The Companions of Jehu, Alexandre Dumas [great books of all time .txt] 📗
- Author: Alexandre Dumas
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Amélie sprang erect and clasped her head in her hands, as though her brain were bursting with the force of the blood that rushed to it. Morgan caught both her hands and looked at her anxiously.
“Do you hesitate?” he asked in a broken, trembling voice.
“No, not an instant!” she cried resolutely. “I am yours in the past, in the present, in the future, here, everywhere. Only the thought convulses me. It is so unexpected.”
“Reflect well, Amélie. What I ask of you is to abandon country and family, all that is dear to you, all that is sacred. If you follow me, you leave the home where you were born, the mother who nurtured you, the brother who loves you, and who, perhaps, when he hears that you are the wife of a brigand, will hate you. He will certainly despise you.”
As he spoke, Morgan’s eyes were anxiously questioning Amélie’s face. Over that face a tender smile stole gradually, and then it turned from heaven to earth, and bent upon Morgan, who was still on his knees before her.
“Oh, Charles!” she murmured, in a voice as soft as the clear limpid river flowing at her feet, “the love that comes direct from the Divine is very powerful indeed, since, in spite of those dreadful words you have just uttered, I say to you without hesitation, almost without regret: Charles, I am here; Charles, I am yours. Where shall we go?”
“Amélie, our fate is not one to discuss. If we go, if you follow me, it must be at once. Tomorrow we must be beyond the frontier.”
“How do we go?”
“I have two horses, ready saddled at Montagnac, one for you, Amélie, and one for me. I have letters of credit for two hundred thousand francs on London and Vienna. We will go wherever you prefer.”
“Wherever you are, Charles. What difference does it make so long as you are there?”
“Then come.”
“Can I have five minutes, Charles; is that too much?”
“Where are you going?”
“To say good-by to many things, to fetch your precious letters and the ivory chaplet used at my first communion. Oh! there are many sacred cherished souvenirs of my childhood which will remind me over there of my mother, of France. I will fetch them and return.”
“Amélie!”
“What is it?”
“I cannot leave you. If I part with you an instant now I feel that I shall lose you forever. Amélie, let me go with you.”
“Yes, come. What matter if they see your footsteps now? We shall be far enough away tomorrow. Come!” The young man sprang from the boat and gave his hand to Amélie to help her out. Then he folded his arm about her and they walked to the house.
On the portico Charles stopped.
“Go on alone,” said he; “memory is a chaste thing. I know that, and I will not embarrass you by my presence. I will wait here and watch for you. So long as I know you are close by me I do not fear to lose you. Go, dear, and come back quickly.”
Amélie answered with a kiss. Then she ran hastily up to her room, took the little coffer of carved oak clamped with iron, her treasury, which contained her lover’s letters from first to last, unfastened from the mirror above her bed the white and virginal chaplet that hung there; put into her belt a watch her father had given her, and passed into her mother’s bedchamber. There she stooped and kissed the pillow where her mother’s head had lain, knelt before the Christ at the foot of the bed, began a thanksgiving she dared not finish, changed it to a prayer, and then suddenly stopped—she fancied she heard Charles calling her.
She listened and heard her name a second time, uttered in a tone of agony she could not understand. She quivered, sprang to her feet, and ran rapidly down the stairs.
“What is it?” cried Amélie, seizing the young man’s hand.
“Listen, listen!” said he.
Amélie strained her ears to catch the sound which seemed to her like musketry. It came from the direction of Ceyzeriat.
“Oh!” cried Morgan, “I was right in doubting my happiness to the last. My friends are attacked. Adieu, Amélie, adieu!”
“Adieu!” cried Amélie, turning pale. “What, will you leave me?”
The sound of the firing grew more distinct.
“Don’t you hear them? They are fighting, and I am not there to fight with them.”
Daughter and sister of a soldier, Amélie understood him and she made no resistance.
“Go!” she said, letting her hands drop beside her. “You were right, we are lost.”
The young man uttered a cry of rage, caught her to his breast, and pressed her to him as though he would smother her. Then, bounding from the portico, he rushed in the direction of the firing with the speed of a deer pursued by hunters.
“I come! I come, my friends!” he cried. And he disappeared like a shadow beneath the tall trees of the park.
Amélie fell upon her knees, her hands stretched toward him without the strength to recall him, or, if she did so, it was in so faint a voice that Morgan did not stop or even check his speed to answer her.
It is easy to guess what had happened. Roland had not wasted his time with the captain of gendarmerie and the colonel of dragoons. They on their side did not forget that they had their own revenge to take.
Roland had informed them of the subterranean passage that led from the church of Brou to the grotto of Ceyzeriat. At nine in the evening the captain and the eighteen men under his command were to go to the church, descend into the burial vault of the Dukes of Savoy, and prevent with their bayonets all communication between the subterranean passage and the quarry.
Roland, at the head of twenty men, was to inclose the woods in a semicircle, drawing in upon it until the two ends should meet at the grotto of Ceyzeriat. The first movement of the party was to be made at nine o’clock, in conjunction with the captain of the gendarmerie.
We have seen, from what Morgan told Amélie, the nature of the present intentions of the Companions of Jehu. The news brought from Mittau and from Brittany had put them at ease. Each man felt that he was free, and, knowing that the struggle had been a hopeless one, he rejoiced in his liberty.
There was therefore a full meeting at the grotto of Ceyzeriat, almost a fête. At twelve o’clock the Companions of Jehu were to separate, and each one, according to his facilities, was to cross the frontier and leave France.
We know how their leader employed his last moments. The others, who had not the same ties of the heart, were supping together in the broad open space of the quarry, brilliantly illuminated—a feast of separation and farewell; for, once out of France, the Vendée and Brittany pacificated, Condé‘s army destroyed, who knew when and where they should meet again in foreign lands.
Suddenly the report of a shot fell upon their ears.
Every man sprang to his feet as if moved by an electric shock. A second shot, and then through the depths of the quarry rang the cry, quivering on the wings of the bird of ill-omen, “To arms!”
To the Companions of Jehu, subjected to all the vicissitudes of life of an outlaw, the occasional rest they snatched was never that of peace. Pistols, daggers, carbines, were ever near at hand. At the cry, given no doubt by the sentinel, each man sprang to his weapons and stood with panting breast and strained ears, waiting.
In the midst of the silence a step as rapid as well could be in the darkness was heard. Then, within the circle of light thrown by the torches and candles, a man appeared.
“To arms!” he cried again, “we are attacked!”
The two shots the Companions of Jehu had heard were from the double-barrelled gun of the sentry. It was he who now appeared, his smoking gun in his hand.
“Where is Morgan?” cried twenty voices.
“Absent,” replied Montbar; “consequently I command. Put out the lights and retreat to the church. A fight is useless now. It would only be waste of blood.”
He was obeyed with an alacrity that showed that every one appreciated the danger. The little company drew together in the darkness.
Montbar, who knew the windings of the subterranean passage almost as well as Morgan, directed the troop, and, followed by his companions, he plunged into the heart of the quarry. Suddenly, as he neared the gate of the passage, he fancied he heard an order given in a low tone not fifty feet away, then a sound like the cocking of guns. He stretched out both arms and muttered in a low voice:
“Halt!” At the same instant came the command, this time perfectly audible: “Fire!”
It was hardly given before the cavern was lighted with a glare, followed by a frightful volley. Ten carbines had been discharged at once into the narrow passage. By their light Montbar and his companions recognized the uniform of the gendarmes.
“Fire!” cried Montbar in turn.
Seven or eight shots answered the command. Again the darkness was illuminated. Two of the Companions of Jehu lay upon the ground, one killed outright, the other mortally wounded.
“Our retreat is cut off, my friends,” cried Montbar. “To the right-about! If we have a chance, it is through the forest.”
The movement was executed with the precision of a military manoeuvre. Montbar, again at the head of his companions, retraced his steps. At that moment the gendarmes fired again. But no one replied. Those who had discharged their guns reloaded them. Those who had not, reserved their fire for the real struggle which was to come. One or two sighs alone told that the last volley of the gendarmes had not been without result.
At the end of five minutes Montbar stopped. The little party had reached the open space of the quarry.
“Are your pistols and guns all loaded?” he asked.
“Yes,” answered a dozen voices.
“Remember the order for those who fall into the hands of the police. We belong to the army of M. de Teyssonnet, and we are here to recruit men for the royalist cause. If they talk to us of mail-coaches and diligences, we don’t know what they mean.”
“Agreed.”
“In either case it will be death. We know that well enough; but the death of a soldier is better than that of thieves—the volley of a platoon rather than the guillotine.”
“Yes, yes,” cried a mocking voice, “we know what that is—Vive la fusillade!”
“Forward, friends!” said Montbar, “and let us sell our lives for what they are worth; that is to say, as dearly as possible.”
“Forward!” they all cried.
Then, as rapidly as was possible in the profound darkness, the little troop resumed its march, still under the guidance of Montbar. As they advanced, the leader noticed a smell of smoke which alarmed him. At the same time gleams of light began to flicker on the granite walls at the angles of the path, showing that something strange was happening at the opening of the grotto.
“I believe those scoundrels are smoking us out,” exclaimed Montbar.
“I fear so,” replied Adler.
“They think we are foxes.”
“Oh!” replied the same voice, “they shall know by our claws that we are lions.”
The smoke became thicker and thicker, the light more and more vivid.
They turned the last corner. A pile of dried wood had been lighted in the quarry about fifty feet from the entrance, not for the smoke, but for the
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