it was soon plain to gaston de trélan that, between bodily pain and mental turmoil, sleep was not likely to visit him much that night. he would, at least, keep that fact from pierre if he could. . . . poor pierre! it seemed to be his fate to cause him anxiety! and he owed him so much, more than a man could ever repay: his life—that was little—but what measure of self-respect he had also.

that life he had nearly cast away this evening, and, because of his present position and circumstances, he fully shared the priest’s reprobation of the hazard, but no other course had been possible, for not pierre himself, who had so quickly penetrated the tale of the “blue,” could guess the lengths to which he had suffered de brencourt to go before he consented to fight him. even to pierre he was not going to repeat the things the comte had said. . . .

seven years ago, in london, only the little priest’s affection and determination had prevented society from saying next day, “you remember that french émigré, the duc de trélan, whom we used to meet everywhere? well, he has just shot himself—and small wonder!” and it was not as if gaston and his protégé were then on terms of intimacy, for they had seen little of each other for the previous ten years or so, since his own visits to st. chamans had become so much rarer—above all since the priest had come under his displeasure for something he had ventured to say to him down there not unconnected with mme de céligny. few people, even of his own rank, under m. de trélan’s displeasure cared to have dealings with him in that condition, and yet this peasant-priest, who had never approached his patron in his own need (for the duc afterwards discovered that he had been living in london for weeks on the verge of starvation) had the disinterested courage to oppose him in the blackest hour of his life. and pierre chassin had done more than stay his finger on the trigger, for when, during that dreadful vigil, gaston himself had said, out of his agony, that no other path remained open to him, since neither in england nor in france could he ever look an acquaintance in the face again, it was the abbé who replied, “then change your name. do not go to serve with condé, as you were intending; go where no one knows you.” and so, as the marquis de kersaint, the duc de trélan—a soldier by education and the descendant of soldiers—entered austrian service against the french republic, thinking, mistakenly, that he could soon throw away his life on the battlefield; as the marquis de kersaint he rose to command, found a certain anodyne in hard work and fighting, and was in touch by letter during those years with the only man he could really call friend—his only confidant at least—the humbly-born foster-brother who had stood by him in his extremity; and had earned the right to address him more freely than a brother by blood would ever have dared to do.

but of the two things he sought—forgetfulness or death—m. de trélan had found neither. for him the arrogant motto of his race was only too true—‘memini et permaneo, i remember and i remain.’ it soon became clear to him that when a man desired extinction he could not have it. what of the hazards of that italian campaign, of the fights for mantua, of castiglione, caldiero, arcola, through which he had always come untouched till the day of rivoli? even then death had tossed him aside in the end.

indeed, that disastrous fourteenth of january, 1797, when the young, haggard-eyed general from corsica had beaten the austrian marshal on that plateau among the mountains, had brought gaston de trélan not death but honour. at vienna, when he had recovered from his all but fatal wound, the emperor’s hand had bestowed on him the coveted cross he wore. so, when the peace of campoformio had ended austria’s wars for a time, and the abbé chassin, now an accredited agent of the royalists of the west, had deterred him from entering russian service and persuaded him, despite his hatred of the place, to come to london, he came, in his borrowed name—and found himself, to his surprise, no little of a hero there also. for there had been attached to alvintzy’s staff at rivoli an english officer of discernment, who, greatly struck by the part played in the battle by “colonel de kersaint” and his practically forlorn hope of a column, while much criticising the higher command for devoting it to destruction, had not spared in his despatches eulogies of its leader nor regrets for his supposed fate. and after a little while spent in london, in very different circles from those in which he moved before, the “marquis de kersaint” was offered by the comte d’artois and his council the post of organising and leading finistère. he accepted; but nothing would induce him to go to edinburgh for the personal interview which the prince desired. they had met too often at versailles for that.

so he had now in his hands the chance to do something that she whom he had lost would have approved. in those years of self-imposed expiation he had learnt what he had thrown away, not so much in failing her at the moment of peril, which he had done in ignorance, but through his insane blindness in having so little prized, through all the best of life, a love and a nobility which many a man would have given his soul to possess. in the great and terrible awakening through which he had passed in london he had seen himself as he must have appeared to other men, and that hell was too sharp at first for any consolation to visit him, and any least thought or memory of valentine could only be more exquisite torture. yet there came a day when, instead of averting his mind from what he could not bear to contemplate, he found himself gazing at it as the one hope in the blackness, as a trembling pagan might see the image of the martyr smile upon him, the martyr his own hands had done to death. valentine had loved him; what if she loved him still?

it grew in him to conviction, that first dim fancy; it saved him, probably, from madness. lost, sometimes, like a star which the clouds have blotted out, it always reappeared, and shone at last with almost the light of an inspiration, a proof of the strong and steady influence which the dead can wield. so it came about in the end that, for all the suffering and hopeless regret involved, gaston, duc de trélan, was fast in love with his wife’s memory—so fast that he who had once been “saint-charmart” in paris salons had in vienna the character of a woman-hater—so fast that he felt, if valentine knew the depth of his repentance and his pain, she, with her wide charity, would forgive him everything . . . as he doubted not that, in the supreme hour, she had.

but to forgive oneself, that was a different matter. his own stark pride, so interwoven with the fabric of his whole nature, seemed to put that possibility ever further and further from him as the years went by. yet, if he could not himself forget, it seemed at least that others had done so—till that night at hennebont when the calumny which he had believed dead had reared its head for an instant. afterwards it had slept again, apparently, through all the directions he had been obliged to give de brencourt about mirabel before despatching him thither, in which he knew quite well that he was risking having the veil torn from the wound. his sacrifice, made to get the gold for the cause to which he had vowed himself, had recoiled on his own head. for days now he had been at the mercy of the comte, with his knowledge of that slander which was half true; and de brencourt had behaved like a red indian with an enemy at the stake, subjecting him to a deliberate mental torture to which this night’s hazard and bloodshed had been nothing but a relief. it was small consolation to know that he, for his part,—till the coming of the breaking-point—had endured reiterated agony without giving a sign . . . agony not only to his pride but to his love. for it was true—by what diabolical instinct had de brencourt known it?—that his chief thought when he received the terrible news had been for his own honour . . . though it had long ceased to be true. but that final remark about the want of an heir, the very taunt he had thrown at her himself! even now, alone and in half darkness though he was, the duc de trélan threw his arm over his eyes and groaned aloud. ah, that look of mortal pain on her face when he had spoken those cruel words—the last he was ever to say to her, the last look he was to carry away. memini et permaneo! and had she remembered, when in the same room she had faced that scene of violence which was but the prelude to the other, the final, the unspeakable, outside the prison door?

it was more than clear to him now what had reawakened de brencourt’s enmity; it was that visit to mirabel where she had lived. that he himself in the past had known nothing of his wife’s acquaintance with the comte was but natural, seeing how their lives, even before their final separation, had drifted asunder, and it was the fact that de brencourt should have constituted himself her defender against him, her husband, which had proved so intolerable. his wife’s memory championed against him by a casual admirer! for the vulgar question as to what valentine’s relations with the comte de brencourt might possibly have been had no power over him. it needed not the enshrinement of death to set her reputation above any suspicion of unfaithfulness. it had stood there in life, something of a marvel among so many which were otherwise. he had not that, at least, to rack him.

now, judging de brencourt by the standard common to gentlemen, since they had been out together and blood had flowed, he expected a surcease of this bitter hostility. absurd as it might be, the fact that he, the injured party, had a bullet in his arm signified, by the code, that his honour was satisfied. since gaston de trélan had been reared in that code, it did not seem absurd to him—though damnably inconvenient and painful. yet, though de brencourt had shared with him that sacrament of expiation, and had taken his hand after it, his superior was beginning to see that he, at least, had undertaken by the dolmen more than he could carry out. de brencourt’s conduct had been too deliberate. they would not be able to work together to any profit. he would be obliged, after all, to ask him to resign. for a few days, however, in order to disarm suspicions on the part of his staff, they would have to go on as before. then he would appoint du ménars in the comte’s place. it would be best; for now he must concentrate all his energies on distributing the arms which the treasure would shortly procure from england, where, as already arranged, the government would buy the gold as it stood, by weight.

yes, at last he had the means in his power to make his difficult task a success. he would, moreover, have had the satisfaction of having provided these himself. it meant a great deal to him—more than he had once thought anything in life could mean. and lying there, more than a little feverish, he began to be busy with plans and schemes. undoubtedly, when the time was fully ripe, as it nearly was, this great uprising of the west would be no petty insurrection. it might change the destinies of france. and he would have no small part in that consummation—he who had wasted all his opportunities, as valentine had told him at the last, and only too truly. yet he could not lay any achievement, past or future, any expiation, before her now. she was gone where she could hear neither of italy nor finistère.

gaston de trélan turned restlessly in the bed. his arm was on fire; he was already between sleep and fever, and, as sometimes happened still, the desperate wound he had taken in his side two and a half years ago, though fully healed, awoke to pain once more. and perhaps because of the ache of the one and the fever of the other, he suddenly saw, as a detached spectator might see in a great picture, the heights and vineyards of rivoli, the lofty plateau which the french had so victoriously retained, the snowy slopes of monte baldo above it, below, the zigzag path from the valley choked with a horrible débris of the slain men and horses and the cannon of reuss’s pounded column—and under monte baldo, himself, among the dead and dying of his own corps, sacrificed in an impossible enterprise, lying as he had fallen in beating off the charge of junot’s cavalry, the whole side of his white austrian uniform one great stain of blood. he saw the picture in this curious way for a moment, with the sun going down red behind the mountains of garda—the next, physical memory caught him up, and he was back in that still conscious body of his, lying there hour after hour in the cold, defeated and forgotten. the stars came out in the january night; down below in the gorge roared the adige, swollen with the winter rains; he could hear from the smirched and trampled snow a few groans, a prayer or two; he was not sure that he was not groaning himself. . . . and he remembered the three days of that toilsome march round monte baldo on which he had been despatched in order to take joubert in the rear—a project ill-conceived and ill-timed, as he was well aware—his breaking in consequence with his five battalions on the doubly-reinforced foe when the battle was already lost, the hopeless conflict against the whole weight of the french army, with its inevitable close—surrender. but he had not surrendered. . . . the cold grew numbing; was this sleep, or death . . .

finistère’s leader came out of this half coma of reminiscence with a start, and realised where he was, how far removed in time and space from the great austrian disaster. he supposed that he was a trifle light-headed, for he had really felt that the next thing would be the arrival of those dim, frosty-breathed forms with lanterns, and schnitterl’s voice, and he would be lifted to a stretcher and to a resumption of that life he thought he had done with at last. josef had often told him how he had begged to be left there. but no . . . et permaneo.

after all, he thought now, staring at the moving reflection of the candle on the ceiling, perhaps it was as well that he had not died there in the snow. there was a chance to-day of something better than mere personal heroism. although nothing, nothing could undo the past nor give him back the dead, yet, if ever they met beyond the grave, he might have some guerdon to lay there at her feet—some tiny sprig of laurel that he could point to and say, “valentine, i was not wholly what you thought me. . . .”

and for a moment he fancied that he saw her, shadowy and bejewelled, by the bed.