Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “Fool! let her go!” I cried. “The mare? Do you understand? The Château is — —”

  “And you, Monsieur?”

  “I am going to the house by the garden wing. Now go! Go, men!” I continued’. “A hundred livres to each of you if the house is saved!”

  I said the house because I dared not speak what was really in my mind; because I dared not picture the girl, young, helpless, a woman, in the hands of those monsters. Yet it was that which goaded me now, it was that which gave me such strength that, before the men had ridden many yards, I had forced my way through the thick fence, as if it had been a mass of cobwebs. Once on the other side, in the open, I hastened across one field and a second, skirted the village, and made for the gardens which abutted on the east wing of the Château. I knew these well; the part farthest from the house, and most easy of entrance, was a wilderness, in which I had often played as a child. There was no fence round this, except a wooden paling, and none between it and the more orderly portion; while a side door opened from the latter into a passage leading to the great hall of the Château. The house, a long, regular building, reared by the Marquis’s father, was composed of two wings and a main block. All faced the end of the village street at a distance of a hundred paces; a wide, dusty, ill-planted avenue leading from the iron gates, which stood always open, to the state entrance.

  The rioters had only a short distance to go, therefore, and no obstacle between them and the house; none when they reached it of greater consequence than ordinary doors and shutters, should the latter be closed. As I ran, I shuddered to think how defenceless all lay; and how quickly the wretches, bursting in the doors, would overrun the shining parquets, and sweep up the spacious staircase.

  The thought added wings to my feet. I had farther to go than they had, and over hedges, but before the first sounds of their approach reached the house I was already in the wilderness, and forcing my way through it, stumbling over stumps and bushes, falling more than once, covered with dust and sweat, but still pushing on.

  At last I sprang into the open garden, with its shadowy walks, and nymphs, and fauns; and looked towards the village. A dull red light was beginning to show among the trunks of the avenue; a murmur of voices sounded in the distance. They were coming! I wasted no more than a single glance; then I ran down the walk, between the statues. In a moment I passed into the darker shadow under the house, I was at the door. I thrust my shoulder against it. It resisted; it resisted! and every moment was precious. I could no longer see the approaching lights nor hear the voices of the crowd — the angle of the house intervened; but I could imagine only too vividly how they were coming on; I fancied them already at the great door.

  I hammered on the panels with my fist; then I fumbled for the latch, and found it. It rose, but the door held. I shook it. I shook it again in a frenzy; at last, forgetting caution, I shouted — shouted more loudly. Then, after an age, as it seemed to me, standing panting in the darkness, I heard halting footsteps come along the passage, and saw a line of light grow, and brighten under the door. At last a quavering voice asked: ——

  “Who is it?”

  “M. de Saux,” I answered impatiently. “M. de Saux! Let me in. Let me in, do you hear?” And I struck the panels wrathfully.

  “Monsieur,” the voice answered, quavering more and more, “is there anything the matter?”

  “Matter? They are going to burn the house, fool!” I cried. “Open! open! if you do not wish to be burned in your beds!”

  For a moment I fancied that the man still hesitated. Then he unbarred. In a twinkling I was inside, in a narrow passage, with dingy, stained walls. An old man, lean-jawed and feeble, an old valet whom I had often seen at worsted work in the ante-room, confronted me, holding an iron candlestick. The light shook in his hands, and his jaw fell as he looked at me. I saw that I had nothing to expect from him, and I snatched the bar from his hands, and set it back in its place myself. Then I seized the light.

  “Quick!” I said passionately. “To your mistress.”

  “Monsieur?”

  “Upstairs! Upstairs!”

  He had more to say, but I did not wait to hear it. Knowing the way, and having the candle, I left him, and hurried along the passage. Stumbling over three or four mattresses that lay on the floor, doubtless for the servants, I reached the hall. Here my taper shone a mere speck in a cavern of blackness; but it gave me light enough to see that the door was barred, and I turned to the staircase. As I set my foot on the lowest step the old valet, who was following me as fast as his trembling legs would carry him, blundered against a spinning-wheel that stood in the hall. It fell with a clatter, and in a moment a chorus of screams and cries broke out above. I sprang up the stairs three at a stride, and on the lobby came on the screamers — a terrified group, whose alarm the doubtful light of a tallow candle, that stood beside them on the floor, could not exaggerate. Nearest to me stood an old footman and a boy — their terror-stricken eyes met mine as I mounted the last stairs. Behind them, and crouching against a tapestry-covered seat that ran along the wall, were the rest; three or four women, who shrieked and hid their faces in one another’s garments. They did not look up or take any heed of me; but continued to scream steadily.

  The old man with a quavering oath tried to still them.

  “Where is Gargouf?” I asked him.

  “He has gone to fasten the back doors, Monsieur,” he answered.

  “And Mademoiselle?”

  “She is yonder.”

  He turned as he spoke; and I saw behind him a heavy curtain hiding the oriel window of the lobby. It moved while I looked, and Mademoiselle emerged from its folds, her small, childish face pale, but strangely composed. She wore a light, loose robe, hastily arranged, and had her hair hanging free at her back. In the gloom and confusion, which the feeble candles did little to disperse, she did not at first see me.

  “Has Gargouf come back?” she asked.

  “No, Mademoiselle, but — —”

  The man was going to point me out; she interrupted him with a sharp cry of anger.

  “Stop these fools,” she said. “Oh, stop these fools! I cannot hear myself speak. Let some one call Gargouf! Is there no one to do anything?”

  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 assurance.

  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 casement 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 châteaux in France had witnessed since the days of the third Henry — God 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 glass.

  I saw Petit 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 lust 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 hoarse 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 glass 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 nobles 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 Petit Jean stilled the tumult.

  “Have done!” he cried to them, in his coarse, 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 m
inds. 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 lust 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 assurance 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.”