The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

CHAPTER X

THE LOVER’S PARTING

MANY times after drill, and that followed nights spent in learning the tactics, Pitou would wander in the skirts of Boursonne Wood to see how faithful Catherine was to her love-trysts.

Stealing an hour or two from her farm and house duties, the girl would go to a little hunting-box, in a rabbit warren belonging to Boursonne Manor, to meet the happy Isidore, the mortal more than ever proud and handsome, when all the country was in suffering around him.

What anguish devoured poor Pitou, what sad reflections he was driven to make on the inequality of men as regards happiness.

He whom the pretty maids were ogling, preferred to come and mope like a dog whipped for following the master too far from home, at the door of the summerhouse where the amorous pair were billing and cooing.

All because he adored Catherine and the more as he deemed her vastly superior to him. He did not regard her as loving another, for Isidore Charny had ceased to be an object of jealousy. He was a lord, handsome and worthy of being loved: but Catherine as a daughter of the lower orders ought not for that reason disgrace her family or drive Pitou to despair.

Meditation on this cut him with sharp edges and keen points.

“She showed no proper feeling in letting me go from the farm,” he mused, “and since I went off, she has not inquired whether I starved to death or not. What would Father Billet say if he knew how his friends are thus cast off, and his business neglected? What would he say if he heard that, instead of looking after the working people, his daughter goes to keep appointments with the aristocrat, Lord Charny? He would not say much, but he would kill her. It is something to have the means of revenge in one’s hand,” thought Pitou.

But it is grander not to use them.

Still, Pitou had learnt that there is no benefit in doing good unless the actions are known to the person befriended.

Would it be possible to let Catherine know that he was helping her?

He knew that she came through the woods to go to the hunting-box, and it was very easy for him to plant himself under the trees, a book in hand as if he were studying, where she would be sure to come along.

Indeed, as he was pretending to pore over the “Perfect National Guardsman,” after having watched her to her rendezvous, he heard the soft shutting of a door. The rustle of a dress in the brush came next. Catherine’s head appeared above the bushes, looking with an apprehensive air all round for fear somebody would see her.

She was ten paces from her rustic worshipper, who kept still with the book on his knee. But he no longer looked on it but at the girl so that she should mark that he saw her.

She uttered a slight faint, stifled scream, recognized him, became pale as though death had flitted by and grazed her, and, after a short indecision betrayed in her trembling and the shrug of her shoulders, she flew wildly into the underwood and found her hitched-up horse in the forest. She mounted and fled.

Pitou’s plot was well laid and she had fallen into it.

He went home, half-frightened, half delighted.

He perceived a number of details most alarming in the accomplished trick.

The following Sunday was appointed for a grand military parade at Haramont. Sufficiently drilled, the Haramontese meant to give warlike exercises. Several rival villages also making military studies, were to contest with them in the career of arms.

The announcement drew a great crowd, and the people in holiday attire gathered on the green, where they feasted frugally on homemade cake and fruit, washed down with spring water.

Some of the spectators were the gentry and squires, come to laugh at the clowns playing at soldiers.

Haramont had become a centre, for four corps of other Guards came hither, headed by fife and drum.

Among the farmers, came Catherine and Mother Billet on horseback.

This was at the same time as the Haramont National Guard marched up, with fife and drum, with Commander Pitou on a borrowed white horse, in order that the likeness should be complete to General Lafayette reviewing the National Guards at Paris.

Without joking, if he did not look stylish and aristocratic, he was noble and valiant and pleasant to behold.

This company of Guards had shining muskets, the national cockades, and marched with most satisfactory time in two files. It had won the tribute before reaching the parade ground.

Out of the corner of his eye, Pitou saw that Catherine changed color. From that moment the review had more interest to him than anything in the world.

He passed his men through the simple manual of arms, and they did it so smartly and neatly that it elicited applause.

Not so with the competitors, who were irregularly armed and had not been trained steadily. Others exaggerated from their conceit what they could have done properly.

On the whole imperfect results.

For the grand array, Pitou was outranked in seniority by an army sergeant who took the general command; but unhappily he had grasped more than he could hold: he bunched his men, lost grip of some files, let a company meander under the surrounding trees, and finally lost his head so that his own soldiers began to grumble.

From the Haramont side rose a shout:

“Let Pitou try!”

“Yes, yes Pitou!” caught up the other villagers, furious at their inferiority being manifested through their own instructors.

Pitou jumped on his white charger, and replacing himself at the head of his troop, become the rallying point of the little army, uttered a word of command so superbly that the oaks shivered. On the instant, and as by miracle, order was re-established: the movements fitted in with one another with such uniformity that the enthusiasm did not disturb the regularity. Pitou so well applied the theory of the instruction books and the practice of old Clovis that he obtained immense success.

Formed into a hollow square, the whole army raised but one voice and proclaimed him Colonel on the spot.

Bathed in perspiration and drunk with glory, Pitou got down off his horse and received the people’s felicitations when he alighted.

But at the same time he glanced round for Catherine. He heard her voice by his side; he had no need to hunt for her, as she had come to him. Great was this triumph.

“Have you not a word for us, Captain Pitou?” she demanded, with a laughing air belied by her pale face; “I suppose you have grown proud since you are a great general?”

“Oh, no,” responded he, saluting, “I am not that, but just a poor fellow who loves his country and desires to serve her.”

This reply was carried away on the waves of the multitude and was proclaimed sublime by the acclamation in unison.

“Ange, I want to speak with you,” whispered Catherine. “Do come back to the farm with mother and me.”

“All right.”

Catherine had already arranged that they should be alone together on the road. She had switched her mother into the train of several neighbors and gossips who held her in talk so that the girl could walk through the woods with the National Guardsman.

“Why have you kept aloof from the farm so long?” began Catherine when they were beneath the hoary oaks. “It is bad behavior on your part.”

Pitou was silent, for it hurt him to hear Catherine tell lies.

“But, I have something else to speak about,” she continued, seeing that he was avoiding her with his usually straight and loyal glance. “The other day I saw you in the copse. Did you know me?”

“Not at first, but I did know you.”

“What were you doing there in hiding?”