London Pride, Or, When the World Was Younger by M. E. Braddon (books to read for beginners TXT) 📖

had better run, Fareham. Take horse to Dover, and get across to Calais or Ostend. You were devilish provoking. It might go hard with you if he was to die."

"I shall not budge, Dangerfield. Didn't you hear me say I wanted to kill him? You might guess I didn't care a cast of the dice for my life when I said as much. Let them find it murder, and hang me. I wanted him out of the world, and don't care how soon I follow."

"You are mad—stark, staring mad!"

The wounded man raised himself on his elbow, groaning aloud in the agony of movement, and beckoned Fareham, who knelt down beside him, all of a piece, like a stone figure.

"Fareham, you had better run; I have powerful friends. There'll be an ugly stir if I die of this bout. Kiss me, mon ami. I forgive you. I know what wound rankled; 'twas for your wife's sister you fought—not the cards."

He sank into Dangerfield's arms, swooning from loss of blood, as Masaroon came back at a run, bringing a surgeon, an elderly man of that Alsatian class which is to be found out of bed in the small hours. He brought styptics and bandages, and at once set about staunching the wound.

While this was happening a curtain had been suddenly pulled aside at an upper window in Lady Castlemaine's lodgings, showing a light within. The window was thrown open, and a figure appeared, clad in a white satin night-gown that glistened in the moonlight, with a deep collar of ermine, from which the handsomest face in London looked across the garden, to the spot where Fareham, the seconds, and the surgeon were grouped about De Malfort.

It was Lady Castlemaine. She leant out of the window and called to them.

"What has happened? Is any one hurt? I'll wager a thousand pounds you devils have been fighting."

"De Malfort is stabbed!" Masaroon answered.

"Not dead?" she shrieked, leaning farther out of the window.

"No; but it looks dangerous."

"Bring him into my house this instant! I'll send my fellows to help. Have you sent for a surgeon?"

"The surgeon is here."

The radiant figure vanished like a vision in the skies; and in three minutes a door was heard opening, and a voice calling, "John, William, Hugh, Peter, every manjack of you. Lazy devils! There's been no time for you to fall asleep since the company left. Stir yourselves, vermin, and out with you!"

"We had best levant, Fareham," muttered Dangerfield, and drew away his principal, who went with him, silent and unresisting, having no more to do there; not to fly the country, however, but to walk quietly home to Fareham House, and to let himself in at the garden door, known to the household as his lordship's.

CHAPTER XVIII. REVELATIONS.

Lord Fareham stayed in his own house by the Thames, and nobody interfered with his liberty, though Henri de Malfort lay for nearly a fortnight between life and death, and it was only in the beginning of December that he was pronounced out of danger, and was able to be removed from Lady Castlemaine's luxurious rooms to his own lodgings. Scandal-mongers might have made much talk of his lying ill in her ladyship's house, and being tenderly nursed by her, had not Lady Castlemaine outlived the possibility of slander. It would have been as difficult for her name to acquire any blacker stain as for a damaged reputation to wash itself white. The secret of the encounter had been faithfully kept by principals and seconds, De Malfort behaving with a chivalrous generosity. He appeared, indeed, as anxious for his antagonist's safety as for his own recovery.

"It was a mistake," he said, when Masaroon pressed him with home questions. "Every man is mad once in his life. Fareham's madness took an angry turn against an old friend. Why, we slept under the same blanket in the trenches before Dunkirk; we rode shoulder to shoulder through the rain of bullets at Chitillon; and to pick a trumpery quarrel with a brother-in-arms!"

"I wonder the quarrel was not picked earlier," Masaroon answered bluntly. "Your courtship of the gentleman's wife has been notorious for the last five years."

"Call it not courtship, Ralph. Lady Fareham and I are old playfellows. We were reared in the pays du tendre, Loveland—the kingdom of innocent attachments and pure penchants, that country of which Mademoiselle Scudéry has given us laws and a map. Your vulgar London lover cannot understand platonics—the affection which is satisfied with a smile or a madrigal. Fareham knows his wife and me better than to doubt us."

"And yet he acted like a man who was madly jealous. His rudeness at the card-table was obvious malice afore-thought. He came resolved to quarrel."

"Ay, he came to quarrel—but not about his wife."

Pressed to explain this dubious phrase, De Malfort affected a fit of languor, and would talk no more.

The town was told that the Comte de Malfort was ill of a quartain fever, and much was said about his sufferings during the Fronde, his exposure to damp and cold in the sea-marshes by Dunkirk, his rough fare and hard riding through the war of the Princes. This fever, which hung about him so long, was an after-consequence of hardship suffered in his youth—privations faced with a boyish recklessness, and which he had paid for with an impaired constitution. Fine ladies in gilded chairs, and vizard-masks in hackney coaches, called frequently at his lodgings in St. James's Street to inquire about his progress. Lady Fareham's private messenger was at his door every morning, and brought a note, or a book, or a piece of new music from her ladyship, who had been sternly forbidden to visit her old friend in person.

"You grow every day a gloomier tyrant!" Hyacinth protested, with more passion in her voice and mien than ever her husband had known. "Why should I not go to him when he is ill—dangerously ill—dying perhaps? He is my old, old friend. I remember no joy in life that he did not share. Why should I not go to him in his sorrow?"

"Because you are my wife, and I forbid you. I cannot understand this passion. I thought you suffered the company of that empty-headed fop as you suffered your lap-dogs—the trivial appendage of a fine lady's state. Had I supposed that there was anything serious in your liking—that you could think him worth anger or tears—should have ordered your life differently, and he would have had no place in it."

"Tyrant! tyrant!"

"You astound me, Hyacinth! Would you dispute the favours of a fop with your young sister?"

"With my sister!" she cried, scornfully.

"Ay, with your sister, whom he has courted assiduously; but with no honourable motive! I have seen his designs."

"Well, perhaps you are right. He may care for Angela—and think her too poor to marry."

"He is a traitor and a villain——"

"Oh, what fury! Marry my sister to Sir Denzil, and then she will be safe from all pursuit! He will bury her alive in Oxfordshire—withdraw her for ever from this wicked town—like poor Lady Yarborough in Cornwall."

"I will never ask her to marry a man she cannot love."

"Why not? Are not you and I a happy couple? And how much love had we for each other before we married? Why I scarce knew the colour of your eyes; and if I had met you in the street, I doubt if I should have recognised you! And now, after thirteen years of matrimony, we are at our first quarrel, and that no lasting one. Come, Fareham, be pleasant and yielding. Let me go and see my old playfellow. I am heartbroken for lack of his company, for fear of his death."

She hung upon him coaxingly, the bright blue eyes looking up at him—eyes that had so often been compared to Madame de Longueville's, eyes that had smiled and beamed in many a song and madrigal by the parlour poets of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. She was exquisitely pretty in her youthful colouring of lilies and roses, blue eyes, and pale gold hair, and retained at thirty almost all the charms and graces of eighteen.

Fareham took her by both hands and held her away from him, severely scrutinising a face which he had always been able to admire as calmly as if it had been on canvas.

"You look like an innocent woman," he said, "and I have always believed you a good woman; and have trusted my honour in your keeping—have seen that man fawning at your feet, singing and sighing in your ear, and have thought no evil. But now that you have told me, as plainly as woman can speak to man, that this is the man you love, and have loved all your life, there must needs come an end to the sighing and singing. You and Henri de Malfort must meet no more. Nay, look not such angry scorn. I impute no guilt; but between innocence and guilt there need be but one passionate hour. The wife goes out an honest woman, able to look her husband in the face as you are looking at me; the wanton comes home, and the rest of her life is a shameful lie. And the husband awakes some day from his dream of domestic peace to discover that he has been long the laughing-stock of the town. I will be no such fatuous husband, Hyacinth. I will wait for no second warning."

Lady Fareham submitted in silence, and with deep resentment. She had never before experienced a husband's authority sternly exercised. She had been forbidden the free run of London play-houses, and some of the pleasures of Court society; but then she had been denied with all kindness, and had been allowed so many counterbalancing extravagances, pleasures, and follies, that it would have been difficult for her to think herself ill-used.

She submitted angrily, passionately regretting the man whose presence had long been the brightest element in her life. Her cheek paled; she grew indifferent to the amusements which had been her sole occupation; she sulked in her rooms, equally avoiding her children and their aunt; and, indeed, seemed to care for no one's society except Mrs. Lewin's. The Court milliner had business with her ladyship every day, and was regaled with cakes and liqueurs in her ladyship's dressing-room.

"You must be very busy about new gowns, Hyacinth," her husband said to her one day at dinner. "I meet the harridan from Covent Garden on the stairs every morning."

"She is not a harridan, whatever that elegant word may mean. And as for gowns, it would be wiser for me to order no new ones, since it is but likely I shall soon have to wear mourning for an old friend."

She looked at her husband, defying him. He rose from the table with a sigh, and walked out of the room. There was war between them, or at best an armed neutrality. He looked back, and saw that he had been blind to the things he should have seen, dull and unobservant where he should have had sense and understanding.

"I did not care enough for my honour," he thought. "Was it because I cared too little for my wife? It is indifference, and not love, that is blind."

Angela saw the cloud that overshadowed Fareham House with deepest distress; and yet felt herself powerless to bring back sunshine. Her sister met her remonstrances with scorn.

"Do you take the part of a tyrant against your own flesh and blood?" she asked. "I have been too tame a slave. To keep me away from the Court while I was young and worth looking at—to deny me amusements and admiration which are the privilege of every woman of quality—to forbid me the play-house, and make a country cousin of me by keeping me ignorant of modern wit. I am ashamed of my compliance."

"Nay, dearest, was it not an evidence of his love that he should desire you to keep your mind pure as well as your face fair?"

"No, he has never loved me. It is only a churlish jealousy that would shut me up in a harem like a Turk's wife, and part me from the friend I like best in the world—with the purest platonic affection."

"Hyacinth, don't be angry with me for being out of the fashion; but indeed I cannot think it right for a wife to care for the company of any other man but her husband."

"And my husband is so entertaining! Sure any woman might be content with