My safety and freedom being thus secure, I was asked, as mistress of
the house, whether I would continue the custom my mother had begun of
receiving on a Monday, chiefly for the sake of our exiled countryfolk at
Paris.
It had been left in doubt, till my fate and my wishes should be known,
whether the reunion should take place on the Monday or not; but all
lived so simply and within so short a distance that it was very easy to
make it known that Lady Walwyn and Madame de Bellaise would receive as
usual.
The rule in ordinary French society was then as now, to offer only
eau-sucree, sherbets, and light cakes as refreshments, but my mother
told me with some disgust that it was necessary to have something more
substantial on the buffet for these great Englishmen.
‘Yes,’ said Annora, ‘I do believe it is often the only meal worth the
name that they get in a week, unless my brother invites them to supper.’
On learning this Tryphena and I resolved that though pies were the most
substantial dish at present prepared, we would do our best another time
to set before them such a round of salt beef as would rejoice their
appetites; and oh! the trouble we had in accomplishing it.
Meantime I submitted to be dressed as my mother wished, much indeed as I
am now, except that my hair was put into little curls, and I had no cap.
The Queen-Regent wore none, so why should I? Moreover, my mother said
that it would not be good taste to put on any jewels among the English.
Alas! I could see why, as the salon filled with gentlemen and ladies,
far fewer of the last than the first, for some wives had been left at
home with their children to keep possession of the estates, and send
what supplies they could to their lords in exile. Some, like brave
Lady Fanshawe, traveled backwards and forwards again and again on their
husbands’ affairs; and some who were at Paris could not afford a servant
nor leave their little children, and others had no dress fit to appear
in. And yet some of the dresses were shabby enough--frayed satin or
faded stained brocade, the singes and the creases telling of hard
service and rough usage. The gentlemen were not much better: some had
their velvet coats worn woefully at the elbows, and the lace of their
collars darned; indeed those were the best off, for there were some
who had no ladies to take care of them, whose fine Flanders lace was in
terrible holes.
Some gallants indeed there were to ruffle it as sprucely as ever, and
there were a few who had taken service as musketeers or archers of the
guard; but these were at that time few, for the King was still living,
and they did not despair of an accommodation which would soon bring them
home again. As my mother had predicted, the gentlemen with the ragged
lace tried in vain to affect indifference to the good things on the
buffet, till they had done their devoir by me as their hostess. Eustace
and Nan were on the watch and soon were caring for them, and heaping
their plates with food, and then it was that my sister’s face began to
light up, and I knew her for herself again, while there was a general
sound of full gruff English voices all round, harsh and cracking my
mother called it, but Nan said it was perfect music to her, and I think
she began to forgive me when she found that to me likewise it had a
sound of home.
But my mother was greatly gratified that evening, for there appeared in
our salon the dark bright face of the Prince of Wales, closely followed
by a tall handsome man in the prime of life, whom I had never seen
before.
‘Do not derange yourself,’ said Prince Charles, bending his black head,
bowing right and left, and signing with his hand to people to continue
their occupations. ‘I always escape to places where I can hear English
tongues, and I wanted to congratulate Madame on her reception yesterday,
also to present to her my cousin Prince Rupert, who arrived this
afternoon.’
Prince Rupert and some of the wiser and more politic gentlemen, Eustace
among them, drew apart in consultation, while the Prince of Wales stood
by me.
‘They are considering of a descent on the Isle of Wight to carry off my
father from Carisbrooke,’ he said.
‘And will not your Highness be with them?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, I shall be with them, of course, as soon as there is anything
to be done; but as to the ways and means, they may arrange that as they
choose. Are you to be at Madame de Choisy’s ball’
I was quite provoked with him for being able to think of such matters
when his father’s rescue was at stake; but he bade me ask his mother and
mine whether it were not an important question, and then told me that he
must make me understand the little comedy in which he was an actor.
Prince as he was, I could not help saying that I cared more for the
tragedy in which we all might be actors; and he shrugged his shoulders,
and said that life would be insupportable if all were to be taken in the
grand serious way. However, Prince Rupert appealed to him, and he was
soon absorbed into the consultation.
My brother told us the next morning of the plan. It was that Prince
Rupert, with the ships which he had in waiting at Harfleur, should take
a trusty band of cavaliers from Paris, surprise Carisbrooke, and carry
off His Sacred Majesty. Eustace was eager to go with them, and would
listen to no representations from my mother of the danger his health
would incur in such an expedition in the month of November. She wept and
entreated in vain.
‘What was his life good for,’ he said, ‘but to be given for the King’s
service?’
Then she appealed to me to persuade him, but he looked at me with his
bright blue eyes and said:
‘Meg learned better in Lorraine;’ and I went up and kissed him with
tears in my eyes, and said: ‘Ah! Madame, we have all had to learn how
loyalty must come before life, and what is better than life.’
And then Annora cried out: ‘Well said, Margaret! I do believe that you
are an honest Englishwoman still.’
My brother went his way to consult with some of the other volunteers,
and my mother called for her sedan chair to go and see whether she could
get an order from Queen Henrietta to stop him, while Annora exclaimed:
‘Yes! I know how it is, and mother cannot see it. Eustace cares little
for his life now, and the only chance of his ever overgetting it is the
having something to do. How can he forget while he lives moping here
in banishment, with nothing better to do than to stroke the Queen’s
spaniels?’
Then of course I asked what he had to get over. I knew he had had
a boyish admiration for Millicent Wardour, a young lady in Lady
Northumberland’s household, but I had never dared inquire after her,
having heard nothing about her since I left England. My sister, whose
mistrust of me had quite given way, told me all she knew.
Eustace had prevailed on my father to make proposals of marriage for
her though not willingly, for my father did not like the politics of
her father, Sir James Wardour, and my mother did not think the young
gentlewoman a sufficient match for the heir of Walwyn and Ribaumont.
There was much haggling over the dowry and marriage portion, and in the
midst, Sir James himself took, for his second wife, a stern and sour
Puritan dame. My mother and she were so utterly alien to each other that
they affronted one another on their first introduction, and Sir James
entirely surrendered himself to his new wife; the match was broken off,
and Millicent was carried away into the country, having returned the
ring and all other tokens that Eustace had given her.
‘I never esteemed her much, said Nan. ‘She was a poor little white,
spiritless thing, with a skin that they called ivory, and great brown
eyes that looked at one like that young fawn with the broken leg. If I
had been Eustace, I would have had some one with a little more will of
her own, and then he would not have been served as he was.’ For the next
thing that was heard of her, and that by a mere chance, was that she
was marred to Mynheer van Hunker, ‘a rascallion of an old half-bred
Dutchman,’ as my hot-tongued sister called him, who had come over to
fatten on our misfortunes by buying up the cavaliers’ plate and jewels,
and lending them money on their estates. He was of noble birth, too, if
a Dutchman could be, and he had an English mother, so he pretended to be
doing people a favour while he was filling his own coffers; and, worst
of all, it was he who had bought the chaplet of pearls, the King’s gift
to the bravest of knights.
The tidings were heard in the midst of war and confusion, and so far as
Nan knew, Eustace had made no moan; but some months later, when he was
seeking a friend among the slain at Cropredy Bridge, he came upon Sir
James Wardour mortally wounded, to whom he gave some drink, and all
the succour that was possible. The dying man looked up and said: ‘Mr.
Rib’mont, I think. Ah! sir, you were scurvily used. My lady would have
her way. My love to my poor wench; I wish she were in your keeping,
but--’ Then he gave some message for them both, and, with wandering
senses, pained Eustace intensely by forgetting that he was not indeed
Millicent’s husband, and talking to him as such, giving the last
greeting; and so he died in my brother’s arms.
Eustace wrote all that needed to be said, and sent the letters, with the
purse and tokens that Sir James had given him for them, with a flag of
truce to the enemy’s camp.
Then came still darker days--my father’s death at Marston Moor, the
year of losses, and Eustace’s wound at Naseby, and his illness almost
to death. When he was recovering, Harry Merrycourt, to whom he had given
his parole, was bound to take him to London for his trial, riding by
easy stages as he could endure it, whilst Harry took as much care of him
as if he had been his brother. On the Saturday they were to halt over
the Sunday at the castle of my Lord Hartwell, who had always been a
notorious Roundhead, having been one of the first to take the Covenant.
Being very strong, and the neighbourhood being mostly of the Roundhead
mind, his castle had been used as a place of security by many of the
gentry of the Parliamentary party while the Royal forces were near, and
they had not yet entirely dispersed, so that the place overflowed with
guests; and when Harry and Eustace came down to supper, they found the
hall full of company. Lord Walwyn was received as if he were simply a
guest. While he was being presented to the hostess on coming down to
supper, there was a low cry, then a confusion among the ladies, round
some one who had fainted.
‘The foolish moppet,’ said my unmerciful sister, ‘to expose herself and
poor Walwyn in that way!’
I pitied her, and said that she could not help it.
‘I would have run my finger through with my bodkin sooner than have made
such a fool of myself,’ returned Nan. ‘And to make it worse, what should
come rolling to my poor brother’s feet but three or four of our pearls?
The pearls of Ribaumont! That was the way she kept them when she had
got them, letting the string break, so that they rolled about the floor
anyhow!’
She had heard all this from Harry Merrycourt, and also that my brother
had gathered up the pearls, and, with some other gentlemen, who had
picked them up while the poor lady was carried from the room, had given
them to my Lady Hartwell to be returned to Madame van Hunker, not of
course escaping the remark from some of the stricter sort that it was a
lesson against the being adorned with pearls and costly array.
Madame van Hunker’s swoon had not surprised any one, for she was known
to have been in very delicate health ever since a severe illness which
she had gone through in London. She had been too weak to accompany her
husband to Holland, and he had left her under the care of Lady Hartwell,
who was a kinswoman of her own. Harry had only seen her again at supper
time the next day, when he marveled at the suffering such a pale little
insignificant faded being could cause Eustace, who, though silent and
resolute, was, in the eyes of one who knew him well--evidently enduring
a great trial with difficulty.
I heard the rest from my brother himself.
He was in no condition to attend the service the next day, not being
able to walk to the Church, nor to sit and stand in the draughty
building through the prayer and preaching that were not easily
distinguished from on another. He was glad of such a dispensation
without offence, for, children, though you suppose all Protestants to
be alike, such members of the English Church as my family, stand as
far apart from the sects that distracted England as we do from the
Huguenots; and it was almost as much against my brother’s conscience
to join in their worship, as it would be against our own. The English
Church claims to be a branch of the true Catholic Church, and there are
those among the Gallicans who are ready to admit her claim.
Harry Merrycourt, who was altogether a political, not a religious rebel,
would gladly have kept Lord Walwyn company; but it was needful not to
expose himself to the suspicion of his hosts, who would have bestowed
numerous strange names on him had he absented himself.
And thus Eustace was left alone in the great hall, lord and lady, guests
and soldiers, men and maids, all going off in procession across the
fields; while he had his choice of the cushions in the sunny window, or
of the large arm-chair by the wood fire on the hearth.
All alone there he had taken out his Prayer-book, a little black clasped
book with my father’s coat-of-arms and one blood-stain on it--he loved
it as we love our Book of the Hours, and indeed, it is much the very
same, for which reason it was then forbidden in England--and was
kneeling in prayer, joining in spirit with the rest of his Church, when
a soft step and a rustle of garments made him look up, and he beheld the
white face and trembling figure of poor Millicent.
‘Sir,’ she said, as he rose, ‘I ask your pardon. I should not have
interrupted your devotions, but now is your time. My servant’s
riding-dress is in a closet by the buttery hatch, his horse is in the
stable, there is no sentry in the way, for I have looked all about. No
one will return to the house for at least two hours longer; you will
have full time to escape.’
I can see the smile of sadness with which my brother looked into her
face as he thanked her, and told her that he was on his parole of
honour. At that answer she sank down into a chair, hiding her face and
weeping--weeping with such an agony of self-abandonment and grief as
rent my brother’s very heart, while he stood in grievous perplexity,
unable to leave her alone in her sorrow, yet loving her too well and
truly to dare to console her. One or two broken words made him think she
feared for his life, and he made haste to assure her that it was in no
danger, since Mr. Merrycourt was assured of bearing him safely through.
She only moaned in answer, and said presently something about living
with such a sort of people as made her forget what a cavalier’s truth
and honour were.
He were sorely shaken, but he thought the best and kindest mode of
helping her to recover herself would be to go on where he was in the
morning prayer, and, being just in the midst of their Litany, he told
her so, and read it aloud. She knelt with her head on the cushions and
presently sobbed out a response, growing calmer as he went on.
When it was ended she had ceased weeping, though Eustace said it was
piteous to see how changed she was, and the startled pleading look in
the dark eyes that used to look at him with such confiding love.
She said she had not heard those prayers since one day in the spring,
when she had stolen out to a house in town where there was a gathering
round one of the persecuted minister, and alas! her stepdaughters had
suspected her, and accused her to their father. He pursued her, caused
the train-bands to break in on the congregation and the minister to be
carried off to prison. It was this that had brought on the sickness of
which she declared that she hoped to have died.
When Eustace would have argued against this wish, it brought out all
that he would fain never have heard nor known.
The poor young thing wished him to understand that she had never been
untrue to him in heart, as indeed was but too plain, and she had only
withdrawn her helpless passive resistance to the marriage with Mr. van
Hunker when Berenger’s death had (perhaps willfully) been reported to
her as that of Eustace de Ribaumont. She had not known him to be alive
till she had seen him the day before. Deaths in her own family had
made her an heiress sufficiently well endowed to excite Van Hunker’s
cupidity, but he had never affected much tenderness for her. He
was greatly her elder, she was his second wife, and he had grown-up
daughters who made no secret of their dislike and scorn. Her timid
drooping ways and her Majesty sympathies offended her husband, shown up
before him as they were by his daughters, and, in short, her life had
been utterly miserable. Probably, as Annora said, she had been wanting
in spirit to rise to her situation, but of course that was not as my
brother saw it. He only beheld what he would have cherished torn from
him only to be crushed and flung aside at his very feet, yet so that
honour and duty forbade him to do anything for her.
What he said, or what comfort he gave her, I do not fully know, for when
he confided to me what grief it was that lay so heavily on his heart and
spirits, he dwelt more on her sad situation than on anything else. The
belief in her weakness and inconstancy had evoked in him a spirit of
defiance and resistance; but when she was proved guiltless and unhappy,
the burden, though less bitter, was far heavier. I only gathered that
he, as the only like-minded adviser she had seen for so long, had felt
it his duty to force himself to seem almost hard, cold, and pitiless in
the counsel he gave her.
I remember his very words as he writhed himself with the pain of
remembrance: ‘And then, Meg, I had to treat the poor child as if I were
stone of adamant, and chide her when my very heart was breaking for her.
One moment’s softening, and where should we have been? And now I have
added to her troubles that fancy that I was obdurate in my anger and
implacability.’ I assured him that she would honour and thank him in her
heart for not having been weak, and he began to repent of what he had
left to be inferred, and to assure me of his having neither said nor
done anything that could be censured, with vehement laudation of her
sweetness and modesty.
The interview had been broken up by the sight of the return from Church.
Mrs. Van Hunker had had full time to retire to her room and Eustace to
arrange himself, so that no one guessed at the visitor he had had. She
came down to supper, and a few words and civilities had passed between
them, but he had never either seen or heard of her since.
Harry Merrycourt, who had known of the early passages between them,
had never guessed that there was more than the encounter in the hall
to cause the melancholy which he kindly watched and bore with in my
brother, who was seriously ill again after he reached their lodgings in
London, and indeed I thought at the time when he was with me in Paris,
that his decay of health chiefly proceeded from sorrow of heart.