So might have looked one of her warlike ancestors when the besiegers set fire to his castle by the Garonne, and he resolved to betake himself, with his stout veterans, to the square stone keep where the well was dug—a maiden fortress, that had never yet succumbed to famine nor been forced by escalade.
“Is there any one in the house whom we can trust?” said the Marquise; and even while she spoke a comely black girl came crawling to her feet, and seized her hand to cover it with tears and kisses.
“Iss, missis!” exclaimed Fleurette, for Fleurette it was, who had indeed been listening at the door for the last five minutes. “You trust me! Life for life! Blood for blood! No fear Jumbo, so lilly ma’amselle go out safe. Trust Fleurette, missis. Trust Fleurette, ma’amselle. Fleurette die at um house-door, so! better than ugly black floggee-man come in.” The Marquise listened calmly.
“Attend to me, Fleurette,” said she, with an authoritative gesture. “Go at once through the kitchen into the dark path that leads to the old summer-house. See if the road to Port Welcome is clear. There is no bush on that side within five hundred paces, and if they mean to stop us, they must post a guard between the house and the gum-trees. Do not show yourself, girl, but if they take you, say Célandine sent you down to the negro-houses for eggs. Quick, and come back here like lightning. Bartoletti—have you any firearms? Do not be afraid, my darling,” she repeated, turning to her daughter, “I know these wretched people well. You need but show a bold front, and they would turn away from a lady’s fan if you only shook it hard at them.”
“I am not afraid, mamma,” answered Cerise, valiantly, though her face was very pale, and her knees shook. “I—I don’t like it, of course, but I can do anything you tell me. Oh, mamma! do you—do you think they will kill us?” she added, with rather a sudden breakdown of the courage she tried so gallantly to rally.
“Kill us, mademoiselle!” exclaimed the overseer, quaking in every limb. “Oh, no! never! They cannot be so bad as that. We will temporise, we will supplicate, we will make terms with them; we will offer freedom, and rum, and plunder; we will go on our knees to their chief, and entreat his mercy!”
The girl looked at him contemptuously. Strange to say, her courage rose as his fell, and she seemed to gather strength and energy from the abject selfishness of his despair. The Marquise did not heed him, for she heard Fleurette’s footsteps returning, and was herself busied with an oblong wooden case, brass-bound, and carefully locked up, that she lifted from the recess of a cupboard in the room.
Fleurette’s black feet could carry her swiftly and lightly as a bird. She had followed her instructions implicitly, had crept noiselessly through the kitchen, and advanced unseen to the old summer-house. Peering from that concealment on the moonlit surface of the lawn, she was horrorstruck to observe nearly a score of slaves intently watching the house. She hurried back panting to her mistress’s presence, and made her discouraging report.
Madame de Montmirail was very grave now. The affair had become more than serious. It was, in truth, desperate. Once again, as she looked at her daughter, came that strange quiver over her features, that shudder of repressed horror rather than pain. It was succeeded, as before, by a moment of deep reflection, and then her eye kindled, her lips tightened, and all her soft voluptuous beauty hardened into the obstinate courage of despair.
Cerise sank on her knees to pray, and rose with a pale, serene, undaunted face. Hers was the passive endurance of the martyr. Her mother’s the tameless valour of the champion, inherited through a long line of the turbulent La Fiertés, not one of whom had ever blenched from death nor yielded an inch before the face of man.