THE VISION OF THE WOOD
WE had reined up under a huge yoke-elm, whose spreading branches
threw a mottled shade on the snow at our feet, and watched Ponthieu
in silence until he went quite out of our sight. The same thoughts
were running in our minds. Perhaps something too of the same despair
had seized us, a presentiment that we were casting away our lives for
nothing. Madame de Condé had at one stroke, by changing her plans,
gone straight into the lion’s mouth, and had increased tenfold the
difficulty of our emprise, if not totally destroying all chances of its
success. And yet, now that I look back upon things, I cannot blame her.
She was a woman, after all, and guided more by the heart than the head.
But then, as we stood there, I railed against the caprice that was like
to cost us all our lives.
“Did ever you hear the like?” I burst out, and Marcilly laughed
bitterly as he answered:
“We go like lambs to the slaughter, perchance,” and then he looked me
straight in the face, saying:
“Gaspard! You see that track! It leads straight to the high road to
Blois. Turn rein and ride there, and thence take horse to Poitou.
There is blood in the air, friend, but it must not be yours. Leave me!
I will do this alone.”
“Monsieur,” I said, a flush rising to my face, and, as God is my
witness, the words I uttered came straight from my heart, “Monsieur, I
have the honor to be joined with you in this thing, and I stay with you
till the last, for good or ill.”
“Think!” he said, “and draw back while there is time. Where are
Renaudie, Castelnau, and Ste. Marie? Where are a hundred brave hearts
we knew and loved?”
“Where we shall be if we fail. I will not go.”
“Your lands are broad, Vibrac. You are young, and life is dear.”
“My life is my own, and neither my lands nor yours of Duras were won
with dishonor. And for the risk--I--I but stake myself, while you----”
I said no more, for he knew what I meant, and his brown cheek paled. As
for me, for that moment I was innocent, I had conquered the past, and
for once the dread breath that stirred the fires of evil within me lost
its malign power. The whispering presence was there, ready as ever, but
I was strong then. Would that that strength had continued! Ah! God in
Heaven! Why dost Thou not stoop a little lower to help Thy creatures?
And now I put aside the fiend with a curse, and swore again and again
that I would die with Marcilly if need be, and we clasped hands once
more on my oath, as we rode through the twilight of the woods of Russy,
through the red sunset that lit up the old and gnarled trunks, and
bronzed the tracery of branches overhead; a strange glow, that flushed
the snow beneath us, that ran on the crests of the trees in a line of
flame, and, falling on the gray of the distant woodlands, lit them with
its glory, to sink at last in a trembling veil of empurpled shadows.
What thoughts stirred Marcilly I know not; but as I rode behind him,
I was once more fighting with myself. I saw with horror that the past
was still awake within me, and there was a black foreboding in my soul
of evil to come. Again I clutched at the strength above me, again bent
my head in silent prayer. I swore to myself that I would put to flight
the hideous phantom that dogged me, and once more there came to me that
momentary strength, that feeble power, that faints so weakly at the
first stealthy footfall of temptation.
Were other men like me, I wondered, or was I accursed beyond my
fellows, one marked with the Mark of the Beast?
Good would it have been if I had taken Jean’s offer, and turned rein to
Blois. The bitter days that were to come had then perchance never been;
but my word was passed, and I would not draw back for dread of my life.
It would be said that Gaspard de Vibrac had feared to die with his
friend, that he had fled like a frighted roe at the first rustle of the
leaves. It would be no longer the Fever of St. Vallière, but the Sweat
of Vibrac, that would brand a poltroon with infamy. No! It could not
be! And so, against myself, I drifted with the tide, into that yawning
abyss from which there is no return.
I had once put the past to sleep as I thought. Fool that I was! The
past never sleeps. The madness had come on me again, and again I had
crushed it, as I imagined, in that lonely struggle with myself which
he, who was a priest of his people, had mocked at and gibed. And was
this horror to envelop me again? God forbid! No! A thousand times no! I
would play this last game to the end of my sword, and then--farewell to
France.
I longed, yet feared, to meet Marie. I felt my bridle hand shiver as I
thought of her, and, so thinking, I all unconsciously slackened pace,
and dropped behind the others, letting my horse go slower and slower
until he barely walked. It was at this moment that I became possessed
of an intense feeling that the thoughts of the woman I loved were with
me. I involuntarily glanced to my right, and there, as I live, at the
edge of the purple shadow, where a lean glade opened and stretched out,
long and white, I saw her stand. It was no dream of fancy. No fever of
the brain. She stood there, I say, at the fringe of the glade, where
the light and darkness joined, with the gold of her hair all shining
like a glory. She was looking straight at me, with that in her glance I
had never seen before. It was not love nor hate, but an infinite pity,
that shone in her eyes, and then her lips seemed to move in speech,
and--she was gone.
I drew rein at the spot where she stood. It was not ten paces from me.
I peered into the quaking shadows, but my glance met nothing except the
endless lines of hoary trunks, that stretched like pillars along the
dim aisles of the forest. Here and there, past the gaps in the boughs
that arched overhead, I saw the blood light of the dying sunset shining
as through the stained glass of some old minster window, a light that
made the darkness yet more dark, and flung strange, awesome shadows on
the still scene upon which it shone.
“Marie!” I called out in a low voice, “Marie!”
But there was no answer except the mockery of the echoes.
“Marie--Marie!” they gibed from behind the haggard trees.
“Marie--Marie!” they whispered from the wan branches. The very air was
full of her name.
I turned, sick at heart, from those voices that spoke to me of her.
Echoes--not they? They were the long-dead people of the wood come back
in that shivering twilight--sprite and elf and goblin--and they had
fashioned of their cunning a phantom to make me a plaything and a sport.
Slowly I pushed my horse a little way into the wood, my eyes here,
there, and everywhere. The dry undergrowth snapped and crackled beneath
his hoofs, and from a bent and twisted bough overhead a huge owl,
startled by the sound, fled with flapping wings, and a dismal hoot,
into the deep of the forest.
I had totally forgotten my companions. In the nervous state to which I
was reduced, I know not how far I might have gone on, but now I heard
my name called out again and again, as Marcilly and Badehorn galloped
back to seek me, and, brought to the moment by their shouts, I came out
and joined them.
“_Cap de Diou!_” exclaimed Jean, “as our friend Ponthieu would say,
this is no season for woodland flowers, Gaspard, nor are we here to
gather posies for our sweethearts. Have you a mind to spend the night
in Russy woods?”
A sharp answer rose to my tongue; but checking myself I forced a laugh,
and we rode on together, until we at length reached the park gates of
Nanteuil, and found a hospitable welcome in the house of Monsieur de
Villequier.
There, as we sat round the log fire, sipping the old Vouvray, and
listening to Villequier’s tales--monsieur was a veteran of Pavia and
Cerisoles--we all unconsciously threw off our gloom, and Villequier
seemed to slip back into the past years; his cheeks flushed, and
his eyes glowed as he recalled his youth, and so the talk drifted
on until it struck midnight from the bells of the Antwerp clock in
the hall, and we retired to rest; and as I lay down, all wearied, to
sleep, I could not help thinking of the strong old age of our host,
who was descending as full of honors as of years to his grave, and I
wondered if the future would bring me the same when I had played my
part--wondered and hoped.
That night I slept the sleep of the weary in body and in mind, the
sleep, deep and dreamless, in which the hours pass like minutes, and it
is light and morning almost, as it seems, in a moment. Strange as it
may appear, no thought of the vision I had seen troubled me, nor did it
appear again, and I woke with the sun, refreshed and cooler in brain
than I had been for long, and laughed and jested gaily as we rode in
the winter sunlight, through the glistening woods on our way to Orleans.
Marcilly, too, seemed to have shaken off his sadness, or caught the
infection of gayety from me, and we gave way to the moment without a
thought that in a few hours we would be but a finger’s distance from
the rack, and the headsman’s block.
I am not going to tell of how we rode through the wintry Orléanais.
How we swam the Cosson, and galloped all wet and dripping to the
Ardoux. How we dried our clothes and broke our fast at the Three Stags,
opposite Our Lady of Clery, where, in the chapel, those who care may
see the lonely grave of Louis XI. of France, that King whose _tisane_
was stronger than strong wine, whose laughter was worse than his frown,
and who, small, deformed, and mean-looking as a tailor of the Rue St.
Antoine, could make his proudest nobles shiver at a look.
All these things and more may rest, for they are foreign to my story.
At length, splashed with the mud and snow of the road, we passed the
Loiret, and saw before us the Faubourg St. Marceau, and beyond, on the
opposite bank of the Loire, the confused mass of pointed gables and
sloping roofs, square towers and slender campaniles, that showed where
Orleans lay. Before us, on the left, rose high the Abbey Church of
Notre Dame de Recouvrance; higher still, though looking smaller because
of the distance, stood the tall spire and the twin towers of Ste.
Croix; whilst overhead a mass of gray and white clouds hung in the lazy
air, and cast their quivering shadows on the City of the Maid.
Our pulses quickened as we trotted through the Rue Dauphine to the Quai
des Augustins, and Marcilly, as he passed the Tudette, pointed to the
spire of Notre Dame, standing out high to view, and said:
“An omen of success! Our Lady of the Recouvrance looks at us,” and he
crossed himself, for he was of the Popish faith. And I wondered in my
heart how man could turn to this saint and to that, to relic and graven
image, when the very Godhead Himself seemed to hold His face from the
creatures He has made.
As we approached the Augustins, we could see that the city was
garrisoned as if expecting a siege. Everywhere there were guards of
soldiery, for the most part foreigners, and it was noticeable that four
out of five of the armed groups bore the arms and wore the colors of
the Guise.
“They seem Guisards to a man, Jean,” I remarked.
“Yes,” he answered, “and if we do not succeed we shall have the eagle
on our crown pieces.”
“There are two strings to our bow, however--Ponthieu has got off safely
with his letter.”
“True! But will Anne de Montmorenci move? He has, it is said, a
thousand lances at his back; but the Guise can lay down three for every
one of his.”
“Then you put little faith in the Admiral’s letter?”
“Yes. If the Constable could have moved he would have done so before.
He is not strong enough, and it is well known that the first Christian
baron plays well for his own hand. He will wait, and join the winning
side--mark my words!”
As he said this we reached the quay, and while Badehorn hailed a barge,
Marcilly put on his mask, and cocked his hat fiercely on one side of
his head, saying, with a laugh: “They know the Prince too well in
Orleans for me to appear openly here.”
“But masked in full day!” I expostulated.
“I have a rash on my face,” he answered; “it will vanish when we see
Cipierre, to whom we must go at once. We should be with him in less
than an hour. He lives in the Place du Martroi.”
“And here is the barge,” I said, and, entering it, we were taken slowly
across the river.
“There is a large crowd there.” I pointed to the opposite bank, where,
on the Quai du Châtelet, a good half of the population of Orleans
seemed to have assembled, all making in a westerly direction, and
swaying backward and forward, like a wind-stirred field, while every
now and again, above the murmuring voices that hummed like a thousand
hives, a hoarse shout would be raised that was taken up all along the
line, to die again as suddenly as it had sprung up.
“It is an expiation,” said our boatman, “a Huguenot who refused to
bow to Our Lady of Mercy, in the Rue des Tanneurs, and he is to make
expiation there on the quay.”
“On the quay? That is strange!” I said. “Why not before Ste. Croix, or
in the Martroi?”
“Monsieur is evidently a stranger,” replied our Charon; “they do not
expiate at Ste. Croix, and the Martroi is kept now for the Prince. ’Tis
said he dies on the 10th.”
From out the blackness of his mask Marcilly glanced at me, and our eyes
met for an instant as he asked:
“And is that known? We, who come from the south, heard that he would
not die.”
“All the world knows it,” replied our man; “the barricades, and
galleries for the spectators are even now ready in the Martroi, as
you will see--but we talk of dangerous things, messieurs, and we have
reached the quay. Ah! Thanks! This will buy a brave petticoat for my
little Lardille.”