“Better youth
Should strive through acts uncouth
Towards making, than repose on aught found made.”
R. Browning.
Norbert watched anxiously for his father’s return from his sad errand next door. So also did Antoine Calvin, to whom all had been told. At last De Caulaincourt came.
“I feel,” he said, “as one who has spoken a death sentence.”
“Does Berthelier know?” asked Antoine.
“Not yet; but they will not be able to keep it from him. Sister Claudine weeps, old Marguerite prays with white lips.”
“But, Gabrielle, father — Gabrielle?” said Norbert.
“A dumb thing shot through the heart does not cry or moan. Nor does she.”
“We will pray,” said Antoine Calvin.
“Ay, with all our hearts. ‘Tis all we can.”
“Is it?” asked Norbert, very low.
“My brother will go to them, and pray, and speak words of comfort,” said Antoine, as if to such consolation as this any sorrow must yield.
There was a pause, broken by Norbert. “Father,” he said abruptly, “with your good leave I am going to Lyons.” Nay, now, my son,” De Caulaincourt returned, with a touch of impatience, ‘tis no time for idle talk.”
“I never talked less idly. I mean it, and I pray of you not to hinder me. Master Antoine, you have influence with Master Calvin. He will write them a letter. Get him to let me take it.”
“At the peril of your life?”
“Am I the one man in Geneva who would not peril his life in such a cause?”
“Wait at least till thou art a man.”
“I am — at all events to-day.”
“Do not heed him,” De Caulaincourt interposed. “He is a boy, a child.”
“I am in my seventeenth year,” said Norbert. “And whatever you may think of the lawfulness of my last enterprise, it was surely no child’s play,” he added boldly.
“My brother, probably, will write by the messenger who brought the letter.”
“Who is sure to be gone, since the letter lay awaiting him for days.”
‘Tis a mad scheme,” said De Caulaincourt. “Master Calvin, or any other man of sense, is sure to say so.”
“That shall I find out, the first thing to-morrow morning.”
“Norbert,” said his father, with grave anxiety, “thou hast hitherto, with all thy faults, been a good, obedient son to me. Am I now to find thee froward and rebellious?”
Norbert turned on him with passionate, beseeching eyes.
“Father, I pray thee, let this thing be?” he said. “There is something in my heart that drives me forth. Of the life here I am weary — weary! The lessons I detest. The school, since Louis left, is a horror. The prayers and the preaching — no, I do not think I hate them. Sometimes I do, but sometimes I could almost love them, as to-day, when Master Calvin — sometimes I think there is something in it all, and that I may end by being “mortified,” “regenerate,” and so forth, like the rest. But then the weariness and disgust come back. And if I stay here, and walk through the dull gray streets, and listen to the droning voices, I shall hate it out and out. Let me go away and do something, something to help Louis — my friend.”
“But,” said his father, amazed at this outburst, “I do not understand. But a day or two agone thou didst refuse the Savoyard’s tempting offers, thou didst tell me Geneva was thy home, and let me think thou lovedst it. What has changed thee so strangely?”
“Nothing, — and everything. Or rather, I am not changed, I was always so. There are two hearts in me, and one of them spoke then, the other speaks now. But I am not going to give up Geneva. Father, if you trust me, and let me go to Lyons, with your blessing, I will come back faithfully, bringing that for which I went. But if you trust me not, still I must go, though of my return in that case I say not anything.” There was in his face a look of determination, new even to his father.
Here Antoine Calvin left the room quietly. “Alone with his father, whom he loves, the lad’s heart will melt,” thought he. “The presence of another would freeze it hard.”
When the door had closed upon him, De Caulaincourt said gravely —
“I fear, my son, thou hast given place to the devil.”
“Nay, father,” Norbert protested eagerly. “I am fighting him all the time, trying to hold him down. Or is it perchance myself I am holding down? All I know is, I want to go away — to go out into the world, to live, to work, to fight. The other day, when I said a steadfast “No” to the grave young count who would have given me all I wanted, I thought I had conquered. But it was not so easy. I no sooner had my foe under my feet than he sprang up again and smote me like a giant. But which is he, and which am I?”
“Oh, my son, pray God to guide thee, for I cannot! There is more here than I can understand.”
“There is more, father. And if I go to Lyons, it will be to serve Master Calvin and the cause you all love here, so that therein I may content every one-and myself too. Father, if thou lovest me, let me go! There is something that drives me forth.”
“My son, to-day and to-morrow, I will fast and pray.”
“Ay, father, to-day. To-morrow you will give me your blessing, and let me go.”
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Next morning, between ten and eleven of the clock, Norbert knocked at the door of the Bertheliers, and asked Marguerite, who opened it, if he could see Damoiselle Gabrielle.
“I suppose so,” said the old servant. “The child goes about her work as usual. She has not shed a tear.”
“Does Master Berthelier know?”
“He does. How could we keep it from him, when his whole heart is in the child, and hers is broken? Come in, Master Norbert; I will fetch her.”
The door of the room on the ground floor, where the dealer in foreign fruit kept his stores, happened to be open. Norbert turned in, thinking his chance of seeing Gabrielle alone would be better if he waited for her there. As he waited, his eyes rested vaguely on a great pile of oranges, aigre-douces, the Genevans called them, and prized them highly. It was only the other day he had chaffered for one himself in the fruit-shop on the bridge; but oh, how long ago it seemed! Then he looked up. Gabrielle had glided in, and stood before him, white and shadowy, with dark rings round her eyes.
Norbert had seen her high courage when the thing she greatly feared seemed about to come upon herself. But he was man enough to know that even that was small compared with this one; while he was boy enough still to be struck dumb with the knowledge, and unable to find one word of comfort for her.
He pointed silently to a box where she might sit, but she stood still, with a look in her dry, wide-opened eyes that seemed to ask; “Why have you disquieted me to bring me up out of the depth of my sorrow?”
He did not speak, but took a letter out of his sleeve and showed it to her. The superscription, written in a strong, clear, irregular hand, full of twists and turns, was this. —
To Master Jean Lyne, of St. Gall,
Merchant in Silks and Velvets,
At Lyons.
“Lyons?” she said, with a sort of shiver.
“I am going thither. With that.”
“You? A boy!”
“A boy can go safely where a man could not venture,” returned Norbert, too much moved to resent the slighting word. “At all events,” he added, with the air of one who settles forever a disputed point, “Master Calvin has given me his letter.”
“How came he?”
“Twas my luck; but “twas a touch of kindness too, I well believe. Master Antoine came and spoke for me; and, moreover, Master Lyne’s messenger had gone home to Berne, where he was taking up a business of his own, and would not return. No one else who might fitly go was at hand.”
“You peril your life, Norbert.”
He almost laughed. “So one does every day, one way or another. But indeed the peril is slight. I am to go first to Gex, where I shall get a pass from the Bernese, who are friends with the French, to bring letters to Master Lyne of St. Gall, at Lyons. Being French myself, I shall do famously. Talk of that for a risk! It is nothing to — ” He caught himself up, just in time not to recall the far greater risk he had run for her sake.
But even in her sorrow Gabrielle understood. She quietly finished his sentence — ” Nothing to what you dared for me.”
“Will you let this also be for you, Gabrielle? Give me your message, your letter, if you will — for Louis.” Gabrielle shook her head. “I cannot write to him.”
“But — ” Suddenly her sad face changed, glowed, like an alabaster lamp when the light is kindled within, turning the pale whiteness into soft rose fire — ”tell him, God is with him. And he will soon be with God, in His joy and glory.”
“Shall I tell him also that you bade him be steadfast?” asked Norbert, speaking in the best light of his age and surroundings, and white highest light it was, austere and pure.
But Gabrielle answered, “No. Should I tell the sun to keep his path in the sky, and rise duly to-morrow morn? Nor need you say we pray for him; he knows it. But you may tell him — for we are standing by the grave — that I love — have loved — will love. And that I think God will soon let me come where he is.”
There was in face or voice no touch of maiden shyness; these are among the things that death, when it comes near enough, burns away.
“Give me a token for him.”
“What shall I give?”
“Anything — one of these even, if you will,” taking an orange from the heap beside him.
“That perishing thing were no fit token of what cannot die,” said Gabrielle, and paused, thinking. Presently she took from her girdle the little ivory tablet which hung there with her keys, her scissors, and her knife. “His gift,” she said. “Stay — I will write — just a word”
Pen or pencil she had not; but with the point of the scissors she scratched upon the smooth polished surface — jusqu”à “aurore — “Till the day break.” Only that. She gave the tablet to Norbert, who said, “I will come back as soon as I can, and tell you all.”
“Do not come until — the day breaks — for him.”
“I understand,” he said. “Farewell, Gabrielle.”
“Stay. Do you need money?”
“Oh no, that is provided.” He wondered she could think of it at such a time, and, to say the truth, felt a little disappointed. Would she let him go without a word of recognition, of thanks? She did not.
“Good-bye, dear Norbert. God bless-and reward you!” she said, giving him her hand, cold as death in the July sunshine.
More in reverence than in tenderness he pressed his lips upon it, and was gone.
On returning home he found, much to his relief, that Antoine Calvin had persuaded his father it was right and wise for him to go to Lyons. In any case, De Caulaincourt would not have refused his consent when Master John Calvin had approved, and entrusted Norbert with his letters. But Antoine argued farther, that it was a good thing the lad should absent himself from Geneva for a little while, until the talk about his late escapade had died away; and also that this errand, well performed, would win him the respect and approbation of the best men in the city. The danger was slight; he had already shown himself adroit and resourceful, and in Lyons he would be under the guardianship of Master Lyne, the well-known and trusted friend of Calvin and of the martyrs. Norbert himself added, as an additional inducement —
“If I find I can travel safely in France, I shall go on another occasion to Gourgolles, and bring you tidings of our people there.”
So he went forth, bearing to the imprisoned confessors the prayers and the sympathy of all Geneva. That her children should lie in foreign prisons awaiting death for their faith was too everyday an occurrence to ruffle the surface of her life, but in the depths beneath the feeling was true and deep. Perhaps there never was a time in her churches when the public prayer for all prisoners and captives was not followed by dear, familiar names, breathed low and with trembling lips by many of the worshippers.
But the internal affairs of the city were still at this time very engrossing. She was like a goodly ship just righting herself after a storm, and resuming, under better and safer auspices, her interrupted course. She had escaped a great danger. She had crushed the Libertines; showing thus to them and to the world that by freedom she did not mean anarchy, nor in throwing off the yoke of Rome would she discard the restraints of morality and religion. Thenceforward the fair City of the Lake was to be indeed, if her children could make her so, the City of the Saints.