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CERISE
[Illustration: “CARESSING HER HORSE WITH ONE HAND.”
(_Page 35._)]
CERISE
A Tale of the Last Century
by
G. J. WHYTE-MELVILLE
Author of “Market Harborough,” “Katerfelto,”
“Satanella,” etc., etc.
Illustrated by G. P. Jacomb-Hood
London
Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
New York and Melbourne.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. The Daisy-Chain 9
II. The Montmirails 17
III. Monsieur l’Abbé 25
IV. Tantara! 34
V. The Usher of the Black Rod 44
VI. A Jesuit’s Task 51
VII. St. Mark’s Balsam 59
VIII. The Grey Musketeers 68
IX. Eugène Beaudésir 76
X. The Boudoir of Madame 86
XI. What the Serpent Said 94
XII. Out-manœuvred 105
XIII. The Mother of Satan 113
XIV. The Débonnaire 122
XV. The Masked Ball 132
XVI. Raising the Devil 144
XVII. A Quiet Supper 151
XVIII. Baiting the Trap 160
XIX. Mater Pulchrâ, Filia Pulchrior 167
XX. A General Rendezvous 177
XXI. The Fox and Fiddle 185
XXII. Three Strands of a Yarn 193
XXIII. The Parlour-Lodger 202
XXIV. A Volunteer 210
XXV. Three Pressed Men 218
XXVI. “Yo-heave-yo!” 227
XXVII. ‘The Bashful Maid’ 235
XXVIII. Dirty Weather 244
XXIX. Port Welcome 250
XXX. Montmirail West 259
XXXI. Black, but Comely 272
XXXII. A Wise Child 277
XXXIII. Jack Aground 286
XXXIV. Jack Afloat 294
XXXV. Besieged 301
XXXVI. At Bay 309
XXXVII. Just in Time 317
XXXVIII. Mère avant tout 326
XXXIX. All Adrift 335
XL. Homeward Bound 341
XLI. Lady Hamilton 351
XLII. The Desire of the Moth 360
XLIII. For the Star 370
XLIV. “Box it About” 379
XLV. The Little Rift 389
XLVI. The Music Mute 399
XLVII. The “Hamilton Arms” 408
XLVIII. Pressure 419
XLIX. Poor Emerald 429
L. Captain Bold 441
LI. Sir Marmaduke 448
LII. The Bowl on the Bias 458
LIII. Fair Fighting 466
LIV. Friends in Need 475
LV. Forewarned 486
LVI. Forearmed 494
LVII. An Addled Egg 503
LVIII. Horns and Hoofs 511
LIX. A Substitute 518
LX. Solace 529
CERISE
_A TALE OF THE LAST CENTURY_
CHAPTER I
THE DAISY-CHAIN
In the gardens of Versailles, as everywhere else within the freezing
influence of the _Grand Monarque_, nature herself seemed to accept the
situation, and succumbed inevitably under the chain of order and courtly
etiquette. The grass grew, indeed, and the Great Waters played, but
the former was rigorously limited to certain mathematical patches, and
permitted only to obtain an established length, while the latter threw
their diamond showers against the sky with the regular and oppressive
monotony of clockwork. The avenues stretched away straight and stiff like
rows of lately-built houses; the shrubs stood hard and defiant as the
white statues with which they alternated, and the very sunshine off the
blinding gravel glared and scorched as if its duty were but to mark a
march of dazzling hours on square stone dials for the kings of France.
Down in Touraine the woods were sleeping, hushed, and peaceful in the
glowing summer’s day, sighing, as it were, and stirring in their repose,
while the breeze crept through their shadows, and quivered in their
outskirts, ere it passed on to cool the peasant’s brow, toiling contented
in his clearing, with blue home-spun garb, white teeth, and honest
sunburnt face.
Far off in Normandy, sleek of skin and rich of colour, cows were
ruminating knee-deep in pasturage; hedges were loaded with wild flowers,
thickets dark with rank luxuriance of growth, while fresh streams, over
which the blue kingfisher flitted like a dragon-fly, rippled merrily down
towards the sea. Through teeming orchards, between waving cornfields,
past convent-walls grown over with woodbine and lilac and laburnum, under
stately churches, rearing Gothic spires, delicate as needlework, to
heaven, and bringing with them a cool current of air, a sense of freedom
and refreshment as they hurried past. Nay, even where the ripening sun
beat fiercely on the vineyards, terraced tier upon tier, to concentrate
his rays—where Macon and Côte-d’Or were already tinged with the first
faint blush of their coming vintage, even amidst the grape-rows so
orderly planted and so carefully trained, buxom peasant-girls could
gather posies of wild flowers for their raven hair, to make their black
eyes sparkle with merrier glances, and their dusky cheeks mantle in rich
carnation, type of southern blood dancing through their veins.
But Versailles was not France, and at Versailles nothing seemed free but
the birds and the children.
One of the alleys, commanded from the king’s private apartments, was
thickly crowded with loungers. Courtiers in silk stockings, laced coats,
and embroidered waistcoats reaching to their thighs, wearing diamond
hilts on their rapiers, and diamond buckles in their shoes, could not
move a step without apology for catching in the spreading skirts of
magnificent ladies—magnificent, be it understood, in gorgeousness of
apparel rather than in beauty of face or symmetry of figure. The former,
indeed, whatever might be its natural advantages, was usually coated with
paint and spotted with patches, while the latter was so disguised by
voluminous robes, looped-up skirts, falling laces, and such outworks and
appendages, not to mention a superstructure of hair, ribbon, and other
materials, towering so high above the head as to place a short woman’s
face somewhere about the middle of her whole altitude, that it must have
been difficult even for the maid who dressed her to identify, in one of
these imposing triumphs of art, the slender and insignificant little
framework upon which the whole fabric had been raised. Devotion in woman
is never more sublime than when sustaining the torture of dress.
It was all artificial together. Not a word was spoken but might have
been overheard with entire satisfaction by the unseen sovereign who
set the whole pageant in motion. Not a gesture but was restrained by
the consciousness of supervision. Not a sentiment broached but had for
its object the greater glorification of a little old man, feeble and
worn-out, eating iced fruit and sweetmeats in a closet opening from a
formal, heavily-furnished, over-gilded saloon, that commanded the broad
gravel-walk on which the courtiers passed to and fro in a shifting,
sparkling throng. If a compliment was paid by grinning gallant to
simpering dame, it was offered and accepted with a sidelong glance from
each towards the palace windows. If a countess whispered scandal to a
duchess behind her fan, the grateful dish was sauced and flavoured for
the master’s palate, to whom it would be offered by the listener on the
first opportunity. Marshals of a hundred fights tapped their jewelled
snuff-boxes to inhale a pinch of the King’s Mixture. Blooming beauties,
whose every breath was fragrance, steeped their gossamer handkerchiefs in
no other perfume than an extract from orange-flowers, called _Bouquet du
Roi_.
For Louis the Fourteenth, if he might believe his household, Time was to
stand still, and the Seasons brought no change. “I am the same age as
everybody else,” said a courtier of seventy to his Majesty at sixty-five.
“The rain of Marly does not wet one,” urged another, as an excuse for not
covering his head in a shower while walking with the king. By such gross
flattery was that sovereign to be duped, who believed himself a match for
the whole of Europe in perceptive wisdom and diplomatic _finesse_.
But though powdered heads were bowing, and laced hats waving, and
brocades ruffling in the great walk, swallows skimmed and darted through
the shades of a green alley behind the nearest fountain, and a little
girl was sitting on the grass, making daisy-chains as busily as if there
were no other interest, no other occupation at Court or in the world.
Her flapping hat was thrown aside, and her head bent studiously over her
work, so that the brown curls, silken and rich and thick, as a girl’s
curls should be, hid all of her face but a little soft white brow.
Her dimpled arms and hands moved nimbly about her task, and a pair of
sturdy, well-turned legs were stuck out straight before her, as if
she had established herself in her present position with a resolution
not to stir till she had completed the long snowy chain that festooned
already for several yards across the turf. She had just glanced in
extreme content at its progress without raising her head, when a spaniel
scoured by, followed at speed by a young gentleman in a page’s dress,
who, skimming the level with his toe, in all the impetuous haste of
boyhood, caught the great work round his ankles, and tore it into a dozen
fragments as he passed.
The little girl looked up in consternation, having duly arranged her face
for a howl; but she controlled her feelings, partly in surprise, partly
in bashfulness, partly perhaps in gratification at the very obvious
approval with which the aggressor regarded that face, while, stopping
short, he begged “Mademoiselle’s pardon” with all the grand manner of the
Court grafted on the natural politeness of France.
It was indeed a very pretty, and, more, a very lovable little face,
with its large innocent blue eyes, its delicate peach-like cheeks, and
a pair of curling ruddy lips, that, combined with her own infantine
pronunciation of her baptismal name Thérèse, had already obtained for the
child the familiar appellation of “Cerise.”
“Pardon, mademoiselle!” repeated the page, colouring boy-like to his
temples—“Pardon! I was running so fast; I was in such a hurry—I am so
awkward. I will pick you a hatful more daisies—and—and I can get you a
large slice of cake this evening when the king goes out of the little
supper-room to the music-hall.”
“Mademoiselle” thus adjured, rose to her full stature of some forty
inches, and spreading her short stiff skirt around her with great care,
replied by a stately reverence that would have done credit to an empress.
Notwithstanding her dignity, however, she cast a wistful look at the
broken daisy-chain, while her little red lips quivered as if a burst of
tears was not far off.
The boy was down on his knees in an instant, gathering handfuls of
the simple flowers, and flinging them impetuously into his hat. It
was obvious that this young gentleman possessed already considerable
energy of character, and judging from the flash of his bold dark eyes,
a determined will of his own. His figure, though as yet unformed, was
lithe, erect, and active, while his noble bearing denoted self-reliance
beyond his years, and a reckless, confident disposition, such as a true
pedagogue would have longed and failed to check with the high hand of
coercion. In a few minutes he had collected daisies enough to fill his
laced hat to the rims, and flinging himself on the turf, began stringing
them together with his strong, well-shaped, sunburnt fingers. The little
girl, much consoled, had reseated herself as before. It was delightful to
see the chain thus lengthening by fathoms at a time, and this new friend
seemed to enter heart and soul into the important work. Active sympathy
soon finds its way to a child’s heart; she nestled up to his side, and
shaking her curls back, looked confidingly in his face.
“I like you,” said the little woman, honestly, and without reserve. “You
are good—you are polite—you make daisy-chains as well as mamma. My name’s
Cerise. What’s _your_ name?”
The page smiled, and with the smile his whole countenance grew handsome.
In repose, his face was simply that of a well-looking youth enough,
with a bold, saucy expression and hardy sunburned features; but when he
smiled, a physiognomist watching the change would have pronounced, “That
boy _must_ be like his mother, and his mother _must_ have been beautiful!”
“Cerise,” repeated the lad. “What a pretty name! Mine is not a pretty
name. Boys don’t have pretty names. My name’s George—George Hamilton.
You mustn’t call me Hamilton. I am never called anything but George at
Court. I’m not big enough to be a soldier yet, but I am page to _Louis le
Grand_!”
The child opened her eyes very wide, and stared over her new friend’s
head at a gentleman who was listening attentively to their conversation,
with his hat in his hand, and an expression of considerable amusement
pervading his old, worn, melancholy face.
This gentleman had stolen round the corner of the alley, treading softly
on the turf, and might have been watching the children for some minutes
unperceived. He was a small, shrunken, but well-made person, with a
symmetrical leg and foot, the arched instep of the latter increased
by the high heels of his diamond-buckled shoes. His dress in those
days of splendour was plain almost to affectation; it consisted of a
full-skirted, light-brown coat, ornamented only with a few gold buttons;
breeches of the same colour, and a red satin waistcoat embroidered
at the edges, the whole suit relieved by the _cordon bleu_ which was
worn outside. The hat he dangled in his pale, thin, unringed hand was
trimmed with Spanish point, and had a plume of white feathers. His face
was long, and bore a solemn, saddened expression, the more remarkable
for the rapidity with which, as at present, it succeeded a transient
gleam of mirth. Notwithstanding all its advantages of dress and manner,
notwithstanding jewelled buckles, and point lace, and full flowing
periwig, the figure now standing over the two children, in sad contrast
to their rich flow of youth and health, was that of a worn-out, decrepid
old man, fast approaching, though not yet actually touching, the brink of
his grave.
The smile, however, came over his wrinkled face once more as the child
looked shyly up, gathering her daisy-chain distrustfully into her lap.
Then he stooped to stroke her brown curls with his white wasted hand.
“Your name is Thérèse,” said he gravely. “Mamma calls you Cerise, because
you are such a round, ruddy little thing. Mamma is waiting in the
painted saloon for the king’s dinner. You may look at him eating it, if
your _bonne_ takes you home past the square table in the middle window
opposite the Great Fountain. She is to come for you in a quarter of an
hour. You see I know all about it, little one.”
Cerise stared in utter consternation, but at the first sound of that
voice the boy had started to his feet, blushing furiously, and catching
up his hat, to upset an avalanche of daisies in the action, stood
swinging it in his hand, bolt upright like a soldier who springs to
“attention” under the eye of his officer. The old gentleman’s face
had resumed its sad expression, but he drew up his feeble figure with
dignity, and motioned the lad, who already nearly equalled him in height,
a little further back. George obeyed instinctively, and Cerise, still
sitting on the grass, with the daisy-chain in her lap, looked from one to
the other in a state of utter bewilderment.
“Don’t be frightened, little one,” continued the old gentleman,
caressingly. “Come and play in these gardens whenever you like. Tell Le
Notre to give you prettier flowers than these to make chains of, and when
you get older, try to leave off turning the heads of my pages with your
brown curls and cherry lips. As for you, sir,” he added, facing round
upon George, “I have seldom seen any of you so innocently employed. Take
care of this pretty little girl till her _bonne_ comes to fetch her, and
show them both the place from whence they can see the king at dinner. How
does the king dine to-day, sir? and when?” he concluded, in a sharper and
sterner tone. George was equal to the occasion.
“There is no council to-day, sire,” he answered, without hesitation. “His
Majesty has ordered ‘The Little Service’[1] this morning, and will dine
in seventeen minutes exactly, for I hear the Grey Musketeers already
relieving guard in the Front Court.”
“Go, sir,” exclaimed the old gentleman, in great good-humour. “You have
learnt your duty better than I expected. I think I may trust you with the
care of this pretty child. Few pages know anything of etiquette or the
necessary routine of a Court. I am satisfied with you. Do you understand?”
The boy’s cheeks flushed once more, as he bowed low and stood silent,
whilst the old gentleman passed on. The latter, however, had not gone
half-a-dozen paces ere he turned back, and again addressed the younger of
the children.
“Do not forget, little one, to ask Le Notre for any flowers you want,
and—and—if you think of it, tell mamma you met the honest _bourgeois_
who owns these gardens, and that he knew you, and knew your name, and
knew how old you were, and, I dare say, little one, you are surprised the
_bourgeois_ should know so much!”
That Cerise was surprised admitted of small doubt. She had scarcely found
her voice ere the old gentleman turned out of the alley and disappeared.
Then she looked at her companion, whose cheeks were still glowing with
excitement, and presently burst into a peal of childish laughter.
“What a funny old man!” cried Cerise, clapping her hands; “and I am to
have as many flowers as I like—what a funny old man!”
“Hush, mademoiselle,” answered the boy, gravely, as though his own
dignity had received a hurt, “you must not speak like that. It is very
rude. It is very wrong. If a man were to say such things it should cost
him his life.”
Cerise opened her blue eyes wider than ever.
“Wrong!” she repeated, “rude! what have I done? who is it, then?”
“It is the King!” answered the boy, proudly. “It is _Louis le Grand_!”