CHAPTER XXXVBESIEGED
In the meantime poor Célandine found herself hurried down the mountain by Hippolyte and his band, in a state of anxiety and alarm that would have paralysed the energies of most women, but that roused all the savage qualities dormant in the character of the Quadroon. Not a word of her captors, not a look escaped her; and she soon discovered, greatly to her dismay, that she was regarded less as an auxiliary than a hostage. She was placed in the centre of the band, unbound indeed, and apparently at liberty; but no sooner did she betray, by the slightest independence of movement, that she considered herself a free agent, than four stalwart blacks closed in on her with brutal glee, attempting no concealment of a determination to retain her in their power till they had completed their merciless design.
“Once gone,” said Hippolyte, politely affecting great reverence for the Obi-woman’s supernatural powers, “never catchee no more!—Jumbo fly away with yaller woman, same as black. Dis nigger no ’fraid of Jumbo, so long as Missee Célandine at um back. Soon dark now. March on, you black villains, and keep your ranks, same as buckra musketeer!”
With such exhortations to discipline, and an occasional compliment to his own military talents, Hippolyte beguiled their journey down the mountain. It seemed to Célandine that far too short a space of time had elapsed ere they reached the skirts of the forest, and even in the deepening twilight could perceive clearly enough the long low building ofCash-a-crou, now called Montmirail West.
The lamps were already lit in the sitting-room on the ground floor. From where she stood, in the midst of the band, outwardly stern and collected, quivering with rage and fear within, the Quadroon could distinguish the figures of Madame la Marquise and her daughter, moving here and there in the apartment, or leaning out at window for a breath of the cool, refreshing evening air.
Their commander kept his men under covert of the woods, waiting till it should be quite dark. There was little to fear from a garrison consisting of but two ladies, backed by Fleurette and Bartoletti, for the other domestic slaves were either involved in the conspiracy or had been inveigled out of the way by its chief promoters; yet notwithstanding the weakness of the besieged, some dread of their ascendancy made the negroes loth to encounter by daylight even such weak champions of the white race as two helpless women and a cowardly Italian overseer.
Nevertheless, every moment gained was worth a purse of gold. Célandine, affecting to identify herself with the conspirators, urged on them the prudence of delay. Hippolyte, somewhat deceived by her enthusiasm, offered an additional reason for postponing the attack, in the brilliancy of a conflagration under a night sky. He intended, he said, to begin by setting fire to the house—there could then be no resistance from within. There would be plenty of time, he opined, for drink and plunder before the flames gained a complete ascendancy, and he seemed to cherish some vague half-formed notion that it would be a fine thing to appear before Cerise in the character of a hero, who should rescue her from a frightful death.
A happy thought struck the Quadroon.
“It was lucky you brought me with you,” said she earnestly. “Brave as you are, I fancy you would have been scared had you acted on your own plan. You talk of firingCash-a-crou, as you would of roasting a turtle in its shell. Do you know that madame keeps a dozen barrels of gunpowder stowed away about the house—nobody knows where but herself. You would have looked a little foolish, I think, my brave colonel, to find your long body blown clean over the Sulphur Mountain into the sea on the otherside of the island. You and your guard here are as handsome a set of blacks as a yellow woman need wish to look on. Not a morsel would have been left of any one of you the size of my hand!”
“Golly!” exclaimed Hippolyte in consternation. “Missee Célandine, you go free for tanks, when this job clean done. Hi! you black fellows, keep under shadow of gum-tree dere—change um plan now,” he added, thoughtfully; and without taking his keen eyes off Célandine, walked from one to the other of his band, whispering fresh instructions to each.
The Quadroon counted the time by the beating of her heart. “Now,” she thought, “my boy must have gained the edge of the forest—ten minutes more to cross the new cane-pieces—another ten to reach the shore. He can swim of course—his father swam like a pilot-fish. In forty minutes he might be on board. Five to man a boat—and ten more to pull her in against the ebb. Then they have fully a league to march, and sailors are such bad walkers.” At this stage of her reflections something went through her heart like a knife. She thought of the grim ground-sharks, heaving and gaping in the warm translucent depths of the harbour at Port Welcome.
But meanwhile Hippolyte had gathered confidence from the bearing of his comrades. Their numbers and fierceness inspired him with courage, and he resolved to enter the house at the head of his chosen body-guard, whilst he surrounded it with a score of additional mutineers who had joined him according to previous agreement at the head of the forest. These, too, had brought with them a fresh supply of rum, and Célandine observed with horror its stimulating effects on the evil propensities of the band.
While he made his further dispositions, she found herself left for a few seconds comparatively unwatched, and at once stole into the open moonlight, where her white dress could be discerned plainly from the house. She knew her husband would be smoking his evening tobacco, according to custom, in the verandah. At little more than a hundred paces he could hardly fail to see her; and in an instant she had unbound the red turban and waved it round her head, in the desperate hope that he might accept that warning for adanger signal. The quick-witted Italian seemed to comprehend at once that something was wrong. He imitated her gesture, retired into the house, and the next minute his figure was seen in the sitting-room with the Marquise and her daughter. By this time Hippolyte had returned to her side, and she could only watch in agony for the result. Completely surrounded by the intoxicated and infuriated negroes, there seemed to be no escape for the besieged, while the looks and gestures of their leader, closely copied by his chosen band, denoted how little of courtesy or common humanity was to be expected from the Coromantee, excited to madness by all the worst passions of his savage nature bursting from the enforced restraints that had so long kept them down.
A bolder spirit than the Signor’s might have been excused for betraying considerable apprehension in such a crisis, and in good truth Bartoletti was fairly frightened out of his wits. In common with the rest of the whites on the island, he had long suspected a conspiracy amongst the negroes, and feared that such an insurrection would take place; but no great social misfortune is ever really believed in till it comes, and he had neither taken measures for its prevention, nor thoroughly realised the magnitude of the evil. Now that he felt it was upon him he knew not where to turn for aid. There was no time to make phrases or to stand on ceremony. He rushed into the sitting-room with a blanched cheek and a wild eye, that caused each of the ladies to drop her work on her lap, and gaze at him in consternation.
“Madame!” he exclaimed, and his jaw shook so that he could hardly form the syllables, “we must leave the house at once—we must save ourselves. There is anémeute, a revolt, a rebellion among the slaves. I know them—the monsters! They will not be appeased till they have drunk our blood. Oh! why did I ever come to this accursed country?”
Cerise turned as white as a sheet—her blue eyes were fixed, her lips apart. Even the Marquise grew pale, though her colour came back, and she held her head the more erect a moment afterwards. “Sit down,” she said, imperiously, yet kindly enough. “Take breath, my good man, and take courage also. Tell me exactly what you have seen;” andadded, turning to Cerise, “don’t be frightened, child—these overseers are sad alarmists. I daresay it is only what the negroes call a ‘bobbery,’ after all!”
Then Bartoletti explained that he had seen his wife waving a red shawl from the edge of the jungle; that this was a preconcerted signal by which they had agreed to warn each other of imminent danger; that it was never to be used except on great emergencies; and that he was quite sure it was intended to convey to him that she was in the power of the slaves, and that the rising they had so often talked about had taken place at last.
The Marquise thought for a moment. She seemed to have no fear now that she realised her danger. Only once, when her eye rested on her daughter, she shuddered visibly. Otherwise, her bearing was less that of a tender woman in peril of her life, than of some wise commander, foiled and beset by the enemy, yet not altogether without hope of securing his retreat.
So might have looked one of her warlike ancestors when the besiegers set fire to his castle by the Garonne, and he resolved to betake himself, with his stout veterans, to the square stone keep where the well was dug—a maiden fortress, that had never yet succumbed to famine nor been forced by escalade.
“Is there any one in the house whom we can trust?” said the Marquise; and even while she spoke a comely black girl came crawling to her feet, and seized her hand to cover it with tears and kisses.
“Iss, missis!” exclaimed Fleurette, for Fleurette it was, who had indeed been listening at the door for the last five minutes. “You trustme! Life for life! Blood for blood! No fear Jumbo, so lilly ma’amselle go out safe. Trust Fleurette, missis. Trust Fleurette, ma’amselle. Fleurette die at um house-door, so! better than ugly black floggee-man come in.” The Marquise listened calmly.
“Attend to me, Fleurette,” said she, with an authoritative gesture. “Go at once through the kitchen into the dark path that leads to the old summer-house. See if the road to Port Welcome is clear. There is no bush on that side within five hundred paces, and if they mean to stop us, they must post a guard between the house and the gum-trees.Do not show yourself, girl, but if they take you, say Célandine sent you down to the negro-houses for eggs. Quick, and come back here like lightning. Bartoletti—have you any firearms? Do not be afraid, my darling,” she repeated, turning to her daughter, “I know these wretched people well. You need but show a bold front, and they would turn away from a lady’s fan if you only shook it hard at them.”
“I am not afraid, mamma,” answered Cerise, valiantly, though her face was very pale, and her knees shook. “I—I don’tlikeit, of course, but I can do anything you tell me. Oh, mamma! do you—do you think they will kill us?” she added, with rather a sudden breakdown of the courage she tried so gallantly to rally.
“Kill us, mademoiselle!” exclaimed the overseer, quaking in every limb. “Oh, no! never! They cannot be so bad as that. We will temporise, we will supplicate, we will make terms with them; we will offer freedom, and rum, and plunder; we will go on our knees to their chief, and entreat his mercy!”
The girl looked at him contemptuously. Strange to say, her courage rose as his fell, and she seemed to gather strength and energy from the abject selfishness of his despair. The Marquise did not heed him, for she heard Fleurette’s footsteps returning, and was herself busied with an oblong wooden case, brass-bound, and carefully locked up, that she lifted from the recess of a cupboard in the room.
Fleurette’s black feet could carry her swiftly and lightly as a bird. She had followed her instructions implicitly, had crept noiselessly through the kitchen, and advanced unseen to the old summer-house. Peering from that concealment on the moonlit surface of the lawn, she was horrorstruck to observe nearly a score of slaves intently watching the house. She hurried back panting to her mistress’s presence, and made her discouraging report.
Madame de Montmirail was very grave now. The affair had become more than serious. It was, in truth, desperate. Once again, as she looked at her daughter, came that strange quiver over her features, that shudder of repressed horror rather than pain. It was succeeded, as before, by a momentof deep reflection, and then her eye kindled, her lips tightened, and all her soft voluptuous beauty hardened into the obstinate courage of despair.
Cerise sank on her knees to pray, and rose with a pale, serene, undaunted face. Hers was the passive endurance of the martyr. Her mother’s the tameless valour of the champion, inherited through a long line of the turbulent La Fiertés, not one of whom had ever blenched from death nor yielded an inch before the face of man.
“Bartoletti!” said the Marquise. “Bar the doors and windows; they can be forced with half-a-dozen strokes, but in war every minute is of value. Hold this rabble in parley as long as you can. I dare not trust you with my pistols, for a weak heart makes a shaking hand, and I think fighting seems less your trade than mine. When you can delay them no longer, arrange your own terms with the villains. It is possible they may spare you for your wife’s sake. Quick, man! I hear them coming now. Cerise, our bedroom has a strong oaken door, and they cannot reach the window without a ladder, which leaves us but one enemy to deal with at a time. Courage, my darling! Kiss me! Again, again! my own! And now. A woman dies but once! Here goes for France, and the lilies on the White Flag!”
Thus encouraging her child, the Marquise led the way to the bed-chamber they jointly occupied, a plainly-furnished room, of which the only ornament was the Prince-Marshal’s portrait, already mentioned as having occupied the place of honour in Madame’sboudoirat the Hôtel Montmirail. Both women glanced at it as they entered the apartment. Then the Marquise, laying down the oblong box she carried, carefully shaded the night-lamp that burned by her bedside, and peered stealthily from the window to reconnoitre.
“Four, six, ten,” said she, calmly, “besides their leader, a tall, big negro, very like Hippolyte. ItisHippolyte.Youat least, my friend, will not leave this house alive! I can hardly miss so fair a mark as those broad black shoulders. This of course is thecorps d’élite. Those at the back of the house I do not regard so much. The kitchen door is strong, and they will do nothing if their champions are repulsed. Courage again, my child! All isnot lost yet. Open that box and help me to load my pistols. Strange, that I should have practised with them for years, only to beat Madame de Sabran, and now to-night we must both trust our safety to a true eye and a steady hand!”
Pale, tearless, and collected, Cerise obeyed. Her mother, drawing the weapons from their case, wiped them with her delicate handkerchief, and proceeded to charge them carefully, and with a preoccupied air, like a mother preparing medicine for a child. Holding the ramrod between her beautiful white teeth, while her delicate and jewelled fingers shook the powder into the pan, she explained to Cerise the whole mystery of loading and priming the deadly weapons. She would thus, as she observed, always have one barrel in reserve. The younger woman listened attentively. Her lip was steady, though her hand shook, and now that the worst was come she showed that peculiar quality of race which is superior to the common fighting courage possessed indiscriminately by all classes—the passive concentrated firmness, which can take every advantage so long as a chance is left, and die without a word at last, when hope gives place to the resignation of despair.
She even pointed out to her mother, that by half closing the shutter, the Marquise, herself unseen, could command the approach to the front door. Then taking a crucifix from her bosom, she pressed it to her lips, and said, “I am ready now, mamma. I am calm. I can do anything you tell me. Kiss me once more, dear, as you used when I was a child. And if wemustdie, it will not seem so hard to die together.”
The Marquise answered by a long clinging embrace, and then the two women sat them down in the gloomy shadows of their chamber, haggard, tearless, silent, watching for the near approach of a merciless enemy armed with horrors worse than death.