(1)
not until that evening did roland’s exact words about the aum?nier 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 an insermenté, one who had not sworn allegiance to the state, or he would never be aum?nier 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’aum?nier,” 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-chateau 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 chateau 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.
(2)
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 her femmes de journée by 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 chateau. 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 aum?nier 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 chateau, 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 present state. 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 chateau, 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 chateau.
“will you come to my room to-day for your coffee, monsieur l’aum?nier?” 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 with appreciation. “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 chateau? 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.
