THE SWORD IS DRAWN
“Prends ton fusil, Grégoire,
Prends ta gourde pour boire,
Prends ta Vierge d’ivoire . . .
Nos Messieurs sont partis
Pour chasser la perdrix.”
—_Monsieur d’Charette._
(Chant Vendéen).
Once again M. des Graves sat in the library, and he sat in silence—save
for a very cheerful and crackling fire. But he was not alone. By the
side of his chair, an elbow on the arm of it, Louis had assumed a
rather favourite position on the floor. It was over, the telling of
his incredible news, incoherently as it had been done, and now he had
no more to say, cast up by that flood of emotion and amazement on to
a shore of silence. But at last he shifted his position a little and
asked, for the second time: “You are sure that you do not disapprove,
Father? You are sure that I may take her?”
“Yes, Louis,” came the answer, grave and low; “you may take her.”
“I don’t deserve it,” said the young man to himself, and fell to
pulling at the bearskin rug on which he lay. Presently he broke the
silence again. “It was horrible for him—horrible. And I cannot try to
thank him; he would hate it.”
The priest’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair. It was
difficult to articulate in the throes of a joy so piercing as to be
pain. Perhaps if he could betake himself for a little to the prayer
which surged up from his inmost soul it would ease the almost
intolerable emotion. And perhaps he could then show to Louis his
sympathy with his happiness. He said gently: “He will be able to take
your thanks some day,” and with that got out of his chair.
“Are you going?” asked the Vicomte, jumping to his feet.
“Yes; to the chapel for a little while.”
“You might say a prayer for me,” murmured Louis, looking away. Then he
seemed to get the better of his embarrassment, and seized both M. des
Graves’ hands. “I had no right to hope for such a thing as this—no
claim to deserve it now,” he said, with deep and real feeling in his
voice. “And Gilbert—— What was that?”
It was, apparently, some small hard object striking against glass. The
two men stood motionless for a second, then Louis abruptly loosed the
priest’s hands, and going to the nearest of the long windows tugged
aside the curtains and threw it open.
There was nothing to be seen, but out of the evening, grown now to the
semblance of night, came an ominous sound of voices and of many feet.
The noise, thrilling to the nerves and more than a little sinister in
suggestion, appeared to come from the front of the house.
“Keep back!” whispered Louis over his shoulder. “Who knows what it may
be?—perhaps they are come for you.” And slipping out on to the long
and narrow balcony he leant over and peered into the darkness. “Who is
there?” he shouted.
There was no direct answer, but feet shuffled on the gravel, and he
caught excited whispers. “It is not he!” “No, it is Monsieur le
Vicomte.” “Perhaps he is not here.”
“What is it, in God’s name?” cried Louis sharply. “And who is in the
avenue?”
A couple of rough voices raised themselves. “We want Monsieur le
Marquis.” “We saw a light here, so we came this way. . . .” The strong
local accent was enough for Louis, and turned his vague fear into a
vague hope.
“Oh, it is you, my friends, from the village? Wait a moment.” He
stepped back into the room and caught up a lamp. “No, don’t come out,
please, Father, for a moment.”
The ring of light showed, a few feet below, a knot of peasants, armed.
And in a flash the young man understood. His heart leapt. “It has
come,” he said to himself. Aloud he said: “You have come to ask
Monsieur le Marquis to lead you, perhaps?”
A shout of joyful asseveration was the response, and in the increasing
din from the front other figures, attracted by the light which he was
holding, began to pour round the corner of the château, vociferating
wildly, and evidently mistaking him for his cousin.
“Monsieur le Marquis is not here at present,” said Saint-Ermay in his
clear, carrying voice, “but he will soon be back. Go round, my
friends, to the front, and Monsieur le Curé and I will come to you at
the steps.”
“You are sure, Monsieur Louis, that Monsieur le Marquis will be back
soon?” enquired an anxious voice.
“We expect him every moment,” said Louis confidently, and went in with
his lamp.
M. des Graves had dropped to his knees before the crucifix on his
writing-table. His face was hidden in his hands. Louis looked at him
as he set down the lamp, hesitated, then hurried from the room. In the
hall were gathered the domestics, plainly terrified, and with some
cause, for the great door was resounding under repeated blows, not all
effected with the human hand.
“Open the door, Pierre!” commanded the Vicomte. “There is nothing to
be afraid of.” Yet even as he spoke there was audible, through the
hammering and the muffled shouts, the sharp crash of broken glass.
“Morbleu!” muttered the young man, frowning, “we can’t have that. Open
the door, imbeciles, unless you want it to be driven in!—I must open
it myself, then.” He was actually pulling at the bolts before he found
old Antoine and Jasmin beside him.
At the noise of the unbolting the hammering ceased, the door swung
open, and Louis stepped out into a clamour and a scene which reminded
him, instantly and none too pleasantly, of that day, three and a half
years ago, when the Paris mob had raved outside the railings of the
great courtyard at Versailles. Here was the same indescribable
atmosphere of emotion, the same medley of weapons, the same sea
of excited faces. Yet it was different, for as the light streamed
out behind him and he was recognised, a wave, not of that deadly
hostility, but of welcome surged towards him.
“It is Monsieur le Vicomte! A la bonne heure, Monsieur Louis! Vive
Monsieur Louis! Ohé, Monsieur le Vicomte, are you coming with us?”
Louis could not make himself heard, and when at last he was able to do
so for a moment, the cry for the Marquis began and drowned him. It
seemed to him a very desirable thing that Gilbert should indeed return
quickly, for he had never seen the villagers so out of hand. As they
shouted they brandished here a scythe-blade, here a pitchfork lit up
by the glare of a few torches and the broad fan of light from the
door. At last the Vicomte began to get annoyed. He shouted to a
domestic: “Go, for God’s sake, and ask Monsieur le Curé to come. . . .
Ah, here he is! Father, can you stop this racket?”
Apparently M. des Graves had that power. The noise had slackened the
instant that he appeared; now, as he held up his hand, it died down to
an undertone.
“My children!” he said a little reprovingly, and then to Louis: “Now
speak to them, my son, and tell them that Gilbert will soon be back.
No—it is your place to do it, not mine.”
And the young man, after glancing at him, went forward to the topmost
step. “My friends, be patient!” he urged. “Monsieur le Marquis will
soon be here.” And he added with a half-smile: “I can guess why you
want him, can’t I?”
A hundred voices asserted that he could. Finally, in answering queries
as to whether the Marquis would consent to lead them, and in shaking
the hands held up to grasp his own, Louis was more or less pulled down
the steps into a sea of passion in which a hostile swimmer would have
had little chance of his life.
“Monsieur le Vicomte, you will come, too?” shouted a group of young
men, rosaries round their necks and no more than stout sticks in their
hands. “Monsieur Louis has learnt soldiering,” explained a voice. “He
was in our King’s guard. That’s what we want, a soldier!”
It was all very hot and breathless and uncomfortable, and the Vicomte
soon contrived to disengage himself and to return to his vantage post
on the steps. Hence, being now more successful in making himself
heard, he invited any one who wished to enter the house, and ordered
such food and drink as it contained to be brought out to the invaders.
No one would come in, but when the latter arrangement was at last
carried through a measure of quiet fell upon the excited throng, as,
like the Israelites, they ate and drank standing and prepared for
departure.
It was now ten o’clock; the rain had ceased, and there was the promise
of a feeble moon. The sound of the tocsin, presage of the unusual,
came dinning to the ears of the young man and the old as they stood by
the door and looked at the scene, ready and waiting for the principal
actor. Why did he not come? The priest, who had been down in the
throng, was aware of the tiniest pang of fear. And Louis seemed to
know it.
“I can’t conceive where he can have gone to,” he said. “There is a man
here, who has only just come, who says that he saw Gilbert walking
very fast towards La Chapelle-Michel about three hours ago. He took it
for granted that he was going there to make a vow or pay his devotions
before—this.” He indicated the scene below. “But I think he must have
been mistaken. . . . What is it, Antoine? More wine?”
* * * * * *
Some half-hour later the Vicomte was down again among the crowd,
listening to the story of how the village had organised itself, when
suddenly the narrator’s hand tightened on his arm, and Louis’ heart
leapt like the rest as he recognised the figure that came quickly out
on to the steps. In the rapturous storm of applause which greeted the
advent of the Marquis he edged his way nearer, and, when the cheering
subsided, heard the latter ask simply: “What do you want of me, my
friends?”
Evidently out of respect, the peasants had accorded their _seigneur_ a
spokesman. A burly, middle-aged man, in whom Louis recognised the
miller, separated himself from the rest and advanced up a step or two.
“It is time, Monseigneur, is it not?” he said in his strong Vendean
accent. “We have borne it long enough. Our priests are gone, our
churches are empty. Now we ourselves must go out of the country to
fight for those who oppress us.” His hoarse voice shook with a
hardly-mastered passion. “We will never go, never! We will die first
here in Vendée. . . . Monsieur le Marquis, they have risen in the
Marais, in the Pays de Retz; Messieurs de Sapinaud took Les Herbiers
the day before yesterday, the men of Le Coudrais, peasants like
ourselves, have defeated the National Guard of Saint-Fulgent, Montaigu
is captured, and now we hear that the men of Saint-Florent-le-Vieil on
the Loire have taken Chemillé and are marching on Cholet. . . . We
must go, too! But we must have some one to lead us—we are ignorant of
war. We have come to ask you to be our leader.”
A dead silence, more impressive than clamour, followed his simple
words. The miller stood motionless on the steps, leaning on the old
fowling-piece which he carried, and looking up, like every one there,
at the young man on the steps.
And perhaps, of all the _seigneurs_ of Vendée, Gilbert de Château-Foix,
the cold and prudent, alone accepted on the instant the call to that
desperate and heroic conflict.
“If it is your wish,” he said steadily, looking down on them, “I am
ready to lead you to the best of my ability. But it is my duty to urge
you to remember against what forces you are pitting yourselves.”
“We know, Monsieur le Marquis—we have remembered!” came back to him,
mixed with wild cries of “Long live the Marquis!” “To Les Herbiers!”
Gilbert held up his hand. “Before I can settle anything I must talk
with some of you. Let Jean Guéchery, Laurent Robineau, and François
Batliau come up here. And where is M. de Saint-Ermay?”
“Here,” said Louis, and made his way through the crowd up the steps,
to a meeting so different from their parting of a few hours ago.
“That is right,” said Gilbert, hardly glancing at him. “I shall want
you to be my lieutenant. Now, tell me, Guéchery, what arms you have.”
They all passed into the library, discussing. Outside, the March night
grew gradually quiet of clamour and torches, as the waiting peasants
slowly made their way, for shelter rather than for sleep, to kitchen,
stable, or outhouse.
When, a couple of hours later, the three leading peasants went out
again to the rest, Louis, left alone with Château-Foix in the hall,
stood a moment looking irresolutely at his back as he stopped to
take down a pair of pistols from the wall. Then he went up to him.
“Gilbert——” he began almost timidly.
The Marquis, though he must have heard, took no notice, but finished
disentangling the pistols. Then he wheeled suddenly round. Seen in a
better light his face appeared very drawn. “Oh, is that you?” he
observed coldly. “Do you want to know anything?”
In a flash Louis had adopted another method of address. “Yes, several
things, if I am to be of any use as your lieutenant,” he replied, in a
matter-of-fact tone. “Where can I see you for a few moments?”
It was just evident that Gilbert welcomed his change of front. “Come
to me in the library in an hour’s time,” he said, slipping the pistols
into his pockets. “And I should advise you to put together a few
clothes as well as your arms.”
Louis nodded and swung on his heel. It would be many a long day before
Gilbert could bear a word on that subject. Well, he did not marvel at
it.
Meanwhile Gilbert went to his own room, changed his wet clothes, wrote
a brief note to Lucienne, and came down to the library, where a
servant had set food and wine. In a business-like manner he despatched
these, and then, pulling down a sheaf of maps from a shelf, selected
one and spread it out on the table. He was bending over it when the
door opened, and in came, not Louis but M. des Graves. The Marquis
instantly shifted the shade of the lamp, which he had tilted up in his
own direction.
“I am looking out the best route to Les Herbiers, Father,” he remarked.
“I believe it would really be shorter to go by Saint-Martin.”
The priest took no notice, but came round the table to his side.
“Because we may neither of us be alive at this time to-morrow,
Gilbert,” he said very solemnly, “it is my duty to say to you, however
much you shrink from the subject, that I am sure you have done right,
and that I believe God will bless your sacrifice. . . . And now I
shall not refer to the matter again until the day when you shall come
to me of your own will and tell me that all is well with you.”
Gilbert, who had not removed his gaze from the map over which he bent,
now stood up and looked at the priest. “I fear that day will never
come, Father,” he returned in polite and chilling tones. “But I
rejoice that you are convinced I have acted rightly. And it is done,
and there is an end of it, and, as you say, we will bury the subject.
Perhaps you would kindly give Louis a hint that I do not desire to be
thanked . . . as though I had given him a horse or paid his debts for
him,” he added to himself.
M. des Graves looked at the pale, resolute face, and his eyes were
full of compassion and understanding. “It shall be as you wish, my
son,” he said quietly. “You have acted; there is no need of further
words. . . . Ah, here is Louis. Louis, we are looking out the roads to
Les Herbiers.”
“And I have got the wrong map,” said the Marquis, rolling it up.
“Please bring me the bundle by the bookcase, Louis. Thank you. Now the
distance: from here to Saint-Martin-des-Noyers— supposing that we go
that way—six miles; from Saint-Martin to Les Quatre Chemins another
six——”
“And from Les Quatre Chemins to Les Herbiers about the same,” finished
Louis. “And after that?” He laughed gaily. “That lamp of yours is
going out, Gilbert. However, it is nearly dawn already.”