Thus it was that Roland de Céligny’s exit from Mirabel was not so speedily effected as his hostess had planned. And without Suzon Tessier it is doubtful whether it would have been effected at all. For if Mme de Trélan was cast for the romantic part in this drama of deliverance, it was Suzon who played the indispensable go-between with MM. de Céligny a?nés, she who brought in the additional and choicer provisions required for the invalid, she who supported, on cleaning-day, the fiction of Mme Vidal’s not being able to leave her room, and personally enforced, in consequence, a surprising quiet among the myrmidons of Louise. But Roland hardly realised his debt to Mme Tessier; the ardour of his gratitude glowed at the feet of Mme de Vidal—as he persisted in calling her. But on the fourth evening he was well enough to go, the two women thought; and, for his part, well enough to be sorry to go.
It had been arranged that at ten o’clock a carriage should be in waiting outside a certain little door in the park wall at the end of the lime-tree avenue known as the Allée des Soupirs—a door which the Duchesse had already investigated, and from which, when she oiled the rusty bolts, she had torn away in readiness the plastered ivy. This door was some distance down the park, and, therefore, to accustom him to the use of his legs, Valentine had caused her patient to walk several times round the room with the assistance of Suzon and herself. It was already getting dark; Suzon had gone back to Paris, and, since Mme de Trélan dared not have her patient in her living-room in case of a surprise, she had taken her armchair into her bedroom and ensconced him in it, to eat his supper before he faced the journey to the door, and herself sat down to bear him company.
And while he ate Roland talked; or, to be more accurate, when he was not talking, he ate. Propped up with pillows in his chair, bright-eyed, with a varying colour, he appeared, as he was, excited, and not the less attractive for his condition. His wound was not, Suzon said, doing very well, but he seemed free from fever, and it was too dangerous for him to stay longer. Both Valentine and he knew that. So he utilised the last remaining half-hour in converse, and not being of a suspicious nature, never considered that this woman who was saving him could quite easily betray him afterwards when she had gained from him all the information she wanted, nor even that it might be worth her while letting him slip for the sake of that information. The concierge’s extraordinary kindness and generosity had earned, besides his undying gratitude, his whole-hearted confidence. Moreover, as he told himself, however she came to her present position, it was not a position natural to her. Apart from her voice, her bearing, what concierge ever had filbert nails like that? Yes, Roland wished he were not going out of Mirabel with the prospect of never seeing its guardian again.
So he chatted unrestrainedly about the little band in Brittany. Chiefly he dwelt upon M. de Kersaint, and manifested astonishment when he learnt that his hostess did not know of the heroic part that gentleman had played in the great Austrian defeat at Rivoli two and a half years ago.
“You forget, Monsieur Roland,” observed Valentine, smiling, “that I do not live in Royalist circles. But I think I do remember hearing at the time that one of the Austrian columns was commanded by a French émigré, but I never learnt his name.”
“It was M. de Kersaint. He has the cross of Maria Theresa for it.”
“Indeed! I am afraid the Directory would give him a very different decoration if they had him in their hands.”
“They are not likely to have him there,” asserted Roland confidently. “But I remember hearing M. de Brencourt say that Masséna in particular—not to speak of General Bonaparte——”
“Whom did you say?” asked Valentine, struck.
“General Masséna. He came up during the night, you know, to Joubert’s assistance, Bonaparte being of course in supreme command——”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted the Duchesse again, less interested in the battle of Rivoli (on which this young man seemed to be an expert) than in something else. “I mean—what name—whom did you say you overheard? . . . M. de Brencourt?”
Roland nodded. “The Comte de Brencourt is M. de Kersaint’s second-in-command. He said that Masséna was furious——”
“Tell me, what is he like, this M. de Brencourt?”
Roland, surprised, described him. “Why, do you know him, Madame?”
“It cannot be the same,” said Valentine hastily. “I did not mean to interrupt you, Monsieur de Céligny. Go on, pray, with what you were telling me about M. de Kersaint and Rivoli.”
But she did not listen. Pictures were floating in her head of her stay at Spa in 1787, of her first meeting at that fashionable resort with the Comte de Brencourt, whose admiration had almost amounted to persecution, who had threatened once to shoot himself because of her coldness, and who had followed her against her bidding to her country house.
It was the same man, of course. Dimly she heard about Lucien and Artamène and the “Abbé,” of the disbanding, of greater plans for the future, and it was not for some moments that she came back entirely to her room and her attractive refugee, and found that the young man, leaning slightly forward in the big chair, was asking her a question.
“Do you not think, Madame de Vidal, that you might add to your never-to-be-forgotten kindness by telling me in your turn, something about yourself? You—pardon me—you are no concierge! You are as gently born as ............