You may go walk, and give me leave a while,
My lessons make no music in three parts.
TAMING OF THE SHREW
Whether the dark pool really showed Sir Marmaduke Thistlewood or not, at
the moment that his son desired that his image should be called up, the
good knight was, in effect, sitting nodding over the tankard of sack
with which his supper was always concluded, while the rest of the
family, lured out of the sunny hall by the charms of a fresh summer
evening, had dispersed into the gardens or hall.
Presently a movement in the neighbourhood made him think it incumbent on
him to open his eyes wide, and exclaim, ‘I’m not asleep.’
‘Oh no! you never are asleep when there’s anything you ought to see!’
returned Dame Annora, who was standing by him with her hand on his
chair.
‘How now? Any tidings of the lads?’ he exclaimed.
‘Of the lads? No, indeed; but there will be bad tidings for the lads if
you do not see to it! Where do you think your daughter is, Sir Duke?’
‘Where? How should I know? She went out to give her sisters some
strawberries, I thought.’
‘See here,’ said Lady Thistlewood, leading the way to the north end of
the hall, where a door opened into what was called the Yew-tree Grove.
This consisted of five rows of yew-trees, planted at regular intervals,
and their natural mode of growth so interfered with by constant cutting,
that their ruddy trunks had been obliged to rise branchless, till about
twelve feet above ground they had been allowed to spread out their limbs
in the form of ordinary forest trees; and, altogether, their foliage
became a thick, unbroken, dark, evergreen roof, impervious to sunshine,
and almost impervious to rain, while below their trunks were like
columns forming five arcades, floored only by that dark red crusty earth
and green lichen growth that seems peculiar to the shelter of yew-trees.
The depth of the shade and the stillness of the place made it something
peculiarly soothing and quiet, more especially when, as now, the sunset
light came below the branches, richly tinted the russet pillars, cast
long shadows, and gleamed into all the recesses of the interlacing
boughs and polished leafage above.
‘Do you see, Sir Duke?’ demanded his lady.
‘I see my little maids making a rare feast under the trees upon their
strawberries set out on leaves. Bless their little hearts! what a pretty
fairy feast they’ve made of it, with the dogs looking on as grave as
judges! It takes me young again to get a smack of the haut-bois your
mother brought from Chelsea Gardens.’
‘Haut-bois! He’d never see if the house ere afire overhead. What’s that
beyond?’
‘No fire, my dear, but the sky all aglow with sunset, and the red cow
standing up against the light, chewing her cud, and looking as well
pleased as though she knew there wasn’t her match in Dorset.’
Lady Thistlewood fairly stamped, and pointed with her fan, like a
pistol, down a side aisle of the grove, where two figures were slowly
moving along.
‘Eh! what? Lucy with her apron full of rose-leaves, letting them
float away while she cons the children’s lesson for the morrow with
Merrycourt? They be no great loss, when the place is full of roses. Or
why could you not call to the wench to take better heed of them, instead
of making all this pother?’
‘A pretty sort of lesson it is like to be! A pretty sort of return for
my poor son, unless you take the better heed!’
‘Would that I saw any return at all for either of the poor dear lads,’
sighed the knight wearily; ‘but what you may be driving at I cannot
perceive.’
‘What! When ‘tis before your very eyes, how yonder smooth-tongued French
impostor, after luring him back to his ruin beyond seas, is supplanting
him even here, and your daughter giving herself over to the wily viper!’
‘The man is a popish priest,’ said Sir Marmaduke; ‘no more given to love
than Mr. Adderley or Friar Rogers.’
The dame gave a snort of derision:’ Prithee, how many popish priests be
now wedded parsons? Nor, indeed, even if his story be true, do I believe
he is a priest at all. I have seen many a young abbe, as they call
themselves, clerk only in name, loitering at court, free to throw off
the cassock any moment they chose, and as insolent as the rest. Why, the
Abbe de Lorraine, cardinal that is now, said of my complexion---’
‘No vows, quotha!’ muttered Sir Marmaduke, well aware of the Cardinal de
Lorraine’s opinion of his lady’s complexion. ‘So much the better; he
is too good a young fellow to be forced to mope single, and yet I hate
men’s breaking their word.’
‘And that’s all you have to say!’ angrily cried her ladyship. ‘No one
save myself ever thinks how it is to be with my poor dear wounded,
heart-broken son, when he comes home, to find himself so scurvily used
by that faithless girl of yours, ready---’
‘Hold, madam,’ said Sir Marmaduke, with real sternness; ‘nothing rash
against my daughter. How should she be faithless to a man who has been
wedded ever since she knew him?’
‘He is free now,’ said Lady Thistlewood, beginning to cry (for the last
letters received from Berenger had been those from Paris, while he still
believed Eustacie to have perished at La Sablerie); ‘and I do say it is
very hard that just when he is rid of the French baggage, the bane of
his life, and is coming home, maybe with a child upon his hands, and all
wounded, scarred, and blurred, the only wench he would or should have
married should throw herself away on a French vagabond beggar, and you
aiding and abetting.’
‘Come, come, Dame Nan,’ said Sir Marmaduke, ‘who told you I was aiding
and abetting?’
‘Tell me not, Sir Duke, you that see them a courting under your very
eyes, and will not stir a finger to hinder it. If you like to see your
daughter take up with a foreign adventurer, why, she’s no child of mine,
thank Heaven! And I’ve nought to do with it.’
‘Pshaw, dame, there’s no taking up in the case; and if there were, sure
it is not you that should be hard on Lucy.’
Whereupon Annora fell into such a flood of tears at the cruelty of
casting such things up to her, that Sir Marmaduke was fain in his
blundering way to declare that he only meant that an honest Englishman
had no chance where a Frenchman once came in, and then very nearly to
surrender at discretion. At any rate, he escaped from her tears by going
out at the door, and calling to Lucy to mind her rose-leaves; then, as
she gazed round, dismayed at the pink track along the ground, he asked
her what she had been doing. Whereto she answered with bright face and
honest eyes, that Mr. Mericour had been going over with her the ode
‘_Jam satis_,’ of Horatius, wherewith to prepare little Nan for him
to-morrow, and then she ran hurriedly away to secure the remainder of
the rose-leaves, while her companion was already on his knees picking up
the petals she had dropped.
‘Master Merrycourt,’ said Sir Marmaduke, a little gruffly, ‘never heed
the flower-leaves. I want a word with you.’
Claude de Mericour rose hastily, as if somewhat struck by the tone.
‘The matter is this,’ said the knight, leading him from the house, and
signing back the little girls who had sprung towards them--‘it has been
brought to my mind that you are but a youth, and, pardon me, my young
master, but when lads and lasses have their heads together over one
book, tongues wag.’
The colour rushed hotly into young Mericour’s face, and he answered
quickly, ‘My rank--I mean my order--should answer that.’
‘Stay, young man, we are not in France; your order, be it what it may,
has not hindered many a marriage in England; though, look you, no man
should ever wed with my consent who broke his word to God in so doing;
but they tell me your vows are not always made at your age.’
‘Nor are they,’ exclaimed Mericour, in a low voice, but with a sudden
light on his countenance. ‘The tonsure was given me as a child, but no
vow of celibacy has passed my lips.’
Sir Marmaduke exclaimed, ‘Oh!--’ with a prolongation of the sound that
lasted till Mericour began again.
‘But, sir, let tongues wag as they will, it is for nought. Your fair
daughter was but as ever preparing beforehand with me the tasks with
which she so kindly indoctrinates her little sisters. I never thought of
myself as aught but a religious, and should never dream of human love.’
‘I thought so! I said so!’ said Sir Marmaduke, highly gratified. ‘I knew
you were an honourable man that would never speak of love to my daughter
by stealth, nor without means to maintain her after her birth.’
The word ‘birth’ brought the blood into the face of the son of the peer
of France, but he merely bowed with considerable stiffness and pride,
saying, ‘You did me justice, sir.’
‘Come, don’t be hurt, man,’ said Sir Marmaduke, putting his hand on his
shoulder. ‘I told you I knew you for an honourable man! You’ll be over
here to-morrow to hear the little maids their _Jam satis_, or whatever
you call it, and dine with us after to taste Lucy’s handiwork in jam
cranberry, a better thing as I take it.’
Mericour had recovered himself, smiled, shook the good Sir Marmaduke
proffered hand, and, begging to excuse himself from bidding good night
to the ladies on the score of lateness, he walked away to cross the
downs on his return to Combe Walwyn, where he was still resident,
according to the arrangement by which he was there to await Berenger’s
return, now deferred so much beyond all reasonable expectation.
Sir Marmaduke, with a free heart, betook himself to the house, dreading
to find that Lucy had fallen under the objurgations of her step-mother,
but feeling impelled to stand her protector, and guided to the spot by
the high key of Dame Annora’s voice.
He found Lucy--who, on the race occasions when good-natured Lady
Thistlewood was really angry with her, usually cowered meekly--now
standing her ground, and while the dame was pausing for breath, he heard
her gentle voice answering steadily, ‘No, madam, to him I could never
owe faith, nor troth, nor love, save such as I have for Philip.’
‘Then it is very unfeeling and ungrateful of you. Nor did you think so
once, but it is all his scars and---’
By this time Sir Marmaduke had come near enough to put his arm round
his daughter, and say, ‘No such thing, dame. It had been unseemly in the
lass had it been otherwise. She is a good girl and a discreet; and the
Frenchman, if he has made none of their vows, feels as bound as though
he had. He’s an honest fellow, thinking of his studies and not of ladies
or any such trumpery. So give me a kiss, Lucy girl, and thou shalt study
_Jam satis_, or any other jam he pleases, without more to vex thee.’
Lucy, now that the warfare was over, had begun to weep so profusely that
so soon as her father released her, she turned, made a mute gesture to
ask permission to depart, and hurried away; while Lady Thistlewood,
who disliked above all that her husband should think her harsh to
her step-children, began to relate the exceeding tenderness of the
remonstrance which had been followed with such disproportionate floods
of tears.
Poor Sir Marmaduke hoped at least that the veil of night had put an end
to the subject which harassed him at a time when he felt less capable
than usual of bearing vexation, for he was yearning sadly after his only
son. The youths had been absent ten months, and had not been heard of
for more than three, when they were just leaving Paris in search of the
infant. Sir Francis Walsingham, whose embassy had ended with the death
of Charles IX., knew nothing of them, and great apprehensions respecting
them were beginning to prevail, and, to Sir Marmaduke especially, seemed
to be eating out the peace and joy of his life. Philip, always at his
father’s side ever since he could run alone, was missed at every visit
to stable or kennel; the ring of his cheery voice was wanting to
the house; and the absence of his merry whistle seemed to make Sir
Marmaduke’s heart sink like lead as he donned his heavy boots, and went
forth in the silver dew of the summer morning to judge which of his
cornfields would soonest be ready for the sickle. Until this expedition
of his sons he had, for more than fourteen years never been alone in
those morning rounds on his farm; and much as he loved his daughters,
they seemed to weigh very light in the scale compared with the sturdy
heir who loved every acre with his own ancestral love. Indeed, perhaps,
Sir Marmaduke had deeper, fonder affection for the children of his first
marriage, because he had barely been able to give his full heart to
their mother before she was taken from him, and he had felt almost
double tenderness to be due to them, when he at length obtained his
first and only true love. Now, as he looked over the shinning billows
of the waving barley, his heart was very sore with longing for Philip’s
gladsome shout at the harvest-field, and he thought with surprise and
compunction how he had seen Lucy leave him struggling with a flood of
tears. While he was still thus gazing, a head appeared in the narrow
path that led across the fields, and presently he recognized the
slender, upright form of the young Frenchman.
‘A fair good morrow to you, Master Merrycourt! You come right early to
look after your ode?’
‘Sir,’ said Mericour, gravely saluting him, ‘I come to make you my
confession. I find that I did not deal truly with you last night, but it
was all unwittingly.’
‘How?’ exclaimed Sir Marmaduke, recollecting Lucy’s tears and looking
much startled. ‘You have not---’ and there he broke off, seeing Mericour
eager to speak.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I was bred as one set apart from love. I had never
learnt to think it possible to me,--I thought so even when I replied to
you last evening; but, sir, the words you then spoke, the question you
asked me set my heart burning, and my senses whirling---’ And between
agitation and confusion he stammered and clasped his hands passionately,
trying to continue what he was saying, but muttering nothing
intelligible.
Sir Marmaduke filled up the interval with a long whistle of perplexity;
but, too kind not to pity the youth’s distress, he laid his hand on his
shoulder, saying, ‘You found out you were but a hot-blooded youth after
all, but an honest one. For, as I well trust, my lass knows nought of
this.’
‘How should she know, sir, what I knew not myself?’
‘Ha! ha!’ chuckled Sir Duke to himself, ‘so ‘twas all Dame Nan’s doing
that the flame has been lighted! Ho! ho! But what is to come next is the
question?’ and he eyed the French youth from head to foot with the same
considering look with which he was wont to study a bullock.
‘Sir, sir,’ cried Mericour, absolutely flinging himself on his knee
before him with national vehemence, ‘do give me hope! Oh! I will bless
you, I will---’
‘Get up, man,’ said the knight, hastily; ‘no fooling of this sort. The
milkmaids will be coming. Hope--why, what sort of hope can be given you
in the matter?’ he continued; ‘you are a very good lad, and I like you
well enough, but you are not the sort of stuff one gives one’s daughter
to. Ay, ay, I know you are a great man in your own country, but what are
you here?’
‘A miserable fugitive and beggar, I know that,’ said Mericour,
vehemently, ‘but let me have but hope, and there is nothing I will not
be!’
‘Pish!’ said Sir Marmaduke.
‘Hear me,’ entreated the youth, recalled to common sense: ‘you know
that I have lingered at the chateau yonder, partly to study divinity
and settle my mind, and partly because my friend Ribaumont begged me to
await his return. I will be no longer idle; my mind is fixed. To France
I cannot return, while she gives me no choice between such doctrine and
practice as I saw at court, and such as the Huguenots would have imposed
on me. I had already chosen England as my country before--before this
wild hope had awakened in me. Here, I know my nobility counts for
nothing, though, truly, sir, few names in France are prouder. But it
shall be no hindrance. I will become one of your men of the robe. I have
heard that they can enrich themselves and intermarry with your country
_noblesse_.’
‘True, true,’ said Sir Marmaduke, ‘there is more sense in that notion
than there seemed to be in you at first. My poor brother Phil was to
have been a lawyer if he had lived, but it seems to me you are a long
way off from that yet! Why, our Templars be mostly Oxford scholars.’
‘So it was explained to me,’ said Mericour, ‘but for some weeks past the
Lady Burnet, to whose sons, as you know, I have been teaching French,
has been praying me to take the charge of them at Oxford, by which means
I should at least be there maintained, and perchance obtain the means
for carrying on my studies at the Temple.’
‘Not ill thought of,’ said the knight; ‘a fair course enough for you;
but look you, you must have good luck indeed to be in a state to marry
within ten or fifteen years,--very likely not then--having nothing of
your own, and my wench but little, for Lucy’s portion cannot be made
equal to her sisters’, her mother having been no heiress like Dame
Nan. And would you have me keep the maid unwedded till she be thirty or
thirty-five years old, waiting for your fortune?’
Mericour looked terribly disconcerted at this.
‘Moreover,’ added the knight, ‘they will all be at me, so soon as those
poor lads come home--Heaven grant they do--to give her to Berenger.’
‘Sir,’ said Mericour, looking up with a sudden smile, ‘all that I would
ask is, what you are too good a father to do, that you would not put any
force on her inclinations.’
‘How now? you said you had never courted her!’
‘Nor have I, sir. But I see the force of your words. Should she love
another man, my dream were, of course, utterly vain, but if not---’ He
broke off.
‘Well, well, I am no man to force a girl to a match against her will;
but never trust to that, man. I know what women are; and let a fantastic
stranger come across them, there’s an end of old friends. But yours is
an honest purpose, and you are a good youth; and if you had anything to
keep her with, you should have Lucy to-morrow, with all my heart.’
Then came the further question whether Mericour should be allowed an
interview with Lucy. Sir Marmaduke was simple enough to fancy that she
need not be made aware of the cause of Mericour’s new arrangement, and
decided against it. The young man sorrowfully acquiesced, but whether
such a secret could be kept was another thing. To him it would have been
impossible to renew their former terms of intercourse without betraying
his feelings, and he therefore absented himself. Lady Thistlewood
triumphed openly in Sir Marmaduke’s having found him out and banished
him from the house; Lucy looked white and shed silent tears. Her
father’s soft heart was moved, and one Sunday evening he whispered into
her ear that Dame Nan was all wrong, and Mericour only kept away because
he was an honourable man. Then Lucy smiled and brightened, and Sir Duke
fondly asked her if she were fool enough to fancy herself in love with
the man.
‘Oh no, how should she, when he had never named love to her? She was
only glad her father esteemed him.’
So then foolish, fond Sir Marmaduke told her all that had passed, and
if it had not been too late, he would have sent for Mericour from Lady
Burnet’s; but his own story did almost as well in bringing back Lucy’s
soft pink color. She crept up into Cecily’s room one day, and found that
she knew all about it, and was as kind and sympathizing as she could
be--when a vocation had been given up, though no vows had been taken.
She did not quite understand it, but she would take it on trust.