London Pride by M. E. Braddon

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

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She sat on a low stool in front of the hearth, while the pile of ship
timber on the andirons burnt itself out and turned from red to grey. She
sat looking into the dying fire and recalling the pictures of the past;
the dull grey convent rooms and formal convent garden; the petty rules and
restrictions; the so-frequent functions--low mass and high, benedictions,
vespers--the recurrent sound of the chapel bell. The few dull books,
permitted in the hour of so-called recreation; the sombre grey gown,
which was the only relief from perpetual black; the limitations of
that colourless life. She had been happy with the Ursulines under her
kinswoman's gentle sway. But could she be happy with the present Superior,
whose domineering temper she knew? She had been happy in her ignorance of
the outer world; but could she be happy again in that grey seclusion--she
who had sat at the banquet of life, who had seen the beauty and the variety
of her native land? To be an exile for the rest of her days, in the
hopeless gloom of a Flemish convent, among the heavy faces of Flemish nuns!

In the intensity of introspective thought she had forgotten one who had
forbidden that gloomy seclusion, and to whom it would be as natural for
her to look for protection and refuge as to convent or husband. From her
thoughts to-night the image of her wandering father had been absent. His
appearances in her life had been so rare and so brief, his influence on her
destiny so slight, that she was forgetful of him now in this crisis of her
fate.

* * * * *

It was within a week of that evening that the sisters were startled by the
arrival of their father, unannounced, in the dusk of the winter afternoon.
He had come by slow stages from Spain, riding the greater part of the
journey--like Howell, fifty years earlier--attended only by one faithful
soldier-servant, and enduring no small suffering, and running no slight
risk, upon the road.

"The wolves had our provender on more than one occasion," he told them.
"The wonder is they never had us or our hackneys. I left Madrid in July,
not long after the death of my poor friend Fanshawe. Indeed, it was his
friendship and his good lady's unvarying courtesy that took me to the
capital. We had last met at Hampton Court, with the King, shortly before
his Majesty's so ill-advised flight; and we were bosom-friends then. And
so, he being dead of a fever early in the summer, I had no more to do but
to travel slowly homeward, to end my days in my own chimney-corner, and to
claim thy promise, Angela, that thou wouldst keep my house, and comfort my
declining years."

"Dear father!" Angela murmured, hanging over him as he sat in the
high-backed velvet chair by the fire, while her ladyship's footmen set
a table near him, with wine and provisions for an impromptu meal, Lady
Fareham directing them, and coming between-whiles to embrace her father in
a flutter of spirits, the firelight shining on her flame-coloured velvet
gown and primrose taffety petticoat, her pretty golden curls and sparkling
Sevigne, her ruby necklace and earrings, and her bright restless eyes.

While the elder sister was all movement and agitation, the younger stood
calm and still beside her father's chair, her hands clasped in his, her
thoughtful eyes looking down at him as he talked, stopping now and then in
his story of adventures to eat and drink.

He looked much older than when he surprised her in the Convent garden. His
hair and beard, then iron grey, were now silver white. He wore his own
hair, which was abundant, and a beard cut after the fashion she knew in the
portraits of Henri Quatre. His clothes also were of that style, which lived
now only in the paintings of Vandyke and his school.

"How the girl looks at me!" Sir John said, surprising his daughter's
earnest gaze. "Does she take me for a ghost?"

"Indeed, sir, she may well fancy you have come back from the other world
while you wear that antique suit," said Hyacinth. "I hope your first
business to-morrow will be to replenish your wardrobe by the assistance
of Lord Rochester's tailor. He is a German, and has the best cut for a
justau-corps in all the West End. Fareham is shabby enough to make a wife
ashamed of him; but his clothes are only too plain for his condition. Your
Spanish cloak and steeple hat are fitter for a travelling quack doctor than
for a gentleman of quality, and your doublet and vest might have come out
of the ark."

"If I change them, it will be but to humour your vanity, sweetheart,"
answered her father. "I bought the suit in Paris three years ago, and
I swore I would cast them back upon the snip's hands if he gave me any
new-fangled finery. But a riding-suit that has crossed the Pyrenees and
stood a winter's wear at Montpelier--where I have been living since
October--can scarce do credit to a fine lady's saloon; and thou art finest,
I'll wager, Hyacinth, where all are fine."

"You would not say that if you had seen Lady Castlemaine's rooms. I would
wager that her gold and silver tapestry cost more than the contents of my
house."

"Thou shouldst not envy sin in high places, Hyacinth."

"Envy! I envy a----"

"Nay, love, no bad names! 'Tis a sorry pass England has come to when the
most conspicuous personage at her Court is the King's mistress. I was with
Queen Henrietta at Paris, who received me mighty kindly, and bewailed with
me over the contrast betwixt her never-to-be-forgotten husband and his
sons. They have nothing of their father, she told me, neither in person nor
in mind. 'I know not whence their folly comes to them!' she cried. It would
have been uncivil to remind her that her own father, hero as he was, had
set no saintly example to royal husbands; and that it is possible our
princes take more of their character from their grandfather Henry than from
the martyr Charles. Poor lady, I am told she left London deep in debt,
after squandering her noble income of these latter years, and that she has
sunk in the esteem of the French court by her alliance with Jermyn."

"I can but wonder that she, above all women, should ever cease to be a
widow."

"She comes of a light-minded race and nation, Angela; and it is easy to her
to forget; or she would not easily forget that so-adoring husband whose
fortunes she ruined. His most fatal errors came from his subservience to
her. When I saw her in her new splendour at Somerset House, all smiles and
gaiety, with youth and beauty revived in the sunshine of restored fortune,
I could but remember all he was, in dignity and manly affection, proud and
pure as King Arthur in the old romance, and all she cost him by womanish
tyrannies and prejudices, and difficult commands laid upon him at a
juncture of so exceeding difficulty."

The sisters listened in respectful silence. The old cavalier cut a fresh
slice of chine, sighed, and continued his sermon.

"I doubt that while we, the lookers on, remember, they, the actors, forget;
for could the son of such a noble victim wallow in a profligate court,
surrender himself to the devilish necromancies of vicious women and viler
men, if he remembered his father's character, and his father's death? No;
memory must be a blank, and we, who suffered with our royal master, are
fools to prate of ingratitude or neglect, since the son who can forget such
a father may well forget his father's servants and friends. But we will not
talk of public matters in the first hour of our greeting. Nor need I prate
of the King, since I have not come back to England to clap a periwig over
my grey hairs, and play waiter upon Court favour, and wear out the back
of my coat against the tapestry at Whitehall, standing in the rear of the
crowd, to have my toes trampled upon by the sharp heels of Court ladies,
and an elbow in my stomach more often than not. I am come, like Wolsey,
girls, to lay my old bones among you. Art thou ready, Angela? Hast thou
had enough of London, and play-houses, and parks; and wilt thou share thy
father's solitude in Buckinghamshire?"

"With all my heart, sir."

"What! never a sigh for London pleasures? Thou hast the great lady's air
and carriage in that brave blue taffety. The nun I knew three years ago has
vanished. Can you so lightly renounce the splendour of this house, and your
sister's company, to make a prosing old father happy?"

"Indeed, sir, I am ready to go with you."

"How she says that--with what a countenance of woeful resignation! But I
will not make the Manor Moat too severe a prison, dearest. You shall visit
London, and your sister, when you will. There shall be a coach and a team
of stout roadsters to pull it when they are not wanted for the plough. And
the Vale of Aylesbury is but a long day's journey from London, while 'tis
no more than a morning's ride to Chilton."

"I could not bear for her to be long away from me," said Hyacinth. "She is
the only companion I have in the world."

"Except your husband."

"Husbands such as mine are poor company. Fareham has a moody brow, and a
mind stuffed with public matters. He dines with Clarendon one day, and with
Albemarle another; or he goes to Deptford to grumble with Mr. Evelyn; or he
creeps away to some obscure quarter of the town to hob-nob with Milton,
and with Marvel, the member for Hull. I doubt they are all of one mind in
abusing his Majesty, and conspiring against him. If I lose my sister I
shall have no one."

"What, no one; when you have Henriette, who even three years ago had
shrewdness enough to keep an old grandfather amused with her impertinent
prattle?"

"Grandfathers are easily amused by children they see as seldom as you have
seen Papillon. To have her about you all day, with her everlasting chatter,
and questions, and remarks, and opinions (a brat of twelve with opinions),
would soon give you the vapours."

"I am not so subject to vapours as you, child. Let me look at you, now the
candles are lighted."

The footmen had lighted clusters of wax candles on either side the tall
chimney-piece.

Sir John drew his elder daughter to the light, and scrutinised her face
with a father's privilege of uncompromising survey.

"You paint thick enough, i' conscience' name, though not quite so thick as
the Spanish senoras. They are browner than you, and need a heavier hand
with white and red. But you are haggard under all your red. You are not the
woman I left in '65."

"I am near two years older than the woman you left; and as for paint, there
is not a woman over twenty in London who uses as little red and white as I
do."

"What has become of Fareham to-night?" Sir John asked presently, when
Hyacinth had picked up her favourite spaniel to nurse and fondle, while
Angela had resumed her occupation at an embroidery frame, and a reposeful
air as of a long-established domesticity had fallen upon the scene.

"He is at Chilton. When he is not plotting he rushes off to Oxfordshire
for the hunting and shooting. He loves buglehorns and yelping curs,
and huntsmen's cracked voices, far before the company of ladies or the
conversation of wits."

"A man was never meant to sit in a velvet chair and talk fine. It is all
one for a French Abbe and a few old women in men's clothing to sit round
the room and chop logic with a learned spinster like Mademoiselle Scudery;
but men must live _sub Jove_, unless they are statesmen or clerks. They
must have horses and hounds, gun and spaniel, hawk or rod. I am glad
Fareham loves sport. And as for that talk of conspiring, let me not hear it
from thee, Hyacinth. 'Tis a perilous discourse to but hint at treason;
and your husband is a loyal gentleman who loves, and"--with a wry
face--"reveres--his King."

"Oh, I was only jesting. But, indeed, a man who so disparages the things
other people love must needs be a rebel at heart. Did you hear of Monsieur
de Malfort while you were at Paris?"

The inquiry was made with that over-acted carelessness which betrays hidden
pain; but the soldier's senses had been blunted by the rough-and-tumble of
an adventurer's life, and he was not on the alert for shades of feeling.

Angela accepted her father's return, with the new duties it imposed upon
her, as if it had been a decree of Heaven. She put aside all consideration
of that refuge which would have meant so complete a renunciation and
farewell. On her knees that night, in the midst of fervent prayers, her
tears streamed fast at the thought that, secure in the shelter of her
father's love, in the peaceful solitude of her native valley, she could
look to a far-off future when she and Fareham might meet with out fear of
sin, when no cloud of passion should darken his brotherly affection for
her; when his heart, now estranged from holy things, would have returned to
the faith of his ancestors, reconciled to God and the Church. She could but
think of him now as a fallen angel--a wanderer who had strayed far from the
only light and guide of human life, and was thus a mark for the tempter.
What lesser power than Satan's could have so turned good to evil; the
friendship of a brother to the base passion which had made so wide a gulf
between them; and which must keep them strangers till he was cured of his
sin? Only to diabolical possession could she ascribe the change that had
come over him since those happy days when she had watched the slow dawn
of health upon his sunken cheeks, when he and she had travelled together
through the rich autumn woods, along the pleasant English roads, and when,
in the leisure of the slow journey, he had poured out his thoughts to her,
the story of his life, his opinions, expatiating in fraternal confidence
upon the things he loved and the things he hated. And at Chilton, she
looked back and remembered his goodness to her, the pains he had taken in
choosing horses for her to ride, their long mornings on the river with
Henriette, their hawking parties, and in all his tender brotherly care of
her. The change in him had come about by almost imperceptible degrees:
but it had been chiefly marked by a fitful temper that had cut her to the
quick; now kind; now barely civil; courting her company to-day; to-morrow
avoiding her, as if there were contagion in her presence. Then, after
the meeting at Millbank, there had come a coldness so icy, a sarcasm so
cutting, that for a long time she had thought he hated as much as he
despised her. She had withered in his contempt. His unkindness had
overshadowed every hour of her life, and the longing to cry out to him
"Indeed, sir, your thoughts wrong me. I am not the wretch you think,"
had been almost too much for her fortitude. She had felt that she must
exculpate herself, even though in so doing she should betray her sister.
But honour, and affection for Hyacinth, had prevailed; and she had bent her
shoulders to the burden of undeserved shame. She had sat silent and abashed
in his presence, like a guilty creature.

Sir John Kirkland spent a week at Fareham House, employed in choosing a
team of horses, suitable alike for the road and the plough, looking
out, among the coachmakers, for a second-hand travelling carriage, and
eventually buying a coach of Lady Fanshawe's, which had been brought from
Madrid with the rest of her very extensive goods and chattels.

One need scarce remark that it was not one of the late Ambassador's state
carriages, his ruby velvet coach, with fringes that cost three hundred
pounds, or his brocade carriage, but a coach that had been built for the
everyday use of his suite.

Sir John also bought a little plain silver, in place of that fine
collection of silver and parcel-gilt which had been so willingly sacrificed
to royal necessities; and though he breathed no sigh over past losses, some
bitter thoughts may have come across his cheerfulness as he heard of the
splendour and superabundance of Lady Castlemaine's plate and jewels, or of
the ring worth six hundred pounds lately presented to a pretty actress.

In a week he was ready for Buckinghamshire; and Angela had her trunks
packed, and had bid good-bye to her London friends, amidst the chatter of
Lady Fareham's visiting-day, and the clear, bell-like clash of delicate
china tea-cups--miniature bowls of egg-shell porcelain, without handles,
and to be held daintily between the tips of high-bred fingers.

There was a chorus of courteous bewailing at the notion of Mrs. Kirkland's
departure.

Sir Ralph Masaroon pretended to be in despair.

"Is it not bad enough to have had the coldest winter my youth can remember?
But you must needs take the sun from our spring. Why, the maids of honour
will count for handsome when you are gone. What's that Butler says?--

'The twinkling stars begin to muster,
And glitter with their borrowed lustre.'

But what's to become of me without the sun? I shall have no one to
side-glass in the Ring."

"Indeed, Sir Ralph, I did not know that you ever side-glassed me!"

"What, you have suffered my devotion to pass unperceived? When I have
broken half a dozen coach windows in your service, rattling a glass down
with a vehemence which would have startled a Venus in marble to turn and
recognise an adorer! Round and round the Ring I have driven for hours, on
the chance of a look. Nay, marble is not so coy as froward beauty! And at
the Queen's chapel have I not knelt at the Mass morning after morning, at
the risk of being thought a Papist, for the sake of seeing you at prayers;
and have envied the Romish dog who handed you the aspersoir as you went
out? And you to be unconscious all the time!"

"Nay, 'tis so much happier for me, Sir Ralph, since you have given me a
reserve of gratified vanity that will last me a year in the country, where
I shall see nothing but ploughmen and bird-boys."

"Look out for the scarecrows in Sir John's fields, for the odds are you
will see me some day disguised as one."

"Why disguised?" asked his friend Mr. Penington, who had lately produced a
comedy that had been acted three afternoons at the Duke's Theatre, and one
evening at Court, which may be taken as a prosperous run for a new play.

Lady Sarah Tewkesbury held forth on the pleasures of a country life, and
lamented that family connections and the necessity of standing well with
the Court constrained her to spend the greater part of her existence in
town.

"I am like Milton," she said. "I adore a rural life. To hear the cock--

'From his watchtower in the skies,
When the horse and hound do rise.'

Oh, I love buttercups and daisies above all the Paris finery in the
Exchange; and to steep one's complexion in May-dew, and to sup on a
syllabub or a dish of frumenty--so cheap, too, while it costs a fortune but
to scrape along in London."

"The country is well enough for a month at hay-making, to romp with a bevy
of London beauties in the meadows near Tunbridge Wells, or to dance to
a couple of fiddles on the Common by moonlight," said Mr. Penington;
whereupon all agreed that Tunbridge Wells, Epsom, Doncaster, and Newmarket
were the only country possible to people of intellect.

"I would never go further than Epsom, if I had my will," said Sir Ralph;
"for I see no pleasure in Newmarket for a man who keeps no running-horses,
and has no more interest in the upshot of a race than he might have in
a maggot match on his own dining-table, did he stake high enough on the
result."

"But my sister is not to be buried in Buckinghamshire all the year round,"
explained Hyacinth. "I shall fetch her here half a dozen times in a season;
and her shortest visits must be long enough to take the country freshness
out of her complexion, and save her from becoming a milkmaid."

"Gud, to see her freckled!" cried Penington. "I could as soon imagine
Helen with a hump. That London pallor is the choicest charm in a girl
of quality--a refined sickliness that appeals to the heart of a man of
feeling, an 'if-you-don't-lend-me-your-arm-I-shall-swoon' sort of air. Your
country hoyden, with her roses-and-cream complexion, and open-air manners,
is more shocking than Medusa to a man of taste."

The talk drifted to other topics at the mention of Buckingham, who had but
lately been let out of the Tower, where he and Lord Dorchester had been
committed for scuffling and quarrelling at the Canary Conference.

"Has your ladyship seen the Duke and Lord Dorchester since they came out of
the house of bondage?" asked Lady Sarah. "I think Buckingham was never so
gay and handsome, and takes his imprisonment as the best joke that ever
was, and is as great at Court as ever."

"His Majesty is but too indulgent," said Masaroon, "and encourages the Duke
to be insolent and careless of ceremony. He had the impertinence to show
himself at chapel before he had waited on his Majesty."

"Who was very angry and forbade him the Court," said Penington. "But
Buckingham sent the King one of his foolish, jesting letters, capped with
a rhyme or two; and if you can make Charles Stuart laugh you may pick his
pocket----"

"Or seduce his mistress----"

"Oh, he will forgive much to wit and gaiety. He learnt the knack of taking
life easily, while he led that queer, shifting life in exile. He was a
cosmopolitan and a soldier of fortune before he was a King _de facto;_ and
still wears the loose garments of those easy, beggarly days, when he had
neither money nor care. Be sure he regrets that roving life--Madrid, Paris,
the Hague--and will never love a son as well as little Monmouth, the child
of his youth."

"What would he not give to make that base-born brat Prince of Wales?
Strange that while Lord Ross is trying to make his offspring illegitimate
by Act of Parliament, his master's anxieties should all tend the other
way."

"Don't talk to me of Parliament!" cried Lady Sarah; "the tyranny of the
Rump was nothing to them. Look at the tax upon French wines, which will
make it almost impossible for a lady of small means to entertain her
friends. And an Act for burying us all in woollen, for the benefit of the
English trade in wool."

"But, indeed, Lady Sarah, it is we of the old faith who have most need to
complain," said Lady Fareham, "since these wretches make us pay a double
poll-tax; and all our foreign friends are being driven away for the same
reason--just because the foolish and the ignorant must needs put down the
fire to the Catholics."

"Indeed, your ladyship, the Papists have had an unlucky knack at lighting
fires, as Smithfield and Oxford can testify," said Penington; "and perhaps,
having no more opportunity of roasting martyrs, it may please some of
your creed to burn Protestant houses, with the chance of cooking a few
Protestants inside 'em."

* * * * *

Angela had drawn away from the little knot of fine ladies and finer
gentlemen, and was sitting in the bay window of an ante-room, with
Henriette and the boy, who were sorely dejected at the prospect of losing
her. The best consolation she could offer was to promise that they should
be invited to the Manor Moat as soon as she and her father had settled
themselves comfortably there--if their mother could spare them.

Henriette laughed outright at this final clause.

"Spare us!" she cried. "Does she ever want us? I don't think she knows when
we are in the room, unless we tread upon her gown, when she screams out
'Little viper!' and hits us with her fan."

"The lightest touch, Papillon; not so hard as you strike your favourite
baby."

"Oh, she doesn't hurt me; but the disrespect of it! Her only daughter, and
nearly as high as she is!"

"You are an ungrateful puss to complain, when her ladyship is so kind as to
let you be here to see all her fine company."

"I am sick of her company, almost always the same, and always talking about
the same things. The King, and the Duke, and the General, and the navy;
or Lady Castlemaine's jewels, or the last new head from Paris, or her
ladyship's Flanders lace. It is all as dull as ditch-water now Monsieur de
Malfort is gone. He was always pleasant, and he let me play on his guitar,
though he swore it excruciated him. And he taught me the new Versailles
coranto. There's no pleasure for any one since he fell ill and left
England."

"You shall come to the Manor. It will be a change, even though you hate the
country and love London."

"I have left off loving London. I have had too much of it. If his lordship
let us go to the play-house often it would be different. Oh, how I
loved Philaster--and that exquisite page! Do you think I could act that
character, auntie, if his lordship's tailor made me such a dress?"

"I think thou hast impudence for anything, dearest."

"I would rather act that page than Pauline in _Polyeucte_, though
Mademoiselle swears I speak her tirades nearly as well as an actress she
once saw at the Marais, who was too old and fat for the character. How I
should love to be an actress, and to play tragedy and comedy, and
make people cry and laugh! Indeed, I would rather be anything than a
lady--unless I could be exactly like Lady Castlemaine."

"Ah, Heaven forbid!"

"But why not? I heard Sir Ralph tell mother that, let her behave as badly
as she may, she will always be atop of the tree, and that the young sparks
at the Chapel Royal hardly look at their prayer-books for gazing at her,
and that the King----"

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