Botta could see Gaspard from where he stood, and his eyes kindled and
grew luminous as he watched the athletic figure bending under its load
of forage. The young carpenter had proved himself good metal, and
Arnaud--one of whose many gifts it was to judge men’s qualities swiftly
and justly--had advanced him from the ranks to a place of trust about
his own person. There was not a man in his whole troop that he trusted
more fully than Botta’s son, Gaspard.
‘This was your mother’s home,’ said the house-master, later that
evening, when he and Gaspard had withdrawn themselves a little from the
rest, and climbed the steep bank which swept up from the hill-torrent to
the bastion of rock that kept watch and ward above. ‘Your mother’s home.
Here I saw her first, binding rye in those fields--the grey and silver
rye. I never see it now but I think of that day in autumn, two and
thirty years ago. Two and thirty years--a long time, Gaspard, to you,
for it is more than your whole life; but to me it seems but a handful
of days, few and evil, like those of Jacob. Two and thirty years!’
‘There are other measurements than hours and weeks,’ returned the young
man slowly; ‘I have learned that. How long is it since we crossed the
mountains into Switzerland? They count our exile as a score or two of
months, to me it is a very lifetime.’
‘His day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years in His sight but
as a day,’ returned Henri Botta, whose slower mind had not grasped the
inner meaning of his son’s words.
‘And,’ Gaspard went on, ‘there are the small things we give our lives to
grasp, and the great things we have not eyes to see. Will God judge us
for our foolishness, and punish us for our blindness in the day of the
account?’
‘He bids us ask for wisdom, Gaspard, and He has promised us the light.’
Still he did not follow the workings of his son’s mind, but he added:
‘God understandeth our frame, and remembereth that we are but dust. If
His heaven is high and far above us, His Son came here that in all
things _He_ might understand.’
The young man did not answer. He was thinking of that day on the
Angrogna hill when first he caught an inkling of the truth that the life
is more than meat, and the body than raiment--that day when it was first
given him to see that God’s stroke, falling as sharp pain, is yet His
Hand of Love.
* * * * *
It was but little that they seemed able to effect, this handful of men
marching across the confines of their native land; their bivouac fires
were few and feeble on that summer night in the Prali fields; and Henri
Botta’s white hairs and Gaspard’s ill-armed hands showed as poor samples
of the stuff of which Arnaud’s army was made. Yet, judged by wider
measurements, they were not ignoble, nor was their effort mean. These
men of the Vaudois were holding forth to the world the spectacle of
reverent faith in the promises of their God. They trusted in Him, and
they believed that that fervent trust would never be confounded.
As the notes of Madeleine’s evening psalm died down on the hill-side, a
figure raised itself from behind a jutting crag and crept stealthily off
in the darkness. The two women, well used to the desolate mountains,
slept serene and safe in the hut. Rénée’s head rested on her
foster-mother’s arm, and over the sweet flower-like face there was
spread the reflection of the peace that passeth understanding. The evil
mood that had tried her faith was gone, and in its place had come the
nameless Light that shines from the Spirit of Comfort. She was dreaming,
not of Gaspard, nor of happy days past or come, but of her
Mother-Madeleine and her ‘Psalm of Confidence.’
Yet all about that ruined hut were cruel and violent men, the hired
soldiery of the duke. Men little better than brigands, who had been sent
expressly upon work of rapine and slaughter, that a ‘strong hand’ might
crush the Vaudois now and for ever.
The singing had roused the attention of the outpost of the troops that
had been thrown forward to keep the Giuliano Pass. A soldier had crept
forward to reconnoitre the advance of Arnaud, and his men had made the
Savoyards cautious, and the sound of a Huguenot hymn might mean serious
mischief. But the alarm died away in a brutal scoff, when the scout
brought news that it was no meeting of heretics, no vanguard of the
Vaudois army, but an aged woman and a young girl singing themselves to
sleep under the shattered roof of a herdsman’s hut.
‘Leave them in peace,’ ordered the captain, an old soldier, who was
weary from his forced march, and who wished for undisturbed repose. ‘If
those two hundred hounds of mine start such a quarry, there will be no
quiet for hours. So hold thy tongue an thou canst, Antoine, and go back
to thy post. Dost hear? It is well.’
But when the sun had climbed the morning sky, and the scented tassels of
the pines were swaying to the breeze stealing from the snow-fields, when
the soldiers had shaken off their slumbers and were clamouring for their
morning meal, they might do what they pleased with such trifles as a
couple of defenceless women, for all their captain cared.
There were, as he said, but two hundred of them; but half that number
might hold the Giuliano Pass; the Vaudois were marching southwards by
Rodoret and Prali, as the duke’s troops were all aware. What mattered
it? Arnaud and his horde of fanatics might beat themselves to pieces
against the swords of the soldiers without risk or loss to that two
hundred, so wonderfully did the rocks stand round the forge, an
entrenchment and barrier stronger than mortal hands could build, a
fastness which neither Arnaud nor his mountaineers could force.
The captain laughed as he glanced up at the cliffs towering towards the
snows. Ah, yes! it would be strange indeed if his two hundred could not
hold the Giuliano Pass against greater odds than Arnaud was likely to
bring.
When at peep of day rude hands flung open the hut door, and ruder voices
called across the empty space, there fell a brief silence of surprise
upon the group of men. The hut was vacant: the quarry had fled.
[Illustration: THE HUT WAS VACANT.]
Whither? Who could tell? As well hunt for the proverbial needle amongst
a bundle of hay as seek two women of the valleys amongst their native
wilds. They might carry news to Arnaud--true, but Arnaud might have the
news and welcome! He was not likely to profit much by it.
So the soldiers hung their camp-kettles over their fires and pushed
chestnuts into the edges of the ashes and made ready their morning meal,
blythe as the birds in the copse of birches below them. And yonder where
the mighty mountains sloped northward and eastward towards Prali,
Madeleine and her foster-child sped through the forest paths with pale
looks and quickened breathings. They had lived through so much, escaped
so much, but perhaps the fiercest danger was this last--the Savoy guard
on the Giuliano Pass.
Madeleine’s quick ear had caught the sound of voices, and a very little
investigation had shown her the nest of hornets amidst which she and
Rénée had lain down to rest. They were well used to see danger staring
them in the face, but even Madeleine’s heart grew sick with fear as they
threaded the stony ways in that gleaming midsummer dawn. A false step
might betray them, and how have cool caution sufficient to plant each
step silently down those difficult paths?