London Pride Or When the World Was Younger Part 2

Yes, it was her father, greyer but less sad of visage than at his last visit. His doublet and cloak were handsomer than the clothes he had worn then, though they were still of the same fas.h.i.+on, that English mode which he had affected before the beginning of the troubles, and which he had never changed.

Immediately after him there alighted a vision of beauty, the loveliest of ladies, in sky-blue velvet and pale grey fur, and with a long white feather encircling a sky-blue hat, and a collar of Venetian lace veiling a bosom that scintillated with jewels.

"Hyacinth!" cried Angela, in a flutter of delight.

The portress peered at the visitors through her spy-hole, and being satisfied that they were the expected guests, speedily opened the iron-clamped door.

There was no one to interfere between father and daughter, sister and sister, in the convent parlour. Angela had her dear people all to herself, the Mother Superior respecting the confidences and outpourings of love, which neither father nor children would wish to be witnessed even by a kinswoman. Thus, by a rare breach of conventual discipline, Angela was allowed to receive her guests alone.

The lay-sister opened the parlour door and ushered in the visitors, and Angela ran to meet her father, and fell sobbing upon his breast, her face hidden against his velvet doublet, her arms clasping his neck.

"What, mistress, hast thou so watery a welcome, now that the clouds have pa.s.sed away, and every loyal English heart is joyful?" cried Sir John, in a voice that was somewhat husky, but with a great show of gaiety.

"Oh, sir, I have waited so long, so long for this day. Sometimes I thought it would never come, that I should never see my dear father again."

"Poor child! it would have been only my desert hadst thou forgotten me altogether. I might have come to you sooner, pretty one; indeed, I would have come, only things went ill with me. I was down-hearted and hopeless of any good fortune in a world that seemed given over to psalm-singing scoundrels; and till the tide turned I had no heart to come nigh you. But now fortunes are mended, the King's and mine, and you have a father once again, and shall have a home by-and-by, the house where you were born, and where your angel-mother made my life blessed. You are like her, Angela!" holding back the pale face in his strong hands, and gazing upon it earnestly. "Yes, you favour your mother; but your face is over sad for your years. Look at your sister here! Would you not say a sunbeam had taken woman's shape and come dancing into the room?"

Angela looked round and greeted the lady, who had stood aside while father and daughter met. Yes, such a face suggested sunlight and summer, birds, b.u.t.terflies, all things buoyant and gladsome. A complexion of dazzling fairness, pearly, transparent, with ever-varying carnations; eyes of heavenliest blue, liquid, laughing, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with espieglerie; a slim little nose with an upward tilt, which expressed a contemptuous gaiety, an inquiring curiosity; a dimpled chin sloping a little towards the full round throat; the bust and shoulders of a Venus, the waist of a sylph, set off by the close-fitting velvet bodice, with its diamond and turquoise b.u.t.tons; hair of palest gold, fluffed out into curls that were traps for sunbeams; hands and arms of a milky whiteness emerging from the large loose elbow-sleeves-a radiant apparition which took Angela by surprise. She had seen Flemish vraus in the richest attire, and among them there had been women as handsome as Helena Forment; but this vision of a fine lady from the court of the "roi soleil" was a revelation. Until this moment, the girl had hardly known what grace and beauty meant.

"Come and let me hug you, my dearest Puritan," cried Hyacinth, holding out her arms. "Why do you suffer your custodians to clothe you in that odious grey, which puts me in mind of lank-haired psalm-singing sc.u.m, and all their hateful works? I would have you sparkling in white satin and silver, or blus.h.i.+ng in brocade powdered with forget-me-nots and rosebuds. What would Fareham say if I told him I had a Puritan in grey woollen stuff for my sister? He sends you his love, dear, and bids me tell you there shall be always an honoured place in our home for you, be it in England or France, in town or country. And why should you not fill that place at once, sister? Your education is finished, and to be sure you must be tired of these stone walls and this sleepy town."

"No, Hyacinth, I love the convent and the friends who have made it my home. You and Lord Fareham are very kind, but I could not leave our reverend mother; she is not so well or so strong as she used to be, and I think she likes to have me with her, because though she loves us all, down to the humblest of the lay-sisters, I am of her kin, and seem nearest to her. I don't want to forsake her; and if it was not against my father's wish I should like to end my days in this house, and to give my thoughts to G.o.d."

"That is because thou knowest nought of the world outside, sweetheart," protested Hyacinth. "I admire the readiness with which folks will renounce a banquet they have never tasted. A single day at the Louvre or the Palais Royal would change your inclinations at once and for ever."

"She is too young for a court life, or a town life either," said Sir John. "And I have no mind to remove her from this safe shelter till the King shall be firm upon his throne, and our poor country shall have settled into a stable and peaceful condition. But there must be no vows, Angela, no renunciation of kindred and home. I look to thee for the comfort of my old age!"

"Dear father, I will never disobey you. I shall remember always that my first duty is to you; and when you want me, you have but to summon me; and whether you are at home or abroad, in wealth and honour, or in exile and poverty, I will go to you, and be glad and happy to be your daughter and your servant."

"I knew thou wouldst, dearest. I have never forgotten how the soft little arms clung about my neck, and how the baby lips kissed me, in this same parlour, when my heart was weighed down by a load of iron, and there seemed no ray of hope for England or me. You were my comforter then, and you will be my comforter in the days to come. Hyacinth here is of the b.u.t.terfly breed. She is fair to look upon, and tender and loving; but she is ever on the wing. And she has her husband and her children to cherish, and cannot be burdened with the care of a broken-down greybeard."

"Broken-down! Why, you are as brave a gallant as the youngest cavalier in the King's service," cried Hyacinth. "I would pit my father against Montagu or Buckingham, Buckhurst or Roscommon-against the gayest, the boldest of them all, on land or sea. Broken-down, forsooth! We will hear no such words from you, sir, for a score of years. And now you will want all your wits to take your proper place at Court as sage counsellor and friend of the new King. Sure he will need his father's friends about him to teach him state-craft-he who has led such a gay, good-for-nothing life as a penniless rover, with scarce a sound coat to his back."

"Nay, Hyacinth, the King will have no need of us old Malignants. We have had our day. He has shrewd Ned Hyde for counsellor, and in that one long head there is craft enough to govern a kingdom. The new Court will be a young Court, and the fas.h.i.+on of it will be new. We old fellows, who were gallant and gay enough in the forties, when we fought against Ess.e.x and his tawny scarves, would be but laughable figures at the Court of a young man bred half in Paris, and steeped in French fas.h.i.+ons and French follies. No, Hyacinth, it is for you and your husband the new day dawns. If I get back to my old meads and woods and the house where I was born, I will sit quietly down in the chimney corner, and take to cattle-breeding, and a pack of harriers, for the diversion of my declining years. And when my Angela can make up her mind to leave her good aunt she shall keep house for me."

"I should love to be your housekeeper, dearest father. If it please Heaven to restore my aunt to health and strength, I will go to you with a heart full of joy," said the girl, hanging caressingly upon the old cavalier's shoulder.

Hyacinth flitted about the room with a swift, birdlike motion, looking at the sacred images and prints, the tableau over the mantelpiece, which told, with much flourish of penmans.h.i.+p, the progress of the convent pupils in learning and domestic virtues.

"What a humdrum, dismal room!" she cried. "You should see our convent parlours in Paris. At the Carmelites, in the Rue Saint Jacques, par exemple, the Queen-mother's favourite convent, and at Chaillot, the house founded by Queen Henrietta-such pictures, and ornaments, and embroidered hangings, and tapestries worked by devotees. This room of yours, sister, stinks of poverty, as your Flemish streets stink of garlic and cabbage. Faugh! I know not which is worse!"

Having thus delivered herself of her disgust, she darted upon her younger sister, laid her hands upon the girl's shoulders, and contemplated her with mock seriousness.

"What a precocious young saint thou art, with no more interest in the world outside this naked parlour than if thou wert yonder image of the Holy Mother. Not a question of my husband, or my children, or of the last fas.h.i.+on in hood and mantle, or of the new laced gloves, or the French King's latest divinity."

"I should dearly like to see your children, Hyacinth," answered her sister.

"Ah! they are the most enchanting creatures, the girl a perpetual sunbeam, ethereal, elfish, a being of life and movement, and with a loquacity that never tires; the boy a lump of honey, fat, sleek, lazily beautiful. I am never tired of admiring them, when I have time to see them. Papillon-an old friend of mine has surnamed her Papillon because she is never still-was five years old on March 19. We were at St. Germain on her birthday. You should have seen the toys and trinkets and sweetmeats which the Court showered upon her-the King and Queen, Monsieur, Mademoiselle, the Princess Henrietta, her G.o.dmother-everybody had a gift for the daughter of La folle Baronne Fareham. Yes, they are lovely creatures, Angela; and I am miserable to think that it may be half a year before I see their sweet faces again."

"Why so long, sister?"

"Because they are at the Chateau de Montrond, grandmother's place near Dieppe, and because Fareham and I are going hence to Breda to meet the King, our own King Charles, and help lead him home in triumph. In London the mob are shouting, roaring, singing, for their King; and Montagu's fleet lies in the Downs, waiting but the signal from Parliament to cross to Holland. He who left his country in a scurvy fis.h.i.+ng-boat will go back to England in a mighty man-of-war, the Naseby-mark you, the Naseby-christened by that Usurper, in insolent remembrance of a rebel victory; but Charles will doubtless change that hated name. He must not be put in mind of a fight where rebels had the better of loyal gentlemen. He will sail home over those dancing seas, with a fleet of great white-winged s.h.i.+ps circling round him like a flight of silvery doves. Oh, what a turn of fortune's wheel! I am wild with rapture at the thought of it!"

"You love England better than France, though you must be almost a stranger there," said Angela, wonderingly, looking at a miniature which her sister wore in a bracelet.

"Nay, love, 'tis in Paris I am an insignificant alien, though they are ever so kind and flattering to me. At St Germain I was only Madame de Montrond's grand-daughter-the wife of a somewhat morose gentleman who was cleverer at winning battles than at gaining hearts. At Whitehall I shall be Lady Fareham, and shall enjoy my full consequence as the wife of an English n.o.bleman of ancient lineage and fine estate, for, I am happy to tell you, his lords.h.i.+p's property suffered less than most people's in the rebellion, and anything his father lost when he fought for the good cause will be given back to the son now the good cause is triumphant, with additions, perhaps-an earl's coronet instead of a baron's beggarly pearls. I should like Papillon to be Lady Henrietta."

"And you will send for your children, doubtless, when you are sure all is safe in England?" said Angela, still contemplating the portrait in the bracelet, which her sister had unclasped while she talked. "This is Papillon, I know. What a sweet, kind, mischievous face!"

"Mischievous as a Barbary ape-kind, and sweet as the west wind," said Sir John.

"And your boy?" asked Angela, reclasping the bracelet on the fair, round arm, having looked her fill at the mutinous eyes, the brown, crisply curling hair, dainty, pointed chin, and dimpled cheeks. "Have you his picture, too?"

"Not his; but I wear his father's likeness somewhere betwixt buckram and Flanders lace," answered Hyacinth, gaily, pulling a locket from amidst the splendours of her corsage. "I call it next my heart; but there is a stout fortification of whalebone between heart and picture. You have gloated enough on the daughter's impertinent visage. Look now at the father, whom she resembles in little, as a kitten resembles a tiger."

She handed her sister an oval locket, bordered with diamonds, and held by a slender Indian chain; and Angela saw the face of the brother-in-law whose kindness and hospitality had been so freely promised to her.

She explored the countenance long and earnestly.

"Well, do you think I chose him for his beauty?" asked Hyacinth. "You have devoured every lineament with that serious gaze of yours, as if you were trying to read the spirit behind that mask of flesh. Do you think him handsome?"

Angela faltered: but was unskilled in flattery, and could not reply with a compliment.

"No, sister; surely none have ever called this countenance handsome; but it is a face to set one thinking."

"Ay, child, and he who owns the face is a man to set one thinking. He has made me think many a time when I would have travelled a day's journey to escape the thoughts he forced upon me. He was not made to bask in the suns.h.i.+ne of life. He is a stormy petrel. It was for his ugliness I chose him. Those dark stern features, that imperious mouth, and a brow like the Olympian Jove. He scared me into loving him. I sheltered myself upon his breast from the thunder of his brow, the lightning of his eye."

"He has a look of his cousin Wentworth," said Sir John. "I never see him but I think of that murdered man-my father's friend and mine-whom I have never ceased to mourn."

"Yet their kin is of the most distant," said Hyacinth. "It is strange that there should be any likeness."

"Faces appear and reappear in families," answered her father. "You may observe that curiously recurring likeness in any picture-gallery, if the family portraits cover a century or two. Louis has little in common with his grandfather; but two hundred years hence there may be a prince of the royal house whose every feature shall recall Henry the Great"

The portrait was returned to its hiding-place, under perfumed lace and cobweb lawn, and the reverend mother entered the parlour, ready for conversation, and eager to hear the history of the last six weeks, of the collapse of that military despotism which had convulsed England and dominated Europe, and was now melting into thin air as ghosts dissolve at c.o.c.k-crow, of the secret negotiations between Monk and Grenville, now known to everybody; of the King's gracious amnesty and promise of universal pardon, save for some score or so of conspicuous villains, whose hands were dyed with the Royal Martyr's blood.

She was full of questioning: and, above all, eager to know whether it was true that King Charles was at heart as staunch a papist as his brother the Duke of York was believed to be, though even the Duke lacked the courage to bear witness to the true faith.

Two lay-sisters brought in a repast of cakes and syrups and light wines, such delicate and dainty food as the pious ladies of the convent were especially skilled in preparing, and which they deemed all-sufficient for the entertainment of company; even when one of their guests was a rugged soldier like Sir John Kirkland. When the light collation had been tasted and praised, the coach came to the door again, and swallowed up the beautiful lady and the old cavalier, who vanished from Angela's sight in a cloud of dust, waving hands from the coach window.

CHAPTER III.

LETTERS FROM HOME.

The quiet days went by, and grew into years, and time was only marked by the gradual failure of the reverend mother's health; so gradual, so gentle a decay, that it was only when looking back on St. Sylvester's Eve that her great-niece became aware how much of strength and activity had been lost since the Superior knelt in her place near the altar, listening to the solemn music of the midnight Ma.s.s that sanctified the pa.s.sing of the year. This year the reverend mother was led to her seat between two nuns, who sustained her feeble limbs. This year the meek knees, which had worn the marble floor in long hours of prayer during eighty pious years, could no longer bend. The meek head was bowed, the bloodless hands were lifted up in supplication, but the fingers were wasted and stiffened, and there was pain in every movement of the joints.

There was no actual malady, only the slow death in life called old age. All the patient needed was rest and tender nursing. This last her great-niece supplied, together with the gentlest companions.h.i.+p. No highly trained nurse, the product of modern science, could have been more efficient than the instinct of affection had made Angela. And then the patient's temper was so amiable, her mind, undimmed after eighty-three years of life, was a mirror of G.o.d. She thought of her fellow-creatures with a Divine charity; she wors.h.i.+pped her Creator with an implicit faith. For her in many a waking vision the heavens opened and the spirits of departed saints descended from their abode in bliss to hold converse with her. Eighty years of her life had been given to religious exercises and charitable deeds. Motherless before she could speak, she had entered the convent as a pupil at three years of age, and had taken the veil at seventeen. Her father had married a great heiress, whose only child, a daughter, was allowed to absorb all the small stock of parental affection; and there was no one to dispute Anastasia's desire for the cloister. All she knew of the world outside those walls was from hearsay. A rare visit from her lovely half-sister, the Marquise de Montrond, had astonished her with the sight of a distinguished Parisienne, and left her wondering. She had never read a secular book. She knew not the meaning of the word pleasure, save in the mild amus.e.m.e.nts permitted to the convent children-till they left the convent as young women-on the evening of a saint's day; a stately dance of curtsyings and waving arms; a little childish play, dramatising some incident in the lives of the saints. So she lived her eighty years of obedience and quiet usefulness, learning and teaching, serving and governing. She had lived through the Thirty Years' War, through the devastations of Wallenstein, the cruelties of Bavarian Tilly, the judicial murder of Egmont and Horn. She had heard of villages burnt, populations put to the sword, women and children killed by thousands. She had conversed with those who remembered the League; she had seen the nuns weeping for Edward Campion's cruel fate; she had heard Ma.s.ses sung for the soul of murdered Mary Stuart. She had heard of Raleigh's visions of conquest and of gold, setting his prison-blanched face towards the West, in the afternoon of life, to encounter bereavement, treachery, sickening failure, and go back to his native England to expiate the dreams of genius with the blood of a martyr. And through all the changes and chances of that eventful century she had lived apart, full of pity and wonder, in a charmed circle of piety and love.