For, of all the things that had happened since I left the Committee Room, the Captain's death remained the one most real and most deeply bitten into my mind. He had shared with me the walk from the inn to the garden, and the petty annoyances that had then filled my thoughts. He had faced them with me, and bravely; and this late association, and the picture of him as he walked beside me, full of life and coarse wrath, rose up now and cried out against his death; cried out that it was impossible. So that it seemed horrible to me, and I shook with fear, and loathed the man whose hand had done it.
Nor was that all. I had known Hugues barely forty-eight hours, my liking for him was only an hour born; but I had his story. I could follow him going about to borrow the small sum of money he had possessed. I could trace the hopes he had built on it. I could see him coming here full of honest courage, believing that he had found an opening; a man strong, confident, looking forward, full of plans. And then of all, this was the end! He had hoped, he had purposed; and on the other side of the Cathedral, he lay stark--stark and dead on the grass.
It seemed so sad and pitiful, I had the man so vividly in my mind, that I scarcely gave a thought to the St. Alais' danger and escape; that, and our hasty flight, had passed like a dream. I was content to listen a moment beside the church door; and then satisfied that the murmur of the crowd was dying in the distance, and that the city was quiet, I thanked the Vicar again, and warmly, and, taking leave of him, in my turn walked up the passage.
It was so still that it echoed my footsteps; and presently I began to think the silence odd. I began to wonder why the mob, which a few minutes before had shown itself so vindictive, had not found its way round; why the neighbourhood had become on a sudden so quiet. A few paces would show, however; I hastened on, and in a moment stood in the market-place.
To my astonishment it lay sunny, tranquil, utterly deserted; a dog ran here and there with tail high, nosing among the garbage; a few old women were at the stalls on the farther side; about as many people were busy, putting up shutters and closing shops. But the crowd which had filled the place so short a time before, thequeueabout the corn measures, the white cockades, all were gone; I stood astonished.
For a moment only, however. Then, in place of the silence which had prevailed between the high walls of the passage, a dull sound, distant and heavy, began to speak to me; a sullen roar, as of breakers falling on the beach. I started and listened. A moment more, and I was across the Square, and at the door of the inn. I darted into the passage, and up the stairs, my heart beating fast.
Here, too, I had left a crowd in the passages, and on the stairs. Not a man remained. The house seemed to be dead; at noon-day with the sun shining outside. I saw no one, heard no one, until I reached the door of the room in which I had left the Committee and entered. Here, at last, I found life; but the same silence.
Round the table were seated some dozen of the members of the Committee. On seeing me they started, like men detected in an act of which they were ashamed, some continuing to sit, sullen and scowling, with their elbows on the table, others stooping to their neighbours' ears to whisper, or listen. I noticed that many were pale and all gloomy; and though the room was light, and hot noon poured in through three windows, a something grim in the silence, and the air of expectation which prevailed, struck a chill to my heart.
Father Benôit was not of them, but Baton was, and the lawyer, and the grocer, and the two gentlemen, and one of the Curés, and Doury--the last-named pale and cringing, with fear sitting heavily on him. I might have thought, at a first glance round, that nothing which had happened outside was known to them; that they were ignorant alike of the duel and the riot; but a second glance assured me that they knew all, and more than I did; so many of them, when they had once met my eyes, looked away.
"What has happened?" I asked, standing half-way between the door and the long table.
"Don't you know, Monsieur?"
"No," I muttered, staring at them. Even here that distant murmur filled the air.
"But you were at the duel, M. le Vicomte?" The speaker was Buton.
"Yes," I said nervously. "But what of that? I saw M. le Marquis safe on his way home, and I thought that the crowd had separated. Now--" and I paused, listening.
"You fancy that you still hear them?" he said, eying me closely and smiling.
"Yes; I fear that they are at mischief."
"We are afraid of that, too," the smith answered drily, setting his elbows on the table, and looking at me anew. "It is not impossible."
Then I understood. I caught Doury's eye--which would fain have escaped mine--and read it there. The hooting of the distant crowd rose more loudly on the summer stillness; as it did so, faces round the table grew graver, lips grew longer, some trembled and looked down; and I understood. "My God!" I cried in excitement, trembling myself. "Is no one going to do anything, then? Are you going to sit here, while these demons work their will? While houses are sacked and women and children----"
"Why not?" Buton said curtly.
"Why not?" I cried.
"Ay, why not?" he answered sternly--and I began to see that he dominated the others; that he would not and they dared not. "We went about to keep the peace, and see that others kept it. But your white cockades, your gentlemen bullies, your soldierless officers, M. le Vicomte--I speak without offence--would not have it. They undertook to bully us; and unless they learn a lesson now, they will bully us again. No, Monsieur," he continued, looking round with a hard smile--already power had changed him wondrously--"let the people have their way for half an hour, and----"
"The people?" I cried. "Are the rascals and sweepings of the streets, the gaol-birds, the beggars andforçatsof the town--are they the people?"
"No matter," he said frowning.
"But this is murder!"
Two or three shivered, and some looked sullenly from me, but the blacksmith only shrugged his shoulders. Still I did not despair, I was going to say more--to try threats, even prayers; but before I could speak, the man nearest to the windows raised his hand for silence, and we heard the distant riot sink, and in the momentary quiet which followed the sharp report of a gun ring out, succeeded by another and another. Then a roar of rage--distinct, articulate, full of menace.
"Oh,mon Dieu!" I cried, looking round, while I trembled with indignation, "I cannot stand this! Will no one act? Will no one do anything? There must be some authority. There must be some one to curb thiscanaille; or presently, I warn you, I warn you all, that they will cut your throats also; yours, M. l'Avoué, and yours, Doury!"
"There was some one; and he is dead," Buton answered. The rest of the Committee fidgeted gloomily.
"And was he the only one?"
"They've killed him," the smith said bluntly. "They must take the consequences."
"They?" I cried, in a passion of wrath and pity. "Ay, and you! And you! I tell you that you are using this scum of the people to crush your enemies! But presently they will crush you too!"
Still no one spoke, no one answered me; no eyes met mine; then I saw how it was; that nothing I could say would move them; and I turned without another word, and I ran downstairs. I knew already, or could guess, whither the crowd had gone, and whence came the shouting and the shots; and the moment I reached the Square I turned in the direction of the St. Alais' house, and ran through the streets; through quiet streets under windows from which women looked down white and curious, past neat green blinds of modern houses, past a few staring groups; ran on, with all about me smiling, but always with that murmur in my ears, and at my heart grim fear.
They were sacking the St. Alais' house! And Mademoiselle! And Madame!
The thought of them came to me late; but having come it was not to be displaced. It gripped my heart and seemed to stop it. Had I saved Mademoiselle only for this? Had I risked all to save her from the frenzied peasants, only that she might fall into the more cruel hands of these maddened wretches, these sweepings of the city?
It was a dreadful thought; for I loved her, and knew, as I ran, that I loved her. Had I not known it I must have known it now, by the very measure of agony which the thought of that horror caused me. The distance from the Trois Rois to the house was barely four hundred yards, but it seemed infinite to me. It seemed an age before I stopped breathless and panting on the verge of the crowd, and strove to see, across the plain of heads, what was happening in front.
A moment, and I made out enough to relieve me; and I breathed more freely. The crowd had not yet won its will. It filled the street on either side of the St. Alais' house from wall to wall; but in front of the house itself, a space was still kept clear by the fire of those within. Now and again, a man or a knot of men would spring out of the ranks of the mob, and darting across this open space to the door, would strive to beat it in with axes and bars, and even with naked hands; but always there came a puff of smoke from the shuttered and loop-holed windows, and a second and a third, and the men fell back, or sank down on the stones, and lay bleeding in the sunshine.
It was a terrible sight. The wild beast rage of the mob, as they watched their leaders fall, yet dared not make the rushen massewhich must carry the place, was enough, of itself, to appal the stoutest. But when to this and their fiendish cries were added other sounds as horrid--the screams of the wounded and the rattle of musketry--for some of the mob had arms, and were firing from neighbouring houses at the St. Alais' windows--the effect was appalling. I do not know why, but the sunshine, and the tall white houses which formed the street, and the very neatness of the surroundings, seemed to aggravate the bloodshed; so that for a while the whole, the writhing crowd, the open space with its wounded, the ugly cries and curses and shots, seemed unreal. I, who had come hot-foot to risk all, hesitated; if this was Cahors, if this was the quiet town I had known all my life, things had come to a pass indeed. If not, I was dreaming.
But this last was a thought too wild to be entertained for more than a few seconds; and with a groan I thrust myself into the press, bent desperately on getting through and reaching the open space; though what I should do when I got there, or how I could help, I had not considered. I had scarcely moved, however, when I felt my arm gripped, and some one clinging obstinately to me, held me back. I turned to resent the action with a blow,--I was beside myself; but the man was Father Benôit, and my hand fell. I caught hold of him with a cry of joy, and he drew me out of the press.
His face was pale and full of grief and consternation; yet by a wonderful chance I had found him, and I hoped. "You can do something!" I cried in his ear, gripping his hand hard. "The Committee will not act, and this is murder! Murder, man! Do you see?"
"What can I do?" he wailed; and he threw up his other hand with a gesture of despair.
"Speak to them."
"Speak to them?" he answered. "Will mad dogs stand when you speak to them? Or will mad dogs listen? How can you get to them? Where can you speak to them? It is impossible. It is impossible, Monsieur. They would kill their fathers to-day, if they stood between them and vengeance."
"Then, what will you do?" I cried passionately. "What will you do?"
He shook his head; and I saw that he meant nothing, that he could do nothing. And then my soul revolted. "You must! You shall!" I cried fiercely. "You have raised this devil, and you must lay him! Are these the liberties about which you have talked to us? Are these the people for whom you have pleaded? Answer, answer me, what you will do!" I cried. And I shook him furiously.
He covered his face with his hand. "God forgive us!" he said. "God help us!"
I looked at him for the first and only time in my life with contempt--with rage. "God help you?" I cried--I was beside myself. "God helps those who help themselves! You have brought this about! You! You! You have preached this! Now mend it!"
He trembled, and was silent. Unsupported by the passion which animated me, in face of the brute rage of the people, his courage sank.
"Now mend it!" I repeated furiously.
"I cannot get to them," he muttered.
"Then I will make a way for you!" I answered madly, recklessly. "Follow me! Do you hear that noise? Well, we will play a part in it!"
A dozen guns had gone off, almost in a volley. We could not see the result, nor what was passing; but the hoarse roar of the mob intoxicated me. I cried to him to follow, and rushed into the press.
Again he caught and stayed me, clinging to me with a stubbornness which would not be denied. "If you will go, go through the houses! Go through the opposite houses!" he muttered in my ear.
I had sense enough, when he had spoken twice, to understand him and comply. I let him lead me aside, and in a moment we were out of the press, and hurrying through an alley at the back of the houses that faced the St. Alais' mansion. We were not the first to go that way; some of the more active of the rioters had caught the idea before us, and gone by this path to the windows, whence they were firing. We found two or three of the doors open, therefore, and heard the excited cries and curses of the men who had taken possession. However, we did not go far. I chose the first door, and, passing quickly by a huddled, panic-stricken group of women and children--probably the occupants of the house--who were clustered about it, I went straight through to the street door.
Two or three ruffianly men with smoke-grimed faces were firing through a window on the ground floor, and one of these, looking behind him as I passed, saw me. He called to me to stop, adding with an oath that if I went into the street I should be shot by the aristocrats. But in my excitement I took no heed; in a second I had the door open, and was standing in the street--alone in the sunny, cleared space. On either side of me, fifty paces distant, were the close ranks of the mob; in front of me rose the white blind face of the St. Alais' house, from which, even as I appeared, there came a little spit of smoke and the bang of a musket.
The crowd, astonished to see me there alone and standing still, fell silent, and I held up my hand. A gun went off above my head, and another; and a splinter flew from one of the green shutters opposite. Then a voice from the crowd cried out to cease firing; and for a moment all was still. I stood in the midst of a hot breathless hush, my hand raised. It was my opportunity--I had got it by a miracle; but for a moment I was silent, I could find no words.
At last, as a low murmur began to make itself heard, I spoke.
"Men of Cahors!" I cried. "In the name of the Tricolour, stand!" And trembling with agitation, acting on the impulse of the instant, I walked slowly across the street to the door of the besieged house, and under the eyes of all I took the Tricolour from my bosom, and hung it on the knocker of the door. Then I turned. "I take possession," I cried hoarsely, at the top of my voice, that all might hear, "I take possession of this house and all that are in it in the name of the Tricolour, and the Nation, and the Committee of Cahors. Those within shall be tried, and justice done upon them. But for you, I call upon you to depart, and go to your homes in peace, and the Committee----"
I got no farther. With the word a shot whizzed by my ear, and struck the plaster from the wall; and then, as if the sound released all the passions of the people, a roar of indignation shook the air. They hissed and swore at me, yelled "A la lanterne!" and "A bas le traître!" and in an instant burst their bounds. As if invisible floodgates gave way, the mob on either side rushed suddenly forward, and, rolling towards the door in a solid mass, were in an instant upon me.
I expected that I should be torn to pieces, but instead I was only buffeted and flung aside and forgotten, and in a moment was lost in the struggling, writhing mass of men, who flung themselves pell-mell upon the door, and fell over one another, and wounded one another in the fury with which they attacked it. Men, injured earlier, were trodden under foot now; but no one stayed for their cries. Twice a gun was fired from the house, and each shot took effect; but the press was so great, and the fury of the assailants, as they swarmed about the door, so blind, that those who were hit sank down unobserved, and perished under their comrades' feet.
Thrust against the iron railings that flanked the door, I clung to them, and protected from the pressure by a pillar of the porch, managed with some difficulty to keep my place. I could not move, however; I had to stand there while the crowd swayed round me, and I waited in dizzy, sickening horror for the crisis. It came at last. The panels of the door, riven and shattered, gave way; the foremost assailants sprang at the gap. Yet still the frame, held by one hinge, stood, and kept them out. As that yielded at length under their blows, and the door fell inward with a crash, I flung myself into the stream, and was carried into the house among the foremost, fortunately--for several fell--on my feet.
I had the thought that I might outpace the others, and, getting first to the rooms upstairs, might at least fight for Mademoiselle if I could not save her. For I had caught the infection of the mob, my blood was on fire. There was no one in all the crowd more set to kill than I was. I raced in, therefore, with the rest; but when I reached the foot of the stairs I saw, and they saw, that which stopped us all.
It was M. de Gontaut, lifted, in that moment of extreme danger, above himself. He stood alone on the stairs, looking down on the invaders, and smiling--smiling, with everything of senility and frivolity gone from his face, and only the courage of his caste left. He saw his world tottering, the scum and rabble overwhelming it, everything which he had loved, and in which he had lived, passing; he saw death waiting for him seven steps below, and he smiled. With his slender sword hanging at his wrist, he tapped his snuff-box and looked down at us; no longer garrulous, feeble, almost--with his stories of stale intrigues and his pagan creed--contemptible; but steady and proud, with eyes that gleamed with defiance.
"Well, dogs," he said, "will you earn the gallows?"
For a second no one moved. For a second the old noble's presence and fearlessness imposed on the vilest; and they stared at him, cowed by his eye. Then he stirred. With a quiet gesture, as of a man saluting before a duel, he caught up the hilt of his sword, and presented the lower point. "Well," he said with bitter scorn in his tone, "you have come to do it. Which of you will go to hell for the rest? For I shall take one."
That broke the spell. With a howl, a dozen ruffians sprang up the stairs. I saw the bright steel flash once, twice; and one reeled back, and rolled down under his fellows' feet. Then a great bar swept up and fell on the smiling face, and the old noble dropped without a cry or a groan, under a storm of blows that in a moment beat the life out of his body.
It was over in a moment, and before I could interfere. The next, a score of men leaped over the corpse and up the stairs, with horrid cries--I after them. To the right and left were locked doors, with panels Wätteau-painted; they dashed these in with brutal shouts, and, in a twinkling, flooded the splendid rooms, sweeping away, and breaking, and flinging down in wanton mischief, everything that came to hand--vases, statues, glasses, miniatures. With shrieks of triumph, they filled thesalonthat had known for generations only the graces and beauty of life; and clattered over the shining parquets that had been swept so long by the skirts of fair women. Everything they could not understand was snatched up and dashed down; in a moment the great Venetian mirrors were shattered, the pictures pierced and torn, the books flung through the windows into the street.
I had a glimpse of the scene as I paused on the landing. But a glance sufficed to convince me that the fugitives were not in these rooms, and I sprang on, and up the next flight. Here, short as had been my delay, I found others before me. As I turned the corner of the stairs I came on three men, listening at a door; before I could reach them one rose. "Here they are!" he cried. "That is a woman's voice! Stand back!" And he lifted a crowbar to beat in the door.
"Hold!" I cried in a voice that shook him, and made him lower his weapon. "Hold! In the name of the Committee, I command you to leave that door. The rest of the house is yours. Go and plunder it."
The men glared at me. "Sacré ventre!" one of them hissed. "Who are you?"
"The Committee!" I answered.
He cursed me, and raised his hand. "Stand back!" I cried furiously, "or you shall hang!"
"Ho! ho! An aristocrat!" he retorted; and he raised his voice. "This way, friends--this way! An aristocrat! An aristocrat!" he cried.
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.
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 fortisanesand 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 Curé 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 smith 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."
"I have not the least idea where he is," I said coldly. "Nor what you mean." The smith's tone had changed and grown savage and churlish.
"He has gone to Nîmes," he answered.
"To Nîmes?" I cried in astonishment. "How do you know? It is more than I know."
"I do know," he answered. "And what is brewing there. And so do a great many more. But this time the St. Alais and their bullies, M. le Vicomte--ay, they are all there--will not escape us. We will break their necks. Yes, M. le Vicomte, make no mistake," he continued, glaring at me, his eyes red with suspicion and anger, "mix yourselves up with none of this. We are the people! The people! Woe to the man or thing that stands in our way!"
"Go!" I said. "I have heard enough. Begone!"
He looked at me a moment as if he would answer me. But old habits overcame him, and with a sullen word of farewell he turned, and went round the house. A minute later I heard his horse trot down the avenue.
I had cut him short; nevertheless the instant he was gone I wished him back, that I might ask him more. The St. Alais at Nîmes? Father Benôit at Nîmes? And a plot brewing there in which all had a hand? In a moment the news opened a window, as it were, into a wider world, through which I looked, and no longer felt myself shut in by the lonely country round me and the lack of society. I looked and saw the great white dusty city of the south, and trouble rising in it, and in the middle of the trouble, looking at me wistfully, Denise de St. Alais.
Father Benôit had gone thither. Why might not I?
I walked up and down in a flutter of spirits, and the longer I considered it, the more I liked it; the longer I thought of the dull inaction in which I must spend my time at home, unless I consented to rub shoulders with Buton and his like, the more taken I was with the idea of leaving.
And after all why not? Why should I not go?
I had my commission in my pocket, wherein I was not only appointed to the National Guards, but described asci-devant"President of the Council of Public Safety in the Province of Quercy"; and this taking the place of papers or passport would render travelling easy. My long illness would serve as an excuse for a change of air; and explain my absence from home; I had in the house as much money as I needed. In a word, I could see no difficulty, and nothing to hinder me, if I chose to go. I had only to please myself.
So the choice was soon made. The following day I mounted a horse for the first time, and rode two-thirds of a league on the road, and home again very tired.
Next morning I rode to St. Alais, and viewed the ruins of the house and returned; this time I was less fatigued.
Then on the following day, Sunday, I rested; and on the Monday I rode half-way to Cahors and back again. That evening I cleaned my pistols and overlooked Gil while he packed my saddle-bags, choosing two plain suits, one to pack and one to wear, and a hat with a small tricolour rosette. On the following morning, the 6th of March, I took the road; and parting from André on the outskirts of the village, turned my horse's head towards Figeac with a sense of freedom, of escape from difficulties and embarrassments, of hope and anticipation, that made that first hour delicious; and that still supported me when the March day began to give place to the chill darkness of evening--evening that in an unknown, untried place is always sombre and melancholy.