London Pride Or When the World Was Younger Part 30

It was the sound of fiddles playing the symphony of a song she knew well-one of De Malfort's, a French chanson, her latest favourite, the words adapted from a little poem by Voiture, "Pour vos beaux yeux."

She opened the cas.e.m.e.nt, and Angela stood beside her looking down at a boat in which several m.u.f.fled figures were seated, and which was moored to the terrace wall.

There were three violins and a 'cello, and a quartette of singing-boys with fair young faces smiling in the light of the lamps that hung in front of Fareham's house.

The evening was still, and mild as early autumn, and the plash of oars pa.s.sing up and down the river sounded like a part of the music-

"Love in her sunny eyes doth basking play, Love walks the pleasant mazes of her hair, Love does on both her lips for ever stray, And sows and reaps a thousand kisses there; In all her outward parts love's always seen; But, oh, he never went within."

It was a song of Cowley's, which De Malfort had lately set to music, and to a melody which Hyacinth especially admired.

"A serenade! Only De Malfort could have thought of such a thing. Lying ill and alone, he sends me the sweetest token of his regard-my favourite air, his own setting-the last song I ever heard him sing. And you wonder that I value so pure, so disinterested a love!" protested Hyacinth to her sister, in the silence at the end of the song.

"Sing again, sweet boys, sing again!" she cried, s.n.a.t.c.hing a purse from her pocket, and flinging it with impetuous aim into the boat.

It hit one of the fiddlers on the head, and there was a laugh, and in a trice the largesse was divided and pocketed.

"They are from his Majesty's choir; I know their voices," said Hyacinth, "so fresh, and pure. They are the prettiest singers in the chapel. That little monkey with the cherub's voice is Purcell-Dr. Blow's favourite pupil-and a rare genius."

They sang another song from De Malfort's repertoire, an Italian serenade, which Hyacinth had heard in the brilliant days before her marriage, when the Italian Opera was still a new thing in Paris. The melody brought back the memory of her happy girlhood with a rush of sudden tears.

The little concert lasted for something less than an hour, with intervals of light music, dances and marches, between the singing. Boats pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed. Strange voices joined in a refrain now and then, and the sisters stood at the open window enthralled by the charm of the music and the scene. London lay in ruins yonder to the east, and Sir Matthew Hale and other judges were sitting at Clifford's Inn to decide questions of t.i.tle and boundary, and the obligation to rebuild; but here in this western London there were long ranges of lighted windows s.h.i.+ning through the wintry mists, wherries pa.s.sing up and down with lanterns at their prows, an air of life and gaiety hanging over that river which had carried so many a n.o.ble victim to his doom yonder, where the four towers stood black against the starlit greyness, unscathed by fire, and untouched by time.

The last notes of a good-night song dwindled and died, to the accompaniment of dipping oars, as the boat moved slowly along the tideway, and lost itself among other boats-jovial cits going eastward, from an afternoon at the King's theatre, modish gallants voyaging westward from play-house or tavern, some going home to domesticity, others intent upon pleasure and intrigue, as the darkness came down, and the hour for supper and deeper drinking drew near. And who would have thought, watching the lighted windows of palace and tavern, hearing those joyous sounds of glee or catch trolled by voices that reeked of wine-who would have thought of the dead-cart, and the unnumbered dead lying in the pest pits yonder, or the city in ruins, or the King enslaved to a foreign power, and pledged to a hated Church? London, gay, splendid, and prosperous, the queen-city of the world as she seemed to those who loved her-could rise glorious from the ashes of a fire unparalleled in modern history, and to Charles and Wren it might be given to realise a boast which in Augustus had been little more than an imperial phrase.

CHAPTER XIX.

DIDO.

The armed neutrality between man and wife continued, and the domestic sky at Fareham House was dark and depressing. Lady Fareham, who had hitherto been remarkable for a girlish amiability of speech which went well with her girlish beauty, became now the height of the mode for acidity and slander. The worst of the evil speakers on her ladys.h.i.+p's visiting-day flavoured the China tea with no bitterer allusions than those that fell from the rosy lips of the hostess. And, for the colouring of those lips, which once owed their vermeil tint only to nature, Lady Fareham was now dependent upon Mrs. Lewin, as well as for the carnation of cheeks that looked pallid and sunken in the gla.s.s which reflected the sad mourning face.

Mrs. Lewin brought roses and lilies in her queer little china pots and powder boxes, pencils and brushes, perfumes and washes without number. It cost as much to keep a complexion as to keep a horse. And Mrs. Lewin was infinitely useful at this juncture, since she called every day at St. James's Street, to carry a lace cravat, or a ribbon, or a flask of essence to the invalid languis.h.i.+ng in lodgings there, and visited by all the town, except Fareham and his wife. De Malfort had lain for a fortnight at Lady Castlemaine's house, alternately petted and neglected by his fair hostess, as the fit took her, since she showed herself ever of the chameleon breed, and hovered betwixt angel and devil. His surgeon told him in confidence that when once his wound was healed enough to allow his removal, the sooner he quitted that feverish company the better it would be for his chance of a speedy convalescence. So, at the end of the second week, he was moved in a covered litter to his own lodgings, where his faithful valet, who had followed his fortunes since he came to man's estate, was quite capable of nursing him.

The town soon discovered the breach between Lord Fareham and his friend-a breach commented upon with many shoulder-shrugs, and not a few coa.r.s.e innuendoes. Lady Lucretia Topham insisted upon making her way to the sick man's room, in the teeth of messages delivered by his valet, which, even to a less intelligent mind than Lady Lucretia's, might have conveyed the fact that she was not wanted. She flung herself on her knees by De Malfort's bed, and wept and raved at the brutality which had deprived the world of his charming company-and herself of the only man she had ever loved. De Malfort, fevered and vexed at her intrusion, and at this renewal of fires long burnt out, had yet discretion enough to threaten her with his dire displeasure if she betrayed the secret of his illness.

"I have sworn Dangerfield and Masaroon to silence," he said. "Except servants, who have been paid to keep mute, you are the only other witness of our quarrel; and if the story becomes town talk, I shall know whose busy tongue set it going-and then-well, there are things I might tell that your ladys.h.i.+p would hardly like the world to know."

"Traitor! If your purse has accommodated me once in a way when luck has been adverse--"

"Oh, madam, you cannot think me base enough to blab of a money transaction with a lady. There are secrets more tender-more romantic."

"Those secrets can be easily denied, wretch. However, I know you would not injure me with a husband so odious and tyrannical that I stood excused in advance for inconstancy when I stooped to wed country manners and stubborn ignorance. Indeed, mon ami, if you will but take pains to recover, I will never breathe a word about the duel; but if-if-" a sob indicated the tragic possibility which Lady Lucretia dared not put into words-"I will do all that a weak woman can do to get Fareham hanged for murder. There has never been a peer hanged in England, I believe. He should be the first."

"Dear soul, there need be no hanging! I have been on the mending hand for a week, or my doctors would not have let you upstairs. There, go, my pretty Lucrece; but if your milliner or your shoemaker is pressing, there are a few jacobuses in the right-hand drawer of yonder escritoire, and you may as well take them as leave them for my valet to steal. He is one of those excellent old servants who make no distinctions, and he robs me as freely as he robbed my father before me."

"Mrs. Lewin is always pressing," sighed Lady Lucretia. "She made me a gown like that of Lady Fareham's, for which you were all eyes. I ordered the brocade to please you; and now I am wearing it when you are not at Whitehall. Well, as you are so kind, I will be your debtor for another trifling loan. It is wicked to leave money where it tempts a good servant to dishonesty. Ah, Henri"-she was pocketing the gold as she talked-"if ten years of my life could save you ten days of pain and fever, how gladly would I give them to you!"

"Ah, douce, if there were a market for the exchange of such commodities, what a roaring trade would be done there! I never loved a woman yet but she offered me her life, or an instalment of it."

"I have emptied your drawer," laughing coyly. "There is just enough to keep Lewin in good humour till you are well again, and we can be partners at ba.s.set."

"It will be very long before I play ba.s.set in London."

"Oh, but indeed you will soon be well."

"Well enough to change the scene, I hope. It needs change of places and persons to make life bearable. I long to be at the Louvre again, to see a play by Moliere's company, as only they can act, instead of the loathsome translations we get here, in which all that there is of wit and charm in the original is trans.m.u.ted to coa.r.s.eness and vulgarity. When I leave this bed, Lucrece, it will be for Paris."

"Why, it will be ages before you are strong enough for such a journey."

"Oh, I will risk that. I hate London so badly, that to escape from it will work a miraculous cure for me."

An armed neutrality! Even the children felt the change in the atmosphere of home, and nestled closer to their aunt, who never changed to them.

"Father mostly looks angry," Henriette complained, "and mother is always unhappy, if she is not laughing and talking in the midst of company; and neither of them ever seems to want me. I wish I was grown up, so that I could be maid of honour to the Queen or the d.u.c.h.ess, and live at Whitehall. Mademoiselle told me that there is always life and pleasure at Court."

"Your father does not love the Court, dearest, and mademoiselle should be wiser than to talk to you of such things, when she is here to teach you dancing and French literature."

"Mademoiselle" was a governess lately imported from Paris, recommended by Mademoiselle Scudery, and full of high-flown ideas expressed in high-flown language. All Paris had laughed at Moliere's Precieuses Ridicules; but the Precieuses themselves, and their friends, protested that the popular farce was aimed only at the low-born imitators of those great ladies who had originated the school of superfine culture and romantic aspirations.

"Sapho" herself, in tracing her own portrait with a careful and elaborate pencil, told the world how shamefully she had been imitated by the spurious middle-cla.s.s Saphos, who set up their salons, and vied with the sacred house of Rambouillet, and the privileged coterie of the Rue de Temple.

Lady Fareham had not ceased to believe in her dear, plain, witty Scudery, and was delighted to secure a governess of her choosing, whereby Papillon, who loved freedom and idleness, and hated lessons of all kinds, was set down to write themes upon chivalry, politeness, benevolence, pride, war, and other abstractions; or to fill in bouts-rimes, by way of enlarging her acquaintance with the French language, which she had chattered freely all her life. Mademoiselle insisted upon all the niceties of phraseology as discussed in the Rue Saint Thomas du Louvre.

There had been a change of late in Fareham's manner to his sister-in-law, a change refres.h.i.+ng to her troubled spirit as mercy, that gentle dew from heaven, to the criminal. He had been kinder; and though he spent very few of his hours with the women of his household, he had talked to Angela somewhat in the friendly tone of those fondly remembered days at Chilton, when he had taught her to row and ride, to manage a spirited palfrey and fly a falcon, and had been in all things her mentor and friend. He seemed less oppressed with gloom as time went on, but had his sullen fits still, and, after being kind and courteous to wife and sister, and playful with his children, would leave them suddenly, and return no more to the saloon or drawing-room that evening. Yet on the whole the sky was lightening. He ignored Hyacinth's resentment, endured her pettishness, and was studiously polite to her.

It was on Lady Fareham's visiting-day, deep in that very severe winter, that some news was told her which came like a thunder-clap, and which it needed all the weak soul's power of self-repression to suffer without swooning or hysterics.

Lady Sarah Tewkesbury, gorgeous in velvet and fur, her thickly painted countenance framed in a furred hood, entered fussily upon a little coterie in which Masaroon, vapouring about the last performance at the King's theatre, was the princ.i.p.al figure.

"There was a little woman spoke the epilogue," he said, "a little creature in a monstrous big hat, as large and as round as a cart-wheel, which vastly amused his Majesty."

"The hat?"

"Nay, it was woman and hat. The thing is so small it might have been scarce noticed without the hat, but it has a pretty little, insignificant, crumpled face, and laughs all over its face till it has no eyes, and then stops laughing suddenly, and the eyes s.h.i.+ne out, twinkling and dancing like stars reflected in running water, and it stamps its little foot upon the stage in a comic pa.s.sion-and-nous verrons. It sold oranges in the pit, folks tell me, a year ago. It may be selling sinecures and captaincies in a year or two, and putting another s.h.i.+lling in the pound upon land."

"Is it that brazen little comedy actress you are talking of, Masaroon?" Lady Sarah asked, when she had exchanged curtsies with the ladies of the company, and established herself on the most comfortable tabouret, near Lady Fareham's tea-table; "Mrs. Glyn-Wynn-Gwyn? I wonder a man of wit can notice such a vulgar creature, a she-jack-pudden, fit only to please the rabble in the gallery."

"Ay, but there is a finer sort of rabble-a rabble of quality-beginning with his Majesty, that are always pleased with anything new. And this little creature is as fresh as a spring morning. To see her laugh, to hear the ring of it, clear and sweet as a skylark's song! On my life, madam, the town has a new toy; and Mrs. Gwyn will be the rage in high quarters. You should have seen Castlemaine's scowl when Rowley laughed, and ducked under the box almost, in an ecstasy of amus.e.m.e.nt at the huge hat."

"Lady Castlemaine's brow would thunder-cloud if his Majesty looked at a fly on a window-pane. But she has something else to provoke her frowns to-day."

"What is that, chere dame?" asked Hyacinth, s.n.a.t.c.hing a favourite fan from Sir Ralph, who was teasing one of the Blenheims with African feathers that were almost priceless.