The Chaplet of Pearls

CHAPTER XL. THE SANDS OF OLONNE

‘M. de Ribaumont,’ said Henry of Navarre, as he stood before the fire after supper at Parthenay, ‘I have been thinking what commission I could give you proportioned to your rank and influence.’

‘Thanks to your Grace, that inquiry is soon answered. I am a beggar here. Even my paternal estate in Normandy is in the hands of my cousin.’

‘You have wrongs,’ said Henry, ‘and wrongs are sometimes better than possessions in a party like ours.’

Berenger seized the opening to explain his position, and mention that his only present desire was for permission, in the first place, to send a letter to England by the messenger whom the King was dispatching to Elisabeth, in tolerable security of her secret countenance; and, secondly, to ride to Nissard to examine into the story he had previously heeded so little, of the old man and his daughter rescued from the waves the day before La Sablerie was taken.

‘If Pluto relented, my dear Orpheus, surely Navarre may,’ said Henry good-humouredly; ‘only may the priest not be more adamantine than Minos. Where lies Nissard? On the Sable d’Olonne? Then you may go thither with safety while we lie here, and I shall wait for my sister, or for news of her.’

So Berenger arranged for an early start on the morrow; and young Selinville listened with a frown, and strange look in his dark eyes. ‘You go not to England?’ he said.

‘Not yet?’ said Berenger

‘This was not what my Lady expected,’ he muttered; but though Berenger silenced him by a stern look, he took the first opportunity of asking Philip if it would not be far wiser for his brother to place himself in safety in England.

‘Wiser, but less honest,’ said Philip.

‘He who has lost all here, who has incurred his grandfather’s anger,’ pursued Aime, ‘were he not wiser to make his peace with his friends in England?’

‘His friends in England would not like him the better for deserting his poor wife’s cause,’ said Philip. ‘I advise you to hold your tongue, and not meddle or make.’

Aime subsided, and Philip detected something like tears. He had still much of rude English boyhood about him, and he laughed roughly. ‘A fine fellow, to weep at a word! Hie thee back to feed my Lady’s lap-dog, ‘tis all thou art fit for.’

‘There spoke English gratitude,’ said Aime, with a toss of the head and flash of the eye.

Philip despised him the more for casting up his obligations, but had no retort to make. He had an idea of making a man of young Selinville, and his notion of the process had something of the bullying tendency of English young towards the poor-spirited or cowardly. He ordered the boy roughly, teased him for his ignorance of manly exercises, tried to cure his helplessness by increasing his difficulties, and viewed his fatigue as affectation or effeminacy. Berenger interfered now and then to guard the poor boy from a horse-jest or practical joke, but he too felt that Aime was a great incumbrance, hopelessly cowardly, fanciful, and petulant; and he was sometimes driven to speak to him with severity, verging on contempt, in hopes of rousing a sense of shame.

The timidity, so unusual and inexplicable in a youth of eighteen or twenty, sowed itself irrepressibly at the Sands of Olonne. These were not misty, as on Berenger’s former journey. Nissard steeple was soon in sight, and the guide who joined them on a rough pony had no doubt that there would be ample time to cross before high water. There was, however, some delay, for the winter rains had brought down a good many streams of fresh water, and the sands were heavy and wet, so that their horses proceeded slowly, and the rush and dash of the waves proclaimed that the low of the tide had begun. To the two brothers the break and sweep was a home-sound, speaking of freshness and freedom, and the salt breeze and spray carried with them life and ecstasy. Philip kept as near the incoming waves as his inland-bred horse would endure, and sang, shouted, and hallooed to them as welcome as English waves; but Aime de Selinville had never even beheld the sea before: and even when the tide was still in the distance, was filled with nervous terror as each rushing fall sounded nearer; and, when the line of white foamy crests became more plainly visible, he was impelled to hurry on towards the steeple so fast that the guide shouted to him that he would only bury himself in a quicksand.

‘But,’ said he, white with alarm, and his teeth chattering, ‘how can we creep with those dreadful waves advancing upon us to drown us?’

Berenger silence Philip’s rude laugh and was beginning to explain that the speed of the waves could always be calculated by an experienced inhabitant; and his voice had seemed to pacify Aime a little, when the spreading water in front of a broken wave flowing up to his horse’s feet, again rendered him nearly frantic. ‘Let us go back!’ he wildly entreated, turning his horse; but Berenger caught his bridle, saying, ‘That would be truly death. Boy, unless you would be scorned, restrain your folly. Nothing else imperils us.’

Here, however, the guide interposed, saying that it had become too late to pursue their course along the curve of the shore, but they must at once cut straight across, which he had intended to avoid, because of the greater depth of a small river that they would have to cross, which divided further out into small channels, more easily forded. They thus went along the chord of the arc formed by the shore, and Aime was somewhat reassured, as the sea was at first farther off; but before long they reached the stream, which lost itself in many little channels in the sands, so that when the tide was out there was a perfect network of little streams dividing low shingly or grassy isles, but at nearly high tide, as at present, many of these islets were submerged, and the strife between river and sea caused sudden deepenings of the water in the channels.

The guide eagerly explained that the safest place for crossing was not by the large sandbank furthest inland and looking firm and promising—it was a recent shifting performance of the water’s heaping up, and would certainly sink away and bury horse the channels on either side had shingly bottoms, and were safe.

‘This way,’ called Berenger, himself setting the example, and finding no difficulty; the water did not rise above his boots, and the current was not strong. He had reached the shingly isle when he looked round for his companions; Humfrey and Philip were close behind him; but, in spite of the loud ‘gare!’ of the guide, Aime, or his horse,—for each was equally senseless with alarm,—were making inwards; the horse was trying to tread on the sandbank, which gave way like the water itself, under its frantic struggles—there was a loud cry—a shrill, unmistakable woman’s shriek—the horse was sinking—a white face and helpless form were being carried out on the waves, but not before Berenger had flung himself from his horse, thrown off his cloak and sword, and dashed into the water; and in the lapse of a few moments he struggled back to the island, where were Philip and Humfrey, leg-deep in water: the one received his burthen, the other helped him to land.

‘On, gentlemen, not a moment to lose,’ cried the guide; and Berenger, still panting, flung himself on his horse, held out his arms, gathered the small, almost inanimate figure upon the horse’s neck before him, and in a few minutes more they had crossed the perilous passage, and were on a higher bank where they could safely halt; and Philip, as he came to help his brother, exclaimed, ‘What a fool the boy is!’

‘Hush!’ said Berenger, gravely, as they laid the figure on the ground.

‘What! he can’t have been drowned in that moment. We’ll bring him to.’

‘Hands off!’ said Berenger, kneeling over the gasping form, and adding in a lower voice, ‘Don’t you see?’ He would his hand in the long drenched hair, and held it up, with cheeks burning like fire, and his scar purple.

‘A woman!—what?—who?’ Then suddenly divining, he exclaimed, ‘The jade!’ and started with wide eyes.

‘Stand back,’ said Berenger; ‘she is coming to herself.’

Perhaps she had been more herself than he knew, for, as he supported her head, her hand stole over his and held it fast. Full of consternation, perplexity, and anger as he was, he could not but feel a softening pity towards a creature so devoted, so entirely at his mercy. At the moment when she lay helpless against him, gasps heaving her breast under her manly doublet, her damp hair spread on his knees, her dark eyes in their languor raised imploring his face, her cold hand grasping his, he felt as if this great love were a reality, and as if he were hunting a shadow; and, as if fate would have it so, he must save and gratify one whose affection must conquer his, who was so tender, so beautiful—even native generosity seemed on her side. But in the midst, as in his perplexity he looked up over the gray sea, he seemed to see the picture so often present to his mind of the pale, resolute girl, clasping her babe to her breast, fearless of the advancing sea, because true and faithful. And at that thought faith and prayer rallied once again round his heart, shame at the instant’s wavering again dyed his cheek; he recalled himself, and speaking the more coldly and gravely because his heart was beating over hotly, he said, ‘Cousin, you are better. It is but a little way to Nissard.’

‘Why have you saved me, if you will not pity me?’ she murmured.

‘I will not pity, because I respect my kinswoman who has save our lives,’ he said steadying his voice with difficulty. ‘The priests of Nissard will aid me in sparing your name and fame.’

‘Ah!’ she cried, sitting up with a start of joy, ‘but he would make too many inquiries! Take me to England first.’

Berenger started as he saw how he had been misunderstood.

‘Neither here nor in England could my marriage be set aside, cousin. No; not priest shall take charge of you, and place you in safety and honour.’

‘He shall not!’ she cried hotly. ‘Why—why will you drive me from you—me who ask only to follow you as a menial servant?’

‘That has become impossible,’ he answered; ‘to say nothing of my brother, my servant and the guide have seen;’ and, as she remembered her streaming hair, and tried, in dawning confusion, to gather it together, he continued: ‘You shrank from the eye of the King of Navarre. You cannot continue as you have done; you have not even strength.’

‘Ah! have you sailed for England,’ she murmured.

‘It had only been greater shame,’ he said. ‘Cousin, I am head of your family, husband of your kinswoman, and bound to respect the reputation you have risked for me. I shall, therefore, place you in charge of the priest till you can either return to your aunt or to some other convent. You can ride now. We will not wait longer in these wet garments.’

He raised her from the ground, threw his own dry cloak round her shoulders and unmanageable hair, and lifted her on his horse; but, as she would have leant against him, he drew himself away, beckoned Philip, and put the bridle into his hands, saying, ‘Take care of her. I shall ride on and warm the priest.’

‘The rock of diamond,’ she murmured, not aware that the diamond had been almost melting. That youthful gravity and resolution, with the mixture of respect and protection, imposed as usual upon her passionate nature, and daunted her into meekly riding beside Philip without a word—only now and then he heard a low moan, and knew that she was weeping bitterly.

At first the lad had been shocked beyond measure, and would have held aloof as from a kind of monster, but Madame de Selinville had been the first woman to touch his fancy, and when he heard how piteously she was weeping, and recollected where he should have been but for her, as well as all his own harshness to her as a cowardly boy, he felt himself brutally ungrateful, and spoke: ‘Don’t weep so, Madame; I am sorry I was rude to you, but you see, how should I take you for a woman?’

Perhaps she heard, but she heeded not.

‘My brother will take good care to shield you,’ Philip added. ‘He will take care you are safe in one of your nunneries;’ and as she only wept the more, he added, with a sudden thought, ‘You would not go there; you would embrace the Protestant faith?’

‘I would embrace whatever was his.’

Philip muttered something about seeing what could be done. They were already at the entrance of the village, and Berenger had come out to meet them, and, springing towards him, Philip exclaimed, in a low voice, ‘Berry, she would abjure her Popish errors! You can’t give her up to a priest.’

‘Foolery, Philip,’ answered Berenger, sternly.

‘If she would be a convert!’

‘Let her be a modest woman first;’ and Berenger, taking her bridle, led her to the priest’s house.

He found that Pere Colombeau was preaching a Lent sermon, and that nobody was at home but the housekeeper, to whom he had explained briefly that the lady with him had been forced to escape in disguise, had been nearly drowned, and was in need of refreshment and female clothing. Jacinthe did not like the sound, but drenched clothes were such a passport to her master’s house, that she durst not refuse. Berenger carried off his other companions to the cabaret, and when he had dried himself, went to wait for the priest at the church door, sitting in the porch where more than one echo of the exhortation to repentance and purity rang in his ears, and enforced his conviction that here he must be cruel if he would be merciful.

It was long before Pere Colombeau came out, and then, if the scar had not blushed for all the rest of his face, the sickly, lanky lad of three years since would hardly have been recognized to the good cure. But the priest’s aspect was less benignant when Berenger tried to set before him his predicament; he coldly asked where the unhappy lady was; and when Berenger expressed his intention of coming the next morning to ask his counsel, he only bowed. He did not ask the brothers to supper, nor show any civility; and Berenger, as he walked back to the cabaret, perceived that his story was but half believed, and that, if Diane’s passion were still stronger than her truth or generosity, she would be able to make out a terrible case against him, and to willing ears, naturally disposed against a young cavalier and a heretic.

He sat much dispirited by the fire of the little wine shop, thinking that his forbearance had been well-nigh thrown away, and that his character would never be cleared in Eustacie’s eyes, attaching, indeed, more importance to the blot than would have been done by a youth less carefully reared.

It was quite dark when a knock came to the door: the cure’s white head appeared in the lamplight; he nodded kindly to all the guests, and entreated that M. de Ribaumont would do him a favour to come and speak with him.

No sooner were they outside the house, than the cure held out his hand, saying ‘Sir, forgive me for a grievous injustice towards you;’ then pressing his hand, he added with a voice tremulous with emotion, ‘Sir, it is no slight thing to have saved a wandering sheep by your uprightness and loyalty.’

‘Have you then opened her eyes, father?’ said Berenger, relieved from a heavy load.

‘You have, my son,’ said the old man. ‘You have taught her what truth and virtue are. For the rest, you shall heard for yourself.’

Before Berenger knew where he was, a door was opened, and he found himself in the church. The building was almost entirely dark; there were two tall lights at the altar in distance, and a few little slender tapers burning before certain niches and shrines, but without power to conquer with the gloom more than enough to spread a pale circle of yellow light beneath them, and to show mysteriously a bit of vaulting above. A single lamp hung from an arch near the door, and beneath it, near a pillar, knelt, or rather crouched, on the floor, a female figure with a dark peasant cloak drawn over her head.

‘The first token of penitence is reparation to the injured,’ said the priest.

Berenger looked at him anxiously.

‘I will not leave you,’ he added. ‘See, I shall pray for you yonder, by the altar,’ and he slowly moved up the aisle.

‘Rise, cousin, I entreat you,’ said Berenger, much embarrassed, as he disappeared in the darkness.

‘I must speak thus,’ she answered, in a hoarse, exhausted voice. ‘Ah! pardon, pardon!’ she added, rising, however, so far as to raise clasped hands and an imploring face. ‘Ah! can you pardon? It was through me that you bear those wounds; that she—Eustacie—was forced into the masque, to detain you for THAT night. Ah! pardon.’

‘That is long past,’ said Berenger. ‘I have been too near death not to have pardoned that long ago. Rise, cousin, I cannot see you thus.’

‘That is not all,’ continued Diane. ‘It was I—I who moved my father to imprison you.’ Then, as he bent his head, and would have again entreated her to rise, she held out her hand as if to silence him, and spoke faster, more wildly. ‘Then—then I thought it would save your life. I thought–’ she looked at him strangely with her great dark eyes, all hollow and cavernous in her white face.

‘I know,’ said Berenger, kindly, ‘you often urged it on me.’

There was a sort of movement on the part of the kneeling figure of the priest at the altar, and she interrupted, saying precipitately. ‘Then—then, I did think you free.’

‘Ah!’ he gasped. ‘Now–!’

‘Now I know that she lives!’ and Diane once more sank at his feet a trembling, shrinking, annihilated heap of shame and misery.

Berenger absolutely gave a cry that, though instantly repressed, had the ring of ecstasy in it. ‘Cousin—cousin!’ he cried, ‘all is forgiven—all forgotten, if you will only tell me where!’

‘That I cannot,’ said Diane, rousing herself again, but speaking in a dull, indifferent tone, as of one to whom the prime bitterness was past, ‘save that she is under the care of the Duchess de Quinet;’ and she then proceeded, as though repeating a lesson: ‘You remember the Italian conjurer whom you would not consult? Would that I had not!’ she added, clasping her hands. ‘His prediction lured me? Well, he saw my father privately, told him he had seen her, and had bought her jewels, even her hair. My father sent him in quest of her again, but told not me till the man returned with tidings that she was at Quinet, in favour with the Duchess. You remember that he went from home. It was to demand he; and, ah! you know how long I had loved you, and they told me that your marriage was void, and that all would be well upon the dispensation coming. And now the good father there tells me that I was deceived—cruelly deceived—that such a dispensation would not be granted save through gross misrepresentation.’ Then, as Berenger began to show tokens of eagerness to come at tidings of Eustacie, she continued, ‘Ah! it is vain to seek to excuse one you care not for. My father could learn nothing from the Duchess; she avowed that she had been there, but would say no more. However, he and my brother were sure she was under their protection; they took measures, and—and the morning my poor father was stricken, there had been a letter from my brother to say he was on her track, and matters must be ended with you, for he should have her in a week;’ and then, as Berenger started forward with an inarticulate outburst, half of horror, half of interrogation, she added, ‘Where, he said not, nor did I learn from him. All our one interview was spend in sneers that answered to my wild entreaties; but this I know—that you would never have reached Tours a living man.’

‘And now, now he is on the way to her!’ cried Berenger, ‘and you kept it from me!’

‘There lay my hope,’ said Diane, raising her head; and now, with glittering eyes and altered voice, ‘How could I not but hate her who had bereaved me of you; her for whose sake I could not earn your love?’

The change of her tone had, perhaps, warned the priest to draw nearer, and as she perceived him, she said, ‘Yes, father, this is not the way to absolution, but my heart will burst if I say not all.’

‘Thou shalt not prevail, foul spirit,’ said the priest, looking earnestly into the darkness, as though he beheld the fiend hovering over her, ‘neither shall these holy walls be defiled with accents of unhallowed love. You have made your reparation, daughter; it is enough.’

‘And can you tell me no more?’ said Berenger, sadly. ‘Can you give me no clue that I may save her from the wolf that may be already on her track? Cousin, if you would do this, I would bless you for ever.’

‘Alas! I would if I could! It is true, cousin, I have no heart to deceive you any longer. But it is to Madame de Quinet that you must apply, and if my brother has though me worth pursuit, you may be in time! One moment,’—as he would have sprung away as if in the impulse to fly to the rescue,—‘cousin; had you gone to England as I hoped, I would have striven to deserve to win that love of yours, but you have conquered by your constancy. Now, father, I have spoken my last save as penitent.’

She covered her head and sank down again.

Berenger, bewildered and impelled to be doing something, let the priest lead him out before he exclaimed, ‘I said nothing to her of pardon!’

‘You do pardon?’ said the priest.

He paused a moment. ‘Freely, if I find my wife. I can only remember now that she set me on the way. I would ease her soul, poor thing, and thinking would make me hard again.’

‘Do the English bring up their sons with such feelings?’ asked the cure, pausing for a moment.

‘Of course,’ said Berenger. ‘May I say that one word, sir?’

‘Not now,’ said the priest; ‘she had better be left to think of her sin towards Heaven, rather than towards man.’

‘But do you leave her there, sir?’

‘I shall return. I shall pray for her true penitence,’ said the priest, and Berenger perceived from his tone that one without the pale might inquire no further. He only asked how safe and honourable shelter could be found for her; and the cure replied that he had already spoken to her of the convent of Lucon, and should take her there so soon as it could safely be done, and that Abbess Monique, he trusted, would assist her crushed spirit in finding the path of penitence. He thought her cousin had better not endeavour to see her again; and Berenger himself was ready to forget her very existence in his burning anxiety to outstrip Narcisse in the quest of Eustacie.

CHAPTER XLI. OUR LADY OF HOPE

As soon as it was possible to leave Nissard, Berenger was on his way back to head-quarters, where he hoped to meet the Duke de Quinet among the many Huguenot gentlemen who were flocking to the Bourbon standard; nor was he disappointed in the hope, for he was presented to a handsome middle-aged gentleman, who told him, with much politeness, that his mother had had the honour to receive and entertain Mme. de Ribaumont and that some months ago he had himself arranged for the conveyance of her letters to England, but, he said, with a smile, he made a point of knowing nothing of his mother’s guests, lest his duties as a governor might clash with those of hospitality. He offered to expedite M. de Ribaumont’s journey to Quinet, observing that, if Nid de Merle were, indeed, on the point of seizing the lady, it must be by treachery; indeed he had, not ten days back, had the satisfaction of hanging an Italian mountebank who had last year stolen a whole packet of dispatches, among them letters from Mme. de Ribaumont, and the fellow was probably acting as a spy upon her, so that no time was to be lost in learning from his mother where she was. On the next morning he was about to send forward twenty men to reinforce a little frontier garrison on the river Dronne, and as M. le Baron must pass through the place, it would be conferring a favour on him to take the command. The men were all well mounted, and would not delay; and when once across the frontier of Guyenne, no escort would be needed.