The Rocks of Valpre by Ethel May Dell (best short books to read txt) 📖

cakes for tea, after which he transferred his attention to more pressing matters. Quite a strategist was Jack, though very few gave him credit for so being.
Later, he sat down beside his forlorn little cousin in the great buzzing vestibule of the hotel whither he had piloted the whole party, and gave her tea, while he plied the boys with questions. But he never noticed that she could not eat, or commented upon her evident weariness. Mademoiselle did both, but he did not hear.
Chris would have gladly escaped the ordeal of dining in the great _salle-a-manger_ that night, but she could muster no excuse for so doing. At any other time it would have been an immense treat, and she dared not let Jack think that it was otherwise with her to-night.
So they dined at length and elaborately, to Mademoiselle's keen satisfaction, but she was aching all the while to slip away to bed and cry her heart out in the darkness. She could not shake free from the memory of the friend who would be waiting for her on the morrow, drawing his pictures in the sand for the playfellow who would never see them--who would never, in fact, be his playfellow again.
Returning to the vestibule after dinner to listen to the band was almost more than she could bear; but still she could not frame an excuse, and still Jack noticed nothing. He sent the boys to bed, but, as a matter of course, she remained with Mademoiselle.
They found a seat under some palms, and Jack ordered coffee. He got on very well with Mademoiselle as with the rest of the world, and there seemed small prospect of an early retirement. But at this juncture poor Chris began to get desperate. She had refused the coffee almost with vehemence, and was on the point of an almost tearful entreaty to be allowed to go to bed, when suddenly a quiet voice spoke close to her.
"Excuse me, Forest! I have been trying to catch your eye for the past ten minutes. May I have the pleasure of an introduction?"
Chris glanced quickly round at the first deliberate syllable, and saw a tall, grave-faced man of possibly thirty, standing at Jack's elbow.
Jack looked round too, and sprang impulsively to his feet. "You, Trevor! I thought you were on the other side of the world. My dear chap, why on earth didn't you speak before? You might have dined with us. Mademoiselle Gautier, may I present my friend, Mr. Mordaunt?"
Mademoiselle acknowledged the introduction stiffly. She had no liking for strange men.
But Chris looked at the new-comer with frank interest, forgetful for the moment of her trouble. His smooth, clean-cut face attracted her. His grey eyes were the most piercingly direct that she had ever encountered.
"My little cousin, Miss Wyndham," said Jack. "Chris, this is the greatest newspaper man of the age. Join us, Mordaunt, won't you? I wish you had come up sooner. Where were you hiding?"
Mordaunt smiled a little as he took a vacant chair by Chris's side. "I have been quite as conspicuous as usual during the whole evening," he said, "but you were too absorbed to notice me. Are you enjoying the music, Miss Wyndham, or only watching the crowd?"
Chris did not know quite what to answer, since she had been doing neither, but he passed on with the easy air of a man accustomed to fill in conversational gaps.
"I believe I saw you arrive this evening. Haven't you got a small dog with a turned-up nose? I thought so. Are you taking him for a holiday? How do you propose to get him home again?"
That opened her lips, and quite successfully diverted her thoughts. "He has had his holiday," she explained, "and we are taking him back. I don't know in the least how we shall do it. Jack will have to manage it somehow. Can you suggest anything? The authorities are so horribly strict about dogs, and I couldn't let him go into quarantine. He would break his heart long before he came out."
"A dog of character evidently!" The new acquaintance considered the matter gravely. "When are you crossing?" he asked.
"To-morrow," said Jack. "I'm sorry, Chris, but I came off in a hurry, as matters seemed urgent, and I have to be back by the end of the week."
"I wonder if you would care to entrust your dog to me," said Mordaunt. "I am fairly well known. I think I could be relied upon with safety to hoodwink the authorities."
He made the suggestion with a smile that warmed Chris's desolate heart. Not till long afterwards did she know that this man had crossed the Channel only that day, and that he proposed to re-cross it on the morrow because of the trouble in a child's eyes that had moved him to compassion.
They spent the next half-hour in an engrossing discussion as to the best means to be adopted for Cinders' safe transit, and when Chris went to bed at last she was so full of the scheme that she forgot after all to cry herself to sleep over the thought of her _preux chevalier_ drawing his sand-pictures in solitude.
She dreamed instead that he and the Englishman with the level, grey eyes were fighting a duel that lasted interminably, neither giving ground, till suddenly Bertrand plunged his sword into the earth and abruptly walked away.
She tried to follow him, but could not, for something held her back. And so presently he passed out of her sight, and turning, she found that the Englishman had gone also, and she was alone.
Then she awoke, and knew it was a dream.


PART I

CHAPTER I
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.
Mordaunt was of the same opinion; but, as he watched the young officer throughout the whole of the day's proceedings, he came to the conclusion that the verdict was everything in this man's estimation and the sentence less than nothing. If he were condemned to be blown from his own gun, he would face the ordeal unshrinking, almost with indifference. Deprived of honour, what else was there in life?
So when the end came at last, and the inevitable verdict was pronounced, Mordaunt shut his note-book with a feeling that there was no more to be recorded.
As a matter of fact the sentence was not pronounced at the time, and only transpired two days later, when it was officially made public--expulsion from the army and incarceration in a French fortress for ten years.
"That, of course, will be commuted," said one who knew the probabilities of the case to Mordaunt when the sentence was made known. "They will release him _au secret_ in a few years and banish him from the country on peril of arrest. They are bound to make an example of him, but they won't