The Young Seigneur Part 29

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

A CRIME!

"The veil of mist that held her eyes was rent As by a lightning flash...."

--W. KIRBY

An hour pa.s.ses. The shades draw on and begin to blend hues and forms.

Chrysler moves his deliberative survey over the neat-clipped gra.s.s and the tall hedge, the poplars looking over it from the other side of the highway, the boughs and trunks of the great triple tree--and the little pinnacles along the Manor-house. A couple of the visitors along the paths are discussing the situation with dapper Parisian steps and gestures.

Suddenly the shades creep perceptibly deeper. The gate rattles. A wild acting man--it is Benoit in his sky-blue clothes--rushes panting in, throwing out his arms before him, stumbling and gasping inarticulately lamentations of anguish. "He is dead; my G.o.d, the poor young man! Poor Francois! My G.o.d! my G.o.d!"

Yes, it is Benoit Iscariotes.

Everyone springs to him. A great tragedy has occurred--for Dormilliere; perhaps little for a more experienced world. In Benoit's mind quivers a scene that has set shouting all the wild voices of his conscience.

Ever-cheerful Francois, so full of life, so faithful, well named "Vadeboncoeur," lies motionless upon the highway, deadly white, with glazed, half-closed eyes. Blood trickles from his open mouth, scatters from a frightful gash over his forehead, and bathes the ground in a dark pool; and a heavy stone lies near and relates its murderous tale.

This is what guilty Jean-Benoit saw at his feet, as, having finished his "labors" to his own satisfaction he was returning from Misericorde in the footsteps of his coadjutor Cuiller. O, as the poor body lay in the blood like a judgment before him, and those half-closed eyes seemed to gleam at him from their lids, what a fearful blow did Conscience strike that hypocrite, leaping from the lair in which it had long lain in wait!

He cannot stir. A mighty thunder cloud rises up from behind high above him, and darkens the earth. A silence lies on the trees, the road, the moor, and all around to the horizon--a silence accusing him.

Not a leaf moved. The sun went down. The bright little narrow gleam under the eyelids of the dead stared slily up to him with an awful triumph. His heart was caught by the grip of a skeleton hand. He could feel its several sinews as they tightened their grasp. It was impossible to break away--the grip of the hand was on the heart in, his breast, and he was in the power of the triumphant _corpse_!

What made him reel, what made him leap at length with such an insane cry, over the ghastly obstacle? He will go mad. This not quite balanced brain might coldly enough commit even some kinds of murder, but fright can unhinge it. Is he not mad, to flee so wildly? He runs--he runs--he gropes, under his black thundercloud and load of fright and agony, towards the glimmer that he must fly to those he has wronged. To her first--to Josephte, his cruelly-treated daughter--the hour tells him where she is! Flying, stumbling, pained, groaning, out of breath, fearing the lone hedges of the road, in wild struggle throwing his vain l.u.s.t of appearances for once to the winds, and having behind and above him as he fled, the sky filled with vast pursuing shapes, with shrieks and curses, and before all the pursuers the CORPSE, he reaches at last the Manoir, and stops before it crying out. It seems as if the instinct failed him here, and the Mansion's imposing front forbade.

She hears though. The maiden's heart, and the world's indefinite voices, beats sharply at certain sounds before the ear has caught them, for they strike the inner strings of its being. First a pang of great alarm,--and then she heard. Rus.h.i.+ng forth, she clasps the sobbing wretch in her arms and cries, "My father, what say'st thou! My G.o.d, what is it?--what has befallen Francois?--O my dear father!"

"He is dead, he is dead!--thy loved one,--at La Misericorde."

"O Holy Virgin!"

Josephte did not fall in a swoon: she darted towards the gate.

Chrysler took the man and made him sit down on a bench,--a wild spectacle of reason in the course of dethronement. The household stood about: the two visitors looked on curiously and made useless suggestions. Haviland and Zotique, driving past to make sure of Misericorde, heard a commotion and turned their horses in. Benoit threw himself on his knees to Chamilly, violently begging his forgiveness, and incoherently confessing the evil work of himself and Spoon, whereat Zotique attacked him with maledictions.

Chamilly restrained his companion. Soul of man was never seen to soar more easily over injury.

"My dear friend, calm yourself. If there has been bad work, what should be done now is to try and rectify it. Repeat what you were saying of Francois."

"The poor young man! The poor young man! I have seen him dead on the road."

The impulse to act was that which came naturally to Haviland. "Not a moment, Zotique!" and almost immediately the rattle of the wheels was dying into the distance.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

THE Pa.s.sING OF THE HOST.

They found Francois, Chamilly said, with Josephte kneeling over him loosening his collar, and tenderly binding her neckerchief over his head with neatness and gentleness quite enough indeed for any Heaven-selected Sister of Charity.

Running home breathless, dishevelled and desperate, she had frightened her brother and grandfather into speechless activity by a terrible command to harness a horse! Dragging out a light vehicle herself she speedily completed the arrangements, and whipping the animal pitiless lashes, dashed out of the presence of her relatives and was soon at the side of her injured lover, on the moorland road.

It must not tell against Zotique's humanity that he had all this time such a mastering sense of the necessity of getting on to Misericorde that, after barely aiding to place the body on Chamilly's vehicle, he took possession of the lighter one of Josephte, and sped on for his destination. The young girl and Haviland, however, conveyed their charge carefully and safely to the farm-house, had him laid upon her own prettily-belaced bed, and Haviland insisted--was it not a sacrifice in him on that critical evening of his election!--in watching with her the whole night by the bedside of Francois. As the silent hours were broken by the occasional sobs of Josephte, the young seigneur often gazed anxiously into the face of his faithful friend, wiping the bruised forehead and hoping that he might not die.

Chrysler hurried down into the village in the dusk for medicine. By the occasional lights of houses he discerned the people, up and out discussing the exciting topic. Shadowy young men were standing on the path, straining their eyes to make out who pa.s.sed by; shadowy fathers of families sat together at their doorways; half discernible women conversed from window to window.

A hand-bell rings somewhere in the dark. It slowly swings and rings a thin, melancholy warning tone, comes nearer, a lantern appears, the young men, the fathers, the women, the miscellaneous groups, seem, for half-a-second, to disappear like lights put out, they drop on their knees so instantly wherever they happen to be. A white-robed figure--an acolyte--pa.s.ses; feebly shone upon by a lantern; the "young cure"

follows, bearing the holy wafer,--a ghostly procession; and Chrysler takes off his hat, for he recognizes it as the pa.s.sing of the Host.

When they are fairly past, and have disappeared into the gloom, the shadowy shapes all rise from their knees, and follow the direction with eyes and ears, and a distinct, ominous murmur pa.s.ses through the whole village, for clearly Francois Le Brun is in _articulo mortis_.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

THE ELECTION.

Election day at Dormilliere was as election days in country places always--that is, a great peal of driving to and fro, and a great deal of crowding about the doors of the poll, and a dense atmosphere of smoke and had jokes among the few to whom the polling-room was reserved, and now and then a flying visit from Haviland, Libergent, or Grandmoulin, for either of whom the people immediately made way by stumbling back on each other's toes; and intermittent activity at head-quarters; and ominous quiet at the parsonage.

Zotique was mysterious, and in better humor. He supervised with determination, and seemed to know how to calculate the exact effect of everything. Breboeuf was marvellously transformed into a little flying spider, running backwards and forwards strengthening Haviland's web. The Honorable seemed to act slowly, but really with deliberation and effect, remarking neglected points, and himself seeing that certain "weak ones"

were brought to the right side of the poll. The schoolmaster was away haranguing the back parishes. For the Blue side, Picault and Grandmoulin appeared but once on the scene, but the energy of Ross de Bleury was astonis.h.i.+ng. Cajoling, ordering, opening bottles aside and treating, volubly greeting everybody in his strong voice all day, he seemed to have raised supporters for his party of whom no one would have dreamt except Zotique; but the little closet up in the attic satisfied the requirements of strict logic.

Haviland had added the fatigues of the last night to weeks of wearing labor, with consequences at length upon his fund of spirits, and also plainly on his face. He felt, like Grandmoulin, that his battle was princ.i.p.ally with De la Lande in the back of the county, cheering up his ranks.

About two o'clock Zotique drove over to Misericorde alone. He did not return for an hour and a half, and when he did, his expression had altered to one of decided triumph, though still mysterious and silent Zotique, in fact, the evening before, when he drove to Misericorde in Josephte's little gig, found what he had suspected to be the truth, that Benoit and Spoon had bought every vote of the hamlet; and paid for them, in the interest of Libergent; but he still believed it possible,--Benoit being incapacitated, and Spoon, he felt sure, not likely to turn up--to bend this plastic material the other way with the same tool, and casting, therefore, aside all delicate distinctions, he succeeded, by a reasonable hour in the evening, in obtaining once more the adhesion of the _hotellier_ and most of the population, giving--for he had no Government funds like his opponents--his own personal notes for the amounts, and enjoining on the tavern-keeper to have the whole of the suffrages polled early. This was all he could do, as it was impossible for him to be present on the morrow, or to delegate any other person of Haviland's circle. His remaining anxiety was removed, when, on driving over, his investigations proved that the arrangement had been fully completed.

De Bleury only got the news in the morning, and Picault, who immediately hurried over at his suggestion, found himself too late, and his carefully prepared representation that "promissory notes representing an immoral compact were invalid" was of no use, while his invitation of the crowd to 'whiskeyblanc' only produced useless condolences. "_C'est dommage, monsieur_. If we could have known." He was not altogether displeased, however, to find what he considered the inevitable hole in Chamilly's professions of purity, and meeting the latter driving just outside the place, he wheeled his horse across the road and compelled an interview.

"You think you can do without Picault!" he laughed frankly.

"Let me pa.s.s, sir!" said Haviland, unwilling to put up with any nonsense.

"To take up the promissory notes of your friend?"

"Do you think sir, that I use your inventions? Let me pa.s.s, I tell you,"

and he rose with his whip.

"I have seen the cards, Haviland; take the game; let us be partners; what is the use of dissembling in this extraordinary manner?"

A flash of the whip,--a leap of the two animals,--Picault careening into the ditch, and Chamilly flying into Misericorde.