London Pride Or When the World Was Younger Part 22

"Not more so than your Hamlet or Oth.e.l.lo. Shakespeare was but kept in fas.h.i.+on during the late King's reign because his Majesty loved him-and will soon be forgotten, now that we have so many gayer and brisker dramatists."

"Whoever quotes Shakespeare, nowadays?" asked Lady Sarah Tewkesbury, who had been showing a rustic niece the beauties of the river, as seen from Fareham House. "Even Mr. Taylor, whose sermons bristle with elegant allusions, never points one of his pa.s.sionate climaxes with a Shakespearian line. And yet there are some very fine lines in Hamlet and Macbeth, which would scarce sound amiss from the pulpit," added her ladys.h.i.+p, condescendingly. "I have read all the plays, some of them twice over. And I doubt that though Shakespeare cannot hold the stage in our more enlightened age, and will be less and less acted as the town grows more refined, his works will always be tasted by scholars; among whom, in my modest way, I dare reckon myself."

Lord Fareham left London on horseback, with but one servant, in the early August dawn, before the rest of the household were stirring. Hyacinth lay nearly as late of a morning as Henrietta Maria, whom Charles used sometimes to reproach for not being up in time for the noonday office at her own chapel. Lady Fareham had not Portuguese Catherine's fervour, who was often at Ma.s.s at seven o'clock; but she did usually contrive to be present at High Ma.s.s at the Queen's chapel; and this was the beginning of her day. By that time Angela and her niece and nephew had spent hours on the river, or in the meadows at Chiswick, or on Putney Heath, ever glad to escape from the great overgrown city, which was now licking up every stretch of green sward, and every flowery hedgerow west of St. James's Street. Soon there would be no country between the Haymarket and "The Pillars of Hercules."

Denzil sometimes enjoyed the privilege of accompanying Angela, children, and gouvernante, on these rural expeditions by the great waterway; and on such occasions he and Angela would each take an oar and row the boat for some part of the voyage, while the watermen rested, and in this manner Angela, instructed by Sir Denzil, considerably advanced her power as an oarswoman. It was an exercise she loved, as indeed she loved all out-of-door exercises, from riding with hawks and hounds to battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k. But most of all, perhaps, she loved the river, and the rhythmical dip of oars in the fresh morning air, when every curve of the fertile sh.o.r.es seemed to reveal new beauty.

It had been a hot, dry summer, and the gra.s.s in the parks was burnt to a dull brown-had, indeed, almost ceased to be gra.s.s-while the atmosphere in town had a fiery taste, and was heavy with the dust which whitened all the roadways, and which the faintest breath of wind dispersed. Here on the flowing tide there was coolness, and the long rank gra.s.s upon those low sedgy sh.o.r.es was still green.

Lady Fareham supported the August heats sitting on her terrace, with a cl.u.s.ter of friends about her, and her musicians and singing-boys grouped in the distance, ready to perform at her bidding; but Henriette and her brother soon tired of that luxurious repose, and would urge their aunt to a.s.sist in a river expedition. The gouvernante was fat and lazy and good-tempered, had attended upon Henriette from babyhood, and always did as she was told.

"Her ladys.h.i.+p says I must have some clever person instead of Priscilla before I am a year older," Henriette told her aunt; "but I have promised poor old Prissy to hate the new person consumedly."

Angela and Denzil laughed as they rowed past the ruined abbey, seen dimly across the low water-meadow, where cows of the same colour were all lying in the same att.i.tude, chewing the cud.

"I think Mr. Spavinger's trick must have cured your sister's fine friends of all belief in ghosts," he said.

"I doubt they would be as ready to believe-or to pretend to believe-to-morrow," answered Angela. "They think of nothing from morning till night but how to amuse themselves; and when every pleasure has been exhausted, I suppose fear comes in as a form of entertainment, and they want the shock of seeing a ghost."

"There have been no more midnight parties since Lady Sarah's a.s.sembly, I think?"

"Not among people of quality, perhaps; but there have been citizens' parties. I heard Monsieur de Malfort telling my sister about a supper given by a wealthy wine-cooper's lady from Aldersgate. The city people copy everything that their superiors wear or do."

"Even to their morals," said Denzil. "'Twere happy if the so-called superiors would remember that, and upon what a fertile ground they sow the seed of new vices. It is like the importation of a new weed or a new insect, which, beginning with an accident, may end in ruined crops and a country's famine."

Without deliberate disobedience to her husband, Lady Fareham made the best use of her time during his absence in Paris. The public theatres had not yet re-opened after the horror of the plague. Whitehall was a desert, the King and his chief following being at Tunbridge. It was the dullest season of the year, and the recrudescence of the contagion in the low-lying towns along the Thames-Deptford, Greenwich, and the neighbourhood-together with some isolated cases in London, made people more serious than usual, despite of the so-called victory over the Dutch, which, although a mixed benefit, was celebrated piously by a day of General Thanksgiving.

Hyacinth, disgusted at the dulness of the town, was for ordering her coaches and retiring to Chilton.

"It is mortal dull at the Abbey," she said, "but at least we have the hawks, and breezy hills to ride over, instead of this sickly city atmosphere, which to my nostrils smells of the pestilence."

Henri de Malfort argued against such a retreat.

"It were a deliberate suicide," he said. "London, when everybody has left-all the bodies we count worthy to live, par exemple-is a more delightful place than you can imagine. There are a host of vulgar amus.e.m.e.nts which you would not dare to visit when your friends are in town; and which are ten times as amusing as the pleasures you know by heart. Have you ever been to the Bear Garden? I'll warrant you no, though 'tis but across the river at Bankside. We'll go there this afternoon, if you like, and see how the common people taste life. Then there are the gardens at Islington. There are mountebanks, and palmists, and fortune-tellers, who will frighten you out of your wits for a s.h.i.+lling. There's a man at Clerkenwell, a jeweller's journeyman from Venice, who pretends to practise the trans.m.u.tation of metals, and to make gold. He squeezed hundreds out of that old miser Denham, who was afraid to have the law of him for imposture, lest all London should laugh at his own credulity and applaud the cheat. And you have not seen the Italian puppet-play, which is vastly entertaining. I could find you novelty and amus.e.m.e.nt for a month."

"Find anything new, even if it fail to amuse me. I am sick of everything I know."

"And then there is our midnight party at Millbank, the ghost-party, at which you are to frighten your dearest friends out of their poor little wits."

"Most of my dearest friends are in the country."

"Nay, there is Lady Lucretia Topham, whom I know you hate; and Lady Sarah and the Dubbins are still in Covent Garden."

"I will have no Dubbin-a toping wretch-and she is a too incongruous mixture, with her Edinburgh lingo and her Whitehall arrogance. Besides, the whole notion of a mock ghost was vulgarised by Wilmot's foolery, who ought to have been born a saltimbanque, and spent his life in a fair. No, I have abandoned the scheme."

"What! after I have been taxing my invention to produce the most terrible illusion that was ever witnessed? Will you let a clown like Spavinger-a well-born stable-boy-baulk us of our triumph? I am sending to Paris for a powder to burn in a corner of the room, which will throw the ghastliest pallor upon your countenance. When I devise a ghost, it shall be no impromptu spectre in yellow riding-boots, but a vision so awful, so true an image of a being returned from the dead, that the stoutest nerves will thrill and tremble at the apparition. The nun's habit is coming from Paris. I have asked my cousin, Madame de Fiesque, to obtain it for me at the Carmelites."

"You are taking a vast deal of trouble. But what kind of a.s.sembly can we muster at this dead season?" "Leave all in my hands. I will find you some of the choicest spirits. It is to be my party. I will not even tell you what night I fix upon, till all is ready. So make no engagements for your evenings, and tell n.o.body anything."

"Who invented that powder?"

"A French chemist. He has it of all colours, and can flood a scene in golden light, or the rose of dawn, or the crimson of sunset, or a pale silvery blueness that you would swear was moons.h.i.+ne. It has been used in all the Court ballets. I saw Madame once look as ghastly as death itself, and all the Court was seized with terror. Some blundering fool had burnt the wrong powder, which cast a greenish tint over the faces, and Henriette's long thin features had a look of death. It seemed the forecast of an early grave; and some of us shuddered, as at a prophecy of evil."

"You might expect the worst in her case, knowing the wretched life she leads with Monsieur."

"Yes, when she is with him; but that is not always. There are compensations."

"If you mean scandal, I will not hear a word. She is adorable. The most sympathetic person I know-good even to her enemies-who are legion."

"You had better not say that, for I doubt she has only one kind of enemy."

"As how?"

"The admirers she has encouraged and disappointed. Yes, she is adorable, wofully thin, and, I fear, consumptive, but royal: and adorable, 'douceur et lumiere,' as Bossuet calls her. But to return to my ghost-party."

"If you were wise, you would abandon the notion. I doubt that in spite of your powders your friends will never believe in a ghost."

"Oh yes, they will. It shall be my business to get them in the proper temper."

That idea of figuring in a picturesque habit, and in a halo of churchyard light, was irresistible. Hyacinth promised to conform to Malfort's plans, and to be ready to a.s.sume her phantom role whenever she was called upon.

Angela knew something of the scheme, and that there was to be another a.s.sembly at Millbank; but her sister had seemed disinclined to talk of the plan in her presence-a curious reticence in one whose sentiments and caprices were usually given to the world at large with perfect freedom. For once in her life Hyacinth had a secret air, and checked herself suddenly in the midst of her light babble at a look from De Malfort, who had urged her to keep her sister out of their midnight party.

"I pledge my honour that there shall be nothing to offend," he told her, "but I hope to have the wittiest c.o.xcombs in London, and we want no prudes to strangle every jest with a long-drawn lip and an alarmed eye. Your sister has a pale, fragile prettiness which pleases an eye satiated with the exuberant charms of your Rubens and t.i.tian women; but she is not handsome enough to give herself airs; and she is a little inclined that way. By the faith of a gentleman, I have suffered scowls from her that I would scarce have endured from Barbara!"

"Barbara! You are vastly free with her ladys.h.i.+p's name."

"Not freer than she has ever been with her friends.h.i.+p."

"Henri, if I thought--"

"What, dearest?"

"That you had ever cared for that-wanton--"

"Could you think it, when you know my life in England has been one long tragedy of loving in vain-of sighing only to be denied-of secret tears-and public submission."

"Do not talk so," she exclaimed, starting up from her low tabouret, and moving hastily to the open window, to fresh air and suns.h.i.+ne, rippling river and blue sky, escaping from an atmosphere that had become feverish.

"De Malfort, you know I must not listen to foolish raptures."

"I know you have been refusing to hear for the last two years."

They were on the terrace now, she leaning on the broad marble bal.u.s.trade, he standing beside her, and all the traffic of London moving with the tide below them.

"To return to our party," she said, in a lighter tone, for that spurt of jealousy had betrayed her into seriousness. "It will be very awkward not to invite my sister to go with me."