‘Poor mother.’
‘You may well pity her, Madame. She writes to me that if Arthur had returned at once from Preston, as my Lord advised, all would have been passed over as a schoolboy frolic; and, indeed, he has never been attainted; but there is nothing that his eldest brother, Lord Burnside as they call him, dreads so much as that it should be known that one of his family was engaged in the campaign, or that he is keeping such ill company as we are. Therefore, at her request, we have never called him Hope, but let him go by our name of Maxwell, which is his by baptism; and now she tells me that if he could make his way to Scotland, not as if coming from Paris or Bar-le-Duc, but merely as if travelling on the Continent, his brother would consent to his return.’
‘Would she be willing that he should live under the usurper?’
‘Madame, to tell you the truth,’ said Lady Nithsdale, ‘the Lady Hope is not one to heed the question of usurpers, so long as her son is safe and a good lad. Nay, for my part, we all lived peaceably and happily enough under Queen Anne; and by all I hear, so they still do at home under the Elector of Hanover.’
‘The Regent has acknowledged him,’ put in the French lady.
‘Well,’ said the poor exile, ‘I know my Lord felt that it was his duty to obey the summons of his lawful sovereign, and that, as he said when he took up arms, one can only do one’s duty and take the consequences; but oh! when I look at the misery and desolation that has come of it, when I think of the wives not so happy as I am, when I see my dear Lord wearing out his life in banishment, and think of our dear home and our poor people, I am tempted to wonder whether it were indeed a duty, or whether there were any right to call on brave men without a more steadfast purpose not to abandon them!’
‘It would have been very different if the Duke of Berwick had led the way,’ observed Madame de Bourke. ‘Then my husband would have gone, but, being French subjects, honour stayed both him and the Duke as long as the Regent made no move.’ The good lady, of course, thought that the Marshal Duke and her own Count must secure victory; but Lady Nithsdale was intent on her own branch of the subject, and did not pursue ‘what might have been.’
‘After all,’ she said, ‘poor Arthur, at fourteen, could have no true political convictions. He merely fled because he was harshly treated, heard his grandfather branded as a traitor, and had an enthusiasm for my husband, who had been kind to him. It was a mere boy’s escapade, and if he had returned home when my Lord bade him, it would only have been remembered as such. He knows it now, and I frankly tell you, Madame, that what he has seen of our exiled court has not increased his ardour in the cause.’
‘Alas, no,’ said Madame de Bourke. ‘If the Chevalier de St. George were other than he is, it would be easier to act in his behalf.’
‘And you agree with me, Madame,’ continued the visitor, ‘that nothing can be worse or more hopeless for a youth than the life to which we are constrained here, with our whole shadow of hope in intrigue; and for our men, no occupation worthy of their sex. We women are not so ill off, with our children and domestic affairs; but it breaks my heart to see brave gentlemen’s lives thus wasted. We have done our best for Arthur. He has studied with one of our good clergy, and my Lord himself has taught him to fence; but we cannot treat him any longer as a boy, and I know not what is to be his future, unless we can return him to his own country.’
‘Our army,’ suggested Madame de Bourke.
‘Ah! but he is Protestant.’
‘A heretic!’ exclaimed the lady, drawing herself up. ‘But—’
‘Oh, do not refuse me on that account. He is a good lad, and has lived enough among Catholics to keep his opinions in the background. But you understand that it is another reason for wishing to convey him, if not to Scotland, to some land like Sweden or Prussia, where his faith would not be a bar to his promotion.’
‘What is it you would have me do?’ said Madame de Bourke, more coldly.
‘If Madame would permit him to be included in her passport, as about to join the Ambassador’s suite, and thus conduct him to Sweden; Lady Hope would find means to communicate with him from thence, the poor young man would be saved from a ruined career, and the heart of the widow and mother would bless you for ever.
Madame de Bourke was touched, but she was a prudent woman, and paused to ask whether the youth had shown any tendency to run into temptation, from which Lady Nithsdale wished to remove him.
‘Oh no,’ she answered; ‘he was a perfectly good docile lad, though high-spirited, submissive to the Earl, and a kind playfellow to her little girls; it was his very excellence that made it so unfortunate that he should thus be stranded in early youth in consequence of one boyish folly.’
The Countess began to yield. She thought he might go as secretary to her Lord, and she owned that if he was a brave young man, he would be an addition to her little escort, which only numbered two men besides her brother-in-law, the Abbé, who was of almost as little account as his young nephew. ‘But I should warn you, Madame,’ added Madame de Bourke, ‘that it may be a very dangerous journey. I own to you, though I would not tell my poor mother, that my heart fails me when I think of it, and were it not for the express commands of their father, I would not risk my poor children on it.’
‘I do not think you will find Sweden otherwise than a cheerful and pleasant abode,’ said Lady Nithsdale.
‘Ah! if we were only in Sweden, or with my husband, all would be well!’ replied the other lady; ‘but we have to pass through the mountains, and the Catalans are always ill-affected to us French.’
‘Nay; but you are a party of women, and belong to an ambassador!’ was the answer.
‘What do those robbers care for that? We are all the better prey for them! I have heard histories of Spanish cruelty and lawlessness that would make you shudder! You cannot guess at the dreadful presentiments that have haunted me ever since I had my husband’s letter.’
‘There is danger everywhere, dear friend,’ said Lady Nithsdale kindly; ‘but God finds a way for us through all.’
‘Ah! you have experienced it,’ said Madame de Bourke. ‘Let us proceed to the affairs. I only thought I should tell you the truth.’
Lady Nithsdale answered for the courage of her protégé, and it was further determined that he should be presented to her that evening by the Earl, at the farewell reception which Madame de Varennes was to hold on her daughter’s behalf, when it could be determined in what capacity he should be named in the passport.
Estelle, who had been listening with all her ears, and trying to find a character in Fénelon’s romance to be represented by Arthur Hope, now further heard it explained that the party were to go southward to meet her father at one of the Mediterranean ports, as the English Government were so suspicious of Jacobites that he did not venture on taking the direct route by sea, but meant to travel through Germany. Madame de Bourke expected to meet her brother at Avignon, and to obtain his advice as to her further route.
Estelle heard this with great satisfaction. ‘We shall go to the Mediterranean Sea and be in danger,’ she said to herself, unfolding the map at the beginning of her Télémaque; ‘that is quite right! Perhaps we shall see Calypso’s island.’
She begged hard to be allowed to sit up that evening to see the hero of the escape from the Tower of London, as well as the travelling companion destined for her, and she prevailed, for mamma pronounced that she had been very sage and reasonable all day, and the grandmamma, who was so soon to part with her, could refuse her nothing. So she was full dressed, with hair curled, and permitted to stand by the tall high-backed chair where the old lady sat