CHAPTER XVMADAM, MY MOTHER
Itwas one day a week or so later that Alaine came upon Madam pacing the floor in deep thought. She looked up as the girl came in. “My son arrives to-night,” she said, abruptly, “and I have been thinking will it be best that he meet you as girl or boy. If as boy, you would best not appear at table; if as girl, we must announce the cause of the masquerade to him and to the rest of the household.”
“Oh, madam, permit me to keep in the background,” returned the girl. “I would much rather it should be so; and if we take up our journey again, it will be best that I do not alter my dress till I am safe at home; you remember that we decided so.”
Madam stood considering; then she smiled. “Taking all things into consideration, I think it will be best; and you need not neglect Trynje, but leave her only when my son seems to desire to be with her. I think,” she smiled again, “he will desire it the more because of the presence of a handsome lad. Yes, that is it; we will make him jealous. So, put on your most devoted air; you are a head taller than Trynje, and will seem quite a possible rival.”
Alaine laughed. She rather enjoyed the humor of the situation.
“I do not know much about your son,” she ventured to say. “Trynje will not talk of him, and when I try to bring the conversation that way she only laughs and changes the subject.”
“He is very triste these days,” continued Madam. “I do not know why, though he is never very communicative, this son of mine. He says little of his affairs, and I shall not tell him all of mine. He and Trynje have been playmates from youth, and she still calls him Bo, as she did when a tiny child and he tried to teach her the English for boy.”
“Must I take my meals with you, madam?”
“You would rather not? I can understand that it might be awkward; then Maria and Johannes shall have your company if you do not mind.”
“I do not mind at all.”
“Then it is settled, and perhaps we shall have a wedding before June, who knows? Trynje has deep affections once they are given, but she has pride as well. Now, then, let us see how well you can act your part in this pretty play.”
In the dusk of the evening there was the sound of trampling of hoofs outside by the porch. Madam arose. “Come, Trynje,” she called, and Trynje ran forward, leaving Alaine in the shadowy corner where they had been sitting. The door opened, and by the waning light Alaine saw a tall form embrace Madam, saw Trynje’s little plump hand carried to a man’slips, then as the waning light fell upon the man’s face she saw the smile of Lendert Verplanck.
“Lendert!” she whispered, and then she dropped back again upon the settle. “Lendert!” She sat there staring for a moment before she made her escape to her little room above-stairs which Madam had insisted upon her occupying. Her heart was beating tumultuously, her head throbbing. She threw herself face down on the floor. “My Lendert! My Lendert!” she whispered. “He has forgotten me. I dare not make myself known. I must try to get away without his knowledge, for there is Pierre and here is Trynje, who love me. Jeanne must know, and she will help me.” She lay there sobbing convulsively till her first tumult of grief was spent, and then she arose and knelt by the window, her elbows on the sill. The little latticed casement was open, and through it was wafted the mysterious sweetness of May, the sweetness of new-born leaves, of blossoms shaking out their perfume to the winds. So perilously sweet the season to those who love, for the promise of bliss, of beauty, the expectant hush covering things as yet wrapped in mystery, the almost answer to everlasting questions, these are conveyed to the heart of youth on a May night. Unutterable thoughts came to the girl as she leaned out and felt the breath of evening on her hot face. Her yearning heart mounted to the skies bearing the enduring “Why?” and again her eyes overflowed.
A light step along the hall was followed by a tap on the door. “Where are you, little runaway?” came from Madam in a bantering tone. “This is not keeping your word. My son has gone to smoke his pipe on the stoop with our manly Jeanne, who has actually joined him. Did she learn to smoke from the Indians? Trynje is watching for you. It is all very good, for I have had a word with my son, and he has said, ‘We will talk of it after a while; if it be so great a desire with you, madam, my mother, I will try to yield to your wishes. One must marry, I suppose, and why not Trynje as well as another? She is an amiable little girl.’ So, you see, it is as good as settled. Now to make him jealous, and he will think she wears many more virtues than the one of amiability.” She had come in and stood by Alaine’s side. “You have had your supper?”
“No, not yet.”
“And so late. Fie upon you for a bashful child! Go along and get it at once, and then come to us.” And she swept out, leaving Alaine with hands nervously clinched and trembling with overwrought feelings.
“Why do I not die?” she moaned. “God knows I have tried to do my duty. I have tried,—I want to do it. O God, why are the hearts of women so weak and their love so strong? My heart will break,—it will break! He has forgotten me!” She leaned her face against the casement. Hark! it was his voice there below. He spoke to Jeanne. She couldhear distinctly the slow, deliberate tones. Oh, let her not lose this one happiness before she accepted the inevitable misery of flying from him!
He spoke slowly in halting French. It was evident that he had heard something of Jeanne from his mother, and believed her to be simply a sort of upper gardener. “You are Rouennaise, I think you say,” Alaine heard him remark.
“From near Rouen, but I left there many years ago.”
“Perhaps you knew a family of the name Hervieu.”
“I knew them well; they were among those who stood high in the parish of my brother.”
There was silence for a moment while Lendert puffed at his great pipe. “This family, I have met a member of it. They became Protestant.”
“A part of the family did and fled the country.”
“Yes, but one has since returned, I have been told.”
“I had not heard of it. M. Theodore Hervieu, I suppose.”
“No, his daughter.”
Jeanne leaned forward and peered into the other’s face. “I think you are mistaken,” she said.
“I know it to be true,” Lendert continued.
Jeanne laughed and leaned back again against the railing of the porch. “Then we do not speak of the same family. There are several of the name.”
There was silence again. Alaine above there, withthe whispering leaves saying a hundred things to her, leaned farther out.
After a long pause Lendert spoke again, as with difficulty. “This young lady’s name was Alaine Hervieu, the adopted daughter of one Louis Mercier and his wife Michelle. I know them all. She saved my life, and—I was ill at their house there in New Rochelle. She disappeared. They mourned her as dead, but she is married, they afterwards learned. I have seen them; they told me. They had just received word from France. She was there, the wife of François Dupont. I would rather she were dead. She is dead to me. She has abjured her faith and will remain among her relatives in France.”
“It is all a lie,” said Jeanne, quietly.
“It cannot be. I saw the letter myself.”
There was a swift running of feet along the hall and down the stair. In the doorway appeared a slight figure, and a voice cried, “Lendert! Lendert! I am not dead! I am not married! I am here!”
Down went the great pipe with a clatter to the ground. The sweet, shrill, imploring tones rang out upon the May night. With one stride Lendert reached her where she stood poised upon the door-sill. “Alaine!” he cried. “Oh, thou good God! It is Alaine!” And then Jeanne stepped in between them, but Lendert swept her aside.
“Shame upon you, girl!” The words came from Madam De Vries, who, shaking with anger, saw thetwo standing as one before her. “Lendert, what does this mean? Girl, go to your room!”
But Lendert held her fast. “It means, madam, that this Alaine Hervieu is the woman to whom before God I have pledged myself. I have vowed to marry no other, and I will not.”
“An outcast, a beggar, a creature of my bounty, a companion of coureurs de bois and of wandering women! You would take such to your home, present her to your mother, smirch your honest name——”
“Stop!” Jeanne strode forward, anger on her face and blazing from her eyes. “You, who are a woman, dare to say that to one who has been afflicted so sorely! You, a mother, can dare to cast your venomous slurs at an innocent, motherless girl, who but yesterday roused your compassion and drew tears from your eyes by the recital of her wrongs! Beware, lest Heaven’s curse——” She paused and dropped her hand raised in malediction. “Monsieur,” she said, turning to Lendert, “the girl is now my charge, and has been under the protection of my brother, a holy man, from her birth up, with the exception of the few years with the Merciers. I am ready to vouch for her innocence and goodness as for an angel’s.”
Lendert leaned his head down till his cheek touched Alaine’s curly head resting against his encircling arm. “I should never question it,” he answered. “She is Alaine, and that is enough. I loveher. I could never doubt her, having once known her. There is no need of your defence of her, yet I thank you for it.”
“Come to me, my child,” Jeanne ordered, and Alaine slipped from Lendert’s hold to hers.
“Tell your story, monsieur,” Jeanne continued. “Though I do not doubt your faithfulness, I must be as particular in my knowledge of who you are as Madam would be of her son’s wife. You are Madam’s son, yet your name is Verplanck.”
“My mother has been twice married,” said Lendert. “I am her son by her first marriage. Some months ago I met Mademoiselle Hervieu. She interposed herself between me and death. She and her adopted parents took me in, a stranger, and for weeks cared for me as for one of their own flesh and blood. I saw and loved Alaine. I gave her my vows and my promise to return and marry her. We parted. I had a mission to perform; it is not yet done, but I determined when it proved successful to return and claim her, trusting to my mother’s good sense and affection not to oppose my happiness. I went to New Rochelle. I saw Michelle and Louis Mercier. They showed me a letter they had received from François Dupont, he who stole their child away; it was written in Canada; it assured them that Alaine was safe, was well and happy; that she was married to him, and that they were about to depart for France. There were messages from Alaine, and it all seemed as if true.”
“That evil-doer,” muttered Jeanne. “It was all a ruse, monsieur, to prevent further action on the part of her friends. I do not know what he hoped to gain by it. Mademoiselle Hervieu left Quebec in the company of my brother six months ago. She has not seen François Dupont since that time. It is quite true that he carried mademoiselle off and would have married her, but, fortunately, my brother was the instrument in God’s hands to prevent it. It is a long story; we will discuss it later. At present our entire desire is to leave here and reach Manhatte.”
“Which you shall do, and the sooner the better. My roof no longer affords you shelter,” said Madam, bitterly.
Lendert’s sleepy eyes half closed. “Mademoiselle Hervieu is under no obligation to you, madam, my mother, for your son is alive through her defence and her protection. The obligation is upon the other side.”
“There is no obligation where there is a graceless, disobedient son who perjures himself and defies his mother.”
“Perjures himself?”
“Did you not, an hour since, promise to marry Trynje van der Deen?”
“I said I would consider it after a while, but there was then nothing of all this. My troth to Alaine I believed severed by her marriage. Now it is different.”
“You cannot marry without my consent; the laws of our colony forbid.”
“Then I will not marry while Alaine is free.”
“And Trynje?”
Trynje had come out and was listening wonderingly. She nestled her hand in Alaine’s and spoke up. “Trynje, madam, does not desire to marry Lendert Verplanck. She prefers to let her parents select for her. You have shown her how very unpleasant a mother can be, and Trynje does not like discord. Lendert Verplanck, I am Alaine’s friend; I love her. I wish her happiness, and my own will not suffer by reason of you, be sure of that.”
Madam standing alone in the doorway with all arrayed against her awoke Trynje’s pity, and she went over to her. “Dear Madam De Vries,” she said, “it would be a very pleasant thing if you would agree with the rest of us and let us be merry over this instead of angry. It was but this morning that you spoke very sweetly of Alaine, and she is the same now as then.”
Madam withdrew the hand Trynje had taken. “Little fool,” she muttered, “if you had but claimed your own we could yet have our own way.”
“I am having my way,” returned Trynje, “only it isn’t your way, madam.”
“She is not the fool she would seem,” remarked Jeanne, in an aside.
“Good little Trynje!” cried Lendert.
Trynje stood a moment looking wistfully from oneto the other. She did not enjoy this disturbance, but she had a happy consciousness of having done what made it easier for all but Madam.
“Go, girl!” Madam commanded Alaine in a hard tone. “Go, take off the clothes my bounty has provided for you. Your rags Maria will return to you. I want never to see your face again.”
“Nor your son’s?” asked Lendert.
“Nor his, unless he agrees to bring Trynje home to me. All this would then be his. Otherwise he can leave my roof; his disobedience casts him out.”
“It is not the first time I have been cast out,” replied Lendert, with some bitterness. “My first opposition to your wishes brought me that.”
“You will not find it necessary to repeat the experience,” responded Madam. “These lands belong to the widow of Pieter De Vries, and not to the son of Kilian Verplanck. Come, Trynje, we will go in. I do not turn you away.”
Trynje did not budge, but held Alaine’s hand tightly in hers. “I am sorry not to oblige you, madam, but I can’t let Alaine sleep in the woods to-night. I shall take her to my mother.”
“The wench has slept often enough in the woods,” sneered Madam. “You do not need to spare her; she is not used to a delicate life, we know that.”
“The more that she should be spared further privation,” spoke up the spunky little Trynje. “If you will get my horse and your own, Lendert Verplanck,we can all travel together, and can reach home in an hour.”
“No, no, Trynje, dear little Trynje,” whispered Alaine. “I will not take you away; it is not safe going at night through the woods.”
“As safe for me as for you, and perhaps safer than a settlement. Then, I wish to go. I want my mother.”
Tears came to Alaine’s eyes, and she bent over and kissed the girl’s soft cheek. This loyalty of Trynje’s touched her deeply.
It was not long before the little party was ready to start, Alaine and Jeanne mounted on Trynje’s horse, and Trynje behind Lendert upon his own steed. They left a silent house, from the windows of which not a light gleamed, but within whose walls sat a disappointed, obdurate woman with rage and self-pity gnawing at her heart.
The travellers rode along quietly enough through the woods. The leaves were yet too sparsely green to shut out the light of the sky, and the bridle-path was easily followed. Lendert’s watchful eyes kept a sharp lookout right and left, and his hand upon his gun was ready. Neither he nor Trynje were great talkers, and they said little. Alaine, on the contrary, kept up a low-voiced conversation with Jeanne. Neither Madam’s sharp words nor the painfulness of the entire situation could take the joy from Alaine’s heart. Above all else arose the one thought: Lendert loved her; he had not forgottenher. Once or twice she lifted her face to the twinkling stars whose beams sifted down between the tender twigs and the little new leaves, and she repeated softly one of the dear old psalms, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” It had been a long time since she had heard any one sing them, but soon, soon she would be at home and free. There was so much she desired to ask Lendert, so much, for he had seen those dear ones not long ago, and she busied herself with this or that surmise as she chattered to Jeanne, and at last she sobered down into pensive recollections of her old life. What of all her resolves? What of the promise she had made to herself that she would forget Lendert and remember Pierre? These had vanished utterly at sight of him to whom her heart was given.
So presently she spoke very gravely. “Dear Jeanne, in those old days in France I used to go to Father Bisset with all my puzzling questions, and he always set me right. Now here am I in a sorry uncertainty. Listen, Jeanne, and tell me what I should do. I have not told you all this, because I thought I ought to try to overcome my love and think only of Pierre and his great sacrifice for my sake. Yet, here is another who loves me so well that he forsakes all else for me, and him I love. I have tried not to. I have sought to let my thoughts dwell on Pierre. And then, at home, Michelle and Papa Louis would have me marry Gerard, yet Ithink when my father returns they will see that it is he who should order my goings. What must I do, dear Jeanne? You saw that my heart outran my resolve, and I have again confessed my love for Lendert. Am I not a deceitful wicked thing? I am miserable when I think of it.”
“What have you promised Pierre?”
“I promised him nothing, for he would not allow it; and furthermore he told me that I must not be bound, and if in a year he or my father had not returned, that I must be free to do what seemed best. Before then I told him I would marry him or whomsoever should be my father’s choice.”
“Then await the end of the year, and if your father returns let him settle it.”
“But Lendert, my whole heart goes out to him, and if he loves me he offends his mother, and if I love him I may offend my father, yet each of us loves only the other.”
Jeanne sighed. “Earthly love is very strong; one cannot always conquer that at once; yet, my dear, if you ought not to marry Lendert you must not.”
“You think I ought not to marry him even if his mother should at last consent?”
“If you gave your promise first to Pierre, and if your father orders it, you should marry Pierre.”
Alaine’s head drooped lower and lower. Ahead rode Lendert; she could see his stalwart figure outlined against the dimly soft sky. She felt that she could leap from her horse, fly to him, beg him totake her away, away from all her confusing and conflicting problems.
The piteous sigh she gave aroused Jeanne’s compassion. “I am telling you what is right, my child, as you asked me to do, but remember, when the year is at an end you will be free to do what your heart dictates. I think there is no doubt of that.”
“Then you think I shall not see my father again?”
“Or Pierre? I think it is very doubtful.”
“It is terrible, terrible, that I should build any happiness on that. I will not. I will think they are both to return, and will be patient. Will you tell Lendert what you have told me it is right to do? Will you let him know that I must abide by the right at any cost? I am so weak-hearted that I should yield up my love again to him if he asked it. When I think of it, Jeanne, I know that love is mightier than death, for I wish we could die together, he and I, this minute. Is it not pitiful that love is so strong and will is so weak? I want to do right. I mean to do right, while every fibre of my being throbs for Lendert. If I am to be the wife of another I must not let him even look at me, with the lovelight in his eyes, for mine will surely answer. Twice in my life for a few moments I have been so happy that I can believe what heaven is like. It is not given to all of us to be so happy, even for a few moments, in this world, therefore I must be satisfied with that and believe that I am more favored than manywomen.” Her voice shook, and Jeanne knew without seeing it that her tears were falling fast.
“Do I not know? Can I not understand?” 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. You have been wonderfully delivered more than once, and surely you should believe that you will be again.”
“I will believe that, dear Jeanne.” Alaine’s arm around Jeanne’s waist gave her a gentle pressure, and they rode on silently till the twinkling lights ahead of them showed that they were approaching a small settlement. In a few minutes a stockade was reached, this enclosed the fort and blockhouse where dwelt Joachim van der Deen and his tenant farmers. To the query, “Who goes there?” Trynje answered, “I, Trynje van der Deen, with friends.” And an immediate admittance was vouchsafed.
Trynje, helped from her horse by Lendert, went at once toward the door which was flung wide open inanswer to her summons. “Whom have we here?” asked a stout, red-faced Dutchman. “What is my daughter doing travelling about this time of night, and who are these in her company?”
“Lendert Verplanck, whom you know, Mademoiselle Hervieu, whom you do not know, and Jeanne Crepin.”
“They are French?” Joachim van der Deen looked suspicious, and pulled the door together a little.
“We are Huguenots and refugees, good sir,” interposed Alaine, “and as your generous Holland has sheltered so many of our faith, we hope we do not ask in vain for shelter here. I have travelled in this dress for some months past that I might the more readily escape detection of my enemies.”
Joachim van der Deen smiled, and, taking Alaine’s hand, he led her to an inner room where sat his buxom wife. “We have visitors, Johanna,” he said. “Trynje returns with them. Let her tell her tale while I see to this gentleman. It is past bedtime and we will retire at once, my friends, unless you have good reason to remain without a good night’s rest.”
Trynje poured forth her story into her mother’s ears. The goede vrow listened attentively, and at the close remarked, triumphantly, “I always said you would find Madam De Vries a hard mother, and you are well awake to it now. We shall have no more objections to Adriaen Vrooman hereafter.”
Trynje blushed and snuggled up to her mother’s side. It was very clear that she agreed with her, and that when Adriaen returned from his journey into the distant forests he would receive a smiling reception from Trynje.