The Scourge of God

"No," the other answered, his voice still broken, his eyes still on the ground.

"What has changed your belief against the evidence you speak of?"

"You murmured her name but now in your slumbers, spoke of her as your love. Is she that? Do you love-her?"

"Yes, I love her. Before all, beyond all else in this world, I love her." Then he turned his face away from Baville and whispered low: "Urbaine, oh, Urbaine!"

The dawn had come now, saffron-hued, bright with the promise of a fair day; had come stealing in through the œillet high up in the wall. Through the cross of the œillet the morning sun streamed, also throwing one ray athwart the features of the two men standing there face to face.

"And-and " – whispered Baville now, the voice, usually so rich and sweet, still blurred with emotion, almost indistinct, "and she loves-returns-your love?"

"Yes," Martin answered, "yes."

"Has told you so?"

"Ay, with her own sweet lips to mine." Then suddenly, his tone changed, speaking loudly, clearly, he exclaimed: "Man, you can not rob me of that! Make one more victim of me in your shambles if you will, yet, as I die, my last word, my last thought, shall be of Urbaine. My recompense, her hate and scorn of you."

"No, no, no!" Baville exclaimed, his hands thrust out before him as though groping for something he could not touch, or as though to fend off the denunciation of the other. "No, no, not that. Never that. You must be saved-for-for her sake. For Urbaine. She is my life, my soul. Sorrow must never come anigh her again. Already I have done-O God! – have done her wrong. Enough. Listen. You will be tried to-day, condemned as an English spy; the De Maintenon has said it-"

"The De Maintenon!"

"Ay! You are the heir to the wealth of the de Rochebazons-to much of it. You are English. It is enough. Tried, I say, condemned! Yet you shall be saved. Here, in Languedoc, I am Louis. I am France," and once more Baville was himself, erect, strong, superb. "It shall be done-it-it-it; there must be no sorrow," he repeated, "for Urbaine."

"You forget one thing-the Church."

"The Church! Bah! Theirs is a sentimental power; mine is effective, actual. You must be saved. I am Louis, the King, here. Shall be recalled for what I do; be broken, ruined. Yet, until recalled, the King. Go to your trial, but say nothing. Refuse to plead; that shall suffice." Then changing the subject, he said eagerly, feverishly almost, "Where is she? Where have you left her?"

"In the mountains. Under the charge of Cavalier."

"Cavalier!" Baville exclaimed recoiling, his face a picture of suspicion and doubt. "With Cavalier! Under the charge of Cavalier! My God! They will slaughter her! And you profess to love her!"

"She is safe; as safe as in your own arms. They will protect her."

"Protect her! Protect her! They! Protestants, like yourself!"

"Yes, Protestants, like myself. And, as they believe, nay, as they know, perhaps as you yourself know, Protestants like-Urbaine Ducaire!"

Through the thick moted sunbeams that swept from the œillet across the dusty room, passing athwart of Baville's face, Martin saw a terrible change come into that face. Saw the rich olive turn to an ashen hue, almost a livid hue; saw the deep, soft eyes harden and become dull.

"They know," he whispered, "they know that! That Urbaine is-a-Protestant? How-can-they-know-it?"

"One of their seers, a woman, divined it, proclaimed her no papist. And Cavalier has discovered those who knew her father, Urbain Ducaire."

"My God!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

BAVILLE-SUPERB!

There was a hush over the Court. Yet a hush broken and disturbed by many sounds. By the sobs of more than one woman, by the shuffling of many feet, by muttered ejaculations from those who strove to force their way nearer to where the judges sat beneath the Intendant, and once by a ribald laugh from a painted woman who leered at all around her and flung nods and smiles toward Montrevel-the woman Léonie Sabbat. By pushings, too, administered by brawny men who were possibly mountaineers to the Miquelets and even the Cravates, since if they were the former they feared not the latter; they had met before. Once an oath was heard muttered and the ominous sound of a blow, then a girl's shriek of horror. Yet at last some semblance of order was obtained, the proceedings were about to commence.

"Bring in the prisoner," exclaimed the presiding judge, Amédée Beauplan, a harsh and severe man who had sentenced countless Protestants to the various forms of death dealt out to those of that religion; and his words were re-echoed by the greffiers.

A moment later Martin Ashurst stood before all assembled there. And as he did so many women were heard to weep afresh. Perhaps his handsome manhood recalled to them some of their own men who had once stood where he was standing now. Alone among her sex Léonie Sabbat, who was eating Lunel grapes from a basket, laughed.

"Tiens!" she muttered, addressing herself to an elderly decorous-looking woman who was close by her, but who shrank away from the courtesan as though she were some noxious reptile, "regardez moi ça. A fool! One who might have had wealth, vast wealth. Now see him! Doomed to death, as he will be in an hour. I know his story. Tout même, il est beau!" and she spat the grape seeds out upon the floor at her feet.

Baville's eyes, roaming round the Court, yet apparently observing nothing, he seeming indeed supremely oblivious of all that was taking place, lighted casually upon two persons hemmed in by many others. A man well enough clad in a simple suit of russet brown, who looked somewhat like a notary's clerk, his wig en pleine échaudé covering the greater part of his cheeks, so that from out of it little could be seen but his eyes, nose, and mouth. An idle fellow, the Intendant deemed him, a scrivener who had probably brought his old mother to see the spectacle. For he held in his hand that of an aged woman whose eyes alone were visible beneath the rough Marseilles shawl with which her head was enveloped, and with, about her brow, some spare locks that were iron-gray.

The pair were not, however, always visible to Baville even from his raised seat; sometimes the movements of others by whom they were surrounded-of a fat and gloating monk, or of a weak and shivering Protestant, or of a crowd of gossips from out the streets-obscured them from him momentarily. Yet, as the trial went on, they came across his view now and again, the youth holding always the old woman's hand. And seeing that woman's hollow eyes fixed on him always, Baville shuddered. He knew her now, from a far-off yet well-remembered past; her face rose as a phantom rises.

That Martin, standing there, calm, almost indifferent, his hands folded on the rail in front of him, should be the principal object of attention in that crowded place was natural. For he was, as all knew, awaiting a sentence that must indubitably be awarded ere long. All knew also that the trial was but a preliminary farce leading up to the great dénoûment.

That trial, such as it was, drew near to its close. Witness had been heard; Montglas, who had seen Martin snatch Urbaine Ducaire from her coach and ride off with her; also the one man who had escaped from the massacre at the Château St. Servas; also the three men who had been present on the beach near Cette and had seen the English spy hand and glove with the Camisards-all had testified, Montglas alone with regret and emotion.

"You swear this is the truth?" Beauplan said to him, looking up from the papers on his desk before him. "There is no doubt?"

"It is the truth," the young dragoon had answered. "Yet I would that other lips had had to speak. He spared my life but yesterday when it was in his hands."

"He has led to the death of many others. Also he is an English spy. Mes frères," he went on, turning to each of the other judges and whispering low, so that none but the silent Intendant sitting above could hear, "what is our verdict? We need not long deliberate, I imagine."

Both those others fixed also their eyes upon him acquiescingly, yet neither spoke. Words were not wanted.

Then Beauplan, turning his head over his shoulder toward the man who represented the King's majesty, and seeing that he sat there calm and impassable, statue-like, inscrutable, rose from his seat and made three solemn bows to Baville.

"We await permission to pronounce sentence," he said.

"Pronounce-it," and Baville drew a long breath between the two words. Yet the handsome face changed not. Or only grew more ivory-like-so ivory-like that those standing in that hall, both enemies and adherents, cast back their thoughts to their dead whom they had seen lying in their shrouds ere the coffin lid closed over and hid them forever.

"What does he see that blasts him?" whispered Montrevel in Fléchier's ear, and the bishop, turning his own white face to the inflamed one of the great bravo, muttered, "God, he knows, he only."

In the crowd beyond the railed-off place where the principals sat the effect was the same. Among all who now fixed their eyes on Baville, the greater number asked: "What does he see?" and glanced over their shoulders as though expecting themselves to see something terrible.

"Can the dead rise?" exclaimed one swarthy Cévenole who, in any other circumstances than the present, would have been arrested for an attroupé ere he had been an hour in Nîmes; have been borne to the earth by the Cravates and loaded with chains ere hurried to a dungeon, so certain did it appear that he was a Camisard. "Can the burned ashes of our loved ones come together again, the limbs that have rotted on the gibbets be restored to life? Has one of those come back to paralyze him?" And he laughed bitterly.

"Il est lâche," whispered Léonie Sabbat through her small white teeth. "Mon Dieu! il a peur. Fichtre pour Baville!" and she pressed her plump jewelled hand on the shoulder of her unwilling neighbour as she craned her neck over the balcony to observe the man she jibed at.

Yet he was no coward. Only his heart sickened within him. With fear, but not the fear of either phantom risen from the dead or of fierce Camisard ready to send him to join the dead. Sickened at the sight of that aged woman who never took her eyes off him, who seemed about to address all assembled there. For he remembered her. Recognised her face now beyond all doubt. Remembered one night-how long ago it seemed! – when all the land lay under the snow, and when, at the foot of the mountains the tourbillon whirled down from the heights above great flurries of other snow which froze as it fell, and struck and cut the faces of those riding through the wintry storm as knives or whipcord strike and cut. Recalled how he himself riding through the tourmente, followed by a dozen of his guard, had to strike breast and body to prevent this freezing snow from ensheathing him in its swift, hardening masses. Yet of what account such memory as that compared to another which followed swiftly in its train!

The memory of a humble peasant's cot, a man stricken with years reading his Bible by the fireside, a child playing at his feet, rolling about the floor laughing and crowing as it teased a good-natured hound that endeavoured, unavailingly, to sleep before the crackling logs. Then a word from the man, another from him-O God! how fearfully, horribly misunderstood! Next, the room full of smoke and the smell of powder, the man gasping out his life, gasping, too, one last muttered sentence, whispering that he, Baville, was forever smitten by God's frown. And on the rude staircase that led from behind the deep chimney to the room above a comely woman standing, the little child clasped in her arms, her face distorted with terror, her voice shrieking that he was a murderer, an assassin.

A comely woman then, now an old one and before him, there, in the body of the Court.

What if she and Urbaine should meet? What if they had met?

The doomed man, the man upon whom Amédée Beauplan was about to pronounce sentence, had said that Cavalier had discovered those who knew her father, Urbain Ducaire. Was she one of those whom the Camisard chief had discovered, and had she told all?

"Is he mad?" some in the Court asked again, while others answered, "More like stricken with remorse or fear." Yet surely not the latter, since now he repeated his last words referring to the sentence.