London Pride by M. E. Braddon

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"Sir Denzil Warner has been over here, his ostensible motive a civil
inquiry after my health; but I could see that his actual purpose was to
hear of you. I told him how happily your simple soul has accommodated
itself to an almost conventual seclusion, and a very inferior style of
living--whereupon he smiled his rapture, and praised you to the skies.
'Would that she could accommodate herself to my house as easily,' he said;
'she should have every indulgence that an adoring husband could yield her.'
And then he said much more, but as lovers always sing the same repetitive
song, and have no more strings to their lyre than the ancients had before
Mercury expanded it, I confess to not listening over carefully, and will
leave you to imagine the eloquence of a manly and honourable love. Ah,
sweetheart! you do wrong to reject him. Thou hast a quiet soothing
prettiness of thine own, but art no blazing star of beauty, like the
Stewart, to bring a King to thy feet--he would have married her if poor
Catherine had not disappointed him by her recovery--and to take a Duke as
_pis aller_. Believe me, love, it were wise of you to become Lady Warner,
with an unmortgaged estate, and a husband who, in these Republican times,
may rise to distinction. He is your only earnest admirer; and a love so
steadfast, backed by a fortune so respectable, should not be discarded
lightly."

Over all these latter passages in her sister's letter Angela's eye ran
with a scornful carelessness. Her womanly pride revolted at such petty
schooling--that she should be bidden to accept this young man gratefully,
because he was her only suitor. No one else had ever cared for her pale
insignificance. She looked at her clouded image in the oblong glass that
hung on the panel above her secretaire, and whose reflection made any
idea of her own looks rather speculative than precise. It showed her a
thoughtful face, too pale for beauty; yet she could but note the harmony of
lines which recalled that Venetian type familiar to her eye in the Titians
and Tintorets at Fareham House.

"I doubt I am good-looking enough for any one to be satisfied with the
outward semblance who valued the soul within," she thought, as she turned
from the glass with a mournful sigh.

It was not of Denzil she was thinking, but of that other who in slow
contemplative days in the library where he had taught her what books
she ought to love, and where she might never more enter, must naturally
sometimes remember her, and cast some backward thoughts to the hours they
had spent together.

Hyacinth's letter of matronly counsel was but a week old when Sir
John surprised his daughter one morning, as they sat at table, by the
announcement of a visitor to stay in the house.

"You will order the west room to be got ready, Angela, and bid Marjory Cook
serve us some of her savourest dishes while Sir Denzil stays here."

"Sir Denzil!"

"Yes, ma mie, Sir Denzil! Ventregris, the girl stares as if I had said Sir
Bevis of Southampton, or Sir Guy of Warwick! I knew this young gentleman's
father before the troubles--an honest man, though he took the wrong side He
paid for his perversity with his life; so we'll say requiescat. The young
man is a fine young man, whom I would fain have something nearer to me than
he is. So at a hint from your sister I have asked him to bring his fishing
tackle and whip our streams for a May trout or two. He may catch a finer
fish than trout, perhaps, while he is a-fishing; if you will be his guide
through the meadows."

"Father, how could you----"

"Ah! thou art a sly one, fair mistress. Who was it told me there was no
one? 'No one, dear father, and indeed, sir, I was thinking of the convent
when you came to London,' while here was as handsome a spark as one would
meet in a day's march, sighing and dying for you."

"Father, I do protest to you----" she began, with a pale distressed look
that vouched for her earnestness; but the Knight had his face in the
tankard, and set it down only to pursue his own train of thought.

"If it had not have been for that little bird at Chilton you might have
hoodwinked me as blind as ever gerfalcon was hooded. Well, the young man
will be here before evening. I would not force your inclinations, but it is
the dearest desire of my heart to see you happily married before I blow out
the candle, and bid my last good night. And a man of honour, handsome and
of handsomest fortune, is not to be slighted."

Angela's spirit rose against this recurrence of her sister's sermon.

"If Sir Denzil is coming to this house as my suitor, I will go to Louvain
without an hour's delay that I can help," she said resolutely.

"Why, what a vixen! Nay, dearest, there is no need for that angry flush.
The young man is too courteous to plague you with unwelcome civilities.
I saw him in London at the tennis court, and was friendly to him for his
father's memory, knowing nothing of his desire to be my son-in-law. He is a
fine player at that royal game, and a fine man. He comes here this evening
as my friend; and if you please to treat him disdainfully, I cannot help
it. But, indeed, I wonder as much as your sister why you should not
reciprocate this gentleman's love."

"When you were young, father, did you love the first comer; only because
she was handsome and civil?"

"No, child; I had seen many handsome women before I met your mother. She
came over in '35 with the Marquise, who had been lady of honour to Queen
Marie before the Princess Henriette married our King, and Queen Henriette
was fond of her, and invited her to come to London, and she divided her
life between the two countries till the troubles, when she was one of the
first to scamper off, as you know. My wife was little more than a child
when I saw her at Court, hiding behind her mother's large sleeves. I had
seen handsomer women; but she was the first whose face went straight to
my heart. And it has dwelt there ever since," he concluded, with a sudden
break in his voice.

"Then you can comprehend, dear sir, that a man may be honourable, and
courteous, and handsome, and yet not win a woman's love."

"Ah, it is not the man; it is love that should win, sweetheart. Love is
worthy of love. When that is the true coin it should buy its reward. Indeed
I have rarely seen it otherwise. Love begets love. Louise de la Valliere is
not the handsomest woman at the French Court. Her complexion has suffered
from small-pox, and she has a defective gait; but the King discovered a so
fond and romantic attachment to his person, a love ashamed of loving, the
very poetry of affection; and that discovery made him her slave. The Court
beauties--sultanas splendid as Vashti--look on in angry wonder. Louise is
adored because she began by adoring. Mind, I do not praise or excuse her,
for 'tis a mortal sin to love a married man, and steal him from his wife.
Foolish child, how your cheek crimsons! I do wrong to shock your innocence
with my babble of a King's mistress."

Denzil arrived at sunset, on horseback, with a mounted servant in
attendance, carrying his saddle-bags and fishing tackle. It was but a short
day's ride from Oxford. Fareham's rides with the hounds must have brought
him sometimes within a few miles of the Manor Moat Hyacinth and her
children might have ridden over in their coach; and indeed she had promised
her sister a visit in more than one of her letters. But there had been
always something to postpone the expedition--company at home, or bad
weather, or a fit of the vapours--so that the sisters had been as much
asunder as if the elder had been in Yorkshire or Northumberland.

Denzil brought news of the household at Chilton. Lady Fareham was as
charming as ever, and though she had complained very often of bad health,
she had been so lively and active whenever the whim took her, riding with
hawk and hound, visiting about the neighbourhood, driving into Oxford, that
Denzil was of opinion her ailments were of the spirits only, a kind of
rustic malady to which most fine ladies were subject, the nostalgia of
paving-stones and oil lamps. Henriette--she now insisted upon discarding
her nick-name--was less volatile than in London, and missed her aunt
sorely, and quarrelled with mademoiselle, who was painfully strict upon all
points of speech and manners. George's days of unalloyed idleness were also
ended, for the Roman Catholic priest was now a resident in the house as
the little boy's tutor, besides teaching 'Henriette the rudiments, and
instructing her in her mother's religion.

Denzil told them even of the guests he had met at the Abbey; but of the
master of the house his lips spoke not, till Sir John questioned him.

"And Fareham? Has he that same air of not belonging to the family which I
remarked of him in London?"

"His lordship has ever an air of being aloof from everybody," Denzil
answered gravely. "He is solitary even in his sports, and his indoor life
is mostly buried in a book."

"Ah, those books, they will be the ruin of nations! As books multiply,
great actions will grow less. Life's golden hours will be wasted in
dreaming over the fancies of dead men; and the world will be over-full of
brooding philosophers like Descartes, or pamphleteers like your friend Mr.
Milton."

"Nay, sir, the world is richer for such a man as John Milton, who has
composed the grandest poem in our language--an epic on a scale and subject
as sublime as the Divine Comedy of Dante."

"I never saw Mr. Dante's comedy acted, and confess myself ignorant of its
merits."

"Comedy, sir, with Dante, is but a name. The Italian poem is an epic, and
not a play. Mr. Milton's poem will be given to the world shortly, though,
alas! he will reap little substantial reward for the intellectual labour
of years. Poetry is not a marketable commodity in England, save when it
flatters a royal patron, or takes the vulgarer form of a stage-play. But
this poem of Mr. Milton's has been the solace of his darkened life. You
have heard, perhaps, of his blindness?"

"Yes, he had to forego his office as Latin Secretary to that villain. To my
mind the decay of sight was a judgment upon him for having written against
his murdered King, even to the denial of his Majesty's own account of his
sufferings. But I confess that even if the man had been a loyal subject,
I have little admiration for that class; scribblers and pamphleteers,
brooders over books, crouchers in the chimney-corner, who have never
trailed a pike or slept under the open sky. And seeing this vast increase
of book-learning, and the arising of such men as Hobbes, to question our
religion--and Milton to assail monarchy--I can but believe those who
say that this old England has taken the downward bent; that, as we are
dwindling in stature, so we are decaying in courage and capacity for
action."

Denzil listened respectfully to the old man's disquisitions over his
morning drink; while Reuben stood at the sideboard carving a ham or a
round of powdered beef; and while Angela sipped her chocolate out of the
porcelain cup which Hyacinth had bought for her at the Middle Exchange,
where curiosities from China and the last inventions from Paris were always
to be had before they were seen anywhere else. Nothing could be more
reverential than the young man's bearing to his host, while his quiet
friendliness set Angela at her ease, and made her think that he had
abandoned his suit, and henceforward aspired only to such a tranquil
friendship as they had enjoyed at Chilton before any word of love had been
spoken.

Apart from the question of love and marriage, his presence was in no manner
displeasing to her; indeed, the long days in that sequestered valley lost
something of their grey monotony now that she had a companion in all her
intellectual occupations. Fondly as she loved her father, she had not been
able to hide from herself the narrowness of his education and the blind
prejudice which governed his ideas upon almost every subject, from politics
to natural history. Of the books which make the greater part of a solitary
life she could never talk to him; and it was here that she had so sorely
missed the counsellor and friend, who had taught her to love and to
comprehend the great poets of the past--Homer and Virgil, Dante and
Tasso, and the deep melancholy humour of Cervantes, and, most of all, the
inexhaustible riches of the Elizabethans.

Denzil was of a temper as thoughtful, but his studies had taken a different
direction. He was not even by taste or apprehension a poet. Had he been
called upon to criticise his tutor's compositions, he might, like Johnson,
have objected to the metaphoric turns of Lycidas, and have missed the
melody of lines as musical as the nightingale. In that great poem of which
he had been privileged to transcribe many of the finest passages from the
lips of the poet, he admired rather the heroic patience of the blind
author than the splendour of the verse. He was more impressed by the
schoolmaster's learning than by that God-given genius which lifted that one
Englishman above every other of his age and country. No, he was eminently
prosaic, had sucked prose and plain-thinking from his mother's breast; but
he was not the less an agreeable companion for a girl upon whose youth an
unnatural solitude had begun to weigh heavily.

All that one mind can impart to another of a widely different fibre, Denzil
had learnt from Milton in that most impressionable period of boyhood which
he had spent in the small house in Holborn, whose back rooms looked out
over the verdant spaces of Lincoln's Inn Fields, where Lord Newcastle's
palace had not yet begun to rise from its foundations, and where the
singing birds had not been scared away by the growth of the town. A theatre
now stood where the boy and a fellow-scholar had played trap and ball,
and the stately houses of Queen Street hard by were alive with rank and
fashion.

In addition to the classical curriculum which Milton had taught with the
solemn earnestness of one in whom learning is a religion, Denzil had
acquired a store of miscellaneous knowledge from the great Republican;
and most interesting among these casual instructions had been the close
acquaintance with nature gained in the course of many a rustic ramble in
the country lanes beyond Gray's Inn, or sauntering eastward along the banks
of the limpid Lee, or in the undulating meadows beside Sir Hugh Middleton's
river. Mixed with plain facts about plant or flower, animal or insect,
Milton's memory was stored with the quaint absurdities of the Hermetic
philosophy, that curious mixture of deep-reaching theories and old women's
superstitions, the experience of the peasant transmuted by the imagination
of the adept. Sound and practical as the poet had ever shown himself--save
where passion got the upper hand of common sense, as in his advocacy
of divorce--he was yet not entirely free from a leaning to Baconian
superstitions, and may, with Gesner, have believed that the pickerel weed
could engender pike, and that frogs could turn to slime in winter, and
become frogs again in spring. Whatever rags of old-world fatuity may have
lingered in that strong brain, he had been not the less a delightful
teacher, and had imparted an ardent love of nature to his little family of
pupils in that peripatetic school between hawthorn hedges or in the open
fields by the Lee.

And now, in quiet rambles with Angela, in the midst of a landscape
transfigured by that vernal beauty which begins with the waning of April,
and is past and vanished before the end of May, Denzil loved to expound the
wonders of the infinitesimal; the insect life that sparkled and hummed in
the balmy air, or flashed like living light among the dewy grasses; the
life of plant and flower, which seemed almost as personal and conscious a
form of existence; since it was difficult to believe there was no sense of
struggle or of joy in those rapid growths which shot out from a tangle of
dark undergrowth upward to the sunlight, no fondness in the wild vines that
clung so close to some patriarchal trunk, covering decay with the
beautiful exuberance of youth. Denzil taught her to realise the wonders of
creation--most wonderful when most minute--for beyond the picturesque
and lovely in nature, he showed her those marvels of order, and law, and
adaptation, which speak to the naturalist with a stronger language than
beauty.

There was a tranquil pleasure in these rustic walks, which beguiled her
into forgetfulness that this man had ever sought to be more to her than he
was now--a respectful, unobtrusive friend. Of London, and the tumultuous
life going on there, he had scarcely spoken, save to tell her that he meant
to stand for Henley at the next Parliament; nor had he alluded to the past
at Chilton; nor ever of his own accord had he spoken Lord Fareham's name;
indeed, that name was studiously avoided by them both; and if Denzil had
never before suspected Angela of an unhappy preference for one whom she
could not love without sin, he might have had some cause for such suspicion
in the eagerness with which she changed the drift of the conversation
whenever it approached that forbidden subject.

From his Puritanical bringing up, the theory of self-surrender and
deprivation ever kept before him, Denzil had assuredly learnt to possess
his soul in patience; and throughout all that smiling month of May, while
he whipped the capricious streams that wound about the valley, with Angela
for the willing companion of his saunterings from pool to pool, he never
once alarmed her by any hint of a warmer feeling than friendship; indeed,
he thought of himself sometimes as one who lived in an enchanted world,
where to utter a certain fatal word would be to break the spell; and
whatever momentary impulse or passionate longing, engendered by a look, a
smile, the light touch of a hand, the mere sense of proximity, might move
him to speak of his love, he had sufficient self-command to keep the fatal
words unspoken. He meant to wait till the last hour of his visit. Only when
separation was imminent would he plead his cause again. Thus at the worst
he would have lost no happy hours of her company. And, in the mean time,
since she was always kind, and seemed to grow daily more familiar and at
ease in his society, he dared hope that affection for him and forgetfulness
of that other were growing side by side in her mind.

In this companionship Angela learnt many of the secrets and subtleties of
the angler's craft, as acquired by her teacher's personal experience, or
expounded in that delightful book, then less than twenty years old, which
has ever been the angler's gospel. Often after following the meandering
water till a gentle weariness invited them to rest, Angela and Denzil
seated themselves on a sheltered bank and read their Izaak Walton together,
both out of the same volume, he pleased to point out his favourite passages
and to watch her smile as she read.

Before May was ended, she knew old Izaak almost as well as Denzil, and had
learnt to throw a fly, and to choose the likeliest spot and the happiest
hour of the day for a good trout; had learnt to watch the clouds and
cloud-shadows with an angler's keen interest; and had amused herself with
the manufacture of an artificial minnow, upon Walton's recipe, devoting
careful labour and all the resources of her embroidery basket--silks and
silver thread--to perfecting the delicate model, which, when completed, she
presented smilingly to Denzil, who was strangely moved by so childish a
toy, and had some difficulty in suppressing his emotion as he held the
glistening silken fish in his hands, and thought how her tapering fingers
had caressed it, and how much of her very self seemed, as he watched her,
to have been enwrought with the fabric. So poor, so trivial a thing; but
her first gift! If she had tossed him a flower, plucked that moment, he
would have treasured it all his life; but this, which had cost her so
much careful work, was far more than any casual blossom. Something of the
magnetism of her mind had passed into the silver thread drawn so daintily
through her rosy fingers--something of the soft light in her eyes had mixed
with the blended colours of the silk. Foolish fancies these, but in the
gravest man's love there is a vein of folly.

Sometimes they rode with Sir John, and in this way explored the
neighbourhood, which was rich in historical associations--some of the
remote past, as when King John kept Christmas at Brill; but chiefly of
those troubled times through which Sir John Kirkland had lived, an active
participator in that deadly drama. He showed them the site of the garrison
at Brill, and trod every foot of the earthworks to demonstrate how the hill
had been fortified. He had commanded in the defence against Hampden and
his greencoats--that regiment of foot raised in his pastoral shire, whose
standard bore on one side the watchword of the Parliament, "God with us,"
and on the other Hampden's own device, "_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_."

"'Twas a legend to frighten some of us, who had no Latin," said Sir John;
"but we put his bumpkin greencoats to the rout, and trampled that insolent
flag in the mire."

All was peaceful now in the hamlet on the hill. Women and children were
sitting upon sunny doorsteps, with their pillows on their knees and their
bobbins moving quickly in dexterous fingers, busy at the lace-making which
had been established in Buckinghamshire more than a century before by
Catherine of Aragon, whose dowry was derived from the revenues of Steeple
Claydon. The Curate had returned to the grey old church, and rural life
pursued its slumbrous course, scarce ruffled by rumours of maritime war,
or plague, or fire. They rode to Thame--a stage on the journey to Oxford,
Angela thought, as she noted the figures on a milestone, and at a flash her
memory recalled that scene in the gardens by the river, when Fareham had
spoken for the first time of his inner life, and she had seen the man
behind the mask. She thought of her sister, so fair, so sweet, charming in
her capriciousness even, yet not the woman to fill that unquiet heart,
or satisfy that sombre and earnest nature. It was not by many words that
Fareham had revealed himself. Her knowledge of his character and feelings
went deeper than the knowledge that words can impart. It came from that
constant unconscious study which a romantic girl devotes to the character
of the man who first awakens her interest.

Angela was grave and silent throughout the drive to Thame and the return
home, riding for the most part in the rear of the two men, leaving Denzil
to devote all his attention to Sir John, who was somewhat loquacious that
afternoon, stimulated by the many memories of the troubled time which the
road awakened. Denzil listened respectfully, and went never astray in his
answers, but he looked back very often to the solitary rider who kept at
some distance to avoid the dust.

Sometimes in the early morning they all went with the otter hounds, the
Knight on horseback, Denzil and Angela on foot, and spent two or three
very active hours before breakfast in rousing the otter from his holt, and
following every flash of his head upon the stream, with that briskness and
active enjoyment which seem a part of the clear morning atmosphere, the
inspiring breath of dewy fields and flowers unfaded by the sun. All that
there was of girlishness in Angela's spirits was awakened by those merry
morning scampers by the margin of the stream, which had often to be forded
by the runners, with but' little heed of wet feet or splashed petticoat.
The Parson and his daughters from the village of St Nicholas joined in the
sport, and were invited to the morning drink and substantial breakfast
afterwards, where the young ladies were lost in admiration of Angela's
silver chocolate-pot and porcelain cups, while their clerical father owned
to a distaste for all morning drinks except such as owed their flavour and
strength to malt and hops.

"If you had lived among green fields and damp marshes as long as I have,
miss, you would know what poor stuff your chocolate is to fortify a man's
bones against ague and rheumatism. I am told the Spaniards brought it from
Mexico, where the natives eat nothing else, from which comes the copper
colour of their skins."

* * * * *

Denzi's visit lasted over a month, during which time he rode into
Oxfordshire twice, to see Lady Warner, stopping a night each time, lest
that worthy person should fancy herself neglected.

Sir John derived the utmost pleasure from the young man's company, who bore
himself towards his host with a respectful courtesy that had gone out of
fashion after the murder of the King, and was rarely met with in an age
when elderly men were generally spoken of as "old puts," and considered
proper subjects for "bubbling."

To Denzil the old campaigner opened his heart more freely than he had ever
done to any one except a brother in arms; and although he was resolute in
upholding the cause of Monarchy against Republicanism, he owned to the
natural disappointment which he had felt at the King's neglect of old
friends, and reluctantly admitted that Charles, sauntering along Pall Mall
with ruin at his heels, and the wickedest men and women in England for his
chosen companions, was not a monarch to maintain and strengthen the public
idea of the divinity that doth hedge a King.

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