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.