D. K. Broster

“ He stopped and coloured a little.
“What, Roland?”
“Forgive me, Madame, but would the Duc approve of such a step?”
Her own colour faded a little as she met his eyes. And then with courage, she answered, “No, Roland, I am afraid he might not. He is, as you know . . . very proud. But it is not as if he personally would have a hand in it. A wife’s mortal anxiety will excuse anything. I should go as one woman—as one wife—to another . . . an independent step.”
“Shall you tell M. de Trélan of it this afternoon?” asked Roland, with his eyes on the floor.
Valentine did not answer for a moment. ”

“ Had it not been for the existence of Roland himself that brief amour with Laure de Céligny, more than twenty years ago, would have seemed now as unreal as a dream. It had come to pass so suddenly, been over so soon. Down there at Saint-Chamans, in the south of olives and nightingales and orange blossom (the south to which, for some reason, his wife so unwillingly and so seldom accompanied him) passion flared up quickly. Yet of the Vicomtesse Laure alone, among the many women who had loved him and the few he had loved, Gaston de Trélan had a particularly gentle memory. ”

“ The Duchesse took it from him. “If you care for another to-morrow at the same hour, Monsieur l’Aumônier, it will be at your disposal.”
“You are too good, Madame,” replied the priest. “You are sure my presence—our conversation—will not bore you?” There was a little twinkle in his eye.
“On the contrary,” responded Mme de Trélan. “I find all this passionately interesting. I feel that I am assisting at a romance. Is it not in the old fairy-tales that three sons of a king come after a treasure, or to slay a dragon, or free a princess?—and it is always the third and last who succeeds.” ”

“ M. de Brencourt’s whole soul was so set on getting Gaston de Trélan out of the mortal peril in which he stood, that he did not analyse his motives over closely. He had entered on the attempt for Valentine’s sake—and a little, too, for the sake of his own self-respect. And the Duc had sent a message of regret; from him of all men that was no empty form of words. Yet Artus de Brencourt was under the impression that he cared very little about de Trélan’s fate in itself. But it is hard to know one’s own heart. ”

“ Think of our enemies saying, ‘At the last moment the Duc de Trélan’s heart failed him, and he humbly besought the First Consul for his life.’ How would that sound in the streets of Paris next week . . . and when the King comes back?”
Valentine flinched. Her lips were grey. Indeed she did not like the sound of it.
“But, Gaston,” she said, those lips quivering, “for the cause you have done more than enough. You have done everything that mortal man could do, you, the last in arms—more than Cadoudal, who was so strong—more than all the rest!” ”

“ That life itself is little enough to give, God knows, but at least it is more than I should have been able to give had I been killed in Brittany, where all we tried to do by the sword has proved so vain. For to fall like this means immortal shame to the conqueror, and you will see, Valentine, that the blot of the violated safe-conduct and its sequel will not easily or soon be washed from Bonaparte’s reputation, whatever lustre the future may add to it; and so I like to think that my death will do more for the cause than my life could ever have done. ”

“ No news had come yet, but the Allée was at such a short distance from the farm that if it came she could easily be informed.
So she walked among the menhirs, Les Vieilles, Les Veilleuses, and the menhirs watched her as she went, and she knew it. They were yellow with lichen, rust-red with it, grey with it; the heather was about their deep roots, older than the oldest trees. Ancient, terrible, venerable, four ranks of them, they marched for ever up the rise and over it towards some invisible goal. Valentine de Trélan with her forty-five years felt very young, very ignorant beside them. ”

“ It was plain that he did not know what he was doing.
“I wager he is thinking of a woman,” whispered Artamène, bringing himself nearer to his friend. “It seems a quieting occupation; suppose we think of one too! But on whom shall I fix my thoughts . . . and you, Roland?”
A slight flush, invisible in the poor light, dyed young de Céligny’s cheek as he answered, with a suspicion of embarrassment, “I will think of that poor old lady next door. Will the Abbé exorcise her, do you think, from the spell of . . . what was it—Mirabel? And, by the way, what is Mirabel?” ”

“ I cannot tell de Brencourt that. But, O my God, what a tragedy of mistakes!”
He was backed now against a huge old wardrobe, motionless, almost as if he were nailed to it, voice and eyes alike full of that seven years’ old horror and anguish.
“It was but a mistake, a misunderstanding, then, Gaston,” said the priest quickly. “You acknowledge that, you see!”
The man against the wardrobe gave a laugh. “But what is worse than a mistake, Pierre? Not a crime, certainly. Mistakes appear, at least, to be more heavily visited in this world. ”

“ Inside, among the Sèvres and the portraits, the Duchesse de Trélan, her arms outstretched on the cold malachite of the console beneath her husband’s picture was weeping bitterly. She had not known that it would be like this! The life of long ago, sunk for ever beneath those whirlpools of fury and carnage—regret for that was past. She was strong enough to face its cold relics without faltering. But Mirabel held, after all, not only the phantom of a dead existence, but of a love slowly slain . . . and not dead. Oh, if only Gaston were back in Mirabel again! ”

“ Roland, who would have swept a pigsty at her bidding, followed her as to some high festival. The hens who drove clucking round his feet might have been the doves of Venus. And the pigeons did indeed sweep in a cloud over Marthe, and ate out of her hand. Roland feared they pecked too hard.
When Artamène appeared he found them sitting in the lime arbour.
“Is our paladin telling you of his adventures?” he enquired, sitting down beside them.
“I have none to tell,” answered Roland. “It is you, mon cher, with your wound and your sling and your surgeon, who have the beau rôle.” ”

“ Valentine could believe it, but the watchers had some spell to make one linger. . . .
It was as she turned from looking at the distant pines and the sunset that she became aware she was not alone in the Allée des Vieilles. Some way off a man was standing by one of the tallest menhirs; indeed, she almost thought that he was leaning against it. It gave her a start at first to find that, when she had thought she was alone, she was being observed. He must have ridden up unheard on the heather, for outside the double avenue a black horse was bending its head towards that arid nourishment. ”

“ He continued to look at her mutely, then made these brief statements:
“My name is Roland de Céligny. I ought not to have come. Now I shall be endangering you. Madame, I implore you to let me go!”
“Chut!” retorted Valentine, laying her hand for a second on his forehead. “How could you go, even if I would let you? There is no need, I assure you, to trouble about me. Besides, why should I not care for a wounded man whom I find in the garden. You are not a malefactor, Monsieur de Céligny!”
“Mais si, Madame,” replied Roland earnestly. “In intention, at least . . . that is just what I am. . . . ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was not merely that Gaston de Trélan’s military situation was hopeless—almost ludicrously so—alone with a few score men not merely against Brune, but, since the submission of the other leaders, against La Barolière and Chabot as well; it was that if he refused the terms he was condemning Finistère to the fate that had been Vendée’s years ago under Turreau’s colonnes infernales. If he had any heart in him, any humanity, he must drink this bitter cup. The chance of dying had not been granted him; to kill himself was tantamount to refusing. ”

“ But Rose—the Rose—she had made up her mind about that ornament of the theatre. There could never have been anything between her and Gaston, fastidious as he had been to his finger-tips. Mlle Dufour had not enough mind even to have amused him. But there was such a thing as claiming for lover a man who had on one occasion, or perhaps two, paid a woman some slight, half careless attention, especially when that man’s admiration was in itself a distinction. The Duchesse de Trélan had known it done in far higher circles than those in which Mlle Dufour moved. ”

“ The letter dropped from Valentine’s hand. Was it a threat—this about the door? Could he know anything about Roland, from some unsuspected source, or did he perceive no more than that the door had recently been used? But, as Roland must surely have quitted Paris by now, the sprig of ivy moved her not, and the most potent emotion roused by her employer’s letter was probably the last he intended—relief. Through that forgotten thirty days’ warning she had a respite; she need not leave Mirabel yet. She had never dreamed that she could be so deeply thankful. ”

“ For 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!” ”

“ The wind blew a fold of the long habit against Roland’s foot. Except on the day when he had joined the Marquis de Kersaint, M. de Céligny had never been so happy in his life—for his rapture on the occasion of the Marquis’s appearance at Kerlidec had been clouded by his grandfather’s hostility. Now there was nothing to stain this perfect joy, and Roland was too deeply enthralled even to envy the solicitous glances which Marthe threw at her brother’s be-slinged left arm.
Sad that out of happiness may spring trouble! ”

“ It was better to think that Gaston was dead. She did think it at last. If he were not, she was too proud to make an appearance in the world of emigration as a deserted wife. And the few family ties she, an only child and early orphaned, had possessed were all broken now, by nature or violence. She was happy, too, in a sense, with the Tessiers, who had risked so much for her, and to whom, since Thermidor, her presence was no longer a menace—though she was still very careful not to betray herself. She began to earn money by embroidery, which she had always done exquisitely ”

“ And, Valentine, can you think that I should allow you to put yourself to a useless humiliation, you whom I love more than my life? For I do not think Mme Bonaparte would have any influence in the matter, and if she had, I dislike the idea of bribing her to use it, as much as you do, I am sure, in your heart. No, we will trust to that clever and audacious young man, Hyde de Neuville, with all the means he has at his disposal. To come and demand a prisoner with a forged order and a fictitious escort will be child’s play to him. ”

“ Valentine stopped dead, lamp in hand. The gentle and recurrent sound did not come from the banqueting hall itself, that was plain. From the “sallette,” then?
No more than when she had searched the garden for a possible malefactor and found Roland did she dream of danger to herself, though had she paused to think of it she might have guessed that the intruder would be armed, and, if surprised, might use his weapon. She walked back and softly opened the door of the sallette; her surmise was right. ”

“ So, beneath the cavernous half-seen gilding of the great Salle Verte, down the basement stairs and along the bare prison-like corridor below, carrying the lamp, went the Duchesse de Trélan in her respectable black dress and fichu, and behind her walked, still half stupefied, the man who had once made such persistent and unavailing love to her. And it was in this guise, very exactly that of a thief in the night, that the Comte de Brencourt came for the first time to her house of Mirabel. ”

“ As a man who is fording a river may come unexpectedly on a deep and eddying current that threatens his balance, so did Artus de Brencourt find himself losing foothold in the wholly unlooked for temptation which suddenly assailed him. Could it be blamed, the lie which should rid this beloved lady of the ghost of that worthless husband who had left her to this, the husband who in effect had been dead to her for years—and who probably really was dead by this time? For those suspicions as to de Kersaint’s identity were absurd. ”

“ Thousands of years before, the ancient and forgotten race, drowned now in the mists of time, which had set up in those parts the long ranks of menhirs on the lande, had raised in the forest, over the remains of some dead chieftain, a great dolmen of granite. The death-chamber had long ago been rifled of bones and treasure, but it still stood, no different from what it had been for the last few hundred years, with ferns growing out of the cracks, and one of its supports prone, and an aged oak, immeasurably younger than itself, watching over it. ”