Through Martin's message, delivered at a time when no man likes to be interrupted—for I talked with Brigitta in the shade, Roland's bridle hooked over my arm—there had been a covert satisfaction that blunted its edge. My recollection of what passed there differed from Martin's.
"Come, Monsieur Gaspard," said he, his sour look turned not on me, but on the girl, "Solignac's a-fire, and there's a man's work to do."
"Solignac a-fire?" Not only I, but Brigitta echoed the words. As she said them she laid her hands on my shoulders with a little high-pitched laugh that set my heart beating even more than did the touch. The peasant girl could feel as keenly as any fine lady, though of fine ladies I knew nothing. My own thought was that Martin coined some clumsy excuse to draw me home, anywhere away from Brigitta, whom he hated malignantly, as only a narrow peasant can hate. So I added, joining in the laugh, "Let who lit the fire put it out, and go thou and help him."
"That's not Jan Meert's way," answered Martin, his voice rougher than I had heard it since I had grown a man. "Come Monsieur Gaspard, come for God's sake. You can find a face of brass any hour, but there's only one Solignac."
"Is it serious?"
"Is Jan Meert serious? Is the devil serious? Solignac is hell, I tell you, hell to-day, and Jan Meert its devil."
Even then, being, thank God, a man of no imagination, I did not understand, and though we rode fast enough—too fast to please Martin—it was the gallop that warmed my blood and not rage against Jan Meert. Understand! How could I understand? How could any man understand who has not seen the like? But now, as we broke the last cover, I cried I do not know what curse, and spurred Roland forward at a pace that cared never a jot whether or no the devil Jan Meert had quitted that smoking hell of his own making. What three hundred grim adventurous years had failed to do three hours had done, and the house of my fathers was a hollow wreck. The walls still stood sheer, even Jan Meert's malignancy had not strength to thrust stone from stone, but the hewn mullions that divided the Norman windows were cracked with fire, and from every blackened casement smoke blew out in little vicious puffs as the great heat within poured up and out where once the roof had been. There was neither flash nor glow of flame, no cataract of fire, no roar of life swelling in destruction, nothing but the sullen, steady flooding upwards of the reek. Solignac was already dead, stripped and stretched on its funeral pyre, and the smoke of its ashes cried to God for vengeance.
Martin, riding at my elbow, was speechless, but I could hear him whimpering and whinging under his breath, as if a rough finger on a new wound fretted him. To me, almost a peasant, as he had said, the sight was a new one; but Martin had been my father's squire in wars south, east, and west, and had seen both sack and siege. Then it was a matter of course that the pride of ten generations should dissolve in one hour's smoke and men and women go homeless, a thing to be borne philosophically being the loss of others; but this was Solignac, this was the birth-house of us both, and the cradle of his master's race, and though he spoke no words, I knew well that every choked fret in the throat was a curse that language could not match for expression or better for force.
Round the north-west of the smoking house we dashed, our horses' mouths frothing even in that short furlong; round to the grey façade where stood the great door flush with the huge stone pillars from which it hung.
"Babette!" I called out as we pulled up, "Babette! Babette! Where are you, Babette?"