THE UNFOLDING OF THE DRAMA.
INSTINCTIVELY I had caught my companion to me to shield her from the
shock, and we stood an instant so with bated breath. Then a fierce
chorus of exulting yells startled us back to action.
“A grenade!” cried M. le Comte, and started for the stair.
But Pasdeloup hurled himself before him down the stair, through that
choking cloud of smoke. We were at his heels, and when we reached the
floor below I saw him tearing down the tinder-dry tapestry, which was
blazing fiercely. In a moment we had stamped out the flames upon the
torn and splintered floor.
“They must not do that a second time,” said M. le Comte when the danger
was past. “I thought the windows were shuttered.”
Pasdeloup went quickly to the window through which the bomb had come.
“This shutter is swinging loose,” he said, and leaned coolly out to
secure it.
A chorus of hoarse yells greeted him and a spatter of musket shots. I
heard the bullets clipping the stones about him; but he heeded them
not at all and pulled the heavy shutter into place and secured it with
careful deliberation.
“We must look to the others,” he said calmly when that was done, and
himself made the circuit of the other windows to assure himself that
the shutters were in place.
“Bring down the candle, Tavernay,” said M. le Comte. “We must see what
damage has been done here.”
Not until it blazed up from the spark which Pasdeloup struck into it
did I suspect that he was injured. Then, as the flame burned clearly, I
perceived a smear of blood across his face.
“Not wounded, Pasdeloup?” cried M. le Comte, whose eyes had been caught
by the same red stain.
“Only a scratch, monsieur,” Pasdeloup replied; but his master was not
satisfied until he had wiped away the blood and assured himself that
the wound was indeed a slight one. A bullet had grazed Pasdeloup’s
forehead, cutting in the skin a clean furrow which was bleeding
copiously. Pasdeloup submitted to this inspection with evident
impatience.
“It is nothing,” he repeated. “It is nothing. You are wasting time,
monsieur.”
“All right, my friend,” said his master, releasing him at last, “but I
wanted to be quite sure;” and he turned to an inspection of the room.
It was sadly wrecked, the furniture blown asunder, the tapestries
smoking on the splintered floor; but the walls were intact,
impregnable. M. le Comte smiled as he looked at them.
“As well assault a lion with pebbles as this tower with hand-grenades,”
he said. “We are safe as ever.”
“Except in one particular, monsieur,” broke in Pasdeloup in a low
voice. “They are now quite certain that we have taken refuge here.
Before, perhaps, they only suspected it.”
“That is true,” agreed his master thoughtfully. “Well, let us see what
the next move will be;” and he blew out the candle and mounted to the
platform. “Everything is safe,” he added, in answer to madame’s look,
and joined her at the parapet.
As for me, I boldly took the place I coveted beside the younger woman.
“It reminds one of Rome burning,” I said, gazing down at the flames and
the frenzied multitude. “I might almost fancy myself a second Nero--you
perceive that the populace is cursing us.”
“Yes,” she retorted without raising her eyes, “and no doubt, like Nero,
you would fiddle in the face of those curses.”
“There are moments,” I said, “when joy of heart enables one to smile at
any misfortune.”
“You are experiencing such a moment now? You are fortunate!”
“I am, indeed. Perhaps Nero also had the woman he loved beside him.”
“That would be an explanation, truly!”
“But one thing I am quite certain he did not have,” I added in a lower
tone, bending above her. “He did not have, warm against his heart, a
flower which his love had kissed and thrown to him.”
“We all of us have our foolish impulses,” she responded tartly; but I
saw the glow which deepened in her cheek.
“If that was a foolish impulse, mademoiselle,” I said, “I trust it will
not be the last one. But it was not mere impulse--it came from your
heart. One day you are going to love me.”
“Well, and what then?” she questioned quietly.
I confess I had no answer ready; what answer was it possible to give?
“I may add, M. de Tavernay,” she continued more severely, “that I
consider your jests exceedingly ill-timed. Why talk of a future which
will never exist?”
“But it will exist!” I protested.
“Then no doubt you have already devised a way of escape from this
tower. It is only necessary for us to depart whenever we are ready.”
“No, mademoiselle,” I said; “I see no way of escape at present; but I
trust my star.”
“Your star?”
“Yes; it has never yet failed me. To-day--or rather yesterday--after
apparently plunging me into the depths of an abyss it drew me forth and
led me straight to you.”
“And to this trap.”
“Ah, mademoiselle; beside the other, that does not matter!”
She turned from me with a gesture of impatience.
“Your mind travels always in a circle.”
“Of which you are the centre, mademoiselle. What other figure could my
mind describe, revolving as it does about you?”
“You have an answer always ready,” she retorted; “nevertheless I
think your star would have done better by you had it permitted you to
continue your journey to Poitiers unmolested. You would have arrived
there with a free heart, ready to fulfil your oath to your father; you
would have had no temptation to forget your honor; your life would have
been calm and happy.”
“The life of an ox would answer that description,” I answered. “Yet I
am very far from envying the ox.”
“And there you are wrong. Besides, I have still to add that as it
stands you have no future before you. You have come to the end of the
path.”
“So much the better,” I said, drawing nearer to her. “Since there is no
future, let us love each other. Let us approach the end heart against
heart.”
She did not answer, only stared moodily down over the parapet. The
château was wholly given over to the flames. They burst from every
window; they roared above the roof, and their scorching breath caused
us to shrink back a little.
“It is heart-breaking!” she cried, shielding her face with her hand;
and I saw that there were tears in her eyes. “That beautiful home! Ah,
those wretches will be punished!”
“What would you do with them, mademoiselle?” I asked.
“I would hang them every one. Men and women alike. Men and
women--beasts!”
And as I noted the sudden clenching of her hands and flashing of her
eyes, I could not but wonder at the complexities of woman’s nature.
“Let us not look at them,” I said. “Let us forget that they exist. Let
us remember only that we are here together and that there is no future.
Let us sit down here in the shadow of the wall and imagine that we are
again in the garden.”
“My imagination cannot touch such heroic heights, M. de Tavernay. In
the garden, I was happy, or nearly so----”
“You confess it, then?” I broke in eagerly; but she stopped me with a
gesture.
“I have always been happy--at least until the past few days. And in the
garden I fancied that even the little cloud which seemed to shadow me
would disappear. Now, on the contrary, I am far from happy.”
“You are at least no coward,” I said. “You are not afraid.”
“No, I am not afraid. It is the sense of helplessness which weighs upon
me and angers me. I have always ordered my life to suit myself; I have
always had control of the circumstances which concerned me. Yet here I
am now, caught like a rat in a trap. I can break my teeth against the
bars, and all in vain. I must wait for some miracle to deliver me, and
not only myself but my dearest friends. Meanwhile their home, their
beautiful home, is burned before my eyes, and I must look on helpless
while a mob of drunken brutes rejoices in its destruction. I know that
no miracle can restore it. And yet, M. de Tavernay, you ask me to
fancy myself in some fool’s paradise!”
“It was a paradise,” I agreed; “whether a fool’s or a wise man’s does
not matter. Paradise is always paradise.”
“Not for the onlookers!” she retorted.
“But what need those within care for those without? Ah, I
understand--you class yourself as an onlooker. You have not love to
work the alchemy for you,” I added sadly.
She looked up at me slowly with luminous eyes.
“Perhaps you are right,” she said. “I have never been really within the
pale. I have always stood outside, peering in, wondering why others
thought it so beautiful.”
I know not what folly I was about to utter, when a sudden tremendous
crash sounded behind me.
“The roof has fallen in,” said M. le Comte quietly, as we rushed to the
parapet. “That is the end of it.”
The flames leaped high into the air with a roar like the passing of a
mighty wind over a great forest. The mob seemed for the moment to have
forgotten us in the grandeur of that spectacle; but always at the foot
of the tower that little group of armed men stood apart.
The sudden burst of light threw their faces into strong relief, and
Pasdeloup, who had been staring down at them, uttered a sharp cry.
“He is there!” he said. “He is there!”
“Who is there, Pasdeloup?” demanded his master.
“Goujon! See!--that one with the cloak about him--there at the right!”
Quick as a flash M. le Comte snatched out his pistol, levelled it and
fired. There was a cry of pain from below and a man fell--but it was
not Goujon. M. le Comte put up his pistol with an oath of anger and
disappointment.
But hell itself had broken loose and such a fusillade of bullets rained
against the tower that we were forced to retire from the parapet. All
the fury of the ages seemed whirled upon us; all the blind madness
which centuries of oppression and injustice had engendered. Those of
the mob who were unarmed danced shrieking about the tower, shaking
their fists at it, or assailed the great stones with their nails. It
seemed that the very uproar was enough to shake it from its foundation.
“That was not wise,” said Pasdeloup gloomily. “It was the one thing
Goujon needed.”
“I know it!” confessed his master, and wiped his forehead with a
shaking hand. “Yet I would have risked it gladly had I only killed that
scoundrel. I must kill him--I must kill him. I could not rest in my
grave with him alive!”
“Who is it?” asked madame. “Who is it that you wish to kill?”
“The scoundrel who set these peasants on.”
“Who seeks your life?”
“Oh, more than my life, madame!” he answered hoarsely. “More than my
life! I could forgive him that!”
For a moment she stared at him, not understanding. Then her face went
white with horror and she put out a hand for support.
“It cannot come to that!” she murmured. “At least we will not let it
come to that!”
“No,” he said, and drew her to him. “Do not fear, my love. It shall
never come to that!”
The firing had slackened and at last we ventured to look down again.
The mob had drawn away from the tower and had gathered into little
groups, staring up at it.
“It is to be a siege,” said M. le Comte, laughing grimly. “If we were
only provisioned we might hold out indefinitely--and these rogues have
little patience.”
But Pasdeloup shook his head.
“You do not know them, monsieur,” he said. “They have patience enough.
But it is not a siege they are planning--it is an assault--I am sure of
it.”
“Well, let them plan,” retorted his master. “Let them assault. Much
good will it do them!”
“No doubt,” said Pasdeloup quietly, “the governor of the Bastille
uttered the same words when he looked down at the unarmed mob of Paris
from the battlement of his prison.”
“You are right, my friend,” agreed M. le Comte gently. “He did not
understand the power of the people. But I, who have been in La Vendée,
should know better. You think we are in danger, then?”
“Beyond question,” answered Pasdeloup. “And I am glad that it is
so--that there will be no siege. Since there is no succor for us
anywhere, we must in the end either starve or surrender. For myself I
prefer a short, sharp fight, with death at the end of it.”
“And I,” I said.
“For myself I can say the same,” agreed M. le Comte. “But for the
women!” and he glanced toward where they stood, sheltered by the
parapet.
“For the women,” said Pasdeloup grimly, “the last bullets must be
saved.”
“There is nothing, then, but to remain here and be murdered?” demanded
his master. “You believe that, Pasdeloup?”
“Not in the least, monsieur,” answered the other cheerfully. “We shall
first make every effort to escape.”
“But how?”
“I must consider it,” said Pasdeloup, with a self-assurance which at
another time would have been amusing. “There is no time to be lost;”
and he disappeared down the stair leading to the floor below.
My companion looked after him musingly.
“Ah, Tavernay,” he said, “I am beginning to suspect that there are
depths in these peasants of which we never dreamed. I have seen them
fight like heroes, and I had always thought them cowards. Here to-night
I have seen one stand erect, a man, and I had fancied that they could
only crawl. When France wins through this peril and shakes off this
madness which has her by the throat, there will be such a searching of
hearts as the world has never seen!”
A sudden stillness had fallen upon the mob below; no sound rose to the
platform save the crackling of the flames. We looked down to see what
this strange silence meant, and found that the little groups of people
had drawn still farther away from the tower and were watching it with
a kind of awed expectancy. Their silence was infinitely more sinister
than their shouting. There was something about it--something horrible
and threatening--which sent a chill to the marrow. Why should they
stand there staring at the tower? What frightful thing was about to
happen?
My companion evidently felt the same foreboding, for he gazed down at
them with drawn brows.
“What do they mean?” he muttered. “What do they mean?”
He stared a moment longer, then turned to his wife.
“Come hither, my love,” he said, and when she came, drew her to him and
held her close.
My heart was full to bursting. In an instant I was beside Charlotte.
“My love!” I said softly, and held out my arms to her.
“What is it?” she whispered. “Oh, what is it?”
“I do not know. They are preparing something, awaiting something. It is
the end perhaps.”
“The end!” she echoed hoarsely. “The end!” and she stared up into my
eyes, her lips trembling.
“And if it were,” I questioned gently, “would you not wish to meet it
with my arms about you? Oh, they are longing for you!”
She did not answer, but I fancied she swayed toward me.
In an instant she was close against my heart--close against my heart!
“Since this is the end,” I said softly, “since there is no future, you
are going to love me, are you not, Charlotte? And there is a future! In
a moment more nothing can ever part us--your soul and mine! Look at me,
my love!”
The tears were streaming down her face as she lifted it to mine.
“Kiss me!” she whispered. “Kiss me!”
I bent and kissed her and felt her warm lips answer. Oh, now I could
smile in the very face of death!
“I love you!” I murmured, my pulses bounding wildly. “I love you!--love
you!--love you! Now and always, I love you!--for life or death!----”
A deep roar burst upon the night, a sheet of livid flame leaped upward
toward us, and the tower swayed and trembled as though smitten by some
mighty hand.
[Illustration: A SHEET OF LIVID FLAME LEAPED UPWARD TOWARD US, AND THE
TOWER SWAYED]