The table, the book, the pallet, the grinning emblem of death, and a
little black crucifix hung up against the wall, were--with the exception
of a large pitcher of very clear, cold water--all that the cell
contained; and yet it was by no means without ornament, for each of
those chambers looking to the western cloister had a window divided into
two by a beautiful mullion and was garnished all round, even in the
interior, with mouldings a foot in depth. The original small panes of
stained glass were also there, but Edward could at first form no idea of
the richness of the coloring; for, although the moon had now risen
several hours, the face of heaven was black with clouds, and all without
was darkness. About five minutes after he had entered the cell, however,
the whole interior of the little room, where the feeble oil-lamp had
only made the darkness visible, was pervaded by intense light, and an
image of the stained-glass window was thrown upon the floor and
opposite wall in colors the most intense and beautiful. Still, the
thunder did not follow for several seconds; but when it did come the
roar was awful. It seemed as if some one were pouring rocks and
mountains in a stream upon the roof of the abbey, making the very solid
walls and foundations shake. Edward drew forth his watch,--one of the
rude contrivances of those days, but with the great advantage of having
the figures on the dial plain and distinct,--and, holding it to the
lamp, perceived it was a quarter past one. "Lucette must be awake," he
thought: "she could not sleep through such a crash as that. I will wait
five minutes and then go and call her."
In the mean time the flashes of lightning became more frequent, some
followed by heavy thunder, some passing away in silence, till at length
they grew so rapid in succession that one could not attach the roar to
the flame. Edward's first knock brought Lucette, completely dressed, to
the door; and he was surprised to see her cheek so pale. The thought of
danger had never entered his own mind; but he clearly saw that she was
much agitated. "You are not afraid, dear girl?" he asked: "it is but a
little thunder."
"It is not fear, but awe, Edward," she said. "But is it time to go? I am
ready."
"Not yet," he answered; "but we may as well stay here in the passage. If
the storm should alarm the monks, and any one come out, we can say we
are frightened too."
"Is not that some one crossing there?" asked Lucette; but almost as she
spoke a sudden flash showed that what she took for a man was but a short
pillar. Edward drew her closer to him and put his arm round her. She did
not feel at all angry, but rather clung to his side. Fear is a great
smoother away of all prudery; and, to say sooth, Lucette had very little
of it to be planed down. The fact is, she was innocent in heart and mind
as a young child; and innocence is never prudish,--nor is real delicacy.
"Ne fiez-vous a l'Angelus;
Mais craignez les bois et les orages,"
says an old French song about two lovers somewhat similarly situated;
but Edward and Lucette ran no danger from any thing but the lightning.
It, however, was now really terrific. The clouds, crammed with
electricity, were evidently directly over the abbey, and every instant
the blaze was running across the windows, the various colors of which
gave the flashes the effect of fireworks more brilliant than any that
ever were constructed by the hand of man.
At length a sound, not the roaring roll of thunder, but an explosion, as
it were, as if some mighty cannon had burst, shook the very ground on
which they stood. Then came a moment's pause, and then a peculiar
noise,--it might be thunder, or it might not, but it seemed more like
the sound of stones rolling rapidly and heavily over each other and then
falling from a height to the ground. The next instant a heavy bell began
to toll, but ceased after three or four strokes had been struck,
mingling strangely with a peal of thunder which was then echoing through
the building.
A spirit of confusion now seemed to seize upon the abbey: the door at
the end of the corridor was thrown open; monks were seen hurrying
across, moving a little way up the passage and disappearing by another
door. There were voices calling and screaming too, and Edward thought he
could distinguish groans and shrieks; while ever and anon a little bell
was heard ringing with a small, tinkling sound; and, in strange discord
with all the rest, a solemn strain of music burst upon the ear whenever
the little door on the left was opened.
Edward tried to ascertain from one of the passing monks what was the
matter; but he could get no intelligible answer; and it was with
infinite satisfaction that at length he saw Pierrot appear, coming
toward them in haste.
"The great tower has been struck, sir," said the man, in answer to his
inquiries; "and Heaven knows how much of it has tumbled down over the
other cloisters. One of the monks is killed, they say, and several other
people are crushed under the stones; but, what is worse than all, just
as they were ringing the great bell, they found out that the lightning
when it struck had set the tower on fire, for the rope broke short off,
and the end that came down upon the sacristan's head was burning. There
is no hope of getting it put out; for some are carrying off the
ornaments of the church, some are praying, some are singing, some are
whipping themselves; and the best thing we can do is to get out to the
bank of the canal,--if we can find the way; for, though the hour you
told me is not quite come, we can wait there more safely than here,
where we are likely to have the roofs and buttresses on our heads every
minute."
Edward pressed Lucette a little closer to him and whispered something,
to which she answered, "Anywhere you will.--Trust you? Oh, yes!" And,
getting her large hat from the cell, Edward placed it on her head so as
to conceal as far as possible her wonderfully luxuriant hair: then,
leading her down the passage, opened the door which the soldier had
pointed out to him. Instantly a flash of lightning crossed their eyes;
but it served to show, though it lived but a second, the dull, heavy
features of the Marais, with not one, but half a dozen, streams of
zigzag lightning playing through the sky,--some, as the levin-bolt is
usually represented, darting down to earth like a flaming javelin,
others twisting into all shapes, and even running up, like fiery
serpents disporting themselves in the horrors of the storm. What was of
more importance, however, to Edward and Lucette, that flash displayed,
close before them, one of those long rows of willows and ash-trees which
in that part of the country denote the course of the larger canals, and
also showed a break in the line of wood, where the monks probably went
down to fish from their own boats.
All the noises of the abbey were now heard far more distinctly, the
thunder notwithstanding; and through every window of the great church,
with its tall square tower, might be seen a red, ominous glare. But
onward Edward supported Lucette, with Pierrot feeling his way before
them, till a few steps brought them to the very edge of the water. Two
boats were fastened to the bank by chains; but there was no boatman
apparent, and Edward and his good servant consulted for a moment, with a
running accompaniment of lightning, as to whether it would not be better
to unloose one of the skiffs and seek safety somewhere.
"I can break the chain in a moment with a big stone, Master Ned," said
Pierrot; "but, as we do not know where to go, we had better wait for
some one to show us. Master George Brin, the good corporal, promised
that some one should be here at two; and, depend on it, he will keep his
word. Hark! I hear oars. It is not quite two yet; but you had better put
the young lady under that ash-tree, for it is beginning to rain, thank
God. That will soon put the thunder out; and pray Heaven it quenches the
fire in the church, too! Those monks are good, simple souls and merry."
Not more than two minutes after he had done speaking, a boat came up
quickly to the little landing-place, rowed by an elderly man, as far as
Edward could see by the lightning, who carefully avoided touching the
abbey boats, but, as soon as he backed his oars, looked round over the
bank.
"Ah, there you are!" he said, in a tongue which, though it was not
French at all, was a jargon quite understandable. "Get in! get in,
quick! Here, young man, give me your hand." And, catching Lucette's arm,
he lifted her in rather than aided her to embark. Edward and Pierrot
followed, and without another word the boatman pushed off. It was all
over in less than thirty seconds, and the boat had made some two hundred
yards over the water, the man pushing her along with a pole, before he
relinquished that instrument and sat down as if to resume his oars. The
rain was now beginning to fall thick in heavy drops, and the boatman, as
he pushed his bark along, had been scanning his party of passengers
earnestly. "Here," he said, at length, dragging something large and
shaggy from beneath one of the seats,--"here, you one in the large hat,
put this on, or you will get wet. The sky may come down in drops without
going through that."
"What is it?" asked Lucette, taking what the man offered, but not
comprehending what it was.
"A _peau de bique_, to-be-sure," replied the boatman. "You are the girl
that Georgy Brin told me of, are not you? I must not let you get wet;
for he says you are weakly. 'Tis a bad business, anyhow!" And, with this
sage reflection, he began vigorously to handle his oars.
Edward aided his fair companion to envelop herself in the water-proof
garment then and still common in that part of France; and the boat shot
on rapidly under the branches of the trees, which may be said to have
interlaced above them. For about a quarter of a mile all was darkness,
but at the end of that distance the boatman began to look up toward the
sky wherever a small patch of the heavens could be seen through the
overhanging trees. Edward, too, saw from time to time gleams of red
light upon the water; and it seemed as if the sky itself had caught fire
from the lightning and would soon be in one general blaze. Another
quarter of a mile brought the travellers to a spot where were two reed
cabins and an open space of ground round them; and there the boatman lay
upon his oars. All eyes were now turned toward the abbey, where a sight
at once sad and grand presented itself. The top of the great square
tower, like an immense altar, bore a pyramid of flame up to the skies;
and from every window and loophole issued forth a tongue of fire,
licking the gray walls. The windows even of the church were painted in
red upon the dark stone-work, whenever the cloud of smoke which
surrounded the whole of the lower part of the building like a vast
shroud suffered the masonry to appear.
"Alas for the poor monks!" said the boatman, with an unaffected sigh:
"if they did not do much good, they did not do any harm; and we might
have had worse people amongst us. That abbey has stood wellnigh four
hundred years, they tell me; and it was never touched by lightning until
now,--doubtless because they have given it to a lay abbot, and he turns
all the revenues to the works of man which were devoted to the works of
God. Well, we cannot help the poor souls." And, without further thought
of the burning edifice, he plied his oars again, and the boat cut her
way smoothly through the glassy waters, leaving long, fiery ripples
behind her.
Two miles more of hard rowing brought the party to a small farm, where
two or three of the same huts of mud, bushes, and reeds appeared close
together on the bank; and the rower paused before the largest of the
humble edifices, calling, in a loud voice, to persons who might not be
without ear-shot but who were certainly not within sight, to inform
them that he would not be home till daybreak. "The rain is falling," he
said, as if speaking to himself, "but the whole abbey will be down: that
is clear."
He then rowed on, pursuing for some three hundred yards the larger
canal; but at the end of that distance he turned into a very narrow and
sinuous channel, where he laid down his oars and propelled the boat
solely with the pole. The labor seemed hard, and the progress slow, and
Edward took the occasion to ask quietly whither they were going.
"To La Caponnière, to-be-sure," replied the man. "Did you not know
that?"
"No," replied the youth: "Monsieur Brin merely told me that he would
procure me a boat at two o'clock to carry us to a place of safety."
"Well, here is the boat," answered the man, "and La Caponnière is a
place of safety. There are no better people in the world than old Madame
Brin and her sons and daughters. They are cousins of his, you know, and
by this time they are ready to receive you. She was his cousin before
her marriage, you know, and then she married his first-cousin, who left
Niort in the time of the troubles; and so they are doubly cousins, you
know."
But, as Edward did not know any thing about it, he thought it better not
to show his ignorance, and resumed his English conversation with
Lucette.
The voyage--for we cannot call that a journey which was performed at
night upon the water--was somewhat long and fatiguing to the boatman;
but at length,--it must have been at least four o'clock in the
morning,--after turning and twisting, and sometimes grating against the
banks, the boat reached a spot where suddenly appeared a small,
star-like light from what seemed the window of a better house than any
they had yet passed, which, skipping over various indistinct objects,
rested more fully on a small skiff at the shore. Some one started up as
they approached: their boatman threw him a rope, and they were speedily
drawn up to the bank and moored.
"Come this way," said the lad who had been waiting for them, holding
out a great coarse hand to Lucette. "Here, mother; they are come." And,
leading the poor girl on, followed by Edward, he conducted her through a
little garden in which various kitchen-vegetables were more plentiful
than flowers. Half-way between the house and the canal they were met by
a goodly-sized dame of forty and a girl of some sixteen or seventeen,
who took Lucette frankly in their arms and gave her a warm embrace. "So
this is your young man, poor thing?" said the elder, looking at Edward;
but then, immediately turning to the boatman, she inquired, eagerly,
"What has been the meaning of all that red light out by the abbey?"
"There's no abbey by this time," answered the man. "But come, good dame,
let us in to your kitchen-fire, if you've got one, and I will tell you
all about it. We are all as wet as bull-frogs, except the girl; and I
gave her my _peau de bique_."
Thus saying, he pushed past the rest and entered a large, roomy kitchen,
well stored with every sort of salted and dried provisions, dependent
from great racks suspended from the ceiling.
There a hearty welcome awaited the poor wayfarers: the fire, which had
nearly gone out, was soon blown up into a cheerful blaze; warm soup was
produced; and to Lucette the good dame of the house, though she weighed
at least two hundred pounds, showed the tenderness and gentleness
associated by poets and romance-writers solely with sylphlike forms and
nymphlike graces. Her two good, buxom girls, who to very pretty faces
added in form a promise of future extent worthy of the stock from which
they sprang, joined in, somewhat more shyly, but with real kindness;
and, for the first time since they left Rochelle, Edward and Lucette
experienced that feeling of security which--to plagiarize a
little--"wraps the whole heart up like a blanket."