BABETTE
To every man they come, sooner or later, these second days of birth in
which at last he knows himself to be truly alive and with a purpose in
the world. In some the ushering into a life of the knowledge of good
and evil comes by way of a woman's kiss, in others the pangs are as
keen as those that forerun the first gasped filling of the babe's
lungs; but whether by way of sweetness or by way of pain, by the glory
of love or by the enfibering dignity of grief, by gain or by loss it
comes to all. Nor is it a slow process. In an hour that which was not
is, and so, being at last a man, the touch of Martin's hand, the
trembling of its grip where no grip should have been, was a sinister
alert to watchfulness, and I would not go back.
Putting his arm aside I drew level with him, and through the general
chaos searched out a something to justify his presumption, a something
that overshadowed with its terror the common exalted level of disaster.
But I missed it; search as I might, I missed it, not knowing what to
look for, and turned at last to Martin, who stood watching me. There
was a new look on his face that puzzled me, so softened was it. What
could there be left in Solignac that made for gentleness?
"Well?"
"It was a good end, Monsieur Gaspard, the finest end in the world; I
could ask no better myself."
Out of the blackening ruins of my home a puff of foul vapour blew
smarting into my face.
"A good end? That! Are you mad?"
"Hers," he answered, "Babette's; she died for Solignac."
"Babette? Dead? Where--?"
I broke off, following the direction of his eyes, but without
comprehension. I had forgotten Babette, and remembered her now with a
rush of shame. From a triangular patch of gloom where a transverse
fallen beam, propped against the wall, buttressed up a mass of
wreckage, a sleeve of homespun woollen stuff was thrust. Motes of wood
ash and dust of rubble were strewn so thickly over it that I had passed
it by as only another wisp of Solignac's torn hangings. Even now it
was not until Martin shook these off and Babette's dead hand hung
limply down that I understood.
"Poor Babette!" I whispered, "Poor faithful Babette!"
I spoke to myself rather than to Martin, and yet he heard me above the
crackle of the pyre settling inch by inch.
"Why would she not be faithful?" he said as roughly as if he grudged
her the remorse of my regret; "you make too much of it, Monsieur
Gaspard. This is but a little thing to have done, and for what else
was she born? We must lift her out somehow; though, but for one thing,
I would say leave her where she is."
"Leave her here? Leave Babette in this hell of a place?"
"Where better, with Solignac for a tomb, and the dust of the house she
loved to cover her? But we must have her out."
Going down on his knees, he crawled across her into the hollow where
the body lay, while I stooped by her, her hand fast in mine as if she
were alive and I comforting her. From within came the sound of ripped
cloth, and Martin returned, coughing and choking with the dusty smoke.
"A joist pinned her," he explained. "Stand aside now, Monsieur
Gaspard, and I'll carry her out."
God be thanked for fresh air! The three greatest blessings in the
world are fresh air, pure water, and a clean life. Not even the ruin
behind us nor the dead at my feet could make stale the sweetness of the
breath that filled my lungs. A dozen steps from the door, Martin had
laid her on the grass, and for a moment we stood one on either side of
her, motionless. Then Martin went down on one knee and deliberately
began fumbling at the loose ends of the bow that knotted-in the kirtle
at the throat. Everywhere in the dress there were marks of Solignac's
disaster, powdered ash, jagged dents with frayed edges, blotches of
charcoal, smouldered holes even, but the stern hard face with the set
teeth and wide-open angry eyes was unbruised. It was only when he had
the two upper couple of tags unfastened that I guessed at his purpose
and it revolted me.
"Leave her alone!" I cried, leaning across her to push him back. "What
does it matter how she died?"
"It matters much," he answered. "D'you think it was for pure love and
pity that I grovelled in the heat yonder? Wait and see."
To his unaccustomed fingers--Martin knew as little of women or women's
gear as I did, and that was nothing--the knots were hard to unravel;
but at length he had enough undone to satisfy him, and he looked up.
"That," and he laid his hand upon a brown stain that stretched above
the ribs to the left, "is why I do it. You must see all Jan Meert's
work, Monsieur Gaspard, or how can you hope to pay all?" Loosening the
kirtle slightly, but no more than showed the withered muscles and cordy
sinews of the neck, he pushed his hand slowly, reverently beneath it.
"Aye! I thought so!" and again he looked up at me, sucking in his
breath with a gasp as we all do when we are hurt. "Not even her grey
head could save her. See here, Monsieur Gaspard!"
Drawing the edge of the stuff aside an inch or two he showed what I
have seen many times since, but never before, the smooth straight lips
of a sword wound. In the dry heat the skin had shrunk aside, and the
red flesh looked broadly out of the cut.
"Murdered! Babette murdered?"
"Jan Meert's way," answered Martin, and drew back the kirtle. "It was
like this," he went on slowly. His hand still rested on the brown
stain, and his face, like my own, was bent over that of the dead woman
between us. "Even in the copse she heard the noise of the devil's work
going on, and it drew her home, for love of Solignac it drew her home.
She came back, that was her duty, being alone." He stopped, and his
hand slipped up to the face. He had never loved Babette; chiefly, I
think, because of her love for me: but now, with a strange tenderness
he smoothed the wrinkles of her withered face, and I knew it was his
repentant amends for many a hard word and harder thought. She had
loved Solignac, she had died for love of Solignac, and if there had
been strife between them it was forgiven for the sake of that love and
death. "I could not," he went on, half to himself and half, it seemed,
in humble, apologetic explanation to her. "I was not alone, and so I
could not come back. Monsieur Gaspard came first. Thou understandest,
dost thou not, thou quiet one, that Monsieur Gaspard is always first?
She came back," he resumed, looking again up at me and speaking
briskly, "came back raging! My faith! don't I know the mood well! She
found Jan Meert and his crew busy and she let loose her tongue.
Solignac has failed in wit now and then, but it never bred cowards even
in its women. Rats fight when cornered, and Babette was no rat. She
fought with what weapon she had, and it cannot hurt her now to say she
was bitter-tongued beyond all reason. Another man would have let her
rail, but not Jan Meert. That was never Jan Meert's way; he answered
her back, and there's his answer!"
"It was a foolish thing, that coming back," said I, my brain in such a
whirl from the conflict within; rage, grief, resentment, hate, warring
to so confused a tumult that I hardly knew what I said.
"Is love foolish? Is duty foolish?"
"What could one, and that one a woman, what could she do?" I answered
sourly. It was not that I did not love old Babette, it was not that I
did not mourn for her, but realization was as yet far from me.
Martin made no reply, but the reproach in his eyes smote me. Down I
went on my knees, my palms on either side the withered face.
"Old friend, old friend, how can I pay thee? How? How?"
"Look in her face for the answer and then look here," he said harshly,
"Pay Jan Meert. Love takes no payment for love. Pay Jan Meert."
From the hard passionless face of the dead I looked up to the hard
passionate face of the living, and laid my hand on the wound Jan Meert
had made.
"By God! I will!"
As if there was no more to be said Martin rose briskly to his feet.
Babette had done Hellewyl of Solignac a last service and one, in his
opinion, worth dying for.
"That settles it, and hey! for Ghent," he cried gaily, as if there were
no such thing as ruin or sack or death in the world, and stooping,
lifted her once more in his arms.
It was an ugly gruesome sight, and it made me shudder, that leathern,
wrinkled, smiling face of his looking satisfaction at me over that
frowning mask of death, blind-eyed, and still staring defiance. But
Martin was as unconscious of indecorum as he was of offence. Nor was
there even cause for mourning. Why should there be? The woman having
done her duty, had fallen on sleep, and there was no more to be said.
Still briskly he retraced his steps the way we three had come, but it
was only as he paused before the forced door that I divined his purpose.
"Not there!" I cried; "for God's sake not there, Martin; the thought is
horrible."
But he only stumbled on up the step. Martin was losing his youth, and
the burden in his arms weighed heavier than he would own.
"There's neither pick nor spade; would you leave her to the wolves?
Horrible!" and again he paused, panting; "never a Hellewyl of them all,
Seigneurs though they were, had so fine a burial. Look at the smoke,
Monsieur Gaspard, and listen to the wind in the tree-tops."
The pall had lifted, and a steady flow of grey vapour flecked with
sparks was already streaming east towards Courtray. With such a wind
abroad the charred ends still smouldering in the heart of the pyre
would yet set flying such a flag as would tell Jan Meert, even were he
ten leagues away, that his work was well done. Martin was right.
Better that than the wolves. The God who is Himself a consuming fire
might be trusted to see to His own, and that which the cold earth gives
up, flame will surely not hold back.
With all reverence we cleared a space as near the heart of Solignac as
the heat and smoke and danger would permit. There we laid her, piling
in--still with all reverence--the torn silks and tapestries that were
the brightness of our house, the shattered spoils of raids by more than
one generation of Hellewyls, intermixed with rafters and rough timber;
beauty, glory, strength, all that was left of Solignac to round off the
red grave of almost its last servant.
There we left her, and as we ended, there came the sudden roaring as of
a furnace springing into furious heat from a dozen centres. Flame,
fanned to sudden birth, spurted, strengthened, leaped from splintered
joist to shattered armoire, caught beams and flooring, sucked strength
from their three hundred years of dryness, licked up in an instant the
gaudy fripperies that hung like rent flags amidst the wreck, soared up,
soared outwards, and streamed in smoke-tipped spirals flapping down the
wind. Truly Martin was right; never had a Hellewyl of Solignac so
grand a funeral as we gave to old Babette.
"It's hey for Ghent!" said Martin again, as we stood on the grass
watching the sparks fly, but with hearts less heavy than might have
been supposed. The very greatness of a catastrophe can be its own
alleviation. The spirit of a man rises within him to watch the crisis
and face it down. "Hey for Ghent! or maybe, Cologne? And the sooner
we are on the road the better. Which shall it be, Monsieur Gaspard,
burgher or Emperor?"
"Neither," I answered; "the King and Paris."
"Paris?" and he looked his incredulity. It was a new thing for
Monsieur Gaspard to have a will of his own. "Why to Paris?"
"How can we two face Jan Meert and his twenty brutes?" I quoted. "We
need backing, and we'll get it from Louis of France."
"From that old fox? From Louis the treaty-breaker? A cunning,
coldhearted, cruel--for the Lord's sake, Monsieur Gaspard, let us keep
out of his claws. When did Louis of France ever back anything but
Louis?"
"Never, and that is why he'll back us. Listen, and see if I am as much
a fool as you think. The Dauphin marries our Margaret of Flanders.
The Dauphin's father, that cunning old fox, will desire excuses to
meddle in the affairs of Flanders; we give him one, and to gain his own
end, he helps us to gain ours."
"What right has he to meddle with Flanders?"
"The right of every just man to put down lawlessness, the right of The
Most Christian King to right the wrong, the right of Louis of France to
please himself--when he is strong enough! and the right of the third is
greater than the other two."
"But he shuts himself up like a rat in a hole; no man goes near him."
"Monsieur de Commines is the King's good friend, Monsieur de Commines
was my father's good friend, and is my cousin thrice removed. Monsieur
de Commines will open the rat hole and let me in. The one thing that
troubles me is how we are to reach Paris, scarecrows as we are and
penniless."
"Scarecrows," answered Martin, looking ruefully at the stains and
tatters that either from fire, smoke, or the ragged edges of splintered
timber so disguised us that whether we were clad in silk or stuff,
browns or crimsons, no man could have told. That morning, even though
the tryst was only with a peasant girl, I had put on my finest
splendour, and now it was a thing of derision; "scarecrows, but not
quite penniless; wait for me, Monsieur Gaspard."
Chuckling, he half ran, half shuffled off into the wood in the opposite
direction to that in which he had hidden Babette, and in five minutes
was back, breathless, but his face still puckered with satisfaction.
"What came from Hellewyl goes back to Hellewyl, and where better could
it go?" said he, holding out his hands. They were open, hollowed to a
bowl, and in the hollow lay a little heap of coins to which patches of
moist earth still clung. They were mostly silver, crowns and
three-crown pieces, with here and there the red glint of a ducat. For
thirty years Martin had served Solignac, heart, head and hand, and now,
as the shadows of age darkened round him, the gains of his service
failed to cover his two palms.
The thought of how we had taken so much and given so little smote me,
and the tears that filled my eyes were in part shame.
"What are these, old friend?" and I put my hands behind my back.
"Bread and meat for the road to Paris."
"A Hellewyl of Solignac travels at his own charges."
"'Tis the right of the King--" he began.
"But I am no King," I cut in, "nothing but a homeless, ruined man."
"My King," he answered. "Take them, Monsieur Gaspard; would you shame
an old friend? Your pardon, but the word is your own. Take them, of
what use are they to me? If I had died last night, they'd have lain in
the earth till some lout ploughed them up a hundred years hence."
But we compromised. They were my debt, but he should keep them, paying
our way as we rode to Paris as friend and friend.
Thus it was that I turned my back for the first time on Solignac,
travelling at the charges of my own servant and with no more gear in
the world than the ragged, smoke-stained suit upon my back. Brigitta?
To be frank, I had forgotten Brigitta, and Martin was too cunning a
diplomatist to remind me of her.