XIV
XIV
XIV
In this same Sir Robin believes he meets hisFair: and Lady Biddy O’Toole is themeans of putting the whole Gardensinto a vast commotion.
In this same Sir Robin believes he meets hisFair: and Lady Biddy O’Toole is themeans of putting the whole Gardensinto a vast commotion.
In this same Sir Robin believes he meets his
Fair: and Lady Biddy O’Toole is the
means of putting the whole Gardens
into a vast commotion.
After quitting Sir Robin, Her Ladyship, jingling the few shillings that now remained to her, since purchasing unguents and the mask and cloak necessary for the approaching festivity, suddenly made up her mind to escape at once, to leave the bundle of her clothes, her shorn tresses, and whatever else beside to tell what tale they might, and, here and now, to shake the dust of London from her feet forever. And to this end she was about to summon a chair to start her as far on her journey as her purse would permit, when out comesMr. Brummell himself from the shop of Monsieur Jabot, and links his arm in hers with his accustomed pleasant familiarity and easy condescension.
“’Pon honor!” exclaims the Beau. “Well met, Sir! Since you were nigh hanged, Sir, I’ve not had too much of your agreeable company. I’d have you know I’m just from Monsieur Jabot’s back room, where, the whiles I took a dish of tea, I explained the riddles of your most amazin’ twist of the lace. Faith, Robin, ’twas a lucky hour for me, when, having left a pile of failures, so high! in the corner of my dressing-room, I beheld your cravat and bade my man knock you down!”
Lady Peggy laughs. The cool audacity of Beau Brummell is a relief after the mawkish sighs of the little scoundrel she has just parted from, and, hoping that Mr. Brummell will soon spy either one of the Fair or a Royal Highness, and so be diverted from her side, she bows and answers:
“Robin McTart must ever account that a lucky day for him, Sir!”
“Hark ye, my young buck,” proceeds the Beau. “Monsieur Jabot is so enchanted with your manner of the cravat that to-day, with my compliments,he introduces it at Court! And since I’ve been seen with it,” adds he pompously, “’tis sure, by this day week, to be the height of the mode!”
“Aye?” responds Her Ladyship, a-wondering how she can best get away.
“Aye!” echoes her companion in a monstrous amazement. “Rot me! Sir, but such a distinction’s not often conferred upon a young gentleman up in town for the first time. What’s the matter with you, boy?” cries he, turning to observe Her Ladyship’s somewhat absent-minded aspect.
“Naught, I swear!” cries she, recovering herself.
“’Sdeath! Robin, are ye in love?” asks the Beau, taking a pinch of snuff and tendering his box, as, attended by all eyes, the two make their way down Piccadilly, betwixt ogling ladies in their chairs and chariots, gallants, dowagers; each, all, mincing and la-la-ing as they go.
Her Ladyship inclines her head. She is well pleased to speak truth when she can.
“By Gad! Mr. Brummell, you’ve hit the mark,” says she.
“Sleep not o’ nights? fickle at your meat? wake sighing? dream of patches, smiles, and daintyfingers? mistrust yourself? easily affronted? believe the whole world’s pointing at you in raillery? take no pleasure in horse, man, gun or dog? loathe all the Fair, save one? love solitude?”
Her Ladyship’s feign to smile in the midst of the snuff, which she abhors, and has only taken because she had to. Sneezing, she nods as her companion continues:
“Hate company? are cursin’ me now for an addle-pated fool, and wishing I’d leave you to yourself, eh? Don’t answer. I know it, Robin, well; a thousand times, more or less, have I been where you stand to-day, and had just cause, I fancied, to damn the Prince himself, since that which I was then pleased to dub his foolish prattle served to distract my ruminations from whichever Lady ’twas at the moment claimed my fancy. I cursed him then, Sir, for clinging to my arm, but now I bless him, as you will me some future day—for, Robin, hark ye, there’s not one of the jades but deceives us, no, Sir! and I’m goin’ to hang on to you, Sir, for keepin’ of you out of the vapors. Zounds, Sir! I’ll not leave you to any such ill company as himself proves to a young man in yourpredicament. Come, Sir, come; we’ll up and into Will’s, and there, me stickin’ faster than a burr, we’ll home to Peter’s Court and with a merry lot of gentlemen make a pretty night of’t against to-morrow with its evening at Vauxhall.”
With which pleasant and most well-intentioned sally, Lady Peggy again finds herself constrained to put off that redemption of her true estate for which she so deeply yearns.
Mr. Brummell’s party went by water to Vauxhall, and ’twas indeed a heavenly night for such an expedition, with no large lady-moon a-staring, but the rather a thin slip of a silver damsel hanging in the vault, and millions of stars a-waiting on her, not any of these a-revealing too much or a-telling any tales if a gentleman’s hand chanced to come in contact with a lady’s amid the folds of brocade, or under the long cloth of the black, crimson or blue cloaks in which all these merry masqueraders were enveloped.
Sir Percy de Bohun was beside Lady Diana Weston; Peggy noted the same with jealous, despairing eyes; while at the left of Lord Brookwood’s daughter sat her own twin—only the secondtime she had seen him since the memorable night in Lark Lane; nor did she see him plainly now, for all the company had set forth in their masks, and only removed them between whiles to gain a breath of fresh air. ’Twas expected that the larger number of the party would meet them at the Gardens, and thereafter the sport and mystification would begin.
So it turned out; not only all the rest of Mr. Brummell’s friends in their cloaks and masks, with glimpse now and then of satins, taffetas, laces, ribands, jeweled stomachers, bodices ablaze, and so forth, but a vast assemblage of other folk also awaited the arrival of the Beau’s barge at the bottom of the Gardens.
Among these, two lurked in the shadow of the trees; they were Sir Robin and the Vicar. The former noted with deep joy that he had, by a happy chance, chosen a crimson color for his new suit, exactly corresponding to that of one of these gallants; that his cloak of sable hue was also quite the ton, and that he could thus, with ease, mingle with the party, and presently, no doubt, either discover Lady Peggy’s identity, or, more than likely,she herself would disclose the same to him, and at last reward his faithfulness and patience. No qualm visited the little gentleman’s conscience-pocket with regard to his supposed victim, although, it is true, he had given him a vicious thought as he had stood near the river’s bank waiting for Mr. Brummell’s barge to come in sight. So had Peggy, as she was being rowed past the old Dove Pier; into her mind and into Sir Percy’s had come the memory of the Sunday night, but he spoke of it no more than, certes, did she.
Sir Robin, his cup overflowing with pleasurable anticipation and the gratified sense that the one who had sworn to take his life lay, fish-food, at the bottom of the Thames, flitted hither and yon, dragging the bewildered Vicar of Friskingdean in his wake.
Wherever the company of Mr. Brummell wandered, there followed, hanging on to the fringe, as ’twere, these two, whom presently one-half the guests accepted as a matter of course to be of themselves.
First, always followed by an admiring and gaping crowd, ’twas up and down the formal Walkssomewhat sedately, for the masquerade, as has been said before, was at that period but just coming into vogue, and fine ladies and gentlemen were, at the outset of an evening, not as easy in their disguises as they became after a promenade in the unaccustomed duds; then, they formed a circle of mysterious appearance around the orchestra; then, ’twas into the Room to stare at the pictures through the peepholes of their masks; then a rush to gaze at the Cascade, which the whole of them, save Lady Peggy, Sir Robin and the Vicar, had seen a hundred times before; later, ’twas up and down the Walks again; and here Sir Robin at last made bold, having long since joined himself and the somewhat reluctant Vicar to a group of the Beau’s company, to address a few words, as it chanced, to the lively Lady Biddy O’Toole!
It had seemed to him, after a careful survey of all, and having been able, by dint of his ears, to learn which was Kennaston, whose was the only personality so far in his possession, that Lady Biddy’s arch turn of the head was the most like to belong to the object of his passion. So up he springs, mincing, leaving the Vicar to huddle inthe shade, and, pulling Her Ladyship’s mask-riband with a twitching finger and thumb, as he had seen others do just now, he said, very low, in her ear:
“I’m sure I know who Your Ladyship is!”
“Out with it,” says she, very low too.
“It’s she whose image is writ on my heart,” answers he.
“Sure,” answers she, “that’s a thing that can never be known until you’re dead, and maybe not as soon, since the surgeons don’t cut up everybody! Lud, Sir, give me your name, and we’ll talk of your heart anon.”
“I am Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent,” exclaims he, feeling positive that this saucy minx is none other than his adored, for be it remembered Lady Biddy spoke under her breath and with a disguised tone to her voice.
“’Od’s blood!” now whispers Her Ladyship, with an accent of mock terror, into Sir Robin’s ear. “You! the highwayman! the cut-throat! the robber! what, I’ve heard, sticks gentlemen in the back, or has your men do it for you, and profits by that same!” laughing fit to kill herself.
But the little man does not laugh; the cold sweat stands out all over his sallow countenance, and he’s so terrified, recalling the threats of Mr. Bloksey, that he stands stock-still, and really can not move a leg.
They are nigh the Dark Walks as Sir Robin comes to his halt, and Lady Biddy, not pausing even to note his silence, goes merrily on with her most apt discourse.
“Oh,” proceeds she, “but you are the hero of the day, Sir Robin, and it’s myself that’s proud to be in your company, and faith! I’d like to have died running to see you hang on Saturday last!”
“Hang!” gasps he, getting back the use of his voice, but not of his shaking legs. “Saturday last!”
“Don’t be that bashful, Sir Robin, making as if you’d never heard of such before!” And Lady Biddy gives the Baronet’s cloak a playful tweak. “Lud, Sir! you and Sir Percy de Bohun’s the two most talked about, of all the bucks in town!”
“Sir Percy de Bohun!” repeats he, his knees knocking together.
“Sure’n didn’t he save you from the gibbet?Oh, go-along with you, Sir Robin, you can’t palaver Lady—”
“Lady who?” he contrives to ejaculate, struck nearly dumb at this mention of his rival, while Lady Biddy now bridles and is mute.
“You are Lady Peggy Burgoyne, are you not?” he goes on more softly, bending toward his companion, and concluding at last that the Lady’s words must have been the mere hap-hazards of a sparkling disposition.
Now Lady Biddy, in common with other ladies of fashion and moving in certain high circles of society, had heard a deal of the mysterious and all unseen Lady Peggy. She well knew the supposition that was rife as to Lady Peggy’s being secretly the wife of Sir Robin McTart. She knew from her bosom friend, Lady Diana Weston, who had the same most direct from her suitor, Lord Kennaston, Lady Peggy’s own twin-brother, that his sister was from home, unknown her whereabouts to father or mother, kith or kin, maid or man, save that she was “up in London”; that Sir Percy de Bohun was mad for love and loss of her;that her brother, had he not been in like case by means of Lady Diana, would long since have made public search, as he was indeed making such privately, for the discovery of the eloping Fair. She likewise was aware that Sir Robin frequented the gay world, was not adverse to ogling a lady, as she herself could testify; stopped at Mr. Brummell’s house; and, albeit ’twas said had fought a duel with Sir Percy because of Lady Peggy, still did not absent himself from any rout, ridotto, or ball, on her always absent account.
So, equipped with such a fund of knowledge and any amount of surmise, Her Ladyship replied coyly beneath her mask:
“Why do you think so, Sir Robin, and pray if I were Lady Peggy, what, now, would you be afther saying to me?”
“Zounds! ’tis she!” exclaims the Baronet, carried away by the fact that Lady Biddy’s hand beneath her cloak has more than half-way met his own moist and trembling fingers.
“Loveliest of women! Oh, ’twas indeed by your express directions, was’t not, that Mr. Incognitoon Monday, watching for me in High Holborn nigh the shop of Mounseer Jabot, bid me come here to-night to meet you?”
Lady Biddy, although much averse to the clammy touch of her cavalier, gives his fingers an assuring pressure.
“Why, oh, why!” pursues Sir Robin, now as much elated by this tacit confession of her passion for him, as he was but lately overwhelmed by the mention of such strange words as “hanging, highwayman, Sir Percy de Bohun,” etc., etc., “why have you seen fit to keep me in such a length of suspense? Why have I not been allowed, before this, to behold you, and renew the days of our sojourn in Kent? Speak, my angel, speak!”
“La, Sir!” murmurs Lady Biddy, minx-like, ever anxious to get at the heart of this now much deepened enigma, “la, Sir, do you not know but too well the whys and wherefores of my secrecy?” Her Ladyship from Cork actually squeezes the little Baronet’s crooked little hand.
“That do I not! Mr. Incognito never would tell me aught, but thus and so; and bade me, from your adorable lips, keep myself in seclusion and safety,—norever,” continues he, his tone sinking to a mere breath, “endanger my precious self,” now stooping to imprint a chaste kiss on Her Ladyship’s hand, “in the meeting even once of Sir Percy de Bohun, for he had sworn to kill me on beholding me. Dearest life,” proceeds Sir Robin, withdrawing Lady Biddy a bit into the shade of the great trees, “I have obeyed your commands. I have never set eyes upon the scoundrel, but have kept myself close housed at my inn in Pimlico, awaiting your dear pleasure.”
“Have ye?” murmurs Lady Biddy, now more bewildered than she ever was before in her life, and seeing no clear way, either to read the puzzle or, truth to tell, to elude the gentleman. Yet the wits of a lady, especially if she happen to have been born in Ireland, may usually be trusted to extricate her from almost any dilemma; therefore, when Sir Robin has done swearing of his impatient probation passed at the Puffled Hen, says she, tweaking her hoop and making a courtesy:
“Lud! Robin,” (the hussy!) “but you are a killing creature! Nay, nay!” drawing out a few steps, he after her, from the shade of the treesand more in the flare of the twinkling globe lamps. “Nay, tarry here but a moment; there are the same reasons for your not accompanying me now that have prevailed upon me to keep our matters secret hitherto. I pray you, stir not from the neighborhood of this wooden lion—see?—until I return, which I will do presently.”
“Faith!” cries the Baronet, “I’ll not budge, my divine Peggy! until you are once more at my side!” and with a horrid leer through his peepholes, he essays to take Lady Biddy’s hand once more, but she’s off, balking him.
Quick as thought, she scampered across to the edge of the orchestra, where she discovered a group of masks and among ’em one, whom, by the rose pinned to her bloom-colored bodice, she knew to be Lady Diana, and she made certain that two of the three bloods near her, canes dangling at their button-holes, must be Sir Percy and Lord Kennaston.
“Hist!” exclaims Lady Biddy, panting partly from speed, partly from the fright a lady alone might experience in running the gauntlet of so many macaronis and fops, not to speak of thievesand pickpockets, as perforce was the case in progressing about Vauxhall.
“What is’t Biddy, for I know you by your silver heels,” answers Lady Di. “Mischief, I’ll dare be sworn, or it’s not you! Speak your mind; there’s none here but what can keep a secret, and the whole of us have been a-watching you with some one, fie! at the entrance to the Dark Alleys.”
“Is Sir Percy here? Is this he?” whispers Biddy.
Sir Percy bows, for he is there; while the other two gentlemen, inferring from her tone that she seeks a private ear, instantly withdraw to one of the boxes for a glass of Burgundy to refresh their spirits.
“I’ve news for you, of one you’re a-dyin’ for, of Lady Peggy Burgoyne!” exclaims she triumphantly.
“What! What!” comes simultaneously from behind each of the masks she addresses.
“Aye; I’m after learning from, whom, think you?”
“Proceed, for the love of God, Madam!” says Percy, very low.
“From him that’s supposed to be her husband, Sir Robin McTart, that mistook me for her,” Biddy titters, “that she’s here to-night by an appointment with him, made by a trusted servant of hers, called 'Mr. Incognito’; sent to meet Sir Robin before the shop of Monsieur Jabot in Holborn; and he’s not seen Her Ladyship,—I mean Sir Robin’s not seen her since they were sojourning in Kent together! and there’s a mystery for you! And I made excuses and left him a-standin’ by the lion, for I could no longer contain the news, but must run back to him now to extract the rest of it. Pray heaven, Lady Peggy herself comes not by, and lets out that I was not she at all, at all!”
“Good God!” murmurs Percy under his breath, as Biddy rattles on. “Can this thing be? and what does it all mean?”
Restraining Lady Biddy, both he and Lady Diana endeavor to quiet her abounding spirits, and to gain from her the detailed account of her encounter with Sir Robin. Percy, in the midst of her voluble tongue and her giggling, striving to form some plan of action which shall this night bring matters to the touch between himself andthe Baronet and leave one or t’other of ’em stiff and stark.
Meantime, Sir Robin, with greedy eyes fixed on Lady Biddy, so long as he can see her, and until she and her companions withdraw into a box, stands as if at one with the wooden lion; presently, however, his gaze is diverted hither and yon, not only by the playful and engaging remarks of various young ladies who challenge his mask in the most direct and obliging fashion, but by a certain Figure which he beholds moving about aimlessly, it would seem, and alone, beneath the dark shadows of the trees toward the river.
There is something in this Figure’s motions, although cloaked and masked,—therefore, the Baronet notes, one of Mr. Brummell’s party,—which strikes him as familiar, and when, presently, the unknown lifts mask and reveals the countenance behind it, Sir Robin sidles up, one eye on the wooden lion of his tryst, however, and plucking Lady Peggy by the arm, says:
“Ho! Mr. Incognito!”
Peggy turns, and betwixt disgust, dismay, horror, and amusement, remains silent.
“’Tis I, Sir, Robin McTart,” lifting his own mask a trifle to assure his companion of his identity.
“Soh!” returns she, “I do perceive.”
“Oh, Mr. Incognito, what do I not owe to your being in My Lady’s employ! She is indeed here.”
Her Ladyship, taking this for a question, answers thus, with emphasis: “Yes, she’s here—indeed.”
“I have seen her,” sighs the little Baronet, leaning his head, just exactly the height of Her Ladyship’s own, down on Peggy’s shoulder in an excess of sensibility.
“Have you?” exclaims she, not daring to stir in the embarrassment of believing it possible that the scoundrel has discovered her identity.
“Oh, yes,” sighs Sir Robin, “I have received a pressure, nay two of ’em, from her hand. I’ve kissed her fingers; I await her return to meet me at the wooden lion yonder.”
“Do you?” says Lady Peggy, mystified beyond everything. “Did she look as you expected her to?”
“Ah!” gasps Sir Robin, “she has not yet lifted her mask for me to behold her countenance, butwhen she returns, I shall beseech her for one glimpse!”
“Ah!” returns Peggy, now fully persuaded that some one has been making a jest of her companion, but none the less disquieted on her own score.
“Hark ye, Sir Robin,” says she, “you have ever found my counsels wise. Be advised by me now; leave Vauxhall at once. Lady Peggy Burgoyne is not safe, so long as you tarry here.”
The little Baronet, doughtily, although trembling, puts his hand to his hilt.
“Nay, Sir!” continues Peg, “your weapon would not avail for her preservation. She leaves town this very night for Kennaston. Do you the same, nor risk detection longer here.” Her Ladyship uses the word advisedly, and has the satisfaction of seeing Sir Robin shiver with terror, then steady again as he reflects that Her Ladyship’s fears can but be in connection with her own escapade; since, ’tis plain from all he can spy and eavesdrop, not a soul as yet has missed Sir Percy de Bohun from his accustomed haunts.
“But she swore me she’d be back in a few moments, Mr. Incognito, and ’sdeath! Sir!” perceivingLady Biddy emerging from the box and advancing toward the lion alone, “there she is!”
Off and away Sir Robin McTart to join his Fair, while Lady Peggy, screened by the increasing shadows, for the dripping lamps are one by one, by this, dying down in their globes, beholds one—she devines not which—of Beau Brummell’s lady guests, courtesying and greeting the Baronet with her finger-tips.
Now My Lady’s heart’s a-thumping monstrous hard; she beholds, as well as Sir Robin and his supposed Peggy, two others—alas! she knows too well who they are, a-peeping out from the corner of the box-entrance whence Lady Biddy came just now, and watching her encounter with Sir Robin.
These are Lady Diana and Sir Percy.
Together? Aye and a-goin’ to be “together” for all their lives, she sadly thinks, both of them, quite forgetting, save perchance for a moment’s beguilement, her very existence. But it behooves her, if not for her own sake, of which she has come to the pass of recking but little, then for her father’s and mother’s, now to bid farewell forever to disguises,falsehoods, cheatings, man’s estate, and even the melancholy chance of seeing the countenance of Sir Percy. She will off presently, and reach home as best she may.
A few minutes, more or less, can make no odds, and ’tis but too true that Her Ladyship stood there in ambush of the branches in the vain hope that Percy might lift his mask, if but for an instant, and thus allow her parting gaze to rest upon his features.
It is quite true that mortals, although in never such haste to reach a desired crisis, still ofttimes halt at the threshhold of its attainment; so Her Ladyship, with now nothing to hinder her escape, still stood leaning against an oak, listless, but for the eager eyes fixed on the pair in the box entrance. These presently crossed into the throng and, joining others of the maskers, were lost to her view; but the Baronet and Lady Biddy had not been idle of their tongues this while.
Much simpering, angling for news, tittering, and a neat show of wit in the manner of plying a gentleman with questions on a matter about whichhe was quite ignorant, on the lady’s side; ardor, impatience, as much daring as his little spirit permitted, on the gentleman’s. Finally said he:
“Mr. Incognito says you start for Kennaston this very night, my dearest life, is’t so?”
“Tell me who is Mr. Incognito?” says she, “and I’ll answer you straight.”
“He’s your paid servant, sworn slave, and the bearer of all tender messages between us.—Now, go you to Kennaston to-night?”
“As sure as I’m Lady Peggy Burgoyne,” returns Biddy. “I start for home ere cock-crow!”
“I’ll follow you poste-haste, but,” cries Sir Robin, “loveliest of created beings, I beseech, I implore! one glimpse of your angelic countenance before we part—to meet only when I can claim you as my own!”
“No! No!” exclaims Biddy, restraining the Baronet’s hand which is laid upon the lutestring of her mask.
“But divine creature, I insist!” with one arm seizing the buxom Lady Biddy about the waist, while with the other he essays to untie the riband which hides her charms from view.
Then Lady Biddy O’Toole, whose lungs were of the best, let such a bawl as rang far up and down the Thames, causing a score of red-stockinged boatmen to leave their wherries and dash up the Gardens; causing every tongue in Vauxhall to cease clacking, every glass to jingle to its table, every echo to resound; every other lady there to shriek; the musicians to stop; the waiters to drop their trays; each gentleman to draw sword; and a vast number of persons of both sexes to shout:
“Watch! Watch! Murder! Thieves! Highwaymen!” and whatever else beside.
While a concourse of people of every condition at once closed in around Sir Robin and Lady Biddy, at the outside rim of which, shivering betwixt terror and that lively curiosity which overrides even a desire for personal safety, gaped the now unmasked Vicar of Friskingdean, unable to find his natural protector and sometime pupil in all this hurly-burly.