'No, no,' petulantly returned the boy. 'What am I that he should notice me? It is M. de Ribaumont whom I follow, not him or his cause.'
'Boy,' said Berenger, dismayed, 'remember, I have answered for you.'
'I am no traitor,' proudly answered the strange boy, and Berenger was forced to be thus satisfied, though intending to watch him closely.
CHAPTER XL. THE SANDS OF OLONNE
Is it the dew of night
That on her glowing cheek
Shines in the moonbeam?-Oh, she weeps, she weeps,
And the good angel that abandoned her
At her hell baptism, by her tears drawn down
Resumes his charge...and the hope
Of pardon and salvation rose
As now she understood
Thy lying prophecy of truth.-SOUTHEY
'M. de Ribaumont,' said Henry of Navarre, as he stood before the fire after supper at Parthenay, 'I have been thinking what commission I could give you proportioned to your rank and influence.'
'Thanks to your Grace, that inquiry is soon answered. I am a beggar here. Even my paternal estate in Normandy is in the hands of my cousin.'
'You have wrongs,' said Henry, 'and wrongs are sometimes better than possessions in a party like ours.'
Berenger seized the opening to explain his position, and mention that his only present desire was for permission, in the first place, to send a letter to England by the messenger whom the King was dispatching to Elisabeth, in tolerable security of her secret countenance; and, secondly, to ride to Nissard to examine into the story he had previously heeded so little, of the old man and his daughter rescued from the waves the day before La Sablerie was taken.
'If Pluto relented, my dear Orpheus, surely Navarre may,' said Henry good-humouredly; 'only may the priest not be more adamantine than Minos. Where lies Nissard? On the Sable d'Olonne? Then you may go thither with safety while we lie here, and I shall wait for my sister, or for news of her.'
So Berenger arranged for an early start on the morrow; and young Selinville listened with a frown, and strange look in his dark eyes. 'You go not to England?' he said.
'Not yet?' said Berenger
'This was not what my Lady expected,' he muttered; but though Berenger silenced him by a stern look, he took the first opportunity of asking Philip if it would not be far wiser for his brother to place himself in safety in England.
'Wiser, but less honest,' said Philip.
'He who has lost all here, who has incurred his grandfather's anger,' pursued Aime, 'were he not wiser to make his peace with his friends in England?'
'His friends in England would not like him the better for deserting his poor wife's cause,' said Philip. 'I advise you to hold your tongue, and not meddle or make.'
Aime subsided, and Philip detected something like tears. He had still much of rude English boyhood about him, and he laughed roughly. 'A fine fellow, to weep at a word! Hie thee back to feed my Lady's lap-dog, 'tis all thou art fit for.'
'There spoke English gratitude,' said Aime, with a toss of the head and flash of the eye.
Philip despised him the more for casting up his obligations, but had no retort to make. He had an idea of making a man of young Selinville, and his notion of the process had something of the bullying tendency of English young towards the poor-spirited or cowardly. He ordered the boy roughly, teased him for his ignorance of manly exercises, tried to cure his helplessness by increasing his difficulties, and viewed his fatigue as affectation or effeminacy. Berenger interfered now and then to guard the poor boy from a horse-jest or practical joke, but he too felt that Aime was a great incumbrance, hopelessly cowardly, fanciful, and petulant; and he was sometimes driven to speak to him with severity, verging on contempt, in hopes of rousing a sense of shame.
The timidity, so unusual and inexplicable in a youth of eighteen or twenty, sowed itself irrepressibly at the Sands of Olonne. These were not misty, as on Berenger's former journey. Nissard steeple was soon in sight, and the guide who joined them on a rough pony had no doubt that there would be ample time to cross before high water. There was, however, some delay, for the winter rains had brought down a good many streams of fresh water, and the sands were heavy and wet, so that their horses proceeded slowly, and the rush and dash of the waves proclaimed that the low of the tide had begun. To the two brothers the break and sweep was a home-sound, speaking of freshness and freedom, and the salt breeze and spray carried with them life and ecstasy. Philip kept as near the incoming waves as his inland-bred horse would endure, and sang, shouted, and hallooed to them as welcome as English waves; but Aime de Selinville had never even beheld the sea before: and even when the tide was still in the distance, was filled with nervous terror as each rushing fall sounded nearer; and, when the line of white foamy crests became more plainly visible, he was impelled to hurry on towards the steeple so fast that the guide shouted to him that he would only bury himself in a quicksand.
'But,' said he, white with alarm, and his teeth chattering, 'how can we creep with those dreadful waves advancing upon us to drown us?'
Berenger silence Philip's rude laugh and was beginning to explain that the speed of the waves could always be calculated by an experienced inhabitant; and his voice had seemed to pacify Aime a little, when the spreading water in front of a broken wave flowing up to his horse's feet, again rendered him nearly frantic. 'Let us go back!' he wildly entreated, turning his horse; but Berenger caught his bridle, saying, 'That would be truly death. Boy, unless you would be scorned, restrain your folly. Nothing else imperils us.'
Here, however, the guide interposed, saying that it had become too late to pursue their course along the curve of the shore, but they must at once cut straight across, which he had intended to avoid, because of the greater depth of a small river that they would have to cross, which divided further out into small channels, more easily forded. They thus went along the chord of the arc formed by the shore, and Aime was somewhat reassured, as the sea was at first farther off; but before long they reached the stream, which lost itself in many little channels in the sands, so that when the tide was out there was a perfect network of little streams dividing low shingly or grassy isles, but at nearly high tide, as at present, many of these islets were submerged, and the strife between river and sea caused sudden deepenings of the water in the channels.
The guide eagerly explained that the safest place for crossing was not by the large sandbank furthest inland and looking firm and promising-it was a recent shifting performance of the water's heaping up, and would certainly sink away and bury horse the channels on either side had shingly bottoms, and were safe.
'This way,' called Berenger, himself setting the example, and finding no difficulty; the water did not rise above his boots, and the current was not strong. He had reached the shingly isle when he looked round for his companions; Humfrey and Philip were close behind him; but, in spite of the loud 'gare!' of the guide, Aime, or his horse,-for each was equally senseless with alarm,-were making inwards; the horse was trying to tread on the sandbank, which gave way like the water itself, under its frantic struggles- there was a loud cry-a shrill, unmistakable woman's shriek-the horse was sinking-a white face and helpless form were being carried out on the waves, but not before Berenger had flung himself from his horse, thrown off his cloak and sword, and dashed into the water; and in the lapse of a few moments he struggled back to the island, where were Philip and Humfrey, leg-deep in water: the one received his burthen, the other helped him to land.
'On, gentlemen, not a moment to lose,' cried the guide; and Berenger, still panting, flung himself on his horse, held out his arms, gathered the small, almost inanimate figure upon the horse's neck before him, and in a few minutes more they had crossed the perilous passage, and were on a higher bank where they could safely halt; and Philip, as he came to help his brother, exclaimed, 'What a fool the boy is!'