Lord Tony's Wife (2 page)

For one moment he held the torch aloft. There was triumph now in his eyes, in his whole attitude. He looked out into the darkness far away which seemed all the more impenetrable beyond the restricted circle of flickering torch-light. It seemed as if he would wrest from that inky blackness all the secrets which it hid–all the enthusiasm, the excitement, the passions, the hatred which he would have liked to set ablaze as he would the straw-ricks anon.

‘Are you ready, mes amis?’ he called.

‘Aye! aye!’ they replied–not gaily, not lustily, but calmly and under their breath.

One touch of the torch and the dry straw began to crackle; a gust of wind caught the flame and whipped it into energy; it crept up the side of the little rick like a glowing python that wraps its prey in its embrace. Another gust of wind and the flame leapt joyously up to the pinnacle of the rick, and sent forth other tongues to lick and to lick, to enfold the straw, to devour, to consume.

But Pierre did not wait to see the consummation of his work of destruction. Already with a few rapid strides he had reached his father’s second straw-rick and this too he set alight, and then another and another, until six blazing furnaces sent their lurid tongues of flames, twisting and twirling, writhing and hissing through the stormy night.

Within the space of two minutes the whole summit of the hillock seemed to be ablaze and Pierre, like a god of fire, torch in hand seemed to preside over and command a multitude of ever-spreading flames to his will. Excitement had overmastered him now, the lust to destroy was upon him, and excitement had seized all the others too.

There was shouting and cursing, and laughter that sounded mirthless and forced, and calls to Pierre, and oaths of revenge. Memory like an evil-intentioned witch was riding invisibily in the darkness and she touched each seething brain with her fever-giving wand. Every man had an outrage to remember, an injustice to recall, and strong, brown fists were shaken aloft in the direction of the chβteau de Kernogan whose lights glimmered feebly in the distance beyond the Loire.

‘Death to the tyrant! A la lanterne les aristos! The people’s hour has come at last! No more starvation! No more injustice! Equality! Liberty! A mort les aristos!’

The shouts, the curses, the crackling flames, the howling of the wind, the soughing of the trees made up a confusion of sounds which seemed hardly of this earth; the blazing ricks, the flickering, red light of the flames had finally transformed the little hillock behind the mill into another Brocken on whose summit witches and devils do of a truth hold their revels.

‘A moi!’ shouted Pierre again, and he threw his torch down upon the ground and once more made for the barn. The others followed him. In the barn were such weapons as these wretched penniless peasants had managed to collect—scythes, poles, axes, saws, anything that would prove useful for the destruction of the chβteau de Kernogan and the proposed brow-beating of M. le duc and his family. All the men trooped in in the wake of Pierre. The entire hillock was now a blaze of light–lurid and red and flickering–alternately teased and fanned and subdued by the gale, so that at times every object stood out clearly cut, every blade of grass, every stone in bold relief, and in the ruts and fissures, every tiny pool of muddy water shimmered like strings of fire-opals: whilst at others a pall of inky darkness, smoke-laden and impenetrable would lie over the ground and erase the outline of farm-buildings and distant mill and of the pushing and struggling mass of humanity inside the barn.

But Pierre, heedless of light and darkness, of heat or of cold, proceeded quietly and methodically to distribute the primitive implements of warfare to this crowd of ignorant men who were by now over ready for mischief: and with every weapon which he placed in willing hands he found the right words for willing ears–words which would kindle passion and lust of vengeance most readily where they lay dormant, or would fan them into greater vigour where they smouldered.

‘For thee this scythe, Hector Lebrun,’ he would say to a tall, lanky youth whose emaciated arms and bony hands were stretched with longing toward the bright piece of steel; ‘remember last year’s harvest, the heavy tax thou wert forced to pay, so that not one sou of profit went into thy pocket, and thy mother starved whilst M. le duc and his brood feasted and danced and shiploads of corn were sunk in the Loire lest abundance made bread too cheap for the poor!’

‘For thee this pick-axe, Henri Meunier! Remember the new roof on thy hut, which thou didst build to keep the wet off thy wife’s bed who was crippled with ague–and the heavy impost levied on thee by the tax-collector for this improvement to thy miserable hovel.’

‘This pole for thee, Charles Blanc! Remember the beating administered to thee by the duc’s bailiff for daring to keep a tame rabbit to amuse thy children!’

‘Remember! Remember, mes amis!’ he added exultantly, ‘remember every wrong you have endured, every injustice, every blow! remember your poverty and his wealth, your crusts of dry bread and his succulent meals, your rags and his silks and velvets, remember your starving children and ailing mother, your care-laden wife and toil-worn daughters! Forget nothing, mes amis, to-night, and at the gates of the chβteau de Kernogan demand of its arrogant owner wrong for wrong and outrage for outrage.’

A deafening cry of triumph greeted this peroration, scythes and sickles and axes and poles were brandished in the air and several scores of hands were stretched out to Pierre and clasped in this newly-found bond of vengeful fraternity.

III

Then it was that with vigorous play of the elbows Jean Adet, the miller, forced his way through the crowd till he stood face to face with his son.

‘Unfortunate!’ he cried, ‘what is all this? What dost thou propose to do? Whither are ye all going?’

‘To Kernogan!’ they all shouted in response.

‘En avant, Pierre! we follow!’ cried some of them impatiently.

But Jean Adet–who was a powerful man despite his years–had seized Pierre by the arm and dragged him to a distant corner of the barn:

‘Pierre!’ he said in tones of command, ‘I forbid thee in the name of thy duty and the obedience which thou dost owe to me and to thy mother, to move another step in this hot-headed adventure. I was on the high-road, walking homewards, when that conflagration and the senseless cries of these poor lads warned me that some awful mischief was afoot. Pierre! my son! I command thee to lay that weapon down.’

But Pierre—who in his normal state was a dutiful son and sincerely fond of his father—shook himself free from Jean Adet’s grasp.

‘Father!’ he said loudly and firmly, ‘this is no time for interference. We are all of us men here and know our own minds. What we mean to do to-night we have thought on and planned for weeks and months. I pray you, father, let me be! I am not a child and I have work to do.’

‘Not a child?’ exclaimed the old man as he turned appealingly to the lads who had stood by, silent and sullen during this little scene. ‘Not a child? But you are all only children, my lads. You don’t know what you are doing. You don’t know what terrible consequences this mad escapade will bring upon us all, upon the whole village, aye! and the countryside. Do you suppose for one moment that the chβteau of Kernogan will fall at the mercy of a few ignorant unarmed lads like yourselves? Why! four hundred of you would not succeed in forcing your way even as far as the courtyard of the palace. M. le duc has had wind for some time of your turbulent meetings at the auberge: he has kept an armed guard inside his castle yard for weeks past, a company of artillery with two guns hoisted upon his walls. My poor lads! you are running straight to ruin! Go home, I beg of you! Forget this night’s escapade! Nothing but misery to you and yours can result from it.’

They listened quietly, if surlily, to Jean Adet’s impassioned words. Far be it from their thoughts to flout or to mock him. Paternal authority commanded respect even among the most rough; but they all felt that they had gone too far now to draw back: the savour of anticipated revenge had been too sweet to be forgone quite so readily, and Pierre with his vigorous personality, his glowing eloquence, his compelling power had more influence over them than the sober counsels of prudence and the wise admonitions of old Jean Adet. Not one word was spoken, but with an instinctive gesture every man grasped his weapon more firmly and then turned to Pierre, thus electing him their spokesman.

Pierre too had listened in silence to all that his father said, striving to hide the burning anxiety which was gnawing at his heart, lest his comrades allowed themselves to be persuaded by the old man’s counsels and their ardour be cooled by the wise dictates of prudence. But when Jean Adet had finished speaking and Pierre saw each man thus grasping his weapon all the more firmly and in silence, a cry of triumph escaped his lips.

‘It is all in vain, father,’ he cried, ‘our minds are made up. A host of angels from heaven would not bar our way now to victory and to vengeance.’

‘Pierre!’ admonished the old man.

‘It is too late, my father,’ said Pierre firmly, ‘en avant, lads!’

‘Yes! en avant! en avant!’ assented some, ‘we have wasted too much time as it is.’

‘But, unfortunate lads,’ admonished the old man, ‘what are you going to do?–a handful of you–where are you going?’

‘We go straight to the cross-roads, now, father,’ said Pierre firmly. ‘The firing of your ricks–for which I humbly crave your pardon–is the preconcerted signal which will bring the lads from all the neighbouring villages—from Goulaine and les Soriniθres and Doulon and Tourne-Bride—to our meeting place. Never you fear! There will be more than four hundred of us and a company of paid soldiers is not like to frighten us. Eh, lads?’

‘No! no! en avant!’ they shouted and murmured impatiently, ‘there has been too much talking already and we have wasted precious time.’

‘Pierre!’ entreated the miller.

But no one listened to the old man now. A general movement down the hillock had already begun and Pierre turning his back on his father had pushed his way to the front of the crowd and was now leading the way down the slope. Up on the summit the fire was already burning low: only from time to time an imprisoned tongue of flame would dart out of the dying embers and leap fitfully up into the night. A dull red glow illumined the small farmery and the mill and the slowly moving mass of men along the narrow road, whilst clouds of black, dense smoke were tossed about by the gale. Pierre walked with head erect. He ceased to think of his father and he never looked back to see if the others followed him. He knew that they did: like the straw-ricks a while ago, they had become the prey of a consuming fire: the fire of their own passion which had caught them and held them and would not leave them now until their ardour was consumed in victory or defeat.

IV

M. le duc de Kernogan had just finished dinner when Jacques Labruniθre his head-bailiff came to him with the news that a rabble crowd composed of the peasantry of Goulaine and Vertou and the neighbouring villages had assembled at the cross-roads, there held revolutionary speeches, and was even now marching toward the castle still shouting and singing and brandishing of miscellaneous collection of weapons chiefly consisting the scythes and axes.

‘The guard is under arms, I imagine,’ was M. le duc’s comment on this not altogether unforeseen piece of news.

‘Everything is in perfect order,’ replied the head-bailiff coolly, ‘for the defence of M. le duc and his property–and of Mademoiselle.’

M. le duc who had been lounging in one of the big armchairs in the stately hall of Kernogan jumped to his feet at these words: his cheeks suddenly pallid, and a look of deadly fear in his eyes.

‘Mademoiselle,’ he said hurriedly, ‘by G-d, Labruniθre, I had forgotten—momentarily—’

‘M. le duc?’ stammered the bailiff in anxious inquiry.

‘Mademoiselle de Kernogan is on her way home–even now–she spent the day with
Mme.
la Marquise d’Herbignac–she was to return at about eight o’clock…If those devils meet her carriage on the road…’

‘There is no cause for anxiety, M. le duc,’ broke in Labruniθre hurriedly. ‘I will see that half a dozen men get to horse at once and go and meet Mademoiselle and escort her home…’

‘Yes…yes…Labruniθre,’ murmured the duc, who seemed very much overcome with terror now that his daughter’s safety was in jeopardy, ‘see to it at once. Quick! quick! I shall wax crazy with anxiety.’

While Labruniθre ran to make the necessary arrangements for an efficient escort for Mademoiselle de Kernogan and gave the sergeant in charge of the posse the necessary directions, M. le duc remained motionless, huddled up in the capacious armchair, his head buried in his hand, shivering in front of the huge fire which burned in the monumental hearth, himself the prey of nameless, overwhelming terror.

He knew—none better–the appalling hatred wherewith he and all his family and belongings were regarded by the local peasantry. Astride upon his manifold rights—feudal, territorial, seignorial rights–he had all his life ridden roughshod over the prejudices, the miseries, the undoubted rights of the poor people, who were little better than serfs in the possession of the high and mighty duc de Kernogan. He also knew—none better–that gradually, very gradually it is true, but with unerring certainty, those same downtrodden, ignorant, miserable and half-starved peasants were turning against their oppressors, that riots and outrages had occurred in many rural districts in the North and that the insidious poison of social revolution was gradually creeping toward the south and West, and had already infected the villages and small townships which were situated quite unpleasantly close to Nantes and to Kernogan.

For this reason he had kept a company of artillery at his own expense inside the precincts of his chβteau, and with the aristocrat’s open contempt for his peasantry which it had not yet learned to fear, he had disdained to take further measures for the repression of local gatherings, and would not pay the village rabble the compliment of being afraid of them in any way.

But with his daughter Yvonne in the open roadway on the very night when an assembly of that same rabble was obviously bent on mischief, matters became very serious. Insult, outrage or worse might befall the proud aristocrat’s only child, and knowing that from these people, whom she had been taught to look upon as little better than beasts, she could expect neither mercy nor chivalry, the duc de Kernogan within his unassailable castle felt for his daughter’s safety the most abject, the most deadly fear which hath ever unnerved any man.