“Sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute’s at end.”
—BROWNING.
THE following evening, Gaspard was sitting alone in the room over the shop. The day had been a very quiet one. Tardif had not made his appearance at all, and Berbier, who was still ailing, had spent most of the time in his own chamber.
Gaspard was reading a shabby little book, which had been printed in Holland, brought surreptitiously into France hidden in some bale of foreign goods, and lent him by Blanc, the goldsmith’s assistant. It contained a few of the sermons of Jacques Saurin, the most eloquent of the exiled pastors. The words Gaspard read were a passionate appeal to the Most High, to the Eternal, embodying in one great and bitter cry the accumulated plaints of His persecuted people. “Oh, Lord, what hast Thou done to us? Ways of Zion covered with mourning, weeping priests, lamenting virgins, sanctuaries thrown down, deserts peopled with fugitives, members of Jesus Christ wandering over the face of the earth, children torn from their parents, galleys gorged with confessors, blood of our countrymen shed like water, bodies flung into the common sewer, or given as food to the beasts of the field and the birds of the air—ruins and ashes of our temple, melancholy remains of houses consecrated to our God —fires, wheels, gibbets, tortures unheard of until our time—answer ye, and bear witness against the Eternal!”
Saurin did not stop there; no Christian preacher would dare so to do—but Gaspard did. He knew that every item in the terrible indictment was true—true—true; true again and yet again, and with more and worse behind, if worse could be. He sat motionless, crushed, stupefied. Despair was stealing over him. What if God could not help? If God did not care?
He did not see, as he threw down the little book, that beneath the awful words some hand—and perhaps there was a broken heart behind it—had traced in faint, irregular characters, “I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because Thou didst it”; though it did occur to him to think that after all these were the words of Jacques Saurin the exile, not of Claude Brousson the martyr.
“M. Gaspard, there is an old gentleman below stairs who wishes to see you,” said Fontanes’ servant at the door, breaking in upon his sorrowful thoughts. Her words “un vieux monsieur,” meant to her just a gray-haired man, dressed respectably.
Gaspard hesitated, the dangers around him making him naturally suspicious of strangers. But thinking it best not to make difficulties, he said, “Bring him up, please.”
A man with gray hair and beard, and a staff in his hand, entered the room. They bowed to each other, and Gaspard, with the courtesy due from the young to the old, asked him to be seated, took his hat, and placed it on the table.
They looked at each other for a moment. “Though his hair and beard are nearly white,” thought Gaspard, “his face is like a young man’s—not worn or wrinkled at all. And it seems quite familiar to me. When and where can I have seen him before?”
“What a fine young man!” said the other to himself. “He has developed wonderfully since I saw him last.”
Then aloud, “Look well at my face, young gentleman, and say if you remember me. There is still light enough. Never mind my hair and my beard.”
Gaspard “looked well,” and into his sad face there came the dawning of a smile. He said at last, “But for what you tell me not to mind, I would say you were the preacher I heard at the Assembly near Negrepelisse.”
“Henri Portal, at your service,” and he stretched out his hand to him.
Gaspard, as he took it, asked wondering, “But how do you know me, and how did you find me here?”
“I could not but know again, from the light that was in it, the face of the youth that came up that night to make, or to renew, his vow of faithfulness to the Gospel, and who afterward, with tears that did no shame to his manhood, ate the Bread and drank the Cup of his Lord. And I saw you here on—on Tuesday—standing on the demi-lune. Afterward, I saw you enter this house.”
“But you, M. le Pasteur, how comes it you are here? Is it not terribly dangerous?”
“How could I not be here? I knew my master was to be taken from my head. And I thought, ‘Peradventure, if I see him when he is taken up, through God’s grace a double portion of his spirit—the first-born’s portion—may rest upon me.’ As for danger, every place is dangerous for me, especially since I have had the honor of a price upon my head. I could not keep away. He was—he is—my father in Christ.”
“And mine,” Gaspard said softly. “You, too, M. Portal, you helped me much that night. I think the Shepherd had found me before, but I did not know He had until then. I am troubled just now, though. Before you came in I was reading this.” He took up Saurin’s little book.
“Oh, yes, I have read it too: though I have read very few books, M. Gaspard. I was but a poor peasant lad. He taught me all I know—even to read and write.”
“Is it not the saddest thing in the world to doubt God, to think He has forsaken us—that he does not care? But our father in Christ did not feel that. He did not accuse God; he praised Him.”
“True,” said Portal, with kindling eyes. “How often have I heard him say, amidst perils and hardships that would have daunted the bravest, ‘God gives me a lively consciousness of His grace and His love. I am infinitely happier than if I were established in the best church in Holland. The consolations of God are infinitely more than I can tell you,’ or other words like these. And, I doubt not, as the darkness deepened, the light grew brighter. You saw his face as he went to death.”
Gaspard reverently bowed his head.
“And I believe,” Portal went on, “nay, I am sure, that if God should call M. Saurin to the same trial, He would give him the same peace, and the same joy. That is ever His way. Those who stand outside looking into the fiery furnace often doubt Him, while those who are walking in the midst of it rejoice and give thanks, for He is with them there.”
There was a silence, which Gaspard broke. “M. Portal, how do you know my name?”
“The woman who admitted me, when I asked for the young man lodging here, called you M. Gaspard.”
“Then I will tell you the rest. My real name is Gaspard Charles Louis de Montausier. My father and mother escaped to England several years ago—and my young brother with them.”
“How came they to leave you behind them, monsieur?”
Gaspard gave him in answer a brief sketch of his history, up to the time of his and Tardif’s arrival at the house of Berbier in Toulouse.
“You are right, monsieur,” said the pastor, “to try by every means in your power to leave this country and rejoin your parents. But you must be cautious! If you were taken, it would mean the galleys for life which, for you, would be far worse than death.” His eyes rested admiringly on the noble-looking youth, with his fine form and graceful figure, and the dawn of man’s strength in his beautiful and still boyish face. “‘Twere pity,” he thought, “to consign him to one of those ‘floating hells,’ to toil at the oar under the lash of brutal ‘comité,’ and in filth, starvation, and misery.”
Gaspard drew himself up. “I think,” he said, “they would find it hard to take me alive.”
“I daresay.” Then, reflecting that youth is hot headed, “Do you think to have anyone with you when you go?”
“Oh, yes; we have a guide, Tardif, who was with me that night. He is true to the core. He would have risked his life to save M. Brousson.”
“You say ‘we,’ monsieur. Who are your companions?”
“Save Tardif, there is but one. Do you not well remember that night, amongst the communicants, very beautiful young girl, with brown hair and deer violet-colored eyes?”
“Not specially. There were so many communicants. Was she amongst the newly admitted?”
“No; she had taken her first Communion at home and had been true ever since. But you could scam have failed to notice her. There is that in her loot which—which—I mean to say, there is no one else like Mademoiselle Elene de Fressinieres.”
Henri Portal looked with a new interest at the face of the young man, full at that moment of life ant animation. “But you have not told me how you me with this young lady,” he said. “Did you see her first at the Assembly?”
“Oh, no, M. le Pasteur! I saw her first at home, when we were both little children. She lived near us—we were play-fellows.”
“And you met her again—where? You left off your tale at your coming, with your guide, to Toulouse.”
Gaspard resumed it very willingly, though in rather confused, incoherent fashion. Still, he made the main thread of it clear enough to Portal. He made something else clear also; and the strange thing was, that it was something he did not yet know himself.
He came to their return with Elene to Toulouse, and their leaving Toulouse again for Montpellier. Then, with bowed head, and voice reverently lowered, he told of the night journey on the canal—all at least that he could tell of it—saying at the end, “He blessed me, and Elene. He said, ‘God bless you both, with the blessing of peace.’ He blessed us together.”
“I understand,” said Portal. “And better than you do, dear lad—half man and half child as you are,” he added to himself. “Then you mean that you and this young lady are to escape from France together, under the guidance of Tardif. But is no one else to go with you?”
“Yes—Babette, a young servant girl. She is not a Huguenot; indeed she knows nothing of religion, but she goes as servant to Mademoiselle Elene.”
“And what is mademoiselle to do when she comes with you to England, where you tell me your parents are? Has she friends there also?”
“No; but I have thought of all that. Of course my parents will receive her as a daughter, and love her—how they will love her! I will bring her to them, and say, Here is my dear sister.”
Portal smiled. “My dear boy, I do not think your plan is a very wise one,” he said, with a curious air of hesitation. “Have you considered that it will place the young lady, both during the journey and afterward, in a difficult and embarrassing position?”
Gaspard looked confused. “She will have Babette with her,” he said.
“No sufficient protection. Could you not defer your journey until someone else or better, two or three, and one at least of them a woman—can be found to join your party? And if delay, in your own case, is dangerous, as it well may be, could you not leave her with your friend M. Berbier, until some better arrangement can be made for her, which might be managed by him?”
“I will not stir from this without her,” Gaspard said hotly. “Not to save my life.”
“Do you love her, then, so much?”
“Love her? Of course I do.”
“Listen to me, M. Gaspard. A true man is very tender, very reverent, of one he loves. He would not have her hurt or sullied, even with a breath. He would protect her—with his life.”
“That is just what I want—to protect her,” said Gaspard, wonder and perplexity dawning in his eyes. “May I ask how old you are, M. Gaspard?”
“Eighteen.”
“And mademoiselle?”
“Nearly seventeen.”
“Then Mademoiselle de Fressinieres is a woman, and M. de Montausier is a man.”
So it was with the Huguenots in those awful days. Fear and sorrow ripen quickly. Gaspard and Elene were practically as old as youth and maiden well over twenty would be accounted now.
Gaspard started to his feet, and looked Portal in the face, the wonder growing in his eyes.
“There is but one way for a man to protect the woman he loves,” Portal went on slowly.
“Oh, yes, I understand,” said Gaspard, flushing crimson. “At least, I suppose I do. Of course—some day—if she will—in England.”
“Better here, and now.”
“M. le Pasteur!” cried Gaspard, as pale as he had been red before. “You do not jest—you could not. But this sounds like it.”
“No, my son—or I should rather say, my brother I only tell you, in all seriousness, what the necessity of these evil times seems to make the best way for you both. Otherwise, the journey will have for you, and still more for her, a thousand difficulties and embarrassments. She has none to control her, and I doubt not that, when you meet, your parents will approve the step I now advise you to take. Whatever happens, it will give you the right to take care of her. And even should misfortune overtake you, which God forbid, it may be easier borne.”
“But the thing is impossible. You know it would mean apostasy.”
“Do you forget that I am a minister of God, M. Gaspard?”
“You!” After that one word, Gaspard seemed struck dumb. At last he faltered, “But it would mean the gallows for you.”
“Is that so dreadful a thought just now?” asked Portal with a sad smile. “Yet, in fact, the danger to me is slight. Here, in this room, and in half an hour, it could be done. I know Jules Blanc, M. Fontanes’ assistant; he would be one of your witnesses. I can trust him; and I suppose your friend, M. Berbier, could be the other. To convince you that I have due warrant and authority to do this thing—and such as would be accepted in England, in Holland, or in any other Protestant state—it suffices to say that I was ordained last winter, in the Cevennes, by the laying on of the hands of M. le Pasteur Romanes, and of M. Brousson himself.”
Of the last statement Gaspard took in nothing, save that Portal had named M. Brousson. His mind was in a whirl. Amazement and perplexity struggled within him; and underneath all was the strange new thrill of something, still but half understood, which was awakening there. He was afraid of it—and yet he felt it might grow into rapture.
Portal was speaking again. “I would suggest, M. Gaspard—or rather, I should say, M. de Montausierthat you talk this matter over with your good friend the physician. Then, if he consent, you—or rather he—should speak to the young lady and ascertain her wishes, I must go now, and I shall be, all tomorrow, away from the town. But if all be well, and you wish indeed that this thing should be done, when the evening falls tomorrow, place two lights, close together, in the window of the chamber above this. I will see, and understand. If I am alive and a free man, I will be with you the next morning an hour before daybreak. See that all is ready, and Jules Blanc prepared to admit me. I need not tell you to keep the secret from all else, saving him and your guardian, M. Berbier. And remember, in the morning the windows must be close shut, and no light visible without. Now farewell. Whatever you decide to do, God have you in His good keeping.”