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, the grandes 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 flowed between 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,” retorted camain, 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 of collets noirs in that fracas with the jacobins of the société du manège last month. you may 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. “rather late 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 expect me to 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 in my family! 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 life you 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 of my 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.
