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Mad Barbara

<div><h1>IV</h1></div> If the divine Hortense ruled his Majesty the King that year, her sway spread itself over the majority of those ambitious gentlemen who were in quest of “place” and plunder. When women exploited the state, and burst the bubble of a reputation with a kiss, politicians baited their interests with some new “beauty,” and pinned their petitions to the flounce of a petticoat. Castlemaine had faded into France; Portsmouth watched from behind a cloud; even the irrepressible Nell had prophesied the splendor of the Mancini’s conquest. Hortense had landed at Torbay, and, like the exquisite romanticist that she was, had ridden up to London in man’s attire with seven servants, a maid, and a black boy in attendance. What was of more significance, she had ridden at a canter into the august heart of Whitehall. The palace of St. James had held her for a season, till the Duke of York, with commendable brotherly discretion, had purchased Lord Windsor’s house for her in the park, that such a brilliant might shine upon them from a fitting setting. There was a fascination in the fact that Cardinal Mazarin should have possessed such a sheaf of adventurous nieces. They were all beautiful, all romantically rebellious, all deliciously feminine. It was impossible not to fall in love with them, and often impossible not to forget the intoxication, for none of the Cardinal’s kinswomen were mere sentimental fools. As for Hortense, she was a woman for whom a man might gamble away his soul, simply because she looked at him with those black, roguish, yet shrewd eyes of hers and made him feel that she was a desire beyond his reach. The incarnation of all womanly mystery, her beauty seemed to have stolen some singular inspiration from twenty different types. A Greek symmetry softened by a sensuous suppleness; the look of the gazelle, and yet of the falcon; the stateliness of the great lady torn aside on occasions by the nude audacity of a laughing Bacchic girl. Her sumptuousness made a man’s glance drop instinctively to her bosom and watch the drawing of her breath. There was sheer magic about her, fire in the blood, color in the mind. When she entered a room the men looked at her, simply because they could not help but look. As my Lord Gore had said, “there was a merry heavenly devil in Hortense.” She loved youth and all the glamour of its irresponsible vitality, and would rather have seen some buffooning trick played upon a bishop than have listened to the most eloquent of sermons. For she herself was vital, magnetic, filled with all genius of sex. A mere glance at her enriched the consciousness with visions, the flush of sunsets, the heart of a rose, the redness of wine, the white curve of a woman’s throat, moonlight and music, bridal casements opening upon foam. My Lord of Gore heard the laughter in the great salon, even while the Mancini’s footman in red and gold was taking his cane and hat. There was nothing autumnal in Hortense’s house. Old men left their gout and their growls behind them on the staircase, for the exquisite art of fooling was a thing to be cherished and enjoyed. The great salon had the brilliancy of color of a rose-garden in June. The brown floor reflected everything like a pool of woodland water that turns noonday into something vague and mystical. It caught the gleam of a satin slipper and threw it back with the imitative rendering of the gliding body of a fish. Like the villas of Pompeii, with its painted walls and ceilings, this salon enclosed sunny worldliness and picturesque realities. Its inmates were all sufficiently happy to be able to forget to analyze the nature of their sensations. “Ready—ready all. Go!” My lord paused in the doorway to watch an improvised chariot-race that offered any gentleman the chance of laying a wager. Three gallants had been harnessed with sashes to as many chairs, and in each chair sat a lady. Twice up and down the polished floor, with a turn at each end, and a forfeit for upsetting. It was much like a great Christmas romping-party for children. A youth in blue satin with a fair-haired girl driving him came in an easy first. The other two chariots had collided at the last turn, with some slight damage to the furniture, and to the delight of the spectators. She who had driven the blue boy to victory frisked out joyfully, and performed a pas seul in the middle of the room. “Bravo! bravo!” “Hortense, I have won my necklace.” “Thanks, madam, to Tearing Tom.” One of the fallen gallants stood rubbing a bruised shin. He was a slim little fop with a weak face that pretended toward impudence, and a name—even Sir Marmaduke Thibthorp—that suited his personality. “I protest. We were overweighted—” The lady whom he had overturned retorted with an unequivocal “Sir!” My Lord Gore, with the genius of an opportunist, introduced his wit as a fitting climax. “The gibe may seem overstrained,” he said, flicking a lace ruffle, “but surely the gentleman who claims to have been overweighted is hopelessly under-calved.” Nor was the joke visible till my lord pointed whimsically to Thibthorp’s very ascetic shanks. Whereat they all laughed, more for the love of ridicule than out of curtesy to my lord’s wit. Hortense herself sat at one of the windows watching the youngsters at their romps with the air of a laughing philosopher, whose mature age of nine-and-twenty constituted her a fitting confidante either for children or for cynics. She was dressed in some brown stuff that shone with a reddish iridescence. The dress was cut low at the throat, so low as to show the white breadth of her bosom. A chain of pearls was woven to and fro amid the black masses of her hair. My Lord Gore crossed the room to her and kissed her hand. They were very good friends were my lord and Hortense. Something more tangible than sentimental tendencies had drawn them together. Their worldly ambitions were identical; the petticoat and the periwig were allied in their campaign against the amiable idiosyncrasies of the King. “Pardon me, but what a public-spirited woman I always find in you.” He stood beside her chair, looking down at her, and at the lace that filled her bosom. “And you, my friend?” “I come to enjoy perpetual rejuvenescence, and to learn to live in the sun rather than in a fog of philosophy that gives us little but cold feet and swollen heads.” She looked up at him and laughed. And Hortense’s laugh had a delightful audacity that rallied the world upon its dulness. “They enjoy themselves, these children; they romp, chatter, make a noise; I never allow them to quarrel. I try to teach them that there is one folly to be condemned, the folly of suffering ourselves to lose our youth.” My lord’s eyes were fixed on the young spark, Tom Temple, who was burlesquing a Spanish dance in the middle of the salon. “We are always in danger of losing the art of make-believe.” “You English are so serious, so grim.” “Say, rather—selfish.” “Is it not often the same thing?” “Assuredly.” “The world is only a great puppet-show; one of your playwriters has said as much. We can all see the fun, even though we remain in the crowd. But you English, you set your teeth, you push and fight; you must be in the front, or nothing will content you. You make yourselves sullen in struggling for your pleasures, while every one else is laughing, perhaps at you.” My lord bowed. “I think you wrong the one enlightened spot in the kingdom, madam—Whitehall. We must petition his Majesty to order Sir Christopher to build you an academy, where we can institute you a new Hypatia. But I gather that your philosophy would not end in oyster shells. For the rest—I have a favor to ask.” “I am listening.” “Suffer me to introduce a very dull virgin into your atmosphere. I want to convert her. She has a conscience.” Hortense’s eyes met his frankly. “So have I, my friend.” “I do not question it. But the child I speak of has not learned to laugh.” “Deplorable!” “She is a tax in sulkiness upon her mother. The poor woman is weary of living with a corpse. In my humanity—I remembered you.” “Bring her to me.” “We shall be your debtors.” “At least—I will tell you whether she will ever laugh. What mischief have we brewing now?” Tom Temple had bethought himself of some fresh piece of boyish buffoonery, in which the girl whom he had drawn to victory in the chariot-race had joined him. It was nothing more complex than a game of double blind-man’s buff. The furniture was pushed aside into corners, and the salon prepared for a lively chase. “Hortense, Hortense, come and play!” It was little Anne of Sussex, Castlemaine’s child, whisking a scarf in one hand, while she held her skirts up with the other. “Tom Temple and I are to be blind first. I am to catch the men, he—the ladies.” Lord Gore made her a grand obeisance. “I will stand wilfully in the middle of the room, madam, and be caught.” “Then you will have to give me three pairs of gloves. But you are too large, my lord; we should always be catching you.” “Like a leviathan in a fish-pond, eh?” “Or an elephant in a parlor. Bind my eyes up, Hortense, and please pin up my skirts.” The Mancini humored her. “Are you ready, Tom?” “At your command,” said the youth, whom a friend had blindfolded. “Turn me, Hortense; one, two, three. Now—have at all of you. If I catch you—Tom—cry carrots.” My lord and Hortense stepped back toward the window to watch the fun. “It is just like the marriage market,” said she. “Catch what you can,” he retorted, “and find out what sort of thing it is—afterward.” There was a great deal of scampering and laughing, of creeping into corners and huddling against walls. In the very glory of a stampede, when Tom Temple had sailed straight with his arms spread for a bunch of girls, the salon door opened, and a servant announced: “My Lord Sussex.” The dramatic humor of the moment was missed by all save Hortense and Lord Gore, so briskly and indiscriminately went the chase. My lord pursed up his lips and whistled with a significant lifting of the eyebrows. Hortense stifled a laugh. Thomas Lennard, Lord Dacre, Earl of Sussex, was a prim aristocrat with very stately prejudices against fashionable horse-play. Moreover, he had one of those jealous and egotistical temperaments that persuades a man to believe that the woman whom he had honored with marriage should henceforth sit meekly at his feet—and play the mirror to his majesty. He stood on the threshold, watching the whirligig of youth with the cold wrath of a man who had come with the full expectation of being offended. And to add to the irony of the moment, my Lady Anne came doubling down the room in close pursuit of a couple of men. She made her capture not three yards from her husband’s person, and made it gamely—with both arms round the neck of Sir Marmaduke Thibthorp of the thin shanks. She whipped off the bandage with a breathless laugh. “Gemini—but it’s Duke Thibthorp!” The gallant, whose back was toward the door, offered a mouth, and caught his captor by the wrists. “Forfeit, forfeit! A pledge—!” Sudden silence had fallen on the room, to be followed by indiscriminate and half-smothered giggling. My Lady Dacre’s face betrayed blank consternation. “Let me go—” “Not for—” “Let me go, fool.” He of the thin shanks imagined that he was amusing the salon with his waggery till a hand fastened upon his collar. Tom Temple, still blissfully blind, came careering along one wall, and added emphasis to the climax by coming down with a crash over a three-legged stool. “I shall deem it a curtesy, sir, if you will release Lady Dacre’s wrists.” Thomas Lennard’s face had the cold fury of a blizzard. Yet he was utterly polite. The gallant whom he had taken by the collar had twisted round, and was staring with ludicrous vacuity into my lord’s eyes. Stephen Gore watched the drama with an expression of angelic satisfaction. “Hortense, my friend, let me see you stop a quarrel.” She had moved forward from the window with all the atmosphere of the Sun King’s court. “Pardon me, my lord. Your hand should be at my throat—if—you are offended.” The husband still had a firm hold of Marmaduke Thibthorp, and was looking at him as though undecided whether it would be dignified to drop the fop down the stairs. The aristocratic apathy in him triumphed. He swept the youth aside, and with a curt bow to his wife, offered her his arm. “Come. Madam, I wish you a boisterous evening.” His young wife had hesitated, with a whimsical grimace in the direction of Hortense. “Oh, what a sermon!” The Italian’s eyes met those of Lord Dacre. It was as though they challenged each other in their influence over the child. “If my Lord Dacre will stay with us, I myself will put on the scarf. And perhaps my Lord Gore—here—” The leviathan bowed. “I will flounder—most biblically.” The Lady Anne giggled, and then glanced furtively at her husband’s face. “A thousand thanks. My Lord Gore should delight even the psalmist. But my coach is waiting. I wish you no broken furniture. Anne—come.” There was a short, pregnant silence when he had departed with his child-wife on his arm. Stephen Gore shrugged his shoulders and smiled at Hortense. “Most serious of swains! Oh, sage Solomon, who would grudge him the responsibility of taming even one wife!” “Alas, another unfortunate who has not learned to laugh.” Sir Marmaduke Thibthorp was standing sheepishly beside the door, striving to look amused. “Such is fate,” he giggled. “And such is a stool!” quoth Thomas Temple, sticking out a leg with a blotch of blood on his stocking. My Lord Gore took leave of Hortense after talking with her a moment alone by the window. “Bring her to me, my friend,” she said, as he made his bow. “If you cannot cure her—” “Ah, well—we shall see.” He was crossing the park when a servant met him and handed him a note. It was sealed with pink wax and smelled of ambergris. My lord opened it as he strolled under the trees. <div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'>    “I would see you soon. Jael has been of use to me.” “A. P.”   </div> </div>  <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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