Saint Bartholomew's Eve Part 44

"You had better stay, Philip," his cousin urged. "You may be sure that this peace will be as hollow as those which preceded it. There will never be a lasting one until we have taken Paris, and taught the bloodthirsty mob there that it is not only women and children who profess the reformed religion, but men who have swords in their hands and can use them."

"If the troubles break out again, I shall hasten back, Francois; indeed, I think that in any case I shall return for a while, ere long. I do not see what I could do at home. My good uncle Gaspard has been purchasing land for me, but I am too young to play the country gentleman."

"Nonsense, Philip. There have been plenty of young n.o.bles in our ranks who, if your seniors in years, look no older than you do, and are greatly your inferiors in strength. They are feudal lords on their estates, and none deem them too young."

"Because they have always been feudal n.o.bles, Francois. I go back to a place where I was, but three years ago, a boy at school. My comrades there are scarcely grown out of boyhood. It will seem to them ridiculous that I should return Sir Philip Fletcher; and were I to set up as a country squire, they would laugh in my face. Until I am at least of age, I should not dream of this; and five-and-twenty would indeed be quite time for me to settle down there.

"Here it is altogether different. I was introduced as your cousin, and as a son of one of n.o.ble French family; and to our friends here it is no more remarkable that I should ride behind Coligny, and talk with the princes of Navarre and Conde, than that you should do so. But at home it would be different; and I am sure that my father and mother, my uncle and aunt will agree with me that it is best I should not settle down, yet. Therefore I propose, in any case, to return soon.

"I agree with you there will be troubles again here, before long.

If not, there is likely enough to be war with Spain, for they say Philip is furious at toleration having been granted to the Huguenots; and in that case there will be opportunities for us, and it will be much pleasanter fighting against Spaniards than against Frenchmen.

"If there are neither fresh troubles here, nor war with Spain, I shall go and join the Dutch in their struggle against the Spaniards. Prince Louis of Na.s.sau told me that he would willingly have me to ride behind him; and the Prince of Orange, to whom the Admiral presented me, also spoke very kindly. They, like you, are fighting for the reformed faith and freedom of wors.h.i.+p and, cruel as are the persecutions you have suffered in France, they are as nothing to the wholesale ma.s.sacres by Alva."

"In that case, Philip, I will not try to detain you; but at any rate, wait a few months before you take service in Holland, and pay us another visit before you decide upon doing so."

Philip journeyed quietly across the north of France, and took pa.s.sage to Dover for himself and his horses. Pierre accompanied him, taking it so greatly to heart, when he spoke of leaving him, behind that Philip consented to keep him; feeling, indeed, greatly loath to part from one who had, for three years, served him so well. The two men-at-arms were transferred to Francois' troop, both being promised that, if Philip rode to the wars again in France, they and their comrades now at Laville should accompany him.

From Dover Philip rode to Canterbury. He saw in the streets he pa.s.sed through many faces he knew, among them some of his former schoolfellows; and he wondered to himself that these were so little changed, while he was so altered that none recognized, in the handsomely dressed young cavalier, the lad they had known; although several stopped to look at, and remark on, the splendid horses ridden by the gentleman and his attendant.

He drew rein in front of Gaspard Vaillant's large establishment and, dismounting, gave his reins to Pierre and entered. He pa.s.sed straight through the shop into the merchant's counting house.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Gaspard Vaillant gets a surprise.]

Gaspard looked up in surprise, at the entry of a gentleman unannounced; looked hard at his visitor, and then uttered his name and, rus.h.i.+ng forward, embraced him warmly.

"I can hardly believe it is you," he exclaimed, holding Philip at arm's length and gazing up in his face. "Why, you have grown a veritable giant; and as fine a man as your father was, when I first knew him; and you have returned Sir Philip, too. I don't know that I was ever so pleased as when you sent me the news. I gave a holiday to all the workmen, and we had a great fete.

"But of course, you cannot stop now. You will be wanting to go up to your father and mother. Run upstairs and embrace Marie. We will not keep you at present, but in an hour we will be up with you."

In a minute or two Philip ran down again.

"Pardieu, but you are well mounted, Philip," the merchant said, as he sprang into the saddle. "These are the two horses, I suppose, you told us about in your letters.

"And is this Pierre, who saved your life when you were captured at Agen?"

"And a good many other times, uncle, by always managing to get hold of a fat pullet when we were pretty near starving. I was always afraid that, sooner or later, I should lose him; and that I should find him, some morning or other, dangling from a tree to which the provost marshal had strung him up."

"Then I shall see you in an hour."

And Philip galloped off to the farm.

The delight of Philip's parents, as he rode up to the house, was great indeed. Philip saw, before he had been at home an hour, that they were animated by somewhat different feelings. His mother was full of grat.i.tude, at his preservation through many dangers; and was glad that he had been able to do some service to her persecuted co-religionists--the fact that he had won great personal credit, and had received the honour of knighthood at the hands of Coligny himself, weighed as nothing in her eyes. It was otherwise with his father. He was very proud that his boy had turned out a worthy descendant of the fighting Kentish stock; and that he had shown, in half-a-dozen fights against heavy odds, a courage as staunch as that which his forefathers had exhibited at Cressy, Poitiers, and Agincourt.

"Good blood tells, my boy," he said; "and you must have shown them a rare sample of what an Englishman can do, before they knighted you. I would rather you had won it in an English battle, but all admit that there is no more capable chief in Europe than the Huguenot Admiral. Certainly there are no English commanders of fame or repute to compare with him; though if we ever get to blows with the Spanish, we shall soon find men, I warrant me, who will match the best of them.

"There was a deal of talk in Canterbury, I can tell you, when the news came home; and many refugees who came through the town declared that they had heard your name among those of the n.o.bles who rode with the Admiral, and the brave La Noue. Indeed, there are two families settled here who fled from Niort, and these have told how you and your cousin saved them from the Catholics.

"I warrant you they have told the tale often enough since they have come here; and it has made quite a stir in Canterbury, and there is not a week pa.s.ses without some of your old school friends, who used to come up here with you, running up to ask the last news of you, and to hear your letters read; and it has been a pleasure to me to read them, lad, and to see how they opened their eyes when they heard that the Queen of Navarre and her son had given you presents, and that you often rode with the young prince, and his cousin Conde.

"You have changed, Philip, mightily; not in your face, for I see but little alteration there, but in your manner and air. The boys did not seem to understand how you, whom they looked on as one of themselves, could be riding to battle with n.o.bles and talking with princes; but I think they will understand better, when they see you. You look almost too fine for such simple people as we are, Philip; though I do not say your clothes are not of sombre hues, as might be expected from one fighting in the Huguenot ranks."

"I am sure, father," Philip laughed, "there is nothing fine about me. I have gained knighthood, it is true; but a poorer knight never sat in saddle, seeing that I have neither a square yard of land nor a penny piece of my own, owing everything to the kindness of my good uncle, and yourself."

"I must go out tomorrow morning, Philip, and look at those horses of yours. They must be rare beasts, from what you say of them."

"That are they, father. Methinks I like the one I bought at Roch.e.l.le even better than that which the Queen of Navarre bestowed upon me; but I grieved sorely over the death of Victor, the horse Francois gave me. I was riding him at the fight of Moncontour, and he was shot through the head with a ball from a German arquebus."

Pierre had, as soon as they arrived, been welcomed and made much of by Philip's mother; and was speedily seated in the post of honour in the kitchen, where he astonished the French servants with tales of his master's adventures, with many surprising additions which had but slight basis of fact.

Gaspard Vaillant and his wife thought that Philip's parents would like to have him, for a time, to themselves; and did not come up for two or three hours after he had arrived.

"You will admit, John, that my plan has acted rarely," the merchant said, when he was seated; "and that, as I prophesied, it has made a man of him. What would he have been, if he had stayed here?"

"He would, I hope, brother Gaspard," Lucie said gravely, "have been what he is now--a gentleman."

"No doubt, Lucie. He promised as much as that, before he went; but he is more than that now. He has been the companion of n.o.bles, and has held his own with them; and if he should go to court, now, he would do honour to your family and his, though he rubbed shoulders with the best of them.

"And now, what are you thinking of doing next, Philip? You will hardly care to settle down among us here, after such a life as you have led for the last three years."

Philip repeated the views he had expressed to Francois de Laville, and his plans were warmly approved by his uncle and father; though his mother folded her hands, and shook her head sadly.

"The lad is right, Lucie," the merchant said.

"He is lord now of the Holford estates--for the deeds are completed and signed, Philip, making them over to you. But I agree heartily with your feeling that you are too young, yet, to a.s.sume their masters.h.i.+p. I have a good steward there looking after things, seeing that all goes well, and that the house is kept in order. But it is best, as you say, that a few years should pa.s.s before you go to reside there. We need not settle, for a time, whether you shall return to France, or go to see service with those st.u.r.dy Dutchmen against the Spaniards. But I should say that it is best you should go where you have already made a name, and gained many friends.

"There is no saying, yet, how matters will go there. Charles is but a puppet in the hands of Catherine de Medici; and with the pope, and Philip of Spain, and the Guises always pus.h.i.+ng her on, she will in time persuade the king, who at present earnestly wishes for peace, to take fresh measures against the Huguenots. She is never happy unless she is scheming, and you will see she will not be long before she begins to make trouble, again."

The news spread quickly through Canterbury that Philip Fletcher had returned, and the next day many of his old friends came up to see him. At first they were a little awed by the change that had come over him, and one or two of them even addressed him as Sir Philip.

But the shout of laughter, with which he received this well-meant respect, showed them that he was their old schoolfellow still; and soon set them at their ease with him.

"We didn't think, Philip," one of them said, "when you used to take the lead in our fights with the boys of the town, that you would be so soon fighting in earnest, in France; and that in three years you would have gained knighthood."

"I did not think so myself, Archer. You used to call me Frenchie, you know; but I did not think, at the time, that I was likely ever to see France. I should like to have had my old band behind me, in some of the fights we had there. I warrant you would have given as hard knocks as you got, and would have held your own there, as well as you did many a time in the fights in the Cloisters.

"Let us go and lie down under the shade of that tree, there. It used to be our favourite bank, you know, in hot weather; and you shall ask as many questions as you like, and I will answer as best I can."

"And be sure, Philip, to bring all your friends in to supper," John Fletcher said. "I warrant your mother will find plenty for them to eat. She never used to have any difficulty about that, in the old times; and I don't suppose their appet.i.tes are sharper, now, than they were then."

Philip spent six months at home. A few days after his return many of the country gentry, who had not known John Fletcher, called on Philip, as one who had achieved a reputation that did honour to the county--for every detail of the Huguenot struggle had been closely followed, in England; and more than one report had been brought over, by emigres, of the bravery of a young Englishman who was held in marked consideration by Admiral Coligny, and had won a name for himself, even among the n.o.bles and gentlemen who rode with that das.h.i.+ng officer De La Noue, whose fame was second only to that of the Admiral. Walsingham, the English amba.s.sador at Paris, had heard of him from La Noue himself, when he was a prisoner there; and mentioned him in one of his despatches, saying that it was this gentleman who had been chosen, by Coligny, to carry important despatches both to the Queen of Navarre and the Duc de Deux-Ponts, and had succeeded admirably in both these perilous missions; and that he had received knighthood, at the hands of the Admiral, for the valour with which he had covered the retreat at the battle of Jarnac.

Philip was, at first, disposed to meet these advances coldly.

"They have not recognized you or my mother, father, as being of their own rank."

"Nor have we been, Philip. I am but a petty landowner, while it is already known that you are the owner of a considerable estate; and have gained consideration and credit, and as a knight have right to precedence over many of them. If you had intended to settle in France, you could do as you like as to accepting their courtesies; but as it is, it is as well that you should make the acquaintance of those with whom you will naturally a.s.sociate, when you take up your residence on the estate your uncle has bought for you.

"Had your mother and I a grievance against them, it might be different; but we have none. We Fletchers have been yeomen here for many generations. In our own rank, we esteem ourselves as good as the best; but we never thought of pus.h.i.+ng ourselves out of our own station, and in the ordinary course of things you would have lived and died as your fathers have done. The change has come about, first through my marrying a French wife of n.o.ble blood, though with but a small share of this world's goods; secondly through her sister's husband making a large fortune in trade, and adopting you as his heir; and thirdly, through your going out to your mother's relations, and distinguis.h.i.+ng yourself in the war. Thus you stand in an altogether different position to that which I held.