CHAPTER X.

"THE LITTLE HEARTS WHERE LIGHT-WINGED Pa.s.sION REIGNS."

Mr. Topsparkle had been buried more than a month, and the old year was waning. The logs were piled in the capacious fireplaces in saloon and dining-room, library and panelled parlour, at Lavendale Manor. The old servants were in new liveries; and such a store of provisions, butcher's meat and poultry, game and venison, eggs and b.u.t.ter, had been laid in to fill the great stone larder as would have afforded material for feasting upon a Gargantuan basis. Wax candles burnt merrily in all the l.u.s.tres, and set the crystal chandelier-drops trembling; holly and yew, laurel and ivy, with waxen mistletoe-berries lurking in sly corners, adorned hall and dining-room, staircase and corridors; and there was a bustle and a movement through the old house such as had never been known there since the early years of the late lord's married life, when the great Whig leaders, Somers, Sunderland, and G.o.dolphin, with all their following, had been entertained at the Manor.

It was like the awaking of Sleeping Beauty's palace, after its century of stillness and slumber: only this time it was the princess, and not the prince, who was coming. It was not his bugle-horn, but her magic touch, which had scared the mice and the spiders, and startled the old seneschal from his torpor, and set the logs blazing, and filled the larder, and brought out the choice old wines from the cobweb-wreathed bins, and sent the sparks dancing up the chimneys, and made life where death had been.

Lady Judith Topsparkle was coming to spend her Christmas at the house where she was to be mistress, so soon as she and Lavendale should be married. They were not going to defer that happy day over-long out of respect for the dead, or out of deference for the opinion of the polite world, which was tolerably used to having its codes and customs set at naught in that merry era, and might be said to be hardened and scandal-proof.

"Let it be soon, love," he had said; and she had not gainsaid him. They meant to be married very quietly, and then to scamper off to the Continent, and rush from one old city to another all along the sunny south of France, and then drop down to the Mediterranean, and loiter on that enchanted sh.o.r.e till the fierce breath of summer drove them away; and then to Vienna, that enchanted city in which Lavendale and Wharton had led so wild a life, and onward to the Austrian Tyrol in quest of solitude, and mountain breezes cooled by the breath of the glaciers in that wild upper world where only the herdsman's hut suggests human habitation, and where the vulture and the eagle are easier to meet than mankind.

"Let it be soon," he said, as he stood with her in the house whence her husband's coffin had not long been carried; and she, with her white arms wreathed round his neck, as on that night years ago in the Chinese tent at Lady Skirmisham's ball, had answered tearfully, with a sad frankness which had a touch of despair in it,

"It shall be when you will, love. I care nothing for the world, nothing for any one in this world or beyond it, except you. And you are looking so ill! I want to be your wife, that I may have the right to take care of you."

"A poor prospect for youth and beauty and wit and fashion, my dearest,"

he said, smiling down at her upturned face with love unutterable in his own. "You have had to bear with an old husband, and now can you put up with an ailing one? I think I am more infirm than Mr. Topsparkle, in spite of his threescore and ten. But indeed, love, I mean to reform--to forswear sack and live cleanly; or, in other words, to take good care of my life now it is worth keeping. I want to be sure of long years, love, now I am sure of you. I feel new life in my veins as I stand here with those sweet eyes looking up at me, full of the promise of bliss. Yes, dear love, I will defy augury. Why should I not be happy?"

Why not, indeed? He asked himself the same question on this Christmas Eve, in the winter gloaming, in front of the great hall fire which roared so l.u.s.tily in the wide chimney, and sent such a coruscation of sparks dancing merrily up to the cold north wind, that it was hard to be gloomy face to face with such a companion: hard to be gloomy when she whom he loved was coming to be his Christmas guest, to stay with him till the turn of the year; then back to the haunted house in Soho for but one night of lonely widowhood; and on the next morning they two were to meet quietly, unknown and unnoticed, at St. Anne's Church, there to be made one for ever.

She was coming. Herrick and his young wife were there to receive her.

She was to bring her own little retinue: Lady Polwhele, and the Asterleys, and a certain Mrs. Lydia Vansittart, a young lady of good birth, small fortune, and easy manners, whom Lady Judith had taken up of late as companion and confidante--a woman of fashion must always have some one of this kind, an unofficial maid of honour, who retires at intervals, like the real article, to make way for a successor, and, unlike the official damsel, is not always certain of returning to her post.

Lavendale was not an admirer of Lady Polwhele, nor of her led captain and his buxom wife, and indeed wondered that his mistress should keep such company; yet at the least hint from her he had hastened to invite them, and was ready to pay them all the honours of a sumptuous hospitality. Mrs. Vansittart he thought a harmless young person, but brazen, after the manner of damsels at the Court end of town. The author of _Gulliver_ had talked of her openly as an insolent drab, but "insolent drab" with the Dean of St. Patrick's was sometimes a term of endearment.

Lord Bolingbroke had promised to spend a day or two at the Manor before the turn of the year, to inspect the home-farm, and compare its old-fashioned neglect with his own new-fangled improvements at Dawley.

"We will quote Virgil to each other, and fancy ourselves farmers," he said, when he accepted the invitation. "Perhaps I may bring friend Pope in my coach, and be sure those keen eyes of his will be on the watch for a trait of character in every particular of your existence--will hit off your house and park, your table and friends, in lines that will be as sharply cut and gracefully finished as a Roman medal."

Every bedchamber of importance in the rambling old house had been swept and garnished for distinguished guests. Irene and the housekeeper had roamed in and out of the rooms, and up and down the corridors again and again, before it had been decided which were to be my Lord Bolingbroke's rooms, and whether the bedchamber with the b.u.t.terfly paper would be good enough for the poet.

"Be sure he will put you into one of his satires, if you lodge him ill, Mrs. Becket," said Irene: "they say he is as malicious as he is clever, and loves to lampoon his friends."

"Lord, madam, I'm no friend of his, so perhaps he'll let me alone," said the housekeeper; "but I shouldn't like to show disrespect to a famous poet. I only wish it was Dr. Watts or Mr. Bunyan that was coming: the best room in the house wouldn't be good enough for either of those pious gentlemen," added the simple soul, who knew not that both her favourite authors were defunct.

And now it was nearly dark on Christmas Eve, and the clatter of Lady Judith's coach and six might be heard at any moment in the avenue. She and her party were to have dined early in London, and to arrive at the Manor in time for a dish of tea, and a substantial nine-o'clock supper of beef and turkey. The Indian cups and saucers, the melon-shaped silver tea-kettle, the dainty little teapots, and coffee-pots, and chocolate-pots, and those miniature silver caddies, in which our ancestors h.o.a.rded their thirty-shilling bohea, had all been set out in the saloon under Irene's superintendence; and Irene herself, in a rustling sea-green brocade, and her unpowdered hair turned up over a cushion, and her dark eyes full of light, looked as fair a young matron as any mansion need boast for its mistress.

Herrick, standing with his back to the fire, and his hands clasped behind him in a lazy, contented att.i.tude, watched his wife in the light of the candles, as she moved to and fro in a restless expectancy: watched, and admired, and smiled with all a young husband's fondness, marvelling even yet that this beauteous, innocent creature could verily belong to him.

These two were alone together in the saloon, but Lavendale stayed without in the firelit hall, brooding over the fire, and waiting for the coming of his love.

"Why should I not be happy?" he asked himself. "Why should I not live to taste this golden fortune that Fate has flung into my lap--at last! at last! A broken const.i.tution can be patched up again. A heart that has taken to irregular paces can learn to beat quietly in an atmosphere of peace and joy. I have burnt life's candle at both ends. .h.i.therto. I must be sober. Shall I despair because of that mystic warning, which may have been, after all, but a waking dream? Yes, I _will_ believe that sweet sad voice--my mother's very voice--was but a supreme effect of a fevered imagination. I know that I was not asleep when I saw that luminous figure, when I heard that unearthly voice; but there may be a kind of trance in which the mind can create the image it looks upon, and the sound that it hears. Hark, there are the horses! She is here, she is here: and where she is death cannot come."

The clatter of six horses upon a frost-bound drive was unmistakable.

There were a couple of outriders, too, and Captain Asterley was on horseback, making nine horses in all. The footmen ran to fling open the hall-door, the butler came to the threshold, Herrick and Irene appeared from the saloon, and Lavendale went out into the dusk, bare-headed, to receive his mistress. She was scarce less eager than her lover. She flung open the coach-door before footmen could reach it, and sprang almost into Lavendale's eager arms. She wore a wide beaver hat with an ostrich plume, and a long velvet pelisse bordered with fur, like a Russian princess. She was flushed with the cold air, and her eyes sparkled; never had she looked lovelier.

"Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear!" cried Lavendale, kissing her audaciously before all the world, and then holding out a hand to Lady Polwhele, who was closely hooded, and whose white-lead complexion looked ghastlier than ever where the cold had turned it blue. "What ample provision hast thou made against Jack Frost, love! Have you borrowed Anastasia Robinson's sables?"

"Do you suppose n.o.body but a soprano can wear a fur-trimmed coat?" she asked gaily. "I bought this yesterday, and I can tell you that it is handsomer than anything Peterborough ever gave his wife. They say she is really married to him, and she and her mother are established in his house at Parson's Green; but he has sworn her to secrecy, and won't even let her wear her wedding-ring."

"He is a fool," answered Lavendale, "and his pride is of the basest quality. King Cophetua was not ashamed of his beggar-maid. He knew his own power to exalt the woman of his choice. Mrs. Robinson is only too good for Mordanto, who will be half a madman to the end of the chapter.

Welcome to Lavendale Manor, my northern princess. 'Tis but a faded old mansion for you, who are used to such splendours--"

"Do not speak of them," she said hurriedly, "forget that I have ever known them. Would to G.o.d my own memory were a blank! Ah, there is your young friend Mrs. Durnford smiling welcome at me, and her clever husband, too;" and Lady Judith ran into the house, and was presently embracing Irene, whom she had not seen since last winter.

Lady Polwhele and the two other ladies had stayed by the coach all this time, squabbling with the two maids, who had travelled in the rumble, and who were broadly accused of having left nearly everything behind, because this or that precious consignment could not be produced on the moment.

"I feel certain my jewel-case is lost!" exclaimed the Dowager, "and if it is I am a ruined woman; for it contains some of the very finest of the family diamonds, which are heirlooms, and must be given up to my son's wife whenever he marries. I wouldn't so much have minded my own rubies and emeralds, though the ruby necklace is worth a small fortune; and to think that careless hussy should have forgotten where she put it!"

"Indeed, your ladyship carried it to the coach--nay, 'twas Captain Asterley carried it, and your ladyship ordered where it was to be put."

"Ifackens, so I did, wench!" cried the Dowager, who was very vulgar when she was in a good temper. "'Tis on the floor of the coach, Lyddy, and I had my feet on it all the way down. Lord, what a no-memory I have, child!" tapping Mrs. Lydia Vansittart archly with her fan, and ignoring the falsely-accused abigail, who stood by with an aggrieved countenance.

"I rejoice to hear your ladyship's memory is bad," said Lavendale, approaching the group with his courtly air, at once debonair and stately, "for in that case I dare hope you will forget the poverty of your entertainment at Lavendale Manor, and remember only how enchanted its master was to have you under his roof."

"Poverty, my dear Lavendale! Your house has a delightful air, and I am going to be ravished with everything I see in it. There is nothing so agreeable, to my ideas, as a fine old mansion which time has sobered down to a prevailing sombreness--the mellow colouring of centuries. I hate your newly-built and newly-appointed house, with its Italian pediment and marble floors, and its draughty comfortless rooms. Give me a house that my ancestors have aired for me. A man who inhabits a house of his own building must feel like Adam, as if he had never had a father."

They were all in the hall by this time, and Lady Polwhele was warming her feet, which were one of her good points, at the log fire, turning about the little velvet slippers with a coquettish air, now making a Bristol diamond buckle flash in the firelight, and now bringing into play an instep exaggerated by a three-inch heel.

Lady Judith had flung herself into a chair, and had thrown off her hat carelessly, letting the loose disordered hair fall as it would about her face and neck. She had unfastened the fur-trimmed coat, revealing the snowy whiteness of swan-like throat and bust, and the glitter of a diamond cross, half veiled by a cloud of Mechlin lace. She was leaning back in her chair, sipping a cup of tea, which Irene had just brought her from the saloon, and looking admiringly round at the old hall, with its family portraits and family armour and floodtide worn last at Sedgemoor, and dusty with the dust of a generation.

The other three women crowded round the fire, Captain Asterley with them. His City wife had seen a good many grand houses since her marriage, and would not commit herself by admiring this one, lest it should be supposed she was overawed by its grandeur.

"There was a turn of the road in your park that reminded me of Canons,"

she told Lavendale.

"My park is but a paddock when compared with the Duke's demesne, my dear Mrs. Asterley; but I am flattered that even a branch of one of my trees should recall that splendid seat. Did you stay long at Canons?"

"N-no, not very long," faltered Mrs. Asterley, who had been admitted to the ducal palace by a side-wind of favour, to see the pictures.

Mrs. Vansittart was in raptures with Lavendale Manor. She affected a kind of hoydenish enthusiasm, rode to hounds, adored the country, pretended to know a great deal about farming, and was altogether of a masculine type of young lady.

"I hope there will be some fox-hunting while we are with your lordship,"

she said, "and that you can find me some kind of creature to ride. I am not particular; anything, from a G.o.dolphin colt to your bailiff's gray Dobbin, will suit me."

"We will try to find you something better than gray Dobbin, if even we cannot promise you the G.o.dolphin blood," answered Lavendale pleasantly.

"If the frost grows no harder, the hounds will meet on Flamestead Common early on Boxing Day; but I fear you will have a good many of the rabble out that morning to follow on foot."

"O, I do not mind the rabble. I am a Republican, and admire old Noll Cromwell better than any hero in history, though he was hardly personable enough for me to be in love with his shade. It has always been a wonder to me that we did not make an end of kings and queens altogether when good Queen Anne died. Instead of making all that fuss about Settlement and Succession, the Whigs should have taken the government into their own hands, elected Robert Walpole as their head, and carried on the affairs of the nation as easily as the Lord Mayor manages the City. Was ever anything so preposterous as to send for an elderly German, who knew not one word of our language, to rule over us, just because he was a lineal descendant of King James I.?"

"O, but we couldn't get on without a king," cried Mrs. Asterley. "I love the look of the King's gilt coach and eight, or his gilt chair, with six footmen walking in front, and a body of soldiers behind. 'Tis one of the prettiest sights in London. And would you have no Drawing-rooms, and no birthnight b.a.l.l.s, and no illuminations, and no trumpeters, and no beefeaters, when the King goes to the play?"

"We should get on just as well without any such raree-shows," said Mrs.

Lydia contemptuously. "Give me a Roman Forum and Consuls elected by the people."

"Nay, child, I'm sure the Romans were no better off than we are, from anything I can hear of their Neros and their Caligulas," protested the Dowager; "and I quite agree with Mrs. Asterley that a Court is an indispensable inst.i.tution. We must have somebody to make a fuss about, and though I allow that Germans are mostly savages, I am sure Queen Caroline is the nicest woman I know."