Because of conscience

by Amy Ella Blanchard

François turned his feverishly bright eyes upon him. “Head of Red Feather and body that is mine,” he said, with a whimsical smile, “you are of no account at all beside the heart which is Alaine Hervieu’s, and which is great enough to do this. Will you bend your head closer, monsieur?”

Lendert obeyed, and François touched his lips to the burning mark, which stood out red and inflamed, even though Jeanne’s soothing applications had taken away the worst of its fire. “When you go to Alaine, tell her so I have dedicated this mark and bear her my long farewell.”

The canoes drifted apart, one going up stream, the other down, and to those who had best known him, who had suffered with and by him, whose fear had been turned into compassion, François Dupont became but a memory, yet from the memory at last all bitterness vanished, and he was remembered as one to whom reverence and gratitude were due.

The long and wearisome journey made by Lendert at last brought him to the house from which he had lately been cast out. But here was no mother to welcome him or to upbraid him, for Madam De Vries had gone to New York after Trynje’s wedding. She felt a miserable satisfaction in nursing her resentment towards Alaine, yet was of a dozen minds about her. Trynje was no longer to be treated as a daughter, and the one whom her son had loved ought rightly to have taken her place. This Madam conceded to herself, but grew hot and angry at the thought, and so at last she shut herself away from her friends and brooded over it all. As day after day passed and the hopelessness of ever seeing Lendert again came over her, she grew more and more bitter, outwardly, and more and more yielding, inwardly, so that if, at certain moments, Alaine had appeared, she would have wept with her and have taken her to her heart. A dozen times she started to make the journey to New Rochelle, where she knew Alaine to be, and as often she fell back in her chair, a slave to her obstinacy and self-pity.

It was one morning, six months after the events of the day, which it seemed to Madam De Vries must always pass in procession before her upon her first waking, that she suddenly decided to return to her home. “I cannot escape it wherever I go,” she moaned; “I am idle here, and I brood too much. I will go to work. I will change everything; I will busy myself doing that. I will have nothing as it used to be, and so in time I may be able to live in a measure contented.”

And thus it happened that the canoe bearing Lendert to New York passed the spot where his mother was resting overnight upon her homeward journey.

While Lendert was proceeding on his way some one else was nearing New York with hope and longing. M. Theodore Hervieu, late engagé upon the island of Dominica, was free at last and was now in possession of the knowledge of his daughter’s whereabouts. These facts had come to him in that peculiar way which gives credence to the saying that truth is stranger than fiction. He had not fared badly, when all is told, for he was fortunate in falling into the hands of a compassionate master, who gave him such liberty as was his due and set him about tasks which were not heavy. It was, however, not upon the island of Guadaloupa, but upon St. Domingo, that he was landed, and having been shipped under a name differing somewhat from his own, he was not discovered by those who had gone in search of him, remaining himself all the while ignorant of what had become of his daughter. Letters sent to France assured him that she had fled the country; letters sent to England remained unanswered, therefore in patience possessing his soul M. Hervieu waited till an event occurred which turned the tide of his affairs.

One morning from a high rock upon the coast of Guadaloupa there might have been seen dangling a rope, and from it swung a man, looking below him to make sure of how far he might drop if he let go. Presently the rope swung free of its burden, and the man, limping a little, ran along the shore and was not long in reaching a small boat, which immediately set out for the neighboring island of Dominica. After six months of miserable bondage Pierre Boutillier had a second time escaped, and as fate would have it, he found himself received upon the plantation of one Madame Valleau, and was taken into that lady’s presence by her secretary, whom she addressed as M. Hervet.

The pitiful condition of the escaped man excited Madame’s pity as she directed that he be given the best that the place could afford, and herself invited him to be her guest at dinner.

Madame Valleau had been a widow a little over two years. She was young and bewitching, and having married an elderly man who seemed more like a father than a husband to her, she was ready to fall in love when the proper person should present himself, and this happened to be Pierre Boutillier, for, as did Desdemona, “she loved him for the dangers he had passed,” and found in him a hero whom fate had cast at her feet.