“The Scorned, Despised, Rejected,
Thou hast come to this heart of mine;
In Thy robes of eternal glory
Thou welcomed me to Thine.”
“He has gone to his death, and it was I that sent him. He might have been warned, but I kept the warning back. I shall never see my father again.”
That was the thought that was ever hammering in Greta's heart and brain.
It was her action that had sent her father unwarned to his doom.
The others grieved, but not as she did. She was shut out from sorrowing together and comforting one another as they did, by her own deed. Their sorrow had no shadow of self-reproach; but she felt like his murderer.
She repulsed Ulric's rough pity, and Béril's caresses, and the little ones' awed sympathy; her secret was between her and all the world. If they had known all—.
She longed to speak, and yet she could not bring herself to utter the story that often trembled on her lips.
After Gerard left them, the two boys turned homewards; the thought of home was not quite so terrible to Ulric, with the prospect of something definite in view. He ran off, followed by Peter, and found the evening meal almost ready, and the two little girls playing with their toys in a corner of the room.
“What hast got there, Aimee?" he demanded, catching sight of something white and stiff amid her little possessions.
Aimee trotted up with it. It was a note addressed to his father, but never opened. Ulric looked at it dubiously.
“Look here, Greta,” he said, as the girl came in to take her place at the table. "Ought we to open this? It is for father. It may be important.”
The girl snatched it from him with a cry. "Let it alone, Ulric," she implored. "Don't open it, don't read it.”
She paused suddenly. What did she really want? Could she bear the burden of her silence any longer? After all, would not any reproach, any hatred, any scorn, be better than what she had borne lately?
“Oh, read it, if you like," she said, with white lips. "You will hate me and despise me, but I cannot keep it to myself any longer. Claudine Levet wrote it to my father that day. It was to warn him, to tell him not to go near the Palace. And I—I would not believe there was any danger. I hid it, so that he might not read it, and might go. I betrayed him, though I love him better than my soul.”
Ulric's eyes were blazing.
“The letter would have warned him! It might have saved him! He might be here with us now if you had not kept it from him!" he cried, in horrified amazement.
“I know—I know!" sobbed Greta.
“And then you talk about your love," he said contemptuously. "Love! Perhaps God will forgive you—I never will.”
He flung out of the room without a second glance at his poor sister sitting on the floor, With bowed head and hidden face. He would not trust himself to speak another word.
Béril ran after him.
“Ulric, don't leave her like that," she pleaded. "You know what it is to be forgiven yourself. Have you no pity for her?”
“I did pity her. I thought it was harder for her than for the rest of us. And all the time
“Oh, can't you see?" the girl said, her eyes blinded with tears, "how much harder it has been for her? The letter makes no difference, Aimié Levet escaped but he was captured. He is worse off than the others, if possible, for they are still in Geneva. But Greta cannot see that. She feels that his betrayal is all her doing. Go back, Ulric, and try to comfort her.”
But the boy shook his head.
“I can't," he said, and the next moment Béril was alone.
She went back slowly to Greta's side. The sight of the crushed, humiliated figure hurt her very heart. Without a word she slipped her arm around her, and drew her away to her own room, and put her, unresisting, into a chair. There was a long silence. Greta looked out over the sparkling lake, with its blue hills beyond, and far away against the sky the outline of Mont Blanc, faint, like a white cloud, with eyes that saw nothing of its beauty.
“I wonder, Béril, you do not think scorn to touch me," she said.
“I? why should I?" the girl said, quietly. "You must not heed what Ulric says. He will be sorry yet.”
“He only said what I say to myself all the time—all these long days.”
Béril nodded understandingly.
“Because God is showing you yourself," she said. "I know all you feel—because I have felt it too. We must all feel it before we can know how much God loved us, when He gave His Son to die for us. Since we can be so black, so vile, just think what He must have suffered, dearest, when all our sins were laid on Him. Oh, Greta, when I think about it all, I do not know which to wonder at most, the greatness of our sins or the greatness of His love. And yet we go on blindly, never dreaming we are evil, and sinful, and lost, till the veil is suddenly torn from before our eyes, and we see what we really are.”
“I think no one was ever so vile or so wretched as I.”
Béril nestled closer to her side.
“But Greta, God would not have you gaze forever on that sight," she ventured. "He has another for you to look upon. Mind you the story the doctor read us that last morning about the people bitten by the snakes, and the Brazen Serpent lifted on the pole? And then those other words he read to us? ‘As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life.' There was no other way in which sin could be put away, no penance, no prayers, no priest or saint or angel could do it. But He did. It meant the Cross, but He did not shrink from even that. It cost His blood, but He paid it. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin—cleanseth us," she glanced through the open window at the distant splendor of the Mont Blanc range, yea, “whiter even that that snow.”
For the first time the girl's stony tearless calm broke down. She threw herself on her knees by the broad sill, and buried her face in her arms.
“Oh, Béril, what shall I do?" she cried. "I have hated the new doctrine so. I have fought against it; but— what if it is true after all? I believed the priests and they have lied to me. I thought the Bishop was God's shepherd, and yet by treachery and violence he has lured my father to prison, perhaps to death. My life seems all one great mistake. I wish I were dead; but I am not fit to die. How can I know that He will receive me when I have fought against Him so long?”
Béril knelt by her side.
“There is only one way," she whispered. "Come to Him by the Lord Jesus and try, for He hath said: 'Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out.'”
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But Ulric's heart was still hot within him when he crept down to the lakeside in the darkness and joined Gerard waiting there.
“You said not why you wanted me," he observed, "but here I am.”
“Ulric, wouldst do something to help thy father?" he said; "even at a risk, perchance, to thyself.”
“Only tell me what, and you shall see," Ulric said, his eyes flashing. "You know not, Gerard, what it is to have a father in prison, with death hanging over him.”
“Thy pardon, Master Ulric, mine own father hath been in prison well nigh these six years," Gerard said, sadly. "If, indeed, he be not dead ere this.”
“I never knew," Ulric put in hastily. "Forgive me, Gerard, and tell me how may I help my father?”
“You mind those boats we watched this afternoon.”
“Boats? Why what of them?”
“Suppose," Gerard said, slowly, "the Bishop were minded to get his prisoners away secretly, without the knowledge of the Council to his Castle of Gaillard, where the Council would have no longer jurisdiction over them; what time would he choose for this think you? I trow he would convey them away by boats in the dark over the lake. Were he so minded, where would those boats lay in readiness, think you?”
Ulric's heart was beating hard with anticipation.
“Just where those did, of a certainty," he returned.
“Then art ready to watch?" Gerard questioned, "that no man may surprise me while I go down and make sure those boats are not ready, if the Bishop's guard should want them to-night.”
Ulric could have shouted aloud in his sudden excitement and confidence. If once the prisoners were carried away to Castle Gaillard the efforts of the Council would be defeated, and the Bishop could, indeed, do as he pleased with them; but as shouting was out of the question he repressed the inclination, and the two boys crept noiselessly along the path.
Gerard's one fear was that the boats might be guarded, but their cautious approach excited no attention. The spot was absolutely deserted, and the boats lay side by side, as they had seen them that afternoon, each with the sculls within, ready for immediate use.
“Watch here,” Gerard whispered.
In the darkness the two boys' hands met and gripped, then Ulric heard the other making his way, with scarcely a sound, to the dark patch on the water where the boats were.
There were two faint splashes as the sculls from the first boat were flung overboard, then a swift, clean slash of the knife through the mooring rope, and the boat itself floated off into the darkness.
One by one the others followed. Ulric held his breath. The night was peopled for him with stealthy footsteps, peering eyes, shadowy figures. Was that the cry of a bird, or a sudden signal; was that the gleam of a glowworm, or was it the glint of a lantern?
But each was a false alarm.
The last little boat slid silently out on to the bosom of the lake, and Gerard joined him again. It was too dark to see each other's faces, but both boys guessed at the relief and triumph there.
“What next? I scarce feel like going home," Ulric said. "How were it to wait and see if, indeed, the prisoners are brought hither. In the confusion, we might chance to speak with my father—even to get him away.”
Gerard's mind had gone no farther than disabling the boats. This was a new thought.
“It might be awkward to be found too near where the boats should be," he said. "Why not go and watch the gate of the Palace itself. We should see all that befell then, and were the prisoners indeed brought out, one could run and get help of others for a rescue, may be.”
Off they went, side by side, everything else forgotten in the exultation of the moment. So far they had been successful; if the boats were indeed intended and prepared for the transport of the prisoners to the Castle of Gaillard, then the Bishop would find an unexpected hitch in the accomplishment of his purpose.
There would be delay, if not confusion, at the lakeside. Who could tell what even a small band of resolute, desperate men might do, led to the spot at the right moment?
The boys ensconced themselves in the shelter of a deep porch, from which they could watch the Palace, and make sure that no body of men could leave it unseen.
Gerard was busy turning over different plans in his own mind. Ought they to keep their suspicions to themselves, or would it be better for one to remain on guard and the other to go to the house of one of the brethren, and tell what they had seen and done, and what they suspected, so that a rescue party might be formed?
A touch on his arm startled him.
“Gerard, watch that house opposite," Ulric whispered. "There is something passing strange about it.”
“How?" he demanded.
“People keep entering it; yes, and they sneak up as if they would fain not be seen," Ulric explained. "They do not knock at the door, they seem to scratch, and then to whisper a watchword ere the door is opened to them. I have noticed more than five or six, all men and each man carrying a strange staff.”
Gerard turned his attention from the Palace to the house opposite. What Ulric said was perfectly true. Dark figures were indeed entering the street one by one in a surreptitious manner.
“What can it mean?" he questioned, when there was no longer any room for doubt.
Had this mystery any connection with the boats moored under the trees? Were these shadowy figures on their side or on that of their enemies?
“If one could only recognize them," he went on, uneasily. "Dost know any of them?”
“I can hardly say. It is so dark, and they all cover their faces," Ulric said, slowly. "Yet one or two seemed somehow familiar. Here is another; look—surely it is Francois Vigne." He darted down the street as he spoke, and crept up to the hurrying figure. "Francois Vigne," he whispered.
The man did not pause, but as he moved on beckoned the boy to follow him. A little passage yawned black between two houses, and he stepped inside the shadow.
“Who is it?” he demanded.
“I—Ulric Morand, Dr. Morand's son," the boy answered. "I know where you are going. We have seen the others. We were watching the Palace, and we saw.”
“Who are 'we'!"Francois asked. He was one of the Gospelers, and knew Ulric well. "And why didst watch the Palace?”
“Gerard Gramont," said Ulric; and calling Gerard over the two boys told the story of the boats, and their recent achievement.
“Verily, 'tis strange," Francois said, slowly. He looked at the two dubiously. "Ye are but boys," he said, "yet Baudichon should hear of this.”
“Gerard is almost a man," Ulric said. "And I—I have a father in the Bishop's dungeon.”
The man moaned.
“Follow me," he said, and led the way in silence to the door they had watched. He scratched the panel, and, as a voice within asked the word, he muttered, "The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon.”
The door opened, and all three stepped inside.