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

and for whom she would have gladly played a mother's part. She wrote in secret to her sister, entreating her to return to England for her children's sake, and to devote herself to them in retirement at Chilton, leaving the scandal of her elopement to be forgotten in the course of blameless years; so that by the time Henriette was old enough to enter the world her mother would have recovered the esteem of worthy people, as well as the respect of the mob.

Lady Fareham's tardy answer was not encouraging. She had no design of returning to a house in which she had never been properly valued, and she admired that her sister should talk of scandal, considering that the scandal of her own intrigue with her brother-in-law had set all England talking, and had been openly mentioned in the London and Oxford Gazettes. Silence about other people's affairs would best become a young miss who had made herself so notorious.

As for the children, Lady Fareham had no doubt that their father, who had ever lavished more affection upon them than he bestowed upon his wife, might be trusted with the care of them, however abominable his conduct might be in other matters. But in any case her ladyship would not exchange Paris for London, where she had been slighted and neglected at Court as well as at home.

The letter was a tissue of injustice and egotism; and Angela gave up all hope of influencing her sister for good; but not the hope of being useful to her sister's children.

Now, as the short winter days went by, and the preparations for departure were making, she grew more and more urgent with her father to obtain the custody of his grandchildren, and carry them to France with him, where they might be reared and educated under his own eye. Montpelier was the place of exile he had chosen, a place renowned alike for its admirable climate and educational establishments; and where Sir John had spent the previous winter, and had made friends.

It was to Montpelier the great Chancellor had retired from the splendours of a princely mansion but just completed—far exceeding his own original intentions in splendour, as the palaces of new-made men are apt to do—and from a power and authority second only to that of kings. There the grandfather of future queens was now residing in modest state, devoting the evening of his life to the composition of an authentic record of the late rebellion, and of those few years during which he had been at the head of affairs in England. Sir John Kirkland, who had never forgotten his own disappointments in the beginning of his master's restored fortunes, had a fellow-feeling for "Ned Hyde" in his fall.

"As a statesman he was next in capacity to Wentworth," said Sir John, "and yet a painted favourite and a rabble of shallow wits were strong enough to undermine him."

The old Knight confessed that he had ridden out of his way on several occasions when he was visiting Warner's sick-bed, in the hope of meeting Henrietta and George on their ponies, and had more than once been so lucky as to see them.

"The girl grows handsomer, and is as insolent as ever; but she has a sorrowful look which assures me she misses her mother; though it was indeed of that wretch, her father, she talked most. She said he had told her he was likely to go on a foreign embassy. If it is to France he goes, there is an end of Montpelier. The same country shall not hold him and my daughter while I live to protect you."

Angela began to understand that it was his fear, or his hatred of Fareham, which was taking him out of his native country. No word had been said of her betrothal since that fatal night. It seemed tacitly understood that all was at an end between her and Denzil Warner. She herself had been prostrate with a low, nervous fever during a considerable part of that long period of apprehension and distress in which Denzil lay almost at the point of death, nursed by his grief-stricken mother, to whom the very name of his so lately betrothed wife was hateful. Verily the papistical bride had brought a greater trouble to that house than even Lady Warner's prejudiced mind had anticipated. Kneeling by her son's bed, exhausted with the passion of long prayers for his recovery, the mother's thoughts went back to the day when Angela crossed the threshold of that house for the first time, so fair, so modest, with a countenance so innocent in its pensive beauty.

"And yet she was guilty at heart even then," Lady Warner told herself, in the long night-watches, after the trial at Westminster Hall, when Angela's public confession of an unlawful love had been reported to her by her favourite Nonconformist Divine, who had been in court throughout the trial, with Lady Warner's lawyer, watching the proceedings in the interest of Sit Denzil. Lady Warner received the news of the verdict and sentence with unspeakable indignation.

"And my murdered son!" she gasped, "for I know not yet that God 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 shipping," 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 compassionate 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. God 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 shipped 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 embassy. 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 embassy, while those little wretches are pining in a lonely barrack in Oxfordshire."

"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 Buckinghamshire 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 succumbed 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