At the word a score of his fellows came swarming up the stairs. I saw myself in an instant surrounded by grimy, pocked faces and scowling eyes, — by haggard creatures sprung from the sewers of the town. Another second and they would have laid hands on me; but desperate and full of rage I rushed instead on the man with the bar, and, snatching it from him before he guessed my intention, in a twinkling laid him at my feet.
In the act, however, I lost my balance, and stumbled. Before I could recover myself one of his comrades struck me on the head with his wooden shoe. The blow partially stunned me; still I got to my feet again and hit out wildly, and drove them back, and for a moment cleared the landing round me. But I was dizzy; I saw all now through a red haze, the figures danced before me; I could no longer think or aim, but only hear taunts and jeers on every side. Some one plucked my coat. I turned blindly. In a moment another struck me a crushing blow — how, or with what, I never knew — and I fell senseless and as good as dead.
CHAPTER XIV.
IT GOES ILL.
It was August, and the leaves of the chestnuts were still green, when they sacked the St. Alais’ house at Cahors, and I fell senseless on the stairs. The ash trees were bare, and the oaks clad only in russet, when I began to know things again; and, looking sideways from my pillow into the grey autumnal world, took up afresh the task of living. Even then many days had to elapse before I ceased to be merely an animal — content to eat, and drink, and sleep, and take Father Benôit kneeling by my bed for one of the permanent facts of life. But the time did come at last, in late November, when the mind awoke, as those who watched by me had never thought to see it awake; and, meeting the good Curé’s eyes with my eyes, I saw him turn away and break into joyful weeping.
A week from that time I knew all — the story, public and private, of that wonderful autumn, during which I had lain like a log in my bed. At first, avoiding topics that touched me too nearly, Father Benôit told me of Paris; of the ten weeks of suspicion and suspense which followed the Bastille riots — weeks during which the Fauxbourgs, scantly checked by Lafayette and his National Guards, kept jealous watch on Versailles, where the Assembly sat in attendance on the King; of the scarcity which prevailed through this trying time, and the constant rumours of an attack by the Court; of the Queen’s unfortunate banquet, which proved to be the spark that fired the mine; last of all, of the great march of the women to Versailles, on the 5th of October, which, by forcing the King and the Assembly to Paris, and making the King a prisoner in his own palace, put an end to this period of uncertainty.
“And since then?” I said in feeble amazement. “This is the 20th of November, you tell me?”
“Nothing has happened,” he answered, “except signs and symptoms.”
“And those?”
He shook his head gravely. “Every one is enrolled in the National Guards — that, for one. Here in Quercy, the corps which M. Hugues took it in hand to form numbers some thousands. Every one is armed, therefore. Then, the game laws being abolished, every one is a sportsman. And so many nobles have emigrated, that either there are no nobles or all are nobles.”
“But who governs?”
“The Municipalities. Or, where there are none, Committees.”
I could not help smiling. “And your Committee, M. le Curé?” I said.
“I do not attend it,” he answered, wincing visibly. “To be plain, they go too fast for me. But I have worse yet to tell you!”
“What?”
“On the Fourth of August the Assembly abolished the tithes of the Church; early in this month they proposed to confiscate the estates of the Church! By this time it is probably done.”
“What! And the clergy are to starve?” I cried in indignation.
“Not quite,” he answered, smiling sadly. “They are to be paid by the State — as long as they please the State!”
He went soon after he had told me that; and I lay in amazement, looking through the window, and striving to picture the changed world that existed round me. Presently André came in with my broth. I thought it weak, and said so; the strong gust of outside life, which the news had brought into my chamber, had roused my appetite, and given me a distaste for tisanes and slops.
But the old fellow took the complaint very ill. “Well,” he grumbled, “and what else is to be expected, Monsieur? With little rent paid, and half the pigeons in the cot slaughtered, and scarcely a hare left in the country side? With all the world shooting and snaring, and smiths and tailors cocked up on horses — ay, and with swords by their sides — and the gentry gone, or hiding their heads in beds, it is a small thing if the broth is weak! If M. le Vicomte liked strong broth, he should have been wise enough to keep the cow himself, and not — —”
“Tut, tut, man!” I said, wincing in my turn. “What of Buton?”
“Monsieur means M. le Capitaine Buton?” the old man answered with a sneer. “He is at Cahors.”
“And was any one punished for — for the affair at St. Alais?”
“No one is punished now-a-days,” André replied tartly. “Except sometimes a miller, who is hung because corn is dear.”
“Then even Petit Jean — —”
“Petit Jean went to Paris. Doubtless he is now a Major or a Colonel.”
With this shot the old man left me — left me writhing. For through all I had not dared to ask the one thing I wished to know; the one thing that, as my strength increased, had grown with it, from a vague apprehension of evil, which the mind, when bidden do its duty, failed to grasp, to a dreadful anxiety only too well understood and defined; a brooding fear that weighed upon me like an evil dream, and in spite of youth sapped my life, and retarded my recovery.
I have read that a fever sometimes burns out love; and that a man rises cured not only of his illness, but of the passion which consumed him, when he succumbed to it. But this was not my fate; from the moment when that dull anxiety about I knew not what took shape and form, and I saw on the green curtains of my bed a pale child’s face — a face that now wept and now gazed at me in sad appeal — from that moment Mademoiselle was never out of my waking mind for an hour. God knows, if any thought of me on her part, if any silent cry of her heart to me in her troubles, had to do with this; but it was the case.
However, on the next day the fear and the weight were removed. I suppose that Father Benôit had made up his mind to broach the subject, which hitherto he had shunned with care; for his first question, after he had learned how I did, brought it up. “You have never asked what happened after you were injured, M. le Vicomte?” he said with a little hesitation. “Do you remember?”
“I remember all,” I said with a groan.
He drew a breath of relief. I think he had feared that there was still something amiss with the brain. “And yet you have never asked?” he said.
“Man! cannot you understand why — why I have not asked?” I cried hoarsely, rising, and sinking back in my seat in uncontrollable agitation. “Cannot you understand that until I asked I had hope? But now, torture me no longer! Tell me, tell me all, man, and then — —”
“There is nothing but good to tell,” he answered cheerfully, endeavouring to dispel my fears at the first word. “You know the worst. Poor M. de Gontaut was killed on the stairs. He was too infirm to flee. The rest, to the meanest servant, got away over the roofs of the neighbouring houses.”
“And escaped?”
“Yes. The town was in an uproar for many hours, but they were well hidden. I believe that they have left the country.”
“You do not know where they are, then?”
“No,” he answered, “I never saw any of them after the outbreak. But I heard of them being in this or that château — at the Harincourts’, and elsewhere. Then the Harincourts left — about the middle of October, and I think that M. de St. Alais and his family went with them.”
I lay for a while too full of thankfulness to speak. Then, “And you know nothing more?”
“Nothing,” the Cur�
� answered.
But that was enough for me. When he came again I was able to walk with him on the terrace, and after that I gained strength rapidly. I remarked, however, that as my spirits rose, with air and exercise, the good priest’s declined. His kind, sensitive face grew day by day more sombre, his fits of silence longer. When I asked him the reason, “It goes ill, it goes ill,” he said. “And, God forgive me, I had to do with it.”
“Who had not?” I said soberly.
“But I should have foreseen!” he answered, wringing his hands openly. “I should have known that God’s first gift to man was Order. Order, and to-day, in Cahors, there is no tribunal, or none that acts: the old magistrates are afraid, and the old laws are spurned, and no man can even recover a debt! Order, and the worst thing a criminal, thrown into prison, has now to fear is that he may be forgotten. Order, and I see arms everywhere, and men who cannot read teaching those who can, and men who pay no taxes disposing of the money of those who do! I see famine in the town, and the farmers and the peasants killing game or folding their hands; for who will work when the future is uncertain? I see the houses of the rich empty, and their servants starving; I see all trade, all commerce, all buying and selling, except of the barest necessaries, at an end! I see all these things, M. le Vicomte, and shall I not say, ‘Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa’?”
“But liberty,” I said feebly. “You once said yourself that a certain price must — —”
“Is liberty licence to do wrong?” he answered with passion — seldom had I seen him so moved. “Is liberty licence to rob and blaspheme, and move your neighbour’s landmark? Does tyranny cease to be tyranny, when the tyrants are no longer one, but a thousand? M. le Vicomte, I know not what to do, I know not what to do,” he continued. “For a little I would go out into the world, and at all costs unsay what I have said, undo what I have done! I would! I would indeed!”
“Something more has happened?” I said, startled by this outbreak. “Something I have not heard?”
“The Assembly took away our tithes and our estates!” he answered bitterly. “That you know. They denied our existence as a Church. That you know. They have now decreed the suppression of all religious houses. Presently they will close also our churches and cathedrals. And we shall be pagans!”
“Impossible!” I said.
“But it is true.”
“The suppression, yes. But for the churches and cathedrals — —”
“Why not?” he answered despondently. “God knows there is little faith abroad. I fear it will come. I see it coming. The greater need — that we who believe should testify.”
I did not quite understand at the time what he meant or would be at, or what he had in his mind; but I saw that his scrupulous nature was tormented by the thought that he had hastened the catastrophe; and I felt uneasy when he did not appear next day at his usual time for visiting me. On the following day he came; but was downcast and taciturn, taking leave of me when he went with a sad kindness that almost made me call him back. The next day again he did not appear; nor the day after that. Then I sent for him, but too late; I sent, only to learn from his old housekeeper that he had left home suddenly, after arranging with a neighbouring curé to have his duties performed for a month.
I was able by this time to go abroad a little, and I walked down to his cottage; I could learn no more there, however, than that a Capuchin monk had been his guest for two nights, and that M. le Curé had left for Cahors a few hours after the monk. That was all; I returned depressed and dissatisfied. Such villagers as I met by the way greeted me with respect, and even with sympathy — it was the first time I had gone into the hamlet; but the shadow of suspicion which I had detected on their faces some months before had grown deeper and darker with time. They no longer knew with certainty their places or mine, their rights or mine; and shy of me and doubtful of themselves, were glad to part from me.
Near the gates of the avenue I met a man whom I knew; a wine-dealer from Aulnoy. I stayed to ask him if the family were at home.
He looked at me in surprise. “No, M. le Vicomte,” he said. “They left the country some weeks ago — after the King was persuaded to go to Paris.”
“And M. le Baron?”
“He too.”
“For Paris?”
The man, a respectable bourgeois, grinned at me. “No, Monsieur, I fancy not,” he said. “You know best, M. le Vicomte; but if I said Turin, I doubt I should be little out.”
“I have been ill,” I said. “And have heard nothing.”
“You should go into Cahors,” he answered; with rough good-nature. “Most of the gentry are there — if they have not gone farther. It is safer than the country in these days. Ah, if my father had lived to see — —”
He did not finish the sentence in words, but raised his eyebrows and shoulders, saluted me, and rode away. In spite of his surprise it was easy to see that the change pleased him, though he veiled his satisfaction out of civility.
I walked home feeling lonely and depressed. The tall stone house, the seigneurial tower and turret and dovecot, stripped of the veil of foliage that in summer softened their outlines, stood up bare and gaunt at the end of the avenue; and seemed in some strange way to share my loneliness and to speak to me of evil days on which we had alike fallen. In losing Father Benôit I had lost my only chance of society just when, with returning strength, the desire for companionship and a more active life was awakening. I thought of this gloomily; and then was delighted to see, as I approached the door, a horse tethered to the ring beside it. There were holsters on the saddle, and the girths were splashed.
André was in the hall, but to my surprise, instead of informing me that there was a visitor, he went on dusting a table, with his back to me.
“Who is here?” I said sharply.
“No one,” he answered.
“No one? Then whose is that horse?”
“The smith’s, Monsieur.”
“What? Buton’s?”
“Ay, Buton’s! It is a new thing hanging it at the front door,” he added, with a sneer.
“But what is he doing? Where is he?”
“He is where he ought to be; and that is at the stables,” the old fellow answered doggedly. “I’ll be bound that it is the first piece of honest work he has done for many a day.”
“Is he shoeing?”
“Why not? Does Monsieur want him to dine with him?” was the ill-tempered retort.
I took no notice of this, but went to the stables. I could hear the bellows heaving; and turning the corner of the building I came on Buton at work in the forge with two of his men. The smith was stripped to his shirt, and with his great leather apron round him, and his bare, blackened arms, looked like the Buton of six months ago. But outside the forge lay a little heap of clothes neatly folded, a blue coat with red facings, a long blue waistcoat, and a hat with a huge tricolour; and as he released the horse’s hoof on which he was at work, and straightened himself to salute me, he looked at me with a new look, that was something between appeal and defiance.
“Tut, tut!” I said, fleering at him. “This is too great an honour, M. le Capitaine! To be shod by a member of the Committee!”
“Has M. le Vicomte anything of which to complain?” he said, reddening under the deep tan of his face.
“I? No, indeed. I am only overwhelmed by the honour you do me.”
“I have been here to shoe once a month,” he persisted stubbornly. “Does Monsieur complain that the horses have suffered?”
“No. But — —”
“Has M. le Vicomte’s house suffered? Has so much as a stack of his corn been burned, or a colt taken from the fields, or an egg from the nest?”
“No,” I said.
Buton nodded gloomily. “Then if Monsieur has no fault to find,” he replied, “perhaps he will let me finish my work. Afterwards I will deliver a message I have for him. But it is for his ear, and the forge — —”
“Is not the place for secrets, though the smit
h is the man!” I answered, with a parting gibe, fired over my shoulders. “Well, come to me on the terrace when you have finished.”
He came an hour later, looking hugely clumsy in his fine clothes; and with a sword — heaven save us! — a sword by his side. Presently the murder came out; he was the bearer of a commission appointing me Lieutenant-Colonel in the National Guard of the Province. “It was given at my request,” he said, with awkward pride. “There were some, M. le Vicomte, who thought that you had not behaved altogether well in the matter of the riot, but I rattled their heads together. Besides I said, ‘No Lieutenant-Colonel, no Captain!’ and they cannot do without me. I keep this side quiet.”
What a position it was! Ah, what a position it was! And how for a moment the absurdity of it warred in my mind with the humiliation! Six months before I should have torn up the paper in a fury, and flung it in his face, and beaten him out of my presence with my cane. But much had happened since then; even the temptation to break into laughter, into peal upon peal of gloomy merriment, was not now invincible. I overcame it by an effort, partly out of prudence, partly from a better motive — a sense of the man’s rough fidelity amid circumstances, and in face of anomalies, the most trying. I thanked him instead, therefore — though I almost choked; and I said I would write to the Committee.
Still he lingered, rubbing one great foot against another; and I waited with mock politeness to hear his business. At length, “There is another thing I wish to say, M. le Vicomte,” he growled. “M. le Curé has left Saux.”
“Yes?”
“Well, he is a good man; or he was a good man,” he continued grudgingly. “But he is running into trouble, and you would do well to let him know that.”
“Why?” I said. “Do you know where he is?”
“I can guess,” he answered. “And where others are, too; and where there will presently be trouble. These Capuchin monks are not about the country for nothing. When the crows fly home there will be trouble. And I do not want him to be in it.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 222
