Lord Tonys Wife | Page 7

terror.
He knew--none better-- the appalling hatred wherewith he and all his family and belongings were regarded by the local peasantry. Astride upon his manifold rights -- feudal, territorial, seignorial rights-- he had all his life ridden roughshod over the prejudices, the miseries, the undoubted rights of the poor people, who were little better than serfs in the possession of the high and mighty duc de Kernogan. He also knew -- none better-- that gradually, very gradually it is true, but with unerring certainty, those same down-trodden, ignorant, miserable and half-starved peasants were turning against their oppressors, that riots and outrages had occurred in many rural districts in the North and that the insidious poison of social revolution was gradually creeping toward the south and West, and had already infected the villages and small townships which were situated quite unpleasantly close to Nantes and to Kernogan.
For this reason he had kept a company of artillery at his own expense inside the precincts of his chateau, and with the aristocrat's open contempt for his peasantry which it had not yet learned to fear, he had disdained to take further measures for the repression of local gatherings, and would not pay the village rabble the compliment of being afraid of them in any way.
But with his daughter Yvonne in the open roadway on the very night when an assembly of that same rabble was obviously bent on mischief, matters became very serious. Insult, outrage or worse might befall the proud aristocrat's only child, and knowing that from these people, whom she had been taught to look upon as little better than beasts, she could expect neither mercy nor chivalry, the duc de Kernogan within his unassailable castle felt for his daughter's safety the most abject, the most deadly fear which hath ever unnerved any man.
Labruni��re a few minutes later did his best to reassure his master.
'I have ordered the men to take the best horses out of the stables, M. le duc,' he said, 'and to cut across the fields toward la Gramoire so as to intercept Mademoiselle's coach ere it reach the cross-roads. I feel confident that there is no cause for alarm,' he added emphatically.
'Pray God you are right, Labruni��re,' murmured the duc feebly. 'Do you know how strong the rabble crowd is?'
'No, Monseigneur, not exactly. Camille the under-bailiff, who brought me the news, was riding homewards across the meadows about an hour ago when he saw a huge conflagration which seemed to come from the back of Adet's mill: the whole sky has been lit up by a lurid light for the past hour, and I fancied myself that Adet's staw must be on fire. But Camille pushed his horse up the rising ground which culminates at Adet's farmery. It seems that he heard a great deal of shouting which did not seem to be accompanied by any attempt at putting out the fire. So he dismounted and led his horse round the hillock skirting Adet's farm buildings so that he should not be seen. Under cover of darkness he heard and saw the old miller with his son Pierre engaged in distributing scythes, poles and axes to a crowd of youngsters and haranguing them wildly all the time. He also heard Pierre Adet speak of the conflagration as a perconcerted signal, and say that he and his mates would meet the lads of the neighbouring villages at the cross-roads... and that four hundred of them would then march on Kernogan and pillage the castle.'
'Bah!' quoth M. le duc in a voice hoarse with execration and contempt, 'a lot of oafs who will give the hangman plenty of trouble to-morrow. As for that Adet and his son, they shall suffer for this... I can promise them that.. If only Mademoiselle were home!' he added with a heartrending sigh.
V
Indeed, had M. le duc de Kernogan been gifted with second sight, the agony of mind which he was enduring would have been aggravated an hundredfold. At the very moment when the head-bailiff was doing his best to reassure his liege-lord as to the safety of Mlle. de Kernogan, her coach was speeding along from the chateau of Herbignac toward those same cross-roads where a couple of hundred hot-headed peasant lads were planning as much mischief as their uniimaginative minds could conceive.
The fury of the gale had in no way abated, and now a heavy rain was falling -- a drenching, sopping rain which in the space of half an hour had added five centimetres to the depth of hte mud on the roads, and had in that same space of time considerably damped the enthusiasm of some of the poor lads. Three score or so had assembled from Goulaine, two score from les Sorini��res, some three dozen from Doulon: they had rallied