London Pride by M. E. Braddon

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The child flung her arms round his neck and kissed him. It was her only
answer, but that mute reply was a vow.

"Thou wilt stay here till England's troubles are over, Angela, and that
base herd yonder have been trampled down. Thou wilt be happy here, and wilt
mind thy book, and be obedient to those good ladies who will teach thee;
and some day, when our country is at peace, I will come back to fetch
thee."

"Soon," murmured the child, "soon, father?"

"God grant it may be soon, my beloved! It is hard for father and children
to be scattered, as we are scattered; thy sister Hyacinth in Paris, and
thou in Flanders, and I in England. Yet it must needs be so for a while!"

"Why should not Hyacinth come to us and be reared with Angela?" asked the
reverend mother.

"Nay, madam, Hyacinth is well cared for with your sister, Madame de
Montrond. She is as dear to her maternal grandmother as this little one
here was to my good mother, whose death last year left us a house of
mourning. Hyacinth will doubtless inherit a considerable portion of Madame
de Montrond's wealth, which is not insignificant. She is being brought up
in the precincts of the Court."

"A worldly and a dangerous school for one so young," said the nun, with a
sigh. "I have heard my father talk of what life was like at the Louvre when
the Bearnais reigned there in the flower of his manhood, newly master of
Paris, flushed with hard-won victory, and but lately reconciled to the
Church."

"Methinks that great captain's court must have been laxer than that of
Queen Anne and the Cardinal. I have been told that the child-king is being
reared, as it were, in a cloister, so strict are mother and guardian. My
only fear for Hyacinth is the troubled state of the city, given over to
civil warfare only less virulent than that which has desolated England. I
hear that the Fronde is no war of epigrams and pamphlets, but that men are
as earnest and bloodthirsty as they were in the League. I shall go from
here to Paris to see my first-born before I make my way back to London."

"I question if you will find her at Paris," said the reverend mother. "I
had news from a priest in the diocese of the Coadjutor. The Queen-mother
left the city secretly with her chosen favourites in the dead of the night
on the sixth of this month, after having kept the festival of Twelfth Night
in a merry humour with her Court. Even her waiting-women knew nothing
of her plans. They went to St. Germain, where they found the chateau
unfurnished, and where all the Court had to sleep upon was a few loads of
straw. Hatred of the Cardinal is growing fiercer every day, and Paris is
in a state of siege. The Princes are siding with Mathieu Mole and his
Parliament, and the Provincial Parliaments are taking up the quarrel. God
grant that it may not be in France as it has been with you in your unhappy
England; but I fear the Spanish Queen and her Italian minister scarce know
the temper of the French people."

"Alas, good friend, we have fallen upon evil days, and the spirit of revolt
is everywhere; but if there is trouble at the French Court, there is all
the more need that I should make my way thither, be it at St. Germain or
at Paris, and so assure myself of my pretty Hyacinth's safety. She was so
sweet an infant when my good and faithful steward carried her across the
sea to Dieppe. Never shall I forget that sad moment of parting; when the
baby arms were wreathed round my sweet saint's neck; she so soon to become
again a mother, so brave and patient in her sorrow at parting with her
first-born. Ah, sister, there are moments in this life that a man must
needs remember, even amidst the wreck of his country." He dashed away a
tear or two, and then turned to his kinswoman with outstretched hands and
said, "Good night, dear and reverend mother; good night and good-bye. I
shall sleep at the nearest inn, and shall be on the road again at daybreak.
Good-bye, my soul's delight"

He clasped his daughter in his arms, with something of despair in the
fervour of his embrace, telling himself, as the soft cheek was pressed
against his own, how many years might pass ere he would again so clasp that
tender form and feel those innocent kisses on his bearded lips. She and
the elder girl were all that were left to him of love and comfort, and the
elder sister had been taken from him while she was a little child. He would
not have known her had he met her unawares; nor had he ever felt for her
such a pathetic love as for this guiltless death-angel, this baby whose
coming had ruined his life, whose love was nevertheless the only drop of
sweetness in his cup.

He plucked himself from that gentle embrace, and walked quickly to the
door.

"You will apply to me for whatever money is needed for the child's
maintenance and education," he said, and in the next moment was gone.

CHAPTER II.

WITHIN CONVENT WALLS.

More than ten years had come and gone since that bleak February evening
when Sir John Kirkland carried his little daughter to a place of safety, in
the old city of Louvain, and in all those years the child had grown like
a flower in a sheltered garden, where cold winds never come. The bud had
matured into the blossom in that mild atmosphere of piety and peace; and
now, in this fair springtide of 1660, a girlish face watched from the
convent casement for the coming of the father whom Angela Kirkland had not
looked upon since she was a child, and the sister she had never seen.

They were to arrive to-day, father and sister, on a brief visit to the
quiet Flemish city. Yonder in England there had been curious changes since
the stern Protector turned his rugged face to the wall, and laid down that
golden sceptre with which he had ruled as with a rod of iron. Kingly title
would he none; yet where kings had chastised with whips, he had chastised
with scorpions. Ireland could tell how the little finger of Cromwell had
been heavier than the arm of the Stuarts. She had trembled and had obeyed,
and had prospered under that scorpion rule, and England's armaments had
been the terror of every sea while Cromwell stood at the helm; but now that
strong brain and bold heart were in the dust, and it had taken England
little more than a year to discover that Puritanism and the Rump were a
mistake, and that to the core of her heart she was loyal to her hereditary
King.

She asked not what manner of man this hereditary ruler might be; asked not
whether he were wise or foolish, faithful or treacherous. She forgot all
of tyranny and of double-dealing she had suffered from his forbears. She
forgot even her terror of the scarlet spectre, the grim wolf of Rome, in
her disgust at Puritan fervour which had torn down altar-rails, usurped
church pulpits, destroyed the beauty of ancient cathedrals. Like a woman
or a child, she held out her arms to the unknown, in a natural recoil
from that iron rule which had extinguished her gaiety, silenced her noble
liturgy, made innocent pleasures and elegant arts things forbidden. She
wanted her churches, and her theatres, her cock-pits and taverns, and
bear-gardens and maypoles back again. She wanted to be ruled by the law,
and not by the sword; and she longed with a romantic longing for that young
wanderer who had fled from her shores in a fishing-boat, with his life in
his hand, to return in a glad procession of great ships dancing over summer
seas, eating, drinking, gaming, in a coat worth scarce thirty shillings,
and with empty pockets for his loyal subjects to make haste and fill.

Angela had the convent parlour all to herself this fair spring morning. She
was the favourite pupil of the nuns, had taken no vows, pledged herself to
no noviciate, ever mindful of her promise to her father. She had lived as
happily and as merrily in that abode of piety as she could have lived in
the finest palace in Europe. There were other maidens, daughters of the
French and Flemish nobility, who were taught and reared within those sombre
precincts, and with them she had played and worked and laboured at such
studies as became a young lady of quality. Like that fair daughter of
affliction, Henrietta of England, she had gained in education by the
troubles which had made her girlhood a time of seclusion. She had been
first the plaything of those elder girls who were finishing their education
in the convent, her childishness appealing to their love and pity; and
then, after being the plaything of the nuns and the elder pupils, she
became the favourite of her contemporaries, and in a manner their queen.
She was more thoughtful than her class-fellows, in advance of her years
in piety and intelligence; and they, knowing her sad story--how she was
severed from her country and kindred, her father a wanderer with his King,
her sister bred up at a foreign Court--had first compassionated and then
admired her. From her twelfth year upwards her intellectual superiority had
been recognised in the convent, alike by the nuns and their pupils. Her
aptitude at all learning, and her simple but profound piety, had impressed
everybody. At fourteen years of age they had christened her "the little
wonder;" but later, seeing that their praises embarrassed and even
distressed her, they had desisted from such loving flatteries, and were
content to worship her with a silent adulation.

Her father's visits to the Flemish city had been few and far apart, fondly
though he loved his motherless girl. He had been a wanderer for the most
part during those years, tossed upon troubled seas, fighting with Conde
against Mazarin and Anne of Austria, and reconciled with the Court later,
when peace was made, and his friends the Princes were forgiven; an exile
from France of his own free will when Louis banished his first cousin, the
King of England, in order to truckle to the triumphant usurper. He had led
an adventurous life, and had cared very little what became of him in a
topsy-turvy world. But now all things were changed. Richard Cromwell's
brief and irresolute rule had shattered the Commonwealth, and made
Englishmen eager for a king. The country was already tired of him whose
succession had been admitted with blank acquiescence; and Monk and the
army were soon to become masters of the situation. There was hope that the
General was rightly affected, and that the King would have his own again;
and that such of his followers as had not compounded with the Parliamentary
Commission would get back their confiscated estates; and that all who had
suffered in person or pocket for loyalty's sake would be recompensed for
their sacrifices.

It was five years since Sir John's last appearance at the convent, and
Angela's heart beat fast at the thought that he was so near. She was to see
him this very day; nay, perhaps this very hour. His coach might have passed
the gate of the town already. He was bringing his elder daughter with him,
that sister whose face she had never seen, save in a miniature, and who
was now a great lady, the wife of Baron Fareham, of Chilton Abbey, Oxon,
Fareham Park, in the County of Hants, and Fareham House, London, a nobleman
whose estates had come through the ordeal of the Parliamentary Commission
with a reasonable fine, and to whom extra favour had been shown by the
Commissioners, because he was known to be at heart a Republican. In the
mean time, Lady Fareham had a liberal income allowed her by the Marquise,
her grandmother, and she and her husband had been among the most splendid
foreigners at the French Court, where the lady's beauty and wit had placed
her conspicuously in that galaxy of brilliant women who shone and sparkled
about the sun of the European firmament--Le roi soleil, or "the King," par
excellence, who took the blazing sun for his crest. The Fronde had been a
time of pleasurable excitement to the high-spirited girl, whose mixed
blood ran like quicksilver, and who delighted in danger and party strife,
stratagem and intrigue. The story of her courage and gaiety of heart in the
siege of Paris, she being then little more than a child, had reached the
Flemish convent long after the acts recorded had been forgotten at Paris
and St. Germain.

Angela's heart beat fast at the thought of being restored to these dear
ones, were it only for a short span. They were not going to carry her away
from the convent; and, indeed, seeing that she so loved her aunt, the good
reverend mother, and that her heart cleaved to those walls and to the holy
exercises which filled so great a part of her life, her father, in replying
to a letter in which she had besought him to release her from her promise
and allow her to dedicate herself to God, had told her that, although he
could not surrender his daughter, to whom he looked for the comfort of his
closing years, he would not urge her to leave the Ursulines until he should
feel himself old and feeble, and in need of her tender care. Meanwhile she
might be a nun in all but the vows, and a dutiful niece to her kind aunt,
Mother Anastasia, whose advanced years and failing health needed all
consideration.

But now, before he went back to England, whither he hoped to accompany the
King and the Princes ere the year was much older, Sir John Kirkland was
coming to visit his younger daughter, bringing Lady Fareham, whose husband
was now in attendance upon His Majesty in Holland, where there were serious
negotiations on hand--negotiations which would have been full of peril to
the English messengers two years ago, when that excellent preacher and holy
man, Dr. Hewer, of St. Gregory, was beheaded for having intelligence with
the King, through the Marquess of Ormond.

The parlour window jutted into the square over against the town hall, and
Angela could see the whole length of the narrow street along which her
father's carriage must come.

The tall, slim figure and the fair, girlish face stood out in full relief
against the grey stone mullion, bathed in sunlight. The graceful form was
undisguised by courtly apparel. The soft brown hair fell in loose ringlets,
which were drawn back from the brow by a band of black ribbon. The girl's
gown was of soft grey woollen stuff, relieved by a cambric collar covering
the shoulders, and by cambric elbow-sleeves. A coral and silver rosary was
her only ornament; but face and form needed no aid from satins or velvets,
Venetian lace or Indian filagree.

The sweet, serious face was chiefly notable for eyes of darkest grey, under
brows that were firmly arched and almost black. The hair was a dark brown,
the complexion somewhat too pale for beauty. Indeed, that low-toned
colouring made some people blind to the fine and regular modelling of the
high-bred face; while there were others who saw no charm in a countenance
which seemed too thoughtful for early youth, and therefore lacking in one
of youth's chief attractions--gladness.

The face lighted suddenly at this moment, as four great grey Flanders
horses came clattering along the narrow street and into the square,
dragging a heavy painted wooden coach after them. The girl opened the
casement and craned out her neck to look at the arrival The coach stopped
at the convent door, and a footman alighted and rang the convent bell, to
the interested curiosity of two or three loungers upon the steps of the
town hall over the way.

Yes, it was her father, greyer but less sad of visage than at his last
visit. His doublet and cloak were handsomer than the clothes he had worn
then, though they were still of the same fashion, that English mode which
he had affected before the beginning of the troubles, and which he had
never changed.

Immediately after him there alighted a vision of beauty, the loveliest of
ladies, in sky-blue velvet and pale grey fur, and with a long white feather
encircling a sky-blue hat, and a collar of Venetian lace veiling a bosom
that scintillated with jewels.

"Hyacinth!" cried Angela, in a flutter of delight.

The portress peered at the visitors through her spy-hole, and being
satisfied that they were the expected guests, speedily opened the
iron-clamped door.

There was no one to interfere between father and daughter, sister and
sister, in the convent parlour. Angela had her dear people all to herself,
the Mother Superior respecting the confidences and outpourings of love,
which neither father nor children would wish to be witnessed even by a
kinswoman. Thus, by a rare breach of conventual discipline, Angela was
allowed to receive her guests alone.

The lay-sister opened the parlour door and ushered in the visitors, and
Angela ran to meet her father, and fell sobbing upon his breast, her face
hidden against his velvet doublet, her arms clasping his neck.

"What, mistress, hast thou so watery a welcome, now that the clouds have
passed away, and every loyal English heart is joyful?" cried Sir John, in a
voice that was somewhat husky, but with a great show of gaiety.

"Oh, sir, I have waited so long, so long for this day. Sometimes I thought
it would never come, that I should never see my dear father again."

"Poor child! it would have been only my desert hadst thou forgotten me
altogether. I might have come to you sooner, pretty one; indeed, I would
have come, only things went ill with me. I was down-hearted and hopeless
of any good fortune in a world that seemed given over to psalm-singing
scoundrels; and till the tide turned I had no heart to come nigh you. But
now fortunes are mended, the King's and mine, and you have a father once
again, and shall have a home by-and-by, the house where you were born, and
where your angel-mother made my life blessed. You are like her, Angela!"
holding back the pale face in his strong hands, and gazing upon it
earnestly. "Yes, you favour your mother; but your face is over sad for your
years. Look at your sister here! Would you not say a sunbeam had taken
woman's shape and come dancing into the room?"

Angela looked round and greeted the lady, who had stood aside while father
and daughter met. Yes, such a face suggested sunlight and summer, birds,
butterflies, all things buoyant and gladsome. A complexion of dazzling
fairness, pearly, transparent, with ever-varying carnations; eyes of
heavenliest blue, liquid, laughing, brimming with espieglerie; a slim
little nose with an upward tilt, which expressed a contemptuous gaiety, an
inquiring curiosity; a dimpled chin sloping a little towards the full round
throat; the bust and shoulders of a Venus, the waist of a sylph, set off by
the close-fitting velvet bodice, with its diamond and turquoise buttons;
hair of palest gold, fluffed out into curls that were traps for sunbeams;
hands and arms of a milky whiteness emerging from the large loose
elbow-sleeves--a radiant apparition which took Angela by surprise. She had
seen Flemish vraus in the richest attire, and among them there had been
women as handsome as Helena Forment; but this vision of a fine lady from
the court of the "roi soleil" was a revelation. Until this moment, the girl
had hardly known what grace and beauty meant.

"Come and let me hug you, my dearest Puritan," cried Hyacinth, holding out
her arms. "Why do you suffer your custodians to clothe you in that odious
grey, which puts me in mind of lank-haired psalm-singing scum, and all
their hateful works? I would have you sparkling in white satin and silver,
or blushing in brocade powdered with forget-me-nots and rosebuds. What
would Fareham say if I told him I had a Puritan in grey woollen stuff for
my sister? He sends you his love, dear, and bids me tell you there shall be
always an honoured place in our home for you, be it in England or France,
in town or country. And why should you not fill that place at once, sister?
Your education is finished, and to be sure you must be tired of these stone
walls and this sleepy town."

"No, Hyacinth, I love the convent and the friends who have made it my home.
You and Lord Fareham are very kind, but I could not leave our reverend
mother; she is not so well or so strong as she used to be, and I think she
likes to have me with her, because though she loves us all, down to the
humblest of the lay-sisters, I am of her kin, and seem nearest to her. I
don't want to forsake her; and if it was not against my father's wish I
should like to end my days in this house, and to give my thoughts to God."

"That is because thou knowest nought of the world outside, sweetheart,"
protested Hyacinth. "I admire the readiness with which folks will renounce
a banquet they have never tasted. A single day at the Louvre or the Palais
Royal would change your inclinations at once and for ever."

"She is too young for a court life, or a town life either," said Sir John.
"And I have no mind to remove her from this safe shelter till the King
shall be firm upon his throne, and our poor country shall have settled into
a stable and peaceful condition. But there must be no vows, Angela, no
renunciation of kindred and home. I look to thee for the comfort of my old
age!"

"Dear father, I will never disobey you. I shall remember always that my
first duty is to you; and when you want me, you have but to summon me; and
whether you are at home or abroad, in wealth and honour, or in exile and
poverty, I will go to you, and be glad and happy to be your daughter and
your servant."

"I knew thou wouldst, dearest. I have never forgotten how the soft little
arms clung about my neck, and how the baby lips kissed me, in this same
parlour, when my heart was weighed down by a load of iron, and there seemed
no ray of hope for England or me. You were my comforter then, and you will
be my comforter in the days to come. Hyacinth here is of the butterfly
breed. She is fair to look upon, and tender and loving; but she is ever on
the wing. And she has her husband and her children to cherish, and cannot
be burdened with the care of a broken-down greybeard."

"Broken-down! Why, you are as brave a gallant as the youngest cavalier in
the King's service," cried Hyacinth. "I would pit my father against Montagu
or Buckingham, Buckhurst or Roscommon--against the gayest, the boldest of
them all, on land or sea. Broken-down, forsooth! We will hear no such words
from you, sir, for a score of years. And now you will want all your wits to
take your proper place at Court as sage counsellor and friend of the
new King. Sure he will need his father's friends about him to teach
him state-craft--he who has led such a gay, good-for-nothing life as a
penniless rover, with scarce a sound coat to his back."

"Nay, Hyacinth, the King will have no need of us old Malignants. We have
had our day. He has shrewd Ned Hyde for counsellor, and in that one long
head there is craft enough to govern a kingdom. The new Court will be a
young Court, and the fashion of it will be new. We old fellows, who were
gallant and gay enough in the forties, when we fought against Essex and his
tawny scarves, would be but laughable figures at the Court of a young man
bred half in Paris, and steeped in French fashions and French follies. No,
Hyacinth, it is for you and your husband the new day dawns. If I get back
to my old meads and woods and the house where I was born, I will sit
quietly down in the chimney corner, and take to cattle-breeding, and a pack
of harriers, for the diversion of my declining years. And when my Angela
can make up her mind to leave her good aunt she shall keep house for me."

"I should love to be your housekeeper, dearest father. If it please Heaven
to restore my aunt to health and strength, I will go to you with a heart
full of joy," said the girl, hanging caressingly upon the old cavalier's
shoulder.

Hyacinth flitted about the room with a swift, birdlike motion, looking at
the sacred images and prints, the _tableau_ over the mantelpiece, which
told, with much flourish of penmanship, the progress of the convent pupils
in learning and domestic virtues.

"What a humdrum, dismal room!" she cried. "You should see our convent
parlours in Paris. At the Carmelites, in the Rue Saint Jacques, _par
exemple_, the Queen-mother's favourite convent, and at Chaillot, the house
founded by Queen Henrietta--such pictures, and ornaments, and embroidered
hangings, and tapestries worked by devotees. This room of yours, sister,
stinks of poverty, as your Flemish streets stink of garlic and cabbage.
Faugh! I know not which is worse!"

Having thus delivered herself of her disgust, she darted upon her younger
sister, laid her hands upon the girl's shoulders, and contemplated her with
mock seriousness.

"What a precocious young saint thou art, with no more interest in the world
outside this naked parlour than if thou wert yonder image of the Holy
Mother. Not a question of my husband, or my children, or of the last
fashion in hood and mantle, or of the new laced gloves, or the French
King's latest divinity."

"I should dearly like to see your children, Hyacinth," answered her sister.

"Ah! they are the most enchanting creatures, the girl a perpetual sunbeam,
ethereal, elfish, a being of life and movement, and with a loquacity that
never tires; the boy a lump of honey, fat, sleek, lazily beautiful. I am
never tired of admiring them, when I have time to see them. Papillon--an
old friend of mine has surnamed her Papillon because she is never
still--was five years old on March 19. We were at St. Germain on her
birthday. You should have seen the toys and trinkets and sweetmeats which
the Court showered upon her--the King and Queen, Monsieur, Mademoiselle,
the Princess Henrietta, her godmother--everybody had a gift for the
daughter of La folle Baronne Fareham. Yes, they are lovely creatures,
Angela; and I am miserable to think that it may be half a year before I see
their sweet faces again."

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