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Stray Pearls

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> Stray Pearls




When I was ready, all in white, and she, most stately in blue velvet
and gold, I followed her down the stairs to the grand parlour, where
stood my father, with my brothers and one or two persons in black,
who I found were a notary and his clerk, and there was a table before
them with papers, parchment, a standish, and pens. I believe if it
had been a block, and I had had to lay my head on it, like poor Lady
Jane Grey, I could not have been much more frightened.

There was a sound of wheels, and presently the gentleman usher came
forward, announcing the Most Noble the Marquis de Nidemerle, and the
Lord Viscount of Bellaise. My father and brothers went half-way down
the stairs to meet them, my mother advanced across the room, holding
me in one hand and Annora in the other. We all curtsied low, and as
the gentlemen advanced, bowing low, and almost sweeping the ground
with the plumes in their hats, we each had to offer them a cheek to
salute after the English fashion. The old marquis was talking French
so fast that I could not understand him in the least, but somehow a
mist suddenly seemed to clear away from before me, and I found that I
was standing before that alarming table, not with him, but with
something much younger--not much older, indeed, than Eustace.

I began to hear what the notary was reading out, and behold it was--
'Contract of marriage on the part of Philippe Marie Francois de
Bellaise, Marquis de Nidermerle, and Eustace de Ribaumont, Baron
Walwyn of Walwyn, in Dorset, and Baron de Ribaumont in Picardy, on
behoof of Gaspard Henri Philippe, Viscount de Bellaise, nephew of the
Marquis de Nidemerle, and Margaret Henrietta Maria de Ribaumont,
daughter of the Baron de Ribaumont.'

Then I knew that I had been taken in by the Prince's wicked trick,
and that my husband was to be the young viscount, not the old uncle!
I do not think that this was much comfort to me at the moment, for,
all the same, I was going into a strange country, away from every one
I had ever known.

But I did take courage to look up under my eye-lashes at the form I
was to see with very different eyes. M. de Ballaise was only
nineteen, but although not so tall as my father or brother, he had
already that grand military bearing which is only acquired in the
French service, and no wonder, or he had been three years in the
Regiment de Conde, and had already seen two battles and three sieges
in Savoy, and now had only leave of absence for the winter before
rejoining his regiment in the Low Countries.

Yet he looked as bashful as a maiden. It was true that, as my father
said, his bashfulness was as great as an Englishman's. Indeed, he
had been bred up at his great uncle's chateau in Anjou, under a
strict abbe who had gone with him to the war, and from whom he was
only now to be set free upon his marriage. He had scarcely ever
spoken to any lady but his old aunt--his parents had long been dead--
and he had only two or three times seen his little sister through the
grating of her convent. So, as he afterwards confessed, nothing but
his military drill and training bore him through the affair. He
stood upright as a dart, bowed at the right place, and in due time
signed his name to the contract, and I had to do the same. Then
there ensued a great state dinner, where he and I sat together, but
neither of us spoke to the other; and when, as I was trying to see
the viscount under my eyelashes, I caught his eyes trying to do the
same by me, I remember my cheeks flaming all over, and I think his
must have done the same, for my father burst suddenly out into a
laugh without apparent cause, though he tried to check himself when
he saw my mother's vexation.

When all was over, she highly lauded the young gentleman, declaring
that he was an example of the decorum with which such matters were
conducted in France; and when my father observed that he should
prefer a little more fire and animation, she said: 'Truly, my lord,
one would think you were of mere English extraction, that you should
prefer the rude habits of a farmer or milkmaid to the reserve of a
true noble and lady of quality.'

'Well, dame, I promised that you should have it your own way with the
poor lass,' said my father; 'and I see no harm in the lad, but I own
I should like to know more of him, and Meg would not object either.
It was not the way I took thee, Margaret.'

'I shall never make you understand that a widow is altogether a
different thing,' said my mother.

I suppose they never recollected that I could hear every word they
said, but I was full in view of them, and of course I was listening
most anxiously for all I could gather about my new life. If I
remember right, it was an envoy-extraordinary with whom the marquis
and his nephew had come, and their stay was therefore very short, so
that we were married after a very few days in the Queen's Chapel, by
her own almoner.

I do not remember much about the wedding, as indeed it was done very
quietly, being intended to be kept altogether a secret; but in some
way, probably through the servants, it became known to the mob in
London, and as we drove home from Whitehall in the great coach with
my father and mother, a huge crowd had assembled, hissing and yelling
and crying out upon Lord Walwyn for giving his daughter to a French
Papist.

The wretches! they even proceeded to throw stones. My young
bridegroom saw one of these which would have struck me had he not
thrown himself forward, holding up his hat as a shield. The stone
struck him in the eye, and he dropped forward upon my mother's knee
senseless.

The crowd were shocked then, and fell back, but what good did that do
to him? He was carried to his chamber, and a surgeon was sent for,
who said that there was no great injury done, for the eye itself had
not been touched, but that he must be kept perfectly quiet until the
last minute, if he was to be able to travel without danger, when the
suite were to set off in two day's time. They would not let me go
near him. Perhaps I was relieved, for I should not have known what
to do; yet I feared that he would think me unkind and ungrateful, and
I would have begged my mother and Eustace to thank him and make my
excuses, but I was too shy, and I felt it very hard to be blamed for
indifference and rudeness.

Indeed, we four young ones kept as much together as we could do in
the house and gardens, and played all our dear old games of
shuttlecock, and pig go to market, and proverbs, and all that you, my
children, call very English sports, because we knew only too well
that we should never play at them altogether again. The more I was
blamed for being childish, the more I was set upon them, till at last
my mother said that she was afraid to let me go, I was so childish
and unfeeling; and my father replied that she should have thought of
that before. He and I were both more English at heart than French,
and I am sure now that he perceived better than I did myself that my
clinging to my brothers and sister, and even my noisy merriment, were
not the effect of want of feeling.

As to my bridegroom, I have since known that he was dreadfully afraid
of us, more especially of me, and was thankful that the injury kept
him a prisoner. Nay, he might have come downstairs, if he had been
willing, on the last evening, but he shrank from another presentation
to me before the eyes of all the world, and chose instead to act the
invalid, with no companion save Eustace, with whom he had made
friends.

I will not tell you about the partings, and the promises and
assurances that we should meet again. My father had always promised
that my mother should see France once more, and he now declared that
they would all visit me. Alas! we little thought what would be the
accomplishment of that promise.

My father and Eustace rode with us from London to Dover, and all the
time I kept close to them. M. de Bellaise was well enough to ride
too. His uncle, the marquis, went in a great old coach with the
ladies, wives of some of his suite, and I should have been there too,
but that I begged so hard to ride with my father that he yielded,
after asking M. le Vicomte whether he had any objection. M. le
Vicomte opened great eyes, smiled, blushed and bowed, stammering
something. I do not think that he had a quite realised previously
that I was his wife, and belonged to him. My father made him ride
with us, and talked to him; and out in the open air, riding with the
wind in our cheeks, and his plume streaming in the breeze, he grew
much less shy, and began to talk about the wolf-hunts and boar-hunts
in the Bocage, and of all the places that my father and I both knew
as well as if we had seen them, from the grandam's stories.

I listened, but we neither of us sought the other; indeed, I believe
it seemed hard to me that when there was so little time with my
father and Eustace, they should waste it on these hunting stories.
Only too soon we were at Dover, and the last, last farewell and
blessing were given. I looked my last, though I knew it not at that
dear face of my father!




CHAPTER III.

CELADON AND CHLOE



My tears were soon checked by dreadful sea-sickness. We were no
sooner out of Dover than the cruel wind turned round upon us, and we
had to go beating about with all our sails reefed for a whole day and
night before it was safe to put into Calais.

All that time I was in untold misery, and poor nurse Tryphena was
worse than I was, and only now and then was heard groaning out that
she was a dead woman, and begging me to tell some one to throw her
over board.

But it was that voyage which gave me my husband. He was not exactly
at his ease, but he kept his feet better than any of the other
gentlemen, and he set himself to supply the place of valet to his
uncle, and of maid to me, going to and fro between our cabins as best
he could, for he fell and rolled whenever he tried to more; sharp
shriek or howl, or a message through the steward, summoned him back
to M. le Marquis, who had utterly forgotten all his politeness and
formality towards the ladies.

However, our sufferings were over at last. My husband, who was by
this time bruised from head to foot by his falls, though he made no
complaints, came to say we should in a few moments be in port. He
helped me to dress, for Tryphena thought she was dead, and would not
move; and he dragged me on deck, where the air revived me, and where
one by one the whole party appeared, spectacles of misery.

M. le Marquis did not recover himself till he was on shore, and
caused himself to be assisted to the quay between his nephew and the
valet, leaving me to myself; but the dear viscount returned for me,
and after he had set me ashore, as he saw I was anxious about
Tryphena, he went back and fetched her, as carefully as if she had
been a lady, in spite of the grumblings of his uncle and of her own
refractoriness, for she was horribly frightened, and could not
understand a word he said to her.

Nevertheless, as soon as we had all of us come to ourselves, it
turned out that he had gained her heart. Indeed, otherwise I should
have had to send her home, for she pined sadly for some time, and
nothing but her love for me and her enthusiastic loyalty to him kept
her up during the first months.

As to my husband and me, that voyage had made us as fond of one
another's company on one side of the Channel as we had been afraid of
it before on the other, but there was no more riding together for us.
I had to travel in the great coach with M. le Marquis, the three
ladies, and all our women, where I was so dull and weary that I
should have felt ready to die, but for watching for my husband's
plume, or now and then getting a glance and a nod from him as he rode
among the other gentlemen, braving all their laughter at his
devotion; for, bashful as he was, he knew how to hold his own.

I knew that the ladies looked on me as an ugly little rustic
foreigner, full of English mauvaise honte. If they tried to be kind
to me, it was as a mere child; and they went on with their chatter,
which I could hardly follow, for it was about things and people of
which I knew nothing, so that I could not understand their laughter.
Or when they rejoiced in their return from what they called their
exile, and found fault with all they had left in England, my cheeks
burned with indignation.

My happy hours were when we halted for refreshments. My husband
handed me to my place at table and sat beside me; or he would walk
with me about the villages where we rested. The ladies were shocked,
and my husband was censured for letting me 'faire l'Anglaise,' but we
were young and full of spirits, and the being thus thrown on each
other had put an end to his timidity towards me. He did indeed blush
up to his curls, and hold himself as upright as a ramrod, when satire
was directed to us as Celadon and Chloe; but he never took any other
notice of it, nor altered his behaviour in consequence. Indeed, we
felt like children escaping from school when we crept down the stairs
in early morning, and hand-in-hand repaired to the church in time for
the very earliest mass among the peasants, who left their scythes at
the door, and the women with their hottes, or their swaddled babies
at their backs. We would get a cup of milk and piece of barley-bread
at some cottage, and wander among the orchards, fields, or vineyards
before Mesdames had begun their toiles; and when we appeared at the
dejeuner, the gentlemen would compliment me on my rouge au naturel,
and the ladies would ironically envy my English appetite.

Sometimes we rested in large hostels in cities, and then our walk
began with some old cathedral, which could not but be admired, Gothic
though it were, and continued in the market-place, where the piles of
fruit, vegetables, and flowers were a continual wonder and delight to
me. My husband would buy bouquets of pinks and roses for me; but in
the coach the ladies always said they incommoded them by their scent,
and obliged me to throw them away. The first day I could not help
shedding a few tears, for I feared he would think I did not value
them; and then I perceived that they thought the little Englishwoman
a child crying for her flowers. I longed to ask them whether they
had ever loved their husbands; but I knew how my mother would have
looked at me, and forbore.

Once or twice we were received in state at some chateau, where our
mails had to be opened that we might sup in full toilet; but this was
seldom, for most of the equals of M. le Marquis lived at Paris.
Sometimes our halt was at an abbey, where we ladies were quartered in
a guest-chamber without; and twice we slept at large old convents,
where nobody had lived since the Huguenot times, except a lay brother
put in by M. l'Abbe to look after the estate and make the house a
kind of inn for travelers. There were fine walled gardens run into
wild confusion, and little neglected and dismantled shrines, and
crosses here and there, with long wreaths of rose and honeysuckle
trailing over them, and birds' nests in curious places. My Viscount
laughed with a new pleasure when I showed him the wren's bright eye
peeping out from her nest, and he could not think how I knew the egg
of a hedge-sparrow from that of a red-breast. Even he had never been
allowed to be out of sight of his tutor, and he knew none of these
pleasures so freely enjoyed by my brothers; while as to his sister
Cecile, she had been carried from her nurse to a convent, and had
thence been taken at fourteen to be wedded to the grandson and heir
of the Count d'Aubepine, who kept the young couple under their own
eye at their castle in the Bocage.

My husband had absolutely only seen her twice, and then through the
grating, and the marriage had taken place while he was in Savoy last
autumn. He knew his brother-in-law a little better, having been his
neighbour at Nid de Merle; but he shrugged his shoulders as he spoke
of 'le chevalier,' and said he was very young, adored by his
grandparents, and rather headstrong.

As to growing up together in the unity that had always existed
between an absolute surprise to him to find that my dear brother was
grieved at parting with me. He said he had lain and heard our shouts
in the passages with wonder as we played those old games of ours.

'As though you were in a den of roaring wild beasts,' I said; for I
ventured on anything with him by that time, voices, I teased him
about his feelings at having to carry off one of these same savage
beasts with him; and then he told me how surprised he had been when,
on the last evening he spent in his chamber in our house, Eustace had
come and implored him to be good to me, telling him--ah, I can see my
dear brother's boyish way!--all my best qualities, ranging from my
always speaking truth to my being able to teach the little dog to
play tricks, and warning him of what vexed or pained me, even
exacting a promise that he would take care of me when I was away from
them all. I believe that promise was foremost in my husband's mind
when he waited on me at sea. Nay, he said when remembered the tears
in my brother's eyes, and saw how mine arose at the thought, his
heart smote him when he remembered that his sister's marriage had
scarcely cost him a thought or care, and that she was an utter
stranger to him; and then we agreed that if ever we had children, we
would bring them up to know and love one another, and have precious
recollections in common. Ah! l'homme propose, mais Dieu dispose.

It was only on that day that it broke upon me that we were to be
separated immediately after our arrival in Paris. M. de Bellaise was
to go to his regiment, which was at garrison at Nancy, and I was to
be left under the charge of old Madame la Marquise de Nidemerle at
Paris. I heard of it first from the Marquise himself in the coach,
as he thanked one of the ladies who invited me--with him--to her
salon in Paris, where there was to be a great entertainment in the
summer. When I replied that M. de Bellaise would have rejoined his
regiment, they began explaining that I should go into society under
Madame de Nidemerle, who would exert herself for my sake.

I said no more. I knew it was of no use there; but when next I could
speak with my husband--it was under an arbour of vines in the garden
of the inn where we dine--I asked him whether it was true. He opened
large eyes, and said he knew I could not wish to withdraw him from
his duty to his king and country, even if he could do so with honour.

'Ah! no,' I said; 'I never thought of that.' But surely the place of
a wife was with her husband, and I had expected to go with him to his
garrison at Nancy, and there wait when he took the field. He threw
himself at my feet, and pressed my hands with transport at what he
called this unheard-of proof of affection; and then I vexed him by
laughing, for I could not help thinking what my brothers would have
said, could they have seen us thus.

Still he declared that, in spite of his wishes, it was hardly
possible. His great-uncle and aunt would never consent. I said they
had no right to interfere between husband and wife, and he replied
that they had brought him up, and taken the place of parents to him;
to which I rejoined that I was far nearer to him. He said I was a
mutinous Englishwoman; and I rejoined that he should never find me
mutinous to him.

Nay, I made up my mind that if he would not insist on taking me, I
would find means to escape and join him. What! Was I to be carried
about in the coach of Madame de Nidemerle to all the hateful salons
of Paris, while my husband, the only person in France whom I could
endure, might be meeting wounds and death in the Low Countries while
I might be dancing!

So again I declined when the ladies in the coach invited me to their
houses in Paris. Should I go to a convent? they asked; and one began
to recommend the Carmelites, another the Visitation, another Port
Royal, till I was almost distracted; and M. le Marquis began to say
it was a pious and commendable wish, but that devotion had its proper
times and seasons, and that judgment must be exercised as to the
duration of a retreat, etc.

'No, Monsieur,' said I, 'I am not going into a convent. A wife's
duty is with her husband; I am going into garrison at Nancy.'

Oh, how they cried out! There was such a noise that the gentlemen
turned their horses' heads to see whether any one was taken ill.
When they heard what was the matter, persecution began for us both.

We used to compare our experiences; the ladies trying to persuade me
now that it was improper, now that I should be terrified to death now
that I should become too ugly to be presentable; while the gentlemen
made game of M. de Bellaise as a foolish young lover, who was so
absurd as to encumber himself with a wife of whom he would soon
weary, and whose presence would interfere with his enjoyment of the
freedom and diversions of military life. He who was only just free
from his governor, would he saddle himself with a wife? Bah!

He who had been so shy defended himself with spirit; and on my side I
declared that nothing but his commands, and those of my father,
should induce me to leave him. At Amiens we met a courier on his way
to England, and by him we dispatched letters to my father.

M. de Nidemerle treated all like absurd childish nonsense,
complimenting me ironically all the while; but I thought he wavered a
little before the journey was over, wishing perhaps that he had never
given his nephew a strange, headstrong, English wife, but thinking
that, as the deed was done, the farther off from himself she was the
better.

At least, he no longer blamed his nephew and threatened him with his
aunt; but declared that Madame de Rambouillet would soon put all such
folly out of our minds.

I asked my husband what Madame de Rambouillet could have to do with
our affairs; and he shrugged his shoulders and answered that the
divine Arthenice was the supreme judge of decorum, whose decisions
no one could gainsay.




CHAPTER IV.

THE SALON BLEU



We arrived at Paris late in the day, entering the city through a
great fortified gateway, and then rolling slowly through the rough
and narrow streets. You know them too well, my children, to be able
to conceive how strange and new they seemed to me, accustomed as I
was to our smooth broad Thames and the large gardens of the houses in
the Strand lying on its banks.

Our carriage turned in under the porte cochere of this Hotel de
Nidemerle of ours, and entered the courtyard. My husband, his uncle,
and I know not how many more, were already on the steps. M. de
Nidemerle solemnly embraced me and bade me welcome, presenting me at
the same time to a gentlemen, in crimson velvet and silver, as my
brother. My foolish heart bounded for a moment as if it could have
been Eustace; but it was altogether the face of a stranger, except
for a certain fine smile like my mother's. It was, of course, my
half-brother, M. le Baron de Solivet, who saluted me, and politely
declared himself glad to make the acquaintance of his sister.

The Marquis then led me up the broad stairs, lined with lackeys, to
our own suite of apartments, where I was to arrange my dress before
being presented to Madame de Nidemerle, who begged me to excuse her
not being present to greet me, as she had caught cold, and had a
frightful megrim.

I made my toilet, and they brought me a cup of eau sucree and a few
small cakes, not half enough for my hungry English appetite.

My husband looked me over more anxiously than ever he had done
before; and I wished, for his sake, that I had been prettier and
fitter to make a figure among all these grand French ladies.

My height was a great trouble to me in those unformed days. I had so
much more length to dispose of than my neighbours, and I knew they
remarked me the more for it; and then my hair never would remain in
curl for half an hour together. My mother could put it up safely,
but since I had left her it was always coming down, like flax from a
distaff; and though I had in general a tolerably fresh and rosy
complexion, heat outside and agitation within made my whole face,
nose and all, instantly become the colour of a clove gillyflower. It
had so become every afternoon on the journey, and I knew I was
growing redder and redder every moment, and that I should put him, my
own dear Viscount, to shame before his aunt.

'Oh! my friend,' I sighed, 'pardon me, I cannot help it.'

'Why should I pardon thee?' he answered tenderly. 'Because thou hast
so great and loving a heart?'

'Ah! but what will thine aunt think of me?'

'Let her think,' he said. 'Thou art mine, not Madame's.'

I know not whether those words made me less red, but they gave me
such joyous courage that I could have confronted all the dragoons,
had I been of the colour of a boiled lobster, and when he himself
sprinkled me for the last time with essences, I felt ready to defy
the censure of all the marchionesses in France.

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