CHAPTER XII.I DEFY DEAR LADY GRIMSTONE.
Itwas a late hour when the lady apparently exposed her soul. She had not one to expose, it is true, but the Captain was deluded into thinking that she had, and persuasion is more powerful than fact. Her father was her blood, her breath; his honour was her own. The Captain gave her the humble admiration of a soldier. Daughters of this mould, who could worship a parent in this manner, must always command the tender reverence of one whose dream was to be the diligent servant of his country. He was also touched. Men of the sword are very human, he informed her. It was a relief, she replied, to have that on such eminent authority, because, to avenge the joyous escapade of an innocent girl, a soldier had proposed to treat her venerable sire with a brutality that was incredible. She did not refine her language to his delicate ear. How could she, being moved so deeply? Did not her lips twitch with feeling, her eyes flash with passion? Alas the Captain! He might have seen “the drums and tramplings of three conquests,” but, being human, could he resist her generous anguish,her lovely indignation? Nay, he swore it, he was pained for her as deeply as ever she was for her father. But the word “avenge” he resented sternly.
“Madam, I say again, I am not the law. I am merely the puppet who obeys it.”
“Must he obey it then?” Madam tapped a satin shoe quite loud upon the hearth-tiles.
“I hold a commission; I am but a puppet,” groaned the Captain, with cheeks of the colour of the damask at his side.
“A puppet!” She rose a queen, and cast the phrase upon him. “A puppet! Then, sir,” demanded she, “do you suppose I can afford to lavish my precious hours upon a puppet?”
An excellent tactician, she swept from the room, offended and imperious, without condescending to receive his tremulous reply. In her wisdom she knew this to be the proper moment to withdraw. The Captain had been carried by easy stages to a sufficient harmony of heart. This final discord must jangle in his finest nerves for many hours, set his teeth on edge, and keep him fretful. The lady calculated that he would not shut his eyes that night. He had been given a sight of happiness, that he might know how much he stood to lose.
My train was laid then. Let a spark fall from my eyes to-morrow, and I did not doubt it, it would blow his duty to the devil. One learns to read the symptoms that precede explosion. Leaving the Captain I tripped to the card-players on my lightest toe. My heart accorded with my step. The triowere now at commerce; and such a handsome heap of coins was piled before Miss Prue that the guinea I had lent her to begin with appeared magnified into a dozen.
“Bab,” says she, turning to me with a pretty eagerness. “I am remarkably in luck. I have turned the ace up five times running—and my conscience, here it is the sixth!”
It was midnight now, and the hour for retirement. The suite of chambers in the south wing were happily at my disposal. One room commanding the park had been aired during the day by my direction, to be in readiness that night for the masquerader. He was conducted to it now by Mrs. Emblem and myself, and was given much instruction in the treatment of his femininity. Two new morning dresses of my own were hung up in his wardrobe; a pot of rouge and a whole armoury of weapons of the toilet were put against his mirror; and such a quantity of advice was strewn upon him touching his carriage and behaviour on the morrow, that he began to yawn in a most abominable manner, and declared I was too earnest in this mummery.
“Mummery,” says I, “you are playing for your life, that’s all, my bravo.”
“Mylife, yes,” says he; “but that is my affair entirely. Have you not said that a beggar with bare elbows is no more to be considered than is a farthing candle by a person of condition like yourself?”
Mrs. Emblem saw the cunning laugh lurking in his eye and the smile that trickled over his lower lip when he said this, and looked at me with a face of inquiring innocence, as though the lad had been speaking Greek and would my superior education be kind enough to supply the meaning for her. At a second glance I perceived that the expression of her countenance corresponded pretty nearly with his own. This made me angry. Here was tacit understanding and conspiracy, with secret mirth beneath it. I could have borne this easily—nay, was always blithe to take my share in such spicy sport when able, and enjoy a laugh at others with the best. But this impudent pair were laughing atme. Yes, I felt genuinely angry.
“Very true,” says I, “you are indeed a beggar with bare elbows. And being that, it is a pity you should evince such a disposition to forget it.”
“My dear madam, the fault is yours, I think,” says he. “For if you will have as much anxiety for my well-being as you would have were I the Cham of Tartary or some other three-tailed bashaw of high birth, merit, and authority, even a beggar will be led in time to presume upon it and forget the humility of his mansion.”
“Would you taunt me then with my gentle-hearted nature, that permits me to look as kindly on the mean and low as on the noble and exalted?”
“Was my Lady Barbarity ever taunted with her gentle-hearted nature?”
It was so difficult to have the laugh of him,that I began to admire the agility with which he generally contrived to have the laugh of me. The fact was that the rogue had an instinct that penetrated much too far. He knew better than I could tell him that he had caught a gaily-painted butterfly and had stuck it on a pin. His wanton fingers itched to twirl that pin to remind, I suppose, the gaudy, flimsy creature of its strange captivity.
“Bab,” Miss Prue says, as I was about to retire to my chamber, “your papa trusts that I shall spend not less than a month at Cleeby. When he said that your aunt seemed to grow uneasy in her soul.”
“Poor auntie,” I says, sympathetically; “but Prue, I hope you know what a wretch you are? And the way you eat is positive immodesty. My aunt observed it. As for the way in which you played his lordship, it was too notorious for words. My aunt observed that also. In fact, in half an evening you have so stabbed the dear creature through her sex, that she will ne’er forgive you for it.”
“Pray recite my errors,” says he, flinging himself into an arm-chair, and stretching out his legs and crumpling his petticoats. “Your voice is so musical it will send me to sleep as promptly as a powder.”
He shut his eyes at this and dropped his chin upon his necklace. Nodding to Mrs. Polly I went off to my dressing-room, followed by my maid. But on opening the door to step from one chamber to the other, we heard plain sounds of feet acrossthe corridor and the rustle of departing draperies. ’Twas too dark to distinguish anything, and though we promptly went in the direction of the noise, the cause of it was under cover before we could in any way detect it.
Now I was certain that a spy had been set upon us, and peradventure we had been overheard. Could anyone have listened at the door? ’Twould be fatal had they done so. The masquerader had by no means conducted his share of the conversation in a Prue-like voice; besides, the discussion of certain matters and its general tenour would be quite enough for any eavesdropper to put a name upon the lady’s true identity. Our carelessness had been indeed of the grossest sort; we had not restrained ourselves with one precaution. Low tones, an occasional eye upon the door, the selection of a proper topic, and there had been nought to fear from anybody. But as it was we were probably undone. Our own incaution was indeed bitterly to blame. In my chamber I let Emblem see the darkness of the whole affair, and gave her freely of my fears; also scolded her so sharply for our accident that the frightened fool began to weep like anything. But there was one point in her behaviour that both pleased and annoyed me. When I told her that if it was verily a spy who had been at the keyhole our sprightly Prue would dance at Tyburn shortly, Mrs. Polly gave a little gasp and a little cry, let fall the hair-brush she was wielding on my head, and burst out in new tears,while her cheeks turned to the colour of my shoulders.
“Oh, your la’ship!” she blubbered, with a deal of tragicality, “say not so.”
“Simpleton,” says I, sternly. “I shall begin to think you regard this beggar—this rebel—this adventurer—almost like a brother if you so persistently bear yourself in this way when I mention quite incidentally, as it were, his proper and natural destination.”
“He hath most lovely eyes, your ladyship,” says she, and wept more bitterly.
“Ods-body! you are not so far wrong there,” says I, turning a sigh into a yawn adroitly. “Hath he kissed you yet?”
“Once, I think, ma’am,” she answers, with a modest rose appearing through her pallor.
“Hath he an opinion of you, then, or was it pastime, merely?”
“’A told me I was kissable,” says she, “a pretty downcast sort of wench, your la’ship, and swore upon his beard that if he came out of this predicament with his heart still underneath his chin he’d the best half of his mind to marry me.”
Here the hussy sighed so desperately from the full depth of her bosom that a spasm was provoked within my own. To allay that pain I took the love-sick Mrs. Emblem by the arm and pinched her till she forgot her heart-ache in one that was less poetical.
Retiring to my earned repose, I found sleep atfirst as coy as she is in town. For half an hour I thought on the impudence of my maid, for another half on the folly of myself.
“Bab,” I soliloquised at the end of an hour’s meditation on this entertaining theme, “you should be whipt through every market town in Yorkshire. You are worse than an incorrigible rogue, you are an incorrigible fool; but any way at nine o’clock to-morrow morning you shall dismiss Mrs. Polly Emblem without a character.”
Had it not been that I had ratafia to compose me I doubt whether I should have had any sleep at all. The fear of discovery lay upon me like a stone. I was persuaded that we had been spied upon. Slumber, however, mercifully drew a curtain round the miserable consequences embodied in the future.
Emblem’s light hand woke me.
“Ten o’clock, your la’ship,” says she.
The red sun was in a station over the tree tops in the east, and sent cold rays across the winter vapours of the park through one corner of my window. I sipped my chocolate, and hoped the rebel was not abroad yet.
“He is,” the maid said; “nought would restrain him. At seven o’clock he knocked me up and made me get him towels and cold water for his tub; at eight o’clock, my lady, he made me paint his face, friz his hair a bit, put his head-dress on, and arrange all the points in what he called his ‘feminine machinery’; at nine he was drinking ale and eating ofhis breakfast; and ten minutes since I saw him in the morning room teaching my Lady Grimstone’s polly-parrot to swear like anything.”
“Oh,” says I, “a very pretty occupation to be sure. Here, girl, put me in mydéshabille, and let me be upon him ere he’s at a further mischief. Quick, wench, or next we shall have him teaching hymns to my papa.”
Half an hour hence I went downstairs to keep a personal eye upon him. I had not been there five minutes when my aunt’s maid, Tupper, came in and said that her mistress required my presence in her room immediately. As the message was so peremptory I dallied some five-and-twenty minutes longer than I need, for I think that persons of an elderly habit should never be encouraged in their arbitrary courses. Had I only foreseen what lay in store when I obeyed this summons, I should have taken my muff and tippet with me to protect myself from frostbite. You may have seen an iceberg clad in all its severities of snow, sitting in a temperature that makes you shiver. If you have had this felicity you have also seen my aunt, the dowager, this wintry morning. She smiled a December sun-glint when she saw me.
“Barbara, good morning,” she began.
“Good morning, ma’am,” says I, and curtsied.
“I trust you are very well,” my aunt says.
“Very well indeed, ma’am,” I answered modestly. I’ll confess a little nerve-twitch. ’Twas a charming idiosyncrasy of my aunt’s that she onlybetrayed an interest in one’s health when she was about to administer a pill of one sort or another. She was about to administer one just now—a blue one!
“I have sent for you, Barbara,” says the dowager, in shivery thin tones that were like cold water trickling down one’s spine, “to inform you that your dear friend, Miss Prudence Canticle, your ownest Prue, the dearest Prue that ever was, the precious Prue, to whom all the world is but as a china tea-cup, is just a man, and a very pretty scoundrel.”
An elderly lady of six-and-fifty winters, whose face is Arctic, and is framed, moreover, in corkscrew curls that look horribly like icicles, can throw an extraordinary stress and feeling in the mild word, “man.” And this instant, such an amount did my aunt employ that a feather might have knocked me down.
“Shall I tell you this man’s name?” the pitiless dowager inquired.
In assent I bowed my head.
“Anthony Dare,” says she, with unction; “escaped rebel, who is to be hanged as a common malefactor.”
“Yes, aunt, Anthony Dare,” says I; “and ’tis all very true, except in the main particular. He is not to be hanged as a common malefactor.”
“Indeed,” says she. “But that is the Government’s disposition, I understand.”
“I do not deny that it is the Government’s disposition,ma’am, but ’tis not the disposition of your niece, Bab Gossiter.”
“You are the law, then, Barbara?”
“Nine-tenths of it,” says I.
“Assertion will be a proof when assumption becomes a claim,” says my sententious relative.
“Possession is allowed to be nine-tenths of it,” says I; “and certainly I have possession of this most charming prisoner.”
“A very temporary one,” my aunt says. “’Tis my duty to advise my brother of this matter; and he will hold it his to acquaint Captain Grantley and other interested persons.”
“That is as it may be,” says I, calmly, “for I think that on reflection, my dearest aunt, you will do nothing of the kind.”
“So and indeed!” cries my aunt, in an awful voice. “Barbara, this is gross—this is impertinence.”
“It may be both, dear aunt,” says I, “or it may be neither, but its truth, I know, and that I’ll swear to.”
“Defend my virtue!” cried my aunt; “this is beyond all suffering.”
The iceberg strove to freeze me with her eye. And perhaps she would have done it, too, only that a bright idea took me at the moment and armed me with new brazenness. My masters of the other sex, if you would bend us to your will, do it with audacity. No palterings, no if-you-pleases, no apostrophes. Big, bullying Coercion does our business.Swear by your beards and the god of thunder, and none of us shall say you nay, for there is not a petticoat among us can resist you. This method, then, I clapped upon my aunt, and now look you to the sequel.
“The matter is just this, dear aunt,” says I. “What about prim old Dame Propriety? I would have you think of her, dear aunt. There is not a female of us all can afford to disregard her.”
I pinned such a steady eye upon my aunt that shortly her high look drooped and was replaced by an ugly one of baffled rage. How fortunate I had ingenuity enough to hold that cat’s paw! ’Twould have scratched me else, and badly.
“What will the world say, auntie dear?” I asked. “A word of this in town and the particular family to which you have the condescension to belong will be derided by the world. My Lady Clapper will live upon it for a fortnight. Your very dear friend, Mrs. Saywell, will dispense it regularly with her new bohea and dish it up hotter than her muffins, and feed every insatiable man in Mayfair on it. Nor will they find it indigestible as her buttered crumpets either. A word, dear aunt, and the whole bench of Bishops will preach a sermon on it, and send all your presentation stoles and slippers back greatly discoloured with their tears. We shall be afflicted with the exultation of our enemies and, worse a hundred times, the commiseration of our friends. Will you not reflect, dear auntie?”
For the dear lady to reflect was quite unnecessary.Instinct was sufficient to decide her. She was as likely to rouse good Dame Propriety, or to make her family the source of common conversation, as she was to sit in a pew with a hassock in it, or to listen to a Low Church clergyman.
The countenance of my aunt was something to be seen. Rage laid her livid; but I was almost proud to look at her, for was she not bred so properly that she smiled away like anything? She put her teeth hard upon her lips, and so did bar her anger back, and continued in that pleasant face that cooled my blood by three degrees.
“Very well, Barbara,” says she, without the faintest passion, though it had required several seconds to give her this composure, “very well. But if I outlast the century I will not overlook this monstrous conduct. From to-day I disinherit you. And I may say that one portion of my fortune will be diverted into building and endowing a church at St. Giles’s in the Fields; the other portion to provide a sanctuary for needy gentlewomen.”
Somewhere in the middle of the day I thought the hour a chosen one to finish off the Captain. With such an application had I pursued the gallant man the previous evening, and such his frame of mind, that surely he was suffering even now an ecstasy of sweet pain. Another amorous glance or two would certainly complete him and drown his duty in his desperation. These reflections carried me to the library door. On entering I was met by the Captain’s greeting and the presence of an unpropitiousthird. Corporal Flickers was in an ostentatious occupation of my seat against the fire-place.
“When you are alone, sir, I shall be glad to speak with you,” I said, this being a hint for the dismissal of the Corporal.
“Important business occupies me most unfortunately just now,” the Captain said; and I retired to await his disengagement.
I conceived this to be perhaps the matter of an hour, but never was more faulty in my reckoning. At three o’clock I sent to inquire of his convenience. ’Twas not yet, however, as the Corporal was with him still; moreover, said the Captain, in reply, he was like to be so until far into the evening. At supper-time they were together also. On Emblem looking farther in the matter, she learned that at the request of the Captain the Corporal had been served with food there.
We were discussing this strange affair in the privacy of my boudoir, when Mr. Anthony, whose fund of shrewdness served him in a thousand ways, advanced a theory meriting much consideration.
“Flickers is his bodyguard,” says he. “Grantley knows it’s in your mind to captivate him, and fears you’ll do it too, if you so much as have him to yourself. Flickers is for safety, and you can take my word for that.”
I thought upon this sadly; for if this was so and the coward’s trick was only persevered in, I should be completely foiled, and that blue paper must be in London very soon.
“You are wrong, Prue,” I said, rebelling against my better judgment. “A soldier and a man like Grantley would never have such a cowardice.”
“Bab,” says he, with insolence, “I’ll bet my back hair on it that I’m right. The bravest man that ever trod will take to strange shifts when confronted with the devil. Pity Grantley, do not blame him.”
Of such is the sympathy of boys!