“Each of us brings with him an element, more or less important, of the life of Humanity to come.”—Mazzini
M. BERBIER sat in his easy chair, trying to read a new work on medicine, which one of the professors in the university had given him; but though medicine was the study and the passion of his life, he scarcely understood a word of it. Philippe came in to prepare the table for dinner. “Where are M. Gaspard and Mademoiselle Elene?” Berbier asked of him, laying down his book.
Philippe shrugged his shoulders. “Monsieur and mademoiselle are gone for a promenade. They are gone a long time,” he said. “But no doubt they will soon return.”
“No doubt,” Berbier answered quietly.
In fact, as Philippe went out, footsteps were heard on the stairs. Then the door opened, and Gaspard and Elene came in together, hand in hand, Gaspard looking strong and manly, with eager face and uplifted head, Elene like a drooping rose in color and in posture, and with the mien of one who takes trembling the first steps on an unknown path.
“Well, my children?” said Berbier, in his gentlest tones.
Gaspard spoke up bravely. “Monsieur,” he said, “you have been as a father to us both, so we come to you together to ask for a father’s blessing.”
“My children, I am little worthy to stand in such place to you, and I have no right to do it. But since you are both deprived of your natural guardians, the one by exile, the other by death, I can but counsel you as far as I may. If mademoiselle had living parents, it goes without saying that they would, of right, dispose of he; but since she has not, she must decide for herself. Has she done so?”
“She has,” answered Gaspard, with a beaming face.
“Will she not speak for herself, then?” asked Berbier.
Elene hesitated a moment, then looked up, and, still flushed and trembling, said gently, with modest firmness, “I think they would wish it, if they knew.”
Berbier was well enough acquainted with human nature to be quite satisfied. “Then be it so, in God’s name,” he said. “I agree with your friend M. Portal that, under the circumstances, the step is a wise one. He shall do as he proposes, and perform the rite for you, after the fashion which, until a few years ago, was lawful and binding in this realm, as it still is in England, Holland, and the other Protestant States. Were my blessing worth anything— But here he broke off suddenly, mastered by emotion. Presently he resumed, “My children, as I call you—and would to God it were true! He knows I would give this right hand of mine to keep you with me, to love and care for me as a dear son and daughter, to cheer my solitary old age, and—it may be—to teach me some things I fain would know before I go hence into the great darkness.”
Deeply moved himself, Gaspard stooped down and touched with his lips the trembling right hand Berbier said he would give to have them. “Well would we both like it,” he said, “only for the Faith, and on account of my parents who are in England.”
At that moment someone sought admittance at the door. It proved to be Tardif. He had not appeared at all the day before, and evidently came now with some important news. Elene, startled, flitted past him like a flash of light and sought the refuge of her own chamber. For the others, his matter-of-fact, business-like air relieved the tension of strong feeling; and brought them down to practical affairs, and the immediate necessities of their position. Berbier told him what had just passed. “And they mean to do it—God help them,” he added.
Tardif promptly marched over to Gaspard, who had withdrawn to the window, and gave him a hearty clap on the shoulder. “Well done, young cockerel!” he cried. “Did not think thou hadst it in thee! ‘Twas thy notion, of course?”
“No, indeed” said Gaspard, turning round on him with flaming cheeks. “I should not have dared. ‘Twas M. Portal—the preacher at the Assembly, dost, remember? He was here yesterday. He is a pastor, and can do it for us.”
“God bless him then, I say, for a man of sense who has his wits about him. One can be religious without being a fool. But, having done the trick, he ought to come away with us himself.”
“That will he not,” said Gaspard.
“The more the pity! But, messieurs, I came to tell you that I have nearly everything settled now. There is an English ship—the King William—lying at Cette, the new port. They can come there, you know, now the war is over. The captain and some of the sailors came here to see the town. Half by good luck and half by contrivance, I came across the men, and got one of them to bring me to their captain—capitaine and captain are so like, ‘twas easy asking for him—and I found he spoke French; so we could talk with comfort. He is of your religion, M. Gaspard, and would be glad to do a good turn for your people. He was—was there on Tuesday. He will take you to England, if you can be got on board his ship with safety.”
“Ah, but the ships are searched now before leaving the ports,” said Berbier.
“I have thought of all that. His ship will be searched at Cette, before leaving the port. But I do not mean that we should go to Cette at all. I do not know that neighborhood well myself, but I have engaged a trusty guide, who does. He will bring us by the shortest route to a desolate bit of shore, well away from the port, near which the ship will pass. She will show a red light; and we, in a little boat which also the guide will provide, can row out to her easily.”
“I hope you are sure of the guide?”
“If he were caught, he would pay for it with his life.”
“But not if he betrayed you.”
“But yes, for assuredly I would shoot him dead.”
“Thou’rt a bold fellow. And whither goes the ship?”
“Back to England. ‘Tis a merchantman. ‘Twill be slow work, but sure. Also, ‘twill be fairly comfortable. I told the captain there was a young lady going, and her servant.”
“But Babette is not going,” said Gaspard with a laugh. “The fact is she—she too—is about to be married!”
This piece of news, which Elene had imparted to Gaspard as they walked home from the Esplanade, came with equal surprise to Berbier and to Tardif. The latter laughed heartily, and said “la petite drole” had stolen a march upon them all, with more cleverness than he expected from her. “But,” he added more gravely, “this makes what has been arranged for monsieur and mademoiselle more convenient, not to say necessary.”
“Yes, indeed,” Berbier agreed, when he had had time to take in the situation. “It would have been difficult enough for mademoiselle with only Babette for companion, but without her—not to be thought of.”
Necessarily a little talk followed about ways and means. “Hast arranged about the passage money?” asked Berbier. “Four—no, now only three to go.”
“That is settled already,” said Tardif. “It is my affair. And—it was not much.”
Berbier demurred. It was the last kindness he could do for “the children,” and he wished to do it, he said, adding after a pause, “M. Gaspard has told me of thy generous proposal in regard to De Rignac’s hoard. But it seems not right that he should accept, when I am more than willing to supply his wants. He has been like a son to me, and as such I would gladly treat him.”
“Monsieur can do what he wills with his own; but I have paid that passage money,” Tardif said doggedly; and after a little more talk over the details of the plan, he took his leave, promising to come again when all was ready for the journey.
As he passed out he encountered Philippe, and stopped him to say, “Ho! what is all this about thy sister? Parbleu! I think she is showing her sense. Any sort of a husband is better than a brother such as thou.”
“Oh, as to that!” jeered Philippe, “‘tis long enough since I washed my hands of the minx. Our fine mademoiselle was very welcome to my share of her though I daresay she is right in throwing her over for this Marc Capiton. To say the truth, I like her the better for showing spirit enough to do it. Anyhow, she will have no more chance of interfering with me, and spoiling my career.”
“Thy career only means a place for thee to fish in troubled waters. I hope, for thine own sake, that thou dost not think to bait thy hook with thy master’s guests. Try it, and take thy last look at the sun, for, as sure as there is a God in Heaven, I will kill thee with these hands. Though thou dost not believe in God”
“As much as thou, smuggler, thief, and brigand. If I meant to betray anyone, I should begin with thee.”
“And get hanged thyself, for company.”
“Talk about hanging is idle talk. Thou knowest full well I shall betray no one. ‘Twould in no way suit my plans. The doctor I will not touch; so all the precious lot he has seen fit to get about him are safe from me. Wouldst call me for that a soft-hearted, grateful fool? Spare thy sneers. Don’t you see that if I got M. Berbier ruined for harboring Huguenots, I should only be cutting off the bough I was sitting on? I don’t throw away my trump card to get a deuce or a tré. Already I am not only the doctor’s confidential personal attendant, but his agent in any business he wants to have done for him. And, mark me, M. le Medecin is by no means the man he was. The hanging of that friend of his has told upon him greatly. That man— ”
“Keep his name out of thy talk, rascal,” said Tardif, turning away. But he turned back again, saying to himself, “After all, one never knows when the knowledge of a villain’s plans may come in useful.” And, notwithstanding their mutual antipathy, Philippe seemed impelled to confide in him by the mysterious freemasonry of a common hostility to law. “Ask news of me some ten years hence,” he said, “if thou art not hanged by then. Thou wilt hear that M. Berbier’s adopted son and heir has taken his name. He is M. Jacques Berbier now, at your service, and by that time a very respectable person indeed. He will get more good out of M. Berbier’s earnings than M. Berbier ever got himself. And he will go to mass, make his salvation, pay the priests well, and all the rest of it. As to how he chooses to amuse himself in private at the same time, trust them to shut their eyes to that! Come now, confess—dost thou not think this is a much better plan for a man of spirit than cadging for blood money, getting cursed by Protestants and kicked by Catholics, and barked at by the very dogs in the street?”
Having thus proved, to his own entire satisfaction, that mitigated honesty was a more paying profession than unmitigated roguery, Philippe waited for an answer, since the opinion of so experienced a criminal as Tardif would certainly be worth having. But all he got from him was, “Very well; save thy skin and lose thy soul after thine own fashion.”
“I save what I have. I cannot lose what I have never had.”
“The truest word thou hast spoken yet. And naught care I, so that thou play no tricks on M. Berbier.”
“That will I not. And as for Babette, I am done with her, though I do not hate her as I used. She and her soldier may live and prosper, so they do it in Auvergne, out of my way. Keep thou out of it too, old smuggler and cut-purse. Farewell.”
Here also we bid farewell to Philippe Darcheau, or Jacques Fredon, or M. Jacques Berbier, as he wished to be, and actually in after days obtained his wish. His character had at least one merit—if merit it be—the merit of consistency. Amidst all changes of name, estate, and outward seeming, he remained essentially the same. To give him his due, he ministered faithfully, and even kindly, to the closing years of M. Anastase Berbier. It was an instance of this, that he took some trouble to procure for him the Latin Testament which he longed for in his last illness. What is more, he kept the book ever afterward in memory of the one human being—except himself—whom, since his childhood, he had really loved. Sometimes, when he chanced to look at it, he would ask himself, “What could Berbier have meant when he said to me in dying, Jacques Frecion, I have done thee great wrong. Better were it for thee and me if I had taught thee out of this book, in place of out of my own erring intellect.’ How could he have done better for me? Unless indeed he had not taken so much in his last days to curing poor folk who had no fees to give him, so there would have been more money left behind him. But peace be to his memory! He was a good friend to me.”
He had his wish about the little sister he used to love in the old, forgotten years. She crossed his path no more. Babette Capiton went back to Auvergne with her husband, to live the hard, sordid, narrow life of the peasant of old France. Few and faint were the gleams of light that fell across her path; little did she ever know of the joys and the wonders of the world she lived in, the world of visible things; and even less of that other world which is around and about us, though as yet we see it not. Still, He who does not forget the “fifth sparrow” took account of His little human bird. Marc Capiton proved himself what we should call in English “a good fellow.” Babette was grateful to him, and loved him sincerely. Still more did her heart—which had been crushed, perhaps as much by the pitying kindness of Gaspard as by the cruelty of Philippe—expand again beside the cradle of her firstborn. Gently into her “dimly lighted soul” there stole the thought that “le bon Dieu” was indeed very good, and that, if she trusted Him, He would take care of her precious little one, of Marc, and of herself. More than once she was heard singing “le petit” to sleep with the old words Gap used to sing as he tramped beside her through the wood of Besogne—
“The Lord’s my Shepherd,
I’ll not want;
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green, He leadeth me
The living waters by.”