“Tush, child! You have never seen me in ‘anything.’ If ever you should surprise me in an ill gown you will see how much the feathers make the bird. Poets and play-wrights may pretend to believe that we need no embellishment from art; but the very men who write all that romantic nonsense are the first to court a well-dressed woman. And there are few of them who could calculate with any exactness the relation of beauty to its surroundings. That is why women go deep into debt to their milliners, and would sooner be dead in well-made graveclothes than alive in an old-fashioned mantua.”
Angela could not be in her sister’s company for a month without discovering that Lady Fareham’s whole life was given up to the worship of the trivial. She was kind, she was amiable, generous, even to recklessness. She was not irreligious, heard Mass and went to confession as often as the hard conditions of an alien and jealously treated Church would allow, had never disputed the truth of any tenet that was taught her — but of serious views, of an earnest consideration of life and death, husband and children, Hyacinth Fareham was as incapable as her ten-year-old daughter. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to Angela that the child had broader and deeper thoughts than the mother, and saw her surroundings with a shrewder and clearer eye, despite the natural frivolity of childhood, and the exuberance of a fine physique.
It was not for the younger sister to teach the elder, nor did Angela deem herself capable of teaching. Her nature was thoughtful and earnest: but she lacked that experience of life which can alone give the thinker a broad and philosophic view of other people’s conduct. She was still far from the stage of existence in which to understand all is to pardon all.
She beheld the life about her with wonder and bewilderment. It was so pleasant, so full of beauty and variety; yet things were said and done that shocked her. There was nothing in her sister’s own behaviour to alarm her modesty; but to hear her sister talk of other women’s conduct outraged all her ideas of decency and virtue. If there were really such wickedness in the world, women so shameless and vile, was it right that good women should know of them, that pure lips should speak of their iniquity?
She was still more shocked when Hyacinth talked of Lady Castlemaine with a good-humoured indulgence.
“There is something fine about her,” Lady Fareham said one day, “in spite of her tempers and pranks.”
“What!” cried Angela, aghast, having thought these creatures unrecognised by any honest woman, “do you know her — that Lady Castlemaine of whom you have told me such dreadful things?”
“C’est vrai. J’en ai dit des raides. Mon Ange, in town one must needs know everybody, though I doubt that after not returning her visit t’other day, I shall be in her black books, and in somebody else’s. She has never been one of my intimates. If I were often at Whitehall, I should have to be friends with her. But Fareham is jealous of Court influences; and I am only allowed to appear on gala nights — perhaps not a half-dozen times in a season. There is a distinction in not showing one’s self often; but it is provoking to hear of the frolics and jollities which go on every day and every night, and from which I am banished. It mattered little while the Queen-mother was at Somerset House, for her Court ranked higher — and was certainly more refined in its splendour — than her son’s ragamuffin herd. But now she is gone, I shall miss our intellectual milieu, and wish myself in the Rue St. Thomas du Louvre, where the Hôtel du Rambouillet, even in its decline, offers a finer style of company than anything you will see in England.”
“Sister, I fear you left half your heart in France.”
“Nay, sweet; perhaps some of it has followed me,” answered Hyacinth, with a blush and an enigmatic smile. “Peste! I am not a woman to make a fuss about hearts! There is not a grain of tragedy in my composition. I am like that girl in the play we saw at Oxford t’other day. Fletcher’s was it, or Shakespeare’s? ‘A star danced, and under that was I born.’ Yes, I was born under a dancing star; and I shall never break my heart — for love.”
“But you regret Paris?”
“Hélas! Paris means my girlhood; and were you to take me back there to-morrow you could not make me seventeen again — and so where’s the use? I should see wrinkles in the faces of my friends; and should know that they were seeing the same ugly lines in mine. Indeed, Ange, I think it is my youth I sigh for rather than the friends I lived with. They were such merry days: battles and sieges in the provinces, parliaments disputing here and there; Condé in and out of prison — now the King’s loyal servant, now in arms against him; swords clashing, cannon roaring under our very windows; alarm bells pealing, cries of fire, barricades in the streets; and amidst it all, lute and theorbo, bouts rimés and madrigals, dancing and play-acting, and foolish practical jests! One could not take the smallest step in life but one of the wits would make a song about it. Oh, it was a boisterous time! And we were all mad, I think; so lightly did we reckon life and death, even when the cannon slew some of our noblest, and the finest saloons were hung with black. You have done less than live, Angélique, not to have lived in that time.”
Hyacinth loved to ring the changes on her sister’s name. Angela was too English, and sounded too much like the name of a nun; but Angélique suggested one of the most enchanting personalities in that brilliant circle on which Lady Fareham so often rhapsodised. This was the beautiful Angélique Paulet, whose father invented the tax called by his name, La Paulette — a financial measure, which was the main cause of the first Fronde war.
“I only knew her when she was between fifty and sixty,” said Lady Fareham, “but she hardly looked forty; and she was still handsome, in spite of her red hair. Trop doré, her admirers called it; but, my love, it was as red as that scullion’s we saw in the poultry yard yesterday. She was a reigning beauty at three Courts, and had a crowd of adorers when she was only fourteen. Ah, Papillon, you may open your eyes! What will you be at fourteen? Still playing with your babies, or mad about your shock dogs, I dare swear!”
“I gave my babies to the housekeeper’s grand-daughter last year,” said Papillon, much offended, “when father gave me the peregrine. I only care for live things now I am old.”
“And at fourteen thou wilt be an awkward, long-legged wench that will frighten away all my admirers, yet not be worth the trouble of a compliment on thine own account.”
“I want no such stuff!” cried Papillon. “Do you think I would like a French fop always at my elbow as Monsieur de Malfort is ever at yours? I love hunting and hawking, and a man that can ride, and shoot, and row, and fight, like father or Sir Denzil Warner — not a man who thinks more of his ribbons and periwig and cannon-sleeves than of killing his fox or flying his falcon.”
“Oh, you are beginning to have opinions!” sighed Hyacinth. “I am indeed an old woman! Go and find yourself something to play with, alive or dead. You are vastly too clever for my company.”
“I’ll go and saddle Brownie. Will you come for a ride, Aunt Angy?”
“Yes, dear, if her ladyship does not want me at home.”
“Her ladyship knows your heart is in the fields and woods. Yes, sweetheart, saddle your pony, and order your aunt’s horse and a pair of grooms to take care of you.”
The child ran off rejoicing.
“Precocious little devil! She will pick up all our jargon before she is in her teens.”
“Dear sister, if you talk so indiscreetly before her — —”
“Indiscreet! Am I really so indiscreet? That is Fareham’s word. I believe I was born so. But I was telling you about your namesake, Mademoiselle Paulet. She began to reign when Henri was king, and no doubt he was one of her most ardent admirers. Don’t look frightened! She was always a model of virtue. Mademoiselle Scudèry has devoted pages to painting her perfections under an Oriental alias. She sang, she danced, she talked divinely. She did everything better than everybody else. Priests and Bishops praised her. And after changes and losses and troubles, she died far from Paris, a spinster, nearly sixty years old. It was a paltry finish to a life that began in a blaze o
f glory.”
CHAPTER VIII.
SUPERIOR TO FASHION.
At Oxford Angela was so happy as to be presented to Catharine of Braganza, a little dark woman, whose attire still bore some traces of its original Portuguese heaviness; such a dress — clumsy, ugly, infinitely rich and expensive — as one sees in old portraits of Spanish and Netherlandish matrons, in which every elaborate detail of the costly fabric seems to have been devised in the research of ugliness. She saw the King also; met him casually — she walking with her brother-in-law, while Lady Fareham and her friends ran from shop to shop in the High Street — in Magdalen College grounds, a group of beauties and a family of spaniels fawning upon him as he sauntered slowly, or stopped to feed the swans that swam close by the bank, keeping pace with him, and stretching long necks in greedy solicitation.
The loveliest woman Angela had ever seen — tall, built like a goddess — walked on the King’s right hand. She carried a heap of broken bread in the satin petticoat which she held up over one white arm, while with her other hand she gave the pieces one by one to the King. Angela saw that as each hunch changed hands the royal fingers touched the lady’s tapering finger-tips and tried to detain them.
Fareham took off his hat, bowed low in a grave and stately salutation, and passed on; but Charles called him back.
“Nay, Fareham, has the world grown so dull that you have nothing to tell us this November morning?”
“Indeed, sir, I fear that my riverside hermitage can afford very little news that could interest your Majesty or these ladies.”
“A fox gone to ground, an otter killed among your reeds, or a hawk in the sulks, is an event in the country. Anything would be a relief from the weekly total of London deaths, which is our chief subject of conversation, or the General’s complaints that there is no one in town but himself to transact business, or dismal prophecies of a Nonconformist rebellion that is to follow the Five Mile Act.”
The group of ladies stared at Angela in a smiling silence, one haughtier than the rest standing a little aloof. She was older, and of a more audacious loveliness than the lady who carried broken bread in her petticoat; but she too was splendidly beautiful as a goddess on a painted ceiling, and as much painted perhaps.
Angela contemplated her with the reverence youth gives to consummate beauty, unaware that she was admiring the notorious Barbara Palmer.
Fareham waited, hat in hand, grave almost to sullenness. It was not for him to do more than reply to his Majesty’s remarks, nor could he retire till dismissed.
“You have a strange face at your side, man. Pray introduce the lady,” said the King, smiling at Angela, whose vivid blush was as fresh as Miss Stewart’s had been a year or two ago, before she had her first quarrel with Lady Castlemaine, or rode in Gramont’s glass coach, or gave her classic profile to embellish the coin of the realm — the “common drudge ‘tween man and man.”
“I have the honour to present my sister-in-law, Mistress Kirkland, to your Majesty.” The King shook hands with Angela in the easiest way, as if he had been mortal.
“Welcome to our poor court, Mistress Kirkland. Your father was my father’s friend and companion in the evil days. They starved together at Beverley, and rode side by side through the Warwickshire lanes to suffer the insolence of Coventry. I have not forgotten. If I had I have a monitor yonder to remind me,” glancing in the direction of a middle-aged gentleman, stately, and sober of attire, who was walking slowly towards them. “The Chancellor is a living chronicle, and his conversation chiefly consists in reminiscences of events I would rather forget.”
“Memory is an invention of Old Nick,” said Lady Castlemaine. “Who the deuce wants to remember anything, except what cards are out and what are in?”
“Not you, Fairest. You should be the last to cultivate mnemonics for yourself or for your friends. Is your father in England, sweet mistress?”
Angela faltered a negative, as if with somebody else’s voice — or so it seemed to her. A swarthy, heavy-browed man, wearing a dark-blue ribbon and a star — a man with whom his intimates jested in shameless freedom — a man whom the town called Rowley, after some ignominious quadruped — a man who had distinguished himself neither in the field nor in the drawing-room by any excellence above the majority, since the wit men praised has resolved itself for posterity into half a dozen happy repartees. Only this! But he was a King, a crowned and anointed King, and even Angela, who was less frivolous and shallow than most women, stood before him abashed and dazzled.
His Majesty bowed a gracious adieu, yawned, flung another crust to the swans, and sauntered on, the Stewart whispering in his ear, the Castlemaine talking loud to her neighbour, Lady Chesterfield, this latter lady very pretty, very bold and mischievous, newly restored to the Court after exile with her jealous husband at his mansion in Wales.
They were gone; Charles to be button-holed by Lord Clarendon, who waited for him at the end of the walk; the ladies to wander as they pleased till the two-o’clock dinner. They were gone, like a dream of beauty and splendour, and Fareham and Angela pursued their walk by the river, grey in the sunless November.
“Well, sister, you have seen the man whom we brought back in a whirlwind of loyalty five years ago, and for whose sake we rebuilt the fabric of monarchical government. Do you think we are much the gainers by that tempest of enthusiasm which blew us home Charles the Second? We had suffered all the trouble of the change to a Republic; a life that should have been sacred had been sacrificed to the principles of liberty. While abhorring the regicides, we might have profited by their crime. We might have been a free state to-day, like the United Provinces. Do you think we are better off with a King like Rowley, to amuse himself at the expense of the nation?”
“I detest the idea of a Republic.”
“Youth worships the supernatural in anointed kings. Think not that I am opposed to a constitutional monarchy, so long as it works well for the majority. But when England had with such terrible convulsions shaken off all those shackles and trappings of royalty, and when the ship, so lightened, had sailed so steadily with no ballast but common sense, does it not seem almost a pity to undo what has been done — to begin again the long procession of good kings and bad kings, foolish or wise — for the sake of such a man as yonder saunterer?” with a glance towards the British Sultan and his harem.
“England was never better governed than by Cromwell,” he continued. “She was tranquil at home and victorious abroad, admired and feared. Mazarin, while pretending to be the faithful friend of Charles, was the obsequious courtier of Oliver. The finest form of government is a limited despotism. See how France prospered under the sagacious tyrant, Louis the Eleventh, under the soldier-statesman, Sully, under pure reason incarnate in Richelieu. Whether you call your tyrant king or protector, minister or president, matters nothing. It is the man and not the institution, the mind and not the machinery that is wanted.”
“I did not know you were a Republican, like Sir Denzil Warner.”
“I am nothing now I have left off being a soldier. I have no strong opinions about anything. I am a looker on; and life seems little more real to me than a stage play. Warner is of a different stamp. He is an enthusiastic in politics — godson of Horn’s — a disciple of Milton’s, the son of a Puritan, and a Puritan himself. A fine nature, Angela, allied to a handsome presence.”
Sir Denzil Warner was their neighbour at Chilton, and Angela had met him often enough for them to become friends. He had ridden by her side with hawk and hound, had been one of her instructors in English sport, and had sometimes, by an accident, joined her and Henriette in their boating expeditions, and helped her to perfect herself in the management of a pair of sculls.
“Hyacinth has her fancies about Warner,” Fareham said presently, as they strolled along.
There was a significance in his tone that the girl could not mistake; more especially as her sister had not been reticent about those notions to which Fareham alluded.
“Hy
acinth has fancies about many things,” she said, blushing a little.
Fareham noted the slightness of the blush.
“I verily believe that handsome youth has found you adamant,” he said, after a thoughtful silence. “Yet you might easily choose a worse suitor. Your sister has often the strangest whims about marriage-making; but in this fancy I did not oppose her. It would be a very suitable alliance.”
“I hope your lordship does not begin to think me a burden on your household,” faltered Angela, wounded by his cold-blooded air in disposing of her. “When you and my sister are tired of me I can go back to my convent.”
“What! Return to those imprisoning walls; immure your sweet youth in a cloister? Not for the Indies. I would not suffer such a sacrifice. Tired of you! I — so deeply bound! I who owe you my life! I who looked up out of a burning hell of pain and madness and saw an angel standing by my bed! Tired of you! Indeed you know me better than to think so badly of me were it but in one flash of thought. You can need no protestations from me. Only, as a young and beautiful woman, living in an age that is full of peril for women, I should like to see you married to a good and true man — such as Denzil Warner.”
“I am sorry to disappoint you,” Angela answered coldly; “but Papillon and I have agreed that I am always to be her spinster aunt, and am to keep her house when she is married, and wear a linsey gown and a bunch of keys at my girdle, like Mrs. Hubbuck, at Chilton.”
“That’s just like Henriette. She takes after her mother, and thinks that this globe and all the people upon it were created principally for her pleasure. The Americas to give her chocolate, the Indian isles to sweeten it for her, the ocean tides to bring her feathers and finery. She is her own centre and circumference, like her mother.”
“You should not say such an ill thing of your wife, Fareham,” said Angela, deeply shocked. “Hyacinth is not one to look into the heart of things. She has too happy a disposition for grave backward-reaching thoughts; but I will swear that she loves you — ay — almost to reverence.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 949