From the clump of pines on the rise the view down the Allée des Vieilles, with the sunset light on it, was extensive, and figures half a mile away were tolerably clear. The Comte de Brencourt had learnt at the farm that he was too late, but he had come on nevertheless. He had not reached his vantage point in time to witness the actual moment of meeting, but, though faces were of course indistinguishable at that distance, he had seen enough. And, grinding his teeth, with strange red spasmodic waves passing across his eyesight, so that from time to time he could see nothing at all, he still waited in the shadow of the clump. He had not known why—till a few minutes ago, when they had started to walk this way.
Yes, he knew now why he had come, and why he had endured that hell. But they walked so slowly—and he did not want to kill her too. Her husband’s arm was about her, and her head rested against him. Zéphyr followed, with his incomparable grace of movement, trying now and then to twitch a mouthful of something edible from among the heather. They were only a couple of hundred yards away now. What was this in his own hand—yes, of course, his pistol. And it was not moonlight this time, but strong level sunlight, falling in the right direction. A hundred and fifty yards. His hand must not shake now. But he must be very careful. If only de Trélan would take his arm away, curse him! A hundred and twenty yards, a hundred yards. . . .
If Valentine de Trélan had not worn that look, who knows what might not have happened, whether the menhirs would not have had their wish, and taken herheart’s desire from her. But what, when she was near enough, he who loved her in his own fashion could read on her face was both shield and sword. Crazed though he was at the moment, it smote the pistol from his hand, the very impulse to use it from his heart. The glory that she wore was not forgiveness, or reconciliation, or the transient joy of a great wonder, but absolute, perfect, rounded happiness, tranquillised ecstasy. Then all those years of desertion were nothing; all those years when Gaston de Trélan had followed strange fires were nothing; all the time in Mirabel, then, she had been thinking of him, had perhaps gone there for the sake of his memory—all her life, perhaps, she had been a ship beating against contrary winds to a haven he had not thought existed. And now she was in harbour—no doubt of that!
“She has the face of a saint in Paradise!” he said to himself, trembling. At her husband’s he cast no look; he mattered less than nothing to him.
Vain, then, his own faithfulness to her, that had led him into such crooked and faithless paths, vain his endeavours, stained with his own dishonour, to keep them apart. She had lovedhimall the time, and now . . .
There was no more to say or do.Ite, missa est.Artus de Brencourt stumbled down the slope, blinded less by the sunset’s exultation as he turned than by that sight, mounted and rode off, more cold and grey than the immemorial watchers, with eyes from which not even hate looked out any more.
No, one thing remained to do, and that quickly. He would have wished to return to the Clos-aux-Grives for a few moments first, but that was impossible, for he would risk meeting them—ifhebrought her there. Nor did he want to do it too near headquarters. If he could light on a place with sufficient cover there was a chance that his body would never be found at all. He would prefer that—not to give de Trélan the satisfaction of knowing how thoroughly he had worsted him.
And, surely, this oak thicket a little off the road would serve, for the road was lonely enough. He could not wait to find a better spot, for a thirst was on him to be gone. He had done a thing for which there was no forgiveness this side death—a thing for which he had no intention ofasking forgiveness—and, what was far more terrible to him had done it in vain.
He dismounted at the entry to the copse. What should he do with his horse, whose presence might betray his own? A moment’s reflection, and he turned the animal’s head away from the direction of the Clos-aux-Grives, and, drawing his sword, smote it hard on the flank with the flat. The beast reared, capered, and bolted down the road. Then, dropping the sword, M. de Brencourt plunged into the thicket.
It was not as dense as he had thought, but at the foot of this oak tree he would be quite invisible from the road. He had no last message to leave other than those he had written on the night of the duel and, as it happened, left undestroyed afterwards. He had no last thoughts, for he was incapable of any thought but one, and as for prayer, a man had no right to it who was doing what he was doing. Nevertheless once familiar words drifted through his brain and out again as he knelt down by the oak-tree’s strong old roots, “. . . pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death” . . . but they scarcely had meaning, and his mind seemed only a blank of wreathing fog as he put the pistol to his ear.
The weapon remained there for perhaps eight seconds, then sank.
For there comes a point when the machinery that the brain controls will not revolve any longer. Artus de Brencourt had come to that point now. Ridden as he had recently been with the most devastating emotions, torn with hatred and more than half mad with jealousy, having twice tried and failed to kill the man he hated, having lived by day on the edge of a volcano and having scarcely slept by night, he had now to face the most shattering experience of all—itself the direct outcome of the others. He lacked the nerve to kill himself.
Only the tiniest muscular action was needed, the pressure of a finger, and he had not the will power left for it. Kneeling there, the sweat pouring off his face, he tried . . . and could not. His hand would not even hold the weapon in position. He who but a little while ago had tried to steal another man’s life from him had not courage left to take his own.
The discovery, stark and sickening, broke the violent, passion-tossed man to pieces, broke him utterly. Never in his life had he known the taste of physical cowardice till now. A horrible nausea came over him, and he fell forward on his face at the foot of the oak tree and lay there, beaten at last—lay there while an oak leaf settled on his hair and his horse, returning, trotted past again in the direction of headquarters. But he did not hear it.
Complicated emotions of some violence had assailed M. Chassin when he reached the Clos-aux-Grives and heard from Lucien the story of the ford, and how M. de Brencourt had recently ridden off in haste—and especially when he learnt why he had thus ridden off. And at that piece of news—since the “lady from Paris” awaiting the Marquis could be no other than Mme de Trélan herself—M. Chassin also, abandoning his duties towards the wounded, rushed out of the farmhouse, a prey at the same time to he knew not what dire premonitions, and to a joy and thankfulness beyond words.
Yet where was he to go, and what was he to do? He found himself setting out as fast as he could go for the Ferme des Vieilles, become now a species of rendezvous. But he had hardly gone a mile, his soutane well tucked up, when between heat, fatigue and apprehension he was asking himself why in the name of all the saints he had not borrowed a horse. And instantly the saints sent him one. It came trotting leisurely down the road towards him, its bridle dangling, a riderless horse—more, a horse that he recognised. It was the Comte de Brencourt’s roan.
The Abbé stood in the dust and smote his brow. What did this portend? At any rate he would utilise the steed. He caught it as it passed, girt his soutane still higher, mounted and pursued his road. And as he went he looked from side to side, but he would not have thought of entering the oak copse when he came to it, had not his eye been attracted by something that glinted at the side of the road—the sword that lay there.
The Abbé dismounted, without grace, and picked it up. He seemed to have seen it before, though, after all, onesword was very much like another. Perhaps the thicket would yield some explanation of the mystery. He tied up the roan and went in.
But, in a sense, the thicket only yielded him another mystery. For, on the root of an oaktree, with a pistol lying on the ground beside him, was quietly seated M. de Brencourt, writing something on his knee. M. Chassin, having expected anything in the world but this sight, stood speechless, his cassock tucked about his waist and the drawn sword in his hand. After a moment the Comte lifted his head, looked at him, and seemed, with an effort—or that was the effect he gave—to recognise him.
“I was writing to you, Abbé,” he said. “You are the person I want.”
The voice, very flat and monotonous, was unlike his own. So was his face. His eyes were someone else’s. The Abbé did not like them.
“I have your horse, Monsieur le Comte, and your sword, I think,” he said, for want of anything better.
“Thank you,” said the stranger under the tree in his dull, slow tones. “As I am leaving the district at once it will be convenient to have them. Perhaps I had better give you this.”
And, still seated there, he handed up the piece of paper on which he had been writing. M. Chassin, advancing, took it, and read, in a nerveless handwriting, these words addressed to himself:
“You wanted me to go, and I am going—probably to join M. de Bourmont in Maine, if he will have me. He is the furthest away. I have tried to go further still, which would no doubt have pleased you better, but——” some words were scratched out here. “Since I am fulfilling your wishes, perhaps you will do me the service to report my decision in the proper quarter, and later despatch my personal effects to me, for I shall not enter the Clos-aux-Grives again.”
The Abbé, dumbfounded, looked at the writer. Something abnormal had happened: what was it? And Gaston?
“You mean this?” he stammered.
“Certainly,” responded M. de Brencourt, without moving a muscle of that expressionless face. “I have tried to shoot the Duc de Trélan”—the priest gave anexclamation—“and failed . . . he does not know it—you can tell him if you like . . . and I have tried to shoot myself and failed. I do not wish to live, but if I cannot kill myself, what other choice is there for the moment?” He brushed some bits of dead leaf off his knees, put his pistol back into his belt, and rising, held out his hand for his sword. “Did I leave it in the road?” he enquired, in the same emotionless way. “Thank you. I will try to have you informed, Monsieur l’Abbé, if I am killed when the campaign opens, as I trust I shall be; I expect you would like to know. But you need not fear that I shall ever seek to see either of them again.”
He slipped his sword carefully back into the scabbard, made the petrified priest a sort of salute, and went quietly past him to the gap in the hedge where his horse was tied.
And M. Chassin, who had come out prepared to fight dragons, turned and stared after him dumbly, knowing not whether to give thanks or no. For this time M. de Brencourt had frightened him. But, just as the Comte got into the saddle, he felt a sudden violent impulse to say something that would pierce that terrifying calm. He could not let him go like that. Calling to him, he hurried to the gap and came out into the road beside him and his horse. The Comte looked down at him with his mask of a face.
“Monsieur le Comte,” said the little priest earnestly, “I have a feeling that some day, in spite of everything, you will be given an opportunity of serving that lady you have loved and wronged . . . May God forgive you and go with you!”
“Thank you; you are most kind,” said the mask politely, and the roan horse moved forward.
And his whilom adversary, so unexpectedly routed, stood in the road thinking, “It is not in Maine, but in a madhouse that he will find himself before he is much older! God pity him! . . . But where can Gaston be—and she?”
Could Pierre Chassin but have seen them they were sitting under the pine-stems, unconscious of the lurking death so recently withdrawn—sitting there very much as they had walked thither, his left arm about her, her headon his breast; only now she held, with her own two hands, that one hand of his fast against her, as if she feared it would slip away again. Here was grass, a little distance from the pines, and Zéphyr cropped it, and for a long while the brisk, tearing noise of his browsing, the jingle of his bridle, and the sough of the wind above them was all that they could hear . . . since the hour was too solemn, too wonderful, for further speech.
For they both knew now, if not all, at least the most vital facts about each other. Now, for Valentine, the seven years’ silence was explained—and could scarcely have had a more honourable justification. Now the idea that Gaston had not cared whether she were dead or alive seemed blasphemy. How false, too, had been all those past conceptions of what their meeting would be like, if ever they met again! Nothing remained now of old wrongs, however deep, nothing of old unhappinesses, however real, nothing of old mistakes. All these were not, before the miracle of his personal presence, the marvel of being in his arms. It was as if hoar frost should change, under a stronger sun than winter’s, into the spring’s diamonds of unimaginable joy.
Here, as she rested on his heart, came on her, after the wonder, the peace of Paradise. For this the watchers seemed to have been planted; to this goal under the pine-trees they ran up. Take her heart’s desire from her! why, they had given it! She would never know how nearly it had been snatched away as soon as given. . . .
As for the man against whose breast she leant, nothing but what he held had reality for him . . . and even she was not yet quite real. The few hours during which he had known the nightmare picture in his mind to be but a lying canvas were not sufficient to erase its effect. The singe of his seven years’ purgatory (worse than hers, because it had been purely mental) would not pass lightly from him, though it would pass. And this of it burnt hot in his mind now, even in these transcendent moments—the subtle change in her, the hair tarnished from its glory, the lines on the delicate skin, not to be accounted for merely by the passing of time, but his doing, his fault! If she had not fallen, there in the Allée, he would scarcelyhave ventured to touch her; had she not been (as he thought) unconscious he would never have kissed her as he had. She was too sacred, and too profoundly wronged. Yet here she was in his arms, willingly, generously—too great in mind to exact what a lesser woman would have exacted. And before the depth of the love which had survived all that hers had had to survive he was still, in spirit, on his knees.
The sunset had burnt out before they stirred, yet the wonderful hour had to end. Gaston de Trélan got up at last and helped his wife to her feet, and then remained gazing at her, almost tranced. And she looked at him, standing there above that strange battle-array of stones, tall and resolute, with the stains of march and fight still on him, with almost everything of the young prince of the Mirabel portrait gone. There was no rose in his swordhilt now. . . . She drew a long breath, and held out her hand to him, and at the touch he woke, and led her down the slope towards the black horse, who was to carry her to the Clos-aux-Grives. But as they went she remembered something.
“Gaston,” she said softly, “I have not come to you empty-handed. I, too, can give you something for the cause, mon Général!” Withdrawing her hand from his she brought out from its hiding-place and held out to him the ruby necklace. “Like the gold, it comes from Mirabel; it was given—I daresay you have heard by whom—to the concierge of Mirabel.”
Yet her husband, with the jewels in his hand, did not seem pleased. “But it is the Duchesse de Trélan who will wear it,” he answered, drawing himself up. “Permit me!” And, a little awkwardly by reason of his injured arm, he contrived to clasp the heirloom round her neck—then, catching her to him with a sudden gasp, said vehemently, “Never speak to me again of Mirabel—of your being there like that! I cannot bear it!”
“But, Gaston,” she said, looking up at him, “when I was there I thought of you nearly all the time. . . . O my dear, when you ride in triumph into Paris with the Royalists of Finistère behind you, we two must make a pilgrimage to Mirabel together. If it had not been for Mirabel—for the treasure . . .”
She did not finish, for she was strained too closely. And, stooping his head, her husband kissed her—but not as he had done on his knees in the heather, like a worshipper. He kissed her like a lover. He was hers at last.
BOOK IV
“But oh, the night! oh! bitter-sweet, oh, sweet!O dark, O moon and stars, O ecstasyOf darkness! O great mystery of love,—In which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason’s selfEnlarges rapture—as a pebble droptIn some full winecup over-brims the wine!”
“But oh, the night! oh! bitter-sweet, oh, sweet!O dark, O moon and stars, O ecstasyOf darkness! O great mystery of love,—In which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason’s selfEnlarges rapture—as a pebble droptIn some full winecup over-brims the wine!”
“But oh, the night! oh! bitter-sweet, oh, sweet!
O dark, O moon and stars, O ecstasy
Of darkness! O great mystery of love,—
In which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason’s self
Enlarges rapture—as a pebble dropt
In some full winecup over-brims the wine!”
Aurora Leigh.
“When Love comes tappingOn the pane,Let not his summonsBe in vain;—‘Enter, Sweet, bring thouSun or rain!’ ”
“When Love comes tappingOn the pane,Let not his summonsBe in vain;—‘Enter, Sweet, bring thouSun or rain!’ ”
“When Love comes tapping
On the pane,
Let not his summons
Be in vain;
—‘Enter, Sweet, bring thou
Sun or rain!’ ”
sang Marthe de la Vergne to the harpsichord in her light sweet voice. The strains floated through the open salon window to Valentine de Trélan as she sat outside in the September sunshine. The music changed:
“Should the King honourMy poor door;—‘Take, Sire, my sword-armAnd my store!’So spake my fathersLong before.”
“Should the King honourMy poor door;—‘Take, Sire, my sword-armAnd my store!’So spake my fathersLong before.”
“Should the King honour
My poor door;
—‘Take, Sire, my sword-arm
And my store!’
So spake my fathers
Long before.”
There was a thrill in the young voice. Yes, thought Mme de Trélan, Marthe, if she had been a man, would certainly have given her sword-arm and her store to-day; in fact she had given them, in her brother, and—another.
The chords ceased; somebody had come into the room, and Valentine recognised her hostess’s voice, though she could not hear what she said. She resumed the embroidery which she had put down to listen to Mlle de la Vergne’s singing, but in a moment or two that had slipped to her lap, and her thoughts were miles away—back at the Allée des Vieilles, at the Clos-aux-Grives. Once more she rode into the courtyard of Gaston’s headquarters on Gaston’s horse, once more she renewed her acquaintance with Roland and the Abbé Chassin; once more she lay in the little room which her husband had given up to her—a soldier’swife, in a soldier’s bare environment. And once more she was arranging Gaston’s sling for him—that sling for which she could not learn the reason, since he evaded her questions about his wound—and he suddenly caught sight of her hands, not quite the white and exquisite hands he remembered, and she perceived that the slight transformation brought home to him almost intolerably the years of which he could not bear her to speak. He had broken down at the sight, and before she could quiet him the palms of those hands, kissed over and over again, were wet with his tears. Yes, the lover she had never known she had now, and in those short five days together at the Clos-aux-Grives, interrupted though their companionship necessarily was, she had lived the only part of all her years that was worth the living.
Yet, lover though he were, Gaston de Trélan had almost instantly to sacrifice his happiness and hers. Even with a woman to wait on her he would not have it said that the chief of Finistère had his wife with him at his headquarters; would not at any rate permit himself a privilege he would not have accorded to any of his officers. He sent Artamène to ask Mme de la Vergne if she would receive his wife for a while—and so the brief idyll came to an end. For nearly a fortnight now the Duchesse de Trélan—her identity was no secret here—had been living, for the first time in seven years, with women of her own class, of whom the younger was already her slave. And she was happy here, where she was made so gladly welcome; but her thoughts had an incorrigible habit, as now, of flying away.
For besides those hours with Gaston there had been conversations with the Abbé Chassin, in which she learnt what had at first puzzled her, why her husband had changed his name; and to her Pierre Chassin revealed, saying he thought he owed it to her as well as to his foster-brother, something of the utter despair and grief of seven years ago, and its sequel. He told her indeed, in so many words, that the profound change in Gaston was due to her—to her memory; but Valentine had both combated this and said that there was no change—it was but the fruition of what had been there all the time. . . .
Fruition, yes—fruition of character, fruition of prayer. She had prayed and longed, and lo, after years, here wasthe answer! Its symbol lay across her very knees—the white silk of which she was making a scarf for the general commanding for the King in Finistère. And that general was her husband—her husband who loved her.
Could a heart, not very young, break with excess of happiness and gratitude? Spring’s joy was not like this—not so secure, not so blest. Surely this, the joy of autumn, was better!
Her eyes were full of tears as she looked at the golden tranquillity before her, the still trees whence floated the murmur of Marthe’s pigeons, the late flowers, the windless blue sky behind the poplars. But they did not fall; and after sitting a moment longer gazing before her she rose, and going to the window, looked in. Marthe, alone once more, was still seated at the harpsichord.
“What a charming little song, my child,” said Valentine, “and what a fresh voice you have!”
Mlle de la Vergne rose and, smiling, made her a curtsey. “Chère Madame, it is a little song that Artamène unearthed somewhere; we used to sing it when he was here in the spring recovering of his wound, M. de Céligny and he and I. There is another verse.”
“Will you not sing it then? Sing it all again, if you will, to please me?”
She sat down in the room this time, and once more Marthe sang the words, to the light tripping measure of the first stanza, and the martial rhythm of the second. For the third, the music changed yet again to more solemn harmonies:
“Then, when Death battersAt my gate,One boon, I pray thee,Grant me, Fate—Instant to openEre he wait!”
“Then, when Death battersAt my gate,One boon, I pray thee,Grant me, Fate—Instant to openEre he wait!”
“Then, when Death batters
At my gate,
One boon, I pray thee,
Grant me, Fate—
Instant to open
Ere he wait!”
The chords ended in the minor.
Looking up, Marthe saw that Mme de Trélan had leant her head on one hand. She rose, stood a moment irresolute, and then darted to her, and flinging herself on her knees beside her seized her other hand.
“Madame! Madame! I should not have sung thelast verse! You are thinking—forgive me, but I can guess—that, when the fighting begins——”
Valentine put her arm round her. “My child, you shame me! You have more courage than I! Have you not given your brother to the same danger, and more than your brother?”
Marthe hid her face on the elder woman’s shoulder, and thus, the dark head and the golden-grey together, they were when the door at the end of the great salon opened. Mlle de la Vergne drew away at the sound, and both ladies looked up. On the threshold stood the tall figure of the Duc de Trélan, with two aides-de-camp behind him; and the aides-de-camp were Roland and Artamène.
A moment the three invaders stood there, smiling, all three of them; then the sun-barred parquet rang under a spurred tread as Gaston came forward to kiss his wife’s hand, and afterwards her cheek. His arm was no longer in a sling; he was wearing the Cross of Maria Theresa. As he lifted Marthe’s fingers to his lips she thought—though she had never been to a court which had ceased to exist by the time she was of an age to be presented—“One sees, just by his manner of doing this, what a great gentleman he is. And I wonder if, in all those brilliant ceremonies at Versailles, in the days when he was first gentleman of the bedchamber to the King, whether Mme de Trélan ever saw him to such advantage as here in our drawing-room, in that plain, dark uniform, with his sword and that air of purpose.”
And the young girl’s reflection was near enough to Valentine’s inmost thought as, clinging to her husband’s arm, she went with him through the long window into the sunshine outside, which was so filled with her thoughts of him. Out there, his arms round her, her hands on his breast, her eyes closed, she took and gave on the lips a kiss at once grave and passionate, a kiss like the first kiss of lovers—a salute which had no special affinity with courts.
“O Gaston, how I have dreamed of this!”
“Not more, my heart of hearts, than I! But I could not well have come, had I not been leaving my headquarters for a few days in any case.”
“To fight? Not yet, surely?”
“No—to talk!” said he with a little rueful look. “Butit will end in fighting, I trust. I am bound for the château of La Jonchère, near Pouancé—just over the border in Anjou—where all the chiefs are to meet on the fifteenth, to take a final decision.”
“And you think it will be war?”
“I hope so. Circumstances have never been so favourable. But you are standing all this while; let us go and sit down in the arbour.”
They were seated under the linden arch, as yet untouched by autumn, when she said, “A rumour came yesterday, Gaston, that Vendée had already risen. But we are so out-of-the-way here; is it true?”
Her husband’s face darkened. “Valentine, it is true. Risen, and risen unsuccessfully, alas. Forestier—you may remember hearing of him in the grande guerre—came back from Spain to lead the rising. He was defeated and, it is feared, mortally wounded, at Civière, on the thirtieth of August.”
Valentine gave a little shiver. Defeat . . . wounds. . . . “Gaston, why was it? Surely in Vendée if anywhere——”
“My darling, Vendée is more a name than a power now. That heroic earth is a desert; half her grown men have perished. Three years have not nearly sufficed to raise her from ruins. And yet”——He stopped, and dropped his voice a little. “Yet one thing might have done it. One thing might even have raised the bones of the slain to life and made soldiers of them—the coming of a Prince. It is the old cry—Charette’s cry, the cry of Quiberon.”
She detected bitterness in his tone. “Does so much, then, depend for us now, in Brittany, on the Comte d’Artois’ coming in person?”
The Duc bent his head. “It is hard to say how much.”
“Perhaps I should not ask this, Gaston,” she suggested, uneasy, “but does he mean to come?”
“He says so,” replied M. de Trélan gravely. “I have no doubt he means it. It is that nest of intriguers round him who can never be made to see the necessity. They put it on the British Government.”
Valentine was silent, thinking of the irresponsible Prince Charming whom they had both known personally in thevanished days of Versailles; then she sighed, and changed the topic. But after a little her husband said that it was his duty to pay his respects to Mme de la Vergne, whom he had not yet seen. And as he rose, reluctantly, he said, “Could we not ride together somewhere this afternoon, Valentine—alone?”
It was what she had been hoping for. “To the sea, then?” she suggested. “I have not been there yet, though you can see it from the upper windows, and hear it too, when there is wind. Let us go there together.”
“Soit!” said he, and went off in search of the lady of the house.
In the salon, meanwhile, Marthe entertained the aides-de-camp.
“No, you must kiss my left hand to-day, Monsieur de Céligny,” she said, laughing, and put her right behind her back. “I keep the other exclusively now for our General.”
She had a flame-coloured ribbon in her hair, and her eyes danced as always. Yes, she was worth all that Mirabel unpleasantness! But Roland had already seen her since his return.
“Mademoiselle,” he said with some audacity, “if I am to follow M. le Duc’s example in salutation to Mme de Trélan, after the hand comes . . . the cheek. But there, too, I would be content with the left!”
“That also,” said Marthe with dignity, “is reserved for someone else!” And she provokingly held it up to her brother, who kissed her on both.
“Did I hear you singingSur le Seuiljust now, ma petite?” he enquired. “That was why you never heard us riding up. You were making such a to-do among those low notes, for Death battering on the gate, that he really might have been battering for all you heard.”
But, presently, with a little wise smile, Artamène drifted out of the salon. He went into the garden and climbed up into an apple tree which he knew of, where he could lie at his ease in a fork and try some of the small green apples. “Maman and I,” he thought, “are de trop in this establishment. M. le Marquis—his pardon, M. le Duc—and his resuscitated spouse (who is worthy of him) in the arbour, Roland and Marthe in the salon . . . Je me fais hermite.”
But his departure had not greatly facilitated matters, for presently Mme de la Vergne came in and carried off Marthe on some business concerned with the nourishment of the gentlemen who had descended on her, and a moment or two later, when Roland stood irresolute and alone by the window, he perceived his leader coming in search of his hostess.
“Go and talk to Mme de Trélan, my boy,” said the Duc. “She is in the arbour. I imagine you still have memories of Mirabel to discuss.”
So Roland went to the arbour, where Valentine was, and having at her request fetched her embroidery, sat himself down precariously at her feet on an overturned wateringpot.
“Madame, I have a grievance against M. le Duc,” he began. “I must lay it before you, for you are the only person who can do anything for me in the matter.”
Valentine looked up. “What is it, my child?”
“My locket!” said Roland. “The locket you gave me. He has never returned it since that night!”
“Have you ever asked him?”
Roland shook his head, and his eyes said plainly who he proposed should perform that office. Valentine met them—and her needle slipped. The memory of another garden came back to her. Hewaslike Gaston in just that light, when he wore just that expression. . . .
“Blood!” cried the young man. “Madame, you are quite pale! If you would allow me——” And out came his handkerchief.
She shook her head, and twisted her own round the scratch, which had already flecked the silk of the scarf. Suppose her first impression had been correct after all? Well, it was part of the pain of the past, stretching onwards, which she must face. And did it hurt so much in this wonderful present? But her look was grave when she said lightly, “Is there not some other person’s locket you would prefer to the concierge’s, Roland?”
He flushed a little. “Even if she would have me, if Mme de la Vergne and her brother—and my grandfather—would give their consents, I am more or less penniless, Madame. My estates were sequestrated when my father died two years ago.”
His father! Her heart leapt up again. And yet . . . Was it possible that shewishedhe were Gaston’s son?
“Sequestrated by the Government, I suppose? You never told me that. Where are they, Roland—in Brittany also?”
“No, Madame; right down in the south, near Avignon.”
Quite abruptly the Duchesse de Trélan stood up, dropping the scarf; and the youth, trying to follow her example with the alacrity which politeness demanded, all but rolled off the wateringcan. And Valentine apologised. “I suddenly felt it too hot here. I will go under the trees, I think.”
Near Avignon! So was Saint-Chamans. She really felt faint, and yet it was not exactly with distaste. But she must know. And since nothing, not eventhat, had power to come between them now she would ask Gaston himself at the first opportunity. She did not even feel that she must have time to reflect on this.
But perhaps Gaston meant to tell her of his own free will . . .
Then she saw him and Marthe coming that way through the sunshine, under the apple trees, and she went towards him, followed by Roland. And in his hermitage the Chevalier de la Vergne, making a wry face over a sour apple, roused himself to peer down at the sound of voices.
“Everything that there is of a family party!” he observed softly. And with that, judging it time to discover himself, he dropped down from his tree and joined the quartet.
“Oh, there you are, young gentleman,” remarked M. de Trélan. “Mademoiselle and I have been looking for you. How far did you say it was to the sea, Mademoiselle?”
“About five miles, Monsieur le Duc.”
“Then you shall lend me your horse after déjeuner, Artamène, and Mme de Trélan shall ride Zéphyr. He prefers to carry a lady, does he not, Mademoiselle?”
“I could not vouch for that, Monsieur le Duc. He has been more honoured since he ceased to do so.”
“You perhaps have not had time to realise, Valentine,” said Gaston, addressing his wife with a smile creeping round his mouth, “that, as in Eastern countries—and not only there, I fancy—where an accused, fearing an adversejudgment, is prompt to send a substantial present to the judge beforehand, so Zéphyr (himself of Eastern origin) came to me as a . . . bribe . . . and my hands, I fear, are somewhat stained by corruption.”
“How is that?” asked the Duchesse, glancing from her husband to the laughing girl.
“But my lips, by the same token, are sealed,” finished M. de Trélan.
“Mesdames, Messieurs, le déjeuner est servi,” announced the recently promoted Séraphin, approaching with the gait of a rustic and the livery of a major-domo.
So Gaston and Valentine rode alone to the sea.
They went at first through deep lanes, scarcely wide enough to ride abreast, where they lost sight of their goal, then, mounting a rise of sandy turf, came on it spread gloriously before them. A fresh breeze was blowing off the land, and the water was of a hundred vivid, changing hues—the clearest green, purple that was almost rose, and blue that was more than the blue of heaven. It was flecked with myriad little tips of foam that looked like sea-birds, for ever vanishing and reappearing, and the offshore wind ran over it in sudden violent caresses. Far out, it was the colour of a distant wood of hyacinths.
They checked their horses. Valentine drew a long breath before the pulsating wonder of it, the freedom and the joy. She stretched out her hand in silence to her husband, and he took it as simply; so they sat on their horses hand in hand like two children at their first sight of the ocean.
Then he suggested their going down to the shore, and they went down among the shelving dunes, their horses’ hoofs sinking deep in the loose blown sand. At the verge were the stem and ribs of an abandoned boat, conveniently embedded there, to which they could tether their horses, and Gaston, dismounting, did so and held out his arms to her. But Zéphyr whinnied after them; sand and rotting timbers pleased him not.
Down here, on the shore itself, the sandhills gave some shelter, and they could walk in comfort, especially when they went nearer to the water where the sand was firm and ribbed. Despite the offshore wind, the curling waves shook off from their edges a breeze of their own, the essence of the sea. Clinging to her husband’s arm, Valentineleant her head against his shoulder and half closed her eyes.
“Here,” he said softly, looking down at her, “here one forgets wars and anxieties, the past and the future—everything but the present. We were right to come.”
The breeze of the sea’s own seemed to freshen. Down here one could not see in the same way as from the verge above the whole extent of that moving field of rapture, all the rainbow thoughts that ran over its surface, but one was nearer to its incommunicable magic.
“You will be cold, my darling. Let us walk along by the waves.”
The little seas, tumbling in foam at their feet, bending in mock homage before them, racing slily to entrap them, laughed their undying laugh whose meaning the heart of man is not deep enough to seize. Starfish, fluted shells, trails of seaweed, all their careless treasures were displayed there. . . . They would laugh with just the same fresh joy to-morrow . . . when Gaston would be here no longer . . . O, terrible, that eternal youth and indifference!
“Gaston,” she said, gripping his arm more closely, “you are not going alone to La Jonchère, surely? You spoke of sending the young men back.”
“No, my heart,” said he, putting his hand over hers. “I am not going alone. M. du Ménars and another officer will meet me to-morrow on the road, with an escort as well. When we meet I shall send my aides-de-camp back to the Clos-aux-Grives. That was all I meant.”
A few paces more, and he added, “Unless I take one of them with me to La Jonchère in order to use him as a messenger to you. Which of them, in that case, would you rather have as Mercury?”
Why did he ask her that? She forgot the sea and glanced at him, but he was looking at the waves.
She answered as she would have answered in any case. “I would rather have Roland. He is a charming boy . . . I was already fond of him at Mirabel.” If Gaston meant to tell her without being asked, which was her great hope, she would make it as easy as possible for him. She paused, and went on lightly, “Mme de la Vergne, however, might prefer her own son. As for Marthe . . . well, I know Roland’s mind at least on that matter.”
Her husband stopped in his walk. “Valentine,” he said, turning his head towards her, “I have something to tell you about Roland.”
She stopped too, and loosed his arm. For a moment her heart seemed to pause also. He had paled a little, his voice was very grave and not free from difficulty, but he did not try to escape her gaze. On the contrary he looked straight at her.
(“I have something to tell you about Roland!” echoed the waves, laughing.)
And then Valentine de Trélan knew that she wanted to spare him the explicit avowal, because she saw how much it would cost him to utter to her face what was, by implication, an insult to her—though an insult twenty years old.
“I guessed it, Gaston,” she said, very quietly. “But I hoped that you would tell me. It is right that I should know . . . but I want to learn nothing further . . . I only wished it not to lie, unspoken, between us. . . . Now we need never speak of it again, save as it affects the boy himself.”
“I hate that you should know it,” he said with emotion. “And yet I hated even more to keep you in ignorance. I thought, too, that you might guess, and that was worse . . . Valentine, Valentine, I cannot wish it undone, because I love him . . . but if only I need not have given you this pain!”
Yet he was suffering more than she; she knew that. Once again, as in the arbour this morning, it came to her as strange that she should feel it so little. And, only eager for the moment to allay the deep distress in his eyes and voice, she put her hands on his arm. “It does not pain me now, Gaston. No, no, believe me! I am speaking the truth! It is so long ago, in that other life which we have forgotten. Why remember it now, in this?”
He caught her hands and raised them to his lips. “Generous! generous!” he murmured. “Why must I choose to-day to wound you so?”
“But you have chosen the right day, the right place!” she cried. The vanishing of the dread that he might not tell her had almost irradiated her. “The . . . the past—see, it can be forgotten, as a pebble would be, cast into those great waters . . . and that there is no painnow—Ilove him, too. Will not that convince you, my husband?”
Perhaps it did. He bowed his forehead silently upon her hands as he held them.
“But as for guessing,” she went on, “—O Gaston, my very dear, it is over now—as for guessing, the first moment that I saw him, lying in the garden at Mirabel, I was startled . . . but I thought it was imagination. And I grew so fond of him in those few days, innocent and gallant as he was. Yet I put the idea away at once because . . . because he had not your eyes . . . and now, after all . . .” She stopped; speech was suddenly failing her. “O Gaston,” she said in a breaking whisper, “Gaston, if only he hadmine!”
And pulling her hands away she put them before her own face, weeping.
“My darling, my darling!” he cried, and strained her in his arms, saying no more than that, beyond speech indeed himself, pierced once more by the memory of his own words at their parting, which came back even now to stab him. But as, with her face covered, she wept upon his heart, he knew that it was not of his unworthy reproach that she was thinking. Hers was a deeper and more mysterious pain. It seemed so to throb through her as he held her, there on the sandy shore, that the very waves were full of it; and he could do nothing save hold her more tenderly still, and kiss the yet beautiful hair.
After a little she ceased to sob, and dried her eyes.
“Only one thing more,” she said unsteadily. “Does Roland know?”
“I gave my word to his grandfather that I would not tell him before he was one-and-twenty. I have tried to keep it in the spirit as well as in the letter. I do not think he guesses. What others may guess I do not know.”
“It is plain,” said Valentine, “that he worships you. But they all do that, those young men—and with reason.”
They were still standing at the edge of the waves when she put the seal on her forgiveness. For she said, looking at him with her clear eyes, “Gaston, when I see him and speak with him I am glad that he is your son!”
Later on they sat at the base of the sandhills, and spoke of many things—even of M. de Brencourt, so sore asubject to her husband that, till now, Valentine had scarcely dared to mention the Comte’s name. Particularly had this been the case since he had learnt, at the Clos-aux-Grives, of the lie told at Mirabel about his own death. Most of the tale of treachery Valentine had gleaned, not from Gaston at all, but from the Abbé Chassin. Yet it seemed to her a better thing that Gaston should say openly now, as with cold passion he did, “He took my hand after I had gone out with him, and yet went on with the worst treason of all! It is impossible for a man to forgive an act so absolutely base!” than that he should nurse his just resentment in secret and never speak of it. But though through the Comte de Brencourt she had so nearly lost him before ever he was found, though now, realising it afresh, she caught to her breast the arm which the false comrade had pierced, this day and place seemed to spread healing hands even over that madness and treachery. And when she looked at him, holding him thus, the frown went from Gaston’s brow, and adding, “At least, then, I will try to forget,” he gave her a long kiss.
But soon, too soon, it was time to return. The wind was dropping; the gulls which had been soaring high on its strength were now beginning to ride on the little waves, or to stalk along by the edge of the tide. The brief hour was over, the hour that seemed more particularly set between the old life and the new, in this place of wild air and rapture, where the years of pain and surmise were forgotten, and the hazard of the sword and what the future might bring yet unweighed. It was time to go.
And as, very close together, the two went slowly along the dry sand at the bottom of the dunes, they saw at a little distance a small patch of colour there—a pool of faint green, touched with blots of pale, swaying yellow that caught and held the sunlight. They came to it.
“Flowers even here!” exclaimed Valentine.
It was the bride of the waves, the beautiful yellow sea-poppy, that blossoms so late, and is so soon scattered. They both stood and looked down at it, not without wonder, as those who come on a jewel in a dusty place—at the strong, abundant, deeply-cut foliage, silvery green in the sunset, fashioned to defy wind and wave, that had yet given birth to such an ethereal marvel of a flower, whoseevery petal was a miracle of delicacy, a flower so frail that a breath could put out its cup of light. Already the plant at their feet bore the tokens of the passing of many of its blossoms, in the long curving horns, treasures of next year’s promise, which had succeeded the fallen petals.
Valentine, who had never seen the horned poppy before, knelt down by it. “How wonderful to bloom so late, and in so inclement a place!” she said. “Look how the wind beats on these flowers!”
“And yet they do not fall,” said her husband. “You shall give me one, my dearest heart, for this our second betrothal.”
So she plucked a poppy and held it up to him. It seemed almost to have light in itself, like a fragile golden lamp half enclosed between the open, guarding hands of its leaves. He took it, and bending, kissed the hand that gave it him. Next moment, either because it was caught by a puff of wind, or because its brief life was already over, he held nothing in his hand but the stem with its sturdy foliage, and the pistil set within its fringe of orange-yellow stamens. The four lovely shining petals were blown away. One only rested over his heart, caught there on the cross of white and gold.
Valentine turned pale. What had suggested to her that this wonder was like their love, so late in blossoming, so little favoured in its surroundings, so exquisite . . . and, perhaps, so short-lived?
“Wait, and I will give you another,” she said with a rather forced gaiety. “I will choose a younger flower this time.”
“No, no,” cried Gaston de Trélan. “I want no other.” And, gently taking off the bright, clinging thing from his breast and closing it in his hand, he stooped and recovered the other three—two from the sand, the fourth from Valentine’s habit, and lifted them to his lips. At the base of each pale golden petal was the faintest stain. Then he put them carefully, almost reverently away in a little leather case, and replaced it inside his uniform.
“You look quite white, my darling!” he exclaimed, catching sight of her face as she rose. “What is the matter?”
But she would not tell him; she only came for the lasttime in that place into the strong circle of his arms. Her cheek rested where the poppy petal had lain, on the guerdon of valour; against her side she felt the hilt of his sword—a sweet discomfort.
“O Gaston, my heart, my only love! It was worth those years—this hour! Only, with so much happiness upon me, I think I would rather die to-day.”
“Are you afraid?” he asked in a low voice, holding her as if he meant to hold her for ever. “Are you afraid, my saint, my strong saint? I am not. This place that we have come to, after such bitter wanderings, shall hold us always now—be sure of it—in life or death!”
And though the yellow poppy shone and shivered at their feet—the sea-poppy that flowers so late and is so soon scattered—she knew that it was true.
So it was Roland, now openly betrothed to Marthe, who came to La Vergne a week later, bringing Gaston’s letter announcing that the die was cast, and it was Roland who told Valentine more fully of the great gathering of Royalist chiefs at La Jonchère, surrounded by almost inaccessible forest, and guarded by more than a thousand peasants. The young man, though not himself admitted to the conferences, had seen some of the leaders, Châtillon and Bourmont and La Prévalaye and Sol de Grisolles, and d’Autichamp the Vendean, and Georges Cadoudal whom he had missed at Hennebont. Their three days of deliberation had resulted in a decision for a general levy of arms in the West. The date fixed was the fifteenth of October. “Not very long to wait, Madame!” said Hermes enthusiastically.
No, for Gaston’s wife the time was all too short till the clash of arms,—but all too long till his promised visit. For in his letter he had said that before the hour of action broke he should, please God, come and show her all that was in his heart for her. And Valentine looked at the words every day, as September, full of rumours, ripened towards October.
In the first week in October came the news that fighting had already begun in Northern Brittany, and with success, for the Chevalier de la Nougarède, “Achille le brun,” had hardly got back from La Jonchère than he raised the standard, and beat, at Argentré, the Republican general Schildt who had come out of Rennes to attack him. And even before that d’Andigné, the Comte de Châtillon’s very competent chief of staff, had inflicted a severe little defeat at Noyant on eight hundred of the old, tried soldiers who had formed part of the garrison of Milan.
On the other hand there was bad news from Holland,where Brune had defeated the allied Anglo-Russian forces of the Texel expedition on September 19; and worse from Switzerland, where, six days later, Masséna inflicted such a severe defeat on Korsakoff at Zurich that Suwaroff, coming from Italy to join his countryman, had difficulty in saving his own army. Valentine was uneasy at these tidings of the Republic’s triumph on a large scale, but neither she nor the other two women fully comprehended how they isolated the Royalists of the West. And though she wondered why the forty-five thousand English and Russians could not have been landed directly on the soil of France, in Brittany or Vendée, instead of in Holland, she could not foresee that a little later Brune’s whole army, set free by the capitulation of Alkmaar, would be employed against the Chouans. She worked at the last golden fleur-de-lys on Gaston’s scarf, and helped Mme de la Vergne and Marthe in their household employments and in the orchard, for there were fewer men than ever, Séraphin and two of the farm boys having gone to join the Lilies.
And once or twice, in that St. Luke’s summer come before its time, she found her steps turning towards the sea. She went there twice with Marthe. She would have liked to go there again with Gaston, but she knew that desire unlikely of fulfilment. And the sea was so changed—calm with an unearthly calm; shining with a pure, still radiance, and warded by great slow-moving fleets of cloud galleons like mother-of-pearl, that were reflected, far-gleaming, in the water over which they sailed. Yes, this October sea was as far removed from a tranquil blue sea of summer as from that beautiful September sea, where there had been wind and rainbow shadows—and the yellow poppy, which bloomed no longer. There shone instead the golden leaves of the poplars at La Vergne, incredibly yellow against the distant sea, on the one or two days that the sea had colour. But mostly it was of that indescribable hue of nacre.
And when would Gaston come?
When he did come Valentine would have given everything in the world that he had not.
Old Colette, the cook, who had gone to the tiny village for her marketing, came back on one of these still mornings rather flustered, reporting that there were soldiers there. Itwas a most startling as well as a most unpleasant novelty. In none of the previous risings had Blues ever been seen at La Vergne. The ancient woman at first reported the invaders to be about a hundred; later she came down to a dozen.
But half that number could terrorise the place. And why were they there? The three ladies at the château had nothing to hide—as yet, nothing, for themselves, to fear; nevertheless they were in a fever. If word could only be sent to the “Marquis de Kersaint” in case he were on his road! But word could not be sent. Valentine comforted herself and them by the assurance that he would not come without an escort, and would therefore have nothing to fear from a handful of Blues. He would never come alone.
But that was precisely what her husband did, riding in quietly to the stable-yard at dusk of that October day, and, finding no one there, putting up his horse with his own hands. And Marthe, hearing unwonted sounds, ran out from the kitchen and found him in the act, with Zéphyr very much at home, and pulling down hay from his old rack.
“O, Monsieur le Duc! Monsieur le Duc!” she cried.
“Mademoiselle,” said Gaston, laughing, “I do indeed apologise for making free of your provender without permission. May I plead that it is for your own horse?”
She darted at him while Zéphyr whinnied for recognition. “Why did you choose to-day to come, Monsieur de Trélan? We have been so praying that you would not. Do not say that you are alone, unescorted! For . . . did you not know it? . . . there are soldiers in the village!”
There was a moment’s silence. “No, I did not know it,” said the Duc quietly. “Had I known, I should not have come alone. But I did not enter the village, so they will not have seen me.” He paused, passing his hand once or twice over Zéphyr’s neck, and said in a voice which, despite himself, revealed how intensely he disliked the idea, “I do not wish to involve you in unpleasantness. Perhaps the simplest thing would be to ride away again at once.”
Marthe shook her head. Now that he was here, risk or no risk, he must see his wife. Perhaps indeed there was greater risk in going back.
“You must stay,” she said. “And we have taken certain precautions. Come to the house, Monsieur le Duc, and I will show you, even before you see Mme de Trélan.”
“And Zéphyr—if they should search? He becomes your horse once more, I suppose? But my saddle, Mademoiselle, what of that? Unless you can persuade them that you always use a man’s!”
“Here is mine quite near,” she said, pointing to it, “and it fits him, of course. Yours—it has holsters, too!—we must hide in the loft.” They hid it, and in a few minutes she was showing M. de Trélan the old hiding-place in the dining-room. “It is very ingenious, the way one gets there,” she added.
Itwasvery ingenious. Against the painted panels stood a massive sideboard which four men could scarcely have stirred from its place. But when Marthe touched a spring a section of it turned upon itself and gave access to a tiny room behind, whose door formed part of the panelling.
“A very charming little retreat,” observed the Duc, smiling. “But I hope that you do not expect me to deprive myself of your society, Mademoiselle, by spending all my time in there?”
“We should be the last to wish to banish you, Monsieur. But there it is ready, if you—get tired of us! Yet I think you have run all the risk you are likely to run . . . unless theyknow.”
“That, I think, is impossible,” said Gaston. And then Valentine, attracted by voices, entered. Marthe slipped out with the speed of a swallow.
“O my darling, my darling, why have you come?” was her first word.
“Ma foi,” returned her husband gaily, as he kissed her, “apparently to be put aside, like the bread, in that sort of garde-manger there—at least that is the fate Mlle Marthe designs for me. It is not my intention, however.”
“Gaston, you should not have come!” she repeated.
“Chère amie, what a greeting. Shall I go again?”
“No, no!” She clung to his arm. “You did not know, of course!”
“No,” he said more gravely, “I did not know. It would not have been right for me to come if I had known.” Thenhe looked at her and said with deliberation, “I am only thankful that I did not know!”
They had all of them that in the blood which responds to the stimulus of danger, and supper, in the room whence the hiding-place was so easily accessible, was a cheerful meal. During its course news arrived that the soldiers had left the village altogether. So they went with light hearts into the salon, and there the leader of Finistère told the three ladies what in a few days they would divine for themselves, the outline of the main plan of campaign, and why what seemed the hazardous plan of attacking large towns instead of small was the better. For in the small towns, violently anti-royalist as they were, the whole population was armed, and the walls and palisades loopholed, so that the losses involved in the capture of such positions, without artillery, would be too heavy to be worth incurring. On the other hand the large towns were often insufficiently garrisoned for their size, opinion therein was more moderate, sometimes secretly favourable, and even an unsuccessful attack would benefit the Royalists, since it would draw off the Republican troops from the country districts.
“It is a good thing that we are going to begin fighting in earnest,” he concluded, “for soon I shall not be able to hold in my followers. Do you know what Lucien and Roland did the other day for a wager—strolled, in full uniform, through the streets of Lanvennec in broad daylight! The Republicans were just changing guard, and were, I fancy, too much petrified by their audacity to take in what was happening. Anyhow my young sparks had completed their promenade before the chase began. It wasIwho had them arrested.”
He had barely finished the story when steps came flying down the passage, the door was unceremoniously opened, and Marthe’s maid, shutting it behind her, stood there panting. “Soldiers!” she gasped, “they are in the house . . . some in the garden . . . they are coming here now.” Indeed, through the closed door could clearly be heard approaching feet and the clank of spurs—feet that cut off the possibility of swift retreat to the cachette in the dining-room. In another moment their owners would be in the salon.
Valentine, turning quite white, went to her husband’sside, and Gaston, who had jumped up, looked quickly round the room. “The window,” he suggested; but at the same moment came a blow on the shutters outside.
“No, no!” exclaimed Marthe, as pale as Mme de Trélan. “Behind you—the hangings!” And she all but pushed him to the wall, parted the hangings of woven Indian stuff, and with her little hands drew them hastily over him again. Then she ran to the long window, on which repeated blows were raining. Mme de la Vergne, nervous but collected, went to the door. And Valentine was left by the hearth to see that Marthe’s work was not completed. For under the thin gay riot of branches, birds and flowers that concealed him, were only too plainly visible Gaston’s boots—the hangings did not quite reach the floor. It seemed to her that in that second she knew the concentrated anguish of a lifetime—for Marthe’s quick wit had been right; it was the only possible place in the room. Yet she had seized a brocaded cushion from the sofa, had cast it down against the hangings on her husband’s feet as though it had fallen there, and, placing a low chair in front of it, had herself sat down as a living screen, all before the door actually opened and the Republican officer and his men came in.
If the search had been anything but perfunctory, Gaston de Trélan must have been discovered. But the officer, it was obvious, had no idea whom the Château de la Vergne was harbouring, nor indeed, that it was specifically harbouring anybody, and he was almost apologetic at disturbing the ladies. But—orders were orders. Round the salon, therefore, he merely took a long glance, and when they had searched the rest of the house with about the same particularity, the Blues went away, and the inmates of the château could sleep in perfect security.
But not Valentine. For all her courage and resource she came near breaking down when she was at last alone with her husband.
“I feel as if I should never sleep again!” she said, pressing the palms of her hands over her eyes. “I see nothing but those men’s faces and the way they looked round the room. Gaston, Gaston, I am not fit to be your wife!”
“Never would I have come,” said he remorsefully, holding her in his arms as they stood by the hearth in her room, “never would I have come had I known it would be to put you to such strain!”
“Gaston, is it true that the Royalists have no artillery?”
“Yes,” he replied unwillingly.
“And these Republican victories in Holland and Switzerland—are they not very unfortunate?”
“They are not fortunate, certainly. But the greater the odds, the greater the glory.”
“Gaston, I . . . I do not think I can let you go!”
To this he said nothing, but very tenderly kissed her hair, as he held her. And now she began to see the price that every woman pays who stands where she did.
“You know,” she said, after a pause, “I think I must be, ordinarily, without imagination. I think of you and danger always, every moment that I breathe, but they never seem together, and only to-night, when danger was in the room with you and I sat there pretending to sew—thank God it was not your scarf that I had—thinking every moment that one of them would pick up that cushion and you would be dragged out—it was only then that I realised what danger is. . . .”
But all night she realised it, and all night, whether she woke, or slept in snatches, she saw the price that she must pay, although he was safe for the moment at her side. Gaston, too, lay long awake, and they talked; but he must rise and ride away before sunrise, and, campaigning having given him the gift of sleep at will, after a while he slept.
He could sleep, yes; for though reluctant to leave her he was going to what he desired, to what she—strange irony—had prayed, years ago, that he might desire—a man’s work, a man’s hazards, a man’s endurances. Long unanswered, that slow prayer of hers had found ample fulfilment now . . . and she was beginning to learn the cost of its realisation. His hand held at last the hilt of a blade that was worthy of him—but its point was in her heart.
Once in her torment she slipped out of bed and wandered distractedly round the dark room. She went, without conscious purpose, towards the deep recessed window, and, feeling her way to the curtains, met on the window-seatsomething long and hard and cold. Her fingers told her that it was Gaston’s sword, which he had laid there. And, hating it and loving it at once, she knelt down and laid her forehead against the scabbard. “Bring him back to me! bring him back!” But what could a sword do against a bullet?
Valentine looked out. The night had been dull and cloudy, but it was now getting towards dawn. She had a desire to see Gaston more clearly, and, leaving the curtain half drawn, she went back towards the bed. Then she wished she had left the window veiled. In that grey light how pale he looked, lying there motionless in the ancient bed, whose twisted posts recalled the great candlesticks she had set out at Mirabel for the requiem mass that was never said. Ah, what horrible presentiments seized one in this wan, uncourageous hour! She had a yearning to wake him, to hear him speak; she even pressed her hand over her mouth as she stood there by him lest she should do it, but all the time she knew that an impulse such as that had no chance against the deep, protective instinct which immediately overrode it. He must sleep, because he would have need of strength to-day whither he went.
Cold and heartsick, she crept back at last into bed and lay there, still wakeful, in agony. How often in the weeks of tension that were coming would she not lie and crave for the pain that she had now—the anticipated pain of parting. For a little time longer she could listen to his quiet breathing. To have done that to-morrow and the morrow after would be the whole of bliss, for she would have known that he was safe. But to-morrow night——