Lord Tonys Wife | Page 9

post as did also the postilion and the four outriders, and with whip and tongue they urged their horses to break through the crowd regardless of human lives, knocking and trampling down men and lads heedless of curses and blasphemies which were hurled on them and on the occupants of the coach, whoever they might be.
The next moment, however, the coach came to a sudden halt and a wild cry of triumph drowned the groans of the injured and the dying.
'Kernogan! Kernogan!' was shouted from every side.
'Adet! Adet!'
'You limbs of Satan,' cried Jean-Marie, 'you'll rue this night's work and weep tears of blood for the rest of your lives. Let me tell you that! Mademoiselle is in the coach. When M. le duc hears of this, there will be work for the hangman...'
'Mademoiselle in the coach,' broke in a hoarse voice with a rough tone of command. 'Let's look at her...'
'Aye! Aye! let's have a look at Mademoiselle,' came with a volley of objurgations and curses from the crowd.
'You devils -- you would dare?' protested Jean-Marie.
Within the coach Yvonne de Kernogan hardly dared to breathe. She sat bolt upright, her cape held tightly round her shoulders: her eyes -- dilated now with excitement, if not with fear, were fixed upon the darkness beyond the window panes. She could see nothing, but she felt the presence of that hostile crowd who had succeeded in overpowering Jean-Marie and were intent on doing her harm.
But she belonged to a caste which never reckoned cowardice amongst its many faults. During these few moments when she knew that her life hung on the merest thread of chance, she neither screamed nor fainted but sat rigidly still, her heart beating in unison with the agonizing seconds which went so fatefully by. And even now when the carriage door was torn violently open and even through the darkness she discerned vaguely the forms of these avowed enemies close beside her, and anon felt a rough hand seize her wrist, she did not move, but said quite calmly, with hardly a tremor in her voice:
'Who are you? and what do you want?'
An outburst of harsh and ironical laughter came in response.
'Who are we, my fine lady?' said the foremost man in the crowd, he who had seized her wrist and was half in and half out of the coach at this moment, 'we are the men who throughout our lives have toiled and starved whilst you and such as you travel in fine coaches and eat your fill. What we want? Why just the spectacle of such a fine lady as you are being knocked down into the mud just as our wives and daughters are if they happen to be in the way when your coach is passing. Isn't that it, mes amis?'
'Aye! aye!' they replied, shouting lustily. 'Into the mud with the fine lady. Out with her, Adet. Let's have a look at Mademoiselle how she will look with her face in the mud. Out with her, quick!'
But the man who was still half in and half out of the coach and who had hold of Mademoiselle's wrist did not obey his mates immediately. He drew her nearer to him and suddenly threw his rough, begrimed arms round her, and with one hand pulled back her hood, then placing two fingers under chin, he jerked it up till her face was level with his own.
Yvonne de Kernogan was certainly no coward, but at the loathsome contact of this infuriated and vengeful creature, she was overcome with such a hideous sense of fear that for the moment consciousness almost left her: not completely alas! for though she could not distinguish his face she could feel his hot breath upon her cheeks, she could smell the nauseating odour of his damp clothes and she could hear his hoarse mutterings as for the space of a few seconds he held her thus close to him in an embrace which to her was far more awesome than that of death.
'And just to punish you, my fine lady,' he said in a whisper which sent a shudder of horror right through her, 'to punish you for what you are, the brood of tyrants, proud, disdainful, a budding tyrant yourself, to punish you for every misery my mother and sister have had to endure, for every luxury which you have enjoyed, I will kiss you on the lips and the cheeks and just between your white throat and chin and never as long as you live if you die this night or live to be an hundred will you be able to wash off those kisses showered upon you by one who hates and loathes you --a miserable peasant whom you despise and who in your sight is lower far than your