London Pride by M. E. Braddon

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36

Angela ran to receive her niece with a cry of rapture, and the tall slip of
a girl in the flame-coloured frock was clasped to her aunt's heart with a
ruthless disregard of the beaver hat and cataract of ostrich plumage.

"Prends garde d'abimer mon chapeau, p'tite tante," cried Henriette, "'tis
one of Lewin's Nell Gwyn hats, and cost twenty guineas, without the buckle,
which I stole out of father's shoe t'other day. His lordship is so careless
about his clothes that he wore the shoes two days and never knew there was
a buckle missing, and those lazy devils his servants never told him. I
believe they meant to rook him of t'other buckle."

"Chatterer, chatterer, how happy I am to see thee! But is not your mother
with you?"

"Her ladyship is in London. Everybody of importance is scampering off to
London; and no doubt will be rushing back to the country again if the Dutch
take the Tower; but I don't think they will while my father is able to
raise a regiment."

"And mademoiselle"--with a curtsy to the lady in grey--"has brought you all
this long way through the heat to see me?"

"I have brought mademoiselle," Henrietta answered contemptuously, before
the Frenchwoman had finished the moue and the shrug which with her always
preceded speech; "and a fine plague I had to make her come."

"Madame will conceive that, in miladi's absence, it was a prodigious
inconvenience to order two coaches, and travel so far. His lordship's groom
of the chambers is my witness that I protested against such an outrageous
proceeding."

"Two coaches!" exclaimed Angela.

"A coach-and-six for me and my dogs and my gouvernante, and a
coach-and-four for my people," explained Henriette, who had modelled her
equipage and suite upon a reminiscence of the train which attended Lady
Castlemaine's visit to Chilton, as beheld from a nursery window.

"Come, child, and rest, out of the sun; and you, mademoiselle, must need
refreshment after so long a drive."

"Our progress through a perpetual cloud of dust and a succession of narrow
lanes did indeed suggest the torments of purgatory; but the happiness
of madame's gracious welcome is an all-sufficient compensation for our
fatigue," mademoiselle replied, with a deep curtsey.

"I was not tired in the least," asserted Henriette. "We stopped at the
Crown at Thame and had strawberries and milk."

"_You_ had strawberries and milk, mon enfant. I have a digestion which will
not allow such liberties."

"And our horses were baited, and our people had their morning drink," said
Henriette, with her grown-up air. "One ought always to remember cattle and
servants. May we put up our horses with you, auntie? We must leave you soon
after dinner, so as to be at Chilton by sunset, or mademoiselle will
be afraid of highwaymen, though I told Samuel and Peter to bring their
blunderbusses in case of an attack. Ma'amselle has no valuables, and at the
worst I should but have to give them my diamond buckle, and my locket with
his lordship's portrait."

Angela's cheeks flushed at that chance allusion to Fareham's picture. It
brought back a vision of the Convent parlour, and she standing there with
Fareham's miniature in her hand, wonderingly contemplative of the dark,
strong face. At that stage of her life she had seen so few men's faces;
and this one had a power in it that startled her. Did she divine, by some
supernatural foreknowledge, that this face held the secret of her destiny?

She went to the house, with Henriette's lissom form hanging upon her, and
the grey governess tripping mincingly beside them, tottering a little upon
her high heels.

Old Reuben had crept out into the sunshine, with a rustic footman following
him, and the cook was looking out at a window in the wing where kitchen and
servants' hall occupied as important a position as the dining-parlour and
saloon on the opposite side. A hall with open roof, wide double staircase,
and music gallery, filled the central space between the two projecting
wings, and at the back there was a banqueting-chamber or ball-room, where
in more prosperous days, the family had been accustomed to dine on all
stately occasions--a room now shabby and grey with disuse.

While the footman showed the way to the stables, Angela drew Reuben aside
for a brief consultation as to ways and means for a dinner that must be the
best the house could provide, and which might be served at two o'clock, the
later hour giving time for extra preparation. A capon, larded after the
French fashion, a pair of trouts, the finest the stream could furnish, or a
carp stewed in clary wine, and as many sweet kickshaws as cook's ingenuity
could furnish at so brief a notice. Nor were waiting-woman, lackey, and
postillions to be neglected. Chine and sirloin, pudding and beer must be
provided for all.

"There are six men besides the black boy," sighed Reuben; they will devour
us a week's provision of butcher's meat."

"If you have done your housekeeping, tante, let me go to your favourite
summer-house with you, and tell you my secrets. I am perishing for a
_tete-a-tete!_ Ma'amselle"--with a wave of the peacock fan--"can take a
siesta, and forget the dust of the road, while we converse."

Angela ushered mademoiselle to the pretty summer-parlour, looking out upon
a geometrical arrangement of flower-beds in the Dutch manner. Chocolate
and other light refreshments were being prepared for the travellers; but
Henrietta's impatience would wait for nothing.

"I have not driven along these detestable roads to taste your chocolate,"
she protested. "I have a world to say to you: en attendant, mademoiselle,
you will consider everything at your disposal in the house of my
grandfather, jusqu'a deux heures."

She sank almost to the ground in a Whitehall curtsy, rose swift as an
arrow, tucked her arm through Angela's, and pulled her out of the room,
paying no attention to the governess's voluble injunctions not to expose
her complexion to the sun, or to sit in a cold wind, or to spoil her gown.

"What a shabby old place it is!" she said, looking critically round her as
they went through the gardens. "I'm afraid you must perish with _ennui_
here, with so few servants and no company to speak of. Yes"--contemplating
her shrewdly, as they seated themselves in a stone temple at the end of the
bowling-green--"you are looking moped and ill. This valley air does not
agree with you. Well, you can have a much finer place whenever you choose.
A better house and garden, ever so much nearer Chilton. And you will
choose, won't you, dearest?" nestling close to her, after throwing off the
big hat which made such loving contact impossible.

"I don't understand you, Henriette."

"If you call me Henriette I shall be sure you are angry with me."

"No, love, not angry, but surprised."

"You think I have no right to talk of your sweetheart, because I am only
thirteen--and have scarce left off playing with babies--I have hated them
for ages, only people persist in giving me the foolish puppets. I know more
of the world than you do, auntie, after being shut in a Convent the best
part of your life. Why are you so obstinate, ma cherie, in refusing a
gentleman we all like?"

"Do you mean Sir Denzil?"

"Sans doute. Have you a crowd of servants?"

"No, child, only this one. But don't you see that other people's liking
has less to do with the question than mine? And if I do not like him well
enough to be his wife----"

"But you ought to like him. You know how long her ladyship's heart has been
set on the match; you must have seen what pains she took in London to have
Sir Denzil always about you. And now, after a most exemplary patience,
after being your faithful servant for over a year, he asks you to be his
wife, and you refuse, obstinately refuse. And you would rather mope here
with my poor old grandfather--in abject poverty--mother says 'abject
poverty'--than be the honoured mistress of one of the finest seats in
Oxfordshire."

"I would rather do what is right and honest, my dearest It is dishonest to
marry without love."

"Then half mother's fine friends must be dishonest, for I dare swear that
very few of them love their husbands."

"Henriette, you talk of things you don't know."

"Don't know! Why, there is no one in London knows more. I am always
listening, and I always remember. De Malfort used to say I had a plaguey
long memory, when I told him of things he had said a year ago."

"My dear, I love you fondly, but I cannot have you talk to me of what you
don't understand; and I am sorry Sir Denzil Warner had no more courtesy
than to go and complain of me to my sister."

"He did not come to Chilton to complain. Her ladyship met him on the way
from Oxford in her coach. He was riding, and she called to him to come
to the coach door. It was the day after he left you, and he was looking
miserable; and she questioned him, and he owned that his suit had been
rejected, and he had no further hope. My mother came home in a rage. But
why was she angry with his lordship? Indeed, she rated him as if it were
his fault you refused Sir Denzil."

Angela sat silent, and the hand Henriette was clasping grew cold as ice.

"Did my father bid you refuse him, aunt?" asked the girl, scrutinising her
aunt's countenance, with those dark grey eyes, so like Fareham's in their
falcon brightness.

"No, child. Why should he interfere? It is no business of his."

"Then why was mother so angry? She walked up and down the room in a
towering passion. 'This is your doing,' she cried. 'If she were not your
adoring slave, she would have jumped at so handsome a sweetheart. This is
your witchcraft. It is you she loves--you--you--you!' His lordship stood
dumb, and pointed to me. 'Do you forget your child is present?' he said. 'I
forget everything except that everybody uses me shamefully,' she cried.
'I was only made to be slighted and trampled upon.' His lordship made
no answer, but walked to the door in that way he ever has when he is
angered--pale, frowning, silent. I was standing in his way, and he gripped
me by the arm, and dragged me out of the room. I dare venture there is a
bruise on my arm where he held me. I know his fingers hurt me with their
grip; and I could hear my lady screaming and sobbing as he took me away.
But he would not let me go back to her. He would only send her women. 'Your
mother has an interval of madness,' he said; 'you are best out of her
presence.' The news of the Dutch ships came the same evening, and my father
rode off towards London, and my mother ordered her coach, and followed an
hour after. They seemed both distracted; and only because you refused Sir
Denzil."

"I cannot help her ladyship's foolishness, Papillon. She has no occasion
for any of this trouble. I am her dutiful, affectionate sister; but my
heart is not hers to give or to refuse."

"But was it indeed my father's fault? Is it because you adore him that you
refused Sir Denzil?"

"No--no--no. My affection for my brother--he has been to me as a
brother--can make no difference in my regard for any one else. One cannot
fall in love at another's ordering, or be happy with a husband of another's
choice. You will discover that for yourself, Papillon, perhaps, when you
are a woman."

"Oh, I mean to marry for wealth and station, as all the clever women do,"
said Papillon, with an upward jerk of her delicate chin. "Mrs. Lewin always
says I ought to be a duchess. I should like to have married the Duke of
Monmouth, and then, who knows, I might have been a Queen. The King's other
sons are too young for me, and they will never have Monmouth's chance. But,
indeed, sweetheart, you ought to marry Sir Denzil, and come and live near
us at Chilton. You would make us all happy."

"Ma tres chere, it is so easy to talk--but when thou thyself art a
woman----"

"I shall never care for such trumpery as love. I mean to have a grand
house--ever so much grander than Fareham House. Perhaps I may marry a
Frenchman, and have a salon, and all the wits about me on my day. I would
make it gayer than Mademoiselle de Scudery's Saturdays, which my governess
so loves to talk of. There should be less talk and more dancing. But
listen, p'tite tante," clasping her arms suddenly round Angela's neck, "I
won't leave this spot till you have promised to change your mind about
Denzil. I like him vastly; and I'm sure there's no reason why you should
not love him--unless you really are his lordship's adoring slave,"
emphasising those last words, "and he has forbidden you."

Angela sat dumb, her eyes fixed on vacancy.

"Why, you are like the lady in those lines you made me learn, who 'sat like
patience on a monument, smiling at grief.' Dearest, why so sad? Remember
that fine house--and the dairy that was once a chapel. You could turn it
into a chapel again if you liked, and have your own chaplain. His Majesty
takes no heed of what we Papists do--being a Papist himself at heart, they
say--though poor wretches are dragged off to gaol for worshipping in a
conventicle. What is a conventicle? Will you not change your mind, dearest?
Answer, answer, answer!"

The slender arms tightened their caress, the pretty little brown face
pressed itself against Angela's pale, cold cheek.

"For my sake, sweetheart, say thou wilt have him. I will go to see thee
every day."

"I have been here for months and you have not come, though I begged you in
a dozen letters."

"I have been kept at my book and my dancing lessons. Mademoiselle told her
ladyship that I was a monster of ignorance. I have been treated shamefully.
I could not have come to-day had my lady been at home; but I would not
brook a hireling's dictation. Voyons, p'tite tante, tu seras miladi Warner.
Dis, dis, que je te fasse mourir de baisers."

She was almost stifling her aunt with kisses in the intervals of her eager
speech.

"The last word has been spoken, Papillon. I have sent him away--and it was
not the first time. I had refused him before. I cannot call him back."

"But he shall come without calling. He is your adoring slave," cried
Henriette, leaping up from the stone bench, and clapping her hands in
an ecstasy. "He will need no calling. Dearest, dearest, most exquisite,
delectable auntie! I am so happy! And my mother will be content. And no one
shall ever say you are my father's slave."

"Henriette, if you repeat that odious phrase I shall hate you!"

"Now you are angry. God, what a frown! I will repeat no word that angers
you. My Lady Warner--sweet Lady Warner. I vow 'tis a prettier name than
Revel or Fareham."

"You are mad, Henriette! I have promised nothing."

"Yes, you have, little aunt. You have promised to drop a curtsy, and say
'Yes' when Sir Denzil rides this way. You sent him away in a huff. He will
come back smiling like yonder sunshine on the water. Oh, I am so happy! My
doing, all my doing!"

"It is useless to argue with you."

"Quite useless. Il n'y a pas de quoi. Nous sommes d'accord. I shall be
your chief bridesmaid. You must be married in her Majesty's chapel at St.
James's. The Pope will give his dispensation--if you cannot persuade Denzil
to change his religion. Were he my suitor I would twist him round my
fingers," with an airy gesture of the small brown hand.

There is nothing more difficult than to convince a child that she pleads in
vain for any ardently desired object. Nothing that Angela could say would
reconcile her niece to the idea of failure; so there was no help but to let
her fancy her arguments conclusive, and to change the bent of her thoughts
if possible.

It wanted nearly an hour of dinner-time, so Angela suggested an inspection
of the home farm, which was close by, trusting that Henriette's love of
animals would afford an all-sufficient diversion; nor was she disappointed,
for the little fine lady was quite as much at home in stable and cowshed as
in a London drawing-room, and spent a happy hour in making friends with
the live stock, from the favourite Hereford cow, queen of the herd, to the
smallest bantam in the poultry-yard.

To this rustic entertainment followed dinner, in the preparation of which
banquet Marjory Cook had surpassed herself; and Papillon, being by this
time seriously hungry, sat and feasted to her heart's content, discussing
the marrow pudding and the stewed carp with the acumen and authority of a
professed gourmet.

"I like this old-fashioned rustic diet," she said condescendingly.

She reproached her governess with not doing justice to a syllabub; but
showed herself a fine lady by her complaint at the lack of ice for her
wine.

"My grandfather should make haste and build an icehouse before next
winter," she drawled. "One can scarce live through this weather without
ice," fanning herself, with excessive languor.

"I hope, dear, thou wilt not expire on the journey home."

The coaches were at the gate before Papillon had finished dinner, and
Mademoiselle was in great haste to be gone, reminding her pupil that she
had travelled so far against her will and at the hazard of angering Madame
la Baronne.

"Madame la Baronne will be enraptured when she knows what I have done to
please her," answered Papillon, and then, with a last parting embrace,
hugging her aunt's fair neck more energetically than ever, she whispered,
"I shall tell Denzil. You will make us all happy."

A cloud of dust, a clatter of hoofs, Ma'amselle's screams as the carriage
rocked while she was mounting the steps, and with much cracking of whips
and swearing at horses from the postillions who had taken their fill of
home-brewed ale, hog's harslet, and cold chine, and, lo, the brilliant
vision of the Honourable Henrietta Maria and her train vanished in the dust
of the summer highway, and Angela went slowly back to the long green walk
beside the fish-pond, where she was in as silent a solitude, but for a
lingering nightingale or two, as if she had been in the palace of the
sleeping beauty. If all things slumbered not, there was at least as marked
a pause in life. The Dutch might be burning more ships, and the noise of
war might be coming nearer London with every hour of the summer day. Here
there was a repose as of the after-life, when all hopes and dreams and
loves and hates are done and ended, and the soul waits in darkness and
silence for the next unfolding of its wings.

Those hateful words, "your adoring slave," and all that speech of
Hyacinth's which the child had repeated, haunted Angela with an agonising
iteration. She had not an instant's doubt as to the scene being faithfully
reported. She knew how preternaturally acute Henriette's intellect had
become in the rarified atmosphere of her mother's drawing-room, how
accurate her memory, how sharp her ears, and how observant her eyes.
Whatever Henriette reported was likely to be to the very letter and spirit
of the scene she had witnessed. And Hyacinth, her sister, had put this
shame upon her, had spoken of her in the cruelest phrase as loving one whom
it was mortal sin to love. Hyacinth, so light, so airy a creature, whom her
younger sister had ever considered as a grown-up child, had yet been shrewd
enough to fathom her mystery, and to discover that secret attachment which
had made Denzil's suit hateful to her. "And if I do not consent to marry
him she will always think ill of me. She will think of me as a wretch who
tried to steal her husband's love--a worse woman than Lady Castlemaine--for
she had the King's affection before he ever saw the Queen's poor plain
face. His adoring slave!"

Evening shadows were around her. She had wandered into the woods, was
slowly threading the slender cattle tracks in the cool darkness; while that
passionate song of the nightingales rose in a louder ecstasy as the quiet
of the night deepened, and the young moon hung high above the edge of a
wooded hill.

"His adoring slave," she repeated, with her hands clasped above her
uncovered head.

Hateful, humiliating words! Yet there was a keen rapture in repeating them.
They were true words. His slave--his slave to wait upon him in sickness and
pain; to lie and watch at his door like a faithful dog; to follow him to
the wars, and clean his armour, and hold his horse, and wait in his tent
to receive him wounded, and heal his wounds where surgeons failed to cure,
wanting that intensity of attention and understanding which love alone can
give; to be his Bellario, asking nothing of him, hoping for nothing, hardly
for kind words or common courtesy, foregoing woman's claim upon man's
chivalry, content to be nothing--only to be near him.

If such a life could have been--the life that poets have imagined for
despairing love! It was less than a hundred years since handsome Mrs.
Southwell followed Sir Robert Dudley to Italy, disguised as a page. But
the age of romance was past. The modern world had only laughter for such
dreams.

That revelation of Hyacinth's jealousy had brought matters to a crisis.
Something must be done, Angela told herself, and quickly, to set her
right with her sister, and in her own esteem. She had to choose between a
loveless marriage and the Convent. By accepting one or the other she must
prove that she was not the slave of a dishonourable love.

Marriage or the Convent? It had been easy, contemplating the step from a
distance, to choose the Convent. But when she thought of it, to-night, amid
the exquisite beauty of these woods, with the moonlit valley lying at her
feet, the winding streams reflecting that silvery light, or veiled in a
pale haze--to-night, in the liberty and loveliness of the earth, the vision
of Convent walls filled her with a shuddering horror. To be shut in that
Flemish garden for ever; her life enclosed within the straight lines of
that long green alley leading to a dead wall, darkened over by flowerless
ivy. How witheringly dull the old life showed, looking back at it after
years of freedom and enjoyment, action and variety. No, no, no! She could
not bury herself alive, could not forego the liberty to wander in a wood
like this, to gaze upon scenes as beautiful as yonder valley, to read the
poets she loved, to see, perhaps, some day those romantic scenes which
she knew but as dreams--Florence, Vallombrosa--to follow the footsteps of
Milton, to see the Venice she had read of in Howell's Letters, to kneel at
the feet of the Holy Father, in the City of Cities. All these things would
be for ever forbidden to her if she chose the common escape from earthly
sorrow.

She thought of her whose example had furnished the theme of many a
discourse at the Convent, Mazarin's lovely niece, the Princess de Conti,
who, in the bloom of early womanhood, was awakened from the dream of this
life to the reality of Heaven, and had renounced the pleasures of the most
brilliant Court in the world for the severities of Port Royal. She thought
of that sublime heretic Ferrar, whose later existence was one long prayer.
Of how much baser a clay must she be fashioned when her too earthly heart
clung so fondly to the loveliness of earth, and shrank with aversion from
the prospect of a long life within those walls where her childhood had been
so peaceful and happy.

"How changed, how changed and corrupted this heart has become!" she
murmured, in her dejection, "when that life which was once my most ardent
desire now seems to me worse than the grave. Anything--any life of duty in
the world, rather than that living death."

She was in the garden next morning at six, after a sleepless night, and
she occupied herself till noon in going about among the cottagers carrying
those small comforts which she had been in the habit of taking them, and
listening patiently to those various distresses which they were very glad
to relate to her. She taught the children, and read to the sick, and
was able in this round of duties to keep her thoughts from dwelling too
persistently upon her own trouble. After the one o'clock dinner, at which
she offended old Reuben by eating hardly anything, she went for a woodland
ramble with her dogs, and it was near sunset when she returned to the
house, just in time to see two road-stained horses being led away from the
hall door.

Sir John had come home. She found him in the dining parlour, sitting gloomy
and weary looking before the table where Reuben was arranging a hasty meal.

"I have eaten nothing upon the road, yet I have but a poor stomach for
your bacon-ham," he said, and then looked up at his daughter with a moody
glance, as she went towards him.

"Dear sir, we must try to coax your appetite when you have rested a little.
Let me unbuckle your spurs and pull off your boots, while Reuben fetches
your easiest shoes."

"Nay, child, that is man's work, not for such fingers as yours. The boots
are nowise irksome--'tis another kind of shoe that pinches, Angela."

She knelt down to unbuckle the spur-straps, and while on her knees she
said--

"You look sad, sir. I fear you found ill news at London."

"I found such shame as never came before upon England, such confusion as
only traitors and profligates can know; men who have cheated and lied and
wasted the public money, left our fortresses undefended, our ships unarmed,
our sailors unpaid, half-fed, and mutinous; clamorous wives crying aloud in
the streets that their husbands should not fight and bleed for a King who
starved them. They have clapped the scoundrel who had charge of the Yard at
Chatham in the Tower--but will that mend matters? A scapegoat, belike, to
suffer for higher scoundrels. The mob is loudest against the Chancellor,
who I doubt is not to blame for our unreadiness, having little power of
late over the King. Oh, there has been iniquity upon iniquity, and men know
not whom most to blame--the venal idle servants, or the master of all."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36