London Pride by M. E. Braddon

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

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Angela put the little prattler aside, more gently, perhaps, than the mother
had done, and passed hurriedly on to Lady Fareham's room. The door was
still locked, but she would take no denial.

"I must speak with you," she said.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE MOTIVE--MURDER.

For Lady Fareham and her sister September and October made a blank interval
in the story of life--uneventful as the empty page at the end of a chapter.
They spent those months at Fareham, a house which Hyacinth detested,
a neighbourhood where she had never condescended to make friends. She
condemned the local gentry as a collection of nobodies, and had never taken
the trouble to please the three or four great families within a twenty-mile
drive, because, though they had rank and consequence, they had not fashion.
The _haut gout_ of Paris and London was wanting to them.

Lord Fareham had insisted upon leaving London on the third of September,
and had, his wife declared, out of pure malignity, taken his family to
Fareham, a place she hated, rather than to Chilton, a place she loved,
at least as much as any civilised mortal could love the country. Never,
Hyacinth protested, had her husband been so sullen and ferocious.

"He is not like an angry man," she told Angela, "but like a wounded lion;
and yet, since your goodness took all the blame of my unlucky escapade upon
your shoulders, and he knows nothing of De Malfort's insolent attempt to
carry me off, I see no reason why he should have become such a gloomy
savage."

She accepted her sister's sacrifice with an amiable lightness. How could
it harm Angela to be thought to have run out at midnight for a frolic
rendezvous? The maids of honour had some such adventure half a dozen times
in a season, and were found out, and laughed at, and laughed again, and
wound up their tempestuous careers by marrying great noblemen.

"If you can but get yourself talked about you may marry as high as you
choose," Lady Fareham told her sister.

* * * * *

Early in November they went back to London, and though all Hyacinth's fine
people protested that the town stank of burnt wood, smoked oil, and resin,
and was altogether odious, they rejoiced not the less to be back again.
Lady Fareham plunged with renewed eagerness into the whirlpool of pleasure,
and tried to drag Angela with her; but it was a surprise to both, and to
one a cause for uneasiness, when his lordship began to show himself in
scenes which he had for the most part avoided as well as reviled. For
some unexplained reason he became now a frequent attendant at the evening
festivities at Whitehall, and without even the pretence of being interested
or amused there.

Fareham's appearance at Court caused more surprise than pleasure in that
brilliant circle. The statue of the Comandante would scarcely have seemed
a grimmer guest. He was there in the midst of laughter and delight, with
never a smile upon his stern features. He was silent for the most part, or
if badgered into talking by some of his more familiar acquaintances, would
vent his spleen in a tirade that startled them, as the pleasant chirpings
of a poultry-yard are startled by the raid of a dog. They laughed at his
conversation behind his back; but in his presence, under the angry light
of those grey eyes, the gloom of those bent brows, they were chilled into
submission and civility. He had a dignity which made his Puritanical
plainness more patrician than Rochester's finery, more impressive than
Buckingham's graceful splendour. The force and vigour of his countenance
were more striking than Sedley's beauty. The eyes of strangers singled him
out in that gay throng, and people wanted to know who he was and what he
had done for fame.

A soldier, yes, cela saute aux yeux. He could be nothing else than a
soldier. A cavalier of the old school. Albeit younger by half a lifetime
than Southampton and Clarendon, and the other ghosts of the troubles.

Charles treated him with chill civility.

"Why does the man come here without his wife?" he asked De Malfort. "There
is a sister, too, fresher and fairer than her ladyship. Why are we to have
the shadow without the sun? Yet it is as well, perhaps, they keep away;
for I have heard of a visit which was not returned--a condescension from a
woman of the highest rank slighted by a trumpery baron's wife--and after an
offence of that kind she could only have brought us trouble. Why do women
quarrel, Wilmot?"

"Why are there any men in the world, sir? If there were none, women would
live together like lambs in a meadow. It is only about us they fight. As
for Lady Fareham, she is adorable, though no longer young. I believe she
will be thirty on her next birthday."

"And the sister? She had a wild-rose prettiness, I thought, when I saw her
at Oxford. She looked like a lily till I spoke to her, and then flamed
like a red rose. So fresh, so easily startled. 'Tis pity that shyness
of youthful purity wears off in a week. I dare swear by this time Mrs.
Kirkland is as brazen as the boldest of our young houris yonder," with
a glance in the direction of the maids of honour, the Queen's and the
Duchess's, a bevy of chatterers, waving fans, giggling, whispering,
shoulder to shoulder with the impudentest men in his Majesty's kingdom;
the men who gave their mornings to writing comedies coarser than Dryden or
Etherege, and their nights to cards, dice, and strong drink; roving the
streets half clad, dishevelled, wanton; beating the watch, and insulting
decent pedestrians; with occasional vicious outbreaks which would have been
revolting in a company of inebriated coal-heavers, and which brought these
fine gentlemen before a too lenient magistrate. But were not these the
manners of which St. Evremond lightly sang--

"'La douce erreur ne s'appelait point crime;
Les vices delicats se nommaient des plaisirs.'"

"Mistress Kirkland has an inexorable modesty which would outlive even a
week at Whitehall, sir," answered Rochester. "If I did not adore the matron
I should worship the maid. Happily for the wretch who loves her I am
otherwise engaged!"

"Thou insolent brat! To be eighteen years of age and think thyself
irresistible!"

"Does your Majesty suppose I shall be more attractive at six and thirty?"

"Yes, villain; for at my age thou wilt have experience."

"And a reputation for incorrigible vice. No woman of taste can resist
that."

"And pray who is Mrs. Kirkland's lover?"

"A Puritan baronet. One Denzil Warner."

"There was a Warner killed at Hoptown Heath."

"His son, sir. A fellow who believes in extempore prayer and republican
government; and swears England was never so happy or prosperous as under
Cromwell."

"And the lady favours this psalm-singing rebel?"

"I know not. For all I have seen of the two she has been barely civil to
him. That he adores her is obvious; and I know Lady Fareham's heart is set
upon the match."

"Why did not Lady Fareham return the Countess's visit?"

There was no need to ask what Countess.

"Be sure, sir, the husband was to blame, if there was want of respect for
that lovely lady. I can answer for Lady Fareham's right feeling in that
matter."

"The husband takes a leaf out of Hyde's book, and forgets that what may be
passed over in the Lord Chancellor, and a man of prodigious usefulness, is
intolerable in a person of Fareham's insignificance."

"Nay, sir, insignificance is scarcely the word. I would as soon call a
thunderstorm insignificant. The man is a volcano, and may explode at any
provocation."

"We want no such suppressed fires at Whitehall. Nor do we want long faces;
as Clarendon may discover some day, if his sermons grow too troublesome."

"The Chancellor is a domestic man; as your Majesty may infer from the size
and splendour of his new house."

"He is an expensive man, Wilmot I believe he got more by the sale of
Dunkirk than his master did."

"In that case your Majesty cannot do better than shift all the disgrace of
the transaction on to his shoulders. Dunkirk will be a sure card to play
when Clarendon has to go overboard."

That incivility of Lady Fareham's in the matter of an unreturned visit had
rankled deep in the bosom of the King's imperious mistress. To sin more
boldly than woman ever sinned, and yet to claim all the privileges and
honours due to virtue was but a trifling inconsistency in a mind so
fortified by pride that it scarce knew how to reckon with shame. That she,
in her supremacy of beauty and splendour, a fortune sparkling in either
ear, the price of a landed estate on her neck--that she, Barbara, Countess
of Castlemaine, should have driven in a windowless coach through dusty
lanes, eating dirt, as it were, with her train of court gallants on
horseback at her coach doors, her ladies in a carriage in the rear, to
visit a person of Lady Fareham's petty quality, a Buckinghamshire Knight's
daughter married to a Baron of Henry the Eighth's creation! And that
this amazing condescension--received with a smiling and curtsying
civility--should have been unacknowledged by any reciprocal courtesy was an
affront that could hardly be wiped out with blood. Indeed, it could never
be atoned for. The wound was poisoned, and would rankle and fester to the
end of that proud life.

Yet on Fareham's appearance at Whitehall Lady Castlemaine distinguished
with a marked civility, and even condescended, smilingly, as if there were
no cause of quarrel, to inquire after his wife.

"Her ladyship is as pretty as ever, though we are all growing old," she
said. "We exchanged curtsies at Tunbridge Wells the other day. I wonder how
it is we never get further than smiles and curtsies? I should like to show
the dear woman some more substantial civility. She is buried alive in your
stately house by the river, for the want of an influential friend to show
her the world we live in."

"Indeed, madam, my wife has all the pleasure she desires--her visiting-day,
her friends."

"And her admirers. Rochester is always hanging about your garden, or
landing from his wherry, when I go by; or, if he himself be not visible,
there are a couple of his watermen on your steps."

"My Lord Rochester has a precocious wit which amuses my wife and her
sister."

"And then there is De Malfort--an impertinent, second only to Gramont. He
and Lady Fareham are twin stars. I have seldom seen them apart."

"Since De Malfort has the honour of being somewhat intimate with your
ladyship, he has doubtless given you full particulars of his friendship for
my wife. I assure you it will bear being talked about. There are no secrets
in it."

"Really; I thought I had heard something about a sedan which took the wrong
road after Killigrew's play. But that was the night before the fire. Good
God! my lord, your face darkens as if a man had struck you. Whatever
happened before the fire should have been burnt out of our memories by this
time."

"I see his Majesty looking this way, madam, and I have not yet paid my
respects to him," Fareham said, moving away, but a dazzling hand on his
sleeve arrested him.

"Oh, your respects will keep; he has Miss Stewart giggling at his elbow.
Strange, is it not, that a woman with as much brain as a pigeon can amuse a
man who reckons himself both wise and witty?"

"It is not the lady who amuses the gentleman, madam. She has the good sense
to pretend that he amuses her."

"And no more understands a jest than she does Hebrew."

"She is conscious of pretty teeth and an enchanting smile. Wit or
understanding would be superfluous," answered Fareham, bowing his adieu to
the Sultana in chief.

There was a great assembly, with music and dancing, on the Queen's
birthday, to which Lord and Lady Fareham and Mistress Kirkland were
invited; and again Angela saw and wondered at the splendid scene, and
at this brilliant world, which calamity could not touch. Pestilence had
ravaged the city, flames had devoured it--yet here there were only smiling
people, gorgeous dress, incomparable jewels. The plague had not touched
them, and the fire had not reached them. Such afflictions are for
the common herd. Angela promenaded with De Malfort in the spacious
banqueting-hall, with its ceiling of such prodigious height that the
apotheosis of King James, and all the emblematical figures, triumphal cars,
lions, bears and rams, corn-sheaves and baskets of fruit, which filled
the panels, might as well have been executed by a sign-painter's
rough-and-ready brush, as by the pencil of the great Fleming.

"We are a little kinder to Rubens at the Louvre," said De Malfort, noting
her upward gaze; "for we allow his elaborate glorification of his Majesty's
grandfather and grandmother about half a mile of wall. But I forgot, you
have not seen Paris, nor those acres of gaudy colouring which Henri's
vanity inflicted upon us. Florentine Marie, with her carnation cheeks and
opulent shoulders--the Roman-nosed Bearnais, with his pointed beard and
stiff ruff. Mon Dieu, how the world has changed since Ravaillac's knife
snapped that valiant life! And you have never seen Paris? You look about
you with wide-open eyes, and take this crowd, this ceiling, those candlebra
for splendour."

"Can there be a scene more splendid?" asked Angela, pleased to keep him by
her side, rather than see him devote himself to her sister; grateful for
his attention in that crowd where most people were strangers, and where
Lord Fareham had not vouchsafed the slightest notice of her.

"When you have seen the Louvre, you will wonder that any King, with a
sense of his own consequence in the world, can inhabit such a hovel as
Whitehall--this congeries of shabby apartments, the offices of servants,
the lodgings of followers and dependents, soldiers and civilians--huddled
in a confused labyrinth of brick and stone--redeemed from squalor only by
one fine room. Could you see the grand proportions, the colossal majesty
of the great Henri's palace--that palace whose costly completion sat heavy
upon Sully's careful soul! Henri loved to build--and his grandson, Louis,
inherits that Augustan taste."

"You were telling us of a new palace at Versailles----"

"A royal city in stone--white--dazzling--grandiose. The mortar was scarcely
dry when I was there in March; but you should have seen the mi-careme ball.
The finest masquerade that was ever beheld in Europe. All Paris came in
masks to see that magnificent spectacle. His Majesty allowed entrance to
all--and those who came were feasted at a banquet which only Rabelais
could fairly describe. And then with our splendour there is an elegant
restraint--a decency unknown here. Compare these women--Lady Shrewsbury
yonder, Lady Chesterfield, the fat woman in sea-green and silver--Lady
Castlemaine, brazen in orange velvet and emeralds--compare them with
Conde's sister, with the Duchesse de Bouillon, the Princess Palatine----"

"Are those such good women?"

"Humph! They are ladies. These are the kind of women King Charles admires.
They are as distinct a race as the dogs that lie in his bed-chamber, and
follow him in his walks, a species of his own creation. They do not even
affect modesty. But I am turning preacher, like Fareham. Come, there is to
be an entertainment in the theatre. Roxalana has returned to the stage--and
Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer, is to perform."

They followed the crowd, and De Malfort remained at Angela's side till the
end of the performance, and attended her to the supper-table afterwards.
Fareham watched them from his place in the background. He stood ever aloof
from the royal focus, the beauty, and the wit, the most dazzling jewels,
the most splendid raiment. He was amidst the Court, but not of it.

Yes; the passion which these two entertained for each other was patent to
every eye; but had it been an honourable attachment upon De Malfort's side,
he would have declared himself before now. He would not have abandoned the
field to such a sober suitor as Denzil. Henri de Malfort loved her, and she
fed his passion with her sweetest smiles, the low and tender tones of the
most musical voice Fareham had ever listened to.

"The voice that came to me in my desolation--the sweetest sound that ever
fell on a dying man's ear," he thought, recalling those solitary days and
nights in the plague year, recalling those vanished hours with a fond
longing, "that arm which shows dazzling white against the purple velvet of
his sleeve is the arm that held up my aching head, in the dawn of returning
reason; those are the eyes that looked down upon mine, so pitiful, so
anxious for my recovery. Oh, lovely angel, I would be a leper again,
a plague-stricken wretch, only to drink a cup of water from that dear
hand--only to feel the touch of those light fingers on my forehead! There
was a magic in that touch that surpassed the healing powers of kings. There
was a light as of heaven in those benignant eyes. But, oh, she is changed
since then. She is plague-stricken with the contagion of a profligate age.
Her wings are scorched by the fire of this modish Tophet She has been
taught to dress and look like the women around her--a little more
modest--but after the same fashion. The nun I worshipped is no more."

Some one tapped him on the shoulder with an ostrich fan. He turned, and saw
Lady Castlemaine close at his elbow.

"Image of gloom, will you lead me to my rooms?" she asked, in a curious
voice, her dark blue eyes deepened by the pallor that showed through her
rouge.

"I shall esteem myself too much honoured by that office," he answered, as
she took his arm and moved quickly, with hurried footsteps, through the
lessening throng.

"Oh, there is no one to dispute the honour with you. Sometimes I have a
mob to hustle me to my lodgings, borne on the current of their
adulation--sometimes I move through a desert, as I do to-night. Your face
attracted me--for I believe it is the only one at Whitehall as gloomy as
my own--unless there are some of my creditors, men to whom I owe gaming
debts."

It was curious to note that subtle change in the faces of those they
passed, which Barbara Palmer knew so well--faces that changed, obedient to
the weathercock of royal caprice--the countenances of courtiers who
even yet had not learnt justly to weigh the influence of that imperial
favourite, or to understand that she ruled their King with a power which no
transient fancy for newer faces could undermine. A day or two in the sulks,
frowns and mournful looks for gossip Pepys to jot down in his diary, and
the next day the sun would be shining again, and the King would be at
supper with "the lady."

Perhaps Lady Castlemaine knew that her empire was secure; but she took
these transient fancies _moult serieusement_. Her jealous soul could
tolerate no rival--or it may be that she really loved the King. He had
given himself to her in the flush of his triumphant return, while he was
still young enough to feel a genuine passion. For her sake he had been a
cruel husband, an insolent tyrant to an inoffensive wife; for her sake he
had squandered his people's money, and outraged every moral law; and it may
be that she remembered these things, and hated him the more fiercely for
them when he was inconstant. She was a woman of extremes, in whose tropical
temperament there was no medium between hatred and love.

"You will sup with me, Fareham?" she said, as he waited on the threshold of
her lodgings, which were in a detached pile of buildings, near the Holbein
Gateway, and looking upon an enclosed and somewhat gloomy garden.

"Your ladyship will excuse me. I am expected at home."

"What devil! Perhaps you think I am inviting you to a _tete-a-tete_. I
shall have some company, though the drove have gone to the Stewarts' in a
hope of getting asked to supper--which but a few of them can realise in
her mean lodgings. You had better stay. I may have Buckhurst, Sedley, De
Malfort, and a few more of the pretty fellows--enough to empty your pockets
at basset."

"Your ladyship is all goodness," said Fareham, quickly.

De Malfort's name had decided him. He followed his hostess through a crowd
of lackeys, a splendour of wax candles, to her saloon, where she turned and
flashed upon him a glorious picture of mature loveliness, her complexion
the peach in its ripest bloom, the orange sheen of her velvet mantua
shining out against a background of purple damask curtains embroidered with
gold.

The logs blazed and roared in the wide chimney. Warmth, opulence,
hospitality, were all expressed in the brilliantly lighted room, where
luxurious fauteuils, after the new French fashion, stood about, ready to
receive her ladyship's guests.

These were not long waited for. There was no crowd. Less than twenty men,
and about a dozen women, were enough to add an air of living gaiety to the
brilliancy of light and colour. De Malfort was the last who entered. He
kissed her ladyship's hand, looked about him, and recognised Fareham with
open wonder.

"An Israelite in the house of Dagon!" he said, _sotto voce_, as he
approached him. "What, Fareham, have you given your neck to the yoke?
Do you yield to the charm which has subjugated such lighter natures as
Villiers and Buckhurst?"

"It is only human to love variety. You have discovered the charm of youth
and innocence."

"Do you think it needs a modish Columbus to discover that? We all worship
innocence, were it but for its rarity, as we esteem a black pearl or a
yellow diamond above a white one. Jarni, but I am pleased to see you here!
It is the most human thing I have known of you since you recovered of the
contagion; for you have been a gloomier man from that time."

"Be assured I am altogether human--at least upon the worser side of
humanity."

"How dismal you look! Upon my soul, Fareham, you should fight against that
melancholic habit. Her ladyship is in the black sulks. We are in for
a pleasant evening. Yet, if we were to go away, she would storm at us
to-morrow; call us sycophants and time-servers, swear she would hold no
further commerce with any manjack among our detestable crew. Well, she is
a magnificent termagant. If Cleopatra was half as handsome, I can forgive
Antony for following her to ruin at Actium."

"There is supper in the music-room, gentlemen," said Lady Castlemaine, who
was standing near the fire in the midst of a knot of whispering women.

They had been abusing the fair Frances, and ridiculing old Rowley, to
gratify their hostess. She knew them by heart--their falsehood and
hollowness. She knew that they were ready, every one of them, to steal her
royal lover, had they but the chance of such a conquest; yet it solaced her
soreness to hear Miss Stewart depreciated even by those false lips--"She
was too tall." "Her Britannia profile looked as if it was cut out of wood."
"She was bold, bad, designing." "It was she who would have the King, not
the King who would have her."

"You are too malicious, my dearest Price," said Lady Castlemaine, with more
good humour than had been seen in her countenance that evening. "Buckhurst,
will you take Mrs. Price to supper? There are cards in the gallery. Pray
amuse yourselves."

"But will your ladyship neither sup nor play?" asked Sedley.

"My ladyship has a raging headache. What devil! Did I not lose enough to
some of you blackguards last night? Do you want to rook me again? Pray
amuse yourselves, friends. No doubt his Majesty is being exquisitely
entertained where he is; but I doubt if he will get as good a supper as you
will find in the next room."

The significant laugh which concluded her speech was too angry for mirth,
and the blackness of her brow forbade questioning. All the town knew next
day that she had contrived to get the royal supper intercepted and carried
off, on its way from the King's kitchen to Miss Stewart's lodgings, and
that his Majesty had a Barmecide feast at the table of beauty. It was a
joke quite in the humour of the age.

The company melted out of the room; all but Fareham, who watched Lady
Castlemaine as she stood by the hearth in an attitude of hopeless
self-forgetfulness, leaning against the lofty sculptured chimney-piece, one
slender foot in gold-embroidered slipper and transparent stocking poised on
the brazen fender, and her proud eyelids lowered as if there was nothing
in this world worth looking at but the pile of ship's timber, burning with
many-coloured flames upon the silver andirons.

In spite of that sullen downward gaze she was conscious of Fareham's
lingering.

"Why do you stay, my lord?" she asked, without looking up. "If your purse
is heavy there are friends of mine yonder who will lighten it for you,
fairly or foully. I have never made up my mind how far a gentleman may be a
rogue with impunity. If you don't love losing money you had best eat a good
supper and begone."

"I thank you, madam. I am more in the mood for cards than for feasting."

She did not answer him, but clasped her hands suddenly before her face and
gave a heart-breaking sigh. Fareham paused on the threshold of the gallery,
watching her, and then went slowly back, bent down to take the hand
that had dropped at her side, and pressed his lips upon it, silently,
respectfully, with a kind of homage that had become strange of late years
to Barbara Palmer. Adorers she had and to spare, toadeaters and flatterers,
a regiment of mercenaries; but these all wanted something of her--kisses,
smiles, influence, money. Disinterested respect was new.

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