A DISAPPEARANCE.
THE old Seigneur del' Peyra was not exactly a changed man since his
descent into and release from the oubliette; he was rather the man he
had been of old with his dullness, inertness intensified. He spoke very
little, never referred to his adventures--it might almost be thought
that he had forgotten them, but that on the smallest allusion to Le Gros
Guillem his eye would fire, all the muscles of his face quiver, and he
would abruptly leave the society of such as spoke of the man who had so
ill-treated him.
Except for the sudden agitations into which he was thrown by such
allusions, he was almost torpid. He took no interest in his land, in his
people, in his castle. He sat much on a stone in the sun when the sun
shone, looking at the ground before him. When the cold and rainy weather
set in, then he sat in the fire-corner with his eyes riveted on the
flames. One thing he could not endure, and that was darkness. The coming
on of night filled him with unrest. He could not abide in a room where
did not burn a light. He would start from sleep during the night several
times to make sure that the lamp was still burning.
At first Jean had spoken to his father relative to the incidents of his
capture, and had asked him particulars about his treatment, but desisted
from doing so as he saw how profoundly it affected the old man, and how
slow he was of recovering his equanimity after such an attempt to
extract his recollections from him. Nor could he consult him about the
affairs of the Seigneurie. The old man seemed incapable of fixing his
mind on any such matters. Not that his brain had ceased to act, but that
it was preoccupied with one absorbing idea, from which it resented
diversion.
Jean made an attempt to sound his father's thoughts, but in vain, and he
satisfied himself that the only course open to him was to leave the old
man alone, and to trust to the restorative forces of Nature to recover
him. He had received a shock which had shaken his powers but had not
destroyed them. If left alone he would in time be himself again.
There was much to occupy the mind and take up the time of Jean del'
Peyra.
The winter had set in. The leaves had been shed from the trees. There
had set in a week of rain, and the river Vézère had swelled to a flood
red-brown in colour, sweeping away the soil rich in phosphates that
overlay the chalk, and which alone sustained vegetation. If the Vézère
were in flood, so also was the Dordogne, and both rivers being
impassable, the little Seigneurie of Le Peuch Ste. Soure was safe. It
was divided from its foe at Domme by these swollen dykes.
But floods would subside in time, the weather would clear, and although
it was not probable that Le Gros Guillem would attempt reprisals during
the winter, yet it would be injudicious not to maintain watch and be
prepared against an attack.
The peasant, impulsive and inconsiderate, was not to be trusted without
direction, and required to be watched so as to be kept to the ungrateful
task of semi-military service. He was easily stirred to acts of furious
violence, and as easily allowed himself to lapse into blind security.
Having taken and destroyed l'Eglise and beaten back the _routiers_ on
the Beune, the peasants considered that they had done all that could be
required of them; they hastily reconverted their swords into the
ploughshares that they had been, and dismounted their spears to employ
them for their proper use as pruning-hooks. At the same time that they
thus turned their implements of husbandry to peaceful ends, so did they
dismantle themselves of all military ambition, and revert to the
condition of the boor, whose thoughts are in the soil he turns and
returns, whose produce he reaps and mows. The peasant mind is not
flexible, and it is very limited in its range. It can think of but one
thing at a time, and it is wholly void of that nimbleness which is
acquired by association with men of many avocations and of intellectual
culture. For a moment, stirred by intolerable wrongs, his passions had
flared into an all-consuming flame. Now he was again the plodding
ploughman, happy to handle the muckfork and the goad.
Jean found it impossible to rouse the men to understand the necessity of
being ever on the alert against the foe. Gros Guillem, said they, had
pillaged Ste. Soure; he had done his worst; now he would go and plunder
elsewhere. He had tried conclusions with them and had been worsted; in
future he would test his strength against weaker men. _Allons!_ we have
had enough of fighting--there is much to be done on the farm. Jean del'
Peyra foresaw danger, and would not relax his efforts to be prepared to
meet it. He established sentinels to keep watch night and day, and he
marshalled the peasants and drilled them. They grumbled, and endeavoured
to shirk, and he had hard matter to enforce discipline. He received
tidings from Domme, and ascertained that the feet of the Captain were
completely restored; and that he was about the town and citadel as
usual.
He had matter to occupy him and divert his attention from Le Peuch. For
some time the great stress of war between the French and the English had
been in the north; there the Maid of Orleans had led to victory, and
there she had been basely deserted and allowed to fall into the hands of
the English. No sooner, however, had these latter burnt "the sorceress"
than they turned their attention to Guyenne. There matters had not been
favourable to the three Leopards. Bergerac, on the Dordogne, an
important mercantile centre devoted to the French cause, and which had
been long held by the English, had been freed, and had the Lilies waving
from its citadel. Then suddenly the English forces from Bordeaux had
appeared under the walls, and the garrison, unable to defend itself
unassisted, had fled, and once more the Lilies were thrown down and the
Leopards unfurled. But recently, owing to some outrage committed in the
town by some of the soldiers of the castle, the whole of the inhabitants
had risen in a mass, had surprised the garrison, and had butchered them
to a man. Bergerac was again French. For the last time it had borne the
English yoke. During three hundred years, with the exception of a few
intervals, it had been under English dominion (1150-1450), many a time
had French and English fought under its walls for the possession of such
a strong point, which by its position commanded the course of the
Dordogne. Tradition even says that in one day the town passed thrice
into English and thrice into French hands.
The recovery of Bergerac by the Count of Penthièvre, the Lieutenant of
the King of France in Guyenne, and the treatment of the garrison by the
citizens, alarmed Le Gros Guillem. He was keenly alive to the
disaffection of the town of Domme. He was in a less satisfactory
position than the commandant of Bergerac. For this latter place was
surrounded by strongholds of barons attached to the English cause, not
on principle, but for their own interest; the nearest town up the river,
Le Linde, was a _bastide_ in English hands. The heights bristled with
castles, all held by men strongly opposed to the crown of France, all
ready to harass in every way the citizens who had dared to free
themselves. The situation at Domme was other. Nearly in face of it was a
town almost as important in population, quite as securely defended by
Nature, and dominated by a castle of exceptional inexpugnability. The
Governor of this place was the brother of the Bishop of Sarlat, and
could not be bribed to betray his charge. From his eyrie every movement
of Guillem was watched. La Roque was a stronghold with the whole county
of Sarlat at its back, and thence it could be filled with men unseen
from Domme, to organise a sudden attack on the enemy's position. That
alone might be repelled, but that aided by treachery within the walls
might succeed.
Consequently Guillem was engaged in filling his ranks and accumulating
material of war. Desire as he might, and did, to chastise those at Ste.
Soure, he could not do so at the moment.
Never did he ride by La Roque without casting on it a covetous gaze. It
was the key to the whole of the Black Périgord--the county of Sarlat.
Jean del' Peyra's mind reverted often to Noémi. He had not seen her
since that incident of the ring. Then, attended by Amanieu and Roger,
she had ridden away at full gallop and had escaped. At the same time he
had succeeded in cutting the bands that held the arms of Heliot, and had
suffered him to ride away as well. Jean was naturally adverse to deeds
of bloodshed; and though the fellow justly merited death, he had no
desire that the peasantry should constitute themselves at once accusers,
judges, and executioners. Jean thought repeatedly of that strange
scene--his engagement by ring to Noémi, forced on him to save her from
the violence of the angry peasants--the only means available to him at
the moment for evading the question as to her parentage.
But though he had quickly proclaimed her to be his affianced bride, he
did not seriously purpose to make her his. Though he loved her, though
his heart eagerly recognised her generosity of feeling, the real
goodness that was in her, he could not forget to what stock she
belonged. It would not be possible for him to consider her as one who
would be his--when he was at deadly enmity with the father. It would not
be decent, natural, to take to his side the child of the ruffian who had
treated his own father in a manner of refined barbarity. It was known
throughout the country what Guillem had done--and the whole country
would point the finger of scorn at him if he so condoned the outrage as
to marry the daughter of the perpetrator of it. But, more than that, he
was certain to be engaged in hand-to-hand fight with Guillem. He did not
for a moment doubt that this man would seize the first opportunity of
attacking and probably of overwhelming him with numbers. When next they
met the meeting would be final, and fatal to one or the other. Either he
or Le Gros Guillem would issue from the struggle with his hands wet with
the blood of the other. It mattered not which turn matters took, what
the result was--either precluded union with Noémi.
He would have liked to have seen her, to have parted from her with words
of gratitude for what she had done for him and his father. He would have
liked to come to an understanding with her. She was not a child, surely
she did not hold those words spoken by him, that ring put on her finger,
as binding them together?
He was thinking over this, scheming how he could meet her, when one of
his men came to him and said--
"Monsieur Jean, have you seen your father?"
"When? Just now?"
"Yes," said the man, "recently."
"No, Antoine, not for several hours."
"Nor has anyone else."
"Not seen my father?"
"No, Monsieur Jean, we have been looking for him in every direction, and
cannot find him."
"He is in the castle."
"No, Monsieur Jean, there he is not."
"He is in the field."
"No, Monsieur Jean, he is nowhere."
"That is not possible."
"He is nowhere that we can find, and no one has seen him leave--no one
knows whether he has been carried off again, and if so, how, when, or by
whom?"
It was so--Ogier del' Peyra had vanished, not leaving a trace behind
him.