Chapter 29

HOW GENERAL RATONEAU MET HIS MATCH

Within and without Les Chouettes the men all listened till those sounds died away. Then Simon turned to the little group of gendarmes and said: "Come along, fellows, make a rush for that window. If there are any Chouan gentlemen here, we must not let them escape."

Then the oldest of the gendarmes, a man well accustomed to hunting this sort of game, hung back and looked at him queerly.

"There are none--I'll answer for that," he said. "Certainly not Monsieur Ange de la Marinière, or he would have been out long ago--and none of us ever felt sure that he was mixed up in Chouannerie--"

"What are you talking about?" cried Simon. "Hold your tongue, and do your duty. The General ordered us to break into the house and search it. Why, you know yourself that it is the headquarters of this plot."

"If so, if I hear rightly, the master of it has paid for his Chouannerie with his life," said the man gravely, still holding back, and watching Simon with a dogged steadiness. "Our mates have caught the other gentlemen--they could not fail--and as for me, Monsieur Simon, I don't feel inclined to take any more orders from that General of yours. To me, he seems like a madman. There's private malice behind all this. It is not the sort of justice that suits me--to kill a gentleman and shoot his servants and burn his house down. I tell you, fellows, I don't like it--there are limits to what the police ought to do, and we shall find ourselves in the wrong box, if we go further without the Prefect's warrant."

"Obey your orders, or you'll pay for it!" shouted Simon. "Come on, men!" and he ran towards the house.

"Be off, or we fire!" cried a voice from the window above.

"All right, Maître Joubard, don't fire; we know you are a loyal man," said the spokesman of the gendarmes. "I am going straight back to Sonnay, to see what Monsieur le Préfet says to all this. Do you agree?" he turned to his comrades, who had drawn up behind him, and who answered, even the man who had been tied to the tree, by a quick murmur of assent. "Come, Monsieur Simon, I advise you to cast in your lot with us; you have had too much to do with that madman. Everybody hates him. They sent him down here because they could not stand him in the army."

As Simon turned his back and walked sulkily away, the gendarme added: "Come down, some of you, and look for your master. He may be still alive."

The men in the room above looked at each other. They could not and did not believe that Monsieur Joseph was dead. To his old servants, it was one of those shocks too heavy for the brain to bear; the thought stunned them. Large tears were rolling down old Joubard's cheeks, but his brain and Martin's were active enough.

"What do you think?" he said to his son. "Are they safe at La Marinière?"

"I'll wager my wooden leg they are," Martin said cheerfully. "They had a good start, and that lumbering brute with his big horse would not know the shortest path. And once with Monsieur Urbain--"

"Ah, poor man! Well, let us go down and look for him, the little uncle. Ah, Martin, all the pretty girls in the world will take long to comfort Monsieur Angelot--and as to Mademoiselle Henriette!"

"The gendarme said he might be still alive," said Martin. "See, they are gone round to him."

"He is dead," said Joubard. "Come, Gigot, you and I must carry him in. As to you, Tobie, just keep watch on this side with your gun--that poisonous snake of a Simon is prowling about there. Don't shoot, of course, but keep him off; don't let him get into the house."

Martin lingered a moment behind his father. "Tobie," he said, "that Simon has been Monsieur Angelot's enemy all through. I thought I had finished him with my stick, two or three hours ago, but--"

"I know--I have my master's orders," said Tobie. He smiled, and lifted his gun to his shoulder.

The sun was rising when they found Monsieur Joseph on his bed of soft grass and leaves, at the foot of his own old oak just bronzed by the sun of August and September. Up above the squirrels were playing; they did not disturb his sleep, though they scampered along the boughs and squeaked and peeped down curiously. The birds cried and chirped about him in the opening day; and one long ray of yellow sunshine pierced the eastern screen of trees, creeping all along up the broad slope where the autumn crocuses grew, till it laid itself softly and caressingly on the smiling face turned to meet it once more. The sportsman had gone out for the last time into his loved fields and woods; and perhaps he would have chosen to die there, rather than in a curtained room with fresh air and daylight shut out. No doubt the manner of his death had been terrible; but the pain was momentary, and he had gone to meet it in his highest mood, all one flame of indignation against evil, and ready, generous self-sacrifice. He had died for Angelot, fighting his enemy; he had carried out his little daughter's words, and the last drop of that good heart's blood was for Angelot, though indeed his dear boy's enemy was also the enemy of the cause he loved, to which his life had been given. No more conspiracies now for the little Royalist gentleman.

They all came and stood about him, Joubard, Martin, Gigot, and the party of gendarmes. At first they hardly liked to touch him; he lay so peacefully asleep under the tree, his thin right hand pressed over his heart, where the sword had wounded him, such a look of perfect content on the face that death had marked for its own. His sword lay on the grass beside him, where it had fallen from his dying hand. Martin picked it up, saying in a low voice, "This will be for Monsieur Angelot."

Sturdy Gigot, choking with sobs, turned upon him fiercely.

"It belongs to mademoiselle."

They lifted Monsieur Joseph--old Joubard at his head, Gigot at his feet--and carried their light burden down to his house, in at his own bedroom window. They laid him on his bed in the alcove, and then were afraid to touch him any more. All the group of strong men stood and looked at him, Gigot weeping loudly, Joubard silently; even the eyes of the gendarmes were wet.

"We must have women here," said Joubard.

Turning round, he saw Monsieur Joseph's letter to his brother lying on the table; he took it up and gave it to Gigot.

"Take this letter to La Marinière," he said, "and tell Monsieur Urbain what has happened. And you," to the gendarmes, "be off to Sonnay, and make your report at once to Monsieur le Préfet. I doubt if he will justify all that is done in his name."

"We will do as you say, Maître Joubard," said the gendarme.

A few minutes later the only one of the General's party left at Les Chouettes was Simon. He skulked round behind the buildings, but could not persuade himself to go away. It seemed to him that there was a good deal of danger in escaping on foot; that the country people, enraged by Monsieur Joseph's death, delighted, as they probably would be, by Monsieur Angelot's marriage, would all be his enemies. He was half terrified by General Ratoneau's desperation. Suppose he had overtaken Angelot's young bride and her companions! suppose he had swung her up on his horse and carried her away, forgetting that he was not campaigning in a foreign country, but living peaceably in France, where the law protected people from such violent doings. It might be very inconvenient, in such a case, to appear at Sonnay as a friend and follower of General Ratoneau. Any credit he still had with the Prefect, for instance, would be lost for ever. And yet, if he deserted the General entirely, washed his hands, as far as possible, of him and his doings, what chance was there of receiving the large sums of money so grudgingly promised him!

"A hard master, the devil!" Simon muttered to himself.

He peeped cautiously round the corner of the kitchen wall, where the silver birches had scattered their golden leaves in the wind of the night. He watched the little band of gendarmes as they started down the road towards Sonnay. It struck him that his best plan would be to slip away across the _landes_ towards the Étang des Morts, and to put himself right with the authorities by helping to capture a few Chouan gentlemen and conveying them to prison.

But first--how still all the place was! The men were busy, he supposed, with their dead master. Surely those windows were not so firmly fastened but that he could make his way in, and perhaps find some evidence to prove Monsieur Joseph's complicity in the plots of the moment. He walked lightly across the sand. A dog barked in the house, and Martin Joubard looked out from an upper window.

All the evil passions of his nature rose in Simon then. That was the man who knew he had arrested Angelot; that was the man who had knocked him down in the park and lost him half an hour of valuable time. As Angelot himself, in some mysterious way, was out of reach, here was this man on whom he might revenge himself. Both for his own sake and the General's, this man would be better out of the way; Simon raised his loaded carbine and fired.

Martin stepped back at the instant, and he missed him. The shot grazed Tobie's cheek as he knelt inside the room, resting his long gun-barrel on the low window-sill.

"Ah, Chouan-catcher, your time is come!" muttered Tobie, and his gun went off almost of itself.

Simon flung up his arms in the air, and dropped upon the sand.

* * * * *

While these things were happening at Les Chouettes, Angelot was hurrying back from his mission to the Étang des Morts. He was full of wild happiness, a joy that could not be believed in, till he saw and touched Hélène again. His heart was as light as the air of that glorious morning, so keen, clear, and still on the high moorlands as he crossed them.

He had done all and more than the little uncle expected of him. In the darkness before dawn, as he rode through the deep lanes beyond La Joubardière, he had met a friendly peasant who warned him that a party of police and gendarmes was watching the country a little farther south, towards the Étang des Morts. He therefore left his horse in a shed, took to the fields and woods, and intercepted César d'Ombré on his way to the rendezvous. Explanations were not altogether easy, for César cared little for the private affairs of young La Marinière. He had never expected much from the son of Urbain. He took his warning, and gave up his companionship easily enough. Striking off across country, avoiding all roads likely to be patrolled by the police, he made his way alone to Brittany and the coast, while Angelot returned by the way he had come.

For the sake of taking the very shortest cut across the _landes_, he brought his horse up to La Joubardière and left him there. For no horse could carry him through the lanes, rocky as they were, at the pace that he could run and walk across country, and it was only because Uncle Joseph insisted on it that he had taken a horse at all.

The golden light of sunrise spread over the moor as he ran. He took long leaps through the heather, and coveys of birds scuttled out of his way; but their lives were safe that morning, though his eyes followed them eagerly. Far beyond the purple _landes_, the woods of Lancilly lay heaped against the western sky, a billowy dark green sea of velvet touched with the bright gold of autumn and of sunrise; and the château itself shone out broad in its glittering whiteness. The guests were all gone now; the music was still; and for Angelot the place was empty, a mere shell, a pile of stones. Other roofs covered the joy of his life now.

This shortest cut from La Joubardière did not bring him to Les Chouettes by the usual road, but by a sharp slope of moorland, all stones and bushes and no path at all, and then across one or two small fields into a narrow lane, a bridle-path between high straggling hedges, one way from Les Chouettes to La Marinière. The poplars by the manor gate, a shining row, lifted their tall heads, always softly rustling, a quarter of a mile farther on.

Angelot ran across the fields, jumped a ditch, reached the lane at a sharp corner, and was turning to the right towards Les Chouettes, thinking in his joyful gladness that he would be back before even Hélène expected him, when something struck his ear and brought him to a sudden stand. It was a woman's scream.

"Help, help!" a voice cried; and then again there was a piteous shriek of pain or extreme terror.

For one moment Angelot hesitated. Who or what could this be? Some one was in trouble, some woman, and probably a woman he knew. Or could it be a child, hurt by some animal? One of the bulls at La Marinière was very fierce; there had been trouble with him before now. Ah! he must turn his back on Hélène and see what it meant, this cursed interruption. What were they doing to let that beast roam about alone? And even as he turned the shriek tore the air again, and now he could hear a man's voice, rough and furious, a confusion of voices, the stamping of a horse, the creaking of harness. No! Bellot the bull was not the aggressor here.

Angelot loosened his hunting knife as he ran along the lane. It turned sharply once or twice between its banks, dipping into the hollow, then climbing again to La Marinière. At its lowest point it touched the elbow of a stream, winding away under willows to join the river near Lancilly, and overflowing the lane in winter and stormy weather. Now, however, the passage was dry, and at that very point a group of figures was struggling. Angelot had the eyes of a hawk, and at that distance knew them all.

General Ratoneau was on horseback; his gold lace flashed in the sunlight. Before him on the horse's neck lay a girl's white figure, flung across the front of the saddle, struggling, shrieking, held down by his bridle hand which also clutched her dress, while with the butt-end of a pistol he threatened Marie Gigot, who screamed for help as she hung to the horse's head. He, good creature, not being one of the General's own chargers, but a harmless beast borrowed without leave from the Lancilly stables, backed from Marie instead of pushing and trampling her down in obedience to his desperate rider. Little Henriette did her best by clinging tightly to the white folds of her cousin's gown as they fell over the horse's shoulder, and was in great danger of being either pushed down or kicked away by Ratoneau, as soon as he should have disposed of Marie.

"Let go, woman!" he shouted, with frightful oaths. "Let go, or I'll kill you! Do you see this pistol? A moment more, and I'll dash your brains out--send you after your master, do you hear?--Ah, bah! keep still, beauty!" as Hélène almost struggled away from him. "I don't want to hurt you, but I will have what is my own. Get away, child, we don't want you. Morbleau! what's that?"

It was a sound of quick running, and Riette's keen ears had heard it already. It had, indeed, saved Ratoneau from being shot dead on the spot, for the child had let go her hold on her cousin's dress with one hand and had clutched the tiny, beautiful pistol with which her father had trusted her, and which she had hidden inside her frock. True, she was shaking with the terrible excitement of the moment, she was nearly dragged off her feet by the horse's plunging backwards, and a correct aim seemed almost impossible--but her father had told her to defend Angelot's wife, and Riette was very sure that this wicked man should not carry away Hélène, as long as she had life and a weapon to prevent it. And if she could have understood those words to Marie,--"send you after your master"--there would have been no hesitation at all.

At the same moment, she and the General turned their heads and looked up the lane. Something wild and lithe, bright and splendid, came flying straight down from the east, from the heart of the sunrise. The swiftness with which Angelot darted upon them was almost supernatural. He might have been a young god of the Greeks, flashing from heaven to rescue his earthly love from an earthly ravisher.

Ratoneau was not prepared for such a sudden and fiery onslaught. It was easy, the work he expected--to tear Hélène from the company of a woman and child, to carry her off to Sonnay. He considered her his own property, given to him by the Emperor, stolen from him by her father and Angelot. It would be easy, he told himself, to have the absurd midnight ceremony declared illegal; or if not, he would soon find means to put Angelot out of his way. By fair means or by foul, he meant to have the girl and to marry her. If his method was that of the ancient Gauls--well, she would forgive him in time! Women love a hero, however roughly he may treat them. He thought he had learnt that from experience; and if Hélène de Sainfoy thought herself too good for him, she must find her level. The man swore to himself that he loved her, and would be good to her, when once she was his own. As he lifted her on the horse he knew he loved her with all the violent instincts of a coarse and unrestrained nature.

And now came vengeance, darting upon him like a bolt from the shining sky. Before his slower senses even knew what was happening, before, encumbered with his prey, he could fire a pistol or draw his sword, Hélène had been snatched from him into Angelot's arms. No leave asked of Ratoneau; a spring and a clutch; it might have been a tiger leaping at the horse's neck and carrying off its victim. The girl screamed again and again, as Angelot set her on the ground, and trembled so that she could not stand alone. As her lover supported her for an instant, saying to Marie Gigot, who ran forward from the horse's head, "Take her--take her home!" Ratoneau fired his pistol straight at the two young heads so near together. The bullet passed actually between them, touching Hélène's curls. Then the sturdy peasant woman threw a strong arm round her, and dragged her away towards La Marinière.

Angelot, with a flushed face and blazing eyes, turned to the General, who sat and glared in speechless fury. Then the young fellow smiled, lifted his hat, and set it jauntily on again. He had not drawn his hunting knife, and stood empty-handed, though this and a pair of pistols were in his belt.

"And now, Monsieur le Général!" he said, a little breathlessly.

Ratoneau stared at him, struck, even at that moment, by his extraordinary likeness to his uncle. There was the same easy grace, the same light gaiety, the same joy in battle and fearless confidence, with more outward dash and daring. Ah, well! as the other insolent life had ended, so in a few minutes this should end. It would be easy--a slip of a boy--it was fortunate indeed, that it happened so.

"Mille tonnerres! you can be buried together!" said Ratoneau.

"Merci, monsieur, I hope so--a hundred years hence," Angelot answered with a laugh.

"You are mistaken--I am not talking of your wife," growled Ratoneau. "She will be a widow in ten minutes, and married to me in a month. I mean that you and your precious uncle can be buried together."

"Indeed! Is my uncle going to die?" Angelot said carelessly; but he looked at the madman a little more steadily, with the sudden idea that he was really and literally mad.

"He is dead already. I have killed him," said Ratoneau.

Angelot turned pale, and stepped back a pace, watching him cautiously.

"When? Where? I don't believe it," he said.

"We had a disagreement," said Ratoneau. "It was about you that we quarrelled, a worthless cause. He chose to take your part, and to insult me. I ran him through the body."

Saying this, he slowly dismounted and drew his sword. Angelot stood motionless, looking at him. The words had stunned him; his heart and brain seemed to be gripped by icy hands, crushing out all sensation. Henriette, who had not followed the others, came up and stood beside him, her great dark eyes, full of horror, fixed upon General Ratoneau. She was motionless and dumb; under the folds of her frock, her fingers gripped the little pistol. As long as she remained silent, neither of the men saw that she was there.

"Look!" said Ratoneau. He held out his sword, red and still wet, as he had thrust it back into the scabbard after killing Monsieur Joseph. "Give up the girl to me or you follow your uncle," he said, after a moment's frightful pause.

Henriette came a step nearer, came quite close and looked at the sword. Every drop of her own blood had forsaken her small face, always delicate and pale. Suddenly she stretched out her hand and touched the sword, saying in a low voice, "That was why he did not come back!"

"Oh, good God! Go away, child!" cried Angelot, suddenly waking from his trance of horror, and pushing her violently back.

Then he drew his knife and sprang furiously upon the General.

"Villain! murderer!" he shouted as he closed with him; for this was no formal fight with swords.

"Keep off, little devil, or I'll tear you to pieces!" shrieked Ratoneau. "What! You will have it? Come on then, plague upon you, cursed wild cat!"

It was an unequal struggle; for Angelot, though strong, was slender and small, and Ratoneau had height and width of chest, besides great muscular power. And he hated Angelot with all the intensity of his violent nature. It was a case in which strength told, and Angelot had been unwise in trusting to his own. A duel with pistols, as he had no sword, would have been better for him. Still, at first, his furious attack brought him some advantage. He wrenched Ratoneau's sword from his hand and flung it into the stream. Twice he wounded him slightly with his knife, but Ratoneau, hugging him like a bear, made it difficult to strike, and the fight became a tremendous wrestling match, in which the two men struggled and panted and slipped and lurched from side to side, from the grassy bank to the willows by the water, each vainly trying to throw the other.

The issue of such a combat could not long be doubtful. Courage and energy being equal, the taller and heavier man was sure to have the better of it. Several times Angelot tried to trip his enemy up, but failed, for his wrestling skill, as well as his strength, was not equal to Ratoneau's. The General was more successful. A twist of his leg, and both men were dashed violently down upon the stones, Angelot underneath.

His knife had already dropped from his hand. Ratoneau snatched it up, and knelt over him, one knee on his chest, one hand on his throat, the knife in the other. Looking up into the dark, furious eyes bent upon him, watching the evil smile that broadened round the handsome, cruel mouth, Angelot felt that his last moment was come. That face leaning over him was the face of death itself. The little uncle would not be long alone in the unknown country to which this same hand had sent him.

"How about your pretty wife now, Monsieur Angelot?" the snarling voice said, and the sharp knife trembled and flashed in the sunshine.

Angelot set his teeth, and closed his eyes that he might not see it. Ratoneau went on saying something, but he did not hear, for in those few moments he dreamed a dream. Hélène's face was bending over his, her soft hair falling upon him, her lips touching his. Was death already over, and was this Paradise?

He came back to life with a violent start, at the discharge of a pistol close by; and then the weight on his chest became suddenly unbearable, and the knife dropped from his enemy's hand, and the cruel face fell aside, changing into something still more dreadful. In another minute he had dragged himself out from under Ratoneau's dead body, and staring wildly round, saw Riette holding a pistol.

"Ah! do not look at me so!" she cried, as she met her cousin's horrified eyes. "I had to save you! Papa will not be angry."

"He is avenged. You are a heroine, Riette!" he said, and held out his arms to her; but the child flung away her little weapon which had done so great a deed, and threw herself upon the ground in a passionate agony of tears.