Читать книгу The Chaste Diana - Elizabeth Louisa Moresby - Страница 10

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HE fair widow,” as my Lord Baltimore had complimented her, the Lady Fanny Armine, sat next morning in negligée in her fine boudoir in Pall Mall, surrounded by all the fashionable frippery of the finest of fine ladies whose gold is as bright as her eyes. Porcelains from Nankin, china gods and monkeys of equal grinning ugliness, chessmen from India in cherry and white ivory, adorned the costly Japan cabinets. Toys from the ends of the earth to please my Lady Fanny—and ’tis to be thought they failed to please her for she never looked their way, but writ and writ, heedless also of the letters and billets that strewed the carpet about her. For this lady might have said with the fair Millamant— “O ay,—letters. I am persecuted with letters. One has ’em one does not know why. They serve to pin up one’s hair.” Indeed she put them to little nobler use than this, or the voider beside her desk. Love-letters, you perceive! But ’twas no love-letter she writ now, but one to a lady she loved—that never failed her in trouble or pleasure. In fine, a most unfeminine friend and cousin, in that she could be trusted with a secret, could give impartial counsel, and never grumble when ’twas not heeded, nor say “I told you so,”—when the inevitable result followed. In short an Irish pearl—her cousin Lady Desmond. But hear the letter. ’Tis revealing.

“My Kitty, my heart’s delight, as the song has it, here’s the long-expected billet from your fond cousin. I was detained late at the Court last night whither I went after Lady Lansdowne’s drum, and so could not seclude myself for a word with my cousin of cousins. But the merry morn is here, and here am I in negligée and my chocolate beside me, for a word with my Lady Desmond, my dear, dear Kitty. And Mrs. Clayton, who shortly proceeds to Ireland to join her episcopal husband and open all your eyes with her coach and six and yellow liveries, hath promised me to take this letter, and if she be not drowned in the crossing that vile water to place it in my Kitty’s own fair hand.

“Well, you would have the news, says you, and I won’t fail. The first news is,—Kitty, ’tis good to be a widow! Don’t pull a long face, Madam, but consider. You, ’tis true, love your Sir Richard. I was but sixteen when my uncle married me to the hobgoblin that swept me down to Cornwall and to a Castle Raggedy that the old miser had the money to set in luxury and would not. O Kitty, my life there!—I a blooming girl of sixteen and he sixty! If ’twas wrote in a book who should believe it? Didn’t I cry so excessively that nearly all the blue was washed out of my eyes and left them the colour of skim milk? Lord, when I think of my days—and nights, and he as jealous of all the booby squires about as though they were Sir Harry Wildairs—every man jack of ’em. Avaricious, my dear. If we had a chicken to our dinner, a roast was not allowed on the same table. My jailor—my tyrant, but surely no husband, yet I played him no prisoner’s tricks. (That’s known to you.) ’Tis no manner of good for you, Kitty, to say as you said before in your tender concern for me— And why would you take the brute? Ah, don’t you recall my uncle and his pride and haughtiness, and when he commanded me what could I do but obey? Had I been a fortune—had I had any living soul to speak for me I had been Fanny Clavering still,—But Mr. Armine’s interest in Cornwall was needful to my uncle’s party in the House of Commons and I must needs pay the piper. Well, ’tis over now. I had but four years of it, but the great abhorrence I had for Mr. Armine made it seem like forty, and when I was left to my own guidance at twenty—two years since, I dare swear I felt myself a woman of forty in all but looks.

“Looks, Kitty! I see you laughing across the Irish Ocean. Well, without vanity I will own my looks passable. The American Prince last night at Lady Lansdowne’s drum was so good as to say:

“ ‘Lady Fanny, here’s poor Mr. Rich, the manager, ravaging all the town for a heroine for Mr. Gay’s new piece to be produced in Portugal Street. For her qualifications he needs beauty of the sparkling order, an exquisite bloom like an apple-blossom in dew. Eyes like the sky above it, lips borrowed from the neighbouring cherry tree. Hair—he did not determine whether it must be spun gold or chestnut, but I am at this moment convinced that chestnut is the only wear. This paragon’s bosom must resemble spring hawthorn in hue and fragrance——’

“ ‘In short,’ says I, interrupting, ‘she is a vegetable beauty, since all your similes are drawn from the garden. I imagine her not difficult to find on any farm. A country wench all curds and cream.’

“ ‘ ’S’death! you laugh me out of countenance eternally,’ says his Highness. ‘But, for all your jibes, poor Mr. Rich is distracted and he swears the play that will delight the town is dead as mutton if he can’t find the lady. Poor man! And here she sits before me radiant as Hebe—am I not blinded with her rays?—and as far out of the poor soul’s reach as if in the heaven she’s native to!’

“I took it, my dear Kitty, as a compliment to my clothes rather than myself, for I had on my white poudesoy embroidered with gold, and rose ribbons with pearl in my head, and ’twas acknowledged it became me very well.

“ ‘Not even to oblige you, my Lord, which must ever be my chief study,’ I cried, ‘can I consent to mince and flutter on the stage. I’m told that though you gentlemen do favour the company there, the ladies are—well, their morality is not highly starched, (‘Is it here?’ he interrupted laughing, and motioning at Lady Cranleigh in conversation with Lady Rose, but I went on regardless.) and the gentlemen are even more forthcoming than with us. I dare not risk my character as a staid widow in such surroundings. But what shall Mr. Rich do?’

“ ‘Probably hang himself, when I inform him that your Ladyship declines the part. ’Tis not however surprising that the chief actress on a stage like this, should disdain a lower.’

“ ’Twas indeed a vast court, it being Queen Caroline’s Birthnight—the men as splendid as the women, which says much. The American Prince had half the revenues of his kingdom on his back—I never saw him look better though he is a personable man always. His coat rose-colour velvet with diamond buttons of prodigious size and the long waistcoat, white satin embroidered by Mrs. Gilson’s own hand (I know her stitch) in pink carnations and forget-me-nots. I heard the Queen remark the embroidery and ask who drew the pattern, telling him she was obliged to the company for the compliment of their Birthnight splendour. Indeed my Lord Baltimore becomes all he wears, though some prefer the graver, more manly features of his Grace of Bolton—his inseparable. So do not I, Kitty, though I love Bolton well.

“And now, now for a secret! What shall a woman do that wants a confidant? Reveal it to the butterflies here that will blurt it out to the next flower they perch on! No, forsooth— I am no such fool. But I am at this minute so sick of a secret that the mere pain forces me to be rid of it, and so I will send it across the Irish Sea, sealed in an envelope to my Kitty that hath known all my secrets since I was three years old and stole my first cake.

“ ’Tis a heart now, Kitty,—not a cake—and perhaps not so sweet, and less wholesome. ’Tis my Lord Baltimore’s. I think, I guess, I doubt, that his Lordship hath cast the eye of affection on a certain young widow—the Lady Fanny Armine. I think. I do not know. It is certain that he distinguishes me in every company, and that his words are— O, Kitty, honey, sugar—nectar perfumed with ambrosia! Indeed they are! But I would not build on that for indeed he is a male flirt if I mistake him not hugely. No—my girl,—words!—what are words? ’Tis his looks—a sort of—what shall I say? His fine eyes soften, he hesitates, dare I say he fears when he is in company with me, he whose looks never fall before the greatest sovereign in the world. When he’s with another I find his looks seek me and hover about me, when—

“But how do you interpret all this, Kitty? For heaven’s sake tell me! for I, who have dismissed—without vanity I may say as many lovers as any woman in London, can’t trust my own judgment where my Lord Baltimore is in question. I dread to be most unfashionably kind to him.... I keep my eyes dropt lest he should read in them more than I mean, and for the life of me I can’t tell my own meaning. What do I mean? Interpret for me. I would not be rash, Kitty. Do but consider my position. Free as air, a handsome fortune (’Tis as well perhaps to marry a miser since I am now repaid for all my Timon’s economies!), the high world’s admiration, cards, beaux, routs, drums, ridottos, masquerades. What more could he or any man give me? To be an American Princess—the Queen of Maryland? Yes, but, Kitty, what a figure should I cut among the savages! with half a dozen provincial ladies to dump curtseys to me? However ’tis not this, ’tis the sex—the sex! His Lordship makes an adorable lover that all the world envies. Indeed, I fear he is a better lover than ever he would be a husband. He is in my power now—Should I put myself in his? I took occasion to make some approach to this subject in regard to Mrs. Greville, married not long since:

“ ‘She had every good thing the world can show,’ says I somewhat melancholy. ‘And here she has made herself a slave to Mr. Greville whose temper is the shortest part of him (he measures near seven feet) and what’s to become of the poor lady now? Marriage! ’tis to walk into a prison and shut the door on oneself. Who should know but I that have escaped by the skin of my teeth, as the Apostle says!’

“He unfurled my fan, smiling as if to himself.

“ ‘Why she has but engaged a new servant, Madam, the foremost and most heartfelt of them all. There’s nothing of the devil in Mr. Greville. He has a heart as fine as his coat and a rent roll as long as his legs. He will not quarrel with his wife for a trifle. ’Twill be a scene of conjugal bliss from morning till night and night till morn. She has but to please him——’

“ ‘Please him!’ cries I, ‘Ah, that’s the rub! And suppose she misses the way! And will he study to please her?’

“ ‘Some ladies need but be themselves to please universally and for ever. I know one!’ says he, bowing.

“All very fine, my dear, at Court,—but at home, by the fireside! I would have said more, but Princess Emily past and stayed a minute. I never saw her look more becoming. She had a glorious stiff-bodied gown of orange and gold stuff with gold ribbons and diamonds in her head. My Lord Baltimore very gallantly got her a seat, we standing.

“ ‘I know I intrude,’ says her Royal Highness very gracious, ‘For whenever a gentleman is in talk with Lady Fanny he has the air of desiring to murder any third person who dares approach. Calm yourself however, my Lord, I design but a moment’s stay.’

“ ‘I beseech it may be all night, Madam,’ says I, ‘my Lord Baltimore is dull. He sympathizes with poor Mr. Rich, the manager that can’t find a player-woman for Gay’s new piece, and such is his sensibility he can talk of nothing else. Mr. Rich is distracted.’

“ ‘Why, there are plenty and to spare of such wenches!’ says the Princess.

“ ‘Indeed yes, Madam, but they’re all so confounded ugly. Excepting only Mrs. Oldfield who is so engaged with her General at present that she won’t look at Mr. Rich, there is not one handsomer than the Duchess of Bolton.’

“So saying he shot a look at that lady across the room and just then the Duke entered, very magnificent in purple velvet,—vastly grave and fine, and goes up to his wife, bowing low.

“ ‘Madam, how does your Grace? I trust I see you pure well?’

“The invariable ceremony! She rose and curtseyed,

“ ‘I thank your Grace. I do extreme well. I hope I see you the same?’

“He bowed and slid off to us. The strangest wedlock sure! Polite, but frosty as December. ’Tis thus and only thus they meet. I wonder would the American Prince and myself come to this favour after a year of wedlock? O Kitty, is not the risk too high for any woman? But supposing a woman loved him?—Supposing there was an emptiness in her heart every time he turned his back. Supposing she hated every woman under fifty that came near him! Kitty, I don’t say ’tis myself I speak of, but if it were—what would you say?

“Well, the crowd was so great after this that we were almost drove apart, and I declare I had been smashed and buffeted and my manteau almost torn off my back had it not been that the two gentlemen put their arms before me. Later, Princess Emily came up past me again, very pretty in her orange and gold and whispers, ‘When shall we give you joy, Lady Fanny? No question but my Lord Baltimore is caught and his fine wings clipt to some purpose. Half the world is chattering of those conquering eyes of yours. Give me the first news, your Ladyship!’ She looked very whimsically upon me and would not stay one minute for my denial, but slipt on to where the Queen stood with Sir Robert Walpole beside her—the two of them so deep in affairs of state that neither had a look for the butterfly world about them. A gay surface, but much below it that catches not the eye. She has suffering in her face, too. I doubt we have her great mind with us long, and then for the foolish pepper-headed old King with that fool Mrs. Howard to rule him, and Sir Robert’s day done! It sobered me a little, Kitty, in spite of my flutteration. Sir Robert’s a great man for all his gross tongue and his insolence to my Kitty Queensbury.

“The night closed with his Lordship squiring me to my chair. He prest my hand, and once I was seated and the roof let down, he kissed it. I could feel his lips hot upon it. I leaned forward—I would have spoke, but the chairmen saved me. They broke into a trot and so I left him standing bareheaded, among the flambeaux.

“O, were he as good as he’s handsome, Kitty!—and yet if he were, should I not weary of him as I should of sops and caudle. What do I want? I know not. I think I want a lover, but not aught so terrible as a husband. I should die of a harsh word from his lips. I want the brilliance of a bad man and the constancy of a good one. Arrant fool that I am!

“For news:—The King asked me how I had passed my time at the Bath, and stayed not for the answer. He was hobbling very gouty on a stick. The Queen had upon her half the di’monds she wore at the Coronation and was a blazing figure indeed. Lady Fanny Shirley had the prettiest dress at Court—a satin embroidered in roses—if ’twas not your humble servant’s, as some were fond to say. And that’s my pride, and here’s Lady Carteret thundering at the door and I’ve denied myself.

“That makes my news, Kitty, my dear, and in return I require a full and true account of all yours, and desire you will speech it handsomely for me to your worthy Sir Richard and bestow a kiss for me on the little heir. May he grow up to resemble his dear parents in all that is worthy.

“But counsel me, Kitty.

“Your affectionate cousin and humble servant to command,

“Fanny Armine.”

“He is called here among the topping ladies the Basilisk on account of his killing looks. In future when I write ‘Bas’ my Kitty will know my meaning.”

This written, the beautiful Frances, spoilt minion of fortune, laid down her quill and looked about her at the room wherein she sat. Her white brow with the bright chestnut hair rolled back from it and a certain alertness in her eyes bespoke her however something better—a woman who could reflect with shrewdness, and speak much to the point, and all this was her seductive ladyship and more. She had a mind as well as a face and, as she began terribly to suspect, a heart as well as both, but what shall a lady do with a heart in a society which mocks at such a rustic possession? Indeed, as may be seen by her letter, she could scarce tell what to make of it. And ignorance may lead a woman into a sad quandary from which ’tis impossible to extricate herself. Was there a man in London to whom she had chose not to be attracted, Charles, Lord Baltimore, was that man? For why? Because Lady Fanny knew well that hearts hovered about him in hordes that he could scarce endure. His life was a hurry of gallantry, equipage, feathers, smiles, ogles, love and courtship. He was spoilt by women, if favours flung before his feet could spoil him. ’Twas said and believed his last voyage to his province was to escape the frantic pursuit of a lady whose rank shall make her nameless, and that relays of weeping charmers lined all the roads down to the port whence he sailed. He had fought three duels with jealous husbands and each time pinked his man, and got off himself for all three with a light thrust in the arm. His history might indeed be read by the light of sparkling eyes, and set to the music of sighs. And out of such charming flimsy stuff to make a good homespun husband! Fie!

No doubt but he distinguished Lady Fanny beyond any other, but O the helplessness of a woman! Was it dependable? What did his Lordship when he strolled off with the Duke of Bolton? Where did they go? How were his hours past? How shall a woman know? She sees what she sees, she hears what she is told, but what is behind the scenes so cunningly set, she cannot tell.

Unusual tears stood in Lady Fanny’s blue eyes as she considered her case.

The door opened and her maid came in with a billet in her hand and a posy of flowers:

“My Lord Baltimore’s gentleman left it, Madam, and enquired how your Ladyship had slept.”

“Does he wait?”

“No, your Ladyship.”

She laid the sealed billet by her lady and went off with a curious eye at it over her shoulder. Indeed Lady Fanny’s hand shook a trifle as she opened it.

“Madam, I purpose a water-party two days hence and it will be no pleasure to the host if you are not of the party. Therefore, I entreat you to reserve Saturday in my favour. If, as on the last occasion, you make conditions for acceptance, I need only say that that soft, that white, that all-commanding hand shall write its own conditions and I accept them unknown. You know very well that in your absence life darkens for me. When you come it is sunshine. If my tongue did not say it ’tis to be read in my eyes, the reflection of a heart that cannot lie to my lady. More I will not say because I am jealous of this paper that kisses your hand, but more, much more I will say when we meet, if I have permission to open my heart to my sovereign.

“Your most humble obedient servant,

“Baltimore.”

“P.S. Rich writes me word this morning that he hath found the paragon he sought, so my Lady Fanny Armine shall not be disappointed of her play. But the paragon is not so fair as my own choice, I dare swear.”

She read the letter greedily, scarce heeding the postscript and knew not, poor lady, that the sting, like a scorpion’s, lay in the tail.

“Is it love, is it love?” she murmured to herself, “or is it but the desire to insult his rivals and carry off what they call a prize? And for me—is it but the delight to see the heart that so many bleed for bleed at last for me? And could either of us endure the arrogance of conjugalities? Can I dwindle into a wife or he into a husband?”

She sat long musing, but when she caught up the quill again ’twas to accept of the water-party.