London Pride by M. E. Braddon

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"You mean that men blame his Majesty?"

"No, Angela. But when our ships were blazing at Chatham, and the Dutch
triumphing, the cry was 'Oh, for an hour of old Noll!' Charles has played
his cards so that he has made the loyalest hearts in England wish the
Brewer back again. They called him the Tiger of the Seas. We have no tigers
now, only asses and monkeys. Why, there was scarce a grain of sense left in
London. The beat of the drums calling out the train-bands seemed to have
stupefied the people. Everywhere madness and confusion. They have sunk
their richest argosies at Barking Creek to block the river; but the Dutch
break chains, ride over sunken ships, laugh our petty defences to scorn."

"Dear sir, this confusion cannot last."

"It will last as long as the world's history lasts. Our humiliation will
never be forgotten."

"But Englishmen will not look on idle. There must be brave men up in arms."

"Oh, there are brave men enough--Fairfax, Ingoldsby, Bethell, Norton. The
Presbyterians come to the front in our troubles. Your brother-in-law is
with Lord Middleton. There is no lack of officers; and regiments are being
raised. But our merchant-ships, which should be quick to help us, hang
back. Our Treasury is empty, and half the goldsmiths in London are
bankrupt. And our ships that are burnt, and our ships that are taken, will
not be conjured back again. The _Royal Charles_ carried off with insulting
triumph! Oh, child, it is not the loss that galls; it is the dishonour!"

He took a draught of claret out of the tankard which Angela placed at his
elbow, and she carved the ham for him, and persuaded him to eat.

"Is it the public misfortune that troubles you so sadly, sir?" she asked,
presently, when her father flung himself back in his chair with a heavy
sigh.

"Nay, Angela, I have my peck of trouble without reckoning the ruin of my
country. But my back is broad. It can bear a burden as well as any."

"Do you count a disobedient daughter among your cares, sir?"

"Disobedient is too harsh a word. I told you I would never force your
inclinations. But I have an obstinate daughter, who has disappointed me,
and well-nigh broken my spirit."

"Your spirit shall not rest broken if my obedience can mend it, sir," she
said gently, dropping on her knees beside his chair.

"What! has that stony heart relented! Wilt thou marry him, sweetheart? Wilt
give me a son as well as a daughter, and the security that thou wilt be
safe and happy when I'm gone?"

"No one can be sure of happiness, father; it comes strangely, and goes we
know not why. But if it will make your heart easier, sir, and Denzil be
still of the same mind----"

"His mind his rock, dearest. He swore to me that he could never change. Ah,
love, you have made me happy! Let the fleet burn, the _Royal Charles_
fly Dutch colours. Here, in this quiet valley, there shall be a peaceful
household and united hearts. Angela, I love that youth! Fareham, with all
his rank and wealth, has never been so dear to me. That black visage
repels love. But Denzil's countenance is open as the day. I can say 'Nunc
Dimittis' with a light heart. I can trust Denzil Warner with my daughter's
happiness."

CHAPTER XXIV.

"QUITE OUT OF FASHION."

Denzil received the good news by the hands of a mounted messenger in the
following forenoon.

The Knight had written, "Ride--ride--ride!" in the Elizabethan style, on
the cover of his letter, which contained but two brief sentences--

"Womanlike, she has changed her mind. Come when thou wilt, dear son."

And the son-in-law-to-be lost not an hour. He was at the Manor before
night-fall. He was a member of the quiet household again, subservient to
his mistress in everything.

"There are some words that must needs be spoken before we are agreed,"
Angela said, when they found themselves alone for the first time, in the
garden, on the morning after his return, and when Denzil would fain have
taken her to his breast and ratified their betrothal with a kiss. "I think
you know as well as I do that it is my father's wish that has made me
change."

"So long as you change not again, dear, I am of all men the happiest. Yes,
I know 'tis Sir John's wooing that won you, not mine. And that I have
still to conquer your heart, though your hand is promised me. Yet I do not
despair of being loved in as full measure as I love. My faith is strong in
the power of an honest affection."

"You may at least be sure of my honesty. I profess nothing but the desire
to be your true and obedient wife----"

"Obedient! You shall be my empress."

"No, no. I have no wish to rule. I desire only to make my father happy, and
you too, sir, if I can."

"Ah, my soul, that is so easy for you. You have but to let me live in your
dear company. I doubt I would rather be miserable with you than happy with
any other woman. Ill-use me if you will; play Zantippe, and I will be more
submissive than Socrates. But you are all mildness--perfect Christian,
perfect woman. You cannot miss being perfect as wife--and----"

Another word trembled on his lips; but he checked himself lest he should
offend, and the speech ended in a sob.

"My Angela, my angel!"

He took her to his heart, and kissed the fair brow, cold under his
passionate kisses. That word "angel" turned her to ice. It conjured back
the sound of a voice that it was sin to remember. Fareham had called her
so; not once, but many times, in their placid days of friendship, before
the fiery breath of passion had withered all the flowers in her earthly
paradise--before the knowledge of evil had clouded the brightness of the
world.

A gentle peace reigned at the Manor after Angela's betrothal. Sir John was
happier than he had been since the days of his youth, before the coming
of that cloud no bigger than a man's hand, when John Hampden's stubborn
resistance of a thirty-shilling rate had brought Crown and People face to
face upon the burning question of Ship-money, and kindled the fire that was
to devour England. From the hour he left his young wife to follow the King
to Yorkshire Sir John's existence had known little of rest or of comfort,
or even of glory. He had fought on the losing side, and had missed the
fame of those who fell and took the rank of heroes by an untimely death.
Hardship and danger, wounds and sickness, straitened means and scanty fare,
had been his portion for three bitter years; and then had come a period of
patient service, of schemes and intrigues foredoomed to failure; of going
to and fro, from Jersey to Paris, from Paris to Ireland, from Ireland
to Cornwall, journeying hither and thither at the behest of a shifty,
irresolute man, or a passionate, imprudent woman, as the case might be; now
from the King to the Queen, now from the Queen to this or that ally; futile
errands, unskilful combinations, failure on every hand, till the last fatal
journey, on which he was an unwilling attendant, the flight from Hampton
Court to Titchfield, when the fated King broke faith with his enemies in an
unfinished negotiation.

Foreign adventure had followed English hardships, and the soldier had
been tossed on the stormy sea of European warfare. He had been graciously
received at the French Court, but only to feel himself a stranger there,
and to have his English clothes and English accent laughed at by Gramont
and Bussy, and the accomplished St. Evremond, and the frivolous herd of
their imitators; to see even the Queen, for whom he had spent his
last jacobus, smile behind her fan at his bevues, and whisper to her
sister-in-law while he knelt to kiss the little white hand that had led a
King to ruin. Everywhere the stern Malignant had found himself outside the
circle of the elect. At the Hotel de Rambouillet, in the splendid houses of
the newly built Place Royale, in the salons of Duchesses, and the taverns
of courtly roysterers and drunken poets, at Cormier's, or at the Pine
Apple, in the Rue de la Juiverie, where it was all the better for a
Christian gentleman not to understand the talk of the wits that flashed and
drank there. Everywhere he had been a stranger and aloof. It was only under
canvas, in danger and privation, that he lost the sense of being one
too many in the world. There John Kirkland found his level, shoulder to
shoulder with Conde and Turenne. The stout Cavalier was second to no
soldier in Louis' splendid army; was of the stamp of an earlier race even,
better inured to hardship than any save that heroic Prince, the Achilles
of his day, who to the graces of a modern courtier joined the temper of an
ancient Greek.

His daughter Hyacinth had given him the utmost affection which such a
nature could give; but it was the affection of a trained singing-bird, or
a pug-nosed spaniel; and the father, though he admired her beauty, and was
pleased with her caresses, was shrewd enough to perceive the lightness
of her disposition and the shallowness of her mind. He rejoiced in her
marriage with a man of Fareham's strong character.

"I have married thee to a husband who will know how to rule a wife," he
told her on the night of her wedding. "You have but to obey and to be
happy; for he is rich enough to indulge all your fancies, and will not
complain if you waste the gold that would pay a company of foot on the
decoration of your poor little person."

"The tone in which you speak of my poor little person, sir, can but remind
me how much I need the tailor and the milliner," answered Hyacinth,
dropping her favourite curtsy, which she was ever ready to practise at the
slightest provocation.

"Nay, petite chatte, you know I think you the loveliest creature at Saint
Germain or the Louvre, far surpassing in beauty the Cardinal's niece, who
has managed to set young Louis' heart throbbing with a boyish passion. But
I doubt you bestow too much care on the cherishing of a gift so fleeting."

"You have said the word, sir. 'Tis because it is so fleeting I must needs
take care of my beauty. We poor women are like the butterflies and the
roses. We have as brief a summer. You men, who value us only for our
outward show, should pardon some vanity in creatures so ephemeral."

"Ephemeral scarce applies to a sex which owns such an example as your
grandmother, who has lived to reckon her servants among the grandsons of
her earliest lovers."

"Not lived, sir! No woman lives after thirty. She can but exist, and dream
that she is still admired. La Marquise has been dead for the last twenty
years, but she won't own it. Ah, sir, c'est un triste supplice to _have
been_! I wonder how those poor ghosts can bear that earthly purgatory which
they call old age? Look at Madame de Sable, par exemple, once a beauty, now
only a tradition. And Queen Anne! Old people say she was beautiful, and
that Buckingham risked being torn by wild horses--like Ravaillac--only
to kiss her hand by stealth in a moonlit garden; and would have plunged
England in war but for an excuse to come back to Paris. Who would go to war
for Anne's haggard countenance nowadays?"

Even in Lady Fareham's household the Cavalier soon began to fancy himself
an inhabitant too much; a dull, grey ghost from a tragical past. He could
not keep himself from talking of the martyred King, and those bitter years
through which he had followed his master's sinking fortunes. He told
stories of York and of Beverley; of the scarcity of cash which reduced his
Majesty's Court to but one table; of that bitter affront at Coventry; of
the evil omens that had marked the raising of the Standard on the hill at
Nottingham, and filled superstitious minds with dark forebodings, reminding
old men of that sad shower of rain that fell when Charles was proclaimed at
Whitehall, on the day of his accession, and of the shock of earthquake on
his coronation day; of Edgehill and Lindsey's death; of the profligate
conduct of the Cavalier regiments, and the steady, dogged force of their
psalm-singing adversaries; of Queen Henrietta's courage, and beauty, and
wilfulness, and her fatal influence upon an adoring husband.

"She wanted to be all that Buckingham had been," said Sir John, "forgetting
that Buckingham was the King's evil genius."

That lively and eminently artificial society of the Rue de Touraine soon
wearied of Sir John's reminiscences. King Charles's execution had receded
into the dim grey of history. He might as well have told them anecdotes
of Cinq Mars, or of the great Henri, or of Moses or Abraham. Life went
on rapid wheels in patrician Paris. They had Conde to talk about, and
Mazarin's numerous nieces, and the opera, that new importation from Italy,
which the Cardinal was bringing into fashion; while in the remote past of
half a dozen years back the Fronde was the only interesting subject, and
even that was worn threadbare; the adventures of the Duchess, the conduct
of the Prince in prison, the intrigues of Cardinal and Queen, Mademoiselle,
yellow-haired Beaufort, duels of five against five--all--all these were
ancient history as compared with young Louis and his passion for Marie de
Mancini, and the scheming of her wily uncle to marry all his nieces to
reigning princes or embryo kings.

And then the affectations and conceits of that elegant circle, the sonnets
and madrigals, the "bouts-rimes," the practical jokes, the logic-chopping
and straw-splitting of those ultra-fine intellects, the romances where the
personages of the day masqueraded under Greek or Roman or Oriental aliases,
books written in a flowery language which the Cavalier did not understand,
and full of allusions that were dark to him; while not to know and
appreciate those master-works placed him outside the pale.

He rejoiced in escaping from that overcharged atmosphere to the tavern, to
the camp, anywhere. He followed the exiled Stuarts in their wanderings,
paid his homage to the Princess of Orange, roamed from scene to scene, a
stranger and one too many wherever he went.

Then came the hardest blow of all--the chilling disillusion that awaited
many of Charles's faithful friends, who were not of such political
importance as to command their recompense. Neglect and forgetfulness were
Sir John Kirkland's portion; and for him and for such as he that caustic
definition of the Act of Indemnity was a hard and cruel truth. It was an
Act of Indemnity for the King's enemies and of oblivion for his friends.
Sir John's spirits had hardly recovered from the bitterness of disappointed
affection when he came back to the old home, though his chagrin was seven
years old. But now, in his delight at the alliance with Denzil Warner, he
seemed to have renewed his lease of cheerfulness and bodily vigour. He rode
and walked about the lanes and woods with erect head and elastic limbs. He
played bowls with Denzil in the summer evenings. He went fishing with his
daughter and her sweetheart. He revelled in the simple rustic life, and
told them stories of his boyhood, when James was King, and many a queer
story of that eccentric monarch and of the rising star, George Villiers.

"Ah, what a history that was!" he exclaimed. "His mother trained him as if
with a foreknowledge of that star-like ascendency. He was schooled to shine
and dazzle, to excel all compeers in the graces men and women admire. I
doubt she never thought of the mind inside him, or cared whether he had a
heart or a lump of marble behind his waist-band. He was taught neither to
think nor to pity--only to shine; to be quick with his tongue in half a
dozen languages, with his sword after half a dozen modes of fence. He could
kill his man in the French, or the Italian, or the Spanish manner. He was
cosmopolitan in the knowledge of evil. He had every device that can make a
man brilliant and dangerous. He mounted every rung of the ladder, leaping
from step to step. He ascended, swift as a shooting star, from plain
country gentleman to the level of princes. And he expired with an
ejaculation, astonished to find himself mortal, slain in a moment by the
thrust of a ten-penny knife. I remember as if it were yesterday how men
looked and spoke when the news came to London, and how some said this
murder would be the saving of King Charles. I know of one man at least who
was glad."

"Who was he, sir?" asked Denzil.

"He who had the greatest mind among Englishmen--Thomas Wentworth.
Buckingham had held him at a distance from the King, and his strong
passionate temper was seething with indignation at being kept aloof by
that silken sybarite--an impotent General, a fatal counsellor. After the
Favourite's death there came a time of peace and plenty. The pestilence had
passed, the war was over. Charles was happy with his Henriette and their
lovely children. Wentworth was in Ireland. The Parliament House stood still
and empty, doors shut, swallows building under the eaves. I look back, and
those placid years melt into each other like one long summer. And then,
again, as 'twere yesterday, I hear Hampden's drums and fifes in the
lanes, and see the rebels' flag with that hateful legend, 'Vestigia nulla
retrorsum,' and Buckinghamshire peasants are under arms, and the King and
his people have begun to hate and fear each other."

"None foresaw that the war would last so long or end in murder, I doubt,
sir," said Angela.

"Nay, child; we who were loyal thought to see that rabble withered by the
breath of kingly nostrils. A word should have brought them to the dust."

"There might be so easy a victory, perhaps, sir, from a King who knew how
to speak the right word at the right moment, how to comply graciously with
a just demand, and how to be firm in a righteous denial," replied Denzil;
"but with Charles a stammering speech was but the outward expression of a
wavering mind. He was a man who never listened to an appeal, but always
yielded to a threat, were it only loud enough."

The wedding was to be soon. Marriages were patched up quickly in the
light-hearted sixties. And here there was nothing to wait for. Sir John had
found Denzil compliant on every minor question, and willing to make his
home at the Manor during his mother's lifetime.

"The old lady would never stomach a Papist daughter-in-law," said Sir John;
and Denzil was fain to confess that Lady Warner would not easily reconcile
herself with Angela's creed, though she could not fail of loving Angela
herself.

"My daughter would have neither peace nor liberty under a Puritan's roof,"
Sir John said; "and I should have neither son nor daughter, and should be a
loser by my girl's marriage. You shall be as much master here, Denzil, as
if this were your own house--which it will be when I have moved to my last
billet. Give me a couple of stalls for my roadsters, and kennel room for my
dogs, and I want no more. You and Angela may introduce as many new fashions
as you like; dine at two o'clock, and sip your unwholesome Indian drink of
an evening. The fine ladies in Paris were beginning to take tea when I was
last there, though by the faces they made over the stuff it might have been
poison. I can smoke my pipe in the chimney-corner, and look on and admire
at the new generation. I shall not feel myself one too many at your
fireside, as I used sometimes in the Rue de Touraine, when those strutting
Gallic cocks were quizzing me."

* * * * *

There were clouds of dust and a clatter of hoofs again in front of the
floriated iron gate; but this time it was not the Honourable Henriette who
came tripping along the gravel path on two-inch heels, but my Lady Fareham,
who walked languidly, with the assistance of a gold-headed cane, and who
looked pale and thin in her apple-green satin gown and silver-braided
petticoat.

She, too, came attended by a second coach, which was filled by her
ladyship's French waiting-woman, Mrs. Lewin, and a pile of boxes and
parcels.

"I'll wager that in the rapture and romance of your sweethearting you have
not given a thought to petticoats and mantuas," she said, after she had
embraced her sister, who was horrified at the sight of that painted
harridan from London.

Angela blushed at those words, "rapture and romance," knowing how little
there had been of either in her thoughts, or in Denzil's sober courtship.
Romance! Alas! there had been but one romance in her life, and that a
guilty one, which she must ever remember with remorse.

"Come now, confess you have not a gown ordered."

"I have gowns enough and to spare. Oh, sister! have you come so far to talk
of gowns? And that odious woman too! What brought her here?" Angela asked,
with more temper than she was wont to show.

"My sisterly kindness brought her. You are an ungrateful hussy for looking
vexed when I have come a score of miles through the dust to do you a
service."

"Ah, dearest, I am grateful to you for coming. But, alas! you are looking
pale and thin. Heaven forbid that you have been indisposed, and we in
ignorance of your suffering."

"No, I am well enough, though every one assures me I look ill; which is but
a civil mode of telling me I am growing old and ugly."

"Nay, Hyacinth, the former we must all become, with time; the latter you
will never be."

"Your servant, Sir Denzil, has taught you to pay antique compliments. Well,
now we will talk business. I had occasion to send for Lewin--my toilet was
in a horrid state of decay; and then it seemed to me, knowing your foolish
indifference, that even your wedding gown would not be chosen unless I
saw to it. So here is Lewin with Lyons and Genoa silks of the very latest
patterns. She has but just come from Paris, and is full of Parisian modes
and Court scandals. The King posted off to Versailles directly after his
mother's death, and has not returned to the Louvre since. He amuses
himself by spending millions on building, and making passionate love to
Mademoiselle la Valliere, who encourages him by pretending an excessive
modesty, and exaggerates every favour by penitential tears. I doubt his
attachment to so melancholy a mistress will hardly last a lifetime. She is
not beautiful; she has a halting gait; and she is no more virtuous than any
other young woman who makes a show of resistance to enhance the merit of
her surrender."

Hyacinth prattled all the way to the parlour, Mrs. Lewin and the
waiting-woman following, laden with parcels.

"Queer, dear old hovel!" she exclaimed, sinking languidly upon a tabouret,
and fanning herself exhaustedly, while the mantua-maker opened her boxes,
and laid out her sample breadths of richly decorated brocade, or silver and
gold enwrought satin. "How well I remember being whipped over my horn-book
in this very room! And there is the bowling green where I used to race with
the Italian greyhound my grandmother brought me from Paris. I look back,
and it seems a dream of some other child running about in the sunshine. It
is so hard to believe that joyous little being--who knew not the meaning of
heart-ache--was I."

"Why that sigh, sister? Surely none ever had less cause for heart-ache than
you?"

"Have I not cause? Not when my glass tells me youth is gone, and beauty
is waning? Not when there is no one in this wide world who cares a straw
whether I am handsome or hideous? I would as lief be dead as despised and
neglected."

"Sorella mia, questa donna ti ascolta," murmured Angela; "come and look at
the old gardens, sister, while Mrs. Lewin spreads out her wares. And pray
consider, madam," turning to the mantua-maker, "that those peacock purples
and gold embroideries have no temptations for me. I am marrying a country
gentleman, and am to lead a country life. My gowns must be such as will
not be spoilt by a walk in dusty lanes, or a visit to a farm-labourer's
cottage."

"Eh, gud, your ladyship, do not tell me that you would bury so much beauty
among sheep and cows, and odious ploughmen's wives and dairy-women. A month
or so of rustic life in summer between Epsom and Tunbridge Wells may be
well enough, to rest your beauty--without patches or a French head--out of
sight of your admirers. But to live in the country! Only a jealous husband
could ever propose more than an annual six weeks of rustic seclusion to a
wife under sixty. Lord Chesterfield was considered as cruel for taking his
Countess to the rocks and ravines of Derbyshire as Sir John Denham for
poisoning his poor lady."

"Chut! tu vas un peu trop loin, Lewin!" remonstrated Lady Fareham.

"But, in truly, your ladyship, when I hear Mrs. Kirkland talk of a husband
who would have her waste her beauty upon clod-polls and dairy-maids, and
never wear a mantua worth looking at----"

"I doubt my husband will be guided by his own likings rather than by Mrs.
Lewin's tastes and opinions," said Angela, with a stately curtsy, which was
designed to put the forward tradeswoman in her place, and which took that
personage's breath away.

"There never was anything like the insolence of a handsome young woman
before she has been educated by a lover," she said to her ladyship's
Frenchwoman, with a vindictive smile and scornful shrug of bloated
shoulders, when the sisters had left the parlour. "But wait till her first
intrigue, and then it is 'My dearest Lewin, wilt thou make me everlastingly
beholden to thee by taking this letter--thou knowest to whom?' Or, in a
flood of tears, 'Lewin, you are my only friend--and if you cannot find me
some good and serviceable woman who would give me a home where I can hide
from the cruel eye of the world, I must take poison.' No insolence then,
mark you, Madame Hortense!"

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