‘It is far to where I left him,’ he said; ‘out there below La Vachère. And if thou didst reach him, mother, they would but tear thee from his side. The men were driven off in gangs to Luserna, and the women——’ He paused, and the dark look came again into his face. ‘The women were taken too, some of them, and the little ones—— Oh, mother, be satisfied! rest here, thou and Rénée, and if God pleases to hear my prayer I will come again, and bring my father, should I carry him on my shoulders.’
And so he left them; and for days, and yet again for days, they watched and waited for his coming back across the torrent, and round by the huge rocks that rose sharp and sheer from the water to the fringes of the pines. But they waited in vain.
And as the time wore on they saw from their point of vantage that the soldiers had left Rora, or only scoured the land at intervals; and Rénée ventured down from time to time to the desolated village, filling her basket with such fruits and food that the ruthless robbers had chanced to spare. Seeking, too, if there might be other fugitives perhaps more helpless and terror-stricken than themselves—to whom Madeleine and she could give a word of cheer or hand of help.
And so the spring deepened into summer, and the skies were stainless blue above them; and the sunlight of many blossoms shone over the grass; the pines shook their yellow dust in clouds into the scented air; and the brooms opened their dry seed-pods with sharp reports, as of fairy artillery.
It was hard to believe that only so few weeks ago human lives had been sobbed out in agony—there in that beautiful world—and that rage and cruelty had wrought their worst wickedness in the sacred name of Christ.
So quiet was it, that at last the two women went back to Rora, finding shelter amongst the ruins of what had once been their home. One or two other hunted and bereaved ones crept back also, like them waiting for news, hoping still in their faithful hearts that better times would come, and those so dear to them would be delivered from the jaws of death.
Rénée would look wistfully northward and westward, where the great violet peaks rose into the summer sky. Would Gaspard come that day? the next? Deferred hope that maketh the heart sick was heavy upon her; she longed to find her way down the valley to the outer world, and learn for herself what had befallen. Inaction and waiting were the hardest of trials to this girl, child of the mountain as she was.
Patience, Rénée! The time for doing will come. The blood of heroes does not flow uselessly in your young veins; ‘to do’ comes by nature to hearts like yours; ‘to wait’ is a lesson taught by care Divine.
Some stray reports penetrated even to the far recesses of this valley, the most southern of all the Vaudois dwelling-places. Some wandering folk would come from Vigne or Villaro, outcasts like themselves, whom they might question. Any well-to-do traveller, any body of men, any strangers who looked happy and well-fed, must be avoided and hidden from, for they would certainly prove to be enemies, who considered all the Vaudois to be under the ban of the Church, and therefore to be driven to a Luserna prison, or hunted down and slain.
But from one and another the story was brokenly gathered—the story of what had chanced beyond the hills, and what sort of measure the duke had dealt to his conquered people.