On Barbara's right sat one of the Queen's Maids, Mrs. Boynton, a lively little minx who liked to affect an air of great languor and grew faint three or four times a day when there were gentlemen about. Now Barbara spoke to her in an undertone which was nevertheless loud enough for Frances Stewart, just behind them, to overhear.
"Mrs. Stewart is looking wretchedly today, have you noticed? I would swear her complexion has a greenish cast."
It was a well-known fact that Frances had been suffering from jealousy over the sensation created by the recent arrival at Court of Mrs. Jennings, a fifteen-year-old blonde who was currently being admired by all gentlemen and criticized by all ladies. Barbara was delighted that someone had come to catch interest from Frances Stewart, since that was what had happened to her the year before when Frances appeared.
Boynton waved her fan lazily, lids half-closed, and drawled, "She doesn't look green to me. Perhaps it's something in your Ladyship's eye."
Barbara gave her a look that once might have troubled her and turned to talk to Monmouth who leant forward eagerly, obviously much smitten by his father's flamboyant mistress. He was tall and well-developed for his age, physically precocious as the King had been, and so extraordinarily handsome that grown women were falling in love with him. He had not only the Stuart beauty but also the Stuart charm—a merry gentle lovable disposition, and something in his personality so dazzling that he arrested attention wherever he went.
Boynton glanced around over her shoulder to exchange smiles with Frances, and Frances leaned forward, whispering behind her fan: "I just saw his Highness slip another note into Mrs. Jenning's hand. Wait a moment and I'll warrant you she tears it up."
Jennings had been amusing the Court for some weeks by refusing to become York's mistress, an office which was generally included in the appointment of Maid of Honour to his wife. She tore up his letters before everyone and scattered the pieces on the floor of her Highness's Drawing-Room. And now, as Boynton and Frances Stewart watched her, she tore his note into bits and tossed them high in the air so that they drifted onto the Duke's head and shoulders.
Boynton and Stewart burst into delighted laughter and York, glancing around, saw the scraps on his shoulder. Scowling, he brushed them off, while Mrs. Jennings sat very straight and prim-faced and looked down over his head at the stage, where the play was beginning.
"What!" said Charles, glancing at his brother as he brushed himself, and he laughed outright. "Another rebuff, James? Odsfish; I should think you'd have taken the hint by now."
"Your Majesty doesn't always take hints, if I may say so," muttered the Duke, but Charles merely smiled good-naturedly.
"We Stuarts are a stubborn race, I think." He leaned closer to James and murmured beneath his breath: "I'll wager my new Turkish pony against your Barbary mare that I break in that skittish filly before you do."
York raised a skeptical eyebrow. "It's a wager, Sire." The two brothers shook hands and Charles settled down to watch the play.
For two acts Barbara remained seated. She smiled at Buckingham and other gentlemen down in the pit. She twisted her pearls and fiddled her fan and put her hands to her hair. She took out a mirror to examine her face, stuck on another patch, and then tossed the mirror back to Wilson. She was, very ostentatiously, bored. And all the while Charles seemed unaware that she was nearby; he did not trouble to glance at her even once.
At last she thought she could bear this no longer, and fixing a determined smile on her face she leaned across Catherine and touched his arm. "It's a wretched performance, don't you think, Sire?"
He glanced at her coldly. "No, I don't think so. I'm enjoying it."
Barbara's eyes glittered and the blood rushed to her face, but in a moment she had recovered herself. All at once she stood up, smiling sweetly, and crossing behind the Queen went to force a place for herself between Charles and York. The two men gave her surprised and angry glances and turned instantly away while Barbara sat, her face impassive and motionless as stone, though humiliated rage was making her sweat. For a moment she thought that her heart would explode, so bursting-full of blood it seemed.
And then, out of the corners of her eyes, she looked at Charles and saw the ominous flicker of his jaw-muscles. She stared at him, longing violently to reach over and rake her nails across that dark smooth-shaven cheek until she drew blood— but at last with a determined effort she dragged her eyes away and forced them down to the stage once more. All she could see was a blur that shifted and rocked; there were faces, faces, faces, turned up and grinning, smirking, sneering at her—a whole sea of enemy faces. She felt that she hated each one of them, with a murderous savage hatred that turned her sick and trembling.
It seemed to her that the play went on for hours and that she would never be able to endure the next minute of sitting there—but at last it was over. She waited a moment, under the pretense of pulling on her gloves, still hoping that Charles would invite her to ride in his coach. But instead he went off with Harry Bennet to call on the Chancellor who was again sick in bed with his gout.
Barbara lifted her hood up over her head, put on her mask and with an impatient gesture to Wilson started out as fast as she could go—the people stepped back to make a path, for her name still had magic to part the waves. Outside she got into her coach, and though it blocked the traffic she kept it waiting while her coachman yelled and swore at whoever complained, telling them to be silent—my lady would go in her own good time. It was several minutes before Buckingham appeared.
But finally he came strolling out of the theatre with Sedley and Buckhurst, and she gestured her footman to open the door. Frantically she signalled to him, but he was talking to an orange-girl, a merry laughing young wench who chattered with the three great men, no more awed than if they had been porters and carmen. At last, completely exasperated, Barbara shouted at him:
"Buckingham!"
He glanced carelessly in her direction, waved, and turned back to continue his conversation. Barbara ripped her fan across. "Lightning blast him! I'll cut off his ears for this!" But finally he took an orange from the girl, kissed her, and dropping his coin into her low-necked bodice strolled toward the coach, tossing the orange to a tattered little ragamuffin who begged him for it.
"Get out and take a hackney," Barbara muttered hastily to Wilson, and as his Grace got in on one side the waiting-woman got out on the other.
"That little wench has the readiest wit in London," he said, sitting down beside her and waving out the window at the girl, while Barbara glared at him with a look so malignant he should have wilted. "She was put out into the streets at six to sell herring and was a slavey in Mother Ross's brothel at twelve. Hart keeps her now, but I say she belongs on the stage. Nell Gwynne's her name and I'd be willing to bet—"
Barbara had not listened to him but was yelling at her coachman to drive off, though now the traffic was so snarled on every side of them that it was impossible to move at all.
"A pox on you and your damned orange-girls!" she cried furiously, turning from the coachman back to her cousin. "A fine service you've done me! I've never been so humiliated— and in plain view of all the world! What've you been about this past week?"
Buckingham stiffened, all his natural pride and arrogance rising in resentment at her hectoring tone and manner. "D'you expect miracles? Pray remember, madame, it's taken you some time to get so far out of his Majesty's favour. Even I can't put you back in all at once. You should have stayed in your own seat—you wouldn't have been humiliated there. And henceforward, madame, please don't shout at me on street-corners as though I were your footboy."
"Why, you impudent dog! I'll have you—"
"You'll what, madame?"
"I'll make you sorry for this!"
"I beg your pardon, madame—but you'll never make me sorry for anything again. Or have you forgotten already that I can undo you whenever I care to take the trouble? Don't forget, madame, that only you and I know that you burned his Majesty
's letters."
Barbara's mouth fell open and for several seconds she sat staring at him with horror which turned slowly to writhing impotent rage. She was about to speak when he flung open the door and got out, gave her a careless wave of his gloved hand and climbed into the next coach. It was full of young women who sat in a billowing sea of silk and satin skirts, and they welcomed him with screams of delight and kisses as he sat down among them. While Barbara stared, her eyes burning purple in a white face, the coach started slowly and rolled off, but the Duke did not give her so much as a backward glance.
Chapter Twenty-six
Dangerfield House was in the aristocratic old quarter of Blackfriars and had been built twenty years before on the site of a great fourteenth-century mansion. It formed a broad sprawling H, with courtyards both in front and in back, and was four stories high with a fifth half-story; the ground floor and the basement served for offices and warehouse. Made of red brick it was perfectly symmetrical with innumerable large square-paned glass windows, several gables cutting into the roof-line and a forest of chimney-tops. It stood on the corner of Shoemaker Row, facing Greed Lane, and was surrounded on every side by a tall iron picket-fence, guarded by massive gates where servants waited at all hours of the day or night.
Climbing out of the coach before the twin staircases which led to the main entrance on the second floor, Amber looked up at it with wide wondering eyes.
This house was something bigger, more imposing, more formidable than she had expected. Two hundred thousand pounds was an even greater amount of money than she had realized. Until now she had thought of Samuel Dangerfield merely as a kind simple old gentleman whom she had contrived to hoodwink, but now he took on something of the awe-inspiring quality of his home, and she began to feel a little nervous at the prospect of meeting his family. She wished that she felt as convinced as he did that they were going to welcome her with open arms—love her at sight.
And now, as they stood for a moment in the February drizzle while he gave instructions to the footman regarding the disposal of their trunks and baggage, a third-story window was flung open and a woman appeared in it.
"Dad! At last you're back! We were so worried—you've been gone so long! But did it help you? Are you feeling better?" She did not, or pretended not to notice that there was a woman with her father.
But Amber looked up at her curiously. That, she thought, must be Lettice.
She had heard a great deal about Lettice—as she had heard a great deal about all his children—but more, perhaps, of Lettice than any of the others. Lettice had been married for several years, but at her mother's death she had returned to Dangerfield House with her husband and family to take charge of the housekeeping. Without intending to, Samuel had portrayed a prim energetic domineering woman, whom his wife was already prepared to dislike. And now Lettice was ignoring her, as though she were a lewd woman whom it was not necessary to notice.
"I'm feeling very well," said Samuel, obviously annoyed by his daughter's bad manners. "How is my new grandson?"
"Two weeks old yesterday and thriving! He's the image of John!"
"Come down into the front drawing-room, Lettice," Samuel said crisply. "I want to see you—immediately."
Lettice, after giving a quick stealthy glance at Amber, closed the window and disappeared and Amber and Samuel—with Nan and Tansy following—went up the staircase and into the house. The door was opened for them by a gigantic Negro in handsome blue livery and they stepped into a great entrance-hall out of which opened other rooms; a pair of broad curved staircases ran up either side of it to the railed-off hallway above.
Everywhere about them were the evidences of lush comfort and wealth: the beautifully laid floors, the carved oak furniture and tapestry-hung walls. And yet, somehow, the impression created was one of soberness, not frivolity. An almost ponderous conservatism marked each velvet footstool and carved cornice. It was possible to know at a glance that quiet and well-bred and moderate people lived in this house.
They walked off to the left into a drawing-room more than fifty feet long and Samuel saw immediately, to his regret, that he had made a careless mistake. For there, over the fireplace, hung a portrait of him and his first wife, painted some twenty years before; it had been there so long that he had forgotten it. But Amber, looking at the powerful prim unlovely face of the first Mrs. Dangerfield, understood immediately why it had been possible to induce Samuel to marry her—though she doubted whether his family would understand as well.
At that moment there were footsteps behind them and she turned to see a replica of the woman on the wall standing facing her. For an instant Lettice's eyes met hers in a quick fierce womanly stare, all-seeing, and condemning, and then she turned to her father. Amber gave her a sweeping glance which discovered that she knew nothing about clothes, was too tall, and looked older than her thirty-two years. The gown Lettice was wearing was like those Killigrew had put on the actresses when he wished to show a hypocritical Puritan, and against which they had always protested violently. It was perfectly plain black and fitted neither snugly nor too loosely, had a deep white-linen collar which covered her to the base of her throat, and broad linen cuffs. Her light-brown hair was almost entirely concealed beneath a starched little cap with shoulder-length lappets, and she wore no jewellery but a diamond-studded wedding-band. Against such simplicity Amber, who had thought herself very demure, felt suddenly gaudy and flamboyant.
"My dear," said Samuel to Amber, and he took her arm "may I present my eldest daughter, Lettice? Lettice, this is my wife."
Lettice gasped and turned paste-white. Amber—once the ceremony was performed—had suggested to Samuel that they send a messenger ahead to notify the family. But he had insisted upon giving them what he was sure would be a most happy surprise.
Now Lettice stood and stared at her father for several stark quiet moments, and then as she turned to look at Amber there was an expression of frank horrified shock on her face. She seemed aware of it herself, but unable to help it, and this unexpected reaction on her part was making Samuel angry. Amber who had prepared herself for it, smiled faintly and nodded.
At last Lettice managed to speak. "Your—wife? But, Dad—" She put one hand distractedly to her head. "You're married? But your letters never mentioned—We didn't—Oh, I—I'm sorry—I—"
She seemed so genuinely and painfully stunned that Samuel's rigid hauteur collapsed. He put one arm about her. "There, my dear, I know it's a surprise to you. But I was counting on you, Lettice, to help me tell the others. Look at me—And please smile. I'm very happy and I want my family to be happy with me."
For a long minute Lettice buried her head against her father's chest and Amber waited with a feeling of annoyance, expecting hysterics. But at last she stood erect, kissed Samuel's cheek and smiled. "I'm glad you're happy, Dad." She turned about quickly. "I'll make arrangements for dinner," and she ran out of the room.
Amber glanced at Samuel and saw a strange thoughtful look on his face as his eyes followed Lettice. She put her hand into his. "Oh, Samuel—she doesn't like me. She didn't want you to get married."
His eyes came back to her. "Well, perhaps she didn't," he agreed, though before he had never admitted such a possibility. "But then Lettice never likes anything new—no matter what it is. But wait until she knows you. She'll love you then—no one could help it."
"Oh, Samuel, I hope so! I hope they'll all like me. I'll try so hard to make them like me."
They went upstairs then to his apartments which were in the southwest wing of the building, overlooking the rear court and the garden. The suite consisted of a string of rooms opening one into another, all of them furnished in much the same style as the others she had seen. There were reminders of his first wife everywhere: another portrait of her above the fireplace, a wardrobe which must have held her clothes and perhaps still did; there was the impress of her personality on every rug and piece of furniture. Amber felt as though she had walked into a room which
still belonged to the dead woman, and decided immediately that she would make some changes here.
Promptly at one o'clock Samuel and Amber entered the dining-room. They found every member of the family who was home and old enough to walk assembled there to meet her. Almost thirty persons stood about the huge table, several of them children who would ordinarily have been eating in the nursery. Such large families were common among the richer middleclasses, for their children did not die in as large proportion as did those of the poor and their women made no effort to prevent child-bearing as did the fashionable ladies of Whitehall and Covent Garden.
Now, as Amber and Samuel stood in the doorway, one little moppet inquired loudly: "Mother, is that the woman?" Her mother administered a hasty embarrassed slap and followed it with a shake to keep her from crying.
Samuel ignored this incident and began to make the introductions. Each person, when presented, came forward to how, if a man, or to curtsy and give her a peck on the cheek if a woman. The children, staring round-eyed, likewise made their awkward bows and curtsies. It was obvious from their interest and awe that much had already been said among the grownups about the new Mrs. Dangerfield.
On the whole they were handsome people; Lettice's plain face was almost conspicuous. There was the eldest son, Samuel, with his wife and six children. Robert, the next son, whose wife was dead, and his two children. Lettice's husband, John Beck-ford, and their eight children. The third son, John, who also lived in the house with his wife and five children and was engaged as were the older sons in their father's business. A daughter who had come from her nearby home with her children for the occasion. James, with his wife and two children. And three younger children, girls fifteen and thirteen, and a twelve-year-old boy. There were others—one travelling abroad, one at Grey's Inn and one at Oxford, a girl who lived in the country and another whose first pregnancy had kept her from attending the great event.
Lord! thought Amber. So many people to divide a fortune between! Well, there's one more now.
Forever Amber Page 42
