(1) Versailles, Dreux, Alen?on, Rennes, Pontivy—like beads on a chaplet they had slid past Valentine de Trélan, like locks on a smooth river or canal, opened for her by that bit of paper in Barras’ handwriting. She was herself amazed by the ease of her journey, that journey which was really a flight, hardly realising how much things were changed from the days, for instance, of the Terror, and how many people travelled comfortably now-a-days and contrived to elude showing their passports if they were out of date. And she had in her possession something much more potent than a mere passport. Whether she were taken for a political power, or for one of the many ladies in whom the raffish Director was interested—or for a combination of both, like Mme Tallien—Valentine neither knew nor cared; at any rate whenever she produced the laissez passer she was shown deference—till she got into the country districts of that land of the leal, farther Brittany. Here the municipalities indeed were Republican, but at one or two small places where she had to halt Barras’ signature commanded anything but reverence, though it had to be obeyed. Twice she distinctly heard the word “spy” whispered of her.
But once she had passed Sca?r and was in full Finistère it was better, for here she could use the private directions which the Abbé had given her. And it was by the employment of these that she finally arrived, without mishap, at the Ferme des Vieilles, to which the Abbé had directed her.
The little old farmhouse by the roadside looked at her cunningly and rather inhospitably, she thought, from its tiny peering windows. Beyond it was a wide stretch of moorland with heather, and, in one place, long strange rows of upright stones. She descended from the farmer’s hooded cart by which she had replaced the diligence at her last stopping-place and knocked at the open half-door. Inside, a beautiful, grave and dirty little girl of six or so, dressed in all respects like a grown woman of the sixteenth century, stuck a finger in her mouth and stared at her.
“Mignonne,” said Valentine, stooping over the half-door “Ema ar bleun er balan—the broom is in flower.”
“Tremenet er ar goanv—the winter is past,” responded an old woman, coming into view. “Enter, Madame!”
Half an hour later Valentine was being served with a rough meal, the children standing round, awed, and she had learnt all there was to know; how the Marquis de Kersaint and practically all the officers from the headquarters, even the aum?nier, were gone to the sea to fetch a convoy of arms, and that to interview the man whom she had come so far to meet she must wait, probably, till the day after to-morrow. Meanwhile Mère Salaun offered her hospitality, premising (and justly) that it was not fit for a lady from Paris.
And indeed Mme de Trélan slept but ill that night in the lit clos put at her disposal, though she had known in prison much less comfortable sleeping-places. But it was not only the unwonted experience of passing the night in a sort of hutch which kept her wakeful, it was partly the dread lest M. de Kersaint should never return from this expedition—for she had been told there would be fighting.
No news next morning, but a rumour that there had been a fierce encounter between the Chouans and the Blues. Valentine was restless. She would have liked to go to the Clos-aux-Grives, but thought it would be unfitting; and it was besides unnecessary, since Mère Salaun had instituted the ten-year-old Yvot as a courier.
So she walked on the lande, where the wind blew over the wide spaces, and tried to be patient.
“What are those great avenues of stones that I saw in the distance this morning?” she asked at the mid-day meal. “There seem to be miles of them.”
“Those, Madame,” said her hostess, pouring out the milk for the children, “are Les Vieilles, the Old Ones, the Old Women. Some call them Les Veilleuses, the Watchers.”
“Your farm is, then, named after them?” commented Mme de Trélan.
“Unfortunately,” replied Mère Salaun, compressing her wrinkled lips. And seeing Valentine’s look of enquiry, she went on, “They are not . . . not benevolent, Les Vieilles. Do not go among them much, Madame, especially after sundown, if you want to keep the wish of your heart. For if they can they will take it from you.”
What a strange idea! “Who set them up?” asked the Duchesse.
Mère Salaun shook her head. “We do not know. Fetch Madame’s crêpe from the hearth, Corentine.”
Little Yvot fidgeted. “But, Madame,” he broke in, in his shrill voice, “nobody set them up. A long while ago they were a queen’s ladies, and a magician turned them into stones. And on one night in the year, on Midsummer Eve, they leave their places one by one and go to the pool to drink—because you see, Madame, they were alive once, and they are still thirsty. Some people think they eat, too, and put food for them. And as they go in turn to drink you can see the gold underneath, and the rich ornaments, in the place they have left!”
“And do people go on that night to take it?” asked Mme de Trélan as he paused for breath.
Yvot’s eyes grew bigger and his tanned little face paled, while his grimy hand made a rapid sign of the cross over himself. “God forbid! There was a man once—he went to get the gold—folks begged him not to. He never came back!”
“Well, what happened to him?” asked Valentine, interested less in the tale than in the narrator—and somewhat appalled at the gigantic pancake, nearly a quarter of an inch in thickness, which had appeared before her.
“The menhir came back from the pond and caught him! He is underneath it to-day—the one they call La Bossue, the Hunchback. You can hear him groaning and praying to be let out sometimes. He has been there for seventy years!”
At this climax one of the smaller children burst into tears, and Yvot was angrily commanded by his mother to get on with his dinner. But she, too, signed herself.
Nevertheless Valentine found herself among the stone avenues that evening. No news had come yet, but the Allée was at such a short distance from the farm that if it came she could easily be informed.
So she walked among the menhirs, Les Vieilles, Les Veilleuses, and the menhirs watched her as she went, and she knew it. They were yellow with lichen, rust-red with it, grey with it; the heather was about their deep roots, older than the oldest trees. Ancient, terrible, venerable, four ranks of them, they marched for ever up the rise and over it towards some invisible goal. Valentine de Trélan with her forty-five years felt very young, very ignorant beside them.
They had been here—planted by whom, and why?—long, long before the overturned order of yesterday; long before its pillars had been laid, long before Clovis and Charlemagne; they would still be here when the name of the last King of France was forgotten. As she stood among them she knew that she was in the oldest place of this old land of Armorica. They were the more living in semblance, the more individual, these grey shapes, because their slope was not alike, any more than their forms. Some leant this way, some that; some were grotesque, some more than grotesque; yet whatever were the purpose that possessed them, it possessed them even terribly. Valentine wondered which was the “hunchback” of the evil legend . . . She was afraid of them; and yet they fascinated her.
And as she walked between their ranks she wondered how much longer she would have to wait before she saw the Marquis de Kersaint. How calmly, at the Ferme des Vieilles, they took this fighting—all the men away with M. le Marquis as a matter of course. Was it true, she had asked, that Cadoudal in the Morbihan had ordered all his young men not to marry for the present? Quite true. And they were not marrying? No. What a people to lead, and what a leader!
What should she do after she had talked with the Marquis? It depended on what he told her. In any case she was come to the beginning of a new chapter in what was left to her of the book of her life. Would Gaston’s name be on those pages—and in what characters would it be written?
It had been a grey day, austere, not unbeautiful. Now, at the approach of sunset, it was warming into a certain splendour. The shadows of the watchers began to slant across the avenue like scores of pointing fingers, and at the other end the pine trees on the rise grew darker against what would soon be a battlemented glory of cloud. And after sundown it was sinister here, they said; Valentine could believe it, but the watchers had some spell to make one linger. . . .
It was as she tur............