THE CHÂTEAU DES PIERRETTES.
“_Nous y voici!_”
The carriage pulled back with a jerk, so that the prisoner Michel, who
sat opposite us, was almost thrown into our laps. One of our grimy
escort appeared at the window.
“Dog of a thief!” he growled. “Is this the turning?”
The other _sacréd_ below his breath and nodded sullenly. A vast
chestnut (the thick of its butt must have been thirty feet in
circumference) stood at the entrance to a narrow lane. Turning, with a
worrying of wheels, down the latter, we continued our journey.
Southwards from Coutras we had broken into a _plat_ of country very
wild and sterile; but now we were amongst trees again--oak, chestnut,
and walnut--that thronged the damp hollows and flung themselves over
the low hills in irresistible battalions.
Suddenly Michel bent forward and touched my companion’s knee
menacingly. The rascal was near restored to himself, and his lowering
eyes were full of gloom.
“The treasure, monsieur,” he said; “is that the condition of my
liberty?”
“I have said--discover it to me and thou shalt go free.”
“But I, monsieur, I also must make a condition.”
Crépin stared. The man bent still more earnestly forward.
“Mademoiselle Carinne----”
“The niece of De Lâge----?”
“She must be considered--respected. I will not have her insulted with
a look.”
“What now, Michel?”
“Oh, monsieur! you may do as you will with the old, hard man; but
her--her----”
“And is it for the lady’s sake thou hast forborne hitherto to
appropriate this treasure, the hiding-place of which thou wilt buy thy
life by revealing?”
“It is so. I have driven a desperate trade, starving often with this
knowledge in my breast.”
“But why?”
“How can I tell? I have known her from a child. Once she struck me
that I killed a cheeping wolf-cub she had brought from the snow; and
then she was sorry and kissed the little stupid bruise; and I swore my
arm should rot before it lost the will to protect her.”
“I will do my best.”
“But that is not enough. My God! if I were to sacrifice mademoiselle’s
_dot_ without purpose.”
“The purpose is thy life.”
“That were nothing were she dishonoured.”
I put in a serene word--
“Yet it seems you would condemn her to poverty to save your skin?”
“That is different. I should have life; and life means many
things--the power, possibly, to influence her fortunes; at least the
wash of wine again in one’s dusty throat.”
“Michel,” I said, “I must applaud you for a capital rogue.”
He stared at me sombrely, muttered, “_Je suis ce que je suis_,” and
sank back in his corner.
We were running between dark hedges at the time. Suddenly we came
among farm-buildings, a thronging dilapidated group. The byres
mouldered on their props; the flat stones of the roofs had flaked
generations of rubbish upon the weedy ground beneath.
Crépin rubbed his hands.
“It is well,” he said. “This without doubt is a skinflint.”
We turned a corner and passed the entrance to a ruined drive. Here the
tall iron gates, swinging upon massive posts of rubble-stone, had been
recently, it seemed, torn from their moorings of grass and knotted
bindweed, for the ground was scarred and the lower bars of metal hung
with rags of drooping green. Crépin’s features underwent another
change at the sight.
“But what is this?” he muttered. “Something unaccustomed--some
scare--some panic?”
He looked with sudden fury at the prisoner.
“If he has got wind of our coming--has escaped with----”
He broke off, showing his teeth and grinding his hands together. At
the moment we came in view of the château.
It was an old grey house--built of the same material as the
gate-pillars--with a high-pitched roof and little corner _tourelles_.
Once, presumably, a possession of importance, decay and neglect had
now beggared it beyond description. Yet within and without were
evidences of that vulgar miserly spirit that seeks by inadequate
tinkering to deceive with half-measures. The tangled grass of the lawn
was cut only where its untidiness would have been most in evidence,
and its litter left where it fell. Triton blew his conch from a fine
fountain basin near the middle of the plot; but the shell, threatening
to break away, had been fastened to the sea-god’s lips with a ligament
of twine that was knotted round the head. A crippled bench was propped
with a stone; a shattered ball-capital at the entrance-door held
together with a loop of wire. What restoration that was visible was
all in this vein of ludicrous economy.
But not a sign of life was about--no footstep in the grounds, no face
at any window. To all appearance the place was desolate.
We drew up at the broken stone porch. The door was already flung wide,
and we entered, with all the usual insolent clatter of “fraternity,”
an echoing hall. Here, as elsewhere, were dust and decay--inconsequent
patching and the same tawdry affectation of repair.
A shallow flight of stairs, broad and oaken, led straight up to a
little low gallery that bisected the hall like a transom. Up these
steps we scuttled, the escort driving the prisoner amongst them, and
came to a corridor from which a number of closed doors shut off the
living rooms of the house.
Suddenly Crépin put up his hand and motioned us to silence. From one
of the invisible chambers, some distance down the corridor, rose and
fell, like wind in a key-hole, a little blasphemous complaining voice.
“In the sober moonlight of my days!” we made it out to cry--“after
scaling the rough peaks of self-denial, thus to be tilted over into
the depths again by a lying Providence!”
There followed some shrill storming of nouns and epithets; then a
pause, out of which the voice snapped once more--
“I hear you, you scum of ditches--you stinking offal of the
Faubourgs--you publicans ennobled of a short-sighted Saviour!--Come
back and finish your work, and I will spit poison on you that you
shall follow me to the hell--to the hell, I say----”
The furious dragging of a chair mangled the sentence; then came a
jarring thump and a further shrieking of oaths. With one impulse we
made for the door, threw it open, and burst into the room. In the
midst of a lofty chamber lay a little man struggling on the floor, a
pretty heavy _prie-dieu_, to which he had been bound with his arms
behind his back, jerking and bobbing above him with his every kick.
“_Mais c’est une tortue!_” cried one of the crew, with a howl of
laughter.
The tortoise twisted up its face, disfigured with passion. It was the
face, without doubt, of the little _fesse-Mathieu_ of Février’s
restaurant.
The room in which he lay was of good proportions, but furnished
meagrely, and informed with the same spirit of graceless economy as
was apparent without. For the dark ancient panels of its walls had
been smeared with some light-grey wash, and an attempt made to
decorate them with plaster wreaths and festoons in the Louis Quinze
style. The work, however, had been left unfinished, and, so far as it
went, was crude and amateurish to a degree. Obviously, here was an
example of that species of niggard that will try to cheat a dozen
trades by wringing the gist of all out of one poor factotum.
But Crépin stood with corrugated forehead; for there were other signs
in the room than those of parsimony--signs in plenty, in fact, that he
had been forestalled in his quest. Chairs and tables were overturned,
a bureau was smashed almost to pieces, great rents appeared in the
panelling of the walls, where search had been instituted, one would
judge, for secret depositories.
A savage oath exploded from _M. le Représentant’s_ lips.
“That spy--that swaggerer--that Lacombe!” he muttered, looking at me.
“He was vanished this morning--he and his ragged tail--when we rose.
He got scent, without doubt, and has played outrider to my mission of
search. If it is so; if he has found and removed--my God! but for all
his Tallien and the Committee of Bordeaux he shall dance--he shall
dance!”
He turned furiously to his men.
“Put the rascal upright,” he bellowed.
A couple of them lifted and spun the chair to its legs, so that the
old man’s skull jerked against the head-rail with a clack like that of
a mill-hopper. He did not seem to notice the blow. His eyes, ever
since they had alighted on this new influx of brigands, had been set
like a fish’s--wondering and unwinking. Now they slowly travelled,
taking in Crépin, Citizen Thibaut, the escort, until they
stopped--actually, it appeared, with a click--at Michel. His mouth
puckered, and, like a ring blown by a smoker, a wavering “O!” issued
from it.
“Your _ci-devant_ servant?” said Crépin, grimly.
The old man nodded his head.
“Michel. But, yes--it is Michel.”
“Thou owest him compensation for that long tyranny of service.”
“I owe him nothing.”
“And me, citizen? Dost thou remember the Abbaye St Germain and the
killings of September?”
I struck in with the question. I was willing, I think, for the girl’s
sake, to identify myself with a past incident.
He looked at me bitterly, but with no recognition in his eyes.
“I deplore the cursed fortune,” he cried in grief, “that preserved me
but for this!”
“How now, old fool!” said Crépin, with impatience. “Thou shalt go
free when Michel has revealed to me thy secret place of hoarding.”
M. de Lâge gave the crying snarl of a wolf.
“Let him go--the ingrate and the traitor! What, Michel! dost thou
mangle the hand that gave thee soft litter for thy couch and honest
bread for thy belly? Look, Michel!--the white garlands on the walls
there! Dost thou remember how thou wrought’st them to pleasure thy
mistress--to win her from the depression she suffered in the sombre
oak and its long history of gloom? There they cling unfinished,--thy
solemn rebuke, Michel. Thy attachment to her was the one reality, thou
wouldst say, in a world of shadows, and yet the blatant fanfare of
those shadows was all that was needed to win thee from the reality.
And what is the price of thy kiss, Judas?”
The man hung his head.
“Not your life, monsieur,” he muttered.
“Nay; but only that which makes my life endurable. And the
forfeit--what is that?”
“_My_ life, monsieur.”
De Lâge drew in his breath with a cruel sound.
“_Hélas!_” he cried. “You will have to pay the penalty! the faithful
servant will have to pay the penalty!”
Crépin uttered an exclamation and strode forward.
“You have been stripped?” said he.
“Of all, monsieur, of all. There have been others here before you this
morning--fine _sans-culotte_ preachers of equality and the gospel of
distribution, whose practice, nevertheless, is to enrich the poor at
the expense of the wealthy. They were brave fellows by their own
showing; yet they must truss me here before they dared brandish the
fruits of their robbery before my eyes!”
Suddenly he was straining and screaming in his bonds, his face like a
map of some inhuman territory of the passions, branched with veins for
rivers of blood.
“Free me that I may kill some one!” he shrieked. “I am mad to groove
my fingers in flesh! The time for concessions is past. I was as wax in
their hands till they unearthed my plate, my coins, my riches. Now,
now----”
He was indeed beyond himself, a better man--or devil--in his despair
than the money-conscious craven who had palpitated over that little
“_Vive le roi!_” once upon a time.
Crépin regarded the struggling creature with harsh contempt. This
plebeian soul also was translated, but not to his moral promotion. It
was evident he had enlarged the scope of his anticipations greatly in
view of his prisoner’s promise; and his disappointment brought the
spotted side of him uppermost.
“Take the dog,” he cried in a hoarse voice (signifying Michel by a
gesture), “and whip him to the lair! At least we will look to see if
the wolves have left a bone or two for our picking.”
“_M. le Représentant_,” I ventured to say, “be just to consider that
the prisoner is by all rights my prisoner. Anyhow he has stuck to his
side of the bargain. Let me hold you in fairness responsible for his
safe-conduct.”
He turned upon me like a teased bullock.
“In fairness!” he cried--“in fairness! But you presume, citizen, on
your position.”
He looked as if he could have struck me; all the beast in the man was
prominent. Then he gave the order to march, and I found myself left
alone with the little grotesque in the chair.
I was hot and indignant; but the passion of the other seemed to have
exploded itself into a rain of emotion. His dry cheeks quivered; the
tears ran down them like moisture on an old wall.
“Monsieur,” I said, softly, “I know not whether to applaud or upbraid
you. And where is Mademoiselle Carinne?”
He seemed quite broken in a moment--neither to resent nor to be
surprised at my mention of the girl’s name.
“She is fled,” he whimpered--“the little graceless cabbage is fled.”
“To safety, I hope?”
“To the devil, for all I care.”
“Monsieur, I hold your wretchedness an excuse, even if you have been
careless of----”
He caught me up, staring at me woefully.
“Careless? but, my God! I have pampered and maintained her ever since
her brown head was a crutch to my fingers; and this is how she repays
me.”
“What has she done?”
“She has condemned me to beggary for a prudish sentiment--me, in my
old forlorn age. From the first I saw that the test might come--that
she might be called upon to employ the privileges of her sex on my
behalf. Free-thought, free-love! Bah! What are they but a
self-adaptation to the ever-changing conditions of life. The spirit
need not subscribe to such mere necessities of being; and a little
gratitude at least was due to me. She has none, and for that may God
strike her dead!”
“What has she done?”
“Done!” (His voice rose to a shriek again.) “But, what has she
not?--That scoundrel Lacombe would have exchanged me my riches--my
pitiful show of tankards that he had unearthed--for her favour. She
would not; she refused to go with him; she reviled and cursed me--me
that had been her bulwark against poverty.”
“You would have sold her honour for your brazen pots?”
“Gold and silver, monsieur; and it was only a question of temporary
accommodation. In a few months she might have returned, and all would
have been well again. But honour--bah! it will survive a chin-chuck
better than loss of wealth. But she would not. She escaped from us by
a lying ruse, and they sought her far and near without avail. At the
last they robbed and maltreated me, and for that may hell seize them
and fester in their bones!”
“And in thine, thou pestilence!”
My fury and my contempt joined with a clap, like detonating acids.
“Lie there and rot!” I shouted, and so flung out of the room.
My heart blazed. That white girl--that Carinne. I could recall her
face, could picture her in her loneliness arraigned before Lacombe and
his _sans-culottes_ and his reptile prisoner--defying them all. With
some vague instinct of search directing my fury, I hurried through
room after room of the empty house. Each was like its neighbour,
vulgarised, scantily furnished, disfigured by the search that had been
conducted therein. Once I broke into the girl’s own bed-chamber (it
was hers, I will swear, by token of little feminine fancies consistent
with the character I had gifted her withal), and cursed the beasts who
had evidently made it the rallying-point of their brutal jesting. But
this, obviously, must be the last place in which to seek her, and I
quickly left it.
Not a soul did I happen upon. Of whomsoever the household had
consisted, no single individual but the old villain in the chair was
remained to brazen out the situation.
At last I made my way into the grounds once more, issuing from the
rear of the building into a patch of dense woodland that flowed up to
within fifty yards of the walls. I heard voices, and, plunging down a
moist track amongst the trees, came immediately in view of my party
returning to the house. Then I saw there were two women conducted in
its midst, and my throat jumped, and I ran forward.
At least my sudden apprehension was comforted. These crying wenches
were of the working class--comely domestics by their appearance.
Crépin stayed them all when he came up to me. The ugly look had not
left his face--was intensified on it, in fact. He stared at me,
haughty and lowering at once, and was altogether a very offensive
creature.
“Has Citizen Thibaut any further exception to take to my methods of
procedure?” he said, ironically.
I looked at him, but did not reply.
“Because,” he went on, “perhaps his permission should be asked that
these pretty citizenesses accompany me in my carriage?”
“_Mais non, monsieur--par pitié, mais non!_” cried one of the wenches
in a sobbing voice.
He bent down to her--a sicklily self-revealed animal.
“Hush, _ma petite_!” he said. “We of the Republic do not ask--we take.
Thou shalt have a brighter gown than ever De Lâge furnished for thy
shapely limbs.”
She stopped crying, and seemed to listen at that. He came erect again,
with a smile on his face and his lips licking together, and regarded
me defiantly.
“The Citizen Representative can please himself,” I said, coldly, and
pushed past them all and walked on. Crépin turned to look after me,
gave a peculiar cynical laugh, and cried “_En avant!_” to his party.
I was to read the significance of his attitude in a moment--to read it
in the dead form of Michel hanging from a tree.
I rushed back along the path, and caught the others as they issued
from the wood. Crépin heard me coming, bade his men on to the house,
and returned a pace or two to meet me. His mood asserted, he was
something inclined, I suppose, to a resumption of the better terms
between us. At any rate, his expression now was a mixture of
embarrassment and a little apprehension. But I spoke to him very
staidly and quietly--
“M. Crépin, it dawns upon me that I am slow to learn the methods of
the new morality, and that I shall never justify your choice of a
secretary.”
“You are going to leave me.”
“There will be the more room in the coach for monsieur’s harem.”
I made him a low bow and went off amongst the trees. He called after
me--there was some real regret in his voice--“But you will come to
harm! be wise!--monsieur!”
I paid no heed; and the thickets received and buried me.