“For the world’s sake—called—elected—sacrificed.”—H. H. KING.
GASPARD very thankfully accepted the hospitality of M. Berbier, if only for the joy of remaining near Elene, who all this time was drawing him as the magnet draws the steel. It is true he did not see much of her, for the doctor insisted on her keeping up the role of an invalid, and passing most of the day upon her couch, with only Babette for companion and attendant. Babette, now decently attired in a white cap and apron, and a short gown and bodice of blue serge, looked quite a presentable little waiting-maid. But she was no longer the gentle, loving-hearted child Gaspard had left behind him in the hut of the Darcheaus. He thought it was first the unkindness and then the evil influence of her brother that changed and hardened her; but, little as he suspected it, he himself had a share in the transformation. Everyone knew that Philippe hated his sister; and no one wondered that in consequence her love for him was changed, if not to hatred, at least to bitter wrath. But the strange thing was that she also hated Elene, who was uniformly kind to her, teaching her to sew, and even to read. Though she never showed the slightest gratitude to her gentle, patient teacher, she eagerly accepted the lessons, especially the reading lessons. “When I can read,” she said to herself, “I shall be as wise as M. Gaspard; and then, perhaps, he will care for me again.”
One day Gaspard, to whom M. Berbier had given a few small coins for pocket money, bought a bunch of autumn violets and sent them to Elene by Babette.
Shortly afterward, in passing through the courtyard, he felt something touch his forehead. Looking up, he had a glimpse of Babette’s face at a window, and then looking down, he saw the violets on the ground at his feet. He caught them, and taking the steep and narrow stairs three steps at a time, confronted the delinquent. “What didst mean by throwing my flowers out of the window?” he asked, angrily.
“Did not know you were there.”
“What has that to do with it? Why didst not give them to mademoiselle, as I bade thee?”
She pouted, shrugged her shoulders, and muttered sulkily, “Mademoiselle would none of them.”
“Didst ask her?”
“Of course.”
“Then I go to ask her why she refused them,”
Gaspard answered, and went.
The next time he saw Babette, he spoke to her sternly:
“Babette, thou hast lied to me.”
“What if I have?” the girl said. No one had ever taught her that a lie, in itself, was wrong.
“This—that I can never trust you again.”
“Tell me something new, M. Gaspard. ‘Tis long enough since you trusted poor Babette Darcheauor cared for her. Oh, I know why! You are noble now, forsooth. You are not Gap any more, you are M. de—de—I can never remember that fine name of yours! And you—you—never remember—” Here her anger changed to a passion of tears, and she sobbed out the rest, “You never remember it was poor little Babette who found out where you were when you fell into the hollow tree—and saved your life,”
“I do remember it all, Babette, and I want to be your friend,” said Gaspard, with pitying kindness in his voice.
“Pretty friendship! Much you care what becomes of me! Mademoiselle is the only one you care for now. You would see me hanged tomorrow if it would save her dainty little finger from being hurt. Philippe was the first to turn against me and cast me off. And now—you!”
Gaspard’s pity was great, but his bewilderment was greater still. He had no skill to deal with her trouble, and no comprehension of it, except so far as it was caused by the unkindness of Philippe. Of his own share in it he had been until then blissfully unconscious.
Babette, however, knew him better than he knew himself, and was quite aware that Mademoiselle Elene was his princess, his star, while the poor little friend of his childhood (she thought) was just a forest flower, liked for a day and then thrown away and forgotten. Adoration for the one, careless pity and kindness for the other, might be the right and natural thing—but the other could not be expected to like it!
She was very angry, because her anger was the measure of her love. She loved Gaspard with all the passion of her narrow, ignorant, untrained soul. She would gladly have waited on him hand and foot, and that without reward or recognition. As Philippe told her tauntingly, “You would like to wax his boots for him, and invite him to kick you with them afterward.” As for Philippe himself, he hated Gaspard even more than he hated his unlucky sister. He was very jealous of Berbier’s affection for him, and not without reason, for Berbier often turned for companionship, and even for assistance in trivial matters, to the younger lad, who was bright and sympathetic, and at the same time thoughtful and intelligent. Gaspard, on his part, disliked Philippe and despised him. His conduct towards his sister seemed to him the essence of cruelty, and, moreover, of meanness and ingratitude.
Berbier also was disappointed in his protégé. “I had done better,” he confessed to Gaspard, “to have left him in his native ignorance, a stupid clodhopper, who, knowing no better, would have served me as faithfully as a dog and a horse. But I must needs in my folly, make a philosopher of the young rascal and fill his empty head with ideas too big for it. I should have left him at least a saint or two to be afraid of, if not to reverence. Yet still, and with all his faults, I can trust him, and trust him wholly, with my own life and my own interests. But,” he added, musingly, “there are lives more precious than mine. That is the reason why I keep thy friend Tardif waiting here. I have, in fact, in my thoughts a business of much difficulty and of great importance, in which I am minded to employ him; but I cannot speak of it at present. I think he is entirely to be trusted.” To which Gaspard assented heartily.
In the weeks that followed for Elene and Gaspard, a life of peril and excitement seemed to be dwarfed into a life of small things, like a broad swift stream compressed into a narrow channel. But under the protection of the much-respected doctor, they were at present in safety, as no, one cared to meddle with him or his household, and this in itself was a wonderful boon. They were well cared for, and the days were happy. They did not exactly fret at the delay, though certainly they were surprised at it, So was Tardif; and, unlike the others, he fretted at it. He began to think that if M. le Docteur had really anything in view for him it was time something came of it. Lingering idly about Toulouse with winter coming on so fast—for it was October now—was rather like burning a candle to look for a pin. Nevertheless he utilized the time, after his fashion, by fraternizing with all sorts of people in the great city—with peddlers, sailors, boatmen on the canal, even beggars and thieves—and gleaning from all these as much information as he could.
An event which touched not one of our friends in person, and yet in deeper ways touched all of them profoundly, brought the pause to an end. One morning Gaspard and Elene were together, busy over a Latin book of the doctor’s, which Gaspard, with much help from Elene, was trying to construe. Philippe knocked at the door. “M. Gaspard,” he said with ceremony—he always treated Gaspard with ceremony now— “you are to go to M. Berbier at once.”
Gaspard went. He found the doctor standing at the bookcase with his face turned away. For some moments he did not move. Then he turned slowly round, and Gaspard saw—what he had seen only once before, on the day his father clasped him for the last time to his heart—a strong man in tears.
“Oh, monsieur, what has happened?” he exclaimed.
Crushing down his emotion and steadying his voice, the doctor answered, “What, if there were the good God in Heaven you and he believe in, would not have happened. Claude Brousson is taken.”
A cry of pain was the answer.
“You know him as Paul Beauclaise. But even by that name we have never spoken of him together. It seemed wiser not.”
Gaspard bowed his head. Then, looking up with a gleam of hope: “But how know you? Perhaps it is not true. It has so often been said before.”
“It is too true. I have the tidings from a sure source—from my own correspondent in Pau. For many months past I have been in fear for him. In the summer I knew he was in Nimes, his native place, which is full of friends. While there, it appears he wrote a letter to the king.”
“A letter to the king!—He!—with a price on his head! It was—”
“Magnificent audacity,” said Berbier, supplying the word Gaspard could not find.
“But surely there could have been no use in it.”
“There was not. But that was ever his way. You could not shake his faith that there was some good in everyone, some sense of justice and mercy, if only you knew where to look for it. No doubt he thought the king did not know the accumulated miseries his Huguenot subjects were enduring—that his courtiers kept them from him. Which I dare say they do, in a measure. Our friend must have known very well what that letter was like to cost him. And, in truth, it set the spies upon his track. He was warned, and went to Foix, afterward to Bèare. My friend, a physician of Pau, wrote to tell me he was there, and that he had seen him. He thought him in sore peril, beset with spies. Then, Gaspard, it seemed to me that your friend Tardif was just the kind of man who could help him to get away once more from this miserable France, which is the grave of good men. He is cool, wary, full of resource, and not too scrupulous about trifles; and I know not what reward our friends abroad would think too great for him if he succeeded. So I have been keeping him here till I could hear more certainly where to send him. Too late now! Being tracked to Pau and denounced, M. Brousson went on to Oleron—where he was arrested.”
After a sorrowful pause, Gaspard asked, “What think you will be done with him?”
“I fear the worst. He is to be sent to Montpellier, to be judged by M. l’Intendant. I should pity the veriest scoundrel who was turned over to the tender mercies of Nicholas Lamoignan de Baville, of whom ‘tis said that he sups on new blood every night. But that man—” Gaspard saw the shudder that shook his frame, and could not ask him more. But he resumed: “My friend in Pau says he requested the Intendant of Beam. M. Pinon, to judge him himself. M. Pinon bears the character of a humane and moderate man, and is, moreover, a Jansenist. But it could not be; to Montpellier he must go.”
“Then,” said Gaspard, struck by a sudden thought, “he will pass through Toulouse. We may see him.”
“Not the shadow of a chance. Do you think they would allow it? My friend says he is most strictly guarded, no one permitted to come near him but the ‘Hoqueton’ who attends him. But go now and tell Mademoiselle de Fressinières. I cannot talk of it any more.”
Tardif heard of the arrest next morning, when he came as usual to the house of Berbier. He only said, “He earned it fairly, and now he has got it. There is nothing to complain of.”
Philippe agreed with him, a little too fully. “Serves him right,” said he. “Who pities him?”
Whereupon the unexpected happened. Tardif sprang upon him, seized him by the shoulder, and shook him like a rat. The weedy, loose-limbed lad was like a reed in the hand of a giant. Cries and struggles went for nothing; Tardif was paying off old scores, and he did it with usury. “There!” he said, when he let him go at last. “I have owed thee that since thou wast a mean-faced urchin of twelve, carrying salt in the wood of Besogne. Go now and whine to thy master.” Then saying, “I want Gaspard,” he went to look for him.
“Come out with me, Gap,” he said, briefly, when he found him. He very seldom used the old name now, usually saying “Monsieur Gaspard,” yet at times it seemed to come naturally to his lips.
They went out, walked to the riverside, and sat down in a quiet place near the Pont St Michel. It was a favorite haunt of theirs, when Tardif happened to wish for a few private words with Gaspard. This time however he seemed either to have nothing particular to say, or to be for some reason loth to say it. His first remark was general and vague.
“Water is useful. I was born near it, and I like it. Rivers are walking roads.” (He had never heard of Pascal, though he unconsciously quoted him then.) “So are canals. On a river or a canal many things may happen.” Then, after a silence, “I am not easy about that fellow.”
“What fellow?”
“Philippe, of course. Don’t you see he could send you any day to the galleys, and mademoiselle to prison or a convent?”
“Ay, but not without ruining M. Berbier, which is the one thing he may be trusted not to do.”
“There is nothing I trust him not to do—except it be something good. I wish we were out of this.”
“I think M. Berbier has a plan.”
“But he is slow—slow,” grumbled Tardif. “Here he keeps us hanging about, waiting for I know not what. I thought he had work for me—”
“Tardif, there was work he had thought of for thee. But now it is too late.”
Something in Gaspard’s voice and manner struck Tardif. It was in a different tone that he asked, “What kind of work?”
“You see, he has a correspondent at Pau. He knew from him that M. Brousson had gone thither—that he was still at large, but in great danger. He told me yesterday that it was his thought to send thee to him—secretly—to act, if he would have it, as his guide, and help him out of France. He thinks you could have done it.”
“Me!” cried Tardif, with kindling eyes. “Me!”
“He has formed a high opinion of thy courage and thy skill. He knows thou hast been fighting the law all thy life almost, and never yet hast got the worst of it. So he thought that in this case, thou—if anyone—could help.”
“That,” said Tardif, slowly and with emphasis, “that would have been worth doing.”
For once, by Gaspard, Tardif was taken at his own valuation, and mistaken. “Indeed it would,” said he, “there is nothing his friends would not have—”
“Stop!” cried Tardif, in hot anger, turning away from him. He felt at that moment as if a sudden flash of light had shown him the worthlessness of the gold he had been seeking. But the anger passed, though the illumination did not. He added presently, in a kind of shamefaced way, “I should have liked the job though.” No more was said about it.
Had Berbier been alone at this time, he would probably, as soon as he heard that his friend was to be sent for judgment to Montpellier, have arranged to go thither himself, that he might see the end, terrible though it was like to be. But the presence of his guests, and especially that of Elene, perplexed and embarrassed him. The thought of her fate, if she were detected in a palpable attempt to leave the country, was absolutely appalling. And he supposed that the danger of all Protestants would be increased just then by the arrest of the best known and most distinguished of their pastors, which would turn upon them the attention of the authorities, and quicken the activity of spies and informers.
Of Philippe, or Jacques Fredon, as he called him, he had no fears as long as Elene and Gaspard remained under his roof; but he did not feel so sure of what he might do if it proved necessary for them to separate from him, or if any chance deprived them of his protection. Without reference of course to his guests, he had taken care to impress upon Philippe the infamy which all honorable men attached to the role of informer. He related, for his benefit, what his correspondent had written from Pau. When the betrayer of Brousson came to claim his reward, M. Pinon drove him from his presence with the scathing rebuke, “Wretch, begone out of my sight! I wonder you are not ashamed to look men in the face, you who traffic in their blood.”
Berbier’s nature was deliberative, and rather slow-moving. While he waited on the one hand for some further news from Pau, on the other for some illumination as to the best thing to do for Gaspard and Elene, the days passed on. He came at last to the conclusion, with which Tardif agreed, that it would be easier to pass his protégés out of the country from Montpellier than from Toulouse, and that it was best in consequence that they should all go thither. Tardif and Gaspard could travel together; Elene was the difficulty. But a bright idea occurred to him at last. He would give out that he was going to consult the celebrated “Faculty” of Montpellier upon the perplexing case of his patient. She could travel in a litter, secluded from observation, and allowed to communicate with no one but himself and her personal attendant. This would be needful only for the start and the finish of their journey; the main part of it could be accomplished safely and easily in a barge on the canal. Once in Montpellier, he would know what to do. There were one or two of his old colleagues, who could be safely trusted with a hint that the disease of mademoiselle was no other than “Huguenotrie,” and the appropriate remedy—change of air.
He imparted his plans to Gaspard, and told him to tell Tardif. But Tardif meanwhile had been busy making plans of his own. One day, when he came to the house, his air of satisfaction, almost of triumph, struck Gaspard as something strange. “I have news,” he said.
They went to their favorite place near the Pont St Michel, and sat down. It was now late in October, and the weather was cold, but they recked little of that. “I also have news for thee,” Gaspard said. “The doctor has settled at last on a safe plan for bringing Mademoiselle Elene to Montpellier, if thou and I can manage the journey for ourselves, and meet him there.”
“Manage the journey!” said Tardif. “I mean to manage more than that. Tell me, M. Gaspard, what thing in the world do you wish for most?”
Gaspard hesitated.
“I do not mean going abroad to join your parents—but now, today—or tonight?”
“Oh, what use in saying?—what use in wishing for the impossible?”
“Impossible or not, you wish to see again the face of M. Brousson?”
“As well may I wish to see my father in England. Stay! Have you heard yet the news of the town? M. Berbier has. This evening they bring him here, and tonight, after dark, he is to travel with his guard in a boat on the canal.”
“Ay, and in that boat thou and I shall travel also. For I have guessed for some time that M. Berbier meant us to go to Montpellier, and I think, for my part, that he is—”
But Gaspard was not listening. He was staring at him in utter incredulity. “Thou wouldst not lie to me,” he said at last. “But this thing is impossible!”
“Why?”
“Dost think they would allow chance passengers a place in that boat?”
“No. But that boat, like all boats, needs men to work it: it will not manage itself. If one of the men is down with fever, and another, his son, must stay to look after him, the captain has got to find substitutes. I have shown him I am a man of my hands, and know all there is to know about boats and barges. He has accepted my services, and those of my son. That is all.”
“But how—how did you—”
Tardif cut him short. “That is all,” he repeated in the tone that ends discussion. Gaspard shrewdly suspected it was not all—nor perhaps would he have been greatly surprised to hear that the fever patient and his son were merrily drinking Tardif’s health with Tardif’s money in the neighboring town of St. Agnes—only he might have wondered where Tardif got the money to bribe them.
Presently Tardif let fall a few words, furtively, as if afraid of his own voice. “It is a night journey, and upon such there are chances.”
“Of what? Of getting speech with him?”
“Well, say I mean that. Now go to M. Berbier. Tell him we will start for Montpellier tonight, I have got places for us both in a canal boat—no more. Remember that. Get directions from him as to what we are to do when we get there, and be ready when I come for thee in the evening. And, Gap” (using again the old familiar name), “can I trust thee to stand by me, without pause or questioning, in whatever I may do this night?”
“Ay, canst thou! Tardif, I do not understand thee at all today. In God’s name tell me, what is it thou hast in mind?”
“There be many queer things which cross a man’s mind—and many impossible things which come to pass. Now go, and do as I say.”
Gaspard did not know, and he never was to know, with what shrewd and skillful management, with what address and tact—not to add with what unscrupulous lying—Tardif had secured for himself and Gaspard a place on that boat. He loved Gaspard as a son, and he would have done much to fulfill a strong desire of his, but there was far more than this in his astute and daring soul.
He had spent the best part of his life in a desperate conflict with the law. In that conflict he had often seen the law—the strong, hateful, cruel law—baffled and defeated, and that against the most desperate odds. Many a victim had he known who was saved from its pursuit, some even who were snatched from its grasp.
His thoughts ran upon an instance he remembered, that of a noted robber and murderer. But then he had friends to help him. Peste! Who would not help a friend who had such a doom before him—a doom which made the gibbet and the rope a welcome mercy? The awful wheel, the iron bar, the mangled limbs, the long, long hours of helpless agony—even the very boldest and most hardened shuddered at the thought! And it was a thought that, since that arrest at Oleron, had been in many a heart; certainly in that of Tardif himself, of Berbier, of Gaspard, and even of Elene, although no one of them ever voiced it in the hearing of the rest.