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

more than an annual six weeks of rustic seclusion to a wife under sixty. Lord Chesterfield was considered as cruel for taking his Countess to the rocks and ravines of Derbyshire as Sir John Denham for poisoning his poor lady."

"Chut! tu vas un peu trop loin, Lewin!" remonstrated Lady Fareham.

"But, in truly, your ladyship, when I hear Mrs. Kirkland talk of a husband who would have her waste her beauty upon clod-polls and dairy-maids, and never wear a mantua worth looking at——"

"I doubt my husband will be guided by his own likings rather than by Mrs. Lewin's tastes and opinions," said Angela, with a stately curtsy, which was designed to put the forward tradeswoman in her place, and which took that personage's breath away.

"There never was anything like the insolence of a handsome young woman before she has been educated by a lover," she said to her ladyship's Frenchwoman, with a vindictive smile and scornful shrug of bloated shoulders, when the sisters had left the parlour. "But wait till her first intrigue, and then it is 'My dearest Lewin, wilt thou make me everlastingly beholden to thee by taking this letter—thou knowest to whom?' Or, in a flood of tears, 'Lewin, you are my only friend—and if you cannot find me some good and serviceable woman who would give me a home where I can hide from the cruel eye of the world, I must take poison.' No insolence then, mark you, Madame Hortense!"

"This demoiselle is none of your sort," Hortense said. "You must not judge English ladies by your maids of honour. Celles là sont des drôlesses, sans foi ni loi."

"Well, if she thinks I am going to make up linsey woolsey, or Norwich drugget, she will find her mistake. I never courted the custom of little gentlemen's wives, with a hundred a year for pin-money. If I am to do anything for this stuck-up peacock, Lady Fareham must give me the order. I am no servant of Madame Kirkland."

* * * * *

Alone in the garden, the sisters embraced again, Lady Fareham with a fretful tearfulness, as of one whose over strung nerves were on the verge of hysteria.

"There is something that preys upon your spirits, dearest," Angela said interrogatively.

"Something! A hundred things. I am at cross purposes with life. But I should have been worse had you been obstinate and still refused this gentleman."

"Why should that affect you, Hyacinth?" asked her sister, with a sudden coldness.

"Chi lo sa? One has fancies! But my dearest sister has been wise in good time, and you will be the happiest wife in England; for I believe your Puritan is a saintly person, the very opposite of our Court sparks, who are the most incorrigible villains. Ah, sweet, if you heard the stories Lewin tells me—even of that young Rochester—scarce out of his teens. And the Duke—not a jot better than the King—and with so much less grace in his iniquity. Well, you will be married at the Chapel Royal, and spend your wedding night at Fareham House. We will have a great supper. His Majesty will come, of course. He owes us that much civility."

"Hyacinth, if you would make me happy, let me be married in our dear mother's oratory, by your chaplain. Sure, dearest, you know I have never taken kindly to Court splendours."

"Have you not? Why, you shone and sparkled like a star, that last night you were ever at Whitehall, Henri sitting close beside you. 'Twas the night he took ill of a fever. Was it a fever? I have wondered sometimes whether there was not a mystery of attempted murder behind that long sickness."

"Murder!"

"A deadly duel with a man who hated him. Is not that an attempt at murder on the part of him who deliberately provokes the quarrel? Well, it is past, and he is gone. For all the colour of the world I live in, there might never have been any such person as Henri de Malfort."

Her airy laugh ended in a sob, which she tried to stifle, but could not.

"Hyacinth, Hyacinth, why will you persist in being miserable when you have so little cause for sadness?"

"Have I not cause? Am I not growing old, and robbed of the only friend who brought gaiety into my life; who understood my thoughts and valued me? A traitor, I know—like the rest of them. They are all traitors. But he would have been true had I been kinder, and trusted him."

"Hyacinth, you are mad! Would you have had him more your friend? He was too near as it was. Every thought you gave him was an offence against your husband. Would you have sunk as low as those shameless women the King admires?"

"Sunk—low? Why, those women are on a pinnacle of fame—courted—flattered—poetised—painted. They will be famous for centuries after you and I are forgotten. There is no such thing as shame nowadays, except that it is shameful to have done nothing to be ashamed of. I have wasted my life, Angela. There was not a woman at the Louvre who had my complexion, nor one who could walk a coranto with more grace. Yet I have consented to be a nobody at two Courts. And now I am growing old, and my poor painted face shocks me when I chance on my reflection by daylight; and there is nothing left for me—nothing."

"Your husband, sister!"

"Sister, do not mock me! You know how much Fareham is to me. We were chosen for each other, and fancied we were in love for the first few years, while he was so often called away from me, that his coming back made a festival, and renewed affection. He came crimson from battles and sieges; and I was proud of him, and called him my hero. But after the treaty of the Pyrenees our passion cooled, and he grew too much the school-master. And when he recovered of the contagion, he had recovered of any love-sickness he ever had for me!"

"Ah, sister, you say these things without thinking them. His lordship needs but some sign of affection on your part to be as fond a husband as ever he was."

"You can answer for him, I'll warrant"

"And there are other claims upon your love—your children."

"Henriette, who is nearly as tall as I am, and thinks herself handsomer and cleverer than ever I was. George, who is a lump of selfishness, and cares more for his ponies and peregrines than for father and mother. I tell you there is nothing left for me, except fine houses and carriages; and to show my fading beauty dressed in the latest mode at twilight in the Ring, and to startle people from the observation of my wrinkles by the boldness of my patches. I was the first to wear a coach and horses across my forehead—in London, at least. They had these follies in Paris three years ago."

"Indeed, dearest?"

"And thou wilt let me arrange thy wedding after my own fancy, wilt thou not, ma très chère?"

"You forget Denzil's hatred of finery."

"But the wedding is the bride's festival. The bridegroom hardly counts. Nay, love, you need fear no immodest fooling when you bid good night to the company; nor shall there be any scuffling for garters at the door of your chamber. There was none of that antique nonsense when Lady Sandwich married her daughter. All vulgar fashions of coarse old Oliver's day have gone to the ragbag of worn-out English customs. We were so coarse a nation, till we learnt manners in exile. Let me have my own way, dearest. It will amuse me, and wean me from melancholic fancies."

"Then, indeed, love, thou shalt have thy way in all particulars."

After this Lady Fareham was in haste to return to the house in order to choose the wedding gown; and here in the panelled parlour they found the two gentlemen, with the dust of the road and the warmth of the noonday sun upon them, newly returned from Aylesbury, where they had ridden in the freshness of the early morning to choose a team of plough-horses at the fair; and who were more disconcerted than gratified at finding the dinner-parlour usurped by Mrs. Lewin, Madame Hortense, and an array of finery that made the room look like a stall in the Exchange.

It was on the stroke of one, yet there were no signs of dinner. Sir John and Sir Denzil were both sharp set after their ride, and were looking by no means kindly on Mrs. Lewin and her wares when Hyacinth and Angela appeared upon the scene.

"Nothing could happen luckier," said Lady Fareham, when she had saluted Denzil, and embraced her father with "Pish, sir! how you smell of clover and new-mown grass! I vow you have smothered my mantua with dust."

Father and sweetheart were called upon to assist in choosing the wedding gown—a somewhat empty compliment on the part of Lady Fareham, since she would not hear of the simple canary brocade which Denzil selected, and which Mrs. Lewin protested was only good enough to make his lady a bed-gown; or of the pale grey atlas which her father considered suitable—since, indeed, she would have nothing but a white satin, powdered with silver fleurs de luces, which she remarked, en passant, would have become the Grande Mademoiselle, had she but obtained her cousin's permission to cast herself away on Lauzun.

"Dear sister, can you consider a fabric fit for a Bourbon Princess a becoming gown for me?" remonstrated Angela.

"Yes, child; white and silver will better become thee than poor Louise, who has no more complexion left than I have. She was in her heyday when she held the Bastille, and when she and Beaufort were two of the most popular people in Paris. She has made herself a laughing-stock since then. That is settled, Lewin"—with a nod to the milliner—"the silver fleurs de luces for the wedding mantua. And now be quick with your samples."

All Angela's remonstrances were as vain to-day as they had been on the occasion of her first acquaintance with Mrs. Lewin. The excitement of discussing and selecting the finery she loved affected Lady Fareham's spirits like a draught of saumur. She was generous by nature, extravagant by long habit.

"Sure it would be a hard thing if I could not give you your wedding clothes, when you are marrying the man I chose for you," she protested. "The cherry-coloured farradine, by all means, Lewin; 'tis the very shade for my sister's fair skin. Indeed, Denzil"—nodding at him, as he stood watching them, with that hopelessly bewildered air of a man in a milliner's shop—"I have been your best friend from the beginning, and, but for me, you might never have won your sweetheart to listen to you. Mazarine hoods are as ancient as the pyramids, Lewin. Pr'ythee show us something newer."

It was late in the evening when the two coaches left the Manor gate. Hyacinth had been in no haste to return to the Abbey. There was nobody there who wanted her, she protested, and there would be a moon after nine o'clock, and she had servants enough to take care of her on the road; so Mrs. Lewin and her ladyship's woman were entertained in the steward's room, where Reuben held forth upon the splendour that had prevailed in his master's house before the troubles—and where the mantua-maker ate and drank all she could get, and dozed and yawned through the old man's reminiscences.

The afternoon was spent more pleasantly by the quality, who sat about in the sunny garden, or sauntered by the fish pond and fed the carp—and took a dish of the Indian drink which the sisters loved, in the pergola at the end of the grass walk.

Hyacinth now affected a passion for the country, and quoted the late Mr.
Cowley in praise of rusticity.

"Oh, how delicious is this woodland valley," she cried.

    "'Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying,
    Hear the soft winds, above me plying,
    With all their wanton boughs dispute.'

Poor Cowley, he might well love the country, for he was shamefully treated in town—a devoted servant to bankrupt royalty for all the best years of his life, and fobbed off with a compliment when the King came into power. Ah me, 'tis an ill world we live in, and London is the most hateful spot in it," she concluded, with a