He was awakened later by a shriek that was followed by a hubbub of tumult.
John Bulmer sat erect in bed. He heard a medley of yelling, of musketry,
and of crashes, like the dilapidation of falling battlements. He knew well
enough what had happened. Cazaio and his men were making a night attack
upon Bellegarde.
John Bulmer arose and, having lighted two candles, dressed himself. He cast
aside the first cravat as a failure, knotted the second with scrupulous
nicety, and afterward sat down, facing the door to his apartment, and
trimmed his finger nails. Outside was Pandemonium, and the little scrap of
sky visible from his one window was now of a sullen red.
"It is very curious I do not suffer more acutely. As a matter of fact, I
am not conscious of any particular feeling at all. I believe that most of
us when we are confronted with a situation demanding high joy or agony
find ourselves devoid of emotion. They have evidently taken de Soyecourt
by surprise. She is yonder in that hell outside and will inevitably be
captured by its most lustful devil--or else be murdered. I am here like
a trapped rat, impotent, waiting to be killed, which Cazaio's men will
presently attend to when they ransack the place and find me. And I feel
nothing, absolutely nothing.
"By this she has probably fallen into Cazaio's power--"
And the man went mad. He dashed upon the locked door, and tore at it with
soft-white hands, so that presently they were all blood. He beat his face
upon the door, cutting open his forehead.
He shook his bleeding hands toward heaven. "In my time I have been cruel. I
am less cruel than You! Let me go!"
The door opened and she stood upon the threshold. His arms were about her
and repeatedly he kissed her, mercilessly, with hard kisses, crushing her
in his embrace.
"Jean, Jean!" she sobbed, beneath his lips, and lay quite still in his
arms. He saw how white and tender a thing she was, and the fierce embrace
relaxed.
"You came to me!" he said.
"Louis had forgotten you. They had all retreated to the Inner Tower.
[Footnote: The inner ward, or ballium, which (according to Quinault) was
defended by ten towers, connected by an embattled stone wall about thirty
feet in height and eight feet thick, on the summit of which was a footway;
now demolished to make way for the famous gardens.] Cazaio cannot take
that, for he has no cannon. Louis can hold out there until Gaston comes
with help," Claire rapidly explained. "But the thieves are burning
Bellegarde. I could bribe no man to set you free. They were afraid to
venture."
"And you came," said John Bulmer--"you left the tall safe Inner Tower to
come to me!"
"I could not let you die, Jean Bulmer."
"Why, then I must live not unworthily the life which, you have given me. O
God!" John Bulmer cried, "what a pitiful creature was that great Duke of
Ormskirk! Now make a man of me, O God!"
"Listen, dear madman," she breathed; "we cannot go out into Bellegarde.
They are everywhere--Cazaio's men. They are building huge fires about the
Inner Tower; but it is all stone, and I think Louis can hold out. But we,
Jean Bulmer, can only retreat to the roofing of this place. There is a
trap-door to admit you to the top, and there--there we can at least live
until the dawn."
"I am unarmed," John Bulmer said; "and weaponless, I cannot hold even a
trap-door against armed men."
"I have brought you weapons," Claire returned, and waved one hand toward
the outer passageway. "Naturally I would not overlook that. There were many
dead men on my way hither, and they had no need of weapons. I have a sword
here and two pistols."
"You are," said John Bulmer, with supreme conviction, "the most wonderful
woman in the universe. By all means let us get to the top of this infernal
tower and live there as long as we may find living possible. But first,
will you permit me to make myself a thought tidier? For in my recent
agitation as to your whereabouts I have, I perceive, somewhat disordered
both my person and my apparel."
Claire laughed a little sadly. "You have been sincere for once in your
existence, and you are hideously ashamed, is it not? Ah, my friend, I would
like you so much better if you were not always playing at life, not always
posing as if for your portrait."
"For my part," he returned, obscurely, from the rear of a wet towel, "I
fail to perceive any particular merit in dying with a dirty face. We are
about to deal with a most important and, it well may be, the final crisis
of our lives. So let us do it with decency."
Afterward John Bulmer changed his cravat, since the one he wore was soiled
and crumpled and stained a little with his blood; and they went up the
winding stairway to the top of the Constable's Tower. These two passed
through the trap-door into a moonlight which drenched the world; westward
the higher walls of the Hugonet Wing shut off that part of Bellegarde where
men were slaughtering one another, and turrets, black and untenanted, stood
in strong relief against a sky of shifting crimson and gold. At their feet
was the tiny enclosed garden half-hidden by the poplar boughs. To the east
the Tower dropped sheer to the moat; and past that was the curve of the
highway leading to the main entrance of the château, and beyond this road
you saw Amneran and the moonlighted plains of the Duardenez, and one little
tributary, a thread of pulsing silver, in passage to the great river which
showed as a smear of white, like a chalk-mark on the world's rim.
John Bulmer closed the trap-door. They stood with clasped hands, eyes
straining toward the east, whence help must arrive if help came at all.
"No sign of Gaston," the girl said. "We most die presently, Jean Bulmer."
"I am sorry," he said,--"Oh, I am hideously sorry that we two must die."
"I am not afraid, Jean Bulmer. But life would be very sweet, with you."
"That was my thought, too.... I have always bungled this affair of living,
you conceive. I had considered the world a healthy and not intolerable
prison, where each man must get through his day's work as best he might,
soiling his fingers as much as necessity demanded--but no more,--so that at
the end he might sleep soundly--or perhaps that he might go to heaven and
pluck eternally at a harp, or else to hell and burn eternally, just as
divines say we will. I never bothered about it, much, so long as there was
my day's work at hand, demanding performance. And in consequence I missed
the whole meaning of life."
"That is not so!" Claire replied. "No man has achieved more, as everybody
knows."
This was an odd speech. But he answered, idly: "Eh, I have done well
enough as respectable persons judge these matters. And I went to church on
Sundays, and I paid my tithes. Trifles, these, sweetheart; for in every
man, as I now see quite plainly, there is a god. And the god must judge,
and the man himself must be the temple and the instrument of the god. It is
very simple, I see now. And whether he go to church or no is a matter of
trivial importance, so long as the man obeys the god who is within him."
John Bulmer was silent, staring vaguely toward the blank horizon.
"And now that you have discovered this," she murmured, "therefore you wish
to live?"
"Why, partly on account of that," he said, "yet perhaps mostly on account
of you.... But heyho!" said John Bulmer; "I am disfiguring my last hours
by inflicting upon a lady my half-baked theology. Let us sit down, my
dear, and talk of trifles till they find us. And then I will kill you,
sweetheart, and afterward myself. Presently come dawn and death; and my
heart, according to the ancient custom of Poictesme, is crying, '_Oy
Dieus! Oy Dieus, de l'alba tantost ve!_' But for all that, my mouth will
resolutely discourse of the last Parisian flounces, or of your unfathomable
eyes, or of Monsieur de Voltaire's new tragedy of _Oreste_,--or, in fine,
of any topic you may elect."
He smiled, with a twinging undercurrent of regret that not even in
impendent death did he find any stimulus to the heroical. But the girl had
given a muffled cry.
"Look, Jean! Already they come for us."
Through the little garden a man was running, running frenziedly from
one wall to another when he found the place had no outlet save the gate
through which he had scuttled. It was fat Guiton, the steward of the Duc de
Puysange. Presently came Achille Cazaio with a wet sword, and harried the
unarmed old man, wantonly driving him about the poplars, pricking him in
the quivering shoulders, but never killing him. All the while the steward
screamed with a monotonous shrill wailing.
After a little he fell at Cazaio's feet, shrieking for mercy.
"Fool!" said the latter, "I am Achille Cazaio. I have no mercy in me."
He kicked the steward in the face two or three times, and Guiton, his
countenance all blood, black in the moonlight, embraced the brigand's
and wept. Presently Cazaio slowly drove his sword into the back of the
prostrate man, who shrieked, "O Jesu!" and began to cough and choke. Five
times Cazaio spitted the writhing thing, and afterward was Guiton's soul
released from the tortured body.
"Is it well, think you," said John Bulmer, "that I should die without first
killing Achille Cazaio?"
"No!" the girl answered, fiercely.
Then John Bulmer leaned upon the parapet of the Constable's Tower and
called aloud, "Friend Achille, your conduct disappoints me."
The man started, peered about, and presently stared upward. "Monsieur
Bulmaire, to encounter you is indeed an unlooked-for pleasure. May I
inquire wherein I have been so ill-fated as to offend?"
"You have an engagement to fight me on Thursday afternoon, friend Achille,
so that to all intent I hold a mortgage on your life. I submit that, in
consequence, you have no right to endanger that life by besieging castles
and wasting the night in assassinations."
"There is something in what you say, Monsieur Bulmaire," the brigand
replied, "and I very heartily apologize for not thinking of it earlier.
But in the way of business, you understand,--However, may I trust it will
please you to release me from this inconvenient obligation?" Cazaio added,
with a smile. "My men are waiting for me yonder, you comprehend."
"In fact," said John Bulmer, hospitably, "up here the moonlight is as clear
as day. We can settle our affair in five minutes."
"I come," said Cazaio, and plunged into the entrance to the Constable's
Tower.
"The pistol! quick!" said Claire.
"And for what, pray?" said John Bulmer.
"So that from behind, as he lifts the trap-door, I may shoot him through
the head. Do you stand in front as though to receive him. It will be quite
simple."