How long he had sat there since he had entered the chamber he did not
know; he had had no consciousness of the old woman having entered the
room with the lamp, and having told him that his dinner awaited him in
the smaller room beyond.
It was with difficulty that he roused himself to a perception of her
voice, when she stood again at his elbow, and called him thrice in a
low, shrill, startled voice.
“Let me alone, my friend,” he said to her; “I am occupied--I do not
need to dine.”
“It is not that. Hearken!” said Caterina, and something in her tone
awakened him to attention. “Sir--sir--there is no one in the house.”
He turned and looked at her.
“No one in the house? There must be some of the men--some of the women.
Have they not supped?”
“That is it, sir,” she answered. “Supper-hour is long past, and never
yet did they fail to get together to fill their bellies. Save old
Matteo, who is daft, and Dreina, who is lame, there is not a soul in
the place. There must be some meaning in it, sir. Never did my folks
dare to cross the threshold without leave.”
“It is strange,” said Cyrille, as he comprehended the singularity of
her intelligence. “They do indeed obey you usually like children. Where
can they all be gone?”
“The Lord knows, sir. But I am afraid----”
Her ruddy face was blanched.
“Of what are you afraid?”
“That they have left the house because they know there will be an
attack on it.”
“Is it possible?”
“Possible enough. People who are warned and do not wish to take either
side always go away like this. Matteo is daft, but even he knows
something; he laughs, and draws his finger across his throat. Dreina is
crying, but will not speak though I beat her. You had best close the
windows, sir, and fasten up the doors.”
He still scarcely gathered the full meaning of her words; his brain was
still dizzy with the sweetness of sudden hope, the rush of reviving
memories, and he had never been alive to the true dangers of the life
around him, to its enmities, its risks, its possibilities. He meant
so well by the people, that he could not consent to believe that they
meant less well by him.
“You must be mistaken,” he said to the old woman. “The household must
be playing you some trick to affright you. Let us go and look over the
outbuildings. The _guardiani_ must at least be about the place.”
He put the portrait he had received in his breast, and buttoned his
coat over it; then he took his revolver from the table and put it in
his chest-pocket.
“Do not go out of doors, sir,” said Caterina, as she laid her hand
on his arm. “I do not believe there is one of our men within call
anywhere, and who knows what gang of thieves and ruffians may not be
hid all round already? If you knew the things I have seen in my youth
and my womanhood! I fear me you will meet your God to-night, for there
is no hand but your own to defend you!”
This time he believed her; he saw that whether she deceived herself or
not, she thought some deadly peril awaited himself.
“What will they do?” he asked, “and why should they seek to kill me?”
She answered almost sullenly:
“I have told you a score of times, and so has the girl Muriella, that
you are hated because you are a stranger, a meddler, as folks think,
a reformer as you call it. You would never believe us because we were
women. Well, this night I fear you will find we said truth. But let us
waste no time in talk. Let us fasten up the doors. They are strong;
they have stood a siege before now.”
“I shall look a poor cowardly fool if the household return.”
“They will not return, sir, till they see the house ablaze.”
“Good heavens! Do you _know_ this?”
“I do not know it, for if I had heard tell of it, I should have told
you, and you could have got the carabineers or the soldiery here; but
I know what an empty house like this means, when there are forty folks
all gone out of it at the same time on the same errand, and I know that
the woodlanders of Le Selve are no lambs.”
He was silent a moment; then he said:
“I will sell my life dearly, Caterina. As for you, slip out while you
can, and hide in the outhouses or the underwood till morning. You
cannot alter my fate. Do not stay to share it.”
“I am no poltroon, sir, and my years anyhow cannot be many. Come to
work.”
She led the way carrying the lamp, and held the light up whilst
he put up the enormous bars and turned the gigantic keys of the
iron-barred doors, and shut and bolted the shutters. There was no sound
without. The imbecile Matteo and the lame woman Dreina he drove,
as a precaution, into a little room off the kitchen, which had no
communication with the outer court, and locked them in there. The woman
would not speak.
He caused Caterina to light as many lamps as there were in the
building, and placed them in various corridors and chambers; he looked
for the guns belonging to the men, but they were gone, and those of the
under-steward likewise.
“Fausto must be in this matter,” he said to Caterina.
“He is probably the mainspring of it, sir,” she answered. “But no one
will ever prove it on him. He went away yesterday eve to go to shoot in
the macchia over by Ostia; there is no close time there. You recollect
he asked your leave to go and buy cattle; but he told several of the
men he was going shooting. If this plan succeed, he will come back and
act innocence. If it fail, he will take ship to one of the Americas.
He has feathered his nest.”
“He did ask leave--yes,” replied Cyrille, still incredulous. “But after
all, there may be nothing of what you think; your lads and lasses may
only have taken holiday.”
“They have taken holiday, sir, indeed,” said Caterina grimly. She was
angered against him for his incredulity. To her the conspiracy was
clear as crystal.
He was still very doubtful of the truth of her suspicions, but he
thought it well to take such measures for protection as he could. He
made the basement as safe from attack as he could with the means at his
disposal, and no man’s strength to aid him, and closed all passages
which led outward; there were some subterranean passages, of the
existence even of which he had possessed no previous knowledge.
Caterina showed him an iron door in the side of a well. The door was
just above the level of the water, which glimmered far down below;
steps in the stonework descended to it.
“It goes out to the woods under the long avenue, and opens up under
that great ilex which they call Pope Paul’s,” she said. “You might get
away so if you would. The passage is low and narrow, but it has been
kept clear. You know the woods well enough to find your way at daybreak
to the guardhouse.”
“I could not hide and fly like that,” answered Cyrille. “I am placed in
charge here. I can only lay down my charge with my life.”
Caterina nodded in approval, but sighed.
“If you will not fly, they will have you before the night is passed.
’Tis a conspiracy of the whole Selve folk.”
She knew nothing, but she had many memories, and she was a native of
the woods.
“Did they not poison your dog?” she added.
When he had made all as secure as it was possible to make it (and he
thought, except against explosives or petroleum, the doors would stand
all night), he went up to an open loggia at the top of the building,
with a dark lanthorn, and thence looked to all points of the compass.
On a clear night he could see from the light at Palo on the west to
the Sabine Hills and to Soracte on the east. Many a night in the full
moonlight he had traced the profiles of the beautiful mountains lying
like the silver waves of a phosphorescent sea. Now they were all hidden
under a haze of heat and vapour; he could scarcely distinguish farther
than the stone benches and balustrades immediately below, and the
outlines of the nearest trees.
The stillness was intense. Leaning against one of the columns of the
loggia, invisible to anyone who might be below, he waited and listened.
But the sense of the possible peril near was less realised by him
than the knowledge of the happiness which had come across steppe and
mountain, and plain and forest, to bring him its blessing.
With all the tide of recovered hope coursing like warm wine through
his veins, he could not believe that he was about to be besieged like
a rat in his hole, hunted out like a fox from his earth. The man whom
Princess Marie loved, whom she remembered, whom she smiled on in
banishment, disgrace, and poverty, must wear an amulet too potent, he
thought, to be done to death by a tribe of ingrate peasants. There
could not be such devilish derision in fate, that at the very moment
when his barren life blossomed like the rose, it was to be cut down by
a yelling rabble against whom he had no sin but to have served them in
sickness and to his own peril.
He leaned against the marble pilaster, and let his thoughts drift away
from the present hour to the past, which was so dear; to the future,
which was still dearer. Come what may, be what might, nothing save
death itself could slay that ecstasy which sang like a bird in his
breast.
The clock tolled at the stables more than once the passing hours, and
the stillness was broken by no other sound. It was midnight; he thought
the old woman had been misled by her fears: the men and women would no
doubt return at sunrise from revel at some distant town to which they
had known it would be useless to ask the Massaja to grant leave of
absence.
Suddenly he heard a sound, distant, slight, such a sound as the passing
of goats or sheep over grass produces; scarcely perceptible by day, but
audible in the deep hush of night.
“That is the movement of men,” thought Cyrille, with a sick sense of
certainty. He listened a moment longer to make sure that it was not
a breeze rising which stirred the foliage; then, with his impression
confirmed, he left the loggia, and descended the stairway to where old
Caterina sat in his chamber telling her beads.
“There are persons approaching,” he said to her; “and they can come for
no good.”
“They come, thinking you are asleep, and that one of the doors has been
left open for them. How many are there?”
“I cannot tell. But several.”
Caterina shook her head.
“If help could come--but how should any help come? We are cut off from
all.”
“Hark! they are crossing the grass. In a moment they will be at the
great doors.”
“They expect Dreina will open for them, the wretched baggage!”
For a moment or two there was silence, then a crossing of confused
voices became audible through the heavy timber of the closed doors.
“Let them think me asleep,” murmured Cyrille, and he covered the
entrance with his revolver. He could not tell who were there without,
nor in what numbers; their purpose it was easy to imagine. It was also
probable that they were for the instant nonplussed finding no one there
ready to admit them. But he knew that they would not long let this
baffle them.
“Go and hide somewhere, good Caterina,” he murmured to her. “It
unnerves me to know you are here.”
“Do not think of me, sir,” said the stout old woman. “I am of no use,
but I will be of no hindrance. It is strange to me that the girl
Muriella did not hear of this and warn us. When did you see her last?”
“Three days ago, I think.”
His voice was drowned in the sound of iron striking wood as the blow of
hatchets fell on the oak of the great doors. But every inch of the wood
was studded with great nails in front and plated with iron behind, and
the axes made but little progress.
“Try the side doors,” said a voice in which he recognised Alcide’s.
“The strumpet Dreina has played us false.”
The feet of a score of men trampled on the marble of the terrace
running round the buildings. But the side doors were armoured in the
same way, and had been all bolted and barred. The assailants realised
that they would not enter by those means; they began to swear savagely
amongst each other.
They had not crossed the turf as yet.
“Poor Caterina!” said Cyrille; “would to heaven you were in safety.”
“It is not me whom they come after. Forgive me, sir; but is there much
money in the strong-box?”
“Happily not. I sent an express with the proceeds of three months’
sales to Rome last week.”
“That will make them mad.”
“If they get in. I hope to keep them out. I shall not open to them--of
that you may be sure.”
She was a stout-hearted old woman; she laughed a little grimly.
In the centre of the great doors, as in most old Italian entrances,
there was a small barred square panel, the width of a man’s hand which
could be slid back, leaving the grating open, and thus a parley could
be effected without danger.
Cyrille drew back the panel, and standing on one side of the grating,
where none could see or touch him, said in a clear voice:
“Why come you here armed?”
“Open, and you will know,” answered the voice of Alcide, and they
cursed him.
“I do not open to threats. Say your errand, or depart.”
They cursed him again.
“We shall have your blood,” said their spokesman. “We come for that. We
shall not be balked. We will burn you out like a live hog smoked from
his lair.”
Cyrille closed the panel.
The group without roared with fury like wild boars, and threw
themselves with all their weight against the doors.
“You could have shot him through the grating,” said Caterina, with her
face gray and stern. “Why did you not? It was Alcide who spoke.”
“I know it was,” replied Cyrille.
“Why did you not shoot him?”
He was silent. He could not have made her understand the reluctance to
shed blood which had held his hand.
The hideous uproars of a ravenous pack was now let loose upon the
stillness of the summer midnight. They fired at the doors. The shots
recoiled harmlessly. They were all armed merely in the rude manner
of the woods. They had expected to be admitted from within, and the
disappointment baffled and drove them mad.
“Burn him out!” cried their ringleader. “There is brushwood in the
sheds.”
By the sound of the trampling feet and lessening shouts he could tell
that they were gone where the firewood used by the household was
stored in sheds beside the stackyard and stables.
“They will try to burn us out,” said Cyrille. “But the house is like a
rock.”
The old woman shrugged her shoulders.
“You could have shot the worst of them and you did not. He will roast
you, as he says, like a spitted hog.”
“I cannot kill a man in cold blood,” he replied, and he pressed the
portrait in his breast closer to him.
But he knew that they would doubtless do what they threatened.
The solid house would resist long, but it could not resist all night.
If they brought wood enough and fired it, sooner or later those within
would perforce fall a prey to the smoke and the flames.
Rather than perish so, he thought he would open and go out, and fall
fighting. But to do so would be to expose the whole place to certain
pillage; and he was there as the representative and trustee of the
owners.
In a few minutes there was no doubt as to the intentions of the
marauders. They returned dragging with them quantities of brushwood
and faggots, and by the sound he could tell that they were piling them
up before the principal entrance; the voice of Alcide was loudest in
command and objurgation.
“Fire you through the peephole, sir,” said Caterina. She was gray with
horror, but she did not cry out, or give any sign of cowardice.
“Not yet,” said Cyrille. “These wretched people were confided to my
care. If I have missed the way to their souls it is my fault.”
Caterina gave a snort of scorn.
“They will not miss the way to your vitals, be sure! Much good will
your fine thoughts do you when the scoundrels shall haul you out
through the smoke, and hack you to pieces as they would hack a wild
boar’s limbs off his trunk.”
Despite his courage and composure a shudder ran through him at the
horrible words. But he did not open the panel and fire.
The men without were mad with rage because they had not found the house
opened to them as arranged with the absent household.
They had planned an easy entrance, unmolested pillage, and the
slaughter of the foreigner in his bed. They could not tell why they
found him up and armed; and all the entrances of the house closed.
“’Tis that traitress Muriella,” muttered Lucio; “she warned him, be
sure,” and as he spoke the other men screamed in chorus with rage and
hate. Let them find her! let them only find her! She should rue the day
that her mother, the cursed woman of Viterbo, bore her!
They heaped the dry heather and pine branches up in a great pile before
the doorway; they lighted matches and resinous cones, and tried to set
fire to the pile. They had not brought petroleum, because of its name
and use they were all ignorant. The wood failed to catch alight; the
air was heavy, and there was no wind to stir a flame.
Cyrille debated whether it would not be best for the place and for the
woman to give himself up to the will of the assailants, on condition
that she and it should be spared. But he knew that he could not trust
them to fulfil any conditions, and the soldier and the noble in him
loathed the thought of surrender to this rabble, and at last he fired
through one of the inch-wide squares of the grating. His shot broke the
wrist of the man lighting the heather.
They all for a moment fell back demoralised; Alcide was safe out
of reach, for he had expected shots from within, and had given his
comrades the posts of danger.
“I would willingly spare you,” said Cyrille, and his voice came clearly
to them through the little aperture. “But you shall not fire the house
whilst I live; I will break the bone of every man’s arm used to set
light to this wood.”
There was a brief pause. They were cunning, vindictive, merciless, but
they were not brave, and they could not be certain that he was alone.
They drew back from the doorway, and took counsel amongst themselves.
No one of them cared to be the second to have his wrist snapped in two;
the first man who had met this fate was howling like a wounded wolf,
calling curses down on the head of Alcide. It was one thing to enter a
defenceless and open house, and pillage all it contained, and kill a
stranger in his sleep, and another to force entrance under the deadly
fire of a revolver whose owner was masked and protected by iron-plated
doors.
They had unlit torches with them, brought to light their way about
the cellars and store-rooms when they should enter the house. Alcide
lighted one, and standing where Cyrille could not see him, hurled its
blazing mass on to the piled brushwood, and three other men did the
same. But the torches fell short and dropped on the marble pavement
before the door; as they flared there harmlessly their red glare glowed
on the black figures of the woodlanders, which looked like the forms of
demons as they danced and yelled with rage and thirst for blood, hidden
by the darkness of the night, save where the fitful glimmer of the
torches touched them.
Owing to the narrowness of the slit through which he fired, Cyrille
could only aim at those immediately before the door or on the grass in
front of him.
The peasants could, without going far, keep out of range, and from
their station beyond the balustrade they flung two other torches;
these fell full on the piled heather, which caught alight, and sent
a rolling, stifling cloud of smoke up through the grating. As they
saw the success of their effort they lost caution, they shouted with
rapture, and crowded nearer to enjoy the sport; the fire ran from
heather to bramble and branch; the cones caught alight with jets of
flame; the dry faggots cracked and flared, the volumes of smoke rolled
up to the sculptured arms and crown about the doorways.
“Their blood be on their own heads,” said Cyrille, and he fired--once,
twice, thrice. Each time a man fell. But Alcide still kept out of
range. The fire was fierce, and its red waves licked hungrily the old
oak and iron which opposed their entrance.
Resistance could be but a question of time.
“If I could believe they would keep faith with me, I would let them
torture me to death, to save the house and the woman. But they do not
know what faith means. Were I once dead, they would sack the place from
loggia to cellar, and get drunk on wine and blood.”
Suddenly there came to his ears a sound of galloping horses. The sound
came from the long avenue in front of the house to the north. The men
did not heed it; they were leaping and shouting and bellowing with
triumph as the fire waxed higher and fiercer, and the smoke ran up
amongst the bronze scroll-work of the balconies above.
He could now see nothing, for the burning wood hid all save itself,
but he could hear, and the gallop of the horses grew nearer, and there
blent with it the jingling of chains and of scabbards, and a shrill
yell of terror rose from the grassland beyond the balustrade.
“The saints be praised!” cried Caterina, and she fell on her knees and
burst into tears. “’Tis the carabineers of Ronciglione!”
Cyrille went to a side door which the fire had not reached, unfastened
its bolts and bars, and went out on to the grass.
The gendarmes had slid from their saddles, had surrounded and seized
the woodlanders, who made a fierce but short resistance. Against
a horse from which she had dismounted there leaned a woman--pale,
dishevelled, exhausted, staring with dilated eyes at the burning pile.
She was drenched with sweat; discoloured with heat and dust; her mouth
was wide open with parching thirst; her bare feet were bleeding.
It was Muriella.
Great tears were falling down her cheeks, for she had delivered her
own kinsmen over to justice, and she was ashamed of the guilt of her
father’s people.
“You brought the guards?” cried Cyrille, as he recognised her.
“I overheard--this afternoon--late,” she said, her breath deep drawn
and laboured, like a worn-out steer’s; “it would have done no good to
come here, and I knew the men at the picquet were absent. I ran to
Ronciglione in four hours for the soldiery. There was no other way. I
could trust no one.”
Alcide was standing, pinioned by a gendarme, his gun having been taken
from him; his eyes were red with a wicked, furious flame. There was
little light, except such as was shed by the glare of the burning wood;
but that was enough to enable him to see who it was who had been his
undoing.
With a sudden movement, lithe and quick and unexpected as a snake’s,
he twisted himself from the hold of the carabineer who was about to
manacle him, and with one leap like a deer’s he sprang to the side of
his niece.
“Traitress!” he hissed in her ear, as he snatched a knife hidden in his
waistbelt, and stabbed her full in the breast.
They seized him instantly again, but he had aimed too well not to have
slain.
“It does not matter,” she said, as she pressed the haft of the knife to
her bosom. “I was in time--it was that which mattered.”
The blood from her pierced lungs choked her.
“You will go home,” she murmured feebly. “The saints did hear!”
A moment later she was dead.