Sure enough, some ten minutes later, there came a knocking on one of the more distant doors that gave on to the garden front. She fetched her keys, and hastening along the lengthy corridor, opened it. Outside were two National Guards, her friend Grégoire Thibault and another. Grégoire had a musket over his shoulder.
“Sorry to disturb you, citoyenne,” said he, half apologetically. “You have not seen anything of a man prowling round here, I suppose?”
“Nothing,” answered Mme de Trélan with perfect truth. “Was that what you were firing at?”
“Jacques here,” said Grégoire, “was going along the road when he saw—or thought he saw—in the distance a man climbing over the wall that goes round the park. He was off duty, so he had not his musket, and instead of going after him he came to tell me, as I was nearer than the guard house.”
“Not being quite the figure for climbing walls either, citoyenne,” put in Grégoire’s companion with reason.
“So we separated, and each went round a different side of the chateau. The light was getting bad, and the first time I fired at something moving it was comrade Jacques here. Luckily I didn’t hit him. Then a few minutes later I saw my gentleman for a second by a big bush of something, but, parbleu, he slipped round one of those heathen goddesses or whatever they are. I sent a remembrancer after him from this”—Grégoire slapped his musket—“and I am almost sure I hit him; but do you think I could find him anywhere in the garden? No!”
Valentine, who knew the extent of the garden—park, rather—so much better than he, was convinced that the time which had elapsed between the second shot and his appearance at the chateau was not a quarter long enough for a thorough search, especially in the rapidly failing light, so that the odds were the intruder, if wounded, was still there. She said as much.
“Well, he can stay there till daylight,” announced the Citizen Grégoire composedly, “and reflect on his crimes. If he isn’t there he has made off, and won’t be likely to return in a hurry. You are not nervous, are you, Madame Vidal?”
“Not the least in the world,” the Duchesse assured him. “Did you see what this man was like, or have you any idea why he should come into the garden?”
“From the way in which he slipped over that wall,” remarked Jacques, “I should say he was young.”
“I daresay,” put in Grégoire consolingly, “that it was only some inquisitive lad wanting to see inside the garden. You will be all right, Madame Vidal; he can’t possibly get into the house. If I wasn’t sure of it, parbleu, I would stay the night here.”
If Grégoire Thibault, in the days of the Terror, had been a hunter of suspects, as he gave himself out to be, his zeal had sadly suffered eclipse since that time. It was clear that he wished to minimise the seriousness of the inroad in order to get home to his bed, and for the same reason, had no intention of turning out the rest of the guard. Valentine was not in the least anxious to keep him from that haven, and so after a few reassuring words the twain departed, and Mme de Trélan was free to resume her interrupted orisons, with a conviction that some man, with purpose unknown, was lurking in the precincts of Mirabel.
The affair indeed was a strange interruption to the almost cloistral quiet of the last few weeks, into which news of the outer world came only through Suzon Tessier or Toinon the laitière, or by the unencouraged gossip of the scrubbers. For, since she never went into the hamlet, Valentine might almost have been a recluse living the contemplative life with brief intervals of the active. Sometimes, already, it seemed to her that she had never known Mirabel under conditions any different.
She did go to bed, and after a time went to sleep, but woke about midnight, and remained awake, for she found that she could not well bear the idea of a fellow-creature lying out all night in the dark and lonely park, perhaps in agony to boot, even though he were a thief or something of the kind. But it was useless looking for him before daylight. The thought that he might try to effect an entry she dismissed. At dawn she rose, dressed, and slipped out behind Mirabel.
It was three o’clock, and the first thrush was singing in that vast desert of a garden. Along the weed-infested paths went the Duchesse, and through bosquet after bosquet, tended groves no longer, but thickets so overgrown that some were almost impassable. Nettles, burdocks, thistles, briars, those raiding colonists were everywhere, waging war against the smothering advances of the unclipped ivy. But the little lake in the distance mirrored no tall pines now on its tarnished surface. Of that aisle of scent and murmurs the nearer pillars were but stumps; the farther stood lonely and condemned against the sky. Valentine did not look this morning at those distant martyrs; she kept her gaze on the ground as she made her way between the bushes or skirted the long, dripping grass of some once-shaven little lawn. Such terms and sylvan deities as still had heads looked at their former lady with cold and curious, in some cases with leering eyes. Had she been wandering there without an object she might have had leisure to taste the infinite sadness of that place, made only for pleasure and good company, or to remember, perhaps, certain passages of its light past. But she was searching for an unfortunate; and that the unfortunate, when found, might prove to be a very undesirable person indeed, that, in fact, she was disposed to picture him as such, did not greatly trouble her. The last few incredible years had given her a sympathy with the hunted.
Full though her mind was of her quest, the first indication that it was on the way to prove successful gave her something of a shock. She had come to the head of the flight of shallow marble steps that led from one little terrace to the next, when she suddenly perceived on each a small, reddish, star-shaped splash. She bent down; yes, it was blood—the trail of the pursued. On the grassgrown gravel at the foot of the steps it was more difficult to follow, but the track began again, clearer and larger than before, on a short flight that led once more upwards. On one step there was even a smear, that looked like the print of a hand, as though the wounded man had stumbled and recovered himself.
And thus, finally, in what had been known as the Bosquet de Mercure, she found the invader, fallen sideways at the foot of the bronze statue of Mercury—a young man, pale as marble and as beautiful as the god himself, and so unlike what she had expected that she stood a moment as still as he. That he was a gentleman was plain without the evidence of his clothes; and he wore, as further and indeed defiant proof, the black coat-collar which marked the aristocrat and reactionary, the collet noir which had caused so many pitched battles in the streets of Paris. One arm lay out on the gravel, crushing a little company of that innocent and joyous flower, the speedwell, which had rooted there, intruding in the garden like him, and, like him, shut-eyed. The other hand held a red ball of a handkerchief which had probably, during consciousness, been pressed against the dark patch on the left side of his grey coat.
And Valentine, her heart alight with compassion, began to stoop over her quarry . . . stopped, raised herself again, and put out a hand to the base of the statue for support. In the unconscious face at her feet she suddenly saw. . . . Whence came that resemblance? She was carried back a hundred years, to a morning in her young wifehood here at Mirabel, to an early wakening, to the thrush, just heard, like this, in the summer dawn . . . while by her side lay the husband who still summed up all her dreams, on whom she had looked down with the yet untroubled eyes of love, and whose sleeping visage had been the very counterpart of this.
But in a moment the illusion was fled, and she did not know how it had ever come. Leaving the statue she knelt down by the fallen youth and felt for his heart. It was beating. She began to unfasten his neckcloth. But how was she to convey him into the chateau? She could not carry him. Besides, how badly was he hurt? Could she possibly get him into that damp little pseudo-classical temple of Ceres on the other side of the grove? But the first thing was to try to revive him. When she had been a fine lady she would have had a vinaigrette or something of the sort about her; now there was nothing for it but to scoop up in her hollowed palms a little stagnant water from the basin at the foot of the statue, and to dash it, greenish as it was, over the white face. Three times she did this without any result but temporary disfigurement, and then set to work to rub the intruder’s hands, long patrician hands like her own, like . . . But that was folly.
“Grandpère!” said the young man suddenly, “Monsieur le Marquis! . . . Artamène . . . Where am I, then?” He opened his eyes, tried rashly to raise himself, and relapsed with a groan, his hand to his wounded side. “What has happened to me? . . . Is this a garden?”
Valentine slipped her arm under his head. “Do not try to move yet, Monsieur,” she said in her beautiful voice. “You are in the park of Mirabel—with a friend.”
He stared up at her, utterly perplexed. (But his eyes were brown, quite unlike that dark grey.) “I am so thirsty,” he said, like a child.
“You cannot drink this stagnant water,” replied Mme de Trélan compassionately, and then, looking closer and seeing how dry and cracked his lips were, bethought her of a spring that flowed, or that used to flow, through a lion’s mouth in the grotto of Latona, a few seconds away. “Wait,” she said, gently withdrawing her arm, “I think I can get you some fresh water.”
She rose and hastened off. Yes, the spring was still flowing, and even the stone goblet that served it, though very green, was still there. The Duchesse brought back that water from the past; and, aided by her, the boy drank long and eagerly, and thanked her.
All this while the dawn was growing brighter, and the solitary thrush now become one of a choir, and, though Mercury was battered and green, he held out the caduceus over the two figures beneath him with an air at once sprightly and benedictory. And the one bright buttercup at his feet, moved by the morning breeze, bent towards them too.
“My child,” said Valentine gently, as she set down the goblet, “I do not know what you were doing here last night, but I suppose you do. At any rate you were shot at by the sentry, and I see that you are hurt in the side, but not, I hope, seriously. The question is, how to move you so that I can do something for your wound.”
The invader was perfectly sensible now. “But, Madame, who are you?” he asked.
“The concierge of Mirabel—of the chateau,” said she.
“I shall never find it now,” murmured the young man dejectedly. “Instead, I suppose I shall have to go to prison.”
“Yes, in the chateau,” said Mme de Trélan encouragingly. “And I will be your gaoler.”
He understood. A look of alarm came over his face. “Oh no, Madame, that would never do! The Directory——”
“I am afraid that I care very little for the Directory,” broke in the Duchesse calmly, beginning to unfasten the fichu from her neck. “Now first, Monsieur, I am going to tie this muslin of mine very tightly about you, for I think there has been no bleeding for some time, and then we must see whether you can get to your feet, and whether, with my help, you can walk as far as the chateau.”
And five minutes or so later, with infinite precautions, the youth trying to put as little weight on a woman as he need, and to stifle the expressions of pain that came to his lips, they were actually progressing very slowly from the Bosquet de Mercure into that of Ceres. And in the pillared shrine of the goddess Mme de Trélan had a moment’s impulse to instal her protégé, seeing his extreme pallor and the possibility of his being unable to reach the house. But the little temple was eminently unsuitable for a hospital, she would find it very awkward to get away to tend him there, and he would be liable to discovery. So, since he assured her rather breathlessly that he was all right, they went forward.
On the edge of the great fountain, however, exposed though it was in its open parterre, he was obliged to sit down and rest a moment or two. The Duchesse sat beside him with her arm round him, lest he should fall backwards off the stone rim into the dark and viscous water behind him. And he, his eyes on the great house, seemed to be realising the extent of his prospective refuge. “I could not see it properly last night,” he murmured.
But Valentine told him not to talk. He did not altogether obey her, and his intermittent remarks as they went onwards in the growing light amid the increasing vociferations of the thrushes were now and then unintelligible. Once he called her “Marthe,” and then apologised.
Certainly there were no eyes to watch them at that early hour save those of the birds, no place for them to watch from but the overgrown thickets. And so Mme de Trélan got Roland de Céligny unobserved into Mirabel by the basement stairway at the back, and along the dark passages to her room. By the time they reached her parlour he was mute and unresisting, and when she had steered him to the bed (left just as she had slipped out of it) and had somehow assisted him on to it, her youthful visitor, as she fully expected, quietly fainted away again.