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.