London Pride by M. E. Braddon

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

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"Of all the lessons danger and adversity can teach he has learnt but
one," said Sir John, with a regretful sigh. "He has learnt the Horatian
philosophy--to snatch the pleasures of the day, and care nothing what may
happen on the morrow. I do not wonder that predictions of a sudden end to
this globe of ours should have been bruited about of late; for if lust
and profaneness could draw down fire from heaven, London would be in as
perilous a case as Gomorrah. But I doubt such particular judgments belonged
but to the infancy of this world, when men believed in a Personal God,
interested in all their concerns, watchful to bless or to punish. We have
now but the God of Spinoza--a God who is in all things and everywhere about
us, of whom this Creation in which we move is but the garment--a Universal
Essence which should govern and inform all we are and all we do; but not
the Judge and Father of His people, to be reached by prayer and touched by
pity."

"Ah, sir, our life here and hereafter is encompassed with mystery. To think
is to be lost on the trackless ocean of doubt. The Papists have the easiest
creed, for they believe that which they are taught, and take the mysteries
of the unseen world at second hand from their Priests. A year ago, had I
been happy enough to win your daughter, I should have tried my hardest to
wean her from Rome; but I have lived and thought since then, and I have
come to see that Calvinism is a religion of despair, and that the doctrine
of Predestination involves contradictions as difficult to swallow as any
fable of the Roman Church."

"It is well that you should be prepared to let her keep her religion; for
I doubt she has a stubborn affection for the creed she learnt in her
childhood. Indeed, it was but the other day she talked of the cloister; and
I fear she has all the disposition to that religious prison in which her
great aunt lived contentedly for the space of a long lifetime. But it is
for you, Denzil, to cure her of that fancy, and to spare me the pain of
seeing my best-beloved child under the black veil."

"Indeed, sir, if a love as earnest as man ever experienced--"

"Yes, Denzil, I know you love her; and I love you almost as if you were my
very son. In the years that went by after Hyacinth was born, before the
beginning of trouble, I used to long for a son, and I am afraid I did
sometimes distress my dear wife by dwelling too persistently upon
disappointed hopes. And then came chaos--England in arms, a rebellious
people, a King put upon his defence--and I had leisure to think of none but
my royal master. And in the thick of the strife my poor lamb was born to
me--the bringer of my life's great sorrow--and there was no more thought of
sons. So, you see, friend, the place in my heart and home has waited empty
for you. Win but yonder shy dove to consent, and we shall be of one family
and of one mind, and I as happy as any broken-down campaigner in England
can be--content to creep to the grave in obscurity, forgotten by the Prince
whose father it is my dear memory to have served."

"You loved your King, sir, I take it, with a personal affection."

"Ah, Denzil, we all loved him. Even the common people--led as they were
by hectoring preachers of sedition, of no more truth or honesty than the
mountebanks that ply their knavish trade round Henry's statue on the Pont
Neuf--even they, the very rabble, had their hours of loyalty. I rode with
his Majesty from Royston to Hatfield, in '47, when the people filled the
midsummer air with his name, from hearts melting with love and pity. They
strewed the ways with boughs, and strewed the boughs with roses. So great
honour has been seldom shown to a royal captive."

"I take it that the lower class are no politicians, and loved their King
for his private virtues."

"Never was monarch worthier to be so esteemed. He was a man of deep
affections, and it was perhaps his most fatal quality where he loved
to love too much. I have no grudge against that beautiful and most
accomplished woman he so worshipped, and who was ever gracious to me; but I
cannot doubt that Henrietta Maria was his evil star. She had the fire and
daring of her father, but none of his care and affection for the people.
The daughter of the most beloved of kings had the instincts of a tyrant,
and was ever urging her too pliant husband to unpopular measures. She
wanted to set that little jewelled shoe of hers on the neck of rebellion,
when she should have held out her soft white hand to make friends of her
foes. Her beauty and her grace might have done much, had she inherited with
the pride of the Medici something of their finesse and suavity. But he
loved her, Denzil, forgave all her follies, her lavish spending and
wasteful splendour. 'My wife is a bad housekeeper,' I heard him say once,
when she was hanging upon his chair as he sat at the end of the Council
table. The palace accounts were on the table--three thousand pounds for
a masque--extravagance only surpassed by Nicholas Fouquet twenty years
afterwards, when he was squandering the public money. 'My wife is a bad
housekeeper,' his Majesty said gently, and then he drew down the little
French museau with a caressing hand, and kissed her in the presence of
those greybeards."

"His son is strangely unlike him in domestic matters."

"His son has the manners of a Frenchman and the morals of a Turk. He is a
despot to his wife and a slave to his mistress. There never was greater
cruelty to a woman than his Majesty's treatment of Catherine while she was
still but a stranger in the land, and when he forced his notorious paramour
upon her as her lady of honour. Of honour, quotha! There was sorry store of
honour in his conduct. He had need feel the sting of remorse t'other day
when the poor lady was thought to be on her death-bed--so gentle,
so affectionate, so broken to the long-suffering of consort-queens,
apologising for having lived to trouble him. Ned Hyde has given me the
whole story of that poor lady's subjugation, for he was behind the scenes,
and in their secrets. Poor soul! Blood rushed from her ears and nostrils
when that shameless woman was brought to her, and she was carried swooning
to her chamber. And then she was sullen, and the King threatened her, and
sent away all her Portuguese, save one ancient waiting woman. I grant
you they were ugly devils, fit to set in a field to frighten crows;
but Catherine loved them. Royal treatment for a Christian Queen from a
Christian King! Could the Sophy do worse? And presently the poor lady
yielded (as most women will, for at heart they are slavish and love to be
beaten), and after holding herself aloof for a long time--a sad, silent,
neglected figure where all the rest were loud and merry--she made friends
with the lady, and even seemed to fawn upon her."

"And now I dare swear the two women mingle their tears when Charles is
unfaithful to both; or Catherine weeps while Barbara curses. That would be
more in character. Fire and not water is her ladyship's element."

"Ah, Denzil, 'tis a curious change; and to have lived to see Buckingham
murdered, and Stafford sacrificed, and the Rebellion, and the Commonwealth,
and the Restoration, and the Plague, and the Fire, and to have skirmished
in the battles of Parliaments and Princes, t'other side the Channel, and
seen the tail of the Thirty Years' War, towns ruined, villages laid waste,
where Tilly passed in blood and fire, is to have lived through as wild a
variety of fortunes as ever madman invented in a dream."

* * * * *

Denzil lingered at the Manor, urged again and again by his host to stay
over the day fixed for departure, and so lengthening his visit with a most
willing submission till late in June, when the silence of the nightingales
made sleep more possible, and the sunset was so late and the sunrise so
early that there seemed to be no such thing as night. He had made up his
mind to plead for a hearing in the hour of farewell; and it may have been
as much from apprehension of that fateful hour as even from the delight of
being in his mistress's company that he acceded with alacrity when Sir John
desired him to stay. But an end must come at last to all hesitations, and a
familiar verse repeated itself in his brain with the persistent iteration
of cathedral chimes--

"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desert is small,
Who fears to put it to the touch,
And win or lose it all."

Sir John pushed him towards his fate with affectionate urgency.

"Never be dastardised by a girl's refusal, man," said the Knight, warm with
his morning draught, on that last day, when the guest's horses had been
fed for a journey, and the saddle-bags packed. "Don't let a simpleton's
coldness cow your spirits. The wench likes you; else she would scarce have
endured your long sermons upon weeds and insects, or been smiling and
contented in your company all these weeks. Take heart of grace, man; and
remember that though I am no tyrannical father to drag an unwilling bride
to the altar, I have all a father's authority, and will not have my dearest
wishes baulked by the capricious humours of a coquette."

"Not for worlds, sir, would I owe to authority what love cannot freely
grant--"

"Don't chop logic, Denzil. You want my daughter; and by God you shall have
her! Win her with pretty speeches if you can. If she turn stubborn she
shall have plain English from me. I have promised not to force her
inclination; but if I am driven to harsh measures 'twill be for her own
good I am severe. Ventregris! What can fortune give her better than a
handsome and virtuous husband?"

Angela was in the garden when Denzil went to take leave of her. She was
walking up and down beside a long border of June flowers, screened from
rough winds by those thick walls of yew which gave such a comfortable
sheltered feeling to the Manor gardens, while in front of flowers and turf
there sparkled the waters of a long pond or stew, stocked with tench and
carp, some among them as ancient and as greedy as the scaly monsters of
Fontainebleau.

The sun was shining on the dark green water and the gaudy flower-bed,
and Angela's favourite spaniel was running about the grass, barking his
loudest, chasing bird or butterfly with impotent fury, since he never
caught anything. At sight of Denzil he tore across the greensward, his
silky ears flying, and barked at him as if the young man's appearance in
that garden were an insufferable impertinence; but, on being taken up in
one strong hand, changed his opinion, and slobbered the face of the foe in
an ecstasy of affection.

"Soho, Ganymede, thou knowest I bear thee a good heart, plaything and mere
pretence of a dog as thou art," said Denzil, depositing their little bundle
of black-and-tan flossiness at Angela's feet.

He might have carried and nursed his mistress's favourite with pleasure
during any casual sauntering and random talk; but a man could hardly ask to
have his fate decided for good or ill with a toy spaniel in his arms.

"My horse is at the door, Angela, and I am come to bid you good-bye," he
said in a grave voice.

The words were of the simplest; but there was something in his tone that
told her all was not said. She paled at the thought of an approaching
conflict; for she knew her father was against her, and that there must be
hard fighting.

They walked the length of flower border and lawn in silence; and then, when
they were furthest from the house, and from the hazard of eyes looking out
of windows, he stopped suddenly, and took her unresisting hand, which lay
cold in his.

"Dearest, I have kept silence through all those blessed days in which you
and I have been together; but I have not left off loving you or hoping for
you. Things have changed since I spoke to you in London last winter. I have
a powerful advocate now whose pleading ought to prevail with you--a father
whose anxious affection urges what my passionate love so ardently desires.
Indeed, dear heart, if you will be kind, you can make a father and lover
happy with one breath. You have but to say 'Yes' to the prayer you know
of----"

"Alas! Denzil, I cannot. I am your true and faithful friend. If you were
sick and alone--as his lordship was--I would go to you and nurse you, as
your friend and sister. If you were poor and I were rich, I would divide my
fortune with you. I shall always think of you with affection--always take
pleasure in your society, if you will let me; but it must be as your
sister. You have no sister, Denzil--I no brother. Why cannot we be to each
other as brother and sister?"

"Only because from the hour when your beauty and sweetness began to grow
into my mind I have been your lover, and nothing else--your adoring lover.
I cannot change my fervent hope for the poor name of friend. I can never
again dare be to you what I have been in this happy season last past,
unless you will let me be more than I have been."

"Alas!"

Only that one word, with a sorrowful shake of the graceful head, covered
with feathery ringlets in the dainty fashion of that day, so becoming in
youth, so inappropriate to advancing years, when the rich profusion of
curls came straight from Chedreux, or some of his imitators, and baldness
was hidden by the spoils of the dead.

"Alas!"

No need for more than that sad dissyllable.

"Then I am no nearer winning this dear hand than I was at Fareham House?"
he said heartbrokenly, for he had built high hopes upon her kindness and
willing companionship in that Arcadian valley.

"I told you then that I should never marry. I have not changed my mind. I
never can change. I am to be Henriette's spinster aunt."

"And Fareham's spinster sister?" said Denzil. "I understand. We are neither
of us cured of our malady. It is my disease to love you in spite of your
disdain. It is your disease to love where you should not. Farewell!"

He was gone before she could reply. The livid anger of his face, the
deep resentment in his voice, haunted her memory, and made life almost
intolerable.

"My sin has found me out!" she said to herself, as she paced the garden
with the rapid steps that indicate a distempered spirit. "What right has he
to pry into the depths of my mind, and ferret out all that there is of evil
in my nature? Well, he goes the surest way to make me hate him. If ever he
comes here again, I will run away and hide from all who know me. I would
rather be a farm-servant, and rise at daybreak to work in the fields, than
endure his insolence."

She had to bear worse pain before Denzil had ridden far upon his journey;
for her father came to the garden to seek her, eager to know the result of
his _protege's_ wooing.

"Well, sweetheart," he began, taking her to his bosom and kissing her. "Do
I salute the future Lady Warner?"

"No, sir; I am too well content with the name I inherit to desire any
other."

"That is gracefully said, cherie; but I want to see my ewe lamb happily
wedded. Has thy sweetheart stolen away without finding courage to ask the
question that has been on the tip of his tongue for the last six weeks?"

"He has been both importunate and impertinent, sir, and he has had his
answer. I hope I may never see him again."

"What! you have refused him? You must be mad!"

"No, sir; sober and sane enough to know when I am happy. I told you before
this gentleman came here that I did not mean to marry. Surely I am not so
unloving a daughter that I must be driven to take a husband, because my
father will not have me."

"Angela, it is for your own safety and welfare I would see you married.
What have you to succeed to when I am gone? An impoverished estate, in a
country that has seen such rough changes within a score of years that one
dare scarcely calculate upon a prolonged time of safety, even in this
sequestered valley. God only knows when cannon-balls may tear up our
fields, and bullets whistle through the copses. This Monarchy, restored
with such a clamorous approval, may endure no longer than the Commonwealth,
which was thought to be lasting. His Majesty's trivial life and gross
extravagance have disgusted and alarmed some who loved him dearly, and have
set the common people questioning whether the rough rule of the Protector
were not better than the ascendency of shameless women and dissolute men.
The pageantry of Whitehall may vanish like a parchment scroll in a furnace,
and Charles, who has tasted the sours of exile, may be again a wanderer,
dependent on the casual munificence of foreign states; and in such an evil
hour," continued the Knight, his mind straying from the contemplation of
his daughter's future to the memory of his own wrongs, "Charles Stuart
may remember the old puts who fought and suffered for his father, and how
scurvy a recompense they had for their services."

He reverted to Denzil's offer after a brief silence, Angela walking
dutifully by his side, prepared to suffer any harshness upon his part
without complaining.

"I love the young man, and he would be to me as a son," he said; "the
comrade and support of my old age. I am poor, as the world goes now; have
but just enough to live modestly in this retreat, where life costs but
little. He is rich, and can give you a handsome seat near your sister's
mansion; and a house in London if you desire one; less splendid, doubtless,
than Fareham's palace on the Thames, but more befitting the habits and
manners of an English gentleman's wife. He can give you hounds and hawks,
your riding-horses, and your coach-and-six. What more, in God's name, can
any reasonable woman desire?"

"Only one thing, sir. To live my own life in peace, as my conscience and my
reason bid me. I cannot love Denzil Warner, though of late I have grown
to like and respect him as a friend and most intelligent companion. Your
persistence is fast changing friendship into dislike; and the very name of
the man would speedily become hateful to me."

"Oh, I have done!" retorted Sir John. "I am no tyrant. You must take your
own way, mistress. I can but lament that Providence gave me only two
daughters, and one of them an arrant fool."

He left her in a huff, and had it not been for an astonishing event, which
convulsed town and country, and suspended private interests and private
quarrels in the excitement of public affairs, she would have heard much
more of his discontent.

The Dutch ships were at Chatham. English men-of-war were blazing at the
very mouth of the Thames, and there was panic lest the triumphant foe
should sail their fire-ships up the river to London, besiege the Tower,
relight the fire whose ashes were scarce grown cold, pillage, slaughter,
destroy--as Tilly had destroyed the wretched Provinces in the religious
war.

Here, in this sheltered haven, amidst green fields, under the lee of the
Brill, the panic and consternation were as intense as if the village of St.
Nicholas were the one spot the Dutch would make for after landing; and,
indeed, there were rustics who went to the placid scene where the infant
Thame rises in its cradle of reed and lily, half expectant of seeing
Netherlandish vessels stranded among the rushes.

The Dutch fleet was at Chatham. Ships were being sunk across the Medway, to
stop the invader.

Sheerness was to be fortified. London was in arms; and Brill remembered
its repulse of Hampden's regiment with a proud consciousness of being
invincible.

The Dutch fleet saved Angela many a paternal lecture; for Sir John rode
post-haste towards London, and did not return until the end of the month.

In London he found Hyacinth, much disturbed about her husband, who had
gone as volunteer with General Middleton, and was in command of a cavalry
regiment at Chatham.

"I never saw him in such spirits as when he left me," Lady Fareham told her
father. "I believe he is ever happiest when he breathes gunpowder."

* * * * *

Sir John's leave-taking had been curt and moody, for Angela's offence
rankled deep in his mind; and it was as much as he could do to command his
anger, even in bidding her good-bye.

"Did I not tell you that we live in troubled times, and that no man can
foresee the coming evil, or how great our woes and distractions may be?" he
asked, with a gloomy triumph. "Whoever thought to hear De Ruyter's guns at
Sheerness, or to see the Royal Charles led captive? Absit omen! Who knows
what destruction may come upon that other Royal Charles, for whose safety
we pray morning and night, and who lolls across a basset-table, perhaps,
with his wantons around him, while we are on our knees supplicating the
Creator for him? Who knows? We may have London in flames again, and a
conflagration more fatal than the last, thou obstinate wench, before thou
art a week older, and every able-bodied man called away from plough and
pasture to serve the King, and desolation and famine where plenty now
smiles at us. And is this a time in which to refuse a valiant and wealthy
protector, a lover as honest as ever God made; a pious, conforming
Christian, of unsullied name; a young man after my own pattern; a fine
horseman and a good farmer; one who loves a pack of hounds and a well-bred
horse, a flight of hawks and a match at bowls, better than to give chase to
a she-rake in the Mall, or to drink himself stark mad at a tavern in Covent
Garden with debauchees from Whitehall?"

Sir John prosed and grumbled to the last moment, but could not refuse to
bend down from his saddle and kiss the fair, pale face that looked at him
in piteous deprecation at the moment of parting.

"Well, keep a brave heart, Mistress Wilful. Thou art safe here yet awhile
from Dutch marauders. I go but to find out how much truth there is in these
panic rumours."

She begged him not to fatigue himself with too long stages, and went back
to the silent house, thankful to be alone in her despondency. She felt as
if the last page in her worldly life had been written. She had to turn
her thoughts backward to that quiet retreat where there would at least be
peace. She had promised her father that she would not return to the Convent
while he wanted her at home. But was that promise to hold good if he were
to embitter her life by urging her to a marriage that would only bring her
unhappiness?

She had ample leisure for thought in one summer day of a solitude so
absolute that she began to shiver in the sultry stillness of afternoon,
and scarce ventured to raise her eyes from her embroidery frame, lest some
shadowy presence, some ghost out of the dead past, should hover near,
watching her as she sat alone in scenes where that pale spirit had been
living flesh. The thought of all who had lived and died in that house--men
and women of her own race, whose qualities of mind and person she had
inherited--oppressed her in the long hours of silent reverie. Before
her first day of loneliness had ended, her spirits had sunk to deepest
melancholy; and in that weaker condition of mind she had begun to ask
herself whether she had any right to oppose her father's wishes by denying
herself to a suitor whom she esteemed and respected, and whose filial
affection would bring new sunshine into that dear father's declining years.
She had noted their manner to each other during Denzil's protracted visit,
and had seen all the evidences of a warm regard on both sides. She had too
complete a faith in Denzil's sterling worth to question the reality of any
feeling which his words and manner indicated. He was above all things a
man of truth and honesty. She was roaming about the gardens with her dog
towards noon in the second day of her solitude, when across the yew hedges
she saw white clouds of dust rising from the high-road, and heard
the clatter of hoofs and roll of wheels--a noise as of a troop of
cavalry--whereat Ganymede barked himself almost into an apoplexy, and
rushed across the grass like a mad thing.

A great cracking of whips and sound of voices, horses galloping, horses
trotting, dust enough to whiten all the hedges and greensward! Angela stood
at gaze, wondering if the Dutch were coming to storm the old house, or the
county militia coming to garrison it.

The Manor Moat was the destination of that clamorous troop, whoever they
were. Wheels and horses stopped sharply at the great iron gate in front of
the house, and the bell began to ring furiously, while other dogs, with
voices that resembled Ganymede's, answered his shrill bark with even
shriller yelpings.

Angela ran towards the gate, and was near enough to see it opened to
admit three black-and-tan spaniels, and one slim personage in a long
flame-coloured brocatelle gown and a large beaver hat, who approached with
stately movements, a small, pert nose held high, and rosy upper lip curled
in patrician disdain of common things, while a fan of peacock's plumage,
that flashed sapphire and emerald in the fierce noonday sun, was waved
slowly before the dainty face, scattering the tremulous life of summer that
buzzed and fluttered in the sultry air.

In the rear of this brilliant figure appeared a middle-aged person in
a grey silk gown and hood, and a negro page in the Fareham livery, a
waiting-woman, and a tall lackey, so many being the necessary adjuncts to
the Honourable Henrietta Maria Revel's state when she went abroad.

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