I am all wonder, O my son, my soul
Is stunned within me; powers to speak to him
Or to interrogate him have I none,
Or even to look on him.
--Cowper’s ODYSSEY
In his waking senses Philip adhered to his story that his little sister
Dolly had stood at the foot of his bed, called him ‘_le pauvre_’ and
had afterwards disappeared, led away by the nursing lady. It seemed to
Berenger a mere delusion of feverish weakness; for Philip had lost a
great deal of blood, and the wound, though not dangerous, permitted no
attempt at moving, and gave much pain. Of the perfections of the lady as
nurse and surgeon Philip could not say enough, and, pale and overwept as
he allowed her to be, he declared that he was sure that her beauty must
equal Mme. De Selinville’s. Berenger laughed, and looking round this
strange hospital, now lighted by the full rays of the morning sun, he
was much struck by the scene.
It was the chancel of the old abbey church. The door by which they
had entered was very small, and perhaps had led merely to the abbot’s
throne, as an irregularity for his own convenience, and only made
manifest by the rending away of the rich wooden stall work, some
fragments of which still clung to the walls. The east end, like that of
many French churches, formed a semicircle, the high altar having been in
the centre, and five tall deep bays forming lesser chapels embracing it,
their vaults all gathered up into one lofty crown above, and a slender
pillar separating between each chapel, each of which further contained
a tall narrow window. Of course, all had been utterly desolated, and
Philip was actually lying in one of these chapels, where the sculptured
figure of St. John and his Eagle still remained on the wall; and a
sufficient remnant of his glowing sanguine robe of love was still in
the window to serve as a shield from the _bise_. The high altar of
rich marbles was a mere heap of shattered rubbish; but what surprised
Berenger more than all the ruined architectural beauty which his
_cinque-cento_ trained taste could not understand, was, that the tiles
of the pavement were perfectly clean, and diligently swept, the rubbish
piled up in corners; and here and there the relics of a cross or carved
figure lay together, as by a tender, reverential hand. Even the morsels
of painted glass had been placed side by side on the floor, so as to
form a mosaic of dark red, blue, and green; and a child’s toy lay beside
this piece of patchwork. In the midst of his observations, however,
Captain Falconnet’s servant came to summon him to breakfast; and the old
woman appearing at the same time, he could not help asking whether the
lady were coming.
‘Oh yes, she will come to dress his wound in good time,’ answered the
old woman.
‘And when? I should like to hear what she thinks of it,’ said Berenger.
‘How?’ said the old woman with a certain satisfaction in his
disappointment; ‘is our Lady of Hope to be coming down among you gay
gallants?’
‘But who is this Lady of Hope?’ demanded he.
‘Who should she be but our good pastor’s daughter? Ah! and a brave, good
daughter she was too, abiding the siege because his breath was so bad
that he could not be moved.’
‘What was his name?’ asked Berenger, attracted strangely by what he
heard.
‘Ribault, Monsieur--Pasteur Ribault. Ah! a good man, and sound preacher,
when preach he could; but when he could not, his very presence kept the
monks’ REVENANTS from vexing us--as a cat keeps mice away; and, ah! The
children have been changed creatures since Madame dealt with them. What!
Monsieur would know why they call her our Lady of Hope? Esperance is
her true name; and, moreover, in the former days this abbey had an image
that they called Notre-Dame de l’Esperance, and the poor deceived folk
thought it did great miracles. And so, when she came hither, and wrought
such cures, and brought blessing wherever she went, it became a saying
among us that at length we had our true Lady of Hope.
A more urgent summons here forced Berenger away, and his repetition of
the same question received much the same answer from deaf old Captain
Falconnet. He was obliged to repair to his post with merely a piece of
bread in his hand; abut, though vigilance was needful, the day bade fair
to be far less actively occupied than its predecessor: the enemy were
either disposed to turn the siege into a blockade, or were awaiting
reinforcements and heavier artillery; and there were only a few
desultory attacks in the early part of the morning. About an hour before
noon, however, the besiegers seemed to be drawing out in arms, as if to
receive some person of rank, and at the same time sounds were heard
on the hills to the eastward, as if troops were on the march. Berenger
having just been told by the old sergeant that probably all would be
quiet for some time longer, and been almost laughed at by the veteran
for consulting him whether it would be permissible for him to be absent
a few minutes to visit his brother, was setting out across the bridge
for the purpose, his eyes in the direction of the rampart, which
followed the curve of the river. The paths which--as has been said--the
feet of the washerwomen and drawers of water had worn away in quieter
times, had been smoothed and scarped away on the outer side, so as
to come to an abrupt termination some feet above the gay marigolds,
coltsfoot, and other spring flowers that smiled by the water-side.
Suddenly he beheld on the rampart a tiny gray and white figure,
fearlessly trotting, or rather dancing, along the summit and the
men around him exclaimed, ‘The little moonbeam child!’ ‘A fairy--a
changeling!’--‘They cannot shoot at such a babe!’ ‘Nor could they
harm her!’ ‘Hola! little one! _Gare_! Go back to your mother!’ ‘Do not
disturb yourself, sir; she is safer than you,’ were the ejaculations
almost at the same moment, while he sprang forward, horrified at the
peril of such an infant. He had reached the angle between the bridge and
rampart, when he perceived that neither humanity nor superstition were
protecting the poor child; for, as she turned down the remnant of one of
the treacherous little paths, a man in bright steel and deep black had
spurred his horse to the river’s brink, and was deliberately taking aim
at her. Furious at such brutality, Berenger fired the pistol he held in
his hand, and the wretch dropped from his horse; but at the same moment
his pistol exploded, and the child rolled down the bank, whence a
piteous wail came up, impelling Berenger to leap down to her assistance,
in the full face of the enemy. Perhaps he was protected for the moment
by the confusion ensuing on the fall of the officer; and when he reached
the bottom of the bank, he saw the little creature on her feet, her
round cap and gray woolen dress stripped half off in the fall, and
her flaxen hair falling round her plump, white, exposed shoulder, but
evidently unhurt, and gathering yellow marigolds as composedly as though
she had been making May garlands. He snatched her up, and she said, with
the same infantine dignity, ‘Yes, take me up; the naughty people spoilt
the path. But I must take my beads first.’ And she tried to struggle
out of his arms, pointing therewith to a broken string among the marshy
herb-age on which gleamed--the pearls of Ribaumont!
In the few seconds in which he grasped them, and then bore the child up
the embankment in desperate bounds, a hail of bullets poured round
him, ringing on his breastplate, shearing the plume from his hat, but
scarcely even heard; and in another moment he had sprung down, on the
inner side, grasping the child with all his might, but not daring even
to look at her, in the wondrous flash of that first conviction. She
spoke first. ‘Put me down, and let me have my beads,’ she said in a
grave, clear tone; and then first he beheld a pair of dark blue eyes,
a sweet wild-rose face--Dolly’s all over. He pressed her so fast and
so close, in so speechless and over powering an ecstasy, that again she
repeated, and in alarm, ‘Put me down, I want my mother!’
‘Yes, yes! your mother! your mother! your mother!’ he cried, unable to
let her out of his embrace; and then restraining himself as he saw her
frightened eyes, in absolute fear of her spurning him, or struggling
from him, ‘My sweet! my child! Ah! do you not know me?’ Then,
remembering how wild this was, he struggled to speak calmly: ‘What are
you called, my treasure?’
‘I am _la petite Rayonette_,’ she said, with puzzled dignity and
gravity; ‘and my mother says I have a beautiful long name of my own
besides.’
‘Berangere--my Berangere---’
‘That is what she says over me, as I go to sleep in her bosom at night,’
said the child, in a wondering voice, soon exchanged for entreaty, ‘Oh,
hug me not so hard! Oh, let me go--let me go to her! Mother! mother!’
‘My child, mine own, I am take thee!--Oh, do not struggle with me!’
he cried, himself imploring now. ‘Child, one kiss for thy father;’
and meantime, putting absolute force on his vehement affection, he was
hurrying to the chancel.
There Philip hailed them with a shout as of desperate anxiety relieved;
but before a word could be uttered, down the stairs flew the Lady of
Hope, crying wildly, ‘Not there--she is not--’ but perceiving the little
one in the stranger’s arms, she held out her own, crying, ‘Ah! is she
hurt, my angel?’
‘Unhurt, Eustacie! Our child is unhurt!’ Berenger said, with an agonized
endeavour to be calm; but for the moment her instinct was so entirely
absorbed in examining into the soundness of her child’s limbs, that she
neither saw nor hear anything else.
‘Eustacie,’ he said, laying his hand on her arm, she started back, with
bewildered eyes. ‘Eustacie--wife? do you not know me? Ah! I forgot that
I am changed.’
‘You--you--’ she gasped, utterly confounded, and gazing as if turned to
stone, and though at that moment the vibration of a mighty discharge
of cannon rocked the walls, and strewed Philip’s bed with the crimson
shivers of St. John’s robe, yet neither of them would have been sensible
of it had not Humfrey rushed in at the same moment, crying, ‘They are
coming on like friends, sir!’
Berenger passed his hand over his face. ‘You will know me WHEN--IF I
return, my dearest,’ he said. ‘If not, then still, thank God! Philip, to
you I trust them!’
And with one kiss on that still, cold, almost petrified brow, he had
dashed away. There was a space of absolutely motionless silence, save
that Eustacie let herself drop on the chancel step, and the child,
presently breaking the spell, pulled her to attract her notice to the
flowers. ‘Mother, here are the _soucis_ for the poor gentleman’s broth.
See, the naughty people had spoilt all the paths, and I rolled down and
tore my frock, and down fell the beads, but be not angry, mother dear,
for the good gentleman picked them up, and carried me up the bank.’
‘The bank!’ cried Eustacie, with a scream, as the sense of the words
reached her ears. ‘Ah! no wonder! Well might thy danger bring thy
father’s spirit;’ and she grasped the little one fervently in her arms,
murmuring, ‘Thank, thank God, indeed! Oh! my precious one; and did He
send that blessed spirit to rescue thee?’
‘And will you tie up my frock? and may I put the flowers into the
broth?’ chattered Rayonette. ‘And why did he kiss me and hug me so
tight? and how did he know what you say over me as we fall asleep?’
Eustacie clasped her tighter, with a convulsive, shudder of
thankfulness; and Philip, but half hearing, and barely gathering the
meaning of her mood, ventured to speak, ‘Madame---’
As if touched by an electric shock, Eustacie started up, as recalled to
instant needs, and coming towards him said, ‘Do you want anything, sir?
Pardon one who has but newly seen a spirit from the other world--brought
by his child’s danger.’ And the dazed, trance-like look was returning.
‘Spirit!’ cried Philip. ‘Nay, Madame, it was himself. Ah! and you are
she whom we have sought so long; and this dear child--no wonder she has
Dolly’s face.’
‘Who--what?’ said Eustacie, pressing her temples with her hands, as if
to retain her senses. ‘Speak; was yonder a living or dead man--and who?’
‘Living, thank God! and your own husband; that is, if you are really
Eustacie. Are you indeed?’ he added, becoming doubtful.
‘Eustacie, that am I,’ she murmured. ‘But he is dead--they killed him; I
swathe blood where he had waited for me. His child’s danger brought him
from the grave.’
‘No, no. Look at me, sister Eustacie. Listen to me. Osbert brought him
home more dead than alive--but alive still.’
‘No!’ she cried, half passionately. ‘Never could he have lived and left
me to mourn him so bitterly.’
‘If you knew--’ cried Philip, growing indignant. ‘For weeks he lay in
deadly lethargy, and when, with his left hand, he wrote and sent Osbert
to you, your kinsfolk threw the poor fellow into a dungeon, and put us
off with lies that you were married to your cousin. All believed, only
he--sick, helpless, speechless, as he was--he trusted you still; and
so soon as Mericour came, though he could scarcely brook the saddle,
nothing would hold him from seeking you. We saw only ruin at La
Sablerie, and well-nigh ever since have we been clapped up in prison by
your uncle. We were on the way to Quinet to seek you. He has kept his
faith whole through wounds and pain and prison and threats,--ay, and
sore temptation,’ cried Philip, waxing eloquent; ‘and, oh, it cannot be
that you do not care for him!’
‘Doubt not my faith, sir,’ said Eustacie, proudly; ‘I have been as true
to him as if I had known he lived. Nor do I know who you are to question
me.’
At this moment the child pressed forward, holding between her tow
careful plump hands a red earthenware bowl, with the tisane steaming in
it, and the yellow petals strewn over the surface. She and Philip had
taken a great fancy to each other, and while her mother was busy
with the other patients, she had been left to her quiet play with her
fragments of glass, which she carried one by one to display, held up
to the light, to her new friends; who, in his weak state, and after
his long captivity, found her the more charming playmate because she so
strangely reminded him of his own little sisters. She thought herself
his little nurse, and missing from his broth the yellow petals that she
had been wont to think the charm of tisane, the housewifely little being
had trotted off, unseen and unmissed, across the quadrangle, over
the embankment, where she had often gathered them, or attended on the
‘_lessive_’ on the river’s brink; and now she broke forth exultingly,
‘Here, here is the tisane, with all the _soucis_. Let me feed you with
them, sir.’
‘Ah! thou sweet one,’ gasped Philip, ‘I could as soon eat them as David
could drink the water! For these--for these---!’ and the tears rushed
into his eyes. ‘Oh! let me but kiss her, Madame; I loved her from the
first moment. She has the very face of my little sweeting, (what French
word is good enough for her?) didst run into peril for me, not knowing
how near I was to thee? What, must I eat it? Love me then.’
But the boarded door was thrown back, and ‘Madame, more wounded,’
resounded. The thrill of terror, the elastic reaction, at the ensuing
words, ‘from the north gate,’ was what made Eustacie in an instant know
herself to be not widow but wife. She turned round at once, holding out
her hand, and saying with a shaken, agitated voice, ‘_Mon frere_,
pardon me, I know not what I say; and, after all, he will find me _bien
mechante_ still.’ Then as Philip devoured her hand with kisses, and held
it fast, ‘I must go; these poor men need me. When I can, I will return.’
‘Only let me have the little one,’ entreated Philip; ‘it is almost home
already to look at her.’
And when Eustacie next looked in on them, they were both fast asleep.
She, poor thing, the only woman with brains among the many scared
females in the garrison, might not rest or look the wonder in the face.
Fresh sufferers needed her care, and related gallant things of ‘the
Duke’s Englishman,’ things of desperate daring and prowess that sent the
blood throbbing to her heart with exultation, but only to be followed by
a pang of anguish at having let him go back to peril--nay, perhaps, to
death--without a word of tenderness or even recognition. She imaged him
as the sunny-faced youth who had claimed her in the royal castle, and
her longing to be at his side and cling to him as his own became every
moment more fervent and irresistible, until she gladly recollected the
necessity of carrying food to the defenders; and snatching an interval
from her hospital cares, she sped to the old circular kitchen of the
monastery, where she found the lame baker vainly trying to organize a
party of frightened women to carry provisions to the garrison of the
bridge-tower.
‘Give some to me,’ she said. ‘My husband is there! I am come to fetch
his dinner.’
The peasant women looked and whispered as if they thought that, to add
to their misfortunes, their Lady of Hope had become distracted by grief;
and one or two, who held the old faith, and were like the crane among
the sparrows, even observed that it was a judgment for the profane
name that had been given her, against which she had herself uniformly
protested.
‘My husband is come,’ said Eustacie, looking round with shining eyes.
‘Let us be brave wives, and not let our men famish.’
She lifted a loaf and a pitcher of broth, and with the latter poised on
her erect and graceful head, and elastic though steady step, she led the
way; the others following her with a sort of awe, as of one they fancied
in a superhuman state. In fact, there was no great danger in traversing
the bridge with its lofty parapet on either side; and her mind was too
much exalted and moved to be sensible of anything but a certain exulting
awe of the battle sounds. There was, however, a kind of lull in the
assault which had raged so fiercely ever since the fall of the officer,
and the arrival of the reinforcements. Either the enemy had paused to
take food, or were devising some fresh mode of attack; and as the
line of women advanced, there started forth from under the arch a
broad-shouldered, white-faced, golden-bearded personage, who cried
joyously, ‘My dearest, my bravest! this for me!’ and lifted the pitcher
from her head as he grasped her hand with a flesh and blood clasp
indeed, but the bright-cheeked, wavy-haired lad of her dream withered
away with a shock of disappointment, and she only looked up with wistful
puzzled earnestness instead of uttering the dear name that she had so
long been whispering to herself. ‘Dearest,’ he said, ‘this is precious
indeed to me, that you should let me feast my eyes once more on you. But
you may not tarry; the rogues may renew the attack at any moment.’
She had thought of herself as insisting on standing beside him and
sharing his peril. Had he been himself she must have don so, but this
was a stranger, whose claiming her made her shrink apart till she could
feel the identity which, though she believed, she could not realize.
Her hand lay cold and tremulous within his warm pressure, but he was too
much wrought up and too full of joy and haste to be sensible of anything
but of the brave affection that had dared all to come to him; and he
was perfectly happy, even as a trumpet-call among the foe warned him to
press her fingers to his lips and say, as his bright blue eye kindled,
‘God grant that we may meet and thank Him tonight! Farewell, my lost and
found! I fight as one who has something to fight for.’
He might not leave his post, but he watched her with eyes that could not
be satiated, as she recrossed the bridge; and, verily, his superabundant
ecstasy, and the energy that was born of it, were all needed to sustain
the spirits of his garrison through that terrible afternoon. The enemy
seemed to be determined to carry the place before it could be relieved,
and renewed the storm again and again with increasing violence; while
the defenders, disheartened by their pertinacity, dismayed at the
effects of the heavy artillery, now brought to bear on the tower, and
direfully afraid of having the bridge destroyed, would have abandoned
their barbican and shut themselves up within the body of the place, had
not Berenger been here, there, and everywhere, directing, commanding,
exhorting, cheering, encouraging, exciting enthusiasm by word and
example, winning proud admiration by feats of valour and dexterity
sprung of the ecstatic inspiration of new-found bliss, and watching,
as the conscious defender of his own most beloved, without a moment’s
respite, till twilight stillness sank on the enemy, and old Falconnet
came to relieve him, thanking him for his gallant defence, and auguring
that, by noonday tomorrow at latest, M. le Duc would succour them,
unless he were hampered by any folly of this young Navarre.
Too blissful for the sense of fatigue, Berenger began to impart to the
Commandant his delight, but the only answer he got was ‘Hope, yes, every
hope;’ and he again recognized what he had already perceived, that the
indistinctness of his utterance made him entirely unintelligible to
the deaf Commandant, and that shouting did but proclaim to the whole
garrison, perhaps even to the enemy’s camp, what was still too new a
joy not to be a secret treasure of delight. So he only wrung the old
Captain’s hand, and strode away as soon as he was released.
It was nearly dark, in spite of a rising moon, but beneath the cloister
arch was torchlight, glancing on a steel head-piece, and on a white cap,
both bending down over a prostrate figure; and he heard the voice he
loved so well say, ‘It is over! I can do no more. It were best to dig
his grave at once here in silence--it will discourage the people less.
Renaud and Armand, here!’
He paused for a few minutes unseen in the shadow while she closed the
eyes and composed the limbs of the dead soldier; then, kneeling, said
the Lord’s Prayer in French over him. Was this the being he had left as
the petted plaything of the palace? When she rose, she came to the arch
and gazed wistfully across the moonlit quadrangle, beyond the dark
shade cast by the buildings, saying to the soldier, ‘You are sure he was
safe?’
‘My Eustacie,’ said Berenger, coming forward, ‘we meet in grave times!’
The relief of knowing him safe after the sickening yearnings and
suspense of the day, and moreover the old ring of tenderness in his
tone, made her spring to him with real warmth of gladness, and cry, ‘It
is you! All is well.
‘Blessedly well, _ma mie_, my sweetheart,’ he said, throwing his arm
round her, and she rested against him murmuring, ‘Now I feel it! Thou
are thyself!’ They were in the dark cloister passage, and when he would
have moved forward she clung closer to him, and murmured, ‘Oh, wait,
wait, yet an instant--thus I can feel that I have thee--the same--my
own!’
‘My poor darling,’ said Berenger, after a second, ‘you must learn to
bear with both my looks and speech, though I be but a sorry shattered
fellow for you.’
‘No, no,’ she cried, hanging on him with double fervour. ‘No, I am
loving you the more already,--doubly--trebly--a thousand times. Only
those moments were so precious, they made all these long years as
nothing. But come to the little one, and to your brother.’
The little one had already heard them, and was starting forward to meet
them, though daunted for a moment by the sight of the strange father:
she stood on the pavement, in the full flood of the moonlight from the
east window, which whitened her fair face, flaxen hair, and gray dress,
so that she did truly look like some spirit woven of the moonbeams.
Eustacie gave a cry of satisfaction: ‘Ah! good, good; it was by
moonlight that I saw her first!’
Berenger took her in his arm, and held her to his breast with a sense of
insatiable love, while Philip exclaimed, ‘Ay, well may you make much of
her, brother. Well might you seek them far and wide. Such treasures are
not to be found in the wide world.’
Berenger without answering, carried the little one to the step of the
ruined high altar, and there knelt, holding Eustacie by the hand, the
child in one arm, and, with the moon glancing on his high white brow
and earnest face, he spoke a few words of solemn thanks and prayer for
a blessing on their reunion, and the babe so wonderfully preserved to
them.
Not till then did he carry her into the lamplight by Philip’s bed, and
scan therein every feature, to satisfy his eyes with the fulfilled hope
that had borne him through those darkest days, when, despairing of the
mother, the thought of the child had still sustained him to throw
his will into the balance of the scale between life and death. Little
Berangere gazed up into his face silently, with wondering, grave,
and somewhat sleepy eyes, and then he saw them fix themselves on his
powder-grimed and blood-stained hands. ‘Ah! little heart,’ he said,
‘I am truly in no state to handle so pure a piece of sugar as thou; I
should have rid myself of the battle-stains ere touching thee, but how
recollect anything at such a moment?’
Eustacie was glad he had broken the spell of silence; for having
recovered her husband, her first instinct was to wait upon him. She took
the child from him, explaining that she was going to put her to bed in
her own rooms up the stone stair, which for the present were filled with
fugitive women and children who had come in from the country, so that
the chancel must continue the lodging of Berenger and his brother;
and for the time of her absence she brought him water to wash away the
stains, and set before him the soup she had kept warm over her little
charcoal brazier. It was only when thus left that he could own, in
answer to Philip’s inquiries, that he could feel either hunger or
weariness; nay, he would only acknowledge enough of the latter to give
a perfect charm to rest under such auspices. Eustacie had dispatched her
motherly cares promptly enough to be with him again just as in taking
off his corselet he had found that it had been pierced by a bullet,
and pursuing the trace, through his doublet, he found it lodged in that
purse which he had so long worn next his heart, where it had spent its
force against the single pearl of Ribaumont. And holding it up to the
light, he saw that it was of silver. Then there returned on him and
Philip the words they had heard two days before, of silver bullets
forged for the destruction of the white moonlight fairy, and he further
remembered the moment’s shock and blow that in the midst of his wild
amaze on the river’s bank had made him gather his breath and strength to
bound desperately upwards, lest the next moment he should find himself
wounded and powerless.
For the innocent, then, had the shot been intended; and she running
into danger out of her sweet, tender instincts of helpfulness, had been
barely saved at the extreme peril of her unconscious father’s life.
Philip, whose vehement affection for the little one had been growing
all day, was in the act of telling Berenger to string the bullet in the
place of the injured pearl, as the most precious heirloom of Ribaumont
bravery, when Eustacie returned, and learning all, grew pale and
shuddered as danger had never made her do before: but this strange day
had almost made a coward of her.
‘And this is has spared,’ said Berenger, taking out the string of little
yellow shells. ‘Dost know them, sweet heart? They have been my chaplet
all this time.’
‘Ah!’ cried Eustacie, ‘poor, good Mademoiselle Noemi! she threaded them
for my child, when she was very little. Ah! could she have given them to
you--could it then not have been true--that horror?’
‘Alas! it was too true. I found these shells in the empty cradle, in the
burnt house, and deemed them all I should ever have of my babe.’
‘Poor Noemi! poor Noemi! She always longed to be a martyr; but we fled
from her, and the fate we had brought on her. That was the thought that
preyed on my dear father. He grieved so to have left his sheep--and it
was only for my sake. Ah! I have brought evil on all who have been good
to me, beginning with you. You had better cast me off, or I shall bring
yet worse!’
‘Let it be so, if we are only together.’
He drew her to him and she laid her head on his shoulder, murmuring,
‘Ah! father, father, were you but here to see it. So desolate yesterday,
so ineffably blest today. Oh! I cannot even grieve for him now, save
that he could not just have seen us; yet I think he knew it would be
so.’
‘Nay, it may be that he does see us,’ said Berenger. ‘Would that I had
known who it was whom you were laying down “_en paix et seurte bonne_!”
As it was, the psalm brought precious thoughts of Chateau Leurre, and
the little wife who was wont to sing it with me.’
‘Ah!’ said Eustacie, ‘it was when he sang those words as he was about
to sleep in the ruin of the Temple that first I--cowering there in
terror--knew him for no Templar’s ghost, but for a friend. That story
ended my worst desolation. That night he became my father; the next my
child came to me!’
‘My precious treasure! Ah! what you must have undergone, and I all
unknowing, capable of nothing wiser than going out of my senses, and
raging in a fever because I could convince no one that those were all
lies about your being aught but my true and loving wife. But tell me,
what brought thee hither to be the tutelary patron, where, but for the
siege, I had over-passed thee on the way to Quinet?’
Then Eustacie told him how the Italian pedlar had stolen her letters,
and attempted to poison her child--the pedlar whom he soon identified
with that wizard who had talked to him of ‘Esperance,’ until the cue
had evidently been given by the Chevalier. Soon after the Duke had
dispatched a messenger to say that the Chevalier de Ribaumont was on the
way to demand his niece; and as it was a period of peace, and the law
was decidedly on his side, Madame de Quinet would be unable to offer any
resistance. She therefore had resolved to send Eustacie away--not to
any of the seaports whither the uncle would be likely to trace her, but
absolutely to a place which he would have passed through on his journey
into Guyenne. The monastery of Notre-Dame de l’Esperance at Pont de
Dronne had been placed there, as well as a colony of silk-spinners,
attracted by the mulberry-trees of the old abbey garden. These, however,
having conceived some terror of the ghosts of the murdered monks, had
entreated for a pastor to protect them; and Madame la Duchesse thought
that in this capacity Isaac Gardon, known by one of the many aliases to
which the Calvinist ministers constantly resorted, might avoid suspicion
for the present. She took the persecuted fugitives for some stages in an
opposite direction, in her own coach, then returned to face and baffle
the Chevalier, while her trusty steward, by a long _detour_, conducted
them to Pont de Dronne, which they reached the very night after to
Chevalier had returned through it to Nid de Merle.
The pastor and his daughter were placed under the special protection of
Captain Falconnet, and the steward had taken care that they should be
well lodged in three rooms that had once been the abbot’s apartments.
Their stay had been at first intended to be short, but the long journey
had been so full of suffering to Isaac, and left such serious effects,
that Eustacie could not bear to undertake it again, and Madame de Quinet
soon perceived that she was safer there than at the chateau, since
strangers were seldom admitted to the fortress, and her presence
there attracted no attention. But for Isaac Gardon’s declining health,
Eustacie would have been much happier here than at the chateau; the
homely housewifely life, where all depended on her, suited her; and,
using her lessons in domestic arts of nursing and medicine for the
benefit of her father’s flock, she had found, to her dismay, that
the simple people, in their veneration, had made her into a sort of
successor to the patroness of the convent. Isaac had revived enough for
a time to be able to conduct the worship in the church, and to instruct
some his flock; but the teaching of the young had been more and more
transferred to her, and, as he ingenuously said, had taught her more
than she ever knew before. He gradually became weaker through more
suffering, and was absolutely incapable of removal, when an attack
by the Guisards was threatened. Eustacie might have been sent back to
Quinet; but she would not hear of leaving him; and this first had been
a mere slight attack, as if a mere experiment on the strength of the
place. She had, however, then had to take the lead in controlling the
women, and teaching them to act as nurses, and to carry out provisions;
and she must then have been seen by some one, who reported her presence
there to Narcisse--perhaps by the Italian pedlar. Indeed Humfrey, who
came in for a moment to receive his master’s orders, report his watch,
and greet his lady, narrated, on the authority of the lately enlisted
men-at-arms, that M. de Nid de Merle had promised twenty crowns to any
one who might shoot down the heretics’ little white _diablesse_.
About six weeks had elapsed since the first attack on Pont de Dronne,
and in that time Gardon had sunk rapidly. He died as he lived, a gentle,
patient man, not a characteristic Calvinist, though his lot had been
thrown with that party in his perplexed life of truth-seeking and
disappointment in the aspirations and hopes of early youth. He had been,
however, full of peace and trust that he should open his eyes where the
light was clear, and no cloud on either side would mar his perception;
and his thankfulness had been great for the blessing that his almost
heaven-sent daughter had been to him in his loneliness, bereavement,
and decay. Much as he loved her, he did not show himself grieved or
distressed on her account; but, as he told her, he took the summons to
leave her as a sign that his task was done, and the term of her trials
ended. ‘I trust as fully,’ he said, ‘that thou wilt soon be in safe and
loving hands, as though I could commit thee to them.’
And so he died in her arms, leaving her a far fuller measure of blessing
and of love than ever she had derived from her own father; and as the
enemy’s trumpets were already sounding on the hills, she had feared
insult to his remains, and had procured his almost immediate burial in
the cloister, bidding the assistants sing, as his farewell, that evening
psalm which had first brought soothing to her hunted spirit.
There, while unable, after hours of weeping, to tear herself from the
grave of her father and protector, had she in her utter desolation been
startled by the summons, not only to attend to the wounded stranger,
but to lodge him in the chancel. ‘Only this was wanting,’ was the first
thought in her desolation, for this had been her own most cherished
resort. Either the _bise_, or fear of a haunted spot, or both, had
led to the nailing up of boards over the dividing screen, so that the
chancel was entirely concealed from the church; and no one ever thought
of setting foot there till Eustacie, whose Catholic reverence was
indestructible, even when she was only half sure that it was not worse
than a foible, had stolen down thither, grieved at its utter desolation,
and with fond and careful hands had cleansed it, and amended the ruin
so far as she might. She had no other place where she was sure of being
uninterrupted; and here had been her oratory, where she daily prayed,
and often came to hide her tears and rally her spirits through that long
attendance on her fatherly friend. It had been a stolen pleasure. Her
reverent work there, if once observed, would have been treated as rank
idolatry; and it was with consternation as well as grief that she found,
by the Captain’s command, that this her sanctuary and refuge was to be
invaded by strange soldiers! Little did she think---!
And thus they sat, telling each other all, on the step of the ruined
chancel, among the lights and shadows of the apse. How unlike to stately
Louvre’s halls of statuary and cabinets of porcelain, or the Arcadian
groves of Montpipeau! And yet how little they recked that they were in
a beleaguered fortress, in the midst of ruins, wounded sufferers all
around, themselves in hourly jeopardy. It was enough that they had one
another. They were so supremely happy that their minds unconsciously
gathered up those pale lights and dark fantastic shades as adjuncts of
their bliss.