A beautiful light grew in her eyes as she listened. "Did I not warn
you that we Bretons know how to die?" she said.
I looked dully at Speed, who sat by the window, brooding over the
little woollen skirt on his knees, stroking it, touching the torn hem,
and at last folding it with unaccustomed and shaky hands.
There were noises outside our door, loud voices, hammering, the sound
of furniture being dragged over stone floors, and I scarcely noticed
it when our door was opened again.
Then somebody called out our names; a file of half-drunken soldiers
grounded arms in the passageway with a bang that brought us to our
feet, as Mornac, flushed with wine, entered unsteadily, drawn sword in
hand.
"I'm damned if I stay here any longer," he broke out, angrily. "I'll
see whether my rascals can't shoot straight by torch-light. Here, you!
Scarlett, I mean! And you, Speed; and you, too, madame; patter your
prayers, for you'll get no priest. Lieutenant, withdraw the guard at
the wall. Here, captain, march the battalion back to Paradise and take
the servants!"
A second later the drums began to beat, but Mornac, furious, silenced
them.
"They can hear you at sea!" he shouted. "Do you want a boat-load of
marines at your heels? Strike out those torches! Four will do for the
garden. March!"
The shuffling tread of the insurgent infantry echoed across the gravel
court-yard; torches behind the walls were extinguished; blackness
enveloped the cliffs.
"Well," broke out Speed, hoarsely, "good-bye, Scarlett."
He held out his hand.
"Good-bye," I said, stunned.
I dropped my hand as two soldiers placed themselves on either side of
him.
"Well, good-bye," he repeated, aimlessly; and then, remembering, he
went to the Countess and offered his hand.
"I am so sorry for you," she said, with a pallid smile. "You have
much to live for. But you must not feel lonely, monsieur; you will be
with us--we shall be close to you."
She turned to me, and her hands fell to her side.
"Are you contented?" she asked.
"Yes," I answered.
"I, too," she said, sweetly, and offered her hands.
I held them very tightly. "You say," I whispered, "that it is
not--love. But you do not speak for me. I love you."
A bright blush spread over brow and neck.
"So--it was love--after all," she said, under her breath. "God be
with us to-day--I love you."
"March!" cried Mornac, as two soldiers took station beside me.
"I beg you will be gentle with this lady," I said, angrily, as two
more soldiers pushed up beside the young Countess and laid their hands
on her shoulders.
"Who the devil are you giving orders to?" shouted Mornac, savagely.
"March!"
Speed passed out first; I followed; the Countess came behind me.
"Courage," I stammered, looking back at her as we stumbled out into
the torch-lit garden.
She smiled adorably. Her forefathers had mounted the guillotine
smiling.
Mornac pointed to the garden wall near the bench where we had sat
together. A soldier dressed like a Turco lifted a torch and set it in
the flower-bed under the wall, illuminating the spot where we were to
stand. As this soldier turned to come back I saw his face.
"Salah Ben-Ahmed!" I cried, hoarsely. "Do Marabouts do this
butcher's work?"
The Turco stared at me as though stunned.
"Salah Ben-Ahmed is a disgraced soldier!" I said, in a ringing
voice.
"It's a lie!" he shouted, in Arabic--"it's a lie, O my inspector!
Speak! Have these men tricked me? Are you not Prussians?"
"Silence! Silence!" bawled Mornac. "Turco, fall in! Fall in, I say!
What! You menace me?" he snarled, cocking his revolver.
Then a man darted out of the red shadows of the torch-light and fell
upon Mornac with a knife, and dragged him down and rolled on him,
stabbing him through and through, while the mutilated wretch screamed
and screamed until his soul struggled out through the flame-shot
darkness and fled to its last dreadful abode.
The Lizard rose, shaking his fagot knife; they fell upon him, clubbing
and stabbing with stock and bayonet, but he swung his smeared and
sticky blade, clearing a circle around him. And I think he could have
cut his way free had not Tric-Trac shot him in the back of the head.
Then a frightful tumult broke loose. Three of the torches were knocked
to the ground and trampled out as the insurgents, doubly drunken with
wine and the taste of blood, seized me and tried to force me against
the wall; but the Turco, with his shrill, wolf-like battle yelp,
attacked them, sabre-bayonet in hand. Speed, too, had wrested a rifle
from a half-stupefied ruffian, and now stood at bay before the
Countess; I saw him wielding his heavy weapon like a flail; then in
the darkness Tric-Trac shot at me, so close that the powder-flame
scorched my leg. He dropped his rifle to spring for my throat,
knocking me flat, and, crouching on me, strove to strangle me; and I
heard him whining with eagerness while I twisted and writhed to free
my windpipe from his thin fingers.
At last I tore him from my body and struggled to my feet. He, too, was
on his legs with a bound, running, doubling, dodging; and at his heels
I saw a dozen sailors, broadaxes glittering, chasing him from tree to
shrub.
"Speed!" I shouted--"the sailors from the _Fer-de-Lance_!"
The curtains of the house were on fire; through the hallway poured the
insurgent soldiery, stampeding in frantic flight across the court out
into the moors; and the marines, swarming along the cliffs, shot at
them as they ran, and laughed savagely when a man fell into the gorse,
kicking like a wounded rabbit.
Speed marked their flight, advancing coolly, pistol flashing; the
Turco, Ben-Ahmed, dark arms naked to the shoulder, bounded behind the
frightened wretches, cornering, hunting them through flower-beds and
bushes, stealthily, keenly, now creeping among the shadows, now
springing like a panther on his prey, until his blue jacket reeked and
his elbows dripped.
I had picked up a rifle with a broken bayonet; the Countess, clasping
my left arm, stood swaying in the rifle-smoke, eyes closed; and, when
a horrid screeching arose from the depths of the garden where they
were destroying Tric-Trac, she fell to shuddering, hiding her face on
my shoulder.
Suddenly Speed appeared, carrying a drenched little figure, partly
wrapped in a sailor's pea-jacket, slim limbs drooping, blue with
cold.
"Put out that fire in there," he said, hoarsely; "we must get her
into bed. Hurry, for God's sake, Scarlett! There's nobody in the
house!"
"Jacqueline! Jacqueline! brave little Bretonne," murmured the
Countess, bending forward and gathering the unconscious child into her
strong, young arms.
Through the dim dawn, through smoke and fading torch-light, we carried
Jacqueline into the house, now lighted up with an infernal red from
the burning dining-room.
"The house is stone; we can keep the flames to one room if we work
hard," I said. A sailor stood by the door wiping the stained blade of
his broadaxe, and I called on him to aid us.
A fresh company of sailors passed on the double, rifles trailing,
their officer shouting encouragement, And as we came in view of the
semaphore, I saw the signal tower on fire from base to top.
The gray moorland was all flickering with flashes where the bulk of
the insurgent infantry began firing in retreat; the marines' fusillade
broke out from Paradise village; rifle after rifle cracked along the
river-bank. Suddenly the deep report of a cannon came echoing landward
from the sea; a shell, with lighted fuse trailing sparks, flew over us
with a rushing whistle and exploded on the moors.
All this I saw from the house where I stood with Speed and a sailor,
buried in smoke, chopping out blazing woodwork, tearing the burning
curtains from the windows. The marines fired steadily from the windows
above us.
"They want the Red Terror!" laughed the sailors. "They shall have
it!"
"Hunt them out! Hunt them out!" cried an officer, briskly. "Fire!"
rang out a voice, and the volley broke crashing, followed by the
clear, penetrating boatswain's whistle sounding the assault.
Blackened, scorched, almost suffocated, I staggered back to the
tea-room, where the Countess stood clasping Jacqueline, huddled in a
blanket, and smoothing the child's wet curls away from a face as white
as death.
Together we carried her back through the smoking hallway, up the
stairs to my bedroom, and laid her in the bed.
The child opened her eyes as we drew the blankets.
"Where is Speed?" she asked, dreamily.
A moment later he came in, and she turned her head languidly and
smiled.
"Jacqueline! Jacqueline!" he whispered, bending close above her.
"Do you love me, Speed?"
"Ah, Jacqueline," he stammered, "more than you can understand."
Suddenly a step sounded on the stairs, a rifle-stock grounded,
clanging, and a sonorous voice rang out:
"Salute, O my brother of the toug! The enemies of France are dead!"
And in the silence around him Salah Ben-Ahmed the Marabout recited the
fatha, bearing witness to the eternal unity of God.
* * * * *
Late that night the light cavalry from Lorient rode into Paradise. At
dawn the colonel, established in the mayory, from whence its foolish
occupant had fled, sent for Speed and me, and when we reported he drew
from his heavy dolman our commissions, restoring us to rank and pay in
the regiment _de marche_ which he commanded.
At sunrise I had bade good-bye to the sweetest woman on earth; at noon
we were miles to the westward, riding like demons on Buckhurst's heavy
trail.
I am not sure that we ever saw him again, though once, weeks later,
Speed and I and a dozen hussars gave chase to a mounted man near St.
Brieuc, and that man might have been Buckhurst. He led us a
magnificent chase straight to the coast, where we rode plump into a
covey of Prussian hussars, who were standing on their saddles, hacking
away at the telegraph-wires with their heavy, curved sabres.
That was our first and last sight of the enemy in either Prussian or
communistic guise, though in the long, terrible days and nights of
that winter of '71, when three French armies froze, and the white
death, not the Prussians, ended all for France, rumors of insurrection
came to us from the starving capital, and we heard of the red flag
flying on the Hôtel-de-Ville, and the rising of the carbineers under
Flourens; and some spoke of the leader of the insurrection and called
him John Buckhurst.
That Buckhurst could have penetrated Paris neither Speed nor I
believed; but, as all now know, we were wrong, though the testimony
concerning his death[A] at the hands of his terrible colleague,
Mortier, was not in evidence until a young ruffian, known as "The
Mouse," confessed before he expiated his crimes on Sartory Plain in
1872.
Thus, for three blank, bitter months, freezing and starving, the 1st
Regiment _de marche_ of Lorient Hussars stood guard at Brest over the
diamonds of the crown of France.
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[A] This affair is dealt with in _Ashes of Empire_.