CHAPTER XIV
THE PILGRIMAGE
From far and near the peasants and the people of the towns andvillages, joined in the customary annual descent upon--or ascentto--the Mount. None was too poor, few too miserable, to undertake thejourney. A pilgrimage, was the occasion called; but although certainreligious ceremonies were duly observed and entered into by some withfanatical warmth, many there were, who, obliged to pay tithes,nourished the onerous recollection of the enforced "ecclesiasticaltenth" to the exclusion of any great desire to avail themselves of thecompensating privilege of beholding and bowing before the sacredrelics. To these recalcitrant spirits, license and a rough sort ofmerrymaking became the order of the hour.
Early in the morning the multitude began to arrive--in every manner ofdilapidated vehicle, astride starved-looking donkeys and bony horses,or on foot. Many who had camped out the night before, by wayside or inforest, brought with them certain scanty provisions and a kitchen potin which to boil thin soup, or some poor makeshift mess; others cameempty-handed, "pilgrims" out at the elbow and shoeless, trusting tofortune for their sustenance, and looking capable even of havingpoached in one of the wide forests they had traversed, despite apenalty, severe and disproportionate to the offense, for laying hand onany lord's wild birds or rabbits.
Savage men; sodden men--good, bad and indifferent! Like ants throngingabout the hill, they straightway streamed to the Mount; took possessionof it, or as much as lay open to them; for around the top, chosen abodeof the Governor, extended a wall; grim, dark and ominous; bristlingwith holes which seemed to look blackly down; to watch, to listen andto frown. Without that pretentious line of encircling masonry, theusual din, accompaniment to the day and the presence of so many people,prevailed; within, reigned silence, a solemn hush, unbroken by even asentinel's tread.
"I shall be glad when it's all over!" Standing at the window of herchamber the Lady Elise had paused in dressing to look out upon thethrong--a thousand clots upon the sand, dark moving masses in thenarrow byways, and motionless ones near the temporary altars.
"Oh, my Lady!" Her companion, and former nurse, a woman about fiftyyears of age, ventured this mild expostulation.
"There, Marie! You can go!"
"Yes, your Ladyship--"
"One moment!" The slender figure turned. "This fastening--"
In an instant the woman was by her side.
"Have you heard anything more about the prisoners, Marie?" abruptly."Those who were tried, I mean?"
"Nothing--only Beppo said they are to be hanged day afterto-morrow--when the pilgrimage is over."
"Day after to-morrow!" The brown eyes looked hard and bright; thesmall white teeth pressed her lip. "And the man my fa--the Governorhad--whipped from the Mount--you have heard nothing more of him--wherehe has gone?"
"No, my Lady; he seems to have disappeared completely; fled thiscountry, perhaps, for those islands where so many like him," halfbitterly, "have gone before!"
The girl looked up in a preoccupied manner. "Poor Marie! Your onlysister died there, didn't she?"
"Yes, my Lady; I never saw her after she left France with her husbandand baby girl. He was an unpatriotic fellow--Pierre Laroche!"
"No doubt," said the Governor's daughter absently, as the otherprepared to leave the room.
Alone, the girl remained for several moments motionless before thegreat Venetian mirror; then mechanically, hardly looking at thereflection the glass threw back at her, she finished her toilet. Thistask accomplished, still she stood with brows closely drawn; afar theflute-like voices of the choir-boys arose from different parts of theMount, but she did not seem to hear them; made a sudden quick gestureand walked toward the door in the manner of one who has arrived at someresolution.
Passing down a corridor, she reached an arched opening whose massivedoor swung easily to her touch, and let herself out by a private way,which had once been the ancient abbot's way, to an isolated corner of asmall secluded platform. From this point a stairway led up to apassage spanning a great gulf. Below and aside, where the red-tiledhouses clung to the steep slope of the rock, fluttered many flags; yetthe girl did not pause either to contemplate or admire. Only when herglance passed seaward and rested on the far-away ocean's rim of light,did she stop for an instant--mid-way on the bridge--then, compressingher lips, moved on the faster; down the incline on the other side; upwinding stairs between giant columns, reaching, at length, that brightand grateful opening, the cloister. With an unvarying air ofresolution she stepped forward; looked in; the place was empty--silentsave for the tinkling of the tiny fountain in the center.
"Are you looking for some one, my Lady?"
The voice was that of Beppo, who was regarding her from an angle in thecloister walk.
"I am looking for his Excellency. I suppose he is--"
"In the apartments of state, my Lady. But--"
The girl frowned.
"But, but!" she said. "But what?"
"His Excellency has left word--he was expecting a minister fromParis--that no one else was to be admitted; the matter was so importantthat he wished no interruptions."
She had already turned, however; moved on past him without answer. Atthe inner entrance to the "little castle" or chatelet, which presentlyshe reached, the girl stopped. Here, without, in the shadow of twohuge cylindrical towers, that crowned the feudal gate-house, a numberof soldiers, seated on the steps, clinked their swords and talked;within, beneath the high-vaulted dome of the guard-room lolled thecommandant and several officers on a bench before a large window.Immediately on her appearance they rose, but, merely bowing stiffly,she started toward a portal on the left. Whereupon the commandantstarted forward, deferentially would have spoken--stopped her, when atthe same moment, the door she was approaching opened, and the Governorhimself appeared. At the sight of her he started; a shade of annoyancecrossed his thin features, then almost immediately vanished; his coldeyes met hers expectantly.
"I have been told you were very busy, yet I must see you; it is veryimportant--"
A fraction of a moment he seemed to hesitate; then with an absent air:"Certainly, I was very busy; nevertheless--" he stepped aside;permitted her to pass, and softly closed the door. With the samepreoccupied air he walked to his table before one of the largefireplaces whose pyramidal canopies merged into the ribs of thevaulting of a noble chamber, and, seating himself in a cushioned chair,looked down at a few embers.
"I came," standing, with her fingers straight and stiff on the coldmarble edge of the table, the girl began to speak hurriedly,constrainedly, "I wanted to see you--about the prisoners--"
He did not answer. Gently stroking his wrist, as if the dampness fromsome subterranean place had got into it, he evinced no sign he hadheard; and this apathy and his apparent disregard of her awoke morestrongly the feeling she had experienced so often since that day in thecloister, when he had promised to set free the servant of the BlackSeigneur; had kept his word, indeed, but--
"Can't you see," she forced herself to continue, "after what the manSanchez thought--suspected about me, what he said that day at theMount, after what he, the Black Seigneur, did for me"--the Governorstarted--"that you, if you care for me at all," he looked at herstrangely, "at least, should--"
"As I told you the other day," his accents were cold, "why concernyourself about outlaws and peasants clamoring for 'rights'!"
"But it _is_ my concern," she said passionately. "Unless--"
"Neither yours nor mine," he answered in the same tone. "Only thelaw's!"
"The law's!" she returned. "_You_ are the law--"
"Its servant!" he corrected.
"But--you could spare their lives! You could deal with them moremercifully!"
"The law is explicit. In the King alone rests the power to--"
"The King! But before word could reach him--"
"Exactly!" As he spoke, the Governor rose. "And now--"
"You will not hear me?"
"If
there is anything else--"
Her figure straightened. "Why do you hate him so?" she askedpassionately. "You have hastened their trial, and would carry out thesentence before there is time for justice. And the man whom that dayyou ordered whipped from the Mount--after letting me think him safe!After all that his master did for me! Why was he lashed? Because ofhim he served or of the old Seigneur before that? I heard you askabout him--of his having gone to America? Why did you care about that?"
"You seem to have listened to a great deal!"
"You seem to have listened to a great deal."]
"And why did he go to America?" she went on, unheeding. "Did you hatehim, too? What for?"
"If you have nothing else to talk about--" He glanced at the door.
"And the lands!" she said. "They were his; now they are yours--"
"Unjustly, perhaps _you_ think."
"No, no!" she cried. "I didn't mean--I didn't imply that. Of coursenot! Only," putting out her hands, "I try to understand, and--you havenever taken me into your confidence, _mon pere_! You have beenindulgent; denied me nothing, but--I don't want to feel the way I havefelt the last week, as if--" quickly she stopped. "No doubt there arereasons--although I have puzzled; and if I knew! Can't you," abruptly,"treat me as one worthy of your confidence?"
"You!" he said with quiet irony. "Who--_listen_!"
The girl flushed. "I had to, because--"
"And who misrepresent facts, as in the case of--Saladin!"
"But--"
"How long," standing over her, "were you on the island?"
"I--don't know!"
"You don't?" His voice implied disbelief.
"Part of the time I was unconscious--"
"In the watch-tower with him!"
She made a gesture. "Would you rather--"
"What did he say?"
The girl's eyes, that had been so steadfast, on a sudden wavered."Nothing--much."
"And you? Nothing, too? Then how was the deception devised--the pactentered into--"
Her figure stiffened. "There was no pact."
"Treason, then? The law holds it treason to--"
"You are cruel; unjust!" she cried. "To me, as you were to him. Thatold man you had whipped! I wonder," impetuously, "if you are so to allof them, the people, the peasants. And if that is the reason they haveonly black looks for me--and hatred? As if they would like to curseus!"
He turned away. "I am very busy."
"_Mon pere_!"
He walked to the door.
"Then you won't--won't spare them?"
He opened wide the door. Still she did not move, until the sight ofthe commandant without, the curious glance he cast in their direction,decided her. Drawing herself up, she walked toward the threshold, and,bowing perfunctorily, with head held high, crossed it.
The Lady of the Mount Page 14