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

you I should love you better than I love God?"

"Not so, dear. But you would open your mind to the truth. St. Paul sanctified union between Christian and pagan, and deemed the unbelieving wife sanctified by the believing husband. There can be no sin, therefore, despite my poor mother's violent opinions, in the union of those who worship the same God, and whose creed differs only in particulars. 'How knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?' Indeed, love, I doubt not my power to wean you from the errors of your early education."

"Cannot you see how wide apart we are? Every word you say widens the gulf betwixt us. Indeed, Sir Denzil, you had best remain my friend. You can be nothing else."

She turned from him almost impatiently. Young, handsome, of a frank and generous nature, he yet lacked the gifts that charm women; or at least this one woman was cold to him. It might be that in his own nature there was a coldness, a something wanting, the fire we miss in that great poet of the age, whose verse could rise to themes transcendent, but never burnt with the white heat of human passion.

Papillon came flying along the terrace, her skirts and waving tresses spread wide in the wind, a welcome intruder.

"What are you and Sir Denzil doing in the cold? I have news for my dear, dearest auntie. My lord is in a good humour, and _Philaster_ is to be acted by the Duke's servants, and her ladyship's footmen are keeping places for us in the boxes. I have only seen three plays in my life, and they were all sad ones. I wish _Philaster_ was a comedy. I should like to see _Love in a Tub_. That must be full of drollery. But his honour likes only grave plays. Be brisk, auntie! The coach will be at the door directly. Come and put on your hood. His lordship says we need no masks. I should have loved to wear a mask. Are you coming to the play, Sir Denzil?"

"I know not if I am bidden, or if there be a place for me."

"Why, you can stand with the fops in the pit, and you can buy us some China oranges. I heard Lady Sarah tell my mother that the new little actress with the pretty feet was once an orange-girl, who lived with Lord Buckhurst. Why did he have an orange-girl to live with him? He must be vastly fond of oranges. I should love to sell oranges in the pit, if I could be an actress afterwards. I would rather be an actress than a duchess. Mademoiselle taught me Chiméne's tirades in Corneille's _Cid_. I learn quicker than any pupil she ever had. Monsieur de Malfort once said I was a born actress," pursued Papillon, as they walked to the house.

_Philaster!_ That story of unhappy love--so pure, patient, melancholy, disinterested. How often Angela had hung over the page, in the solitude of her own chamber! And to hear the lines spoken to-day, when a tempest of emotion had been raised in her breast, with Fareham by her side; to meet his glances at this or that moment of the play, when the devoted girl was revealing the secret of her passionate heart. Yet never was love freer from taint of sin, and the end of the play was in no wise tragic. That pure affection was encouraged and sanctified by the happy bride. Bellario was not to be banished, but sheltered.

Alas! yes; but this was love unreturned. There was no answering warmth on Philaster's part, no fire of passion to scathe and destroy; only a gentle gratitude for the girl's devotion--a brother's, not a lover's regard.

She found Fareham and her sister in the hall, ready to step into the coach.

"I saw the name of your favourite play on the posts as I walked home," he said; "and as Hyacinth is always teasing me for denying her the play-house, I thought this was a good opportunity for pleasing you both."

"You would have pleased me more if you had offered me the chance of seeing a new comedy," his wife retorted, pettishly.

"Ah, dearest, let us not resume an old quarrel. The play-wrights of Elizabeth's age were poets and gentlemen. The men who write for us are blackguards and empty-headed fops. We have novelty, which is all most of us want, a hundred new plays in a year, of which scarce one will be remembered after the year is out."

"Who wants to remember? The highest merit in a play is that it should be a reflection of to-day; and who minds if it be stale to-morrow? To hold the mirror up to nature, doesn't your Shakespeare say? And what more transient than the image in a glass? A comedy should be like one's hat or one's gown, the top of the mode to-day, and cast off and forgotten, in a week."

"That is what our fine gentlemen think; who are satisfied if their wit gets three days' acceptance, and some substantial compliment from the patron to whom they dedicate their trash."

His lordship's liveries and four grey horses made a stir in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and startled the crowd at the doors of the New Theatre; and within the house Lady Fareham and her sister divided the attention of the pit with their royal highnesses the Duke and Duchess, who no longer amused or scandalised the audience by those honeymoon coquetries which had distinguished their earlier appearances in public. Duchess Anne was growing stout, and fast losing her beauty, and Duke James was imitating his brother's infidelities, after his own stealthy fashion; so it may be that Clarendon's daughter was no more happy than her sister-in-law the Queen, nor than her father the Chancellor, over whom the shadows of royal disfavour were darkening.

Lady Fareham lolled languidly back in her box, and let all the audience see her indifference to Fletcher's poetic dialogue. Angela sat motionless, her hands clasped in her lap, entranced by that romantic story, and the acting which gave life and reality to that poetic fable, as well it might when the incomparable Betterton played Philaster. Fareham stood beside his wife, looking down at the stage, and sometimes, as Angela looked up, their eyes met in one swift flash of responsive thought; met and glanced away, as if each knew the peril of such meetings--


"If it be love
To forget all respect of his own friends
In thinking on your face."


Was it by chance that Fareham sighed as those lines were spoken? And again--


"If, when he goes to rest (which will not be),
'Twixt every prayer he says he names you once."


And again, was it chance that brought that swift, half-angry, questioning look upon her from those severe eyes in the midst of Philaster's tirade?--


"How heaven is in your eyes, but in your hearts
More hell than hell has; how your tongues, like scorpions,
Both heal and poison; how your thoughts are woven
With thousand changes in one subtle web,
And worn so by you. How that foolish man
That reads the story of a woman's face,
And dies believing it is lost for ever."


It was Angela whose eyes unconsciously sought his when that passage occurred which had written itself upon her heart long ago at Chilton when she first read the play--


"Alas, my lord, my life is not a thing
Worthy your noble thoughts; 'tis not a life,
'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away."


What was her poor life worth--so lonely even in her sister's house--so desolate when his eyes looked not upon her in kindness? After having lived for two brief summers and winters in his cherished company, having learnt to know what a proud, honourable man was like, his disdain of vice, his indifference to Court favour, his aspirations for liberty; after having known him, and loved him with silent and secret love, what better could she do than bury herself within convent walls, and spend the rest of her days in praying for those she loved? Alas, he had such need that some faithful soul should soar heavenward in supplication for him who had himself so weak a hold upon the skies! Alas, to think of him as unbelieving, putting his trust in the opinions of infidels like Hobbes and Spinoza, rather than leaning on that Rock of Ages the Church of St. Peter.

If she could not live for him--if it were a sin even to dwell under the same roof with him--she could at least die for him--die to the world of pleasure and folly, of beauty and splendour, die to friendship and love; sink all individuality under the monastic rule; cease to be, except as a part in a great organisation, an atom acting and acted upon by higher powers; surrendering every desire and every hope that distinguished her from the multitude of women vowed to a holy life.


"Never, sir, will I
Marry; it is a thing within my vow."


The voice of the actress sounded silver-clear as Bellario spoke her last speech, finishing her story of a love which can submit to take the lower place, and asks but little of fate.


"It is a thing within my vow."


The line repeated itself in Angela's mind as Denzil met them at the door, and handed her into the coach.

Should she prove of weaker stuff than the sad Eufrasia, and accept a husband she did not love? This humdrum modern age allowed of no romance. She could not stain her face with walnut juice, and disguise herself as a footboy, and live unknown in his service, to wait upon him when he was weary, to nurse him when he was sick. Such a life she would have deemed exquisitely happy; but the hard everyday world had no room for such dreams. In this unromantic age Dion's daughter would be recognised within twenty-four hours of her putting on male attire. The golden days of poetry were dead. Una would find no lion to fawn at her feet. She would be mobbed in the Strand.

"Oh, that it could have been!" thought Angela, as the coach jolted and rumbled through the narrow ways, and shaved awkward corners with its ponderous wheels, and got its horses entangled with other noble teams, to the provocation of much ill-language from postillions, and flunkeys, and linkmen, for it was dark when they came out of the theatre, and a thick mist was rising from the river, and flambeaux were flaring up and down the dim narrow thoroughfares.

"They light the streets better in Paris," complained Hyacinth. "In the Rue de Touraine we had a lamp to every house."

"I like to see the links moving up and down," said Papillon; "'tis ever so much prettier than lanterns that stand still--like that one at the corner."

She pointed to a small round lamp that made a bubble of light in an abyss of gloom.

"Here the lamps stink more than they light," said Hyacinth. "How the coach rocks--those blockheads will end by upsetting it. I should have been twice as well in my chair."

Angela sat in her place, lost in thought, and hardly conscious of the jolting coach, or of Papillon's prattle, who would not be satisfied till she had dragged her aunt into the conversation.