“I have not much more time. Old Bernard has gone to find a priest, but I do not somehow think he will be successful. If I must depart unshriven you will pray best for me, my heart of hearts, for you know all the worst of me. For I desire to die as I have not always lived, in the Catholic faith, the servant of the King of France, and your most unworthy lover.”
It was dated that morning at a little before seven o’clock, and signed with his full name, Gaston-Henri-Hippolyte-Gabriel-Eléonor de Saint-Chamans, and with all his titles.
The letter fell from Valentine’s hands. No mention here of the pardon he had spurned—no mention, for her sake. Ah, how much better she understood yesterday now. “You tried to keep it from me,” she whispered, “but I know your secret, O my knight without stain! I know why you look like that! ‘If one can do it cheerfully—as I do.’ If you could do it, surely I can bear the knowledge of it!” And she clasped her hands in acceptance above the piece of flotsam from other years that covered him like a banner, whereon still lingered fragments of warriors and guidons and waves and battlemented towers, and—unnoticed, perhaps, by the reverent and hostile hands that spread it there—a border of the flower which had sprung out of a soil of such past glories, the fleur-de-lys, the symbol for which he had died. For she had very clearly the conviction that she was speaking to him, that she would often speak to him like this, as she might have spoken yesterday, but with all the pain, the conflict of wills, gone from their intercourse—that they would many times talk together thus, and that she would tell him over and over again, “My heart, my hero! you did well . . . well!”
Then she saw the little packet lying where it had fallen, and took it up again. It was no more than a folded square of paper with three words on it; but out of it—pale, brittle, transparent as goldbeater’s skin, the stain at their bases more deeply marked—floated the four pressed petals of the yellow poppy she had once given him by the verge of that full sea of joy. As before they fell—fell and scattered . . . but not this time on the sand. Valentine’s hand shook suddenly. Her presentiment of that day of rapture had come true; they did typify that love of theirs, so late in blooming, so miraculous in its perfect flower, so soon cut short. Ghosts of their former loveliness, they lay unstirred now on the quiet breast. . . . And there, too, above her, as she knelt by Gaston treacherously slain, there they were once more, wavering in the cold air, pallid in the March daylight—four petals, each on a stem of wax, significant and alive! Was this what the yellow sea-poppy had foreshadowed—the petals of this encircling flower of death, between which he lay so ivory-pale and would not speak to her nor move? . . .
Then he was dead; she had not understood. He could not hear. Her head began to turn; a cold, slow terror rose over her soul like a marsh-mist. The air seemed full of flickering petals, flickering flames. As she had stretched out her hands to Gaston that day by the menhirs, so now she stretched them out again, but more blindly, in more desperate need—and met his for the last time. And, cold though they were and motionless, she clasped her own round them, and, stooping, covered them with kisses, for they were still his hands . . . the hands that yesterday, about this time, warm and strong, were holding hers. . . .
When that thought touched her, Valentine’s composure shattered to fragments. She could not bear it. It was too much to ask of her, to approve this cruel heroism. After so short a time . . . so short a time! . . . O, if only she might follow Gaston now, if she might only lie here cold beside him, where she was bowed in weeping such as she had never known. . . . No, that was not for her; she saw instead a long road. . . . And even in her anguish she found herself praying almost unconsciously—but not for the accomplishment of that desire. In that difficult prayer she seemed to drift a long way from the Salle Verte . . . even to be, once, on the threshold of a strange region where grief and joy were in some mysterious fashion fused into one awful beauty. And Gaston was there with her. . . .
When she came back she found in her hand the little piece of paper that had enclosed the petals, on which she saw that Gaston had written, written recently, three words, no more. And they were the motto of his house; Memini et permaneo—‘I remember and I remain . . . to the end.’
They wonderfully steadied her; they seemed the most direct message from those closed, serene and half-smiling lips. And in this border country between the four candle-flames, where her desire was accomplished and her heart broken with its accomplishment, she saw clearly—and would never quite lose the vision—the marvellous and splendid thing that had come to them after those barren years: to both a great love, to her a great sorrow, and to him that noble end which even the foe had envied him—the opportunity, in a shaken time, of proving his fidelity to the uttermost, the supreme honour of choosing death rather than belittle the cause he served.