Lord Tony's Wife (3 page)

Labruniθre a few minutes later did his best to reassure his master.

‘I have ordered the men to take the best horses out of the stables, M. le duc,’ he said, ‘and to cut across the fields toward la Gramoire so as to intercept Mademoiselle’s coach ere it reach the cross-roads. I feel confident that there is no cause for alarm,’ he added emphatically.

‘Pray God you are right, Labruniθre,’ murmured the duc feebly. ‘Do you know how strong the rabble crowd is?’

‘No, Monseigneur, not exactly. Camille the under-bailiff, who brought me the news, was riding homewards across the meadows about an hour ago when he saw a huge conflagration which seemed to come from the back of Adet’s mill: the whole sky has been lit up by a lurid light for the past hour, and I fancied myself that Adet’s staw must be on fire. But Camille pushed his horse up the rising ground which culminates at Adet’s farmery. It seems that he heard a great deal of shouting which did not seem to be accompanied by any attempt at putting out the fire. So he dismounted and led his horse round the hillock skirting Adet’s farm buildings so that he should not be seen. Under cover of darkness he heard and saw the old miller with his son Pierre engaged in distributing scythes, poles and axes to a crowd of youngsters and haranguing them wildly all the time. He also heard Pierre Adet speak of the conflagration as a perconcerted signal, and say that he and his mates would meet the lads of the neighbouring villages at the cross-roads…and that four hundred of them would then march on Kernogan and pillage the castle.’

‘Bah!’ quoth M. le duc in a voice hoarse with execration and contempt, ‘a lot of oafs who will give the hangman plenty of trouble to-morrow. As for that Adet and his son, they shall suffer for this…I can promise them that…If only Mademoiselle were home!’ he added with a heartrending sigh.

V

Indeed, had M. le duc de Kernogan been gifted with second sight, the agony of mind which he was enduring would have been aggravated an hundredfold. At the very moment when the head-bailiff was doing his best to reassure his liege-lord as to the safety of
Mlle.
de Kernogan, her coach was speeding along from the chβteau of Herbignac toward those same cross-roads where a couple of hundred hot-headed peasant lads were planning as much mischief as their unimaginative minds could conceive.

The fury of the gale had in no way abated, and now a heavy rain was falling—a drenching, sopping rain which in the space of half an hour had added five centimetres to the depth of the mud on the roads, and had in that same space of time considerably damped the enthusiasm of some of the poor lads. Three score or so had assembled from Goulaine, two score from les Soriniθres, some three dozen from Doulon: they had rallied to the signal in hot haste, gathered their scythes and spades, very eager and excited, and had reached the cross-roads which were much nearer to their respective villages than to Jean Adet’s farm and the mill, even while the old man was admonishing his son and the lads of Vertou on the summit of the blazing hillock. Here they had spent half an hour in cooling their heels and their tempers under the drenching rain–wet to the skin–fuming and fretting at the delay.

But even so–damped in ardour and chilled to the marrow–they were still a dangerous crowd and prudence ought to have dictated to Mademoiselle de Kernogan the wiser course of ordering her coachman Jean-Marie to head his horses back toward Herbignac, the moment that the outrider reported that a mob, armed with scythes, spades and axes, held the cross-roads and that it would be dangerous for the coach to advance any further.

Already for the past few minutes the sound of loud shouting had been heard even above the tramp of the horses and the clatter of the coach. Jean-Marie had pulled up and sent one of the outriders on ahead to see what was amiss: the man returned with very unpleasant tidings—in his opinion it certainly would be dangerous to go any further. The mob appeared bent on mischief: he had heard threats and curses all levelled against M. le duc de Kernogan–the conflagration up at Vertou was evidently a signal which would bring along a crowd of malcontents from all the neighbouring villages. He was for turning back forthwith. But Mademoiselle put her head out of the window just then and asked what was amiss. On hearing that Jean-Marie and the postilion and outriders were inclined to be afraid of a mob of peasant lads who had assembled at the cross-roads and were apparently threatening to do mischief, she chided them for their cowardice.

‘Jean-Marie,’ she called scornfully to the old coachman, who had been in her father’s service for close on half a century, ‘do you really mean to tell me that you are afraid of that rabble!’

‘Why no! Mademoiselle, so please you,’ replied the old man, nettled in his pride by the taunt, ‘but the temper of the peasantry round here has been ugly of late, and ‘tis your safety I have got to guard.’

‘Tis my commands you have got to obey,’ retorted Mademoiselle with a gay little laugh which mitigated the peremptoriness of her tone. ‘If my father should hear that there’s trouble on the road he will die of anxiety if I do not return: so whip up the horses Jean-Marie. No one will dare to attack the coach.’

‘But Mademoiselle–’ remonstrated the old man.

‘Ah ηΰ!’ she broke in more impatiently, ‘am I to be openly disobeyed? Best join that rabble, Jean-Marie, if you have no respect for my commands.’

Thus twitted by Mademoiselle’s sharp tongue Jean-Marie could not help but obey. He tried to peer into the distance through the veil of blinding rain which beat against his face and stung the horses to restlessness. But the light from the coach lanterns prevented his seeing clearly into the darkness beyond. Still it seemed to him that on ahead a dense and solid mass was moving toward the coach, also that the sound of shouting and of excited humanity was considerably nearer than it had been before. No doubt the mob had perceived the lights of the coach and was even now making towards it, with what intent Jean-Marie divined all too accurately.

But he had his orders, and though he was an old and trusted servant disobedience these days was not even to be thought of. So he did as he was bid. He whipped up his horses, which were high-spirited and answered to the lash with a bound and a plunge forward.
Mlle.
de Kernogan leaned back on the cushions of the coach. She was satisfied that Jean-Marie had done as he was told, and she was not in the least afraid.

But less than five minutes later she ahd a rude awakening. The coach gave a terrific lurch. The horses reared and plunged, there was a deafening clamour all around: men were shouting and cursing: there was the clash of wood and iron and the cracking of whips: the tramp of horses’ hoofs in the soft ground, and the dull thud of human bodies falling in the mud followed by loud cries of pain. There was the sudden crash of broken glass, the coach lanthorns had been seized and broken: it seemed to Yvonne de Kernogan that out of the darkness faces distorted with fury were peering at her through the window-panes. But through all the confusion the coach kept moving on. Jean-Marie stuck to his post as did also the postilion and the four outriders, and with whip and tongue they urged their horses to break through the crowd regardless of human lives, knocking and trampling down men and lads heedless of curses and blasphemies which were hurled on them and on the occupants of the coach, whoever they might be.

The next moment, however, the coach came to a sudden halt and a wild cry of triumph drowned the groans of the injured and the dying.

‘Kernogan! Kernogan!’ was shouted from every side.

‘Adet! Adet!’

‘You limbs of Satan,’ cried Jean-Marie, ‘you’ll rue this night’s work and weep tears of blood for the rest of your lives. Let me tell you that! Mademoiselle is in the coach. When M. le duc hears of this, there will be work for the hangman…’

‘Mademoiselle in the coach,’ broke in a hoarse voice with a rough tone of command. ‘Let’s look at her…’

‘Aye! Aye! let’s have a look at Mademoiselle,’ came with a volley of objurgations and curses from the crowd.

‘You devils—you would dare?’ protested Jean-Marie.

Within the coach Yvonne de Kernogan hardly dared to breathe. She sat bolt upright, her cape held tightly round her shoulders: her eyes—dilated now with excitement, if not with fear, were fixed upon the darkness beyond the window panes. She could see nothing, but she felt the presence of that hostile crowd who had succeeded in overpowering Jean-Marie and were intent on doing her harm.

But she belonged to a caste which never reckoned cowardice amongst its many faults. During these few moments when she knew that her life hung on the merest thread of chance, she neither screamed nor fainted but sat rigidly still, her heart beating in unison with the agonizing seconds which went so fatefully by. And even now when the carriage door was torn violently open and even through the darkness she discerned vaguely the forms of these avowed enemies close beside her, and anon felt a rough hand seize her wrist, she did not move, but said quite calmly, with hardly a tremor in her voice:

‘Who are you? and what do you want?’

An outburst of harsh and ironical laughter came in response.

‘Who are we, my fine lady?’ said the foremost man in the crowd, he who had seized her wrist and was half in and half out of the coach at this moment, ‘we are the men who throughout our lives have toiled and starved whilst you and such as you travel in fine coaches and eat your fill. What we want? Why just the spectacle of such a fine lady as you are being knocked down into the mud just as our wives and daughters are if they happen to be in the way when your coach is passing. Isn’t that it, mes amis?’

‘Aye! aye!’ they replied, shouting lustily. ‘Into the mud with the fine lady. Out with her, Adet. Let’s have a look at Mademoiselle how she will look with her face in the mud. Out with her, quick!’

But the man who was still half in and half out of the coach and who had hold of Mademoiselle’s wrist did not obey his mates immediately. He drew her nearer to him and suddenly threw his rough, begrimed arms round her, and with one hand pulled back her hood, then placing two fingers under chin, he jerked it up till her face was level with his own.

Yvonne de Kernogan was certainly no coward, but at the loathsome contact of this infuriated and vengeful creature, she was overcome with such a hideous sense of fear that for the moment consciousness almost left her: not completely alas! for though she could not distinguish his face she could feel his hot breath upon her cheeks, she could smell the nauseating odour of his damp clothes and she could hear his hoarse mutterings as for the space of a few seconds he held her thus close to him in an embrace which to her was far more awesome than that of death.

‘And just to punish you, my fine lady,’ he said in a whisper which sent a shudder of horror right through her, ‘to punish you for what you are, the brood of tyrants, proud, disdainful, a budding tyrant yourself, to punish you for every misery my mother and sister have had to endure, for every luxury which you have enjoyed, I will kiss you on the lips and the cheeks and just between your white throat and chin and never as long as you live if you die this night or live to be an hundred will you be able to wash off those kisses showered upon you by one who hates and loathes you–a miserable peasant whom you despise and who in your sight is lower far than your dogs.’

Yvonne with eyes closed hardly breathed, but through the veil of semi-consciousness which mercifully wrapped her senses she could still hear those awful words, and feel the pollution of those loathsome kisses with which—true to his threat–this creature–half man, wholly devil, whom she could not see but whome she hated and feared as she would Satan himself—now covered her face and throat.

After that she remembered nothing more. Consciousness mercifully forsook her altogether. When she recovered her senses, she was within the percincts of the castle: a confused murmur of voices reached her ears, and her father’s arms were round her. Gradually she distinguished what was being said: she gathered the threads of the story which Jean-Marie and the postilion and outriders were hastily unravelling in response to M. le duc’s commands.

These men of course knew nothing of the poignant little drama which had been enacted inside the coach. All they knew was that they had been surrounded by a rough crowd—a hundred or so strong–who brandished scythes and spades, that they had made valiant efforts to break through the crowd by whipping up their horses, but that suddenly some of those devils more plucky than the others seized the horses by their bits and rendered poor Jean-Marie quite helpless. He thought then that all would be up with the lot of them and was thinking of scrambling down from his box in order to protect Mademoiselle with his body, and the pistols which he had in the boot, when happily for every one concerned he heard in the distance—above the clatter which that abominable rabble was making, the hurried tramp of horses. At once he jumped to the conclusion that these could be none other than a company of soldiers sent by M. le duc. This spurred him to a fresh effort and gave him a new idea. To Carmail the postilion who had a pistol in his holster he gave the peremptory order to fire a shot into the air or into the crowd, Jean-Marie cared not which. This Carmail did and at once the horses, already maddened by the crowd, plunged and reared wildly, shaking themselves free. Jean-Marie, however, had them well in hand, and from far away there came the cries of encouragement from the advancing horsemen who were bearing down on them full tilt. The next moment there was a general mκlιe. Jean-Marie saw nothing save his horses’ heads, but the outriders declared that men were trampled down like flies all around while others vanished into the night.

What happened after that none of the men knew or cared. Jean-Marie galloped his horses all the way to the castle and never drew rein until the precincts were reached.

VI

Had M. de Kernogan had his way and a free hand to mete out retributive justice in the proportion that he desired, there is no doubt that the hangman of Nantes would have been kept exceedingly busy. As it was a number of arrests were effected the following day—half the manhood of the countryside was implicated in the aborted Jacquerie and the city prison was not large enough to hold it all.