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 . . .