CHAPTER XXXII
THE BITTERNESS OF DEATH
From that old, dismantled farmhouse, built on to the tower, there sloped down, toward where a small stream ran some four hundred yards away, a long stretch of bare land, covered sometimes in the summer heat by short, coarse grass, while in the winter time it was, if any of it were left uneaten by the sheep, frost-bound or snow-covered. It was so now on this clear, cold winter night, its surface being dotted by innumerable folds and pens into which those sheep had once been driven, but which, since the mountaineers had been forced into revolution and had raided the place, were empty. They were so on this night, of sheep. Yet not of other living things, unless the moon played strange tricks with the eyes of those regarding the pens. Instead, were being filled rapidly with human forms creeping like Indians or painted snakes toward them, wriggling their bodies beneath the hurdles they were composed of, entering by that way into the ready-found ambush-the forms of the Miquelets, the most hated by the Camisards of all the troops which had been sent against them; the men whose extermination was more vowed and determined than the extermination of either dragoon, chevau-léger, or milice.
"You see?" whispered Le Leopard to Cavalier and Montbonneux as they stood together sheltering themselves from observation behind the great stone posts of the farmhouse's antique stoop, "you see? They first, then next the cavalry. Observe, beyond the stream; look through the trunks of the trees across it. The moon sparkles on breast and back and the splints of the gorgets. You see?" Then added, "And hear?"
For from down toward where Le Léopard had directed the other's attention there rang that which told beyond all doubt that the foe was lurking there; discovered them to the surrounded, hemmed-in Camisards. The neigh of a horse, long, loud, and shrill, taken up a moment later by others in their company and answered.
After that no need for further disguise or hiding. The presence of the enemy was made known. An instant later the trumpets rang out the "Advance!" Across the stretch of bare land the cavalry of Montrevel were seen riding fast.
"To arms! To arms!" sounded Cavalier's voice on the night air, it rivalling almost in distinctness the clear sounds of the royal trumpeters. "To arms! The tyrants are upon us. To arms! I say," and ere, with one wild shriek in unison from the throats of the Miquelets, the latter sprang from their ambush, the Protestants had leaped from the floors where they had flung themselves and were in the open, face to face with the Pyrenean wolves.
Instantly the whole surface of the earth beneath the bright rays of the moon was changed. Soon no moon was seen. The smoke from countless firelocks covered, obscured her. Smoke dispelled for an instant now and again by volleys of flame belched forth from fusil and carabine, flame that showed Miquelets dashing at huge mountaineers' throats, their long knives in their hands or 'twixt their teeth as they so sprang and clutched; that showed, too, these savage creatures forced to release their grasp, hurled to the earth, their brains clubbed out by butt and stock. Showed also the dragoons in the midst of all, sabring, thrusting, cutting down, overriding ally and foeman indiscriminately, reeling back themselves over their chargers' haunches as, from the windowless apertures of the tower, came hail after hail of bullets from Camisards ensconced therein.
But still the battle raged. Still from the Protestants' throats rang their war cry, "For God and his children!" from those of the royalists, "For God and the King!" from those of the Miquelets, in their hideous shrieking falsetto, "Guerra al Culchielo!" "Guerra al Morté!"
"Save yourself and her," cried Cavalier, rushing back for a moment to the farmhouse kitchen and stumbling over the dead body of the treacherous peasant, Guignon, who had been poniarded by Le Léopard the moment he was certain that the man had betrayed them, "save yourself-and her. There is a backway by the fosse to an ancient passage 'neath the old castle; save yourselves. We are lost, lost! Outnumbered! Save yourselves!"
Then in a moment he saw that neither Martin nor Urbaine were there. Gone! either to destruction or safety, he knew not which, yet gone. And he rushed back to his doomed band; rushed back to see that the tower was in flames, that all of his men who were in it were beyond earthly salvation. Already it seemed to rock beneath the great spouting flames that leaped forth from roofless summit and openings where windows might once have been. Doomed!
Le Léopard came near him at this moment, an awful spectacle-bleeding from a dozen wounds, his vast and iron-gray beard crimson, yet with his eyes glaring as ever. Came near, staggering, reeling, yet able to gasp:
"To the fosse, to the fosse! You can save some that way. To the fosse!"
"Come you also," muttered Cavalier, "Come-"
"I come!" Le Léopard exclaimed. "Nay, never more. See!" and he tore open his rough coat, showing on his breast a hideous gaping wound. And as he did so he reeled more heavily than before, then fell across the body of a dragoon lying close by.
But still, all around, the fight went on; the sabres swung and the volleys rattled, while from the tower there rose now the death song of those within it. Above all else that was heard a hymn of praise to the God of Battles, the God also of the outcasts-a hymn blessing and magnifying his name. And as it rolled through the fumes and the grime there came next an awful roar, a vast uprising of a monstrous sheet of fresh flame, and, with a crash, the tower came to earth, burying beneath its ruins not only those within it, but also many others around, Camisards and royalists.
"They are bringing their culverins," cried one now above all the tumult, "to play upon the house," and in answer there rang out now another voice which all knew, the voice of Cavalier, the words he shouted being: "Disperse, disperse, my brethren! Children of the mountains and the clouds, disperse as do the clouds themselves. Not to-night is our triumph, yet it will come. It must come."
He spoke truly. The triumph was to come ere long now. The Camisards were to gain their cause at last, but it was not to be to-night, nor by the sword. Instead, by the gentle mediation and mercy of one whose name is still spoken gently in the Cévennes-the name of the great and good Villars.
"You can go no farther?" Urbaine said an hour later to Martin Ashurst, "no farther. Oh, my God, my God, that it should come to this! And for me, for my sake!"
"Nay, dear one, what matter? We are together to the last. And you love me. What more is there to ask?"
"Alas! Alas! I can not live without you, stay behind alone. My love, my love, you must not leave me. Shall not go before. If you die, then must I die too."
And as she spoke she loosened his vest and sought for the wound in his shoulder which had brought him to this pass.
They had found the fosse the Camisards knew of in the old farmhouse. Even as the attack began, Martin, seeking for a place of refuge for her, had thrust open a door at the back of the great old kitchen in which they were, and had led her out of the dangerous room that gave upon the spot where the conflict had begun. Had led her on through a passage sloping down into the earth from behind the house, until, by following it, they found themselves in a place which none could have supposed would have been there; a place like a crypt, stone-flagged, the stones themselves roughly hewn, the pillars dwarfed, yet strong enough to bear a vast fabric above them; a place so old, so long since built, that it may have been some Roman sepulchre, or hiding-place of Albigenses in long-forgotten days, or secret chapel of worship beneath the old feudal castle that had once existed.
Yet there it was, calm and quiet. Even the sounds of the battle now waging in all its fury without came gently to their ears, was scarce heard more strongly than the murmur in a shell or the breaking of the ocean on a far-off shore. Calm and quiet, with, through a recess in the farther wall, perhaps once a niche or shrine, a moonbeam streaming brightly and making the dull flame of the lantern Martin had brought with him, snatching it off the nail where it hung, burn dull and rustily.
And Urbaine, entering with him this haven into which they had penetrated-surely none of those soldiers knew of it, would find it, surely God in his mercy would not permit that-flung herself on her lover's breast sobbing that they were saved again; again were saved by him whom she so loved with her whole heart and soul.
Then started back, a look of terror on her face-a look of awful fear and apprehension-seeing what she did see in her lover's eyes as she sought them.
"My God!" she half whispered, half shrieked, shuddering, "what-what is it? Martin, my love? Oh, what-what has happened?"
For his lips were cold, there was no answering warmth in them as they met hers; his face was white as death, his eyes dull and filmy.
"It-it-is not much. But-I-am struck. As we left the place above, a bullet-through the window-struck me. I-I-can go no farther. Alas, I can not stand," while as he spoke he swayed heavily against the middle pillar of the crypt, then slid, clutching at it, to the earth.
Even as he did so, even, too, as she a moment later undid his vest to seek for the wound, there came to her ears, though perhaps not to his as he lay there faint and almost insensible, the sound of many rushing feet, a heavy trampling; then, next, men passing swiftly by and farther on through the fosse-men whose smoke-grimed faces (sometimes, too, their wounded faces) she recognised as the moonbeams flickered on them. Camisards fleeing hastily, dispersing as Cavalier had said. The Camisards in whose power she had once been, in whose company she had but a few hours ago descended from the mountains.
"O God!" she moaned, "are they pursued by Montrevel's troops? If so, and he, my love, is found here by those troops!"
But he was not all unconscious; he could still hear, and, hearing, understood that moan.
"Nay, dearest," he whispered back, "even so it matters not. The Protestants, these men, are our friends. Baville's pass, the packet he bade me give you on our wedding morn-alas, our wedding morn! – will hold us safe from the soldiers. Fear not, ma mie."
Baville! The name stung her like an adder's fang. Baville! The man who had slain her father, and then endeavoured by a false, pretended love, to take that father's place! The man she would never see again, had vowed, as deeply as one so gentle as she could vow, never to see or know again.
Baville! And he had written to her, sent her a packet. Her lover had it about him at this moment. What could such a thing mean? What import? Yet, yet she upbraided herself for thinking of her own griefs and sorrows now at such a time as this. Baville! Faugh! Baville! Yet if he knew to what a pass they had come, knew that this man whose life might be ebbing slowly from him now, was ebbing slowly, was here? If he knew that he who had saved her was dying? Baville! The man whom once she had loved with a daughter's love.
Again the hurrying feet passed, again the gaunt fugitives went by, yet she heeded them not. Her whole soul was in what she was endeavouring to do-to staunch that gaping wound. Then suddenly one, an old, white-faced, terror-stricken man with long gray hair, stopped, seeing those forms; stopped, peering through the moonbeam that slanted down upon their faces; stopped, then advanced toward them.
"'Tis he," he whispered, bending toward the wounded man. "Martin! Martin! O Martin, my friend!"
"You know him? Your friend? You know him?" she whispered back. "Who are you?"
"His friend, Buscarlet, the inhibited pasteur of Montvert. Driven to the mountains at last, forced to abide with these unhappy outcasts, but, thank God, not yet to draw the sword. No, no, not that! Never, never! Only to pray upon my knees to them by morn and night to shed no blood, to bear, to suffer all. To do that, I followed them here. Only they will not listen. Oh, Baville, Baville, has not your tiger's fury been glutted yet?" And he gazed down upon the almost senseless form of Martin lying there, muttering, "If I could save you!"
Then, a moment later, he spoke again.
"Who," he said very gently now, "are you? Not his wife or sister, I know. But what?"
For a moment she did not answer, looking up at him, instead, with wide, clear eyes so full of sorrow that her glance struck him to the heart.
"I was to have been his, am his, affianced wife. And-and-God help me! – I am Baville's, that tiger's, adopted child!"
"You! His adopted child, and Martin's affianced wife!"
"Even so." And she bent her head and wept.
For a moment there was silence in that deserted place, deserted now since all the fugitive mountaineers had passed through the fosse; silent because no longer was heard the distant sound or hum of shot or cry of combatants. Then he bent over Martin, looked to his wound, touching it very gently and afterward replacing the hasty bandages she had made from some of her own linen, and said:
"He is exhausted from his loss of blood. But, though he dies, it will not be yet. The cold is to be feared, however. If that reaches the wound-I know somewhat of surgery-he can not live. Now I go to seek succour, help!"
"Succour! Help! Where can it be obtained? In Heaven's mercy, where? Nîmes is three leagues off."
"I will do my best. Pray God I am not too late."
And so he left her.
CHAPTER XXXIII
TOUT SAVOIR, C'EST TOUT PARDOXNER
Coming to himself, Martin, lying there, wondered where he was. He felt no pain in the wounded shoulder, only, instead, an awful weakness. Also he felt no cold. Knew too that around him was wrapped some soft warm garment, yet knew not that it was the great fur cloak in which the woman whom he had loved had been muffled up as she descended from the mountains, and in which she had long since enveloped him. Long since to her, watching, waiting there for succour to come, through two, three, four hours, and then another, but to him no length of time whatsoever. And he did not know-he was indeed even still in a half-unconscious state-how those hours had been spent by her, heedless of the cold which pierced through and through her, spent in sitting on the ground by his side, soothing him when he moaned painfully, holding his hand, kissing his hot brow. Attending also to his wound, and going even some distance farther along the fosse in the hope of discovering water, yet without success.
He knew nothing; had forgotten how he came there, that she had been with him, that there was such a woman, and that they loved each other madly.
Then suddenly a voice broke in upon his unconsciousness-a voice that seemed to recall him back to the world-the voice of Urbaine, yet, as she spoke, stifled now and again by sobs.
"Better," it seemed to him that he heard her say, "better have slain me with him, upon his desolate hearth, than have spared me to learn this at last. Of you, you whom I worshipped, whom I so reverenced."
If he had doubted whether he lived or was already in the shades leading to another world, or in that world itself, he doubted no longer, when through that old crypt a second voice sounded, one known to him as well as Urbaine's was known-a voice deep, solemn, beautiful. Broken, too, as hers had been, yet sweet as music still.
"If," that voice said, "you had escaped with your lover to some far-distant land as I hoped, ay, as even such as I dared to pray that you might do, you would have learned all. In those papers I sent by him you love, you would have known all on the morning you became his wife. Now I must tell you with my own lips. Urbaine, in memory of the happy years gone by, the years when you grew from childhood to womanhood by my side, at my knee, hear my justification, let me speak."
It was Baville.
Baville! Her father's murderer there! Face to face with Urbaine once more!
For a moment the silence was intense, or broken only by the woman's sobs. Then from her lips he heard the one word "Speak" uttered.
"Urbaine, your father died through me, though not by my will, not by my hands."
"Ah!"
"I loved Urbain Ducaire," the rich, full voice went on. "Loved him, pitied him too, knowing something, though not all, of his past life. Knew that he, a Huguenot, was doomed if he stayed here in Languedoc, stranger though he was, for his nature was too noble to conceal aught; he was a Catholic who had renounced his ancient faith, a nouveau converti, yet of the wrong side for his future tranquility. And he boasted of it loudly, openly. He was doomed."
Again there was a pause broken only by the weeping of Urbaine. Then once more Baville continued:
"I beseeched him to go, to leave the neighbourhood, to depart in peace. Provided him with safe conducts, implored him to seek an asylum in England or Holland where those of his newly adopted creed were safe. He refused. Your mother, a woman of the province, had died in giving birth to you. He swore he would not leave the place where her body lay. He defied me, bade me do my worst."
"And-and-" Urbaine sobbed.
"And the orders came from Paris. From Louvois, then alive, and Madame de Maintenon. 'Saccagez tous!' they wrote. 'Those who will not recant must be exterminated.'
"Then I sent to him by a trusty hand a copy of those orders. I bade him fly at once, since even I could not save him. Told him that on a fixed night-great God! it was the night ere Christmas, the night when the priests bid us have our hearts full of love and mercy for each other-I must be at his cottage with my Cravates. He was a marked man; also I was known to favour him. If I did so now, spared him and imprisoned others, all the south would be in a tumult."
Again Baville paused. Again went on:
"I never deemed I should find him; would have sworn he must be gone ere I reached his house. Yet went there, knowing that I dared not omit him. Went there, praying, as not often I have prayed, that it would be empty, forsaken. Alas! Alas! Alas! he had ignored my warning, my beseechings. He was there, reading his Bible. He defied me. By his hand he had a pistol. Seeing the Cravates behind me, their musketoons ready, it seemed as though he was about to use it. Raised it, pointed it at me, covered my breast."
The pause was longer now. Martin, hearing, understanding all, his mind and memory returned to him, thought Baville dreaded to continue. Yet it was not so. The full clear tones reached his ear again:
"I could not deem him base enough to do that, to shoot me down like a dog, since I had drawn no weapon of my own. It was, I have divined since, the soldiers whom he defied. Yet in my contempt for what I thought his idle threat, I cried scornfully 'Tirez donc.' Alas, ah, God! the fatal error that has forever darkened your life and mine! Those words were misunderstood. The Cravates misunderstood them, believed the exclamation an order given to them by me; a moment later they had fired. O Urbaine! my love, my child-I-I-what more is there to tell?"
And as he ceased, hers were not the only sobs Martin heard now.
Then, as they too ceased somewhat, another voice was heard by the listener-the voice of Buscarlet.
"You hear? The wrong, that was in truth no wrong, is atoned. Has never been. Your way is clear before you. The evil he has wrought has not come nigh you or yours. Woman, as his heart has ever cherished you, I, a pastor of your rightful faith, bid you give back your love to him."
The dawn was coming as the old man spake these words. In the thin light of that new morning which crept in from where the moon's ray had shone through the night, Martin, his fur covering tossed from off him long since, saw Urbaine fall on Baville's breast, heard her whisper, "My father, oh, my father!" Knew, too, that they were reconciled, the past forgotten. And thanked God that it was so.
Yet once again Buscarlet spoke, his white hair gleaming in the light of the coming day, his old form erect and stately before the other.
"You are absolved by her," he said; "earn absolution, too, for your past cruelty by greater mercy to others of her faith. I charge you, I, a priest of that persecuted faith, that henceforth you persecute no more. God has given you back your child's love. Be content."
* * * * * * *
A little later and those three were gathered round the spot where Martin lay, with, in the background, a fourth figure, that of Baville's own surgeon. He had been brought by the Intendant after Buscarlet had told the latter all that he had ridden hastily to Nîmes to inform him of, and when the pastor had declared that if surgical aid was not at once forthcoming the wounded man must surely die. And, seeing him, the surgeon had said that his life still hung in the balance; that if what Baville desired was to be done, it had best be done at once.
"It will make you happy?" Urbaine whispered, her lips close to her lover's, her arms about him.
"Passing happy," he murmured, "beyond all hope. Now, now, at once."
"You can do it?" the Intendant asked, turning to the pastor.
"I can do it now."
"So! Let it be done."
"Stay there by his side," Buscarlet said then to Urbaine, "upon your knees. – Take you her hand," to Martin.
And in whispered tones he commenced the marriage ceremony of the Huguenots as prescribed by their Church.
"Repeat after me that you take Urbaine Ducaire to be your wedded wife"
"Nay, nay," said Baville, interposing. "Nay, I had forgotten. Not that. Not that. The packet would have told what both must have learned ere they had been married elsewhere. Now I must tell it myself. Her name is not Urbaine Ducaire."
"Not Urbaine Ducaire?" all exclaimed, looking up at him. "Not Urbaine Ducaire?"
"Nay. Nor her father's Urbain Ducaire. Instead, this," and he produced hastily his tablets from his pocket and wrote on them for some few moments, muttering as he did so, "I knew it not till lately, until I communicated with those in Paris, though I suspected. Also," he repeated, "the packet would have told all."
Then, thrusting the tablets into the pastor's hands, while all around still gazed incredulously at him, he said aloud: "Marry her in those names and titles. Hers by right which none can dispute, and by the law of Richelieu passed through the Parliament of Paris in the last year of his life. The right of sole daughters where no male issue exists."
"These titles are lawfully hers?" Buscarlet asked, reading in astonishment that which Baville had written, while Urbaine clung closer still to her lover, wondering what further mystery surrounded her birth, and Martin, no light breaking in on him as yet, deeming Baville demented. "Lawfully hers?"
"Lawfully, absolutely hers. Proceed."
And again Buscarlet commenced:
"Repeat after me that you take Cyprienne, Urbaine Beauvilliers-"
"My God!" whispered Martin faintly ere he did so. "My God! that my quest ends here!" Then he repeated the words that Buscarlet read from Baville's tablets as he had been bidden.
"Baronne de Beauvilliers," the pastor continued, "Comtesse de Montrachet, Marquise du Gast d'Ançilly, Princesse de Rochebazon, daughter of Cyprien, Urbain Beauvilliers, former bearer of those titles, to be your wedded wife-to-"
* * * * * * *
It was finished. They were married. The union blessed by a pastor of their own Church and attested by him who had so persecuted the members of that Church by order of the man, if indeed it was by his orders, whom they called "The Scourge of God."
And Martin, gazing up into the eyes of his wife, murmured:
"I have not failed, my love, in what I sought. But, ah, that my search should bring me to such perfect peace, should end with you! Now, if I die, I die happy."
But even as she held him close to her, his head upon her shoulder, he knew, felt sure, that he would not die; that God would restore him to a new life, to be passed as long as it lasted by her side.
Postscript. – The historical incidents in the foregoing story have necessarily, for obvious purposes in one or two instances, been altered from their exact sequence. With this exception they are described precisely as they occurred, each description being taken from the best authorities, and especially the best local ones. Exclusive of the names of Ashurst, Ducaire, and all pertaining to that of De Rochebazon and of De Rochebazon itself, the others are, in almost every case, authentic.