“I will go where I am sent. Pierre and I will go; Papa Louis, no. We have another selected in his place.”
“And you start?”
“To-morrow. That is why I wanted to talk to you. I thought should anything happen to me it might be a comfort to the good parents to know that we were fiancée.”
“If anything were to happen to you they would not be so easily comforted. We are brother and sister, Gerard, and I am fiancée to no one. There is Mère Michelle calling. I have left her there with those two miserables to nurse, and I chatter here half the afternoon.”
CHAPTER VIII
PLOT AND COUNTER-PLOT
The situation in New York at this time was exciting. The air was rife with reports that the Roman Catholics of other colonies adjacent were making preparations to march upon New York, and that there were persons within the city’s borders who were willing to betray it into the hands of those opposed to Protestantism. It was even rumored that General Dongan was in the plot, and the people turned to Jacob Leisler, that impetuous, if indiscreet, upholder of the liberties of the people. Having first seized the fort, he turned out the English troops, established himself in the name of the common people, and defied his enemies. It was quite natural that many of the Huguenots, dreading an establishment of that power from which they had already suffered so much, should cling to Leisler’s cause, and that the Dutch militia, all strong Protestants, should also array themselves against any government which represented a Jacobite king. Yet there were many office-holders who because of their being members of the same church as Leisler should have been above suspicion, but the impetuous Leisler did not believe in half measures, and pursued, denounced, and arrested in a wholesale manner. It was all or nothing with him, and honest as his intentions doubtless were, his hammer-and-nails way of dealing with his political opponents, his lack of tact, and his uncompromising faculty of making enemies at last brought about his own downfall.
Without being aware of it those under the roof of the Merciers were at loggerheads. Papa Louis and Gerard were strong upholders of Jacob Leisler; Lendert Verplanck was as strongly arrayed on the side of Van Cortlandt, Bayard, and Phillipse; while François Dupont, an ardent Frenchman, was ready to do what mischief he could to any foe of his own country. He considered that no means should be despised if it brought about the ultimate benefit to France, and he was ready to declare himself a friend to any cause if by so doing he could accomplish his ends.
“I love France. How, then? Who of her children does not?” he exclaimed, when Mère Michelle suspiciously sought to fathom his errand to New York. “You yourself, madame, and your good husband there, are you not also the same? And that old man of whom you tell me, he who goes every day to look toward France and to stretch out his hands in her direction, émigré though he is, has he forgotten his love for his country. Of what do you accuse me? Of being a Frenchman instead of a Dutchman, or an Englishman? Am I not Rouennese, and therefore the more your compatriot? Judge me not so ill as to think I plot against you, Mère Michelle.”
“I trust you not, else why did you steal away my child, my Alainette?”
“I steal her away?” He laughed. “’Twas I who rescued her from those who were her captors. Yes, yes, I know you will not believe that, nor that when the Indian brought her in I was as surprised as any one. Those in whose company she found me are no more your enemies than the Dutch monsieur yonder who receives your good offices. The story is this: Mademoiselle is carried off by a thieving Indian, who, for hope of reward, brings her to us with a tale of having rescued her from his comrades. I desire to aid mademoiselle to a return to her rightful possessions, and I offer her escape from yonder Dutchman, whose good intentions I have no reason to know. She, in a spasm of fear, resents this, and behold the result; I suffer from a gunshot wound, and monsieur, the Dutchman, suffers from my self-defence, and here we are.”