“Sometimes one moment can repay
Unnumbered years of pain.”
AGAIN it was the Fête-Dieu; and the gayest city of the world wore its gayest adornment of flowers, wreaths, and tapestry. No. 18, Rue Béthizy, did not look outwardly less gay than its neighbors, though there was little festivity within. M. Bairdon had taken his son Henri―now a fine boy of twelve―to see the decorations of the city; the servants were out, keeping holiday; only Madame Bairdon and Griselle remained at home. They sat in the parlor; Madame Bairdon showing respect for the day by reading a book of devotion, Griselle reading also. Care and sorrow had touched her face, not to mar, but to refine and consecrate. The soft bloom of early youth had passed, the pure and finished grace of perfect womanhood had come instead. The fair hair, golden as ever, was bound simply back from the pale broad forehead; and the deep soft eyes looked more large, more full, more blue, because the cheek was less round, and its blush less rosy.
Madame Bairdon’s good-humored face also showed traces of anxious days and nights. She presently remarked, looking up from her book, far more willingly than she would have done from a manual occupation, “I forgot our lodgers were at home. I think I hear their footsteps.”
“I believe their valet has gone out,” Griselle answered. “But the English ‘milord’ himself and his tutor are within.”
“I wonder they do not go and see the city, such a day as this,” said Madame Bairdon. “Especially as they are strangers. Are we not fortunate in getting such distinguished lodgers, Griselle? Englishmen, it is true, are plenty enough here since the Peace, but English milords will never be too plenty anywhere. I am quite curious to see what ours is like. As yet I have only seen the valet, who engaged the lodgings for them. It was quite dark when they came last night. Margot, who helped the valet to carry up milord’s baggage, and saw his face in the lamplight, says he looks very delicate, poor young gentleman!”
They relapsed into silence, which Griselle broke, though with a little hesitation, “Chère maman,” she said, “do you remember this day five years?”
Madame Bairdon did remember, only too well; but she was one of those who find it hard, and almost think it wrong, to speak of past sorrows. “Ah, how things are changed since then!” she sighed. “Of those who sat around our table, the Sunday after, just half are lost to us. Griselle, m’amie, my heart does not ache for the two who are in their graves, as it aches for those of whom we know not whether they live or die. It is hard for thee, child, to waste thy youth, and wear thy life away, for one of whom the best we hope to hear is the death of hope itself!”
“Not hard,” Griselle answered. “He is good and noble ―he suffers for no crime, but for a generous purpose. And he lives, or we should know it. Gustave would have come back to us. Our dear, brave Gustave! He is a true hero.”
“Who would have thought so much of my poor Gustave, incomprehensible boy that he was? That he, who mocked generous words and sentiments, should straightway go and do generous deeds! It was love―the love he bore to Gerard and to thee.”
“Mother, the generous love was yours too,” said Griselle in a low voice. “You have given, for me and mine, as much as anyone on earth could give―a firstborn son.”
Madame Bairdon stooped and kissed her.
“Tais-toi, ma fille,” she murmured. “The boy must needs have his way. And, truth to tell, I had rather have him in the Bastille―or wherever else he may be―doing his devoir like his father’s son, than have had him become, as he was like to do, a little foolish-wise philosopher, full of his own conceit, denying the good God, and scorning his neighbors. Ma foi, that sort of thing is not―convenable!”
“I pray night and day―” Griselle began, and stopped.
“And I, if I am ever so busy, manage to say a Paternoster―one for him, and another for M. Gerard. Do you remember how our little Valérie used to pray for M. Gerard? The dear little one loved him well.”
“She was wise beyond her years, as children often are whom God would take,” said Griselle.
“Ah, you taught her prayers and verses, and stories of our Lord and the saints. I was always so busy,” said Madame Bairdon with a sigh, thinking perhaps of treasures she had overlooked, in her keen pursuit of the tangible rewards of diligence in business. Though these too had been sought for her children’s sake.
“She and Henri learned much in those quiet Sunday afternoons, from dear Father Goudin. How often she thought of your promise that he should prepare her for her first communion, and talked of it, even in her wanderings, near the end! Perhaps, indeed, he did prepare her for that communion, which was to be her first, where the little ones do alway behold the face of the Father.”
“Ah! I wish we were all prepared as my little Valérie for our last hour! But one must belong to this world while one is in it. Yet we cannot live in it forever; nor take the best ‘point de Paris’ with us out of it.”
“Hush, maman!―listen!” Griselle rather breathed than spoke, as she raised her hand gently, and a look at once of exquisite pleasure and of intense emotion passed across her face.
“Our lodgers are entertaining themselves with a little music,” said Madame Bairdon. “And very good music too.”
The music was good,―but there was that in its tones which Madame Bairdon failed to hear, though Griselle heard. She could not speak; tears gathered slowly in her eyes, and at last overflowed them.
For a time they sat in silence, listening. And then, chanted clearly enough to reach their ears, came words―words that thrilled the heart of Griselle to its core.
“C’est á Dieu mon Père
Que j’éléve mon cceur;
En Lui mon ame espére
D’une constante ardeur.”
“Oh, mother―mother!” she cried, trembling from head to foot. “Don’t you remember, mother?”
“Hush, my daughter, they have finished. And I hear footsteps; someone descends the stairs. What shall we do if our lodgers should happen to call for something, and not a servant in the house? Ah, quelle horreur!”
Her fears were realized. There was a gentle knock at the door of the room where they sat. Madame Bairdon rose, gave a hasty touch of adjustment to her coiffure, always fresh and graceful, and opened it.
The English “milord” spoke with deliberation and with an air of constraint, natural to one who translates his thoughts from another tongue.
“Pardon, madame. My preceptor, that is to say, M. le Professeur― is indisposed. Would mademoiselle your daughter be so very good as to make a tisane for him?”
Griselle had scarcely time to think the request extraordinary or impertinent, ere a cry rang through the house from garret to basement― “Gustave!” She hurried to the door, and saw the tan bearded youth clasp his mother to his heart in a long embrace. Then she heard Madame Bairdon’s faint, agitated words, “My son Gustave! But Gerard―where?”
“Here, to speak for himself,” Gustave said. For another step was on the stairs, another form drew near.
And Griselle was just conscious, amidst the darkness that suddenly surrounded her, and the strange sounds that filled her ears, of a face dreamed of night and day bending over her, a voice whispering words too sacred to be breathed aloud.
“Thy father and Henri,” said Madame Bairdon presently, starting at the sound of a well-known knock at the street door. How long was it since they had gone out? An hour? A day? A lifetime? She went down, opened the door, and led her husband up to the entresol, pouring into his ear a thousand voluble, half-understood explanations.
“Father, embrace thy son,” she said. “He was dead and is alive.”
The stately Scotchman folded his son in his strong arms ―kissed him―wept over him.
“He was dead―but not as the prodigal,” were the first words he spoke. “I am proud of my noble son, who has done his devoir well.”
“Father, here is another son for thee,” said Gustave, drawing Gerard forward.
“Who would have filled a nameless grave in the court of the Bastille, but for his more than brother,” Gerard added.
“My opinion is,” said Madame Bairdon through her tears, “that before we begin to praise and thank one another, we ought to praise and thank the good God.”
“You say well, mother,” Gerard responded. “‘Let those give thanks whom the Lord hath redeemed, and delivered from the hand of the enemy.’”
“Amen!” Gustave added.
This thanksgiving from the lips of Gerard, which was also a confession of faith, filled Griselle’s cup of joy to overflowing.
Afterward they talked together. “You have escaped from prison,” Madame Bairdon said. “If you had been set at liberty, you would not have come hither in this strange disguise. How did you ever think of it?”
“The plan was mine,” Gustave answered. “The prestige of an English milord is a grand protection; and my knowledge of the language fits me admirably for the role, while the quiet, scholarly Gerard makes a capital tutor, just a few years older than his pupil.”
“Tell us in what manner you contrived to break your bonds,” asked M. Bairdon.
Gerard answered, “We owe our freedom to kind and true friends who never ceased to think of us, and to toil for us.” Then producing an étui of perfumed morocco, much worn and faded, he added, with a glance at Griselle, “The kind hands in which I left this ‘gage,’ in exchange for the new purse they wrought for me ere I went to M. Pelletier, must have been the same that sent it back, with its precious contents.”
Griselle blushed, and seemed about to speak, but the words died on her lips, and she glanced at Madame Bairdon, who smiled with an air of intelligence, but said nothing. At last M. Bairdon spoke, “We were all in the secret,” he said; “but we could have done little, had not others of higher station and larger influence lent us their help.”
“Imagine our joy,” said Gustave, “when at length we were able to open and examine the little parcel M. Abadie placed in our hands on leaving the Bastille. The étui itself was like the face of a friend; ―I shall not tell just now how Gerard welcomed it. We took out the two goodly ‘rolls of a hundred louis,’ duly wrapped and sealed; and with the morbid curiosity of prisoners who have so little to see, must needs open both at the same time. The contents of the first fell out readily on the table before us―a glittering golden shower. But those of the other perplexed and baffled us; for the louis d’or on the top seemed to have a singular objection to separate from its neighbors. At last we removed it, and found that it formed the lid of a little circular box―so ingeniously contrived!―when we placed it beside the pile of gold coins it was meant to counterfeit we could scarcely tell the difference, yet it was large enough to contain these―which doubtless you know well.” He produced a knife blade, and a very small strong file without a handle.
“Oh, my father, no one but a captive can understand the rapture with which we seized them I When freedom is to be won, a man who has iron enough in his hands to file a bar never cries ‘Impossible!’ We were sent, I know not wherefore, to a dreary prison attached to a monastery in the south. Castelsarazin was the name of the hateful place. It was more comfortless than the Bastille; though by no mean so strongly fortified. ‘Twere a long tale to describe our labors, our shifts, our hopes, fears, and disappointments. We filed the bars of our prison window, made ropes of our bed covering and spare garments cut into strips; let ourselves down to the court, climbed the outer wall, and were free at last.”
“Free indeed, but far from safe,” said Madame Bairdon, repressing a shudder. “What did you do then?”
“Oh, then Gerard took the direction of matters into his own hand,” said Gustave, looking towards his friend.
“I went to my own people,” Gerard said― “and would to God I had done it long ago! We found shelter, protection, concealment, all that the truest friendship could give, with my kinsfolk, the Gentlemen Glass-makers of Foix.”
“Gentlemen Glass-makers!” Bairdon repeated in surprise.
“Yes,” cried Gustave eagerly. “Father, mother, only think―our Gerard is ‘gentilhomme.’”
A flush overspread Gerard’s pale face, and for a few moments he looked downcast, even sad. Then he said, turning to Bairdon, “Monsieur, had I been a true man, I might long ago have entreated your permission to give your daughter a name noble and stainless as any in your native land. But in my pride and folly I turned scornfully away from the proscribed, poverty-stricken race, with whom the memories of my childhood were associated. I remembered my father only as a poor artizan, whose name would disgrace me in the salons of Paris. And all the while that name, though I knew it not, was a noble one. Thus, while I gloried in my shame, my rejection of God and His Truth, I was ashamed of that which should have been my glory.”
“We value you for your own sake, M. Gerard,” Bairdon said. “We have always done so. Nevertheless, I own I have no objection to gentle birth and long descent. I admire that proverb of my adopted country, ‘Noblesse oblige.’”
“Gerard’s ‘noblesse’ is four centuries old,” Gustave explained with pride and satisfaction. “He is a Grenier of Foix, one of that family of Gentlemen Glass-makers who were ennobled in the fourteenth century by Charles VII. Notwithstanding their poverty, their rights are uncontested by friend or foe. You remember that the three Greniers―the young men who were put to death with the Protestant pastor Rochette―were allowed to die by the axe, without ‘amende honorable’ or indignity of any kind, just as if they had been princes of the blood.”
“So, even if I were retaken―” Gerard began with a smile.
“Oh, hush!” cried Madame Bairdon. “How can you speak thus, even in jest? Then, M. Gerard” ―with a little hesitation― “I suppose you are a Protestant?”
Gerard glanced around the group, but his eye rested on the face of Griselle, as he said firmly, “I hold the name of Protestant more dear than that of gentilhomme.”
“Ah, well! Your fathers were all of the Religion,” said Madame Bairdon apologetically and rather dolefully.
“My fathers were men who chose to die rather than say the thing they did not believe,” Gerard answered.
“And you, M. Gerard,” ―for the first time Griselle’s gentle voice was heard― “you believe in God? Nay, more―you believe in the Cross, and in what was done there for us all?”
“I do, from the depths of my heart.”
“Then, I think, you may live faithfully and die joyfully without priest or sacrament, as one died whose memory is precious to us all―dear Father Goudin.”
“I think with you, my daughter,” said Bairdon. “I belonged for half my life to the Church of Scotland. And though, for my own part, I have returned to Catholic Unity, I do not see, in this difference of creed, anything that need change the position of M. Désiré Gerard towards us, since he brings back to us an unchanged heart.”
“The heart of Désiré Gerard Grenier de Montalte must cease to beat,” Gerard answered with emotion, “ere it could change to those friends to whom he owes life and liberty, and the love that makes them precious. And yet,” he added after a pause, “he to whom so much has been given dares to ask still more―”
Bairdon smiled, though a tear glistened in his eye as he looked at Griselle. “I understand you, my son,” he said. “But have patience, and all will be well. What think you of a journey to my native land?”
Here Madame Bairdon interposed, and said something in a low voice about “prudence and discretion.”
And then a quiet festive calm stole over all. The reunited family ate and drank together, and talked of the future and the past; nor were the two dear ones forgotten who were that day keeping, in another place, no superstitious “Fête-Dieu,” but the true feast of God.
At an early hour one morning, about a fortnight afterward, a simple but solemn marriage service was performed in the chapel of the English Embassy. Secrecy and baste were necessary, for the bridegroom’s position was one of peculiar danger, and his departure from Paris and from France could not longer be delayed with safety. Amongst the few who were present by invitation, when Bairdon of Glenmair gave the hand of his daughter to Désiré Gerard Grenier de Montalte, was Gerard’s old friend M. Jules Prosper. After the ceremony he overwhelmed the bride with compliments, and gave her a handsome keepsake, a brooch á la Grecque. Then turning to Gerard, he asked with an abrupt simplicity which, with him, was the strongest sign of genuine feeling, “As for thee, my friend, where wilt thou go, and what wilt thou do now?”
“We go first to Holland, kindly aided by M. Delabroue, the chaplain of the Dutch Ambassador, who has given us letters of introduction to persons of distinction there. And then we hope to visit Scotland. My wife must needs show me and our brother Gustave the purple hills of her native land. Moreover, since the Peace, M. Bairdon has received communications from friends at home. The property he possessed in his own right is, they fear, irrecoverably lost, nor would his presence in Scotland be desirable, or safe, even now. But an estate belonging to the family of his late wife might be claimed for Griselle, as her grandfather’s sole surviving heir. I go to make the claim; and Gustave Will be useful also. He wishes afterward to study at an English university. While, as for me, I long to return to my art. I am Gerard the musician once more; and with joy and gladness now. For, Prosper, I have found the keynote of art, and of life. We go forth safe and happy, because we go― ‘in the shadow of God.’”
THE END.