The Bow of Orange Ribbon - Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (best book club books of all time txt) 📗

him. His days were mainly spent in dangling after Lady Suffolk and other fair dames. It was auctions at Christie's, and morning concerts, and afternoon rides and plays, and dinners and balls and masks at Ranelagh's. It was sails down the river to Richmond, and trips to Sadler's Wells, and one perpetual round of flirting and folly, of dressing and dancing and dining and gaming.

And it must be remembered that the English women of that day were such as England may well hope never to see again. They had little education: many very great ladies could hardly read and spell properly. Their sole accomplishments were dressing and embroidery; the ability to make a few delicate dishes for the table, and scents and pomade for the toilet. In the higher classes they married for money or position, and gave themselves up to intrigue. They drank deeply; they played high; they very seldom went to church, for Sunday was the fashionable day for all kinds of frivolity and amusement. And as the men of any generation are just what the women make them, England never had sons so profligate, so profane and drunken. The clubs, especially Brooke's, were the nightly scenes of indescribable orgies. Gambling alone was their serious occupation; duels were of constant occurrence.

Such a life could not be lived except at frightful and generally ruinous expense. Hyde was soon embarrassed. His pay was small and uncertain and the allowance which his brother William added to it, in order that the heir-apparent to the earldom might live in becoming style, had not been calculated on the squandering basis of Hyde's expenditures. Toward Christmas bills began to pour in, creditors became importunate, and, for the first time in his life, creditors really troubled him. Lady Capel was not likely to pay his debts any more. The earl, in settling Hyde's American obligations, had warned him against incurring others, and had frankly told him he would permit him to go to jail rather than pay such wicked and foolish bills for him again. The income from Hyde Manor had never been more than was required for the expenses of the place; and the interest on Katherine's money had gone, though he could not tell how. He was destitute of ready cash, and he foresaw that he would have to borrow some from Lady Capel or some other accommodating friend.

He returned to barracks one Sunday afternoon, and was moodily thinking over these things, when his orderly brought him a letter which had arrived during his absence. It was from Katherine. His face flushed with delight as he read it, so sweet and tender and pure was the neat epistle. He compared it mentally with some of the shameless scented billet-doux he was in the habit of receiving; and he felt as if his hands were unworthy to touch the white wings of his Katherine's most womanly, wifely message. "She wants to see me. Oh, the dear one! Not more than I want to see her. Fool, villain, that I am! I will go to her. Katherine! Kate! My dear little Kate!" So he ejaculated as he paced his narrow quarters, and tried to arrange his plans for a Christmas visit to his wife and child.

First he went to his colonel's lodging, and easily obtained two weeks' absence; then he dressed carefully, and went to his club for dinner. He had determined to ask Lady Capel for a hundred pounds; and he thought it would be the best plan to make his request when she was surrounded by company, and under the pleasurable excitement of a winning rubber. And if the circumstances proved adverse, then he could try his fortune in the hours of her morning retirement.

The mansion in Berkeley Square was brilliantly lighted when he approached it. Chairs and coaches were waiting in lines of three deep; coachmen and footmen quarrelling, shouting, talking; link-boys running here and there in search of lost articles or missing servants. But the hubbub did not at that time make his blood run quicker, or give any light of expectation to his countenance; for his heart and thoughts were near a hundred miles away.

Sunday night was Lady Capel's great card-night, and the rooms were full of tables surrounded by powdered and painted beauties intent upon the game and the gold. The odour of musk was everywhere, and the sound of the tapping of gold snuff-boxes, and the fluttering of fans, and the sharp, technical calls of the gamesters, and the hollow laughter of hollow hearts. There was a hired singing-girl with a lute at one end of the room, babbling of Cupid and Daphne, and green meadow and larks. But she was poorly dressed and indifferent looking; and she sang with a sad, mechanical air, as if her thoughts were far off. Hyde would have passed her without a glance; but, as he approached, she broke her love-ditty in two, and began to sing, with a meaning look at him,--

"They say there is a happy land,
Where husbands never prove untrue;
Where lovely maids may give their hearts,
And never need the gift to rue;
Where men can make and keep a vow,
And wives are never in despair.
I'm very fond of seeing sights--
Pray tell me, how can I get there?"

The question seemed so directly addressed to Hyde that he hesitated a moment, and looked at the girl, who then with a mocking smile continued,--

"They say there really is a land,
Where husbands never are untrue,
Where wives are always beautiful,
And the old love is always new.
I've asked the wise to tell me how
A loving woman could get there;
And this is what they say to me,--
'If you that happy land would see,
There's only one way to get there:
_Go straight along the crooked lane,
And all around the square_.'"

The scornful little song followed him, and conveyed a certain meaning to his mind. The girl must have taken her cue from the gossip of those who passed her to and fro. He burned with indignation, not for himself, but for his sweet, pure Katherine. He was determined that the world should in the future know that he held her peerless among women. In this half-aggressive mood he approached Lady Capel. She had been unfortunate all the evening, and was not amiable. As he stood behind her chair, Lord Leffham asked,--

"What think you, Hyde, of a party at picquet?"

"Oh, indeed, my lord, you are too much for me!"

"I will give you three points." Then, calling a footman, "Here, fellow, get cards."

Lady Capel flung her own down. "No, no, Leffham. Spare my grandson: there are bigger fish here. Dick, I am angry at you. I have a mind to banish you for a month."

"I am going to Norfolk for two weeks, madam."

"That will do. It is a worse punishment than I should have given you. Norfolk! There is only one word between it and the plantations. At this time of the year, it is a clay pudding full of villages. Give me your arm, Dick; I shall play no more until my luck turns again. Losing cards are dull company indeed."

"I am very sorry that you have been losing. I came to ask for the loan of a hundred pounds, grandmother."

"No, sir, I will not lend you a hundred pounds; nor am I in the humour to do anything else you desire."

"I make my apology for the request. I ought to have asked Katherine."

"No, sir, you ought not to have asked Katherine. You ought to take what you want. Jack Capel took every shilling of my fortune and neither said 'by your leave' nor 'thank you.' Did the Dutchman tie the bag too close?"

"Councillor Van Heemskirk left it open, in my honour. When I am scoundrel enough to touch it, I shall not come and see you at all, grandmother."

"Upon my word, a very pretty compliment! Well, sir, I'll pay you a hundred pounds for it. When do you start?"

"To-morrow morning."

"Make it afternoon, and take care of me as far as your aunt Julia's. The duke is of the royal bed-chamber this month, and I am going to see my daughter while he is away. It will make him supremely wretched at court to know that I am in his house. So I am going there, and I shall take care he knows it."

"I have heard a great deal of his new house."

"A play-house kind of affair, Dick, I assure you,--all in the French style; gods and goddesses above your head, and very badly dressed nymphs all around, and his pedigree on every window, and his coat of arms on the very stairs. I have the greatest satisfaction in treading upon them, I assure you."

"Why do you take the trouble to go? It can give you no pleasure."

"Imagine the true state of things, Dick. The duke is at court--say he is holding the royal gold wash-basin; but in the very sunshine of King George's smile, he is thinking, 'That snuffy old woman is lounging in my white and gilt satin chairs, and handling all my Chinese curiosities, and asking if every hideous Hindoo idol is a fresh likeness of me.' I am always willing to take some trouble to give pleasure to the people I like; I will gladly go to any amount of trouble to annoy the people I hate as cordially as I hate my good, rich, noble son-in-law, the great Duke of Exmouth."

"Will you play again?"

"No; I lost seventy pounds to-night."

"I protest, grandmother, that such high stakes go not with amusement. People come here, not for civility, but for the chance of money."

"Very well, sir. Money! It is the only excuse for card-playing. All the rest is sinning without temptation. But, Dick, put on the black coat to preach in,--why do they wear black to preach in?--and I am not in a humour for a sermon. Come to-morrow at one o'clock; we shall reach Julia's before dinner. And I dare say you want money to-night. Here are the keys of my desk. In the right-hand drawer are some _rouleaus_ of fifty pounds each. Take two."

The weather, as Lady Capel said, was "so very Decemberish" that the roads were passably good, being frozen dry and hard; and on the evening of the third day Hyde came in sight of his home. His heart warmed to the lonely place; and the few lights in its windows beckoned him far more pleasantly than the brilliant illuminations of Vauxhall or Almacks, or even the cold splendours of royal receptions. He had given Katherine no warning of his visit--partly because he had a superstitious feeling about talking of expected joys (he had noticed that when he did so they vanished beyond his grasp); partly because love, like destiny, loves surprises; and he wanted to see with his own eyes, and hear with his own ears, the glad tokens of her happy wonder.

So he rode his horse upon the turf, and, seeing a light in the stable, carried him there at once. It was just about the hour of the evening meal, and the house was brighter than it would have been a little later. The kitchen