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 passionate 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 hoarsely.
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 attitude; 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 God 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 breasts! 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 glass 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 passed 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 massed 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 Petit 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 passages, 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 passed 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 passed 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 passage, a passage 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.
“No, Monsieur, to the roof!”
“Up, up, then!” I cried in a frenzy of impatience. “It will give us time. Quick. They are coming.”
For I heard the door at the end of the suite, the door I had locked, creak and yield. They were forcing it, at any moment it might give; where I stood waiting to bring up the rear, their hoarse cries and curses came to my ears. But the good door held; it held, long enough at any rate. Before it gave way we were on the stairs and I had shut the door of the closet behind me. Then, holding to the ski
rts of the woman before me, I groped my way up quickly — up and up through darkness with a close smell of bats in my nostrils — and almost before I could believe it, I stood with the panting, trembling group on the roof. The glare of the burning outhouses below shone on a great stack of chimneys beside us and reddened the sky above, and burnished the leaves of the chestnut trees that rose on a level with our eyes. But all the lower part of the steep roofs round us, and the lead gutters that ran between them, lay in darkness, the denser for the contrast. The flames crackled below, and a thick reek of smoke swept up past the coping, but the noise alike of fire and riot was deadened here. The night wind cooled our brows, and I had a minute in which to think, to breathe, to look round.
“Is there any other way to the roof?” I asked anxiously.
“One other, Monsieur!”
“Where? Or do you stay here, and guard this door,” I said, pressing my gun on the man who had answered. “And let the boy come and show me. Mademoiselle, stay there if you please.”
The boy ran before me to the farther end of the roof, and in a lead walk, between two slopes, showed me a large trap-door. It had no fastening on the outside, and for a moment I stood nonplussed; then I saw, a few feet away, a neat pile of bricks, left there, I learned afterwards, in the course of some repairs. I began to remove them as fast as I could to the trap-door, and the boy saw and followed my example; in two minutes we had stacked a hundred and more on the door. Telling him to add another hundred to the number, I left him at the task and flew back to the women.
They might burn the house under us; that always, and for certain, and it meant a dreadful death. Yet I breathed more freely here. In the white and gold room below, among Madame’s mirrors and Cupids, and silken cushions, and painted Venuses, my heart had failed me. The place, with its heavy perfumes, had stifled me. I had pictured the brutish peasants bursting in on us there — on the screaming women, crouching vainly behind chairs and couches; and the horror of the thought overcame me. Here, in the open, under the sky, we could at least die fighting. The depth yawned beyond the coping; the weakest had here no more to fear than death. Besides we had a respite, for the house was large, and the fire could not lick it up in a moment.
And help might come. I shaded my eyes from the light below, and looked into the darkness in the direction of the village and the Cahors road. In an hour, at furthest, help might come. The glare in the sky must be visible for miles; it would spur on the avengers. Father Benôit, too, if he could get help — he might be here at any time. We were not without hope.
Suddenly, while we stood together, the women sobbing and whimpering, the old man-servant spoke.
“Where is M. Gargouf?” he muttered under his breath.
“Ah!” I exclaimed; “I had forgotten him.”
“He came up,” the man continued, peering about him. “This door was open, M. le Vicomte, when we came to it.”
“Ah! then where is he?”
I looked round too. All the roof, I have said, was dark, and not all of it was on the same level; and here and there chimneys broke the view. In the obscurity, the steward might be lurking close to us without our knowledge; or he might have thrown himself down in despair. While I looked, the boy whom I had left by the bricks came flying to us.
“There is some one there!” he said. And he clung to the old man in terror.
“It must be Gargouf!” I answered. “Wait here!” And, disregarding the women’s prayers that I would stay with them, I went quickly along the leads to the other trap-door, and peered about me through the gloom. For a moment I could see no one, though the light shining on the trees made it easy to discern figures standing nearer the coping. Presently, however, I caught the sound of some one moving; some one who was farther away still, at the very edge of the roof. I went on cautiously, expecting I do not know what; and close to a stack of chimneys I found Gargouf.
He was crouching on the coping in the darkest part, where the end wall of the east wing overlooked the garden by which I had entered. This end wall had no windows, and the greater part of the garden below it lay it darkness; the angle of the house standing between it and the burning buildings. I supposed that the steward had sneaked hither, therefore, to hide; and set it down to the darkness that he did not know me, but, as I approached, he rose on his knees on the ledge, and turned on me, snarling like a dog.
“Stand back!” he said, in a voice that was scarcely human. “Stand back, or I will — —”
“Steady, man,” I answered quietly, beginning to think that fear had unhinged him. “It is I, M. de Saux.”
“Stand back!” was his only answer; and, though he cowered so low that I could not get his figure against the shining trees, I saw a pistol-barrel gleam as he levelled it. “Stand back! Give me a minute! a minute only” — and his voice quavered— “and I will cheat the devils yet! Come nearer, or give the alarm, and I will not die alone! I will not die alone! Stand back!”
“Are you mad?” I said.
“Back, or I shoot!” he growled. “I will not die alone.”
He was kneeling on the very edge, with his left hand against the chimney. To rush upon him in that posture was to court death; and I had nothing to gain by it. I stepped back a pace. As I did so, at the moment I did so, he slid over the edge, and was gone!
I drew a deep breath and listened, flinching and drawing back involuntarily. But I heard no sound of a fall; and in a moment, with a new idea in my mind, I stepped forward to the edge, and looked over.
The steward hung in mid-air, a dozen feet below me. He was descending; descending foot by foot, slowly, and by jerks; a dim figure, growing dimmer. Instinctively I felt about me; and in a second laid my hand on the rope by which he hung. It was secured round the chimney. Then I understood. He had conceived this way of escape, perhaps had stored the rope for it beforehand, and, like the villain he was, had kept the thought to himself, that his chance might be the better, and that he might not have to give the first place to Mademoiselle and the women. In the first heat of the discovery, I almost found it in my heart to cut the rope, and let him fall; then I remembered that if he escaped, the way would lie open for others; and then, even as I thought this, into the garden below me, there shone a sudden flare of light, and a stream of a dozen rioters poured round the corner, and made for the door by which I had entered the house.
I held my breath. The steward, hanging below me, and by this time half-way to the ground, stopped, and moved not a limb. But he still swung a little this way and that, and in the strong light of the torches which the new-comers carried, I could see every knot in the rope, and even the trailing end, which, as I looked, moved on the ground with his motion.
The wretches, making for the door, had to pass within a pace of the rope, of that trailing end; yet it was possible that, blinded by the lights they carried, and their own haste and excitement, they might not see it. I held my breath as the leader came abreast of it; I fancied that he must see it. But he passed, and disappeared in the doorway. Three others passed the rope together. A fifth, then three more, two more; I began to breathe more freely. Only one remained — a woman, the same whose imprecations had greeted me on my appearance at the window. It was not likely that she would see it. She was running to overtake the others; she carried a flare in her right hand, so that the blaze came between her and the rope. And she was waving the light in a mad woman’s frenzy, as she danced along, hounding on the men to the sack.
But, as if the presence of the man who had wronged her had over her some subtle influence — as if some sense, unowned by others, warned her of his presence, even in the midst of that babel and tumult — she stopped short under him, with her foot almost on the threshold. I saw her head turn slowly. She raised her eyes, holding the torch aside. She saw him!
With a scream of joy, she sprang to the foot of the rope, and began to haul at it as if in that way she might get to him sooner; while she filled the air with her shrieks and laughter. The men, who had gone into the ho
use, heard her, and came out again; and after them others. I quailed, where I knelt on the parapet, as I looked down and met the wolfish glare of their upturned eyes; what, then, must have been the thoughts of the wretched man taken in his selfishness — hanging there helpless between earth and heaven? God knows.
He began to climb upwards, to return; and actually ascended hand over hand a dozen feet. But he had been supporting himself for some minutes, and at that point his strength failed him. Human muscles could do no more. He tried to haul himself up to the next knot, but sank back with a groan. Then he looked at me. “Pull me up!” he gasped in a voice just audible. “For God’s sake! For God’s sake, pull me up!”
But the wretches below had the end of the rope, and it was impossible to raise him, even had I possessed the strength to do it. I told him so, and bade him climb — climb for his life. In a moment it would be too late.
He understood. He raised himself with a jerk to the next knot, and hung there. Another desperate effort, and he gained the next; though I could almost hear his muscles crack, and his breath came in gasps. Three more knots — they were about a foot apart — and he would reach the coping.
But as he turned up his face to me, I read despair in his eyes. His strength was gone; and while he hung there, the men began, with shouts of laughter, to shake the rope this way and that. He lost his grip, and, with a groan, slid down three or four feet; and again got hold and hung there — silent.
By this time the group below had grown into a crowd — a crowd of maddened beings, raving and howling, and leaping up at him as dogs leap at food; and the horror of the sight, though the doomed man’s features were now in shadow, and I could not read them, overcame me. I rose to draw back — shuddering, listening for his fall. Instead, before I had quite retreated, a hot flash blinded me, and almost scorched my face, and, as the sharp report of a pistol rang out, the steward’s body plunged headlong down — leaving a little cloud of smoke where I stood.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 215
