London Pride by M. E. Braddon

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

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"I thought you were a Puritan, Lord Fareham."

"I am a man; and I know what it is to suffer the hell-fire of jealousy."

"Jealousy, yes! I never was good at hiding my feelings. He treats me
shamefully. Come, now, you take me for an abandoned profligate woman, a
callous wanton. That is what the world takes me for; and, perhaps, I have
deserved no better of the world. But whatever I am 'twas he made me so.
If he had been true, I could have been constant. It is the insolence of
abandonment that stings; the careless slights, scarce conscious that he
wounds. Before the eyes of the world, too, before wretches that grin and
whisper, and prophesy the day when my pride shall be in the dust. It is
treat ment such as this that makes women desperate; and if we cannot keep
him we love, we make believe to love some one else, and flaunt our fancy in
the deceiver's face. Do you think I cared for Buckingham, with his heart
of ice; or for such a snipe as Jermyn; or for a low-born rope-dancer?
No, Fareham; there has been more of rage and hate than of passion in my
caprices. And he is with Frances Stewart to-night. She sets up for a model
of chastity, and is to marry Richmond next month. But we know, Fareham, we
know. Women who ride in glass coaches should not throw stones. I will have
Charles at my feet again. I will have my foot upon his neck again. I cannot
use him too ill for the pain he gives me. There, go--go! Why did you tempt
me to lay my heart bare?"

"Dearest lady, believe me, I respect your candour. My heart bleeds for your
wrongs. So beautiful, so high above all other women in the capacity to
charm! Ah, be sure such loveliness has its responsibilities. It is a gift
from Heaven, and to hold it cheap is a sin."

"There is nothing in this life can be held too cheap. Beauty, love--all
trumpery! You would make life a tragedy. It is a farce, Fareham, a farce;
and all our pleasures and diversions only serve to make us forget what
worms we are. There, go--to cards--to supper--as you please. I am going to
my bed-chamber to rest this throbbing head. I may return and take a hand at
cards by-and-by, perhaps. Those fellows will game and booze till daylight."

Fareham opened the door for her, as she went out, regal in port and air.
She had moved him to compassion, even while she owned herself a wanton. To
love passionately--and to see another preferred! There is a brotherhood in
agony, that brings even opposite natures into sympathy. He passed into the
gallery, a long low room, hung with modern tapestries, richly coloured,
voluptuous in design. Clusters of wax tapers in gilded sconces lit up those
Paphian pictures. There were several tables, at which the mixed company
were sitting. Piles of the new guineas, fresh from his Majesty's Mint,
shone in the candle-light. At some tables there was a silent absorption in
the game, which argued high play, and the true gambler's spirit; at others
mirth reigned--talk, laughter, animated looks. One of the noisiest was the
table at which De Malfort was the most conspicuous figure; his periwig the
highest, his dress the most sumptuous, his breast glittering with orders.
His companions were Sir Ralph Masaroon, Colonel Dangerfield, an old
Malignant, who had hibernated during the Protectorate, and had never left
his own country, and Lady Lucretia Topham, a visiting acquaintance of
Hyacinth's.

"Come here, Fareham," cried De Malfort; "there is plenty of room for you.
I'll wager Lady Lucretia will pass you her hand, and thank you for taking
it."

"Lady Lucretia is glad to be quit of such dishonest company," said the
lady, tossing her cards upon the table, and rising in a cloud of powder and
perfume, and a flutter of lace and brocade. "If I were ill-humoured I would
say you marked the cards! but as I'm the soul of good nature, I'll only
swear you are the luckiest dog in London."

"You are the soul of good nature, and I am the luckiest dog in the universe
when you smile upon me," answered De Malfort, without looking up from his
cards, as the lady posed herself gracefully at the back of his chair,
leaning over his shoulder to watch his play. "I would not limit the area to
any city, however big."

Fareham seated himself in the chair the lady had vacated, and gathered up
the cards she had abandoned. He took a handful of gold from his pocket, and
put it on the table at his elbow, all with a somewhat churlish silence,
that escaped notice where everybody was loquacious. De Malfort went on
fooling with Lady Lucretia, whose lovely hand and arm, her strongest point,
descended upon a card now and then, to indicate the play she deemed wisest.

Once he caught the hand and kissed it in transit.

"Wert thou as wise as this hand is fair it should direct my play; but it is
only a woman's hand, and points the way to perdition."

Fareham had been losing steadily from the moment he took up Lady Lucretia's
cards; and his pile of jacobuses had been gradually passed over to De
Malfort's side of the table. He had emptied his pockets, and had scrawled
two or three I.O.U.'s upon scraps of paper torn from a note-book. Yet he
went on playing, with the same immovable countenance. The room had emptied
itself, the rest of the visitors leaving earlier than their usual hour in
that hospitable house. Perhaps because the hostess was missing; perhaps
because the royal sun was shining elsewhere.

Lackeys handed their salvers of Burgundy and Bordeaux, and the players
refreshed themselves occasionally with a brimmer of clary; but no wine
brightened Fareham's scowling brow, or changed the glooiay intensity of his
outlook.

"My cards have brought your lordship bad luck," said Lady Lucretia, who
watched De Malfort's winnings with an air of personal interest.

"I knew my risk before I took them, madam. When an Englishman plays against
a Frenchman he is a fool if he is not prepared to be rooked."

"Fareham, are you mad?" cried De Malfort, starting to his feet. "To insult
your friend's country, and, by basest implication, your friend."

"I see no friend here. I say that you Frenchmen cheat at cards--on
principle--and are proud of being cheats! I have heard De Gramont brag of
having lured a man to his tent, and fed him, and wined him, and fleeced him
while he was drunk." He took a goblet of claret from the lackey who brought
his salver, emptied it, and went on, hoarse with passion. "To the marrow of
your bones you are false, all of you! You do not cog your dice, perhaps,
but you bubble your friends with finesses, and are as much sharpers at
heart as the lowest tat-mongers in Alsatia. You empty our purses, and
cozen our women with twanging guitars and jingling rhymes, and laugh at us
because we are honest and trust you. Seducers, tricksters, poltroons!"

The footman was at De Malfort's elbow now. He snatched a tankard from the
salver, and flung the contents across the table, straight at Fareham's
face.

"This bully forces me to spoil his Point de Venise," he said coolly, as he
set down the tankard. "There should be a law for chaining up rabid curs
that have run mad without provocation."

Fareham sprang to his feet, black and terrible, but with a savage
exultation in his countenance. The wine poured in a red stream from his
point-lace cravat, but had not touched his face.

"There shall be something redder than Burgundy spilt before we have done!"
he said.

"Sacre nom, nous sommes tombes dans un antre de betes sauvages!" exclaimed
Masaroon, starting up, and anxiously examining the skirts of his brocade
coat, lest that sudden deluge had caught him.

"None of your ---- French to show your fine breeding!" growled the old
cavalier. "Fareham, you deserved the insult; but one red will wash out
another. I'm with your lordship."

"And I'm with De Malfort," said Masaroon. "He had more than enough
provocation."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, no bloodshed!" cried Lady Lucretia; "or, if you are
going to be uncivil to each other, for God's sake get me to my chair. I
have a husband who would never forgive me if it were said you fought for my
sake."

"We will see you safely disposed of, madam, before we begin our business,"
said Colonel Dangerfield, bluntly. "Fareham, you can take the lady to her
chair, while Masaroon and I discuss particulars."

"There is no need of a discussion," interrupted Fareham, hotly. "We have
nothing to arrange--nothing to wait for. Time, the present; place, the
garden, under these windows; weapons, the swords we wear. We shall have no
witnesses but the moon and stars. It is the dead middle of the night, and
we have the world all to ourselves."

"Give me your rapier, then, that I may compare it with the Count's. You are
satisfied, monsieur? 'Tis you that are the offender, and Lord Fareham has
the choice of weapons."

"Let him choose. I will fight him with cannon--or with soap-bubbles,"
answered De Malfort, lolling back in his chair, tilted at an angle of
forty-five, and drumming a gay dance tune with his finger-tips on the
table. "'Tis a foolish imbroglio from first to last: and only his lordship
and I know how foolish. He came here to provoke a quarrel, and I must
indulge him. Come, Lady Lucretia"--he turned to his fair friend, as he
unbuckled his sword and flung it on the table--"it is my place to lead you
to your chair. Colonel, you and your friend will find me below stairs in
front of the Holbein Gate."

"You are forgetting your winnings," remonstrated the lady, pointing to the
pile of gold.

"The lackeys will not forget them when they clear the room," answered De
Malfort, putting her hand through his arm, and leaving the money on the
table.

Ten minutes later Fareham and De Malfort were standing front to front in
the glare of four torches, held by a brace of her ladyship's lackeys who
had been impressed into the service, and the colder light of a moon that
rode high in the blue-black of a wintry heaven. There was not a sound but
the ripple of the unseen river, and the distant cry of a watchman in Petty
France, till the clash of swords began.

It was decided after a brief parley that the principals only should fight.
The quarrel was private. The seconds placed their men on a piece of level
turf, five paces apart. They were bare-headed, and without coat or vest,
the lace ruffles of their shirt-sleeves rolled back to the elbow, their
naked arms ghastly white, their faces suggesting ghost or devil as the
spectral moonlight or the flame of the flambeaux shone upon them.

"You mean business, so we may sink the parade of the fencing saloon," said
Dangerfield. "Advance, gentlemen."

"A pity," murmured Masaroon, "there is nothing prettier than the salute _a
la Francaise_."

Dangerfield handed the men their swords. They were nearly similar in
fashion, both flat-grooved blades, with needle points, and no cutting edge,
furnished with shell-guards and cross-bars in the Italian style, and were
about of a length.

The word was given, and the business of engagement proceeded slowly and
warily, for a few moments that seemed minutes; and then the blades were
firmly joined in carte, and a series of rapid feints began, De Malfort
having a slight advantage in the neatness of his circles, and the swiftness
of his wrist play. But in these preliminary lounges and parries, he soon
found he needed all his skill to dodge his opponent's point; for Fareham's
blade followed his own, steadily and strongly, through every turn.

De Malfort had begun the fight with an insolent smile upon his lips, the
smile of a man who believes himself invincible, while Fareham's countenance
never changed from the black anger that had darkened it all that night. It
was a face that meant death. A man who had never been a duellist, who had
raised his voice sternly against the practice of duelling, stood there
intent upon bloodshed. There could be no mistake as to his purpose. The
quarrel was an artificial quarrel--the object was murder.

De Malfort, provoked at the unexpected strength of Fareham's fence,
attempted a partial disarmament, after the deadly Continental method.
Joining his opponent's blade near the point, from a wide circular parry,
he made a rapid thrust in seconde, carrying his forte the entire length of
Fareham's blade, almost wrenching the sword from his grasp; and then, in
the next instant, reaching forward to his fullest stretch, he lunged at his
enemy's breast, aiming at the vital region of the heart; a thrust that must
have proved fatal had not Fareham sprung aside, and so received the blow
where the sword only grazed his ribs, inflicting a flesh-wound that showed
red upon the whiteness of his shirt. Dangerfield tore off his cravat, and
wanted to bind it round his principal's waist; but Fareham repulsed him,
and lashed into hot fury by the Frenchman's uncavalier-like ruse, met
his adversary's thrusts with a deadly purpose, which drove De Malfort to
reckless lunging and riposting, and the play grew fast and fierce, while
the rattle of steel seemed never likely to end. Suddenly, timing his attack
to the fraction of a second, Fareham dropped on his left knee, and planting
his left hand upon the ground, sent a murderous thrust home under De
Malfort's guard, whose blade passed harmlessly over his adversary's head as
he crouched on the sward.

De Malfort fell heavily in the arms of the two seconds, who both sprang to
his assistance.

"Is it fatal?" asked Fareham, standing motionless as stone, while the other
men knelt on either side of De Malfort.

"I'll run for a surgeon," said Masaroon. "There's a fellow I know of this
side the Abbey--mends bloody noses and paints black eyes," and he was off,
running across the grass to the nearest gate.

"It looks plaguily like a coffin," Dangerfield answered, with his hand on
the wounded man's breast. "There's throbbing here yet; but he may bleed to
death, like poor Lindsey, before surgery can help him. You had better run,
Fareham. Take horse to Dover, and get across to Calais or Ostend. You were
devilish provoking. It might go hard with you if he was to die."

"I shall not budge, Dangerfield. Didn't you hear me say I wanted to kill
him? You might guess I didn't care a cast of the dice for my life when I
said as much. Let them find it murder, and hang me. I wanted him out of the
world, and don't care how soon I follow."

"You are mad--stark, staring mad!"

The wounded man raised himself on his elbow, groaning aloud in the agony of
movement, and beckoned Fareham, who knelt down beside him, all of a piece,
like a stone figure.

"Fareham, you had better run; I have powerful friends. There'll be an ugly
stir if I die of this bout. Kiss me, mon ami. I forgive you. I know what
wound rankled; 'twas for your wife's sister you fought--not the cards."

He sank into Dangerfield's arms, swooning from loss of blood, as Masaroon
came back at a run, bringing a surgeon, an elderly man of that Alsatian
class which is to be found out of bed in the small hours. He brought
styptics and bandages, and at once set about staunching the wound.

While this was happening a curtain had been suddenly pulled aside at an
upper window in Lady Castlemaine's lodgings, showing a light within. The
window was thrown open, and a figure appeared, clad in a white satin
night-gown that glistened in the moonlight, with a deep collar of ermine,
from which the handsomest face in London looked across the garden, to the
spot where Fareham, the seconds, and the surgeon were grouped about De
Malfort.

It was Lady Castlemaine. She leant out of the window and called to them.

"What has happened? Is any one hurt? I'll wager a thousand pounds you
devils have been fighting."

"De Malfort is stabbed!" Masaroon answered.

"Not dead?" she shrieked, leaning farther out of the window.

"No; but it looks dangerous."

"Bring him into my house this instant! I'll send my fellows to help. Have
you sent for a surgeon?"

"The surgeon is here."

The radiant figure vanished like a vision in the skies; and in three
minutes a door was heard opening, and a voice calling, "John, William,
Hugh, Peter, every manjack of you. Lazy devils! There's been no time for
you to fall asleep since the company left. Stir yourselves, vermin, and out
with you!"

"We had best levant, Fareham," muttered Dangerfield, and drew away his
principal, who went with him, silent and unresisting, having no more to do
there; not to fly the country, however, but to walk quietly home to Fareham
House, and to let himself in at the garden door, known to the household as
his lordship's.

CHAPTER XVIII.

REVELATIONS.

Lord Fareham stayed in his own house by the Thames, and nobody interfered
with his liberty, though Henri de Malfort lay for nearly a fortnight
between life and death, and it was only in the beginning of December that
he was pronounced out of danger, and was able to be removed from Lady
Castlemaine's luxurious rooms to his own lodgings. Scandal-mongers might
have made much talk of his lying ill in her ladyship's house, and being
tenderly nursed by her, had not Lady Castlemaine outlived the possibility
of slander. It would have been as difficult for her name to acquire any
blacker stain as for a damaged reputation to wash itself white. The secret
of the encounter had been faithfully kept by principals and seconds, De
Malfort behaving with a chivalrous generosity. He appeared, indeed, as
anxious for his antagonist's safety as for his own recovery.

"It was a mistake," he said, when Masaroon pressed him with home questions.
"Every man is mad once in his life. Fareham's madness took an angry turn
against an old friend. Why, we slept under the same blanket in the trenches
before Dunkirk; we rode shoulder to shoulder through the rain of bullets at
Chitillon; and to pick a trumpery quarrel with a brother-in-arms!"

"I wonder the quarrel was not picked earlier," Masaroon answered bluntly.
"Your courtship of the gentleman's wife has been notorious for the last
five years."

"Call it not courtship, Ralph. Lady Fareham and I are old playfellows. We
were reared in the _pays du tendre_, Loveland--the kingdom of innocent
attachments and pure penchants, that country of which Mademoiselle Scudery
has given us laws and a map. Your vulgar London lover cannot understand
platonics--the affection which is satisfied with a smile or a madrigal.
Fareham knows his wife and me better than to doubt us."

"And yet he acted like a man who was madly jealous. His rudeness at the
card-table was obvious malice afore-thought. He came resolved to quarrel."

"Ay, he came to quarrel--but not about his wife."

Pressed to explain this dubious phrase, De Malfort affected a fit of
languor, and would talk no more.

The town was told that the Comte de Malfort was ill of a quartain fever,
and much was said about his sufferings during the Fronde, his exposure to
damp and cold in the sea-marshes by Dunkirk, his rough fare and hard riding
through the war of the Princes. This fever, which hung about him so long,
was an after-consequence of hardship suffered in his youth--privations
faced with a boyish recklessness, and which he had paid for with an
impaired constitution. Fine ladies in gilded chairs, and vizard-masks in
hackney coaches, called frequently at his lodgings in St. James's Street
to inquire about his progress. Lady Fareham's private messenger was at his
door every morning, and brought a note, or a book, or a piece of new music
from her ladyship, who had been sternly forbidden to visit her old friend
in person.

"You grow every day a gloomier tyrant!" Hyacinth protested, with more
passion in her voice and mien than ever her husband had known. "Why should
I not go to him when he is ill--dangerously ill--dying perhaps? He is my
old, old friend. I remember no joy in life that he did not share. Why
should I not go to him in his sorrow?"

"Because you are my wife, and I forbid you. I cannot understand this
passion. I thought you suffered the company of that empty-headed fop as you
suffered your lap-dogs--the trivial appendage of a fine lady's state. Had
I supposed that there was anything serious in your liking--that you could
think him worth anger or tears--should have ordered your life differently,
and he would have had no place in it."

"Tyrant! tyrant!"

"You astound me, Hyacinth! Would you dispute the favours of a fop with your
young sister?"

"With my sister!" she cried, scornfully.

"Ay, with your sister, whom he has courted assiduously; but with no
honourable motive! I have seen his designs."

"Well, perhaps you are right. He may care for Angela--and think her too
poor to marry."

"He is a traitor and a villain----"

"Oh, what fury! Marry my sister to Sir Denzil, and then she will be safe
from all pursuit! He will bury her alive in Oxfordshire--withdraw her for
ever from this wicked town--like poor Lady Yarborough in Cornwall."

"I will never ask her to marry a man she cannot love."

"Why not? Are not you and I a happy couple? And how much love had we for
each other before we married? Why I scarce knew the colour of your eyes;
and if I had met you in the street, I doubt if I should have recognised
you! And now, after thirteen years of matrimony, we are at our first
quarrel, and that no lasting one. Come, Fareham, be pleasant and yielding.
Let me go and see my old playfellow. I am heartbroken for lack of his
company, for fear of his death."

She hung upon him coaxingly, the bright blue eyes looking up at him--eyes
that had so often been compared to Madame de Longueville's, eyes that had
smiled and beamed in many a song and madrigal by the parlour poets of the
Hotel de Rambouillet. She was exquisitely pretty in her youthful colouring
of lilies and roses, blue eyes, and pale gold hair, and retained at thirty
almost all the charms and graces of eighteen.

Fareham took her by both hands and held her away from him, severely
scrutinising a face which he had always been able to admire as calmly as if
it had been on canvas.

"You look like an innocent woman," he said, "and I have always believed you
a good woman; and have trusted my honour in your keeping--have seen that
man fawning at your feet, singing and sighing in your ear, and have thought
no evil. But now that you have told me, as plainly as woman can speak to
man, that this is the man you love, and have loved all your life, there
must needs come an end to the sighing and singing. You and Henri de Malfort
must meet no more. Nay, look not such angry scorn. I impute no guilt; but
between innocence and guilt there need be but one passionate hour. The wife
goes out an honest woman, able to look her husband in the face as you
are looking at me; the wanton comes home, and the rest of her life is a
shameful lie. And the husband awakes some day from his dream of domestic
peace to discover that he has been long the laughing-stock of the town.
I will be no such fatuous husband, Hyacinth. I will wait for no second
warning."

Lady Fareham submitted in silence, and with deep resentment. She had never
before experienced a husband's authority sternly exercised. She had been
forbidden the free run of London play-houses, and some of the pleasures of
Court society; but then she had been denied with all kindness, and had been
allowed so many counterbalancing extravagances, pleasures, and follies,
that it would have been difficult for her to think herself ill-used.

She submitted angrily, passionately regretting the man whose presence had
long been the brightest element in her life. Her cheek paled; she grew
indifferent to the amusements which had been her sole occupation; she
sulked in her rooms, equally avoiding her children and their aunt; and,
indeed, seemed to care for no one's society except Mrs. Lewin's. The Court
milliner had business with her ladyship every day, and was regaled with
cakes and liqueurs in her ladyship's dressing-room.

"You must be very busy about new gowns, Hyacinth," her husband said to her
one day at dinner. "I meet the harridan from Covent Garden on the stairs
every morning."

"She is not a harridan, whatever that elegant word may mean. And as for
gowns, it would be wiser for me to order no new ones, since it is but
likely I shall soon have to wear mourning for an old friend."

She looked at her husband, defying him. He rose from the table with a sigh,
and walked out of the room. There was war between them, or at best an armed
neutrality. He looked back, and saw that he had been blind to the things he
should have seen, dull and unobservant where he should have had sense and
understanding.

"I did not care enough for my honour," he thought. "Was it because I cared
too little for my wife? It is indifference, and not love, that is blind."

Angela saw the cloud that overshadowed Fareham House with deepest distress;
and yet felt herself powerless to bring back sunshine. Her sister met her
remonstrances with scorn.

"Do you take the part of a tyrant against your own flesh and blood?" she
asked. "I have been too tame a slave. To keep me away from the Court while
I was young and worth looking at--to deny me amusements and admiration
which are the privilege of every woman of quality--to forbid me the
play-house, and make a country cousin of me by keeping me ignorant of
modern wit. I am ashamed of my compliance."

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