The Chaplet of Pearls

CHAPTER XVIII. THE MOONBEAM

The morrow was Sunday, and in the old refectory, in the late afternoon, a few Huguenots, warned by messages from the farm, met to profit by one of their scanty secret opportunities for public worship. The hum of the prayer, and discourse of the pastor, rose up through the broken vaulting to Eustacie, still lying on her bed; for she had been much shaken by the fatigues of the day and alarm of the night, and bitterly grieved, too, by a message which Nanon conveyed to her, that poor Martin was in no state to come for her in the next day; but he and his wife having been seized upon by Narcisse and his men, and so savagely beaten in order to force from them a confession of her hiding-place, that both were lying helpless on their bed; and could only send an entreaty by the trustworthy fool, that Rotrou would find means of conveying Madame into Chollet in some cart of hay or corn, in which she could be taken past the barriers.

But this was not to be. Good Nanon had sacrificed the sermon to creep up to Eustacie, and when the congregation were dispersing in the dusk, she stole down the stairs to her husband; and a few seconds after he was hurrying as fast as detours would allow him to Blaise’s farm. An hour and a half later, Dame Perrine, closely blindfolded for the last mile, was dragged up the spiral staircase, and ere the bandage was removed heard Eustacie’s voice, with a certain cheeriness, say, ‘Oh! nurse; my son will soon come!’

The full moon gave her light, and the woman durst not have any other, save from the wood-fire that Nanon had cautiously lighted and screened. The moonshine was still supreme, when some time later a certain ominous silence and half-whisper between the two women at the hearth made Eustacie, with a low cry of terror, exclaim, ‘Nurse, nurse, what means this? Oh! He lives! I know he lives! Perrine, I command you tell me!’

‘Living! Oh, yes, my love, my Lady,’ answered Perrine, returning towards her; ‘fair and perfect as the day. Be not disquieted for a moment.’

‘I will—I will disquiet myself,’ panted Eustacie, ‘unless you tell me what is amiss.’

‘Nothing amiss,’ said Nanon, gruffly. ‘Madame will give thanks for this fair gift of a daughter.’

It must be owned the words felt chill. She had never thought of this! It was as if the being for whom she had dared and suffered so much, in the trust that he would be Berenger’s representative and avenger, had failed her and disappointed her. No defender, no paladin, no so to be proud of! Her heart and courage sank down in her weakness as they had never done before; and, without speaking, she turned her head away towards the darkness, feeling as if had been for nothing, and she might as well sink away in her exhaustion. Mere Perrine was more angry with Nanon than conscious of her Lady’s weakness. ‘Woman, you speak as if you knew not the blow to this family, and to all who hoped for better days. What, that my Lady, the heiress, who ought to be in a bed of state, with velvet curtains, lace pillows, gold caudle-cups, should be here in a vile ruin, among owls and bats, like any beggar, and all for the sake, not of a young Lord to raise up the family, but of a miserable little girl! Had I known how it would turn out, I had never meddled in this mad scheme.’

Before Nanon could express her indignation, Eustacie had turned her head opened her eyes, and called out, ‘Miserable! Oh! what do you mean? Oh, it is true, Nanon? is it well with her?

‘As well as heart could wish,’ answered Nanon, cheerily. ‘Small, but a perfect little piece of sugar. There, Lady, she shall speak for herself.’

And as Nanon laid the babe on the young mother’s bosom, the thrilling touch at once put an end to all the repinings of the heiress, and awoke far other instincts.

‘My child! my little one, my poor little orphan—all cruel to her! Oh, no welcome even from thy mother! Babe, babe, pardon me, I will make it up to thee; indeed I will! Oh! let me see her! Do not take her away, dear good woman, only hold her in the moonlight!’

The full rays of the moon, shining through the gable window, streamed down very near where Eustacie lay, and by a slight movement Dame Rotrou was able to render the little face as distinctly visible to her as if it had been daylight, save that the blanching light was somewhat embellishing to the new-born complexion, and increased that curious resemblance so often borne for the first few hours of life to the future self. Eustacie’s cry at once was, ‘Himself, himself—his very face! Let me have her, my own moonbeam—his child—my joy!’

The tears, so long denied, rushed down like summer rain as she clasped the child in her arms. Dame Perrine wandered to and fro, like one beside herself, not only at her Lady’s wretched accommodations, but at the ill omens of the moonlight illumination, of the owls who snapped and hissed incessantly over the hay, and above all the tears over the babe’s face. She tried to remonstrate with Eustacie, but was answered only, ‘Let me weep! Oh, let me weep! It eases my heart! It cannot hurt my little one! She cannot weep for her father herself, so I must weep for her.’

The weeping was gentle, not violent; and Dame Rotrou thought it did good rather than harm. She was chiefly anxious to be quit of Perrine, who, however faithful to the Lady of Ribaumont, must not be trusted to learn the way to this Huguenot asylum, and must be escorted back by Rotrou ere peep of dawn. The old woman knew that her own absence from home would be suspicious, and with many grumblings submitted; but first she took the child from Eustacie’s reluctant arms, promising to restore her in a few moments, after finishing dressing her in the lace-edged swaddling bands so carefully preserved ever since Eustacie’s own baby hood. In these moments she had taken them all by surprise by, without asking any questions, sprinkling the babe with water, and baptizing her by the hereditary name of Berangere, the feminine of the only name Eustacie had always declared her son should bear. Such baptisms were not unfrequently performed by French nurses, but Eustacie exclaimed with a sound half dismay, half indignation.

‘Eh quoi!’ said Perrine, ‘it is only ondoyee. You can have all the ceremonies if ever time shall fit; but do you think I could leave my Lady’s child—mere girl though it be—alone with owls, and follets, and REVENANTS, and heretics, and she unbaptized? She would be a changeling long ere morning, I trow.’

‘Come, good woman,’ said Rotrou, from between the trusses of hay at the entrance; ‘you and I must begin our Colin-Mail-lard again, or it may be the worse for us both.’

And with the promise of being conducted to Eustacie again in three nights’ time, if she would meet her guide at the cross-roads after dark, Perrine was forced to take her leave. She had never suspected that all this time Maitre Gardon had been hidden in the refectory below, and still less did she guess that soon after her departure the old man was installed as her Lady’s chief attendant. It was impossible that Nanon should stay with Eustacie; she had her day’s work to attend to, and her absence would have excited suspicion. He, therefore, came partly up the stairs, and calling to Nanon, proffered himself to sit with ‘cette pauvre,’ and make a signal in case Nanon should be wanted. The good woman was thus relieved of a great care. She would not have dared to ask it of him, but with a low reverence, she owned that it was an act of great charity towards the poor lady, who, she hoped, was falling into a tranquil sleep, but who she would hardly have dared to leave. The pastor, though hardships, battles, and persecutions had left him childless, had been the father of a large family; and perhaps he was drawn the more strongly towards the mother and child, because he almost felt as if, in fulfilling the part of a father towards the widow of Berenger de Ribaumont, he was taking her in the stead of the widow of his own Theodore.

Had the little Baronne de Ribaumont been lodged in a tapes-tried chamber, between curtains of velvet and gold, with a beauffet by her side glistening with gold and silver plate, as would have befitted her station, instead of lying on a bed of straw, with no hangings to the walls save cobwebs and hay, and wallflowers, no beauffet but the old rickety table, no attendants but Nanon and M. Gardon, no visitors but the two white owls, no provisions save the homely fare that rustic mothers lived upon—neither she nor her babe could have thriven better, and probably not half so well. She had been used to a hardy, out-of-door life, like the peasant women; and she was young and strong, so that she recovered as they did. If the April shower beat in at the window, or the hole in the roof, they made a screen of canvas, covered her with cloaks, and heaped them with hay, and she took no harm; and the pure open air that blew in was soft with all the southern sweetness of early spring-tide, and the little one throve in it like the puff-ball owlets in the hayloft, or the little ring-doves in the ivy, whose parent’s cooing voice was Eustacie’s favourite music. Almost as good as these her fellow-nestlings was the little Moonbeam, la petite Rayonette, as Eustacie fondly called this light that had come back to her from the sunshine she had lost. Had she cried or been heard, the sounds would probably have passed for the wailings of the ghostly victims of the Templars, but she exercised an exemplary forbearance in that respect, for which Eustacie thought she could not be sufficiently admired.

Like the child she was, Eustacie seemed to have put care from her, and to be solely taken up with the baby, and the amusement of watching the owl family.

There was a lull in the search at this moment, for the Chevalier had been recalled to Paris by the fatal illness of his son-in-law, M. de Selinvine. The old soldier, after living half his life on bread and salad, that he might keep up a grand appearance at Paris, had, on coming into the wealth of the family, and marrying a beautiful wife, returned to the luxuries he had been wont only to enjoy for a few weeks at a time, with in military occupation of some Italian town. Three months of festivities had been enough to cause his death; and the Chevalier was summoned to assist his daughter in providing for his obsequies, and in taking possession of the huge endowments which, as the last of his race, he had been able to bequeath to her. Such was the news brought by the old nurse Perrine, who took advantage of the slackening vigilance of the enemy to come to see Eustacie. The old woman was highly satisfied; for one of the peasants’ wives had—as if on purpose to oblige her Lady—given birth to twins, one of whom had died almost immediately; and the parents had consented to conceal their loss, and at once take the little Demoiselle de Ribaumont as their own—guarding the secret till her mother should be able to claim her. It was so entirely the practice, under the most favourable circumstances, for French mothers to send their infants to be nursed in cottages, that Perrine was amazed by the cry of angry refusal that burst from Eustacie: ‘Part with my child! leave her to her enemies!—never! never! Hold your tongue, Perrine! I will not hear of such a thing!’

‘But, Madame, hear reason. She will pass for one of Simonette’s!’

‘She shall pass for none but mine!—I part with thee, indeed! All that is left me of thy father!—the poor little orphaned innocent, that no one loves but her mother!’

‘Madame—Mademoiselle, this is not common sense! Why, how can you hide yourself? how travel with a baby on your neck, whose crying may betray you?’

‘She never cries—never, never! And better I were betrayed than she.’

‘If it were a boy–’ began Perrine.

‘If it were a boy, there would be plenty to care for it. I should not care for it half so much. As for my poor little lonely girl, whom every one wishes away but her mother—ah! yes, baby, thy mother will go through fire and water for thee yet. Never fear, thou shalt not leave her!’

‘No nurse can go with Madame. Simonette could not leave her home.’

‘What needs a nurse when she has me?’

‘But, Madame,’ proceeded the old woman, out of patience, ‘you are beside yourself! What noble lady ever nursed her babe?’

‘I don’t care noble ladies—I care for my child,’ said the vehement, petulant little thing.

‘And how—what good will Madame’s caring for it do? What knows she of infants? How can she take care of it?’

‘Our Lady will teach me,’ said Eustacie, still pressing the child passionately to her heart; ‘and see—the owl—the ring-dove—can take care of their little ones; the good God shows them how—He will tell me how!’

Perrine regarded her Lady much as if she were in a naughty fit, refusing unreasonably to part with a new toy, and Nanon Rotrou was much of the same mind; but it was evident that if at the moment they attempted to carry off the babe, the other would put herself into an agony of passion, that they durst not call forth; and they found it needful to do their best to soothe her out of the deluge of agitated tears that fell from her eyes, as she grasped the child so convulsively that she might almost have stifled it at once. They assured her that they would not take it away now—not now, at any rate; and when the latent meaning made her fiercely insist that it was to leave her neither now nor ever, Perrine made pacifying declarations that it should be just as she pleased—promises that she knew well, when in that coaxing voice, meant nothing at all. Nothing calmed her till Perrine had been conducted away; and even then Nanon could not hush her into anything like repose, and at last called in the minister, in despair.

‘Ah! sir, you are a wise man; can you find how to quiet the poor little thing? Her nurse has nearly driven her distracted with talking of the foster-parents she has found for the child.’

‘Not found!’ cried Eustacie. ‘No, for she shall never go!’

‘There!’ lamented Nanon—‘so she agitates herself, when it is but spoken of. And surely she had better make up her mind, for there is no other choice.’

‘Nay, Nanon,’ said M. Gardon, ‘wherefore should she part with the charge that God has laid on her?’

Eustacie gave a little cry of grateful joy. ‘Oh, sir, come nearer! Do you, indeed, say that they have no right to tear her from me?’

‘Surely not, Lady. It is you whose duty it is to shield and guard her.’

‘Oh, sir, tell me again! Yours is the right religion. Oh, you are the minister for me! If you will tell me I ought to keep my child, then I will believe everything else. I will do just as you tell me.’ And she stretched out both hands to him, with vehement eagerness.

‘Poor thing! This is no matter of one religion or another,’ said the minister; ‘it is rather the duty that the Almighty hath imposed, and that He hath made an eternal joy.’

‘Truly,’ said Nanon, ashamed at having taken the other side: ‘the good pasteur says what is according to nature. It would have gone hard with me if any one had wished to part me from Robin or Sara; but these fine ladies, and, for that matter, BOURGEOISES too, always do put out their babes; and it seemed to me that Madame would find it hard to contrive for herself—let alone the little one.’

‘Ah! but what would be the use of contriving for myself, without her?’ said Eustacie.

If all had gone well and prosperously with Madame de Ribaumont, probably she would have surrendered an infant born in purple and in pall to the ordinary lot of its contemporaries; but the exertions and suffering she had undergone on behalf of her child, its orphanhood, her own loneliness, and even the general disappointment in its sex, had given it a hold on her vehement, determined heart, that intensified to the utmost the instincts of motherhood; and she listened as if to an angle’s voice as Maitre Gardon replied to Nanon—

‘I say not that it is not the custom; nay, that my blessed wife and myself have not followed it; but we have so oft had cause to repent the necessity, that far be it from me ever to bid a woman forsake her sucking child.’

‘Is that Scripture?’ asked Eustacie. ‘Ah! sir, sir, tell me more! You are giving me all—all—my child! I will be—I am—a Huguenot like her father! and, when my vassals come, I will make them ride with you to La Rochelle, and fight in your cause!’

‘Nay,’ said Maitre Gardon, taken by surprise; ‘but, Lady, your vassals are Catholic.’

‘What matters it? In my cause they shall fight!’ said the feudal Lady, ‘for me and my daughter!’

And as the pastor uttered a sound of interrogative astonishment, she continued—

‘As soon as I am well enough, Blaise will send out messages, and they will meet me at midnight at the cross-roads, Martin and all, for dear good Martin is quite well now, and we shall ride across country, avoiding towns, wherever I choose to lead them. I had thought of Chantilly, for I know M. de Montmorency would stand my friend against a Guisard; but now, now I know you, sir, let me escort you to La Rochelle, and do your cause service worthy of Nid de Merle and Ribaumont!’ And as she sat up on her bed, she held up her little proud head, and waved her right hand with the grace and dignity of a queen offering an alliance of her realm.

Maitre Gardon, who had hitherto seen her as a childish though cheerful and patient sufferer, was greatly amazed, but he could not regard her project as practicable, or in his conscience approve it; and after a moment’s consideration he answered, ‘I am a man of peace, Lady, and seldom side with armed men, nor would I lightly make one of those who enroll themselves against the King.’

‘Not after all the Queen-mother had done!’ cried Eustacie.

‘Martyrdom is better than rebellion,’ quietly answered the old man, folding his hands. Then he added ‘Far be it from me to blame those who have drawn the sword for the faith; yet, Lady, it would not be even thus with your peasants; they might not follow you.’

‘Then,’ said Eustacie, with flashing eyes, ‘they would be traitors.’

‘Not to the King,’ said the pastor, gently. ‘Also, Lady, how will it be with their homes and families—the hearths that have given you such faithful shelter?’

‘The women would take to the woods,’ readily answered she; ‘it is summer-time, and they should be willing to bear something for my sake. I should grieve indeed,’ she added, ‘if my uncle misused them. They have been very good to me, but then they belong to me.’

‘Ah! Lady, put from you that hardening belief of seigneurs. Think what their fidelity deserves from their Lady.’

‘I will be good to them! I do love them! I will be their very good mistress,’ said Eustacie, her eyes filling.

‘The question is rather of forbearing than of doing,’ said the minister.

‘But what would you have me do?’ asked Eustacie, petulantly.

‘This, Lady. I gather that you would not return to your relations.’

‘Never! never! They would rend my babe from me; they would kill her, or at least hide her for ever in a convent—they would force me into this abhorrent marriage. No—no—no—my child and I would die a hundred deaths together rather than fall into the hands of Narcisse.’

‘Calm yourself, Lady; there is no present fear, but I deem that the safest course for the little one would be to place her in England. She must be heiress to lands and estates there; is she not?’

‘Yes; and in Normandy.’

‘And your husband’s mother lives? Wherefore then should you not take me for your guide, and make your way—more secretly than would be possible with a peasant escort—to one of your Huguenot towns on the coast, whence you could escape with the child to England?’

‘My belle-mere has re-married! She has children! I would not bring the daughter of Ribaumont as a suppliant to be scorned!’ said Eustacie, pouting. ‘She has lands enough of her own.’

‘There is no need to discuss the question now,’ said M. Gardon, gravely; for a most kind offer, involving much peril and inconvenience to himself, was thus petulantly flouted. ‘Madame will think at her leisure of what would have been the wishes of Monsieur le Baron for his child.’

He then held himself aloof, knowing that it was not well for her health, mental or bodily, to talk any more, and a good deal perplexed himself by the moods of his strange little impetuous convert, if convert she could be termed. He himself was a deeply learned scholar, who had studied all the bearings of the controversy; and, though bound to the French Reformers who would gladly have come to terms with the Catholics at the Conference of Plassy, and regretted the more decided Calvinism that his party had since professed, and in which the Day of St. Bartholomew confirmed them. He had a strong sense of the grievous losses they suffered by their disunion from the Church. The Reformed were less and less what his ardent youthful hopes had trusted to see them; and in his old age he was a sorrow-stricken man, as much for the cause of religion as for personal bereavements. He had little desire to win proselytes, but rather laid his hand to build up true religion where he found it suffering shocks in these unsettled, neglected times; and his present wish was rather to form and guide this little willful warm-hearted mother—whom he could not help regarding with as much affection as pity—to find a home in the Church that had been her husband’s, than to gain her to his own party. And most assuredly he would never let her involve herself, as she was ready to do, in the civil war, without even knowing the doctrine which grave and earnest men had preferred to their loyalty.