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CHAPTER X
"AND SUDDENLY, SWEETLY, MY HEART BEAT STRONGER."
Squire Bosworth, having once consented to bring his daughter to town, was not a man to stint money in detail. He surprised his sister-in-law by the liberality of his arrangements and the liberty he allowed her in expenditure. She had excellent rooms for herself and her gaunt daughters, and a coach and four at her disposition, with free license to buy tickets for concerts, operas, masquerades, and public amusements of all kinds; and she was told to order all that was needful for the adornment of the heiress's person. Her ladyship was an old campaigner, and knew how to profit by her position. The mantua-makers and milliners who waited upon Mrs. Bosworth were tradeswomen who had supplied Lady Tredgold for a quarter of a century, and she had them, as it were, under her thumb. "I have so little money to spend, my dears, that if I did not spend it with the same people year after year, I should not be of the slightest importance to fashionable trades-folk. But by a steady patronage of the same people, and by always paying ready money, I have contrived to keep the best milliner and mantua-maker in London my very humble and devoted servants."
It happened, therefore, that in these halcyon days of the Arlington Street lodgings, Mrs. Amelia and Mrs. Sophia Tredgold were supplied with gowns and caps almost at half-price by these obliging and confidential purveyors. There was a handsome margin for profit upon the prices paid for Irene's Court-train and other fineries.
Everything in that wonderful world of fashion and pleasure was new and surprising to the girl who had been reared in the seclusion of Fairmile Park. She gave herself up freely to the enchantments of the dazzling, dissipated, extravagant, artificial town. She saw only the glitter and sparkle of society's surface, and knew not that the light was the phosphorescence of putrefaction; that the whole fabric, this fairy palace gleaming with lights and breathing music, was rotten to the core, and might fall about the heads of these revellers at any moment, as that other fairy palace where Philip the Regent and his roués had so lately held their orgies was doomed to fall before the century should be ended.
But of all pleasures which that great city could offer to innocent youth the divinest was music, which at this period enjoyed an unbounded popularity and fashion. The one art which George I. loved was music, and to that art and its most famous professors he and his family gave the warmest encouragement. The Royal Academy for Music had only been founded six years, but the influence of such a school was already felt. Italian opera was in its glory, and the rivalry between Handel and Buononcini, and between Cuzzoni and La Faustina, was one of the most exciting topics in the whole round of society talk.
Rena revelled in that magic world of the opera. All the glamour of the stage was here intensified by the stronger magic of music. Handel's classic operas, with their wealth of melody and charm of mythologic story, opened a new world of enchantment to the girl's quick imagination. Lady Tredgold and her daughters loved the opera only because it was fashionable, and stifled many a yawn behind their Watteau fans; Rena and Mdlle. Latour delighted in music as an epicure delights at a feast. They hung entranced upon every note, and inwardly resented the chattering and giggling of Mrs. Amelia and Mrs. Sophia, who coquetted with their admirers at the back of the box, and encouraged visits from all the most frivolous foplings of the town. Rena had no suspicion that these young fribbles came for the most part in the hope of getting a word or two with the heiress. It had never occurred to her that she was a prize for which half the young men in London would have liked to race each other.
Lord Lavendale was a frequent visitor at the house in Arlington Street, and was cordially received by Lady Tredgold, who had been intimate with his mother in her girlhood and was disposed to favour his suit. He had spoken to Mr. Bosworth, who had answered bluntly, "Win her if you can, and then we will see about paying off the mortgages on Lavendale, and joining the two estates. But I am no tyrant to force my daughter into an uncongenial marriage. If you would have her and her fortune, you must first win her heart."
"I will try," Lavendale answered, honestly enough.
It was his resolute intention to try and gain Rena's love, and to lead a better life than he had ever led yet: to abjure the bottle and the dice-box, though both those amusements were deemed the fitting diversion for a fine gentleman's leisure. Even the graver and statelier men of the day were topers. The late Lord Oxford had been accused of coming drunk into the presence of his Queen; and Pulteney drank almost as deep as St. John. Three or four bottles of Burgundy were deemed a fair allowance for a gentleman; and now the Methuen treaty, giving free trade in Portuguese wines, was bringing a heavier liquor into fashion.
Lavendale and Irene met in all the aristocratic assemblies of the day, at operas and balls, auction-rooms, Park, and Mall. They met at the house of Henrietta Duchess of Marlborough, daughter of the great Duke and widow of Lord Godolphin the statesman, who gave musical evenings and swore by Buononcini. Here Rena beheld Mr. Congreve, l'ami de la maison, gouty, irritable, and nearly blind, but occasionally condescending to sparkle in brief flashes of wit. He was petted and obviously adored by the lady, who, after having had the greatest soldier and the grandest statesman of that age for father and husband, appeared to have reserved her warmest affections for a selfish old bachelor playwright.
Lavendale and Irene met each other in still higher society at St. James's, Leicester House, and Richmond Lodge, where Lady Tredgold had the entry. New and pretty faces are always welcome at Court, and it became speedily known that the charms of this particular face were fortified by a handsome fortune. The Princess of Wales was very gracious to Squire Bosworth's daughter, and Mrs. Howard smiled upon her with that sweet vague placidity which one sees in the faces of deaf people. Rena here beheld the famous Dean Swift, newly advanced to that title of Dean, and come to kiss his patroness's beautiful hand, and to sneer at all the little great world around him in nightly letters to Stella Johnson, far away in a Dublin lodging, with small means and an elderly companion. Fond and faithful Stella may have needed those lively letters of the Dean's, with their graphic account of his pleasures, to cheer the slow monotony of her days.
Irene enjoyed everything, and, being nearly as innocent as Una, saw no evil under that fair outward surface of high-born society. Life flowed so smoothly and pleasantly under that superficial elegance; everybody spoke sweetly, wit was current coin, and music of the highest quality seemed the very atmosphere in which these people lived. It was but for the King to set the fashion, and everybody adored music; just as in Charles I.'s time everybody had been more or less fanatical about painters and painting. Rena moved from scene to scene with a sublime unconsciousness of evil, and late at night, or over their chocolate in the morning, would describe all she had seen and heard to her devoted governess, who shared in none of her amusements except the opera and an occasional concert, but who was always sympathetic and interested in all she heard.
"You seem to meet Lord Lavendale wherever you go," Mdlle. Latour said on one occasion, when his lordship's name had been mentioned by her pupil with perfect frankness.
"We are always meeting all the same people. When I go into a crowded room now, I seem to know everybody in it. I feel quite surprised at the sight of a stranger."
"Just as if you were an experienced fine lady," laughed Mademoiselle; "how quickly my woodland nymph has accustomed herself to the ways of this crowded fashionable town! But to return to Lord Lavendale: if you do not meet him oftener than you do other people, I think that at least you enjoy more of his society. You and he are often talking together, Mrs. Amelia told me."
"O yes, we are very good friends," the girl answered carelessly. "I think he is pleasanter than most people."
"Heart-whole, and likely to remain so, as far as Lavendale is concerned," thought the little Frenchwoman with satisfaction; for she knew too much of his lordship's past history to approve of him as a suitor for her beloved pupil.
After a pause she said,
"By the bye, Rena, Mr. Durnford called yesterday when you were out with Lady Tredgold. It is the fifth time he has called and found you gone abroad."
Irene blushed crimson.
"O, why did you not beg him to stop till I came home?" she asked.
"My dear child, this is not my house. I have no right to give invitations."
"Yes, you have. You could have detained him if you had liked. The fifth visit! What must he think of me?"
"He confessed that he thought you somewhat a gad-about. He told me that he tried to waylay you in public resorts – in the Ring, or at the auction-rooms; but even there he had been unfortunate: when he went west, you had gone east."
Irene looked piteously disappointed.
"Five times! and I have not been told of one of those visits!" she exclaimed indignantly. "Why was that?"
"Because your aunt's footmen forgot all about it, I daresay," replied Mademoiselle. "Footmen have a knack of forgetting such visitors, especially when the visitor wears a shabby coat and may forget to emphasise his inquiries with a crown. I doubt you would never have heard of this last visit, if I had not happened to come in from my walk in St. James's Park just as Mr. Durnford knocked at the door. He stopped for a few minutes' chat on the doorstep. I told him you were to be at the opera to-night."
"Then perhaps he will go there!" cried Rena, suddenly becoming radiant, and confirming the shrewd little Frenchwoman in a suspicion which she had harboured for some time.
What a pity that Herrick Durnford was poor, and without rank or lineage to counterbalance his poverty! She knew that Squire Bosworth would favour Lavendale's suit, and would in all probability disinherit his daughter if she presumed to marry a penniless scribbler. Mdlle. Latour had enjoyed opportunities of studying the character of both these young men, and she had decided that Durnford's was the nobler nature, though there was assuredly some good in Lavendale.
CHAPTER XI
"AND BEAUTY DRAWS US WITH A SINGLE HAIR."
Christmas was near at hand, the fox-hunting season was in full swing, and Lady Judith and Mr. Topsparkle had made up a large party for sport and music at Ringwood Abbey. Her Grace of Marlborough and Mr. Congreve were to be there; Sir Robert Walpole had promised to spend half a week away from the charms of his own beloved Houghton and his still dearer Molly Skerritt. The two spendthrift Spencers were asked, and Chesterfield; while Bolingbroke, whom Lady Judith pretended to admire more than any man living, was to be the chief star among so many luminaries.
Lady Judith affected to have taken a fancy to the new heiress, and was so pressing in her invitation to Lady Tredgold to bring her sweet niece to Ringwood for the Christmas holidays, that the good lady could not resist the temptation to visit at a house which she had so often joined in rancorously abusing for its riotous extravagance and corrupt taste. But as Lady Judith had pointedly ignored the two gaunt daughters in her invitation, Lady Tredgold considered herself under no obligation to be grateful. She left the daughters in Arlington Street under the charge of Mdlle. Latour, and started for Ringwood with Rena and two maids in a coach and six. Had she been travelling at her own expense, she might have managed the journey with four horses, bad as the roads were; but as Mr. Bosworth had to pay, she considered six indispensable. Had the journey been at her own cost, she might even have gone in the great heavy Salisbury coach, which, although periodically surprised by highwaymen between Putney and Kingston, or on Bagshot Heath, was perhaps somewhat safer in its strength of numbers than any private conveyance.
On this occasion she took a couple of footmen armed with blunderbusses, hid her own and the heiress's jewels in a little leather bag under the seat, and put her trust in Providence for the rest. Despite of these precautions and of her six horses she might, perchance, have fared badly, had it not been for an unexpected reinforcement in the persons of Lavendale and Durnford, who overtook the carriage on Putney Common in the sharp frosty morning of December 21.
They were both well mounted on powerful roadsters, and followed by two grooms upon horses of scarcely inferior quality; gentlemen and servants were both armed.
Irene blushed and sparkled at sight of the two cavaliers, and Lavendale, spoiled by a decade of successes, made sure those smiles were for him.
"You are early on the road, ladies," he exclaimed gaily, "considering that it was past two this morning ere you plunged the Ridotto in untimely gloom by your departure. There were some blockheads who put down that diminished lustre to a sudden failure of the wax candles; but I knew 'twas but two pairs of eyes that had ceased to shine upon the assembly. Pray how far do you propose travelling to-day, Lady Tredgold?"
"Only as far as Fairmile. We are to lie at my brother's house to-night, and pursue our journey at eight o'clock to-morrow morning. It is odious rising so early in winter. My niece and I dressed by candlelight, and the watchman was crying half-past six o'clock and a frosty morning when my maid came to wake me. It seemed but half an hour since I left the Ridotto."
"'Tis those short nights that shorten the measure of life, madam," said Durnford gravely. "Mrs. Bosworth will be older by ten years for the pleasures of a single season."
Her ladyship honoured the speaker with a slow, supercilious stare, and deigned no other answer.
"0, but there are some things worth wasting life for, Mr. Durnford," replied Irene, smiling at him; "the opera, for instance. I would barter a year of my old age for one night of Rinaldo or Theseus."
"A lady of eighteen is as free with the treasure of long life as a minor with his reversion," said Durnford. "Both are spendthrifts. But I, who have passed life's zenith, which with a man I take to be thirty, am beginning to be chary of my declining years. I hope to win some prize out of life's lottery, and to live happy ever after, as they say in fairy tales. Now I conclude that 'ever after' in your story-book means a hale old age."
"Give me the present hour and its pleasures," cried Lavendale, "a bumper of rattle and excitement, filled to the brim, a long deep draught of joy, and no for-ever-after of old age and decline, in which to regret the golden days of youth. There should be no arrière pensée on such a morning as this, with a bright winter sun, a good trotting-horse, and beauty's eyes for our lode-stars."
"How does your lordship happen to be travelling our way?" asked Lady Tredgold.
"For the simplest of all reasons: I and my friend Durnford here are both bound for the same destination."
"You are going to Ringwood Abbey! How very curious, how very pleasant!" exclaimed the lady, in her most gracious tones; then she added with a colder air, and without looking at the person of whom she spoke, "I was not aware that Mr. Durnford was acquainted with Mr. Topsparkle."
Durnford was absorbed in the landscape, and made no reply to the indirect question.
"Mr. Topsparkle is ever on the alert to invite clever people to his house," said Lavendale, "and Lady Judith has a rage for literature, poetry, science, what you will. She is a student of Newton and Flamsteed, and loves lectures on physical science such as Desaguliers gave the town when Durnford and I were boys. Lady Judith is devoted to Mr. Durnford."
"I am charmed to learn that literature is so highly appreciated," said her ladyship stiffly.
She made up her mind that Herrick Durnford was dangerous – a fortune-hunter, doubtless, with a keen scent for an heiress; and she had observed that her niece blushed when he addressed her.
She could not, however, be openly uncivil to so close a friend of Lord Lavendale's, so the journey progressed pleasantly enough; the horsemen trotting beside the carriage like a bodyguard for a while, and then dropping behind to breathe their cattle, or cantering in advance now and then when there came a long stretch of level turf by the wayside.
They all stopped at Kingston for an early dinner, and it was growing towards dusk when the coach and six fresh horses started on the second stage of the journey. The progress became slower from this point. The road was dark, and had the reputation of being a favourite resort for highwaymen. Lady Tredgold had never yet been face to face with one of those monsters, but she had an ever-present terror of masked and armed marauders springing out upon her from every hedge. It was but last year that Jonathan Wild had paid the penalty of his crimes, and Jack Sheppard had swung the year before; and though neither of these had won his renown upon the road, Lady Tredgold vaguely associated those great names with danger to travellers. It was not so very long since the Duke of Chandos had been stopped by five highwaymen on a night journey from Canons to London; nor had her ladyship forgotten how the Chichester mail had been robbed of the letter-bags in Battersea Bottom; nor that robbery on the road at Acton, by which the wretches made off with a booty of two thousand pounds. And she had the family diamonds under the seat of the carriage, tied up in a rag of old chintz to make the parcel seem insignificant; and her point lace alone was worth a small fortune.
She counted her forces, and concluded that so long as they all kept together no band of robbers would be big enough or bold enough to attack them.
"Don't leave us, I entreat, dear Lord Lavendale," she urged, as they crossed Esher Common. "We will drive as slow as ever you like, so as not to tire your saddle-horses. Tell those postboys to go slower."
"Have no fear, madam," answered Lavendale gaily. "Our hacks are not easily tired. We will stick by you as close as if we were gentlemen of the road and had hopes of booty."
So they rode cheerily enough towards Fairmile. It was broad moonlight by the time they came to Flamestead Common; a clear, cold, winter moon, which lighted up every hillock and gleamed silvery upon the tiny waterpools.
Durnford had been riding close beside the coach, talking of music and plays with Irene; but as they approached this open ground where the light was clearest, he observed a change in her countenance. Those lovely eyes became clouded over, those lovely lips ceased to smile, and his remarks were responded to briefly, with an absent air.
"Why are you silent, dearest miss?" he asked. Lady Tredgold was snoring in her corner of the carriage, Lavendale was riding on the farther side of the road, and those two seemed almost alone. "Does yonder cold, pale planet inspire you with a gentle melancholy?"
"I was thinking of the past," she answered gravely, looking beyond him towards that irregular ground where flowerless furze-bushes showed black against the steel-blue sky.
"You can have no past to inspire sad thoughts. You are too young."
"One is never too young for sorrow. The memory of a companion I loved very dearly is associated with this spot."
And then she told him the story of her little adopted sister, as she had heard it often from her nurse Bridget – the little fair-haired child who seemed like her own reflection charmed into life – the happy days and evenings they two had spent together, and how death came untimely and snapped that golden thread.
"I like to look upon the place where my father found her, and the place where she lies in her little grave," said Rena, straining her eyes, first towards the Common which they were now leaving, and then further afield to the low Norman tower of Flamestead Church.
Lady Tredgold woke suddenly when her niece relapsed into silence, and inquired where they were.
"Within half an hour of home, madam," answered Rena.
"Home!" and her ladyship, still half asleep, thought of that stately stone mansion in the fair white city of Bath, where her husband was left in solitude to nurse his gout and lament his wife's absence. Not but that Bath was a very pleasant place for a solitary man in those days, being the resort of fashion, wit, and beauty, statesmen and soldiers, men of letters and fine gentlemen, an ever-shifting gallery of faces, a various assembly of well-bred people, who all found it necessary from time to time to repair to "the Bath." Golden age for England when Continental spas were known only to the few, and when fashionable people were not ashamed to enjoy themselves on English soil. Had not the distinguished, erratic Lord Peterborough himself been seen hurrying through those busy streets from the market to his lodgings, with a cabbage under one arm and a chicken under the other, blue ribbon and star on his breast all the same? A city of considerable latitude both as to manners and morals.
"O, you mean Fairmile," muttered her ladyship, with a disappointed air; for though she loved a season in London at somebody else's cost, she had a passion for Bath, which to her was veritably home, and in her slumberous state she had fancied herself just entering that delightful city. "I hope the beds will be aired. There was plenty of time for that queer, grim housekeeper to get my letter."
"You need have no fear, aunt. Mrs. Layburne is not an agreeable woman, but she is a very good manager. The servants all fear and obey her."
"That is just the sort of person one wants to look after a household. Your good, easy-tempered souls are no use, and they are generally arrant cheats into the bargain. Do you lie at the Manor to-night, Lord Lavendale?"
Lavendale had been riding as in a dream, with head bent, and rein loose in a careless hand. A horse less sure-footed than his famous black Styx might have stumbled and thrown him. He was thinking of Lady Judith Topsparkle; wondering why she had so urgently invited him to Ringwood Abbey, when, if she had his sense of peril, she would assuredly have avoided his company. It might be that for her the past was utterly past; so completely forgotten that she could afford to indulge herself in the latest whim of the moment. What but a whim could be her friendship for him, her eagerness to mate him with wealth and beauty? How completely indifferent must she have become to those old memories which had still such potency with him!
"Why, if she can forget, so can I," he told himself. "Should Horace be truer than Lydia to an expired love? and yet, and yet, were Thracian Chloe ten times as fair, one of those old familiar glances from Lydia's starry eyes would send my blood to fever-point."
The gentlemen escorted the coach to the very door of Mr. Bosworth's house, much to Lady Tredgold's contentment, as she suspected marauders even among the old elm-trunks in Fairmile avenue. Arrived at the house, her ladyship honoured Lord Lavendale with a cordial invitation to supper; but as she ignored his companion Lavendale declined her hospitality, on the ground that the horses had done so heavy a day's work that they must needs require the comfort of their own stables. And so the two gentlemen said good-night, and rode away to Lavendale Manor, after promising to be in attendance upon the ladies at eight next morning.
Nurse Bridget was in the hall, eager to welcome her dear charge, from whom she had never been parted until this winter. Nurse and nursling hugged each other affectionately, and then Bridget put back Irene's black silk hood, and contemplated the fair young face in warmest admiration.
"You have grown prettier than ever," she exclaimed, "and taller too; I protest you are taller. I hope your ladyship will pardon me for loving my pet too much to be mannerly," she added, curtsying to Lady Tredgold.
"There is nothing, my good creature, unmannerly in affection. Yes, Miss Bosworth has certainly grown; and then she has had her stays made by my French staymaker, and that improves any young woman's figure and gives a taller air. I hope they have got us a decent supper. I am positively famished. And I hope there are good fires, for my niece and I have been starved this last two hours. The night is horribly cold. And have you aired a room for my maids?"
"Yes, my lady," and "Yes, my lady," said Bridget, with low curtsies, in reply to all these eager questions; and then Lady Tredgold and her niece followed the fat old butler – he had contrived to keep fat by sheer inactivity, in spite of Mrs. Layburne's meagre housekeeping – to the long white drawing-room, where there was a blazing log fire, and where Irene flew to her harpsichord and began to play the Sparrow Symphony from Rinaldo. There are moments of happiness, joyous impulses in the lives of women, which can only find expression in music.