“I did, certainly,” said the Abbé quietly. The vista was opening out into a regular Heaven. The Comte was understood to say that he had hardly seen her.
“It certainly does seem extraordinary,” mused theMarquis, leaning his head on his hand, his eyes fixed on Roland.
“If you had seen her, sir, you would have thought so still more,” said Roland with eagerness. “She had a carriage, always, and a way of speaking when she forgot herself—what I mean to say is, that if it hadn’t been so patently absurd to think so, one might even have taken her for a grande dame.”
“And why,” asked the Abbé softly, “would it be so patently absurd to have taken her for one? Stranger things have happened in the topsy-turveydom of to-day. I have heard of Chevaliers of St. Louis working as stevedores at a German port, and we all know how many émigrés in London earned——”
M. de Brencourt broke in upon him rudely. “Pshaw, Abbé, you are too romantic, and so is M. de Céligny. You forget, I have seen the woman too, and though undoubtedly superior, she was nothing out of the way, and as unlike the paragon of our young friend’s poetic fancy as——”
“As falsehood is unlike truth,” finished M. Chassin, looking straight at him. “Well, we differ, Comte, in our estimate of what is ‘out of the way,’ that is all. I am with M. de Céligny’s.—Go on, my son. You think one might even have taken her for a grande dame?”
“Stuff and nonsense,” muttered M. de Brencourt angrily, pushing away his plate.
“Really,” said the Marquis, as this little passage of arms ended, “your Mme Vidal begins to intrigue me so much that I almost wish I had gone to Mirabel myself!”
“Ah, if only you had!” was drawn in a whisper from the Abbé.
M. de Kersaint heard, though he was not meant to, and raised his eyebrows. “Why, it was your representations which prevented me from going!” he exclaimed. “What is the matter, Monsieur de Brencourt?”
“Nothing,” replied the Comte, who had half risen from his seat. “For the moment I thought—it was nothing.”
“You hear that testimony, Monsieur le Comte?” said the Abbé, turning to him with a sudden air of combat. “You should be pleased with me—M. le Marquis acknowledges that it was my wise counsels which prevailed on him not to go in person to Mirabel!”
“And why the deuce do you suppose I should be pleased at that?” demanded the goaded gentleman. “M. de Kersaint was welcome to go to Mirabel if he wished, for all it mattered to me!”
(“How very rude he is!” thought Roland, displeased.)
“You would not, surely, have had our leader run into such danger?”
“Well,Ihad to run into it!” retorted the Comte.
“Yes—and succumbed!” returned the priest with such a world of meaning in his voice that the Comte changed colour.
“Come, Abbé,” interposed the Marquis, “are you not being ungenerous to a less fortunate rival? You are surely not casting it up at M. de Brencourt that he endured a brief captivity for the King’s cause?”
The Abbé shook his head. “M. le Comte knows that I am not,” he replied. “But I am afraid that we are checking Roland’s interesting recital by our divergences on the subject of Mme Vidal. If he will forgive our bad manners . . .”
“Yes, go on, Roland,” said the Marquis. “But you must eat too. You were telling us about your actual entry into the château.”
“I got as far as Mme Vidal’s room,” resumed Roland obediently, “and then I suppose I fainted again, for the next thing I remember is finding myself in bed there, and Mme Vidal bending over me again.—Ah, by the way,” he cried, suddenly remembering something which might serve as a contribution to portraiture, “there was one curious little fact about her which I forgot to mention. It was then that I first noticed it. One of her eyes, though they were almost blue, had some brown specks in it. Did you remark it, Monsieur l’Abbé? It was the right eye. You could only see it when she was quite near you.”
“No . . . I . . . did not observe it,” said the Abbé. He spoke as if a strong wind of sudden origin had somehow taken away his breath. From the lower end of the table came the sound of a man drawing his sharply.
“I remember I used to look at it when she nursed me,” went on Roland, happy at producing some effect in the end. “And I——”
He was interrupted by a voice he scarcely knew. “Shehad eyes, you say, almost blue, with brown specks in one?” gasped the Marquis, jerking forward in his chair. “Did I hear rightly? Blue eyes . . . which one had the . . . say it again!”
In a dead silence, and much embarrassed thereby, Roland repeated his observation. The Marquis de Kersaint, leaning forward in his chair, his left hand clutching the table, looked at him with eyes which seemed as if they would drive through him, and as the young man, fascinated by that extraordinary gaze, returned it, he saw his leader slowly turn so pale that it looked as if every vestige of blood had been drained away from his face. Even his lips were the colour of paper. Next moment, without a word, without even a gesture of apology, he had pushed back his chair, risen from his place, and disappeared into his bedroom.
Roland fell back, smitten dumb with astonishment and, staring at the door which had just closed, he did not see the black and thunderous look which the Comte de Brencourt darted first at him and then at the Abbé. But in a moment the priest, too, was on his feet.
“It must be that wound of his,” he said quickly. “If you will excuse me a minute, Messieurs?” And he, too, went through the bedroom door. Roland saw his face as he went; it was not inexpressive now. It wore a most singular look of mingled gravity and exultation.
The Comte de Brencourt and the unconscious author of this scene were now alone. And just because the Comte was looking as he did Roland felt that he must say something.
“I am afraid that M. le Marquis’ wound——” he began timidly.
M. de Brencourt gave a short laugh that was more like a snarl. “His wound!” he exclaimed. “Well, yes, a wound if you like—a sore, a festering sore! Mort de ma vie, boy, what made you so observant!”
“Observant!” repeated the puzzled Roland. “I don’t understand you, Monsieur le Comte. Ought one not to have noticed that M. le Marquis was—in pain. But the Abbé——”
“Go on with your supper, in Heaven’s name!” broke in the Comte roughly. He really looked like murder at thatmoment. “You have done a pretty evening’s work, on my soul—and I don’t suppose you are through with it yet, either!” And, laughing again, he poured out and drank off a glass of wine.
But Roland, almost convinced that he was sitting at table with a madman, was in no mood to obey him. He merely stared at the second in command. Fortunately it was only for a moment, for the bedroom door opened again and the Abbé stood there.
“M. de Kersaint wishes to speak to you, Roland,” he said. Amazing thing—helooked pleased. Roland got up, utterly bewildered. His interview—now? He knew not what he had said or done to precipitate it, and apprehension was so written on his face that M. Chassin put his hand kindly for a moment on his arm as he passed him, and gave it a little pressure.
The Comte de Brencourt now addressed the aumônier. “Since your services, Monsieur l’Abbé, don’t seem after all to be needed for this surprising seizure of M. de Kersaint’s,” he observed, “perhaps you will be good enough to sit down and finish your supper. These constant exits hardly tend to good appetite!”
A flame of anger suddenly ran over the little priest’s face. “It isyourservices that have been required these many days, Monsieur de Brencourt,” he rapped out, “and you know it! I have no wish to sit down to table with you!” And turning on his heel he marched out of the sitting-room and slammed the door.
Stupefaction seized M. de Brencourt in his turn. Hedidknow then, that wily old devil—he had known all the time! Why, in the name of all his saints had he not told de Trélan? But anyhow de Trélan was in process of enlightenment at this moment behind that door, for of course he had had the boy in to question him further. In a few minutes he would doubtless come out, and then—well, there would probably be murder. For a little bloodshed would hardly wash away this time what their encounter the other evening had not availed to bring to light. . . .
For five minutes, perhaps, the Comte de Brencourt sat there with a set face waiting for this to happen; then, as no one emerged from the inner room, his fretted nervesdrew him to his feet and sent him out in search of the Abbé.
He found him standing motionless under the moon and stars just outside the farmyard—not far, to be exact, from the pigsties, as would have been obvious to anyone less absorbed. The Comte strode over to the cassocked figure.
“May I ask what you meant by that remark you made just now?” he demanded without preliminary.
The Abbé drew himself up. “It is no good talking to me in that tone, Monsieur de Brencourt,” he returned with spirit. “I am neither a gentleman nor a layman, soIcan’t go out with you to the Moulin-aux-Fées.”
“Certainly no one would ever take you for a gentleman,” responded the Comte, his voice shaking with passion, “and it takes a priest indeed to play the part you have played—a spying hedge-priest——”
“Which is worse, Monsieur le Comte, spying or lying?”
“Lying!” ejaculated the Comte with vehemence. “Don’t your books of moral theology tell you that keeping quiet about a thing is as bad as lying about it? Why was it more my business to tell the Duc de Trélan that his wife is alive than yours, as you evidently knew it?”
“Dear me,” said M. Chassin, and he smiled. “I was referring to something quite different—to the occasion on which, in so many words, you told Mme Vidal that her husband was dead—no tacit lie that! I think you are rather betraying yourself, are you not, by referring to yet another?”
“Oh, go to the devil!” burst out M. de Brencourt.
“I wish I knew where you were to go, Monsieur le Comte,” was the priest’s answer. “No, seriously, I do not wish to quarrel with you—even after the part you have played. The situation that you have brought about is much too grave for that. You must know that you have done a thing which God may forgive but which man will find it hard to. Listen to me, Monsieur de Brencourt, I beg of you, before it is too late, and remove yourself from the Clos-aux-Grives, from M. de Kersaint’s command even——”
M. de Brencourt, thus adjured, exploded in an oath andstruck the door of the pigsty so violent a blow that he brought out an enquiring inmate.
“By the God above us, Abbé, you go too far! Do you suppose that I am going to run away from de Kersaint’s—from de Trélan’s—from any man’s anger!—Forgiveness—I have not asked for it! And when the Duc de Trélan wants me he will know where to find me!” He swung off in the direction of the forest.
“I only wish I could hope he didnotknow where to find you,” muttered the Abbé, gazing after his receding figure, “for, short of a miracle, there will be a terrible day of reckoning for this silence of yours!”
But the flood of joy and gratitude in his heart was too potent; it swept away alike his disgust and his apprehension, and by the pigsty wall itself M. Chassin fell on his knees and covered his face, while the moon, but little declined from her fatal plenitude of four nights ago, looked down benignantly upon him.
The brief but acrimonious interview of M. de Brencourt and M. Chassin had scarcely terminated when Roland de Céligny emerged from his leader’s bedroom to the outer room. He shut the door behind him quickly, and stood there a moment with his back to it, curiously combining the air of a sentinel and that of a fugitive. And indeed, breathing rather fast, he was saying to himself, “No one shall go in—not even the Abbé!”
He had just been witnessing something which, though he did not fully understand it, he felt no eyes ought to have witnessed; he was hot and shaken with the thought that his own unwilling but necessary presence had been an outrage. . . . But since he was there, as he knew, to answer what he was asked, and since the Marquis de Kersaint could ask anything of him, even to his life, he had stayed, and averted his eyes through the storm of questioning, behind which could be divined a man’s very soul on the rack—till that final bowing of the proud, unhappy head over the battered trinket that Roland had withdrawn from his own neck and held out as proof irrefragable . . . yet a proof of what he still did not know.
He was so agitated that it was only after a few seconds of this self-imposed vigil that he realised he was facing an empty room. The Abbé was not there, the Comte was not there. And in a minute or two more, still hearing no movement from within he thought, “I must not stay here; he would not like it . . . I must tell the Abbé something. But I must also contrive that no one else goes in.” And, casting a glance on the wasted victuals of that supper-table which he had been so instrumental in breaking up, he went out.
A little later he was knocking at the aumônier’s door. M. Chassin, barely entered himself, opened it. His face lit up when he saw who stood there.
“My dear boy, I am glad to see you! Come in!”
Roland still hesitated. “Are you alone, mon père?”
“Absolutely, my child. Come in!” He almost steered him in. “Now sit down, and we will have a talk. I was hoping that you would come.”
But Roland would not sit down. In his young mind he was afraid, if he did that, of being led into saying more than he wanted to say. He did not know how much he ought to reveal. As a matter of fact he hated saying anything at all about what he had seen, but, bewildered as he was, he felt that the Abbé had better be told something.
Standing there by the bed, he began at the end. “I . . . I ventured to tell the officer of the guard that no one was to approach M. le Marquis to-night except through you—because of his wound,” he said.
“Excellent! Very good indeed!” said the priest, and he clapped him on the shoulder. Roland wondered a little why he seemed so elated; to him, fresh from that scene with his leader, it did not seem quite decent.
“You are perhaps going to see him now, mon père?” he hazarded.
“God forbid, my son! If ever a man’s privacy should be respected, his should be at this moment . . . if you have done what I prayed you might be doing!”
“But, Monsieur l’Abbé,” besought the perplexed and almost unhappy Roland, “what is it that I have done? What is it all?”
“Tell me first what you did do?” said the priest. “No,”—for the boy had instantly turned away and was showing a disposition to go—“I do not want to hear anything about M. de Kersaint. I can see from your face how you feel about it. I only want to know this—how did you convince him . . . if you did . . . that Mme Vidal, who has some brown specks in one of her eyes, was . . . someone he had known before?”
“I showed him,” said Roland, looking at the floor, “a little old locket she gave me when I left. And when he saw that——” He stopped dead.
“Yes, yes,” said the priest, putting a hand on his arm. “When he saw that he was convinced, was he not? That’s all it is necessary for me to know, my child. Please God the rest will come right now.”
“O, Monsieur l’Abbé, couldn’t you tell mewhatis to come right?”
“Not just yet,” said M. Chassin, smiling. “But you shall know soon. Anyhow, my son, you can go to bed, as I hope you are about to do, with the reflection that you have this evening done the best day’s work you ever did in your young life. . . . I think you have not yet had your scolding for going to Mirabel? No! Well, you will never get it now——from M. de Kersaint.” And adding, “Go to bed! God bless you!” he, to Roland’s astonishment, bestowed upon him a hearty embrace.
And the author of so much disturbance, somewhat comforted, lay down a little later by the side of Artamène and Lucien, whose scrupulous abstention, on his request, from all enquiries about his supper-party seemed a thing phenomenal, an almost chilly lack. So, also, did the absence of the little locket and its chain from Roland’s own neck.
How well inspired M. l’Abbé Chassin, for his part, had been to lie down to sleep that night almost fully dressed, was proved at about a quarter to five next morning, when he woke to find M. du Ménars, rather scantily clothed, standing beside his bed. He blinked up at him a moment, for if he had expected to be roused by anyone, it was by Gaston himself.
“Do you know where de Brencourt is, Abbé?” asked the Comte’s next in rank. “He is nowhere to be found, and I must see either him or the Marquis at once, the Marquis by preference. But for that I want your permission, as I understand he was not to be disturbed without it.”
“What has happened?” asked the Abbé, getting off the bed.
“Cadoudal has just sent an express to say that the English convoy with muskets and ammunition for the Morbihan which he was expecting has arrived—arrived two days ago,” he added, glancing at the open letter in hishand, “but that, knowing M. de Kersaint to be in need of both, and that he would probably be in a position to repay him in kind later on, he detached one ship for us before it unloaded, and directed it to put in at Sainte-Brigitte, and as the wind is favourable it ought to be there this evening. Splendid news—provided we can reach the coast quickly. And of course we shall want every man we can get together to cover the disembarkation, for the Blues are certain to get wind of it.”
“I will rouse the Marquis instantly,” said M. Chassin. “Only do me the favour, Monsieur du Ménars, of allowing me to see him first. He was much indisposed last night. . . .”
And a few seconds later, with Cadoudal’s despatch in his hand, he was knocking gently on his foster-brother’s door. Receiving no answer he tried the handle. To his surprise it gave, so he went in, shutting the door quickly.
It was light, of course; had been light for long enough, added to which the sun would soon be up. All the eastern sky already expected him. But in the room there still survived the pale, forgotten ghost of a candle flame, and the open window was curtained over. And by the window, fully dressed, his sound arm stretched out along the wide ledge, his head sunk forward on that arm, sat Gaston de Trélan asleep. At least he did not move until the priest touched him on the shoulder.
“Who is it?” he asked without moving. “I thought the door was locked.”
“It is I, Pierre,” answered the Abbé, his voice very stirred. “Gaston, my brother . . .”
And his brother sighed, lifted his head, and pulled himself up from the sill, stiffly, as if he had been there a long time. In his one available hand he held something tightly. He looked like a man who has had as much as he can bear in this world, from whom shock has shorn away everything, even the power to feel joy.
“I fell asleep, I think,” he said uncertainly. “I suppose you have come to tell me, Pierre, that it is all a dream?”
“No, thank the ever-merciful God, it is true. Look in your hand!”
The Duc de Trélan obeyed him, opening his fingers withdifficulty, as if they too were stiff. And he gazed at the little locket, at the worn, dangling chain, as a man sleepwalking or entranced might gaze. Then he said, in one and the same breath, “It can’t, it can’t be true! . . . I must start for Mirabel instantly!” and rose to his feet.
The Abbé faced him. “Something is asked of you, Gaston, before you meet her. As a soldier . . . You did not hear a horseman gallop into the yard a short time ago?”
The sleepwalker shook his head mutely. “Who was it?” he asked with indifference.
“A messenger in haste from Georges—with great news. He brought this. M. du Ménars opened it, and is outside now, waiting to consult you.” And he held out the open despatch.
The wounded man transferred the locket to the keeping of his hampered right hand, and took it. A quick touch of colour shot into his face as he read, and he bit his lip hard. Then, even paler than before, he held out the letter again. “Tell du Ménars and de Brencourt to see to it then, Pierre. I must start for Mirabel at once.”
The priest said nothing, and made no motion to take the despatch, but looked at him with some of his own steady colour fading, a most unusual phenomenon. Ah, was that inherent wilfulness going to ruin this also!
“You do not approve?” said Gaston de Trélan sharply. “But how could you understand! I would go to her over a world in flames!”
“And over your own honour, too?—Gaston, Gaston, reflect a moment, I implore you! Do not spoil this almost incredible miracle that God has wrought for you by snatching at it before the hour! See how she has been preserved for you all these years, how wonderfully the knowledge of it has come to light, and have patience a few days longer! For this unexpected coming of arms—why, it is the fulfilment of your greatest desire!”
“I have a greater now,” said Gaston de Trélan, looking far beyond him. “Are you human, Pierre, that you do not realise it?” Cadoudal’s despatch was almost crumpled to nothing in his clenched hand; he became aware of it. “Take this, before I—But, my God, that it should have come to-day!”
This time the priest accepted the letter, and retained the hand that gave it him as well. “Mon frère, consider!” he said pleadingly. “It only means the shortest of delays. You can hasten to Mirabel afterwards.”
“Yes,” said his brother with an indescribable intonation, “If you will guarantee that I shall still be alive—afterwards!” And he withdrew his hand.
There indeed lay the hazard, and they both knew it. Disabled, too, as he was, he might well be killed before that meeting could take place, for there would be fighting over this business of the convoy. And death, the long desired, had terrors for him now.
Nevertheless the little priest did not budge. Gaston would thank him for it, he knew, when his brain was clear of this tremendous shock.
“No, my first duty is to her,” went on the Duc de Trélan with all his old stubbornness. “I can never offer her sufficient reparation; at least what I can offer her shall be instant. And—she may be in danger there! I have plenty of competent officers; de Brencourt, du Ménars can handle the men as well as I for this affair. It will not amount to more than a skirmish at most—perhaps there will be no collision with the Republicans at all.”
“Then why,” said the Abbé very low, looking at the floor, “did you speak just now of the possibility of your falling yourself before you and she could meet?”
His shot went home. The tired eyes flashed like steel. “Pierre!” said the Duc de Trélan in a warning voice.
The priest raised his head. There were tears in his own eyes. “The men are untried, Gaston, most of them. They will followyou, but who really knows whether they will follow du Ménars? And the Comte de Brencourt—no one knows where he is. There may be no big engagement with the Republicans over this business, but it will be no easy task to cover the disembarkation and get the arms away from Sainte-Brigitte. You are a soldier; I do not need to tell you that. With these peasants it will need the most skilful leadership. And . . . to throw away, after all our prayers, the chance of arming Finistère! My brother, my brother . . .”
But his brother had already turned away and was at the window, his back to him, and the priest heard him say in astifled voice, “Finistère, Finistère . . . O my God, what a refinement of cruelty!”
The sun was up now; the curtain could not withhold it. In the silence could be heard the tread of M. du Ménars as he walked up and down in the room outside—waiting. Pierre Chassin looked at the crumpled despatch that he held, and its characters seemed to him like the writing on the wall. Yet how natural was the impulse to disregard it—how brutal to stand in the way of disregarding it . . . . But because he loved the man by the window so much he struck again at him, and harder.
“You said just now, Gaston, that your first duty was to your wife. Yes, I think it is, but only because your duty to your King and your position coincide with it—risen though she be from the dead. Think for a moment of her—what she would choose—not of your own most natural desires! Which would she have, that you should be false to your trust in order to hasten to her, or that you fulfil it first, setting her second . . . even” his voice shook a little, “even if need be, that you should die in fulfilling it. O—forgive me, my brother—you know which she would have . . .”
But Gaston gave no sign.
“Forgive me, too,” resumed Pierre rather brokenly, “for saying things so harshnow! But this is the testing-moment; you will never meet another more crucial. You could not lay before your noble wife a nobler reparation than this—to put your fidelity to a trust before the instincts of your own heart. . . .”
The words died away as his own heart sank. And had he gone too far? He knew that no other man would have ventured to say a tithe as much to that haughty and wounded spirit. But he knew, too, with conviction, that Gaston’s better self must echo every cruel word. And as the tall figure still stood motionless, the forehead leaning on the bent left arm against the frame of the curtained window, Pierre Chassin prayed as he had not prayed even for their reunion, that the man faced with so tense a choice should not fail.
“Of course, you have seen her,” said the Duc at last, breaking the vibrating silence, but in a voice that told how slowly mental circulation was coming back to him. “Youhave seen her . . . spoken with her! Pierre, you knew all this then—knew and never told me!—Concierge at Mirabel! It is like a nightmare!”
Indeed there was much to explain—but not now. “I only knew at the eleventh hour,” said the priest quickly. “And under the seal, Gaston; so I could not tell you. My promise to you prevented my telling her before I had time to consider whether I were justified in breaking it. That time was never given me; but had I not had to leave in such haste I should have told her. But—listen, Gaston, for God’s sake—all may yet come right of itself, for I pressed her so strongly to come to Brittany in person to see the ‘Marquis de Kersaint,’ giving her full directions, that I fully believe she will come. And if the sword lies between you and that meeting she would urge you——”
“To take it up,” said the leader of Finistère. “Yes, yes. You are right. I don’t see things clearly this morning.” He drew a long breath, jerked back the little curtain from before the casement, and the risen sun entered gloriously. Then he turned round, his figure dark against it, and said, in his voice of everyday,
“Tell du Ménars to come in, Pierre.”
The Abbé went quickly up to him and kissed him.
Not Artamène de la Vergne himself had received the command to boot and saddle, which set the Clos-aux-Grives in such a pleasurable commotion at sunrise that morning, more jubilantly than Lucien du Boisfossé. None of the three had been more thrilled than he with the joyful news about the English frigate and its cargo, and the prospect of a brush with the Blues before that cargo could be secured.
But alas for those bright anticipations! The youthful philosopher was destined to have no hand in disembarking barrels of powder on the beach of Sainte-Brigitte. Because M. de Kersaint considered him the youngest officer with a head on his shoulders—how gladly would poor Lucien have foregone that flattering opinion!—he had been left behind with thirty men or so to guard the deserted headquarters. And there, late the next afternoon, he still was, trying to read Rabelais in the empty ‘nursery,’ in spite of a headache. For on top of his head, bandaged up like a mummy’s, there was a fairly extensive sabre cut—though there had been no fighting at the Clos-aux-Grives. But Lucien had seen some rather murderous fighting, for all that.
It was M. de Brencourt who was thefons et origoof that headache—M. de Brencourt who had so mysteriously disappeared, who could not be found for any searching before the column started on its march to the sea . . . but who had just as mysteriously reappeared, about four hours after its departure, to fall into such a paroxysm of rage and despair when he learnt what had happened as Lucien hoped never to witness again. It was plain that the Comte feared Lucien and everyone else would attribute his strange defection (of which he offered no explanation) to cowardice, an idea which had never entered the youth’s head, andwhich he endeavoured tactfully to convey to his superior would enter the head of no living man who knew him. In the end the Comte did what du Boisfossé had seen from the first he would do—rode off like a madman along the road to the sea.
In a couple of hours he was back again, his roan horse a lather. It seemed that when he had got a certain distance he had heard a piece of news which had sent him back as hard as he could gallop. The Blues had got wind of the convoy, and it seemed likely that they would attack the Chouans in force from the far side of Sainte-Brigitte. That could not concern M. de Brencourt now, but what had sent him back was the news that a smaller body—of cavalry, it was said—were probably setting out to fall upon their rear from the north-east. This contingent would pass within some six or seven miles of Lanvennec. And, since every available Chouan in the district who possessed arms had gone with the Marquis de Kersaint, M. de Brencourt proposed to take the headquarters guard, all but a man or two, and ambush this column at a certain ford which it must cross—if he could get there in time.
It was not for Lucien to protest; M. de Brencourt was not merely his superior officer, but the second-in-command. And the youth was only too pleased at the prospect of seeing some fighting after all, and perhaps doing a great service to his departed comrades. For this was how its originator seemed to regard the enterprise. So they set out, and they did get there in time, and yesterday, almost at this hour, Lucien had found himself, musket in hand, kneeling with the rest behind a fringe of willows on the bank of a broadish stream. And as they waited, and the willow leaves tickled his nose, M. du Boisfossé, who had only just learnt from the Comte the numerical strength of the enemy, began to realise that thirty men, even posted as they were, with all the advantage of a surprise, could hardly hope to stop or account for two hundred and fifty horsemen, and that M. de Brencourt was doing something that was a great deal more than rash. Could it be that he wanted to get himself killed? If so, he possibly had a right to indulge this fancy, but hardly to include him, du Boisfossé, and the major part of the headquarters guard in his desire. However . . .
Now, looking back on yesterday’s mêlée, the young philosopher, though he had no reason to modify this view of the Comte’s motives when he remembered how recklessly that gentleman had exposed himself throughout, knew at least that the second-in-command could congratulate himself on having caused the foe, after all, something worse than confusion and delay. For the Republicans, counting presumably on annexing the English muskets to their own use, had with them, and in the front of the column too, some empty ammunition waggons, and these were their bane. At the very first volley, poured into their unsuspecting ranks just as they were about to ford the stream, the now riderless horses of one of these waggons had dashed down into the river, and being there instantly shot, and the waggon overturned by their dying struggles, the narrow passage was for some time entirely blocked, while a hail of bullets came from the invisible marksmen on the opposite bank. Undoubtedly the Blues lost their heads in the surprise of it, or they would have rushed the ford and discovered how lightly it was held, but in the turmoil many saddles were emptied before the passage was clear. When at last they splashed over they were in too much haste to investigate the willows, but their infuriated rear ranks, without drawing rein, did use the sabre on anyone they could see—and Lucien happened to be one of these.
He woke up to find himself lying on the trampled, muddy bank, amid a strong smell of bruised peppermint. M. de Brencourt himself was bathing his head, and told him that he had had a nasty knock, but that, luckily, the blade had turned. Two of their men had been less fortunate.
But the ford! Lucien dreamed of it that night; yet what he still saw with most particularity was none of the slain cavalrymen, but one dead rawboned chestnut horse, which lay pathetically with outstretched neck in the stream which was not deep enough to float it, the cut traces bobbing on the current.
And now the youth, relieved of his command, since the Comte was at the farmhouse, sat in the nursery and longed for its other occupants. M. de Brencourt had been unwontedly genial to him, and really solicitous about his hurt, but his manner was sometimes very strange, he wasrestless to an extraordinary degree, and looked as if he had not slept for nights. And though rumours were beginning to come in of the complete success of the expedition, rumours indeed that it had beaten off the enemy and was on its way back with what it had gone to fetch, M. de Kersaint’s chief of staff seemed in no way uplifted by them. Lucien could not make him out.
He was in fact thinking about him now when the door of the nursery opened a little way and a small barefooted boy looked timidly in.
“Hallo!” said the young man. “What do you want, mon gars? Come in!”
“Yes, go in, child, and tell us what you want,” commanded de Brencourt, appearing at that moment behind him. “Why, you are from the Ferme des Vieilles, are you not—Le Blé-aux-Champs’ brother?”
The boy, half frightened, half alert, looked up with dark eyes at the gentleman who had him by the shoulder. “Yes, Monsieur le Comte.”
“You came to see if he was back, I suppose?”
“No, Monsieur le Comte. I came on a message,” said the boy, rubbing one bare and dirty foot against the ankle of the other. “I knew they were not back. But soon they will be. There is dust hanging over the road from the sea.”
“Ah, a good scout already,” observed M. de Brencourt, releasing him. “How is that head, du Boisfossé?”
“Better, thank you, sir,” responded Lucien politely. “How soon do you think they will be here?”
The Comte gave an odd little movement of the shoulders, as if to say that the matter did not interest him. He was certainly very strange.
“Well, and what did you come here for, child?” he asked carelessly.
“Only to say that there is a lady from Paris at our farm,” responded the small messenger, “and that she wishes to wait on M. le Marquis when he returns. That is all, Monsieur.”
It seemed, however, to be more than enough for the Comte de Brencourt. He grabbed hold of the small shoulder again, almost throwing the child off his balance.
“What did you say! A lady from Paris asking for the Marquis?”
“Yes,” said the boy, wriggling; and his face turned sulky, just like his elder brother’s.
“Well, go on!” said the Comte, shaking him.
“There is nothing else,” muttered Mercury. “She came yesterday. She is waiting. And when M. le Marquis returns . . . Let me go, Monsieur le Comte—I have to drive the cow home.”
Without another word M. de Brencourt dragged the boy out of the room. The expression on his face was startling. So was the amazement on Lucien’s.
And about two minutes later the young man was craning his swathed head recklessly out of the window. There had been a sudden clatter of hoofs on the cobbles of the yard, but the rider was already gone.
“Well,” thought M. du Boisfossé, “the mysterious lady may have intended to interview M. le Marquis, but I think it is M. le Comte whom she will see first. Here, perhaps, is some explanation of—everything! Oh, why are Roland and Artamène not back!”
They were not far away. That dust above the road from the sea hung over a column winding triumphantly along, with a string of country carts in its midst piled high with the cases and barrels which, since dawn, they had been receiving from the English sailors on the beach at Sainte-Brigitte. The Chouans were intoxicated with their success; had they not yesterday, before ever arriving at the little bay, routed what seemed to them a huge body of Blues; had not hostile cavalry, too, broken harmlessly during the night on the covering force which M. le Marquis had so wisely stationed on the road to protect his operations? Vaguely they themselves realised that they had been brilliantly handled, and assented without hesitation to the opinion of hardbitten veterans of former wars like Sans-Souci and Fleur d’Epine when they said, “We have a great general—another Charette, perhaps.”
At the head of his victorious array, rather weary from strain and want of sleep, his right arm still in a sling, but erect and easy as ever, rode Gaston de Trélan on the beautifulblack horse which had once been Marthe de la Vergne’s. By his side was M. du Ménars, and the two were already discussing the best method of distributing the muskets and ammunition through the department, and how far they would meet their needs till the gold of Mirabel could procure more.
“Still, this is an excellent beginning,” observed M. du Ménars contentedly. “We shall be in soon now. . . . I wonder if we shall find any news of de Brencourt when we get back? His disappearance at this juncture is the most inexplicable thing I ever heard of. Has it occurred to you, Marquis, that it might conceivably be the result of foul play?”
His leader looked round at him, evidently startled. Du Ménars knew that he had had very little time for any speculation about his missing subordinate.
“Foul play?” he ejaculated. “No, I had not thought of that. I know no more than you why . . .My God!”
And his horse suddenly bounded forward as if he had unconsciously driven in the spurs. Checking him, he turned his head sharply aside, then addressed his aide-de-camp over his shoulder.
“Monsieur de Céligny, have the goodness to ride back till you come to the Abbé, and tell him that I must speak to him at once. I will wait for him here, by the side of the road. Don’t halt the column, du Ménars; go on and I will catch you up.”
And as Roland turned to obey he rode across to the side of the road, and sat there waiting while the ranks trudged past. In these, sooner or later, would come the Abbé, who always marched with the men. At last the priest came abreast, and stepping aside, stood by the black horse and its rider, while the loaded carts and their escort passed. When the embroidered jacket, baggy breeches and wide-brimmed hat of the last Chouan had gone by, his foster-brother swung off his steed. His face was fearfully stern.
“Pierre,” he said in a voice unlike his own, “a terrible thought has just come to me. I cannot understand why I have not had it earlier. As de Brencourt knew my wife in the old days,” he paused; the priest guessed only too well what was coming, “—as he knew her personally, hemust have been aware that she was alive—was at Mirabel—and . . .deliberately kept the knowledge from me!”
The priest looked down at the dusty road. “I am afraid that he did, Gaston.”
“God!” said Gaston de Trélan, and smote his fist upon his saddle. The thoroughbred reared a little, and the Abbé caught the reins.
“I tried to force him to tell you. But my own position was so difficult,” he began.
“To keep silent after I had consented to meet him,” exclaimed the Duc, his eyes blazing, “after he had taken my hand . . . it revolts me! I can hardly believe it—be quiet, Zéphyr!”
“He was mad, I suppose, at seeing her again,” said the priest, shaking his head. “It has revolted me, too. Perhaps his disappearance—Where are you going, Gaston?”
For M. de Trélan, already back in the saddle, was turning his horse’s head in the opposite direction.
“I must get away for a little,” he said, very grim. “This is a thunderbolt—horrible. I must have time to get accustomed to it before I can face anybody. Go on after the men, Pierre; do not get left behind.”
He set spurs to his horse in earnest; Zéphyr went half across to the opposite bank, tried vainly to get his head down, and next moment was going down the road like an arrow, and, annoyed at his cavalier treatment, pulling so hard that for a moment or two his rider thought that he would prove too much for his bridle hand, and regretted his disabled right arm. The struggle for mastery, however, gave him some physical relief in the black whirlwind of repulsion and horror that had broken on him. Between the demands of leadership and the overwhelming news about his wife, he had had no time or inclination these two days to think out the part de Brencourt had played—scarcely time, indeed, till this homeward march, to think of him at all, in spite of his singular disappearance. And now the realisation of the Comte’s cold-blooded treachery and deceit, coming on top of his provocations, on top of the duel, on top of his own sparing of him, despite his resolve to the contrary—for Gaston de Trélan was no more exclusively right-handed than another—and, most repulsive of all, on top of their reconciliation . . . it was surelyenough to put any decent man beside himself, and how much more the man who had been his victim! He turned Zéphyr on to a track that made for the lande, and for a space, in which time hardly seemed to exist, galloped him madly over the heather.
Gradually he began to regain control over himself, too. The man had probably taken himself off for good; though he could never forgive him, nor forget what he had done, he would not be called upon to meet him again. And he had not succeeded in his devil’s work. So he himself would rather think of this tremendous news of Valentine’s survival—if indeed it were not after all some mistake, some cruel imposture, which he would discover for such when he got to Mirabel.
—No, the evidence was too strong! Shewasthere—no impostress, but the real Valentine; not the dead Valentine whom he had grown to love and look to, but the living. And so their meeting was to be in this world after all—though he himself in the last few days had so nearly gone to another. And how would the living Valentine receive him? Perhaps she would altogether turn from him. Could he blame her if she did?
He rode off the lande by way of the Ferme des Vieilles, Zéphyr by this time quieted, indeed exhausted. “Poor Zéphyr!” said his master remorsefully. “Because I have been treated like a brute, I have treated you like one!”
As he drew near the farm he saw the old mother of the family outside, violently agitating her arms and crying, “Monsieur le Marquis! Monsieur le Marquis!”
He drew rein. “What is it, mother? Your sons are safe; Le Blé-aux-Champs has done very well.”
The old woman’s wrinkled face lighted up. “Ste. Anne be praised! But it is not that, Monsieur le Marquis. I thought I had better make sure if you had met the lady out there on the lande—among the Stones, I think she is.”
“Lady! what lady?”
“You have not come from the Clos-aux-Grives, then? You have not had the message I sent by Yvot?”
“What message?—No, I have not been there yet. Out with it, in Heaven’s name!”
“A lady has come from Paris to see you, Monsieur leMarquis; she arrived yesterday. So we gave her a bed here—poor lying, but the best we could do till you——”
“Here! Now! With you?” And in a second he was on the road by her side.
“Ma Doué, Monsieur le Marquis, how you startled me, getting off so quickly! No, she is not here now—she went out on the lande a little while ago, and I thought I saw her walking in the Allée. Being from Paris she does not understand how evil they are, the Old Ones, about sundown, though I warned her . . . Bless us, Monsieur le Marquis, you look as if someone had put a spell on you!”
For, stricken with an odd silence, and very pale, the leader of Finistère had taken a step or two backwards, till he was brought up by his horse’s quarter, and there he was staring at her, his hand to his head.
“No, it is the breaking of a spell, please God!” said he, recovering himself. “I will go and find this lady on the lande. It may be that . . . that she will not return to you, Mère Salaun.”
He took Zéphyr by the bridle, and went back on to the heather. But, once out of sight, he drew a long shuddering breath, and throwing his arm over Zéphyr’s crest, pressed his forehead against the warm satin of his neck, and so remained for a while.
And Zéphyr, convinced by now that the master he knew had returned to him, put his head round and lipped at his shoulder. Then he cocked his little ears and listened. Far away, the beat of another horse’s hoofs was audible on the highroad. His rider gave no sign of having heard it, but in a moment or two took the bridle again and went forward towards the Allée des Vieilles.
Versailles, Dreux, Alençon, Rennes, Pontivy—like beads on a chaplet they had slid past Valentine de Trélan, like locks on a smooth river or canal, opened for her by that bit of paper in Barras’ handwriting. She was herself amazed by the ease of her journey, that journey which was really a flight, hardly realising how much things were changed from the days, for instance, of the Terror, and how many people travelled comfortably now-a-days and contrived to elude showing their passports if they were out of date. And she had in her possession something much more potent than a mere passport. Whether she were taken for a political power, or for one of the many ladies in whom the raffish Director was interested—or for a combination of both, like Mme Tallien—Valentine neither knew nor cared; at any rate whenever she produced the laissez passer she was shown deference—till she got into the country districts of that land of the leal, farther Brittany. Here the municipalities indeed were Republican, but at one or two small places where she had to halt Barras’ signature commanded anything but reverence, though it had to be obeyed. Twice she distinctly heard the word “spy” whispered of her.
But once she had passed Scaër and was in full Finistère it was better, for here she could use the private directions which the Abbé had given her. And it was by the employment of these that she finally arrived, without mishap, at the Ferme des Vieilles, to which the Abbé had directed her.
The little old farmhouse by the roadside looked at her cunningly and rather inhospitably, she thought, from its tiny peering windows. Beyond it was a wide stretch of moorland with heather, and, in one place, long strange rows of upright stones. She descended from the farmer’shooded cart by which she had replaced the diligence at her last stopping-place and knocked at the open half-door. Inside, a beautiful, grave and dirty little girl of six or so, dressed in all respects like a grown woman of the sixteenth century, stuck a finger in her mouth and stared at her.
“Mignonne,” said Valentine, stooping over the half-door “Ema ar bleun er balan—the broom is in flower.”
“Tremenet er ar goanv—the winter is past,” responded an old woman, coming into view. “Enter, Madame!”
Half an hour later Valentine was being served with a rough meal, the children standing round, awed, and she had learnt all there was to know; how the Marquis de Kersaint and practically all the officers from the headquarters, even the aumônier, were gone to the sea to fetch a convoy of arms, and that to interview the man whom she had come so far to meet she must wait, probably, till the day after to-morrow. Meanwhile Mère Salaun offered her hospitality, premising (and justly) that it was not fit for a lady from Paris.
And indeed Mme de Trélan slept but ill that night in thelit closput at her disposal, though she had known in prison much less comfortable sleeping-places. But it was not only the unwonted experience of passing the night in a sort of hutch which kept her wakeful, it was partly the dread lest M. de Kersaint should never return from this expedition—for she had been told there would be fighting.
No news next morning, but a rumour that there had been a fierce encounter between the Chouans and the Blues. Valentine was restless. She would have liked to go to the Clos-aux-Grives, but thought it would be unfitting; and it was besides unnecessary, since Mère Salaun had instituted the ten-year-old Yvot as a courier.
So she walked on the lande, where the wind blew over the wide spaces, and tried to be patient.
“What are those great avenues of stones that I saw in the distance this morning?” she asked at the mid-day meal. “There seem to be miles of them.”
“Those, Madame,” said her hostess, pouring out the milk for the children, “are Les Vieilles, the Old Ones, the Old Women. Some call them Les Veilleuses, the Watchers.”
“Your farm is, then, named after them?” commented Mme de Trélan.
“Unfortunately,” replied Mère Salaun, compressing her wrinkled lips. And seeing Valentine’s look of enquiry, she went on, “They are not . . . not benevolent, Les Vieilles. Do not go among them much, Madame, especially after sundown, if you want to keep the wish of your heart. For if they can they will take it from you.”
What a strange idea! “Who set them up?” asked the Duchesse.
Mère Salaun shook her head. “We do not know. Fetch Madame’s crêpe from the hearth, Corentine.”
Little Yvot fidgeted. “But, Madame,” he broke in, in his shrill voice, “nobody set them up. A long while ago they were a queen’s ladies, and a magician turned them into stones. And on one night in the year, on Midsummer Eve, they leave their places one by one and go to the pool to drink—because you see, Madame, they were alive once, and they are still thirsty. Some people think they eat, too, and put food for them. And as they go in turn to drink you can see the gold underneath, and the rich ornaments, in the place they have left!”
“And do people go on that night to take it?” asked Mme de Trélan as he paused for breath.
Yvot’s eyes grew bigger and his tanned little face paled, while his grimy hand made a rapid sign of the cross over himself. “God forbid! There was a man once—he went to get the gold—folks begged him not to. He never came back!”
“Well, what happened to him?” asked Valentine, interested less in the tale than in the narrator—and somewhat appalled at the gigantic pancake, nearly a quarter of an inch in thickness, which had appeared before her.
“The menhir came back from the pond and caught him! He is underneath it to-day—the one they call La Bossue, the Hunchback. You can hear him groaning and praying to be let out sometimes. He has been there for seventy years!”
At this climax one of the smaller children burst into tears, and Yvot was angrily commanded by his mother to get on with his dinner. But she, too, signed herself.
Nevertheless Valentine found herself among the stoneavenues that evening. No news had come yet, but the Allée was at such a short distance from the farm that if it came she could easily be informed.
So she walked among the menhirs, Les Vieilles, Les Veilleuses, and the menhirs watched her as she went, and she knew it. They were yellow with lichen, rust-red with it, grey with it; the heather was about their deep roots, older than the oldest trees. Ancient, terrible, venerable, four ranks of them, they marched for ever up the rise and over it towards some invisible goal. Valentine de Trélan with her forty-five years felt very young, very ignorant beside them.
They had been here—planted by whom, and why?—long, long before the overturned order of yesterday; long before its pillars had been laid, long before Clovis and Charlemagne; they would still be here when the name of the last King of France was forgotten. As she stood among them she knew that she was in the oldest place of this old land of Armorica. They were the more living in semblance, the more individual, these grey shapes, because their slope was not alike, any more than their forms. Some leant this way, some that; some were grotesque, some more than grotesque; yet whatever were the purpose that possessed them, it possessed them even terribly. Valentine wondered which was the “hunchback” of the evil legend . . . She was afraid of them; and yet they fascinated her.
And as she walked between their ranks she wondered how much longer she would have to wait before she saw the Marquis de Kersaint. How calmly, at the Ferme des Vieilles, they took this fighting—all the men away with M. le Marquis as a matter of course. Was it true, she had asked, that Cadoudal in the Morbihan had ordered all his young men not to marry for the present? Quite true. And they were not marrying? No. What a people to lead, and what a leader!
What should she do after she had talked with the Marquis? It depended on what he told her. In any case she was come to the beginning of a new chapter in what was left to her of the book of her life. Would Gaston’s name be on those pages—and in what characters would it be written?
It had been a grey day, austere, not unbeautiful. Now, at the approach of sunset, it was warming into a certain splendour. The shadows of the watchers began to slant across the avenue like scores of pointing fingers, and at the other end the pine trees on the rise grew darker against what would soon be a battlemented glory of cloud. And after sundown it was sinister here, they said; Valentine could believe it, but the watchers had some spell to make one linger. . . .
It was as she turned from looking at the distant pines and the sunset that she became aware she was not alone in the Allée des Vieilles. Some way off a man was standing by one of the tallest menhirs; indeed, she almost thought that he was leaning against it. It gave her a start at first to find that, when she had thought she was alone, she was being observed. He must have ridden up unheard on the heather, for outside the double avenue a black horse was bending its head towards that arid nourishment. All she could see of its rider at this distance was that he was tall, that he wore a long close-fitting dark redingote, that he had a white sash round his middle, and a sword.
All at once she thought, “How stupid of me; it is a Royalist, one of M. de Kersaint’s officers, probably, back from the fighting. Perhaps it is even M. de Kersaint himself, ridden over from his headquarters, on hearing that I am here, to wait on me. That is very courteous of him. But why, since he must see me, does he not move, or come to meet me? . . . Perhaps, if he is from the fighting, he is hurt.” And then indeed she saw that he carried his right arm in a sling.
She began in her turn to go towards him. Still she could not see his face; he had his hat rammed low over his eyes. In the hat, as she now noticed for the first time, was a white plume. That feather showed her that it must be M. de Kersaint himself, and her heart beat a little faster. Yet how strange of him to remain covered when, plainly, he must see her advancing, and not to move a step to meet her. But she went on nevertheless, till only ten yards or so separated them.
And the Royalist still stood motionless, the sunset glow falling on him, watching her so intently that he gave the effect of holding his breath. Valentine began to be alittle frightened; his behaviour was so unaccountable. And suddenly the old Breton woman’s warning came back to her. Was the wish of her heart, then, going to be reft from her here among Les Vieilles; was she to learn from this man, among the covetous old stones, that Gaston was dead—to learn it this time without possibility of doubt? Was that why he was so still—because he knew her errand? She stopped.
Her stopping seemed to galvanise the watcher into life. He moved a little forward from the menhir which had been supporting him, and put up his left hand to his hat as though to remove it. But still he did not take it off.
“Madame de Trélan!”
That voice! . . .
She quivered as though she had been shot and put her hands to her breast. “Dear God!” she said. “Who is it? Who is it?”
“Valentine!” said the voice again.
And in a single movement the Royalist officer uncovered, flung his hat from him, and was at her feet. But even with the previous warning of the voice, even with his tardy uncovering, the shock was too much for a woman who was no longer young. It was as one sees something a long way off that she saw him kneeling there with bent head; but when he raised it, and his face was visible, the blood drummed in her ears. The grey watchers bowed suddenly towards her, the heather began to give way beneath her feet. “Gaston!” she sighed, putting out her hands helplessly like a frightened child, “Gaston—I’m falling! . . .” The heather gave way altogether. . . .
The cold grey sea on which Valentine had been floating hither and thither began a little to cease its swaying motion. . . . But how curious to be on a sea at all! Yet she could hear it . . . no, it was the wind in the pine avenue at Mirabel. But the pine avenue was nearly all cut down now . . . It was neither, neither. She was lying in strong arms that held her close, against a heart whose pulsations she could hear. It began to come back. That figure by the menhir. O, Christ in Heaven!—but that was a dream!
Yet kisses, not the kisses of a dream, were being laid on her closed eyes, her hair, her brow—though none upon her lips—and with them went passionate words of supplication for forgiveness, and words of a meaning far transcending that . . . words of love, heartbroken words. But he who thus addressed her must have thought her still unconscious when he dared to speak them, for when she opened her eyes and stirred she was very gently laid down out of his grasp upon the heather, and this Royalist officer who was her husband knelt silently there beside her, with his face buried in his hands.
At that relaxing hold Valentine might have thought—a thousand things—but, dizzy and confused though she still was, she had heard, and felt. There was no room for surmises or mistakes.
“Gaston,” she said faintly, lingering on the name. “O Gaston . . . if you are real . . . your arms!”
His hands came down, and she saw his face, ravaged, older, infinitely changed.
“Dare I hold you in my arms, Valentine?” He was shaking as he said it.
From where she lay she gave him one look, and held out her hands the second time.
“O my wife, my saint!” said Gaston de Trélan, choking. He stooped and gathered her once more to his breast.
And, after all, so unbelievable was it, that the long embrace did seem to belong to another world than this—a far world, but the only real. . . .
That passed. The heather became heather again, the air the air of earth. Somehow he was helping the living Valentine whom he held to her feet, and was leading her towards the nearest menhir—that indeed against which he had himself been leaning. Directly he saw that she could stand alone, and could take some support, if she wished it, from the great granite finger, he threw himself on his knees before her.
“Valentine, this is where I should be!” he broke out uncontrollably, “here, at your feet, not holding you in my arms. I am not worthy of that, Valentine—Valentine, how can I even ask for forgiveness? But I do ask for it—I do ask! For seven years I have sought it, and I have sometimes felt that you . . . where I thought you hadgone, had given it to me.” His voice broke, and, stooping that proud head of his, he did literally kiss her feet.
“Gaston, if you love me!” she cried out, trying to stay him. “No, no . . . and what talk is this of forgiveness? O my darling, I was wrong too—stubborn and proud. I should have gone with you—and afterwards . . . you never got my letters, I know it, but I should have written again, made more efforts. O Gaston, if you love me, don’t do that!”
He lifted his head. “Letters!” he said in a dazed way. “You wrote . . . you had no answer? I never had them!—Valentine,” and there was anguish in his voice, “you did not think I received them . . . and left them unanswered!”
“No, no!” she said. “No, my heart! We will talk of that presently; there is so much to say. Only now, Gaston—I cannot bear to see you kneel to me, my husband.”
“But there is more than that,” he said, not without difficulty. “More than my having left you to face . . . horrors. The years before——”
“I do not remember the years before,” answered Valentine.
“At least,” said he, very low, “the years since have been yours alone.” And still kneeling there, but with his arms about her, as she stooped to him he kissed her on the lips.
Afterwards she sat propped against the menhir, and her husband half sat, half knelt beside her, holding her hands and gazing at her as at what indeed she was, one returned from the dead. Very briefly, and only under the pressure of his questions, for she, too, desired chiefly to contemplate him, she had given him the outline of that past nine years, sliding as quickly as possible over the massacres and her subsequent year in prison, because he turned so pale that she feared he would faint next. And he had been wounded . . . but he said that it was an old injury—nothing . . .
“And now, Gaston,” she said breathlessly, “you—what are you doing here with this M. de Kersaint? Is he really a kinsman—is that why you are here? At first—before I recognised you—I thought you must be he.”
His grasp tightened on her hands, and before he answeredhe put them to his lips. “You were not mistaken, Valentine. That has been my name for seven years, since you . . . died. O, my wife” he almost crushed her hand, “areyou alive—is it not some phantasy, some illusion of this place——”
“What!” she broke in, the colour rushing over her face and fleeing again, “youare M. de Kersaint—it wasyouat Rivoli—it isyouwho command Finistère for the King . . . that scarf means——”
Quite suddenly she drew away her hands and putting them over her face burst into tears.