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

her interrogator with an untroubled gaze. When her lips had touched the dirty little book, greasy with the kisses of innumerable perjurers, the Serjeant began to question her in a tone of odious familiarity.

"Now, my dear young lady, here is a gentleman's liberty, and perhaps his life, hanging on the breath of those pretty lips; so I want you to answer a few plain questions with as plain speech as you can command, remembering that you are to tell us the truth, and the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Come, now, dear miss, when you left your father's house on the night of July 4, in this present year, in Lord Fareham's company, did you go with him of your own free will, and with a knowledge of his purpose?"

"I knew that he loved me."

A heart-breaking groan from Sir John Kirkland was hushed down by an usher of the court.

"You knew that he loved you, and that he designed to carry you beyond seas?"

"Yes."

"And you were willing to leave your father's custody and go with the defendant as his paramour?"

There was a pause, and the white cheek crimsoned, and the heavy eyelids fell over agonised eyes.

"I went willingly—because I loved him;" and then with a sudden burst of passion, "I would have died for him, or lived for him. It mattered not which."

"And she has lied for him—has sworn to a lie—and that to her own dishonour!" cried Sir John, beside himself; whereupon he was sternly bidden to keep silence.

There was no intention that this little Buckinghamshire gentleman should be indulged, to the injury of a person of Lord Fareham's wealth and consequence. The favour of the Bench obviously leant towards the defendant.

Fareham's deep tones startled the audience.

"In truth, your Honour, the young lady has belied herself in order to help me," he said. "I cannot accept acquittal at the cost of her good name."

"Your lordship has pleaded not guilty."

"And his lordship's chivalry would revoke that plea," cried the Counsel; "this is most irregular. I must beg that the Bench do order the defendant to keep silence. The witness can stand down."

Angela descended from the witness-box falteringly, and would perhaps have fallen but for her father's strong grasp, which clutched her arm as she reached the last step.

He dragged her out of the close-packed court, and into the open Hall.

"Wanton!" he hissed in her ear, "shameless wanton!"

She answered nothing; but stood where he held her, with wild eyes looking out of a white, rigid countenance. She had done what she had come there to do. Persuaded by Fareham's attorney, who had waited upon her at her lodgings when Sir John was out of the way, she had made her ill-considered attempt to save the man she loved, ignorant of the extent of his danger, exaggerating the potential severity of his punishment, in the illimitable fear of a woman for the safety of the being she loves. And now she cared nothing what became of her, cared little even for her father's anger or distress. There was always the Convent, last refuge of sin or sorrow, which meant the annihilation of the individual, and where the world's praise or blame had no influence.

Her woman fussed about her with a bottle of strong essence, and Sir John dragged rather than led her along the Hall, to the great door where the coach that had carried her from his London lodgings was in waiting. He saw her seated, with her woman beside her, supporting her, gave the coachman his orders, and then went hastily back to the Court of King's Bench.

The Court was rising; the Jury, without leaving their seats, had pronounced the defendant guilty of a misdemeanour, not in conveying Sir John Kirkland's daughter away from her home, to which act she had avowed herself a consenting party; but in detaining her in his house with violence, and in opposition to her father and proper guardian. The Lord Chief Justice expressed his satisfaction at this verdict, and after expatiating with pious horror upon the evil consequences of an ungovernable passion, a guilty, soul-destroying love, a direct inspiration of Satan, sentenced the defendant to pay a fine of ten thousand pounds, upon the payment of which sum he would be set at liberty.

The old Cavalier heard the brief sermon and the sentence, which seemed to him of all punishments the most futile. He had hoped to see his son-in-law sent to the Plantations for life; had been angry at the thought that he would escape the gallows; and for sole penalty the seducer was sentenced to forfeit less than a year's income. How corrupt and venal was a bench that made the law of the land a nullity when a great personage was the law-breaker!

He flung himself in the defendant's way as he left the court, and struck him across the breast with the flat of his sword.

"An unarmed man, Sir John! Is that your old-world chivalry?" Fareham asked, quietly.

A crowd was round them and swords were drawn before the officer could interfere. There were friends of Fareham's in the court, and two of his gentlemen; and Sir John, who was alone, might have been seriously hurt before the authorities could put down the tumult, had not his son-in-law protected him.

"Sheath your swords, if you love me!" he exclaimed, flinging himself in front of Sir John. "I would not have the slightest violence offered to this gentleman."

"And I would kill you if I had the chance!" cried Sir John; "that is the difference between us. I keep no measures with the man who ruined my daughter."

"Your daughter is as spotless a saint as the day she left her Convent, and you are a blatant old fool to traduce her," said Fareham, exasperated, as the Usher led him away.

His detention was no more than a formality; and as he had been previously allowed his liberty upon bail, he was now permitted to return to his own house, where by an order upon his banker he paid the fine, and was henceforward a free man.

The first use he made of his freedom was to rush to Sir John's lodgings, only to hear that the Cavalier, with his daughter and two servants, had left half an hour earlier in a coach-and-four for Buckinghamshire. The people at the lodgings did not know which road they had taken, or at what Inn they were to lie on the way.

"Well, there will be a better chance of seeing her at the Manor than in London," Fareham thought; "he cannot keep so close a watch upon her there as in the narrow space of town lodgings."

CHAPTER XXVII. BRINGERS OF SUNSHINE.

It was December, and the fields and pastures were white in the tardy dawn with the frosty mists of early winter, and Sir John Kirkland was busy making his preparations for leaving Buckinghamshire and England with his daughter. He had come from Spain at the beginning of the year, hoping to spend the remnant of his days in the home of his forefathers, and to lay his old bones in the family vault; but the place was poisoned to him for evermore, he told Angela. He could not stay where he and his had been held in highest honour, to have his daughter pointed at by every grinning lout in hob-nailed shoes, and scorned by the neighbouring quality. He only waited till Denzil Warner should be pronounced out of danger and on the high-road to recovery, before he crossed the Channel.

"There is no occasion you should leave Buckinghamshire, sir," Angela argued. "It is the dearest wish of my heart to return to the Convent at Louvain, and finish my life there, sheltered from the world's contempt."

"What, having failed to get your fancy, you would dedicate yourself to God?" he cried. "No, madam. I am still your father, though you have disgraced me; and I require a daughter's duty from you. Oh, child, I so loved you, was so proud of you! It is a bitter physic you have given me to drink."

She knelt at his feet, and kissed his sunburnt hands shrunken with age.

"I will do whatever you desire, sir. I wish no higher privilege than to wait upon you; but when you weary of me there is ever the Convent."

"Leave that for your libertine sister. Be sure she will finish a loose life by a conspicuous piety. She will turn saint like Madame de Longueville. Sinners are the stuff of which modern saints are made. And women love extremes—to pass from silk and luxury to four-o'clock matins, and the Carmelite's woollen habit. No, Angela, there must be no Convent for you, while I live. Your penance must be to suffer the company of a petulant, disappointed old man."

"No penance, sir, but peace and contentment; so I am but forgiven."

"Oh, you are forgiven. There is that about you with which one cannot long be angry—a creature so gentle and submissive, a reed that bends under a blow. Let us not think of the past. You were a fool—but not a wanton. No, I will never believe that! A generous, headstrong fool, ready with thine own perjured lips to blacken thy character in order to save the villain who did his best to ruin thee. But thou art pure," looking down at her with a severe scrutiny. "There is no memory of guilt in those eyes. We will go away together, and live peacefully together, and you shall still be the staff of my failing steps, the light of my fading eyes, the comfort of my ebbing life. Were I but easy in my mind about those poor forsaken grandchildren, I could leave England cheerfully enough; but to know them motherless—with such a father!"

"Indeed, sir, I believe, however greatly Lord Fareham may have erred, he will not prove a neglectful father," Angela said, her voice growing low and tremulous as she pronounced that fatal name.

"You will vouch for him, no doubt. A licentious villain, but an admirable father! No, child, Nature does not deal in such anomalies. The children are alone at Chilton with their English gouvernante, and the prim Frenchwoman, who takes infinite pains to perfect Henriette's unlikeness to a human child. They are alone, and their father is hanging about the Court."

"At Court! Lord Fareham! Indeed, sir, I think you must be mistaken."

"Indeed, madam, I have the fact on good authority."

"Oh, sir, if you have reason to think those dear children neglected, is it not your duty to protect and care for them? Their poor, mistaken mother has abandoned them."

"Yes, to play the great lady in Paris, where, when I went in quest of her last July—while thou wert lying sick here—hoping to bring back a penitent, I was received with a triumphant insolence, finding her the centre of a circle of flatterers, a Princess in little, with all the airs and graces and ceremonies and hauteur of the French Blood-royal. When I charged her with being Malfort's mistress, and bade her pack her traps and come home with me, she deafened me with her angry volubility. I to slander her—I, her father, when there was no one in Paris, from the Place Royale to the Louvre, more looked up to! But when I questioned my old friends they answered with enigmatical smiles, and assured me that they knew nothing against my daughter's character worse than all the world was saying about some of the highest ladies in France—Madame, to wit; and with this cold comfort I must needs be content, and leave her in her splendid infamy."

"Father, be sure she will come back to us. She has been led into wrong-doing by the artfullest of villains. She will discover the emptiness of her life, and come back to seek the solace of her children's love. Let us care for them meanwhile. They have no other kindred. Think of our sweet Henriette—so rich, so beautiful, so over-intelligent—growing from child to woman in the care of servants, who may spoil and pervert her even by their very fondness."

"It is a bad case, I grant; but I can stir no finger where that man is concerned. I can hold no communication with that scoundrel."

"But your lawyer could claim custody of the children for you, perhaps."

"I think not, Angela, unless there was a criminal neglect of their bodies.
The law takes no account of souls."

Angela's greatest anxiety—now that Denzil's recovery was assured—was for the welfare of these children whom she fondly loved,