Night was near at hand again and all were gone--all except Martin Ashurst and the pastor1, both of whom sat now upon the bridge of Montvert, their eyes fixed3 always on the crest4 of the hill which rose between the little town and the larger one of Alais. For it was from that situation that they expected to see at last the flash of sabres carried by the dragoons of de Broglie and the foot soldiers of de Peyre, Lieutenant6 General of the Province, to observe the rays of the setting sun flicker7 on their embrowned musketoon and fusil barrels, and to hear the ring of bridle8 chain and stirrup iron. That they would come on the instant that the intelligence reached Baville of what had been done in Montvert over night it was impossible to doubt. And then--well, then, possibly, since there were no human beings left to be destroyed except these two men waiting there, the village would itself be demolished9, burned to the ground. Such vengeance10 had been taken only a week ago on a similarly deserted11 bourg from which the inhabitants had fled, though silently and without revolt. It might be expected that the same would happen here.
All were gone, the men, the women and children; the old, the feeble, and the babes being carried by the stronger ones, or conveyed on the backs of mules12 and asses13. Also the cattle were removed--they would be priceless in the mountain fastnesses; even the dogs had followed at their masters' heels; upon those masters' shoulders and upon the backs of the animals the household gods, the little gifts that had come to them on marriage days and feast days, on christenings and anniversaries, had been transported.
The place was deserted except for those two men who sat there wondering what would be their lot.
That vengeance would be taken on them neither deemed likely; but that both would be haled before Baville they both felt sure. Buscarlet was known to be one of the Protestant pastors15 who, from the day when the Revocation16 of Nantes was promulgated17 seventeen years before, had fought strongly against his congregation attending the Romish masses as the Government had ordered them to do. He was a man in evil odour, though against him until the present time no overt18 act could be charged. But now--now after the events of the past night, with those dead Things lying there behind the hedge, what might he not be accused of?
"Yet," said Martin, as he leaned over the parapet of the bridge, glancing sometimes up at the ridge2 which rose between Montvert and Alais, expecting every moment to see the soldiers approaching, and sometimes watching the long weeds in the river as they bent19 beneath its swift flow, "yet of what can you be accused? You interceded20 for him," and he directed his eyes in the direction of the dead abbé, where he lay covered by a cloth, "besought21 them to show mercy, to return evil for good. Also those men, those attroupés, were not of this village nor of your flock. As well call you to account for the invasion of a hostile army or foreign levy22."
But again Buscarlet only shook his head, then answered:
"No, not of this village, nor of my congregation, but of the same faith--Protestants! Therefore accursed in Baville's and his master's eyes. That is enough."
As he spoke23, from far up in the heights toward Alais they heard the blare of a trumpet24 ring loudly and clearly on the soft evening air; a moment later and, on the white road that ran like a thread through the green slopes, they saw the scarlet14 coats of the horsemen gleaming; saw, too, a guidon blown out as its rider came forward against the wind; caught the muffled25 sound of innumerable horses' hoofs26. Then, next, heard orders shouted, and a moment later saw a large body of dragoons winding27 down the hillside slowly, while behind them on foot came the milices of the province.
"You see?" Martin said as he watched them. "Be calm. They can do you no harm."
And he leaned over the bridge again and continued to observe the oncomers.
Ahead of the main body, consisting of some hundred of cavalry28 and an even larger number of Languedoc milice or train bands, there rode three men abreast29. In the middle was one clad in a sober riding dress of dark gray; the others on either side of him were rich in scarlet coats much guarded with galloon, the evening sun flickering30 on the lace and causing it to sparkle like burnished31 gold, and with large laced three-cornered hats in which also their gold cockades shone, while he on the left wore the rich justaucorps à brevet, a sure sign not of a soldier of France alone, but of a soldier of high social rank and standing32.
"He in the middle," said Buscarlet, "is Baville, the Scourge33 of the Scourge. Be sure that when he comes with the soldiery the worst is to be dreaded34. That he deems his presence is necessary to insure fitting vengeance being taken."
"Fear not," said Martin. "They can not execute us here to-night; afterward35, inquiry36 will show that we have done nothing to deserve their vengeance. Be calm."
Amid clouds of dust from the road on which no rain had fallen for many days the cavalcade37 came onward38, reaching at last the farther end of the bridge from where these two men stood side by side; then the officer on the right gave the orders for all following to halt, and slowly he with the other two rode on to the bridge itself and up the slope to where Buscarlet and Martin stood.
"It is the Lieutenant General, de Peyre," Buscarlet whispered. "The other is the Marquis du Chaila, the dead man's nephew. O God! what a sight for him to see!"
"What has been done here?" said Baville, looking down at the two men on foot who stood close by where they had halted their horses, though not until he and his companions had turned their eyes to the burned house, from which little spiral wreaths of smoke rose vertically39 in the calm evening air. "What? And who, messieurs, are you?"
The quiet tones of his full rich voice, the absence of all harshness in it, almost startled Martin Ashurst. Was this the man, he wondered--or could the pastor have been mistaken?--of whose cruelty to the Protestants as well as his fierce and overbearing nature not only all the province rang, but also other parts of the land far remote from here? The man whose name was known and mentioned with loathing40 by the refugees in Holland and Switzerland, in Canterbury and Spitalfields?
"Who are you, messieurs?" he repeated quietly, "though I think I should know you, at least," and he directed his glance to the pastor. "Monsieur André Buscarlet, prédicateur of the--the--so-called Reformed Religion, if I am not mistaken."
"André Buscarlet," the old man replied, looking up at him; and now, Martin observed, he trembled no more, but answered fearlessly, "Protestant minister of Montvert and----"
"Where," exclaimed the young Marquis du Chaila, "my uncle has been barbarously murdered by you and your brood. Oh, fear not, you shall pay dearly for it. Where, vagabond, is his body?"
"Sir," said Martin, speaking for the first time, "your grief carries you into violent extremes. This gentleman whom you term 'vagabond' has had no part nor share in your uncle's murder. Neither has his flock. The deed was done by the refugees from the mountains. Monsieur Buscarlet attempted in vain to prevent it."
"Bah!" exclaimed the marquis. "You are another Protestant, I should suppose. Valuable testimony41! Who are you?"
"One who at least is not answerable to you. Suffice it that no person in this village had any hand in the abbé's murder, that it was done by the men of whom the pastor speaks."
"To me, monsieur, at least all persons are answerable," Baville interposed. "I am the king's Intendant. I must demand your name and standing."
"My name is----" he began, yet ere he could tell it a shout from the foremost dragoons who had dismounted startled all on the bridge. Some of these men had been engaged in tethering their horses close by the hedge, several of the animals indeed had already begun to crop the dusty grass that grew beneath it, and they had found the bodies.
"My God, my God!" the marquis almost shrieked42 as he bent over the abbé's form, the soldiers having led him to where it lay after he had hastily quitted the saddle. "Oh, my God! my father's brother slaughtered43 thus. Devils!" he exclaimed, turning round and glancing up the long street, imagining probably that the inhabitants were all within their houses. "Devils! was not his death enough, that you must glut45 your rage with such butchery as this? See, Baville--see, de Peyre, the wounds in his body. Enough to kill twenty men."
Looking down from their saddles at the murdered man's form, which they could observe very plainly over the hedge from the elevation46 at which they were, the Intendant and the leader of the troops shuddered47, the former turning white beneath the clear olive of his complexion48. Yet, even as Martin observed him blench49, he wondered why he should do so. Countless50 men and feeble women and children had gone to the gibbet, the fire, the wheel, and the rack, as well as to the galleys51 and the lash5, at this man's orders, unless all Languedoc and every Huguenot tongue lied. Why should he pale now, except it was because this retaliation52, this shifting of murder from the one side to the other, told of a day of reckoning that had begun, of a Nemesis53 that had been awakened54?
"Baville," the young man cried again, "Baville! Vengeance! Vengeance! He has died slaughtered at his post, as he knew he would die. But last week, at our house in Montpelier, he spoke of how he was doomed55 because he served God. Baville!--de Peyre! give the orders to fall on, to destroy all. Otherwise I make my way to the king of the north and cry on my knees for vengeance on these accursed heretics, these bloodthirsty Protestants, as they term themselves. Burn down their hovels, I say; slaughter44 them, exterminate56."
"Alas57, unhappy man!" exclaimed Buscarlet, still firm in his speech now, and undaunted before the distracted marquis, who had already torn his sword from its scabbard and stood before them gesticulating like a madman in his grief and rage. "What use to destroy empty houses, barren walls? Besides ourselves there is no living soul left in all Montvert."
"What!" the two other men exclaimed together in their surprise. "What! All gone? None left?"
And now on the Intendant's face there came another look, also the return of his dark colour, as he said:
"Gone, yet you proclaim their innocence58. Tell us in one breath that they are guiltless, in another that they have fled. Do the innocent flee?"
"They feared your cruelty. They knew that your Church spares not the innocent; that it punishes them alike with the guilty."
"Blasphemer!" Baville exclaimed, though still his voice was low and calm, belying59 the terrible accusation60 which lay beneath this word. Terrible anywhere in France--now pious61 by law!--but doubly so in the Cévennes.
"I blaspheme not," Buscarlet said, waxing even bolder. "Pause. Look back. Twenty-seven Protestants have been done to death by you in the past month----"
"Silence!" the other ordered, still in his unruffled voice, yet uttering words enough to affright the boldest, "or I will have you gagged; if that suffices not, strung up there," and he pointed62 to the lamp.
Then turning to the marquis, he said:
"Be sure your uncle shall be avenged63. Let them flee to the mountains, yet we will have them. Extirpate64 them like rats in a granary. Julien, the field marshal, has left Paris to assist in the holy work. Meanwhile, de Peyre, send your men into every house in the place; see if this abandonment is true. If not, if you find any, bring them before me. As for you, and you," directing a glance at the pastor and Martin, "you will sleep to-night in Alais. To-morrow a court will be held." Then he added, under his breath, as though talking to himself:
"You must be bold men. Otherwise you would have decamped too."
"Or innocent ones," Martin replied, hearing his words, low as they were. "You yourself have said it. Asked but now, 'Do the innocent flee?'"
The Intendant bit his lips; the riposte had gone fairly home. Then, while de Peyre gave his orders and told off some of the dragoons to enter and search every house in the village, and the marquis, who was in command of the milices, bade them take up the bodies carefully and cover them decently with their capes65, Baville glanced down at Martin, saying:
"Monsieur, I do not know you. You are not, I think, of this locality. Yet I observe you are of the better classes. Where is your property?"
"In La Somme, department of the Ile de France. I am a proprietor66; the property of Duplan La Rose is mine, such as it is."
Had he not in truth been the owner of this property he would have scorned to shelter himself beneath a falsehood. Had he been asked his faith it was his fixed resolve to declare it, as, had it been possible for Baville to recognise that he was an Englishman--which, after his earliest years being spent in France, was not so--he had determined67 to avow68 his nationality, no matter what the consequences might be. But so far the truth alone was necessary.
When his father waited long and eagerly for the time to come for the Stuart Restoration--as no follower69 of the Stuarts ever doubted it would come, sooner or later--he, hating Paris and all its garish70 dissipations under the then young and immoral71 king (the king now so old and self-righteous!), purchased this property from the Baron72 Duplan La Rose, a man himself broken and ruined by his participation73 in the outbreaks of the Fronde. Purchased it because all the Ile de France and the Pas de Calais were full of English refugees waiting like himself for happier days to come; also because, when the time did come, it would be near to England. And he dying, it became Martin's property.
Baville touched his hat as an acknowledgment of Martin's explanation, perhaps also as an acknowledgment of his position, since he was a great believer in les propriétaires as men who were almost always opposed to the murmurings and discontents of the canaille and les ordres bas, such as the wretches74 belonged to who had massacred the abbé and the others. And as he did so he said:
"Monsieur is therefore a visitor here only--to--perhaps"--and his eyes rested piercingly on Martin--"Monsieur Buscarlet?"
"Monsieur is," Martin replied, "a visitor here seeking for a lost person. A connection by marriage. A man who has been wronged, has partly wronged himself. Monsieur has lodged75 with Monsieur Buscarlet before."
"May I demand the name of the lost man?"
"Alas, monsieur, I do not know it. He discarded his own over forty years ago. That which he has adopted I can not tell you. Also he may be dead and my quest in vain."
"Would he be," and again his eyes stared fixedly76 into the eyes of the other man, "would he be, do you think, of--of--well--of Monsieur Buscarlet's religious faith?"
"He would."
"I hope you will find him, sir. If you do so, use your utmost endeavours to persuade him to abjure77 that faith. Otherwise the province of Languedoc will be no pleasant refuge for him henceforth, even though he has been here for the forty years you speak of. Now, sir," and he left this subject to speak of that which had brought him to Montvert, "I must beg you will accompany us to Alais. As a visitor to the neighbourhood and, as I suppose, a person not interested in our unhappy local troubles, you can give us much information as to how last night's murder was perpetrated. You are, I presume, willing to do so?"
"I am willing to speak as truthfully as I can on the matter. To speak as I do now, when I tell you that neither Monsieur Buscarlet nor any of the inhabitants of this place had any hand whatever in last night's doings."
"I shall--the Court will be--glad to be assured of that," Baville replied.
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1
pastor
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| n.牧师，牧人 | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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lash
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| v.系牢；鞭打；猛烈抨击；n.鞭打；眼睫毛 | |
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lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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flicker
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| vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现 | |
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bridle
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| n.笼头，束缚；vt.抑制，约束；动怒 | |
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demolished
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| v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光 | |
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vengeance
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| n.报复，报仇，复仇 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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mules
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| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
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asses
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| n. 驴，愚蠢的人，臀部 adv. (常用作后置)用于贬损或骂人 | |
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14
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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pastors
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| n.（基督教的）牧师( pastor的名词复数 ) | |
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revocation
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| n.废止，撤回 | |
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promulgated
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| v.宣扬（某事物）( promulgate的过去式和过去分词 )；传播；公布；颁布（法令、新法律等） | |
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overt
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| adj.公开的，明显的，公然的 | |
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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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interceded
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| v.斡旋，调解( intercede的过去式和过去分词 )；说情 | |
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besought
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| v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的过去式和过去分词 )；(beseech的过去式与过去分词) | |
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levy
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| n.征收税或其他款项，征收额 | |
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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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trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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hoofs
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| n.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 ) | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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burnished
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| adj.抛光的，光亮的v.擦亮（金属等），磨光( burnish的过去式和过去分词 )；被擦亮，磨光 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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scourge
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| n.灾难，祸害；v.蹂躏 | |
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dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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cavalcade
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| n.车队等的行列 | |
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onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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vertically
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| adv.垂直地 | |
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40
loathing
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| n.厌恶，憎恨v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的现在分词)；极不喜欢 | |
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41
testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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42
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43
slaughtered
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| v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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slaughter
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| n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀 | |
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glut
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| n.存货过多，供过于求；v.狼吞虎咽 | |
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elevation
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| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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47
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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blench
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| v.退缩，畏缩 | |
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countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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51
galleys
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| n.平底大船，战舰( galley的名词复数 )；（船上或航空器上的）厨房 | |
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retaliation
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| n.报复，反击 | |
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nemesis
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| n.给以报应者，复仇者，难以对付的敌手 | |
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54
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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exterminate
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| v.扑灭，消灭，根绝 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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belying
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| v.掩饰，与…不符，使…失望；掩饰( belie的现在分词 )；证明（或显示）…为虚假；辜负；就…扯谎 | |
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accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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61
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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62
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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avenged
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| v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的过去式和过去分词 )；为…报复 | |
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64
extirpate
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| v.除尽，灭绝 | |
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65
capes
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| 碎谷； 斗篷( cape的名词复数 )； 披肩； 海角； 岬 | |
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66
proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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68
avow
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| v.承认，公开宣称 | |
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69
follower
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| n.跟随者；随员；门徒；信徒 | |
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70
garish
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| adj.华丽而俗气的，华而不实的 | |
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71
immoral
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| adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的 | |
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72
baron
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| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
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participation
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| n.参与，参加，分享 | |
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wretches
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| n.不幸的人( wretch的名词复数 )；可怜的人；恶棍；坏蛋 | |
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75
lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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fixedly
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| adv.固定地；不屈地，坚定不移地 | |
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77
abjure
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| v.发誓放弃 | |
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