Lord Tonys Wife | Page 3

The
night, so the chronicles of the time tell us, was as dark as pitch: on
ahead lay the lights of the city flickering in the gale: to the left the wide
tawny ribbon of the river wound its turbulent course toward the ocean,
the booming of the waters swollen by the recent melting of the snows
sounded like the weird echoes of invisible cannons far away.
Without hesitation Pierre advanced. His little troop followed him in
silence. They were a little sobered now that they came out into the open
and that the fumes of cider and of hot, perspiring humanity no longer
obscurred their vision or inflamed their brain.
They knew whither Pierre was going. It had all been pre-arranged
--throughout this past summer, in the musty parlour of the auberge,
behind barred doors and shuttered windows-- all they had to do was to
follow Pierre, whom they had tacitly chosen as their leader. They

walked on behind him, their hands buried in the pockets of their thin,
tattered breeches, their heads bent forward against the fury of the gale.
Pierre made straight for the mill- his home- where his father lived and
where Louise was even now crying her eyes out because Antoine
Melun, her sweetheart, had been condemned to be hanged for killing
two pigeons.
At the back of the mill was the dwelling house and beyond it a small
farmery, for Jean Adet owned a little bit of land and would have been
fairly well off if the taxes had not swallowed up all the money that he
made out of the sale of his rye and his hay. Just here the ground rose
sharply to a little hillock which dominated the flat valley of the Loire
and commanded a fine view over the more distant villages.
Pierre skirted the mill and without looking round to see if the others
followed him he struck squarely to the right up a narrow lane bordered
by tall poplars, and which led upwards to the summit of the little
hillock around which clustered the tumble-down barns of his father's
farmery.
The gale lashed the straight, tall stems of the poplars until they bent
nearly double, and each tiny bare twig sighed and whispered as if in
pain. Pierre strode on and the others followed in silence. They were
chilled to the bone under their scanty clothes, but they followed on with
grim determination, set teeth, and anger and hate seething in their
hearts.
The top of the rising ground was reached. It was pitch dark, and the
men when they halted fell up against one another trying to get a
foothold on the sodden ground. But Pierre seemed to have eyes like a
cat. He only paused one moment to get his bearings, then --still without
a word-- he set to work. A large barn and a group of small circular
straw ricks loomed like solid masses out of the darkness - black,
silhouetted against the black of the stormy sky. Pierre turned toward the
barn: those of his comrades who were in the forefront of the small
crowd saw him disappearing inside one of those solid shadowy masses
that looked so ghostlike in the night.

Anon those who watched and who happened to be facing the interior of
the barn saw sparks from a tinder flying in every direction: the next
moment they could see in every direction: the next moment they could
see Pierre himself quite clearly. He was standing in the middle of the
barn and intent on lighting a roughly-fashioned torch with his tinder:
soon the resin caught a spark and Pierre held the torch inclined toward
the ground so that the flames could lick their way up the shaft. The
flickering light cast a weird glow and deep grotesque shadows upon the
face and figure of the young man. His hair, lanky and dishevelled, fell
over his eyes; his mouth and jaw, illumined from below by the torch,
looked unnaturally large, and showed his teeth gleaming white, like the
fangs of a beast of prey. His shirt was torn open at the neck and the
sleeves of his coat were rolled up to the elbow. He seemed not to feel
either the cold from without or the scorching heat of the flaming torch
in his hand. But he worked deliberately and calmly, without haste or
febrile movements: grim determination held his excitement in check.
At last his work was done. The men who had pressed forward, in order
to watch him, fell back as he advanced torch in hand. They knew
exactly what he was going to do, they had thought it all out, planned it,
spoken of it till even their unimaginative minds had visualized this
coming scene with absolutely realistic perception. And yet