The Scourge of God 29 – Bloundelle-Burton · Verses Across
Literature · Historical Fiction
The Scourge of God 29Chapter 29
18
Literature · Historical Fiction
The Scourge of God 29
Chapter 29
Bloundelle-BurtonEnglish
"HER FATHER'S MURDERER."
"I have not yet decided," Baville said that night to Beauplan as they sat together in the new citadel, "when the sentence will be carried out. Have my doubts as to whether I shall not release him."
"Release him!" the other echoed. "Release him! Such a thing is unheard of. He, an Englishman, a consorter with the Camisards, a man under the ban of Versailles! Surely you would not dare----"
"Dare!" exclaimed Baville, though very quietly, "dare! Monsieur Beauplan, you forget yourself. Since I have ruled in Languedoc no man has dared to use that word to me before."
"Yet," said the judge, a member of an ancient family in the south, who had always rebelled against the authority of this stranger to the customs, as well as the noblesse, of Languedoc, "though none here may question your authority, there are those in the capital who can do so."
"There are. But you are not of the number. Monsieur Beauplan, I have nothing more to say. I wish you a good-night."
"I understand," Beauplan replied, "understand very well. And your conduct is natural; also natural that there should be an exchange of prisoners, that your child's release should depend upon his. Yet beware, Monsieur l'Intendant! I was at Versailles two months ago, as you know, and--and--they said----" and he hesitated a moment while a slight smile came into his face.
"What did they say?"
"That not only might a substitute he sent in place of Montrevel, but of----"
"Baville! Is that it?"
"It is that."
"The substitute to be, perhaps, Amédée Beauplan."
"Nay, that is impossible, as you are aware. In Languedoc none can rule as Intendant who are of the province. Yet I warn you, if you set free this man even in the desire to obtain the freedom of Urbaine Ducaire, neither Chamillart nor Madame de Maintenon will forgive."
"You mean well, doubtless," Baville replied, "yet I shall act as I see best. Beauplan, you have children of your own, also a high post. If the life of one of your girls were balanced against that post, which should you prefer to protect?"
To this the judge made no answer, leaving the Intendant alone a moment afterward. Yet, as he sought his own great sumptuous coach, he acknowledged that, much as he detested Baville, what he was undoubtedly about to do was natural.
Left alone, the other took from his pocket a paper and glanced at it as, before the judge had appeared in his room, he had glanced at it a dozen times--a paper on which were written only a few words. They ran:
"Urbaine Ducaire will be restored unharmed to none other than the Englishman sentenced to death to-day. If he dies she dies too. Nothing can save her, even though she is a Huguenot. Decide, therefore, and decide quickly." And it was signed "Jean Cavalier."
"So," he mused, "he was in the Court to-day, or sent this message by one of his followers, knowing well what the sentence would be. Yet the decision was made ere this paper was smuggled in here, God knows how! It needed not this to determine me."
He struck upon the bell by his side as he thus reflected, and, on the servant appearing in answer to it, he asked:
"How came this paper here which I found upon my table?" and he touched with his finger the letter from Cavalier.
"It was left, monsieur, by a woman."
"A woman! Of what description?"
"Old, monsieur, gray and worn. She said, monsieur, that it was of the first importance. A matter of life and death."
Again, as the lackey spoke, there came that feeling to the other's heart of icy coldness, the feeling of utter despair which had seized upon him earlier, as he saw her face in Court. For he never doubted that the bearer of the missive was the same woman who appeared as a spectre before him at the trial--the woman who could tell Urbaine all.
"Where have they disposed the man who was tried and sentenced to-day?" he asked next.
"In the same room he has occupied since he was brought here, monsieur."
"So! Let him be brought to this room. I have to speak with him."
"Here, monsieur!" the man exclaimed with an air of astonishment which he could not repress.
"Here."
Ten minutes later and Martin was before him, he having been conducted from the wing of the citadel in which he was confined to the adjacent one in which Baville's set of apartments were.
His escort consisted of two warders who were of the milice; nor was there any need that he should have more to guard him, for his hands were manacled with great steel gyves, the lower ends of which were attached by ring bolts to his legs above his knees. Yet, since they could have had no idea that there was any possibility of one so fettered as he escaping from their custody, the careful manner in which these men stood by their prisoner could have been but assumed with a view to finding favour with the ruler of the province.
As Martin confronted the other, their eyes met in one swift glance; then Baville's were quickly lowered. Before that man, the man whom Urbaine loved, the man who had saved her life, who could restore her once more to his arms--if, knowing what she might know, she would ever return to them--the all-powerful Intendant felt himself abased.
"Who," he said, addressing the warders, "has the key of those irons?"
"I, monsieur," one answered.
"Remove them."
"Monsieur!"
"Do as I bid you."
With a glance at his comrade (the fellow said afterward that the Intendant had gone mad) the one thus addressed did as he was ordered. A moment later and Martin and Baville were alone, the warders dismissed with a curt word, and hurrying off to tell their mates and comrades that the rebellion must be over since the trial of the morning could have been but a farce.
Then Baville rose and, standing before Martin, said:
"You see, I keep my promise. You are free."
"Free! To do what? Rejoin Urbaine?"
"Ay, to rejoin Urbaine. For that alone, upon one stipulation."
"What is the stipulation?"
"That--that--she and I meet again!"
"Meet again! Why not?"
Instead of replying to this question Baville asked Martin another.
"Was," he demanded, speaking swiftly, "Cavalier in Court to-day, dressed in a russet suit, disguised in a long black wig?"
"Yes," the other replied, "he was there."
"And the woman with him, old, gray-haired, is she one of the dwellers in the mountains, one of his band?"
"Nay. Her I have never seen."
"She can not then have met, have come into contact with Urbaine?"
"How can I say? It is a week since I left Urbaine there, safe with him in those mountains. Since then many things have happened, among others the horrors of Mercier's mill."
"It was not my doing," Baville answered hotly. "Not mine; Montrevel is alone answerable for that. I was away at the beginning, on my road back from Valence. None can visit that upon my head. Yet--yet--rather should fifty such horrors happen, rather that I myself should perish in such a catastrophe, than that this woman and Urbaine should ever meet."
As he spoke there came to Martin's memory the words that Cavalier had uttered to him. "Ere she leaves us there is something to be told her as regards Baville's friendship for her father, Ducaire. And when she has heard that, it may be she will never wish to return to him, to set eyes on her beloved Intendant again."
Was this woman of whom Baville spoke the one who could tell her that which would cause her the great revulsion of feeling which Cavalier had hinted at?
"Why should they never meet?" he asked, the question forced from him by the recollection of the Camisard's words joined to Baville's present emotion.
"Because," the other replied, his face once more the colour of death, the usually rich full voice dull and choked, "because--O God! that I should have to say it--because I am, though all unwittingly, her father's murderer. And that woman knows it."
"You! Her father's murderer!"
"Yes, I." Then he went on rapidly, his tones once more those of command, his bearing that of the ruler before whom stood a prisoner in his power. "But ask me no more. It was all a hideous, an awful mistake. I loved Urbain Ducaire; would have saved him. And--and--by that mistake I slew him. Also, I love his child--his!--nay, mine, by all the years in which I have cherished, nurtured her. Oh, Urbaine, Urbaine, ma mie, ma petite!" he whispered, as though there were none other present to see him in this, his dark hour. "Urbaine, if you learn this you will come to hate me as all in Languedoc hate me."
"Be comforted," Martin exclaimed, touched to the heart by the man's grief, forgetful, too, of all the horrible instances of severity linked with his name, "be comforted. She must never meet that woman, never know. Only," he almost moaned, remembering all that the knowledge of this awful thing would bring to her, "how to prevent it. How to prevent it."
"I have it," Baville said, and he straightened himself, was alert, strong again, "I have it. I said but now I would, must, see her once more. But, God help me! I renounce that hope forever. To save her from that knowledge, to save her heart from breaking, I forego all hopes of ever looking on her face again, ever hearing her whisper 'Father' in my ear more. And you, you alone, can save her. You must fly with her, away, out of France. Then--God, he knows!--she and I will be far enough apart. Also she will be far enough away from that woman who can denounce me."
"But how, how, how? Where can we fly? All Languedoc, all the south, is blocked with the King's, with your, troops----"
"Nay, the Camisards can help you. Can creep like snakes across the frontier to Switzerland, to the Duke of Savoy's dominions. You must go--at once. You are free, I say," and he stamped his foot in his excitement. "Go, go, go. I set you free, annul this trial, declare it void. Only go, for God's sake go, and find her ere it is too late."
"I need no second bidding," Martin answered, his heart beating high within him at the very thought of flying to Urbaine, of seeing her again and of clasping her to his arms, and, once across the frontier, of never more being parted from her; of his own freedom which would thereby be assured he thought not one jot, the full joy of possessing Urbaine forever eclipsing the delight of that newly restored liberty entirely; "desire naught else. Only, how will you answer for it?"
"Answer!" Baville exclaimed. "Answer! To whom shall I answer but to Louis? And though I pay with my head for my treachery, if treachery it is, she will be safe from the revelation of my fault. That before all."
"When shall I depart?" Martin asked briefly.
"Now, to-night, at once. Lose no moment. A horse shall be prepared for you. Also a pass that will take you through any of the King's forces you may encounter on the road to the mountains. Once there, you are known to the Camisards and--and she will be restored to you."
"Will they let me pass the gate?"
"Let you pass the gate! Pass the gate! Ay, since I go with you as far as that. Let us see who will dare to stop you."
An hour later Martin was a free man.
Free, that is, in so far that he had passed the Porte des Carmes and was once more upon the road toward the mountains, toward where Urbaine Ducaire was. Yet with all around him the troops of Montrevel, the field marshal having sallied forth that morning intent upon more slaughter and bloodshed, and with, still farther off, the Camisards under Cavalier in one division and under Roland in another, descending, if all accounts were true, upon Nîmes and Alais with a full intention of avenging mercilessly the burning of their brethren in the mill.
Yet, sweet as was the sense of that freedom, sweet, too, as was the hope that ere many more hours would be passed he and Urbaine would have met once more never again to part, he could not but reflect upon the heartbrokenness of Baville as he bid him Godspeed.
"Save her, save her," he whispered as they stood at the Great Gate, "save her from France, above all from the knowledge of what happened so long ago. Fly with her to Switzerland and thence to your own land; there you can live happily. And--and--tell me ere you go that from your lips she shall never know aught. Grant me that prayer at the last."
"Out of my love for her, out of the hopes that in all the years which I pray God to let me spend with her, no sorrow may come near her, I promise. If it rests with me you shall be always the same in her memory as you have been in actual life. I promise. And perhaps when happier days shall dawn, you and your wife and she may all meet again."
"Perhaps," Baville replied, "perhaps." Then from the breast of this man whose name was execrated in every land to which French Protestants had fled for asylum, this man of whom all said that his heart, if heart he had, was formed of marble, there issued a deep sob ere he moaned: "Be good to her. Shield her from harm, I implore you. She was all we had to love. Almost the only thing on earth that loved me. Farewell!"
