“Heu miserande puer! si qua fata aspera rumpas,Tu Marcellus eris. Manibus date lilia plenisPurpureos——”
“Heu miserande puer! si qua fata aspera rumpas,Tu Marcellus eris. Manibus date lilia plenisPurpureos——”
“Heu miserande puer! si qua fata aspera rumpas,
Tu Marcellus eris. Manibus date lilia plenis
Purpureos——”
He had got no further when, to his enormous surprise, the book was gently but firmly taken out of his hand.
“Do not repeat those lines, boy, over anyone young, as you are doing at this moment,” said M. de Kersaintquietly looking, not at him, but at Roland. “I always think they are unlucky. . . .”
And before the two young men had time to recover from their astonishment he had walked over to the other side of the attic, and joined his second in command at the little table to which the latter had returned.
“I have some papers here, de Brencourt,” he said, sitting down, “which we could look at till the Abbé returns. Undoubtedly our attempt was premature . . . but unless we can get money it always will be premature. I have seen ‘Sincère’; he could join us with at least two hundred and fifty men if we could only provide arms for them.”
“Always the same cry—insufficient arms and ammunition,” remarked his lieutenant rather bitterly. “How is anything considerable going to be done in Finistère if there is always this lack? And we could get both in plenty from England if we only had the money to buy them with.”
“Exactly,” said the Marquis. “But where the money is to come from I do not know—beyond the not very generous subsidy which the British Government has promised me for the summer.—Well, we must take counsel with Georges when he comes. Now, look at these figures.”
And he and the Comte de Brencourt were still bending over the papers which he had spread out on the table when the three young men, who had withdrawn themselves as far as possible from the conclave of their superiors, became aware that the priest was once more in their midst. He had entered among the shadows very quietly.
“A la bonne heure, Monsieur l’Abbé!” said Roland de Céligny. “Monsieur le Marquis has arrived.” And he indicated the other side of the attic.
“And have you been to the wedding at Mirabel?” enquired Artamène mischievously.
The Abbé Chassin quickly turned on him with a frown, putting his finger to his lips. But he was too late; the words were out, and, though the culprit had moderated his voice, they had been heard. And Artamène, roused at once to interest and alertness by the priest’s gesture, was somehow aware of a sudden stiffening of M. de Kersaint’s whole figure, ere he said, turning round from the table, “What is this about . . . Mirabel?”
The Abbé seeming in no great haste to answer, it was M. de Brencourt who replied, “The old lady whom the Abbé has been visiting next door is, apparently, suffering from delusions about Mirabel—that château of the Duc de Trélan’s near Paris. That is what M. de la Vergne means.”
“This is interesting,” observed the Marquis de Kersaint, turning further round to look at the little priest, who had not advanced a step since Artamène’s jest. “And did you learn anything fresh about Mirabel, Abbé?”
“Yes, I did, Monsieur le Marquis,” answered the priest rather shortly.
“May we hear it?”
M. Chassin was silent, and seemed to be considering this request. Artamène saw his face, and it was oddly perturbed.
“We are not, I hope, inviting you to reveal the secrets of the confessional?”
“No.”
“Why may we not hear it, then?”
“Because,” said the Abbé gravely, “it is more suited for your private ear, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“Why?” asked M. de Brencourt, instantly, looking from one to the other, “why for M. de Kersaint’s private ear?”
This question the Abbé seemed totally unable to answer, and after a second or two the Marquis de Kersaint said carelessly to his subordinate, “Because M. Chassin knows that I am a kinsman of the Duc de Trélan’s, I suppose.”
“A kinsman of the Duc de Trélan’s—you!” exclaimed the Comte de Brencourt in obvious surprise. “A near kinsman?”
“No, no, very distant,” replied his leader quickly. “And that is why I cannot conceive how a disclosure affecting his property can possibly be destined for my ear alone. So let us all hear it, if you please, Monsieur l’Abbé.”
M. de Brencourt, still under the empire of surprise or some other emotion, continued to look at this kinsman of M. de Trélan’s very fixedly; so, from where he still stood near the door, did the priest. A better light would have revealed entreaty in his eyes.
“Well, Monsieur l’Abbé, I am waiting!” said theMarquis de Kersaint rather haughtily, and in the fashion of a man who has never been used to that discipline.
The Abbé set his lips obstinately. “It will keep well enough till to-morrow, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“What, a communication from the dying? And who knows whether we shall all see to-morrow? Come, Abbé, I command you!—Roland, a chair here for M. Chassin.”
Whether the priest could have stood out, had he willed, against that masterful voice and gesture, at any rate he did not.
“Very well, Marquis,” said he, and Artamène, thrilled to the core, thought, “ ‘Tu l’as voulu, Georges Dandin!’ That’s what he would really like to say, our Abbé!” And since their leader had intimated that the matter was not private after all, he applied himself to listen with all his ears. Roland, looking rather troubled, set a chair at the table for the priest and stood back.
“You must know then, Monsieur le Marquis,” began the Abbé in a low voice, “that the old lady whom I have been visiting had been present at the festivities in 1771, when the . . . the young Duc de Trélan married his bride.”
“That beautiful and most unfortunate lady!” commented M. de Brencourt under his breath.
The Marquis glanced at him for the fraction of a second, and the priest went on, nervously rubbing his hands together, and rather pale:
“It seems that there is a legend of a treasure hidden in Mirabel since the days of the Fronde, a treasure whose whereabouts no one has ever been able to discover. Since you are a kinsman of M. de Trélan’s, Monsieur le Marquis, it is possible that you have heard of the legend?”
M. de Kersaint nodded thoughtfully. “I believe I have heard of it. Yes?”
“The story appears to be true. The document describing the hiding-place of the treasure was stolen at the time—nearly a hundred and fifty years ago—and came into the possession of this old lady’s family, but in such a way that it was only recently rediscovered by the old lady herself.”
“What an extraordinary tale! Well?”
“Since then she had desired to give it to the Duc, but could not, as he was not in France. And in her deliriumjust now, fancying herself back at the wedding, she was talking so persistently of offering to the . . . the young couple, as a wedding gift, this paper, which would help them to what was after all their own, that M. Charlot——”
“A wedding gift for de Trélan and his wife!” interposed the Comte de Brencourt with a laugh. “Bon Dieu, what irony, considering how their wedded life ended!”
“Surely that need not concern us now, Monsieur de Brencourt!” said his leader coldly. “Go on please, Abbé.”
“By the most curious coincidence,” pursued M. Chassin, his eyes fixed on the Marquis, “M. Charlot asked me, as a priest, to see if I could not set the old lady’s mind at rest by some means. She did at last regain control of her senses, and I was able in the end to assure her that I could and would despatch the document, if she entrusted me with it, to the proper quarter.”
“And she gave it you?” asked the Marquis, bending forward with some eagerness.
“I have it here now,” answered the priest, touching his breast.
M. de Kersaint drew back again, and Artamène was struck with his resemblance to a chess player who is meditating the next move. But only the Marquis de Kersaint himself and the man whom he had forced into playing out this gambit with him, fully realised the awkward position into which his insistence had got them.
“So I must make it my business to despatch it, somehow, to M. le Duc,” finished the Abbé. “It was of course my knowledge that you were kin to him, Monsieur le Marquis, which made me accept the trust, as I knew I could rely on your assistance.”
But the Marquis was looking down at the table and said nothing.
“The document will hardly be of much use to M. de Trélan when he does get it,” remarked the Comte de Brencourt. “Mirabel, I have heard, is now a museum or something of the sort; at any rate it is in government hands. And M. de Trélan—where is M. de Trélan? In England still? No, hardly. One never hears of him. Perhaps he is dead.”
“No, he is alive,” replied his kinsman briefly, lifting his eyes for a second.
“Ah! But how is he going to profit by this treasure, even if it is still there?”
“Nevertheless, I must fulfil my trust,” observed M. Chassin, looking across the table at M. de Kersaint’s lowered head.
“Oh, undoubtedly, Abbé, though I do not know how you are going to do it even with M. de Kersaint’s cousinly . . . is it cousinly? . . . assistance. What do you yourself think of the problem, Marquis?”
The Marquis de Kersaint raised his head. “I think,” he said slowly, looking hard at M. Chassin, “that the Abbé is right. M. de Trélan must be informed, somehow. But at the same time, since it is practically out of the question for him, in exile, to take any steps in the matter—and would be difficult and dangerous even were he in France—and since our need for money is so pressing at this moment, I would propose——”
“What?” asked the Comte.
“To ask, as his kinsman, for his authorisation to use the treasure, if we can come at it, for the needs of Finistère—that is to say, for the King’s service.”
“O sir, do you think we could!” cried Roland eagerly, starting forward.
“O, Monsieur le Marquis, send us to Mirabel!” cried Artamène.
“You are going too fast, gentlemen. We must first get the Duc’s leave to pillage his property, even though it be confiscated.”
“Do you think you will have difficulty in getting it?” asked the Comte de Brencourt, narrowing his eyes.
“No, I do not think so. As you have yourself pointed out, Comte, how is M. de Trélan going to profit, in any case, by this suddenly revealed hoard?”
“Well, when the King comes into his own again, it would be of no small service to the Duc, a fund in his own château! I expect his financial resources, great as they once were, are much embarrassed. He could hardly have been accused of husbanding them!”
“You seem to know a great deal about the private affairs of M. de Trélan, Comte!” observed M. de Kersaintdrily, turning and looking at him. “I might observe that no honest man has gained by the Revolution, and that those with much to lose have lost proportionately. However, if my kinsman takes the view that you suggest—which I do not think he will—he must be induced to look upon our present proposed use of the money as a loan to His Majesty. After all, it was never of any advantage to him as long as he was unaware of its existence or of its whereabouts, and of these, apparently, he never would have known but for the extraordinary coincidence of which the Abbé has just told us.”
“But,” suggested M. de Brencourt, “before approaching him on the subject—through you—might it not be as well to get a sight of this precious document, so that we may form some idea as to whether the amount will repay the risking a man’s neck to find, and whether it will prove easy to come at?”
The priest and M. de Kersaint looked at one another. “Yes. I think we might do that without indiscretion,” said the latter, after a moment’s hesitation. “Do not you, Abbé?”
M. Chassin made no reply in words, but drew out from his coat the parchment received from the dying woman and gave it into the hands of his leader. The Marquis de Kersaint spread out the ancient memorandum on the table, moved the candles in their bottles nearer, and the three men studied in silence the rough diagram and its legend. Nor were Roland and Artamène, in the background, innocent of craning their necks to see likewise.
“Ten bags—two thousand five hundred pistoles in each,” murmured the Comte reflectively. “How much is that, I wonder, in modern money? And there are jewels too, apparently.”
The Marquis de Kersaint’s lips were compressed, his face an enigma. “It certainly appears to be worth taking risks for,” he said at last. “Money is what we most need in the world now for Finistère. We can get the men; the last few months have shown me that clearly, but of what use are unarmed men?”
“Less than none,” observed his second in command. “This document, therefore, seems singularly like a gift from heaven.”
“I shall certainly communicate with M. de Trélan without delay,” said the Marquis. “May I keep this parchment, Abbé?”
“I had hoped that you would charge yourself with its despatch, Monsieur le Marquis,” replied the priest, and M. de Kersaint without more ado folded it up and put it in his breast.
“It seems to me, de Kersaint,” said the Comte de Brencourt reflectively, playing with the cards which still strewed the table, “that, considering all things, the exceptional circumstances, our pressing needs, the possibility that you may never succeed in communicating with the Duc—wherever he may be—that we could hardly be blamed if we took the law into our own hands, and did not wait for his authorisation. After all, the risk would be ours.”
“That solution had already occurred to me, I admit,” said the Marquis, with the ghost of a smile, while mute applause from MM. de Céligny and de la Vergne greeted the Comte’s suggestion. “But the affair is in a sense the Abbé’s, and entrusted to him.”
“I am quite content to abide by your decision, Monsieur le Marquis,” replied the priest sedately.
“But, de Kersaint,” objected the Comte, evidently struck by a sudden idea, “have you not some reversionary interest in the treasure yourself, if you are kin to M. de Trélan? Should we not ultimately be robbing you, perhaps?”
“No, I am not sufficiently nearly related to the Duc for that,” returned the Marquis quickly. “I am connected with him by marriage only—a distant kinsman.”
“Perhaps you will allow me to congratulate you on that, then,” said M. de Brencourt in a sombre tone. “For myself, I should not care to think that I had near ties of blood with a man who, in safety himself, left his wife to perish as he did!”
An electric shock seemed at these words to communicate itself to the other two men. M. de Kersaint’s right hand, which rested on the table in the ring of candlelight, was seen instantly to clench itself. The next instant the Abbé, by a sudden clumsy movement, sent the candle nearest to him to the floor where, with a crash of the bottle, it was immediately extinguished.
“Pardon me, Monsieur le Comte!” he interposed quickly, bending forward. “—Dear me, how awkward I am!—Pardon me, but you do the Duc de Trélan a great injustice, surely! How could he, an émigré to whom France was closed, possibly rescue a woman immured in a Paris prison? The thing is preposterous. Besides, he probably knew nothing about her being there till all was over. I have heard that Mirabel was not sacked till August the thirtieth, and the prison massacres, you will remember, began on the second of September.”
“You seem very much the champion of M. de Trélan, Abbé!” remarked the Comte, looking at him hard. “You have wasted a candle over him.”
“One should try, surely, to be just to those who cannot answer for themselves,” retorted the priest. “Moreover, I am certain M. de Kersaint would bear me out in what I say.”
“He does not seem to be in any great haste to do so,” observed the other, half to himself, and his eyes suddenly moved to the clenched hand.
“I am too much amazed at your attack on my kinsman,” retorted the Marquis, in a voice unlike his own. “It is incredible that such a thing should be said in France of M. de Trélan—that he could have saved his wife and did not!”
The Comte shrugged his shoulders. “I do not know that it is what others say, for I imagine that few people trouble their heads about de Trélan now-a-days. But it is what I think—though as a matter of fact you are putting more into my words than I actually uttered. Perhaps I am prejudiced. I knew that lady many years ago,” he went on, with lowered eyes, fidgeting with the cards again, “the most gracious of God’s creatures, and to remember that she went, abandoned by everybody, throughthatdoor, saw, as her last glimpse of life, those obscene faces, that gutter running with blood, that mound of——”
The priest jumped up and seized him by the arm. “For God’s sake, stop, Monsieur de Brencourt!” he whispered. “Do you not know that most of M. de Kersaint’s family perished in the massacres!”
And at that the Comte did stop. After a momentM. de Kersaint removed the hand with which he had covered his eyes.
“I should indeed be glad if you would spare me that subject,” he said, in a scarcely audible voice, not looking at either of them. Even the one remaining candle showed him to be frightfully pale. “I . . . I cannot . . . perhaps we should finish this discussion . . . in the morning. It is already very late.”
“Yes, it is very late,” agreed the Comte, plainly rather horrified. He leant over the table. “Can you forgive me, Marquis? Of course I was not aware, and I regret——”
“I knew that,” said M. de Kersaint with a palpable effort, and touched the hand which the other held out. And so ended the reception of Mlle Magny’s wedding gift.
Roland de Celigny, waking with a start, wondered for a moment where he was. Then he raised himself on his elbow and looked about him.
The dawn was slipping a slim, cool hand into the strangely populated attic, and the grey light invested furniture and sleepers alike with quite a different appearance from last night’s. Roland himself had insisted on giving up his pallet permanently to Le Blé-aux-Champs, because of his hurt, and had ensconced himself at the other side of the attic. Over in his old place Chouan and noble, alike young and alike wounded, lay side by side, the only difference in their condition being that the peasant, for all his protests, had the better couch. But, like M. de Brencourt, huddled on the little sofa of worn, gilt-striped rose brocade, and the Abbé, of whom he could see only the feet projecting round a wardrobe, they both appeared to be asleep, despite their injuries; and Roland knew that Artamène’s gave him no slight pain at times.
But he could not be altogether sorry for his friend’s wound. For, since it was M. de la Vergne’s right arm that had suffered, it had fallen to the Vicomte de Céligny to write at his dictation a line of reassurance to his mother and sister in Finistère. And thus Roland’s own fingers had formed, if his brain had not originated, the words which would undoubtedly have the happiness of penetrating into the little ears of Mlle Marthe de la Vergne, even, probably, that of being read by her brilliant dark eyes. And she would know, too, from the contents of the letter who had penned it. The question whether she would care was one which he did not like to press overmuch, for he had very little to go upon, poor Roland, since Marthe had grown up—one meeting under the eyes of Mme de la Vergne in the wide, cool salon of the château with itsshining floor, and Mlle Marthe rising from tambour work at its farther end; and one brief message of good wishes with which his friend Artamène, her fortunate brother, was found to be charged when Roland met him a few weeks ago at the rallying-place.
Roland could have wished that his friend’s flesh wound were his own, that he also had something with a tinge of suffering and heroism about it, of which Mlle Marthe could have been informed, to which she might even have given a moment’s regret. Or, better still, if it could have been, that the injury had happened so near the Château de la Vergne as to leave no alternative but to take the sufferer in and tend him there. Alas, Roland neither possessed the requisite damage, nor had the Château de la Vergne the desired proximity to the scene of the little defeat at la Croix-Fendue.
Besides, if anything untoward happened to him, he was under promise to return, if possible, to his grandfather, with whom he lived.
Roland did not remember his mother, and of his father, though he had died only about a year and a half ago, he had seen extremely little. Three years after Mme de Céligny’s death he had been committed, a child of five years old, to the care of his maternal grandfather, the Baron de Carné, and by him he had been brought up at Kerlidec, in Brittany, separated by the breadth of France from his patrimony near Avignon. He had seldom visited this, or his morose parent, though when he did, M. de Céligny had always made a point of initiating him, young as he was, into the management of the estate which would one day be his—for the Vicomte, unlike so many landowners in those troubled years, had never been dispossessed. But Roland was much fonder of the stern and passionate old man who had brought him up, and who had for him such exquisite tendernesses; and he had become too much accustomed to living with a grandfather rather than with a father to find the arrangement surprising. He had, moreover, few friends of his own age to comment on its unusual character, since his education had been entirely conducted at Kerlidec by his grandfather and a tutor or two. Artamène de la Vergne, who lived at no very great distance, was, in fact, his only intimate.
Yet in the end, through no fault of the Vicomte de Céligny’s other than an unfortunate choice of the moment of his death, his estates did not come to Roland at all. He died very suddenly of heart disease just after the coup d’état of ’97, and the Directory at once seized the property on the specious pretext that the heir was an émigré. Because the events of Fructidor had revived the legislation against that unfortunate class, it had taken a year and a half and very cautious moves indeed on the part of the Baron de Carné even to get his grandson’s name removed from that inauspicious list on which, like many another, it wrongly figured, and Roland was not yet in possession of his inheritance. His present proceedings, if the Government became aware of them, were still less likely to hasten that event.
And these proceedings had been entered into against M. de Carné’s wishes; another had overborne that strong will of his. To this day Roland could not quite understand how it had been done. For a moment he lived again through the episode of his quasi-abduction from Kerlidec last February;—that strained interview (at part of which he had been present) between his grandfather and the tall, commanding visitor who, turning out, to Roland’s surprise and delight, to be the Marquis de Kersaint, the hero of the lost day of Rivoli, enlisting likely young men to fight for the King later on in Finistère, had asked M. de Carné if Roland might come with him——provided Roland himself were willing. Of Roland’s willingness—rather, rapture—there could be no question, but M. de Kersaint had insisted on the Baron’s formal consent; and this, on the understanding that Roland was to be regarded strictly as a loan, and returned, had been given . . . but given with such palpable, almost venomous hostility that the youth could not imagine why it should have been vouchsafed at all.
The end of the episode, too, just because it puzzled him, was bitten into his memory. Grandfather and grandson were on the perron watching the unbidden guest ride away down the dripping avenue—for Roland was to join him, with Artamène, a few days later—and Roland, boylike, had exclaimed at his admirable seat on a horse.
“As you say, Roland, a damnably good seat!” M. deCarné had returned harshly. “A damnable air of assurance altogether! Quite enough to turn a young man’s head, or for that matter a——” He checked himself, and said with bitterness that they must begin to think of Roland’s preparations. And when the young man remorsefully replied, “Not yet, grandpère! It is growing dark; let us think of our game of chess!” his grandfather retorted, looking at him in a way that he could not fathom, “Chess! Poor little pawn, you have been taken!”
But if it were so, the pawn certainly had no objection.
And now, indeed, feeling a sense of elation, almost of importance, at being apparently the only one awake in this company, Roland looked past the intervening furniture towards the two large chairs in which M. de Kersaint had elected to spend the night. Well, he was still stretched in them, long and rather shadowy in outline, but Roland doubted if he were asleep, for as he gazed at him he heard the Marquis move and sigh.
The adoration tempered with awe which Roland felt for him had received, if it needed it, a fresh impetus through last night’s happenings. An eager and interested witness of the scene’s beginning, an unwilling and indignant one of its close, Roland had felt, and still felt, that he hated M. de Brencourt for the torture to which, even unwittingly, he had put him, as anyone could see. And why, as Artamène had whispered to him afterwards, had M. de Brencourt displayed such an aversion to the Duc de Trélan?
What was M. de Kersaint going to do, he wondered, about this business of Mirabel? The name seemed to have a faintly familiar sound, though he could have sworn that he had never heard it before. As he strove to recover the connection a glorious thought shot suddenly into his mind. If only M. de Kersaint would lethimgo to Paris in search of this treasure! There—if his search were successful, as of course it would be—shone in truth a deed worthy to lay at the feet of Mlle Marthe de la Vergne!
Wrapped in the warm and rosy imaginings which this idea brought to him Roland dropped off to sleep again—a light slumber in which he had a distinct impression that M. de Kersaint came and stood for some time looking down on him, and from which he woke to find the atticgrown considerably lighter, and M. de Kersaint’s sleeping-place, to which he instantly glanced, empty. Everybody else seemed to be slumbering as before.
It was a moment or two before Roland’s eyes found his leader, in the farthest corner of the attic, seated sideways at a little table, writing—at least, with a pen between his fingers. His chin was propped on his fist, and the young daylight as it entered silhouetted his fine profile with sufficient clearness for the observer to be sure that his thoughts were not pleasant ones.
“All his family massacred!” sprang into Roland’s mind. “He is thinking of that—or of how to retrieve la Croix-Fendue, or perhaps how to get the treasure from Mirabel . . . How handsome he is!” And on Roland, himself as unconscious of his own good looks as it is possible for a young man to be, came the resolve to use this Heaven-sent opportunity for the furtherance of his own desires.
Rising very quietly from the floor, he picked his way, half dressed as he was, among furniture and sleepers till he came to the window.
“Monsieur le Marquis!”
M. de Kersaint started and looked round. “Roland, what are you doing?” he asked in a whisper.
“I have been awake before,” said Roland, as if that were a reply.
“Well?”
“I want to ask you something, sir.”
“If,” said M. de Kersaint, studying him as he stood there in his shirt and breeches, “if it is to repeat La Vergne’s request of last night about Mirabel, I may as well tell you at once, my boy, that it is of no use.”
The youth’s visage so manifestly fell that his leader could not help smiling.
“I see that I guessed right. No, my dear boy, this business, if ever it gets itself done at all, is work for a much older head than yours.”
“I am not so young, Monsieur le Marquis,” pleaded the aspirant, in the same discreet tone. “I shall be twenty this year.”
“Yes, but not until the very end of it,” retorted M. de Kersaint with promptitude.
The child of December was first taken aback, thenflattered, that the date of his obscure birthday should be known to his hero, who was now looking at him half-teasingly, a mood in which Roland especially adored him. Then the petitioner recovered himself.
“But even if you think me young, sir,” he went on with fervour, “nobody here, however much older he is——”
“Has any experience of house-breaking,” he was going on to say, when the words were cut short by a grasp on his arm. He turned, and M. de Kersaint, who had momentarily lowered his gaze, lifted it at the same instant so that they both beheld the Chevalier de la Vergne, sling and all.
“What, another!” exclaimed M. de Kersaint. “Morbleu!”
“I felt sure that he was trying to steal a march on me, Monsieur le Marquis,” explained Artamène. “If anyone is to go to Mirabel——”
“It would certainly not be you, La Vergne, with that arm,” interposed his leader. “However, there is no question of Mirabel for either of you.”
“But——” began both the candidates.
“If you want to know my plans, gentlemen,” said M. de Kersaint then, with a touch of impatience, real or assumed, “they are, as far as regards yourselves, these—a return, for the present, to your own firesides.”
“We are to go back home!” ejaculated the horror-struck Artamène.
Amusement shot again into M. de Kersaint’s eyes at the tone, but because of its pitch he laid his finger on his lips. “It is not designed as a punishment, believe me, my children. But our drawing of the sword was premature; I always feared it, and I have resolved, for the present, to disband. It will only be for a month or two, probably.”
“But—but you will send for us again, sir?” stammered Roland. All the brightness seemed suddenly to have departed from life.
“Most certainly. I could not get on without my aides-de-camp. Now go back to your beds and leave me to finish what I am doing.”
It was two exceedingly dispirited young men who returned to their couches. “To be sent home like schoolboys!” whispered Roland, who had left his with suchhopes. But they were too dejected to discuss the catastrophe. Happy Lucien, who had slept through its announcement! They sat side by side on Artamène’s blanket, and looked at each other, while close by the young Chouan, who was awake, moved restlessly. What, if they were going to separate, was to become of him? Perhaps this unspoken query gave Artamène his great idea.
“I am not fit to take the journey to La Vergne alone,” he whispered suddenly in Roland’s ear. “Will you escort me?”
“Will I not?” responded his friend, his eyes sparkling again.
With the full advent of morning came the good M. Charlot and a servant, bringing coffee and rolls to the unaccustomed guestchamber. To this welcome refreshment he joined the more than welcome news that the troops who had nearly intercepted the Marquis and his guide last night had marched out at dawn, and in an hour or so it would be quite safe to depart. Also, the wounded man could now be moved downstairs to a bed and cared for until his foot was healed.
“Excellent, my dear Monsieur Chariot,” said the Marquis de Kersaint. “And—the other matter?”
“I have already sent to the place, Monsieur, and a message has come back that the person your honours are expecting has not yet arrived.”
Artamène and Roland looked at each other over their coffee-bowls. They cherished a faint hope, now rapidly withering, that they might catch a glimpse of this famous person ere departing.
But very shortly afterwards, as it seemed, the three of them had put together their small belongings, had received their last instructions, and had learnt how, when the summons came to them again, it would probably be to a more lasting campaign. The Marquis de Kersaint hoped by the summer to have a regular headquarters at least—to keep always on foot an army of Chouans was impossible—in short, to be in a larger way of business. But even these bright predictions did not cheer ‘les jeunes,’ as the Abbé called them, very much.
“All I can do, mes enfants,” said their leader to themin conclusion, “is to wish you a safe return and a better meeting. Remember my recommendations as to prudence in your journeys.—I am not sure that I ought to let you travel in that condition, Artamène.”
And when the youth hastened to inform him that he would have the advantage of Roland’s care and company M. de Kersaint smiled and said, “Very well. But, Roland, remember that your real destination is not La Vergne, but Kerlidec. My honour is engaged, as you know, in sending you back to your grandfather. Good-bye, Lucien; you will now have leisure to proceed with your study of the Mantuan.”
The Abbé had already given them his blessing; the Comte had gone to the place appointed to await Cadoudal. Even Le Blé-aux-Champs had been carried downstairs. So when the Marquis had shaken hands with them there was nothing for the three young men to do but to go. And they went.
But they had not got beyond the next turn on the dusky staircase before they heard M. de Kersaint’s voice on the landing above them.
“Roland,” it called down, “come back a moment, will you? I have a message for M. de Carné.”
Wondering, the young Vicomte went up again, nearly to the top, where the tall figure was standing.
“I only wish you to point out to him,” said the Marquis, “that I am fulfilling my promise. That is all.”
Then he added, in a different tone, “May God keep you, my boy!” and stooping, kissed him on the forehead.
“And so,exeunt‘les jeunes,’ ” said the Marquis de Kersaint, coming back into the attic and shutting the door after him.
Its only remaining occupant, the Abbé Chassin, looked up from his breviary where he sat on the old brocade sofa.
“I could wish,” he observed, “that they had departed earlier—or at least that young La Vergne had done so, before he brought about what happened last night, by his mention of the word ‘Mirabel.’ But what, Gaston, in the name of all the saints, possessed you to force me to give you the memorandum like that, before everybody? Of course I only meant to put it into your hands when we were alone!”
The Marquis de Kersaint, seeming to find it perfectly natural to be addressed thus familiarly by his inferior, shrugged his shoulders. “Why then, my dear Pierre, did you, in your turn, say before everybody that your information was for my private ear? A slip of that kind is unlike you. How could I possibly accept for my private ear any news about the place?”
“No, perhaps not, but your persistence, if you will forgive my saying so, rather drove me into a corner. However, I dare say we were both equally to blame, I for not being readier-witted, and you for—well, for taking the bull a little too much by the horns.”
M. de Kersaint, evidently not at all resenting these criticisms, looked down at the priest. “Above all things I did not want to create a mystery,” he said.
“And instead of that you created a kinsman,” observed the Abbé with a half smile, and then became grave again. “It was very unfortunate, the whole thing, but naturally we had neither of us any idea of what it was going to lead to.”
The Marquis de Kersaint’s face darkened. He turned away, and began to walk up and down. “You made a fine holocaust of my imaginary family,” he said after a moment.
“I had to stop him somehow,” replied the Abbé briefly. He had closed his book, and was watching the pacing figure.
“So that,” said M. de Kersaint after another silence, “that is how a Frenchman, an émigré himself, judges the conduct of the Duc de Trélan! I thought it was only in England that they did not understand.”
The priest had risen. “Gaston,” he said firmly, “as I said to the Comte last night, and as I would repeat it at my last hour, in the matter of Mme de Trélan’s death I hold that no one was to blame—save her murderers. She could not have been saved. Did his Highness the Duc de Penthièvre save his daughter? We know that he tried. Not an archangel could have saved Mme de Lamballe. So with Mme de Trélan that day. You know that as well as I, and M. de Brencourt, if he were not ridden by some demon of spite, knows it too.”
“She went through that door, as he said,” continued M. de Kersaint. He had come to a standstill; his face was ashen. “She saw . . . all that . . . before——And she might have taken the road to England and safety two years earlier.”
“It is true,” answered the priest. “She had the chance.”
“Yes,” said his foster-brother, looking at him as if he did not see him, “she had the chance . . . and refused it. I cannot tell de Brencourt that. But, O my God, what a tragedy of mistakes!”
He was backed now against a huge old wardrobe, motionless, almost as if he were nailed to it, voice and eyes alike full of that seven years’ old horror and anguish.
“It was but a mistake, a misunderstanding, then, Gaston,” said the priest quickly. “You acknowledge that, you see!”
The man against the wardrobe gave a laugh. “But what is worse than a mistake, Pierre? Not a crime, certainly. Mistakes appear, at least, to be more heavily visited in this world. It seems to me that I am aboutto begin a fresh series of payments for mine. . . . As for her, if she made any, she paid—how much more than paid!—in that moment of martyrdom that does not bear thinking of, that I still dream about, it seems to me, almost every night. . . . Now, if it is to be dragged out as de Brencourt dragged it yesterday, I shall wish you had not turned me from my purpose seven years ago.”
Dear saints, thought the priest, looking at him compassionately, are we, after all he has suffered, to go once more through the inferno of those dreadful days in England? For a moment he saw again that lofty, richly-furnished room in London where the proudest man whom Pierre Chassin had ever met or read of sat with his whole existence fallen in a day to ruins about him—his honour tarnished and his self-respect in the dust. For he had that day received the appalling news of his wife’s butchery in prison—not having known, even, that she was a prisoner—and he had heard also that he was in consequence being talked about in no flattering terms throughout those same London drawing-rooms where he had been so courted. Indeed—not then knowing why—he had that very morning been cut in St. James’s Street by two of his most intimate English acquaintances. . . . The candlelight on his escritoire, running over the darkly shining mahogany before him, had showed the weapon ready to his hand when the shabby little émigré priest, who had come hotfoot at the news, succeeded in forcing his way past the terrified servants into that forbidden room . . . only to be ordered, in a voice that made him quail, to depart instantly. He had sometimes wondered himself what had given him the courage to disobey, and to stand, as he had done, for a whole night between the Duc de Trélan and suicide. Even to-day he could scarcely bear to think of the naked agony and conflict of that vigil, and it was very rarely referred to by either of them.
He went up to him and put his hand on his shoulder. “O my brother, if you would only cease to torment yourself! You have not, you never have had, a shadow of real responsibility for your wife’s death.”
“Easy to believe, is it not?” remarked the other with a ghastly smile, “when men speak still as de Brencourt spoke last night!”
The Abbé made an almost impatient movement. “It is quite impossible that the Comte really thinks what he says! Why, thousands of men emigrated without their wives,—just as some wives without their husbands—and no one thought it anything but natural and right in those days . . . a duty even! All the noblesse were equally blinded as to what was coming. And can you seriously maintain that any blame attaches to you for what happened two years later, because you were no clearer-sighted than the rest—the rest who, like you, were in exile?”
“But the rest,” said the Marquis de Kersaint, staring down before him at his locked hands, “were not, in 1792, merely amusing themselves in exile, whatever they may have been doing in 1790. . . . Even though I had not been by her side, if I had been where I ought to have been long before, in the army of the Princes or with Condé, do you think that de Brencourt would say . . . those things? Or that they would be like death to me, if he did? . . . You see you cannot answer that, Pierre!”
“Mon frère,” said M. Chassin quietly, “that delay has been expiated. The question for the moment is, whether M. le Comte suspects your identity.”
M. de Kersaint moved a little. “Do you think he possibly can? I never remember seeing him before in my life, until he was assigned to me last December in Jersey as my lieutenant.”
“And if he had ever chanced to see you before the Revolution,” went on the priest musingly, “this bitter resentment he seems to have would have shown itself ere now. No, he could have had no grounds for suspicion of any kind before last night and the business of Mirabel. It was evidently only the mention of that name that roused him. If he begins to have . . . ideas . . . my advice to you, Gaston, is to tell him who you are. He knows, as most people do, about the part you played at Rivoli, not to speak of what you are doing now, so he would not continue——”
“Never!” broke in the Marquis, making a violent gesture of negation. “I desire never to hear that old name of mine again in this life! And I forbid you once more to tell anyone in the world—anyone—whatever you might think would be gained by it! Is it a promise?”
“You have had my promise once for all, Gaston.”
“I will never see you again if you break it!” said his foster-brother with vehemence.
“Have I kept it so ill these seven years, then, that you think a threat is necessary?” asked the priest gently.
“Oh, my dear Pierre, forgive me!” cried the other instantly, and he held out his hand. “When a man starts threatening the best friend he ever had, to whom he owes not only his life but his sanity, it looks rather as if that sanity was leaving him!”
“I do not see much signs of that,” said the priest, with a smile, as he took the proffered hand. “And last night’s business was horrible. I have always thought,” he went on reflectively, “that M. le Comte was an embittered man.”
“If I had known,” said his foster-brother in a low voice, “that he had ever met her, I would never have consented to work with him. . . . But I never should have known save for this strange business of Mirabel.”
“And that is a business which must be attended to, I suppose,” the priest reminded him.
“Yes, I suppose so, too,” said M. de Kersaint rather wearily. He went to the nearest table, and sitting down pulled out the parchment and flattened it out on it. The Abbé came and studied it over his shoulder for a while in silence.
“Well, what do you think of it, Gaston?”
“I have very little doubt that it is genuine. As a child, I once heard my grandfather speak of the legend, but he dismissed it as being only a legend. In those days I thought the idea romantic and fascinating. Did I never mention it to you when I came to Rosmadel?”
“Never,” said the priest, suddenly seeing himself as he was in those days, a little barefooted boy going birdsnesting with a young prince in velvet whom he had the right to call brother. “Had you done so I should not have forgotten it.”
“I do not believe that I ever gave it a thought after I came to man’s estate,” went on the Marquis musingly. “It must have gone back to the region of fairy stories. And this old lady—what was her name?—you did not mention it, I think.”
“Purposely so,” replied the Abbé, dropping into a chairbeside him. “Her name was Magny, Mlle Magny. She was for years, she said, tiring-woman to Mme la Duchesse Douairière.”
His hearer clasped his hands over his eyes. “I remember the name,” he said after a moment. “I recall her too, I think. She must be well advanced in years now.”
“She was yesterday,” agreed the priest. “To-day—who knows?”
The Marquis looked up. “She is dead then? I did not gather that.”
“She died while I was with her.” They both fell silent, M. de Kersaint fingering the parchment—gone back also, thought the priest, to a distant wedding-day.
“Gaston, give me your hand!” he said suddenly, stretching out his own. “No, not that one, the other.” And when the Marquis in surprise had complied, the Abbé, holding the so dissimilar fingers in his own, tapped with a forefinger on the signet ring that one of them bore, and said, “Are you wise to wearthat?”
M. de Kersaint looked down at the crest cut in the emerald. “I have always worn it—without reflecting, I suppose—when I gave up everything else. One is inconsistent, no doubt. I never use it, of course.”
“But anybody—anybody interested—can make out what the device is, though oddly enough it never struck me till last night when your hand was on the table and the candlelight fell on it.”
“It means nothing tohimprobably.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said the priest, releasing the hand.
The Marquis slipped off the ring. “Very well. I will give up wearing it then.—Though, indeed, I might use it to support my claim of being akin . . . not that I am likely to wish to do that again!”
“Your kinship is by marriage, remember. You would never use the same arms. And, Gaston, having once declared yourself a kinsman of the Duc de Trélan’s you will have to keep it up, in order to get at the money.”
The Marquis, putting the ring in his pocket, frowned at this obvious truth.
“I suppose I shall. Let us think about this business then, before de Brencourt comes back, as he may do anymoment. Now, am I to take on myself to give permission for the further rifling of my ‘kinsman’s’ property, or shall I go through the farce of writing him a letter?”
“If you do that, a certain time must be allowed to elapse before you could . . . receive a reply.”
“Precisely,” said the Marquis de Kersaint. In spite of everything a gleam of rather grim amusement flitted over his face. “And I need not point out to you that the money would be like manna from heaven at this moment. So large a sum, absolutely at one’s own disposal—why, one might organise and arm Finistère almost as well as Cadoudal is arming the Morbihan. There is no time to lose, for, as it is, when we get possession of the treasure—if we ever do—it will be useless in its present state—coin of the time of Louis XIII. and Henri IV. It would have to go to England. Bertin would see to that, of course.”
The Abbé nodded. “But Bertin is not the man to get it out of Mirabel. What staff, if any, do you suppose the Directory maintains in the place?”
Mirabel’s owner shook his head. “I have no idea. I only know that it is a museum, which implies a guardian of some sort. I had rather for our purposes that it was empty and falling into ruins. Make a note, Pierre, to write to Bertin or someone to find out the dispositions there.”
The Abbé nodded again. “I imagine, then, that you will not write the letter to M. de Trélan—you will take the responsibility on your own shoulders, as you hinted at doing last night.”
“Yes,” said M. de Kersaint, leaning back in his chair. “And I shall probably go to Mirabel myself.”
The priest jumped. “Gaston, that would be madness!”
“Why?”
“Why? You know that as well as I. It is a great risk for anyone to run, and for a general himself to incur a hazard which he should assign to a subordinate is not only folly, but culpable folly. What would happen to all the plans for Finistère if you got laid by the heels? And think of the self-betrayal! Could you wonder if those quick-witted young men of yours, if M. de Brencourt, if all who got to know of it asked themselves why you didsuch an extraordinary thing as to go on this quest in person?”
M. de Kersaint looked at him musingly. “You have a terrible habit of being in the right, mon frère. I believe you want to go yourself!”
“Well, I think I should not do amiss, though I do not know Mirabel.”
“I wonder if you know what a good opinion of yourself you have!” said the Marquis, smiling. “No—though I dislike sending him there—I think that de Brencourt is the man to go.”
“Has he ever been there, do you think?” asked the priest, hesitating a little.
The Marquis looked away. “No, I should doubt it,” he said after a moment. “I shall have to ask him, I suppose. But here is my ancestor’s plan, and naturally I can give him all necessary details.”
“You must be careful how you do that—remember that you are only a distant kinsman.”
“I am not likely to forget it,” retorted the Marquis. “I would far rather not, but I think I must send the Comte. He is the man I should naturally have sent.”
“Roland de Céligny was dying to go, was he not?”
“Harebrained boy, yes! But I told him and La Vergne that I would have none of it. It is no work for children. He will be safely out of the way with his grandfather till I send for him again—though to be sure I should have preferred to keep him with me.”
“I hope his grandfather will be grateful to you for your self-denial.”
“Highly improbable, I should think,” observed the Marquis sardonically. “I can do no good thing in that quarter.”
“I can understand that it is not work for Roland,” pursued the priest meditatively, “but, as far as risk goes, he ran enough of that with us at la Croix-Fendue the day before yesterday.”
“Of a soldier’s death, perhaps, but not of any other. Notthatagain, please God!” A look of bitter regret passed over his face. “O Pierre,” he said in a low voice, “if only that boy had been born . . . at Mirabel!”
“Yes, yes!” assented the priest sadly. Things mightindeed have been otherwise if Mirabel had not in its last days been a childless house.
“When I see his grandfather again——” the Marquis was beginning—and was cut short by the sound of steps on the stairs. In an instant he was the man who had entered the attic yesterday evening, not the man who for the last three-quarters of an hour had been talking without reserve to his only intimate.
“De Brencourt—and Georges,” he said, and rising, stood waiting to receive the most notable of all the Royalist leaders, and that a peasant. In another moment the latter stood on the threshold, a massive Breton of about thirty, bull-necked, wide-shouldered, with short and very closely curling reddish hair.
The Marquis went forward and held out his hand. “Monsieur Cadoudal, I am honoured to meet the bravest of the brave.”
The Chouan’s great grip engulfed the strong, slender fingers. “And I in my turn,” he said, with a natural dignity, “salute the hero of Rivoli. You bear a Breton name, Monsieur le Marquis.”
“I have—or had—property in Brittany,” replied M. de Kersaint, hesitating for a moment, “but I am not a Breton.”
Georges CadoudalwasBreton—to the backbone—and in the discussion which followed Pierre Chassin had leisure to realise the force and unswervingness of his countryman’s personality, his warlike and (on a small scale) his administrative genius, and his justness of political outlook. For he knew perfectly well that as long ago as last summer, when Cadoudal had come back from his refuge in England to reorganise the Morbihan, he had urged the Bourbons to immediate action, pointing out that Hoche was no more, Bonaparte shut up (as he still was) with his best troops in Egypt, and the Republican armies being drawn off to the frontiers to face other foes. It was the hour to seize. But the advisers of the King and of his brother the Comte d’Artois, who was more particularly concerned with the affairs of the west, were, as usual, swayed by the evil genius which always seemed to haunt their counsels, and did nothing. Against that ineptitude Cadoudal, like all the Royalist leaders, past and present, had continually to struggle—as if there were not enoughdifficulties and more than enough dangers, without instructions from overseas that were always either futile or too late. If only, thought the Abbé, they do not trip Gaston’s feet in the future . . . He watched him now, listening to Cadoudal’s explanation of his system of “legions” in the Morbihan and in Loire-Inférieure, and how he had brought it about.
“But Finistère, Monsieur le Marquis,” finished the Breton, looking at the keen patrician face opposite him, “will be a much more difficult matter, because it is almost fresh ground. And you will find there many fewer arms stored away than is the case in my command, where we have been fighting on and off for six years.”
“I know it,” returned Finistère’s destined leader gravely. “I know I have a very hard task before me. But I have just received good news, Monsieur Cadoudal. I may be able to supply a good proportion of the necessary arms myself. There is something equivalent to 12,000 louis awaiting me in a kinsman’s château if I can secure it. As to organisation, here is my scheme, if you will be good enough to glance at it. Though I can never look to have a force like yours, I should hope in the event of hostilities to be able to support your rear—though indeed that would by no means counterbalance the immense benefit to me of having you as a bulwark in front of me. Against the tide of attack we of Finistère should at best be only a few pebbles—behind a rock.”
“At any rate, Monsieur le Marquis,” said ‘Georges,’ gazing at him hard out of his deepset eyes, “I can tell, without even looking at your scheme, that I should not havesandbehind me!”
An hour later Cadoudal, escorted by M. de Brencourt, having departed as secretly as he had come, M. de Kersaint stood collecting the papers strewn on the table. “I should have been happy to serve under that man, instead of being his colleague,” he said musingly. Then he went and looked out through the attic window at the remains of the mediaeval fortifications of Hennebont, with their memories of the indomitable spirit which had once defended them, housing in the breast of the Comtesse Jeanne de Montfort.
“Pierre,” he said suddenly, “before we leave I have a fancy that I should like to see the giver of this strange and belated wedding gift of mine. Would it be possible, think you?”
“I do not suppose the niece would object, if you give me leave to concoct some reason for the request,” replied the Abbé.
The Marquis gave a sort of smile. “You can say what you like. I am afraid you must be getting inured to deception on my behalf. At any rate I cannot betray myself to Mlle Magny now.”
No, one cannot betray oneself to the dead. And yet, who knows? . . . Perhaps the old lady’s spirit, still hovering round the habitation it had so recently quitted, could realise and be glad that her offering had thus quickly found its goal. But candles burnt now at the head and feet of that empty dwelling, and the face looked austere, and remote from those old desires and admirations. M. de Kersaint took the holy-water sprinkler which the priest handed to him, and shook a few drops on the dead servitress of his house.
“Yes, I remember her,” he said in a low voice. “My mother always thought so highly of her . . . I wish now that I had seen her alive, for I should like to have thanked her for this great gift of hers, with its possibilities for France. Could she have chosen a better time to make it?”
He stooped over the bed, and, reverently lifting one of the old hands folded over the crucifix, put a kiss on its icy, shrivelled surface, while the priest gazed at him, full of sorrowful thoughts. Eight-and-twenty years ago, when those closed eyes had looked on him in his springtime, what might he not have become? Lucien, who had been struck by it, had told him how M. de Kersaint had objected to last night’s use of theTu Marcellus eris, and the sad and lovely lines rushed into the priest’s mind anew. Yes, more poignant than the lament for youth cut off and blighted promise, was that for youth spent to no end and promise wasted.Tu Marcellus eris!At twenty-three he might have been . . . at fifty-one? . . .
For what the man who stood there with him by the dead had since done to redeem the light and sterile past hecould not claim in his own name, and she—the bride of Mlle Magny’s memories—to whom this late justification of her faith in him would have been life’s supremest happiness, was no longer on earth to see it.
Truly, as the great Latin knew, there was a bitter sense of tears in human things.