London Pride Or When the World Was Younger Part 10

That open-air life was a revelation to the cloister-bred girl. Could this earth hold greater bliss than to roam at large over s.p.a.cious gardens, to cross the river, sculling her boat with strong hands, with her niece Henriette, otherwise Papillon, sitting in the stern to steer, and scream instructions to the novice in navigation; and then to lose themselves in the woods on the further sh.o.r.e, to wander in a labyrinth of reddening beeches, and oaks on which the thick foliage still kept its dusky green; to emerge upon open lawns where the pale gold birches looked like fairy trees, and where amber and crimson toadstools shone like jewels on the skirts of the dense undergrowth of holly and hawthorn? The liberty of it all, the delicious feeling of freedom, the release from convent rules and convent hours, bells ringing for chapel, bells ringing for meals, bells ringing to mark the end of the brief recreation-a perpetual ringing and drilling which had made conventual life a dull machine, working always in the same grooves.

Oh, this liberty, this variety, this beauty in all things around and about her! How the young glad soul, newly escaped from prison, revelled and expatiated in its freedom! Papillon, who at ten years old, had skimmed the cream off all the simple pleasures, appointed herself her aunt's instructress in most things, and taught her to row, with some help from Lord Fareham, who was an expert waterman; and, at the same time, tried to teach her to despise the country, and all rustic pleasures, except hunting-although in her inmost heart the minx preferred the liberty of Oxfords.h.i.+re woods to the splendour of Fareham House, where she was cooped in a nursery with her gouvernante for the greater part of her time, and was only exhibited like a doll to her mother's fine company, or seated upon a cus.h.i.+on to tinkle a saraband and display her precocious talent on the guitar, which she played almost as badly as Lady Fareham herself, at whose feeble endeavours even the courteous De Malfort laughed.

Never was sister kinder than Hyacinth, impelled by that impulsive sweetness which was her chief characteristic, and also, it might be, moved to lavish generosity by some scruples of conscience with regard to her grandmother's will. Her first business was to send for the best milliner in Oxford, a London Madam who had followed her court customers to the university town, and to order everything that was beautiful and seemly for a young person of quality.

"I implore you not to make me too fine, dearest," pleaded Angela, who was more horrified at the milliner's painted face and exuberant figure than charmed by the contents of the baskets which she had brought with her in the s.p.a.cious leather coach-velvets and brocades, hoods and gloves, silk stockings, fans, perfumes and pulvilios, sweet-bags and scented boxes-all of which the woman spread out upon Lady Fareham's embroidered satin bed, for the young lady's admiration. "I pray you remember that I am accustomed to have only two gowns-a black and a grey. You will make me afraid of my image in the gla.s.s if you dress me like-like-"

She glanced from her sister's decollete bodice to the far more appalling charms of the milliner, which a gauze kerchief rather emphasised than concealed, and could find no proper conclusion for her sentence.

"Nay, sweetheart, let not thy modesty take fright. Thou shalt be clad as demurely as the nun thou hast escaped being-

'And sable stole of Cyprus lawn Over thy decent shoulders drawn.'

We will have no blacks, but as much decency as you choose. You will mark the distinction between my sister and your maids of honour, Mrs. Lewin. She is but a debutante in our modish world, and must be dressed as modestly as you can contrive, to be consistent with the fas.h.i.+on."

"Oh, my lady, I catch your ladys.h.i.+p's meaning, and your ladys.h.i.+p's instructions shall be carried out as far as can be without making a savage of the young lady. I know what some young ladies are when they first come to Court. I had fuss enough with Miss Hamilton before I could persuade her to have her bodice cut like a Christian. And even the beautiful Miss Brooks were all for high tuckers and modesty-pieces when I began to make for them; but they soon came round. And now with my Lady Denham it is always, 'Gud, Lewin, do you call that the right cut for a bosom? Udsbud, woman, you haven't made the curve half deep enough.' And with my Lady Chesterfield it is, 'Sure, if they say my legs are thick and ugly, I'll let them know my shoulders are worth looking at. Give me your scissors, creature,' and then with her own delicate hand she will scoop me a good inch off the satin, till I am fit to swoon at seeing the cold steel against her milk-white flesh."

Mrs. Lewin talked with but little interruption for the best part of an hour while measuring her new customer, showing her pattern-book, and exhibiting the ready-made wares she had brought, the greater number of which Hyacinth insisted on buying for Angela-who was horrified at the slanderous innuendoes that dropped in casual abundance from the painted lips of the milliner; horrified, too, that her sister could loll back in her armchair and laugh at the woman's coa.r.s.e and malignant talk.

"Indeed, sister, you are far too generous, and you have overpowered me with gifts," she said, when the milliner had curtsied herself out of the room; "for I fear my own income will never pay for all these costly things. Three pounds, I think she said, was the price of the Mazarine hood alone-and there are stockings and gloves innumerable."

"Mon Ange, while you are with me your own income is but for charities and vails. I will have it spent for nothing else. You know how rich the Marquise has made me-while I believe Fareham is a kind of modern Croesus, though we do not boast of his wealth, for all that is most substantial in his fortune comes from his mother, whose father was a great merchant trading with Spain and the Indies, all through James's reign, and luckier in the hunt for gold than poor Raleigh. Never must you talk to me of obligation. Are we not sisters, and was it not a mere accident that made me the elder, and Madame de Montrond's protegee?"

"I have no words to thank you for so much kindness. I will only say I am so happy here that I could never have believed there was such full content on this sinful earth."

"Wait till we are in London, Angelique. Here we endure existence. It is only in London that we live."

"Nay, I believe the country will always please me better than the town. But, sister, do you not hate that Mrs. Lewin-that horrid painted face and evil tongue?"

"My dearest child, one hates a milliner for the spoiling of a bodice or the ill cut of a sleeve-not for her character. I believe Mrs. Lewin's is among the worst, and that she has had as many intrigues as Lady Castlemaine. As for her painting, doubtless she does that to remind her customers that she sells alabaster powder and ceruse."

"Nay, if she wants to disgust them with painted faces she has but to show her own."

"I grant she lays the stuff on badly. I hope, if I live to have as many wrinkles, I shall fill them better than she does. Yet who can tell what a hideous toad she might be in her natural skin? It may be Christian charity that induces her to paint, and so to spare us the sight of a monster. She will make thee a beauty, Ange, be sure of that. For satin or velvet, birthday or gala gowns, n.o.body can beat her. The wretch has had thousands of my money, so I ought to know. But for thy riding-habit and hawking-jacket we want the firmer grip of a man's hand. Those must be made by Roget."

"A Frenchman?"

"Yes, child. One only accepts British workmans.h.i.+p when a Parisian artist is not to be had. Clever as Lewin is, if I want to eclipse my dearest enemy on any special occasion I send Manningtree across the Channel, or ask De Malfort to let his valet-who spends his life in transit like a king's messenger-bring me the latest confection from the Rue de Richelieu."

"What infinite trouble about a gown-and for you who would look lovely in anything!"

"Tush, child! You have never seen me in 'anything.' If ever you should surprise me in an ill gown you will see how much the feathers make the bird. Poets and play-wrights may pretend to believe that we need no embellishment from art; but the very men who write all that romantic nonsense are the first to court a well-dressed woman. And there are few of them who could calculate with any exactness the relation of beauty to its surroundings. That is why women go deep into debt to their milliners, and would sooner be dead in well-made graveclothes than alive in an old-fas.h.i.+oned mantua."

Angela could not be in her sister's company for a month without discovering that Lady Fareham's whole life was given up to the wors.h.i.+p of the trivial. She was kind, she was amiable, generous, even to recklessness. She was not irreligious, heard Ma.s.s and went to confession as often as the hard conditions of an alien and jealously treated Church would allow, had never disputed the truth of any tenet that was taught her-but of serious views, of an earnest consideration of life and death, husband and children, Hyacinth Fareham was as incapable as her ten-year-old daughter. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to Angela that the child had broader and deeper thoughts than the mother, and saw her surroundings with a shrewder and clearer eye, despite the natural frivolity of childhood, and the exuberance of a fine physique.

It was not for the younger sister to teach the elder, nor did Angela deem herself capable of teaching. Her nature was thoughtful and earnest: but she lacked that experience of life which can alone give the thinker a broad and philosophic view of other people's conduct. She was still far from the stage of existence in which to understand all is to pardon all.

She beheld the life about her with wonder and bewilderment. It was so pleasant, so full of beauty and variety; yet things were said and done that shocked her. There was nothing in her sister's own behaviour to alarm her modesty; but to hear her sister talk of other women's conduct outraged all her ideas of decency and virtue. If there were really such wickedness in the world, women so shameless and vile, was it right that good women should know of them, that pure lips should speak of their iniquity?

She was still more shocked when Hyacinth talked of Lady Castlemaine with a good-humoured indulgence.

"There is something fine about her," Lady Fareham said one day, "in spite of her tempers and pranks."

"What!" cried Angela, aghast, having thought these creatures unrecognised by any honest woman, "do you know her-that Lady Castlemaine of whom you have told me such dreadful things?"

"C'est vrai. J'en ai dit des raides. Mon Ange, in town one must needs know everybody, though I doubt that after not returning her visit t'other day, I shall be in her black books, and in somebody else's. She has never been one of my intimates. If I were often at Whitehall, I should have to be friends with her. But Fareham is jealous of Court influences; and I am only allowed to appear on gala nights-perhaps not a half-dozen times in a season. There is a distinction in not showing one's self often; but it is provoking to hear of the frolics and jollities which go on every day and every night, and from which I am banished. It mattered little while the Queen-mother was at Somerset House, for her Court ranked higher-and was certainly more refined in its splendour-than her son's ragam.u.f.fin herd. But now she is gone, I shall miss our intellectual milieu, and wish myself in the Rue St. Thomas du Louvre, where the Hotel du Rambouillet, even in its decline, offers a finer style of company than anything you will see in England."

"Sister, I fear you left half your heart in France."

"Nay, sweet; perhaps some of it has followed me," answered Hyacinth, with a blush and an enigmatic smile. "Peste! I am not a woman to make a fuss about hearts! There is not a grain of tragedy in my composition. I am like that girl in the play we saw at Oxford t'other day. Fletcher's was it, or Shakespeare's? 'A star danced, and under that was I born.' Yes, I was born under a dancing star; and I shall never break my heart-for love."

"But you regret Paris?"

"Helas! Paris means my girlhood; and were you to take me back there to-morrow you could not make me seventeen again-and so where's the use? I should see wrinkles in the faces of my friends; and should know that they were seeing the same ugly lines in mine. Indeed, Ange, I think it is my youth I sigh for rather than the friends I lived with. They were such merry days: battles and sieges in the provinces, parliaments disputing here and there; Conde in and out of prison-now the King's loyal servant, now in arms against him; swords clas.h.i.+ng, cannon roaring under our very windows; alarm bells pealing, cries of fire, barricades in the streets; and amidst it all, lute and theorbo, bouts rimes and madrigals, dancing and play-acting, and foolish practical jests! One could not take the smallest step in life but one of the wits would make a song about it. Oh, it was a boisterous time! And we were all mad, I think; so lightly did we reckon life and death, even when the cannon slew some of our n.o.blest, and the finest saloons were hung with black. You have done less than live, Angelique, not to have lived in that time."

Hyacinth loved to ring the changes on her sister's name. Angela was too English, and sounded too much like the name of a nun; but Angelique suggested one of the most enchanting personalities in that brilliant circle on which Lady Fareham so often rhapsodised. This was the beautiful Angelique Paulet, whose father invented the tax called by his name, La Paulette-a financial measure, which was the main cause of the first Fronde war.

"I only knew her when she was between fifty and sixty," said Lady Fareham, "but she hardly looked forty; and she was still handsome, in spite of her red hair. Trop dore, her admirers called it; but, my love, it was as red as that scullion's we saw in the poultry yard yesterday. She was a reigning beauty at three Courts, and had a crowd of adorers when she was only fourteen. Ah, Papillon, you may open your eyes! What will you be at fourteen? Still playing with your babies, or mad about your shock dogs, I dare swear!"

"I gave my babies to the housekeeper's grand-daughter last year," said Papillon, much offended, "when father gave me the peregrine. I only care for live things now I am old."

"And at fourteen thou wilt be an awkward, long-legged wench that will frighten away all my admirers, yet not be worth the trouble of a compliment on thine own account."

"I want no such stuff!" cried Papillon. "Do you think I would like a French fop always at my elbow as Monsieur de Malfort is ever at yours? I love hunting and hawking, and a man that can ride, and shoot, and row, and fight, like father or Sir Denzil Warner-not a man who thinks more of his ribbons and periwig and cannon-sleeves than of killing his fox or flying his falcon."

"Oh, you are beginning to have opinions!" sighed Hyacinth. "I am indeed an old woman! Go and find yourself something to play with, alive or dead. You are vastly too clever for my company."

"I'll go and saddle Brownie. Will you come for a ride, Aunt Angy?"

"Yes, dear, if her ladys.h.i.+p does not want me at home."

"Her ladys.h.i.+p knows your heart is in the fields and woods. Yes, sweetheart, saddle your pony, and order your aunt's horse and a pair of grooms to take care of you."

The child ran off rejoicing.

"Precocious little devil! She will pick up all our jargon before she is in her teens."

"Dear sister, if you talk so indiscreetly before her--"

"Indiscreet! Am I really so indiscreet? That is Fareham's word. I believe I was born so. But I was telling you about your namesake, Mademoiselle Paulet. She began to reign when Henri was king, and no doubt he was one of her most ardent admirers. Don't look frightened! She was always a model of virtue. Mademoiselle Scudery has devoted pages to painting her perfections under an Oriental alias. She sang, she danced, she talked divinely. She did everything better than everybody else. Priests and Bishops praised her. And after changes and losses and troubles, she died far from Paris, a spinster, nearly sixty years old. It was a paltry finish to a life that began in a blaze of glory."

CHAPTER VIII.

SUPERIOR TO FAs.h.i.+ON.

At Oxford Angela was so happy as to be presented to Catharine of Braganza, a little dark woman, whose attire still bore some traces of its original Portuguese heaviness; such a dress-clumsy, ugly, infinitely rich and expensive-as one sees in old portraits of Spanish and Netherlandish matrons, in which every elaborate detail of the costly fabric seems to have been devised in the research of ugliness. She saw the King also; met him casually-she walking with her brother-in-law, while Lady Fareham and her friends ran from shop to shop in the High Street-in Magdalen College grounds, a group of beauties and a family of spaniels fawning upon him as he sauntered slowly, or stopped to feed the swans that swam close by the bank, keeping pace with him, and stretching long necks in greedy solicitation.