The Chaplet of Pearls, Charlotte M. Yonge [superbooks4u .TXT] 📗

‘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;