Eager to know
The worst, and with that fatal certainty
To terminate intolerable dread,
He spurred his courser forward--all his fears
Too surely are fulfilled.--SOUTHEY
Contrary winds made the voyage of the THROSTLE much more tardy than had
been reckoned on by Berenger’s impatience; but hope was before him, and
he often remembered his days in the little vessel as much happier than
he had known them to be at the time.
It was in the calm days of right October that Captain Hobbs at length
was putting into the little harbour nearest to La Sablerie. Berenger, on
that morning, had for the first time been seized by a fit of anxiety as
to the impression his face would make, with its terrible purple scar,
great patch, and bald forehead, and had brought out a little black
velvet mask, called a _tour de nez_, often used in riding to protect the
complexion, intending to prepare Eustacie for his disfigurement. He had
fastened on a carnation-coloured sword-knot, would a scarf of the same
colour across his shoulder, clasped a long ostrich plume into his broad
Spanish hat, and looked out his deeply-fringed Spanish gloves; and
Philip was laughing merrily, not to say rudely, at him, for trying to
deck himself out so bravely.
‘See, Master Hobbs,’ cried the boy in his high spirits, as he followed
his brother on deck, ‘you did not know you had so fine a gallant on
board. Here be braveries for my Lady.’
‘Hush, Phil,’ broke in Berenger, who had hitherto taken all the raillery
in perfect good part. ‘What is amiss, Master Hobbs?’
‘I cannot justly say, sir,’ returned Master Hobbs, without taking his
gaze off the coast, ‘but by yonder banks and creeks this should be the
Sables d’Olonne; and I do not see the steeple of La Sablerie, which has
always been the landmark for the harbour of St. Julien.’
‘What do you understand by that?’ asked Berenger, more struck by his
manner than his words.
‘Well, sir, if I am right, a steeple that has stood three or four
hundred years does not vanish out of sight like a cloud of smoke for
nothing. I may be lightning, to be sure; or the Protestants may have
had it down for Popery; but methinks they would have too much Christian
regard for poor mariners than to knock down the only landmark on this
coast till you come to Nissard spire.’ Then he hailed the man at the
mast-head, demanding if he saw the steeple of La Sablerie. ‘No, no,
sir.’ But as other portions of the land became clearer, there was no
doubt that the THROSTLE was right in her bearings; so the skipper
gave orders to cast anchor and lower a boat. The passengers would have
pressed him with inquiries as to what he thought the absence of his
landmark could portend; but he hurried about, and shouted orders, with
the deaf despotism of a nautical commander; and only when all was made
ready, turned round and said, ‘Now, sir, maybe you had best let me go
ashore first, and find out how the land lies.’
‘Never!’ said Berenger, in an agony of impatience.
‘I thought so,’ said the captain. ‘Well, then, sir, are your fellows
ready? Armed? All right.’
So Berenger descended to the boat, followed by Philip; next came the
captain, and then the two serving-men. Six of the crew were ready to row
them to the shore, and were bidden by their captain to return at once
to the vessel, and only return on a signal from him. the surging rush of
intense anxiety, sure to precede the destined moment of the consummation
of hope long deferred, kept Berenger silent, choked by something between
fear and prayer; but Philip, less engrossed, asked Master Hobbs if it
were not strange that none of the inhabitants of the squalid little huts
on the shore had not put out to greet them in some of the boats that
were drawn up on the beach.
‘Poor wretches,’ said Hobbs; ‘they scarce know friend from foe, and are
slow to run their heads into the lion’s mouth. Strange fellows have the
impudence to sail under our flag at times.’
However, as they neared the low, flat, sandy shore, a few red caps
peeped out at the cottage-doors, and then, apparently gaining confidence
from the survey, some wiry, active figures appeared, and were hailed by
Hobbs. His Bordeaux trade had rendered him master of the coast language;
and a few incomprehensible shouts between him and the natives resulted
in a line being thrown to them, and the boat dragged as near as possible
to the landing-place, when half a dozen ran up, splashing with their
bare legs, to offer their shoulders for the transport of the passengers,
both of whom were seized upon before they were aware, Philip struggling
with all his might, till a call from Captain Hobbs warned him to resign
himself; and then he became almost helpless with laughter at the figure
cut by the long-legged Berenger upon a small fisherman’s back.
They were landed. Could it be that Berenger was only two miles--only
half an hour’s walk form Eustacie? The bound his heart gave as he
touched the shore seemed to stifle him. He could not believe it. Yet he
knew how fully he had believed it, the next moment, when he listened to
what the fishermen were saying to Captain Hobbs.
‘Did Monsieur wish to go to La Sablerie? Ah! then he did not know
what had happened. The soldiers had been there; there had been a great
burning. They had been out in their boats at sea, but they had seen the
sky red--red as a furnace, all night; and the steeple was down. Surely,
Monsieur had missed the steeple that was a guide to all poor seafarers;
and now they had to go all the way to Brancour to sell their fish.’
‘And the townspeople?’ Hobbs asked.
‘Ah! poor things; ‘twas pity of them, for they were honest folk to deal
with, even if they were heretics. They loved fish at other seasons if
not in Lent; and it seemed but a fair return to go up and bury as many
of them as were not burnt to nothing in their church; and Dom Colombeau,
the good priest of Nissard, has said it was a pious work; and he was a
saint, if any one was.’
‘Alack, sir,’ said Hobbs, laying his hand on the arm of Berenger, who
seemed neither to have breathed nor moved while the man was speaking:
‘I feared that there had been some such bloody work when I missed the
steeple. But take heart yet: your lady is very like to have been out of
the way. We might make for La Rochelle, and there learn!’ Then, again to
the fisherman, ‘None escaped, fellow?’
‘Not one,’ replied the man. ‘They say that one of the great folks was in
a special rage with them for sheltering the lady he should have wedded,
but who had broken convent and turned heretic; and they had victualled
Montgomery’s pirates too.’
‘And the lady?’ continued Hobbs, ever trying to get a more supporting
hold of his young charge, in case the rigid tension of his limbs should
suddenly relax.’
‘I cannot tell, sir. I am a poor fisher; but I could guide you to the
place where old Gillot is always poking about. He listened to their
preachings, and knows more than we do.’
‘Let us go,’ said Berenger, at once beginning to stride along in his
heavy boots through the deep sand. Philip, who had hardly understood a
word of the _patois_, caught hold of him, and begged to be told what had
happened; but Master Hobbs drew the boy off, and explained to him and
to the two men what were the dreadful tidings that had wrought such
a change in Berenger’s demeanour. The way over the shifting sands was
toilsome enough to all the rest of the party; but Berenger scarcely
seemed to feel the deep plunge at every step as they almost ploughed
their way along for the weary two miles, before a few green bushes and
half-choked trees showed that they were reaching the confines of the
sandy waste. Berenger had not uttered a word the whole time, and his
silence hushed the others. The ground began to rise, grass was seen
still struggling to grow, and presently a large straggling mass of
black and gray ruins revealed themselves, with the remains of a once
well-trodden road leading to them. But the road led to a gate-way choked
by a fallen jamb and barred door, and the guide led them round the
ruins of the wall to the opening where the breach had been. The sand
was already blowing in, and no doubt veiled much; for the streets were
scarcely traceable through remnants of houses more or less dilapidated,
with shreds of broken or burnt household furniture within them.
‘Ask him for _la rue des Trois Fees_,’ hoarsely whispered Berenger.
The fisherman nodded, but soon seemed at fault; and an old man, followed
by a few children, soon appearing, laden with piece of fuel, he appealed
to him as Father Gillot, and asked whether he could find the street. The
old man seemed at home in the ruins, and led the way readily. ‘Did he
know the Widow Laurent’s house?’
‘Mademoiselle [footnote: This was the title of _bourgeoise_ wives, for
many years, in France.] Laurent! Full well he knew her; a good pious
soul was she, always ready to die for the truth,’ he added, as he read
sympathy in the faces round; ‘and no doubt she had witnessed a good
confession.’
‘Knew he aught of the lady she had lodged?’
‘He knew nothing of ladies. Something he had heard of the good widow
having sheltered that shining light, Isaac Gardon, quenched, no doubt,
in the same destruction; but for his part, he had a daughter in one of
the isles out there, who always sent for him if she suspected danger
here on the mainland, and he had only returned to his poor farm a day
or two after Michael-mas.’ So saying, he led them to the threshold of a
ruinous building, in the very centre, as it were, of the desolation, and
said, ‘That, gentlemen, is where the poor honest widow kept her little
shop.’
Black, burnt, dreary, lay the hospitable abode. The building had fallen,
but the beams of the upper floor had fallen aslant, so as to shelter a
portion of the lower room, where the red-tile pavement, the hearth with
the gray ashes of the harmless home-fire, some unbroken crocks, a chain,
and a _sabot_, were still visible, making the contrast of dreariness
doubly mournful.
Berenger had stepped over the threshold, with his hat in his hand, as if
the ruin were a sacred place to him, and stood gazing in a transfixed,
deadened way. The captain asked where the remains were.
‘Our people,’ said the old man and the fisher, ‘laid them by night in
the earth near the church.’
Just then Berenger’s gaze fell on something half hidden under the fallen
timbers. He instantly sprang forward, and used all his strength to drag
it out in so headlong a manner that all the rest hurried to prevent his
reckless proceedings from bringing the heavy beams down on his head.
When brought to light, the object proved to be one of the dark, heavy,
wooden cradles used by the French peasantry, shining with age, but
untouched by fire.
‘Look in,’ Berenger signed to Philip, his own eyes averted, his mouth
set.
The cradle was empty, totally empty, save for a woolen covering, a
little mattress, and a string of small yellow shells threaded.
Berenger held out his hand, grasped the baby-play thing convulsively,
then dropped upon his knees, clasping his hands over his ashy face, the
string of shells still wound among his fingers. Perhaps he had hitherto
hardly realized the existence of his child, and was solely wrapped up in
the thought of his wife; but the wooden cradle, the homely toy, stirred
up fresh depths of feelings; he saw Eustacie wither tender sweetness as
a mother, he beheld the little likeness of her in the cradle; and oh!
that this should have been the end! Unable to repress a moan of anguish
from a bursting heart, he laid his face against the senseless wood, and
kissed it again and again, then lay motionless against it save for the
long-drawn gasps and sobs that shook his frame. Philip, torn to the
heart, would have almost forcibly drawn him away; but Master Hobbs,
with tears running down his honest cheeks, withheld the boy. ‘Don’t ye,
Master Thistlewood, ‘twill do him good. Poor young gentleman! I know
how it was when I came home and found our first little lad, that we had
thought so much on, had been take. But then he was safe laid in his
own churchyard, and his mother was there to meet me; while your poor
brother---Ah! God comfort him!’
‘_Le pauvre Monsieur_!’ exclaimed the old peasant, struck at the sight
of his grief, ‘was it then his child? And he, no doubt, lying wounded
elsewhere while God’s hand was heavy on this place. Yet he might hear
more. They said the priest came down and carried off the little ones to
be bred up in convents.’
‘Who?--where?’ asked Berenger, raising his head as if catching at a
straw in this drowning of all his hopes.
‘’Tis true,’ added the fisherman. ‘It was the holy priest of Nissard,
for he send down to St. Julien for a woman to nurse the babes.’
‘To Nissard, then,’ said Berenger, rising.
‘It is but a chance,’ said the old Huguenot; ‘many of the innocents were
with their mothers in yonder church. Better for them to perish like the
babes of Bethlehem than to be bred up in the house of Baal; but perhaps
Monsieur is English, and if so he might yet obtain the child. Yet he
must not hope too much.’
‘No, for there was many a little corpse among those we buried,’ said the
fisher. ‘Will the gentleman see the place?’
‘Oh, no!’ exclaimed Philip, understanding the actions, and indeed many
of the words; ‘this place will kill him.’
‘To the grave,’ said Berenger, as if he heard nothing.
‘See,’ added Philip, ‘there are better things than graves,’ and he
pointed to a young green sucker of a vine, which, stimulated by the
burnt soil, had shot up between the tiles of the floor. ‘Look, there is
hope to meet you even here.’
Berenger merely answered by gathering a leaf from the vine and putting
it into his bosom; and Philip, whom only extreme need could have thus
inspired, perceived that he accepted it as the augury of hope.
Berenger turned to bid the two men bear the cradle with them, and then
followed the old man out into the PLACE, once a pleasant open paved
square, now grass-grown and forlorn. On one side lay the remains of the
church. The Huguenots had been so predominant at La Sablerie as to
have engrossed the building, and it had therefore shared the general
destruction, and lay in utter, desolate ruin, a mere shell, and the once
noble spire, the mariner’s guiding star, blown up with gun-cruel that
ever desolated the country. Beyond lay the burial-ground, in unspeakable
dreariness. The crossed of the Catholic dead had been levelled by the
fanaticism of the Huguenots, and though a great dominant stone cross
raised on steps had been re-erected, it stood uneven, tottering and
desolate among nettles, weeds, and briers. There seemed to have been a
few deep trenches dug to receive the bodies of the many victims of the
siege, and only rudely and slightly filled in with loose earth, on which
Philippe treading had nearly sunk in, so much to his horror that he
could hardly endure the long contemplation in which his brother stood
gazing on the dismal scene, as if to bear it away with him. Did the fair
being he had left in a king’s palace sleep her last sleep her last sleep
amid the tangled grass, the thistles and briers that grew so close
that it was hardly possible to keep from stumbling over them, where all
memorials of friend or foe were alike obliterated? Was a resting-place
among these nameless graves the best he could hope for the wife whose
eyes he had hoped by this time would be answering his own--was this her
shelter from foe, from sword, famine, and fire?
A great sea-bird, swooping along with broad wings and wild wailing cry,
completed the weird dismay that had seized on Philip, and clutching at
his brother’s cloak, he exclaimed, ‘Berry, Berry, let us be gone, or we
shall both be distraught!’
Berenger yielded passively, but when the ruins of the town had been
again crossed, and the sad little party, after amply rewarding the old
man, were about to return to St. Julien, he stood still, saying, ‘Which
is the way to Nissard?’ and, as the men pointed to the south, he added,
‘Show me the way thither.’
Captain Hobbs now interfered. He knew the position of Nissard, among
dangerous sandbanks, between which a boat could only venture at the
higher tides, and by daylight. To go the six miles thither at present
would make it almost impossible to return to the THROSTLE that night,
and it was absolutely necessary that he at least should do this. He
therefore wished the young gentleman to return with him on board, sleep
there, and be put ashore at Nissard as soon as it should be possible in
the morning. But Berenger shook his head. He could not rest for a moment
till he had ascertained the fate of Eustacie’s child. Action alone could
quench the horror of what he had recognized as her own lot, and the
very pursuit of this one thread of hope seemed needful to him to make
it substantial. He would hear of nothing but walking at once to Nissard;
and Captain Hobbs, finding it impossible to debate the point with one so
dazed and crushed with grief, and learning from the fishermen that not
only was the priest one of the kindest and most hospitable men living,
but that there was a tolerable _caberet_ not far from the house,
selected from the loiterers who had accompanied them from St. Julien
a trustworthy-looking, active lad as a guide, and agreed with the high
tide on the morrow, either to concert measures for obtaining possession
of the lost infant, or, if all were in vain, to fetch them off. Then
he, with the mass of stragglers from St. Julien, went off direct for
the coast, while the two young brothers, their two attendants, and the
fishermen, turned southwards along the summit of the dreary sandbanks.