BECAUSE OF CONSCIENCE

By Amy E. Blanchard

AN INDEPENDENT DAUGHTER THREE PRETTY MAIDS MISS VANITY HER VERY BEST

12mo. Cloth, illustrated, $1.25 per volume

TWO GIRLS GIRLS TOGETHER BETTY OF WYE

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TWENTY LITTLE MAIDENS

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“Because you have shown me how powerful a shield a woman can be, I stand here”

Page 104

Because of Conscience

Being a Novel relating to the Adventures of certain Huguenots in Old New York

By Amy E. Blanchard Author of “Her Very Best,” “Betty of Wye,” “Two Girls,” “Girls Together,” “Three Pretty Maids,” etc.

With Frontispiece by E. Benson Kennedy

Philadelphia & London J. B. Lippincott Company 1901

Copyright, 1901 By J. B. Lippincott Company Electrotyped and Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U. S. A.

DEDICATED WITH DEEP AFFECTION AND PROFOUND ADMIRATION TO ELIZA ELVIRA KENYON WHOSE LOVING INTEREST AND LOFTY EXAMPLE HAVE BEEN MY STAY FOR MANY YEARS

A. E. B.

CHAPTER I A WILD MARIGOLD

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. “Now I know what it is to be a creature like Fifi; no wonder he is forever running after the impossible, as it seems to me, for I, gigantically lifted above him, cannot see the objects on a level with his sharp eyes.” She watched her dog darting among the stubble at the edge of the field, and as she idly viewed his gambols her eyes caught sight of a yellow flower growing near the hedge. She lifted her little head with its toss of brown hair, then drew her slender,[12] lithe body from its covert to stand erect and to walk slowly across the open space to gather the wild

marigold, at which she gazed thoughtfully, standing so still that her shadow scarcely wavered.

The sudden sharp bark of her little dog roused her, and she turned her head to see some one coming toward her,—a young man swinging along with an easy, confident tread.

“Good-evening, my cousin,” he cried. “You were so deep in thought that I fancied I should not move you till I came near enough to touch you. What are you studying so intently?”

“This.” Alaine held out her yellow blossom. “Tell me, Étienne, does it turn always to the sun, this yellow marigold?”

“Who told you so?”

“Michelle, and she says it was chosen as her device by Margaret of Valois because it does truly resemble the sun. It is likewise the emblem of the Protestants, who say that it signifies that they ever turn to the true source of light,—God in his heaven. Was Margaret of Valois Protestant, Étienne, and——”

“Is Michelle, then, Protestant?” Étienne interrupted her by asking.

“Yes, I think so. I know so. She has a little Bible, Étienne, which she guards sacredly, and she makes long journeys at night to secret meetings, I fancy. She is very good and devout, Étienne, but still——”

“Still you can cry, ‘À bas les Huguenots!’ is it[13] not so? She would make you Protestant, my cousin, would she not?”

Alaine looked up at him gravely from under her long lashes. She wondered how much she dared tell to this cousin to whose opinions she had deferred ever since she could remember.

“Would she not?” he repeated, smiling as he took the flower, with rather too rough a hand, Alaine thought. “Can you say with true spirit, ‘À bas les Huguenots’?” He spoke the words so fiercely that Alaine looked half alarmed, at which he laughed. “There, my cousin,” he continued, “you are too young to be troubled by these questions, and your father is too good a Catholic to let you stray from the fold.”

“But I do not wish to be done with questions. I wish to know about everything, and I mean to ask my father this very night when he returns from Paris. He will tell me, if you will not. I know he will. You are very provoking, Étienne, to treat my questions so,” she pouted. “Give me my flower; I want to wear it.”

“What if I want to wear it?”

“Ah, Étienne, are you, then, a Huguenot?”

“That is nothing to you,” he returned. “I am simply your cousin, Étienne Villeneau. Better trust me, Alainette; I know more than Michelle there; in fact, it is an amusement of mine to follow up all sources of information that will in any way benefit the house of Villeneau, and I will pass over to you[14] anything in the matter of news which may be good for you.”

“Which may be good for me! As if news were like doses of medicine. I will take your news or not, as I like.”

“You will take it whether you like it or not,” he returned, looking at her for a moment with narrowed eyes. “If your father does not return from Paris you will be glad enough to run to me for knowledge of him.”

“Étienne, how can you? My father will return from Paris; he said he would, and he speaks truly at all times.”

“Too truly for once, it is reported. Au revoir, my cousin; when you are ready to hear what I have to tell send me word.” And he turned on his heel.

“You are hateful! a beast, a monster!” Alaine cried after him. “I hate you.”

“I have heard that before,” the young man replied over his shoulder, “and the next day you have told me the opposite.”

“It will not be the next day this time, nor for many days that you hear it,” Alaine retorted. “And you have not given me back my flower. Thief! Robber!”

He tossed the flower on the ground, then, as if urged by an angry impulse, he stopped and ground it with his heel, but immediately after he turned, laughing: “That for your naughtiness, fierce little cousin. Adieu.”

[15]“Go!” she cried. “I am glad to see your wicked body disappear.” Then, half in tears, she ran to Michelle, who had returned from bearing her burden into the house and was now picking up the remaining articles left on the grass to bleach. “Michelle! Michelle!” cried the girl, “that detestable cousin of mine has been teasing me, and has crushed the life out of the little yellow marigold I meant for you. Is he not a beast, Michelle? and how dares he say that there is any doubt of my father’s return?”

“He says that?” exclaimed Michelle, looking startled.

“He did not say just that, but only if my father should not return that I would be glad to run to him for news of him. He will return; say so at once, Michelle.” She shook the good woman’s arm impatiently.

“God grant he returns,” murmured Michelle, gravely. “And your cousin, what further did he say?”

“Very little, except to ask if you were trying to make me Protestant. You would like to have me one, you know, Michelle, but my tender flesh shrinks from the horrors of which you tell me, and that have been going on since before I was born. I have no wish to be dragged through the streets, to be beaten or burned or foully abused in any way, and I do not see how you can be happy with such a possibility hanging over you, Michelle.”

“Listen to the poor little one,” said Michelle to[16] herself. “She little knows of the real terrors that threaten us. And your cousin Étienne, did you tell him I was Protestant?”

“I believe I did, but no doubt he knew it before; and what matters it anyhow to one of the family to whom you have always been so good? Many a scrape have you helped my cousin out of. He would defend you to the last, and so would I, Michelle, Catholic as I am.”

Michelle made no answer. She stood still with her arms clasped around the web of homespun linen which had been bleaching on the grass. Her eyes wandered over the fair fields to the spires of Rouen in the distance, and then to the chateau closer at hand, showing dimly gray through the trees. She shook her head, but turned with a smile to the girl at her side. “Come in, my Alainette,” she said; “it grows late and I have a loaf in the oven. There is no need to be angered by the words of your cousin, he did but tease; and should your father not return to-night, there is no doubt some good reason for his staying.” And Alaine, accustomed as she had been from babyhood to accept Michelle’s adjustments of her difficulties, forgot her late quarrel with her cousin and ran on ahead to satisfy her youthful appetite with the fresh sweet loaf that no one knew better than Michelle how to bake.

The days were over when the Huguenots were an influence, or were at all formidable in politics. They pursued amiably and tranquilly their various avocations.[17] The massacre of St. Bartholomew had occurred over a century before; La Rochelle had fallen more than half a century back, and Protestant subjects were so faithful in their allegiance to the throne that even the reigning sovereign, Louis XIV., acknowledged that his Huguenot servitors had proved their devotion; he had, moreover, promised that the provisions of the Edict of Nantes should be faithfully maintained, yet at this very time a decree was issued fixing the age of seven as that when children were to be allowed to declare their religious preferences, and forbidding parents to send their children out of the country to be educated. In consequence, it was a common thing for children to be enticed from their parents to be placed in the hands of the clergy, or to be persuaded by rewards or coerced by threats to attend mass, and then to be claimed by the Church. One by one the Protestant seats of

learning were suppressed, and the consternation of the Huguenots was great.

Beyond this the system of dragonnades had done much toward terrorizing and impoverishing the Protestants, so that again numbers were fleeing the country through every possible means. The times were ripe for the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Of all these things Alaine Hervieu was passingly aware. The horizon of her little world was bounded by Rouen, beyond whose borders she dwelt, spending a quiet and joyous existence with Michelle, her foster-mother and her chief guardian: Michelle with[18] her fund of reminiscences, too often those thrilling and horrifying tales of massacres and persecutions. When Michelle waxed too fierce and terrifying Alaine would fly to her father for diversion, but, to her credit be it said, she never laid the cause of her frights upon her nurse, but rather complained of loneliness and begged that dear papa would tell her tales of his boyhood; of her sainted mother she was quite ready to hear, but of other saints she heard more than enough from Father Bisset, she declared. Something rousing and merry she preferred; and her father, taking her on his knee, would tell her of the Fête des Rois, and would show her the basket of wax fruit won upon one of those festive occasions. Or he would sing her some old song, such as

And he would tell her of the time when the Boise of St. Nicaise was dragged away and burned by the young men of St. Godard.

Alaine herself had more than once been taken to the Fête St. Anne to see, running about the streets, the boys dressed as angels and the girls as Virgins, and at Easter Eve she had watched the children when they mocked and hooted at the now scorned herring while the boys pitched barrels and fish-barrows into the river.

But of late it was of other things he told her; of[19] brave resistance by those who fought for freedom of thought; of the loss of position by those who refused to conform to the requirements of state and church; and sometimes he would sing to her in a low voice, from a small book, some of those psalms which Michelle, too, sang.

Alaine once showed the little old book with its silver clasps to her cousin Étienne. “I remember it well,” he told her; “it belonged to our great-grandfather, for in his day the Psalms of David were held in great esteem by the ladies and gentlemen of the court, and once on a time in the heart of Paris, on the favorite promenade, five or six thousand, including the king and queen of Navarre, joined in singing psalms.”

“It must have been fine. I wish I had been there,” Alaine exclaimed, clapping her hands. “Go on, Étienne, what more about the book?”

“It is a seditious thing now,” he returned, turning to the copy of the Hervieu coat of arms on the inside cover. “If we were as zealous as we should be we would burn it, for if it were discovered here trouble might come of it. Let us make a fire of the heretical thing, Alaine.”

“No, no.” Alaine clasped it to her breast. “I like it, Étienne. It is a family relic. I will keep it safely hidden, and no one shall know of it.”

She did keep it safely hidden, and her father never once asked for it, because another book had taken its place; one over which he pored for hours at a[20] time, and which Alaine knew to be a Bible. Was her father turning Protestant? she asked herself.

Within the last few months it was Alaine who tried to divert her father, for often there was a cloud upon his brow, and he was frequently grave and taciturn, so that his daughter tried to set him laughing when she could, and when she could not would take refuge with her cousin Étienne, who lived but a short distance away. He was her elder by ten years, but a good companion for all that, with whom Alaine quarrelled once a day upon an average, and upon whom she penitently used her blandishments when next they met.

She, therefore, was quite ready for Étienne when he appeared upon the terrace the next morning after her latest quarrel with him. “Papa did not come, Étienne,” she cried, jumping up to meet him, “but Michelle says it is nothing; men are often detained so. Come, sit here and tell me what you have done, and how is my aunt; also, if you have that piece of news you offered me yesterday.”

“Am I a thief and robber, then? A monster and a beast?” he asked, sitting down beside her.

“No, you are not; it was yesterday you were those things, and this is to-day.”

“Child!” he exclaimed, “but a woman-child for all. Alainette, would you turn Protestant if your father were one?”

“There, now, you said we were done with that question.”

[21]“It was you who urged it upon me, and who became angry with me because I put you off.”

“Again that was yesterday, and this is to-day, as I told you.”

“Nevertheless, I put the question again.”

“Oh, I don’t know. What would you do if you were I, Étienne?”

“I should do as my conscience and my Church bade me, rather than obey my father.” He looked at her again with those narrowed eyes, the expression of which Alaine was beginning to dread.

“Thank you for your advice, sir. My father is not likely to command me to do anything wrong; and even if he did——”

“Even if he did,” repeated her cousin, “you would be taken to a convent and be separated from him, as you well know. There would be one way out of it, Alaine.”

“And that?” She looked up at him with all the confidence of her youth shining in her piquant little face.

“Would be to marry me,” he said, slowly.

The blood rushed to the girl’s face and she sprang to her feet. “How dare you say such a thing, Étienne? It is for your mother and my father to arrange a matter like that. Besides,”—she burst into a sob,—“I—I don’t want to be married. I don’t want to go to a convent either. Why do you come here troubling me with such dreadful things, Étienne? I hate you for it.”

[22]He caught her hands and looked down closely into her dark eyes. “No you don’t; you love me for it.”

“I do not! I do not!” she cried, passionately. “I detest you. Monster, beast! Monster, beast! Hear me, I say it again and again. I hate you, hate you, hate you!” And having wrested one hand from his grasp, she gave him a stinging blow on the ear.

He loosed his grasp of her and pushed her from him. “You shall pay me for that,” he said, his breath coming quickly, as he sprang to his feet.

Alaine, frightened at what she had done, shrank from him. “I—I never did so before, did I, Étienne? I—I was so surprised, you see.” She made a faint attempt to smile, but there was no response from her cousin. She remembered vaguely that she had once or twice before seen him thus angry, and she also remembered that her aunt had told her that Étienne was very vindictive. “It would not be proper for me to say that I would marry you, Étienne,” she said, wistfully. “You know we must not think of such things; Michelle says we must not, and Mother Angelique says that it is very wrong. It really would not be proper for me to tell you that I would marry you.”

“You shall tell no one else,” he said, fiercely, “and you will have to do it soon or——”

“Or what?” She crept closer to him and laid her hand on his arm.

[23]He looked down at her, the resentment in his face fading into something like compassion. “Listen, Alaine; your father will not come back to-day; one cannot say that he ever will. He has announced himself a Huguenot, and has disappeared, we know not where.”

Alaine fixed her great eyes on him. Suddenly she dropped her childish coaxing tone. “Are you telling me the truth, Étienne? I am—yes, I am nearly a woman. A girl of fifteen has a right to decide for herself as you say. Tell me, are you merely teasing me, or is this the truth?”

“It is the truth, and at any moment this place may be given over to the dragonnades. Will you stay? If you do not come to us your case will be pitiable, indeed. I have not said anything as yet to my mother, for you know her state of health, but you will be safe with us, Alaine.”

“And Michelle, she must go too.”

“No, she must not. She is Protestant, and must take the risks with those she has chosen.”

“Étienne! and after all these years that you have known her, and when she has done you more than one good service.”

“We cannot remember anything but that she is an enemy of the Church.”

“You have said that if my father commanded I must not obey, therefore I will learn his commands, if I can. You would not desire to marry a Huguenot, Étienne.”

[24]“That need not disturb you just now; the main thing is your safety.”

“And if I refuse to leave Michelle?”

“You know the consequences.”

“Do you think, then, that Father Bisset will not speak for me? Have I ever neglected my religious duties? And the Mother Angelique, will she not answer for me?”

“Once you go to them you will find closer bonds than those with which I would bind you.”

“But they love me.”

“Because they love you they would keep you. It has been weeks since you saw Mother Angelique, and as for Father Bisset, how long since you have had a call from him? At this moment he is on his way to Holland, unless, indeed, he has been overtaken, the poor miserable apostate.”

“How do you know? How do you know?”

“I am neither deaf nor blind. I see what is before me and I hear what is told me.”

“It is the Revocation which is doing all this,” cried Alaine. “Michelle told me so. Dear Father Bisset! Would he had told me he was going and had given me his blessing before he fled! I hope he will escape in safety.”

“I hope he will not,” returned Étienne, savagely.