Stray Pearls: Memoirs of Margaret De Ribaumont, Viscountess of Bellaise, Yonge [love books to read txt] 📗

for which the excuse was my interview with Clement. It made me hot and indignant enough, but there was yet a further purpose in it.

The next thing was to send for a certain Frere Allonville, a man who had been a doctor before he was converted and became a Dominican friar, and who still practiced, and was aid to do cures by miracle. I know this, that it would have been a miracle if his treatment had cured my brother, for the first thing he did was to bleed him, the very thing that Dr. Dirkius had always told us was the sure way to kill him, when he was losing so much blood already. Then the friar turned out Tryphena, on the plea that he must have a nurse who understood his language. As if poor Tryphena, after living thirteen years in France, could not understand the tongue quite enough for any purpose, and as if she did not know better how to take care of Eustace than any one else! But of course the language was not the real reason that she was shut out, and kept under guard, as it were, just as much as I was, while a Sister of Charity was brought in to act as my brother’s nurse, under my mother, who, look you, never had been nurse at all, and always fainted at any critical moment.

Assuredly I knew why they were thus isolating my brother from all of us. I heard steps go upstairs, not only of the Dominican quack doctor, but of the Abbe Montagu, who had been previously sent to convert us. The good old Bonchamp, who had a conscience, was away at St. Germain with Gaspard de Nidemerle, and I—I had no one to appeal to when I knew they were harassing the very life out of my dearest, dearest brother, by trying to make him false to the Church and the faith he had fought for. I could do nothing—I was a prisoner; all by my own fault too; for they would have had no such opportunity had I not been so unguarded towards my brother. When I did meet my mother it chafed me beyond all bearing to see her devout air of resignation and piety. Her dear son was, alas! in the utmost danger, but his dispositions were good, and she trusted to see him in the bosom of the true Church, and that would be a consolation, even if he were not raised up by a miracle, which would convince even me. Poor woman, I believe she really did expect that his conversion would be followed by a miraculous recovery. I told her she was killing him—and well! I don’t know what I said, but I think I frightened her, for she sent Mr. Walter Montague to see what he could do with me.

I told him I wondered he was not ashamed of such a conversion, supposing he made it, which I was sure he would not, as long as my brother retained his senses.

To which he answered that Heaven was merciful, and that so long as one was in communion with the true Church there was power to be redeemed in the next world, if not in this.

‘A sorry way of squeezing into Heaven,’ I said; and then he began arguing, as he had done a hundred times before, on the blessing and rest he had found in the Church, after renouncing his errors. And no wonder, for it is well known that my Lord Mandeville brought up his family to be mere Puritans. However, I said: ‘Look you here, Mr. Montagu; if my brother, Lord Walwyn, gave himself to you of deliberate mind, with full health and faculties, you might think him a gain indeed. Or if you like it better, he would have a claim to the promises of your Church; but if you merely take advantage of the weakness of a man at the point of death to make him seem a traitor to his whole life, why, then, I should say you trusted, more than I do, to what you call Divine promises.’

He told me—as they always do—that I knew nothing about it, and that he should pray for me. But I had some trust that his English blood would be guilty of no foul play. I was much more afraid of the Dominican; only one good thing was that the man was not a priest. So went by Good Friday and Easter Eve. They would not let me go to church for fear I should speak to any one. Madame Croquelebois and my mother’s old smirking tire-woman, Bellote, took turns to mount guard over me. I heard worse and worse accounts of my dear brother’s bodily state, but I had one comfort. One of the servants secretly handed Tryphena this little note addressed to me, in feeble straggling characters:—

‘Do what they may to me my will does not consent. Pray for me. If word were taken to the K. E. W. and R.’

It was some comfort that I should have that to prove what my brother was to the last. I made me able to weep and pray—pray as I had never prayed before—all that night and that strange sad Easter morning, when all the bells were ringing, and the people flocking to the churches, and I sat cut off from them all in my chamber, watching, watching in dread of sounds that might tell me that my dearest and only brother, my one hope, was taken from me, body and soul, and by my fault, in great part.

Oh! what a day it was, as time went on. Madame Croquelebois went to high mass, and Bellote remained in charge. I was, you understand, a prisoner at large. Provided some one was attending me, I went into any room in the house save the only one where I cared to be. And I was sitting in the salon, with my Bible and Prayer-book before me—not reading, I fear me, but at any rate attesting my religion, when there came up a message that Son Altesse Royale, the Duke of Gloucester, requested to be admitted to see Mademoiselle de Ribaumont.

Nobody made any question about admitting a Royal Highness, so up he came, the dear boy, with his bright hazel eyes like his father’s, and his dark shining curls on his neck. He had missed me at the ambassador’s chapel, and being sure, from my absence, that my brother must be very ill indeed, he had come himself to inquire. He could as yet speak little French, and not understanding what they told him at the door, he had begged to see me.

It did not take long to tell him all, for Bellote did not understand English; I showed him the note, and he stood considering. He was not like his brothers, he had not lived in vain all those years with his sister Elisabeth in captivity, for there was a grave manliness about him though he was only thirteen. He said: ‘do you think Lord Walwyn would see me? I am used to be with a sick person.’

Eagerly I sent up word. I knew my mother would never refuse entrance to royal blood; nor did she. She sent word that the Duke would do her son only too much honour by thus troubling himself. I did not miss the chance of marshalling him upstairs, and gaining one sight of my brother—oh! so sadly wasted in these few days, his cheeks flushed, his breath labouring, his eyes worn and sleepless, as he lay, raised high on his pillow. He looked up with pleasure into the Duke’s face. My mother was making speeches and ceremonies; but after bowing in reply, the Duke, holding Eustace’s hand, leant over him and said; ‘Can I do anything for you? Shall I send for a chaplain?’

Eustace’s eye brightened, and he answered in a voice so faint that the Prince only heard by bending over him:

‘An order from the King for some one to remain—Then I need not be