“Sometimes one moment can repay Unnumbered years of pain,”
—CAMPBELL
DECEMBER snows had fallen, but a bright December sun was flushing them with afternoon glory, when through the beautiful West Gate of Canterbury town, Gaspard and Elene de Montausier passed together. Their neat, plain clothing, in spite of its indefinable air of foreignness, attracted no particular attention. They both looked very weary and wayworn, for they had walked far that day. Still they were gazing about them with an eagerness that betokened much more than natural interest on entering a celebrated place for the first time.
As they passed the Church of the Holy Cross, Elene paused to look at it. “Come on, m’amie,” Gaspard said gently, but with suppressed excitement. “That is not the Cathedral.”
Presently Elene pointed to a large, handsome house, built after the French fashion. “Does not that remind thee of home?” she said.
“Perhaps the English copy our houses,” he answered. Neither of them knew that they were looking at a real French house, built, like others in Canterbury, a hundred years before, by earlier Huguenot refugees. “But we do not expect to find them in a fine street like this,” he went on. “The Cathedral—’tis there we must go first. A Protestant cathedral!—only think of it, Elene!”
As they went on from Peter’s Street over the King’s Bridge into High Street, and, following the directions they had received, turned from that into Mercer’s Lane, they exchanged no more words; for they knew beforehand what to do, and each heart was beating too fast for speech. Gaspard’s face was white with emotion, while Elene’s changed every moment, now flushing with hope, now paling with sweet, shy terror, as she longed with trembling for the welcome he had promised her so confidently from his parents. Little note did either take of the quaint and curious houses where the mercers held their traffic. Emerging into the open space beyond, their wondering eyes rested on the grand, elaborately sculptured Christ Church gateway. They knew it was the entrance to a world of splendors and of glories; but they only thought that within it were “The Precincts,” where some official would be surely found, able to direct them to Monsieur Dubordieu, the exiled pastor who held worship there for his countrymen, and who would tell Gaspard where his parents lived.
They stopped, and looked at each other. “M’amie,” said Gaspard, “you are trembling all over. Sit down and rest a little,” pointing to a bench close at hand. “I will go and seek some verger or sacristan, who will tell us what we want. Then, all will be easy.”
“No, Gaspard—I can’t rest now. I feel as if I could walk to the world’s end, if thy father and mother had to be sought for there. Let us keep together.”
While they spoke, a noisy crowd of boys, evidently fresh from the restraints of the Grammar School, came rushing towards them, talking, laughing, and squabbling after the manner of their kind. They stopped at the gateway, barring Gaspard’s progress; and as they chatted and wrangled, another lad came running after them in frantic haste, crying out breathlessly, “You’ve got it, Gaspard—you’ve got it!”
Gaspard, who was standing in his way, turned quickly round, amazed at the sound of his name. “Monsieur, je suis Gaspard de Montausier,” he began in French, to the equal amazement of the English boy, who stood and stared at him open-mouthed.
But the right Gaspard darted out of the throng, and flung himself upon his namesake. “Say that again, for God’s sake!” he cried in French. “Say that again.”
“I—I am Gaspard de Montausier. And you?”
“Cyril Gaspard, without the ‘De Montausier.’ And your brother.”
“Here’s another Frenchy come over,” shouted the English boy, grasping the situation at once. “And a brother of Gaspard’s. You fellows, give him a good English cheer, by way of a welcome.”
While the brothers embraced, they did it, and so heartily that Gaspard’s next words, “I bring you a sister too,” were completely drowned. The first thing Cyril heard was the breathless question, “My father—my mother—where? How?”
“Quite well, and close at hand. I’ll bring thee to them in a trice. Come on.”
He would have dashed on, but Gaspard stopped him. “Stay—stay for thy sister.”
“Sister? We have none,” said Cyril; then for the first time he looked at Elene, who was standing by Gaspard, with flushed cheeks and kindling eyes, her own tremors forgotten in the sight of his exceeding joy.
“Dost remember our little playfellow, Elene de Fressinieres?” said Gaspard, drawing her forward. “She is here—and she is my wife.”
Dumb with astonishment, Cyril gazed at the two. But, though scarcely fifteen, he was a gentleman of France, so he promptly recovered himself enough to remove his schoolboy cap, and offer his arm to the young lady with a bow. “It is quite near, mademoiselle madame,” he corrected himself. “In the main street.”
“Not in one of those great houses?” asked Gaspard, surprised, as they turned again into Mercer’s Lane, at a more moderate pace.
“Yes,” said Cyril. “‘Tis in one of the houses built by our people, who started the silk weaving here a hundred years ago. We live in the top story, which used to be the warehouse. My father helps the merchant in his business—Oh, Gaspard, how glad they will be! We pray for you every day.”
They soon reached a house in the main street, built after the French fashion, like the one they had noticed before, though not quite so large. “Here we are!” cried Cyril. “I’ll run up first, and tell them. You follow—with her.”
He ran up the high, narrow stairs to the very top, and flung open the door of a large room, sparely furnished, but with a good fire blazing on the hearth. A gray-haired man, with a calm, resolute, thoughtful face, sat reading by a small table, while a worn and faded but sweet-looking lady, dressed in black, was placing some food upon a larger one.
Monsieur Gaspard de Montausier, now plain Master Gaspard, looked up from his book, and, seeing his son’s excited face, asked eagerly, “Well, boy, hast got the scholarship?”
“Scholarship!” cried Cyril, with ineffable scorn. “I’ve got our Gaspard And, father, Elene de Fressinieres has come with him. He says she’s his wife! Here they are!”
The next moment—when he saw his father’s face, and felt his mother’s arms about him—Gaspard knew himself repaid for the dreary years in the smuggler’s hut, and the perils and wanderings that followed. But the woman’s heart of Madame de Montausier made her resign him quickly to his father’s embrace, and turn to the trembling Elene. “My daughter!” she said, as she folded her to her motherly breast.
Broken, agitated talk followed. Presently, feeling Elene’s hands, which were cold as ice, Madame de Mnntausier drew her gently towards the fire. The others followed and sat down, Gaspard beside his father, one hand in his, and one in his mother’s, who still held that of Elene in her other hand. She spoke to her gentle words of sympathy and welcome from time to time; and learned in answer that, save for Gaspard, she was now quite alone in the world. Cyril sat at their feet in blissful content, already making a hero of his tall, manly brother, who had done and dared such wonderful things, of which he was disposed to think his marriage quite the most wonderful. “Everybody talked,” he said to his school friends next day. “Everything was told together—and nothing was told at all.” And certainly there remained still much to be told, for it is not the deepest things of the heart that come first to the lips of those who meet after a long separation.
After a little while Monsieur de Montausier said, rising from his seat, “My children, we forget how weary you must be; and most like you are also famished with hunger. Come—the table is spread. God has been good to us, and given us, in this land of our exile, bread enough and to spare.”
“It seems more like the land of Heaven to me,” said Gaspard. “Here we are, together once more, in peace and safety, and able to worship our God as our hearts desire. What lack we yet?”
“Ah, my son, you will soon find that we are not yet come to the rest of the inheritance which the Lord our God giveth us. England is a good land, which the Lord loves, and has His eye upon continually. But England is not Heaven.”
“I know that here too there must be sin and sorrow,” said Gaspard— “and death. Mother, I see you are in mourning; yet our grandmother has been long dead. And there was no one else.” But, as he spoke, there flashed through his mind the thought that during the years of his absence a baby brother or sister—or more than one—might well have been lent to them, and taken home again. So his voice was low, and had a touch of hesitation in it, as he asked, “For whom?”
“For him whose name is dear to thee, and to us all, as the household name of father or of brother. Here and in every land that has given us refuge, all the exiles of France wear the garb of mourning for the friend of all, Monsieur Claude Brousson.”
“Mother, it was he who sent thee back thy son. But for him, I might still be smuggling salt in the forest of Besogne. And yet, mother, I shall wear no garb of mourning for Claude Brousson. For I saw him go to his death, and his face was that of one who was about to look upon the Face of Christ.”
“Oh, Gaspard, tell us,” Cyril broke in eagerly.
And Gaspard told the story which hitherto they had heard but in bare outline. His words were few and simple, because they came up from the calm depths of that “crystalline sea” which sleeps beneath the tide of surface emotion.
His father was the first to break the solemn pause that followed. He said quietly, “Let us give thanks to Almighty God.” Standing with his wife, his two sons, and his new daughter around him, he clasped his hands, and raised his eyes to Heaven. “O Eternal,” he began, “we praise Thee, we bless Thee, we thank Thee for all Thy mercies. And especially for Thy great mercies to us, and to these, Thy children and ours, whom Thou hast brought home to us this day.”
Here his voice faltered, and stopped. But presently he resumed, in words not his own, nor his Church’s, but which he had heard in the grand Cathedral near, and changed, as he spoke them, into his own tongue.
“And we also bless Thy holy name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and fear. And most of all for Thy faithful servant, the ‘man greatly beloved,’ whom Thou hast made exceeding glad in Thy Presence, and crowned him with glory and honor—beseeching Thee to give us grace so to follow his, and their, good example that with them we may be partakers of Thy heavenly kingdom. Amen.”