Angela was interested in everything in that bright world where all things were new. The children piping Christmas hymns in the clear cold morning enchanted her. She ran down to kiss and fondle the smaller among them, and finding them thinly clad promised to make them warm cloaks and hoods as fast as her fingers could sew. Denzil found her there in the wide snowy space before the porch, prattling with the children, bare-headed, her soft brown hair blown about in the wind; and he was moved, as a man must needs be moved by the aspect of the woman that he loves caressing a small child, melted almost to tears by the thought that in some blessed time to come she might so caress, only more warmly, a child whose existence should be their bond of union.
And yet, being both shy and somewhat cold of temperament, he restrained himself, and greeted her only as a friend; for his mother’s influence was holding him back, urging him not to marry a Papist, were she ever so lovely or lovable.
He had known Angela for nearly three months, and his acquaintance with her had reached this point of intimacy, yet Lady Warner had never seen her. This fact distressed him, and he had tried hard to awaken his mother’s interest by praises of the Fareham family and of Angela’s exquisite character; but the Scarlet Spectre came between the Puritan lady and the house of Fareham.
“There is nothing you can tell me about this girl, upon whom I fear you have foolishly set your affection, which can make me forget that she has been nursed and swaddled in the bondage of a corrupt Church, taught to worship idols, and to cherish lying traditions, while the light of God’s holy word has been made dark for her.”
“She is young enough to embrace a purer creed, and to walk by the clearer light that leads your footsteps, mother. If she were my wife I should not despair of winning her to think as we do.”
“And in all the length of England was there no young woman of right principles fit to be thy wife, that thou must needs fall into the snare of the first Popish witch who set her lure for thee?”
“Popish witch! Oh, mother, how ill you can conceive the image of my dear love, who has no witchcraft but beauty, no charm so potent as her truth and innocency!”
“I know them — these children of the Scarlet Woman — and I know their works, and the fate of those who trust them. The late King — weak and stubborn as he was — might have been alive this day, and reigning over a contented people, but for that fair witch who ruled him. It was the Frenchwoman’s sorceries that wrought Charles’s ruin.”
“If thou wouldst but see my Angela,” pleaded the son, with a caressing arm about his mother’s spare shoulders.
“Thine! What! is she thine — pledged and promised already? Then, indeed, these white hairs will go down with sorrow to the grave.”
“Mother, I doubt if thou couldst find so much as a single grey hair in that comely head of thine,” said the son; and the mother smiled in the midst of her affliction.
“And as for promise — there has been none. I have said no word of love; nor
have I been encouraged to speak by any token of liking on the lady’s part.
I stand aloof and admire, and wonder at so much modesty and intelligence in
Lady Fareham’s sister. Let me bring her to see you, mother?”
“This is your house, Denzil. Were you to fill it with the sons and daughters of Belial, I could but pray that your eyes might be opened to their iniquity. I could not shut these doors against you or your companions. But I want no Popish women here.”
“Ah, you do not know! Wait until you have seen her,” urged Denzil, with the lover’s confidence in the omnipotence of his mistress’s charms.
And now on this Christmas Day there came the opportunity Denzil had been waiting for. The weather was cold and bright, the landscape was blotted out with snow; and the lake in Chilton Park offered a sound surface for the exercise of that novel amusement of skating, an accomplishment which Lord Fareham had acquired while in the Low Countries, and in which he had been Denzil’s instructor during the late severe weather. Angela, at her brother-in-law’s entreaty, had also adventured herself upon a pair of skates, and had speedily found delight in the swift motion, which seemed to her like the flight of a bird skimming the steely surface of the frozen lake, and incomparable in enjoyment.
“It is even more delightful than a gallop on Zephyr,” she told her sister, who stood on the bank with a cluster of gay company, watching the skaters.
“I doubt not that; since there is even more danger of getting your neck broken upon runaway skates than on a runaway horse,” answered Hyacinth.
After an hour on the lake, in which Denzil had distinguished himself by his mastery of the new exercise, being always at hand to support his mistress at the slightest indication of peril, she consented to the removal of her skates, at Papillon’s earnest entreaty, who wanted her aunt to walk with her before dinner. After dinner there would be the swift-coming December twilight, and Christmas games, snap-dragon and the like, which Papillon, although a little fine lady, reproducing all her mother’s likes and dislikes in miniature, could not, as a human child, altogether disregard.
“I don’t care about such nonsense as Georgie does,” she told her aunt, with condescending reference to her brother; “but I like to see the others amused. Those village children are such funny little savages. They stick their fingers in their mouths and grin at me, and call me ‘Your annar,’ or ‘Your worship,’ and say ‘Anan’ to everything. They are like Audrey in the play you read to me.”
Denzil was in attendance upon aunt and niece.
“If you want to come with us, you must invent a pretty walk, Sir Denzil,” said Papillon. “I am tired of long lanes and ploughed fields.”
“I know of one of the pleasantest rambles in the shire — across the woods to the Grange. And we can rest there for half an hour, if Mrs. Angela will allow us, and take a light refreshment.”
“Dear Sir Denzil, that is the very thing,” answered Papillon, breathlessly. “I am dying of hunger. And I don’t want to go back to the Abbey. Will there be any cakes or mince pies at the Grange?”
“Cakes in plenty, but I fear there will be no mince pies. My mother does not love Christmas dainties.”
Henriette wanted to know why. She was always wanting the reason of things. A bright inquiring little mind, perpetually on the alert for novelty; an imitative brain like a monkey’s; hands and feet that know not rest; and there you have the Honourable Henrietta Maria Revel, alias Papillon.
They crossed the river, Angela and Denzil each taking an oar, while Papillon pretended to steer, a process which she effected chiefly by screaming.
“Another lump of ice!” she shrieked. “We shall be swamped. I believe the river will be frozen before Twelfth Night, and we shall be able to dance upon it. We must have bonfires and roast an ox for the poor people. Mrs. Hubbuck told me they roasted an ox the year King Charles was beheaded. Horrid brutes — to think that they could eat at such a time! If they had been sorry they could not have relished roast beef.”
Hadley Grange, commonly known as the Grange, was in every detail the antithesis of Chilton Abbey. At the Abbey the eye was dazzled, the mind was bewildered, by an excess of splendour — an over-much of everything gorgeous or beautiful. At the Grange sight and mind were rested by the low tone of colour, the quaker-like precision of form. All the furniture in the house was Elizabethan, plain, ponderous, the conscientious work of Oxfordshire mechanics. On one side of the house there was a bowling green, on the other a physic garden, where odours of medicinal herbs, camomile, fennel, rosemary, rue, hung ever on the surrounding air. There was nothing modern in Lady Warner’s house but the spotless cleanliness; the perfume of last summer’s roses and lavender; the polished surface of tables and cabinets, oak chests and oak floors, testifying to the inexorable industry of rustic housemaids. In all other respects the Grange was like a house that had just awakened from a century of sleep.
Lady Warner rose from her high-backed chair by the chimney corner in the oak parlour, and l
aid aside the book she had been reading, to welcome her son, startled at seeing him followed by a tall, fair girl in a black mantle and hood, and a little slip of a thing, with bright dark eyes and small determined face, pert, pointed, interrogative, framed in swansdown — a small aërial figure in a white cloth cloak, and a scarlet brocade frock, under which two little red shoes danced into the room.
“Mother, I have brought Mrs. Angela Kirkland and her niece to visit you this Christmas morning.”
“Mrs. Kirkland and her niece are welcome,” and Lady Warner made a deep curtsy, not like one of Lady Fareham’s sinking curtseys, as of one near swooning in an ecstasy of politeness, but dignified and inflexible, straight down and straight up again.
“But as for Christmas, ’tis one of those superstitious observances which I have ever associated with a Church I abhor.”
Denzil reddened furiously. To have brought this upon his beloved!
Angela drew herself up, and paled at the unexpected assault. The brutality of it was startling, though she knew, from Denzil’s opinions, that his mother must be an enemy of her faith.
“Indeed, madam, I am sorry that anybody in England should think it an ill thing to celebrate the birthday of our Redeemer and Lord,” she said.
“Do you think, young lady, that foolish romping games, and huge chines of beef, and smoking ale made luscious with spices and roasted pippins, and carol-singing and play-acting, can be the proper honouring of Him who was God first and for ever, and Man only for one brief interval in His eternal existence? To keep God’s birthday with drunken rioting! What blasphemy! If you can think that there is not more profaneness than piety in such sensual revelries — why, it is that you do not know how to think. You would have learnt to reason better had you known that sweet poet and musician, and true thinker, Mr. John Milton, with whom it was my privilege to converse frequently during my husband’s lifetime, and afterwards when he condescended to accept my son for his pupil, and spent three days and nights under this roof.”
“Mr. Milton is still at Chalfont, mother. So you may hope to see him again with a less journey than to London,” said Denzil, seizing the first chance of a change in the conversation; “and here is a little Miss to whom I have promised a light collation, with some of your Jersey milk.”
“Mistress Kirkland and her niece shall have the best I can provide. The larder will furnish something acceptable, I doubt not, although I and my household observe this day as a fast.”
“What, madam, are you sorry that Jesus Christ was born to-day?” asked
Papillon.
“I am sorry for my sins, little mistress, and for the sins of all mankind, which nothing but His blood could wash away. To remember His birth is to remember that He died for us; and that is why I spend the twenty-fifth of December in fasting and prayer.”
“Are you not glad you are to dine at the Abbey to-day, Sir Denzil?” asked
Papillon, by way of commentary.
“Nay, I put no restraint on my son. He can serve God after his own manner, and veer with every wind of passion or fancy, if he will. But you shall have your cake and draught of milk, little lady, and you too, Mistress Kirkland, will, I hope, taste our Jersey milk, unless you would prefer a glass of Malmsey wine.”
“Mrs. Kirkland is as much an anchorite as yourself, mother. She takes no wine.”
Lady Warner was the soul of hospitality, and particularly proud of her dairy. When kept clear of theology and politics she was not an ill-natured woman. But to be a Puritan in the year of the Five Mile Act was not to think kindly of the Government under which she lived; while her sense of her own wrongs was intensified by rumours of over-indulgence shown to Papists, and the broad assertion that King and Duke were Roman Catholic at heart, and waited only the convenient hour to reforge the fetters that had bound England to Rome.
She was fond of children, most of all of little girls, never having had a daughter. She bent down to kiss Henriette, and then turned to Angela with her kindest smile —
“And this is Lady Fareham’s daughter? She is as pretty as a picture.”
“And I am as good as a picture — sometimes, madam,” chirped Papillon.
“Mother says I am douce comme un image.”
“When thou hast been silent or still for five minutes,” said Angela, “and that is but seldom.”
A loud hand-bell summoned the butler, and an Arcadian meal was speedily set out on a table in the hall, where a great fire of logs burnt as merrily as if it had been designed to enliven a Christmas-keeping household. Indeed there was nothing miserly or sparing about the housekeeping at the Grange, which harmonised with the sombre richness of Lady Warner’s grey brocade gown, from the old-fashioned silk mercer’s at the sign of the Flower-de-luce, in Cheapside. There was liberality without waste, and a certain quiet refinement in every detail, which reminded Angela of the convent parlour and her aunt’s room — and contrasted curiously with the elegant disorder of her sister’s surroundings.
Papillon clapped her hands at sight of the large plum cake, the jug of milk, and bowl of blackberry conserve.
“I was so hungry,” she said, apologetically, after Denzil had supplied her with generous slices of cake, and large spoonfuls of jam. “I did not know that Nonconformists had such nice things to eat.”
“Did you think we all lay in gaol to suffer cold and hunger for the faith that is in us, like that poor preacher at Bedford?” asked Lady Warner, bitterly. “It will come to that some day, perhaps, under the new Act.”
“Will you show Mistress Kirkland your house, mother, and your dairy?” Denzil asked hurriedly. “I know she would like to see one of the neatest dairies in Oxfordshire.”
No request could be more acceptable to Lady Warner, who was a housekeeper first and a controversialist afterwards. Inclined as she was to rail against the Church of Rome — partly because she had made up her mind upon hearsay, chiefly Miltonian, that Roman Catholicism was only another name for image-worship and martyr-burning, and partly on account of the favour that had been shown to Papists, as compared with the cruel treatment of Nonconformists — still there was a charm in Angela’s gentle beauty against which the daughterless matron could not steel her heart. She melted in the space of a quarter of an hour, while Denzil was encouraging Henriette to over-eat herself, and trying to persuade Angela to taste this or that dainty, or reproaching her for taking so little; and by the time the child had finished her copious meal, Lady Warner was telling herself how dearly she might have loved this girl for a daughter-in-law, were it not for that fatal objection of a corrupt and pernicious creed.
No! Lovely as she was, modest, refined, and in all things worthy to be loved, the question of creed must be a stumbling-block. And then there were other objections. Rural gossip, the loose talk of servants, had brought a highly coloured description of Lady Fareham’s household to her neighbour’s ears. The extravagant splendour, the waste and idleness, the late hours, the worship of pleasure, the visiting, the singing, and dancing, and junketing, and worst of all, the too-indulgent friendship shown to a Parisian fopling, had formed the subject of conversation in many an assembly of pious ladies, and hands and eyebrows had been uplifted at the iniquities of Chilton Abbey, as second only to the monstrous goings-on of the Court at Oxford.
Almost ever since the Restoration Lady Warner had been living in meek expectancy of fire from heaven; and the chastisement of this memorable year had seemed to her the inevitable realisation of her fears. The fiery rain had come down — impalpable, invisible, leaving its deadly tokens in burning plague spots, the forerunners of death. That the contagion had mostly visited that humbler class of persons who had been strangers to the excesses and pleasures of the Court made nothing against Lady Warner’s conviction that this scourge was Heaven’s vengeance upon fashionable vice. Her son had brought her stories of the life at Whitehall, terrible pictures of iniquity, conveyed in the scathing words of one who sat apart, in a humble lodging, where for him the light of day came not,
and heard with disgust and horror of that wave of debauchery which had swept over the city he loved, since the triumph of the Royalists. And Lady Warner had heard the words of Milton, and had listened with a reverence as profound as if the blind poet had been the prophet of Israel, alone in his place of hiding, holding himself aloof from an idolatrous monarch and a wicked people.
And now her son had brought her this fair girl, upon whom he had set his foolish hopes, a Papist, and the sister of a woman whose ways were the ways of — ! A favourite scriptural substantive closed the sentence in Lady Warner’s mind.
No; it might not be. Whatever power she had over her son must be used against his Papistical syren. She would treat her with courtesy, show her house and dairy, and there an end. And so they repaired to the offices, with Papillon running backwards and forwards as they went along, exclaiming and questioning, delighted with the shining oak floors and great oak chests in the corridor, and the armour in the hall, where, as the sacred and central object, hung the breastplate Sir George Warner wore when he fell at Hopton Heath, dinted by sword and pike, as the enemy’s horse rode him down in the melée. His orange scarf, soiled and torn, was looped across the steel cuirass. Papillon admired everything, most of all the great cool dairy, which had once been a chapel, and where the piscina was converted to a niche for a polished brass milk-can, to the horror of Angela, who could say no word in praise of a place that had been created by the profanation of holy things. A chapel turned into a storehouse for milk and butter! Was this how Protestants valued consecrated places? An awe-stricken silence came upon her, and she was glad when Denzil remembered that they would have barely time to walk back to the Abbey before the two o’clock dinner.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 951