(1) Roland had come. He stood in the ‘nursery’ with an overjoyed friend holding him firmly by either arm.
“But why,” he was now demanding feverishly, “why cannot I see M. le Marquis at once, and get it over?”
For if his sincere penitence had caused his grandfather to dismiss him in the end with a sort of blessing—a remark that he was, if crazy and disobedient, at least no milksop—the youth knew that there was a still more merited penance to be gone through before he could expect a blessing here. Part indeed of that penance, and perhaps the worst part, he had already been undergoing at Kerlidec—the ashamed realisation of the damage his own wilfulness had caused to his hero’s reputation, in the eyes, too, of one who was always so inexplicably hostile to M. de Kersaint.
“Why?” echoed Artamène. “Because, four nights ago, our revered leader met with an accident in the forest. (Roland gave an exclamation.) The accident took the form of a Blue, who shot him in the arm.”
“But he’s all right,” interpolated the kindhearted Lucien. “They took out the bullet next morning. The Abbé is very strict, however.”
“—And M. de Brencourt shot the Blue,” continued Artamène, “shot him so dead that he was, apparently, blown completely off this planet.”
“You forget,” Lucien reminded him, “that the Comte distinctly stated that he got away.”
“What, after he was dead?” asked Roland.
They looked at him; they drew closer, very close.
“Bend your head, my paladin,” commanded Artamène. And, almost glueing his lips to the attentive ear, he whispered into it, “The question is, whether he ever lived, that Blue!”
“Oh!” exclaimed the Vicomte de Céligny, drawing back.
“Oh, and likewise Ah, and many other vocables!” agreed M. de la Vergne, his eyes bright.
“But that means. . .”
Lucien put a finger on his lip. “We don’t discuss it, Roland. We don’t—ahem—allow our minds to dwell on it. But——”
“?‘Au clair de la lune,’?” hummed the Chevalier de la Vergne under his breath. “Two gentlemen, seized with a sudden desire for a walk at half past ten at night. I was on duty that evening, and let them out. Also, I met them returning—in perfect amity, I must confess; most correct. You see, M. le Comte had been so obliging as to bandage the wound which he——”
“Don’t go on, Artamène!” cried Lucien warningly. “Remember that we are here in the region of hypothesis only.”
“Listen to our student. ‘The wound which he so signally avenged,’ was what I was going to say, mon cher. Now, is that statement in the region of hypothesis or of fact? If we knew that, we should know all!”
“But, merciful Heavens, why should they——” began Roland, in tones of horrified amazement.
“My good Roland,” replied Artamène, “though most things are in time revealed to enquiring intelligences, such as M. du Boisfossé’s and mine, the reason for that promenade under the goddess of the night has not yet been disclosed. The infernally bad temper in which M. de Bren—— Chut! here’s the Abbé, come to summon you to the scaffold.”
But that was not exactly M. Chassin’s errand. He had come to say that M. de Kersaint desired Roland to sup with them and to relate his adventures. And if the prodigal should have a little private interview with him afterwards he, the priest, did not fancy that it would be very terrible.
“I expect you have been informed of his mishap,” concluded M. Chassin, glancing at the other young men, neither of whom, by a singular coincidence, met his eye. “Thank God it was not worse.—Now mind you tell him, my child, all about Mirabel—especially about the concierge there.”
(2)
So Roland supped with the gods, as Artamène and Lucien had put it. The invitation, with its suggestion of pardon for the past, had pleased and flattered him; the banquet itself he found at first a little embarrassing. To begin with, he had uneasy anticipations of the interview afterwards; and then he found the sight of the Marquis with his arm in a sling oddly shocking, after the revelations made to him downstairs. That support was as inconspicuous as possible, being of black silk; still, there was the leader of Finistère, at the head of the table, unable to use his right hand; and at the other end sat the man who was . . . perhaps . . . responsible for his condition. The priest was placed opposite Roland, and Josef Schnitterl, M. de Kersaint’s bodyservant, waited upon them all; but he was little in the room.
Now if Roland, who possessed only conjectures, felt embarrassed, the little aum?nier, dowered though he was with an appearance of placidity and a good appetite, had arrived at the point where he could scarcely bear to see M. de Brencourt in the same room with his foster-brother—much less because of what had passed at the Moulin-aux-Fées than because of the deadly wrong the Comte was doing him now. And, as a matter of fact the Marquis and his chief of staff did not seem to be seeking each other’s society these last few days, though when they were together their relations were of such a successful correctness that speculation downstairs—except with MM. du Boisfossé and de la Vergne—was beginning to languish. No one could have guessed that the priest was thinking, as he looked at the handsome and engaging young face opposite him, “If only Roland knew of her identity!” and that he was preoccupied every hour of the day with the question, “Will she come?” or was on tenterhooks at every communication the Marquis received—for it might be from her.
When Roland’s first constraint was over, and the meal had proceeded a little way, the Marquis enjoined the young man to give a most particular account of all his doings. Roland assumed the air of obeying to the full, though as a matter of fact he contrived to make his narrative begin with his arrival in Paris. But this the Marquis would not have.
“You can only earn my full pardon, Roland,” he said, looking at him quizzically, “by an equally full confession of your sins—and by revealing the names of all your accomplices!”
The Comte and the Abbé both exclaimed at this. “No gentleman could consent to receive his pardon on such terms,” declared the former.
“It is true,” admitted the inquisitor, “that I know Roland’s partners in guilt already. The one I have already dealt with; the other, I am afraid, lies outside my jurisdiction.”
“Ah, there was another, was there?” asked the Abbé, looking amusedly across at poor Roland, who, blushing, was alternately studying the tablecloth and sending appealing glances at his leader. “I know of one. Who was the other? Not our staid Lucien, surely?”
“No,” replied M. de Kersaint, smiling, “not Lucien. I have strong reasons to suspect another member of Artamène’s family, no less daring than himself, and, presumably, even more inspiring.—But enough that I know the name of this . . . person.—Go on, Roland; after all we will dispense with the meetings of the conspirators at La Vergne. Continue from your leaving that nest of plotters.”
He was in better spirits than he had been for days; and how should Roland guess with what pleasure he was looking forward to an interview after supper where, after all, he should let the penitent off rather easily? Thankfully escaping from the dangerous neighbourhood of Mlle de la Vergne the young man carried on his narrative up to his falling unconscious at the foot of the statue of Mercury in the park of Mirabel.
M. de Kersaint leant back in his chair. “We now come, I think, to the really romantic part of the story, do we not? Enter Mme Vidal, I believe.”
As Roland embarked on the entry of Mme Vidal into his recital the Abbé and M. de Brencourt became very silent. (But Roland noticed nothing; his audience was M. de Kersaint.)
Almost immediately, however, the latter interrupted him. “What was she like to look at, this good angel?” he enquired, laying down his fork. “She was not young, that I have gathered.”
Roland was rather at a loss. “I am afraid I am not very good at description, sir. But M. le Comte or M. l’Abbé”—he turned towards them—“surely you have heard all about her appearance from them.”
“No, indeed I have not,” replied the Marquis. “Rather remarkably, they neither of them seem able to describe her.”
“Let us have your attempt, then, Roland,” said the Abbé. A vista of blest possibilities was opening out before him. The same thing was happening to the Comte de Brencourt . . . only the possibilities were not blest.
Roland tried, but possibly through the hostile influence of the gentleman at the bottom of the table he failed to achieve anything recognisable.
“?‘Tall, fair hair going grey, blue-grey eyes’—that does not advance us much,” observed M. de Kersaint with truth. “It is like the passport descriptions, ‘bouche moyenne,’ and the rest. Never mind Mme Vidal’s appearance, then, Roland. But since you of the three had the most intimate acquaintance with her, tell us, at least, what impression her personality made on you. For though M. le Comte does not seem to find the presence at Mirabel of a concierge with Royalist sympathies extraordinary, I must say that I do.”
“I said, Marquis, if I remember,” interposed M. de Brencourt rather hoarsely, “that I thought her sympathies need not have been so entirely Royalist as you assume. She was a woman, M. de Céligny an interesting young man, helpless and wounded . . . que sais-je? It was enough to appeal to any woman’s heart.”
Roland, embarrassed at hearing himself described in these terms, and in such an unpleasant voice, broke in,
“Oh but, indeed, Monsieur le Comte, she had Royalist sympathies. At least she was the widow of a poor Royalist gentleman . . . for of course, Messieurs, you saw at once that she was a lady. Indeed, I could not quite understand why she accepted the post, for she certainly seemed out of place in it. Didn’t you think so, Messieurs?”
“I did, certainly,” said the Abbé quietly. The vista was opening out into a regular Heaven. The Comte was understood to say that he had hardly seen her.
“It certainly does seem extraordinary,” mused the Marquis, leaning his head on his hand, his eyes fixed on Roland.
“If you had seen her, sir, you would have thought so still more,” said Roland with eagerness. “She had a carriage, always, and a way of speaking when she forgot herself—what I mean to say is, that if it hadn’t been so patently absurd to think so, one might even have taken her for a grande dame.”
“And why,” asked the Abbé softly, “would it be so patently absurd to have taken her for one? Stranger things have happened in the topsy-turveydom of to-day. I have heard of Chevaliers of St. Louis working as stevedores at a German port, and we all know how many émigr&............