The False Chevalier Part 43

"Go and find what is the matter, Dominique," Lecour said, and sprang up to seek for Cyrene, but checking himself, crossed the corridor and went to a front window.

He saw a mult.i.tude trooping down the gardens from the gates and walls, over which in the distance he could descry them swarming, and forming a sort of semicircle around the entrance door. The vanguard were led by a drum and a violin. The expressions on the faces of the men were wild and haggard, most wore greasy bonnets of wool, some huge wooden shoes, some hobnailed ones, and over their shoulders or in their hands protruded their weapons--pitchforks, scythes, flails, knives, clubs, and rusty guns. All must have been several thousand, collected from every hamlet in his territory. They seemed like a legion of some spectre army of Hunger and Ignorance. In the commander Germain recognised his discharged butler.

The Canoness he descried escaping, unseen by them, with the aid of a gardener, across the pond into the park. He withdrew from the window and fled quickly towards the chamber of Cyrene. She likewise was seeking him, and in a pa.s.sage they rushed into each other's arms.

"Where is the Canoness?" she exclaimed.

"She is gone, she was warned," he said. "You know there is danger, love?"

"I see it," she answered.

"Come," he urged her, "the office is strong, we may have to defend ourselves."

Thither, therefore, they returned and anxiously awaited Dominique, each fearful of the safety of the other. For the moment the protection of the house had to be trusted wholly to the Auvergnat.

Dominique was absent about fifteen minutes, during which Germain could hear the servants barring the doors, and voices surrounding the house in all directions. The valet returned and related his observations. After making the doors fast and collecting the female servants in the hall, he had carefully looked out of the wicket of the grand entrance, and seeing no one approaching, opened, and going out to the head of the steps, inquired of the mob their errand. He was met by a hurly-burly of cries.

"Long live Liberty! Long live the King! Death to the aristocrats! Long live the nation!"

"What do you seek of Monsieur le Chevalier?"

"His head!" cried Cliquet.

"Bread, bread!" shouted the sabot-maker.

But two others came forward and more rightly interpreted the chief and quaint demand of the ignorant peasants. They demanded all his parchments and t.i.tle-deeds to burn; "for," said they sententiously, "we shall then be freed of rents and dues, which are now abolished by the King." Some of the bolder rioters had even started a fire to burn the doc.u.ments.

"And if he does not give them up?"

"We must cut off his head and burn down his chateau. We are sorry, but it is the King's order."

Dominique, in reporting, made no suggestions; instead, he waited for instructions. Lecour thought a moment. He came to the conclusion to try severity. "Tell them," said he, "that unless they are quiet I will make parchments of their skins."

Cyrene caught his arm, but the answer had already gone.

Dominique dropped the _role_ of butler for his old ones of soldier. He saluted, and marched down to deliver the message. A hush was heard for a few moments, then the entrance door slammed, and an instant after all the windows in the mansion seemed to shatter simultaneously before a tremendous volley of musketry and stones. Every wall and cas.e.m.e.nt shook with the shouts and racketing sounds of a fierce and general attack.

Germain and Cyrene shuddered. The noise awoke them to the seriousness of the situation. It brought them face to face with that terrible storm whose thunderclouds were now thickly darkening over France--the death-dealing typhoon of the Revolution. A proud thought came into his head. "My time is come. I shall die defending her."

"Do you and all the servants save yourselves," he said to Dominique. And he took two pistols from the drawer and laid them on the table, looking into Cyrene's eyes.

"No, my master," Dominique returned, "if you die, I will die with you.

I know my duty. But let us at least defend ourselves well."

"See that the others escape, and especially the women. It is not right for them, who are from the country here, to be embroiled with their relatives. Tell them on no account to open the outer doors, or they run the risk of ma.s.sacre, but to make terms through their friends in the mob."

It was only a question of minutes when the besiegers should succeed in breaking a door or scaling the walls to the windows and making their entrance. From the office windows they could see a score of those in the rear running forward across the grounds with a ladder which they had secured in the stables. Pa.s.sing again to the front of the house, Lecour saw the mob angrily tearing up garden benches and summerhouses for the same purpose. An active crowd besides, under the urging of Cliquet, was battering the main door with a beam. The fire, lit for his parchments was blazing merrily, and a man with a shock of matted hair, by a sudden impulse s.n.a.t.c.hed a long brand and raised the cry of "Burn him up!"

Others sprang forward to do the same, and fought for the blazing pieces, but Cliquet bounded down the steps and knocked the matted-hair man down.

"Curse you!" he shouted. "You will spoil the whole business. You don't know how many good things are in there for us."

Dominique returned from the servants. "They are well arranged for," said he.

Cyrene tremblingly caught Germain's arm, excited with a new idea. "To the old chateau! not a moment to lose!" she cried, and seizing Lecour by the arm hurried him into the pa.s.sage which communicated between the new mansion on land and the ancient one in the lake, while Dominique followed. Half-way across was a decayed wooden door, which once had done duty as a gate behind the portcullis. They shut and bolted this with all speed, and then turned to look round them. The crash of the main door falling and the shout of the mob which followed, penetrated to their retreat.

"We have plenty of powder and pistols," Dominique exclaimed; "there is the armoury just at our backs."

The armoury, in truth, was close at hand and in it an ample selection of old-fashioned weapons.

"Let us place this to command the pa.s.sage," Germain said, touching a bronze cannon, after they had taken some pistols and powder.

"Very good, my General," Dominique a.s.sented excitedly, and pushing the rusty trunnion they got it into position. It was an ornate affair, which had been for centuries discharged by the de Bailleuls on the birthdays of the family. Cyrene had the good judgment to remain in the armoury.

It was several hours before they were discovered. The reason, as they concluded by listening at the door in the pa.s.sage, was the exploring of the wine-cellars by the besiegers, under the guidance of Cliquet. Blows, shouts, and crashes indicated numerous acts of destruction. Inevitably, however, they were at last found out by Cliquet himself, who could not forego the delights of revenge. He came to the wooden door.

"Baptism, dame, I have you now, you cursed young white-gill!" cried he.

"Break it in, my boys, smash, hack. We'll roast _him_ in place of his parchments--the man who will make parchments of our skins."

Lecour ran back to take a moment's glance at Cyrene. She was kneeling at prayer. He withdrew, grasped his pistols with renewed determination, and stood at his post.

Lecour and Dominique were quite ready--the latter with his fuse, the former with a pistol in each outstretched hand and the need of saving Cyrene in his fast-beating heart. They were disciplined soldiers, the mob was not. No sooner had the door fallen in and the crowd of attackers rushed into the pa.s.sage, than the roar of the cannon was heard, its flame was seen, a cloud of sulphurous smoke thickly filled the pa.s.sage, and a ma.s.s of mutilated and shrieking creatures covered the floor. A terrible sorrow for his suffering tenants surged over Germain. A dreadful silence fell upon the rest of the house, followed by mingled sounds of confusion in the distance, and soon the main mult.i.tude itself appeared, pressing forward towards the pa.s.sage.

Lecour, with his pistols undischarged, again stood immovably covering Dominique, as he deliberately and rapidly reloaded, and once more while the crowd still pressed on a torrent of shrapnel poured into them, sickening all finally of the attempt.

The two army men thus remained temporary masters of the situation, but they knew that the advantage could not serve them long.

As for Cyrene she was weak with the shock, but insisted on making no complaints. He watched her anxiously and tenderly until she seemed somewhat recovered, but it was evident by her trembling limbs that a grave illness was but briefly postponed. The groans which came from the pa.s.sage caused her to make several attempts to go to the sufferers, and she had to be gently restrained and removed by them to another part of the castle.

As dusk fell the two defenders moved cautiously forward among the horrors of the dead and dying, and once more rudely fastened up the door. It became clear that they must attempt an escape, for with the dark came fresh dangers.

Dominique remained on guard, while Lecour, taking a candle, went through the old castle, making a rapid survey. The night was clear and cold, the moon had not yet risen, and the darkness was sufficient to favour them. He selected a window for the attempt. Then, reckless of treasures, he cut down some of the old tapestries which lined the chambers, and slit off enough to twist into a rope. This would bring them to the level of the water, now thinly covered with ice.

"But will the ice bear us?"

"No, Monsieur, I started across this morning and it broke."

"Of what nature is it?"

"Soft, and bends, and your foot sinks through it."

"Very well, we can cross it."

He hurried back to one of the chambers where there were some of the de Bailleul portraits hanging, pulled them down with his own hands, and tore the frames of several apart. Their sides he attached as cross-bars to others, by means of strings ravelled from the canvas of the tapestries. The result was a makeshift for snowshoes. With these they escaped across the ice to the park, unnoticed by their enemies, who, by the lights in every part of the mansion, they could see were active and uproarious.

When at last, arriving at the gate of a chateau miles onward toward Paris they looked back they saw an immense blaze in the distance, and the heavens aglare from east to west with the conflagration. But the saving of Cyrene made up in Germain's heart for the loss of his mansion, and he felt as if by that as he had taken a step towards redemption.