FORGIVENESS
At last there came a day when Alaine, though pitifully weak and pale,
was able to creep out into the open air, supported by the strong arm
of Trynje’s father, solicitously followed by Madam van der Deen and
Trynje, and stared at by a group of tow-headed little children of
various ages.
“I want to go home, Mynheer,” Alaine whispered to the good man, who so
carefully placed her in the big chair which had been set for her under
a spreading tree.
He nodded. “You shall go.”
Trynje, busying herself in tucking a robe around her patient’s feet,
did not hear. “There,” she exclaimed, “you are well placed.” She stood
off and looked at her charge with a satisfied air. “It is good to be
out again, is it not? Are you tired? When you are rested I will tell
you something about myself. I have been keeping it till now to tell
you.” She sat down on the ground by Alaine’s side, her round, smiling
face rosier than ever. “You will get well,” she went on, “for after a
while my wedding will be.”
“What?” Alaine smiled to see the blushes.
Trynje nodded. “Yes, all arranged it is. Last night he was here.”
Alaine laid her hand, now so frail-looking, on Trynje’s plump one. “He
was? And who is he?”
“Adriaen Vrooman. He has returned from a long journey into the woods
with his man Isaac, and they brought many pelts. He is now ready to
marry. Betrothed we are, and married we will be before the winter
comes.”
“And you are happy, Trynje, happy?”
“Oh, yes.” Trynje looked very complacent. She was quite satisfied.
Alaine patted the hand resting on her knee, but as she leaned her head
back against the soft fur which hung over the chair the tears welled up
into her eyes. Madam van der Deen, standing behind her, laid her hand
upon the girl’s head. She looked up and with trembling lips asked, “Is
there no hope, no hope?”
“We have heard nothing, but there is always hope till worst is proved.
Be comforted by that, my child. 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----” 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.”
“I cannot hear it; not now,” returned Alaine, “not now.”
“Then we will not urge it. Very long his time cannot be. Far beyond
what we looked for he has endured. But I hoped----”
“Hush, hush, mother,” Trynje broke in. “She is not to be troubled by
such things. She her strength must get, and worry her you must not.”
And Trynje looked as severe as she was capable of doing. “I must go in
now, my mother, and I leave you here; very cheerful you must be; of
dying and such things you must not speak. Good stories you must tell of
when you were a little girl, and laugh you must.” She shook her finger
at her mother and ran in.
Alaine sat mournfully gazing around her. Yonder was the woodland path
along which Madam De Vries had approached; there the little spring
to which Jeanne had gone for water; there---- She shuddered and hid
her eyes, as if still before her shrieked and yelled the horde of
bloodthirsty Indians. “I want to go home,” she murmured. “I want to see
Michelle and Papa Louis and Gerard. I am so tired of being away from
home. Will you not take me there?”
“In a little while; as soon as you are able,” Madam van der Deen
told her, gently. And, indeed, it seemed while in the midst of scenes
connected with such terrible memories that she was not likely to
entirely recover. Therefore, to Trynje’s disappointment it was decided
that the invalid should be taken as far as Fort Orange, and, if she
were able to stand the journey, to go from there to New York, still
known as New Amsterdam by these good people.
“And must I remain?” said François, when he was told. “I cannot be left
here to trouble you. Prisoner I am, but I shall be free soon, and I
would die among my own people. I, too, must go.”
Madam van der Deen looked puzzled. It was part of the plan that Alaine
should be removed from his neighborhood, for the mere mention of him
caused the girl such distress that the goede vrouw had determined to
give up a scheme for the meeting of these two, resolved that if one
must be considered that Alaine should be the one. Yet she made a final
effort in François’s behalf and drew a pitiful picture of the man’s
helplessness, his longing for forgiveness, his desire to make his peace
with the world before he left it, so that Alaine, moved to pity, no
longer protested, but faintly said, “Could he be taken away safely?
Does he so desire it?”
“He desires it above all things to be taken to the house of your family
there in New Rochelle. He refers again and again to the goodness of
Madame Mercier, to his own tyrannical spirit, and repeats his longing
to be allowed to die there. I think my husband will have no difficulty
in persuading the authorities to allow it when they see his condition.
He is our enemy and a prisoner, but a helpless one.”
Alaine sat thinking deeply. “I think I am almost forgetting to be a
Christian,” she said. “I am so weak, so wretched, so grief-worn, but if
it can ease a departing soul to grant his request, and he can be safely
taken, I shall not deny my consent. But do not let me see him yet.”
“That is the good child. I expected nothing less of you,” Madam told
her. “So then I think we shall trust him to Adriaen, whose heart is
so warm at thought of his marriage to Trynje that the whole world
he loves. Smiling and staring, he sits there by François just for
the sake of comradeship. They can go on ahead to Fort Orange, and
we will follow. From there it will not be much of a voyage down the
river to New Amsterdam.” The goede vrouw had arranged it all to her
satisfaction, and sat smiling over the plan.
“He is better. Better is François Dupont,” Trynje told Alaine. “Scarce
believe it would I, but he lies there and smiles and chatters at
Adriaen, who smiles at him, and sits and smokes and blinks and blushes,
though not a word he understands of what is said.” Trynje laughed.
“But good care he will have, and I shall let him go all the way to New
Amsterdam.” She spoke with a pretty air of proprietorship. Her little
heart had adjusted itself very readily and there was not any one now
like Adriaen. “And my mother will go,” Trynje added, “and my father.
They will take the time to buy my wedding finery, though it is little I
need, for long ago my chests were filled.”
One morning, therefore, Alaine bade good-by to the fort and the
blockhouse, to little Trynje and the flock of flaxen-haired children.
Mynheer van der Deen and his goede vrouw accompanied this party; the
first had gone on. Adriaen and his man Isaac took charge of François.
The young Dutchman’s face was wreathed in smiles. He gloated over his
charge as a mother over her baby. Trynje had given him this to do. Very
well, it became a pleasure, and he would do it as faithfully as he
could.
François gave a little weak laugh as he was deposited in the canoe
on a pile of skins. “My faith! but I never expected to travel again,
and here I am still following mademoiselle about. She has not a word
for me, and no wonder.” A shadow passed over his face, for the pains
spent upon him by Johanna van der Deen were not without result, and
in the weeks of suffering, in the long nights when she had watched by
his side, he had spoken to her as to a mother. He had lost much of his
arrogance, and acknowledged that he was a mere straw driven by the
wind, a leaf in a storm.
“You have dared to undertake to change the decrees of the Almighty,
little insignificant human creature that you are,” Madam van der Deen
had said to him. “You have thought your will stronger than that of God.
Wrapped in your own selfish desires you have forgotten that the cry of
the helpless is more powerful than the clash of a destroying sword in
the hands of man.”
“You have me here, and I cannot get away,” François had returned. “Say
on, mother. I will listen, for I cannot help myself. You are as good a
preacher as the old renegade priest.” He had learned of Father Bisset’s
change of belief and of his plan of escape, and he had laughed. His
respect for the wily Jacques Bisset increased as his anger against
the priest died away. “At least, then, we are quits,” he had said.
“I fooled him and he fooled me, so that is done with. Now I am here,
shattered and done for. Lendert Verplanck takes his way out of the
world by another road. There is then left the man Pierre Boutillier,
and he is no doubt as good as dead. All that the work of one girl.”
“The work of wicked men,” Madam van der Deen had replied, “of Louis
XIV. and François Dupont.”
At that François had laughed. “Thanks for coupling my name with his
majesty’s. He would feel flattered.”
But all this had been gone over days before, François reflected, as
he lay in the canoe floating down the river Hudson. A prisoner, with
a useless and suffering body, but with brain alive and strong enough
to guide his will. They did not want him. They would fain have thrown
him overboard. He would be received with aversion by Michelle; yet,
helpless as he was, he was having his way, and he could still smile
when he thought of that.
At Fort Orange they learned that Jacob Leisler had paid the penalty
of his mistaken and obdurate policy, and that by contemptible methods
his enemies had rid themselves of him. The new governor was in power
and the white people were again in the ascendant. Alaine, overcome
with grief, and full of longing to see her friends again, heard these
matters discussed, but heard indifferently. The time had passed when
they could interest her. She felt a dull sense of pleasure that the
first stage of the journey was over and that they would soon be nearing
New York. So far she had steadfastly avoided meeting François, but
soon it would be no longer possible, for they must travel in the same
conveyance from New York to the French settlement.
“It will have to be, my child,” said Madam van der Deen. “You cannot
avoid it, for he will be under the same roof.”
“So he has been these weeks past and I have not seen him. He must be
there, yes, while he lives, while he lives. Ah, that I might have been
spared this!”
“It is not so great a matter,” said the good lady, looking at her
serenely.
“He is Lendert’s murderer.”
“Oh, no, that he is not.”
“It was he who ordered them to take him. Shall I ever forget it? And
has he not made my life one of unutterable misery? Must I forgive him
all he has made me suffer during these years? Did I not have enough
to bear before that? Was it nothing that I must leave my home, be
separated from my only living parent, and come to a strange land, but I
must be weighted down by these heavier sorrows?”
“Seventy times seven,” returned her friend.
Alaine shook her head. “There are some things one can never forgive.”
“But he is penitent.”
“How do you know? He can appear to be anything. He is a vile
dissembler.”
“He has confessed to me that he is sorry for his misdeeds. He wishes to
tell you so, and there are other things he desires you to know.”
“I do not trust him. He would be as bad as ever if he were strong and
well.”
“That he will never be. Will you see him now?”
Alaine arose. They had lodged for the night in one of the ordinaries of
the town. They would soon be starting upon the second stage of their
journey.
The girl’s face was drawn and white as she followed Madam van der Deen
to another room. She trembled and was hot by turns. This meeting that
she had dreaded for weeks, that she had put off, and that Trynje had
helped her to defer, must now come about.
At Madam’s tap upon the door Adriaen opened it. The two women entered
and the door closed behind them. Where the light from a window fell
upon him François Dupont was propped up in his bed; he was waiting for
them. He was so thin that his eyes seemed too large and deep set for so
pale a face; his hands were like claws, and his lips were bloodless. At
sight of his utter helplessness Alaine felt her first wave of pity, but
she steeled herself against it.
He smiled as he saw her, and said, “At last, mademoiselle. I have long
wanted to see you, and the fault of our not meeting is not mine. Will
my good nurse give mademoiselle a chair?”
Adriaen understood, but Alaine refused to seat herself.
With a look at Adriaen, Madam retired and the young Dutchman followed.
Alaine, mute, troubled, a little pitiful for the invalid, wholly
resentful toward the man, stood there.
François regarded her for some moments in silence. “I have been the
cause of much suffering for you, mademoiselle,” he said at last, “and I
wish to tell you of my sorrow.”
“Sorrow comes too late, monsieur. In return I can only say that if I
despised you before, now that you are become the worst of creation, a
murderer, I can only look at you with horror and loathing.”
He winced but went on speaking. “Let us first talk of that morning
when I saw you last. The attack was not a personal matter. I was with
others who had long desired to make a raid into the English colony.
The opportunity came and we took it. I was chosen to lead the little
company of Frenchmen who were allies of the Indians. If the carrying
out of what seems one’s duty in serving one’s country is a crime,
then I am punished. None but myself can realize how great is this
punishment, this long death. I lie here paralyzed; only my head and my
hands are free to move. I do not say this to extort pity from you, but
to let you know that I have not come off better than my enemies. M.
Verplanck----”
“Hush!” Alaine raised her hand. There was agony in her eyes and in her
voice.
François turned his head away. “I did not understand,” he said, after
a pause. “I thought it was your sweet womanly pity which made you give
your body as a defence. I thought it was the other one,--that Pierre. I
cannot ask your forgiveness now, mademoiselle, for I understand. I must
tell you that I employed one who played the spy for me in those first
days of our acquaintance, and when you came so readily in answer to the
supposed word from Pierre, I believed he was the one you favored. I
thought it was but a friendship and a wish to oppose me that gave you a
kindly attitude toward any one else. I understand. Holy Mother! yes,
who better? I wish to tell you; it was Étienne, and I desired revenge.
I loved Constance De Caux in my student days there in France, but
Étienne she loved. He laughed when I said he had stolen her from me. He
said, ‘If you do not know how to keep her love, find out, but if you
expect me not to profit by your ignorance, you are a fool.’ And I vowed
I would win her or would have my revenge. She did not love me, although
I swear but for Étienne she would have done so, and she was all pity
for Étienne, who had lost his cousin Alaine. He came to me bowed down
with grief, and I pretended to give him my friendship again. But I had
not forgotten. No, I had not forgotten. Will you give me a drop of that
wine? I am very weak.”
Alaine handed him the cup but did not offer to help him to drink;
instead she turned away and stood looking out the window till he spoke
again, then she took the cup from him and placed it on the table.
He went on with his story. “Then I said, I will find her, this cousin,
and if I can bring her back to Étienne he will marry her, and after
a while Constance will remember how long I have loved her. I came.
I found Alaine, but she would not marry Étienne, I saw that, but I
did not tell him, for I had then another plan. He believed Alaine to
be dead, and then he married Constance, and broke her heart by his
indifference. I never told you all this, for I wished to marry you
myself, and returning, I thought to flaunt my wife in the face of him
who had vowed to win her, as I had vowed to win Constance. I knew
that your estates would return to you once you became my wife, and I
said I will have them and herself too; thus will I revenge myself upon
Étienne, who would fain have had both. He crossed me in my love, and I
will show him that I can do the same. A sweet revenge! A sweet revenge!
for Constance is dead and in heaven; she will know who it is that loves
her, and there she is mine and not his--not his. I would have won you
for my wife, and so he would have been left with neither one to bless
his days. Now it is all over and I have lost my last throw.”
He lay very still, his eyes closed, his breath coming quickly. It was
evident that the recital had cost him all the strength he could summon.
Alaine again took the cup of wine to him. “Will you drink?” she said.
“It has been an effort to tell me all this.”
He opened his eyes to smile at her. “Thank you. How kind you are! How
good and sweet you have always been! Even when you have flung your
defiance at me, it was always as a rebuking angel might speak. If I had
never loved Constance--Yet, I would have been kind to you. I would have
loved you as most men love, or even better. One does not love madly,
with the pain and the depth of a hundred loves all bound in one, one
does not love so but once. Never but once that comes, and to few.”
“I--know.” The words came painfully from Alaine’s lips. As she took the
cup away, François seized her hand and turned his face over upon it.
Alaine felt hot tears from the eyes pressing her palm.
“Don’t! Don’t!” she cried, drawing her hand away.
“At last I understand,” he repeated. “As I cannot forgive Étienne, so
you cannot forgive me. Let me tell you all. I lured you to the house in
the woods that first summer that we met. The men whom you believed to
be political spies were emissaries of a Jesuit who is yet working among
them there in Manhatte. He is not known as aught but a Protestant, and
I will not reveal his name, but it was through him that I was able to
carry out the plan which we meant should result in your being removed
from your home. The questions put to you were of no importance, and
were but to blind you to the real object. Again I wrote the letter from
Quebec, after I found you had escaped. I hoped that it might aid me
in preventing your marriage to another, and I hoped to discover your
hiding-place and to prevent any others from seeking you. How I have
planned and plotted and set spies upon you and dogged your actions! I
meant, if you should find your way back to your friends, to come to you
with a letter purporting to be from your father. I had meant to do even
that, to pretend that I had his consent to our marriage. I would have
done even that. I think I have told you all now. If I have robbed your
life of happiness, so you know I am not less miserable. I carry the
burden of love denied, of revenge untasted, of ambition thwarted, of a
miserable, helpless, suffering body. Mon Dieu! is it not enough? I ask
you, even you, Alaine Hervieu, whom I have wronged and have hurt as I
have hurt no other creature, is it not enough that with all this I must
yet live and face you, and see your misery and bear this gnawing misery
of knowing I have broken your heart, and that my own wretchedness is
scarcely greater?”
Alaine dropped on her knees by the bedside. “Lord be merciful to us!”
she cried. “Pray, François Dupont, pray!”
And François whispered, “Lord be merciful to us!”
Alaine buried her face in her hands. Sobs shook her slight frame.
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against
us.” She said the words brokenly.
François timidly reached out his hand and laid it on her head. His lips
moved, and when Alaine arose to her feet he looked at her with eyes so
full of entreaty that she bowed her head. “God forgive you, François
Dupont, and I pray that I may. I cannot yet,--I cannot,--but I pray
that I may yet be able to do so.”
And then Adriaen came in. “We must make ready to start,” he said.
Alaine turned to go. “Mademoiselle,” said François, “if I could fall
on my knees before you I would do it; as it is, my heart is bowed in
reverence for you. God knows it would be a small thing to die for you,
but I shall live, and perhaps by living a little longer I may yet do
something to undo my great wrong to you. If I might, if I might.”
When she had left the room François spoke to Adriaen. He had learned
enough Dutch in these weeks to carry on a halting conversation with
his self-instituted nurse. “Adriaen, my good fellow, I am as full of
whims as an egg is of meat. What would you say if I declared that I had
determined to go back to Canada? Helpless wretch that I am, there is
yet work for me to do and you must help me to do it. Will you?”
It took some moments for this to get through Adriaen’s brain, but
finally he nodded, “Yes.”
“I am a prisoner. I wish to be exchanged. I wish to remain here in
Orange. I shall not die yet. I am not worth one able-bodied man, but
there is enough of me, seeing my headpiece is still good, there is
enough to work an exchange. You will stay with me here?”
“That will I do.”
“Very well, then. I shall go back. One might suppose I enjoyed
travelling about the country in a canoe.” He laughed mirthlessly. “I
ought to die by the way, but I shall not, I say I shall not. Let me
remain here and see the big-wigs. Get that managed for me, and let us
remain. It is that much nearer your sweetheart, you see.”
Adriaen smiled broadly and regarded François with a puzzled look. This
sudden change of plans was bewildering, and he felt that he could not
adjust himself to it as rapidly as this keen young Frenchman.
“Will you ask Madam van der Deen and mademoiselle if they will permit
me to make my adieux to them? I would not force myself upon them again
to-day, but I may not live to see them again.” He spoke quietly of what
long since had become an accepted fact with him.
Adriaen withdrew and took the message to Madam van der Deen. “What
means this sudden change of plans?” she asked.
“That I know not.” Adriaen had not recovered from his surprise of it
himself.
“How can he wish to attempt it when he has been so eager to reach New
Rochelle? It passes my comprehension. I must consult my husband. The
man will die by the way,” Madam declared.
“Perhaps that is what he wishes,” thought Alaine.
The interview with François which Joachim van der Deen sought did not
alter the former’s decision. “He has a will of iron,” Joachim told his
wife. “He cannot be moved from his intention, and, helpless though he
is, one finds oneself agreeing with whatever he proposes. A pity so
able a man should be smitten down at this early age. He is our enemy
and could do us much harm, but one cannot remember that when one is in
his presence. He means to return to Canada, and when all is said that
is the sum of it.”
“Will you go in to see him?” Madam looked at Alaine, who followed
without a word.
“This is kind, madam,” was the greeting from François. “And you,
mademoiselle, I did not hope for this added grace from you. I am going.
I mean to do more before I die. If I can, I will do more. We shall
probably not meet again, and therefore I have asked to make my final
adieux. Words are poor things. I cannot thank you as I would for all
your motherly kindness to a wounded prisoner, Madam van der Deen, but
I shall remember it as one of the few pleasant things which have come
to me. Mademoiselle Hervieu, adieu. Will you come nearer?” She came to
his side. “You said pray, and I will pray to the blessed Virgin day and
night, to her and to all the saints, that you may have peace. If we do
not meet again, I shall have tried to make amends. Will you remember
that?”
She bowed her head in assent.
“Adieu, then.”
“Adieu, monsieur.”
They left him, so wreak in body, so strong of will, so wrong-headed,
so weary-hearted, with determination written in his deep-set eyes, and
even indicated by the nervous clasp of the wasted fingers. He turned
to Adriaen. “Now, then, we remain for a space, and the saints spare me
to do this thing which is not for revenge, nor for ambition, nor for
fame.”