CHAPTER XVIII.

A GREAT STEP.

MY Aunt Jem's death was, of course, a great shock to me, and might well have opened my eyes as to the course wherein I was walking, but I would not have them opened.

In the state of mind I was at that time, it seemed to me only a new injury. I was like one possessed. In the midst of all my worldliness and backsliding, my heart had clung to Andrew, and I had believed in his faithfulness and uprightness. Now he turned out no better than the rest. There was no truth in anything. My father and mother had served the Lord faithfully, and how had they been rewarded? If they had indeed served him aright, would he not have stretched forth his hand to help and deliver them?

Thus I reasoned, contemning the generation of his children, and wilfully shutting my eyes to the fact that the Lord nowhere in the New Testament promises exemption from sorrow, and the cross in this world as a reward for faithful service. There is no person so open to the attacks of Satan as a professed and enlightened Christian who is living in known and wilful sin.

The first effect of my aunt's death was to throw me more completely into the hands of Madame de Fayrolles. I was very unwell after the funeral, and indeed kept my bed for several days. As soon as I was able to be up, madame came to me full of affection and of caresses. She informed me that she and her husband were going to travel to Bath and to several other watering-places, and that she had arranged to take me with her. My health and spirits would be all the better for the change, and my uncle had given his consent.

"So you have nothing to do but to get ready, and we will set out in a few days," she concluded. "Have you an attendant, or shall I provide one?"

Now Mercer had waited upon me since my aunt's death, my own damsel having gone to a more lucrative place. She had tended me with the most devoted kindness, and I had become greatly attached to her; but when I asked her whether she would accompany me on my journey, to my surprise and chagrin she flatly refused.

"But why?" I asked.

"Well, Mrs. d'Antin, the truth is this," said Mercer. "I am fond of travelling, it is true, and I like you. You have always been a good young lady to me. But—I mean no disrespect—I do not like that French lady, and I like her attendants still less. Besides—"

"Well, besides what?" I asked a little impatiently. "Besides is always the real reason, I find."

"Besides, madame, I should not think it right," added Mercer, turning very red, though she spoke with great resolution. "I have lived too much for the follies of this world as it is. I know I have a liking for them, and am therefore best out of their way. Some words your blessed mother said to me when she was here, and I was waiting upon her, stuck in my mind and first made me think of something beyond this life, and my poor dear lady's death has been another warning to me about living for this world. My sister has a ladies' boarding-school at Hackney, in which I can invest my savings, and I can be a help to her in teaching the ladies to work and in looking after their dress and manners. She will be very glad to have me with her, and I hope I shall be able to do some good in the world before I leave it."

"Oh, very well," I said petulantly, "if you prefer teaching cross and satin stitch to stupid girls, and seeing that they comb their hair and put on clean linen, to attending upon and travelling with me—"

"I do not prefer it, madam," answered Mercer. "I choose it, because I know that I shall be putting myself out of the way of temptation, and into the way of doing good. Besides, madame, I am a simple unlearned woman who does not know how to answer for her faith, and to say the truth, I would not like to trust myself among a family all made up of Papists."

"You are very bigoted," said I, in a superior tone. "Don't you suppose there are as good Christians among Papists as you call them, as there are among Protestants? Don't you believe a Papist can be saved?"

"As to that," answered Mercer readily, "that there are those among them that live up to their lights, such as they are, I don't deny, but I don't say nor believe that they are as good Christians as they would be if their lights were brighter. As to their being saved, that is no business of mine. I know that the Scriptures are very hard upon idolaters, especially those idolaters who might know better."

"But the Papists do not worship images," I said. "The veneration of holy images is permitted because this veneration is not paid to the image itself, but to that which it represents."

"But the second commandment is explicit about that," returned Mercer. "That very veneration is forbidden, because we are not to bow down to them. Besides if there is nothing in the image itself, why do they venerate one image so much more than another?"

"Oh, you are a great casuist," said I. "I wonder you do not take orders instead of going into a school. The long and the short of it is, you think it will be a fine thing to set up for yourself and to have a parcel of young ladies to govern."

"You are mistaken, madame," answered Mercer, with enough of dignity to make me ashamed of my petulance. "If you were to remain here in London or to go into the country, even down to that barbarous Cornwall, that my poor dear lady dreaded so much, I would give up all thoughts of going into the school, and stay with you as long as you wished, and that for your dear mother's sake as well as your own. But into the family of Madame de Fayrolles I will not go. And I do beg and entreat you, Mrs. Vevette, to think twice before you do so. Think of what your mother would say—think!"

But the conversation was here interrupted by a call from my aunt. She did not seem at all displeased when I told her of Mercer's decision.

"It is just as well," said she. "Of course, if you wished for the good woman, and she desired to come, I should say nothing against it; but it would not have been comfortable for her or you. But I wonder she should refuse so good an offer."

"It was a case of conscience, I believe," said I. "She was afraid of being converted."

"Oh, I understand. Well, petite, it is just as well. I shall have no difficulty. You shall take my second woman, who has been well trained and is an accomplished seamstress and hair-dresser. So, Mrs. Mercer—" as that damsel entered the room "you will not go with your young lady because you are afraid of being converted. Does not that in itself show you how weak your cause is, and how conscious you are of its weakness?"

Madame spoke smilingly, and Mercer answered also with a twinkle of the eye.

"If I might venture to put a case, madame?"

"Go on," said my aunt.

"Suppose, madame, one of your own family, a woman neither very bright nor very learned, should be offered a service in a Protestant family, where she would be likely all the time to hear her own faith attacked by an accomplished Protestant minister—what would your ladyship advise her to do?"

"Fairly posed," returned my aunt, laughing good-naturedly. "Well, well, I will not urge you. But at least accept this little remembrance from me," she added, drawing out a very elegant little étui, with pencil tablets and all complete. "It will be useful to you and is valuable in itself."

Mercer accepted the present with many thanks, and retired.

"That is a good soul," said my aunt. "What a pity she is not a Catholic? She might have a real vocation."

The next day I removed to the lodgings which my uncle and aunt had been inhabiting for some time, and my uncle's establishment was broken up. He gave me all my poor aunt's wardrobe, except her most valuable jewels, and I in turn bestowed upon Mercer such of the things as were likely to be useful to her, together with a number of books of devotion which had belonged to Aunt Jem's mother.

Mercer was profuse in her thanks, and we parted the best of friends. I visited the good woman many years afterward, and found her at the head of the school which she had entered, and though an old lady, still hale and strong, and ruling her little kingdom with a wise and vigorous hand. I took from among her young ladies, one to be waiting-gentlewoman to myself and my eldest daughter, and I have never had reason to regret the choice.

I had written to my Lord Stanton asking permission to stay for a while with Madame de Fayrolles, and received a speedy answer, as some one from the neighborhood was coming direct to London. My lord evidently wrote in a good deal of irritation, and his letter was to the effect that he had not the least objection to my residing with Madame de Fayrolles since from all he could hear, she was a woman of reputation. He only hoped she had no sons to be bewitched—this sentence was scratched out, but I could read it. He sent me some money for my private purse and would remit more if I needed it. In short, it was plain that my lord dreaded nothing so much just now as having me returned on his hands.

Theo, on the contrary, who wrote at the same time, gave me a most warm and pressing invitation to make my home with her, as long as I pleased, and she begged me to think twice before placing myself wholly in the hands of Madame de Fayrolles. I shall not repeat her arguments, though they were all good and wise. Indeed, I hardly read them myself. I could not endure the idea of returning to Devonshire on any terms.

I found a luxurious apartment prepared for me in the house Monsieur de Fayrolles had taken for the season, and here I remained for some two or three weeks, coaxed and flattered to the top of my bent. Every means was used to attach me to my new friends, and separate me from old ones.

Neither my lord nor Theo said a word about Andrew, and I had not heard a word from Tre Madoc in a long time. I had asked Mr. Pepys about Andrew, and he admitted that he had heard the story of his approaching marriage from excellent authority, and believed it to be true.

From this time I became like one desperate. I put away my French Bible, so dear as having been my mother's, and the little brown English prayer-book she had carried off in our hasty flight from the Tour d'Antin. I could not make up my mind to destroy them, so I made them into a package, sealed them up, and committed them to Mercer's care, from whom I reclaimed them long afterward.

I read only the books of controversy and devotion supplied to me by Father Martien. I began to use a rosary, and to fancy that I found comfort and help in praying to the virgin. I was quite ready to have made a profession of my new faith at this time, but to my surprise and disappointment, Father Martien put me off. He said I had not had time to know my own mind or to receive proper instruction.

The truth was, I believe, he did not think it would be very safe either for my uncle or himself. There was in England a growing jealousy of Roman Catholics and their influence, a jealousy well founded enough in itself, though it culminated afterward in the follies and wickedness of the so-called Popish plot. It would be dangerous to have it known that a young lady of good family, a ward of my Lord Stanton's, had been induced to abandon the English for the Romish Church.

This refusal, however, only increased my eagerness. I really persuaded myself that I embraced all those dogmas which I had been educated to regard with horror, as monstrous and profane. My aunt, while greatly edified by my devotion, was a little alarmed at it. It was at that time no part of her plan to have me become a religious, as she called it. She took me out with her a great deal, and paid great attention to my dress and manners. Both she and my uncle were very kind and indulgent, but they contrived to keep me in a kind of honorable restraint—a restraint so gentle that I never felt it at all.

I was not permitted to visit by myself any of the young ladies of my own age whose acquaintance I had made at my Aunt Jemima's, and though my friends were made welcome and treated with great courtesy, yet somehow their visits gradually fell off, and I saw them no more.

In a few weeks we visited the Bath, as my aunt had proposed, and remained for some time seeing a good deal of company. From thence we went to Epsom, at which place the king was residing, though he kept no court and had very few about him, save the very most dissolute of his courtiers, for he had by this time thrown off all pretence to decency of conduct. It was at Epsom that Monsieur de Fayrolles received a summons to return at once to France. It seems he had some sort of command over the household guards, from which command he had been absent longer than his royal master approved.

My uncle received this notice in the morning at the hands of Father Martien, who had come down with some letters from the French ambassador. In the evening, my gentlewoman came to me with a message desiring my immediate presence in my aunt's room. I found her seated beside her husband, while Father Martien stood behind her chair. The faces of all three wore a very solemn expression, and I trembled, I hardly knew why. My aunt bade me be seated. Zelie placed a chair for me and then at a sign from her mistress withdrew.

"Genevieve," said my uncle seriously, "the time has come for you to make a decisive choice as to your future conduct. We are obliged to return to France immediately. Will you return with us, embrace the true Catholic faith, and be to us as a daughter, or will you remain in this land of heretics, and return to my Lord Stanton, or to his daughter who has invited you?"

"Nay, my friend, state the case fairly—that might not be the alternative," said madame. "Vevette might undoubtedly be married before we leave England, since Mr. Cunningham has made application for her hand already. Besides, her cousin, Mr. Corbet, is as we hear just about to return with his bride, and I dare say they would not be sorry to give Vevette a home."

This last news—I hope I do my aunt no injustice when I say I believe she made it up for the occasion—decided me. I was not a moment in saying that if monsieur pleased, I would return to France with him.

"But if you return with us it must be as a Catholic," said my uncle. "I do not profess to be bigoted, but I cannot, I dare not, take an open heretic to the court of the most Christian king."

"Mademoiselle has already confessed to me her desire of being admitted into the bosom of our holy mother church," said Father Martien. "Is it not so, my daughter?"

"It is so," I answered quite calmly and resolvedly. "I am ready to make a profession at any time."

The priest and my aunt were loud in their expressions of gratitude to all the saints. My uncle merely said:

"That settles the matter then. We shall go to London to-morrow and from thence set out at once for Paris. There is no time to consult my Lord Stanton, nor is there any need of doing so since he has given his consent to your residing with us."

The next day we went to London, where we remained less than a week, settling up affairs, paying off servants and tradespeople, and taking leave of our friends.

I was in a high state of excitement, and it did not strike me at the time, but I well remember now that I was hardly left to myself a moment, and that care was taken that I should never have the opportunity of speaking alone with any of my Protestant friends.

My good Mercer came to see me, but she was not admitted, nor did I know of her visit till long afterward. There was no need, however, of all these precautions. I was possessed of only one idea—to separate myself as far as possible from Andrew, and to get out of the country before he came into it. I felt as if I could have gone to the ends of the earth to avoid him.

Besides I was delighted with the prospect of seeing Paris and Versailles, and that court my aunt described to me in such glowing colors. I conceived that I should be a person of a good deal of importance, and even began to have dreams of a grand alliance. As to love, I said to myself it was all sentimental nonsense, just fit for boys and girls. I had got over all that. In short, my heart was given to the world. That was the god of my idolatry, and it paid me the wages it usually bestows upon its votaries.

We were favored with a passage in a king's ship, and therefore fared better than most people do in crossing the channel, but we had a rough time. Every member of our party was sick but myself, and I had my hands full with waiting upon my aunt, who fell into all sorts of terrors and fits of the nerves, and was sure we were going to be drowned. However, we reached Calais in safety, and after waiting a day or two to refresh ourselves, we took the way to Paris.

Whether it was that I had been so long away from France that I had forgotten how it looked, or that Normandy had been in a more flourishing condition than the other provinces, or finally, that I contrasted what I now saw with what I had seen in England, I cannot tell; but certainly the country looked terribly forlorn to me. There was little tillage, and what there was seemed by no means flourishing; the people had a crushed, oppressed, half-fed look which was very sad to see. Even when the vintage was going on there seemed very little rejoicing.

Once, taking a by-road to avoid a hill, we came upon what must have been a flourishing vineyard a day or two before, but the vines were crushed and torn from their supports, and lay withering upon the ground, the beautiful grapes were scattered and spoiled, while two or three women with faces of blank despair were trying to rescue some of the fruit from the general destruction.

"Oh, the poor people!" I exclaimed. "What has happened to them?"

"A boar hunt probably," said my uncle indifferently.

"But why should that have wrought such ruin?" I asked.

"Because, little simpleton, the boar would as soon go through a vineyard as anywhere else, and when he does it is needful that the hunt should follow him, which is not very good for the vineyards."

"And so for the sake of some great man's pleasure of an hour or two the poor man's heritage is destroyed," said I indignantly. "What a shame! What wickedness!"

"Tut, tut! Petite! Remember that we are not now in England where every clown can bring his lord to justice, but in France where nobles have privileges. But I wonder where the owner is. Where is your husband, my good woman?" he called out, as we came opposite the workers.

"Alas, monsieur, I do not know," answered the poor woman, with streaming eyes. "Monsieur the marquis was hunting yesterday and took a short cut through our vineyard to arrive the sooner, and my husband was so ill-advised as to utter some harsh words and maledictions which the marquis overheard; so he bade the huntsmen take him away and teach him better manners. Since then I have not seen him, and Heaven knows what has become of him. Oh, monsieur, if you would but intercede for us; I am sure my husband meant no harm."

"He should be more careful with his words," returned my uncle. "My good woman, I am not acquainted with your marquis, and cannot therefore take the liberty of speaking for your husband; but there is some money for you. Drive on, postilion."

My heart was sick with the injustice and tyranny, the effects of which I had just seen, but my aunt and uncle seemed to think little of it, and indeed I saw enough more sights of the same kind before we reached Paris. The simple truth was and is, that in France the common people have no rights whatever, but are absolutely at the mercy of their lord. Their crops, the honor of their families, their very lives, depend upon his humor, and how great soever may be the wrong, there is no redress.

I had seen little of this sort of thing in Normandy. The only great proprietor near the tour, besides my father and Monsieur Le Roy, who were both Huguenots, was a gentleman of great kindness, and one who made a conscience of dealing justly with his people. I was heart-sick before we reached our destination, and wished twenty times I were back in England.

We arrived in Paris at last, and I found myself dazzled by the splendid buildings and the grand equipages which met my eyes on every hand. The streets, it was true, were quite as dirty as London, but there was no fog or coal smoke to obscure the air or blacken the house fronts. My aunt was in the best of spirits at being once more in her dear native city, but I could not help thinking my uncle rather grave and preoccupied. As to Father Martien, he was always the same under every circumstance, and I have no doubt would have preserved the same calm countenance whether he were watching the agonies of a heretic on the wheel, or being himself served with the same sauce by the Iroquois.

My uncle had a fine hotel in a fashionable situation, and as a courier had been sent before us we found everything ready for our reception. I was assigned a small room which looked into a court, and had no exit but through my aunt's reception-room. It was prettily furnished enough, but I took a dislike to it from the first, because it reminded me of my little turret-room at the Tour d'Antin, which I would have preferred of all things to forget.

I had looked forward to Paris as a scene of gaiety and splendor far beyond anything I had ever seen, and so it was, but I very soon found that the gaiety and splendor were not for me. It was not that my aunt meant to be unkind; on the contrary, at that time she was amiability itself, but in France a young lady of good family lives before her marriage in a state of as much seclusion as if she were in a convent. In fact, almost every French young lady is placed in a convent at a very early age, from which she only emerges to be married to the man not of her own, but of her parents' choice, whom she perhaps never saw more than twice and never a moment alone, till she was married to him.

I could not complain of being treated as other girls were, but I must confess I found the life a very dull one. My aunt lost no time in securing for me the services of a music and a dancing master, and she often took me out with her in the coach, but I had no companions of my own age. I was not at all well. I had been accustomed to a great deal of exercise all my life, and that in the fresh air, and the state of excitement in which I had been kept for such a length of time began to tell on me.

I slept very little and was troubled by frightful dreams, which almost always took me back to the Tour d'Antin, and the dangers I had undergone there, or, what was still worse, I read and worked and prayed with my mother, and then waked to an intolerable sense of want and desolation. I told Father Martien of these dreams. He looked grave, pronounced them direct temptations of the devil, and said he feared I had some sin or some concealment yet upon my conscience which gave the evil spirit power over me. I assured him that such was not the case; but he still looked grave, bade me search my conscience anew, advised a retreat, and gave me to read the "Four Weeks' Meditations of Saint Ignatius."

This retreat and course of study were to be my final preparation for the public profession which I was to make. In the course of it, I secluded myself entirely in my room, which was so far darkened that I had only light enough to read. I fasted rigorously, saw no company, was allowed no recreation, and no employment save my rosary and my book of meditations. And such meditations—full of the grossest and most material images of death and its consequences—the decay of the senses, the desolation of the sick-room and the dying-bed, the corruption of the body, the flames and brimstone, the wheels and spits of purgatory and hell! In the midst of all this, the penitent is invited to pause and resolve seriously upon his or her vocation, just at the time and in the state when she is most incapable of judging reasonably of anything. No wonder the book has been instrumental in leading so many into the cloister.

I finished my month's retreat and was admitted into the fold of the Holy Catholic Church, as she dares to call herself, in the chapel of the king himself, who had taken a great interest in my story. I should like to give my reader an account of this important passage of my life, but in truth I remember very little about it. I have an indistinct recollection of knocking at a closed door and requesting admission to the church, of various chants and prayers, of censers and waxen tapers, but it is all like a confused dream. In fact, I was already very ill, though nobody suspected it. I recollect receiving a great many congratulations, and being saluted by the king himself, who, having been converted himself (save the mark), took a great interest in all converts.

The next morning found me in the stupor of such a fever as I had suffered in Jersey, and for two or three weeks I lay between life and death, unconscious of everything. At last, however, the disease took a turn, and I was pronounced out of danger.

For some time longer, I lay quietly in my bed, slowly gaining strength and the ability to think connectedly. I was indeed like one waking from a long dream, and I began to realize what I had done. All the instructions I had received in my youth—the very psalms I had learned from my foster-mother—returned upon me, and would not be put aside. My eyes were opened, and I was compelled to see and to own that I had deliberately sold myself to the world, and that unless I could find a place of repentance—which did not yet appear to me—I must reckon upon paying the price of the bargain, namely, my immortal soul.

Little did my aunt and my nurse guess, while I lay so quietly with closed eyes, what was going on within. I would have given worlds to weep, but I had no tears. Neither could I pray. My heart was dry as dust, and the unmeaning repetitions which had served me instead of prayers now inspired me with nothing but weariness and disgust. Oh, how I hated that image of the Virgin which stood opposite my bed, dressed in laces and satin, and wearing my own mother's pearl clasp! I had myself given it away for this purpose in one of my fits of devotion. If I had dared, I would have crushed the simpering waxen baby under my feet.

The stronger I grew, the more wretched I found myself. I was obliged to go to confession, but Father Martien's threats and cajoleries had no more effect upon me than to make me hate him, as the one who had led me into the snare from which I could see no escape, unless it were such a martyrdom as my father's, or the slower hidden agonies of a convent prison. For these I was by no means prepared, and I well knew they were what awaited me if I allowed my change of feeling to become known.

The king, as I have hinted, had been converted by the jubilee which had taken place some years before. He was still in the fervor of his first love, and as his spiritual guides could not succeed in making him give up Madame de Montespan and company, they compromised by urging him on to more and greater acts of severity against the so-called heretics. One might be an unbeliever even to denying the existence of a God at all, but to be a Huguenot, or even a Jansenist, was an unpardonable sin. Two or three great men, indeed, who were necessary to him by their talents as soldiers or statesmen, were allotted a sort of protection, but even these soon found their lives unbearable, and either conformed like Turenne afterward, or fled from the kingdom.

For a young girl like myself, away from all near friends, and, above all, one who had only lately conformed, there would be no hope. Even a suspicion of relapse would lead at once to a convent with all its possible horrors. No, there was no escape. I had left my Lord, and he had left me. I had denied him, and he would deny me. I must go on as I had begun, and that to the bitter end.

It was not one of the least of my troubles that I felt all my love for Andrew revive again. I began to doubt the truth of the stories I had heard, and to wonder whether they had not been invented for the very sake of entrapping me. Doubt soon grew into conviction, and, reasonably or unreasonably, I no more believed that Andrew was married than that I was. No, he would return in a year—return to claim me and to find that I was lost to him, to truth, and heaven forever.

It was in the church where I was kneeling for the first time since my illness that this thought came to me, and I cast myself on the ground and groaned almost aloud. My aunt observed the movement, as indeed nothing escaped her eyes, and when she returned she remarked upon it, saying that such a display of devotion, however commendable in private, was not in good taste in such a public place, and that I would do well to restrain myself.

About this time Father Martien was called away, and I made my confessions to a fat old priest at our parish church, who, I am persuaded, used to doze through half the time of confession and take snuff the other half. He was very kind, however, and gave me easy penances and plentiful absolutions. My religion had by this time become the merest form, kept up to save appearances, but now and then would recur the thought that perhaps Father Martien was right after all, and if so why I was living in mortal sin, a sacrilegious person for whom millions of ages in purgatory would be of no avail. Thus I was tossed from one doubt to another, and found comfort nowhere.

The discomfort of my mind could not but react upon my body. I grew pale, sallow, and was miserably unwell. My aunt lamented the loss of my beauty, and predicted that I should never find a husband. A husband indeed was what I now feared most of all. I determined that I would die before I would accept one, and then came the thought that not death would be the alternative but a convent. No, there was no hope anywhere.

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