FALCON AND DOVE.
“Has your ladyship any commands for Paris?” Lord Fareham asked, one
August afternoon, when the ghost party at Millbank was almost forgotten
amid a succession of entertainments on land and river; a fortnight at
Epsom to drink the waters; and a fortnight at Tunbridge—where the Queen
and Court were spending the close of summer—to neutralise the bad
effects of Epsom chalybeates with a regimen of Kentish sulphur. If
nobody at either resort drank deeper of the medicinal springs than
Hyacinth—who had ordered her physician to order her that treatment—the
risk of harm or the possibility of benefit was of the smallest. But at
Epsom there had been a good deal of gay company, and a greater liberty
of manners than in London; for, indeed, as Rochester assured Lady
Fareham, “the freedom of Epsom allowed almost nothing to be
scandalous.” And at Tunbridge there were dances by torchlight on the
common. “And at the worst,” Lady Fareham told her friends, “a fortnight
or so at the Wells helps to shorten the summer.”
It was the middle of August when they went back to Fareham House, hot,
dry weather, and London seemed to be living on the Thames, so thick was
the throng of boats going up and down the river, so that with an
afternoon tide running up it seemed as if barges, luggers, and wherries
were moving in one solid block into the sunset sky.
De Malfort had been attached to her ladyship’s party at Epsom, and at
Tunbridge Wells. He had his own lodgings, but seldom occupied them,
except in that period between four or five in the morning and two in
the afternoon, which Rochester and he called night. His days were
passed chiefly in attendance upon Lady Fareham—singing and playing,
fetching and carrying combing her favourite spaniel with the same ivory
pocket-comb that arranged his own waterfall curls; or reading a French
romance to her, or teaching her the newest game of cards, or the last
dancing-step imported from Fontainebleau or St. Cloud, or some new
grace or fashion in dancing, the holding of the hand lower or higher;
the latest manner of passaging in a bransle or a coranto, as performed
by the French King and Madame Henriette, the two finest dancers in
France; Condé, once so famous for his dancing, now appearing in those
gay scenes but seldom.
“Have you any commands for Paris, Hyacinth?” repeated Lord Fareham, his
wife being for the moment too surprised to answer him. “Or have you,
sister? I am starting for France to-morrow. I shall ride to Dover—lying
a night at Sittingbourne, perhaps—and cross by the Packet that goes
twice a week to Calais.”
“Paris! And pray, my lord, what business takes you to Paris?”
“There is a great collection of books to be sold there next week. The
library of your old admirer, Nicolas Fouquet, whom you knew in his
splendour, but who has been a prisoner at Pignerol for a year and a
half.”
“Poor wretch!” cried De Malfort, “I was at the Chamber with Madame de
Sévigné very often during his long tedious trial. Mon dieu! what
courage, what talent he showed in defending himself! Every safeguard of
the law was violated in order to silence him and prove him guilty; his
papers seized in his absence, no friend or servant allowed to protect
his interest, no inventory taken—documents suppressed that might have
served for his defence, forgeries inserted by his foes. He had an
implacable enemy, and he the highest in the land. He was the scapegoat
of the past, and had to answer for a system of plunder that made
Mazarin the richest man in France.”
“I don’t wonder that Louis was angry with a servant who had the
insolence to entertain his Majesty with a splendour that surpassed his
own,” said Lady Fareham. “I should like to have been at those fêtes at
Vaux. But although Fareham talks so lightly of travelling to Paris to
choose a few dusty books, he has always discouraged me from going there
to see old friends, and my own house—which I grieve to think
of—abandoned to the carelessness of servants.”
“Dearest, the cleverest woman in the world cannot be in two places at
once; and it seems to me you have ever had your days here so full of
agreeable engagements that you can have scarcely desired to leave
London,” answered Fareham, with his grave smile.
“To leave London—no! But there have been long moping months in
Oxfordshire when it would have been a relief to change the scene.”
“Then, indeed, had you been very earnest in wanting such a change, I am
sure you would have taken it. I have never forbidden your going to
Paris, nor refused to accompany you there. You may go with me
to-morrow, if you can be ready.”
“Which you know I cannot, or you would scarce make so liberal an
offer.”
“Très chère, you are pleased to be petulant. But I repeat my question.
Is there anything you want at Paris?”
“Anything? A million things! Everything! But they are things which you
would not be able to choose—except, perhaps, some of the new lace. I
might trust you to buy that, though I’ll wager you will bring me a
hideous pattern—and some white Cypress powder—and a piece of the
ash-coloured velvet Madame wore last winter. I have friends who can
choose for you, if I write to them; and you will have but to bring the
goods, and see they suffer no harm on the voyage. And you can go to the
Rue de Tourain and see whether my servants are keeping the house in
tolerable order.”
“With your ladyship’s permission I will lodge there while I am in
Paris, which will be but long enough to attend the sale of books, and
see some old friends. If I am detained it will be by finding my friends
out of town, and having to make a journey to see them. I shall not go
beyond Fontainebleau at furthest.”
“Dear Fontainebleau! It is of all French palaces my favourite. I always
envy Diana of Poitiers for having her cypher emblazoned all over that
lovely gallery—Henri and Diane! Diane and Henri! Ah, me!”
“You envy her a kind of notoriety which I do not covet for my wife!”
“You always take one au pied de la lettre; but seriously, Madame de
Brézé was an honest woman compared with the lady who lodges by the
Holbein Gate.”
“I admit that sin wears a bolder front than it did in the last century.
Angela, can I find nothing for you in Paris?”
“No; I thank your lordship. You and sister are both so generous to me
that I have lost the capacity to wish for anything.”
“And as Lewin crosses the Channel three or four times a year, I doubt
we positively have the Paris fashions as soon as the Parisians
themselves,” added Hyacinth.
“That is an agreeable hallucination with which Englishwomen have ever
consoled themselves for not being French,” said De Malfort, who sat
lolling against the marble balustrade, nursing the guitar on which he
had been playing when Fareham interrupted their noontide idleness; “but
your ladyship may be sure that London milliners are ever a twelvemonth
in the rear of Paris fashions. It is not that they do not see the new
mode. They see it, and think it hideous; and it takes a year to teach
them that it is the one perfect style possible.”
“I was not thinking of kerchiefs or petticoats,” said Fareham. “You are
a book-lover, sister, like myself. Can I bring you no books you wish
for?”
“If there were a new comedy by Molière; but I fear it is wrong to read
him, since in his late play, performed before the King at Versailles,
he is so cruel an enemy to our Church.”
“A foe only to hypocrites and pretenders, Angela. I will bring you his
_Tartuffe_, if it is printed; or still better, _Le Misanthrope_, which
I am told is the finest comedy that was ever written; and the latest
romance, in twenty volumes or so, by one of those lady authors Hyacinth
so admires, but which I own to finding as tedious as the divine
Orinda’s verses.”
“You can jeer at that poor lady’s poetry, yet take pleasure in such
balderdash as Hudibras!”
“I love wit, dearest; though I am not witty. But as for your Princesse
de Cleves, I find her ineffably dull.”
“That is because you do not take the trouble to discover for whom the
characters are meant. You lack the key to the imbroglio,” said his
wife, with a superior air.
“I do not care for a book that is a series of enigmas. Don Quixote
needs no such guess-work. Shakespeare’s characters are painted not from
the petty models of yesterday and to-day, but from mankind in every age
and every climate. Molière’s and Calderon’s personages stand on as
solid a basis. In less than half a century your ‘Grand Cyrus’ will be
insufferable jargon.”
“Not more so than your _Hamlet_ or _Othello_. Shakespeare was but kept
in fashion during the late King’s reign because his Majesty loved
him—and will soon be forgotten, now that we have so many gayer and
brisker dramatists.”
“Whoever quotes Shakespeare, nowadays?” asked Lady Sarah Tewkesbury,
who had been showing a rustic niece the beauties of the river, as seen
from Fareham House. “Even Mr. Taylor, whose sermons bristle with
elegant allusions, never points one of his passionate climaxes with a
Shakespearian line. And yet there are some very fine lines in _Hamlet_
and _Macbeth_, which would scarce sound amiss from the pulpit,” added
her ladyship, condescendingly. “I have read all the plays, some of them
twice over. And I doubt that though Shakespeare cannot hold the stage
in our more enlightened age, and will be less and less acted as the
town grows more refined, his works will always be tasted by scholars;
among whom, in my modest way, I dare reckon myself.”
Lord Fareham left London on horseback, with but one servant, in the
early August dawn, before the rest of the household were stirring.
Hyacinth lay nearly as late of a morning as Henrietta Maria, whom
Charles used sometimes to reproach for not being up in time for the
noonday office at her own chapel. Lady Fareham had not Portuguese
Catherine’s fervour, who was often at Mass at seven o’clock; but she
did usually contrive to be present at High Mass at the Queen’s chapel;
and this was the beginning of her day. By that time Angela and her
niece and nephew had spent hours on the river, or in the meadows at
Chiswick, or on Putney Heath, ever glad to escape from the great
overgrown city, which was now licking up every stretch of green sward,
and every flowery hedgerow west of St. James’s Street. Soon there would
be no country between the Haymarket and “The Pillars of Hercules.”
Denzil sometimes enjoyed the privilege of accompanying Angela,
children, and _gouvernante_, on these rural expeditions by the great
waterway; and on such occasions he and Angela would each take an oar
and row the boat for some part of the voyage, while the watermen
rested, and in this manner Angela, instructed by Sir Denzil,
considerably advanced her power as an oarswoman. It was an exercise she
loved, as indeed she loved all out-of-door exercises, from riding with
hawks and hounds to battledore and shuttlecock. But most of all,
perhaps, she loved the river, and the rhythmical dip of oars in the
fresh morning air, when every curve of the fertile shores seemed to
reveal new beauty.
It had been a hot, dry summer, and the grass in the parks was burnt to
a dull brown—had, indeed, almost ceased to be grass—while the
atmosphere in town had a fiery taste, and was heavy with the dust which
whitened all the roadways, and which the faintest breath of wind
dispersed. Here on the flowing tide there was coolness, and the long
rank grass upon those low sedgy shores was still green.
Lady Fareham supported the August heats sitting on her terrace, with a
cluster of friends about her, and her musicians and singing-boys
grouped in the distance, ready to perform at her bidding; but Henriette
and her brother soon tired of that luxurious repose, and would urge
their aunt to assist in a river expedition. The _gouvernante_ was fat
and lazy and good-tempered, had attended upon Henriette from babyhood,
and always did as she was told.
“Her ladyship says I must have some clever person instead of Priscilla
before I am a year older,” Henriette told her aunt; “but I have
promised poor old Prissy to hate the new person consumedly.”
Angela and Denzil laughed as they rowed past the ruined abbey, seen
dimly across the low water-meadow, where cows of the same colour were
all lying in the same attitude, chewing the cud.
“I think Mr. Spavinger’s trick must have cured your sister’s fine
friends of all belief in ghosts,” he said.
“I doubt they would be as ready to believe—or to pretend to
believe—to-morrow,” answered Angela. “They think of nothing from
morning till night but how to amuse themselves; and when every pleasure
has been exhausted, I suppose fear comes in as a form of entertainment,
and they want the shock of seeing a ghost.”
“There have been no more midnight parties since Lady Sarah’s assembly,
I think?”
“Not among people of quality, perhaps; but there have been citizens’
parties. I heard Monsieur de Malfort telling my sister about a supper
given by a wealthy wine-cooper’s lady from Aldersgate. The city people
copy everything that their superiors wear or do.”
“Even to their morals,” said Denzil. “’Twere happy if the so-called
superiors would remember that, and upon what a fertile ground they sow
the seed of new vices. It is like the importation of a new weed or a
new insect, which, beginning with an accident, may end in ruined crops
and a country’s famine.”
Without deliberate disobedience to her husband, Lady Fareham made the
best use of her time during his absence in Paris. The public theatres
had not yet re-opened after the horror of the plague. Whitehall was a
desert, the King and his chief following being at Tunbridge. It was the
dullest season of the year, and the recrudescence of the contagion in
the low-lying towns along the Thames—Deptford, Greenwich, and the
neighbourhood—together with some isolated cases in London, made people
more serious than usual, despite of the so-called victory over the
Dutch, which, although a mixed benefit, was celebrated piously by a day
of General Thanksgiving.
Hyacinth, disgusted at the dulness of the town, was for ordering her
coaches and retiring to Chilton.
“It is mortal dull at the Abbey,” she said, “but at least we have the
hawks, and breezy hills to ride over, instead of this sickly city
atmosphere, which to my nostrils smells of the pestilence.”
Henri de Malfort argued against such a retreat.
“It were a deliberate suicide,” he said. “London, when everybody has
left—all the bodies we count worthy to live, _par exemple_—is a more
delightful place than you can imagine. There are a host of vulgar
amusements which you would not dare to visit when your friends are in
town; and which are ten times as amusing as the pleasures you know by
heart. Have you ever been to the Bear Garden? I’ll warrant you no,
though ’tis but across the river at Bankside. We’ll go there this
afternoon, if you like, and see how the common people taste life. Then
there are the gardens at Islington. There are mountebanks, and
palmists, and fortune-tellers, who will frighten you out of your wits
for a shilling. There’s a man at Clerkenwell, a jeweller’s journeyman
from Venice, who pretends to practise the transmutation of metals, and
to make gold. He squeezed hundreds out of that old miser Denham, who
was afraid to have the law of him for imposture, lest all London should
laugh at his own credulity and applaud the cheat. And you have not seen
the Italian puppet-play, which is vastly entertaining. I could find you
novelty and amusement for a month.”
“Find anything new, even if it fail to amuse me. I am sick of
everything I know.”
“And then there is our midnight party at Millbank, the ghost-party, at
which you are to frighten your dearest friends out of their poor little
wits.”
“Most of my dearest friends are in the country.”
“Nay, there is Lady Lucretia Topham, whom I know you hate; and Lady
Sarah and the Dubbins are still in Covent Garden.”
“I will have no Dubbin—a toping wretch—and she is a too incongruous
mixture, with her Edinburgh lingo and her Whitehall arrogance. Besides,
the whole notion of a mock ghost was vulgarised by Wilmot’s foolery,
who ought to have been born a saltimbanque, and spent his life in a
fair. No, I have abandoned the scheme.”
“What! after I have been taxing my invention to produce the most
terrible illusion that was ever witnessed? Will you let a clown like
Spavinger—a well-born stable-boy—baulk us of our triumph? I am sending
to Paris for a powder to burn in a corner of the room, which will throw
the ghastliest pallor upon your countenance. When I devise a ghost, it
shall be no impromptu spectre in yellow riding-boots, but a vision so
awful, so true an image of a being returned from the dead, that the
stoutest nerves will thrill and tremble at the apparition. The nun’s
habit is coming from Paris. I have asked my cousin, Madame de Fiesque,
to obtain it for me at the Carmelites.”
“You are taking a vast deal of trouble. But what kind of assembly can
we muster at this dead season?” “Leave all in my hands. I will find you
some of the choicest spirits. It is to be _my_ party. I will not even
tell you what night I fix upon, till all is ready. So make no
engagements for your evenings, and tell nobody anything.”
“Who invented that powder?”
“A French chemist. He has it of all colours, and can flood a scene in
golden light, or the rose of dawn, or the crimson of sunset, or a pale
silvery blueness that you would swear was moonshine. It has been used
in all the Court ballets. I saw Madame once look as ghastly as death
itself, and all the Court was seized with terror. Some blundering fool
had burnt the wrong powder, which cast a greenish tint over the faces,
and Henriette’s long thin features had a look of death. It seemed the
forecast of an early grave; and some of us shuddered, as at a prophecy
of evil.”
“You might expect the worst in her case, knowing the wretched life she
leads with Monsieur.”
“Yes, when she is with him; but that is not always. There are
compensations.”
“If you mean scandal, I will not hear a word. She is adorable. The most
sympathetic person I know—good even to her enemies—who are legion.”
“You had better not say that, for I doubt she has only one kind of
enemy.”
“As how?”
“The admirers she has encouraged and disappointed. Yes, she is
adorable, wofully thin, and, I fear, consumptive, but royal: and
adorable, ‘douceur et lumière,’ as Bossuet calls her. But to return to
my ghost-party.”
“If you were wise, you would abandon the notion. I doubt that in spite
of your powders your friends will never believe in a ghost.”
“Oh yes, they will. It shall be my business to get them in the proper
temper.”
That idea of figuring in a picturesque habit, and in a halo of
churchyard light, was irresistible. Hyacinth promised to conform to
Malfort’s plans, and to be ready to assume her phantom _rôle_ whenever
she was called upon.
Angela knew something of the scheme, and that there was to be another
assembly at Millbank; but her sister had seemed disinclined to talk of
the plan in her presence—a curious reticence in one whose sentiments
and caprices were usually given to the world at large with perfect
freedom. For once in her life Hyacinth had a secret air, and checked
herself suddenly in the midst of her light babble at a look from De
Malfort, who had urged her to keep her sister out of their midnight
party.
“I pledge my honour that there shall be nothing to offend,” he told
her, “but I hope to have the wittiest coxcombs in London, and we want
no prudes to strangle every jest with a long-drawn lip and an alarmed
eye. Your sister has a pale, fragile prettiness which pleases an eye
satiated with the exuberant charms of your Rubens and Titian women; but
she is not handsome enough to give herself airs; and she is a little
inclined that way. By the faith of a gentleman, I have suffered scowls
from her that I would scarce have endured from Barbara!”
“Barbara! You are vastly free with her ladyship’s name.”
“Not freer than she has ever been with her friendship.”
“Henri, if I thought——”
“What, dearest?”
“That you had ever cared for that—wanton——”
“Could you think it, when you know my life in England has been one long
tragedy of loving in vain—of sighing only to be denied—of secret
tears—and public submission.”
“Do not talk so,” she exclaimed, starting up from her low tabouret, and
moving hastily to the open window, to fresh air and sunshine, rippling
river and blue sky, escaping from an atmosphere that had become
feverish.
“De Malfort, you know I must not listen to foolish raptures.”
“I know you have been refusing to hear for the last two years.”
They were on the terrace now, she leaning on the broad marble
balustrade, he standing beside her, and all the traffic of London
moving with the tide below them.
“To return to our party,” she said, in a lighter tone, for that spurt
of jealousy had betrayed her into seriousness. “It will be very awkward
not to invite my sister to go with me.”
“If you did she would refuse, belike, for she is under Fareham’s thumb;
and he disapproves of everything human.”
“Under Fareham’s thumb! What nonsense! Indeed I must invite her. She
would think it so strange to be omitted.”
“Not if you manage things cleverly. The party is to be a surprise. You
can tell her next morning you knew nothing about it beforehand.”
“But she will hear me order the barge—or will see me start.”
“There will be no barge. I shall carry you to Millbank in my coach,
after your evening’s entertainment, wherever that may be.”
“I had better take my own carriage at least, or my chair.”
“You can have a chair, if you are too prudish to use my coach, but it
shall be got for you at the moment. We won’t have your own chairman and
links to chatter and betray you before you have played the ghost.
Remember you come to my party not as a guest, but as a performer. If
they ask why Lady Fareham is absent I shall say you refused to take
part in our foolery.”
“Oh, you must invent some better excuse. They will never believe
anything rational of me. Say I was disappointed of a hat or a mantua.
Well, it shall be as you wish. Angela is apt to be tiresome. I hate a
disapproving carriage, especially in a younger sister.”
Angela was puzzled by Hyacinth’s demeanour. A want of frankness in one
so frank by nature aroused her fears. She was puzzled and anxious, and
longed for Fareham’s return, lest his giddy-pated wife should be guilty
of some innocent indiscretion that might vex him.
“Oh! if she but valued him at his just worth she would value his
opinion second only to the approval of conscience,” she thought, sadly,
ever regretful of her sister’s too obvious indifference towards so kind
a husband.