London Pride, Or, When the World Was Younger

by M. E. Braddon

  CHAPTER XX.

  PHILASTER.

  January was nearly over, the memorial service for the martyred King wasdrawing near, and royalty and fashion had deserted Whitehall for HamptonCourt; yet the Farehams lingered at their riverside mansion. His lordshiphad business in London, while Sir Denzil Warner, who came to Fareham Housedaily, was also detained in the city by some special attraction, which madehawk and hound, and even his worthy mother's company, indifferent to him.

  Lady Fareham had an air of caring for neither town nor country, but on thewhole preferred town.

  "London has become a positive desert--and the smoke from the smoulderingruins poisons the garden and terrace whenever there is an east wind," shecomplained. "But Oxfordshire would be a worse desert--and I believe Ishould die of the spleen in a week, if I trusted myself in that greatrambling Abbey. I can just suffer life in London; so I suppose I had beststay till his lordship has finished his business, about which he is sosecret and mysterious."

  Denzil was more devoted, more solicitous to please than ever; and had abetter chance of pleasing now that most of her ladyship's fine visitorshad left town. He read aloud to Hyacinth and her sister as they worked--orpretended to work--at their embroidery frames. He played the organ, andsang duets with Angela. He walked with her on the terrace, in the cold,bleak afternoon, and told her the news of the town--not the scandals andtrivialities which alone interested Lady Fareham, but the graver factsconnected with the state and the public welfare--the prospects of war orpeace, the outlook towards France and Spain, Holland and Sweden, AndrewMarvel's last speech, or the last grant to the King, who might be reliedon to oppose no popular measure when his lieges were about to provide ahandsome subsidy or an increase of his revenue.

  "We are winning our liberties from him," Denzil said.

  "For the mess of pottage we give, the money he squanders on libertinepleasures, England is buying freedom. Yet why, in the name of common sense,maintain this phantom King, this Court which shocks and outrages everydecent Englishman's sense of right, and maintains an ever-widening hotbedof corruption, so that habits and extravagances once unknown beyond thatfocus of all vice, are now spreading as fast as London; and wherever thereare bricks and mortar there are profligacy and irreligion? Can you wonderthat all the best and wisest in this city regret Cromwell's iron rule, therule of the strongest, and deplore that so bold a stroke for liberty shouldhave ended in such foolish subservience to a King of whom we knew nothingwhen we begged him to come and reign over us?"

  "But if you win liberty while he is King, if wise laws are established--"

  "Yes; but we might have been noble as well as free. There is something sopetty in our resumed bondage. Figure to yourself a thoroughbred horse thathad kicked off the traces, and stood free upon the open plain with archedneck and lifted nostrils, sniffing the morning air! and behold he creepsback to his harness, and makes himself again a slave! We had done withthe Stuarts, at the cost of a tragedy, and in ten years we call them backagain, and put on the old shackles; and for common sense, religion, andfreedom, we have the orgies of Whitehall, and the extravagance of LadyCastlemaine. It will not last, Angela; it cannot last. I was with hislordship in Artillery Row last night, and we talked with the blind sage whowould sacrifice the remnant of his darkened days in the cause of liberty."

  "Sir Denzil, I hope you are not plotting mischief--you and my brother,"Angela said anxiously. "You are so often together; and his lordship hassuch a preoccupied air."

  "No, no, there is no conspiring; but there is plenty of discontent. Itwould need but little to fire the train. Can any man in his senses be happywhen he sees his country, which ten years ago was at the pinnacle ofpower and renown, sinking to the appanage of a foreign sovereign; Englandthreatened with a return to Rome; honest men forbidden to preach thegospel; and innocent seekers after truth hounded off to gaol, to rotamong malefactors, because they have dared to worship God after their ownfashion?"

  "Where was your liberty of conscience under the Protectorate, when theLiturgy was forbidden as if it were an unholy thing, when the Anglicanpriests were turned out of their pulpits, and the Anglican servicetolerated in only one church in all this vast London?" Angela askedindignantly.

  "That was a revolt of deep thinkers against a service which has all themechanical artifice of Romanism without its strong appeal to the heart andthe senses--dry, empty, rigid--a repetition of vain phrases. If I am everto bow my neck beneath the Church's yoke, let me swallow the warm-bloodederrors of Papacy rather than the heartless formalism of EnglishEpiscopacy."

  "But what can you or Fareham--or a few good men like you--do to changeestablished things? Remember Venner's plot, and how many lives were wastedon that foolish, futile attempt. You can only hazard your lives, die on thescaffold. Or would you like to see civil war again; the nation divided intoopposite camps; Englishmen fighting with Englishmen? Can you forget thatdreadful last year of the Rebellion? I was only a little child; but it isbranded deep on my memory. Can you forget the murder of the King? He wasmurdered; let Mr. Milton defend the deed as he can with his riches of bigwords. I have wept over the royal martyr's own account of his sufferings."

  "Over Dr. Gauden's account, that is to say. 'Eikon Basilike' was no morewritten by Charles than by Cromwell. It was a doctored composition--achurchman's spurious history, trumped up by Charles's friends andpartisans, possibly with the approval of the King himself. It is a finepiece of special pleading in a bad cause."

  "You make me hate you when you talk so slightingly of that so ill-usedKing. You will make me hate you more if you lead Fareham into danger byunderhand work against the present King."

  "Lies Fareham's safety so very near your heart?"

  "It lies in my heart," she answered, looking at him, and defying him withstraight, clear gaze. "Is he not my sister's husband, and to me as abrother? Do you expect me to be careless about his fate? I know you areleading him into danger. Some mischief must come of these visits to Mr.Milton, a Republican outlaw, who has escaped the penalty of his treasonouspamphlets only because he is blind and old and poor. I doubt there isdanger in all such conferences. Fareham is at heart a Republican. It wouldneed little persuasion to make him a traitor to the King."

  "You have it in your power to make me so much your slave, that I wouldsacrifice every patriotic aspiration at your bidding, Angela," Denzilanswered gravely.

  "I know not if this be the time to speak, or if, after waiting more than ayear, I may not even now be premature. Dearest girl, you know that I loveyou--that I haunt this house only because you live here; that I am inLondon only because my star shines there; that above all public interestsyou rule my life. I have exercised a prodigious patience, only because Ihave a prodigious resolution. Is it not time for me to reap my reward?"

  "Oh, Denzil, you fill me with sorrow! Have I not said everything todiscourage you?"

  "And have I not refused to be discouraged? Angela, I am resolved todiscover the reason of your coldness. Was there ever a young and lovelywoman who shut love out of her heart? History has no record of such anone. I am of an appropriate age, of good birth and good means, notunder-educated, not brutish, or of repulsive face and figure. If your heartis free I ought to be able to win it. If you will not favour my suit, itmust be because there is some one else, some one who came before me, or whohas crossed my path, and to whom your heart has been secretly given."

  She had turned from red to pale as he spoke. She stood before him in thewinter light, with her colour changing, her hands tightly clasped, her eyescast down, and tears trembling on the long dark lashes.

  "You have no right to question me. It is enough for you to have my honestanswer. I esteem you, but I do not love you; and it distresses me when youtalk of love."

  "There is some one else, then! I knew it. There is some one else. For meyou are marble. You are fire for him. He is in your heart. You have saidit."

  "How dare you----" she began.

  "Why should I shrink from warning you of your da
nger? It is Fareham youlove. I have seen you tremble at his touch--start at the sound of hisfootstep--that step you know so well. His footstep? Why, the very air hebreathes carries to you the consciousness of his approach. Oh, I havewatched you both, Angela; and I know, I know. Jealous pangs have racked me,day after day; yet I have hung on. I have been very patient. 'She knows notthe sinful impulses of her own heart,' I said, 'knows not in her purity hownear she goes to a fall. Here, in her sister's house, passionately loved byher sister's husband! She calls him 'brother,' whose eyes cannot look ather without telling their story of wicked love. She walks on the edge ofa precipice--self-deceived. Were I to abandon her she might fall. Myaffection is her only safeguard; and by winning her to myself I shallsnatch her from the pit of hell.'"

  It was the truth he was telling her. Yes; even when Fareham was harshest,she had been dimly conscious that love was at the root of his unkindness.The coldness that had held them apart since that midnight meeting had beenice over fire. It was jealousy that had made him so angry. No word of love,directly spoken, had ever offended her ear; but there had been many aspeech of double meaning that had set her wondering and thinking.

  And, oh! the guilt of it, when an honourable man like Denzil set her sinbefore her, in plain language. She stood aghast at her own wickedness. Thatwhich had been a sin of thought only, a secret sorrow, wrestled with inmany an hour of heartfelt prayer, with all the labour of a soul that soughtheavenly aid against earthly temptation, was conjured into hideous realityby Denzil's plain speech. To love her sister's husband, to suffer hisguilty love, to know gladness only in his company, to be exquisitely happywere he but in the same room with her--to sink to profoundest melancholywhen he was absent. Oh, the sin of it! In what degree did her guilt differfrom that of the women of the Court, who had each her open secret in somebase intrigue that all the world knew and laughed at? She had been keptaloof from that libertine crew; but was she any better than they? WasFareham, who openly scorned the royal debauchee, was he any better than theKing?

  She remembered how he had talked of Lord Sandwich, making excuses for aperverted love. She had heard him speak of other offenders in the samestrain. He had been ever ready to recognise fatality where a good Catholicwould have perceived only sin.

  "Angela, believe me, you are drifting helmless in perilous waters," Denzilurged, while she stood beside him in mute distress. "Let me be your strongrock. Only give me the promise of your hand. I can be patient still. I willgive time for love to grow. Grant me but the right to guard you from thedanger of an unholy passion that is always near you in this house."

  "You pretend to be his lordship's friend, and you speak slander of him."

  "I am his friend. I could find it in my heart to pity him for loving you.Indeed, it has been in friendship that I have tried to interest him in agreat national question--to wean him from his darling sin. But were you mywife he should never cross our threshold. The day that made us one shouldmake you and Fareham strangers. It is for you to choose, Angela, betweentwo men who love you--one near your own age, free, God-fearing; the othernearly old enough to be your father, bound by the tie which your Churchdeems indissoluble, whose love is insult and pollution, and can but end inshame and despair. It is for you to choose between honest and dishonestlove."

  "There is a nobler choice open to me," she said, more calmly than she hadyet spoken, and with a pale dignity in her countenance that awed him. Athrill of admiration and fear ran along his nerves as he looked at her. Sheseemed transfigured. "There is a higher and better love," she said. "Thisis not the first time that I have considered a sure way out of allmy difficulties. I can go back to the convent where, in my dear AuntAnastasia, I saw so splendid an example of a holy life hidden from theworld."

  "Life buried in a living grave!" cried Denzil, horror-stricken at the ideaof such a sacrifice. "Free-will and reason obscured in a cloud of incense!All the great uses of a noble life brought down to petty observances andchildish mummeries, prayers and genuflections before waxen relics anddressed-up madonnas. Oh, my dearest girl, next worst only to the dominionof sin is the slavery of a false religion. I would have thee free asair--free and enlightened--released from the trammels of Rome, happy inthyself and useful to thy fellow-creatures."

  "You see, Sir Denzil, even if we loved each other, we could never thinkalike," Angela said, with a gentle sadness. "Our minds would always dwellfar apart. Things that are dear and sacred to me are hateful to you."

  "If you love me I could win you to my way of thinking," he said.

  "You mean that if I loved you I should love you better than I love God?"

  "Not so, dear. But you would open your mind to the truth. St. Paulsanctified union between Christian and pagan, and deemed the unbelievingwife sanctified by the believing husband. There can be no sin, therefore,despite my poor mother's violent opinions, in the union of those whoworship the same God, and whose creed differs only in particulars. 'Howknowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?' Indeed, love, Idoubt 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 gulfbetwixt us. Indeed, Sir Denzil, you had best remain my friend. You can benothing else."

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

  Papillon came flying along the terrace, her skirts and waving tressesspread 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 actedby the Duke's servants, and her ladyship's footmen are keeping places forus in the boxes. I have only seen three plays in my life, and they were allsad ones. I wish _Philaster_ was a comedy. I should like to see _Love in aTub_. 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 onyour hood. His lordship says we need no masks. I should have loved to weara 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 Chinaoranges. I heard Lady Sarah tell my mother that the new little actress withthe 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 oforanges. I should love to sell oranges in the pit, if I could be an actressafterwards. I would rather be an actress than a duchess. Mademoiselletaught me Chimene's tirades in Corneille's _Cid_. I learn quicker than anypupil 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 ofher own chamber! And to hear the lines spoken to-day, when a tempest ofemotion had been raised in her breast, with Fareham by her side; to meethis glances at this or that moment of the play, when the devoted girl wasrevealing the secret of her passionate heart. Yet never was love freer fromtaint of sin, and the end of the play was in no wise tragic. That pureaffection was encouraged and sanctified by the happy bride. Bellario wasnot to be banished, but sheltered.

  Alas! yes; but this was love unreturned. There was no answering warmth onPhilaster's part, no fire of passion to scathe and destroy; only a gentlegratitude 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," hesaid; "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 seeinga new comedy," his wife retorted, pettishly.

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

  "Who wants to remember? The highest merit in a play is that it should be areflection of to-day; and who minds if it be stale to-morrow? To hold themirror up to nature, doesn't your Shakespeare say? And what more transientthan 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 getsthree days' acceptance, and some substantial compliment from the patron towhom they dedicate their trash."

  His lordship's liveries and four grey horses made a stir in Lincoln's InnFields, and startled the crowd at the doors of the New Theatre; and withinthe house Lady Fareham and her sister divided the attention of the pitwith their royal highnesses the Duke and Duchess, who no longer amusedor scandalised the audience by those honeymoon coquetries which haddistinguished their earlier appearances in public. Duchess Anne was growingstout, and fast losing her beauty, and Duke James was imitating hisbrother's infidelities, after his own stealthy fashion; so it may be thatClarendon's daughter was no more happy than her sister-in-law the Queen,nor than her father the Chancellor, over whom the shadows of royaldisfavour were darkening.

  Lady Fareham lolled languidly back in her box, and let all the audience seeher indifference to Fletcher's poetic dialogue. Angela sat motionless, herhands clasped in her lap, entranced by that romantic story, and the actingwhich gave life and reality to that poetic fable, as well it might when theincomparable Betterton played Philaster. Fareham stood beside his wife,looking down at the stage, and sometimes, as Angela looked up, their eyesmet in one swift flash of responsive thought; met and glanced away, as ifeach 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? Andagain--

  "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, questioninglook 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 passageoccurred which had written itself upon her heart long ago at Chilton whenshe 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--sodesolate when his eyes looked not upon her in kindness? After having livedfor two brief summers and winters in his cherished company, having learntto know what a proud, honourable man was like, his disdain of vice, hisindifference to Court favour, his aspirations for liberty; after havingknown him, and loved him with silent and secret love, what better could shedo than bury herself within convent walls, and spend the rest of her daysin praying for those she loved? Alas, he had such need that some faithfulsoul should soar heavenward in supplication for him who had himself so weaka hold upon the skies! Alas, to think of him as unbelieving, putting histrust in the opinions of infidels like Hobbes and Spinoza, rather thanleaning 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 thesame roof with him--she could at least die for him--die to the world ofpleasure and folly, of beauty and splendour, die to friendship and love;sink all individuality under the monastic rule; cease to be, except asa part in a great organisation, an atom acting and acted upon by higherpowers; surrendering every desire and every hope that distinguished herfrom 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 lastspeech, finishing her story of a love which can submit to take the lowerplace, 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 ahusband she did not love? This humdrum modern age allowed of no romance.She could not stain her face with walnut juice, and disguise herself asa footboy, and live unknown in his service, to wait upon him when he wasweary, to nurse him when he was sick. Such a life she would have deemedexquisitely happy; but the hard everyday world had no room for suchdreams. In this unromantic age Dion's daughter would be recognised withintwenty-four hours of her putting on male attire. The golden days of poetrywere dead. Una would find no lion to fawn at her feet. She would be mobbedin the Strand.

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

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

  "I like to see the links moving up and down," said Papillon; "'tis ever somuch 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 abyssof gloom.

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

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

  "Did you not love the play, and would you not love to be a princess likeArethusa, and to wear such a necklace? Mother's diamonds are not half asbig."

  "Pshaw, child, 'twas absolute glass--arrant trumpery."

  "But her gown was not trumpery. It was Lady Castlemaine's last birthdaygown. I heard a lady telling her friend about it in the seat next mine.Lady Castlemaine gave it to the actress; and it cost three hundredpounds--and Lady Castlemaine is all that there is of the most extravagant,the lady said, and old Rowley has to pay her debts--(who is old Rowley, andwhy does he pay people's debts?)--though she is the most unscrupulous--Iforget the word--in London."

  "You see, madam, what a good school the play-house is for your child," saidFareham grimly.

  "I never asked you to take our child there."

  "Nay, Hyacinth; but a mother should enter no scene unfit for her daughter'sinnocence."

  "Oh, my lord, your opinions are of the Protectorate. You would be better inNew England--tilling your fields reclaimed from the waste."

  "Yes, I might be better there, reclaimed from the waste--of London life.Strange that your talk should hit upon New England. I was thinking of thatNew World not an hour ago at the play--thinking what a happy innocent lifea man might lead there, were he but young and free, with one he loved."

  "Innocent, yes; happy, no; unless he were a savage or a peasant," Hyacinthexclaimed disdainfully. "We that have known the grace and beauty of lifecannot go back
to the habits of our ancestors, to eat without forks, andcover our floors with rushes instead of Persian carpets."

  "The beauty and grace of life--houses that are whited sepulchres, banquetswhere there is no love."

  The coach stopped before the tall Italian doorway, and Fareham handed outhis wife and sister in silence; but there was one of the party to whom itwas unnatural to be mute.

  Papillon sprang off the coach step into her father's arms.

  "Sweetheart, why are you so sad?" she asked. "You look more unhappy thanPhilaster when he thought his lady loved him not."

  She would not be put off, but hung about him all the length of thecorridor, to the door of his room, where he parted from her with a kiss onher forehead.

  "How your lips burn!" she cried. "I hope you are not sickening for theplague. I dreamt last night that the contagion had come back; and that ournew glass coach was going about with a bell collecting the dead."

  "Thou hadst eaten too much supper, sweet. Such dreams are warnings againstexcess of pies and jellies. Go, love; I have business."

  "You have always business now. You used to let me stay with you--even whenyou was busy," Henriette remonstrated, dejectedly, as the sonorous oak doorclosed against her.

  Fareham flung himself into his chair in front of the large table, withits heaped-up books and litter of papers. Straight before him there layMilton's pamphlet--a publication of ten years ago; but he had been readingit only that morning--"The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce."

  There were sentences which seemed to him to stand out upon the page, almostas if written in fire; and to these he recurred again and again, broodingover and weighing every word. "....Neither can this law be of force toengage a blameless creature to his own perpetual sorrow, mistaken for hisexpected solace, without suffering charity to step in and do a confessedgood work of parting those whom nothing holds together but this of God'sjoining, falsely supposed against the express end of his own ordinance....'It is not good,' said He, 'that man should be alone; I will make him ahelpmeet for him.' From which words, so plain, less cannot be concluded,nor is by any learned interpreter, than that in God's intention a meet andhappy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of marriage.... Again,where the mind is unsatisfied, the solitariness of man, which God hadnamely and principally ordered to prevent by marriage, hath no remedy, butlies in a worse condition than the loneliest single life; for in singlelife the absence and remoteness of a helper might inure him to expect hisown comforts out of himself, or to seek with hope; but here the continualsight of his deluded thoughts, without cure, must needs be to him, ifespecially his complexion incline him to melancholy, a daily trouble andpain of loss, in some degree like that which reprobates feel."

  He closed the book, and started up to pace the long, lofty room, full ofshadow, betwixt the light of the fire and that one pair of candles on hisreading desk.

  "Reprobate! Yes. Am not I a reprobate, and the worst, plotting againstinnocence? New England," he repeated to himself. "How much the namepromises. A new world, a new life, and old fetters struck off. God, if itcould be done! It would hurt no one--no one--except perhaps those children,who might suffer a brief sorrow--and it would make two lives happy thatmust be blighted else. Two lives! Am I so sure of her? Yes, if eyes speaktrue. Sure as of my own fond passion. The contagion, quotha! I havesuffered that, sweet, and know its icy sweats and parching heats; but'tis not so fierce a fever as that devilish disease, the longing for yourcompany."