The Chaplet of Pearls, Charlotte M. Yonge [good beach reads TXT] 📗

found. Yes'--as the boy put his hand to his neck--'he bears a pearl, parted from its sister pearls. Where they are, there is hope. Who can miss Hope, who has sought it at a royal death-bed?'

'Ah, where is it?' Berenger could not help exclaiming.

'Sir,' said the pedlar, 'as I told Messieurs and Mesdames before, the spirits that cast the lights of the future on the dark pool need invocation. Ere he can answer M. le Baron's demands, he and I must have time and seclusion. If Monsieur le Chevalier will grant us an empty room, there will we answer all queries on which the spirits will throw light.'

'And how am I to know that you will not bring the devil to shatter the castle, my friend?' demanded the Chevalier. 'Or more likely still, that you are not laughing all the time at these credulous boys and ladies?'

'Of that, sir, you may here convince yourself,' said the mountebank, putting into his hand a sort of credential in Italian, signed by Renato di Milano, the Queen's perfumer, testifying to the skill of his compatriot Ercole Stizzito both in perfumery, cosmetics, and in the secrets of occult sciences.

The Chevalier was no Italian scholar, and his daughter interpreted the scroll to him, in a rapid low voice, adding, 'I have had many dealings with Rene of Milan, father. I know he speaks sooth. There can be no harm in letting the poor man play out his play--all the castle servants will be frantic to have their fortunes told.'

'I must speak with the fellow first, daughter,' said the Chevalier. 'He must satisfy me that he has no unlawful dealings that could bring the Church down on us.' And he looked meaningly at the mountebank, who replied by a whole muster-roll of ecclesiastics, male and female, who had heard and approved his predictions.

'A few more words with thee, fellow,' said the Chevalier, pointing the way to one of the rooms opening out of the hall. 'As master of the house I must be convinced of his honesty,' he added. 'If I am satisfied, then who will may seek to hear their fortune.'

Chevalier, man and boy disappeared, and Philip was the first to exclaim, 'A strange fellow! What will he tell us? Madame, shall you hear him?'

'That depends on my father's report,' she said. 'And yet,' sadly and pensively, 'my future is dark and void enough. Why should I vex myself with hearing it?'

'Nay, it may brighten,' said Philip.

'Scarcely, while hearts are hard,' she murmured with a slight shake of the head, that Philip thought indescribably touching; but Berenger was gathering his purchases together, and did not see. 'And you, brother,' said Philip, 'you mean to prove him?'

'No,' said Berenger. 'Have you forgotten, Phil, the anger we met with, when we dealt with the gipsy at Hurst Fair?'

'Pshaw, Berry, we are past flogging now.'

'Out of reach, Phil, of the rod, but scarce of the teaching it struck into us.'

'What?' said Philip, sulkily.

'That divining is either cozening manor forsaking God, Phil. Either it is falsehood, or it is a lying wonder of the devil.'

'But, Berry, this man is not cheat.'

'Then he is worse.'

'Only, turn not away, brother. How should he have known things that even I know not?--the heather.'

'No marvel in that,' said Berenger. 'This is the very man I bought Annora's fan from; he was prowling round Montpipeau, and my heather was given to Veronique with little secrecy. And as to the royal deathbed, it was Rene, his master, who met me there.'

'Then you think it mere cozeing? If so, we should find it out.'

'I don't reckon myself keener than an accomplished Italian mountebank,' said Berenger, dryly.

Further conference was cut short by the return of the Chevalier, saying, in his paternal genial way, 'Well, children, I have examined the fellow and his credentials, and for those who have enough youth and hope to care to have the future made known to them, bah! it is well.'

'Is it sorcery, sir?' asked Philip, anxiously.

The Chevalier shrugged his shoulders. 'What know I?' he said. 'For those who have a fine nose for brimstone there may be, but he assures me it is but the white magic practiced in Egypt, and the boy is Christian!'

'Did you try this secret, father?' inquired Madame de Selinville.

'I, my daughter? An old man's fortune is in his children. What have I to ask?'

'I--I scarcely like to be the first!' said the lady, eager but hesitating. 'Veronique, you would have your fortune told?'

'I will be the first,' said Philip, stepping forward manfully. 'I will prove him for you, lady, and tell you whether he be a cozener or not, or if his magic be fit for you to deal with.'

And confident in the inherent intuition of a plain Englishman, as well as satisfied to exercise his resolution for once in opposition to Berenger's opinion, Master Thistlewood stepped towards the closet where the Italian awaited his clients, and Berenger knew that it would be worse than useless to endeavour to withhold him. He only chafed at the smile which passed between father and daughter at this doughty self-assertion.

There was a long silence. Berenger sat with his eyes fixed on the window where the twilight horizon was still soft and bright with the pearly gold of the late sunset, thinking with an intensity of yearning what it would be could he truly become certain of Eustacie's present doings; questioning whether he would try to satisfy that longing by the doubtful auguries of the diviner, and then recollecting how he had heard from wrecked sailors that to seek to delude their thirst with sea-water did but aggravate their misery. He knew that whatever he might hear would be unworthy of confidence. Either it merely framed to soothe and please him--or, were it a genuine oracle, he had no faith in the instinct that was to perceive it, but what he HAD faith in was the Divine protection over his lost ones. 'No,' he thought to himself, 'I will not by a presumptuous sin, in my own impatience, risk incurring woes on them that deal with familiar spirits and wizards that peep and mutter. If ever I am to hear of Eustacie again, it shall be by God's will, not the devil's.'

Diane de Selinville had been watching his face all the time, and now said, with that almost timid air of gaiety that she wore when addressing him: 'You too, cousin, are awaiting Monsieur Philippe's report to decide whether to look into the pool of mystery.'

'Not at all, Madame,' said Berenger, gravely. 'I do not understand white magic.'

'Our good cousin has been too well bred among the Reformers to condescend to our little wickednesses, daughter,' said the Chevalier; and the sneer-much like that which would await a person now who scrupled at joining in table-turning or any form of spiritualism--purpled Berenger's scar, now his only manner of blushing; but he instantly perceived that it was the Chevalier's desire that he should consult the conjurer, and therefore became the more resolved against running into a trap.

'I am sure,' said Madame de Selinville, earnestly, though with an affectation of lightness, 'a little wickedness is fair when there is a great deal at stake. For my part, I would not hesitate long, to find out how soon the King will relent towards my fair cousin here!'

'That, Madame,' said Berenger, with the same grave dryness, 'is likely to be better known to other persons than this wandering Greek boy.'

Here Philip's step was heard returning hastily. He was pale, and looked a good deal excited, so that Madame de Selinville uttered a little cry, and exclaimed, 'Ah! is it so dreadful then?'

'No, no, Madame,' said Philip, turning round, with a fervour and confidence he had never before shown. 'On my word, there is nothing formidable. You see nothing--nothing but the Italia and the boy. The boy gazes into a vessel of some black liquid, and sees--sees there all you would have revealed. Ah!'

'Then you believe?' asked Madame de Selinville.

'It cannot be false,' answered Philip; 'he told me everything. Things he could not have known. My very home, my father's house, passed in review before that strange little blackamoor's eyes; where I--though I would have given worlds to see it--beheld only the lamp mirrored in the dark pool.'

'How do you know it was your father's house?' said Berenger.

'I could not doubt. Just to test the fellow, I bade him ask for my native place. The little boy gazed, smiled, babbled his gibberish, pointed. The man said he spoke of a fair mansion among green fields and hills, "a grand _cavalier embonpoint_,"--those were his very words,--at the door, with a tankard in one hand. Ah! my dear father, why could not I see him too? But who could mistake him or the Manor?'

'And did he speak of future as well as past?' said Diane.

'Yes, yes, yes,' said Philip, with more agitation. 'Lady, that will you know for yourself.'

'It was not dreadful?' she said, rising.

'Oh no!' and Philip had become crimson, and hesitated; 'certes, not dreadful. But---I must not say more.'

'Save good night,' said Berenger, rising; 'See, our gendarmes are again looking as if we had long exceeded their patience. It is an hour later than we are wont to retire.'

'If it be your desire to consult this mysterious fellow now you have heard your brother's report, my dear Baron,' said the Chevalier, 'the gendarmes may devour their impatience a little longer.'

'Thanks, sir,' said Berenger; 'but I am not tempted,' and he gave the usual signal to the gendarmes, who, during meals, used to stand as sentries at the great door of the hall.

'It might settle your mind,' muttered Philip, hesitating. 'And yet--yet---'

But he used no persuasions, and permitted himself to be escorted with his brother along the passages to their own chamber, where he threw himself into a chair with a long sigh, and did not speak. Berenger meantime opened the Bible, glanced over the few verses he meant to read, found the place in the Prayer-book, and was going to the stairs to call Humfrey, when Philip broke forth: 'Wait, Berry; don't be in such haste.'

'What, you want time to lose the taste of your dealings with the devil?' said Berenger, smiling.

'Pshaw! No devil in the matter,' testily said Philip. 'No, I was only wishing you had not had a Puritan fit, and seen and heard for yourself. Then I should not have had to tell you,' and he sighed.

'I have no desire to be told,' said Berenger, who had become more fixed in the conviction that it was an imposture.

'No desire! Ah! I have none when I knew what it was. But you ought to know.'

'Well,' said Berenger, 'you will burst anon if I open not my ears.'

'Dear Berry, speak not thus. It will be the worse for you when you do hear. Alack, Berenger, all ours have been vain hopes. I asked for HER--and the boy fell well-nigh into convulsions of terror as he gazed; spoke of flames and falling houses. That was wherefore I pressed you not again--it would have wrung your heart too much. The boy fairly wept and writhed himself, crying out in his tongue for pity on the fair lady and the little babe in the burning house. Alack! brother,' said Philip, a little hurt that