CHAPTER X.
BREAD UPON THE WATERS.
Across the lawn the mob poured like a foul and hideous flood, reeling in a kind of drunken frenzy, their voices mounting to demoniac screams now that their goal was in sight—waving their blazing brands above their heads, or shaking furiously such rude weapons as they possessed. And as I looked down at them I realized how thin and fragile is the veneer of civilization, product though it be of long and painful centuries. Here it had vanished at a breath. These creatures had reverted to the state of savages, and burned with the lust of blood and plunder. They were wolves indeed—and they were hunting in pack!
“Why, there are women among them!” I cried; and indeed there were certain petticoated figures shrieking as madly as the rest, though there was nothing feminine in the frenzied countenances revealed by the red light of the torches.
“The women are the worst of all,” said M. le Comte. “They devise tortures of a fiendishness beyond man’s ingenuity. They sit day after day watching the guillotine. They are never sated with blood.”
But the mob had reached the terrace, had swept up over it like a tidal wave, and on into the house. Instantly pandemonium broke loose—the crash of breaking glass, of furniture riven asunder, of doors burst from their hinges. It seemed that in a breath the house itself must be destroyed, torn stone from stone, under that fierce assault. I saw madame shudder at thought of the havoc which was being wrought among the objects that she loved.
“But where are the Blues?” I asked. “Will they stand by and permit this outrage?”
“How could they stay it?” asked M. le Comte sadly. “They are powerless. They can do nothing. As well hope to stay the tide of the ocean.”
“They wish to do nothing, monsieur,” said Pasdeloup. “They abandon the château and all it contains to the mob. See!—there they go yonder.”
And following his gesture we saw two boats loaded with armed men just slipping into the shadows of the farther shore.
M. le Comte stared at them for a moment, then down at the frenzied crowd on the terrace, and grew white to the lips. At last he turned to his wife.
“Come, madame,” he said, in a voice strangely calm, “do you and Charlotte descend to the floor below, where you can at least sit down. If I had only thought to bring a candle!”
“I have one,” said Pasdeloup; and produced from his pocket a piece of candle some six inches in length, together with flint and steel. In a moment the candle was alight.
“Good!” cried his master. “Now you can feel almost at home, madame. Perhaps you may even succeed in getting an hour’s sleep. Certainly you will be far more comfortable than on this exposed platform. Let me light the way.”
He took the candle from Pasdeloup’s hand and started down the stair. Madame followed him without a word, but her companion paused and glanced at me. I was at her side in an instant.
“What is it?” she questioned, in a whisper. “Why are we banished. There is no danger?”
“Oh, no, mademoiselle,” I assured her. “There is not the slightest danger at present. I hope that you will really get some sleep.”
“Sleep!” she echoed scornfully. “For what do you take me?”
“For the loveliest woman in the world!” I said. “In that, at least, I am not mistaken.”
“Wait until you have seen more of them!” she retorted, with a flash of her old spirit, and started down the stair. But at the second step she stopped and turned back to me. “M. de Tavernay,” she said, looking up at me with shining eyes, “you must promise me one thing.”
“What is that, mademoiselle?”
“If there is any danger you will call me.”
“Very well,” I said quietly, after a moment, “I promise.”
“Thank you,” she said; and waving her hand to me, disappeared down the stair.
M. le Comte was back a moment later, the shadow still dark across his face. He came directly to the spot where Pasdeloup and I stood leaning against the wall.
“Now, Pasdeloup,” he said, “tell me what you know of this affair. I confess that I do not in the least understand it. And I want the worst—mind you, the worst! I want to know the very uttermost we shall have to face. Who was it set these peasants on? Who set that trap for me this morning? Whose hand is it aiming these blows at me?”
For a moment Pasdeloup hesitated, staring from his master down at the château and back again.
“You remember Goujon, monsieur?” he asked at last; and it seemed to me that I had heard the name, though I could not remember where.
“Goujon?” repeated M. le Comte. “No; who is he?”
“One night three years ago, monsieur, as you were about to retire, you fancied you heard a noise in the room above your apartment—an empty attic. You called a servant, and taking your pistols, mounted to that attic. In one corner you found a man crouching. You dragged him forth and discovered him to be a creature who should have been employed about the kennels. He excused himself by saying that one of the maids was his mistress; that, on leaving her, he had lost his way and stumbled into that attic. The maids did indeed sleep on that floor, and you found that he was the lover of one of them. But when she shrieked that it was not with her he spent his nights, you did not heed her; you thought it merely some excuse—some lie. So you contented yourself with kicking the fellow down the steps of the terrace and warning him never again to set foot on your estate.”
“Well?” said M. le Comte, somewhat impatiently.
“Well, that fellow was Goujon, monsieur. Had you passed your sword through him, all this would never have occurred. Six months later you were walking in your woods down yonder by the river when you came suddenly upon a man setting a snare. I chanced to pass at the moment, and we brought him with us back to the château, though he resisted desperately. Three hares were found upon him——”
“I remember,” broke in his master. “Did I punish him?”
“Yes, monsieur,” answered Pasdeloup quietly. “You caused him to be stripped and beaten, then branded on both shoulders with the fleur-de-lis.”
“Ah,” said the other with a sigh of relief, “I am glad I was so lenient. I might have decreed the gallows or the wheel for the miserable poacher.”
“Oui, dà, monsieur,” agreed Pasdeloup, with a grim smile; “but after all your leniency was a mistake, for there are some men who prefer the gallows to the white-hot iron. That miserable poacher was one of them—although he has since become Citizen Goujon, a deputy of the Republic.”
“A deputy?”
“He arrived at Dange a week ago.”
“You mean it is he who aroused these peasants?”
“Undoubtedly. It was also he who sent Laroche to you with the message that madame was ill.”
Then in a flash I remembered where I had heard the name.
“Pasdeloup is right!” I cried. “When Dubosq was placing the sentries in the garden I heard him say that it was from Citizen Goujon he had his orders. But this Goujon cannot be such a bad fellow, since he gave peremptory orders that the women were not to be harmed.”
“Did he so?” asked M. le Comte with a quick breath of relief. “Then it is only me he hates—it is only me he seeks. Well, I can face death. But when I saw that we were abandoned to this mob I fancied—I fancied——”
“Do not fear, monsieur,” said Pasdeloup in a strange voice. “This mob has leaders who will also take care to deliver the women unharmed into the hands of Citizen Goujon.”
“Well, and what then?” demanded his master. “Why do you speak in that tone?”
“Because, monsieur,” answered Pasdeloup grimly, “you do not know Goujon. Hatred of monsieur was not the only reason which led to this attack.”
“What other reason was there?”
Pasdeloup looked down at the mob, then away to the east toward Dange, his lips compressed.
“Come, tell me!” commanded his master. “This is not the time for hesitancies.”
Pasdeloup cleared his throat gruffly.
“Citizen Goujon has the audacity to love Madame la Comtesse,” he said finally.
M. le Comte burst into a laugh.
“Any fool may worship a star,” he said. “He cannot drag it down to him.”
“Goujon is trying to drag this one down, monsieur,” added Pasdeloup quietly, “as he tried once before. This time he believes that success is certain.”
M. le Comte grew suddenly sober.
“‘As he tried once before?’” he repeated. “Your meaning, Pasdeloup?”
“Ah, monsieur,” answered Pasdeloup, with a gesture indicating that the matter had been taken out of his hands, “it was not by mistake that Goujon entered that attic three years ago. That girl to whom you would not listen—terror had frightened her into the truth. For that attic extended also above the apartment of madame. He had fashioned a hole in the ceiling; he had even planned to descend some night when you were absent....”
“Ah, if I had known!” cried his master hoarsely. “If I had known! But how do you know all this, Pasdeloup?” he demanded, turning upon the other fiercely, a sudden red suspicion in his eyes.
“Goujon himself told me,” replied Pasdeloup calmly, “two nights ago at Dange, when he had drunk too much wine. Shall I continue the story, monsieur, or have you heard enough?”
“Continue! Let us have it all;” and M. le Comte bowed his head upon his breast.
“Expelled from the house and from your service,” went on Pasdeloup, “Goujon spent his days and nights watching the château in the hope that chance might yet give madame into his hands. He lived by poaching, as you happened to discover. After you had punished him he still lingered for a time in your woods, defying death. He was half-mad, I think: he was willing to suffer any torment, face any torture, if he could die with the consciousness of having possessed madame. Not only his passion for her, but his hatred of you urged him on. At last he thought of a better way; he joined the assassins at Paris, and now he has returned armed with a power which will give him his revenge. All of this,” he added, with a gesture toward the hall below, “is for the purpose of enabling him to taste that revenge. You can guess now why he ordered that madame should be delivered into his hands unharmed.”
M. le Comte’s face was livid.
“Is he in this mob?” he asked hoarsely. “Point him out to me, Pasdeloup!”
“I do not think he is here,” answered Pasdeloup. “Not yet—but he will come—and perhaps, who knows, fate may give you a chance at him.”
M. le Comte grew suddenly silent, searching the other’s face with eyes intent.
“How came you to be with Goujon two nights ago?” he questioned. “Have you been consorting with these scoundrels?”
“If I have, M. le Comte,” answered Pasdeloup simply, “it was that I might better serve my master—that I might pay my debt.”
“Your debt?”
“Ah, that is another thing he does not remember,” said Pasdeloup, turning to me with a sad little smile. “But he was only a boy at the time and it was to him a little thing not worth remembering. We lived in a hut on the edge of the wood yonder, my mother and I. Every morning my mother cleaned the sties here at the château and gave the pigs their food. For this she received every day a loaf of black bread, and she managed now and then to snatch a few morsels from the trough when no one was near. For the rest, we lived on the roots and nuts we gathered in the forest, and we were permitted also to use such wood as the storms swept from the trees. In this manner we somehow managed to keep alive.
“But one day my mother fell ill. She could not go to her work; instead, she grew worse and worse, and I had no food to give her. In the course of three days I myself grew so hungry that I could think of nothing better to do than to sit in the sun at the door of our hut and weep. It was while I was doing this that I heard a noise, and looking up, saw approaching me a horse ridden by a being who seemed to me a god. He stopped his horse and asked me what the matter was. So overwhelmed was I by this vision that I could only point to the door of the hut and to my belly. He dismounted, he entered the hut, he looked at my mother; then he came out, patted me on the head and rode away. I was so dazzled by the sight of him that for a time I forgot my hunger; but at last it pinched me again more sharply than before, and I reflected that after all the visit of the god had profited me nothing. And I was just about to renew my wailing when again I heard a noise, and again saw my visitor approaching through the trees. This time he bore in one hand an iron kettle which he thrust upon me and bade me carry in to my mother. The kettle contained two fowls, steaming hot in their own juices,—the first I had ever tasted.”
“Ah, now I remember,” said M. le Comte smiling. “I snatched that kettle from the cook just as he had taken it from the fire. I can even yet see his astonished countenance. Well, did it save your mother?”
“No, M. le Comte, she was too far gone for that; but at least she entered heaven with a full belly. She filled herself, slept and never awakened. But it saved me, monsieur, and it is that debt which I hope to repay.”
“And yet,” said his master, looking at him, “if I remember rightly, that boy must have been at least three years younger than myself; while you are at least ten years older.”
“I do not know how old I am, monsieur; I have lost count of it; but I am that boy.”
“Then you cannot be more than twenty-seven. Twenty-seven!” and he gazed at the squat figure, the gnarled hands, the seamed and rugged countenance.
“No,” said Pasdeloup, “I do not think I am more than twenty-seven; but for many of those years, M. le Comte, I struggled day by day to keep the soul in the body. That ages one, you see.”
“Yes,” agreed his master, sadly, “I see.”
“At first I was only in the way,” said Pasdeloup. “No one wanted me, and I received everybody’s kicks and blows. Then I grew big enough to help with the pigs. Since I have been keeper of the gate for M. le Comte,” he added eagerly, “I have had an easy life.”
“Yet I have found you there whenever I passed, day or night.”
“Ah, monsieur has remarked that?” cried Pasdeloup, his face glowing with pleasure. “There is a corner between the gate and the wall,” he explained, “where one is sheltered from the weather. And I have learned to sleep with one eye open, watching for monsieur. It is a thing soon learned. And I sleep none the less soundly.”
“I am glad of that,” said his master, gently, and stared for a moment gloomily down at the crowd upon the lawn. “This Revolution is not so surprising after all,” he added, half to himself.