The Chaplet of Pearls by Charlotte M. Yonge (early reader books txt) 📖

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.


CHAPTER XXI. UNDER THE WALNUT-TREE


Mistress Jean was making the elder-flower wine—
'And what brings the Laird 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