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

which seems so much an English birthright, that the only trace of his French origin was, that he betrayed no unbecoming awkwardness in the somewhat embarrassing position in which he was placed, literally standing, according to the respectful discipline of the time, as the subject of discussion, before the circle of his elders. His colour was indeed, deepened, but his attitude was easy and graceful, and he used no stiff rigidity nor restless movements to mask his anxiety. At Sir Marmaduke’s desire, he could not but redden a good deal more, but with a clear, unhesitating voice, he translated, the letter that he had received from the Chevalier de Ribaumont, who, by the Count’s death, had become Eustacie’s guardian. It was a request in the name of Eustacie and her deceased father, that Monsieur le Baron de Ribaumont—who, it was understood, had embraced the English heresy—would concur with his spouse in demanding from his Holiness the Pope a decree annulling the childish marriage, which could easily be declared void, both on account of the consanguinity of the parties and the discrepancy of their faith; and which would leave each of them free to marry again.

‘Nothing can be better,’ exclaimed his mother. ‘How I have longed to free him from that little shrew, whose tricks were the plague of my life! Now there is nothing between him and a worthy match!’

‘We can make an Englishman of him now to the backbone,’ added Sir Marmaduke, ‘and it is well that it should be the lady herself who wants first to be off with it, so that none can say he has played her a scurvy trick.’

‘What say you, Berenger?’ said Lord Walwyn. ‘Listen to me, fair nephew. You know that all my remnant of hope is fixed upon you, and that I have looked to setting you in the room of the son of my own; and I think that under our good Queen you will find it easier to lead a quiet God-fearing life than in your father’s vexed country, where the Reformed religion lies under persecution. Natheless, being a born liegeman of the King of France, and heir to estates in his kingdom, meseemeth that before you are come to years of discretion it were well that you should visit them, and become better able to judge for yourself how to deal in this matter when you shall have attained full age, and may be able to dispose of them by sale, thus freeing yourself from allegiance to a foreign prince. And at the same time you can take measures, in concert with this young lady, for loosing the wedlock so unhappily contracted.’

‘O sir, sir!’ cried Lady Thistlewood, ‘send him not to France to be burnt by the Papists!’

‘Peace, daughter,’ returned her mother. ‘Know you not that there is friendship between the court party and the Huguenots, and that the peace is to be sealed by the marriage of the King’s sister with the King of Navarre? This is the most suitable time at which he could go.’

‘Then, madam,’ proceeded the lady, ‘he will be running about to all the preachings on every bleak moor and wet morass he can find, catching his death with rheums, like his poor father.’

There was a general smile, and Sir Marmaduke laughed outright.

‘Nay, dame,’ he said, ‘have you marked such a greed of sermons in our Berry that you should fear his so untowardly running after them?’

‘Tilly-vally, Sir Duke,’ quoth Dame Annora, with a flirt of her fan, learnt at the French court. ‘Men will run after a preacher in a marshy bog out of pure forwardness, when they will nod at a godly homily on a well-stuffed bench between four walls.’

‘I shall commit that matter to Mr. Adderley, who is good enough to accompany him,’ said Lord Walwyn, ‘and by whose counsel I trust that he will steer the middle course between the pope and Calvin.’

Mr. Adderley bowed in answer, saying he hoped that he should be enable to keep his pupil’s mind clear between the allurements of Popery and the errors of the Reformed; but meanwhile Lady Thistlewood’s mind had taken a leap, and she exclaimed,—

‘And, son, whatever you do, bring home the chaplet of pearls! I know they have set their minds upon it. They wanted me to deck Eustacie with it on that unlucky bridal-day, but I would not hear of trusting her with it, and now will it rarely become our Lucy on your real wedding-day.’

‘You travel swiftly, daughter,’ said Lord Walwyn. ‘Nor have we yet heard the thoughts of one who ever thinks wisely. Sister,’ he added, turning to Cecily St. John, ‘hold not you with us in this matter?’

‘I scarce comprehend it, my Lord,’ was the gentle reply. ‘I knew not that it was possible to dissolve the tie of wedlock.’

‘The Pope’s decree will suffice,’ said Lord Walwyn.

‘Yet, sir,’ still said the ex-nun, ‘methought you had shown me that the Holly Father exceeded his power in the annulling of vows.’

‘Using mine own lessons against me, sweet sister?’ said Lord Walwyn, smiling; ‘yet, remember, the contract was rashly made between two ignorant babes; and, bred up as they have severally been, it were surely best for them to be set free from vows made without their true will or knowledge.’

‘And yet,’ said Cecily, perplexed, ‘when I saw my niece here wedded to Sir Marmaduke, was it not with the words, ‘What God hath joined let no man put asunder’?’

‘Good lack! aunt,’ cried Lady Thistlewood, ‘you would not have that poor lad wedded to a pert, saucy, ill-tempered little moppet, bred up that den of iniquity, Queen Catherine’s court, where my poor Baron never trusted me after he fell in with the religion, and had heard of King Antony’s calling me the Swan of England.’

At that moment there was a loud shriek, half-laugh, half-fright, coming through the window, and Lady Thistlewood, starting up, exclaimed, ‘The child will be drowned! Box their ears, Berenger, and bring them in directly.’

Berenger, at her bidding, hurried out of the room into the hall, and thence down a flight of steps leading into a square walled garden, with a couple of stone male and female marine divinities accommodating their fishy extremities as best they might on the corners of the wall. The square contained a bowling-green of exquisitely-kept turf, that looked as if cut out of green velvet, and was edged on its four sides by a raised broad-paved walk, with a trimming of flower-beds, where the earliest blossoms were showing themselves. In the centre of each side another paved path intersected the green lawn, and the meeting of these two diameters was at a circular stone basin, presided over by another merman, blowing a conch on the top of a pile of rocks. On the gravelled margin stood two distressed little damsels of seven and six years old, remonstrating with all their might against the proceedings of a roguish-looking boy of fourteen of fifteen, who had perched their junior—a fat, fair, kitten-like element of mischief, aged about five—en croupe on the merman, and was about, according to her delighted request, to make her a bower of water, by extracting the plug and setting the fountain to play; but as the fountain had been still all the winter, the plug was hard of extraction, especially to a young gentleman who stood insecurely, with his feet wide apart upon pointed and slippery point of rock-work; and Berenger had time to hurry up, exclaiming, ‘Giddy pate!