CHAPTER XII.
LADY FAREHAM'S DAY.
A month later the _Oxford Gazette_ brought Lady Fareham the welcomest newsthat she had read for ever so long. The London death-rate had decreased,and his Majesty had gone to Hampton Court, attended by the Duke and PrinceRupert, Lord Clarendon, and his other indispensable advisers, and a retinueof servants, to be within easy distance of that sturdy soldier Albemarle,who had remained in London, unafraid of the pestilence; and who declaredthat while it was essential for him to be in frequent communication withhis Majesty, it would be perilous to the interests of the State for him toabsent himself from London; for the Dutch war had gone drivelling on eversince the victory in June, and that victory was not to be supposed final.Indeed, according to the General, there was need of speedy action and aconsiderable increase of our naval strength.
Windsor had been thought of in the first place as a residence for the King;but the law courts had been transferred there, and the judges and theirfollowing had overrun the town, while there was a report of an infectedhouse there. So it had been resolved that his Majesty should make a briefresidence at Hampton Court, leaving the Queen, the Duchess, and theirbelongings at Oxford, whither he could return as soon as the business ofproviding for the setting out of the fleet had been arranged between himand the General, who could travel in a day backwards and forwards betweenthe Cockpit and Wolsey's palace.
When this news came they were snowed up at Chilton. Sport of all kinds hadbeen stopped, and Fareham, who, in his wife's parlance, lived in his bootsall the winter, had to amuse himself without the aid of horse and hound;while even walking was made difficult by the snowdrifts that blockedthe lanes, and reduced the face of Nature to one muffled and monotonouswhiteness, while all the edges of the landscape were outlined vaguelyagainst the misty greyness of the sky.
Hyacinth spent her days half in yawning and sighing, and half in idlelaughter and childish games with Henriette and De Malfort. When she was gayshe was as much a child as her daughter; when she was fretful and hipped,it was a childish discontent.
They played battledore and shuttlecock in the picture-gallery, and my ladylaughed when her volant struck some reverend judge or venerable bishop arap on the nose. They sat for hours twanging guitars, Hyacinth taking hermusic-lesson from De Malfort, whose exquisite taste and touch made a guitarseem a different instrument from that on which his pupil's delicate fingersnipped a wiry melody, more suggestive of finger-nails than music.
He taught her, and took all possible pains in the teaching, and laughed ather, and told her plainly that she had no talent for music. He told herthat in her hands the finest lute Laux Maler ever made, mellowed by threecenturies, would be but wood and catgut.
"It is the prettiest head in the world, and a forehead as white as QueenAnne's," he said one day, with a light touch on the ringletted brow, "butthere is nothing inside. I wonder if there is anything here?" and the samelight touch fluttered for an instant against her brocade bodice, at thespot where fancy locates the faculty of loving and suffering.
She laughed at his rude speeches, just as she laughed at his flatteries--asif there were safety in that atmosphere of idle mirth. Angela heard andwondered, wondering most perhaps what occupied and interested Lord Farehamin those white winter days, when he lived for the greater part alone in hisown rooms, or pacing the long walks from which the gardeners had clearedthe snow. He spent some of his time indoors, deep in a book. She knew asmuch as that. He had allowed Angela to read some of his favourites, thoughhe would not permit any of the new comedies, which everybody at Court wasreading, to enter his house, much to Lady Fareham's annoyance.
"I am half a century behind all my friends in intelligence," she said,"because of your Puritanism. One tires of your everlasting gloomytragedies--your _Broken Hearts_ and _Philasters_. I am all for the geniusof comedy."
"Then satisfy your inclinations, and read Moliere. He is second only toShakespeare."
"I have him by heart already."
The _Broken Heart_ and _Philaster_ delighted Angela; indeed, she had readthe latter play so often, and with such deep interest, that many passagesin it had engraved themselves on her memory, and recurred to her sometimesin the silence of wakeful nights.
That character of Bellario touched her as no heroine of the "Grand Cyrus"had power to move her. How elaborately artificial seemed the Scudery'spolished tirades, her refinements and quintessences of the grand passion,as compared with the fervid simplicity of the woman-page--a love so humble,so intense, so unselfish!
Sir Denzil came to Chilton nearly every day, and was always graciouslyreceived by her ladyship. His Puritan gravity fell away from him like apilgrim's cloak, in the light air of Hyacinth's amusements. He seemed togrow younger; and Henriette's sharp eyes discovered an improvement in hisdress.
"This is your second new suit since Christmas," she said, "and I'll swearit is made by the King's tailor. Regardez done, madame! What exquisiteembroidery, silver and gold thread intermixed with little sparks of garnetssewn in the pattern! It is better than anything of his lordship's. I wish Ihad a father who dressed well. I'm sure mine must be the shabbiest lord atWhitehall. You have no right to be more modish than monsieur mon pere, SirDenzil."
"Hold that insolent tongue, p'tit drole!" cried the mother. "Sir Denzil isyounger by a dozen years than his lordship, and has his reputation to makeat Court, and with the ladies he will meet there. I hope you are coming toLondon, Denzil. You shall have a seat in one of our coaches as soon as thedeath-rate diminishes, and this odious weather breaks up."
"Your ladyship is all goodness. I shall go where my lode-star leads,"answered Denzil, looking at Angela, and blushing at the audacity of hisspeech.
He was one of those modest lovers who rarely bring a blush to the cheek ofthe beloved object, but are so poor-spirited as to do most of the blushingthemselves.
A week later Lady Fareham could do nothing but praise that severe weatherwhich she had pronounced odious, for her husband, coming in from Oxfordafter a ride along the road, deep with melting snow, brought the news of aconsiderable diminution in the London death-rate; and the more startlingnews that his Majesty had removed to Whitehall for the quicker despatch ofbusiness with the Duke of Albemarle, albeit the bills of mortality recordedfifteen hundred deaths from the pestilence in the previous week, andalthough not a carriage appeared in the deserted streets of the metropolisexcept those in his Majesty's train.
"How brave, how admirable!" cried Hyacinth, clapping her hands in theexuberance of her joy. "Then we can go to London to-morrow, if horses andcoaches can be made ready. Give your orders at once, Fareham, I beseechyou. The thaw has set in. There will be no snow to stop us."
"There will be floods which may make fords impassable."
"We can avoid every ford--there is always a _detour_ by the lanes."
"Have you any idea what the lanes will be like after two feet deep of snow?Be sure, my love, you are happier twanging your lute by this fireside thanyou would be stuck in a quagmire, perishing with cold in a windy coach."
"I will risk the quagmires and the windy coach. Oh, my lord, if you everloved me let us set out to-morrow. I languish for Fareham House--mybasset-table, my friends, my watermen to waft me to and fro betweenBlackfriars and Westminster, the mercers in St. Paul's Churchyard, theMiddle Exchange. I have not bought myself anything pretty since Christmas.Let us go to-morrow."
"And risk spoiling the prettiest thing you own--your face--by aplague-spot."
"The King is there--the plague is ended."
"Do you think he is a God, that the pestilence will flee at his coming?"
"I think his courage is godlike. To be the first to return to thatabandoned city."
"What of Monk and the Archbishop, who never left it?"
"A rough old soldier! A Churchman! Such lives were meant to face danger.But his Majesty! A man for whom existence should be one long holiday?"
"He has done his best to make it so; but the pestilence has shown him thatther
e are grim realities in life. Don't fret, dearest. We will go to townas soon as it is prudent to make the move. Kings must brave great hazards;and there is no reason that little people like us should risk our livesbecause the necessities of State compel his Majesty to imperil his."
"We shall be laughed at if we do not hasten after him."
"Let them laugh who please. I have passed through the ordeal, Hyacinth. Idon't want a second attack of the sickness; nor would I for worlds that youor your sister should run into the mouth of danger. Besides, you can loselittle pleasure by being absent; for the play-houses are all closed, andthe Court is in mourning for the French Queen-mother."
"Poor Queen Anne!" sighed Hyacinth. "She was always kind to me. And todie of a cancer--after out-living those she most loved! King Louis wouldscarcely believe she was seriously ill, till she was at the point of death.But we know what mourning means at Whitehall--Lady Castlemaine in blackvelvet, with forty thousand pounds in diamonds to enliven it; a concertinstead of a play, perhaps; and the King sitting in a corner whisperingwith Mrs. Stewart. But as for the contagion, you will see that everybodywill rush back to London, and that you and I will be laughing-stocks."
The next week justified Lady Fareham's assertion. As soon as it was knownthat the King had established himself at Whitehall, the great people cameback to their London houses, and the town began to fill. It was as if a Godhad smiled upon the smitten city, and that healing and happiness radiatedfrom the golden halo round that anointed head. Was not this the monarch ofwhom the most eloquent preacher of the age had written, "In the arms ofwhose justice and wisdom we lie down in safety"?
London flung off her cerements--erased her plague-marks. The dead-cart'sdreadful bell no longer sounded in the silence of an afflicted city.Coffins no longer stood at every other door; the pits at Finsbury, inTothill Fields, at Islington, were all filled up and trampled down; and thegrass was beginning to grow over the forgotten dead. The Judges came backto Westminster. London was alive again--alive and healed; basking in thesunshine of Royalty.
Nowhere was London more alive in the month of March than at FarehamHouse on the Thames, where the Fareham liveries of green and gold showedconspicuous upon his lordship's watermen, lounging about the stone stepsthat led down to the water, or waiting in the terraced garden, which wasone of the finest on the river. Wherries of various weights and sizesfilled one spacious boathouse, and in another handsome stone edifice witha vaulted roof Lord Fareham's barge lay in state, glorious in cream colourand gold, with green velvet cushions and Oriental carpets, as splendid asthat blue-and-gold barge which Charles had sent as a present to Madame, avessel to out-glitter Cleopatra's galley, when her ladyship and her friendsand their singing-boys and musicians filled it for a voyage to HamptonCourt.
The barge was used on festive occasions, or for country voyages, as toHampton or Greenwich; the wherries were in constant requisition. Alongthat shining waterway rank and fashion, commerce and business, were movingbackwards and forwards all day long. That more novel mode of transit, thehackney coach, was only resorted to in foul weather; for the Legislaturehad handicapped the coaching trade in the interests of the watermen, andcoaches were few and dear.
If Angela had loved the country, she was not less charmed with Londonunder its altered aspect. All this gaiety and splendour, this movement andbrightness, astonished and dazzled her.
"I am afraid I am very shallow-minded," she told Denzil when he asked heropinion of London. "It seems an enchanted place, and I can scarcely believeit is the same dreadful city I saw a few months ago, when the dead werelying in the streets. Oh, how clearly it comes back to me--those emptystreets, the smoke of the fires, the wretched ragged creatures begging forbread! I looked down a narrow court, and saw a corpse lying there, anda child wailing over it; and a little way farther on a woman flung up awindow, and screamed out, 'Dead, dead! The last of my children is dead! HasGod no relenting mercy?'"
"It is curious," said Hyacinth, "how little the town seems changed afterall those horrors. I miss nobody I know."
"Nay, madam," said Denzil, "there have only died one hundred and sixtythousand people, mostly of the lower classes; or at least that is therecord of the bills; but I am told the mortality has been twice as much,for people have had a secret way of dying and burying their dead. If yourladyship could have heard the account that Mr. Milton gave me this morningof the sufferings he saw before he left London, you would not think thevisitation a light one."
"I wonder you consort with such a rebellious subject as Mr. Milton," saidHyacinth. "A creature of Cromwell's, who wrote with hideous malevolence anddisrespect of the murdered King, who was in hiding for ever so long afterhis Majesty's return, and who now escapes a prison only by the royalclemency."
"The King lacks only that culminating distinction of having persecuted thegreatest poet of the age in order to stand equal to the bigots who murderedGiordano Bruno," said Denzil.
"The greatest poet! Sure you would not compare Milton with Waller?"
"Indeed I would not, Lady Fareham."
"Nor with Cowley, nor Denham--dear cracked-brained Denham?"
"Nor with Denham. To my fancy he stands as high above them as the pole-starover your ladyship's garden lamps."
"A pamphleteer who has scribbled schoolboy Latin verses, and a few shortpoems; and, let me see, a masque--yes, a masque that he wrote for LordBridgewater's children before the troubles. I have heard my father talk ofit. I think he called the thing _Comus_."
"A name that will live, Lady Fareham, when Waller and Denham are shadows,remembered only for an occasional couplet."
"Oh, but who cares what people will think two or three hundred years hence?Waller's verses please us now. The people who come after me can pleasethemselves, and may read _Comus_ to their hearts' content. I know hislordship reads Milton, as he does Shakespeare, and all the cramped oldplay-wrights of Elizabeth's time. Henri, sing us that song of Waller's,'Go, lovely rose.' I would give all Mr. Milton has written for thatperfection."
They were sitting on the terrace above the river in the golden light ofan afternoon that was fair and warm as May, though by the calendar 'twasMarch. The capricious climate had changed from austere winter to smilingspring. Skylarks were singing over the fields at Hampstead, and over theplague-pits at Islington, and all London was rejoicing in blue skies andsunshine. Trade was awakening from a death-like sleep. The theatres wereclosed; but there were plays acted now and then at Court. The New and theMiddle Exchange were alive with beribboned fops and painted belles.
It was Lady Fareham's visiting-day. The tall windows of her saloon wereopen to the terrace, French windows that reached from ceiling to floor,like those at the Hotel de Rambouillet, and which Hyacinth had substitutedfor the small Jacobean casements, when she took possession of her husband'sancestral mansion. Saloon and terrace were one on a balmy afternoon likethis; and her ladyship's guests wandered in and out at their pleasure. Herlackeys, handing chocolate and cakes on silver or gold salvers, were somany as to seem ubiquitous; and in the saloon, presided over by Angela,there was a still choicer refreshment to be obtained at a tea-table, wheretiny cups of the new China drink were dispensed to those who cared forexotic novelties.
"Prythee, take your guitar and sing to us, were it but to change theconversation," cried Hyacinth; and De Malfort took up his guitar and began,in the sweetest of tenors, "Go, lovely rose."
He had all her ladyship's visitors, chiefly feminine, round him before hehad finished the first verse. That gift of song, that exquisite touch uponthe Spanish guitar, were irresistible.
Lord Fareham landed at the lower flight of steps as the song ended, andcame slowly along the terrace, saluting his wife's friends with a gravecourtesy. He brought an atmosphere of silence and restraint with him, itseemed to some of his wife's visitors, for the babble that usually followsthe end of a song was wanting.
Most of Lady Fareham's friends affected literature, and professedfamiliarity with two books which had caught the public taste
on oppositesides of the Channel. In London people quoted Butler, and vowed there wasno wit so racy as the wit in "Hudibras." In Paris the cultured were allstriving to talk like Rochefoucauld's "Maxims," which had lately delightedthe Gallic mind by the frank cynicism that drew everybody's attention tosomebody else's failings.
"Himself the vainest of men, 'tis scarce wonderful that he takes vanity tobe the mainspring that moves the human species," said De Malfort, when someone had found fault with the Duke's analysis.
"Oh, now we shall hear nothing but stale Rochefoucauldisms, sneers at loveand friendship, disparagement of our ill-used sex! Where has my gravehusband been, I wonder?" said Hyacinth. "Upon my honour, Fareham, your browlooks as sombre as if it were burdened with the care of the nation."
"I have been with one who has to carry the greater part of that burden, mylady, and my spirits may have caught some touch of his uneasiness."
"You have been prosing with that pragmatical personage at Dunkirk--nay, Ibeg the Lord Chancellor's pardon, Clarendon House. Are not his marblesand tapestries much finer than ours? And yet he began life as a sneakinglawyer, the younger son of a small Wiltshire squire----"
"Lady Fareham, you allow your tongue too much licence----"
"Nay, I speak but the common feeling. Everybody is tired of a Minister whois a hundred years behind the age. He should have lived under Elizabeth."
"A pretty woman should never talk politics, Hyacinth."
"Of what else can I talk when the theatres are closed, and you deny me theprivilege of seeing the last comedy performed at Whitehall? Is it not ranktyranny in his lordship, Lady Sarah?" turning to one of her intimates, alady who had been a beauty at the court of Henrietta Maria in the beginningof the troubles, and who from old habit still thought herself lovely andbeloved. "I appeal to your ladyship's common sense. Is it not monstrous todeprive me of the only real diversion in the town? I was not allowed toenter a theatre at all last year, except when his favourite Shakespeare orFletcher was acted, and that was but a dozen times, I believe."
"Oh, hang Shakespeare!" cried a gentleman whose periwig occupied nearly asmuch space against the blue of a vernal sky as all the rest of his dapperlittle person. "Gud, my lord, it is vastly old-fashioned in your lordshipto taste Shakespeare!" protested Sir Ralph Masaroon, shaking a cloud ofpulvilio out of his cataract of curls. "There was a pretty enough playconcocted t'other day out of two of his--a tragedy and comedy--_Measure forMeasure_ and _Much Ado about Nothing_, the interstices filled in with theutmost ingenuity. But Shakespeare unadulterated--faugh!"
"I am a fantastical person, perhaps, Sir Ralph; but I would rather mywife saw ten of Shakespeare's plays--in spite of their occasionalcoarseness--than one of your modern comedies."
"I should revolt against such tyranny," said Lady Sarah. "I have alwaysappreciated Shakespeare, but I adore a witty comedy, and I never allowed myhusband to dictate to me on a question of taste."
"Plays which her Majesty patronises can scarcely be unfit entertainment forher subjects," remarked another lady.
"Our Portuguese Queen is an excellent judge of the niceties of ourlanguage," said Fareham. "I question if she understands five sentences inas many acts."
"Nor should _I_ understand anything low or vulgar," said Hyacinth.
"Then, madam, you are best at home, for the whole entertainment would beHebrew to you."
"That cannot be," protested Lady Sarah; "for all our plays are written bygentlemen. The hack writers of King James's time have been shoved aside. Itis the mark of a man of quality to write a comedy."
"It is a pity that fine gentlemen should write foul jests. Nay, it is asubject I can scarce speak of with patience, when I remember what theEnglish stage has been, and hear what it is; when I recall what LordClarendon has told me of his Majesty's father, for whom Shakespeare wasa closet companion, who loved all that was noblest in the drama of theElizabethan age. Time, which should have refined and improved the stage,has sunk it in ignominy. We stand alone among nations in our worship of theobscene. You have seen plays enough in Paris, Hyacinth. Recall the themesthat pleased you at the Marais and the Hotel de Bourgogne; the stories ofclassic heroism, of Christian fortitude, of manhood and womanhood liftedto the sublime. You who, in your girlhood, were familiar with the austeregenius of Corneille----"
"I am sick of that Frenchman's name," interjected Lady Sarah. "St. Evremondwas always praising him, and had the audacity to pronounce him superior toDryden; to compare _Cinna_ with the _Indian Queen_."
"A comparison which makes one sorry for Mr. Dryden," said Fareham. "I haveheard that Conde, when a young man, was affected to tears at the scenebetween Augustus and his foe."
"He must have been very young," said Lady Fareham. "But I am not going todepreciate Corneille, or to pretend that the French theatre is not vastlysuperior to our own. I would only protest that if our laughter-loving Kingprefers farce to tragedy, and rhyme to blankverse, his subjects shouldaccommodate themselves to his taste, and enjoy the plays he likes. It is afoolish prejudice that deprives me of such a pleasure. I could always go ina mask."
"Can you put a mask upon your mind, and preserve that unstained in anatmosphere of corruption? Indeed, your ladyship does not know what youare asking for. To sit and simper through a comedy in which the filthiestsubjects are discussed in the vilest language; to see all that is foolishor lascivious in your own sex exaggerated with a malignant licence, whichmakes a young and beautiful woman an epitome of all the vices, uniting theextreme of masculine profligacy with the extreme of feminine silliness.Will you encourage by your presence the wretches who libel your sex? Willyou sit smiling to see your sisters in the pillory of satire?"
"I should smile as at a fairy tale. There are no such women among myfriends----"
"And if the satire hits an enemy, it is all the more pungent," said LadySarah.
"An enemy! The man who can so write of women is your worst enemy. The daywill come, perhaps, long after we are dust, when the women in _Epsom Wells_will be thought pictures from life. 'Such an one,' people will say, asthey stand to read your epitaph, 'was this Lady Sarah, whose virtues arerecorded here in Latin superlatives. We know her better in the pages ofShadwell.'"
Lady Sarah paled under her rouge at that image of a tomb, as Fareham'sfalcon eye singled her out in the light-hearted group of which De Malfortwas the central figure, sitting on the marble balustrade, in an easyimpertinent attitude, swinging his legs, and dandling his guitar. She wasless concerned at the thought of what posterity might say of her moralsthan at the idea that she must inevitably die.
"Not a word against Shad," protested Sir Ralph. "I have roared withlaughter at his last play. Never did any one so hit the follies of town andcountry. His rural Put is perfection; his London rook is to the very life."
"And if the generality of his female characters conduct themselves badlythere is always one heroine of irreproachable morals," said Lady Sarah.
"Who talks like a moral dragoon," said Fareham.
"Oh, dem, we must have the play-houses!" cried Masaroon. "Consider how dulltown is without them. They are the only assemblies that please quality andriffraff alike. Sure 'tis the nature of wit to bubble into licentiousness,as champagne foams over the rim of a glass; and, after all, who listens tothe play? Half the time one is talking to some adventurous miss, who willswallow a compliment from a stranger if he offer it with a china orange.Or, perhaps, there is quarrelling; and all our eyes and ears are on thescufflers. One may ogle a pretty actress on the stage; but who listens tothe play, except the cits and commonalty?"
"And even they are more eyes than ears," said Lady Sarah, "and are gazingat the King and Queen, or the Duke and Duchess, when they should be'following an intrigue by Shadwell or Dryden."
"Pardieu!" exclaimed De Malfort, "there are tragedies and comedies in theboxes deeper and more human than anything that is acted on the stage. Towatch the Queen, sitting silent and melancholy, while Madame Barbara lollsacross half a dozen people to talk to his Majesty, dazz
ling him with herbrilliant eyes, bewildering him by her daring speech. Or, on other nightsto see the same lady out of favour, sitting apart, with an ivory shoulderturned towards Royalty, scowling at the audience like a thunder-cloud."
"Well, it is but natural, perhaps, that such a Court should inspire such astage," returned Fareham, "and that for the heroic drama of Beaumont andFletcher, Webster, Massinger, and Ford, we should have a gross caricatureof our own follies and our own vices. Nay, so essential is foulness to themodern stage that when the manager ventures a serious play, he takes careto introduce it with some filthy prologue, and to spice the finish with afilthier epilogue."
"Zounds, Fareham!" cried Masaroon, "when one has yawned or slept throughfive acts of dull heroics, one needs to be stung into wakefulness by ahigh-spiced epilogue. For my taste your epilogue can't be too pungentto give a flavour to my oysters and Rhenish. Gud, my lord, we must havesomething to talk about when we leave the play-house!"
"His lordship is spoilt; we are all spoilt for London after having lived inthe most exquisite city in the world," drawled Mrs. Danville, one of LadyFareham's particular friends, who had been educated at the Visitandineswith the Princess Henrietta, now Duchess of Orleans. "Who can tolerate thecoarse manners and sea-coal fires of London after the smokeless skies andexquisite courtesies of Parisian good company in the Rue St. Thomas duLouvre--a society so refined that a fault in grammar shocks as much as aslit nose at Charing Cross? I shudder when I recall the Saturdays in theRue du Temple, and compare the conversations there, the play of wit andfancy, the elaborate arguments upon platonic love, the graceful raillery,with any assembly in London--except yours, Hyacinth. At Fareham House webreathe a finer air, although his lordship's esprit moqueur will not allowus any superiority to the coarse English mob."
"Indeed, Mrs. Danville, even your prejudice cannot deny London finegentlemen and wits," remonstrated Sir Ralph. "A court that can boast aBuckhurst, a Rochester, an Etherege, a Sedley----"
"There is not one of them can compare with Voiture or Godeau, with Bussy orSt. Evremond, still less with Scarron or Moliere," said De Malfort. "I haveheard more wit in one evening at Scarron's than in a week at Whitehall. Witin France has its basis in thought and erudition. Here it is the sparkleand froth of empty minds, a trick of speech, a knack of saying brutalthings under a pretence of humour, varnishing real impertinence with mockwit. I have heard Rowley laugh at insolences which, addressed to Louis,would have ensured the speaker a year in the Bastille."
"I would not exchange our easy-tempered King for your graceful despot,"said Fareham. "Pride is the mainspring that moves Louis' self-absorbedsoul. His mother instilled it into his mind almost before he could speak.He was bred in the belief that he has no more parallel or fellow than thesun which he has chosen for his emblem. And then, for moral worth, he islittle better than his cousin, Louis has all Charles's elegant vices, plustyranny."
"Louis is every inch a King. Your easy-tempered gentleman at Whitehall isonly a tradition," answered De Malfort. "He is but an extravagantly paidofficial, whose office is a sinecure, and who sells something of hisprerogative every session for a new grant of money. I dare adventure, bythe end of his reign, Charles will have done more than Cromwell to increasethe liberty of the subject and to demonstrate the insignificance of kings."
"I doubt the easy-tempered sinecurist who trusts the business of the Stateto the nation's representatives will wear longer than your officioustyrant, who wants to hold all the strings in his own fingers."
"He may do that safely, so long as he has men like Colbert for puppets----"
"Men!" cried Fareham. "A man of so rare an honesty must not be thought ofin the plural. Colbert's talent, probity, and honour constitute a phoenixthat appears once in a century; and, given those rare qualities in the man,it needs a Richelieu to inspire the minister, and a Mazarin to teach himhis craft, and to prepare him for double-dealing in others which hisown direct mind could never have imagined. Trained first by one of thegreatest, and next by one of the subtlest statesmen the world has everseen, the provincial woollen-draper's son has all the qualities needed toraise France to the pinnacle of fortune, if his master will but give him afree hand."
"At any rate, he will make Jacques Bonhomme pay handsomely for hisMajesty's new palaces and new loves," said De Malfort. "Colbert adores theKing, and is blind to his follies, which are no more economical than thevulgar pleasures of your jovial Rowley."
"Who takes four shillings in every country gentleman's pound to spendon the pleasures of London," interjected Masaroon. "Royalty is plagueyexpensive."
The company sighed a melancholy assent.
"And one can never tell whether the money they squeeze out of us goes tobuild a new ship, or to pay Lady Castlemaine's gambling debts," said LadySarah.
"Oh, no doubt the lady, as Hyde calls her, has her tithes," said DeMalfort. "I have observed she always flames in new jewels after a subsidy."
"Royal accounts should be kept so that every tax-payer could look intothem," said Masaroon. "The King has spent millions. We were all sofoolishly fond of him in the joyful day of his restoration that we allowedhim to wallow in extravagance, and asked no questions; and for a man whohad worn threadbare velvet and tarnished gold, and lived upon loans andgratuities from foreign princes and particulars, it was a new sensation todraw _ad libitum_ upon a national exchequer."
"The exchequer Rowley draws upon should be as deep and wide as the riverPactolus; for he is a spendthrift by instinct," said Fareham.
"Yet his largest expenditure can hardly equal his cousin's drain upon therevenue. Mansart is spending millions on Versailles, with his bastardItalian architecture, his bloated garlands and festoons, his stone liliesand pomegranates. Charles builds no palaces, initiates no war----"
"And will leave neither palace nor monument; will have lived only to havediminished the dignity and importance of his country. Restored to kingdomand power as if by a miracle, he makes it his chief business to showEnglishmen how well they could have done without him," said Denzil Warner,who had been hanging over Angela's tea-table until just now, when they bothsauntered on to the terrace, the lady's office being fulfilled, the littleChinese teapot emptied of its costly contents, and the tiny tea-cupsdistributed among the modish few who relished, or pretended to relish, thenew drink.
"You are a Republican, Sir Denzil, fostered by an arrant demagogue!"exclaimed Masaroon, with a contemptuous shake of his shoulder ribbons. "Youhate the King because he is a King."
"No, sir, I despise him because he is so much less than a King. Nobodycould hate Charles the Second. He is not big enough."
"Oh, dem, we want no meddlesome Kings to quarrel with their neighbours, andset Europe by the ears! The treaty of the Pyrenees may be a fine thing forFrance; but how many noble gentlemen's lives it cost, to say nothing of thecommon people! Rowley is the finest gentleman in his kingdom, and the mostgood-natured. Eh, gud, sirs! what more would you have?"
"A MAN--like Henry the Fifth, or Oliver Cromwell, or Elizabeth."
"Faith, she had need possess the manly virtues, for she must have beenan untowardly female--a sour, lantern-jawed spinster, with all theinclinations but none of the qualities of a coquette."
"Greatness has the privilege of small failings, or it would scarcebe human. Elizabeth and Julius Caesar might be excused some harmlessvanities."
* * * * *
The spring evenings were now mild enough for promenading St. James's Park,and the Mall was crowded night after night by the finest company in London.Hyacinth walked in the Mall, and appeared occasionally in her coach inHyde Park; but she repeatedly reminded her friends how inferior was themill-round of the Ring to the procession of open carriages along the Coursla Reine, by the side of the Seine; the splendour of the women's dress,outshone sometimes by the extravagant decoration of their coaches and therichness of their liveries; the crowds of horsemen, the finest gentlemen inFrance, riding at the coach doors, and bandying jests and compli
ments withBeauty, enthroned in her triumphal chariot. Gay, joyous sunsets; lightlaughter; delicate feasting in Renard's garden, hard by the Tuileries. Toremember that fairer and different scene was to recall the freshness ofyouth, the romance of a first love.
Here in the Mall there was gaiety enough and to spare. A crowd of finepeople that sometimes thickened to a mob, hustled by the cits andstarveling poets who came to stare at them.
Yet, since St. James's Park was fashion's favourite promenade, Lady Farehamaffected it, and took a turn or two nearly every evening, alighting fromher chair at one gate and returning to it at another, on her way to routor dance. She took Angela with her; and De Malfort and Sir Denzil weregenerally in attendance upon them, Denzil's devotion stopping at nothingexcept a proposal of marriage, for which he had not mustered courage in afriendship that had lasted half a year.
"Because there was one so favoured as Endymion, am I to hope for the moonto come down and give herself to me?" he said one day, when Lady Farehamrebuked him for his reticence. "I know your sister does not love me; yet Ihang on, hoping that love will come suddenly, like the coming of spring,which is ever a surprise. And even if I am never to win her, it ishappiness to see her and to talk with her. I will not spoil my chance byrashness; I will not hazard banishment from her dear company."
"She is lucky in such an admirer," sighed Hyacinth. "A silent, respectfulpassion is the rarest thing nowadays. Well, you deserve to conquer, Denzil;and if my sister were not of the coldest nature I ever met in woman shewould have returned your passion ages ago, when you were so much in hercompany at Chilton."
"I can afford to wait as long as the Greeks waited before Troy," saidDenzil; "and I will be as constant as they were. If I cannot be her lover Ican be her friend, and her protector."
"Protector! Nay, surely she needs no protector out-of-doors, when she hasFareham and me within!"
"Beauty has always need of defenders."
"Not such beauty as Angela's. In the first place, her charms are of nodazzling order; and in the second, she has a coldness of temper and anold-fashioned wisdom which would safeguard her amidst the rabble rout ofComus."
"There I believe you are right, Lady Fareham. Temptation could not touchher. Sin, even the subtlest, could not so disguise itself that her puritywould not take alarm. Yes; she is like Milton's lady. The tempter couldnot touch the freedom of her mind. Sinful love would wither at a look fromthose pure eyes."
He turned away suddenly and walked to the window.
"Denzil! Why, what is the matter? You are weeping!"
"Forgive me!" he said, recovering himself. "Indeed, I am not ashamed of atributary tear to virtue and beauty like your sister's."
"Dear friend, I shall not be happy till I call you brother."
She gave him both her hands, and he bent down to kiss them.
"I swear you are losing all your Anabaptist stiffness," she said,laughingly. "You will be ruffling it in Covent Garden with Buckhurst andhis crew before long."
London Pride, Or, When the World Was Younger Page 12