start, and realised where he was, how far removed in time and space from
the great Austrian disaster. He supposed that he was a trifle
light-headed, for he had really felt that the next thing would be the
arrival of those dim, frosty-breathed forms with lanterns, and
Schnitterl’s voice, and he would be lifted to a stretcher and to a
resumption of that life he thought he had done with at last. Josef had
often told him how he had begged to be left there. But no . . . _Et
permaneo_.
After all, he thought now, staring at the moving reflection of the
candle on the ceiling, perhaps it was as well that he had not died there
in the snow. There was a chance to-day of something better than mere
personal heroism. Although nothing, nothing could undo the past nor give
him back the dead, yet, if ever they met beyond the grave, he might have
some guerdon to lay there at her feet—some tiny sprig of laurel that he
could point to and say, “Valentine, I was not wholly what you thought
me. . . .”
And for a moment he fancied that he saw her, shadowy and bejewelled, by
the bed.
CHAPTER VII
THE CHURCH MILITANT
It was Lucien who rode to Lanvennec next morning for the surgeon. M. de
Brencourt considered him discreet, and chose him rather than Artamène
(who had besides been up all night) or any other of the younger men. But
had he known that Lucien, though outwardly respectful and certainly of a
fundamental prudence, was finishing in his head as he rode a short but
very venomous epistle in verse, beginning, “_Artus, le Judas de nos
jours!_” in which, somewhere near the end, “_maître_” rhymed with
“_traître_,” he might have selected another messenger.
However, the surgeon came, concerned but unsuspicious, and, assisted by
M. Chassin, did his unpleasant work with reasonable speed and deftness,
producing at the end of it what he vaguely termed a “projectile” from a
region of M. de Kersaint’s forearm which, on the contrary, he described
with much exactitude. And while he was binding up the arm in question
the Abbé quietly annexed the bullet—“as a souvenir,” he said.
But someone else seemed to be souvenir-hunting that morning. Not long
after the Abbé had left his patient to repose and had established
himself again in the outer room with his reflections and his breviary,
the Comte de Brencourt appeared there.
“Is it out satisfactorily?” he enquired.
“Quite,” replied the priest. “A painful business; but nothing,
mercifully, appears to be permanently injured. Yet the surgeon tells me
that our leader”—he stressed the words a little—“came very near never
having the use of his sword-arm again.”
The Comte looked grave. To do him justice, he had desired last night to
kill, not to maim.
“The curious thing,” went on the priest, “is that the bullet is a pistol
bullet, though last night M. de Kersaint distinctly said that his
assailant shot him with a musket.”
“No, no! The man had a pistol,” said M. de Brencourt. “The Marquis was
mistaken.”
“Obviously the man had a pistol,” agreed M. Chassin with serenity. “And
not an army pistol either.”
The Comte met his look. “I should rather like to see that bullet,” he
observed.
“No doubt,” thought the Abbé, twiddling it in his pocket. “But you are
not going to.” And as he made no audible reply to this suggestion the
enquirer had to let the subject drop.
“To turn to another question, Abbé,” he said, sitting down, “one has not
yet had opportunity to congratulate you on your wonderful success. Allow
me to do so now—most heartily.”
“You are generous, Monsieur le Comte,” said the priest, reaching round
to place his breviary on the table, and not seeming to notice the
proffered hand. “I thank you all the more. Another person ought by
rights, however, to be included in your congratulations.”
“Who—not Roland de Céligny, surely?”
“No. His friend the concierge—your friend the concierge.”
“Why do you call her my friend?” asked the Comte with a frown. “She was
certainly de Céligny’s, but in no sense mine.”
“No? Well, my friend the concierge, then,” said the priest with a little
smile.
De Brencourt’s heart was beating to suffocation as he looked at him.
Now, surely, he should learn whether to M. Chassin she were more than a
concierge—the main purpose with which he had sought this interview.
“Yes, she was of the greatest service to me,” resumed the priest,
“although, indeed, she gave me no active assistance. Poor woman, she had
had a sad history.”
“Did she tell it to you?” demanded the Comte quickly.
“Oh, one did not need to be _told_ it,” replied the Abbé.
But the look of relief which at that most palpably appeared on the
Comte’s features had the briefest stay there conceivable, for the
aumônier went on to say meditatively, “I am glad to think that I was
able to make her some recompense. You remember the ruby necklace
mentioned in the plan, Monsieur le Comte?”
“You are not going to say that you gave her that!” exclaimed his
companion, starting up in his chair.
“Ah, I see you think it an excessive reward?” commented the Abbé,
looking at him enquiringly. “So did M. le Marquis, I fancy, when I told
him. But come now, Monsieur le Comte, do you not think that it really
was no more than her due, that if ever woman had a right to it, she had
. . . and that if M. de Kersaint knew all he would say the same?”
But the Comte was quite speechless. The piercing little eyes held his,
and he could feel them boring into his very soul. “If ever woman had a
right to it” . . . “if M. de Kersaint knew all.” The Abbé knew—he knew!
He would never have given her the necklace else. Had he told the Duc
yet?
“Of course,” went on the priest in a lowered tone, lowering that
uncomfortable gaze also till it rested on his blunt fingers outspread on
his knees, “had there been a Duchess of the house living I should not
have felt justified in giving so valuable an heirloom to a concierge.
But, under the sad circumstances, I hold that I was absolved, do not
you, Monsieur le Comte?”
Oh, curse his maddening and mysterious persistence! Was he playing with
him, or was he ignorant after all?
“That is not for me to say,” muttered the Comte thickly. “The matter
concerns M. de Kersaint.”
“Very true. Everything about Mme Vidal more nearly concerns M. de
Kersaint than anybody else.” He seemed to wait for the Comte to agree or
else to ask why, but the Comte could bring out neither assent nor query.
“Since he is most interested in the treasure,” finished the Abbé with an
amicable air of explaining his statement. “And, speaking of that
treasure, Monsieur le Comte, I feel sure that by now you have penetrated
the disguise. The cloak was bound to sit rather awkwardly after—you
know what I mean.” He looked at him again.
M. de Brencourt changed colour. “Disguise? Whose disguise? No, I do
_not_ know what you mean!” There was sharp alarm in his tone; whither
was this tending?
“Whose disguise?” repeated the priest. “Why, surely, there is only one
disguise in question?” He waited a second and then went on, “The Marquis
has perhaps told you himself who he is?”
“No, he has not!” returned M. de Brencourt angrily. “And I do not wish
to learn any secrets, if you please, Abbé!” For if he could carry it off
with the Abbé and the outside world in general that he had never known
who de Kersaint really was, how could he be blamed for not having told
him that his wife was alive?
“Very well said, Monsieur le Comte,” remarked M. Chassin in a tone of
commendation. “And if I were not sure that, like myself, you know
already, I would not speak to you of the identity of M. de Kersaint and
the Duc de Trélan.”
“But for Heaven’s sake do _not_ speak to me of their identity!” cried
the Comte, his head reeling as he saw this knowledge being openly thrust
upon him. “How do I know—or care—who he is!”
“I am afraid I have done it now,” said the priest placidly “but only
because I was sure you had guessed it.”
“How could you be sure?” growled the other. “Did—surely he did not tell
you? Only last night he asked me to respect his confidence!”
“Ah!” said the priest. “After you . . . saved his life, no doubt! Well,
Monsieur de Brencourt, you can still respect it. And since you do know
it—_I thought you did_—I am sure that as a gentleman you must regret
the expressions you used, in ignorance, of M. de Trélan, that night at
Hennebont. But you have no doubt made that all right with him.”
“That,” said M. de Brencourt, with hostility, “is a matter which
concerns M. de Trélan and myself, not you, Monsieur Chassin.—And as
regards confidences, it seems to me that you were going very near
betraying one yourself just now. If I had _not_ known . . . are you
usually in the habit of doing that?” For now there was a fresh track of
alarm; had the priest betrayed this particular confidence to one at
Mirabel—told the concierge, even without knowing who she was, that he
really came from Mirabel’s master? It was not impossible. He waited in
acute tension.
“No,” said the Abbé composedly, “without wishing to belaud myself, it is
a point I am rather particular upon. But I assured the Marquis—the
Duc—some time ago that he would have to tell you sooner or later. I
wonder he did not do so before you went to Mirabel. Did you not guess it
then, from the knowledge he displayed of the place?”
“Monsieur l’Abbé,” replied the Comte, with more than irritation, “it
does not seem to me to matter much what I guessed or what I did not
guess. Enough that I did not impart my speculations to any living soul.”
“No, I am sure you were very careful not to do that!” said the Abbé
warmly, and he looked at him harder than ever.
M. de Brencourt got up and went to the window. He must know, this man.
And yet . . . did he? He would have told de Trélan at once, if he did; a
bullet in the arm would not have prevented the reception of that news.
The Comte would almost have given his soul to make sure, but it was so
difficult to plumb the extent of the priest’s knowledge without exposing
his own. A sort of fascination caused him to recur to the subject of
Mirabel, but he approached it this time from a safer side.
“When am I to have an account of your securing of the treasure, Abbé?”
he asked, throwing himself down on the window-seat. “It _was_ under the
hearth in the sallette, I suppose?”
And presumably his fellow-adventurer felt he owed him this, for he gave
him, on this invitation, a fairly circumstantial account of his success
at Mirabel and his peregrinations afterwards. The Comte listened from
the window with the closest attention. After all, _she_ did not seem to
have played so much part in the business as he had feared. Perhaps——
“But I was glad to leave Mirabel in any case,” finished the narrator
with a sigh. “It has a tragic atmosphere—a haunted feeling. Were you
not conscious of that, Monsieur le Comte?” And as the Comte, for fear of
giving an opening, did not reply, the priest went on, “If it were M. de
Trélan’s once more and he were free to go there, I am sure he never
would.”
M. de Brencourt could not resist the bait. “No, I should think not!” he
broke out in spite of himself. “He would think always of that night—of
his wife, alone——”
The priest looked up. “Ah yes, I have heard you in that vein before,
Monsieur le Comte,” he interrupted coolly. “Now tell me candidly, for I
want to know, since I am not gently born, and can’t understand the
refinements of you nobles—is it not a fact that all the aristocrats who
emigrated early, as M. de Trélan did, emigrated on a point of honour
. . . mistaken, it may be, but still a principle? Why, if it comes to
that, Monsieur de Brencourt, you are, I think, an émigré yourself, and I
don’t suppose you considered that you were running away?”
“No, that is true,” conceded the Comte somewhat reluctantly. “It
was—before it became a matter of safety—a matter of principle.”
“When the Duc emigrated in 1790 it would have taken a very far-sighted
person to prophesy the extremities to which the Revolution would go
later on. I happen to know, too, that he made a great effort to induce
the Duchesse to accompany him. She refused, as it were on a point of
honour also. She disapproved of the emigration.”
“And dearly enough she paid for that disapproval,” muttered the Comte.
“Quite true. And don’t you think that M. de Trélan has paid dearly for
it too?”
A pause. “He deserved to,” said his companion.
The Abbé made a gesture. “One must make allowances for you, Monsieur. I
know that you had the honour of the acquaintance of that noble and
unfortunate lady—you told us so—and it has biased you against a man
who has been equally unfortunate, and who, for seven years, in the midst
of hardships and dangers of his own seeking, has never ceased to suffer
the pangs of a remorse which, as I hope for salvation, I consider
excessive.”
“You are an eloquent defender, Abbé,” said the Comte de Brencourt,
shrugging his shoulders. “You should be at the bar . . . I happen to
differ from you. I consider, to put it bluntly, that M. le Duc de Trélan
deserves every sting of remorse he has suffered and may still suffer
henceforward. I am not for letting a man off so cheaply.”
M. Chassin leant forward. “That was a figure of speech, I presume?” he
put in like lightning.
“What do you mean?” asked the Comte, startled.
“You spoke of letting him off—as if you had the power to do it.”
The Comte recovered himself. “Do not be absurd, Abbé!” he said
scornfully. “Am I the Judge of all the earth? Of course it was a figure
of speech! How could _I_ absolve him for what is done and can never be
undone? Put his behaviour down, at the best, to mistaken judgment, we
have to suffer for our mistakes just as much as for our crimes.”
The Abbé sat back in his chair again. “Since you know that so well,
Monsieur de Brencourt,” he said gravely, “it might occur to you that it
is a mistake—a dangerous mistake—to play with other people’s remorse.
You might conceivably know that torment yourself one day!”
“I’ll take the risk of that,” said the Comte drily, and got up.
“Especially as I have no idea what you mean about ‘playing’ with other
people’s,” he added, not at all certain what that phrase did mean in the
mouth that had uttered it. It was time, at any rate, to end this
dangerous interview, which had not told him what he wanted to know. One
thing was clear, that if the priest knew Mme Vidal’s secret he would
eventually tell the “Marquis de Kersaint,” and after that, no doubt,
would come the deluge, and either he, Artus de Brencourt, or his late
adversary would really be swept away in it, this time. But if there came
no deluge, then M. Chassin did not know.
“If you will excuse me, mon père,” he said, looking down at him, “I must
quit this interesting conversation for my duties. Ask M. de . . .
Kersaint when you go in to him again, to send for me if he wants me.”
And he left the room.
So the Abbé Chassin knew that he did not mean ever to tell Gaston de
Trélan that his wife was alive, that he meant to go on withholding the
knowledge for his own purpose. And his heart was hardened against M. de
Brencourt.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PAWN RETURNS TO THE BOARD
(1)
Roland had come. He stood in the ‘nursery’ with an overjoyed friend
holding him firmly by either arm.
“But why,” he was now demanding feverishly, “why cannot I see M. le
Marquis at once, and get it over?”
For if his sincere penitence had caused his grandfather to dismiss him
in the end with a sort of blessing—a remark that he was, if crazy and
disobedient, at least no milksop—the youth knew that there was a still
more merited penance to be gone through before he could expect a
blessing _here_. Part indeed of that penance, and perhaps the worst
part, he had already been undergoing at Kerlidec—the ashamed
realisation of the damage his own wilfulness had caused to his hero’s
reputation, in the eyes, too, of one who was always so inexplicably
hostile to M. de Kersaint.
“Why?” echoed Artamène. “Because, four nights ago, our revered leader
met with an accident in the forest. (Roland gave an exclamation.) The
accident took the form of a Blue, who shot him in the arm.”
“But he’s all right,” interpolated the kindhearted Lucien. “They took
out the bullet next morning. The Abbé is very strict, however.”
“—And M. de Brencourt shot the Blue,” continued Artamène, “shot him so
dead that he was, apparently, blown completely off this planet.”
“You forget,” Lucien reminded him, “that the Comte distinctly stated
that he got away.”
“What, after he was dead?” asked Roland.
They looked at him; they drew closer, very close.
“Bend your head, my paladin,” commanded Artamène. And, almost glueing
his lips to the attentive ear, he whispered into it, “The question is,
whether he ever lived, that Blue!”
“Oh!” exclaimed the Vicomte de Céligny, drawing back.
“Oh, and likewise Ah, and many other vocables!” agreed M. de la Vergne,
his eyes bright.
“But that means. . .”
Lucien put a finger on his lip. “We don’t discuss it, Roland. We
don’t—ahem—allow our minds to dwell on it. But——”
“‘Au clair de la lune,’” hummed the Chevalier de la Vergne under his
breath. “Two gentlemen, seized with a sudden desire for a walk at half
past ten at night. I was on duty that evening, and let them out. Also, I
met them returning—in perfect amity, I must confess; most correct. You
see, M. le Comte had been so obliging as to bandage the wound which
he——”
“Don’t go on, Artamène!” cried Lucien warningly. “Remember that we are
here in the region of hypothesis only.”
“Listen to our student. ‘The wound which he so signally avenged,’ was
what I was going to say, mon cher. Now, is that statement in the region
of hypothesis or of fact? If we knew that, we should know all!”
“But, merciful Heavens, why should they——” began Roland, in tones of
horrified amazement.
“My good Roland,” replied Artamène, “though most things are in time
revealed to enquiring intelligences, such as M. du Boisfossé’s and mine,
the reason for that promenade under the goddess of the night has not yet
been disclosed. The infernally bad temper in which M. de Bren—— Chut!
here’s the Abbé, come to summon you to the scaffold.”
But that was not exactly M. Chassin’s errand. He had come to say that M.
de Kersaint desired Roland to sup with them and to relate his
adventures. And if the prodigal should have a little private interview
with him afterwards he, the priest, did not fancy that it would be very
terrible.
“I expect you have been informed of his mishap,” concluded M. Chassin,
glancing at the other young men, neither of whom, by a singular
coincidence, met his eye. “Thank God it was not worse.—Now mind you
tell him, my child, all about Mirabel—especially about the concierge
there.”
(2)
So Roland supped with the gods, as Artamène and Lucien had put it. The
invitation, with its suggestion of pardon for the past, had pleased and
flattered him; the banquet itself he found at first a little
embarrassing. To begin with, he had uneasy anticipations of the
interview afterwards; and then he found the sight of the Marquis with
his arm in a sling oddly shocking, after the revelations made to him
downstairs. That support was as inconspicuous as possible, being of
black silk; still, there was the leader of Finistère, at the head of the
table, unable to use his right hand; and at the other end sat the man
who was . . . perhaps . . . responsible for his condition. The priest
was placed opposite Roland, and Josef Schnitterl, M. de Kersaint’s
bodyservant, waited upon them all; but he was little in the room.
Now if Roland, who possessed only conjectures, felt embarrassed, the
little aumônier, dowered though he was with an appearance of placidity
and a good appetite, had arrived at the point where he could scarcely
bear to see M. de Brencourt in the same room with his
foster-brother—much less because of what had passed at the
Moulin-aux-Fées than because of the deadly wrong the Comte was doing him
now. And, as a matter of fact the Marquis and his chief of staff did not
seem to be seeking each other’s society these last few days, though when
they were together their relations were of such a successful correctness
that speculation downstairs—except with MM. du Boisfossé and de la
Vergne—was beginning to languish. No one could have guessed that the
priest was thinking, as he looked at the handsome and engaging young
face opposite him, “If only Roland knew of her identity!” and that he
was preoccupied every hour of the day with the question, “Will she
come?” or was on tenterhooks at every communication the Marquis
received—for it might be from _her_.
When Roland’s first constraint was over, and the meal had proceeded a
little way, the Marquis enjoined the young man to give a most particular
account of all his doings. Roland assumed the air of obeying to the
full, though as a matter of fact he contrived to make his narrative
begin with his arrival in Paris. But this the Marquis would not have.
“You can only earn my full pardon, Roland,” he said, looking at him
quizzically, “by an equally full confession of your sins—and by
revealing the names of all your accomplices!”
The Comte and the Abbé both exclaimed at this. “No gentleman could
consent to receive his pardon on such terms,” declared the former.
“It is true,” admitted the inquisitor, “that I know Roland’s partners in
guilt already. The one I have already dealt with; the other, I am
afraid, lies outside my jurisdiction.”
“Ah, there was another, was there?” asked the Abbé, looking amusedly
across at poor Roland, who, blushing, was alternately studying the
tablecloth and sending appealing glances at his leader. “I know of one.
Who was the other? Not our staid Lucien, surely?”
“No,” replied M. de Kersaint, smiling, “not Lucien. I have strong
reasons to suspect another member of Artamène’s family, no less daring
than himself, and, presumably, even more inspiring.—But enough that I
know the name of this . . . person.—Go on, Roland; after all we will
dispense with the meetings of the conspirators at La Vergne. Continue
from your leaving that nest of plotters.”
He was in better spirits than he had been for days; and how should
Roland guess with what pleasure he was looking forward to an interview
after supper where, after all, he should let the penitent off rather
easily? Thankfully escaping from the dangerous neighbourhood of Mlle de
la Vergne the young man carried on his narrative up to his falling
unconscious at the foot of the statue of Mercury in the park of Mirabel.
M. de Kersaint leant back in his chair. “We now come, I think, to the
really romantic part of the story, do we not? Enter Mme Vidal, I
believe.”
As Roland embarked on the entry of Mme Vidal into his recital the Abbé
and M. de Brencourt became very silent. (But Roland noticed nothing;
_his_ audience was M. de Kersaint.)
Almost immediately, however, the latter interrupted him. “What was she
like to look at, this good angel?” he enquired, laying down his fork.
“She was not young, that I have gathered.”
Roland was rather at a loss. “I am afraid I am not very good at
description, sir. But M. le Comte or M. l’Abbé”—he turned towards
them—“surely you have heard all about her appearance from them.”
“No, indeed I have not,” replied the Marquis. “Rather remarkably, they
neither of them seem able to describe her.”
“Let us have your attempt, then, Roland,” said the Abbé. A vista of
blest possibilities was opening out before him. The same thing was
happening to the Comte de Brencourt . . . only the possibilities were
not blest.
Roland tried, but possibly through the hostile influence of the
gentleman at the bottom of the table he failed to achieve anything
recognisable.
“‘Tall, fair hair going grey, blue-grey eyes’—that does not advance us
much,” observed M. de Kersaint with truth. “It is like the passport
descriptions, ‘bouche moyenne,’ and the rest. Never mind Mme Vidal’s
appearance, then, Roland. But since you of the three had the most
intimate acquaintance with her, tell us, at least, what impression her
personality made on you. For though M. le Comte does not seem to find
the presence at Mirabel of a concierge with Royalist sympathies
extraordinary, I must say that I do.”
“I said, Marquis, if I remember,” interposed M. de Brencourt rather
hoarsely, “that I thought her sympathies need not have been so entirely
Royalist as you assume. She was a woman, M. de Céligny an interesting
young man, helpless and wounded . . . que sais-je? It was enough to
appeal to any woman’s heart.”
Roland, embarrassed at hearing himself described in these terms, and in
such an unpleasant voice, broke in,
“Oh but, indeed, Monsieur le Comte, she had Royalist sympathies. At
least she was the widow of a poor Royalist gentleman . . . for of
course, Messieurs, you saw at once that she was a lady. Indeed, I could
not quite understand why she accepted the post, for she certainly seemed
out of place in it. Didn’t you think so, Messieurs?”
“I did, certainly,” said the Abbé quietly. The vista was opening out
into a regular Heaven. The Comte was understood to say that he had
hardly seen her.
“It certainly does seem extraordinary,” mused the Marquis, leaning his
head on his hand, his eyes fixed on Roland.
“If you had seen her, sir, you would have thought so still more,” said
Roland with eagerness. “She had a carriage, always, and a way of
speaking when she forgot herself—what I mean to say is, that if it
hadn’t been so patently absurd to think so, one might even have taken
her for a grande dame.”
“And why,” asked the Abbé softly, “would it be so patently absurd to
have taken her for one? Stranger things have happened in the
topsy-turveydom of to-day. I have heard of Chevaliers of St. Louis
working as stevedores at a German port, and we all know how many émigrés
in London earned——”
M. de Brencourt broke in upon him rudely. “Pshaw, Abbé, you are too
romantic, and so is M. de Céligny. You forget, I have seen the woman
too, and though undoubtedly superior, she was nothing out of the way,
and as unlike the paragon of our young friend’s poetic fancy as——”
“As falsehood is unlike truth,” finished M. Chassin, looking straight at
him. “Well, we differ, Comte, in our estimate of what is ‘out of the
way,’ that is all. I am with M. de Céligny’s.—Go on, my son. You think
one might even have taken her for a grande dame?”
“Stuff and nonsense,” muttered M. de Brencourt angrily, pushing away his
plate.
“Really,” said the Marquis, as this little passage of arms ended, “your
Mme Vidal begins to intrigue me so much that I almost wish I had gone to
Mirabel myself!”
“Ah, if only you had!” was drawn in a whisper from the Abbé.
M. de Kersaint heard, though he was not meant to, and raised his
eyebrows. “Why, it was your representations which prevented me from
going!” he exclaimed. “What is the matter, Monsieur de Brencourt?”
“Nothing,” replied the Comte, who had half risen from his seat. “For the
moment I thought—it was nothing.”
“You hear that testimony, Monsieur le Comte?” said the Abbé, turning to
him with a sudden air of combat. “You should be pleased with me—M. le
Marquis acknowledges that it was my wise counsels which prevailed on him
not to go in person to Mirabel!”
“And why the deuce do you suppose I should be pleased at that?” demanded
the goaded gentleman. “M. de Kersaint was welcome to go to Mirabel if he
wished, for all it mattered to me!”
(“How very rude he is!” thought Roland, displeased.)
“You would not, surely, have had our leader run into such danger?”
“Well, _I_ had to run into it!” retorted the Comte.
“Yes—_and succumbed_!” returned the priest with such a world of meaning
in his voice that the Comte changed colour.
“Come, Abbé,” interposed the Marquis, “are you not being ungenerous to a
less fortunate rival? You are surely not casting it up at M. de
Brencourt that he endured a brief captivity for the King’s cause?”
The Abbé shook his head. “M. le Comte knows that I am not,” he replied.
“But I am afraid that we are checking Roland’s interesting recital by
our divergences on the subject of Mme Vidal. If he will forgive our bad
manners . . .”
“Yes, go on, Roland,” said the Marquis. “But you must eat too. You were
telling us about your actual entry into the château.”
“I got as far as Mme Vidal’s room,” resumed Roland obediently, “and then
I suppose I fainted again, for the next thing I remember is finding
myself in bed there, and Mme Vidal bending over me again.—Ah, by the
way,” he cried, suddenly remembering something which might serve as a
contribution to portraiture, “there was one curious little fact about
her which I forgot to mention. It was then that I first noticed it. One
of her eyes, though they were almost blue, had some brown specks in it.
Did you remark it, Monsieur l’Abbé? It was the right eye. You could only
see it when she was quite near you.”
“No . . . I . . . did not observe it,” said the Abbé. He spoke as if a
strong wind of sudden origin had somehow taken away his breath. From the
lower end of the table came the sound of a man drawing his sharply.
“I remember I used to look at it when she nursed me,” went on Roland,
happy at producing some effect in the end. “And I——”
He was interrupted by a voice he scarcely knew. “She had eyes, you say,
almost blue, with brown specks in one?” gasped the Marquis, jerking
forward in his chair. “Did I hear rightly? Blue eyes . . . which one had
the . . . say it again!”
In a dead silence, and much embarrassed thereby, Roland repeated his
observation. The Marquis de Kersaint, leaning forward in his chair, his
left hand clutching the table, looked at him with eyes which seemed as
if they would drive through him, and as the young man, fascinated by
that extraordinary gaze, returned it, he saw his leader slowly turn so
pale that it looked as if every vestige of blood had been drained away
from his face. Even his lips were the colour of paper. Next moment,
without a word, without even a gesture of apology, he had pushed back
his chair, risen from his place, and disappeared into his bedroom.
Roland fell back, smitten dumb with astonishment and, staring at the
door which had just closed, he did not see the black and thunderous look
which the Comte de Brencourt darted first at him and then at the Abbé.
But in a moment the priest, too, was on his feet.
“It must be that wound of his,” he said quickly. “If you will excuse me
a minute, Messieurs?” And he, too, went through the bedroom door. Roland
saw his face as he went; it was not inexpressive now. It wore a most
singular look of mingled gravity and exultation.
The Comte de Brencourt and the unconscious author of this scene were now
alone. And just because the Comte was looking as he did Roland felt that
he must say something.
“I am afraid that M. le Marquis’ wound——” he began timidly.
M. de Brencourt gave a short laugh that was more like a snarl. “His
wound!” he exclaimed. “Well, yes, a wound if you like—a sore, a
festering sore! Mort de ma vie, boy, what made you so observant!”
“Observant!” repeated the puzzled Roland. “I don’t understand you,
Monsieur le Comte. Ought one not to have noticed that M. le Marquis
was—in pain. But the Abbé——”
“Go on with your supper, in Heaven’s name!” broke in the Comte roughly.
He really looked like murder at that moment. “You have done a pretty
evening’s work, on my soul—and I don’t suppose you are through with it
yet, either!” And, laughing again, he poured out and drank off a glass
of wine.
But Roland, almost convinced that he was sitting at table with a madman,
was in no mood to obey him. He merely stared at the second in command.
Fortunately it was only for a moment, for the bedroom door opened again
and the Abbé stood there.
“M. de Kersaint wishes to speak to you, Roland,” he said. Amazing
thing—_he_ looked pleased. Roland got up, utterly bewildered. His
interview—now? He knew not what he had said or done to precipitate it,
and apprehension was so written on his face that M. Chassin put his hand
kindly for a moment on his arm as he passed him, and gave it a little
pressure.
The Comte de Brencourt now addressed the aumônier. “Since your services,
Monsieur l’Abbé, don’t seem after all to be needed for this surprising
seizure of M. de Kersaint’s,” he observed, “perhaps you will be good
enough to sit down and finish your supper. These constant exits hardly
tend to good appetite!”
A flame of anger suddenly ran over the little priest’s face. “It is
_your_ services that have been required these many days, Monsieur de
Brencourt,” he rapped out, “and you know it! I have no wish to sit down
to table with you!” And turning on his heel he marched out of the
sitting-room and slammed the door.
Stupefaction seized M. de Brencourt in his turn. He _did_ know then,
that wily old devil—he had known all the time! Why, in the name of all
his saints had he not told de Trélan? But anyhow de Trélan was in
process of enlightenment at this moment behind that door, for of course
he had had the boy in to question him further. In a few minutes he would
doubtless come out, and then—well, there would probably be murder. For
a little bloodshed would hardly wash away this time what their encounter
the other evening had not availed to bring to light. . . .
For five minutes, perhaps, the Comte de Brencourt sat there with a set
face waiting for this to happen; then, as no one emerged from the inner
room, his fretted nerves drew him to his feet and sent him out in search
of the Abbé.
He found him standing motionless under the moon and stars just outside
the farmyard—not far, to be exact, from the pigsties, as would have
been obvious to anyone less absorbed. The Comte strode over to the
cassocked figure.
“May I ask what you meant by that remark you made just now?” he demanded
without preliminary.
The Abbé drew himself up. “It is no good talking to me in that tone,
Monsieur de Brencourt,” he returned with spirit. “I am neither a
gentleman nor a layman, so _I_ can’t go out with you to the
Moulin-aux-Fées.”
“Certainly no one would ever take you for a gentleman,” responded the
Comte, his voice shaking with passion, “and it takes a priest indeed to
play the part you have played—a spying hedge-priest——”
“Which is worse, Monsieur le Comte, spying or lying?”
“_Lying!_” ejaculated the Comte with vehemence. “Don’t your books of
moral theology tell you that keeping quiet about a thing is as bad as
lying about it? Why was it more my business to tell the Duc de Trélan
that his wife is alive than yours, as you evidently knew it?”
“Dear me,” said M. Chassin, and he smiled. “I was referring to something
quite different—to the occasion on which, in so many words, you told
Mme Vidal that her husband was dead—no tacit lie that! I think you are
rather betraying yourself, are you not, by referring to yet another?”
“Oh, go to the devil!” burst out M. de Brencourt.
“I wish I knew where you were to go, Monsieur le Comte,” was the
priest’s answer. “No, seriously, I do not wish to quarrel with you—even
after the part you have played. The situation that you have brought
about is much too grave for that. You must know that you have done a
thing which God may forgive but which man will find it hard to. Listen
to me, Monsieur de Brencourt, I beg of you, before it is too late, and
remove yourself from the Clos-aux-Grives, from M. de Kersaint’s command
even——”
M. de Brencourt, thus adjured, exploded in an oath and struck the door
of the pigsty so violent a blow that he brought out an enquiring inmate.
“By the God above us, Abbé, you go too far! Do you suppose that I am
going to run away from de Kersaint’s—from de Trélan’s—from any man’s
anger!—Forgiveness—I have not asked for it! And when the Duc de Trélan
wants me he will know where to find me!” He swung off in the direction
of the forest.
“I only wish I could hope he did _not_ know where to find you,” muttered
the Abbé, gazing after his receding figure, “for, short of a miracle,
there will be a terrible day of reckoning for this silence of yours!”
But the flood of joy and gratitude in his heart was too potent; it swept
away alike his disgust and his apprehension, and by the pigsty wall
itself M. Chassin fell on his knees and covered his face, while the
moon, but little declined from her fatal plenitude of four nights ago,
looked down benignantly upon him.
CHAPTER IX
THE CHOICE
(1)
The brief but acrimonious interview of M. de Brencourt and M. Chassin
had scarcely terminated when Roland de Céligny emerged from his leader’s
bedroom to the outer room. He shut the door behind him quickly, and
stood there a moment with his back to it, curiously combining the air of
a sentinel and that of a fugitive. And indeed, breathing rather fast, he
was saying to himself, “No one shall go in—not even the Abbé!”
He had just been witnessing something which, though he did not fully
understand it, he felt no eyes ought to have witnessed; he was hot and
shaken with the thought that his own unwilling but necessary presence
had been an outrage. . . . But since he was there, as he knew, to answer
what he was asked, and since the Marquis de Kersaint could ask anything
of him, even to his life, he had stayed, and averted his eyes through
the storm of questioning, behind which could be divined a man’s very
soul on the rack—till that final bowing of the proud, unhappy head over
the battered trinket that Roland had withdrawn from his own neck and
held out as proof irrefragable . . . yet a proof of what he still did
not know.
He was so agitated that it was only after a few seconds of this
self-imposed vigil that he realised he was facing an empty room. The
Abbé was not there, the Comte was not there. And in a minute or two
more, still hearing no movement from within he thought, “I must not stay
here; he would not like it . . . I must tell the Abbé something. But I
must also contrive that no one else goes in.” And, casting a glance on
the wasted victuals of that supper-table which he had been so
instrumental in breaking up, he went out.
A little later he was knocking at the aumônier’s door. M. Chassin,
barely entered himself, opened it. His face lit up when he saw who stood
there.
“My dear boy, I am glad to see you! Come in!”
Roland still hesitated. “Are you alone, mon père?”
“Absolutely, my child. Come in!” He almost steered him in. “Now sit
down, and we will have a talk. I was hoping that you would come.”
But Roland would not sit down. In his young mind he was afraid, if he
did that, of being led into saying more than he wanted to say. He did
not know how much he ought to reveal. As a matter of fact he hated
saying anything at all about what he had seen, but, bewildered as he
was, he felt that the Abbé had better be told something.
Standing there by the bed, he began at the end. “I . . . I ventured to
tell the officer of the guard that no one was to approach M. le Marquis
to-night except through you—because of his wound,” he said.
“Excellent! Very good indeed!” said the priest, and he clapped him on
the shoulder. Roland wondered a little why he seemed so elated; to him,
fresh from that scene with his leader, it did not seem quite decent.
“You are perhaps going to see him now, mon père?” he hazarded.
“God forbid, my son! If ever a man’s privacy should be respected, his
should be at this moment . . . if you have done what I prayed you might
be doing!”
“But, Monsieur l’Abbé,” besought the perplexed and almost unhappy
Roland, “what is it that I have done? What is it all?”
“Tell me first what you did do?” said the priest. “No,”—for the boy had
instantly turned away and was showing a disposition to go—“I do not
want to hear anything about M. de Kersaint. I can see from your face how
you feel about it. I only want to know this—how did you convince him
. . . if you did . . . that Mme Vidal, who has some brown specks in one
of her eyes, was . . . someone he had known before?”
“I showed him,” said Roland, looking at the floor, “a little old locket
she gave me when I left. And when he saw that——” He stopped dead.
“Yes, yes,” said the priest, putting a hand on his arm. “When he saw
that he was convinced, was he not? That’s all it is necessary for me to
know, my child. Please God the rest will come right now.”
“O, Monsieur l’Abbé, couldn’t you tell me _what_ is to come right?”
“Not just yet,” said M. Chassin, smiling. “But you shall know soon.
Anyhow, my son, you can go to bed, as I hope you are about to do, with
the reflection that you have this evening done the best day’s work you
ever did in your young life. . . . I think you have not yet had your
scolding for going to Mirabel? No! Well, you will never get it
now——from M. de Kersaint.” And adding, “Go to bed! God bless you!” he,
to Roland’s astonishment, bestowed upon him a hearty embrace.
And the author of so much disturbance, somewhat comforted, lay down a
little later by the side of Artamène and Lucien, whose scrupulous
abstention, on his request, from all enquiries about his supper-party
seemed a thing phenomenal, an almost chilly lack. So, also, did the
absence of the little locket and its chain from Roland’s own neck.
(2)
How well inspired M. l’Abbé Chassin, for his part, had been to lie down
to sleep that night almost fully dressed, was proved at about a quarter
to five next morning, when he woke to find M. du Ménars, rather scantily
clothed, standing beside his bed. He blinked up at him a moment, for if
he had expected to be roused by anyone, it was by Gaston himself.
“Do you know where de Brencourt is, Abbé?” asked the Comte’s next in
rank. “He is nowhere to be found, and I must see either him or the
Marquis at once, the Marquis by preference. But for that I want your
permission, as I understand he was not to be disturbed without it.”
“What has happened?” asked the Abbé, getting off the bed.
“Cadoudal has just sent an express to say that the English convoy with
muskets and ammunition for the Morbihan which he was expecting has
arrived—arrived two days ago,” he added, glancing at the open letter in
his hand, “but that, knowing M. de Kersaint to be in need of both, and
that he would probably be in a position to repay him in kind later on,
he detached one ship for us before it unloaded, and directed it to put
in at Sainte-Brigitte, and as the wind is favourable it ought to be
there this evening. Splendid news—provided we can reach the coast
quickly. And of course we shall want every man we can get together to
cover the disembarkation, for the Blues are certain to get wind of it.”
“I will rouse the Marquis instantly,” said M. Chassin. “Only do me the
favour, Monsieur du Ménars, of allowing me to see him first. He was much
indisposed last night. . . .”
* * * * *
And a few seconds later, with Cadoudal’s despatch in his hand, he was
knocking gently on his foster-brother’s door. Receiving no answer he
tried the handle. To his surprise it gave, so he went in, shutting the
door quickly.
It was light, of course; had been light for long enough, added to which
the sun would soon be up. All the eastern sky already expected him. But
in the room there still survived the pale, forgotten ghost of a candle
flame, and the open window was curtained over. And by the window, fully
dressed, his sound arm stretched out along the wide ledge, his head sunk
forward on that arm, sat Gaston de Trélan asleep. At least he did not
move until the priest touched him on the shoulder.
“Who is it?” he asked without moving. “I thought the door was locked.”
“It is I, Pierre,” answered the Abbé, his voice very stirred. “Gaston,
my brother . . .”
And his brother sighed, lifted his head, and pulled himself up from the
sill, stiffly, as if he had been there a long time. In his one available
hand he held something tightly. He looked like a man who has had as much
as he can bear in this world, from whom shock has shorn away everything,
even the power to feel joy.
“I fell asleep, I think,” he said uncertainly. “I suppose you have come
to tell me, Pierre, that it is all a dream?”
“No, thank the ever-merciful God, it is true. Look in your hand!”
The Duc de Trélan obeyed him, opening his fingers with difficulty, as if
they too were stiff. And he gazed at the little locket, at the worn,
dangling chain, as a man sleepwalking or entranced might gaze. Then he
said, in one and the same breath, “_It can’t, it can’t be true! . . . I
must start for Mirabel instantly!_” and rose to his feet.
The Abbé faced him. “Something is asked of you, Gaston, before you meet
her. As a soldier . . . You did not hear a horseman gallop into the yard
a short time ago?”
The sleepwalker shook his head mutely. “Who was it?” he asked with
indifference.
“A messenger in haste from Georges—with great news. He brought this. M.
du Ménars opened it, and is outside now, waiting to consult you.” And he
held out the open despatch.
The wounded man transferred the locket to the keeping of his hampered
right hand, and took it. A quick touch of colour shot into his face as
he read, and he bit his lip hard. Then, even paler than before, he held
out the letter again. “Tell du Ménars and de Brencourt to see to it
then, Pierre. I must start for Mirabel at once.”
The priest said nothing, and made no motion to take the despatch, but
looked at him with some of his own steady colour fading, a most unusual
phenomenon. Ah, was that inherent wilfulness going to ruin this also!
“You do not approve?” said Gaston de Trélan sharply. “But how could you
understand! I would go to her over a world in flames!”
“And over your own honour, too?—Gaston, Gaston, reflect a moment, I
implore you! Do not spoil this almost incredible miracle that God has
wrought for you by snatching at it before the hour! See how she has been
preserved for you all these years, how wonderfully the knowledge of it
has come to light, and have patience a few days longer! For this
unexpected coming of arms—why, it is the fulfilment of your greatest
desire!”
“I have a greater now,” said Gaston de Trélan, looking far beyond him.
“Are you human, Pierre, that you do not realise it?” Cadoudal’s despatch
was almost crumpled to nothing in his clenched hand; he became aware of
it. “Take this, before I—But, my God, that it should have come to-day!”
This time the priest accepted the letter, and retained the hand that
gave it him as well. “Mon frère, consider!” he said pleadingly. “It only
means the shortest of delays. You can hasten to Mirabel afterwards.”
“Yes,” said his brother with an indescribable intonation, “If you will
guarantee that I shall still be alive—_afterwards_!” And he withdrew
his hand.
There indeed lay the hazard, and they both knew it. Disabled, too, as he
was, he might well be killed before that meeting could take place, for
there would be fighting over this business of the convoy. And death, the
long desired, had terrors for him now.
Nevertheless the little priest did not budge. Gaston would thank him for
it, he knew, when his brain was clear of this tremendous shock.
“No, my first duty is to her,” went on the Duc de Trélan with all his
old stubbornness. “I can never offer her sufficient reparation; at least
what I can offer her shall be instant. And—she may be in danger there!
I have plenty of competent officers; de Brencourt, du Ménars can handle
the men as well as I for this affair. It will not amount to more than a
skirmish at most—perhaps there will be no collision with the
Republicans at all.”
“Then why,” said the Abbé very low, looking at the floor, “did you speak
just now of the possibility of your falling yourself before you and she
could meet?”
His shot went home. The tired eyes flashed like steel. “Pierre!” said
the Duc de Trélan in a warning voice.
The priest raised his head. There were tears in his own eyes. “The men
are untried, Gaston, most of them. They will follow _you_, but who
really knows whether they will follow du Ménars? And the Comte de
Brencourt—no one knows where he is. There may be no big engagement with
the Republicans over this business, but it will be no easy task to cover
the disembarkation and get the arms away from Sainte-Brigitte. You are a
soldier; I do not need to tell you that. With these peasants it will
need the most skilful leadership. And . . . to throw away, after all our
prayers, the chance of arming Finistère! My brother, my brother . . .”
But his brother had already turned away and was at the window, his back
to him, and the priest heard him say in a stifled voice, “Finistère,
Finistère . . . O my God, what a refinement of cruelty!”
The sun was up now; the curtain could not withhold it. In the silence
could be heard the tread of M. du Ménars as he walked up and down in the
room outside—waiting. Pierre Chassin looked at the crumpled despatch
that he held, and its characters seemed to him like the writing on the
wall. Yet how natural was the impulse to disregard it—how brutal to
stand in the way of disregarding it . . . . But because he loved the man
by the window so much he struck again at him, and harder.
“You said just now, Gaston, that your first duty was to your wife. Yes,
I think it is, but only because your duty to your King and your position
coincide with it—risen though she be from the dead. Think for a moment
of her—what she would choose—not of your own most natural desires!
Which would she have, that you should be false to your trust in order to
hasten to her, or that you fulfil it first, setting her second . . .
even” his voice shook a little, “even if need be, that you should die in
fulfilling it. O—forgive me, my brother—you know which she would have
. . .”
But Gaston gave no sign.
“Forgive me, too,” resumed Pierre rather brokenly, “for saying things so
harsh _now_! But this is the testing-moment; you will never meet another
more crucial. You could not lay before your noble wife a nobler
reparation than this—to put your fidelity to a trust before the
instincts of your own heart. . . .”
The words died away as his own heart sank. And had he gone too far? He
knew that no other man would have ventured to say a tithe as much to
that haughty and wounded spirit. But he knew, too, with conviction, that
Gaston’s better self must echo every cruel word. And as the tall figure
still stood motionless, the forehead leaning on the bent left arm
against the frame of the curtained window, Pierre Chassin prayed as he
had not prayed even for their reunion, that the man faced with so tense
a choice should not fail.
“Of course, you have seen her,” said the Duc at last, breaking the
vibrating silence, but in a voice that told how slowly mental
circulation was coming back to him. “You have seen her . . . spoken with
her! Pierre, you knew all this then—knew and never told me!—Concierge
at Mirabel! It is like a nightmare!”
Indeed there was much to explain—but not now. “I only knew at the
eleventh hour,” said the priest quickly. “And under the seal, Gaston; so
I could not tell you. My promise to you prevented my telling her before
I had time to consider whether I were justified in breaking it. That
time was never given me; but had I not had to leave in such haste I
should have told her. But—listen, Gaston, for God’s sake—all may yet
come right of itself, for I pressed her so strongly to come to Brittany
in person to see the ‘Marquis de Kersaint,’ giving her full directions,
that I fully believe she will come. And if the sword lies between you
and that meeting she would urge you——”
“To take it up,” said the leader of Finistère. “Yes, yes. You are right.
I don’t see things clearly this morning.” He drew a long breath, jerked
back the little curtain from before the casement, and the risen sun
entered gloriously. Then he turned round, his figure dark against it,
and said, in his voice of everyday,
“Tell du Ménars to come in, Pierre.”
The Abbé went quickly up to him and kissed him.
CHAPTER X
“AFTERWARDS”
(1)
Not Artamène de la Vergne himself had received the command to boot and
saddle, which set the Clos-aux-Grives in such a pleasurable commotion at
sunrise that morning, more jubilantly than Lucien du Boisfossé. None of
the three had been more thrilled than he with the joyful news about the
English frigate and its cargo, and the prospect of a brush with the
Blues before that cargo could be secured.
But alas for those bright anticipations! The youthful philosopher was
destined to have no hand in disembarking barrels of powder on the beach
of Sainte-Brigitte. Because M. de Kersaint considered him the youngest
officer with a head on his shoulders—how gladly would poor Lucien have
foregone that flattering opinion!—he had been left behind with thirty
men or so to guard the deserted headquarters. And there, late the next
afternoon, he still was, trying to read Rabelais in the empty ‘nursery,’
in spite of a headache. For on top of his head, bandaged up like a
mummy’s, there was a fairly extensive sabre cut—though there had been
no fighting at the Clos-aux-Grives. But Lucien had seen some rather
murderous fighting, for all that.
It was M. de Brencourt who was the _fons et origo_ of that headache—M.
de Brencourt who had so mysteriously disappeared, who could not be found
for any searching before the column started on its march to the sea
. . . but who had just as mysteriously reappeared, about four hours
after its departure, to fall into such a paroxysm of rage and despair
when he learnt what had happened as Lucien hoped never to witness again.
It was plain that the Comte feared Lucien and everyone else would
attribute his strange defection (of which he offered no explanation) to
cowardice, an idea which had never entered the youth’s head, and which
he endeavoured tactfully to convey to his superior would enter the head
of no living man who knew him. In the end the Comte did what du
Boisfossé had seen from the first he would do—rode off like a madman
along the road to the sea.
In a couple of hours he was back again, his roan horse a lather. It
seemed that when he had got a certain distance he had heard a piece of
news which had sent him back as hard as he could gallop. The Blues had
got wind of the convoy, and it seemed likely that they would attack the
Chouans in force from the far side of Sainte-Brigitte. That could not
concern M. de Brencourt now, but what had sent him back was the news
that a smaller body—of cavalry, it was said—were probably setting out
to fall upon their rear from the north-east. This contingent would pass
within some six or seven miles of Lanvennec. And, since every available
Chouan in the district who possessed arms had gone with the Marquis de
Kersaint, M. de Brencourt proposed to take the headquarters guard, all
but a man or two, and ambush this column at a certain ford which it must
cross—if he could get there in time.
It was not for Lucien to protest; M. de Brencourt was not merely his
superior officer, but the second-in-command. And the youth was only too
pleased at the prospect of seeing some fighting after all, and perhaps
doing a great service to his departed comrades. For this was how its
originator seemed to regard the enterprise. So they set out, and they
did get there in time, and yesterday, almost at this hour, Lucien had
found himself, musket in hand, kneeling with the rest behind a fringe of
willows on the bank of a broadish stream. And as they waited, and the
willow leaves tickled his nose, M. du Boisfossé, who had only just
learnt from the Comte the numerical strength of the enemy, began to
realise that thirty men, even posted as they were, with all the
advantage of a surprise, could hardly hope to stop or account for two
hundred and fifty horsemen, and that M. de Brencourt was doing something
that was a great deal more than rash. Could it be that he wanted to get
himself killed? If so, he possibly had a right to indulge this fancy,
but hardly to include him, du Boisfossé, and the major part of the
headquarters guard in his desire. However . . .
Now, looking back on yesterday’s mêlée, the young philosopher, though he
had no reason to modify this view of the Comte’s motives when he
remembered how recklessly that gentleman had exposed himself throughout,
knew at least that the second-in-command could congratulate himself on
having caused the foe, after all, something worse than confusion and
delay. For the Republicans, counting presumably on annexing the English
muskets to their own use, had with them, and in the front of the column
too, some empty ammunition waggons, and these were their bane. At the
very first volley, poured into their unsuspecting ranks just as they
were about to ford the stream, the now riderless horses of one of these
waggons had dashed down into the river, and being there instantly shot,
and the waggon overturned by their dying struggles, the narrow passage
was for some time entirely blocked, while a hail of bullets came from
the invisible marksmen on the opposite bank. Undoubtedly the Blues lost
their heads in the surprise of it, or they would have rushed the ford
and discovered how lightly it was held, but in the turmoil many saddles
were emptied before the passage was clear. When at last they splashed
over they were in too much haste to investigate the willows, but their
infuriated rear ranks, without drawing rein, did use the sabre on anyone
they could see—and Lucien happened to be one of these.
He woke up to find himself lying on the trampled, muddy bank, amid a
strong smell of bruised peppermint. M. de Brencourt himself was bathing
his head, and told him that he had had a nasty knock, but that, luckily,
the blade had turned. Two of their men had been less fortunate.
But the ford! Lucien dreamed of it that night; yet what he still saw
with most particularity was none of the slain cavalrymen, but one dead
rawboned chestnut horse, which lay pathetically with outstretched neck
in the stream which was not deep enough to float it, the cut traces
bobbing on the current.
And now the youth, relieved of his command, since the Comte was at the
farmhouse, sat in the nursery and longed for its other occupants. M. de
Brencourt had been unwontedly genial to him, and really solicitous about
his hurt, but his manner was sometimes very strange, he was restless to
an extraordinary degree, and looked as if he had not slept for nights.
And though rumours were beginning to come in of the complete success of
the expedition, rumours indeed that it had beaten off the enemy and was
on its way back with what it had gone to fetch, M. de Kersaint’s chief
of staff seemed in no way uplifted by them. Lucien could not make him
out.
He was in fact thinking about him now when the door of the nursery
opened a little way and a small barefooted boy looked timidly in.
“Hallo!” said the young man. “What do you want, mon gars? Come in!”
“Yes, go in, child, and tell us what you want,” commanded de Brencourt,
appearing at that moment behind him. “Why, you are from the Ferme des
Vieilles, are you not—Le Blé-aux-Champs’ brother?”
The boy, half frightened, half alert, looked up with dark eyes at the
gentleman who had him by the shoulder. “Yes, Monsieur le Comte.”
“You came to see if he was back, I suppose?”
“No, Monsieur le Comte. I came on a message,” said the boy, rubbing one
bare and dirty foot against the ankle of the other. “I knew they were
not back. But soon they will be. There is dust hanging over the road
from the sea.”
“Ah, a good scout already,” observed M. de Brencourt, releasing him.
“How is that head, du Boisfossé?”
“Better, thank you, sir,” responded Lucien politely. “How soon do you
think they will be here?”
The Comte gave an odd little movement of the shoulders, as if to say
that the matter did not interest him. He was certainly very strange.
“Well, and what did you come here for, child?” he asked carelessly.
“Only to say that there is a lady from Paris at our farm,” responded the
small messenger, “and that she wishes to wait on M. le Marquis when he
returns. That is all, Monsieur.”
It seemed, however, to be more than enough for the Comte de Brencourt.
He grabbed hold of the small shoulder again, almost throwing the child
off his balance.
“What did you say! A lady from Paris asking for the Marquis?”
“Yes,” said the boy, wriggling; and his face turned sulky, just like his
elder brother’s.
“Well, go on!” said the Comte, shaking him.
“There is nothing else,” muttered Mercury. “She came yesterday. She is
waiting. And when M. le Marquis returns . . . Let me go, Monsieur le
Comte—I have to drive the cow home.”
Without another word M. de Brencourt dragged the boy out of the room.
The expression on his face was startling. So was the amazement on
Lucien’s.
And about two minutes later the young man was craning his swathed head
recklessly out of the window. There had been a sudden clatter of hoofs
on the cobbles of the yard, but the rider was already gone.
“Well,” thought M. du Boisfossé, “the mysterious lady may have intended
to interview M. le Marquis, but I think it is M. le Comte whom she will
see first. Here, perhaps, is some explanation of—everything! Oh, why
are Roland and Artamène not back!”
(2)
They were not far away. That dust above the road from the sea hung over
a column winding triumphantly along, with a string of country carts in
its midst piled high with the cases and barrels which, since dawn, they
had been receiving from the English sailors on the beach at
Sainte-Brigitte. The Chouans were intoxicated with their success; had
they not yesterday, before ever arriving at the little bay, routed what
seemed to them a huge body of Blues; had not hostile cavalry, too,
broken harmlessly during the night on the covering force which M. le
Marquis had so wisely stationed on the road to protect his operations?
Vaguely they themselves realised that they had been brilliantly handled,
and assented without hesitation to the opinion of hardbitten veterans of
former wars like Sans-Souci and Fleur d’Epine when they said, “We have a
great general—another Charette, perhaps.”
At the head of his victorious array, rather weary from strain and want
of sleep, his right arm still in a sling, but erect and easy as ever,
rode Gaston de Trélan on the beautiful black horse which had once been
Marthe de la Vergne’s. By his side was M. du Ménars, and the two were
already discussing the best method of distributing the muskets and
ammunition through the department, and how far they would meet their
needs till the gold of Mirabel could procure more.
“Still, this is an excellent beginning,” observed M. du Ménars
contentedly. “We shall be in soon now. . . . I wonder if we shall find
any news of de Brencourt when we get back? His disappearance at this
juncture is the most inexplicable thing I ever heard of. Has it occurred
to you, Marquis, that it might conceivably be the result of foul play?”
His leader looked round at him, evidently startled. Du Ménars knew that
he had had very little time for any speculation about his missing
subordinate.
“Foul play?” he ejaculated. “No, I had not thought of that. I know no
more than you why . . . _My God_!”
And his horse suddenly bounded forward as if he had unconsciously driven
in the spurs. Checking him, he turned his head sharply aside, then
addressed his aide-de-camp over his shoulder.
“Monsieur de Céligny, have the goodness to ride back till you come to
the Abbé, and tell him that I must speak to him at once. I will wait for
him here, by the side of the road. Don’t halt the column, du Ménars; go
on and I will catch you up.”
And as Roland turned to obey he rode across to the side of the road, and
sat there waiting while the ranks trudged past. In these, sooner or
later, would come the Abbé, who always marched with the men. At last the
priest came abreast, and stepping aside, stood by the black horse and
its rider, while the loaded carts and their escort passed. When the
embroidered jacket, baggy breeches and wide-brimmed hat of the last
Chouan had gone by, his foster-brother swung off his steed. His face was
fearfully stern.
“Pierre,” he said in a voice unlike his own, “a terrible thought has
just come to me. I cannot understand why I have not had it earlier. As
de Brencourt knew my wife in the old days,” he paused; the priest
guessed only too well what was coming, “—as he knew her personally, he
must have been aware that she was alive—was at Mirabel—and . . .
_deliberately kept the knowledge from me!_”
The priest looked down at the dusty road. “I am afraid that he did,
Gaston.”
“_God!_” said Gaston de Trélan, and smote his fist upon his saddle. The
thoroughbred reared a little, and the Abbé caught the reins.
“I tried to force him to tell you. But my own position was so
difficult,” he began.
“To keep silent after I had consented to meet him,” exclaimed the Duc,
his eyes blazing, “after he had taken my hand . . . it revolts me! I can
hardly believe it—be quiet, Zéphyr!”
“He was mad, I suppose, at seeing her again,” said the priest, shaking
his head. “It has revolted me, too. Perhaps his disappearance—Where are
you going, Gaston?”
For M. de Trélan, already back in the saddle, was turning his horse’s
head in the opposite direction.
“I must get away for a little,” he said, very grim. “This is a
thunderbolt—horrible. I must have time to get accustomed to it before I
can face anybody. Go on after the men, Pierre; do not get left behind.”
He set spurs to his horse in earnest; Zéphyr went half across to the
opposite bank, tried vainly to get his head down, and next moment was
going down the road like an arrow, and, annoyed at his cavalier
treatment, pulling so hard that for a moment or two his rider thought
that he would prove too much for his bridle hand, and regretted his
disabled right arm. The struggle for mastery, however, gave him some
physical relief in the black whirlwind of repulsion and horror that had
broken on him. Between the demands of leadership and the overwhelming
news about his wife, he had had no time or inclination these two days to
think out the part de Brencourt had played—scarcely time, indeed, till
this homeward march, to think of him at all, in spite of his singular
disappearance. And now the realisation of the Comte’s cold-blooded
treachery and deceit, coming on top of his provocations, on top of the
duel, on top of his own sparing of him, despite his resolve to the
contrary—for Gaston de Trélan was no more exclusively right-handed than
another—and, most repulsive of all, on top of their reconciliation
. . . it was surely enough to put any decent man beside himself, and how
much more the man who had been his victim! He turned Zéphyr on to a
track that made for the lande, and for a space, in which time hardly
seemed to exist, galloped him madly over the heather.
Gradually he began to regain control over himself, too. The man had
probably taken himself off for good; though he could never forgive him,
nor forget what he had done, he would not be called upon to meet him
again. And he had not succeeded in his devil’s work. So he himself would
rather think of this tremendous news of Valentine’s survival—if indeed
it were not after all some mistake, some cruel imposture, which he would
discover for such when he got to Mirabel.
—No, the evidence was too strong! She _was_ there—no impostress, but
the real Valentine; not the dead Valentine whom he had grown to love and
look to, but the living. And so their meeting was to be in this world
after all—though he himself in the last few days had so nearly gone to
another. And how would the living Valentine receive him? Perhaps she
would altogether turn from him. Could he blame her if she did?
He rode off the lande by way of the Ferme des Vieilles, Zéphyr by this
time quieted, indeed exhausted. “Poor Zéphyr!” said his master
remorsefully. “Because I have been treated like a brute, I have treated
you like one!”
As he drew near the farm he saw the old mother of the family outside,
violently agitating her arms and crying, “Monsieur le Marquis! Monsieur
le Marquis!”
He drew rein. “What is it, mother? Your sons are safe; Le Blé-aux-Champs
has done very well.”
The old woman’s wrinkled face lighted up. “Ste. Anne be praised! But it
is not that, Monsieur le Marquis. I thought I had better make sure if
you had met the lady out there on the lande—among the Stones, I think
she is.”
“Lady! what lady?”
“You have not come from the Clos-aux-Grives, then? You have not had the
message I sent by Yvot?”
“What message?—No, I have not been there yet. Out with it, in Heaven’s
name!”
“A lady has come from Paris to see you, Monsieur le Marquis; she arrived
yesterday. So we gave her a bed here—poor lying, but the best we could
do till you——”
“Here! Now! With you?” And in a second he was on the road by her side.
“Ma Doué, Monsieur le Marquis, how you startled me, getting off so
quickly! No, she is not here now—she went out on the lande a little
while ago, and I thought I saw her walking in the Allée. Being from
Paris she does not understand how evil they are, the Old Ones, about
sundown, though I warned her . . . Bless us, Monsieur le Marquis, you
look as if someone had put a spell on you!”
For, stricken with an odd silence, and very pale, the leader of
Finistère had taken a step or two backwards, till he was brought up by
his horse’s quarter, and there he was staring at her, his hand to his
head.
“No, it is the breaking of a spell, please God!” said he, recovering
himself. “I will go and find this lady on the lande. It may be that
. . . that she will not return to you, Mère Salaun.”
He took Zéphyr by the bridle, and went back on to the heather. But, once
out of sight, he drew a long shuddering breath, and throwing his arm
over Zéphyr’s crest, pressed his forehead against the warm satin of his
neck, and so remained for a while.
And Zéphyr, convinced by now that the master he knew had returned to
him, put his head round and lipped at his shoulder. Then he cocked his
little ears and listened. Far away, the beat of another horse’s hoofs
was audible on the highroad. His rider gave no sign of having heard it,
but in a moment or two took the bridle again and went forward towards
the Allée des Vieilles.
CHAPTER XI
AMONG THE WATCHERS
(1)
Versailles, Dreux, Alençon, Rennes, Pontivy—like beads on a chaplet
they had slid past Valentine de Trélan, like locks on a smooth river or
canal, opened for her by that bit of paper in Barras’ handwriting. She
was herself amazed by the ease of her journey, that journey which was
really a flight, hardly realising how much things were changed from the
days, for instance, of the Terror, and how many people travelled
comfortably now-a-days and contrived to elude showing their passports if
they were out of date. And she had in her possession something much more
potent than a mere passport. Whether she were taken for a political
power, or for one of the many ladies in whom the raffish Director was
interested—or for a combination of both, like Mme Tallien—Valentine
neither knew nor cared; at any rate whenever she produced the laissez
passer she was shown deference—till she got into the country districts
of that land of the leal, farther Brittany. Here the municipalities
indeed were Republican, but at one or two small places where she had to
halt Barras’ signature commanded anything but reverence, though it had
to be obeyed. Twice she distinctly heard the word “spy” whispered of
her.
But once she had passed Scaër and was in full Finistère it was better,
for here she could use the private directions which the Abbé had given
her. And it was by the employment of these that she finally arrived,
without mishap, at the Ferme des Vieilles, to which the Abbé had
directed her.
The little old farmhouse by the roadside looked at her cunningly and
rather inhospitably, she thought, from its tiny peering windows. Beyond
it was a wide stretch of moorland with heather, and, in one place, long
strange rows of upright stones. She descended from the farmer’s hooded
cart by which she had replaced the diligence at her last stopping-place
and knocked at the open half-door. Inside, a beautiful, grave and dirty
little girl of six or so, dressed in all respects like a grown woman of
the sixteenth century, stuck a finger in her mouth and stared at her.
“Mignonne,” said Valentine, stooping over the half-door “_Ema ar bleun
er balan_—the broom is in flower.”
“_Tremenet er ar goanv_—the winter is past,” responded an old woman,
coming into view. “Enter, Madame!”
* * * * *
Half an hour later Valentine was being served with a rough meal, the
children standing round, awed, and she had learnt all there was to know;
how the Marquis de Kersaint and practically all the officers from the
headquarters, even the aumônier, were gone to the sea to fetch a convoy
of arms, and that to interview the man whom she had come so far to meet
she must wait, probably, till the day after to-morrow. Meanwhile Mère
Salaun offered her hospitality, premising (and justly) that it was not
fit for a lady from Paris.
And indeed Mme de Trélan slept but ill that night in the _lit clos_ put
at her disposal, though she had known in prison much less comfortable
sleeping-places. But it was not only the unwonted experience of passing
the night in a sort of hutch which kept her wakeful, it was partly the
dread lest M. de Kersaint should never return from this expedition—for
she had been told there would be fighting.
No news next morning, but a rumour that there had been a fierce
encounter between the Chouans and the Blues. Valentine was restless. She
would have liked to go to the Clos-aux-Grives, but thought it would be
unfitting; and it was besides unnecessary, since Mère Salaun had
instituted the ten-year-old Yvot as a courier.
So she walked on the lande, where the wind blew over the wide spaces,
and tried to be patient.
“What are those great avenues of stones that I saw in the distance this
morning?” she asked at the mid-day meal. “There seem to be miles of
them.”
“Those, Madame,” said her hostess, pouring out the milk for the
children, “are Les Vieilles, the Old Ones, the Old Women. Some call them
Les Veilleuses, the Watchers.”
“Your farm is, then, named after them?” commented Mme de Trélan.
“Unfortunately,” replied Mère Salaun, compressing her wrinkled lips. And
seeing Valentine’s look of enquiry, she went on, “They are not . . . not
benevolent, Les Vieilles. Do not go among them much, Madame, especially
after sundown, if you want to keep the wish of your heart. For if they
can they will take it from you.”
What a strange idea! “Who set them up?” asked the Duchesse.
Mère Salaun shook her head. “We do not know. Fetch Madame’s crêpe from
the hearth, Corentine.”
Little Yvot fidgeted. “But, Madame,” he broke in, in his shrill voice,
“nobody set them up. A long while ago they were a queen’s ladies, and a
magician turned them into stones. And on one night in the year, on
Midsummer Eve, they leave their places one by one and go to the pool to
drink—because you see, Madame, they were alive once, and they are still
thirsty. Some people think they eat, too, and put food for them. And as
they go in turn to drink you can see the gold underneath, and the rich
ornaments, in the place they have left!”
“And do people go on that night to take it?” asked Mme de Trélan as he
paused for breath.
Yvot’s eyes grew bigger and his tanned little face paled, while his
grimy hand made a rapid sign of the cross over himself. “God forbid!
There was a man once—he went to get the gold—folks begged him not to.
He never came back!”
“Well, what happened to him?” asked Valentine, interested less in the
tale than in the narrator—and somewhat appalled at the gigantic
pancake, nearly a quarter of an inch in thickness, which had appeared
before her.
“The menhir came back from the pond and caught him! He is underneath it
to-day—the one they call La Bossue, the Hunchback. You can hear him
groaning and praying to be let out sometimes. He has been there for
seventy years!”
At this climax one of the smaller children burst into tears, and Yvot
was angrily commanded by his mother to get on with his dinner. But she,
too, signed herself.
Nevertheless Valentine found herself among the stone avenues that
evening. No news had come yet, but the Allée was at such a short
distance from the farm that if it came she could easily be informed.
So she walked among the menhirs, Les Vieilles, Les Veilleuses, and the
menhirs watched her as she went, and she knew it. They were yellow with
lichen, rust-red with it, grey with it; the heather was about their deep
roots, older than the oldest trees. Ancient, terrible, venerable, four
ranks of them, they marched for ever up the rise and over it towards
some invisible goal. Valentine de Trélan with her forty-five years felt
very young, very ignorant beside them.
They had been here—planted by whom, and why?—long, long before the
overturned order of yesterday; long before its pillars had been laid,
long before Clovis and Charlemagne; they would still be here when the
name of the last King of France was forgotten. As she stood among them
she knew that she was in the oldest place of this old land of Armorica.
They were the more living in semblance, the more individual, these grey
shapes, because their slope was not alike, any more than their forms.
Some leant this way, some that; some were grotesque, some more than
grotesque; yet whatever were the purpose that possessed them, it
possessed them even terribly. Valentine wondered which was the
“hunchback” of the evil legend . . . She was afraid of them; and yet
they fascinated her.
And as she walked between their ranks she wondered how much longer she
would have to wait before she saw the Marquis de Kersaint. How calmly,
at the Ferme des Vieilles, they took this fighting—all the men away
with M. le Marquis as a matter of course. Was it true, she had asked,
that Cadoudal in the Morbihan had ordered all his young men not to marry
for the present? Quite true. And they were not marrying? No. What a
people to lead, and what a leader!
What should she do after she had talked with the Marquis? It depended on
what he told her. In any case she was come to the beginning of a new
chapter in what was left to her of the book of her life. Would Gaston’s
name be on those pages—and in what characters would it be written?
It had been a grey day, austere, not unbeautiful. Now, at the approach
of sunset, it was warming into a certain splendour. The shadows of the
watchers began to slant across the avenue like scores of pointing
fingers, and at the other end the pine trees on the rise grew darker
against what would soon be a battlemented glory of cloud. And after
sundown it was sinister here, they said; Valentine could believe it, but
the watchers had some spell to make one linger. . . .
It was as she turned from looking at the distant pines and the sunset
that she became aware she was not alone in the Allée des Vieilles. Some
way off a man was standing by one of the tallest menhirs; indeed, she
almost thought that he was leaning against it. It gave her a start at
first to find that, when she had thought she was alone, she was being
observed. He must have ridden up unheard on the heather, for outside the
double avenue a black horse was bending its head towards that arid
nourishment. All she could see of its rider at this distance was that he
was tall, that he wore a long close-fitting dark redingote, that he had
a white sash round his middle, and a sword.
All at once she thought, “How stupid of me; it is a Royalist, one of M.
de Kersaint’s officers, probably, back from the fighting. Perhaps it is
even M. de Kersaint himself, ridden over from his headquarters, on
hearing that I am here, to wait on me. That is very courteous of him.
But why, since he must see me, does he not move, or come to meet me?
. . . Perhaps, if he is from the fighting, he is hurt.” And then indeed
she saw that he carried his right arm in a sling.
She began in her turn to go towards him. Still she could not see his
face; he had his hat rammed low over his eyes. In the hat, as she now
noticed for the first time, was a white plume. That feather showed her
that it must be M. de Kersaint himself, and her heart beat a little
faster. Yet how strange of him to remain covered when, plainly, he must
see her advancing, and not to move a step to meet her. But she went on
nevertheless, till only ten yards or so separated them.
And the Royalist still stood motionless, the sunset glow falling on him,
watching her so intently that he gave the effect of holding his breath.
Valentine began to be a little frightened; his behaviour was so
unaccountable. And suddenly the old Breton woman’s warning came back to
her. Was the wish of her heart, then, going to be reft from her here
among Les Vieilles; was she to learn from this man, among the covetous
old stones, that Gaston was dead—to learn it this time without
possibility of doubt? Was that why he was so still—because he knew her
errand? She stopped.
Her stopping seemed to galvanise the watcher into life. He moved a
little forward from the menhir which had been supporting him, and put up
his left hand to his hat as though to remove it. But still he did not
take it off.
“Madame de Trélan!”
That voice! . . .
She quivered as though she had been shot and put her hands to her
breast. “Dear God!” she said. “Who is it? Who is it?”
“_Valentine!_” said the voice again.
And in a single movement the Royalist officer uncovered, flung his hat
from him, and was at her feet. But even with the previous warning of the
voice, even with his tardy uncovering, the shock was too much for a
woman who was no longer young. It was as one sees something a long way
off that she saw him kneeling there with bent head; but when he raised
it, and his face was visible, the blood drummed in her ears. The grey
watchers bowed suddenly towards her, the heather began to give way
beneath her feet. “Gaston!” she sighed, putting out her hands helplessly
like a frightened child, “Gaston—I’m falling! . . .” The heather gave
way altogether. . . .
(2)
The cold grey sea on which Valentine had been floating hither and
thither began a little to cease its swaying motion. . . . But how
curious to be on a sea at all! Yet she could hear it . . . no, it was
the wind in the pine avenue at Mirabel. But the pine avenue was nearly
all cut down now . . . It was neither, neither. She was lying in strong
arms that held her close, against a heart whose pulsations she could
hear. It began to come back. That figure by the menhir. O, Christ in
Heaven!—but that was a dream!
Yet kisses, not the kisses of a dream, were being laid on her closed
eyes, her hair, her brow—though none upon her lips—and with them went
passionate words of supplication for forgiveness, and words of a meaning
far transcending that . . . words of love, heartbroken words. But he who
thus addressed her must have thought her still unconscious when he dared
to speak them, for when she opened her eyes and stirred she was very
gently laid down out of his grasp upon the heather, and this Royalist
officer who was her husband knelt silently there beside her, with his
face buried in his hands.
At that relaxing hold Valentine might have thought—a thousand
things—but, dizzy and confused though she still was, she had heard, and
felt. There was no room for surmises or mistakes.
“Gaston,” she said faintly, lingering on the name. “O Gaston . . . if
you are real . . . your arms!”
His hands came down, and she saw his face, ravaged, older, infinitely
changed.
“Dare I hold you in my arms, Valentine?” He was shaking as he said it.
From where she lay she gave him one look, and held out her hands the
second time.
“O my wife, my saint!” said Gaston de Trélan, choking. He stooped and
gathered her once more to his breast.
And, after all, so unbelievable was it, that the long embrace did seem
to belong to another world than this—a far world, but the only
real. . . .
That passed. The heather became heather again, the air the air of earth.
Somehow he was helping the living Valentine whom he held to her feet,
and was leading her towards the nearest menhir—that indeed against
which he had himself been leaning. Directly he saw that she could stand
alone, and could take some support, if she wished it, from the great
granite finger, he threw himself on his knees before her.
“Valentine, this is where I should be!” he broke out uncontrollably,
“here, at your feet, not holding you in my arms. I am not worthy of
that, Valentine—Valentine, how can I even ask for forgiveness? But I do
ask for it—I do ask! For seven years I have sought it, and I have
sometimes felt that you . . . where I thought you had gone, had given it
to me.” His voice broke, and, stooping that proud head of his, he did
literally kiss her feet.
“Gaston, if you love me!” she cried out, trying to stay him. “No, no
. . . and what talk is this of forgiveness? O my darling, I was wrong
too—stubborn and proud. I should have gone with you—and afterwards
. . . you never got my letters, I know it, but I should have written
again, made more efforts. O Gaston, if you love me, don’t do that!”
He lifted his head. “Letters!” he said in a dazed way. “You wrote . . .
you had no answer? I never had them!—Valentine,” and there was anguish
in his voice, “you did not think I received them . . . and left them
unanswered!”
“No, no!” she said. “No, my heart! We will talk of that presently; there
is so much to say. Only now, Gaston—I cannot bear to see you kneel to
me, my husband.”
“But there is more than that,” he said, not without difficulty. “More
than my having left you to face . . . horrors. The years before——”
“I do not remember the years before,” answered Valentine.
“At least,” said he, very low, “the years since have been yours alone.”
And still kneeling there, but with his arms about her, as she stooped to
him he kissed her on the lips.
* * * * *
Afterwards she sat propped against the menhir, and her husband half sat,
half knelt beside her, holding her hands and gazing at her as at what
indeed she was, one returned from the dead. Very briefly, and only under
the pressure of his questions, for she, too, desired chiefly to
contemplate him, she had given him the outline of that past nine years,
sliding as quickly as possible over the massacres and her subsequent
year in prison, because he turned so pale that she feared he would faint
next. And he had been wounded . . . but he said that it was an old
injury—nothing . . .
“And now, Gaston,” she said breathlessly, “you—what are you doing here
with this M. de Kersaint? Is he really a kinsman—is that why you are
here? At first—before I recognised you—I thought you must be he.”
His grasp tightened on her hands, and before he answered he put them to
his lips. “You were not mistaken, Valentine. That has been my name for
seven years, since you . . . died. O, my wife” he almost crushed her
hand, “_are_ you alive—is it not some phantasy, some illusion of this
place——”
“What!” she broke in, the colour rushing over her face and fleeing
again, “_you_ are M. de Kersaint—it was _you_ at Rivoli—it is _you_
who command Finistère for the King . . . that scarf means——”
Quite suddenly she drew away her hands and putting them over her face
burst into tears.
CHAPTER XII
THE CENTRE OF THE LABYRINTH
(1)
From the clump of pines on the rise the view down the Allée des
Vieilles, with the sunset light on it, was extensive, and figures half a
mile away were tolerably clear. The Comte de Brencourt had learnt at the
farm that he was too late, but he had come on nevertheless. He had not
reached his vantage point in time to witness the actual moment of
meeting, but, though faces were of course indistinguishable at that
distance, he had seen enough. And, grinding his teeth, with strange red
spasmodic waves passing across his eyesight, so that from time to time
he could see nothing at all, he still waited in the shadow of the clump.
He had not known why—till a few minutes ago, when they had started to
walk this way.
Yes, he knew now why he had come, and why he had endured that hell. But
they walked so slowly—and he did not want to kill her too. Her
husband’s arm was about her, and her head rested against him. Zéphyr
followed, with his incomparable grace of movement, trying now and then
to twitch a mouthful of something edible from among the heather. They
were only a couple of hundred yards away now. What was this in his own
hand—yes, of course, his pistol. And it was not moonlight this time,
but strong level sunlight, falling in the right direction. A hundred and
fifty yards. His hand must not shake now. But he must be very careful.
If only de Trélan would take his arm away, curse him! A hundred and
twenty yards, a hundred yards. . . .
* * * * *
If Valentine de Trélan had not worn that look, who knows what might not
have happened, whether the menhirs would not have had their wish, and
taken her heart’s desire from her. But what, when she was near enough,
he who loved her in his own fashion could read on her face was both
shield and sword. Crazed though he was at the moment, it smote the
pistol from his hand, the very impulse to use it from his heart. The
glory that she wore was not forgiveness, or reconciliation, or the
transient joy of a great wonder, but absolute, perfect, rounded
happiness, tranquillised ecstasy. Then all those years of desertion were
nothing; all those years when Gaston de Trélan had followed strange
fires were nothing; all the time in Mirabel, then, she had been thinking
of him, had perhaps gone there for the sake of his memory—all her life,
perhaps, she had been a ship beating against contrary winds to a haven
he had not thought existed. And now she was in harbour—no doubt of
that!
“She has the face of a saint in Paradise!” he said to himself,
trembling. At her husband’s he cast no look; he mattered less than
nothing to him.
Vain, then, his own faithfulness to her, that had led him into such
crooked and faithless paths, vain his endeavours, stained with his own
dishonour, to keep them apart. She had loved _him_ all the time, and now
. . .
There was no more to say or do. _Ite, missa est._ Artus de Brencourt
stumbled down the slope, blinded less by the sunset’s exultation as he
turned than by that sight, mounted and rode off, more cold and grey than
the immemorial watchers, with eyes from which not even hate looked out
any more.
No, one thing remained to do, and that quickly. He would have wished to
return to the Clos-aux-Grives for a few moments first, but that was
impossible, for he would risk meeting them—if _he_ brought her there.
Nor did he want to do it too near headquarters. If he could light on a
place with sufficient cover there was a chance that his body would never
be found at all. He would prefer that—not to give de Trélan the
satisfaction of knowing how thoroughly he had worsted him.
And, surely, this oak thicket a little off the road would serve, for the
road was lonely enough. He could not wait to find a better spot, for a
thirst was on him to be gone. He had done a thing for which there was no
forgiveness this side death—a thing for which he had no intention of
asking forgiveness—and, what was far more terrible to him had done it
in vain.
He dismounted at the entry to the copse. What should he do with his
horse, whose presence might betray his own? A moment’s reflection, and
he turned the animal’s head away from the direction of the
Clos-aux-Grives, and, drawing his sword, smote it hard on the flank with
the flat. The beast reared, capered, and bolted down the road. Then,
dropping the sword, M. de Brencourt plunged into the thicket.
It was not as dense as he had thought, but at the foot of this oak tree
he would be quite invisible from the road. He had no last message to
leave other than those he had written on the night of the duel and, as
it happened, left undestroyed afterwards. He had no last thoughts, for
he was incapable of any thought but one, and as for prayer, a man had no
right to it who was doing what he was doing. Nevertheless once familiar
words drifted through his brain and out again as he knelt down by the
oak-tree’s strong old roots, “. . . pray for us sinners now and in the
hour of our death” . . . but they scarcely had meaning, and his mind
seemed only a blank of wreathing fog as he put the pistol to his ear.
The weapon remained there for perhaps eight seconds, then sank.
For there comes a point when the machinery that the brain controls will
not revolve any longer. Artus de Brencourt had come to that point now.
Ridden as he had recently been with the most devastating emotions, torn
with hatred and more than half mad with jealousy, having twice tried and
failed to kill the man he hated, having lived by day on the edge of a
volcano and having scarcely slept by night, he had now to face the most
shattering experience of all—itself the direct outcome of the others.
He lacked the nerve to kill himself.
Only the tiniest muscular action was needed, the pressure of a finger,
and he had not the will power left for it. Kneeling there, the sweat
pouring off his face, he tried . . . and could not. His hand would not
even hold the weapon in position. He who but a little while ago had
tried to steal another man’s life from him had not courage left to take
his own.
The discovery, stark and sickening, broke the violent, passion-tossed
man to pieces, broke him utterly. Never in his life had he known the
taste of physical cowardice till now. A horrible nausea came over him,
and he fell forward on his face at the foot of the oak tree and lay
there, beaten at last—lay there while an oak leaf settled on his hair
and his horse, returning, trotted past again in the direction of
headquarters. But he did not hear it.
(2)
Complicated emotions of some violence had assailed M. Chassin when he
reached the Clos-aux-Grives and heard from Lucien the story of the ford,
and how M. de Brencourt had recently ridden off in haste—and especially
when he learnt why he had thus ridden off. And at that piece of
news—since the “lady from Paris” awaiting the Marquis could be no other
than Mme de Trélan herself—M. Chassin also, abandoning his duties
towards the wounded, rushed out of the farmhouse, a prey at the same
time to he knew not what dire premonitions, and to a joy and
thankfulness beyond words.
Yet where was he to go, and what was he to do? He found himself setting
out as fast as he could go for the Ferme des Vieilles, become now a
species of rendezvous. But he had hardly gone a mile, his soutane well
tucked up, when between heat, fatigue and apprehension he was asking
himself why in the name of all the saints he had not borrowed a horse.
And instantly the saints sent him one. It came trotting leisurely down
the road towards him, its bridle dangling, a riderless horse—more, a
horse that he recognised. It was the Comte de Brencourt’s roan.
The Abbé stood in the dust and smote his brow. What did this portend? At
any rate he would utilise the steed. He caught it as it passed, girt his
soutane still higher, mounted and pursued his road. And as he went he
looked from side to side, but he would not have thought of entering the
oak copse when he came to it, had not his eye been attracted by
something that glinted at the side of the road—the sword that lay
there.
The Abbé dismounted, without grace, and picked it up. He seemed to have
seen it before, though, after all, one sword was very much like another.
Perhaps the thicket would yield some explanation of the mystery. He tied
up the roan and went in.
But, in a sense, the thicket only yielded him another mystery. For, on
the root of an oaktree, with a pistol lying on the ground beside him,
was quietly seated M. de Brencourt, writing something on his knee. M.
Chassin, having expected anything in the world but this sight, stood
speechless, his cassock tucked about his waist and the drawn sword in
his hand. After a moment the Comte lifted his head, looked at him, and
seemed, with an effort—or that was the effect he gave—to recognise
him.
“I was writing to you, Abbé,” he said. “You are the person I want.”
The voice, very flat and monotonous, was unlike his own. So was his
face. His eyes were someone else’s. The Abbé did not like them.
“I have your horse, Monsieur le Comte, and your sword, I think,” he
said, for want of anything better.
“Thank you,” said the stranger under the tree in his dull, slow tones.
“As I am leaving the district at once it will be convenient to have
them. Perhaps I had better give you this.”
And, still seated there, he handed up the piece of paper on which he had
been writing. M. Chassin, advancing, took it, and read, in a nerveless
handwriting, these words addressed to himself:
“_You wanted me to go, and I am going—probably to join M. de Bourmont
in Maine, if he will have me. He is the furthest away. I have tried to
go further still, which would no doubt have pleased you better,
but——_” some words were scratched out here. “_Since I am fulfilling
your wishes, perhaps you will do me the service to report my decision in
the proper quarter, and later despatch my personal effects to me, for I
shall not enter the Clos-aux-Grives again._”
The Abbé, dumbfounded, looked at the writer. Something abnormal had
happened: what was it? And Gaston?
“You mean this?” he stammered.
“Certainly,” responded M. de Brencourt, without moving a muscle of that
expressionless face. “I have tried to shoot the Duc de Trélan”—the
priest gave an exclamation—“and failed . . . he does not know it—you
can tell him if you like . . . and I have tried to shoot myself and
failed. I do not wish to live, but if I cannot kill myself, what other
choice is there for the moment?” He brushed some bits of dead leaf off
his knees, put his pistol back into his belt, and rising, held out his
hand for his sword. “Did I leave it in the road?” he enquired, in the
same emotionless way. “Thank you. I will try to have you informed,
Monsieur l’Abbé, if I am killed when the campaign opens, as I trust I
shall be; I expect you would like to know. But you need not fear that I
shall ever seek to see either of them again.”
He slipped his sword carefully back into the scabbard, made the
petrified priest a sort of salute, and went quietly past him to the gap
in the hedge where his horse was tied.
And M. Chassin, who had come out prepared to fight dragons, turned and
stared after him dumbly, knowing not whether to give thanks or no. For
this time M. de Brencourt had frightened him. But, just as the Comte got
into the saddle, he felt a sudden violent impulse to say something that
would pierce that terrifying calm. He could not let him go like that.
Calling to him, he hurried to the gap and came out into the road beside
him and his horse. The Comte looked down at him with his mask of a face.
“Monsieur le Comte,” said the little priest earnestly, “I have a feeling
that some day, in spite of everything, you will be given an opportunity
of serving that lady you have loved and wronged . . . May God forgive
you and go with you!”
“Thank you; you are most kind,” said the mask politely, and the roan
horse moved forward.
And his whilom adversary, so unexpectedly routed, stood in the road
thinking, “It is not in Maine, but in a madhouse that he will find
himself before he is much older! God pity him! . . . But where can
Gaston be—and she?”
(3)
Could Pierre Chassin but have seen them they were sitting under the
pine-stems, unconscious of the lurking death so recently
withdrawn—sitting there very much as they had walked thither, his left
arm about her, her head on his breast; only now she held, with her own
two hands, that one hand of his fast against her, as if she feared it
would slip away again. Here was grass, a little distance from the pines,
and Zéphyr cropped it, and for a long while the brisk, tearing noise of
his browsing, the jingle of his bridle, and the sough of the wind above
them was all that they could hear . . . since the hour was too solemn,
too wonderful, for further speech.
For they both knew now, if not all, at least the most vital facts about
each other. Now, for Valentine, the seven years’ silence was
explained—and could scarcely have had a more honourable justification.
Now the idea that Gaston had not cared whether she were dead or alive
seemed blasphemy. How false, too, had been all those past conceptions of
what their meeting would be like, if ever they met again! Nothing
remained now of old wrongs, however deep, nothing of old unhappinesses,
however real, nothing of old mistakes. All these were not, before the
miracle of his personal presence, the marvel of being in his arms. It
was as if hoar frost should change, under a stronger sun than winter’s,
into the spring’s diamonds of unimaginable joy.
Here, as she rested on his heart, came on her, after the wonder, the
peace of Paradise. For this the watchers seemed to have been planted; to
this goal under the pine-trees they ran up. Take her heart’s desire from
her! why, they had given it! She would never know how nearly it had been
snatched away as soon as given. . . .
* * * * *
As for the man against whose breast she leant, nothing but what he held
had reality for him . . . and even she was not yet quite real. The few
hours during which he had known the nightmare picture in his mind to be
but a lying canvas were not sufficient to erase its effect. The singe of
his seven years’ purgatory (worse than hers, because it had been purely
mental) would not pass lightly from him, though it would pass. And this
of it burnt hot in his mind now, even in these transcendent moments—the
subtle change in her, the hair tarnished from its glory, the lines on
the delicate skin, not to be accounted for merely by the passing of
time, but his doing, his fault! If she had not fallen, there in the
Allée, he would scarcely have ventured to touch her; had she not been
(as he thought) unconscious he would never have kissed her as he had.
She was too sacred, and too profoundly wronged. Yet here she was in his
arms, willingly, generously—too great in mind to exact what a lesser
woman would have exacted. And before the depth of the love which had
survived all that hers had had to survive he was still, in spirit, on
his knees.
The sunset had burnt out before they stirred, yet the wonderful hour had
to end. Gaston de Trélan got up at last and helped his wife to her feet,
and then remained gazing at her, almost tranced. And she looked at him,
standing there above that strange battle-array of stones, tall and
resolute, with the stains of march and fight still on him, with almost
everything of the young prince of the Mirabel portrait gone. There was
no rose in his swordhilt now. . . . She drew a long breath, and held out
her hand to him, and at the touch he woke, and led her down the slope
towards the black horse, who was to carry her to the Clos-aux-Grives.
But as they went she remembered something.
“Gaston,” she said softly, “I have not come to you empty-handed. I, too,
can give you something for the cause, mon Général!” Withdrawing her hand
from his she brought out from its hiding-place and held out to him the
ruby necklace. “Like the gold, it comes from Mirabel; it was given—I
daresay you have heard by whom—to the concierge of Mirabel.”
Yet her husband, with the jewels in his hand, did not seem pleased. “But
it is the Duchesse de Trélan who will wear it,” he answered, drawing
himself up. “Permit me!” And, a little awkwardly by reason of his
injured arm, he contrived to clasp the heirloom round her neck—then,
catching her to him with a sudden gasp, said vehemently, “Never speak to
me again of Mirabel—of your being there like that! I cannot bear it!”
“But, Gaston,” she said, looking up at him, “when I was there I thought
of you nearly all the time. . . . O my dear, when you ride in triumph
into Paris with the Royalists of Finistère behind you, we two must make
a pilgrimage to Mirabel together. If it had not been for Mirabel—for
the treasure . . .”
She did not finish, for she was strained too closely. And, stooping his
head, her husband kissed her—but not as he had done on his knees in the
heather, like a worshipper. He kissed her like a lover. He was hers at
last.
BOOK IV
THE YELLOW POPPY
“But oh, the night! oh! bitter-sweet, oh, sweet!
O dark, O moon and stars, O ecstasy
Of darkness! O great mystery of love,—
In which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason’s self
Enlarges rapture—as a pebble dropt
In some full winecup over-brims the wine!”
_Aurora Leigh._
CHAPTER I
FULFILMENT
_“When Love comes tapping_
_On the pane,_
_Let not his summons_
_Be in vain;_
_—‘Enter, Sweet, bring thou_
_Sun or rain!’”_
sang Marthe de la Vergne to the harpsichord in her light sweet voice.
The strains floated through the open salon window to Valentine de Trélan
as she sat outside in the September sunshine. The music changed:
_“Should the King honour_
_My poor door;_
_—‘Take, Sire, my sword-arm_
_And my store!’_
_So spake my fathers_
_Long before.”_
There was a thrill in the young voice. Yes, thought Mme de Trélan,
Marthe, if she had been a man, would certainly have given her sword-arm
and her store to-day; in fact she had given them, in her brother,
and—another.
The chords ceased; somebody had come into the room, and Valentine
recognised her hostess’s voice, though she could not hear what she said.
She resumed the embroidery which she had put down to listen to Mlle de
la Vergne’s singing, but in a moment or two that had slipped to her lap,
and her thoughts were miles away—back at the Allée des Vieilles, at the
Clos-aux-Grives. Once more she rode into the courtyard of Gaston’s
headquarters on Gaston’s horse, once more she renewed her acquaintance
with Roland and the Abbé Chassin; once more she lay in the little room
which her husband had given up to her—a soldier’s wife, in a soldier’s
bare environment. And once more she was arranging Gaston’s sling for
him—that sling for which she could not learn the reason, since he
evaded her questions about his wound—and he suddenly caught sight of
her hands, not quite the white and exquisite hands he remembered, and
she perceived that the slight transformation brought home to him almost
intolerably the years of which he could not bear her to speak. He had
broken down at the sight, and before she could quiet him the palms of
those hands, kissed over and over again, were wet with his tears. Yes,
the lover she had never known she had now, and in those short five days
together at the Clos-aux-Grives, interrupted though their companionship
necessarily was, she had lived the only part of all her years that was
worth the living.
Yet, lover though he were, Gaston de Trélan had almost instantly to
sacrifice his happiness and hers. Even with a woman to wait on her he
would not have it said that the chief of Finistère had his wife with him
at his headquarters; would not at any rate permit himself a privilege he
would not have accorded to any of his officers. He sent Artamène to ask
Mme de la Vergne if she would receive his wife for a while—and so the
brief idyll came to an end. For nearly a fortnight now the Duchesse de
Trélan—her identity was no secret here—had been living, for the first
time in seven years, with women of her own class, of whom the younger
was already her slave. And she was happy here, where she was made so
gladly welcome; but her thoughts had an incorrigible habit, as now, of
flying away.
For besides those hours with Gaston there had been conversations with
the Abbé Chassin, in which she learnt what had at first puzzled her, why
her husband had changed his name; and to her Pierre Chassin revealed,
saying he thought he owed it to her as well as to his foster-brother,
something of the utter despair and grief of seven years ago, and its
sequel. He told her indeed, in so many words, that the profound change
in Gaston was due to her—to her memory; but Valentine had both combated
this and said that there was no change—it was but the fruition of what
had been there all the time. . . .
Fruition, yes—fruition of character, fruition of prayer. She had prayed
and longed, and lo, after years, here was the answer! Its symbol lay
across her very knees—the white silk of which she was making a scarf
for the general commanding for the King in Finistère. And that general
was her husband—her husband who loved her.
Could a heart, not very young, break with excess of happiness and
gratitude? Spring’s joy was not like this—not so secure, not so blest.
Surely this, the joy of autumn, was better!
Her eyes were full of tears as she looked at the golden tranquillity
before her, the still trees whence floated the murmur of Marthe’s
pigeons, the late flowers, the windless blue sky behind the poplars. But
they did not fall; and after sitting a moment longer gazing before her
she rose, and going to the window, looked in. Marthe, alone once more,
was still seated at the harpsichord.
“What a charming little song, my child,” said Valentine, “and what a
fresh voice you have!”
Mlle de la Vergne rose and, smiling, made her a curtsey. “Chère Madame,
it is a little song that Artamène unearthed somewhere; we used to sing
it when he was here in the spring recovering of his wound, M. de Céligny
and he and I. There is another verse.”
“Will you not sing it then? Sing it all again, if you will, to please
me?”
She sat down in the room this time, and once more Marthe sang the words,
to the light tripping measure of the first stanza, and the martial
rhythm of the second. For the third, the music changed yet again to more
solemn harmonies:
_“Then, when Death batters_
_At my gate,_
_One boon, I pray thee,_
_Grant me, Fate—_
_Instant to open_
_Ere he wait!”_
The chords ended in the minor.
Looking up, Marthe saw that Mme de Trélan had leant her head on one
hand. She rose, stood a moment irresolute, and then darted to her, and
flinging herself on her knees beside her seized her other hand.
“Madame! Madame! I should not have sung the last verse! You are
thinking—forgive me, but I can guess—that, when the fighting
begins——”
Valentine put her arm round her. “My child, you shame me! You have more
courage than I! Have you not given your brother to the same danger, and
more than your brother?”
Marthe hid her face on the elder woman’s shoulder, and thus, the dark
head and the golden-grey together, they were when the door at the end of
the great salon opened. Mlle de la Vergne drew away at the sound, and
both ladies looked up. On the threshold stood the tall figure of the Duc
de Trélan, with two aides-de-camp behind him; and the aides-de-camp were
Roland and Artamène.
A moment the three invaders stood there, smiling, all three of them;
then the sun-barred parquet rang under a spurred tread as Gaston came
forward to kiss his wife’s hand, and afterwards her cheek. His arm was
no longer in a sling; he was wearing the Cross of Maria Theresa. As he
lifted Marthe’s fingers to his lips she thought—though she had never
been to a court which had ceased to exist by the time she was of an age
to be presented—“One sees, just by his manner of doing this, what a
great gentleman he is. And I wonder if, in all those brilliant
ceremonies at Versailles, in the days when he was first gentleman of the
bedchamber to the King, whether Mme de Trélan ever saw him to such
advantage as here in our drawing-room, in that plain, dark uniform, with
his sword and that air of purpose.”
And the young girl’s reflection was near enough to Valentine’s inmost
thought as, clinging to her husband’s arm, she went with him through the
long window into the sunshine outside, which was so filled with her
thoughts of him. Out there, his arms round her, her hands on his breast,
her eyes closed, she took and gave on the lips a kiss at once grave and
passionate, a kiss like the first kiss of lovers—a salute which had no
special affinity with courts.
“O Gaston, how I have dreamed of this!”
“Not more, my heart of hearts, than I! But I could not well have come,
had I not been leaving my headquarters for a few days in any case.”
“To fight? Not yet, surely?”
“No—to talk!” said he with a little rueful look. “But it will end in
fighting, I trust. I am bound for the château of La Jonchère, near
Pouancé—just over the border in Anjou—where all the chiefs are to meet
on the fifteenth, to take a final decision.”
“And you think it will be war?”
“I hope so. Circumstances have never been so favourable. But you are
standing all this while; let us go and sit down in the arbour.”
They were seated under the linden arch, as yet untouched by autumn, when
she said, “A rumour came yesterday, Gaston, that Vendée had already
risen. But we are so out-of-the-way here; is it true?”
Her husband’s face darkened. “Valentine, it is true. Risen, and risen
unsuccessfully, alas. Forestier—you may remember hearing of him in the
grande guerre—came back from Spain to lead the rising. He was defeated
and, it is feared, mortally wounded, at Civière, on the thirtieth of
August.”
Valentine gave a little shiver. Defeat . . . wounds. . . . “Gaston, why
was it? Surely in Vendée if anywhere——”
“My darling, Vendée is more a name than a power now. That heroic earth
is a desert; half her grown men have perished. Three years have not
nearly sufficed to raise her from ruins. And yet”——He stopped, and
dropped his voice a little. “Yet one thing might have done it. One thing
might even have raised the bones of the slain to life and made soldiers
of them—the coming of a Prince. It is the old cry—Charette’s cry, the
cry of Quiberon.”
She detected bitterness in his tone. “Does so much, then, depend for us
now, in Brittany, on the Comte d’Artois’ coming in person?”
The Duc bent his head. “It is hard to say how much.”
“Perhaps I should not ask this, Gaston,” she suggested, uneasy, “but
does he mean to come?”
“He says so,” replied M. de Trélan gravely. “I have no doubt he means
it. It is that nest of intriguers round him who can never be made to see
the necessity. They put it on the British Government.”
Valentine was silent, thinking of the irresponsible Prince Charming whom
they had both known personally in the vanished days of Versailles; then
she sighed, and changed the topic. But after a little her husband said
that it was his duty to pay his respects to Mme de la Vergne, whom he
had not yet seen. And as he rose, reluctantly, he said, “Could we not
ride together somewhere this afternoon, Valentine—alone?”
It was what she had been hoping for. “To the sea, then?” she suggested.
“I have not been there yet, though you can see it from the upper
windows, and hear it too, when there is wind. Let us go there together.”
“Soit!” said he, and went off in search of the lady of the house.
In the salon, meanwhile, Marthe entertained the aides-de-camp.
“No, you must kiss my left hand to-day, Monsieur de Céligny,” she said,
laughing, and put her right behind her back. “I keep the other
exclusively now for our General.”
She had a flame-coloured ribbon in her hair, and her eyes danced as
always. Yes, she was worth all that Mirabel unpleasantness! But Roland
had already seen her since his return.