THE MOTIVE—MURDER.
For Lady Fareham and her sister September and October made a blank
interval in the story of life—uneventful as the empty page at the end
of a chapter. They spent those months at Fareham, a house which
Hyacinth detested, a neighbourhood where she had never condescended to
make friends. She condemned the local gentry as a collection of
nobodies, and had never taken the trouble to please the three or four
great families within a twenty-mile drive, because, though they had
rank and consequence, they had not fashion. The _haut gout_ of Paris
and London was wanting to them.
Lord Fareham had insisted upon leaving London on the third of
September, and had, his wife declared, out of pure malignity, taken his
family to Fareham, a place she hated, rather than to Chilton, a place
she loved, at least as much as any civilised mortal could love the
country. Never, Hyacinth protested, had her husband been so sullen and
ferocious.
“He is not like an angry man,” she told Angela, “but like a wounded
lion; and yet, since your goodness took all the blame of my unlucky
escapade upon your shoulders, and he knows nothing of De Malfort’s
insolent attempt to carry me off, I see no reason why he should have
become such a gloomy savage.”
She accepted her sister’s sacrifice with an amiable lightness. How
could it harm Angela to be thought to have run out at midnight for a
frolic rendezvous? The maids of honour had some such adventure half a
dozen times in a season, and were found out, and laughed at, and
laughed again, and wound up their tempestuous careers by marrying great
noblemen.
“If you can but get yourself talked about you may marry as high as you
choose,” Lady Fareham told her sister.
Early in November they went back to London, and though all Hyacinth’s
fine people protested that the town stank of burnt wood, smoked oil,
and resin, and was altogether odious, they rejoiced not the less to be
back again. Lady Fareham plunged with renewed eagerness into the
whirlpool of pleasure, and tried to drag Angela with her; but it was a
surprise to both, and to one a cause for uneasiness, when his lordship
began to show himself in scenes which he had for the most part avoided
as well as reviled. For some unexplained reason he became now a
frequent attendant at the evening festivities at Whitehall, and without
even the pretence of being interested or amused there.
Fareham’s appearance at Court caused more surprise than pleasure in
that brilliant circle. The statue of the Comandante would scarcely have
seemed a grimmer guest. He was there in the midst of laughter and
delight, with never a smile upon his stern features. He was silent for
the most part, or if badgered into talking by some of his more familiar
acquaintances, would vent his spleen in a tirade that startled them, as
the pleasant chirpings of a poultry-yard are startled by the raid of a
dog. They laughed at his conversation behind his back; but in his
presence, under the angry light of those grey eyes, the gloom of those
bent brows, they were chilled into submission and civility. He had a
dignity which made his Puritanical plainness more patrician than
Rochester’s finery, more impressive than Buckingham’s graceful
splendour. The force and vigour of his countenance were more striking
than Sedley’s beauty. The eyes of strangers singled him out in that gay
throng, and people wanted to know who he was and what he had done for
fame.
A soldier, yes, cela saute aux yeux. He could be nothing else than a
soldier. A cavalier of the old school. Albeit younger by half a
lifetime than Southampton and Clarendon, and the other ghosts of the
troubles.
Charles treated him with chill civility.
“Why does the man come here without his wife?” he asked De Malfort.
“There is a sister, too, fresher and fairer than her ladyship. Why are
we to have the shadow without the sun? Yet it is as well, perhaps, they
keep away; for I have heard of a visit which was not returned—a
condescension from a woman of the highest rank slighted by a trumpery
baron’s wife—and after an offence of that kind she could only have
brought us trouble. Why do women quarrel, Wilmot?”
“Why are there any men in the world, sir? If there were none, women
would live together like lambs in a meadow. It is only about us they
fight. As for Lady Fareham, she is adorable, though no longer young. I
believe she will be thirty on her next birthday.”
“And the sister? She had a wild-rose prettiness, I thought, when I saw
her at Oxford. She looked like a lily till I spoke to her, and then
flamed like a red rose. So fresh, so easily startled. ’Tis pity that
shyness of youthful purity wears off in a week. I dare swear by this
time Mrs. Kirkland is as brazen as the boldest of our young houris
yonder,” with a glance in the direction of the maids of honour, the
Queen’s and the Duchess’s, a bevy of chatterers, waving fans, giggling,
whispering, shoulder to shoulder with the impudentest men in his
Majesty’s kingdom; the men who gave their mornings to writing comedies
coarser than Dryden or Etherege, and their nights to cards, dice, and
strong drink; roving the streets half clad, dishevelled, wanton;
beating the watch, and insulting decent pedestrians; with occasional
vicious outbreaks which would have been revolting in a company of
inebriated coal-heavers, and which brought these fine gentlemen before
a too lenient magistrate. But were not these the manners of which St.
Evremond lightly sang—
“‘La douce erreur ne s’appelait point crime;
Les vices délicats se nommaient des plaisirs.’”
“Mistress Kirkland has an inexorable modesty which would outlive even a
week at Whitehall, sir,” answered Rochester. “If I did not adore the
matron I should worship the maid. Happily for the wretch who loves her
I am otherwise engaged!”
“Thou insolent brat! To be eighteen years of age and think thyself
irresistible!”
“Does your Majesty suppose I shall be more attractive at six and
thirty?”
“Yes, villain; for at my age thou wilt have experience.”
“And a reputation for incorrigible vice. No woman of taste can resist
that.”
“And pray who is Mrs. Kirkland’s lover?”
“A Puritan baronet. One Denzil Warner.”
“There was a Warner killed at Hoptown Heath.”
“His son, sir. A fellow who believes in extempore prayer and republican
government; and swears England was never so happy or prosperous as
under Cromwell.”
“And the lady favours this psalm-singing rebel?”
“I know not. For all I have seen of the two she has been barely civil
to him. That he adores her is obvious; and I know Lady Fareham’s heart
is set upon the match.”
“Why did not Lady Fareham return the Countess’s visit?”
There was no need to ask what Countess.
“Be sure, sir, the husband was to blame, if there was want of respect
for that lovely lady. I can answer for Lady Fareham’s right feeling in
that matter.”
“The husband takes a leaf out of Hyde’s book, and forgets that what may
be passed over in the Lord Chancellor, and a man of prodigious
usefulness, is intolerable in a person of Fareham’s insignificance.”
“Nay, sir, insignificance is scarcely the word. I would as soon call a
thunderstorm insignificant. The man is a volcano, and may explode at
any provocation.”
“We want no such suppressed fires at Whitehall. Nor do we want long
faces; as Clarendon may discover some day, if his sermons grow too
troublesome.”
“The Chancellor is a domestic man; as your Majesty may infer from the
size and splendour of his new house.”
“He is an expensive man, Wilmot I believe he got more by the sale of
Dunkirk than his master did.”
“In that case your Majesty cannot do better than shift all the disgrace
of the transaction on to his shoulders. Dunkirk will be a sure card to
play when Clarendon has to go overboard.”
That incivility of Lady Fareham’s in the matter of an unreturned visit
had rankled deep in the bosom of the King’s imperious mistress. To sin
more boldly than woman ever sinned, and yet to claim all the privileges
and honours due to virtue was but a trifling inconsistency in a mind so
fortified by pride that it scarce knew how to reckon with shame. That
she, in her supremacy of beauty and splendour, a fortune sparkling in
either ear, the price of a landed estate on her neck—that she, Barbara,
Countess of Castlemaine, should have driven in a windowless coach
through dusty lanes, eating dirt, as it were, with her train of court
gallants on horseback at her coach doors, her ladies in a carriage in
the rear, to visit a person of Lady Fareham’s petty quality, a
Buckinghamshire Knight’s daughter married to a Baron of Henry the
Eighth’s creation! And that this amazing condescension—received with a
smiling and curtsying civility—should have been unacknowledged by any
reciprocal courtesy was an affront that could hardly be wiped out with
blood. Indeed, it could never be atoned for. The wound was poisoned,
and would rankle and fester to the end of that proud life.
Yet on Fareham’s appearance at Whitehall Lady Castlemaine distinguished
with a marked civility, and even condescended, smilingly, as if there
were no cause of quarrel, to inquire after his wife.
“Her ladyship is as pretty as ever, though we are all growing old,” she
said. “We exchanged curtsies at Tunbridge Wells the other day. I wonder
how it is we never get further than smiles and curtsies? I should like
to show the dear woman some more substantial civility. She is buried
alive in your stately house by the river, for the want of an
influential friend to show her the world we live in.”
“Indeed, madam, my wife has all the pleasure she desires—her
visiting-day, her friends.”
“And her admirers. Rochester is always hanging about your garden, or
landing from his wherry, when I go by; or, if he himself be not
visible, there are a couple of his watermen on your steps.”
“My Lord Rochester has a precocious wit which amuses my wife and her
sister.”
“And then there is De Malfort—an impertinent, second only to Gramont.
He and Lady Fareham are twin stars. I have seldom seen them apart.”
“Since De Malfort has the honour of being somewhat intimate with your
ladyship, he has doubtless given you full particulars of his friendship
for my wife. I assure you it will bear being talked about. There are no
secrets in it.”
“Really; I thought I had heard something about a sedan which took the
wrong road after Killigrew’s play. But that was the night before the
fire. Good God! my lord, your face darkens as if a man had struck you.
Whatever happened before the fire should have been burnt out of our
memories by this time.”
“I see his Majesty looking this way, madam, and I have not yet paid my
respects to him,” Fareham said, moving away, but a dazzling hand on his
sleeve arrested him.
“Oh, your respects will keep; he has Miss Stewart giggling at his
elbow. Strange, is it not, that a woman with as much brain as a pigeon
can amuse a man who reckons himself both wise and witty?”
“It is not the lady who amuses the gentleman, madam. She has the good
sense to pretend that he amuses her.”
“And no more understands a jest than she does Hebrew.”
“She is conscious of pretty teeth and an enchanting smile. Wit or
understanding would be superfluous,” answered Fareham, bowing his adieu
to the Sultana in chief.
There was a great assembly, with music and dancing, on the Queen’s
birthday, to which Lord and Lady Fareham and Mistress Kirkland were
invited; and again Angela saw and wondered at the splendid scene, and
at this brilliant world, which calamity could not touch. Pestilence had
ravaged the city, flames had devoured it—yet here there were only
smiling people, gorgeous dress, incomparable jewels. The plague had not
touched them, and the fire had not reached them. Such afflictions are
for the common herd. Angela promenaded with De Malfort in the spacious
banqueting-hall, with its ceiling of such prodigious height that the
apotheosis of King James, and all the emblematical figures, triumphal
cars, lions, bears and rams, corn-sheaves and baskets of fruit, which
filled the panels, might as well have been executed by a sign-painter’s
rough-and-ready brush, as by the pencil of the great Fleming.
“We are a little kinder to Rubens at the Louvre,” said De Malfort,
noting her upward gaze; “for we allow his elaborate glorification of
his Majesty’s grandfather and grandmother about half a mile of wall.
But I forgot, you have not seen Paris, nor those acres of gaudy
colouring which Henri’s vanity inflicted upon us. Florentine Marie,
with her carnation cheeks and opulent shoulders—the Roman-nosed
Béarnais, with his pointed beard and stiff ruff. Mon Dieu, how the
world has changed since Ravaillac’s knife snapped that valiant life!
And you have never seen Paris? You look about you with wide-open eyes,
and take this crowd, this ceiling, those candlebra for splendour.”
“Can there be a scene more splendid?” asked Angela, pleased to keep him
by her side, rather than see him devote himself to her sister; grateful
for his attention in that crowd where most people were strangers, and
where Lord Fareham had not vouchsafed the slightest notice of her.
“When you have seen the Louvre, you will wonder that any King, with a
sense of his own consequence in the world, can inhabit such a hovel as
Whitehall—this congeries of shabby apartments, the offices of servants,
the lodgings of followers and dependents, soldiers and
civilians—huddled in a confused labyrinth of brick and stone—redeemed
from squalor only by one fine room. Could you see the grand
proportions, the colossal majesty of the great Henri’s palace—that
palace whose costly completion sat heavy upon Sully’s careful soul!
Henri loved to build—and his grandson, Louis, inherits that Augustan
taste.”
“You were telling us of a new palace at Versailles——”
“A royal city in stone—white—dazzling—grandiose. The mortar was
scarcely dry when I was there in March; but you should have seen the
mi-careme ball. The finest masquerade that was ever beheld in Europe.
All Paris came in masks to see that magnificent spectacle. His Majesty
allowed entrance to all—and those who came were feasted at a banquet
which only Rabelais could fairly describe. And then with our splendour
there is an elegant restraint—a decency unknown here. Compare these
women—Lady Shrewsbury yonder, Lady Chesterfield, the fat woman in
sea-green and silver—Lady Castlemaine, brazen in orange velvet and
emeralds—compare them with Condé’s sister, with the Duchesse de
Bouillon, the Princess Palatine——”
“Are those such good women?”
“Humph! They are ladies. These are the kind of women King Charles
admires. They are as distinct a race as the dogs that lie in his
bed-chamber, and follow him in his walks, a species of his own
creation. They do not even affect modesty. But I am turning preacher,
like Fareham. Come, there is to be an entertainment in the theatre.
Roxalana has returned to the stage—and Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer, is
to perform.”
They followed the crowd, and De Malfort remained at Angela’s side till
the end of the performance, and attended her to the supper-table
afterwards. Fareham watched them from his place in the background. He
stood ever aloof from the royal focus, the beauty, and the wit, the
most dazzling jewels, the most splendid raiment. He was amidst the
Court, but not of it.
Yes; the passion which these two entertained for each other was patent
to every eye; but had it been an honourable attachment upon De
Malfort’s side, he would have declared himself before now. He would not
have abandoned the field to such a sober suitor as Denzil. Henri de
Malfort loved her, and she fed his passion with her sweetest smiles,
the low and tender tones of the most musical voice Fareham had ever
listened to.
“The voice that came to me in my desolation—the sweetest sound that
ever fell on a dying man’s ear,” he thought, recalling those solitary
days and nights in the plague year, recalling those vanished hours with
a fond longing, “that arm which shows dazzling white against the purple
velvet of his sleeve is the arm that held up my aching head, in the
dawn of returning reason; those are the eyes that looked down upon
mine, so pitiful, so anxious for my recovery. Oh, lovely angel, I would
be a leper again, a plague-stricken wretch, only to drink a cup of
water from that dear hand—only to feel the touch of those light fingers
on my forehead! There was a magic in that touch that surpassed the
healing powers of kings. There was a light as of heaven in those
benignant eyes. But, oh, she is changed since then. She is
plague-stricken with the contagion of a profligate age. Her wings are
scorched by the fire of this modish Tophet She has been taught to dress
and look like the women around her—a little more modest—but after the
same fashion. The nun I worshipped is no more.”
Some one tapped him on the shoulder with an ostrich fan. He turned, and
saw Lady Castlemaine close at his elbow.
“Image of gloom, will you lead me to my rooms?” she asked, in a curious
voice, her dark blue eyes deepened by the pallor that showed through
her rouge.
“I shall esteem myself too much honoured by that office,” he answered,
as she took his arm and moved quickly, with hurried footsteps, through
the lessening throng.
“Oh, there is no one to dispute the honour with you. Sometimes I have a
mob to hustle me to my lodgings, borne on the current of their
adulation—sometimes I move through a desert, as I do to-night. Your
face attracted me—for I believe it is the only one at Whitehall as
gloomy as my own—unless there are some of my creditors, men to whom I
owe gaming debts.”
It was curious to note that subtle change in the faces of those they
passed, which Barbara Palmer knew so well—faces that changed, obedient
to the weathercock of royal caprice—the countenances of courtiers who
even yet had not learnt justly to weigh the influence of that imperial
favourite, or to understand that she ruled their King with a power
which no transient fancy for newer faces could undermine. A day or two
in the sulks, frowns and mournful looks for gossip Pepys to jot down in
his diary, and the next day the sun would be shining again, and the
King would be at supper with “the lady.”
Perhaps Lady Castlemaine knew that her empire was secure; but she took
these transient fancies _moult serieusement_. Her jealous soul could
tolerate no rival—or it may be that she really loved the King. He had
given himself to her in the flush of his triumphant return, while he
was still young enough to feel a genuine passion. For her sake he had
been a cruel husband, an insolent tyrant to an inoffensive wife; for
her sake he had squandered his people’s money, and outraged every moral
law; and it may be that she remembered these things, and hated him the
more fiercely for them when he was inconstant. She was a woman of
extremes, in whose tropical temperament there was no medium between
hatred and love.
“You will sup with me, Fareham?” she said, as he waited on the
threshold of her lodgings, which were in a detached pile of buildings,
near the Holbein Gateway, and looking upon an enclosed and somewhat
gloomy garden.
“Your ladyship will excuse me. I am expected at home.”
“What devil! Perhaps you think I am inviting you to a _tête-à-tête_. I
shall have some company, though the drove have gone to the Stewarts’ in
a hope of getting asked to supper—which but a few of them can realise
in her mean lodgings. You had better stay. I may have Buckhurst,
Sedley, De Malfort, and a few more of the pretty fellows—enough to
empty your pockets at basset.”
“Your ladyship is all goodness,” said Fareham, quickly.
De Malfort’s name had decided him. He followed his hostess through a
crowd of lackeys, a splendour of wax candles, to her saloon, where she
turned and flashed upon him a glorious picture of mature loveliness,
her complexion the peach in its ripest bloom, the orange sheen of her
velvet mantua shining out against a background of purple damask
curtains embroidered with gold.
The logs blazed and roared in the wide chimney. Warmth, opulence,
hospitality, were all expressed in the brilliantly lighted room, where
luxurious fauteuils, after the new French fashion, stood about, ready
to receive her ladyship’s guests.
These were not long waited for. There was no crowd. Less than twenty
men, and about a dozen women, were enough to add an air of living
gaiety to the brilliancy of light and colour. De Malfort was the last
who entered. He kissed her ladyship’s hand, looked about him, and
recognised Fareham with open wonder.
“An Israelite in the house of Dagon!” he said, _sotto voce_, as he
approached him. “What, Fareham, have you given your neck to the yoke?
Do you yield to the charm which has subjugated such lighter natures as
Villiers and Buckhurst?”
“It is only human to love variety. You have discovered the charm of
youth and innocence.”
“Do you think it needs a modish Columbus to discover that? We all
worship innocence, were it but for its rarity, as we esteem a black
pearl or a yellow diamond above a white one. Jarni, but I am pleased to
see you here! It is the most human thing I have known of you since you
recovered of the contagion; for you have been a gloomier man from that
time.”
“Be assured I am altogether human—at least upon the worser side of
humanity.”
“How dismal you look! Upon my soul, Fareham, you should fight against
that melancholic habit. Her ladyship is in the black sulks. We are in
for a pleasant evening. Yet, if we were to go away, she would storm at
us to-morrow; call us sycophants and time-servers, swear she would hold
no further commerce with any manjack among our detestable crew. Well,
she is a magnificent termagant. If Cleopatra was half as handsome, I
can forgive Antony for following her to ruin at Actium.”
“There is supper in the music-room, gentlemen,” said Lady Castlemaine,
who was standing near the fire in the midst of a knot of whispering
women.
They had been abusing the fair Frances, and ridiculing old Rowley, to
gratify their hostess. She knew them by heart—their falsehood and
hollowness. She knew that they were ready, every one of them, to steal
her royal lover, had they but the chance of such a conquest; yet it
solaced her soreness to hear Miss Stewart depreciated even by those
false lips—“She was too tall.” “Her Britannia profile looked as if it
was cut out of wood.” “She was bold, bad, designing.” “It was she who
would have the King, not the King who would have her.”
“You are too malicious, my dearest Price,” said Lady Castlemaine, with
more good humour than had been seen in her countenance that evening.
“Buckhurst, will you take Mrs. Price to supper? There are cards in the
gallery. Pray amuse yourselves.”
“But will your ladyship neither sup nor play?” asked Sedley.
“My ladyship has a raging headache. What devil! Did I not lose enough
to some of you blackguards last night? Do you want to rook me again?
Pray amuse yourselves, friends. No doubt his Majesty is being
exquisitely entertained where he is; but I doubt if he will get as good
a supper as you will find in the next room.”
The significant laugh which concluded her speech was too angry for
mirth, and the blackness of her brow forbade questioning. All the town
knew next day that she had contrived to get the royal supper
intercepted and carried off, on its way from the King’s kitchen to Miss
Stewart’s lodgings, and that his Majesty had a Barmecide feast at the
table of beauty. It was a joke quite in the humour of the age.
The company melted out of the room; all but Fareham, who watched Lady
Castlemaine as she stood by the hearth in an attitude of hopeless
self-forgetfulness, leaning against the lofty sculptured chimney-piece,
one slender foot in gold-embroidered slipper and transparent stocking
poised on the brazen fender, and her proud eyelids lowered as if there
was nothing in this world worth looking at but the pile of ship’s
timber, burning with many-coloured flames upon the silver andirons.
In spite of that sullen downward gaze she was conscious of Fareham’s
lingering.
“Why do you stay, my lord?” she asked, without looking up. “If your
purse is heavy there are friends of mine yonder who will lighten it for
you, fairly or foully. I have never made up my mind how far a gentleman
may be a rogue with impunity. If you don’t love losing money you had
best eat a good supper and begone.”
“I thank you, madam. I am more in the mood for cards than for
feasting.”
She did not answer him, but clasped her hands suddenly before her face
and gave a heart-breaking sigh. Fareham paused on the threshold of the
gallery, watching her, and then went slowly back, bent down to take the
hand that had dropped at her side, and pressed his lips upon it,
silently, respectfully, with a kind of homage that had become strange
of late years to Barbara Palmer. Adorers she had and to spare,
toadeaters and flatterers, a regiment of mercenaries; but these all
wanted something of her—kisses, smiles, influence, money. Disinterested
respect was new.
“I thought you were a Puritan, Lord Fareham.”
“I am a man; and I know what it is to suffer the hell-fire of
jealousy.”
“Jealousy, yes! I never was good at hiding my feelings. He treats me
shamefully. Come, now, you take me for an abandoned profligate woman, a
callous wanton. That is what the world takes me for; and, perhaps, I
have deserved no better of the world. But whatever I am ’twas he made
me so. If he had been true, I could have been constant. It is the
insolence of abandonment that stings; the careless slights, scarce
conscious that he wounds. Before the eyes of the world, too, before
wretches that grin and whisper, and prophesy the day when my pride
shall be in the dust. It is treatment such as this that makes women
desperate; and if we cannot keep him we love, we make believe to love
some one else, and flaunt our fancy in the deceiver’s face. Do you
think I cared for Buckingham, with his heart of ice; or for such a
snipe as Jermyn; or for a low-born rope-dancer? No, Fareham; there has
been more of rage and hate than of passion in my caprices. And he is
with Frances Stewart to-night. She sets up for a model of chastity, and
is to marry Richmond next month. But we know, Fareham, we know. Women
who ride in glass coaches should not throw stones. I will have Charles
at my feet again. I will have my foot upon his neck again. I cannot use
him too ill for the pain he gives me. There, go—go! Why did you tempt
me to lay my heart bare?”
“Dearest lady, believe me, I respect your candour. My heart bleeds for
your wrongs. So beautiful, so high above all other women in the
capacity to charm! Ah, be sure such loveliness has its
responsibilities. It is a gift from Heaven, and to hold it cheap is a
sin.”
“There is nothing in this life can be held too cheap. Beauty, love—all
trumpery! You would make life a tragedy. It is a farce, Fareham, a
farce; and all our pleasures and diversions only serve to make us
forget what worms we are. There, go—to cards—to supper—as you please. I
am going to my bed-chamber to rest this throbbing head. I may return
and take a hand at cards by-and-by, perhaps. Those fellows will game
and booze till daylight.”
Fareham opened the door for her, as she went out, regal in port and
air. She had moved him to compassion, even while she owned herself a
wanton. To love passionately—and to see another preferred! There is a
brotherhood in agony, that brings even opposite natures into sympathy.
He passed into the gallery, a long low room, hung with modern
tapestries, richly coloured, voluptuous in design. Clusters of wax
tapers in gilded sconces lit up those Paphian pictures. There were
several tables, at which the mixed company were sitting. Piles of the
new guineas, fresh from his Majesty’s Mint, shone in the candle-light.
At some tables there was a silent absorption in the game, which argued
high play, and the true gambler’s spirit; at others mirth reigned—talk,
laughter, animated looks. One of the noisiest was the table at which De
Malfort was the most conspicuous figure; his periwig the highest, his
dress the most sumptuous, his breast glittering with orders. His
companions were Sir Ralph Masaroon, Colonel Dangerfield, an old
Malignant, who had hibernated during the Protectorate, and had never
left his own country, and Lady Lucretia Topham, a visiting acquaintance
of Hyacinth’s.
“Come here, Fareham,” cried De Malfort; “there is plenty of room for
you. I’ll wager Lady Lucretia will pass you her hand, and thank you for
taking it.”
“Lady Lucretia is glad to be quit of such dishonest company,” said the
lady, tossing her cards upon the table, and rising in a cloud of powder
and perfume, and a flutter of lace and brocade. “If I were ill-humoured
I would say you marked the cards! but as I’m the soul of good nature,
I’ll only swear you are the luckiest dog in London.”
“You are the soul of good nature, and I am the luckiest dog in the
universe when you smile upon me,” answered De Malfort, without looking
up from his cards, as the lady posed herself gracefully at the back of
his chair, leaning over his shoulder to watch his play. “I would not
limit the area to any city, however big.”
Fareham seated himself in the chair the lady had vacated, and gathered
up the cards she had abandoned. He took a handful of gold from his
pocket, and put it on the table at his elbow, all with a somewhat
churlish silence, that escaped notice where everybody was loquacious.
De Malfort went on fooling with Lady Lucretia, whose lovely hand and
arm, her strongest point, descended upon a card now and then, to
indicate the play she deemed wisest.
Once he caught the hand and kissed it in transit.
“Wert thou as wise as this hand is fair it should direct my play; but
it is only a woman’s hand, and points the way to perdition.”
Fareham had been losing steadily from the moment he took up Lady
Lucretia’s cards; and his pile of jacobuses had been gradually passed
over to De Malfort’s side of the table. He had emptied his pockets, and
had scrawled two or three I.O.U.’s upon scraps of paper torn from a
note-book. Yet he went on playing, with the same immovable countenance.
The room had emptied itself, the rest of the visitors leaving earlier
than their usual hour in that hospitable house. Perhaps because the
hostess was missing; perhaps because the royal sun was shining
elsewhere.
Lackeys handed their salvers of Burgundy and Bordeaux, and the players
refreshed themselves occasionally with a brimmer of clary; but no wine
brightened Fareham’s scowling brow, or changed the gloomy intensity of
his outlook.
“My cards have brought your lordship bad luck,” said Lady Lucretia, who
watched De Malfort’s winnings with an air of personal interest.
“I knew my risk before I took them, madam. When an Englishman plays
against a Frenchman he is a fool if he is not prepared to be rooked.”
“Fareham, are you mad?” cried De Malfort, starting to his feet. “To
insult your friend’s country, and, by basest implication, your friend.”
“I see no friend here. I say that you Frenchmen cheat at cards—on
principle—and are proud of being cheats! I have heard De Gramont brag
of having lured a man to his tent, and fed him, and wined him, and
fleeced him while he was drunk.” He took a goblet of claret from the
lackey who brought his salver, emptied it, and went on, hoarse with
passion. “To the marrow of your bones you are false, all of you! You do
not cog your dice, perhaps, but you bubble your friends with finesses,
and are as much sharpers at heart as the lowest tat-mongers in Alsatia.
You empty our purses, and cozen our women with twanging guitars and
jingling rhymes, and laugh at us because we are honest and trust you.
Seducers, tricksters, poltroons!”
The footman was at De Malfort’s elbow now. He snatched a tankard from
the salver, and flung the contents across the table, straight at
Fareham’s face.
“This bully forces me to spoil his Point de Venise,” he said coolly, as
he set down the tankard. “There should be a law for chaining up rabid
curs that have run mad without provocation.”
Fareham sprang to his feet, black and terrible, but with a savage
exultation in his countenance. The wine poured in a red stream from his
point-lace cravat, but had not touched his face.
“There shall be something redder than Burgundy spilt before we have
done!” he said.
“Sacre nom, nous sommes tombes dans un antre de betes sauvages!”
exclaimed Masaroon, starting up, and anxiously examining the skirts of
his brocade coat, lest that sudden deluge had caught him.
“None of your —— French to show your fine breeding!” growled the old
cavalier. “Fareham, you deserved the insult; but one red will wash out
another. I’m with your lordship.”
“And I’m with De Malfort,” said Masaroon. “He had more than enough
provocation.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, no bloodshed!” cried Lady Lucretia; “or, if you
are going to be uncivil to each other, for God’s sake get me to my
chair. I have a husband who would never forgive me if it were said you
fought for my sake.”
“We will see you safely disposed of, madam, before we begin our
business,” said Colonel Dangerfield, bluntly. “Fareham, you can take
the lady to her chair, while Masaroon and I discuss particulars.”
“There is no need of a discussion,” interrupted Fareham, hotly. “We
have nothing to arrange—nothing to wait for. Time, the present; place,
the garden, under these windows; weapons, the swords we wear. We shall
have no witnesses but the moon and stars. It is the dead middle of the
night, and we have the world all to ourselves.”
“Give me your rapier, then, that I may compare it with the Count’s. You
are satisfied, monsieur? ’Tis you that are the offender, and Lord
Fareham has the choice of weapons.”
“Let him choose. I will fight him with cannon—or with soap-bubbles,”
answered De Malfort, lolling back in his chair, tilted at an angle of
forty-five, and drumming a gay dance tune with his finger-tips on the
table. “’Tis a foolish imbroglio from first to last: and only his
lordship and I know how foolish. He came here to provoke a quarrel, and
I must indulge him. Come, Lady Lucretia”—he turned to his fair friend,
as he unbuckled his sword and flung it on the table—“it is my place to
lead you to your chair. Colonel, you and your friend will find me below
stairs in front of the Holbein Gate.”
“You are forgetting your winnings,” remonstrated the lady, pointing to
the pile of gold.
“The lackeys will not forget them when they clear the room,” answered
De Malfort, putting her hand through his arm, and leaving the money on
the table.
Ten minutes later Fareham and De Malfort were standing front to front
in the glare of four torches, held by a brace of her ladyship’s lackeys
who had been impressed into the service, and the colder light of a moon
that rode high in the blue-black of a wintry heaven. There was not a
sound but the ripple of the unseen river, and the distant cry of a
watchman in Petty France, till the clash of swords began.
It was decided after a brief parley that the principals only should
fight. The quarrel was private. The seconds placed their men on a piece
of level turf, five paces apart. They were bare-headed, and without
coat or vest, the lace ruffles of their shirt-sleeves rolled back to
the elbow, their naked arms ghastly white, their faces suggesting ghost
or devil as the spectral moonlight or the flame of the flambeaux shone
upon them.
“You mean business, so we may sink the parade of the fencing saloon,”
said Dangerfield. “Advance, gentlemen.”
“A pity,” murmured Masaroon, “there is nothing prettier than the salute
_à la Française_.”
Dangerfield handed the men their swords. They were nearly similar in
fashion, both flat-grooved blades, with needle points, and no cutting
edge, furnished with shell-guards and cross-bars in the Italian style,
and were about of a length.
The word was given, and the business of engagement proceeded slowly and
warily, for a few moments that seemed minutes; and then the blades were
firmly joined in carte, and a series of rapid feints began, De Malfort
having a slight advantage in the neatness of his circles, and the
swiftness of his wrist play. But in these preliminary lounges and
parries, he soon found he needed all his skill to dodge his opponent’s
point; for Fareham’s blade followed his own, steadily and strongly,
through every turn.
De Malfort had begun the fight with an insolent smile upon his lips,
the smile of a man who believes himself invincible, while Fareham’s
countenance never changed from the black anger that had darkened it all
that night. It was a face that meant death. A man who had never been a
duellist, who had raised his voice sternly against the practice of
duelling, stood there intent upon bloodshed. There could be no mistake
as to his purpose. The quarrel was an artificial quarrel—the object was
murder.
De Malfort, provoked at the unexpected strength of Fareham’s fence,
attempted a partial disarmament, after the deadly Continental method.
Joining his opponent’s blade near the point, from a wide circular
parry, he made a rapid thrust in seconde, carrying his forte the entire
length of Fareham’s blade, almost wrenching the sword from his grasp;
and then, in the next instant, reaching forward to his fullest stretch,
he lunged at his enemy’s breast, aiming at the vital region of the
heart; a thrust that must have proved fatal had not Fareham sprung
aside, and so received the blow where the sword only grazed his ribs,
inflicting a flesh-wound that showed red upon the whiteness of his
shirt. Dangerfield tore off his cravat, and wanted to bind it round his
principal’s waist; but Fareham repulsed him, and lashed into hot fury
by the Frenchman’s uncavalier-like ruse, met his adversary’s thrusts
with a deadly purpose, which drove De Malfort to reckless lunging and
riposting, and the play grew fast and fierce, while the rattle of steel
seemed never likely to end. Suddenly, timing his attack to the fraction
of a second, Fareham dropped on his left knee, and planting his left
hand upon the ground, sent a murderous thrust home under De Malfort’s
guard, whose blade passed harmlessly over his adversary’s head as he
crouched on the sward.
De Malfort fell heavily in the arms of the two seconds, who both sprang
to his assistance.
“Is it fatal?” asked Fareham, standing motionless as stone, while the
other men knelt on either side of De Malfort.
“I’ll run for a surgeon,” said Masaroon. “There’s a fellow I know of
this side the Abbey—mends bloody noses and paints black eyes,” and he
was off, running across the grass to the nearest gate.
“It looks plaguily like a coffin,” Dangerfield answered, with his hand
on the wounded man’s breast. “There’s throbbing here yet; but he may
bleed to death, like poor Lindsey, before surgery can help him. You had
better run, Fareham. Take horse to Dover, and get across to Calais or
Ostend. You were devilish provoking. It might go hard with you if he
was to die.”
“I shall not budge, Dangerfield. Didn’t you hear me say I wanted to
kill him? You might guess I didn’t care a cast of the dice for my life
when I said as much. Let them find it murder, and hang me. I wanted him
out of the world, and don’t care how soon I follow.”
“You are mad—stark, staring mad!”
The wounded man raised himself on his elbow, groaning aloud in the
agony of movement, and beckoned Fareham, who knelt down beside him, all
of a piece, like a stone figure.
“Fareham, you had better run; I have powerful friends. There’ll be an
ugly stir if I die of this bout. Kiss me, mon ami. I forgive you. I
know what wound rankled; ’twas for your wife’s sister you fought—not
the cards.”
He sank into Dangerfield’s arms, swooning from loss of blood, as
Masaroon came back at a run, bringing a surgeon, an elderly man of that
Alsatian class which is to be found out of bed in the small hours. He
brought styptics and bandages, and at once set about staunching the
wound.
While this was happening a curtain had been suddenly pulled aside at an
upper window in Lady Castlemaine’s lodgings, showing a light within.
The window was thrown open, and a figure appeared, clad in a white
satin night-gown that glistened in the moonlight, with a deep collar of
ermine, from which the handsomest face in London looked across the
garden, to the spot where Fareham, the seconds, and the surgeon were
grouped about De Malfort.
It was Lady Castlemaine. She leant out of the window and called to
them.
“What has happened? Is any one hurt? I’ll wager a thousand pounds you
devils have been fighting.”
“De Malfort is stabbed!” Masaroon answered.
“Not dead?” she shrieked, leaning farther out of the window.
“No; but it looks dangerous.”
“Bring him into my house this instant! I’ll send my fellows to help.
Have you sent for a surgeon?”
“The surgeon is here.”
The radiant figure vanished like a vision in the skies; and in three
minutes a door was heard opening, and a voice calling, “John, William,
Hugh, Peter, every manjack of you. Lazy devils! There’s been no time
for you to fall asleep since the company left. Stir yourselves, vermin,
and out with you!”
“We had best levant, Fareham,” muttered Dangerfield, and drew away his
principal, who went with him, silent and unresisting, having no more to
do there; not to fly the country, however, but to walk quietly home to
Fareham House, and to let himself in at the garden door, known to the
household as his lordship’s.