard, and hurt. “No, no,” she
interposed hastily, “not that _you_ should! But I, your wife,
approaching Mme Bonaparte, a wife herself, that is a very different
thing. For me to do so is a most natural step, and when I point out to
her what surely her husband cannot realise, the infamy of the means by
which he took you, the violation of your safe-conduct——”
He had been staring at the floor, his mouth set. But again he broke in.
“The First Consul has had plenty of time to reflect on that, Valentine.
Believe me, he knows what he is doing.”
O, the place was cold, after all, deadly cold! And Gaston so
inexorable——
“And you will not let me——” she began once more unsteadily.
“A thousand times no! I forbid it absolutely.”
Very low, Valentine said, “And what of me? Am I too to be sacrificed to
the pride of your race? Can I not plead for myself, Gaston,—not with
Bonaparte indeed, but with you, with you!”
He turned, he caught her quickly in his arms. “My darling, my very dear,
don’t say that!” he exclaimed in a moved voice. “Don’t say that! It is
not I indeed, nor pride——”
But she retorted, half sobbing, “Gaston, I almost think that if you were
to be told you could have your life for the asking, you would not ask
for it!”
Mercifully she could not guess that the sudden closer tension of his
arms about her told how her shot had gone home, nor that her head almost
rested at that moment on Hyde de Neuville’s letter. As for Gaston
himself, who knew how truly, indeed, she had unwittingly spoken, he
dared not take up her challenge. So he said, as calmly as he could, “My
dearest, you are overwrought. And, Valentine, can you think that I
should allow you to put yourself to a useless humiliation, you whom I
love more than my life? For I do not think Mme Bonaparte would have any
influence in the matter, and if she had, I dislike the idea of bribing
her to use it, as much as you do, I am sure, in your heart. No, we will
trust to that clever and audacious young man, Hyde de Neuville, with all
the means he has at his disposal. To come and demand a prisoner with a
forged order and a fictitious escort will be child’s play to him. And
some day I will tell you the very good reason I have for not wishing my
life to be begged by anyone. On the faith of a gentleman it is not
merely pride. But for the present you must trust me.”
The present. He could speak of it like that! Then he really thought that
there might be a future in which he would be a free man? Did he, _did_
he? She looked hard at him, and suddenly out of the past shot the
remembrance of that very different struggle which had ended their life
at Mirabel. Then she had pleaded with him to do something worthy of
himself; now . . . was it possible that she was urging him to consent to
something unworthy? If that were so, thank God that he was, as before,
unmoved. And as she studied the fine, rather worn profile she realised,
too, how much less stern were the lines of his mouth. He had asked a
little while ago, in jest, if she thought his brief captivity had
changed him. But it was true; there was a deep change in him. The
profound depression of those last days at La Vergne was gone. Why?
“Gaston,” she said on an impulse, “you are happier than when we parted.”
He turned his head, looked down into her eyes, and smiled. “You can
guess why, my soul—you who know what was spared me. God was kind to me.
The wine was poured, but I did not drink it. I never had to give up my
sword; I never did consent to disarmament. And Finistère is saved all
the same. Have I not reason to be happier?”
“And yet—O Gaston, Gaston, I must say it—if only you had listened to
M. de Brencourt’s warning!”
He got up from the bed. “M. de Brencourt, I trust, has received the
message I sent by M. Camain?”
“Yes,” said Valentine. “He sent one back by me to-day; that he accepted
your apology. But he said—and it distressed me, Gaston—that he ought
never to have brought the message himself. Your disbelief, he seemed to
think, was his Nemesis.”
“That is true,” said her husband a little coldly. “To this hour I do not
see how I could have believed in his good faith. But—I have been
wanting to say this to you, my dearest—nothing could have made any
difference. You think that if I had listened to his warning I should not
be here to-day, nor those poor boys lying at Hennebont. But as far as I
am concerned it would have been just the same. I must have gone to
Vannes to give up my sword, even were I sure that I was walking into a
snare. For if, scenting a trap, I had not gone, what would have
happened? Brune would have stoutly denied the intended treachery, I
should have been branded as failing to redeem my pledge, and Finistère
would have been invaded after all. Do you not see that even if I had
believed de Brencourt I could have done no differently?”
She looked up at him a moment, standing there with a prison wall for
background. No, _he_ could have done no differently, whatever a man with
less strict a sense of honour might have done.
“You are you!” she said proudly. “But I will point out that aspect to
the Comte—for he has suffered, Gaston. . . . But, my darling, there is
something else I want to ask you.” She paused a moment. “If you will not
let me beg your life, and I”—she faltered a little—“I accept your
wishes . . . what is to happen if the plan for to-morrow fails? Will
Bonaparte keep you in prison for years, perhaps?”
And the human spirit has such strange recesses that it really seemed to
her that by throwing out this suggestion in words she could make it
real, avoid a worse. For at Vannes they had told her——
Gaston de Trélan went suddenly over to the stove, and held out his hands
for a moment to its warmth. His back was towards her. Then, sitting down
beside her on the bed again, he said lightly, “He is not likely to have
the chance of doing that—unless he captures me a second time.”
She saw that he was evading her. “Yes,” she broke in, seizing his arm,
“I know; we have spoken about that. But the best plans sometimes fail.
What then? Gaston, as you love me . . . Gaston, answer me!”
He looked down at the little hand gripping his arm, and after a moment
put his other hand over it. “My wife, can you not see that the First
Consul, a soldier himself, would not incur the odium of an almost
unparalleled piece of military treachery unless it were worth his while?
. . . My dear, there is no braver woman than you. I do you the honour,
therefore, of telling you the truth. No, he will not keep me in prison.
If I am not rescued I shall undoubtedly be shot . . . as an—example.”
She was answered. Her hand relaxed upon his arm, and he hastily slipped
the arm itself about her as she fell away from him. But Valentine pulled
herself still further away.
“Then I am going to disregard your wishes, Gaston! You do not know what
you are saying. I give you fair warning. I am going to Mme Bonaparte—to
the First Consul himself! You expect me to stand by and see you murdered
when I might save you! What is your pride—which you cannot
deny—against your life . . . and Gaston, Gaston, against my love for
you, which you treat so lightly!”
He slipped to his knees and caught her hands to his breast. “O, my more
than dear, do not say that!” he implored. “Is not your love for me all
the light I have in the world? But at this hour there is something that
calls more insistently even than love—something that, if it has to do
with pride, is not linked with personal pride. I mean—honour. And you
could not gain me my life if you asked—I am sure of it—yet if you were
to make the attempt——”
But Valentine broke in with desperate logic. “You cannot know that I
should fail! How could you? You cannot be sure till it has been tried.
And I shall try! Then you can talk of failure!”
Gaston knelt there as pale as she. Surely, surely, he could find some
way to stay her without revealing the cruel knowledge he had—that only
he himself could ever be successful in an entreaty which even she could
not move him to make.
“Valentine, sooner than think of you on your knees to that man I would
go on my own—if that were conceivable. But it is not conceivable—not
if he had a pardon ready sealed in his hand, not if he held it out to
me! Think a moment, heart of my heart, and face it! When did any
captured Breton or Vendean, even the humblest peasant, ever ask for
mercy? Thousands of them have laid down their lives readily in the cause
they fought for, and hundreds of gentlemen, too. And would you have
me—through your mouth or my own it matters little—would you have me, a
leader, be the first in either of those lists to play the recreant? Was
it for that you wrought and gave me that scarf there—that when the
crucial moment came I should deal the cause it represents such a stab in
the back as my humiliation would be? Think of our enemies saying, ‘At
the last moment the Duc de Trélan’s heart failed him, and he humbly
besought the First Consul for his life.’ How would that sound in the
streets of Paris next week . . . and when the King comes back?”
Valentine flinched. Her lips were grey. Indeed she did not like the
sound of it.
“But, Gaston,” she said, those lips quivering, “for the cause you have
done more than enough. You have done everything that mortal man could
do, you, the last in arms—more than Cadoudal, who was so strong—more
than all the rest!”
“And all in vain,” he finished sadly.
“No devotion is in vain!”
He smiled suddenly, the smile, somehow, of a young man. “My darling,
that is what I have been trying to say. There are two sides to being
made an ‘example’ of.”
But at that she gave a sharp exclamation and put her hands over her
eyes.
Her husband’s face became still more drawn. “Valentine,” he said
tenderly, but very gravely, “have you forgotten the night I came, when
the tide of fortune was ebbing, to La Vergne. It was your name day; not
three weeks have passed since then. That night, my very dear, my heart
of hearts, my fleur-de-lys, you understood—wonderfully—and you gave me
leave to die!”
“But not like this—not like this!” she cried distractedly. “O blessed
saints, help me! Why did I ever say that! I meant—in the fighting . . .
and I thought the need for it was past with the surrender. O Gaston,
Gaston, you are killing me!”
Indeed it seemed like it. Her head went down to her very knees, and the
wrenching sobs shook her from head to foot. The price was more than she
could pay! He was now, through and through, what once she would almost
have given her soul to see him. But the cost, the cost of it! . . . She
saw, dimly, horribly, what he meant—the damage his death would do to
Bonaparte’s reputation. It broke her, strong as she was. And, no longer
rebellious but purely suppliant, she threw herself on his neck as he
knelt there beside the little prison bed, pleaded with him, besought
him, implored him—and all in vain.
It almost broke Gaston too, since for him there was also the strain of
keeping from her any suspicion of what he knew about Bonaparte’s real
desire, but his man’s, his soldier’s will held firm against the lover’s.
Extravagant perhaps, even fanatical, but none could say ignoble, his
intention was fixed. If the attempt at rescue failed, if the First
Consul meant to consummate his treachery, he must do it. There was no
more to say.
In the end Valentine was, if not acquiescent, at least vanquished. No,
she would not go to Mme Bonaparte; she gave him her word. No, she would
not even lend the countenance of her name to any of the protests now
being made in certain quarters. Yes, she would even acknowledge that,
theoretically, he was right. . . . Beaten and shivering, she half lay in
his arms, and composure, the composure of exhaustion, began to come back
to them both after the combat, and for a little while they were able to
talk of other things, far away and dear. . . .
A warning knock came at the door.
“Good God!” exclaimed Gaston, “is the time nearly up, then? And we have
spent so much of it in . . . conflict!”
He looked at her with eyes full of love and a very white smile on his
lips. And all Valentine’s soul was in the gaze with which she met his in
her answer:
“Forgive me for my foolishness! It is over now. I would not have you
otherwise than victor—for now I see you at your full stature. And I
. . . who once presumed to criticise you—I am at your feet . . . in
worship.”
Her voice died out of existence under his sudden passionate kisses. His
own was shaking as he said between them, almost fiercely, “You must not
say that, Valentine, you must not say that! O my dear, my dear, how
_can_ we part, how can I——”
The knock came once more. He stopped abruptly, set his teeth, loosed the
tension of his hold, and after a second or two stood up, quite steady
and composed again, drawing her gently with him.
“Who brought you here, my darling?”
“Roland,” she answered. “He is waiting out there all this while, poor
boy. And, Gaston, he is heartbroken. He thinks they ought all to have
been killed before they let you be taken. Not even the message you sent
him at Vannes seems to comfort him.”
Gaston sighed. “Poor Roland! And he is just outside? Cannot he come in
for a moment? Surely, Valentine, I am absolved now from my promise to de
Carné. I should like to tell him.”
“My heart, he knows, these seven days. I told him at Vannes. _I_ had
made no promise.”
“God bless you!” said her husband, raising her hand to his lips.
“Gaston, ask to see him,” she suggested. “The pass was for one or more
members of the family. Tell the gaoler that he is your son.”
“You would allow that?”
“I should wish it. It is the only way to see him.”
“My saint!” He kissed her hand again. “Very well. Old Bernard is an
excellent soul; he will not be particular to a minute or two. But do not
go, my darling! I want yours to be the last presence in this room
to-day.”
But Valentine shook her head with a little smile. “These are his
moments. I will come back afterwards.”
One long embrace and they separated as the door swung open. Outside
could be heard the click of steel as the sentries crossed their bayonets
over the aperture. But, before Valentine going out, they uncrossed for a
second.
* * * * *
“I should like to see the Vicomte de Céligny for a minute or two,” said
Gaston to the gaoler.
“Only members of the family, Monseigneur,” returned the precise old man,
shaking his head. “I have very strict orders.”
“But since he is my son!” retorted M. de Trélan, in the most natural
tone possible. “Come,” he went on, as the old man looked incredulous,
“you are sufficiently old-fashioned to call me Monseigneur, and yet you
affect not to know that the son of a duke rarely bears the same title as
his father. Besides, if you doubt me, go and look at him!”
“Well, well,” said old Bernard, “if he is your son the order covers him,
though his name is not on it. You swear that he is your son, Monsieur le
Duc?”
“Yes, I swear it,” answered Gaston.
What a strange person and place to receive the first public avowal of
his relationship to Roland! He leant against the table and put his hand
over his eyes, for indeed the victory he had won in the last hour was
only less prostrating than a defeat. When he removed it, Roland was
through the door, was on one knee before him, trying to seize his hand
and kiss it, and half sobbing out the old appellation, “Monsieur le
Marquis! Monsieur le Marquis!”
Gaston stooped and raised him. “Am I only that to you, Roland, my son,
my son!”
And, actually in his father’s arms, the warring tides of emotion in the
boy’s breast were stilled. He hid his face there, trembling a little.
But Gaston said never a word till he took his son’s head between his
hands and lifted it. “You are like your mother,” he said in a low voice,
looking into his eyes. “You may think of me as you like, Roland, but of
her you must think as you have always done. The blame was mine, and mine
alone.” And he kissed him.
With his hero’s kiss on his forehead, Roland was in no state to
apportion blame between that hero in his mortal peril, and the mother
whom he did not remember. He drew a long breath and said, “If only I can
be what your son ought to be, sir!”
Gaston smiled rather sadly. “Take a better example, my child. But there
is one way in which you can—no, I think I have really no need to point
it out to you. If I am shot, Mme de Trélan——”
Roland clutched his arm. “Don’t use that word, sir—I cannot bear it!
For it is our fault, all this—we failed you! And we had hoped to die
with you!”
“But, my dear boy, that was just what I did not want—and you must allow
your general some say in the matter. That was why I hoped the business
would be quickly over, and why I was so much distressed to hear from M.
Camain what happened after I was gone. You have no further news of the
others yet, I suppose?”
Roland shook his head. “But it was thought, when we passed through
Hennebont, that Artamène would eventually recover, though he was too ill
to know us. . . . Monsieur le Duc, I have never understood why it
happened just at that moment—your arrest?”
“Because, directly after you left the room, Roland, I was recognised by
a woman whom I had once known slightly. The comedy was that I failed to
recognise her at the time—though I have realised since who she was—and
that she had no idea, poor soul, of what she was bringing on me. But it
made no difference; they would have taken me at Auray, if not at
Hennebont; even if I _had_ reached Vannes a free man I should not long
have remained so. That came out very clearly at my—trial. So you see
there is nothing to be distressed about.”
But Roland thought otherwise. Had the arrest been attempted on the
highroad there would have been a chance which there never had been in
that trap of a room. He had a vision of a great fight in the open, in
which they three should have laid down their lives indeed, and their
leader spurred away, free. He sighed disconsolately.
“Mme de Trélan spoke of going to Mme Bonaparte,” he remarked.
“I would not sanction it,” said his father quietly. “Besides, it would
be useless.”
“You mean,” said Roland, biting his lips to keep back certain unmanly
evidences of emotion, “that you are sure the First Consul is absolutely
determined to . . .”
Gaston did not answer for a moment. Then he took a letter out of his
coat. “No,” he said quietly, “as it happens that is just what I do not
mean. On the contrary. For a person of his extreme decision he appears
to be uncomfortable. Read that, Roland; but first give me your word that
you will not tell the Duchesse.”
“I give you my word, sir—as your son,” said Roland, throwing back his
head.
But as he read it some colour came back to his face.
“My God! Then, Mon——”
“Mon père, I hope you were going to say,” interposed M. de Trélan
smiling, as he took the letter from his suddenly shaking hand and tore
it across. “No, my son, there are some things that one does not do, and
one is, to play, in a situation such as mine, the enemy’s game. You see
from that letter what—as far as any mortal can penetrate into his
heart—the First Consul would like to happen—and therefore, quite
plainly, it is just what shall not happen. Either he must release me of
his own act, unconditionally—a step which is extremely improbable—or
he must go on to the end. That end he will regret . . . for his own
sake.” He opened the door of the stove, and threw in the paper. “I have
shown you that letter, Roland,” he went on, turning to him again,
“because you are a man now, but I have particularly kept the knowledge
of what it says from the Duchesse; still more must it be kept from her
if I die. It would make it too hard for her . . . you understand? I fear
I have made it hard enough as it is . . . You can tell her, if you like,
some day—years hence. And I want you to warn the Comte de Brencourt and
M. Hyde de Neuville not to let her know on any account—if I die, that
is. If I escape, it is of no consequence.”
“If you escape!” cried Roland feverishly, “but you shall escape! That
plan—if only I might take part in it! But Mon—mon père, I have been
thinking out there . . . I am not so tall as you, but since I am like
you a little (though I never knew it), if you would but get into my
clothes now and go away with Mme de Trélan while I——”
“My dearest boy,” said Gaston, touched and laughing too, as he put his
arm round his shoulders, “that thousand-year-old device! As if I could
pass for a young man of twenty! Alas, never again! But I have every
confidence in . . . the official scheme for to-morrow evening. Yet in
case——” He slipped the emerald ring with the phoenix off his finger
and put it on Roland’s.
A quiver ran through the boy. He clasped the hand thus decorated to his
breast as though it were wounded. “Then you have not every confidence
. . . O mon père, take it back!”
“I will take it back when I am free,” replied his father, smiling. “A
loan, you see.—Here is my patient Bernard.” He took him in his arms and
kissed him on either cheek. “Be happy with Marthe—she shall wear the
rubies after all. And try to get your grandfather, some day, to think
less hardly of me.”
Roland, shaking with the sobs he was striving so hard to suppress, said
almost inaudibly, “But he does. I have had a letter. He is greatly
distressed.”
“Then I have gained something by being sentenced to death,” thought
Gaston to himself, with a rather grim amusement. “You must go, my boy,”
he said aloud. “And God go with you, always!”
He watched his son walk, blind with tears, to the door, and then made a
sign to the gaoler. “Give us one last moment, Bernard, for pity’s sake!”
For, before the bayonets could cross themselves again, Valentine had
slipped in, and come straight into his arms where he stood under that
heartbreaking window. And Bernard compassionately went out again and
closed the door.
“If the plan fails, Gaston, is this the last time?” (How could anyone
who was so white speak so steadily?)
“No, no—they will certainly let me see you again.” His own voice was
not quite steady.
“You are sure? I—a woman does not know about these things.”
“Yes, I am sure of it. If it comes to that, I shall have you in my arms
once again, my dearest, dearest heart!” Yet he held her now as if that
time had come. “Moreover, I do not believe the plan will fail. But, my
darling, I have not been torturing you unnecessarily, in speaking of
. . . the other alternative. It is only because, as God has given us at
the end of summer to be one in life, I want you to understand that to
die now would be to me no defeat or loss—to understand so that we might
still be one . . . even if we had to part. . . .”
“Death could never take you from me,” she answered.
CHAPTER XI
GASTON GIVES UP THE YELLOW POPPY
(1)
It was about six o’clock the next morning that old Bernard, who had just
finished dressing himself, looked out of the window of the little
ground-floor room in the Palace of the Temple where he slept—for most
of the personnel of the prison were housed there, and he indeed, a
former servant of the Prince de Conti, had slept there for more years
than he could count. The pale, reluctant winter dawn was on the
courtyard and its shivering trees. It would be a chilly transit to his
duties in the Tower.
As he was turning away, blowing on his fingers, he heard unusual sounds
in the courtyard, and, after another glance through the window, he went
out on to the perron and stood there in some astonishment.
A closed carriage—a berline—had just drawn in under the entrance and
was coming to a standstill in the middle of the court. Immediately
behind, with a great jangle of bits and trappings, came riding two and
two a score or so of hussars. What on earth could this portend, at so
early an hour? It must be something official, however, since the guard
at the entry had admitted the cortège.
Even as Bernard stood there he heard himself hailed, and saw the
sergeant of the guard running towards him and trying to attract his
attention. A little behind him rode an officer.
“Holà, Bernard!” called out the sergeant. “You are just the man I want.
Take M. le Capitaine Guibert to the Tower at once; he brings orders for
the immediate transference of a prisoner. Here, mon Capitaine, is the
very gaoler who has the care of those au secret.”
The officer dismounted without a word, threw the speaker the reins, and
strode up the five steps to where the surprised old man awaited him. He
was young, tall and handsome, suitable in every way to the bravery of
his sky-blue pelisse heavily barred with silver, the fur-edged dolman of
darker blue that hung from one shoulder, and the gaily embroidered
sabretache that swung against his leg. But under the high, cord-wreathed
shako his face looked impenetrably, almost unnaturally grave.
“If you will come this way, sir,” said Bernard a little nervously, and
thereafter trotted along in front of him through the palace and the
length of its frosty garden, perturbed in spirit, while the officer
stalked behind him equally silent. They passed the guardhouse in the
wall without comment. At the _greffe_ in the Tower itself the hussar,
with the same economy of language, presented an order, and said he
wished to see the prisoner in question immediately. The _guichetier_,
having read it through, raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips and
transcribed it carefully in a book. It was an order for the delivery of
the person of Gaston de Saint-Chamans, ex-Duc de Trélan, known also as
the Marquis de Kersaint.
“M. de Trélan is au secret—I expect you know that, captain,” he
remarked when he had finished. “I hope there has been no dissatisfaction
at the Tuileries? I assure you that every precaution is taken for his
safe custody.”
The young officer made a gesture that might have meant anything, and
prepared to follow his guide.
To mount that dark, winding staircase on a winter’s morning required a
light. Bernard produced a torch and preceded the officer, whose sabre
clanked on the steps as he followed him. Half way up, at one of the
wickets, the old man paused, and turned to him. “You are taking away our
most distinguished prisoner, Monsieur le Capitaine.”
“Yes,” replied the hussar. His mouth shut as if he did not intend to say
more, and the old man went on again.
One sentry—they were of a corps of veterans—was plainly asleep, on the
bench by the door, when they got up. His companion, pacing to and fro,
shoved him with his foot, and he stood sleepily to attention as the
officer passed. In another moment the nail-studded door stood open, and
the young hussar, taking the torch from Bernard and motioning him back,
went in, pushing the door to behind him.
The torch he held, conflicting with the daylight from the high window,
showed him the man he had come for fast asleep on the little bed in the
furthest corner. He went over to him, stood looking down at him a second
or two, and then, with what looked like hesitation, put out a hand to
wake him. But at that moment, roused by the light, the prisoner stirred.
(2)
Gaston had dreamt much that night, dreams commingled of sweet and
sinister. Nearly always the menhirs had been in them, the Allée des
Vieilles where Valentine had been miraculously restored to him, but they
were strangely mixed with visions of Mirabel, where he and she had
parted. He stood once more among the old stones, but she was not there;
he was to meet her, he knew, at Mirabel, and the idea was sweet. Yet
somehow the dream was sinister. . . .
And now—he was fully awake on the instant, in the fashion of a soldier
and a commander. His first thought was—Hyde de Neuville . . . they had
put forward the time . . . here was the pseudo-Republican officer he was
to expect. He looked up at the hussar for a second or two—and all that
fell away from him for ever. A man in peril is swift of apprehension.
This officer was genuine.
“You are an early visitor, sir,” he said, raising himself on his elbow.
“I may guess, may I not, that you do not come at this hour on any very
agreeable errand?”
“General,” said the young man, speaking at length for the first time
since he had entered the prison, “my errand is hateful. I . . . I am
ashamed of the uniform I wear—but as long as I wear it I must
obey. . . . Will you read that, Monsieur le Duc?” He held out, not the
order he had shown to the _guichetier_, but another, and brought the
torch a little nearer.
Gaston took the paper, and, still leaning on one elbow, studied it, and
the vehement “Bonaparte” at the bottom, with the marks of the splutter
of the pen. His eyebrows went up a trifle, but no other change came over
his face.
“A little sudden,” he observed. “But after all . . . What time do you
wish me to be ready?”
“At seven o’clock, General. It is now ten minutes after six.”
The Duc de Trélan returned the warrant. “The First Consul is somewhat
given to sudden impulses,” he remarked. “As he grows older he will find
that they are generally to be regretted. But I think that, after all, I
misjudge him; for this was intended from the first. I have about fifty
minutes then. Would you be so good, Monsieur, as to see if they could
find me a priest while I am dressing; there may be one in captivity in
the Temple.—No, do not give yourself the trouble; if old Bernard is
there I will ask him myself. And you, Monsieur le Capitaine—shall I see
you again?”
“I command the escort,” replied the young hussar, looking away.
“I will be ready for you then, in . . . forty-seven minutes,” said the
Duc, his eyes on the watch he had drawn from beneath his pillow.
“Perhaps you will be good enough to leave me your torch for the moment.
The oil was finished in my lamp last night, and the illumination here is
not very good, as you can see.”
The young officer looked round, saw a ring designed for that purpose on
the wall, thrust the torch into it, drew himself up, made the captive a
magnificent salute, and strode to the door.
Next moment the old gaoler looked in, mildly curious.
“Monsieur Bernard,” said the Duc, who was now sitting on the edge of the
bed, “I have a particular favour to ask you. Can you contrive to heat me
some shaving water within a quarter of an hour or so? I wish to be
presentable this morning.”
“But certainly, only—Monsieur le Duc, what is it, so early? You are
being transferred, I gathered?”
“Yes, Bernard—if you like to put it so. And besides the shaving
water—and a better light to use it by—is there by chance a priest
among the prisoners here, think you?”
“A priest!” exclaimed the old man, taken aback. “A priest . . . I don’t
know—I don’t think so. But why do you want a . . . O Monseigneur!—it’s
not _that_!”
“It is indeed,” said Gaston with a little smile. “Not altogether
unexpected, my good Bernard.—Well, do your best to get me a priest. I
have not much time; only about three-quarters of an hour.”
No, he had not much time. And perhaps it was best. He could not possibly
say good-bye to Valentine now. Yesterday had been their farewell after
all. Did this hurried execution mean that the First Consul had got wind
of to-night’s rescue?
He dressed swiftly, but with attention to details, shaved with care when
old Bernard, almost weeping, brought him the water and the tidings that
no priest could so far be found; and, with only twenty-five minutes
left, sat down to write his last letter to Valentine.
He had no little to say, but he wrote steadily and without difficulty,
pausing only once or twice. When he had finished he took out from a
pocket-case in his breast a little square of folded paper, somewhat
worn, wrote on it three words and slipped it inside his letter. Then he
folded, addressed and sealed the whole, kissed his wife’s name upon the
superscription, and put it in the case. There was already another letter
there.
And now, since he had taken from its place over his heart the amulet he
always wore there, to give it back to the hand whence he had it, for the
short time that heart had to beat it should beat against the symbol that
was rather of loyalty than of love—but which love had nevertheless
fashioned and given him. He took from the back of the chair the scarf he
had so treasured, and put the end with the golden fleur-de-lys to his
lips. For a moment, at the touch of what her fingers had wrought, a wave
of anguish engulfed him. He gripped his hands hard behind his head, as
it fell forward on the folds of the scarf across the table. O, not to
have to leave her . . . even to see her once more, only once!
It was short, that agony. Gaston de Trélan had faced it many times these
last few days. He rose, fastening the scarf across his breast instead of
as usual round his waist. Her arms would be about him thus, to the end.
Only four minutes more. No priest had come. So he knelt down by the
table, and tried to collect his thoughts.
* * * * *
The door opened slowly. Gaston stood up; the young hussar, much the
paler of the two, came in.
“I am ready,” said the Duc. “But before we go I have a favour to ask of
you. This case, Monsieur, contains a letter to my wife, with another to
the same address. Could it be given to her? She is to be found at Mme
Tessier’s in the Rue de Seine.”
“I give you my word that she shall have it,” said the officer. “I will
take it myself—if I cannot find a better messenger.”
“Thank you, Monsieur,” said Gaston, replacing the case inside his
uniform. “If it will not inconvenience you, however, I will keep the
letter on me till the last possible moment, and give it to you—later
on. And I have a fancy not to be parted from my Cross of Maria Theresa
before I need; therefore, if it would not be putting you to too much
trouble, I would ask you to take it off when the business is over. This
scarf I should wish to be buried with. I am still, you know, Monsieur le
Capitaine,” he threw back his head a little, “the General commanding for
His Majesty King Louis XVIII. in Finistère, a position that is not
cancelled by my capture under a safe-conduct.—I beg your pardon, for
you neither had part in, nor approve of that,” he added, seeing the
young man wince. “The scarf, then, I should desire to remain on me, the
order to go to the Duchesse if you would be so good.”
“She shall have it . . . if you think that a Republican’s word is ever
to be trusted again.”
“I think that I can trust yours,” retorted Gaston, holding out his hand.
“Monsieur le Duc . . .” stammered the young hussar, hesitating.
The keen eyes smiled at him. “My boy, do you think I don’t understand?
Come, we have a journey to make in company. And your hands are clean—as
I hope mine are.”
So, with a flush, Captain Guibert gripped his prisoner’s fingers for a
second. And then old Bernard’s voice broke in on them. “Monseigneur,” it
said at Gaston’s elbow, “you are fasting, and it is so cold outside!
Will you not?” And he held out on a little tray a cup of coffee. But his
hands shook so that the cup was clattering on its saucer.
“Monsieur Bernard, you are my good angel,” said Gaston gaily, as he took
it from him. “I hope M. le Capitaine was as fortunate before he set
out—so much earlier, too, than I am to do.”
He drank down the hot coffee and set the empty cup on the table in
significant proximity to his purse, which he had already placed there
for the old gaoler. But Bernard, sniffing, shuffled out before he could
take farewell of him.
“Poor Bernard is too tenderhearted for his post,” observed his prisoner.
“The sooner he is quit of us the better.—I follow you, Monsieur.”
(3)
A guard of dismounted hussars was awaiting them at the foot of the
Tower.
“I have a carriage for you, Monsieur le Duc,” explained Captain Guibert
half apologetically, as, on a sign from him, his men fell in behind him
and his prisoner, “but it is in the courtyard of the Palace, for as you
know, it is impossible for a vehicle to be brought any nearer.”
“But why should I wish for better treatment than my King?” asked the Duc
de Trélan. “He had to walk from the Tower.”
Once through the great wall of isolation—at last—they went side by
side in silence, the armed guard behind, across the garden to the
Palace. Gaston was thinking that if, on their way to the Plaine de
Grenelle—the usual spot for such events—they crossed the river by the
Pont Neuf, as was most likely, they could hardly avoid passing one end
or other of the Rue de Seine, where Valentine lay asleep, or wakeful. He
wondered whether she would somehow be aware . . . and whether he could
entirely keep his composure as they went so near. . . .
When they came, through the building, in sight of the courtyard, the
carriage was drawn up at the foot of the steps. Grouped round it, the
remaining hussars sat their horses motionless, holding those of their
dismounted comrades, but the frost in the air made the animals
impatient, and one perpetual jingle shook from their tossing heads,
while their breaths, and the men’s, too, went up like smoke.
Gaston looked back over his shoulder for an instant. Above the low
façade of the Palace, to the left of the Tower behind, the sun was now
visible, huge and red. It would be a fine day, probably—but one would
not know. . . . The dismounted men were already resuming their saddles;
a horse was pawing the ground as if eager to be off.
“Lieutenant Soyer,” said the captain, “take the head of the escort!” He
turned to his prisoner. “Monsieur de Trélan, pardon me, but someone must
drive in the carriage with you. I am very sorry . . . but if you will
permit me, I will do so myself, instead of my lieutenant.”
He reminded Gaston of his own three ‘jeunes.’ In such circumstances he
would not have wished Roland to carry himself otherwise.
“I should desire your company, Monsieur le Capitaine,” he replied
courteously, and put his foot on the step of the high-slung berline. “We
journey to the Plaine de Grenelle, I suppose?”
The young man dropped his eyes and reddened. “No,” he said, in a low,
ashamed voice, “the orders are . . . _Mirabel_.”
For the first time since he had learnt that he was to die that morning,
Gaston de Trélan showed emotion before a witness. He flushed too, but it
was with anger.
“The First Consul’s idea of the dramatic, I suppose! One sees his
origin.” He bit his lip and recovered himself. “I have the right, I
think, to consider it somewhat misplaced. However, the setting of the
last scene is really of small importance to me.”
He got into the carriage, and the captain of hussars silently followed
him in, and sat down opposite him, his sabre across his knees. In a few
seconds the carriage was rolling noisily over the cobblestones of the
archway into the street. But they would not pass near Valentine now;
they would soon be going further away every moment . . . for ever.
They had traversed Paris, and were in the Avenue de Neuilly, when the
young officer said abruptly,
“Monsieur le Duc, if when we are past Neuilly, I were to get out, to
halt the escort, make some diversion, and call off the men on either
side if you could slip out . . .”
Gaston shook his head, smiling, despite himself, at the wild idea. “My
dear boy—apart from a personal preference for not being shot in the
back—do you suppose that I would accept your young life for mine?”
“My life! But my career was my life—and I am going to resign my
commission before this day is over! I cannot serve any more a soldier
who violates a safe-conduct. And I thought him . . . I was with him in
Italy—at Acre—at Aboukir . . .” He put his forehead down on the hands
that rested over each other on the hilt of his sabre, upright between
his knees.
Gaston’s face softened as he looked at him. It was as he thought. He
would not have died in vain.
He leant back with folded arms. The rumble of the wheels, the trot of
the horses on either hand, the figures of their riders as they rose and
fell close to the carriage windows, held a rhythm that was almost
soothing. And now that the shock of indignation and disgust was over,
what better place at which to die than Mirabel, which had re-united him
and Valentine? It was his dream come true; he was not going away from
her; she was—was she not?—waiting for him there.
Only just this side of death had they plucked the flower of flowers; but
they _had_ plucked it. And the life whose uselessness had hurt her so,
at the end he had contrived to do something with it after all. By
refusing to ransom it, as he might conceivably have done, he was
flinging it down, not as a forfeit, but as a challenge, against the
walls that had been his and Valentine’s. In having him shot in defiance
of the strictest article of military honour, Bonaparte plainly designed
to make of the Duc de Trélan’s death a terrible example—in decreeing
that the sentence should be carried out, against all the dictates of
decent feeling, in front of his own confiscated house, to make that
death a kind of show as well. But the more publicity given to so callous
and unscrupulous an action, the longer it was likely to be
remembered—against its author; and the impression might not be what
Bonaparte designed. The hope of such a result was partly what Gaston de
Trélan was laying down his life for. Already, as he knew, there was no
small clamour and protest in Paris over his probable fate, so that the
added affront of this morning did but make dying, after all, the more
worth while.
The short miles had slipped past. Here already, by the slackening pace,
was the turn off the Saint-Germain road. Nearly ten years. . . . The
carriage, swaying a little, swung round at right angles into the way
lined with gaunt poplars, where the frozen puddles crackled under hoofs
and wheels—the last stage but one of the journey that was bearing him
away from all he loved. No! “Death could never take you from me!” _Et
expecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi saeculi._ Crossing
himself, he began silently to recite his act of contrition.
* * * * *
And in a few moments more, the faint winter sun glinting on its
majolica, came Mirabel—Mirabel with the barrier removed, and some
hundreds of troops drawn up in front of it on the frostbound gravel.
The officer of hussars, raising his head, saw his companion holding out
to him, with a little smile, the lettercase he had drawn from his
breast.
“I am glad, after all,” said the last Duc de Trélan quietly, “that it
should be _here_.”
CHAPTER XII
FOR SOME THE WORLD IS EMPTY
(1)
It was Hyde de Neuville, half beside himself with grief and fury, who
brought the Comte de Brencourt the news, which at ten o’clock the young
conspirator had only just heard, and which he could hardly believe. Yet
there was no doubt about its truth. And someone must break it to the
Duchesse.
But not, surely, the stunned and horrified man to whom this announcement
had just been made. He stood frozen, in his room at the little _hôtel
garni_, repeating with a stammering tongue, “Dead!—dead! shot this
morning! . . . there is some mistake . . .”
“I wish there were!” cried Hyde de Neuville passionately. “I wish to God
there were! I wish we had tried for last night—why were we such fools
as to delay? I do not yet know whether this morning’s work was prompted
by design, or just by evil chance. And the Duchesse——”
“Don’t suggest that I shall tell her!” cried the Comte wildly. “De
Neuville, for pity’s sake——”
“But I must not lose a moment in going to Bertin and the others,” said
the young man. “We may all find ourselves in prison before
nightfall—and to no purpose. Besides, I am a stranger to her; you an
old acquaintance—the Duc’s late chief of staff. You are the man, Comte.
Tell her the whole plan has failed—tell her her husband is suddenly
taken ill—tell her anything to soften the blow!” And he was gone.
The Comte sank down and buried his head in his arms. “I told her that he
was dead, once. Now it is true—now it is true!”
He could not do it. He must find someone else. Roland—he would break
the news best, if he could get hold of him. O God, to think he had once
wished this, had lied for it, had tried to bring it about with his own
hand! And—shot at Mirabel! The idea was profoundly shocking to him even
in the midst of the shock of the execution itself. He seemed to recall a
hateful precedent for it, for he remembered the young Prince de Talmont,
captured in the Vendean war and shot in front of the castle of Laval,
which had belonged to his family for nine centuries.
What was the time? Suppose Mme de Trélan were to go to the Temple this
morning! “The Duc is gone, Madame la Duchesse; he has driven out to his
château of Mirabel. Will Madame follow?” Why did he see the Temple as it
had once been, a princely residence, and why did he imagine that
dialogue? He must be going mad. She would not go there to-day; the order
was for yesterday. Yesterday she had seen him; and did not know she
should see him no more in life.
Or stay, suppose Valentine had taken a fancy to visit Mirabel this
morning with Roland. It was most unlikely that she would do such a
thing; yet his distracted mind showed him the Duchesse and Roland
arriving there and finding God knew what—soldiers, a crowd, and in
front of the great façade——
M. de Brencourt sprang up. That wholly baseless picture decided him. He
could not let her run that dreadful risk. Oblivious of the fact that,
long before she got to Mirabel, if ever she went, she must meet the
tidings of what had taken place there, he crammed on his hat, and
without a redingote, despite the cold, rushed out in the direction of
the Rue de Seine.
* * * * *
“No, M. de Céligny has gone out,” replied Suzon’s servant. “Mme de
Trélan is within.”
His last hope was vanished then. He never thought of Mme Tessier. There
was no help for it. Far rather would he have been in the dead man’s
place at Mirabel.
He was only just in time, apparently, for the first thing that he saw on
being ushered into Mme Tessier’s parlour was Valentine’s hat and gloves
on the table. And she, standing by the hearth, had her cloak on
already—a grey cloak with grey fur at the throat, in which he would
always see her now to the end of the world. He contrived, he knew not
how, to get across the room and to kiss her hand before she noticed
anything unusual.
“I am glad I had not gone out, Monsieur de Brencourt,” she said in an
ordinary tone, such as she had managed to preserve nearly all the time
in these days of strain. “I was only waiting for Roland to return.”
And then she saw his face and said, quite quietly, “I am afraid you
bring some bad news.”
“It is not good.” His voice—he heard it himself—was the voice of a
stranger.
“The plan has miscarried somehow, Comte—you have come to tell me that?”
He bent his head. “Yes. Yes, Madame. I . . . came to tell you that.”
A pause. Slowly, slowly the colour faded in the face over the grey fur
collar that he would see to the end of the world.
“It will not be carried out to-night, then?”
(“_Nor any other night._”) No, he lacked courage to say that yet.
“No, Madame. It . . . it . . . it has proved impossible.”
“This cloak is too hot,” said Valentine de Trélan suddenly. She
unfastened the collar. “Perhaps I will not go out after all.” She made
as if she were going to throw it off, then sat down instead in the
armchair by the fire. “But time is precious, Monsieur de Brencourt,” she
said, looking at him fixedly—he could feel that, though he could not
meet her eyes.
“No,” he said, trembling, and very low, “time is of no value now.”
But either she had not heard, or she did not understand. He could see
that; so he tried again, and got out more. “Madame, I must tell you that
the time for this plan is past for ever.”
He felt the impact of these words on her mind, yet he felt also that she
was gathering herself up in spirit either to resist their meaning or to
infuse fresh will into him. He saw her hands clench themselves a little
as she said,
“If that has failed, then, you will make another, a better plan, will
you not?”
O, why would she not understand! He raised his eyes at last in agony
from her clenched hands to her face. “Valentine . . .” he said, and, had
her life depended on it, could get out no other word. His throat had
closed up. He turned away and hid his face.
The fire crackled like a burning house; outside in the street a boy was
whistling like a fife . . . and yet it was so still.
At last her voice came, and it sounded sick with horror. “Monsieur de
Brencourt, what—_what_, in God’s name, are you trying to tell me?”
“Not to go to the Temple to-day—not to go——”
“They have taken him away?” she interrupted sharply, her hands on the
arms of the chair. “Transferred him to another prison?”
At last he turned and faced her, at last he got it out in its entirety.
“Yes, he is gone—but not to another prison. He is gone where I wish I
were gone too, before I had to tell you. It is all over, Valentine, all
over . . .”
She fell back in her chair. If only he might kneel and kiss her feet,
try—though he knew he could not—to comfort her. But the memory of this
scene’s parody, played out falsely before, lay like a bitter flood
between him and her. This time it was true, his news.
Steps outside, thank God! Roland, perhaps, or Mme Tessier, whom he had
forgotten. He hurried to the door, caught at the passerby—Suzon.
“Go in to the Duchesse at once,” he said. “I have had to bring her
terrible news—I can bear no more. The Duc was shot at Mirabel this
morning. Go in, I say!” He pushed her in.
(2)
On the very threshold, as he opened the door into the street to escape,
M. de Brencourt all but ran into an officer of hussars. The officer was
young, handsome, rigid, set about the mouth.
“Does Mme de Trélan lodge here?” he asked with a foot on the doorstep.
“Yes,” replied the Comte. “Excuse me, Monsieur——”
The officer barred the way. “Pardon me a moment. I must see her.”
“You cannot,” retored de Brencourt, stopped despite himself. “She cannot
see anyone.”
“She knows then!” said the young man, and there was relief in his tone.
And instantly, looking at the expression on his visage, the Comte
understood.
“I have just told her,” he said.
“Thank God for that,” returned the hussar. “But I have a message to
deliver—and I pray you, Monsieur, to give it to her, as you have . . .
done the other thing. I come straight from Mirabel.”
“Monsieur,” replied the Comte hoarsely. “Once it was prophesied to me
that I should do this lady a service. I did not know what it would
be—now, I think I do . . . I have just rendered it, and not for the
hope of heaven would I go through the like again. You must give the
message yourself, if it was from . . . _him_.”
“There is no verbal message from . . . the late Duc de Trélan,” answered
the young hussar, and as he paused at the name and its qualification he
suddenly brought his heels together and saluted. And the Comte, for all
his pre-occupation with his own feelings, saw that his mouth was
twitching. “There is no verbal message,” he repeated, “but I have two
letters, and the Duc’s decoration. I am charged, however, to say, that
Mme de Trélan is at liberty to go to Mirabel when and how she will, that
her privacy will be respected in every way, and that if she wishes the
body to be buried in the chapel there——”
“Is this the First Consul’s magnanimity!” flared out the Comte. And,
thinking he heard a sound behind him in the house, and suddenly becoming
conscious, too, that all this was taking place on the doorstep, he
seized hold of the young officer’s hanging dolman. “Bring that cursed
uniform of yours inside!” he muttered, and, opening the door of a little
room close by, pushed the glittering and jingling form inside.
Once sheltered by a closed door the young Republican turned on him
almost savagely. “Do you think that you are the only man heartbroken
over this horrible business?” he demanded. “Do you realise that I have
had to help carry it out—that it was I, at least, who commanded the
escort, that it was I who had to rouse M. de Trélan early this morning
with the news, had to drive with him from Paris to Mirabel, had to sit
my horse like a statue with my sword drawn, as though I approved, while
it was done—I who have been one of Bonaparte’s aides-de-camp in Egypt
and Syria, and have worshipped his very stirrup leather . . . and am
going to throw up my commission the moment I leave this house!”
There was no doubt of his emotion now; two tears were running down his
face. He could not have been more than five and twenty. He raised a
gauntleted hand and brushed them away.
“Why, then, did you——” began M. de Brencourt in a suddenly weary
voice.
“Because if I had not commanded the escort someone else would have done
so. When I found I was detailed for that duty, I thought I could at
least ensure that M. de Trélan had due respect shown him—and that I
could, perhaps, let him know before he died that there was, at any rate,
one soldier of the Republic who was ashamed of the deed. As I intended
to resign my commission immediately afterwards there was nothing
improper in that . . . and if I went farther than I should perhaps have
done when, on the way to Mirabel, I offered to connive at his
escape—well, the Duc refused.” He paused, drew a long breath, and said,
“Afterwards I had my men carry him into Mirabel, into the great hall
there. We unbarred the big door for it. I had the candlesticks fetched
from the chapel also; strangely enough, there were funeral candles
already in them. If Mme de Trélan goes, therefore, there is nothing she
cannot look upon; I have seen to that. His face is quite uninjured—I
would not even have it covered.”
The Comte held out his hand to him. “If I could bring myself really to
believe that he is dead,” he said painfully, “I would thank you in her
name. But I cannot believe it—even after telling her so.”
“Oh, God knows it’s true enough,” responded the young hussar, passing
his hand for a moment over his eyes.
“Where was it carried out—this iniquity?” demanded M. de Brencourt
abruptly.
“In front of one of the central towers, below which the concierge used
to live. It was the Duc’s own choice, when he was asked if he had any
preference; I do not know the reason for it.”
M. de Brencourt did. He turned away.
And, even as he turned, the door of the little room opened, and in came,
not Roland, as he expected—but the Abbé Chassin.
“You!” exclaimed the Comte, staring at him in astonishment. They had not
met since the memorable day in the thicket by the road; moreover he
thought the Abbé still in England.
Travelstained, his eyes red-rimmed for lack of sleep, his round face
drawn and shadowed, the little priest looked not only twenty years
older, but as if the heart had gone out of him for ever.
“I have journeyed day and night since I heard he was taken,” he said in
a dulled voice. “I know now that I am too late. My God, my God!”
“How did you learn it? Have you seen Mme de Trélan?”
“Not yet. Mme Tessier is with her. I heard it in the streets.”
The Comte looked at him and was moved with compassion. “I am sorry for
that,” he said, gently for him, and put his hand for a second on the
dusty shoulder. Then he bent and added in a low voice, “We should have
saved him this very evening if it had not been for this.”
The young officer, who had been standing since the Abbé’s entrance
gazing at some objects which he had laid on the table, here raised his
head and addressed the newcomer. “Then perhaps you, Monsieur, would give
Mme la Duchesse the message I bear—and give her these, too. I was
trying to persuade this gentleman to do it. It is not over fitting for
me.”
“You were . . .?” asked M. Chassin, his face working a little.
“Monsieur commanded the escort,” replied the Comte for him, “and has
done everything that he could do, then and since. He bears a message
from the . . . the authorities that the Duchesse is free to go to
Mirabel when she pleases, and to do what she wishes about burial. . . .
You tell her, Abbé. We have both had as much as we can bear!”
“And you think I can bear anything?” asked M. Chassin in a half-choked
voice, “I, who shall never see him alive now!”
The young hussar had noted the Comte’s method of address. “You are a
priest, sir?” he enquired. “Then perhaps this letter, directed to the
Abbé Chassin, is for you?”
Pierre was beside him in a moment, and saw what was on the table. “O
Gaston, my brother!” he exclaimed brokenly, and knelt down there,
covering his face.
“_Brother!_” ejaculated the Comte under his breath. Then he understood.
It explained many things.
“This order that he wore is not hurt,” murmured the young hussar almost
to himself, “although——” He did not finish, but lifted a fold of the
handkerchief, and revealed the cross of white and gold with its red
heart. “M. de Trélan particularly wished the Duchesse to have it.” He
relapsed into silence again, looking down at it, and M. de Brencourt
stood looking at it too—save those two letters in the firm hand-writing
which he knew so well, all that was left of the leader he had admired,
and hated, and schemed against—and tried to save.
“_Absolve, O Lord, the soul of Thy servant_,” prayed the Abbé in the
silence, “_that though dead to the world he may live to Thee, and
whatsoever he hath done amiss in his human conversation, through the
weakness of the flesh, do Thou by the pardon of Thy most merciful
loving-kindness wipe away_.” He rose to his feet, took up the letter
addressed to him, kissed it, and put it in his pocket. “This, I
understand,” he said to the hussar, touching the cross, “is for Mme de
Trélan, as well as the letter?”
“You will do my commission then, Monsieur l’Abbé?” asked the young man,
his face haggard with strain and entreaty. “I thank you from my heart!
As for me, I have business of my own now.” And he picked up his shako.
“One moment,” said M. Chassin. “I fancy that when I came in you were
telling this gentleman some details about—the end. The Duchesse may
some day wish to hear them; and I wish to know now, both as M. le Duc’s
foster-brother and a priest.—Did they let him have a priest this
morning?”
The young captain sedulously fingered the cords that went round his
headgear. “He asked for one, but none could be found in the time.” He
hesitated, and then broke out—“If I might tell you the rest another
day, Monsieur l’Abbé; I engage to do so. But just now the whole affair
is so horrible to me—no, not the actual execution, for any one more
nobly and simply composed than M. de Trélan it is impossible to imagine
. . . the one man at Mirabel this morning who had no cause for shame.
Moreover since there was, mercifully, no bungling, he could scarcely
have suffered—shot, as he was, through the heart. I was not the only
soldier there who envied him so fine an end before so many witnesses.
(There were generals present; Lannes and Murat, and Marmont, too, I
think.) But the treachery of it! . . . Gentlemen, your cause has
sustained a great loss, but Bonaparte’s honour has sustained a greater!”
“Yes,” said the Comte, “and if M. de Trélan had cared less for that
cause for which he died, he might very conceivably have kept his
life—but that, I expect, is not generally known. I intend that it shall
be.”
“What is that?” exclaimed the Abbé. “He refused a pardon?”
“He refused to ask for one,” returned the Comte, and explained.
“O, my brother, I recognise you there!” said Pierre softly.
“Yet it is not a thing that the Duchesse ought to know,” added M. de
Brencourt.
“Not know it!” exclaimed the young hussar. “Why, to die like that is
more than fine—it is glorious! It seems a pity that she should be
ignorant of it. _I_ shall remember . . . Farewell, gentlemen.”
He turned towards the door, and took one step in its direction, but no
more. For it was open, and Mme de Trélan herself stood on the threshold.
None of them, absorbed, had known it.
M. de Brencourt put his hand over his mouth. God grant she had not
heard! She gave no sign of it. Her eyes were on the young Republican.
“You come from . . . Mirabel, I think, sir?”
“Yes, Madame. I have brought you . . . these.” He indicated the letter
and the decoration on the table, but made no motion to give them to her,
and she did not take them. Yet she looked at them as though she saw
nothing else. And the Abbé was kissing her hand before she seemed to
realise that he was there, nor did she show any surprise at his
presence.
But in a moment or two she lifted her eyes to the young officer again,
and from her look it seemed as if, with the strange, exalted sight that
comes sometimes with the stroke of a grief that no words can fathom, she
saw something now of the tragedy of his soul on his face.
“I thank you, sir, for these,” she said gently. “My husband has a higher
honour now, I think.”
The young hussar bent his head till his looped-up tresses of plaited
hair fell on his breast. “Yes, Madame.” He bowed profoundly, and went
once more towards the door; then, inspired perhaps by that vision of
measureless sorrow and courage before him, turned and said, “Madame, I
have been present at the death of a hero. I wish mine might be like it!”
And—only a young captain of hussars, but the material of which the
conqueror’s marshals were made—he saluted and went out, to lay aside,
with his broken belief, all his dreams of glory.
When he was gone, M. Chassin took the letter and the cross in its
handkerchief, and put them into Valentine’s hands. M. de Brencourt
looked out of the window. He did not hear what they said to each other,
but he supposed that the priest was giving her the message about Mirabel
. . .
It was thawing outside. People were going to and fro as usual. . . . Who
would have thought the world would seem so empty?
Valentine’s voice startled him. “Monsieur de Brencourt, would you have
the goodness to procure me a carriage? I am going at once to Mirabel.”
He turned round. “Not alone, Madame, surely!” For she stood there alone
now.
“No, M. l’Abbé will go with me.—But first, tell me of what you were
speaking when I came in. I heard the word _pardon_; was there ever talk
of such a thing?”
Rent with compassion, he looked at her and did not answer.
“I heard what that young man said,” she went on with extraordinary
steadiness, “that it was a pity I should not know. Tell me, I implore
you!”
She knew too much already! Useless to try to keep it from her now, and
dreadful to combat her wishes at this moment. And, not yet having seen
Roland since yesterday afternoon, the Comte had received no direct
prohibition; it was only his own consideration for her which recommended
silence. So he told her the truth. She covered her face; and once again
he left her.
* * * * *
“Will you tell Roland, when he comes, to follow us to Mirabel?” said the
Abbé to him some half-hour later, before entering the carriage after Mme
de Trélan.
M. de Brencourt bowed his head. “And I?” he said in a low voice, “If I
might—if I dared think——”
The Duchesse turned hers and answered without hesitation. “Come with
Roland—_friend_!”
CHAPTER XIII
TO THE UTTERMOST
The Abbé Chassin, who lived to be a very old man, left among his papers
a full record of most of the events connected with the death of the Duc
de Trélan, but no word of that short drive with Mme de Trélan from Paris
to Mirabel. Presumably he could not write of it.
Yet Valentine was quite calm. She leant back nearly all the way with her
eyes closed, an image of marble in her grey cloak. Her hands were
clasped in her lap; Pierre thought that she, like himself, was praying,
but he was not sure. From him, at intervals, scraps of the _De
Profundis_ broke aloud, and he did not know it. . . . _Domine exaudi
vocem meam_ . . . _Quia apud te propitiatio est_ . . . _speravit anima
mea in Domino_. . . . Underneath it all was the thought that their
carriage wheels, once Paris was behind them, were on the very track of
Gaston’s, and that they were passing over again, at so short an
interval, his _via dolorosa_. But well he knew that his had been nothing
to his wife’s, now.
Was not that the final swordstroke, too—that bitter and glorious
knowledge which was to have been kept from her? He was sure that Gaston
had not meant her to learn it. And yet, after all, perhaps it fell at
this hour on a heart already numbed by shock, and she could better bear
it to-day than to-morrow. To have known it yesterday, when her husband
was still on earth—that would have been intolerable. But she had said
so little, seemed set on so high a pinnacle of loss, that he could only
look at her, and conjecture, and pray. And in his own heart the sword
turned also.
At last they left the road to Saint-Germain. The poplars passed one by
one, those poplars under which Mme Vidal had walked last spring to take
up her post. Mud splashed from the wheels; the puddles were melted since
this morning. The carriage slackened, then, turning, drove through the
empty space between the gateposts with their mutilated lions. But
Mirabel bore little trace of what had taken place there four or five
hours ago, save that the barrier was entirely removed, and the gravel
scored by the passage of troops. And there were certain marks on the
base of one of the towers; but these were invisible at a distance.
They drew up before the great steps. The priest got out and assisted Mme
de Trélan to alight. The heavy door at the top, barred for so many
years, stood wide open, and on either side of it was stationed a hussar
with drawn sabre. At least then, ran his thought, the butchers have some
proper feeling; they do not intend the curious to pass that door . . .
unless, perhaps, it were that young captain’s doing only. He offered his
arm. But Valentine refused it. “I would rather go quite alone,” she said
gently. “If you would wait here till I summon you . . . or till the
others come . . .”
He could not gainsay her. So once more he, too, stood in front of
Mirabel, and suddenly realised with intensity the part that Mirabel’s
treasure—yielded moreover to _his_ hands—had played in these two
lives. It had made possible Gaston de Trélan’s short-lived success in
Finistère, and had thereby brought him fame—and death. It had lifted
his burden from him, and joined him and Valentine in a union such as
they had never known . . . but only to part them. The colonnades wavered
for a moment as all this beat upon the priest’s brain. Then he thought
of nothing else but what was before his eyes—the figure of Mme de
Trélan going up those wide, neglected steps.
He did not know, nor did Valentine till she came to them, that across
their discoloured marble trailed, in places, another and a deeper
discolouration. She had reached the sixth or seventh of the twelve
before its meaning penetrated to her consciousness. She stopped, drawing
a long breath; then went slowly on again, looking at it. But when she
came to the tenth step Pierre Chassin, watching from below, saw her sink
on her knees, and thought her strength was failing her. It was not so.
Bending forward, as on the ascent of some great altar, the Duchesse de
Trélan deliberately stooped and kissed, on the topmost step of all, one
of the little splashes, dull now, and dry, which marked her husband’s
return to his house of Mirabel.
Then she rose, and went also, between the guards, through the open door,
and into the Salle Verte.
* * * * *
But here, in the long, pillared room, there were no signs of anything
like that ineffaceable witness upon the steps. Only, an island of light
in its vastness, a pale island in the winter’s day, the tall
candlesticks from the chapel, with tapers burning in them, and, on the
ground between, straight and still, the sovereign presence
there—Gaston. Had there been rivers of blood, disfigurement, horrors,
they would not have stopped her for a moment; and, come as she was to
the end of the world where the great sea washes in, she saw nothing but
beauty and an unimagined splendour.
For a second, indeed, those four spires tipped with flame seemed a
strange distance off, and, measured even by steps, the way was long down
the great, silent room of gilt and marble, under the gaze of the painted
Olympus of the ceiling, which had looked on many scenes, but never on
the counterpart of this. Yet, with no remembrance of having traversed
it, she was there beside him.
He lay his full length, his head hardly raised on the rolled-up military
cloak which pillowed it, and he had for a pall the strip of ancient
tapestry from the sallette. The worn fabric covered his body from throat
to feet, but over its faded imagery his hands were folded lightly on his
breast, the fingertips just crossing each other. His head was turned a
very little towards the door by which she had entered, as if expecting
her; a faint gleam of gold at his side showed an inch or two of the
fringe of his scarf—her scarf—escaping from beneath the shrouding
tapestry. He did not now look more than five-and-forty, and, except that
he was mortally pale, he might have been asleep.
Valentine had no consciousness of death in presence of this incarnation
of dignity and repose. He had never seemed more alive, or closer to her.
Slowly she knelt down by him; slowly, and without a tremor, she kissed
him on the mouth. For her there were no more fever-fits of suspense, nor
ever would be again.
Then she contemplated him, lying there like a victor. This was his
return to the house he had so lightly quitted—a triumphal return, she
could feel it no otherwise. He had in death the same air of dominating
his surroundings that had been his in life, but with a serenity added
which it was hard to believe a violent end had given him. And whence had
he that air of absorption in some grave happiness of his own? She knew.
She had known this long while—was it an hour? . . . It was written too,
perhaps, in this letter. For here, alone with Gaston in this narrow
house of light, was the place to read his last message. When she broke
the seal of the letter a tiny packet slipped out on to the hands which
had put it there. Valentine let it lie; what need for haste?
“_There is not time_,” she read, “_there is not time to ask you
to come to me, Valentine, beloved, and perhaps it is best.
Indeed I did not intentionally deceive you yesterday when I said
that I should be allowed to see you again. The plan has not
failed; but it will never be put to the test now, and perhaps
that is best too._
“_I think you know, my dearest, that I look upon the perfidy
with which my life is taken from me as an opportunity which I
would not forego—though I tried not to put it to you too
directly yesterday when the issue was still in doubt. That life
itself is little enough to give, God knows, but at least it is
more than I should have been able to give had I been killed in
Brittany, where all we tried to do by the sword has proved so
vain. For to fall like this means immortal shame to the
conqueror, and you will see, Valentine, that the blot of the
violated safe-conduct and its sequel will not easily or soon be
washed from Bonaparte’s reputation, whatever lustre the future
may add to it; and so I like to think that my death will do more
for the cause than my life could ever have done. And if my sword
is broken, it is not taken from me. It is not I who have regrets
on the score of treachery. I have my chance thereby—and you
would surely be the last to stay me. For once, Valentine, you
gave me leave to die!_
“_The regret I have . . . O my darling, is there need to name
it? Yet you said, that last night at La Vergne, that we should
never know any happiness over the sea greater than that which we
have had, so briefly but so wonderfully, this autumn. It is
true, dearest, true a thousand times. We shall not now grow old
together, that is all._
“_I do not presume to dictate to you what you should do until we
meet again. You will know best. The Abbé is aware of my
dispositions for your future. They are safely in London; he will
tell you of them when he returns. I wish I could have seen him
again; I have written him a few lines—poor acknowledgment of
what he has been to me. I commend Roland to him, but most of all
to you, you being what you are. For him, too, Pierre knows my
wishes. And I ask de Brencourt’s pardon once more for what I
said to him at La Vergne when he tried to warn me. He has taken
the best revenge._
“_But, Valentine, I do not ask your pardon again for all the
past, for that would be to doubt you—a thing impossible. To my
last breath this morning I shall have you in my heart—and feel
you in my arms, perhaps, as on the shore that day in Finistère,
when it was you who wished to die because we were so happy. You
see, therefore, beloved, how small a thing it is, if one can do
it cheerfully—as I do._
“_I have not much more time. Old Bernard has gone to find a
priest, but I do not somehow think he will be successful. If I
must depart unshriven you will pray best for me, my heart of
hearts, for you know all the worst of me. For I desire to die as
I have not always lived, in the Catholic faith, the servant of
the King of France, and your most unworthy lover._”
It was dated that morning at a little before seven o’clock, and signed
with his full name, Gaston-Henri-Hippolyte-Gabriel-Eléonor de
Saint-Chamans, and with all his titles.
* * * * *
The letter fell from Valentine’s hands. No mention here of the pardon he
had spurned—no mention, for her sake. Ah, how much better she
understood yesterday now. “You tried to keep it from me,” she whispered,
“but I know your secret, O my knight without stain! I know why you look
like that! ‘_If one can do it cheerfully—as I do._’ If you could do it,
surely I can bear the knowledge of it!” And she clasped her hands in
acceptance above the piece of flotsam from other years that covered him
like a banner, whereon still lingered fragments of warriors and guidons
and waves and battlemented towers, and—unnoticed, perhaps, by the
reverent and hostile hands that spread it there—a border of the flower
which had sprung out of a soil of such past glories, the fleur-de-lys,
the symbol for which he had died. For she had very clearly the
conviction that she was speaking to him, that she would often speak to
him like this, as she might have spoken yesterday, but with all the
pain, the conflict of wills, gone from their intercourse—that they
would many times talk together thus, and that she would tell him over
and over again, “My heart, my hero! you did well . . . well!”
Then she saw the little packet lying where it had fallen, and took it up
again. It was no more than a folded square of paper with three words on
it; but out of it—pale, brittle, transparent as goldbeater’s skin, the
stain at their bases more deeply marked—floated the four pressed petals
of the yellow poppy she had once given him by the verge of that full sea
of joy. As before they fell—fell and scattered . . . but not this time
on the sand. Valentine’s hand shook suddenly. Her presentiment of that
day of rapture had come true; they did typify that love of theirs, so
late in blooming, so miraculous in its perfect flower, so soon cut
short. Ghosts of their former loveliness, they lay unstirred now on the
quiet breast. . . . And there, too, above her, as she knelt by Gaston
treacherously slain, there they were once more, wavering in the cold
air, pallid in the March daylight—four petals, each on a stem of wax,
significant and alive! Was this what the yellow sea-poppy had
foreshadowed—the petals of this encircling flower of death, between
which he lay so ivory-pale and would not speak to her nor move? . . .
Then he _was_ dead; she had not understood. He could not hear. Her head
began to turn; a cold, slow terror rose over her soul like a marsh-mist.
The air seemed full of flickering petals, flickering flames. As she had
stretched out her hands to Gaston that day by the menhirs, so now she
stretched them out again, but more blindly, in more desperate need—and
met his for the last time. And, cold though they were and motionless,
she clasped her own round them, and, stooping, covered them with kisses,
for they were still his hands . . . the hands that yesterday, about this
time, warm and strong, were holding hers. . . .
When that thought touched her, Valentine’s composure shattered to
fragments. She could not bear it. It was too much to ask of her, to
approve this cruel heroism. After so short a time . . . so short a time!
. . . O, if only she might follow Gaston now, if she might only lie here
cold beside him, where she was bowed in weeping such as she had never
known. . . . No, that was not for her; she saw instead a long
road. . . . And even in her anguish she found herself praying almost
unconsciously—but not for the accomplishment of that desire. In that
difficult prayer she seemed to drift a long way from the Salle Verte
. . . even to be, once, on the threshold of a strange region where grief
and joy were in some mysterious fashion fused into one awful beauty. And
Gaston was there with her. . . .
* * * * *
When she came back she found in her hand the little piece of paper that
had enclosed the petals, on which she saw that Gaston had written,
written recently, three words, no more. And they were the motto of his
house; _Memini et permaneo_—‘I remember and I remain . . . to the end.’
They wonderfully steadied her; they seemed the most direct message from
those closed, serene and half-smiling lips. And in this border country
between the four candle-flames, where her desire was accomplished and
her heart broken with its accomplishment, she saw clearly—and would
never quite lose the vision—the marvellous and splendid thing that had
come to them after those barren years: to both a great love, to her a
great sorrow, and to him that noble end which even the foe had envied
him—the opportunity, in a shaken time, of proving his fidelity to the
uttermost, the supreme honour of choosing death rather than belittle the
cause he served.
Yes, all, all that she had longed for him to show himself lay here
between the candles; and with it their love, safe for ever. And very
gently Valentine de Trélan gathered up from their restingplace the
almost bodiless petals of the yellow poppy which were thus given back to
her, and held them a moment in the curve of her hand. They seemed to
mean, now, even more than they had meant that day, since they had lain
on the heart which, in making so great a sacrifice, asked of her a
courage as great, a fortitude longer drawn. Yet it was a crown that she
would carry—sharp, but royal. She looked at the composed and beautiful
head on the soldier’s cloak.
“I am _his_ wife,” she said to herself, “—_his_ widow!”
THE END.
REPRODUCED AND PRINTED BY
LOWE & BRYDONE (PRINTERS) LIMITED,
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
A few obvious printing errors have been silently corrected. Otherwise,
inconsistencies, variations and possible errors in spelling and grammar
have been preserved. Please note the following changes:
“though” changed to “through” and
“time” changed to “times”, both on p. 97.
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