The Red Cockade. Weyman Stanley John
has a bloody nose, fighting a Harincourt lad that called Monsieur a fool; but for me, I am too old for fighting. And there is one other thing I am too old for," he continued, with a sniff.
"What is that, impertinent?" I cried.
"To bury another master."
I waited a minute. Then I said: "You think that I shall be killed?"
"It is the talk of the town!"
I thought a moment. Then: "You served my father, André," I said.
"Ah! Monsieur."
"Yet you would have me run away?"
He turned to me, and flung up his hands in despair.
"Mon Dieu!" he cried, "I don't know what I would have! We are ruined by these canaille. As if God made them to do anything but dig and work; or we could do without poor! If you had never taken up with them, Monsieur-"
"Silence, man!" I said sternly. "You know nothing about it. Go down now, and another time be more careful. You talk of the canaille and the poor! What are you yourself?"
"I, Monsieur?" he cried, in astonishment.
"Yes-you!"
He stared at me a moment with a face of bewilderment. Then slowly and sorrowfully he shook his head, and went out. He began to think me mad.
When he was gone I did not at once move. I fancied it likely that if I showed myself in the streets before the Assembly met, I should be challenged, and forced to fight. I waited, therefore, until the hour of meeting was past; waited in the dull upper room, feeling the bitterness of isolation, and thinking, sometimes of Louis St. Alais, who had let me go, and spoken no word in my behalf, sometimes of men's unreasonableness; for in some of the provinces half of the nobility were of my way of thinking. I thought of Saux, too; and I will not say that I felt no temptation to adopt the course which André had suggested-to withdraw quietly thither, and then at some later time, when men's minds were calmer, to vindicate my courage. But a certain stubbornness, which my father had before me, and which I have heard people say comes of an English strain in the race, conspired with resentment to keep me in the way I had marked out. At a quarter past ten, therefore, when I thought that the last of the Members would have preceded me to the Assembly, I went downstairs, with hot cheeks, but eyes that were stern enough; and finding André and Gil waiting at the door, bade them follow me to the Chapter House beside the Cathedral, where the meetings were held.
Afterwards I was told that, had I used my eyes, I must have noticed the excitement which prevailed in the streets; the crowd, dense, yet silent, that filled the Square and all the neighbouring ways; the air of expectancy, the closed shops, the cessation of business, the whispering groups in alleys and at doors. But I was wrapped up in myself, like one going on a forlorn hope; and of all remarked only one thing-that as I crossed the Square a man called out, "God bless you, Monsieur!" and another, "Vive Saux!" and that thereon a dozen or more took off their caps. This I did notice; but mechanically only. The next moment I was in the entry which leads alongside one wall of the Cathedral to the Chapter House, and a crowd of clerks and servants, who blocked it almost from wall to wall, were making way for me to pass; not without looks of astonishment and curiosity.
Threading my way through them, I entered the empty vestibule, kept clear by two or three ushers. Here the change from sunshine to shadow, from the life and light and stir which prevailed outside, to the silence of this vaulted chamber, was so great that it struck a chill to my heart. Here, in the greyness and stillness, the importance of the step I was about to take, the madness of the challenge I was about to fling down, in the teeth of my brethren, rose before me; and if my mind had not been braced to the utmost by resentment and obstinacy, I must have turned back. But already my feet rang noisily on the stone pavement, and forbade retreat. I could hear a monotonous voice droning in the Chamber beyond the closed door; and I crossed to that door, setting my teeth hard, and preparing myself to play the man, whatever awaited me.
Another moment, and I should have been inside. My hand was already on the latch, when some one, who had been sitting on the stone bench in the shadow under the window, sprang up, and hurried to stop me. It was Louis de St. Alais. He reached me before I could open the door, and, thrusting himself in front of me, set his back against the panels.
"Stop, man! for God's sake, stop!" he cried passionately, yet kept his voice low. "What can one do against two hundred? Go back, man, go back, and I will-"
"You will!" I answered with fierce contempt, yet in the same low tone-the ushers were staring curiously at us from the door by which I had entered. "You will? You will do, I suppose, as much as you did last night, Monsieur."
"Never mind that now!" he answered earnestly; though he winced, and the colour rose to his brow. "Only go! Go to Saux, and-"
"Keep out of the way!"
"Yes," he said, "and keep out of the way. If you will do that-"
"Keep out of the way?" I repeated savagely.
"Yes, yes; then everything will blow over."
"Thank you!" I said slowly; and I trembled with rage. "And how much, may I ask, are you to have, M. le Comte, for ridding the Assembly of me?"
He stared at me. "Adrien!" he cried.
But I was ruthless. "No, Monsieur le Comte-not Adrien!" I said proudly; "I am that only to my friends."
"And I am no longer one?"
I raised my eyebrows contemptuously. "After last night?" I said. "After last night? Is it possible, Monsieur, that you fancy you played a friendly part? I came into your house, your guest, your friend, your all but relative; and you laid a trap for me, you held me up to ridicule and odium, you-"
"I did?" he exclaimed.
"Perhaps not with your own voice. But you stood by and saw it done! You stood by and said no word for me! You stood by and raised no finger for me! If you call that friendship-"
He stopped me with a gesture full of dignity. "You forget one thing, M. le Vicomte," he said, in a tone of proud reticence.
"Name it!" I answered disdainfully.
"That Mademoiselle de St. Alais is my sister!"
"Ah!"
"And that, whether the fault was yours or not, you last evening treated her lightly-before two hundred people! You forget that, M. le Vicomte."
"I treated her lightly?" I replied, in a fresh excess of rage. We had moved, as if by common consent, a little from the door, and by this time were glaring into one another's eyes. "And with whom lay the fault if I did? With whom lay the fault, Monsieur? You gave me the choice-nay, you forced me to make choice between slighting her and giving up opinions and convictions which I hold, in which I have been bred, in which-"
"Opinions!" he said more harshly than he had yet spoken. "And what are, after all, opinions? Pardon me, I see that I annoy you, Monsieur. But I am not philosophic; I have not been to England; and I cannot understand a man-"
"Giving up anything for his opinions!" I cried, with a savage sneer. "No, Monsieur, I daresay you cannot. If a man will not stand by his friends he will not stand by his opinions. To do either the one or the other, M. le Comte, a man must not be a coward."
He grew pale, and looked at me strangely. "Hush, Monsieur!" he said-involuntarily, it seemed to me. And a spasm crossed his face, as if a sharp pain shot through him.
But I was beside myself with passion. "A coward!" I repeated. "Do you understand me, M. le Comte? Or do you wish me to go inside and repeat the word before the Assembly?"
"There is no need," he said, growing as red as he had before been pale.
"There should be none," I answered, with a sneer. "May I conclude that you will meet me after the Assembly rises?"
He bowed without speaking; and then, and not till then, something in his silence and his looks pierced the armour of my rage; and on a sudden I grew sick at heart, and cold. It was too late, however; I had said that which could never be unsaid. The memory of his patience, of his goodness, of his forbearance, came after the event. I saluted him formally;