Part 4

Barbara had not gone ten steps before she heard a slight sound behind her like the rustle of a skirt. Startled though she may have been, she betrayed nothing, but moved on with every sense alert. That some one was close behind her she felt assured. Her hand was on the latch of her mother’s door before her suspicions began to be confirmed.

She pushed the door open and crossed the threshold; yet though the room was in utter darkness, she felt instinctively that it was empty. Turning slowly so that she faced the door, she saw the outline of a figure framed there against the dim glow of the moonlight that filled the gallery.

Barbara stood motionless awhile, making no sign or sound, and then walked straight toward the door. The figure faltered a moment before gliding aside. Barbara passed it, her eyes fixed as on some dreamy distance, her face blank and expressionless, her step unhurried. As she passed back along the gallery she felt that the figure was following her, and knew that it was a woman, and that woman Mrs. Jael.

Still statuesque as one walking in her sleep she re-entered her room, closed the door, locked it, and moved toward the window. She stood there a moment, motionless, and if she saw anything in the garden beneath her she betrayed no feeling and no conscious life. Before the clocks had chimed the half-hour she was in her bed again, but not to sleep.

By the door leading into the garden two shadowy figures were whispering together.

“She was asleep?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Are you sure?”

“She walked past me as though I was not there. I have seen such a thing before, yet it gave me a fright.”

“And she went to my room, Jael?”

“It was as dark as a cupboard, my lady. No one could have told that it was empty—even if they had been awake.”

The sky was a brave blue next morning, and the air full of the scent of summer when Barbara came down to the little parlor that looked out on the garden. Her air of lethargy had a touch of gentleness to soften it. Anne Purcell was already at the table. A plate of cherries and a flask of red wine added color to the prosaic usefulness of pie and bacon.

Anne Purcell glanced at her daughter with momentary and questioning distrust. The girl’s face betrayed no more self-consciousness than the great white loaf on the trencher near her mother. She sat down, glanced over the table listlessly, and then through the window where the sun was shining.

“You look tired, Barbe?”

An insinuating friendliness approached her in the mother’s voice.

“Tired?—I slept all night. How fresh the garden looks! I feel I should like a drive in the park to-day.”

“Yes; you want more interest—more bustle in your life.”

“Perhaps I should have fewer moods—”

“Take some wine, dear,” and she pushed the flask toward her. “Why not trust yourself to me a little more? We are not all so melancholy.”

“I might only spoil your pleasure.”

“Nonsense. I should enjoy life more if you had a happier face.”

VIII

Set a thief to catch a thief, and a woman to unravel the character of a woman. Such was the aphorism my Lord Gore had bestowed in confidence upon Hortense when he had bequeathed Anne Purcell’s daughter to the Italian’s cleverness. If there were anything beneath that sullen and lethargic surface, Hortense would discover it, and perhaps resurrect the girl’s instinct to laugh and live.

Few guests met in the painted salon that summer evening: three girls of Barbara’s age, an elderly knight with sharp, humorous eyes, a sentimental widow, and Hortense. The windows were open toward the park, where dull, rain-ladened clouds shut out the stars. A few shaded candles in sconces along the walls made a glimmering twilight in the room, and in one corner a little brazen lamp burned perfumed oil, so that the air was richly scented.

A girl stood singing beside the harpsichord when Anne Purcell and her daughter entered the salon. Hortense herself was accompanying the song, while those who listened were like figures in a picture, each with a shadowy individuality of its own. There was an atmosphere of opulence and sensitive refinement about the scene. The breeze of youth had been banished and the salon made sacred to musing maturity.

Hortense excelled in the art of welcoming a friend. Even the flowing lines of her figure could put forth an intoxicating graciousness that fascinated women as well as men. She suggested infinite sympathy, yet infinite shrewdness. Strangers might have mistrusted her if she had shown only the one or the other.

My Lady Anne looked commonplace beside Hortense. Her smile had a crude affectation of good-will that did not completely conceal latent distrust and jealousy. The Englishwoman was there with a purpose, and a purpose is often one of the most difficult things on earth to smother. It was in the daughter that Hortense discovered a vacant unapproachableness, a callous apathy that piqued her interest. The girl was not gauche, despite her silence. It was as though her individuality refused to mingle with the individuality of others.

Hortense disposed of my lady by setting her to chat with the grim old gentleman in the big periwig, whose interest in life gravitated between the latest piece of learned gossip he might pick up at the meetings of the Royal Society and the lighter, more glittering gossip of Whitehall. My lady could at least satisfy him in the lighter vein. The three girls were given a pack of cards and a table in a corner; the sentimental widow—some new book. Hortense herself drew Barbara aside toward one of the windows, as though she was the one person whom she chose to actively amuse.

The prelude between them resembled a game of chess in which one player made tentative moves to which the other blankly refused to respond. A series of challenges provoked nothing but monosyllabic answers. Hortense had no difficulty, as a rule, in persuading even dull or frightened people to talk. There were the many mundane topics to be invoked when necessary: clothes, music, books, men, amusements—and other women.

“Mère de Dieu!” she confessed to herself, at last, “the child is impenetrable. There is a magic spring in every mortal. I have not touched it—here—as yet.”

She studied Barbara with the easy air of the woman of the world who does not betray the glance behind the eyes.

“And who is your great friend—in England, cara mia? We women must always have a confidential mirror, though it does not always tell us the truth. When I was quite young I used to write down all my thoughts and adventures in a book. Some of us make friends with our own souls—in our diaries.”

Barbara looked at her as though all the Italian’s subtle suggestiveness beat on nothing more intelligent than the blank surface of a wall.

“Do you keep a diary, madam?”

Hortense laughed.

“Oh, life is my diary, and then—I write on the faces of those I meet.”

“Do you—how?”

“You must guess my meaning.”

“I can never guess anything.”

“How dull! Have you travelled much—with your mother?”

“My mother?”

“Yes. Is she not charming? so young—and Junelike! She should promise you a long youth.”

“I do not care whether she does or not.”

“Then you have not learned to envy her?”

“What have I to envy?”

Hortense paused, with a momentary gleam of impatience in her eyes.

“Has the child any enthusiasm? Let us try her on another surface. Do you remember your father, cara mia?”

Barbara’s eyes met the Mancini’s with a sudden intense stare.

“My father?”

“He was a great scholar, was he not?”

“Yes.”

“Books become such friends to us! Did he teach you—at all?”

“Oh, sometimes. He was very patient. How dark the sky looks!”

Hortense smiled. She had a suspicion that she was no longer fumbling in the dark. She had touched the girl beneath her apathy and her reserve.

“Have you your father’s books—still?”

“They are in the library—covered with dust.”

“Why do you not keep the dust away by reading them. You could fancy yourself talking with him when you turned the pages he had turned.”

“Could I?”

Hortense became silent suddenly, her face turned with an expression of sadness toward the night.

“Of course. It is in our memories that we live again. The past may become a kind of religion to us.”

She did not look at the girl, but her brilliant and sensitive consciousness waited for impressions. Barbara remained motionless, with stolid, morose face.

“What clever things you think of!” she said, abruptly. “But the books are nearly all in Latin. I wish I had not eaten so much supper. It always makes me sleepy and stupid.”

Hortense turned with a sharpness that contradicted her soft and sympathetic attitude.

“Perhaps you would like some wine?”

“No, I thank you, madam. Mother made me drink half a jugful before we came. She said that it might make me talk.”

Hortense gave her one searching stare.

“Either you are very clever or very dull,” she said to herself. “I must try other methods, for I want to see you show yourself. Then—we may understand.”

It was possible that the Mancini knew that her salon would not maintain its air of Platonic tranquillity throughout the whole evening. She who queened it for the moment above a galaxy of queens could not be left long uncourted by the courtiers of her King. She was the Spirit of Wit and the Pyre of Passion for that year at least; a fire about which the moths might flutter; a Partisan of Princes; a shrewd, roguish, laughter-loving woman. She was never unwilling that a fashionable rout should storm and take possession of her house, for they came to entertain her with their nonsense and to flatter her pride by attending at her court.

A flare of links across the park, and the sound of laughter warned Hortense of a possible invasion. The torches flowed in the direction of her house, with a confusion of voices that betrayed the spirit of the invaders. Barbara, who sat watching the stream of fire, saw the link-boys running on ahead, with the glare of their torches flashing over the grass and upon the trunks of the trees, while behind these fire-flies came a stream of gentlemen in bright-colored cloaks, arguing and laughing, some of them flourishing their swords like sticks.

Hortense appealed to her guests.

“Alas! my friends, here come the court innocents with all manner of nonsense in their noddles. Shall we stand a siege?”

“You will never keep fools out of heaven, madam,” said the Fellow of the Royal Society, with a cynical sniff; “have them in, and let us moralize on the wasted energies of youth.”

“And you—my vestals?”

The girls at the card-table betrayed no immoderate shyness.

“And my Lady Purcell?”

“Should a woman be afraid of a boy’s tongue? We can clip it with our wit.”

“They are in the court-yard already, the mad children! Let us see what power music may have over them.” And she sat down at the harpsichord and began to play with great unction a dolorous chant that was familiar to serious singers of psalms.

Comus and his crew came in right merrily with a superfluity of ironical obeisances and vivid color-contrasts in their clothes. The party was headed by a figure in a black silk gown, with huge lawn ruffles at the wrists, a white periwig, and a big lace bib. Barbara recognized my Lord Gore among the gentlemen, and in the background she caught a glimpse of the brown and imperturbable face of John Gore, his son.

Hortense still fingered out her psalm as though ignoring the irruption of the world, the flesh, and the devil into her house. The three girls at the card-table sat with eyes cast down and hands folded demurely in prim laps. The grim old gentleman reclined in his chair, and stared at the intruders with the inimitable assurance of a Diogenes. Barbara remained by the window in isolation, while her mother and the widow were smiling and whispering together in a corner.

The gentry of Whitehall appreciated the satirical humor of their welcome. Hortense was laughing at them with that dolorous canticle of hers.

“Now, Thomas, where is your wit?”

“Prick the bishop’s calves, he has gone to sleep.”

They laughed and applauded as the figure in the silk gown moved forward into the room. Mr. Thomas Temple could play a variety of parts. His mimicry excelled in burlesquing the episcopate.

“My children, let peace be upon this house.” And he gave them a pompous blessing with upraised hands.

Hortense rose from the harpsichord with the assumed fire of a fanatic.

“Children of Belial!”

“Lady, pardon me, they are already qualifying as saints.”

“What sayest thou, Antichrist, thou Red Man of Rome? Woe, woe unto this city when its priests wax fat in purple and fine linen!”

The bishop extended reproving hands.

“Woman, blaspheme not! We are here to save all souls with the kiss of peace. My children, come hither. Have you been baptized?”

The three girls tittered. Hortense stood forward, flinging out one arm with a passionate gesture of scorn.

“Behold the book of the beast. Behold the Serpent without a surplice! And you—ye children of iniquity—make way for Thomas with the wine!”

There was a shout of laughter as my lord the bishop, picking up his skirts, cut a delighted caper.

“Alas, she has bewitched me! St. Sack, where art thou—oh, strengthener of my soul?”

A footman bearing a tray with flasks and glasses moved stolidly through the crowd. The mock churchman extended a protecting arm.

“Bless you, my son. Blessed are all vintners and tavern-keepers! And you, madam” (he turned to her with a stately obeisance), “our Lord the King of his nobleness hath sent us to unbind your eyes—and to lead you into the paths of light. We will baptize those innocents yonder into the one true church, even the church of Sack—and Sashes. Let all the heathen rejoice for the souls we shall save this day from the pit of prudery. No woman can be saved unless she be kissed. Amen.”

IX

For a girl to maintain her dignity in some such assemblage as that at the house of Hortense, she needed a glib tongue, an easy temper, and no prejudices with regard to the inviolate sanctity of her lips or cheek. The gentlemen of fashion had renounced the central superstition of Chivalry, while retaining some of its outward pageantry and splendor. Cynics and worldlings, they had no real reverence for woman, no belief in her honor, and little consideration for her name. She was merely a thing to be coveted, to be maligned, or to be made, perhaps, the butt of the bitterest and most unmanly ridicule. How mean and utterly contemptible those splendid gentlemen of the court could be, Anne Hyde had learned in the days before she became a duchess. So many noble fellows conspiring to swear away a woman’s honor, and fabricating unclean lies about her, in the belief they would please a prince.

Barbara remained isolated by the window, studying the scene with an expression of sulky scorn. It was her first glimpse of the gadflies of the court; their methods of attack and of torture were to her things unknown. Many of the men had prematurely aged features, harsh skins, and unhealthy eyes. Some two or three were palpably the worse for wine. And despite their rich clothes and the beauty of mere surface refinement, they brought an atmosphere of unwholesome insolence into the Italian’s salon—an insolence that made such true aristocrats as John Evelyn despair of the courts of kings.

The Mancini had drawn the mock bishop aside, and they were talking together with ironical little smiles and gestures. Barbara met Hortense’s eyes across the room. The man in the silk cassock glanced also in the same direction, and Barbara had the sudden sense of being under discussion.

The majority of the men were drinking wine at a side table, talking loudly and without an atom of restraint, as though they were in a tavern and not in the salon of a great lady. My Lord Gore and his son were the centre of a little group; the brown face of the sea-captain contrasting with the whiter skins of the idlers about town. He was glancing about the room, as though tired of being penned up in a corner by a party of fops with whom he had no sympathy. More than once his eyes met those of Barbara Purcell. They appeared to be the only two people in the room who chafed instinctively at their surroundings.

A loud voice at the door of the salon, strident and harsh, overtopped the babbling of the crowd. Heads were turned in the direction; periwigs bowed; slim swords cocked under velvet coat-tails. The commotion hinted at the entry of some great captain in the campaign of pleasure. The knot of many-colored figures fell apart, and a big man in black and silver stalked forward to salute Hortense.

It was Philip of Pembroke, the most outrageous and hot-headed aristocrat in the kingdom, a man whose own friends treated him as they would have treated an open powder-mine, and whose very friendship was often the prelude to a quarrel. Few people had the nerve to sit near him at table, for an argument was his great joy, and his method of debate was so fierce and fanatical that his arguments very frequently took the form of wine bottles and dishes, or any forcible persuader that came to hand. He would quarrel with any one, anywhere, on any topic, and appeared to cherish the conviction that the whole world had conspired to contradict him. Lean, ominous, with a fierce, intent, brown face, his sharp, snapping jowl made him appear more like a mad fanatic than a sane and stately English peer. The marvel was that a man with such a face should waste even his madness on irresponsible brawls and outrages. It was like some fierce Egyptian monk playing insane tricks in Christian Alexandria.

He saluted Hortense with his usual air of restless-eyed and explosive abruptness. She had assumed her utmost graciousness, her full feminine fascination. My lord stared at her for a moment in his queer, distrustful way, and then turned to the figure in the silk cassock.

“Well, you dull dog, how are we to be amused to-night?”

Tom Temple adopted a tone of the blandest deference.

“We have founded a mission, my lord, for the conversion of unkissed females.”

“Damnation, boy, there are none!”

“My Lord of Pembroke is a great authority.”

“Am I? Who told you that? I should like to talk with him a minute. Where are your converts, eh? By my soul, I don’t see many!”

The bishop made an unctuous gesture with his open hands.

“There are an innocent few, my lord.”

“Three pinafores and two aprons! Who’s that there—old Purcell’s widow? She is as plump as a fat hen! And the one there by the window, who’s she?”

Tom Temple appealed to Hortense.

“Anne Purcell’s daughter.”

“A sour, scratch-your-face looking wench! Zounds, Tom, begin your mission there! Go and kiss her, or I’ll knock your head against the wall.”

He laughed, as though hugely tickled, while the majority of the men, who had been listening, exchanged glances, and divided their curiosity between the girl by the window, my Lord Pembroke, and Bishop Tom.

Hortense had drawn aside, and was bending over Anne Purcell. There may have been a motive in the move. Possibly she did not wish to countenance the joke, and yet desired to profit by the information she might gain thereby.

The bishop looked embarrassed.

“If you will lend me your countenance, my lord—”

“Go and kiss her.”

“On my conscience, sir, but—”

He was drifting perilously near an argument, and the mad peer’s eyes began to sparkle. The crowd settled itself to enjoy the drama.

“Why, my lord bishop is a heretic!”

“The recusant, the Fifth Monarchy maniac! Pull his bibs off!”

Tom Temple found himself in the midst of a dilemma. On the one hand was this silent, swarthy-face girl who looked as unapproachable as a Minerva; on the other, my Lord of Pembroke, ready to explode at the slightest opposition.

“I accept your mandate, my lord.”

“Forward, then, sainted sir; I am the church militant to support the conversion.”

Tom Temple plucked up his impertinence, and approached Barbara with an air of grim solemnity. All eyes were turned in her direction. She found herself the cynosure of this mocking, sneering, mischief-loving crowd.

“My daughter, I am authorized by his Majesty, Pope of Whitehall, and by my Lord Cardinal Pembroke, here, to initiate you into the one true church. Are you, my daughter, in a fit and ready state to be converted?”

Barbara looked the young man straight in the face and said nothing.

“Have you no answer for me, my child?”

My Lord of Pembroke gave him a push from behind.

“To it, Tom, or I’ll convert her myself!”

“My Lord Cardinal, I am ready to abdicate in your favor.”

“Sophist! Kiss her, and have done.”

Tom Temple looked at Barbara and found his expiring impudence unequal to the task. A breeze of cynical laughter swept the room. The three girls had left the card-table, and were standing huddled together, giggling and glancing from Barbara to the gentlemen. Hortense and Anne Purcell had drawn aside toward the harpsichord, while the sentimental widow seemed scared.

“The church militant must intervene!”

My Lord of Pembroke jostled the mock churchman aside and faced Barbara. She had risen and was standing at her full height, an angry color flooding into her face. The peer and the lady looked each other in the eyes.

The man’s cynical yet malicious stare humiliated her, despite her wrath and her defiance. Her glance travelled over the faces that seemed to fill the room. Nowhere did she find a glimmer of pity or resentment. She was just a silly, prudish girl to them; a sulky child to be teased; a thing that piqued their cynical curiosity.

My Lord of Pembroke made her a curt bow.

“You will permit me to receive you into the bosom of our church,” he said.

She flashed a fierce stare at him, and then drew back close to the window. It was then that her eyes met the eyes of some one in the room, some one who had been standing in the background, and who was watching her with intense earnestness. She recognized John Gore. A rush of appeal and of chivalrous sympathy seemed to leap from face to face.

My Lord of Pembroke advanced a step. There was something satanic about his eyes.

“Come, little simpleton.”

He stretched out an arm, and caught her wrist roughly. But she twisted it free.

“Gently, my wild filly; we must break you to harness. Come—now—”

He was shouldered aside abruptly with a vigor that set the whole room gaping at the thunderclap that would follow. A shortish, sturdy man with a brown, imperturbable face had established himself calmly between my lord and Barbara Purcell.

“It seems, my lord, that, since you are all Christians, I am the only heathen in the room.”

The retort came instantly with a sweep of the peer’s arm. John Gore was ready for it, and put the blow aside. Half a dozen gentlemen rushed in and made a human barrier between the pair.

My Lord of Pembroke struggled like a knot of fire half smothered by damp fuel.

“Hold off, fools! Let go my arm, Howard, or by God, I’ll run my sword through you!”

They tried to pacify him, but his violent temper blazed through their words. He looked madman enough as he spat his fury over the shoulders of those who held him back. But for the inevitable steel, the scene might have been ridiculous.

“Will you fight?”

“I am at your service, my lord.”

“Come then, draw! Clear the room. Howard, you are my second.”

Hortense’s voice intervened with imperious feeling.

“Gentlemen, not in my house.”

Stephen Gore had pushed through and stood beside his son.

“Take me, Jack; keep cool, boy; the fool’s mad.”

“In the park, then.”

“Lud! but it’s raining—torrents,” said some one, peering through the window.

“Rain! Who the devil cares for rain? Tell my boys to light their links. Get me my cloak, Howard. Are you ready, sir?”

“Ready, my lord,” said John Gore. “We can use the swords we have. That is my privilege, I believe.”

X