The Chaplet of Pearls

CHAPTER XXI. UNDER THE WALNUT-TREE

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.’