London Pride, Or, When the World Was Younger Read online

  CHAPTER III.

  LETTERS FROM HOME.

  The quiet days went by, and grew into years, and time was only marked bythe gradual failure of the reverend mother's health; so gradual, so gentlea decay, that it was only when looking back on St. Sylvester's Eve that hergreat-niece became aware how much of strength and activity had been lostsince the Superior knelt in her place near the altar, listening to thesolemn music of the midnight Mass that sanctified the passing of the year.This year the reverend mother was led to her seat between two nuns, whosustained her feeble limbs. This year the meek knees, which had worn themarble floor in long hours of prayer during eighty pious years, could nolonger bend. The meek head was bowed, the bloodless hands were lifted up insupplication, but the fingers were wasted and stiffened, and there was painin every movement of the joints.

  There was no actual malady, only the slow death in life called old age. Allthe patient needed was rest and tender nursing. This last her great-niecesupplied, together with the gentlest companionship. No highly trainednurse, the product of modern science, could have been more efficient thanthe instinct of affection had made Angela. And then the patient's temperwas so amiable, her mind, undimmed after eighty-three years of life, was amirror of God. She thought of her fellow-creatures with a Divine charity;she worshipped her Creator with an implicit faith. For her in many a wakingvision the heavens opened and the spirits of departed saints descended fromtheir abode in bliss to hold converse with her. Eighty years of her lifehad been given to religious exercises and charitable deeds. Motherlessbefore she could speak, she had entered the convent as a pupil at threeyears of age, and had taken the veil at seventeen. Her father had married agreat heiress, whose only child, a daughter, was allowed to absorb allthe small stock of parental affection; and there was no one to disputeAnastasia's desire for the cloister. All she knew of the world outsidethose walls was from hearsay. A rare visit from her lovely half-sister, theMarquise de Montrond, had astonished her with the sight of a distinguishedParisienne, and left her wondering. She had never read a secular book. Sheknew not the meaning of the word pleasure, save in the mild amusementspermitted to the convent children--till they left the convent as youngwomen--on the evening of a saint's day; a stately dance of curtsyings andwaving arms; a little childish play, dramatising some incident in thelives of the saints. So she lived her eighty years of obedience and quietusefulness, learning and teaching, serving and governing. She had livedthrough the Thirty Years' War, through the devastations of Wallenstein, thecruelties of Bavarian Tilly, the judicial murder of Egmont and Horn. Shehad heard of villages burnt, populations put to the sword, women andchildren killed by thousands. She had conversed with those who rememberedthe League; she had seen the nuns weeping for Edward Campion's cruel fate;she had heard Masses sung for the soul of murdered Mary Stuart. Shehad heard of Raleigh's visions of conquest and of gold, setting hisprison-blanched face towards the West, in the afternoon of life, toencounter bereavement, treachery, sickening failure, and go back to hisnative England to expiate the dreams of genius with the blood of a martyr.And through all the changes and chances of that eventful century she hadlived apart, full of pity and wonder, in a charmed circle of piety andlove.

  Her room, in these peaceful stages of the closing scene, was a haven ofrest. Angela loved the seclusion of the panelled chamber, with its heavilymullioned casement facing the south-west, and the polished oak floor,on which the red and gold of the sunset were mirrored, as on the darkstillness of a moorland tarn. For her every object in the room had itsinterest or its charm. The associations of childhood hallowed them all. Thelarge ivory crucifix, yellow with age, dim with the kisses of adoring lips;the delf statuettes of Mary and Joseph, flaming with gaudy colour; thefigure of the Saviour and St. John the Baptist, delicately carved out ofboxwood, in a group representing the baptism in the river Jordan, the holydove trembling on a wire over the Divine head; the books, the pictures, therosaries: all these she had gazed at reverently when all things were new,and the convent passages places of shuddering, and the service of the Massan unintelligible mystery. She had grown up within those solemn walls; andnow, seeing her kinswoman's life gently ebbing away, she could but wonderwhat she would have to do in this world when another took the Superior'splace, and the tie that bound her to Louvain would be broken.

  The lady who would in all probability succeed Mother Anastasia as Superiorwas a clever, domineering woman, whom Angela loved least of all the nuns--awidow of good birth and fortune, and a thorough Fleming; stolid, bigoted,prejudiced, and taking much credit to herself for the wealth she hadbrought to the convent, apt to talk of the class-room and the chapel hermoney had helped to build and restore as "my class-room," or "my chapel."

  No; Angela had no desire to remain in the convent when her dear kinswomanshould have vanished from the scene her presence sanctified. The housewould be haunted with sorrowful memories. It would be time for her to claimthat home which her father had talked of sharing with her in his old age.She could just faintly remember the house in which she was born--the moat,the fish-pond, the thick walls of yew, the peacocks and lions cut in box,of which the gardener who clipped them was so proud. Faintly, faintly, thepicture of the old house came back to her; built of grey stone, and stainedwith moss, grave and substantial, occupying three sides of a quadrangle, ahouse of many windows, few of which were intended to open, a house of darkpassages, like these in the convent, and flights of shallow steps, andcurious turns and twistings here and there. There were living birds thatsunned their spreading tails and stalked in slow stateliness on the turfterraces, as well as those peacocks clipped out of yew. The house lay ina Buckinghamshire valley, shut round and sheltered by hills and coppices,where there was an abundance of game. Angela had seen the low, cavern-likelarder hung with pheasants and hares.

  Her heart yearned towards the old house, so distinctly pictured by memory,though perchance with some differences from the actual scene. The mansionwould seem smaller to her, doubtless, beholding it with the eyes ofwomanhood, than childish memory made it. But to live there with her father,to wait upon him and tend him, to have Hyacinth's children there, playingin the gardens as she had played, would be as happy a life as her fancycould compass.

  All that she knew of the march of events during those tranquil years inthe convent came to her in letters from her sister, who was a vivaciousletter-writer, and prided herself upon her epistolary talent--as indeedupon her general superiority, from a literary standpoint, to the women ofher day.

  It was a pleasure to Lady Fareham in some rare interval of solitude--whenthe weather was too severe for her to venture outside the hall door, evenin her comfortable coach, and when by some curious concatenation shehappened to be without visitors--to open her portfolio and prattle withher pen to her sister, as she would have prattled with her tongue to thevisitors whom snow or tempest kept away. Her letters written from Londonwere apt to be rare and brief, Angela noted; but from his lordship'smansion near Oxford, or at the Grange between Fareham and Winchester--oncethe property of the brothers of St. Cross--she always sent a budget. Fewof these lengthy epistles contained anything bearing upon Angela's ownexistence--except the oft-repeated entreaty that she would make haste andjoin them--or even the flippant suggestion that Mother Anastasia shouldmake haste and die. They were of the nature of news-letters; but the newswas tinctured by the feminine medium through which it came, and there wasa flavour of egotism in almost every page. Lady Fareham wrote as only apretty woman, courted, flattered, and indulged by everybody about her, eversince she could remember, could be forgiven for writing. People had pettedher and worshipped her with such uniform subservience that she had grown tothirty years of age without knowing that she was selfish, accepting homageand submission as a law of the universe, as kings and princes do.

  Only in one of those letters was there that which might be called amomentous fact, but which Angela took as easily as if it had been a meredetail, to be dismissed from her thoughts when the letter had been laidaside.


  It was a letter with a black seal, announcing the death of the Marquise deMontrond, who had expired of an apoplexy at her house in the Marais, aftera supper party at which Mademoiselle, Madame de Longueville, Madame deMontausier, the Duchesse de Bouillon, Lauzun, St. Evremond, cheery littleGodeau, Bishop of Vence, and half a dozen other famous wits had beenpresent, a supper bristling with royal personages. Death had come withappalling suddenness while the lamps of the festival were burning, and thecards were still upon the tables, and the last carriage had but just rolledunder the _porte cochere_.

  "It is the manner of death she would have chosen," wrote Hyacinth. "Shenever missed confession on the first Sunday of the month; and she was sogenerous to the Church and to the poor that her director declared she wouldhave been too saintly for earth, but for the human weakness of liking finecompany. And now, dearest, I have to tell you how she has disposed of herfortune; and I hope, if you should think she has not used you generously,you will do me the justice to believe that I have neither courted her forher wealth nor influenced her to my dear sister's disadvantage. You willconsider, _tres chere_, that I was with her from my eighth year until theother day when Fareham brought me to England. She loved me passionately inmy childhood, and has often told me since that she never felt towards meas a grandmother, but as if she had been actually my mother, being indeedstill a young woman when she adopted me, and by strangers always mistakenfor my mother. She was handsome to the last, and young in mind and inhabits long after youth had left her. I was said to be the image of whatshe was when she rivalled Madame de Hautefort in the affections of the lateKing. You must consider, sweetheart, that he was the most moral of men,and that with him love meant a passion as free from sensual taint as thepreferences of a sylph. I think my good grandmother loved me all the betterfor this fancied resemblance. She would arrange her jewels about my hairand bosom, as she had worn them when Buckingham came wooing for his master;and then she would bid her page hold a mirror before me and tell me to lookat the face of which Queen Anne had been jealous, and for which Cinq Marshad run mad. And then she would shed a tear or two over the years and thecharms that were gone, till I brought the cards and cheered her spiritswith her favourite game of primero.

  "She had her fits of temper and little tantrums sometimes, Ange, and itneeded some patience to restrain one's tongue from insolence; but I amhappy to remember that I ever bore her in profound respect, and that Inever made her seriously angry but once--which was when I, being thenalmost a child, went out into the streets of Paris with Henri de Malfortand a wild party, masked, to hear Beaufort address the populace in themarket-place, and when I was so unlucky as to lose the emerald crossgiven her by the great Cardinal, for whom, I believe, she had a sneakingkindness. Why else should she have so hated his Eminence's very muchfavoured niece, Madame de Combalet?

  "But to return to that which concerns my dear sister. Regarding me as herown daughter, the Marquise has lavished her bounties upon me almost to theexclusion of my own sweet Angela. In a word, dearest, she leaves youa modest income of four hundred louis--or about three hundred poundssterling--the rental of two farms in Normandy; and all the rest of herfortune she bequeaths to me, and Papillon after me, including her housein the Marais--sadly out of fashion now that everybody of consequence ismoving to the Place Royale--and her chateau near Dieppe; besides all herjewels, many of which I have had in my possession ever since my marriage.My sweet sister shall take her choice of a carcanet among thoseold-fashioned trinkets. And now, dearest, if you are left with a pittancethat will but serve to pay for your gloves and fans at the Middle Exchange,and perhaps to buy you an Indian night-gown in the course of the year--foryour Court petticoats and mantuas will cost three times as much--you havebut to remember that my purse is to be yours, and my home yours, and thatFareham and I do but wait to welcome you either to Fareham House, in theStrand, or to Chiltern Abbey, near Oxford. The Grange near Fareham I neverintend to re-enter if I can help it. The place is a warren of rats, whichthe servants take for ghosts. If you love water you will love our houses,for the river runs near them both; indeed, when in London, we almost thinkourselves in Venice, save that we have a spacious garden, which I am toldfew of the Venetians can command, their city being built upon an assemblageof minuscule islets, linked together by innumerable bridges."

  Angela smiled as she looked down at her black gown--the week-day uniform ofthe convent school, exchanged for a somewhat superior grey stuff on Sundaysand holidays--smiled at the notion of spending the rent of two farms uponher toilet. And how much more ridiculous seemed the assertion that toappear at King Charles's Court she must spend thrice as much! Yet she couldbut remember that Hyacinth had described trains and petticoats so loadedwith jewelled embroidery that it was a penance to wear them--lace worthhundreds of pounds--plumed hats that cost as much as a year's maintenancein the convent.

  Mother Anastasia expressed considerable displeasure at Madame de Montrond'sdisposal of her wealth.

  "This is what it is to live in a Court, and to care only for earthlythings!" she said. "All sense of justice is lost in that world of vanityand self-love. You are as near akin to the Marquise as your sister; andyet, because she was familiar with the one and not with the other--andbecause her vain, foolish soul took pleasure in a beauty that recalled herown perishable charms, she leaves one sister a great fortune and the othera pittance!"

  "Dear aunt, I am more than content----"

  "But I am not content for you, Angela. Had the estate been divided equallyyou might have taken the veil, and succeeded to my place in this belovedhouse, which needs the accession of wealth to maintain it in usefulness anddignity."

  Angela would not wound her aunt's feelings by one word of disparagement ofthe house in which she had been reared; but, looking along the dim avenueof the future, she yearned for some wider horizon than the sky, barred withtall poplars which rose high above the garden wall that formed the limit ofher daily walks. Her rambles, her recreations, had all been confined withinthat space of seven or eight acres, and she thought sometimes with a suddenlonging of those hills and valleys of fertile Buckinghamshire, which lay sofar back in the dawn of her mind, and were yet so distinctly pictured inher memory.

  And London--that wonderful city of which her sister wrote in such glowingwords! the long range of palaces beside the swift-flowing river, wider thanthe Seine where it reflects the gloomy bulk of the Louvre and the Temple!Were it only once in her life, she would like to see London--the King, thetwo Queens, Whitehall, and Somerset House. She would like to see all thesplendour of Court and city; and then to taste the placid retirement of thehouse in the valley, and to be her father's housekeeper and companion.

  Another letter from Hyacinth announced the death of Mazarin.

  "The Cardinal is no more. He died in the day of success, having got thebetter of all his enemies. A violent access of gout was followed by anaffection of the chest which proved fatal. His sick-room was crowded withcourtiers and sycophants, and he was selling sinecures up to the day of hisdeath. Fareham says his death-bed was like a money-changer's counter. Hewas passionately fond of hocca, the Italian game which he brought intofashion, and which ruined half the young men about the Court. Thecounterpane was scattered with money and playing cards, which were onlybrushed aside to make room for the last Sacraments. My Lord Clarendondeclares that his spirits never recovered from the shock of his Majesty'srestoration, which falsified all his calculations. He might have made hisfavourite niece Queen of England; but his Italian caution restrained him,and the beautiful Hortense has to put up with a new-made duke--a titlebought with her uncle's money--to whom the Cardinal affianced her on hisdeath-bed. He was a remarkable man, and so profound a dissembler that hispretended opposition to King Louis' marriage with his niece Olympe Manciniwould have deceived the shrewdest observer, had we not all known that heardently desired the union, and that it was only his fear of Queen Anne'sanger which prevented it. Her Spanish pride was in arms at the notion, andshe would not have sto
pped short at revolution to prevent or to revengesuch an alliance.

  "This was perhaps the only occasion upon which she ever seriously opposedMazarin. With him expires all her political power. She is now as much acypher as in the time of the late King, when France had only one master,the great Cardinal. He who is just dead, Fareham says, was but a littleRichelieu; and he recalls how when the great Cardinal died people scarcedared tell one another of his death, so profound was the awe in which hewas held. He left the King a nullity, and the Queen all powerful. She wasyoung and beautiful then, you see; her husband was marked for death,her son was an infant. All France was hers--a kingdom of courtiers andflatterers. And now she is old and ailing; and Mazarin being gone, theyoung King will submit to no minister who claims to be anything betterthan a clerk or a secretary. Colbert he must tolerate--for Colbert meansprosperity--but Colbert will have to obey. My friend, the Duchesse deLongueville, who is now living in strict retirement, writes me the mostexquisite letters; and from her I hear all that happens in that countrywhich I sometimes fancy is more my own than the duller climate where my lotis now cast. Fifteen years at the French Court have made me in heart andmind almost a Frenchwoman; nor can I fail to be influenced by my maternalancestry. I find it difficult sometimes to remember my English, whenconversing with the clod-hoppers of Oxfordshire, who have no French, yetinsist, for finery's sake, upon larding their rustic English with Frenchwords.

  "All that is most agreeable in our court is imitated from the Palais Royaland the Louvre.

  "'Whitehall is but the shadow of a shadow,' says Fareham, in one of hisphilosophy fits, preaching upon the changes he has seen in Paris andLondon. And, indeed, it is strange to have lived through two revolutions,one so awful in its final catastrophe that it dwarfs the other, yet bothterrible; for I, who was a witness of the sufferings of Princes andPrincesses during the two wars of the Fronde, am not inclined to thinklightly of a civil war which cost France some of the flower of hernobility, and made her greatest hero a prisoner and an exile for sevenyears of his life.

  "But oh, my dear, it was a romantic time! and I look back and am proud tohave lived in it. I was but twelve years old at the siege of Paris; butI was in Madame de Longueville's room, at the Hotel de Ville, while thefighting was going on, and the officers, in their steel cuirasses, comingin from the thick of the strife. Such a confusion of fine ladies and armedmen--breast-plates and blue scarves--fiddles squeaking in the salon,trumpets sounding in the square below!"

  * * * * *

  In a letter of later date Lady Fareham expatiated upon the folly of hersister's spiritual guides.

  "I am desolated, _ma mie_, by the absurd restriction which forbids you toprofit by my New Year's gift. I thought, when I sent you all the volumes ofla Scudery's enchanting romance, I had laid up for you a year of enjoyment,and that, touched by the baguette of that exquisite fancy, your conventwalls would fall, like those of Jericho at the sound of Jewish trumpets,and you would be transported in imagination to the finest society in theworld--the company of Cyrus and Mandane--under which Oriental disguise youare shown every feature of mind and person in Conde and his heroic sister,my esteemed friend, the Duchesse de Longueville. As I was one of the firstto appreciate Mademoiselle Scudery's genius, and to detect behind thename of the brother the tender sentiments and delicate refinement of thesister's chaster pen, so I believe I was the first to call the Duchesse'Mandane,' a sobriquet which soon became general among her intimates.

  "You are not to read 'Le Grand Cyrus," your aunt tells you, because it isa romance! That is to say, you are forbidden to peruse the most faithfulhistory of your own time, and to familiarise yourself with the persons andminds of great people whom you may never be so fortunate as to meet in theflesh. I myself, dearest Ange, have had the felicity to live amongthese princely persons, to revel in the conversations of the Hotel deRambouillet--not, perhaps, as our grandmother would have told you, in itsmost glorious period--but at least while it was still the focus of all thatis choicest in letters and in art. Did we not hear M. Poquelin read hisfirst comedy before it was represented by Monsieur's company in thebeautiful theatre at the Palais Royal, built by Richelieu, when it was thePalais Cardinal? Not read 'Le Grand Cyrus,' and on the score of morality!Why, this most delightful book was written by one of the most moral womenin Paris--one of the chastest--against whose reputation no word of slanderhas ever been breathed! It must, indeed, be confessed that Sapho is of anugliness which would protect her even were she not guarded by the aegis ofgenius. She is one of those fortunate unfortunates who can walk through thefurnace of a Court unscathed, and leave a reputation for modesty in an agethat scarce credits virtue in woman.

  "I fear, dear child, that these narrow-minded restrictions of your conventwill leave you of a surpassing ignorance, which may cover you withconfusion when you find yourself in fine company. There are accomplishmentswithout which youth is no more admired than age and grey hairs; and tosparkle with wit or astonish with learning is a necessity for a womanof quality. It is only by the advantages of education that we can showourselves superior to such a hussy as Albemarle's gutter-bred duchess, whowas the faithless wife of a sailor or barber--I forget which--and who hangslike a millstone upon the General's neck now that he has climbed to thezenith. To have perfect Italian and some Spanish is as needful as tohave fine eyes and complexion nowadays. And to dance admirably is a giftindispensable to a lady. Alas! I fear that those little feet of yours--Ihope they _are_ small--have never been taught to move in a coranto or acontre-danse, and that you will have to learn the alphabet of dancing at anage when most women are finished performers. The great Conde, while winningsieges and battles that surpassed the feats of Greeks and Romans, contrivedto make himself the finest dancer of his day, and won more admirationin high-bred circles by his graceful movements, which every one couldunderstand and admire, than by prodigies of valour at Dunkirk orNordlingen."

  The above was one of Lady Fareham's most serious letters. Her pen wasexercised, for the most part, in a lighter vein. She wrote of the Courtbeauties, the Court jests--practical jokes some of them, which our finerminds of to-day would consider in execrable taste--such jests as we readof in Grammont's memoirs, which generally aimed at making an ugly womanridiculous, or an injured husband the sport and victim of wicked lover andheartless wife. No sense of the fitness of things constrained her ladyshipfrom communicating these Court scandals to her guileless sister. Did theynot comprise the only news worth anybody's attention, and relate to theonly class of people who had any tangible existence for Lady Fareham? Therewere millions of human beings, no doubt, living and acting and suffering onthe surface of the earth, outside the stellary circles of which Louis andCharles were the suns; but there was no interstellar medium of sympathy toconvey the idea of those exterior populations to Hyacinth's mind. She knewof the populace, French or English, as of something which was occasionallygiven to become dangerous and revolutionary, which sometimes starved andsometimes died of the plague, and was always unpleasing to the educatedeye.

  Masquerades, plays, races at Newmarket, dances, duels, losses atcards--Lady Fareham touched every subject, and expatiated on all; but shehad usually more to tell of the country she had left than of that in whichshe was living.

  "Here everything is on such a small scale, _si mesquin!_" she wrote."Whitehall covers a large area, but it is only a fine banqueting hall anda labyrinth of lodgings, without suite or stateliness. The pictures in thelate King's cabinet are said to be the finest in the world, but they area kind of pieces for which I care very little--Flemish and Dutchchiefly--with a series of cartoons by Raphael, which connoisseurs affect toadmire, but which, did they belong to me, I would gladly exchange for a setof Mortlake tapestries.

  "His Majesty here builds ships, while the King of France builds palaces.I am told Louis is spending millions on the new palace at Versailles,an ungrateful site--no water, no noble prospect as at St. Germain, nopopulation. The King likes the spot all the better, Mad
ame tells me,because he has to create his own landscape, to conjure lakes and cataractsout of dry ground. The buildings have been but two years in progress, andit must be long before these colossal foundations are crowned with theedifice which Louis and his architect, Mansart, have planned. Colbert isfurious at this squandering of vast sums on a provincial palace, while theLouvre, the birthplace and home of dynasties, remains unfinished.

  "The King's reason for disliking St. Germain--a chateau his mother hasalways loved--has in it something childish and fantastic, if, as my dearduchess declares, he hates the place only because he can see the towers ofSt. Denis from the terrace, and is thus hourly reminded of death and thegrave. I can hardly believe that a being of such superior intelligencecould be governed by any such horror of man's inevitable end. I would farsooner attribute the vast expenditure of Versailles to the common love ofmonarchs and great men for building houses too large for their necessities.Indeed, it was but yesterday that Fareham took me to see the palace--for Ican call it by no meaner name--that Lord Clarendon is building for himselfin the open country at the top of St. James's Street. It promises to bethe finest house in town, and, although not covering so much ground asWhitehall, is judged far superior to that inchoate mass in its fineproportions and the perfect symmetry of its saloons and galleries. There isa garden a-making, projected by Mr. Evelyn, a great authority on trees andgardens. A crowd of fine company had assembled to see the newly finishedhall and dining parlour, among them a fussy person, who came in attendanceupon my Lord Sandwich, and who was more voluble than became his quality asa clerk in the Navy Office. He was periwigged and dressed as fine as hismaster, and, on my being civil to him, talked much of himself and of diverstaverns in the city where the dinners were either vastly good or vastlyill. I told him that as I never dined at a tavern the subject wasaltogether beyond the scope of my intelligence, at which Sandwich andFareham laughed, and my pertinacious gentleman blushed as red as the heelsof his shoes. I am told the creature has a pretty taste in music, and isthe son of a tailor, but professes a genteel ancestry, and occasionallypushes into the best company.

  "Shall I describe to you one of my latest conquests, sweetheart? 'Tisa boy--an actual beardless boy of eighteen summers; but such a boy! Sobeautiful, so insolent, with an impudence that can confront Lord Clarendonhimself, the gravest of noblemen, who, with the sole exception of my LordSouthampton, is the one man who has never crossed Mrs. Palmer's threshold,or bowed his neck under that splendid fury's yoke. My admirer thinks nomore of smoking these grave nobles, men of a former generation, who learnttheir manners at the court of a serious and august King, than I do ofteasing my falcon. He laughs at them, jokes with them in Greek or in Latin,has a ready answer and a witty quip for every turn of the discourse; willeven interrupt his Majesty in one of those anecdotes of his Scottishmartyrdom which he tells so well and tells so often. Lucifer himself couldnot be more arrogant or more audacious than this bewitching boy-loverof mine, who writes verses in English or Latin as easy as I can toss ashuttlecock. I doubt the greater number of his verses are scarce properreading for you or me, Angela; for I see the men gather round him incorners as he murmurs his latest madrigal to a chosen half-dozen or so;and I guess by their subdued tittering that the lines are not over modest;while by the sidelong glances the listeners cast round, now at my LadyCastlemaine, and anon at some other goddess in the royal pantheon, I have ashrewd notion as to what alabaster breast my witty lover's shafts are aimedat.

  "This youthful devotee of mine is the son of a certain Lord Wilmot, whofought on the late King's side in the troubles. This creature went to theuniversity of Oxford at twelve years old--as it were, straight from hisgo-cart to college, and was master of arts at fourteen. He has made thegrand tour, and pretends to have seen so much of this life that he hasfound out the worthlessness of it. Even while he woes me with a mostromantic ardour, he affects to have outgrown the capacity to love.

  "Think not, dearest, that I outstep the bounds of matronly modesty by thisairy philandering with my young Lord Rochester, or that my serious Farehamis ever offended at our pretty trifling. He laughs at the lad as heartilyas I do, invites him to our table, and is amused by his monkeyish tricks.A woman of quality must have followers; and a pert, fantastical boy is thesafest of lovers. Slander itself could scarce accuse Lady Fareham, who hashad soldier-princes and statesmen at her feet, of an unworthy tendernessfor a jackanapes of seventeen; for, indeed, I believe his eighteenthbirthday is still in the womb of time. I would with all my heart thou werthere to share our innocent diversions; and I know not which of all myplaythings thou wouldst esteem highest, the falcon, my darling spaniels,made up of soft silken curls and intelligent brown eyes, or Rochester. Nay,let me not forget the children, Papillon and Cupid, who are truly verypretty creatures, though consummate plagues. The girl, Papillon, has atongue which Wilmot says is the nearest approach to perpetual motion thathe has yet discovered; and the boy, who was but seven last birthday, isfull of mischief, in which my admirer counsels and abets him.

  "Oh, this London, sweetheart, and this Court! How wide those violet eyeswould open couldst thou but look suddenly in upon us after supper atBasset, or in the park, or at the play-house, when the orange girls aresmoking the pretty fellows in the pit, and my Lady Castlemaine is leaninghalf out of her box to talk to the King in his! I thought I had seen enoughof festivals and dances, stage-plays and courtly diversions beyond sea; butthe Court entertainments at Paris or St. Germain differed as much from thefestivities of Whitehall as a cathedral service from a dance in a booth atBartholomew Fair. His Majesty of France never forgets that he is a king.His Majesty of England only remembers his kingship when he wants anew subsidy, or to get a Bill hurried through the Houses. Louis atfour-and-twenty was serious enough for fifty. Charles at thirty-four hasthe careless humour of a schoolboy. He is royal in nothing except hisextravagance, which has squandered more millions than I dare mention sincehe landed at Dover.

  "I am growing almost as sober as my solemn spouse, who will ever be railingat the King and the Duke, and even more bitterly at the favourite, hisGrace of Buckingham, who is assuredly one of the most agreeable men inLondon. I asked Fareham only yesterday why he went to Court, if hisMajesty's company is thus distasteful to him. 'It is not to his company Iobject, but to his principles,' he answered, in that earnest fashion of hiswhich takes the lightest questions _au grand serieux_. 'I see in him a manwho, with natural parts far above the average, makes himself the jest ofmeaner intellects, and the dupe of greedy courtesans; a man who, trainedin the stern school of adversity, overshadowed by the great horror of hisfather's tragical doom, accepts life as one long jest, and being, by aconcatenation of circumstances bordering on the miraculous, restored to theprivileges of hereditary monarchy, takes all possible pains to provethe uselessness of kings. I see a man who, borne back to power by theirresistible current of the people's affections, has broken every pledge hegave that people in the flush and triumph of his return. I see one who,in his own person, cares neither for Paul nor Peter, and yet can tamelywitness the persecution of his people because they do not conform to aState religion--can allow good and pious men to be driven out of thepulpits where they have preached the Gospel of Christ, and suffer wives andchildren to starve because the head of the household has a conscience. Isee a king careless of the welfare of his people, and the honour and gloryof his reign; affecting to be a patriot, and a man of business, on thestrength of an extravagant fancy for shipbuilding; careless of everythingsave the empty pleasure of an idle hour. A king who lavishes thousands uponwantons and profligates, and who ever gives not to the most worthy, but tothe most importunate.'

  "I laughed at this tirade, and told him, what indeed I believe, that he isat heart a Puritan, and would better consort with Baxter and Bunyan, andthat frousy crew, than with Buckhurst and Sedley, or his brilliant kinsman,Roscommon."

  From her father directly, Angela heard nothing, and her sister's allusionsto him were of the briefest, anxiously as she had questioned
that livelyletter-writer. Yes, her father was well, Hyacinth told her; but he stayedmostly at the Manor Moat. He did not care for the Court gaieties.

  "I believe he thinks we have all parted company with our wits," she wrote."He seldom sees me but to lecture me, in a sidelong way, upon my folly; forhis railing at the company I keep hits me by implication. I believethese old courtiers of the late King are Puritans at heart; and that ifArchbishop Laud were alive he would be as bitter against the sins of thetown as any of the cushion-thumping Anabaptists that preach to the elect inback rooms and blind alleys. My father talks and thinks as if he had spentall his years of exile in the cave of the Seven Sleepers. And yet he foughtshoulder to shoulder with some of the finest gentlemen in France--Conde,Turenne, Gramont, St. Evremond, Bussy, and the rest of them. But all theworld is young, and full of wit and mirth, since his Majesty came to hisown; and elderly limbs are too stiff to trip in our new dances. I doubt myfather's mind is as old-fashioned, and of as rigid a shape as his Courtsuit, at sight of which my best friends can scarce refrain from laughing."

  This light mention of a parent whom she reverenced wounded Angela to thequick; and that wound was deepened a year later, when she was surprised bya visit from her father, of which no letter had forewarned her. She waswalking in the convent garden, in her hour of recreation, tasting the sunnyair, and the beauty of the many-coloured tulips in the long narrow borders,between two espalier rows trained with an exquisite neatness, and reputedto bear the finest golden pippins and Bergamot pears within fifty miles ofthe city. The trees were in blossom, and a wall of pink and white bloomrose up on either hand above the scarlet and amber tulips.

  Turning at the end of the long alley, where it met a wall that in Augustwas flushed with the crimson velvet of peaches and nectarines, Angela saw aman advancing from the further end of the walk, attended by a lay sister.The high-crowned hat and pointed beard, the tall figure in a grey doubletcrossed with a black sword-belt, the walk, the bearing, were unmistakable.It might have been a figure that had stepped out of Vandyke's canvas. Ithad nothing of the fuss and flutter, the feathers and ruffles, the looseflow of brocade and velvet, that marked the costume of the young FrenchCourt.

  Angela ran to receive her father, and could scarce speak to him, she was sostartled, and yet so glad.

  "Oh, sir, when I prayed for you at Mass this morning, how little I hopedfor so much happiness! I had a letter from Hyacinth only a week ago, andshe wrote nothing of your intentions. I knew not that you had crossed thesea."

  "Why, sweetheart, Hyacinth sees me too rarely, and is too full of her ownaffairs, ever to be beforehand with my intentions; and, although I havebeen long heartily sick of England, I only made up my mind to come toFlanders less than a week ago. No sooner thought of than done. I came byour old road, in a merchant craft from Harwich to Ostend, and the rest ofthe way in the saddle. Not quite so fast as they used to ride that carriedhis Majesty's post from London to York, in the beginning of the troubles,when the loyal gentlemen along the north road would galop faster withdespatches and treaties than ever they rode after a stag. Ah, child, howhopeful we were in those days; and how we all told each other it was but apassing storm at Westminster, which could all be lulled by a little civilconcession here and there on the King's part! And so it might, perhaps, ifhe would but have conceded the right thing at the right time--yieldedbut just the inch they asked for when they first asked--instead ofshilly-shallying till they got angry, and wanted ells instead of inches.'Tis the stitch in time, Angela, that saves trouble, in politics as well asin thy petticoat."

  He had flung his arm round his daughter's neck as they paced slowly side byside.

  "Have you come to stay at Louvain, sir?" she asked, timidly.

  "Nay, love, the place is too quiet for me. I could not stay in a townthat is given over to learning and piety. The sound of their everlastingcarillon would tease my ear with the thought, 'Lo, another quarter of anhour gone of my poor remnant of days, and nothing to do but to doze in thesunshine or fondle my spaniel, fill my pipe, or ride a lazy horse on alevel road, such as I have ever hated.'"

  "But why did you tire of England, sir? I thought the King would have wantedyou always near him. You, his father's close friend, who suffered so muchfor Royal friendship. Surely he loves and cherishes you! He must be a base,ungrateful man if he do not."

  "Oh, the King is grateful, Angela, grateful enough and to spare. He neversees me at Court but he has some gracious speech about his father's regardfor me. It grows irksome at last, by sheer repetition. The turn of thesentence varies, for his Majesty has a fine standing army of words, but thegist of the phrase is always the same, and it means, 'Here is a tiresomeold Put to whom I must say something civil for the sake of his ancientvicissitudes.' And then his phalanx of foppery stares at me as if I were aTopinambou; and since I have seen them mimic Ned Hyde's stately speech andmanners, I doubt not before I have crossed the ante-room I have served tomake sport for the crew, since their wit has but two phases--ordure andmimickry. Look not so glum, daughter. I am glad to be out of a Court whichis most like--such places as I dare not name to thee."

  "But to have you disrespected, sir; you, so brave, so noble! You who gavethe best years of your life to your royal master!"

  "What I gave I gave, child. I gave him youth--that never comes back--andfortune, that is not worth grieving for. And now that I have begun to losethe reckoning of my years since fifty, I feel I had best take myself backto that roving life in which I have no time to brood upon losses andsorrows."

  "Dear father, I am sure you must mistake the King's feelings towards you.It is not possible that he can think lightly of such devotion as yours."

  "Nay, sweetheart, who said he thinks lightly? He never thinks of me at all,or of anything serious under God's sky. So long as he has spending money,and can live in a circle of bright eyes, and hear only flippant tonguesthat offer him a curious incense of flattery spiced with impertinence,Charles Stuart has all of this life that he values. And for the next--aman who is shrewdly suspected of being a papist, while he is attached bygravest vows to the Church of England, must needs hold heaven's rewards andhell's torments lightly."

  "But Queen Catherine, sir--does not she favour you? My aunt says she is agood woman."

  "Yes, a good woman, and the nearest approach to a cypher to be found atHampton Court or Whitehall. Young Lord Rochester has written a poem upon'Nothing.' He might have taken Queen Catherine's name as a synonym. She isnothing; she counts for nothing. Her love can benefit nobody; her hatred,were the poor soul capable of hating persistently, can do no one harm."

  "And the King--is he so unkind to her?"

  "Unkind! No. He allows her to live. Nay, when for a few days--the brieffelicity of her poor life--she seemed on the point of dying, he wasstricken with remorse for all that he had not been to her, and was kind,and begged her to live for his sake. The polite gentleman meant it fora compliment--one of those pious falsehoods that men murmur in dyingears--but she took him at his word and recovered; and she is there still,a little dark lady in a fine gown, of whom nobody takes any notice, beyondthe emptiest formality of bent knees and backward steps. There are longevenings at Hampton Court in which she is scarce spoken to, save when shefawns upon the fortunate lady whom she began by hating. Oh, child, I shouldnot talk to you of these things; but some of the disgust that has mademy life bitter bubbles over in spite of me. I am a wanderer and an exileagain, dear heart. I would sooner trail a pike abroad than suffer neglectat home. I will fight under any flag so long as it flies not for mycountry's foe. I am going back to my old friends at the Louvre, to thosefew who are old enough to care for me; and if there come a war with Spain,why my sword may be of some small use to young Louis, whose mother wasalways gracious to me in the old days at St. Germain, when she knew notin the morning whether she would go safe to bed at night. A golden age ofpeace has followed that wild time; but the Spanish king's death is like tolight the torch and set the war-dogs barking. Louis will thrust his swordthrou
gh the treaty of the Pyrenees if he see the way to a throne t'otherside of the mountains."

  "But could a good man violate a treaty?"

  "Ambition knows no laws, sweet, nor ever has since Hannibal."

  "Then King Louis is no better a man than King Charles?"

  "I cannot answer for that, Angela; but I'll warrant him a better king fromthe kingly point of view. Scarce had death freed him from the Cardinal'sleading-strings than he snatched the reins of power, showed his ministersthat he meant to drive the coach. He has a head as fit for business as ifhe had been the son of a woollen-draper. Mazarin took pains to keep himignorant of everything that a king ought to know; but that shrewd judgmentof his taught him that he must know as much as his servants, unless hewanted them to be his masters. He has the pride of Lucifer, with a strengthof will and power of application as great as Richelieu's. You will live tosee that no second Richelieu, no new Mazarin, will arise in his reign. Hisministers will serve him, and go down before him, like Nicolas Fouquet, towhom he has been implacable."

  "Poor gentleman! My aunt told me that when his judges sentenced him tobanishment from France, the King changed the sentence to imprisonment forlife."

  "I doubt if the King ever forgave those fetes at Vaux, which were designedto dazzle Mademoiselle la Valliere, whom this man had the presumption tolove. One may pity so terrible a fall, yet it is but the ruin of a boldsensualist, who played with millions as other men play with tennis balls,and who would have drained the exchequer by his briberies and extravagancesif he had not been brought to a dead stop. The world has been growingwickeder, dearest, while this fair head has risen from my knee to myshoulder; but what have you to do with its wickedness? Here you are happyand at peace----"

  "Not happy, father, if you are to hazard your life in battles and sieges.Oh, sir, that life is too dear to us, your children, to be risked solightly. You have done your share of soldiering. Everybody that everheard your name in England or in France knows it is the name of a bravecaptain--a leader of men. For our sakes, take your rest now, dear sir. Ishould not sleep in peace if I knew you were with Conde's army. I shoulddream of you wounded and dying. I cannot bear to think of leaving my auntnow that she is old and feeble; but my first duty is to you, and if youwant me I will go with you wherever you may please to make your home. I amnot afraid of strange countries."

  "Spoken like my sweet daughter, whose baby arms clasped my neck in the dayof despair. But you must stay with the reverend mother, sweetheart. Thesebones of mine must be something stiffer before they will consent to restin the chimney corner, or sit in the shade of a yew hedge while other menthrow the bowls. When I have knocked about the world a few years longer,and when Mother Anastasia is at rest, thou shalt come to me at the Manor,and I will find thee a noble husband, and will end my days with my childrenand grandchildren. The world has so changed since the forties, that I shallthink I have lived centuries instead of decades, when the farewell hourstrikes. In the mean time I am pleased that you should be here. The Courtis no place for a pure maiden, though some sweet saints there be who canwalk unsmirched in the midst of corruption."

  "And Hyacinth? She can walk scatheless through that Court furnace. Shewrites of Whitehall as if it were Paradise."

  "Hyacinth has a husband to take care of her; a man with a brave headpieceof his own, who lets her spark it with the fairest company in the town,but would make short work of any fop who dared attempt the insolence of asuitor. Hyacinth has seen the worst and the best of two Courts, and has anexperience of the Palais Royal and St. Germain which should keep her safeat Whitehall."

  Sir John and his daughter spent half a day together in the garden and theparlour, where the traveller was entertained with a collation and a bottleof excellent Beaujolais before his horse was brought to the door. Angelasaw him mount, and ride slowly away in the melancholy afternoon light, andshe felt as if he were riding out of her life for ever. She went back toher aunt's room with an aching heart. Had not that kind lady, her mother inall the essentials of maternal love, been so near the end of her days, andso dependent on her niece's affection, the girl would have clung about herfather's neck, and implored him to go no more a-soldiering, and to makehimself a home with her in England.