GARGOUF.
Some called for silence, while others stared at me stupidly, or
pointed me out to their fellows; but the greater part took up the
woman's cry, and, enraged by my presence, shook their fists at me, and
shouted vile threats and viler abuse. For a minute the air rang with
"_A bas les Seigneurs! A bas les tyrans!_" And I found this bad
enough. But, presently, whether they caught sight of the steward, or
merely returned to their first hatred, from which my appearance had
only for the moment diverted them, the cry changed to a sullen roar of
"Gargouf! Gargouf!" A roar so full of the lust for blood, and coupled
with threats so terrible, that the heart sickened and the cheek grew
pale at the sound.
"Gargouf! Gargouf! Give us Gargouf!" they howled. "Give us Gargouf!
and he shall eat hot gold! Give us Gargouf, and he shall need no more
of our daughters!"
I shuddered to think that Mademoiselle heard; shuddered to think of
the peril in which she stood. The wretches below were no longer men;
under the influence of this frenzied woman they were mad brute beasts,
drunk with fire and licence. As the smoke from the burning building
eddied away for a moment across the crowd and hid it, and still that
hoarse cry came out of the mirk, I could believe that I heard not men,
but maddened hounds raving in the kennel.
Again the smoke drifted away; and some one in the rear shot at me. I
heard the glass splinter beside me. Another, a little nearer, flung up
a burning fragment that, alighting on the ledge, blazed and spluttered
by my foot. I kicked it down.
The act, for the moment, stilled the riot, and I seized the
opportunity. "You dogs!" I said, striving to make my voice heard above
the hissing of the flames. "Begone! The soldiers from Cahors are on
the road. I sent for them this hour back. Begone, before they come,
and I will intercede for you. Stay, and do further mischief, and you
shall hang, to the last man!"
Some answered with a yell of derision, crying out that the soldiers
were with them. More, that the nobles were abolished, and their houses
given to the people. One, who was drunk, kept shouting, "_A bas la
Bastille! A bas la Bastille!_" with a stupid persistence.
A moment more and I should lose my chance. I waved my hand! "What do
you want?" I cried.
"Justice!" one shouted, and another, "Vengeance!" A third, "Gargouf!"
And then all, "Gargouf! Gargouf!" until Petit Jean stilled the tumult.
"Have done!" he cried to them, in his coarse, brutal voice. "Have we
come here only to yell? And do you, Seigneur, give up Gargouf, and you
shall go free. Otherwise, we will burn the house, and all in it."
"You villain!" I said. "We have guns, and----"
"The rats have teeth, but they burn! They burn!" he answered, pointing
triumphantly, with the axe he held, to the flaming buildings. "They
burn! Yet listen, Seigneur," he continued, "and you shall have a
minute to make up your minds. Give up Gargouf to us to do with as we
please, and the rest shall go."
"All?"
"All."
I trembled. "But Gargouf, man?" I said. "Will you--what will you do
with him?"
"Roast him!" the smith cried, with a fearful oath; and the wretches
round him laughed like fiends. "Roast him, when we have plucked him
bare."
I shuddered. From Cahors help could not come for another hour. From
Saux it might not come at all. The doors below me could not stand
long, and these brutes were thirty to one, and mad with the lust of
vengeance. With the wrongs, the crimes, the vices of centuries to
avenge, they dreamed that the day of requital was come; and the dream
had turned clods into devils. The very flames they had kindled gave
them assurance of it. The fire was in their blood. _A bas la Bastille!
A bas les tyrans!_
I hesitated.
"One minute!" the smith cried, with a boastful gesture--"one minute we
give you! Gargouf or all."
"Wait!"
I turned and went in--turned from the smoky glare, the circling
pigeons, the grotesque black figures, and the terror and confusion of
the night, and went in to that other scene scarcely less dreadful to
me; though only two candles, guttering in tin sockets, lit the
landing, and it borrowed from the outside no more than the ruddy
reflection of horror. The women had ceased to scream and sob, and
crowded together silent and panic-stricken. The old men and the lad
moistened their lips, and looked furtively from the arms they handled
to one another's faces. Mademoiselle alone stood erect, pale, firm. I
shot a glance at the slender little figure in the white robe, then I
looked away. I dared not say what I had in my mind. I knew that she
had heard, and----
She said it! "You have answered them?" she muttered, her eyes meeting
mine.
"No," I said, looking away again. "They have given us a minute to
decide, and----"
"I heard them," she answered shivering. "Tell them."
"But, Mademoiselle----"
"Tell them never! Never!" she cried feverishly. "Be quick, or they
will think that we are dreaming of it."
Yet I hesitated--while the flames crackled outside. What, after all,
was this rascal's life beside hers? What his tainted existence, who
all these years had ground the faces of the poor and dishonoured the
helpless, beside her youth? It was a dreadful moment, and I hesitated.
"Mademoiselle," I muttered at last, avoiding her eyes, "you have
not thought, perhaps. But to refuse this offer may be to sacrifice
all--and not save him."
"I have thought!" she answered, with a passionate gesture. "I have
thought. But he was my father's steward, Monsieur, and he is my
brother's; if he has sinned, it was for them. It is for them to pay
the penalty. And--after all, it may not come to that," she continued,
her face changing, and her eyes seeking mine, full of sudden terror.
"They will not dare, I think. They will never dare to----"
"Where is he?" I asked hoarsely.
She pointed to the corner behind her. I looked, and could scarcely
believe my eyes. The man whom I had left full of a desperate courage,
prepared to sell his life dearly, now crouched a huddled figure in the
darkest angle of the tapestry seat. Though I had spoken of him in a
low voice, and without naming him, he heard me, and looked up, and
showed a face to match his attitude; a face pallid and sweating with
fear; a face that, vile at the best and when redeemed by hardihood,
looked now the vilest thing on earth. _Ciel!_ that fear should reduce
a man to that! He tried to speak as his eyes met mine, but his lips
moved inaudibly, and he only crouched lower, the picture of panic and
guilt.
I cried out to the others to know what had happened to him. "What is
it?" I said.
No one answered; and then I seemed to know. While he had thought all
in danger, while he had felt himself only one among many, the common
courage of a man had supported him. But God knows what voices, only
too well known to him, what accents of starving men and wronged women,
had spoken in that fierce cry for his life! What plaints from the
dead, what curses of babes hanging on dry breasts! At any rate,
whatever he had heard in that call for his blood, _his_ blood--it had
unmanned him. In a moment, in a twinkling, it had dashed him back into
this corner, a trembling craven, holding up his hands for his life.
Such fear is infectious, and I strode to him in a rage and shook him.
"Get up, hound!" I said. "Get up and strike a blow for your life; or,
by heaven, no one else will!"
He stood up. "Yes, yes, Monsieur," he muttered. "I will! I will stand
up for Mademoiselle. I will----"
But I heard his teeth chatter, and I saw that his eyes wandered this
way and that, as do a hare's when the dogs close on it; and I knew
that I had nothing to expect from him. A howl outside warned me at the
same moment that our respite was spent; and I flung him off and turned
to the window.
Too late, however; before I could reach it, a thundering blow on the
doors below set the candles flickering and the women shrieking; then
for an instant I thought that all was over. A stone came through the
window; another followed it, and another. The shattered glass fell
over us; the draught put out one light, and the women, terrified
beyond control, ran this way and that with the other, shrieking
dismally. This, the yelling of the crowd outside, the sombre light and
more sombre glare, the utter confusion and panic, so distracted me,
that for a moment I stood irresolute, inactive, looking wildly about
me; a poltroon waiting for some one to lead. Then a touch fell on my
arm, and I turned and found Mademoiselle at my side, and saw her face
upturned to mine.
It was white, and her eyes were wide with the terror she had so long
repressed. Her hold on me grew heavier; she swayed against me,
clinging to me.
"Oh!" she whispered in my ear in a voice that went to my heart. "Save
me! Save me! Can nothing be done? Can nothing be done, Monsieur? Must
we die?"
"We must gain time," I said. My courage returned wonderfully, as I
felt her weight on my arm. "All is not over yet," I said. "I will
speak to them."
And setting her on the seat, I sprang to the window and passed through
it. Outside, things at a first glance seemed unchanged. The wavering
flames, the glow, the trail of smoke and sparks, all were there. But a
second glance showed that the rioters no longer moved to and fro about
the fire, but were massed directly below me in a dense body round the
doors, waiting for them to give way. I shouted to them frantically,
hoping still to delay them. I called Petit Jean by name. But I could
not make myself heard in the uproar, or they would not heed; and while
I vainly tried, the great doors yielded at last, and with a roar of
triumph the crowd burst in.
Not a moment was to be lost. I sprang back through the window,
clutching up as I did so the gun Gargouf had given me; and then I
stood in amazement. The landing was empty! The rush of feet across the
hall below shook the house. Ten seconds and the mob, whose screams of
triumph already echoed through the passages, would be on us. But where
was Mademoiselle? Where was Gargouf? Where were the servants, the
waiting-maids, the boy, whom I had left here?
I stood an instant paralysed, like a man in a nightmare; brought up
short in that supreme moment. Then, as the first crash of heavy feet
sounded on the stairs, I heard a faint scream, somewhere to my right,
as I stood. On the instant I sprang to the door which, on that side,
led to the left wing. I tore it open and passed through it--not a
moment too soon. The slightest delay, and the foremost rioters must
have seen me. As it was I had time to turn the key, which,
fortunately, was on the inside.
Then I hurried across the room, making my way to an open door at the
farther end, from which light issued; I passed through the room
beyond, which was empty, then into the last of the suite.
Here I found the fugitives; who had fled so precipitately that they
had not even thought of closing the doors behind them. In this last
refuge--Madame's boudoir, all white and gold--I found them crouching
among gilt-backed chairs and flowered cushions. They had brought only
one candle with them; and the silks and gew-gaws and knick-knacks on
which its light shone dimly, gave a peculiar horror to their white
faces and glaring eyes, as, almost mad with terror, they huddled in
the farthest corner and stared at me.
They were such cowards that they put Mademoiselle foremost; or it was
she who stood out to meet me. She knew me before they did, therefore,
and quieted them. When I could hear my own voice, I asked where
Gargouf was.
They had not discovered that he was not with them, and they cried out,
saying that he had come that way.
"You followed him?"
"Yes, Monsieur."
This explained their flight, but not the steward's absence. What
matter where he had gone, however, since his help could avail little.
I looked round--looked round in despair; the very simpering Cupids on
the walls seemed to mock our danger. I had the gun, I could fire one
shot, I had one life in my hands. But to what end? In a moment, at any
moment, within a minute or two at most, the doors would be forced, and
the horde of mad brutes would pour in upon us, and----
"Ah, Monsieur, the closet staircase! He has gone by the closet
staircase!"
It was the boy who spoke. He alone of them had his wits about him.
"Where is it?" I said.
The lad sprang forward to show me, but Mademoiselle was before him
with the candle. She flew back into the passage, a passage of four or
five feet only between that room and the second of the suite; in the
wall of this she flung open a door, apparently of a closet. I looked
in and saw the beginning of a staircase. My heart leapt at the sight.
"To the floor above?" I said.
"No, Monsieur, to the roof!"
"Up, up, then!" I cried in a frenzy of impatience. "It will give us
time. Quick. They are coming."
For I heard the door at the end of the suite, the door I had locked,
creak and yield. They were forcing it, at any moment it might give;
where I stood waiting to bring up the rear, their hoarse cries and
curses came to my ears. But the good door held; it held, long enough
at any rate. Before it gave way we were on the stairs and I had shut
the door of the closet behind me. Then, holding to the skirts of the
woman before me, I groped my way up quickly--up and up through
darkness with a close smell of bats in my nostrils--and almost before
I could believe it, I stood with the panting, trembling group on the
roof. The glare of the burning outhouses below shone on a great stack
of chimneys beside us and reddened the sky above, and burnished the
leaves of the chestnut trees that rose on a level with our eyes. But
all the lower part of the steep roofs round us, and the lead gutters
that ran between them, lay in darkness, the denser for the contrast.
The flames crackled below, and a thick reek of smoke swept up past the
coping, but the noise alike of fire and riot was deadened here. The
night wind cooled our brows, and I had a minute in which to think, to
breathe, to look round.
"Is there any other way to the roof?" I asked anxiously.
"One other, Monsieur!"
"Where? Or do you stay here, and guard this door," I said, pressing my
gun on the man who had answered. "And let the boy come and show me.
Mademoiselle, stay there if you please."
The boy ran before me to the farther end of the roof, and in a lead
walk, between two slopes, showed me a large trap-door. It had no
fastening on the outside, and for a moment I stood nonplussed; then I
saw, a few feet away, a neat pile of bricks, left there, I learned
afterwards, in the course of some repairs. I began to remove them as
fast as I could to the trap-door, and the boy saw and followed my
example; in two minutes we had stacked a hundred and more on the door.
Telling him to add another hundred to the number, I left him at the
task and flew back to the women.
They might burn the house under us; that always, and for certain, and
it meant a dreadful death. Yet I breathed more freely here. In the
white and gold room below, among Madame's mirrors and Cupids, and
silken cushions, and painted Venuses, my heart had failed me. The
place, with its heavy perfumes, had stifled me. I had pictured the
brutish peasants bursting in on us there--on the screaming women,
crouching vainly behind chairs and couches; and the horror of the
thought overcame me. Here, in the open, under the sky, we could at
least die fighting. The depth yawned beyond the coping; the weakest
had here no more to fear than death. Besides we had a respite, for the
house was large, and the fire could not lick it up in a moment.
And help might come. I shaded my eyes from the light below, and looked
into the darkness in the direction of the village and the Cahors road.
In an hour, at furthest, help might come. The glare in the sky must be
visible for miles; it would spur on the avengers. Father Benoit, too,
if he could get help--he might be here at any time. We were not
without hope.
Suddenly, while we stood together, the women sobbing and whimpering,
the old man-servant spoke.
"Where is M. Gargouf?" he muttered under his breath.
"Ah!" I exclaimed; "I had forgotten him."
"He came up," the man continued, peering about him. "This door was
open, M. le Vicomte, when we came to it."
"Ah! then where is he?"
I looked round too. All the roof, I have said, was dark, and not all
of it was on the same level; and here and there chimneys broke the
view. In the obscurity, the steward might be lurking close to us
without our knowledge; or he might have thrown himself down in
despair. While I looked, the boy whom I had left by the bricks came
flying to us.
"There is some one there!" he said. And he clung to the old man in
terror.
"It must be Gargouf!" I answered. "Wait here!" And, disregarding the
women's prayers that I would stay with them, I went quickly along the
leads to the other trap-door, and peered about me through the gloom.
For a moment I could see no one, though the light shining on the trees
made it easy to discern figures standing nearer the coping. Presently,
however, I caught the sound of some one moving; some one who was
farther away still, at the very edge of the roof. I went on
cautiously, expecting I do not know what; and close to a stack of
chimneys I found Gargouf.
He was crouching on the coping in the darkest part, where the end wall
of the east wing overlooked the garden by which I had entered. This
end wall had no windows, and the greater part of the garden below it
lay it darkness; the angle of the house standing between it and the
burning buildings. I supposed that the steward had sneaked hither,
therefore, to hide; and set it down to the darkness that he did not
know me, but, as I approached, he rose on his knees on the ledge, and
turned on me, snarling like a dog.
"Stand back!" he said, in a voice that was scarcely human. "Stand
back, or I will----"
"Steady, man," I answered quietly, beginning to think that fear had
unhinged him. "It is I, M. de Saux."
"Stand back!" was his only answer; and, though he cowered so low
that I could not get his figure against the shining trees, I saw a
pistol-barrel gleam as he levelled it. "Stand back! Give me a minute!
a minute only"--and his voice quavered--"and I will cheat the devils
yet! Come nearer, or give the alarm, and I will not die alone! I will
not die alone! Stand back!"
"Are you mad?" I said.
"Back, or I shoot!" he growled. "I will not die alone."
He was kneeling on the very edge, with his left hand against the
chimney. To rush upon him in that posture was to court death; and I
had nothing to gain by it. I stepped back a pace. As I did so, at the
moment I did so, he slid over the edge, and was gone!
I drew a deep breath and listened, flinching and drawing back
involuntarily. But I heard no sound of a fall; and in a moment, with a
new idea in my mind, I stepped forward to the edge, and looked over.
The steward hung in mid-air, a dozen feet below me. He was descending;
descending foot by foot, slowly, and by jerks; a dim figure, growing
dimmer. Instinctively I felt about me; and in a second laid my hand on
the rope by which he hung. It was secured round the chimney. Then I
understood. He had conceived this way of escape, perhaps had stored
the rope for it beforehand, and, like the villain he was, had kept the
thought to himself, that his chance might be the better, and that he
might not have to give the first place to Mademoiselle and the women.
In the first heat of the discovery, I almost found it in my heart to
cut the rope, and let him fall; then I remembered that if he escaped,
the way would lie open for others; and then, even as I thought this,
into the garden below me, there shone a sudden flare of light, and a
stream of a dozen rioters poured round the corner, and made for the
door by which I had entered the house.
I held my breath. The steward, hanging below me, and by this time
half-way to the ground, stopped, and moved not a limb. But he still
swung a little this way and that, and in the strong light of the
torches which the new-comers carried, I could see every knot in the
rope, and even the trailing end, which, as I looked, moved on the
ground with his motion.
The wretches, making for the door, had to pass within a pace of the
rope, of that trailing end; yet it was possible that, blinded by the
lights they carried, and their own haste and excitement, they might
not see it. I held my breath as the leader came abreast of it; I
fancied that he must see it. But he passed, and disappeared in the
doorway. Three others passed the rope together. A fifth, then three
more, two more; I began to breathe more freely. Only one remained--a
woman, the same whose imprecations had greeted me on my appearance at
the window. It was not likely that she would see it. She was running
to overtake the others; she carried a flare in her right hand, so that
the blaze came between her and the rope. And she was waving the light
in a mad woman's frenzy, as she danced along, hounding on the men to
the sack.
But, as if the presence of the man who had wronged her had over her
some subtle influence--as if some sense, unowned by others, warned her
of his presence, even in the midst of that babel and tumult--she
stopped short under him, with her foot almost on the threshold. I saw
her head turn slowly. She raised her eyes, holding the torch aside.
She saw him!
With a scream of joy, she sprang to the foot of the rope, and began to
haul at it as if in that way she might get to him sooner; while she
filled the air with her shrieks and laughter. The men, who had gone
into the house, heard her, and came out again; and after them others.
I quailed, where I knelt on the parapet, as I looked down and met the
wolfish glare of their upturned eyes; what, then, must have been the
thoughts of the wretched man taken in his selfishness--hanging there
helpless between earth and heaven? God knows.
He began to climb upwards, to return; and actually ascended hand over
hand a dozen feet. But he had been supporting himself for some
minutes, and at that point his strength failed him. Human muscles
could do no more. He tried to haul himself up to the next knot, but
sank back with a groan. Then he looked at me. "Pull me up!" he gasped
in a voice just audible. "For God's sake! For God's sake, pull me up!"
But the wretches below had the end of the rope, and it was impossible
to raise him, even had I possessed the strength to do it. I told him
so, and bade him climb--climb for his life. In a moment it would be
too late.
He understood. He raised himself with a jerk to the next knot, and
hung there. Another desperate effort, and he gained the next; though I
could almost hear his muscles crack, and his breath came in gasps.
Three more knots--they were about a foot apart--and he would reach the
coping.
But as he turned up his face to me, I read despair in his eyes. His
strength was gone; and while he hung there, the men began, with shouts
of laughter, to shake the rope this way and that. He lost his grip,
and, with a groan, slid down three or four feet; and again got hold
and hung there--silent.
By this time the group below had grown into a crowd--a crowd of
maddened beings, raving and howling, and leaping up at him as dogs
leap at food; and the horror of the sight, though the doomed man's
features were now in shadow, and I could not read them, overcame me. I
rose to draw back--shuddering, listening for his fall. Instead, before
I had quite retreated, a hot flash blinded me, and almost scorched my
face, and, as the sharp report of a pistol rang out, the steward's
body plunged headlong down--leaving a little cloud of smoke where I
stood.
He had balked his enemies.