I saw Madame van Hunker led out by a solid, wooden-faced old Dutchman, who looked more like her father than her husband; and I told Annora that I was sure she had worn the pearls only because he compelled her.
'Belike,' said my sister. 'She hath no more will of her own than a hank of flax! That men can waste their hearts on such moppets as that!'
But though we did not at all agree on the impression Madame van Hunker had made on us, we were of one mind to say nothing of it to Eustace.
Another person laid her hand on Annora's arm as she was about to enter our carriage. 'Mistress Ribmont!' she exclaimed; 'I knew not that you were present in this land of our exile.'
I looked and saw a lady, as fantastically dressed as the mourning would permit, and with a keen clever face, and Nan curtsied, saying: 'My Lady Marchioness of Newcastle! let me present to you my sister, Madame la Vicomtesse de Bellaise.'
She curtsied and asked in return for Lord Walwyn, declaring that her lord would come and see him, and that we must come to visit her. 'We are living poorly enough, but my lord's good daughter Jane Doth her best for us and hath of late sent us a supply; so we are making merry while it lasts, and shall have some sleighing on ice-hills to-morrow, after the fashion of the country. Do you come, my good lad is cruelly moped in yonder black-hung place, with his widowed sister and her mother-in-law, and I would fain give him a little sport with young folk.'
Lady Newcastle's speech was cut short by her lord, who came to insist on her getting into the coach, which was delaying for her, and on the way home Nan began to tell me of her droll pretensions, which were like an awkward imitation of the best days of the Hotel Rambouillet.
She also told me about the noble-hearted Lady Jane Cavendish, the daughter of the Marquis's first marriage-how she held out a house of her father against the rebels, and acted like a brave captain, until the place was stormed, and she and her sister were made prisoners. The Roundhead captain did not treat them with over-ceremony, but such was the Lady Jane's generous nature that when the Royalists came to her relief, and he was made captive in his turn, she saved his life by her intercession.
She had since remained in England, living in a small lodge near the ruins of her father's house at Bolsover, to obtain what she could for his maintenance abroad, and to collect together such remnants of the better times as she might, such as the family portraits, and the hangings of the hall. I longed to see this very worthy and noble lady, but she was out of our reach, being better employed in England. Nan gave a little sigh to England, but not such a sigh as she would once have heaved.
And we agreed on the way home to say nothing to my brother of our meeting with poor Millicent.
My Lord Marquis of Newcastle showed his esteem for my brother by coming to see him that very day, so soon as he could escape from the banquet held in honour of the christening, which, like all that was done by the Dutch, was serious and grim enough, though it could not be said to be sober.
He declared that he had been ignorant that Lord Walwyn was at the Hague, or he should have waited on him immediately after arriving there, 'since nothing,' said the Marquis, 'does me good like the sight of an honest cavalier.' I am sure Eustace might have said the same; and they sat talking together long and earnestly about how it fared with the King in Scotland, and how he had been made to take the Covenant, which, as they said, was in very truth a dissembling which must do him grievous ill, spiritually, however it might serve temporally. My Lord repeated his lady's invitation to a dinner, which was to be followed up by sleighing on hills formed of ice. Annora, who always loved rapid motion as an exhilaration of spirits, brightened at the notion, and Eustace was anxious that it should be accepted, and thus we found ourselves pledged to enter into the diversions of the place.
CHAPTER XXVI. HUNDERSLUST
So to my Lord Marquis of Newcastle's dinner we went, and found ourselves regaled with more of good cheer than poor cavaliers could usually offer. There was not only a good sirloin of beer, but a goose, and many choice wild-fowl from the fens of the country. There was plum porridge too, which I had not seen since I left England at my marriage. Every one was so much charmed at the sight that I thought I ought to be so too, but I confess that it was too much for me, and that I had to own that it is true that the English are gross feeders. The Duke of York was there, looking brighter and more manly than I had yet seen him, enlivened perhaps by my Lady Newcastle, who talked to him, without ceasing, on all sorts of subjects. She would not permit the gentlemen to sit after dinner, because she would have us all out to enjoy her sport on the ice-hills, which were slopes made with boards, first covered with snow, and then with water poured over them till they were perfectly smooth and like glass. I cannot say that I liked the notion of rushing down them, but it seemed to fill Annora with ecstasy, and my lady provided her with a sleigh and a cavalier, before herself instructing the Duke of York in the guidance of her own sledge upon another ice-hill.
My Lord Marquis did me the honour to walk with me and converse on my brother. There was a paved terrace beneath a high wall which was swept clear of snow and strewn with sand and ashes, so that those who had no turn for the ice-hills could promenade there and gaze upon the sport. When his other duties as a host called him away, his lordship said, with a smile, that he would make acquainted with each other two of his own countrywomen, both alike disguised under foreign names, and therewith he presented Madame van Hunker to me. Being on the same side of the table we had not previously seen one another, nor indeed would she have known me by sight, since I had left England before her arrival at Court.
She knew my name instantly, and the crimson colour rushed into those fair cheeks as she made a very low reverence, and murmured some faltering civility.
We were left together, for all the other guest near us were Hollanders, whose language I could not speak, and who despised French too much to learn it. So, as we paced along, I endeavoured to say something trivial of the Prince's christening and the like, which might begin the conversation; and I was too sorry for her to speak with the frigidity with which my sister thought she ought to be treated. Then gradually she took courage to reply, and I found that she had come in attendance on her stepdaughter Cornelia, who was extremely devoted to these sleighing parties. The other daughter, Veronica, was at home, indisposed, having, as well as her father, caught a feverish cold on a late expedition into the country, and Madame would fain have given up the party, as she thought Cornelia likewise to be unwell, but her father would not hear of his favourite Keetje being disappointed. I gather that the Yung-vrow Cornelia had all the true Dutch obstinacy of nature. By and by she ventured timidly, trying to make her voice sound as if she were only fulfilling an ordinary call of politeness, to hope that my Lord Walwyn was in better health. I told her a little of his condition, and she replied with a few soft half-utterance; but before we had gone far in our conversation there was a sudden commotion among the sleighing party-an accident, as we supposed-and we both hurried forward in anxiety for our charges. My sister was well, I was at once reassured by seeing her gray and ermine hood, which I knew well, for it was Mademoiselle van Hunker who lay insensible. It was not from a fall, but the cold had perhaps struck her, they said, for after her second descent she had complained of giddiness, and had almost immediately swooned away. She was lying on the sledge, quite unconscious, and no one seemed to know what to do. Her stepmother and I came to her; I raised her head and put essences to her nose, and Madame van Hunker took off her gloves and rubbed her hands, while my Lady Newcastle, hurrying up, bade them carry her into the house, and revive her by the fire; but Madame van Hunker insisted and implored that she should not be taken indoors, but carried home at once, showing a passion and vehemence quite unlike one so gentle, and which our good host and hostess withstood till she hinted that she feared it might be more than a swoon, since her father and sister were already indisposed. Then, indeed, all were ready enough to stand aloof; a coach was procured, I know not how, and poor Cornelia was lifted into it, still unconscious, or only moaning a little. I could not let the poor young stepmother go with her alone, and no one else would make the offer, the dread of contagion keeping all at a distance, after what had passed. At first I think Madame van Hunker hardly perceived who was with her, but as I spoke a word or two in English, as we tried to accommodate the inanimate form between us, she looked up and said: 'Ah! I should not have let you come, Madame! I do everything wrong. I pray you to leave me!' Then, as I of course refused, she added: 'Ah, you know not--' and then whispered in my ear, though the poor senseless girl would scarce have caught the sound, the dreadful word 'smallpox.' I could answer at once that I had had it-long, long ago, in my childish days, when my grandmother nursed me and both my brothers through it, and she breathed freely, I asked her why she apprehended it, and she told me that some weeks ago her husband had taken the whole party down to his pleasure-house in the country, to superintend some arrangement in his garden, which he wished to make before the frost set in.