The Scourge of God

But still the battle raged. Still from the Protestants' throats rang their war cry, "For God and his children!" from those of the royalists, "For God and the King!" from those of the Miquelets, in their hideous shrieking falsetto, "Guerra al Culchielo!" "Guerra al Morté!"

"Save yourself and her," cried Cavalier, rushing back for a moment to the farmhouse kitchen and stumbling over the dead body of the treacherous peasant, Guignon, who had been poniarded by Le Léopard the moment he was certain that the man had betrayed them, "save yourself-and her. There is a backway by the fosse to an ancient passage 'neath the old castle; save yourselves. We are lost, lost! Outnumbered! Save yourselves!"

Then in a moment he saw that neither Martin nor Urbaine were there. Gone! either to destruction or safety, he knew not which, yet gone. And he rushed back to his doomed band; rushed back to see that the tower was in flames, that all of his men who were in it were beyond earthly salvation. Already it seemed to rock beneath the great spouting flames that leaped forth from roofless summit and openings where windows might once have been. Doomed!

Le Léopard came near him at this moment, an awful spectacle-bleeding from a dozen wounds, his vast and iron-gray beard crimson, yet with his eyes glaring as ever. Came near, staggering, reeling, yet able to gasp:

"To the fosse, to the fosse! You can save some that way. To the fosse!"

"Come you also," muttered Cavalier, "Come-"

"I come!" Le Léopard exclaimed. "Nay, never more. See!" and he tore open his rough coat, showing on his breast a hideous gaping wound. And as he did so he reeled more heavily than before, then fell across the body of a dragoon lying close by.

But still, all around, the fight went on; the sabres swung and the volleys rattled, while from the tower there rose now the death song of those within it. Above all else that was heard a hymn of praise to the God of Battles, the God also of the outcasts-a hymn blessing and magnifying his name. And as it rolled through the fumes and the grime there came next an awful roar, a vast uprising of a monstrous sheet of fresh flame, and, with a crash, the tower came to earth, burying beneath its ruins not only those within it, but also many others around, Camisards and royalists.

"They are bringing their culverins," cried one now above all the tumult, "to play upon the house," and in answer there rang out now another voice which all knew, the voice of Cavalier, the words he shouted being: "Disperse, disperse, my brethren! Children of the mountains and the clouds, disperse as do the clouds themselves. Not to-night is our triumph, yet it will come. It must come."

He spoke truly. The triumph was to come ere long now. The Camisards were to gain their cause at last, but it was not to be to-night, nor by the sword. Instead, by the gentle mediation and mercy of one whose name is still spoken gently in the Cévennes-the name of the great and good Villars.

"You can go no farther?" Urbaine said an hour later to Martin Ashurst, "no farther. Oh, my God, my God, that it should come to this! And for me, for my sake!"

"Nay, dear one, what matter? We are together to the last. And you love me. What more is there to ask?"

"Alas! Alas! I can not live without you, stay behind alone. My love, my love, you must not leave me. Shall not go before. If you die, then must I die too."

And as she spoke she loosened his vest and sought for the wound in his shoulder which had brought him to this pass.

They had found the fosse the Camisards knew of in the old farmhouse. Even as the attack began, Martin, seeking for a place of refuge for her, had thrust open a door at the back of the great old kitchen in which they were, and had led her out of the dangerous room that gave upon the spot where the conflict had begun. Had led her on through a passage sloping down into the earth from behind the house, until, by following it, they found themselves in a place which none could have supposed would have been there; a place like a crypt, stone-flagged, the stones themselves roughly hewn, the pillars dwarfed, yet strong enough to bear a vast fabric above them; a place so old, so long since built, that it may have been some Roman sepulchre, or hiding-place of Albigenses in long-forgotten days, or secret chapel of worship beneath the old feudal castle that had once existed.

Yet there it was, calm and quiet. Even the sounds of the battle now waging in all its fury without came gently to their ears, was scarce heard more strongly than the murmur in a shell or the breaking of the ocean on a far-off shore. Calm and quiet, with, through a recess in the farther wall, perhaps once a niche or shrine, a moonbeam streaming brightly and making the dull flame of the lantern Martin had brought with him, snatching it off the nail where it hung, burn dull and rustily.

And Urbaine, entering with him this haven into which they had penetrated-surely none of those soldiers knew of it, would find it, surely God in his mercy would not permit that-flung herself on her lover's breast sobbing that they were saved again; again were saved by him whom she so loved with her whole heart and soul.

Then started back, a look of terror on her face-a look of awful fear and apprehension-seeing what she did see in her lover's eyes as she sought them.

"My God!" she half whispered, half shrieked, shuddering, "what-what is it? Martin, my love? Oh, what-what has happened?"

For his lips were cold, there was no answering warmth in them as they met hers; his face was white as death, his eyes dull and filmy.

"It-it-is not much. But-I-am struck. As we left the place above, a bullet-through the window-struck me. I-I-can go no farther. Alas, I can not stand," while as he spoke he swayed heavily against the middle pillar of the crypt, then slid, clutching at it, to the earth.

Even as he did so, even, too, as she a moment later undid his vest to seek for the wound, there came to her ears, though perhaps not to his as he lay there faint and almost insensible, the sound of many rushing feet, a heavy trampling; then, next, men passing swiftly by and farther on through the fosse-men whose smoke-grimed faces (sometimes, too, their wounded faces) she recognised as the moonbeams flickered on them. Camisards fleeing hastily, dispersing as Cavalier had said. The Camisards in whose power she had once been, in whose company she had but a few hours ago descended from the mountains.

"O God!" she moaned, "are they pursued by Montrevel's troops? If so, and he, my love, is found here by those troops!"

But he was not all unconscious; he could still hear, and, hearing, understood that moan.

"Nay, dearest," he whispered back, "even so it matters not. The Protestants, these men, are our friends. Baville's pass, the packet he bade me give you on our wedding morn-alas, our wedding morn! – will hold us safe from the soldiers. Fear not, ma mie."

Baville! The name stung her like an adder's fang. Baville! The man who had slain her father, and then endeavoured by a false, pretended love, to take that father's place! The man she would never see again, had vowed, as deeply as one so gentle as she could vow, never to see or know again.

Baville! And he had written to her, sent her a packet. Her lover had it about him at this moment. What could such a thing mean? What import? Yet, yet she upbraided herself for thinking of her own griefs and sorrows now at such a time as this. Baville! Faugh! Baville! Yet if he knew to what a pass they had come, knew that this man whose life might be ebbing slowly from him now, was ebbing slowly, was here? If he knew that he who had saved her was dying? Baville! The man whom once she had loved with a daughter's love.

Again the hurrying feet passed, again the gaunt fugitives went by, yet she heeded them not. Her whole soul was in what she was endeavouring to do-to staunch that gaping wound. Then suddenly one, an old, white-faced, terror-stricken man with long gray hair, stopped, seeing those forms; stopped, peering through the moonbeam that slanted down upon their faces; stopped, then advanced toward them.

"'Tis he," he whispered, bending toward the wounded man. "Martin! Martin! O Martin, my friend!"

"You know him? Your friend? You know him?" she whispered back. "Who are you?"

"His friend, Buscarlet, the inhibited pasteur of Montvert. Driven to the mountains at last, forced to abide with these unhappy outcasts, but, thank God, not yet to draw the sword. No, no, not that! Never, never! Only to pray upon my knees to them by morn and night to shed no blood, to bear, to suffer all. To do that, I followed them here. Only they will not listen. Oh, Baville, Baville, has not your tiger's fury been glutted yet?" And he gazed down upon the almost senseless form of Martin lying there, muttering, "If I could save you!"

Then, a moment later, he spoke again.

"Who," he said very gently now, "are you? Not his wife or sister, I know. But what?"

For a moment she did not answer, looking up at him, instead, with wide, clear eyes so full of sorrow that her glance struck him to the heart.

"I was to have been his, am his, affianced wife. And-and-God help me! – I am Baville's, that tiger's, adopted child!"

"You! His adopted child, and Martin's affianced wife!"

"Even so." And she bent her head and wept.

For a moment there was silence in that deserted place, deserted now since all the fugitive mountaineers had passed through the fosse; silent because no longer was heard the distant sound or hum of shot or cry of combatants. Then he bent over Martin, looked to his wound, touching it very gently and afterward replacing the hasty bandages she had made from some of her own linen, and said:

"He is exhausted from his loss of blood. But, though he dies, it will not be yet. The cold is to be feared, however. If that reaches the wound-I know somewhat of surgery-he can not live. Now I go to seek succour, help!"

"Succour! Help! Where can it be obtained? In Heaven's mercy, where? Nîmes is three leagues off."

"I will do my best. Pray God I am not too late."

And so he left her.

CHAPTER XXXIII

TOUT SAVOIR, C'EST TOUT PARDOXNER

Coming to himself, Martin, lying there, wondered where he was. He felt no pain in the wounded shoulder, only, instead, an awful weakness. Also he felt no cold. Knew too that around him was wrapped some soft warm garment, yet knew not that it was the great fur cloak in which the woman whom he had loved had been muffled up as she descended from the mountains, and in which she had long since enveloped him. Long since to her, watching, waiting there for succour to come, through two, three, four hours, and then another, but to him no length of time whatsoever. And he did not know-he was indeed even still in a half-unconscious state-how those hours had been spent by her, heedless of the cold which pierced through and through her, spent in sitting on the ground by his side, soothing him when he moaned painfully, holding his hand, kissing his hot brow. Attending also to his wound, and going even some distance farther along the fosse in the hope of discovering water, yet without success.

He knew nothing; had forgotten how he came there, that she had been with him, that there was such a woman, and that they loved each other madly.

Then suddenly a voice broke in upon his unconsciousness-a voice that seemed to recall him back to the world-the voice of Urbaine, yet, as she spoke, stifled now and again by sobs.

"Better," it seemed to him that he heard her say, "better have slain me with him, upon his desolate hearth, than have spared me to learn this at last. Of you, you whom I worshipped, whom I so reverenced."

If he had doubted whether he lived or was already in the shades leading to another world, or in that world itself, he doubted no longer, when through that old crypt a second voice sounded, one known to him as well as Urbaine's was known-a voice deep, solemn, beautiful. Broken, too, as hers had been, yet sweet as music still.

"If," that voice said, "you had escaped with your lover to some far-distant land as I hoped, ay, as even such as I dared to pray that you might do, you would have learned all. In those papers I sent by him you love, you would have known all on the morning you became his wife. Now I must tell you with my own lips. Urbaine, in memory of the happy years gone by, the years when you grew from childhood to womanhood by my side, at my knee, hear my justification, let me speak."