London Pride Or When the World Was Younger Part 32

"So, my angel, I am leaving your foggy island, my cramped London lodgings, and extortionate London tradesmen, on whom I have squandered so much of my fortune that they ought to forgive me for leaving a margin of debt, which I hope to pay the extortioners hereafter for the honour of my name. I doubt if I shall ever revisit England. I have tasted all London pleasures, till familiarity has taken the taste out of them; and though Paris may be only London with a difference, that difference includes bluer skies, brighter streets and gardens, and all the originals of which you have here the copies. There, at least, I shall have the fas.h.i.+on of my peruke and my speech at first hand. Here you only adopt a mode when Paris begins to tire of it.

"Farewell, then, dearest lady, but let it be no tragical or eternal parting, since your fine house in the Rue de Touraine will doubtless be honoured with your presence some day. You have only to open a salon there in order to be the top of the mode. Some really patrician milieu is needed to replace the antique court of the dear old Marquise, and to extinguish the Scudery, whose Sat.u.r.days grow more vulgar every week. Yes, you will come to Paris, bringing that human lily, Mrs. Angela, in your train; and I promise to make you the fas.h.i.+on before your house has been open a month. The wits and Court favourites will go where I bid them. And though your dearest friend, Madame de Longueville, has retired from the world in which she was more queenly than the Queen, you will find Mademoiselle de Montpensier as faithful as ever to mundane pleasures, and, after having refused kings and princes, slavishly devoted to a colonel of dragoons who does not care a straw for her.

"Louise de Bourbon, a woman who can head a revolt and fire a cannon, would think no sacrifice too great for a cold-hearted schemer like Lauzun-yet you who swore you loved me, when the coach was waiting that would have carried me to paradise, and made us one for all this life, could suffer a foolish girl to separate us in the very moment of triumphant union. You were mine, Hyacinth; heart and mind were consenting, when your convent-bred sister surprised us, and all my hopes of bliss expired in a sermon. And now I can but say, with that witty rhymester, whom everybody in London quotes-

'Love in your heart as idly burns, As fire in antique Roman urns.'

"Good-bye, which means 'G.o.d be with you.' I know not if the fear of Him was in your mind when you sacrificed your lover to that icy abstraction women call virtue. The Romans had but one virtue, which meant the courage that dares; and to me the highest type of woman would be one whose bold spirit dared and defied the world for love's sake. These are the women history remembers, and whom the men who live after them wors.h.i.+p. Cleopatra, Mary Stuart, Diana of Poictiers, Marguerite de Valois, la Chevreuse, la Montbazon! Think you that these became famous by keeping their lovers at a distance?

"'Go, lovely rose!'

"How often I have sung those lines, and you have listened, and nothing has come of it; except time wasted, smiles, sighs, and tears, that ever promised, and ever denied. Beauty, too choice to be kind, adieu!

"DE MALFORT."

When she had read these last words, she crushed the letter in her palm, clenching her fingers over it till the nails wounded the delicate flesh; and then she opened her hand, and employed herself in smoothing out the crumpled paper, as if her life depended on making the letter readable again. But her pains could not undo what her pa.s.sion had done; and finding this, she tossed the ragged paper into the flames, and began to walk about the room in a distracted fas.h.i.+on, giving a little hysterical cry every now and then, and clasping her hands upon her forehead.

Anger, humiliation, wounded love, wounded vanity, disappointment, disillusion, were all in that cry, and in the pa.s.sionate beating of her heart, her stifled breath, her clenched hands.

"He was laughing when he wrote that letter-I am sure he was laughing. There was not one serious moment, not one pang at leaving me! He has been laughing at me ever since he came to London. I have been his fool, his amus.e.m.e.nt. Other women have had his love, the guilty love that he praises! He has come to me straight from their wicked houses, their feasting, and riot, and drunkenness-has come and pretended to love poetry, and Scudery's romances, and music, and innocent conversation-come to rest himself after dissolute pleasures, bringing me the leavings of that h.e.l.lish company! And I have reviled such women, and he has pretended an equal horror of them; and he was their slave all the time, and went from me to them, and made a jest of me for their amus.e.m.e.nt I know his biting raillery. And he was at the play-house day after day, where I could not go, sitting side by side with his Jezebels, laughing at filthy comedies, and at me that was forbidden to appear there. He had pleasures of which I knew nothing; and when I fancied our inmost souls moved in harmony, his thoughts were full of wanton women and their wanton jests, and he smiled at my childishness, and fooled me as children are fooled."

The thought was distraction. She plucked out handfuls of her pale gold hair, the pretty blonde hair which had been almost as famous in Paris as Beaufort's or Madame de Longueville's yellow locks. The thought of De Malfort's ridicule cut her like a whalebone whip. She had fancied herself his Beatrice, his Laura, his Stella-a being to be wors.h.i.+pped as reverently as the stars, to make her lover happy with smiles and kindly words, to stand for ever a little way off, like a G.o.ddess in her temple, yet near enough to be adored.

And fondly believing this to be her mission, having posed for the character, and filled it to her own fancy, she found that she had only been a dissolute man's dupe all the time; and no doubt had been the laughing-stock of her acquaintance, who looked at the game.

"And I was so proud of his devotion-I carried my slave everywhere with me.

Oh, fool, fool, fool!"

And then-the poor little brains being disordered by pa.s.sionate regrets-wickedest ideas ran riot in the confusion of a mind not wide enough to hold life's large pa.s.sions. She began to be sorry that she was not like those other women-to hate the modesty that had lost her a lover.

To be like Barbara Castlemaine! That was woman's only royalty. To rule with sovereign power over the hearts and senses of men. A King for her lover, constant in inconstancy, always going back to her from every transient fancy-her property, her chattel; and the foremost wits and dandies of the age for her servants, her Court of adorers, whom she ruled with frowns or smiles, as her humour prompted. To be daring, profuse, reckless, tyrannical; to suffer no control of heaven or men-yes, that was, indeed, to be a Queen! And compared with such empire, the poor authority of the Precieuse, dictating the choice of adjectives, condemning p.r.o.nouns, theorising upon feelings and pa.s.sions of which in practice she knows nothing, was a thing for scornfullest laughter.

CHAPTER XX.

PHILASTER.

January was nearly over, the memorial service for the martyred King was drawing near, and royalty and fas.h.i.+on had deserted Whitehall for Hampton Court; yet the Farehams lingered at their riverside mansion. His lords.h.i.+p had business in London, while Sir Denzil Warner, who came to Fareham House daily, was also detained in the city by some special attraction, which made hawk and hound, and even his worthy mother's company, indifferent to him.

Lady Fareham had an air of caring for neither town nor country, but on the whole preferred town.

"London has become a positive desert-and the smoke from the smouldering ruins poisons the garden and terrace whenever there is an east wind," she complained. "But Oxfords.h.i.+re would be a worse desert-and I believe I should die of the spleen in a week, if I trusted myself in that great rambling Abbey. I can just suffer life in London; so I suppose I had best stay till his lords.h.i.+p has finished his business, about which he is so secret and mysterious."

Denzil was more devoted, more solicitous to please than ever; and had a better chance of pleasing now that most of her ladys.h.i.+p's fine visitors had left town. He read aloud to Hyacinth and her sister as they worked-or pretended to work-at their embroidery frames. He played the organ, and sang duets with Angela. He walked with her on the terrace, in the cold, bleak afternoon, and told her the news of the town-not the scandals and trivialities which alone interested Lady Fareham, but the graver facts connected with the state and the public welfare-the prospects of war or peace, the outlook towards France and Spain, Holland and Sweden, Andrew Marvel's last speech, or the last grant to the King, who might be relied on to oppose no popular measure when his lieges were about to provide a handsome subsidy or an increase of his revenue.

"We are winning our liberties from him," Denzil said.

"For the mess of pottage we give, the money he squanders on libertine pleasures, England is buying freedom. Yet why, in the name of common sense, maintain this phantom King, this Court which shocks and outrages every decent Englishman's sense of right, and maintains an ever-widening hotbed of corruption, so that habits and extravagances once unknown beyond that focus of all vice, are now spreading as fast as London; and wherever there are bricks and mortar there are profligacy and irreligion? Can you wonder that all the best and wisest in this city regret Cromwell's iron rule, the rule of the strongest, and deplore that so bold a stroke for liberty should have ended in such foolish subservience to a King of whom we knew nothing when we begged him to come and reign over us?"

"But if you win liberty while he is King, if wise laws are established-"

"Yes; but we might have been n.o.ble as well as free. There is something so petty in our resumed bondage. Figure to yourself a thoroughbred horse that had kicked off the traces, and stood free upon the open plain with arched neck and lifted nostrils, sniffing the morning air! and behold he creeps back to his harness, and makes himself again a slave! We had done with the Stuarts, at the cost of a tragedy, and in ten years we call them back again, and put on the old shackles; and for common sense, religion, and freedom, we have the orgies of Whitehall, and the extravagance of Lady Castlemaine. It will not last, Angela; it cannot last. I was with his lords.h.i.+p in Artillery Row last night, and we talked with the blind sage who would sacrifice the remnant of his darkened days in the cause of liberty."

"Sir Denzil, I hope you are not plotting mischief-you and my brother," Angela said anxiously. "You are so often together; and his lords.h.i.+p has such a preoccupied air."

"No, no, there is no conspiring; but there is plenty of discontent. It would need but little to fire the train. Can any man in his senses be happy when he sees his country, which ten years ago was at the pinnacle of power and renown, sinking to the appanage of a foreign sovereign; England threatened with a return to Rome; honest men forbidden to preach the gospel; and innocent seekers after truth hounded off to gaol, to rot among malefactors, because they have dared to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d after their own fas.h.i.+on?"

"Where was your liberty of conscience under the Protectorate, when the Liturgy was forbidden as if it were an unholy thing, when the Anglican priests were turned out of their pulpits, and the Anglican service tolerated in only one church in all this vast London?" Angela asked indignantly.

"That was a revolt of deep thinkers against a service which has all the mechanical artifice of Romanism without its strong appeal to the heart and the senses-dry, empty, rigid-a repet.i.tion of vain phrases. If I am ever to bow my neck beneath the Church's yoke, let me swallow the warm-blooded errors of Papacy rather than the heartless formalism of English Episcopacy."

"But what can you or Fareham-or a few good men like you-do to change established things? Remember Venner's plot, and how many lives were wasted on that foolish, futile attempt. You can only hazard your lives, die on the scaffold. Or would you like to see civil war again; the nation divided into opposite camps; Englishmen fighting with Englishmen? Can you forget that dreadful last year of the Rebellion? I was only a little child; but it is branded deep on my memory. Can you forget the murder of the King? He was murdered; let Mr. Milton defend the deed as he can with his riches of big words. I have wept over the royal martyr's own account of his sufferings."

"Over Dr. Gauden's account, that is to say. 'Eikon Basilike' was no more written by Charles than by Cromwell. It was a doctored composition-a churchman's spurious history, trumped up by Charles's friends and partisans, possibly with the approval of the King himself. It is a fine piece of special pleading in a bad cause."

"You make me hate you when you talk so slightingly of that so ill-used King. You will make me hate you more if you lead Fareham into danger by underhand work against the present King."

"Lies Fareham's safety so very near your heart?"

"It lies in my heart," she answered, looking at him, and defying him with straight, clear gaze. "Is he not my sister's husband, and to me as a brother? Do you expect me to be careless about his fate? I know you are leading him into danger. Some mischief must come of these visits to Mr. Milton, a Republican outlaw, who has escaped the penalty of his treasonous pamphlets only because he is blind and old and poor. I doubt there is danger in all such conferences. Fareham is at heart a Republican. It would need little persuasion to make him a traitor to the King."

"You have it in your power to make me so much your slave, that I would sacrifice every patriotic aspiration at your bidding, Angela," Denzil answered gravely.

"I know not if this be the time to speak, or if, after waiting more than a year, I may not even now be premature. Dearest girl, you know that I love you-that I haunt this house only because you live here; that I am in London only because my star s.h.i.+nes there; that above all public interests you rule my life. I have exercised a prodigious patience, only because I have a prodigious resolution. Is it not time for me to reap my reward?"

"Oh, Denzil, you fill me with sorrow! Have I not said everything to discourage you?"

"And have I not refused to be discouraged? Angela, I am resolved to discover the reason of your coldness. Was there ever a young and lovely woman who shut love out of her heart? History has no record of such an one. I am of an appropriate age, of good birth and good means, not under-educated, not brutish, or of repulsive face and figure. If your heart is free I ought to be able to win it. If you will not favour my suit, it must be because there is some one else, some one who came before me, or who has crossed my path, and to whom your heart has been secretly given."

She had turned from red to pale as he spoke. She stood before him in the winter light, with her colour changing, her hands tightly clasped, her eyes cast down, and tears trembling on the long dark lashes.

"You have no right to question me. It is enough for you to have my honest answer. I esteem you, but I do not love you; and it distresses me when you talk of love."

"There is some one else, then! I knew it. There is some one else. For me you are marble. You are fire for him. He is in your heart. You have said it."

"How dare you--" she began.

"Why should I shrink from warning you of your danger? It is Fareham you love. I have seen you tremble at his touch-start at the sound of his footstep-that step you know so well. His footstep? Why, the very air he breathes carries to you the consciousness of his approach. Oh, I have watched you both, Angela; and I know, I know. Jealous pangs have racked me, day after day; yet I have hung on. I have been very patient. 'She knows not the sinful impulses of her own heart,' I said, 'knows not in her purity how near she goes to a fall. Here, in her sister's house, pa.s.sionately loved by her sister's husband! She calls him 'brother,' whose eyes cannot look at her without telling their story of wicked love. She walks on the edge of a precipice-self-deceived. Were I to abandon her she might fall. My affection is her only safeguard; and by winning her to myself I shall s.n.a.t.c.h her from the pit of h.e.l.l.'"

It was the truth he was telling her. Yes; even when Fareham was harshest, she had been dimly conscious that love was at the root of his unkindness. The coldness that had held them apart since that midnight meeting had been ice over fire. It was jealousy that had made him so angry. No word of love, directly spoken, had ever offended her ear; but there had been many a speech of double meaning that had set her wondering and thinking.

And, oh! the guilt of it, when an honourable man like Denzil set her sin before her, in plain language. She stood aghast at her own wickedness. That which had been a sin of thought only, a secret sorrow, wrestled with in many an hour of heartfelt prayer, with all the labour of a soul that sought heavenly aid against earthly temptation, was conjured into hideous reality by Denzil's plain speech. To love her sister's husband, to suffer his guilty love, to know gladness only in his company, to be exquisitely happy were he but in the same room with her-to sink to profoundest melancholy when he was absent. Oh, the sin of it! In what degree did her guilt differ from that of the women of the Court, who had each her open secret in some base intrigue that all the world knew and laughed at? She had been kept aloof from that libertine crew; but was she any better than they? Was Fareham, who openly scorned the royal debauchee, was he any better than the King?

She remembered how he had talked of Lord Sandwich, making excuses for a perverted love. She had heard him speak of other offenders in the same strain. He had been ever ready to recognise fatality where a good Catholic would have perceived only sin.

"Angela, believe me, you are drifting helmless in perilous waters," Denzil urged, while she stood beside him in mute distress. "Let me be your strong rock. Only give me the promise of your hand. I can be patient still. I will give time for love to grow. Grant me but the right to guard you from the danger of an unholy pa.s.sion that is always near you in this house."

"You pretend to be his lords.h.i.+p's friend, and you speak slander of him."