The Red Cockade Part 7

One of the old men pottered off to do it, leaving her standing in the middle of the terror-stricken group; a white pathetic little figure, keeping fear at bay with both hands. The dark curtains behind threw her face and form into high relief; but admiration was the last thought in my mind.

"Mademoiselle," I said, "you must fly by the garden door."

She started and stared at me, her eyes dilating.

"Monsieur de Saux," she muttered. "Are you here? I do not--I do not understand. I thought----"

"The village is rising," I said. "In a moment they will be here."

"They are here already," she answered faintly.

She meant only that she had seen their approach from the window; but a dull murmur that at the moment rose on the air outside, and penetrating the walls, grew each instant louder and more sinister, seemed to give another significance to her words. The women listened with white faces, then began to scream afresh. A reckless movement of one of them dashed out the nearer of the two lights. The old man who had admitted me began to whimper.

"O mon Dieu!" I cried fiercely, "can no one still these cravens?" For the noise almost robbed me of the power of thought, and never had thought been more necessary. "Be still, fools," I continued, "no one will hurt you. And do you, Mademoiselle, please to come with me. There is not a moment to be lost. The garden by which I entered----"

But she looked at me in such a way that I stopped.

"Is it necessary to go?" she said doubtfully. "Is there no other way, Monsieur?"

The noise outside was growing louder. "What men have you?" I said.

"Here is Gargouf," she answered promptly. "He will tell you."

I turned to the staircase and saw the steward's face, at all times harsh and grim, rising out of the well of the stairs. He had a candle in one hand and a pistol in the other; and his features as his eyes met mine wore an expression of dogged anger, the sight of which drew fresh cries from the women. But I rejoiced to see him, for he at least betrayed no signs of flinching. I asked him what men he had.

"You see them," he answered drily, betraying no surprise at my presence.

"Only these?"

"There were three more," he said. "But I found the doors unbarred, and the men gone. I am keeping this," he continued, with a dark glance at his pistol, "for one of them."

"Mademoiselle must go!" I said.

He shrugged his shoulders with an indifference that maddened me. "How?" he asked.

"By the garden door."

"They are there. The house is surrounded."

I cried out at that in despair; and on the instant, as if to give point to his words, a furious blow fell on the great doors below, and awakening every echo in the house, proclaimed that the moment was come. A second shock followed; then a rain of blows. While the maids shrieked and clung to one another, I looked at Mademoiselle, and she at me.

"We must hide you," I muttered.

"No," she said.

"There must be some place," I said, looking round me desperately, and disregarding her answer. The noise of the blows was deafening. "In the----"

"I will not hide, Monsieur," she answered. Her cheeks were white, and her eyes seemed to flicker with each blow. But the maiden who had been dumb before me a few days earlier was gone; in her place I saw Mademoiselle de St. Alais, conscious of a hundred ancestors. "They are our people. I will meet them," she continued, stepping forward bravely, though her lip trembled. "Then if they dare----"

"They are mad," I answered. "They are mad! Yet it is a chance; and we have few! If I can get to them before they break in, I may do something. One moment, Mademoiselle; screen the light, will you?"

Some one did so, and I turned feverishly and caught hold of the curtain. But Gargouf was before me. He seized my arm, and for the moment checked me.

"What is it? What are you going to do?" he growled.

"Speak to them from the window."

"They will not listen."

"Still I will try. What else is there?"

"Lead and iron," he answered in a tone that made me shiver. "Here are M. le Marquis's sporting guns; they shoot straight. Take one, M. le Vicomte; I will take the other. There are two more, and the men can shoot. We can hold the staircase, at least."

I took one of the guns mechanically, amid a dismal uproar; wailing and the thunder of blows within, outside the savage booing of the crowd. No help could come for another hour; and for a moment in this desperate strait my heart failed me. I wondered at the steward's courage.

"You are not afraid?" I said. I knew how he had trampled on the poor wretches outside; how he had starved them and ground them down, and misused them through long years.

He cursed the dogs.

"You will stand by Mademoiselle?" I said feverishly. I think it was to hearten myself by his a.s.surance.

He squeezed my hand in a grip of iron, and I asked no more. In a moment, however, I cried aloud.

"Ah, but they will burn the house!" I said. "What is the use of holding the staircase, when they can burn us like rats?"

"We shall die together," was his only answer. And he kicked one of the weeping, crouching women. "Be still, you whelp!" he said. "Do you think that will help you?"

But I heard the door below groan, and I sprang to the window and dragged aside the curtain, letting in a ruddy glow that dyed the ceiling the colour of blood. My one fear was that I might be too late; that the door would yield or the crowd break in at the back before I could get a hearing. Luckily, the cas.e.m.e.nt gave to the hand, and I thrust it open, and, meeting a cold blast of air, in a twinkling was outside, on the narrow ledge of the window over the great doors, looking down on such a scene as few chateaux in France had witnessed since the days of the third Henry--G.o.d be thanked!

A little to one side the great dovecot was burning, and sending up a trail of smoke that, blown across the avenue, hid all beyond in a murky reek, through which the flames now and again flickered hotly. Men, busy as devils, black against the light, were plying the fire with straw. Beyond the dovecot, an outhouse and a stack were blazing; and nearer, immediately before the house, a crowd of moving figures were hurrying to and fro, some battering the doors and windows, others bringing fuel, all moving, yelling, laughing--laughing the laughter of fiends to the music of crackling flames and shivering gla.s.s.

I saw Pet.i.t Jean in the forefront giving orders; and men round him. There were women, too, hanging on the skirts of the men; and one woman, in the midst of all, half-naked, screaming curses, and brandishing her arms. It was she who added the last touch of horror to the scene; and she, too, who saw me first, and pointed me out with dreadful words, and cursed me, and the house, and cried for our blood.

CHAPTER VIII.

GARGOUF.

Some called for silence, while others stared at me stupidly, or pointed me out to their fellows; but the greater part took up the woman's cry, and, enraged by my presence, shook their fists at me, and shouted vile threats and viler abuse. For a minute the air rang with "A bas les Seigneurs! A bas les tyrans!" And I found this bad enough. But, presently, whether they caught sight of the steward, or merely returned to their first hatred, from which my appearance had only for the moment diverted them, the cry changed to a sullen roar of "Gargouf! Gargouf!" A roar so full of the l.u.s.t for blood, and coupled with threats so terrible, that the heart sickened and the cheek grew pale at the sound.

"Gargouf! Gargouf! Give us Gargouf!" they howled. "Give us Gargouf! and he shall eat hot gold! Give us Gargouf, and he shall need no more of our daughters!"

I shuddered to think that Mademoiselle heard; shuddered to think of the peril in which she stood. The wretches below were no longer men; under the influence of this frenzied woman they were mad brute beasts, drunk with fire and licence. As the smoke from the burning building eddied away for a moment across the crowd and hid it, and still that hoa.r.s.e cry came out of the mirk, I could believe that I heard not men, but maddened hounds raving in the kennel.

Again the smoke drifted away; and some one in the rear shot at me. I heard the gla.s.s splinter beside me. Another, a little nearer, flung up a burning fragment that, alighting on the ledge, blazed and spluttered by my foot. I kicked it down.

The act, for the moment, stilled the riot, and I seized the opportunity. "You dogs!" I said, striving to make my voice heard above the hissing of the flames. "Begone! The soldiers from Cahors are on the road. I sent for them this hour back. Begone, before they come, and I will intercede for you. Stay, and do further mischief, and you shall hang, to the last man!"

Some answered with a yell of derision, crying out that the soldiers were with them. More, that the n.o.bles were abolished, and their houses given to the people. One, who was drunk, kept shouting, "A bas la Bastille! A bas la Bastille!" with a stupid persistence.

A moment more and I should lose my chance. I waved my hand! "What do you want?" I cried.

"Justice!" one shouted, and another, "Vengeance!" A third, "Gargouf!" And then all, "Gargouf! Gargouf!" until Pet.i.t Jean stilled the tumult.

"Have done!" he cried to them, in his coa.r.s.e, brutal voice. "Have we come here only to yell? And do you, Seigneur, give up Gargouf, and you shall go free. Otherwise, we will burn the house, and all in it."

"You villain!" I said. "We have guns, and----"

"The rats have teeth, but they burn! They burn!" he answered, pointing triumphantly, with the axe he held, to the flaming buildings. "They burn! Yet listen, Seigneur," he continued, "and you shall have a minute to make up your minds. Give up Gargouf to us to do with as we please, and the rest shall go."

"All?"

"All."

I trembled. "But Gargouf, man?" I said. "Will you--what will you do with him?"

"Roast him!" the smith cried, with a fearful oath; and the wretches round him laughed like fiends. "Roast him, when we have plucked him bare."

I shuddered. From Cahors help could not come for another hour. From Saux it might not come at all. The doors below me could not stand long, and these brutes were thirty to one, and mad with the l.u.s.t of vengeance. With the wrongs, the crimes, the vices of centuries to avenge, they dreamed that the day of requital was come; and the dream had turned clods into devils. The very flames they had kindled gave them a.s.surance of it. The fire was in their blood. A bas la Bastille! A bas les tyrans!

I hesitated.

"One minute!" the smith cried, with a boastful gesture--"one minute we give you! Gargouf or all."

"Wait!"

I turned and went in--turned from the smoky glare, the circling pigeons, the grotesque black figures, and the terror and confusion of the night, and went in to that other scene scarcely less dreadful to me; though only two candles, guttering in tin sockets, lit the landing, and it borrowed from the outside no more than the ruddy reflection of horror. The women had ceased to scream and sob, and crowded together silent and panic-stricken. The old men and the lad moistened their lips, and looked furtively from the arms they handled to one another's faces. Mademoiselle alone stood erect, pale, firm. I shot a glance at the slender little figure in the white robe, then I looked away. I dared not say what I had in my mind. I knew that she had heard, and---- She said it! "You have answered them?" she muttered, her eyes meeting mine.

"No," I said, looking away again. "They have given us a minute to decide, and----"

"I heard them," she answered shivering. "Tell them."

"But, Mademoiselle----"

"Tell them never! Never!" she cried feverishly. "Be quick, or they will think that we are dreaming of it."

Yet I hesitated--while the flames crackled outside. What, after all, was this rascal's life beside hers? What his tainted existence, who all these years had ground the faces of the poor and dishonoured the helpless, beside her youth? It was a dreadful moment, and I hesitated. "Mademoiselle," I muttered at last, avoiding her eyes, "you have not thought, perhaps. But to refuse this offer may be to sacrifice all--and not save him."

"I have thought!" she answered, with a pa.s.sionate gesture. "I have thought. But he was my father's steward, Monsieur, and he is my brother's; if he has sinned, it was for them. It is for them to pay the penalty. And--after all, it may not come to that," she continued, her face changing, and her eyes seeking mine, full of sudden terror. "They will not dare, I think. They will never dare to----"

"Where is he?" I asked hoa.r.s.ely.

She pointed to the corner behind her. I looked, and could scarcely believe my eyes. The man whom I had left full of a desperate courage, prepared to sell his life dearly, now crouched a huddled figure in the darkest angle of the tapestry seat. Though I had spoken of him in a low voice, and without naming him, he heard me, and looked up, and showed a face to match his att.i.tude; a face pallid and sweating with fear; a face that, vile at the best and when redeemed by hardihood, looked now the vilest thing on earth. Ciel! that fear should reduce a man to that! He tried to speak as his eyes met mine, but his lips moved inaudibly, and he only crouched lower, the picture of panic and guilt.

I cried out to the others to know what had happened to him. "What is it?" I said.

No one answered; and then I seemed to know. While he had thought all in danger, while he had felt himself only one among many, the common courage of a man had supported him. But G.o.d knows what voices, only too well known to him, what accents of starving men and wronged women, had spoken in that fierce cry for his life! What plaints from the dead, what curses of babes hanging on dry b.r.e.a.s.t.s! At any rate, whatever he had heard in that call for his blood, his blood--it had unmanned him. In a moment, in a twinkling, it had dashed him back into this corner, a trembling craven, holding up his hands for his life.

Such fear is infectious, and I strode to him in a rage and shook him.

"Get up, hound!" I said. "Get up and strike a blow for your life; or, by heaven, no one else will!"

He stood up. "Yes, yes, Monsieur," he muttered. "I will! I will stand up for Mademoiselle. I will----"

But I heard his teeth chatter, and I saw that his eyes wandered this way and that, as do a hare's when the dogs close on it; and I knew that I had nothing to expect from him. A howl outside warned me at the same moment that our respite was spent; and I flung him off and turned to the window.

Too late, however; before I could reach it, a thundering blow on the doors below set the candles flickering and the women shrieking; then for an instant I thought that all was over. A stone came through the window; another followed it, and another. The shattered gla.s.s fell over us; the draught put out one light, and the women, terrified beyond control, ran this way and that with the other, shrieking dismally. This, the yelling of the crowd outside, the sombre light and more sombre glare, the utter confusion and panic, so distracted me, that for a moment I stood irresolute, inactive, looking wildly about me; a poltroon waiting for some one to lead. Then a touch fell on my arm, and I turned and found Mademoiselle at my side, and saw her face upturned to mine.

It was white, and her eyes were wide with the terror she had so long repressed. Her hold on me grew heavier; she swayed against me, clinging to me.

"Oh!" she whispered in my ear in a voice that went to my heart. "Save me! Save me! Can nothing be done? Can nothing be done, Monsieur? Must we die?"

"We must gain time," I said. My courage returned wonderfully, as I felt her weight on my arm. "All is not over yet," I said. "I will speak to them."

And setting her on the seat, I sprang to the window and pa.s.sed through it. Outside, things at a first glance seemed unchanged. The wavering flames, the glow, the trail of smoke and sparks, all were there. But a second glance showed that the rioters no longer moved to and fro about the fire, but were ma.s.sed directly below me in a dense body round the doors, waiting for them to give way. I shouted to them frantically, hoping still to delay them. I called Pet.i.t Jean by name. But I could not make myself heard in the uproar, or they would not heed; and while I vainly tried, the great doors yielded at last, and with a roar of triumph the crowd burst in.

Not a moment was to be lost. I sprang back through the window, clutching up as I did so the gun Gargouf had given me; and then I stood in amazement. The landing was empty! The rush of feet across the hall below shook the house. Ten seconds and the mob, whose screams of triumph already echoed through the pa.s.sages, would be on us. But where was Mademoiselle? Where was Gargouf? Where were the servants, the waiting-maids, the boy, whom I had left here?

I stood an instant paralysed, like a man in a nightmare; brought up short in that supreme moment. Then, as the first crash of heavy feet sounded on the stairs, I heard a faint scream, somewhere to my right, as I stood. On the instant I sprang to the door which, on that side, led to the left wing. I tore it open and pa.s.sed through it--not a moment too soon. The slightest delay, and the foremost rioters must have seen me. As it was I had time to turn the key, which, fortunately, was on the inside.

Then I hurried across the room, making my way to an open door at the farther end, from which light issued; I pa.s.sed through the room beyond, which was empty, then into the last of the suite.

Here I found the fugitives; who had fled so precipitately that they had not even thought of closing the doors behind them. In this last refuge--Madame's boudoir, all white and gold--I found them crouching among gilt-backed chairs and flowered cushions. They had brought only one candle with them; and the silks and gew-gaws and knick-knacks on which its light shone dimly, gave a peculiar horror to their white faces and glaring eyes, as, almost mad with terror, they huddled in the farthest corner and stared at me.

They were such cowards that they put Mademoiselle foremost; or it was she who stood out to meet me. She knew me before they did, therefore, and quieted them. When I could hear my own voice, I asked where Gargouf was.

They had not discovered that he was not with them, and they cried out, saying that he had come that way.

"You followed him?"

"Yes, Monsieur."

This explained their flight, but not the steward's absence. What matter where he had gone, however, since his help could avail little. I looked round--looked round in despair; the very simpering Cupids on the walls seemed to mock our danger. I had the gun, I could fire one shot, I had one life in my hands. But to what end? In a moment, at any moment, within a minute or two at most, the doors would be forced, and the horde of mad brutes would pour in upon us, and---- "Ah, Monsieur, the closet staircase! He has gone by the closet staircase!"

It was the boy who spoke. He alone of them had his wits about him.

"Where is it?" I said.

The lad sprang forward to show me, but Mademoiselle was before him with the candle. She flew back into the pa.s.sage, a pa.s.sage of four or five feet only between that room and the second of the suite; in the wall of this she flung open a door, apparently of a closet. I looked in and saw the beginning of a staircase. My heart leapt at the sight.

"To the floor above?" I said.