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

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.


CHAPTER XVI.


WHICH WAS THE FIERCER FIRE?

It was Saturday, the first of September, and the hot dry weather having continued with but trifling changes throughout the month, the atmosphere was at its sultriest, and the burnt grass in the parks looked as if even the dews of morning and evening had ceased to moisten it, while the arid and dusty foliage gave no feeling of coolness, and the very shadows cast upon that parched ground seemed hot. Morning was sultry as noon; evening brought but little refreshment; while the night was hotter than the day. People complained that the season was even more sickly than in the plague year, and prophesied a new and worse outbreak of the pestilence. Was not this the fatal year about which there had been darkest prophecies? 1666! Something awful, something tragical was to make this triplicate of sixes for ever memorable. Sixty-five had been terrible, sixty-six was to bring a greater horror; doubtless a recrudescence of that dire malady which had desolated London.

"And this time," says one modish raven, "'twill be the quality that will suffer. The lower 'classis' has paid its penalty, and only the strong and hardy are left. We. have plenty of weaklings and corrupt constitutions that will take fire at a spark. I should