It is doubtful if the Comte de Brencourt realised how his false tidings about her husband would sweep out of Mme de Trélan’s head almost all thought of himself, his proximity and his enterprise; and quite certain that he would not have been pleased had he known where she spent the greater part of the following morning. For she had deliberately gone up to a part of the château which she had not yet entered, a part shut to visitors—the Duc’s private apartments.
Stripped, dusty, neglected, they were yet the rooms which Gaston had inhabited, and she wandered there too miserable, too self-reproachful even for weeping.Mort!the word with its hollow vowel seemed to go echoing through the emptiness that had once been so different. No chance now of reconciliation; no chance of that ultimate meeting somewhere, somehow, to the hope of which, in spite of herself, she knew at last that she had been desperately clinging—which had even, perhaps unknown to her, been the determining factor in her acceptance of the post at Mirabel. Whatever unsubstantial edifice she had been rearing was all in ruins now, and neither in pride and resentment, nor in the love that forgives everything, could they meet again on earth.
Now she knew the truth: she had always loved him, she always would. And since, in its own surroundings, there was not a single possession of his remaining, she went to the Galerie de Psyché, and, under the paintings of that wife of fable who also lost her mate, she knelt down by Gaston’s beautiful escritoire, and bowing her head upon it, kissed the place on the tortoiseshell where his hand had used to rest. He was dead—so what did it matter that he had long ceased to love her? He was dead; he was hers now; she could love for both.
It was neither a cleaning nor a visiting day, and Valentine could not be too thankful that, with these tidings fresh upon her heart, she would not be obliged to act just yet the intolerable part she had so lightly taken up. But, to her utter dismay, she heard, about two o’clock in the afternoon, voices on the steps leading down to her room, and then the sound of the entrance door opening, which showed that the arrivals must include her master Camain, who now used the key he had had, it appeared, all the time. And when Valentine went out unwillingly into the passage she found him in the midst of a whole cortège of visitors, mostly feminine. Hanging on to his arm was a pretty, plump woman of about thirty-five, whom she recognised at once from the frequent prints of her in Paris. It was Rose Dufour, the actress of the Ambigu-Comique.
A violent gust of repulsion went through the Duchesse de Trélan. True, she had never been able to believe that her husband had really admired Mlle Dufour, but nine or ten years ago rumour had certainly linked their names for a space, and to see her in person to-day, of all days . . .
“Ha, here is our good friend, Mme Vidal!” said Camain, advancing. “Rose, if you wish to leave your wrap in her care——” And without waiting for permission he removed from the nymph’s very scantily attired shoulders a handsome pelisse of violet satin edged with ermine.
“Good God, Camain, do you want me to die of cold in your old tomb of a château!” exclaimed she, snatching at it.
“Well, it is true that you will not be suffocated without it. You might almost as well have nothing on,” observed her admirer frankly, looking at her transparent white muslin gown of classic cut, worn slightly damp, according to the insane fashion of the day, to make it cling. Even Mlle Dufour’s arms were bare to the shoulder, for the actress was not of those who had to endure the accusation launched at the wearers of sleeves, that they feared to show those members. And her mythological garb, slit for a considerable distance up the side, revealed the golden fastenings of the buskin clambering half-way up her leg, where a gilded acorn clasped them. For that reason, presumably, she was not wearing, like one of her companions, a jewelled thong around her ankle. Butupon her fair coiffure—probably a wig, for which the rage was extreme—rose a confection of lilac crêpe, adorned with two rows of pearls and surmounted by a rose and a pansy.
Valentine had turned her back, pretending to be busy. For nothing on earth would she touch any of that creature’s belongings! However, the dispute about the pelisse resolved itself into the lady’s decreeing that her swain should carry it over his arm, lest she should wish to resume it, and presently the whole party, laughing and talking, swept up the stairway to the ground floor. Mme de Trélan, conscious of jangled nerves, would fain have stayed behind, but Camain insisted on her accompanying them, as was indeed her duty. He did not present her to his mistress, but his affability stopped short only of that mark of distinction.
In the great Salle Verte, for which they presently made, he acted showman, while many remarks were passed on its size and decorations, and surmises made as to what scenes (“orgies,” one of the male members of the party termed them) had occurred in it.
“And there is an inner room, somewhat curious,” said the Deputy. “It was designed, I believe, to be a sort of retreat for the prince—since the château, as I daresay you know, was originally built for King François I. It is worth looking at, Mesdames.” So the company obediently followed him along the Salle Verte.
Valentine was conscious of a violent wish that they should not enter the sallette. Till this moment she had been too much absorbed in the thought of her dead husband to give much consideration to the Comte de Brencourt and his doings. Now, although she knew that he had not attacked the masonry, and although he would surely not be so rash as to attempt anything in daylight, she had a premonition of disaster. But Camain waved his hand towards the door, and there was nothing for it but to open it.
However, to Mme de Trélan’s great relief—for she had somehow, against her better sense, expected to see de Brencourt standing where she had found him last night—the sallette was empty. And the company were called on by the Deputy to admire thecheminée royale, with itscarving of Apollo and Daphne, and its nymph and pipe-playing satyr on either side, but some of the ladies, unversed in mythological lore, despite their present attire, were intrigued by the main subject, and among these was the Citoyenne Dufour.
“What on earth is happening to that woman, Camain?” she demanded. “Her arms are sprouting at the ends. And who is the man?”
“That, ma belle,” responded her admirer, “is the nymph Daphne, turning into a laurel to escape the attentions of the god Apollo—a pretty prudery not likely, I fancy, to find many imitators in these days, eh, ladies?”
Violent protests from the ladies of the party.
“Oh, oh, Citizen Deputy, you have left some fleur-de-lys on the wall!” observed one of them. “Is that to be on the safe side—in case a Bourbon should return?”
“Fleur-de-lys? Nonsense!” returned M. Camain, putting up his spy-glass to look at the poor scorched remnant of tapestry hanging there. “Those things you see round that bit of border are . . . humming-birds, heraldic humming-birds!”
Much laughter greeted this sally. “And what is this queer long beast over the hearth?” demanded another voice.
“With a crown on its head, too! Oh fie!”
“It is not, at any rate,” said one of the two youngish men of the party, in the extraordinary lisp cultivated by the would-be fashionable, “the strange fowl to whose nest some one has set fire just as she was going to lay, which we saw in the Salle Verte!”
So it went on, the flow of humour; and after visiting most of the apartments on the first floor, where M. Camain tripped badly as an expositor of the story of Psyche, and where Valentine’s own apartments, though arousing much interest, were voted horribly old-fashioned in decoration, they came to the second, to the door of the locked gallery with the china and portraits. Mme de Trélan had hoped that she might have been spared that—for how should she look upon that portrait in primrose satin to-day?—and sick at heart as never before, she had contrived to trail behind. She heard Camain’s voice explaining what was in the room while he waited for herto unlock the door. Then she realised that the key, being a special one, was not on the concierge’s bunch, and that she had in consequence forgotten to bring it with her. She came forward and said so. “But I will go and fetch it instantly, Monsieur le Député.”
“Do, pray,—though I regret to put you to the trouble,” said her employer. “Meanwhile, ladies, come out on to this balcony, and you will see——”
Valentine hastened down the nearest stairs. Better to get it over as soon as possible, the visit to that room, for it had to be gone through with, and she had no one but herself to thank for that fact.
She had come down a minor staircase which deposited her at some distance from her own quarters, and having arrived on the basement floor she began to run, for she was still as light-footed as a girl, and she had a constitutional dislike, for all her upbringing, to keeping people waiting. And thus, round a corner, she almost collided with a man hastening in the opposite direction. A second of stupefaction, and she saw that it was the Comte de Brencourt.
“What!” she stammered out. “M. le Comte—what madness! Camain is here himself!”
“I know!” returned he rather breathlessly. “They are after me—never mind what happened—a folly of my own. I am trying to get as far away from your rooms as possible.”
“But for God’s sake go back there!” said the Duchesse, seizing hold of his arm, and all but pushing him. “Go to my room—you will be safe there. They will not go in!”
“Never!” he exclaimed. “The last thing I should do—compromise you in this affair!” And breaking away from her he disappeared without another word, and was out of sight or hearing before she could even think of some spot in which he could hide. And since her quick wit told her that any delay in returning with the key might lead to Camain himself descending to investigate, she ran on to her little parlour, snatched it up and set off again with all haste. Terrible though it was to leave the Comte to his fate, or at least to his own devices—for she heard no sounds of pursuit yet—it was out of her power to help him now.
From what she caught, as she returned to the little group of persons on the second floor, it seemed that Camain had been singing her praises in her absence.
“I am afraid that you have hurried, Madame Vidal,” he said in a tone of concern as he took the key from her. She was indeed very obviously out of breath. “You should not have done so. These ladies seized the opportunity of taking a breath of air on the balcony, and having a peep from there at the park, which they tell me I ought to keep in better order.”
“Indeed, Monsieur le Député,” put in one of the critics in an affected voice, “you ought to be scolded! It seems, as far as one can judge from up here, to be in the state of the tangled wood which surrounded the castle of the Sleeping Beauty.” She pulled her gauze scarf about her with a still more affected air, acquired with a good deal of pains above her husband’s shop, and the five blue feathers in her turban quivered.
“Now that remark, Madame Constant,” said the Deputy, stooping and fitting the key into the lock, “gives me an opening, does it not, for a pretty speech about the Sleeping Beauty herself? However, Mme Vidal doesn’t like pretty speeches, so I won’t make it.” He opened the door, invited the ladies to enter, and after casting upon Valentine a glance which could only be described as ogling, followed the bevy, who had already fluttered in with exclamations—two of them also casting glances of another nature upon the concierge as they passed.
Mme de Trélan, every sense on the alert, remained outside. Dared she run down the stairs again, and could she do any good if she did? She had not long to hesitate, for in an instant Camain’s voice was heard summoning her within, and she obeyed, anxiety as to what was going forward downstairs swallowing for the moment every other feeling.
“You might show these gentlemen the pictures, Madame Vidal,” said her master, looking up from his favourite Sèvres. And as the three men of the party attached themselves to her, the Duchesse began to move slowly along the line of Trélans, starting as far as possible from her husband’s portrait. She heard, before beginning her own unwilling exposition, Camain saying, “Yousee this plate, ladies; I believe it was one of a service painted for the late Duchesse on her marriage.” And she guessed to what he was directing the attention of those fair and envious vulgarians, to the plate of green Sèvres with the alternate medallions of cherubs on clouds, baskets of flowers, and green wreaths, round the rim whose extreme edge was of dark blue hatched with gold.
“That must be the poor woman’s monogram in the middle, then,” said one of them, and Valentine knew that she was looking at the gold T in the centre, intertwined with a V of roses and forget-me-nots, and surmounted by a coronet. “T for Trélan, of course—I wonder what the V stood for?”
“I don’t know,” said Camain. “Victoire or Victorine, I expect. Do you know, Mademoiselle Dufour?”
“Why on earth should I?” asked Rose Dufour indifferently. “Let me look at it, Georges—I’ll take it in my own hands, thanks . . . Great God, how clumsy you are!” For the sound of a smash told that the late Duchesse de Trélan’s plate now existed only in fragments.
Through the ensuing recriminations between the Deputy and hisinnamorata, and the expressions of concern from everybody else in the room, including her own three prospective picture-gazers, Valentine’s ears were strained to catch other sounds. And as she still did not hear them she began to entertain a faint hope. The château was so large that a man might lead his pursuers a good dance and elude them in the end. Unfortunately M. de Brencourt was not familiar with its topography.
“If you say you dropped it because you were carrying my pelisse I’ll take the pelisse myself!” Mlle Dufour’s voice emerged again, sounding less good-humoured than usual. “No, I’m not going to carry it on my arm—Heaven forbid. You can put it on my shoulders, only don’t drop it also—Bon Dieu, what’s that?”
For a loud knock had come at the door, which stood ajar—a knock that sounded to Valentine like the summons of Fate. Moving a trifle, she was able to see the soldier outside, whose approaching footfalls the recent scene had drowned. A sensitive lady gave a little scream.
“Who’s there?” asked Camain, the violet satin held above Mlle Dufour’s bare shoulders. “Excuse me, ma mie!” He dropped the cloak upon its destination withoutmuch ceremony, and strode to the door, where the National Guard was seen to salute and to say something in a low voice.
“Tut, tut!” said the Deputy. “Well, I suppose I had better come down and ask him a few questions.”
“What is it, Georges?” asked the Dufour, who had glided to the door after him, the ermine slipping half off her shoulders.
“The guard have captured a man who has just made an entrance into the building, and they would like me to have a look at him before marching him off.”
“How interesting!” cried the actress. “What a coup de théâtre! Do not go down to him, Georges! Let them bring him up here! This might have been arranged for us. What was he doing?”
Nobody could answer that question but Valentine, and she only in part. Camain hesitated a moment, but only a moment. “Very well,” he said. “Tell them to bring him up here,” he added to the National Guard.
A hot flame of indignation ran over the Duchesse. The Comte de Brencourt, a gentleman, was then to be made a show for the passing curiosity of a courtesan and her friends! But what had he been about, in daylight too? The same question no doubt was exercising the Deputy, for he turned round, his look seeking her out; and, being half a head taller than any one else in the room, he easily found her.
“Here is a pretty find to be made on your domain, Madame Vidal!” he said. The voice sounded jocular, but she was not sure of the genuineness of that jocularity. She was saved the necessity of a reply by a remark from one of the ladies, winged by a malicious side-glance at her, the shabby, middle-aged caretaker; “Perhaps it is the Prince come after the Sleeping Beauty!”
Half ashamed, the men sniggered too. Valentine’s anger, lit in spite of her contempt, served usefully to steady her. “It is more likely, Monsieur le Député,” she said coldly, “that he has come after something in this room—there are valuables here, are there not?”
“At the moment, most certainly!” cut in one of the youngish men, bowing with a fatuous air in the direction of Rose and the others.
“But in the daytime!” said Camain musingly. His eyes strayed to the jasper cup. “I’ll have the room made surer.”
“And I shall beg leave to give up the key,” said Valentine, her head high. Anything to foster the idea of ordinary theft.
“I shall not ask you——” Camain was beginning, when the tramp of feet in the corridor interrupted him. “Ah, here is our adventurer. Yes, bring him in, men.”
If the Comte de Brencourt felt the indignity of his position, he did not show it. His chief preoccupation, Valentine could not but feel, was to avoid looking at her. He had not been secured without a struggle, that was evident, for there was a cut on his forehead, and his neckcloth was wrenched half off. His arms were bound to his sides by a pipe-clayed cross-belt. Valentine could not keep her eyes off him, but the Comte himself looked nowhere but at Camain. And Camain, advancing a little, studied him for a moment, his hands behind his back, his rather prominent blue eyes suddenly grown searching.
“Your report, corporal?” he said abruptly, still running his gaze over the captive.
The National Guard related a story to which no one in the room listened more fixedly than the concierge of Mirabel: how the sentry—apparently neither Grégoire nor Jacques—happening to look round at the château not very long after the entry of the Deputy and his party, had seen a man getting in at one of the ground-floor windows, how he had summoned the guard and they, selecting the same window, as the quickest mode of entrance, had at last run the intruder to earth on the basement floor and, after a lively resistance, captured him.
“Very smart work, corporal,” said the Deputy. “But that window—what window was it?”
“We found ourselves when we got in, Citizen Deputy, in that room they call the ‘sallette.’ ”
“The sallette!” echoed Camain in surprise, and Valentine suppressed an exclamation. How nearly right her presentiments had been, then! But to enter by the window, in broad daylight, in view of the sentry; it sounded crazy!
“And what had he in his pockets?” went on the Deputy.
“These small tools, Citizen Deputy, a handkerchief, and a case with assignats; we have not counted them yet.”
(He must have had time to get rid of the plan, then.)
“Well, my fine fellow, and what have you to say for yourself?” The words were careless, but the tone was so different from anything which Mme de Trélan had yet heard him use, that, for the first time, she realised how Georges Camain might have been a Terrorist.
To this the prisoner was understood to mutter, in a strong patois, that he hoped the citizen would not be too severe on a poor man, that the times were bitter hard—no work, no food—and he had thought he might light on something or other in Mirabel that nobody would miss . . .
His dishevelled appearance, the blood trickling down one cheek, and a certain amount of dirt that M. de Brencourt had somehow accumulated, went really a good way to obliterate the marks of race. Perhaps he would succeed in carrying it off that he was a common thief. The Deputy seemed inclined to believe it.
“I rather think, my man,” he said, with a smile which had in it nothing of amiable, “that you have known the inside of a gaol already, from the look of you. However, we shall hear all about that later. You had better take him to the guard-house for the present,” he remarked to the corporal, “and make arrangements for having him conveyed to Paris.”
By the end of this little speech Valentine had realised where the captive’s eyes, which had already removed themselves from his inquisitor’s, were now fixed—on the portrait of her husband as a young man which faced him all the while.
If, owing to the slackness of the once fire-eating Grégoire and his superior, Roland’s apparition in the gardens of Mirabel had produced but little stir in official quarters, it was not so with the actual capture of a delinquent made within the château, and practically under the eyes of the Deputy himself. For two days Mirabel was turned inside out, and Camain, the outwardly easy-going, piqued by this daring intrusion, superintended much of the search in person. What the soldiers and police agents expected to find appeared doubtful; and indeed there was actually little for them to discover, since, already aware of the strangely open method of ingress selected by the invader, they paid no attention to the broken shutter at the back of Mirabel which had originally admitted him. The one genuine discovery which they made intrigued them a good deal—the lantern lying in the colonnade not far from the windows of the sallette—for why should a man want a lantern in the daytime?
It puzzled Valentine also when she came to hear of it; but, after thought, she came to the conclusion that the lantern was, for her at least, the key to the whole mystery of the Comte’s arrest—as indeed it was. She recalled that he had had a lantern when she found him in the sallette that evening; on searching her memory was fairly sure that he had not brought it with him to her room, and supposed that next morning, suddenly remembering having left it where its presence, if discovered, might prove very awkward for him—or for her—he had gone, at a most unfortunate moment, to retrieve it, had nearly been trapped in the sallette by the advent of Camain and his party, and in desperation had climbed with it through the window, trusting to the colonnading outside to hide him. But onreturning, after an interval, by the same way, he had had the ill-luck to be seen. For all she knew, that had been the road by which he had originally entered Mirabel.
It was not until a day or two had elapsed that Valentine realised how fortunate for her was the fact that M. de Brencourt had been found breaking in, apparently for the first time, during the presence of visitors. It occurred to no one that it was not his first invasion, and had there been complicity on the part of the concierge it was plain that he would never have chosen such a time. That M. Camain himself entertained no suspicions of her was proved by the frankness with which, coming daily during this period of turmoil, he kept his subordinate posted up in the course of events.
“The authorities can make nothing of the man,” he admitted in her little room, on the third morning. “They cannot even discover his name. But, chiefly because he turned out to have too large a sum of money on him for a common malefactor, he has been clapped into the Temple, on the chance of his being a political offender.”
“Political!” ejaculated Valentine. “What political object could be served by breaking in here!”
“I confess I cannot imagine,” responded the administrator. “But the Royalists are up to all sorts of games. If he had been better-looking, now, one might have put forward a theory that he was the Duc de Trélan himself, come back to have a peep at the place . . . as you once suggested to me that he might, Madame Vidal!” He laughed, as at something equally preposterous and amusing, but all the colour went from Valentine’s face. That surmise, made in utter and desperate jest as it had been, could never know fulfilment now!
“But,” went on the Deputy, unobservant, “I am relieved to find that there is no question of the Minister of Police wanting to confront you with this man, as I was afraid, at one point, that there might be. It is possible, however, that he may require some sworn statement of conditions here, a deposition, in short, such as one makes before a notary. And I also should be glad of it for the sake of my reputation, for though this man was fortunately seen and captured at once, you will imagine, Madame, that I am not pleased to learn about that other marauder who escapedfrom the garden a while ago, though that has been kept very quiet—too quiet, in fact. Will you believe, Madame Vidal, that I was only a few days ago informed of that episode?”
Valentine stared at him, disconcerted. “But I thought you knew of that, Monsieur le Député!”
“Naturally. I ought to have known of it. Well, there is a more zealous sergeant at the poste de garde now, and there will henceforth be a sentry on duty here all night. So I hope that your peace will not be molested again. Now, Madame, if you will kindly give me writing materials. . . . Thank you. Be seated, pray. I shall ask you to give me an account of the early part of that day?”
“But there is nothing to give an account of,” said the Duchesse. If he had asked for the preceding evening!
“So much the better,” returned Camain, trying the nib of the quill on his finger-nail. “Still, you can tell me how the day was passed, from your rising in the morning; and what, if anything, you observed of unusual. I take it, of course, that you had not seen this man lurking about the place before?”
“No, of course not,” lied Valentine gallantly. After all, it was not for herself. But she was glad she had not to meet his eye, as he glanced up for a second.
“I was sure of that,” said he, beginning to write. “Now, although I am not a notary, we will observe the forms. . . . ‘Je soussignée. . . .’ What is your baptismal name, Madame Vidal?”
Hastily Mme de Trélan put forward the least aristocratic sounding of her names. “Marie,” she answered.
“ ‘Marie,’ ” repeated the scribe, in somewhat lingering tones. “ ‘Marie.’ ‘I, the undersigned, Marie Vidal.’ Widow, of course?”
“Yes,” said Valentine rather faintly, for the question stabbed her. The Deputy looked up, and she had an impression that he was going to ask her how long she had been a widow, and that she would be mesmerised into answering that she did not know, that it was just what she was seeking to know. . . . But he did not; he settled to business instead—and was very business-like too. Valentine had to account for every hour of that morning, and as she really had no right in the Duc’s apartments shedid not find it too easy. When it was finished, and she had signed, he thanked her, and looking at his watch left somewhat precipitately.
Valentine came back rather thoughtful from accompanying him to the door, which she always conceived it her duty to do. He was kind; she did not like deceiving him—though indeed she had no hand in this enterprise of the Comte de Brencourt’s any more than in Roland de Céligny’s. All she was doing was to hold her tongue about the Comte’s identity, and to wish him well out of the Temple. His sudden capture, however, had profoundly affected her own affairs, for he could not now be the bearer of her intended letter to the Marquis de Kersaint, nor—since he had left her that night without giving her his leader’s address—could she send it by any other means.
Unless, indeed, she thought, standing by the high barred window and looking out, she were to discover M. de Kersaint’s whereabouts by communication with Roland de Céligny, if he were still with his cousins. No, to approach Roland might be very inauspicious for him just at this juncture; moreover, she must hope, for his own sake, that he had left Paris by now. She must wait a little; and, after all, the initial shock was over. Gaston was dead, and details of the how and when of his death could not help him to life again. She hoped he had not died in poverty. She could not bear that thought. . . .
Nor could she bear, just now, the consciousness that M. Georges Camain was beginning to look upon her with an eye more beaming than that of an employer. Even his consideration, for which she had been grateful, was coming to displease her, for surely it exceeded what was due to a concierge. Not being born to that estate she could not feel certain about this, but she did know that a demeanour in the Deputy which even as Mme Vidal she disliked, as the Duc de Trélan’s widow she abhorred.
And she was troubled next day, when M. Camain appeared again, in a shirt of fine batiste fastened with a golden butterfly, bearing a bunch of roses in his hand. He laid them down on the table.
“I am happy to tell you, Madame Vidal, that the depositionwas quite sufficient. You will not be molested in any way.”
“Really, Citizen Deputy, I am most grateful to you,” said the Duchesse—and meant it.
“You are more than welcome,” returned her benefactor with a bow. “It is a pleasure to serve you in anything. Besides, I look upon you as a colleague in the preservation of Mirabel.”
It was well said, if, again, an unusual sentiment. However, the look which followed its enunciation gave Valentine a sudden presentiment that his next words were going to be less well chosen, and she became acutely conscious of the red roses on the table. But at that very moment the door burst abruptly open, and Louise, with a bucket of water and a mop tied up in a cloth, clanged into the little room.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Madame Vidal, I thought you were upstairs, and I was going to wash the. . . . Oh, Monsieur le Député!” She was struck speechless.
“I will go,” said Georges Camain at once. “No, remain, my good woman, and do your work.” Her he did not address as colleague.
“Pray, Monsieur le Député——” began the Duchesse, for form’s sake, though in reality she could have embraced that bucket-bearing form.
“No, no,” said he quite good-humouredly. “I would not for the world interfere with your wise dispositions. Do not come to the door, I beg.”
He disappeared, only just avoiding a second bucket which Louise had left outside in the passage, and Valentine turned away to hide a smile, but not because of the bucket, for that anyone should fall over such an object was not a form of humorous incident that appealed to her. Her mirth, however, was of a very fleeting nature, since the situation had elements which did not amuse her at all.
“Look what beautiful flowers M. le Député has brought, Madame!” said Louise, suddenly seeing them. “He doubtless brought them for you. A very affable gentleman, M. Camain!”
Mme de Trélan glanced at the roses, still lying on the table. Impossible to tell, since the bearer had been so hastily routed, whether they were intended for her or no.On the whole she feared they were. Then the idea of another destination occurred to her. The affable gentleman was probably on his way to Mlle Dufour.
“You can take them away with you when you go, Louise,” she said, indifferently. “M. le Député must have forgotten them. But it is a pity that they should be wasted.”
“But surely Madame will keep them?”
“I dislike the scent of roses,” was Madame’s quite curt reply.
But Rose—theRose—she had made up her mind about that ornament of the theatre. There could never have been anything between her and Gaston, fastidious as he had been to his finger-tips. Mlle Dufour had not enough mind even to have amused him. But there was such a thing as claiming for lover a man who had on one occasion, or perhaps two, paid a woman some slight, half careless attention, especially when that man’s admiration was in itself a distinction. The Duchesse de Trélan had known it done in far higher circles than those in which Mlle Dufour moved. Something told her that in 1790 the actress had employed that useful method of self-advertisement, and who was there then—or ever—to gainsay its truth? To-day that man’s wife, having seen the claimant, felt with every instinct that the claim was false. But she did not detest Rose much the less.
Camain did not come again for several days. The little sprite which dwelt in Mme de Trélan’s brain, even in the cloud of sorrow and remorse, suggested that he was trying to find out and avoid a day when minor “colleagues” might come charging into her room. And luck served him, for he arrived one beautiful afternoon when she was quite alone. But he seemed in a very business-like mood, and while he apologised for interrupting her sewing, he told her the reason for his visit; he was thinking of having the garden put in better order, though, as he said, the ridiculous sum which the Directory placed at his disposal would not admit of much being done.
“But I know very little about gardens,” he concluded.“Now, a woman’s taste . . . Will you come out with me and give me the benefit of your advice, Madame Vidal?”
“But, Monsieur le Député,” objected Valentine, “I am not a Lenôtre. It is gardening on a grand scale here—landscape gardening. I suppose, however, that you could begin by putting the Italian garden in the front a little in order. Shall I come out there with you?”
M. Camain shook his head. “I should prefer to do something to the wilderness at the back—for a wilderness it is fast becoming. You would be doing Mirabel a real service if you would come out there with me now.”
Valentine had to acknowledge to herself that, assuming his sudden anxiety about the garden to be genuine, this was certainly true. And the state of the park had long afflicted her. Nevertheless she went unwillingly.
But the Deputy’s business-like mood continued, and from the great terrace at the top the two took a general survey of the rioting vegetation. Nodding spires of foxgloves pierced it now, and the stately candles of the mulleins were lit, while round the rose-trees, turned once more to briars, the bindweed stretched her strangling arms, and trumpeted her victories from a thousand mouths. And arbour after arbour was nothing but a mantle of the white stars of the wild clematis.
Into this jungle the administrator and the concierge of Mirabel descended after a little, and pushed their way along the paths, discussing the pruning and lopping of laurel and arbor vitæ, and the possibility of re-shaping the yews that once had been ships or peacocks. But it seemed very hopeless.
“Indeed, I can hardly wonder that that marauder escaped the other day,” commented M. Camain, standing at the top of a flight of steps not very far from the scene of the invader’s mishap. “It would need an army to make any impression on this. I almost think that you are right, Madame Vidal, and that, with the meagre means at my disposal; I shall have at present to content myself with the front garden.”
“There is only one saving clause,” he remarked suddenly over his shoulder as he led the way back, “and that is, that to put order into this tangle would destroy its characterof the Sleeping Beauty’s enchanted forest, on which Mme Constant remarked so aptly the other day.”
Valentine, annoyed, bit her lip and, answering nothing, followed him at a slackening pace. But M. Georges Camain, having arrived at a seat in the bosquet through which they were passing, turned round and waited for her.
“Shall we sit down a moment after our walk?” he suggested.
It was a curved stone seat which the honeysuckle had so invaded as to leave little room. But one end was still clear. On this the Duchesse unwillingly sat down, and her employer did the same.
“It only occurred to me the other day,” he began in a conversational tone, looking at her profile, “that I might in some sort claim relationship with you, Madame Vidal.”
“Indeed, Citizen Deputy! How is that?”
“Well, as I have the happiness to call Mme Tessier cousin, it appears to me that, since you are akin to her, I might have the even greater happiness of thinking of you as——”
“As your aunt, were you going to say, Citizen?” interrupted Mme de Trélan with, a gleam. “But I am afraid that I cannot aspire to that honour. It is only by marriage that I am related to Suzon.”
“I fear you are mocking me, Madame,” said Camain in a tone of relish. “You must be well aware that I do not conceive of you as my aunt.” His hand was creeping towards her along the back of the seat, over the tangled honeysuckle.
“I am nearly forty-five years old, Monsieur le Député,” said Valentine in a very repressive voice. “Old enough to be a grandmother.” She rose. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must be getting back to my work.”
“But that is just what I do not wish you to do, Madame Vidal,” interposed Camain, getting to his feet with even greater alacrity. “Oblige me by sitting down a moment, and by listening to what I have to say.”
As his not inconsiderable bulk blocked the only egress from the seat there was nothing for it but to comply, and this, after a momentary hesitation, Mme de Trélan did.
“You must by this time,” began Camain, clearing his throat, “have become aware, Madame, of my profound admiration for you.”
“I know that you have shown me great consideration, Citizen,” responded Valentine, “and I assure you that it has been appreciated.”
“It would be impossible for me to do too much to show my regard for you,” said the Deputy earnestly. “Your talents, Madame, your character, your gifts of heart and brain—you must forgive me if I point out (what you must surely know) that they are thrown away upon your present situation.”
“Is that a kind way of intimating, Monsieur le Député, that you wish me to resign it?” enquired Valentine, immensely relieved at the goal towards which, after all, the conversation appeared to be making.
“You have hit the nail on the head,” replied M. Camain with a peculiar smile. “I do wish you to resign this post, so unworthy of your sensibilities and your education. I wish to remove you, with your consent, to another, which I dare to flatter myself will be less unworthy of you.”
Mme de Trélan looked at him mutely.
“All this, Madame,” pursued the Deputy, waving his hand to include not only the garden but the château itself, “all this, over which you exercise so wise a regency, is but a dead kingdom. You are but the guardian of a cenotaph. But imagine yourself,” he went on, warming to his trope, “imagine yourself ruling with a real authority where all is, on the contrary, alive, where every subject is your—I should say, every wish is your subject, every project laid at your feet for approval, every——”
But Valentine broke in rather ruthlessly by saying, “I cannot imagine to what kingdom you refer, Monsieur Camain.”
“You do not divine?” said he, and the smile became more marked. “You must guess—’tis your adorable woman’s modesty which dictates that reluctance! Madame . . .Marie. . . the kingdom which I invite you to enter—ah no, not to enter, for you are already enthroned there, but to sway absolutely—is at your feet this moment, is, in short, this heart!” finished M. Camain, transferring himself very neatly from the bench beside her to one bendedknee, and clasping both hands to the neighbourhood of the organ he had named.
Valentine surveyed him there on the gravel with stupefaction and a spice of malicious amusement.
“Am I to understand, Monsieur le Député, that you are good enough to offer me the post recently occupied by Mlle Dufour?”
Her suitor reddened. “Good God, no, Madame! I must have expressed myself but ill if I gave you to suppose that! No, Mlle Dufour and I have parted. It is my hand, in all respect and honesty, of which I have the honour to ask your acceptance.”
“In short,” said the Duchesse, unable to resist, “vous allez vous ranger. Please get up, Citizen. I am very much honoured by your offer, but it is impossible for me to accept it.”
Her wooer kept his countenance very well. Possibly he had expected this refusal, as a further manifestation of the modesty to which he had alluded. He did get up, and, dusting the traces of the greenish gravel off the knees of his small-clothes, stood before her, rather a fine figure of a man, who probably carried off better than most the ridiculous red togaà l’antiquewhich the members of the Conseil des Anciens had to wear at their assemblies.
“I am too sudden, perhaps, Madame?” he enquired, his head on one side. “I recognise and bow to your superior delicacy. A flower should never be plucked in a hurry. And yet, the encouragement I have received——”
“Encouragement, Monsieur?” exclaimed the Duchesse. “Whence did you derive that?”
The Deputy made her a bow. “You have been—unintentionally, no doubt—kinder than you knew.”
“Do you mean to say that I—I—gave you encouragement, Monsieur?” All the Duchesse de Trélan was in the astonishment of that emphasized pronoun.
“Not openly, Madame, I admit—but in a way you were unconscious of.”
“Most certainly I was unconscious of it!” said Valentine, in a tone of the strongest indignation. “Your imagination, Monsieur le Député, runs away with you!”
“Madame, I only used my eyes,” pleaded Camain, undeterred by her displeasure—seeming, indeed, rather toenjoy it. And he sat down again on the seat. “You would not, naturally, be aware of it, chère Madame. But cast your mind back a week—to the day of the arrest. It was on that day that I first received hope. . . . I see you do not believe me. Must I convince you then?”
“You cannot, Monsieur.”
Camain bent nearer. “Do you challenge me? Ah, Madame Marie, but you will be angry with me! It was, then—you remember that day, Mlle Dufour was with me—it was the way you looked . . . in which I saw you looking . . . the hostile way, in short, in which you looked at poor Rose.”
“Rose. . . the way I looked . . . you think—is it possible that you imagine, Monsieur Camain, that I was jealous of your mistress?” A white and royal anger possessed the Duchesse, and she got up from the stone bench more like a queen than a concierge.
“I knew you would be angry,” said Camain plaintively, gazing up at her. “But as I live, I saw you looking at her once or twice in a manner which seemed to me to admit of only one explanation.”
Mme de Trélan gasped. She had no words before a supposition so monstrous. What had begun by resembling farce had turned to something else. Here, in her own garden, to be subjected to the insolent fatuity of this man of no breeding! And Rose Dufour, of all women. . . .
“It is impossible for me to remain at Mirabel to be insulted, Monsieur Camain,” she said very haughtily. “Will you kindly relieve me of my charge here, and replace me as soon as you can? I should prefer to leave to-morrow.”
M. Camain stooped and picked up his cameo-headed cane. With this, rising, he poked the ground for a few seconds.
“I am obliged by the terms of my appointment, Madame Vidal,” he said at the end of them, “to receive notice of resignation in writing.”
“Then you shall have it in writing at once,” returned she. “If you will kindly let me pass——”
He stood aside. “Send it by post, Madame, to-morrow, if you are still of the same mind. Though why my most respectful admiration should be construed——”
“That is enough, Monsieur,” said Mme de Trélan as she might have spoken to a disobedient servant, and walked straight past him out of the grove.
M. Camain, deputy for Maine-et-Loire, did not follow her. After a moment he reseated himself on the stone bench, and, crossing one blue and white striped leg over the other, rubbed his ankle thoughtfully. Then a sort of smile passed over his well-shaven face, he put a finger and thumb into a waistcoat pocket, and drew forth a little almanac, which he consulted. This done, he rose and sauntered towards the lower end of the park, to a certain little door in the outer wall which, to his knowledge, had not been used for years. It had, as he knew, bolts only on the inside, so the absence of a key need not deter him from leaving Mirabel by that way . . . unless indeed long disuse should have rusted those bolts in their sockets, or the ivy have bolted it in another fashion.
It was not until Valentine’s letter of resignation had gone that she realised what, in the heat of her anger, she had done. She had shut herself out of Mirabel for ever. To-morrow would probably be the last day she should ever spend there. Was it really only a week ago that, fresh from the shock of the Comte’s news, she had wondered how she could possibly have put herself into such a position? Well, she had still more indignant reason for wonder at herself to-day, yet—she had suddenly discovered that she did not want to quit Mirabel. But it was too late now.
Next afternoon a messenger brought her a letter addressed in Camain’s large, sprawling hand. Out of it fell a spray of young ivy. Mme de Trélan looked at it distastefully—some sentimental afterthought, no doubt, of her bourgeois wooer’s—and letting it lie on the table read his regrets at her decision to resign, his surprise at the resentment aroused by his “deeply respectful addresses”—and his reminder that by the terms of her appointment she had agreed to give thirty days’ notice of resignation, and that she was not therefore legally free to leave Mirabel till the 27th of Thermidor next. But the rejected suitor pledged his word that, unless obliged, he would not enter the château again during her stay, so that she might feel at liberty from the menace of a devotion which was evidently distasteful. “And perhaps,” the letter concluded, “in that period the rest of this torn ivy, which you will no doubt recognise, may have time to grow again over the little door near the Allée des Soupirs.”
The letter dropped from Valentine’s hand. Was it a threat—this about the door? Could he know anything about Roland, from some unsuspected source, or did he perceive no more than that the door had recently been used? But, as Roland must surely have quitted Parisby now, the sprig of ivy moved her not, and the most potent emotion roused by her employer’s letter was probably the last he intended—relief. Through that forgotten thirty days’ warning she had a respite; she need not leave Mirabel yet. She had never dreamed that she could be so deeply thankful.
For she would have fuller leisure now to think of Gaston, whose widow she was—whose widow she had been, perhaps, for long enough already, even though this Chouan leader had only recently learnt the fact of his death. Yes, she had known that all along. That was why Gaston had never answered her letters, never sought for her. It was not indifference, but a gaoler far more implacable who had held him captive; and the reflection that he had possibly been dead for years held a terrible kind of comfort in it.
She was Gaston de Trélan’s widow, in Gaston’s violated home. And it seemed to her that these twenty-nine days had been given her to go over their life together, and to pray for him. Afterwards, when she, too, had left that home for ever, she would take steps to communicate with the Marquis de Kersaint in the hopes of hearing more. So, before the empty tabernacle in the cold, half-pillaged chapel, where in the presence of such a brilliant company the Archbishop of Paris had made them one, she prayed for him every night and morning, at hours when no one was likely to summon her. Suzon was indisposed and could not come to see her. Camain had sworn not to come. And more than half the allotted respite slid by—too quickly.
Mme de Trélan had not mentioned her approaching departure to Louise and the rest of her minions. A faint hope began to stir in her, as time went on, that the Deputy would ask her to reconsider her decision. Her anger against him had measurably died down; it seemed to her now rather absurd that she had been so hot. The man knew no better; and, had not Rose been involved in his amazing “proof” she might even have seen the ludicrous side of it. But despite her conviction about her, nothing connected with Mlle Dufour could be to her amusing—only hateful. Yet, if M. Camain did ask her to stay on as concierge, how was she to regulate their intercourse in future?
So July went on, with reverses abroad and discontent at home, and Valentine saw now the use to which she would put the money, the price of Roland’s safety, for when she was free she would find some priest who would say Masses for Gaston’s soul, and she would herself go to her duties, as she had done now, regularly but surreptitiously, for years. For she felt on her own soul a deadly sin of pride; and if Gaston had contracted a sacrilegious marriage before he died, the fault was partly hers. What were those few letters which she had sent compared to the more active steps which she ought to have taken to find him—steps which, now that it was too late, she could not conceive why she had not taken?
And she longed so intensely for the comfort of the Mass that she thought she would have asked Suzon, had she not been indisposed, to take her place at Mirabel for a night, to allow her to attend in Paris one of the churches where, in a half clandestine fashion, it was celebrated. Then she would remember that in a couple of weeks she would be free to do this, since—Camain having given no further sign—Mirabel would shortly know her no more. Her desire changed its goal a little then, and became a longing that the chapel of Mirabel itself which had witnessed their union might know once more the offering of the holy mysteries, for Gaston’s soul and for her grave shortcomings too. Alas, there appeared small chance of that.
“I see you have got a gardener, Madame Vidal,” observed Louise one morning as she came in. “He seems very busy out in the front there. An oldish man for all that work, though.”
She was right. Later on, when Valentine looked out, she did indeed descry an elderly man busy with what had been the flower beds in the Italian garden. Then she remembered that Camain, on that memorable day, had spoken of his intention of having the beds attended to. Still, one man could not accomplish very much in so absolute a desolation.
The gardener did not come near the château, nor did she take any notice of him till two days later. It happened to turn extremely cold for the beginning of August, and atmidday, as she saw this industrious elderly person sitting eating on a barrow, she thought he might like to conclude his meal under the shelter of the colonnades, with the addition, perhaps, of a cup of coffee. She went up the steps, crossed to the bed by which he was sitting, and suggested it.
Without his hat, which the gardener removed as he rose on her approach, his face was seen to be round and comfortable. He seemed about fifty, hale and vigorous, with a twinkling eye. He thanked Mme de Trélan warmly, very warmly, for her kind thought, left his barrow, and betook himself up the great steps to the shelter of the colonnade, while she returned to her own quarters to make him some coffee.
By the time she brought it out to him he had finished his meal, and was standing in front of the boarded-up door looking at it. He turned round, took the cup from her with a little bow, and said,
“Madame, you do more in offering me this cup of coffee than you know. I am thirsty, it is true, but I am even more thirsty for talk with you.”
The Duchesse stared at him. He spoke with a slight accent, but his speech was educated.
“I have dug,” went on the gardener, sipping the coffee, “for three days in the garden, and I desire presently, with your permission, to dig in the château itself.”
“What, are you another of them?” cried Valentine involuntarily.
He smiled. “Even so, Madame. And since the arrest of M. de Brencourt has——”
“You know M. de Brencourt?”
“We are under the same orders.”
“Those of this Marquis de Kersaint?”
“Precisely,” said the gardener, and he now gulped down the coffee.
“But,” objected the Duchesse, puzzled, “how is it that you confide in me so readily? With M. de Brencourt”—“it was different,” she was going on to say, but stopped, realising that she was on the verge of an indiscretion.
“Because in the first place,” said the new treasure-seeker, “I went, on the receipt of certain information, tothose old MM. de Céligny to whom you so cleverly restored their interesting young relative; and from them—since the boy has returned to his grandfather—I learnt all that Roland had told them of your devotion.”
“Roland has gone, then?” said she, relieved. “He was well again?”
“Very nearly. The wound was not serious.”
“And the second gentleman—he who was arrested, M. de Brencourt?”
“He is still imprisoned in the Temple, but soon to leave it, I hope. He has found a venial guard, and . . . one has agents in Paris, you know, Madame. It is from them that I have learnt the facts about him.”
“I hope that you may not follow him to the Temple, Monsieur,” said Valentine, rather troubled.
“I hope so too,” said the newcomer composedly. “But since I hold a certain position here, having—no matter how—procured the post of an accredited gardener, I shall set about matters quietly. I propose, therefore, to go on attending to my horticultural duties for a space before beginning my investigation.”
Mme de Trélan studied the little man a moment. He seemed an extremely unhurried plotter—either a very cool hand, or one who was inclined to take things too easily. It was impossible for her to judge. It suddenly came to her, however, that the means of communication with M. de Kersaint were restored. When she knew rather more about him she could ask this emissary to bear her letter.
“You want me to help you, Monsieur, I suppose?” she suggested. “But what if I have scruples—I am not sure that I have not? I did not help either of the others, you know.”
“I shall respect your scruples, Madame. Unless you carry them so far as to denounce me, I can do what is necessary without claiming your active assistance. All I shall ask is that you remark on it to no one if I transfer the scene of my labours, in a day or two, from the front garden to the park behind. And now, if you will excuse me,” he concluded, “I will return to my wheelbarrow.”
“Before you go, Monsieur, may I know your name?” asked Valentine. Then she caught herself up. “No,I think I know too many names. I would rather not hear it. It is better for your sake that I should know you only as the gardener of Mirabel.”
Now this abstention of the concierge’s suited M. Chassin admirably. Although he had never been at Mirabel (just as he had never seen its Duchess) it was as well that his name, undistinguished though it were, should not be whispered there. So he bowed a little and said, “As you please, Madame. But possibly you know it already from one of the other gentlemen—from M. de Céligny, perhaps, if he talked to you much about M. de Kersaint, whose aumônier I have the honour to be.”
“You are a priest, then?” exclaimed Mme de Trélan, surprised.
“Presbyter valde indignus,” replied M. Chassin.
“I had not guessed it,” said Valentine. “Though indeed why should I?—Yes, M. de Céligny did refer to the aumônier, now I come to think of it, in connection with the plan of the treasure, but he did not mention the name.”
“Then I will remain the aumônier, or the gardener, according as you please, Madame,” said M. Chassin briskly. “What shall I do with this cup—besides thanking you a thousand times for its contents?”
The Duchesse took it from him. “If you care for another to-morrow at the same hour, Monsieur l’Aumônier, it will be at your disposal.”
“You are too good, Madame,” replied the priest. “You are sure my presence—our conversation—will not bore you?” There was a little twinkle in his eye.
“On the contrary,” responded Mme de Trélan. “I find all this passionately interesting. I feel that I am assisting at a romance. Is it not in the old fairy-tales that three sons of a king come after a treasure, or to slay a dragon, or free a princess?—and it is always the third and last who succeeds.”
“Alas, Madame,” said the third and last adventurer, “I am no king’s son. That description may serve for MM. de Céligny and de Brencourt, but my father was a shoemaker. I should not be worthy to free a princess. Besides, as I have told you, I am a priest.”
“Moreover there are no princesses here,” added Valentinehastily, annoyed with herself for having chosen just that illustration.
“Nor a dragon?” enquired the treasure-seeker.
“No, unless it be the Deputy or the sentry.”
“The latter, indeed, may be wondering at our conversation now, if he can see us in here,” observed the gardener, and he began to move towards the steps. “By the way, Madame, is it true that the Deputy Camain does not come here much now? I heard from . . . a source of information . . . that his visits, at one time very frequent, have practically ceased of late. Is that so? It is somewhat important for me to know.”
“Yes, that is quite correct,” answered the Duchesse, and was again annoyed with herself because she felt the colour rising to her face.