London Pride, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [book recommendations website txt] 📗

dinner to-day," said Papillon; "but I hope I shall be able to eat a mince pie. Why don't you love mince pies, madam? He"--pointing to Denzil--"says you do not."


CHAPTER X.


THE PRIEST'S HOLE.

Denzil dined at the Abbey, where he was always made welcome. Lady Fareham had been warmly insistent upon his presence at their Christmas gaieties.

"We want to show you a Cavalier's Christmas," she told him at dinner, he seated at her side in the place of honour, while Angela sat at the other end of the table between Fareham and De Malfort. "For ourselves we care little for such simple sports: but for the poor folk and the children Yule should be a season to be remembered for good cheer and merriment through all their slow, dull year. Poor wretches! I think of their hard life sometimes, and wonder they don't either drown themselves or massacre us."

"They are like the beasts of the field, Lady Fareham. They have learnt patience from the habit of suffering. They are born poor, and they die poor. It is happy for us that they are not learned enough to consider the inequalities of fortune, or we should have the rising of want against abundance, a bitterer strife, perhaps, than the strife of adverse creeds, which made Ireland so bloody a spectacle for the world's wonder thirty years ago."

"Well, we shall make them all happy this afternoon; and there will be a supper in the great stone barn which will acquaint them with abundance for this one evening at least," answered Hyacinth, gaily.

"We are going to play games after dinner!" cried Henriette, from her place at her father's elbow.

His lordship was the only person who ever reproved her seriously, yet she loved him best of all her kindred or friends.

"Aunt Angy is going to play hide-and-seek with us. Will you play, Sir Denzil?"

"I shall think myself privileged if I may join in your amusements."

"What a courteous speech! You will be cutting off your pretty curly hair, and putting on a French perruque, like his"--pointing to De Malfort. "Please do not. You would be like everybody else in London--and now you are only like yourself--and vastly handsome."

"Hush, Henriette! you are much too pert," remonstrated Fareham.

"But 'tis the very truth, father. All the women who visit mother paint their faces, so that they are all alike; and all the men talk alike, so that I don't know one from t'other, except Lord Rochester, who is impudenter and younger than the others, and gives me more sugar-plums and pays me prettier compliments than anybody else."

"Hold your tongue, mistress! A dinner-table is no place for pert children. Thy brother there has better manners," said her father, pointing to the cherubic son and heir, whose ideas were concentrated upon a loaded plate of red-deer pasty.

"You mean that he is greedier than I," retorted Papillon. "He will eat till he won't be able to run about with us after dinner; and then he will sprawl upon mother's satin train by the fire, with Ganymede and Phosphor, and she will tell everybody how good and gentle he is, and how much better bred than his sister. And now, if people are _ever_ going to leave off eating, we may as well begin our games before it is quite dark. Perhaps _you_ are ready, auntie, if nobody else is."

Dinner may have ended a little quicker for this speech, although Papillon was sternly suppressed, and bade to keep silence or leave the table. She obeyed so far as to make no further remarks, but expressed her contempt for the gluttony of her elders by several loud yawns, and bounced up out of her seat, like a ball from a racket, directly the little gentleman in black sitting near his lordship had murmured a discreet thanksgiving. This gentleman was the Roman Catholic priest from Oxford, who had said Mass early that morning in the muniment room, and had been invited to his lordship's table in honour of the festival.

Papillon led all the games, and ordered everybody about. Mrs. Dorothy Lettsome, the young lady who was sorry she had not had the honour to be born in France, was of the party, with her brother, honest Dan Lettsome, an Oxfordshire squire, who had been in London only once in his life, to see the Coronation, and had nearly lost his life, as well as his purse and jewellery, in a tavern, after that august ceremonial. This bitter experience had given him a distaste for the pleasures of the town which his poor sister deplored exceedingly; since she was dependent upon his coffers, and subject to his authority, and had no hope of leaving Oxfordshire unless she were fortunate enough to find a town-bred husband.

These two joined in the sports with ardour, Squire Dan glad to be moving about, rather than to sit still and listen to music which he hated, or to conversation to which he could contribute neither wit nor sense, unless the kennel or the gun-room were the topic under discussion. The talk of a lady and gentleman who had graduated in the salons of the Hôtel de Rambouillet was a foreign language to him; and he told his sister that it was all one to him whether Lady Fareham and the Mounseer talked French or English, since it was quite as hard to understand 'em in one language as in t'other.

Papillon, this rustic youth adored. He knew no greater pleasure than to break and train a pony for her, to teach her the true knack of clearing a hedge, to explain the habits and nature of those vermin in whose lawless lives she was deeply interested--rats, weasels, badgers, and such-like--to attend her when she hunted, or flew her peregrine.

"If you will marry me, sweetheart, when you are of the marrying age, I would rather wait half a dozen years for you than have the best woman in Oxfordshire that I know of at this present."

"Marry you!" cried Lord Fareham's daughter. "Why, I shall marry no one under an earl; and I hope it will be a duke or a marquis. Marchioness is a pretty title: it sounds better than duchess, because it is in three syllables--mar-chion-ess," with an affected drawl. "I am going to be very beautiful. Mrs. Hubbuck says so, and mother's own woman; and I heard that painted old wretch, Mrs. Lewin, tell mother so. 'Eh, gud, your la'ship, the young miss will be almost as great a beauty as your la'ship's self!' Mrs. Lewin always begins her speeches with 'Eh, gud!' or 'What devil!' But I hope I shall be handsomer than _mother_" concluded Papillon, in a tone which implied a poor opinion of the maternal charms.

And now on this Christmas evening, in the thickening twilight of the rambling old house, through long galleries, crooked passages, queer little turns at right angles, rooms opening out of rooms, half a dozen in succession, Squire Dan led the games, ordered about all the time by Papillon, whom he talked of admiringly as a high-mettled filly, declaring that she had more tricks than the running-horse he was training for Abingdon races.

De Malfort, after assisting in their sports for a quarter of an hour with considerable spirit, had deserted them, and sneaked off to the great saloon, where he sat on the Turkey carpet at Lady Fareham's feet, singing chansonettes to his guitar, while George and the spaniels sprawled beside him, the whole group making a picture of indolent enjoyment, fitfully lighted by the blaze of a yule log that filled the width of the chimney. Fareham and the Priest were playing chess at the other end of the long low room, by the light of a single candle.

Papillon ran in at the door and ejaculated her disgust at De Malfort's desertion.

"Was there ever such laziness? It's bad enough in Georgie to be so idle; but then,_ he_ has over-eaten himself."

"And how do you know that I haven't over-eaten myself, mistress?" asked De Malfort.

"You never do that; but you often drink too much--much, much, much too much!"

"That's a slanderous thing to say of your mother's most devoted servant," laughed De Malfort. "And pray how does a baby-girl like you know when a gentleman has been more thirsty than discreet?"

"By the way you talk--always French. Jarni! ch'dame, n'savons joui d' n'belle s'rée--n'fam-partie d'ombre. Moi j'ai p'du n'belle f'tune, p'rol'd'nneur! You clip your words to nothing. Aren't you coming to play hide-and-seek?"

"Not I, fair slanderer. I am a salamander, and love the fire."

"Is that a kind of Turk? Good-bye. I'm going to hide."

"Beware of the chests in the gallery, sweetheart," said her father, who heard only this last sentence, as his daughter ran past him towards the door. "When I was in Italy I was told of a bride who hid herself in an old dower-chest, on her wedding-day--and the lid clapped to with a spring and kept her there for half a century."

"There's no spring that ever locksmith wrought that will keep down Papillon," cried De Malfort, sounding a light accompaniment to his words on the guitar strings, with delicatest touch, like fairy music.

"I know of better hiding-places," answered the child, and vanished, banging the great door behind her.

She found her aunt with Dorothy Lettsome and her brother and Denzil in the gallery above stairs, walking up and down, and listening with every indication of weariness to the Squire's discourse about his hunters and running-horses.

"Now we are going to have real good sport!" cried Papillon. "Aunt Angy and I are to hide, and you three are to look for us. You must stop in this gallery for ten minutes by the French clock yonder--with the door shut. You must give us ten minutes' law, Mr. Lettsome, as you did the hare the other day, when I was out with you--and then you may begin to look for us. Promise."

"Stay, little miss, you will be outside the house belike, roaming lord knows where; in the shrubberies, or the barns, or halfway to Oxford--while we are made fools of here."

"No, no. We will be inside the house."

"Do you promise that, pretty lady?"

"Yes, I promise."

Mrs. Dorothy suggested that there had been enough of childish play, and that it would be pleasanter to sit in the saloon with her ladyship, and hear Monsieur de Malfort sing.

"I'll wager he was singing when you saw him just now."

"Yes, he is always singing foolish French songs--and I'm sure you can't understand 'em."

"I've learnt the French ever since I was as old as you, Mistress Henriette."

"Ah! that was too late to begin. People who learn French out of books know what it looks like, but not what it sounds like."

"I should be very sorry if I could not understand a French ballad, little miss."

"Would you--would you, really?" cried Papillon, her face alight with impish mirth. "Then, of course, you understand this--


Oh, la d'moiselle, comme elle est sot-te,
Eh, je me moque de sa sot-ti-se!
Eh, la d'moiselle, comme elle est bê-te,
Eh, je m'ris de sa bê-ti-se!"


She sang this impromptu nonsense _prestissimo_ as she danced out of the room, leaving the accomplished Dorothy vexed and perplexed at not having understood a single word.

It was nearly an hour later when Denzil entered the saloon hurriedly, pale and perturbed of aspect, with Dorothy and her brother following him.

"We have been hunting