St. George's Cross; Or, England Above All

"It is not so long since your youth, my all fair."

"But perhaps M. le Gallais is better occupied in another part."

"Voyons, ma soeur; it is quite equal, to me. Your M. le Gallais indeed! one would think it was you and M. de Maufant that wanted to marry him. As for me, I do not want to marry at all. Least of all does it import me to marry a man chosen by others. I prefer the ways of England."

"Di va!" exclaimed her sister. "A good man is not bad because our friends like him. Marry this good Alain, and love him after."

The damsel replied by a pretty grimace.

"Marguerite!" said Mme. de Maufant, with a little frown, "on ne badine pas avec l'amour. Or do you love another perhaps? Ah! malheureuse; art thou still thinking of ce beau guilliard, how did they call him? M. Elliot, I think, the King's page? I hear that he is returned with the King; and—oh, Marguerite!–"

"I swear to you Rose, I know nothing of M. Elliot—"

As she spoke a low whistle was heard without.

"It is Alain's signal," cried Rose, all in a flutter. "He brings me news from Michael."

So saying Mme. de Maufant moved with a quick step towards the door opening on the back yard, whence the signal-whistle evidently came. Marguerite site still on her tabouret, her head hidden in her shapely white hands.

On reaching the back-door Rose threw a wimple over her head, and carefully undoing the-chain and bar, admitted le Gallais, weary and travel-stained. Taking both her hands the young man gazed in her face with the honest gaze of a loving brother. Then searching in the lining of his doublet he drew out a letter, or rather a packet tied with string, and gave it to her.

"He is well," he said, "but his heart suffers."

"I know it, I know it," sobbed the wife, "but come in, Alain; come in and take some repose."

With which she led him into the room, and up to the hearth where sate the wilful beauty.

"Marguerite," she said, "do you not see Alain le Gallais?"

"I am delighted to see M. le Capitaine," was the girl's reply, as she rose and made an obeisance, immediately resuming her seat.

Poor Alain! the cold of the autumn evening outside was nothing in comparison with the chill that fell upon him by that blazing hearth. Weary as he was, and—as soon appeared—wounded also, his nerve, shaken by fatigue, gave way before this reception. With giddy brain and wan face he sank into the nearest seat.

"What hast thou, my friend, speak, for the love of God," said the lady of Maufant, while her sister's reluctant eye glanced at him, through unshed tears with yet more tender inquiry.

"A scratch, no more," said Alain, tightening the scarf on his left arm, which showed stains of new blood. "I am but now landed in Boulay Bay, and a militia-sentry discharged his matchlock at me as I ran down the lane under the battery. They are indifferent marksmen, my good compatriots, and their pieces make small impression compared with Cromwell's snaphaunces."

Rose tenderly unbound the bandage, found a mere flesh-wound, to which she applied some lint steeped in styptic, and restored the ligature in a manner more effective.

"Remets-toi Alain, réprends ton haleine, et dis-nous ce que c'est," said she, after paying these quasi-maternal attentions to the fugitive. "And first tell me, how bears himself my Michael, and what greeting sends he to his home?"

But before Alain could answer there came a knocking at the gate: and the scared ladies had barely time to dismiss Le Gallais by a side door almost hidden in the wainscot before Elliot entered, hat in hand, and looking shy and breathless in the leaping light of the hearth.

"Pardon me, fair ladies," he stammered, "have you any welcome for an old friend."

The two women leaned against each other, even more embarrassed than, for a moment, was their visitor. They seemed to remember the voice, yet could not speak to much purpose for the beating of their scared pulses. But it is not easy for female self-love to be deceived. The boy had not changed so much in turning into man but that the face of an old love could resume its familiarity.

"'Tis Mr. Elliot," presently said Marguerite, addressing her sister in English. "Mr. Chevalier, the Centenier, told you of his return but yesterday when we went to the market at S. Helier. I admire to see him here so soon."

Rose advanced, with the restored self-possession of a lady on her own hearth, and gave the visitor her hand. "Welcome back to Jersey, Mr. Elliot. Time hath dealt kindly with you: you are almost grown to man's estate."

The young Scot flushed, somewhat angrily, at this equivocal compliment. "What Time hath done with me I cannot tell," said he, with less than his wonted ease, "save that nothing Time can do can avail to quench old feelings. This is the first liberty that I have had since we landed. I have used it to lay myself at your feet."

The ladies resumed their seats, motioning Tom to the place between them, just vacated by Le Gallais: and the talk soon ran into easier grooves.

"I have that to say," continued the page, "that may shake your spirits, fair ladies. What I have listened to this day it may cost me my ears to have heard. But," with an air of important resolution, "cost what it may, I will not nor cannot keep it from you."

"A groat for your tidings," replied Rose, "we poor women hear none in this remote corner. But is it a secret? Women may keep one," she added, looking at the panel that had closed on Le Gallais, "but walls have ears: and so have you, as yet such as they are, which I would not have you sacrifice in our cause. If therefore your news be dangerous, think not of our curiosity, and give the matter no vent."

Elliot was a scamp, no doubt, yet he could not but be moved by this thoughtful speech of a woman who could decline a secret. But he had come too far, laden with a burden that he would fain lay down. So long as he kept to himself what he had heard in the King's chamber he might be doing his duty to Charles. But Charles had insulted him and his nation. Marguerite de St. Martin was his first love, the welfare of herself and her sister was at stake; he had trudged, four miles and more through the mire of steep and devious lanes to tell them; was he to leave them unwarned? Love and Duty fought their old battle, and with the old result—Love conquered and the secret was told. He had not, it is true, heard the full purport of the Secretary's grave words or of Charles' light replies: but what he had caught, tallying with the Chaplain's disclosures of an earlier hour, had led him to conclude that there was a villainous plot on foot, of which the King did not seem to approve, and which therefore might be made known to those interested without real breach of faith. What he knew he told, and eked it out with what he could but conjecture.

The conference lasted long. While it was confined to the designs of the French, on which the short gusts of the Lieutenant-Governor's stormy impatience had thrown a transient gleam of lurid light, the ladies were all attention. When the page began to talk of the King's loyal resolves and of what great things he would do, they gave less heed. It seemed to them that Charles Stuart was all too young, too much bound to his mother, to be trusted in an affair wherein her favourite took an interest. Tom pleaded his master's cause with the zeal of one who felt himself to have done that master some wrong; but he pleaded in vain. Little did the Jersey ladies care who might bear rule in the British islands; their chief care was for what would affect Jersey, and—above all men and things of Jersey—their dear Michael, now in exile.

It had long grown dusk, and Tom knew that he was absent without leave. His visit must be cut short. If he glanced significantly at Marguerite as he bent over Rose's hand, if he hoped that Marguerite would follow him to the door and allow an integration of former toys, he was only building on a precocious knowledge of the sex. "I will but lock the door after Mr. Elliot," said she to Rose, in patois, "be tranquil, my sister, he is but an infant."

The dismissal of the infant appeared a work of time. In the meanwhile Rose opened the wainscot door, and called softly up the narrow stair to which it led. Alain heard her, and came down, looking anxiously round the parlour as he came inside.

"Is Marguerite gone out," he asked, "with yonder polisson of the Court?"

"Thou knowest her, my friend," answered Madame de Maufant, kindly; "ever since her mother's death she has been a daughter to me. But a sister is not a mother at the end of the account; and our little one will not be kept a prisoner. She has learned English ideas in her girlhood, passed as you know with our London kinsfolk. Once she is married her husband will find her faithful, in life and to the death."

"Such freedoms are not according to our island ways."

"Be not stupid, my good Alain. Mr. Elliot is an old friend; though her dealings with him—or with others—be never so little to thy taste, I advertise thee to seek no cause of quarrel upon them; unless thou wouldst lose her altogether."

"I do not understand how a girl that is promised can do such things. Moreover, his coming here at all is what Michael would not find well."

"He has done us a very friendly act in coming here, and has told us of a matter which it may cost him dear to have revealed. For the rest, we can take very good care of ourselves."

Alain was not a man of the world. With something of a poet's nature, he was born to be the slave of women. Passionately attached to the mother who had brought him up—and who was lately dead—and wholly unacquainted with the coarser aspects of feminine character, he had a romantic ideal of womanhood. The ladies in whose company he might chance to find himself were usually quick enough to discover this; and seeing him at their feet were always trampling upon him, reserving their wiles and fascinations for men who were more artful or less chivalrous. The case was by no means singular in those days, and is believed to be occasionally reproduced even in more recent times.

He was now thoroughly annoyed; and Rose's reasoning, far from composing his mind, had rendered it only the more anxious. Therefore, when Marguerite returned into the parlour, with a somewhat heightened colour, Alain affected to take no notice of her, and sate gazing moodily at the fire.

"I have been plucking these roses," said the girl, offering Alain a bunch of flowers wet with early dew.

He took them with a negligent air, stuck one of the buds into the band of his broad-brimmed hat that lay on the table, and allowed the rest to fall upon the rushes that strewed the stone floor. Marguerite, with a slight and mocking grimace, watched the ill-tempered action without taking any audible notice of it. Then resuming her seat, she took up her wool and needles and applied herself to her interrupted knitting.

Meantime the page, apparently well satisfied with the circumstances of his visit, including those of his parting from the fair Marguerite, pursued his way to S. Helier. The darkness of the autumn evening was relieved by the multitudinous illumination of a cloudless sky. The lanes, bordered by the fortress-like enclosures of the fields, were shaded overhead by tunnels of interlacing boughs still in the full thickness of their summer foliage. A bird, disturbed by Elliot's brushing against the branch on which she roosted, gave a solitary cry of angry alarm; the dogs barked in the distant farms; the grazing cows, tethered in the wayside pastures, made soft noises as they cropped the grass. Passing on by the old grammar school of S. Manelier and then through the village of Five Oaks, where he scared a quiet family assembled in their parlour by looking in at their window with a grimace and a wild scream, he ran on rapidly by the Town Mills and through the town towards the quay. When he reached the bridge-head the tide was ebbing; but partly walking, partly wading, he made good his footing on the Castle-rock. A sleepy sentry challenged, but the page crept through the darkness without deigning a reply. A ball whizzed through his hat, but did not check his progress. Availing himself of projections in the wall with which he seemed well acquainted, he entered his own little room by the open casement, and throwing himself on the pallet soon slept the sleep of youth and healthy fatigue.

At Maufant matters were not quite so peaceful. The ladies there, it may be feared, were ready enough to regret the page's visit and its consequences, if not to express that regret to the old friend who might with some cause have complained.

Pretending indifference, he sate silently in a seat further from the ladies than that which he had occupied before the page's intrusion. Finding him disinclined for talk, Rose read her husband's letter without taking any further notice of him by whom it had been brought.

At length she broke the awkward silence; replacing the letter in her bosom and turning to Alain, she said:—

"I must go and get your chamber ready. I shall be back anon." And she left the room by the concealed door.

Left alone with his mistress, Alain fell into a great embarrassment. Marguerite, for her part, felt a qualm of conscience, had he only known it. But her amour-propre was, none the less, extremely hurt by his cavalier treatment of her flowers. She was by no means in love with the saucy Scot, who had indeed given her some offence by the frankness of his leave-taking, though this was a matter of which she was not likely to complain, least of all to her official adorer.