CHAPTER VI.
BETWEEN LONDON AND OXFORD.
Three nights and days had gone since Angela first set her foot upon thethreshold of Fareham House, and in all that time she had not once gone outinto the great city, where dismal silence reigned by day and night, savefor the hideous cries of the men with the dead-carts, calling to theinhabitants of the infected houses to bring out their dead, and roaringtheir awful summons with as automatic a monotony as if they had beenhawking some common necessary of life--a dismal cry that was butoccasionally varied by the hollow tones of a Puritan fanatic, stalking,gaunt and half clad, along the Strand, and shouting some sentence of fatalbodement from the Hebrew prophets; just as before the siege of Titus therewalked through the streets of Jerusalem one who cried, "Woe to the wickedcity!" and whose voice could not be stopped but by death.
In those three days and nights the worst symptoms of the contagion weresubjugated. But the ravages of the disease had left the patient in astate of weakness which bordered on death; and his nurses were full ofapprehension lest the shattered forces of his constitution should fail evenin the hour of recovery. The violence of the fever was abated, and thedelirium had become intermittent, while there were hours in which thesufferer was conscious and reasonable, in which calmer intervals he wouldfain have talked with Angela more than her anxiety would allow.
He was full of wonder at her presence in that house; and when he had beentold who she was, he wanted to know how and why she had come there. By whathappy accident, by what interposition of Providence, had she been sent tosave him from a hideous death?
"I should have died but for you," he said. "I should have lain here tillthe cart fetched my putrid carcase. I should be rotting in one of theirplague-pits yonder, behind the old Abbey."
"Nay, indeed, my lord, your good doctor would have discovered your desolatecondition, and would have brought Mrs. Basset to nurse you."
"He would have been too late. I was drifting out to the dark sea of death.I felt as if the river were bearing me so much nearer to that unknown seawith every ripple of the hurrying tide. 'Twas your draught of strong winesnatched me back from the cruel river, drew me on to _terra firma_ again,renewed my consciousness of manhood, and that I was not a weed to be washedaway. Oh, that wine! Ye gods! what elixir to this parched, burning throat!Did ever drunkard in all Alsatia snatch such fierce joy from a brimmer?"
Angela put her finger on her lip, and with the other hand drew the silkencoverlet over the sick man's shoulders.
"You are not to talk," she said, "you are to sleep. Slumber is to be yourdiet and medicine after that good soup at which you make such a wry face."
"I would swallow the stuff were it Locusta's hell-broth, for your sake."
"You will take it for wisdom's sake, that you may mend speedily, and gohome to my sister," said Angela.
"Home, yes! It will be bliss ineffable to see flowery pastures and woodedhills after this pest-haunted town; but oh, Angela, mine angel, why dostthou linger in this poisonous chamber where every breath of mine exhalesinfection? Why do you not fly while you are still unstricken? Truly theplague-fiend cometh as a thief in the night. To-day you are safe. To-nightyou may be doomed."
"I have no fear, sir. You are not the first plague-patient I have nursed."
"And thou fanciest thyself pestilence-proof! Sweet girl, it may be that thedivine lymph which fills those azure veins has no affinity with poisonsthat slay rude mortals like myself."
"Will you ever be talking?" she said with grave reproach, and left him tothe care of Mrs. Basset, whose comfortable and stolid personality did notstimulate his imagination.
She had a strong desire to explore that city of which she had yet seen solittle, and her patient being now arrived at a state of his disorder whenit was best for him to be tempted to prolonged slumbers by silence andsolitude, she put on her hood and gloves and went out alone to see thehorrors of the deserted streets, of which nurse Basset had given her soappalling a picture.
It was four o'clock, and the afternoon was at its hottest; the blue of acloudless sky was reflected in the blue of the silent river, where, insteadof the flotilla of gaily painted wherries, the procession of gilded barges,the music and song, the ceaseless traffic of Court and City, there was onlythe faint ripple of the stream, or here and there a solitary bargecreeping slowly down the tide with ineffectual sail napping in the sultryatmosphere.
That unusual calm which had marked this never-to-be-forgotten year, fromthe beginning of spring, was yet unbroken, and the silent city lay like agreat ship becalmed on a tropical ocean; the same dead silence; the samecruel, smiling sky above; the same hopeless submission to fate in everysoul on board that death-ship. How would those poor dying creatures,panting out their latest breath in sultry, airless chambers, have welcomedthe rush of rain, the cool freshness of a strong wind blowing along thosesun-baked streets, sweeping away the polluted dust, dispersing noxiousodours, bringing the pure scents of far-off woodlands, of hillside heatherand autumn gorse, the sweetness of the country across the corruption ofthe town. But at this dreadful season, when storm and rain would have beenwelcomed with passionate thanksgiving, the skies were brass, and the groundwas arid and fiery as the sands of the Arabian desert, while even the grassthat grew in the streets, where last year multitudinous feet had trodden,sickened as it grew, and faded speedily from green to yellow.
Pausing on the garden terrace to survey the prospect before she descendedto the street, Angela thought of that river as her imagination had depictedit, after reading a letter of Hyacinth's, written so late as last May; thegay processions, the gaudy liveries of watermen and servants, the gildedbarges, the sound of viol and guitar, the harmony of voices in part songs,"Go, lovely rose," or "Why so pale and wan, fond lover?" the beauty and thesplendour; fair faces under vast plumed hats, those picturesque hats whichthe maids of honour snatched from each other's heads with giddy laughter,exchanging head-gear here on the royal barge, as they did sometimes walkingabout the great rooms at Whitehall; the King with his boon companionsclustered round him on the richly carpeted dais in the stern, his courtiersand his favoured mistresses; haughty Castlemaine, empres, regnant over theroyal heart, false, dissolute, impudent, glorious as Cleopatra when herpurple sails bore her down the swift-flowing Cydnus; the wit and follyand gladness. All had vanished like the visions of a dreamer; and thereremained but this mourning city, with its closed windows and doors, itswatchmen guarding the marked houses, lest disease and death should holdcommunion with that poor remnant of health and life left in the infectedtown. Would that fantastic vision of careless, pleasure-loving monarch andbutterfly Court ever be realised again? Angela thought not. It seemed toher serious mind that the glory of those wild years since his Majesty'srestoration was a delusive and pernicious brightness which could nevershine again. That extravagant splendour, that reckless gaiety had bornebeneath their glittering surface the seeds of ruin and death. An angryGod had stretched out His hand against the wicked city where sin andprofaneness sat in the high places. If Charles Stuart and his courtiersever came back to London they would return sobered and chastened, taughtwisdom by adversity. The Puritan spirit would reign once more in the land,and an age of penitence and Lenten self-abasement would succeed the orgiesof the Restoration; while the light loves of Whitehall, the noble ladies,the impudent actresses, would vanish into obscurity. Angela's loyal youngheart was full of faith in the King. She was ready to believe that his sinswere the sins of a man whose head had been turned by the sudden change fromexile to a throne, from poverty to wealth, from dependence upon hisBourbon cousin and his friends in Holland to the lavish subsidies of atoo-indulgent Commons.
No words could paint the desolation which reigned between the Strand andthe City in that fatal summer, now drawing to its melancholy close. Morethan once in her brief pilgrimage Angela drew back, shuddering, from theembrasure of a door, or the inlet to some narrow alley, at sight of deathlying on the threshold, stiff, stark, unheeded; more than once in herprogress f
rom the New Exchange to St Paul's she heard the shrill wail ofwomen lamenting for a soul just departed. Death was about and around her.The great bell of the cathedral tolled with an inexorable stroke in thesummer stillness, as it had tolled every day through those long months ofheat, and drought, and ever-growing fear, and ever-thickening graves.
Eastward there rose the red glare of a great fire, and she feared that someof those old wooden houses in the narrower streets were blazing, but oninquiry of a solitary foot passenger, she learnt that this fire was one ofmany which had been burning for three days, at street corners and in openspaces, at a great expense of sea-coal, with the hope of purifying theatmosphere and dispersing poisonous gases--but that so far no ameliorationhad followed upon this outlay and labour. She came presently to a junctionof roads near the Fleet ditch, and saw the huge coal-fire flaming with asickly glare in the sunshine, tended by a spectral figure, half-clad andhungry-looking, to whom she gave an alms; and at this juncture of ways agreat peril awaited her, for there sprang, as it were, out of the veryground, so quickly did they assemble from neighbouring courts and alleys,a throng of mendicants, who clustered round her, with filthy handsoutstretched, and shrill voices imploring charity. So wasted were theirhalf-naked limbs, so ghastly and livid their countenances, that they mighthave all been plague-patients, and Angela recoiled from them in horror.
"Keep your distance, for pity's sake, good friends, and I will give you allthe money I carry," she exclaimed, and there was something of command inher voice and aspect, as she stood before them, straight and tall, withpale, earnest face.
They fell off a little way, and waited till she scattered the contents ofher purse--small Flemish coin--upon the ground in front of her, where theyscrambled for it, snarling and scuffling with each other like dogs fightingfor a bone.
Hastening her footsteps after the horror of that encounter, she went byLudgate Hill to the great cathedral, keeping carefully to the middle of thestreet, and glancing at the walls and shuttered casements on either side ofher, recalling that appalling story which the Italian choir-mistress at theUrsulines had told her of the great plague in Milan--how one morning thewalls and doors of many houses in the city had been found smeared with somefoul substance, in broad streaks of white and yellow, which was believed tobe a poisonous compost carrying contagion to every creature who touchedor went within the influence of its mephitic odour; how this thing hadhappened not once, but many times; until the Milanese believed that Satanhimself was the prime mover in this horror, and that there were a companyof wretches who had sold themselves to the devil, and were his servants andagents, spreading disease and death through the city. Strange tales weretold of those who had seen the foul fiend face to face, and had refused hisproffered gold. Innocent men were denounced, and but narrowly escaped beingtorn limb from limb, or trampled to death, under the suspicion of beingconcerned in this anointing of the walls, and even the cathedral benches,with plague-poison; yet no death, that the nun could remember, had everbeen traced directly to the compost. It was a mysterious terror whichstruck deep into the hearts of a frightened people, so that at last,against his better reason, and at the repeated prayer of his flock, thegood Archbishop allowed the crystal coffin of St. Carlo Borromeo to becarried in solemn procession, upon the shoulders of Cardinals, from end toend of the city--on which occasion all Milan crowded into the streets,and clustered thick on either side of the pompous train of monks andincense-bearers, priests and acolytes. But soon there fell a deeper despairupon the inhabitants of the doomed city; for within two days after thissolemn carrying of the saintly remains the death-rate had tripled and therewas scarce a house in which the contagion had not entered. Then it was saidthat the anointers had been in active work in the midst of the crowd, andhad been busiest in the public squares where the bearers of the crystalcoffin halted for a space with their sacred load, and where the peopleclustered thickest. The Archbishop had foreseen the danger of thisgathering of the people, many but just recovering from the disease, manyinfected and unconscious of their state; but his flock saw only thehandiwork of the fiend in this increase of evil.
In Protestant London there had been less inclination to superstition; yeteven here a comet which, under ordinary circumstances, would have appearedbut as other comets, was thought to wear the shape of a fiery swordstretched over the city in awful threatening.
Full of pity and of gravest, saddest thoughts, the lonely girl walkedthrough the lonely town to that part of the city where the streets werenarrowest, a labyrinth of lanes and alleys, with a church-tower or steeplerising up amidst the crowded dwellings at almost every point to which theeye looked. Angela wondered at the sight of so many fine churches in thisheretical land. Many of these city churches were left open in this day ofwrath, so that unhappy souls who had a mind to pray might go in at will,and kneel there. Angela peered in at an old church in a narrow court,holding the door a little way ajar, and looking along the cold grey nave.All was gloom and silence, save for a monotonous and suppressed murmurof one invisible worshipper in a pew near the altar, who varied hissupplicatory mutterings with long-drawn sighs.
Angela turned with a shudder from the cold emptiness of the great greychurch, with its sombre woodwork, and lack of all those beautiful formswhich appeal to the heart and imagination in a Romanist temple. She thoughthow in Flanders there would have been tapers burning, and censors swinging,and the rolling thunder of the organ pealing along the vaulted roof in thesolemn strains of a _Dies Irae_, lifting the soul of the worshipper intothe far-off heaven of the world beyond death, soothing the sorrowful heartwith visions of eternal bliss.
She wandered through the maze of streets and lanes, sometimes coming backunawares to a street she had lately traversed, till at last she came to achurch that was not silent, for through the open door she heard a voicewithin, preaching or praying. She hesitated for a few minutes on thethreshold, having been taught that it was a sin to enter a Protestantchurch; and then something within her, some new sense of independence andrevolt against old traditions, moved her to enter, and take her placequietly in one of the curious wooden boxes where the sparse congregationwere seated, listening to a man in a Geneva gown, who was preaching in atall oaken pulpit, surmounted by a massive sounding-board, and furnishedwith a crimson velvet cushion, which the preacher used with great effectduring his discourse, now folding his arms upon it and leaning forward toargue familiarly with his flock, now stretching a long, lean arm above itto point a denouncing finger at the sinners below, anon belabouring itseverely in the passion of his eloquence.
The flock was small, but devout, consisting for the most part ofmiddle-aged and elderly persons in sombre attire and of Puritanical aspect;for the preacher was one of those Calvinistic clergy of Cromwell's time whohad been lately evicted from their pulpits, and prosecuted for assemblingcongregations under the roofs of private citizens, and had shown a nobleperseverance in serving God in circumstances of peculiar difficulty. Andnow, though the Primate had remained at his post, unfaltering and unafraid,many of the orthodox shepherds had fled and left their sheep, being toocareful of their own tender persons to remain in the plague-stricken townand minister to the sick and dying; whereupon the evicted clergy hadin some cases taken possession of the deserted pulpits and the silentchurches, and were preaching Christ's Gospel to that remnant of thefaithful which feared not to assemble in the House of God.
Angela listened to a sermon marked by a rough eloquence which enchained herattention and moved her heart. It was not difficult to utter heart-stirringwords or move the tender breast to pity when the Preacher's theme wasdeath; with all its train of attendant agonies; its partings and farewells;its awful suddenness, as shown in this pestilence, where a young manrejoicing in his health and strength at noontide sees, as the sun slopeswestward, the death-tokens on his bosom, and is lying dumb and stark atnight-fall; where the joyous maiden is surprised in the midst of her mirthby the apparition of the plague-spot, and in a few hours is lifelessclay. The Preacher dwelt upon
the sins and follies and vanities of theinhabitants of that great city; their alacrity in the pursuit of pleasure;their slackness in the service of God.
"A man who will give twenty shillings for a pair of laced gloves toa pretty shopwoman at the New Exchange, will grudge a crown for themaintenance of God's people that are in distress; and one who is not hardyenough to walk half a mile to church, will stand for a whole afternoon inthe pit of a theatre, to see painted women-actors defile a stage that wasevil enough in the late King's time, but which has in these latter dayssunk to a depth of infamy that it befits not me to speak of in this holyplace. Oh, my Brethren, out of that glittering dream which you have dreamtsince his Majesty's return, out of the groves of Baal, where you have sungand danced, and feasted, worshipping false gods, steeping your benightedsouls in the vices of pagans and image-worshippers, it has pleased the Godof Israel to give you a rough waking. Can you doubt that this plague, whichhas desolated a city, and filled many a yawning pit with the promiscuousdead, has been God's way of chastening a profligate people, a people caringonly for fleshly pleasures, for rich meats and strong wines, for fineclothing and jovial company, and despising the spiritual blessings thatthe Almighty Father has reserved for them that love Him? Oh, my afflictedBrethren, bethink you that this pestilence is a chastisement upon a blindand foolish people; and if it strikes the innocent as well as the guilty,if it falls as heavily upon the spotless virgin as upon the hoary sinner,remember that it is not for us to measure the workings of Omnipotence withthe fathom-line of our earthly intellects; or to say this fair girl shouldbe spared, and that hoary sinner taken. Has not the Angel of Death everchosen the fairest blossoms? His business is to people the skies ratherthan to depopulate the earth. The innocent are taken, but the warning isfor the guilty; for the sinners whose debaucheries have made this world sopolluted a place that God's greatest mercy to the pure is an early death.The call is loud and instant, a call to repentance and sacrifice. Let eachbear his portion of suffering with patience, as under that wise rule ofa score years past each family forewent a weekly meal to help those whoneeded bread. Let each acknowledge his debt to God, and be content to havepaid it in a season of universal sorrow."
And then the Preacher turned from that awful image of an angry and avengingGod to contemplate Divine compassion in the Redeemer of mankind--godlikepower joined with human love. He preached of Christ the Saviour with afulness and a force which were new to Angela. He held up that commanding,that touching image, unobscured by any other personality. All thosesurrounding figures which Angela had seen crowded around the godlike form,all those sufferings and virtues of the spotless Mother of God were ignoredin that impassioned oration. The preacher held up Christ crucified, Himonly, as the fountain of pity and pardon. He reduced Christianity to itssimplest elements, primitive as when the memory of the God-man was yetfresh in the minds of those who had seen the Divine countenance andlistened to the Divine voice; and Angela felt as she had never felt beforethe singleness and purity of the Christian's faith.
It was the day of long sermons, when a preacher who measured his discourseby the sands of an hour-glass was deemed moderate. Among the Nonconformiststhere were those who turned the glass, and let the flood of eloquence flowon far into the second hour. The old man had been preaching a long timewhen Angela awoke as from a dream, and remembered that sick-chamber whereduty called her. She left the church quietly and hurried westward, guidedchiefly by the sun, till she found herself once more in the Strand; andvery soon afterwards she was ringing the bell at the chief entrance ofFareham House. She returned far more depressed in spirits than she wentout, for all the horror of the plague-stricken city was upon her; and,fresh from the spectacle of death, she felt less hopeful of Lord Fareham'srecovery.
Thomas Stokes opened the great door to admit that one modest figure, a doorwhich looked as if it should open only to noble visitors, to a processionof courtiers and court beauties, in the fitful light of wind-blown torches.Thomas, when interrogated, was not cheerful in his account of the patient'shealth during Angela's absence. My lord had been strangely disordered; Mrs.Basset had found the fever increasing, and was "afeared the gentleman wasrelapsing."
Angela's heart sickened at the thought. The Preacher had dwelt on thesudden alternations of the disease, how apparent recovery was sometimes theprecursor of death. She hurried up the stairs, and through the seeminglyendless suite of rooms which nobody wanted, which never might be inhabitedagain perhaps, except by bats and owls, to his lordship's chamber, andfound him sitting up in bed, with his eyes fixed on the door by which sheentered.
"At last!" he cried. "Why did you inflict such torturing apprehensions uponme? This woman has been telling me of the horrors of the streets whereyou have been; and I figured you stricken suddenly with this foul malady,creeping into some deserted alley to expire uncared for, dying with yourhead upon a stone, lying there to be carried off by the dead-cart. You mustnot leave this house again, save for the coach that shall fetch you toOxfordshire to join Hyacinth and her children--and that coach shall startto-morrow. I am a madman to have let you stay so long in this infectedhouse."
"You forget that I am plague-proof," she answered, throwing off hood andcloak, and going to his bedside, to the chair in which she had spent manyhours watching by him and praying for him.
No, there was no relapse. He had only been restless and uneasy because ofher absence. The disease was conquered, the pest-spots were healing fairly,and his nurses had only to contend against the weakness and depressionwhich seemed but the natural sequence of the malady.
Dr. Hodgkin was satisfied with his patient's progress. He had written toLady Fareham, advising her to send some of her servants with horses for hislordship's coach, and to provide for relays of post-horses between Londonand Oxfordshire, a matter of easier accomplishment than it would have beenin the earlier summer, when the quality were flying to the country, andpost-horses were at a premium. Now there were but few people of rank orstanding who had the courage to stay in town, like the Archbishop, who hadnot left Lambeth, or the stout old Duke of Albemarle, at the Cockpit, whofeared the pestilence no more than he feared sword or cannon.
Two of his lordship's lackeys, and his Oxfordshire major-domo and clerk ofthe kitchen, arrived a week after Angela's landing, bringing loving lettersfrom Hyacinth to her husband and sister. The physician had so written asnot to scare the wife. She had been told that her husband had been ill, butwas in a fair way to recovery, and would post to Oxfordshire as soon as hewas strong enough for the journey, carrying his sister-in-law with him,and lying at the accustomed inn at High Wycombe, or perchance resting twonights and spending three days upon the road.
That was a happy day for Angela when her patient was well enough to starton his journey. She had been longing to see her sister and the children,longing still more intensely to escape from the horror of that house, wheredeath had seemed to lie in ambush behind the tapestry hangings, and wherefew of her hours had been free from a great fear. Even while Fareham was onthe high-road to recovery there had been in her mind the ever-present dreadof a relapse. She rejoiced with fear and trembling, and was almost afraidto believe physician and nurse when they assured her that all danger wasover.
The pestilence had passed by, and they went out in the sunshine, in thefreshness of a September morning, balmy, yet cool, with a scent of flowersfrom the gardens of Lambeth and Bankside blowing across the river. Eventhis terrible London, the forsaken city, looked fair in the morning light;her palaces and churches, her streets of heavily timbered houses, theirprojecting windows enriched with carved wood and wrought iron--streets thatrecalled the days of the Tudors and even suggested an earlier and rougherage, when the French King rode in all honour, albeit a prisoner, at hisconqueror's side; or later, when fallen Richard, shorn of all royaldignity, rode abject and forlorn through the city, and caps were flung upfor his usurping cousin. But oh, the horror of closed shops and desertedhouses, and pestiferous wretches running by the coach door in theirpoisonous ra
gs, begging alms, whenever the horses went slowly, in thosenarrow streets that lay between Fareham House and Westminster!
To Angela's wondering eyes Westminster Hall and the Abbey offered a newidea of magnificence, so grandly placed, so dignified in their antiquity.Fareham watched her eager countenance as the great family coach, which hadbeen sent up from Oxfordshire for his accommodation, moved ponderouslywestward, past the Chancellor's new palace, and other new mansions, to theHercules Pillars Inn, past Knightsbridge and Kensington, and then northwardby rustic lanes, and through the village of Ealing to the Oxford road.
The family coach was as big as a small parlour, and afforded ample room forthe convalescent to recline at his ease on one seat, while Angela and thesteward, a confidential servant with the manners of a courtier, sat side byside upon the other.
They had the two spaniels with them, Puck and Ganymede, silky-haired littlebeasts, black and tan, with bulging foreheads, crowded with intellect, pugnoses so short as hardly to count for noses, goggle eyes that expressedshrewdness, greediness, and affection. Puck snuggled cosily in the softlace of his lordship's shirt; Ganymede sat and blinked at the sunshine fromAngela's lap. Both snarled at Mr. Manningtree, the steward, and resentedthe slightest familiarity on his part.
Lord Fareham's thoughtful face brightened with its rare smile--half amused,half cynical--as he watched Angela's eager looks, devouring every object onthe road.
"Those grave eyes look at our London grandeurs with a meek wonder,something as thy namesake an angel might look upon the splendours ofBabylon. You can remember nothing of yonder palace, or senate house, orAbbey, I think, child?"
"Yes, I remember the Abbey, though it looked different then. I saw itthrough a cloud of falling snow. It was all faint and dim there. There weresoldiers in the streets, and it was bitter cold; and my father sat in thecoach with his elbows on his knees and his face hidden in his hands. Andwhen I spoke to him, and tried to pull his hands away--for I was afraid ofthat hidden face--he shook me off and groaned aloud. Oh, such a harrowinggroan! I should have thought him mad had I known what madness meant; but Iknow not what I thought. I remember only that I was frightened. And later,when I asked him why he was sorry, he said it was for the King."
"Ay, poor King! We have all supped full of sorrow for his sake. We havecursed and hated his enemies, and drawn and quartered their vile carcases,and have dug them out of the darkness where the worms were eating them. Wehave been distraught with indignation, cruel in our fury; and I look backto-day, after fifteen years, and see but too clearly now that CharlesStuart's death lies at one man's door."
"At Cromwell's? At Bradshaw's?"
"No, child; at his own. Cromwell would have never been heard of, save inHuntingdon Market-place, as a God-fearing yeoman, had Charles been strongand true. The King's weakness was Cromwell's opportunity. He dug his owngrave with false promises, with shilly-shally, with an inimitable talentfor always doing the wrong thing and choosing the wrong road. Open not sowide those reproachful eyes. Oh, I grant you, he was a noble king, a kingof kings to walk in a royal procession, to sit upon a dais under a velvetand gold canopy, to receive ambassadors, and patronise foreign painters,and fulfil all that is splendid and stately in ideal kingship. He was anadoring husband--confiding to simplicity--a kind father, a fond friend,though never a firm one."
"Oh, surely, surely you loved him?"
"Not as your father loved him, for I never suffered with him. It was thosewho sacrificed the most who loved him best, those who were with him to theend, long after common sense told them his cause was hopeless; indeed, Ibelieve my father knew as much at Nottingham, when that luckless standardwas blown down in the tempest. Those who starved for him, and lay outon barren moors through the cold English nights for him, and wore theirclothes threadbare and their shoes into holes for him, and left wife andchildren, and melted their silver and squandered their gold for him--thoseare the men who love his memory dearest, and for whose poor sakes we of theyounger generation must make believe to think him a saint and a martyr."
"Oh, my lord, say not that you think him a bad man!"
"Bad! Nay, I believe that all his instincts were virtuous and honourable,and that--until the whirlwind of those latter days in which he scarce knewwhat he was doing--he meant fairly by his people, and had their welfare atheart. He might have done far better for himself and others had he been abrave bad man like Wentworth--audacious, unscrupulous, driving straightto a fixed goal. No, Angela, he was that which is worse for mankind--anobstinate, weak man. A bundle of impulses, some good and some evil; a manwho had many chances, and lost them all; who loved foolishly and too well,and let himself be ruled by a wife who could not rule herself. Blindimpulse, passionate folly were sailing the State ship through that sea oftroubles which could be crossed but by a navigator as politic, profound,and crafty as Richelieu or Mazarin. Who can wonder that the Royal Charleswent down?"
"It must seem strange to you, looking back from the Court, as Hyacinth'sletters have painted it--to that time of trouble?"
"Strange! I stand in the crowd at Whitehall sometimes, amidst their maskingand folly, their frolic schemes, their malice, their jeering wit andriotous merriment, and wonder whether it is all a dream, and I shall wakeand see the England of '44, the year Henrietta Maria vanished--a discrownedfugitive, from the scene where she had lived to do harm. I look along theperspective of painted faces and flowing hair, jewels, and gay colours,towards that window through which Charles I. walked to his bloody death,suffered with a kingly grandeur that made the world forget all that waspoor and petty in his life; and I wonder does anyone else recall thatsuffering or reflect upon that doom. Not one! Each has his jest, and hismistress--the eyes he worships, the lips he adores. It is only the ruralPut that feels himself lost in the crowd whose thoughts turn sadly to thesad past."
"Yet whatever your lordship may say----"
"Tush, child, I am no lordship to you! Call me brother, or Fareham;and never talk to me as if I were anything else than your brother inaffection."
"It is sweet to hear you say so much, sir," she answered gently. "I haveoften envied my companions at the Ursulines when they talked of theirbrothers. It was so strange to hear them tell of bickering and ill-willbetween brother and sister. Had God given me a brother, I would not quarrelwith him."
"Nor shall thou quarrel with me, sweetheart; but we will be fast friendsalways. Do I not owe thee my life?"
"I will not hear you say so; it is blasphemy against your Creator, whorelented and spared you."
"What! you think that Omnipotence, in the inaccessible mystery of Heaven,keeps the muster-roll of earth open before Him, and reckons each littlelife as it drops off the list? That is hardly my notion of Divinity. Isee the Almighty rather as the Roman poet saw Him--an inexorable Father,hurling the thunderbolt our folly has deserved from His red right hand, yetmerciful to stay that hand when we have taken our punishment meekly. That,Angela, is the nearest my mind can reach to the idea of a personal God. Butdo not bend those pencilled brows with such a sad perplexity. You know,doubtless, that I come of a Catholic family, and was bred in the old faith.Alas! I have conformed ill to Church discipline. I am no theologian, norquite an infidel, and should be as much at sea in an argument with Hobbesas with Bossuet. Trouble not thy gentle spirit for my sins of thought ordeed. Your tender care has given me time to repent all my errors. Youwere going to tell my lordship something, when I chid you for excess ofceremony--"
"Nay, sir--brother, I had but to say that this wicked Court, of which myfather and you have spoken so ill, can scarcely fail to be turned from itssins by so terrible a visitation. Those who have looked upon the city as Isaw it a week ago can scarce return with unchastened hearts to feasting anddancing and idle company."
"But the beaux and belles of Whitehall have not seen the city as my bravegirl saw it," cried Fareham.
"They have not met the dead-cart, nor heard the groans of the dying, norseen the red cross upon the doors. They made off with the first rum
our ofperil. The roads were crowded with their coaches, their saddle-horses,their furniture and finery; one could scarce command a post-horse for loveor money. 'A thousand less this week,' says one. 'We may be going back totown and have the theatres open again in the cold weather.'"
They dined at the Crown, at Uxbridge, which was that "fair house at the endof the town" provided for the meeting of the late King's Commissioners withthe representatives of the Parliament in the year '44. Fareham showed hissister-in-law a spacious panelled parlour, which was that "fair room inthe middle of the house" that had been handsomely dressed up for theCommissioners to sit in.
They pushed on to High Wycombe before night-fall, and supped _tete-a-tete_in the best room of the inn, with Fareham's faithful Manningtree to bringin the chief dish, and the people of the house to wait upon them. They werevery friendly and happy together, Fareham telling his companion much of hisadventurous life in France, and how in the first Fronde war he had been onthe side of Queen and Minister, and afterwards, for love and admiration ofConde, had joined the party of the Princes.
"Well, it was a time worth living in--a good education for the boy-king,Louis, for it showed him that the hereditary ruler of a great nation hassomething more to do than to be born, and to exist, and to spend money."
Lord Fareham described the shining lights of that brilliant court with acaustic tongue; but he was more indulgent to the follies of the PalaisRoyal and the Louvre than he had been to the debaucheries of Whitehall.
"There is a grace even in their vices," he said. "Their wit is lighter, andthere is more mind in their follies. Our mirth is vulgar even when it isnot bestial. I know of no Parisian adventure so degrading as certain pranksof Buckhurst's, which I would not dare mention in your hearing. We imitatethem, and out-herod Herod, but we are never like them. We send to Paris forour clothes, and borrow their newest words--for they are ever inventingsome cant phrase to startle dulness--and we make our language a foreignfarrago. Why, here is even plain John Evelyn, that most pious of pedants,pleading for the enlistment of a troop of Gallic substantives andadjectives to eke out our native English!"
Fareham told Angela much of his past life during the freedom of that long_tete-a-tete_, talking to her as if she had indeed been a young sister fromwhom he had been separated since her childhood. That mild, pensive mannerpromised sympathy and understanding, and he unconsciously inclined toconfide his thoughts and opinions to her, as well as the history of hisyouth.
He had fought at Edgehill as a lad of thirteen, had been with the King atBeverley, York, and Nottingham, and had only left the Court to accompanythe Prince of Wales to Jersey, and afterwards to Paris.
"I soon sickened of a Court life and its petty plots and parlourintrigues," he told Angela, "and was glad to join Conde's army, where myfather's influence got me a captaincy before I was eighteen. To fight undersuch a leader as that was to serve under the god of war. I can imagine Marshimself no grander soldier. Oh, my dear, what a man! Nay, I will not callhim by that common name. He was something more or less than man--of anotherspecies. In the thick of the fight a lion; in his dominion over armies,in his calmness amidst danger, a god. Shall I ever see it again, Iwonder--that vulture face, those eyes that flashed Jove's red lightning?"
"Your own face changes when you speak of him," said Angela, awe-strickenat that fierce energy which heroic memories evoked in Fareham's wastedcountenance.
"Nay, you should have seen the change in _his_ face when he flung off thecourtier for the captain. His whole being was transformed. Those who knewConde at St. Germain, at the Hotel de Rambouillet, at the Palais Royal,knew not the measure or the might of that great nature. He was born toconquer. But you must not think that with him victory meant brute force. Itmeant thought and patience, the power to foresee and to combine, therapid apprehension of opposing circumstances, the just measure of his ownmaterials. A strict disciplinarian, a severe master, but willing to work atthe lowest details, the humblest offices of war. A soldier, did I say? Hewas the Genius of modern warfare."
"You talk as if you loved him dearly."
"I loved him as I shall never love any other man. He was my friend aswell as my General. But I claim no merit in loving one whom all the worldhonoured. Could you have seen princes and nobles, as I saw them when Iwas a boy at Paris, standing on chairs, on tables, kneeling, to drink hishealth! A demi-god could have received no more fervent adulation. Alas!sister, I look back at those years of foreign service and know they werethe best of my life!"
They started early next morning, and were within half a dozen miles ofOxford before the sun was low. They drove by a level road that skirted theriver; and now, for the first time, Angela saw that river flowing placidlythrough a rural landscape, the rich green of marshy meadows in theforeground, and low wooded hills on the opposite bank, while midway acrossthe stream an islet covered with reed and willow cast a shadow over therosy water painted by the western sun.
"Are we near them now?" she asked eagerly, knowing that herbrother-in-law's mansion lay within a few miles of Oxford.
"We are very near," answered Fareham; "I can see the chimneys, and thewhite stone pillars of the great gate."
He had his head out of the carriage, looking sunward, shading his eyes withhis big doe-skin gauntlet as he looked. Those two days on the road, thefresh autumn air, the generous diet, the variety and movement of thejourney, had made a new man of him. Lean and gaunt he must needs be forsome time to come; but the dark face was no longer bloodless; the eyes hadthe fire of health.
"I see the gate--and there is more than that in view!" he cried excitedly."Your sister is coming in a troop to meet us, with her children, andvisitors, and servants. Stop the coach, Manningtree, and let us out."
The post-boys pulled up their horses, and the steward opened the coachdoor and assisted his master to alight. Fareham's footsteps were somewhatuncertain as he walked slowly along the waste grass by the roadside,leaning a little upon Angela's shoulder.
Lady Fareham came running towards them in advance of children and friends,an airy figure in blue and white, her fair hair flying in the wind, herarms stretched out as if to greet them from afar. She clasped her sister toher breast even before she saluted her husband, clasped her and kissed her,laughing between the kisses.
"Welcome, my escaped nun!" she cried. "I never thought they would let theeout of thy prison, or that thou wouldst muster courage to break thy bonds.Welcome, and a hundred times, welcome. And that thou shouldst have nursedand tended my ailing lord! Oh, the wonder of it! While I, within a hundredmiles of him, knew not that he was ill, here didst thou come across seas tosave him! Why, 'tis a modern fairy tale."
"And she is the good fairy," said Fareham, taking his wife's face betweenhis two hands and bending down to kiss the white forehead under its cloudof pale golden curls, "and you must cherish her for all the rest of yourlife. But for her I should have died alone in that great gaudy house, andthe rats would have eaten me, and then perhaps you would have cared nolonger for the mansion, and would have had to build another further west,by my Lord Clarendon's, where all the fine folks are going--and that wouldhave been a pity."
"Oh, Fareham, do not begin with thy irony-stop! I know all your organtones, from the tenor of your kindness to the bourdon of your displeasure.Do you think I am not glad to have you here safe and sound? Do you think Ihave not been miserable about you since I knew of your sickness? Monsieurde Malfort will tell you whether I have been unhappy or not."
"Why, Malfort! What wind blew you hither at this perilous season, whenEnglishmen are going abroad for fear of the pestilence, and when yourfriend St Evremond has fled from the beauties of Oxford to the malodoroussewers and fusty fraus of the Netherlands?"
"I had no fear of the contagion, and I wanted to see my friends. I am inlodgings in Oxford, where there is almost as much good company as thereever was at Whitehall."
The Comte de Malfort and Fareham clasped hands with a cordiality whichbespoke old friendship; and it was only an instin
ctive recoil on the partof the Englishman which spared him his friend's kisses. They had lived incamps and in courts together, these two, and had much in common, and muchthat was antagonistic, in temperament and habits, Malfort being lazy andluxurious, when no fighting was on hand; a man whose one business, when notunder canvas, was to surpass everybody else in the fashion and folly ofthe hour, to be quite the finest gentleman in whatever company he foundhimself.
He was a godson and favourite of Madame de Montrond, who had numbered hisfather among the army of her devoted admirers. He had been Hyacinth'splayfellow and slave in her early girlhood, and had been _l'ami de lamaison_ in those brilliant years of the young King's reign, when theFarehams were living in the Marais. To him had been permitted allprivileges that a being as harmless and innocent as he was polished andelegant might be allowed, by a husband who had too much confidence in hiswife's virtue, and too good an opinion of his own merits to be easilyjealous. Nor was Henri de Malfort a man to provoke jealousy by any superiorgifts of mind or person. Nature had not been especially kind to him. Hisfeatures were insignificant, his eyes pale, and he had not escaped thatscourge of the seventeenth century, the small-pox. His pale and clearcomplexion was but slightly pitted, however, and his eyelids hadnot suffered. Men were inclined to call him ugly; women thought himinteresting. His frame was badly built from the athlete's point of view;but it had the suppleness which makes the graceful dancer, and was anelegant scaffolding on which to hang the picturesque costume of the day.For the rest, all that he was he had made himself, during those eighteenyears of intelligent self-culture, which had been his engrossing occupationsince his fifteenth birthday, when he determined to be one of the finestgentlemen of his epoch.
A fine gentleman at the Court of Louis had to be something more than afigure steeped in perfumes and hung with ribbons. His red-heeled shoes, hisperiwig and cannon sleeves, were indispensable to fashion, but notenough for fame. The favoured guest of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and ofMademoiselle de Scudery's "Saturdays," must have wit and learning, or atleast that capacity for smart speech and pedantic allusion which might passcurrent for both in a society where the critics were chiefly feminine.Henri de Malfort had graduated in a college of blue-stockings. He had grownup in an atmosphere of gunpowder and _bouts rimes_. He had stormed thebreach at sieges where the assault was led off by a company of violins,in the Spanish fashion. He had fought with distinction under the finestsoldiers in Europe, and had seen some of his dearest friends expire at hisside.
Unlike Gramont and St. Evremond, he was still in the floodtide of royalfavour in his own country; and it seemed a curious caprice that had led himto follow those gentlemen to England, to shine in a duller society, andsparkle at a less magnificent court.
The children hung upon their father, Papillon on one side, Cupid on theother, and it was in them rather than in her sister's friend that Angelawas interested. The girl resembled her mother only in the grace andflexibility of her slender form, the quickness of her movements, and thevivacity of her speech. Her hair and eyes were dark, like her father's, andher colouring was that of a brunette, with something of a pale bronze underthe delicate carmine of her cheeks. The boy favoured his mother, and wasworthy of the sobriquet Rochester had bestowed upon him. His blue eyes,chubby cheeks, cherry lips, and golden hair were like the typical Cupidof Rubens, and might be seen repeated _ad libitum_ on the ceiling of theBanqueting House.
"I'll warrant this is all flummery," said Fareham, looking down at the girlas she hung upon him. "Thou art not glad to see me."
"I am so glad that I could eat you, as the Giant would have eaten Jack,"answered the girl, leaping up to kiss him, her hair flying back like adark cloud, her nimble legs struggling for freedom in her long brocadepetticoat.
"And you are not afraid of the contagion?"
"Afraid! Why, I wanted mother to take me to you as soon as I heard you wereill."
"Well, I have been smoke-dried and pickled in strong waters, until Dr.Hodgkin accounts me safe, or I would not come nigh thee. See, sweetheart,this is your aunt, whom you are to love next best to your mother."
"But not so well as you, sir. You are first," said the child, and thenturned to Angela and held up her rosebud mouth to be kissed. "You saved myfather's life," she said. "If you ever want anybody to die for you let itbe me."
"Gud! what a delicate wit! The sweet child is positively _tuant_,"exclaimed a young lady, who was strolling beside them, and whom LadyFareham had not taken the trouble to introduce by name to any one, but whowas now accounted for as a country neighbour, Mrs. Dorothy Lettsome.
Angela was watching her brother-in-law as they sauntered along, and she sawthat the fatigue and agitation of this meeting were beginning to affecthim. He was carrying his hat in one hand, while the other caressedPapillon. There were beads of perspiration on his forehead, and hisfootsteps began to drag a little. Happily the coach had kept a few paces intheir rear, and Manningtree was walking beside it; so Angela proposed thathis lordship should resume his seat in the vehicle and drive on to hishouse, while she went on foot with her sister.
"I must go with his lordship," cried Papillon, and leapt into the coachbefore her father.
Hyacinth put her arm through Angela's, and led her slowly along the grassywalk to the great gates, the Frenchman and Mrs. Lettsome following; andunversed as the convent-bred girl was in the ways of this particular world,she could nevertheless perceive that in the conversation between these two,M. de Malfort was amusing himself at the expense of his fair companion. Hisown English was by no means despicable, as he had spent more than a year,at the Embassy immediately after the Restoration, to say nothing of hisconstant intercourse with the Farehams and other English exiles in France;but he was encouraging the young lady to talk to him in French, which wasspoken with an affected drawl, that was even more ridiculous than itserrors in grammar.
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