(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and how many people travelled comfortably now-a-days and contrived to elude showing their passports if they were out of date.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 turned from looking at the distant pines and the sunset that she became aware she was not alone in the allée des vieilles. some way off a man was standing by one of the tallest menhirs; indeed, she almost thought that he was leaning against it. it gave her a start at first to find that, when she had thought she was alone, she was being observed. he must have ridden up unheard on the heather, for outside the double avenue a black horse was bending its head towards that arid nourishment. all she could see of its rider at this distance was that he was tall, that he wore a long close-fitting dark redingote, that he had a white sash round his middle, and a sword.
all at once she thought, “how stupid of me; it is a royalist, one of m. de kersaint’s officers, probably, back from the fighting. perhaps it is even m. de kersaint himself, ridden over from his headquarters, on hearing that i am here, to wait on me. that is very courteous of him. but why, since he must see me, does he not move, or come to meet me? . . . perhaps, if he is from the fighting, he is hurt.” and then indeed she saw that he carried his right arm in a sling.
she began in her turn to go towards him. still she could not see his face; he had his hat rammed low over his eyes. in the hat, as she now noticed for the first time, was a white plume. that feather showed her that it must be m. de kersaint himself, and her heart beat a little faster. yet how strange of him to remain covered when, plainly, he must see her advancing, and not to move a step to meet her. but she went on nevertheless, till only ten yards or so separated them.
and the royalist still stood motionless, the sunset glow falling on him, watching her so intently that he gave the effect of holding his breath. valentine began to be a little frightened; his behaviour was so unaccountable. and suddenly the old breton woman’s warning came back to her. was the wish of her heart, then, going to be reft from her here among les vieilles; was she to learn from this man, among the covetous old stones, that gaston was dead—to learn it this time without possibility of doubt? was that why he was so still—because he knew her errand? she stopped.
her stopping seemed to galvanise the watcher into life. he moved a little forward from the menhir which had been supporting him, and put up his left hand to his hat as though to remove it. but still he did not take it off.
“madame de trélan!”
that voice! . . .
she quivered as though she had been shot and put her hands to her breast. “dear god!” she said. “who is it? who is it?”
“valentine!” said the voice again.
and in a single movement the royalist officer uncovered, flung his hat from him, and was at her feet. but even with the previous warning of the voice, even with his tardy uncovering, the shock was too much for a woman who was no longer young. it was as one sees something a long way off that she saw him kneeling there with bent head; but when he raised it, and his face was visible, the blood drummed in her ears. the grey watchers bowed suddenly towards her, the heather began to give way beneath her feet. “gaston!” she sighed, putting out her hands helplessly like a frightened child, “gaston—i’m falling! . . .” the heather gave way altogether. . . .
(2)
the cold grey sea on which valentine had been floating hither and thither began a little to cease its swaying motion. . . . but how curious to be on a sea at all! yet she could hear it . . . no, it was the wind in the pine avenue at mirabel. but the pine avenue was nearly all cut down now . . . it was neither, neither. she was lying in strong arms that held her close, against a heart whose pulsations she could hear. it began to come back. that figure by the menhir. o, christ in heaven!—but that was a dream!
yet kisses, not the kisses of a dream, were being laid on her closed eyes, her hair, her brow—though none upon her lips—and with them went passionate words of supplication for forgiveness, and words of a meaning far transcending that . . . words of love, heartbroken words. but he who thus addressed her must have thought her still unconscious when he dared to speak them, for when she opened her eyes and stirred she was very gently laid down out of his grasp upon the heather, and this royalist officer who was her husband knelt silently there beside her, with his face buried in his hands.
at that relaxing hold valentine might have thought—a thousand things—but, dizzy and confused though she still was, she had heard, and felt. there was no room for surmises or mistakes.
“gaston,” she said faintly, lingering on the name. “o gaston . . . if you are real . . . your arms!”
his hands came down, and she saw his face, ravaged, older, infinitely changed.
“dare i hold you in my arms, valentine?” he was shaking as he said it.
from where she lay she gave him one look, and held out her hands the second time.
“o my wife, my saint!” said gaston de trélan, choking. he stooped and gathered her once more to his breast.
and, after all, so unbelievable was it, that the long embrace did seem to belong to another world than this—a far world, but the only real. . . .
that passed. the heather became heather again, the air the air of earth. somehow he was helping the living valentine whom he held to her feet, and was leading her towards the nearest menhir—that indeed against which he had himself been leaning. directly he saw that she could stand alone, and could take some support, if she wished it, from the great granite finger, he threw himself on his knees before her.
“valentine, this is where i should be!” he broke out uncontrollably, “here, at your feet, not holding you in my arms. i am not worthy of that, valentine—valentine, how can i even ask for forgiveness? but i do ask for it—i do ask! for seven years i have sought it, and i have sometimes felt that you . . . where i thought you had gone, had given it to me.” his voice broke, and, stooping that proud head of his, he did literally kiss her feet.
“gaston, if you love me!” she cried out, trying to stay him. “no, no . . . and what talk is this of forgiveness? o my darling, i was wrong too—stubborn and proud. i should have gone with you—and afterwards . . . you never got my letters, i know it, but i should have written again, made more efforts. o gaston, if you love me, don’t do that!”
he lifted his head. “letters!” he said in a dazed way. “you wrote . . . you had no answer? i never had them!—valentine,” and there was anguish in his voice, “you did not think i received them . . . and left them unanswered!”
“no, no!” she said. “no, my heart! we will talk of that presently; there is so much to say. only now, gaston—i cannot bear to see you kneel to me, my husband.”
“but there is more than that,” he said, not without difficulty. “more than my having left you to face . . . horrors. the years before——”
“i do not remember the years before,” answered valentine.
“at least,” said he, very low, “the years since have been yours alone.” and still kneeling there, but with his arms about her, as she stooped to him he kissed her on the lips.
afterwards she sat propped against the menhir, and her husband half sat, half knelt beside her, holding her hands and gazing at her as at what indeed she was, one returned from the dead. very briefly, and only under the pressure of his questions, for she, too, desired chiefly to contemplate him, she had given him the outline of that past nine years, sliding as quickly as possible over the massacres and her subsequent year in prison, because he turned so pale that she feared he would faint next. and he had been wounded . . . but he said that it was an old injury—nothing . . .
“and now, gaston,” she said breathlessly, “you—what are you doing here with this m. de kersaint? is he really a kinsman—is that why you are here? at first—before i recognised you—i thought you must be he.”
his grasp tightened on her hands, and before he answered he put them to his lips. “you were not mistaken, valentine. that has been my name for seven years, since you . . . died. o, my wife” he almost crushed her hand, “are you alive—is it not some phantasy, some illusion of this place——”
“what!” she broke in, the colour rushing over her face and fleeing again, “you are m. de kersaint—it was you at rivoli—it is you who command finistère for the king . . . that scarf means——”
quite suddenly she drew away her hands and putting them over her face burst into tears.
