Chapter XXXVIII: The Sword Is Drawn

“Prends ton fusil, Grégoire,
Prends ta gourde pour boire,
Prends ta Vierge d’ivoire . . .
Nos Messieurs sont partis
Pour chasser la perdrix.”
—_Monsieur d’Charette._
(Chant Vendéen).

Once again M. des Graves sat in the library, and he sat in silence—save for a very cheerful and crackling fire. But he was not alone. By the side of his chair, an elbow on the arm of it, Louis had assumed a rather favourite position on the floor. It was over, the telling of his incredible news, incoherently as it had been done, and now he had no more to say, cast up by that flood of emotion and amazement on to a shore of silence. But at last he shifted his position a little and asked, for the second time: “You are sure that you do not disapprove, Father? You are sure that I may take her?”

“Yes, Louis,” came the answer, grave and low; “you may take her.”

“I don’t deserve it,” said the young man to himself, and fell to pulling at the bearskin rug on which he lay. Presently he broke the silence again. “It was horrible for him—horrible. And I cannot try to thank him; he would hate it.”

The priest’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair. It was difficult to articulate in the throes of a joy so piercing as to be pain. Perhaps if he could betake himself for a little to the prayer which surged up from his inmost soul it would ease the almost intolerable emotion. And perhaps he could then show to Louis his sympathy with his happiness. He said gently: “He will be able to take your thanks some day,” and with that got out of his chair.

“Are you going?” asked the Vicomte, jumping to his feet.

“Yes; to the chapel for a little while.”

“You might say a prayer for me,” murmured Louis, looking away. Then he seemed to get the better of his embarrassment, and seized both M. des Graves’ hands. “I had no right to hope for such a thing as this—no claim to deserve it now,” he said, with deep and real feeling in his voice. “And Gilbert—— What was that?”

It was, apparently, some small hard object striking against glass. The two men stood motionless for a second, then Louis abruptly loosed the priest’s hands, and going to the nearest of the long windows tugged aside the curtains and threw it open.

There was nothing to be seen, but out of the evening, grown now to the semblance of night, came an ominous sound of voices and of many feet. The noise, thrilling to the nerves and more than a little sinister in suggestion, appeared to come from the front of the house.

“Keep back!” whispered Louis over his shoulder. “Who knows what it may be?—perhaps they are come for you.” And slipping out on to the long and narrow balcony he leant over and peered into the darkness. “Who is there?” he shouted.

There was no direct answer, but feet shuffled on the gravel, and he caught excited whispers. “It is not he!” “No, it is Monsieur le Vicomte.” “Perhaps he is not here.”

“What is it, in God’s name?” cried Louis sharply. “And who is in the avenue?”

A couple of rough voices raised themselves. “We want Monsieur le Marquis.” “We saw a light here, so we came this way. . . .” The strong local accent was enough for Louis, and turned his vague fear into a vague hope.

“Oh, it is you, my friends, from the village? Wait a moment.” He stepped back into the room and caught up a lamp. “No, don’t come out, please, Father, for a moment.”

The ring of light showed, a few feet below, a knot of peasants, armed. And in a flash the young man understood. His heart leapt. “It has come,” he said to himself. Aloud he said: “You have come to ask Monsieur le Marquis to lead you, perhaps?”

A shout of joyful asseveration was the response, and in the increasing din from the front other figures, attracted by the light which he was holding, began to pour round the corner of the château, vociferating wildly, and evidently mistaking him for his cousin.

“Monsieur le Marquis is not here at present,” said Saint-Ermay in his clear, carrying voice, “but he will soon be back. Go round, my friends, to the front, and Monsieur le Curé and I will come to you at the steps.”

“You are sure, Monsieur Louis, that Monsieur le Marquis will be back soon?” enquired an anxious voice.

“We expect him every moment,” said Louis confidently, and went in with his lamp.

M. des Graves had dropped to his knees before the crucifix on his writing-table. His face was hidden in his hands. Louis looked at him as he set down the lamp, hesitated, then hurried from the room. In the hall were gathered the domestics, plainly terrified, and with some cause, for the great door was resounding under repeated blows, not all effected with the human hand.

“Open the door, Pierre!” commanded the Vicomte. “There is nothing to be afraid of.” Yet even as he spoke there was audible, through the hammering and the muffled shouts, the sharp crash of broken glass.

“Morbleu!” muttered the young man, frowning, “we can’t have that. Open the door, imbeciles, unless you want it to be driven in!—I must open it myself, then.” He was actually pulling at the bolts before he found old Antoine and Jasmin beside him.

At the noise of the unbolting the hammering ceased, the door swung open, and Louis stepped out into a clamour and a scene which reminded him, instantly and none too pleasantly, of that day, three and a half years ago, when the Paris mob had raved outside the railings of the great courtyard at Versailles. Here was the same indescribable atmosphere of emotion, the same medley of weapons, the same sea of excited faces. Yet it was different, for as the light streamed out behind him and he was recognised, a wave, not of that deadly hostility, but of welcome surged towards him.

“It is Monsieur le Vicomte! A la bonne heure, Monsieur Louis! Vive Monsieur Louis! Ohé, Monsieur le Vicomte, are you coming with us?”

Louis could not make himself heard, and when at last he was able to do so for a moment, the cry for the Marquis began and drowned him. It seemed to him a very desirable thing that Gilbert should indeed return quickly, for he had never seen the villagers so out of hand. As they shouted they brandished here a scythe-blade, here a pitchfork lit up by the glare of a few torches and the broad fan of light from the door. At last the Vicomte began to get annoyed. He shouted to a domestic: “Go, for God’s sake, and ask Monsieur le Curé to come. . . . Ah, here he is! Father, can you stop this racket?”

Apparently M. des Graves had that power. The noise had slackened the instant that he appeared; now, as he held up his hand, it died down to an undertone.

“My children!” he said a little reprovingly, and then to Louis: “Now speak to them, my son, and tell them that Gilbert will soon be back. No—it is your place to do it, not mine.”

And the young man, after glancing at him, went forward to the topmost step. “My friends, be patient!” he urged. “Monsieur le Marquis will soon be here.” And he added with a half-smile: “I can guess why you want him, can’t I?”

A hundred voices asserted that he could. Finally, in answering queries as to whether the Marquis would consent to lead them, and in shaking the hands held up to grasp his own, Louis was more or less pulled down the steps into a sea of passion in which a hostile swimmer would have had little chance of his life.

“Monsieur le Vicomte, you will come, too?” shouted a group of young men, rosaries round their necks and no more than stout sticks in their hands. “Monsieur Louis has learnt soldiering,” explained a voice. “He was in our King’s guard. That’s what we want, a soldier!”

It was all very hot and breathless and uncomfortable, and the Vicomte soon contrived to disengage himself and to return to his vantage post on the steps. Hence, being now more successful in making himself heard, he invited any one who wished to enter the house, and ordered such food and drink as it contained to be brought out to the invaders. No one would come in, but when the latter arrangement was at last carried through a measure of quiet fell upon the excited throng, as, like the Israelites, they ate and drank standing and prepared for departure.

It was now ten o’clock; the rain had ceased, and there was the promise of a feeble moon. The sound of the tocsin, presage of the unusual, came dinning to the ears of the young man and the old as they stood by the door and looked at the scene, ready and waiting for the principal actor. Why did he not come? The priest, who had been down in the throng, was aware of the tiniest pang of fear. And Louis seemed to know it.

“I can’t conceive where he can have gone to,” he said. “There is a man here, who has only just come, who says that he saw Gilbert walking very fast towards La Chapelle-Michel about three hours ago. He took it for granted that he was going there to make a vow or pay his devotions before—this.” He indicated the scene below. “But I think he must have been mistaken. . . . What is it, Antoine? More wine?”

* * * * * *

Some half-hour later the Vicomte was down again among the crowd, listening to the story of how the village had organised itself, when suddenly the narrator’s hand tightened on his arm, and Louis’ heart leapt like the rest as he recognised the figure that came quickly out on to the steps. In the rapturous storm of applause which greeted the advent of the Marquis he edged his way nearer, and, when the cheering subsided, heard the latter ask simply: “What do you want of me, my friends?”

Evidently out of respect, the peasants had accorded their _seigneur_ a spokesman. A burly, middle-aged man, in whom Louis recognised the miller, separated himself from the rest and advanced up a step or two.

“It is time, Monseigneur, is it not?” he said in his strong Vendean accent. “We have borne it long enough. Our priests are gone, our churches are empty. Now we ourselves must go out of the country to fight for those who oppress us.” His hoarse voice shook with a hardly-mastered passion. “We will never go, never! We will die first here in Vendée. . . . Monsieur le Marquis, they have risen in the Marais, in the Pays de Retz; Messieurs de Sapinaud took Les Herbiers the day before yesterday, the men of Le Coudrais, peasants like ourselves, have defeated the National Guard of Saint-Fulgent, Montaigu is captured, and now we hear that the men of Saint-Florent-le-Vieil on the Loire have taken Chemillé and are marching on Cholet. . . . We must go, too! But we must have some one to lead us—we are ignorant of war. We have come to ask you to be our leader.”

A dead silence, more impressive than clamour, followed his simple words. The miller stood motionless on the steps, leaning on the old fowling-piece which he carried, and looking up, like every one there, at the young man on the steps.

And perhaps, of all the _seigneurs_ of Vendée, Gilbert de Château-Foix, the cold and prudent, alone accepted on the instant the call to that desperate and heroic conflict.

“If it is your wish,” he said steadily, looking down on them, “I am ready to lead you to the best of my ability. But it is my duty to urge you to remember against what forces you are pitting yourselves.”

“We know, Monsieur le Marquis—we have remembered!” came back to him, mixed with wild cries of “Long live the Marquis!” “To Les Herbiers!”

Gilbert held up his hand. “Before I can settle anything I must talk with some of you. Let Jean Guéchery, Laurent Robineau, and François Batliau come up here. And where is M. de Saint-Ermay?”

“Here,” said Louis, and made his way through the crowd up the steps, to a meeting so different from their parting of a few hours ago.

“That is right,” said Gilbert, hardly glancing at him. “I shall want you to be my lieutenant. Now, tell me, Guéchery, what arms you have.”

They all passed into the library, discussing. Outside, the March night grew gradually quiet of clamour and torches, as the waiting peasants slowly made their way, for shelter rather than for sleep, to kitchen, stable, or outhouse.

When, a couple of hours later, the three leading peasants went out again to the rest, Louis, left alone with Château-Foix in the hall, stood a moment looking irresolutely at his back as he stopped to take down a pair of pistols from the wall. Then he went up to him. “Gilbert——” he began almost timidly.

The Marquis, though he must have heard, took no notice, but finished disentangling the pistols. Then he wheeled suddenly round. Seen in a better light his face appeared very drawn. “Oh, is that you?” he observed coldly. “Do you want to know anything?”

In a flash Louis had adopted another method of address. “Yes, several things, if I am to be of any use as your lieutenant,” he replied, in a matter-of-fact tone. “Where can I see you for a few moments?”

It was just evident that Gilbert welcomed his change of front. “Come to me in the library in an hour’s time,” he said, slipping the pistols into his pockets. “And I should advise you to put together a few clothes as well as your arms.”

Louis nodded and swung on his heel. It would be many a long day before Gilbert could bear a word on that subject. Well, he did not marvel at it.

Meanwhile Gilbert went to his own room, changed his wet clothes, wrote a brief note to Lucienne, and came down to the library, where a servant had set food and wine. In a business-like manner he despatched these, and then, pulling down a sheaf of maps from a shelf, selected one and spread it out on the table. He was bending over it when the door opened, and in came, not Louis but M. des Graves. The Marquis instantly shifted the shade of the lamp, which he had tilted up in his own direction.

“I am looking out the best route to Les Herbiers, Father,” he remarked. “I believe it would really be shorter to go by Saint-Martin.”

The priest took no notice, but came round the table to his side. “Because we may neither of us be alive at this time to-morrow, Gilbert,” he said very solemnly, “it is my duty to say to you, however much you shrink from the subject, that I am sure you have done right, and that I believe God will bless your sacrifice. . . . And now I shall not refer to the matter again until the day when you shall come to me of your own will and tell me that all is well with you.”

Gilbert, who had not removed his gaze from the map over which he bent, now stood up and looked at the priest. “I fear that day will never come, Father,” he returned in polite and chilling tones. “But I rejoice that you are convinced I have acted rightly. And it is done, and there is an end of it, and, as you say, we will bury the subject. Perhaps you would kindly give Louis a hint that I do not desire to be thanked . . . as though I had given him a horse or paid his debts for him,” he added to himself.

M. des Graves looked at the pale, resolute face, and his eyes were full of compassion and understanding. “It shall be as you wish, my son,” he said quietly. “You have acted; there is no need of further words. . . . Ah, here is Louis. Louis, we are looking out the roads to Les Herbiers.”

“And I have got the wrong map,” said the Marquis, rolling it up. “Please bring me the bundle by the bookcase, Louis. Thank you. Now the distance: from here to Saint-Martin-des-Noyers— supposing that we go that way—six miles; from Saint-Martin to Les Quatre Chemins another six——”

“And from Les Quatre Chemins to Les Herbiers about the same,” finished Louis. “And after that?” He laughed gaily. “That lamp of yours is going out, Gilbert. However, it is nearly dawn already.”