London Pride by M. E. Braddon

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

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"You have suffered him to talk too much," she said, glancing angrily at Sir
John. "And I'll warrant he has been talking of your daughter--whose name
must be poison to him. God knows 'tis worse than poison to me!"

"Madam, I did not come to this house to hear my daughter abused----"

"It would have better become you, Sir John Kirkland, to keep away from this
house."

"Mother, silence! You distress me worse than my illness----"

"This, madam, is my farewell visit. You will not be plagued any more with
me," said Sir John, lifting his hat, and bowing low to Lady Warner.

He was gone before she could reply.

* * * * *

The baggage was ready--clothes, books, guns, plate, and linen--all
necessaries for an exile that might last for years, had been packed for the
sea voyage; but the trunks and bales had not yet been placed in the waggon
that was to convey them to the Tower Wharf, where they were to be shipped
in one of the orange-boats that came at this season from Valencia, laden
with that choice and costly fruit, and returned with a heterogeneous cargo.
At Valencia the goods would be put on board a Mediterranean coasting
vessel, and landed at Cette.

Sir John began to waver about his destination after having heard from
Henriette of her father's possible embassy. Certainly if Fareham were to be
employed in foreign diplomacy, Paris seemed a likely post for a man who was
so well known there, and had spent so much of his life in France. And if
Fareham were to be at Paris, Sir John considered Montpelier, remote as it
was from the capital, too near his enemy.

"He has proved himself an indomitable villain," thought the Knight. "And I
could not always keep as close a watch upon my daughter as I have done
in the last six weeks. No. If Fareham be for France, I am for some other
country. I might take her to Florence, and put the Apennines between her
and that daring wretch."

It may be, too, that Sir John had another reason for lingering, after all
was ready for the journey. He may have been much influenced by Angela's
concern about his grandchildren, and may have hesitated at leaving them
alone in England with only salaried guardians.

"Their father concerns himself very little about them, you see," he told
Angela, "since he can entertain the project of a foreign embassy, while
those little wretches are pining in a lonely barrack in Oxfordshire."

"Indeed, sir, he is a fond father. I would wager my life that he is deeply
concerned about them."

"Oh, he is an angel, on your showing! You would blacken your sister's
character to make him a saint."

The next day was fine and sunny, a temperature as of April, after the
morning frost had melted. There was a late rose or two still lingering in
the sheltered Buckinghamshire valley, though it wanted but a fortnight of
Christmas. Angela and her father were sitting in a parlour that faced the
iron gates. Since their return from London Sir John had seemed uneasy when
his daughter was out of his sight; and she, perceiving his watchfulness and
trouble, had been content to abandon her favourite walks in the lanes and
woods and to the "fair hill of Brill," whence the view was so lovely and
so vast, on one side reaching to the Welsh mountains, and on another
commanding the nearer prospect of "the great fat common of Ottmoor," as
Aubrey calls it, "which in some winters is like a sea of waters." For her
father's comfort, noting the sad wistful eyes that watched her coming in
and going out, she had resigned herself to spend long melancholy
hours within doors, reading aloud till Sir John fell asleep, playing
backgammon--a game she detested worse even than shove-halfpenny, which
latter primitive game they played sometimes on the shovel-board in the
hall. Life could scarcely be sadder than Angela's life in those grey winter
days; and had it not been for an occasional ride across country with her
father, health and spirits must alike have succumbed to this monotony of
sadness.

This morning, as on many mornings of late, the subject of the boy and girl
at Chilton had been discussed with the Knight's tankard of home-brewed and
his daughter's chocolate.

"Indeed, sir, it would be a cruel thing for us to abandon them. At
Montpelier we shall be a fortnight's journey from England; and if either
of those dear creatures should fall ill, dangerously ill, perhaps, their
father beyond the seas, and we, too, absent--oh, sir, figure to yourself
Henriette or George dying among strangers! A cold or a fever might carry
them off in a few days; and we should know nothing till all was over."

Sir John groaned and paced the room, agitated by the funereal image.

"Why, what a raven thou art, ever to croak dismal prophecies. The children
are strong and well, and have careful custodians. I can have no dealings
with their father. Must I tell you that a hundred times, Angela? He is a
consummate villain: and were it not that I fear to make a bigger scandal,
he or I should not have survived many hours after that iniquitous
sentence."

A happy solution of this difficulty, which distressed the Knight much more
than his stubbornness allowed him to admit, was close at hand that morning,
while Angela bent over her embroidery frame, and her father spelt through
the last _London Gazette_ that the post had brought him.

The clatter of hoofs and roll of wheels announced a visit; and while they
were looking at the gate, full of wonder, since their visitors were of so
small a number, a footman in the Fareham livery pulled the iron ring that
hung by a chain from the stone pillar, and the bell rang loud and long in
the frosty air. The Fareham livery! Twice before the Fareham coaches and
liveries had taken that quiet household by surprise; but to-day terror
rather than surprise was in Angela's mind as she stood in front of the
window looking at the gate.

Could Fareham be so rash as to face her father, so daring as to seek a
farewell interview on the eve of departure? No, she told herself; such
folly was impossible. The visitor could be but one person--Henriette. Even
assured of this in her own mind, she did not rush to welcome her niece, but
stood as if turned to stone, waiting for the opening of the gate.

Old Reuben, having seen the footman, went himself to admit the visitors,
with his grandson and slave in attendance.

"It must be her little ladyship," he said, taking his young mistress's view
of the case. "Lord Fareham would never dare to show his deceiving face
here."

A shrill voice greeted him from the coach window before he reached the
gate.

"You are the slowest old wretch I ever saw!" cried the voice. "Don't you
know that when visitors of importance come to a house they expect to be let
in? I vow a convent gate would be opened quicker."

"Indeed, your ladyship, when your legs are as old as mine----"

"Which I hope they never will be," muttered Henriette, as she descended
with a languid slowness from the coach, assisted on either side by a
footman; while George, who could not wait for her airs and graces, let
himself out at the door on the off side just as Reuben succeeded in turning
the key.

"So you are old Reuben!" he said, patting the butler on the shoulder with
the gold hilt of his riding-whip. "And you were here, like a vegetable, all
through the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth?"

"Yes, your lordship, from the raising of Hampden's regiment."

"Ah, you shall tell me all about it over a pipe and a bottle. You must be
vastly good company. I am come to live here."

"To live here, your honour?"

"Yes; sister and I are to live here while my father represents his Majesty
beyond seas. I hope you have good stabling and plenty of room. My ponies
and Mistress Henriette's Arab horse will be here to-morrow. I doubt I shall
have to build a place for my hawks; but I suppose Sir John will find me a
cottage for my Dutch falconer."

"Lord, how the young master do talk!" exclaimed Reuben, with an admiring
grin.

The boy was so rapid in his speech, had such vivacity and courage in his
face, such a spring in every movement, as if he had quicksilver in his
veins, Reuben thought; but it was only the quicksilver of youth, that
Divine ichor which lasts for so brief a season.

"It made me feel twenty years younger only to hear him prattle," Reuben
said afterwards.

Sir John and his daughter had come to meet the children by this time,
and there were fond embracings, in the midst of which Henriette withdrew
herself from her grandfather's arms, and retired a couple of paces, in
order to drop him the Jennings curtsy, sinking almost to the ground, and
then rising from billows of silk, like Venus from the sea, and handing
him a letter, with a circular sweep of her arm, learnt in London from her
Parisian dancing mistress, an apprentice of St. Andre's, not from the
shabby little French cut-caper from Oxford.

"My father sends you this letter, sir."

"Is your father at Chilton?"

"No, sir. He was with us the day before yesterday, to bid us good-bye
before he started upon his foreign embassy," replied Henriette, struggling
with her tears, lest she should seem a child, and not the woman of fashion
she aspired to be. "He left us early in the afternoon to ride back to
London, and he takes barge this afternoon to Gravesend, to embark for
Archangel, on his way to Moscow. I doubt you know he is to be his Majesty's
Ambassador at Muscovy?"

"I know nothing but what you told me t'other day, Henriette," the Knight
answered, as they went to the house, where George began to run about on an
exploration of corridors, and then escaped to the stables, while Henriette
stood in front of the great wood fire, and warmed her hands in a stately
manner.

Angela had found no words of welcome for her niece yet. She only hugged
and kissed her, and now occupied herself unfastening the child's hood and
cloak. "How your hands shake, auntie. You must be colder than I am; though
that leathern coach lets in the wind like a sieve. I suppose my people will
know where to dispose themselves?" she added, resuming her grand air.

"Reuben will take care of them, dearest."

"Why, your voice shakes like your hands; and oh, how white you are. But you
are glad to see us, I hope?"

"Gladder than I can say, Henriette."

"I am glad you don't call me Papillon. I have left off that ridiculous
name, which I ought never to have permitted."

"I doubt, mistress, you who know so much know what is in this letter," said
Sir John, staring at Fareham's superscription as if he had come suddenly
upon an adder.

"Nay, sir, I only know that my father was shut in his library for a long
time writing, and was as white as my aunt is now when he brought it to me.
'You and George, and your gouvernante and servants, are to go to the Manor
Moat the day after to-morrow,' he said, 'and you are to give this letter
into your grandfather's hand.' I have done my duty, and await your Honour's
pleasure. Our gouvernante is not the Frenchwoman. Father dismissed her for
neglecting my education, and walking out after dark with Daniel Lettsome.
'Tis only Priscilla, who is something between a servant and a friend, and
who does everything I tell her."

"A pretty gouvernante!"

"Nay, sir, she is as plain as a pikestaff; that is one of her merits.
Mademoiselle thought herself pretty, and angled for a rich husband. Please
be so good as to read your letter, grandfather, for I believe it is about
us."

Sir John broke the seal, and began to read the letter with a frowning brow,
which lightened as he read. Angela stood with her niece clasped in her
arms, and watched her father's countenance across the silky brown head that
nestled against her bosom.

"SIR,--Were it not in the interests of others, who must needs hold a place
in your affection second only to that they have in my heart, I should
scarce presume to address you; but it is to the grandfather of my children
I write, rather than to the gentleman whom I have so deeply offended. I
look back, sir, and repent the violence of that unhappy night; but know no
change in the melancholy passion that impelled me to crime. It would have
been better for me had I been the worst rake-hell at Whitehall, than to
have held myself aloof from the modish vices of my day, only to concentrate
all my desires and affections there, where it was most sinful to place
them.

"Enough, sir. Did I stand alone I should have found an easy solution of all
difficulties, and you, and the lady my madness has so insulted, would have
been rid for ever of the despicable wretch who now addresses you.

"I had to remember the dear innocents who bring you this letter, and it was
of them I thought when I humbled myself to turn courtier in order to obtain
the post of Ambassador to Muscovy--in which savage place I shall be so
remote from all who ever knew me in this country, that I shall be as good
as dead; and you would have as much compunction in withholding your love
and protection from my boy and girl as if they were de facto orphans. I
send them to you, sir, unheralded. I fling them into the bosom of your
love. They are rich, and the allowance that will be paid you for them will
cover, I apprehend, all outlays on their behalf, or can be increased at
your pleasure. My lawyers, whom you know, will be at your service for all
communications; and they will spare you the pain of correspondence with me.

"I leave the nurture, education, and happiness of these, my only son and
daughter, solely in your care and authority. They have been reared in
over-much luxury, and have been spoiled by injudicious indulgence. But
their faults are trivial faults, and are all on the surface. They are
truthful, and have warm and generous hearts. I shall deem it a further
favour if you will allow their nurse, or nurse-gouvernante, Mrs. Priscilla
Baker, to remain with them, as your servant, and subject to your authority.
Their horses, ponies, hawks, and hounds, carriages, etc., must be
accommodated, or not, at your pleasure. My girl is greatly taken up with
the Arab horse I gave her on her last birthday, and I should be glad if
your stable could shelter him. I subscribe myself, perhaps for the last
time, sir,

"Your obedient servant, and a penitent sinner,

"FAREHAM."

When he had come to the end of the letter, reading slowly and thoughtfully,
Sir John handed it to his daughter, in a dead silence.

She tried to read; but at sight of the beloved writing a rush of tears
blinded her, and she gave the letter back to her father.

"I cannot read it, sir," she sobbed; "tell me only, are we to keep the
children?"

"Yes. Henceforward they are our children; and it will be the business of
our lives to make them happy."

"If you cry, tante, I shall think you are vexed that we have come to plague
you," said Henriette, with a pretty, womanly air. "I am very sorry for
his poor lordship, for he also cried when he kissed us; but he will have
skating and sledging in Muscovy, and he will shoot bears; so he will be
very happy."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

IN A DEAD CALM.

The great bales and chests, and leather trunks, on the filling whereof
Sir John's household had bestowed a week's labour, were all unpacked and
cleared out of the hall, to make room for a waggon load of packages from
Chilton Abbey, which preliminary waggon was followed day after day by other
conveyances laden with other possessions of the Honourable Henriette,
or the Honourable George. The young lady's virginals, her guitar, her
embroidery frames, her books, her "babies," which the maids had packed,
although it was long since she had played with them; the young gentleman's
guns and whips, tennis rackets, bows and arrows, and a mass of
heterogeneous goods; there seemed no end to the two children's personal
property, and it was well that the old house was sufficiently spacious to
afford a wing for their occupation. They brought their gouvernante, and a
valet and maid, the falconer, and three grooms, for whom lodgings had to
be found out-of-doors. The valet and waiting-woman spent some days in
distributing and arranging all that mass of belongings; but at the end of
their labour the children's rooms looked more cheerful than their luxurious
quarters at Chilton, and the children themselves were delighted with their
new home.

"We are lodged ever so much better here than at the Abbey," George told
his grandfather. "We were ever so far away from father and mother, and
the house was under a curse, being stolen from the Church in King Henry's
reign. Once, when I had a fever, an old grey monk came and sat at the
foot of the bed, between the curtains, and wouldn't go away. He sat there
always, till I began to get well again. Father said there was nothing
there, and it was only the fever made me see him; but I know it was the
ghost of one of the monks who were flung out to starve when the Abbey was
seized by Cromwell's men. Not Oliver Cromwell, grandfather; but another bad
man of the name, who had his head cut off afterwards; though I doubt he
deserved the axe less than the Brewer did."

There was no more talk of Montpelier or exile. A new life began in the old
house in the valley, with new pleasures, new motives, new duties--a life in
which the children were paramount. These two eager young minds ruled at the
Manor Moat. For them the fish-pond teemed with carp and tench, for them
hawks flew, and hounds ran, and horses and ponies were moving from morning
till twilight; for them Sir John grew young again, and hunted fox and hare,
and rode with the hawks with all the pertinacity of youth, for whom there
is no such word as enough. For them the happy grandfather lived in his
boots from October to March, and the adoring aunt spent industrious hours
in the fabrication of flies for trout, after the recipes in Mr. Walton's
agreeable book. The whole establishment was ordered for their comfort and
pleasure; but their education and improvement were also considered in
everything. A Roman Catholic gentleman, from St. Omer, was engaged as
George's tutor, and to teach Angela and Henriette Latin and Italian,
studies in which the niece was stimulated to industry by her desire to
surpass her aunt, an ambition which her volatile spirits never allowed her
to realise. For all other learning and accomplishments Angela was her only
teacher, and as the girl grew to womanhood aunt and niece read and studied
together, like sisters, rather than like pupil and mistress; and Angela
taught Henriette to love those books which Fareham had given her, and so in
a manner the intellect of the banished father influenced the growing mind
of the child. Together, and of one opinion in all things, aunt and niece
visited and ministered to the neighbouring poor, or entertained their
genteel neighbours in a style at once friendly and elegant. No existence
could have been calmer or happier, to one who was content to renounce all
passionate hopes and desires, all the romantic aspirations of youth; and
Angela had resigned herself to such renunciation when she rose from her
sick-bed, after the tragedy at Chilton. Here was the calm of the Convent
without its restrictions and limitations, the peace which is not of this
world, and yet liberty to enjoy all that is fairest and noblest in this
world; for had not Sir John pledged himself to take his daughter and niece
and nephew for the grand tour through France and Italy, soon after George's
seventeenth birthday? Father Andrea, who was of Florentine birth, would go
with them; and with such a cicisbeo, they would see and understand all the
treasures of the past and the present, antique and modern art.

Lord Fareham was still in the north of Europe; but, after three years in
Russia, had been transferred from Moscow to Copenhagen, where he was in
high favour with the King of Denmark.

Denzil Warner had lately married a young lady of fortune, the only child
and heiress of a Wiltshire gentleman, who had made a considerable figure in
Parliament under the Protector, but was now retired from public affairs.

And all that remained to Angela of her story of impassioned love, sole
evidence of the homage that had been offered to her beauty or her youth,
was a letter, now long grown dim with tears, which Henriette had given to
her on the first night the children spent under their grandfather's roof.

"I was to hand you this when no one was by," the girl said simply, and left
her aunt standing mute and pale with a sealed letter in her hand.

* * * * *

"How shall I thank or praise you for the sacrifice your love made for one
so unworthy--a sacrifice that cut me to the heart? Alas, my beloved, it
would have been better for both of us hadst thou given me thyself rather
than so empty a gift as thy good name. I hoped to tell you, lip to lip, in
one last meeting, all my gratitude and all my hopeless love; but though I
have watched and hung about your gardens and meadows day after day, you
have been too jealously guarded, or have kept too close, and only with my
pen can I bid you an eternal farewell.

"I go out of your life for ever, since I am leaving for a distant country
with the fixed intention never to return to England. I bequeath you my
children, as if I left you a rag of my own lacerated heart.

"If you ever think of me, I pray you to consider the story of my life
as that of an invincible passion, wicked and desperate if you will, but
constant as life and death. You were, and are, and will be to my latest
breath, my only love.

"Perhaps you will think sometimes, as I shall think always, that we might
have lived innocently and happily in New England, forgetting and forgotten
by the rabble we left behind us, having shaken off the slough of an unhappy
life, beginning the world again, under new names, in a new climate and
country. It was a guilty dream to entertain, perhaps; but I shall dream
it often enough in a strange land, among strange faces and strange
manners--shall dream of you on my death-bed, and open dying eyes to see you
standing by my bedside, looking down at me with that sweetly sorrowful
look I remember best of all the varying expressions in the face I
worship.--Farewell for ever.

"F."

While her son and daughter were growing up at the Manor Moat, Lady Fareham
sparkled at the French Court, one of the most brilliant figures in that
brilliant world, a frequent guest at the Louvre and Palais Royal, and the
brand-new palace of Versailles, where the largest Court that had ever
collected round a throne was accommodated in a building of Palladian
richness in ornament and detail, a Palace whose offices were spacious
enough for two thousand servants. No foreigner at the great King's court
was more admired than the lovely Lady Fareham, whose separation from her
black-browed husband occasioned no scandal in a society where the husbands
of beautiful women were for the most part gentlemen who pursued their own
vulgar amours abroad, and allowed a wide liberty to the Venus at home; nor
was Henri de Malfort's constant attendance upon her ladyship a cause of
evil-speaking, since there was scarce a woman of consequence who had not
her _cavaliere servante_.

Madame de Sevigne, in one of those budgets of Parisian scandal with which
she cheered a kinsman's banishment, assured Bussy de Rabutin that Lady
Fareham had paid her friend's debts more than once since her return to
France; but constancy such as De Malfort's could hardly be expected
were not the golden fetters of love riveted by the harder metal of
self-interest. Their alliance was looked on with favour by all that
brilliant world, and even tolerated by that severe moralist, the Due
du Montausier, who had been lately rewarded for his wife's civility to
Mademoiselle de la Valliere, now Duchess and reigning favourite, by being
made guardian of the infant Dauphin.

Every one approved, every one admired; and Hyacinth's life in the land
she loved was like a long summer day. But darkness came upon that day as
suddenly as the night of the tropics. She rose one morning, light-hearted
and happy, to pursue the careless round of pleasure. She lay down in a
darkened chamber, never again to mix in that splendid crowd.

Betwixt noon and twilight Henri de Malfort had fallen in a combat of eight,
a combat so savage as to recall that fatal fight of five against five
during the Fronde, in which Nemours had fallen, shot through the heart by
Beaufort.

The light words of a fool in a tavern, backed by three other fools, had led
to this encounter, in which De Malfort had been the challenger. He and
one of his friends died on the ground, while three on the other side
were mortally wounded. It would henceforth be fully understood that Lady
Fareham's name was not for ribald jesters; but the man Lady Fareham loved
was dead, and her life of pleasure had ended with a pistol-ball from an
unerring hand. To her it seemed the hand of Fate. She scarcely thought of
the man who had killed him.

As her life had been brilliant and conspicuous, so her retirement from the
world was not without _eclat_. Royalty witnessed the solemn office of the
Church which transformed Hyacinth, Lady Fareham, into Mere Agnes, of the
Seven Wounds; while, seated in the royal tribune, a King's mistress,
beautiful and adored, thought of a day when she, too, might bring to yonder
altar the sacrifice of a broken spirit and a life that had outlived earthly
happiness.

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