We had avoided Paris, coming through Troyes and Orleans, and thus our sad strange journey lasted a full month. Poor old M. de Nidemerle had, of course, been prepared for our coming, and he came out in his coach to meet us at the cross-roads. My brother saw the mourning liveries approaching, and gave me notice. I descended from my carriage, intending to go to him in his, but he anticipated me; and there, in the middle of the road, the poor old man embraced me, weeping floods of passionate tears of grief. He was a small man, shrunk with age, and I found him clinging to me so like a child that I felt an almost motherly sense of protection and tenderness towards his forlorn old age; but my English shyness was at the moment distressed at the sense of all the servants staring at such a meeting, and I cried out: ‘Oh, sir! you should not have come thus.’ ‘What can I do, but show all honour to the heroic wife of my dear child?’ sobbed he; and, indeed, I found afterwards that my persistence in bringing home my dearest to the tombs of his forefathers had won for me boundless gratitude and honour. They took the hearse to the church of the convent at Bellaise, where its precious burthen was to rest. The obsequies, requiem, and funeral mass were to take place the next day, and in the meantime I accompanied the Marquis to the chateau, and we spent the evening and great part of the night in talking of him whom we had both loved so dearly, and in weeping together.
Then came the solemn and mournful day of the funeral. I was taken early to the convent, where, among the nuns behind the grille, I might assist at these last rites.
Thickly veiled, I looked at no one except that I curtsied my thanks to the Abbess before kneeling down by the grating looking into the choir. My grief had always been too deep for tears, and on that day I was blessed in a certain exaltation of thoughts which bore me onward amid the sweet chants to follow my Philippe, my brave, pure-hearted, loving warrior, onto his rest in Paradise, and to think of the worship that he was sharing there.
So I knelt quite still, but by and by I was sensible of a terrible paroxysm of weeping from some one close to me. I could scarcely see more than a black form when I glanced round, but it seemed to me that it was sinking; I put out my arm in support, and I found a head on my shoulder. I knew who it must be—my husband’s poor little sister, Madame d’Aubepine, and I held my arm round her with an impulse of affection, as something that was his; but before all was over, I was sure that she was becoming faint, and at last I only moved just in time to receive her in my lap and arms, as she sank down nearly, if not quite, unconscious.
I tore back the heavy veil that was suffocating her, and saw a tiny thin white face, not half so large as my little Gaspard’s round rosy one. Numbers of black forms hovered about with water and essences; and one tall figure bent to lift the poor child from me, apologizing with a tone of reproof, and declaring that Madame la Comtesse was ashamed to inconvenience Madame.
‘No,’ I said; ‘one sister could not inconvenience another,’ and I felt the feeble hand stealing round my waist, and saw a sort of smile on the thin little lips, which brought back one look of my Philippe’s. I threw off my own veil, and raised her in my arms so as to kiss her, and in that embrace I did indeed gain a sister.
I did not heed the scolding and the murmuring; I lifted her; she was very small, and light as a feather; and I was not merely tall, but very strong, so I carried her easily to a chamber, which one of the nuns opened for us, and laid her on the bed. She clung to me, and when some one brought wine, I made her drink it, and prayed that they would leave us to ourselves a little while.
I know now that nothing but the privileges of my position on that day would have prevailed to get that grim and terrible dame de compagnie out of the room. However, we were left alone, and the first thing the poor young thing did when she could speak or move, was to throw herself into my arms and cry:
‘Tell me of him!’
‘He sent his love. He commended you to me,’ I began.
‘Did he? Oh, my dear hero! And how is he looking?’
So it was of her husband, not her brother, that she was thinking. I gave me a pang, and yet I could not wonder; and alas, d’Aubepine had not given me any message at all for her. However, I told her what I thought would please her—of his handsome looks, and his favour with the Duke of Enghien, and her great dark eyes began to shine under their tear-swollen lids; but before long, that terrible woman knocked at the door again to say that Madame la Comtesse’s carriage was ready, and that M. le Marquis awaited Madame la Vicomtesse.
We arranged our disordered dress, and went down hand-in-hand. The Marquis and the Abbess both embraced the poor little Countess, and I assured her that we would meet again, and be much together.
‘Madame la Comtesse will do herself the honour of paying her respects to Madame la Vicomtesse,’ said the dame de compagnie with the elder M. d’Aubepine, and had regulated her household of late years.
‘I congratulate myself on not belonging to that respectable household,’ said my brother.
M. de Nidemerle laughed, and said the good lady had brought with her a fair share of Calvinist severity. In fact, it was reported that her conversion had been stimulated by the hope that she should be endowed with her family property, and bestowed in marriage on the young d’Aubepine, the father of the present youth, and that disappointment in both these expectations had embittered her life. I was filled with pity for my poor little sister-in-law, who evidently was under her yoke; and all the more when, a day or two later, the tow ladies came in great state to pay me a visit of ceremony, and I saw how pale and thin was the little Countess, and how cowed she seemed by the tall and severe duenna.
Little Gaspard was trotting about. The Marquis was delighted with the child, and already loved him passionately; and the little fellow was very good, and could amuse himself without troubling any one.
He took refuge with me from Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau; but as I held him to kiss his aunt, her eyes filled with tears; and when I asked whether her little girl could walk as well as he did, she faltered so that I was startled, fearing that the child might have died and I not have heard of it.
‘She is out at nurse,’ at last she murmured.
‘Children are best at farms,’ said Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau; ‘Madame la Comtesse Douariere is not to be incommoded.’ The old man held out his arms to my little boy, and said something of his being a pleasure instead of an inconvenience; but though the lady answered politely, she looked so severe that my poor child hid his face on my bosom and began to cry, by way of justifying her.
However, when she was gone, both the gentlemen agreed that the little fellow was quite right, and showed his sense, and that if they had been only two years old, they would have cried too.
That was all in my favour when I entreated M. de Nidemerle to let me have a visit from my sister-in-law,—not a mere call of ceremony, but a stay at the chateau long enough for me to get acquainted with her. Not only was she the only sister of my dear Philippe, but the Marquis, her uncle, was her guardian and only near relative, so that he had a right to insist, more especially as the old Countess was imbecile and bedridden.
I think he felt towards me much as he would have done if he had been shut up in a room with Gaspard, ready to give me anything I begged for, provided I would not cry. He was very good to me, and I could not but be sorry for the poor, bereaved, broken old man, and try to be a daughter to him; and thus our relations were very different from what they had been on our journey to Paris together in the coach. At any rate, he promised me that I should be gratified, and the day after my brother left us, he actually went over to Chateau d’Aubepine, and brought off his niece in the carriage with him, presenting her to me in the hall like the spoils of war. She was frightened, formal, and ceremonious all super time, but I thought she was beginning to thaw, and was more afraid of the Marquis than of me. We played at cards all the evening, the Cure being sent for to make up the set, and now and then I caught her great eyes looking at me wistfully; indeed, I was obliged to avoid them lest they should make me weep; for it was almost the look that my Philippe used to cast on me in those early days when we had not begun to know one another.
At last we went up to bed. The rooms were all en suite, and I had given her one opening into mine, telling her we would never shut the door save when she wished it. I saw her gazing earnestly at her brother’s portrait and all the precious little objects consecrated to his memory, which I had arranged by my benitier and crucifix, but I did not expect her firs exclamation, when our woman had left us: ‘Ah! Madame, how happy you are!’
‘I was once!’ I sighed.
‘Ah! but you ARE happy. You have your child, and your husband loved you.’
‘But your husband lives, and your children are well.’
‘That may be. I never see them. I have only seen my daughter twice, and my son once, since they were born. They will not let them come to the chateau, and they say there is no road to the farms.’
‘We will see to that,’ I said, and I made her tell me where they were; but she knew no more of distances than I did, never going anywhere save in the great family coach. Poor child! When I called her Cecile, she burst into tears, and said no one had called her by that name since she had left her friend Amelie in the convent, and as to calling me Marguerite, Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau would be sure to say it was bourgeois and ill-bred to use familiar names, but then we need never let her hear us.
I took the poor little forlorn creature to sleep with me, and then, and in the course of the next day or two, the whole sad state of things came before me.
The little Cecile de Bellaise had been carried to a convent at Angers from the farm that she could just remember. Here she had spent all the happy days of her life. The nuns ere not strict, and they must have been very ignorant, for they had taught her nothing but her prayers, a little reading, some writing, very bad orthography, embroidery, and heraldry; but they were very good-natured, and had a number of pensionnaires who seemed to have all run wild together in the corridors and gardens, and played all sorts of tricks on the nuns. Sometimes Cecile told me some of these, and very unedifying they were,—acting ghosts in the passages, fastening up the cell doors, ringing the bells at unearthly hours, putting brushes or shoes in the beds, and the like practical jokes.
Suddenly, from the midst of these wild sports, while still a mere child under fourteen, Cecile was summoned to be married to Armand d’Aubepine, who was two years older, and was taken at once to Chateau d’Aubepine.
There was no more play for her; she had to sit upright embroidering under the eyes of Madame la Comtesse and of Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau; nor did she ever go out of doors except for a turn on the terrace with the ladies, or a drive in the great coach. Of course they were disappointed in having such a little unformed being on their hands, but they must have forgotten that they had ever been young themselves, when they forced her to conform rigidly to the life that suited them, and which they thought the only decorous thing for a lady of any age.
There was nothing else that was young near her except her husband, and he thought her an ugly little thing, and avoided her as much as possible. He had expected to be freed from his tutor on his marriage, and when he was disappointed, he was extremely displeased, and manifested his wrath by neglect of her. His governor must have been a very different one from my dear husband’s beloved abbe, fro I know that if I had been five times as ugly and stupid as I was, my Philippe would have tried to love me, because it was his duty—and have been kind to me, because he could not be unkind to any one. But the Chevalier d’Aubepine had never learnt to care for any one’s pleasure but his own; he was angry at, and ashamed of, the wife who had been imposed on him; he chafed and raged at not being permitted to join the army and see the world; and in the meantime he, with the connivance of his governor, from time to time escaped at night to Saumur, and joined in the orgies of the young officers in garrison there.
Nevertheless, through all his neglect, Cecile loved him with a passionate, faithful adoration, surpassing all words, just as I have seen a poor dog follow faithfully a savage master who gives him nothing but blows. She never said a word of complaint to me of him. All I gathered of this was from her simple self-betrayals, or from others, or indeed what I knew of himself; but the whole sustenance of that young heart had been his few civil words at times when he could make her useful to him. I am persuaded, too, that Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau exercised her spite in keeping the two young creatures from any childish or innocent enjoyments that might have drawn them together. If etiquette were the idol of that lady, I am sure that spite flavoured the incense she burned to it.
I think, if I had been in Cecile’s position, I should either have gone mad, or have died under the restraint and dreariness; but she lived on in the dull dream of half-comprehended wretchedness, and gave birth to her daughter, but without being in the least cheered, for a peasant woman was in waiting, who carried the child off while she was still too much exhausted to have even kissed it. All she obtained was universal murmuring at the sex of the poor little thing. It seemed the climax of all her crimes, which might be involuntary, but for which she was made to suffer as much as if they had been her fault.
Her husband was more displeased than any one else; above all when he heard the news of Rocroy; and then it was that he devised the scheme of running away, and in discussing it with her became more friendly than ever before. Of course it was dreadful to her that he should go to the war, but the gratification of helping him, keeping his secret, plotting with him, getting a few careless thanks and promises, carried the day, and bore her through the parting. ‘He really did embrace me of his own accord,’ said the poor young creature; and it was on that embrace that she had ever since lived, in hope that when they should meet again he might find it possible to give her a few shreds of affection.
Of course, when she was found to have been cognizant of his departure, she was in the utmost disgrace. Rage at his evasion brought on the fit of apoplexy which cost the old count his life; and the blame was so laid upon her, not only by Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau, but by Madame and by her confessor, that she almost believed herself a sort of parricide; and she had not yet completed the course of penitential exercises that have been imposed on her.
By the time—more than half a year later—her son was born, the old countess had become too childish to be gratified for more than a moment. Indeed, poor Cecile herself was so ill that she survived only by a wonder, since no one cared whether she lived or died, except her own maid, who watched over her tenderly, and gave her, when she could read it, a letter from her husband upon the joyful news. She wore that letter, such as it was, next her heart, and never told her how my husband had absolutely stood over him while he wrote it.
So she recovered, if it can be called recovery—for her health had been shattered by all this want of the most care and consideration; she was very weak and nervous, and suffered constantly from headache, and her looks were enough to break one’s heart. I suppose nothing could have made her beautiful, but she had a strange, worn, blighted, haggard, stunted look, quite dreadful for one not yet eighteen; she was very short, and fearfully thin and pale, but out of the sad little face there looked my Philippe’s eyes, and now and then his smile.
After talking till late I fell asleep, and when I woke to dress for morning mass, I found that she had not slept at all, and had a frightful headache. I bade her lie still till I came back, and she seemed hardly able to believe in such luxury. Mademoiselle said nothing but resolution was wanting to shake off a headache.
‘Have you found it so?’ I asked.
‘At any rate, it is better than the doses Mademoiselle gives me,’ she said.
‘You shall try my remedy this time,’ I said; and I set out for the little village church, which stood at the garden-gate, with a fixed determination that this state of things—slow torture and murder, as it seemed to me—should not go on. If one work bequeathed to me by my dear Philippe was to take care of his uncle, another surely was to save and protect his sister.
It was in my favour that M. de Nidemerle had conceived a very high opinion of me, far above my deserts. My dear husband’s letters had been full of enthusiasm for me. I found them all among the Marquis’s papers; and his tenderness and gratitude, together with the circumstances of my return, had invested me with a kind of halo, which made me a sort of heroine in his eyes.
Besides, I did my best to make the old man’s life more cheerful. I read him the Gazette that came once a week, I played at cards with him all the evening, and I sometimes even wrote or copied his letters on business; and, when I sat at my embroidery, he liked to come and sit near me, sometimes talking, playing with Gaspard, or dozing. He was passionately fond of Gaspard, and let the child domineer over him in a way that sometimes shocked me.
Thus he was ready to believe what I told him of his niece, and assured me I might keep her with me as long as I wished, if the Countess, her mother-in-law, would consent. The first thing we did together was that I took her to see her children. The boy was at a farm not very far off; he was seven months old, and a fine healthy infant, though not as clean as I could have wished; but then Tryphena and I had been looked on as barbarians, who would certainly be the death of Gaspard, because we washed him all over every evening, and let him use his legs and arms. Cecile was enchanted; she saw an extraordinary resemblance between her son and his father; and hugged the little form like one who had been famished.
Our search for the little Armantine was less prosperous. Cecile could not ride, nor could even walk a quarter of a mile without nearly dying of fatigue; nay, the jolting of the coach as we drove along the road would have been insupportable to her but for her longing to see her little one. We drove till it was impossible to get the coach any farther, and still the farm was only just in sight.
I jumped out and said I would bring the child to her, and I went up between the hedges with two lackeys behind me, till I came to a farmyard, where three or four children, muddy up to the very eyes, were quarrelling and playing with the water of a stagnant pool. I made my way through animals, dogs, and children, to the farm kitchen, where an old grandmother and a beggar sat on two chairs opposite to one another, on each side of the fire, and a young woman was busy over some raw joints of an animal. They stared at me with open mouths, and when I said that Madame la Comtesse d’Aubepine was come to see her child, and was waiting in the carriage, they looked as if such a thing had never been heard of before. The young woman began to cry—the old woman to grumble. I think if they had dared, they would have flown into a passion, and I was really alarmed lest the child might be sick or even dead. I told them impressively who I was, and demanded that they would instantly show me the little one.
The young woman, muttering something, stepped out and brought in her arms the very dirtiest child of the whole group I had left in the gutter, with the whole tribe behind her. My first impulse was to snatch it up and carry it away to its mother, taking it home at once to Nid de Merle; but it squalled and kicked so violently when I held out my arms to it, that it gave me time to think that to carry it thus away without authority might only bring Cecile into trouble with those who had the mastery over her, and that to see it in such a condition could only give her pain. I should not have objected to the mere surface dirt of grubbing in the farmyard (shocking as it may sound to you, Mademoiselle mes Petites Filles). Eustace and I had done such things at Walwyn and been never the worse for it; but this poor little creature had a wretched, unwholesome, neglected air about her that made me miserable, and the making her fit to be seen would evidently be a long business, such as could hardly be undertaken in the midst of the salting of a pig, which was going on.
I therefore promised the woman a crown if she would make the child tidy and bring her to Nid de Merle on the Sunday. Something was muttered about Mademoiselle having said the child was not to be constantly brought to the house to incommonde Madame la Comtesse; but I made her understand that I meant Nid de Merle, and trusted that the hope of the money would be a bait.
Cecile was sorely disappointed when I returned without the child, and conjured me at once to tell her the worst, if it were indeed dead; but she let herself be pacified by the hope of seeing it on Sunday, and indeed she was half dead with fatigue from the roughness of the road.
The child was duly brought by the foster-mother who was in the full costume of a prosperous peasant, with great gold cross and gay apron; but I was not better satisfied about the little on, though she had a cleaner face, cap, and frock. Unused to the sight of black, she would let neither of us touch her, and we could only look at her, when she sat on her nurse’s knee with a cake in her hand. I was sure she was unhealthy and uncared for, her complexion and everything about her showed it, and my Gaspard was twice her size. It was well for the peace of the young mother that she knew so little what a child ought to be like, and that her worst grief was that the little Armantine would not go to her.
‘And oh! they will send her straight into a convent as soon as she is weaned, and I shall never have her with me!’ sighed Cecile.
‘ON’ ON had done many harsh things towards my poor little sister-in-law, and I began now to consider of whom ON now consisted. It seemed to me to be only Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau acting in the name of the doting Countess and the absent husband, and that one resolute effort might emancipate the poor young thing.
I was still considering the matter, and rallying my forces, when a message came from the Chateau l’Aube that Madame la Douariere was dying, and Madame la Comtesse must return instantly. I went with her; I could not let her return alone to Mademoiselle’s tender mercies, and the Marquis approved and went with us. In fact, the two chateaux were not two miles apart, through the lanes and woods, though the way by the road was much longer.
The old Countess lingered another day and then expired. Before the funeral ceremonies were over, I had seen how Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau tyrannise over this young sister-in-law, who was still a mere gentle child, and was absolutely cowed by the woman. When I tried to take her home with me, Mademoiselle had the effrontery to say that the Count himself, as well as the late dowager, had given her authority over Madame as dame de compagnie, and that she did not consider it etiquette to visit after so recent a bereavement, thus decidedly hitting at me.
However, I had made up my mind. I entreated my poor weeping Cecile to hold out yet a little longer in hope; and then I returned home to lay the whole situation before the Marquis, and to beg him to assert his authority as uncle, and formally request that she might reside under his protection while her husband was with the army—a demand which could hardly fail to be granted.
I wrote also to M. d’Aubepine, over whom I thought I had some influence, and added likewise a letter to my half-brother De Solivet, explaining the situation, and entreating him to get the young gentleman into his lodgings, and not let him out till he had written his letters, signed and sealed them!
The plan answered. In due time our courier returned, and with all we wanted in the way of letters, with one great exception, alas! any true sign of tenderness for the young wife. There was a formal letter for her, telling her to put herself and her children under the charge of her uncle and her brother’s widow, leaving the charge of the chateau and the servants to the intendant and to Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau. The poor child had to imbibe what her yearning heart could extract from the conventional opening and close. I have my share of the budget still, and her it is:—
‘MADAME—You still love to play your part of beneficent angel, and wish to take on your shoulder my impedimenta. Well, be it so then; though I have no hope that you will make thereof (en) anything like yourself. Kissing your hands.
‘LE COMTE D’AUBEPINE.’
His whole family was thus disposed of in two letters of the alphabet (en).
M. de Nidemerle received a polite request to undertake the charge of his niece, and Mademoiselle had likewise her orders, and I heard from my brother how he had smiled at my commands, but had found them necessary, for Armand d’Aubepine had been exactly like a naughty boy forced to do a task. Not that he had the smallest objection to his wife and children being with me—in fact, he rather preferred it; he only hated being troubled about the matter, wanted to go to a match at tennis, and thought it good taste to imitate the Duke of Enghien in contempt for the whole subject. Would he ever improve? My brother did not give much present hope of it, saying that on returning to winter quarters he had found the lad plunged all the deeper in dissipation for want of the check that my dear husband had been able to impose on him; but neither M. de Solivet nor the Marquis took it seriously, thinking it only what every youth in the army went through, unless he were such a wonderful exception as my dear Philippe had been.
Cecile could hardly believe that such peace and comfort were in store for her, and her tyrant looked as gloomy as Erebus at losing her slave, but we did not care for that; we brought her home in triumph, and a fortnight’s notice was given to the foster-mother in which to wean Mademoiselle d’Aubepine and bring her to Nid de Merle.
That fortnight was spent by our guest in bed. As if to justify Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau, she was no sooner under my care than she had a sharp illness; but Tryphena, who had been so instructed by my grandmother, Lady Walwyn, as to be more skilful than any doctor, declared that it was in consequence of the long disregard of health and strain of spirits, and so managed her that, though never strong, she improved much in health, and therewith in looks. Beautiful she could hardly be, as the world counts beauty, but to me her sweet, tender, wistful expression made her countenance most lovable, and so did her gentle unmurmuring humility. She sincerely believed that all the cruel slights she underwent were the result of her own ugliness, stupidity, and ignorance, and instead of blaming her husband, she merely pitied him for being tied to her. As to grating that her brother had been a better man than her husband, she would have thought that high treason—the difference was only that her dear Marguerite was so pretty, so clever, amiable, and well taught, that she had won his heart.
In truth, I had outgrown the ungainliness of my girlhood, and, now that it did not matter to any one, had become rather a handsome woman, and it was of no use to tell her that I had been worse than she, because there was so much more of me, when my dear young husband gave me the whole of his honest heart.
To make herself, at least, less dull was her next desire. One reason why she had so seldom written was that she knew she could not spell, and Mademoiselle insisted on looking over her letters that they might not be a disgrace. I doubted whether M. le Comte would have discovered the errors, but when the Marquis praised some letters that I had written to amuse him from Nancy and Mezieres, she was fired with ambition to write such clever letters as might bewitch her husband. Besides, if she could teach her daughter, the child need not be banished to a convent.
I began to give her a few lessons in the morning, and to read to her. And just then there came to Nid de Merle, to see me, the good Abbe Bonchamp, the excellent tutor to whom my dear Philippe always said he owed so much. The good man had since had another employment, and on quitting it, could not help gratifying his desire to me and see the wife and child of his dear pupil, as indeed I had begged him to do, if ever it were in his power, when I fulfilled my husband’s wishes by writing his last greeting and final thanks to the good man.
I remember the dear quaint form riding up on a little hired mule, which he almost concealed with his cassock. Above, his big hat looked so strange that Gaspard, who was wonderfully forward for his age, ran up to me crying: ‘A droll beast, mamma! it had four legs and a great hat!’ while little Armantine fled crying from the monster.
All the servants were, however, coming out eagerly to receive the blessing of the good man, who had mad himself much beloved in the household. The Marquis embraced him with tears, and presented him to me, when he fell on his knee, took my hand, pressed it to his lips and bathed it with his tears, and then held Gaspard to his breast with fervent love.
It was necessary to be cheerful before M. de Nidemerle. He had truly loved his nephew, and mourned for him, but the aged do not like a recurrence to sorrow, so the abbe amused him with the news brought from Saumur, and our party at cards was a complete one that evening.
But the next day, the Abbe, who had loved his pupil like a son, could talk of him to me, and it was a comfort I cannot express to my aching heart to converse with him. Everything had settled into an ordinary course. People fancied me consoled; I had attended to other things, and I could not obtrude my grief on the Marquis or on Cecile; but on! My sick yearning for my Philippe only grew the more because I might not mention him or hear his name. However, the Abbe only longed to listen to all I could tell him of the last three years, and in return to tell me much that I should never otherwise have known of the boyhood and youth of my dear one.
I felt as if the good man must never leave us, and I entreated M. de Nidemerle to retain him at once as governor to little Gaspard. The Marquis laughed at securing a tutor for a child not yet three years old; but he allowed that the boy could not be in better hands, and, moreover, he was used to the Abbe, and liked to take his arm and to have him to make up the party at cards, which he played better than the cure.
So the Abbe remained as chaplain and as tutor, and, until Gaspard should be old enough to profit by his instructions, Cecile and I entreated him to accept us as pupils. I had begun to feel the need of some hard and engrossing work to take off my thoughts alike from my great sorrow and my pressing anxieties about my English home, so that I wished to return to my Latin studies again, and the Abbe helped me to read Cicero de Officiis again, and likewise some of the writings of St. Gregory the Great. He also read to both of us the Gospels and Mezeray’s HISTORY OF FRANCE, which I did not know as an adopted Frenchwoman ought to know it, and Cecile knew not at all; nay, the nuns had scarcely taught her anything, even about religion, nor the foundations of the faith.
No, I can never explain what we, both of us, owe to the Abbe Bonchamp. You, my eldest grandchild, can just recollect the good old man as he sat in his chair and blessed us ere he passed to his rest and the reward of his labours.
Yes, the life at Nid de Merle was very peaceful. Just as exquisitely happy it was in spite of alarms, anxieties, perplexities, and discomforts, so when I contemplate my three years in Anjou I see that they were full of peace, though the sunshine of my life was over and Cecile had never come.
We had our children about us, for we took little Maurice d’Aubepine home as soon as possible; we followed the course of devotion and study traced for us by the Abbe; we attended to the wants of the poor, and taught their children the Catechism; we worked and lived like sisters, and I thought all that was life to me was over. I forgot that at twenty-two there is much life yet to come, and that one may go through many a vicissitude of feeling even though one’s heart be in a grave.
The old Marquis did not long remain with us. He caught a severe cold in the winter, and had no strength to rally. Tryphena would have it that he sank from taking nothing but tisanes made of herbs; and that if she might only have given him a good hot sack posset, he would have recovered; but he shuddered at the thought, and when a doctor came from Saumur, he bled the poor old gentleman, faintings came on, and he died the next day. I was glad Tryphena’s opinion was only expressed in English.
The poor old man had been very kind to me, and had made me love him better than I should have supposed to be possible when we crossed from Dover. The very last thing he had done was to write to my mother, placing his hotel at Paris at her disposal in case she and her son should find it expedient to leave England; and when his will was opened it proved that he had left me personal guardian and manager of the estates of his heir, my little Gaspard, now M. de Nidemerle, joining no one with me in the charge but my half-brother the Baron de Solivet.
I had helped him, read letters to him, and written them for him, and overlooked his accounts enough for the work not to be altogether new and strange to me, and I took it up eagerly. I had never forgotten the sermon by the holy Father Vincent, whom the Church has since acknowledged as a saint, and our excellent Abbe had heightened the impression that a good work lay prepared for me; but he warned me to be prudent, and I am afraid I was hot-headed and eager.
Much had grieved me in the six months I had spent in the country, in the state of the peasantry. I believe that in the Bocage they are better off than in many parts of France, but even there they seemed to me much oppressed and weighed down. Their huts were wretched—they had no chimneys, no glass in the windows, no garden, not even anything comfortable for the old to sit in; and when I wanted to give a poor rheumatic old man a warm cushion, I found it was carefully hidden away lest M. l’Intendant should suppose the family too well off.
Those seigniorial rights then seemed to me terrible. The poor people stood in continual fear either of the intendant of the king or of the Marquis, or of the collector of the dues of the Church. At harvest time, a bough was seen sticking in half the sheaves. In every ten, one sheaf is marked for the tithe, tow for the seigneur, two for the king; and the officer of each takes the best, so that only the worst are left for the peasant.
Nay, the only wonder seemed to me that there were any to be had at all, for our intendant thought it his duty to call off the men from their own fields for the days due from them whenever he wanted anything to be done to our land (or his own, or his son’s-in-law), without the slightest regard to the damage their crops suffered from neglect.
I was sure these things ought not to be. I thought infinitely more good might be done by helping the peasants to make the most of what they had, and by preventing them from being robbed in my son’s name, than by dealing out gallons of soup and piles of bread at the castle gates to relieve the misery we had brought on them, or by dressing the horrible sores that were caused by dirt and bad food. I told the Abbe, and he said it was a noble inspiration in itself, but that he feared that one lady, and she a foreigner, could not change the customs of centuries, and that innovations were dangerous. I also tried to fire with the same zeal for reformation the Abbess of Bellaise, who was a young and spirited woman, open to conviction; but she was cloistered, and could not go to investigate matters as I did, with the Abbe for my escort, and often with my son. He was enchanted to present any little gift, and it was delightful that the peasants should learn to connect all benefits with Monsieur le Marquis, as they already called the little fellow.
I think they loved me the better when they found that I was the grandchild of the Madame Eustace who had been hidden in their cottages. I found two or three old people who still remembered her wanderings when she kept the cows and knitted like a peasant girl among them. I was even shown the ruinous chamber where my aunt Thistlewood was born, and the people were enchanted to hear how much the dear old lady had told me of them, and of their ways, and their kindness to her.
I encouraged the people to make their cottages clean and not to be afraid of comforts, promising that our intendant at least should not interfere with them. I likewise let him know that I would not have men forced to leave their fields when it would ruin their crops, and that it was better that ours should suffer than theirs. He was obsequious in manner and then disobeyed me, till one day I sent three labourers back again to secure their own hay before they touched ours. And when the harvest was gathered in the Abbe and I went round the fields of the poor, and I pointed out the sheaves that might be marked, and they were not the best.
I taught the girls to knit as they watched their cows, and promised to buy some of their stockings, so that they might obtain sabots for themselves with the price. They distrusted me at first, but before long, they began to perceive that I was their friend, and I began to experience a nice kind of happiness.
Alas! even this was too sweet to last, or perhaps, as the good Abbe warned me, I was pleasing myself too much with success, and with going my own way. The first murmur of the storm came thus: I had been out all the afternoon with the Abbe, Armantine’s bonne, and the two children, looking at the vineyards, which always interested me much because we have none like them in England. In one, where they were already treading the grapes, the good woman begged that M. le Marquis and Mademoiselle would for once tread the grapes to bring good luck. They were frantic with joy; we took off their little shoes and silk stockings, rolled them up in thick cloths, and let them get into the trough and dance on the grapes with their little white feet. That wine was always called ‘the Vintage of le Marquis.’ We could hardly get them away, they were so joyous, and each carried a great bunch of grapes as a present to the little boy at home and his mother.
We thought we saw a coachman’s head and the top of a carriage passing through the lanes, and when we came home I was surprised to find my sister-in-law in tears, thoroughly shaken and agitated.
Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau had been to see her, she said, and had told her the Count was in Paris, but had not sent for her; and I thought that enough to account for her state; but when the children began to tell their eager story, and hold up their grapes to her, she burst again into tears, and cried: ‘Oh, my dear sister, if you would be warned. It is making a scandal, indeed it is! They call you a plebeian.’
I grew hot and angry, and demanded what could be making a scandal, and what business Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau had to meddle with me or my affairs.
‘Ah! but she will write to my husband, and he will take me from you, and that would be dreadful. Give it up. Oh, Marguerite, give it up for MY sake!’
What was I to give up? I demanded. Running about the country, it appeared, like a farmer’s wife rather than a lady of quality, and stirring up the poor against their lords. It was well known that all the English were seditious. See what they had done to their king; and here was I, beginning the same work. Had not the Count’s intendant at Chateau d’Aubepine thrown in his teeth what Madame de Bellaise did and permitted? He was going to write to Monseigneur, ay, and the king’s own intendant would hear of it, so I had better take care, and Mademoiselle had come out of pure benevolence to advise Madame la Comtesse to come and take refuse at her husband’s own castle before the thunderbolt should fall upon me, and involve her in my ruin.
I laughed. I was sure that I was neither doing nor intending any harm; I thought the whole a mere ebullition of spite on the duenna’s part to torment and frighten her emancipated victim, and I treated all as a joke to reassure Cecile, and even laughed at the Abbe for treating the matter more seriously, and saying it was always perilous to go out of a beaten track.
‘I thought the beaten track and wide road were the dangerous ones,’ I said, with more lightness, perhaps, than suited the subject.
‘Ah, Madame,’ he returned gravely, ‘you have there the truth; but there may be danger in this world in the narrow path.’
The most effectual consolation that I could invent for Cecile was that if her husband thought me bad company for her, he could not but fetch her to her proper home with him, as soon as peace was made. Did I really think so? The little thing grew radiant with the hope.
Days went on, we heard nothing, and I was persuaded that the whole had been, as I told Cecile, a mere figment of Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau’s.
I had written to beg my mother, with my brother and sister, to come and join us, and I as already beginning to arrange a suite of rooms for them, my heart bounding as it only can do at the thought of meeting those nearest and dearest of one’s own blood.
I remember that I was busy giving orders that the linen should be aired, and overlooking the store of sheets, when Gaspard and Armantine from the window called out: ‘Horses, horses, mamma! fine cavaliers!’
I rushed to the window and recognized the Solivet colours. No doubt the baron had come to announce the arrival of my mother and the rest, and I hastened down to meet him at the door, full of delight, with my son holding my hand.
My first exclamation after the greeting was to ask where they were, and how soon they would arrive, and I was terribly disappointed when I found that he had come alone, and that my mother, with Eustace and Annora, were at the Hotel de Nidemerle, at Paris, without any intention of leaving it. He himself had come down on business, as indeed was only natural since he was joined with me in the guardianship of my little Marquis, and he would likewise be in time to enjoy the chase over the estates.
He said no more of his purpose then, so I was not alarmed; and he seemed much struck with the growth and improvement of Gaspard. I had much to hear of the three who were left to me of my own family. M. de Solivet had never seen them before, and could hardly remember his mother, so he could not compare them with what they were before their troubles; but I gathered that my mother was well in health, and little the worse for her troubles, and that my little Nan was as tall as myself, a true White Ribaumont, with an exquisite complexion, who would be all the rage if she were not so extremely English, more English even than I had been when I had arrived.
‘And my brother, my Eustace. Oh, why did he not come with you?’ I asked.
And M. de Solivet gravely answered that our brother was detained by a suit with the Poligny family respecting the estate of Ribaumont, and, besides, that the rapidity of the journey would not have agreed with his state of health. I only then fully understood the matter, for our letter had been few, and had to be carefully written and made short; and though I knew that, at the battle of Naseby, Eustace had been wounded and made prisoner, he had written to me that his hurt was not severe, and that he had been kindly treated, through the intervention of our cousin Harry Merrycourt, who, to our great regret, was among the rebels, but who had become surety for Eustace and procured his release.
I now heard that my brother had been kept with the other prisoners in a miserable damp barn, letting in the weather on al sides, and with no bedding or other comforts, so that when Harry Merrycourt sought him out, he had taken a violent chill, and had nearly died, not from the wound, but from pleurisy. He had never entirely recovered, though my mother thought him much stronger and better since he had been in France, out of sight of all that was so sad and grievous to a loyal cavalier in England.
‘They must come to me,’ I cried. ‘He will soon be well in this beautiful air; I will feed him with goat’s mild and whey, and Tryphena shall nurse him well.’
M. de Solivet made no answer to this, but told me how delighted the Queen of England had to welcome my mother, whom she had at once appointed as one of her ladies of the bedchamber; and then we spoke of King Charles, who was at Hampton Court, trying to make terms with the Parliament, and my brother spoke with regret and alarm of the like spirit of resistance in our own Parliament of Paris, backed by the mob. I remember it was on that evening that I first heard the name Frondeurs, or Slingers, applied to the speechifiers on either side who started forward, made their hit, and retreated, like the little street boys with their slings. I was to hear a great deal more of that name.
It was not till after supper that I heard the cause of M. de Solivet’s visit. Cecile, who always retired early, went away sooner than usual to leave us together, so did the Abbe, and then the baron turned to me and said: ‘Sister, how soon can you be prepared to come with me to Paris?’
I was astounded, thinking at first that Eustace’s illness must be more serious than he had led me to suppose, but he smiled and said notre frere de Volvent, which was the nearest he could get to Walwyn, had nothing do with it; it was by express command of the Queen Regent, and that I might thank my mother and the Queen of England that it was no worse. ‘This is better than a letter de catche,’ he added, producing a magnificent looking envelope with a huge seal of the royal French arms, that made me laugh rather nervously to brave my dismay, and asked what he called THAT. He responded gravely that it was no laughing matter, and I opened it. It was an official order that Gaspard Philippe Beranger de Bellaise, Marquis de Nidemerle, should be brought to the Louvre to be presented to the King.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I must go to Paris. Ought I to have brought my boy before? I did not know that he ought to pay his homage till he was older. Was it really such a breach of respect?’
‘You are a child yourself, my sister,’ he said, much injuring my dignity. ‘What have you not been doing here?’
Then it came on me. The intendant of the King had actually written complaints of me to the Government. I was sewing disaffection among the peasants by the favours I granted my own, teaching them for rebellion like that which raged in England, and bringing up my son in the same sentiments. Nay, I was called the Firebrand of the Bocage! If these had been the days of the great Cardinal de Richelieu, my brother assured me, I should probably have been by this time in the Bastille, and my son would have been taken from me for ever!’
However, my half-brother heard of it in time, and my mother had flown to Queen Henrietta, who took her to the Queen-Regent, and together they had made such representations of my youth, folly, and inexperience that the Queen-Mother, who had a fellow-feeling for a young widow and her son, and at last consented to do nothing worse than summon me and my child to Paris, where my mother and her Queen answered for me that I should live quietly, and give no more umbrage to the authorities; and my brother De Solivet had been sent off to fetch me!
I am afraid I was much more angry than grateful, and I said such hot things about tyranny, cruelty, and oppression that Solivet looked about in alarm, lest walls should have ears, and told me he feared he had done wrong in answering for me. He was really a good man, but he could not in the least understand why I should weep hot tears for my poor people whom I was just hoping to benefit. He could not enter into feeling for Jacques Bonhomme so much as for his horse or his dog; and I might have argued for years without making him see anything but childish folly in my wishing for any mode of relief better than doles of soup, dressing wounds, and dowries for maidens.
However, there was no choice; I was helpless, and resistance would have done my people no good, but rather harm, and would only have led to my son being separated from me. Indeed, I cherished a hope that when the good Queen Anne heard the facts she might understand better than my half-brother did, and that I might become an example and public benefactor. My brother must have smiled at me in secret, but he did not contradict me.
My poor mother and the rest would not have been flattered by my reluctance to come to Paris; but in truth the thought of them was my drop of comfort, and if Eustace could not come to me I must have gone to him. And Cecile—what was to become of Cecile?
To come with me of course. Here at least Solivet agreed with me, for he had as great a horror of Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau as I had, and knew, moreover, that she wrote spiteful letters to the Count d’Aubepine about his poor little wife, which happily were treated with the young gentleman’s usual insouciance. Solivet was of my opinion that the old demoiselle had instigated this attack. He thought so all the more when he heard that she was actually condescending to wed the intendant of Chateau d’Aubepine. But he said he had no doubt that my proceedings would have been stopped sooner or later, and that it was well that it should be done before I committed myself unpardonably.
Madame d’Aubepine had been placed in my charge by her husband, so that I was justified in taking her with me. Her husband had spent the last winter at Paris, but was now with the army in the Low Countries, and the compliments Solivet paid me on my dear friend’s improvement in appearance and manner inspired us with strong hopes that she might not attract her husband; for though still small, pale, and timid, she was very unlike the frightened sickly child he had left.
I believe she was the one truly happy person when we left the Chateau de Nid de Merle. She was all radiant with hope and joy, and my brother could not but confess she was almost beautiful, and a creature whom any man with a heart must love.