THE TRICOLOUR.
It was known afterwards that they fell upon the body and tore it, like
the dogs they were; but I had seen enough. I reeled back, and for a
few moments leaned against the chimney, trembling like a woman, sick
and faint. The horrid drama had had only one spectator--myself; and
the strange solitude from which I had viewed it, kneeling at the edge
of the roof of the Chateau, with the night wind on my brow and the
tumult far below me, had shaken me to the bottom of my soul. Had the
ruffians come upon me then I could not have lifted a finger; but,
fortunately, though the awakening came quickly, it came by another
hand. I heard the rustle of feet behind me, and, turning, found
Mademoiselle de St. Alais at my shoulder, her small face grey in the
gloom.
"Monsieur," she said, "will you come?"
I sprang up, ashamed and conscience-stricken. I had forgotten her,
all, in the tragedy. "What is it?" I said.
"The house is burning."
She said it so calmly, in such a voice, that I could not believe her,
or that I understood; though it was the thing I had told myself must
happen. "What, Mademoiselle? This house?" I said stupidly.
"Yes," she replied, as quietly as before. "The smoke is rising through
the closet staircase. I think that they have set the east wing on
fire."
I hastened back with her, but before I reached the little door by
which we had ascended I saw that it was true. A faint, whitish eddy of
smoke, scarcely visible in the dusk, was rising through the crack
between door and lintel. When we came up the women were still round it
watching it; but while I looked, dazed and wondering what we were to
do, the group melted away, and Mademoiselle and I were left alone
beside the stream of smoke that grew each moment thicker and darker.
A few moments before, immediately after my escape from the rooms
below, I had thought that I could face this peril; anything,
everything, had then seemed better than to be caught with the women,
in the confinement of those luxurious rooms, perfumed with _poudre de
rose_, and heavy with jasmine--to be caught there by the brutes who
were pursuing us. Now the danger that showed itself most pressing
seemed the worst. "We must take off the bricks!" I cried. "Quick, and
open that door! There is nothing else for it. Come, Mademoiselle, if
you please!"
"They are doing it," she answered.
Then I saw whither the women and the servants had gone. They were
already beside the other door, the trap-door, labouring frantically to
remove the bricks we had piled on it. In a moment I caught the
infection of their haste.
"Come, Mademoiselle! come!" I cried, advancing involuntarily a step
towards the group. "Very likely the rogues below will be plundering
now, and we may pass safely. At any rate, there is nothing else for
it."
I was still flurried and shaken--I say it with shame--by Gargouf's
fate; and when she did not answer at once, I looked round impatiently.
To my astonishment, she was gone. In the darkness, it was not easy to
see any one at a distance of a dozen feet, and the reek of the smoke
was spreading. Still, she had been at my elbow a moment before, she
could not be far off. I took a step this way and that, and looked
again anxiously; and then I found her. She was kneeling against a
chimney, her face buried in her hands. Her hair covered her shoulders,
and partly hid her white robe.
I thought the time ill-chosen, and I touched her angrily.
"Mademoiselle!" I said. "There is not a moment to be lost! Come! they
have opened the door!"
She looked up at me, and the still pallor of her face sobered me. "I
am not coming," she said, in a low voice. "Farewell, Monsieur!"
"You are not coming?" I cried.
"No, Monsieur; save yourself," she answered firmly and quietly. And
she looked up at me with her hands still clasped before her, as if she
were fain to return to her prayers, and waited only for me to go.
I gasped.
"But, Mademoiselle!" I cried, staring at the white-robed figure, that
in the gloom--a gloom riven now and again by hot flashes, as some
burning spark soared upwards--seemed scarcely earthly--"But,
Mademoiselle, you do not understand. This is no child's play. To stay
here is death! death! The house is burning under us. Presently the
roof, on which we stand, will fall in, and then----"
"Better that," she answered, raising her head with heaven knows
what of womanly dignity, caught in this supreme moment by her, a
child--"Better that, than that I should fall into their hands. I am a
St. Alais, and I can die," she continued firmly. "But I must not fall
into their hands. Do you, Monsieur, save yourself. Go now, and I will
pray for you."
"And I for you, Mademoiselle," I answered, with a full heart. "If you
stay, I stay."
She looked at me a moment, her face troubled. Then she rose slowly to
her feet. The servants had disappeared, the trap-door lay open; no one
had yet come up. We had the roof to ourselves. I saw her shudder as
she looked round; and in a second I had her in my arms--she was no
heavier than a child--and was half-way across the roof. She uttered a
faint cry of remonstrance, of reproach, and for an instant struggled
with me. But I only held her the tighter, and ran on. From the
trap-door a ladder led downwards; somehow, still holding her with one
hand, I stumbled down it, until I reached the foot, and found myself
in a passage, which was all dark. One way, however, a light shone at
the end of it.
I carried her towards this, her hair lying across my lips, her face
against my breast. She no longer struggled, and in a moment I came to
the head of a staircase. It seemed to be a servant's staircase, for it
was bare, and mean, and narrow, with white-washed walls that were not
too clean. There were no signs of fire here, even the smoke had not
yet reached this part; but half-way down the flight a candle,
overturned, but still burning, lay on a step, as if some one had that
moment dropped it. And from all the lower part of the house came up a
great noise of riot and revelry, coarse shrieks, and shouts, and
laughter. I paused to listen.
Mademoiselle lifted herself a little in my arms. "Put me down,
Monsieur," she whispered.
"You will come?"
"I will do what you tell me."
I set her down in the angle of the passage, at the head of the stairs;
and in a whisper I asked her what was beyond the door, which I could
see at the foot of the flight.
"The kitchen," she answered.
"If I had any cloak to cover you," I said, "I think that we could
pass. They are not searching for us. They are robbing and drinking."
"Will you get the candle?" she whispered, trembling. "In one of these
rooms we may find something."
I went softly down the bare stairs, and, picking it up, returned with
it in my hand. As I came back to her, our eyes met, and a slow blush,
gradually deepening, crept over her face, as dawn creeps over a grey
sky. Having come, it stayed; her eyes fell, and she turned a little
away from me, confused and frightened. We were alone; and for the
first time that night, I think, she remembered her loosened hair and
the disorder of her dress--that she was a woman and I a man.
It was a strange time to think of such things; when at any instant the
door at the foot of the stairs before us might open, and a dozen
ruffians stream up, bent on plunder, and worse. But the look and the
movement warmed my heart, and set my blood running as it had never run
before. I felt my courage return in a flood, and with it twice my
strength. I felt capable of holding the staircase against a hundred, a
thousand, as long as she stood at the top. Above all, I wondered how I
could have borne her in my arms a minute before, how I could have held
her head against my breast, and felt her hair touch my lips, and been
insensible! Never again should I carry her so with an even pulse. The
knowledge of that came to me as I stood beside her at the head of the
bare stairs, affecting to listen to the noises below, that she might
have time to recover herself.
A moment, and I began to listen seriously; for the uproar in the
kitchen through which we must pass to escape, was growing louder; and
at the same time that I noticed this, a smell of burning wood, with a
whiff of smoke, reached my nostrils, and warned me that the fire was
extending to the wing in which we stood. Behind us, as we stood,
looking down the stairs, was a door; along the passage to the left by
which we had come were other doors. I thrust the candle into
Mademoiselle's hands, and begged her to go and look in the rooms.
"There may be a cloak, or something!" I said eagerly. "We must not
linger. If you will look, I will----"
No more; for as the last word trembled on my lips the door at the foot
of the stairs flew open, and a man blundered through it and began to
ascend towards us, two steps at a time. He carried a candle before
him, and a large bar in his right hand; and a savage roar of voices
came with him through the doorway.
He appeared so suddenly that we had no time to move. I had a side
glimpse of Mademoiselle standing spell-bound with horror, the light
drooping in her hand. Then I snatched the candle from her and quenched
it; and, plucking it from the iron candlestick, stood waiting, with
the latter in my hand--waiting, stooping forward, for the man. I had
left my sword in the farther wing, and had no other weapon; but the
stairs were narrow, the sloping ceiling low, and the candlestick might
do. If his comrades did not follow him, it might do.
He came up rapidly, two-thirds of the way, holding the light high in
front of him. Only four or five steps divided him from us! Then on a
sudden, he stumbled, swore, and fell heavily forwards. The light in
his hand went out, and we were in darkness!
Instinctively I gripped Mademoiselle's hand in my left hand to stay
the scream that I knew was on her lips; then we stood like two
statues, scarcely daring to breathe. The man, so near us, and yet
unconscious of our presence, got up swearing; and, after a terrible
moment of suspense, during which I think he fumbled for the candle, he
began to clatter down the stairs again. They had closed the door at
the bottom, and he could not for a moment find the string of the
latch. But at last he found it, and opened the door. Then I stepped
back, and under cover of the babel that instantly poured up the
staircase I drew Mademoiselle into the room behind us, and, closing
the door which faced the stairs, stood listening.
I fancied that I could hear her heart beating. I could certainly hear
my own. In this room we seemed for the moment safe; but how were we,
without a light, to find anything to disguise her? How were we to pass
through the kitchen? And in a moment I began to regret that I had left
the stairs. We were in perfect darkness here and could see nothing in
the room, which had a close, unused smell, as of mice; but even as I
noticed this the fumes of burning wood, which had doubtless entered
with us, grew stronger and overcame the other smell. The rushing
wind-like sound of the fire, as it caught hold of the wing, began to
be audible, and the distant crackling of flames. My heart sank.
"Mademoiselle," I said softly. I still held her hand.
"Yes, Monsieur," she murmured faintly. And she seemed to lean against
me.
"Are there no windows in this room?"
"I think that they are shuttered," she murmured.
With a new thought in my mind, that the way of the kitchen being
hopeless we might escape by the windows, I moved a pace to look for
them. I would have loosed her hand to do this, that my own might be
free to grope before me, but to my surprise she clung to me and would
not let me go. Then in the darkness I heard her sigh, as if she were
about to swoon; and she fell against me.
"Courage, Mademoiselle, courage!" I said, terrified by the mere
thought.
"Oh, I am frightened!" she moaned in my ear. "I am frightened! Save
me, Monsieur, save me!"
She had been so brave before that I wondered; not knowing that the
bravest woman's courage is of this quality. But I had short time for
wonder. Her weight hung each instant more dead in my arms, and my
heart beating wildly as I held her I looked round for help, for a
thought, for an idea. But all was dark. I could not remember even
where the door stood by which we had entered. I peered in vain, for
the slightest glimmer of light that might betray the windows. I was
alone with her and helpless, our way of retreat cut off, the flames
approaching. I felt her head fall back and knew that she had swooned;
and in the dark I could do no more than support her, and listen and
listen for the returning steps of the man, or what else would happen
next.
For a long time, a long time it seemed to me, nothing happened. Then a
sudden burst of sound told me that the door at the foot of the stairs
had been opened again; and on that followed a clatter of wooden shoes
on the bare stairs. I could judge now where the door of the room was,
and I quickly but tenderly laid Mademoiselle on the floor a little
behind it, and waited myself on the threshold. I still had my
candlestick, and I was desperate.
I heard them pass, my heart beating; and then I heard them pause and I
clutched my weapon; and then a voice I knew gave an order, and with a
cry of joy I dragged open the door of the room and stood before
them--stood before them, as they told me afterwards, with the face of
a ghost or a man risen from the dead.
There were four of them, and the nearest to us was Father Benoit.
The good priest fell on my neck and kissed me. "You are not hurt?" he
cried.
"No," I said dully. "You have come then?"
"Yes," he said. "In time to save you, God be praised! God be praised!
And Mademoiselle? Mademoiselle de St. Alais?" he added eagerly,
looking at me as if he thought I was not quite in my senses. "Have you
news of her?"
I turned without a word, and went back into the room. He followed
with a light, and the three men, of whom Buton was one, pressed in
after him. They were rough peasants, but the sight made them give
back, and uncover themselves. Mademoiselle lay where I had left her,
her head pillowed on a dark carpet of hair; from the midst of which
her child's face, composed and white as in death, looked up with
solemn half-closed eyes to the ceiling. For myself, I stared down at
her almost without emotion, so much had I gone through. But the priest
cried out aloud.
"_Mon Dieu!_" he said, with a sob in his voice. "Have they killed
her?"
"No," I answered. "She has only fainted. If there is a woman here----"
"There is no woman here that I dare trust," he answered between his
teeth. And he bade one of the men go and get some water, adding a few
words which I did not hear.
The man returned almost immediately, and Father Benoit, bidding him
and his fellows stand back a little, moistened her lips with water,
afterwards dashing some in her face; doing it with an air of haste
that puzzled me until I noticed that the room was grown thick with
smoke, and on going myself to the door saw the red glow of the fire at
the end of the passage, and heard the distant crash of falling stones
and timbers. Then I thought that I understood the men's attitude, and
I suggested to Father Benoit that I should carry her out.
"She will never recover here," I said, with a sob in my throat. "She
will be suffocated if we do not get her into the air."
A thick volume of smoke swept along the passage as I spoke, and gave
point to my words.
"Yes," the priest said slowly, "I think so, too, my son, but----"
"But what?" I cried. "It is not safe to stay!"
"You sent to Cahors?"
"Yes," I answered. "Has M. le Marquis come?"
"No; and you see, M. le Vicomte, I have only these four men," he
explained. "Had I stayed to gather more I might have been too late.
And with these only I do not know what to do. Half the poor wretches
who have done this mischief are mad with drink. Others are strangers,
and----"
"But I thought--I thought that it was all over," I cried in
astonishment.
"No," he answered gravely. "They let us pass in after an altercation;
I am of the Committee, and so is Buton there. But when they see you,
and especially Mademoiselle de St. Alais--I do not know how they may
act, my friend."
"But, _mon Dieu!_" I cried. "Surely they will not dare----"
"No, Monseigneur, have no fear, they shall not dare!"
The words came out of the smoke. The speaker was Buton. As he spoke,
he stepped forward, swinging the ponderous bar he carried, his huge
hairy arms bare to the elbow. "Yet there is one thing you must do," he
said.
"What?"
"You must put on the tricolour. They will not dare to touch that."
He spoke with a simple pride, which at the moment I found
unintelligible. I understand it better now. Nay, on the morrow, it was
no riddle to me, though an abiding wonder.
The priest sprang at the idea. "Good," he said. "Buton has hit it!
They will respect that."
And before I could speak he had detached the large rosette which he
wore on his _soutane_, and was pinning it on my breast.
"Now yours, Buton," he continued; and taking the smith's--it was not
too clean--he fixed it on Mademoiselle's left shoulder. "There," he
said eagerly, when it was done. "Now, M. le Vicomte, take her up.
Quick, or we shall be stifled. Buton and I will go before you, and our
friends here will follow you."
Mademoiselle was beginning to come to herself with sighs and sobs,
when I raised her in my arms; and we were all coughing with the smoke.
This in the passage outside was choking; had we delayed a minute
longer we could not have passed out safely, for already the flames
were beginning to lick the door of the next room, and dart out angry
tongues towards us. As it was, we stumbled down the stairs in some
fashion, one helping another; and checked for an instant by the closed
door at the bottom, were glad to fall when it was opened pell-mell in
the kitchen, where we stood with smarting eyes, gasping for breath.
It was the grand kitchen of the Chateau that had seen many a feast
prepared, and many a quarry brought home; but for Mademoiselle's sake
I was glad that her face was against my breast, and that she could not
see it now. A great fire, fed high with fat and hams, blazed on the
hearth, and before it, instead of meat, the carcases of three dogs
hung from the jack, and tainted the air with the smell of burning
flesh. They were M. le Marquis' favourite hounds, killed in pure
wantonness. Below them the floor, strewn with bottles, ran deep in
wasted wine, out of which piles of shattered furniture and staved
casks rose like islands. All that the rioters had not taken they had
spoiled; even now in one corner a woman was filling her apron with
salt from a huge trampled heap, and at the battered _dressoir_ three
or four men were plundering. The main body of the peasants, however,
had retired outside, where they could be heard fiercely cheering on
the flames, shouting when a chimney fell or a window burst, and
flinging into the fire every living thing unlucky enough to fall into
their hands. The plunderers, on seeing us, sneaked out with grim looks
like wolves driven from the prey. Doubtless, they spread the news; for
while we paused, though it was only for a moment, in the middle of the
floor, the uproar outside ceased, and gave place to a strange silence
in the midst of which we appeared at the door.
The glare of the burning house threw a light as strong as that of day
on the scene before us; on the line of savage frenzied faces that
confronted us, and the great pile of wreckage that stood about and
bore witness to their fury. But for a moment the light failed to show
us to them; we were in the shadow of the wall, and it was not until we
had advanced some paces that the ominous silence was broken, and the
mob, with a howl of rage, sprang forward, like bloodhounds slipped
from the leash. Low-browed and shock-headed, half-naked, and black
with smoke and blood, they seemed more like beasts than men; and like
beasts they came on, snapping the teeth and snarling, while from the
rear--for the foremost were past speech--came screams of "_Mort aux
Tyrans! Mort aux Accapareurs!_" that, mingling with the tumult of the
fire, were enough to scare the stoutest.
Had my escort blenched for an instant our fate was sealed. But they
stood firm, and before their stern front all but one man quailed and
fell back--fell back snarling and crying for our blood. That one came
on, and aimed a blow at me with a knife. On the instant Buton raised
his iron bar, and with a stentorian cry of "Respect the Tricolour!"
struck him to the ground, and strode over him.
"Respect the Tricolour!" he shouted again, with the voice of a bull;
and the effect of the words was magical. The crowd heard, fell back,
and fell aside, staring stupidly at me and my burden.
"Respect the Tricolour!" Father Benoit cried, raising his hand aloft;
and he made the sign of the cross. On that in an instant a hundred
voices took it up; and almost before I could apprehend the change,
those who a moment earlier had been gaping for our blood were
thrusting one another back, and shouting as with one voice, "Way, way
for the Tricolour!"
There was something unutterably new, strange, formidable in this
reverence; this respect paid by these savages to a word, a ribbon, an
idea. It made an impression on me that was never quite effaced. But at
the moment I was scarcely conscious of this. I heard and saw things
dully. Like a man in a dream, I walked through the crowd, and,
stumbling under my burden, passed down the lane of brutish faces, down
the avenue, down to the gate. There Father Benoit would have taken
Mademoiselle from me, but I would not let him.
"To Saux! To Saux!" I said feverishly; and then, I scarcely knew how,
I found myself on a horse holding her before me. And we were on the
road to Saux, lighted on our way by the flames of the burning Chateau.