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

the angle between the bridge and rampart, when he perceived that neither humanity nor superstition were protecting the poor child; for, as she turned down the remnant of one of the treacherous little paths, a man in bright steel and deep black had spurred his horse to the river’s brink, and was deliberately taking aim at her. Furious at such brutality, Berenger fired the pistol he held in his hand, and the wretch dropped from his horse; but at the same moment his pistol exploded, and the child rolled down the bank, whence a piteous wail came up, impelling Berenger to leap down to her assistance, in the full face of the enemy. Perhaps he was protected for the moment by the confusion ensuing on the fall of the officer; and when he reached the bottom of the bank, he saw the little creature on her feet, her round cap and gray woolen dress stripped half off in the fall, and her flaxen hair falling round her plump, white, exposed shoulder, but evidently unhurt, and gathering yellow marigolds as composedly as though she had been making May garlands. He snatched her up, and she said, with the same infantine dignity, ‘Yes, take me up; the naughty people spoilt the path. But I must take my beads first.’ And she tried to struggle out of his arms, pointing therewith to a broken string among the marshy herb-age on which gleamed—the pearls of Ribaumont!

In the few seconds in which he grasped them, and then bore the child up the embankment in desperate bounds, a hail of bullets poured round him, ringing on his breastplate, shearing the plume from his hat, but scarcely even heard; and in another moment he had sprung down, on the inner side, grasping the child with all his might, but not daring even to look at her, in the wondrous flash of that first conviction. She spoke first. ‘Put me down, and let me have my beads,’ she said in a grave, clear tone; and then first he beheld a pair of dark blue eyes, a sweet wild-rose face—Dolly’s all over. He pressed her so fast and so close, in so speechless and over powering an ecstasy, that again she repeated, and in alarm, ‘Put me down, I want my mother!’

‘Yes, yes! your mother! your mother! your mother!’ he cried, unable to let her out of his embrace; and then restraining himself as he saw her frightened eyes, in absolute fear of her spurning him, or struggling from him, ‘My sweet! my child! Ah! do you not know me?’ Then, remembering how wild this was, he struggled to speak calmly: ‘What are you called, my treasure?’

‘I am la petite Rayonette,’ she said, with puzzled dignity and gravity; ‘and my mother says I have a beautiful long name of my own besides.’

‘Berangere—my Berangere—-’

‘That is what she says over me, as I go to sleep in her bosom at night,’ said the child, in a wondering voice, soon exchanged for entreaty, ‘Oh, hug me not so hard! Oh, let me go—let me go to her! Mother! mother!’

‘My child, mine own, I am take thee!—Oh, do not struggle with me!’ he cried, himself imploring now. ‘Child, one kiss for thy father;’ and meantime, putting absolute force on his vehement affection, he was hurrying to the chancel.

There Philip hailed them with a shout as of desperate anxiety relieved; but before a word could be uttered, down the stairs flew the Lady of Hope, crying wildly, ‘Not there—she is not—’ but perceiving the little one in the stranger’s arms, she held out her own, crying, ‘Ah! is she hurt, my angel?’

‘Unhurt, Eustacie! Our child is unhurt!’ Berenger said, with an agonized endeavour to be calm; but for the moment her instinct was so entirely absorbed in examining into the soundness of her child’s limbs, that she neither saw nor hear anything else.

‘Eustacie,’ he said, laying his hand on her arm, she started back, with bewildered eyes. ‘Eustacie—wife? do you not know me? Ah! I forgot that I am changed.’

‘You—you—’ she gasped, utterly confounded, and gazing as if turned to stone, and though at that moment the vibration of a mighty discharge of cannon rocked the walls, and strewed Philip’s bed with the crimson shivers of St. John’s robe, yet neither of them would have been sensible of it had not Humfrey rushed in at the same moment, crying, ‘They are coming on like friends, sir!’

Berenger passed his hand over his face. ‘You will know me WHEN—IF I return, my dearest,’ he said. ‘If not, then still, thank God! Philip, to you I trust them!’

And with one kiss on that still, cold, almost petrified brow, he had dashed away. There was a space of absolutely motionless silence, save that Eustacie let herself drop on the chancel step, and the child, presently breaking the spell, pulled her to attract her notice to the flowers. ‘Mother, here are the soucis for the poor gentleman’s broth. See, the naughty people had spoilt all the paths, and I rolled down and tore my frock, and down fell the beads, but be not angry, mother dear, for the good gentleman picked them up, and carried me up the bank.’

‘The bank!’ cried Eustacie, with a scream, as the sense of the words reached her ears. ‘Ah! no wonder! Well might thy danger bring thy father’s spirit;’ and she grasped the little one fervently in her arms, murmuring, ‘Thank, thank God, indeed! Oh! my precious one; and did He send that blessed spirit to rescue thee?’

‘And will you tie up my frock? and may I put the flowers into the broth?’ chattered Rayonette. ‘And why did he kiss me and hug me so tight? and how did he know what you say over me as we fall asleep?’

Eustacie clasped her tighter, with a convulsive, shudder of thankfulness; and Philip, but half hearing, and barely gathering the meaning of her mood, ventured to speak, ‘Madame—-’

As if touched by an electric shock, Eustacie started up, as recalled to instant needs, and coming towards him said, ‘Do you want anything, sir? Pardon one who has but newly seen a spirit from the other world—brought by his child’s danger.’ And the dazed, trance-like look was returning.

‘Spirit!’ cried Philip. ‘Nay, Madame, it was himself. Ah! and you are she whom we have sought so long; and this dear child—no wonder she has Dolly’s face.’

‘Who—what?’ said Eustacie, pressing her temples with her hands, as if to retain her senses. ‘Speak; was yonder a living or dead man—and who?’

‘Living, thank God! and your own husband; that is, if you are really Eustacie. Are you indeed?’ he added, becoming doubtful.

‘Eustacie, that am I,’ she murmured. ‘But he is dead—they killed him; I swathe blood where he had waited for me. His child’s danger brought him from the grave.’

‘No, no. Look at me, sister Eustacie. Listen to me. Osbert brought him home more dead than alive—but alive still.’

‘No!’ she cried, half passionately. ‘Never could he have lived and left me to mourn him so bitterly.’

‘If you knew—’ cried Philip, growing indignant. ‘For weeks he lay in deadly lethargy, and when, with his left hand, he wrote and sent Osbert to you, your kinsfolk threw the poor fellow into a dungeon, and put us off with lies that you were married to your