The Chaplet of Pearls by Charlotte M. Yonge (best classic novels .TXT) 📕

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.


CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SCANDAL OF THE SYNOD OF MONTAUBAN


O ye, wha are sae guid yourself,
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye've naught to do but mark and tell
Your neebour's fauts and folly.
--BURNS

The old city of Montauban, once famous as the home of Ariosto's Rinaldo and his brethren, known to French romance as '_Les Quatre Fils Aymon_,' acquired in later times a very diverse species of fame,--that, namely, of being one of the chief strong-holds of the Reformed. The Bishop Jean de Lettes, after leading a scandalous life, had professed a sort of Calvinism, had married, and retired to Geneva, and his successor had not found it possible to live at Montauban from the enmity of the inhabitants. Strongly situated, with a peculiar municipal constitution of its own, and used to Provencal independence both of thought and deed, the inhabitants had been so unanimous in their Calvinism, and had offered such efficient resistance, as to have wrung from Government reluctant sanction for the open observance of the Reformed worship, and for the maintenance of a college for the education of their ministry.

There then was convoked the National Synod, answering to the Scottish General Assembly, excepting that the persecuted French Presbyterians met in a different place every year. Delegated pastors there gathered from every quarter. From Northern France came men used to live in constant hazard of their lives; from Paris, confessors such as Merlin, the chaplain who, leaving Coligny's bedside, had been hidden for three days in a hayloft, feeding on the eggs that a hen daily laid beside him; army-chaplains were there who had passionately led battle-psalms ere their colleagues charged the foe, and had striven with vain endeavours to render their soldiers saints; while other pastors came from Pyrenean villages where their generation had never seen flames lighted against heresy, nor knew what it was to disperse a congregation in haste and secrecy for hear of the enemy.

The audience was large and sympathizing. Montauban had become the refuge of many Huguenot families who could nowhere else profess their faith without constant danger; and a large proportion of these were ladies, wives of gentlemen in the army kept up by La Noue, or widows who feared that their children might be taken from them to be brought up by their Catholic relations, elderly dames who longed for tranquillity after having lost husbands or sons by civil war. Thickly they lodged in the strangely named _gasches_ and _vertiers_, as the divisions and subdivisions of the city were termed, occupying floors or apartments of the tall old houses; walking abroad in the streets in grave attire, stiff hat, crimped ruff, and huge fan, and forming a society in themselves, close-packed, punctilious and dignified, rigidly devout but strictly censorious, and altogether as unlike their typical country folks of Paris as if they had belonged to a different nation. And the sourest and most severe of all were such as had lived farthest south, and personally suffered the least peril and alarm.

Dancing was unheard-of enormity; cards and dice were prohibited; and stronger expletive than the elegant ones invented for the special