The Rocks of Valpré

by Ethel M. Dell

THE PRECIPICE

The angry yelling of a French mob rose outside the court—a low, ominous roar, pierced here and there with individual execrations, and the prisoner turned his head and listened. There was a suspicion of contempt on his face, drawn though it was. What did they care for justice? It was only the instinct to hunt the persecuted that urged them. Were he proved innocent ten times over, they would hardly be convinced or cease from their reviling.

But he knew that no proof of innocence would be forthcoming. He was hedged around too completely by adverse circumstances for that. Everything pointed to his guilt, and only he himself and one other knew him to be the victim of a deliberate plot devised to compass his destruction. He was too hopelessly enmeshed to extricate himself, and the other—the only man in the world who could establish his innocence—was the man who had set the snare.

Bertrand de Montville, gunner and genius, had faced this fact until he was in a measure used to it. There was to be no escape for him. He, who had dared to scale the heights of Olympus and had diced with the gods, was to be hurled into the mire to rise therefrom no more for ever. He had climbed so high; almost his feet had reached the summit. He had completed his invention, and it had surpassed even his most sanguine hopes of success. At four-and-twenty he had been acclaimed by his superiors as the greatest artillery engineer of his time. His genius had won him a footing that men more than twice his age, and far above him in military rank, might have envied. He had been honoured by the highest.

And then at the very zenith of his prosperity had come his downfall. His gun, the cherished invention that was to place the French artillery at the head of the list, the child of his brain, his own peculiar treasure, was discovered to have been purchased by another Government three months before he had offered it to his own.

None but himself—so it was believed, so it was ultimately to be proved to the satisfaction of impartial judges—had been in a position at that time to betray the secret, for none but himself had then possessed it. And a great storm of indignation went through the whole country over the revelation.

Passionately but uselessly he protested his innocence. There were a few, even among his judges, who secretly believed him; but the proof was incontestable. Inch by inch he had been forced down from the heights that he had so gallantly scaled, and now he was on the brink of the precipice, no longer fighting, only waiting with the unflinching courage of the French aristocrat to be hurled headlong into the abyss that yawned below.

The yelling of the crowd outside the court was only a detail of the bitter process that was gradually compassing his condemnation. He knew he was to be convicted. It was written in varying characters upon every face; pity, severity, disgust—he met them on every hand. And so on this the fifth and last day of his court-martial he confronted destiny—that destiny that he had once so gaily dared—with closed lips and eyes that revealed neither misery nor despair, only the indomitable pride of his race. Do what they would to him, they would never quench that while life remained. The worst indignity that man could inflict would provoke no outcry here. He had protested his innocence in vain, and he had no proof thereof to offer. It remained for him to face dishonour as an honourable man, steady and undismayed. Doubtless there were those who would deem his bearing brazen, but not his worst enemy should call him coward.

Across the court an Englishman, with keen grey eyes that took in every detail, sat and sketched him—sketched the proud, fearless pose of the man and the hard young face, with its faint, patrician smile. The sketch was little more than outline, a few bold strokes; but the people in England who saw it a couple of days later felt as if the artist had deliberately lifted a curtain and shown to them a man's wrung soul. And everyone who saw it said, "That man is innocent!"

Trevor Mordaunt said it himself many times that day before and after the making of the sketch. He knew, as well as did the prisoner himself, that there would be no acquittal. Almost from the commencement of the trial he had known it. But he knew also that two at least of the judges were disposed towards leniency, and upon this fact he based such slender hopes as he entertained on the prisoner's behalf. As a fellow-correspondent—a Frenchman—had remarked to him earlier in the trial, whatever the verdict, they would hardly martyrize the man lest at a later date further question as to his guilt should arise and all Europe be set bubbling anew upon that much-discussed topic—French justice.