"So long as you change not again, dear, I am of all men the happiest. Yes, I know "tis Sir John"s wooing that won you, not mine. And that I have still to conquer your heart, though your hand is promised me. Yet I do not despair of being loved in as full measure as I love. My faith is strong in the power of an honest affection."
"You may at least be sure of my honesty. I profess nothing but the desire to be your true and obedient wife--"
"Obedient! You shall be my empress."
"No, no. I have no wish to rule. I desire only to make my father happy, and you too, sir, if I can."
"Ah, my soul, that is so easy for you. You have but to let me live in your dear company. I doubt I would rather be miserable with you than happy with any other woman. Ill-use me if you will; play Zantippe, and I will be more submissive than Socrates. But you are all mildness-perfect Christian, perfect woman. You cannot miss being perfect as wife-and--"
Another word trembled on his lips; but he checked himself lest he should offend, and the speech ended in a sob.
"My Angela, my angel!"
He took her to his heart, and kissed the fair brow, cold under his pa.s.sionate kisses. That word "angel" turned her to ice. It conjured back the sound of a voice that it was sin to remember. Fareham had called her so; not once, but many times, in their placid days of friendship, before the fiery breath of pa.s.sion had withered all the flowers in her earthly paradise-before the knowledge of evil had clouded the brightness of the world.
A gentle peace reigned at the Manor after Angela"s betrothal. Sir John was happier than he had been since the days of his youth, before the coming of that cloud no bigger than a man"s hand, when John Hampden"s stubborn resistance of a thirty-shilling rate had brought Crown and People face to face upon the burning question of Ship-money, and kindled the fire that was to devour England. From the hour he left his young wife to follow the King to Yorkshire Sir John"s existence had known little of rest or of comfort, or even of glory. He had fought on the losing side, and had missed the fame of those who fell and took the rank of heroes by an untimely death. Hardship and danger, wounds and sickness, straitened means and scanty fare, had been his portion for three bitter years; and then had come a period of patient service, of schemes and intrigues foredoomed to failure; of going to and fro, from Jersey to Paris, from Paris to Ireland, from Ireland to Cornwall, journeying hither and thither at the behest of a shifty, irresolute man, or a pa.s.sionate, imprudent woman, as the case might be; now from the King to the Queen, now from the Queen to this or that ally; futile errands, unskilful combinations, failure on every hand, till the last fatal journey, on which he was an unwilling attendant, the flight from Hampton Court to t.i.tchfield, when the fated King broke faith with his enemies in an unfinished negotiation.
Foreign adventure had followed English hardships, and the soldier had been tossed on the stormy sea of European warfare. He had been graciously received at the French Court, but only to feel himself a stranger there, and to have his English clothes and English accent laughed at by Gramont and Bussy, and the accomplished St. evremond, and the frivolous herd of their imitators; to see even the Queen, for whom he had spent his last jacobus, smile behind her fan at his bevues, and whisper to her sister-in-law while he knelt to kiss the little white hand that had led a King to ruin. Everywhere the stern Malignant had found himself outside the circle of the elect. At the Hotel de Rambouillet, in the splendid houses of the newly built Place Royale, in the salons of d.u.c.h.esses, and the taverns of courtly roysterers and drunken poets, at Cormier"s, or at the Pine Apple, in the Rue de la Juiverie, where it was all the better for a Christian gentleman not to understand the talk of the wits that flashed and drank there. Everywhere he had been a stranger and aloof. It was only under canvas, in danger and privation, that he lost the sense of being one too many in the world. There John Kirkland found his level, shoulder to shoulder with Conde and Turenne. The stout Cavalier was second to no soldier in Louis" splendid army; was of the stamp of an earlier race even, better inured to hardship than any save that heroic Prince, the Achilles of his day, who to the graces of a modern courtier joined the temper of an ancient Greek.
His daughter Hyacinth had given him the utmost affection which such a nature could give; but it was the affection of a trained singing-bird, or a pug-nosed spaniel; and the father, though he admired her beauty, and was pleased with her caresses, was shrewd enough to perceive the lightness of her disposition and the shallowness of her mind. He rejoiced in her marriage with a man of Fareham"s strong character.
"I have married thee to a husband who will know how to rule a wife," he told her on the night of her wedding. "You have but to obey and to be happy; for he is rich enough to indulge all your fancies, and will not complain if you waste the gold that would pay a company of foot on the decoration of your poor little person."
"The tone in which you speak of my poor little person, sir, can but remind me how much I need the tailor and the milliner," answered Hyacinth, dropping her favourite curtsy, which she was ever ready to practise at the slightest provocation.
"Nay, pet.i.te chatte, you know I think you the loveliest creature at Saint Germain or the Louvre, far surpa.s.sing in beauty the Cardinal"s niece, who has managed to set young Louis" heart throbbing with a boyish pa.s.sion. But I doubt you bestow too much care on the cherishing of a gift so fleeting."
"You have said the word, sir. "Tis because it is so fleeting I must needs take care of my beauty. We poor women are like the b.u.t.terflies and the roses. We have as brief a summer. You men, who value us only for our outward show, should pardon some vanity in creatures so ephemeral."
"Ephemeral scarce applies to a s.e.x which owns such an example as your grandmother, who has lived to reckon her servants among the grandsons of her earliest lovers."
"Not lived, sir! No woman lives after thirty. She can but exist, and dream that she is still admired. La Marquise has been dead for the last twenty years, but she won"t own it. Ah, sir, c"est un triste supplice to have been! I wonder how those poor ghosts can bear that earthly purgatory which they call old age? Look at Madame de Sable, par exemple, once a beauty, now only a tradition. And Queen Anne! Old people say she was beautiful, and that Buckingham risked being torn by wild horses-like Ravaillac-only to kiss her hand by stealth in a moonlit garden; and would have plunged England in war but for an excuse to come back to Paris. Who would go to war for Anne"s haggard countenance nowadays?"
Even in Lady Fareham"s household the Cavalier soon began to fancy himself an inhabitant too much; a dull, grey ghost from a tragical past. He could not keep himself from talking of the martyred King, and those bitter years through which he had followed his master"s sinking fortunes. He told stories of York and of Beverley; of the scarcity of cash which reduced his Majesty"s Court to but one table; of that bitter affront at Coventry; of the evil omens that had marked the raising of the Standard on the hill at Nottingham, and filled superst.i.tious minds with dark forebodings, reminding old men of that sad shower of rain that fell when Charles was proclaimed at Whitehall, on the day of his accession, and of the shock of earthquake on his coronation day; of Edgehill and Lindsey"s death; of the profligate conduct of the Cavalier regiments, and the steady, dogged force of their psalm-singing adversaries; of Queen Henrietta"s courage, and beauty, and wilfulness, and her fatal influence upon an adoring husband.
"She wanted to be all that Buckingham had been," said Sir John, "forgetting that Buckingham was the King"s evil genius."
That lively and eminently artificial society of the Rue de Touraine soon wearied of Sir John"s reminiscences. King Charles"s execution had receded into the dim grey of history. He might as well have told them anecdotes of Cinq Mars, or of the great Henri, or of Moses or Abraham. Life went on rapid wheels in patrician Paris. They had Conde to talk about, and Mazarin"s numerous nieces, and the opera, that new importation from Italy, which the Cardinal was bringing into fashion; while in the remote past of half a dozen years back the Fronde was the only interesting subject, and even that was worn threadbare; the adventures of the d.u.c.h.ess, the conduct of the Prince in prison, the intrigues of Cardinal and Queen, Mademoiselle, yellow-haired Beaufort, duels of five against five-all-all these were ancient history as compared with young Louis and his pa.s.sion for Marie de Mancini, and the scheming of her wily uncle to marry all his nieces to reigning princes or embryo kings.
And then the affectations and conceits of that elegant circle, the sonnets and madrigals, the "bouts-rimes," the practical jokes, the logic-chopping and straw-splitting of those ultra-fine intellects, the romances where the personages of the day masqueraded under Greek or Roman or Oriental aliases, books written in a flowery language which the Cavalier did not understand, and full of allusions that were dark to him; while not to know and appreciate those master-works placed him outside the pale.
He rejoiced in escaping from that overcharged atmosphere to the tavern, to the camp, anywhere. He followed the exiled Stuarts in their wanderings, paid his homage to the Princess of Orange, roamed from scene to scene, a stranger and one too many wherever he went.
Then came the hardest blow of all-the chilling disillusion that awaited many of Charles"s faithful friends, who were not of such political importance as to command their recompense. Neglect and forgetfulness were Sir John Kirkland"s portion; and for him and for such as he that caustic definition of the Act of Indemnity was a hard and cruel truth. It was an Act of Indemnity for the King"s enemies and of oblivion for his friends. Sir John"s spirits had hardly recovered from the bitterness of disappointed affection when he came back to the old home, though his chagrin was seven years old. But now, in his delight at the alliance with Denzil Warner, he seemed to have renewed his lease of cheerfulness and bodily vigour. He rode and walked about the lanes and woods with erect head and elastic limbs. He played bowls with Denzil in the summer evenings. He went fishing with his daughter and her sweetheart. He revelled in the simple rustic life, and told them stories of his boyhood, when James was King, and many a queer story of that eccentric monarch and of the rising star, George Villiers.
"Ah, what a history that was!" he exclaimed. "His mother trained him as if with a foreknowledge of that star-like ascendency. He was schooled to shine and dazzle, to excel all compeers in the graces men and women admire. I doubt she never thought of the mind inside him, or cared whether he had a heart or a lump of marble behind his waist-band. He was taught neither to think nor to pity-only to shine; to be quick with his tongue in half a dozen languages, with his sword after half a dozen modes of fence. He could kill his man in the French, or the Italian, or the Spanish manner. He was cosmopolitan in the knowledge of evil. He had every device that can make a man brilliant and dangerous. He mounted every rung of the ladder, leaping from step to step. He ascended, swift as a shooting star, from plain country gentleman to the level of princes. And he expired with an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, astonished to find himself mortal, slain in a moment by the thrust of a ten-penny knife. I remember as if it were yesterday how men looked and spoke when the news came to London, and how some said this murder would be the saving of King Charles. I know of one man at least who was glad."
"Who was he, sir?" asked Denzil.
"He who had the greatest mind among Englishmen-Thomas Wentworth. Buckingham had held him at a distance from the King, and his strong pa.s.sionate temper was seething with indignation at being kept aloof by that silken sybarite-an impotent General, a fatal counsellor. After the Favourite"s death there came a time of peace and plenty. The pestilence had pa.s.sed, the war was over. Charles was happy with his Henriette and their lovely children. Wentworth was in Ireland. The Parliament House stood still and empty, doors shut, swallows building under the eaves. I look back, and those placid years melt into each other like one long summer. And then, again, as "twere yesterday, I hear Hampden"s drums and fifes in the lanes, and see the rebels" flag with that hateful legend, "Vestigia nulla retrorsum," and Buckinghamshire peasants are under arms, and the King and his people have begun to hate and fear each other."
"None foresaw that the war would last so long or end in murder, I doubt, sir," said Angela.
"Nay, child; we who were loyal thought to see that rabble withered by the breath of kingly nostrils. A word should have brought them to the dust."
"There might be so easy a victory, perhaps, sir, from a King who knew how to speak the right word at the right moment, how to comply graciously with a just demand, and how to be firm in a righteous denial," replied Denzil; "but with Charles a stammering speech was but the outward expression of a wavering mind. He was a man who never listened to an appeal, but always yielded to a threat, were it only loud enough."
The wedding was to be soon. Marriages were patched up quickly in the light-hearted sixties. And here there was nothing to wait for. Sir John had found Denzil compliant on every minor question, and willing to make his home at the Manor during his mother"s lifetime.
"The old lady would never stomach a Papist daughter-in-law," said Sir John; and Denzil was fain to confess that Lady Warner would not easily reconcile herself with Angela"s creed, though she could not fail of loving Angela herself.
"My daughter would have neither peace nor liberty under a Puritan"s roof," Sir John said; "and I should have neither son nor daughter, and should be a loser by my girl"s marriage. You shall be as much master here, Denzil, as if this were your own house-which it will be when I have moved to my last billet. Give me a couple of stalls for my roadsters, and kennel room for my dogs, and I want no more. You and Angela may introduce as many new fashions as you like; dine at two o"clock, and sip your unwholesome Indian drink of an evening. The fine ladies in Paris were beginning to take tea when I was last there, though by the faces they made over the stuff it might have been poison. I can smoke my pipe in the chimney-corner, and look on and admire at the new generation. I shall not feel myself one too many at your fireside, as I used sometimes in the Rue de Touraine, when those strutting Gallic c.o.c.ks were quizzing me."
There were clouds of dust and a clatter of hoofs again in front of the floriated iron gate; but this time it was not the Honourable Henriette who came tripping along the gravel path on two-inch heels, but my Lady Fareham, who walked languidly, with the a.s.sistance of a gold-headed cane, and who looked pale and thin in her apple-green satin gown and silver-braided petticoat.
She, too, came attended by a second coach, which was filled by her ladyship"s French waiting-woman, Mrs. Lewin, and a pile of boxes and parcels.
"I"ll wager that in the rapture and romance of your sweethearting you have not given a thought to petticoats and mantuas," she said, after she had embraced her sister, who was horrified at the sight of that painted harridan from London.
Angela blushed at those words, "rapture and romance," knowing how little there had been of either in her thoughts, or in Denzil"s sober courtship. Romance! Alas! there had been but one romance in her life, and that a guilty one, which she must ever remember with remorse.
"Come now, confess you have not a gown ordered."
"I have gowns enough and to spare. Oh, sister! have you come so far to talk of gowns? And that odious woman too! What brought her here?" Angela asked, with more temper than she was wont to show.
"My sisterly kindness brought her. You are an ungrateful hussy for looking vexed when I have come a score of miles through the dust to do you a service."
"Ah, dearest, I am grateful to you for coming. But, alas! you are looking pale and thin. Heaven forbid that you have been indisposed, and we in ignorance of your suffering."
"No, I am well enough, though every one a.s.sures me I look ill; which is but a civil mode of telling me I am growing old and ugly."
"Nay, Hyacinth, the former we must all become, with time; the latter you will never be."
"Your servant, Sir Denzil, has taught you to pay antique compliments. Well, now we will talk business. I had occasion to send for Lewin-my toilet was in a horrid state of decay; and then it seemed to me, knowing your foolish indifference, that even your wedding gown would not be chosen unless I saw to it. So here is Lewin with Lyons and Genoa silks of the very latest patterns. She has but just come from Paris, and is full of Parisian modes and Court scandals. The King posted off to Versailles directly after his mother"s death, and has not returned to the Louvre since. He amuses himself by spending millions on building, and making pa.s.sionate love to Mademoiselle la Valliere, who encourages him by pretending an excessive modesty, and exaggerates every favour by penitential tears. I doubt his attachment to so melancholy a mistress will hardly last a lifetime. She is not beautiful; she has a halting gait; and she is no more virtuous than any other young woman who makes a show of resistance to enhance the merit of her surrender."
Hyacinth prattled all the way to the parlour, Mrs. Lewin and the waiting-woman following, laden with parcels.
"Queer, dear old hovel!" she exclaimed, sinking languidly upon a tabouret, and fanning herself exhaustedly, while the mantua-maker opened her boxes, and laid out her sample breadths of richly decorated brocade, or silver and gold enwrought satin. "How well I remember being whipped over my horn-book in this very room! And there is the bowling green where I used to race with the Italian greyhound my grandmother brought me from Paris. I look back, and it seems a dream of some other child running about in the sunshine. It is so hard to believe that joyous little being-who knew not the meaning of heart-ache-was I."
"Why that sigh, sister? Surely none ever had less cause for heart-ache than you?"
"Have I not cause? Not when my gla.s.s tells me youth is gone, and beauty is waning? Not when there is no one in this wide world who cares a straw whether I am handsome or hideous? I would as lief be dead as despised and neglected."
"Sorella mia, questa donna ti ascolta," murmured Angela; "come and look at the old gardens, sister, while Mrs. Lewin spreads out her wares. And pray consider, madam," turning to the mantua-maker, "that those peac.o.c.k purples and gold embroideries have no temptations for me. I am marrying a country gentleman, and am to lead a country life. My gowns must be such as will not be spoilt by a walk in dusty lanes, or a visit to a farm-labourer"s cottage."
"Eh, gud, your ladyship, do not tell me that you would bury so much beauty among sheep and cows, and odious ploughmen"s wives and dairy-women. A month or so of rustic life in summer between Epsom and Tunbridge Wells may be well enough, to rest your beauty-without patches or a French head-out of sight of your admirers. But to live in the country! Only a jealous husband could ever propose more than an annual six weeks of rustic seclusion to a wife under sixty. Lord Chesterfield was considered as cruel for taking his Countess to the rocks and ravines of Derbyshire as Sir John Denham for poisoning his poor lady."
"Chut! tu vas un peu trop loin, Lewin!" remonstrated Lady Fareham.