The Chaplet of Pearls - Charlotte Yonge 4 стр.

And she has on her best blue, made out of mothers French farthingale, cried the discreet Annora.

Do you know, Dolly, Ive orders to box your ears, and send you in? added Berenger, as he lifted his half-sister from her perilous position, speaking, as he did so, without a shade of foreign accent, though with much more rapid utterance than was usual in England. She clung to him without much alarm, and retaliated by an endeavour to box his ears, while Philip, slowly making his way back to the mainland, exclaimed, Ah theres no chance now! Here comes demure Mistress Lucy, and she is the worst mar-sport of all.

A gentle girl of seventeen was drawing near, her fair delicately-tinted complexion suiting well with her pale golden hair. It was a sweet face, and was well set off by the sky-blue of the farthingale, which, with her white lace coif and white ruff, gave her something the air of a speedwell flower, more especially as her expression seemed to have caught much of Cecilys air of self-restrained contentment. She held a basketful of the orange pistils of crocuses, and at once seeing that some riot had taken place, she said to the eldest little girl, Ah, Nan, you had been safer gathering saffron with me.

Nay, brother Berry came and made all well, said Annora; and he had been shut up so long in the library that he must have been very glad to get out.

And what came of it? cried Philip. Are you to go and get yourself unmarried?

Unmarried! burst out the sisters Annora and Elizabeth.

What, laughed Philip, you knew not that this is an ancient husband, married years before your father and mother?

But, why? said Elizabeth, rather inclined to cry. What has poor Lucy done that you should get yourself unmarried from her?

There was a laugh from both brothers; but Berenger, seeing Lucys blushes, restrained himself, and said. Mine was not such good luck, Bess, but they gave me a little French wife, younger than Dolly, and saucier still; and as she seems to wish to be quit of me, why, I shall be rid of her.

See there, Dolly, said Philip, in a warning voice, that is the way youll be served if you do not mend your ways.

But I thought, said Annora gravely, that people were married once for all, and it could not be undone.

So said Aunt Cecily, but my Lord was proving to her out of all law that a contract between such a couple of babes went for nought, said Berenger.

And shall you, indeed, see Paris, and all the braveries there? asked Philip. I thought my Lord would never have trusted you out of his sight.

And now it is to be only with Mr. Adderley, said Berenger; but there will be rare doings to be seen at this royal wedding, and maybe I shall break a lance there in your honour, Lucy.

And youll bring me a French fan? cried Bess.

And me a pouncet-box? added Annora.

And me a French puppet dressed Paris fashion? said Dolly.

And what shall he bring Lucy? added Bess.

I know, said Annora; the pearls that mother is always talking about! I heard her say that Lucy should wear them on her wedding-day.

Hush! interposed Lucy, dont you see my father yonder on the step, beckoning to you?

The children flew towards Sir Marmaduke, leaving Berenger and Lucy together.

Not a word to wish me good speed, Lucy, now I have my wish? said Berenger.

Oh, yes, said Lucy, I am glad you should see all those brave French gentlemen of whom you used to tell me.

Yes, they will be all at court, and the good Admiral is said to be in high favour. He will surely remember my father.

And shall you see the lady? asked Lucy, under her breath.

Eustacie? Probably; but that will make no change. I have heard too much of lescadron de la Reine-mere to endure the thought of a wife from thence, were she the Queen of Beauty herself. And my mother says that Eustacie would lose all her beauty as she grew uplike black-eyed Sue on the down; nor did I ever think her brown skin and fierce black eyes to compare with you, Lucy. I could be well content never to see her more; but, and here he lowered his voice to a tone of confidence, my father, when near his death, called me, and told me that he feared my marriage would be a cause of trouble and temptation to me, and that I must deal with it after my conscience when I was able to judge in the matter. Something, too, he said of the treaty of marriage being a burthen on his soul, but I know not what he meant. If ever I saw Eustacie again, I was to give her his own copy of Clement Marots Psalter, and to tell her that he had ever loved and prayed for her as a daughter; and moreover, my father added, said Berenger, much moved at the remembrance it brought across him, that if this matter proved a burthen and perplexity to me, I was to pardon him as one who repented of it as a thing done ere he had learnt to weigh the whole world against a soul.

Yes, you must see her, said Lucy.

Well, what more were you going to say, Lucy?

I was only thinking, said Lucy, as she raised her eyes to him, how sorry she will be that she let them write that letter.

Berenger laughed, pleased with the simplicity of Lucys admiration, but with modesty and common sense enough to answer, No fear of that, Lucy, for an heiress, with all the court gallants of France at her feet.

Ah, but you!

I am all very well here, when you have never seen anybody but lubberly Dorset squires that never went to London, nor Oxford, nor beyond their own furrows, said Berenger; but depend upon it, she has been bred up to care for all the airs and graces that are all the fashion at Paris now, and will be as glad to be rid of an honest man and a Protestant as I shall to be quit of a court puppet and a Papist. Shall you have finished my point-cuffs next week, Lucy? Depend upon it, no gentleman of them all will wear such dainty lace of such a fancy as those will be.

And Lucy smiled, well pleased.

Coming from the companionship of Eustacie to that of gentle Lucy had been to Berenger a change from perpetual warfareto perfect supremacy, and his preference to his little sister, as he had been taught to call her from the first, had been loudly expressed. Brother and sister they had ever since considered themselves, and only within the last few months had possibilities been discussed among the elders of the family, which oozing out in some mysterious manner, had become felt rather than known among the young people, yet without altering the habitual terms that existed between them. Both were so young that love was the merest, vaguest dream to them; and Lucy, in her quiet faith that Berenger was the most beautiful, excellent, and accomplished cavalier the earth could afford, was little troubled about her own future share in him. She seemed to be promoted to belong to him just as she had grown up to curl her hair and wear ruffs and farthingales. And to Berenger Lucy was a very pleasant feature in that English home, where he had been far happier than in the uncertainties of Chateau Leurre, between his naughty playfellow, his capricious mother, and morose father. If in England his lot was to be cast, Lucy was acquiesced in willingly as a portion of that lot.

CHAPTER IV. TITHONUS

It was in the month of June that Berenger de Ribaumont first came in sight of Paris. His grandfather had himself begun by taking him to London and presenting him to Queen Elizabeth, from whom the lads good mien procured him a most favourable reception. She willingly promised that on which Lord Walwyns heart was set, namely, that his title and rank should be continued to his grandson; and an ample store of letter of recommendation to Sir Francis Walsingham, the Ambassador, and all others who could be of service in the French court, were to do their utmost to provide him with a favourable reception there.

CHAPTER IV. TITHONUS

It was in the month of June that Berenger de Ribaumont first came in sight of Paris. His grandfather had himself begun by taking him to London and presenting him to Queen Elizabeth, from whom the lads good mien procured him a most favourable reception. She willingly promised that on which Lord Walwyns heart was set, namely, that his title and rank should be continued to his grandson; and an ample store of letter of recommendation to Sir Francis Walsingham, the Ambassador, and all others who could be of service in the French court, were to do their utmost to provide him with a favourable reception there.

Then, with Mr. Adderley and four or five servants, he had crossed the Channel, and had gone first to Chateau Leurre, where he was rapturously welcomed by the old steward Osbert. The old man had trained up his son Landry, Berengers foster-brother, to become his valet, and had him taught all the arts of hair-dressing and surgery that were part of the profession of a gentlemans body-servant; and the youth, a smart, acuter young Norman, became a valuable addition to the suite, the guidance of which, through a foreign country, their young master did not find very easy. Mr. Adderley thought he knew French very well, through books, but the language he spoke was not available, and he soon fell into a state of bewilderment rather hard on his pupil, who, though a very good boy, and crammed very full of learning, was still nothing more than a lad of eighteen in all matters of prudence and discretion.

Lord Walwyn was, as we have seen, one of those whose Church principles had altered very little and very gradually; and in the utter diversity of practice that prevailed in the early years of Queen Elizabeth, his chaplain as well as the rector of the parish had altered no more than was absolutely enjoined of the old ceremonial. If the poor Baron de Ribaumont had ever been well enough to go to church on a Sunday, he would perhaps have thought himself still in the realms of what he considered as darkness; but as he had never openly broken with the Gallic Church, Berenger had gone at once from mass at Leurre to the Combe Walwyn service. Therefore when he spent a Sunday at Rouen, and attended a Calvinist service in the building that the Huguenots were permitted outside the town, he was much disappointed in it; he thought its very fervour familiar and irreverent, and felt himself much more at home in the cathedral into which he strayed in the afternoon. And, on the Sunday he was at Leurre, he went, as a part of his old home-habits, to mass at the old round-arched church, where he and Eustacie had played each other so many teasing tricks at his mothers feet, and had received so many admonitory nips and strokes of her fan. All he saw there was not congenial to him, but he liked it vastly better than the Huguenot meeting, and was not prepared to understand or enter into Mr. Adderleys vexation, when the tutor assured him that the reverent gestures that came naturally to him were regarded by the Protestants as idolatry, and that he would be viewed as a recreants from his faith. All Mr. Adderley hoped was that no one would hear of it: and in this he felt himself disappointed, when, in the midst of his lecture, there walked into the room a little, withered, brown, dark-eyed man, in a gorgeous dress of green and gold, who doffing a hat with an umbrageous plume, precipitated himself, as far as he could reach, towards Berengers neck, calling him fair cousin and dear baron. The lad stood taken by surprise for a moment, thinking that Tithonus must have looked just like this, and skipped like this, just as he became a grasshopper; then he recollected that this must be the Chevalier de Ribaumont, and tried to make up for his want of cordiality. The old man had, it appeared, come out of Picardy, where he lived on soupe maigre in a corner of the ancestral castle, while his son and daughter were at court, the one in Monsieurs suite, the other in that of the Queen-mother. He had come purely to meet his dear young cousin, and render him all the assistance is his power, conduct him to Paris, and give him introductions.

Berenger, who had begun to find six Englishmen a troublesome charge in France, was rather relieved at not being the only French scholar of the party, and the Chevalier also hinted to him that he spoke with a dreadful Norman accent that would never be tolerated at court, even if it were understood by the way. Moreover, the Chevalier studied him all over, and talked of Paris tailors and posture-masters, and, though the pink of politeness, made it evident that there was immensely too much of him. It might be the custom in England to be so tall; here no one was of anything like such a height, but the Duke of Guise. He, in his position, with his air, could carry it off, but we must adapt ourselves as best we can.

And his shrug and look of concern made Berenger for a moment almost ashamed of that superfluous height of which they were all so proud at home. Then he recollected himself, and asked, And why should not I be tall as well as M. de Guise?

We shall see, fair cousin, he answered, with an odd satirical bow; we are as Heaven made us. All lies in the management and if you had the advantages of training, PERHAPS you could even turn your height into a grace.

Am I such a great lubber? wondered Berenger; they did not think so at home. No; nor did the Queen. She said I was a proper stripling! Well, it matters the less, as I shall not stay long to need their favour; and Ill show them there is some use in my inches in the tilt-yard. But if they think me such a lout, what would they say to honest Philip?

The Chevalier seemed willing to take on him the whole management of his fair cousin. He inquired into the amount of the rents and dues which old Osbert had collected and held ready to meet the young Barons exigencies; and which would, it seemed, be all needed to make his dress any way presentable at court. The pearls, too, were inquired for, and handed over by Osbert to his young Lords keeping, with the significant intimation that they had been demanded when the young Madame la Baronne went to court; but that he had buried them in the orchard, and made answer that they were not in the chateau. The contract of marriage, which Berenger could just remember signing, and seeing signed by his father, the King, and the Count, was not forthcoming; and the Chevalier explained that it was in the hands of a notary at Paris. For this Berenger was not sorry. His grandfather had desired him to master the contents, and he thought he had thus escaped a very dry and useless study.

He did not exactly dislike the old Chevalier de Ribaumont. The system on which he had been brought up had not been indulgent, so that compliments and admiration were an agreeable surprise to him; and rebuffs and rebukes from his elders had been so common, that hints, in the delicate dressing of the old knight, came on him almost like gracious civilities. There was no love lost between the Chevalier and the chaplain, that was plain; but how could there be between an ancient French courtier and a sober English divine? However, to Mr. Adderleys great relief, no attempts were made on Berengers faith, his kinsman even was disposed to promote his attendance at such Calvinist places of worship as they passed on the road, and treated him in all things as a mere guest, to be patronized indeed, but as much an alien as if he had been born in England. And yet there was a certain deference to him as head of the family, and a friendliness of manner that made the boy feel him a real relation, and all through the journey it came naturally that he should be the entire manager, and Berenger the paymaster on a liberal scale.