WITHIN CONVENT WALLS.
More than ten years had come and gone since that bleak February evening
when Sir John Kirkland carried his little daughter to a place of
safety, in the old city of Louvain, and in all those years the child
had grown like a flower in a sheltered garden, where cold winds never
come. The bud had matured into the blossom in that mild atmosphere of
piety and peace; and now, in this fair springtide of 1660, a girlish
face watched from the convent casement for the coming of the father
whom Angela Kirkland had not looked upon since she was a child, and the
sister she had never seen.
They were to arrive to-day, father and sister, on a brief visit to the
quiet Flemish city. Yonder in England there had been curious changes
since the stern Protector turned his rugged face to the wall, and laid
down that golden sceptre with which he had ruled as with a rod of iron.
Kingly title would he none; yet where kings had chastised with whips,
he had chastised with scorpions. Ireland could tell how the little
finger of Cromwell had been heavier than the arm of the Stuarts. She
had trembled and had obeyed, and had prospered under that scorpion
rule, and England’s armaments had been the terror of every sea while
Cromwell stood at the helm; but now that strong brain and bold heart
were in the dust, and it had taken England little more than a year to
discover that Puritanism and the Rump were a mistake, and that to the
core of her heart she was loyal to her hereditary King.
She asked not what manner of man this hereditary ruler might be; asked
not whether he were wise or foolish, faithful or treacherous. She
forgot all of tyranny and of double-dealing she had suffered from his
forbears. She forgot even her terror of the scarlet spectre, the grim
wolf of Rome, in her disgust at Puritan fervour which had torn down
altar-rails, usurped church pulpits, destroyed the beauty of ancient
cathedrals. Like a woman or a child, she held out her arms to the
unknown, in a natural recoil from that iron rule which had extinguished
her gaiety, silenced her noble liturgy, made innocent pleasures and
elegant arts things forbidden. She wanted her churches, and her
theatres, her cock-pits and taverns, and bear-gardens and maypoles back
again. She wanted to be ruled by the law, and not by the sword; and she
longed with a romantic longing for that young wanderer who had fled
from her shores in a fishing-boat, with his life in his hand, to return
in a glad procession of great ships dancing over summer seas, eating,
drinking, gaming, in a coat worth scarce thirty shillings, and with
empty pockets for his loyal subjects to make haste and fill.
Angela had the convent parlour all to herself this fair spring morning.
She was the favourite pupil of the nuns, had taken no vows, pledged
herself to no noviciate, ever mindful of her promise to her father. She
had lived as happily and as merrily in that abode of piety as she could
have lived in the finest palace in Europe. There were other maidens,
daughters of the French and Flemish nobility, who were taught and
reared within those sombre precincts, and with them she had played and
worked and laboured at such studies as became a young lady of quality.
Like that fair daughter of affliction, Henrietta of England, she had
gained in education by the troubles which had made her girlhood a time
of seclusion. She had been first the plaything of those elder girls who
were finishing their education in the convent, her childishness
appealing to their love and pity; and then, after being the plaything
of the nuns and the elder pupils, she became the favourite of her
contemporaries, and in a manner their queen. She was more thoughtful
than her class-fellows, in advance of her years in piety and
intelligence; and they, knowing her sad story—how she was severed from
her country and kindred, her father a wanderer with his King, her
sister bred up at a foreign Court—had first compassionated and then
admired her. From her twelfth year upwards her intellectual superiority
had been recognised in the convent, alike by the nuns and their pupils.
Her aptitude at all learning, and her simple but profound piety, had
impressed everybody. At fourteen years of age they had christened her
“the little wonder;” but later, seeing that their praises embarrassed
and even distressed her, they had desisted from such loving flatteries,
and were content to worship her with a silent adulation.
Her father’s visits to the Flemish city had been few and far apart,
fondly though he loved his motherless girl. He had been a wanderer for
the most part during those years, tossed upon troubled seas, fighting
with Condé against Mazarin and Anne of Austria, and reconciled with the
Court later, when peace was made, and his friends the Princes were
forgiven; an exile from France of his own free will when Louis banished
his first cousin, the King of England, in order to truckle to the
triumphant usurper. He had led an adventurous life, and had cared very
little what became of him in a topsy-turvy world. But now all things
were changed. Richard Cromwell’s brief and irresolute rule had
shattered the Commonwealth, and made Englishmen eager for a king. The
country was already tired of him whose succession had been admitted
with blank acquiescence; and Monk and the army were soon to become
masters of the situation. There was hope that the General was rightly
affected, and that the King would have his own again; and that such of
his followers as had not compounded with the Parliamentary Commission
would get back their confiscated estates; and that all who had suffered
in person or pocket for loyalty’s sake would be recompensed for their
sacrifices.
It was five years since Sir John’s last appearance at the convent, and
Angela’s heart beat fast at the thought that he was so near. She was to
see him this very day; nay, perhaps this very hour. His coach might
have passed the gate of the town already. He was bringing his elder
daughter with him, that sister whose face she had never seen, save in a
miniature, and who was now a great lady, the wife of Baron Fareham, of
Chilton Abbey, Oxon, Fareham Park, in the County of Hants, and Fareham
House, London, a nobleman whose estates had come through the ordeal of
the Parliamentary Commission with a reasonable fine, and to whom extra
favour had been shown by the Commissioners, because he was known to be
at heart a Republican. In the mean time, Lady Fareham had a liberal
income allowed her by the Marquise, her grandmother, and she and her
husband had been among the most splendid foreigners at the French
Court, where the lady’s beauty and wit had placed her conspicuously in
that galaxy of brilliant women who shone and sparkled about the sun of
the European firmament—Le roi soleil, or “the King,” par excellence,
who took the blazing sun for his crest. The Fronde had been a time of
pleasurable excitement to the high-spirited girl, whose mixed blood ran
like quicksilver, and who delighted in danger and party strife,
stratagem and intrigue. The story of her courage and gaiety of heart in
the siege of Paris, she being then little more than a child, had
reached the Flemish convent long after the acts recorded had been
forgotten at Paris and St. Germain.
Angela’s heart beat fast at the thought of being restored to these dear
ones, were it only for a short span. They were not going to carry her
away from the convent; and, indeed, seeing that she so loved her aunt,
the good reverend mother, and that her heart cleaved to those walls and
to the holy exercises which filled so great a part of her life, her
father, in replying to a letter in which she had besought him to
release her from her promise and allow her to dedicate herself to God,
had told her that, although he could not surrender his daughter, to
whom he looked for the comfort of his closing years, he would not urge
her to leave the Ursulines until he should feel himself old and feeble,
and in need of her tender care. Meanwhile she might be a nun in all but
the vows, and a dutiful niece to her kind aunt, Mother Anastasia, whose
advanced years and failing health needed all consideration.
But now, before he went back to England, whither he hoped to accompany
the King and the Princes ere the year was much older, Sir John Kirkland
was coming to visit his younger daughter, bringing Lady Fareham, whose
husband was now in attendance upon His Majesty in Holland, where there
were serious negotiations on hand—negotiations which would have been
full of peril to the English messengers two years ago, when that
excellent preacher and holy man, Dr. Hewer, of St. Gregory, was
beheaded for having intelligence with the King, through the Marquess of
Ormond.
The parlour window jutted into the square over against the town hall,
and Angela could see the whole length of the narrow street along which
her father’s carriage must come.
The tall, slim figure and the fair, girlish face stood out in full
relief against the grey stone mullion, bathed in sunlight. The graceful
form was undisguised by courtly apparel. The soft brown hair fell in
loose ringlets, which were drawn back from the brow by a band of black
ribbon. The girl’s gown was of soft grey woollen stuff, relieved by a
cambric collar covering the shoulders, and by cambric elbow-sleeves. A
coral and silver rosary was her only ornament; but face and form needed
no aid from satins or velvets, Venetian lace or Indian filagree.
The sweet, serious face was chiefly notable for eyes of darkest grey,
under brows that were firmly arched and almost black. The hair was a
dark brown, the complexion somewhat too pale for beauty. Indeed, that
low-toned colouring made some people blind to the fine and regular
modelling of the high-bred face; while there were others who saw no
charm in a countenance which seemed too thoughtful for early youth, and
therefore lacking in one of youth’s chief attractions—gladness.
The face lighted suddenly at this moment, as four great grey Flanders
horses came clattering along the narrow street and into the square,
dragging a heavy painted wooden coach after them. The girl opened the
casement and craned out her neck to look at the arrival The coach
stopped at the convent door, and a footman alighted and rang the
convent bell, to the interested curiosity of two or three loungers upon
the steps of the town hall over the way.
Yes, it was her father, greyer but less sad of visage than at his last
visit. His doublet and cloak were handsomer than the clothes he had
worn then, though they were still of the same fashion, that English
mode which he had affected before the beginning of the troubles, and
which he had never changed.
Immediately after him there alighted a vision of beauty, the loveliest
of ladies, in sky-blue velvet and pale grey fur, and with a long white
feather encircling a sky-blue hat, and a collar of Venetian lace
veiling a bosom that scintillated with jewels.
“Hyacinth!” cried Angela, in a flutter of delight.
The portress peered at the visitors through her spy-hole, and being
satisfied that they were the expected guests, speedily opened the
iron-clamped door.
There was no one to interfere between father and daughter, sister and
sister, in the convent parlour. Angela had her dear people all to
herself, the Mother Superior respecting the confidences and outpourings
of love, which neither father nor children would wish to be witnessed
even by a kinswoman. Thus, by a rare breach of conventual discipline,
Angela was allowed to receive her guests alone.
The lay-sister opened the parlour door and ushered in the visitors, and
Angela ran to meet her father, and fell sobbing upon his breast, her
face hidden against his velvet doublet, her arms clasping his neck.
“What, mistress, hast thou so watery a welcome, now that the clouds
have passed away, and every loyal English heart is joyful?” cried Sir
John, in a voice that was somewhat husky, but with a great show of
gaiety.
“Oh, sir, I have waited so long, so long for this day. Sometimes I
thought it would never come, that I should never see my dear father
again.”
“Poor child! it would have been only my desert hadst thou forgotten me
altogether. I might have come to you sooner, pretty one; indeed, I
would have come, only things went ill with me. I was down-hearted and
hopeless of any good fortune in a world that seemed given over to
psalm-singing scoundrels; and till the tide turned I had no heart to
come nigh you. But now fortunes are mended, the King’s and mine, and
you have a father once again, and shall have a home by-and-by, the
house where you were born, and where your angel-mother made my life
blessed. You are like her, Angela!” holding back the pale face in his
strong hands, and gazing upon it earnestly. “Yes, you favour your
mother; but your face is over sad for your years. Look at your sister
here! Would you not say a sunbeam had taken woman’s shape and come
dancing into the room?”
Angela looked round and greeted the lady, who had stood aside while
father and daughter met. Yes, such a face suggested sunlight and
summer, birds, butterflies, all things buoyant and gladsome. A
complexion of dazzling fairness, pearly, transparent, with ever-varying
carnations; eyes of heavenliest blue, liquid, laughing, brimming with
espiéglerie; a slim little nose with an upward tilt, which expressed a
contemptuous gaiety, an inquiring curiosity; a dimpled chin sloping a
little towards the full round throat; the bust and shoulders of a
Venus, the waist of a sylph, set off by the close-fitting velvet
bodice, with its diamond and turquoise buttons; hair of palest gold,
fluffed out into curls that were traps for sunbeams; hands and arms of
a milky whiteness emerging from the large loose elbow-sleeves—a radiant
apparition which took Angela by surprise. She had seen Flemish vraus in
the richest attire, and among them there had been women as handsome as
Helena Forment; but this vision of a fine lady from the court of the
“roi soleil” was a revelation. Until this moment, the girl had hardly
known what grace and beauty meant.
“Come and let me hug you, my dearest Puritan,” cried Hyacinth, holding
out her arms. “Why do you suffer your custodians to clothe you in that
odious grey, which puts me in mind of lank-haired psalm-singing scum,
and all their hateful works? I would have you sparkling in white satin
and silver, or blushing in brocade powdered with forget-me-nots and
rosebuds. What would Fareham say if I told him I had a Puritan in grey
woollen stuff for my sister? He sends you his love, dear, and bids me
tell you there shall be always an honoured place in our home for you,
be it in England or France, in town or country. And why should you not
fill that place at once, sister? Your education is finished, and to be
sure you must be tired of these stone walls and this sleepy town.”
“No, Hyacinth, I love the convent and the friends who have made it my
home. You and Lord Fareham are very kind, but I could not leave our
reverend mother; she is not so well or so strong as she used to be, and
I think she likes to have me with her, because though she loves us all,
down to the humblest of the lay-sisters, I am of her kin, and seem
nearest to her. I don’t want to forsake her; and if it was not against
my father’s wish I should like to end my days in this house, and to
give my thoughts to God.”
“That is because thou knowest nought of the world outside, sweetheart,”
protested Hyacinth. “I admire the readiness with which folks will
renounce a banquet they have never tasted. A single day at the Louvre
or the Palais Royal would change your inclinations at once and for
ever.”
“She is too young for a court life, or a town life either,” said Sir
John. “And I have no mind to remove her from this safe shelter till the
King shall be firm upon his throne, and our poor country shall have
settled into a stable and peaceful condition. But there must be no
vows, Angela, no renunciation of kindred and home. I look to thee for
the comfort of my old age!”
“Dear father, I will never disobey you. I shall remember always that my
first duty is to you; and when you want me, you have but to summon me;
and whether you are at home or abroad, in wealth and honour, or in
exile and poverty, I will go to you, and be glad and happy to be your
daughter and your servant.”
“I knew thou wouldst, dearest. I have never forgotten how the soft
little arms clung about my neck, and how the baby lips kissed me, in
this same parlour, when my heart was weighed down by a load of iron,
and there seemed no ray of hope for England or me. You were my
comforter then, and you will be my comforter in the days to come.
Hyacinth here is of the butterfly breed. She is fair to look upon, and
tender and loving; but she is ever on the wing. And she has her husband
and her children to cherish, and cannot be burdened with the care of a
broken-down greybeard.”
“Broken-down! Why, you are as brave a gallant as the youngest cavalier
in the King’s service,” cried Hyacinth. “I would pit my father against
Montagu or Buckingham, Buckhurst or Roscommon—against the gayest, the
boldest of them all, on land or sea. Broken-down, forsooth! We will
hear no such words from you, sir, for a score of years. And now you
will want all your wits to take your proper place at Court as sage
counsellor and friend of the new King. Sure he will need his father’s
friends about him to teach him state-craft—he who has led such a gay,
good-for-nothing life as a penniless rover, with scarce a sound coat to
his back.”
“Nay, Hyacinth, the King will have no need of us old Malignants. We
have had our day. He has shrewd Ned Hyde for counsellor, and in that
one long head there is craft enough to govern a kingdom. The new Court
will be a young Court, and the fashion of it will be new. We old
fellows, who were gallant and gay enough in the forties, when we fought
against Essex and his tawny scarves, would be but laughable figures at
the Court of a young man bred half in Paris, and steeped in French
fashions and French follies. No, Hyacinth, it is for you and your
husband the new day dawns. If I get back to my old meads and woods and
the house where I was born, I will sit quietly down in the chimney
corner, and take to cattle-breeding, and a pack of harriers, for the
diversion of my declining years. And when my Angela can make up her
mind to leave her good aunt she shall keep house for me.”
“I should love to be your housekeeper, dearest father. If it please
Heaven to restore my aunt to health and strength, I will go to you with
a heart full of joy,” said the girl, hanging caressingly upon the old
cavalier’s shoulder.
Hyacinth flitted about the room with a swift, birdlike motion, looking
at the sacred images and prints, the _tableau_ over the mantelpiece,
which told, with much flourish of penmanship, the progress of the
convent pupils in learning and domestic virtues.
“What a humdrum, dismal room!” she cried. “You should see our convent
parlours in Paris. At the Carmelites, in the Rue Saint Jacques, _par
exemple_, the Queen-mother’s favourite convent, and at Chaillot, the
house founded by Queen Henrietta—such pictures, and ornaments, and
embroidered hangings, and tapestries worked by devotees. This room of
yours, sister, stinks of poverty, as your Flemish streets stink of
garlic and cabbage. Faugh! I know not which is worse!”
Having thus delivered herself of her disgust, she darted upon her
younger sister, laid her hands upon the girl’s shoulders, and
contemplated her with mock seriousness.
“What a precocious young saint thou art, with no more interest in the
world outside this naked parlour than if thou wert yonder image of the
Holy Mother. Not a question of my husband, or my children, or of the
last fashion in hood and mantle, or of the new laced gloves, or the
French King’s latest divinity.”
“I should dearly like to see your children, Hyacinth,” answered her
sister.
“Ah! they are the most enchanting creatures, the girl a perpetual
sunbeam, ethereal, elfish, a being of life and movement, and with a
loquacity that never tires; the boy a lump of honey, fat, sleek, lazily
beautiful. I am never tired of admiring them, when I have time to see
them. Papillon—an old friend of mine has surnamed her Papillon because
she is never still—was five years old on March 19. We were at St.
Germain on her birthday. You should have seen the toys and trinkets and
sweetmeats which the Court showered upon her—the King and Queen,
Monsieur, Mademoiselle, the Princess Henrietta, her godmother—everybody
had a gift for the daughter of La folle Baronne Fareham. Yes, they are
lovely creatures, Angela; and I am miserable to think that it may be
half a year before I see their sweet faces again.”
“Why so long, sister?”
“Because they are at the Château de Montrond, grandmother’s place near
Dieppe, and because Fareham and I are going hence to Breda to meet the
King, our own King Charles, and help lead him home in triumph. In
London the mob are shouting, roaring, singing, for their King; and
Montagu’s fleet lies in the Downs, waiting but the signal from
Parliament to cross to Holland. He who left his country in a scurvy
fishing-boat will go back to England in a mighty man-of-war, the
_Naseby_—mark you, the _Naseby_—christened by that Usurper, in insolent
remembrance of a rebel victory; but Charles will doubtless change that
hated name. He must not be put in mind of a fight where rebels had the
better of loyal gentlemen. He will sail home over those dancing seas,
with a fleet of great white-winged ships circling round him like a
flight of silvery doves. Oh, what a turn of fortune’s wheel! I am wild
with rapture at the thought of it!”
“You love England better than France, though you must be almost a
stranger there,” said Angela, wonderingly, looking at a miniature which
her sister wore in a bracelet.
“Nay, love, ’tis in Paris I am an insignificant alien, though they are
ever so kind and flattering to me. At St Germain I was only Madame de
Montrond’s grand-daughter—the wife of a somewhat morose gentleman who
was cleverer at winning battles than at gaining hearts. At Whitehall I
shall be Lady Fareham, and shall enjoy my full consequence as the wife
of an English nobleman of ancient lineage and fine estate, for, I am
happy to tell you, his lordship’s property suffered less than most
people’s in the rebellion, and anything his father lost when he fought
for the good cause will be given back to the son now the good cause is
triumphant, with additions, perhaps—an earl’s coronet instead of a
baron’s beggarly pearls. I should like Papillon to be Lady Henrietta.”
“And you will send for your children, doubtless, when you are sure all
is safe in England?” said Angela, still contemplating the portrait in
the bracelet, which her sister had unclasped while she talked. “This is
Papillon, I know. What a sweet, kind, mischievous face!”
“Mischievous as a Barbary ape—kind, and sweet as the west wind,” said
Sir John.
“And your boy?” asked Angela, reclasping the bracelet on the fair,
round arm, having looked her fill at the mutinous eyes, the brown,
crisply curling hair, dainty, pointed chin, and dimpled cheeks. “Have
you his picture, too?”
“Not his; but I wear his father’s likeness somewhere betwixt buckram
and Flanders lace,” answered Hyacinth, gaily, pulling a locket from
amidst the splendours of her corsage. “I call it next my heart; but
there is a stout fortification of whalebone between heart and picture.
You have gloated enough on the daughter’s impertinent visage. Look now
at the father, whom she resembles in little, as a kitten resembles a
tiger.”
She handed her sister an oval locket, bordered with diamonds, and held
by a slender Indian chain; and Angela saw the face of the
brother-in-law whose kindness and hospitality had been so freely
promised to her.
She explored the countenance long and earnestly.
“Well, do you think I chose him for his beauty?” asked Hyacinth. “You
have devoured every lineament with that serious gaze of yours, as if
you were trying to read the spirit behind that mask of flesh. Do you
think him handsome?”
Angela faltered: but was unskilled in flattery, and could not reply
with a compliment.
“No, sister; surely none have ever called this countenance handsome;
but it is a face to set one thinking.”
“Ay, child, and he who owns the face is a man to set one thinking. He
has made me think many a time when I would have travelled a day’s
journey to escape the thoughts he forced upon me. He was not made to
bask in the sunshine of life. He is a stormy petrel. It was for his
ugliness I chose him. Those dark stern features, that imperious mouth,
and a brow like the Olympian Jove. He scared me into loving him. I
sheltered myself upon his breast from the thunder of his brow, the
lightning of his eye.”
“He has a look of his cousin Wentworth,” said Sir John. “I never see
him but I think of that murdered man—my father’s friend and mine—whom I
have never ceased to mourn.”
“Yet their kin is of the most distant,” said Hyacinth. “It is strange
that there should be any likeness.”
“Faces appear and reappear in families,” answered her father. “You may
observe that curiously recurring likeness in any picture-gallery, if
the family portraits cover a century or two. Louis has little in common
with his grandfather; but two hundred years hence there may be a prince
of the royal house whose every feature shall recall Henry the Great”
The portrait was returned to its hiding-place, under perfumed lace and
cobweb lawn, and the reverend mother entered the parlour, ready for
conversation, and eager to hear the history of the last six weeks, of
the collapse of that military despotism which had convulsed England and
dominated Europe, and was now melting into thin air as ghosts dissolve
at cock-crow, of the secret negotiations between Monk and Grenville,
now known to everybody; of the King’s gracious amnesty and promise of
universal pardon, save for some score or so of conspicuous villains,
whose hands were dyed with the Royal Martyr’s blood.
She was full of questioning: and, above all, eager to know whether it
was true that King Charles was at heart as staunch a papist as his
brother the Duke of York was believed to be, though even the Duke
lacked the courage to bear witness to the true faith.
Two lay-sisters brought in a repast of cakes and syrups and light
wines, such delicate and dainty food as the pious ladies of the convent
were especially skilled in preparing, and which they deemed
all-sufficient for the entertainment of company; even when one of their
guests was a rugged soldier like Sir John Kirkland. When the light
collation had been tasted and praised, the coach came to the door
again, and swallowed up the beautiful lady and the old cavalier, who
vanished from Angela’s sight in a cloud of dust, waving hands from the
coach window.