London Pride Or When the World Was Younger Part 16

"The Church has neither profit nor honour from you," said his wife, shaking her fan at him. "You seldom go to Ma.s.s; you never go to confession."

"I would rather keep my sins to myself, and atone for them by the pangs of a wounded conscience. That is too easy a religion which s.h.i.+fts the burden of guilt on to the shoulders of a stipendiary priest, and walks away from the confessional absolved by the payment of a few extra prayers."

"I believe you are either an infidel or a Puritan."

"A cross between the two, perhaps-a mongrel in religion, as I am a mongrel in politics."

Angela looked up at him with sad eyes-reproachful, yet full of pity. She remembered his wild talk, semi-delirious some of it, all feverish and excited, during his illness, and how she had listened with aching heart to the ravings of one so near death, and so unfit to die. And now that the pestilence had pa.s.sed him by, now that he was a strong man again, with half a lifetime before him, her heart was still heavy for him. She who sat in the theatre of life as a spectator had discovered that her sister's husband was not happy. The trifles that delighted Hyacinth left Fareham unamused and discontented; and his wife knew not that there was anything wanting to his felicity. She could go on prattling like a child, could be in a fever about a fan or a bunch of ribbons, could talk for an hour of a new play or the contents of the French Gazette, while he sat gloomy and apart.

The sympathy, the companions.h.i.+p that should be in marriage was wanting here. Angela saw and deplored this distance, scarce daring to touch so delicate a theme, fearful lest she, the younger, should seem to sermonise the elder; and yet she could not be silent for ever while duty and religion urged her to speak.

At Chilton Abbey the sisters were rarely alone. Papillon was almost always with them; and De Malfort spent more of his life in attendance upon Lady Fareham than at Oxford, where he was supposed to be living. Mrs. Lettsome and her brother were frequent guests; and coach-loads of fine people came over from the court almost every day. Indeed, it was only Fareham's character-austere as Clarendon's or Southampton's-which kept the finest of all company at a distance. Lady Castlemaine had called at Chilton in her coach-and-four early in July; and her visit had not been returned-a slight which the proud beauty bitterly resented: and from that time she had lost no opportunity of depreciating Lady Fareham. Happily her jests, not over refined in quality, had not been repeated to Hyacinth's husband.

One January afternoon the longed-for opportunity came. The sisters were sitting alone in front of the vast mediaeval chimney, where the Abbots of old had burnt their surplus timber-Angela busy with her embroidery frame, working a satin coverlet for her niece's bed; Hyacinth yawning over a volume of Cyrus; in whose stately pages she loved to recognise the portraits of her dearest friends, and for which she was a living key. Angela was now familiar with the famous romance, which she had read with deepest interest, enlightened by her sister. As an eastern story-a record of battles and sieges evolved from a clever spinster's brain, an account of men and women who had never lived-the book might have seemed pa.s.sing dull; but the story of actual lives, of living, breathing beauty, and valour that still burnt in warrior b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the keen and clever a.n.a.lysis of men and women who were making history, could not fail to interest an intelligent girl, to whom all things in life were new.

Angela read of the siege of Dunkirk, where Fareham had fought; of the tempestuous weather; the camp in the midst of salt marshes and quicksands, and all the sufferings and perils of life in the trenches. He had been in more than one of those battles which mademoiselle's conscientious pen depicted with such graphic power, the Gazette at her elbow as she wrote. The names of battles, sieges, Generals, had been on his lips in his delirious ravings. He had talked of the taking of Charenton, the key to Paris, a stronghold dominating Seine and Marne; of Clanleu, the brave defender of the fortress; of Chatillon, who led the charge-both killed there-Chatillon, the friend of Conde, who wept bitterest tears for a loss that poisoned victory. Read by these lights, the "Grand Cyrus" was a book to be pored over, a book to bend over in the grey winter dusk, reading by the broad blaze of the logs that flamed and crackled on wrought-iron standards. Just as merrily the blaze had spread its ruddy light over the room when it was a monkish refectory, and when the droning of a youthful brother reading aloud to the fraternity as they ate their supper was the only sound, except the clattering of knives and grinding of jaws.

Now the room was her ladys.h.i.+p's drawing-room, bright with Gobelins tapestry, dazzling with Venetian mirrors, gaudy with gold and colour, the black oak floor enlivened by many-hued carpets from our new colony of Tangiers. Fareham told his wife that her Moorish carpets had cost the country fifty times the price she had paid for them, and were a.s.sociated with an irrevocable evil in the existence of a childless Queen; but that piece of malice, Hyacinth told him, had no foundation but his hatred of the Duke, who had always been perfectly civil to him.

"Of two profligate brothers I prefer the bolder sinner," said Fareham.

"Bigotry and debauchery are an ill mixture."

"I doubt if his Majesty frets for the want of an heir," remarked De Malfort. "He is not a family man."

"He is not a one family man, Count," answered Fareham.

Fareham and De Malfort were both away on this January evening. Papillon was taking a dancing lesson from a wizened old Frenchman, who brought himself and his fiddle from Oxford twice a week for the damsel's instruction. Mrs. Priscilla, nurse and gouvernante, attended these lessons, at which the Honourable Henrietta Maria Revel gave herself prodigious airs, and was indeed so rude to the poor old professor that her aunt had declined to a.s.sist at any more performances.

"Has his lords.h.i.+p gone to Oxford?" Angela asked, after a silence broken only by her sister's yawns.

"I doubt he is anywhere rather than in such good company," Hyacinth answered, carelessly. "He hates the King, and would like to preach at him, as John Knox did at his great-grandmother. Fareham is riding, or roving with his dogs, I dare say. He has a gloomy taste for solitude."

"Hyacinth, do you not see that he is unhappy?" Angela asked, suddenly, and the pain in her voice startled her sister from the contemplation of the sublime Mandane.

"Unhappy, child! What reason has he to be unhappy?"

"Ah, dearest, it is that I would have you discover. 'Tis a wife's business to know what grieves her husband."

"Unless it be Mrs. Lewin's bill-who is an inexorable harpy-I know of no act of mine that can afflict him."

"I did not mean that his gloom was caused by any act of yours, sister. I only urge you to discover why he is so sad."

"Sad? Sullen, you mean. He has a fine, generous nature. I am sure it is not Lewin's charges that trouble him. But he had always a sullen temper-by fits and starts."

"But of late he has been always silent and gloomy."

"How the child watches him! Ma tres chere, that silence is natural. There are but two things Fareham loves-the first, war; the second, sport. If he cannot be storming a town, he loves to be killing a fox. This fireside life of ours-our books and music, our idle talk of plays and dances-wearies him. You may see how he avoids us-except out-of-doors."

"Dear Hyacinth, forgive me!" Angela began, falteringly, leaving her embroidery frame and moving to the other side of the hearth, where she dropped on her knees by her ladys.h.i.+p's chair, and was almost swallowed up in the ample folds of her brocade train. "Is it not possible that Lord Fareham is pained to see you so much gayer and more familiar with Monsieur de Malfort than you ever are with him?"

"Gayer! more familiar!" cried Hyacinth. "Can you conceive any creature gay and familiar with Fareham? One could as soon be gay with Don Quixote; indeed, there is much in common between the knight of the rueful countenance and my husband. Gay and familiar! And pray, mistress, why should I not take life pleasantly with a man who understands me, and in whose friends.h.i.+p I have grown up almost as if we were brother and sister? Do you forget that I have known Henri ever since I was ten years old-that we played battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k together in our dear garden in the Rue de Touraine, next the bowling-green, when he was at school with the Jesuit Fathers, and used to spend all his holiday afternoons with the Marquise? I think I only learnt to know the saints' days because they brought me my playfellow. And when I was old enough to attend the Court-and, indeed, I was but a child when I first appeared there-it was Henri who sang my praises, and brought a crowd of admirers about me. Ah, what a life it was! Love in the city, and war at the gates: plots, battles, barricades! How happy we all were! except when there came the news of some great man killed, and walls were hung with black, where there had been a thousand wax candles and a crowd of dancers. Chatillon, Chabot, Laval! Helas, those were sad losses!"

"Dear sister, I can understand your affection for an old friend, but I would not have you place him above your husband; least of all would I have his lords.h.i.+p suspect that you preferred the friend to the husband--"

"Suspect! Fareham! Are you afraid I shall make Fareham jealous, because I sing duets and cudgel these poor brains to make bouts rimes with De Malfort? Ah, child, how little those watchful eyes of yours have discovered the man's character! Fareham jealous! Why, at St. Germain he has seen me surrounded by adorers; the subject of more madrigals than would fill a big book. At the Louvre he has seen me the-what is that Mr. What's-his-name, your friend's old school-master, the Republican poet, calls it-'the cynosure of neighbouring eyes.' Don't think me vain, ma mie. I am an old woman now, and I hate my looking-gla.s.s ever since it has shown me my first wrinkle; but in those days I had almost as many admirers as Madame Henriette, or the Princess Palatine, or the fair-haired d.u.c.h.ess. I was called la belle Anglaise."

It was difficult to sound a warning-note in ears so obstinately deaf to all serious things. Papillon came bounding in after her dancing-lesson-exuberant, loquacious.

"The little beast has taught me a new step in the coranto. See, mother," and the slim small figure was drawn up to its fullest, and the thin little lithe arms were curved with a studied grace, as Papillon slid and tripped across the room, her dainty little features illumined by a smirk of ineffable conceit.

"Henriette, you are an ill-bred child to call your master so rude a name," remonstrated her mother, languidly.

"'Tis the name you called him last week when his dirty shoes left marks on the stairs. He changes his shoes in my presence," added Papillon, disgustedly. "I saw a hole in his stocking. Monsieur de Malfort calls him Cut-Caper."

CHAPTER XII.

LADY FAREHAM'S DAY.

A month later the Oxford Gazette brought Lady Fareham the welcomest news that she had read for ever so long. The London death-rate had decreased, and his Majesty had gone to Hampton Court, attended by the Duke and Prince Rupert, Lord Clarendon, and his other indispensable advisers, and a retinue of servants, to be within easy distance of that st.u.r.dy soldier Albemarle, who had remained in London, unafraid of the pestilence; and who declared that while it was essential for him to be in frequent communication with his Majesty, it would be perilous to the interests of the State for him to absent himself from London; for the Dutch war had gone drivelling on ever since the victory in June, and that victory was not to be supposed final. Indeed, according to the General, there was need of speedy action and a considerable increase of our naval strength.

Windsor had been thought of in the first place as a residence for the King; but the law courts had been transferred there, and the judges and their following had overrun the town, while there was a report of an infected house there. So it had been resolved that his Majesty should make a brief residence at Hampton Court, leaving the Queen, the d.u.c.h.ess, and their belongings at Oxford, whither he could return as soon as the business of providing for the setting out of the fleet had been arranged between him and the General, who could travel in a day backwards and forwards between the c.o.c.kpit and Wolsey's palace.

When this news came they were snowed up at Chilton. Sport of all kinds had been stopped, and Fareham, who, in his wife's parlance, lived in his boots all the winter, had to amuse himself without the aid of horse and hound; while even walking was made difficult by the snowdrifts that blocked the lanes, and reduced the face of Nature to one m.u.f.fled and monotonous whiteness, while all the edges of the landscape were outlined vaguely against the misty greyness of the sky.

Hyacinth spent her days half in yawning and sighing, and half in idle laughter and childish games with Henriette and De Malfort. When she was gay she was as much a child as her daughter; when she was fretful and hipped, it was a childish discontent.

They played battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k in the picture-gallery, and my lady laughed when her volant struck some reverend judge or venerable bishop a rap on the nose. They sat for hours tw.a.n.ging guitars, Hyacinth taking her music-lesson from De Malfort, whose exquisite taste and touch made a guitar seem a different instrument from that on which his pupil's delicate fingers nipped a wiry melody, more suggestive of finger-nails than music.

He taught her, and took all possible pains in the teaching, and laughed at her, and told her plainly that she had no talent for music. He told her that in her hands the finest lute Laux Maler ever made, mellowed by three centuries, would be but wood and catgut.

"It is the prettiest head in the world, and a forehead as white as Queen Anne's," he said one day, with a light touch on the ringletted brow, "but there is nothing inside. I wonder if there is anything here?" and the same light touch fluttered for an instant against her brocade bodice, at the spot where fancy locates the faculty of loving and suffering.

She laughed at his rude speeches, just as she laughed at his flatteries-as if there were safety in that atmosphere of idle mirth. Angela heard and wondered, wondering most perhaps what occupied and interested Lord Fareham in those white winter days, when he lived for the greater part alone in his own rooms, or pacing the long walks from which the gardeners had cleared the snow. He spent some of his time indoors, deep in a book. She knew as much as that. He had allowed Angela to read some of his favourites, though he would not permit any of the new comedies, which everybody at Court was reading, to enter his house, much to Lady Fareham's annoyance.

"I am half a century behind all my friends in intelligence," she said, "because of your Puritanism. One tires of your everlasting gloomy tragedies-your Broken Hearts and Philasters. I am all for the genius of comedy."

"Then satisfy your inclinations, and read Moliere. He is second only to Shakespeare."

"I have him by heart already."

The Broken Heart and Philaster delighted Angela; indeed, she had read the latter play so often, and with such deep interest, that many pa.s.sages in it had engraved themselves on her memory, and recurred to her sometimes in the silence of wakeful nights.

That character of Bellario touched her as no heroine of the "Grand Cyrus" had power to move her. How elaborately artificial seemed the Scudery's polished tirades, her refinements and quintessences of the grand pa.s.sion, as compared with the fervid simplicity of the woman-page-a love so humble, so intense, so unselfis.h.!.+

Sir Denzil came to Chilton nearly every day, and was always graciously received by her ladys.h.i.+p. His Puritan gravity fell away from him like a pilgrim's cloak, in the light air of Hyacinth's amus.e.m.e.nts. He seemed to grow younger; and Henriette's sharp eyes discovered an improvement in his dress.

"This is your second new suit since Christmas," she said, "and I'll swear it is made by the King's tailor. Regardez done, madame! What exquisite embroidery, silver and gold thread intermixed with little sparks of garnets sewn in the pattern! It is better than anything of his lords.h.i.+p's. I wish I had a father who dressed well. I'm sure mine must be the shabbiest lord at Whitehall. You have no right to be more modish than monsieur mon pere, Sir Denzil."

"Hold that insolent tongue, p't.i.t drole!" cried the mother. "Sir Denzil is younger by a dozen years than his lords.h.i.+p, and has his reputation to make at Court, and with the ladies he will meet there. I hope you are coming to London, Denzil. You shall have a seat in one of our coaches as soon as the death-rate diminishes, and this odious weather breaks up."