London Pride by M. E. Braddon

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

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"That is false, and you know it!" cried Fareham. "My life is of less
account to me than a hair of her head. I hid her from you, to save her from
your tyranny, and the hateful marriage to which you would have compelled
her."

"Liar! Impudent, barbarous liar!" roared the old Knight, with his right arm
raised, and his body half out of the box, as if he would have assaulted
the defendant. "Sir John," said the Judge, "I would be very loath to deal
otherwise than becomes me with a person of your quality; but, indeed, this
is not so handsome, and we must desire you to be calm."

"When I remember his infamy, and that vile assumption of my daughter's
passion for him, which he showed in every word and act of that miserable
scene."

He went on to relate the searching of the house, and Warner's happy
inspiration, by which Angela's hiding-place was discovered, and she rescued
in a fainting condition. He described the defendant's audacious attempt
to convey her to the coach which stood ready for her abduction, and his
violence in opposing her rescue, and the fight which had well-nigh resulted
in Warner's death.

When Sir John's story was finished the defendant's advocate, who had
declined to question the old butler, rose to cross-examine this more
important witness.

"In your tracing of the defendant's journey between your house and Chilton
you heard of no outcries of resistance upon your daughter's side?"

"No, sir. She went willingly, under a delusion."

"And do you think now, sir, as a man of the world, and with some knowledge
of women, that your daughter was so easily hoodwinked; she having seen her
sister, Lady Fareham, so shortly before, in good health and spirits?"

"Lady Fareham did not appear in good health when she was last at the Manor,
and her sister was already uneasy about her."

"But not so uneasy as to believe her dying, and that it was needful to ride
to her helter-skelter in the night-time. Do you not think, sir, that the
young lady, who was so quick to comply with his lordship's summons, and
bustled up and was in the saddle ten minutes after he entered the house,
and was willing to got without her own woman, or any preparation for
travel, had a strong inclination for the journey, and a great kindness for
the gentleman who solicited her company?"

"Has that barbarous wretch set you on to slander the lady whose ruin he
sought, sir?" asked the Knight, pallid with the white heat of indignation.

"Nay, Sir John, I am no slanderer; but I want the Jury to understand the
sentiments and passions which are the springs of action here, and to bear
in mind that the case they are hearing is a love story, and they can only
come at the truth by remembering their own experience as lovers--"

The deep and angry tones of his client interrupted the silvery-tongued
Counsellor.

"If you think to help me, sir, by traducing the lady, I repudiate your
advocacy."

"My lord, you are not allowed to give evidence or to interrupt the Court.
You have pleaded not guilty, and it is my duty to demonstrate your
innocence. Come, Sir John, do you not know that his lordship's unhappy
passion for his sister-in-law was shared by the subject of it; and that she
for a long time opposed all your efforts to bring about a proper alliance
for her, solely guided and influenced by this secret passion?"

"I know no such thing."

"Do I understand, then, that from the time of your first proposals she was
willing to marry Sir Denzil Warner?"

"She was not willing."

"I would have wagered as much. Did you fathom her reason for declining so
proper an alliance?"

"I did not trouble myself about her reasons. I knew that time would wear
them away."

"And I doubt you trusted to a father's authority?"

"No, sir. I promised my daughter that I would not force her inclinations."

"But you used all methods of persuasion. How long was it before July the
4th that Mrs. Angela consented to marry Sir Denzil?"

"I cannot be over precise upon that point. I have no record of the date."

"But you have the faculty of memory, sir; and this is a point which a
father would not easily forget."

"It may have been a fortnight before."

"And until that time the lady was unwilling?"

"Yes."

"She refused positively to accept the match you urged upon her?"

"She refused."

"And finally consented, I will wager, with marked reluctance?"

"No, sir, there was no reluctance. She came to me of her own accord, and
surprised me by her submission."

"That will do, Sir John. You can stand down. I shall now proceed to call a
witness who will convince the Jury of my client's innocence upon the first
and chief count in the indictment, abduction with fraud and violence. I
shall tell you by the lips of my witness, that if he took the lady away
from her home, she being of full age, she went freely consenting, and with
knowledge of his purpose."

"Lies--foul lies!" cried the old Cavalier, almost strangled with passion.

He plucked at the knot of his cravat, trying to loosen it, feeling himself
threatened with apoplexy.

"Call Mistress Angela Kirkland," said the Serjeant, in strong steady tones
that contrasted with the indignant father's hoarse and gasping utterance.

"S'life! the business becomes every moment more interesting," whispered
Lady Sarah. "Will he make that sly slut own her misconduct in open court?"

"If she blush at her slip from virtue, it will be a new sensation in a
London law-court to see the colour of shame," replied Sir Ralph, behind his
perfumed glove; "but I warrant she'll carry matters with a high hand, and
feel herself every inch a heroine."

Angela came into the court attended by her waiting-woman, who remained near
the entrance, amid the close-packed crowd of lawyers and onlookers, while
her mistress quietly followed the official who conducted her to the
witness-box.

She was dressed in black, and her countenance under her neat black hood
looked scarcely less white than her lawn neckerchief; but she stood erect
and unfaltering in that conspicuous station, and met the eyes of her
interrogator with an untroubled gaze. When her lips had touched the dirty
little book, greasy with the kisses of innumerable perjurers, the Serjeant
began to question her in a tone of odious familiarity.

"Now, my dear young lady, here is a gentleman's liberty, and perhaps his
life, hanging on the breath of those pretty lips; so I want you to answer
a few plain questions with as plain speech as you can command, remembering
that you are to tell us the truth, and the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth. Come, now, dear miss, when you left your father's house on the night
of July 4, in this present year, in Lord Fareham's company, did you go with
him of your own free will, and with a knowledge of his purpose?"

"I knew that he loved me."

A heart-breaking groan from Sir John Kirkland was hushed down by an usher
of the court.

"You knew that he loved you, and that he designed to carry you beyond
seas?"

"Yes."

"And you were willing to leave your father's custody and go with the
defendant as his paramour?"

There was a pause, and the white cheek crimsoned, and the heavy eyelids
fell over agonised eyes.

"I went willingly--because I loved him;" and then with a sudden burst of
passion, "I would have died for him, or lived for him. It mattered not
which."

"And she has lied for him--has sworn to a lie--and that to her own
dishonour!" cried Sir John, beside himself; whereupon he was sternly bidden
to keep silence.

There was no intention that this little Buckinghamshire gentleman should
be indulged, to the injury of a person of Lord Fareham's wealth and
consequence. The favour of the Bench obviously leant towards the defendant.

Fareham's deep tones startled the audience.

"In truth, your Honour, the young lady has belied herself in order to help
me," he said. "I cannot accept acquittal at the cost of her good name."

"Your lordship has pleaded not guilty."

"And his lordship's chivalry would revoke that plea," cried the Counsel;
"this is most irregular. I must beg that the Bench do order the defendant
to keep silence. The witness can stand down."

Angela descended from the witness-box falteringly, and would perhaps have
fallen but for her father's strong grasp, which clutched her arm as she
reached the last step.

He dragged her out of the close-packed court, and into the open Hall.

"Wanton!" he hissed in her ear, "shameless wanton!"

She answered nothing; but stood where he held her, with wild eyes looking
out of a white, rigid countenance. She had done what she had come there
to do. Persuaded by Fareham's attorney, who had waited upon her at her
lodgings when Sir John was out of the way, she had made her ill-considered
attempt to save the man she loved, ignorant of the extent of his danger,
exaggerating the potential severity of his punishment, in the illimitable
fear of a woman for the safety of the being she loves. And now she cared
nothing what became of her, cared little even for her father's anger or
distress. There was always the Convent, last refuge of sin or sorrow, which
meant the annihilation of the individual, and where the world's praise or
blame had no influence.

Her woman fussed about her with a bottle of strong essence, and Sir John
dragged rather than led her along the Hall, to the great door where the
coach that had carried her from his London lodgings was in waiting. He saw
her seated, with her woman beside her, supporting her, gave the coachman
his orders, and then went hastily back to the Court of King's Bench.

The Court was rising; the Jury, without leaving their seats, had pronounced
the defendant guilty of a misdemeanour, not in conveying Sir John
Kirkland's daughter away from her home, to which act she had avowed herself
a consenting party; but in detaining her in his house with violence, and
in opposition to her father and proper guardian. The Lord Chief Justice
expressed his satisfaction at this verdict, and after expatiating with
pious horror upon the evil consequences of an ungovernable passion, a
guilty, soul-destroying love, a direct inspiration of Satan, sentenced the
defendant to pay a fine of ten thousand pounds, upon the payment of which
sum he would be set at liberty.

The old Cavalier heard the brief sermon and the sentence, which seemed to
him of all punishments the most futile. He had hoped to see his son-in-law
sent to the Plantations for life; had been angry at the thought that he
would escape the gallows; and for sole penalty the seducer was sentenced to
forfeit less than a year's income. How corrupt and venal was a bench
that made the law of the land a nullity when a great personage was the
law-breaker!

He flung himself in the defendant's way as he left the court, and struck
him across the breast with the flat of his sword.

"An unarmed man, Sir John! Is that your old-world chivalry?" Fareham asked,
quietly.

A crowd was round them and swords were drawn before the officer could
interfere. There were friends of Fareham's in the court, and two of his
gentlemen; and Sir John, who was alone, might have been seriously hurt
before the authorities could put down the tumult, had not his son-in-law
protected him.

"Sheath your swords, if you love me!" he exclaimed, flinging himself in
front of Sir John. "I would not have the slightest violence offered to this
gentleman."

"And I would kill you if I had the chance!" cried Sir John; "that is the
difference between us. I keep no measures with the man who ruined my
daughter."

"Your daughter is as spotless a saint as the day she left her Convent, and
you are a blatant old fool to traduce her," said Fareham, exasperated, as
the Usher led him away.

His detention was no more than a formality; and as he had been previously
allowed his liberty upon bail, he was now permitted to return to his
own house, where by an order upon his banker he paid the fine, and was
henceforward a free man.

The first use he made of his freedom was to rush to Sir John's lodgings,
only to hear that the Cavalier, with his daughter and two servants, had
left half an hour earlier in a coach-and-four for Buckinghamshire. The
people at the lodgings did not know which road they had taken, or at what
Inn they were to lie on the way.

"Well, there will be a better chance of seeing her at the Manor than in
London," Fareham thought; "he cannot keep so close a watch upon her there
as in the narrow space of town lodgings."

CHAPTER XXVII.

BRINGERS OF SUNSHINE.

It was December, and the fields and pastures were white in the tardy dawn
with the frosty mists of early winter, and Sir John Kirkland was busy
making his preparations for leaving Buckinghamshire and England with his
daughter. He had come from Spain at the beginning of the year, hoping to
spend the remnant of his days in the home of his forefathers, and to lay
his old bones in the family vault; but the place was poisoned to him for
evermore, he told Angela. He could not stay where he and his had been held
in highest honour, to have his daughter pointed at by every grinning lout
in hob-nailed shoes, and scorned by the neighbouring quality. He only
waited till Denzil Warner should be pronounced out of danger and on the
high-road to recovery, before he crossed the Channel.

"There is no occasion you should leave Buckinghamshire, sir," Angela
argued. "It is the dearest wish of my heart to return to the Convent at
Louvain, and finish my life there, sheltered from the world's contempt."

"What, having failed to get your fancy, you would dedicate yourself to
God?" he cried. "No, madam. I am still your father, though you have
disgraced me; and I require a daughter's duty from you. Oh, child, I so
loved you, was so proud of you! It is a bitter physic you have given me to
drink."

She knelt at his feet, and kissed his sunburnt hands shrunken with age.

"I will do whatever you desire, sir. I wish no higher privilege than to
wait upon you; but when you weary of me there is ever the Convent."

"Leave that for your libertine sister. Be sure she will finish a loose life
by a conspicuous piety. She will turn saint like Madame de Longueville.
Sinners are the stuff of which modern saints are made. And women love
extremes--to pass from silk and luxury to four-o'clock matins, and the
Carmelite's woollen habit. No, Angela, there must be no Convent for you,
while I live. Your penance must be to suffer the company of a petulant,
disappointed old man."

"No penance, sir, but peace and contentment; so I am but forgiven."

"Oh, you are forgiven. There is that about you with which one cannot long
be angry--a creature so gentle and submissive, a reed that bends under a
blow. Let us not think of the past. You were a fool--but not a wanton. No,
I will never believe that! A generous, headstrong fool, ready with thine
own perjured lips to blacken thy character in order to save the villain who
did his best to ruin thee. But thou art pure," looking down at her with a
severe scrutiny. "There is no memory of guilt in those eyes. We will go
away together, and live peacefully together, and you shall still be the
staff of my failing steps, the light of my fading eyes, the comfort of
my ebbing life. Were I but easy in my mind about those poor forsaken
grandchildren, I could leave England cheerfully enough; but to know them
motherless--with such a father!"

"Indeed, sir, I believe, however greatly Lord Fareham may have erred, he
will not prove a neglectful father," Angela said, her voice growing low and
tremulous as she pronounced that fatal name.

"You will vouch for him, no doubt. A licentious villain, but an admirable
father! No, child, Nature does not deal in such anomalies. The children are
alone at Chilton with their English gouvernante, and the prim Frenchwoman,
who takes infinite pains to perfect Henriette's unlikeness to a human
child. They are alone, and their father is hanging about the Court."

"At Court! Lord Fareham! Indeed, sir, I think you must be mistaken."

"Indeed, madam, I have the fact on good authority."

"Oh, sir, if you have reason to think those dear children neglected, is it
not your duty to protect and care for them? Their poor, mistaken mother has
abandoned them."

"Yes, to play the great lady in Paris, where, when I went in quest of
her last July--while thou wert lying sick here--hoping to bring back a
penitent, I was received with a triumphant insolence, finding her the
centre of a circle of flatterers, a Princess in little, with all the airs
and graces and ceremonies and hauteur of the French Blood-royal. When I
charged her with being Malfort's mistress, and bade her pack her traps and
come home with me, she deafened me with her angry volubility. I to slander
her--I, her father, when there was no one in Paris, from the Place Royale
to the Louvre, more looked up to! But when I questioned my old friends they
answered with enigmatical smiles, and assured me that they knew nothing
against my daughter's character worse than all the world was saying about
some of the highest ladies in France--Madame, to wit; and with this cold
comfort I must needs be content, and leave her in her splendid infamy."

"Father, be sure she will come back to us. She has been led into
wrong-doing by the artfullest of villains. She will discover the emptiness
of her life, and come back to seek the solace of her children's love. Let
us care for them meanwhile. They have no other kindred. Think of our sweet
Henriette--so rich, so beautiful, so over-intelligent--growing from child
to woman in the care of servants, who may spoil and pervert her even by
their very fondness."

"It is a bad case, I grant; but I can stir no finger where that man is
concerned. I can hold no communication with that scoundrel."

"But your lawyer could claim custody of the children for you, perhaps."

"I think not, Angela, unless there was a criminal neglect of their bodies.
The law takes no account of souls."

Angela's greatest anxiety--now that Denzil's recovery was assured--was for
the welfare of these children whom she fondly loved, and for whom she would
have gladly played a mother's part. She wrote in secret to her sister,
entreating her to return to England for her children's sake, and to devote
herself to them in retirement at Chilton, leaving the scandal of her
elopement to be forgotten in the course of blameless years; so that by the
time Henriette was old enough to enter the world her mother would have
recovered the esteem of worthy people, as well as the respect of the mob.

Lady Fareham's tardy answer was not encouraging. She had no design of
returning to a house in which she had never been properly valued, and
she admired that her sister should talk of scandal, considering that the
scandal of her own intrigue with her brother-in-law had set all England
talking, and had been openly mentioned in the London and Oxford Gazettes.
Silence about other people's affairs would best become a young miss who had
made herself so notorious.

As for the children, Lady Fareham had no doubt that their father, who had
ever lavished more affection upon them than he bestowed upon his wife,
might be trusted with the care of them, however abominable his conduct
might be in other matters. But in any case her ladyship would not exchange
Paris for London, where she had been slighted and neglected at Court as
well as at home.

The letter was a tissue of injustice and egotism; and Angela gave up all
hope of influencing her sister for good; but not the hope of being useful
to her sister's children.

Now, as the short winter days went by, and the preparations for departure
were making, she grew more and more urgent with her father to obtain the
custody of his grandchildren, and carry them to France with him, where they
might be reared and educated under his own eye. Montpelier was the place of
exile he had chosen, a place renowned alike for its admirable climate and
educational establishments; and where Sir John had spent the previous
winter, and had made friends.

It was to Montpelier the great Chancellor had retired from the splendours
of a princely mansion but just completed--far exceeding his own original
intentions in splendour, as the palaces of new-made men are apt to do--and
from a power and authority second only to that of kings. There the
grandfather of future queens was now residing in modest state, devoting the
evening of his life to the composition of an authentic record of the late
rebellion, and of those few years during which he had been at the head of
affairs in England. Sir John Kirkland, who had never forgotten his own
disappointments in the beginning of his master's restored fortunes, had a
fellow-feeling for "Ned Hyde" in his fall.

"As a statesman he was next in capacity to Wentworth," said Sir John, "and
yet a painted favourite and a rabble of shallow wits were strong enough to
undermine him."

The old Knight confessed that he had ridden out of his way on several
occasions when he was visiting Warner's sick-bed, in the hope of meeting
Henrietta and George on their ponies, and had more than once been so lucky
as to see them.

"The girl grows handsomer, and is as insolent as ever; but she has a
sorrowful look which assures me she misses her mother; though it was indeed
of that wretch, her father, she talked most. She said he had told her he
was likely to go on a foreign embassy. If it is to France he goes, there is
an end of Montpelier. The same country shall not hold him and my daughter
while I live to protect you."

Angela began to understand that it was his fear, or his hatred of Fareham,
which was taking him out of his native country. No word had been said of
her betrothal since that fatal night. It seemed tacitly understood that all
was at an end between her and Denzil Warner. She herself had been prostrate
with a low, nervous fever during a considerable part of that long period of
apprehension and distress in which Denzil lay almost at the point of death,
nursed by his grief-stricken mother, to whom the very name of his so lately
betrothed wife was hateful. Verily the papistical bride had brought a
greater trouble to that house than even Lady Warner's prejudiced mind had
anticipated. Kneeling by her son's bed, exhausted with the passion of long
prayers for his recovery, the mother's thoughts went back to the day when
Angela crossed the threshold of that house for the first time, so fair, so
modest, with a countenance so innocent in its pensive beauty.

"And yet she was guilty at heart even then," Lady Warner told herself, in
the long night-watches, after the trial at Westminster Hall, when Angela's
public confession of an unlawful love had been reported to her by her
favourite Nonconformist Divine, who had been in court throughout the trial,
with Lady Warner's lawyer, watching the proceedings in the interest of Sit
Denzil. Lady Warner received the news of the verdict and sentence with
unspeakable indignation.

"And my murdered son!" she gasped, "for I know not yet that God will
hear my prayers and raise him up to me again. Is his blood to count for
nothing--or his sufferings--his patient sufferings on that bed? A fine--a
paltry fine--a trifle for a rich man. I would pay thrice as much, though
it beggared me, to see him sent to the Plantations. O Judge and Avenger of
Israel! Thou hast scourged us with pestilence, and punished us with fire;
but Thou hast not convinced us of sin. The world is so sunk in wickedness
that murder scarce counts for crime."

The day of terror was past. Denzil's convalescence was proceeding slowly,
but without retrograde stages. His youth and temperate habits had helped
his recovery from a wound which in the earlier stages looked fatal. He was
now able to sit up in an armchair, and talk to his visitor, when Sir John
rode twenty miles to see him; but only once did his lips shape the name
that had been so dear, and that occasion was at the end of a visit which
Sir John announced as the last.

"Our goods are packed and ready for shipping," he said. "My daughter and I
will begin our journey to Montpelier early next week."

It was the first time Sir John had spoken of his daughter in that
sick-room.

"If she should ever talk of me, in the time to come," Denzil said--speaking
very slowly, in a low voice, as if the effort, mental and physical, were
almost beyond his strength, and holding the hand which Sir John had given
him in saying good-bye--"tell her that I shall ever remember her with
a compassionate affection--ever hold her the dearest and loveliest of
women--yes, even if I should marry, and see the children of some fair and
chaste wife growing up around me. She will ever be the first. And tell
her that I know she forswore herself in the court; and that she was the
innocent dupe of that villain--never his consenting companion. And tell her
that I pity her even for that so misplaced affection which tempted her to
swear to a lie. I knew, sir, always, that she loved him and not me. Yes,
from the first. Indeed, sir, it was but too easy to read that unconscious
beginning of unholy love, which grew and strengthened like some fatal
disease. I knew, but nursed the fond hope that I could win her heart--in
spite of him. I fancied that right must prevail over wrong; but it does
not, you see, sir, not always--not----" A faintness came over him;
whereupon his mother, re-entering the room at this moment, ran to him and
restored him with the strong essence that stood handy among the medicine
bottles on the table by his chair.

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