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

he spoke English, and how he had borne himself at Paris, he quite forgave me, and only thought how he could serve Eustace, the man whom he had always loved beyond all others.

He was practicing law in London still, but he had had time to repent of having been on the wrong side when he saw what it had come to, and had the Protector at the head of affairs. He said, however, that negotiations for peace with France were like to begin, and that Mr. Secretary Milton was casting about for one learned in French law to assist in drawing the papers, so that he had little doubt that Mr. Darpent would be readily taken into one of the public officers in London.

Moreover, he said that the Walwyn property had been sequestered, but no one had yet purchased it, and he thought that for a fair sum, it might be redeemed for the family.

When Eustace and Millicent found that I would not hear of keeping the pearls, declaring that such things were not fit for a poor exiled lawyer’s wife, Millicent said they had always felt like hot lead on her neck. To compound the matter, Eustace persuaded her to have the chaplet valued by a Dutch jeweller, and to ask Margaret and Solivet, the guardians of the young Marquis de Nidemerle, to purchase them for him.

To Margaret was left whatever of the property M. Poligny would spare, and if Gaspard should have sons, one would bear the title of Ribaumont, though the name would be extinct. So it was fitting that the pearls should return to that family, and the fair value, as we hoped, sufficed, in Harry Merrycourt’s hands, to redeem, in my husband’s name, the inheritance my brother had always destined for me.

This was the last worldly care that occupied our believed brother. He said his work was done, and he was very peaceful and at rest. His strength failed very fast after Harry Merrycourt came. Indeed, I think he had for months lived almost more by force of strong will than anything else, and now he said he had come to his rest. He passed away one month after my wedding, on the 16th of October 1652, very peacefully, and the last look he gave any one here was for Millicent. There was a last eager, brighter look, but that was for nothing here.

The physicians said he died of the old wound in the lungs received at Naseby, so that he gave his life as much for the cause as my father and Berenger had done, though he had had far, far more to suffer in his nine years of banishment.

We left him in a green churchyard by the waterside, and Millicent saying through her tears that he had taught her to find comfort in her married life, and that he had calmed her and left her peace and blessing now in the work before her. And then we sailed with sore hearts for England, which was England still to me, though sadly changed from what I had once known it. We had come to think that there was no hope of the right cause ever prevailing, and that all that could be done was to save our own conscience, and do our best to serve God and man. ‘The foundations are cast down, and what hath the righteous done?’

We were met by Harry Merrycourt, who had obtained the employment for Clement that he had hoped for. It was well, for, when Walwyn was repurchased, all our money had been sunk in it, and enough borrowed to consume the rents for some years to come, and thus we had to live very frugally in a little house in Westminster; but as for that, I was far happier marketing in the morning with my basket on my arm, cooking my husband’s supper, making his shirts, and by and by nursing my babe, than ever I had been in all the stiff state and splendour of poor Margaret’s fine salons. Camlet suits me better than brocade, and a basket of fresh eggs better than a gold-enamelled snuff-box. While, though I did long to see the old home again, I knew it would be bare of those who had made it dear, and, besides, it would be as well that M. Darpent should rub off as much as might be of his French breeding before showing him among the Thistlewoods and Merrycourts, and all the rest of our country-folk. Moreover, after the stir of Paris he might have found himself dull, and he had the opportunity of studying English law; ay, and I saw him yearly winning more and more trust and confidence among those who had to do with him, and forming friendships with Mr. John Evelyn and other good men.

So, when better times came round, and we had our King and Court back, on the very day of my Harry’s birth, M. Darpent was recommended to my Lord Clarendon as too useful a secretary to be parted with, and therewith the great folk remembered that I came of an old Cavalier family. Indeed Queen Henrietta had promised my mother and sister to seek me out, though may be she would never have recollected it. After all it was the Duke of Gloucester who actually came and found me, riding up to our door with only one gentleman, and he no other than good old Sir Francis Ommaney.

Prince Henry was a fine youth, far handsomer and more like his blessed father than his brothers, and with as bright a wit and as winning and gracious as the King. He reproached me for not having come to see his mother, and asked merrily if I had turned Roundhead as well Frondeuse. I told him I had a good excuse, and showed him my three children, the youngest not yet a month old, and the other two staring open-mouthed to see a Prince so like other gentlemen.

Whereupon he asked if the little one was yet christened, and did him the honour to offer to be his godfather; and he noted that little Eustace promised to be like his uncle, and spake, with tears in his eyes, of the blessing my brother had been to him in his earlier stay at Paris, and how the remembrance of that example had helped him through the days when he had to undergo the same persuasions to forsake his father’s Church.

So whereas the two first christenings had been done privately, as among those under persecution, Master Harry was baptized in state and splendour in St. Margaret’s Church in full and open day, with all the neighbours gaping to see the Duke come forth, leading Mistress Darpent by the hand.

Thus I had to turn out my fine gowns (grown all too tight for me) and betake me to the Queen, who had become a little old woman, but was as gay and kind as ever, and told me much about my mother and sister. The King himself came and spoke to me, and said he supposed I wished to have the old title revived; but I told him, with all thanks, that I liked my husband better by his own name than by that which I had rather leave sacred to my brother; whereat he laughed, and said he must make a low bow to me, as being the first person he had met who had nothing to ask from him.

That was all I saw of the Court. Before many weeks had passed the cruel smallpox had carried off the young Duke of Gloucester in his twentieth year, taking him, mayhap, from the evil to come, in his bright youth and innocence, for had he lived, and kept himself unsoiled even to these days, he might have been sorely tempted to break that last promise made when he sat on his father’s knee.

Soon after Madame van Hunker came to England. There was Wardour property, which had descended to