it may be doubted whether, after all, roland de céligny really regretted exchanging ares for aphrodite. he hardly knew himself, as he journeyed with his injured friend by discreet routes back to finistère and that friend’s home near the sea. his heart was certainly sore at leaving the clash of arms, and he still resented the summary separation from his leader. yet, to balance the sword half drawn and all too quickly sheathed, were the curls of mlle de la vergne, enshrined in the chateau whose tourelles rose, on the third day, from a screen of chestnuts to greet the travellers.
what, in that blest abode, would marthe be doing when they came on her? involuntarily roland pictured their meeting as a replica, and saw her again at embroidery in the salon with its indian hangings. but one always paints these things wrong. the reality was even better. for there was no duenna of a mother with her, merely a rustic groom, when, mounted on a beautiful black thoroughbred, she suddenly trotted round a bend of the road. . . .
“if that is not my little sister!” exclaimed artamène spurring forward; and roland, uncovering, pulled up his horse.
in the dappled sunlight, under the chestnuts, brother greeted sister, bending from the saddle. roland thought he had never seen anything more beautiful. he was near enough to hear the joy and the anxiety in mlle de la vergne’s voice, her stream of enquiries. then artamène looked back and beckoned.
“let me present m. le vicomte de céligny, whom you have already met, ma s?ur, in a new r?le—that of the trusty garde-malade. since i cannot dispense with his services he comes to stay with us for a few days.”
the little hand which marthe, pulling off her gauntlet, surrendered with a smile to his salute, was it not even more shapely, more satin-soft to the lips than when it had dropped the embroidery needle to submit to the same reverential greeting? and she herself, in her long blue habit, her man’s high-crowned buckled hat, seemed even more desirable than in high-waisted white, yellow-sprigged muslin of that afternoon in the salon!
“tell séraphin to gallop back and tell maman,” suggested artamène.
and so they rode slowly along, marthe in the middle, and talked of their adventures. the wind blew a fold of the long habit against roland’s foot. except on the day when he had joined the marquis de kersaint, m. de céligny had never been so happy in his life—for his rapture on the occasion of the marquis’s appearance at kerlidec had been clouded by his grandfather’s hostility. now there was nothing to stain this perfect joy, and roland was too deeply enthralled even to envy the solicitous glances which marthe threw at her brother’s be-slinged left arm.
sad that out of happiness may spring trouble! if the seeds of roland’s escapade were not exactly sown during that short ride the ground was at any rate prepared for their reception.
mme de la vergne, warned by the herald, was on the perron to greet them. artamène flung himself off his horse and ran up the steps, and, while the good lady embraced her son, roland had the bliss of dismounting mlle de la vergne—of receiving her for one brief second in his arms as she slipped like a feather from the saddle. then followed his own reception by mme de la vergne, small and fair and so unlike her daughter; and he found himself being thanked—thanked!—for accompanying her son hither.
“maman,” sang marthe to the harpsichord that evening, “maman, d?tes-moi ce qu’on sent quand on aime, est-ce plaisir, est-ce tourment? je suis tout le jour dans une peine extrême, et la nuit je ne sais comment!”
was she? no! but roland, that night, could not sleep for exaltation.
artamène, by his mother’s desire, remained in bed next morning. a surgeon had been summoned to view his arm.
“come and feed the poultry, monsieur de céligny—or are you too proud?” suggested mlle de la vergne after breakfast. “we are very rustic here, you must know, for we are short of farm servants.”
roland, who would have swept a pigsty at her bidding, followed her as to some high festival. the hens who drove clucking round his feet might have been the doves of venus. and the pigeons did indeed sweep in a cloud over marthe, and ate out of her hand. roland feared they pecked too hard.
when artamène appeared he found them sitting in the lime arbour.
“is our paladin telling you of his adventures?” he enquired, sitting down beside them.
“i have none to tell,” answered roland. “it is you, mon cher, with your wound and your sling and your surgeon, who have the beau r?le.”
“and all wasted on a sister!” observed the hero with a grin.
“m. de céligny has been telling me,” said marthe, “the strange story about the old lady and the treasure of mirabel. do you believe it?”
“i believed it sufficiently to try to get sent after the treasure,” replied her brother. “so, taking a mean advantage of my slumbers, did roland.”
marthe turned her brilliant dark eyes from one to the other. artamène shook his head.
“our request was not favourably received.”
“o, what a pity!” sighed mlle de la vergne.
flecks of sunlight came through the linden-leaves on to her dark hair, bringing out unsuspected warmth in its ebony, and on to a red stone on her finger.
“there is a ruby necklace there,” said roland suddenly, his eyes moving from her ringlets to her hand. “and hundreds of louis in pistoles of the time of louis xiii. so the plan said. oh, if we could only have gone!”
“and is all that hoard to lie there, then, unused, while the cause goes short of money?”
“oh, no!” said both the young men together. “presently, when m. de kersaint has got the authority of the duc de trélan, wherever he may be, he will send some one after it.”
“some one—whom?”
“i should think very probably m. de brencourt,” replied roland.
“and he must wait—perhaps for weeks and weeks—before he can start?”
“yes,” said her brother, “unless the marquis, who, as m. de céligny will have told you, is a kinsman of m. de trélan’s, decides to act without his authorisation, which, from what he said, it is quite likely he may do.”
“so that m. de trélan’s authorisation is not indispensable?”
“no. only a matter of form, i think. being an émigré and mirabel confiscated—he can neither prevent nor forward such an attempt.”
mlle de la vergne was silent, pushing at the gravel with a little shoe and looking down at it. “where is mirabel, did you say?”
“quite near paris, i gather,” replied artamène.
“i wish,” said marthe pensively, “that i were in paris—quite near mirabel!”
“my dear little sister, what would be the good of that?” asked artamène, amused.
“i have relatives in paris,” announced roland, with sudden and apparent irrelevance, “two old cousins of my father’s—quiet, unsuspected, unsuspicious old gentlemen.”
the little silence which followed this statement was broken by a whirr of wings as one of marthe’s pigeons alighted on the gravel outside the arbour, and, looking hard and hopefully at them out of one round, red-circled, unemotional eye, began to walk slowly up and down, jerking its burnished neck.
“o, if i were only a man!” exclaimed mlle de la vergne, abruptly, springing to her feet with kindling eyes.
“if i only had two arms!” said her brother, following her example, but more slowly.
“but i am a man, and both my arms are sound!” cried roland, almost brandishing those members.
“and you have relatives in paris who could help you!” said marthe, turning her eyes on him.
“well, no, hardly help,” said roland slowly, thinking of his ancient and peaceful kinsmen. “but they could give me a roof. . . .”
“and i could give you money to bribe anyone who needed bribing,” declared marthe. “at least, i have my pearls.”
“oh, curse this arm!” muttered the wounded hero. “yet, after all, i do not see why i also——”
“no! no!” exclaimed both the others. “no, we know what the surgeon said. that would be the sheerest folly”—as if what they had in their own inflammable heads were cold wisdom.
artamène leant dejectedly against the side of the arbour. “i don’t see how you could do anything, roland. you have not the plan of the late lamented of the time of mazarin. you could not go and dig all over a place of that size on chance, even if the directory gave you permission, which it certainly would not!”
“but i saw the plan!” retorted the vicomte de céligny. “i saw it perfectly clearly over the abbé’s shoulder that night. why, i could draw it now, if i had a pencil. nobody has one? well, look here!”
he broke off a twig from the lime-tree and began a series of scratches on the gravel, just as a bell clanged from the house to summon them to the midday meal—scratches which séraphin diligently raked out during that repast.
by sunlight and by twilight and by lamplight, under the arbour, on the lawn, in the salon, the rough plan made from that fleeting glimpse of the original was constructed and reconstructed and discussed. so much were their young heads bent over it the next evening that mme de la vergne said they looked like conspirators.
“ma mère, you are perspicacious,” replied her son. “we are conspirators.” but, not really believing him, she did not pursue the question, and indeed, before she could revert to it, artamène looked very hard at his sister and asked her if she were not going to sing to them.
roland added his entreaties, and attended mlle de la vergne to the harpsichord.
“what shall i sing?” asked she. “no, i do not need any music, thank you. you must join in the chorus, then, monsieur, you and artamène.” and with a mischievous smile she broke into the old children’s ronde of la double violette:
“j’ai un long voyage à faire,
???je ne sais qui le fera;
?si je l’dis à l’alouette
???tout le monde le saura!
?la violette double double,
?la violette doublera!
“si je l’dis à l’alouette,
???tout le monde le saura:
?rossignol du vert bocage
???fa?tes-moi ce plaisir-là!”
and when she got to
“rossignol prend sa volée,
???au chateau d’amour s’en va,”
she looked at roland.
afterwards they sang other songs.
next day the conspirators met again in the arbour for a final council of war. they could not improve upon the map which the two young men had made—indeed, the question rather was whether they had not already improved it out of all resemblance to the original. roland’s immediate movements were now under discussion. though it must shorten his visit, they all, even roland himself, felt that no time was to be lost. m. de céligny was supposed, of course, to be on his way to kerlidec and his grandfather.
“but it will be wiser,” said he, “not to go there now. when i return. . . . you see, he might make difficulties about my visiting paris at all. so i will write to him. . . .”
he would not accept mlle de la vergne’s pearls, though he thought it sublime of her to offer them. he had plenty of money, he said. and he settled to start next day. artamène tried to salve his own fierce dejection by resolving to accompany him part of the way.
but, perhaps from the excitement of these deliberations, the chevalier de la vergne’s arm became unexpectedly painful during the night. it was out of the question for him even to leave his bed next morning, and, for once in his life, he did not seem wishful to do so. roland’s offer to delay his departure was, however, declined by him. mme de la vergne, supposing their young guest to be setting off for kerlidec—a point on which he did not undeceive her—hoped that he would visit them again, and when he asked if he might pay his parting respects to mlle de la vergne (having already taken a bedside farewell of her brother), replied rather absently that she was probably in the poultry-yard, and that if m. de céligny would give himself the trouble. . . . for her thoughts were not at the moment with an unchaperoned daughter and what a susceptible young man might say to her ere he rode away, but with her son in pain upstairs, and whether the surgeon really understood his case, and if the constant poulticing he had ordered were right. besides—though this even the inquiring mind of artamène had never come near guessing—there existed a certain understanding between her and m. de carné on the subject of roland and marthe.
roland was off before the permission could be revoked. but mlle de la vergne was not in the poultry yard, though matters connected with her pensioners had drawn her to the spot where he found her, the miniature bridge which spanned the little stream winding through the grounds. from this she was watching with some anxiety the first voyage of a brood of ducklings down that st. lawrence. roland was stabbed to the heart. he was going to danger, to prison perhaps, for her—and her mind was set on ducklings!
erect and noble (so he hoped—at any rate booted and spurred) the young man walked towards the bridge. directly she turned, the surprise and concern on her face healed him.
“what! you are going already, monsieur de céligny! i thought it was not to be for another hour, and that you were closeted with artamène . . . and i might have missed wishing you godspeed because of these wretched little adventurers!”
“ah no, mademoiselle!” said roland. “do you think i should have gone like that? i have need of all the benedictions you can give me.”
and what she gave him satisfied him fully—only a look, but a look so charged with meaning—and both her hands. there on the tiny bridge he raised them with reverence and joy to his lips. her silence, her faint flush, her movement of surrender, whether it were ultimate or no, dubbed him indeed her knight, going to the ogre’s castle with her colours on his helm—invincible indeed, and supremely blest to serve at once his lady and his king.
and unregarded, in that high moment, went the indignant comments of the little yellow navigator under their very feet, who was finding the stream on which his inexperience had embarked of an unlooked-for strength and volume.
