When thelaitièrecame at half-past six that morning she was sorry to hear that Mme Vidal was indisposed, but not ill-pleased to sell her, in consequence, a double portion of milk. So indisposed indeed was the concierge that she requested Toinon, when she returned to the village, to get conveyed to Paris a note to her niece Mme Tessier, asking the latter to make a few purchases and to visit her.
The sympathetic Toinon gone, Mme de Trélan went back to her patient. Long before this he had come to himself for the second time, and she had fed him with the milk she had reserved for her morning coffee, in a spoon. He took it drowsily, like a child, and dropped off to sleep again.
She thought him asleep now when she came in, and went about noiselessly putting the dark little bedroom to rights, preoccupied all the time with one thought, this boy’s safety. The thought divided itself into two parts; how to secure proper attention for his wound, and how to get the boy himself away without discovery. Her unpractised investigation of his hurt had already led her to suppose that it was a glancing flesh wound off the ribs, probably not dangerous, save from the amount of blood he seemed to have lost. Why he had risked coming by it she had not even a guess.
But though she thought him asleep she saw, after a minute or two, as she passed by the bed, that his eyes were open and that he was looking at her. He was very flushed.
“Is there anything you want, mon enfant?” she asked, stopping.
He continued to look at her mutely, then made these brief statements:
“My name is Roland de Céligny. I ought not to have come. Now I shall be endangering you. Madame, I implore you to let me go!”
“Chut!” retorted Valentine, laying her hand for a second on his forehead. “How could you go, even if I would let you? There is no need, I assure you, to trouble about me. Besides, why should I not care for a wounded man whom I find in the garden. You are not a malefactor, Monsieur de Céligny!”
“Mais si, Madame,” replied Roland earnestly. “In intention, at least . . . that is just what I am. . . . You ought to give me up.”
“If we all did what we ought to do!” exclaimed Valentine lightly, and stood looking down at him, convinced now that that momentary likeness was a trick of the dawn, some enchantment of the garden, anything but fact.
She felt that to ensure silence she ought to leave him; unused as she was to caring for an injured man she was certain that he ought not to talk. In romances the wounded hero was always adjured not to do so, and the boy looked feverish. But not to know a little more about him were to waste the chance of arranging some plan which the faithful Suzon’s arrival would bring her. So, contrary to all romantic tradition, Valentine sat down by the bed and said in a business-like way,
“Tell me, Monsieur de Céligny, as shortly as possible, what you came into the garden to do, and if you know anyone in Paris with whom it would be safe to communicate. I ask you this because I have a trusted friend coming to see me to-day, and through her something might be arranged. Your personal safety is the first thing to consider, your wound—which I believe is not serious—the second.”
“I have cousins in Paris,” said Roland. He gave their address. “I was at their house for three or four days before I came here.”
“Do they know where you are?”
“No, Madame.”
“They will be very anxious about you, then?”
“Yes,” murmured he rather shamefacedly, and sighed.
“Are they likely to track you here?”
“I don’t think so,” said the adventurer. “No, I do not believe it possible.”
“But the sentry saw you; fortunately it was too dark to distinguish your face. They are sure to search again. I think the moment has come, Monsieur de Céligny, if I am to help you further, for you to tell me a little more. You see that I am your friend, and that I am not . . . in fear of the Directory. You need not name anyone unless you wish, but I think you had better tell me for what reason you were in the park of Mirabel last night.”
“Madame,” replied Roland with emotion, “after what you have done for me I should indeed be foolish and ungrateful if I kept back anything from you. I came to Mirabel to find the hidden treasure.”
The Duchesse de Trélan stared at him. “But, my child, there is no such thing!”
From the pillow the young man’s look said as politely as possible, “How can you be sure of that, Madame la concierge?”
“I have known the château for many years,” said Valentine, “and I assure you. . . .” She broke off, puzzled.
“But I have seen a plan of its hiding-place,” said Roland eagerly.
“Where did you see such a thing?”
“When I was in Brittany with M. de——” some remnant of caution checked him, “—with a Chouan leader.”
“A Chouan leader had a plan of a treasure hidden in Mirabel!” exclaimed Mirabel’s mistress, strongest amazement in her tone. “What was his name—no, I will not ask you that. Did he send you here, then?”
“No, Madame,” admitted Roland, with a return of shamefacedness. “He will be very angry with me—if ever I see him again.” He gave a second or two to inward contemplation, presumably, of this anger, and went on, “The money was hidden here during the Fronde by the Duc of those days, but the paper describing its whereabouts was stolen, and came into the hands of an old lady who was dying in the next house to . . . to where we were. Our aumônier went to see her, and she gave him the paper to convey to the Duc de Trélan, who, I believe, is in England, or somewhere of the sort. At any rate he is an émigré—as I suppose you know, Madame.”
Valentine forced herself to remain quietly sitting there.“Well?” she said, and her voice, from sheer self-restraint, sounded quite stony.
“And the aumônier brought it in to give to M. de Kersaint, because he knew that the Marquis was a kinsman of the Duc de Trélan.”
“What name did you say?” asked Valentine, more and more amazed.
“The Marquis de Kersaint,” replied Roland. Then he stopped. “I did not mean to mention the name.”
“De Kersaint—a kinsman!” exclaimed Valentine, from whom all thoughts of encouraging prudence in the fugitive were now miles away. “I never heard the name in my life! A kinsman of——”
And now Roland was staring at her.
“Well, never mind,” said she. “We must keep to the point, which is, how to get you away, Monsieur de Céligny. You saw this . . . this extraordinary plan, then, and—since you say that you were not sent—I assume that you thought that you would like to come on your own account to hunt for the treasure. Had you any accomplices?”
“Not in Paris,” replied Roland, reddening faintly.
“And your cousins know nothing?”
“No, I merely said that I was leaving Paris for the day and might be back late. You see, Madame, I meant to have got here earlier, but it was light so long. I only had a sight of that plan for a moment,” confessed the treasure-hunter with engaging candour, “yet I remember that it looked as though there were an entrance from the garden to a passage leading under the house to the banqueting hall, I think. But I did not realise that the garden was so large.”
Again Valentine stared at him. It was making her dizzy to learn these facts—if they were facts—about her own house after all her years of acquaintance with it.
“You must be crazy, my child,” she said conclusively, “or the plan was a hoax. But to return to these cousins of yours, and how to get you restored to them. The point is whether it would be better to try to smuggle a surgeon in to you, or to smuggle you out. And what to say to them? It is not over safe to tell the exact truth in a letter. It might endanger the bearer also. Let me think.”
She put her shapely, slightly roughened hand over her eyes, and Roland gazed at it.
“Monsieur de Céligny,” she said after a moment, uncovering her eyes, “have you ever fought a duel?”
“No, Madame.”
“Should you object to having come to the park of Mirabel for that purpose last night?”
Roland took her meaning, with a little smile. “There is nothing I should like better.”
“It is the best I can devise for the moment. As I say, it would not do for you to tell the truth in writing. If, to-morrow night, you could walk with my assistance as far as a little door in the park wall that I know of, and if your cousins could procure, with all secrecy, for a carriage to be there. . . . You see, it will be impossible for you to get out of the place you have so rashly entered save in some such clandestine fashion, and even then any mischance——”
“Mischance to me matters not, Madame!” cried the young man. “But if it were to you!”
The Duchesse de Trélan smiled. “Reassure yourself, Monsieur de Céligny. No mischance is likely to come to me. If you feel able I must urge you now to write a line to your cousins about your duel. It might be thought a trap of some kind if I wrote. They must see your hand.”
She fetched him pencil and paper, and together they concocted a letter to his elderly kinsmen, she holding the paper. At the end she fed him again, for the conversation and the effort of writing had exhausted him rather alarmingly. It was no more than was to be expected. But at that price Valentine had the main threads of the affair in her hands now.
In the early afternoon arrived, as she had been desired, the faithful Tessier, with a basket containing medicaments and comforts.
“I knew the place would not suit you, Madame,” she said, almost as soon as she set foot inside the little parlour. “Ah, I see that you are indeed indisposed!” For Mme de Trélan, to give colour to her statement to Toinon, had wrapped herself in a shawl.
“Suzon, I was never better in my life,” said she, and looked it. “But there is someone ill here. That was really why I sent for you.”
“Someone—in there?” ejaculated Mme Tessier, pointing to the bedroom door.
“Yes, a young man, suffering from a gunshot wound in the side,” responded the Duchesse calmly. “You can give me help and advice.”
For the moment Suzon looked little capable of either. Her eyes turned wildly from Mme de Trélan to the bedroom door.
“But—did he fall from heaven, or through the chimney?” she managed to get out.
“Neither. I found him in the garden at three o’clock this morning. He was shot by the guard last night.”
Suzon sat down heavily on a chair. “Mercy on us! What is his name, Madame, his business?”
“His name—no, I will not tell you his name. And as for his business, suffice it to say that it has not succeeded. I want to keep him here no longer than is necessary for his wound, lest he should be discovered and taken.”
“But you yourself, Madame?”
“My reputation, do you mean?” asked the Duchesse, laughing. She seemed in a mood of unusual exhilaration. “I think, at my age, that will take care of itself.”
“Your safety is what I mean, Madame,” said Suzon reproachfully. “You ought to give him up, whatever he was doing.”
“That is just what I am going to do—to his relations if they will come and fetch him.” And Valentine explained her plan. When she had heard it, poor Suzon, breathing a sigh of relief at the prospect of getting rid of the refugee, almost clamoured to take the compromising letter to its destination.
“And I think I had better see these gentlemen and bring back the answer to-morrow,” she volunteered.
“I hardly like to ask you to do that,” said Valentine, hesitating.
“Then how are you going to know, Madame, whether the carriage will be there or not,” objected Mme Tessier. “It will be difficult enough as it is to bring it all off without a hitch. And I am only too anxious for him to be gone.Cleaning day or visiting day, what might happen—Heaven preserve us!”
“My bedroom is not on show to the general public,” observed Valentine lightly. “And I can always lock Louise out.” (Louise commanded the brigade of cleaners.) “However, I am not anxious to keep the boy, for his own sake. Now, what have you brought me for him, Suzette?”
Mme Tessier watched her as, alert and interested, she unpacked the basket. Now and again there would peep out, in this tragically fated lady, whom she worshipped and protected with equal fervour—this lady who for all her lifetime of authority was so wonderfully humble and contented—some trait of those older days when her lightest wish had been a command. Despite her extraordinary consideration for others, and those her inferiors, she did sometimes demand services without counting the cost, and accept devotion as a right. And Suzon loved her for it.
“This is excellent, ma fille,” said the Duchesse in a moment, setting out Suzon’s purchases on the table. “I think that as a reward I must tell you, after all, about this young man’s errand—a wild-goose chase if ever there was one. Did you ever hear, Suzon, from your grandfather, of a treasure hidden in Mirabel from the time of the Fronde?”
“Why, bless you, yes, Madame,” replied Suzon. “Grandpère used often to talk of it. There were supposed to be jewels too. But I never believed it myself.”
Valentine was taken aback at this unexpected reply. “You did know of it! It is extraordinary that I should be the last to hear of it, then.”
And in both their minds, as each guessed, was the unuttered question, Had the Duc known of it too? But for years now Mme Tessier had never mentioned M. de Trélan unless the Duchesse did so first.
“It is very strange,” went on Mirabel’s mistress reflectively. “And stranger still that the man who possesses a plan of the spot where this treasure is supposed to be hidden should be a Chouan leader calling himself—with what truth I cannot tell—a kinsman of . . . of the Duc’s.” A swift, tiny flush ran over her face. “I have never heard his name. I think it must be a false assertion.”
“And that is why the young man is here, then?” interrupted Suzon despite herself. “—sent by this Chouan to secure the treasure! He is a Royalist, therefore!—O, Madame——”
“Notsent, I gather,” corrected the Duchesse. “Yes, a Royalist, acollet noir.”
“Acollet noir—one of those hotheads! And the guard—you say they shot him! Did they not search for him? Will they not search again? Really, Madame, I must say it, your imprudence . . .”
“The search, if you can call it so, is over,” said Mme de Trélan with composure, opening a pot of jelly. “It was very perfunctory last night, and little better this morning, when the sergeant and three men came. I of course knew nothing—may Heaven pardon me!”
“Heaven needs to watch over you!” murmured Suzon.
“They think he got away—the obvious conclusion. So now we have nothing to do but to make that surmise a fact.” Suddenly she turned her head. “What, in heaven’s name, is the poor boy doing in there now?”
He was singing; and as the two women went hastily in, it was apparent that his choice was that gay little air,La Double Violette.
“Suzon,” said the Duchesse in alarm, after a moment, “he is light-headed. Is he worse? What ought I to do?”
“I expect,” replied Mme Tessier, “that a surgeon would say he should be bled.”
“Bled! when he has lost so much blood already!”
“Rossignol prend sa volée,Au château d’amour s’en va,”
“Rossignol prend sa volée,Au château d’amour s’en va,”
“Rossignol prend sa volée,
Au château d’amour s’en va,”
chanted Roland, more and more out of tune.
“Oh, poor nightingale!” exclaimed Valentine, half laughing. “ ‘Château d’amour,’ indeed!”
“Trouva la porte fermée,Par la fenêtre il entra,”
“Trouva la porte fermée,Par la fenêtre il entra,”
“Trouva la porte fermée,
Par la fenêtre il entra,”
was the songster’s next equally appropriate announcement.
“I will go at once to the village and get a febrifuge of some kind,” said Suzon, making for the door. “I will not be long.”
And Mme de Trélan was left, to be greeted with the nightingale’s message:
“Bonjour l’une, bonjour l’autre,Bonjour la belle que voilà!Votre amant m’envoie vous direQue vous ne l’oubliez pas!”
“Bonjour l’une, bonjour l’autre,Bonjour la belle que voilà!Votre amant m’envoie vous direQue vous ne l’oubliez pas!”
“Bonjour l’une, bonjour l’autre,
Bonjour la belle que voilà!
Votre amant m’envoie vous dire
Que vous ne l’oubliez pas!”
“Child,” she said, sitting down and laying her hand on the hot forehead, “you could put your strength to so much better use!”
And at her voice or touch the minstrel suddenly ceased his strain, while his fingers, moving over the bed, found and closed on her other hand. Thereafter he was at least quiet.
Thus it was that Roland de Céligny’s exit from Mirabel was not so speedily effected as his hostess had planned. And without Suzon Tessier it is doubtful whether it would have been effected at all. For if Mme de Trélan was cast for the romantic part in this drama of deliverance, it was Suzon who played the indispensable go-between with MM. de Célignyaînés, she who brought in the additional and choicer provisions required for the invalid, she who supported, on cleaning-day, the fiction of Mme Vidal’s not being able to leave her room, and personally enforced, in consequence, a surprising quiet among the myrmidons of Louise. But Roland hardly realised his debt to Mme Tessier; the ardour of his gratitude glowed at the feet of Mme de Vidal—as he persisted in calling her.
But on the fourth evening he was well enough to go, the two women thought; and, for his part, well enough to be sorry to go.
It had been arranged that at ten o’clock a carriage should be in waiting outside a certain little door in the park wall at the end of the lime-tree avenue known as the Allée des Soupirs—a door which the Duchesse had already investigated, and from which, when she oiled the rusty bolts, she had torn away in readiness the plastered ivy. This door was some distance down the park, and, therefore, to accustom him to the use of his legs, Valentine had caused her patient to walk several times round the room with the assistance of Suzon and herself. It was already getting dark; Suzon had gone back to Paris, and, since Mme de Trélan dared not have her patient in her living-room in case of a surprise, she had taken her armchair into her bedroom and ensconced him in it, to eat his supper before he faced the journey to the door, and herself sat down to bear him company.
And while he ate Roland talked; or, to be more accurate, when he was not talking, he ate. Propped up with pillows in his chair, bright-eyed, with a varying colour, he appeared, as he was, excited, and not the less attractive for his condition. His wound was not, Suzon said, doing very well, but he seemed free from fever, and it was too dangerous for him to stay longer. Both Valentine and he knew that. So he utilised the last remaining half-hour in converse, and not being of a suspicious nature, never considered that this woman who was saving him could quite easily betray him afterwards when she had gained from him all the information she wanted, nor even that it might be worth her while letting him slip for the sake of that information. The concierge’s extraordinary kindness and generosity had earned, besides his undying gratitude, his whole-hearted confidence. Moreover, as he told himself, however she came to her present position, it was not a position natural to her. Apart from her voice, her bearing, what concierge ever had filbert nails like that? Yes, Roland wished he were not going out of Mirabel with the prospect of never seeing its guardian again.
So he chatted unrestrainedly about the little band in Brittany. Chiefly he dwelt upon M. de Kersaint, and manifested astonishment when he learnt that his hostess did not know of the heroic part that gentleman had played in the great Austrian defeat at Rivoli two and a half years ago.
“You forget, Monsieur Roland,” observed Valentine, smiling, “that I do not live in Royalist circles. But I think I do remember hearing at the time that one of the Austrian columns was commanded by a French émigré, but I never learnt his name.”
“It was M. de Kersaint. He has the cross of Maria Theresa for it.”
“Indeed! I am afraid the Directory would give him a very different decoration if they had him in their hands.”
“They are not likely to have him there,” asserted Roland confidently. “But I remember hearing M. de Brencourt say that Masséna in particular—not to speak of General Bonaparte——”
“Whom did you say?” asked Valentine, struck.
“General Masséna. He came up during the night,you know, to Joubert’s assistance, Bonaparte being of course in supreme command——”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted the Duchesse again, less interested in the battle of Rivoli (on which this young man seemed to be an expert) than in something else. “I mean—what name—whom did you say you overheard? . . . M. de Brencourt?”
Roland nodded. “The Comte de Brencourt is M. de Kersaint’s second-in-command. He said that Masséna was furious——”
“Tell me, what is he like, this M. de Brencourt?”
Roland, surprised, described him. “Why, do you know him, Madame?”
“It cannot be the same,” said Valentine hastily. “I did not mean to interrupt you, Monsieur de Céligny. Go on, pray, with what you were telling me about M. de Kersaint and Rivoli.”
But she did not listen. Pictures were floating in her head of her stay at Spa in 1787, of her first meeting at that fashionable resort with the Comte de Brencourt, whose admiration had almost amounted to persecution, who had threatened once to shoot himself because of her coldness, and who had followed her against her bidding to her country house.
It was the same man, of course. Dimly she heard about Lucien and Artamène and the “Abbé,” of the disbanding, of greater plans for the future, and it was not for some moments that she came back entirely to her room and her attractive refugee, and found that the young man, leaning slightly forward in the big chair, was asking her a question.
“Do you not think, Madame de Vidal, that you might add to your never-to-be-forgotten kindness by telling me in your turn, something about yourself? You—pardon me—you are no concierge! You are as gently born as I!”
“You think so? Well, the world has been upside down these ten years, has it not? Ten years ago—if you were old enough then to give a thought to the future—you would not have expected to grow up a house-breaker, Monsieur Roland!”
But from the way he looked at her then she could almost see his young and romantic mind working, and probablymaking up wild stories about her. She decided to present him with one ready-made, and not so far from the truth.
“Yes,” she said quietly, “it is useless to deny that I am gently born, but I trust that my employer, the Deputy who has charge of the château, is not aware of the fact. For him I am the aunt of his cousin, Mme Tessier. My late husband, an émigré, died abroad, and I was obliged to earn my living, like many a better woman. I used to earn it by needlework; now I do so by looking after Mirabel. There you have my history in the proverbial nutshell. And now”—she glanced at the little clock on the shelf, “it is nearly time to start for the Allée des Soupirs.”
The colour leapt into Roland’s face. “You have been so divinely kind, Madame, that I dare ask one more kindness. Something—the merest trifle—as a memento of what indeed I shall need no memento to keep in lifelong memory!”
It was a long time since young men had asked Valentine de Trélan for souvenirs. That they had asked in vain was neither here nor there.
“But, my child,” she responded with a maternal air, “I have nothing to give you . . . unless you would like a thimble or a pair of scissors!”
“I should like anything,” said the petitioner humbly.
“I suppose,” said she, rising, “that what you would like best would be some of this semi-mythical treasure.—Roland!” she said, struck by a sudden thought, “promise me that you will not come back after it when you are better! Promise me!”
The boy had flushed with pleasure at the sound of his unprefixed name. “Alas, the treasure will probably be gone before I am well enough for that, Madame. The Marquis de Kersaint will send somebody—but not one of us. He said it was work for an older and wiser head, and I suppose he was right. I suspect he will send M. de Brencourt, if he can spare him.”
“Oh!” said Valentine, and was silent all at once.
“But,” went on the youth, unregarding, “if I am to promise not to return, Madame de Vidal, you must give me a remembrance of you to take away with me. Otherwise——”
“I think you are threatening me,” observed Valentine, recovering herself. “For my part I can ill spare my thimble, but if it will prevent your climbing that wall again—Stay, I believe I have something after all.”
And going into the outer room she came back with the locket she had found in the work table in her boudoir.
“If you care for this, Monsieur de Céligny,” she said, “you are welcome to it. It has no value. It was mine as a girl, before my marriage.”
But she need not have said that, for the V, which alone stood out clearly among the twisted pearls and garnets of the monogram, he could easily take for “Vidal.” Getting with some difficulty to his feet the young man reverently received the trinket, looked at it, and having kissed it slipped the worn chain about his neck. Mme de Trélan brought some garments from the bed.
“It is really time to go, mon enfant. You will need all your courage for the journey. Here is your hat; I brought it in afterwards from the guardianship of the statue; and you must put on this cloak, for it is raining hard. All the better, for rain drowns noises—though I hope there is no one to hear in any case. Now, you must lean on me hard, for I am very strong.”
It was indeed raining from a light spring sky which somehow concealed a moon. On the limes of the Allée des Soupirs, when they got there, the drops pattered heavily. The journey had been slow and trying, but at last they reached the door. Roland, panting, leant against the wall while Valentine opened it.
It was lucky that she had oiled bolts and hinges, for even then it protested as she pulled at it. The last ivy tendril gave. Mme de Trélan went through and heard an unseen horse blow out its nostrils and a bit jingle, and then saw two dim forms waiting in the lane. One of them touched her on the shoulder.
“He is there?” asked an educated man’s voice.
“Just inside,” she answered. “Be quick, for he can scarcely stand.”
The two men went through the door, and in a moment Roland came out between them, stumbling a little but not so spent that he did not try to stop as he passed her. His supporters very properly would have none of this, but sheheard the boy’s low, broken words of gratitude and farewell before the three had vanished in the shadows.
She turned to go in. And then the same man’s form loomed through the darkness again.
“This is for your inestimable services, and your discretion, my good woman,” he whispered. “You can guess whence it comes.” And, seizing one of her hands in the obscurity, he thrust something into it and closed her fingers round the gift.
Very shortly afterwards the Duchesse de Trélan stood alone in the rain under the wet limes of the Allée des Soupirs in her park of Mirabel. Her arm was lightened of the burden she had supported down the avenue, but her heart, although it knew a great relief, beat to an odd little ache that was almost regret. And she stood there between tears and laughter, because of what she held in her hand as an exchange for Roland de Céligny—a considerable bundle of assignats.
May had given place to June before Valentine de Trélan had quite got accustomed to the departure of the handsome boy whose presence had been such an anxiety and yet such a pleasure to her. The five thousand francs which she had in his place—not nearly so large a sum as it appeared owing to the enormous depreciation of paper money under the incapable rule of the Five Kings—she had at first thought of returning to his relatives by Suzon Tessier. But Suzon, by pretending to wish for her own sake to avoid further intercourse with that house, had persuaded the Duchesse to keep their bounty, at least for the present.
Since the evening when she had wept under her husband’s portrait Valentine had never again felt any disposition to tears. Reaction had come after that outburst. If Gaston were alive—and she could not rid herself of the conviction that he was—it was difficult not to draw the conclusion that he was indifferent to her fate. Seven years, and no sign! Then she told herself again, as she had so often done, that her letters had never reached him, that he had not the slightest reason for supposing her to be still in life, since everybody of her world who had survived the tempest believed her murdered, that she had no evidence of his not having made enquiries after her, or unsuccessful efforts to find her. Only of a successful effort would she have heard. But none of these reasoned considerations could remove the sting of that long silence.
Yet, if Gaston were suddenly to appear before her, would she be able to greet him with that unconcern which she had almost persuaded herself that she felt—and that she ought to feel? She knew she would not. Down in the depths of her soul all the time was the emotion which had pierced her in the picture-gallery—the intense longing tosee him again. It was Mirabel which had first made her conscious of this longing, and it was Mirabel which had insensibly fed it. And there were times when she cursed the impulse which had brought her here, for under the crust of indifference which she had hoped was forming over her heart she could feel the stirring of that desire, growing daily not less strong, but stronger.
And then one day it occurred to her that if this Chouan chief of Roland de Céligny’s spoke of writing to the Duc de Trélan about the treasure he must know, or think he knew, Gaston’s whereabouts. More, if he were to send someone to Mirabel after the hoard, as Roland had appeared to think certain, she might communicate at least with this self-styled kinsman of her husband’s by his emissary, whoever he were. Yes, even if he were the Comte de Brencourt; for although that mad passion of his must be many times dead after all these years—and, perhaps, just because of its death—he would surely bear a letter for her back to Brittany . . . even as Roland might have done, had she thought of it in time.
This idea grew in her to an impatience for the coming of the next treasure-seeker. But June went on, and he did not come. Paris celebrated (with insufficient enthusiasm to please the Government) the obsequies of the envoys murdered at Rastadt; commerce continued to decline, discontent and lethargy to become more marked, and Republican feelings suffered outrage at the first performances of the opera ofAdrien, wherein the stage emperor made his entry with undue pomp. On the eighteenth came a minor revolution, thecoup d’étatof the 30th Prairial, with a consequent change of ministry. Valentine heard of it with calm, and June slid presently into July.
Among the few sightseers who passed the sentry on the 20th of Messidor, a visiting day, was one who, though M. Thibault was too much engrossed in conversation to observe it, never entered the château at all, but strolled round to the garden front. There was nothing to prevent this, though it was hardly ever done. The really remarkable fact about this enterprising visitor was that he did not reappear again at leaving time; but this alsopassed without remark. Yet he had not vanished into space; he was seated, when twilight came, in that very grotto of Latona whose spring had refreshed Roland, waiting with some impatience for completer darkness. He had already seen as much of the garden front of Mirabel as he wished—a window on the ground-floor with a badly-broken shutter.
Problems connected with the recruiting and organisation of Finistère had kept the Comte de Brencourt longer in Brittany than the Marquis de Kersaint had bargained for, but he was here at last on his mission. Since a detail of the ancient plan had proved susceptible of two interpretations, he hoped to-night to make a preliminary search; after which he would arrange his plan of campaign with the Royalist agents in Paris with whom he was in touch.
More than the question of his difficult enterprise, however, was occupying M. de Brencourt’s mind as he sat in that fantastic relic of the dead and gone world of which he also was a survival. It was impossible to be at Mirabel, even for the first time in his life, without thinking of Mme de Trélan, and, as his refuge darkened, he found himself thinking of little else, and of the extraordinary chance which had thrown her tragic and sacred shadow across his path again. On the windings of that chance Artus de Brencourt, while he waited, had time to meditate profoundly, and sitting there in the July twilight, his chin on his hand, staring at the arbutus which almost blocked the entrance to the grotto, he was asking himself two questions. Why had the Marquis de Kersaint, that kinsman of the Duc de Trélan’s, ceased, after that night at Hennebont, to wear his emerald signet ring; and why had that ring borne, as he then distinctly saw for the first time, the phoenix of the Saint-Chamans? For M. de Kersaint had stated that he was a connection of that house by marriage only. That he was a connection seemed obvious from the minute instructions he had been able to give M. de Brencourt on the topography of Mirabel. This business of the ring intrigued the Comte not a little. He was quite conversant with the device of the great house of Trélan, and over the troop of strange surmises born of the presence of that device on M. de Kersaint’s finger and its abrupt disappearance he was still frowningwhen the time came for him to make his stealthy entrance into Mirabel.
For all that she had half looked for his arrival, it was chance, of a kind, that directed the Duchesse de Trélan’s steps that evening towards the invader; chance that caused her to have left the special key in the door of the portrait gallery; chance that made her set out, somewhat unnecessarily, to fetch it before she retired for the night—and chance that led her returning footsteps through the great dark spaces of the Salle Verte . . . to hear, as she passed along between the pillars and the wall, a slight muffled noise of tapping—coming whence?
Valentine stopped dead, lamp in hand. The gentle and recurrent sound did not come from the banqueting hall itself, that was plain. From the “sallette,” then?
No more than when she had searched the garden for a possible malefactor and found Roland did she dream of danger to herself, though had she paused to think of it she might have guessed that the intruder would be armed, and, if surprised, might use his weapon. She walked back and softly opened the door of the sallette; her surmise was right.
Her own lamp cast in its beams, but there was light there already—a lantern standing on the floor, making a pool of radiance by the feet of a man who stood in front of the great hearth with his back to her. In this pool, pinned down by the lantern, was an outspread sheet of paper, a plan of some sort. Her eyes were able to take in these details before the man, turning quickly, saw her standing there with her lamp. His one hand went to his breast, doubtless in search of a weapon, but he never produced it, and the tool which he held in the other fell clattering to the floor.
“God in Heaven!” he exclaimed sharply, and recoiled a step or two.
“Who is it?” asked Valentine a little uncertainly. “Is it—is it Monsieur de Brencourt?”
The intruder did not answer—did not even seem to hear her question. He remained literally as if turned to stone, his eyes burning cavernously in his pale face, on which the upcast light of the lantern at his feet, crossingwith that of Valentine’s lamp, cast odd shadows. After a moment, moving like a man half stunned from a fall, he came a little towards her. Then he stopped again, and passed his hand over his eyes.
“That light dazzles me . . . you are not real!” he muttered. Stooping, he picked up his own lantern, and held it high in a hand that shook.
“Is it really Madame de Trélan?” he asked huskily. “Was it untrue then . . . September . . . La Force?—Speak, Duchesse, for God’s sake!”
In the matter of astonishment Valentine had the advantage of him, since she had been led to think his coming possible. But she too was shaken by the encounter, the first with anyone of her own world who had known her, for seven long years. And she found herself unable to do more than give a sort of pale acquiescence to his agitated questions by bending her head and saying, “Yes, it was untrue.”
“It is she!” said de Brencourt to himself, his harsh features showing his profound emotion. Suddenly he lowered his lantern. “Give me your lamp, Duchesse, and sit down and tell me—tell me, unless I am to take leave of my senses, how it comes about . . . where you have been all these years . . . what you are doing now? My God, to think—Permit me!”
He deposited his own lantern on the floor and took the lamp from her unresisting grasp, looking round the plundered sallette in vain for something to put it on.
“Give me back the lamp, Monsieur le Comte,” said Valentine, finding speech. “We cannot talk here. Let us go to my room. It is safer also.”
“You have a room here?” he exclaimed. “You are . . .” For the first time he seemed to become aware of her attire, so different from anything which he had ever seen her wear.
She held out her hand for the lamp. “Come,” she said, “unless your business here——” She indicated the tool and the map.
“Oh, that can wait now!” said the treasure-hunter with an accent of scorn. He picked up the chisel and the plan and followed her.
So, beneath the cavernous half-seen gilding of the greatSalle Verte, down the basement stairs and along the bare prison-like corridor below, carrying the lamp, went the Duchesse de Trélan in her respectable black dress and fichu, and behind her walked, still half stupefied, the man who had once made such persistent and unavailing love to her. And it was in this guise, very exactly that of a thief in the night, that the Comte de Brencourt came for the first time to her house of Mirabel.
The thought penetrated his stupor with some force during the transit. For, once arrived at Valentine’s little parlour, as she put down the lamp on the table he said abruptly:
“I have never been in Mirabel in my life. And I find you here to greet me!” He gave a sudden laugh.
Valentine did not answer. She was much more moved than she wished to betray. She sat down in a chair near the table and motioned to him to do the same. But he put his hands on the table and remained leaning over it, staring at her with a half-wild eagerness.
“Areyou alive, Duchesse? Or am I dead, too?”
“The Duchesse is not alive,” responded Valentine with a faint smile. “You are speaking to Madame Vidal, the concierge of Mirabel.”
“Good God!” exclaimed the Comte de Brencourt, springing upright.
“How else do you suppose I could be here?”
“You are jesting!” cried he, still incredulous. “You . . . you . . . a concierge! Does no one know you? Then you are poor—in want! Madame, Madame! . . .”
Valentine lifted a hand. “Please, Monsieur de Brencourt, do not agitate yourself! I am not in want. There is no one left at Mirabel to recognise me—my portrait had a pike put through it. I came of my own free will, and I am not unhappy here.”
At this, as if it were the most stunning news of all, he did, perhaps unconsciously, subside into a chair, and, leaning his elbows on the table, took his head between his hands.
“Tell me what happened?” he said after a moment. And Mme de Trélan told him, shortly, the history of those seven years.
“Everybody thinks that I was killed,” she finished.
“I thought so,” said he without moving. “I thought so. . . . God pity me, I have carried that picture of your death about with me all these years. Oh, why did you not let me into the secret?”
She looked at him with a sort of maternal regret, a kinder look indeed, had he but met it, than he had ever won from her during all the period of his fruitless passion. “In the beginning I could tell no one, lest I should endanger the Tessiers. I disappeared, Comte, without exactly intending it. In the end I was glad to disappear. No one but Mme Tessier knows to this hour of my identity; I do not mean anyone to know. Believe me, I have not been unhappy with these good friends of mine. After being twice so near death, to see the sky and the green leaves in the spring, to know affection, as I have known it, and faithfulness. . . . But I am sorry if I have caused you so long a pain. . . . I had no news of you—for all I knew you had gone the same road.”
“I nearly did—in another way,” said the Comte briefly, raising his head. He drew a deep breath and gazed at her anew. “Do you know, Duchesse, that this is like—No, I cannot yet grasp that this is you, Valentine de Trélan, not only alive, but in this mean room, this bourgeois dress——”
She interrupted him with a warning. “Comte, this mean room of mine is not too safe a shelter for you! And how did you get into Mirabel?”
Plainly this subject had ceased to interest him for the moment, yet he answered that it were better for her not to know, adding, “But you do not ask me why you found me where you did?”
“No,” said Valentine composedly. “I know why you broke in. You are come, are you not, on behalf of the Marquis de Kersaint, to secure the treasure supposed to have been hidden in the château during the time of the Fronde?”
Again M. de Brencourt stared at her. “Are you a witch, Madame, or has some Royalist agent——”
“Neither,” said she smiling. “It is no mystery how I know. You have been preceded in your quest here, Monsieur de Brencourt. Let me tell you of the doings of a very rash young man.”
And astonished, annoyed, but half envious in the end (for had she not nursed the boy for four days) the Comte de Brencourt listened. But Valentine had to hear some very trenchant comments on her protégé’s insane proceedings—so her hearer characterised them.
“And where is the treasure really supposed to be?” she asked.
“As far as can be made out,” said her guest, “behind the great hearth, under that curious sort of gallery, in the room where you found me.—Duchesse, I should perhaps ask your permission for my work there; indeed, should I find anything, what right have I to take it?”
“The right of conquest,” answered Valentine. “But, as for my permission, if I thought that withholding it would keep you from going on with your search, I believe I would withhold it. You risk your life, Monsieur de Brencourt—or at least your liberty. Is it worth it?”
His look said as plainly as speech, “So you do care a little for my life—even for my liberty,” but what he replied was, “The King’s cause in Finistère is in desperate need of money.”
“And your leader is determined to secure it,” finished Valentine. She went on, “Who is this Marquis de Kersaint who . . . who sent you?” It was not the way in which she had meant to end the sentence.
Her question had rung in the Comte de Brencourt’s own head pretty often of late. If he could have answered it . . .
“M. de Kersaint, Madame, as his ardent admirer, young de Céligny, will probably have told you, is the émigré who commanded that forlorn hope of an Austrian column at Rivoli. He had been in Imperial service, I believe, for some years, but left it at Campoformio. Monseigneur le Comte d’Artois and his council offered him the post of organising Finistère, where he will, if all goes well, be the general commanding for the King this summer. I was assigned to him as his second-in-command and came over to Brittany with him in January. I know no more of his personal history than that—except that all his family, so I understand, perished in the massacres.”
There was a little pause, and Valentine, with an effort,said, “I hear that in addition he calls himself a kinsman of . . . my husband’s.”
The Comte made her a little bow. “He does claim that honour.”
The blood mounted to Mme de Trélan’s cheek, but she took no notice of his tone, somewhat at variance with the phrase he used.
“I do not remember ever having heard his name.”
M. de Brencourt was silent.
“But,” she went on, “as his kinship is . . . quite possible . . . I shall ask you, Monsieur de Brencourt, to do me a favour.”
“A favour! You have only to ask, Duchesse.” But he bit his lip; for he feared what the request might be.
“There is,” said Valentine, looking down, “a certain family matter on which I should be glad of information. It is possible that M. de Kersaint can supply this. I will, therefore, write him a letter, and ask you to be good enough to convey it to him when you return, Comte. Will you do this for me?”
“Any least service that I can render you, Madame——” said the Comte, but rather formally this time. His brain was still dazed with shock, but it was beginning to wake to other activities, and he suddenly saw with immense distaste a picture of himself delivering a letter from this woman, loved and mourned and now given back to life, into the hand of the man who wore the crest of the house of Trélan, who knew Mirabel so well, who had been so agitated at the mention of her death. . . .
“But do not, Duchesse,” he continued hastily, “do not give me the letter till I have finished or all but finished my quest, for, should I have the mischance to be taken with it on me, you will involve yourself—involve us all,” he added, guessing that any threat of danger to herself alone would probably go unregarded.
Valentine bent her head. “Yes, I understand. And I thank you, Comte. How long will your investigations take you, do you think?”
“It is the getting the gold away that will be the difficulty,” replied the adventurer. “When I have satisfactorily located it I shall concert measures with an agent in Paris. See, Madame, here is a copy of the originalplan. But I fear it will not mean much to you, for steps have been taken to render it unintelligible to anybody else.”
He spoke truth, for of the scrawl now under her eyes Valentine could make nothing. Yet she kept her gaze long on it, making up her mind to do a thing she shrank from, with this man of all others, and that was, to bring her husband’s name into the conversation once more. For the Comte had been with this “kinsman”; he might even conceivably have heard something himself.
“Did I understand,” she began, her head still bent over the plan, “that M. de Kersaint communicated with my . . . with the Duc de Trélan before undertaking this search? M. de Céligny said something about such a project.”
“No,” replied M. de Brencourt sharply. “No, there is nothing of M. de Trélan in this. M. de Kersaint soon abandoned that idea. He had to dispense with his kinsman’s authorisation.”
“He could not, perhaps, get into touch with the Duc?” suggested Valentine faintly. Oh, how she hated this! Yet he might hold some clue.
“No,” said the Comte again. “He judged it to be impracticable, after all.”
“The Duc is no longer in England, perhaps?” pursued Valentine, in torture at having to show him that she herself did not know.
“No, Madame, not in England, nor——”
He stopped abruptly. As a man who is fording a river may come unexpectedly on a deep and eddying current that threatens his balance, so did Artus de Brencourt find himself losing foothold in the wholly unlooked for temptation which suddenly assailed him. Could it be blamed, the lie which should rid this beloved lady of the ghost of that worthless husband who had left her to this, the husband who in effect had been dead to her for years—and who probably really was dead by this time? For those suspicions as to de Kersaint’s identity were absurd. . . .
And though it was unpremeditated, nothing could have served him better than his hesitation. The Duchesse’s eyes were on him.
“Do not be afraid to speak, Monsieur de Brencourt,” she said, slowly turning ashy pale. “If you mean that the Duc is dead—tell me so!”
How could he resist the statement, put into his very mouth like that? Once again those arguments flashed past him: nothing had been heard of de Trélan for years, the Marquis hadnotcommunicated with him—and as for those surmises about de Kersaint himself, which till this moment he had done nothing but encourage, he mentally stamped on them. Then, taking a long breath, he let himself be sucked down, dizzy but open-eyed, into the torrent.
“Madame . . . I regret to be so fatal a messenger,” was all he said, and bent his head.
At least he would not look at her to see how his arrow had sped. He heard her catch her breath, heard her rise from her place opposite him at the table and go away. Glancing up, after a moment, he saw her on the edge of the circle of lamplight, leaning against the high shuttered window, her hands over her face.
Now, after the stroke he had dealt her, it were the part of a gentleman to leave her. Even though her husband were nothing to her now, there was shock in the news. De Brencourt was very conscious of it, but the circumstances were exceptional, for he stood in peril of never seeing her again. And now, perhaps, after these wasted, unhappy years she would listen to him.
He got up and went towards her, but something in her attitude or in his own soul restrained him from speaking to her just then. He paused, stood looking desperately at her stricken figure for a moment, then, going back to his former place at the table, buried his face in his arms.
After a little he heard her voice say, falteringly, from where she was:
“Do you know any details, Monsieur le Comte—any place . . . when it was?”
He raised his head but did not look at her. “No,” he said slowly, gripping his hands together before him on the table. “M. de Kersaint said no more than this, that it was useless to write to the Duc de Trélan, because he had just heard that he was dead—had been dead . . . some time.”
When, at the repetition of that word “dead” he heard her catch her breath again, he felt as though he werebludgeoning her. But no—it was only a surgical operation . . . and better so for her. The man he was murdering was dead already. And it was too late to go back now.
“I do not know how M. de Kersaint was aware of this,” he went on. “He keeps his own counsel always. But that is what he said, Madame. I . . . I . . . .” He tried to add some formal words of sympathy, but that falsehood would not come, and he remained staring before him.
“But I must know more!” said the Duchesse to herself in a quick, breathless voice. “He will know, this M. de Kersaint, this kinsman. Oh, I must write to him at once—before you go, even, Comte!” She put her hand to her head. “Where—how shall I address the letter?”
He saw that he must give a direction that would never find its destination. How unexpectedly dark and tortuous it was beginning to be, this path! Suddenly realising that he was seated while she was standing he got up, and for the first time since the utterance of his lie, looked her in the face for a second. But he could not bear the sight, and it was with downcast gaze that he responded,
“It will be better for me to take the letter myself, Madame.”
“But I cannot wait . . .” she answered faintly, so faintly that he saw she was on the point of swooning. He sprang round the table to her, and catching her in his arms held her a second or two. The scarf had fallen from her hair, and her head, grey and golden, rested against his shoulder. Her eyes were shut, but he did not think she had quite lost consciousness, or the kiss, reverent as it was, which he put on that pathetic hair might have found another goal, for his heart was beating furiously. Then he lowered her into a chair, looked round for water, and, seeing a pitcher and a cup, poured some out with shaking hands and held it to her lips.
He was right; the Duchesse had not lost consciousness entirely. She drank some water, contrived to thank him, and put her head back against the chair.
“Are you better? Are you better?” he got out. (“Brute, brute, brute!” he said to himself. But he was not repentant.)
“You were right to tell me . . . I asked you,” said shealmost inaudibly. A little colour was creeping back to her face.
He waited a moment, gave her the cup again, gently took one hand when she had finished, and gently rubbed it. “And now that I have told you—Valentine, my only love, I have been faithful to your memory all these years—now that I have told you, you will let me take you away from this dreadful place, this intolerable existence, for ever. Valentine . . . Valentine . . .”
He was at her feet now, clutching at the hand he had been chafing, breathless, almost sobbing in the extremity of his pleading:
“Valentine, I implore you! It breaks my heart to see you here! Come with me; be my wife! let us take what remains to us in this sorry world! And if I speak so soon, when my hand has just dealt you this blow, it is because the time is so short, as you know. Indeed, I would not press you for an answer now, even after all these years, but that we are in the midst of perils. Say you forgive my importunity—and say you will come with me!”
She gently withdrew her hand.
“Comte,” she said with an effort, “I . . . I thank you, but it could not be. I am an old woman now . . . I thank you, I thank you indeed for your faithfulness, but I could not.”
“At least then, let me take you away as a brother might! You cannot remain here—it is impossible to leave you to this!”
“You will have enough to do,” said she, with a tremor of the lips, “to get your gold away without encumbering yourself . . . with a sister.”
“Curse the gold!” answered the Comte de Brencourt. “No, after all, it brought me here.”
He had got to his feet and stood looking down at her, his eyes kindling. Then he made a great effort over himself, and, stooping, took her hand and kissed it as he might have done amid the gaieties where first he met her.
“To-morrow night I will come again for an answer, Duchesse. I will leave you now; I have given you, I know, a very great shock. And I regret . . .” Again the words stuck. “You must forgive me . . . And, lest youshould be anxious, I will not return to the sallette to-night. Indeed, I think it must be getting near dawn.”
“I have given you my answer, Monsieur de Brencourt,” repeated Valentine. There were black rings under her eyes. “Believe me, I do appreciate your devotion. If I could accept, I would.”
“I cannot take that answer,” said Artus de Brencourt gravely. “But I will take an assurance that when you have duly mourned the man to whom you have been so nobly faithful . . . that then, even if I have to wait a year, two years——”
“I can give you no hope,” she said once more.
“You do not love me, Madame, that I have always known. But all I ask is the right to be spent in your service.”
“I had rather, Comte, that you were spent in a worthier.”
He made a gesture. “There exists no worthier,” he said with quiet conviction, and bowing, went towards the door.
But at the door he paused. “One thing more, Duchesse. Since I would sooner die a thousand deaths than implicate you in this attempt of M. de Kersaint’s, I wish to say that should any mischance happen to me within these walls, you may be well assured that I shall give no sign of ever having seen you before. And you, Duchesse—for your own sake, not for mine—will do the same by me, will you not? Promise me that!”
Half by gesture, for speech was getting beyond her, she promised.
“I have the honour to take leave of you,” said the Comte de Brencourt, and he went out.
There was night in Mirabel—cold night and loneliness.