Lord Montagu's Page Part 12

There was some deep drinking that night; but still Pierrot, though he could have emptied the most capacious flagon there at an easy draught, maintained the combat against habit gloriously, till at length, just as the leader of the party returned, at the end of two hours, the good Roch.e.l.lois, finding himself weak with the labor of resistance, retired to rest, after having received a hint from his master, which happily he was in a state to profit by,--happily indeed for him. "The primrose path to the everlasting bonfire" men have strewed in their imaginations with all sorts of sweet things; but, take my word for it, it is paved by _Example_,--that most slippery and dangerous of all asphalts. Luckily for him, the troopers did not care a fig whether he drank or not, and thus all he had to resist was the sight of outstretched arms and full cups; but he had something better on the other side: he had the warning of rolling eyes, and hiccoughing throats, and maudlin faces, and embarra.s.sed tongues, which he had never seen before when he was himself sober enough to appreciate them fully. "Well, drunkenness," he thought, as he left the room, "is a very beastly thing, it is true."

The monks withdrew nearly at the same time; and I am well pleased to say that, although they had shown during that night, amongst the pies and the pottles, no narrow objection to either those carnal or those spiritual things which some castes of Hindoos call the "creature comforts of life," not one of them had an uneven step or an unsteady head. Probably they drank seldom; for those who drink often deprive themselves of the power of drinking at all,--soberly.

The coach-driver was soon under the table; and the troopers, though most of them, when the last drop provided was emptied from the flask, could make their way by diagonals to the dormitory a.s.signed to them, were in a state which promised no early rising on the following day; and Edward and his friendly soldier parted about eleven o'clock, the latter merely saying, "We shall have a heavy storm to-night. The clouds are rolling up like distant mountains. But all the better for your purpose. Remember three!"

The consequences! Good G.o.d! How frightful a thing it is to consider what--under an overruling hand and will omnipotent--may be the consequences of the smallest deed we do. The consequences immediate, proximate, future! How many lives, what an amount of misery, how much d.a.m.nation, may depend upon a light word, an idle jest, a sportive trick!

Should such a consideration forbid us to act and do, to resolve and to perform? Far from it. Man is an active being, and his life is deeds.

Each moment must have its thought or its action, or the whole is sleep; but the consideration of that strange thing, CONSEQUENCE,--that overruling of our deeds to ends that we see not,--should teach us so to frame thought, word, and act, that, be the consequences what they may, we may be able at the great end of all to say, boldly, "I did it in an honest heart." G.o.d himself is responsible for the result if man acts with purity of intent.

Not one man in that small room who had that night "sinned as it were with a cart-rope" ever saw the dawning of the morning; and it was a heavy thought to Edward Langdale for many a year after, "What share had I in this?" For himself, he took the little lamp which had been left for him, and sought the cell where his pallet lay. But he had no thought of sleep. As he went along the corridor, with the rays just gleaming upon the fretted stone-work, something like a flash reddened the dim panes of the painted windows, and some seconds afterward a distant roar was heard, as if of a heavy sea rolling along an extended sh.o.r.e. "It will thunder," he said to himself; but he thought of it no more; and, opening the door of the cell, on the little table beneath the window appeared the missal and the skull and cross-bones--the _memento mori_ of the cloister.

CHAPTER XIII.

The table, the book, the pallet, the grinning emblem of death, and a little black crucifix hung up against the wall, were--with the exception of a large pitcher of very clear, cold water--all that the cell contained; and yet it was by no means without ornament, for each of those chambers looking to the western cloister had a window divided into two by a beautiful mullion and was garnished all round, even in the interior, with mouldings a foot in depth. The original small panes of stained gla.s.s were also there, but Edward could at first form no idea of the richness of the coloring; for, although the moon had now risen several hours, the face of heaven was black with clouds, and all without was darkness. About five minutes after he had entered the cell, however, the whole interior of the little room, where the feeble oil-lamp had only made the darkness visible, was pervaded by intense light, and an image of the stained-gla.s.s window was thrown upon the floor and opposite wall in colors the most intense and beautiful. Still, the thunder did not follow for several seconds; but when it did come the roar was awful. It seemed as if some one were pouring rocks and mountains in a stream upon the roof of the abbey, making the very solid walls and foundations shake. Edward drew forth his watch,--one of the rude contrivances of those days, but with the great advantage of having the figures on the dial plain and distinct,--and, holding it to the lamp, perceived it was a quarter past one. "Lucette must be awake," he thought: "she could not sleep through such a crash as that. I will wait five minutes and then go and call her."

In the mean time the flashes of lightning became more frequent, some followed by heavy thunder, some pa.s.sing away in silence, till at length they grew so rapid in succession that one could not attach the roar to the flame. Edward's first knock brought Lucette, completely dressed, to the door; and he was surprised to see her cheek so pale. The thought of danger had never entered his own mind; but he clearly saw that she was much agitated. "You are not afraid, dear girl?" he asked: "it is but a little thunder."

"It is not fear, but awe, Edward," she said. "But is it time to go? I am ready."

"Not yet," he answered; "but we may as well stay here in the pa.s.sage. If the storm should alarm the monks, and any one come out, we can say we are frightened too."

"Is not that some one crossing there?" asked Lucette; but almost as she spoke a sudden flash showed that what she took for a man was but a short pillar. Edward drew her closer to him and put his arm round her. She did not feel at all angry, but rather clung to his side. Fear is a great smoother away of all prudery; and, to say sooth, Lucette had very little of it to be planed down. The fact is, she was innocent in heart and mind as a young child; and innocence is never prudish,--nor is real delicacy.

"Ne fiez-vous a l'Angelus; Mais craignez les bois et les orages,"

says an old French song about two lovers somewhat similarly situated; but Edward and Lucette ran no danger from any thing but the lightning.

It, however, was now really terrific. The clouds, crammed with electricity, were evidently directly over the abbey, and every instant the blaze was running across the windows, the various colors of which gave the flashes the effect of fireworks more brilliant than any that ever were constructed by the hand of man.

At length a sound, not the roaring roll of thunder, but an explosion, as it were, as if some mighty cannon had burst, shook the very ground on which they stood. Then came a moment's pause, and then a peculiar noise,--it might be thunder, or it might not, but it seemed more like the sound of stones rolling rapidly and heavily over each other and then falling from a height to the ground. The next instant a heavy bell began to toll, but ceased after three or four strokes had been struck, mingling strangely with a peal of thunder which was then echoing through the building.

A spirit of confusion now seemed to seize upon the abbey: the door at the end of the corridor was thrown open; monks were seen hurrying across, moving a little way up the pa.s.sage and disappearing by another door. There were voices calling and screaming too, and Edward thought he could distinguish groans and shrieks; while ever and anon a little bell was heard ringing with a small, tinkling sound; and, in strange discord with all the rest, a solemn strain of music burst upon the ear whenever the little door on the left was opened.

Edward tried to ascertain from one of the pa.s.sing monks what was the matter; but he could get no intelligible answer; and it was with infinite satisfaction that at length he saw Pierrot appear, coming toward them in haste.

"The great tower has been struck, sir," said the man, in answer to his inquiries; "and Heaven knows how much of it has tumbled down over the other cloisters. One of the monks is killed, they say, and several other people are crushed under the stones; but, what is worse than all, just as they were ringing the great bell, they found out that the lightning when it struck had set the tower on fire, for the rope broke short off, and the end that came down upon the sacristan's head was burning. There is no hope of getting it put out; for some are carrying off the ornaments of the church, some are praying, some are singing, some are whipping themselves; and the best thing we can do is to get out to the bank of the ca.n.a.l,--if we can find the way; for, though the hour you told me is not quite come, we can wait there more safely than here, where we are likely to have the roofs and b.u.t.tresses on our heads every minute."

Edward pressed Lucette a little closer to him and whispered something, to which she answered, "Anywhere you will.--Trust you? Oh, yes!" And, getting her large hat from the cell, Edward placed it on her head so as to conceal as far as possible her wonderfully luxuriant hair: then, leading her down the pa.s.sage, opened the door which the soldier had pointed out to him. Instantly a flash of lightning crossed their eyes; but it served to show, though it lived but a second, the dull, heavy features of the Marais, with not one, but half a dozen, streams of zigzag lightning playing through the sky,--some, as the levin-bolt is usually represented, darting down to earth like a flaming javelin, others twisting into all shapes, and even running up, like fiery serpents disporting themselves in the horrors of the storm. What was of more importance, however, to Edward and Lucette, that flash displayed, close before them, one of those long rows of willows and ash-trees which in that part of the country denote the course of the larger ca.n.a.ls, and also showed a break in the line of wood, where the monks probably went down to fish from their own boats.

All the noises of the abbey were now heard far more distinctly, the thunder notwithstanding; and through every window of the great church, with its tall square tower, might be seen a red, ominous glare. But onward Edward supported Lucette, with Pierrot feeling his way before them, till a few steps brought them to the very edge of the water. Two boats were fastened to the bank by chains; but there was no boatman apparent, and Edward and his good servant consulted for a moment, with a running accompaniment of lightning, as to whether it would not be better to unloose one of the skiffs and seek safety somewhere.

"I can break the chain in a moment with a big stone, Master Ned," said Pierrot; "but, as we do not know where to go, we had better wait for some one to show us. Master George Brin, the good corporal, promised that some one should be here at two; and, depend on it, he will keep his word. Hark! I hear oars. It is not quite two yet; but you had better put the young lady under that ash-tree, for it is beginning to rain, thank G.o.d. That will soon put the thunder out; and pray Heaven it quenches the fire in the church, too! Those monks are good, simple souls and merry."

Not more than two minutes after he had done speaking, a boat came up quickly to the little landing-place, rowed by an elderly man, as far as Edward could see by the lightning, who carefully avoided touching the abbey boats, but, as soon as he backed his oars, looked round over the bank.

"Ah, there you are!" he said, in a tongue which, though it was not French at all, was a jargon quite understandable. "Get in! get in, quick! Here, young man, give me your hand." And, catching Lucette's arm, he lifted her in rather than aided her to embark. Edward and Pierrot followed, and without another word the boatman pushed off. It was all over in less than thirty seconds, and the boat had made some two hundred yards over the water, the man pus.h.i.+ng her along with a pole, before he relinquished that instrument and sat down as if to resume his oars. The rain was now beginning to fall thick in heavy drops, and the boatman, as he pushed his bark along, had been scanning his party of pa.s.sengers earnestly. "Here," he said, at length, dragging something large and s.h.a.ggy from beneath one of the seats,--"here, you one in the large hat, put this on, or you will get wet. The sky may come down in drops without going through that."

"What is it?" asked Lucette, taking what the man offered, but not comprehending what it was.

"A _peau de bique_, to-be-sure," replied the boatman. "You are the girl that Georgy Brin told me of, are not you? I must not let you get wet; for he says you are weakly. 'Tis a bad business, anyhow!" And, with this sage reflection, he began vigorously to handle his oars.

Edward aided his fair companion to envelop herself in the water-proof garment then and still common in that part of France; and the boat shot on rapidly under the branches of the trees, which may be said to have interlaced above them. For about a quarter of a mile all was darkness, but at the end of that distance the boatman began to look up toward the sky wherever a small patch of the heavens could be seen through the overhanging trees. Edward, too, saw from time to time gleams of red light upon the water; and it seemed as if the sky itself had caught fire from the lightning and would soon be in one general blaze. Another quarter of a mile brought the travellers to a spot where were two reed cabins and an open s.p.a.ce of ground round them; and there the boatman lay upon his oars. All eyes were now turned toward the abbey, where a sight at once sad and grand presented itself. The top of the great square tower, like an immense altar, bore a pyramid of flame up to the skies; and from every window and loophole issued forth a tongue of fire, licking the gray walls. The windows even of the church were painted in red upon the dark stone-work, whenever the cloud of smoke which surrounded the whole of the lower part of the building like a vast shroud suffered the masonry to appear.

"Alas for the poor monks!" said the boatman, with an unaffected sigh: "if they did not do much good, they did not do any harm; and we might have had worse people amongst us. That abbey has stood wellnigh four hundred years, they tell me; and it was never touched by lightning until now,--doubtless because they have given it to a lay abbot, and he turns all the revenues to the works of man which were devoted to the works of G.o.d. Well, we cannot help the poor souls." And, without further thought of the burning edifice, he plied his oars again, and the boat cut her way smoothly through the gla.s.sy waters, leaving long, fiery ripples behind her.

Two miles more of hard rowing brought the party to a small farm, where two or three of the same huts of mud, bushes, and reeds appeared close together on the bank; and the rower paused before the largest of the humble edifices, calling, in a loud voice, to persons who might not be without ear-shot but who were certainly not within sight, to inform them that he would not be home till daybreak. "The rain is falling," he said, as if speaking to himself, "but the whole abbey will be down: that is clear."

He then rowed on, pursuing for some three hundred yards the larger ca.n.a.l; but at the end of that distance he turned into a very narrow and sinuous channel, where he laid down his oars and propelled the boat solely with the pole. The labor seemed hard, and the progress slow, and Edward took the occasion to ask quietly whither they were going.

"To La Caponniere, to-be-sure," replied the man. "Did you not know that?"

"No," replied the youth: "Monsieur Brin merely told me that he would procure me a boat at two o'clock to carry us to a place of safety."

"Well, here is the boat," answered the man, "and La Caponniere is a place of safety. There are no better people in the world than old Madame Brin and her sons and daughters. They are cousins of his, you know, and by this time they are ready to receive you. She was his cousin before her marriage, you know, and then she married his first-cousin, who left Niort in the time of the troubles; and so they are doubly cousins, you know."

But, as Edward did not know any thing about it, he thought it better not to show his ignorance, and resumed his English conversation with Lucette.

The voyage--for we cannot call that a journey which was performed at night upon the water--was somewhat long and fatiguing to the boatman; but at length,--it must have been at least four o'clock in the morning,--after turning and twisting, and sometimes grating against the banks, the boat reached a spot where suddenly appeared a small, star-like light from what seemed the window of a better house than any they had yet pa.s.sed, which, skipping over various indistinct objects, rested more fully on a small skiff at the sh.o.r.e. Some one started up as they approached: their boatman threw him a rope, and they were speedily drawn up to the bank and moored.

"Come this way," said the lad who had been waiting for them, holding out a great coa.r.s.e hand to Lucette. "Here, mother; they are come." And, leading the poor girl on, followed by Edward, he conducted her through a little garden in which various kitchen-vegetables were more plentiful than flowers. Half-way between the house and the ca.n.a.l they were met by a goodly-sized dame of forty and a girl of some sixteen or seventeen, who took Lucette frankly in their arms and gave her a warm embrace. "So this is your young man, poor thing?" said the elder, looking at Edward; but then, immediately turning to the boatman, she inquired, eagerly, "What has been the meaning of all that red light out by the abbey?"

"There's no abbey by this time," answered the man. "But come, good dame, let us in to your kitchen-fire, if you've got one, and I will tell you all about it. We are all as wet as bull-frogs, except the girl; and I gave her my _peau de bique_."

Thus saying, he pushed past the rest and entered a large, roomy kitchen, well stored with every sort of salted and dried provisions, dependent from great racks suspended from the ceiling.

There a hearty welcome awaited the poor wayfarers: the fire, which had nearly gone out, was soon blown up into a cheerful blaze; warm soup was produced; and to Lucette the good dame of the house, though she weighed at least two hundred pounds, showed the tenderness and gentleness a.s.sociated by poets and romance-writers solely with sylphlike forms and nymphlike graces. Her two good, buxom girls, who to very pretty faces added in form a promise of future extent worthy of the stock from which they sprang, joined in, somewhat more shyly, but with real kindness; and, for the first time since they left Roch.e.l.le, Edward and Lucette experienced that feeling of security which--to plagiarize a little--"wraps the whole heart up like a blanket."

CHAPTER XIV.

The house in which Edward Langdale found himself on waking the next morning was evidently one of those belonging to what they call in France the _cultivateurs proprietaires_, and in the Marais the _cabaniers_, or farmers possessing the freehold of the land they till. He had been placed in a little room not larger than the abbey cell; but his bed had been most comfortable, and he might have slept late had not the youth whom they had found in the boat the night before, and who was a son of the good dame of the house, come in to ask how he had rested and to invite him to go to the farther side of the farm to shoot some ducks for breakfast. Edward did not neglect the opportunity, thinking that he might obtain some important information by the way; but the youth, though perfectly and even profusely communicative, could tell him little of any thing beyond the precincts of the _Marais_, because he knew little. They had heard, he said, from his cousin George, the night before, that at some hour in that night a young gentleman and lady who had run away to get married would come to their house for shelter and protection, which he bespoke for them particularly; and the good soldier had added many an injunction to secrecy and discretion. He had also asked that a boat might be sent with their neighbor Bonnet to the abbey wharf, with directions to take off the young gentleman and lady without saying a word.

This was the amount of young Brin's foreign intelligence,--for such to him it was; and as soon as it was given he proceeded to describe and eulogize his mother's farm, which he had not quitted more than two or three times in his life, and which he seemed to think both the richest and most beautiful spot of earth. Rich indeed it was; but to explain its sort of riches I must have recourse to that old author whom I have already quoted. I must premise, however, that the spot on which Edward Langdale now found himself was just at the edge of what are called the dried marshes, where they join on to the _marais mouillans_, which, at the time I write of, were much more extensive than at present. The farm, then, of La Caponniere comprised a portion of both; and, as the _marais desseches_ have been already described from the account of an eye-witness, I may be permitted a word or two from the same source in regard to the _marais mouillans_. "All these marshes," says my author, "are not equally inundated; and, in consequence, all parts are not equally sterile. The highest parts [of the _marais mouillans_] are under water from the middle of October to the middle of June, and sometimes later. The lower parts never dry; and, to make something of them, they have been cut by innumerable ca.n.a.ls, all communicating, and only separated from each other by earth-banks of from twelve to fifteen feet in width, piled up from the excavated earth of the ca.n.a.ls. These earth-banks are of prodigious fertility, many of them planted with willows, ashes, poplars, and sometimes oaks; so that one is often astonished to see so vigorous a forest springing out of the middle of the waters."

The traveller then goes on to tell the uses these forests are put to,--how the f.a.gots are sent to Roch.e.l.le and the Isle de Rhe, and how the trunks of the trees, cut into firewood and called _cosses de marais_, are highly valued throughout the whole of the neighboring country, and burn better than any other trees. But, as the reader will probably never dabble in the cultivation of the marshes of Bretagne, he shall be spared the details. My author, however, goes on to state that the farms vary in extent from two hundred and forty to twelve hundred acres, and that each is divided by little ca.n.a.ls into squares of about thirty acres, each ca.n.a.l being large enough to carry a small boat.

Now fancy, dear reader, what an interminable network of water-communication these ca.n.a.ls, each hidden from the other by trees and shrubs, must form; how impossible for any but one born and bred in the country to find one's way along there; how easy for any one acquainted with their involutions to baffle the most skilful pursuer, to lie hid from the eyes of the most clear-sighted enemy. The Minotaur did not feel himself more safe in the depths of the Cretan labyrinth than Edward Langdale after their morning's row; and Edward was more safe than the Minotaur.

"Here," he thought, "we may stay till all pursuit is ended and all suspicions forgotten, till dear Lucette has recovered strength,--and, perhaps, till I can communicate with Mauze or Roch.e.l.le."

All very well as a matter of probability; but where any thing is joined together by mere tacks--as is indeed the case with the fate of every one,--and not alone with his fate for years or months, but for a single hour--it is much better to remember, before we make any calculation at all, what tacks may fall out or get broken and the whole piece of machinery tumble to atoms.