Not until that evening did Roland’s exact words about the aumônier recur to Mme de Trélan’s memory. Who could she have been, the dying old lady who possessed this mysterious document? It was all but clear now that some treasure really did exist in Mirabel; but its existence, as a matter of fact, interested Mirabel’s mistress less than the means by which it had come to light after all these years. She had no intention of claiming the hoard.
And more amazing than all was the fact that this third treasure-seeker was a priest. It seemed almost as if her fervent wish of the last days were on its way to be granted. Could she ask him to say Mass in Mirabel—would it be safe? She knew nothing about him personally, but he could not be a man to shrink from risks, or he would not be employed on his present mission. He must equally be aninsermenté, one who had not sworn allegiance to the State, or he would never be aumônier to a Royalist division.
The desire to feel her way towards this great question of a Mass at Mirabel, as well as to satisfy her curiosity about the plan, was the reason why next day, at the same time, as the Abbé-gardener was making with a handkerchief of provisions towards the colonnades, she went up the great steps and intercepted him.
“Your coffee is awaiting you in my room, Monsieur l’Aumônier,” she suggested, “if you will give yourself the trouble to descend thither.”
He thanked her and followed her down, unrolled his comestibles, took the plate she put before him, and with little ado set heartily to work. Valentine placed the coffee pot at his elbow and herself sat down opposite him.
“I hope you will pardon my rustic manners, Madame,” he observed after a moment or two, “but this digging gives a man a fine appetite.”
“I trust they feed you well where you lodge in the village, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said she in reply. “Where do you lodge, by the way?”
“At the little house next the church—I beg its pardon, the Temple of . . . what is it the Temple of, Madame, Age, or Genius, or Fame, or what?”
“I have never enquired,” returned the Duchesse, with a shade of contempt. “The Temple of Lunacy, I should think.—Who lives in that little house now? It used to be . . . let me see—Nicole, the locksmith, and his family.”
“Nicole the locksmith?” repeated the priest, ceasing to masticate. “He has not lived there for seven years, I understand, since Mirabel was sacked.”
“Is that so?” asked Valentine. “What happened to him?”
“I do not know,” answered the Abbé. “I only know the bare fact from the old man who lives there now.—Did you then know Mirabel-le-Château as long ago as that, Madame Vidal?”
“Yes, I have known Mirabel a long time,” said Valentine, after a slight hesitation. If she were going eventually to ask him to say a Mass here for the Duc de Trélan, she must give him some sort of ground for making the request.
“You have lived here before, perhaps?”
“Yes,” admitted Mme de Trélan. “How I have come to live here again, under such different auspices, is the result of circumstances with which I need not trouble you. But, since I knew the château before it changed owners, perhaps you will not think it strange that I should show curiosity as to how you came into possession of the plan of which M. de Céligny spoke, and of which I saw a copy in M. de Brencourt’s possession. M. de Céligny said something about an old lady who was dying, whom you visited. But how did she come to have this paper, and why did she desire to give it to . . . to M. de Trélan?”
M. Chassin wiped his mouth. “It is a long story how it came into her possession, Madame, but a much shorter one why she desired it to go to its rightful owner. She had been tiring-woman to M. de Trélan’s mother, the Duchesse Eléonore.”
“What was her name?” demanded Valentine, a little breathlessly.
“Magny, Mlle Magny,” said M. Chassin.
Valentine got up from the table and went over toward the stove. The past seemed suddenly to crowd upon her almost suffocatingly. Behind the other ghosts in Mirabel she often felt the gentle spirit of the mother-in-law who had welcomed her with such affection, and now here was another shadowy inmate. Then she was aware that the priest was watching her out of his placid, shrewd little eyes with a good deal of interest, and that she must walk warily.
“You knew Mlle Magny, I see?” he remarked.
“Yes,” said the Duchesse de Trélan. She remembered now her first sight of that prim, devoted attendant as it were yesterday. The best thing for him to suppose would be that they had been fellow-servants years ago. So she added, “I was here for the last two years of Mlle Magny’s service, when, as you say, she was maid to Mme la Duchesse Douairière.”
“Were you here, then, Madame, under the Duchesse Valentine?” was the priest’s not unnatural question.
Mme de Trélan much disliked lying, although her whole life recently might have been called a lie. She clung to the literal truth underlying her statement when she said, “No, I never served the Duchesse Valentine.” And then, to turn him away from a dangerous topic, she said, “I need not ask you, Monsieur l’Abbé, if you are an insermenté priest. You must be, to hold the position which you do, and to have received any trust from so good a Catholic as Mlle Magny.”
“No, Madame, naturally I have never taken the oath,” responded M. Chassin. He looked at her with fresh interest, and added, “You too, then, my daughter, are a good Catholic in these times of persecution?”
“I was never a Catholic worth speaking of, I am afraid,” said Valentine rather sadly, “until these times.”
“And are you able to go to your duties here, my child?” It was remarkable how the cloak of the plotter and half humorous observer slipped at once aside, and revealed the priest.
“Not here,” responded Mme de Trélan. “I always did in Paris; it is possible there. But there is no Mass here, no priest . . . O mon père!”
“What is it?”
“Lately—for a special reason—I have longed for little else, night and day, but that there might be Mass said once in the chapel here, for . . . for one who was much connected with Mirabel.”
Her deep earnestness and hardly contained emotion affected M. Chassin. He was a little puzzled, too. Did she mean Mlle Magny? If so, why did she not say so? More likely, perhaps, that she was thinking of some relative of her own. Perhaps she was the widow of a steward or something of the kind, for she was far too superior to have been an ordinary servant. However, practical as usual, he saw that the point was not for whose soul—if she meant that—the Mass was to be said, but whether it could be said at all.
“Have you the necessaries still in the chapel?” he asked thoughtfully.
“I believe so,” answered the Duchesse. “I could look . . . I know where they would be hidden. A priest coming like this seems . . .” She broke off wistfully. “But there would be a certain amount of risk to you, Father, and so I hardly like suggesting it. Nothing but my very real need would make me. I . . . I have heard news that would make it just now the greatest comfort I could look for in this world.”
“My daughter,” said the Abbé, rising, “as a priest, nothing could give me greater joy, in these times, than to hear that you desire such a thing. But, as a plotter, I think that I must get on a little further with my task before I undertake the additional risk—not much, perhaps, but still to be considered when I am charged with a mission not my own. An argument, no doubt,” he added with a sort of twinkle, “against the union of the secular and the sacred characters in one individual. However, I will think over the best way to fulfil your edifying desire, if I can. I should begin at once, I think, by starting work earlier than I have hitherto done, that no suspicion might be excited on the morning itself, for it would have, would it not, to be a very early Mass? And you wish, I gather, a Mass of requiem?”
Valentine bowed her head. She was almost too much stirred to thank him, and looked up with eyes full of tears.
M. Chassin was moved to give her his blessing, and on that departed once more to his wheelbarrow and his hoe.
Valentine thought of little else but the priest’s half promise all the rest of the day. Very early next morning she went and searched in the chapel for the gem-studded chalice and ciborium, hidden away with all the more valuable vestments early in 1792, and hidden so securely that if they had been looked for in the August pillage they had never been found. That day being a cleaning day she thought it better not to invite the remarks of herfemmes de journéeby having the gardener into her room at all. Moreover at first she thought he had not arrived; till it occurred to her to look out from an upper window at the back of the château. The result of her observations was that she took out a bowl of coffee at noon to the grotto of Latona, and, going in, told him the reason.
“Much wiser, Madame,” said the priest, wiping a hot brow with his sleeve. “And did you say that to-morrow was a visiting day? Then I shall be back in the front, very active, for all eyes to see. I have no business to be here at the back at all.”
“But you have a good reason for it?” suggested Mme de Trélan.
The aumônier dropped his voice. “There is a sort of underground passage leading from this grotto—which is of course of later construction—to the place under the cheminée royale in the sallette where Louis-Antoine de Trélan hid his money. Once I have unblocked the end of it, now hidden by those rocks, I hope to find the rest easy.”
“M. de Céligny did not know of that!”
“The misguided youth never got more than a moment’s sight of the plan.”
“And M. de Brencourt?”
“He preferred to attack the other end, in the château, as likely to prove shorter. The result you know.”
“And when you have got the money?”
“I have to convey it by degrees—or rather, cause it to be conveyed—to an agent in Paris, and he to England to be melted down. It is of course useless in its presentstate. When I reach it I calculate that it will take me three or four days to get it away, a portion at a time. It will be too heavy to take all at once, for so much weight in so little bulk would excite suspicion.”
“I see that you are coming earlier,” said Valentine. “Does that mean that you will be able to say Mass? I have found all that is requisite.”
“I think I may promise it,” replied the gardener.
Next day, as he had predicted, he was working in the front of the château, and a Deputy whom Valentine showed round said that he was glad something was being done to the flower beds, but that he considered M. Camain rather parsimonious in the matter of labour.
During the next three days, although the priest had returned to his work in the park, something invariably happened to prevent Mme de Trélan from getting speech with him. But on the fourth afternoon she had the curiosity to go and stand by the great fireplace in the sallette. She most distinctly heard gnome-like activities at work below. Evidently the miner was advancing in his task.
Next morning she sought him out soon after he arrived, while he was still in the front of the château.
“Will you come to my room to-day for your coffee, Monsieur l’Aumônier?” she asked.
“Certainly, Madame,” responded the gardener, and he walked beside her wheeling his wheelbarrow. “I wanted to speak with you about a certain arrangement. I shall not be here much longer, I think,” he added significantly.
“You are—advancing?”
“To-morrow or the next day will see the end, I hope. I will certainly come at noon.”
And he came, punctually. He was hot and rather dirty. Valentine let him eat his meal in peace.
“And so it really was true, the tale of the treasure,” she said meditatively, as he drew to a close.
“Every word, Madame,” replied the priest.
“And you have actually secured the whole of it?”
“Except the jewels—and unless I am prevented from going on to-morrow.”
“Why should you be?”
“One never knows,” said he, and finished his coffee withappreciation. “And now,” he added briskly, “about to-morrow morning?”
“You will really do it for me? God reward you, Father!”
“I will come at half-past four to-morrow to your entrance here. I suppose there is a private door to the chapel from the château? You will have everything ready? Perhaps you have made ready for Mass before?”
“Yes, I have,” said the Duchesse.
“Then that is settled,” observed M. Chassin, brushing the crumbs off his person. “The sentry is used by now to my industrious early entrances, and there is no one about to ask why, having entered, I am not to be seen working. Nor will anybody, I presume, ring your bell at that early hour. I see no extra hazard at all; and most of my treasure trove is already in Paris, in good hands.”
At the door he stopped. “There is only one thing more. For whose soul do you wish this Mass said, Madame Vidal?”
Valentine did not reply at once. She suddenly saw what questions it would lead to if she said “For the Duc de Trélan’s.” Perhaps he would even refuse to say a requiem for Gaston at all unless she told him by what right she demanded it. A desire, very unlike her, to put off the difficult moment seized her. If she only told him the name to-morrow, at the eleventh hour, when the candles were lit, and everything ready, surely he would ask no questions then. Or if it came to it, she might even tell him who she was. But not now.
“May I tell you to-morrow morning, Father?” she asked.
M. Chassin raised his clumsy eyebrows a trifle, but since he could not very well pretend that it was of paramount importance to know the name overnight, he said, “Very well, my daughter,” and departed.
The chapel at Mirabel, of later date than the château itself, was one of those lofty, pompous, rococo edifices abounding in heavy wood-carving, and puffy-cheeked cherubs, and tribunes with bulged and gilded fronts almost suggestive of a theatre. But hostile hands, in stripping it of some of its exuberance, had bestowed the crown of martyrdom on its floridity, and the light of this early summer morning, streaming in through the red and purple clad saints of the apsidal eastern window, seemed a little to dispel its chill—the chill of a building long disused—though it could not replace the warm memory of incense and the winking light before the tabernacle.
The candles on the unvested marble altar, and those in the great carved candlesticks where the bier or catafalque should have stood, were of brown wax as usage demanded. Valentine had found them, and in another place the black and gold vestments for the priest, stored away with the rest, and she had brought out from the sacristy and spread between the candlesticks on the floor itself—since there was no bier—the black pall with the arms of the house of Trélan. Everything was ready, and now she herself, the solitary worshipper, knelt with bowed head on a chair in the nave, though it wanted yet an hour to the priest’s coming. She was making her preparation for confession, for she was going to ask for communion at this Mass. The resolve to do so had come to her during the night.
Nearly half-past four already. Valentine hurried back to her room. He was very punctual, the gardener priest, and prudent to boot, for he did not even wake any echoes by ringing, but tapped upon the outer door.
“Everything is ready, mon père. I will take you straight to the chapel,” said Mme de Trélan.
M. Chassin paused a moment when he got inside the building. This, then, was where his foster-brother had married the “beautiful and unfortunate lady” as M. de Brencourt had justly called her. Little as Mme Vidal had been able to do, the place had something the air of requiem; he saw the candles, the pall—and then the arms on the pall. Surely she, a former domestic, would not have brought that out save for a member of the house! Then he thought, wondering at his own slow-wittedness, that of course she wanted a Mass said for the Duchesse Valentine. He was more than glad to say one here for the repose of that soul.
As he moved forward again Mme Vidal pointed out the sacristy. “I will light the candles while you vest, Father,” she added. “But, before you begin Mass, I should like to make my confession, for I wish to communicate. And then I will tell you for whose soul I am asking for this Mass.”
M. Chassin, feeling that he hardly needed now to be told, disappeared into the sacristy. Valentine lit the candles on the altar and those round the pall. Before she had finished the priest emerged in alb and stole, tying the girdle of the former round him as he came, for there was need of haste in all this business. He entered the confessional, whose elaborate carving bore scars from axe or hammer, and drew the curtain after him. She went and knelt down at the right-hand grille.
There was absolute silence when Valentine had finished. All through the priest had hardly said a word or asked her a question, and from the beginning she had resolved to make no mysteries, but here, under the seal, to be perfectly frank about her identity. It would have meant, perhaps, evasions else.
But the silence was so prolonged that at last she raised her eyes, and could just see through the grille enough to gather that the Abbé had covered his own eyes with his hand. It was not till then that Valentine fully recognised how even to this man, unconnected, save as a political plotter, with the house of Trélan, it must come as a shock to learn, in the very chapel of Mirabel itself, her identity with its supposedly murdered mistress. She had not been thinking enough of herself to realise that; rather ofher relations to Gaston. She waited; and after a moment or two more her confessor seemed to collect himself, and in a shaken voice named her penance and gave her absolution.
Bent under the weight of freedom Valentine bowed her head, and so remained—till she suddenly heard the rungs of the curtain in front of the confessional rattle on their little pole, and it came to her that the priest, still so strangely silent, was preparing to leave the box. But there was still something for her to say.
“Father, now you can guess for whose soul I wish this Mass said—for that of my husband, Gaston, Duc de Trélan.”
Still silence. M. Chassin had, in fact, only drawn aside the curtain because in the tumult of his emotions he felt that he was suffocating. He was not thinking of moving at that moment; he was incapable of it. What was he to do! what, in God’s name, was he to do! And there was no time to think, that was the terrible part of it. He could not knowingly enact a sacrilege. . . . And this, this was the murdered Duchesse! It was incredible—yet obviously true, though his brain could hardly grasp it yet. . . . But the other side of the business! Of course Gaston’s repeated injunction to respect his secret to the uttermost, an injunction laid on him afresh not long ago at Hennebont, did not apply to this case, which the Duc could not have foreseen . . . no man could have imagined a resurrection like this! Yet what was it, “nobody in the world,” “whatever you think might be gained by it.” He must have a little time to consider. . . . And he must say something now. . . .
“My child,” he managed to get out, “I cannot well say a requiem Mass unless I have reason to . . . to know the person dead.”
“But I know it, Father,” came the sad voice. “Is not that enough?”
She had heard some rumour, of course. How to convey to her its falsity without betraying what he knew as fact—and without undue shock to her?
“I suppose, my daughter,” he said gently, “that you have had some private information. Is it—forgive me—is it reliable?”
Valentine caught her breath. “Only too much so, Ifear.” And then a light broke upon her. “Surely, Father, as you were sent from the Marquis de Kersaint about this business, and he knew of the Duc’s death, you know it, too? Or did he keep you in ignorance before he sent you to Mirabel?”
“What!” exclaimed M. Chassin, thinking he had not heard aright through the grille. “What did you say, my child? M. de Kersaint knew that the Duc was dead? Who told you that?”
His astonishment set a mad hope tearing at Valentine’s heart. “M. de Brencourt,” she answered. “Was he wrong, then?”
But M. Chassin had flung himself out of the confessional, his stole in his hand. “M. de Brencourt!” he exclaimed. Once out he seemed on the verge of some expression better befitting his late employment as gardener or plotter than his present as priest. “M. de Brencourt told you—my child, do not stay kneeling there . . . M. de Brencourt . . . here, sit on this chair and let me hear more of this extraordinary . . . misunderstanding!—May I know this great matter—your identity—so long as to speak of it a little now?”
His face was mottled with emotions. Valentine, her eyes fixed on him, had already risen from her knees and did sink down on the chair he indicated. In front of her the candles burnt round the pall and on the altar, ready for the funeral Mass.
“Yes, Father—but—misunderstanding!” she caught at the word. “Is it untrue, then, Father, is it untrue?”
“I do not say that, but . . . tell me what M. de Brencourt said to you!”
“But is it untrue—is it untrue?” she repeated piteously. “O God, is he alive after all?”
The secret knocked so hard at the door of the priest’s lips that it seemed to him it must force its way out. It was cruelty to keep her in this tension—and almost absurd, too. But he must have a little time to reflect if he were justified in breaking so solemn a promise.
“Calm yourself, Madame la Duchesse,” he said, and, sufficiently agitated himself, sat down beside her. How extraordinary, how dizzying a sensation to be in the actual living presence of her whose loss had turned thewhole current of his foster-brother’s being. “Tell me first just what M. de Brencourt said.”
Valentine put her hands to her head in the effort to remember exactly.
“He said that M. de Kersaint had told him it was useless to write to the Duc de Trélan for permission to search here because he had just heard that the Duc was dead—had been dead some time.”
“And M. de Brencourt told you that!”
Valentine’s heart seemed to stand still. “It was false then?”
“I cannot say, Madame, whether it was false or true,” responded M. Chassin, “this only, that M. de Brencourt must have strangely misunderstood M. de Kersaint, for the Marquis has certainly no grounds for asserting that the Duc is dead. I do not say that it is not so, but he has no authority for asserting it . . . and I do not believe that he ever did.”
What was the mystery? The chapel, the lights, were beginning to dance round Valentine. The priest guessed it.
“Madame, this is too much for you. And for me, too. . . . To learn that you are alive—Let us both try to be calm. I will do what I came here to do, and though cannot say a funeral Mass for the Duc de Trélan because . . . because I am convinced that he is still alive, I will say one for his intention and for yours, and for your reunion . . . and for wisdom to know how to act,” he added almost to himself. “But you will give me leave to retain my knowledge of who you are, will you not? As you are aware, I must not, having learnt it as I did, unless you sanction it?”
“But not to use it, Father, not to impart to any third person.”
“Not even to——” He checked himself.
“Not to anyone,” said Valentine firmly. “I am no longer the Duchesse de Trélan. It was necessary, I thought, that you should know I once was. Now I am Mme Vidal again.”
“Then,” said the priest very solemnly, “I implore you, as your confessor, either to write without loss of time to M. de Kersaint, telling him who you are, and asking fordetails about your husband which only he can give you, or, better still,” his voice shook with earnestness, “to go in person to Brittany to see him. Believe me, you will be more than thankful all your life if you do. I will give you directions afterwards. And now I will finish vesting.”
Valentine slipped to her knees, and remained sunk on the kneeling-chair while M. Chassin hastily rolled aside the pall, put out the great candles, and went into the sacristy.
Yet in a moment or two he was hurrying out and bending over the kneeling figure. “Madame, Madame, I think it must be your bell which is ringing so furiously!”
He had to repeat it again; but, when once she had understood, Mme de Trélan was in full possession of her wits.
“I will go at once, Father. It must be something unusual at this hour. But take off those vestments—leave the chapel! You must not be found here at any cost!”
Fears only for him hurried her out of the chapel and along the corridor. It was true; her bell was ringing violently, and it could not be much later than five o’clock.
She expected to find outside the door soldiers, or at least the sentry. The only being there was a rather indignant small boy, who said reproachfully that he had been ringing for five minutes, and asked if the gardener were anywhere about. The child seemed so little the herald of danger that Valentine said she thought that she could find him, and asked why he was wanted.
“Tell him, please,” said the small messenger, sniffing, “that his mother in Paris is very ill—dying—and that he must go at once if he wants to see her alive.” And as Valentine gave an exclamation he added, “A man has come from Paris to say this. The gardener must hurry. That’s all.” And he scampered up the steps again.
Valentine hastened out into the passage, relieved to see in the distance the form of the Abbé, once more a gardener, coming towards her.
“There is bad news for you, Monsieur l’Abbé, I am sorry to say,” she exclaimed when he came within hearing. “Your mother in Paris——”
“Is dying, I suppose,” finished the priest with a strangemixture of concern and irritation. “Do not be distressed, Madame, for I have no mother. It means something quite different. I will come into your room for a moment—but I must leave Mirabel at once. . . . It means, in fact,” he went on, once inside, “that the agent in Paris who has the bulk of the treasure in his possession by now, and who has the task of transferring it to England, is in peril of some kind—has probably fallen under suspicion. There is not a moment to lose if I am to save the money. Fortunately I had not begun Mass . . . Before I go, however . . .” He fumbled hastily in a pocket, and bringing out something wrapped in a scrap of faded silk, slid the contents out on to the table—a glittering, snake-like heap of blood and fire and tarnished gold.
“This is yours, Madame, by every right. I cannot take it!”
Valentine stared at it a moment. “But I do not need it, Monsieur l’Abbé. Take it with the rest!”
“No. It would provide for the journey, Madame, which I implore you to make,” returned M. Chassin, looking at her hard. “And the directions I promised you—have you pencil and paper? M. de Kersaint’s headquarters are now at an oldmanoircalled le Clos-aux-Grives, near Lanvennec in Finistère. If you journey in person to Lanvennec you should go by the route which I am writing down. In the end you will be directed to a little farm called the Ferme des Vieilles, not very far from his headquarters, and on saying there these words in Bas-Breton all will be made easy for you.” Standing, he wrote for a moment or two, blessed her, and remained looking at her, for all his haste, with an expression Valentine could not decipher—the expression of a man torn by perplexity. Then he caught her hand, kissed it, and in a very little had been let out of the door and was hurrying up the steps.
And Mme de Trélan, who had meant to watch him safely past the sentry, stood oblivious with closed eyes. . . .
Three days later, about sunset, the Duchesse de Trélan, her long dead predecessor’s rubies heavy, warm, and invisible about her neck, stood in the great Salle Verte, probably for the last time. Only one more day remained of her strange tenancy of Mirabel—for Camain had made no sign—and moreover nothing would have kept her longer now. She was on fire to get to Finistère . . . if it were possible.
Of the Abbé she had heard nothing—but she could expect to hear nothing, unless it were news of his arrest. No one had seemed perturbed at the non-appearance of the gardener; possibly no one knew of it. She could only hope that he had got the treasure away from Paris, for his coming had so profoundly affected her that she could not but wish him well. They would meet again, she supposed, in Brittany, if she ever got there—for, money apart (and that she had, the reward for Roland) how was she going to find a means to take her unmolested from Paris into the furthest fastnesses of the Royalist West?
A mellowed light between afternoon and evening was pouring in, softening the vista of green marble pillars and the gilt. Would she ever see the Salle Verte again after to-morrow? Much had happened there. The great apartment peopled itself for a space with that throng on her wedding night, one young and splendid figure outshining every other man there; it held again the later assemblies it had seen, the men of note that the Duchesse de Trélan had known, the soldiers, the diplomats, the courtiers, thegrandes dames. . . all that scarlet-heeled, powdered, witty, gallant, vicious world, exquisite, debauched and courteous, everyone of whom, however reluctant or defiant, had come to the brink of the red torrent which flowedbetween that life and this, the torrent in which most of them had been swept away, with so many of the old landmarks, good or bad, as well. And for a moment Valentine found herself wondering what this historic room, still unhurt, unpillaged, might be destined to witness in the future. No de Trélan, at least, would ever tread its floor again.
Unless Gaston came back . . . some day. He might—he might! Stranger things had happened. Only it was certain that he would never come back under any conditions that involved a pact with the spoilers. No exile, no hardships, nothing that she could imagine would have changed that trait in him. . . .
A step, a heavy, hasty step, broke into her reverie—a step that had not been her way of late. It could only be one person’s. She turned, and saw M. Georges Camain advancing along the line of pillars towards her, wearing a face of thunder.
Valentine’s heart sank. She went a few paces to meet him, and he stayed his advance, and, beckoning to her in a manner quite devoid of his usual objectionable gallantry, walked back to the great hearth and took up by his stand by it. Evidently he felt the middle of so vast an apartment no place for a scene, and that there was going to be a scene was written on his whole demeanour.
“Well, Madame Vidal?” He threw the words at her like a challenge.
She met his look with composure, and answered, “Yes, Citizen Deputy.”
“Yes, Citizen Deputy,” he mimicked her angrily. “The Citizen Deputy wants to know what you have done with the gardener who was working here a few days ago?”
“I have done nothing with him, Citizen. He has not been here for the last three days.”
“Indeed? And do you know why he left?”
“A messenger came to say that his mother in Paris was dying.”
“Mother!” said Camain, exploding. “Mother dying! You have the impudence . . . Shall I tell you, since you are so persistently innocent, why he left? His plans in Paris were threatened, and you know what those plans were, and his work here, too, as well as I—no, by God,better, since I have not yet had time to investigate his operations at Mirabel.”
“Plans? Work?” repeated Valentine. “Do you refer to the Italian——”
“Pshaw!” broke in the ex-Jacobin savagely, “don’t trifle with me like that, woman! I say you know what he came to do, and you helped him to do it, and to get away with his booty.”
Then he had got away . . . or did Camain only mean from Mirabel? Valentine made no reply.
“Why don’t you answer me?” barked her late admirer.
“You are so positive, Citizen Deputy, what is the use? It is of little avail for me to protest—though you must know it quite well—that I had no hand in the appointment of this gardener who seems to have displeased you, nor in the carrying out of his ‘work,’ whatever it may have been, except that I used to give him a cup of coffee with his meal at mid-day.”
“Yes, just as out of the same pure kindness you opened the door in the park wall to let one or the other of the rest out or in—just as you fooled me into saving you from being confronted with the man who broke into the sallette, your accomplice, whom you invited here, I expect——”
“Never!” interrupted Valentine firmly. “I had nothing to do with his coming, any more than with that of the gardener.”
Camain would not listen. “Then, like a fool, I gave you thirty days in which you were assured of my absence—incredible idiot that I was! And this is the use you have made of them!” His towering rage seemed almost as much with himself as with her; but his scowl was not pleasant to sustain.
“Did I appoint the gardener, Citizen?”
“That is not the question. He got his appointment by chicanery, used it to search Mirabel for hidden treasure in the interests of the Royalists, and you furthered his researches—you who asked me so guilelessly a little time ago for what reason that other man could have broken in.”
“I absolutely deny that I furthered his researches in any way,” retorted Valentine with spirit.
“If you did not actually go and help him dig,” retortedCamain, scowling worse than ever, “you knew of his purpose, and it was your duty to tell me.”
“I wonder if it was,” said Valentine reflectively, almost more to herself than to him.
The irate Georges stared at her a second in amazement. “You are a cool hand!” he exclaimed. “You wonder if it was . . . when I am paying you to look after the place”—a flush rose in Valentine’s cheek—“and when now, in consequence of your silence, if not of your complicity, I am myself in a most unenviable position!”
“I am sorry to hear that, Monsieur le Député,” said Valentine gravely.
“Deuced good of you! It never occurred to you, I suppose, that I was responsible to the Government for Mirabel—even when I was taking down that worthless deposition of yours? Still, you have shown me pretty clearly once that my concerns are less than nothing to you. But let me tell you that, if there is an enquiry, someone else—to whom I begin to think you are under a very heavy debt indeed—will probably come off badly, and that is Suzon Tessier.”
She turned an alarmed face on him. “Not Suzon! What had she to do with it?”
“This, that she has had you under her roof for nearly seven years as her ‘aunt,’ and that it was from her house that you were taken off to prison as a suspected aristocrat. Yes, you see I know that now—not from Suzon, of course.”
“We are not in the Terror now,” said Valentine uneasily. Could Suzon really be in danger?
“No, but we may go back to it before long if these crazy young Royalist reactionaries become more troublesome. There were quantities ofcollets noirsin that fracas with the Jacobins of the Société du Manège last month.Youmay approve of those antics, but they will lead to—repression.”
“But what am I to do?” asked Valentine. “I deny complicity with the persons who came here, but truth or falsehood, as I know, has little to do with the verdict of a revolutionary jury, and for nothing in the world would I have Suzon suffer on my account.”
Camain took a turn up and down, his arms folded. “Yes, what can you do?” he asked sarcastically. “Ratherlate to think of that now! Well, I think the best thing you can do, Madame Vidal, is to vanish. If there is an enquiry, which I shall do my best to prevent for my own sake, Suzon had better not be able to produce you.”
Valentine’s heart gave a leap. Was it possible that he, of all people, might be interested in her going to Finistère? A few moments ago her chances of an interview with the Marquis de Kersaint had seemed very remote indeed.
“But how can I vanish in a moment?” she asked.
Camain came nearer, and looked down at her with searching, half mocking eyes. “Have you no friends, no aristocratic kin who would shelter you? Cannot you go back to that ‘provincial town’ from which you came to be Suzon’s aunt? Difficult to find again, I fancy! . . . It must be a complete, a good disappearance—you must not be caught.”
“To fulfil that requirement, Monsieur le Député, there is no place but the grave. I do not propose to kill myself, nor, I suppose, are you asking that of me.”
An unwilling smile came over the heavy, angry visage.
“Corbleu, I was right in admiring you! Yes, there is no place but the grave for that. I am not asking you to journey so far. But you understand that, if you vanish, you will, in a sense, assume some of the guilt of these happenings at Mirabel?”
“Yes, I understand. And that is what you want, Citizen, in order to take it off your shoulders—and Suzon’s?”
“But you can scarcely regard yourself, in that case, as an innocent scapegoat, can you, Madame Vidal?” he suggested.
She did not answer this, but said, with a beating heart and outward calm, “There is a place to which I could go—a place far enough away, where I should not, probably, be found. But how, without a passport or papers of any kind, am I to get there?”
“Papers!” he said half sneeringly. “Plenty of Royalist agents in Paris would forge you those.”
“I do not know any Royalist agents in Paris, Citizen.”
“Again so innocent! Do you expectmeto provide you with papers?”
“I doubt if you could,” answered Valentine. “I expect nothing—but I do wish to preserve Suzon from ill.”
“And me?” suggested Camain. “No, I am not much above a bricklayer by origin—no stewards to the aristocracy inmyfamily! Well, Madame Vidal, since I am fond of Suzon, and since I was misguided enough to admire you, and since I am not indifferent to the safety of my own skin, I can give you a paper . . . at a price. I have here,” he brought out a pocket-case, “a blank laissez-passer that I once got out of Barras when he was particularly in need of cash. That would carry you anywhere as long as the Directory stands, but it cost me a deal of money. The question is, how much is it worth to you?”
The Duchesse’s hand went involuntarily to the neck of her dress. Was it for this that the Abbé had left her the necklace?
“I do not mean in money,” said Camain, watching her. “If you really want this paper—and you ought to want it, for it would be beyond price to a person in your situation—you will be willing to give me in exchange for it what I conceive you value most.”
Valentine changed colour a little. “And what is that?” she asked.
“Your secret,” said the Deputy.
She stared at him, bereft of speech.
“By that I mean—your real name,” explained M. Camain. “You cannot flatter yourself that, by this time, I do not almost know it. Did you not realise when you refused my suit, when you were for once your real self, how you betrayed your origin? That scorn——”
“It was not scorn of you, Monsieur Camain,” she broke in quickly. “You mistook me. I did not resent your offer, but the . . . the grounds on which you based it. However, it is no good going back to that.”
“No,” said the Deputy, looking at her as she stood there by the blazoned and defaced hearth, so plainly dressed, yet clothed with the grace and dignity that never left her. “No, it is no use going back to that. But, to be frank with you, even after your treatment of me the other day in the garden, I meant to renew my suit. I told myself that a man,” involuntarily he drew himself up, “is a man after all, and we are every one equal in these days. But now, I think you are too clever for the wife of a bourgeois, and too innately ci-devant after all, in spite of the lifeyou have lived of late, and your conciergeship and the rest. There is, as the Scripture says, a great gulf fixed between us. I was aiming too high, was I not, Madame la . . . what was the title you used to bear?”
Valentine did not answer, but said very gravely indeed, turning her gaze full on him. “There is indeed a great gulf fixed, Monsieur le Député, between such as you are and such as I. It is filled with blood—and mostly with innocent blood—the blood of my class . . . shed by yours.”
Georges Camain shifted uneasily. “There may have been mistakes,” he muttered, and Valentine wondered for a second over what private and accusing memories of his own his mind went glancing as he looked at the floor. “But come,” he said, recovering himself, “we must keep to business. I can replace you to-morrow, and you can start to-morrow. You observe I do not ask your destination. To get there, wherever it be, you have only to show this paper. It will open any gate to you, for that dissolute scoundrel’s signature is still all-powerful. You have only to tell me, Madame Vidal, what you called yourself in the days before you became Suzon Tessier’s aunt, and it is yours.”
“And,” said Valentine slowly, “if my name should chance not to please you, you would have me arrested at once, before I had an opportunity of using your paper.”
“That’s the worst of you ci-devants,” said the Deputy, in something resembling his former jocular tones. “So suspicious. You won’t trust the People . . . I do not know what oath I can swear to you. And why should an oath be needed; it is to my interest and my cousin’s to get you away. Moreover I am a Theophilanthropist and you, I expect, a Catholic.”
“Then we both believe in a God at least,” said Mme de Trélan. “Swear to me, Monsieur Camain, by the God we both believe in, that you will make no use of my name if I tell it to you, that you will betray it to no one else, that you will give me the paper and not hinder my departure, and I will tell you my secret.”
Camain raised his hand. “I swear all this, by the God in Whom we both believe, and by the white head ofmy old mother down in Angers, who still prays, I think, to your Catholic Virgin for her son.”
Valentine looked away from him.
“I am the woman who best has a right to be in Mirabel,” she said, with her eyes on the phoenix over the escutcheon where her own arms of Fondragon were quartered with all the rest. “This house—this hearth—knows no name but the name I bear.”
“What the . . . why . . . what in the wide universe do you mean?” ejaculated Camain, open-mouthed and recoiling.
His protégée turned and faced him. “I mean that I am the Duchesse de Trélan,” she said simply.
Barras’ signature, turning upon itself in its descent, fluttered from the Deputy’s paralysed hand to the floor between them.