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Stray Pearls

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> Stray Pearls




'Sir,' she said, as he rose, 'I ask your pardon. I should not have
interrupted your devotions, but now is your time. My servant's
riding-dress is in a closet by the buttery hatch, his horse is in the
stable, there is no sentry in the way, for I have looked all about.
No one will return to the house for at least two hours longer; you
will have full time to escape.'

I can see the smile of sadness with which my brother looked into her
face as he thanked her, and told her that he was on his parole of
honour. At that answer she sank down into a chair, hiding her face
and weeping--weeping with such an agony of self-abandonment and grief
as rent my brother's very heart, while he stood in grievous
perplexity, unable to leave her alone in her sorrow, yet loving her
too well and truly to dare to console her. One or two broken words
made him think she feared for his life, and he made haste to assure
her that it was in no danger, since Mr. Merrycourt was assured of
bearing him safely through. She only moaned in answer, and said
presently something about living with such a sort of people as made
her forget what a cavalier's truth and honour were.

He were sorely shaken, but he thought the best and kindest mode of
helping her to recover herself would be to go on where he was in the
morning prayer, and, being just in the midst of their Litany, he told
her so, and read it aloud. She knelt with her head on the cushions
and presently sobbed out a response, growing calmer as he went on.

When it was ended she had ceased weeping, though Eustace said it was
piteous to see how changed she was, and the startled pleading look in
the dark eyes that used to look at him with such confiding love.

She said she had not heard those prayers since one day in the spring,
when she had stolen out to a house in town where there was a
gathering round one of the persecuted minister, and alas! her
stepdaughters had suspected her, and accused her to their father. He
pursued her, caused the train-bands to break in on the congregation
and the minister to be carried off to prison. It was this that had
brought on the sickness of which she declared that she hoped to have
died.

When Eustace would have argued against this wish, it brought out all
that he would fain never have heard nor known.

The poor young thing wished him to understand that she had never been
untrue to him in heart, as indeed was but too plain, and she had only
withdrawn her helpless passive resistance to the marriage with Mr.
van Hunker when Berenger's death had (perhaps willfully) been
reported to her as that of Eustace de Ribaumont. She had not known
him to be alive till she had seen him the day before. Deaths in her
own family had made her an heiress sufficiently well endowed to
excite Van Hunker's cupidity, but he had never affected much
tenderness for her. He was greatly her elder, she was his second
wife, and he had grown-up daughters who made no secret of their
dislike and scorn. Her timid drooping ways and her Majesty
sympathies offended her husband, shown up before him as they were by
his daughters, and, in short, her life had been utterly miserable.
Probably, as Annora said, she had been wanting in spirit to rise to
her situation, but of course that was not as my brother saw it. He
only beheld what he would have cherished torn from him only to be
crushed and flung aside at his very feet, yet so that honour and duty
forbade him to do anything for her.

What he said, or what comfort he gave her, I do not fully know, for
when he confided to me what grief it was that lay so heavily on his
heart and spirits, he dwelt more on her sad situation than on
anything else. The belief in her weakness and inconstancy had evoked
in him a spirit of defiance and resistance; but when she was proved
guiltless and unhappy, the burden, though less bitter, was far
heavier. I only gathered that he, as the only like-minded adviser
she had seen for so long, had felt it his duty to force himself to
seem almost hard, cold, and pitiless in the counsel he gave her.

I remember his very words as he writhed himself with the pain of
remembrance: 'And then, Meg, I had to treat the poor child as if I
were stone of adamant, and chide her when my very heart was breaking
for her. One moment's softening, and where should we have been? And
now I have added to her troubles that fancy that I was obdurate in my
anger and implacability.' I assured him that she would honour and
thank him in her heart for not having been weak, and he began to
repent of what he had left to be inferred, and to assure me of his
having neither said nor done anything that could be censured, with
vehement laudation of her sweetness and modesty.

The interview had been broken up by the sight of the return from
Church. Mrs. Van Hunker had had full time to retire to her room and
Eustace to arrange himself, so that no one guessed at the visitor he
had had. She came down to supper, and a few words and civilities had
passed between them, but he had never either seen or heard of her
since.

Harry Merrycourt, who had known of the early passages between them,
had never guessed that there was more than the encounter in the hall
to cause the melancholy which he kindly watched and bore with in my
brother, who was seriously ill again after he reached their lodgings
in London, and indeed I thought at the time when he was with me in
Paris, that his decay of health chiefly proceeded from sorrow of
heart.




CHAPTER XIII.

MADEMOISELLE'S TOILETTE.



We were to go to Madame de Choisy's assembly. She was the wife of
the Chanceller of the Duke of Orleans, and gave a fete every year, to
which all the court went; and, by way of disarming suspicion, all the
cavaliers who were in the great world were to attend to order that
their plans might not be suspected.

Our kind Queen Henrietta insisted on inspecting Nan and me before we
went. She was delighted with the way in which my mother had dressed
our hair, made her show how it was done, and declared it was exactly
what was suited to her niece, Mademoiselle, none of whose women had
the least notion of hair-dressing. She was going herself to the
Luxembourg to put the finishing touches, and Nan and I must come with
her. I privately thought my mother would have been more to the
purpose, but the Queen wanted to show the effect of the handi-work.
However, Nan disliked the notion very much, and showed it so plainly
in her face that the Queen exclaimed: 'You are no courtier,
Mademoiselle de Ribaumont. Why did you not marry her to her
Roundhead cousin, and leave her in England, Madame? Come, my god-
daughter, you at least have learnt the art of commanding your looks.'

Poor Annora must have had a sad time of it with my mother when we
were gone. She was a good girl, but she had grown up in rough times,
and had a proud independent nature that chafed and checked at
trifles, and could not brood being treated like a hairdresser's
block, even by Queens or Princesses. She was likewise very young,
and she would have been angered instead of amused at the scene which
followed, which makes me laugh whenever I think of it.

The Queen sent messages to know whether the Prince of Wales were
ready, and presently he came down in a black velvet suits slashed
with white and carnation ribbons, and a little enameled jewel on his
gold chain, representing a goose of these three colours. His mother
turned him all round, smoothed his hair, fresh buckled his plume, and
admonished him with earnest entreaties to do himself credit.

'I will, Madame,' he said. 'I will do my very utmost to be worthy of
my badge.'

'Now, Charles, if you play the fool and lose her, I will never
forgive you.'

I understood it soon. The Queen was bent on winning for her son the
hand of Mademoiselle, a granddaughter of France, and the greatest
heiress there. If all were indeed lost in England, he would thus be
far from a landless Prince, and her wealth might become a great
assistance to the royal cause in England. But Mademoiselle was
several years older than the Prince, and was besides stiff, haughty,
conceited, and not much to his taste, so he answered rather sullenly
that he could not speak French.

'So much the better,' said his mother; 'you would only be uttering
follies. When I am not there, Rupert must speak for you.'

'Rupert is too High-Dutch to be much of a courtier,' said the Prince.

'Rupert is old enough to know what is for your good, and not
sacrifice all to a jest,' returned his mother.

By this time the carriage had reached the Palais Royal. We were told
that Mademoiselle was still at her toilette, and up we all went,
through ranks of Swiss and lackeys, to her apartments, to a splendid
dressing-room, where the Princess sat in a carnation dress, richly
ornamented with black and white, all complete except the fastening
the feather in her hair. The friseur was engaged in this critical
operation, and whole ranks of ladies stood round, one of them reading
aloud one of Plutarch's Lives. The Queen came forward, with the most
perfect grace, crying: 'Oh, it is ravishing! What a coincidence!' and
pointing to her son, as if the similarity in colours had been a mere
chance instead of a contrivance of hers.

Then, with the most gracious deference in the world, so as not to
hurt the hairdresser's feelings, she showed my head, and begged
permission to touch up her niece's, kissing her as she did so. Then
she signed to the Prince to hold her little hand-mirror, and he
obeyed, kneeling on one knee before Mademoiselle; while the Queen,
with hands that really were more dexterous than those of any one I
ever saw, excepting my mother, dealt with her niece's hair, paying
compliments in her son's name all the time, and keeping him in check
with her eye. She contrived to work in some of her own jewels,
rubies and diamonds, to match the scarlet, black and white. I have
since found the scene mentioned in Mademoiselle's own memoirs, but
she did not see a quarter of the humour of it. She was serene in the
certainty that her aunt was paying court to her, and the assurance
that her cousin was doing the same, though she explains that, having
hopes of the Emperor, and thinking the Prince a mere landless exile,
she only pitied him. Little did she guess how he laughed at her, his
mother, and himself, most of all at her airs, while his mother,
scolding him all the time, joined in the laugh, though she always
maintained that Mademoiselle, in spite of her overweening conceit and
vanity, would become an excellent and faithful wife, and make her
husband's interests her own.

'Rather too much so,' said the Prince, shrugging his shoulders; 'we
know what the Margaret of Anjou style of wife can do for a King of
England.'

However, as he always did what any one teased him about, if it were
not too unpleasant, and as he was passionately fond of his mother,
and as amused by playing on the vanity of la grande Mademoiselle, he
acted his part capitally. It was all in dumb show, for he really
could not speak French at that time, though he could understand what
was said to him. He, like a good many other Englishmen, held that
the less they assimilated themselves to their French hosts, the more
they showed their hopes of returning home, and it was not till after
his expedition to Scotland that he set himself to learn the language.

Queen Henrietta's skill in the toilette was noted. She laughingly
said that if everything else failed her she should go into business
as a hairdresser, and she had hardly completed her work, before a
message was brought from Queen Anne to desire to see Mademoiselle in
her full dress.

I do not know what would have become of me, if my good-natured royal
godmother, who never forgot anybody, had not packed me into a
carriage with some of the ladies who were accompanying Mademoiselle.
That lady had a suit of her own, and went about quite independently
of her father and her stepmother, who, though a Princess of Lorraine,
was greatly contemned and slighted by the proud heiress.

I was put au courant with all this by the chatter of the ladies in
the coach. I did no know them, and in the dark they hardly knew who
was there. Men with flambeaux ran by the side of the carriage, and
now and then the glare fell across a smiling face, glanced on a satin
dress, or gleamed back from some jewels; and then we had a long halt
in the court of the Tuileries, while Mademoiselle went to the Queen-
Regent to be inspected. We waited a long time, and I heard a great
deal of gossip before we were again set in motion, and when once off
we soon found ourselves in the court of the Hotel de Choisy, where we
mounted the stairs in the rear of Mademoiselle, pausing on the way
through the anteroom, in order to give a final adjustment to her
head-dress before a large mirror, the Prince of Wales standing
obediently beside her, waiting to hand her into the room, so that the
two black, white, and carnation figures were reflected side by side,
which was, I verily believe, the true reason of her stopping there,
for Queen Henrietta's handiwork was too skilful to require
retouching. Prince Rupert was close by, to act as interpreter, his
tall, powerful figure towering above them both, and his dark eyes
looking as if his thoughts were far off, yet keeping in control the
young Prince's great inclination to grimace and otherwise make game
of Mademoiselle's magnificent affectations and condescensions.

I was rather at a loss, for the grand salon was one sea of feathers,
bright satins and velvets, and curled heads, and though I tried to
come in with Mademoiselle's suite I did not properly belong to it,
and my own party were entirely lost to me. I knew hardly any one,
and was quite unaccustomed to the great world, so that, though the
Prince's dame de compagnie was very kind, I seemed to belong to no
one in that great room, where the ladies were sitting in long rows,
and the gentlemen parading before them, paying their court to one
after another, while the space in the middle was left free for some
distinguished pair to dance the menuet de la cour.

The first person I saw, whom I knew, was the Duchess of Longueville,
more beautiful than when I had met her before as Mademoiselle de
Bourbon, perfectly dazzling, indeed, with her majestic bearing and
exquisite complexion, but the face had entirely lost that innocent,
wistful expression that had so much enchanted me before. Half a
dozen gentlemen were buzzing round her, and though I once caught her
eye she did not know me, and no wonder, for I was much more changed
than she was. However, there I stood forlorn, in an access of
English shyness, not daring to take a chair near any of the
strangers, and looking in vain for my mother or one of my brothers.

'Will not Madame take a seat beside me?' said a kind voice. 'I think
I have had the honour of making her acquaintance,' she added, as our
eyes met; 'it is the Gildippe of happier times.'

Then I knew her for Mademoiselle d'Argennes, now duchess of
Montausieur, the same who had been so kind to me at the Hotel de
Rambouillet on my first arrival at Paris. Most gladly did I take my
seat by her as an old friend, and I learned from her that her mother
was not present, and she engaged me to go and see her at the Hotel de
Rambouillet the next morning, telling me that M. de Solivet had
spoken of me, and that Madame de Rambouillet much wished to see me.
Then she kindly told me the names of many of the persons present,
among whom were more gens de la robe than it was usual for us of the
old nobility to meet. They were indeed ennobled, and thus had no
imposts to pay, but that did not put them on a level with the
children of crusaders. So said my mother and her friends, but I
could not but be struck with the fine countenance and grave collected
air of the President Matthieu de Mole, who was making his how to the
hostess.

Presently, in the violet robes of a Bishop, for which he looked much
too young, there strolled up a keen-faced man with satirical eyes,
whom Madame de Montausieur presented as 'Monseigneur le Coadjuteur.'
This was the Archbishop of Corinth, Paul de Gondi, Coadjutor to his
uncle, the Archbishop of Paris. I think he was the most amusing
talker I ever heard, only there was a great spice of malice in all
that he said--or did not say; and Madame de Montausier kept him in
check, as she well knew how to do.

At last, to my great joy, I saw my brother walking with a young man
in the black dress of an advocate. He came up to me and the Duchess
bade me present him, declaring herself delighted to make the
acquaintance of a brave English cavalier, and at the same time
greeting his companion as Monsieur Darpent. Eustace presently said
that my mother had sent him in quest of me, and he conducted me
through the salon to another apartment, where the ladies, as before,
sat with their backs to the wall, excepting those who were at card-
tables, a party having been made up for Monsieur. On my way I was
struck both with the good mien and good sense of the young lawyer,
who still stood conversing with my brother after I had been restored
to my mother. The cloud cleared up from Annora's face as she
listened, making her look as lovely and as animated as when she was
in English company. The conversation was not by any means equally
pleasing to my mother, who, on the first opportunity, broke in with
'My son,' and sent my brother off in search of some distinguished
person to whom she wished to speak, and she most expressingly frowned
off his former companion, who would have continued the conversation
with my sister and me, where upon Nan's face, which was always far
too like a window, became once more gloomy.

When we went home, it appeared that my mother was will satisfied that
I should be invited to the Hotel de Rambouillet. It was a
distinguished thing to have the entree there, though for her part she
thought it very wearisome to have to listen to declamations about she
knew not what; and there was no proper distinction of ranks kept up,
any more than at the Hotel de Choisy, where one expected it. And,
after all, neither Monsieur nor Madame de Rambouillet were of the old
noblesse. The Argennes, like the Rambouillets, only dated from the
time of the League, when they had in private confirmed the sentence
of death on the Duke of Guise, which had been carried out by his
assassination. Strange to look at the beautiful and gentle Julie,
and know her to be sprung from such a stem!

Then my mother censured Eustace for bad taste in talking over his
case with his lawyer in public. He laughed, and assured her that he
had never even thought of his suit, but had been discussing one of
the pictures on the walls, a fine Veronese--appealing to me if it
were not so; but she was not satisfied; she said he should not have
encouraged the presumption of that little advocate by presenting him
to his sisters.

Eustace never attempted argument with her, but went his own way; and
when Annora broke out with something about Mr. Hyde and other
lawyers, such as Harry Merrycourt, being company for any one in
London, she was instantly silenced or presuming to argue with her
elders.

I had a happy morning with Mesdames de Rambouillet and De Montausier,
who showed the perfect union of mother and daughter.

In the little cabinet where Madame de Rambouillet read and studied so
much in order to be able to fill her eminent position, she drew out
from me all my story and all my perplexities, giving me advice as a
wise woman of my own church alone could do, and showing me how much I
might still do in my life at Paris. She advised me, as I had been
put under Father Vincent's guidance, to seek him at the Church of St.
Sulpice, where, on certain days of the week, he was accessible to
ladies wishing to undertake pious works. For the rest, she said that
a little resolution on my part would enable me to reserve the early
part of the day for study and the education of my son; and she fully
approved of my giving the evenings to society, and gave me at once
the entree to her circle. She insisted that I should remain on that
day and dine with her, and Madame de Montausier indited two charming
billets, which were sent to invite our family to join us there in the
evening.

'It will not be a full circle,' she said; 'but I think your brother
treats as a friend a young man who is there to make his first essai.'

'M. Darpent?' I asked; and I was told that I was right, and that the
young advocate had been writing a discourse upon Cicero which he was
to read aloud to the fair critics and their friends. Madame de
Montausier added that his father was a counselor in the Parliament,
who had originally been a Huguenot, but had converted himself with
all his family, and had since held several good appointments. She
thought the young man, Clement Darpent, likely to become a man of
mark, and she did not like him the less for having retained something
of the Huguenot gravity.

The dinner was extremely pleasant; we followed it up by a walk in the
beautifully laid out gardens; and after we had rested, the reception
began, but only in the little green cabinet, as it was merely a
select few who were to be admitted to hear the young aspirant. I
watched anxiously for the appearance of my family, and presently in
came Eustace and Annora. My mother had the migraine, and my brother
had taken upon him, without asking leave, to carry off my sister!

I had never seen her look so well as she did, with that little spirit
of mischief upon her, lighting her beautiful eyes and colouring her
cheeks. Madame de Rambouillet whispered to me that she was a perfect
nymph, with her look of health and freshness. Then M. Darpent came
in, and his grave face blushed with satisfaction as he saw his
friend, my Lord Walwyn, present.

His was a fine face, though too serious for so young a man. It was a
complete oval, the hair growing back on the forehead, and the beard
being dark and pointed, the complexion a clear pale brown, the eyes
with something of Italian softness in them, rather than of French
vivacity, the brows almost as if drawn with a pencil, the mouth very
grave and thoughtful except when lighted by a smile of unusual
sweetness. As a lawyer, his dress was of plain black with a little
white collar fastened by two silken tassels (such as I remember my
Lord Falkland used to wear). It became him better than the gay coats
of some of our nobles.

The circle being complete by this time, the young orator was placed
in the midst, and began to read aloud his manuscript, or rather to
recite it, for after the fire of his subject began to animate him, he
seldom looked at the paper.

It was altogether grand and eloquent discourse upon the loyalty and
nobility of holding with unswerving faith to the old laws and
constitutions of one's country against all fraud, oppression, and
wrong, tracing how Cicero's weak and vain character grew stronger at
the call of patriotism, and how eagerly and bravely the once timid
man finally held out his throat for the knife. It might be taken as
the very highest witness to the manner in which he had used his
divine gift of rhetoric, that Fulvia's first thought was to show her
bitter hatred by piercing his eloquent tongue! 'Yes, my friends,' he
concluded, with his eyes glancing round, 'that insult to the dead was
the tribute of tyranny to virtue!'

Annora's hands were clasped, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes
glanced with the dew of admiration, and there were others who were
carried along by the charm of the young orator's voice and
enthusiasm; but there were also anxious glances passing, especially
between the divine Arthenice and her son-in-law, M. de Montausier,
and when there had been time for the compliments the discourse
merited to be freely given, Madame de Rambouillet said: 'My dear
friend, the tribute may be indeed the highest, but it can scarcely be
the most appreciable either by the fortunate individual or his
friends. I therefore entreat that the most eloquent discourse of our
youthful Cicero of admires who have listened to it.'

Everybody bowed assent, but the young man himself began, with some
impetuosity: 'Madame will believe me that I had not the slightest
political intention. I spoke simply as a matter of history.'

'I am perfectly aware of it, Monsieur,' returned the Marquise; 'but
all the world does not understand as well as I do how one may be
carried away by the fervour of imagination to identify oneself and
one's surroundings with those of which one speaks.'

'Madame is very severe on the absent,' said M. Darpent.

'Monsieur thinks I have inferred more treason than he has spoken,'
said Madame de Rambouillet gaily. 'Well, be it so; I am an old
woman, and you, my friend, have your career yet to come, and I would
have you remember that though the great Cesar be dead, yet the bodkin
was not in his time.'

'I understand, Madame, after the lion comes the fox. I thank you for
your warning until the time---'

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