“Lives there a man with soul so dead
Who never to his country said,
‘Thou art my own, my native land?' "—Scott.
“Greta, I want to learn to be useful like you. Will you teach me?”
Greta surveyed the graceful little figure before her with good-natured derision.
“What do you want to do?" she demanded.
“Just what you do," Béril persisted. “You are always busy. I want to be busy and useful, too. You know all sorts of things—I know nothing.”
Greta gave an extra rub to the brass lamp she was polishing.
“Ah, Béril," she laughed. “I am but a poor physician's daughter, and the eldest of five at that! You are a rich man's heiress, and in a little while you will go away to some grand chateau in France and forget all about this funny little home in Geneva, with its noisy children, and simple living and busy days.”
“You know that isn't true," Béril protested, indignantly. "As if I could ever forget! And if you knew— if you only knew how I hated—yes, hated—all the money you talk about, you would never remind me of it again. It makes me miserable every time I think of it.”
“Money is a very good thing," Greta returned, agreeably. "Very often I wish for more. If you had seven or eight people to provide for every week you would get quite reconciled to it. I have never yet reproached father for giving me too much—in fact, I often wish he were not so fond of poor patients, and had more that could pay well.”
“Ah! yes, money earned like that," Béril said, wistfully. “But money may have a curse upon it; it may be stained with blood. Would you welcome it then, Greta? Father loved it at first, but at the end he loathed it, and he made me loathe it too. I will never be really happy till I have got rid of it. You think I don't mean what I say, but I do; so let us forget the money altogether, Greta, and let me learn to sew and mend, and cook and clean like you do.”
“What dost think Ulric?" Greta turned with a laugh to her brother, who came into the room at that moment." Béril wants to set to work like Marthe and me. Do you think she was meant for cooking meats and rubbing brass?”
Ulric shrugged his shoulders.
“It must be a drear thing to be a girl," he said. "It is I that am glad to be a man, and to have something better than cooking and sewing before me. Ah! you laugh, Greta; you think I am only a boy, but even the boys may have to take their share in the fight that is coming in Geneva soon. Geneva is free, and she is willing to fight till the last drop of blood to maintain her freedom, but free she will be!”
“Why should Geneva fight?" demanded Béril "And who is she going to fight?”
“Hast never heard of the Duke of Savoy?" retorted Ulric, "and of the Bishop de la Baume?”
“I don't think so," confessed Béril
“Didst think," he pursued, with increased indignation, "that our Geneva is just a Swiss town and no more?”
“Isn't it a Swiss town?" asked Béril, innocently.
“Heard ye ever the like, Greta?" demanded the outraged Ulric. "Why, Aimee would know better. Irene could teach her. And she is fifteen!”
“Geneva is a free republic, Béril," Greta explained, proudly. "And this is the capital. We have always been free and independent from the times of the Romans, and had our own rulers. We have been envied; we have had many enemies, but we have never been conquered.”
“We never shall be," Ulric put in.
“The Duke of Savoy is the worst enemy of all," Greta went on. “For hundreds of years the dukes have been trying to add Geneva to their own possessions. We have always to be on our guard, because the armies of Savoy are always threatening us. All the boys here are like Ulric, their only thought is to grow up to be soldiers and fight for Geneva.”
“Father says the greatest danger for Geneva is within, not without," Ulric interrupted. "You see there are three parties in Geneva; there is one party for the Duke of Savoy; one for Bishop de la Baume—we have always had a Prince Bishop here, and though he had to flee from the city some years ago, his Vicar rules here in his palace. That makes two. Thirdly, there are the Huguenots.”
“Which are they for?" asked Béril. The same word was to become well known in her own lands in after years, but the Huguenots of Geneva had no connection with the Huguenots of France. The Genevans were a political not a religious party.
“The Huguenots are for neither Duke nor Bishop—they are for Geneva," Ulric returned. "They want Geneva to be free and to remain free. Father is a Huguenot, and so am I. It was the Huguenots that welcomed Farel to the city. Have you ever heard of him? Of course you haven't, though.”
But Béril had.
“It was the day we came to Geneva, father and I," she exclaimed. “We could not imagine what the tumult was. The market square was like a battlefield. It was crowded with people, and the people were frantic. They were like beings possessed. We could do nothing: the horses could not move a step backward or forward. Father placed himself one side of me, and Jean, his servant, on the other, to protect me. We heard a gun fired, then the door of the house, before which the people were gathered, opened, and two men appeared. The one I noticed was quite a small, worn man with red hair and beard.”
“That was Master Farel," Ulric said.
Béril nodded.
“I soon saw it was he at which all their anger was aimed, and I thought he would have been torn limb from limb. The crowd was like a sea of furious faces. They were shouting, 'Kill him! Kill the Lutheran dog! To the Rhone with him!’ And yet he looked so calm, so gentle. I can see his face now. I longed to go to this side to help him.”
“It was the Vicar's house," Ulric supplemented. "He had been taken there for judgment. There were eighty armed priests outside, waiting to kill him and Saunier when they came out.”
“I was so glad," Béril went on, "when, the armed guard forced their way through the mob and led them both away in safety. I never heard what happened after, because it: was then father's accident happened. The horses had grown very restive, and someone threw a stone. It struck father's horse, and it reared and threw him. You know the rest. That boy—Gerard you call him—came to the rescue; he showed us the way to the inn and then rushed off for your father. Father did seem to get better, though he was so badly hurt, but all at once he got worse again, and then—he died.”
“They got away safely the next morning," Ulric added, not knowing, boy-like, how to express the sympathy he felt, and going back to the subject in hand. "There was a crowd there ready to attack them when they started, but the little band—seven in all—passed through it unhurt, and reached the boat that had been prepared on the lake, and they rowed away, and that was the end of the Gospel at Geneva. They came here to preach, and in two days they were driven away, beaten and kicked and spat upon. But father and many other Huguenots went to the inn to hear him the first night before the priests had found him out, and he says he can never forget what he heard. He had never heard the like in Geneva before or since.”
“And what about Master Froment?" asked Béril, who had heard much of him from Irene.
“Oh, Froment!" Greta put in, contemptuously." He is nothing but a boy. I wish father would not let the children go to his school. He is not twenty-two, and what can he know?”
“He was old enough and brave enough to face death by coming here to tell of Christ, when he knew it might cost his life," Ulric said, hotly." Master Farel could find no one else to come back, and he could not bear that the city that had cast him out should be left without any witness, so he asked Anthony Froment, and he was not afraid to come. Yes, and he stuck to it, too; and when the Huguenot leaders would have nothing to do with him, because he was so young and so insignificant-looking, he just began on his own account, and if they would not hear him preach he made up his mind to teach the little children. The people are beginning to crowd to the Golden Cross themselves, though, now, and hear him preach after the children's lessons are over."
“You can believe all the seven hundred priests in the city are wrong and he is right, if you like," Greta retorted. "I don't.”
As a matter of fact, Greta had been intensely miserable since that night, a week ago when Béril came, though she no longer held Béril, but rather Irene's Testament, as the cause. That was the first and the last time she had opened the book.
Anthony Froment, the Lutheran schoolmaster, the messenger of the exiled reformer Farel, had already attracted the attention of the priests. They were alarmed, not only at the numbers that were finding their way to his preachings, but at the news that first one, then another, was learning through him of the One Who could pardon and save without any intermediary, with no help from priest or confessor. They were visiting from house to house warning their flock against the young heretic, and the doctor's house had not escaped a visit.
Greta's dimly-roused doubts had vanished, and all her love and loyalty to her father had been thrown into the scale. He was in danger, so Father Wenli convinced her, in awful danger of being led into horrible, unpardonable sin. It was her task by prayer, by penance, by every means in her power, to win him back to the right path.
Béril wondered, as she saw her feverish devotion, saw how earnestly she told her beads before the little altar in her room, how regularly she went to mass and confession. The words Greta had quoted to her that first night had touched her heart with infinite power, and produced a passionate longing to know more of the Book from which they came. But whenever she had tried to question Greta since, she had been repulsed and put off. It was clear she would learn no more of it in that quarter.
“If it were Master Froment's word against the priest's it might be strange for him to be in the right," Ulric said, now taking up her challenge. "But it is not what he says, but what the Bible says.”
“The Bible was given to the Church not to the laity," Greta returned, putting down the last of the brass cups with unusual emphasis, "and only the Church can interpret it.”
“You go and hear Master Froment," advised her brother.
“No, not for a hundred thousand marks!" Greta said, vehemently. "Cousin Claudine says her sister-in-law Paula Levet goes to the preaching, and Froment has bewitched her. She is like another creature. She implores Claudine to go with her, but nothing will induce her. She says she would be terrified to go.”
“I wish I could go," Béril said, longingly.
“Come with me to-morrow morning," Ulric said, eagerly. "I'll take you.”
Béril promised eagerly, to the great indignation of Greta, and the discussion between her and Ulric waxed so hot, that it was rather a relief when the three little ones ran in, accompanied by a gust of icy wind and a swirl of snowflakes to remind Ulric he had promised to build them a snow man.
A little persuasion induced the two girls to assume wraps and furs and join the others, and in the fun of making the snow man, and the riotous game of snowballing that followed it, dissension was forgotten, and the time flew by till dusk fell, and old Marthe, the solitary domestic the doctor's household boasted, came and called them in to supper.
As they trooped in, a hand touched Béril, and she turned and saw the boy who, a week ago, had restored Bruno to her. His face looked even thinner and whiter, she thought, his deep-set eyes more hungry.
“Mademoiselle," he said, in her own French, and with a refinement of tone her ear was quick to note. "Mademoiselle made a mistake the other night.”
He held out his hand, the coin she had given him lay there—a golden coin.
“No, Gerard," she said simply, "there was no mistake.”
The boy looked at her incredulously. "But it is gold," he faltered.
“Yes, I know. It was so little to give for getting Bruno back.”
“You meant to give it to me?" he repeated, in a dazed voice. “I thought it was a mistake, but I had no chance to give it back before-”
He paused, his face was white to the lips. At last he lifted his eyes and looked into her own.
“I am lying to you," he said hoarsely. "I had every chance to return it. It was that I could not bring myself to part with it. It was so much money I thought of all it would buy, not for myself, but for someone who needed it, ah, so bitterly! But I could not steal, even for her sake. I have brought it back at length. Take it and let me go, Mademoiselle, now you know all—know me a liar and a thief." His voice was low with shame.
“No, Gerard," she said quickly, and her eyes were wet. "Neither a liar nor a thief, but the bravest boy I ever met.”
The door was thrown open. Greta had missed her and was looking out; she had scarcely time to force the money back into his hand before he darted away.
“Who were you talking to?" Greta demanded. "It looked like that Gerard.”
“It was," Béril said, slowly, shaking the snow from her fur cap. "Who is he, Greta?”
“Just a servant," Greta said contemptuously. "His master is Bruyere the old miser, who lives above us. Everybody knows Bruyere. Whatever anyone wants he can supply—pictures, musical instruments, furniture, relics, silver, jewelery, arms, clothing, anything and everything, you have only to go to Bruyere, and if he hasn't got it he will get it. Gerard has been with him for years—his slave, his drudge, treated worse than a dog.”
“He looked absolutely hungry to-night," the girl said in a low voice.
I don't suppose he is ever anything else," Greta said with careless pity. "Old Brueyre must be swimming in money, but he grudges every sou he spends on himself, let alone anyone else. The rooms above are crowded with his things. Gerard sleeps in what little space is left in the garret.”
“But why does he stay?" she questioned.
“Who knows? I suppose he has not the spirit to seek anything better. Besides, he has a little sister, and Bruyere lets her share the attic with him. Supper is waiting, come along, and don't worry about them any more.”