London Pride by M. E. Braddon

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"Ah, sweetheart, I want to hear no more of her!"

"Why, don't you like her? I thought you did not know her. She never comes
here."

"Are there any staghounds in the Vale of Aylesbury?" asked the boy, who had
been looking out of the window, watching the boats go by, unheeding his
sister's babble.

"I know not, love; but there shall be dogs enough for you to play with,
I'll warrant, and a pony for you to ride. Grandfather shall get them for
his dearest."

Sir John was fond of Henriette, whom he looked upon as a marvel of
precocious brightness; but the boy was his favourite, whom he loved with an
old man's half-melancholy affection for the creature which is to live and
act a part in the world when he, the greybeard, shall be dust.

CHAPTER XXII.

AT THE MANOR MOAT.

Solid, grave, and sober, grey with a quarter of a century's neglect, the
Manor House, in the valley below Brill, differed in every detail from the
historical Chilton Abbey. It was a moated manor house, the typical house of
the typical English squire; an E-shaped house, with a capacious roof that
lodged all the household servants, and clustered chimney-stacks that
accommodated a great company of swallows. It had been built in the reign
of Henry the Seventh, and was coeval with its distinguished neighbour, the
house of the Verneys, at Middle Claydon, and it had never served any other
purpose than to shelter Englishmen of good repute in the land. Souvenirs
of Bosworth field--a pair of huge jack-boots, a two-handed sword, and a
battered helmet--hung over the chimney-piece in the low-ceiled hall; but
the end of the civil war was but a memory when the Manor House was built.
After Bosworth a slumberous peace had fallen on the land, and in the
stillness of this secluded valley, sheltered from every bleak wind by
surrounding hills and woods, the gardens of the Manor Moat had grown into
a settled beauty that made the chief attraction of a country seat which
boasted so little of architectural dignity, or of expensive fantasy in
moulded brick and carved stone. Plain, sombre, with brick walls and heavy
stone mullions to low-browed windows, the Manor House stood in the midst
of gardens such as the modern millionaire may long for, but which only the
grey old gardener Time can create.

There was more than a mile of yew hedge, eight feet high, and three
feet broad, walling in flower garden and physic garden, the latter the
particular care of the house-mothers of previous generations, the former a
paradise of those old flowers which bloom and breathe sweet odours in the
pages of Shakespeare, and jewel the verse of Milton. The fritillary here
opened its dusky spotted petals to drink the dews of May; and here, against
a wall of darkest green, daffodils bloomed unruffled by March winds.

Verily a garden of gardens; but when Angela came there in the chill
February there were no flowers to welcome her, only the long, straight
walks beside those walls of yew, and the dark shining waters of the moat
and the fish-pond, reflecting the winter sun; and over all the scene a
quiet as of the grave.

A little colony of old servants had been left in the house, which had
escaped confiscation, albeit the property of a notorious Malignant, perhaps
chiefly on account of its insignificance, the bulk of the estate having
been sold by Sir John in '44, when the king's condition was waxing
desperate, and money was worth twice its value to those who clung to hope,
and were ready to sacrifice their last jacobus in the royal cause. The poor
little property--shrunk to a home-farm of ninety acres, a humble homestead,
and the Manor House--may have been thought hardly worth selling; or Sir
John's rights may have been respected out of regard for his son-in-law,
who, on the maternal side, had kindred in high places under the
Commonwealth, a fact of which Hyacinth occasionally reminded her husband,
telling him that he was by hereditary instinct a rebel and a king-slayer.

The farm had been taken to by Sir John's steward, a man who in politics was
of the same easy temper as the Vicar of Bray in religion, and was a staunch
Cromwellian so long as Oliver or Richard sat at Whitehall, or would have
tossed up his cap and cheered for Monk, as Captain-General of Great
Britain, had he been called upon to till his fields and rear his stock
under a military despotism. It mattered little to any man living at ease in
a fat Buckinghamshire valley what King or Commonwealth ruled in London, so
long as there was a ready market at Aylesbury or Thame for all the farm
could produce, and civil war planted neither drake nor culverin on Brill
Hill.

The old servants had vegetated as best they might in the old house, their
wages of the scantiest; but to live and die within familiar walls was
better than to fare through a world which had no need of them. The younger
members of the household had scattered, and found new homes; but the
grey-haired cook was still in her kitchen; the old butler still wept over
his pantry, where a dozen or so of spoons, and one battered tankard of
Heriot's make, were all that remained of that store of gold and silver
which had been his pride forty years ago, when Charles was bringing home
his fair French bride, and old Thames at London was alight with fire-works
and torches, and alive with music and singing, as the city welcomed its
young Queen, and when Reuben Holden was a lad in the pantry, learning to
polish a salver or a goblet, and sorely hectored by his uncle the butler.

Reuben, and Marjory, the old cook, famous in her day as any _cordon-bleu_,
were the sole representatives of the once respectable household; but a
couple of stout wenches had been hired from the cluster of labourers'
hovels that called itself a village; and these had been made to drudge as
they had never drudged before in the few days of warning which prepared
Reuben for his master's return.

Fires had been lighted in rooms where mould and mildew had long prevailed;
wainscots had been scrubbed and polished till the whole house reeked
of bees-wax and turpentine, to a degree that almost overpowered those
pervading odours of damp and dry rot, which can curiously exist together.
The old furniture had been made as bright as faded fabrics and worm-eaten
wood could be made by labour; and the leaping light of blazing logs,
reflected on the black oak panelling, gave a transient air of cheerfulness
to the spacious dining-parlour where Sir John and his daughter took their
first meal in the old home. And if to Angela's eye, accustomed to the
Italian loftiness of the noble mansions on the Thames, the broad oak
crossbeams seemed coming down upon her head, there was at least an air of
homely snugness in the low darkly coloured room.

On that first evening there had been much to interest and engage her. She
had the old house to explore, and dim childish memories to recall. Here was
the room where her mother died, the room in which she herself had first
seen the light--perhaps not until a month or so after her birth, since
the seventeenth-century baby was not flung open-eyed into her birthday
sunshine, but was swaddled and muffled in a dismal apprenticeship to life.
The chamber had been hung with "blacks" for a twelvemonth, Reuben told her,
as he escorted her over the house, and unlocked the doors of disused rooms.

The tall bedstead with its red and yellow stamped velvet curtains and
carved ebony posts looked like an Indian temple. One might expect to
see Buddha squatting on the embroidered counterpane--the work of half a
lifetime. When the curtains were drawn back, a huge moth flew out of the
darkness, and spun and wheeled round the room with an awful humming noise,
and to the superstitious mind might have suggested a human soul embodied in
this phantasmal greyness, with power of sound in such excess of its bulk.

"Sir John never used the room after her ladyship's death," Reuben
explained, "though 'tis the best bed-chamber. He has always slept in the
blue room, which is at the furthest end of the gallery from the room that
has been prepared for madam. We call that the garden room, and it is mighty
pretty in summer."

In summer! How far it seemed to summer-time in Angela's thoughts! What a
long gulf of nothingness to be bridged over, what a dull level plain to
cross, before June and the roses could come round again, bringing with them
the memory of last summer; and the days she had lived under the same roof
with Fareham, and the evenings when they had sat in the same room, or
loitered on the terrace, pausing now and then beside an Italian vase of
gaudy flowers to look at this or that, or to watch the mob on the river;
and those rare golden days, like that at Sayes Court, which she had spent
in some excursion with Fareham and Henriette.

"I hope madam likes the chamber we have prepared for her?" the old man
said, as she stood dreaming.

"Yes, my good friend, it is very comfortable. My woman complained of the
smoky chimney in her chamber; but no doubt we shall mend that by-and-by."

"It would be strange if a gentlewoman's servant found not something to
grumble about," said Reuben; "they have ever less work to do than any one
else in the house, and ever make more trouble than their mistresses. I'll
settle the hussy, with madam's leave."

"Nay, pray, Mr. Reuben, no harshness. She is a willing, kind-hearted girl,
and we shall find plenty of work for her in this big house where there are
so few servants."

"Oh, there's work enough for sure, if she'll do it, and is no fine city
madam that will scream at sight of a mouse, belike."

"She is a girl I had out of Oxfordshire."

"Oh, if she comes out of Oxfordshire, from his lordship's estate, I dare
swear she is a good girl. I hate your London trash; and I think the great
fire would have been a blessing in disguise if it had swept away most of
such trumpery."

"Oh, sir, if a Romanist were to say as much as that!" said Angela,
laughing.

"Oh, madam, I am not one of they fools that say because half London was
burnt the Papishes must have set it on fire. What good would the burning of
it do 'em, poor souls? And now they are to pay double taxes, as if it was
a sure thing their faggots kindled the blaze. I know how kind and sweet a
soul a Papish may be, though she do worship idols; for I had the honour to
serve your ladyship's mother from the hour she first entered this house
till the day I smuggled the French priest by the back stairs to carry her
the holy oils. Ah! she was a noble and lovely lady. Madam's eyes are of her
colour; and, indeed, madam favours her mother more than my Lady Fareham
does."

"Have you seen Lady Fareham of late years?"

"Ay, madam, she came here in her coach-and-six the summer before the
pestilence, with her two beautiful children, and a party of ladies and
gentlemen. They rode here from his Grace of Buckingham's new mansion by
the Thames--Clefden, I think they call it; and they do say his Grace do so
lavish and squander money in the building of it, that belike he will be
ruined and dead before his palace be finished. There were three coaches
full, with servants and what not. And they brought wine, and capons ready
dressed, and confectionery, and I helped to serve a collation for them in
the garden. And after they had feasted merrily, with a vast quantity of
sparkling French wine, they all rushed through the house like madcaps,
laughing and chattering, regular French magpies, for there was more of 'em
French than English, her ladyship leading them, till she comes to the door
of this room, and finds it locked, and she begins to thump upon the panels
like a spoilt child, and calls, 'Reuben, Reuben, what is your mystery? Sure
this must be the ghost-chamber! Open, open, instantly.' And I answered her
quietly, ''Tis the chamber where that sweet angel, your ladyship's mother,
lay in state, and it has never been opened to strangers since she died.'
And all in the midst of her mirth, the dear young lady burst out weeping,
and cried, 'My sweet, sweet mother! I remember the last smile she gave me
as if it was yesterday.' And then she dropped on her knees and crossed
herself, and whispered a prayer, with her face close against the door;
and I knew that she was praying for her lady-mother, as the way of your
religion is, madam, to pray for the dead; and sure, though it is a simple
thing, it can do no harm; and to my thinking, when all the foolishness is
taken out of religion the warmth and the comfort seem to go too; for I know
I never used to feel a bit more comfortable after a two hours' sermon, when
I was an Anabaptist."

"Are you not an Anabaptist now, Reuben?"

"Lord forbid, madam! I have been a member of the Church of England ever
since his Majesty's restoration brought the Vicar to his own again, and
gave us back Christmas Day, and the organ, and the singing-boys."

Angela's life at the Manor was so colourless that the first blossoming of a
familiar flower was an event to note and to remember. Life within convent
walls would have been scarcely more tranquil or more monotonous. Sir John
rode with his hounds three or four times a week, or was about the fields
superintending the farming operations, walking beside the ploughman as he
drove his furrow, or watching the scattering of the seed. Or he was in
the narrow woodlands which still belonged to him, and Angela, taking her
solitary walk at the close of day, heard his axe ringing through the wintry
air.

It was a peaceful, and should have been a pleasant, life, for father and
for daughter. Angela told herself that God had been very good to her in
providing this safe haven from tempestuous seas, this quiet little world,
where the pulses of passion beat not; where existence was like a sleep, a
gradual drifting away of days and weeks, marked only by the changing note
of birds, the deepening umber on the birch, the purpling of beech buds, and
the starry celandine shining out of grassy banks that had so lately been
obliterated under the drifted snow.

"I ought to be happy," she said to herself of a morning, when she rose from
her knees, and stood looking across the garden to the grassy hills beyond,
while the beads of her rosary slipped through her languid fingers--"I ought
to be happy."

And then she turned from the sunny window with a sigh, and went down the
dark, echoing staircase to the breakfast parlour, where her own little
silver chocolate-pot looked ridiculously small beside Sir John's quart
tankard, and where the crisp, golden rolls, baked in the French fashion
by the maid from Chilton, who had been taught by Lord Fareham's _chef_,
contrasted with the chine of beef and huge farmhouse loaf that accompanied
the knight's old October.

After all his Continental wanderings Sir John had come back to substantial
English fare with an unabated relish; and Angela had to sit down, day after
day, to a huge joint and an overloaded dish of poultry, and to reassure her
father when he expressed uneasiness because she ate so little.

"Women do not want much food, sir. Martha's rolls, and our honey, and the
conserves old Marjory makes so well, are better for me than the meat which
suits your heartier appetite."

"Faith, child, if I played no stouter a part at table than you do, I should
soon be fit to play living skeleton at Aylesbury Fair. And I dubitate as to
your diet-loaves and confectionery suiting you better than a slice of chine
or sirloin, for you have a pale cheek and a pensive eye that smite me to
the heart. Indeed, I begin to question if I was kind to take you from all
the pleasures of the town to be mewed up here with a rusty old soldier."

"Indeed, sir, I could be happier nowhere than here. I have had enough of
London pleasures; and I was meditating upon returning to the convent, when
you came to put an end to all my perplexities; and, sir, I think God sent
you to me when I most needed a father's love."

She went to him and knelt by his chair, hiding her tearful eyes against the
cushioned arm. But, though he could not see her face, he heard the break in
her voice, and he bent down and lifted her drooping head on his breast, and
kissed the soft brown hair, and embraced her very tenderly.

"Sweetheart, thou hast all a father's love, and it is happiness to me to
have thee here; but old as I am, and with so little cunning to read a
maiden's heart, I can read clear enough to know thou art not happy.
Whisper, dearest. Is it a sweetheart who sighs for thy favours far off, and
will not beard this old lion in his den? My gentle Angela would make no ill
choice. Fear not to trust me, my heart. I will love whom you love, favour
whom you favour. I am no tyrant, that my sweet daughter should grow pale
with keeping secrets from me."

"Dear father, you are all goodness. No, there is no one--no one! I am happy
with you. I have no one in the world but you, and, in a so much lesser
degree of love, my sister and her children--"

"And Fareham. He should be to you as a brother. He is of a black
melancholic humour, and not a man whom women love; but he has a heart of
gold, and must regard you with grateful affection for your goodness to him
when he was sick. Hyacinth is never weary of expatiating upon your devotion
in that perilous time."

"She is foolish to talk of services I would have given as willingly to a
sick beggar," Angela answered, impatiently.

Her face was still hidden against her father's breast; but she lifted her
head presently, and the pale calmness of her countenance reassured him.

"Well, it is uncommon strange," he said, "if one so fair has no sweetheart
among all the sparks of Whitehall."

"Lord Fareham hates Whitehall. We have only attended there at great
festivals, when my sister's absence would have been a slight upon her
Majesty and the Duchess."

"But my star, though seldom shining there, should have drawn some
satellites to her orbit. You see, dearest, I can catch the note of Court
flattery. Nay, I will press no questions. My girl shall choose her own
partner; provided the man is honest and a loyal servant of the King. Her
old father shall set no stumbling-block in the high-road to her happiness.
What right has one who is almost a pauper to stipulate for a wealthy
son-in-law?"

CHAPTER XXIII.

PATIENT, NOT PASSIONATE.

The quiet days went on, and the old Cavalier settled down into a tranquil
happiness, which comforted his daughter with the feeling of duty
prosperously fulfilled. To make this dear old man happy, to be his
companion and friend, to share in his rides and rambles, and of an evening
to play the games he loved on the old shovel-board in the hall, or an
old-fashioned game at cards, or backgammon beside the fire in the panelled
parlour, reconciled her to the melancholy of an existence from which hope
had vanished like a light extinguished. It seemed to her as if she had
dropped back into the old life with her great-aunt. The Manor House was
just a little gayer than the Flemish Convent--for the voices and footsteps
of the few inhabitants had a freer sound, which made the few seem more
populous than the many. And then there were the dogs. What a powerful
factor in home life those four-footed friends were! Out-of-doors a stone
barn had been turned into a kennel for five couple of foxhounds; indoors a
couple of setters, sent by a friend over sea from Waterford, had insinuated
themselves into the parlour, where they established themselves as household
favourites, to the damage of those higher hereditary qualities which fitted
them for distinction with the guns. Indeed, the old Knight was too fond of
his fireside companions to care very much if he missed a bird now and then
because Cataline was over-fed or Caesar disobedient. They stood sentinel on
each side of his chair at dinner, like supporters to a coat-of-arms. Angela
had her own particular favourite in a King Charles's spaniel. It was the
very dog which had first greeted her in the silence of the plague-stricken
house. She had chosen this one from the canine troop when her sister
offered her the gift of a dog at parting, though Hyacinth had urged her to
take something younger than this, which was over five years old.

"He will die just when you love him best," she said.

"Nay; but such partings must come. I love this one because he was with me
in fear and sadness. He used to cling to me, and look up and lick my face,
as if he were telling me to hope, when my brother seemed marked for death."

"Poor Fareham! Did you desire every dog in the house--and my spaniels are
of the same breed as the King's, and worth fifty pound apiece--you have
a right to take them. But, indeed, I would rather you chose a younger
dog--and with a shorter nose; but, of course, if you like this one
best----"

Angela held by her first choice, and Ganymede was the companion of all her
hours, walked and lived with her, and slept on a satin cushion at the foot
of her spacious four-post bed, and fretted and whined if she left him shut
in an empty room for half an hour; yet with all his refinements, and his
air of being as dainty a gentleman as any spark of quality, he had a gross
passion for the kitchen, and after nibbling sweet cakes delicately out
of his mistress's taper fingers, he would waddle through a labyrinth of
passages, and find his way to the hog-tub, there to wallow in slush and
broken victuals, till he all but drowned himself in a flood of pot-liquor.
It was hard to reconcile so much beauty and grace, such eloquent eyes and
satin coat, with tastes and desires so vulgar; and Angela sighed over him
when a scullion brought him to her, greasy and penitent, to crouch at her
feet, and deprecate her disgust with an abject tail.

Oh, tranquil, duteous life, how fair it might have seemed, as spring
advanced, and the garden smiled with the promise of summer, were it not for
that aching sense of loss, the some one missing, whose absence made all
things grey and cold!

Yes, she knew now, fully realising as she had never done before, how long
and how utterly her life had been influenced by an affection which even to
contemplate was mortal sin. Yet to extinguish memory was not within her
power. She looked back and remembered how Fareham's protecting love had
enfolded her with its gentle warmth, in those happy days at Chilton; how
all she knew of poetry and the drama, of ethics and philosophy, had been
learnt from him. She recalled his evident delight in opening the rich
treasures of a mind which he had never ceased to cultivate, even amidst the
vicissitudes of a soldier's life, in making her familiar with the writers
he loved, and teaching her to estimate, and to discuss them. And in
all their talk together he had been for the most part careful to avoid
disparagement of the religion in which she believed--so that it was only
some chance revelation of the infidel's narrow outlook that reminded her of
his unbelief.

Yes, his love had been round her like an atmosphere; and she had been
exquisitely happy while that unquestioning affection was hers. On her part
there had been neither doubt nor fear. It seemed the most natural thing in
the world that he should be fond of her and she of him. Affinity had made
them brother and sister; and then they had been together in sickness and in
peril of death. It might be true, as he himself had affirmed, that her
so happy arrival had saved his life; since just those hours between the
departure of his attendants and the physician's evening visit may have been
the crisis of his disease.

Well, it was past--the exquisite bliss, the unconscious sin, the
confidence, the danger. All had vanished into the grave of irrecoverable
days.

She had heard nothing from Denzil since she left London, nor had she
acknowledged his letter. Her silence had doubtless angered him, and all
was at an end between them, and this was what she wished. Hyacinth and her
children were at Chilton, whence came letters of complaining against the
dulness of the country, where his lordship hunted four times a week, and
spent all the rest of his time in his library, appearing only "at our
stupid heavy meals; and that not always, since on his hunting days he is
far afield when I have to sit down to the intolerable two-o'clock dinner,
and make a pretence of eating--as if anybody with more intellectuals than
a sheep could dine; or as if appetite came by staring at green fields! You
remember how in London supper was the only meal I ever cared for. There
is some grace in a repast that comes after conversation and music, or the
theatre, or a round of visits--a table dazzling with lights, and men and
women ready to amuse, and be amused. But to sit down in broad daylight,
when one has scarce swallowed one's morning chocolate, and face a
sweltering sirloin, or open a smoking veal pie! Indeed, dearest, our whole
method of feeding smacks of a vulgar brutishness, more appropriate to a
company of Topinambous than to persons of quality. Why, oh, why must these
reeking hecatombs load our tables, when they might as easily be kept out of
sight upon a buffet? The spectacle of huge mountains of meat, the steam and
odour of rank boiled and roast under one's very nostrils, change appetite
to nausea, and would induce a delicate person to rise in disgust and fly
from the dining-room. Mais, je ne fais que divaguer; and almost forget what
it was I was so earnest to tell thee when I began my letter.

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