Putting his arm aside I drew level with him, and through the general chaos7 searched out a something to justify8 his presumption9, a something that overshadowed with its terror the common exalted10 level of disaster. But I missed it; search as I might, I missed it, not knowing what to look for, and turned at last to Martin, who stood watching me. There was a new look on his face that puzzled me, so softened11 was it. What could there be left in Solignac that made for gentleness?
"Well?"
"It was a good end, Monsieur Gaspard, the finest end in the world; I could ask no better myself."
Out of the blackening ruins of my home a puff12 of foul13 vapour blew smarting into my face.
"A good end? That! Are you mad?"
"Hers," he answered, "Babette's; she died for Solignac."
"Babette? Dead? Where—?"
I broke off, following the direction of his eyes, but without comprehension. I had forgotten Babette, and remembered her now with a rush of shame. From a triangular14 patch of gloom where a transverse fallen beam, propped15 against the wall, buttressed16 up a mass of wreckage17, a sleeve of homespun woollen stuff was thrust. Motes19 of wood ash and dust of rubble20 were strewn so thickly over it that I had passed it by as only another wisp of Solignac's torn hangings. Even now it was not until Martin shook these off and Babette's dead hand hung limply down that I understood.
"Poor Babette!" I whispered, "Poor faithful Babette!"
I spoke21 to myself rather than to Martin, and yet he heard me above the crackle of the pyre settling inch by inch.
"Why would she not be faithful?" he said as roughly as if he grudged22 her the remorse23 of my regret; "you make too much of it, Monsieur Gaspard. This is but a little thing to have done, and for what else was she born? We must lift her out somehow; though, but for one thing, I would say leave her where she is."
"Leave her here? Leave Babette in this hell of a place?"
"Where better, with Solignac for a tomb, and the dust of the house she loved to cover her? But we must have her out."
Going down on his knees, he crawled across her into the hollow where the body lay, while I stooped by her, her hand fast in mine as if she were alive and I comforting her. From within came the sound of ripped cloth, and Martin returned, coughing and choking with the dusty smoke.
"A joist pinned her," he explained. "Stand aside now, Monsieur Gaspard, and I'll carry her out."
God be thanked for fresh air! The three greatest blessings24 in the world are fresh air, pure water, and a clean life. Not even the ruin behind us nor the dead at my feet could make stale the sweetness of the breath that filled my lungs. A dozen steps from the door, Martin had laid her on the grass, and for a moment we stood one on either side of her, motionless. Then Martin went down on one knee and deliberately25 began fumbling26 at the loose ends of the bow that knotted-in the kirtle at the throat. Everywhere in the dress there were marks of Solignac's disaster, powdered ash, jagged dents27 with frayed28 edges, blotches29 of charcoal30, smouldered holes even, but the stern hard face with the set teeth and wide-open angry eyes was unbruised. It was only when he had the two upper couple of tags unfastened that I guessed at his purpose and it revolted me.
"Leave her alone!" I cried, leaning across her to push him back. "What does it matter how she died?"
"It matters much," he answered. "D'you think it was for pure love and pity that I grovelled31 in the heat yonder? Wait and see."
To his unaccustomed fingers—Martin knew as little of women or women's gear as I did, and that was nothing—the knots were hard to unravel32; but at length he had enough undone33 to satisfy him, and he looked up.
"That," and he laid his hand upon a brown stain that stretched above the ribs34 to the left, "is why I do it. You must see all Jan Meert's work, Monsieur Gaspard, or how can you hope to pay all?" Loosening the kirtle slightly, but no more than showed the withered35 muscles and cordy sinews of the neck, he pushed his hand slowly, reverently36 beneath it. "Aye! I thought so!" and again he looked up at me, sucking in his breath with a gasp3 as we all do when we are hurt. "Not even her grey head could save her. See here, Monsieur Gaspard!"
Drawing the edge of the stuff aside an inch or two he showed what I have seen many times since, but never before, the smooth straight lips of a sword wound. In the dry heat the skin had shrunk aside, and the red flesh looked broadly out of the cut.
"Murdered! Babette murdered?"
"Jan Meert's way," answered Martin, and drew back the kirtle. "It was like this," he went on slowly. His hand still rested on the brown stain, and his face, like my own, was bent37 over that of the dead woman between us. "Even in the copse she heard the noise of the devil's work going on, and it drew her home, for love of Solignac it drew her home. She came back, that was her duty, being alone." He stopped, and his hand slipped up to the face. He had never loved Babette; chiefly, I think, because of her love for me: but now, with a strange tenderness he smoothed the wrinkles of her withered face, and I knew it was his repentant38 amends39 for many a hard word and harder thought. She had loved Solignac, she had died for love of Solignac, and if there had been strife40 between them it was forgiven for the sake of that love and death. "I could not," he went on, half to himself and half, it seemed, in humble41, apologetic explanation to her. "I was not alone, and so I could not come back. Monsieur Gaspard came first. Thou understandest, dost thou not, thou quiet one, that Monsieur Gaspard is always first? She came back," he resumed, looking again up at me and speaking briskly, "came back raging! My faith! don't I know the mood well! She found Jan Meert and his crew busy and she let loose her tongue. Solignac has failed in wit now and then, but it never bred cowards even in its women. Rats fight when cornered, and Babette was no rat. She fought with what weapon she had, and it cannot hurt her now to say she was bitter-tongued beyond all reason. Another man would have let her rail, but not Jan Meert. That was never Jan Meert's way; he answered her back, and there's his answer!"
"It was a foolish thing, that coming back," said I, my brain in such a whirl from the conflict within; rage, grief, resentment42, hate, warring to so confused a tumult43 that I hardly knew what I said.
"Is love foolish? Is duty foolish?"
"What could one, and that one a woman, what could she do?" I answered sourly. It was not that I did not love old Babette, it was not that I did not mourn for her, but realization44 was as yet far from me.
Martin made no reply, but the reproach in his eyes smote45 me. Down I went on my knees, my palms on either side the withered face.
"Old friend, old friend, how can I pay thee? How? How?"
"Look in her face for the answer and then look here," he said harshly, "Pay Jan Meert. Love takes no payment for love. Pay Jan Meert."
From the hard passionless face of the dead I looked up to the hard passionate46 face of the living, and laid my hand on the wound Jan Meert had made.
"By God! I will!"
As if there was no more to be said Martin rose briskly to his feet. Babette had done Hellewyl of Solignac a last service and one, in his opinion, worth dying for.
"That settles it, and hey! for Ghent," he cried gaily47, as if there were no such thing as ruin or sack or death in the world, and stooping, lifted her once more in his arms.
It was an ugly gruesome sight, and it made me shudder48, that leathern, wrinkled, smiling face of his looking satisfaction at me over that frowning mask of death, blind-eyed, and still staring defiance49. But Martin was as unconscious of indecorum as he was of offence. Nor was there even cause for mourning. Why should there be? The woman having done her duty, had fallen on sleep, and there was no more to be said.
Still briskly he retraced50 his steps the way we three had come, but it was only as he paused before the forced door that I divined his purpose.
"Not there!" I cried; "for God's sake not there, Martin; the thought is horrible."
But he only stumbled on up the step. Martin was losing his youth, and the burden in his arms weighed heavier than he would own.
"There's neither pick nor spade; would you leave her to the wolves? Horrible!" and again he paused, panting; "never a Hellewyl of them all, Seigneurs though they were, had so fine a burial. Look at the smoke, Monsieur Gaspard, and listen to the wind in the tree-tops."
The pall51 had lifted, and a steady flow of grey vapour flecked with sparks was already streaming east towards Courtray. With such a wind abroad the charred52 ends still smouldering in the heart of the pyre would yet set flying such a flag as would tell Jan Meert, even were he ten leagues away, that his work was well done. Martin was right. Better that than the wolves. The God who is Himself a consuming fire might be trusted to see to His own, and that which the cold earth gives up, flame will surely not hold back.
With all reverence53 we cleared a space as near the heart of Solignac as the heat and smoke and danger would permit. There we laid her, piling in—still with all reverence—the torn silks and tapestries54 that were the brightness of our house, the shattered spoils of raids by more than one generation of Hellewyls, intermixed with rafters and rough timber; beauty, glory, strength, all that was left of Solignac to round off the red grave of almost its last servant.
There we left her, and as we ended, there came the sudden roaring as of a furnace springing into furious heat from a dozen centres. Flame, fanned to sudden birth, spurted55, strengthened, leaped from splintered joist to shattered armoire, caught beams and flooring, sucked strength from their three hundred years of dryness, licked up in an instant the gaudy56 fripperies that hung like rent flags amidst the wreck18, soared up, soared outwards57, and streamed in smoke-tipped spirals flapping down the wind. Truly Martin was right; never had a Hellewyl of Solignac so grand a funeral as we gave to old Babette.
"It's hey for Ghent!" said Martin again, as we stood on the grass watching the sparks fly, but with hearts less heavy than might have been supposed. The very greatness of a catastrophe58 can be its own alleviation59. The spirit of a man rises within him to watch the crisis and face it down. "Hey for Ghent! or maybe, Cologne? And the sooner we are on the road the better. Which shall it be, Monsieur Gaspard, burgher or Emperor?"
"Neither," I answered; "the King and Paris."
"Paris?" and he looked his incredulity. It was a new thing for Monsieur Gaspard to have a will of his own. "Why to Paris?"
"How can we two face Jan Meert and his twenty brutes60?" I quoted. "We need backing, and we'll get it from Louis of France."
"From that old fox? From Louis the treaty-breaker? A cunning, coldhearted, cruel—for the Lord's sake, Monsieur Gaspard, let us keep out of his claws. When did Louis of France ever back anything but Louis?"
"Never, and that is why he'll back us. Listen, and see if I am as much a fool as you think. The Dauphin marries our Margaret of Flanders. The Dauphin's father, that cunning old fox, will desire excuses to meddle61 in the affairs of Flanders; we give him one, and to gain his own end, he helps us to gain ours."
"What right has he to meddle with Flanders?"
"The right of every just man to put down lawlessness, the right of The Most Christian62 King to right the wrong, the right of Louis of France to please himself—when he is strong enough! and the right of the third is greater than the other two."
"But he shuts himself up like a rat in a hole; no man goes near him."
"Monsieur de Commines is the King's good friend, Monsieur de Commines was my father's good friend, and is my cousin thrice removed. Monsieur de Commines will open the rat hole and let me in. The one thing that troubles me is how we are to reach Paris, scarecrows as we are and penniless."
"Scarecrows," answered Martin, looking ruefully at the stains and tatters that either from fire, smoke, or the ragged63 edges of splintered timber so disguised us that whether we were clad in silk or stuff, browns or crimsons64, no man could have told. That morning, even though the tryst65 was only with a peasant girl, I had put on my finest splendour, and now it was a thing of derision; "scarecrows, but not quite penniless; wait for me, Monsieur Gaspard."
Chuckling66, he half ran, half shuffled67 off into the wood in the opposite direction to that in which he had hidden Babette, and in five minutes was back, breathless, but his face still puckered68 with satisfaction.
"What came from Hellewyl goes back to Hellewyl, and where better could it go?" said he, holding out his hands. They were open, hollowed to a bowl, and in the hollow lay a little heap of coins to which patches of moist earth still clung. They were mostly silver, crowns and three-crown pieces, with here and there the red glint of a ducat. For thirty years Martin had served Solignac, heart, head and hand, and now, as the shadows of age darkened round him, the gains of his service failed to cover his two palms.
The thought of how we had taken so much and given so little smote me, and the tears that filled my eyes were in part shame.
"What are these, old friend?" and I put my hands behind my back.
"Bread and meat for the road to Paris."
"A Hellewyl of Solignac travels at his own charges."
"'Tis the right of the King—" he began.
"But I am no King," I cut in, "nothing but a homeless, ruined man."
"My King," he answered. "Take them, Monsieur Gaspard; would you shame an old friend? Your pardon, but the word is your own. Take them, of what use are they to me? If I had died last night, they'd have lain in the earth till some lout69 ploughed them up a hundred years hence."
But we compromised. They were my debt, but he should keep them, paying our way as we rode to Paris as friend and friend.
Thus it was that I turned my back for the first time on Solignac, travelling at the charges of my own servant and with no more gear in the world than the ragged, smoke-stained suit upon my back. Brigitta? To be frank, I had forgotten Brigitta, and Martin was too cunning a diplomatist to remind me of her.
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1
ushering
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的现在分词 ) | |
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pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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3
gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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watchfulness
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| 警惕，留心； 警觉（性） | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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12
puff
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| n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气 | |
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13
foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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triangular
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| adj.三角（形）的，三者间的 | |
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propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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buttressed
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| v.用扶壁支撑，加固( buttress的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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motes
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| n.尘埃( mote的名词复数 )；斑点 | |
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rubble
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| n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾 | |
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21
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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grudged
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| 怀恨（grudge的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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blessings
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| n.（上帝的）祝福( blessing的名词复数 )；好事；福分；因祸得福 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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dents
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| n.花边边饰；凹痕( dent的名词复数 )；凹部；减少；削弱v.使产生凹痕( dent的第三人称单数 )；损害；伤害；挫伤（信心、名誉等） | |
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frayed
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| adj.磨损的v.（使布、绳等）磨损，磨破( fray的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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blotches
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| n.（皮肤上的）红斑，疹块( blotch的名词复数 )；大滴 [大片]（墨水或颜色的）污渍 | |
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charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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grovelled
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| v.卑躬屈节，奴颜婢膝( grovel的过去式和过去分词 )；趴 | |
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unravel
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| v.弄清楚（秘密）；拆开，解开，松开 | |
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undone
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| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
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ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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35
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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reverently
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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repentant
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| adj.对…感到悔恨的 | |
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amends
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| n. 赔偿 | |
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strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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realization
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| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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45
smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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46
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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48
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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49
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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50
retraced
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| v.折回( retrace的过去式和过去分词 )；回忆；回顾；追溯 | |
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51
pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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52
charred
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| v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦 | |
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53
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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54
tapestries
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| n.挂毯( tapestry的名词复数 )；绣帷，织锦v.用挂毯（或绣帷）装饰( tapestry的第三人称单数 ) | |
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55
spurted
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| （液体，火焰等）喷出，（使）涌出( spurt的过去式和过去分词 )； （短暂地）加速前进，冲刺 | |
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gaudy
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| adj.华而不实的；俗丽的 | |
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57
outwards
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| adj.外面的，公开的，向外的；adv.向外；n.外形 | |
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catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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alleviation
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| n. 减轻，缓和，解痛物 | |
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brutes
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| 兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性 | |
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meddle
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| v.干预，干涉，插手 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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crimsons
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| 变为深红色（crimson的第三人称单数形式） | |
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tryst
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| n.约会；v.与…幽会 | |
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66
chuckling
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的现在分词 ) | |
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67
shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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68
puckered
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| v.（使某物）起褶子或皱纹( pucker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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69
lout
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| n.粗鄙的人；举止粗鲁的人 | |
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