The Yellow Poppy

by D. K. Broster

CHAPTER VI

“SWORD, THY NOBLER USE IS DONE!”

“Le vin est versé; il faut le boire.” The words of the old adage rang in Valentine’s head to-night. Not long ago Gaston had quoted them. She had never before so felt their inexorable quality—for to-morrow he must set out to Vannes to drink it. . . . He had said farewell to his very few remaining officers, disbanded, of his handful of men, all but a few sentries, and wanted to ride alone to his surrender, but ‘les jeunes’ had made such an outcry at this, and begged so hard to be his escort, that, as the other safe-conducts were blank, he consented.

It was past midnight, and he was still writing, by the light of a couple of candles, at a table in the embrasure of the large window in their room at La Vergne. Despite the cold, Valentine was sitting on the seat in the space between her husband and the heavily curtained window—the seat where, that October night, she had found and kissed his sword. Now, that same sword. . . . She looked between the candle-flames at his downbent face. One hand supported his head as he wrote, the fingers running up into the thick, rippling hair. The last three months of strain had aged him a little; but she saw nothing there that she did not love and honour.

The château was very still. Now and again, even through the closed window, Valentine could hear the footfall of the sentry on the flags below. But, after the recent armed occupation, this was like the last moments before death. To-morrow there would be no sentry—nothing to guard. It would all be over.

She pulled aside the curtain and looked out. There was a royal moon; she had forgotten it. The terrace sparkled with thinly fallen snow, and she could see how it powdered the bare, pleached boughs of the arbour where, in the spring, Roland and the son and daughter of the house had planned the invasion of Mirabel. And she saw, too, in the distance—or was it fancy?—a silver streak, the sea.

Ah, if they were there, embarking—if Gaston could but be spared the purgatory that lay before him first. She glanced at him again. He had death in his soul; she knew that. Le vin est versé . . .

It was not merely that he shrank, as any soldier might, from the personal humiliation of surrendering his sword; it was also that he had given to this enterprise, so nearly successful, not only his arm, but his heart. Only lately had she come to see what the overthrow of the cause meant to him; indeed she had not fully learnt it yet. Was he writing to the Comte d’Artois, she wondered now—to the Prince who, once again, had never come? If she had held the pen there were words, burning words, that she would have written to that royal laggard! O, how could the man exist who knew that a whole population was sacrificing itself for him and his family, that for years they had been dying for him on the battlefield and the scaffold, that his appearance was the one thing they asked of life, and his presence would cause all that suffering and sacrifice to be forgotten—how could he know all this . . . and not come!

Valentine clenched her hands. He whom she loved was driven to this pass through Charles of Bourbon. He had fought to keep open a harbour for the sails that never came, and was now left, deserted and alone, to drink this bitter wine. . . . The tears began to creep down her face—tears of wrath. She did not want Gaston to see them, and turning away, her forehead against the cold glass, she swallowed them down, trying to fix her thoughts instead on that silver gleam of sea, which, when the surrender was consummated, would bear them both away from the land of the once more lost cause.

When she had regained her self-control she dropped the curtain and turned back into the room. Her husband had laid down his pen and was leaning back in his chair, his hands along the arms. His look was remote and very grave. She rose from the seat, knelt down beside him and took his right hand in both of hers. His gaze came from far off and rested on her—still very grave.