D. Broster: A Fire of Driftwood: A Collection of Short Stories (D. K. Broster) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

He saluted them with a smile, and stood there, as he had stood some hours earlier, watching them filing off. When the last man had disappeared he stood there still. The approach of night was filling the air with impalpable incense; a thin slip of a moon, almost lightless, hung timidly over the dark mass of the forest. Down at the foot of the steps old Yves stood motionless, leaning on his musket, and at a little distance de Lage was giving low-voiced orders to a Chouan. The candle-light streamed out from the dining-room, and threw up Madame de Rocquigny’s figure against the window. From the distance the hoot of an owl, that sound almost sacred to the ear of a Chouan, brought a smile to the face of Yves, and, turning his head, he looked up at the figure of his young leader on the steps. Hervé, who understood perfectly what was in his mind, nodded to him, and, lifting the hilt of his broken sword as if in salute to the distant bird, turned to go in. But his eyes, as he moved, were caught by his scabbard, lying where he had thrown it on the steps, and he stooped to pick it up.

Even as he bent a bullet came whizzing over his head and smacked into the woodwork of the half-open door behind him.

Saint-Armel had leapt down in an instant from his exposed position. “Somewhere in the shrubbery on the other side!” he shouted coolly to Yves, whose musket was already at his shoulder. “Lend me your sword, de Lage!” But de Lage and the Chouan had already begun to run towards the bushes, rendered by the deceptive dusk a fit hiding-place for any straggler, and, pulling a pistol from his belt, Hervé followed them. The calm of a moment ago was transformed into a palpitating tension. Yet there was nothing to be seen or heard. The great over-grown laurels round the drive were thick, shadowy and mocking; but it was in them, somewhere, that death was lurking. De Lage was hacking at them desperately and rather aimlessly, the Chouan had plunged into their fastnesses, and Hervé, pistol in hand, was giving him directions. All three were on one side of the drive.

“For God’s sake come away!” shouted Yves. “Come away, Monsieur Hervé; it’s you he wants!” Saint-Armel’s disdainful little laugh was all the answer he got ere, frantic with apprehension, and careless whether he killed the Chouan or no, the old man fired at a venture into the laurels, and, lowering his musket, ran forward.

A man in the uniform of a grenadier instantly slipped out of the bushes on the other side of the drive, in the shade of a large arbor vitæ, and, dropping on one knee, took deliberate aim. . . . Yves, the only one who could see the assassin, was the fraction of a second too late.

“He’s the other side!” he yelled, and fired.

The two shots rang out simultaneously, and as Jean Delorme sank forward in a huddled heap, Hervé threw out his arms, spun half round, and fell on the weed-grown gravel, shot through the heart. In an instant Yves had caught him to his breast. L’Invincible, opening his eyes, looked up at him with a faint and fleeting smile, and the old man thought to catch the word “Dieu!” or “Adieu!” he could not tell which. . . .

And in a few moments the two women in the lighted room saw a tall old Breton standing in the doorway with the tears running down his face, and his foster-son once more inert in his arms. But this time l’Invincible would not wake again.

XI

In the little chapel of the château, with candles at his head and feet, his hands crossed over his broken sword, and two great June roses hiding the wound in his breast, Hervé de Saint-Armel lay under the flag of France. Yves le Guerric, his head fallen forward on the fleur-de-lis, and his hands clasped together over his rosary, was kneeling by him when Armande de Bellegarde came softly in, and, looking long at the dead face, stooped and kissed it.

“Yves,” she said gently, “do you know the story of the Inn of the Sword?”

Le Guerric raised his ravaged old countenance, and looked at her across the pall of white and gold.

“Were you the lady?” was all his answer.

“Yes,” said Armande, “and this is the Inn of the Sword. The sword is the device of the house.”

“I did not know it,” said Yves fiercely. “Should he have come here had I known? . . . And it was you that brought him here!” he added, with a hushed and savage vehemence.

Madame de Bellegarde took no notice. “See, Yves,” she said, more gently still, “here are two roses, and when they bury him to-morrow we will each take one, because we loved him best, and because we are both glad that he sleeps so well at the Inn of the Sword, under the Lilies. . . . You are not sorry, are you, Yves?”

But Yves, instead of answering the beautiful poignant voice, broke into a storm of sobbing.

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