The Yellow Poppy. D. K. Broster

always on foot an army of Chouans was impossible—in short, to be in a larger way of business. But even these bright predictions did not cheer ‘les jeunes,’ as the Abbé called them, very much.

      “All I can do, mes enfants,” said their leader to them in conclusion, “is to wish you a safe return and a better meeting. Remember my recommendations as to prudence in your journeys.—I am not sure that I ought to let you travel in that condition, Artamène.”

      And when the youth hastened to inform him that he would have the advantage of Roland’s care and company M. de Kersaint smiled and said, “Very well. But, Roland, remember that your real destination is not La Vergne, but Kerlidec. My honour is engaged, as you know, in sending you back to your grandfather. Good-bye, Lucien; you will now have leisure to proceed with your study of the Mantuan.”

      The Abbé had already given them his blessing; the Comte had gone to the place appointed to await Cadoudal. Even Le Blé-aux-Champs had been carried downstairs. So when the Marquis had shaken hands with them there was nothing for the three young men to do but to go. And they went.

      But they had not got beyond the next turn on the dusky staircase before they heard M. de Kersaint’s voice on the landing above them.

      “Roland,” it called down, “come back a moment, will you? I have a message for M. de Carné.”

      Wondering, the young Vicomte went up again, nearly to the top, where the tall figure was standing.

      “I only wish you to point out to him,” said the Marquis, “that I am fulfilling my promise. That is all.”

      Then he added, in a different tone, “May God keep you, my boy!” and stooping, kissed him on the forehead.

      CHAPTER V

       TU MARCELLUS ERIS

       Table of Contents

      “And so, exeunt ‘les jeunes,’ ” said the Marquis de Kersaint, coming back into the attic and shutting the door after him.

      Its only remaining occupant, the Abbé Chassin, looked up from his breviary where he sat on the old brocade sofa.

      “I could wish,” he observed, “that they had departed earlier—or at least that young La Vergne had done so, before he brought about what happened last night, by his mention of the word ‘Mirabel.’ But what, Gaston, in the name of all the saints, possessed you to force me to give you the memorandum like that, before everybody? Of course I only meant to put it into your hands when we were alone!”

      The Marquis de Kersaint, seeming to find it perfectly natural to be addressed thus familiarly by his inferior, shrugged his shoulders. “Why then, my dear Pierre, did you, in your turn, say before everybody that your information was for my private ear? A slip of that kind is unlike you. How could I possibly accept for my private ear any news about the place?”

      “No, perhaps not, but your persistence, if you will forgive my saying so, rather drove me into a corner. However, I dare say we were both equally to blame, I for not being readier-witted, and you for—well, for taking the bull a little too much by the horns.”

      M. de Kersaint, evidently not at all resenting these criticisms, looked down at the priest. “Above all things I did not want to create a mystery,” he said.

      “And instead of that you created a kinsman,” observed the Abbé with a half smile, and then became grave again. “It was very unfortunate, the whole thing, but naturally we had neither of us any idea of what it was going to lead to.”

      The Marquis de Kersaint’s face darkened. He turned away, and began to walk up and down. “You made a fine holocaust of my imaginary family,” he said after a moment.

      “I had to stop him somehow,” replied the Abbé briefly. He had closed his book, and was watching the pacing figure.

      “So that,” said M. de Kersaint after another silence, “that is how a Frenchman, an émigré himself, judges the conduct of the Duc de Trélan! I thought it was only in England that they did not understand.”

      The priest had risen. “Gaston,” he said firmly, “as I said to the Comte last night, and as I would repeat it at my last hour, in the matter of Mme de Trélan’s death I hold that no one was to blame—save her murderers. She could not have been saved. Did his Highness the Duc de Penthièvre save his daughter? We know that he tried. Not an archangel could have saved Mme de Lamballe. So with Mme de Trélan that day. You know that as well as I, and M. de Brencourt, if he were not ridden by some demon of spite, knows it too.”

      “She went through that door, as he said,” continued M. de Kersaint. He had come to a standstill; his face was ashen. “She saw . . . all that . . . before——And she might have taken the road to England and safety two years earlier.”

      “It is true,” answered the priest. “She had the chance.”

      “Yes,” said his foster-brother, looking at him as if he did not see him, “she had the chance . . . and refused it. I cannot tell de Brencourt that. But, O my God, what a tragedy of mistakes!”

      He was backed now against a huge old wardrobe, motionless, almost as if he were nailed to it, voice and eyes alike full of that seven years’ old horror and anguish.

      “It was but a mistake, a misunderstanding, then, Gaston,” said the priest quickly. “You acknowledge that, you see!”

      The man against the wardrobe gave a laugh. “But what is worse than a mistake, Pierre? Not a crime, certainly. Mistakes appear, at least, to be more heavily visited in this world. It seems to me that I am about to begin a fresh series of payments for mine. . . . As for her, if she made any, she paid—how much more than paid!—in that moment of martyrdom that does not bear thinking of, that I still dream about, it seems to me, almost every night. . . . Now, if it is to be dragged out as de Brencourt dragged it yesterday, I shall wish you had not turned me from my purpose seven years ago.”

      Dear saints, thought the priest, looking at him compassionately, are we, after all he has suffered, to go once more through the inferno of those dreadful days in England? For a moment he saw again that lofty, richly-furnished room in London where the proudest man whom Pierre Chassin had ever met or read of sat with his whole existence fallen in a day to ruins about him—his honour tarnished and his self-respect in the dust. For he had that day received the appalling news of his wife’s butchery in prison—not having known, even, that she was a prisoner—and he had heard also that he was in consequence being talked about in no flattering terms throughout those same London drawing-rooms where he had been so courted. Indeed—not then knowing why—he had that very morning been cut in St. James’s Street by two of his most intimate English acquaintances. . . . The candlelight on his escritoire, running over the darkly shining mahogany before him, had showed the weapon ready to his hand when the shabby little émigré priest, who had come hotfoot at the news, succeeded in forcing his way past the terrified servants into that forbidden room . . . only to be ordered, in a voice that made him quail, to depart instantly. He had sometimes wondered himself what had given him the courage to disobey, and to stand, as he had done, for a whole night between the Duc de Trélan and suicide. Even to-day he could scarcely bear to think of the naked agony and conflict of that vigil, and it was very rarely referred to by either of them.

      He went up to him and put his hand on his shoulder. “O my brother, if you would only cease to torment yourself! You have not, you never have had, a shadow of real responsibility for your wife’s death.”

      “Easy to believe, is it not?” remarked the other with a ghastly smile, “when men speak still as de Brencourt spoke last night!”

      The Abbé made an almost impatient movement. “It is quite impossible that the Comte really thinks what he says! Why, thousands of men emigrated without their wives,—just as some wives without their husbands—and no one thought it anything but natural and right in those days . . . a duty even! All the noblesse