The Trampling of the Lilies Part 3

Shot through the head, the servant collapsed forward; then, as the horse reared and started off at a gallop, he toppled sideways and fell. The girl went down with him and lay in the road whilst he was dragged along, his head b.u.mping horribly on the stones as faster and faster went the frightened horse.

With a shout that may have been either anger or dismay Jean reined in his horse, and sat for a second hesitating whether to begin by recovering the girl, or avenging his comrade. But his doubts were solved for him by La Boulaye, who took a deliberate aim at him.

"Begone!" cried the secretary, "unless you prefer to go by the road I've sent your fellow." And being a discreet youth, Jean made off in silence by the street down which poor Blaise had been dragged.

"Carom" cried Duhamel, in a frenzy of apprehension. "I tremble for you, my son. Fly from Bellecour at once--now, this very instant. Go to my friends at Amiens; they will--"

But Caron had already left his side to repair to the spot where Marie was lying. The peasantry followed him, though leisurely, in their timid hesitation. They were asking themselves whether, even so remotely as by tending the girl, they dared partic.i.p.ate in the violence La Boulaye had committed. That a swift vengeance would be the Seigneur's answer they were well a.s.sured, and a great fear possessed them that in that vengeance those of the Chateau might lack discrimination. Charlot was amongst them, and on his feet, but still too dazed to have a clear knowledge of the circ.u.mstances. Presently, however, his faculties awakening and taking in the situation, he staggered forward, and came lurching towards La Boulaye, who was a.s.sisting the frightened Marie to rise. With a great sob the girl flung herself into her husband's arms.

"Charlot, mon Charlot!" she cried, and added a moment later: "It was he--this brave gentleman--who rescued me."

"Monsieur," said Charlot, "I shall remember it to my dying day."

He would have said more, but the peasants, stirred by fear, now roused themselves and plucked at his coat.

"Get you gone, Charlot, Get you gone quickly," they advised him. "And if you are wise you will leave Bellecour without delay. It is not safe for you here."

"It is not safe for any of us," exclaimed one. "I have no mind to be caught when the Seigneur returns. There will be a vengeance. Ah Dieu!

what a vengeance!"

The warning acted magically. There were hurried leave-takings, and then, like a parcel of scuttling rabbits, they made for their burrows to hide from the huntsman that would not be long in coming. And ere the last of them was out of sight there arose a stamping of hoofs and a chorus of angry voices. Down tine street thundered the Marquis's cavalcade, brought back by the servant who had escaped and who had ridden after them. Some anger there was--particularly in the heart of the Lord of Bellecour--but greater than their anger was their excitement at the prospect of a man-hunt, with which the chase on which they had been originally bent made but a poor comparison.

"There he is, Monseigneur" cried Jean, as he pointed to La Boulaye. "And yonder are the girl and her husband."

"Ah! The secretary again, eh?" laughed the n.o.bleman, grimly, as he came nearer. "Ma foi, life must have grown wearisome to him. Secure the woman, Jean."

Caron stood before him, pale in his impotent rage, which was directed as much against the peasants who had fled as against the n.o.bles who approached. Had these clods but stood there, and defended themselves and their manhood with sticks and stones and such weapons as came to their hands, they might have taken pride in being trampled beneath the hoofs of the Seigneurie. Thus, at least, might they have proved themselves men. But to fly thus--some fifty of them from the approach of less than a score--was to confess unworthiness of a better fate than that of which their seigneurs rendered themselves the instruments.

Himself he could do no more than the single shot in his pistol would allow. That much, however, he would do, and like him whose resources are reduced, and yet who desires to spend the little that he has to best advantage, he levelled the weapon boldly at the advancing Marquis, and pulled the trigger. But Bellecour was an old campaigner, and by an old campaigner's trick he saved himself at the last moment. At sight of that levelled barrel he pulled his horse suddenly on to its haunches, and received the charge in the animal's belly. With a shriek of pain the horse sought to recover its feet, then tumbled forward hurling the Marquis from the saddle. La Boulaye had an inspiration to fling himself upon the old roue and seek with his hands to kill him before they made an end of himself. But ere he could move to execute his design a horseman was almost on top of him. He received a stunning blow on the head. The daylight faded in his eyes, he felt a sensation of sinking, and a reverberating darkness engulfed him.

CHAPTER III. THE WORD OF BELLECOUR

When La Boulaye recovered consciousness he was lying on his back in the middle of the courtyard of the Chateau de Bellecour. From a great stone balcony above, a little group, of which Mademoiselle de Bellecour was the centre, observed the scene about the captive, who was being resuscitated that he might fittingly experience the Seigneur's vengeance.

She had returned from the morning's affair in the park with a conscience not altogether easy. To have stood by whilst her father had struck Caron, and moreover, to have done so without any sense of horror, or even of regret, was a matter in which she asked herself whether she had done well. Certainly La Boulaye had presumed unpardonably in speaking to her as he had spoken, and for his presumption it was fitting that he should be punished. Had she interfered she must have seemed to sympathise, and thus the lesson might have suffered in salutariness.

And yet Caron La Boulaye was a man of most excellent exterior, and, when pa.s.sion had roused him out of his restraint and awkwardness, of most ardent and eloquent address. The very sombreness that--be it from his mournful garments or from a mind of thoughtful habit--seemed to envelop him was but an additional note of poetry in a personality which struck her now as eminently poetical. In the seclusion of her own chamber, as she recalled the burning words and the fall of her father's whip upon the young man's pale face, she even permitted herself to sigh. Had he but been of her own station, he had been such a man as she would have taken pride in being wooed by. As it was--she halted there and laughed disdainfully, yet with never so faint a note of regret. It was absurd!

She was Mademoiselle de Bellecour, and he her father's secretary; educated, if you will--aye, and beyond his station--but a va.s.sal withal, and very humbly born. Yes, it was absurd, she told herself again: the eagle may not mate with the sparrow.

And when presently she had come from her chamber, she had been greeted with the story of a rebellion in the village, and an attempted a.s.sa.s.sination of her father. The ringleader, she was told, had been brought to the Chateau, and he was even then in the courtyard and about to be hanged by the Marquis. Curious to behold this unfortunate, she had stepped out on to the balcony where already an idle group had formed.

Inexpressible had been her shock upon seeing him that lay below, his white face upturned to the heavens, his eyes closed.

"Is he dead?" she asked, when presently she had overcome her feelings.

"Not yet Mademoiselle," answered the graceful Chevalier de Jacquelin, toying with his solitaire. "Your father is bringing him to life that he may send him back to death."

And then she heard her father's voice behind her. The Marquis had stepped out on to the balcony to ascertain whether La Boulaye had yet regained consciousness.

"He seems to be even now recovering," said someone.

"Ah, you are there, Suzanne," cried Bellecour. "You see your friend the secretary there. He has chosen to present himself in a new role to-day.

From being my servant, it seems that he would const.i.tute himself my murderer."

However unfilial it might be, she could not stifle a certain sympathy for this young man. She imagined that his rebellion, whatever shape it had a.s.sumed, had been provoked by that weal upon his face; and it seemed to her then that he had been less than a man had he not attempted to exact some reparation for the hurt the whip had inflicted at once upon his body and his soul.

"But what is it that he has done, Monsieur?" she asked, seeking more than the scant information which so far she had received.

"Enough, at least, to justify my hanging him," answered Bellecour grimly. "He sought to withstand my authority; he incited the peasants of Bellecour to withstand it; he has killed Blaise, and he would have killed me but that I preferred to let him kill my horse."

"In what way did he seek to withstand your authority!" she persisted.

He stared at her, half surprised, half angry.

"What doers the manner of it signify?" he asked impatiently. "Is not the fact enough? Is it not enough that Blaise is dead, and that I have had a narrow escape, at his hands?"

"Insolent hound that he is!" put in Madame la Marquise--a fleshly lady monstrously coiffed. "If we allow such men as thus to live in France our days are numbered."

"They say that you are going to hang him," said Suzanne, heedless of her mother's words, and there was the faintest note of horror in her voice.

"They are mistaken. I am not."

"You are not?" cried the Marquise. "But what, then, do you intend to do?"

"To keep my word, madame," he answered her. "I promised that canaille that if he ever came within the grounds of Bellecour I would have him flogged to death. That is what I propose."

"Father," gasped Suzanne, in horror, a horror that was echoed by the other three or four ladies present. But the Marquise only laughed.

"He will be; richly served," she approved, with a sage nod of her pumpkin-like head-dress--"most richly served."

A great pity arose now in the heart of Mademoiselle, as her father went below that he might carry out his barbarous design. She was deaf to the dainty trifles which the most elegant Chevalier de Jacquelin was murmuring into her ear. She stood, a tall, queenly figure, at the balcony's parapet and watched the preparations that were being made.

She heard her father's harshly-voiced commands. She saw them literally tear the clothes from the unfortunate secretary's back, and lash him--naked to the waist--to the pump that stood by the horse-trough at the far end of the yard. His body was now hidden from her sight, but his head appeared surmounting the pillar of the pump, his chin seeming to rest upon its summit, and his face was towards her. At his side stood a powerful knave armed with a stout, leather-thonged whip.

"How many strokes, Monseigneur?" she heard the man inquire.

"How many?" echoed the Marquise. "Do I know how many it will take to make an end of him? Beat him to death, man. Allons! Set about it."

She saw the man uncoil his lash and step forward. In that instant Caron's eyes were raised, and they met hers across the intervening s.p.a.ce. He smiled a valedictory smile that seemed to make her heart stand still. She and her mother were now the only women on the balcony.

The others had made haste to withdraw as soon as La Boulaye had been pilloried. The Marquise remained because she seemed to find entertainment in the spectacle. Suzanne remained because horror rooted her to the spot--horror and a great pity for this unfortunate who had looked so strong and brave that morning, when he had had the audacity to tell her that he loved her.

The lash sang through the air, quivered, hummed, and cut with a sickening crackle into the young man's flesh.

The hideous sound roused her. She shuddered from head to foot, and turning she put her hands to her face and rushed within, followed by the Marquise's derisive laughter.

"Mon Dieu! It is horrible! Horrible!" she cried as she sank into the nearest chair, and clapped her hands to her ears. But she could not shut it out. Still she heard the humming of the whip and the cruel sound of the falling blows. Mechanically she counted them, unconsciously almost, and at twenty she heard them cease. Was it over? Was he dead, this poor unfortunate? Moved by a curiosity that was greater than her loathing, she rose and went to the threshold of the balcony.