So M. de Brencourt had counselled when, the evening of Roland’s arrival,

he had offered Valentine such assistance as a man still sick could give.

That she could accept it as she had done, and could show herself

willing, in this terrible hour, to rely whole-heartedly upon him, was

balm to his scarified pride. But indeed, in contemplating her despair,

he forgot, at moments, his reception by her husband. If Artus de

Brencourt had never arrived at seeing his own past conduct in quite the

same light as a dispassionate observer would have done, there was one

episode on which he could not reflect without tingling shame and

horror—that frenzied vigil in which he had come near to slaying in

Valentine’s presence the man she loved. He had indeed recognised for

months past that he had been practically out of his senses at the

time—perhaps all the time since his return from Mirabel. . . . Not

indeed that this knowledge had helped him much that night at Vannes, in

the struggle he had had to bring himself to render a great service to

the man he had so deeply injured—apprehensive as he was lest he should

seem to be trying to make reparation, yet forced to do the service in

person for lack of a trustworthy messenger. Well, it was certain that

the Duc de Trélan had not suspected him of _that_ motive, when he had

flung back in his face the warning which the Comte had only been driven

to bring by the instinctive feeling that, despite the past, he could not

let his former leader go to his death in such a shocking fashion. But

the Duc had gone . . . and just because of the past.

There was no difficulty in obtaining news of “M. de Kersaint” at Vannes.

The place was ringing with it—and it was stunning. He had been

summarily tried the day before by a military court, and sentenced to

death. The pretext was that he was an émigré a rebel taken in arms who

had never meant to surrender. He was to have been shot that same

afternoon, but at twelve o’clock had come a courier with orders for a

respite and for his immediate transference to Paris. And, in half an

hour from the arrival of the despatch, he had been taken away in a

travelling-carriage under a strong escort. That was yesterday.

So much the Comte de Brencourt, quitting the conveyance, easily gathered

before they got to the Hotel de l’Epée. He had to tell Valentine that

her husband was gone, but he suppressed the fact that, had he not been

removed, she would not have seen him alive; and hoped she would not hear

it. The lamp that lit the interior of the carriage showed him, when he

had finished his brief recital, the tragic face of the woman he loved,

on whom, as if she had not known enough sorrow, this, too, was come. But

she did not weep nor blench; she said, “Then we must follow to Paris

to-morrow morning,” and he assented. It would take them between three

and four days.

They rattled through the dark and tortuous streets and drew up at the

hotel. Valentine put down her thick veil and Roland assisted her to

alight. Just inside the door a large man was standing waiting—Georges

Camain in person. He came forward with an air of profound deference.

“I have ventured to order a private room to be put at your disposal,

Madame,” he said, “and if you will allow me, I will attend you there. I

have a message for you.”

“You have seen him then?” she breathed. And Camain bent his head in

assent.

“I will wait upon you afterwards,” murmured the Comte in her ear. Since

the Deputy had not recognised him there was no point in giving him a

further opportunity. But Roland, obeying his gesture, followed Mme de

Trélan; yet after all, when the room was reached, remained outside the

door. So the ex-administrator of Mirabel and the ex-concierge were once

more alone together.

The moment that she was inside Valentine threw back her veil and turned

to him. There was no need to utter her question.

“I succeeded in seeing M. de Trélan for three minutes yesterday,” said

the Deputy gravely. “It was between noon and half-past, when he left for

Paris. I had been trying in vain all morning to do so. And then, Madame,

the interview took place on the stairs as they were conducting him to

the carriage, so that it was not very satisfactory.”

“But at least you saw him!” said Valentine, and the emotion she was

holding in check showed itself hungrily for a moment. “O, if only I had

been in your place!”

“Indeed, I only wish you had, Madame,” returned Camain gently.

“And you found him——?”

“Quite well, Madame, and perfectly composed, though I think the respite

was a great surprise to him. You know, I expect,” he went on, looking

away for a second, “that the iniquitous sentence was to have been

carried out yesterday afternoon?—Of course,” he added hastily, for her

face told him that she had not known, “this respite has changed all

that. . . . As I say, we had only a moment or two, and the letter which

I understand M. le Duc would have written to you, had this change not

occurred, he had not yet begun, so in that moment on the stairs he

scribbled a line on a page from my pocketbook, which he did me the

honour to commit to me, and I was to explain why it was so short. I was

also charged to ask you to convey to a certain person who had brought a

warning his profound regret for the way he had received it, and to his

aides-de-camp an assurance that they were not to blame themselves in any

way for what happened at Hennebont; that since his arrest was inevitable

he wished it to take place without their knowledge, and that he was only

grieved to hear that in the end it had not done so. . . . Here is M. de

Trélan’s note, Madame.”

He put a tiny piece of paper in her hand, and, clearing his throat,

walked away to the fireplace.

Valentine opened the little torn-off twist. It contained only one word,

and Gaston’s initials. The word was “_Always_.”

She pressed it to her lips. For a moment she seemed to feel his arms

about her. Ah, never again, perhaps. . . . She murmured some words of

thanks. The Deputy turned round.

“I wish to God I could have done more,” he said, surreptitiously

pocketing his handkerchief. “It is abominable—beyond words—this

affair! And to think that it was brought about . . .” he checked himself

and looked at her strangely, but she did not seem to notice anything,

and he went on, “Now, alas, I can do nothing further. I have no

influence with the present Government. I must pursue my journey to

Lorient.”

“If you had done nothing but bring me this,” replied Valentine, rousing

herself, “a world of thanks would be no payment. But you have shown me

besides, Monsieur Camain, the treasure of a kind and generous heart.”

“As long as you live, Duchesse,” said the bricklayer’s son, bending over

the hand she gave him, “you will not lack that offering. It is your own

heart that calls it out. . . .”

* * * * *

A little later the three travellers had made some pretence of eating the

meal which had been brought up to them, and then, seeing that the two

men were restless, Valentine begged them not to consider her but to

leave her if they wished; and they, thinking on their side that she

perhaps desired to be alone, obeyed.

Valentine did desire to be alone, but it was no solace. It seemed to her

that she had touched the lowest depths of human despair. She had never

dreamt that Gaston would be gone from Vannes. The word he had sent her

was warm in her bosom, but that was not he. She felt that it was only

the prospect of seeing him at the end of them, even though it must be as

a captive, which had kept life in her these two dreadful days. And what

had the Deputy said—that if the _sursis_ had not come . . . O no, no,

that was not possible! She would not look at it. . . . But it _was_ true

that he was far away, alone, in the hands of his enemies. It was an

effort to keep herself from calling his name aloud.

She sat in a chair by the fire, the wind howling outside, the tears

dripping through her fingers, and did not hear the door open. Roland

stood on the threshold again, looking at her with a great compassion and

understanding in his young eyes—for if his heart was broken what must

hers be? And half impulsively, half timidly, he went across the little

room and knelt down by her.

“Madame, dear Madame!”

Still weeping, she put out her hand to him blindly, and he kissed it,

kissed her tears on it. And then she turned wholly to him, and as he,

kneeling there, took her tenderly and reverently into his arms, she

shook with sobbing on his shoulder. It was really the first time that

she had broken down since the arrest. Except that he felt he must

comfort her—though he knew not by what means, for what means were

there?—the boy would have liked to sob too.

He said something, and through her misery she thought, “His voice is

getting like Gaston’s. There will be something of Gaston left in the

world after all.”

It was at that moment that the impulse to tell him came to her

overwhelmingly. She was so lonely; it would comfort her—if she could

keep from thinking of Mme de Céligny. He ought to know now, too.

She mastered her sobs after a while, lifted her head from the boy’s

shoulder, dried her eyes and leant back in her chair.

“Stay there, Roland, if you will,” she said, and he sat on the floor

beside her chair, silently looking into the fire. What he saw there was

always the same—the inn parlour at Hennebont; sometimes with his leader

sitting there, as he had last seen him when he went out to the others on

that thrice accursed errand of his own making, sometimes disordered and

sickeningly empty, as it had appeared at his return. . . .

Valentine contemplated his face, quite haggard in the firelight for all

its youth, and the tragedy in his eyes.

“Roland,” she said, putting her hand on his arm, “I want to tell you

something. The Duc sent a message to you and the others through M.

Camain. You were not, he said, to distress yourself about what happened

at Hennebont, for as his arrest had to come he particularly wished it

should take place as quickly as possible, before you could return. He

knew quite well, you see, what you would all have done—what you did,

alas—and he would not have you killed to no end.”

Roland turned that tragic gaze upon her. “In other words, M. le Duc got

himself taken to save us. . . . _I wish I were dead!_”

The tears were in his voice, not in his eyes, which were quite dry. He

turned them on the fire again.

“Do you then love him so much?” asked Valentine softly.

Roland gave her one look; he did not answer in words.

“O my child, my child!” said Mme de Trélan. Her beautiful and expressive

voice held a world of meanings, but Roland was back in the coals and the

inn parlour. He remembered they had not laid the four covers when he

went out of the room; there were only three—or was it two? . . . If he

had stayed, he could have died there at his feet before they took him.

“Roland,” said the Duchesse’s voice again, “I want to tell you something

else. I did not mean to do so yet . . . but I feel I must.” She made a

little pause. “You do not remember your mother, I think?”

He shook his head.

“A long time ago, Roland . . . she and the Duc met . . . and he loved

her——”

The boy turned, startled, from his contemplation of the fire.

“—Too well,” finished Valentine, with a long breath.

He went white, then scarlet; then white again. “Madame—what do you

mean?—I don’t understand. . . . You cannot mean——”

Unconsciously she was pressing her wet handkerchief into a ball. “M. de

Trélan is your father, Roland.”

CHAPTER IX

THE RUBIES OF MIRABEL

(1)

“You really wish to do this, Madame?” asked Suzon Tessier, looking at

the piece of embroidery she had just laid before the Duchesse.

“I must do something, Suzon, to pass the time till I start for the

Temple. I cannot go out; Paris hurts me. And, sewing once more in this

room, I shall feel I am back in the old days.”

“I only wish you were!” thought Suzon as she left the room—a wish

Valentine would never have echoed. Though these days were nothing but

linked hours of anguish and suspense, she would not have changed. Heaven

lay between that time and this.

The day before yesterday she had arrived with her escort in this new,

gay, animated Paris which hurt her so—the Paris which, exhilarated by a

slight frost, under a cheerful winter sky, seemed to have drunk in a new

lease of life with its revivifying change of government. It was a fresh

world to Valentine—and a cruel. So when, after one night at a hotel,

she had sought out Suzon to see how she fared, that faithful soul had

refused to let her face again the curious looks of the hostelry. Since

there was no danger to Mme Tessier in housing her now—and Valentine had

learnt long since that the threatened Mirabel enquiry had never come to

anything—she let herself be persuaded without much difficulty, and she

and Roland were staying in the Rue de Seine. M. de Brencourt was lodging

at an obscure little _hôtel garni_ in the Rue du Vieux-Colombier. Mme de

Trélan had hardly seen him since their arrival; he was too deeply

occupied. For the whole weight of Royalist influence in Paris was at

work to procure the release of “M. de Kersaint” from the prison of the

Temple, where he was in close confinement awaiting the First Consul’s

pleasure. He was still under the sentence of death passed on him at

Vannes, and all attempts, based on the disgraceful means taken for his

capture, to get that sentence removed, or even commuted, had so far been

vain, though Berthier, the Minister of War, was an officer of the ancien

régime, and Lebrun, the Third Consul, actually in relations with the

Royalist party. Protests and clamour having proved unavailing, there

remained therefore nothing, if the prisoner was to be saved, but to

carry him off.

And this was by no means a hopeless enterprise, for in Paris there

existed a whole subterranean population of Chouans and émigrés, of

conspirators and dubious characters. The heads of the secret Royalist

agency, the Chevalier de Coigny and the Baron Hyde de Neuville, knew

well where to put their hands on suitable instruments. Plans were in

fact already well forward for a very promising scheme, to be put into

force the following evening. There would arrive at the prison of the

Temple a carefully forged order for M. de Trélan’s transference to some

other place of confinement; it would be brought by an officer, and there

would be a carriage and a considerable escort—enough to impose on any

jailor in the world. And, once they had the captive out, they would make

for the coast, along the road to which relays would be in waiting.

All this Valentine knew, and it had, till an hour or so ago, been the

one thing which filled her mind. But the arrival of the order to see her

husband, which after reiterated attempts had been procured for her,

absorbed it now. The order was for three o’clock that afternoon.

There was more colour on Mme de Trélan’s face to-day than at

Vannes—more colour and more signs of strain. And the sewing she had

asked for was something of a pretence—as much a pretence, really, as

was Roland’s book, now upside down on his knee where he sat on the

window-seat, his chin on his hand, gazing immovably out of the window.

She put down her needle and gazed at him in her turn.

How like his profile was to Gaston’s—and how unlike! Was she sorry that

she had told him? It had changed him, between that news and the

catastrophe of Hennebont he seemed a boy no longer. For a nature so open

as his he had said extraordinarily little, but she had divined easily

enough the tides of feeling that had met—were meeting still—in his

young heart: the shock of knowing that he had no right to the name he

bore (though since he had been so carefully recognised by the late M. de

Céligny the world need never know that) the shock to his thoughts of the

mother of whom, perhaps mercifully, he had no memory. On the other hand

there was the fervour of his worship for M. de Trélan, which lent so

much reality and poignancy to his frustrated desire to have died to save

him. . . . She did not feel sure that she had not been selfish in the

matter; she had even said so, later on, that dark evening at Vannes. But

when he had cried bewildered, “How can you be so good to me, Madame? You

ought to hate me!” she had answered that he must know she loved him and

was leaning on him then, or she would never have told him. “But I think

you ought to know,” she had ended, “in case he . . .”

Before she got further Roland had come back from the mantelpiece, where

his head lay buried in his arms, and was at her feet, kissing the hands

which were gripping each other in the effort to finish that sentence.

And he said, in a smothered voice, “If it is dishonour . . . I do not

feel dishonoured.—But I cannot grasp it yet; it seems too blinding

. . .”

Valentine remembered all this, looking at him now after six days.

“Roland, my child,” she said suddenly, “I want to consult you about

something. If to-morrow night’s scheme should fail——”

The young man turned his head at once. “Oh, it will not fail,” he

asserted. “But I wish—O, how I wish—that I were in it!”

For, there being secret communication between the Royalist agency and

the Temple, the prisoner had contrived to express a strong desire that

the Vicomte de Céligny should take no active part in the plan of rescue.

“Poor boy, I know you do! But, Roland, I also have to be inactive. Yet I

have a scheme of my own, in case the other fails . . . You know the

Trélan rubies? We had designed them, M. de Trélan and I, for Marthe on

your wedding day. Now I have the thought of giving—of offering—them to

someone else . . . as a price.”

“To whom?” asked Roland, leaning forward as the Duchesse unclasped them

from under her dress.

“To Mme Bonaparte.”

Roland, a little startled, considered. “Would it be of any use?”

“She is said to be rapacious for jewels—and of Royalist leanings.”

“But what could she do?”

“Use her influence with her husband. What do you think of it, Roland?”

The young man on the window seat reflected. “You should consult M. Hyde

de Neuville, Madame, not me. I know nothing of Mme Bonaparte. But——”

He stopped and coloured a little.

“What, Roland?”

“Forgive me, Madame, but would the Duc approve of such a step?”

Her own colour faded a little as she met his eyes. And then with

courage, she answered, “No, Roland, I am afraid he might not. He is, as

you know . . . very proud. But it is not as if he personally would have

a hand in it. A wife’s mortal anxiety will excuse anything. I should go

as one woman—as one wife—to another . . . an independent step.”

“Shall you tell M. de Trélan of it this afternoon?” asked Roland, with

his eyes on the floor.

Valentine did not answer for a moment. “But in that case I could not say

truthfully that he knew nothing of it—which I should wish to be able to

say. Advise me, Roland!”

“O Madame, how can I presume to advise you in a matter that concerns

only you and him. You know so much better what he would wish than I do!”

And Valentine sat silent, looking at him, her face drawn, the red

rivulet of fire across her hands.

“Roland, what you really mean is that I know what he would not wish!”

“Yes, Madame,” answered the boy in a very low voice.

Valentine caught her underlip. “You have your father in you, there is no

doubt,” she thought to herself, and as she bent over the stones a tear

fell on to the possible price of blood. For the worst of it was that she

knew Roland was right.

She lifted her head again. “Then I shall speak of it to him—ask his

permission. . . . And I think, Roland, that I will go and prepare now.

It is very early to start, but it is a long way to the Temple, and we

could walk part of it. It is so hard to sit still.”

As she came downstairs again, dressed for the street, she was thinking

of the man who had put the rubies into her hands that strange day at

Mirabel. Ah, that the Abbé Chassin were here now! he who had always been

at hand in difficulties, and who now, at the most critical time of all,

was over the sea. But even he, as she knew, could do no more than was

being done.

In the parlour she found M. de Brencourt—the first time she had seen

him that day.

“You are setting out already, Madame?” he asked, bending over her hand.

She told him why, thinking how worn and ill he looked, and how possessed

(as indeed he was) by a spirit of restless energy.

“I would beg leave to escort you part of the way,” he said, “but having

missed Hyde de Neuville at his lodging, and hearing he had something of

importance to say to me and was coming here, I must await him. Roland, I

suppose, accompanies you?”

“Yes—but he will not be able to see M. de Trélan, I am afraid. Is there

any message you wish conveyed about to-morrow night?”

M. de Brencourt shook his head. “Communications of that kind, Madame, go

by their own channel. Besides, there is nothing fresh to say. The Duc

knows the attempt is to be made; his part is merely passive.”

She said nothing for a moment. Then, flooding up from the depths, came

the thing she had not yet allowed to escape her. “O, Monsieur de

Brencourt, if only he had listened to you!”

The Comte shook his head. “No, Madame, say rather, If only the warning

had come from other lips! I was the one man in the world who should not

have carried it. . . . Duchesse, we cannot put off our past so easily;

it clings, like the shirt of fable, and poisons everything. . . . You

may tell the Duc, if you will, that I accept his apology in the same

spirit in which he sent it. I cannot blame him for disbelieving my

veracity—however much, being only human, I resent it. But it was

inevitable; and that he is where he is now is Nemesis—the Nemesis I

have drawn down on both of us.”

She could find no words before the sadness of his tone. He opened the

door for her.

(2)

When he had shut the door behind Mme de Trélan the Comte turned and

threw himself down in a chair, his chin on his breast, staring into the

fire. His brain was weary, for he had been up most of the night. He

could not forget (even if Valentine did, as he sometimes suspected) that

the Duc de Trélan was not only a prisoner but a condemned prisoner—not

a man awaiting trial, but one already under sentence of death—and that

his position was very precarious. Any hour might conceivably bring the

tidings that the sentence had been carried out on him; for his own part

he wished the rescue had been fixed for that evening, but it had not

proved possible to have every thread in place so soon.

M. de Brencourt’s whole soul was so set on getting Gaston de Trélan out

of the mortal peril in which he stood, that he did not analyse his

motives over closely. He had entered on the attempt for Valentine’s

sake—and a little, too, for the sake of his own self-respect. And the

Duc had sent a message of regret; from him of all men that was no empty

form of words. Yet Artus de Brencourt was under the impression that he

cared very little about de Trélan’s fate in itself. But it is hard to

know one’s own heart.

He went on staring into the coals. He wished he did not keep seeing that

figure by the dolmen in the forest waiting with folded arms to receive

his fire. It was so very possible . . . He shivered. “How much better it

would be if I could take his place!”

A knock, and the expected visitor was shown in, and the Comte roused

himself. Hyde de Neuville, the newcomer, was surprisingly young for the

position he occupied—only three and twenty in fact—good-looking,

alert, intelligent, well-dressed, a man of good family accustomed to the

best society, and, in some of his activities, to the worst. He had some

astonishingly audacious exploits to his name. When he wrote letters—as

to M. Chassin—he signed himself “Paul Berry.”

“I had gone to see Bertin,” explained the young man, coming over to the

fire. “I was fearing a hitch about the escort. But it is all right. The

two dozen men he had laid his hand on are perfectly reliable, and I am

now quite satisfied. Uniforms, indeed, are more difficult to procure

than bodies to put them on. But we shall manage.”

“You have no doubts about the forged order?”

“Not the slightest. And none of the Temple officials will be surprised,

I think, if M. de Trélan is transferred, the circumstances of his

capture having been so exceptional.”

“So damnable!” interpolated the Comte.

“But I really wanted to speak to you about something quite different,”

went on the young conspirator. “Late last night I had a communication

from my compatriot Bourgoing, who is in relations with Talleyrand. It

appears Talleyrand thinks that, partly owing to the outcry which has

been made about this abominable violation of M. de Trélan’s

safe-conduct, Bonaparte would, after all, be rather glad to get out of

going to the extremity to which he most undoubtedly meant to go when he

sent those infamous orders to Brune.”

De Brencourt stared at him rather incredulously. “I can hardly believe

that of the First Consul. He is entirely without scruples, and very

unlikely to be frightened into turning back once he has started on a

course, however black that course may be. He cannot be magnanimous now;

it is too late. It would only look like weakness.”

“I know that. But Bonaparte, besides getting rid of the odium this

affair is raising in certain quarters in Paris, would demand some kind

of _quid pro quo_—that the Duc should personally ask for his life, and,

I suppose, give an undertaking never to conspire against him. Talleyrand

is almost convinced that in such a case he would be merciful—in fact

that he would secretly be relieved. He could make at any rate some

pretence of magnanimity; it might affect wavering supporters. But he has

gone too far to set the Duc de Trélan free of his own motion; it would

look too much like weakness, as you say. On the other hand if it were

publicly known that the Duc had asked for mercy——”

“I fear, in that case, that the First Consul will not obtain the relief

which he desires,” observed M. de Brencourt drily. “Who that had had any

acquaintance with him could imagine that the Duc de Trélan would, for

any consideration, stoop to sue from Bonaparte—and by so doing serve

Bonaparte’s purpose too! . . . I should scarcely like even to propose

such an idea to him.—But of course it would be only proper to inform

him—as I expect you have already done?”

Hyde de Neuville looked thoughtful. He nodded. “My note must have

reached him, by the usual channel, three or four hours ago.—By the way,

has the Duchesse started for the Temple? I think her interview was for

three o’clock, was it not? I was wondering whether the ease with which,

in the end, the order was obtained, was due to the idea that she might

work on her husband if she knew.”

“Then I am thankful that she does not know,” replied the Comte rather

hoarsely.

“You mean that it would be of no use? Well, we must then stake

everything on to-morrow night’s affair, which promises excellently.” He

brought out a paper. “Now, who of these do you think had best drive the

carriage, and who play the officer commanding the escort? And I have not

yet quite arranged about all the further relays.”

(3)

At that very moment Valentine, on Roland’s arm, had just emerged from

the Rue du Roule into the Rue Saint-Honoré, whence they intended to take

a fiacre to the Temple. In that animated and busy street Roland was

looking round for a carriage when he suddenly exclaimed,

“See, Madame, what is coming. Is it—it must be the First Consul

himself!”

Valentine followed his eyes. From the direction of the Tuileries was

approaching, at a fast trot, a carriage with an escort of mounted

grenadiers. It came onwards in a clatter of hoofs, and on its passage a

roar of cheers went up and hats were waved. Valentine felt a momentary

dizziness, and held Roland’s arm tightly. She was about to see the

master of France, the great general, the great administrator, the genius

with a marvellous brain, an indomitable will, and a petty soul—the man

who had her husband’s life in his hand, to keep or to throw away. But

when the carriage was almost abreast she involuntarily dropped Roland’s

arm and drew herself up, the pride of a long line firing her blood.

And she saw, passing quickly, not, as she had expected, a young hero in

uniform, but, in a grey civilian overcoat, the wide revers crossed

closely over his chest, a little man whose hollow temples and cheeks,

and pallid yellowish complexion, made him look at least ten years older

than his thirty years. Sombre and preoccupied, his head sunk on his

breast, he appeared almost indifferent to the plaudits of the crowd, but

chance, or something in her attitude, drew his eyes in Valentine’s

direction, and for one brief second the Duchesse de Trélan

sustained—and returned—the singular and burning gaze of Napoleon

Bonaparte. Then he was gone.

Trembling a little, Mme de Trélan took the young man’s arm again. She

could not shake off the feeling that the First Consul knew who she was,

and that it was the question of the Duc de Trélan’s fate which was

absorbing his thoughts just then. And he did not look as if he could be

turned from his purpose by any woman. . . .

“Let us get a carriage and go quickly, Roland,” she said in a faint

voice.

The slow horse clanked dully along the interminable Rue du Temple, till

at last Valentine and Roland found themselves standing before the

columned entrance to the Palace of the Temple, once the habitation of

the Comte d’Artois and, before him, of other princes of the blood, such

as Conti of amorous memory. And soon, formalities over, they were

walking, with a soldier as guide, across the great courtyard with its

encircling row of leafless trees, towards the low façade. Except that

this was day, and not night, they saw just what the Royal Family had

seen when they were brought there captives on the 13th of August, 1792,

for the palace itself had not changed its external aspect since, and the

prison itself, the great Tower, stood at some distance behind. Following

their guide they went through the building, emerging finally on the

flight of steps which led down from what had been the great salon to the

palace garden, and saw then, at the end of the deserted pleasances, the

great wall built round the Tower to isolate the royal captives, and over

its bleak masonry the upper storeys and the pointed roof of the massive

donjon of the Temple which was their goal.

Valentine had heard of this wall of Palloy’s at the time of its

construction. It had served its purpose only too well then; it

looked—God help her!—as if it would serve it well now. Yet M. de

Brencourt had escaped—but that was by bribery, and he had not been in

solitary confinement. . . . Now they were at the guardhouse in the wall,

were passed civilly and quietly through, and found themselves facing the

fortress itself, grey, massive, foursquare, with its small satellite

round tower at each angle. Every window in the main building, except

those at the very top, was blinded by a sloping board-work, a tabatière.

And round it the encircling wall, supported on many buttresses, formed a

complete square of desolation. In this were listlessly promenading a few

prisoners.

“That is the entrance, Madame,” said their guide, pointing to the

left-hand of the two smaller towers on that side. “The stairway runs up

that tourelle; they will take you up from the greffe there. I see old

Bernard awaiting you, in fact.”

And indeed, on the small semi-circular perron at the foot of the little

tower was already standing an old gaoler with a bunch of keys.

“Madame de Trélan?” said this old man when they got there. “We were

expecting you. If you will show me the pass there is no need to go into

the greffe. Thank you, Monsieur . . . Madame will be obliged to mount a

good many steps, since M. de Trélan, as she probably knows, is in

solitary confinement, and therefore at the top of the Tower. I will go

first; there are wickets to unfasten.”

The winding stairway of the turret was too narrow for Roland to give the

Duchesse his arm. Light and gloom alternated with each other as they

passed the slit-like windows in the six-foot masonry. And every step

they mounted seemed to drive the blood further from Valentine’s heart.

How could Gaston ever be rescued, even by guile, from a place like this?

And she, who had been twice in prison herself, and thought she knew all

its bitterness, now found that she was tasting a cup incomparably

sharper.

She was so pale when they got to the top that Roland put his arm about

her for a moment.

“Trying, the ascent, Madame,” observed the melancholy gaoler. “One

hundred and twenty-two steps.”

A couple of sentries with fixed bayonets stood before the thick,

nail-studded door. The “Marquis de Kersaint” was well guarded indeed.

“The young gentleman will stay outside,” observed Bernard. “My orders,

as you know, are only for the family. There is a bench yonder,

Monsieur.”

Roland, his heart beating furiously, bent his head in acquiescence, and

when the gaoler had unlocked the door and the sentries had stood aside

Valentine passed in alone.

CHAPTER X

THE LAST CONFLICT

She had no time for thought of her surroundings. Gaston, warned by the

opening of the door, was waiting just inside, and she was in his arms,

strained to him, clinging to him, before ever it had finished closing

behind her.

O, haven where she had thought these last dreadful days never to rest

again! But no, how could God take it from her again so soon? He was too

good! Just to be there once more, to feel Gaston’s lips on hers, to hold

him—the agony of suspense drugged, if not dead—nothing else mattered,

not even that he was a prisoner.

“Beloved, your cheek is cold,” he murmured. “Is it so cold in here?—and

if I hold you all the time will you be warm enough?”

“I am not cold,” she answered in a whisper, “but hold me . . . hold me

. . .” And consciousness of everything but that hold drifted away.

. . . Cold? Perhaps _he_ was cold—neglected? What was this place like?

To see it, in its relation to him, she lifted her head from his breast,

and was conscious for the first time of the small, high room in which

she stood, of the window ten feet up in the wall, so that no view was

possible, and the light came down from it very cheerlessly. On the

ancient walls, blackened in places by the smoke of many a bygone torch,

names were scrawled. She saw a pallet, a table and chair—and a stove,

which was burning.

Then she scrutinised him, with such eyes of anxiety for what she might

discover in his appearance that Gaston smiled at it.

“Do you expect to find, my darling, that ten days of captivity can have

changed me?” he asked. “I have everything I want—everything I can pay

for, that is—except liberty for correspondence . . . and my personal

liberty, bien entendu.”

Indeed he looked younger, less worn, than at her last sight of him. And

his tone, assumed or natural, was so calm. But somehow that very fact

made her a little uneasy.

He took her hands again. “Sit down, my heart. No, not on my solitary

chair; I cannot recommend it. The bed is better; I can sit there too.”

She obeyed him. She did not like to think he slept on that!

“This place makes me shudder, Gaston.”

“Dearest, after La Force and your other prison! It seems to me, now that

you are here, like a palace! And you, what roof in Paris has the

happiness of sheltering you?”

She told him. And then, holding his hand as he sat by her on the little

bed, and turning round and round on his finger, for which it was now too

loose, his emerald ring, she approached the subject so near her lips.

“Gaston, you spoke just now—not seriously, I know—of paying for your

liberty. Suppose this plan for your rescue fails, which God forbid, but

suppose it fails . . . could your liberty be bought?”

He looked at her so hard, so questioningly, that her hopes for the

scheme sank lower still.

“I fear not,” he said very gravely. And then, after another pause, “What

did you imagine could buy it, my wife?”

And by his very intonation she knew that she would never, with his

consent, kneel to Joséphine Bonaparte. Yet she would not give up.

“With the ruby necklace,” she answered, and went on. But he soon stopped

her.

“Valentine, you cannot really be proposing that I should stoop to beg my

life of Bonaparte!”

She winced, for the tone was almost hard, and hurt. “No, no,” she

interposed hastily, “not that _you_ should! But I, your wife,

approaching Mme Bonaparte, a wife herself, that is a very different

thing. For me to do so is a most natural step, and when I point out to

her what surely her husband cannot realise, the infamy of the means by

which he took you, the violation of your safe-conduct——”

He had been staring at the floor, his mouth set. But again he broke in.

“The First Consul has had plenty of time to reflect on that, Valentine.

Believe me, he knows what he is doing.”

O, the place was cold, after all, deadly cold! And Gaston so

inexorable——

“And you will not let me——” she began once more unsteadily.

“A thousand times no! I forbid it absolutely.”

Very low, Valentine said, “And what of me? Am I too to be sacrificed to

the pride of your race? Can I not plead for myself, Gaston,—not with

Bonaparte indeed, but with you, with you!”

He turned, he caught her quickly in his arms. “My darling, my very dear,

don’t say that!” he exclaimed in a moved voice. “Don’t say that! It is

not I indeed, nor pride——”

But she retorted, half sobbing, “Gaston, I almost think that if you were

to be told you could have your life for the asking, you would not ask

for it!”

Mercifully she could not guess that the sudden closer tension of his

arms about her told how her shot had gone home, nor that her head almost

rested at that moment on Hyde de Neuville’s letter. As for Gaston

himself, who knew how truly, indeed, she had unwittingly spoken, he

dared not take up her challenge. So he said, as calmly as he could, “My

dearest, you are overwrought. And, Valentine, can you think that I

should allow you to put yourself to a useless humiliation, you whom I

love more than my life? For I do not think Mme Bonaparte would have any

influence in the matter, and if she had, I dislike the idea of bribing

her to use it, as much as you do, I am sure, in your heart. No, we will

trust to that clever and audacious young man, Hyde de Neuville, with all

the means he has at his disposal. To come and demand a prisoner with a

forged order and a fictitious escort will be child’s play to him. And

some day I will tell you the very good reason I have for not wishing my

life to be begged by anyone. On the faith of a gentleman it is not

merely pride. But for the present you must trust me.”

The present. He could speak of it like that! Then he really thought that

there might be a future in which he would be a free man? Did he, _did_

he? She looked hard at him, and suddenly out of the past shot the

remembrance of that very different struggle which had ended their life

at Mirabel. Then she had pleaded with him to do something worthy of

himself; now . . . was it possible that she was urging him to consent to

something unworthy? If that were so, thank God that he was, as before,

unmoved. And as she studied the fine, rather worn profile she realised,

too, how much less stern were the lines of his mouth. He had asked a

little while ago, in jest, if she thought his brief captivity had

changed him. But it was true; there was a deep change in him. The

profound depression of those last days at La Vergne was gone. Why?

“Gaston,” she said on an impulse, “you are happier than when we parted.”

He turned his head, looked down into her eyes, and smiled. “You can

guess why, my soul—you who know what was spared me. God was kind to me.

The wine was poured, but I did not drink it. I never had to give up my

sword; I never did consent to disarmament. And Finistère is saved all

the same. Have I not reason to be happier?”

“And yet—O Gaston, Gaston, I must say it—if only you had listened to

M. de Brencourt’s warning!”

He got up from the bed. “M. de Brencourt, I trust, has received the

message I sent by M. Camain?”

“Yes,” said Valentine. “He sent one back by me to-day; that he accepted

your apology. But he said—and it distressed me, Gaston—that he ought

never to have brought the message himself. Your disbelief, he seemed to

think, was his Nemesis.”

“That is true,” said her husband a little coldly. “To this hour I do not

see how I could have believed in his good faith. But—I have been

wanting to say this to you, my dearest—nothing could have made any

difference. You think that if I had listened to his warning I should not

be here to-day, nor those poor boys lying at Hennebont. But as far as I

am concerned it would have been just the same. I must have gone to

Vannes to give up my sword, even were I sure that I was walking into a

snare. For if, scenting a trap, I had not gone, what would have

happened? Brune would have stoutly denied the intended treachery, I

should have been branded as failing to redeem my pledge, and Finistère

would have been invaded after all. Do you not see that even if I had

believed de Brencourt I could have done no differently?”

She looked up at him a moment, standing there with a prison wall for

background. No, _he_ could have done no differently, whatever a man with

less strict a sense of honour might have done.

“You are you!” she said proudly. “But I will point out that aspect to

the Comte—for he has suffered, Gaston. . . . But, my darling, there is

something else I want to ask you.” She paused a moment. “If you will not

let me beg your life, and I”—she faltered a little—“I accept your

wishes . . . what is to happen if the plan for to-morrow fails? Will

Bonaparte keep you in prison for years, perhaps?”

And the human spirit has such strange recesses that it really seemed to

her that by throwing out this suggestion in words she could make it

real, avoid a worse. For at Vannes they had told her——

Gaston de Trélan went suddenly over to the stove, and held out his hands

for a moment to its warmth. His back was towards her. Then, sitting down

beside her on the bed again, he said lightly, “He is not likely to have

the chance of doing that—unless he captures me a second time.”

She saw that he was evading her. “Yes,” she broke in, seizing his arm,

“I know; we have spoken about that. But the best plans sometimes fail.

What then? Gaston, as you love me . . . Gaston, answer me!”

He looked down at the little hand gripping his arm, and after a moment

put his other hand over it. “My wife, can you not see that the First

Consul, a soldier himself, would not incur the odium of an almost

unparalleled piece of military treachery unless it were worth his while?

. . . My dear, there is no braver woman than you. I do you the honour,

therefore, of telling you the truth. No, he will not keep me in prison.

If I am not rescued I shall undoubtedly be shot . . . as an—example.”

She was answered. Her hand relaxed upon his arm, and he hastily slipped

the arm itself about her as she fell away from him. But Valentine pulled

herself still further away.

“Then I am going to disregard your wishes, Gaston! You do not know what

you are saying. I give you fair warning. I am going to Mme Bonaparte—to

the First Consul himself! You expect me to stand by and see you murdered

when I might save you! What is your pride—which you cannot

deny—against your life . . . and Gaston, Gaston, against my love for

you, which you treat so lightly!”

He slipped to his knees and caught her hands to his breast. “O, my more

than dear, do not say that!” he implored. “Is not your love for me all

the light I have in the world? But at this hour there is something that

calls more insistently even than love—something that, if it has to do

with pride, is not linked with personal pride. I mean—honour. And you

could not gain me my life if you asked—I am sure of it—yet if you were

to make the attempt——”

But Valentine broke in with desperate logic. “You cannot know that I

should fail! How could you? You cannot be sure till it has been tried.

And I shall try! Then you can talk of failure!”

Gaston knelt there as pale as she. Surely, surely, he could find some

way to stay her without revealing the cruel knowledge he had—that only

he himself could ever be successful in an entreaty which even she could

not move him to make.

“Valentine, sooner than think of you on your knees to that man I would

go on my own—if that were conceivable. But it is not conceivable—not

if he had a pardon ready sealed in his hand, not if he held it out to

me! Think a moment, heart of my heart, and face it! When did any

captured Breton or Vendean, even the humblest peasant, ever ask for

mercy? Thousands of them have laid down their lives readily in the cause

they fought for, and hundreds of gentlemen, too. And would you have

me—through your mouth or my own it matters little—would you have me, a

leader, be the first in either of those lists to play the recreant? Was

it for that you wrought and gave me that scarf there—that when the

crucial moment came I should deal the cause it represents such a stab in

the back as my humiliation would be? Think of our enemies saying, ‘At

the last moment the Duc de Trélan’s heart failed him, and he humbly

besought the First Consul for his life.’ How would that sound in the

streets of Paris next week . . . and when the King comes back?”

Valentine flinched. Her lips were grey. Indeed she did not like the

sound of it.

“But, Gaston,” she said, those lips quivering, “for the cause you have

done more than enough. You have done everything that mortal man could

do, you, the last in arms—more than Cadoudal, who was so strong—more

than all the rest!”

“And all in vain,” he finished sadly.

“No devotion is in vain!”

He smiled suddenly, the smile, somehow, of a young man. “My darling,

that is what I have been trying to say. There are two sides to being

made an ‘example’ of.”

But at that she gave a sharp exclamation and put her hands over her

eyes.

Her husband’s face became still more drawn. “Valentine,” he said

tenderly, but very gravely, “have you forgotten the night I came, when

the tide of fortune was ebbing, to La Vergne. It was your name day; not

three weeks have passed since then. That night, my very dear, my heart

of hearts, my fleur-de-lys, you understood—wonderfully—and you gave me

leave to die!”

“But not like this—not like this!” she cried distractedly. “O blessed

saints, help me! Why did I ever say that! I meant—in the fighting . . .

and I thought the need for it was past with the surrender. O Gaston,

Gaston, you are killing me!”

Indeed it seemed like it. Her head went down to her very knees, and the

wrenching sobs shook her from head to foot. The price was more than she

could pay! He was now, through and through, what once she would almost

have given her soul to see him. But the cost, the cost of it! . . . She

saw, dimly, horribly, what he meant—the damage his death would do to

Bonaparte’s reputation. It broke her, strong as she was. And, no longer

rebellious but purely suppliant, she threw herself on his neck as he

knelt there beside the little prison bed, pleaded with him, besought

him, implored him—and all in vain.

It almost broke Gaston too, since for him there was also the strain of

keeping from her any suspicion of what he knew about Bonaparte’s real

desire, but his man’s, his soldier’s will held firm against the lover’s.

Extravagant perhaps, even fanatical, but none could say ignoble, his

intention was fixed. If the attempt at rescue failed, if the First

Consul meant to consummate his treachery, he must do it. There was no

more to say.

In the end Valentine was, if not acquiescent, at least vanquished. No,

she would not go to Mme Bonaparte; she gave him her word. No, she would

not even lend the countenance of her name to any of the protests now

being made in certain quarters. Yes, she would even acknowledge that,

theoretically, he was right. . . . Beaten and shivering, she half lay in

his arms, and composure, the composure of exhaustion, began to come back

to them both after the combat, and for a little while they were able to

talk of other things, far away and dear. . . .

A warning knock came at the door.

“Good God!” exclaimed Gaston, “is the time nearly up, then? And we have

spent so much of it in . . . conflict!”

He looked at her with eyes full of love and a very white smile on his

lips. And all Valentine’s soul was in the gaze with which she met his in

her answer:

“Forgive me for my foolishness! It is over now. I would not have you

otherwise than victor—for now I see you at your full stature. And I

. . . who once presumed to criticise you—I am at your feet . . . in

worship.”

Her voice died out of existence under his sudden passionate kisses. His

own was shaking as he said between them, almost fiercely, “You must not

say that, Valentine, you must not say that! O my dear, my dear, how

_can_ we part, how can I——”

The knock came once more. He stopped abruptly, set his teeth, loosed the

tension of his hold, and after a second or two stood up, quite steady

and composed again, drawing her gently with him.

“Who brought you here, my darling?”

“Roland,” she answered. “He is waiting out there all this while, poor

boy. And, Gaston, he is heartbroken. He thinks they ought all to have

been killed before they let you be taken. Not even the message you sent

him at Vannes seems to comfort him.”

Gaston sighed. “Poor Roland! And he is just outside? Cannot he come in

for a moment? Surely, Valentine, I am absolved now from my promise to de

Carné. I should like to tell him.”

“My heart, he knows, these seven days. I told him at Vannes. _I_ had

made no promise.”

“God bless you!” said her husband, raising her hand to his lips.

“Gaston, ask to see him,” she suggested. “The pass was for one or more

members of the family. Tell the gaoler that he is your son.”

“You would allow that?”

“I should wish it. It is the only way to see him.”

“My saint!” He kissed her hand again. “Very well. Old Bernard is an

excellent soul; he will not be particular to a minute or two. But do not

go, my darling! I want yours to be the last presence in this room

to-day.”

But Valentine shook her head with a little smile. “These are his

moments. I will come back afterwards.”

One long embrace and they separated as the door swung open. Outside

could be heard the click of steel as the sentries crossed their bayonets

over the aperture. But, before Valentine going out, they uncrossed for a

second.

* * * * *

“I should like to see the Vicomte de Céligny for a minute or two,” said

Gaston to the gaoler.

“Only members of the family, Monseigneur,” returned the precise old man,

shaking his head. “I have very strict orders.”

“But since he is my son!” retorted M. de Trélan, in the most natural

tone possible. “Come,” he went on, as the old man looked incredulous,

“you are sufficiently old-fashioned to call me Monseigneur, and yet you

affect not to know that the son of a duke rarely bears the same title as

his father. Besides, if you doubt me, go and look at him!”

“Well, well,” said old Bernard, “if he is your son the order covers him,

though his name is not on it. You swear that he is your son, Monsieur le

Duc?”

“Yes, I swear it,” answered Gaston.

What a strange person and place to receive the first public avowal of

his relationship to Roland! He leant against the table and put his hand

over his eyes, for indeed the victory he had won in the last hour was

only less prostrating than a defeat. When he removed it, Roland was

through the door, was on one knee before him, trying to seize his hand

and kiss it, and half sobbing out the old appellation, “Monsieur le

Marquis! Monsieur le Marquis!”

Gaston stooped and raised him. “Am I only that to you, Roland, my son,

my son!”

And, actually in his father’s arms, the warring tides of emotion in the

boy’s breast were stilled. He hid his face there, trembling a little.

But Gaston said never a word till he took his son’s head between his

hands and lifted it. “You are like your mother,” he said in a low voice,

looking into his eyes. “You may think of me as you like, Roland, but of

her you must think as you have always done. The blame was mine, and mine

alone.” And he kissed him.

With his hero’s kiss on his forehead, Roland was in no state to

apportion blame between that hero in his mortal peril, and the mother

whom he did not remember. He drew a long breath and said, “If only I can

be what your son ought to be, sir!”

Gaston smiled rather sadly. “Take a better example, my child. But there

is one way in which you can—no, I think I have really no need to point

it out to you. If I am shot, Mme de Trélan——”

Roland clutched his arm. “Don’t use that word, sir—I cannot bear it!

For it is our fault, all this—we failed you! And we had hoped to die

with you!”

“But, my dear boy, that was just what I did not want—and you must allow

your general some say in the matter. That was why I hoped the business

would be quickly over, and why I was so much distressed to hear from M.

Camain what happened after I was gone. You have no further news of the

others yet, I suppose?”

Roland shook his head. “But it was thought, when we passed through

Hennebont, that Artamène would eventually recover, though he was too ill

to know us. . . . Monsieur le Duc, I have never understood why it

happened just at that moment—your arrest?”

“Because, directly after you left the room, Roland, I was recognised by

a woman whom I had once known slightly. The comedy was that I failed to

recognise her at the time—though I have realised since who she was—and

that she had no idea, poor soul, of what she was bringing on me. But it

made no difference; they would have taken me at Auray, if not at

Hennebont; even if I _had_ reached Vannes a free man I should not long

have remained so. That came out very clearly at my—trial. So you see

there is nothing to be distressed about.”

But Roland thought otherwise. Had the arrest been attempted on the

highroad there would have been a chance which there never had been in

that trap of a room. He had a vision of a great fight in the open, in

which they three should have laid down their lives indeed, and their

leader spurred away, free. He sighed disconsolately.

“Mme de Trélan spoke of going to Mme Bonaparte,” he remarked.

“I would not sanction it,” said his father quietly. “Besides, it would

be useless.”

“You mean,” said Roland, biting his lips to keep back certain unmanly

evidences of emotion, “that you are sure the First Consul is absolutely

determined to . . .”

Gaston did not answer for a moment. Then he took a letter out of his

coat. “No,” he said quietly, “as it happens that is just what I do not

mean. On the contrary. For a person of his extreme decision he appears

to be uncomfortable. Read that, Roland; but first give me your word that

you will not tell the Duchesse.”

“I give you my word, sir—as your son,” said Roland, throwing back his

head.

But as he read it some colour came back to his face.

“My God! Then, Mon——”

“Mon père, I hope you were going to say,” interposed M. de Trélan

smiling, as he took the letter from his suddenly shaking hand and tore

it across. “No, my son, there are some things that one does not do, and

one is, to play, in a situation such as mine, the enemy’s game. You see

from that letter what—as far as any mortal can penetrate into his

heart—the First Consul would like to happen—and therefore, quite

plainly, it is just what shall not happen. Either he must release me of

his own act, unconditionally—a step which is extremely improbable—or

he must go on to the end. That end he will regret . . . for his own

sake.” He opened the door of the stove, and threw in the paper. “I have

shown you that letter, Roland,” he went on, turning to him again,

“because you are a man now, but I have particularly kept the knowledge

of what it says from the Duchesse; still more must it be kept from her

if I die. It would make it too hard for her . . . you understand? I fear

I have made it hard enough as it is . . . You can tell her, if you like,

some day—years hence. And I want you to warn the Comte de Brencourt and

M. Hyde de Neuville not to let her know on any account—if I die, that

is. If I escape, it is of no consequence.”

“If you escape!” cried Roland feverishly, “but you shall escape! That

plan—if only I might take part in it! But Mon—mon père, I have been

thinking out there . . . I am not so tall as you, but since I am like

you a little (though I never knew it), if you would but get into my

clothes now and go away with Mme de Trélan while I——”

“My dearest boy,” said Gaston, touched and laughing too, as he put his

arm round his shoulders, “that thousand-year-old device! As if I could

pass for a young man of twenty! Alas, never again! But I have every

confidence in . . . the official scheme for to-morrow evening. Yet in

case——” He slipped the emerald ring with the phoenix off his finger

and put it on Roland’s.

A quiver ran through the boy. He clasped the hand thus decorated to his

breast as though it were wounded. “Then you have not every confidence

. . . O mon père, take it back!”

“I will take it back when I am free,” replied his father, smiling. “A

loan, you see.—Here is my patient Bernard.” He took him in his arms and

kissed him on either cheek. “Be happy with Marthe—she shall wear the

rubies after all. And try to get your grandfather, some day, to think

less hardly of me.”

Roland, shaking with the sobs he was striving so hard to suppress, said

almost inaudibly, “But he does. I have had a letter. He is greatly

distressed.”

“Then I have gained something by being sentenced to death,” thought

Gaston to himself, with a rather grim amusement. “You must go, my boy,”

he said aloud. “And God go with you, always!”

He watched his son walk, blind with tears, to the door, and then made a

sign to the gaoler. “Give us one last moment, Bernard, for pity’s sake!”

For, before the bayonets could cross themselves again, Valentine had

slipped in, and come straight into his arms where he stood under that

heartbreaking window. And Bernard compassionately went out again and

closed the door.

“If the plan fails, Gaston, is this the last time?” (How could anyone

who was so white speak so steadily?)

“No, no—they will certainly let me see you again.” His own voice was

not quite steady.

“You are sure? I—a woman does not know about these things.”

“Yes, I am sure of it. If it comes to that, I shall have you in my arms

once again, my dearest, dearest heart!” Yet he held her now as if that

time had come. “Moreover, I do not believe the plan will fail. But, my

darling, I have not been torturing you unnecessarily, in speaking of

. . . the other alternative. It is only because, as God has given us at

the end of summer to be one in life, I want you to understand that to

die now would be to me no defeat or loss—to understand so that we might

still be one . . . even if we had to part. . . .”

“Death could never take you from me,” she answered.

CHAPTER XI

GASTON GIVES UP THE YELLOW POPPY

(1)

It was about six o’clock the next morning that old Bernard, who had just

finished dressing himself, looked out of the window of the little

ground-floor room in the Palace of the Temple where he slept—for most

of the personnel of the prison were housed there, and he indeed, a

former servant of the Prince de Conti, had slept there for more years

than he could count. The pale, reluctant winter dawn was on the

courtyard and its shivering trees. It would be a chilly transit to his

duties in the Tower.

As he was turning away, blowing on his fingers, he heard unusual sounds

in the courtyard, and, after another glance through the window, he went

out on to the perron and stood there in some astonishment.

A closed carriage—a berline—had just drawn in under the entrance and

was coming to a standstill in the middle of the court. Immediately

behind, with a great jangle of bits and trappings, came riding two and

two a score or so of hussars. What on earth could this portend, at so

early an hour? It must be something official, however, since the guard

at the entry had admitted the cortège.

Even as Bernard stood there he heard himself hailed, and saw the

sergeant of the guard running towards him and trying to attract his

attention. A little behind him rode an officer.

“Holà, Bernard!” called out the sergeant. “You are just the man I want.

Take M. le Capitaine Guibert to the Tower at once; he brings orders for

the immediate transference of a prisoner. Here, mon Capitaine, is the

very gaoler who has the care of those au secret.”

The officer dismounted without a word, threw the speaker the reins, and

strode up the five steps to where the surprised old man awaited him. He

was young, tall and handsome, suitable in every way to the bravery of

his sky-blue pelisse heavily barred with silver, the fur-edged dolman of

darker blue that hung from one shoulder, and the gaily embroidered

sabretache that swung against his leg. But under the high, cord-wreathed

shako his face looked impenetrably, almost unnaturally grave.

“If you will come this way, sir,” said Bernard a little nervously, and

thereafter trotted along in front of him through the palace and the

length of its frosty garden, perturbed in spirit, while the officer

stalked behind him equally silent. They passed the guardhouse in the

wall without comment. At the _greffe_ in the Tower itself the hussar,

with the same economy of language, presented an order, and said he

wished to see the prisoner in question immediately. The _guichetier_,

having read it through, raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips and

transcribed it carefully in a book. It was an order for the delivery of

the person of Gaston de Saint-Chamans, ex-Duc de Trélan, known also as

the Marquis de Kersaint.

“M. de Trélan is au secret—I expect you know that, captain,” he

remarked when he had finished. “I hope there has been no dissatisfaction

at the Tuileries? I assure you that every precaution is taken for his

safe custody.”

The young officer made a gesture that might have meant anything, and

prepared to follow his guide.

To mount that dark, winding staircase on a winter’s morning required a

light. Bernard produced a torch and preceded the officer, whose sabre

clanked on the steps as he followed him. Half way up, at one of the

wickets, the old man paused, and turned to him. “You are taking away our

most distinguished prisoner, Monsieur le Capitaine.”

“Yes,” replied the hussar. His mouth shut as if he did not intend to say

more, and the old man went on again.

One sentry—they were of a corps of veterans—was plainly asleep, on the

bench by the door, when they got up. His companion, pacing to and fro,

shoved him with his foot, and he stood sleepily to attention as the

officer passed. In another moment the nail-studded door stood open, and

the young hussar, taking the torch from Bernard and motioning him back,

went in, pushing the door to behind him.

The torch he held, conflicting with the daylight from the high window,

showed him the man he had come for fast asleep on the little bed in the

furthest corner. He went over to him, stood looking down at him a second

or two, and then, with what looked like hesitation, put out a hand to

wake him. But at that moment, roused by the light, the prisoner stirred.

(2)

Gaston had dreamt much that night, dreams commingled of sweet and

sinister. Nearly always the menhirs had been in them, the Allée des

Vieilles where Valentine had been miraculously restored to him, but they

were strangely mixed with visions of Mirabel, where he and she had

parted. He stood once more among the old stones, but she was not there;

he was to meet her, he knew, at Mirabel, and the idea was sweet. Yet

somehow the dream was sinister. . . .

And now—he was fully awake on the instant, in the fashion of a soldier

and a commander. His first thought was—Hyde de Neuville . . . they had

put forward the time . . . here was the pseudo-Republican officer he was

to expect. He looked up at the hussar for a second or two—and all that

fell away from him for ever. A man in peril is swift of apprehension.

This officer was genuine.

“You are an early visitor, sir,” he said, raising himself on his elbow.

“I may guess, may I not, that you do not come at this hour on any very

agreeable errand?”

“General,” said the young man, speaking at length for the first time

since he had entered the prison, “my errand is hateful. I . . . I am

ashamed of the uniform I wear—but as long as I wear it I must

obey. . . . Will you read that, Monsieur le Duc?” He held out, not the

order he had shown to the _guichetier_, but another, and brought the

torch a little nearer.

Gaston took the paper, and, still leaning on one elbow, studied it, and

the vehement “Bonaparte” at the bottom, with the marks of the splutter

of the pen. His eyebrows went up a trifle, but no other change came over

his face.

“A little sudden,” he observed. “But after all . . . What time do you

wish me to be ready?”

“At seven o’clock, General. It is now ten minutes after six.”

The Duc de Trélan returned the warrant. “The First Consul is somewhat

given to sudden impulses,” he remarked. “As he grows older he will find

that they are generally to be regretted. But I think that, after all, I

misjudge him; for this was intended from the first. I have about fifty

minutes then. Would you be so good, Monsieur, as to see if they could

find me a priest while I am dressing; there may be one in captivity in

the Temple.—No, do not give yourself the trouble; if old Bernard is

there I will ask him myself. And you, Monsieur le Capitaine—shall I see

you again?”

“I command the escort,” replied the young hussar, looking away.

“I will be ready for you then, in . . . forty-seven minutes,” said the

Duc, his eyes on the watch he had drawn from beneath his pillow.

“Perhaps you will be good enough to leave me your torch for the moment.

The oil was finished in my lamp last night, and the illumination here is

not very good, as you can see.”

The young officer looked round, saw a ring designed for that purpose on

the wall, thrust the torch into it, drew himself up, made the captive a

magnificent salute, and strode to the door.

Next moment the old gaoler looked in, mildly curious.

“Monsieur Bernard,” said the Duc, who was now sitting on the edge of the

bed, “I have a particular favour to ask you. Can you contrive to heat me

some shaving water within a quarter of an hour or so? I wish to be

presentable this morning.”

“But certainly, only—Monsieur le Duc, what is it, so early? You are

being transferred, I gathered?”

“Yes, Bernard—if you like to put it so. And besides the shaving

water—and a better light to use it by—is there by chance a priest

among the prisoners here, think you?”

“A priest!” exclaimed the old man, taken aback. “A priest . . . I don’t

know—I don’t think so. But why do you want a . . . O Monseigneur!—it’s

not _that_!”

“It is indeed,” said Gaston with a little smile. “Not altogether

unexpected, my good Bernard.—Well, do your best to get me a priest. I

have not much time; only about three-quarters of an hour.”

No, he had not much time. And perhaps it was best. He could not possibly

say good-bye to Valentine now. Yesterday had been their farewell after

all. Did this hurried execution mean that the First Consul had got wind

of to-night’s rescue?

He dressed swiftly, but with attention to details, shaved with care when

old Bernard, almost weeping, brought him the water and the tidings that

no priest could so far be found; and, with only twenty-five minutes

left, sat down to write his last letter to Valentine.

He had no little to say, but he wrote steadily and without difficulty,

pausing only once or twice. When he had finished he took out from a

pocket-case in his breast a little square of folded paper, somewhat

worn, wrote on it three words and slipped it inside his letter. Then he

folded, addressed and sealed the whole, kissed his wife’s name upon the

superscription, and put it in the case. There was already another letter

there.

And now, since he had taken from its place over his heart the amulet he

always wore there, to give it back to the hand whence he had it, for the

short time that heart had to beat it should beat against the symbol that

was rather of loyalty than of love—but which love had nevertheless

fashioned and given him. He took from the back of the chair the scarf he

had so treasured, and put the end with the golden fleur-de-lys to his

lips. For a moment, at the touch of what her fingers had wrought, a wave

of anguish engulfed him. He gripped his hands hard behind his head, as

it fell forward on the folds of the scarf across the table. O, not to

have to leave her . . . even to see her once more, only once!

It was short, that agony. Gaston de Trélan had faced it many times these

last few days. He rose, fastening the scarf across his breast instead of

as usual round his waist. Her arms would be about him thus, to the end.

Only four minutes more. No priest had come. So he knelt down by the

table, and tried to collect his thoughts.

* * * * *

The door opened slowly. Gaston stood up; the young hussar, much the

paler of the two, came in.

“I am ready,” said the Duc. “But before we go I have a favour to ask of

you. This case, Monsieur, contains a letter to my wife, with another to

the same address. Could it be given to her? She is to be found at Mme

Tessier’s in the Rue de Seine.”

“I give you my word that she shall have it,” said the officer. “I will

take it myself—if I cannot find a better messenger.”

“Thank you, Monsieur,” said Gaston, replacing the case inside his

uniform. “If it will not inconvenience you, however, I will keep the

letter on me till the last possible moment, and give it to you—later

on. And I have a fancy not to be parted from my Cross of Maria Theresa

before I need; therefore, if it would not be putting you to too much

trouble, I would ask you to take it off when the business is over. This

scarf I should wish to be buried with. I am still, you know, Monsieur le

Capitaine,” he threw back his head a little, “the General commanding for

His Majesty King Louis XVIII. in Finistère, a position that is not

cancelled by my capture under a safe-conduct.—I beg your pardon, for

you neither had part in, nor approve of that,” he added, seeing the

young man wince. “The scarf, then, I should desire to remain on me, the

order to go to the Duchesse if you would be so good.”

“She shall have it . . . if you think that a Republican’s word is ever

to be trusted again.”

“I think that I can trust yours,” retorted Gaston, holding out his hand.

“Monsieur le Duc . . .” stammered the young hussar, hesitating.

The keen eyes smiled at him. “My boy, do you think I don’t understand?

Come, we have a journey to make in company. And your hands are clean—as

I hope mine are.”

So, with a flush, Captain Guibert gripped his prisoner’s fingers for a

second. And then old Bernard’s voice broke in on them. “Monseigneur,” it

said at Gaston’s elbow, “you are fasting, and it is so cold outside!

Will you not?” And he held out on a little tray a cup of coffee. But his

hands shook so that the cup was clattering on its saucer.

“Monsieur Bernard, you are my good angel,” said Gaston gaily, as he took

it from him. “I hope M. le Capitaine was as fortunate before he set

out—so much earlier, too, than I am to do.”

He drank down the hot coffee and set the empty cup on the table in

significant proximity to his purse, which he had already placed there

for the old gaoler. But Bernard, sniffing, shuffled out before he could

take farewell of him.

“Poor Bernard is too tenderhearted for his post,” observed his prisoner.

“The sooner he is quit of us the better.—I follow you, Monsieur.”

(3)

A guard of dismounted hussars was awaiting them at the foot of the

Tower.

“I have a carriage for you, Monsieur le Duc,” explained Captain Guibert

half apologetically, as, on a sign from him, his men fell in behind him

and his prisoner, “but it is in the courtyard of the Palace, for as you

know, it is impossible for a vehicle to be brought any nearer.”

“But why should I wish for better treatment than my King?” asked the Duc

de Trélan. “He had to walk from the Tower.”

Once through the great wall of isolation—at last—they went side by

side in silence, the armed guard behind, across the garden to the

Palace. Gaston was thinking that if, on their way to the Plaine de

Grenelle—the usual spot for such events—they crossed the river by the

Pont Neuf, as was most likely, they could hardly avoid passing one end

or other of the Rue de Seine, where Valentine lay asleep, or wakeful. He

wondered whether she would somehow be aware . . . and whether he could

entirely keep his composure as they went so near. . . .

When they came, through the building, in sight of the courtyard, the

carriage was drawn up at the foot of the steps. Grouped round it, the

remaining hussars sat their horses motionless, holding those of their

dismounted comrades, but the frost in the air made the animals

impatient, and one perpetual jingle shook from their tossing heads,

while their breaths, and the men’s, too, went up like smoke.

Gaston looked back over his shoulder for an instant. Above the low

façade of the Palace, to the left of the Tower behind, the sun was now

visible, huge and red. It would be a fine day, probably—but one would

not know. . . . The dismounted men were already resuming their saddles;

a horse was pawing the ground as if eager to be off.

“Lieutenant Soyer,” said the captain, “take the head of the escort!” He

turned to his prisoner. “Monsieur de Trélan, pardon me, but someone must

drive in the carriage with you. I am very sorry . . . but if you will

permit me, I will do so myself, instead of my lieutenant.”

He reminded Gaston of his own three ‘jeunes.’ In such circumstances he

would not have wished Roland to carry himself otherwise.

“I should desire your company, Monsieur le Capitaine,” he replied

courteously, and put his foot on the step of the high-slung berline. “We

journey to the Plaine de Grenelle, I suppose?”

The young man dropped his eyes and reddened. “No,” he said, in a low,

ashamed voice, “the orders are . . . _Mirabel_.”

For the first time since he had learnt that he was to die that morning,

Gaston de Trélan showed emotion before a witness. He flushed too, but it

was with anger.

“The First Consul’s idea of the dramatic, I suppose! One sees his

origin.” He bit his lip and recovered himself. “I have the right, I

think, to consider it somewhat misplaced. However, the setting of the

last scene is really of small importance to me.”

He got into the carriage, and the captain of hussars silently followed

him in, and sat down opposite him, his sabre across his knees. In a few

seconds the carriage was rolling noisily over the cobblestones of the

archway into the street. But they would not pass near Valentine now;

they would soon be going further away every moment . . . for ever.

They had traversed Paris, and were in the Avenue de Neuilly, when the

young officer said abruptly,

“Monsieur le Duc, if when we are past Neuilly, I were to get out, to

halt the escort, make some diversion, and call off the men on either

side if you could slip out . . .”

Gaston shook his head, smiling, despite himself, at the wild idea. “My

dear boy—apart from a personal preference for not being shot in the

back—do you suppose that I would accept your young life for mine?”

“My life! But my career was my life—and I am going to resign my

commission before this day is over! I cannot serve any more a soldier

who violates a safe-conduct. And I thought him . . . I was with him in

Italy—at Acre—at Aboukir . . .” He put his forehead down on the hands

that rested over each other on the hilt of his sabre, upright between

his knees.

Gaston’s face softened as he looked at him. It was as he thought. He

would not have died in vain.

He leant back with folded arms. The rumble of the wheels, the trot of

the horses on either hand, the figures of their riders as they rose and

fell close to the carriage windows, held a rhythm that was almost

soothing. And now that the shock of indignation and disgust was over,

what better place at which to die than Mirabel, which had re-united him

and Valentine? It was his dream come true; he was not going away from

her; she was—was she not?—waiting for him there.

Only just this side of death had they plucked the flower of flowers; but

they _had_ plucked it. And the life whose uselessness had hurt her so,

at the end he had contrived to do something with it after all. By

refusing to ransom it, as he might conceivably have done, he was

flinging it down, not as a forfeit, but as a challenge, against the

walls that had been his and Valentine’s. In having him shot in defiance

of the strictest article of military honour, Bonaparte plainly designed

to make of the Duc de Trélan’s death a terrible example—in decreeing

that the sentence should be carried out, against all the dictates of

decent feeling, in front of his own confiscated house, to make that

death a kind of show as well. But the more publicity given to so callous

and unscrupulous an action, the longer it was likely to be

remembered—against its author; and the impression might not be what

Bonaparte designed. The hope of such a result was partly what Gaston de

Trélan was laying down his life for. Already, as he knew, there was no

small clamour and protest in Paris over his probable fate, so that the

added affront of this morning did but make dying, after all, the more

worth while.

The short miles had slipped past. Here already, by the slackening pace,

was the turn off the Saint-Germain road. Nearly ten years. . . . The

carriage, swaying a little, swung round at right angles into the way

lined with gaunt poplars, where the frozen puddles crackled under hoofs

and wheels—the last stage but one of the journey that was bearing him

away from all he loved. No! “Death could never take you from me!” _Et

expecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi saeculi._ Crossing

himself, he began silently to recite his act of contrition.

* * * * *

And in a few moments more, the faint winter sun glinting on its

majolica, came Mirabel—Mirabel with the barrier removed, and some

hundreds of troops drawn up in front of it on the frostbound gravel.

The officer of hussars, raising his head, saw his companion holding out

to him, with a little smile, the lettercase he had drawn from his

breast.

“I am glad, after all,” said the last Duc de Trélan quietly, “that it

should be _here_.”

CHAPTER XII

FOR SOME THE WORLD IS EMPTY

(1)

It was Hyde de Neuville, half beside himself with grief and fury, who

brought the Comte de Brencourt the news, which at ten o’clock the young

conspirator had only just heard, and which he could hardly believe. Yet

there was no doubt about its truth. And someone must break it to the

Duchesse.

But not, surely, the stunned and horrified man to whom this announcement

had just been made. He stood frozen, in his room at the little _hôtel

garni_, repeating with a stammering tongue, “Dead!—dead! shot this

morning! . . . there is some mistake . . .”

“I wish there were!” cried Hyde de Neuville passionately. “I wish to God

there were! I wish we had tried for last night—why were we such fools

as to delay? I do not yet know whether this morning’s work was prompted

by design, or just by evil chance. And the Duchesse——”

“Don’t suggest that I shall tell her!” cried the Comte wildly. “De

Neuville, for pity’s sake——”

“But I must not lose a moment in going to Bertin and the others,” said

the young man. “We may all find ourselves in prison before

nightfall—and to no purpose. Besides, I am a stranger to her; you an

old acquaintance—the Duc’s late chief of staff. You are the man, Comte.

Tell her the whole plan has failed—tell her her husband is suddenly

taken ill—tell her anything to soften the blow!” And he was gone.

The Comte sank down and buried his head in his arms. “I told her that he

was dead, once. Now it is true—now it is true!”

He could not do it. He must find someone else. Roland—he would break

the news best, if he could get hold of him. O God, to think he had once

wished this, had lied for it, had tried to bring it about with his own

hand! And—shot at Mirabel! The idea was profoundly shocking to him even

in the midst of the shock of the execution itself. He seemed to recall a

hateful precedent for it, for he remembered the young Prince de Talmont,

captured in the Vendean war and shot in front of the castle of Laval,

which had belonged to his family for nine centuries.

What was the time? Suppose Mme de Trélan were to go to the Temple this

morning! “The Duc is gone, Madame la Duchesse; he has driven out to his

château of Mirabel. Will Madame follow?” Why did he see the Temple as it

had once been, a princely residence, and why did he imagine that

dialogue? He must be going mad. She would not go there to-day; the order

was for yesterday. Yesterday she had seen him; and did not know she

should see him no more in life.

Or stay, suppose Valentine had taken a fancy to visit Mirabel this

morning with Roland. It was most unlikely that she would do such a

thing; yet his distracted mind showed him the Duchesse and Roland

arriving there and finding God knew what—soldiers, a crowd, and in

front of the great façade——

M. de Brencourt sprang up. That wholly baseless picture decided him. He

could not let her run that dreadful risk. Oblivious of the fact that,

long before she got to Mirabel, if ever she went, she must meet the

tidings of what had taken place there, he crammed on his hat, and

without a redingote, despite the cold, rushed out in the direction of

the Rue de Seine.

* * * * *

“No, M. de Céligny has gone out,” replied Suzon’s servant. “Mme de

Trélan is within.”

His last hope was vanished then. He never thought of Mme Tessier. There

was no help for it. Far rather would he have been in the dead man’s

place at Mirabel.

He was only just in time, apparently, for the first thing that he saw on

being ushered into Mme Tessier’s parlour was Valentine’s hat and gloves

on the table. And she, standing by the hearth, had her cloak on

already—a grey cloak with grey fur at the throat, in which he would

always see her now to the end of the world. He contrived, he knew not

how, to get across the room and to kiss her hand before she noticed

anything unusual.

“I am glad I had not gone out, Monsieur de Brencourt,” she said in an

ordinary tone, such as she had managed to preserve nearly all the time

in these days of strain. “I was only waiting for Roland to return.”

And then she saw his face and said, quite quietly, “I am afraid you

bring some bad news.”

“It is not good.” His voice—he heard it himself—was the voice of a

stranger.

“The plan has miscarried somehow, Comte—you have come to tell me that?”

He bent his head. “Yes. Yes, Madame. I . . . came to tell you that.”

A pause. Slowly, slowly the colour faded in the face over the grey fur

collar that he would see to the end of the world.

“It will not be carried out to-night, then?”

(“_Nor any other night._”) No, he lacked courage to say that yet.

“No, Madame. It . . . it . . . it has proved impossible.”

“This cloak is too hot,” said Valentine de Trélan suddenly. She

unfastened the collar. “Perhaps I will not go out after all.” She made

as if she were going to throw it off, then sat down instead in the

armchair by the fire. “But time is precious, Monsieur de Brencourt,” she

said, looking at him fixedly—he could feel that, though he could not

meet her eyes.

“No,” he said, trembling, and very low, “time is of no value now.”

But either she had not heard, or she did not understand. He could see

that; so he tried again, and got out more. “Madame, I must tell you that

the time for this plan is past for ever.”

He felt the impact of these words on her mind, yet he felt also that she

was gathering herself up in spirit either to resist their meaning or to

infuse fresh will into him. He saw her hands clench themselves a little

as she said,

“If that has failed, then, you will make another, a better plan, will

you not?”

O, why would she not understand! He raised his eyes at last in agony

from her clenched hands to her face. “Valentine . . .” he said, and, had

her life depended on it, could get out no other word. His throat had

closed up. He turned away and hid his face.

The fire crackled like a burning house; outside in the street a boy was

whistling like a fife . . . and yet it was so still.

At last her voice came, and it sounded sick with horror. “Monsieur de

Brencourt, what—_what_, in God’s name, are you trying to tell me?”

“Not to go to the Temple to-day—not to go——”

“They have taken him away?” she interrupted sharply, her hands on the

arms of the chair. “Transferred him to another prison?”

At last he turned and faced her, at last he got it out in its entirety.

“Yes, he is gone—but not to another prison. He is gone where I wish I

were gone too, before I had to tell you. It is all over, Valentine, all

over . . .”

She fell back in her chair. If only he might kneel and kiss her feet,

try—though he knew he could not—to comfort her. But the memory of this

scene’s parody, played out falsely before, lay like a bitter flood

between him and her. This time it was true, his news.

Steps outside, thank God! Roland, perhaps, or Mme Tessier, whom he had

forgotten. He hurried to the door, caught at the passerby—Suzon.

“Go in to the Duchesse at once,” he said. “I have had to bring her

terrible news—I can bear no more. The Duc was shot at Mirabel this

morning. Go in, I say!” He pushed her in.

(2)

On the very threshold, as he opened the door into the street to escape,

M. de Brencourt all but ran into an officer of hussars. The officer was

young, handsome, rigid, set about the mouth.

“Does Mme de Trélan lodge here?” he asked with a foot on the doorstep.

“Yes,” replied the Comte. “Excuse me, Monsieur——”

The officer barred the way. “Pardon me a moment. I must see her.”

“You cannot,” retored de Brencourt, stopped despite himself. “She cannot

see anyone.”

“She knows then!” said the young man, and there was relief in his tone.

And instantly, looking at the expression on his visage, the Comte

understood.

“I have just told her,” he said.

“Thank God for that,” returned the hussar. “But I have a message to

deliver—and I pray you, Monsieur, to give it to her, as you have . . .

done the other thing. I come straight from Mirabel.”

“Monsieur,” replied the Comte hoarsely. “Once it was prophesied to me

that I should do this lady a service. I did not know what it would

be—now, I think I do . . . I have just rendered it, and not for the

hope of heaven would I go through the like again. You must give the

message yourself, if it was from . . . _him_.”

“There is no verbal message from . . . the late Duc de Trélan,” answered

the young hussar, and as he paused at the name and its qualification he

suddenly brought his heels together and saluted. And the Comte, for all

his pre-occupation with his own feelings, saw that his mouth was

twitching. “There is no verbal message,” he repeated, “but I have two

letters, and the Duc’s decoration. I am charged, however, to say, that

Mme de Trélan is at liberty to go to Mirabel when and how she will, that

her privacy will be respected in every way, and that if she wishes the

body to be buried in the chapel there——”

“Is this the First Consul’s magnanimity!” flared out the Comte. And,

thinking he heard a sound behind him in the house, and suddenly becoming

conscious, too, that all this was taking place on the doorstep, he

seized hold of the young officer’s hanging dolman. “Bring that cursed

uniform of yours inside!” he muttered, and, opening the door of a little

room close by, pushed the glittering and jingling form inside.

Once sheltered by a closed door the young Republican turned on him

almost savagely. “Do you think that you are the only man heartbroken

over this horrible business?” he demanded. “Do you realise that I have

had to help carry it out—that it was I, at least, who commanded the

escort, that it was I who had to rouse M. de Trélan early this morning

with the news, had to drive with him from Paris to Mirabel, had to sit

my horse like a statue with my sword drawn, as though I approved, while

it was done—I who have been one of Bonaparte’s aides-de-camp in Egypt

and Syria, and have worshipped his very stirrup leather . . . and am

going to throw up my commission the moment I leave this house!”

There was no doubt of his emotion now; two tears were running down his

face. He could not have been more than five and twenty. He raised a

gauntleted hand and brushed them away.

“Why, then, did you——” began M. de Brencourt in a suddenly weary

voice.

“Because if I had not commanded the escort someone else would have done

so. When I found I was detailed for that duty, I thought I could at

least ensure that M. de Trélan had due respect shown him—and that I

could, perhaps, let him know before he died that there was, at any rate,

one soldier of the Republic who was ashamed of the deed. As I intended

to resign my commission immediately afterwards there was nothing

improper in that . . . and if I went farther than I should perhaps have

done when, on the way to Mirabel, I offered to connive at his

escape—well, the Duc refused.” He paused, drew a long breath, and said,

“Afterwards I had my men carry him into Mirabel, into the great hall

there. We unbarred the big door for it. I had the candlesticks fetched

from the chapel also; strangely enough, there were funeral candles

already in them. If Mme de Trélan goes, therefore, there is nothing she

cannot look upon; I have seen to that. His face is quite uninjured—I

would not even have it covered.”

The Comte held out his hand to him. “If I could bring myself really to

believe that he is dead,” he said painfully, “I would thank you in her

name. But I cannot believe it—even after telling her so.”

“Oh, God knows it’s true enough,” responded the young hussar, passing

his hand for a moment over his eyes.

“Where was it carried out—this iniquity?” demanded M. de Brencourt

abruptly.

“In front of one of the central towers, below which the concierge used

to live. It was the Duc’s own choice, when he was asked if he had any

preference; I do not know the reason for it.”

M. de Brencourt did. He turned away.

And, even as he turned, the door of the little room opened, and in came,

not Roland, as he expected—but the Abbé Chassin.

“You!” exclaimed the Comte, staring at him in astonishment. They had not

met since the memorable day in the thicket by the road; moreover he

thought the Abbé still in England.

Travelstained, his eyes red-rimmed for lack of sleep, his round face

drawn and shadowed, the little priest looked not only twenty years

older, but as if the heart had gone out of him for ever.

“I have journeyed day and night since I heard he was taken,” he said in

a dulled voice. “I know now that I am too late. My God, my God!”

“How did you learn it? Have you seen Mme de Trélan?”

“Not yet. Mme Tessier is with her. I heard it in the streets.”

The Comte looked at him and was moved with compassion. “I am sorry for

that,” he said, gently for him, and put his hand for a second on the

dusty shoulder. Then he bent and added in a low voice, “We should have

saved him this very evening if it had not been for this.”

The young officer, who had been standing since the Abbé’s entrance

gazing at some objects which he had laid on the table, here raised his

head and addressed the newcomer. “Then perhaps you, Monsieur, would give

Mme la Duchesse the message I bear—and give her these, too. I was

trying to persuade this gentleman to do it. It is not over fitting for

me.”

“You were . . .?” asked M. Chassin, his face working a little.

“Monsieur commanded the escort,” replied the Comte for him, “and has

done everything that he could do, then and since. He bears a message

from the . . . the authorities that the Duchesse is free to go to

Mirabel when she pleases, and to do what she wishes about burial. . . .

You tell her, Abbé. We have both had as much as we can bear!”

“And you think I can bear anything?” asked M. Chassin in a half-choked

voice, “I, who shall never see him alive now!”

The young hussar had noted the Comte’s method of address. “You are a

priest, sir?” he enquired. “Then perhaps this letter, directed to the

Abbé Chassin, is for you?”

Pierre was beside him in a moment, and saw what was on the table. “O

Gaston, my brother!” he exclaimed brokenly, and knelt down there,

covering his face.

“_Brother!_” ejaculated the Comte under his breath. Then he understood.

It explained many things.

“This order that he wore is not hurt,” murmured the young hussar almost

to himself, “although——” He did not finish, but lifted a fold of the

handkerchief, and revealed the cross of white and gold with its red

heart. “M. de Trélan particularly wished the Duchesse to have it.” He

relapsed into silence again, looking down at it, and M. de Brencourt

stood looking at it too—save those two letters in the firm hand-writing

which he knew so well, all that was left of the leader he had admired,

and hated, and schemed against—and tried to save.

“_Absolve, O Lord, the soul of Thy servant_,” prayed the Abbé in the

silence, “_that though dead to the world he may live to Thee, and

whatsoever he hath done amiss in his human conversation, through the

weakness of the flesh, do Thou by the pardon of Thy most merciful

loving-kindness wipe away_.” He rose to his feet, took up the letter

addressed to him, kissed it, and put it in his pocket. “This, I

understand,” he said to the hussar, touching the cross, “is for Mme de

Trélan, as well as the letter?”

“You will do my commission then, Monsieur l’Abbé?” asked the young man,

his face haggard with strain and entreaty. “I thank you from my heart!

As for me, I have business of my own now.” And he picked up his shako.

“One moment,” said M. Chassin. “I fancy that when I came in you were

telling this gentleman some details about—the end. The Duchesse may

some day wish to hear them; and I wish to know now, both as M. le Duc’s

foster-brother and a priest.—Did they let him have a priest this

morning?”

The young captain sedulously fingered the cords that went round his

headgear. “He asked for one, but none could be found in the time.” He

hesitated, and then broke out—“If I might tell you the rest another

day, Monsieur l’Abbé; I engage to do so. But just now the whole affair

is so horrible to me—no, not the actual execution, for any one more

nobly and simply composed than M. de Trélan it is impossible to imagine

. . . the one man at Mirabel this morning who had no cause for shame.

Moreover since there was, mercifully, no bungling, he could scarcely

have suffered—shot, as he was, through the heart. I was not the only

soldier there who envied him so fine an end before so many witnesses.

(There were generals present; Lannes and Murat, and Marmont, too, I

think.) But the treachery of it! . . . Gentlemen, your cause has

sustained a great loss, but Bonaparte’s honour has sustained a greater!”

“Yes,” said the Comte, “and if M. de Trélan had cared less for that

cause for which he died, he might very conceivably have kept his

life—but that, I expect, is not generally known. I intend that it shall

be.”

“What is that?” exclaimed the Abbé. “He refused a pardon?”

“He refused to ask for one,” returned the Comte, and explained.

“O, my brother, I recognise you there!” said Pierre softly.

“Yet it is not a thing that the Duchesse ought to know,” added M. de

Brencourt.

“Not know it!” exclaimed the young hussar. “Why, to die like that is

more than fine—it is glorious! It seems a pity that she should be

ignorant of it. _I_ shall remember . . . Farewell, gentlemen.”

He turned towards the door, and took one step in its direction, but no

more. For it was open, and Mme de Trélan herself stood on the threshold.

None of them, absorbed, had known it.

M. de Brencourt put his hand over his mouth. God grant she had not

heard! She gave no sign of it. Her eyes were on the young Republican.

“You come from . . . Mirabel, I think, sir?”

“Yes, Madame. I have brought you . . . these.” He indicated the letter

and the decoration on the table, but made no motion to give them to her,

and she did not take them. Yet she looked at them as though she saw

nothing else. And the Abbé was kissing her hand before she seemed to

realise that he was there, nor did she show any surprise at his

presence.

But in a moment or two she lifted her eyes to the young officer again,

and from her look it seemed as if, with the strange, exalted sight that

comes sometimes with the stroke of a grief that no words can fathom, she

saw something now of the tragedy of his soul on his face.

“I thank you, sir, for these,” she said gently. “My husband has a higher

honour now, I think.”

The young hussar bent his head till his looped-up tresses of plaited

hair fell on his breast. “Yes, Madame.” He bowed profoundly, and went

once more towards the door; then, inspired perhaps by that vision of

measureless sorrow and courage before him, turned and said, “Madame, I

have been present at the death of a hero. I wish mine might be like it!”

And—only a young captain of hussars, but the material of which the

conqueror’s marshals were made—he saluted and went out, to lay aside,

with his broken belief, all his dreams of glory.

When he was gone, M. Chassin took the letter and the cross in its

handkerchief, and put them into Valentine’s hands. M. de Brencourt

looked out of the window. He did not hear what they said to each other,

but he supposed that the priest was giving her the message about Mirabel

. . .

It was thawing outside. People were going to and fro as usual. . . . Who

would have thought the world would seem so empty?

Valentine’s voice startled him. “Monsieur de Brencourt, would you have

the goodness to procure me a carriage? I am going at once to Mirabel.”

He turned round. “Not alone, Madame, surely!” For she stood there alone

now.

“No, M. l’Abbé will go with me.—But first, tell me of what you were

speaking when I came in. I heard the word _pardon_; was there ever talk

of such a thing?”

Rent with compassion, he looked at her and did not answer.

“I heard what that young man said,” she went on with extraordinary

steadiness, “that it was a pity I should not know. Tell me, I implore

you!”

She knew too much already! Useless to try to keep it from her now, and

dreadful to combat her wishes at this moment. And, not yet having seen

Roland since yesterday afternoon, the Comte had received no direct

prohibition; it was only his own consideration for her which recommended

silence. So he told her the truth. She covered her face; and once again

he left her.

* * * * *

“Will you tell Roland, when he comes, to follow us to Mirabel?” said the

Abbé to him some half-hour later, before entering the carriage after Mme

de Trélan.

M. de Brencourt bowed his head. “And I?” he said in a low voice, “If I

might—if I dared think——”

The Duchesse turned hers and answered without hesitation. “Come with

Roland—_friend_!”

CHAPTER XIII

TO THE UTTERMOST

The Abbé Chassin, who lived to be a very old man, left among his papers

a full record of most of the events connected with the death of the Duc

de Trélan, but no word of that short drive with Mme de Trélan from Paris

to Mirabel. Presumably he could not write of it.

Yet Valentine was quite calm. She leant back nearly all the way with her

eyes closed, an image of marble in her grey cloak. Her hands were

clasped in her lap; Pierre thought that she, like himself, was praying,

but he was not sure. From him, at intervals, scraps of the _De

Profundis_ broke aloud, and he did not know it. . . . _Domine exaudi

vocem meam_ . . . _Quia apud te propitiatio est_ . . . _speravit anima

mea in Domino_. . . . Underneath it all was the thought that their

carriage wheels, once Paris was behind them, were on the very track of

Gaston’s, and that they were passing over again, at so short an

interval, his _via dolorosa_. But well he knew that his had been nothing

to his wife’s, now.

Was not that the final swordstroke, too—that bitter and glorious

knowledge which was to have been kept from her? He was sure that Gaston

had not meant her to learn it. And yet, after all, perhaps it fell at

this hour on a heart already numbed by shock, and she could better bear

it to-day than to-morrow. To have known it yesterday, when her husband

was still on earth—that would have been intolerable. But she had said

so little, seemed set on so high a pinnacle of loss, that he could only

look at her, and conjecture, and pray. And in his own heart the sword

turned also.

At last they left the road to Saint-Germain. The poplars passed one by

one, those poplars under which Mme Vidal had walked last spring to take

up her post. Mud splashed from the wheels; the puddles were melted since

this morning. The carriage slackened, then, turning, drove through the

empty space between the gateposts with their mutilated lions. But

Mirabel bore little trace of what had taken place there four or five

hours ago, save that the barrier was entirely removed, and the gravel

scored by the passage of troops. And there were certain marks on the

base of one of the towers; but these were invisible at a distance.

They drew up before the great steps. The priest got out and assisted Mme

de Trélan to alight. The heavy door at the top, barred for so many

years, stood wide open, and on either side of it was stationed a hussar

with drawn sabre. At least then, ran his thought, the butchers have some

proper feeling; they do not intend the curious to pass that door . . .

unless, perhaps, it were that young captain’s doing only. He offered his

arm. But Valentine refused it. “I would rather go quite alone,” she said

gently. “If you would wait here till I summon you . . . or till the

others come . . .”

He could not gainsay her. So once more he, too, stood in front of

Mirabel, and suddenly realised with intensity the part that Mirabel’s

treasure—yielded moreover to _his_ hands—had played in these two

lives. It had made possible Gaston de Trélan’s short-lived success in

Finistère, and had thereby brought him fame—and death. It had lifted

his burden from him, and joined him and Valentine in a union such as

they had never known . . . but only to part them. The colonnades wavered

for a moment as all this beat upon the priest’s brain. Then he thought

of nothing else but what was before his eyes—the figure of Mme de

Trélan going up those wide, neglected steps.

He did not know, nor did Valentine till she came to them, that across

their discoloured marble trailed, in places, another and a deeper

discolouration. She had reached the sixth or seventh of the twelve

before its meaning penetrated to her consciousness. She stopped, drawing

a long breath; then went slowly on again, looking at it. But when she

came to the tenth step Pierre Chassin, watching from below, saw her sink

on her knees, and thought her strength was failing her. It was not so.

Bending forward, as on the ascent of some great altar, the Duchesse de

Trélan deliberately stooped and kissed, on the topmost step of all, one

of the little splashes, dull now, and dry, which marked her husband’s

return to his house of Mirabel.

Then she rose, and went also, between the guards, through the open door,

and into the Salle Verte.

* * * * *

But here, in the long, pillared room, there were no signs of anything

like that ineffaceable witness upon the steps. Only, an island of light

in its vastness, a pale island in the winter’s day, the tall

candlesticks from the chapel, with tapers burning in them, and, on the

ground between, straight and still, the sovereign presence

there—Gaston. Had there been rivers of blood, disfigurement, horrors,

they would not have stopped her for a moment; and, come as she was to

the end of the world where the great sea washes in, she saw nothing but

beauty and an unimagined splendour.

For a second, indeed, those four spires tipped with flame seemed a

strange distance off, and, measured even by steps, the way was long down

the great, silent room of gilt and marble, under the gaze of the painted

Olympus of the ceiling, which had looked on many scenes, but never on

the counterpart of this. Yet, with no remembrance of having traversed

it, she was there beside him.

He lay his full length, his head hardly raised on the rolled-up military

cloak which pillowed it, and he had for a pall the strip of ancient

tapestry from the sallette. The worn fabric covered his body from throat

to feet, but over its faded imagery his hands were folded lightly on his

breast, the fingertips just crossing each other. His head was turned a

very little towards the door by which she had entered, as if expecting

her; a faint gleam of gold at his side showed an inch or two of the

fringe of his scarf—her scarf—escaping from beneath the shrouding

tapestry. He did not now look more than five-and-forty, and, except that

he was mortally pale, he might have been asleep.

Valentine had no consciousness of death in presence of this incarnation

of dignity and repose. He had never seemed more alive, or closer to her.

Slowly she knelt down by him; slowly, and without a tremor, she kissed

him on the mouth. For her there were no more fever-fits of suspense, nor

ever would be again.

Then she contemplated him, lying there like a victor. This was his

return to the house he had so lightly quitted—a triumphal return, she

could feel it no otherwise. He had in death the same air of dominating

his surroundings that had been his in life, but with a serenity added

which it was hard to believe a violent end had given him. And whence had

he that air of absorption in some grave happiness of his own? She knew.

She had known this long while—was it an hour? . . . It was written too,

perhaps, in this letter. For here, alone with Gaston in this narrow

house of light, was the place to read his last message. When she broke

the seal of the letter a tiny packet slipped out on to the hands which

had put it there. Valentine let it lie; what need for haste?

“_There is not time_,” she read, “_there is not time to ask you

to come to me, Valentine, beloved, and perhaps it is best.

Indeed I did not intentionally deceive you yesterday when I said

that I should be allowed to see you again. The plan has not

failed; but it will never be put to the test now, and perhaps

that is best too._

“_I think you know, my dearest, that I look upon the perfidy

with which my life is taken from me as an opportunity which I

would not forego—though I tried not to put it to you too

directly yesterday when the issue was still in doubt. That life

itself is little enough to give, God knows, but at least it is

more than I should have been able to give had I been killed in

Brittany, where all we tried to do by the sword has proved so

vain. For to fall like this means immortal shame to the

conqueror, and you will see, Valentine, that the blot of the

violated safe-conduct and its sequel will not easily or soon be

washed from Bonaparte’s reputation, whatever lustre the future

may add to it; and so I like to think that my death will do more

for the cause than my life could ever have done. And if my sword

is broken, it is not taken from me. It is not I who have regrets

on the score of treachery. I have my chance thereby—and you

would surely be the last to stay me. For once, Valentine, you

gave me leave to die!_

“_The regret I have . . . O my darling, is there need to name

it? Yet you said, that last night at La Vergne, that we should

never know any happiness over the sea greater than that which we

have had, so briefly but so wonderfully, this autumn. It is

true, dearest, true a thousand times. We shall not now grow old

together, that is all._

“_I do not presume to dictate to you what you should do until we

meet again. You will know best. The Abbé is aware of my

dispositions for your future. They are safely in London; he will

tell you of them when he returns. I wish I could have seen him

again; I have written him a few lines—poor acknowledgment of

what he has been to me. I commend Roland to him, but most of all

to you, you being what you are. For him, too, Pierre knows my

wishes. And I ask de Brencourt’s pardon once more for what I

said to him at La Vergne when he tried to warn me. He has taken

the best revenge._

“_But, Valentine, I do not ask your pardon again for all the

past, for that would be to doubt you—a thing impossible. To my

last breath this morning I shall have you in my heart—and feel

you in my arms, perhaps, as on the shore that day in Finistère,

when it was you who wished to die because we were so happy. You

see, therefore, beloved, how small a thing it is, if one can do

it cheerfully—as I do._

“_I have not much more time. Old Bernard has gone to find a

priest, but I do not somehow think he will be successful. If I

must depart unshriven you will pray best for me, my heart of

hearts, for you know all the worst of me. For I desire to die as

I have not always lived, in the Catholic faith, the servant of

the King of France, and your most unworthy lover._”

It was dated that morning at a little before seven o’clock, and signed

with his full name, Gaston-Henri-Hippolyte-Gabriel-Eléonor de

Saint-Chamans, and with all his titles.

* * * * *

The letter fell from Valentine’s hands. No mention here of the pardon he

had spurned—no mention, for her sake. Ah, how much better she

understood yesterday now. “You tried to keep it from me,” she whispered,

“but I know your secret, O my knight without stain! I know why you look

like that! ‘_If one can do it cheerfully—as I do._’ If you could do it,

surely I can bear the knowledge of it!” And she clasped her hands in

acceptance above the piece of flotsam from other years that covered him

like a banner, whereon still lingered fragments of warriors and guidons

and waves and battlemented towers, and—unnoticed, perhaps, by the

reverent and hostile hands that spread it there—a border of the flower

which had sprung out of a soil of such past glories, the fleur-de-lys,

the symbol for which he had died. For she had very clearly the

conviction that she was speaking to him, that she would often speak to

him like this, as she might have spoken yesterday, but with all the

pain, the conflict of wills, gone from their intercourse—that they

would many times talk together thus, and that she would tell him over

and over again, “My heart, my hero! you did well . . . well!”

Then she saw the little packet lying where it had fallen, and took it up

again. It was no more than a folded square of paper with three words on

it; but out of it—pale, brittle, transparent as goldbeater’s skin, the

stain at their bases more deeply marked—floated the four pressed petals

of the yellow poppy she had once given him by the verge of that full sea

of joy. As before they fell—fell and scattered . . . but not this time

on the sand. Valentine’s hand shook suddenly. Her presentiment of that

day of rapture had come true; they did typify that love of theirs, so

late in blooming, so miraculous in its perfect flower, so soon cut

short. Ghosts of their former loveliness, they lay unstirred now on the

quiet breast. . . . And there, too, above her, as she knelt by Gaston

treacherously slain, there they were once more, wavering in the cold

air, pallid in the March daylight—four petals, each on a stem of wax,

significant and alive! Was this what the yellow sea-poppy had

foreshadowed—the petals of this encircling flower of death, between

which he lay so ivory-pale and would not speak to her nor move? . . .

Then he _was_ dead; she had not understood. He could not hear. Her head

began to turn; a cold, slow terror rose over her soul like a marsh-mist.

The air seemed full of flickering petals, flickering flames. As she had

stretched out her hands to Gaston that day by the menhirs, so now she

stretched them out again, but more blindly, in more desperate need—and

met his for the last time. And, cold though they were and motionless,

she clasped her own round them, and, stooping, covered them with kisses,

for they were still his hands . . . the hands that yesterday, about this

time, warm and strong, were holding hers. . . .

When that thought touched her, Valentine’s composure shattered to

fragments. She could not bear it. It was too much to ask of her, to

approve this cruel heroism. After so short a time . . . so short a time!

. . . O, if only she might follow Gaston now, if she might only lie here

cold beside him, where she was bowed in weeping such as she had never

known. . . . No, that was not for her; she saw instead a long

road. . . . And even in her anguish she found herself praying almost

unconsciously—but not for the accomplishment of that desire. In that

difficult prayer she seemed to drift a long way from the Salle Verte

. . . even to be, once, on the threshold of a strange region where grief

and joy were in some mysterious fashion fused into one awful beauty. And

Gaston was there with her. . . .

* * * * *

When she came back she found in her hand the little piece of paper that

had enclosed the petals, on which she saw that Gaston had written,

written recently, three words, no more. And they were the motto of his

house; _Memini et permaneo_—‘I remember and I remain . . . to the end.’

They wonderfully steadied her; they seemed the most direct message from

those closed, serene and half-smiling lips. And in this border country

between the four candle-flames, where her desire was accomplished and

her heart broken with its accomplishment, she saw clearly—and would

never quite lose the vision—the marvellous and splendid thing that had

come to them after those barren years: to both a great love, to her a

great sorrow, and to him that noble end which even the foe had envied

him—the opportunity, in a shaken time, of proving his fidelity to the

uttermost, the supreme honour of choosing death rather than belittle the

cause he served.

Yes, all, all that she had longed for him to show himself lay here

between the candles; and with it their love, safe for ever. And very

gently Valentine de Trélan gathered up from their restingplace the

almost bodiless petals of the yellow poppy which were thus given back to

her, and held them a moment in the curve of her hand. They seemed to

mean, now, even more than they had meant that day, since they had lain

on the heart which, in making so great a sacrifice, asked of her a

courage as great, a fortitude longer drawn. Yet it was a crown that she

would carry—sharp, but royal. She looked at the composed and beautiful

head on the soldier’s cloak.

“I am _his_ wife,” she said to herself, “—_his_ widow!”

THE END.

REPRODUCED AND PRINTED BY

LOWE & BRYDONE (PRINTERS) LIMITED,

101, PARK ST., CAMDEN TOWN, N.W.1.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

A few obvious printing errors have been silently corrected. Otherwise,

inconsistencies, variations and possible errors in spelling and grammar

have been preserved. Please note the following changes:

“though” changed to “through” and

“time” changed to “times”, both on p. 97.