London Pride by M. E. Braddon

M >> M. E. Braddon >> London Pride

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There were musicians in her ladyship's household--youths who played
lute and viol, and sang the dainty, meaningless songs of the latest
ballad-mongers very prettily. The warm weather, which had a bad effect
upon the bills of mortality, was so far advantageous that it allowed these
gentlemen to sing in the garden while the family were at supper, or on
the river while the family were taking their evening airing. Their newest
performance was an arrangement of Lord Dorset's lines--"To all you ladies
now on land," set as a round. There could scarcely be anything prettier
than the dying fall of the refrain that ended every verse:--

"With a fa, la, la,
Perhaps permit some happier man
To kiss your hand or flirt your fan,
With a fa, la, la."

The last lines died away in the distance of the moonlit garden, as the
singers slowly retired, while Henri de Malfort illustrated that final
couplet with Hyacinth's fan, as he sat beside her.

"Music, and moonlight, and a garden. You might fancy yourself amidst the
grottoes and terraces of St. Germain."

"I note that whenever there is anything meritorious in our English life
Malfort is reminded of France, and when he discovers any obnoxious feature
in our manners or habits he expatiates on the vast difference between the
two nations," said his lordship.

"Dear Fareham, I am a human being. When I am in England I remember all I
loved in my own country. I must return to it before I shall understand the
worth of all I leave here--and the understanding may be bitter. Call your
singers back, and let us have those two last verses again. 'Tis a fine
tune, and your fellows perform it with sweetness and brio."

The song was new. The victory which it celebrated was fresh in the minds
of men. The disgrace of later Dutch experiences--the ships in the Nore
ravaging and insulting--was yet to come. England still believed her
floating castles invincible.

To Angela's mind the life at Chilton was full of change and joyous
expectancy. No hour of the day but offered some variety of recreation, from
battledore and shuttlecock in the _plaisance_ to long days with the hounds
or the hawks. Angela learnt to ride in less than a month, instructed by the
stud-groom, a gentleman of considerable importance in the household; an old
campaigner, who had groomed Fareham's horses after many a battle, and
many a skirmish, and had suffered scant food and rough quarters without
murmuring; and also with considerable assistance and counsel from Lord
Fareham, and occasional lectures from Papillon, who was a Diana at ten
years old, and rode with her father in the first flight. Angela was soon
equal to accompanying her sister in the hunting-field, for Hyacinth liked
following the chase after the French rather than the English fashion,
affecting no ruder sport than to wait at an opening of the wood, or on
the crest of a common, to see hounds and riders sweep by; or, favoured
by chance now and then, to signal the villain's whereabouts by a lace
handkerchief waved high above her head. This was how a beautiful lady who
had hunted in the forests of St. Germain and Fontainebleau understood
sport; and such performances as this Angela found easy and agreeable. They
had many cavaliers who came to talk with them for a few minutes, to tell
them what was doing or not doing yonder where the hounds were hidden in
thicket or coppice; but Henri de Malfort was their most constant attendant.
He rarely left them, and dawdled through the earlier half of an October
day, walking his horse from point to point, or dismounting at sheltered
corners to stand and talk at Lady Fareham's side, with a patience that made
Angela wonder at the contrast between English headlong eagerness, crashing
and splashing through hedge and brook, and French indifference.

"I have not Fareham's passion for mud," he explained to her, when she
remarked upon his lack of interest in the chase, even when the music of the
hounds was ringing through wood and valley, now close beside them, anon
diminishing in the distance, thin in the thin air. "If he comes not home
at dark plastered with mire from boots to eyebrows he will cry, like
Alexander, 'I have lost a day.'"

Partridge-hawking in the wide fields between Chilton and Nettlebed was more
to Malfort's taste, and it was a sport for which Lady Fareham expressed a
certain enthusiasm, and for which she attired herself to the perfection of
picturesque costume. Her hunting-coats were marvels of embroidery on atlas
and smooth cloth; but her smartest velvet and brocade she kept for the
sunny mornings, when, with hooded peregrine on wrist, she sallied forth
intent on slaughter, Angela, Papillon, and De Malfort for her _cortege_, an
easy-paced horse to amble over the grass with her, and the Dutch falconer
to tell her the right moment at which to slip her falcon's hood.

The nuns at the Ursuline Convent would scarcely have recognised their
quondam pupil in the girl on the grey palfrey, whose hair flew loose under
a beaver hat, mingling its tresses with the long ostrich plume, whose
trimly fitting jacket had a masculine air which only accentuated the
womanliness of the fair face above it, and whose complexion, somewhat too
colourless within the convent walls, now glowed with a carnation that
brightened and darkened the large grey eyes into new beauty.

That open-air life was a revelation to the cloister-bred girl. Could this
earth hold greater bliss than to roam at large over spacious gardens,
to cross the river, sculling her boat with strong hands, with her niece
Henriette, otherwise Papillon, sitting in the stern to steer, and scream
instructions to the novice in navigation; and then to lose themselves in
the woods on the further shore, to wander in a labyrinth of reddening
beeches, and oaks on which the thick foliage still kept its dusky green; to
emerge upon open lawns where the pale gold birches looked like fairy trees,
and where amber and crimson toadstools shone like jewels on the skirts of
the dense undergrowth of holly and hawthorn? The liberty of it all, the
delicious feeling of freedom, the release from convent rules and convent
hours, bells ringing for chapel, bells ringing for meals, bells ringing
to mark the end of the brief recreation--a perpetual ringing and drilling
which had made conventual life a dull machine, working always in the same
grooves.

Oh, this liberty, this variety, this beauty in all things around and about
her! How the young glad soul, newly escaped from prison, revelled and
expatiated in its freedom! Papillon, who at ten years old, had skimmed
the cream off all the simple pleasures, appointed herself her aunt's
instructress in most things, and taught her to row, with some help from
Lord Fareham, who was an expert waterman; and, at the same time, tried
to teach her to despise the country, and all rustic pleasures, except
hunting--although in her inmost heart the minx preferred the liberty of
Oxfordshire woods to the splendour of Fareham House, where she was cooped
in a nursery with her _gouvernante_ for the greater part of her time, and
was only exhibited like a doll to her mother's fine company, or seated upon
a cushion to tinkle a saraband and display her precocious talent on the
guitar, which she played almost as badly as Lady Fareham herself, at whose
feeble endeavours even the courteous De Malfort laughed.

Never was sister kinder than Hyacinth, impelled by that impulsive sweetness
which was her chief characteristic, and also, it might be, moved to lavish
generosity by some scruples of conscience with regard to her grandmother's
will. Her first business was to send for the best milliner in Oxford, a
London Madam who had followed her court customers to the university town,
and to order everything that was beautiful and seemly for a young person of
quality.

"I implore you not to make me too fine, dearest," pleaded Angela, who was
more horrified at the milliner's painted face and exuberant figure than
charmed by the contents of the baskets which she had brought with her in
the spacious leather coach--velvets and brocades, hoods and gloves, silk
stockings, fans, perfumes and pulvilios, sweet-bags and scented boxes--all
of which the woman spread out upon Lady Fareham's embroidered satin bed,
for the young lady's admiration. "I pray you remember that I am accustomed
to have only two gowns--a black and a grey. You will make me afraid of my
image in the glass if you dress me like--like--"

She glanced from her sister's _decollete_ bodice to the far more appalling
charms of the milliner, which a gauze kerchief rather emphasised than
concealed, and could find no proper conclusion for her sentence.

"Nay, sweetheart, let not thy modesty take fright. Thou shalt be clad as
demurely as the nun thou hast escaped being--

'And sable stole of Cyprus lawn
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.'

We will have no blacks, but as much decency as you choose. You will mark
the distinction between my sister and your maids of honour, Mrs. Lewin. She
is but a _debutante_ in our modish world, and must be dressed as modestly
as you can contrive, to be consistent with the fashion."

"Oh, my lady, I catch your ladyship's meaning, and your ladyship's
instructions shall be carried out as far as can be without making a savage
of the young lady. I know what some young ladies are when they first come
to Court. I had fuss enough with Miss Hamilton before I could persuade her
to have her bodice cut like a Christian. And even the beautiful Miss Brooks
were all for high tuckers and modesty-pieces when I began to make for them;
but they soon came round. And now with my Lady Denham it is always, 'Gud,
Lewin, do you call that the right cut for a bosom? Udsbud, woman, you
haven't made the curve half deep enough.' And with my Lady Chesterfield it
is, 'Sure, if they say my legs are thick and ugly, I'll let them know my
shoulders are worth looking at. Give me your scissors, creature,' and then
with her own delicate hand she will scoop me a good inch off the satin,
till I am fit to swoon at seeing the cold steel against her milk-white
flesh."

Mrs. Lewin talked with but little interruption for the best part of an hour
while measuring her new customer, showing her pattern-book, and exhibiting
the ready-made wares she had brought, the greater number of which Hyacinth
insisted on buying for Angela--who was horrified at the slanderous
innuendoes that dropped in casual abundance from the painted lips of the
milliner; horrified, too, that her sister could loll back in her armchair
and laugh at the woman's coarse and malignant talk.

"Indeed, sister, you are far too generous, and you have overpowered me with
gifts," she said, when the milliner had curtsied herself out of the room;
"for I fear my own income will never pay for all these costly things. Three
pounds, I think she said, was the price of the Mazarine hood alone--and
there are stockings and gloves innumerable."

"Mon Ange, while you are with me your own income is but for charities
and vails. I will have it spent for nothing else. You know how rich the
Marquise has made me--while I believe Fareham is a kind of modern Croesus,
though we do not boast of his wealth, for all that is most substantial
in his fortune comes from his mother, whose father was a great merchant
trading with Spain and the Indies, all through James's reign, and luckier
in the hunt for gold than poor Raleigh. Never must you talk to me of
obligation. Are we not sisters, and was it not a mere accident that made me
the elder, and Madame de Montrond's _protegee_?"

"I have no words to thank you for so much kindness. I will only say I am so
happy here that I could never have believed there was such full content on
this sinful earth."

"Wait till we are in London, Angelique. Here we endure existence. It is
only in London that we live."

"Nay, I believe the country will always please me better than the town.
But, sister, do you not hate that Mrs. Lewin--that horrid painted face and
evil tongue?"

"My dearest child, one hates a milliner for the spoiling of a bodice or the
ill cut of a sleeve--not for her character. I believe Mrs. Lewin's is among
the worst, and that she has had as many intrigues as Lady Castlemaine. As
for her painting, doubtless she does that to remind her customers that she
sells alabaster powder and ceruse."

"Nay, if she wants to disgust them with painted faces she has but to show
her own."

"I grant she lays the stuff on badly. I hope, if I live to have as many
wrinkles, I shall fill them better than she does. Yet who can tell what a
hideous toad she might be in her natural skin? It may be Christian charity
that induces her to paint, and so to spare us the sight of a monster.
She will make thee a beauty, Ange, be sure of that. For satin or velvet,
birthday or gala gowns, nobody can beat her. The wretch has had
thousands of my money, so I ought to know. But for thy riding-habit and
hawking-jacket we want the firmer grip of a man's hand. Those must be made
by Roget."

"A Frenchman?"

"Yes, child. One only accepts British workmanship when a Parisian artist is
not to be had. Clever as Lewin is, if I want to eclipse my dearest enemy
on any special occasion I send Manningtree across the Channel, or ask De
Malfort to let his valet--who spends his life in transit like a king's
messenger--bring me the latest confection from the Rue de Richelieu."

"What infinite trouble about a gown--and for you who would look lovely in
anything!"

"Tush, child! You have never seen me in 'anything.' If ever you should
surprise me in an ill gown you will see how much the feathers make the
bird. Poets and play-wrights may pretend to believe that we need no
embellishment from art; but the very men who write all that romantic
nonsense are the first to court a well-dressed woman. And there are few of
them who could calculate with any exactness the relation of beauty to its
surroundings. That is why women go deep into debt to their milliners,
and would sooner be dead in well-made graveclothes than alive in an
old-fashioned mantua."

Angela could not be in her sister's company for a month without discovering
that Lady Fareham's whole life was given up to the worship of the trivial.
She was kind, she was amiable, generous, even to recklessness. She was
not irreligious, heard Mass and went to confession as often as the hard
conditions of an alien and jealously treated Church would allow, had never
disputed the truth of any tenet that was taught her--but of serious views,
of an earnest consideration of life and death, husband and children,
Hyacinth Fareham was as incapable as her ten-year-old daughter. Indeed, it
sometimes seemed to Angela that the child had broader and deeper thoughts
than the mother, and saw her surroundings with a shrewder and clearer eye,
despite the natural frivolity of childhood, and the exuberance of a fine
physique.

It was not for the younger sister to teach the elder, nor did Angela deem
herself capable of teaching. Her nature was thoughtful and earnest: but she
lacked that experience of life which can alone give the thinker a broad
and philosophic view of other people's conduct. She was still far from the
stage of existence in which to understand all is to pardon all.

She beheld the life about her with wonder and bewilderment. It was so
pleasant, so full of beauty and variety; yet things were said and done that
shocked her. There was nothing in her sister's own behaviour to alarm her
modesty; but to hear her sister talk of other women's conduct outraged all
her ideas of decency and virtue. If there were really such wickedness in
the world, women so shameless and vile, was it right that good women should
know of them, that pure lips should speak of their iniquity?

She was still more shocked when Hyacinth talked of Lady Castlemaine with a
good-humoured indulgence.

"There is something fine about her," Lady Fareham said one day, "in spite
of her tempers and pranks."

"What!" cried Angela, aghast, having thought these creatures unrecognised
by any honest woman, "do you know her--that Lady Castlemaine of whom you
have told me such dreadful things?"

"C'est vrai. J'en ai dit des raides. Mon Ange, in town one must needs know
everybody, though I doubt that after not returning her visit t'other day, I
shall be in her black books, and in somebody else's. She has never been one
of my intimates. If I were often at Whitehall, I should have to be friends
with her. But Fareham is jealous of Court influences; and I am only allowed
to appear on gala nights--perhaps not a half-dozen times in a season. There
is a distinction in not showing one's self often; but it is provoking to
hear of the frolics and jollities which go on every day and every night,
and from which I am banished. It mattered little while the Queen-mother
was at Somerset House, for her Court ranked higher--and was certainly more
refined in its splendour--than her son's ragamuffin herd. But now she is
gone, I shall miss our intellectual _milieu_, and wish myself in the Rue
St. Thomas du Louvre, where the Hotel du Rambouillet, even in its decline,
offers a finer style of company than anything you will see in England."

"Sister, I fear you left half your heart in France."

"Nay, sweet; perhaps some of it has followed me," answered Hyacinth, with
a blush and an enigmatic smile. "_Peste_! I am not a woman to make a fuss
about hearts! There is not a grain of tragedy in my composition. I am like
that girl in the play we saw at Oxford t'other day. Fletcher's was it, or
Shakespeare's? 'A star danced, and under that was I born.' Yes, I was born
under a dancing star; and I shall never break my heart--for love."

"But you regret Paris?"

"_Helas_! Paris means my girlhood; and were you to take me back there
to-morrow you could not make me seventeen again--and so where's the use? I
should see wrinkles in the faces of my friends; and should know that they
were seeing the same ugly lines in mine. Indeed, Ange, I think it is my
youth I sigh for rather than the friends I lived with. They were such merry
days: battles and sieges in the provinces, parliaments disputing here and
there; Conde in and out of prison--now the King's loyal servant, now in
arms against him; swords clashing, cannon roaring under our very windows;
alarm bells pealing, cries of fire, barricades in the streets; and amidst
it all, lute and theorbo, _bouts rimes_ and madrigals, dancing and
play-acting, and foolish practical jests! One could not take the smallest
step in life but one of the wits would make a song about it. Oh, it was a
boisterous time! And we were all mad, I think; so lightly did we reckon
life and death, even when the cannon slew some of our noblest, and the
finest saloons were hung with black. You have done less than live,
Angelique, not to have lived in that time."

Hyacinth loved to ring the changes on her sister's name. Angela was too
English, and sounded too much like the name of a nun; but Angelique
suggested one of the most enchanting personalities in that brilliant
circle on which Lady Fareham so often rhapsodised. This was the beautiful
Angelique Paulet, whose father invented the tax called by his name, La
Paulette--a financial measure, which was the main cause of the first Fronde
war.

"I only knew her when she was between fifty and sixty," said Lady Fareham,
"but she hardly looked forty; and she was still handsome, in spite of her
red hair. _Trop dore_, her admirers called it; but, my love, it was as red
as that scullion's we saw in the poultry yard yesterday. She was a reigning
beauty at three Courts, and had a crowd of adorers when she was only
fourteen. Ah, Papillon, you may open your eyes! What will you be at
fourteen? Still playing with your babies, or mad about your shock dogs, I
dare swear!"

"I gave my babies to the housekeeper's grand-daughter last year," said
Papillon, much offended, "when father gave me the peregrine. I only care
for live things now I am old."

"And at fourteen thou wilt be an awkward, long-legged wench that will
frighten away all my admirers, yet not be worth the trouble of a compliment
on thine own account."

"I want no such stuff!" cried Papillon. "Do you think I would like a French
fop always at my elbow as Monsieur de Malfort is ever at yours? I love
hunting and hawking, and a man that can ride, and shoot, and row, and
fight, like father or Sir Denzil Warner--not a man who thinks more of his
ribbons and periwig and cannon-sleeves than of killing his fox or flying
his falcon."

"Oh, you are beginning to have opinions!" sighed Hyacinth. "I am indeed an
old woman! Go and find yourself something to play with, alive or dead. You
are vastly too clever for my company."

"I'll go and saddle Brownie. Will you come for a ride, Aunt Angy?"

"Yes, dear, if her ladyship does not want me at home."

"Her ladyship knows your heart is in the fields and woods. Yes, sweetheart,
saddle your pony, and order your aunt's horse and a pair of grooms to take
care of you."

The child ran off rejoicing.

"Precocious little devil! She will pick up all our jargon before she is in
her teens."

"Dear sister, if you talk so indiscreetly before her----"

"Indiscreet! Am I really so indiscreet? That is Fareham's word. I believe
I was born so. But I was telling you about your namesake, Mademoiselle
Paulet. She began to reign when Henri was king, and no doubt he was one of
her most ardent admirers. Don't look frightened! She was always a model of
virtue. Mademoiselle Scudery has devoted pages to painting her perfections
under an Oriental alias. She sang, she danced, she talked divinely. She did
everything better than everybody else. Priests and Bishops praised her. And
after changes and losses and troubles, she died far from Paris, a spinster,
nearly sixty years old. It was a paltry finish to a life that began in a
blaze of glory."

CHAPTER VIII.

SUPERIOR TO FASHION.

At Oxford Angela was so happy as to be presented to Catharine of Braganza,
a little dark woman, whose attire still bore some traces of its original
Portuguese heaviness; such a dress--clumsy, ugly, infinitely rich and
expensive--as one sees in old portraits of Spanish and Netherlandish
matrons, in which every elaborate detail of the costly fabric seems to have
been devised in the research of ugliness. She saw the King also; met him
casually--she walking with her brother-in-law, while Lady Fareham and her
friends ran from shop to shop in the High Street--in Magdalen College
grounds, a group of beauties and a family of spaniels fawning upon him as
he sauntered slowly, or stopped to feed the swans that swam close by
the bank, keeping pace with him, and stretching long necks in greedy
solicitation.

The loveliest woman Angela had ever seen--tall, built like a
goddess--walked on the King's right hand. She carried a heap of broken
bread in the satin petticoat which she held up over one white arm, while
with her other hand she gave the pieces one by one to the King. Angela
saw that as each hunch changed hands the royal fingers touched the lady's
tapering finger-tips and tried to detain them.

Fareham took off his hat, bowed low in a grave and stately salutation, and
passed on; but Charles called him back.

"Nay, Fareham, has the world grown so dull that you have nothing to tell us
this November morning?"

"Indeed, sir, I fear that my riverside hermitage can afford very little
news that could interest your Majesty or these ladies."

"A fox gone to ground, an otter killed among your reeds, or a hawk in the
sulks, is an event in the country. Anything would be a relief from the
weekly total of London deaths, which is our chief subject of conversation,
or the General's complaints that there is no one in town but himself to
transact business, or dismal prophecies of a Nonconformist rebellion that
is to follow the Five Mile Act."

The group of ladies stared at Angela in a smiling silence, one haughtier
than the rest standing a little aloof. She was older, and of a more
audacious loveliness than the lady who carried broken bread in her
petticoat; but she too was splendidly beautiful as a goddess on a painted
ceiling, and as much painted perhaps.

Angela contemplated her with the reverence youth gives to consummate
beauty, unaware that she was admiring the notorious Barbara Palmer.

Fareham waited, hat in hand, grave almost to sullenness. It was not for him
to do more than reply to his Majesty's remarks, nor could he retire till
dismissed.

"You have a strange face at your side, man. Pray introduce the lady,"
said the King, smiling at Angela, whose vivid blush was as fresh as Miss
Stewart's had been a year or two ago, before she had her first quarrel with
Lady Castlemaine, or rode in Gramont's glass coach, or gave her classic
profile to embellish the coin of the realm--the "common drudge 'tween man
and man."

"I have the honour to present my sister-in-law, Mistress Kirkland, to your
Majesty." The King shook hands with Angela in the easiest way, as if he had
been mortal.

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