CHAPTER X
THE WOMAN AND THE PRIEST.
Gabrielle spent the afternoon of her Sunday in prayer and thought. Her young face was deep stained with tears when the vesper bell rang out over the forest; and for the first time since she had come to the château, the villagers remarked that she was not in church. But she had no heart to appear among them; and when the sun began to sink over the western woods, she was still pacing her chamber; at one moment chiding herself for the evil which had befallen; at the next, taking courage of her impulse to save her lover.
Child that she was, this conviction that she alone could save de Guyon gained strength every hour. It was the one substantial conviction chosen of all the confusing ideas which came upon her. Until this time, perhaps, she had scarce realised that she loved; but now passion broke the bonds, and stood before her questioningly. A deep longing to kiss the lips of her lover again, to stand with him where he should stand, to suffer with him when he should suffer, overwhelmed her. A week ago she would have laughed to scorn the suggestion that any man thus should come between her and the path she had chosen. But destiny was playing with her; it remained to be seen if it would crush her.
Until the dusk fell, she warred with the many devices which her brain wrought—rejecting this scheme, dallying with that. Her earliest impulse had been to write to the king, declaring her love boldly; concealing nothing in the hope that sincerity would prove the best of weapons. Anon, the impossibility of stirring any generous emotions in the heart of the "Well-Beloved" turned her to thoughts of her cousin Claude and of his influence. In any other case, she said, that influence would help her; but what would be its worth when pitted against the king's will! Nor had she other kinsman at the Court, but must come back to the remembrance of her slight relationship to the Marquis de Monnier, and to the fact that he was then at Nancy. The old President would befriend her if she could gain his ear; yet how would de Guyon fare in the between- while? Had not Pepin said that he would be in the Bastille before the week was out?
The vesper bell had ceased to boom in the tower of the chapel; the chanting of the choir in court and cloister was like the echo of some sweet celestial hymn; the cattle in the park were going down to the waters; the birds were roosting, when at length the mistress of the château made up her mind. If she had been tempted at one time to open her heart to the Abbé, who posed as her governor, she resolved when dusk had come that she would seek other counsel. The thought had come to her as an inspiration while she had been listening at her window to the music of the choir. In all the country round, she remembered that she had only one friend—and he was an exile and an outcast. But she would go to him in her need, and in his words would find consolation.
Nerved to the resolution by the dominating love which had come so swiftly, so stealthily into her life, she resolved also that she would go alone. Her girlhood shrank from any confidences. If de Guyon were to be saved, it would not be by proclaiming urbi et orbi that she loved him. Any sacrifice that she could make she would offer cheerfully. There were wild moments when she said that she would even yield to the king, if thereby she might help her lover; but this thought she was quick to repent and to beat from her mind. All her purity of soul revolted at it. She knew that if once Louis's lips touched her own, that never again could she bear de Guyon's kisses, or suffer his embrace.
It was dusk when she took her resolution; it was nearly dark when at last she quitted the château, hiding her face in the folds of a black cloak, and fleeing with light step to the distant woods. There was not a path in all the forest round that was unfamiliar to her; scarce a thicket she had not penetrated; a copse she had not explored. Darkness could not hinder her, nor the shades of night deter. Like some fairy of the glens, she passed now through unfrequented meadows; now through ravines hid in the darkness; now by black pools and bubbling streamlets. Often she would pause to listen to the snapping of the twigs or the rustle of the branches—but her ear told her that no human thing was near. She walked alone—a worthy child of the forest she loved.
Once in her flight, she passed the hut of some woodlanders who had grouped themselves about a fire of logs. They started up with oaths upon their lips when they heard her footstep; but observing her young face, they crossed themselves and called upon the saints. Or, again, she came of a sudden upon a rough fellow, a worthy tenant of the Caverne des Brigands, which she was approaching; and for a moment a savage thought possessed him, and he made a step towards her. But she looked him full in the face, and recognising her, he slunk away into the bramble like a boy that has been beaten. The little Huguenot was not as other women to such a one; she was a child of mystery, a guardian spirit breathing benevolence and charity and love; a creature of the heavens sent to do battle with devils stalking the forest. There was not a woodlander about the precincts of the château who did not in some way associate her with the Blessed Virgin. They called her sometimes a "daughter of Mary." And this was rather the outcome of their love than of their ignorance.
At the distance of half-a-mile or less from that dark place of the forest known as the Cave of the Brigands, Gabrielle began for the first time to find trouble of the way. She was now in the heart of an almost impenetrable wood, a wood where thorn and briar were knitted about the serried trunks, and sweet-smelling creepers twined ropes across her path. So heavy was the canopy of branches, so close did the bushes grow, that the dark of a moonless night reigned in all the grove. Even the cloudless sky above was hidden by the leaves; no path trodden of man was to be seen; the only note upon the silence was the ceaseless music of the nightingale, or the howling of the wolves. And through this wood, onward to its depths, the girl must pick her steps; often tearing her arms in the bramble, often feeling some beast or bird stirring at her very feet, often despairing of her mission.
In the heart of the grove, and when Gabrielle had told herself that she had mistaken the way and must retrace her steps, she came suddenly upon a little lawn of grass, and at this she cried aloud with pleasure. Hid in the trees upon the opposite side of the sward was a hut of logs, from the open door of which an aureole of light fell upon the grass, shining as a beacon of the wood warningly. And the girl's cry was heard and answered; scarce had it escaped her lips when the outcast Jesuit, who had warned de Guyon as he went to the château, stood in the doorway of the hut asking, "Who goes?"
"It is I, Gabrielle," she said, trembling in spite of herself.
"Merciful God, you!" cried the priest, holding his lantern high, that its rays might fall upon her face.
"Yes," she said, recovering her calm when she heard his voice; "I come to you for help—you will not refuse it to me?"
"I, child—what a thought!"
She followed him into the hut, which contained little but his bed of moss, his books of devotion, and his crucifix. She knew nothing of the devils tearing at the man's heart, of the hours when her face had stood between him and his prayers, when he had wrestled with her haunting image until the sweat stood upon his brow. To her, he was one of God's messengers—a man between whose soul and sin a great gulf was fixed. And while she offered him this whole worship of her trust, voices were crying in his ears and telling him that he loved her.
But while all this was passing in his mind he had found a log for her to sit upon, and setting the lantern between them, he fixed his questioning eyes upon her.
"My child," he said, "you are in trouble?"
She answered him very simply, telling him of the coming of the king's messenger, and of his arrest. But of her love, she had not as yet the courage to speak. Nor did the priest read her heart, as she looked for him to do.
"Well," said he, when he had thought long upon the matter, "and what is all this to you? The man came here with lies upon his lips. Why should you stand between him and his intrigues?"
"What he suffers, he suffers for me," she pleaded.
"Nay; what he suffers, he suffers for his ambition."
"But he carried my message."
"Which you have no proof that he delivered."
"I have his promise and I ask no more. Oh, you do not know him as I do!"
The priest raised his eyes quickly.
"You come here as his friend, then"
"I come here to save him."
"But why?—what is he to you?"
"He—he is my lover."
She had not thought that it would be so difficult to tell him, but now when the word was spoken her heart-strings were unloosed, and she continued passionately—
"Judge me not hastily, my father—only pray for me. I am a woman and I have a woman's heart. If I love, it is because my heart bids me to love. Indeed, it is not given us to say yes or no. A week ago, I believed that I should live alone always for Christ and His glory, but this has come into my life as a gift of God. Oh, I cannot turn from it, I cannot make myself other than I am."
The priest's hands were clenched, there was a strange buzzing in his ears, his brain seemed to burn while he listened to her words. He had been in some way the master of himself so long as she lived the virgin's life at the château; but now that she talked of love for another man, a fierce, passionate envy came upon him, and there was a moment when his strength seemed to ebb so that he could scarce wrestle longer with temptation.
"You forsake, then," he said sternly, "the faith to which Christ has called you; you thrust from you the companionship of the saints; you close your ears to the heavenly voices"
She fell upon her knees before him sobbing.
"No, no!" she exclaimed; "I forsake nothing as God is my witness—I only love."
He raised her up with a gentle hand. The generosity of his soul was prevailing over his humanity.
"My child," he said, "who am I to be your judge—or to say this is or this is not the will of God. May His Holy Spirit guide you!"
With this word, he knelt at his faldstool; and while she believed that he was offering a prayer for her, he warred anew with the impulses which possessed him, suffered all the agony of a soul in bondage. When he rose up at last, his eyes were full of kindness for her, and the touch of her hand no longer thrilled him.
"Come," said he, "you have not yet told me how I am to help you."
She looked up into his face and answered him frankly—
"Bring my lover to me."
She believed that he was all-powerful, a man above men, whose word was a command, whose will might work miracles. And he, knowing his weakness, was yet vain of her confidence.
"I—child," said he, "for whose body there is a ransom; I, whom the king would tear limb from limb; how shall I bring your lover back to you?"
"I cannot answer you. I have no other friend—I trust you. You will not let me suffer."
He was standing at the door of his hut now, and before he spoke again, he paced the grassy knoll which was his garden. The moon had risen above the forest while they talked, and all the woods were lit with the silver beams. There was exhilaration in the night-air; a breath of courage and of strength.
"Gabrielle," said the priest, waking suddenly from the spell which the beauties of the night had cast upon him, "is the king at his château?"
"He was there at dawn."
"Who brought the news?"
"Pepin, the guide."
"He carried a letter for the Abbé?"
"Yes."
"Ah!"
He stood for a moment erect, the moon shining upon his black hair, his eyes looking fondly upon the girl at his side.
"Child," said he, "there is but one way out of your difficulty—you must see the king."
"See him!"
"As I say, you must leave here at dawn and go straight to the château of Francis."
"But—oh my father—you know that he has sent for me."
"I know all; that is why I wish you to see him."
"And when I am there?"
"When you are there, I shall be there too."
"You—but they would kill you."
The Jesuit laughed a little bitterly.
"They have long asked my death," said he, "and yet I live. Fear nothing for me."
Selfishness is often the dominating note of love. Gabrielle heard in the priest's words only the promise that he would save de Guyon. And so great was her trust in this man's strength, that all her trouble seemed over when he bade her follow him to her home. She did not know, as she watched him striding along with the lantern's light dancing on their path, that he was thinking of Damiens, who had been torn limb from limb by wild horses. So also would they do to him when the king's men laid hands upon him.