THE TRAMPLING OF THE LILIES
By Rafael Sabatini
CONTENTS
[ PART I. ] THE OLD RULE
[ CHAPTER I. ] MONSIEUR THE SECRETARY
[ CHAPTER II. ] LORDS OF LIFE AND DEATH
[ CHAPTER III. ] THE WORD OF BELLECOUR
[ CHAPTER IV. ] THE DISCIPLES OF ROUSSEAU
[ PART II. ] THE NEW RULE
[ CHAPTER V. ] THE SHEEP TURNED WOLVES
[ CHAPTER VI. ] THE CITIZEN COMMISSIONER
[ CHAPTER VII. ] LA BOULAYE DISCHARGES A DEBT
[ CHAPTER VIII. ] THE INVALIDS AT BOISVERT
[ CHAPTER IX. ] THE CAPTIVES
[ CHAPTER X. ] THE BAISER LAMOURETTE
[ CHAPTER XI. ] THE ESCAPE
[ CHAPTER XII. ] THE AWAKENING
[ CHAPTER XIII. ] THE ROAD TO LIEGE
[ CHAPTER XIV. ] THE COURIER
[ CHAPTER XV. ] LA BOULAYE BAITS HIS HOOK
[ PART III. ] THE EVERLASTING RULE
[ CHAPTER XVI. ] CECILE DESHAIX
[ CHAPTER XVII. ] LA BOULAYE'S PROMISE
[ CHAPTER XVIII. ] THE INCORRUPTIBLE
[ CHAPTER XIX. ] THE THEFT
[ CHAPTER XX. ] THE GRATITUDE OF OMBREVAL
[ CHAPTER XXI. ] THE ARREST
[ CHAPTER XXII. ] THE TRIBUNAL
[ CHAPTER XXIII. ] THE CONCIERGERIE
PART I. THE OLD RULE
These are they
Who ride on the court gale, control its tides;
***
Whose frown abases and whose smile exalts.
They shine like any rainbow—and, perchance,
Their colours are as transient.
Old Play
CHAPTER I. MONSIEUR THE SECRETARY
It was spring at Bellecour—the spring of 1789, a short three months before the fall of the Bastille came to give the nobles pause, and make them realise that these new philosophies, which so long they have derided, were by no means the idle vapours they had deemed them.
By the brook, plashing its glittering course through the park of Bellecour, wandered La Boulaye, his long, lean, figure clad with a sombreness that was out of harmony in that sunlit, vernal landscape. But the sad-hued coat belied that morning a heart that sang within his breast as joyously as any linnet of the woods through which he strayed. That he was garbed in black was but the outward indication of his clerkly office, for he was secretary to the most noble the Marquis de Fresnoy de Bellecour, and so clothed in the livery of the ink by which he lived. His face was pale and lean and thoughtful, but within his great, intelligent eyes there shone a light of new-born happiness. Under his arm he carried a volume of the new philosophies which Rousseau had lately given to the world, and which was contributing so vastly to the mighty change that was impending. But within his soul there dwelt in that hour no such musty subject as the metaphysical dreams of old Rousseau. His mood inclined little to the “Discourses upon the Origin of Inequality” which his elbow hugged to his side. Rather was it a mood of song and joy and things of light, and his mind was running on a string of rhymes which mentally he offered up to his divinity. A high-born lady was she, daughter to his lordly employer, the most noble Marquis of Bellecour. And he a secretary, a clerk! Aye, but a clerk with a great soul, a secretary with a great belief in the things to come, which in that musty tome beneath his arm were dimly prophesied.
And as he roamed beside the brook, his feet treading the elastic, velvety turf, and crushing heedlessly late primrose and stray violet, his blood quickened by the soft spring breeze, fragrant with hawthorn and the smell of the moist brown earth, La Boulaye's happiness gathered strength from the joy that on that day of spring seemed to invest all Nature. An old-world song stole from his firm lips-at first timidly, like a thing abashed in new surroundings, then in bolder tones that echoed faintly through the trees
“Si le roi m'avait donne
Paris, sa grande ville,
Et qui'il me fallut quitter
L'amour de ma mie,
Je dirais au roi Louis
Reprenez votre Paris.
J'aime mieux ma mie, O gai!
J'aime mieux ma mie!”
How mercurial a thing is a lover's heart! Here was one whose habits were of solemnity and gloomy thought turned, so joyous that he could sing aloud, alone in the midst of sunny Nature, for no better reason than that Suzanne de Bellecour had yesternight smiled as—for some two minutes by the clock—she had stood speaking with him.
“Presumptuous that I am,” said he to the rivulet, to contradict himself the next moment. “But no; the times are changing. Soon we shall be equals all, as the good God made us, and—”
He paused, and smiled pensively. And as again the memory of her yesternight's kindness rose before him, his smile broadened; it became a laugh that went ringing down the glade, scaring a noisy thrush into silence and sending it flying in affright across the scintillant waters of the brook. Then that hearty laugh broke sharply off, as, behind him, the sweetest voice in all the world demanded the reason of this mad-sounding mirth.
La Boulaye's breath seemed in that instant to forsake him and he grew paler than Nature and the writer's desk had fashioned him. Awkwardly he turned and made her a deep bow.
“Mademoiselle! You—you see that you surprised me!” he faltered, like a fool. For how should he, whose only comrades had been books, have learnt to bear himself in the company of a woman, particularly when she belonged to the ranks of those whom—despite Rousseau and his other dear philosophers—he had been for years in the habit of accounting his betters?
“Why, then, I am glad, Monsieur, that I surprised you in so gay a humour—for, my faith, it is a rare enough thing.”
“True, lady,” said he foolishly, yet politely agreeing with her, “it is a rare thing.” And he sighed—“Helas!”
At that the laughter leapt from her young lips, and turned him hot and cold as he stood awkwardly before her.
“I see that we shall have you sad at the thought of how rare is happiness, you that but a moment back were—or so it seemed—so joyous. Or is it that my coming has overcast the sky of your good humour?” she demanded archly.
He blushed like a school-girl, and strenuously protested that it was not so. In his haste he fell headlong into the sin of hastiness—as was but natural—and said perhaps too much.
“Your coming, Mademoiselle?” he echoed. “Nay but even had I been sad, your coming must have dispelled my melancholy as the coming of the sun dispels the mist upon the mountains.”
“A poet?” She mocked him playfully, with a toss of black curls and a distracting glance of eyes blue as the heavens above them. “A poet, Monsieur, and I never suspected it, for all that I held you a great scholar. My father says you are.”
“Are we not all poets at some season of our lives?” quoth he, for growing accustomed to her presence—ravished by it, indeed—his courage was returning fast and urging him beyond the limits of discretion.
“And in what season may this rhyming fancy touch us?” she asked. “Enlighten me, Monsieur.”
He smiled, responsive to her merry mood, and his courage ever swelling under the suasion of it, he answered her in a fearless, daring fashion that was oddly unlike his wont. But then, he was that day a man transformed.
“It comes, Mademoiselle, upon some spring morning such as this—for is not spring the mating season, and have not poets sung of it, inspired and conquered by it? It comes in the April of life, when in our hearts we bear the first fragrant bud of what shall anon blossom into a glorious summer bloom red as is Love's livery and perfumed beyond all else that God has set on earth for man's delight and thankfulness.”
The intensity with which he spoke, and the essence of the speech itself, left her a moment dumb with wonder and with an incomprehensible consternation, born of some intuition not yet understood.
“And so, Monsieur, the Secretary,” said she at last, a nervous laugh quivering in her first words, “from all this wondrous verbiage I am to take it that you love?”
“Aye, that I love, dear lady,” he cried, his eyes so intent upon her that her glance grew timid and fell before them. And then, a second later, she could have screamed aloud in apprehension, for the book of Jean Jacques Rousseau lay tumbled in the grass where he had flung it, even as he flung himself upon his knees before her. “You may take it indeed that I love—that I love you, Mademoiselle.”
The audacious words being spoken, his courage oozed away and anti-climax, followed. He paled and trembled, yet he knelt on until she should bid him rise, and furtively he watched her face. He saw it darken; he saw the brows knit; he noted the quickening breath, and in all these signs he read his doom before she uttered it.
“Monsieur, monsieur,” she answered him, and sad was her tone, “to what lengths do you urge this springtime folly? Have you forgotten so your station—yes, and mine—that because I talk with you and laugh with you, and am kind to you, you must presume to speak to me in this fashion? What answer shall I make you, Monsieur—for I am not so cruel that I can answer you as you deserve.”
An odd thing indeed was La Boulaye's courage. An instant ago he had felt a very coward, and had quivered, appalled by the audacity of his own words. Now that she assailed him thus, and taxed him with that same audacity, the blood of anger rushed to his face—anger of the quality that has its source in shame. In a second he was on his feet before her, towering to the full of his lean height. The words came from him in a hot stream, which for reckless passion by far outvied his erstwhile amatory address.
“My station?” he cried, throwing wide his arms. “What fault lies in my station? I am a secretary, a scholar, and so, by academic right, a gentleman. Nay, Mademoiselle, never laugh; do not mock me yet. In what do you find me less a man than any of the vapid caperers that fill your father's salon? Is not my shape as good? Are not my arms as strong, my hands as deft, my wits as keen, and my soul as true? Aye,” he pursued with another wild wave of his long arms, “my attributes have all these virtues, and yet you scorn me—you scorn me because of my station, so you say!”
How she had angered him! All the pent-up gall of years against the supercilia of the class from which she sprang surged in that moment to his lips. He bethought him now of the thousand humiliations his proud spirit had suffered at their hands when he noted the disdain with which they addressed him, speaking to him—because he was compelled to carve his living with a quill—as though he were less than mire. It was not so much against her scorn of him that he voiced his bitter grievance, but against the entire noblesse of France, which denied him the right to carry a high head because he had not been born of Madame la Duchesse, Madame la Marquise, or Madame la Comtesse. All the great thoughts of a wondrous transformation, which had been sown in him by the revolutionary philosophers he had devoured with such appreciation, welled up now, and such scraps of that infinity of thought as could find utterance he cast before the woman who had scorned him for his station. Presumptuous he had accounted himself—but only until she had found him so. By that the presumption, it seemed, had been lifted from him, and he held that what he had said to her of the love he bore her was no more than by virtue of his manhood he had the right to say.
She drew back before him, and shrank in some measure of fear, for he looked very fierce. Moreover, he had said things which professed him a revolutionist, and the revolutionists, whilst being a class which she had been taught to despise and scorn, dealt, she knew, in a violence which it might be ill to excite.
“Monsieur,” she faltered, and with her hand she clutched at her riding-habit of green velvet, as if preparing to depart, “you are not yourself. I am beyond measure desolated that you should have so spoken to me. We have been good friends, M. La Boulaye. Let us forget this scene. Shall we?” Her tones grew seductively conciliatory.
La Boulaye half turned from her, and his smouldering eye fell upon “The Discourses” lying on the grass. He stooped and picked up the volume. The act might have seemed symbolical. For a moment he had cast aside his creed to woo a woman, and now that she had denied him he returned to Rousseau, and gathered up the tome almost in penitence at his momentary defection.
“I am quite myself, Mademoiselle,” he answered quietly. His cheeks were flushed, but beyond that, his excitement seemed to have withered. “It is you who yesternight, for one brief moment and again to-day—were not yourself, and to that you owe it that I have spoken to you as I have done.”
Between these two it would seem as the humour of the one waned, that of the other waxed. Her glance kindled anew at his last words.
“I?” she echoed. “I was not myself? What are you saying, Monsieur the Secretary?”
“Last night, and again just now, you were so kind, you—you smiled so sweetly—”
“Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed, angrily interrupting him. “See what you are for all your high-sounding vaunts of yourself and your attributes! A woman may not smile upon you, may not say one kind word to you, but you must imagine you have made a conquest. Ma foi, you and yours do not deserve to be treated as anything but vassals. When we show you a kindness, see how you abuse it. We extend to you our little finger and you instantly lay claim to the whole arm. Because last night I permitted myself to exchange a jest with you, because I chance to be kind to you again to-day, you repay me with insults!”
“Stop!” he cried, rousing himself once more. “That is too much to say, Mademoiselle. To tell a woman that you love her is never to insult her. To be loved is never to be slighted. Upon the meanest of His creatures it is enjoined to love the same God whom the King loves, and there is no insult to God in professing love for Him. Would you make a woman more than that?”
“Monsieur, you put questions I have no mind to answer; you suggest a discussion I have no inclination to pursue. For you and me let it suffice that I account myself affronted by your words, your tone, and your manner. You drive me to say these things; by your insistence you compel me to be harsh. We will end this matter here and now, Monsieur, and I will ask you to understand that I never wish it reopened, else shall I be forced to seek protection at the hands of my father or my brother.”
“You may seek it now, Suzanne,” quoth a voice from the thicket at her back, a voice which came to startle both of them though in different ways. Before they had recovered from their surprise the Marquis de Bellecour stood before them. He was a tall man of some fifty years of age, but so powerful of frame and so scrupulous in dress that he might have conveyed an impression of more youth. His face, though handsome in a high-bred way, was puffed and of an unhealthy yellow. But the eyes were as keen as the mouth was voluptuous, and in his carefully dressed black hair there were few strands of grey.
He came slowly forward, and his lowering glance wandered from his daughter to his secretary in inquiry. At last—
“Well?” he demanded. “What is the matter?”
“It is nothing, Monsieur,” his daughter answered him. “A trifling affair 'twixt M. la Boulaye and me, with which I will not trouble you.”
“It is not nothing, my lord,” cried La Boulaye, his voice vibrating oddly. “It is that I love your daughter and that I have told her of it.” He was in a very daring mood that morning.
The Marquis glanced at him in dull amazement. Then a flush crept into his sallow cheeks and mounted to his brow. An inarticulate grunt came from his thick lips.
“Canaille!” he exclaimed, through set teeth. “Can you have presumed so far?”
He carried a riding-switch, and he seemed to grasp it now in a manner peculiarly menacing. But La Boulaye was nothing daunted. Lost he already accounted himself, and on the strength of the logic that if a man must hang, a sheep as well as a lamb may be the cause of it, he took what chances the time afforded him to pile up his debt.
“There is neither insolence nor presumption in what I have done,” he answered, giving back the Marquis look for look and scowl for scowl. “You deem it so because I am the secretary to the Marquis de Bellecour and she is the daughter of that same Marquis. But these are no more than the fortuitous circumstances in which we chance to find ourselves. That she is a woman must take rank before the fact that she is your daughter, and that I am a man must take rank before the fact that I am your secretary. Not, then, as your secretary speaking to your daughter have I told this lady that I love her, but as a man speaking to a woman. To utter that should be—nay, is—the right of every man; to hear it should be honouring to every woman worthy of the name. In a primitive condition—”
“A thousand devils!” blazed the Marquis, unable longer to contain himself. “Am I to have my ears offended by this braying? Miserable scum, you shall be taught what is due to your betters.”
His whip cracked suddenly, and the lash leapt serpentlike into the air, to descend and coil itself about La Boulaye's head and face. A cry broke from the young man, as much of pain as of surprise, and as the lash was drawn back, he clapped his hands to his seared face. But again he felt it, cutting him now across the hand with which he had masked himself. With a maddened roar he sprang upon his aggressor. In height he was the equal of the Marquis, but in weight he seemed to be scarce more than the half of his opponent's. Yet a nervous strength dwelt unsuspected in those lean arms and steely wrists.
Mademoiselle stood by looking on, with parted lips and eyes that were intent and anxious. She saw that figure, spare and lithe as a greyhound, leap suddenly upon her father, and the next instant the whip was in the secretary's hands, and he sprang back from the nobleman, who stood white and quivering with rage, and perhaps, too, with some dismay.
“That I do not break it across your back, M. le Marquis, said the young man,” as he snapped the whip on his knee, “you may thank your years.” With that he flung the two pieces wide into the sunlit waters of the brook. “But I will have satisfaction, Monsieur. I will take payment for this.” And he pointed to the weal that disfigured his face.
“Satisfaction?” roared the Marquis, hoarse in his passion. “Would you demand satisfaction of me, animal?”
“No,” answered the young man, with a wry smile. “Your years again protect you. But you have a son, and if by to-morrow it should come to pass that you have a son no more, you may account yourself, through this”—and again he pointed to the weal—“his murderer.”
“Do you mean that you would seek to cross swords with the Vicomte?” gasped the nobleman, in an unbelief so great that it gained the ascendency over his anger.
“That is what I mean, Monsieur. In practice he has often done so. He shall do so for once in actual earnest.”
“Fool!” was the contemptuous answer, more coldly delivered now, for the Marquis was getting himself in hand. “If you come near Bellecour again, if you are so much as found within the grounds of the park, I'll have you beaten to death by my grooms for your presumption. Keep you the memory of that promise in mind, Sir Secretary, and let it warn you to avoid Bellecour, as you would a plague-house. Come, Suzanne,” he said, turning abruptly to his daughter, “Enough of this delightful morning have we already wasted on this canaille.”
With that he offered her his wrist, and so, without so much as another glance at La Boulaye, she took her departure.
The secretary remained where they had left him, pale of face—saving the fortuitous crimson mark which the whip had cut—and very sick at heart. The heat of the moment being spent, he had leisure to contemplate his plight. A scorned lover, a beaten man, a dismissed secretary! He looked sorrowfully upon his volume of “The Discourses,” and for the first time a doubt crossed his mind touching the wisdom of old Jean Jacques. Was there would there ever be any remedy for such a condition of things as now prevailed?
Already the trees had hidden the Marquis and his daughter from La Boulaye's sight. The young revolutionist felt weary and lonely—dear God, how lonely! neither kith nor kin had he, and of late all the interest of his life—saving always that absorbed by Jean Jacques—had lain in watching Suzanne de Bellecour, and in loving her silently and distantly. Now that little crumb of comfort was to be his no more, he was to go away from Bellecour, away from the sight of her for all time. And he loved her, loved her, loved her!
He tossed his arms to Heaven with a great sigh that was a sob almost, then he passed his hands over his face, and as they came in contact with the swollen ridge that scored it, love faded from his mind, and vindictiveness came to fill its room.
“But for this,” he cried aloud. “I shall take payment—aye, as there is a God!”
Then turning, and with “The Discourses” held tightly to his side, he moved slowly away, following the course of the gleaming waters.
CHAPTER II. LORDS OF LIFE AND DEATH
One friend did La Boulaye count in the village of Bellecour. This was old Duhamel, the schoolmaster, an eccentric pedant and a fellow-worshipper of the immortal Jean Jacques. It was to him that La Boulaye now repaired intent upon seeking counsel touching a future that wore that morning a singularly gloomy outlook.
He found Duhamel's door open, and he stepped across the threshold into the chief room of the house. But there he paused, and hesitated. The chamber was crowded with people in holiday attire, and the centre of attraction was a well-set-up peasant with a happy, sun-tanned face, whose golden locks were covered by a huge round hat decked with a score of gaily-coloured ribbons.
At sight of him La Boulaye remembered that it was Charlot's wedding-day. Popular amongst the women by virtue of his comeliness, and respected by the men by virtue of his strength, Charlot Tardivet was a general favourite of the countryside, and here, in the room of old Duhamel, the schoolmaster, was half the village gathered to do him honour upon his wedding morn. It was like Duhamel, who, in fatherliness towards the villagers, went near out-rivalling M. le Cure, to throw open his house for the assembling of Charlot's friends, and La Boulaye was touched by this fresh sign of kindliness from a man whose good heart he had not lacked occasion to observe and appreciate. But it came to the secretary that there was no place for him in this happy assemblage. His advent would, probably, but serve to cast a gloom upon them, considering the conditions under which he came, with the signs of violence upon his face to remind them of the lords of life and death who dwelt at the Chateau up yonder. And such a reminder must fall upon them as does the reminder of some overhanging evil clutch suddenly at our hearts in happy moments of forgetfulness. To let them be happy that day, to leave their feasts free of a death's head, La Boulaye would have withdrawn had he not already been too late. Duhamel had espied him, and the little, wizened old man came hurrying forward, his horn-rimmed spectacles perched on the very end of his nose, his keen little eyes beaming with delight and welcome.
“Ah, Caron, you are very choicely come,” he cried, holding out both hands to La Boulaye. “You shall embrace our happy Hercules yonder, and wish him joy of the wedded life he has the audacity to exploit.” Then, as he espied the crimson ridge across the secretary's countenance, “Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed, “what have you done to yourself, Caron?”
“Pish! It is nothing,” answered La Boulaye hurriedly, and would have had the subject dismissed, but that one of the onlooking peasants swore by the memory of some long-dead saint that it was the cut of a whip. Duhamel's eyes kindled and his parchment-like skin was puckered into a hundred evil wrinkles.
“Who did it, Caron?” he demanded.
“Since you insist, old master,” answered the secretary, still endeavouring to make light of it, “learn that is the lord Marquis's signature to his order of my dismissal from his service.”
“The dog!” ejaculated the school-master.
“Sh! let it be. Perhaps I braved him overmuch. I will tell you of it when these good folks have gone. Do not let us cast a gloom over their happiness, old master. And now to embrace this good Charlot.”
Though inwardly burning with curiosity and boiling with indignation, Duhamel permitted himself to be guided by La Boulaye, and for the moment allowed the matter to rest. La Boulaye himself laughingly set aside the many questions with which they pressed him. He drank the health of the bride-elect—who was not yet of the party—and he pledged the happiness of the pair. He embraced Charlot, and even went so far as to urge upon him, out of his own scanty store, a louis d'or with which to buy Marie a trinket in memory of him.
Then presently came one with the announcement that M. le Cure was waiting, and in answer to that reminder that there was a ceremony to be gone through, Charlot and his friends flung out of the house in joyous confusion, and went their way with laughter and jest to the little church of St. Ildefonse.
“We will follow presently—M. la Boulaye and I—Charlot,” Duhamel had said, as the sturdy bridegroom was departing. “We shall be there to shake Madame by the hand and wish her joy of you.”
When at last they were alone in the schoolmaster's room, the old man turned to La Boulaye, the very embodiment of a note of interrogation. The secretary told him all that had passed. He reddened slightly when it came to speaking of his love for Mlle. de Bellecour, but he realised that if he would have guidance he must withhold nothing from his friend.
Duhamel's face grew dark as the young man spoke, and his eyes became sad and very thoughtful.
“Alas!” he sighed, when La Boulaye had ended. “What shall I say to you, my friend? The time is not yet for such as we—you and I—to speak of love for a daughter of the Seigneurie. It is coming, I doubt it not. All things have their climax, and France is tending swiftly to the climax of her serfdom. Very soon we shall have the crisis, this fire that is already smouldering, will leap into a great blaze, that shall lick the old regime as completely from the face of history as though it had never been. A new condition of things will spring up, of that I am convinced. Does not history afford us many instances? And what is history but the repetition of events under similar circumstances with different peoples. It will come in France, and it will come soon, for it is very direly needed.”
“I know, I know, old master,” broke in La Boulaye; “but how shall all this help me? For all that I have the welfare of France at heart, it weighs little with me at the moment by comparison with my own affairs. What am I to do, Duhamel? How am I to take payment for this?” And he pressed his finger to his seared cheek.
“Wait,” said the old man impressively. “That is the moral you might have drawn from what I have said. Be patient. I promise you your patience shall not be overtaxed. To-day they say that you presume; that you are not one of them—although, by my soul, you have as good an air as any nobleman in France.” And he eyed the lean height of the secretary with a glance of such pride as a father might take in a well-grown son.
Elegant of figure, La Boulaye was no less elegant in dress, for all that, from head to foot—saving the silver buckles on his shoes and the unpretentious lace at throat and wrists—he was dressed in the black that his office demanded. His countenance, too, though cast in a mould of thoughtfulness that bordered on the melancholy, bore a lofty stamp that might have passed for birth and breeding, and this was enhanced by the careful dressing of his black unpowdered hair, gathered into a club by a broad ribbon of black silk.
“But what shall waiting avail me?” cried the young man, with some impatience. “What am I to do in the meantime?”
“Go to Amiens,” said the other. “You have learning, you have eloquence, you have a presence and an excellent address. For success no better attributes could be yours.” He approached the secretary, and instinctively lowered his voice. “We have a little club there—a sort of succursal to the Jacobins. We are numerous, but we have no very shining member yet. Come with me, and I will nominate you. Beginning thus, I promise you that you shall presently become a man of prominence in Picardy. Anon we may send you to Paris to represent us in the States-General. Then, when the change comes, who shall say to what heights it may not be yours to leap?”
“I will think of it,” answered La Boulaye cordially, “and not a doubt of it but that I will come. I did not know that you had gone so far—”
“Sh! You know now. Let that suffice. It is not good to talk of these things just yet.”
“But in the meantime,” La Boulaye persisted, “what of this?” And again he pointed to his cheek.
“Why, let it heal, boy.”
“I promised the Marquis that I would demand satisfaction of his son, and I am tempted to do so and risk the consequences.”
“I am afraid the consequences will be the only satisfaction that you will get. In fact, they will be anticipations rather than consequences, for they'll never let you near the boy.”
“I know not that,” he answered. “The lad is more generous than his sire, and if I were to send him word that I have been affronted, he might consent to meet me. For the rest, I could kill him blindfolded,” he added, with a shrug.
“Bloodthirsty animal!” rejoined Duhamel. “Unnatural tutor! Do you forget that you were the boy's preceptor?”
With that Duhamel carried the argument into new fields, and showed La Boulaye that to avenge upon the young Vicomte the insults received at the hands of the old Marquis was hardly a worthy method of taking vengeance. At last he won him to his way, and it was settled that on the morrow La Boulaye should journey with him to Amiens.
“But, Caron, we are forgetting our friend Charlot and his bride,” he broke off suddenly. “Come, boy; the ceremony will be at an end by this.”
He took La Boulaye by the arm, and led him out and down the street to the open space opposite St. Ildefonse. The wedding-party was streaming out through the door of the little church into the warm sunshine of that April morning. In the churchyard they formed into a procession of happy be-ribboned and nosegayed men and women—the young preceding, the old following, the bridal couple. Two by two they came, and the air rang with their laughter and joyous chatter. Then another sound arose, and if the secretary and the pedagogue could have guessed of what that beating of hoofs was to be the prelude, they had scarce smiled so easily as they watched the approaching cortege.
From a side street there now emerged a gaily apparelled cavalcade. At its head rode the Marquis de Bellecour, the Vicomte, and a half-dozen other gentlemen, followed by, perhaps, a dozen lacqueys. It was a hunting party that was making its way across the village to the open country beyond. The bridal procession crossing their path caused them to draw rein, and to wait until it should have passed—which argued a very condescending humour, for it would not have been out of keeping with their habits to have ridden headlong through it. Their presence cast a restraint upon the peasants. The jests were silenced, the laughter hushed, and like a flight of pigeons under the eye of the hawk, they scurried past the Seigneurie, and some of them prayed God that they might be suffered to pass indeed.
Bellecour eyed them in cold disdain, until presently Charlot and his bride were abreast of him. Then his eye seemed to take life and his sallow face to kindle into expression. He leant lightly from the saddle.
“Stay!” he commanded coldly, and as they came to a halt, daring not to disobey him—“approach, girl,” he added.
Charlot's brows grew black. He looked up at the Marquis, but if his glance was sullen and threatening, it was also not free from fear. Marie obeyed, with eyes downcast and a heightened colour. If she conjectured at all why they had been stopped, it was but to conclude that M. le Marquis was about to offer her some mark of appreciation. Uneasiness, in her dear innocence, she knew none.
“What is your name, child?” inquired the Marquis more gently.
“It was Marie Michelin, Monseigneur,” she made answer timidly. “But it has just been changed to Marie Tardivet.”
“You have just been wed, eh?”
“We are on our way from church, Monseigneur.”
“C'est ca,” he murmured, as if to himself, and his eyes taking such stock of her as made Charlot burn to tear him from his horse. Then, in a kindly, fatherly voice, he added: “My felicitations, Marie; may you be a happy wife and a happier mother.”
“Merci, Monseigneur,” she murmured, with crimson cheeks, whilst Charlot breathed once more, and from his heart gave thanks to Heaven, believing the interview at an end. But he went too fast.
“Do you know, Marie, that you are a very comely child?” quoth the Marquis, in tones which made the bridegroom's blood run cold.
Some in that noble company nudged one another, and one there was who burst into a loud guffaw.
“Charlot has often told me so,” she laughed, all unsuspicious.
The Marquis moved on his horse that he might bend lower. With his forefinger he uptilted her chin, and now, as she met his glance thus at close quarters, an unaccountable fear took possession of her, and the colour died out of her plump cheeks.
“Yes,” said Bellecour, with a smile, “this Tardivet has good taste. My congratulations, to him. We must find you a wedding gift, little woman,” he continued more briskly. “It is an ancient and honoured custom that is falling somewhat into neglect. Go up to the Chateau with Blaise and Jean there. This good Tardivet must curb his impatience until to-morrow.”
He turned in his saddle, and beckoning the two servants he had named, he bade Marie to mount behind Blaise.
She drew back now, her cheeks white as those of the dead. With a wild terror in her eyes she turned to Charlot, who stood the very picture of anguish and impotent rage. In the cortege, where but a few moments ago all had been laughter, a sob or two sounded now from some of the women.
“By my faith,” laughed Bellecour contemptuously eyeing their dejection, “you have more the air of a burial than a bridal party.”
“Mercy my lord!” cried the agonised voice of Charlot, as, distraught with grief, he flung himself before the Marquis.
“Who seeks to harm you, fool?” was Bellecour's half-derisive rejoinder.
“Do not take her from me, my lord,” the young man pleaded piteously.
“She shall return to-morrow, booby,” answered the noble. “Out of the way!”
But Charlot was obstinate. The Marquis might be claiming no more than by ancient law was the due of the Seigneur, but Charlot was by no means minded to submit in craven acquiescence to that brutal, barbarous law.
“My lord,” he cried, “you shall not take her. She is my wife. She belongs to me. You shall not take her!”
He caught hold of the Marquis's bridle with such a strength and angry will that the horse was forced to back before him.
“Insolent clod!” exclaimed Bellecour, with an angry laugh and a sharp, downward blow of the butt of his whip upon the peasant's head. Charlot's hand grew nerveless and released the bridle as he sank stunned to the ground. Bellecour touched his horse with the spur and rode over the prostrate fellow with no more concern than had he been a dog's carcase. “Blaise, see to the girl,” he called over his shoulder, adding to his company: “Come, messieurs, we have wasted time enough.”
Not a hand was raised to stay him, not a word of protest uttered, as the nobles rode by, laughing, and chatting among themselves, with the utmost unconcern of the tragedy that was being enacted.
Like a flock of frightened sheep the peasants stood huddled together and watched them go. In the same inaction—for all that not a little grief was blent with the terror on their countenances—they stood by and allowed Blaise to lift the half-swooning girl to the withers of his horse. No reply had they to the coarse jest with which he and his fellow-servant rode off. But La Boulaye, who, from the point where he and Duhamel had halted, had observed the whole scene from its inception, turned now a livid face upon his companion.
“Shall such things be?” he cried passionately. “Merciful God! Are we men, Duhamel, and do we permit such things to take place?”
The old pedagogue shrugged his shoulders in despair. His face was heavily scored by sorrow.
“Helas!” he sighed. “Are they not masters of all that they may take? The Marquis goes no further than is by ancient law allowed his class. It is the law needs altering, my friend, and then the men will alter. Meanwhile, behold them—lords of life and death.”
“Lords of hell are they!” blazed the young revolutionist. “That is where they belong, whence they are come, and whither they shall return. Poltroons!” he cried, shaking his fist at the group of cowed peasants that surrounded the prostrate Charlot “Sheep! Worthless clods! The nobles do well to despise you, for, by my faith, you invite nothing but contempt, you that will suffer rape and murder to be done under your eyes, and never do more than look scared encouragement upon your ravishers!”
“Blame not these poor wretches, Caron,” sighed the old man. “They dare not raise a hand.”
“Then, pardieu! here, at least, is one who does dare,” he cried furiously, as from the breast pocket of his coat he drew a pistol.
Blaise, with the girl across the withers of his horse, was approaching them, followed by Jean.
“What would you do?” cried the old man fearfully, setting a restraining hand upon La Boulaye's sleeve. But Caron shook himself free.
“This,” was all he answered, and simultaneously, he levelled his pistol and fired at Blaise.
Shot through the head, the servant collapsed forward; then, as the horse reared and started off at a gallop, he toppled sideways and fell. The girl went down with him and lay in the road whilst he was dragged along, his head bumping horribly on the stones as faster and faster went the frightened horse.
With a shout that may have been either anger or dismay Jean reined in his horse, and sat for a second hesitating whether to begin by recovering the girl, or avenging his comrade. But his doubts were solved for him by La Boulaye, who took a deliberate aim at him.
“Begone!” cried the secretary, “unless you prefer to go by the road I've sent your fellow.” And being a discreet youth, Jean made off in silence by the street down which poor Blaise had been dragged.
“Carom” cried Duhamel, in a frenzy of apprehension. “I tremble for you, my son. Fly from Bellecour at once—now, this very instant. Go to my friends at Amiens; they will—”
But Caron had already left his side to repair to the spot where Marie was lying. The peasantry followed him, though leisurely, in their timid hesitation. They were asking themselves whether, even so remotely as by tending the girl, they dared participate in the violence La Boulaye had committed. That a swift vengeance would be the Seigneur's answer they were well assured, and a great fear possessed them that in that vengeance those of the Chateau might lack discrimination. Charlot was amongst them, and on his feet, but still too dazed to have a clear knowledge of the circumstances. Presently, however, his faculties awakening and taking in the situation, he staggered forward, and came lurching towards La Boulaye, who was assisting the frightened Marie to rise. With a great sob the girl flung herself into her husband's arms.
“Charlot, mon Charlot!” she cried, and added a moment later: “It was he—this brave gentleman—who rescued me.”
“Monsieur,” said Charlot, “I shall remember it to my dying day.”
He would have said more, but the peasants, stirred by fear, now roused themselves and plucked at his coat.
“Get you gone, Charlot, Get you gone quickly,” they advised him. “And if you are wise you will leave Bellecour without delay. It is not safe for you here.”
“It is not safe for any of us,” exclaimed one. “I have no mind to be caught when the Seigneur returns. There will be a vengeance. Ah Dieu! what a vengeance!”
The warning acted magically. There were hurried leave-takings, and then, like a parcel of scuttling rabbits, they made for their burrows to hide from the huntsman that would not be long in coming. And ere the last of them was out of sight there arose a stamping of hoofs and a chorus of angry voices. Down tine street thundered the Marquis's cavalcade, brought back by the servant who had escaped and who had ridden after them. Some anger there was—particularly in the heart of the Lord of Bellecour—but greater than their anger was their excitement at the prospect of a man-hunt, with which the chase on which they had been originally bent made but a poor comparison.
“There he is, Monseigneur” cried Jean, as he pointed to La Boulaye. “And yonder are the girl and her husband.”
“Ah! The secretary again, eh?” laughed the nobleman, grimly, as he came nearer. “Ma foi, life must have grown wearisome to him. Secure the woman, Jean.”
Caron stood before him, pale in his impotent rage, which was directed as much against the peasants who had fled as against the nobles who approached. Had these clods but stood there, and defended themselves and their manhood with sticks and stones and such weapons as came to their hands, they might have taken pride in being trampled beneath the hoofs of the Seigneurie. Thus, at least, might they have proved themselves men. But to fly thus—some fifty of them from the approach of less than a score—was to confess unworthiness of a better fate than that of which their seigneurs rendered themselves the instruments.
Himself he could do no more than the single shot in his pistol would allow. That much, however, he would do, and like him whose resources are reduced, and yet who desires to spend the little that he has to best advantage, he levelled the weapon boldly at the advancing Marquis, and pulled the trigger. But Bellecour was an old campaigner, and by an old campaigner's trick he saved himself at the last moment. At sight of that levelled barrel he pulled his horse suddenly on to its haunches, and received the charge in the animal's belly. With a shriek of pain the horse sought to recover its feet, then tumbled forward hurling the Marquis from the saddle. La Boulaye had an inspiration to fling himself upon the old roue and seek with his hands to kill him before they made an end of himself. But ere he could move to execute his design a horseman was almost on top of him. He received a stunning blow on the head. The daylight faded in his eyes, he felt a sensation of sinking, and a reverberating darkness engulfed him.
CHAPTER III. THE WORD OF BELLECOUR
When La Boulaye recovered consciousness he was lying on his back in the middle of the courtyard of the Chateau de Bellecour. From a great stone balcony above, a little group, of which Mademoiselle de Bellecour was the centre, observed the scene about the captive, who was being resuscitated that he might fittingly experience the Seigneur's vengeance.
She had returned from the morning's affair in the park with a conscience not altogether easy. To have stood by whilst her father had struck Caron, and moreover, to have done so without any sense of horror, or even of regret, was a matter in which she asked herself whether she had done well. Certainly La Boulaye had presumed unpardonably in speaking to her as he had spoken, and for his presumption it was fitting that he should be punished. Had she interfered she must have seemed to sympathise, and thus the lesson might have suffered in salutariness. And yet Caron La Boulaye was a man of most excellent exterior, and, when passion had roused him out of his restraint and awkwardness, of most ardent and eloquent address. The very sombreness that—be it from his mournful garments or from a mind of thoughtful habit—seemed to envelop him was but an additional note of poetry in a personality which struck her now as eminently poetical. In the seclusion of her own chamber, as she recalled the burning words and the fall of her father's whip upon the young man's pale face, she even permitted herself to sigh. Had he but been of her own station, he had been such a man as she would have taken pride in being wooed by. As it was—she halted there and laughed disdainfully, yet with never so faint a note of regret. It was absurd! She was Mademoiselle de Bellecour, and he her father's secretary; educated, if you will—aye, and beyond his station—but a vassal withal, and very humbly born. Yes, it was absurd, she told herself again: the eagle may not mate with the sparrow.
And when presently she had come from her chamber, she had been greeted with the story of a rebellion in the village, and an attempted assassination of her father. The ringleader, she was told, had been brought to the Chateau, and he was even then in the courtyard and about to be hanged by the Marquis. Curious to behold this unfortunate, she had stepped out on to the balcony where already an idle group had formed. Inexpressible had been her shock upon seeing him that lay below, his white face upturned to the heavens, his eyes closed.
“Is he dead?” she asked, when presently she had overcome her feelings.
“Not yet Mademoiselle,” answered the graceful Chevalier de Jacquelin, toying with his solitaire. “Your father is bringing him to life that he may send him back to death.”
And then she heard her father's voice behind her. The Marquis had stepped out on to the balcony to ascertain whether La Boulaye had yet regained consciousness.
“He seems to be even now recovering,” said someone.
“Ah, you are there, Suzanne,” cried Bellecour. “You see your friend the secretary there. He has chosen to present himself in a new role to-day. From being my servant, it seems that he would constitute himself my murderer.”
However unfilial it might be, she could not stifle a certain sympathy for this young man. She imagined that his rebellion, whatever shape it had assumed, had been provoked by that weal upon his face; and it seemed to her then that he had been less than a man had he not attempted to exact some reparation for the hurt the whip had inflicted at once upon his body and his soul.
“But what is it that he has done, Monsieur?” she asked, seeking more than the scant information which so far she had received.
“Enough, at least, to justify my hanging him,” answered Bellecour grimly. “He sought to withstand my authority; he incited the peasants of Bellecour to withstand it; he has killed Blaise, and he would have killed me but that I preferred to let him kill my horse.”
“In what way did he seek to withstand your authority!” she persisted.
He stared at her, half surprised, half angry.
“What doers the manner of it signify?” he asked impatiently. “Is not the fact enough? Is it not enough that Blaise is dead, and that I have had a narrow escape, at his hands?”
“Insolent hound that he is!” put in Madame la Marquise—a fleshly lady monstrously coiffed. “If we allow such men as thus to live in France our days are numbered.”
“They say that you are going to hang him,” said Suzanne, heedless of her mother's words, and there was the faintest note of horror in her voice.
“They are mistaken. I am not.”
“You are not?” cried the Marquise. “But what, then, do you intend to do?”
“To keep my word, madame,” he answered her. “I promised that canaille that if he ever came within the grounds of Bellecour I would have him flogged to death. That is what I propose.”
“Father,” gasped Suzanne, in horror, a horror that was echoed by the other three or four ladies present. But the Marquise only laughed.
“He will be; richly served,” she approved, with a sage nod of her pumpkin-like head-dress—“most richly served.”
A great pity arose now in the heart of Mademoiselle, as her father went below that he might carry out his barbarous design. She was deaf to the dainty trifles which the most elegant Chevalier de Jacquelin was murmuring into her ear. She stood, a tall, queenly figure, at the balcony's parapet and watched the preparations that were being made.
She heard her father's harshly-voiced commands. She saw them literally tear the clothes from the unfortunate secretary's back, and lash him—naked to the waist—to the pump that stood by the horse-trough at the far end of the yard. His body was now hidden from her sight, but his head appeared surmounting the pillar of the pump, his chin seeming to rest upon its summit, and his face was towards her. At his side stood a powerful knave armed with a stout, leather-thonged whip.
“How many strokes, Monseigneur?” she heard the man inquire.
“How many?” echoed the Marquise. “Do I know how many it will take to make an end of him? Beat him to death, man. Allons! Set about it.”
She saw the man uncoil his lash and step forward. In that instant Caron's eyes were raised, and they met hers across the intervening space. He smiled a valedictory smile that seemed to make her heart stand still. She and her mother were now the only women on the balcony. The others had made haste to withdraw as soon as La Boulaye had been pilloried. The Marquise remained because she seemed to find entertainment in the spectacle. Suzanne remained because horror rooted her to the spot—horror and a great pity for this unfortunate who had looked so strong and brave that morning, when he had had the audacity to tell her that he loved her.
The lash sang through the air, quivered, hummed, and cut with a sickening crackle into the young man's flesh.
The hideous sound roused her. She shuddered from head to foot, and turning she put her hands to her face and rushed within, followed by the Marquise's derisive laughter.
“Mon Dieu! It is horrible! Horrible!” she cried as she sank into the nearest chair, and clapped her hands to her ears. But she could not shut it out. Still she heard the humming of the whip and the cruel sound of the falling blows. Mechanically she counted them, unconsciously almost, and at twenty she heard them cease. Was it over? Was he dead, this poor unfortunate? Moved by a curiosity that was greater than her loathing, she rose and went to the threshold of the balcony.
“Is it ended?” she asked.
“Ended?” echoed Monsieur de Jacquelin, with a shrug. “It is scarce begun, it seems. The executioner is pausing for breath, that is all. The fellow has not uttered a sound. He is as obstinate as a mule.”
“As enduring as a Spartan,” more generously put in the Vicomte, her brother. “Look at him, Suzanne.”
Almost involuntarily she obeyed, and moved forward a step that she might behold him. A face, deathly pale, she saw, which in the sunshine glistened with the sweat of agony that bedewed it; but the lips were tightly closed and the countenance grimly expressionless. Even as she looked she heard her father command the man to lay on anew. Then, as before, his eyes met hers; but this time no smile did she see investing them.
Again the whip cracked and fell. She drew back, but his glance seemed to haunt her even when she no longer saw his face. A sudden resolution moved her, and in a frenzy of anger and compassion she flung out of the room. A moment later she burst like a beautiful virago into the courtyard.
“Stop!” she commanded shrilly, causing both her father and the executioner to turn, and the latter pausing in his hideous work. But a glance from the Marquis bade him resume, and resume he did, as though there had been no interruption.
“What is this?” demanded Bellecour, half amused, half vexed, whilst a sudden new light leapt to the eyes of La Boulaye, which but a moment back had been so full of agony.
But Mademoiselle never paused to answer her father. Seeing the executioner proceeding, despite her call to cease, she sprang upon him, caught him by the arms and wrested the whip from hands that dared not resist her.
“Did I not bid you stop?” she blazed, her face white, her eyes on fire; and raising the whip she brought it down upon his head and shoulders, not once but half-a-dozen times in quick succession, until he fled, howling, to the other side of the horse trough for shelter. “It stings you, does it” she cried, whilst the Marquis, from angered that at first he had been, now burst into a laugh at her fury and at this turning of tables upon the executioner. She made shift to pursue the fellow to his place of refuge, but coming of a sudden upon the ghastly sight presented by La Boulaye's lacerated back, she drew back in horror. Then, mastering herself—for girl though she was, her courage was of a high order—she turned to her father.
“Give this man to me, Monsieur,” she begged.
“To you!” he exclaimed. “What will you do with him?”
“I will see that you are rid of him,” she promised. “What more can you desire? You have tortured him enough.”
“Maybe. But am I to blame that he dies so hard?”
She answered him with renewed insistence, and unexpectedly she received an ally in M. des Cadoux—an elderly gentleman who had been observing the flogging with disapproval, and who had followed her into the courtyard.
“He is too brave a man to die like this, Bellecour,” put in the newcomer. “I doubt if he can survive the punishment he has already received. Yet I would ask you, in the name of courage, to give him the slender chance he may have.”
“I promised him he should be flogged to death—” began the Marquis, when Des Cadoux and Mademoiselle jointly interrupted him to renew their intercessions.
“But, sangdieu,” the Marquis protested “you seem to forget that he has killed one of my servants.”
“Why, then, you should have hanged him out of hand, not tortured him thus,” answered Des Cadoux shortly.
For a moment it almost seemed as if the pair of them would have fallen a-quarrelling. Their words grew more heated, and then, while they were still wrangling, the executioner came forward to solve matters with the news that the secretary had expired. To Bellecour this proved a very welcome conclusion.
“Most opportunely!” he laughed “Had the rascal lived another minute I think we had quarrelled, Cadoux.” He turned to the servant, “You are certain that it is so?” he asked.
“Look, Monsieur,” said the fellow, as he pointed with his whip to the pilloried figure of La Boulaye. The Marquis looked, and saw that the secretary had collapsed, and hung limp in his bonds, his head fallen back upon his shoulders and his eyes closed.
With a shrug and a short laugh Bellecour turned to his daughter.
“You may take the carrion, if you want to. But I think you can do no more than order it to be flung into a ditch and buried there.”
But she had no mind to be advised by him. She had the young man's body cut down from the pump, and she bade a couple of servants convey it to the house of Master Duhamel, she for remembered that La Boulaye and the old pedagogue were friends.
“An odd thing is a woman's heart,” grumbled the Marquis, who begrudged La Boulaye even his last act of mercy. “She may care never a fig for a man, and yet, if he has but told her that he loves her, be he never so mean and she never so exalted, he seems thereby to establish some measure of claim to her.”
CHAPTER IV. THE DISCIPLES OF ROUSSEAU
The Marquis of Bellecour would, perhaps have philosophised less complacently had he known that the secretary was far from dead, and that what the executioner had, genuinely enough, mistaken for death was no more than a passing swoon. Under ordinary circumstances he might not have been satisfied to have taken the fellow's word; he would himself have ascertained the truth of the statement by a close inspection of the victim. But, as we have seen, the news came as so desirable a solution to the altercation that was waxing 'twixt himself and Des Cadoux that he was more than glad to avail himself of it.
The discovery that Caron lived was made while they were cutting him down from his pillory, and just as the Marquis was turning to go within. A flutter of the eyelids and a gasp for breath announced the fact, and the executioner was on the point of crying out his discovery when Mademoiselle's eyes flashed him a glance of warning, and her voice whispered feverishly:
“Hush! There are ten louis for each of you if you but keep silent and carry him to Master Duhamel as I told you.”
The secretary opened his eyes but saw nothing, and a low moan escaped him. She shot a fearful glance at the retreating figure of her father, whilst Gilles—the executioner—hissed sharply into his ear:
“Mille diables! be still, man. You are dead.”
Thus did he escape, and thus was he borne—a limp, agonised, and bleeding mass, to the house of Duhamel. The old schoolmaster received them with tears in his eyes—nor were they altogether tears of sorrow, for all that poor Caron's mangled condition grieved him sorely; they were in a measure tears of thankfulness; for Duhamel had not dared hope to see the young man alive again.
At the pedagogue's door stood a berline, and within his house there was a visitor. This was a slight young man of medium stature, who had not the appearance of more than twenty-five years of age, for all that, as a matter of fact, he was just over thirty. He was dressed with so scrupulous a neatness as to convey, in spite of the dark colour of his garments, an impression almost of foppishness. There was an amplitude about his cravat, an air of extreme care about the dressing of his wig and the powdering of it, and a shining brightness about his buttons and the buckles of his shoes which seemed to proclaim the dandy, just as the sombreness of the colour chosen seemed to deny it. In his singularly pale countenance a similar contradiction was observable. The weak, kindly eyes almost appeared to give the lie to the astute prominence of his cheekbones; the sensitiveness of the mouth seemed neutralised by the thinness of the lips, whilst the oddly tip-tilted nose made a mock of the austerity of the brow.
He was perfectly at ease in his surroundings, and as La Boulaye was carried into the schoolmaster's study and laid on a couch, he came forward and peered curiously at the secretary's figure, voicing an inquiry concerning him.
“It is the young man of whom I was telling you, Maximilien,” answered Duhamel. “I give thanks to God that they have not killed him outright. It is a mercy I had not expected from those wolves, and one which, on my soul, I cannot understand.”
“Monsieur,” said Gilles, “will understand it better perhaps if I tell you that the Marquis believes him to be dead. He was cut down for dead, and when we discovered that he still lived it was Mademoiselle who prevailed upon us to save him. She is paying us to keep the secret, but not a fortune would tempt me if I thought the Seigneur were ever likely to hear of it. He must be got away from Bellecour; indeed, he must be got out of Picardy at once, Monsieur. And you must promise me that this shall be done or we will carry him back to the Chateau and tell the Marquis that he has suddenly revived. I must insist, Monsieur; for if ever it should transpire that he was not dead the Seigneur would hang us.”
The stranger's weak eyes seemed to kindle in anger, and his lips curled until they exaggerated the already preposterous tilt of his nose.
“He would hang you, eh?” said he. “Ma foi, Duhamel, we shall change all this very soon, I promise you.”
“God knows it needs changing,” growled Duhamel. “It seems that it was only in the Old Testament that Heaven interfered with human iniquity. Why it does not rain fire and brimstone on the Chateau de Bellecour passes the understanding of a good Christian. I'll swear that in neither Sodom nor Gomorrah was villainy more rampant.”
The stranger plucked at his sleeve to remind him of the presence of the servants from the Chateau. Duhamel turned to them.
“I will keep him concealed here until he is able to get about,” he assured them. “Then I shall find him the means to leave the province.”
But Gilles shook his head, and his companion grunted an echo of his disapproval.
“That will not serve, master,” he answered sullenly. “What if the Seigneur should have word of his presence here? It is over-dangerous. Someone may see him. No, no, Either he leaves Bellecour this very night, and you swear that he shall, or else we carry him back to the Chateau.”
“But how can I swear this?” cried Duhamel impatiently.
“Why, easily enough,” put in the stranger. “Let me take him in my berline. I can leave him at Amiens or at Beauvais, or any one of the convenient places that I pass. Or I can even carry him on to Paris with me.”
“You are very good, Maximilien,” answered the old man, to which the other returned a gesture of deprecation.
In this fashion, then, was the matter settled to the satisfaction of the Seigneur's retainers, and upon having received Duhamel's solemn promise that Caron should be carried out of Bellecour, and, for that matter, out of Picardy, before the night was spent, they withdrew.
Within the schoolmaster's study he whom Duhamel called Maximilien strode to and fro, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent, his chin thrust forward, denouncing the seigneurial system, of whose atrocity he had received that evening instances enough—for he had heard the whole story of La Boulaye's rebellion against the power of Bellecour and the causes that had led to it.
“We will mend all this, I promise you, Duhamel,” he was repeating. “But not until we have united to shield the weak from oppression, to restrain the arrogant and to secure to each the possession of what belongs to him; not until all men are free and started upon equal terms in the race of life; not until we shall have set up rules of justice and of peace, to which all—rich and poor, noble and simple alike—shall be obliged to conform. Thus only can we repair the evil done by the caprice of fortune, which causes the one to be born into silk and the other into fustian. We must subject the weak and the mighty alike to mutual duties, collecting our forces into the supreme power to govern us all impartially by the same laws, to protect alike all members of the community, to repel our common foes and preserve us in never-ending concord. How many crimes, murders, wars, miseries, horrors shall thus be spared us, Duhamel? And it will come; it will come soon, never fear.”
Caron stirred on the couch where Duhamel was tending him, and raised his head to glance at the man who was voicing the doctrines that for years had dwelt in his heart.
“Dear Jean Jacques,” he murmured.
The stranger turned sharply and stepped to the young man's side.
“You have read the master?” he inquired, with a sudden, new-born interest in the secretary.
“Read him?” cried Carom forgetting for the moment the sore condition of his body in the delight of discovering one who was bound to him by such bonds of sympathy as old Rousseau established.
“Read him, Monsieur? There is scarce a line in all his 'Discourses' that I do not know by heart, and that I do not treasure, vaguely hoping and praying that some day such a state as he dreamt of may find itself established, and may sweep aside these corrupt, tyrannical conditions.”
Maximilien's eyes kindled.
“Boy,” he answered impressively, “Your hopes are on the eve of fruition, your prayers are about to be heard. Yes—even though it should entail trampling the Lilies of France into the very dust.
“Who are you, Monsieur?” asked La Boulaye, eyeing this prophet with growing interest.
“Robespierre is my name,” was the answer, and to La Boulaye it conveyed no enlightenment, for the name of Maximilien Marie Isidore de Robespierre, which within so very short a time was to mean so much in France, as yet meant nothing.
La Boulaye inclined his head as if acknowledging an introduction, then turned his attention to Duhamel who was offering him a cup of wine. He drank gratefully, and the invigorating effects were almost instantaneous.
“Now let us see to your hurts,” said the schoolmaster, who had taken some linen and a pot of unguents from a cupboard. La Boulaye sat up, and what time Duhamel was busy dressing his lacerated back, the young man talked with Robespierre.
“You are going to Paris, you say, Monsieur?”
“Yes, to the States-General,” answered Maximilien.
“As a deputy?” inquired Caron, with ever-heightening interest.
“As a deputy, Monsieur. My friends of Arras have elected me to the Third Estate of Artois.”
“Dieu! How I envy you!” exclaimed La Boulaye, to cry out a moment later in the pain to which Duhamel's well-intentioned operations were subjecting him. “I would it might be mine,” he added presently, “to take a hand in legislation, and the mending of it; for as it stands at present it is inferior far to the lawless anarchy of the aborigines. Among them, at least, the conditions are more normal, they offer better balance between faculty and execution; they are by far more propitious to happiness and order than is this broken wreck of civilisation that we call France. It is to equality alone,” he continued, warming to his subject, “that Nature has attached the preservation of our social faculties, and all legislation that aims at being efficient should be directed to the establishment of equality. As it is, the rich will always prefer their own fortune to that of the State, whilst the poor will never love—nor can love—a condition of laws that leaves them in misery.”
Robespierre eyed the young man in some surprise. His delivery was impassioned, and although in what he said there was perhaps nothing that was fresh to the lawyer of Arras, yet the manner in which he said it was impressive to a degree.
“But Duhamel,” he cried to the schoolmaster, “you did not tell me this young patriot was an orator.”
“Nor am I, Monsieur,” smiled La Boulaye. “I am but the mouthpiece of the great Rousseau. I have so assimilated his thoughts that they come from me as spontaneously as if they were my own, and often I go so far as to delude myself into believing that they are.”
No better recommendation than this could he have had to the attention of Robespierre, who was himself much in the same case, imbued with and inspired by those doctrines, so ideal in theory, but, alas! so difficult, so impossible in practice. For fully an hour they sat and talked, and each improved in his liking of the other, until at last, bethinking him of the flight of time, Robespierre announced that he must start.
“You will take him to Paris with you, Maximilien?” quoth the old pedagogue.
“Ma foi, yes; and if with such gifts as Nature appears to have given him, and such cultivation of them as, through the teachings of Rousseau, he has effected, I do not make something of him, why, then, I am unworthy of the confidence my good friends of Arras repose in me.”
They made their adieux, and the schoolmaster, opening his door, peered out. The street was deserted save for de Robespierre's berline and his impatient postillion. Between them Duhamel and Maximilien assisted Caron to the door of the carriage. The moving subjected him to an excruciating agony, but he caught his nether lip in his teeth, and never allowed them to suspect it. As they raised him into the berline, however, he toppled forward, fainting. Duhamel hastened indoors for a cordial, and brought also some pillows with which to promote the young man's comfort on the journey that was before him—or, rather, to lessen the discomfort which the jolting was likely to occasion him.
Caron recovered before they started, and with tears in his eyes he thanked old Duhamel and voiced a hope that they might meet again ere long.
Then Robespierre jumped nimbly into the berline. The door closed, the postillion's whip cracked briskly, and they set out upon a journey which to La Boulaye was to be as the passing from one life to another.
PART II. THE NEW RULE
Allons! Marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!
La Marseillaise.
CHAPTER V. THE SHEEP TURNED WOLVES
There were roars of anger and screams of terror in the night, and above the Chateau de Bellecour the inky blackness of the heavens was broken by a dull red glow, which the distant wayfarer might have mistaken for the roseate tint of dawn, were it possible for the dawn to restrict itself to so narrow an area.
Ever and anon a tongue of flame would lick up into the night towards that russet patch of sky, betraying the cause of it and proclaiming that incendiaries were at work. Above the ominous din that told of the business afoot there came now and again the crack of a musket, and dominating all other sounds was the sullen roar of the revolted peasants, the risen serfs, the rebellious vassals of the Siegneur de Bellecour.
For time has sped and has much altered in the speeding. Four years have gone by since the night on which the lacerated Caron la Boulaye was smuggled out of Bellecour in Robespierre's berline and in that four years much of the things that were prophesied have come to pass —aye, and much more besides that was undreamt of at the outset by the revolutionaries. A gruesome engine that they facetiously called the National Razor—invented and designed some years ago by one Dr. Guillotin—is but an item in the changes that have been, yet an item that in its way has become a very factor. It stands not over-high, yet the shadow of it has fallen athwart the whole length and breadth of France, and in that shadow the tyrants have trembled, shaken to the very souls of them by the rude hand of fear; in that shadow the spurned and downtrodden children of the soil have taken heart of grace. The bonds of servile cowardice that for centuries had trammelled them have been shaken off like cobwebs, and they that were as sheep are now become the wolves that prey on those that preyed on them for generations.
There is, in the whole of France, no corner so remote but that, sooner or later, this great upheaval has penetrated to it. Louis XVI.—or Louis Capet, as he is now more generally spoken of—has been arraigned, condemned and executed. The aristocrats are in full emigratory flight across the frontiers—those that have not been rent by the vassals they had brought to bay, the people they had outraged. The Lilies of France lie trampled under foot in the shambles they have made of that fair land, whilst overhead the tricolour—that symbol of the new trinity, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—is flaunted in the breeze.
A few of the more proud and obstinate—so proud and obstinate as to find it a thing incredible that the order should indeed change and the old regime pass away—still remain, and by their vain endeavours to lord it in their castles provoke such scenes as that enacted at Bellecour in February of '93 (by the style of slaves) or Pluviose of the year One of the French Republic, as it shall presently come to be known in the annals of the Revolution.
Bellecour, the most arrogant of arrogants, had stood firm, and desperately contrived through all these months of revolution to maintain his dominion in his corner of Picardy. But even he was beginning to realise that the end was at hand, and he made his preparations to emigrate. Too proud, however, to permit his emigration to savour of a flight, he carried the leisureliness of his going to dangerous extremes. And now, on the eve of departure, he must needs pause to give a fete at once of farewell and in honour of his daughter's betrothal to the Vicomte Anatole d'Ombreval. This very betrothal at so unpropitious a season was partly no more than contrived by the Marquis that he might mark his ignoring and his serene contempt of the upheaval and the new rule which it had brought.
All that was left of the noblesse in Picardy had flocked that day to the Chateau de Bellecour, and the company there assembled numbered perhaps some thirty gallants and some twenty ladies. A banquet there had been, which in the main was a gloomy function, for the King's death was too recent a matter to be utterly lost sight of. Later, however, as the generous supply of wine did its work and so far thawed the ice of apprehension that bound their souls as to dispose them to enjoy, at least, the present hour in forgetfulness, there was a better humour in the air. This developed, and so far indeed did it go that in the evening a Pavane was suggested, and, the musicians being found, it was held in the great salon of the Chateau.
It was then that the first alarm had penetrated to their midst. It had found them a recklessly merry crew, good to behold in their silks and satins, powder and patches, gold lace and red heels, moving with waving fans, or hand on sword, and laced beaver under elbow, through the stately figures of the gavotte.
Scared, white-faced lackeys had brought the news, dashing wildly in upon that courtly assembly. The peasants had risen and were marching on Bellecour.
Some of his sudden rage the Marquis vented by striking the servants' spokesman in the face.
“Dare you bring me such a message?” he cried furiously.
“But, my lord, what are we to do?” gasped the frightened lackey.
“Do, fool?” returned Bellecour. “Why, close the gates and bid them return home as they value their lives. For if they give me trouble I'll hang a round dozen of them.”
Still was there that same big talk of hanging men. Still did it seem that the Marquis of Bellecour accounted himself the same lord of life and death that he and his forbears had been for generations. But there were others who thought differently. The music had ceased abruptly, and a little knot of gentlemen now gathered about the host, and urged him to take some measures of precaution. In particular they desired to ensure the safety of the ladies who were being thrown into a great state of alarm, so that of some of these were the screams that were heard in that night of terror. Bellecour's temper was fast gaining, and as he lost control of himself the inherent brutality of his character came uppermost.
“Mesdames,” he cried rudely, “this screeching will profit us nothing. Even if we must die, let us die becomingly, not shrieking like butchered geese.”
A dozen men raised their voices angrily against him in defence of the women he had slighted. But he waved them impatiently away.
“Is this an hour in which to fall a-quarrelling among ourselves?” he exclaimed. “Or do you think it one in which a man can stop to choose his words? Sang-dieu! That screaming is a more serious matter than at first may seem. If these rebellious dogs should chance to hear it, it will be but so much encouragement to them. A fearless front, a cold contempt, are weapons unrivalled if you would prevail against these mutinous cravens.”
But his guests were insistent that something more than fearless fronts and cold contempts should be set up as barriers between themselves and the advancing peasantry. And in the end Bellecour impatiently quitted the room to give orders for the barricading of the gates and the defending of the Chateau, leaving behind him in the salon the very wildest of confusions.
From the windows the peasantry could now be seen, by the light of their torches, marching up the long avenue that fronted the Chateau, and headed by a single drum on which the bearer did no more than beat the step. They were a fierce, unkempt band, rudely armed—some with scythes, some with sickles, some with hedge-knives, and some with hangers; whilst here and there was one who carried a gun, and perhaps a bayonet as well. Nor were there men only in the rebellious ranks. There were an almost equal number of women in crimson caps, their bosoms bare, their heads dishevelled, their garments filthy and in rags—for the tooth of poverty had bitten deeply into them during the past months.
As they swung along to the rhythmical thud of the drum, their voices were raised in a fearful chorus that must have made one think of the choirs of hell, and the song they sang was the song of Rouget de l'Isle, which all France had been singing these twelve months past:
“Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons.
Allons, marchons!
Qu'un sang inpur
Abreuve nos sillons!”
Ever swelling as they drew nearer came the sound of that terrible hymn to the ears of the elegant, bejewelled, bepowdered company in the Chateau. The gates were reached and found barred. An angry roar went up to Heaven, followed by a hail of blows upon the stout, ironbound oak, and an imperious call to open.
In the courtyard below the Marquis had posted the handful of servants that remained faithful—for reasons that Heaven alone may discern—to the fortunes of the house. He had armed them with carbines and supplied them with ammunition. He had left them orders to hold off the mob from the outer gates as long as possible; but should these be carried, they were to fall back into the Chateau itself, and make fast the doors. Meanwhile, he was haranguing the gentlemen—some thirty of them, as we have seen—in the salon and urging them to arm themselves so that they might render assistance.
His instances were met with a certain coldness, which at last was given expression by the most elegant Vicomte d'Ombreval—the man who was about to become his son-in-law.
“My dear Marquis,” protested the young man, his habitually supercilious mouth looking even more supercilious than usual as he now spoke, “I beg that you will consider what you are proposing. We are your guests, we others, and you ask us to defend your gates against your own people for you! Surely, surely, sir, your first duty should have been to have ensured our safety against such mutinies on the part of the rabble of Bellecour.”
The Seigneur angrily stamped his foot. In his choler he was within an ace of striking Ombreval, and might have done so had not the broad-minded and ever-reasonable old Des Cadoux interposed at that moment to make clear to the Marquis's guests a situation than which nothing could have been clearer. He put it to them that the times were changed, and that France was no longer what France had been; that allowances must be made for M. de Bellecour, who was in no better case than any other gentleman in that unhappy country! and finally, that either they must look to arming and defending themselves or they must say their prayers and submit to being butchered with the ladies.
“For ourselves,” he concluded calmly, tapping his gold snuffbox and holding it out to Bellecour, for all the world with the air of one who was discussing the latest fashion in wigs, “I can understand your repugnance at coming to blows with this obscene canaille. It is doing them an honour of which they are not worthy. But we have these ladies to think of, Messieurs, and—” he paused to apply the rappee to his nostrils—“and we must exert ourselves to save them, however disagreeable the course we may be compelled to pursue. Messieurs, I am the oldest here; permit that I show you the way.”
His words were not without effect; they kindled chivalry in hearts that, after all, were nothing if not prone to chivalry—according to their own lights—and presently something very near enthusiasm prevailed. But the supercilious and very noble Ombreval still grumbled.
“To ask me to fight this scum!” he ejaculated in horror “Pardi! It is too much. Ask me to beat them off with a whip like a pack of curs, and I'll do it readily. But fight them—!”
“Nothing could delight us more, Vicomte, than to see you beat them off with a whip,” Des Cadoux assured him. “Arm yourself with a whip, by all means, my friend, and let us witness the prodigies you can perform with it.”
“See what valour inflames the Vicomte, Suzanne,” sneered a handsome woman into Mademoiselle's ear. “With what alacrity he flies to arms that he may defend you, even with his life.”
“M. d'Ombreval is behaving according to his lights,” answered Suzanne coldly.
“Ma foi, then his lights are unspeakably dim,” was the contemptuous answer.
Mademoiselle gave no outward sign of the deep wound her pride was receiving. The girl of nineteen, who had scorned the young secretary-lover in the park of Bellecour that morning four years ago, was developed into a handsome lady of three-and-twenty.
“It would be beneath the dignity of his station to soil his hands in such a conflict as my father has suggested,” she said at last.
“I wonder would it be beneath the dignity of his courage,” mused the same caustic friend. “But surely not, for nothing could be beneath that.”
“Madame!” exclaimed Suzanne, her cheeks reddening; for as of old, and like her father, she was quickly moved to anger. “Will it please you to remember that M. d'Ombreval is my affianced husband?”
“True,” confessed the lady, no whit abashed. “But had I not been told so I had accounted him your rejected suitor, who, broken-hearted, gives no thought either to his own life or to yours.”
In a pet, Mademoiselle gave her shoulder to the speaker and turned away. In spite of the words with which she had defended him, Suzanne was disappointed in her betrothed, and yet, in a way, she understood his bearing to be the natural fruit of that indomitable pride of which she had observed the outward signs, and for which, indeed as much as for the beauty of his person, she had consented to become his wife. After all, it was the outward man she knew. The marriage had been arranged, and this was but their third meeting, whilst never for an instant had they been alone together. By her mother she had been educated up to the idea that it was eminently desirable she should become the Vicomtesse d'Ombreval. At first she had endured dismay at the fact that she had never beheld the Vicomte, and because she imagined that he would be, most probably, some elderly roue, as did so often fall to the lot of maidens in her station. But upon finding him so very handsome to behold, so very noble of bearing, so lofty and disdainful that as he walked he seemed to spurn the very earth, she fell enamoured of him out of very relief, as well as because he was the most superb specimen of the other sex that it had ever been hers to observe.
And now that she had caught a glimpse of the soul that dwelt beneath that mass of outward perfections it had cost her a pang of disappointment, and the poisonous reflection cast upon his courage by that sardonic lady with whom she had talked was having its effect.
But the time was too full of other trouble to permit her to indulge her thoughts overlong upon such a matter. A volley of musketry from below came to warn them of the happenings there. The air was charged with the hideous howls of the besieging mob, and presently there was a cry from one of the ladies, as a sudden glare of light crimsoned the window-panes.
“What is that?” asked Madame de Bellecour of her husband.
“They have fired the stables,” he answered, through set teeth. “I suppose they need light to guide them in their hell's work.”
He strode to the glass doors opening to the balcony the same balcony from which four years ago his guests had watched the flogging of La Boulaye—and, opening them, he passed out. His appearance was greeted by a storm of execration. A sudden shot rang out, and the bullet, striking the wall immediately above him, brought down a shower of plaster on his head. It had been fired by a demoniac who sat astride the great gates waving his discharged carbine and yelling such ordures of speech as it had never been the most noble Marquis's lot to have stood listening to. Bellecour never flinched. As calmly as if nothing had happened, he leant over the parapet and called to his men below.
“Hold, there! Of what are you dreaming slumberers. Shoot me that fellow down.”
Their guns had been discharged, but one of them, who had now completed his reloading, levelled the carbine and fired. The figure on the gates seemed to leap up from his sitting posture, and then with a scream he went over, back to his friends without.
The fired stables were burning gaily by now, and the cheeriest bonfire man could have desired on a dark night, and in the courtyard it was become as light as day.
The Marquis on the balcony was taking stock of his defences and making rapid calculations in his mind. He saw no reason why, so well protected by those stout oaken gates they should not—if they were but resolute—eventually beat back the mob. And then, even as his courage was rising at the thought, a deafening explosion seemed to shake the entire Chateau, and the gates—their sole buckler, upon whose shelter he had been so confidently building—crashed open, half blown away by the gunpowder keg that had been fired against it.
He had a fleeting glimpse of a stream of black fiends pouring through the dark gap and dashing with deafening yells into the crimson light of the courtyard. He saw his little handful of servants retreat precipitately within the Chateau. He heard the clang of the doors that were swung to just as the foremost of the rabble reached the threshold—With all this clearly stamped upon his mind, he turned, and springing into the salon he drew his sword.
“To the stairs, Messieurs!” he cried “To the stairs!”
And to the stairs they went. The extremity was now too great for argument. They dared not so much as look at their women-folk, lest they should be unmanned by the sight of those huddled creatures—their finery but serving to render them the more pitiable in their sickly affright. In a body the whole thirty of them swept from the room, and with Bellecour at their head and Ombreval somewhere in the rearmost rank, they made their way to the great staircase.
Here, armed with their swords and a brace of pistols to each man, whilst for a few the Marquis had even found carbines, they waited, with faces set and lips tight pressed for the end that they knew approached.
Nor was their waiting long. As the peasants had blown down the gates so now did they blow down the doors of the Chateau, and in the explosion three of Bellecour's servants—who had stood too near—were killed. Over the threshold they swarmed into the dark gulf of the great hall to the foot of the staircase. But here they were at a disadvantage. The light of the burning stables, shining through the open doorway, revealed them to the defenders, whilst they themselves looked up into the dark. There was a sudden cracking of pistols and a few louder reports from the guns, and the mob fled, screaming, back into the yard, leaving a score of dead and wounded on the polished floor of the hall.
Old M. des Cadoux laughed in the dark, as with his sword hanging from his wrist he tapped his snuff-box.
“Ma foi,” said he to his neighbour, “they are discovering that it is not to be the triumphal march they had expected. A pinch of rappee, Stanislas?”
But the respite was brief. In a moment they saw the glare increase at the door, and presently a half-dozen of the rabble entered with torches, followed by some scores of their comrades. They paused at sight of that company ranged upon the stairs, as well they might, for a more incongruous sight could scarcely be imagined. Across the bodies of the slain, and revealed by the lifting powder smoke, stood that little band of thirty men, a blaze of gay colours, a sheen of silken hose, their wigs curled and powdered, their costly ruffles scintillant with jewels; calm, and supercilious, mocking to a man. There was a momentary gasp of awe, and then the spell was broken by the aristocrats themselves. A pistol spoke, and a volley followed. In the hall some stumbled forward, some hurtled backward, and some sank down in nerveless heaps. But those that remained did not again retreat. Reinforced by others, that crowded in behind, they charged boldly up the stairs, headed by a ragged, red capped giant named Souvestre—a man whom the Marquis had once irreparably wronged.
The sight of him was a revelation to Bellecour. This assault was Souvestre's work; the fellow had been inciting the people of Bellecour for the past twelve months, long indeed before the outbreak of the revolution proper, and at last he had roused them to the pitch of accompanying him upon his errand of tardy but relentless vengeance.
With a growl the Marquis raised his pistol. But Souvestre saw the movement, and with a laugh he did the like. Simultaneously there were two reports, and Bellecour's arm fell shattered to his side. Souvestre continued to advance, his smoking pistol in one hand and brandishing a huge sabre with the other. Behind him, howling and roaring like the beasts of prey they were become, surged the tenantry of Bellecour to pay the long-standing debt of hate to their seigneur.
“Here,” said Des Cadoux, with a grimace, “endeth the chapter of our lives. I wonder, do they keep rappee in heaven?” He snapped down the lid of his gold snuffbox—that faithful companion and consoler of so many years—and cast it viciously at the head of one of the oncoming peasants. Then tossing back the lace from his wrist he brought his sword into guard and turned aside a murderous stroke which an assailant aimed at him.
“Animal,” he snapped viciously, as he set to work, “it is the first time that my chaste blade has been crossed with such dirty steel as yours. I hope, for the honour of Cadoux, that it may not be quite the last.”
Up, and ever up, swept that murderous tide. The half of those that had held the stairs lay weltering upon them as if in a last attempt to barricade with their bodies what they could no longer defend with their hands. A bare half-score remained standing, and amongst these that gallant old Cadoux, who had by now accounted for a half-dozen sans-culottes, and was hence in high glee, a man rejuvenesced. His sallies grew livelier and more barbed as the death-tide rose higher about him. His one regret was that he had been so hasty in casting his snuff box from him, for he was missing its familiar stimulus. At his side the Marquis was fighting desperately, fencing with his left arm, and in the hot excitement seeming oblivious of the pain his broken right must be occasioning.
“It is ended, old friend,” he groaned at last, to Des Cadoux. “I am losing strength, and I shall be done for in a moment. The women,” he almost sobbed, “mon Dieu, the women!”
Des Cadoux felt his old eyes grow moist, and the odd, fierce mirth that seemed to have hitherto infected him went out like a candle that is snuffed. But suddenly before he could make any answer, a new and unexpected sound, which dominated the din of combat, and seemed to cause all—assailants and defenders alike—to pause that they might listen, was wafted to their ears.
It was the roll of the drum. Not the mere thudding that had beaten the step for the mob, but the steady and vigorous tattoo of many sticks upon many skins.
“What is it? Who comes?” were the questions that men asked one another, as both aristocrats and sansculottes paused in their bloody labours. It was close at hand. So close at hand that they could discern the tramp of marching feet. In the infernal din of that fight upon the stairs they had not caught the sound of this approach until now that the new-comers—whoever they might be—were at the very gates of Bellecour.
From the mob in the yard there came a sudden outcry. Men sprang to the door of the Chateau and shouted to those within.
“Aux Armes,” was the cry. “A nous, d nous!”
And in response to it the assailants turned tail, and dashed down the stairs, overleaping the dead bodies that were piled upon them, and many a man slipping in that shambles and ending the descent on his back. Out into the courtyard they swept: leaving that handful of gentlemen, their fine clothes disordered, splashed with blood and grimed with powder, to question one another touching this portent, this miracle that seemed wrought by Heaven for their salvation.
CHAPTER VI. THE CITIZEN COMMISSIONER
It was, after all, no miracle, unless the very timely arrival upon the scene of a regiment of the line might be accepted in the light of Heaven-directed. As a matter of fact, a rumour of the assault that was to be made that night upon the Chateau de Bellecour had travelled as far as Amiens, and there, that evening, it had reached the ears of a certain Commissioner of the National Convention, who was accompanying this regiment to the army of Dumouriez, then in Belgium.
Now it so happened that this Commissioner had meditated making a descent upon the Chateau on his own account, and he was not minded that any peasantry should forestall or baulk him in the business which he proposed to carry out there. Accordingly, he issued certain orders to the commandant, from which it resulted that a company, two hundred strong, was immediately despatched to Bellecour, to either defend or rescue it from the mob, and thereafter to await the arrival of the Commissioner himself.
This was the company that had reached Bellecour in the eleventh hour, to claim the attention of the assailants. But the peasants, as we have seen, were by no means disposed to submit to interference, and this they signified by the menacing front they showed the military, abandoning their attack upon the Chateau until they should be clear concerning the intentions of the newcomers. Of these intentions the Captain did not leave them long in doubt. A brisk word of command brought his men into a bristling line of attack, which in itself should have proved sufficient to ensure the peasantry's respect.
“Citizens” cried the officer, stepping forward, “in the name of the French Republic I charge you to withdraw and to leave us unhampered in the business we are here to discharge.”
“Citizen-captain,” answered the giant Souvestre, constituting himself the spokesman of his fellows, “we demand to know by what right you interfere with honest patriots of France in the act of ridding it of some of the aristocratic vermin that yet lingers on its soil?”
The officer stared at his interlocutor, amazed by the tone of the man as much as by the sudden growls that chorused it, but nowise intimidated by either the one or the other.
“I proclaimed my right when I issued my charge in the name of the Republic,” he answered shortly.
“We are the Republic,” Souvestre retorted, with a wave of the hand towards the ferocious crowd of men and women behind him. “We are the Nation—the sacred people of France. In our own name, Citizen-soldier, we charge you to withdraw and leave us undisturbed.”
Here lay the basis of an argument into which, however, the Captain, being neither politician nor dialectician, was not minded to be drawn. He shrugged his shoulders and turned to his men.
“Present arms!” was the answer he delivered, in a voice of supreme unconcern.
“Citizen-captain, this is an outrage,” screamed a voice in the mob. “If blood is shed, upon your own head be it.”
“Will you withdraw?” inquired the Captain coldly.
“To me, my children,” cried Souvestre, brandishing his sabre, and seeking to encourage his followers. “Down with these traitors who dishonour the uniform of France! Death to the blue-coats!”
He leapt forward towards the military, and with a sudden roar his followers, a full hundred strong sprang after him to the charge.
“Fire!” commanded the Captain, and from the front line of his company fifty sheets of flame flashed from fifty carbines.
The mob paused; for a second it wavered; then before the smoke had lifted it broke, and shrieking in terror, it fled for cover, leaving the valorous Souvestre alone, to revile them for a swarm of cowardly rats.
The Captain put his hands to his sides and laughed till the tears coursed down his cheeks. Checking his mirth at last, he called to Souvestre, who was retreating in disgust and anger.
“Hi! My friend the patriot! Are you still of the same mind or will you withdraw your people?”
“We will not withdraw,” answered the giant sullenly. “You dare not fire upon free citizens of the French Republic.”
“Dare I not? Do you delude yourself with that, nor think that because this time I fired over your heads I dare not fire into your ranks. I give you my word that if I have to command my men to fire a second time it shall not be mere make-believe, and I also give you my word that if at the end of a minute I have not your reply and you are not moving out of this—every rogue of you shall have a very bitter knowledge of how much I dare.”
Souvestre was headstrong and angry. But what can one man, however headstrong and however angry, do against two hundred, when his own followers refuse to support him. The valour of the peasants was distinctly of that quality whose better part is discretion. The thunder of that fusillade had been enough to shatter their nerve, and to Souvestre's exhortations that they should become martyrs in the noble cause, of the people against tyranny, in whatsoever guise it came, they answered with the unanswerable logic of caution.
The end was that a very few moments later saw them in full retreat, leaving the military in sole and undisputed possession of Bellecour.
The officer's first thought was for the blazing stables, and he at once ordered a detachment of his company to set about quenching the fire, a matter in which they succeeded after some two hours of arduous labour.
Meanwhile, leaving the main body bivouacked in the courtyard, he entered the Chateau with a score of men, and came upon the ten gentlemen still standing in the shambles that the grand staircase presented. With the Marquis de Bellecour the Captain had a brief and not over courteous interview. He informed the nobleman that he was acting under the orders of a Commissioner, who had heard at Amiens, that evening, of the attack that was to be made upon Bellecour. Not unnaturally the Marquis was mistrustful of the ends which that Commissioner, whoever he might be, looked to serve by so unusual an act. Far better did it sort with the methods of the National Convention and its members to leave the butchering of aristocrats to take its course. He sought information at the Captain's hands, but the officer was reticent to the point of curtness, and so, their anxiety but little relieved, since it might seem that they had but escaped from Scylla to be engulfed in Charbydis, the aristocrats at Bellecour spent the night in odious suspense. Those that were tending the wounded had perhaps the best of it, since thus their minds were occupied and saved the torture of speculation.
The proportion of slain was mercifully small: of twenty that had fallen it was found that but six were dead, the others being more or less severely hurt. Conspicuous among the men that remained, and perhaps the bravest of them all was old Des Cadoux. He had recovered his snuff-box, than which there seemed to be nothing of greater importance in the world, and he moved from group to group with here a jest and there a word of encouragement, as seemed best suited to those he addressed. Of the women, Mademoiselle de Bellecour and her sharp tongued mother, showed certainly the most undaunted fronts.
Suzanne had not seen her betrothed since the fight upon the stairs. But she was told that he was unhurt, and that he was tending a cousin of his who had been severely wounded in the head.
It was an hour or so after sunrise when he sought her out, and they stood in conversation together—a very jaded pair—looking down from one of the windows upon the stalwart blue-coats that were bivouacked in the quadrangle.
Suddenly on the still morning air came the sound of hoof-beats, and as they looked they espied a man in a cocked hat and an ample black cloak riding briskly up the avenue.
“See?” exclaimed Ombreval; “yonder at last comes the great man we are awaiting—the Commissioner of that rabble they call the National Convention. Now we shall know what fate is reserved for us.”
“But what can they do?” she asked.
“It is the fashion to send people of our station to Paris,” he replied, “to make a mock of us with an affair they call a trial before they murder us.”
She sighed.
“Perhaps this gentleman is more merciful,” was the hope she expressed.
“Merciful?” he mocked. “Ma foi, a ravenous tiger may be merciful before one of these. Had your father been wise he had ordered the few of us that remained to charge those soldiers when they entered, and to have met our end upon their bayonets. That would have been a merciful fate compared with the mercy of this so-called Commissioner is likely to extend us.”
It seemed to be his way to find fault, and that warp in his character rendered him now as heroic—in words—as he had been erstwhile scornful.
Suzanne shuddered, brave girl though she was.
“Unless you can conceive thoughts of a pleasanter complexion,” she said, “I should prefer your silence, M. d'Ombreval.”
He laughed in his disdainful way—for he disdained all things, excepting his own person and safety—but before he could make any answer they were joined by the Marquis and his son.
In the courtyard the horseman was now dismounting, and a moment or two later they heard the fall of feet, upon the stairs. A soldier threw open the door, and holding it, announced:
“The Citizen-deputy La Boulaye, Commissioner of the National Convention to the army of General Dumouriez.”
“This,” mocked Ombreval, to whom the name meant nothing, “is the representative of a Government of strict equality, and he is announced with as much pomp as was ever an ambassador of his murdered Majesty's.”
Then a something out of the common in the attitude of his companions arrested his attention. Mademoiselle was staring with eyes full of the most ineffable amazement, her lips parted, and her cheeks whiter than the sleepless night had painted them. The Marquis was scowling in a surprise that seemed no whit less than his daughter's, his head thrust forward, and his jaw fallen. The Vicomte, too, though in a milder degree, offered a countenance that was eloquent with bewilderment. From this silent group Ombreval turned his tired eyes to the door and took stock of the two men that had entered. One of these was Captain Juste, the officer in command of the military; the other was a tall man, with a pale face, an aquiline nose, a firm jaw, and eyes that were very stern—either of habit or because they now rested upon the man who four years ago had used him so cruelly.
He stood a moment in the doorway as if enjoying the amazement which had been sown by his coming. There was no mistaking him. It was the same La Boulaye of four years ago, and yet it was not quite the same. The face had lost its boyishness, and the strenuous life he had lived had scored it with lines that gave him the semblance of a greater age than was his. The old, poetic melancholy that had dwelt in the secretary's countenance was now changed to strength and firmness. Although little known as yet to the world at large, the great ones of the Revolution held him in high esteem, and looked upon him as a power to be reckoned with in the near future. Of Robespierre—who, it was said, had discovered him and brought him to Paris—he was the protege and more than friend, a protection and friendship this which in '93 made any man almost omnipotent in France.
He was dressed in a black riding-suit, relieved only by the white neck-cloth and the tricolour sash of office about his waist. He removed his cocked hat, beneath which the hair was tied in a club with the same scrupulous care as of old.
Slowly he advanced into the salon, and his sombre eyes passed from the Marquis to Mademoiselle. As they rested upon her some of the sternness seemed to fade from their glance. He found in her a change almost as great as that which she had found in him. The lighthearted, laughing girl of nineteen, who had scorned his proffered love when he had wooed her that April morning to such disastrous purpose, was now ripened into a stately woman of three-and-twenty. He had thought his boyish passion dead and buried, and often in the years that were gone had he smiled softly to himself at the memory of his ardour, as we smile at the memory of our youthful follies. Yet now, upon beholding her again, so wondrously transformed, so tall and straight, and so superbly beautiful, he experienced an odd thrill and a weakening of the stern purpose that had brought him to Bellecour.
Then his glance moved on. A moment it rested on the supercilious, high-bred countenance of the Vicomte d'Ombreval, standing with so proprietary an air beside her, then it passed to the kindly old face of Des Cadoux, and he recalled how this gentleman had sought to stay the flogging of him. An instant it hovered on the Marquis, who—haggard of face and with his arm in a sling—was observing him with an expression in which scorn and wonder were striving for the mastery; it seemed to shun the gaze of the pale-faced Vicomte, whose tutor he had been in the old days of his secretaryship, and full and stern it returned at last to settle upon the Marquis.
“Citizen Bellecour,” he said, and his voice, like his face, seemed to have changed since last the Marquis had heard it, and to have grown more deep and metallic, “you may marvel, now that you behold the Commissioner who sent a company of soldiers to rescue you and your Chateau from the hands of the mob last night, what purpose I sought to serve by extending to you a protection which none of your order merits, and you least of any, in my eyes.”
“The times may have wrought sad and overwhelming changes,” answered the Marquis, with cold contempt, “but it has not yet so utterly abased us that we bring ourselves to speculate upon the purposes of the rabble.”
A faint crimson flush crept into Caron's sallow cheeks.
“Indeed, I see how little you have changed!” he answered bitterly. “You are of those that will not learn, Citizen. The fault lies here,” he added, tapping his head, “and it will remain until we remove the ones with the other. But now for the business that brings me,” he proceeded, more briskly. “Four years ago, Citizen Bellecour, you laid your whip across my face in the woods out yonder, and when I spoke of seeking satisfaction action you threatened me with your grooms. I will not speak of your other brutalities on that same day. I will confine myself to that first affront.”
“Be brief, sir,” cried the Marquis offensively. “Since you have the force to compel us to listen to you, let me beg that you will at least display the generosity of detaining us no longer than you need.”
“I will be as brief as it lies within the possibility of words,” answered Caron coldly. “I am come, Citizen Bellecour, to demand of you to-day the satisfaction which four years ago you refused me.”
“Of me?” cried the Marquis.
“Through the person of your son, the Vicomte, as I asked for it four years ago,” said Caron. “You are am old man, Citizen, and I do not fight old men.”
“I am yet young enough to cut you into ribbons, you dog, if I were minded to dishonour myself by meeting you.” And turning to Ombreval for sympathy, he vented a low laugh of contemptuous wonder.
“Insolence!” sneered Ombreval sympathetically, whilst Mademoiselle stood looking on with cheeks that were growing paler, for that this event would end badly for either her father or her brother she never doubted.
“Citizen Bellecour,” said Caron, still very coldly, “you have heard what I propose, as have you also, Citizen-vicomte.”
“For myself,” began the youth “I am—”
“Silence, Armand!” his father commanded, laying a hand upon his sleeve. “Understand me, citizen-deputy, or citizen-commissioner, or citizen-blackguard or whatever you call your vile self, you are come on a fruitless journey to Bellecour. Neither I nor my son is so lost to the duty which we owe our rank as to so much as dream of acceding to your preposterous request. I think, sir, that you had been better advised to have left the mob to its work last night, if you but restrained it for this purpose.”
“Is that your last word?” asked La Boulaye, still calmly weathering that storm of insults.
“My very last, sir.”
“There are more ways than one of taking satisfaction for that affront, Citizen Bellecour,” rejoined La Boulaye, “and if the course which I now pursue should prove more distasteful to you than that which I last suggested, the blame of it must rest with you.” He turned to the bluecoat at the door. “Citizen-soldier, my whip.”
There was a sudden movement among the aristocrats—a horrified recoiling—and even Bellecour was shaken out of his splendid arrogance.
“Insolent cur!” exclaimed Ombreval with withering scorn; “to what lengths is presumption driving you?”
“To the length of a horsewhip,” answered La Boulaye pleasantly.
He received the whip from the hands of the soldier and he now advanced towards Bellecour, unwinding the lash as he came. Ombreval barred his way with an oath.
“By Heaven: you shall not!” he cried.
“Shall not?” echoed La Boulaye, his lips curling. “You had best stand aside—you that are steeped in musk and fierceness.” And before the stern and threatening contempt of La Boulaye's glance the young nobleman fell back. But his place was taken by the Vicomte de Bellecour, who advanced to confront Caron.
“Monsieur la Boulaye,” he announced, “I am ready and willing to meet you.” And considering the grim alternative with which the Republicans had threatened him, the old Marquis had not the courage to interfere again.
“Ah!” It was an exclamation of satisfaction from the Commissioner. “I imagined that you would change your minds. I shall await you, Citizen, in the garden in five minutes' time.”
“I shall not keep you waiting, Monsieur,” was the Vicomte's answer.
Very formally La Boulaye bowed and left the room accompanied by the officer and followed by the soldier.
“Mon Dieu!” gasped the Marquise, fanning herself as the door closed after the Republicans. “Open me a window or I shall stifle! How the place reeks with them. I am a calm woman, Messieurs, but, on my honour, had he addressed any of you by his odious title of 'citizen' again, I swear that I had struck him with my own hands.”
There were some that laughed. But Mademoiselle was not of those.
Her eyes travelled to her brother's pale face and weakly frame, and her glance was such a glance as we bend upon the beloved dead, for in him she saw one who was going inevitably to his death.
CHAPTER VII. LA BOULAYE DISCHARGES A DEBT
Along the northern side of the Chateau ran a terrace bordered by a red sandstone balustrade, and below this the Italian garden, so called perhaps in consequence of the oddly clipped box-trees, its only feature that suggested Italy. At the far end of this garden there was a strip of even turf that might have been designed for a fencing ground, and which Caron knew of old. Thither he led Captain Juste, and there in the pale sunshine of that February morning they awaited the arrival of the Vicomte and his sponsor.
But the minutes went by and still they waited-five, ten, fifteen minutes elapsed, yet no one came. Juste was on the point of returning within to seek the reason of this delay when steps sounded on the terrace above. But they were accompanied by the rustle of a gown, and presently it was Mademoiselle who appeared before them. The two men eyed her with astonishment, which in the case of La Boulaye, was tempered by another feeling.
“Monsieur la Boulaye,” said she, her glance wandering towards the Captain, “may I speak with you alone?”
Outwardly impassive the Commissioner bowed.
“Your servant, Citoyenne,” said he, removing his cocked hat. “Juste, will you give us leave?”
“You will find me on the terrace when you want me, Citizen-deputy,” answered the officer, and saluting, he departed.
For a moment or two after he was gone Suzanne and Caron stood confronting each other in silence. She seemed smitten with a sudden awkwardness, and she looked away from him what time he waited, hat in hand, the chill morning breeze faintly stirring a loose strand of his black hair.
“Monsieur,” she faltered at last, “I am come to intercede.”
At that a faint smile hovered a second on the Republican's thin lips.
“And is the noblesse of France fallen so low that it sends its women to intercede for the lives of its men? But, perhaps,” he added cynically, “it had not far to fall.”
Her cheeks reddened. His insult to her class acted upon her as a spur and overcame the irresoluteness that seemed to have beset her.
“To insult the fallen, sir, is worthy of the new regime, whose representative you are, Enfine! We must take it, I suppose, as we take everything else in these disordered times—with a bent head and a meek submission.”
“From the little that I have seen, Citoyenne,” he answered, very coldly, roused in his turn, “it rather seems that you take things on your knees and with appeals for mercy.”
“Monsieur,” she cried, and her eyes now met his in fearless anger, “if you persist in these gratuitous insults I shall leave you.”
He laughed in rude amusement, and put on his hat. The spell that for a moment her beauty had cast over him when first she had appeared had been attenuating. It now broke suddenly, and as he covered himself his whole manner changed.
“Is this interview of my seeking?” he asked. “It is your brother I am awaiting. Name of a name, Citoyenne, do you think my patience inexhaustible? The ci-devant Vicomte promised to attend me here. It was the boast of your order that whatever sins you might be guilty of you never broke your word. Have you lost even that virtue, which served you as a cloak for untold vices? And is your brother fled into the woods whilst you, his sister, come here to intercede with me for his wretched life? Pah! In the old days you aroused my hatred by your tyrannies and your injustices; to-day you weary and disgust me by your ineffable cowardices, from that gentleman in Paris who now calls himself Orleans-Egalite downwards.”
“Monsieur,” she began But he was not yet done. His cheeks were flushed with a reflection of the heart within.
“Citoyenne, I have a debt to discharge, and I will discharge it in full. Intercessions are vain with me. I cannot forget. Send me your brother within ten minutes to meet me here, man to man, and he shall have—all of you shall have—the chance that lies in such an encounter. But woe unto every man at Bellecour if he should fail me. Citoyenne, you know my mind.”
But she overlooked the note of dismissal in his voice.
“You speak of a debt that you must discharge,” said she, with no whit less heat than he had exhibited. “You refer to the debt of vengeance which you look to discharge by murdering that boy, my brother. But do you not owe me a debt also?”
“You?” he questioned. “My faith! Unless it be a debt of scorn, I know of none.”
“Aye,” she returned wistfully, “you are like the rest. You have a long memory for injuries, but a short one for benefits. Had it not been for me, Monsieur, you would not be here now to demand this that you call satisfaction. Have you forgotten how I—”
“No,” he broke in. “I well remember how you sought to stay them when they were flogging me in the yard there. But you came too late. You might have come before, for from the balcony above you had been watching my torture. But you waited overlong. I was cast out for dead.”.
She flashed him a searching glance, as though she sought to read his thoughts, and to ascertain whether he indeed believed what he was saying.
“Cast out for dead?” she echoed. “And by whose contrivance? By mine, M. la Boulaye. When they were cutting you down they discovered that you were not dead, and but that I bribed the men to keep it secret and carry you to Duhamel's house, they had certainly informed my father and you would have been finished off.”
His eyes opened wide now, and into them there came a troubled look—the look of one who is endeavouring to grasp an elusive recollection.
“Ma foi,” he muttered. “It seems to come to me as if I had heard something of the sort in a dream. It was—” He paused, and his brows were knit a moment. Then he looked up suddenly, and gradually his face cleared. “Why, yes—I have it!” he exclaimed. “It was in Duhamel's house. While I was lying half unconscious on the couch I heard one of the men telling Duhamel that you had paid them to carry me there and to keep a secret.”
“And you had forgotten that?” she asked, with the faintest note of contempt.
“Not forgotten,” he answered, “for it was never really there to be remembered. That I had heard such words had more than once occurred to me, but I have always looked upon it as the recollection of something that I had dreamt. I had never looked upon it as a thing that had had a real happening.”
“How, then, did you explain your escape?”
“I always imagined that I had been assumed dead.”
There was a brief spell of silence. Then—
“And now that you know, Monsieur—?”
She left the question unfinished, and held out her hands to him in a gesture of supplication. His face paled slightly and overclouded. Her influence, against which so long he had steeled himself, reinforced by the debt in which she had shown him that he stood towards her, was prevailing with him despite himself. Stirred suddenly out of the coldness that he had hitherto assumed, he caught the outstretched hands and drew her a step nearer. That was his undoing. Strong man though he unquestionably was, like many another strong man his strength seemed to fall from him at a woman's touch. He had led so austere and stern a life during the past four years; of women he had but had the most passing of glances, and intercourse with none save an old female who acted as his housekeeper in Paris. And here was a woman who was not only beautiful, but the woman who years ago had embodied all his notions of what was most perfect in womanhood; the woman who ever since, and despite all that was past, had reigned in his heart and mind almost in spite of himself, almost unknown to him.
The touch of her hand now, the closeness of her presence, the faint perfume that reached him from her, and that was to him as a symbol of her inherent sweetness, the large blue eyes meeting his in expectation, and the imploring half-pout of her lips, were all seductions against which he had not been human had he prevailed.
Very white in the intensity of the long-quiescent passion she had resuscitated, he cried:
“Mademoiselle, what shall I say to you?”
The four years that were gone seemed suddenly to have slipped away. It was as if they stood again by the brook in the park on that April morn when first he had dared to word his presumptuous love. Even the vocabulary of the Republic was forgotten, and the interdicted title of “Mademoiselle” fell naturally from his lips.
“Say that you can be generous,” she implored him softly. “Say that you prefer the debt you owe to the injury you received.”
“You do not know the sacrifice you ask,” he exclaimed still fighting with himself. “I have waited four years for this, and now—”
“He is my brother,” she whispered, in so wonderful a tone that words which of themselves may have seemed no argument at all became the crowning argument of her intercession.
“Soit!” he consented. “For your sake, Mademoiselle, and in payment of the debt I owe you, I will go as I came. I shall not see the Citizen-marquis again. But do you tell him from me that if he sets any value on his life, he had best shake the dust of France from his feet. Too long already has he tarried, and at any moment those may arrive who will make him emigrate not only out of France but out of the world altogether. Besides, the peasantry that has risen once may rise again, and I shall not be here to protect him from its violence. Tell him he had best depart at once.”
“Monsieur, I am grateful—very, very deeply grateful. I can say no more. May Heaven reward you. I shall pray the good God to watch over you always. Adieu, Monsieur!”
He stood looking at her a moment still retaining his hold of her hands.
“Adieu, Mademoiselle,” he said at last. Then, very slowly—as if so that realising his intent she might frustrate it were she so minded—he raised her right hand. It was not withdrawn, and so he bent low, and pressed his lips upon it.
“God guard you, Mademoiselle,” he said at last, and if they were strange words for a Republican and a Deputy, it must be remembered that his bearing during the past few moments had been singularly unlike a Republican's.
He released her hand, and stepping back, doffed his hat. With a final inclination of the head, she turned and walked away in the direction of the terrace.
At a distance La Boulaye followed, so lost in thought that he did not observe Captain Juste until the fellow's voice broke upon his ear.
“You have been long enough, Citizen-deputy,” was the soldier's greeting. “I take it there is to be no duel.”
“I make you my compliments upon the acuteness of your perception,” answered La Boulaye tartly. “You are right. There is to be no encounter.”
Juste's air was slightly mocking, and words of not overdelicate banter rose to his lips, to be instantly quelled by La Boulaye.
“Let your drums beat a rally, Citizen-captain,” he commanded briskly. “We leave Bellecour in ten minutes.”.
And indeed, in less than that time the blue-coats were swinging briskly down the avenue. In the rear rode La Boulaye, his cloak wrapped about him, his square chin buried in his neck-cloth, and his mind deep in meditation.
From a window of the Chateau the lady who was the cause of the young Revolutionist's mental absorption watched the departing soldiers. On either side of her stood Ombreval and her father.
“My faith, little one,” said Bellecour good-humouredly. “I wonder what magic you have exercised to rid us of that infernal company.”
“Women have sometimes a power of which men know nothing,” was her cryptic answer.
Ombreval turned to her with a scowl of sudden suspicion.
“I trust, Mademoiselle, that you did not—” he stopped short. His thoughts were of a quality that defied polite utterance.
“That I did not what, Monsieur?” she asked.
“I trust you remembered that you are to become the Vicomtesse d'Ombreval” he answered, constructing his sentence differently.
“Monsieur!” exclaimed Bellecour angrily.
“I was chiefly mindful of the fact that I had my brother's life to save,” said the girl, very coldly, her eye resting upon her betrothed in a glance of so much contempt that it forced him into an abashed silence.
In her mind she was contrasting this supercilious, vacillating weakling with the stern, strong man who lode yonder. A sigh fluttered across her lips. Had things but been different. Had Ombreval been the Revolutionist and La Boulaye the Vicomte, how much better pleased might she not have been. But since it was not so, why sigh? It was not as if she had loved this La Boulaye. How was that possible? Was he not of the canaille, basely born, and a Revolutionist—the enemy of her order—in addition? It were a madness to even dream of the possibility of such a thing, for Suzanne de Bellecour came of too proud a stock, and knew too well the respect that was due to it.
CHAPTER VIII. THE INVALIDS AT BOISVERT
There had been friction between the National Convention and General Dumouriez, who, though a fine soldier, was a remarkably indifferent Republican. The Convention had unjustly ordered the arrest of his commissariat officers, Petit-Jean and Malus, and in other ways irritated a man whose patience was never of the longest.
On the eve, however, of war with Holland, the great ones in Paris had suddenly perceived their error, and had sought—despite the many enemies, from Marat downwards, that Dumouriez counted among their numbers—to conciliate a general whose services they found that they could not dispense with. This conciliation was the business upon which the Deputy La Boulaye had been despatched to Antwerp, and as an ambassador he proved signally successful, as much by virtue of the excellent terms he was empowered to offer as in consequence of the sympathy and diplomacy he displayed in offering them.
The great Republican General started upon his campaign in the Low Countries as fully satisfied as under the circumstances he could hope to be. Malus and Petit-Jean were not only enlarged but reinstated, he was promised abundant supplies of all descriptions, and he was assured that the Republic approved and endorsed his plan of campaign.
La Boulaye, his mission satisfactorily discharged, turned homewards once more, and with an escort of six men and a corporal he swiftly retraced his steps through that blackened, war-ravaged country. They had slept a night at Mons, and they were within a short three leagues of French soil when they chanced to ride towards noon into the little hamlet of Boisvert. Probably they would have gone straight through without drawing rein, but that, as they passed the Auberge de l'Aigle, La Boulaye espied upon the green fronting the wayside hostelry a company of a half-dozen soldiers playing at bowls with cannon-balls.
The sight brought Caron to a sudden halt, and he sat his horse observing them and wondering how it chanced that these men should find themselves so far from the army. Three of them showed signs of having been recently wounded. One carried his arm in a sling, another limped painfully and by the aid of a stick, whilst the head of the third was swathed in bandages. But most remarkable were they by virtue of their clothes. One fellow—he of the bandaged head—wore a coat of yellow brocaded silk, which, in spite of a rent in the shoulder, and sundry stains of wine and oil, was unmistakably of a comparative newness. Beneath this appeared the nankeens and black leggings of a soldier. Another covered his greasy locks with a three-cornered hat, richly laced in gold. A third flaunted under his ragged blue coat a gold-broidered waistcoat and a Brussels cravat. A valuable ring flashed from the grimy finger of a fourth, who, instead of the military white nankeens, wore a pair of black silk breeches. There was one—he of the injured arm—resplendent in a redingote of crimson velvet, whilst he of the limp supported himself upon a gold-headed cane of ebony, which was in ludicrous discord with the tattered blue coat, the phrygian cap, and the toes that peeped through his broken boots.
They paused in their game to inspect, in their turn, the newcomers, and to La Boulaye it seemed that their glances were not free from uneasiness.
“A picturesque company on my life,” he mused aloud. Then beckoned the one in the crimson coat.
“Hola, Citizen,” he called to him.
The fellow hesitated a moment, then shuffled forward with a sullen air, and stood by Caron's stirrup.
“In God's name, what are you and who are you?” the Deputy demanded.
“We are invalided soldiers from the army of Dumouriez,” the man answered him.
“But what are you doing here, at Boisvert?”
“We are in hospital, Citizen.”
“Yonder?” asked La Boulaye derisively, pointing with his whip to the “Eagle Inn.”
The fellow nodded.
“Yes, Citizen, yonder,” he answered curtly.
La Boulaye looked surprised. Then his eyes strayed to the others on the green.
“But you are not all invalids?” he questioned.
“Many of us are convalescent.”
“Convalescent? But those three braves yonder are something more than convalescent. They are as well as I am. Why do they not rejoin the troops?”
The fellow looked up with a scowl.
“We take our orders from our officer,” he answered sourly.
“Ah!” quoth the Deputy. “There is someone in charge here, then? Who may it be?”
“Captain Charlot,” the fellow answered, with an impudent air, which clearly seemed to ask: “What have you to say to that?”
“Captain Charlot?” echoed La Boulaye, in astonishment, for the name was that of the sometime peasant of Bellecour, who had since risen in life, and who, as an officer, had in a few months acquired a brilliant fame for deeds of daring. “Charlot Tardivet?” he inquired.
“Is there any other Captain Charlot in the army of the Republic?” the fellow asked insolently.
“Is he invalided too?” inquired Caron, without heeding the soldier's offensiveness of manner.
“He was severely wounded at Jemappes,” was the answer.
“At Jemappes? But, voyons my friend, Jemappes was fought three months ago.”
“Why, so all the world knows. What then? The General sent Captain Charlot here to rest and be cured, giving him charge of the invalided soldiers who came with him and of others who were already here.”
“And of these,” cried La Boulaye, his amazement growing, “have none returned to Dumouriez?”
“Have I not said that we are invalids?”
Caron eyed him with cold contempt.
“How many of you are there?” he asked. And for all that the man began to mislike this questioning, he had not the hardihood to refuse an answer to the stern tones of that stern man on horseback.
“Some fifty, or thereabouts.”
La Boulaye said nothing for a moment, then touching the fellow's sleeve with his whip.
“How came you into this masquerade?” he inquired.
“Ma foi,” answered the man, shrugging his shoulders, “we were in rags. The commissariat was demoralised, and supplies were not forthcoming. We had to take what we could find, or else go naked.”
“And where did you find these things?”
“Diable! Will your questions never come to an end, Citizen? Would you not be better advised in putting them to the Captain himself?”
“Why, so I will. Where is he?”
In the distance a cloud of dust might be perceived above the long, white road. The soldier espied it as La Boulaye put his question.
“I am much at fault if he does not come yonder.” And he pointed to the dust-cloud.
“I think,” said La Boulaye, turning to his men, “that we will drink a cup of wine at the 'Eagle Inn.'”
Mean though the place was, it was equipped with a stable-yard, to which admittance was gained by a porte-cochere on the right. Wheeling his horse, La Boulaye, without another word to the soldier he had been questioning, rode through it, followed by his escort.
The hostess, who came forward to receive them, was a tall, bony woman of very swarthy complexion, with beady eyes and teeth prominent as a rat's. But if ill-favoured, she seemed, at least, well-intentioned, in addition to which the tricolour scarf of office round La Boulaye's waist was a thing that commanded respect and servility, however much it might be the insignia of a Government of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
She bade the ostler care for their horses, and she brought them her best wine, seeking under an assumed geniality to conceal the unrest born of her speculations as to what might happen did Captain Charlot return ere the Deputy departed.
Charlot did return. Scarce were they seated at their wine when the confused sounds that from the distance had been swelling took more definite shape. The hostess looked uneasy as La Boulaye rose and went to the door of the inn. Down the road marched now a numerous company from which—to judge by their odd appearance—the players at bowls had been drawn. They numbered close upon threescore, and in the centre of them came a great lumbering vehicle, which puzzled La Boulaye. He drew away from the door and posted himself at the window, so that unobserved he might ascertain what was toward. Into the courtyard came that company, pêle-mêle, an odd mixture of rags and gauds, yet a very lusty party, vigorous of limb and loud of voice. With them came the coach, and there was such a press about the gates that La Boulaye looked to see some of them crushed to death. But with a few shouts and oaths and threats at one another they got through in safety, and the unwieldy carriage was brought to a standstill.
They were clamouring about its doors, and to La Boulaye it seemed that they were on the point of quarrelling among themselves, some wanting to enter the coach and others seeking to restrain them, when through the porte-cochere rode Charlot Tardivet himself.
He barked out a sharp word of command, and they grew silent and still, testifying to a discipline which said much for the strength of character of their captain. He was strangely altered, was this Tardivet, and his appearance now was worthy of his followers. Under a gaudily-laced, three-cornered hat his hair hung dishevelled and unkempt, like wisps of straw. He wore a coat of flowered black silk, with a heavy gold edging, and a very bright plum-coloured waistcoat showed above the broad tricolour scarf that sashed his middle. His breeches were white (or had been white in origin), and disappeared into a pair of very lustrous lacquered boots that rose high above his knees. A cavalry sabre of ordinary dimensions hung from a military belt, and a pistol-butt, peeping from his sash, completed the astonishing motley of his appearance. For the rest, he was the same tall and well-knit fellow; but there was more strength in his square chin, more intelligence in the keen blue eyes, and, alas! more coarseness in the mouth, which bristled with a reddish beard of some days' growth.
La Boulaye watched him with interest. He had become intimate with him in the old days in Paris, whither Tardivet had gone, and where, fired by the wrongs he had suffered, he had been one of the apostles of the Revolution. When the frontiers of France had been in danger Tardivet had taken up arms, and by the lustre which he had shed upon the name of Captain Charlotas he was come to be called throughout the army—he had eclipsed the fame of Citizen Tardivet, the erstwhile prophet of liberty. Great changes these in the estate of one who had been a simple peasant; but then the times were times of great changes. Was not Santerre, the brewer, become a great general, and was not Robespierre, the obscure lawyer of Arras, by way of becoming a dictator? Was it, therefore, wonderful that Charlot should have passed from peasant to preacher, from preacher to soldier, and from soldier to—what?
A shrewd suspicion was being borne in upon La Boulaye's mind as he stood by that window, his men behind him watching also, with no less intentness and some uneasiness for themselves—for they misliked the look of the company.
In five seconds Charlot had restored order in the human chaos without. In five minutes there were but ten men left in the yard. The others were gone at Charlot's bidding—a bidding, couched in words that went to confirm La Boulaye's suspicions.
“You will get back to your posts at once,” he had said. “Because we have made one rich capture is no reason why you should neglect the opportunities of making others no less rich. You, Moulinet, with twenty men, shall patrol the road to Charleroi, and get as near France as possible. You Boligny, station yourself in the neighbourhood of Conde, with ten men, and guard the road from Valenciennes. You, Aigreville, spread your twenty men from Conde to Tournay, and watch the frontiers closely. Make an inspection of any captures you may take, and waste no time in bringing hither worthless ones. Now go. I will see that each man's share of this is assured him. March!”
There were some shouts of “Vive la Republique!” some of “Vive le Captaine Charlot!” and so they poured out of the yard, and left him to give a few hurried directions to the ten men that remained.
“Sad invalids these, as I live!” exclaimed La Boulaye over his shoulder to his followers. “Ha! There is my friend of the red redingote!”
The fellow with the bandaged head had approached Charlot and was tugging at his sleeve.
“Let be, you greasy rascal,” the Captain snapped at him, to add: “What do you say? A Deputy? Where?” The fellow pointed with his thumb in the direction of the hostelry.
“Sacred name of a name!” growled Charlot, and, turning suddenly from the men to whom he had been issuing directions, he sprang up the steps and entered the inn. As he crossed the threshold of the common room he was confronted by the tall figure of La Boulaye.
“I make you my compliments, Charlot,” was Caron's greeting, “upon the vigorous health that appears to prevail in your hospital.”
Tardivet stood a moment within the doorway, staring at the Deputy. Then his brow cleared, and with a laugh, at once of welcome and amusement, he strode forward and put out his hand.
“My good Caron!” he cried. “To meet you at Boisvert is a pleasure I had not looked for.”
“Are you so very sure,” asked La Boulaye sardonically, as he took the outstretched hand, “that it is a pleasure?”
“How could it be else, old friend? By St. Guillotine!” he added, clapping the Deputy on the back, “you shall come to my room, and we will broach a bottle of green seal.”
In some measure of wonder, La Boulaye permitted himself to be led up the crazy stairs to a most untidy room above, which evidently did duty as the Captain's parlour. A heavy brass lamp, hanging from the ceiling, a few untrustworthy chairs and a deal table, stained and unclean, were the only articles of furniture. But in almost every corner there were untidy heaps of garments Of all sorts and conditions; strewn about the floor were other articles of apparel, a few weapons, a saddle, and three or four boots; here an empty bottle, lying on its side, yonder a couple of full ones by the hearth; an odd book or two and an infinity of playing cards, cast there much as a sower scatters his seeds upon the ground.
There may be a hundred ways of apprehending the character of a man, but none perhaps is more reliable than the appearance of his dwelling, and no discerning person that stepped into Captain Tardivet's parlour could long remain in doubt of its inhabitant's pursuits and habits.
When Dame Capoulade had withdrawn, after bringing them their wine and casting a few logs upon the fire, La Boulaye turned his back to the hearth and confronted his host.
“Why are you not with the army, Charlot?” he asked in a tone which made the question sound like a demand.
“Have they not told you,” rejoined the other airily, engrossed in filling the glasses.
“I understand you were sent here to recover from a wound you received three months ago at Jemappes, and to take charge of other invalided soldiers. But seemingly, your invalids do not number more than a half-dozen out of the fifty or sixty men that are with you. How is it then, that you do not return with these to Dumouriez?”
“Because I can serve France better here,” answered Charlot, “and at the same time enrich myself and my followers.”
“In short,” returned La Boulaye coldly, “because you have degenerated from a soldier into a brigand.”
Charlot looked up, and for just a second his glance was not without uneasiness. Then he laughed. He unbuckled his sword and tossed it into a corner, throwing his hat after it.
“It was ever your way to take extreme views, Caron,” he observed, with a certain whimsical regret of tone. “That, no doubt, is what has made a statesman of you. You had chosen more wisely had you elected to serve the Republic with your sword instead. Come, my friend,” and he pointed to the wine, “let us pledge the Nation.”
La Boulaye shrugged his shoulders slightly, and sighed. In the end he came forward and took the wine.
“Long live the Republic!” was Charlot's toast, and with a slight inclination of the head La Boulaye drained his glass.
“It is likely to live without you, Charlot, unless you mend your conduct.”
“Diable!” snapped the Captain, a trifle peevishly. “Can you not understand that in my own way I am serving my country. You have called me a brigand. But you might say the same of General Dumouriez himself. How many cities has he not sacked?”
“That is the way of war.”
“And so is this. He makes war upon the enemies of France that dwell in cities, whilst I, in a smaller way, make war upon those that travel in coaches. I confine myself to emigres—these damned aristocrats whom it is every good Frenchman's duty to aid in stamping out. Over the frontiers they come with their jewels, their plate, and their money-chests. To whom belongs this wealth? To France. Too long already have they withheld from the sons of the soil that which belongs equally to them, and now they have the effrontery to attempt to carry these riches out of the country. Would any true Republican dare to reproach me for what I do? I am but seizing that which belongs to France, and here dividing it among the good patriots that are with me, the soldiers that have bled for France.”
“A specious argument,” sneered La Boulaye.
“Specious enough to satisfy the Convention itself if ever I should be called to task,” answered Charlot, with heat. “Do you propose to draw the attention of the Executive to my doings?”
La Boulaye's grey eyes regarded him steadily for a moment.
“Know you of any reason why I should not?” he asked.
“Yes, Caron, I do,” was the ready answer. “I am well aware of the extent of your power with the Mountain. In Paris I can see that it might go hard with me if you were minded that it should, and you were able to seize me. On the other hand, that such arguments that I have advanced to you would be acceptable to the Government I do not doubt. But whilst they would approve of this that you call brigandage, I also do not doubt that they would claim that the prizes I have seized are by right the property of the Convention, and they might compel me to surrender them. Thus they would pass from my hands into those of some statesman-brigand, who, under the plea of seizing these treasures for the coffers of the nation, would transfer them to his own. Would you rather help such an one to profit than me, Caron? Have you so far forgotten how we suffered together—almost in the self-same cause—at Bellecour, in the old days? Have you forgotten the friendship that linked us later, in Paris, when the Revolution was in its dawn? Have you forgotten what I have endured at the hands of this infernal class that you can feel no sympathy for me? Caron, it is a measure of revenge, and as there is a Heaven, a very mild one. Me they robbed of more than life; them I deprive but of their jewels and their plate, turning them destitute upon the world. Bethink you of my girl-wife, Caron,” he added, furiously, “and of how she died of grief and shame a short three months after our hideous nuptials. God in Heaven! When the memory of it returns to me I marvel at my own forbearance. I marvel that I do not take every man and woman of them that fall into my hands and flog them to death as they would have flogged you when you sought—alas to so little purpose—to intervene on my behalf.”
He grew silent and thoughtful, and the expression of his face was not nice. At last: “Have I given you reason enough,” he asked, “why you should not seek to thwart me?”
“Why, yes,” answered La Boulaye, “more than was necessary. I am desolated that I should have brought you to re-open a sorrow that I thought was healed.”
“So it is, Caron. How it is I do not know. Perhaps it is my nature; perhaps it is that in youth sorrow is seldom long-enduring; perhaps it is the strenuous life I have lived and the changes that have been wrought in me—for, after all, there is a little in this Captain Tardivet that is like the peasant poor Marie took to husband, four years ago. I am no longer the same man, and among the other things that I have put from me are the sorrows that were of the old Charlot. But some memories cannot altogether die, and if to-day I no longer mourn that poor child, yet the knowledge of the debt that lies 'twixt the noblesse of France and me is ever present, and I neglect no opportunity of discharging a part of it. But enough of that, Caron. Tell me of yourself. It is a full twelvemonth since last we met, and in that time, from what I have heard, you have done much and gone far. Tell me of it, Caron.”
They drew their chairs to the hearth, and they sat talking so long that the early February twilight came down upon them while they were still at their reminiscences. La Boulaye had intended reaching Valenciennes that night; but rather than journey forward in the dark he now proposed to lie at Boisvert, a resolution in which he did not lack for encouragement from Charlot.
CHAPTER IX. THE CAPTIVES
Amid the sordid surroundings of Charlot's private quarters the Captain and the Deputy supped that evening. The supper sorted well with the house—a greasy, ill-cooked meal that proved little inviting to the somewhat fastidious La Boulaye. But the wine, plundered, no doubt, in common with the goblets out of which they drank it—was more than good, and whilst La Boulaye showed his appreciation of it, Charlot abused it like a soldier. They sat facing each other across the little deal table, whose stains were now hidden by a cloth, and to light them they had four tapers set in silver candlesticks of magnificent workmanship, and most wondrous weight, which Tardivet informed his guest had been the property of a ci-devant prince of the blood.
As the night wore on Captain Charlot grew boisterous and more confidential. He came at length to speak of the last capture they had made.
“I have taken prizes, Caron,” said he, “which a king might not despise. But to-day—” He raised his eyes to the ceiling and wagged his head.
“Well?” quoth La Boulaye. “What about to-day?”
“I have made a capture worth more than all the others put together. It was an indifferent-looking berline, and my men were within an ace of allowing it to pass. But I have a nose, mon cher”—and he tapped the organ with ludicrous significance—“and, bon Dieu, what affair! I can smell an aristocrat a league off. Down upon that coach I swooped like a hawk upon a sparrow. Within it sat two women, thickly veiled, and I give you my word that in a sense I pitied them, for not a doubt of it, but they were in the act of congratulating themselves upon their escape from France. But sentiment may become fatal if permitted to interfere with enterprise. Stifling my regrets I desired them to alight, and they being wise obeyed me without demur. I allowed them to retain their veils. I sought the sight of things other than women's faces, and a brief survey of the coach showed me where to bestow my attention. I lifted the back seat. It came up like the lid of the chest it was, and beneath it I discovered enough gold and silver plate to outweigh in value almost everything that I had ever taken. But that was by no means all. Under the front seat there was a chest of gold—louis d'ors they were, some two or three thousand at least—and, besides that, a little iron-bound box of gems which in itself was worth more than all the rest of the contents of that treasure-casket of a coach. I tell you, Caron, I dropped the lid of that seat in some haste, for I was not minded that my men should become as wise as I. I stepped down and bade, the women re-enter, and hither under strong escort I have brought them.”
“And these treasures?” asked La Boulaye.
“They are still in the coach below, with the women. I have told these that they shall spend the night there. To-morrow I shall see to them and give them their liberty—which is a more generous proceeding than might befall them at the hands of another. When they are gone comes the division of the spoil.” He closed one eye slowly, in a very ponderous wink. “To my men I shall relegate the gold and silver plate as well as the money. For myself I shall only retain the little iron-bound box. My followers will account me more than generous and themselves more than satisfied. As for me, La Boulaye—by St. Guillotine, I am tempted to emigrate also and set up as an aristocrat myself in Prussia or England, for in that little box there is something more than a fortune. I asked you to-day whether you were minded to lay information against me in Paris. My faith, I am little concerned whether you do or not, for I think that before you can reach Paris, Captain Charlot Tardivet will be no more than a name in the Republican army. Abroad I shall call myself Charlot du Tardivet, and I shall sleep in fine linen and live on truffles and champagne. Caron, your health!”
He drained his glass, and laughed softly to himself as he set it down.
“Do you trust your men?” asked La Boulaye.
“Eh? Trust them? Name of a name! They know me. I have placed the ten most faithful ones on guard. They answer to the rest of us with their necks for the safety of their charge. Come hither, Caron.”
He rose somewhat unsteadily, and lurched across to the window. La Boulaye followed him, and gazing out under his indication, he beheld the coach by the blaze of a fire which the men had lighted to keep them from freezing at their post.
“Does that look secure?”
“Why, yes—secure enough. But if those fellows were to take it into their heads that it would be more profitable to share the prize among ten than among sixty?”
“Secreanom!!” swore Charlot impatiently. “You do my wits poor credit. For what do you take me? Have I gone through so much, think you, without learning how little men are to be trusted? Faugh! Look at the porte-cochere. The gates are closed—aye, and locked, mon cher, and the keys are here, in my pocket. Do you imagine they are to be broken through without arousing anyone? And then, the horses. They are in the stables over there, and again, the keys are in my pocket. So that, you see, I do not leave everything to the honesty of my ten most faithful ones.”
“You have learned wisdom, not a doubt of it,” laughed the Deputy.
“In a hard school, Caron,” answered the Captain soberly. “Aye, name of a name, in a monstrous hard school.”
He turned from the window, and the light of the tapers falling on his face, showed it heavily scored with lines of pain, testifying to the ugly memories which the Deputy's light words had evoked. Then suddenly he laughed, half-bitterly, half humourously.
“La, la!” said he. “The thing's past. Charlot Tardivet the bridegroom of Bellecour and Captain Charlot of Dumouriez' army are different men-very different.”
He strode back to the table, filled his goblet, and gulped down the wine. Then he crossed to the fire and stood with his back to La Boulaye for a spell. When next he faced his companion all signs of emotion had cleared from his countenance. It was again the callous, reckless face of Captain Charlot, rendered a trifle more reckless and a trifle more callous by the wine-flush on his cheeks and the wine-glitter in his eye.
“Caron” said he, with a half-smile, “shall we have these ladies in to supper?”
“God forbid!” ejaculated La Boulaye.
“Nay, but I will,” the other insisted, and he moved across to the window.
As he passed him, La Boulaye laid a detaining hand upon his arm.
“Not that, Charlot,” he begged impressively, his dark face very set. “Plunder them, turn them destitute upon the world, if you will, but remember, at least, that they are women.”
Charlot laughed in his face.
“It is something to remember, is it not? They remembered it of our women, these aristocrats!”
There was so much ugly truth in the Captain's words, and such a suggestion of just, if bitter, retribution in his mental attitude, that La Boulaye released his arm, at a loss for further arguments wherewith to curb him.
“Paydi!” Charlot continued, “I have a mind for a frolic. Does not justice give me the right to claim that these aristocrats shall amuse me?”
With an oath he turned abruptly, and pulled the casement open.
“Guyot!” he called, and a voice from below made answer to him.
“You will make my compliments to the citoyennes in the coach, Guyot, and tell them that the Citizen-captain Tardivet requests the honour of their company to supper.”
Then he went to the door, and calling Dame Capoulade, he bade her set two fresh covers; in which he was expeditiously obeyed. La Boulaye stood by the fire, his pale face impassive now and almost indifferent. Charlot returned to the window to learn from Guyot that the citoyennes thanked the Citizen-captain, but that they were tired and sought to be excused, asking nothing better than to be allowed to remain at peace in their carriage.
“Sacred name of a name!” he croaked, a trifle thickly, for the wine he had taken was mastering him more and more. “Are they defying us? Since they will not accept an invitation, compel them to obey a command. Bring them up at once, Guyot.”
“At once, Captain,” was the answer, and Guyot went about the business.
Charlot closed the window and approached the table.
“They are coquettish these scented dames,” he mocked, as he poured himself out some wine. “You are not drinking Caron.”
“It is perhaps wise that one of us should remain sober,” answered the Deputy quietly, for in spite of a certain sympathy with the feelings by which Charlot was actuated, he was in dead antipathy to this baiting of women that seemed toward.
Charlot made no answer. He drained his goblet and set it down with a bang. Then he flung himself into a chair, and stretching out his long, booted legs he began to hum the refrain of the “Marseillaise.” Thus a few moments went by. Then there came a sound of steps upon the creaking stairs, and the gruff voice of the soldier urging the ladies to ascend more speedily.
At last the door opened and two women entered, followed by Guyot. Charlot lurched to his feet.
“You have come, Mesdames,” said he, forgetting the mode of address prescribed by the Convention, and clumsily essaying to make a leg. “Be welcome! Guyot, go to the devil.”
For a moment or two after the soldier's departure the women remained in the shadow, then, at the Captain's invitation, which they dared not disobey, they came forward into the halo of candle-light. Simultaneously La Boulaye caught his breath, and took a step forward. Then he drew back again until his shoulders touched the overmantel and there he remained, staring at the newcomers, who as yet, did not appear to have observed him.
They wore no headgear, and their scarfs were thrown back upon their shoulders, revealing to the stricken gaze of La Boulaye the countenances of the Marquise de Bellecour and her daughter.
And now, as they advanced into the light, Charlot recognised them too. In the act of offering a chair he stood, arrested, his eyes devouring first one, then the other of then, with a glance that seemed to have grown oddly sobered. The flush died from his face, and his lips twitched like those of a man who seeks to control his emotions. Then slowly the colour crept back into his cheeks, a curl of mockery appeared on the coarse mouth, and the eyes beamed evilly.
They tense silence was broken by the bang with which he dropped the chair he had half raised. As he leaned forward now, La Boulaye read in his face the thought that had leapt into the Captain's mind, and had it been a question of any woman other than Zuzanne de Bellecour, the Deputy might have indulged in the consideration of what a wonderful retribution was there here. Into the hands of the man whose bride the Marquis de Bellecour had torn from him were now delivered by a wonderful chance the wife and daughter of that same Bellecour. And at Boisvert this briganding Captain was as much to-night the lord of life and death, and all besides, as had been the Marquis of Bellecour of old. But he pondered not these things, for all that the stern irony of the coincidence did not escape him. That evil look in Charlot's eyes, that sinister smile on Charlot's lips, more than suggested what manner of vengeance the Captain would exact—and that, for the time, was matter enough to absorb the Deputy's whole attention.
And the women did not see him. They were too much engrossed in the figure fronting them, and agonisedly, with cheeks white and bosoms heaving, they waited, in their dread suspense. At last, drawing himself to the full of his stalwart height, the Captain laughed grimly and spoke.
“Mesdames,” said he, his very tone an insult in its brutal derision, “we Republicans have abolished God, and until tonight I have held the Republic right, arguing that if a God there was, His leanings must be aristocratic, since He never seemed to concern Himself with the misfortunes of the lowly-born. But tonight, mesdames, I know that the Republic is at fault. There is a God—a God of justice and retribution, who has delivered you, of all people in the world, into my hands. Look on me well, Ci-devant Marquise de Bellecour, and you, Mademoiselle de Bellecour. Look in my face and see if you know me again. Not you. You never heeded me as you rode by in those proud days. But heard you ever tell of one Charlot Tardivet, a base vassal whose wife your husband, Madame, and your father, Mademoiselle, took from him on his bridal morn? Heard you ever tell of that poor girl—one Marie Tardivet—who died of grief as a consequence of that brutality? But no; such matters were too trivial for your notice if you saw them, or for your memory if you ever heard tell of them. What was the life of a peasant more than that of any other animal of the land, that the concern of it should perturb the sereneness of your aristocratic being? Mesdames, that Charlot Tardivet am I; that Marie Tardivet was my wife. I knew not whom you were when I bade you sup at my table but now that I know it—what do you look for at my hands?”
It was the Marquise who answered him. She was deathly pale, and her words came breathlessly: for all that their import was very bold.
“We look for the recollection that we are women and unless you are as cowardly as—”
“Citoyenne,” he broke in harshly, answering her as he had answered La Boulaye, “was my wife less a woman think you? Pah! There is yet another here who was wronged,” he announced, and he waved his hand in the direction of La Boulaye, who stood, stiff and pale, by the hearth.
The women turned, and at sight of the Deputy a cry escaped Suzanne. It was a cry of hope, for here was one who would surely lend them aid. It was a fact, she thought, upon which the Captain had not counted. But La Boulaye stood straight and cold, and not by so much as an inclination of the head did he acknowledge that grim introduction. Charlot, mistaking Mademoiselle's exclamation, laughed softly.
“Well may you cry out, Citoyenne,” said he, “for him I see you recognise. He is the man who sought to rescue my wife from the clutches of your lordly and most noble father. For his pains he was flogged until they believed him dead. Is it not very fitting that he should be with me now to receive you?”
“But he, at least, is in my debt,” cried Mademoiselle, now making a step forward, and sustained by an excitement born of hope. “Whatever may be my father's sins, M. la Boulaye, at least, will not seek to visit them upon the daughter, for he owes his life to me, and he will not forget the debt.”
Charlot's brows were suddenly knit with vexation. He half-turned to La Boulaye, as if to speak; but ere he could utter a word—
“The debt has been paid, Citoyenne,” said Caron impassively.
Before that cold answer, so coldly delivered, Mademoiselle recoiled.
“Paid!” she echoed mechanically.
“Aye, paid,” he rejoined. “You claimed your brother's life in payment, and I gave it to you. Do you not think that we are quits? Besides,” he ended suddenly, “Captain Tardivet is the master here. Address your appeals to him, Citoyenne.”
With terror written on her face, she turned from him to meet the flushed countenance of Charlot, who, with arms akimbo and his head on one side, was regarding her at once with mockery and satisfaction.
“What do you intend by us, Monsieur?” she questioned in a choking voice.
He smiled inscrutably.
“Allay your fears, Citoyenne; you will find me very gentle.”
“I knew you would prove generous,” she cried.
“But, yes, Citoyenne,” he rejoined, in the tones we employ to those who fear unreasonably. “I shall prove generous; as generous as—as was my lord your father.”
La Boulaye trembled, but his face remained calmly expressionless as he watched that grim scene.
“Monsieur!” Suzanne cried out in horror.
“You will not dare, you scum!” blazed the Marchioness.
Charlot shrugged his shoulders and laughed, whereupon Madame de Bellecour seemed to become a being transformed. Her ample flesh, which but a moment back had quivered in fear, quivered now more violently still in anger. The colour flowed back into her cheeks until they flamed an angry crimson, and her vituperations rang in so loud and fierce a voice that at last, putting his hands to his ears, Charlot crossed to the door.
“Silence!” he roared at her, so savagely that her spirit forsook her on the instant. “I will put an end to this,” he swore, as he opened the door. “Hold there! Is Guyot below?”
“Here, Captain,” came a voice.
Charlot retraced his steps, leaving the door wide, his eyes dwelling upon Suzanne until she shrank under its gaze, as she might have done from the touch of some unclean thing. She drew near to her mother, in whom the brief paroxysm of rage was now succeeded by a no less violent paroxysm of weeping. On the stairs sounded Guyot's ascending steps.
“Mother,” whispered Suzanne, setting her arms about her in a vain attempt to comfort. Then she heard Charlot's voice curtly bidding Guyot to reconduct the Marquise to her carriage.
Madame de Bellecour heard it also, and roused herself once more.
“I will not go,” she stormed, anger flashing again from the tear-laden eyes. “I will not leave my daughter.”
Charlot shrugged his shoulders callously.
“Take her away, Guyot,” he said, shortly, and the sturdy soldier obeyed him with a roughness that took no account of either birth or sex.
When the Marquise's last scream had died away in the distance, Charlot turned once more to Suzanne, and it seemed that he sought to compose his features into an expression of gentleness beyond their rugged limitations. But the glance of his blue eyes was kind, and mistaking the purport of that kindness, Mademoiselle began an appeal to his better feelings.
Straight and tall, pale and delicate she stood, her beauty rendered, perhaps, the more appealing by virtue of the fear reflected on her countenance. Her blue eyes were veiled behind their long black lashes, her lips were tremulous, and her hands clasped and unclasped as she now made her prayer to the Republican. But in the hardened heart of Charlot no breath of pity stirred. He beheld her beauty and he bethought him of his wrongs. For the rest, perhaps, had she been less comely he had been less vengeful.
And yonder by the hearth stood La Boulaye like a statue, unmoved and immovable. The Captain was speaking to her, gently and soothingly, but her thoughts became more taken with the silence of La Boulaye than with the speech of Charlot. Even in that parlous moment she had leisure to despise herself for having once—on the day on which, in answer to her intercessions, he had spared her brother's life—entertained a kindly, almost wistful, thought concerning this man whom she now deemed a dastard.
CHAPTER X. THE BAISER LAMOURETTE
Presently Charlot turned to La Boulaye, and for all that he uttered no word, his glance left nothing to be said. In response to it Caron stirred at last, and came leisurely over to the table.
“A mouthful of wine, and I'm gone, Charlot,” said he in level, colourless tones, as taking up a flagon he filled himself a goblet.
“Fill for me, too,” cried the Captain; “aye, and for the Citoyenne here. Come, my girl, a cup of wine will refresh you.”
But Suzanne shrank from the invitation as much as from the tenor of it and the epithet he had applied to her. Observing this, he laughed softly.
“Oh! As you will. But the wine is good-from cellar of a ci-devant Duke. My service to you, Citoyenne,” he pledged her, and raising his cup, he poured the wine down a throat that was parched by the much that he had drunk already, But ere the goblet was half-empty, a sharp, sudden cry from La Boulaye came to interrupt his quaffing. He glanced round, and at what he saw he spilled the wine down his waistcoat, then let the cup fall to the ground, as with an oath he flung himself upon the girl.
She had approached the table whilst both men were drinking, and quietly possessed herself of a knife; and, but that it was too blunt to do the service to which she put it, Charlot's intervention would have come too late. As it was he caught her wrist in time, and in a rage he tore the weapon from her fingers, and flung it far across the room.
“So, pretty lady!” he gasped, now gripping both her wrists. “So! we are suicidally inclined, are we! We would cheat Captain Charlot, would we? Fi donc!” he continued with horrid playfulness. “To shed a blood so blue upon a floor so unclean! Name of a name of a name!”
Accounting herself baffled at every point, this girl, who had hitherto borne herself so stoutly as to have stoically sought death as a last means of escape, began to weep softly. Whereupon:
“Nay, nay, little-woman,” murmured the Captain, in such accents as are employed to a petted child, and instinctively, in his intent to soothe he drew her nearer. And now the close contact thrilled him; her beauty, and some subtle perfume that reached him from her, played havoc with his senses. Nearer he drew her in silence, his face white and clammy, and his hot, wine laden breath coming quicker every second. And unresisting she submitted, for she was beyond resistance now, beyond tears even. From between wet lashes her great eyes gazed into his with a look of deadly, piteous affright; her lips were parted, her cheeks ashen, and her mind was dimly striving to formulate a prayer to the Holy Mother, the natural protectress of all imperilled virgins.
Nearer she felt herself drawn to her tormentor, in whose thoughts there dwelt now little recollection of the vengeful character of his purpose. For a second her wrists were released; then she felt his arms going round her as the coils of a snake go round its prey. With a sudden reassertion of self, with a panting gasp of horror, she tore herself free. An oath broke from him as he sprang after her. Then the unexpected happened. Above his head something bright flashed up, then down. There was a dull crack, and the Captain stopped short in his rush; his hands were jerked to the height of his breast, and like a pole-axed beast he dropped and lay prone at her feet.
Across his fallen body she beheld La Boulaye standing impassively, the ghost of a smile on his thin lips, and in his hand one of the heavy silver candlesticks from the table.
Whilst a man might count a dozen they stood so with no word spoken. Then:
“It was a cowardly blow, Citoyenne,” said the Deputy in accents of regret; “but what choice had I?” He set down the candlestick, and kneeling beside Charlot, he felt for the Captain's heart. “The door, Citoyenne,” he muttered. “Lock it.”
Mechanically, and without uttering a word, she hastened to do his bidding. As the key grated in the lock he rose.
“It has only stunned him,” he announced. “Now to prepare an explanation for it.”
He drew a chair under the old brass lamp, that hung from the ceiling. He mounted the chair, and with both hands he seized the chain immediately above the lamp. Drawing himself up, he swung there for just a second; then the hook gave way, and amid a shower of plaster La Boulaye half-tumbled to the ground.
“There,” said he, as he dropped the lamp with its chain and hook upon the floor by Charlot. “It may not be as convincing as we might wish, but I think that it will prove convincing enough to the dull wits of the landlady, and of such of Charlot's followers as may enter here. I am afraid,” he deplored, “that it will be some time before he recovers. He was so far gone in wine that it needed little weight to fell him.”
Her glance met his once more, and she took a step towards him with hands outstretched.
“Monsieur, Monsieur!” she cried. “If you but knew how in my thoughts I wronged you a little while ago.”
“You had all reason to,” he answered, taking her hands, and there came the least softening of his stern countenance. “It grieved me to add to your affliction. But had I permitted him to do so much as suspect that I was anything but your implacable enemy, I had no chance of saving you. He would have dismissed me, and I must have obeyed or been compelled, for he is master here, and has men enough to enforce what he desires.”
And now she would have thanked him for having saved her, but he cut her short almost roughly.
“You owe me no thanks,” he said. “I have but done for you what my manhood must have bidden me do for any woman similarly situated. For to-night I have saved you, Citoyenne. I shall make an effort to smuggle you and your mother out of Boisvert before morning, but after that you must help yourselves.”
“You will do this?” she cried, her eyes glistening.
“I will attempt it.”
“By what means, Monsieur Caron?”
“I do not yet know. I must consider. In the meantime you had best return to your coach. Later to-night I shall have you and your mother brought to me, and I will endeavour to so arrange matters that you shall not again return to your carriage.
“Not return to it?” she exclaimed. “But are we then to leave it here?”
“I am afraid there is no help for that.”
“But, Monsieur, you do not know; there is a treasure in that carriage. All that we have is packed in it, and if we go without it we go destitute.”
“Better, perhaps, to go destitute than not to go at all, Mademoiselle. I am afraid there is no choice for you.”
His manner was a trifle impatient. It irritated him that in such a moment she should give so much thought to her valuables. But in reality she was thinking of them inasmuch as they concerned her mother, who was below, and her father and brother who awaited them in Prussia, whither they had separately emigrated. The impatience in his tone stung her into a feeling of resentment, that for the moment seemed to blot out the much that she owed him. A reproachful word was trembling on her lips, when suddenly he put out his hand.
“Hist!” he whispered, the concentrated look of one who listens stamped upon his face. His sharp ears had detected some sound which—perhaps through her preoccupation—she had not noticed. He stepped quickly to the Captain's side, and taking up the lamp by its chain, he leapt into the air like a clown, and came down on his heels with a thud that shook the chamber. Simultaneously he dropped the lamp with a clatter, and sent a shout re-echoing through the house.
The girl stared at him with parted lips and the least look of fear in her eyes. Was he gone clean mad of a sudden?
But now the sound which had warned him of someone's approach reached her ears as well. There were steps on the stairs, which at that alarming noise were instantly quickened. Yet ere they had reached the top La Boulaye was at the door vociferating wildly.
Into the room came the hostess, breathless and grinning with anxiety, and behind her came Guyot, who, startled by the din, had hastened up to inquire into its cause.
At sight of the Captain stretched upon the floor there was a scream from Mother Capoulade and an oath from the soldier.
“Mon Dieu! what has happened?” she cried, hurrying forward.
“Miserable!” exclaimed La Boulaye, with well-feigned anger. “It seems that your wretched hovel is tumbling to pieces, and that men are not safe beneath its roof.” And he indicated the broken plaster and the fallen lamp.
“How did it happen, Citoyenne-deputy?” asked Guyot; for all that he drew the only possible inference from what he saw.
“Can you not see how it happened?” returned La Boulaye, impatiently. “As for you, wretched woman, you will suffer for it, I promise you. The nation is likely to demand a high price for Captain Charlot's injuries.”
“But, bon Dieu, how am I to blame?” wailed the frightened woman.
“To blame,” echoed La Boulaye, in a furious voice. “Are you not to blame that you let rooms in a crazy hovel? Let them to emigres as much as you will, but if you let them to good patriots and thereby endanger their lives you must take the consequences. And the consequences in this case are likely to be severe, malheureuse.”
He turned now to Guyot, who was kneeling by the Captain, and looking to his hurt.
“Here, Guyot,” he commanded sharply, “reconduct the Citoyenne to her coach. I will perhaps see her again later, when the Captain shall have recovered consciousness. You, Citoyenne Capoulade, assist me to carry him to bed.”
Each obeyed him, Guyot readily, as became a soldier, and the hostess trembling with the dread which La Boulaye's words had instilled into her. They got Charlot to bed, and when a half-hour or so later he recovered consciousness, it was to find Guyot watching at his bed-side. Bewildered, he demanded an explanation of his present position and of the pain in his head, which brought him the memory of a sudden and unaccountable blow he had received, which was the last thing that he remembered. Guyot, who had never for a moment entertained a doubt of the genuineness of the mise-en-scene La Boulaye had prepared, answered him with the explanation of how he had been struck by the falling lamp, whereupon Charlot fell to cursing lamps and crumblings with horrid volubility. That done he would have risen, but that La Boulaye, entering at that moment, insisted that he should remain abed.
“Are you mad?” the Deputy expostulated, “or is it that you do not appreciate the nature of your hurt? Diable! I have known a man die through insisting to be about with a cracked skull that was as nothing to yours.”
“Name of a name!” gasped Charlot, who in such matters was profoundly ignorant and correspondingly credulous. “Is it so serious?”
“Not serious if you lie still and sleep. You will probably be quite well by to-morrow. But if you move to-night the consequences may well be fatal.”
“But I cannot sleep at this hour,” the Captain complained. “I am very wakeful.”
“We will try to find you a sleeping potion, then,” said La Boulaye. “I hope the hosteen may have something that will answer the purpose. Meanwhile, Guyot, do not allow the Captain to talk. If you would have him well to-morrow, remember that it is of the first importance that he should have utter rest tonight.”
With that he went in quest of Dame Capoulade to ascertain whether she possessed any potion that would induce sleep. He told her that the Captain was seriously injured, and that unless he slept he might die, and, quickened by the terror of what might befall her in such a case, the woman presently produced a small phial full of a brown, viscous fluid. What it might be he had no notion, being all unversed in the mysteries of the pharmacopoeia; but she told him that it had belonged to her now defunct husband, who had always said that ten drops of it would make a man sleep the clock round.
He experimented on the Captain with ten drops, and within a quarter of an hour of taking the draught of red wine in which it was administered, Charlot's deep breathing proclaimed him fast asleep.
That done, La Boulaye sent Guyot below to his post once more, and returning to the room in which they had supped, he paced up and down for a full hour, revolving in his mind the matter of saving Mademoiselle and her mother. At last, towards ten o'clock, he opened the casement, and calling down to Guyot, as Charlot had done, he bade him bring the women up again. Now Guyot knew of the high position which Caron occupied in the Convention, and he had seen the intimate relations in which he stood to Tardivet, so that unhesitatingly he now obeyed him.
La Boulaye closed the window, and crossed slowly to the fire. He stirred the burning logs with his boot, then stood there waiting. Presently the stairs creaked, next the door opened, and Guyot ushered in Mademoiselle.
“The elder citoyenne refuses to come, Citizen-deputy,” said the soldier. “They both insisted that it was not necessary, and that the Citoyenne here would answer your questions.”
Almost on the point of commanding the soldier to return for the Marquise, Caron caught the girl's eye, and her glance was so significant that he thought it best to hear first what motives she had for thus disobeying him.
“Very well,” he said shortly. “You may go below, Guyot. But hold yourself in readiness lest I should have need of you.”
The soldier saluted and disappeared. Scarce was he gone when Mademoiselle came hurrying forward.
“Monsieur Caron,” she cried “Heaven is surely befriending us. The soldiers are drinking themselves out of their wits. They will be keeping a slack watch presently.”
He looked at her for a moment, fathoming the purport of what she said.
“But,” he demanded at last, “why did not the Marquise obey my summons, and accompany you?”
“She was afraid to leave the coach, Monsieur. Moreover, she agreed with me that it would not be necessary.”
“Not necessary?” he echoed. “But it is necessary. When last you were here I told you I did not intend you should return to the coach. This is my plan, Citoyenne. I shall keep Guyot waiting below while you and your mother are fortifying yourselves by supper here. Then I shall dismiss him with a recommendation that he keep a close watch upon the carriage, and the information that you will not be returning to it to-night. A half-hour later or so, when things are quiet, I shall find a way out for you by the back, after which the rest must remain in your hands. More I cannot do.”
“You can,” she cried; “you can.”
“If you will enlighten me,” said he, with the faintest touch of irony.
She looked at his stern, sardonic face and solemn grey eyes, and for a moment it almost seemed to her that she hated him more than anybody in the world. He was so passionless, so master of himself, and he addressed her in a tone which, whilst it suggested that he accounted himself most fully her equal, made her feel that he was really her better by much. If one of these two was an aristocrat, surely that one was the Citizen-deputy La Boulaye.
“If you had but the will you would do it, Monsieur,” she answered him. “It is not mine to enlighten you; I know not how.”
“I have the very best will in the world, Citoyenne,” said he. “Of that I think that I am giving proof.”
“Aye, the will to do nothing that will shame your manhood,” she rejoined. “That is all you think of. It was because your manhood bade you that you came to my rescue—so you said when you declined my thanks. It is this manhood of yours, I make no doubt, that is now prevailing upon you to deliver two unprotected women out of the hands of these brigands.”
“In Heaven's name, Citoyenne,” quoth the astonished Deputy, “out of what sentiment would you have me act, and, indeed, so that I save you, how can it concern you by what sentiment I am prompted?”
She paused a moment before replying. Her eyes were downcast, and some of the colour faded from her cheeks. She came a step nearer, which brought her very close to him.
“Monsieur,” she faltered very shyly, “in the old days at Bellecour you would have served me out of other sentiments.”
He started now in spite of himself, and eyed her with a sudden gleam of hope, or triumph, or mistrust, or perhaps of all three. Then his glance fell, and his voice was wistful.
“But the old days are dead, Mademoiselle.”
“The days, yes,” she answered, taking courage from his tone. “But love Monsieur, is everlasting—it never dies, they say.”
And now it was La Boulaye who drew closer, and this man who had so rigidly schooled himself out of all emotions, felt his breath quickening, and his pulses throbbing faster and faster. To him it seemed that she was right, and that love never died—for the love for her, which he believed he had throttled out of existence long ago, seemed of a sudden to take life as vigorously as ever. And then it was as if some breeze out of the past bore to his nostrils the smell of the violets and of the moist earth of that April morning when she had repulsed him in the woods of Bellecour. His emotion died down. He drew back, and stood rigid before her.
“And if it were to live, Citoyenne,” he said—the resumption of the Republican form of address showed that he had stepped back into the spirit as well as in the flesh “what manner of fool were I to again submit it to the lash of scorn it earned when first it was discovered?”
“But that belonged to the old days,” she cried, “and it is dead with the old days.'
“It is vain to go back, Citoyenne,” he cut in, and his voice rang harsh with determination.
She bit her lip under cover of her bent head. If she had hated him before how much more did she not hate him now? And but a moment back it had seemed to her that she had loved him. She had held out her hands to him and he had scorned them; in her eagerness she had been unmaidenly, and all that she had earned had been humiliation. She quivered with shame and anger, and sinking into the nearest chair she burst into a passion of tears.
Thus by accident did she stumble upon the very weapon wherewith to make an utter rout of all Caron's resolutions. For knowing nothing of the fountain from which those tears were springing, and deeming them the expression of a grief pure and unalloyed—saving, perhaps, by a worthy penitence—he stepped swiftly to her side.
“Mademoiselle,” he murmured, and his tone was as gentle and beseeching as it had lately been imperious. “Nay, Mademoiselle, I implore you!”
But her tears continued, and her sobs shook the slender frame as if to shatter it. He dropped upon his knees. Scarcely knowing what he did, he set his arm about her waist in a caress of protection.
A long curl of her black, unpowdered hair lay against his cheek.
“Mademoiselle,” he murmured, and she took comfort at the soothing tone.
From it she judged him malleable now, that had been so stern and unyielding before. She raised her eyes, and through her tears she turned their heavenly blue full upon the grey depths of his.
“You will not believe me, Monsieur,” she complained softly. “You will not believe that I can have changed with the times; that I see things differently now. If you were to come to me again as in the woods at Bellecour—” She paused abruptly, her cheeks flamed scarlet, and she covered them with her hands.
“Suzanne!” he cried, seeking to draw those hands away. “Is it true, this? You care, beloved!”
She uncovered her face at last. Again their eyes met.
“I was right,” she whispered. “Love never dies, you see.”
“And you will marry me, Suzanne?” he asked incredulously.
She inclined her head, smiling through her tears, and he would have caught her to him but that she rose of a sudden.
“Hist!” she cried, raising her finger: “someone is coming.”
He listened, holding his breath, but no sound stirred. He went to the door and peered out. All was still. But the interruption served to impress him with the fact that time was speeding, and that all unsuspicious though Guyot might be as yet, it was more than possible that his suspicions would be aroused if she remained there much longer.
He mentioned this, and he was beginning to refer to his plan for their escape when she thrust it aside, insisting that they must depart in their coach, so that their treasure might also be saved.
“Be reasonable, Suzanne,” he cried. “It is impossible.”
A cloud of vexation swept across her averted face.
“Nay, surely not impossible,” she answered. “Listen, Caron, there are two treasures in that coach. One is in money and in gold and silver plate; the other is in gems, and amounts to thrice the value of the rest. This latter is my dowry. It is a fortune with which we can quit France and betake ourselves wherever our fancy leads us. Would you ask me to abandon that and come to you penniless, compelled thereby to live in perpetual terror in a country where at any moment an enemy might cast at me the word aristocrate, and thereby ruin me?”
There was no cupidity in La Boulaye's nature, and even the prospect of an independent fortune would have weighed little with him had it not been backed by the other argument she employed touching the terror that would be ever with her did they dwell in France.
He stood deep in thought, his hand to his brow, thrusting back the long black hair from his white forehead, what time she recapitulated her argument.
“But how?” he exclaimed, in exasperation “Tell me how?”
“That is for you to discover, Caron.”
He thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and set himself to pace the chamber. And now his fingers came in contact with something foreign. Idly he drew it forth, and it proved to be the phial Mother Capoulade had given him, and from which he had poured the ten drops for the Captain's sleeping potion. His eyes brightened with inspiration. Here was a tool whose possibilities were vast. Then his brows were knit again.
“Wait,” he said slowly. “Let me think.”
CHAPTER XI. THE ESCAPE
Resting his elbow on the table, and with his hand to his brow, Caron sat deep in thought, his forefinger and thumb pressed against his closed eyelids. From beyond the board Mademoiselle watched him anxiously and waited. At last he looked up.
“I think I have it,” he announced, rising. “You say that the men are drinking heavily. That should materially assist us.”
She asked him what plan he had conceived, but he urged that time pressed; she should know presently; meanwhile, she had best return immediately to her carriage. He went to the door to call Guyot, but she stayed him.
“No, no, Monsieur,” she exclaimed. “I will not pass through the common-room again in that fellow's company. They are all in there, carousing, and—and I dare not.”
As if to confirm her words, now that he held the door open, he caught some sounds of mirth and the drone of voices from below.
“Come with me, then,” said he, taking up one of the candles. “I will escort you.”
Together they descended the narrow staircase, La Boulaye going first, to guide her, since two might not go abreast. At the foot there was a door, which he opened, and then, at the end of a short passage—in which the drone of voices sounded very loud and in particular one, cracked voice that was raised in song—they gained the door of the common-room. As La Boulaye pushed it open they came upon a scene of Bacchanalian revelry. On a chair that had been set upon the table they beheld Mother Capoulade enthroned like a Goddess of Liberty, and wearing a Phrygian cap on her dishevelled locks. Her yellow cheeks were flushed and her eyes watery, whilst hers was the crazy voice that sang.
Around the table, in every conceivable attitude of abandonment, sat Captain Charlot's guard—every man of the ten—and with them the six men and the corporal of La Boulaye's escort, all more or less in a condition of drunkenness.
“Le jour de gloire est arrive?” sang the croaking voice of Dame Capoulade, and there it stopped abruptly upon catching sight of La Boulaye and his companion in the doorway. Mademoiselle shivered out of loathing; but La Boulaye felt his pulses quickened with hope, for surely all this was calculated to assist him in his purpose.
At the abrupt interruption of the landlady's version of the “Marseillaise” the men swung round, and upon seeing the Deputy they sought in ludicrous haste to repair the disorder of their appearance.
“So!” thundered Caron. “This is the watch you keep? This is how you are to be trusted? And you, Guyot,” he continued, pointing his finger at the man. “Did I not bid you await my orders? Is this how you wait? You see that I am compelled to reconduct the Citoyenne myself, for I might have called you in vain all night.”
Guyot came forward sheepishly, and a trifle unsteady in his gait.
“I did not hear you call, Citizen,” he muttered.
“It had been a miracle if you had with this din,” answered La Boulaye. “Here, take the Citoyenne back to her carriage.”
Obediently Guyot led the Citoyenne across the room and out into the courtyard, and the men, restrained by La Boulaye's severe presence, dared scarcely so much as raise their eyes to her as she passed out.
“And now to your posts,” was Caron's stern command. “By my soul, if you were men of mine I would have you flogged for this. Out with you!” And he pointed imperiously to the door.
“It is a bitter night, Citizen,” grumbled one of them.
“Do you call yourself soldiers, and does a touch of frost make cowards of you? Outside, you old wives, at once! I'll see you at your post before I go to bed.”
And with that he set himself to drive them out, and they went, until none but his own half-dozen remained. These he bade dispose themselves about the hearth, in which they very readily obeyed him.
On a side-table stood a huge steaming can which had attracted La Boulaye's attention from the moment that he had entered the room. He went to peer into this, and found it full almost to the brim of mulled red wine.
With his back to those in the room, so as to screen his actions, he had uncorked the phial as he was approaching the can. Now, as he made pretence first to peer into it and then to smell its contents, he surreptitiously emptied the potion into it, wondering vaguely to himself whether the men would ever wake again if they had drunk it. Slipping the phial into his sash he turned to Mother Capoulade, who had descended from the table and stood looking very foolish.
“What is this?” he demanded angrily.
“It was a last cup of wine for the men,” she faltered. “The night is bitterly cold, Citizen,” she added, by way of excusing herself.
“Bah!” snarled Caron, and for a moment he stood there as if deliberating. “I am minded to empty it into the kennel,” he announced.
“Citizen!” cried the woman, in alarm. “It is good wine, and I have spiced it.”
“Well,” he relented, “they may have it. But see that it is the last to-night.”
And with that he strode across the room, and with a surly “Good-night” to his men, he mounted the stairs once more.
He waited perhaps ten minutes in the chamber above, then he went to the casement, and softly opened the window. It was as he expected. With the exception of the coach standing in the middle of the yard, and just discernible by the glow of the smouldering fire they had built there but allowed to burn low, the place was untenanted. Believing him to have retired for the night, the men were back again in the more congenial atmosphere of the hostelry, drinking themselves no doubt into a stupor with that last can of drugged wine. He sat down to quietly mature his plans, and to think out every detail of what he was about to do. At the end of a half-hour, silence reigning throughout the house, he rose. He crept softly into Charlot's chamber and possessed himself of the Captain's outer garments. These he carried back to the sitting-room, and extracted from the coat pocket two huge keys tied together with a piece of string. He never doubted that they were the keys he sought, one opening the stable door and the other the gates of the porte-cochere.
He replaced the garments, and then to make doubly sure, he waited yet—in a fever of impatience—another half-hour by his watch.
It wanted a few minutes to midnight when, taking up his cloak and a lantern he had lighted, he went below once more. In the common-room he found precisely the scene he had expected. Both Charlot's men and his own followers lay about the floor in all conceivable manner of attitudes, their senses locked deep in the drunken stupor that possessed them. Two or three had remained seated, and had fallen across the table, when overcome. Of these was Mother Capoulade, whose head lay sideways on her curled arms, and from whose throat there issued a resonant and melodious snore. Most of the faces that La Boulaye could see were horribly livid and bedewed with sweat, and again it came into his mind to wonder whether he had overdone things, and they would wake no more. On the other hand, an even greater fear beset him, that the drug might have been insufficient. By way of testing it, he caught one fellow who lay across his path a violent kick in the side. The man grunted in his sleep, and stirred slightly, to relapse almost at once into his helpless attitude, and to resume his regular breathing, which the blow had interrupted.
La Boulaye smiled his satisfaction, and without further hesitancy passed out into the yard. He had yet a good deal to say to Mademoiselle, but he could not bring himself to speak to her before her mother, particularly as he realised how much the Marquise might be opposed to him. He opened the carriage door.
“Mademoiselle,” he called softly, “will you do me the favour to alight for an instant? I must speak to you.”
“Can you not say what you have to say where you are?” came the Marquise's voice.
“No, Madame,” answered La Boulaye coldly, “I cannot.”
“Oh, it is 'Madame' and 'Mademoiselle' now, eh? What have you done to the man, child, to have earned us so much deference.”
“May I remind Mademoiselle,” put in La Boulaye firmly, “that time presses, and that there is much to be done?”
“I am here, Monsieur” she answered, as without more ado, and heedless of her mother's fresh remarks, she stepped from the carriage.
La Boulaye proffered his wrist to assist her to alight, then reclosed the door, and led her slowly towards the stable.
“Where are the soldiers?” she whispered.
“Every soul in the inn is asleep,” he answered. “I have drugged them all, from the Captain down to the hostess. The only one left is the ostler, who is sleeping in one of the outhouses here. Him you must take with you, not only because it is not possible to drug him as well, but also because the blame of your escape must rest on someone, and it may as well rest on him as another.”
“But why not on you?” she asked.
“Because I must remain.”
“Ah!” It was no more than a breath of interrogation, and her face was turned towards him as she awaited an explanation.
“I have given it much thought, Suzanne, and unless someone remains to cover, as it were, your retreat, I am afraid that your flight might be vain, and that you would run an overwhelming risk of recapture. You must remember the resourcefulness of this fellow, Tardivet, and his power in the country here. If he were to awake to the discovery that I had duped him, he would be up and after us, and I make little doubt that it would not be long ere he found the scent and ran us to earth. Tomorrow I shall discover your flight and the villainy of the ostler, and I shall so organise the pursuit that you shall not be overtaken.”
There was a moment's pause, during which La Boulaye seemed to expect some question. But none came, so he proceeded:
“Your original intention was to make for Prussia, where you say that your father and your brother are awaiting you.”
“Yes, Monsieur. Beyond the Moselle—at Treves.”
“You must alter your plans,” said he shortly. “Your mother, no doubt, will insist upon repairing thither, and I will see that the road is left open for her escape. At Soignies you, Suzanne, can hire yourself a berline, that will take you back to France.”
“Back to France?” she echoed.
“Yes, back to France. That is the unlikeliest road on which to think of pursuing you, and thus you will baffle Charlot. Let your mother proceed on her journey to Prussia, but tell her to avoid Charleroi, and to go round by Liege. Thus only can she hope to escape Tardivet's men that are patrolling the road from France. As for you, Suzanne, you had best go North as far as Oudenarde, so as to circumvent the Captain's brigands on that side. Then make straight for Roubaix, and await me at the 'Hotel des Cloches.'”
“But, Monsieur, I shudder at the very thought of re-entering France.”
“As Mademoiselle de Bellecour, a proscribed aristocrat, that is every reason for your fears. But I have given the matter thought and I can promise you that as the Citoyenne La Boulaye, wife of the Citizen-deputy Caron La Boulaye, you will be as safe as I should be myself, if you are questioned, and, in response, you will find nothing but eagerness to serve you on every hand.”
She spoke now of the difficulties her mother would make, but he dismissed the matter by reminding her that her mother could not detain her by force. Again she alluded to her dowry, but that also he dismissed, bidding her leave it behind. Her family would need the money, to be realised by the jewels. As for herself, he assured her that as his wife she would not want, and showed her how idle was her dread of living in France.
“And now, Mademoiselle,” he said, more briskly, “let us see to this ostler.”
He opened the door of the outhouse, and uncovering his lantern he raised it above his head. Its yellow light revealed to them a sleeper on the straw in a corner. La Boulaye entered and stirred the man with his foot.
The fellow sat up blinking stupidly and dragging odd wisps of straw from his grey hair.
“What's amiss?” he grunted.
As briefly as might be La Boulaye informed him that he was to receive a matter of five hundred francs if he would journey into Prussia with the ci-devant Marquise de Bellecour.
Five hundred francs? It was a vast sum, the tenth of which had never been his at any one time of his wretched life. For five hundred francs he would have journeyed into Hades, and La Boulaye found him willing enough to go to Prussia, and had no need to resort to the more forcible measures he had come prepared to employ.
Accompanied by the ostler, they now passed to the stables, and when La Boulaye had unlocked the door and cut the bonds that pinioned the Marquis's coachman, they got the horses, and together they harnessed them as quietly as might be.
Then working with infinite precaution, and as little sound as possible, they brought them out into the yard and set them in the shafts of the carriage. The rest was easy work, and a quarter of an hour later the heavy vehicle rumbled through the porte-cochere and started on its way to Soignies.
La Boulaye dropped the keys into a bucket and went within. In the common-room nothing had changed, and the men lay about precisely as he had left them. Reassured, he went above and took a peep at the Captain, whom he found snoring lustily.
Satisfied that all was well, Caron passed quietly to his own chamber, and with an elation of soul such as had never been his since boyhood, he fell asleep amid visions of Suzanne and the new life he was to enter upon in her sweet company.
CHAPTER XII. THE AWAKENING
La Boulaye awakened betimes next morning. It may be that the matter on his mind and the business that was toward aroused him; certainly it was none of the sounds that are common to an inn at early morn, for the place was as silent as a tomb.
Some seconds he remained on his back, staring at the whitewashed ceiling and listening to the patter of the rain against his window. Then, as his mind gathered up the threads of recollection, he leapt from his bed and made haste to assume a garment or two.
He stood a moment at his casement, looking out into the empty courtyard. From a leaden sky the rain was descending in sheets, and the gargoyle at the end of the eaves overhead was discharging a steady column of water into the yard. Caron shivered with the cold of that gloomy February morning, and turned away from the window. A few moments later he was in Tardivet's bedchamber, vigorously shaking the sleeping Captain.
“Up, Charlot! Awake!” he roared in the man's ear.
“What o'clock?” he asked with a yawn. Then a sudden groan escaped him, and he put his hand to his head. “Thousand devils!” he swore, “what a headache!”
But La Boulaye was not there on any mission of sympathy, nor did he waste words in conveying his news.
“The coach is gone,” he announced emphatically.
“Coach? What coach?” asked the Captain, knitting his brows.
“What coach?” echoed La Boulaye testily. “How many coaches were there? Why, the Bellecour coach; the coach with the treasure.”
At that Charlot grew very wide-awake. He forgot his headache and his interest in the time of day.
“Gone?” he bellowed. “How gone? Pardieu, it is not possible!”
“Look for yourself,” was La Boulaye's answer as he waved his hand in the direction of the window. “I don't know what manner of watch your men can have kept that such a thing should have come about. Probably, knowing you ill a-bed, they abused the occasion by getting drunk, and probably they are still sleeping it off. The place is silent enough.”
But Tardivet scarcely heard him. From his window he was staring into the yard below, too thunderstruck by its emptiness to even have recourse to profanity. Stable door and porte-cochere alike stood open. He turned suddenly and made for his coat. Seizing it, he thrust his hand in one pocket after another. At last:
“Treachery!” he cried, and letting the garment fall to the ground, he turned upon La Boulaye a face so transfigured by anger that it looked little like the usually good-humoured countenance of Captain Tardivet “My keys have been stolen. By St. Guillotine, I'll have the thief hanged.”
“Did anybody know that the keys were in your pocket?” asked the ingenuous Caron.
“I told you last night.”
“Yes, yes; I remember that. But did anybody else know?”
“The ostler knew. He saw me lock the doors.”
“Why, then, let us find the ostler,” urged Caron. “Put on some clothes and we will go below.”
Mechanically Charlot obeyed him, and as he did so he gave his feelings vent at last. From between set teeth came now a flow of oaths and imprecations as steady as the flow of water from the gargoyle overhead.
At last they hastened down the stairs together, and in the common-room they found the sleeping company much as La Boulaye had left it the night before. In an access of rage at what he saw, and at the ample evidences of the debauch that had reduced them to this condition, Charlot began by kicking the chair from under Mother Capoulade. The noise of her fall and the scream with which she awoke served to arouse one or two others, who lifted their heads to gaze stupidly about them.
But Charlot was busy stirring the other slumberers. He had found a whip, and with this he was now laying vigorously about him.
“Up, you swine!” he blazed at them. “Afoot, you drunken scum!”
His whip cracked, and his imprecations rang high and lurid. And La Boulaye assisted him in his labours with kicks and cuffs and a tongue no less vituperative.
At last they were on their feet—a pale, bewildered, shamefaced company—receiving from the infuriated Charlot the news that whilst they had indulged themselves in their drunken slumbers their prisoners had escaped and carried off the treasure with them. The news was received with a groan of dismay, and several turned to the door to ascertain for themselves whether it was indeed exact. The dreary emptiness of the rain-washed yard afforded them more than ample confirmation.
“Where is your pig of an ostler, Mother Capoulade?” demanded the angry Captain.
Quivering with terror, she answered him that the rascal should be in the shed by the stables, where it was his wont to sleep. Out into the rain, despite the scantiness of his attire, went Charlot, followed closely by La Boulaye and one or two stragglers. The shed proved empty, as Caron could have told him—and so, too, did the stables. Here, at the spot where Madame de Bellecour's coachman had been left bound, the Captain turned to La Boulaye and those others that had followed him.
“It is the ostler's work,” he announced. “There was knavery and treachery writ large upon his ugly face. I always felt it, and this business proves how correct were my instincts. The rogue was bribed when he discovered how things were with you, you greasy sots. But you, La Boulaye,” he cried suddenly, “were you drunk, too?”
“Not I,” answered the Deputy.
“Then, name of a name, how came that lumbering coach to leave the yard without awakening you?”
“You ask me to explain too much,” was La Boulaye's cool evasion. “I have always accounted myself a light sleeper, and I could not have believed that such a thing could really have taken place without disturbing me. But the fact remains that the coach has gone, and I think that instead of standing here in idle speculation as to how it went, you might find more profitable employment in considering how it is to brought back again. It cannot have gone very far.”
If any ray of suspicion had begun to glimmer in Charlot's brain, that suggestion of La Boulaye's was enough to utterly extinguish it.
They returned indoors, and without more ado Tardivet set himself to plan the pursuit. He knew, he announced, that Prussia was their destination. He had discovered it at the time of their capture from certain papers that he had found in a portmanteau of the Marquise's. He discussed the matter with La Boulaye, and it was now that Caron had occasion to congratulate himself upon his wisdom in having elected to remain behind.
The Captain proposed to recall the fifty men that were watching the roads from France, and to spread them along the River Sambre, as far as Liege, to seek information of the way taken by the fugitives. As soon as any one of the parties struck the trail it was to send word to the others, and start immediately in pursuit.
Now, had Charlot been permitted to spread such a net as this, the Marquise must inevitably fall into it, and Caron had pledged his word that she should have an open road to Prussia. With a map spread upon the table he now expounded to the Captain how little necessity there was for so elaborate a scheme. The nearest way to Prussia was by Charleroi, Dinant, and Rochefort, into Luxembourg, and—he contended—it was not only unlikely, but incredible, that the Marquise should choose any but the shortest road to carry her out of Belgium, seeing the dangers that must beset her until the frontiers of Luxembourg were passed.
“And so,” argued La Boulaye, “why waste time in recalling your men? Think of the captives you might miss by such an act! It were infinitely better advised to assume that the fugitives have taken the Charleroi-Dinant road, and to despatch, at once, say, half-a-dozen men in pursuit.”
Tardivet pondered the matter for some moments.
“Yom are right,” he agreed at last. “If they have resolved to continue their journey, a half-dozen men should suffice to recapture them. I will despatch these at once...”
La Boulaye looked up at that.
“If they have resolved to continue their journey?” he echoed. “What else should they have resolved?”
Tardivet stroked his reddish hair and smiled astutely.
“In organising a pursuit,” said he, “the wise pursuer will always put himself in the place of the fugitives, and seek to reason as they would probably reason. Now, what more likely than that these ladies, or their coachman, or that rascally ostler, should have thought of doubling back into France? They might naturally argue that we; should never think of pursuing them in that direction. Similarly placed, that is how I should reason, and that is the course I should adopt, making for Prussia through Lorraine. Perhaps I do their intelligences too much honour—yet, to me, it seems such an obvious course.”'
La Boulaye grew cold with apprehension. Yet impassively he asked:
“But what of your men who are guarding the frontiers?”
“Pooh! A detour might circumvent them. The Marquise might go as far north as Roubaix or Comines, or as fair south as Rocroy, or even Charlemont. Name of a name, but it is more than likely!” he exclaimed, with sudden conviction. “What do you say, Caron?”
“That you rave,” answered La Boulaye coldly.
“Well, we shall see. I will despatch a message to my men, bidding them spread themselves as far north as Comiines and as far south as Charlemont. Should the fugitives have made such a detour as I suggested there will be ample time to take them.”
La Boulaye still contemned the notion with a fine show of indifference, but Tardivet held to his purpose, and presently despatched the messengers as he had proposed. At that Caron felt his pulses quickening with anxiety for Mademoiselle. These astute measures must inevitably result im her capture—for was it not at Roubaix that he had bidden her await him? There was but one thing to be done, to ride out himself to meet her along the road from Soignies to Oudenarde, and to escort her into France. She should go ostensibly as his prisoner, and he was confident that not all the brigands of Captain Tardivet would suffice to take her from him.
Accordingly, he announced his intention of resuming his interrupted journey, and ordered his men to saddle and make ready. Meanwhile, having taken measures to recapture the Marquise should she have doubled back into France, Charlot was now organising an expedition to scour the road to Prussia, against the possibility of her having adhered to her original intention of journeying that way. Thus he was determined to take no risks, and leave her no loophole of escape.
Tardivet would have set himself at the head of the six horsemen of this expedition, but that La Boulaye interfered, and this time to some purpose. He assured the Captain that he was still far from recovered, and that to spend a day in the saddle might have the gravest of consequences for him.
“If the occasion demanded it,” he concluded, “I should myself urge you to chance the matter of your health. But the occasion does not. The business is of the simplest, and your men can do as much without you as they could with you.”
Tardivet permitted himself to be persuaded, and Caron had again good cause to congratulate himself that he had remained behind to influence him. He opined that the men, failing to pick up the trail at Charleroi, would probably go on as far as Dinant before abandoning the chase; then they would return to Boisvert to announce their failure, and by that time it would be too late to reorganise the pursuit. On the other hand, had Tardivet accompanied them, upon failing to find any trace of the Marquise at Charleroi, La Boulaye could imagine him pushing north along the Sambre, and pressing the peasantry into his service to form an impassable cordon.
And so, having won his way in this at least, and seen the six men set out under the command of Tardivet's trusted Guyot, Caron took his leave of the Captain. He was on the very point of setting out when a courier dashed up to the door of the “Eagle,” and called for a cup of wine. As it was brought him he asked the hostess whether the Citizen-deputy La Boulaye, Commissioner to the army of Dumouriez, had passed that way. Upon being informed that the Deputy was even then within the inn, the courier got down from his horse and demanded to be taken to him.
The hostess led him into the common-room, and pointed out the Deputy. The courier heaved a sigh of relief, and removing his sodden cloak he bade the landlady get it dried and prepare him as stout a meal as her hostelry afforded.
“Name of a name!” he swore, as he pitched his dripping hat into a corner. “But it is good to find you at last, Citizen-deputy? I had expected to meet you at Valenciennes. But as you were not there, and as my letters were urgent, I have been compelled to ride for the past six hours through that infernal deluge. Enfin, here you are, and here is my letter—from the Citizen-deputy Maximilien Robespierre—and here I'll rest me for the next six hours.”
Bidding the fellow by all means rest and refresh himself, La Boulaye broke the seal, and read the following:
Dear Caron,
My courier should deliver you this letter as you are on the Point
of reentering France, on your return from the mission which you
have discharged with so much glory to yourself and credit to me
who recommended you for the task. I make you my compliments on
the tact and adroitness you have employed to bring this stubborn
Dumouriez into some semblance of sympathy with the Convention.
And now, my friend, I have another task for you, which you can
discharge on your homeward journey. You will make a slight detour,
passing into Artois and riding to the Chateau d'Ombreval, which is
situated some four miles south of Arras. Here I wish you not only
to Possess yourself of the person of the ci-devant Vicomte
d'Ombreval, bringing him to Paris as your Prisoner, but further,
to make a very searching investigation of that aristocrat's papers,
securing any documents that you may consider of a nature
treasonable to the French Republic, One and Indivisible.
The letter ended with the usual greetings and Robespierre's signature.
La Boulaye swore softly to himself as he folded the epistle.
“It seems,” he muttered to Charlot, “that I am to turn catch-poll in the service of the Republic.”
“To a true servant of the Nation,” put in the courier, who had overheard him, “all tasks that may tend to the advancement of the Republic should be eagerly undertaken. Diable! Have not I ridden in the rain these six hours past?”
La Boulaye paid no heed to him; he was too inured to this sort of insolence since the new rule had levelled all men. But Charlot turned slowly to regard the fellow.
He was a tall man of rather slender stature, but indifferently dressed in garments that were splashed from head to foot with mud, and from which a steam was beginning to rise as he stood now with his back to the fire. Charlot eyed him so narrowly that the fellow shifted his position and dropped his glance in some discomfort. His speech, though rough of purport, had not been ungentle of delivery. But his face was dirty—the sure sign of an ardent patriot—his hair hung untidy about his face, and he wore that latest abomination of the ultra-revolutionist, a dense black beard and moustache.
“My friend,” said Charlot, “although we are ready to acknowledge you our equal, we should like you to understand that we do not take lessons in duty even from our equals. Bear you that in mind if you seek to have a peaceful time while you are here, for it so happens that I am quartered at this inn, and have a more important way with me than this good-natured Deputy here.”
The fellow darted Charlot a malevolent glance.
“You talk of equality and you outrage equality in a breath,” he growled. “I half suspect you of being a turncoat aristocrat.” And he spat ostentatiously on the ground.
“Suspect what you will, but voice no suspicions here, else you'll become acquainted with the mighty short methods of Charlot Tardivet. And as for aristocrats, my friend, there are none so rabid as the newly-converted. I wonder how long it is since you became a patriot?”
Before the fellow could make any answer the corporal in command of La Boulaye's escort entered to inform Caron that the men were in the saddle.
At that the Deputy hurriedly took his leave of Tardivet, and wrapping his heavy cloak tightly about him he marched out into the rain, and mounted.
A few moments later they clattered briskly out of Boisvert, the thick grey mud flying from their horses' hoofs as they went, and took the road to France. For a couple of miles they rode steadily along under the unceasing rain and in the teeth of that bleak February wind. Then at a cross-road La Boulaye unexpectedly called a halt.
“My friends,” he said to his escort, “we have yet a little business to discharge in Belgium before we cross the frontier.”
With that he announced his intention of going North, and so briskly did he cause them to ride, that by noon—a short three hours after quitting Boisvert—they had covered a distance of twenty-five miles, and brought up their steaming horses before the Hotel de Flandres at Leuze.
At this, the only post-house in the place, La Boulaye made inquiries as to whether any carriage had arrived from Soignies that morning, to receive a negative answer. This nowise surprised him, for he hardly thought that Mademoiselle could have had time to come so far. She must, however, be drawing nearer, and he determined to ride on to meet her. From Leuze to Soignies is a distance of some eight or nine leagues by a road which may roughly be said to be the basis of a triangle having its apex at Boisvert.
After his men had hurriedly refreshed themselves, La Boulaye ordered them to horse again, and they now cantered out, along this road, to Soignes. But as mile after mile was covered without their coming upon any sign of such a carriage as Mademoiselle should be travelling in, La Boulaye almost unconsciously quickened the pace until in the end they found themselves careering along as fast as their jaded horses would bear them, and speculating mightily upon the Deputy's odd behaviour.
Soignies itself was reached towards four o'clock, and still they had not met her whom La Boulaye expected. Here, in a state of some wonder and even of some anxiety, Caron made straight for the Auberge des Postes. Bidding his men dismount and see to themselves and their beasts, he went in quest of the host, and having found him, bombarded him with questions.
In reply he elicited the information that at noon that day a carriage such as he described had reached Soignies in a very sorry condition. One of the wheels had come off on the road, and although the Marquise's men had contrived to replace it and to rudely secure it by an improvised pin, they had been compelled to proceed at a walk for some fifteen miles of the journey, which accounted for the lateness of their arrival at Soignies. They had remained at the Auberge des Postes until the wheel had been properly mended, and it was not more than an hour since they had resumed their journey along the road to Liege.
“But did both the citoyennes depart?” cried La Boulaye, in amazement, and upon receiving an affirmative reply it at once entered his mind that the Marquise must have influenced her daughter to that end—perhaps even employed force.
“Did there appear to be any signs of disagreement between them?” was his next question.
“No, Citizen, I observed nothing. They seemed in perfect accord.”
“The younger one did not by any chance inquire of you whether it would be possible to hire a berline?” asked Caron desperately.
“No,” the landlord answered him, with wondering eyes. “She appeared as anxious as her mother for the repairing of the coach in which they came, that they might again depart in it.”
La Boulaye stood a moment in thought, his brows drawn together, his breathing seeming suspended, for into his soul a suspicion had of a sudden been thrust—a hideous suspicion. Abruptly he drew himself up to the full of his active figure, and threw back his head, his resolve taken.
“Can I have fresh horses at once?” he inquired. “I need eight.”
The landlord thoughtfully scratched his head.
“You can have two at once, and the other six in a half-hour.”
“Very well,” he answered. “Saddle me one at once, and have the other seven ready for my men as soon as possible.”
And whilst the host sent the ostler to execute the order, Caron called for a cup of wine and a crust of bread. Munching his crust he entered the common-room where his men were at table with a steaming ragout before them.
“Garin,” he said to the corporal, “in a half-hour the landlord will be able to provide you with fresh horses. You will set out at once to follow me along the road to Liege. I am starting immediately.”
Garin, with the easy familiarity of the Republican soldier, bade him take some thought of his exhausted condition, and snatch at least the half-hour's rest that was to be theirs. But La Boulaye was out of the room before he had finished. A couple of minutes later they heard a clatter of departing hoofs, and La Boulaye was gone along the road too Liege in pursuit of the ladies of Bellecour.
CHAPTER XIII. THE ROAD TO LIEGE
“Of what are you thinking, little fool?” asked the Marquise peevishly, her fat face puckered into a hundred wrinkles of ill-humour.
“Of nothing in particular, Madame,” the girl answered patiently.
The Marquise sniffed contemptuously, and glanced through the window of the coach upon the dreary, rain sodden landscape.
“Do you call the sometime secretary Citizen-cutthroat La Boulaye, nothing in particular?” she asked. “Ma foi! I wonder that you do not die of self-contempt after what passed between you at Boisvert.”
“Madame, I was not thinking of him,” said Suzanne.
“More shame to you, then,” was the sour retort, for the Marquise was bent upon disagreeing with her. “Have you a conscience, Suzanne, that you could have played such a Delilah part and never give a thought to the man you have tricked?”
“You will make me regret that I told you of it,” said the girl quietly.
“You are ready enough to regret anything but the act itself. Perhaps you'll be regretting that you did not take a berline at Soignies, as you promised the citizen-scoundrel that you would, and set out to join him?”
“It is hardly generous to taunt me so, Madame, I do very bitterly regret what has taken place. But you might do me the justice to remember that what I did I did as much for others as for myself. As much, indeed, for you as for myself.”
“For me?” echoed the Marquise shrilly. “Tiens, that is droll now! For me? Was it for me that you made love to the citizen-blackguard? Are you so dead to shame that you dare remind me of it?”
Mademoiselle sighed, and seemed to shrink back into the shadows of the carriage. Her face was very pale, and her eyes looked sorely troubled.
“It is something that to my dying day I shall regret,” she murmured. “It was vile, it was unworthy! Yet if I had not used the only weapon to my hand—” She ceased, the Marquise caught the sound of a sob.
“What are you weeping for, little fool?” she cried.
“As much as anything for what he must think of me when he realises how shamefully I have used him.”
“And does it matter what the canaille thinks? Shall it matter what the citizen-assassin thinks?”
“A little, Madame,” she sighed. “He will despise me as I deserve. I almost wish that I could undo it, and go back to that little room at Boisvert the prisoner of that fearful man, Tardivet, or else that—” Again she paused, and the Marquise turned towards her with a gasp.
“Or else that what?” she demanded. “Ma foi, it only remains that you should wish you had kept your promise to this scum.”
“I almost wish it, Madame. I pledged my word to him.”
“You talk as if you were a man,” said her mother; “as if your word was a thing that bound you. It is a woman's prerogative to change her mind. As for this Republican scum—”
“You shall not call him that,” was the rejoinder, sharply delivered; for Suzanne was roused at last. “He is twenty times more noble and brave than any gentleman, that I have ever met. We owe our liberty to him at this moment, and sufficiently have I wronged him by my actions—”
“Fool, what are you saying?” cried the enraged Marquise. “He, more noble and brave than any gentleman that you ever met? He—this kennel-bred citizen-ruffian of a revolutionist? Are you mad, girl, or—” The Marquise paused a moment and took a deep breath that was as a gasp of sudden understanding. “Is it that you are in love with this wretch!”
“Madame!” The exclamation was laden with blended wonder, dignity, and horror.
“Well?” demanded Madame de Bellecour severely. “Answer me, Suzanne. Are you in love with this La Boulaye?”
“Is there the need to answer?” quoth the girl scornfully. “Surely you forget that I am Mademoiselle de Bellecour, daughter of the Marquise de Bellecour, and that this man is of the canaille, else you had never asked the question.”
With an expression of satisfaction the Marquise was sinking back in the carriage, when of a sudden she sat bolt upright.
“Someone is riding very desperately,” she cried, a note of alarm ringing in her voice.
Above the thud of the coach-horses' hoofs and the rumble of their vehicle sounded now the clatter of someone galloping madly in their wake. Mademoiselle looked from the window into the gathering dusk.
“It will be some courier, Madame,” she answered calmly. “None other would ride at such a pace.”
“I shall know no rest until we are safely in a Christian country again,” the Marquise complained.
The hoof-beats grew nearer, and the dark figure of a horseman dashed suddenly past the window. Simultaneously, a loud, harsh command to halt rang out upon the evening air.
The Marquise clutched at her daughter's arm with one hand, whilst with the other she crossed herself, as though their assailant were some emissary of the powers of evil.
“Mother in Heaven, deliver us!” she gasped, turning suddenly devout.
“Mon Dieu!” cried Mademoiselle, who had recognised the voice that was now haranguing the men on the box—their driver and the ostler of the 'Eagle Inn.' “It is La Boulaye himself.”
“La Boulaye?” echoed the Marquise. Then, in a frenzy of terror: “There are the pistols there, Suzanne,” she cried. “You can shoot. Kill him! Kill him!”
The girl's lips came tightly together until her mouth seemed no more than a straight line. Her cheeks grew white as death, but her eyes were brave and resolute. She put forth her hand and seized one of the pistols as the carriage with a final jolt came to a standstill.
An instant later the door was dragged open, and La Boulaye stood bowing in the rain with mock ceremoniousness and a very contemptuous smile on his stern mouth. He had dismounted, and flung the reins of his horse over the bough of a tree by the roadside. The Marquise shuddered at sight of him, and sought to shrink farther back into the cushions of the carriage.
“Citoyenne,” he was saying, very bitterly, “when I made my compact with you yesternight, I did not reckon upon being compelled to ride after you in this fashion. I have some knowledge of the ways of your people, of their full words and empty deeds; but you I was fool enough to trust. By experience we learn. I must ask you to alight, Citoyenne.”
“To what purpose, Monsieur?” she asked, in a voice which she strove to render cold and steady.
“To the purpose that your part of the bargain be carried out. Your mother and your treasure were to find their way into Prussia upon condition that you return with me to France.”
“It was a bargain of coercion, Monsieur,” she answered attempting to brazen it out. “I was a woman in a desperate situation.”
“Surely your memory is at fault, Citoyenne,” he answered, with a politeness that was in itself a mockery.
“Your situation was so little desperate that I had offered to effect the rescue both of your mother and yourself without asking any guerdon. Your miserable treasure alone it was that had to be sacrificed. You will recall that the bargain was of your own proposing.”
There was a pause, during which he stood waiting for her reply. Her blue eyes made an attempt to meet his steady gaze, but failed. Her bosom rose and fell in the intensity of her agitation.
“I was a woman distraught, Monsieur. Surely you will not hold me to words uttered in an hour of madness. It was a bargain I had no right to make, for I am no longer free to dispose of myself. I am betrothed to the Vicomte Anatole d'Ombreval. The contract has already been signed, and the Vicomte will be meeting us at Treves.”
It was as if she had struck him, and amazement left him silent a moment. In a dim, subconscious way he seemed to notice that the name she mentioned was that of the man he was bidden to arrest. Then, with an oath:
“I care naught for that,” he cried. “As God lives, you shall fulfil your word to me.”
“Monsieur, I refuse,” she answered, with finality. “Let me request you to close the door and suffer us to proceed.”
“Your mother and your treasure may proceed—it was thus we bargained. But you shall come with me. I will be no girl's dupe, no woman's fool, Citoyenne.”
When he said that he uttered the full truth. There was no love in his voice or in his heart at that moment. Than desire of her nothing was further from his mind. It was his pride that was up in arms, his wounded dignity that cried out to him to avenge himself upon her, and to punish her for having no miserably duped him. That she was unwilling to go with him only served to increase his purpose of taking her, since the more unwilling she was the more would she be punished.
“Citoyenne, I am waiting for you to alight,” he said peremptorily.
“Monsieur, I am very well as I am,” she answered him, and leaning slightly from the coach—“Drive on, Blaise,” she commanded.
But La Boulaye cocked a pistol.
“Drive so much as a yard,” he threatened “and I'll drive you to the devil.” Then, turning once more to Suzanne: “Never in my life, Citoyenne have I employed force to a woman,” he said. “I trust that you will not put me to the pain of commencing now.”
“Stand back, Monsieur,” was her imperious answer. But heedless he advanced, and thrusting his head under the lintel of the carriage door he leaned forward, to seize her. Then, before he could so much as conjecture what she was about, her hand went up grasping a heavy horse-pistol by the barrel, and she brought the butt of it down with a deadly precision between his brows.
He reeled backwards, threw up his arms, and measured his length in the thick grey mud of the road.
Her eyes had followed him with a look of horror, and until she saw him lying still on his back did she seem to realise what she had done.
“My dear, brave girl,” murmured her mother's voice but she never heard it. With a sob she relaxed her grasp of the pistol and let it fall from the carriage.
“Shall I drive on, Mademoiselle?” inquired Blaise from the box.
But without answering him she had stepped down into the mud, and was standing bare-headed in the rain beside the body of Caron.
Silently, she stooped and groped for his heart. It was beating vigorously enough, she thought. She stooped lower and taking him under the arms, she half bore, half dragged him to the side of the road, as if the thin, bare hedge were capable of affording him shelter. There she stood a moment looking down at him. Then with a sob she suddenly stooped, and careless of the eyes observing her, she kissed him full upon the mouth.
A second later she fled like a frightened thing back to the carriage, and, closing the door, she called in a strangled voice too drive on.
She paid little heed to the praise that was being bestowed upon her by her mother—who had seen nothing of the kiss. But she lay back in her corner of the coach, and now her lashes were wet at the thought of Caron lying out there in the road. Now her cheeks grew red with shame at the thought that she, the nobly-born Mademoiselle de Bellecour, should have allowed even pity to have so far overcome her as to have caused her to touch with her lips the lips of a low-bred revolutionist.
CHAPTER XIV. THE COURIER
It was well for La Boulaye that he had tethered his horse to a tree before approaching the coach. That solitary beast standing by the roadside in the deepening gloom attracted the attention of his followers, when—a half-hour or so later—they rode that way, making for Liege, as La Boulaye had bidden them.
At their approach the animal neighed, and Garin, hearing the sound, reined in and peered forward into the gloom, to descry the horse's head and back outlined above the blur of the hedge. His men halted behind him whilst he approached the riderless beast and made—as well as he could in the darkness—an examination of the saddle. One holster he found empty, at which he concluded that the rider, whoever he had been, had met with trouble; from the other he drew a heavy pistol, which, however, gave him no clue.
“Get down,” he ordered his men, “and search the roads hereabouts. I'll wager a horse to a horseshoe that you will find a body somewhere.”
He was obeyed, and presently a cry from one of the searchers announced a discovery. It was succeeded by another exclamation.
“Sacre nom!” swore the trooper. “It is the Citizen-deputy!”
In an instant Garin had leapt to the ground and with the others crowding about him, their bridles over their arms and their horses in a bunch behind them, he was bending under the dripping hedge to examine the body that lay supine in the sodden road. A vigorous oath escaped him when he assured himself that it was indeed La Boulaye.
“Is he dead?” cried the men in chorus.
“No—not dead” grumbled the corporal. “But there is a lump on his brow the size of an egg, and God knows how long he has been lying here in this bed of mud.”
They had no restoratives, and the only thing was to convey him to the nearest habitation and demand shelter. They held a short council on the matter, and in the end Garin bade four of them take him up and carry him in a cloak. Some two miles back they had passed a house, and thither the corporal now bade them retrace their steps. They made an odd procession; first went two mounted troopers leading the horses of the others, then the four on foot, carrying the Deputy in a cloak, and lastly, Garin riding in the rear.
In this manner they went back along the dark road, and for close upon a half-hour—for their progress was slow—they trudged along in silence. At last there was a short exclamation from one of the riders, as half a mile away an illuminated window beamed invitingly. Encouraged by it, they quickened their steps a little. But almost at the same time La Boulaye stirred on the cloak, and the men who carried him heard him speak. At first it was an incoherent mutter, then his words came more distinctly.
“Hold! Where are you carrying me? Who the devil are you?”
It was Garin's voice that came instantly to reassure him. Caron essayed to sit up, but finding it impracticable, he shortly bade his men set him down. They halted. Garin dismounted and came to the Deputy's side, and it was found that his condition was none so grave after all, for he was able to stand unaided. When, however, he attempted to walk, he reeled, and would of a certainty have fallen, but that Garin put out his arm to support him.
“Steady there, Citizen,” the corporal admonished him.
“Get my horse!” he commanded briefly.
“But, name of a name! you are not fit to ride,” Garin protested.
La Boulaye, however, would listen to no reason. With the recovery of his faculties came the consideration of how miserably Suzanne had duped him, and of how she had dealt with him when he had overtaken her. He burned now to be avenged, and at all costs he would ride after and recapture her. He announced, therefore, to the corporal that they must push on to Liege. Garin gasped at his obstinacy, and would have sought to have dissuaded him, but that La Boulaye turned on him with a fierceness that silenced his expostulations.
It was left to Nature to enforce what Garin could not achieve. When La Boulaye came to attempt to mount he found it impossible. He was stiff and numb from his long exposure in the rain, and when he moved with any vigour his head swam dizzily and throbbed with pain.
At last he was forced to realise—with inward girding—that he must relinquish his determination, and he acknowledged himself ready to take the corporal's advice and make for the house whose lighted window shone like a beacon in the darkness that had descended. He even allowed them to prevail upon him to lie down in the cloak again, and thus they carried him the remainder of the way. In his heart he still bore the hope that short rest, restoratives, and fresh clothes would fit him for the pursuit once more, and that if he set out within the next few hours he might yet come up with Mademoiselle before she had passed beyond his reach. Should the morning still find him unequal to the task of going after her, he would despatch Garin and his men.
At last they reached the cottage—it was little more—and Garin rapped on the door with his whip. It was opened by a woman, who told them, in answer to the corporal's request for shelter, that her husband was from home, and that she had no accommodation for them. It would seem that the woman had housed soldiers of the Republic before, and that her experiences had not been of a nature calculated to encourage her in the practice. But La Boulaye now staggered forward and promised her generous payment if she would receive them.