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

an elbow in my stomach more often than not. I am come, like Wolsey, girls, to lay my old bones among you. Art thou ready, Angela? Hast thou had enough of London, and play-houses, and parks; and wilt thou share thy father's solitude in Buckinghamshire?"

"With all my heart, sir."

"What! never a sigh for London pleasures? Thou hast the great lady's air and carriage in that brave blue taffety. The nun I knew three years ago has vanished. Can you so lightly renounce the splendour of this house, and your sister's company, to make a prosing old father happy?"

"Indeed, sir, I am ready to go with you."

"How she says that—with what a countenance of woeful resignation! But I will not make the Manor Moat too severe a prison, dearest. You shall visit London, and your sister, when you will. There shall be a coach and a team of stout roadsters to pull it when they are not wanted for the plough. And the Vale of Aylesbury is but a long day's journey from London, while 'tis no more than a morning's ride to Chilton."

"I could not bear for her to be long away from me," said Hyacinth. "She is the only companion I have in the world."

"Except your husband."

"Husbands such as mine are poor company. Fareham has a moody brow, and a mind stuffed with public matters. He dines with Clarendon one day, and with Albemarle another; or he goes to Deptford to grumble with Mr. Evelyn; or he creeps away to some obscure quarter of the town to hob-nob with Milton, and with Marvel, the member for Hull. I doubt they are all of one mind in abusing his Majesty, and conspiring against him. If I lose my sister I shall have no one."

"What, no one; when you have Henriette, who even three years ago had shrewdness enough to keep an old grandfather amused with her impertinent prattle?"

"Grandfathers are easily amused by children they see as seldom as you have seen Papillon. To have her about you all day, with her everlasting chatter, and questions, and remarks, and opinions (a brat of twelve with opinions), would soon give you the vapours."

"I am not so subject to vapours as you, child. Let me look at you, now the candles are lighted."

The footmen had lighted clusters of wax candles on either side the tall chimney-piece.

Sir John drew his elder daughter to the light, and scrutinised her face with a father's privilege of uncompromising survey.

"You paint thick enough, i' conscience' name, though not quite so thick as the Spanish señoras. They are browner than you, and need a heavier hand with white and red. But you are haggard under all your red. You are not the woman I left in '65."

"I am near two years older than the woman you left; and as for paint, there is not a woman over twenty in London who uses as little red and white as I do."

"What has become of Fareham to-night?" Sir John asked presently, when
Hyacinth had picked up her favourite spaniel to nurse and fondle, while
Angela had resumed her occupation at an embroidery frame, and a reposeful
air as of a long-established domesticity had fallen upon the scene.

"He is at Chilton. When he is not plotting he rushes off to Oxfordshire for the hunting and shooting. He loves buglehorns and yelping curs, and huntsmen's cracked voices, far before the company of ladies or the conversation of wits."

"A man was never meant to sit in a velvet chair and talk fine. It is all one for a French Abbé and a few old women in men's clothing to sit round the room and chop logic with a learned spinster like Mademoiselle Scudéry; but men must live sub Jove, unless they are statesmen or clerks. They must have horses and hounds, gun and spaniel, hawk or rod. I am glad Fareham loves sport. And as for that talk of conspiring, let me not hear it from thee, Hyacinth. 'Tis a perilous discourse to but hint at treason; and your husband is a loyal gentleman who loves, and"—with a wry face—"reveres—his King."

"Oh, I was only jesting. But, indeed, a man who so disparages the things other people love must needs be a rebel at heart. Did you hear of Monsieur de Malfort while you were at Paris?"

The inquiry was made with that over-acted carelessness which betrays hidden pain; but the soldier's senses had been blunted by the rough-and-tumble of an adventurer's life, and he was not on the alert for shades of feeling.

Angela accepted her father's return, with the new duties it imposed upon her, as if it had been a decree of Heaven. She put aside all consideration of that refuge which would have meant so complete a renunciation and farewell. On her knees that night, in the midst of fervent prayers, her tears streamed fast at the thought that, secure in the shelter of her father's love, in the peaceful solitude of her native valley, she could look to a far-off future when she and Fareham might meet with out fear of sin, when no cloud of passion should darken his brotherly affection for her; when his heart, now estranged from holy things, would have returned to the faith of his ancestors, reconciled to God and the Church. She could but think of him now as a fallen angel—a wanderer who had strayed far from the only light and guide of human life, and was thus a mark for the tempter. What lesser power than Satan's could have so turned good to evil; the friendship of a brother to the base passion which had made so wide a gulf between them; and which must keep them strangers till he was cured of his sin? Only to diabolical possession could she ascribe the change that had come over him since those happy days when she had watched the slow dawn of health upon his sunken cheeks, when he and she had travelled together through the rich autumn woods, along the pleasant English roads, and when, in the leisure of the slow journey, he had poured out his thoughts to her, the story of his life, his opinions, expatiating in fraternal confidence upon the things he loved and the things he hated. And at Chilton, she looked back and remembered his goodness to her, the pains he had taken in choosing horses for her to ride, their long mornings on the river with Henriette, their hawking parties, and in all his tender brotherly care of her. The change in him had come about by almost imperceptible degrees: but it had been chiefly marked by a fitful temper that had cut her to the quick; now kind; now barely civil; courting her company to-day; to-morrow avoiding her, as if there were contagion in her presence. Then, after the meeting at Millbank, there had come a coldness so icy, a sarcasm so cutting, that for a long time she had thought he hated as much as he despised her. She had withered in his contempt. His unkindness had overshadowed every hour of her life, and the longing to cry out to him "Indeed, sir, your thoughts wrong me. I am not the wretch you think," had been almost too much for her fortitude. She had felt that she must exculpate herself, even though in so doing she should betray her sister. But honour, and affection for Hyacinth, had prevailed; and she had bent her shoulders to the burden of undeserved shame. She had sat silent and abashed in his presence, like a guilty creature.

Sir John Kirkland spent a week at Fareham House, employed in choosing a team of horses, suitable alike for the road and the plough, looking out, among the coachmakers, for a second-hand travelling carriage, and eventually buying a coach of Lady Fanshawe's, which had been brought from Madrid with the rest of her very extensive goods and chattels.

One need scarce remark that it was not one of the late Ambassador's state carriages, his ruby velvet coach, with fringes that cost three hundred pounds, or his brocade carriage, but a coach that had been built for the everyday use of his suite.

Sir John also bought a little plain silver, in place of that fine collection of silver and parcel-gilt which had been so willingly sacrificed to royal necessities; and though he breathed no sigh over past losses, some bitter thoughts may have come across his cheerfulness as he heard of the splendour and superabundance of Lady Castlemaine's plate and jewels, or of the ring worth six hundred pounds lately presented to a pretty actress.

In a week he was ready for Buckinghamshire; and Angela had her trunks packed, and had bid good-bye to her London friends, amidst the chatter of Lady Fareham's visiting-day, and the clear, bell-like clash of delicate china tea-cups—miniature bowls of egg-shell porcelain, without handles, and to be held daintily between the tips of high-bred fingers.

There was a chorus of courteous bewailing at the notion of Mrs. Kirkland's departure.

Sir Ralph Masaroon pretended to be in despair.

"Is it not bad enough to have had the coldest winter my youth can remember? But you must needs take the sun from our spring. Why, the maids of honour will count for handsome when you are gone. What's that Butler says?—

    'The twinkling stars begin to muster,
    And glitter with their borrowed lustre.'

But what's to become of me without the sun? I shall have no one to side-glass in the Ring."

"Indeed, Sir Ralph, I did not know that you ever side-glassed me!"

"What, you have suffered my devotion to pass unperceived? When I have broken half a dozen coach windows in your service, rattling a glass down with a vehemence which would have startled a Venus in marble to turn and recognise an adorer! Round and round the Ring I have driven for hours, on the chance of a look. Nay, marble is not so coy as froward beauty! And at the Queen's chapel have I not knelt at the Mass morning after morning, at the risk of being thought a Papist, for the sake of seeing you at prayers; and have envied the Romish dog who handed you the aspersoir as you went out? And you to be unconscious all the time!"

"Nay, 'tis so much happier for me, Sir Ralph, since you have given me a reserve of gratified vanity that will last me a year in the country, where I shall see nothing but ploughmen and bird-boys."

"Look out for the scarecrows in Sir John's fields, for the odds are you will see me some day disguised as one."

"Why disguised?" asked his friend Mr. Penington, who had lately produced a comedy that had been acted three afternoons at the Duke's Theatre, and one evening at Court, which may be taken as a prosperous run for a new play.

Lady Sarah Tewkesbury held forth on the pleasures of a country life, and lamented that family connections and the necessity of standing well with the Court constrained her to spend the greater part of her existence in town.

"I am like Milton," she said. "I adore a rural life. To hear the cock—

    'From his watchtower in the skies,
    When the horse and hound do rise.'

Oh, I love buttercups and daisies above all the Paris finery in the Exchange; and to steep one's complexion in May-dew, and to sup on a syllabub or a dish of frumenty—so cheap, too, while it costs a fortune but to scrape along in London."

"The country is well enough for a month at hay-making, to romp with a bevy of London beauties in the meadows near Tunbridge Wells, or to dance to a couple of fiddles on the Common by moonlight," said Mr. Penington; whereupon all agreed that Tunbridge Wells, Epsom, Doncaster, and Newmarket were the only country possible to people of intellect.

"I would never go further than Epsom, if I had my will," said Sir Ralph; "for I see no pleasure in Newmarket for a man who keeps no running-horses, and has no more interest in the upshot of a race than he might have in a maggot match on his own dining-table, did he stake high enough on the result."

"But my sister is not to be buried in Buckinghamshire all the year round," explained Hyacinth. "I shall fetch her here half a dozen times in a season; and her shortest visits must be long enough to take the country freshness out of her complexion, and save her from becoming a milkmaid."

"Gud, to see her freckled!" cried Penington. "I could as soon imagine Helen with