Part 17 (1/2)
”Your ladys.h.i.+p is all goodness. I shall go where my lode-star leads,” answered Denzil, looking at Angela, and blus.h.i.+ng at the audacity of his speech.
He was one of those modest lovers who rarely bring a blush to the cheek of the beloved object, but are so poor-spirited as to do most of the blus.h.i.+ng themselves.
A week later Lady Fareham could do nothing but praise that severe weather which she had p.r.o.nounced odious, for her husband, coming in from Oxford after a ride along the road, deep with melting snow, brought the news of a considerable diminution in the London death-rate; and the more startling news that his Majesty had removed to Whitehall for the quicker despatch of business with the Duke of Albemarle, albeit the bills of mortality recorded fifteen hundred deaths from the pestilence in the previous week, and although not a carriage appeared in the deserted streets of the metropolis except those in his Majesty's train.
”How brave, how admirable!” cried Hyacinth, clapping her hands in the exuberance of her joy. ”Then we can go to London to-morrow, if horses and coaches can be made ready. Give your orders at once, Fareham, I beseech you. The thaw has set in. There will be no snow to stop us.”
”There will be floods which may make fords impa.s.sable.”
”We can avoid every ford-there is always a detour by the lanes.”
”Have you any idea what the lanes will be like after two feet deep of snow? Be sure, my love, you are happier tw.a.n.ging your lute by this fireside than you would be stuck in a quagmire, peris.h.i.+ng with cold in a windy coach.”
”I will risk the quagmires and the windy coach. Oh, my lord, if you ever loved me let us set out to-morrow. I languish for Fareham House-my ba.s.set-table, my friends, my watermen to waft me to and fro between Blackfriars and Westminster, the mercers in St. Paul's Churchyard, the Middle Exchange. I have not bought myself anything pretty since Christmas. Let us go to-morrow.”
”And risk spoiling the prettiest thing you own-your face-by a plague-spot.”
”The King is there-the plague is ended.”
”Do you think he is a G.o.d, that the pestilence will flee at his coming?”
”I think his courage is G.o.dlike. To be the first to return to that abandoned city.”
”What of Monk and the Archbishop, who never left it?”
”A rough old soldier! A Churchman! Such lives were meant to face danger.
But his Majesty! A man for whom existence should be one long holiday?”
”He has done his best to make it so; but the pestilence has shown him that there are grim realities in life. Don't fret, dearest. We will go to town as soon as it is prudent to make the move. Kings must brave great hazards; and there is no reason that little people like us should risk our lives because the necessities of State compel his Majesty to imperil his.”
”We shall be laughed at if we do not hasten after him.”
”Let them laugh who please. I have pa.s.sed through the ordeal, Hyacinth. I don't want a second attack of the sickness; nor would I for worlds that you or your sister should run into the mouth of danger. Besides, you can lose little pleasure by being absent; for the play-houses are all closed, and the Court is in mourning for the French Queen-mother.”
”Poor Queen Anne!” sighed Hyacinth. ”She was always kind to me. And to die of a cancer-after out-living those she most loved! King Louis would scarcely believe she was seriously ill, till she was at the point of death. But we know what mourning means at Whitehall-Lady Castlemaine in black velvet, with forty thousand pounds in diamonds to enliven it; a concert instead of a play, perhaps; and the King sitting in a corner whispering with Mrs. Stewart. But as for the contagion, you will see that everybody will rush back to London, and that you and I will be laughing-stocks.”
The next week justified Lady Fareham's a.s.sertion. As soon as it was known that the King had established himself at Whitehall, the great people came back to their London houses, and the town began to fill. It was as if a G.o.d had smiled upon the smitten city, and that healing and happiness radiated from the golden halo round that anointed head. Was not this the monarch of whom the most eloquent preacher of the age had written, ”In the arms of whose justice and wisdom we lie down in safety”?
London flung off her cerements-erased her plague-marks. The dead-cart's dreadful bell no longer sounded in the silence of an afflicted city. Coffins no longer stood at every other door; the pits at Finsbury, in Tothill Fields, at Islington, were all filled up and trampled down; and the gra.s.s was beginning to grow over the forgotten dead. The Judges came back to Westminster. London was alive again-alive and healed; basking in the suns.h.i.+ne of Royalty.
Nowhere was London more alive in the month of March than at Fareham House on the Thames, where the Fareham liveries of green and gold showed conspicuous upon his lords.h.i.+p's watermen, lounging about the stone steps that led down to the water, or waiting in the terraced garden, which was one of the finest on the river. Wherries of various weights and sizes filled one s.p.a.cious boathouse, and in another handsome stone edifice with a vaulted roof Lord Fareham's barge lay in state, glorious in cream colour and gold, with green velvet cus.h.i.+ons and Oriental carpets, as splendid as that blue-and-gold barge which Charles had sent as a present to Madame, a vessel to out-glitter Cleopatra's galley, when her ladys.h.i.+p and her friends and their singing-boys and musicians filled it for a voyage to Hampton Court.
The barge was used on festive occasions, or for country voyages, as to Hampton or Greenwich; the wherries were in constant requisition. Along that s.h.i.+ning waterway rank and fas.h.i.+on, commerce and business, were moving backwards and forwards all day long. That more novel mode of transit, the hackney coach, was only resorted to in foul weather; for the Legislature had handicapped the coaching trade in the interests of the watermen, and coaches were few and dear.
If Angela had loved the country, she was not less charmed with London under its altered aspect. All this gaiety and splendour, this movement and brightness, astonished and dazzled her.
”I am afraid I am very shallow-minded,” she told Denzil when he asked her opinion of London. ”It seems an enchanted place, and I can scarcely believe it is the same dreadful city I saw a few months ago, when the dead were lying in the streets. Oh, how clearly it comes back to me-those empty streets, the smoke of the fires, the wretched ragged creatures begging for bread! I looked down a narrow court, and saw a corpse lying there, and a child wailing over it; and a little way farther on a woman flung up a window, and screamed out, 'Dead, dead! The last of my children is dead! Has G.o.d no relenting mercy?'”
”It is curious,” said Hyacinth, ”how little the town seems changed after all those horrors. I miss n.o.body I know.”