He smiled and nodded. Arran, with an answering grimace, expressive at least of as much mental vacuity as understanding, bowed low and withdrew.
The moment they were alone, the Duke turned in his chair, and, crossing his knees and leaning on one arm, bent his melancholy brows on Moll in deliberate scrutiny.
“Byshe, madam,” he said, “you allude to——?”
Moll laughed shortly.
“O! don’t you know very well?”
“Don’tyouknow,” he said, “that the young gentleman just left is her brother?”
“Of course I do,” answered Moll, “and that that was why you wanted to shut my mouth.”
He sat regarding her some moments longer, and then a little sombre smile dawned on his face.
“You have a quick understanding, I perceive, Mrs. Davis,” he said. “That may be a profitable or a perilous possession, according as it is employed. I wonder it has never yet led you to realize the supreme asset you have in your voice.”
“O! I see well enough you too want me out of the way,” said Moll, perking a scornful nose. “What is the good of going round about it like this? I’m dangerous where I am, I suppose. Very well, then I must be got rid of.”
He laughed.
“Too impulsive, too impulsive, my little lady. Dangerous you could be, that’s patent, to any man’s peace of mind. But, as to the sense in which you mean it——”
She broke in with a little imperious stamp.
“As to that, I’m not to be misjudged by you or any one. When I said the scandal wasn’t inmyposition, I meant it. If you think I’m there as my lord’s doxy, you’re precious well mistaken. I hate the beast—and if it’s a question of scandal, ’tis her ladyship ought to go. There, she ought; and you know why.”
“I don’t, on my honour.”
“Then, you’d like to.”
“Ah! that, maybe, is quite another matter.”
He looked at her, she looked at him.
“Come, Mrs. Davis,” he said, after a minute of silence: “I’m sure we are on the way to understand one another.”
“O! are we?” said Moll, with a sniff.
“Scandals,” he said, “have nothing to do with facts. An apparition might cause one. You may be as innocent as a babe, but appearances are against you. Therefore you must suffer for appearances. Now, about this voice of yours.”
“Well, what about it?”
“With that and your face for fortune, you might, under proper auspices, prove an incalculable success.”
“What do you mean by auspices?”
He leaned forward, lightly touching his breast with his fingers.
“Patronage: a Royal Duke’s. And in the meantime, pending developments, we might consent to condone this offence, leaving you undisturbed in your present position.”
“I see,” said the girl, after a pause, her eyes rather glowing—“I see. And that, you mean, is to be your reward to me by and by for consenting, if I do consent, to act now as your creature and decoy to help you to your fancy. You’ve no objection to letting me remain on the spot, in spite of my polluting it, if only I’ll act my best for you as an informer and go-between.”
“Such intelligence,” said the Duke, “combined with gifts so sweet, should ensure you, properly directed, a prosperous future.”
“Well,” said Moll, “it’s a bargain if you like. Only wait while I think.”
A sense of mischief was already alive in her. Defrauded in her higher expectations, she cared nothing for that conditional promise of patronage, except that it humiliated even her to be thought worthy of it. She had the wit and the gifts, if she chose to exercise them, to prevail in that direction without any help from outsiders. Feeling rather at bay, in the midst of this group of self-interested plotters, she was driven at last to abandon her position in a revel of retaliation on them all. Only how could she manage it—how? Let her think.
“You’re a great gentleman, I know,” she said suddenly; “but, where love’s concerned, even princes have to take their place among the ranks. Have you never fear of a rival?”
He gazed at her sombrely some moments, without speaking.
“Do you know of any?” he asked at length.
“I know of a coming meeting,” she said.
“With whom?”
“Kit’s his name. I’ve learnt no more.”
“How did you learn that?”
“Never mind how. I’ve not been in her company these weeks for nothing.”
“And when and where is this meeting to take place?”
“At half past eight o’clock to-morrow evening, in the—in the Mulberry Garden”—she chose the place and time at haphazard.
“What!” cried his Highness, biting his lip: “so public!”
“O!” said Moll; “there’s nothing so private, for that matter, as a vizard. And—and he’s to wear a green scarf in his hat to be known by her, and she a green bow in her bosom to be known by him. If you doubt, you’d better go and see for yourself.”
My lord Duke’s countenance had fallen very glum. A shadow seemed to overspread his face.
“It is a good thought,” he said. “Kit, did you say?”
“Kit, sure.”
“Supposing I were to be Kit?”
Moll clapped her hands in delight.
“And pretending it,” she cried, “find out all about the other!”
“H’m!”
His Highness was plainly disturbed. He sat awhile pondering, a gloomy frown knotting his forehead. Presently he looked up, with a deep sigh.
“Well,” said he, “you have already proved your title to my favour. I will consider of this matter; and, in the meantime, keep, you, as silent as the grave.” He rose, put a finger to his lips: “Not a word to any one,” he said. “You shall hear from me again.” And he led her to the door, smiled on her, hesitated, laughed away the temptation, and bade her go.
And then he returned to his seat, and sat gnawing at his nails for the next half-hour.
Onthe morning succeeding the conversation last recorded the following anonymous communication was received by three of the individuals most concerned in this history—
An assignation (vizards) with Kit is arranged for 8.30 this evening in the Mulberry Garden. The parties to it will be distinguished by, in the gentleman’s case, a green scarf about the hat, in the lady’s, a green bow at the bosom.A Well-wisher.
An assignation (vizards) with Kit is arranged for 8.30 this evening in the Mulberry Garden. The parties to it will be distinguished by, in the gentleman’s case, a green scarf about the hat, in the lady’s, a green bow at the bosom.
A Well-wisher.
This note, in facsimile and in a palpably feigned hand, was delivered by the twopenny post—through its recent establishment in Cloak Lane near Dowgate Hill—to his lordship the Earl of Chesterfield, to my lady Countess his wife, and to Mr. George Hamilton, my lady’s kinsman. Each, in its private turn, pooh-pooh’d over it, each concluded that it was without question the work of Mrs. Davis, and therefore not worth consideration in any shape, and each decided, after long and irritable reflection, that it would lose nothing by going to verify the falsehood or accuracy of the report. And to each, in conclusion, succeeded the same inspiration (was it possible that perspicacious Mrs. Moll had clearly foreseen that contingency?), which was to adorn itself with the fateful badge, with a view to surprising such secrets as might reveal themselves to that verdant enigma.
His lordship considered: “This may be nothing but the hussy’s retaliation on me for my rejection of her advances. And yet—curse it!—how can she afford to be so definite in her facts without some ground to go upon? ’Tis my lady that’s meant—that’s sure. There must be something in some way in it; and, if so, how to surprise and expose them? Ah! by God, I know.”
My lady thought: “Is she really by chance telling the truth? And is this her way of revenging herself on me for my reflections on her character? Yet, if it is all an imposition? A barren vengeance that would be, defeating its own object. No, there must be something at the bottom of it, some mischief, some wickedness. ’Tis my lord that’s meant, without question, and in that case I have a right, a duty, to perform in being present. But how to penetrate such perfidy, supposing it to exist? O, I know what I will do! If only I can be there first, and lead him to betray himself!”
Mr. Hamilton reflected: “What is this, my Mollinda?—for Mollinda’s work you are. Kit, and an assignation—with whom? Is it man or woman, you little devil? And so is the enigma to be resolved at last? I don’t believe a word of it. It is some pretty trick of yours to requite me for my late unkindness to you. Well, I’ll defeat it. Find me, with a green scarf to my hat, at the rendezvous, and kiss me for Kit whoever you may be. Who would have thought of that, now, George, but your own ingenious self?”
But, in spite of their pretended confidence, they were all three properly puzzled and nervous, bless you. And one after the other, in an inconsequent sort of way, they put themselves into positions where they might hope to run across Mrs. Davis by accident, and question her casually as to her plans for the evening. But, exasperatingly enough, Moll was never once in evidence the whole day long, and no one knew what had become of her. She had vanished from all human ken like the “baseless fabric of a vision.”
Wherethe grounds of Buckingham Palace now extend, there stood in the seventeenth century the old flowery pleasaunce known as Mulberry Garden, a place long appropriated, like its Spring prototype at Whitehall, toal frescoentertainment. Ex-mural and mural as things then went, there was to the ordinary cit asoupçonof adventure suggested in a visit to this remoter fairyland; and, as a little enterprising beyond the confines of the orthodox adds a zest to the soberest merry-making, Mulberry Garden possessed an attraction for the town, which was certainly due as much to its comparative removedness as to any diversions it might offer in the way of dancing and junketing. There was a mild thrill in achieving it, its wild and tangled acres, only gathered into cores of brilliancy at certain definite centres, where, after dark, the scattered threads of lamps, like gossamer hung with dew-drops, constellated thickly about groups of arbours, set in open spaces among the trees, where glittering forms circulated, and laughter rang, and cheese-cakes were eaten and lips kissed under fragrant ambushes of boughs woven into a thousand pretty devices of green garters and lovers’ knots. There was here none of the structural artifices which later came to vulgarize, and, alas! popularize, the more ordered vistas of Vauxhall across the water—cascades, and sham ruins, and side shows, and so forth; but Nature was allowed for the most part her own sweet, untrammelled way; and, where the wildernesseswereconverted, it was to no more than an artless religion of green swards and bowers, whereon and wherein the tripping frolic of foot and heart might adapt itself, if it would, to “the music of the moon” and the song of the innocent nightingale.
Not that to those chaste warblers of the night was entrusted the whole provision of music for the company. Skies might be moonless, and birds silent or out of season; wherefore there was generally to be found engaged to the service of romantic hearts and ears some performer, skilled on lute or harp, whose melodious utterances, thrilling through grove and clearing, were calculated to awaken such emotions as were compatible with the sweet understanding of sylvan solitudes.
Now, that is a true picture, though very certainly a one-sided. For where innocence goes sin is sure to follow; and the atmosphere of Mulberry Garden was by no means all of harmless frolic compact. Being relatively remote, and consisting, moreover, for three-fourths of its space of unredeemed wilderness, it formed a tempting rendezvous for spirits kept better apart; and too often, it must be confessed, a meeting among its waste thickets was tantamount to an intrigue. Still, in its popular centres the whole may be said to have leavened the parts, and it was to those, nominally, that the town gravitated, and in them found its entertainment.
Mulberry Garden was aristocratic, and remained so until its vogue came to abate—which it was already threatening to do—through the growing reputation of that “Jardin Printemps” at Lambeth, to the entrance of which a trip across the water made such a pleasant prelude. Never popularly patronized, there were times when—robuster novelties attracting—the exclusive might enjoy its green walks and hospitalities with the sense almost of being a privileged company invited to afête champêtre. It had, of course, its central restaurant—without which it could not have existed aristocratically—in the building known as Mulberry Garden House, where quiterecherchélittle dinners could be eaten; and, indeed, it was there that Mr. Pepys (to mention him but once again) discussed that “Spanish Olio,” chartered by one Shere, and mentioned in the Diary, which he found so richly delectable—“a very noble dish such as I never saw better or more of.” In this room Fashion would dine—and often too liberally wine, too—before emerging to tickle its pseudo-pastoral sentiment with pretence of neo-Arcadian groves and flowery shepherdesses; and it was from this room that, vizard on brow, Mr. George Hamilton issued at about a quarter past eight o’clock on a certain soft and windless June night.
He looked sharply about him, as he descended the steps into the open, searching among the company within his range for a particular token. It was one of those exceptional occasions when the visitors were relatively few, and as such widely scattered among the walks and trees. All the space before him was strung with tiny lamps, festooned from branch to branch, or ambushed in cloudy green like glow-worms. They cast a diffused light, enough to distinguish people by, but clothing one and all in a romantic glamour very soft and mystic. Many, most, in fact, of the company wore vizards. Women, indeed, on view in public places, seldom appeared unmasked, not from blushing modesty, but to hide their inability to blush at all where a blush was called for. That was understood, and derided; yet, while wit and address might effect what they could in the way of persuasion, it was an article of the strictest punctilio that no vizor should be removed by force—a rule so respected that any abuse of it was like enough, in those hot times, to lead to bloody reprisals on the offender.
Now, not distinguishing what he sought—and, indeed, the hour was yet early for an expected trysting—Master George sauntered away, with the purpose to seek some retired spot, where he might pin about his hat the green emblem of identification which he had brought with him in his pocket. On his way, reaching an open space where much company was congregated, he stopped to ascertain the cause of the assembling, and perceived, seated upon a green knoll in the midst, the long, grey-clad figure of a harpist, who was in the act of tuning up his instrument before performing.
“Quel qu’il soit?” he asked of a scented exquisite who stood near him.
“What!” exclaimed the gallant, turning in a fainting affectation on his interlocutor. “Not know him? Not know our divine Orpheus, the rare, the inspired, the man to whose finger-tips the bees come a-sipping for honey, the man the tweak of whose thumb will ravish a heart from its bosom as clean as a periwinkle from its shell!”
“I asked for a name,” said Hamilton caustically, “and you have given me a catalogue, of which the least desired part was the note of exclamation at the end.”
“Well, ’tis Jack Bannister,” said the stranger, much misliking the other’s tone, but recognizing a potential something in it which kept him civil. But, having furnished the information, he first edged and then swaggered away.
Hamilton had heard speak of the prodigy, but had never yet chanced to alight on him. He lingered now, to endorse or not the extravagant eulogies lavished on this eighth wonder of his age. And, having listened, he admitted to himself that the verdict was justified. There was something in this man’s performance which surpassed anything he had hitherto experienced. It illustrated in the extremest degree what is called genius, but which is really soul—that spiritual utterance, born with a few men like an unknown language, which would be transcendental were it not for the medium—paint, or ink, or chord, or marble—through which it must materialize in order to reach the senses. “Ah!” he thought: “if he could only say all that without the harp; if Shakespeare could only have conveyed his mind to us without pen or paper, what a divine and cleansing understanding would be ours! But the senses are cloudy interpreters.”
He was moved, but he would not applaud. “As well cry ‘Brava!’” he thought, “to the divine Speaker of the Sermon on the Mount. I will not so degrade him to exalt myself.”
But there were others who lacked his understanding, and the clapping of hands was general. It offended this paradoxical being, and he strode away, the perfection of his impression sullied. As he dived into a dusk, unfrequented walk, a new strain of music pursued him; but he would not stop to listen to it. That applause had spelt the surfeit which had spoilt the feast.
Presently a little stealing figure in front of him barred his way. There was but an occasional lamp here, and the path was dim. But he could make out that it was a woman, and young, and alone. It was easy to overtake her, and a matter of course to stop and accost, because she was masked and unaccompanied, which was in itself a challenge. As he stood, a sudden thought seizing him, he looked down at her bosom; but no green emblem was there to inform him, only a rather tell-tale tawdriness of ornament and material; and he laughed, and put his hand on the truant’s arm.
“He is under the gooseberry-bushes beyond,” he said. “Shall we go stoop and seek him there?”
She started from him, wincing up her shoulders in alarm, while she clutched a handkerchief between her palms; and then he heard her breath catch, and saw that she had been crying.
“O! don’t touch me!” she said, with a gulp. “Please to let me go past, good gentleman.”
The address, her intonation, betrayed her plainly enough for what she was—some little town skit, sempstress or servant-maid, broken loose, and now frightened over her own temerity.
“Why,” said he. “If you are in distress, I am a rare comforter. Come, let me remove this before it dissolves.”
She could offer no resistance to so beautiful a gentleman, and he slipped the vizard from her face. It was a blowzed and plain one so revealed, its only recommendation youth.
“Let honesty spare to deny itself,” said Hamilton. “There was no need to cover this away, child. What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know,” said the girl, distraught and sobbing. “I didn’t ought to have come. O, let me go!”
“What made you come, then?”
“’Twas my young man, there! He called me a name; and I thought—I thought, if I was to be called that——”
“You’d not be called it for nothing? Now, you know, that was foolish, because to answer wrong with wrong is like patching a worn-out gown with a piece cut from itself.”
“Yes, sir; so it is.”
“Mend bad with good, child, and”—he positively seemed to expand—“forgive injuries. Tell me, what wrought this change of feeling in you, this sense of an error realized and repented?”
She began to sob again, but quietly, and hanging her head.
“’Twas—’twas him there, I think, a-playing so beautiful; and—and, I seemed overtook, all of a sudden, with my wickedness. I want to get out, to escape, from—from——”
“Why, from yourself, child; and so you shall. But whither? To him?”
“O no, no! To mother.”
“Come, then; I will see you on your road.”
“O, don’t, sir!”
“Pish! I am sincere. What is thy name?”
“Betty, sir.”
“Harkee, Betsinda! I also heard the harpist, and was ‘overtook,’ and repented me of my sins—for the time being. Now for the nonce I am to be trusted; but you must hurry. This virtue will certainly last to the gate, where I will see you safe bestowed. Go home, then, and be a good girl, and never think to sin this way again.”
She still hesitated, tearful and in doubt, but quickly surrendered to his insistence, and went beside him submissively. He led her by a circuitous route to the great wicket of the place, where it stood in a blaze of flambeaux facing the dining-hall; and there outside waited a throng of chairs and vehicles, the most having brought visitors, but among them several hackney coaches, driven over, as they might be to-day, on the chance of a fare. And into one of these Hamilton bundled his charge, having first settled with the coachman; and he sent her off with his blessing, smiling on her timid benedictions. And then he turned his back on the gate, and smacked his chest with ineffable unction, and threw a glance at the sky, as if to observe if the recording angel were there making a note.
Yet, what if the girl had been pretty?—but he shall have the benefit of the doubt.
He strolled back the length of the lighted building, savouring by the way his own laudableness; and, coming presently to the starry, tree-haunted sward beyond, was aware in one instant of a lady, with an emerald bow in her bosom, standing fanning herself apart near a rhododendron thicket, and of a cavalier, whose hat was adorned with an apple-green scarf, striding across the grass to join her. He was so near the two that he was able, unobserved, to slip, though with a little jump of the heart, behind a tree-trunk, within earshot of the coming colloquy.
The gentleman walked up to the lady, and bowed, and stood silent. She responded with the minutest toss of her head, and remained as mute. She fanned herself, he whistled. “Hem!” said he. “Hem!” said she. Hamilton chuckled, though in an exasperated way.
“By the lord,” he thought, “if ’tis not my cousin Kate and Phil! And I perceive what is their game, which is for each to make the other speak first.”
He watched like a cat. “Hem!” coughed the lady again, and “Hem!” coughed the gentleman, only more aggressively. At that moment a second lady, having a green bow at her bosom, came rapidly from the direction of the gate, and, passing across the observer’s near field of vision, went on and vanished among the trees. She was seen both by him and by the stationary lady, who started ever so slightly; Chesterfield, having his back to the flitting figure, stood unmoved.
“I think,” said the lady, in an odd, repressed little voice, and seeming to make up her mind of a sudden, “that you have made a mistake.”
Chesterfield uttered a sort of triumphant snarl.
“No, by God!” said he. “I have made no mistake. And now acknowledge, madam, that you have been the first to break the silence between us.”
“What, then?” she protested. “You have made a mistake, I say. Whoever you may think me, I am not she.”
Now Hamilton, struck with an idea, had been privily, during these few moments, pinning his own scarf about his hat. And at these words he came from his ambush.
“Noguet-apens, but the grass, sir,” said he, “must explain my soft approach. This lady speaks truth. You are mistaken in her.”
Chesterfield’s eyes glared red through his vizard holes. He sneered horribly.
“If I were mistaken before, sir,” said he, “judge what I may be now.” Then he turned with a whirl on the other. “Is this the way you hope to convince me against your shameless perfidy? But you are betrayed, madam, as much in your purposed visit here as in the object of your wanton escapade. Will you still pretend you do not know your husband?”
“Indeed,” she said, “I know him very well.”
He uttered an oath.
“Then you know his way with villains”—and, white with passion, he whipped out his sword.
They were all standing apart, screened by shrubs from the general view. For the first time the lady showed some trepidation. She moved hurriedly to interpose herself.
“For shame! Put it up,” she said. “I tell you again you are mistaken.”
“And you may say it a hundred times,” he cried, “and I shall not believe you.”
“Sir,” said Hamilton frigidly, “I too wear a sword, though I have not drawn it.”
“You shall not lack the need,” cried the other. But he left him for the moment, and, addressing the lady, stamped with fury.
“You dare to face me with that lie, and the very witness to it standing here to refute you! But there’s a way to settle it. Take off your vizard.”
“I’ll not.”
“Ah! Take it off, I say.”
“Never, while I live!”
“Then, by God, I’ll do it for you!”
He actually meant it; she retreated before him. “Kit!” she cried, “will you see me so insulted?”
Now, at that, my lord stopped dead, mowing and grinning like an ape.
“So convict out of your own mouth,” he cried, “will you dare to deny longer?” And then he turned his fury on the other. “Liar and betrayer, whatever your cursed identity, this point shall penetrate it. Look to yourself!”
Hamilton was ready, the swords tinkled, the lady screamed.
“There she goes again—the green favour! Look! Is it for her you have mistaken me? Wretch, hold your wicked hand!”
As by one consent, the two belligerents lowered their points. The figure, which had once before revealed itself hurrying past, was again come into view, walking this time with a gentleman, about whose hat was wound a scarf of green sarcenet.
Hamilton gaped, a surprised grin on his face. Already somewhat confounded by his cousin’s appeal to him, this suggestion of a further entanglement seemed fairly to take his breath away. Was the coincidence accidental or deliberate? And, if the latter, what the mischief was at the bottom of it all? He might have thought “who,” rather, but that was superfluous. There could be only one. Anyhow, being in for it, he would make the best he could of circumstance. For the rest, he was rather tickled with the hussy’s impudent daring, and curious to see how her plot worked out. Where was she herself? he wondered. Somewhere watching the game, no doubt.
But, as for my lord, he stared like one petrified. All his assurance was knocked out of him. He looked—goggle-eyed and gasping like a landed fish—from his adversary to the lady, and from the lady to Hamilton, and again from them both to the rapidly receding couple. It seemed minutes before he could find his voice.
“But—but——” he said, and stuck again.
“Very well, sir,” said Hamilton. “Take your guard.”
But the other, with a muttered oath, slipped his blade into its scabbard.
“I’m damned if I do!” he said, and looked stupidly at the lady. “You called him Kit, you know,” he muttered.
“And why not?” she said. “Is he to be killed for being christened?”
“You may realize by now, sir,” said Hamilton, “that you have made an error. If I may suggest, the way to rectify it is by not imposing yourself longer on our company.”
The glare came again into Chesterfield’s eyes; and then doubt, confusion, indecision. Was this, in truth, his errant wife? He had never questioned it before; but now—was there not something seeming more familiar in the pose, the walk of the other? And yet——
He bent, bewildered, to search the secret of the impenetrable mask. Certainly the dim light, the artificial atmosphere, were trickish things; they confused the visual sense, no less than that of voice and hearing. Was he mistaken after all? And what was his folly, in that case, in bandying words with these while the actual delinquents escaped!
One moment longer he hesitated; then, with a curse, turned on his heel and hurried off in pursuit.
The two remaining watched his retreat in silence; and then Hamilton, resheathing his sword with a snap, gave a low laugh.
“Nothing, my Phil,” muttered he, “will make thee a gentleman”; and he turned on his companion. She stood quite still, observing him. “What made you call me Kit?” said he.
“Why, are you not Kit?” she asked.
He peered at her, inquisitive. Surely she could not have failed to recognize him? No! that was incredible. And he, her? There could be no doubt about it. Her voice, her figure, her manner of dressing her hair; even the trick of her speech, moulded on soft wilful lips; even the fashion of her gown, which he seemed vaguely to recall—they were all Kate, indubitably Kate. No, he must seek another reason for her caprice. And could it be this—that all the time in “Kit” had been meant himself? that all the time she had been taking this playful symbolic means to avow her love for one she dared not admit by name? It was a revealing, a rapturous thought; it might explain much which had seemed inexplicable. And yet, if it were true, what had decided the crisis? Was it possible that it was she herself who had written that anonymous letter, confident in her bait to allure him hither? But, in that case, how had her husband got wind of the ruse? And who were those others, all, apparently, in the emblematic secret? Well, at least she had claimed him, and that was sufficient for his present satisfaction. If some eavesdropping mischief, possessed of knowledge, was manœuvring to complicate the issue, they must set their own wits to outwit hers. For the moment it was only his obvious policy to answer that question in kind.
“Yes, I am Kit,” he said. “I understand at last—your very Kit, sweet cousin. And now, let us away to covert where we can talk.”
“Which way?” she said. Her voice seemed to suggest some tiny inward struggle.
“The shady way,” he answered, with a laugh; and she went compliantly with him. “You made sure of my coming?” he asked tenderly.
“O yes,” she answered—“sure.”
He sighed. “I have waited long, trying to dissemble, but trust a woman to know. Come this way, little cousin. There are labyrinths of wild darknesses beyond, where none may hope to track and find us. Is not the night sweet? So Phil hath sinned at last beyond forgiveness? Come—why do you linger?” For she had stopped.
“I hear music,” she said.
“It is only some harping fellow. Come!”
“Where is he?”
“Yonder in the grove.”
She stood as if spellbound, took a hurried step or two, paused, and caught her hands to her bosom.
“Let us go listen,” she said; her breath came quick. “Where is he? I will go, I tell you,” and in a moment she was running. He followed, calling to her: “Cousin, wait! What hath taken you? Stop for me at least!” But she paid no heed to him, and sped on. Her feet twinkled on the grass, in and out between the hanging lamps; he found her, lost her, found her again among the thickening throng; and in another moment, hard pressing on her tracks, he had pursued her into the ring which stood about the player—through it, to the very front, where she stopped, breathless and panting.
And now let us follow the footsteps of that other green-bowed lady, the seeming double or replica of this, whom we can leave for the time being. She was Kate herself, in fact, the little outraged wife, intent on her design to personate the object of her faithless spouse’s pursuit, and, by figuring to him under false colours, to draw him into an unconscious confession of his guilt.
She had driven over in her coach, and—though some accident had delayed her by the way—in time, she still hoped, to enable her to forestall the other. Alighting, she had hurriedly traversed the distance between the gates and the open sward beyond, where the company were most wont to congregate; but, though she used her eyes for all the inquisition they were worth, without result. Eager and flurried, then, she was turning to retrace her steps, when she sawhimmaking towards her from the shadow of a clump of trees, whence, obviously, he had been watching. She stopped instantly, and let out a shaking breath to ease the turmoil of her heart.
It was he, her husband; it never occurred to her to doubt it; the height, the figure, were sufficient, not to speak of the damning token in his hat. And, once assured, she hardly looked his way, I think. And yet, so susceptible is jealousy to false witness, it was not my lord at all, but the Duke of York.
He came up to her where she stood, and, gazing intently through his mask, waited silently a while. And then he sighed, with extreme audibility. Still, she vouchsafed him no recognition or encouragement, but stood as cold and motionless as one of the white lilies in the bed beyond. He was forced at last into taking the initiative.
“Not one word, madam,” said he, “to him that wears your favour? Will you not reassure my anxiety?”
He was aware of the faintest odd response to this appeal; it might have been a whispered note of exultation.
“For whom, sir,” she said, still white, still inflexible, “do you take me?”
“Ah!” he said, “is not that bow in your bosom sufficient answer?”
With a quick, fierce action, she pulled the vizard from her face, looked him in the eyes one moment, and, replacing it, half turned her back on him.
“Now,” she said, “are you satisfied of your error?”
“Satisfied,” said he, “but not of my error, for indeed there is none.” And, indeed, therewasnone, from his point of view.
She turned on him irresistibly, unable to control her indignation—
“You can dare to say it, trapped and detected in the very act? There is no error—none?—and I am she, I suppose, whom you expected to find revealed under this token? O! shameless! But your dissembling does not deceive me—instant and ready as it proves itself. Go seek her, sir, the vile party to your iniquity—she is doubtless somewhere in the garden; and bear with you the scorn and detestation of the insulted wife you thought vainly to overreach, and who now denounces and repudiates you for evermore.”
She made as if to leave him, but again turned, a quivering smile on her lips—
“And bear with you, Philip Stanhope, this reflection, which I know will gall you above any sense of guilt expressed: it was you broke the long silence between us, and it was I that trapped you into doing so. If you can feel any humiliation greater than your own discovered wickedness, it will lie in that, I know.”
“Stop!” cried his Highness, as she was going. The truth had dawned upon him through that torrent of invective. Not Kit was he, in her assumption, but her own recreant husband. The discovery was illuminating—and, indirectly, gratifying, inasmuch as it seemed to dispose, so far as she was concerned, of that hypothetical intriguer. And yet was it possible she was only manœuvring to justify her own frailty through her husband’s example? “Where are you going?” he said.
She answered in one straitened monosyllable: “Home.”
And that reassured and decided him. It was a cruel ruse, perhaps; but he saw no other hope, in her excited state, of detaining and reasoning with her. Doubtless, when the inevitable discovery ensued, the emotional reaction consequent on it would prove his forgiver and abetter.
He had to hurry to keep pace with her. “Nay,” he whispered in her ear, “believe me when I say there was no error. Could I have failed, think you, to recognize my Kate, though in a subtler disguise than this? Trust a husband’s eyes and senses, sweetheart. Come, be reasonable; we cannot talk here. Turn with me, and let us seek a spot more private to our confidences in the solitudes beyond.”
Indeed, as they advanced, it was to make themselves more and more “the cynosure of neighbouring eyes.” But the wife was not to be moved. She was deaf and blind now with a passion she could not surmount. As he persisted in accompanying her, she stopped suddenly, and stamped her little foot on the grass.
“Will you cease to importune me,” she said, “and go?”
“Only turn and come away,” he entreated, “and I will explain everything.”
“Never!” she exclaimed vehemently. “I do not believe you—not one word. It is all over between us. Leave me, and go and seek your paramour.”
“I will not,” he persisted doggedly. “There is none but yourself for me.”
“I am going home, I say.”
“Then I will go with you.”
She hurried a few steps farther; then, as he kept beside her, turned with a flounce, and went off in the opposite direction. He wheeled to follow—and so suddenly, that he ran into the very arms of a masked gentleman who, the moment before, had been advancing upon him from the rear. He snapped out a half-angry apology, and was for speeding on; but, to his astonishment, the other gripped and held him like a vice.
“Unhand me, sir!” cried the Duke. “What! do you dare?”
For the moment he was beside himself with fury, seeing his light quarry, who had taken advantage of the check, in the act of making her escape. But his struggles availed him nothing.
“Aye, I dare,” said the stranger viciously; and he turned his face, in a white fume, to regard the flight of the fugitive. “Go your way,” said he between his teeth, as if addressing the receding figure. “You are marked down at last, my lady, and will be called on in due time to pay the reckoning. And as for you, you villain”—he whisked like a devil on his prisoner—“you have got to answer for this here and now.”
He had to, somehow. His Highness, with that acute perception of his, saw the necessity, and ceased to strive. He was fairly trapped, and very certainly by the injured husband himself. He had nothing for it but to bring all his finesse to the solution of so embarrassing a problem.
“Sir,” said he, with a good deal of haughtiness, “will you please to quit this rude grasp on me? You need not fear. I am a man of honour.”
“O, of honour!” said Chesterfield, with a sneer. But he released his hold. “You surprise me, on my word. But, being so, perhaps you will inform me, man of honour, where you would like to come with me to have your throat cut.”
“We will discuss the necessity of that,” said the Duke civilly, “when I know your name.”
“So particular?” mocked the other. “But will it not inform you sufficiently to be told that I am the husband of the lady you have just parted with?”
“Indeed, it informs me nothing,” replied the Duke most suavely.
“What! you dare to pretend to me that you know her not?”
“Sir,” said the Duke, “I would disdain to answer to your insolence were it not that there must be something in appearances which, it seems, justifies it in you. I cannot presume your name from that of the lady who has just vanished, because I do not know her.”
“You are lying to me, I know.”
“You deserve no explanation; which I vouchsafe, nevertheless, solely for her good credit’s sake. I admit I accosted the lady in question; but it was under a misapprehension, being misled by a certain token she wore in her dress, and for which I had been directed to look. My importunities are explained by my reluctance to believe that a coincidence so remarkable as the wearing of that same token by another was even conceivable.”
Truly a plausible defence; but there is a craft, as well as a credulity, in jealousy, and Chesterfield showed it.
“Well, sir,” said he, “I will take your word for’t on a condition; and that is that you return me your name for my own. I am the Earl of Chesterfield.”
“And I,” said the Duke, “prefer to be known to you for the moment as ‘Kit’—simply ‘Kit,’ at your service.”
It was no sooner spoken than he realized his blunder. It would be this very anonymity, the presumptive second party to the liaison, whom the husband, being here, would be in search of. Chesterfield, in fact, showed his instant sense of the admission. He let out a laugh that was wholly diabolical.
“Ha-ha!” cried he. “Damned and condemned, thou dog, out of thine own mouth!”
Conscious that all this time they were objects of some curious attention on the part of the nearest company, he thought it well now to subdue his voice, and affect a nonchalant manner.
“Mr. Kit,” said he, in an undertone, “you will hardly continue, in face of that confession, your pretence of innocence, nor, by denying me the satisfaction I demand here and now, force me to the necessity of whipping you, like the hound you are, in public. There are level spaces in the wildernesses beyond, and something of a rising moon, sufficient for the business we have in hand. Will you walk with me, sir—or——”
“Without admitting anything,” said his Highness, very haughty and wroth, “or condescending to further remonstrance, I answer to your effrontery as it deserves. It must be chastised, at whatever cost to the truth. Follow me, sir,” and he stalked off in high choler.
He was horribly perplexed, nevertheless, though for the moment so offended as half to mean the bellicosity he threatened. But reflection soon cooled him of that temper, and he recognized that, if nothing else intervened, there would be no alternative for him but to make himself known, at the critical pass, to his adversary.
The two gentlemen disappeared in the direction of the thickets.
And so, leaving them, we will return to Hamilton andhisgreen bow.
The harper harped his sweetest, and the lady stood and listened entranced. She seemed as one fascinated, half hypnotized, oblivious of the soft reproaches her companion kept whispering in her ear. She paid no heed whatever to his babble, but always her gaze was fixed on the long swaying form of the musician and the melancholy-wrapt eyes of him, lost, like her own, to all outer influences and impressions, and wholly absorbed in the visions conjured up of his unconscious soul. And when at length he ended on a triumphant chord, she sighed, and seemed to come awake, and, first joining in the applause with her little hands, plucked off her vizard, being quite carried away by her feelings, and, waving it in the air, cried “Brava!” in a manner to make the people about her laugh.
Hamilton, momentarily pressed back by the thrusting forward of the crowd, saw that ebullition, and frowned and wondered a little over such agrossièretéin his cousin; but she had the thing on again before he could reach her to remonstrate; and, indeed, he never had the chance to. For all of a sudden he found himself witness of an odd scene. Attracted, it seemed, by the little acclaiming voice, the performer, who was seated not ten yards away, got suddenly to his feet, and, after standing staring a minute, came striding across the grass towards the spot whence the demonstration had issued. Those about the lady may have thought that he was bent on some graceful acknowledgment to her of an approval so spontaneous and so unusual; but, whatever the attention he designed, she did not wait to receive it. As if seized with a sudden panic over the publicity she had called down upon herself, she whipped round, and, taking advantage of an opening in the crowd, slipped through it, to a roar of laughter, and was gone in an instant. So quick had she been, that Hamilton, taken by surprise, and hemmed in as he was, could not extricate himself from his position in time to mark the direction of her flight; but, once clear of the press, he stood completely baffled and cursing his evil luck.
And in the meantime green-bow was making good her escape; she ran as if some spectre were at her heels. Across the thronged grass, in and out between the trees, heedless of the attention she attracted, making instinctively for the outer glooms, onward she sped, and never paused until the covert of green shadows coming thickly about her gave her comfort and reassurance of an asylum reached at last. And then she stopped, panting and dishevelled, but with a little inclination, nevertheless, to some hysterical giggling.
“O, mussey me!” she whispered, as she fought for breath: “O, mussey me!” And then she looked hurriedly about her. She was still so near the fringe of the thickets as to have a clear view of the lighted swards she had left. Not safe from detection yet, she must penetrate deeper into the wilderness, if she hoped to baffle pursuit. Away from her ran a little glow-worm track, dim but discernible, and threaded with lamps, always attenuating, until they seemed to cease altogether in the leafy depths. She followed it, and found it to conduct her deep into an open space among the trees, about which was hung a slender coronal of lamps, and in whose midmost stood a rustic arbour, “for whispering lovers made,” but at the moment, it seemed, unoccupied. And here she stopped, to recover her breath and her self-possession, and, with a laugh, began to preen her tumbled plumes like a bird escaped from the fowler.
“I never did—there, never!” she said aloud, and instantly looked up with a start. A masked lady, with a green bow at her bosom, had come silently, it seemed, from the direction of the bower, and was standing regarding her with stony eyes. This was poor Kate, indeed, whom accident had precipitated upon the same refuge.
Moll, after that first little shock, continued her preening unperturbed.
“You fair took my breath away,” she said, “coming on me that fashion like a ghost.”
Kate’s head was bent forward; her dove-like eyes glared.
“Who are you?” she said, scarce audibly. “How dare you thrust yourself upon me like this?”
“Highty-tighty!” said Moll, still comfortably busy. “I might ask that of you.”
“Of me!” cried Kate desperately. “I think I hardly know myself”—for indeed the other had taken pains to duplicate her in many particulars, both dress and voice. “What are you doing here? But I understand the cunning infamy of it all at last. It was to throw dust in the eyes of scandal by feigning ’twas his own wife he came to meet.”
“He? Who?” said Moll, readjusting her breast knot.
“Do not you well know, false creature? But you are betrayed through that very token in your bosom you used to further your wicked designs.”
“What!” says saucebox: “mayn’t I wear a green bow if it suits my complexion?”
“Lies and duplicity,” cries the other, “are your complexion. It suits them very well.”
“Green stands for ‘forsaken,’” says the vixen. “Is that why you wear one yourself?”
It was a stab that made the poor lady wince. Her face went from pink to white.
“Cruel and inhuman!” she gasped.
“Come, call fair, my lady,” said Moll, in some heat. “If he’s been and mistaken you for me,whoever he is—and I take it that’s the truth—you’ve only got what you asked for. Look through the keyhole, you know, and you’ll get a sore eye.”
Her white teeth showed a moment under the hem of her vizard. With a dart, her ladyship was upon her.
“I will see it—that face”—she could hardly articulate in her passion—“abandoned wretch that you are—masquerading under a false name. I will know this ‘Kit’ of his for whom she is. Take it off, I say.”
But the facile jade easily repulsed and eluded her.
“Give over,” she said. “You’re no match for me.”
And indeed it was obvious to the poor girl that she was not. So she desisted in a moment, and resolved upon the better part of dignity, which is contempt.
“Keep your secret,” she said, panting. “After all, its shame is better hidden out of sight. Do you know who I am?”
“I can guess,” said Moll.
“Go to him, then. You will find him seeking for you, yonder in the open. Tell him that he is welcome to his goods for me; that I have seen them and understand their attraction to one so sunk in base corruption as himself.”
“Come, now,” said Moll. “Keep a civil tongue in your head.”
Did Kate suspect? She glanced anyhow, in a startled, puzzled way, at the dim face menacing her, before she turned on her heel, and, with her head held erect, swept away. She made for the narrow track, leaving the other standing where she was, and had passed but half-way down it, when she met Hamilton face to face. The scarf in his hat was plainly distinguishable; she took him for her husband, and stood rigidly aside to let him pass.
“Ah, little wicked truant!” said he; “but I have run you to earth at last. What made you scamper from the great musician in that panic fashion?”
His voice insensibly perplexed her; but her emotions were in too prejudiced a state to serve her for trusty interpreters.
“Areyou, then, the great musician?” she said, hard scorn in her tone, “since it was you alone I sought to escape from, and—and for ever.”
“From me?”—a grieved amazement marked his voice—“after what hath passed between us?”
She stood back, peremptorily signing him on with her hand.
“Passed? Are you again in error? Proceed, sir—’tis but a little distance—and find her, the brazen partner of your guilt, for whom you have already once mistaken me.”
He cried out: “You are mad! How could I ever mistake you? Were we not listening together but now to the harpist, when you turned and ran?”
“Iran? I have heard no harpist. It was from your lying importunities I escaped.”
“My lying—before God I spoke my very heart. And you were kind, cousin.”
“Cousin!”
“Am I not your cousin, though your lover?”
“George Hamilton!”
“Do you not know me, cousin?”
She sighed, seemed to sway a little, then to stiffen.
“O!” she said. “I know you now, indeed.”
He laughed, relieved.
“Why, what misled you, Kate?”
“Never mind.” She was a serpent all at once, subtle, wooing, alluring. “Let us go back this way. There is something I want to show you. Will you come?”
Come? He would have followed her to the pit. Yet what surprise had she in store for him, what unknown witness to her own mistake, what solution of this mystery of her denial about the music? She had appeared strangely affected by that performance; was it possible it had wrought upon her to forgetfulness? Well, he would know in a moment.
She meant that he should—meant to face him with the proof of his own misconception and his intended betrayal of herself. It was somehow that woman wretch’s doing, of that she felt certain, though she was bewildered with the complication of it all. But at least her course here was clear: it was to expose and denounce the would-be seducer in the presence of the wanton who had entrapped him.
Mrs. Moll, however, was not to be caught so easily. She had, in fact, having followed stealthily in Kate’s footsteps, and whisked behind a tree at the psychologic moment, overheard the gist of this colloquy, and it imbued her with no desire to return and face the music. She just waited until the couple had passed out of sight, then slipped into the track with a view to making her escape by it.
But, alas for “the best-laid plans of mice”—and monkeys! This little monkey was nabbed before she had well set foot on the path. For there suddenly appeared advancing towards her along the narrow way the figures of a couple of gentlemen—and each had a green scarf adorning his hat.
“Well, I’m damned!” she whispered, and stood stock still.
His Highness, coming first, saw her at once, and paused—as he thought recognizing her—in some amazement. It was an embarrassing moment, and he was standing in frank indecision, when Chesterfield, coming up, pushed by him, and in his turn jerked to a stop.
“What, by God!” said he. “So we have tracked you to your lair, my lady.”
He ran at her, with a scowl, and seized her by the wrist, so roughly that she cried out.
“Aye, howl!” said he. “You will have full reason for your lamentation before I have done with you and this fancy beau of yours. Come, my pretty faithful Kate, and watch us fight. You shall stand by, and clap your husband victor, while I cut him into ribbons for love-knots to your gown. Come, stir—there is a green hard by where he shall caper for you, dancing to very prick-song. Will you not come?”
She could not help herself, indeed. His grip was iron; he dragged her with him, so that he half pulled her arm out. “O, lud!” she thought. “I’m in for it now!”
A few steps farther, and they broke into the clearing. My lady and Hamilton were just before them; it was plain they had both overheard. They stood as if petrified, Kate with white face and bewildered eyes, her companion with the grin of a dog at bay lifting his lip.
“Curse it!” said Chesterfield. “What’s this?”
Involuntarily he released his hold; on which Moll, with a naughty laugh, sprang from him and stood apart, nursing her angry wrist. And so they remained a full minute, Chesterfield and my lord Duke facing the other two, the girl covertly watching.
The Earl looked from one woman to the other, and more than once; but always his eyes returned to his true wife, on whom they finally rested.
“If this,” said he, in a gripping voice, and pulling off his mask, “is to make me the victim of some foul conspiracy, it fails with you, my lady. I know you. You need pretend no longer.”
She plucked offhervizard, and, throwing it with a gesture of scorn on the grass, stood proudly up before him.
“Well guessed, sir,” she said. “But you were not so happy in your choice a moment ago. Was it the green bow deceived you?”
“Yes, by God, it was, madam, though you may sneer. I looked for it on none but you.”
“On me?” Her eyes opened, amazed. “And why, please?”
“Because I was privily informed you were to wear it.”
“Indeed? And for whose benefit?”
“Will you ask it”—he stepped aside, flinging out his arm towards his Highness, who stood silent, gnawing his forefinger—“and this Kit, this damning witness to your guilt, to answer for it to your face? Did I not find you with him but now? For shame, madam! But he shall pay for his temerity with his life.”
“You are mad,” she said, in a voice of wonder. “I never saw you. I thought him you, and that he had accosted me, taking me for Kit.”
“YouKit? Why, in God’s name? Kit’s a man.”
“No, a woman.”
“A man, I say. He’s here.”
“And so is she here.”
“She? I tell you, no! What cursed coil is this? And you thought him me, you say? Why—answer that.”
“He wore the scarf in his hat the secret letter spoke of.”
“The secret letter? What! you have received one too?”
“I have received one.” In a sudden thought she whipped round on Hamilton. “And you, also, cousin, judging by your token.”
“Cousin!” roared Chesterfield. “What, you too, George!” For, seeing further disguise useless, that gentleman had also discovered himself. “Damme! am I to fight you all?” He stamped with fury. “Who and what is at the bottom of this juggling?”
“Why, Kit,” said Hamilton coolly—he guessed pretty well the truth, and was only mad with himself for having walked so tamely into the trap—“whoever Kit may be. I had the letter, sure enough, and acted on it. ’Twas the green bow, nothing else, for which I went. How could I know your wife behind it?”
“Why, not at all,” quoth my lady, “by what you said to her. I think, cousin, you were the most mistaken of us all.”
He felt the cold, sarcastic sting in her tone, and knew himself revealed and dismissed from that moment.
Chesterfield clinched and convulsed his fists in impotent desperation. “But—but——” he shouted, and turned on his wife again. “Kit was to wear a scarf, I tell you.”
“No, a bow,” said she.
“And nothing else, madam?” he cried.
“There would be no disputing Kit’s sex in that case,” said Hamilton pleasantly. And then he laughed. “But there are still two potential Kits in the field—and both unmasked. Why not ask them?”
Obviously it was the simple course. Chesterfield pounced on the Duke—
“You hear? Kit or the devil, man—whichever you are, confess yourself.”
His Highness hesitated—it was an awkward moment for him—and succumbed, finally, to the tyranny of circumstance.
“I could claim my privilege, and refuse, sir,” said he, “were it not that by persisting in this disguise the fair fame of an innocent lady might appear to lack its vindication. I took her, if not for another, at least not for herself,” and he pulled off his vizard in his turn.
“The Duke of York!” muttered the Earl, falling back a little, with a stupefied look; while Kate, on her part, her face flushing crimson, bent her eyes on the ground.
But in a moment she looked up, and, clasping her hands, took a passionate step forward.
“My lord Duke,” she said, urgently and pitifully, “tell him—you owe it to me—that I knew nothing of your presence here, that I guessed you as little as he did himself. My behaviour proves it.”
“Surely, madam,” said his Highness, rather grimly. “It should be self-evident to any reasonable man. But to put the matter beyond dispute, I confess myself a victim to the same mischievous agency which, it seems, has been working this havoc amongst us. From private information received, I understood that here, on this night, a green scarf was to rally to a green bow, the pass-word ‘Kit,’ and ’twas in a mere spirit of frolic that I undertook to be present in order to confuse the issue. If I had guessed for a moment——”
“But you did not guess, Sir,” said Chesterfield dryly, and only half convinced.
“I did not guess,” said the Duke, mildly and piously. “And now comes in the question, who is the one responsible for all this misunderstanding?”
“Kit!” cried Moll. She was standing a little apart on a rising mound. “Kit!” she cried, with a ringing laugh. “Here’s Kit!” And she took from her pocket a little impish, sexless doll, a mere thing of cloth and wire, which she flourished in the air. “My darling,” she said, hugging and kissing the fetish. “Look at them! Look at it, good people! It’s always been with me, everywhere, from the time I was a baby; and sometimes it’s a girl, and sometimes a boy; and I never can tell from one minute to another what it will be up to next. O, you dear!” and she held the rubbish to her young breast, swaying it as if it were an infant.
They had all turned on her, like a pack baying a little speared otter. Stupefaction marked their faces; a dead silence ensued.
And suddenly, in the midst of it, awoke a sound—music—the plucking of fingers on harp strings; and with one impulse they turned.
It came from the darkness of the trees—sweet, wild, unearthly; it rose on the starry night like incense, like a drug, like a spell, taking their brains captive. And in a moment it had slipped into a symphony, preluding some wonder—and the girl, as if irresistibly compelled, was singing—