BOOK III
“Why care by what meanders we are hereIn the centre of the labyrinth? Men have diedTrying to find this place, which we have found.”
“Why care by what meanders we are hereIn the centre of the labyrinth? Men have diedTrying to find this place, which we have found.”
“Why care by what meanders we are here
In the centre of the labyrinth? Men have died
Trying to find this place, which we have found.”
In a Balcony.
Because it was both midday and high summer, the thrushes that gave its pretty name to the old farmhouse of Le Clos-aux-Grives, near Lanvennec in Finistère, were not singing; and though the same hour of noon which silenced them called insistently for some voice from the large iron cooking-pot that hung over the fire in the living-room, the pot also was mute. Yet Lucien du Boisfossé, wearing as serious a face as that which he had bent over theÆneidat Hennebont, was seated on a stool near it, almost under the deep recessed hearth, and from time to time he would rise, take off the lid, and peer into its contents.
The youthful cook was not alone in the big, low room—far from it. On one of the aged black oak settles that ran out at right angles from the hearth was seated Artamène de la Vergne, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and a riding-switch between his hands. He was regarding his friend’s occupation with much the same amused criticism which he had bestowed on Roland’s bedmaking in M. Charlot’s attic four months ago. And at least a dozen other gentlemen, some quite young, some in the thirties or forties, were also in the room, talking and laughing. For though the three treasure-seekers who had formed part of the smaller gathering at Hennebont were still missing, their places, as far as numbers went, were amply filled.
The projects which had been discussed with Georges Cadoudal on that occasion were in a fair way of realisation to-day. Finistèrewasin process of organisation—at the cost of weeks of unremitting toil and danger, in which M. de Kersaint had personally traversed all the wildest districts of the department. As far as the promise of men went, the harvest was good, but, as usual, the pinch cameover arming them—and Mirabel had not yet yielded up its treasure. The chief source of encouragement, however, lay in the aspect of the political situation: the effect produced by the numerous Austrian and Russian victories of the spring and summer—not yet indeed come to an end, for it was the eve of Novi; the weariness of the country, still groaning under a detested but tottering government; the hopes based on the important Royalist movement centred in Bordeaux, which embraced Toulouse and Languedoc, and not a little, too, on the revulsion caused by the cruel operation of the Law of Hostages of July 12, which actually forced recruits into the Chouan camp.
Of the other Royalist leaders many were still in England. And the Marquis de Kersaint was not advertising himself; with the means at his disposal—for in no one place could he hope to get together a really formidable force—his aim, when the time came, was to surprise rather than to defy. Weeks, however, would probably elapse before concerted action was taken, and meanwhile he had still to find most of the arms and ammunition required. And, though he had his staff round him here, his men, hisgars, were, with certain exceptions, going about their usual avocations, cultivating their farms or preparing for harvest. Only, one day, when the whisper went round, the hoe and sickle would lie idle in the fields, and he who had been a small farmer would turn up in the likeness of a brigand at the rallying-place—Galoppe-la-Frime or Frappe d’Abord the Chouan.
In one thing alone was M. de Kersaint singular, in that he already had a regular headquarters and was able to occupy it unmolested. Even Cadoudal and his subordinates in the Morbihan judged it prudent to leave theirs by night, and sleep dispersed in the forest. That M. de Kersaint and his officers could remain with impunity at the Clos-aux-Grives, that despatches found their way there and that it was the discreet centre of a continual going and coming of emissaries, as the work of organisation advanced towards completion, was owing to the fact that it stood in furthest Finistère, the most remote and untouched part of the intractable West. It was too difficult for the Blues, as they were termed, to get at it.
And so, in this large farm-house, once amanoir, all but the superior officers of M. de Kersaint’s staff were awaiting their noontide meal this August day. The old greenish glass in the tiny panes admitted a tempered light, but the room was large enough to have windows on both sides, and it was a pleasant apartment. At night it was used as a dormitory by the younger officers, who slept on pallets on the floor, for which reason, and also because it was mainly ‘les jeunes’ who inhabited it at any time, M. du Ménars, acting second-in-command till the Comte de Brencourt’s return, had christened it ‘the nursery’—earning thereby small gratitude from Lucien and Artamène and their peers. On the long table, dark with the polish of ages, were set platters, horn spoons and forks, bowls of the cheerful Quimper ware, and jugs of cider, but the meal, whatever its nature, seemed to be dependent on the boiling of Lucien’s pot, to which process, indeed, other eyes than Artamène’s were directed.
M. de la Vergne himself was moved at last to expostulate, though as a matter of fact he had only come into the ‘nursery’ five minutes before. Stretching out an arm, he tapped the pot with his switch, and said gently, “What is in this receptacle, my good Lucien? Stones?”
“I am sure I don’t know,” replied M. du Boisfossé in a rather exasperated voice. “They brought it in here from the kitchen, and said it would finish cooking nicely, if I would just see that the fire was kept up. And I’ve put sticks and sticks on the wretched thing——”
“And blacked your face into the bargain,” finished his friend brutally. “I expect it is the mortal part of that superannuated cow I have seen about. . . . Never mind, time conquers all things, even cows. Put on yet more sticks, and while the old lady simmers I will tell you a piece of news. M. le Marquis is going to recall—you can guess whom!”
“Not our long-lost Roland?” exclaimed Lucien, starting up.
Artamène nodded. “If you agitate yourself, mon ami, you will knock your head against the hearth next. Yes, it appears that the convalescent adventurer has written him so penitent and piteous a letter from Kerlidec that our leader’s heart is softened, and he is writing to tell Rolandthat he may rejoin us. You have heard, of course, gentlemen,” he went on, addressing a little group of newly-joined young officers who had strolled over to the hearth, “how our paladin was unhorsed at Roncesvalles—that is to say, winged by the guard of the enchanted castle of Mirabel. But he did not fall into the hands of the Saracens, like M. de Brencourt, his successor, for the princess who inhabits the same, in other words, the concierge, taking pity on him, nursed and smuggled him out of Mirabel again to his relatives in Paris. Thence, when he was sufficiently recovered, the poor Roland returned home to, I am afraid, a very irate grandparent.—Keep the dowager going, Lucien!”
“And now you say that Charlemagne has relented, and is going to summon him here?” said Lucien, taking up his friend’s metaphor. “What a mercy!”
“I suppose M. le Marquis has been anxious about M. de Céligny?” suggested one of the newcomers.
“Yes, very anxious—and more than anxious, exceedingly angry,” replied M. du Boisfossé. “Isn’t that so, Artamène.”
“Parbleu!” remarked M. de la Vergne, making a face.
“Do you mean angry with you, Chevalier?” pursued the enquirer. “Why?”
“Because I had a hand in M. de Céligny’s enterprise,” explained Artamène, sighing gently. “I would fain have shared it altogether, but I was winged myself then. We planned it together in our retirement last spring—if what we had to leave so largely to chance can be said to have had a plan. And then, when Roland had set out, his grandfather wrote to the Marquis to know what had become of him, and M. le Marquis sent to me, and out it all came . . . at least, most of it. I said that Roland had gone to visit his cousins in Paris, which was true, but not, I must confess, the whole truth. If I may venture a counsel, gentlemen, to such of you as are newcomers, always tell the whole truth when you are dealing with M. le Marquis.”
“And when didyoutell the whole truth, then, La Vergne?”
“When I came here,” replied Artamène. He beat a little tattoo on one boot with his riding-switch, and addedin a feeling voice, but with a laugh in the corner of his eye, “—a memorable day.”
“Dies nefas,” commented Lucien.
“And M. de Kersaint was displeased with you?”
“Displeased!” exclaimed the culprit. “Had I possessed the gift of metamorphosis the shape of a mouse, a spider—of a gnat, even—had speedily been mine.”
A laugh went round his audience.
“But,” objected someone, “I do not see in your case, Chevalier, the reason for this excessive wrath at which you hint.”
“Well, for one thing,” returned Artamène pensively, “M. le Marquis had definitely forbidden either of us to go to Mirabel, whereas I . . . and my family . . . had certainly encouraged Roland’s expedition. Then the Marquis seemed to consider also that I had deceived him about Roland by merely telling him of his visit to those confounded cousins (which of course I did solely to shield Roland). In fact he characterised my conduct by a very unpleasant term which I am not going to repeat. (However, we have since made it up, Charlemagne and I.) And thirdly, to such of us as have seen them together, it is undeniable that between M. le Marquis and the Vicomte de Céligny there subsists——”
“Chut!” said the prudent Lucien, holding up a finger.
“Mais, au nom de Dieu, pourquoichut?” demanded Artamène in a voice of injured innocence. “I was merely going to say that there subsisted between them a special affection, of which I, for one, am not in the least jealous. What is the harm in that remark?”
Nobody present either condemned or absolved him, but one or two who in the spring had seen the couple together turned away to hide a smile.
“I still cannot quite understand,” remarked Lucien judicially, “how this good fairy of a concierge came to be inhabiting Mirabel. I thought that the place was in the hands of the Directory, and surely their nominee——”
“We shall have to wait until the Abbé or M. de Brencourt returns to discover that,” said Artamène. “I gathered that M. le Marquis expects the latter any day now; it seems, from what the Abbé wrote, a foregone conclusion that he would succeed in escaping from the Temple.”
“How?” asked Lucien, his head almost in the procrastinating pot.
“Mainly by the use of the root of all evil, mon cher—in plainer language, by bribery. I thought you knew that.”
“And M. le Comte did not get the treasure from Mirabel?” asked a newcomer.
“No, the booty is left to the Church to secure. And, do you know, I shall stake my money on the Church’s success.”
“I wish Roland could have got it,” murmured Lucien.
“So do I,” said Artamène. “So does . . . my family.” He got up and stretched himself. “But, dear me, we were very young last spring! I am older now, and wiser—much wiser. And as for poor Roland, he must have attained to such a pitch of sagacity that——” He suddenly stopped and remained fixed, his arms extended, and, staring at an open casement said, “Morbleu, talk of the devil!”
“What is it?” exclaimed several voices, their owners following his gaze, while Lucien sprang up and had exactly that encounter with the overhanging hearth which his friend had predicted.
“May I be shot if that is not the Comte de Brencourt in person, just ridden into the courtyard!” And Artamène dashed to the window, followed by almost everybody else.
But in a moment he had turned away again, shaking his head. “Too late!” he said disappointedly. “He will go straight to M. le Marquis now. Besides, he did not look as if he would be communicative; he had his mouth shut like a strongbox.” And he regretfully strolled back to the fire, which the sedulous Lucien had not deserted. “Good Heavens, philosopher, isn’t that soufflé of yours cooked yet?”
“I think,” said M. du Boisfossé, prodding about with a fork, one hand pressed to his head, “that I shall assume the process.”
About the time that the contents of Lucien’s pot were becoming only a tough memory, the Marquis de Kersaint was standing, with his hands behind his back, looking out through the casement of the small room on the upper floor of the Clos-aux-Grives which was set apart for his sole use, and out of which led a still smaller bedroom. Under his gaze was the farmyard, still stocked with chickens and pigs, and then, almost at once, came the outposts of the great forest which stretched for many miles to the south-west, and whose friendly presence had been one of his reasons for his choice of headquarters. From the window of the inner room could be seen also the low bare contours of the lande, studded with menhirs.
M. de Kersaint, however, was not occupied with the view. He was thinking about the singularly unsatisfactory interview which he had just had with his returned chief of staff. For M. de Brencourt would hardly answer any questions about his doings, seemed to know almost nothing of the unusual concierge at Mirabel (of whom, and of whose services to Roland M. de Kersaint had heard from the Abbé) and, when taxed with having written from the Temple, as he had, a letter dissuading his leader from sending another emissary after the treasure, could only reply that he supposed, at his age, captivity was extinguishing to the sense of adventure. And, when closer pressed as to why he had stated in so many words that the gold was impossible to get at and the place closely guarded, whereas the Abbé had just written exactly the opposite, he had made no answer at all. Decidedly, in view of the effect which Mirabel had had on him, it would have been better not to have sent him at all.
The Marquis turned at last from the window. He had discarded the peasant’s dress now-a-days, and wore a dark-greenuniform with black facings, with the little red and white ribbon of the Order of Maria Theresa on the breast, and a white scarf round the waist. Out of a small travelling safe near the window he took some letters, and re-read Roland de Céligny’s ashamed appeal with something between a smile and a frown. After that, obeying the instinct which so often pushes a man to do what hurts him, he re-read also the three biting epistles from M. de Carné which Roland’s action had brought upon him. The first was thus conceived:
“Monsieur le ‘Marquis,’I am most reluctant to enter into a correspondence with you, but as I am confined to my bed with an attack of gout, I cannot carry out my first intention of coming in person to see you. Six days have now passed since you disbanded your cohort of young men, yet Roland has not been sent back to me according to the promise on which I was weak enough to rely. Where is the boy?”
“Monsieur le ‘Marquis,’
I am most reluctant to enter into a correspondence with you, but as I am confined to my bed with an attack of gout, I cannot carry out my first intention of coming in person to see you. Six days have now passed since you disbanded your cohort of young men, yet Roland has not been sent back to me according to the promise on which I was weak enough to rely. Where is the boy?”
This was the first intimation which the Marquis had received that Roland was missing. Alarmed and angry, he wrote to the old man in that sense, but his disclaimer did not prevent his meanwhile receiving a second missive, now in his hand. “I find by a letter which has just reached me from my grandson, that instead of sending him back to me, you have despatched him on a secret and doubtless dangerous mission to Paris, for that he can really have gone of his own initiative, as he says, I refuse to believe. I regret that my present infirmity, by making it impossible for me to offer you satisfaction, renders it impossible also for me to tell you what I think of your conduct—though, to be frank, that conduct does not surprise me.”
M. de Kersaint, greatly roused, had answered that for his part he regretted his respect for the Baron’s grey hairs should prevent his replying in the strain to which he was tempted, stating, however, that he did not send Roland to Paris, that on the contrary he had forbidden him to go, that he had only that day heard of his disobedience, and that he was at once instituting enquiries after him in the capital. His anxiety and his displeasure, he added, were not less than M. de Carné’s own.
To which the old man had replied with brevity and effect:
“I have only to say that, to my bitter grief, I see at last in Roland the dawn of those qualities whose appearance I have always so much dreaded. He is indeed his father’s son.”
Even now the reader flushed as his eyes met this thrust, and he had been far angrier when he first received it—angry with himself too for having protected his own honour by revealing the boy’s disobedience. He might as well have taken the blame on his own shoulders, since the old man had contrived after all to put the responsibility there—on the score of that paternity which, during that visit to Kerlidec last February, M. de Carné had at length been obliged to acknowledge. . . .
Had it not been for the existence of Roland himself that brief amour with Laure de Céligny, more than twenty years ago, would have seemed now as unreal as a dream. It had come to pass so suddenly, been over so soon. Down there at Saint-Chamans, in the south of olives and nightingales and orange blossom (the south to which, for some reason, his wife so unwillingly and so seldom accompanied him) passion flared up quickly. Yet of the Vicomtesse Laure alone, among the many women who had loved him and the few he had loved, Gaston de Trélan had a particularly gentle memory. She had seemed to him like a dove in a cypress-tree.
The episode ended. That it had ever been was not discovered till Laure’s sudden death, coming to light then only through the single letter her lover had written her, which (of course) she had kept. M. de Céligny wrote to him. The Duc de Trélan posted down from Paris to the olives and the nightingales and offered him satisfaction. Very greatly to his surprise it was refused. The Vicomte de Céligny—the cypress-tree—intimated that, though he had proof enough that M. de Trélan had been his wife’s lover, he had none that Roland (now two years old) was not his own son. He should consider him his own, and a duel, whatever its result, could only bring disrepute on the name of his dead wife. Roland should succeed to his estates, and the Duc had no claim on him whatever. A strange interview.
So it was, and for three years the Duc heard nothingmore, and never visited his possessions in the south. Then he learnt, incidentally, that the child had been sent to his grandfather in Brittany to be brought up. The move, after de Céligny’s declaration, puzzled him extremely, and in the end he went to Kerlidec to investigate the matter. The fiery temper of the Baron de Carné, who had worshipped his dead daughter, led to the meeting which his son-in-law had declined, and the fact that Gaston de Trélan, a singularly fine swordsman, and a much younger man than himself (being then about six-and-thirty) disarmed him with ease, only increased M. de Carné’s bitter resentment against him as the seducer—so he termed him—of his Laure. No more than his son-in-law would he acknowledge the Duc’s claim on the child, and forbade him, if he had any regard for Laure’s memory, to see the boy again.
But M. de Trélan had seen the five-year-old Roland at that very visit, and the sight was enough to explain why M. de Céligny had sent him away. At that age more than later, his resemblance to his real father was unmistakable; apparently M. de Céligny had not been able to bear this speaking witness to his wife’s frailty, though it seemed that he had not moved from his intention of acknowledging him as his heir. To M. de Carné the beautiful boy was merely the child of his beloved Laure. . . . The Duc said that he would undertake not to see him again during his supposed father’s lifetime; further than that he would not go. He had kept his word.
But now he could claim, had claimed, if not the full rights of a father—for he had promised not to reveal his relationship till Roland was of age—at least some control over his movements. It was doubly unfortunate then, that Roland had acted as he had about Mirabel. Was it true that he had handed down to the boy his own bad qualities—left conveniently unnamed in that stinging remark of M. de Carné’s? At any rate, he thought now with a bitter smile, “I have not yet seen traces in the sweet-tempered Roland of being his grandfather’s grandson.” And, lighting a candle, he burnt the Baron’s three letters to ashes.
But there was a fourth—that which had come with Roland’s—and it was couched in a milder vein. Roland had evidently succeeded in convincing his grandfatherthat the Marquis de Kersaint was far indeed from having had a hand in his escapade, and the Baron had consequently penned a rather stiff apology for his former insinuations, and, in addition, an obviously reluctant request for Roland’s recall to the Royalist colours, since he was, he confessed, eating his heart out at Kerlidec. M. de Kersaint had thereupon recalled the culprit.
So, in a week now, he might expect Roland in person. He must do his best to show him just the amount of severity that he would have done to Lucien or Artamène, no less and no more. It would not be easy. The boy’s misdemeanour sprang after all from no worse fault than want of thought, and its very foolhardiness went far to redeem it. Suppose he had paid for it with his life!
And as he locked the safe, the Marquis said to himself, “How am I ever going to repay that woman for saving the child?”
M. le Général Marquis de Kersaint and M. le Comte de Brencourt supped together that evening. The latter was no longer a treasure-hunter; he was M. de Kersaint’s second-in-command, and he had been out of touch with his leader and the organisation of Finistère for some weeks. He had to be initiated into the present state of Royalist affairs in the department, and there were also a quantity of other matters to discuss: the proposed Anglo-Russian landing at the Texel, and how it would affect the West, how much weight Pichegru’s name would carry when he appeared as a Royalist, and as ever, the difficulties created by the vacillating conduct of the Comte d’Artois’ advisers.
And over their meal they did discuss these, but, as they were neither of them men to waste words on a situation, they got through pretty quickly, and towards the end of the repast the Comte was able to gratify the curious desire he now seemed to have to talk about Mirabel.
“A monstrous fine place, you know, Marquis,” he observed for the second time, refilling his glass.
“Is it?” said M. de Kersaint with indifference.
“Well, you must realise that it is!” retorted the Comte. “You speak as if you had never seen it.”
“I have seen it very seldom.”
“If that is so, then, parbleu, you have an astoundingmemory for topographical details! The accuracy of the plan of the interior you made for me was astounding, considering that you had only been there once.”
“I never said, surely, that I had only been there once.”
“Your pardon, then. You gave me to understand as much, I thought, when you drew me the plan.”
“Did I? I have no recollection of having said so, for as a matter of fact I must have been there quite three times in my life.”
The Comte smiled curiously. “Your plan becomes less miraculous then. But even so, the owner or someone must have conducted you into every hole and corner on the ground floor.”
To this deduction M. de Kersaint made no response. The Comte drank off a glass of wine, and then, just perceptibly taking a breath as one addressing himself to a plunge, said, “Did you ever see the Duchesse during any of your—three visits?”
“No,” replied the Marquis, his eyes on the stem of his wineglass. “She was not there. She was often elsewhere. They had several other properties.”
“A great pity,” observed M. de Brencourt meaningly, “that she was not elsewhere in August, ’92. Why in God’s name did she not emigrate?”
“My dear Comte, how can I say?” retorted M. de Kersaint, twisting the wineglass round and round. (Had he turned paler?)
“I wonder,” said his companion reflectively, “if her husband ever gave her the chance of going with him?”
How can a man in mental agony, however proud and determined, suppress every sign of what he is suffering? Yet only a very close observer could have seen the throbbing of the vein at the Marquis de Kersaint’s temple. And this observer, though watching as the proverbial cat the mouse, missed it.
“You seem to forget,” returned M. de Kersaint rather haughtily, “that my kinsman is a gentleman. And, for the matter of that, the Duchesse could have gone at any time between ’90 and ’92.”
“Quite true. And might be alive now had she done so.”
“So might many other people, if it comes to that.”
“It was a wise precaution, certainly, leaving France.I suppose one may say you oweyourlife to it, de Kersaint?”
“Possibly,” said his leader shortly. “More probably I owe it to Josef Schnitterl. Pass me the wine if you have done with it, please.”
The Comte’s glance lit for an instant on the scrap of ribbon on the speaker’s breast. It was Schnitterl, the Marquis’s Austrian body-servant—not long ago serving their meal—who, as he was never tired of relating, had found his master half-dead on the battlefield of Rivoli.
“If Mme de Trélan had emigrated,” the tormentor pursued, “the Duc would be spared the burden of remorse which he carries—or does not carry, as the case may be.” With that he pushed the bottle of wine towards his companion and looked him full in the face.
But M. de Kersaint, though rather white about the mouth, met the look quite steadily. “Thank you,” he said, taking the bottle. But he offered no remark on the subject of the Duc de Trélan’s problematical burden.
“Do you know, de Kersaint,” shot out the Comte suddenly, watching him as he filled his glass, “that there is a portrait at Mirabel which reminded me very strongly of you—of what you must have been when you were younger.”
“Well, you know I am kin to the family.” He had not spilled a drop of wine.
“But by marriage only!” riposted the Comte like lightning. “You laid some stress on that once.”
The Marquis shrugged his shoulders. “You forgot that, I expect, when you thought you saw a likeness. Some people,” he pursued with commendable sangfroid, “are always seeing resemblances of that sort in relations by marriage.”
“Indeed! Well, you might have sat for this picture! I saw it when I was arrested, for I was taken up into the room where all your—I mean your kinsman’s—family portraits now hang. Camain, the Deputy of whom I have told you, happened to be there with a party of friends, including his bonne amie, Mlle Dufour—the actress, Rose Dufour.”
“Yes?”
“It was piquant to see her there, with her great bourgeois admirer, going round the Duc’s china under the eyesof all his ancestors—and under someone else’s, too,” he added mentally, “and must have been even more piquant for her—the Duc’s former mistress.”
“His mistress!” exclaimed M. de Kersaint sharply. “That she never was!”
The Comte looked a rather mocking surprise. He had not expected to draw de Kersaint thus, for he believed what he said. “What, you can answer for your kinsman’s private life to that extent, Marquis! You must have known him pretty well, then, after all!”
“I knew him well enough to be sure that that story has no foundation,” retorted his companion with a frown.
“Ah! Was he then such a puritan, the Duc de Trélan?”
“Certainly not. But every man draws the line somewhere.”
“I see,” observed M. de Brencourt, looking down with a smile at the tablecloth. “Your noble relative thought too highly of himself to lay his purse at the feet of an opera singer, yet he did not scruple to leave his wife to years of penury. The world, as you must recognise, would have thought nothing of the first—a mere peccadillo—the second——” He shrugged his shoulders.
Obsessed with the ineffaceable picture of the Duchesse in her shabby dress, he looked up to see how it was faring with his victim after this venomous thrust. The latter was gazing at him, sufficiently ghastly indeed, but with so much astonishment that the Comte realised his slip.
“Years of penury!” said the Marquis harshly. “What are you talking of, de Brencourt? Mme de Trélan was amply provided for during the two years of the Duc’s emigration, and at her . . . death” (it was evident that he could scarcely bring out the word) “she certainly was not poor!”
And at that M. de Brencourt himself went white. Good Heavens, supposing that in the delight of torturing him he let out something vital, as he had almost done now. He must curb his tongue. “No, no, that is true, I suppose,” he stammered. “I ought to beg M. de Trélan’s pardon for saying that. . . .”
“I think you ought to beg his pardon for a good dealelse that you have said about him,” remarked M. de Trélan’s kinsman stiffly.
“Why, so I would, perhaps,—if he were here,” replied M. de Brencourt, shutting his eyes.
His leader looked at him contemptuously for a moment, then he said, “It is perhaps fortunate that he is not.—Well, did you collect any morechroniques scandaleusesat Mirabel?”
The colour returned to the Comte’s face under the tone.
“No. One item, however, may interest you—as a kinsman by marriage. Her portrait is no longer at Mirabel.”
“Whose portrait?”
“The late Duchesse’s.” His secret felt safer now behind that adjective.
A moment’s pause. “What had happened to it then?”
“When the mob broke in that day, the mob which she had to face alone—picture it, de Kersaint!—some ruffian with a pike dashed his weapon through it. No doubt he would have liked——”
“Who told you that—about the portrait?” interrupted the Marquis, setting down his glass. He had not drunk; and this time there was a stain on the cloth.
“Who told me?—The concierge,” replied M. de Brencourt after a second’s hesitation.
“Ah, this concierge about whom you are so unwilling to tell me anything, although the Abbé’s success or failure may possibly depend upon her.”
“Unwilling—I!” exclaimed the Comte harshly. “There is nothing to tell. She did not save me, like Roland.” A sneer crept into his voice. “And probably in Roland’s case it was merely that he is a taking youth, and she felt compassion for him, or——” An idea seemed suddenly to come into his mind that struck him silent for a moment; then with half a laugh he muttered, “No, morbleu, it could hardly have been that! On the contrary!”
“You are mysterious,” observed his leader coldly. “And I repeat that, since you knew this friendly woman to be in charge at Mirabel, I cannot understand your trying to dissuade me from a further attempt on the treasure.”
M. de Brencourt looked at the ceiling. “Possibly you cannot,” he returned very slowly. “But I rememberedthat one woman had already gone to prison—and worse—from Mirabel, and I did not——”
The Marquis leant forward. “Do you mean to insinuate,” he said hotly, “that I wish to make use of a woman and leave her to pay? Because if so, Monsieur de Brencourt——”
He checked himself abruptly. “Come in!”
The knock at the door had heralded Lucien du Boisfossé, who stood there saluting and signifying that thechef de cantoncalled ‘Sincèree’ had sent a messenger who would like to speak to the General at once.
“Show him up,” said M. de Kersaint. “No—wait! I’ll see him downstairs. Excuse me, Comte.” And he was gone.
M. de Brencourt looked after him with an unpleasant smile; then he poured himself out another glass of wine and drank it down.
Next evening M. du Ménars and another officer were also at supper.
Lucien du Boisfossé and Artamène de la Vergne would not have been themselves—particularly Artamène—if they had not remarked, during the next few days, that a state of curious restraint had come into existence between their leader and his chief of staff, the Comte de Brencourt. Indeed, apart from any intercourse that he held with M. de Kersaint, no one could fail to see that the Comte had returned from his mission another and a much less agreeable person. As Artamène remarked, he had never been genial in his manners, but at least he had some manners; now he seemed to have left them with the abandoned treasure at Mirabel. His moodiness and irritability vented themselves on all his subordinates, and he would harry gentleman and peasant alike for not saluting with sufficient precision, or not mounting guard properly. Indeed, the Chevalier de la Vergne opined that there might be a mutiny among the Chouans, caused for no other reason than that M. de Brencourt had something on his mind—wasrongéwith something or other, as he put it.
To what it could be that was thus gnawing at him the two young men then applied their wits, and, suddenly remembering that night at Hennebont, arrived without much trouble at a theory not very far removed from the truth. With the facile, half-contemptuous pity of youth, they threw a hasty crumb of sympathy to the elder man, obliged to return to the house where had lived the murdered lady for whom he had then confessed his admiration. Still, they wished it had not made him so unpleasant.
But Artus de Brencourt was to be pitied—and condemned—for reasons more acute than ‘les jeunes’ had divined.
He had come back to the Clos-aux-Grives after his escape from prison not only because, in the position he held, itwas his plain duty to do so, but also because even a momentary return to Mirabel, where all his desire was set, would most certainly have involved Mme de Trélan in suspicion, or so he considered. Madly as he craved to see her again, his love was sufficiently unselfish to shrink from that. But he had by no means abandoned his intention of breaking down her opposition to his suit. When he got back to Finistère, and found that the Abbé had been despatched to Mirabel in spite of his letter of dissuasion (which had been prompted in reality less by fear for her safety than by anxiety about the preservation of her incognito) he decided that he must wait at the Clos-aux-Grives till the latter’s return, for, successful or unsuccessful, the priest would certainly bring some information about the concierge and the state of affairs at the château. Then he could make up his mind to his next move.
But there were tormenting elements in this course. If the Abbé proved unsuccessful in his quest, it was quite likely—having regard to the issues for Finistère hanging on the securing of the gold—that the Marquis himself would resolve to go after it, and then. . . . Or again, suppose that M. Chassin were successful, and that his very success brought “Mme Vidal” into suspicion? Prison at least would face her again—possibly deportation. Or, almost worst of all, suppose the self-contained little priest, anything but a fool, and deep, as he always suspected, in de Kersaint’s confidence, should discover who she was. What was there, indeed, to prevent her telling him? It was hardly surprising that during these days of suspense M. de Brencourt developed into a martinet.
For he had besides to endure the close daily companionship of the man he hated, envied, pretended to despise, admired, the man who—so he chose to put it—had deserted Valentine, the man who nevertheless had had for nineteen years the rights of a husband and to whom perhaps she was, in spite of everything, not indifferent. Had she not all but swooned at the news of his death, though he had so completely cast her off? That she might conceivably care for Gaston de Trélan still, that was the horrible doubt which gnawed at the Comte’s heart—almost more than a doubt in the hours when he allowed himself to realise how little foundation he had for the charges which he hadmade against the Duc. But he fed himself on those accusations till he had come almost to believe in their truth. Theymustbe true—else why had he found Mme de Trélan under a false name, in an inconceivable situation, and ignorant whether her husband were alive or dead? He must have treated her abominably, or she would long ago have taken steps to join him! And now that, since his visit to Mirabel, suspicion as to de Kersaint’s identity existed no longer, for heknew, the perpetual craving to wound, to avenge himself—and her—together with the intoxicating consciousness of the secret which he held, and which he meant to keep for ever from the one man on earth who had a right to know it, and to whom it would mean, as he guessed, at the lowest estimation release from hell, and perhaps much more—all these were driving him insensibly to a precipice which now he could see gaping in front of him and that other man almost with joy, for even if both of them fell over it he cared little, provided they fell together.
The last day or two had lent a more sinister purpose to his gibes. It began to be clear to him that he could not even wait for the Abbé’s return, which might take place any day now. For what if he brought the news of the presence at Mirabel of something far more wonderful and precious than what he had gone to search for? All would be over then;hewould certainly go to her. . . . The prospect was intolerable; the only way to render it impossible of realisation was to provoke de Kersaint—if he could—before the priest’s return. And despite the astonishing armour of self-control which the Marquis had succeeded in buckling on, the latter was beginning to lose patience at last.
The Comte saw it, and hugged the knowledge. Everything that he could say, short of direct personal insult, he had said to him whenever he had the chance, during the last four days. And he knew that his victim, unless he revealed his identity, was helpless to do more than resent his insinuations, since they were all directed against that presumably absent person, the Duc de Trélan. But the veil was wearing very thin now. The hour would soon come when the man who had woven it would be forced to tear it asunder with his own hands.
It had been a trying day, sultry, and overshadowed by the threat of thunder without its relief. A despatch had come too from a subordinate to say that the zeal of the recruits in his region was sensibly diminishing because only one in four could be armed. As usual for the last three nights, there had been one or two other officers to supper. M. de Brencourt could smile, now, at that effort at self-protection on the Marquis’s part. Hatred, like love, will find out the way. Yet he had not hoped that he could bring about the explosion that very evening.
After the other officers had withdrawn and the supper dishes were removed, M. de Kersaint was obliged to consult his chief of staff about the news which had just arrived. Nor, to do him justice, did the Comte de Brencourt give to the matter in hand much less attention than he would have done had their relations been perfectly normal.
At the end M. de Kersaint remarked that unless the gold from Mirabel was in their hands soon it would come too late to be of use.
“You have not heard further from the Abbé then?” asked his second-in-command, though he was aware that he had not.
“Not a word.”
“He may be arrested—the whole attempt a failure then, for all we know?”
“Yes,” said de Kersaint with a little sigh. “And with it the best of our hopes for Finistère.”
De Brencourt shook his head in an affectation of sympathy.
“I wonder you can sleep at night, Marquis, with so much on your mind!”
The proud grey eyes met his. “I do not find it difficult, thanks,” returned his leader drily, and he got up and went to the window, where he pulled aside the rough curtain and looked out. Moonlight came in when he did so.
The Comte made a movement as though to go, but he still lingered, his eyes fixed on the back turned to him.
“It begins to look as if Mirabel had proved as fatal to the Abbé as to Roland and myself and . . . its late mistress,” he observed.
“We must hope not,” replied the Marquis after a moment, drumming lightly on the window pane.
“I feel sure,” went on the Comte, “that, from what I have heard of him, de Trélan’s remorse over that business—assuming that he felt any—would be due rather to the damage suffered by his own reputation than to any affection for his wife. Don’t you think that is probable, de Kersaint?”
The man at the window suddenly flung open the casement as though he needed air. And indeed there was sweat on his forehead.
“By the way,” pursued his tormentor, as though struck by a sudden idea, “I don’t believe I ever asked you, Marquis, who was de Trélan’s heir? He had nolegitimatechildren, I fancy?”
There was a momentary pause.
“No,” said M. de Kersaint, without moving. “The Duc de Savary-Lancosme, his cousin-german, would have come into most of his property.” And he shut the window again.
“Is Savary-Lancosme alive?”
“He was guillotined in ’94.”
“Humph. He must sleep more soundly, then, than his cousin.”
The Marquis de Kersaint dropped the curtain over the moonlit casement and half turned round. “I really do not know why he should,” he said shortly, yet speaking, as was evident, with the most careful self-restraint. “Shall we say good-night now, Comte?”
A very little more and he might do it, if he could only hit on the right thing. So, instead of taking this broad hint, the Comte de Brencourt sat down carelessly on the table.
“I wonder,” he observed slowly, and with a sort of casual reflectiveness, “ifthatwas the reason of de Trélan’s . . . poltroonery.”
He waited, after that last substantive, either for an explosion, or for a question as to what he meant. Neither came. But, glancing across the zone of lamplight to the window, he saw the smitten rigidity of his victim, and was filled with hope.
“I mean,” he explained, “the fact of the late Duchesse’s childlessness . . . Poor lady!”
Luck had served him far better than he could ever know. He had stabbed at the rawest wound of all, the most torturing memory. The Marquis swung round with clenched hands.
“And who gave you the right to make suppositions about the private affairs of the Duc and Duchesse de Trélan, Monsieur?” he demanded in a voice of hardly suppressed fury.
The Comte got off the table and looked at him.
“The same Fates, I imagine,” he answered coolly, “which caused the Duchesse to stand, in her lifetime, so sadly in need of some champion, by making her husband what he was—what he is!”
And at that the string snapped entirely. M. de Kersaint strode round the table. “Mort de ma vie! this is insufferable! Monsieur de Brencourt, I have borne insolence and innuendo from you long enough! I have been far too patient——”
“The innuendo, Monsieur,” broke in de Brencourt with a grim exultation, “the innuendo, since you term it so, shall be dropped. God knows I desire nothing better! Anything that I have said of the Duc de Trélan I will repeat to the Duc de Trélan’s face. You cannot retort that that is an idle boast! Have I not recently seen a certain portrait in primrose satin at Mirabel?”
The original of that portrait put his hand for a second over his eyes. But it was only for a second; then he faced his enemy, his head high, and said, with blazing scorn,
“It is an idle boast, and a cowardly! You have insulted me past endurance—have gone on doing it—and yet you know I cannot demand satisfaction. Is that chivalry?”
“Cannot demand satisfaction?” cried the Comte de Brencourt with a sneer. “And why not, pray? Are you still intent on keeping up the farce of the Duc de Trélan’s being somewhere far away—somewheresafe—somewhere where you have to write letters to him . . . the farce of his not being in this very room, standing on the identical spot you are standing on now?”
“You know I do not mean that!” retorted M. de Kersaint, white with fury. “I mean that you have gone on in your underhand and venomous persecution, knowing that, placed in such a position as mine, I could not call youto account for it. You have done a despicable thing knowing that you were safe from consequences, but some day—some day, by God,—you shall give me full reparation for your conduct!”
The Comte, darkly flushed, was gripping the hilt of his sword with his left hand. “I will give it you to-night—with all my heart!” he said between his teeth.
“Do not be absurd, Monsieur!” said his leader sharply. “You are beside yourself to suggest such a thing. Howcouldwe go out, you and I, the general and the second-in-command of the army of Finistère! The whole of the West would ring with the scandal. We must part, that is plain, but we cannot fight . . . unfortunately.”
The Comte saw the precipice receding. He gathered himself together for a final effort.
“Then, Monsieur le Duc de Trélan,” he said, “give me leave to tell you that, my opinion of your past behaviour being unchanged, I must now add to it what I think of your present. You have not redeemed yourself by these last years—by that business of Rivoli and the rest. You are, as you always were . . .un lâche!”
He had reached his goal. That intolerable word, delivered moreover like the sting of a whip, was too much for the determination of the proud nature at which it was flung.
“Will you fight me now?” asked de Brencourt, watching him.
“Yes!” said Gaston de Trélan with a gasp, and, as though to seal his reversed decision and make it impossible to withdraw from it, he struck the Comte with the back of his hand, but quite lightly, across the mouth.
“Thank you!” said the latter, apparently accepting the formal blow in the same spirit. “I thought you would see reason in the end.” He passed his handkerchief across his lips and became business-like. “We cannot fight here, that is plain. And we must dispense with seconds.”
“There is a full moon,” said the Duc de Trélan curtly. “We must go to the forest. By that dolmen they call the Moulin-aux-Fées would serve. There is a level clearing there.”
“Yes, that would serve admirably. We must provide some excuse—say we are anxious to make a reconnaissanceor something of the kind—since I suppose it is impossible to get out without being seen. Nobody should suspect . . . unless one of us does not come back. Then it will be—the work of some lurking Republican.”
M. de Kersaint nodded. “And the weapons? Swords, I presume.”
“I should prefer swords,” said his adversary. “Unfortunately”—he looked doubtfully at his right hand—“I am afraid that since the affair of la Croix-Fendue my wrist is still too stiff for anything so delicate as sword-play.”
“I had forgotten that. It must be pistols then. We shall have to go further off, that is all. Who is officer of the guard to-night?”
“Young La Vergne, I am afraid,” said the Comte.
The Marquis consulted his watch. “Shall we say in half an hour, then?” he suggested. “I have one or two matters that I must set in order, in case I fall; you doubtless the same. And if I fall, Comte, the command devolves naturally on you—at least till you hear from Edinburgh. Possibly you would be confirmed in the command of Finistère.” He spoke quite dispassionately, as if he were one of the seconds in whose hands, had not the circumstances been unusual, the conduct of the affair would have rested, and going to the little travelling safe began to unlock it. De Brencourt picked up some papers he had brought with him and went to the door.
“You have only to mark anything you wish ‘Private,’ and I give you my word it shall be burnt unread,” he observed. “I for my part shall rely on a similar consideration.” On him, too, rested the same forced composure.
“You may do so, Monsieur,” said the Marquis, without looking round. “There will be nothing private here, however, but a couple of letters that I am going to write now. You will find, on the other hand, a number of papers that will be essential to you if you have to take over the command. I will just see that they are in order.—Will you come back for me in half an hour, then?”
“Yes,” said the Comte, and, something impelling him to salute, perhaps for the last time, the leader he hoped to kill, he did so and went out.
The moment that the door closed behind his enemy Gaston de Trélan drew a long, almost a sobbing breath,and bending his head stood gripping the edge of the safe with both hands. He had had such a hard fight of it . . . and he was beaten after all. But the consuming rage that shook him left no room now for consciousness of defeat; and that rage, so overpowering for a moment or two as to make him feel physically faint, gave way in its turn to a savage gladness. For duty’s sake, and at almost unbearable cost to himself, he had tried to avoid this thing—but now that it had come, and he was going to settle the score, what place was there for anything but a measureless relief? Good God, because he commanded Finistère, was he to submit to a series of insults without parallel?
After a few minutes he loosed his hold of the safe, sat down at the table, pulled writing-materials towards him, and began to write rapidly. Thrusting his hand inside his shirt when he had finished, he brought out and slipped over his head something which hung round his neck on a ribbon. It was a white, gold-edged cross with a red medallion in the centre surrounded by a border of white and gold—the cross of the Order of Maria Theresa, never given save for personal valour in the field. Around the medallion ran the single word, “Fortitudini.” He placed the decoration in the letter, which he sealed and addressed to “Monsieur le Vicomte de Céligny,” writing underneath, “Not to be opened except in the event of my death.” This done, he wrote another which he addressed to the Abbé Chassin, and took them both to put in the safe. Standing by that receptacle he then sorted through some papers and locked it up again. Then he took his pistols from their case, oiled them very carefully, loaded them, and laid them on the table.
There were still five minutes or so before he went out to use them. He stood looking down at them a little. Then he went slowly to the fireplace and laid his head on his folded arms on the mantel. It was bitter to be driven to this, just when he was on the eve of making his work in Finistère a success. To-morrow, if he lived, he might hear that the money from Mirabel was truly his—for the Cause—but to-night he must expose himself to the chance of being killed by this man who had been trying for days to provoke him. Well, God knew he had done his utmost that he should not succeed—but therewas a limit to what could be borne by flesh and blood. Would not evenshehave said so, for whose memory’s sake he had tried to do something worthy of a man? . . . But if he fell, what a way to fall—in a quarrel with his own chief of staff?
Then it came back upon him like a flood that his enemy had dared to use her sacred name as a cover for his own unspeakable insolence, and regret and reluctance were gone as though they had never been. He would kill de Brencourt for that! He went back to the table and took up his pistols.
It was time indeed, for as he pushed the first into his belt there came a tap at the door, and the Comte reappeared.
“Are you ready?” he asked in a low voice.
The Marquis, with a face like flint, nodded and took up the second pistol. But M. de Brencourt closed the door behind him.
“Before we go,” he said, “would it not be as well to settle the distance and the order of firing? We might do that as conveniently here as in the forest.”
“Certainly,” agreed his adversary. “The less time we spend there the better.”
“Ten paces, then?” suggested the other. “Moonlight is not daylight.” (But, even in the moonlight, it would surely be impossible to miss at ten paces.)
“Very well,” agreed M. de Kersaint indifferently. “Across a handkerchief, if you like—only there are no seconds to hold it for us.”
“No, and that is the other point,” said the Comte de Brencourt with some eagerness. “Since there is no one to count for us, or to make any signal, we cannot with the best will in the world be sure of firing at exactly the same moment. I suggest, therefore, that we draw lots to determine who is to fire first.”
There was a second’s pause. The Marquis had not faced this difficulty. But of course some such reliance on a hazard was inevitable. “That would certainly be best,” he replied, looking steadily at its proposer. “There might, too, in that case, be only one shot to attract attention.”
“Quite so. How shall we settle it then?” asked the Comte, looking round the room.
“I have it,” said his opponent rather grimly, plunging a hand into a pocket. “A very simple way, if somewhat childish. You see this coin?” And he held out on his open palm a florin of the last issue of Louis XVI. “I will put my hands behind my back, and when I bring them closed into sight again you shall guess which of them contains the florin. If you guess rightly the first shot shall be yours—if you guess wrongly, mine. Are you content? Or would you prefer to hold the coin and I will guess? But I think the odds are just the same either way.”
“No, I am perfectly content that you should hold it,” replied his foe. So, standing there in the lamplight, the Marquis de Kersaint, commanding in chief for the King in Finistère, and in past days, when he bore another name, a very great gentleman indeed, put his hands behind him in the way that children have done for centuries, with not the fate of a game but his own, perhaps, hanging on the choice. In another moment he brought his closed fists in front of him again and looked at M. de Brencourt.
“I choose the left hand,” said the Comte.
M. de Kersaint opened his fingers. The silver effigy lay in his palm. His life was M. de Brencourt’s for the taking.
“Let us go, then,” he said, and turned down the lamp.
Thousands of years before, the ancient and forgotten race, drowned now in the mists of time, which had set up in those parts the long ranks of menhirs on the lande, had raised in the forest, over the remains of some dead chieftain, a great dolmen of granite. The death-chamber had long ago been rifled of bones and treasure, but it still stood, no different from what it had been for the last few hundred years, with ferns growing out of the cracks, and one of its supports prone, and an aged oak, immeasurably younger than itself, watching over it. And to this spot the two men, with passions no less primitive in their hearts, made their way; for on one side of the Moulin-aux-Fées, as the peasants called it, there was a little clearing.
It was true that M. de Kersaint had said, when pistols were named, that they must go further than this. But when they beheld the clearing, so inviting in the cold light that flooded it from a moon well over the tree tops, its suitability to the work they had in hand struck both of them so strongly that they agreed it was not necessary to go on. They had already put a considerable distance between them and the Clos-aux-Grives, and the little wind that walked the forest to-night had its light feet set in the opposite direction. They would risk the sound of a shot carrying back to the farm.
So, under the impassive gaze of the moon, which alone made their culpable proceedings possible at this hour, they measured out ten paces, first one of them, then the other, and set each a bit of dead branch to mark their respective positions. When this was done to their satisfaction they found themselves standing at the Comte’s mark examining their pistols for the last time.
“I shall not cock mine until you have fired, Monsieur,”announced the Marquis. “If there were to be an accident—such things have happened—you might think I had broken our compact.”
“I have no fear, Monsieur, of an accident of that kind,” returned de Brencourt, buttoning his coat up to the throat as he spoke. “However, as you please—But you are surely going to take off that white scarf of yours?” And as the Marquis looked down a little doubtfully at the white scarf of leadership round his waist, his opponent added hotly, “Good God, man, do you think I am going to stand up and fire at you unless you do? It would be murder! And your sword—the hilt catches the moonlight.” His own lay already at his feet.
“Very well,” agreed the Marquis, and began, almost, it seemed reluctantly, to detach the scarf. Having unwound it he paused with it in his hand.
“I have a request to make of you, Comte, before I go to my place,” he said, not altogether in the tone of one making a request. “The disagreement between us being a purely personal matter, I should be glad to have your word that you intend to respect my secret, whatever the result of our encounter?”
De Brencourt looked at him. It was some satisfaction to have him begging for terms—no, begging was certainly not the word for one who spoke like that.
“Yes, I promise you that,” he answered. “Whatever the result of our encounter, I will keep your secret as far as in me lies.”
“Thank you,” returned his adversary. And, throwing the white scarf from him, he turned and walked to his place.
Artus de Brencourt waited a second or two, his pistol by his side. This was the moment he had hoped and schemed for, and it was sweet. Yet now that it had come, it suddenly seemed incredible that they two should be facing each other like this. A few months ago, who would have predicted it? . . . No use to think of that now, nor, since he was a gentleman, with his enemy’s life in his hands, did he desire to keep that enemy in mortal suspense longer than was needful. Best be as quick about the business as possible. He was a notoriously good shot. . . .
“Are you ready?” he called out.
And the Marquis de Kersaint, standing like a dark statue in the moonlight, his face merely a pale blur, his arms folded on his breast, silently nodded.
The Comte de Brencourt drew a deep breath, raised his pistol, and took a long and steady aim for the statue’s heart.
Yet when he had got the barrel on the mark his hand began to shake. He bit his lip. If only de Kersaint had his own weapon cocked, were not standing there defenceless to be shot at by the man who had insulted him. It took some courage to do that! And he had called him a coward. . . . Had it not been an affair of honour it had felt a little too much like murder for his taste after all. Yet he intended to kill Valentine’s husband. And the iron sanction of the code which kept the other there as a mere target for his bullet kept him there too, determined to complete his work.
. . . But—could he complete it? The Comte had no idea how deceptive even the most brilliant moonlight can be, for now, at a short ten paces’ distance, he found to his mortification that he could not really distinguish the outline of de Kersaint’s body, though he could see it as a mass. That scarf would have been useful, yet it did not occur to him to regret it. Bending all his will anew to the task he succeeded in steadying his hand, and his forefinger began to close round the trigger. In another second or two. . . . Would the Marquis spin round, as a man sometimes did when shot through the heart, or would he fall forward on his face? . . . Odd that he should think, at such a moment, of the execution of Charette three years ago at Nantes, when, as the tale went, the indomitable spirit that dwelt in the riddled body of the Royalist chief had held him upright for a moment in death, with six balls in him. De Kersaint would have but one—sent there by a comrade. He, Artus de Brencourt, was doing the Directory’s work for them! . . . No, he was doing Valentine’s! One vision of her as he had seen her in her homely dress at Mirabel, one fleeting thought of those years of neglect before the storm, of the life she had led since, and those half regrets were swept aside like gnats before a gale. The baffling moonlight paralysed him no longer. Hecorrected his aim for the second time, set his teeth, and pressed the trigger.
The shot went echoing with startling effect in the silver silence; it seemed to reverberate even from the empty dolmen. A scuttling of some frightened creature took place in the undergrowth, and, as the light smoke cleared away, rising ghostlike towards the moon, the Comte saw that M. de Kersaint was staggering a little. He took a step backwards, threw out his left arm and regained his balance somewhat abruptly, while the uncocked pistol slid with a rustle and a thud into the bracken at his feet. Either to recover it, or because he could not help himself, he sank to one knee and appeared to be groping for it with his left hand; then, abandoning the attempt, he got rather unsteadily to his feet again, and stood a moment with his head bent, and his right arm still across his breast, where he had kept it all the time.
“You are hit, Monsieur? Can you not return my fire?” called out de Brencourt, still standing ready to receive it.
M. de Kersaint shook his head, then, turning his back on him, walked to the nearest tree and stood leaning against it, always holding his right arm to his breast, but now supporting it with the other. A doubtless annoyed owl sailed out of the branches above him with a hoot.
And, after all, his adversary never even paused to ask himself whether he were sorry he had not succeeded. . . . In a moment he was at his side.
“Where are you hit, Monsieur le Marquis?”
“In my right arm,” said his opponent briefly. “You have disabled me. I cannot return your fire.”
“I am sorry for that,” said the Comte rather stiffly. “Are you sure you cannot—with your left hand?”
“I am sorry too,” said the Marquis de Kersaint, lifting his head. “Believe me, I should not have done you the poor compliment of firing in the air! But it would be a farce—my left hand. I am extremely right-handed; so of what use to risk the noise of another shot. I fancy my arm is broken. Let us get back.” He did not seem to know that, even as he spoke, the blood, very dark in the moonlight, was running through the fingers of the hand which held his wounded arm pressed up to his body.
“But first,” interposed the Comte quickly, “we must stop this bleeding, however roughly. It is not from the artery, I trust?—no, I think not. Can you take your coat off . . . I’d better slit up the sleeve, in any case. Sit down on this stone, de Kersaint; that will be easier for both of us.”
And, supporting him under his left arm, he guided his wounded enemy to the fallen block of the dolmen.
The Marquis sat down obediently, and lent his head for a moment on his left hand. It was evident, though not a sound passed his lips, that he was in a good deal of pain.