(1) When the laitière came at half-past six that morning she was sorry to hear that Mme Vidal was indisposed, but not ill-pleased to sell her, in consequence, a double portion of milk. So indisposed indeed was the concierge that she requested Toinon, when she returned to the village, to get conveyed to Paris a note to her niece Mme Tessier, asking the latter to make a few purchases and to visit her.
The sympathetic Toinon gone, Mme de Trélan went back to her patient. Long before this he had come to himself for the second time, and she had fed him with the milk she had reserved for her morning coffee, in a spoon. He took it drowsily, like a child, and dropped off to sleep again.
She thought him asleep now when she came in, and went about noiselessly putting the dark little bedroom to rights, preoccupied all the time with one thought, this boy’s safety. The thought divided itself into two parts; how to secure proper attention for his wound, and how to get the boy himself away without discovery. Her unpractised investigation of his hurt had already led her to suppose that it was a glancing flesh wound off the ribs, probably not dangerous, save from the amount of blood he seemed to have lost. Why he had risked coming by it she had not even a guess.
But though she thought him asleep she saw, after a minute or two, as she passed by the bed, that his eyes were open and that he was looking at her. He was very flushed.
“Is there anything you want, mon enfant?” she asked, stopping.
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. . . . You ought to give me up.”
“If we all did what we ought to do!” exclaimed Valentine lightly, and stood looking down at him, convinced now that that momentary likeness was a trick of the dawn, some enchantment of the garden, anything but fact.
She felt that to ensure silence she ought to leave him; unused as she was to caring for an injured man she was certain that he ought not to talk. In romances the wounded hero was always adjured not to do so, and the boy looked feverish. But not to know a little more about him were to waste the chance of arranging some plan which the faithful Suzon’s arrival would bring her. So, contrary to all romantic tradition, Valentine sat down by the bed and said in a business-like way,
“Tell me, Monsieur de Céligny, as shortly as possible, what you came into the garden to do, and if you know anyone in Paris with whom it would be safe to communicate. I ask you this because I have a trusted friend coming to see me to-day, and through her something might be arranged. Your personal safety is the first thing to consider, your wound—which I believe is not serious—the second.”
“I have cousins in Paris,” said Roland. He gave their address. “I was at their house for three or four days before I came here.”
“Do they know where you are?”
“No, Madame.”
“They will be very anxious about you, then?”
“Yes,” murmured he rather shamefacedly, and sighed.
“Are they likely to track you here?”
“I don’t think so,” said the adventurer. “No, I do not believe it possible.”
“But the sentry saw you; fortunately it was too dark to distinguish your face. They are sure to search again. I think the moment has come, Monsieur de Céligny, if I am to help you further, for you to tell me a little more. You see that I am your friend, and that I am not . . . in fear of the Directory. You need not name anyone unless you wish, but I think you had better tell me for what reason you were in the park of Mirabel last night.”
“Madame,” replied Roland with emotion, “after what you have done for me I should indeed be foolish and ungrateful if I kept back anything from you. I came to Mirabel to find the hidden treasure.”
The Duchesse de Trélan stared at him. “But, my child, there is no such thing!”
From the pillow the young man’s look said as politely as possible, “How can you be sure of that, Madame la concierge?”
“I have known the chateau for many years,” said Valentine, “and I assure you. . . .” She broke off, puzzled.
“But I have seen a plan of its hiding-place,” said Roland eagerly.
“Where did you see such a thing?”
“When I was in Brittany with M. de——” some remnant of caution checked him, “—with a Chouan leader.”
“A Chouan leader had a plan of a treasure hidden in Mirabel!” exclaimed Mirabel’s mistress, strongest amazement in her tone. “What was his name—no, I will not ask you that. Did he send you here, then?”
“No, Madame,” admitted Roland, with a return of shamefacedness. “He will be very angry with me—if ever I see him again.” He gave a second or two to inward contemplation, presumably, of this anger, and went on, “The money was hidden here during the Fronde by the Duc of those days, but the paper describing its whereabouts was stolen, and came into the hands of an old lady who was dying in the next house to . . . to where we were. Our aum?nier went to see her, and she gave him the paper to convey to the Duc de Trélan, who, I believe, is in England, or somewhere of the sort. At any rate he is an émigré—as I suppose you know, Madame.”
Valentine forced herself to remain quietly sitting there. “Well?” she said, and her voice, from sheer self-restraint, sounded quite stony.
“And the aum?nier brought it in to give to M. de Kersaint, because he knew that the Marquis was a kinsman of the Duc de Trélan.”
“What name did you say?” asked Valentine, more and more amazed.
“The Marquis de Kersaint,” replied Roland. Then he stopped. “I did not mean to mention the name.”
“De Kersaint—a kinsman!” exclaimed Valentine, from whom all thoughts of encouraging prudence in the fugitive were now miles away. “I never heard the name in my life! A kinsman of——”
And now Roland was staring at her.
“Well, never mind,” said she. “We must keep to the point, which is, how to get you away, Monsieur de Céligny. You saw this . . . this extraordinary plan, then, and—since you say that you were not sent—I assume that you thought that you would like to come on your own account to hunt for the treasure. Had you any accomplices?”
“Not in Paris,” replied Roland, reddening faintly.
“And your cousins know nothing?”
“No, I merely said that I was leaving Paris for the day and might be back late. You see, Madame, I meant to have got here earlier, but it was light so long. I only had a sight of that plan for a moment,” confessed the treasure-hunter with engaging candour, “yet I remember that it looked as though there were an entrance from the garden to a passage leading under the house to the banqueting hall, I think. But I did not realise that the garden was so large.”
Again Valentine stared at him. It was making her dizzy to learn these facts—if they were facts—about her own house after all her years of acquaintance with it.
“You must be crazy, my child,” she said conclusively, “or the plan was a hoax. But to return to these cousins of yours, and how to get you restored to them. The point is whether it would be better to try to smuggle a surgeon in to you, or to smuggle you out. And what to say to them? It is not over safe to tell the exact truth in a letter. It might endanger the bearer also. Let me think.”
She put her shapely, slightly roughened hand over her eyes, and Roland gazed at it.
“Monsieur de Céligny,” she said after a moment, uncovering her eyes, “have you ever fought a duel?”
“No, Madame.”
“Should you object to having come to the park of Mirabel for that purpose last night?”
Roland took her meaning, with a little smile. “There is nothing I should like better.”
“It is the best I can devise for............