GOOD-BYE, LONDON.
Sitting in her own room before supper, a letter was brought to Angela—a
long letter, closely written, in a neat, firm hand she knew very well.
It was from Denzil Warner; a letter full of earnest thought and warm
feeling, in which he pursued the subject of their morning’s discourse.
“We were interrupted before I had time to open my heart to you,
dearest,” he wrote; “and at a moment when we had touched on the most
delicate point in our friendship—the difference in our religious
education and observance. Oh, my beloved, let not difference in
particulars divide two hearts that worship the same God, or make a
barrier between two minds that think alike upon essentials. The Christ
who died for you is not less my Saviour because I love not to obtrude
the dressed-up image of His earthly mother between His Godhead and my
prayers. In the regeneration of baptism, in the sanctity of marriage,
in the resurrection of the body, and the life of the world to come, in
the reality of sin and the necessity for repentance, I believe as truly
as any Papist living. Let our lives be but once united, who knows how
the future may shape and modify our minds and our faith? I may be
brought to your way of thinking, or you to mine. I will pledge myself
never to be guilty of disrespect to your religion, or to unkindly urge
you to any change in your observances. I am not one of those who have
exchanged one tyranny for another, and who, released from the dominion
of Rome, have become the slave of the Covenant. I have been taught by
one who, himself deeply religious, would have all men free to worship
God by the light of their own conscience; and to my wife, that dearer
half of my soul, I would allow perfect freedom. I suffer from the lack
of poetic phrases with which to embellish the plain reality of my love;
but be sure, Angela, that you may travel far through the world, and
receive many a flowery compliment to your beauty, yet meet none who
will love you as faithfully as I have loved you for this year last
past, and as I doubt I shall love you—happy or unfortunate in my
wooing—for all the rest of my life. Think, dearest, whether it were not
wise on your part to accept the chaste and respectful homage of a
suitor who is free to love and cherish you, and thus to shield yourself
from the sinful pursuit of one who offends Heaven and dishonours you
whenever he looks at you with the eyes of a lover. I would not write
harshly of a man whose very sin I pity, and whom I believe not wholly
vile; but for him, as for me, that were a happy day which should make
you my wife, and thus end the madness of unholy hopes. I would again
urge that Lady Fareham desires our union with all a sister’s concern
for you, and more than a friend’s tenderness to me.
“I beseech your pardon and indulgence for my rough words of this
morning. God forbid that I should impute one unworthy thought to her
whose virtues I honour above all earthly merit. If your heart inclines
towards one whom it were misery for you to love, I know that it must be
with an affection pure and ethereal as the love of the disguised girl
in Fletcher’s play. But, ah, dearest angel, you know not the peril in
which you walk. Your innocent mind cannot conceive the audacious height
to which unholy love may climb in a man’s fiery nature. You cannot
fathom the black depths of such a character as Fareham—a man as capable
of greatness in evil as of distinction in good. Forget not whose fierce
blood runs in those veins. Can you doubt his audacity in wrong-doing,
when you remember that he comes of the same stock which produced that
renegade and tyrant, Thomas Wentworth—a man who would have waded deep
in the blood of a nation to reach his desired goal, all the history of
whose life was expressed by him in one word—‘thorough’?
“Do you consider what that word means to a man over whose heart sin has
taken the upper hand? Thorough! How resolute in evil, how undaunted and
without limit in baseness, is he who takes that word for his motto! Oh,
my love, there are dragons and lions about thy innocent footsteps—the
dragons of lust, the lions of presumptuous love. Flee from thy worst
enemy, dearest, to the shelter of a heart which adores thee; lean upon
a breast whose pulses beat for thee with a truth that time cannot
change.
“Thine till death,
“WARNER.”
Angela tore up the letter in anger. How dared he write thus of Lord
Fareham? To impute sinful passions, guilty desires—to enter into
another man’s mind, and read the secret cipher of his thoughts and
wishes with an assumed key, which might be false? His letter was a
bundle of false assumptions. What right had he to insist that her
brother-in-law cared for her with more than the affection authorised by
affinity? He had no right. She hated him for his insolent letter. She
scorned the protection of his love. She had her refuge and her shelter
in a holier love than his. The doors of the old home would open to her
at a word.
She sat on a low stool in front of the hearth, while the pile of ship
timber on the andirons burnt itself out and turned from red to grey.
She sat looking into the dying fire and recalling the pictures of the
past; the dull grey convent rooms and formal convent garden; the petty
rules and restrictions; the so-frequent functions—low mass and high,
benedictions, vespers—the recurrent sound of the chapel bell. The few
dull books, permitted in the hour of so-called recreation; the sombre
grey gown, which was the only relief from perpetual black; the
limitations of that colourless life. She had been happy with the
Ursulines under her kinswoman’s gentle sway. But could she be happy
with the present Superior, whose domineering temper she knew? She had
been happy in her ignorance of the outer world; but could she be happy
again in that grey seclusion—she who had sat at the banquet of life,
who had seen the beauty and the variety of her native land? To be an
exile for the rest of her days, in the hopeless gloom of a Flemish
convent, among the heavy faces of Flemish nuns!
In the intensity of introspective thought she had forgotten one who had
forbidden that gloomy seclusion, and to whom it would be as natural for
her to look for protection and refuge as to convent or husband. From
her thoughts to-night the image of her wandering father had been
absent. His appearances in her life had been so rare and so brief, his
influence on her destiny so slight, that she was forgetful of him now
in this crisis of her fate.
It was within a week of that evening that the sisters were startled by
the arrival of their father, unannounced, in the dusk of the winter
afternoon. He had come by slow stages from Spain, riding the greater
part of the journey—like Howell, fifty years earlier—attended only by
one faithful soldier-servant, and enduring no small suffering, and
running no slight risk, upon the road.
“The wolves had our provender on more than one occasion,” he told them.
“The wonder is they never had us or our hackneys. I left Madrid in
July, not long after the death of my poor friend Fanshawe. Indeed, it
was his friendship and his good lady’s unvarying courtesy that took me
to the capital. We had last met at Hampton Court, with the King,
shortly before his Majesty’s so ill-advised flight; and we were
bosom-friends then. And so, he being dead of a fever early in the
summer, I had no more to do but to travel slowly homeward, to end my
days in my own chimney-corner, and to claim thy promise, Angela, that
thou wouldst keep my house, and comfort my declining years.”
“Dear father!” Angela murmured, hanging over him as he sat in the
high-backed velvet chair by the fire, while her ladyship’s footmen set
a table near him, with wine and provisions for an impromptu meal, Lady
Fareham directing them, and coming between-whiles to embrace her father
in a flutter of spirits, the firelight shining on her flame-coloured
velvet gown and primrose taffety petticoat, her pretty golden curls and
sparkling Sévigné, her ruby necklace and earrings, and her bright
restless eyes.
While the elder sister was all movement and agitation, the younger
stood calm and still beside her father’s chair, her hands clasped in
his, her thoughtful eyes looking down at him as he talked, stopping now
and then in his story of adventures to eat and drink.
He looked much older than when he surprised her in the Convent garden.
His hair and beard, then iron grey, were now silver white. He wore his
own hair, which was abundant, and a beard cut after the fashion she
knew in the portraits of Henri Quatre. His clothes also were of that
style, which lived now only in the paintings of Vandyke and his school.
“How the girl looks at me!” Sir John said, surprising his daughter’s
earnest gaze. “Does she take me for a ghost?”
“Indeed, sir, she may well fancy you have come back from the other
world while you wear that antique suit,” said Hyacinth. “I hope your
first business to-morrow will be to replenish your wardrobe by the
assistance of Lord Rochester’s tailor. He is a German, and has the best
cut for a justau-corps in all the West End. Fareham is shabby enough to
make a wife ashamed of him; but his clothes are only too plain for his
condition. Your Spanish cloak and steeple hat are fitter for a
travelling quack doctor than for a gentleman of quality, and your
doublet and vest might have come out of the ark.”
“If I change them, it will be but to humour your vanity, sweetheart,”
answered her father. “I bought the suit in Paris three years ago, and I
swore I would cast them back upon the snip’s hands if he gave me any
new-fangled finery. But a riding-suit that has crossed the Pyrenees and
stood a winter’s wear at Montpelier—where I have been living since
October—can scarce do credit to a fine lady’s saloon; and thou art
finest, I’ll wager, Hyacinth, where all are fine.”
“You would not say that if you had seen Lady Castlemaine’s rooms. I
would wager that her gold and silver tapestry cost more than the
contents of my house.”
“Thou shouldst not envy sin in high places, Hyacinth.”
“Envy! I envy a——”
“Nay, love, no bad names! ’Tis a sorry pass England has come to when
the most conspicuous personage at her Court is the King’s mistress. I
was with Queen Henrietta at Paris, who received me mighty kindly, and
bewailed with me over the contrast betwixt her never-to-be-forgotten
husband and his sons. They have nothing of their father, she told me,
neither in person nor in mind. ‘I know not whence their folly comes to
them!’ she cried. It would have been uncivil to remind her that her own
father, hero as he was, had set no saintly example to royal husbands;
and that it is possible our princes take more of their character from
their grandfather Henry than from the martyr Charles. Poor lady, I am
told she left London deep in debt, after squandering her noble income
of these latter years, and that she has sunk in the esteem of the
French court by her alliance with Jermyn.”
“I can but wonder that she, above all women, should ever cease to be a
widow.”
“She comes of a light-minded race and nation, Angela; and it is easy to
her to forget; or she would not easily forget that so-adoring husband
whose fortunes she ruined. His most fatal errors came from his
subservience to her. When I saw her in her new splendour at Somerset
House, all smiles and gaiety, with youth and beauty revived in the
sunshine of restored fortune, I could but remember all he was, in
dignity and manly affection, proud and pure as King Arthur in the old
romance, and all she cost him by womanish tyrannies and prejudices, and
difficult commands laid upon him at a juncture of so exceeding
difficulty.”
The sisters listened in respectful silence. The old cavalier cut a
fresh slice of chine, sighed, and continued his sermon.
“I doubt that while we, the lookers on, remember, they, the actors,
forget; for could the son of such a noble victim wallow in a profligate
court, surrender himself to the devilish necromancies of vicious women
and viler men, if he remembered his father’s character, and his
father’s death? No; memory must be a blank, and we, who suffered with
our royal master, are fools to prate of ingratitude or neglect, since
the son who can forget such a father may well forget his father’s
servants and friends. But we will not talk of public matters in the
first hour of our greeting. Nor need I prate of the King, since I have
not come back to England to clap a periwig over my grey hairs, and play
waiter upon Court favour, and wear out the back of my coat against the
tapestry at Whitehall, standing in the rear of the crowd, to have my
toes trampled upon by the sharp heels of Court ladies, and an elbow in
my stomach more often than not. I am come, like Wolsey, girls, to lay
my old bones among you. Art thou ready, Angela? Hast thou had enough of
London, and play-houses, and parks; and wilt thou share thy father’s
solitude in Buckinghamshire?”
“With all my heart, sir.”
“What! never a sigh for London pleasures? Thou hast the great lady’s
air and carriage in that brave blue taffety. The nun I knew three years
ago has vanished. Can you so lightly renounce the splendour of this
house, and your sister’s company, to make a prosing old father happy?”
“Indeed, sir, I am ready to go with you.”
“How she says that—with what a countenance of woeful resignation! But I
will not make the Manor Moat too severe a prison, dearest. You shall
visit London, and your sister, when you will. There shall be a coach
and a team of stout roadsters to pull it when they are not wanted for
the plough. And the Vale of Aylesbury is but a long day’s journey from
London, while ’tis no more than a morning’s ride to Chilton.”
“I could not bear for her to be long away from me,” said Hyacinth. “She
is the only companion I have in the world.”
“Except your husband.”
“Husbands such as mine are poor company. Fareham has a moody brow, and
a mind stuffed with public matters. He dines with Clarendon one day,
and with Albemarle another; or he goes to Deptford to grumble with Mr.
Evelyn; or he creeps away to some obscure quarter of the town to
hob-nob with Milton, and with Marvel, the member for Hull. I doubt they
are all of one mind in abusing his Majesty, and conspiring against him.
If I lose my sister I shall have no one.”
“What, no one; when you have Henriette, who even three years ago had
shrewdness enough to keep an old grandfather amused with her
impertinent prattle?”
“Grandfathers are easily amused by children they see as seldom as you
have seen Papillon. To have her about you all day, with her everlasting
chatter, and questions, and remarks, and opinions (a brat of twelve
with opinions), would soon give you the vapours.”
“I am not so subject to vapours as you, child. Let me look at you, now
the candles are lighted.”
The footmen had lighted clusters of wax candles on either side the tall
chimney-piece.
Sir John drew his elder daughter to the light, and scrutinised her face
with a father’s privilege of uncompromising survey.
“You paint thick enough, i’ conscience’ name, though not quite so thick
as the Spanish señoras. They are browner than you, and need a heavier
hand with white and red. But you are haggard under all your red. You
are not the woman I left in ’65.”
“I am near two years older than the woman you left; and as for paint,
there is not a woman over twenty in London who uses as little red and
white as I do.”
“What has become of Fareham to-night?” Sir John asked presently, when
Hyacinth had picked up her favourite spaniel to nurse and fondle, while
Angela had resumed her occupation at an embroidery frame, and a
reposeful air as of a long-established domesticity had fallen upon the
scene.
“He is at Chilton. When he is not plotting he rushes off to Oxfordshire
for the hunting and shooting. He loves buglehorns and yelping curs, and
huntsmen’s cracked voices, far before the company of ladies or the
conversation of wits.”
“A man was never meant to sit in a velvet chair and talk fine. It is
all one for a French Abbé and a few old women in men’s clothing to sit
round the room and chop logic with a learned spinster like Mademoiselle
Scudéry; but men must live _sub Jove_, unless they are statesmen or
clerks. They must have horses and hounds, gun and spaniel, hawk or rod.
I am glad Fareham loves sport. And as for that talk of conspiring, let
me not hear it from thee, Hyacinth. ’Tis a perilous discourse to but
hint at treason; and your husband is a loyal gentleman who loves,
and”—with a wry face—“reveres—his King.”
“Oh, I was only jesting. But, indeed, a man who so disparages the
things other people love must needs be a rebel at heart. Did you hear
of Monsieur de Malfort while you were at Paris?”
The inquiry was made with that over-acted carelessness which betrays
hidden pain; but the soldier’s senses had been blunted by the
rough-and-tumble of an adventurer’s life, and he was not on the alert
for shades of feeling.
Angela accepted her father’s return, with the new duties it imposed
upon her, as if it had been a decree of Heaven. She put aside all
consideration of that refuge which would have meant so complete a
renunciation and farewell. On her knees that night, in the midst of
fervent prayers, her tears streamed fast at the thought that, secure in
the shelter of her father’s love, in the peaceful solitude of her
native valley, she could look to a far-off future when she and Fareham
might meet with out fear of sin, when no cloud of passion should darken
his brotherly affection for her; when his heart, now estranged from
holy things, would have returned to the faith of his ancestors,
reconciled to God and the Church. She could but think of him now as a
fallen angel—a wanderer who had strayed far from the only light and
guide of human life, and was thus a mark for the tempter. What lesser
power than Satan’s could have so turned good to evil; the friendship of
a brother to the base passion which had made so wide a gulf between
them; and which must keep them strangers till he was cured of his sin?
Only to diabolical possession could she ascribe the change that had
come over him since those happy days when she had watched the slow dawn
of health upon his sunken cheeks, when he and she had travelled
together through the rich autumn woods, along the pleasant English
roads, and when, in the leisure of the slow journey, he had poured out
his thoughts to her, the story of his life, his opinions, expatiating
in fraternal confidence upon the things he loved and the things he
hated. And at Chilton, she looked back and remembered his goodness to
her, the pains he had taken in choosing horses for her to ride, their
long mornings on the river with Henriette, their hawking parties, and
in all his tender brotherly care of her. The change in him had come
about by almost imperceptible degrees: but it had been chiefly marked
by a fitful temper that had cut her to the quick; now kind; now barely
civil; courting her company to-day; to-morrow avoiding her, as if there
were contagion in her presence. Then, after the meeting at Millbank,
there had come a coldness so icy, a sarcasm so cutting, that for a long
time she had thought he hated as much as he despised her. She had
withered in his contempt. His unkindness had overshadowed every hour of
her life, and the longing to cry out to him “Indeed, sir, your thoughts
wrong me. I am not the wretch you think,” had been almost too much for
her fortitude. She had felt that she must exculpate herself, even
though in so doing she should betray her sister. But honour, and
affection for Hyacinth, had prevailed; and she had bent her shoulders
to the burden of undeserved shame. She had sat silent and abashed in
his presence, like a guilty creature.
Sir John Kirkland spent a week at Fareham House, employed in choosing a
team of horses, suitable alike for the road and the plough, looking
out, among the coachmakers, for a second-hand travelling carriage, and
eventually buying a coach of Lady Fanshawe’s, which had been brought
from Madrid with the rest of her very extensive goods and chattels.
One need scarce remark that it was not one of the late Ambassador’s
state carriages, his ruby velvet coach, with fringes that cost three
hundred pounds, or his brocade carriage, but a coach that had been
built for the everyday use of his suite.
Sir John also bought a little plain silver, in place of that fine
collection of silver and parcel-gilt which had been so willingly
sacrificed to royal necessities; and though he breathed no sigh over
past losses, some bitter thoughts may have come across his cheerfulness
as he heard of the splendour and superabundance of Lady Castlemaine’s
plate and jewels, or of the ring worth six hundred pounds lately
presented to a pretty actress.
In a week he was ready for Buckinghamshire; and Angela had her trunks
packed, and had bid good-bye to her London friends, amidst the chatter
of Lady Fareham’s visiting-day, and the clear, bell-like clash of
delicate china tea-cups—miniature bowls of egg-shell porcelain, without
handles, and to be held daintily between the tips of high-bred fingers.
There was a chorus of courteous bewailing at the notion of Mrs.
Kirkland’s departure.
Sir Ralph Masaroon pretended to be in despair.
“Is it not bad enough to have had the coldest winter my youth can
remember? But you must needs take the sun from our spring. Why, the
maids of honour will count for handsome when you are gone. What’s that
Butler says?—
‘The twinkling stars begin to muster,
And glitter with their borrowed lustre.’
But what’s to become of me without the sun? I shall have no one to
side-glass in the Ring.”
“Indeed, Sir Ralph, I did not know that you ever side-glassed me!”
“What, you have suffered my devotion to pass unperceived? When I have
broken half a dozen coach windows in your service, rattling a glass
down with a vehemence which would have startled a Venus in marble to
turn and recognise an adorer! Round and round the Ring I have driven
for hours, on the chance of a look. Nay, marble is not so coy as
froward beauty! And at the Queen’s chapel have I not knelt at the Mass
morning after morning, at the risk of being thought a Papist, for the
sake of seeing you at prayers; and have envied the Romish dog who
handed you the aspersoir as you went out? And you to be unconscious all
the time!”
“Nay, ’tis so much happier for me, Sir Ralph, since you have given me a
reserve of gratified vanity that will last me a year in the country,
where I shall see nothing but ploughmen and bird-boys.”
“Look out for the scarecrows in Sir John’s fields, for the odds are you
will see me some day disguised as one.”
“Why disguised?” asked his friend Mr. Penington, who had lately
produced a comedy that had been acted three afternoons at the Duke’s
Theatre, and one evening at Court, which may be taken as a prosperous
run for a new play.
Lady Sarah Tewkesbury held forth on the pleasures of a country life,
and lamented that family connections and the necessity of standing well
with the Court constrained her to spend the greater part of her
existence in town.
“I am like Milton,” she said. “I adore a rural life. To hear the cock—
‘From his watchtower in the skies,
When the horse and hound do rise.’
Oh, I love buttercups and daisies above all the Paris finery in the
Exchange; and to steep one’s complexion in May-dew, and to sup on a
syllabub or a dish of frumenty—so cheap, too, while it costs a fortune
but to scrape along in London.”
“The country is well enough for a month at hay-making, to romp with a
bevy of London beauties in the meadows near Tunbridge Wells, or to
dance to a couple of fiddles on the Common by moonlight,” said Mr.
Penington; whereupon all agreed that Tunbridge Wells, Epsom, Doncaster,
and Newmarket were the only country possible to people of intellect.
“I would never go further than Epsom, if I had my will,” said Sir
Ralph; “for I see no pleasure in Newmarket for a man who keeps no
running-horses, and has no more interest in the upshot of a race than
he might have in a maggot match on his own dining-table, did he stake
high enough on the result.”
“But my sister is not to be buried in Buckinghamshire all the year
round,” explained Hyacinth. “I shall fetch her here half a dozen times
in a season; and her shortest visits must be long enough to take the
country freshness out of her complexion, and save her from becoming a
milkmaid.”
“Gud, to see her freckled!” cried Penington. “I could as soon imagine
Helen with a hump. That London pallor is the choicest charm in a girl
of quality—a refined sickliness that appeals to the heart of a man of
feeling, an ‘if-you-don’t-lend-me-your-arm-I-shall-swoon’ sort of air.
Your country hoyden, with her roses-and-cream complexion, and open-air
manners, is more shocking than Medusa to a man of taste.”
The talk drifted to other topics at the mention of Buckingham, who had
but lately been let out of the Tower, where he and Lord Dorchester had
been committed for scuffling and quarrelling at the Canary Conference.
“Has your ladyship seen the Duke and Lord Dorchester since they came
out of the house of bondage?” asked Lady Sarah. “I think Buckingham was
never so gay and handsome, and takes his imprisonment as the best joke
that ever was, and is as great at Court as ever.”
“His Majesty is but too indulgent,” said Masaroon, “and encourages the
Duke to be insolent and careless of ceremony. He had the impertinence
to show himself at chapel before he had waited on his Majesty.”
“Who was very angry and forbade him the Court,” said Penington. “But
Buckingham sent the King one of his foolish, jesting letters, capped
with a rhyme or two; and if you can make Charles Stuart laugh you may
pick his pocket——”
“Or seduce his mistress——”
“Oh, he will forgive much to wit and gaiety. He learnt the knack of
taking life easily, while he led that queer, shifting life in exile. He
was a cosmopolitan and a soldier of fortune before he was a King _de
facto;_ and still wears the loose garments of those easy, beggarly
days, when he had neither money nor care. Be sure he regrets that
roving life—Madrid, Paris, the Hague—and will never love a son as well
as little Monmouth, the child of his youth.”
“What would he not give to make that base-born brat Prince of Wales?
Strange that while Lord Ross is trying to make his offspring
illegitimate by Act of Parliament, his master’s anxieties should all
tend the other way.”
“Don’t talk to me of Parliament!” cried Lady Sarah; “the tyranny of the
Rump was nothing to them. Look at the tax upon French wines, which will
make it almost impossible for a lady of small means to entertain her
friends. And an Act for burying us all in woollen, for the benefit of
the English trade in wool.”
“But, indeed, Lady Sarah, it is we of the old faith who have most need
to complain,” said Lady Fareham, “since these wretches make us pay a
double poll-tax; and all our foreign friends are being driven away for
the same reason—just because the foolish and the ignorant must needs
put down the fire to the Catholics.”
“Indeed, your ladyship, the Papists have had an unlucky knack at
lighting fires, as Smithfield and Oxford can testify,” said Penington;
“and perhaps, having no more opportunity of roasting martyrs, it may
please some of your creed to burn Protestant houses, with the chance of
cooking a few Protestants inside ’em.”
Angela had drawn away from the little knot of fine ladies and finer
gentlemen, and was sitting in the bay window of an ante-room, with
Henriette and the boy, who were sorely dejected at the prospect of
losing her. The best consolation she could offer was to promise that
they should be invited to the Manor Moat as soon as she and her father
had settled themselves comfortably there—if their mother could spare
them.
Henriette laughed outright at this final clause.
“Spare us!” she cried. “Does she ever want us? I don’t think she knows
when we are in the room, unless we tread upon her gown, when she
screams out ‘Little viper!’ and hits us with her fan.”
“The lightest touch, Papillon; not so hard as you strike your favourite
baby.”
“Oh, she doesn’t hurt me; but the disrespect of it! Her only daughter,
and nearly as high as she is!”
“You are an ungrateful puss to complain, when her ladyship is so kind
as to let you be here to see all her fine company.”
“I am sick of her company, almost always the same, and always talking
about the same things. The King, and the Duke, and the General, and the
navy; or Lady Castlemaine’s jewels, or the last new head from Paris, or
her ladyship’s Flanders lace. It is all as dull as ditch-water now
Monsieur de Malfort is gone. He was always pleasant, and he let me play
on his guitar, though he swore it excruciated him. And he taught me the
new Versailles coranto. There’s no pleasure for any one since he fell
ill and left England.”
“You shall come to the Manor. It will be a change, even though you hate
the country and love London.”
“I have left off loving London. I have had too much of it. If his
lordship let us go to the play-house often it would be different. Oh,
how I loved Philaster—and that exquisite page! Do you think I could act
that character, auntie, if his lordship’s tailor made me such a dress?”
“I think thou hast impudence for anything, dearest.”
“I would rather act that page than Pauline in _Polyeucte_, though
Mademoiselle swears I speak her tirades nearly as well as an actress
she once saw at the Marais, who was too old and fat for the character.
How I should love to be an actress, and to play tragedy and comedy, and
make people cry and laugh! Indeed, I would rather be anything than a
lady—unless I could be exactly like Lady Castlemaine.”
“Ah, Heaven forbid!”
“But why not? I heard Sir Ralph tell mother that, let her behave as
badly as she may, she will always be atop of the tree, and that the
young sparks at the Chapel Royal hardly look at their prayer-books for
gazing at her, and that the King——”
“Ah, sweetheart, I want to hear no more of her!”
“Why, don’t you like her? I thought you did not know her. She never
comes here.”
“Are there any staghounds in the Vale of Aylesbury?” asked the boy, who
had been looking out of the window, watching the boats go by, unheeding
his sister’s babble.
“I know not, love; but there shall be dogs enough for you to play with,
I’ll warrant, and a pony for you to ride. Grandfather shall get them
for his dearest.”
Sir John was fond of Henriette, whom he looked upon as a marvel of
precocious brightness; but the boy was his favourite, whom he loved
with an old man’s half-melancholy affection for the creature which is
to live and act a part in the world when he, the greybeard, shall be
dust.