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

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"And my husband is so entertaining! Sure any woman might be content with such gay company--such flashes of wit--such light raillery!" cried Hyacinth, scornfully, walking up and down the room, plucking at the lace upon her sleeves with restless hands, her bosom heaving, her eyes steel-bright with anger. "Since his sickness last year, he has been the image of melancholy; he has held himself aloof from me as if _I_ had had the pestilence. I was content that it should be so. I had my children and you, and one who loved me better, in his light way, than any of you--and I could do without Lord Fareham. But now he forbids me to see an old friend that is dangerously ill, and every drop of blood in my veins boils in rebellion against his tyranny!"

It was in the early dusk, an hour or so after dinner. Angela sat silent in the shadow of a bay window, quite as heavy-hearted as her sister--sorry for Hyacinth, but still sorrier for Hyacinth's husband, yet feeling that there was treachery and unkindness in making him first in her thoughts. But surely, surely he deserved a better wife than this! Surely he deserved a wife's love--this man who stood alone among the men she knew, hating all evil things, honouring all things good and noble! He had been unkind to her--cold and cruel--since that fatal night. He had let her understand that all friendship between them was at an end for ever, and that she had become despicable in his sight; and she had submitted to be scorned by him, since it was impossible that she should clear herself. She had made her sisterly sacrifice for a sister who regarded it very lightly; to whose light fancy that night and all it involved counted but as a scene in a comedy; and she could not unmake it. But having so sacrificed his good opinion whose esteem she valued, she wanted to see some happy result, and to save this splendid home from shipwreck.

Suddenly, with a passionate impulse, she went to her sister, and put her arms round her and kissed her.

"Hyacinth, you shall not continue in this folly," she cried, "to fret for that shallow idler, whose love is lighter than thistledown, whose element is the ruelle of one of those libertine French duchesses he is ever talking about. To rebel against the noblest gentleman in England! Oh, sister, you must know him better than I do; and yet I, who am nothing to him, am wretched when I see him ill-used. Indeed, Hyacinth, you are acting like a wicked wife. You should never have wished to see De Malfort again, after the peril of that night. You should have known that he had no esteem for you, that he was a traitor--that his design was the wickedest, cruellest----"

"I don't pretend to know a man's mind as well as you--neither De Malfort's nor my husband's. You have needed but the experience of a year to make you wise enough in the world's ways to instruct your elders. I am not going to be preached to----Hark!" she cried, running to the nearest window, and looking out at the river, "that is better than your sermons."

It was the sound of fiddles playing the symphony of a song she knew well--one of De Malfort's, a French chanson, her latest favourite, the words adapted from a little poem by Voiture, "Pour vos beaux yeux."

She opened the casement, and Angela stood beside her looking down at a boat in which several muffled figures were seated, and which was moored to the terrace wall.

There were three violins and a 'cello, and a quartette of singing-boys with fair young faces smiling in the light of the lamps that hung in front of Fareham's house.

The evening was still, and mild as early autumn, and the plash of oars passing up and down the river sounded like a part of the music--


"Love in her sunny eyes doth basking play,
Love walks the pleasant mazes of her hair,
Love does on both her lips for ever stray,
And sows and reaps a thousand kisses there;
In all her outward parts love's always seen;
But, oh, he never went within."


It was a song of Cowley's, which De Malfort had lately set to music, and to a melody which Hyacinth especially admired.

"A serenade! Only De Malfort could have thought of such a thing. Lying ill and alone, he sends me the sweetest token of his regard--my favourite air, his own setting--the last song I ever heard him sing. And you wonder that I value so pure, so disinterested a love!" protested Hyacinth to her sister, in the silence at the end of the song.

"Sing again, sweet boys, sing again!" she cried, snatching a purse from her pocket, and flinging it with impetuous aim into the boat.

It hit one of the fiddlers on the head, and there was a laugh, and in a trice the largesse was divided and pocketed.

"They are from his Majesty's choir; I know their voices," said Hyacinth, "so fresh, and pure. They are the prettiest singers in the chapel. That little monkey with the cherub's voice is Purcell--Dr. Blow's favourite pupil--and a rare genius."

They sang another song from De Malfort's repertoire, an Italian serenade, which Hyacinth had heard in the brilliant days before her marriage, when the Italian Opera was still a new thing in Paris. The melody brought back the memory of her happy girlhood with a rush of sudden tears.

The little concert lasted for something less than an hour, with intervals of light music, dances and marches, between the singing. Boats passed and repassed. Strange voices joined in a refrain now and then, and the sisters stood at the open window enthralled by the charm of the music and the scene. London lay in ruins yonder to the east, and Sir Matthew Hale and other judges were sitting at Clifford's Inn to decide questions of title and boundary, and the obligation to rebuild; but here in this western London there were long ranges of lighted windows shining through the wintry mists, wherries passing up and down with lanterns at their prows, an air of life and gaiety hanging over that river which had carried so many a noble victim to his doom yonder, where the four towers stood black against the starlit greyness, unscathed by fire, and untouched by time.

The last notes of a good-night song dwindled and died, to the accompaniment of dipping oars, as the boat moved slowly along the tideway, and lost itself among other boats--jovial cits going eastward, from an afternoon at the King's theatre, modish gallants voyaging westward from play-house or tavern, some going home to domesticity, others intent upon pleasure and intrigue, as the darkness came down, and the hour for supper and deeper drinking drew near. And who would have thought, watching the lighted windows of palace and tavern, hearing those joyous sounds of glee or catch trolled by voices that reeked of wine--who would have thought of the dead-cart, and the unnumbered dead lying in the pest pits yonder, or the city in ruins, or the King enslaved to a foreign power, and pledged to a hated Church? London, gay, splendid, and prosperous, the queen-city of the world as she seemed to those who loved her--could rise glorious from the ashes of a fire unparalleled in modern history, and to Charles and Wren it might be given to realise a boast which in Augustus had been little more than an imperial phrase.


CHAPTER XIX.


DIDO.

The armed neutrality between man and wife continued, and the domestic sky at Fareham House was dark and depressing. Lady Fareham, who had hitherto been remarkable for a girlish amiability of speech which went well with her girlish beauty, became now the height of the mode for acidity and slander. The worst of the evil speakers on her ladyship's visiting-day flavoured the China tea with no bitterer allusions than those that fell from the rosy lips of the hostess. And, for the colouring of those lips, which once owed their vermeil tint only to nature, Lady Fareham was now dependent upon Mrs. Lewin, as well as for the carnation of cheeks that looked pallid and sunken in the glass which reflected the sad mourning face.

Mrs. Lewin brought roses and lilies in her queer little china pots and powder boxes, pencils and brushes, perfumes and washes without number. It cost as much to keep a complexion as to keep a horse. And Mrs. Lewin was infinitely useful at this juncture, since she called every day at St. James's Street, to carry a lace cravat, or a ribbon, or a flask of essence to the invalid languishing in lodgings there, and visited by all the town, except Fareham and his wife. De Malfort had lain for a fortnight at Lady Castlemaine's house, alternately petted and neglected by his fair hostess, as the fit took her, since she showed herself ever of the chameleon breed, and hovered betwixt angel and devil. His surgeon told him in confidence that when once his wound was healed enough to allow his removal, the sooner he quitted that feverish company the better it would be for his chance of a speedy convalescence. So, at the end of the second week, he was moved in a covered litter to his own lodgings, where his faithful valet, who had followed his fortunes since he came to man's estate, was quite capable of nursing him.

The town soon discovered the breach between Lord Fareham and his friend--a breach commented upon with many shoulder-shrugs, and not a few coarse innuendoes. Lady Lucretia Topham insisted upon making her way to the sick man's room, in the teeth of messages delivered by his valet, which, even to a less intelligent mind than Lady Lucretia's, might have conveyed the fact that she was not wanted. She flung herself on her knees by De Malfort's bed, and wept and raved at the brutality which had deprived the world of his charming company--and herself of the only man she had ever loved. De Malfort, fevered and vexed at her intrusion, and at this renewal of fires long burnt out, had yet discretion enough to threaten her with his dire displeasure if she betrayed the secret of his illness.

"I have sworn Dangerfield and Masaroon to silence," he said. "Except servants, who have been paid to keep mute, you are the only other witness of our quarrel; and if the story becomes town talk, I shall know whose busy tongue set it going--and then--well, there are things I might tell that your ladyship would hardly like the world to know."

"Traitor! If your purse has accommodated me once in a way when luck has been adverse----"

"Oh, madam, you cannot think me base enough to blab of a money transaction with a lady. There are secrets more tender--more romantic."

"Those secrets can be easily denied, wretch. However, I know you would not injure me with a husband so odious and tyrannical that I stood excused in advance for inconstancy when I stooped to wed country manners and stubborn ignorance. Indeed, mon ami, if you will but take pains to recover, I will never breathe a word about the duel; but if--if--" a sob indicated the tragic possibility which Lady Lucretia dared not put into words--"I will do all that a weak woman can do to get Fareham hanged for murder. There has never been a peer hanged in England, I believe. He should be the first."

"Dear soul, there need be no hanging!