A COUP-D'ÉTAT
As the Marquis de Gemosac's step was already on the stairs, Barebone was
spared the necessity of agreeing in words to the inevitable.
A moment later the old man hurried into the room. He had not even waited
to remove his coat and gloves. A few snow-flakes powdered his shoulders.
"Ah!" he cried, on perceiving Barebone. "Good--you are safe!" He turned
to speak to some one who was following him up the stairs with the slower
steps of one who knew not his way.
"All is well!" he cried. "He is here. Give yourself no anxiety."
And the second comer crossed the threshold, coming suddenly out of the
shadow of the staircase. It was Dormer Colville, white with snow, his
face grey and worn. He shook hands with Barebone and bowed to Juliette,
but the Marquis gave him no time to speak.
"I go down into the town," he explained, breathlessly. "The streets are
full. There is a crowd on the marketplace, more especially round the
tobacconist's, where the newspapers are to be bought. No newspapers, if
you please. The Paris journals of last Sunday, and this is Friday
evening. Nothing since that. No Bordeaux journal. No news at all from
Paris: absolute silence from Toulouse and Limoges. 'It is another
revolution,' they tell each other. Something has happened and no one
knows what. A man comes up to me and tugs at my sleeve. 'Inside your
walls, Monsieur le Marquis, waste no time,' he whispers, and is gone. He
is some stable-boy. I have seen him somewhere. I! inside my walls! Here
in Gemosac, where I see nothing but bare heads as I walk through the
streets. Name of God! I should laugh at such a precaution. And while I am
still trying to gather information the man comes back to me. 'It is not
the people you have to fear,' he whispers in my ear, 'it is the
Government. The order for your arrest is at the Gendarmerie, for it was I
who took it there. Monsieur Albert was arrested yesterday, and is now in
La Rochelle. Madame de Chantonnay's house is guarded. It is from Madame I
come.' And again he goes. While I am hesitating, I hear the step of a
horse, tired and yet urged to its utmost. It is Dormer Colville, this
faithful friend, who is from Paris in thirty-six hours to warn us. He
shall tell his story himself."
"There is not much to tell," said Colville, in a hollow voice. He looked
round for a chair and sat down rather abruptly. "Louis Bonaparte is
absolute master of France; that is all. He must be so by this time. When
I escaped from Paris yesterday morning nearly all the streets were
barricaded. But the troops were pouring into the city as I rode out--and
artillery. I saw one barricade carried by artillery. Thousands must have
been killed in the streets of Paris yesterday--"
"--And, _bon Dieu!_ it is called a _coup-d'état_," interrupted the
Marquis.
"That was on Tuesday," explained Colville, in his tired voice--"at six
o'clock on Tuesday morning. Yesterday and Wednesday were days of
massacre."
"But, my friend," exclaimed the Marquis, impatiently, "tell us how it
happened. You laugh! It is no time to laugh."
"I do not know," replied Colville, with an odd smile. "I think there is
nothing else to be done--it is all so complete. We are all so utterly
fooled by this man whom all the world took to be a dolt. On Tuesday
morning he arrested seventy-eight of the Representatives. When Paris
awoke, the streets had been placarded in the night with the decree of the
President of the Republic. The National Assembly was dissolved. The
Council of State was dissolved. Martial law was declared. And why? He
does not even trouble to give a reason. He has the army at his back. The
soldiers cried '_Vive l'Empereur_' as they charged the crowd on
Wednesday. He has got rid of his opponents by putting them in prison.
Many, it is said, are already on their way to exile in Cayenne; the
prisons are full. There is a warrant out against myself; against you,
Barebone; against you, of course, Monsieur le Marquis. Albert de
Chantonnay was arrested at Tours, and is now in La Rochelle. We may
escape--we may get away to-night--"
He paused and looked hurriedly toward the door, for some one was coming
up the stairs--some one who wore sabots. It was the servant, Marie, who
came unceremoniously into the room with the exaggerated calm of one who
realises the gravity of the situation and means to master it.
"The town is on fire," she explained, curtly; "they have begun on the
Gendarmerie. Doubtless they have heard that these gentlemen are to be
arrested, and it is to give other employment to the gendarmes. But the
cavalry has arrived from Saintes, and I come upstairs to ask Monsieur to
come down and help. It is my husband who is a fool. Holy Virgin! how many
times have I regretted having married such a blockhead as that. He says
he cannot raise the drawbridge. To raise it three feet would be to gain
three hours. So I came to get Monsieur," she pointed at Barebone with a
steady finger, "who has his wits on the top always and two hands at the
end of his arms."
"But it is little use to raise the drawbridge," objected the Marquis.
"They will soon get a ladder and place it against the breach in the wall
and climb in."
"Not if I am on the wall who amuse myself with a hayfork, Monsieur le
Marquis," replied Marie, with that exaggerated respect which implies a
knowledge of mental superiority. She beckoned curtly to Loo and clattered
down the stairs, followed by Barebone. The others did not attempt to go
to their assistance, and the Marquis de Gemosac had a hundred questions
to ask Colville.
The Englishman had little to tell of his own escape. There were so many
more important arrests to be made that the overworked police of Monsieur
de Maupas had only been able to apportion to him a bungler whom Colville
had easily outwitted.
"And Madame St. Pierre Lawrence?" inquired the Marquis.
"Madame quitted Paris on Tuesday for England under the care of John
Turner, who had business in London. He kindly offered to escort her
across the Channel."
"Then she, at all events, is safe," said the Marquis, with a little wave
of the hand indicating his satisfaction. "He is not brilliant, Monsieur
Turner--so few English are--but he is solid, I think."
"I think he is the cleverest man I know," said Dormer Colville,
thoughtfully. And before they had spoken again Loo Barebone returned.
He, like Marie, had grasped at once the serious aspect of the situation,
whereas the Marquis succeeded only in reaching it with a superficial
touch. He prattled of the political crisis in Paris and bade his friends
rest assured that law and order must ultimately prevail. He even seemed
to cherish the comforting assurance that Providence must in the end
interfere on behalf of a Legitimate Succession. For this old noble was
the true son of a father who had believed to the end in that King who
talked grandiloquently of the works of Seneca and Tacitus while driving
from the Temple to his trial, with the mob hooting and yelling
imprecations into the carriage windows.
The Marquis de Gemosac found time to give a polite opinion on John Turner
while the streets of Gemosac were being cleared by the cavalry from
Saintes, and the Gendarmerie, burning briskly, lighted up a scene of
bloodshed.
"We have raised the drawbridge a few feet," said Barebone; "but the
chains are rusted and may easily be broken by a blacksmith. It will serve
to delay them a few minutes; but it is not the mob we seek to keep out,
and any organised attempt to break in would succeed in half an hour. We
must go, of course."
He turned to Colville, with whom he had met and faced difficulties in the
past. Colville might easily have escaped to England with Mrs. St. Pierre
Lawrence, but he had chosen the better part. He had undertaken a long
journey through disturbed France only to throw in his lot at the end of
it with two pre-condemned men. Loo turned to him as to one who had proved
himself capable enough in an emergency, brave in face of danger.
"We cannot stay here," he said; "the gates will serve to give us an
hour's start, but no more. I suppose there is another way out of the
château."
"There are two ways," answered the Marquis. "One leads to a house in the
town and the other emerges at the mill down below the walls. But, alas!
both are lost sight of. My ancestors--"
"I know the shorter one," put in Juliette, "the passage that leads to the
mill. I can show you the entrance to that, which is in the crypt of the
chapel, hidden behind the casks of wine."
She spoke to Barebone, only half-concealing, as Marie had done, the fact
that the great respect with which the Marquis de Gemosac was treated was
artificial, and would fall to pieces under the strain of an emergency--a
faint echo of the old regime.
"When you are gone," the girl continued, still addressing Barebone,
"Marie and I can keep them out at least an hour--probably more. We may be
able to keep them outside the walls all night, and when at last they come
in it will take them hours to satisfy themselves that you are not
concealed within the enceinte."
She was quite cool, and even smiled at him with a white face.
"You are always right, Mademoiselle, and have a clear head," said
Barebone.
"But no heart?" she answered in an undertone, under cover of her father's
endless talk to Colville and with a glance which Barebone could not
understand.
In a few minutes Dormer Colville pronounced himself ready to go, and
refused to waste further precious minutes in response to Monsieur de
Gemosac's offers of hospitality. No dinner had been prepared, for Marie
had sterner business in hand and could be heard beneath the windows
urging her husband to display a courage superior to that of a rabbit.
Juliette hurried to the kitchen and there prepared a parcel of cold meat
and bread for the fugitives to eat as they fled.
"We might remain hidden in a remote cottage," Barebone had suggested to
Colville, "awaiting the development of events, but our best chance is
'The Last Hope.' She is at Bordeaux, and must be nearly ready for sea."
So it was hurriedly arranged that they should make their way on foot to a
cottage on the marsh while Jean was despatched to Bordeaux with a letter
for Captain Clubbe.
"It is a pity," said Marie, when informed of this plan, "that it is not I
who wear the breeches. But I will make it clear to Jean that if he fails
to carry out his task he need not show his face at the gate again."
The Marquis ran hither and thither, making a hundred suggestions, which
were accepted in the soothing manner adopted toward children. He assured
Juliette that their absence would be of short duration; that there was
indeed no danger, but that he was acceding to the urgent persuasions of
Barebone and Colville, who were perhaps unnecessarily alarmed--who did
not understand how affairs were conducted in France. He felt assured that
law and order must prevail.
"But if they have put Albert de Chantonnay in prison, why should you be
safe?" asked Juliette. To which the Marquis replied with a meaning cackle
that she had a kind heart, and that it was only natural that it should be
occupied at that moment with thoughts of that excellent young man who, in
his turn, was doubtless thinking of her in his cell at La Rochelle.
Which playful allusion to Albert de Chantonnay's pretensions was received
by their object with a calm indifference.
"When Jean returns," she said, practically, "I will send him to you at
the Brémonts' cottage with food and clothing. But you must not attempt to
communicate with us. You would only betray your whereabouts and do no
good to us. We shall be quite safe in the château. Marie and I and Madame
Maugiron are not afraid."
At which the Marquis laughed heartily. It was so amusing to think that
one should be young and pretty--and not afraid. In the mean time Barebone
was sealing his letter to Captain Clubbe. He had written it in the
Suffolk dialect, spelling all the words as they are pronounced on that
coast and employing when he could the Danish and Dutch expressions in
daily use on the foreshore, which no French official seeking to translate
could find in any dictionary.
Loo gave his instructions to Jean himself, who received them in a silence
not devoid of intelligence. The man had been round the walls and reported
that nothing stirred beneath them; that there was more than one fire in
the town, and that the streets appeared to be given over to disorder and
riot.
"It is assuredly a change in the Government," he explained, simply. "And
there will be many for Monsieur l'Abbé to bury on Sunday."
Jean was to accompany them to the cottage of an old man who had once
lived by ferrying the rare passenger across the Gironde. Having left them
here, he could reach Blaye before daylight, from whence a passage up the
river to Bordeaux would be easily procurable.
The boatman's cottage stood on the bank of a creek running into the
Gironde. It was a lone building hidden among the low dunes that lie
between the river and the marsh. Any one approaching it by daylight would
be discernible half an hour in advance, and the man's boat, though old,
was seaworthy. None would care to cross the lowlands at night except
under the guidance of one or two, who, like Jean, knew their way even in
the dark.
Colville and Barebone had to help Jean to move the great casks stored in
the crypt of the old chapel by which the entrance to the passage was
masked.
"It is, I recollect having been told, more than a passage--it is a ramp,"
explained the Marquis, who stood by. "It was intended for the passage of
horses, so that a man might mount here and ride out into the mill-stream,
actually beneath the mill-wheel which conceals the exit."
Juliette, a cloak thrown over her evening dress, had accompanied them and
stood near, holding a lantern above her head to give them light. It was
an odd scene--a strange occupation for the last of the de Gemosacs.
Through the gaps in the toppling walls they could hear the roar of voices
and the occasional report of a firearm in the streets of the town below.
The door opened easily enough, and Jean, lighting a candle, led the way.
Barebone was the last to follow. Within the doorway he turned to say
good-bye. The light of the lantern flickered uncertainly on Juliette's
fair hair.
"We may be back sooner than you expect, mademoiselle," said Barebone.
"Or you may go--to England," she answered.