London Pride Or When the World Was Younger Part 38

Denzil was of a temper as thoughtful, but his studies had taken a different direction. He was not even by taste or apprehension a poet. Had he been called upon to criticise his tutor's compositions, he might, like Johnson, have objected to the metaphoric turns of Lycidas, and have missed the melody of lines as musical as the nightingale. In that great poem of which he had been privileged to transcribe many of the finest pa.s.sages from the lips of the poet, he admired rather the heroic patience of the blind author than the splendour of the verse. He was more impressed by the schoolmaster's learning than by that G.o.d-given genius which lifted that one Englishman above every other of his age and country. No, he was eminently prosaic, had sucked prose and plain-thinking from his mother's breast; but he was not the less an agreeable companion for a girl upon whose youth an unnatural solitude had begun to weigh heavily.

All that one mind can impart to another of a widely different fibre, Denzil had learnt from Milton in that most impressionable period of boyhood which he had spent in the small house in Holborn, whose back rooms looked out over the verdant s.p.a.ces of Lincoln's Inn Fields, where Lord Newcastle's palace had not yet begun to rise from its foundations, and where the singing birds had not been scared away by the growth of the town. A theatre now stood where the boy and a fellow-scholar had played trap and ball, and the stately houses of Queen Street hard by were alive with rank and fas.h.i.+on.

In addition to the cla.s.sical curriculum which Milton had taught with the solemn earnestness of one in whom learning is a religion, Denzil had acquired a store of miscellaneous knowledge from the great Republican; and most interesting among these casual instructions had been the close acquaintance with nature gained in the course of many a rustic ramble in the country lanes beyond Gray's Inn, or sauntering eastward along the banks of the limpid Lee, or in the undulating meadows beside Sir Hugh Middleton's river. Mixed with plain facts about plant or flower, animal or insect, Milton's memory was stored with the quaint absurdities of the Hermetic philosophy, that curious mixture of deep-reaching theories and old women's superst.i.tions, the experience of the peasant trans.m.u.ted by the imagination of the adept. Sound and practical as the poet had ever shown himself-save where pa.s.sion got the upper hand of common sense, as in his advocacy of divorce-he was yet not entirely free from a leaning to Baconian superst.i.tions, and may, with Gesner, have believed that the pickerel weed could engender pike, and that frogs could turn to slime in winter, and become frogs again in spring. Whatever rags of old-world fatuity may have lingered in that strong brain, he had been not the less a delightful teacher, and had imparted an ardent love of nature to his little family of pupils in that peripatetic school between hawthorn hedges or in the open fields by the Lee.

And now, in quiet rambles with Angela, in the midst of a landscape transfigured by that vernal beauty which begins with the waning of April, and is past and vanished before the end of May, Denzil loved to expound the wonders of the infinitesimal; the insect life that sparkled and hummed in the balmy air, or flashed like living light among the dewy gra.s.ses; the life of plant and flower, which seemed almost as personal and conscious a form of existence; since it was difficult to believe there was no sense of struggle or of joy in those rapid growths which shot out from a tangle of dark undergrowth upward to the sunlight, no fondness in the wild vines that clung so close to some patriarchal trunk, covering decay with the beautiful exuberance of youth. Denzil taught her to realise the wonders of creation-most wonderful when most minute-for beyond the picturesque and lovely in nature, he showed her those marvels of order, and law, and adaptation, which speak to the naturalist with a stronger language than beauty.

There was a tranquil pleasure in these rustic walks, which beguiled her into forgetfulness that this man had ever sought to be more to her than he was now-a respectful, un.o.btrusive friend. Of London, and the tumultuous life going on there, he had scarcely spoken, save to tell her that he meant to stand for Henley at the next Parliament; nor had he alluded to the past at Chilton; nor ever of his own accord had he spoken Lord Fareham's name; indeed, that name was studiously avoided by them both; and if Denzil had never before suspected Angela of an unhappy preference for one whom she could not love without sin, he might have had some cause for such suspicion in the eagerness with which she changed the drift of the conversation whenever it approached that forbidden subject.

From his Puritanical bringing up, the theory of self-surrender and deprivation ever kept before him, Denzil had a.s.suredly learnt to possess his soul in patience; and throughout all that smiling month of May, while he whipped the capricious streams that wound about the valley, with Angela for the willing companion of his saunterings from pool to pool, he never once alarmed her by any hint of a warmer feeling than friends.h.i.+p; indeed, he thought of himself sometimes as one who lived in an enchanted world, where to utter a certain fatal word would be to break the spell; and whatever momentary impulse or pa.s.sionate longing, engendered by a look, a smile, the light touch of a hand, the mere sense of proximity, might move him to speak of his love, he had sufficient self-command to keep the fatal words unspoken. He meant to wait till the last hour of his visit. Only when separation was imminent would he plead his cause again. Thus at the worst he would have lost no happy hours of her company. And, in the mean time, since she was always kind, and seemed to grow daily more familiar and at ease in his society, he dared hope that affection for him and forgetfulness of that other were growing side by side in her mind.

In this companions.h.i.+p Angela learnt many of the secrets and subtleties of the angler's craft, as acquired by her teacher's personal experience, or expounded in that delightful book, then less than twenty years old, which has ever been the angler's gospel. Often after following the meandering water till a gentle weariness invited them to rest, Angela and Denzil seated themselves on a sheltered bank and read their Izaak Walton together, both out of the same volume, he pleased to point out his favourite pa.s.sages and to watch her smile as she read.

Before May was ended, she knew old Izaak almost as well as Denzil, and had learnt to throw a fly, and to choose the likeliest spot and the happiest hour of the day for a good trout; had learnt to watch the clouds and cloud-shadows with an angler's keen interest; and had amused herself with the manufacture of an artificial minnow, upon Walton's recipe, devoting careful labour and all the resources of her embroidery basket-silks and silver thread-to perfecting the delicate model, which, when completed, she presented smilingly to Denzil, who was strangely moved by so childish a toy, and had some difficulty in suppressing his emotion as he held the glistening silken fish in his hands, and thought how her tapering fingers had caressed it, and how much of her very self seemed, as he watched her, to have been enwrought with the fabric. So poor, so trivial a thing; but her first gift! If she had tossed him a flower, plucked that moment, he would have treasured it all his life; but this, which had cost her so much careful work, was far more than any casual blossom. Something of the magnetism of her mind had pa.s.sed into the silver thread drawn so daintily through her rosy fingers-something of the soft light in her eyes had mixed with the blended colours of the silk. Foolish fancies these, but in the gravest man's love there is a vein of folly.

Sometimes they rode with Sir John, and in this way explored the neighbourhood, which was rich in historical a.s.sociations-some of the remote past, as when King John kept Christmas at Brill; but chiefly of those troubled times through which Sir John Kirkland had lived, an active partic.i.p.ator in that deadly drama. He showed them the site of the garrison at Brill, and trod every foot of the earthworks to demonstrate how the hill had been fortified. He had commanded in the defence against Hampden and his greencoats-that regiment of foot raised in his pastoral s.h.i.+re, whose standard bore on one side the watchword of the Parliament, "G.o.d with us," and on the other Hampden's own device, "Vestigia nulla retrorsum."

"'Twas a legend to frighten some of us, who had no Latin," said Sir John; "but we put his b.u.mpkin greencoats to the rout, and trampled that insolent flag in the mire."

All was peaceful now in the hamlet on the hill. Women and children were sitting upon sunny doorsteps, with their pillows on their knees and their bobbins moving quickly in dexterous fingers, busy at the lace-making which had been established in Buckinghams.h.i.+re more than a century before by Catherine of Aragon, whose dowry was derived from the revenues of Steeple Claydon. The Curate had returned to the grey old church, and rural life pursued its slumbrous course, scarce ruffled by rumours of maritime war, or plague, or fire. They rode to Thame-a stage on the journey to Oxford, Angela thought, as she noted the figures on a milestone, and at a flash her memory recalled that scene in the gardens by the river, when Fareham had spoken for the first time of his inner life, and she had seen the man behind the mask. She thought of her sister, so fair, so sweet, charming in her capriciousness even, yet not the woman to fill that unquiet heart, or satisfy that sombre and earnest nature. It was not by many words that Fareham had revealed himself. Her knowledge of his character and feelings went deeper than the knowledge that words can impart. It came from that constant unconscious study which a romantic girl devotes to the character of the man who first awakens her interest.

Angela was grave and silent throughout the drive to Thame and the return home, riding for the most part in the rear of the two men, leaving Denzil to devote all his attention to Sir John, who was somewhat loquacious that afternoon, stimulated by the many memories of the troubled time which the road awakened. Denzil listened respectfully, and went never astray in his answers, but he looked back very often to the solitary rider who kept at some distance to avoid the dust.

Sometimes in the early morning they all went with the otter hounds, the Knight on horseback, Denzil and Angela on foot, and spent two or three very active hours before breakfast in rousing the otter from his holt, and following every flash of his head upon the stream, with that briskness and active enjoyment which seem a part of the clear morning atmosphere, the inspiring breath of dewy fields and flowers unfaded by the sun. All that there was of girlishness in Angela's spirits was awakened by those merry morning scampers by the margin of the stream, which had often to be forded by the runners, with but' little heed of wet feet or splashed petticoat. The Parson and his daughters from the village of St Nicholas joined in the sport, and were invited to the morning drink and substantial breakfast afterwards, where the young ladies were lost in admiration of Angela's silver chocolate-pot and porcelain cups, while their clerical father owned to a distaste for all morning drinks except such as owed their flavour and strength to malt and hops.

"If you had lived among green fields and damp marshes as long as I have, miss, you would know what poor stuff your chocolate is to fortify a man's bones against ague and rheumatism. I am told the Spaniards brought it from Mexico, where the natives eat nothing else, from which comes the copper colour of their skins."

Denzi's visit lasted over a month, during which time he rode into Oxfords.h.i.+re twice, to see Lady Warner, stopping a night each time, lest that worthy person should fancy herself neglected.

Sir John derived the utmost pleasure from the young man's company, who bore himself towards his host with a respectful courtesy that had gone out of fas.h.i.+on after the murder of the King, and was rarely met with in an age when elderly men were generally spoken of as "old puts," and considered proper subjects for "bubbling."

To Denzil the old campaigner opened his heart more freely than he had ever done to any one except a brother in arms; and although he was resolute in upholding the cause of Monarchy against Republicanism, he owned to the natural disappointment which he had felt at the King's neglect of old friends, and reluctantly admitted that Charles, sauntering along Pall Mall with ruin at his heels, and the wickedest men and women in England for his chosen companions, was not a monarch to maintain and strengthen the public idea of the divinity that doth hedge a King.

"Of all the lessons danger and adversity can teach he has learnt but one," said Sir John, with a regretful sigh. "He has learnt the Horatian philosophy-to s.n.a.t.c.h the pleasures of the day, and care nothing what may happen on the morrow. I do not wonder that predictions of a sudden end to this globe of ours should have been bruited about of late; for if l.u.s.t and profaneness could draw down fire from heaven, London would be in as perilous a case as Gomorrah. But I doubt such particular judgments belonged but to the infancy of this world, when men believed in a Personal G.o.d, interested in all their concerns, watchful to bless or to punish. We have now but the G.o.d of Spinoza-a G.o.d who is in all things and everywhere about us, of whom this Creation in which we move is but the garment-a Universal Essence which should govern and inform all we are and all we do; but not the Judge and Father of His people, to be reached by prayer and touched by pity."

"Ah, sir, our life here and hereafter is encompa.s.sed with mystery. To think is to be lost on the trackless ocean of doubt. The Papists have the easiest creed, for they believe that which they are taught, and take the mysteries of the unseen world at second hand from their Priests. A year ago, had I been happy enough to win your daughter, I should have tried my hardest to wean her from Rome; but I have lived and thought since then, and I have come to see that Calvinism is a religion of despair, and that the doctrine of Predestination involves contradictions as difficult to swallow as any fable of the Roman Church."

"It is well that you should be prepared to let her keep her religion; for I doubt she has a stubborn affection for the creed she learnt in her childhood. Indeed, it was but the other day she talked of the cloister; and I fear she has all the disposition to that religious prison in which her great aunt lived contentedly for the s.p.a.ce of a long lifetime. But it is for you, Denzil, to cure her of that fancy, and to spare me the pain of seeing my best-beloved child under the black veil."

"Indeed, sir, if a love as earnest as man ever experienced-"

"Yes, Denzil, I know you love her; and I love you almost as if you were my very son. In the years that went by after Hyacinth was born, before the beginning of trouble, I used to long for a son, and I am afraid I did sometimes distress my dear wife by dwelling too persistently upon disappointed hopes. And then came chaos-England in arms, a rebellious people, a King put upon his defence-and I had leisure to think of none but my royal master. And in the thick of the strife my poor lamb was born to me-the bringer of my life's great sorrow-and there was no more thought of sons. So, you see, friend, the place in my heart and home has waited empty for you. Win but yonder shy dove to consent, and we shall be of one family and of one mind, and I as happy as any broken-down campaigner in England can be-content to creep to the grave in obscurity, forgotten by the Prince whose father it is my dear memory to have served."

"You loved your King, sir, I take it, with a personal affection."

"Ah, Denzil, we all loved him. Even the common people-led as they were by hectoring preachers of sedition, of no more truth or honesty than the mountebanks that ply their knavish trade round Henry's statue on the Pont Neuf-even they, the very rabble, had their hours of loyalty. I rode with his Majesty from Royston to Hatfield, in '47, when the people filled the midsummer air with his name, from hearts melting with love and pity. They strewed the ways with boughs, and strewed the boughs with roses. So great honour has been seldom shown to a royal captive."

"I take it that the lower cla.s.s are no politicians, and loved their King for his private virtues."

"Never was monarch worthier to be so esteemed. He was a man of deep affections, and it was perhaps his most fatal quality where he loved to love too much. I have no grudge against that beautiful and most accomplished woman he so wors.h.i.+pped, and who was ever gracious to me; but I cannot doubt that Henrietta Maria was his evil star. She had the fire and daring of her father, but none of his care and affection for the people. The daughter of the most beloved of kings had the instincts of a tyrant, and was ever urging her too pliant husband to unpopular measures. She wanted to set that little jewelled shoe of hers on the neck of rebellion, when she should have held out her soft white hand to make friends of her foes. Her beauty and her grace might have done much, had she inherited with the pride of the Medici something of their finesse and suavity. But he loved her, Denzil, forgave all her follies, her lavish spending and wasteful splendour. 'My wife is a bad housekeeper,' I heard him say once, when she was hanging upon his chair as he sat at the end of the Council table. The palace accounts were on the table-three thousand pounds for a masque-extravagance only surpa.s.sed by Nicholas Fouquet twenty years afterwards, when he was squandering the public money. 'My wife is a bad housekeeper,' his Majesty said gently, and then he drew down the little French museau with a caressing hand, and kissed her in the presence of those greybeards."

"His son is strangely unlike him in domestic matters."

"His son has the manners of a Frenchman and the morals of a Turk. He is a despot to his wife and a slave to his mistress. There never was greater cruelty to a woman than his Majesty's treatment of Catherine while she was still but a stranger in the land, and when he forced his notorious paramour upon her as her lady of honour. Of honour, quotha! There was sorry store of honour in his conduct. He had need feel the sting of remorse t'other day when the poor lady was thought to be on her death-bed-so gentle, so affectionate, so broken to the long-suffering of consort-queens, apologising for having lived to trouble him. Ned Hyde has given me the whole story of that poor lady's subjugation, for he was behind the scenes, and in their secrets. Poor soul! Blood rushed from her ears and nostrils when that shameless woman was brought to her, and she was carried swooning to her chamber. And then she was sullen, and the King threatened her, and sent away all her Portuguese, save one ancient waiting woman. I grant you they were ugly devils, fit to set in a field to frighten crows; but Catherine loved them. Royal treatment for a Christian Queen from a Christian King! Could the Sophy do worse? And presently the poor lady yielded (as most women will, for at heart they are slavish and love to be beaten), and after holding herself aloof for a long time-a sad, silent, neglected figure where all the rest were loud and merry-she made friends with the lady, and even seemed to fawn upon her."

"And now I dare swear the two women mingle their tears when Charles is unfaithful to both; or Catherine weeps while Barbara curses. That would be more in character. Fire and not water is her ladys.h.i.+p's element."

"Ah, Denzil, 'tis a curious change; and to have lived to see Buckingham murdered, and Stafford sacrificed, and the Rebellion, and the Commonwealth, and the Restoration, and the Plague, and the Fire, and to have skirmished in the battles of Parliaments and Princes, t'other side the Channel, and seen the tail of the Thirty Years' War, towns ruined, villages laid waste, where Tilly pa.s.sed in blood and fire, is to have lived through as wild a variety of fortunes as ever madman invented in a dream."

Denzil lingered at the Manor, urged again and again by his host to stay over the day fixed for departure, and so lengthening his visit with a most willing submission till late in June, when the silence of the nightingales made sleep more possible, and the sunset was so late and the sunrise so early that there seemed to be no such thing as night. He had made up his mind to plead for a hearing in the hour of farewell; and it may have been as much from apprehension of that fateful hour as even from the delight of being in his mistress's company that he acceded with alacrity when Sir John desired him to stay. But an end must come at last to all hesitations, and a familiar verse repeated itself in his brain with the persistent iteration of cathedral chimes-

"He either fears his fate too much, Or his desert is small, Who fears to put it to the touch, And win or lose it all."

Sir John pushed him towards his fate with affectionate urgency.

"Never be dastardised by a girl's refusal, man," said the Knight, warm with his morning draught, on that last day, when the guest's horses had been fed for a journey, and the saddle-bags packed. "Don't let a simpleton's coldness cow your spirits. The wench likes you; else she would scarce have endured your long sermons upon weeds and insects, or been smiling and contented in your company all these weeks. Take heart of grace, man; and remember that though I am no tyrannical father to drag an unwilling bride to the altar, I have all a father's authority, and will not have my dearest wishes baulked by the capricious humours of a coquette."

"Not for worlds, sir, would I owe to authority what love cannot freely grant-"

"Don't chop logic, Denzil. You want my daughter; and by G.o.d you shall have her! Win her with pretty speeches if you can. If she turn stubborn she shall have plain English from me. I have promised not to force her inclination; but if I am driven to harsh measures 'twill be for her own good I am severe. Ventregris! What can fortune give her better than a handsome and virtuous husband?"

Angela was in the garden when Denzil went to take leave of her. She was walking up and down beside a long border of June flowers, screened from rough winds by those thick walls of yew which gave such a comfortable sheltered feeling to the Manor gardens, while in front of flowers and turf there sparkled the waters of a long pond or stew, stocked with tench and carp, some among them as ancient and as greedy as the scaly monsters of Fontainebleau.

The sun was s.h.i.+ning on the dark green water and the gaudy flower-bed, and Angela's favourite spaniel was running about the gra.s.s, barking his loudest, chasing bird or b.u.t.terfly with impotent fury, since he never caught anything. At sight of Denzil he tore across the greensward, his silky ears flying, and barked at him as if the young man's appearance in that garden were an insufferable impertinence; but, on being taken up in one strong hand, changed his opinion, and s...o...b..red the face of the foe in an ecstasy of affection.

"Soho, Ganymede, thou knowest I bear thee a good heart, plaything and mere pretence of a dog as thou art," said Denzil, depositing their little bundle of black-and-tan flossiness at Angela's feet.

He might have carried and nursed his mistress's favourite with pleasure during any casual sauntering and random talk; but a man could hardly ask to have his fate decided for good or ill with a toy spaniel in his arms.

"My horse is at the door, Angela, and I am come to bid you good-bye," he said in a grave voice.

The words were of the simplest; but there was something in his tone that told her all was not said. She paled at the thought of an approaching conflict; for she knew her father was against her, and that there must be hard fighting.

They walked the length of flower border and lawn in silence; and then, when they were furthest from the house, and from the hazard of eyes looking out of windows, he stopped suddenly, and took her unresisting hand, which lay cold in his.

"Dearest, I have kept silence through all those blessed days in which you and I have been together; but I have not left off loving you or hoping for you. Things have changed since I spoke to you in London last winter. I have a powerful advocate now whose pleading ought to prevail with you-a father whose anxious affection urges what my pa.s.sionate love so ardently desires. Indeed, dear heart, if you will be kind, you can make a father and lover happy with one breath. You have but to say 'Yes' to the prayer you know of--"

"Alas! Denzil, I cannot. I am your true and faithful friend. If you were sick and alone-as his lords.h.i.+p was-I would go to you and nurse you, as your friend and sister. If you were poor and I were rich, I would divide my fortune with you. I shall always think of you with affection-always take pleasure in your society, if you will let me; but it must be as your sister. You have no sister, Denzil-I no brother. Why cannot we be to each other as brother and sister?"

"Only because from the hour when your beauty and sweetness began to grow into my mind I have been your lover, and nothing else-your adoring lover. I cannot change my fervent hope for the poor name of friend. I can never again dare be to you what I have been in this happy season last past, unless you will let me be more than I have been."

"Alas!"

Only that one word, with a sorrowful shake of the graceful head, covered with feathery ringlets in the dainty fas.h.i.+on of that day, so becoming in youth, so inappropriate to advancing years, when the rich profusion of curls came straight from Chedreux, or some of his imitators, and baldness was hidden by the spoils of the dead.

"Alas!"