The farmer, a huge Falstaff of a man quite in proportion to his barn, towered in the doorway obscuring the light, while the farm hands clumped with heavy legs towards the horses.
"Gi' they pleanty o' oats, my lads."
"A' right," mumbled the lads in chorus.
"Come in, my gentlemen, come in. Never mind for a speck of mud; the maids'll dust 'ee."
This sally provoked a ripple of laughter from the maids, and a chuckle from the young gentlemen.
The farmer surveyed them solemnly as they stepped into the barn.
"Why, you be all in top-boots?" he shouted. "Ho! ho! my maids, ye'll get thy twinkling toes rarely trod on, or shall I lend 'em my slippers to each in turn?"
This was considered splendid fooling, and laughter again resounded.
"Nay, farmer, you're in the wrong," said Charles producing a pair of pumps from the pockets of his riding coat.
"Why! dang me, if they han't brought a King's wardrobe wi'en. Eh! maids, you must mind your modesties to-night."
The maids, huddled together like a bunch of red apples, were set shaking with laughter at this warning—as if by a boisterous wind.
"Who will help us with our boots?" asked Clare as he subsided upon a truss of straw and flung his legs wide apart.
There was considerable whispering from the heart of the bunch till one of the maids was pushed by her companions out into the open with ejaculations of "Go on, stoopid."
"Thee needst not let on to be so backward." "Thee wast forthy enough behind the kitchen door yester'een." "Eh! bustle thyself, great gowk," and others of like freedom of opinion.
The maid selected for Mr. Clare was blooming indeed.
"Cream and claret," murmured Charles.
"Gad! a Venus by a Dutch master truly," commented Vernon.
"She's no g-ghost," stammered little Peter Wingfield.
sang or rather bellowed Mr. Blewforth, slapping his thigh with a nautical zest.
continued Charles to the same tune.
"Give what?" asked Tom Chalkley.
"The breezy charm of his manner," replied Charles.
Now ensued jests, giggles, laughter, pranks, and struggles, as each gentleman persuaded a fair to wrestle with his riding-boots. Vernon who had forgotten to provide himself with pumps remained aloof from the merriment not sorry for an opportunity to convince Mr. Lovely of his remoteness from anything so vulgar as excitement.
Great was the mirth of everybody when the Lieutenant produced an enormous Valentine that depicted a peculiarly fat Cupid winking at a dairymaid over a brimming bowl of milk. Greater still was the mirth when he presented the token with much earnestness to the bashful lass they called Margery, and it became uproarious indeed when he explained he had wished to offer it on the preceding night, but had been deterred by Mr. Clare's reputed jealousy.
"Whoever heard tell of such a thing in the milk before?"
"Tis a Cupid, Margery," said Mr. Clare.
"There now and if I didn't go for to think it were a baby," declared Margery.
Farmer Hogbin coming back from attending to the horses in time to hear this remark called out in his great voice:
"Don't 'ee fret thyself, my lass, what thee wants'll come soon enough, I warrant. Now my gentlemen, take your partners, we was just a-going to begin a round dance. Tune up your squeaking boxes, fiddlers, and tip usCome lasses and lads."
The fiddlers smiled encouragement at the dancers as they struck off with the gallant old tune. Even Mr. Vernon, boots and all, was made to give an arm to buxom Mrs. Crumplehorn, the cowman's wife. The sanded floor of the barn resounded with the perpetual tripping of toes and heels.
The waist of every fair was encircled by a neat arm thattapered to a fine wrist as the dancers swung down to their places. Little Peter Wingfield unable to enfold the ample Polly was given her pinner as if he were indeed the child his appearance and behaviour proclaimed him.
Every one admired the first two couples that took the middle. Mr. Lovely was so graceful and Mr. Clare was so thorough. Round they went and down they went and across and through and over and under while the rest of the dancers clapped and tapped their appreciation. Faster and faster went the fiddles, faster and faster went the shoes. Thicker and thicker rose the sand and saw-dust from the floor until the barn seemed to be the centre of a raging storm, such a wind the petticoats made and so dense became the atmosphere. Thunder was added when the gigantick farmer and the burly Lieutenant, whom merry chance had thrown into the arena together, charged through their Pas Seul, bellowing the while with Gargantuan laughter.
At last the fiddles stopped and, panting mutual congratulations, the exhausted couples subsided upon the various trusses of straw laid along the side of the barn. Even the ivory paleness of Mr. Vernon's cheeks wore a faint tinge of carmine, and some curls of his modish wig were very slightly ruffled.
Jock, Tommas, William, Jarge, Joe, Samuel, Peter, and Ern, who had gathered into a critical knot, feeling themselves eclipsed by these active visitors, were released from their sheepishness by a demand for the bowls of spiced ale.
After this, they played Kiss in the Ring; and it was truly a most exhilarating sight to see Mr. Anthony Clare with flapping coat-tails in pursuit of the blooming Margery who was soon caught not very unwillingly as we may suppose. It was ludicrous in the extreme to see little Peter Wingfield darting hither and thither like a little brown rabbit. His little white wig seemed to twinkle like a tail set too high on his little brown body. But he let himself be caught by Polly beneath a lingering spray of mistletoe, and how all the world laughed when she lifted him up and gave him a resonant kiss on his little red lips. As for the large farmer andthe burly Lieutenant they thundered after every maid in the barn quite regardless of any rules and, as I think, kissed the most of them very heartily indeed.
But the chief excitement of all was caused by a great white owl that came flapping down from the rafters and put out half the candles with his great sweeping wings. How all the lasses screamed and how earnestly the lads reassured them, and though the former were repeatedly told that owls while feeding on mice had not yet imbibed their habits, they persistently held their skirts a little higher than usual and nestled very close and comfortable to the exquisite young gentlemen from theBlue Boar.
Then, of course, they all dancedSir Roger de Coverley, and drank more spiced ale while they rested. Somebody called on Charles for a song and he gave them one of his own which everybody agreed was much too serious for so jolly an occasion. Charles swore he had composed the tune himself, but everybody else vowed they had heard it before, and as for the words, there was not a trace of originality about them. However, his voice was pleasant enough as he sang:
Blewforth protested he had said good-bye with almostidentical rhymes in every port of the two hemispheres, and moreover was not ashamed to confess as much. All the maids, however, grew quite tearful and vowed the evening was spoiled; indeed, they made such ado that Charles sang one of Mr. d'Urfey's ballads to cheer their spirits and succeeded in providing such a burst of laughter that the echo of it never died away during the rest of the evening.
Of course, it was decided they must danceSir Rogeronce more and, that duty accomplished, it was discovered that Anthony Clare and Margery had vanished. Of course everybody wondered where they could have gone, and when they returned in time to take a last sip at the spiced ale, it was noticed that Margery hung back in the shadows with a melancholy expression of countenance that made her companions nudge each other with wise looks.
Soon word came that the horses were saddled and waiting. Good-byes were murmured, and many a promise to come again was faithfully sworn and many a kiss given and taken. The ousted yokels held each a soil-stained hand for their genteel rivals to mount from. The maids stood huddled in the flickering light of the open barn-door; Farmer Hogbin bellowed a last farewell which was thunderously echoed by the Lieutenant, as with flushed faces and half-regretful memories, the horsemen cantered towards Curtain Wells under a sailing moon.
Clare rode by Charles to hear the judgment of Paris upon his tatterdemalion Venus.
"I'd liefer for her sake that you were overseas next barley-harvest," said Charles shortly.
"Plague on the man, what a cold stream it is!"
"My excellent Tony, your Blowzabella will be happier mating on a straw pallet with Hodge than living under your protection in London."
"She would see the world."
"Pshaw! her world is a garden of gillyflowers. She was never meant to be pushed out of sight for an importunate visitor."
"She would return."
"Like a spent primrose fit only for the bonfire."
"I could secure an annuity for her."
"You'll tire of her in London. Drain the claret from her cheeks, smear the downy bloom, and you'll find rank lees and rotten core. Hodge never would. No, no, the thought of so much comely maidenhood languishing for your velvet-sleeved caresses is merely droll."
Clare loved and admired Charles too much to despise his tirades however self-consciously virtuous they might appear. He felt more than ever convinced that his friend was in love, in love too with some one the very antithesis of the dairymaid. He would try one more test.
"But if I told I was in mind to wed my Venus?"
Charles jerked his reins in astonishment.
"Z—— ds, Tony look round you. There are maids more fit I say. Why wed a mountain, however rich in pasture when you can wed a mountain-nymph?"
Clare decided his suspicion was confirmed. Lovely objected to milkmaids on the score of a taste sharpened to an exquisite point of refinement by an ideal passion. He was postulating mere theories of life on account of the charms of one dear She. Who was the witch? She had not withdrawn him from their late junketing whatever her spells.
"Your morality, Charles, did not prevent you from entering very heartily into the spirit of our pastoral piece."
They had fallen behind the others, and through the silent night Charles' voice caught a melody from the wakening year as he rhapsodized.
"Fore Heaven! I love the country, I love these creamy hussies. I love their swains with the sweet earth all about them. I was happy to-night! I was happy with those dear people. I could lose my tricked-out self in that twinkling barn. I bowed to merriment as a tree bows to the wind. I wanted to hear the singing hopes and joys and desires of humble people. There we were, all of us populating a frieze for some merry artist god. We were as wax moulded to some fantastick dancing shape. On these occasions, I can surmize at immortality and imagine the heart ofthe universe. I doubt you think I'm babbling nonsense, but I'm trying to tell you I was entirely disinterested in our merry-making of to-night."
Clare stretched out to touch the poet's arm.
"Try to think that I, chattering of Margery, am not more personal than you. 'Tis true, I piped a love-ditty, but though it may trouble the bush and brake of a small wood, it would seem thin fluting——"
"To any but her," Charles interrupted. "The thinnest tune will charm one who is nearer than you to the primitive animal too easily quelled by sweet songs. Pipe to a crowd, Tony, but musick dedicated to a solitary shepherdess at the sight of whom your mouth will be awry in a year's time is ill work for her."
"I doubt you're right," said Clare softly. "You are compassionate to poor nymphs to-night, Charles. Have you met a goddess?"
"Tony, I have."
"May you prosper!"
"Thank'ee. I'll tell you more of her when I know more myself."
They urged their horses to a trot and were silent for a while. Then Clare asked Charles what he thought of Vernon.
"Oh! a statue positively. I doubt the whole affair was to him vastly low.
"Umph! there was a permanent leer carved on his lips. I dislike the fellow."
"Nay! you're too stern in your judgments. He has promised me an evening for Hazard."
Clare smiled. It was useless to remonstrate with a man whom the thought of two dice transformed into a machine with glassy eyes and curiously sensitive fingers.
So they rode silently.
Charles could see Phyllida in the moon-enchanted clouds, sometimes with the trim waist of a dice-box.
SUNDAY morning at Curtain Wells was eminently a day of rest. A stroke of organizing genius on the part of Beau Ripple had abolished the fatigues of early Chalybeate by transferring the corporeal obligations of fashionable humanity to an hour which would not interfere with the respect owed to the spirit.
"A glass of Chalybeate," he had remarked, "will promote the proper digestion of the homily. Moreover, the vanity of post-religious promenades will be considerably mitigated by the discipline of the Pump."
At Curtain Wells, therefore, soon arose the pleasant custom of inviting one's friends and neighbours to partake of a substantial breakfast before setting out to St. Simon's parish church. The neighbours, if gentlemen, were expected to provide a suitable escort for their lady-hosts, and there was not a dame in the town who did not make it a point of honour to be armed in at the great West door on fine mornings or handed out of her chair with cautious ceremony if the weather was unsettled.
The Widow Courteen was not the woman to neglect or despise any prescriptive right conferred upon her sex. It was not surprizing, therefore, to see Major Constantine Tarry and Mr. Gregory Moon turning solemnly into the Crescent on the first Sunday morning whose events I am privileged to chronicle. The demeanour of neither gentleman would have allowed us even a momentary hesitation as to the day. The Sabbath wrote itself in the devout wrinkles of Mr. Moon's domed forehead and expressed itself in the stiff curls of the Major's military wig. As they drew near to Mrs.Courteen's house the latter voiced a desire to see eggs and bacon upon the breakfast table, and the former encouraged his ambition by repeating a legend of a fecundity among hens unusual at this season of the year. The meditation carried the two gentlemen to Mrs. Courteen's door in silence.
"Your turn to knock, Tarry," said Mr. Moon, in a rather depressed voice, as he fumbled with the steps from which the Major assaulted the door with military abruptness.
To them after a decent interval appeared Thomas in resplendent waistcoat of Sunday and with nose polished to the limit of a nose's power of brightness.
"Is your mistress within?" inquired the Major.
"Within and awaiting you," said solemn Mr. Thomas.
"Then I think, Mr. Moon," said the Major with half a turn, "we will step inside immediately."
"I think we may venture," replied the latter.
They were ushered into the passage where Thomas received their hats and canes. Thomas had such a sober effect on his fellow men that the slightest action in which he took part was conducted with a ritual at once austere and grand. One felt that the delivery of a hat, smallsword, cane, or message possessed at least the dignity, the entire absence of all worldly considerations that belong to the Sunday alms.
"Will your mistress receive us in the front parlour or the back parlour this morning?" inquired Tarry whose legs were prepared for either emergency.
"In the front parlour," said Thomas. "Miss Thomasina was ill this morning."
"In the back parlour, I presume?" said Moon.
"Very ill with retching and divers pains," continued Thomas.
"Poor Thomasina," said the Major with an attempt at jocularity.
"A feeble animal," said the footman, "and too fond of grass; and the grass of this city is fit only for Nebuchadnezzar."
A bright fire was crackling in the grate, and on eachhob a kettle of burnished copper sang with considerable sentiment.
Thomas withdrew, and the Major and Mr. Moon took up the Englishman's position on the hearthrug with coat-tails wide apart to allow the grateful warmth free access to whatever chillness of morning air still clung about their bodies. So they remained, silent, wrapped in the dignified contemplation of an inferior painting in oils on the opposite wall. No doubt in reality their thoughts were far away, possibly in the chaste seclusion of the Widow's own room or possibly in the kitchen whence from time to time ascended the pleasant jingle and chink that heralds food's approach.
No doubt they would both have stood there long enough for us to moralize on England and the greatness of England, had not Mrs. Courteen come into the room just then.
Ponto, Phyllida's black spaniel, sidled in with the breakfast and Phyllida herself followed, and the freshness of her in the morning was strewn about the room like petals of roses.
Conversation at breakfast suited itself to the solemnity of the day. The widow sighed at every remark that was made, and in the gentle pathos of her manner indicated placidly her conviction of fleeting time and sorrow, and all those melancholy reflexions which are considered proper to the Sabbath. However, at all times she was accustomed to preserve a cloistral rigour of speech before her daughter. No one loved better to gather the easier blooms on the safe side of the garden-god's perfumed hedge, but they could only be plucked in numerous corners of ballrooms and during secluded promenades. The presence of Phyllida made her mother's blood so much rennet. Conversation became mere verbal curds and whey.
However, the Justice talked into his cup of the swift approach of Spring, of the benefit of sun, the intolerable increase in vagrancy, the need for repressing poachers. If platitudes were esteemed as high as rolling hexameters, Moon would have been among the epical poets. As for Major Tarry, he thrashed each topick at if his tongue werea little rattan cane. One felt that any observation was regarded by that gallant gentleman as an awkward recruit. He had an air of drilling the conversation. After breakfast, the various members dispersed to acquire a seemly attitude towards matters of religion.
Since the search for attitudes occupies a vast deal of human energy, it may not be out of place to inform my reader where the half-dozen required for Morning Prayer at St. Simon's were found.
The Widow Courteen found hers hidden between powder puff and patch-box.
Miss Courteen found hers between the lines of a three-cornered note.
Madam Betty found hers in the coral secrets of Miss Courteen's left ear.
Mr. Thomas found his in a Bible as large and heavy as a Bible should be.
Major Tarry found his in the stem of a churchwarden pipe.
Mr. Moon found his in the best attitude that exists.
Soon Mrs. Courteen's chairmen were knocking at the door and the whole party prepared to set out. The widow seated in her chair, hummed a hymntempo di minuetto. The Major marched upon her left and the Justice upon her right, and Thomas marched in front. Phyllida and Betty kept to the pavement and had scarcely time to wonder if all the world would be at church, when they arrived at the porch and found that all the world certainly was.
As the Major had handed the widow into her chair, Mr. Moon handed her out, and the party of Mrs. Courteen proceeded to Mrs. Courteen's pew, while Mrs. Courteen's chairmen carried the chair to an alley beloved of chairmen and proceeded to doze away the Sabbath morning in its damask recesses and were no doubt as comfortable as their mistress in the musty cushions of St. Simon's pews. In the Western gallery, three fiddles, two hautboys, and a bass viol squeaked and groaned with much fervour. In the pulpit the parson squeaked and groaned with equal fervour and inthe desk below the clerk squeaked and groaned with most fervour of all. When the parson threatened damnation, the ladies fanned themselves rapidly and when he spoke of alms and oblations, they consoled themselves with carraway comfits.
The service was rather worldly and seemed remote enough from anything at all spiritual, but nevertheless in so far as it was indigenous to fair King Richard's land, it should exact from us as much respect as we owe to a Chippendale chair and that is or ought to be very great indeed. If so much condemnatory fervour was equivalent to breaking these butterflies of fashion upon a religious wheel, it cannot be denied that the exquisite bloom of their ruined wings was a great deal more pleasant to regard than the spattered blood and bones of earlier and more tangible martyrs to an extreme mode.
The parson continued to prophesy hell-fire. But hell-fire means so many kinds of illumination—certainly it had an invincible attraction for these gay moths and butterflies. Perhaps they thought of it merely as a huge aggregation of wax candles by which most of them had more than once been morally singed. If any permanency of emotion was desirable, it would certainty be more endurable in heat and gaiety than in chill aerial solitudes. And, thanks to chickens, there would always be painted fans. This was the sum of the congregation's united reflection during the sermon; individually, no doubt, each soul played with more particular premisses, but the ultimate conclusion was the same for all.
After so much damnation, the blessing was a rhetorical anti-climax. Clouds had gathered during the homily due, no doubt, to the violence of the preacher and, as the worshippers tripped out through the great West door, the clouds burst and the streaming rain inclined them more favourably than ever to the prospect of eternal warmth.
The morning's fair promise had been utterly belied, and many appealing glances were launched at Mr. Ripple as he beckoned to his chairman. Surely he would not be sobarbarous as to force so much accumulated fine raiment through mud and water, to drink the latter element in a less pleasing form. But Mr. Ripple was inexorable: he stepped into his gilded chair, regardless of appeal: the chairmen tightened their muscles for the long pull uphill, and Gog and Magog, the diminutive negroes balanced one on each step, guarded their master from interruption. Now ensued shouts, whistles, cockcrows and screams. Hats were waved, canes flourished, and lily-white hands shaken. All this uproar was due to the fact that there were just half as many coaches and chairs as were required, and when these were filled, and on their way to the Pump Room, there remained in the church too many foolish virgins, too many improvident dowagers, too many thoughtless beaux.
The rain fell in torrents, and the last vehicle had turned the corner.
A desolate remnant surveyed the situation. It was wet enough.
Now arose one of those crises which are inseparable from a despotism. Somebody, for his presumption will always remain anonymous, somebody suggested that the idea of climbing the hill of health in such a downpour was unimaginable.
The stranded exquisites depended for the moment entirely on their rouge for colour.
"Rebellion," they muttered and the ominous word flapped over their heads and darkened the gloom more profoundly.
"The Beau will be furious."
"He will never forgive us."
"We shall be banished."
"Curtain Wells will no longer know us."
Again the daring voice was upraised:
"We are strong enough to defy Ripple. He has no right to make us wade through mud for a whim of his own. If we do so, we'll do so in shifts and shirts." The unknown voice gathered force with each new proposition, and the startled exquisites huddled closer in a very ecstasy of perturbation.
"Shall damask flowers lose their beauty, shall silver lace betarnished and broideries lack lustre because Ripple has commanded the impossible? Silk is the fashion, ay! and watered silk, but not sodden silk. Well was it named the Pump Room, for such shall we become, mere pumps exuding moisture at the propulsion of a tyrant!"
The apparent carelessness of the unknown tyrannicide had its effect; a suspicion began to creep in that Mr. Ripple's domination was based on insecurity. The thin end of this destructive wedge was enough to break open the fortress of their duty and, the rain stopping for a moment, the stranded exquisites hurried home to discuss the probable result of their revolt over hot rum and lemon. Up at the Pump Room Mr. Ripple missed many a well-known face that Sunday, and his urbane countenance lost some of its smoothness as the minutes rolled by without the arrival of a single person on foot.
At the expiration of the quarter of an hour, he despatched Gog to see what had happened and when Gog came back with the news that the stranded exquisites had one and all departed to their own lodgings, Mr. Ripple ascended his marble pedestal with an air of determination.
"My lords, ladies and gentlemen," he began, and just then Magog hurried up with the Beau's glass of chalybeate. The latter looked at it for a moment. Pity and anger fought visibly for the mastery. Anger won, and the remorseless Beau dashed the glass into a thousand sparkling fragments.
"The Pump Room will be closed until—until this—," he faltered over the description of such ingratitude, "until the extraordinary behaviour of certain visitors has been justified, if it can be justified. There will be no Assembly to-morrow night."
The company shivered unanimously and the Beau, dismissing his chairmen, walked forth into the rain with all the dignity in the world. It is said he ruined three suits of unparagoned cut that fatal day by walking about the principal thoroughfares of Curtain Wells for the remainder of a very wet afternoon.
NOT unnaturally, the only topick of that memorable Sunday was the rebellion. The excitement it raised far exceeded anything of the sort not excepting the Jacobite rising, and the oldest inhabitant of the Wells positively asserted that the landing of the Duke of Monmouth was altogether inferior in the quality of emotional interest.
Sirloins of beef were allowed to freeze into glaciers of fat, horse radish lost its sting, and the most frothy ale was flat in the presence of such an absorbing topick of conversation. When at last everybody, momentarily exhausted, sought recuperation in the Sunday dinner, everybody ate so fast to be the sooner at the coffee-house or the Town Hall or the Assembly Rooms or some such equally renowned haunt of gossip that everybody had a remarkably bad attack of indigestion.
From every doorway the crowds hurried forth after dinner, scorning the sacred forty winks. But coffee-house, Town Hall, and Assembly Rooms were closed, bolted, barred and shuttered, and for a sign over each was a scroll of parchment on which was inscribed in the finest gold leaf:
Closed till further notice. By order. Horace Ripple.
Disconsolately the ladies trooped home again to discuss developments over a dish of Bohea; eagerly the gentlemen trotted to theBlue Boaronly to be told that nobody save lodgers could be admitted.
Most of them admired the decision of the Great little Man, but the rebels who, having once started, felt bound to hold out if only against the censure of the faithful, laughedvery loudly and boldly and said it was all very well to close the places of publick entertainment on Sunday, that was only a loss of two hours custom to the proprietors, but on the next day, a very different tale would be told. So they prophesied as they tripped home to their pipes and hot rum, with a twirl of their elegant canes, a shake of their exquisite heads, and aWhack row-de-dowfrom their irreverent lips.
The faithful who had seen the Beau in the first flood of his wrath were not so sanguine. They knew that like the late King of France he could sayL'état, c'est moi, and what shopkeeper, innkeeper, or porter, would be brave enough to defy him?
The sun set on a gloomy town and everybody went to bed at half-past eight o'clock having nothing better to do.
Mr. Ripple had earlier in the afternoon assured himself of Mr. Lovely's fidelity, and in the company of the young gentlemen of theBlue Boar, passed a very pleasant evening over some capital Burgundy opened at his expense. He sent down messages to my Lord Cinderton and my Lord Vanity begging the favour of their company, and both my lords hurried back as fast as their dignified legs would carry them. Of course, they quite agreed with Mr. Ripple that the outbreak was scandalous and were determined to support his decrees against the whole of society provided they were not included in the excommunication. The news of Sir Jeremy Dummer's sudden decease was brought in, and Mr. Ripple, deeply moved by the melancholy event, ascribed it to the horror with which the old baronet was overwhelmed at the defiance of himself. It was soon announced in every drawing-room that Sir Jeremy Dummer had died of an apoplexy brought on by the sight of the rebel abstainers from morning Chalybeate.
It was arranged, almost in silence, that everybody faithful to the great Beau, should repair to the Pump Room on the following morning, dressed in funereal black, a quarter of an hour earlier than usual. They might not be admitted, but their devotion would carry its own reward, and would certainly afford the Beau confidence in the loyalty of the most of his subjects. It was farther arranged that a deputationof the leading visitors and residents should wait upon him at his lodgings with an address black-edged, assuring him of their sorrow and fidelity. As for the rebels, they must make what terms they could.
At eleven o'clock of Monday forenoon the deputation waited upon the Beau and was ushered over the Turkey carpet into his urbane presence. Apparently he was quite untouched by the almost servile assurance of loyalty contained in the address. He begged leave to inform the company that, while sensible of their compliment, he could not permit any publick amusement until the ringleaders of the revolt had, hat in hand, implored his forgiveness. He added he had reluctantly despatched mounted messengers to Leamington, Cheltenham, Bristol Well, Brighthelmstone, Harrowgate, Scarborough, Tunbridge and the Bath, begging his brethren to refuse admittance to any new arrivals until farther warning. He was confident that his appeal would not be disregarded. The abashed deputation withdrew, having effected nothing. Monday passed gloomily enough. There were no chairmen, there were no chairs, there were no coaches, there was no Assembly. The shops were all closed: the Pump Room was closed: coffee-houses, chocolate-houses and taverns were all closed.
The rebels were now merged almost imperceptibly into loyalists but a few still held out, and two of the more callous—I will not affront the living world with their names—went so far as to send out invitations to a party of Quadrille. Six equally hardened rebels arrived at the time appointed. Two tables were formed, the candles were lighted, the guineas stood piled in glittering dozens, the cards were dealt, when suddenly the door was flung open and Mr. Ripple in black sattin, armed with a spade, marched into the room.
"I think, ladies and gentlemen, that I am Spadille this evening," he proclaimed in a voice of ice.
The eight rebels dropped their cards. It was impossible to play with any calmness in the presence of that menacing figure whose contempt was so sublime. The ladies fluttered from the room in dismay.
"Gentlemen," said the Beau, "you will call at my house to-morrow with the humblest apologies for this evening's outrage."
Then he vanished from the room. It only remains to add that the gentlemen did call at the Great House on the following morning where their humiliation was complete if we may judge by an alabaster tablet set up in the portico of the Assembly Rooms where it remained until the other day, when, alas! the famous old rooms, so long the most frequented shrine of wit and beauty in England, were pulled down to make way for a publick library.
The tablet which was in the likeness of the Ace of Spades bore the following inscription:
Sacred to the Memory of Justice, Decency, and Order,This Tablet was erected by four GentlemenIn Token of their sincere Penitence and resoluteAmendment.Also in the profoundest Admiration and deepestRespect for Beau Ripple, King of Curtain Wells,for many yearsArbiter of FashionandOracle of Wit.The Great and OnlySpadille.
THE submission of the recalcitrants secured once more to Curtain Wells her publick amusements, and the Monday Assembly was announced for Wednesday evening. Everybody determined that it should make up in brilliance what it lacked in punctuality, and all private conversaziones, routs, and Quadrille parties were, by general consent, postponed.
We have temporarily got out of touch with the lesser intrigues of this history, but truly all such were eclipsed by the great Rebellion whose echoes drowned the whispered vows of lovers and the murmur of scandalous small talk. The prospect of peace set everybody at amusement, with vigour refreshed by the momentary lull in the gay tempest of their lives.
An additional excitement surrounded this Assembly because it was everywhere reported that the young gentlemen of theBlue Boarwould be present in force. This rumour was, indeed, likely to prove true, for the young gentlemen, already determined to discover Mr. Lovely's charmer, were confirmed in their resolve by a desire to reciprocate the Beau's lately implied confidence in a way more likely to gratify him than any other.
The prospect of dancing with young Tom Chalkley of the Foot, Tony Clare, and Peter Wingfield, or Lieutenant Blewforth of theLivelyfluttered all the young ladies' hearts and very many of the old ones'. Moreover, there were the Honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe and Mr. Golightly, and above all, there was Mr. Charles Lovely who, if he were a poet, was also a man of the extremest fashion and finesttaste, and so at once genteel and romantick. Altogether the postponed Assembly promised to be a great success.
Miss Phyllida Courteen hoped that her dear Amor would make an exception for once, but Mr. Vernon declared he would by no means commit himself to such publick adoration of his fair; so she was forced to content herself with the prospect of teasing Miss Sukey Morton about the anonymous Valentine. She knew that her dear Morton would suspect Mr. Chalkley who, with the politeness for which the British Army has always been famous, had once recovered her dropped fan. This somewhat ordinary event had led Miss Morton to colour the whole world to the hue of a red coat. All the dearest confidences exchanged with her beloved Courteen referred to young Mr. Chalkley who was quite unconscious of the amount of room he occupied in Miss Morton's heart, and was used to regard women as musquets for the presenting of arms, but nothing more.
The whole of Wednesday had been spent by the ladies of the Wells in refreshing their bodies with sleep and rouge alternately, and the sickle moon in the frore February sky looked pale and ghostly beside the sleek tapers that twinkled in every window pane and the ruddy flambeaux of the lackeys as they stamped up and down in waiting to escort their mistresses to the ball.
Phyllida was not long in putting on her white muslin nightgown with flowered sack; and as her curls had neither to be subdued by Powder and Pomatum, nor frizzled to a mock vivacity by restorative Tongs, she sat in the bow-window of her bedchamber and stared at the young moon. The curtains were drawn back, but, even so, she could still see innumerable shepherds arming as many shepherdesses through the pattern and, as the fire-light flickered over them, they seemed, indeed, to be stepping a forgotten dance.
"I should like to live in a curtain," thought Phyllida, "and be always young and always happy and always hand in hand with—but after all nothing could be less like a shepherd than Amor," and just then the little flame that had been urging all the figures into motion turned to a noisy puff of smoke;the picture faded from her mind and the voice of her mother destroyed the last gossamer fancy that floated through her brain.
The widow's room was billowy with rejected petticoats on which, like sea-wrack, floated garters, stockings, and gloves; while a large constellation of paste gleamed fitfully through the mirk of a Paris net. In the midst of the delicate havock sat the widow uncertain as ever what colour and stuff would most become the evening.
"The Major spoils my rose lustring and my orange sack makes the Justice look——"
"Like suet," said Betty.
The widow was about to reprimand her for the simile, but as it perfectly expressed what the Justice would look like, she refrained.
"Sure, madam," said Phyllida, who was impatient to set out, "you had best wear your blue brocade."
"The child is right," said the widow emphatically. "Betty! my blue brocade."
Betty did not protest she had already tried on the blue brocade four times because, if she had, the widow would instantly have thought that green would be better, and the argument would have begun all over again.
At last the widow was dressed; the coach was at the door; and in a very short time made one of a long row of equally cumbersome vehicles that extended far down the High Street. Mrs. Courteen peering from the window announced she had caught a glimpse of Lady Bunbutter stepping out of her coach in blue brocade. This dreadful anticipation of her own entrance was extremely disconcerting, and if there had been the slightest prospect of turning round in the crush of coaches, chairs, footmen, linkboys and gaping cits, she would have instantly driven home to exchange blue for any other colour in her trunk-mail or closet. However, as she could not change her attire, she did the next best thing possible, by blaming Phyllida for her suggestion. As this was the prologue to every assembly, the latter was not much troubled by her mother's annoyance and soon the coach arrived at thevery steps leading up to the Rooms. At the moment it drew up, Major Tarry and Mr. Moon stepped forward and flung open the door and handed the widow out and armed her up the steps and gave her name to Mr. Ripple's confidential Secretary who passed it on to another equally confidential footman who bawled it out at the top of his voice just as Mrs. Courteen sailed into the ballroom where Mr. Ripple, with the rosy bloom of triumph on his cheeks, advanced to offer two fingers vailed in gloves of diaphanous chicken-skin.
Curtseys, bows, and compliments lasted until the arrival of the next guest, when the widow with her faithful Ancients surveyed the room in a grand promenade. Phyllida made off to greet her dear Morton with half a glance in the direction of the young gentlemen from theBlue Boar, who were grouped rather stiffly at the other end of the ballroom.
The babble of conversation and the swish of fans, the colour all compact of movement, the innumerable tapers, the glitter of many brooches, pins, and buckles, the mirrours, the preliminary notes of the musicians, the shuffling feet, and the tap of the opened snuff-boxes combined in that glorious whole—a ball at the Assembly Rooms, Curtain Wells.
Soon the Minuets would begin, and after the Minuets, the Gavottes, and so on to the Country Dances and the last great Cotillon. The passionate history of the world is writ in crowquill letters on the programs of dances. What Jealousies and yellow-winged Envies hovered on the cool air of waving fans, what vows would be made and broken in those alcoves, now serene and empty, before the last flambeau expired in the gutter outside. What mean Ambitions coiled around every genteel fine hoop!
Yet Mr. Ripple was so suave, Mrs. Courteen and my Lady Bunbutter so full of compliments, Lieutenant Blewforth so jolly and Mr. Lovely so witty, old Lord Vanity so generous of snuff, my Lord Cinderton so distinguished—and as for Miss Phyllida Courteen, she was enchanted to a magical domain where only very slowly did Mr. FrancisVernon blacken a trinket sun with the menace of real passion.
Suddenly her heart began to beat so fast that she feared all her friends would observe her agitation. Surely that young gentleman in primrose sattin and flesh-coloured brocaded waistcoat, who took the polished floor so easily, was the poet of Valentine Day to whom she had confided her note. Surely too, for all he stared at everybody else from time to time, his eyes were really fixed on hers. Perhaps he was a friend of Amor's with a message to deliver—and yet it would be more interesting, she decided, if he were not. Presently Mr. Lovely was bowing over her chair and asking in the politest manner possible for the honour of the next two dances.
She looked round at Miss Morton as if to say she could not leave her without a partner.
"Madam," said Mr. Lovely bowing very low indeed, "if I might be so presumptuous, does the young lady wish for a Vis à Vis, for in that case I shall certainly present my friend Mr. Chalkley of the Foot."
Miss Morton, amid a deal of simpering, confessed she favoured a minuet on occasions, so Mr. Lovely hurried off to fetch Mr. Chalkley before the musicians began to play the opening bars of the dance.
Phyllida was astonished at the coincidence and not sure whether, after all, Mr. Chalkley had not employed Mr. Lovely's offices on his behalf. However, as she had little enough envy in her and was romantically attached to Mr. Amor, she could scarcely refuse to help her dear Morton into the arms of an expectant lover, and if Mr. Lovely had no real inclination to dance with her, that was no great matter, since he was a vastly agreeable young gentleman and would pass the time very pleasantly in the absence of another.
Mr. Chalkley, when summoned by Charles, was extremely indignant and swore he was not come to dance with any jade in the room.
"Pshaw," replied his friend, "you can't stand there gaping all the evening."
"Why don't you make Blewforth dance with the hussy?"
"Odds my life, Tom, why won't you tread a minuet with a handsome young woman?"
"You're too devilish fond of arranging matters for other people to suit your own whims. I'll be hanged if I dance a step to-night!" But all the other young gentlemen vowed so earnestly that Mr. Chalkley was a surly fellow, that he gave way at last and suffered himself to be dragged to the feet of attractive Miss Sukey Morton, whose black eyes flashed very brightly at the sight of Mr. Chalkley's red coat.
Charles, having disposed her friend, offered his hand to Phyllida and soon they were stepping the minuet with infinite grace, admired by every one who saw them.
For her the room sank into unreality and she lived in a rainbow whose colours moved and changed to the slow dignity of far-heard Pizzicato.
The melody to which these marionettes were dancing possessed a strange quality. It was emotion in quintessence, without passion, without abandon. Whatever it had of definite character lay in the half bashful invitation to dance, as if some ghostly puppet master, pale and stately, were beckoning to his performers. As the opening bars of the minuet were repeated at the close only to die away in a poignant farewell, Phyllida felt for the first time, in the swoon of her last courtesy, that she was a doll whose gestures served to amuse a genteel but unearthly audience of monocled Gods.
Actually it was a mere momentary dizziness, a sudden loss of volition on which Charles hung a score of fancies.
"You are feeling faint?" he inquired.
"No, no."
"The heat is overpowering. Shall we sit for a while in an alcove, or shall we saunter in Curtain Garden?" They passed through the crowded room and down a cool passage into a Baroc cloister where stone Satyrs took the place of Angels, and the Cherubim were not easily to be distinguished from Loves.
The young moon was setting behind Curtain Hill larger and more golden than before.
The cloister was hung with amber lights and held innumerable whispers. Somewhere close at hand was a sound of running water.
"You are fond of dancing, madam?"
"Oh, sir, 'tis a very delicate motion truly."
"I fear you thought I was presumptuous in offering my hand for the minuet."
"No, indeed, sir," Phyllida answered quite naturally.
Lovely was rather surprized. He had expected the customary play of a fan.
"You are making a long stay here?" he asked.
"Oh, sir, I do not know, 'tis for so long as my mamma thinks proper."
"I have not had the honour of an introduction."
"No," said Phyllida doubtfully. She was not at all anxious to present Mr. Lovely, and willing enough to take advantage of the Assembly rule that the offer and acceptance of a dance was not necessarily a passport to intimacy on the next day. She did not wish to be treated like a child before the gallant Mr. Lovely who treated her with such deference.
"Did you hear anything more of the Valentine?" said Phyllida with a ripple of laughter.
"Not a word."
"You remember the young woman by whom I was seated?"
"Perfectly."
"’Twas for her," said Phyllida with more laughter.
"Nonsense."
"Oh, yes! indeed, 'tis true, and the best of it is she thinks the Valentine was sent by Mr. Chalkley."
"Never!"
"Oh! yes, yes, yes."
"But he has never set eyes on her."
"No! But she thinks he has—often, just because he picked up her fan once."
"Truly then I did a very politick action in effecting the introduction."
"Oh, sir, she was ravished, you may be sure."
"Gad! I'll send her a Valentine every day of the week, and put one in her Prayer Book on Sundays."
"Oh, sir! but sure, it might end in a wedding, and that's a very serious matter as all the world knows."
"Not more serious than love," said Charles.
"Well, no, perhaps not more than love; but then neither of 'em is in love with t'other."
"I swear they shall be."
"You can't force people to fall in love."
"Can't you?" said Charles very earnestly, so earnestly that Phyllida thought the air was turning chill and that they ought to go back to the ballroom.
"Not yet," pleaded Mr. Lovely. "I thought we might walk towards the Maze."
"The Maze?" said she quickly.
"Why, yes! the entrance is but a few yards from where we are."
"I had forgot," she answered, and then with a sudden determination, "I think we had better go back."
"You're not frightened of the Maze?"
"Oh, no, truly I'm not," Phyllida affirmed. "But I think I heard my mamma's voice and if she sees me here, I shall not be allowed to come to the next Assembly."
Phyllida was feeling a vague emotion of infidelity to her dear Amor and almost dreaded to see his tall shadow in the amber light.
"As you will," he said in some disappointment, "but we han't had a deal of conversation yet."
"That's true," she replied, "but this is only our second meeting. Oh! Gemini!" she went on, "you'll think me forward and bold, but I vow I never meant it in that way."
"Madam," said Charles with a bow, "I should never presume to put upon it an interpretation so complimentary to myself, but, seriously, you will give me two more dances to-night?"
"It would be indiscreet."
"Nay, I do not think so."
"Your friends would laugh."
"I do notthinkso."
Mr. Lovely looked so fierce that Phyllida hurriedly promised two gavottes, and Charles who was something of a Gascon could not help congratulating himself on his speedy success.
They walked back to the ballroom almost in silence, and above the chatter of folk in the lobby, heard the opening of a plaintive minuet.
Lovely, when he had left his partner, walked over to his friends of theBlue Boarand was greeted with a shower of sallies.
"How now, Charles, have you been smuggling rare spirits in the cloister?" cried Blewforth.
"Snuggling would be b-b-better!" stammered little Peter Wingfield.
Charles glared at both the young gentlemen, who laughed very heartily indeed, and were not at all put about by his frowns.
"Oddslife, Charles," said Mr. Chalkley, "where have been your eyes these past six weeks to have so lately discovered the fair Courteen?"
"Charles looks at women through dice-boxes," said Blewforth.
"And what's worse, sees double wherever he looks," added Mr. Chalkley.
"Charles," added Mr. Antony Clare, "be wise. Some knave of Clubs will trump your Queen."
"Mr. Clare," said Charles drawing himself up very straight and looking as grand as possible, "I'll trouble you to croak when I ask for your noise; as for you, gentlemen, you're too free with your words, be d—d to the lot of you."
Thereupon Mr. Charles Lovely swung himself out of the room with such an air that the young gentlemen looked after him in some apprehension.
"Egad!" commented Chalkley, "the man must be madly in love for he's lost his wit."
"And his humour too," said Blewforth.
"Don't rally him too hard, boys," said Tony.
"We can't all turn parsons because Charles is bewitched by two blue eyes," grumbled Chalkley.
This was the opinion of the company, and though in their hearts they excused Mr. Lovely, they were loud in their condemnation of his churlish behaviour.
Clare, afraid he was gone to work off his injured feelings by reckless play, soon followed him out of the ballroom, but could not find him at the tables.
Charles had, in fact, turned into the garden. Cupid had pierced him with a long sharp arrow, and he was not yet able to bear a rough hand on the wound. The night air came over him fresh and cool. In the darkness he was more than ever enthralled by the image and pale fancies of an ideal passion. Yet for all he was a poet, or perhaps just because he was a poet, his love was tinted with the hues of convention. She was like those Madonnas who appear to peasant children, Madonnas in crude crœlean robes sown with tinsel stars. One feels that much of the apparition is due to preconceived opinion. So with Charles, his love made one of a list of women dating to the Queens of Babylon. There was too much bob-a-cherry about her and too much cream. She stood, too, on such a high pedestal that if she owned feet of cracked clay not a soul could have seen them.
Charles felt very angry with his bachelor friends, and when Clare joined him at the end of an alley was in no mood to be pleasant company.
"Sure, Charles," the latter remonstrated, "you're the last man to tie yourself to the skirts of a goddess."
"There's a medium between an angel and a woman of the town," said Charles sententiously.
"But the woman was once an angel to somebody, and 'foregad! I believe you do your charmer an injury to make her such a paragon of air. I swear those eyes can flash with more than saintly ecstasy."
"Z—— ds! Tony, you are bent on a quarrel. I tell you the child's name shall not be a toast for my profligate friends."
"You are not better than any of them."
"But at least I can reverence purity."
"Aye, and so can Blewforth."
"D—— e!" swore Charles, "'tis a pity he don't exercise his talent more openly."
The argument would doubtless have continued, if the sound of voices approaching had not made the two young men pause involuntarily. Two people were passing down the adjoining alley, and it was impossible not to overhear some of the conversation, which was sufficiently ridiculous. A feminine voice declared that soldiers were romantick, and a voice of opposite sex replied that as an attribute of class, it was an undeniable quality, but not for that reason universally applicable to individual members of that class.
"But a scarlet coat is so dazzling," argued Treble.
"Madam," said Bass, "I cannot claim that my profession is romantick. The Law, Madam, has no time for romance except perhaps in the examination of an unwilling witness, but what my profession lacks, my name possesses. Moon, madam, I venture to affirm, is a singularly romantick name."
"It is," murmured the widow, for, of course, it was she.
"The moon is the method of illumination adopted by every poet of distinction."
"How true that is," she sighed.
"I might add that so far as dazzling goes my name is as capable of extreme refraction as the red coat of a soldier. Moreover, madam, the latter is very antipathetick to the complexion of a woman of quality."
"But the coat need not be worn, Mr. Moon. It could exist in a bottom drawer, I should feel it was there, and I could sometimes brush it even."
"Good heavens! ma'am, has not the Law an equal fascination? Do you know that my house is full of legal cases?"
"How untidy!" said the widow reprovingly.
"ArgumentsProandContra, trials!"
"But I dislike arguments, they put my hair out of curl and we have so many trials to bear already."
"They need never be used, but they can exist, madam, they can exist in calf on a bottom shelf, and they could be dusted sometimes," declared the Justice. Then in softer accents he began to plead:
"Think, my dear Mrs. Courteen, of Mrs. Moon. Mrs. Moon! I often murmur that short sentence over to myself."
"Do you, Mr. Moon? When?" said the widow, who seemed touched by his devotion.
"Oh! after dinner—or getting into bed, or—" but the third occasion was never revealed, for Major Tarry charged round the corner and carried off the dear questioner to adorn a gavotte.
Somehow the hedges no longer seemed so mysterious and the night not quite so large.
"Gad! what follies!" laughed Charles.
"D'ye know who the lady was?" inquired the other.
"Venus grown fat by the sound of her voice."
"That was Mrs. Courteen."
"Eh?"
"Your charmer's mother."
"Then she must have had a very delightful father."
"That's neither here nor there," said Clare. "Your angel's wings may moult, and she who now goes tiptoe for very lightness will one day—but, pshaw! if you love her, she will always skim the ground."
"Tony!" said Charles, "I've made a fool of myself."
"In the best way of folly."
It may seem odd that Charles should have been so ready to admit the mortality of his goddess, but after all as yet his love was an apparition. No miracles had been worked at the shrine, and she had a mother.
Also Charles began to smell romance, of which he pretended to an exaggerated horror. Like mother, like daughter.He made up his mind to neglect Miss Phyllida Courteen, and having done so, went back to the ballroom with the temerity of a successful anchorite. Yet when he saw her again she was young and adorable, and he was as madly in love with her as ever; all the more perhaps because he realized that one day she would fade. However, he was no longer so full of heroick rebukes for his friends. Perhaps, like the Greeks, he was beginning to understand that romantick Troy was a menace to the common sense of the world.
Charles found the young men in precisely the same position as that in which he left them.
"Oddslife," cried Blewforth, "there's Charles come back. What, man! have you been languishing under the sky? Your mistress has been dancing merrily with Ripple himself, while you were star-gazing."
"'Tis a pity that none of you have enough impudence to follow his example," retorted Charles, "for on my soul you all stand stiff and awkward as the figures on a Gothick tombstone. Gad! I've a mind to tell the ladies how nimbly you tripped it at Baverstock, Blewforth, and as for you, Tom, I'm hanged if I'd be cut out by a beggarly half-pay militia captain," continued Charles pointing to the disreputable Captain Mann who was handing Miss Morton through the gavotte.
"Well said!" Clare joined in, "we shall find it more difficult than ever to believe Blewforth's tales of conquest in the ports of civilization."
"Unless," added Charles, "like a picture by a great master he possesses an immovable reputation and attracts by beauty in repose."
"Ha—ha—ha," bellowed the Lieutenant, "you should have seen me at Minorca. These finicking hussies aren't worth the shoe leather one uses in dragging them round the room." But just as Mr. Blewforth was about to give a discourse on the beauty, grace, and agility of feminine Spain, Mr. Ripple scaled the rigid group:
"Now, gentlemen, you are not dancing. Come, comethis won't do. I've let you off the Minuets and Gavottes, but I insist on the Country Dances. Let me see, Lieutenant Blewforth, I have the very Vis à Vis you are looking for—Mrs. Georgina Bean, widow of the late Captain Bean, of your own Service. She will like to hear the latest Marine Information."
Blewforth struck his colours with an almost humble salute.
"Mr. Chalkley," the Beau continued, "Miss Margery Mansel a young lady fresh from boarding-school, will certainly suit your accomplishments. Treat her kindly, sir. Mr. Golightly, I insist on your dancing with Lady Jane Vane—your father and hers were intimate friends. Mr. Harthe-Brusshe, your respected father tells me that he has a particular desire you should dance with Miss Mimsy; she's an heiress, sir, and as good as she is wealthy. Come, come, gentlemen, make no doubt that I shall find a partner for every one of you."
The young gentlemen, a little stiffer, a little more awkward, followed Mr. Ripple very mildly across the room. The rest of the Assembly fluttered quite perceptibly at their approach.
Lovely had no opportunity of asking Phyllida to dance with him as by the time he had crossed the room, she was standing opposite Mr. Moon. So he hurried up to Miss Sukey Morton who flashed her black eyes and took his arm with all the grace in the world and discussed the attraction of the British Army with much fan-play and volubility. He met Phyllida in the course of the dance and begged her hand for the Cotillon, but she shook her head gravely with a glance in the direction of old General Morton, and Charles passed on to less interesting encounters much exasperated by the impertinence of old age.
"Why aren't you a soldier, Mr. Lovely?" asked Miss Morton in a wondering voice.
"I like to pull the sheets over my head when I sleep," said Charles very solemnly, "but soldiers always have to put them on top of a pole."
"Oh! but think of war and fortresses and sieges and bivouacks."
"I dislike war, I object to fortresses. For sieges I lack the patience and I abominate bivouacks."
"But the uniform is so gay," persisted Miss Morton, "and so martial."
"A footman's, ma'am, is twice as gay and three times as martial."
"Nay, I vow you're jealous of the Army."
"Madam, is that surprizing, when Miss Morton inclines so much to scarlet?"
"Nay, now you are laughing at me,", she pouted, "and I hate to be laughed at. Are you a friend of Mr. Chalkley?"
"Indeed, I hope I may describe myself as such," said Charles.
"Does he paint landskips as an Amateur?" inquired cunning Miss Sukey Morton.
"Not that I am aware of."
The disappointment visible on her countenance recalled the incident of the Valentine, and he made haste to add:
"Though now I come to think of it, I found him cutting out an ace of hearts one day last week."
"An ace of hearts?" said Miss Morton very innocently, "why what would he do that for?"
"I asked him as much, and he muttered something about a torn velvet patch. But his behaviour that day was monstrous odd altogether, for I remember I found him later on the bowling green of theBlue Boarpicking snowdrops, and when I rallied him, he asked me for a rhyme to 'white.'"
Miss Morton danced for the rest of the evening as though her scarlet heels were little flames.
The hands of the clock were nearing the magick hour of the last Cotillon, and everybody was hurrying in search of partners and places; when the appearance of Gog and Magog, with Mr. Ripple's marble pedestal, warned everybody that the Great little Man was about to make an announcement. Everybody waited with extreme deference and nota whisper disturbed the religious peace. The room was quite still save for the tinkle of jewellery and the slow sighing of the fans.
The Beau ascended his pedestal, calm and majestick while the listeners craned their necks to attention.
"My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. You are doubtless all aware that we have to lament the sudden death of that respected model of fortitude and perseverance, Sir Jeremy Dummer."
A sympathetick murmur floated along the wind of the fans.
"I am happy to tell you that he died as he lived, fighting. He died, if I may use so vulgar a metaphor, in harness—the harness of an old war-horse who, having fought the foes of England during his prime, continued to fight the greatest foe of England during his decay. That energy which erstwhile displayed itself in the trenches of War enabled him for twenty-one years to persecute by every means in his power that enemy of all of us—the Gout.
"He sought to starve it into capitulation by restricted diet, he tried to storm it by sudden charges of chalybeate. My lords, ladies and gentlemen, it was in the middle of one of these gallant sallies that he died. In a word, he was half-way through a glass of the cleansing liquid when death overtook him. There it stood, that partially empty glass beside the dead form of the veteran. May we not regard this relick as the tears of Æsculapius? Shall we not enshrine these sparkling drops in a lachrymatory and, having sealed the sacred fluid with the city seal, shall we not set it in a prominent part of our civick museum? My lords, ladies and gentlemen, we shall. I have consulted with my brother the Mayor of this town, and he has agreed.
"Moreover, let me remind you of the last words of the great Socrates, his last injunction to his friend to sacrifice a cock to Æsculapius. Let us also, in memory of our deceased exemplar, present a new tap to our publick fountain and so sacrifice, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, not a cock, but a turncock to Æsculapius."
The Great little Man here paused to wipe away the tearsof sorrow and the heat of the atmosphere. "It seems," he continued, "out of place to make any announcement of a new diversion, but pleasure is as inexorable as death."
Here the audience seemed to murmur a mournful assent.
"Next Tuesday at 7 o'clock precisely will be held the Chinese Masquerade. This, as you are aware, limits our costumes to those authorized by gold-lackered cabinets and teacups of blue china. I myself shall act as Gold Mandarin and my young friend Mr. Charles Lovely will be the Blue Mandarin. There will be a grand minuet of Cathay, but I will not detain you now with farther particulars of this entertainment. I hope that we shall hold masquerades of assorted characters until May, when we shall make an attempt to start the Fêtes Champêtres which were so successful last year.
"Finally, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, you are aware that an incident of an unpleasantly obtrusive habit deterred us from Terpsichore on Monday night. I am, indeed, happy to say that the curtain has fallen upon the whole affair without a dissentient voice. I should have been inexpressibly grieved if the gloom consequent upon the defiance of my authority, had been at all lasting. May I add that the rebels—if I may call them so without offence—have acted in the handsomest manner and have offered to set up in the portico of these rooms a tablet commemorating the temporary cloud upon your delight. I should be more than mortal if I were not proud of such a token of confidence in my despotism.
"My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am your very grateful, humble, and obliged servant to command."
The Beau's descent from his pedestal was the signal for much waving of lace handkerchiefs and fans. There were cries of 'Bravo, Beau,' 'Viva, Ripple!'
Finally when old Lord Vanity stepped up to the dignified lord of ceremonies and solemnly offered him his noted jade snuffbox full to overflowing of the richest brown Rappee, and when the Beau, having dropped his jewelled fingers into the modish soil, drew them forth and raised them to his aquiline nose, a stillness fell upon the room, and above thesilence the sniffs of the great Beau, three in number, were distinctly heard by all. It was as if he wished them Good Health. But this was not enough for the Exquisite Mob. Somebody—it may have been our hero—ran post haste for a bottle of champagne, and somebody else rushed off for goblets. Presently, the prettiest Impromptu in the world was enacted, and very proud indeed were the spectators of a scene memorable for many years in the chronicles of fashion.