Amy Ella Blanchard

“ A kind hand was laid upon her shoulder. “My child,” said Joachim van der Deen, “why are you here alone? God has not forsaken you.”
Alaine dropped her head on the good man’s arm. “I am desolate, desolate,” she moaned. “If we had but died together; but now, this moment, he may be enduring tortures such as I never dreamed of. Ah-h!” she shrieked in her despair and fell to the ground, hiding her face, as if she would shut out the frightful possibilities that her misery suggested to her. ”

“ Alaine whispered, hoarsely, “she comes perhaps to ask your forgiveness; she comes to seek you. Lendert, Lendert, I must save her. No, no, hold me not; I tell you it is I who must go. Do you not see that one of those out there is François Dupont? Another is Ricard. I shall not fall into the hands of enemies, for they will recognize that I am French and will think me here a prisoner. I must go. Lendert, if you love me, let me go!”
“I cannot. I will not see you killed before my very eyes. They will fire before they understand.” ”

“ I know what a great love is, and I respect yours. Go with it to Mademoiselle Hervieu and say, I am François Dupont’s gift to you. I love you so deeply that I can even endure it that he whom I hate has been the means of liberating me and that it is from his hands that you receive me back to your heart. I do not ask your forgiveness, Lendert Verplanck; only angels can forgive utterly, and it is an angel who waits for you there in New Rochelle. ”

“ The poor old one, he has never missed a day in going to the spot where he landed, to turn his eyes toward his beloved France and to lift up his voice in prayer and song. He is smitten with a great home-sickness, is Papa Renaud. But me, I never wish to see France again; it holds too many graves. Ciel! when I think of how many of them, I am affrighted by the number.”
Alaine laid a caressing hand on her shoulder. “I do not wonder, my poor Mathilde; one who alone of all her family is left must feel so. As for me, I know not, and so I still long for France if it contain my father. ”

“ Into Jeanne’s voice crept a note of love and longing akin to Alaine’s. “We have been sorely afflicted. The waves and the billows have gone over us both. It is a wonderful thing this love of woman for man. None knows how wonderful or how great but those who have felt it. And none but they can tell how much a human soul can suffer. I will speak to M. Verplanck, and I think he will understand and will be patient also. It is very hard for youth to be patient,” she continued, half to herself. “One must think of the things for which one must be thankful, then it will not be so hard. ”

“ She leaned her forehead on the window-sill, and back to her remembrance came those peaceful days at home in France before those hours of terror threatened her; then came the recollection of the quiet dwelling in New Rochelle, the good pious parents, the simple, earnest, happy ways. “I know now,” she said, rising. “No one, not even my father, would have me seem to renounce my faith for any material good, nor have me live a lie. Die will I, and die must my father, but we will not, we cannot be treacherous to our friends nor our faith. ”

“ Nothing in the world smelled so sweet as fresh sun-dried linen, thought Alaine as she watched Michelle heaping the white pile upon her strong arms; unless, indeed, Alaine reflected a moment later, it be a loaf baking in the oven, yet even that did not suggest odorous grass and winds laden with the fragrance of hedge and wood. She lay in the long grass, chin in hands, her brown eyes wandering over the low-growing objects which her position brought easily within her vision. ”

“ It is for France you will do this; not for faith, nor for freedom, nor for favor, but for France. She is at war with England, and for her honor, her glory, we would know how stands this colony of Yorke. You know as well any other—you are not wanting in wit and wisdom and experience—that disaffection is at work in the colony; that Leisler holds the fort; that Nicholas Bayard and Phillipse and Van Cortlandt are his enemies; at such a time, when all is confusion and there is no unity at home, it is the time for a blow to be struck from the outside. ”

“ Is it not rather Étienne who should marry her?”
“Étienne!” François clinched his fist. “He shall never have her. At first—but I will not go into that,—it is sufficient that now I wish to marry [179] her, and I shall move heaven and earth to accomplish my object.”
“Softly, softly, my son. Heaven is not to be moved for the accomplishment of human desires.”
François laughed. “Then I will say that I mean to use every human endeavor to make it possible to marry Alaine Hervieu, and when a resolution takes possession of me I am not one to give it up easily.” ”

“ François looked thoughtfully seaward. “I? No, I do not. As I have told you, I was never an enthusiast in matters of religion. What shall I say?”
“More depends upon the manner of saying than upon the words,” replied Father Bisset, astutely. “One should know well how to choose his words. It is a pity that you are not a more saintly man,” he added, as it were, regretfully.
“Then, my dear Father, I must rely upon you, and shall commit the matter into your hands, first exacting a promise from you that you will not lose sight of Alaine a moment till she is safely established.” ”

“ I will not have you mixed up in them, neither will I allow good M. Bayard to suffer; and as for you, you scheming monster, I am not sure what is bad enough for you. Go to Manhatte if you must, go to-morrow, Papa Louis, we can manage without you. Adieu!” And she lightly blew him a kiss from the ends of her fingers.
“To Manhatte!” cried Mère Michelle, when her husband announced his intention of an early start. “And for why? Politics? Many a better man has been ruined by them. For my part I advise you to remain at home and watch your garden, your fields, your family. ”

“ By the huge fireplace hung the warming-pan, and there was a brass candlestick upon the shelf above it. A gun and powder-horn were hung within easy reach of Papa Louis’s arm. In the fireplace swung two iron pots on long cranes, and at the side hung a bright kettle. Two spinning-wheels, of course, held their places, but now their drowsy hum was hushed, for Alaine, stepping briskly back and forth, prepared the supper. From time to time she looked out of the open door toward the barn just beyond the garden, now brave in summer blossoms. ”

“ The recognition was mutual; the red-faced, testy man who confronted the pale young Huguenot raised his heavy stick. “Dog of a Huguenot! Knave! Vile renegade! You dare to return and face me!” The stick descended upon Pierre’s head and shoulders, blow after blow fell until, bruised and unconscious, he lay at his master’s feet, to remain there till some one could be sent to take him up and bear him to the slave’s quarters on the plantation, there to lie, bereft of reason, for days. “He shall have the full benefit of the lash when he is able to stand up!” ”

“ I do you wrong, I who should cherish you and defend you from unkindness and suspicion. I am to-day, as one would say, at odds with myself. Petite émigrée, pauvrette, fifille, I am a stupide. I ought to have seen why your eyes have all day been triste and your mouth so wistful. It is not the kisses of a husband for which you sigh, but for those of a father. Go, then, star of my life, and I will add my prayers to yours.”
Alaine, overcome at this humility, embraced her and called her dear mamma and her always beloved Michelle, and then she turned to go. ”

“ Gerard has told me why he went.”
Alaine let her hands lie idle in her lap for a moment and looked mournfully out of the window. The year was past, but there was no Pierre to claim her, and no Lendert to step in between her and duty. “In what strange ways are our doings ordered,” she said, gravely. “We mourn and sigh and fret over the difficulties in our pathway, and before we know it some convulsion of nature has removed them and we walk for evermore through a twilight world in which no stumbling is possible. With the danger we lose the light.” ”

“ A few steps away was the Rue Harenguerie, and here in the midst of the cries and chatterings of the fish-wives it was easy to lose one’s self. Across on the opposite bank was the favorite promenade of the ladies of the town. Alaine had often been there with her aunt among the careless pleasure-seekers, but now she watched anxiously the stolid countenance of Michelle, who elbowed her way through the market, and at last stopped upon its outskirts, where, after some chaffering with a sharp-eyed man, she appeared satisfied, and turned with a smile to her charge. ”

“ Alaine nodded. “I remember the couplet which Papa Louis taught me,—
‘Plus a me frapper on s’amuse,
Tant plus de marteau on y use.’
But to tell you the truth, Pierre, I am not a patient being. I am full of indignation many times a day, and I wonder if I will ever be called a patient Huguenot. That anvil, it is because of Beza’s words that we have it for an emblem, is it not so? I like better the marigold myself.”
“And I like the anvil,” returned Pierre.
Alaine gave him a half-saucy look from under her long lashes. “Yes, you are more like an anvil,” she told him. ”

“ Well, then, say to your mother this man, half dead, took his poor body over hill and dale, through forest and down-stream, that he might right a wrong, and he gives you back your son, but in return he asks that you do not stand between him and happiness. This man, François Dupont, you will tell her what became of his strong will, and how Heaven treated him for his vainglory and stubbornness. I am not good; I am not religious, not I, but I know when I am beaten, and I can recognize the stroke when it comes. I am so near death that I can see the meaning of things. ”

“ I wish you might never go, Lendert Verplanck, with your yellow hair, your beautiful smile, and your broad shoulders. Monkey under the tree, if you but knew how insignificant you look beside him you would cease your mowing and grimacing.”
François was beckoning to Lendert, who viewed him imperturbably from his point of vantage within the stable-yard. “Here, oaf, boor, ox, stolid ox! By St. Michael! it is as much as one’s life is worth to bring an idea into that thick skull. He does well out there with the cattle in the barn-yard, for he looks at me as if he had no notion of what I am. ”

“ Steep the bandages well, Gerard. Art better, monsieur? There, I think we must keep you very quiet. The other is of no weight. I could lift him myself, but he is the color of wax. He is not fit to die, the miserable, and we must save him for God knows what, yet we cannot let even an enemy go directly to burn in hell, as he surely would.”
The eyes of the sufferer opened slowly; they caught sight of Alaine. “Whither thou goest,” the white lips murmured, and Alaine, bravely as she had endured everything else, now burst into tears, and sobbed inconsolably upon Papa Louis’s shoulder. ”

“ As I lay in bed and heard thy voice, and saw thy face day after day, it grew, this love, and I thought, If she can love this big clumsy ox, as the Frenchman calls him, I will love her forever; I will marry none other; but I did not hope as yet, Alaine, that thou couldst love Lendert Verplanck, who loves thee so dearly. ”

“ The neighbors were kind, so very kind, but kindest of all was our little Mathilde, who came and helped to nurse her night and day. She did more than that, for she looked after the house so deftly that our good Michelle herself said that she could have done no better, and that Mathilde’s dainty touch was something that she could never hope to attain. For myself, I did not contradict her; an invalid must not be contradicted, you know.” His cheery laugh warmed Alaine’s heart, it was so pleasantly familiar. ”

“ A guest perforce. Who asks you to bring disaster upon a guest? He is one no longer when he leaves your roof, and it is of the man Bayard of whom we chiefly speak. Well, you do not care to prove your friendship for your cause. You are not a very stanch champion, M. Mercier. Perhaps you, too, are a Jacobite, and are not without ambition to show yourself a partisan of these aristocrats. A man of your intellect might well expect to be admitted into what the adherents of Leisler call the court circle.”
“No, no, that is no ambition of mine!” cried Papa Louis, vehemently. ”

“ Blindness and egotism will always do that.”
Madam van der Deen said nothing. Her narrow religious view made her behold only a pit of fire for such as François.
Yet the dawn of another day saw him still alive, and so it continued day after day, a little better, a little worse, while above Alaine, exhausted by fever, was watched over by faithful little Trynje and her mother.
Madam De Vries did not tarry long, but took her aching heart back to her home. “I am a lonely, childless old woman,” she told Trynje, “and I care not how soon I leave this wretched world. It is woe and misery on every side.” ”

“ You are doing well, Father.” He laughed. “How sweet is revenge! There is nothing so sweet.”
“Except forgiveness,” returned the other, gently.
François got up and walked the deck excitedly. “I say revenge. By the saints, but I shall have won, if not in all directions, at least in one.” He stepped closer to the old man. “And I reckon on you, Father Bisset, to make it possible for me to win in both. Alaine vows she will marry no one whom her father does not favor; the inference is obvious. Behold your son-in-law, good Monsieur Hervieu, bondman over there in Guadaloupa. ”

“ One there is in there who has less to hope for than you, for he is helpless, paralyzed, but entirely conscious, and there he must lie waiting for death to release him, and with but a misspent life to dwell upon. Yet sinned against he has been, and forgive him you should.”
Alaine turned her dark eyes upon the goede vrouw’s kind face. “You mean—who is it, Madam?”
“François Dupont it is.”
“He is here? He lives! But for him——” [284] She turned her head from side to side as if to deny any possibility of forgiveness.
“He wishes to see you when you are stronger. He has a confession to make to you.” ”