The Red Cockade

"Stand back!" he said, in a voice that was scarcely human. "Stand back, or I will-"

"Steady, man," I answered quietly, beginning to think that fear had unhinged him. "It is I, M. de Saux."

"Stand back!" was his only answer; and, though he cowered so low that I could not get his figure against the shining trees, I saw a pistol-barrel gleam as he levelled it. "Stand back! Give me a minute! a minute only" – and his voice quavered-"and I will cheat the devils yet! Come nearer, or give the alarm, and I will not die alone! I will not die alone! Stand back!"

"Are you mad?" I said.

"Back, or I shoot!" he growled. "I will not die alone."

He was kneeling on the very edge, with his left hand against the chimney. To rush upon him in that posture was to court death; and I had nothing to gain by it. I stepped back a pace. As I did so, at the moment I did so, he slid over the edge, and was gone!

I drew a deep breath and listened, flinching and drawing back involuntarily. But I heard no sound of a fall; and in a moment, with a new idea in my mind, I stepped forward to the edge, and looked over.

The steward hung in mid-air, a dozen feet below me. He was descending; descending foot by foot, slowly, and by jerks; a dim figure, growing dimmer. Instinctively I felt about me; and in a second laid my hand on the rope by which he hung. It was secured round the chimney. Then I understood. He had conceived this way of escape, perhaps had stored the rope for it beforehand, and, like the villain he was, had kept the thought to himself, that his chance might be the better, and that he might not have to give the first place to Mademoiselle and the women. In the first heat of the discovery, I almost found it in my heart to cut the rope, and let him fall; then I remembered that if he escaped, the way would lie open for others; and then, even as I thought this, into the garden below me, there shone a sudden flare of light, and a stream of a dozen rioters poured round the corner, and made for the door by which I had entered the house.

I held my breath. The steward, hanging below me, and by this time half-way to the ground, stopped, and moved not a limb. But he still swung a little this way and that, and in the strong light of the torches which the new-comers carried, I could see every knot in the rope, and even the trailing end, which, as I looked, moved on the ground with his motion.

The wretches, making for the door, had to pass within a pace of the rope, of that trailing end; yet it was possible that, blinded by the lights they carried, and their own haste and excitement, they might not see it. I held my breath as the leader came abreast of it; I fancied that he must see it. But he passed, and disappeared in the doorway. Three others passed the rope together. A fifth, then three more, two more; I began to breathe more freely. Only one remained-a woman, the same whose imprecations had greeted me on my appearance at the window. It was not likely that she would see it. She was running to overtake the others; she carried a flare in her right hand, so that the blaze came between her and the rope. And she was waving the light in a mad woman's frenzy, as she danced along, hounding on the men to the sack.

But, as if the presence of the man who had wronged her had over her some subtle influence-as if some sense, unowned by others, warned her of his presence, even in the midst of that babel and tumult-she stopped short under him, with her foot almost on the threshold. I saw her head turn slowly. She raised her eyes, holding the torch aside. She saw him!

With a scream of joy, she sprang to the foot of the rope, and began to haul at it as if in that way she might get to him sooner; while she filled the air with her shrieks and laughter. The men, who had gone into the house, heard her, and came out again; and after them others. I quailed, where I knelt on the parapet, as I looked down and met the wolfish glare of their upturned eyes; what, then, must have been the thoughts of the wretched man taken in his selfishness-hanging there helpless between earth and heaven? God knows.

He began to climb upwards, to return; and actually ascended hand over hand a dozen feet. But he had been supporting himself for some minutes, and at that point his strength failed him. Human muscles could do no more. He tried to haul himself up to the next knot, but sank back with a groan. Then he looked at me. "Pull me up!" he gasped in a voice just audible. "For God's sake! For God's sake, pull me up!"

But the wretches below had the end of the rope, and it was impossible to raise him, even had I possessed the strength to do it. I told him so, and bade him climb-climb for his life. In a moment it would be too late.

He understood. He raised himself with a jerk to the next knot, and hung there. Another desperate effort, and he gained the next; though I could almost hear his muscles crack, and his breath came in gasps. Three more knots-they were about a foot apart-and he would reach the coping.

But as he turned up his face to me, I read despair in his eyes. His strength was gone; and while he hung there, the men began, with shouts of laughter, to shake the rope this way and that. He lost his grip, and, with a groan, slid down three or four feet; and again got hold and hung there-silent.

By this time the group below had grown into a crowd-a crowd of maddened beings, raving and howling, and leaping up at him as dogs leap at food; and the horror of the sight, though the doomed man's features were now in shadow, and I could not read them, overcame me. I rose to draw back-shuddering, listening for his fall. Instead, before I had quite retreated, a hot flash blinded me, and almost scorched my face, and, as the sharp report of a pistol rang out, the steward's body plunged headlong down-leaving a little cloud of smoke where I stood.

He had balked his enemies.

CHAPTER IX.

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 Château, 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.