Part 15

Chief among my favourites was a madcap young member, whose wit was never so impertinent as when, flitting here and there for an opportunity, it could prick the sides of some great parliamentary bull, and elicit a roar for its pains. He was that Mr. Roper who, indeed, went so far, on somebody’s instigation, as to tease the great Mr. Pitt himself on certain measures introduced for the betterment of the Roman Catholics, and who, in consequence, redeemed himself a little, it was whispered, in the eyes of high personages with whom he had long been in disgrace. His father was Robert Lord Beltower, that deplorable old nobleman who was reported early in life to have staked his honour on some trifling issue, and lost; and who always described himself as living a posthumous life, since he had been carried off by a petticoat in the fifteenth year of his age. Father and second son (the heir to the title, Lord Roper of Loftus, was eminently respectable and pious) were known as Bob Major and Bob Minor; and, indeed, apart or together, could ring the changes on some very pretty tunes. But the minor, who had been a scapegrace page at court and early dismissed, was _my enfant gâté_, as well for his wit and information as for a daring that recked nothing of the deuce itself. He owned to no party, and as to his principles, “Why,” said he, “I throw up my hat to the best shot, and that isn’t always to the heavenly marksman. I have known the devil score some points in charity.”

He never truckled to me, which was perhaps one of the reasons of my favour; but was like a licensed brother--a relationship I had come to regard. Indeed, he most offended me by his outrageous independence of my partialities.

“Hey! Come, rogue, rogue!” sniggered his father to him once, on the occasion of some abominable impertinence; “you go too far. What the devil means this disrespect to our goddess? You’ll be pricked, egad, one of these days, like that fellow Atlas, or Actæon, or what the devil was his name, that was tore for his impudence.”

The son bowed to the sire, quoting Slender’s words to Shallow: “‘I will marry her, sir, at your request; but if there be no great love in the beginning, yet Heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another: I hope, upon familiarity will grow more contempt; but if you say “Marry her,” I will marry her, that I am freely dissolved, and dissolutely.’”

“Why, you villain,” said his lordship, with a grin, “if you’re the devil quoting Scripture, I’m done with you.”

“Nay, sir,” said the other, “you flatter yourself. I quote no better than my father.”

“No better, you dog! And how?”

“Why, sir, wasn’t it you taught me that the more one sees of a woman the less one respects her?”

“I?”

“’Twas _à propos_ the Chudleigh, sir, you may remember, whom you met at Ranelagh--in ’49, I think it was--undressed as Iphigenia. She came clothed in little but her virtue, and caught a bad cold a-consequence. You may have forgot the moral of your sermon, sir, but I, as a dutiful son, have stored it.”

“Hang you, Bob! What moral?”

“Why, sir, that a woman dreads exposure in nothing but her weakness to stand the test of it. If she’s a peculiar fineness anywhere, she’ll take some means to let you know.”

“Then, sir,” cried I, with a flaming face, “I pride myself on nothing so much as my hand!”--and I brought it down stingingly on his ear.

“But I don’t want your hand,” he cried, stamping about, while his father roared, “Didn’t I tell you as much?”

Nevertheless, we were fast comrades, and together in some captivating peccancies, of which I only learned to rue the publicity when they led to my undoing.

Mr. Roper, as I have said, found a particular delight in galling--_on somebody’s instigation_--the sides of the promoters of the new pro-Papish Bills. Well, I will ask you, what did I owe to that Church? Was it likely that my treatment at its hands had left any love between us, or that I should wish its disabilities removed, who had suffered so much from it muzzled? I had been educated, under its shadow, to a full understanding of its juggleries and impostures. Now was the time, the country being still in a ferment over its heir-apparent’s alleged marriage with the Fitzherbert, to relate my experiences.

There was at that date published in London a little fashionable scapegrace of a paper called the _World_, the property of a Major Topham, who made it the vehicle for such a _chronique scandaleuse_ as the town had never yet known; and in this paper I began (by preconcert with my political ally) to disclose, over the signature “Angélique,” the true story and circumstances of a certain beautiful young lady, who had been practised upon, and in the very heart of Protestant England, by a worse than Spanish Inquisition. The series, cautiously as I began by handling it, made an immediate sensation, and was, you may be sure, deftly engineered in the House by Mr. Roper for the Opposition. Moreover, “Angélique”--which delighted me as much--gave her sweet and melancholy name to a mourning gauze, which was so pretty that I had to kill an aunt to give me a title to wear it. At the same time her instant popularity made me tremble for my incognito, which, nevertheless, I knew to be the major’s very best asset in a profitable bargain. Still, not even his tact could altogether explain away the association of ideas implied in Mr. Roper’s common friendship with me and with that poor persecuted anonymity; and that I had made myself by no means so secure as Junius was a fact disagreeably impressed upon me on a certain evening.

I had been entertaining late that night, when his lordship entered unexpected. He came from St. James’s and from playing backgammon with the king, and wore his orders on a pearl-silk coat and, for contrast, a mighty scowling face over. I took no heed of him as he walked up the room towards me, humping his shoulders, and acknowledging wintrily the salutations of my little court, but went on laughing and rallying a dear little ensign Percy, with whom I was in love just then, _pour faire passer le temps_. However, the boy could not stand the inquisition of the red eyes, and joked himself into other company, with a blush and a bow to the ogre; at which I laughed, lolling back in my chair.

“Well, madam,” said Hardrough, knuckling his snuff-box softly, “when you can vouchsafe me a moment of your attention.”

I recognised the compelling tone in his voice, and rose, with a little show of indolence.

“O!” I said, yawning, “what sin has found me out now? I vow it can never be so ugly as it looks.”

He gave me his arm, mighty ceremonious, and, conducting me into an antechamber, shut the door.

“That is for you to prove,” he said, taking snuff, and stood glaring into my soul. “So, madam,” he said, “you are for setting your little teeth into the hands that have warmed you?”

I sat down, fluttering my fan, and pretty pale, I daresay. But I was not surprised. My conscience had pricked me at the first sight of his face. He pulled from his pocket a copy of the damning sheet, and “Tell me,” says he, “if His Majesty was justified in asking me if this did not refer to some member of my family?”

I did not answer, and he threw the paper on the floor.

“Well, you are condemned,” he said drily; and at that I found my wits.

“Condemned?” I cried. “By whom? Why, my lord, how can you, being of the Court party and in Opposition, condemn an anti-papish tract?”

“That is all very well,” he said acridly; “but the stone once set rolling against a house, who knows who may be included in the ruin?”

I knew very well, of course, to what he referred; for had he not been subsidised by his sister (and during the time, too, when he had figured hottest against Catholic emancipation) into overlooking the establishment by her, in the very heart of his estate, of that community of Sisters whose complicity in my abduction I was bent upon exposing? And was I not aware, too, that the appointment he coveted to a vacant garter trembled at the moment in the balance of such revelations? O, I held some strings, my friend, you may believe! though at present I had the opposite to any inducement to pull this particular one.

“Why, Nunky!” I cried, “is not this, your succour and protection of madam’s poor victim, the best proof of your orthodoxy?”

He regarded me grimly, but with some shadow of returning good-humour.

“That’s true enough,” he said, “so long as you use _me_, if at all, for no worse than to point the moral of _her_ damnation.”

“Why should I not? ’Tis my interest to, at least.”

“Ha!” he said; “there you speak. And stap me if I love you the less for it.”

He took a turn or two, and came back grinning.

“They’re damn clever, Di: there, I’ll admit they’re damn clever! But ’tis a perilous game you play, my girl; and you’ll do well to take care you play it to none but your own interests.”

He went off again, and returned.

“Harkee!” he said; “there’s Beltower’s whelp, and--and I don’t care a fig for your predilections. Work your oracle as you will; only be faithful to me, and you won’t suffer for’t in the end.”

He finished in such spirits that he was moved to show me a letter he had received from his sister but a few days before. In it she upbraided him for his treachery,--of which she only recently had certain information--in converting his capture of me to such infamous account; and called upon him, as he valued his soul, to turn his Jezebel adrift again to her merited deserts.

“_Enfin_,” I said, handing him back the effusion, “for a respectable lady she shows a vigorous vocabulary. She writes in London, I see.”

He chuckled like a demon.

“She writes in hell, and bites the more viciously for her roasting. ’Tis that fellow has led her here, dancing after some new fancy of his; and, by God, she’s paid for her stubbornness, and must vent her spite on someone.”

“Well,” I said, “tell her so from me; and that, for my part, I’d rather be Jezebel than what came to lap her blood.”

At which he neighed, vowing he’d take me at my word.

XXII. I RUN ACROSS AN OLD FRIEND

It has always been my fate to suffer most at the hands of my best friends; and now it was to be my dearest, my little sister, who was to shoot her arrow over the house and wound me. In innocence, Heaven forgive her; and, in forgiving, answer to itself for making me the unconscious instrument of its retribution.

It was in the third year of my “minority,” and while in the full zest of my conspiracy with young Roper, that one night we made up a party for Vauxhall Gardens, and crossed from Whitehall Stairs--very merry with French horns and lanterns and a little Roman boy, Ugolino, who sang like an angel--to witness the new picture of a tempest in the cascade house. This we had seen, and were gone for supper into one of the boxes (which Bob called the loose boxes) in a retired corner of the grove, when occurred the _contretemps_ which was to change the whole face of my fortunes. I had observed, without marking them, a couple enter the adjoining booth, and was bawling my part in a catch, while waiting for the chickens and cheesecakes, when a fellow put his head round the partition, and, kissing his dirty hand with a leer, “Beg pardon, leddies,” says he, “but I can supplement that ’ere chaunt with a better”--and immediately, disappearing from sight, began to bang the table beyond and to roar out a filthy ballad.

Roper leapt to his feet--there was a crowd lingering by, attracted by our merriment--and ran round to the front.

“Stop, you sot!” screamed he, “or I’ll nail your ears to the table!”

The fellow ceased dead, and in a moment came staggering out with a furious face. He was a coarse, blotched ruffian, and as drunk as David’s sow.

“What, the ’ell,” said he, lurching up his words; “ain’t one song as good as another in this here bordel, mister?”

Bob struck like Harlequin, and the wretch went down. I had once before heard the smack of flesh on flesh, and it made my blood jump.

There was a fine uproar: we had all risen to our feet; and in the midst I observed the girl (we had forgot the creature had a companion) slip out of the box and away, taking advantage of the confusion to mix with the crowd. I just saw her white face melt from me, and gave one gasp, and started in pursuit. My companions called; but I took no notice, and was lost in a moment.

She was making for the Druid’s Walk, unheeding my cries in her blindness. But in a little she began to falter, and then to sway, and I came up with her, and caught her into my arms.

“Patty!” I whispered, frantic, “Patty!”

She looked at me quite dumb and bewildered, the poor thing; and then sighed, and mechanically put her hair back from her temples.

“Patty!” I urged again, “don’t you know me?”

And at that, all of a sudden she had burst into tears, and was clinging to me.

“Is it you, Diana?” she sobbed, “really you at last? O, I have so longed, since we came, and I knew you was here in London! Take me away; don’t let me be carried back.”

She was near choking me with her arms.

“Hush!” I said. “What have they been doing with you? Pish, child! that was never--no, no; with all your softness, you couldn’t be such a fool. Who the deuce was it, then? Now, don’t answer; but come with me where we can talk.”

We were already being accosted and offered genteel squiring. The child held to me, terrified, while I laughed, and convoyed her in safety to the open, where we were lucky to encounter one of my party.

“Is it over?” I asked.

“O, faith!” he answered, quizzing my friend, “the manster’s floored; and Parseus refreshing himself on Roman panch; and here, by my soul, ’s Andrameda come to give thanks to her presarver.”

“Well,” I said, “Andromeda’s in better hands for the present; so you must e’en take us where we can talk private, while you mount guard.”

He looked mightily astonished; but, obeying, conducted us to the farthest limits of the grounds--where was little company but the keepers, put to restrain interlopers from the fields beyond--and there set us on a seat, and withdrew. And the moment we were alone, I took the girl and held her at arm’s length.

She was the same as ever, though her figure grown a thought too full for perfection, perhaps. But there were the soft, bashful eyes, and the naïve face, too white under its dark hair, that I loved so well.

“So,” I said, nodding my head, “we meet again, like the town and country mice. And are you still under her dominion, you little brown frump?”

She could not have enough of wondering, and fondling me, and weeping; but her inarticulateness filled me with a horrible foreboding.

“What!” I cried, giving her a little shake; “don’t tell me, miss, that--but, no, I won’t hear it! ’Tis grotesque beyond reason.”

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

I looked searchingly into her eyes.

“No,” I said, reassured; “there are the same unborn babies there. But who, then, was that brute you ran from?”

She put her arms round my neck.

“He--he is a groom of madam’s, and high in favour with her because a good Catholic. She bids me listen to him; and--and I don’t know what she means, Diana, or what he means. He is a coarse and violent man--sometimes. But she forces me into his company, and to see the town together. And O, Diana! I am almost sure he drinks too much.”

I burst into a laugh.

“You should be whipped for the slander, child. But I suspect the truth. We don’t run but from those we have a partiality for. Watch Moll and Meg at dragging-time in the fairs.”

She cried “Diana!” and, looking up horrified into my face, read its mockery, and, gasping out, “I am very unhappy,” fell away from me.

“You poor little creature!” I cried, fiercely moved by her distress; “if _you_ don’t know what madam means, _I do_. ’Tis the way with the quality to pension off their discarded fancies on Jack or Molly.”

She showed by her manner that she did not understand me, but my indignation would not let me explain. Moreover, I was too satisfied with my own solution to wish it contradicted.

“Never mind,” I said, stamping my foot. “Tell me everything--every word.”

Then it all came out in a flood: How, since my removal, madam had visited more and more upon her innocent head the trespasses of her poor little friend and sister; how this habit, vindictive at the best, had grown into a very fury of spite (which I laughed much to hear about) when de Crespigny’s wandering fancy had begun (as it inevitably had) to turn from the hop-pole, which had invited it to be wreathed about itself, to the ripe little sapling growing so snug beside; how, in her jealousy, my lady had driven her below stairs, and at last made her altogether consort with the servants as her proper peers, who had only been lifted by her generosity out of the gutter; how, not content with this, literal, debasement, she had thought further to soil her by forcing upon her the reversion of her tipsy _cavaliere servente_ (as, anyhow, I chose to think him), a tyranny which had at last driven the soft little creature to despair and rebellion. So she told me all, though with less force and conviction, poor simplicity, than I have chosen to put into her relation.

“And you was gone--and how did you escape, Diana?--and I hated Mr. de Crespigny as much as I hate this one--and it all makes no difference, and I don’t know how I can bear it longer,” she cried, in a breath.

“Very well, then,” I said, and looked sternly at her. “You must find the courage to run away.”

I had thought that the very suggestion would make her faint; but instead, to my surprise, a rose of colour flew to her pale cheeks.

“Yes,” she whispered. “If I only knew where!”

O, fie on madam! She must have been a cruel task-mistress, indeed!

“There!” I said, “you naughty little thing! But confess to me first what you have heard tell about your sister.”

“What does that matter,” she murmured, hanging her head, “when nothing in the world can ever alter my love for you?”

I took her in my arms, and touched her little simple toilette into shape here and there.

“You are very desperate, in truth, child. What do you say--will you risk all, and come and be my duenna? You are older than I, sure, and shall defend your little sister from slander. I will get the earl to consent, if you will say yes.”

She seemed beyond answering, but could only cling to me in a kind of frenzied rapture.

“And I will make a fine bird of my Jenny Wren,” I said, still busy with her; “for she has a thousand pretty little modest graces which will do me a vast credit in the dressing. You shall keep your natural hair, miss, for powder, since the tax, is not _à la mode_ with the best; but a gentleman’s arm--_le cas échéant_--would never go round this waist by three inches.”

I peeped, with a smile, into her face.

“O, if I only dared!” she sighed.

“Sir Benjamin,” I cried, rising instantly, “escort us to the gates, please, and call a coach.”

An hour later I broke upon his lordship’s privacy.

“Nunky,” I cried, “I want permission for a new toy, please.”

He looked up askew. He was in the hands of his valet.

“I have been taking thought for my reputation,” I said, “and desire a duenna.”

He screwed out a laugh and an oath.

“I’ll have no old hags about.”

“’Tis a young hag but a little older than myself. Will you let me?”

“No, I won’t.”

“It will please me.”

“No.”

“It will spite Lady Sophia to death.”

“Curse it, you viper! I’ll think about it.”

“Very well. I’ll bring her to be introduced.” And, before he could remonstrate, I was gone.

We found him in demi-toilette when I returned, dragging my reluctant baggage with me, like a lamb to the slaughter. She was as terrified as if ’twere for him I coveted her, and not for myself. He started, seeing her, and came and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Well, I vow,” said he, “’tis a toy for a king. Whence come you, child? From my sister? She was wise to dismiss you, egad!”

XXIII. I AM MADE FORTUNE’S MISTRESS

I have ruled myself all my life to be none but Fortune’s mistress. Let who will question it, the gift of fine clothes has never bought my independence. Honesty, as the little plant of that name tells us, may go dressed in satin. And, as with me, so would I have it with my sister.

I was not long in discovering that I had erred in bringing her to Berkeley Square, though I will not, for her sake, detail the processes of my enlightenment. Let it suffice to say that the nobleman, my guardian, was not exactly intellectual. He was one of those who, like Tony Lumpkin, reckon beauty by bulk; and in that respect, it is certain, Patty could more than fill my place with him. She had no notion, of course, dear innocent, that she was being invited to do so. She was all blindness and affection; but that made it none the less my duty to save her the consequences of her own simplicity, seeing how it was I had unwittingly brought it imperilled. The worldly may sneer and welcome. That I _did_ preserve her, and at the last cost to myself, is the only proof needed of that same disinterested honesty which in the beginning had welcomed her, without a selfish second thought, to its arms.

Now, the moment I realised my mistake, I set myself to combat its results. I think I may say I gave my lord some _mauvais quarts d’heure_. He, for his part, when I thought it time to throw off the mask, did not spare me insult and brutality. In very disdain I will not report the quarrel. And all the while the silly child its subject trembled apart, in an atmosphere she felt but could not understand, while the shepherdess and the butcher disputed for her possession.

At length came the climax. One day, at the end of a furious scene, he told me roundly that he had had enough of me, and that it would be well for me to agree to commute my proposed settlement for--for what? A sum that was less than a valet’s pension. I refused it; I refused everything. Let that at least speak in my vindication. He assured me that in that case I had nothing further to expect from him. The dotard! Did he laugh when I told him, perfectly quietly, that I quite understood that the debt was mine, and that I should pay it? Did he still count himself the better tactician, when I affected to be terrified over my own rashness, and to slink away from him to lament and reconsider?

I went straight to my bedroom, where for an hour or two I sat writing. At the end, I despatched two letters, one to the _World_, one to Mr. Roper, who lived hard by, and whose reply I set myself to await with what philosophy I could muster. It came in a little; and then, singing, I sought out Patty, in the pretty boudoir that was hers of late. She flew to greet me, and coaxed me to a couch. The moment we were seated, I hushed her head into my breast.

“Patty,” I whispered, “do you love the earl?”

I could feel her breath stop, then recover itself in wonder.

“He is so good to us, Diana--like a father. And I had always lived in such terror of his mere name. How easily we may be deceived.”

“Yes, child,” I answered. “How easily--how easily.”

Her pulses answered to my tone, I could feel again. She slipped upon her knees before me, and clasping her hands looked up, dumbly questioning, into my face.

“You are so simple, _ma mignonette_; I hardly know how to tell you,” I began pitifully.

“Tell me! O, what, Diana? I am frightened.”

“I wish you to be. Patty”--I took her two entreating hands into one of mine, and with the other made a significant gesture--“all this--these little costly gifts--has it never occurred to you, child, that they are bribes”-- I stopped.

“To me?” she whispered, with a whole heart of astonishment.

“To your honour, child.”

“To--?”

She gulped, and turned as pale as death.

“He has promised to show you his Richmond cottage?”

“Yes.”

“To-night?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Never mind. I know. You must not go.”

“How can I help it? Diana!”