“Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky.”
MADAME LARACHETTE’S malady was nervous fever. Not that Madame Meniet or Babette, her only physicians, called it by that name. They knew nothing of nerves in theory, and very little by experience; but they had a traditional code of medicine and surgery, according to which they treated all cases. The prescriptions of this code were severe; doses were violent, bleedings and blisterings frequent. It seems wonderful that patients did not oftener succumb under such energetic treatment. But the simple frugal life of the Desert braced the bodily frame to endurance, as the strong fervent piety, nourished upon the New Testament, the Psalms, and the exhortations of the pastors, nerved the spirit to heroism. Moreover, in medicine as in other things, common sense and experience exercised a beneficial influence, preventing a too rigid adherence to traditional rules.
Madame Larachette began to recover, though slowly, with infinite suffering to herself, and scarcely less to those around her. An imperious temper, a heart half brokers, and nerves jarred and strained by fever, formed an apparatus of torture more cruel for the patient than even for those who were ministering to her wants. But although Annette and Madeleine suffered keenly, each for the other rather than for herself, the illness in the house proved in some respects a relief and blessing. Had Annette been left, during that dreary interval, only to watch and pray for those she loved, mind and body would probably have sunk under the strain. But even the dungeons of Montpellier, where two most dear to her were awaiting their doom, sometimes faded from her thoughts whilst the duties and cares of the sick room engrossed and claimed them.
In little Madeleine she had a most efficient helper. Hers was already the woman’s heart of loving self-sacrifice, and the woman’s true blessing:
“A child’s kiss
Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;
A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich;
A sick man helped by thee shall make thee whole;
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest.”
René watched the child with wonder, as if she were some fair bud unfolding before him into a rare and beautiful flower. At first he assumed, without consideration, that she merely stood in the shadow of her mother’s grief, reflecting her feelings in a dim, childlike way. But he discovered gradually, and by slight signs and tokens, that the quiet, silent little girl was taking the family sorrow to her heart after a manner entirely her own.
Madeleine was in everything a Majal, not a Meniet. The broad open forehead, the candid blue eyes, the firm sweetness―or sweet firmness―of the finely-molded mouth, were outward tokens none could mistake. Claude, on the other hand, showed hitherto his father’s likeness only; although there was hidden in that yet unwrought mine a vein of the finer ore of his mother’s nature, which might be brought to light in after years. Now he was merely a stout, rosy, dark-eyed boy, with more beauty of form and color than of expression, full of fun and merriment, and very passionate. He delighted in play, sunshine, toys, sweetmeats, as his father frankly and innocently enjoyed the pleasant things that fell to his lot; and, like his father, he enjoyed sharing them as much as having them.
As often happens, the boy, who resembled his father, clung far more fondly to his mother; while the girl, who was her mother’s reflection, idolized her father. But there is no reserve so sensitive, so shrinking, as that of a child of unusually deep feelings and mature character. Not even her mother guessed how Madeleine mourned in secret for that beloved father, who could never come home to them again; who would be doomed to sit day and night, unsheltered in sunshine or frost, on the narrow bench of a galley, most probably until he died. Many a fearful story, only too true, had she heard of the sufferings of the confessors at the galleys. Of these stories she never spoke; but she pondered them in her heart, and often lay awake in the hours of darkness with that childish heart strained and racked, as they rose before her in all their shifting scenes of horror; one thing only alike in all―the victim’s face―that face she loved best on earth.
She loved Majal also, very tenderly; yet for him she did not mourn. A great awe and mystery, which her childish sympathies could not penetrate, hung over his fate. He seemed far away, wrapped in the strange sad glory of martyrdom, which, like a radiant mist, “enwound him fold by fold,”
“Until himself became as mist
Before her; moving ghostlike to his doom.”
Soon after René’s arrival at Mazel, there was a long day of storm and fitful rain, dreary within and without. Madame Larachette had been very ill, and very restless and impatient. The previous night had brought no sleep to Annette, and the morning was filled with the petty cases and duties of the sickroom. But at length, when the gloom of the winter afternoon began to deepen, she was persuaded by Babette and “the children” (as she called René and Madeleine) to take a little much-needed rest. The watch beside her grandmother devolved on Madeleine; Babette prepared supper; and René attended to the cattle. While thus occupied, the stormy wind bore to his ears a sweet sound of distant bells, which, though he heard, he scarcely heeded. His work done, he came back to the empty sitting room, now half in darkness, and lounged idly, in weary disheartened mood, upon one of the oak settles.
He had remained for some time without changing his position, when the door opened quickly and noiselessly, and Madeleine―a white ghost-like figure, in her little cloak of homespun, home-bleached wool―ran past him to the darkest comer of the room. There she knelt, and buried her face in her hands. René at first thought she was weeping, and would fain have tried to comfort her; but, greatly to his surprise, her gestures and half-smothered exclamations showed passion rather than grief. The small foot stamped the oaken floor, and the slight frame quivered, as, unconscious of his presence, she murmured, “Cruel, wicked words! Oh, grandmother, how could you speak them!”
René was not only surprised, but alarmed. He came softly to her side; but he could not have told afterward, nor could she, by what half-uttered words, by what light touches, he sought to soothe her. After a while tears came to her relief―then the brief passion was over. She tried hard to restrain her sobs; exercising a degree of self-control rather mournful to see in so young a child. “I will be good now,” she said with simplicity.
“It is Madame Larachette who is not good,” René answered bluntly.
“Had she said anything else, I would not have cared. But it was cruel to say of him―of him who always thought for everyone before himself―that he was over-bold; that he might have known he was watched, and ought not to have ventured here! And oh, René!―that he was the cause of all our sorrows, and it had been good for us never to have seen his face! How dared she?” Once more a crimson flush mounted to the child’s white forehead, and the blue veins swelled and throbbed.
René’s wrath was greater than even hers. Yet the aged, broken-hearted woman, from whom the desire of her eyes―her brave and affectionate son―had been taken at a stroke, deserved pity, not anger. It was in the anguish of her soul that she cast bitter words, like arrows, around her; little caring whom, or where, they struck.
“I must be wise,” Madeleine said, again trying to recover herself. “Il faut être sage” is always the first lesson impressed on the French child. “I must comfort mother, and take care of her. And I ought to be kind and loving to the poor grandmother. She never meant the words she said.”
“You are always kind and loving, Madeleine,” René maintained stoutly. “And you always comfort everyone.”
“Ah, René, you don’t know. That night―” Madeleine’s voice sank to a whisper and she drew closer to René. “That night, even little Claude was quiet and brave; while I thought of no one’s sorrow but my own, and troubled every one.”
Madeleine had never spoken of that night before. René said gently, “But then Claude did not understand, I suppose?”
“No; of course he did not. Oh, René! why does God let us be so happy, and not tell us, even in a whisper, when sorrow is coming? I often think of the evening before. We all sat round the fire, listening to my uncle’s stories of what he saw when he went over the mountains to take that other pastor’s place. Claude and I knew he must go long before daybreak, so we could not see him again. Even the grandmother did not forbid us to stay as long as we liked. At last it grew very late, and Claude fell asleep in his arms. He carried him to our room, and I followed. I was soon in bed and asleep. And then―” She stopped and shuddered. “I can’t tell you how it all happened. I awoke suddenly in terror. There were lights everywhere, and footsteps, and voices. I got up and dressed. Looking out of the window, I saw men with steel caps, matchlocks and bayonets, standing under the trees of the orchard. There were men too, in the house―everywhere. They searched every place, even our room; wakening Claude, who was terrified, and cried for our mother. I wished to go to her also; but we were told to stay where we were, and not dare to stir, for our lives. Then we heard a great noise and trampling of horse, for the Commandant of St. Argrève had been sent for, and was come. After that, all was quiet for a long time. Claude fell asleep again; I sat on the bed, shivering with cold and fear. At last Babette came in weeping, and said our father asked for us; we must come and bid him farewell. She dressed Claude quickly, and led us both downstairs. René, until then I did not know that our father, too―”
René stroked the small hand tenderly, but did not speak. Presently Madeleine went on. “We were brought into this room. A blaze of torches and of soldiers’ weapons seemed to fill the place. But through all, I saw him.”
“M. Majal?” René asked involuntarily.
“No. I saw no one but my father. He sat near the table; his head bowed over it, buried in his hands. Mother stood beside him. Her face was sad and white; but she was quite still and calm. She held on her arm my, father’s warmest cloak, ready for him to put on (for the snow was heavy), and that comforted me―it made this strange going away look a little more like others I remembered. I took Claude’s hand, and we went up to him together. He raised his head, took Claude in his arms, and kissed and blessed him. Claude only wept quietly―he did not understand all. Then my tum came. I felt his arms round me, I saw his tears; I wept too, and clung to him. I think I cried out―said no one should take him from us. I don’t know. I can tell no more.”
“Do not try,” said René, gently; for the child was weeping and trembling.
“One thing more I must tell. Babette and the rest all say they tried to part us, but could not loose my hold, so I clung. But I remember nothing until my uncle’s hand touched me―oh, René, so gently!―yet I had to obey that touch. I could not struggle, or even sob aloud. He took my hand in his, and led me to my mother. ‘You must comfort her, Madeleine,’ he said. That was all.”
“And was that his last farewell?” asked René.
“It was. But oh, René, my father! my father!”
“Your father you may see again one day, even on earth,” René said. The bitter tears shed so lately over his own father’s grave deepened his sympathy with Madeleine’s sorrow; and he was at no loss for tender words with which to comfort her.
But though he heard many things from Madeleine’s lips in after years, never again did he hear aught of that fatal night. Yet it left upon the childish heart an impression never effaced. To comfort her mother became thenceforward the law of Madeleine’s Life: no tears of selfish sorrow must hinder that, or any work for others given her to do.
René quite understood that the subject was dismissed. After a pause he asked, gently, “Don’t you hear the sound of church bells through the wind?”
“I have been hearing them all day since early morning,” Madeleine answered, looking at him through the twilight with blue eyes still full of tears. “They are the bells of St. Argrève. Why are they ringing?”
“Don’t you know? Our Catholic neighbors are keeping holiday; for today, they say, Christ was born.”
“I thought in my dream this morning that I was listening to the psalms the angels sing over the ruined temples,” Madeleine said.
“Do they sing psalms there?” René asked. “I never knew that.”
Madeleine told him the beautiful legend that still lingers amongst the children of the persecuted Huguenots. “When my uncle came from the South, he said the old people there assured him that when, after the Revocation, their fathers went by night to weep over their ruined temples, they often heard the angels singing in the sky above them. And as they listened, they recognized their own beloved psalms, that they used to sing there in the old happy days before the temples were destroyed.”
“Is that true? Does he believe it?” René asked, prudently holding his own judgment in suspense.
“He said it was true,” Madeleine answered. “Only the songs were in their own hearts, not in the sky; and the names of the angels who sang them were Faith, Hope, and Love. And this was what they sang: ‘The Lord shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all her waste places, and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found therein; thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.’ Mother found the words for me afterward, and I learned them by heart. This morning I thought I heard the angels singing ‘thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.’ I was very sorry to awake and find it was a dream.”
Annette came into the room at that moment, with a lamp in her hand. “Of what are you talking, my children, here in the dark?” she asked.
“We are saying the bells are ringing for Christmas Day,” René answered.
“I know it,” she rejoined. “We also should be glad and rejoice, since for us there is born a Saviour, even Christ the Lord. After supper, we will read of the star and the shepherds, and the angels’ song of peace and goodwill.”
Yet it was not that story they read after all. The great multitude of the heavenly host, lighting up the midnight sky with the sudden blaze of their starry wings, were too dazzling for those tear-dimmed eyes. They took refuge in the shadow that is dearer than the brightest light of earth―or heaven―the shadow of the cross. And there weeping eyes and weary hearts found rest.
Only three and thirty years did the Child for whose birthday the bells were ringing at St. Argrève, and throughout the world, spend upon earth. And of none of these, save the last three, have we almost any record. Yet in every land, in every age, have the sons and daughters of earth loved Him with a love greater than any they have borne to their nearest and dearest. When the name of husband or wife, of mother or child, ceases to thrill the loosening chords of life, the dying pulse still leaps, the dying heart still throbs, at the name of Jesus Christ.
For that Name, the young Pastor of the Desert, Majal Désubas, was even then going to death; not in peace alone, but in “joy unspeakable, and full of glory.” He was but one amongst thousands of whom history tells us; and there were tens of thousands more, of whom no record remains, save that which is written on high.
Let those who refuse to believe in miracles account, if they can, for that great miracle, ever new―that wonderful love of Christ, of which even the dim reflection, in poor human hearts, so truly “passeth knowledge.”