London Pride, Or, When the World Was Younger

  CHAPTER XI.

  LIGHTER THAN VANITY.

  "I think father must be a witch," Henriette said at dinner next day, "orwhy did he tell me of the Italian lady who was shut in the dower-chest,just before Angela and I were lost in"--she checked herself at a look fromhis lordship--"in the chimney?"

  "It wants no witch to tell that little girls are foolish and mischievous,"answered Fareham.

  "You ladies must have been vastly black when you came out of yourhiding-place," said De Malfort. "I should have been sorry to see so muchbeauty disguised in soot. Perhaps Mrs. Kirkland means to appear in thecharacter of a chimney at our next Court masquerade. She would cause asgreat a stir as Lady Muskerry, in all her Babylonian splendour; but forother reasons. Nothing could mitigate the Muskerry's ugliness; and nodisguise could hide Mrs. Angela's beauty."

  "What would the costume be?" asked Papillon.

  "Oh, something simple. A long black satin gown, and a brick-dust velvethat, tall and curiously twisted, like your Tudor chimney; and a cluster ofgrey feathers on the top, to represent smoke."

  "Monsieur le Comte makes a joke of everything. But what would father havesaid if we had never been found?"

  "I should have said that they are right who swear there is a curse upon allproperty taken from the Church, and that the ban fell black and bitter uponChilton Abbey," answered his lordship's grave deep voice from the end ofthe table, where he sat somewhat apart from the rest, gloomy and silent,save when directly addressed.

  Her ladyship and De Malfort had always plenty to talk about. They had thepast as well as the present for their discourse, and were always sighingfor the vanished glories of their youth--at Paris, at Fontainebleau, at St.Germain. Nor were they restricted to the realities of the present and thememories of the past; they had that wider world of unreality in which tocirculate; they had the Scudery language at the tips of their tongues,the fantastic sentimentalism of that marvellous old maid who invented theseventeenth-century hero and heroine; or who crystallised the vanishingfigures of that brilliant age and made them immortal. All that littlelanguage of toyshop platonics had become a natural form of speech withthese two, bred and educated in the Marais, while it was still the selectand aristocratic quarter of Paris.

  To-day Hyacinth and her old playfellow had been chattering like children,or birds in an aviary, and with little more sense in their conversation;but at this talk of the Church's ban, Hyacinth stopped in her prattle andwas almost serious.

  "I sometimes think we shall have bad luck in this house," she said, "orthat we shall see the ghosts of the wicked monks who were turned out tomake room for Fareham's great-grandfather."

  "Tush, child! what do you know of their wickedness, after a century?"

  "They were very wicked, I believe, for it was one of those quiet littlemonasteries where the monks could do all manner of evil things, and raisethe devil, if they liked, without anybody knowing. And when Henry theEighth sent his Commissioners, they were taken by surprise; and the altarat which they worshipped Beelzebub was found in a side chapel, and awax figure of the King stuck with arrows, like St. Sebastian. The Abbotpretended it _was_ St. Sebastian; but nobody believed him."

  "Nobody wanted to believe him," said Fareham. "King Henry made an exampleof Chilton Abbey, and gave it to my worthy ancestor, who was a fourthcousin of Jane Seymour's, and had turned Protestant to please his royalmaster. He went back to the Church of Rome on his death-bed, and we Revelshave been Papists ever since. I wish the Church joy of us!"

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

  "I would rather keep my sins to myself, and atone for them by the pangs ofa wounded conscience. That is too easy a religion which shifts the burdenof guilt on to the shoulders of a stipendiary priest, and walks away fromthe 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 mongrelin politics."

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

  The sympathy, the companionship that should be in marriage was wantinghere. Angela saw and deplored this distance, scarce daring to touch sodelicate a theme, fearful lest she, the younger, should seem to sermonisethe elder; and yet she could not be silent for ever while duty and religionurged her to speak.

  At Chilton Abbey the sisters were rarely alone. Papillon was almost alwayswith them; and De Malfort spent more of his life in attendance upon LadyFareham than at Oxford, where he was supposed to be living. Mrs. Lettsomeand her brother were frequent guests; and coach-loads of fine peoplecame over from the court almost every day. Indeed, it was only Fareham'scharacter--austere as Clarendon's or Southampton's--which kept the finestof all company at a distance. Lady Castlemaine had called at Chilton in hercoach-and-four early in July; and her visit had not been returned--a slightwhich the proud beauty bitterly resented: and from that time she had lostno opportunity of depreciating Lady Fareham. Happily her jests, not overrefined in quality, had not been repeated to Hyacinth's husband.

  One January afternoon the longed-for opportunity came. The sisters weresitting alone in front of the vast mediaeval chimney, where the Abbots ofold had burnt their surplus timber--Angela busy with her embroidery frame,working a satin coverlet for her niece's bed; Hyacinth yawning overa volume of Cyrus; in whose stately pages she loved to recognise theportraits of her dearest friends, and for which she was a living key.Angela was now familiar with the famous romance, which she had read withdeepest interest, enlightened by her sister. As an eastern story--a recordof battles and sieges evolved from a clever spinster's brain, an account ofmen and women who had never lived--the book might have seemed passing dull;but the story of actual lives, of living, breathing beauty, and valour thatstill burnt in warrior breasts, the keen and clever analysis of men andwomen who were making history, could not fail to interest an intelligentgirl, to whom all things in life were new.

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

  Now the room was her ladyship's drawing-room, bright with Gobelinstapestry, dazzling with Venetian mirrors, gaudy with gold and colour, thebl
ack oak floor enlivened by many-hued carpets from our new colony ofTangiers. Fareham told his wife that her Moorish carpets had cost thecountry fifty times the price she had paid for them, and were associatedwith an irrevocable evil in the existence of a childless Queen; but thatpiece of malice, Hyacinth told him, had no foundation but his hatred of theDuke, 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 DeMalfort. "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 wastaking a dancing lesson from a wizened old Frenchman, who brought himselfand his fiddle from Oxford twice a week for the damsel's instruction. Mrs.Priscilla, nurse and _gouvernante_, attended these lessons, at which theHonourable Henrietta Maria Revel gave herself prodigious airs, and wasindeed so rude to the poor old professor that her aunt had declined toassist at any more performances.

  "Has his lordship gone to Oxford?" Angela asked, after a silence brokenonly by her sister's yawns.

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

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

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

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

  "Unless it be Mrs. Lewin's bill--who is an inexorable harpy--I know of noact of mine that can afflict him."

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

  "Sad? Sullen, you mean. He has a fine, generous nature. I am sure it is notLewin's charges that trouble him. But he had always a sullen temper--byfits and starts."

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

  "How the child watches him! Ma tres chere, that silence is natural. Thereare but two things Fareham loves--the first, war; the second, sport. If hecannot be storming a town, he loves to be killing a fox. This fireside lifeof ours--our books and music, our idle talk of plays and dances--wearieshim. You may see how he avoids us--except out-of-doors."

  "Dear Hyacinth, forgive me!" Angela began, falteringly, leaving herembroidery frame and moving to the other side of the hearth, where shedropped on her knees by her ladyship's chair, and was almost swallowed upin the ample folds of her brocade train. "Is it not possible that LordFareham is pained to see you so much gayer and more familiar with Monsieurde Malfort than you ever are with him?"

  "Gayer! more familiar!" cried Hyacinth. "Can you conceive any creaturegay and familiar with Fareham? One could as soon be gay with Don Quixote;indeed, there is much in common between the knight of the ruefulcountenance and my husband. Gay and familiar! And pray, mistress, whyshould I not take life pleasantly with a man who understands me, and inwhose friendship 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--thatwe played battledore and shuttlecock together in our dear garden in the Ruede Touraine, next the bowling-green, when he was at school with the JesuitFathers, 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 myplayfellow. 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 mypraises, 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! Howhappy we all were! except when there came the news of some great mankilled, and walls were hung with black, where there had been a thousand waxcandles and a crowd of dancers. Chatillon, Chabot, Laval! _Helas_, thosewere sad losses!"

  "Dear sister, I can understand your affection for an old friend, but Iwould not have you place him above your husband; least of all would I havehis lordship suspect that you preferred the friend to the husband----"

  "Suspect! Fareham! Are you afraid I shall make Fareham jealous, becauseI sing duets and cudgel these poor brains to make _bouts rimes_ with DeMalfort? Ah, child, how little those watchful eyes of yours have discoveredthe man's character! Fareham jealous! Why, at St. Germain he has seen mesurrounded by adorers; the subject of more madrigals than would fill a bigbook. 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--'thecynosure of neighbouring eyes.' Don't think me vain, ma mie. I am an oldwoman now, and I hate my looking-glass ever since it has shown me myfirst wrinkle; but in those days I had almost as many admirers as MadameHenriette, or the Princess Palatine, or the fair-haired Duchess. I wascalled la belle Anglaise."

  It was difficult to sound a warning-note in ears so obstinately deaf toall serious things. Papillon came bounding in after herdancing-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 littlelithe arms were curved with a studied grace, as Papillon slid and trippedacross the room, her dainty little features illumined by a smirk ofineffable 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 markson the stairs. He changes his shoes in my presence," added Papillon,disgustedly. "I saw a hole in his stocking. Monsieur de Malfort calls himCut-Caper."