Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  A soldier, yes, cela saute aux yeux. He could be nothing else than a soldier. A cavalier of the old school. Albeit younger by half a lifetime than Southampton and Clarendon, and the other ghosts of the troubles.

  Charles treated him with chill civility.

  “Why does the man come here without his wife?” he asked De Malfort. “There is a sister, too, fresher and fairer than her ladyship. Why are we to have the shadow without the sun? Yet it is as well, perhaps, they keep away; for I have heard of a visit which was not returned — a condescension from a woman of the highest rank slighted by a trumpery baron’s wife — and after an offence of that kind she could only have brought us trouble. Why do women quarrel, Wilmot?”

  “Why are there any men in the world, sir? If there were none, women would live together like lambs in a meadow. It is only about us they fight. As for Lady Fareham, she is adorable, though no longer young. I believe she will be thirty on her next birthday.”

  “And the sister? She had a wild-rose prettiness, I thought, when I saw her at Oxford. She looked like a lily till I spoke to her, and then flamed like a red rose. So fresh, so easily startled. ’Tis pity that shyness of youthful purity wears off in a week. I dare swear by this time Mrs. Kirkland is as brazen as the boldest of our young houris yonder,” with a glance in the direction of the maids of honour, the Queen’s and the Duchess’s, a bevy of chatterers, waving fans, giggling, whispering, shoulder to shoulder with the impudentest men in his Majesty’s kingdom; the men who gave their mornings to writing comedies coarser than Dryden or Etherege, and their nights to cards, dice, and strong drink; roving the streets half clad, dishevelled, wanton; beating the watch, and insulting decent pedestrians; with occasional vicious outbreaks which would have been revolting in a company of inebriated coal-heavers, and which brought these fine gentlemen before a too lenient magistrate. But were not these the manners of which St. Evremond lightly sang —

  ”’La douce erreur ne s’appelait point crime;

  Les vices délicats se nommaient des plaisirs.’”

  “Mistress Kirkland has an inexorable modesty which would outlive even a week at Whitehall, sir,” answered Rochester. “If I did not adore the matron I should worship the maid. Happily for the wretch who loves her I am otherwise engaged!”

  “Thou insolent brat! To be eighteen years of age and think thyself irresistible!”

  “Does your Majesty suppose I shall be more attractive at six and thirty?”

  “Yes, villain; for at my age thou wilt have experience.”

  “And a reputation for incorrigible vice. No woman of taste can resist that.”

  “And pray who is Mrs. Kirkland’s lover?”

  “A Puritan baronet. One Denzil Warner.”

  “There was a Warner killed at Hoptown Heath.”

  “His son, sir. A fellow who believes in extempore prayer and republican government; and swears England was never so happy or prosperous as under Cromwell.”

  “And the lady favours this psalm-singing rebel?”

  “I know not. For all I have seen of the two she has been barely civil to him. That he adores her is obvious; and I know Lady Fareham’s heart is set upon the match.”

  “Why did not Lady Fareham return the Countess’s visit?”

  There was no need to ask what Countess.

  “Be sure, sir, the husband was to blame, if there was want of respect for that lovely lady. I can answer for Lady Fareham’s right feeling in that matter.”

  “The husband takes a leaf out of Hyde’s book, and forgets that what may be passed over in the Lord Chancellor, and a man of prodigious usefulness, is intolerable in a person of Fareham’s insignificance.”

  “Nay, sir, insignificance is scarcely the word. I would as soon call a thunderstorm insignificant. The man is a volcano, and may explode at any provocation.”

  “We want no such suppressed fires at Whitehall. Nor do we want long faces; as Clarendon may discover some day, if his sermons grow too troublesome.”

  “The Chancellor is a domestic man; as your Majesty may infer from the size and splendour of his new house.”

  “He is an expensive man, Wilmot I believe he got more by the sale of

  Dunkirk than his master did.”

  “In that case your Majesty cannot do better than shift all the disgrace of the transaction on to his shoulders. Dunkirk will be a sure card to play when Clarendon has to go overboard.”

  That incivility of Lady Fareham’s in the matter of an unreturned visit had rankled deep in the bosom of the King’s imperious mistress. To sin more boldly than woman ever sinned, and yet to claim all the privileges and honours due to virtue was but a trifling inconsistency in a mind so fortified by pride that it scarce knew how to reckon with shame. That she, in her supremacy of beauty and splendour, a fortune sparkling in either ear, the price of a landed estate on her neck — that she, Barbara, Countess of Castlemaine, should have driven in a windowless coach through dusty lanes, eating dirt, as it were, with her train of court gallants on horseback at her coach doors, her ladies in a carriage in the rear, to visit a person of Lady Fareham’s petty quality, a Buckinghamshire Knight’s daughter married to a Baron of Henry the Eighth’s creation! And that this amazing condescension — received with a smiling and curtsying civility — should have been unacknowledged by any reciprocal courtesy was an affront that could hardly be wiped out with blood. Indeed, it could never be atoned for. The wound was poisoned, and would rankle and fester to the end of that proud life.

  Yet on Fareham’s appearance at Whitehall Lady Castlemaine distinguished with a marked civility, and even condescended, smilingly, as if there were no cause of quarrel, to inquire after his wife.

  “Her ladyship is as pretty as ever, though we are all growing old,” she said. “We exchanged curtsies at Tunbridge Wells the other day. I wonder how it is we never get further than smiles and curtsies? I should like to show the dear woman some more substantial civility. She is buried alive in your stately house by the river, for the want of an influential friend to show her the world we live in.”

  “Indeed, madam, my wife has all the pleasure she desires — her visiting-day, her friends.”

  “And her admirers. Rochester is always hanging about your garden, or landing from his wherry, when I go by; or, if he himself be not visible, there are a couple of his watermen on your steps.”

  “My Lord Rochester has a precocious wit which amuses my wife and her sister.”

  “And then there is De Malfort — an impertinent, second only to Gramont. He and Lady Fareham are twin stars. I have seldom seen them apart.”

  “Since De Malfort has the honour of being somewhat intimate with your ladyship, he has doubtless given you full particulars of his friendship for my wife. I assure you it will bear being talked about. There are no secrets in it.”

  “Really; I thought I had heard something about a sedan which took the wrong road after Killigrew’s play. But that was the night before the fire. Good God! my lord, your face darkens as if a man had struck you. Whatever happened before the fire should have been burnt out of our memories by this time.”

  “I see his Majesty looking this way, madam, and I have not yet paid my respects to him,” Fareham said, moving away, but a dazzling hand on his sleeve arrested him.

  “Oh, your respects will keep; he has Miss Stewart giggling at his elbow. Strange, is it not, that a woman with as much brain as a pigeon can amuse a man who reckons himself both wise and witty?”

  “It is not the lady who amuses the gentleman, madam. She has the good sense to pretend that he amuses her.”

  “And no more understands a jest than she does Hebrew.”

  “She is conscious of pretty teeth and an enchanting smile. Wit or understanding would be superfluous,” answered Fareham, bowing his adieu to the Sultana in chief.

  There was a great assembly, with music and dancing, on the Queen’s birthday, to which Lord and Lady Fareham and Mistress Kirkland were invited; and again Angela saw and wond
ered at the splendid scene, and at this brilliant world, which calamity could not touch. Pestilence had ravaged the city, flames had devoured it — yet here there were only smiling people, gorgeous dress, incomparable jewels. The plague had not touched them, and the fire had not reached them. Such afflictions are for the common herd. Angela promenaded with De Malfort in the spacious banqueting-hall, with its ceiling of such prodigious height that the apotheosis of King James, and all the emblematical figures, triumphal cars, lions, bears and rams, corn-sheaves and baskets of fruit, which filled the panels, might as well have been executed by a sign-painter’s rough-and-ready brush, as by the pencil of the great Fleming.

  “We are a little kinder to Rubens at the Louvre,” said De Malfort, noting her upward gaze; “for we allow his elaborate glorification of his Majesty’s grandfather and grandmother about half a mile of wall. But I forgot, you have not seen Paris, nor those acres of gaudy colouring which Henri’s vanity inflicted upon us. Florentine Marie, with her carnation cheeks and opulent shoulders — the Roman-nosed Béarnais, with his pointed beard and stiff ruff. Mon Dieu, how the world has changed since Ravaillac’s knife snapped that valiant life! And you have never seen Paris? You look about you with wide-open eyes, and take this crowd, this ceiling, those candlebra for splendour.”

  “Can there be a scene more splendid?” asked Angela, pleased to keep him by her side, rather than see him devote himself to her sister; grateful for his attention in that crowd where most people were strangers, and where Lord Fareham had not vouchsafed the slightest notice of her.

  “When you have seen the Louvre, you will wonder that any King, with a sense of his own consequence in the world, can inhabit such a hovel as Whitehall — this congeries of shabby apartments, the offices of servants, the lodgings of followers and dependents, soldiers and civilians — huddled in a confused labyrinth of brick and stone — redeemed from squalor only by one fine room. Could you see the grand proportions, the colossal majesty of the great Henri’s palace — that palace whose costly completion sat heavy upon Sully’s careful soul! Henri loved to build — and his grandson, Louis, inherits that Augustan taste.”

  “You were telling us of a new palace at Versailles — —”

  “A royal city in stone — white — dazzling — grandiose. The mortar was scarcely dry when I was there in March; but you should have seen the mi-careme ball. The finest masquerade that was ever beheld in Europe. All Paris came in masks to see that magnificent spectacle. His Majesty allowed entrance to all — and those who came were feasted at a banquet which only Rabelais could fairly describe. And then with our splendour there is an elegant restraint — a decency unknown here. Compare these women — Lady Shrewsbury yonder, Lady Chesterfield, the fat woman in sea-green and silver — Lady Castlemaine, brazen in orange velvet and emeralds — compare them with Condé’s sister, with the Duchesse de Bouillon, the Princess Palatine — —”

  “Are those such good women?”

  “Humph! They are ladies. These are the kind of women King Charles admires. They are as distinct a race as the dogs that lie in his bed-chamber, and follow him in his walks, a species of his own creation. They do not even affect modesty. But I am turning preacher, like Fareham. Come, there is to be an entertainment in the theatre. Roxalana has returned to the stage — and Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer, is to perform.”

  They followed the crowd, and De Malfort remained at Angela’s side till the end of the performance, and attended her to the supper-table afterwards. Fareham watched them from his place in the background. He stood ever aloof from the royal focus, the beauty, and the wit, the most dazzling jewels, the most splendid raiment. He was amidst the Court, but not of it.

  Yes; the passion which these two entertained for each other was patent to every eye; but had it been an honourable attachment upon De Malfort’s side, he would have declared himself before now. He would not have abandoned the field to such a sober suitor as Denzil. Henri de Malfort loved her, and she fed his passion with her sweetest smiles, the low and tender tones of the most musical voice Fareham had ever listened to.

  “The voice that came to me in my desolation — the sweetest sound that ever fell on a dying man’s ear,” he thought, recalling those solitary days and nights in the plague year, recalling those vanished hours with a fond longing, “that arm which shows dazzling white against the purple velvet of his sleeve is the arm that held up my aching head, in the dawn of returning reason; those are the eyes that looked down upon mine, so pitiful, so anxious for my recovery. Oh, lovely angel, I would be a leper again, a plague-stricken wretch, only to drink a cup of water from that dear hand — only to feel the touch of those light fingers on my forehead! There was a magic in that touch that surpassed the healing powers of kings. There was a light as of heaven in those benignant eyes. But, oh, she is changed since then. She is plague-stricken with the contagion of a profligate age. Her wings are scorched by the fire of this modish Tophet She has been taught to dress and look like the women around her — a little more modest — but after the same fashion. The nun I worshipped is no more.”

  Some one tapped him on the shoulder with an ostrich fan. He turned, and saw

  Lady Castlemaine close at his elbow.

  “Image of gloom, will you lead me to my rooms?” she asked, in a curious voice, her dark blue eyes deepened by the pallor that showed through her rouge.

  “I shall esteem myself too much honoured by that office,” he answered, as she took his arm and moved quickly, with hurried footsteps, through the lessening throng.

  “Oh, there is no one to dispute the honour with you. Sometimes I have a mob to hustle me to my lodgings, borne on the current of their adulation — sometimes I move through a desert, as I do to-night. Your face attracted me — for I believe it is the only one at Whitehall as gloomy as my own — unless there are some of my creditors, men to whom I owe gaming debts.”

  It was curious to note that subtle change in the faces of those they passed, which Barbara Palmer knew so well — faces that changed, obedient to the weathercock of royal caprice — the countenances of courtiers who even yet had not learnt justly to weigh the influence of that imperial favourite, or to understand that she ruled their King with a power which no transient fancy for newer faces could undermine. A day or two in the sulks, frowns and mournful looks for gossip Pepys to jot down in his diary, and the next day the sun would be shining again, and the King would be at supper with “the lady.”

  Perhaps Lady Castlemaine knew that her empire was secure; but she took these transient fancies moult serieusement. Her jealous soul could tolerate no rival — or it may be that she really loved the King. He had given himself to her in the flush of his triumphant return, while he was still young enough to feel a genuine passion. For her sake he had been a cruel husband, an insolent tyrant to an inoffensive wife; for her sake he had squandered his people’s money, and outraged every moral law; and it may be that she remembered these things, and hated him the more fiercely for them when he was inconstant. She was a woman of extremes, in whose tropical temperament there was no medium between hatred and love.

  “You will sup with me, Fareham?” she said, as he waited on the threshold of her lodgings, which were in a detached pile of buildings, near the Holbein Gateway, and looking upon an enclosed and somewhat gloomy garden.

  “Your ladyship will excuse me. I am expected at home.”

  “What devil! Perhaps you think I am inviting you to a tête-à-tête. I shall have some company, though the drove have gone to the Stewarts’ in a hope of getting asked to supper — which but a few of them can realise in her mean lodgings. You had better stay. I may have Buckhurst, Sedley, De Malfort, and a few more of the pretty fellows — enough to empty your pockets at basset.”

  “Your ladyship is all goodness,” said Fareham, quickly.

  De Malfort’s name had decided him. He followed his hostess through a crowd of lackeys, a splendour of wax candles, to her saloon, where she turned and flashed upon him a glorious pictu
re of mature loveliness, her complexion the peach in its ripest bloom, the orange sheen of her velvet mantua shining out against a background of purple damask curtains embroidered with gold.

  The logs blazed and roared in the wide chimney. Warmth, opulence, hospitality, were all expressed in the brilliantly lighted room, where luxurious fauteuils, after the new French fashion, stood about, ready to receive her ladyship’s guests.

  These were not long waited for. There was no crowd. Less than twenty men, and about a dozen women, were enough to add an air of living gaiety to the brilliancy of light and colour. De Malfort was the last who entered. He kissed her ladyship’s hand, looked about him, and recognised Fareham with open wonder.

  “An Israelite in the house of Dagon!” he said, sotto voce, as he

  approached him. “What, Fareham, have you given your neck to the yoke?

  Do you yield to the charm which has subjugated such lighter natures as

  Villiers and Buckhurst?”

  “It is only human to love variety. You have discovered the charm of youth and innocence.”

  “Do you think it needs a modish Columbus to discover that? We all worship innocence, were it but for its rarity, as we esteem a black pearl or a yellow diamond above a white one. Jarni, but I am pleased to see you here! It is the most human thing I have known of you since you recovered of the contagion; for you have been a gloomier man from that time.”

  “Be assured I am altogether human — at least upon the worser side of humanity.”

  “How dismal you look! Upon my soul, Fareham, you should fight against that melancholic habit. Her ladyship is in the black sulks. We are in for a pleasant evening. Yet, if we were to go away, she would storm at us to-morrow; call us sycophants and time-servers, swear she would hold no further commerce with any manjack among our detestable crew. Well, she is a magnificent termagant. If Cleopatra was half as handsome, I can forgive Antony for following her to ruin at Actium.”