The Red Cockade

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 Benôit.

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 Benôit, 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 Benôit 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 Château 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.