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_LORD TONY'S WIFE_ BARONESS ORCZY
By BARONESS ORCZY
LORD TONY'S WIFE LEATHERFACE THE BRONZE EAGLE A BRIDE OF THE PLAINS THE LAUGHING CAVALIER "UNTO CAESAR" EL DORADO MEADOWSWEET THE NOBLE ROGUE THE HEART OF A WOMAN PETTICOAT RULE
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY NEW YORK
LORD TONY'S WIFE
AN ADVENTURE OF THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL
BY
BARONESS ORCZY
AUTHOR OF "THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL," "THE LAUGHING CAVALIER," ETC.
NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To
DORA COUNTESS OF CHESTERFIELD
A TOKEN OF FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE.
EMMUSKA ORCZY.
CONTENTS
PAGE PROLOGUE: NANTES, 1789 11
BOOK ONE: BATH, 1793
CHAPTER
I THE MOOR 43
II THE BOTTOM INN 50
III THE ASSEMBLY ROOMS 78
IV THE FATHER 100
V THE NEST 109
VI THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL 123
VII MARGUERITE 130
VIII THE ROAD TO PORTISHEAD 134
IX THE COAST OF FRANCE 147
BOOK TWO: NANTES, DECEMBER, 1793
I THE TIGER'S LAIR 163
II LE BOUFFAY 195
III THE FOWLERS 212
IV THE NET 234
V THE MESSAGE OF HOPE 256
VI THE RAT MORT 267
VII THE FRACAS IN THE TAVERN 279
VIII THE ENGLISH ADVENTURERS 299
IX THE PROCONSUL 313
X LORD TONY 327
PROLOGUE
NANTES, 1789
I
"Tyrant! tyrant! tyrant!"
It was Pierre who spoke, his voice was hardly raised above a murmur, butthere was such an intensity of passion expressed in his face, in thefingers of his hand which closed slowly and convulsively as if they wereclutching the throat of a struggling viper, there was so much hate inthose muttered words, so much power, such compelling and awesomedetermination that an ominous silence fell upon the village lads and themen who sat with him in the low narrow room of the auberge des TroisVertus.
Even the man in the tattered coat and threadbare breeches, who--perchedupon the centre table--had been haranguing the company on the subject ofthe Rights of Man, paused in his peroration and looked down on Pierrehalf afraid of that fierce flame of passionate hate which his own wordshad helped to kindle.
The silence, however, had only lasted a few moments, the next Pierre wason his feet, and a cry like that of a bull in a slaughter-house escapedhis throat.
"In the name of God!" he shouted, "let us cease all that senselesstalking. Haven't we planned enough and talked enough to satisfy ourpuling consciences? The time has come to strike, mes amis, to strike Isay, to strike at those cursed aristocrats, who have made us what weare--ignorant, wretched, downtrodden--senseless clods to work ourfingers to the bone, our bodies till they break so that they may wallowin their pleasures and their luxuries! Strike, I say!" he reiteratedwhile his eyes glowed and his breath came and went through his throatwith a hissing sound. "Strike! as the men and women struck in Paris onthat great day in July. To them the Bastille stood for tyranny, and theystruck at it as they would at the head of a tyrant--and the tyrantcowered, cringed, made terms--he was frightened at the wrath of thepeople! That is what happened in Paris! That is what must happen inNantes. The chateau of the duc de Kernogan is our Bastille! Let usstrike at it to-night, and if the arrogant aristocrat resists, we'llraze his house to the ground. The hour, the day, the darkness are allpropitious. The arrangements hold good. The neighbours are ready.Strike, I say!"
He brought his hard fist crashing down upon the table, so that mugs andbottles rattled: his enthusiasm had fired all his hearers: his hatredand his lust of revenge had done more in five minutes than all thetirades of the agitators sent down from Paris to instil revolutionaryideas into the slow-moving brains of village lads.
"Who will give the signal?" queried one of the older men quietly.
"I will!" came a lusty response from Pierre.
He strode to the door, and all the men jumped to their feet, ready tofollow him, dragged into this hot-headed venture by the mere force ofone man's towering passion. They followed Pierre like sheep--sheep thathave momentarily become intoxicated--sheep that have become fierce--astrange sight truly--and yet one that the man in the tattered coat whohad done so much speechifying lately, watched with eager interest andpresently related with great wealth of detail to M. de Mirabeau thechampion of the people.
"It all came about through the death of a pair of pigeons," he said.
The death of the pigeons, however, was only the spark which set allthese turbulent passions ablaze. They had been smouldering for half acentury, and had been ready to burst into flames for the past decade.
Antoine Melun, the wheelwright, who was to have married Louise, Pierre'ssister, had trapped a pair of pigeons in the woods of M. le duc deKernogan. He had done it to assert his rights as a man--he did not wantthe pigeons. Though he was a poor man, he was no poorer than hundreds ofpeasants for miles around: but he paid imposts and taxes until everyparticle of profit which he gleaned from his miserable little plot ofland went into the hands of the collectors, whilst M. le duc de Kernoganpaid not one sou towards the costs of the State, and he had to live onwhat was left of his own rye and wheat after M. le duc's pigeons had hadtheir fill of them.
Antoine Melun did not want to eat the pigeons which he had trapped, buthe desired to let M. le duc de Kernogan know that God and Nature hadnever intended all the beasts and birds of the woods to be the exclusiveproperty of one man, rather than another. So he trapped and killed twopigeons and M. le duc's head-bailiff caught him in the act of carryingthose pigeons home.
Whereupon Antoine was arrested for poaching and thieving: he was triedat Nantes under the presidency of M. le duc de Kernogan, and ten minutesago, while the man in the tattered coat was declaiming to a number ofpeasant lads in the coffee-room of the auberge des Trois Vertus on thesubject of their rights as men and citizens, some one brought the newsthat Antoine Melun had just been condemned to death and would be hangedon the morrow.
That was the spark which had fanned Pierre Adet's hatred of thearistocrats to a veritable conflagration: the news of Antoine Melun'sfate was the bleat which rallied all those human shee
p around theirleader. For Pierre had naturally become their leader because his hatredof M. le duc was more tangible, more powerful than theirs. Pierre hadhad more education than they. His father, Jean Adet the miller, had senthim to a school in Nantes, and when Pierre came home M. le cure ofVertou took an interest in him and taught him all he knew himself--whichwas not much--in the way of philosophy and the classics. But later onPierre took to reading the writings of M. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and soonknew the _Contrat Social_ almost by heart. He had also read the articlesin M. Marat's newspaper _L'ami du Peuple!_ and, like Antoine Melun, thewheelwright, he had got it into his head that it was not God, nor yetNature who had intended one man to starve while another gorged himselfon all the good things of this world.
He did not, however, speak of these matters, either to his father or tohis sister or to M. le cure, but he brooded over them, and when theprice of bread rose to four sous he muttered curses against M. le duc deKernogan, and when famine prices ruled throughout the district thosecurses became overt threats; and by the time that the pinch of hungerwas felt in Vertou Pierre's passion of fury against the duc de Kernoganhad turned to a frenzy of hate against the entire noblesse of France.
Still he said nothing to his father, nothing to his mother and sister.But his father knew. Old Jean would watch the storm-clouds whichgathered on Pierre's lowering brow; he heard the muttered curses whichescaped from Pierre's lips whilst he worked for the liege-lord whom hehated. But Jean was a wise man and knew how useless it is to put out afeeble hand in order to stem the onrush of a torrent. He knew howuseless are the words of wisdom from an old man to quell the rebelliousspirit of the young.
Jean was on the watch. And evening after evening when the work on thefarm was done, Pierre would sit in the small low room of the aubergewith other lads from the village talking, talking of their wrongs, ofthe arrogance of the aristocrats, the sins of M. le duc and his family,the evil conduct of the King and the immorality of the Queen: and men inragged coats and tattered breeches came in from Nantes, and even fromParis, in order to harangue these village lads and told them yet furthertales of innumerable wrongs suffered by the people at the hands of thearistos, and stuffed their heads full of schemes for getting even onceand for all with those men and women who fattened on the sweat of thepoor and drew their luxury from the hunger and the toil of thepeasantry.
Pierre sucked in these harangues through every pore: they were meat anddrink to him. His hate and passions fed upon these effusions till hiswhole being was consumed by a maddening desire for reprisals, forvengeance--for the lust of triumph over those whom he had been taught tofear.
And in the low, narrow room of the auberge the fevered heads of villagelads were bent together in conclave, and the ravings and shoutings of awhile ago were changed to whisperings and low murmurings behind barreddoors and shuttered windows. Men exchanged cryptic greetings when theymet in the village street, enigmatical signs passed between them whilethey worked: strangers came and went at dead of night to and from theneighbouring villages. M. le duc's overseers saw nothing, heard nothing,guessed nothing. M. le cure saw much and old Jean Adet guessed a greatdeal, but they said nothing, for nothing then would have availed.
Then came the catastrophe.
II
Pierre pushed open the outer door of the auberge des Trois Vertus andstepped out under the porch. A gust of wind caught him in the face. Thenight, so the chronicles of the time tell us, was as dark as pitch: onahead lay the lights of the city flickering in the gale: to the left thewide tawny ribbon of the river wound its turbulent course toward theocean, the booming of the waters swollen by the recent melting of thesnow sounded like the weird echoes of invisible cannons far away.
Without hesitation Pierre advanced. His little troop followed him insilence. They were a little sobered now that they came out into the openand that the fumes of cider and of hot, perspiring humanity no longerobscured their vision or inflamed their brain.
They knew whither Pierre was going. It had all beenpre-arranged--throughout this past summer, in the musty parlour of theauberge, behind barred doors and shuttered windows--all they had to dowas to follow Pierre, whom they had tacitly chosen as their leader. Theywalked on behind him, their hands buried in the pockets of their thin,tattered breeches, their heads bent forward against the fury of thegale.
Pierre made straight for the mill--his home--where his father lived andwhere Louise was even now crying her eyes out because Antoine Melun, hersweetheart, had been condemned to be hanged for killing two pigeons.
At the back of the mill was the dwelling house and beyond it a smallfarmery, for Jean Adet owned a little bit of land and would have beenfairly well off if the taxes had not swallowed up all the money that hemade out of the sale of his rye and his hay. Just here the ground rosesharply to a little hillock which dominated the flat valley of the Loireand commanded a fine view over the more distant villages.
Pierre skirted the mill and without looking round to see if the othersfollowed him he struck squarely to the right up a narrow lane borderedby tall poplars, and which led upwards to the summit of the littlehillock around which clustered the tumble-down barns of his father'sfarmery.
The gale lashed the straight, tall stems of the poplars until they bentnearly double, and each tiny bare twig sighed and whispered as if inpain. Pierre strode on and the others followed in silence. They werechilled to the bone under their scanty clothes, but they followed onwith grim determination, set teeth, and anger and hate seething in theirhearts.
The top of the rising ground was reached. It was pitch dark, and the menwhen they halted fell up against one another trying to get a foothold onthe sodden ground. But Pierre seemed to have eyes like a cat. He onlypaused one moment to get his bearings, then--still without a word--heset to work. A large barn and a group of small circular straw ricksloomed like solid masses out of the darkness--black, silhouetted againstthe black of the stormy sky. Pierre turned toward the barn: those of hiscomrades who were in the forefront of the small crowd saw himdisappearing inside one of those solid shadowy masses that looked soghostlike in the night.
Anon those who watched and who happened to be facing the interior of thebarn saw sparks from a tinder flying in every direction: the nextmoment they could see Pierre himself quite clearly. He was standing inthe middle of the barn and intent on lighting a roughly-fashioned torchwith his tinder: soon the resin caught a spark and Pierre held the torchinclined toward the ground so that the flames could lick their way upthe shaft. The flickering light cast a weird glow and deep grotesqueshadows upon the face and figure of the young man. His hair, lanky anddishevelled, fell over his eyes; his mouth and jaw, illumined from belowby the torch, looked unnaturally large, and showed his teeth gleamingwhite, like the fangs of a beast of prey. His shirt was torn open at theneck, and the sleeves of his coat were rolled up to the elbow. He seemednot to feel either the cold from without or the scorching heat of theflaming torch in his hand. But he worked deliberately and calmly,without haste or febrile movements: grim determination held hisexcitement in check.
At last his work was done. The men who had pressed forward, in order towatch him, fell back as he advanced, torch in hand. They knew exactlywhat he was going to do, they had thought it all out, planned it, spokenof it till even their unimaginative minds had visualised this comingscene with absolutely realistic perception. And yet, now that thesupreme hour had come, now that they saw Pierre--torch in hand--preparedto give the signal which would set ablaze the seething revolt of thecountryside, their heart seemed to stop its beating within their body;they held their breath, their toil-worn hands went up to their throatsas if to repress that awful choking sensation which was so like fear.
But Pierre had no such hesitations; if his breath seemed to choke him asit reached his throat, if it escaped through his set teeth with astrange whistling sound, it was because his excitement was that of ahungry beast who had sighted his prey and is ready to spring and devour.His hand did not shake, his step was firm: the
gusts of wind caught theflame of his torch till the sparks flew in every direction and scorchedhis hair and his hands, and while the others recoiled he strode on, tothe straw-rick that was nearest.
For one moment he held the torch aloft. There was triumph now in hiseyes, in his whole attitude. He looked out into the darkness far awaywhich seemed all the more impenetrable beyond the restricted circle offlickering torchlight. It seemed as if he would wrest from that inkyblackness all the secrets which it hid--all the enthusiasm, theexcitement, the passions, the hatred which he would have liked to setablaze as he would the straw-ricks anon.
"Are you ready, mes amis?" he called.
"Aye! aye!" they replied--not gaily, not lustily, but calmly and undertheir breath.
One touch of the torch and the dry straw began to crackle; a gust ofwind caught the flame and whipped it into energy; it crept up the sideof the little rick like a glowing python that wraps its prey in itsembrace. Another gust of wind, and the flame leapt joyously up to thepinnacle of the rick, and sent forth other tongues to lick and to lick,to enfold the straw, to devour, to consume.
But Pierre did not wait to see the consummation of his work ofdestruction. Already with a few rapid strides he had reached hisfather's second straw-rick, and this too he set alight, and then anotherand another, until six blazing furnaces sent their lurid tongues offlames, twisting and twirling, writhing and hissing through the stormynight.
Within the space of two minutes the whole summit of the hillock seemedto be ablaze, and Pierre, like a god of fire, torch in hand, seemed topreside over and command a multitude of ever-spreading flames to hiswill. Excitement had overmastered him now, the lust to destroy was uponhim, and excitement had seized all the others too.
There was shouting and cursing, and laughter that sounded mirthless andforced, and calls to Pierre, and oaths of revenge. Memory, like anevil-intentioned witch, was riding invisibly in the darkness, and shetouched each seething brain with her fever-giving wand. Every man had anoutrage to remember, an injustice to recall, and strong, brown fistswere shaken aloft in the direction of the chateau de Kernogan, whoselights glimmered feebly in the distance beyond the Loire.
"Death to the tyrant! A la lanterne les aristos! The people's hour hascome at last! No more starvation! No more injustice! Equality! Liberty!A mort les aristos!"
The shouts, the curses, the crackling flames, the howling of the wind,the soughing of the trees, made up a confusion of sounds which seemedhardly of this earth; the blazing ricks, the flickering, red light ofthe flames had finally transformed the little hillock behind the millinto another Brocken on whose summit witches and devils do of a truthhold their revels.
"A moi!" shouted Pierre again, and he threw his torch down upon theground and once more made for the barn. The others followed him. In thebarn were such weapons as these wretched, penniless peasants had managedto collect--scythes, poles, axes, saws, anything that would prove usefulfor the destruction of the chateau de Kernogan and the proposedbrow-beating of M. le duc and his family. All the men trooped in in thewake of Pierre. The entire hillock was now a blaze of light--lurid andred and flickering--alternately teased and fanned and subdued by thegale, so that at times every object stood out clearly cut, every bladeof grass, every stone in bold relief, and in the ruts and fissures,every tiny pool of muddy water shimmered like strings of fire-opals:whilst at others, a pall of inky darkness, smoke-laden and impenetrablewould lie over the ground and erase the outline of farm-buildings anddistant mill and of the pushing and struggling mass of humanity insidethe barn.
But Pierre, heedless of light and darkness, of heat or of cold,proceeded quietly and methodically to distribute the primitiveimplements of warfare to this crowd of ignorant men, who were by nowover ready for mischief: and with every weapon which he placed inwilling hands, he found the right words for willing ears--words whichwould kindle passion and lust of vengeance most readily where they laydormant, or would fan them into greater vigour where they smouldered.
"For thee this scythe, Hector Lebrun," he would say to a tall, lankyyouth whose emaciated arms and bony hands were stretched with longingtoward the bright piece of steel; "remember last year's harvest, theheavy tax thou wert forced to pay, so that not one sou of profit wentinto thy pocket, and thy mother starved whilst M. le duc and his broodfeasted and danced, and shiploads of corn were sunk in the Loire lestabundance made bread too cheap for the poor!
"For thee this pick-axe, Henri Meunier! Remember the new roof on thyhut, which thou didst build to keep the wet off thy wife's bed, who wascrippled with ague--and the heavy impost levied on thee by thetax-collector for this improvement to thy miserable hovel.
"This pole for thee, Charles Blanc! Remember the beating administered tothee by the duc's bailiff for daring to keep a tame rabbit to amuse thychildren!
"Remember! Remember, mes amis!" he added exultantly, "remember everywrong you have endured, every injustice, every blow! remember yourpoverty and his wealth, your crusts of dry bread and his succulentmeals, your rags and his silks and velvets, remember your starvingchildren and ailing mother, your care-laden wife and toil-worndaughters! Forget nothing, mes amis, to-night, and at the gates of thechateau de Kernogan demand of its arrogant owner wrong for wrong andoutrage for outrage."
A deafening cry of triumph greeted this peroration, scythes and sicklesand axes and poles were brandished in the air and several scores ofhands were stretched out to Pierre and clasped in this newly-formed bondof vengeful fraternity.
III
Then it was that with vigorous play of the elbows, Jean Adet, themiller, forced his way through the crowd till he stood face to face withhis son.
"Unfortunate!" he cried, "what is all this? What dost thou propose todo? Whither are ye all going?"
"To Kernogan!" they all shouted in response.
"En avant, Pierre! we follow!" cried some of them impatiently.
But Jean Adet--who was a powerful man despite his years--had seizedPierre by the arm and dragged him to a distant corner of the barn:
"Pierre!" he said in tones of command, "I forbid thee in the name of thyduty and the obedience which thou dost owe to me and to thy mother, tomove another step in this hot-headed adventure. I was on the high-road,walking homewards, when that conflagration and the senseless cries ofthese poor lads warned me that some awful mischief was afoot. Pierre!my son! I command thee to lay that weapon down."
But Pierre--who in his normal state was a dutiful son and sincerely fondof his father--shook himself free from Jean Adet's grasp.
"Father!" he said loudly and firmly, "this is no time for interference.We are all of us men here and know our own minds. What we mean to doto-night we have thought on and planned for weeks and months. I prayyou, father, let me be! I am not a child and I have work to do."
"Not a child?" exclaimed the old man as he turned appealingly to thelads who had stood by, silent and sullen during this little scene. "Nota child? But you are all only children, my lads. You don't know what youare doing. You don't know what terrible consequences this mad escapadewill bring upon us all, upon the whole village, aye! and thecountry-side. Do you suppose for one moment that the chateau of Kernoganwill fall at the mercy of a few ignorant unarmed lads like yourselves?Why! four hundred of you would not succeed in forcing your way even asfar as the courtyard of the palace. M. le duc has had wind for some timeof your turbulent meetings at the auberge: he has kept an armed guardinside his castle yard for weeks past, a company of artillery with twoguns hoisted upon his walls. My poor lads! you are running straight toruin! Go home, I beg of you! Forget this night's escapade! Nothing butmisery to you and yours can result from it."
They listened quietly, if surlily, to Jean Adet's impassioned words. Farbe it from their thoughts to flout or to mock him. Paternal authoritycommanded respect even among the most rough; but they all felt that theyhad gone too far now to draw back: the savour of anticipated revenge hadbeen too sweet to be forgone quite so readily, and Pierre with hisvigorous personality, his
glowing eloquence, his compelling power hadmore influence over them than the sober counsels of prudence and thewise admonitions of old Jean Adet. Not one word was spoken, but with aninstinctive gesture every man grasped his weapon more firmly and thenturned to Pierre, thus electing him their spokesman.
Pierre too had listened in silence to all that his father said, strivingto hide the burning anxiety which was gnawing at his heart, lest hiscomrades allowed themselves to be persuaded by the old man's counselsand their ardour be cooled by the wise dictates of prudence. But whenJean Adet had finished speaking, and Pierre saw each man thus graspinghis weapon all the more firmly and in silence, a cry of triumph escapedhis lips.
"It is all in vain, father," he cried, "our minds are made up. A host ofangels from heaven would not bar our way now to victory and tovengeance."
"Pierre!" admonished the old man.
"It is too late, my father," said Pierre firmly, "en avant, lads!"
"Yes! en avant! en avant!" assented some, "we have wasted too much timeas it is."
"But, unfortunate lads," admonished the old man, "what are you going todo?--a handful of you--where are you going?"
"We go straight to the cross-roads now, father," said Pierre, firmly."The firing of your ricks--for which I humbly crave your pardon--is thepreconcerted signal which will bring the lads from all the neighbouringvillages--from Goulaine and les Sorinieres and Doulon and Tourne-Brideto our meeting place. Never you fear! There will be more than fourhundred of us and a company of paid soldiers is not like to frighten us.Eh, lads?"
"No! no! en avant!" they shouted and murmured impatiently, "there hasbeen too much talking already and we have wasted precious time."
"Pierre!" entreated the miller.
But no one listened to the old man now. A general movement down thehillock had already begun and Pierre, turning his back on his father,had pushed his way to the front of the crowd and was now leading the waydown the slope. Up on the summit the fire was already burning low; onlyfrom time to time an imprisoned tongue of flame would dart out of thedying embers and leap fitfully up into the night. A dull red glowillumined the small farmery and the mill and the slowly moving mass ofmen along the narrow road, whilst clouds of black, dense smoke weretossed about by the gale. Pierre walked with head erect. He ceased tothink of his father and he never looked back to see if the othersfollowed him. He knew that they did: like the straw-ricks a while ago,they had become the prey of a consuming fire: the fire of their ownpassion which had caught them and held them and would not leave them nowuntil their ardour was consumed in victory or defeat.
IV
M. le duc de Kernogan had just finished dinner when Jacques Labruniere,his head-bailiff, came to him with the news that a rabble crowd,composed of the peasantry of Goulaine and Vertou and the neighbouringvillages, had assembled at the cross-roads, there held revolutionaryspeeches, and was even now marching toward the castle still shoutingand singing and brandishing a miscellaneous collection of weaponschiefly consisting of scythes and axes.
"The guard is under arms, I imagine," was M. le duc's comment on thisnot altogether unforeseen piece of news.
"Everything is in perfect order," replied the head-bailiff cooly, "forthe defence of M. le duc and his property--and of Mademoiselle."
M. le duc, who had been lounging in one of the big armchairs in thestately hall of Kernogan, jumped to his feet at these words: his cheekssuddenly pallid, and a look of deadly fear in his eyes.
"Mademoiselle," he said hurriedly, "by G--d, Labruniere, I hadforgotten--momentarily----"
"M. le duc?" stammered the bailiff in anxious inquiry.
"Mademoiselle de Kernogan is on her way home--even now--she spent theday with Mme. le Marquise d'Herbignac--she was to return at about eighto'clock.... If those devils meet her carriage on the road...."
"There is no cause for anxiety, M. le duc," broke in Labrunierehurriedly. "I will see that half a dozen men get to horse at once and goand meet Mademoiselle and escort her home...."
"Yes ... yes ... Labruniere," murmured the duc, who seemed very muchovercome with terror now that his daughter's safety was in jeopardy,"see to it at once. Quick! quick! I shall wax crazy with anxiety."
While Labruniere ran to make the necessary arrangements for an efficientescort for Mademoiselle de Kernogan and gave the sergeant in charge ofthe posse the necessary directions, M. le duc remained motionless,huddled up in the capacious armchair, his head buried in his hand,shivering in front of the huge fire which burned in the monumentalhearth, himself the prey of nameless, overwhelming terror.
He knew--none better--the appalling hatred wherewith he and all hisfamily and belongings were regarded by the local peasantry. Astride uponhis manifold rights--feudal, territorial, seignorial rights--he had allhis life ridden roughshod over the prejudices, the miseries, theundoubted rights of the poor people, who were little better than serfsin the possession of the high and mighty duc de Kernogan. He alsoknew--none better--that gradually, very gradually it is true, but withunerring certainty, those same downtrodden, ignorant, miserable andhalf-starved peasants were turning against their oppressors, that riotsand outrages had occurred in many rural districts in the North and thatthe insidious poison of social revolution was gradually creeping towardthe South and West, and had already infected the villages and smalltownships which were situated quite unpleasantly close to Nantes and toKernogan.
For this reason he had kept a company of artillery at his own expenseinside the precincts of his chateau, and with the aristocrat's opencontempt for this peasantry which it had not yet learned to fear, he haddisdained to take further measures for the repression of localgatherings, and would not pay the village rabble the compliment of beingafraid of them in any way.
But with his daughter Yvonne in the open roadway on the very night whenan assembly of that same rabble was obviously bent on mischief, mattersbecame very serious. Insult, outrage or worse might befall the proudaristocrat's only child, and knowing that from these people, whom shehad been taught to look upon as little better than beasts, she couldexpect neither mercy nor chivalry, the duc de Kernogan within hisunassailable castle felt for his daughter's safety the most abject, themost deadly fear which hath ever unnerved any man.
Labruniere a few minutes later did his best to reassure his master.
"I have ordered the men to take the best horses out of the stables, M.le duc," he said, "and to cut across the fields toward la Gramoire so asto intercept Mademoiselle's coach ere it reach the cross-roads. I feelconfident that there is no cause for alarm," he added emphatically.
"Pray God you are right, Labruniere," murmured the duc feebly. "Do youknow how strong the rabble crowd is?"
"No, Monseigneur, not exactly. Camille the under-bailiff, who brought methe news, was riding homewards across the meadows about an hour ago whenhe saw a huge conflagration which seemed to come from the back of Adet'smill: the whole sky has been lit up by a lurid light for the past hour,and I fancied myself that Adet's straw must be on fire. But Camillepushed his horse up the rising ground which culminates at Adet'sfarmery. It seems that he heard a great deal of shouting which did notseem to be accompanied by any attempt at putting out the fire. So hedismounted and led his horse round the hillock skirting Adet's farmbuildings so that he should not be seen. Under cover of darkness heheard and saw the old miller with his son Pierre engaged in distributingscythes, poles and axes to a crowd of youngsters and haranguing themwildly all the time. He also heard Pierre Adet speak of theconflagration as a preconcerted signal, and say that he and his mateswould meet the lads of the neighbouring villages at the cross-roads ...and that four hundred of them would then march on Kernogan and pillagethe castle."
"Bah!" quoth M. le duc in a voice hoarse with execration and contempt,"a lot of oafs who will give the hangman plenty of trouble to-morrow.As for that Adet and his son, they shall suffer for this ... I canpromise them that.... If only Mademoiselle were home!" he added with aheartrending sigh.
V
&nbs
p; Indeed, had M. le duc de Kernogan been gifted with second sight, theagony of mind which he was enduring would have been aggravated anhundredfold. At the very moment when the head-bailiff was doing his bestto reassure his liege-lord as to the safety of Mlle. de Kernogan, hercoach was speeding along from the chateau of Herbignac toward those samecross-roads where a couple of hundred hot-headed peasant lads wereplanning as much mischief as their unimaginative minds could conceive.
The fury of the gale had in no way abated, and now a heavy rain wasfalling--a drenching, sopping rain which in the space of half an hourhad added five centimetres to the depth of the mud on the roads, and hadin that same space of time considerably damped the enthusiasm of some ofthe poor lads. Three score or so had assembled from Goulaine, two scorefrom les Sorinieres, some three dozen from Doulon: they had rallied tothe signal in hot haste, gathered their scythes and spades, very eagerand excited, and had reached the cross-roads which were much nearer totheir respective villages than to Jean Adet's farm and the mill, evenwhile the old man was admonishing his son and the lads of Vertou on thesummit of the blazing hillock. Here they had spent half an hour incooling their heels and their tempers under the drenching rain--wet tothe skin--fuming and fretting at the delay.
But even so--damped in ardour and chilled to the marrow--they werestill a dangerous crowd and prudence ought to have dictated toMademoiselle de Kernogan the wiser course of ordering her coachmanJean-Marie to head his horses back toward Herbignac the moment that theoutrider reported that a mob, armed with scythes, spades and axes, heldthe cross-roads, and that it would be dangerous for the coach to advanceany further.
Already for the past few minutes the sound of loud shouting had beenheard even above the tramp of the horses and the clatter of the coach.Jean-Marie had pulled up and sent one of the outriders on ahead to seewhat was amiss: the man returned with very unpleasant tidings--in hisopinion it certainly would be dangerous to go any further. The mobappeared bent on mischief: he had heard threats and curses all levelledagainst M. le duc de Kernogan--the conflagration up at Vertou wasevidently a signal which would bring along a crowd of malcontents fromall the neighbouring villages. He was for turning back forthwith. ButMademoiselle put her head out of the window just then and asked what wasamiss. On hearing that Jean-Marie and the postilion and outriders wereinclined to be afraid of a mob of peasant lads who had assembled at thecross-roads, and were apparently threatening to do mischief, she chidedthem for their cowardice.
"Jean-Marie," she called scornfully to the old coachman, who had been inher father's service for close on half a century, "do you really mean totell me that you are afraid of that rabble!"
"Why no! Mademoiselle, so please you," replied the old man, nettled inhis pride by the taunt, "but the temper of the peasantry round here hasbeen ugly of late, and 'tis your safety I have got to guard."
"'Tis my commands you have got to obey," retorted Mademoiselle with agay little laugh which mitigated the peremptoriness of her tone. "If myfather should hear that there's trouble on the road he will die ofanxiety if I do not return: so whip up the horses, Jean-Marie. No onewill dare to attack the coach."
"But Mademoiselle----" remonstrated the old man.
"Ah ca!" she broke in more impatiently, "am I to be openly disobeyed?Best join that rabble, Jean-Marie, if you have no respect for mycommands."
Thus twitted by Mademoiselle's sharp tongue, Jean-Marie could not helpbut obey. He tried to peer into the distance through the veil ofblinding rain which beat against his face and stung the horses torestlessness. But the light from the coach lanthorns prevented hisseeing clearly into the darkness beyond. Still it seemed to him that onahead a dense and solid mass was moving toward the coach, also that thesound of shouting and of excited humanity was considerably nearer thanit had been before. No doubt the mob had perceived the lights of thecoach, and was even now making towards it, with what intent Jean-Mariedivined all too accurately.
But he had his orders, and, though he was an old and trusted servant,disobedience these days was not even to be thought of. So he did as hewas bid. He whipped up his horses, which were high-spirited and answeredto the lash with a bound and a plunge forward. Mlle. de Kernogan leanedback on the cushions of the coach. She was satisfied that Jean-Marie haddone as he was told, and she was not in the least afraid.
But less than five minutes later she had a rude awakening. The coachgave a terrific lurch. The horses reared and plunged, there was adeafening clamour all around: men were shouting and cursing: there wasthe clash of wood and iron and the cracking of whips: the tramp ofhorses' hoofs in the soft ground, and the dull thud of human bodiesfalling in the mud, followed by loud cries of pain. There was the suddencrash of broken glass, the coach lanthorns had been seized and broken:it seemed to Yvonne de Kernogan that out of the darkness faces distortedwith fury were peering at her through the window-panes. But through allthe confusion, the coach kept moving on. Jean-Marie stuck to his post,as did also the postilion and the four outriders, and with whip andtongue they urged their horses to break through the crowd regardless ofhuman lives, knocking and trampling down men and lads heedless of cursesand blasphemies which were hurled on them and on the occupants of thecoach, whoever they might be.
The next moment, however, the coach came to a sudden halt, and a wildcry of triumph drowned the groans of the injured and the dying.
"Kernogan! Kernogan!" was shouted from every side.
"Adet! Adet!"
"You limbs of Satan," cried Jean-Marie, "you'll rue this night's workand weep tears of blood for the rest of your lives. Let me tell youthat! Mademoiselle is in the coach. When M. le duc hears of this, therewill be work for the hangman...."
"Mademoiselle in the coach," broke in a hoarse voice with a rough toneof command. "Let's look at her...."
"Aye! Aye! let's have a look at Mademoiselle," came with a volley ofobjurgations and curses from the crowd.
"You devils--you would dare?" protested Jean-Marie.
Within the coach Yvonne de Kernogan hardly dared to breathe. She satbolt upright, her cape held tightly round her shoulders: her eyesdilated now with excitement, if not with fear, were fixed upon thedarkness beyond the window-panes. She could see nothing, but she _felt_the presence of that hostile crowd who had succeeded in over-poweringJean-Marie and were intent on doing her harm.
But she belonged to a caste which never reckoned cowardice amongst itsmany faults. During these few moments when she knew that her life hungon the merest thread of chance, she neither screamed nor fainted but satrigidly still, her heart beating in unison with the agonising secondswhich went so fatefully by. And even now, when the carriage door wastorn violently open and even through the darkness she discerned vaguelythe forms of these avowed enemies close beside her, and anon felt arough hand seize her wrist, she did not move, but said quite calmly,with hardly a tremor in her voice:
"Who are you? and what do you want?"
An outburst of harsh and ironical laughter came in response.
"Who are we, my fine lady?" said the foremost man in the crowd, he whohad seized her wrist and was half in and half out of the coach at thismoment, "we are the men who throughout our lives have toiled and starvedwhilst you and such as you travel in fine coaches and eat your fill.What we want? Why, just the spectacle of such a fine lady as you arebeing knocked down into the mud just as our wives and daughters are ifthey happen to be in the way when your coach is passing. Isn't that it,mes amis?"
"Aye! aye!" they replied, shouting lustily. "Into the mud with the finelady. Out with her, Adet. Let's have a look at Mademoiselle how she willlook with her face in the mud. Out with her, quick!"
But the man who was still half in and half out of the coach, and who hadhold of Mademoiselle's wrist did not obey his mates immediately. He drewher nearer to him and suddenly threw his rough, begrimed arms roundher, and with one hand pulled back her hood, then placing two fingersunder her chin, he jerked it up till her face was level with his own.
Yvonne de Kernogan
was certainly no coward, but at the loathsome contactof this infuriated and vengeful creature, she was overcome with such ahideous sense of fear that for the moment consciousness almost left her:not completely alas! for though she could not distinguish his face shecould feel his hot breath upon her cheeks, she could smell thenauseating odour of his damp clothes, and she could hear his hoarsemutterings as for the space of a few seconds he held her thus close tohim in an embrace which to her was far more awesome than that of death.
"And just to punish you, my fine lady," he said in a whisper which senta shudder of horror right through her, "to punish you for what you are,the brood of tyrants, proud, disdainful, a budding tyrant yourself, topunish you for every misery my mother and sister have had to endure, forevery luxury which you have enjoyed, I will kiss you on the lips and thecheeks and just between your white throat and chin and never as long asyou live if you die this night or live to be an hundred will you be ableto wash off those kisses showered upon you by one who hates and loathesyou--a miserable peasant whom you despise and who in your sight is lowerfar than your dogs."
Yvonne, with eyes closed, hardly breathed, but through the veil ofsemi-consciousness which mercifully wrapped her senses, she could stillhear those awful words, and feel the pollution of those loathsome kisseswith which--true to his threat--this creature--half man, wholly devil,whom she could not see, but whom she hated and feared as she would Satanhimself--now covered her face and throat.
After that she remembered nothing more. Consciousness mercifully forsookher altogether. When she recovered her senses, she was within theprecincts of the castle: a confused murmur of voices reached her ears,and her father's arms were round her. Gradually she distinguished whatwas being said: she gathered the threads of the story which Jean-Marieand the postilion and outriders were hastily unravelling in response toM. le duc's commands.
These men of course knew nothing of the poignant little drama which hadbeen enacted inside the coach. All they knew was that they had beensurrounded by a rough crowd--a hundred or so strong--who brandishedscythes and spades, that they had made valiant efforts to break throughthe crowd by whipping up their horses, but that suddenly some of thosedevils more plucky than the others seized the horses by their bits andrendered poor Jean-Marie quite helpless. He thought then that all wouldbe up with the lot of them and was thinking of scrambling down from hisbox in order to protect Mademoiselle with his body, and the pistolswhich he had in the boot, when happily for every one concerned, he heardin the distance--above the clatter which that abominable rabble wasmaking, the hurried tramp of horses. At once he jumped to the conclusionthat these could be none other than a company of soldiers sent by M. leduc. This spurred him to a fresh effort, and gave him a new idea. ToCarmail the postilion who had a pistol in his holster he gave theperemptory order to fire a shot into the air or into the crowd,Jean-Marie cared not which. This Carmail did, and at once the horses,already maddened by the crowd, plunged and reared wildly, shakingthemselves free. Jean-Marie, however, had them well in hand, and fromfar away there came the cries of encouragement from the advancinghorsemen who were bearing down on them full tilt. The next moment therewas a general melee. Jean-Marie saw nothing save his horses' heads, butthe outriders declared that men were trampled down like flies allaround, while others vanished into the night.
What happened after that none of the men knew or cared. Jean-Mariegalloped his horses all the way to the castle and never drew rein untilthe precincts were reached.
VI
Had M. de Kernogan had his way and a free hand to mete out retributivejustice in the proportion that he desired, there is no doubt that thehangman of Nantes would have been kept exceedingly busy. As it was anumber of arrests were effected the following day--half the manhood ofthe countryside was implicated in the aborted _Jacquerie_ and the cityprison was not large enough to hold it all.
A court of justice presided over by M. le duc, and composed of half adozen men who were directly or indirectly in his employ, pronouncedsummary sentences on the rioters which were to have been carried out assoon as the necessary arrangements for such wholesale executionscould be made. Nantes was turned into a city of wailing;peasant-women--mothers, sisters, daughters, wives of the condemned,trooped from their villages into the city, loudly calling on M. le ducfor mercy, besieging the improvised court-house, the prison gates, thetown residence of M. le duc, the palace of the bishop: they pushed theirway into the courtyards and the very corridors of thosebuildings--flunkeys could not cope with them--they fought with fists andelbows for the right to make a direct appeal to the liege-lord who hadpower of life and death over their men.
The municipality of Nantes held aloof from this distressful state ofthings, and the town councillors, the city functionaries and theirfamilies shut themselves up in their houses in order to avoid being awitness to the heartrending scenes which took place uninterruptedlyround the court-house and the prison. The mayor himself was powerless tointerfere, but it is averred that he sent a secret courier to Paris toM. de Mirabeau, who was known to be a personal friend of his, with adetailed account of the _Jacquerie_ and of the terrible measures ofreprisal contemplated by M. le duc de Kernogan, together with an earnestrequest that pressure from the highest possible quarters be brought tobear upon His Grace so that he should abate something of his vengefulrigours.
Poor King Louis, who in these days was being terrorised by the NationalAssembly and swept off his feet by the eloquence of M. de Mirabeau, wasonly too ready to make concessions to the democratic spirit of the day.He also desired his noblesse to be equally ready with such concessions.He sent a personal letter to M. le duc, not only asking him, butcommanding him, to show grace and mercy to a lot of misguided peasantlads whose loyalty and adherence--he urged--might be won by a graciousand unexpected act of clemency.
The King's commands could not in the nature of things be disobeyed: thesame stroke of the pen which was about to send half a hundred youngcountrymen to the gallows granted them M. le duc's gracious pardon andtheir liberty: the only exception to this general amnesty being PierreAdet, the son of the miller. M. le duc's servants had deposed to seeinghim pull open the door of the coach and stand for some time half in andhalf out of the carriage, obviously trying to terrorise Mademoiselle.Mademoiselle refused either to corroborate or to deny this statement,but she had arrived fainting at the gate of the chateau, and she hadbeen very ill ever since. She had sustained a serious shock to hernerves, so the doctor hastily summoned from Paris had averred, and itwas supposed that she had lost all recollection of the terribleincidents of that night.
But M. le duc was satisfied that it was Pierre Adet's presence insidethe coach which had brought about his daughter's mysterious illness andthat heartrending look of nameless horror which had dwelt in her eyesever since. Therefore with regard to that man M. le duc remainedimplacable and as a concession to a father's outraged feelings both themayor of Nantes and the city functionaries accepted Adet's condemnationwithout a murmur of dissent.
The sentence of death finally passed upon Pierre, the son of Jean Adet,miller of Vertou, could not, however, be executed, for the simple reasonthat Pierre had disappeared and that the most rigorous search institutedin the neighbourhood and for miles around failed to bring him tojustice. One of the outriders who had been in attendance on Mademoiselleon that fateful night declared that when Jean-Marie finally whipped uphis horses at the approach of the party of soldiers, Adet fell backwardsfrom the step of the carriage and was run over by the hind wheels andinstantly killed. But his body was never found among the score or sowhich were left lying there in the mud of the road until the women andold men came to seek their loved ones among the dead.
Pierre Adet had disappeared. But M. le duc's vengeance had need of aprey. The outrage which he was quite convinced had been perpetratedagainst his daughter must be punished by death--if not by the death ofthe chief offender, then by that of the one who stood nearest to him.Thus was Jean Adet the miller dragged from his home and cast intopris
on. Was he not implicated himself in the riots? Camille the bailiffhad seen and heard him among the insurgents on the hillock that night.At first it was stated that he would be held as hostage for thereappearance of his son. But Pierre Adet had evidently fled thecountryside: he was obviously ignorant of the terrible fate which hisown folly had brought upon his father. Many thought that he had gone toseek his fortune in Paris where his talents and erudition would ensurehim a good place in the present mad rush for equality amongst all men.Certain it is that he did not return and that with merciless hate andvengeful relentlessness M. le duc de Kernogan had Jean Adet hanged for asupposed crime said to be committed by his son.
Jean Adet died protesting his innocence. But the outburst of indignationand revolt aroused by this crying injustice was swamped by the torrentof the revolution which, gathering force by these very acts of tyrannyand of injustice, soon swept innocent and guilty alike into a vastwhirlpool of blood and shame and tears.