The Chaplet of Pearls by Charlotte M. Yonge (i am reading a book .txt) 📕

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