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

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