The Yellow Poppy. D. K. Broster

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ of M. de Kersaint’s whole figure, ere he said, turning round from the table, “What is this about . . . Mirabel?”

      The Abbé seeming in no great haste to answer, it was M. de Brencourt who replied, “The old lady whom the Abbé has been visiting next door is, apparently, suffering from delusions about Mirabel—that château of the Duc de Trélan’s near Paris. That is what M. de la Vergne means.”

      “This is interesting,” observed the Marquis de Kersaint, turning further round to look at the little priest, who had not advanced a step since Artamène’s jest. “And did you learn anything fresh about Mirabel, Abbé?”

      “Yes, I did, Monsieur le Marquis,” answered the priest rather shortly.

      “May we hear it?”

      M. Chassin was silent, and seemed to be considering this request. Artamène saw his face, and it was oddly perturbed.

      “We are not, I hope, inviting you to reveal the secrets of the confessional?”

      “No.”

      “Why may we not hear it, then?”

      “Because,” said the Abbé gravely, “it is more suited for your private ear, Monsieur le Marquis.”

      “Why?” asked M. de Brencourt, instantly, looking from one to the other, “why for M. de Kersaint’s private ear?”

      This question the Abbé seemed totally unable to answer, and after a second or two the Marquis de Kersaint said carelessly to his subordinate, “Because M. Chassin knows that I am a kinsman of the Duc de Trélan’s, I suppose.”

      “A kinsman of the Duc de Trélan’s—you!” exclaimed the Comte de Brencourt in obvious surprise. “A near kinsman?”

      “No, no, very distant,” replied his leader quickly. “And that is why I cannot conceive how a disclosure affecting his property can possibly be destined for my ear alone. So let us all hear it, if you please, Monsieur l’Abbé.”

      M. de Brencourt, still under the empire of surprise or some other emotion, continued to look at this kinsman of M. de Trélan’s very fixedly; so, from where he still stood near the door, did the priest. A better light would have revealed entreaty in his eyes.

      “Well, Monsieur l’Abbé, I am waiting!” said the Marquis de Kersaint rather haughtily, and in the fashion of a man who has never been used to that discipline.

      The Abbé set his lips obstinately. “It will keep well enough till to-morrow, Monsieur le Marquis.”

      “What, a communication from the dying? And who knows whether we shall all see to-morrow? Come, Abbé, I command you!—Roland, a chair here for M. Chassin.”

      Whether the priest could have stood out, had he willed, against that masterful voice and gesture, at any rate he did not.

      “Very well, Marquis,” said he, and Artamène, thrilled to the core, thought, “ ‘Tu l’as voulu, Georges Dandin!’ That’s what he would really like to say, our Abbé!” And since their leader had intimated that the matter was not private after all, he applied himself to listen with all his ears. Roland, looking rather troubled, set a chair at the table for the priest and stood back.

      “You must know then, Monsieur le Marquis,” began the Abbé in a low voice, “that the old lady whom I have been visiting had been present at the festivities in 1771, when the . . . the young Duc de Trélan married his bride.”

      “That beautiful and most unfortunate lady!” commented M. de Brencourt under his breath.

      The Marquis glanced at him for the fraction of a second, and the priest went on, nervously rubbing his hands together, and rather pale:

      “It seems that there is a legend of a treasure hidden in Mirabel since the days of the Fronde, a treasure whose whereabouts no one has ever been able to discover. Since you are a kinsman of M. de Trélan’s, Monsieur le Marquis, it is possible that you have heard of the legend?”

      M. de Kersaint nodded thoughtfully. “I believe I have heard of it. Yes?”

      “The story appears to be true. The document describing the hiding-place of the treasure was stolen at the time—nearly a hundred and fifty years ago—and came into the possession of this old lady’s family, but in such a way that it was only recently rediscovered by the old lady herself.”

      “What an extraordinary tale! Well?”

      “Since then she had desired to give it to the Duc, but could not, as he was not in France. And in her delirium just now, fancying herself back at the wedding, she was talking so persistently of offering to the . . . the young couple, as a wedding gift, this paper, which would help them to what was after all their own, that M. Charlot——”

      “A wedding gift for de Trélan and his wife!” interposed the Comte de Brencourt with a laugh. “Bon Dieu, what irony, considering how their wedded life ended!”

      “Surely that need not concern us now, Monsieur de Brencourt!” said his leader coldly. “Go on please, Abbé.”

      “By the most curious coincidence,” pursued M. Chassin, his eyes fixed on the Marquis, “M. Charlot asked me, as a priest, to see if I could not set the old lady’s mind at rest by some means. She did at last regain control of her senses, and I was able in the end to assure her that I could and would despatch the document, if she entrusted me with it, to the proper quarter.”

      “And she gave it you?” asked the Marquis, bending forward with some eagerness.

      “I have it here now,” answered the priest, touching his breast.

      M. de Kersaint drew back again, and Artamène was struck with his resemblance to a chess player who is meditating the next move. But only the Marquis de Kersaint himself and the man whom he had forced into playing out this gambit with him, fully realised the awkward position into which his insistence had got them.

      “So I must make it my business to despatch it, somehow, to M. le Duc,” finished the Abbé. “It was of course my knowledge that you were kin to him, Monsieur le Marquis, which made me accept the trust, as I knew I could rely on your assistance.”

      But the Marquis was looking down at the table and said nothing.

      “The document will hardly be of much use to M. de Trélan when he does get it,” remarked the Comte de Brencourt. “Mirabel, I have heard, is now a museum or something of the sort; at any rate it is in government hands. And M. de Trélan—where is M. de Trélan? In England still? No, hardly. One never hears of him. Perhaps he is dead.”

      “No, he is alive,” replied his kinsman briefly, lifting his eyes for a second.

      “Ah! But how is he going to profit by this treasure, even if it is still there?”

      “Nevertheless, I must fulfil my trust,” observed M. Chassin, looking across the table at M. de Kersaint’s lowered head.

      “Oh, undoubtedly, Abbé, though I do not know how you are going to do it even with M. de Kersaint’s cousinly . . . is it cousinly? . . . assistance. What do you yourself think of the problem, Marquis?”

      The СКАЧАТЬ