“Conditionally, that was.”
“No longer. Never, and never, and never. In this house! Before my very face. O, it cannot be true!”
“Well, perhaps he only jested.”
She moved, and, forgetting her sling again, put a fierce young hand on his sleeve. “You called her his fancy.”
“A man may fancy in a woman more or less than she desires. It may be her wit, when she’d give the world it were her face.”
“Is she witty, then?”
“No doubt he thinks so.”
“And ugly?”
“Betwixt and between.”
“You have seen her?”
“More or less.”
“I only asked of her face.”
“It was a bad light. She lies at an inn in the town called ‘The Mischief.’”
“She lies well. Well, thank you, cousin.”
Her features relaxed in a wonderful way. One might have thought her suddenly convinced and at ease. With a sigh that seemed to dissipate all her scruples, she chassé’d a retreating step or two, and twirled, and dropped a little mocking curtsey to the gentleman.
“I must go now,” she said. “You have been very entertaining, Signor George, and—and there is no cure for blindness like——”
“Like what?”
“Like seeing, you know.”
His brows went up, perplexed. “Have I been so whimsical?”
“Infinitely, I assure you—the drollest, most diverting cousin—tra-la-la!”
“But sympathetic, I hope, Kate?”
“O, believe me, that isn’t the word for it—tra-la-la!”
“You know you can always depend upon me for help and advice?”
“O,mostdisinterestedly!”
His jaw seemed to stick as he opened it to answer. She laughed, as she turned her back on him.
“Ah!” he breathed out. “I see you’ll make it up with Philip yet.”
With a stamp of her foot, she flared round on him in a final spasm of anger.
“You dare to say so! I tell you, once and for all, that from this moment it is eternal silence between us.”
He watched her, from under lowered lids, and with a furtive smile on his lips, sweep from the room, then twitched up his shoulders to a noiseless laugh. To make certain of her fixed resolution—that was why he had provoked her to that last retort. Now at length it should be safe for him to act. If only that dubious manner of hers had left him with more conviction as to his own ultimate profit in the matter! But like enough it had been mere coquetry.
He left Whitehall shortly, and made his way to “The Mischief” Inn, where he found Mrs. Davis bored to death over her confinement to her room, and in a very fractious mood.
“Have you come to take me away?” she said. “You called yourself my friend.”
“Why, so I am,” he answered. “What have I done to disprove it?”
“You’ve done nothing, sure; and that’s what.”
“Didn’t I pay your reckoning?”
“O! it’s true you opened the trap door; but you must go and tie me by the tail first.”
He laughed.
“’Twas to keep my country mouse from the gib-cats. No reflection on her.”
“So to keep her from the cats you set a dog on her. A nice one I owe you for that beast of a landlord.”
“Well, he’s called off, and here am I to redeem my word. Will you come with me?”
“Where to?”
“To the tailor and the haberdasher first of all. Will that suit you?”
“Very well—if another pays.”
“So? That’s settled, then. We must have you dressed to the part.”
“What part?” She affected, perhaps felt, a passing perturbation, but it served for no more than to add a thrill to her voice. And then, suddenly, her eyes brightened. “Have you got me a London engagement, George?” she said—“perhaps in the King’s theatre!”—and she clasped her hands rapturously.
“Why,” said he, “an engagement, true enough; but ’tis on the human stage.”
Her lip fell dolefully.
“O, curse that!”
“Mrs. Moll,” he said, “I shall be obliged if you will study to express your feelings less epigrammatically.”
“What’s that?” she said.
“Why, in your case, ’tis another word for cursing.”
“I only know of one other,” said she; “but I’ll damn it with all my heart, if that likes you better.”
“I like neither one nor t’other: ’tis to turn to ‘bitter-sweets’ those cherry-seeming lips of yours, and make poison of their nectar.”
She was sitting at the table, her elbows propped on it, her chin on her fists, and, so disposed, she put out her tongue at him.
“Gingumbobs!” she said; and that was all.
“And, in short,” said he, rising—for he too was seated—“I think I’ll say good day to you.”
Sobered at once, she jumped to her feet, and intercepted him. “What have I said, sure? Don’t never mind a silly wench. I’ll do what you want of me—there!”
He stood arrested, but as if unwillingly.
“I doubt your capacity, child; or your art to curb your tongue. A fig for that when Moll is Moll; but once she shapes herself to my designs, good speech must go with good looks.”
She seemed as if she would cry.
“George, I’ll curb it. I did but jest with you. Haven’t I learned my speaking parts, and said them to the letter, too, without one extra oath?” She was stroking his arms up and down; her fingers wandered to his hands, and gave themselves softly to that refuge; her lifted eyes were full of azure pain. “Tell me what you desire of me,” she said with pretty wooing.
“Why, discretion first and last,” he answered. “Have you got it?”
“Haven’t I! Why, look how particular I can be in the choice of my friends.”
“You’ll have to play a double part.”
“Twice tenpence is two and sixpence, George. It ought to pay me.”
“It ought and shall, if you’re clever. Help me to bring about a thing I much desire, and your fortunes, as I promised, shall be made my care.”
He questioned the young uplifted face. Her hands were still held in his.
“Was thethingborn a girl?” she said. He laughed, but did not answer, and she seemed to muse, her lids lowered. “What a pretty gentleman you are, George!” she said absently, by and by. “I never guessed at first, when you came that unhandsome off the road, what fine clothes could make of you. Why are you going to take me to the haberdasher’s?”
“To prink you out for great company, child.”
She looked up breathlessly.
“Not the King’s!”
“All in good time,” he said—“if you please me.”
“Well,” she said, looking down again, “I’ll do my best—saving my honour. Will that please you?”
“Faith,” says the gentleman coolly, “if you save it at the expense of another’s.”
She drew back a little.
“Not a woman’s?”
“Never fear, Mrs. Moll. ’Tis your pretty rogue’s face and your ready impudence I wish for a bait, and they’d catch no woman, believe me. Come, are you prepared to engage them in my service?”
She primmed her lips, holding up a finger.
“Discretion,” she said. “I’ll answer when I’m told.”
He nodded, and, leading her apart from betraying keyholes, seated himself and pulled her to a chair beside him.
“Now,” said he, “give me your little lovely ear, while I whisper in it.”
She sat at attention like a mouse, while he spoke his low-voiced scheme to her. Mischief, intelligence, secret laughter waited on her lips and eyes as she leaned to listen, sometimes shaking her curls, sometimes whispering the softest little “yes” or “no.” And when at last it was all said, she jumped to her feet with a laugh that was like glass bells, and clapped her hands merrily, while her companion sat, one arm akimbo, regarding her with a pleasant waiting expression.
“Well,” he said; “you’ll do it?”
She strutted, assuming the grand air, and swept a curtsey.
“I am my lord Chesterfield’s most obliged,” she said throatily.
Hamilton rose with a grin.
“You will, I can see,” said he. “It’s really simple if you will only bear in mind this main assurance—they are not on speaking terms, and each will think the other has invited you.”
Runningnorth from Storey’s Gate, the backs of its western houses abutting on the network of conduits which fed what is now in St. James’s Park called the Ornamental Water, but which was then “The Canal,” was a short road, or row, named Duke Street, in which was situated the building—subsequently the town home of Jeffreys, the filthy Fouquier Tinville of an earlier revolution—known as the Admiralty House. This mansion—or part of it, for the whole of it was of considerable dimensions—was, in fact, the headquarters of the recently reorganized Navy, and as such is mentioned here as being associated, however indirectly, with our narrative, inasmuch as it was to a member of its staff (a Mr. Samuel Pepys, not then long nominated to a clerkship of the acts) that Jack Bannister, the famous harpist, and a figure with whom we have hereafter to reckon, owed his “discovery,” in the exclusive as apart from the popular sense.
This man, sprung into evidence no one knew whence or when, had for months been perambulating the town as an itinerant musician, earning a precarious livelihood by playing before tavern doors, at street corners, and in marketplaces, and rich only in the soulful tribute of the many-headed, to whom he had come to be known by the appellation of “Sad Jack.” For sad, indeed, he appeared, both in face and habit; a lean, stoop-shouldered fellow, grimly austere, and always clothed in grey—grey hose, grey breeches, grey doublet, and grey hat, from the shadow of whose limp wide brim his eyes shone white, like pebbles gleaming through dark water. His figure was familiar to the streets as, his instrument strapped to his back, a folding-stool hung over his arm, and his soul patiently subdued to the philosophy which could find in unrecognition the surest proof of worth, he plodded his fortuitous way, with eye grown selective in the matter of “pitches,” and at his heels, perhaps, a string of ragamuffins, who, for the merest dole of his magnificence’s quality, would be ready to walk in his shadow to the town’s end. For sweet music hath through all the ages the “force” we wot of to “tame the furious beast,” and there was never a Pied Piper of genius but could count on his audience of rats to follow him over half the world if he pleased.
And this man had genius, for all it went unrecognized; but that was accident, and no moral whatever attaches to the fact. He communicated it from his finger-tips to the strings, hypostatically as it were, bestowing on them that gift of tongues which, speaking one language, speaks all. To his own ears it might appear that he was uttering no more than his native accents; to all others, gentile and barbarian, it seemed that he spoke in theirs. And that it is to command genius, the universal appeal, the gift of the Holy Ghost.
Yet outside this solitary faculty or inspiration there was nothing noteworthy about the creature but his gloom; and even that might have been no more than the shadow cast by the brighter half of his dual personality on the other. Born musicians are not as a rule remarkable for their intellectual brilliancy, and Sad Jack was, I am afraid, no exception to the rule. He was a dull fellow, in truth, in all that did not appertain to his exquisite art.
Now, it so happened that Fortune one bright spring morning directed the wandering harpist’s footsteps towards that quarter of the town which has already been mentioned, when, attracted perhaps by the sunny quiet of the spot, or by some suggestion in it of acoustic possibilities, he turned into Duke Street, and, choosing a convenient place, unslung his harp and stool, and stood for some moments glassily appraising the constitution of the little throng which had followed him into that retreat. He was inured by now to open-air criticism, and easily master of its moods. He could afford to tantalize expectation, sure of his ability to win the heart out of any crowd at the first touch of those long, nervous fingers of his which for the moment caressed his chin reflective, and with no more apparent sensibility in them than the fingers of a farmer calculating the profits on a flock of sheep. And, indeed, these were sheep, in their curiosity, in their shyness of the challenging human eye, in the way in which each refused to be thrust forward of his fellows, lest his prominent position should argue his readiness to be fleeced. But they all gaped and hung aloof, while the musician, anticipating their sure subjection, leisurely keyed up his strings to the concordant pitch; when at last, satisfied and in the humour, he began to play.
Then it was curious to note the hush which instantly fell upon the throng. Sure, of all the instruments of the senses—ear, eye, palate, nose, and finger—there is none so subtle in its mechanism as the first, nor so defiant of analysis in the way it transmits its message to the soul. The nature to which taste and vision and smell and touch may never prove holier than carnal provocations will yet find its divinity in music. Sound, perhaps, built the universe, as Amphion with his lyre built the walls of Thebes. Children of light, we may be children of sound also, if only we knew.
Now the kennel-sweeper leaned upon his broom, and dreamed of starry tracks where no rain ever fell; the cadger hated himself no longer; the little climbing-boy sat on the rim of the tallest chimney in all the world; the pretty sempstress hid with a little hand the furtive patch upon her chin, and flushed to know it there; the hackney coachman pulled on his rein and sat to listen, a piece of straw stuck motionless between his teeth. One and all they dwelt like spirits intoxicated, hearing of a new message and drunk with some wonderful joy of release. And then the sweet strains ended and they came to earth.
“It was like heaven,” said the sempstress, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye with her apron.
“Was it, indeed?” said a full-bodied, good-humoured-looking gentleman, who had paused on his way to his official duties to listen, and who now pushed himself forward with an easy condescension. This was Mr. Pepys himself, no less, who, brought to a stop between sense and sensibility, had discovered no choice but to fall slave to those transports with which emotional music always filled him. Yet, astounded as he was by the performance, his eye—a pretty shrewd and noticing one—had been no less observant than his ear. He wrinkled it quizzically at the little beauty. “Was it?” says he. “Well, faith, pretty angel, you ought to know.”
He was very handsomely dressed in a blue jackanapes coat, then come into fashion, with silver buttons, a pair of fine white stockings, and a white plume in his hat; and he appeared if anything a little conscious of his finery. But whether it was from his assurance, which seemed unjustified of any exceptional good looks, or the thickness of his calves, which were stupendous, he failed to impress the sempstress, who, heaving a petulant shoulder at him, with a “La, sir, I know I am no angel!” tripped about and away, her nose in the air.
Mr. Pepys chuckled into his chin (though no more than twenty-eight, he possessed already an affluently double one), and, looking a moment after the retreating figure, turned to the musician, who all this while had been gazing into vacancy, his hat, placed crown downwards on the stones, his sole petitioner. But, before any could respond to that mute invitation, the new-comer had stooped to snatch up the dishonoured headgear, which he presented with a great bow to its owner.
“’Tis the privilege of kings, sir,” said he, “to go bonneted before their subjects. Prithee put this to a nobler use than a beggar’s bowl. ’Tis we that should doff to the prince of harpists,” and he suited the action to the word, standing bareheaded before the musician.
He, for his part, sat staring, doubtful whether he was honoured or derided.
“Sir,” he stammered, “have I not played to your liking?”
“So much so,” answered Pepys, “that my liking is you play no more on the streets. Will you be sensible, sir, and discuss this business? I can introduce you where your talent will receive justice; and I ask no other reward for my pains, which is indeed a duty. Sir, I confess your playing ravished me beyond anything I have heard. Rise, if you will, and walk with me.”
Looking dumbfoundered, the musician obeyed. He appeared on closer acquaintance a much younger man than the other had suspected, which was all in his favour as a prodigy. The offer, nevertheless, had been a quite disinterested one—a point to the fine gentleman’s credit; for in truth he was not above expecting commissions on occasion. But in the question of music he was always at his most altruistic. Now he conducted his discovery into the court of the Admiralty House, the better to shake off the throng which followed, and there put to him the few inquiries which came uppermost in his mind—as to the stranger’s genesis, to wit, his social standing, his calling, the circumstances which had thrown him, thus gifted and unpatronized, upon London streets, and so on. But he learned little to satisfy his curiosity. The man was reticent, awkward of speech, proud perhaps; and, beyond the facts that he was self-taught, had been a pedagogue in a country school, and had voluntarily abandoned an uncongenial task for one more to his fancy and potential well-being, the listener was able to glean little. But one thing stood out clear, and that was the genius which proclaimed this oddity as exalted a natural musician as any that had ever captured the heart of the world, and on that assurance Mr. Pepys proceeded. The upshot of this interview was that he came to introduce him, having a pretty wide acquaintance in professional quarters, among the right influential people, with the result that “Sad Jack,” from being a wandering street performer, became presently one of the most fashionable soloists in the town, with the command of a salary in proportion, and engagements covering the most popular resorts from Spring Gardens to the new Spa at Islington.
And with that we will leave him for the time being; while as to Mr. Pepys, having served his purpose, he must walk here and now out of the picture.
TheEarl of Chesterfield, entering his apartments one afternoon, was informed by the porter that a young person, lately arrived, waited on his convenience in the audience-room, to which she had been shown—not ushered. Thus Mrs. Moll, to the menial instinct, be it observed, was still subtly, and in spite of all her fine new trappings, the unclassified “young person.” She might impose on the master, but never on the man.
His lordship demanded tartly why his lady had not been informed. He was told that she was out. The stranger, it appeared, had entered with an assured air, stating that she was expected on a visit. Expected by whom? She had bridled, but in a manner twinkling-like, to the question. By whom did he, the porter, suppose? By one of the servants, curse his impudence? And so he had admitted her, with her smart baggage, assuming that, if she was the invited guest of either his master or mistress, it must be of the former. Why? O! for only the reason that she looked most like a gentleman’s lady.
“A gentleman’s lady”! My lord grinned, then looked serious.
“Did she give no name?”
“The name of Davis, please your lordship. Mrs. Moll Davis she called herself.”
Chesterfield’s brow went up; he whistled. Of course, now, he remembered, this must be Kate’s young country friend of whom he had been advised, and her manners, no doubt, were to be accounted to mere rustic gaucherie. He had better see her at once in his wife’s absence, and judge of her suitability, from his point of view, for the part for which Hamilton had cast her. She might prove, after all, an impossible instrument to play on. And yet the rogue had seemed confident.
He turned on the porter harshly. “Why did you not say so before? Mrs. Davis is her ladyship’s friend and guest, and as such is to be lodged fitly. See to it, fellow, and that you keep that free tongue of yours out of your cheek.”
He went on, and at the door of the audience chamber was received by a couple of lackeys, who, throwing wide the oak, announced him in form—
“My lord Chesterfield, for Mrs. Davis!”
She had been peering into costly nooks and corners, and was taken by surprise. But that did not matter. The blush with which she whisked about from contemplating herself in a remote stand-glass became her mightily, and seemed offered to his lordship like a flower gathered from the mirror to propitiate him for the liberty she had been caught taking. He accepted and pinned it over his heart, so to speak. If this was rusticity, he was quite willing, it appeared to him, to become a country Strephon on the spot. The danger, he foresaw at once, was of falling in love with his own pretence.
And, indeed, Mrs. Davis, with her pert young face and forget-me-not eyes, made an alluring figure, and one seeming admirably efficient to the part she was dressed to play. As to that, Hamilton had advised with taste and discretion; so that, in her plain bodice and pannier, with her slim arms bared to the elbow and tied above with favours of ribbon, and the curls shaken over her bright cheeks from under a coquettish hat-brim, she might have passed for the very sweet moral of a provincial nymph, conceived in the happiest vein between homeliness and fashion. She curtsied, as she had been taught to curtsey on the stage—latterly, for her sex had only quite recently won its way to the footlights—and boldly, with a little musical laugh, accepted the situation.
“Sure,” she said, “if you hadn’t caught me at it, my cheeks ’ud betray me. I was looking in the glass—so there!”
It put him at his ease at once. With no rustic coyness to conquer, he was already half way to the end. It mattered little, he felt confident, what he might venture to say; and so he gave his tongue full rein.
“So there!” said he; “and faith, Mistress Davis, if I were you, I could look till my eyes went blind.”
“Couldyou?” she said. “Then you’d be a blind donkey for your pains.” She came up and stood before him, her chin raised, her hands clasped behind her back. “So you’re Lord Chesterfield,” she said. “How do you like it?”
“How do you?” he asked, grinning.
“H’m!” she said critically, bringing one hand forward to fondle her baby chin. “’Tis early days to say. But, on the face of you, you look very much like any other man. But perhaps you’re different underneath—made of gold, like the boys in the folk-tale.”
“O! I’m not made of gold, I can assure you.”
“Aren’t you, now? I’ve heard of some that are said to be.”
“I’m made just like anybody else.”
“There, now! What a disappointment! And you call yourself a lord!”
“Why, how would you have me?”
“I wouldn’t have you at all. What a question from a married man!”
He was a little vexed; he made that sound of impatience between tongue and palate which cannot be rendered in spelling.
“I see you’re a literal soul,” said he. “I must be careful how I put things.”
“You’d better,” she said. “Now I come to look at you, you’ve got a sinful eye.”
“And now I come to look at you, I don’t wonder at it.”
“Don’t you? Well, for all you’re like to get, you may put it in there and see none the worse.”
He laughed, a little astounded. “Troth!” thought he; “this is a strange acquaintance for Kate to have made!”
“Why,” he said, “what have I asked or expected but the right of every man to see and admire?”
“O! you may admire as much as you like,” quoth she. “I wouldn’t deprive you of that gratification.”
“Or yourself, perhaps?”
“No!” she said, with indifference; “you needn’t consider me. I’ve more than I can do with already.”
“What!” he said, “but not of the town quality? ’Tis only sheep’s-eyes they make at you in the country.”
“All’s fish, for that, that comes to a woman’s net. ’Tis a question with her more of quantity than quality.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Do you love the country?”
“Sure,” she said. “I love the pigs and the cows and the horses, and the ducks and the geese; but, after all, there’s no goose like a lord.”
He laughed, but a little uneasily. He was not quite so confident as he had been of the simple nature of his task. He would just like, for an experiment, to eschew badinage, and insinuate a thought more feeling into the conversation.
“I think I agree with you,” he said. “A lord is a goose.”
“Unless he’s a gander,” said she.
“You called him a goose,” he answered with asperity; “and a goose he shall be.”
“Well, don’t quarrel about it,” she protested. “Goose and gander and gosling, they say, are three sounds but one thing. Why is a lord—whichever he is?”
“Well, what wasyourreason for calling him a goose?”
“I never did. I said there was no goose like him.”
“That was to flatter the goose, I think.”
“Was it, now? And I meant it to flatter the lord.”
He raised appealing hands. “No, I prithee! Flattery—the very mess of pottage for which he sold his birthright as a man! A lord, Mrs. Davis, from the very moment he becomes one, hath parted with sincerity.”
“No, sure?”
“Yes, indeed; and for it exchanged the eternal adulation of the hypocrite, paid not to his merits but his title. The base thenceforth surround him; the worthy keep their distance, lest old friendships, once frankly mutual, be suspected of self-interest. He knows no truth but such as he may read in its withholding; he knows no love but such as loves his rank before himself. Was he not a goose to be a lord—to part with truth and love—to give himself to be devoured by parasites in a hundred forms?”
He smiled, appealing and a little melancholy. The lady lifted her brows.
“Lud!” she said. “And to think we in the country only know but two—the one that hops and the one that doesn’t!”
His lordship gave a slight start and cough.
“Exactly,” he said: “yes, exactly.” He stiffened, clearing his throat, then smiled again, but painfully. “So flatter me not,” he said. “Be your sweet, candid self, to earn my gratitude. You cannot know what it would mean to me to win at last a woman’s unaffected sympathy. Will you not extend to me the friendship which is already, I understand, my wife’s?”
Her eyes twinkled, her mouth twitched, as she stood before him.
“What is the matter?” he asked, in mild surprise.
“You—you do look so droll,” she said, and burst into a fit of laughter.
He was inclined to be very incensed, but with good sense made a moral vault of it, and landed lightly the other side of his own temper. Once there, he could afford to echo the hussy’s merriment.
“You are a bad girl,” he said, grinning, and shaking a finger; “but I can see we are going to be great friends. Hist, though!”
He looked about him cautiously, and then approached her.
“Stand and deliver,” said she, and backed a little.
“No, no,” he said; “on my honour, I only wish a word in confidence.”
“O, I know that word!” she said. “I’m not so young but I’ve learned to crack nuts with my own teeth.”
“Here it is, then,” he said, coming no farther. “There’s this difficulty in the way of our good understanding—that it can owe no encouragement to my lady, your friend.”
“Why not, now?”
“Why, the truth is, we’re—we’re not on speaking terms.”
“Lord-a-mussy! What’s the matter?”
“O, these little domestic differences; they will occur! Unsuited, I suppose. It was her suggestion; but it makes things somewhat awkward for the moment.” He heaved a profound sigh. “Alone—always alone, you see! What a goose to be a lord!”
She eyed him roguishly.
“She’s been finding out things about you: don’t tell me!”
He sighed again. “What a goose, what a goose!” and then started, as if remembering something. “O! and there’s another secret.”
“Another?” said she, thrilled; and irresistibly she leaned her ear towards him.
“Listen!” he said, and, with a single step, had dived and snatched a kiss.
“You devil!” she cried, starting away. “If I don’t pay you for that——”
The word died on her lips. They were both simultaneously aware that the young Countess had come unnoticed into the room, and was standing regarding them with stony eyes.
My lord, coughing and feeling at his cravat, tried to hum a little nonchalant air, failed conspicuously, and, hesitating a moment, yielded incontinent to the better part of valour, and swaggered out by the door, with a little run at the last as if he felt behind him the invisible persuasion of a boot. Some minutes of pregnant silence succeeded his departure. Mrs. Davis was the first to break it.
“I’m—I’m glad to see your ladyship looking so bonny.”
As if it had needed but the sound of this voice to galvanize her into life, to assure her of the incarnate reality of the insult with which she had been threatened, the young wife started, and, advancing a few hurried paces, paused, recollected herself, and went on deliberately to a table, on which she proceeded to deposit the gloves which she stripped leisurely from her hands. She was just come in from riding, and, in her dove-grey habit, with the soft-plumed hat on her head—steeple-crowned, but coaxed into that picturesque shapelessness which only a woman can contrive—looked a figure sweet enough to set Mrs. Davis wondering over the criminal blindness of husbands. Mr. George Hamilton, you see, had let her into only so much of the truth; a half-knowledge which his lordship’s behaviour had certainly done nothing to rectify.
My lady, whose fingers had gripped a silvered riding-switch, put down that weapon, as if reluctantly, and drew off her gloves. If this woman was what she supposed, there could be no course for her to adopt more contemptuous than that of overlooking her as if she did not exist for her.
“Sure, it must have been a surprise for you,” said Moll, after waiting vainly for some response, “to find me come, unbeknown to you, on a visit to my kinsman. But la! we never know what’s going to happen next—now, do we?” (No answer.) “‘Look in any time you’re in the neighbourhood,’ he says to me, ‘and there’s always bed and board for you at Whitehall.’” (No answer.) “You’ve a pretty place here, my lady. We’ve got none such in the country, saving it’s the Manor House where Squire Bucksey lives; and him but half a gentleman, having lost a leg and an arm at Worcester fight.” (My lady takes up a book, which she affects to read in.) “Well,” said Moll, “if you’ve nothing to say, I think I’d better be following his lordship.”
She moved as if to go. The book slapped down. My lady turned upon her peremptorily, with crimson cheeks.
“Stay! Too intolerable an insolence! This affectation of rustic artlessness! I had thought to be silent, but it transcends my endurance. I had been warned of your coming, and I know who you are. Your name is Davis; deny it not.”
Impudence was not offended; but her sauce was up. She turned to counter, and the two faced one another.
“Deny it? Not I,” she said. “What if it is?”
“What? How dare you speak to me? Is not your presence here offence enough?”
“What have I done now?”
“Done? No wonder your right cheek flushes for its shame.”
“He kissed it—not I. Another moment, if you hadn’t come in, and I’d have clouted his ears for him.”
“What made him kiss you?”
“That’s for him to say. You can ask him if you like.”
“I!”
“Old acquaintance’ sake, he’ll tell you, perhaps.”
“Ah!”
“What are you ‘ahing’ about? Did it look like a habit between us? Take my word, if you care, that he’s never kissed me in his life before.”
“Care? Not I.”
“I thought you looked as if you didn’t.”
“His kisses and his fancies are subjects of supreme indifference to me.”
“What’s the matter, then?”
“My self-respect is the matter—a thing beyond your comprehension. To have to sit and suffer such a guest—in silence—as though I seemed to countenance her presence! That is the matter.”
Mrs. Davis, half-whimpering, put her knuckles to her eyes.
“Why don’t you speak to him, then,” she said, “and have me turned out? O, dear, O, dear! A nice way this to treat a harmless visitor!”
Harmless! For the first time a wonder seized her little ladyship. Was she really maligning in her heart a rustic simpleton? No, there was something hereadroite, practised, something indescribable, which precluded the idea. And yet the thought had come to puzzle and disturb her. Though she could not believe, her tone was less uncompromising when she spoke again.
“I speak to him? It is not for such as you to understand. To answer to an insult is to flatter it. Let him answer for his own, so it be one, to himself and you. Never fear that I shall complain.” She turned away and back again. “I ask no questions about you,” she said. “I desire to hear and know nothing. Your conduct, if you speak truth, need be your only voucher.”
She took up her gloves, preparing to leave the room, then stopped, as if on a resistless impulse, and looked into the slut’s eyes.
“You have a pretty face, child,” she said. “I know not whence it comes, or what designs; but I would fain think no evil of it.”
And she gathered up her things and went, without another word.
It had been a brief interview, but a stupefying. For some moments after she was left alone Moll stood motionless, as if afraid to stir. Then, gradually, expression came back to her face, and she gave a soft whistle.
“Lud! the first is over,” she murmured; “and I would I could think the worst. I stand to have my eyes scratched out, seemeth to me. But, never mind. George must be accommodated, and the fool lord caught in the snare of his own laying. We’ve not, for that matter, begun so badly.”
She rubbed her cheek viciously, then, executing a little noiselesspas-seul, shivered to a stop, and looked about her inquiringly. She was as light on her feet as a kitten, as graceful and as pretty.
“What next?” She tittered. “Will nobody fetch me or tell me? And O!”—she pressed a hand to the seat of suffering—“whendo great folks dine!”
She stiffened on the word, like a soldier to “attention.” A liveried gentleman who had come into the room stood bent and bowing before her—and kicking a furtive heel to another, who stood sniggering in the shadow of the door.
“Will your ladyship,” said the first, speaking from the root of his nose, “condescend to be pleased to be shown your ladyship’s chamber?”
Moll whisked about, her cheek on fire. “Yes, she will, turnip-head, when you’ve got over that stomach-ache of yours.”
Itmust be explained at this point that the comedy with which we are especially concerned formed only one of innumerable kindred sideshows in the endless junketing fair at Whitehall Palace, where, ever since the first days of the Restoration, the high revel which that reaction from Cimmerian glooms had come to inaugurate had been steadily degenerating into a Saturnalia as unblushing as it was universal. It represents, in fact, but one among many such performances, and, though isolated by us for purely dramatic purposes, is none the less to be understood as constituting part of the general entertainment. Thus, you can picture our little company, if you will, as joining, in the intervals between the acts, in the common hilarity, as forming part of the glittering personnel which daily, in that idle, pleasure-loving Court, laughs and fribbles away the hours. The young Countess is there,ingénue, childish, but already a mark for predatory eyes, and not, alas! in her proud revolt, wholly, or wholly innocently, unconscious of the fact. My lord her husband, secretly watchful of the change, conceals, under an affectation ofinsouciance, the jealousy which is beginning to set him speculating as to any reason which may exist for it. Hamilton, who holds in his hand, or imagines that he holds, the strings of all the puppets implicated in this play of cross-purposes, pervades the entire scene, a figure of wit and grace, handsome, urbane, and popular wherever he chooses to distribute his favours. Of the Court and its demoralizing atmosphere are all these lives, is all this complication of unscrupulous intrigue; and, if we leave that Court out of our account, it is not to imply thereby that the aforesaid lives are not nine-tenths subject to its baneful influences, but simply because to mix any such complex ingredients with a plain tale were hopelessly to confuse the issues thereof. Wherefore we will continue to confine ourmise en scène, if you please, to that district of the huge, rambling palace in which my lord of Chesterfield has his quarters. It is there that the sole business with which we are concerned develops itself.
Now, it comes to include, this business, in the process of its unfolding, a certain illustrious figure, with whose name we have dealt hitherto but in parenthesis. His Royal Highness the Duke of York was at this date a young man of twenty-seven, and somewhat notable, in a reckless community, for the comparative propriety of his conduct. At least, he kept his lapses within reasonable, if infrequent, bounds, and, in erring, showed some occasional capacity for shamefacedness. He had virtues—courage, truth to his word, fidelity, and application; vices—parsimony, excessive hauteur, and an implacable enmity for his foes. Yet, commonly master of himself, he possessed one cardinal weakness, and that showed itself in a remarkable susceptibility to feminine allurements—showed itself, I say, for he seemed unable to conceal it; he was, according to Grammont, the most completely unguarded ogler of his time.
Fresh, unspoiled, and possessed of the double recommendation of having a husband, and notoriously an indifferent one, the little Countess with the rose-leaf face was not long, you may be sure, in attracting the rather prominent inquisition of those wandering orbs, and not altogether, be it said, without some flattered consciousness, on her part, of their interested scrutiny. The Duke, though austere to severity, was not an uncomely Stuart; he was tall, well formed, and the sallow melancholy of his look, when tempered to a soft occasion, could be sufficiently moving. Satisfied as to first impressions, he began to consider his further policy; and in the meantime he ogled.
His ogling, it seemed, was not, in spite of its temerity, suspected by Hamilton. Perhaps Cousin George’s confidence in his own most-favoured position was too absolute to cherish a thought of any rival influence outside it. But, whatever the case, it is certain that, even if he observed, he gave himself no concern whatever about an ocular blandishment which was generally at the service of anybeaux yeuxof a pattern finer than the common.
But, if he remained indifferent, it was far otherwise with the husband, whose vision in a night had changed its blindness for the thousand-lensed optic of spiderous jealousy. Realizing, too late, his own infatuated folly, reduced to a vain coveting of what was by all legal right his own possession, forced into an attitude of apparent insensibility to the promiscuous gallantries offered to his lady on the strength of their estrangement, and prevented, both by policy and pride, from confessing to his altered sentiments, the unhappy man was, in these days, suffering all the pangs the most vindictive wife could have wished. And yet she would have forgiven him, even now, could he have brought that obstinate devil in him to submit to the one condition she had dictated, and have owned to his iniquity and asked absolution for it. But to that extreme he could not go; it was still a point of honour with him to force her into being the first to break the silence; and so he continued to ground what hopes he had on the nature of the compromise suggested by Hamilton. To that absurd faith he clung, soon wearying of the little malapert instrument lent, though he never guessed it, to his purpose, but desperately continuing to play her for the success he looked to achieve. And, in the meanwhile, if his part in private was a difficult one, in public it was an endless anguish. It was not only that, cursed to that compact of silence, he must be perpetually manœuvring to avoid its discovery by others—and always on the edge of a fear lest what he so carefully concealed should be mockingly made known, in a spasm of feminine perversity, by the capricious partner thereto—but that he was wholly debarred by it from uttering a word of warning or menace to that same partner on the subject of the perils, to which her own wilfulness was subjecting her, from oglings, princely or otherwise. He himself was so acutely sensitive to the danger that he found a suggestive meaning in every appreciative glance, every small natural homage paid to a beauty which could not be seen but to be admired. The attractions which should have been his pride had become his torment, while his mind revolted from the memory of a dead infatuation as from something noisome: and in so much the Nemesis of deserved retribution had swiftly overtaken him. From his jealous misery he could find no relief at last but in confiding its fancied justifications to his friend Hamilton. Him, for some inexplicable reason, he never suspected.
“Curse it, George!” he would say. “I am so driven and harassed, curse it! A little more and I shall pack her off to the Peak!”
He spoke of the Peak in Derbyshire, near which his country seat, Bretby Hall, was situated. The phrase at Court came to pass into a jocular proverb; so that to rid oneself of a tiresome wife was to send her to the Peak. But the threat a little alarmed Hamilton. It was true that, if carried into effect, it might prove itself the short cut to his own desired goal, since friends come doubly welcomed into killing solitudes; still, that welcome, gained at the sacrifice, perhaps, of a month in town, was a prospect altogether too wry to be entertained with composure. No, he must certainly counter the suggestion with all his wits.
“Why?” he said. “What is poor Kate’s new offence?”
“Did I speak of any?” snarled Chesterfield. “The old is wide enough and long enough to serve the purpose of a score.”
“How do you mean?”
“How, says he! Why, does she not take advantage of my tongue-tied state to flaunt her coquetries in my very face?”
“Speak to her, then.”
“You know I cannot.”
“O, you can, indeed!”
“I’ll see her damned first!”
“Why, there you are. You’ll see her damned first, and so you will.”
“So I will? What do you imply by that?”
“Did you not say you would? Your word on it, then, you will.”
“Curse you! You mean the Duke.”
“Curse you! What Duke?”
“Don’t you know very well?”
“O, a pox on these conundrums! What Duke, I say?”
“York, then.”
“What! Ishethe villain?”
“I’ve watched them exchange glances.”
“Why, so have I, and so have hundreds.”
“You own it?”
“With perfect equanimity. Such frank barter of the eyes is your surest proof of innocence. Give me your stolen look for mischief.”
“You think he means none, then?”
Hamilton laughed, and clapped his friend on the shoulder.
“O, Phil!” said he, “thou art surely possessed. The Duke hath other fish to fry; his net is full. Believe me, on my sincerity” (and he meant it), “your jealousy corrupts your judgment. And more—it dishonours your wife. Come, tell me—how goes it with the little country skit, Kate’s friend?”
Chesterfield, but half convinced, shook his head and growled.
“She wearies me. A tasteless business.”
“What!” said the other, again perturbed: “you are not crying off?”
“No”—he shrugged—“O, faith, no! But, ’tis uphill work.”
“The looser rein to give yourself. A plague on distaste! That is to put on the brake uphill.”
“A common creature, nevertheless, to appear my more natural choice—and whensheis by. I think Kate must hold me despicable.”
“Is the skit so common?”
“Troth, you’d think it: though, to do her justice, she makes one laugh.”
“Still, though against your inclinations, you play the part?”
“O! I play it.”
“And with what effect so far?”
“None that you promised—unless rank mutiny lay in your scheme. She seems determined to show me that, of all men she encounters, I stand least in her regard.”
“So you are signalled out for her slights. What could you wish more? I’d rather be the one scorned by a woman than the fifty favoured. ’Tis to stand alone in her estimation, and be thought of always for yourself. She’s jealous, take my word. These coquetries you speak of are but retorts on you in kind. Be thankful that she thinks you worth them. It works, Phil—believe me, it works.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Come, visit us this night, and make sureness surer.”
Hamilton feigned to reflect.
“To-night? Why, the truth is——”
Chesterfield, breaking into a chuckle, nudged him roguishly.
“Hey-hey! I see: an assignation. Well, another night.”
“Nay; to prove you’re wrong, I’ll come.”
It so happened that, passing along a corridor that afternoon, Hamilton encountered the Duke of York, who took his arm and held him in friendly talk as he paced the matting with him up and down. His Royal Highness was in a suit of plain black, which became his sombre visage very well, and wore no ornament but the “George” suspended from his neck by a blue ribbon.
“I know your love for music, Geordie,” says he. “What is this new saraband that all seem suddenly crazed about?”
Hamilton told him. It was by the Signor Francesco Corbetti, that famous master of the guitar, who had lately come from Paris to Whitehall, and with such good result for himself that the King, who loved his art, had actually appointed him a groom of the Queen’s privy chamber, with a princely salary, in order that he might attach him permanently to the Court.
“’Tis nothing else, both morning and noon,” said the young man, with a groan: “till, for my very love of music, I could throttle these mutilators of it with their own guitar strings. Not a doting coxcomb or lang’rous amourette but murders the ‘jealous-pated swain’ six times a day. I wish he were rotten. Is it not strange how vanity will never learn that to sing the nightingale’s song is not necessarily to sing the nightingale!”
The Duke smiled tolerantly.
“Are they all such bunglers?” said he. “I have heard of some reputed to handle their instruments well.”
“Arran is one,” said Hamilton, “and there is another accomplished performer among them—your Royal Highness’s self. But, for the rest, it is not that I object to their twanging to their hearts’ content; it is that they must all do it to the same tune. This saraband is indeed a ravishing air—as Corbetti plays it; but watered nectar was never to my taste. God forbid I should quarrel with a vogue his Majesty started, or curse to hear this discordant plucking of strings come wailing eternally like the wind through a hundred keyholes; all I ask is an occasional change in the theme.”
“You think, nevertheless, the air itself beautiful?”
“O! it is. Your Royal Highness should hear it.”
“What did you remark of Lord Arran, Geordie?”
“Why, he knows and plays it, after Corbetti, the best of all.”
This Earl of Arran, Kate Chesterfield’s younger brother, was a little callow perfumed exquisite, a little lisping buck, who could play many parts prettily, but none to such effect as that of minstrel, for which, like Moore, and Leigh Hunt, and other twitterers of a later date, he had a small natural aptitude. So, when the Italian, by the King’s grace, brought guitars into that fashion that no lady’s toilet table was thought complete without it included a beribboned instrument among its rouge and powder-puffs, this curled darling found his opportunity, and earned through it a more devoted attention than any of his puppyish charms had hitherto been able to procure him.
“He must play it to me,” said the Duke. “The boy has a fine touch, though something due, no doubt, to the quality of his instrument. They say ’tis the best in all England.”
“No, that it is not,” said Hamilton unguardedly. “His sister owns the best.”
The Duke affected an air of momentary abstraction before he answered—
“What did you say? O, my lady Chesterfield! She plays too?”
“Faith! that is the word for it,” answered the other. “She plays, as they all do—at playing.”
“And she has a finer guitar than her brother, was it? She should lease it to him.”
“Doubtless she would, if asked.”
Again his answer seemed to pass unnoticed. Then the Duke started, as if recollecting himself.
“Eh?” he said: “we were discussing—what or whom? I’ve forgot. But let it pass. There was something of interest—what was it?—that I had in my mind to mention to you.”
“Thesame: three days later.” So, in theatrical parlance, we lift the curtain on a scene the replica of that introduced in the second chapter of this Comedy of Errors. It was all as before, even to the parted figures—only with this difference: somewhat equidistant between the two sat Mrs. Davis.
That, though an addition seeming insignificant, had all the latent force in it of a barrel of gunpowder with an unlighted fuse attached. The moment might come when, the match being applied, the whole of that artificial stuff of obmutescence would be blown in a flash to the winds.
Mrs. Moll was perhaps herself a little conscious of the volcano on which she was perched. Yet it would be doing her an injustice to hint that she either felt or showed any perturbation. While fully realizing that her position was in the last degree precarious, the thrill of the thing, the exercise of the mental agility needed to prevent, or at least postpone, that final catastrophe, was compensation enough, while it lasted, to reconcile her to her utmost danger. And in the meanwhile she was having, in the slang of to-day, the time of her life. Lapt in a perfumed luxury, which was as foreign as it was agreeable to her nature, and enjoying it none the less because it was stolen fruit, soon to be consumed; like a born actress living in her part, but like an astute woman keeping an unsleeping eye to the business side of her engagement, she gave herself wholly to the situation, and endeavoured to extract from it the best that mischief and ingenuity could devise. Morally, she was in her own eyes merely the naughty littletertium quidneeded in a drama of love and jealousy to effect a certain purpose of separation.
And, incidentally, she regarded the feelings of no one. The play was the thing, and nothing outside it mattered. She was not, personally, taken with his lordship, while, professionally, she coquetted with, and, as she supposed, captivated him. If, in the course of those antics, he should be so obsessed as to propose to make her his mistress in actual fact, she might possibly, for reasons of self-interest, be induced to accept. But she was quite contented without. The entertainment to her lay in the successful management of the double deception which was to end by procuring Hamilton the fruit of his elaborate intrigue. She was not jealous of him, though he was the man, handsome and daring, for her fancy. They were small souls akin, and she would like to please him, if only to hear his praise.
My lord read, my lady worked, and Mrs. Davis sat with her hands on her lap and yawned. When she addressed either, it had to be with a careful view to maintaining with each the fiction that she was the other’s friend—a task not to be under-estimated for its difficulty, and, indeed, only rendered possible by the stubborn avoidance by the two, in replying to her, of any reference to her position in the house as the guest of one of them. But their mutual pride was in that her safety. For any self-betrayal they invited, designedly or undesignedly, she might actually have been their known and accepted visitor. They spoke not so much to her as through her—shafts designed by each to gall the other. It was for her usefulness in that respect that my lady had condescended to condone her presence, and even to the extent of some verbal interchanges. As a medium, transmitting the bitter intercourse of soul with soul, she had her negative virtues.
It was evening, and the girandoles were all a sparkling haze of light. There was no company but these three; for his lordship had of late shown a peevish avoidance of his friends, and his implied intimation of a desire for solitude had been generally respected—infinitely to the disgust of his young Countess, who, never wedded to domestic dullness, found in this infliction of it, under the circumstances, an intolerably aggravated grievance. She sat like a figure of fate, distilling frost.
Moll, leaning back in her chair, linked her hands behind her head, stretched deliciously, gave a prodigious yawn, and rattling her little heels on the floor, came erect again, and looked in a collapsed way at her ladyship.
“Sure, you’d find stitching easier, wouldn’t you,” she said, “if you took off that black sling of a thing.” (The injured wife still advertised her hurt on occasion.)
“No,” answered the lady shortly, pursing her lips. “I shouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t you, now?” said the slut, and settled herself down for a tease. She was a born chatterer, as glib at retort as she was garrulous, and the bump of reverence had been wholly denied her. She looked very pretty, nevertheless, in her evening frock of flowered lutestring, with her bright hair tumbling over her bright cheeks, and dressed at each temple with a knot of pink ribbon. “Well, there’s no accounting for tastes. If I’d hurt my arm, I should either forget the bruise or forget my work. They don’t pull together.”
“I haven’t hurt my arm.”
“Not?”
“It was bitten by a dog.”
“Sakes, now! What made him do it?”
“What makes any dog bite? An evil disposition, I suppose.”
“You weren’t taking his bone away from him, by chance?”
“Not I. He’s welcome to a whole skeleton of bones for me.”
“All except the spare-rib, maybe.”
His lordship, from his place apart, went “Ha-ha!”—and immediately looked furiously solemn. My lady, beyond a slight flushing of the cheek, showed no consciousness of the interruption. Moll turned in her chair, leaning her arms on the back and her chin on her crossed hands.
“That’s you,” she said. “Is your book so funny?”
“Killing,” answered Chesterfield. “’Tis—’tis a tract on drainage.”
“Lord, now—how humoursome! No wonder it makes you roar. But, sure, there’s no laughter in your face. You look as cross as a Good Friday bun.”
“Zounds! I’m amused, I tell you,” he said; “as amused as a dog when a cat arches her back at him.”
“I’ve seen more amused things than that. Come, prithee, leave your book and let us talk. What do you want to read for when a guest is by?”
“O! just to occupy my mind.”
“Put something into nothing, do you mean? Well, ’tis better empty than filled with drainage.”
He laughed, without hilarity, but laid aside his reading.
“Well,” said he; “I am at your service.”
“That’s right,” she said. “And so we’ll make a merry company, we three—the best in the middle and the bread on each side, like a duck sandwich.”
“Little merriment in a sandwich, to my thinking.”
“Why, so there isn’t. ’Tis a poor substitute for the stomach.”
“A very poor substitute. A man might better own a bread-basket.”
But that was too much for Mrs. Davis. She bridled, instantly offended.
“You vulgar beast! I’ll have you know I’m not to be spoken to like that, curse you!”
There is nothing more incommensurable, to be sure, than the particular standards of decorum which obtain with people of Mrs. Moll’s station—now as then.
Chesterfield’s eyebrows went up; he shook with a little inward laughter.
“Why,” says he, “I’m all amazement! ’Twas but afaçon de parler; or, as we call it, a figure of speech.”
“Well, you can keep that part of speech’s figure to yourself.”
“I will; though I’ve got enough of my own. Come—forgive my offence. What were we discussing? Sandwiches?”
“Well, I say they’re a poor manner of food. The man that invented them meant well, but he went the wrong way about with it. They should be a slice of bread between two slices of meat, to my taste. He must ha’ been like Kit’s friend, who always did the right thing and did it wrong.”
She was constantly referring to this “Kit.” Neither of her hearers had a notion as to who was the individual alluded to, though each supposed it to be some one familiar to the other’s knowledge. The lady, of course, thought it a woman, the gentleman a man. The name, you see, as applicable to a member of either sex, was one very well chosen for abstract purposes. It enabled her to keep up an assumption of understood references, while avoiding the danger of specific instances. “Kit” was made the mouthpiece of quite a number of imaginary characters. He—or she—might or might not have had some existence in fact—even to a certain association with that mythical personage her husband (in whom, by the by, Hamilton had scant belief); but for oracular purposes it mattered nothing whether “Kit” were a derivation or a creation. The enigma, however, had this whimsical effect—both husband and wife became presently consumed with such an insatiable curiosity to penetrate the secret of “Kit’s” identity, that they felt like to burst under the weight of silence which the irony of circumstance had imposed on them.
“What friend of Kit’s was that?” inquired his lordship.
“He was a plumber,” answered Moll—and turned on her hostess. “Have you ever had a friend a plumber?”
It was as though she had suddenly shot a jet of iced water over the daughter of the Duke of Ormonde. Kate started, quivered, and sat rigid.
“Never!” she gasped out.
“Well,” said Moll, “I don’t blame you. They’ve a smell about them of putty and warm tallow that isn’t appetizing. But this friend of Kit’s was worse than most. He never mended a broken pipe but what he shut up some of his tools in it first, or stopped one leak without opening two. Aren’t you feeling well?”
“Never mind my feelings,”—the response came Arctic. “I’m not accustomed to having them considered”—“by the friends of plumbers,” was implied.
“What a shame, now! If ’tis your arm that’s hurting you, don’t stand on ceremony, but get to bed. We can manage alone somehow.”
The Earl raised his eyebrows, positively petrified. How dared the baggage mock the other thus, however much her friend? It could be nothing but her obsession about himself and his fatal attraction which emboldened her so to range herself, as it were, under the protection of his guns.
Lady Chesterfield, her cheek aglow, rose to her feet.
“This is becoming insufferable,” she began; and stopped, biting her lip.
“You’ve forgotten your sling,” said Moll.
“You’ve forgottenyourself,” said Kate disdainfully; and, with a shrug, resumed her seat. “But perhaps that is an advantage.”
Mrs. Davis jumped up, with a ringing laugh.
“What a company of crosspatches!” she cried. “The sandwich doesn’t seem to be a success. You come in the middle, Phil, and be the duck.”
He grinned, but in a half-scared way. She had never yet ventured so far as to call him by his Christian name. He was feeling suddenly rather helpless—taken off his feet by the excess of the storm he had himself invited. When she ran to him and pulled at his coat, he resisted feebly.
“Come and be the duck.” She chirped with laughter. “What a face to grin through a horse collar! O! look intelligent!” She shook him. “What shall we do—play games? Hot cockles, say, or——” she released him, and stood with deliberating finger on lip. “No, that would never do. Dumb-crambo—what do you say to that?” She glanced with comical plaintiveness from one mute figure to the other. “But you don’t look very playful, either of you. I wish Kit was here. You’d never be able to resist Kit, whatever you do me.”
Chesterfield cleared his throat, fingering the cravat at it.
“Is Kit such a wag?” said he.
“Just,” was the answer.
“And good at games?”
“There was never such a one for make-believe.”
“A happy disposition. But then, as to happiness—Kit isn’t married, of course.”
Her ladyship, in an uncontrollable spasm, whisked about.
“Kit, Mrs. Davis, has never suffered that most cruel of disillusionments.”
And then they went at it alternately, each pointedly addressingnotthe other, and tossing the hypothetical Kit between them, as if that epicene individual were the most familiar of shuttlecocks.
“Kit is to be congratulated, Mrs. Davis,” said his lordship.
“Kit has chosen the better course, Mrs. Davis,” said her ladyship.
“Matrimony is the shadow of felicity, Mrs. Davis, for which men, like the dog in the fable, drop the substance.”
“Men, you see, are beasts, Mrs. Davis; and not only beasts, but silly beasts.”
“They don’t know when they are well off, Mrs. Davis.”
“But women do, Mrs. Davis, when men insist on remaining single.”
“A pity for them, then, Mrs. Davis, that they don’t insist on remaining single too.”
“A great pity, Mrs. Davis; but women are in everything self-sacrificing.”
“They know how to take consolation for their injuries, Mrs. Davis.”
“The one lesson for which they are thankfully indebted to men, Mrs. Davis.”
“Take care what you’re confessing to, Mrs. Davis!”
“Or what calumnies you are making poor Kit responsible for, Mrs. Davis,” said her ladyship, with a little contemptuous laugh.
“O, Kit is the devil!” shouted the Earl, his wrath, till then steadily crescendo, exploding in a clap.
Moll, with a shriek of laughter, put her little hands to her ears.
“Lud!” she cried. “I’ve never confessed to so much before without knowing it! And to think Kit is come to be the devil after all!”
She lowered her hands to clap them; and at that moment the doors were flung open and Mr. Hamilton was announced. He came in from attending the Court, a brilliant figure all silk and velvet, with bows to his shoes a foot wide, and deep ruffles of lace falling from his knees over his calves. His teeth showed in a little tentative smile, their whiteness emphasized by the thread of moustache, no thicker than an eyebrow, which adorned his upper lip; while his glance, swift and comprehensive, took in the essentials of the situation on which he had alighted. His young kinswoman sprang to greet him with a cry of gladness.
“Oh, bien rencontré, mon beau cousin!You are welcome as health after sickness!”
She positively seemed to fawn on him, while Chesterfield, black and splenetic, scowled from his place across the room.
Hamilton was hugely gratified; but prudence necessitated his discounting this demonstration in the kindest way possible. He laughed, and very gently putting aside the caressing hands, answered, sufficiently audibly—