Stray Pearls: Memoirs of Margaret De Ribaumont, Viscountess of Bellaise

Ere long the poor Princess was in even more grievous trouble. Her husband, the young Prince of Orange, died of smallpox, whereupon she fell into such transports of grief that there was the greatest anxiety respecting her, not only from compassion, but because she was the staunch supporter of her exiled family to the best of her ability.

Eight days later, on her own nineteenth birthday, her son was born; and in such gloom, that it was a marvel that mother or babe survived, for the entire rooms were hung with black, and even the cradle of the child was covered completely with black velvet, so that the poor little puny infant seemed as if he were being put into a coffin. We saw the doleful chamber ourselves, for Eustace sent us to pay our respects, and Queen Henrietta honoured me with commands to write her a report of her widowed daughter and first grandson.

For we were still at the Hague, Eustace gradually regaining strength, and the bleedings had almost entirely ceased; but the physician who attended him, the best I think whom I have even known, and whose regimen did him more good than any other he had adopted, charged me, as I valued his life, not to attempt a journey with him till after the winter should be over, and summer entirely set in. If the effusion of blood could be prevented he might even yet recover and live to old age, but if it recurred again Dr. Dirkius would not answer for his life for an hour; nor must he do aught that would give him a rheum or renew his cough.

After all, we were very peaceful and happy in those rooms at the Hague, though Eustace was very anxious about the King, Annora’s heart was at Paris, and I yearned after my son, from whom I had never thought to be so long parted; but we kept our cares to ourselves, and were cheerful with one another. We bought or borrowed books, and read them together, we learned to make Holland lace, studied Dutch cookery, and Annora, by Eustace’s wish, took lessons on the lute and spinnet, her education in those matters having been untimely cut short. By the way, she had a real taste for music, and the finding that her performance and her singing amused and refreshed him gave her further zeal to continue the study and conquer the difficulties, though she would otherwise have said she was too old to go to school.

Then the frost set in, and all the canals and sluggish streams were sheets of ice, to which the market people skated, flying along upon the ice like birds. We kept my brother’s room as warm as it was in our power to do, and made him lie in bed till the house was thoroughly heated, and he did not suffer much or become materially worse in the winter, but he was urgent upon us to go out and see the curious sights and share the diversions as far as was possible for us. Most of the Dutch ladies skated beautifully, and the younger ones performed dances on the ice with their cavaliers, but all was done more quietly than usual on account of the mourning, the Prince of Orange being not yet buried, and his child frail and sickly. The Baptism did not take place till January, and then we were especially invited to be present. Though of course my brother could not go, Annora and I did so. The poor child had three sets of States-General for his godfathers, his godmothers being his grandmother, the elder Princess of Orange, and his great aunt, Queen Elisabeth of Bohemia. The Duke of York, who had lately arrived, was asked to carry the little Prince to church, but he shuddered at the notion of touching a baby, as much as did his sister a the idea of trusting her precious child with him, so the infant was placed in the arms of one of his young aunts, Mademoiselle Albertine of Nassau.

I saw no more than a roll of ermine, and did not understand much of the long sermon with which the Dutch minister precluded the ceremony, and which was as alien to my sister’s ideas of a christening as it was to mine. Many other English ladies were mingled with the Dutch ones in the long rows that lined the aisle, and I confess that my eyes wandered a good deal, guessing which were my countrywomen. Nearly opposite to me was one of the sweetest faces I have ever seen, the complexion quite pearly white, the hair of pale gold, in shining little rings over the brow, which was wonderfully pure, though with an almost childish overtone. There was peace on the soft dark eyes and delicately-moulded lips and the fair, oval, though somewhat thin cheeks. It was a perfect refreshment to see that countenance, and it reminded me of two most incongruous and dissimilar ones—namely, the angelic face of the Dutchess de Longueville when I had first seen her in her innocent, untainted girlhood, and of the expression on the worn old countenance of Madame Darpent.

I was venturing a glance now and then to delight myself without disconcerting that gentle lady, when I felt Annora’s hand on my arm, squeezing so hard, poor maid, that her fingers left a purple mark there, and though she did not speak, I beheld, as it were, darts and arrows in the gleam of her eyes. And then it was that I saw on the black velvet dress worn by the lady a part of a necklace of large pearls—the pearls of Ribaumont—though I should not have known them again, or perhaps would Nan, save for the wearer.

‘Flaunting them in our very faces,’ muttered poor Nan; and if eyes could have slain, hers would have killed the poor Vrow van Hunker on the spot. As it was, the dark eyes met her fierce glance and sunk beneath it, while such a painful crimson suffused the fair cheeks that I longed to fly to the rescue, and to give at least a look of assurance that I acquitted her of all blame, and did not share my sister’s indignation. But there was no uplifting of the eyelids again till the ceremony was ended, and we all had to take our places again in one of the thirty state coaches in which the company had come to the christening.

I saw Madame van Hunker led out by a solid, wooden-faced old Dutchman, who looked more like her father than her husband; and I told Annora that I was sure she had worn the pearls only because he compelled her.

‘Belike,’ said my sister. ‘She hath no more will of her own than a hank of flax! That men can waste their hearts on such moppets as that!’

But though we did not at all agree on the impression Madame van Hunker had made on us, we were of one mind to say nothing of it to Eustace.

Another person laid her hand on Annora’s arm as she was about to enter our carriage. ‘Mistress Ribmont!’ she exclaimed; ‘I knew not that you were present in this land of our exile.’

I looked and saw a lady, as fantastically dressed as the mourning would permit, and with a keen clever face, and Nan curtsied, saying: ‘My Lady Marchioness of Newcastle! let me present to you my sister, Madame la Vicomtesse de Bellaise.’

She curtsied and asked in return for Lord Walwyn, declaring that her lord would come and see him, and that we must come to visit her. ‘We are living poorly enough, but my lord’s good daughter Jane Doth her best for us and hath of late sent us a supply; so we are making merry while it lasts, and shall have some sleighing on ice-hills to-morrow, after the fashion of the country. Do you come, my good lad is cruelly moped in yonder black-hung place, with his widowed sister and her mother-in-law, and I would fain give him a little sport with young folk.’

Lady Newcastle’s speech was cut short by her lord, who came to insist on her getting into the coach, which was delaying for her, and on the way home Nan began to tell me of her droll pretensions, which were like an awkward imitation of the best days of the Hotel Rambouillet.

She also told me about the noble-hearted Lady Jane Cavendish, the daughter of the Marquis’s first marriage—how she held out a house of her father against the rebels, and acted like a brave captain, until the place was stormed, and she and her sister were made prisoners. The Roundhead captain did not treat them with over-ceremony, but such was the Lady Jane’s generous nature that when the Royalists came to her relief, and he was made captive in his turn, she saved his life by her intercession.

She had since remained in England, living in a small lodge near the ruins of her father’s house at Bolsover, to obtain what she could for his maintenance abroad, and to collect together such remnants of the better times as she might, such as the family portraits, and the hangings of the hall. I longed to see this very worthy and noble lady, but she was out of our reach, being better employed in England. Nan gave a little sigh to England, but not such a sigh as she would once have heaved.

And we agreed on the way home to say nothing to my brother of our meeting with poor Millicent.

My Lord Marquis of Newcastle showed his esteem for my brother by coming to see him that very day, so soon as he could escape from the banquet held in honour of the christening, which, like all that was done by the Dutch, was serious and grim enough, though it could not be said to be sober.

He declared that he had been ignorant that Lord Walwyn was at the Hague, or he should have waited on him immediately after arriving there, ‘since nothing,’ said the Marquis, ‘does me good like the sight of an honest cavalier.’ I am sure Eustace might have said the same; and they sat talking together long and earnestly about how it fared with the King in Scotland, and how he had been made to take the Covenant, which, as they said, was in very truth a dissembling which must do him grievous ill, spiritually, however it might serve temporally. My Lord repeated his lady’s invitation to a dinner, which was to be followed up by sleighing on hills formed of ice. Annora, who always loved rapid motion as an exhilaration of spirits, brightened at the notion, and Eustace was anxious that it should be accepted, and thus we found ourselves pledged to enter into the diversions of the place.

CHAPTER XXVI. – HUNDERSLUST

So to my Lord Marquis of Newcastle’s dinner we went, and found ourselves regaled with more of good cheer than poor cavaliers could usually offer. There was not only a good sirloin of beer, but a goose, and many choice wild-fowl from the fens of the country. There was plum porridge too, which I had not seen since I left England at my marriage. Every one was so much charmed at the sight that I thought I ought to be so too, but I confess that it was too much for me, and that I had to own that it is true that the English are gross feeders. The Duke of York was there, looking brighter and more manly than I had yet seen him, enlivened perhaps by my Lady Newcastle, who talked to him, without ceasing, on all sorts of subjects. She would not permit the gentlemen to sit after dinner, because she would have us all out to enjoy her sport on the ice-hills, which were slopes made with boards, first covered with snow, and then with water poured over them till they were perfectly smooth and like glass. I cannot say that I liked the notion of rushing down them, but it seemed to fill Annora with ecstasy, and my lady provided her with a sleigh and a cavalier, before herself instructing the Duke of York in the guidance of her own sledge upon another ice-hill.

My Lord Marquis did me the honour to walk with me and converse on my brother. There was a paved terrace beneath a high wall which was swept clear of snow and strewn with sand and ashes, so that those who had no turn for the ice-hills could promenade there and gaze upon the sport. When his other duties as a host called him away, his lordship said, with a smile, that he would make acquainted with each other two of his own countrywomen, both alike disguised under foreign names, and therewith he presented Madame van Hunker to me. Being on the same side of the table we had not previously seen one another, nor indeed would she have known me by sight, since I had left England before her arrival at Court.

She knew my name instantly, and the crimson colour rushed into those fair cheeks as she made a very low reverence, and murmured some faltering civility.

We were left together, for all the other guest near us were Hollanders, whose language I could not speak, and who despised French too much to learn it. So, as we paced along, I endeavoured to say something trivial of the Prince’s christening and the like, which might begin the conversation; and I was too sorry for her to speak with the frigidity with which my sister thought she ought to be treated. Then gradually she took courage to reply, and I found that she had come in attendance on her stepdaughter Cornelia, who was extremely devoted to these sleighing parties. The other daughter, Veronica, was at home, indisposed, having, as well as her father, caught a feverish cold on a late expedition into the country, and Madame would fain have given up the party, as she thought Cornelia likewise to be unwell, but her father would not hear of his favourite Keetje being disappointed. I gather that the Yung-vrow Cornelia had all the true Dutch obstinacy of nature. By and by she ventured timidly, trying to make her voice sound as if she were only fulfilling an ordinary call of politeness, to hope that my Lord Walwyn was in better health. I told her a little of his condition, and she replied with a few soft half-utterance; but before we had gone far in our conversation there was a sudden commotion among the sleighing party—an accident, as we supposed—and we both hurried forward in anxiety for our charges. My sister was well, I was at once reassured by seeing her gray and ermine hood, which I knew well, for it was Mademoiselle van Hunker who lay insensible. It was not from a fall, but the cold had perhaps struck her, they said, for after her second descent she had complained of giddiness, and had almost immediately swooned away. She was lying on the sledge, quite unconscious, and no one seemed to know what to do. Her stepmother and I came to her; I raised her head and put essences to her nose, and Madame van Hunker took off her gloves and rubbed her hands, while my Lady Newcastle, hurrying up, bade them carry her into the house, and revive her by the fire; but Madame van Hunker insisted and implored that she should not be taken indoors, but carried home at once, showing a passion and vehemence quite unlike one so gentle, and which our good host and hostess withstood till she hinted that she feared it might be more than a swoon, since her father and sister were already indisposed. Then, indeed, all were ready enough to stand aloof; a coach was procured, I know not how, and poor Cornelia was lifted into it, still unconscious, or only moaning a little. I could not let the poor young stepmother go with her alone, and no one else would make the offer, the dread of contagion keeping all at a distance, after what had passed. At first I think Madame van Hunker hardly perceived who was with her, but as I spoke a word or two in English, as we tried to accommodate the inanimate form between us, she looked up and said: ‘Ah! I should not have let you come, Madame! I do everything wrong. I pray you to leave me!’ Then, as I of course refused, she added: ‘Ah, you know not—’ and then whispered in my ear, though the poor senseless girl would scarce have caught the sound, the dreadful word ‘smallpox.’ I could answer at once that I had had it—long, long ago, in my childish days, when my grandmother nursed me and both my brothers through it, and she breathed freely, I asked her why she apprehended it, and she told me that some weeks ago her husband had taken the whole party down to his pleasure-house in the country, to superintend some arrangement in his garden, which he wished to make before the frost set in.

He and his daughter Veronica had been ailing for some days, but it was only on that very morning that tidings had come to the Hague that the smallpox had, on the very day of their visit, declared itself in the family of the gardener who kept the house, and that two of his children were since dead. Poor Millicent had always had a feeble will, which yielded against her judgment and wishes. She had not had the malady herself, ‘But oh! my child,’ she said, ‘my little Emilia!’ And when I found that the child had not been on the expedition to Hunderslust, and had not seen her father or sister since they had been sickening, I ventured to promise that I would take her home, and the young mother clasped my hand in fervent gratitude.

But we were not prepared for the scene that met us when we drove into the porte cochere. The place seemed deserted, not a servant was to be seen but one old wrinkled hag, who hobbled up to the door saying something in Dutch that made Madame van Hunker clasp her hands and exclaim: ‘All fled! Oh, what shall we do?’

At that moment, however, Dr. Dirkius appeared at the door. He spoke French, and he explained that he had been sent for about an hour ago, and no sooner had he detected smallpox than Mynheer’s valet had fled from his master’s room and spread the panic throughout the household, so that every servant, except one scullion and this old woman, had deserted it. The Dutch have more good qualities than the French, their opposites, are inclined to believe, but they have also a headstrong selfishness that seems almost beyond reach. Nor perhaps had poor Mynheer van Hunker been a master who would win much affection.

I know not what we should have done if Dr. Dirkius had not helped me to carry Cornelia to her chamber. The good man had also locked the little Emilia into her room, intending, after having taken the first measures for the care of his patients, to take or send her to the ladies at Lord Newcastle’s, warning them not to return. Madame van Hunker looked deadly pale, but she was a true wife, and said nothing should induce her to forsake her husband and his daughters; besides, it must be too late for her to take precautions. Dirkius looked her all over in her pure delicate beauty, muttering what I think was: ‘Pity! pity!’ and then agreed that so it was. As we stood by the bed where we had laid Cornelia, we could hear at one end old Hunker’s voice shouting—almost howling—for his vrow; and likewise the poor little Emilia thumping wildly against the door, and screaming for her mother to let her out. Millicent’s face worked, but she said: ‘She must not touch me! She had best not see me! Madame, God sent in you an angle of mercy. Take her; I must go to my husband!’

And at a renewed shout she ran down the corridor to hide her tears. The doctor and I looked at one another. I asked if a nurse was coming. Perchance, he said; he must go and find some old woman, and old Trudje must suffice meantime. There would as yet be no risk in my taking the child away, if I held her fast, and made her breathe essences all through the house.

It was a strange capture, and a dreadful terror for the poor little girl. By his advice I sprinkled strong essences all over the poor little girl’s head, snatched her up in my arms, and before she had breath to scream hurried down stairs with her. She was about three years old, and it was not till I was almost at the outer door that she began to kick and struggle. My mind was made up to return as soon as she was safe. It was impossible to leave that poor woman to deal alone with three such cases, and I knew what my brother would feel about it. And all fell out better than I could have hoped, for under the porte cochere was the coach in which we had come to Lady Newcastle’s. My sister, learning that I had gone home with Madame van Hunker, had driven thither to fetch me, and Nicolas was vainly trying to find some one to tell me that she was waiting. I carried the child, now sobbing and calling for her mother, to the carriage, and explained the state of affairs as well as I could while trying to hush her. Annora was quick to understand, and not slow to approve. ‘The brutes!’ she said. ‘Have they abandoned them? Yes, Meg, you are safe, and you cannot help staying. Give me the poor child! I will do my best for her. O yes! I will take care of Eustace, and I’ll send you your clothes. I wish it was any one else, but he will be glad. So adieu, and take care of yourself! Come, little one, do not be afraid. We are going to see a kind gentleman.’

But as poor little Emilia knew no English, this must have failed to console her, and they drove away amid her sobs and cries, while I returned to my strange task. I was not altogether cut off from home, for my faithful Nicolas, though uncertain whether he had been secured from the contagion, declared that where his mistress went he went. Tryphena would have come too, but like a true old nurse she had no confidence in Mistress Nan’s care of my brother, or of the child, and it was far better as it was, for the old women whom the doctor found for us were good for nothing but to drink and to sleep; whereas Nicolas, like a true French laquais, had infinite resources in time of need. He was poor Madame’s only assistant in the terrible nursing of her husband; he made the most excellent tisanes and bouillons for the patients, and kept us nurses constantly supported with good meats and wines, without which we never could have gone through the fatigue; he was always at hand, and seemed to sleep, if he slept at all, with one ear and one eye open during that terrible fifteen days during which neither Madame van Hunker, he, nor I, ever took off our clothes. Moreover, he managed our communication with my family. Every day in early morning he carried a billet from me which he placed in a pan of vinegar at their door; and, at his whistle, Annora looked out and threw down a billet for me, which, to my joy and comfort, generally told me that my brother was no worse, and that the little maid was quite well, and a great amusement to him. He was the only one who could speak any Dutch, so that he had been able to do more with her than the others at her first arrival; and though she very soon picked up English enough to understand everything, and to make herself understood in a droll, broken baby tongue, she continued to be devoted to him. She was a pretty, fair child of three years old, with enough of Dutch serenity and gravity not to be troublesome after the first shock was over, and she beguiled many of his weary hours of confinement by the games in which he joined her. He sent out to by for her a jointed baby, which Annora dressed for her, and, as she wrote, my lord was as much interested about the Lady Belphoebe’s robes (for so had he named her) as was Emilia, and he was her most devoted knight, daily contriving fresh feasts and pageants for her ladyship. Nan declared that she was sometimes quite jealous of Belphoebe and her little mistress; but, on the whole, I think she enjoyed the months when she had Eustace practically to herself.

For we were separated for months. Poor Cornelia’s illness was very short, the chill taken at the sleighing party had been fatal to her at the beginning of the complaint, and she expired on the third day, with hardly any interval of consciousness.

Her sister, Veronica, was my chief charge. I had to keep her constantly rolled in red cloth in a dark room, while the fever ran very high, and she suffered much. I think she was too ill to feel greatly the discomfort of being tended by a person who could not speak her language, and indeed necessity enabled me to understand a tongue so much like English, which indeed she could herself readily speak when her brain began to clear. This, however, was not for full a fortnight, and in the meantime Mynheer van Hunker was growing worse and worse, and he died on the sixteenth day of his illness. His wife had watched over him day and night with unspeakable tenderness and devotion, though I fear he never showed her much gratitude in return; he had been too much used to think of woman as mere housewifely slaves.

She had called me in to help in her terror at the last symptoms of approaching death, and I heard him mutter to her: ‘Thou hast come to be a tolerable housewife. I have taken care thou dost not lavish all on beggarly stranger.’

At least so the words came back on me afterwards; but we were absorbed in our attendance on him in his extremity, and when death had come at last I had to lead her away drooping and utterly spent. Alas! it was not exhaustion alone, she had imbibed the dreadful disease, and for another three weeks she hung between life and death. Her stepdaughter left her bed, and was sent away to the country-house to recover, under the care of the steward’s wife, before Millicent could open her eyes or lift her head from her pillow; but she did at last begin to revive, and it was in those days of slow convalescence that she and I became very dear to one another.

We could talk together of home, as she loved to call England, and of her little daughter, of whom Annora sent me daily reports, which drew out the mother’s smiles. She could not be broken-hearted for Mynheer van Hunker, nor did she profess so to be, but she said he had been kind to her—much kinder since she had really tried to please him; and that, she said—and then broke off—was after he—your brother—my lord—And she went no further, but I knew well afterwards what that chance meeting had done for her—that meeting which, with such men as I had too often seen at Paris, might have been fatal for ever to her peace of mind and purity of conscience by renewing vain regrets, not to be indulged without a stain. Nay, it had instead given her a new impulse, set her in the way of peace, and helped her to turn with new effort to the path of duty that was left to her. And she had grown far happier therein. Her husband had been kinder to her after she ceased to vex him by a piteous submission and demonstrative resignation; his child had been given to brighten her with hope; and that she had gained his daughter’s affection I had found by Veronica’s conversation about her, and her tears when permitted to see her—or rather to enter her dark chamber for a few moments before going to Hunkerslust, the name of the country-house near Delf. Those days of darkness, when the fever had spent itself, and the strength was slowly returning, were indeed a time when hearts could flow into one another; and certainly I had never found any friend who so perfectly and entirely suited me as that sweet Millicent. There was perhaps a lack of strength of resolute will; she had not the robust temper of my high-spirited Annora, but, on the other hand, she was not a mere blindly patient Grisel, like my poor sister-in-law, Cecily d’Aubepine, but could think and resolve for herself, and hold staunchly to her duty when she saw it, whatever it might cost her; nor did terror make her hide anything, and thus she had won old Hunker’s trust, and he had even permitted her to attend the service of exiled English ministers at the Hague.