(1) About the time that the contents of Lucien’s pot were becoming only a tough memory, the Marquis de Kersaint was standing, with his hands behind his back, looking out through the casement of the small room on the upper floor of the Clos-aux-Grives which was set apart for his sole use, and out of which led a still smaller bedroom. Under his gaze was the farmyard, still stocked with chickens and pigs, and then, almost at once, came the outposts of the great forest which stretched for many miles to the south-west, and whose friendly presence had been one of his reasons for his choice of headquarters. From the window of the inner room could be seen also the low bare contours of the lande, studded with menhirs.
M. de Kersaint, however, was not occupied with the view. He was thinking about the singularly unsatisfactory interview which he had just had with his returned chief of staff. For M. de Brencourt would hardly answer any questions about his doings, seemed to know almost nothing of the unusual concierge at Mirabel (of whom, and of whose services to Roland M. de Kersaint had heard from the Abbé) and, when taxed with having written from the Temple, as he had, a letter dissuading his leader from sending another emissary after the treasure, could only reply that he supposed, at his age, captivity was extinguishing to the sense of adventure. And, when closer pressed as to why he had stated in so many words that the gold was impossible to get at and the place closely guarded, whereas the Abbé had just written exactly the opposite, he had made no answer at all. Decidedly, in view of the effect which Mirabel had had on him, it would have been better not to have sent him at all.
The Marquis turned at last from the window. He had discarded the peasant’s dress now-a-days, and wore a dark-green uniform with black facings, with the little red and white ribbon of the Order of Maria Theresa on the breast, and a white scarf round the waist. Out of a small travelling safe near the window he took some letters, and re-read Roland de Céligny’s ashamed appeal with something between a smile and a frown. After that, obeying the instinct which so often pushes a man to do what hurts him, he re-read also the three biting epistles from M. de Carné which Roland’s action had brought upon him. The first was thus conceived:
“Monsieur le ‘Marquis,’
I am most reluctant to enter into a correspondence with you, but as I am confined to my bed with an attack of gout, I cannot carry out my first intention of coming in person to see you. Six days have now passed since you disbanded your cohort of young men, yet Roland has not been sent back to me according to the promise on which I was weak enough to rely. Where is the boy?”
This was the first intimation which the Marquis had received that Roland was missing. Alarmed and angry, he wrote to the old man in that sense, but his disclaimer did not prevent his meanwhile receiving a second missive, now in his hand. “I find by a letter which has just reached me from my grandson, that instead of sending him back to me, you have despatched him on a secret and doubtless dangerous mission to Paris, for that he can really have gone of his own initiative, as he says, I refuse to believe. I regret that my present infirmity, by making it impossible for me to offer you satisfaction, renders it impossible also for me to tell you what I think of your conduct—though, to be frank, that conduct does not surprise me.”
M. de Kersaint, greatly roused, had answered that for his part he regretted his respect for the Baron’s grey hairs should prevent his replying in the strain to which he was tempted, stating, however, that he did not send Roland to Paris, that on the contrary he had forbidden him to go, that he had only that day heard of his disobedience, and that he was at once instituting enquiries after him in the capital. His anxiety and his displeasure, he added, were not less than M. de Carné’s own.
To which the old man had replied with brevity and effect:
“I have only to say that, to my bitter grief, I see at last in Roland the dawn of those qualities whose appearance I have always so much dreaded. He is indeed his father’s son.”
Even now the reader flushed as his eyes met this thrust, and he had been far angrier when he first received it—angry with himself too for having protected his own honour by revealing the boy’s disobedience. He might as well have taken the blame on his own shoulders, since the old man had contrived after all to put the responsibility there—on the score of that paternity which, during that visit to Kerlidec last February, M. de Carné had at length been obliged to acknowledge. . . .
Had it not been for the existence of Roland himself that brief amour with Laure de Céligny, more than twenty years ago, would have seemed now as unreal as a dream. It had come to pass so suddenly, been over so soon. Down there at Saint-Chamans, in the south of olives and nightingales and orange blossom (the south to which, for some reason, his wife so unwillingly and so seldom accompanied him) passion flared up quickly. Yet of the Vicomtesse Laure alone, among the many women who had loved him and the few he had loved, Gaston de Trélan had a particularly gentle memory. She had seemed to him like a dove in a cypress-tree.
The episode ended. That it had ever been was not discovered till Laure’s sudden death, coming to light then only through the single letter her lover had written her, which (of course) she had kept. M. de Céligny wrote to him. The Duc de Trélan posted down from Paris to the olives and the nightingales and offered him satisfaction. Very greatly to his surprise it was refused. The Vicomte de Céligny—the cypress-tree—intimated that, though he had proof enough that M. de Trélan had been his wife’s lover, he had none that Roland (now two years old) was not his own son. He should consider him his own, and a duel, whatever its result, could only bring disrepute on the name of his dead wife. Roland should succeed to his estates, and the Duc had no claim on him whatever. A strange interview.
So it was, and for three years the Duc heard nothing more, and never visited his possessions in the south. Then he learnt, incidentally, that the child had been sent to his grandfather in Brittany to be brought up. The move, after de Céligny’s declaration, puzzled him extremely, and in the end he went to Kerlidec to investigate the matter. The fiery temper of the Baron de Carné, who had worshipped his dead daughter, led to the meeting which his son-in-law had declined, and the fact that Gaston de Trélan, a singularly fine swordsman, and a much younger man than himself (being then about six-and-thirty) disarmed him with ease, only increased M. de Carné’s bitter resentment against him as the seducer—so he termed him—of his Laure. No more than his son-in-law would he acknowledge the Duc’s claim on the child, and forbade him, if he had any regard for Laure’s memory, to see the boy again.
But M. de Trélan had seen the five-year-old Roland at that very visit, and the sight was enough to explain why M. de Céligny had sent him away. At that age more than later, his resemblance to his real father was unmistakable; apparently M. de Céligny had not been able to bear this speaking witness to his wife’s frailty, though it seemed that he had not moved from his intention of acknowledging him as his heir. To M. de Carné the beautiful boy was merely the child of his beloved Laure. . . . The Duc said that he would undertake not to see him again during his supposed father’s lifetime; further than that he would not go. He had kept his word.
But now he could claim, had claimed, if not the full rights of a father—for he had promised not to reveal his relationship till Roland was of age—at least some control over his movements. It was doubly unfortunate then, that Roland had acted as he had about Mirabel. Was it true that he had handed down to the boy his own bad qualities—left conveniently unnamed in that stinging remark of M. de Carné’s? At any rate, he thought now with a bitter smile, “I have not yet seen traces in the sweet-tempered Roland of being his grandfather’s grandson.” And, lighting a candle, he burnt the Baron’s three letters to ashes.
But there was a fourth—that which had come with Roland’s—and it was couched in a milder vein. Roland had evidently succeeded in convincing his grandfather that the Marquis de Kersaint was far indeed from having had a hand in his escapade, and the Baron had consequently penned a rather stiff apology for his former insinuations, and, in addition, an obviously reluctant request for Roland’s recall to the Royalist colours, since he was, he confessed, eating his heart out at Kerlidec. M. de Kersaint had thereupon recalled the culprit.
So, in a week now, he might expect Roland in person. He must do his best to show him just the amount of severity that he would have done to Lucien or Artamène, no less and no more. It would not be easy. The boy’s misdemeanour sprang after all from no worse fault than want of thought, and its very foolhardiness went far to redeem it. Suppose he had paid for it with his life!
And as he locked the safe, the Marquis said to himself, “How am I ever going to repay that woman for saving the child?”
(2)
M. le Général Marquis de Kersaint and M. le Comte de Brencourt supped together that evening. The latter was no longer a treasure-hunter; he was M. de Kersaint’s second-in-command, and he had been out of touch with his leader and the organisation of Finistère for some weeks. He had to be initiated into the present state of Royalist affairs in the department, and there were also a quantity of other matters to discuss: the proposed Anglo-Russian landing at the Texel, and how it would affect the West, how much weight Pichegru’s name would carry when he appeared as a Royalist, and as ever, the difficulties created by the vacillating conduct of the Comte d’Artois’ advisers.
And over their meal they did discuss these, but, as they were neither of them men to waste words on a situation, they got through pretty quickly, and towards the end of the repast the Comte was able to gratify the curio............