By the day and night her sorrows fallWhere miscreant hands and rudeHave stained her pure, ethereal pallWith many a martyr’s blood.And yearns not her maternal heartTo hear their secret sighs,Upon whose doubting way apartBewildering shadows rise?—KEBLE
It was in the summer twilight that Eustacie, sitting on the doorstep between the two rooms, with her baby on her knees, was dreamily humming to her a tune, without even words, but one that she loved, because she had first learnt to sing it with Berenger and his friend Sidney to the lute of the latter; and its notes always brought before her eyes the woods of Montpipeau. Then it was that, low and soft as was the voice, that befell which Noemi had feared: a worn, ragged-looking young man, who had been bargaining at the door for a morsel of bread in exchange for a handkerchief, started at the sound, and moved so as to like into the house.
Noemi was at the moment not attending, being absorbed in the study of the handkerchief, which was of such fine, delicate texture that an idea of its having been stolen possessed her; and she sought the corner where, as she expected, a coat-of-arms was embroidered. Just as she was looking up to demand explanation, the stranger, with a sudden cry of ‘Good heavens, it is she!’ pushed past her into the house, and falling on his knee before Eustacie, exclaimed, ‘O Lady, Lady, is it thus that I see you?’
Eustacie had started up in dismay, crying out, ‘Ah! M. l’Abbe, as you are a gentleman, betray me not. Oh! have they sent you to find me? Have pity on us! You loved my husband!’
‘You have nothing to fear from me, Lady,’ said the young man, still kneeling; ‘if you are indeed a distressed fugitive—so am I. If you have shelter and friends—I have none.’
‘Is it indeed so?’ said Eustacie, wistfully, yet scarce reassured. ‘You are truly not come from my uncle. Indeed, Monsieur, I would not doubt you, but you see I have so much at stake. I have my little one here, and they mean so cruelly by her.’
‘Madame, I swear by the honour of a nobleman—nay, by all that is sacred—that I know nothing of your uncle. I have been a wanderer for many weeks past; proscribed and hunted down because I wished to seek into the truth.’
‘Ah!’ said Eustacie, with a sound of relief, and of apology, ‘pardon me, sir; indeed, I know you were good. You loved my husband;’ and she reached out her hand to raise him, when he kissed it reverently. Littlebourgeoiseand worn mendicant as they were in dress, the air of the Louvre breathed round them; and there was all its grace and dignity as the lady turned round to her astonished hosts, saying, ‘Good sir, kind mother, this gentleman is, indeed, what you took me for, a fugitive for the truth. Permit me to present to you, Monsieur l’Abbe de Mericour—at least, so he was, when last I had the honour to see him.’
The last time HE had seen her, poor Eustacie had been incapable of seeing anything save that bloody pool at the foot of the stairs.
Mericour now turned and explained. ‘Good friends,’ he said courteously, but with thefiereteof the noble not quite out of his tone, ‘I beg your grace. I would not have used so little ceremony, if I had not been out of myself at recognizing a voice and a tune that could belong to none but Madame—-’
‘Sit down, sir,’ said Noemi, a little coldly and stiffly—for Mericour was a terrible name to Huguenots ears; ‘a true friend to this lady must needs be welcome, above all if he comes in Heaven’s name.’
‘Sit down and eat, sir,’ added Gardon, much more heartily; ‘and forgive us for not having been more hospitable—but the times have taught us to be cautious, and in that lady we have a precious charge. Rest; for you look both weary and hungry.’
Eustacie added an invitation, understanding that he would not sit without her permission, and then, as he dropped into a chair, she exclaimed, ‘Ah! sir, you are faint, but you are famished.’
‘It will pass,’ he said; ‘I have not eaten to-day.’
Instantly a meal was set before him, and ere long he revived; and as the shutters were closed, and shelter for the night promised to him by a Huguenot family lodging in the same house, he began to answer Eustacie’s anxious questions, as well as to learn from her in return what had brought her into her present situation.
Then it was that she recollected that it had been he who, at her cousin Diane’s call, had seized her when she was rushing out of the palace in her first frenzy of grief, and had carried her back to the women’s apartments.
‘It was that day which brought me here,’ he said.
And he told how, bred up in his own distant province, by a pious and excellent tutor, he had devoutly believed in the extreme wickedness of the Reformers; but in his seclusion he had been trained to such purity of faith and morals, that, when his brother summoned him to court to solicit a benefice, he had been appalled at the aspect of vice, and had, at the same time, been struck by the pure lives of the Huguenots; for truly, as things then were at the French court, crime seemed to have arrayed itself on the side of the orthodox party, all virtue on that of the schismatics.
De Mericour consulted spiritual advisers, who told him that none but Catholics could be truly holy, and that what he admired were merely heathen virtues that the devil permitted the Huguenots to display in order to delude the unwary. With this explanation he had striven to be satisfied, though eyes unblended by guilt and a pure heart continued to be revolted at the practices which his Church, scared at the evil times, and forgetful of her own true strength, left undenounced in her partisans. And the more that the Huguenot gentlemen thronged the court, and the young Abbe was thrown into intercourse with them, and the more he perplexed himself how the truth, the faith, the uprightness, the forbearance, the purity that they evinced could indeed be wanting in the zeal that made them acceptable. Then came the frightful morning when carnage reigned in every street, and the men who had been treated as favourite boon companions were hunted down like wild beasts in every street. He had endeavoured to save life, but would have speedily been slaughtered himself except for his soutane; and in all good faith he had hurried to the Louvre, to inform royalty of the horrors that, as he thought, a fanatic passion was causing the populace to commit.
He found the palace become shambles—the King himself, wrought up to frenzy, firing on the fugitives. And the next day, while his brain still seemed frozen with horror, he was called on to join in the procession of thanksgiving for the King’s deliverance from a dangerous plot. Surely, if the plot were genuine, he thought, the procession should have savoured of penance and humiliation rather than of barbarous exultation! Yet these might be only the individual crimes of the Queen-mother, and of the Guises seeking to mask themselves under the semblance of zeal; and the infallible head of the visible Church would disown the slaughter, and cast it from the Church with loathing as a blood-stained garment. Behold, Rome was full of rejoicing, and sent sanction and commendation of the pious zeal of the King! Had the voice of Holy Church become indeed as the voice of the bloodhound? Was this indeed her call?
The young man, whose life from infancy had been marked out for the service of the Church—so destined by his parents as securing a wealthy provision for a younger son, but educated by his good tutor with more real sense of his obligations—felt the question in its full import. He was under no vows; he had, indeed, received the tonsure, but was otherwise unpledged, and he was bent on proving all things. The gaieties in which he had at first mingled had become abhorrent to him, and he studied with the earnestness of a newly-awakened mind in search of true light. The very face of study and inquiry, in one of such a family as that of his brother the Duke de Mericour, was enough to excite suspicion of Huguenot inclinations. The elder brother tried to quash the folly of the younger, by insisting on his sharing the debaucheries which, whether as priest or monk, or simply as Christian man, it would be his duty to abjure; and at length, by way of bringing things to a test, insisted on his making one of a party who were about to break up and destroy a Huguenot assembly. Unable, in his present mood, to endure the thought of further cruelty, the young Abbe fled, gave secret warning to the endangered congregation, and hastened to the old castle in Brittany, where he had been brought up, to pour out his perplexities, and seek the counsel of the good old chaplain who had educated him. Whether the kind, learned, simple-hearted tutor could have settled his mind, he had no time to discover, for he had scarcely unfolded his troubles before warnings came down that he had better secure himself—his brother, as head of the family, had obtained the royal assent to the imprisonment of the rebellious junior, so as to bring him to a better mind, and cure him of the Huguenot inclinations, which in the poor lad were simply undeveloped. But in all the Catholic eyes he was a tainted man, and his almost inevitable course was to take refuge with some Huguenot relations. There he was eagerly welcome; instruction was poured in on him; but as he showed a disposition to inquire and examine, and needed time to look into what they taught him, as one who feared to break his link with the Church, and still longed to find her blameless and glorious, the righteous nation that keepeth the truth, they turned on him and regarded him as a traitor and a spy, who had come among them on false pretences.
All the poor lad wanted was time to think, time to examine, time to consult authorities, living and dead. The Catholics called this treason to the Church, the Huguenots called it halting between two opinions; and between them he was a proscribed, distrusted vagabond, branded on one side as a recreant, and on the other as a traitor. He had asked for a few months of quiet, and where could they be had? His grand-mother had been the daughter of a Scottish nobleman in the French service, and he had once seen a nephew of hers who had come to Paris during the time of Queen Mary’s residence there. He imagined that if he were once out of this distracted land of France, he might find respite for study, for which he longed; and utterly ignorant of the real state of Scotland, he had determined to make his way to his kindred there; and he had struggled on the way to La Rochelle, cheated out of the small remains of his money, selling his last jewels and all the clothing that was not indispensable, and becoming so utterly unable to pay his passage to England, that he could only trust to Providence to find him some means of reaching his present goal.
He had been listened to with kindness, and a sympathy such as M. Gardon’s large mind enable him to bestow, where his brethren had been incapable of comprehending that a man could sincerely doubt between them and Rome. When the history was finished, Eustacie exclaimed, turning to Maitre Gardon, ‘Ah! sir, is not this just what we sought? If this gentleman would but convey a letter to my mother-in-law—-’
M. Gardon smiled. ‘Scotland and England are by no means the same place, Lady,’ he said.
‘Whatever this lady would command, wherever she would send me, I am at her service,’ cried the Abbe, fervently.
And, after a little further debate, it was decided that it might really be the best course, for him as for Madame de Ribaumont, to become the bearer of a letter and token from her, entreating her mother-in-law to notify her pleasure whether she should bring her child to England. She had means enough to advance a sufficient sum to pay Mericour’s passage, and he accepted it most punctiliously as a loan, intending, so soon as her despatches were ready, to go on to La Rochelle, and make inquiry for a ship.
Chance, however, seemed unusually propitious, for the next day there was an apparition in the streets of La Sablerie of four or five weather-beaten, rollicking-looking men, their dress profusely adorned with ribbons, and their language full of strange oaths. They were well known at La Sablerie as sailors belonging to a ship of the fleet of the Count de Montgomery, the unfortunate knight whose lance had caused the death of King Henry II., and who, proscribed by the mortal hatred of Catherine de Medicis, had become the admiral of a piratical fleet in the Calvinist interest, so far winked at the Queen Elizabeth that it had its head-quarters in the Channel Islands, and thence was a most formidable foe to merchant vessels on the northern and eastern coasts of France; and often indulged in descents on the coast, when the sailors—being in general the scum of the nation—were apt to comport themselves more like American buccaneers than like champions of any form of religion.
La Sablerie was a Huguenot town, so they used no violence, but only swaggered about, demanding from Bailli La Grasse, in the name of their gallant Captain Latouche, contributions and provisions, and giving him to understand that if he did not comply to the uttermost it should be the worse for him. Their ship, it appeared, had been forced to put into the harbour, about two miles off, and Maitre Gardon and the young Abbe decided on walking thither to see it, and to have an interview with the captain, so as to secure a passage for Mericour at least. Indeed Maitre Gardon had, in consultation with Eustacie, resolved, if he found things suitable, to arrange for their all going together. She would be far safer out of France; and, although the Abbe alone could not have escorted her, yet Maitre Gardon would gladly have secured for her the additional protection of a young, strong, and spirited man; and Eustacie, who was no scribe, was absolutely relieved to have the voyage set before her as an alternative to the dreadful operation of composing a letter to thebelle-mere, whom she had not seen since she had been seven years old, and of whose present English name she had the most indistinct ideas.
However, the first sight of the ship overthrew all such ideas. It was a wretched single-decked vessel, carrying far more sail than experienced nautical eyes would have deemed safe, and with no accommodation fit for a woman and child, even had the aspect of captain or crew been more satisfactory—for the ruffianly appearance and language of the former fully rivaled that of his sailors. It would have been mere madness to think of trusting the lady in such hands; and, without a word to each other, Gardon and Mericour resolved to give no hint even that she and her jewels were in La Sablerie. Mericour, however, made his bargain with the captain, who understood to transport him as far as Guernsey, whence he might easily make his way to Dorsetshire, where M. Gardon knew that Berenger’s English home had been.
So Eustacie, with no small trouble and consideration, indited her letter—telling of her escape, the birth of her daughter, the dangers that threatened her child—and begging that its grand-mother would give it a safe home in England, and love it for the sake of its father. An answer would find her at the Widow Noemi Laurent’s, Rue des Trois Fees, La Sablerie. She could not bring herself to speak of the name of Eserance Gardon which had been saddled upon her; and even M. de Mericour remained in ignorance of her bearing this disguise. She recommended him to the kindness of her mother-in-law; and M. Gardon added another letter to the lady, on behalf of the charge to whom he promised to devote himself until he should see them safe in friendly hands. Both letters were addressed, as best they might be, between Eustacie’s dim comprehension of the word Thistlewood, and M. Gardon’s notion of spelling. ‘Jadis, Baronne de Ribaumont’ was the securest part of the direction.
And for a token, Eustacie looked over her jewels to find one that would serve for a token; but the only ones she knew would be recognized, were the brooch that had fastened the plume in Berenger’s bloody cap, and the chaplet of pearls. To part with the first, or to risk the second in the pirate-ship, was impossible, but Eustacie at last decided upon detaching the pear-shaped pearl which was nearest the clasp, and which was so remarkable in form and tint that there was no doubt of its being well known.
Mistress Jean was making the elder-flower wine—‘And what brings theLaird at sic a like time?’LADY NAIRN, THE LAIRD OF COCKPEN
Summer was nearly ended, and Lucy Thistlewood was presiding in the great kitchen of the Manor-house, standing under the latticed window near the large oak-table, a white apron over her dress, presiding over the collecting of elder-berries for the brew of household-wine for the winter. The maids stood round her with an array of beechen bowls or red and yellow crocks, while barefooted, bareheaded children came thronging in with rush or wicker baskets of the crimson fruit, which the maids poured in sanguine cascades into their earthenware; and Lucy requited with substantial slices of bread and cheese, and stout homely garment mostly of her own sewing.
Lucy was altogether an inmate of her father’s house. She had not even been at Hurst Walwyn for many months; for her step-mother’s reiterated hopes that Berenger would make her his consolation for all he had suffered from his French spouse rendered it impossible to her to meet him with sisterly unconsciousness; and she therefore kept out of the way, and made herself so useful at home, that Dame Annora only wondered how it had been possible to spare her so long, and always wound up her praises by saying, that Berenger would learn in time how lucky he had been to lose the French puppet, and win the good English housewife.
If only tidings would have come that the puppet was safe married. That was the crisis which all the family desired yet feared for Berenger, since nothing else they saw would so detach his thoughts from the past as the leave him free to begin life again. The relapse brought on by the cruel reply to Osbert’s message had been very formidable: he was long insensible or delirious and then came a state of annihilated thought, then of frightfully sensitive organs, when light, sound, movement, or scent were alike agony; and when he slowly revived, it was with such sunken spirits, that his silence was as much from depression as from difficulty of speech. His brain was weak, his limbs feeble, the wound in his mouth never painless; and all this necessarily added to his listless indifference and weariness, as though all youthful hope and pleasure were extinct in him. He had ceased to refer to the past. Perhaps he had thought it over, and seen that the deferred escape, the request for the pearls, the tryst at the palace, and detention from the king’s chamber, made an uglier case against Eustacie than he could endure to own even to himself. If his heart trusted, his mind could not argue out her defence, and his tongue would not serve him for discussion with his grandfather, the only person who could act for him. Perhaps the stunned condition of his mind made the suspense just within the bounds of endurance, while trust in his wife’s innocence rendered his inability to come to her aid well-nigh intolerable; and doubt of her seemed both profanity and misery unspeakable. He could do nothing. He had shot his only shaft by sending Landry Osbert, and had found that to endeavour to induce his grandfather to use further measures was worse than useless, and was treated as mere infatuation. He knew that all he had to do was to endeavour for what patience he could win from Cecily’s sweet influence and guidance, and to wait till either certainty should come—that dreadful, miserable certainty that all looked for, and his very helplessness might be bringing about—or till he should regain strength to be again effective.
And miserably slow work was this recovery. No one had surgical skill to deal with so severe a wound as that which Narcisse had inflicted; and the daily pain and inconvenience it caused led to innumerable drawbacks that often—even after he had come as far as the garden—brought him back to his bed in a dark room, to blood-letting, and to speechlessness. No one knew much of his mind—Cecily perhaps the most; and next to her, Philip—who, from the time he had been admitted to his step-brother’s presence, had been most assiduous in tending him—seemed to understand his least sign, and to lay aside all his boisterous roughness in his eager desire to do him service. The lads had loved each other from the moment they had met as children, but never so apparently as now, when all the rude horse-play of healthy youths was over—and one was dependent, the other considerate. And if Berenger had made on one else believe in Eustacie, he had taught Philip to view her as the ‘Queen’s men’ viewed Mary of Scotland. Philip had told Lucy the rough but wholesome truth, that ‘Mother talks mere folly. Eustacie is no more to be spoken of with you than a pheasant with old brown Partlet; and Berry waits but to be well to bring her off from all her foes. And I’ll go with him.’
It was on Philip’s arm that Berenger first crept round the bowling-green, and with Philip at his rein that he first endured to ride along the avenue on Lord Walwyn’s smooth-paced palfrey; and it was Philip who interrupted Lucy’s household cares by rushing in and shouting, ‘Sister, here! I have wiled him to ride over the down, and he is sitting under the walnut-tree quite spent, and the three little wenches are standing in a row, weeping like so many little mermaids. Come, I say!’
Lucy at once followed him through the house, through the deep porch to the court, which was shaded by a noble walnut-tree, where Sir Marmaduke loved to sit among his dogs. There not sat Berenger, resting against the trunk, overcome by the heat and exertion of his ride. His cloak and hat lay on the ground; the dogs fawned round him, eager for the wonted caress, and his three little sisters stood a little aloof, clinging to one another and crying piteously.
It was their first sight of him; and it seemed to them as if he were behind a frightful mask. Even Lucy was not without a sensation of the kind, of this effect in the change from the girlish, rosy complexion to extreme paleness, on which was visible, in ghastly red and purple, the great scar left by Narcisse, from the temple on the one side to the ear on the other.
The far more serious would on the cheek was covered with a black patch, and the hair had almost entirely disappeared from the head, only a few light brown locks still hanging round the neck and temples, so that the bald brow gave a strange look of age; and the disfigurement was terrible, enhanced as it was by the wasting effect of nearly a year of sickness. Lucy was so much shocked, that she could hardly steady her voice to chide the children for not giving a better welcome to their brother. They would have clung round her, but she shook them off, and sent Annora in haste for her mother’s fan; while Philip arriving with a slice of diet-bread and a cup of sack, the one fanned him, and the other fed him with morsels of the cake soaked in the wine, till he revived, looked up with eyes that were unchanged, and thanked them with a few faltering words, scarcely intelligible to Lucy. The little girls came nearer, and curiously regarded him but when he held out his hand to his favourite Dolly, she shrank back in reluctance.
‘Do not chide her,’ he said wearily. ‘May she never become used to such marks!’
‘What, would you have her live among cowards?’ exclaimed Philip; but Berenger, instead of answering, looked up at the front of the house, one of those fine Tudor facades that seem all carved timber and glass lattice, and asked, so abruptly that Lucy doubted whether she heard him alright,—‘How many windows are there in this front?’
‘I never counted,’ said Philip.
‘I have,’ said Annora; ‘there are seven and thirty, besides the two little ones in the porch.’
‘None shall make them afraid,’ he muttered. ‘Who would dare build such a defenceless house over yonder?’—pointing south.
‘Our hearts are guarded now,’ said Philip, proudly. Berenger half smiled, as he was wont to do when he meant more than he could conveniently utter, and presently he asked, in the same languid, musing tone, ‘Lucy, were you ever really affrighted?’
Lucy questioned whether he could be really in his right mind, as if the bewilderment of his brain was again returning; and while she paused, Annora exclaimed, ‘Yes, when we were gathering cowslips, and the brindled cow ran at us, and Lucy could not run because she had Dolly in her arm. Oh! we were frightened then, till you came, brother.’
‘Yes,’ added Bessie; ‘and last winter too, when the owl shrieked at the window—-’
‘And,’ added Berenger, ‘sister, what was your greatest time of revelry?’
Annora again put in her word. ‘I know, brother; you remember the fair-day, when my Lady Grandame was angered because you and Lucy went on dancing when we and all then gentry had ceased. And when Lucy said she had not seen that you were left alone, Aunt Cecily said it was because the eyes of discretion were lacking.’
‘Oh, the Christmas feast was far grander,’ said Bessie. ‘Then Lucy had her first satin farthingale, and three gallants, besides my brother, wanted to dance with her.’
Blushing deeply, Lucy tried to hush the little ones, much perplexed by the questions, and confused by the answers. Could he be contrasting the life where a vicious cow had been the most alarming object, a greensward dance with a step-brother the greatest gaiety, dye of the elder juice the deepest stain, with the temptations and perils that had beset one equally young? Resting his head on his hand, his elbow on his knee, he seemed to be musing in a reverie that he could hardly brook, as his young brow was knitted by care and despondency.
Suddenly, the sounds in the village rose from the quiet sleepy summer hum into a fierce yell of derisive vituperation, causing Philip at once to leap up, and run across the court to the entrance-gate, while Lucy called after him some vain sisterly warning against mingling in a fray.
It seemed as if his interposition had a good effect, for the uproar lulled almost as soon as he had hurried to the scene of action; and presently he reappeared, eager and breathless. ‘I told them to bring him up here,’ he said; ‘they would have flogged him at the cart’s-tail, the rogues, just because my father is out of the way. I could not make out his jargon, but you can, brother; and make that rascal Spinks let him go.’
‘What should I have to do with it?’ said Berenger, shrinking from the sudden exposure of his scarred face and maimed speech. ‘I am no magistrate.’
‘But you can understand him; he is French, the poor rogue something abut a letter, and wanting to ask his way. Ah! I thought that would touch you, and it will cost you little pains, and slouching it over his face, rose, and, leaning upon Annora’s shoulder, stepped forward, just as the big burly blacksmith-constable and small shriveled cobbler advanced, dragging along, by a cord round the wrists, a slight figure with a red woolen sailor’s shirt, ragged black hosen, bare head, and almost bare feet.
Doffing their caps, the men began an awkward salutation to the young Lord on his recovery, but he only touched his beaver in return, and demanded, ‘How now! what have you bound him for?’
‘You see, my Lord,’ began the constable, ‘there have been a sort of vagrants of late, and I’ll be bound’ twas no four-legged fox as took Gaffer Shepherd’s lamb.’
The peroration was broken off, for with a start as if he had been shot, Berenger cried aloud, ‘Mericour! the Abbe!’
‘Ah, Monsieur, if you know me,’ cried the young man, raising his head, ‘free me from this shame—aid me in my mission!’
‘Loose him, fellows,’ shouted Berenger; ‘Philip, a knife—Lucy, those scissors.’
‘Tis my duty, my Lord,’ said Spinks, gruffly. ‘All vagabonds to be apprehended and flogged at the cart’s-tail, by her Grace’s special commands. How is it to be answered to his Honour, Sir Marmaduke?’
‘Oaf!’ cried Philip, ‘you durst not have used such violence had my father been at home! Don’t you see my brother knows him?’
With hands trembling with haste, Berenger had seized the scissors that, house-wife like, hung at Lucy’s waist, and was cutting the rope, exclaiming in French, ‘Pardon, pardon, friend, for so shameful a reception.’
‘Sir,’ was the reply, without a sign of recognition, ‘if, indeed, you know my name, I entreat you to direct me to the chateau of Le Sieur Tistefote, whose lady was once Baronne de Ribaumont.’
‘My mother! Ah, my friend, my friend! what would you?’ he cried in a tone of tremulous hope and fear, laying one hand on Mericour’s shoulder, and about to embrace him.
Mericour retreated from him; but the high-spirited young man crossed his arms on his breast, and gazing at the group with indignant scorn, made answer, ‘My message is from her who deems herself a widow, to the mother of the husband whom she little imagines to be not only alive, but consoled.’
‘Faithful! Faithful!’ burst out Berenger, with a wild, exultant, strangely-ringing shout. ‘Woe, woe to those who would have had me doubt her! Philip—Lucy—hear! Her truth is clear to all the world!’ Then changing back again to French, ‘Ten thousand blessings on you, Mericour! You have seen her! Where—how?’
Mericour still spoke with frigid politeness. ‘I had the honour to part with Madame la Baronne de Ribaumont in the town of La Sablerie, among humble, Huguenot guardians, to whom she had fled, to save her infant’s life—when no aid came.’
He was obliged to break off, for Berenger, stunned by the sudden rush of emotion, reeled as he stood, and would have fallen but for the prompt support of Lucy, who was near enough to guide him back to rest upon the bench, saying resentfully in French as she did so, ‘My brother is still very ill. I pray you, sir, have a care.’
She had not half understood the rapid words of the two young men, Philip comprehended them far less, and the constable and his crew of course not at all; and Spinks pushed forward among the group as he saw Berenger sink back on the bench; and once more collaring his prisoner, exclaimed almost angrily to Philip, ‘There now, sir, you’ve had enough of the vagabond. We’ll keep him tight ere he bewitches any more of you.’
This rude interference proved an instant restorative. Berenger sprang up at once, and seizing Spink’s arm, exclaimed, ‘Hands off, fellow! This is my friend—a gentleman. He brings me tidings of infinite gladness. Who insults him, insults me.’
Spinks scarcely withdrew his hand from Mericour’s neck; and scowling, said, ‘Very odd gentleman—very queer tidings, Master Berenger, to fell you like an ox. I must be answerable for the fellow till his Honour comes.’
‘Ah!Eh quoi, wherefore not show thecanailleyour sword?’ said Mericour, impatiently.
‘It may not be here, in England,’ said Berenger (who fortunately was not wearing his weapon). ‘And in good time here comes my step-father,’ as the gate swung back, and Sir Marmaduke and Lady Thistlewood rode through it, the former sending his voice far before him to demand the meaning of the hurly-burly that filled his court.
Philip was the first to spring to his rein, exclaiming, ‘Father, it is a Frenchman whom Spinks would have flogged at the cart’s-tail; but it seems he is a friend of Berenger’s, and has brought him tidings. I know not what—about his wife, I believe—any way he is beside himself with joy.’
‘Sir, your Honour,’ shouted Spinks, again seizing Mericour, and striving to drag him forward, ‘I would know whether the law is to be hindered from taking its course because my young Lord there is a Frenchman and bewitched.’
‘Ah,’ shrieked Lady Thistlewood, ‘I knew it. They will have sent secret poison to finish him. Keep the fellow safe. He will cast it in the air.’
‘Ay, ay, my Lady,’ said Spinks, ‘there are plenty of us to testify that he made my young Lord fall back as in a swoon, and reel like one distraught. Pray Heaven it have not gone further.’
‘Sir,’ exclaimed Berenger, who on the other side held his friend’s hand tight, ‘this is a noble gentleman—the brother of the Duke de Mericour. He has come at great risk to bring me tidings of my dear and true wife. And not one word will these demented rascals let me hear with their senseless clamour.’
‘Berenger! You here, my boy!’ exclaimed Sir Marmaduke, more amazed by this than all the rest.
‘He touches him—he holds him! Ah! will no one tear him away?’ screamed Lady Thistlewood. Nor would Spinks have been slow in obeying her if Sir Marmaduke had not swung his substantial form to the ground, and stepping up to the prisoner, rudely clawed on one side by Spinks, and affectionately grasped on the other side by Berenger, shouted—
‘Let go, both!’ does he speak English? Peace, dame! If the lad be bewitched, it is the right way. He looks like the other man. Eh, lad, what does your friend say for himself?’
‘Sir,’ said Berenger, interpreting Mericour’s words as they were spoken, ‘he has been robbed and misused at sea by Montgomery’s pirate crews. He fled from court for the religion’s sake; he met her—my wife’ (the voice was scarcely intelligible, so tremulously was it spoken), ‘in hiding among the Huguenots—he brings a letter and a token from her to my mother.’
‘Ha! And you know him? You avouch him to be what he represents himself?’
‘I knew him at court. I know him well. Father, make these fellows cease their insults! I have heard nothing yet. See here!’ holding out what Mericour had put into his hand; ‘this you cannot doubt, mother.’
‘Parted the pearls! Ah, the little minx!’ cried the lady, as she recognized the jewels.
‘I thought he had been robbed?’ added Sir Marmaduke.
‘The gentleman doubts?’ said Mericour, catching some of the words. ‘He should know that what is confided in a French gentleman is only taken from him with his life. Much did I lose; but the pearl I kept hidden in my mouth.’
Therewith he produced the letter. Lady Thistlewood pronounced that no power on earth should induce her to open it, and drew off herself and her little girls to a safe distance from the secret poison she fancied it contained; while Sir Marmaduke was rating the constables for taking advantage of his absence to interpret the Queen’s Vagrant Act in their own violent fashion; ending, however, by sending them round to the buttery-hatch to drink the young Lord’s health. For the messeger, the good knight heartily grasped his hand, welcoming him and thanking him for having ‘brought comfort to you poor lad’s heart.’
But there Sir Marmaduke paused, doubting whether the letter had indeed brought comfort; for Berenger, who had seized on it, when it was refused by his mother, was sitting under the tree—turning away indeed, but not able to conceal that his tears were gushing down like rain. The anxious exclamation of his step-father roused him at length, but he scarce found power or voice to utter, as he thrust the letter into the knight’s hand, ‘Ah! see what has she not suffered for me! me, whom you would have had believed her faithless!’
He then grasped his friend’s arm, and with him disappeared into the house, leaving Sir Marmaduke holding the letter in a state of the utmost bewilderment, and calling by turns on his wife and daughter to read and explain it to him.
And as Lucy read the letter, with her mother could not yet prevail on herself to touch, she felt at each word more grateful to the good Aunt Cecily, whose influence had taught her always to view Berenger as a brother, and not to condemn unheard the poor young wife. If she had not been thus guarded, what distress might not this day of joy to Berenger have brought to Lucy! Indeed, Lady Thistlewood was vexed enough as it was, and ready to carry her incredulity to the most inconsistent lengths. ‘It was all a trick for getting the poor boy back, that they might make an end of him altogether. Tell her they thought him dead.—‘Tilley-valley! It was a mere attempt on her own good-nature, to get a little French impostor on her hands. Let Sir Duke look well to it, and take care that her poor boy was not decoyed among them. The Frenchman might be cutting his throat at that moment! Where was he? Had Sir Duke been so lost as to let them out of sight together? No one had either pity or prudence now that her poor father was gone;’ and she began to weep.
‘No great fear on that score, dame,’ laughed the knight. ‘Did you not hear the lad shouting for ‘Phil, Phil!’ almost in a voice like old times? It does one good to hear it.’
Just at twilight, Berenger came down the steps, conducting a graceful gentleman in black, to whom Lady Thistlewood’s instinct impelled her to make a low courtesy, before Berenger had said, ‘Madam, allow me to present to you my friend, the Abbe de Mericour.’
‘Is it the same?’ whispered Bessie to Annora. ‘Surely he is translated!’
‘Only into Philip’s old mourning suit. I know it by the stain on the knee.
‘Then it is translated too. Never did it look so well on Philip! See, our mother is quite gracious to him; she speaks to him as though he were some noble visitor to my Lord.’
Therewith Sir Marmaduke came forward, shook Mericour with all his might by the hand, shouted to him his hearty thanks for the good he had done his poor lad and assured him of a welcome from the very bottom of his heart. The good knight would fain have kept both Berenger and his friend at the Manor, but Berenger was far too impatient to carry home his joy, and only begged the loan of a horse for Mericour. For himself, he felt as if fatigue or dejection would never touch him again, and he kissed his mother and his sisters, including Lucy, all round, with an effusion of delight.
‘Is that indeed your step-father?’ said Mericour, as they rode away together. ‘And the young man, is he your half-brother?’
‘Brother wholly in dear love,’ said Berenger; ‘no blood relation. The little girls are my mother’s children.’
‘Ah! so large a family all one? All at home? None in convents?’
‘We have no convents.’
‘Ah, no, but all at home! All at peace! This is a strange place, your England.’
It is my mistress!Since she is living, let the time run onTo good or bad.—CYMBELINE
Mericour found the welcome at Hurst Walwyn kindly and more polished than that at Combe Manor. He was more readily understood, and found himself at his natural element. Lord Walwyn, in especial, took much notice of him, and conversed with him long and earnestly; while Berenger, too happy and too weary to exert himself to say many words, sat as near Cecily as he could, treating her as though she, who had never contradicted in his trust in Eustacie, were the only person who could worthily share his infinite relief, peace, and thankfulness.
Lord Walwyn said scarcely anything to his grandson that night, only when Berenger, as usual, bent his knee to ask his blessing on parting for the night, he said, gravely, ‘Son, I am glad of your joy; I fear me you have somewhat to pardon your grandsire. Come to my library so soon as morning prayers be over; we will speak then. Not now, my dear lad,’ he added, as Berenger, with tears in his eyes, kissed his hand, and would have begun; ‘you are too much worn and spent to make my dear ears hear. Sleep, and take my blessing with you.’
It was a delight to see the young face freed from the haggard, dejected expression that had been sadder than the outward wound; and yet it was so questionable how far the French connection was acceptable to the family, that when Berenger requested Mr. Adderley to make mention of the mercy vouch-safed to him in the morning devotions, the chaplain bowed, indeed, but took care to ascertain that his so doing would be agreeable to my Lord and my Lady.
He found that if Lady Walwyn was still inclined to regret that the Frenchwoman was so entirely a wife, and thought Berenger had been very hasty and imprudent, yet that the old Lord was chiefly distressed at the cruel injustice he had so long been doing this poor youth thing. A strong sense of justice, and long habit of dignified self-restraint, alone prevented Lord Walwyn from severely censuring Mr. Adderley for misrepresentations; but the old nobleman recollected that Walsingham had been in the same story, and was too upright to visit his own vexation on the honestly-mistaken tutor.
However, when Berenger made his appearance in the study, looking as if not one right, but weeks, had been spent in recovering health and spirit, the old man’s first word was a gentle rebuke for his having been left unaware of how far matters had gone; but he cut short the attempted reply, but saying he knew it was chiefly owing to his own over-hasty conclusion, and fear of letting his grandson injure himself by vainly discussing the subject. Now, however, he examined Berenger closely on all the proceedings Paris and at Montpipeau, and soon understood that the ceremony had been renewed, ratifying the vows taken in infancy. The old statesman’s face cleared up at once; for, as he explained, he had now no anxieties as to the validity of the marriage by English law, at least, in spite of the decree from Rome, which, as he pointed out to his grandson, was wholly contingent on the absence of subsequent consent, since the parties had come to an age for free-will. Had he known of this, the re-marriage, he said, he should certainly have been less supine. Why had Berenger been silent?
‘I was commanded, sir. I fear I have transgressed the command by mentioning it now. I must pray you to be secret.’
‘Secret, foolish lad. Know you not that the rights of your wife and your children rest upon it?’ and as the change in Berenger’s looks showed that he had not comprehended the full importance of the second ceremony as nullifying the papal sentence, which could only quash the first on the ground of want of mutual consent, he proceeded, ‘Command, quotha? Who there had any right to command you, boy?’
‘Only one, sir.’
‘Come, this no moment for lover’s folly. It was not the girl, then? Then it could no other than the miserable King—was it so?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Berenger. ‘He bade me as king, and requested me as the friend who gave her to me. I could do no otherwise, and I thought it would be but a matter of a few days, and that our original marriage was the only important one.’
‘Have you any parchment to prove it?’
‘No, sir. It passed but as a ceremony to satisfy the Queen’s scruples ere she gave my wife to me to take home. I even think the King was displeased at her requiring it.’
‘Was Mr. Sidney a witness?’
‘No, sir. None was present, save the King and Queen, her German countess, and the German priest.’
‘The day?’
‘Lammas-day.’
‘The 1st of August of the year of grace 1572. I will write to Walsingham to obtain the testimony, if possible, of king or of priest; but belike they will deny it all. It was part of the trick. Shame upon it that a king should dig pits for so small a game as you, my poor lad!’
‘Verily, my Lord,’ said Berenger, ‘I think the King meant us kindly, and would gladly have sped us well away. Methought he felt his bondage bitterly, and would fain have dared to be a true king. Even at the last, he bade me to hisgarde-robe, and all there were unhurt.’
‘And wherefore obeyed you not?’
‘The carouse would have kept me too late for our flight.’
‘King’s behests may not lightly be disregarded,’ said the old courtier, with a smile. ‘However, since he showed such seeming favour to you, surely you might send a petition to him privately, through Sir Francis Walsingham, to let the priest testify to your renewal of contract, engaging not to use it to his detriment in France.’
‘I will do so, sir. Meanwhile,’ he added, as one who felt he had earned a right to be heard in his turn, ‘I have your permission to hasten to bring home my wife?’
Lord Walwyn was startled at this demand from one still so far from recovered as Berenger. Even this talk, eager as the youth was, had not been carried on without much difficulty, repetitions, and altered phrases, when he could not pronounce distinctly enough to be understood and the effort brought lines of pain into his brow. He could take little solid food, had hardly any strength for walking or riding; and, though all his wounds were whole, except that one unmanageable shot in the mouth, he looked entirely unfit to venture on a long journey in the very country that had sent him home a year before scarcely alive. Lord Walwyn had already devised what he thought a far more practicable arrangement; namely, to send Mr. Adderley and some of my Lady’s women by sea, under the charge of Master Hobbs, a shipmaster at Weymouth, who traded with Bordeaux for wine, and could easily put in near La Sablerie, and bring off the lady and child, and, if she wished it, the pastor to whom such a debt of gratitude was owing.
Berenger was delighted with the notion of the sea rather than the land journey; but he pointed out at once that this would remove all objection to his going in person. He had often been out whole nights with the fishermen, and knew that a sea-voyage would be better for his health than anything,—certainly better than pining and languishing at home, as he had done for months. He could not bear to think of separation from Eustacie an hour longer than needful; nay, she had been cruelly entreated enough already; and as long as he could keep his feet, it was absolutely due to her that he should not let others, instead of himself, go in search of her. It would be almost death to him to stay at home.
Lord Walwyn looked at the pallid, wasted face, with all its marks of suffering and intense eagerness of expression, increased by the difficulty of utterance and need of subduing agitation. He felt that the long-misunderstood patience and endurance had earned something; and he knew, too, that for all his grandson’s submission and respect, the boy, as a husband and father, had rights and duties that would assert themselves manfully if opposed. It was true that the sea-voyage obviated many difficulties, and it was better to consent with a good grace than drive one hitherto so dutiful to rebellion. He did then consent, and was rewarded by the lightning flash of joy and gratitude in the bright blue eyes, and the fervent pressure and kiss of his hand, as Berenger exclaimed, ‘Ah! sir, Eustacie will be such a daughter to you. You should have seen how the Admiral liked her!’
The news of Lord Walwyn’s consent raised much commotion in the family. Dame Annora was sure her poor son would be murdered outright this time, and that nobody cared because he was only HER son; and she strove hard to stir up Sir Marmaduke to remonstrate with her father; but the good knight had never disputed a judgment of ‘my Lord’s’ in his whole life, and had even received his first wife from his hands, when forsaken by the gay Annora. So she could only ride over the Combe, be silenced by her father, as effectually as if Jupiter had nodded, and bewail and murmur to her mother till she lashed Lady Walwyn up into finding every possible reason why Berenger should and must sail. Then she went home, was very sharp with Lucy, and was reckoned by saucy little Nan to have nineteen times exclaimed ‘Tilley-valley’ in the course of one day.
The effect upon Philip was a vehement insistence on going with his brother. He was sure no one else would see to Berry half as well; and as to letting Berry go to be murdered again without him, he would not hear of it; he must go, he would not stay at home; he should not study; no, no, he should be ready to hang himself for vexation, and thinking what they were doing to his brother. And thus he extorted from his kind-hearted father an avowal that he should be easier a bout the lad if Phil were there, and that he might go, provided Berry would have him, and my Lord saw no objection. The first point was soon settled; and as to the second, there was no reason at all that Philip should not go where his brother did. In fact, excepting for Berenger’s state of health, there was hardly any risk about the matter. Master Hobbs, to whom Philip rode down ecstatically to request him to come and speak to my Lord, was a stout, honest, experienced seaman, who was perfectly at home in the Bay of Biscay, and had so strong a feudal feeling for the house of Walwyn, that he placed himself and his best ship, the THROSTLE, entirely at his disposal. The THROSTLE was a capital sailer, and carried arms quite sufficient in English hands to protect her against Algerine corsairs or Spanish pirates. He only asked for a week to make her cabin ready for the reception of a lady, and this time was spent in sending a post to London, to obtain for Berenger the permit from the Queen, and the passport from the French Ambassador, without which he could not safely have gone; and, as a further precaution, letters were requested from some of the secret agents of the Huguenots to facilitate his admission into La Sablerie.
In the meantime, poor Mr. Adderley had submitted meekly to the decree that sentenced him to weeks of misery on board the THROSTLE, but to his infinite relief, an inspection of the cabins proved the space so small, that Berenger represented to him grandfather that the excellent tutor would be only an incumbrance to himself and every one else, and that with Philip he should need no one. Indeed, he had made such a start into vigour and alertness during the last few days that there was far less anxiety about him, though with several sighs for poor Osbert. Cecily initiated Philip into her simple rules for her patient’s treatment in case of the return of his more painful symptoms. The notion of sending female attendants for Eustacie was also abandoned: her husband’s presence rendered them unnecessary, or they might be procured at La Sablerie; and thus it happened that the only servants whom Berenger was to take with him were Humfrey Holt and John Smithers, the same honest fellows whose steadiness had so much conduced to his rescue at Paris.
Claude de Mericour had in the meantime been treated as an honoured guest at Combe Walwyn, and was in good esteem with its master. He would have set forth at once on his journey to Scotland, but that Lord Walwyn advised him to wait and ascertain the condition of his relatives there before throwing himself on them. Berenger had, accordingly, when writing to Sidney by the messenger above mentioned, begged him to find out from Sir Robert Melville, the Scottish Envoy, all he could about the family whose designation he wrote down at a venture from Mericour’s lips.
Sidney returned a most affectionate answer, saying that he had never been able to believe the little shepherdess a traitor and was charmed that she had proved herself a heroine; he should endeavour to greet her with all his best powers as a poet, when she should brighten the English court; but his friend, Master Spenser, alone was fit to celebrate such constancy. As to M. l’Abbe de Mericour’s friends, Sir Robert Melville had recognized their name at once, and had pronounced them to be fierce Catholics and Queensmen, so sorely pressed by the Douglases, that it was believed they would soon fly the country altogether; and Sidney added, what Lord Walwyn had already said, that to seek Scotland rather than France as a resting-place in which to weigh between Calvinism and Catholicism, was only trebly hot and fanatical. His counsel was that M. de Mericour should so far conform himself to the English Church as to obtain admission to one of the universities, and, through his uncle of Leicester, he could obtain for him an opening at Oxford, where he might fully study the subject.
There was much to incline Mericour to accept this counsel. He had had much conversation with Mr. Adderley, and had attended his ministrations in the chapel, and both satisfied him far better than what he had seen among the French Calninists; and the peace and family affection of the two houses were like a new world to him. But he had not yet made up his mind to that absolute disavowal of his own branch of the Church, which alone could have rendered him eligible for any foundation at Oxford. His attainments in classics would, Mr. Adderley thought, reach such a standard as to gain one of the very few scholarships open to foreigners; and his noble blood revolted at becoming a pensioner of Leicester’s, or of any other nobleman.
Lord Walwyn, upon this, made an earnest offer of his hospitality, and entreated the young man to remain at Hurst Walwyn till the return of Berenger and Philip, during which time he might study under the directions of Mr. Adderley, and come to a decision whether to seek reconciliation with his native Church and his brother, or to remain in England. In this latter case, he might perhaps accompany both the youths to Oxford, for, in spite of Berenger’s marriage, his education was still not supposed to be complete. And when Mericour still demurred with reluctance to become a burden on the bounty of the noble house, he was reminded gracefully of the debt of gratitude that the family owed to him for the relief he had brought to Berenger; and, moreover, Dame Annora giggled out that, ‘if he would teach Nan and Bess to speak and read French and Italian, it would be worth something to them.’ The others of the family would have hushed up this uncalled-for proposal; but Mericour caught at it as the most congenial mode of returning the obligation. Every morning he undertook to walk or ride over to the Manor, and there gave his lessons to the young ladies, with whom he was extremely popular. He was a far more brilliant teacher than Lucy, and ten thousand times preferable to Mr. Adderley, who had once begun to teach Annora her accidence with lamentable want of success.