So it was Roland, now openly betrothed to Marthe, who came to La Vergne a week later, bringing Gaston’s letter announcing that the die was cast, and it was Roland who told Valentine more fully of the great gathering of Royalist chiefs at La Jonchère, surrounded by almost inaccessible forest, and guarded by more than a thousand peasants. The young man, though not himself admitted to the conferences, had seen some of the leaders, Chatillon and Bourmont and La Prévalaye and Sol de Grisolles, and d’Autichamp the Vendean, and Georges Cadoudal whom he had missed at Hennebont. Their three days of deliberation had resulted in a decision for a general levy of arms in the West. The date fixed was the fifteenth of October. “Not very long to wait, Madame!” said Hermes enthusiastically. No, for Gaston’s wife the time was all too short till the clash of arms,—but all too long till his promised visit. For in his letter he had said that before the hour of action broke he should, please God, come and show her all that was in his heart for her. And Valentine looked at the words every day, as September, full of rumours, ripened towards October.
In the first week in October came the news that fighting had already begun in Northern Brittany, and with success, for the Chevalier de la Nougarède, “Achille le brun,” had hardly got back from La Jonchère than he raised the standard, and beat, at Argentré, the Republican general Schildt who had come out of Rennes to attack him. And even before that d’Andigné, the Comte de Chatillon’s very competent chief of staff, had inflicted a severe little defeat at Noyant on eight hundred of the old, tried soldiers who had formed part of the garrison of Milan.
On the other hand there was bad news from Holland, where Brune had defeated the allied Anglo-Russian forces of the Texel expedition on September 19; and worse from Switzerland, where, six days later, Masséna inflicted such a severe defeat on Korsakoff at Zurich that Suwaroff, coming from Italy to join his countryman, had difficulty in saving his own army. Valentine was uneasy at these tidings of the Republic’s triumph on a large scale, but neither she nor the other two women fully comprehended how they isolated the Royalists of the West. And though she wondered why the forty-five thousand English and Russians could not have been landed directly on the soil of France, in Brittany or Vendée, instead of in Holland, she could not foresee that a little later Brune’s whole army, set free by the capitulation of Alkmaar, would be employed against the Chouans. She worked at the last golden fleur-de-lys on Gaston’s scarf, and helped Mme de la Vergne and Marthe in their household employments and in the orchard, for there were fewer men than ever, Séraphin and two of the farm boys having gone to join the Lilies.
And once or twice, in that St. Luke’s summer come before its time, she found her steps turning towards the sea. She went there twice with Marthe. She would have liked to go there again with Gaston, but she knew that desire unlikely of fulfilment. And the sea was so changed—calm with an unearthly calm; shining with a pure, still radiance, and warded by great slow-moving fleets of cloud galleons like mother-of-pearl, that were reflected, far-gleaming, in the water over which they sailed. Yes, this October sea was as far removed from a tranquil blue sea of summer as from that beautiful September sea, where there had been wind and rainbow shadows—and the yellow poppy, which bloomed no longer. There shone instead the golden leaves of the poplars at La Vergne, incredibly yellow against the distant sea, on the one or two days that the sea had colour. But mostly it was of that indescribable hue of nacre.
And when would Gaston come?
When he did come Valentine would have given everything in the world that he had not.
Old Colette, the cook, who had gone to the tiny village for her marketing, came back on one of these still mornings rather flustered, reporting that there were soldiers there. It was a most startling as well as a most unpleasant novelty. In none of the previous risings had Blues ever been seen at La Vergne. The ancient woman at first reported the invaders to be about a hundred; later she came down to a dozen.
But half that number could terrorise the place. And why were they there? The three ladies at the chateau had nothing to hide—as yet, nothing, for themselves, to fear; nevertheless they were in a fever. If word could only be sent to the “Marquis de Kersaint” in case he were on his road! But word could not be sent. Valentine comforted herself and them by the assurance that he would not come without an escort, and would therefore have nothing to fear from a handful of Blues. He would never come alone.
But that was precisely what her husband did, riding in quietly to the stable-yard at dusk of that October day, and, finding no one there, putting up his horse with his own hands. And Marthe, hearing unwonted sounds, ran out from the kitchen and found him in the act, with Zéphyr very much at home, and pulling down hay from his old rack.
“O, Monsieur le Duc! Monsieur le Duc!” she cried.
“Mademoiselle,” said Gaston, laughing, “I do indeed apologise for making free of your provender without permission. May I plead that it is for your own horse?”
She darted at him while Zéphyr whinnied for recognition. “Why did you choose to-day to come, Monsieur de Trélan? We have been so praying that you would not. Do not say that you are alone, unescorted! For . . . did you not know it? . . . there are soldiers in the village!”
There was a moment’s silence. “No, I did not know it,” said the Duc quietly. “Had I known, I should not have come alone. But I did not enter the village, so they will not have seen me.” He paused, passing his hand once or twice over Zéphyr’s neck, and said in a voice which, despite himself, revealed how intensely he disliked the idea, “I do not wish to involve you in unpleasantness. Perhaps the simplest thing would be to ride away again at once.”
Marthe shook her head. Now that he was here, risk or no risk, he must see his wife. Perhaps indeed there was greater risk in going back.
“You must stay,” she said. “And we have taken certain precautions. Come to the house, Monsieur le Duc, and I will show you, even before you see Mme de Trélan.”
“And Zéphyr—if they should search? He becomes your horse once more, I suppose? But my saddle, Mademoiselle, what of that? Unless you can persuade them that you always use a man’s!”
“Here is mine quite near,” she said, pointing to it, “and it fits him, of course. Yours—it has holsters, too!—we must hide in the loft.” They hid it, and in a few minutes she was showing M. de Trélan the old hiding-place in the dining-room. “It is very ingenious, the way one gets there,” she added.
It was very ingenious. Against the painted panels stood a massive sideboard which four men could scarcely have stirred from its place. But when Marthe touched a spring a section of it turned upon itself and gave access to a tiny room behind, whose door formed part of the panelling.
“A very charming little retreat,” observed the Duc, smiling. “But I hope that you do not expect me to deprive myself of your society, Mademoiselle, by spending all my time in there?”
“We should be the last to wish to banish you, Monsieur. But there it is ready, if you—get tired of us! Yet I think you have run all the risk you are likely to run . . . unless they know.”
“That, I think, is impossible,” said Gaston. And then Valentine, attracted by voices, entered. Marthe slipped out with the speed of a swallow.
“O my darling, my darling, why have you come?” was her first word.
“Ma foi,” returned her husband gaily, as he kissed her, “apparently to be put aside, like the bread, in that sort of garde-manger there—at least that is the fate Mlle Marthe designs for me. It is not my intention, however.”
“Gaston, you should not have come!” she repeated.
“Chère amie, what a greeting. Shall I go again?”
“No, no!” She clung to his arm. “You did not know, of course!”
“No,” he said more gravely, “I did not know. It would not have been right for me to come if I had known.” Then he looked at her and said with deliberation, “I am only thankful that I did not know!”
They had all of them that in the blood which responds to the stimulus of danger, and supper, in the room whence the hiding-place was so easily accessible, was a cheerful meal. During its course news arrived that the soldiers had left the village altogether. So they went with light hearts into the salon, and there the leader of Finistère told the three ladies what in a few days they would divine for themselves, the outline of the main plan of campaign, and why what seemed the hazardous plan of attacking large towns instead of small was the better. For in the small towns, violently anti-royalist as they were............