Charlotte Yonge - The Young Step-Mother; Or, A Chronicle of Mistakes

Albinia saw her disposing it over Lizzie’s shoulders, and then running in again. This time it was for Miss Louisa’s cloak, and a third time for Miss Drury’s shawl, which Albinia chose to take out herself, and encountering Sophia, said, ‘Next time, you had better run on errands yourself instead of sending your guests.’

Sophy gave a black look, and she retreated, but presently the groups coalesced, and Maria Drury and Sophy ran out to call Genevieve into the midst. Albinia hoped they were going to play, but soon she beheld Genevieve trying to draw back, but evidently imprisoned, there was an echo of a laugh that she did not like; the younger girls were skipping up in the victim’s face in a rude way; she hastily turned round as in indignation, one hand raised to her eyes, but it was instantly snatched down by Maria Drury, and the pitiless ring closed in. Albinia sprang to her feet, exclaiming aloud, ‘They are teasing her!’ and rushed into the garden, hearing on her way, ‘No, we wont let you go!—you shall tell us—you shall promise to show us—my papa is a magistrate, you know—he’ll come and search—Jenny, you shall tell!’

Come with me, Genevieve,’ said Albinia, standing in the midst of the tormentors, and launching a look of wrath around her, as she saw tears in the young girl’s eyes, and taking her hand, found it trembling with agitation. Fondling it with both her own, she led Genevieve away, turning her back upon Lucy and her, ‘We were only—’

The poor girl shook more and more, and when they reached the shelter of the house, gave way to a tightened, oppressed sob, and at the first kind words a shower of tears followed, and she took Albinia’s hand, and clasped it to her breast in a manner embarrassing to English feelings, though perfectly natural and sincere in her. ‘Ah! si bonne! si bonne! pardonnes-moi, Madame!’ she exclaimed, sobbing, and probably not knowing that she was speaking French; ‘but, oh, Madame, you will tell me! Is it true—can he?’

‘Can who? What do you mean, my dear?’

‘The Admiral,’ said Genevieve, looking about frightened, and sinking her voice to a whisper. ‘Miss Louisa said so, that he could send and search—’

‘Search for what, my dear?’

‘For my poor little secret. Ah, Madame, assuredly I may tell you. It is but a French Bible, it belonged to my martyred ancestor, Francois Durant, who perished at the St. Barthelemi—it is stained with his blood—it has been handed on, from one to the other—it was all that Jacques Durant rescued when he fled from the Dragonnades—it was given to me by my own dear father on his death-bed, with a charge to keep it from my grandmother, and not to speak of it—but to guard it as my greatest treasure. And now—Oh, I am not disobeying him,’ cried Genevieve, with a fresh burst of tears. ‘You can feel for me, Madame, you can counsel me. Can the magistrates come and search, unless I confess to those young ladies?’

‘Most decidedly not,’ said Albinia. ‘Set your mind at rest, my poor child; whoever threatened you played you a most base, cruel trick.’

‘Ah, do not be angry with them, Madame; no doubt they were in sport. They could not know how precious that treasure was to me, and they will say much in their gaiety of heart.’

‘I do not like such gaiety,’ said Albinia. ‘What, they wished to make you confess your secret?’

‘Yes. They had learnt by some means that I keep one of my drawers locked, and they had figured to themselves that in it was some relic of my Huguenot ancestors. They thought it was some instrument of death, and they said that unless I would tell them the whole, the Admiral had the right of search, and, oh! it was foolish of me to believe them for a moment, but I only thought that the fright would, kill my grandmother. Oh, you were so good, Madame, I shall never forget; no, not to the end of my life, how you rescued me!’

‘We did not bring you here to be teased,’ said Albinia, caressing her. ‘I should like to ask your pardon for what they have made you undergo.’

‘Ah, Madame!’ said Genevieve, smiling, ‘it is nothing. I am well used to the like, and I heed it little, except when it falls on such subjects as these.’

She was easily drawn into telling the full history of her treasure, as she had learnt from her father’s lips, the Huguenot shot down by the persecutors, and the son who had fled into the mountains and returned to bury the corpse, and take the prized, blood-stained Bible from the breast; the escapes and dangers of the two next generations; the few succeeding days of peace; and, finally, the Dragonnade, when the children had been snatched from the Durant family, and the father and mother had been driven at length to fly in utter destitution, and had made their way to England in a wretched, unprovisioned open boat. The child for whose sake they fled, was the only one rescued from the hands of these enemies, and the tradition of their sufferings had been handed on with the faithfully preserved relic, down to the slender girl, their sole descendant, and who in early childhood had drunk in the tale from the lips of her father. The child of the persecutors and of the persecuted, Genevieve Durant did indeed represent strangely the history of her ancestral country; and as Albinia said to her, surely it might be hoped that the faith in which she had been bred up, united what was true and sound in the religion of both Reformed and Romanist.

The words made the brown cheek glow. ‘Ah, Madame, did I not say I could talk with you? You, who do not think me a heretic, as my dear grandmother’s friends do, and who yet can respect my grandmother’s Church.’

Assuredly little Genevieve was one of the most interesting and engaging persons that Albinia had ever met, and she listened earnestly to her artless history, and pretty enthusiasms, and the story which she could not tell without tears, of her father’s care, when the reward of her good behaviour had been the reading one verse in the quaint black letter of the old French Bible.

The conversation lasted till Gilbert made his appearance, and Albinia was glad to find that his greeting to Genevieve was cordial and affectionate, and free from all that was unpleasant in his sisters’ manner, and he joined himself to their company when Albinia proposed a walk along the broad causeway through the meadows. It was one of the pleasantest walks that she had taken at Bayford, with both her companions so bright and merry, and the scene around in all the beauty of spring. Gilbert, with the courtesy that Albinia’s very presence had infused into him, gathered a pretty wild bouquet for each, and Albinia talked of cowslip-balls, and found that neither Gilbert nor Genevieve had ever seen one; then she pitied them, and owned that she did not know how to get through a spring without one; and Gilbert having of course a pocketful of string, a delicious ball was constructed, over which Genevieve went into an inexpressible ecstasy.

All the evening, Gilbert devoted himself to Genevieve, though more than one of the others tried to attract him, playing off the follies of more advanced girlhood, to the vexation of Albinia, who could not bear to see him the centre of attention to silly girls, when he ought to have been finding his level among boys.

‘Gilbert makes himself so ridiculous about Jenny Durant,’ said his sisters, when he insisted on escorting her home, and thus they brought on themselves Albinia’s pent-up indignation at their usage of their guest. Lucy argued in unsatisfactory self-defence, but Sophy, when shown how ungenerous her conduct had been, crimsoned deeply, and though uttering no word of apology, wore a look that gave her step-mother for the first time a hope that her sullenness might not be so much from want of compunction, as from want of power to express it.