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

from which hope had vanished like a light extinguished. It seemed to her as if she had dropped back into the old life with her great-aunt. The Manor House was just a little gayer than the Flemish Convent--for the voices and footsteps of the few inhabitants had a freer sound, which made the few seem more populous than the many. And then there were the dogs. What a powerful factor in home life those four-footed friends were! Out-of-doors a stone barn had been turned into a kennel for five couple of foxhounds; indoors a couple of setters, sent by a friend over sea from Waterford, had insinuated themselves into the parlour, where they established themselves as household favourites, to the damage of those higher hereditary qualities which fitted them for distinction with the guns. Indeed, the old Knight was too fond of his fireside companions to care very much if he missed a bird now and then because Cataline was over-fed or Caesar disobedient. They stood sentinel on each side of his chair at dinner, like supporters to a coat-of-arms. Angela had her own particular favourite in a King Charles's spaniel. It was the very dog which had first greeted her in the silence of the plague-stricken house. She had chosen this one from the canine troop when her sister offered her the gift of a dog at parting, though Hyacinth had urged her to take something younger than this, which was over five years old.

"He will die just when you love him best," she said.

"Nay; but such partings must come. I love this one because he was with me in fear and sadness. He used to cling to me, and look up and lick my face, as if he were telling me to hope, when my brother seemed marked for death."

"Poor Fareham! Did you desire every dog in the house--and my spaniels are of the same breed as the King's, and worth fifty pound apiece--you have a right to take them. But, indeed, I would rather you chose a younger dog--and with a shorter nose; but, of course, if you like this one best----"

Angela held by her first choice, and Ganymede was the companion of all her hours, walked and lived with her, and slept on a satin cushion at the foot of her spacious four-post bed, and fretted and whined if she left him shut in an empty room for half an hour; yet with all his refinements, and his air of being as dainty a gentleman as any spark of quality, he had a gross passion for the kitchen, and after nibbling sweet cakes delicately out of his mistress's taper fingers, he would waddle through a labyrinth of passages, and find his way to the hog-tub, there to wallow in slush and broken victuals, till he all but drowned himself in a flood of pot-liquor. It was hard to reconcile so much beauty and grace, such eloquent eyes and satin coat, with tastes and desires so vulgar; and Angela sighed over him when a scullion brought him to her, greasy and penitent, to crouch at her feet, and deprecate her disgust with an abject tail.

Oh, tranquil, duteous life, how fair it might have seemed, as spring advanced, and the garden smiled with the promise of summer, were it not for that aching sense of loss, the some one missing, whose absence made all things grey and cold!

Yes, she knew now, fully realising as she had never done before, how long and how utterly her life had been influenced by an affection which even to contemplate was mortal sin. Yet to extinguish memory was not within her power. She looked back and remembered how Fareham's protecting love had enfolded her with its gentle warmth, in those happy days at Chilton; how all she knew of poetry and the drama, of ethics and philosophy, had been learnt from him. She recalled his evident delight in opening the rich treasures of a mind which he had never ceased to cultivate, even amidst the vicissitudes of a soldier's life, in making her familiar with the writers he loved, and teaching her to estimate, and to discuss them. And in all their talk together he had been for the most part careful to avoid disparagement of the religion in which she believed--so that it was only some chance revelation of the infidel's narrow outlook that reminded her of his unbelief.

Yes, his love had been round her like an atmosphere; and she had been exquisitely happy while that unquestioning affection was hers. On her part there had been neither doubt nor fear. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should be fond of her and she of him. Affinity had made them brother and sister; and then they had been together in sickness and in peril of death. It might be true, as he himself had affirmed, that her so happy arrival had saved his life; since just those hours between the departure of his attendants and the physician's evening visit may have been the crisis of his disease.

Well, it was past--the exquisite bliss, the unconscious sin, the confidence, the danger. All had vanished into the grave of irrecoverable days.

She had heard nothing from Denzil since she left London, nor had she acknowledged his letter. Her silence had doubtless angered him, and all was at an end between them, and this was what she wished. Hyacinth and her children were at Chilton, whence came letters of complaining against the dulness of the country, where his lordship hunted four times a week, and spent all the rest of his time in his library, appearing only "at our stupid heavy meals; and that not always, since on his hunting days he is far afield when I have to sit down to the intolerable two-o'clock dinner, and make a pretence of eating--as if anybody with more intellectuals than a sheep could dine; or as if appetite came by staring at green fields! You remember how in London supper was the only meal I ever cared for. There is some grace in a repast that comes after conversation and music, or the theatre, or a round of visits--a table dazzling with lights, and men and women ready to amuse, and be amused. But to sit down in broad daylight, when one has scarce swallowed one's morning chocolate, and face a sweltering sirloin, or open a smoking veal pie! Indeed, dearest, our whole method of feeding smacks of a vulgar brutishness, more appropriate to a company of Topinambous than to persons of quality. Why, oh, why must these reeking hecatombs load our tables, when they might as easily be kept out of sight upon a buffet? The spectacle of huge mountains of meat, the steam and odour of rank boiled and roast under one's very nostrils, change appetite to nausea, and would induce a delicate person to rise in disgust and fly from the dining-room. Mais, je ne fais que divaguer; and almost forget what it was I was so earnest to tell thee when I began my letter.

"Sir Denzil Warner has been over here, his ostensible motive a civil inquiry after my health; but I could see that his actual purpose was to hear of you. I told him how happily your simple soul has accommodated itself to an almost conventual seclusion, and a very inferior style of living--whereupon he smiled his rapture, and praised you to the skies. 'Would that she could accommodate herself to my house as easily,' he said; 'she should have every indulgence that an adoring husband could yield her.' And then he said much more, but as lovers always sing the same repetitive song, and have no more strings to their lyre than the ancients had before Mercury expanded it, I confess to not listening over carefully, and will leave you to imagine the eloquence of a manly and honourable love. Ah, sweetheart! you do wrong to reject him. Thou hast a quiet soothing prettiness of thine own, but art no blazing star of beauty, like the Stewart, to bring a King to thy feet--he would have married her if poor Catherine had not disappointed him by her recovery--and to take a Duke as _pis aller_. Believe me, love, it were wise of you to become Lady Warner, with an unmortgaged estate, and a husband who, in these Republican times, may rise to distinction. He is your only earnest admirer; and a love so steadfast, backed by a fortune so respectable, should not be discarded lightly."

Over all these latter passages in her sister's letter Angela's eye ran with a scornful carelessness. Her womanly pride revolted at such petty schooling--that she should be bidden to accept this young man gratefully, because he was her only suitor. No one else had ever cared for her pale insignificance. She looked at her clouded image in the oblong glass that hung on the panel above her secrétaire, and whose reflection made any idea of her own looks rather speculative than precise. It showed her a thoughtful face, too pale for beauty; yet she could but note the harmony of lines which recalled that Venetian type familiar to her eye in the Titians and Tintorets at Fareham House.

"I doubt I am good-looking enough for any one to be satisfied with the outward semblance who valued the soul within," she thought, as she turned from the glass with a mournful sigh.

It was not of Denzil she was thinking, but of that other who in slow contemplative days in the library where he had taught her what books she ought to love, and where she might never more enter, must naturally sometimes remember her, and cast some backward thoughts to the hours they had spent together.

Hyacinth's letter of matronly counsel was but a week old when Sir John surprised his daughter one morning, as they sat at table, by the announcement of a visitor to stay in the house.

"You will order the west room to be got ready, Angela, and bid Marjory Cook serve us some of her savourest dishes while Sir Denzil stays here."

"Sir Denzil!"

"Yes, ma mie, Sir Denzil! Ventregris, the girl stares as if I had said Sir Bevis of Southampton, or Sir Guy of Warwick! I knew this young gentleman's father before the troubles--an honest man, though he took the wrong side He paid for his perversity with his life; so we'll say requiescat. The young man is a fine young man, whom I would fain have something nearer to me than he is. So at a hint from your sister I have asked him to bring his fishing tackle and whip our streams for a May trout or two. He may catch a finer fish than trout, perhaps, while he is a-fishing; if you will be his guide through the meadows."

"Father, how could you----"

"Ah! thou art a sly one, fair mistress. Who was it told me there was no one? 'No one, dear father, and indeed, sir, I was thinking of the convent when you came to London,' while here was as handsome a spark as one would meet in a day's march, sighing and dying for you."

"Father, I do protest to you----" she began, with a pale distressed look that vouched for her earnestness; but the Knight had his face in the tankard, and set it down only to pursue his own train of thought.

"If it had not have been for that little bird at Chilton you might have hoodwinked me as blind as ever gerfalcon was hooded. Well, the young man will be here before evening. I would not force your inclinations, but it is the dearest desire of my heart to see you happily married before