London Pride Or When the World Was Younger Part 50

"And my murdered son!" she gasped, "for I know not yet that G.o.d will hear my prayers and raise him up to me again. Is his blood to count for nothing-or his sufferings-his patient sufferings on that bed? A fine-a paltry fine-a trifle for a rich man. I would pay thrice as much, though it beggared me, to see him sent to the Plantations. O Judge and Avenger of Israel! Thou hast scourged us with pestilence, and punished us with fire; but Thou hast not convinced us of sin. The world is so sunk in wickedness that murder scarce counts for crime."

The day of terror was past. Denzil's convalescence was proceeding slowly, but without retrograde stages. His youth and temperate habits had helped his recovery from a wound which in the earlier stages looked fatal. He was now able to sit up in an armchair, and talk to his visitor, when Sir John rode twenty miles to see him; but only once did his lips shape the name that had been so dear, and that occasion was at the end of a visit which Sir John announced as the last.

"Our goods are packed and ready for s.h.i.+pping," he said. "My daughter and I will begin our journey to Montpelier early next week."

It was the first time Sir John had spoken of his daughter in that sick-room.

"If she should ever talk of me, in the time to come," Denzil said-speaking very slowly, in a low voice, as if the effort, mental and physical, were almost beyond his strength, and holding the hand which Sir John had given him in saying good-bye-"tell her that I shall ever remember her with a compa.s.sionate affection-ever hold her the dearest and loveliest of women-yes, even if I should marry, and see the children of some fair and chaste wife growing up around me. She will ever be the first. And tell her that I know she forswore herself in the court; and that she was the innocent dupe of that villain-never his consenting companion. And tell her that I pity her even for that so misplaced affection which tempted her to swear to a lie. I knew, sir, always, that she loved him and not me. Yes, from the first. Indeed, sir, it was but too easy to read that unconscious beginning of unholy love, which grew and strengthened like some fatal disease. I knew, but nursed the fond hope that I could win her heart-in spite of him. I fancied that right must prevail over wrong; but it does not, you see, sir, not always-not--" A faintness came over him; whereupon his mother, re-entering the room at this moment, ran to him and restored him with the strong essence that stood handy among the medicine bottles on the table by his chair.

"You have suffered him to talk too much," she said, glancing angrily at Sir John. "And I'll warrant he has been talking of your daughter-whose name must be poison to him. G.o.d knows 'tis worse than poison to me!"

"Madam, I did not come to this house to hear my daughter abused--"

"It would have better become you, Sir John Kirkland, to keep away from this house."

"Mother, silence! You distress me worse than my illness--"

"This, madam, is my farewell visit. You will not be plagued any more with me," said Sir John, lifting his hat, and bowing low to Lady Warner.

He was gone before she could reply.

The baggage was ready-clothes, books, guns, plate, and linen-all necessaries for an exile that might last for years, had been packed for the sea voyage; but the trunks and bales had not yet been placed in the waggon that was to convey them to the Tower Wharf, where they were to be s.h.i.+pped in one of the orange-boats that came at this season from Valencia, laden with that choice and costly fruit, and returned with a heterogeneous cargo. At Valencia the goods would be put on board a Mediterranean coasting vessel, and landed at Cette.

Sir John began to waver about his destination after having heard from Henriette of her father's possible emba.s.sy. Certainly if Fareham were to be employed in foreign diplomacy, Paris seemed a likely post for a man who was so well known there, and had spent so much of his life in France. And if Fareham were to be at Paris, Sir John considered Montpelier, remote as it was from the capital, too near his enemy.

"He has proved himself an indomitable villain," thought the Knight. "And I could not always keep as close a watch upon my daughter as I have done in the last six weeks. No. If Fareham be for France, I am for some other country. I might take her to Florence, and put the Apennines between her and that daring wretch."

It may be, too, that Sir John had another reason for lingering, after all was ready for the journey. He may have been much influenced by Angela's concern about his grandchildren, and may have hesitated at leaving them alone in England with only salaried guardians.

"Their father concerns himself very little about them, you see," he told Angela, "since he can entertain the project of a foreign emba.s.sy, while those little wretches are pining in a lonely barrack in Oxfords.h.i.+re."

"Indeed, sir, he is a fond father. I would wager my life that he is deeply concerned about them."

"Oh, he is an angel, on your showing! You would blacken your sister's character to make him a saint."

The next day was fine and sunny, a temperature as of April, after the morning frost had melted. There was a late rose or two still lingering in the sheltered Buckinghams.h.i.+re valley, though it wanted but a fortnight of Christmas. Angela and her father were sitting in a parlour that faced the iron gates. Since their return from London Sir John had seemed uneasy when his daughter was out of his sight; and she, perceiving his watchfulness and trouble, had been content to abandon her favourite walks in the lanes and woods and to the "fair hill of Brill," whence the view was so lovely and so vast, on one side reaching to the Welsh mountains, and on another commanding the nearer prospect of "the great fat common of Ottmoor," as Aubrey calls it, "which in some winters is like a sea of waters." For her father's comfort, noting the sad wistful eyes that watched her coming in and going out, she had resigned herself to spend long melancholy hours within doors, reading aloud till Sir John fell asleep, playing backgammon-a game she detested worse even than shove-halfpenny, which latter primitive game they played sometimes on the shovel-board in the hall. Life could scarcely be sadder than Angela's life in those grey winter days; and had it not been for an occasional ride across country with her father, health and spirits must alike have succ.u.mbed to this monotony of sadness.

This morning, as on many mornings of late, the subject of the boy and girl at Chilton had been discussed with the Knight's tankard of home-brewed and his daughter's chocolate.

"Indeed, sir, it would be a cruel thing for us to abandon them. At Montpelier we shall be a fortnight's journey from England; and if either of those dear creatures should fall ill, dangerously ill, perhaps, their father beyond the seas, and we, too, absent-oh, sir, figure to yourself Henriette or George dying among strangers! A cold or a fever might carry them off in a few days; and we should know nothing till all was over."

Sir John groaned and paced the room, agitated by the funereal image.

"Why, what a raven thou art, ever to croak dismal prophecies. The children are strong and well, and have careful custodians. I can have no dealings with their father. Must I tell you that a hundred times, Angela? He is a consummate villain: and were it not that I fear to make a bigger scandal, he or I should not have survived many hours after that iniquitous sentence."

A happy solution of this difficulty, which distressed the Knight much more than his stubbornness allowed him to admit, was close at hand that morning, while Angela bent over her embroidery frame, and her father spelt through the last London Gazette that the post had brought him.

The clatter of hoofs and roll of wheels announced a visit; and while they were looking at the gate, full of wonder, since their visitors were of so small a number, a footman in the Fareham livery pulled the iron ring that hung by a chain from the stone pillar, and the bell rang loud and long in the frosty air. The Fareham livery! Twice before the Fareham coaches and liveries had taken that quiet household by surprise; but to-day terror rather than surprise was in Angela's mind as she stood in front of the window looking at the gate.

Could Fareham be so rash as to face her father, so daring as to seek a farewell interview on the eve of departure? No, she told herself; such folly was impossible. The visitor could be but one person-Henriette. Even a.s.sured of this in her own mind, she did not rush to welcome her niece, but stood as if turned to stone, waiting for the opening of the gate.

Old Reuben, having seen the footman, went himself to admit the visitors, with his grandson and slave in attendance.

"It must be her little ladys.h.i.+p," he said, taking his young mistress's view of the case. "Lord Fareham would never dare to show his deceiving face here."

A shrill voice greeted him from the coach window before he reached the gate.

"You are the slowest old wretch I ever saw!" cried the voice. "Don't you know that when visitors of importance come to a house they expect to be let in? I vow a convent gate would be opened quicker."

"Indeed, your ladys.h.i.+p, when your legs are as old as mine--"

"Which I hope they never will be," muttered Henriette, as she descended with a languid slowness from the coach, a.s.sisted on either side by a footman; while George, who could not wait for her airs and graces, let himself out at the door on the off side just as Reuben succeeded in turning the key.

"So you are old Reuben!" he said, patting the butler on the shoulder with the gold hilt of his riding-whip. "And you were here, like a vegetable, all through the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth?"

"Yes, your lords.h.i.+p, from the raising of Hampden's regiment."

"Ah, you shall tell me all about it over a pipe and a bottle. You must be vastly good company. I am come to live here."

"To live here, your honour?"

"Yes; sister and I are to live here while my father represents his Majesty beyond seas. I hope you have good stabling and plenty of room. My ponies and Mistress Henriette's Arab horse will be here to-morrow. I doubt I shall have to build a place for my hawks; but I suppose Sir John will find me a cottage for my Dutch falconer."

"Lord, how the young master do talk!" exclaimed Reuben, with an admiring grin.

The boy was so rapid in his speech, had such vivacity and courage in his face, such a spring in every movement, as if he had quicksilver in his veins, Reuben thought; but it was only the quicksilver of youth, that Divine ichor which lasts for so brief a season.

"It made me feel twenty years younger only to hear him prattle," Reuben said afterwards.

Sir John and his daughter had come to meet the children by this time, and there were fond embracings, in the midst of which Henriette withdrew herself from her grandfather's arms, and retired a couple of paces, in order to drop him the Jennings curtsy, sinking almost to the ground, and then rising from billows of silk, like Venus from the sea, and handing him a letter, with a circular sweep of her arm, learnt in London from her Parisian dancing mistress, an apprentice of St. Andre's, not from the shabby little French cut-caper from Oxford.

"My father sends you this letter, sir."

"Is your father at Chilton?"

"No, sir. He was with us the day before yesterday, to bid us good-bye before he started upon his foreign emba.s.sy," replied Henriette, struggling with her tears, lest she should seem a child, and not the woman of fas.h.i.+on she aspired to be. "He left us early in the afternoon to ride back to London, and he takes barge this afternoon to Gravesend, to embark for Archangel, on his way to Moscow. I doubt you know he is to be his Majesty's Amba.s.sador at Muscovy?"

"I know nothing but what you told me t'other day, Henriette," the Knight answered, as they went to the house, where George began to run about on an exploration of corridors, and then escaped to the stables, while Henriette stood in front of the great wood fire, and warmed her hands in a stately manner.

Angela had found no words of welcome for her niece yet. She only hugged and kissed her, and now occupied herself unfastening the child's hood and cloak. "How your hands shake, auntie. You must be colder than I am; though that leathern coach lets in the wind like a sieve. I suppose my people will know where to dispose themselves?" she added, resuming her grand air.

"Reuben will take care of them, dearest."

"Why, your voice shakes like your hands; and oh, how white you are. But you are glad to see us, I hope?"

"Gladder than I can say, Henriette."