MR. ANTHONY CLARE stayed behind to help our hero home to bed. His effort to achieve sobriety had completely exhausted such faculties as remained after so many quarts of Burgundy, and he babbled to his companion foolish threats and impotent defiance in such an incoherent voice that I doubt his enemy, had he been present, would scarcely have been able to discover common sense in any one of his remarks. Charles woke up in the morning full of bile, dressed himself in a splenetick fury and ate a breakfast, conspicuous for its peppery flavours, with petulance and aversion. Then he crammed his gold-laced Kevenhuller hat on his head and went out to interview Mr. Horace Ripple.
In crossing the courtyard of the inn he passed Mr. Chalkley, and for a moment debated seriously the wisdom of challenging him out of hand. This he was the more inclined to do because he fancied the gallant Ensign was regarding him with some disfavour. However, the latter gave him a 'good morning,' and excused his want of geniality on the score of a liver teased out of endurance by hard and violent exercise.
So Charles forgave him his supposed breach of good manners and decided to hear from Tony a full account of the evening's events.
Clare presently overtook him under the archway, and, on being informed of our hero's destination, tried to dissuade him from the projected visit to the Beau.
"Z—— ds! I tell you that blackguard shall be turned out of the Wells with ignominy." So much Charles vowed.
"But 'tis no business of yours, Charles," argued his friend.
"No business of mine? Eh! is that so? Then, by heaven! I'll make it my business."
"Ripple does not believe in settling disputes of this nature by the personal encounter."
"Then, by heaven!" said Charles, "that being the case there is the greater necessity for expelling him from the company of gentlemen."
"That is all very well," expostulated Clare, "but you are neither the young woman's brother nor, as I believe, her lover. What right have you to interfere?"
"I tell you, Tony," said Charles, "that Ripple has already pondered the advisableness of interfering with Mr. Francis Amor-Vernon and, indeed, begged me to disclose his pseudonym, but I would not."
"You owed him money, in fact?" said Clare, gently tapping the kerb of the pavement with his cane.
"Yes, I owed the dog money."
"And now he is paid?"
"Thanks to your generosity he is paid."
"Charles," said Mr. Clare, laying his hand affectionately on that indignant gentleman's right shoulder, "oblige me, who was able and glad to oblige you, by not proceeding further in this affair."
"'Tis monstrous ill-bred in you to remind me of an obligation under which I laid myself with the most profound disinclination." Charles was growing angry.
"Nay, you know that is not my meaning, but, consider Charles, this confounded, pasquinading pamphlet book has placed you in such an ill light that the world will be very loth to believe any good of you."
"Ripple is wiser than the raree-show over which he presides."
"Ay! but depend on't, he has already been informed of last night's affair and will be prejudiced against you on account of your quarrelsome overtures."
"'Sdeath! Tony, pray desist from further argument; you do not convince me and will soon rouse my choler."
"As you will," said Tony, and, leaving the company of his friend, betook himself to the solitude of green fields. In the pleasures of country sights and sounds he found some consolation for the undeserved reproaches of a gentleman whom he had gratified at considerable expense to himself.
Charles continued in the direction of the Great House. Being arrived on the topmost doorstep he rang the bell with complete assurance and knocked thrice with the heavy brass knocker.
He was admitted to an audience and walked upstairs to the tall white drawing-room without trepidation or bashfulness. Mr. Ripple had favoured him with so many compliments lately, had begged his advice on so many trifles of publick importance, had in fact adopted him so completely into intimate conversation, that Charles may be pardoned for supposing that, notwithstanding his unceremonious conduct of the night before last, notwithstanding his notoriety as the author of a book of satirical poems, he would still be received with that inimitable and charming condescension which the Great little Man reserved for few indeed.
He found the Beau seated among the roses of his wide-winged armchair sipping what looked uncommonly like a cordial physick. He did not rise to Mr. Lovely's entrance, did not even turn his head, but merely said in a tone, indifferent, lifeless and chill,
"To what may I ascribe the honour of this visit, sir?"
Conceive the shocked feelings of Madam Semele when he, whom she had hitherto regarded with the familiarity born of many amorous meetings, assumed at her own request the attributes of divinity. She died, if you can recall the sad event.
Charles experienced a particle of that dismay when the Great little Man for whom he had hitherto felt an almost playful affection suddenly appeared to him with the attributes of majesty—remoteness, scorn, and inaccessibleness. The pattern upon the Aubusson rug swam before his eyes in changes of tint and form as frequent as a child's Kaleidoscope,and he found himself in humble obeisance. The Beau twirled the fluted stem of the green Venetian glass that contained his physick and waited for Mr. Lovely to explain his business.
"Well, sir," he said at last.
The abashed favourite stammered his reasons for the visit.
"Pooh, pooh," said the Beau. "Pooh, pooh! a likely story. Your brain, sir, addled by the ridiculous rhymes it has already born with obvious labour, refuses to hatch further monstrous fancies, and is content to send into the world an abortion. The night before last, Mr. Lovely, you waited upon me at an hour both indiscreet and inconvenient. I was ready to overlook this horrid breach of decorum and was indeed willing to receive your apologies on the following day. You found, however, a more engaging diversion in cracking bottles with a bagman. For this I do not blame you—and, indeed, think you will do well to cultivate a manner of company for which you seem to me singularly adapted. Pray understand, however, that, in finding your level, you have had to make a very considerable descent. The rider who has been thrown into a ditch is unable to cry 'View! Holloa!' to the master of the hunt. In other words, Mr. Lovely, you have put yourself in a position where your estimate of polite intrigue is incredible and impertinent. I am very well able to look after the morals of the Beau Monde without the assistance of the kitchen or the tap-room."
"Mr. Ripple," said our hero, "you insult me."
"Unfortunately, sir, I recognize no responsibleness in that direction. I have always claimed the right to speak my mind. If you find my strictures intolerable, the door affords you an easy remedy."
"Mr. Ripple," Charles replied, "I think you are making a fool of yourself."
The Great little Man clutched the arms of his wide-winged chair and gasped. It was certainly twenty years since any one had dared to address him with such a want of reverence.
"You wrap yourself in paint and sattin," continued Charles. "You strut about as if you were indeed the king of a puppet show. But don't forget, Mr. Ripple, that when the puppets perform, when they make miniature love and die small deaths, the publick regards them, not the wire-puller above. The world, your world, will forget you, Mr. Ripple, when it still remembers the inconsiderable passions of your dolls."
"It does not matter, sir," the Beau interrupted in a voice tremulous with well-bred anger. "It does not matter what the world thinks of me, so long as my puppets comport themselves with taste and discretion."
"You fool," shouted Charles, "the wires are twisted."
It is improbable that any one had ever shouted in this tall white room before, and the lustres shivered at the unwonted sound, while a diminutive Dresden shepherdess, fragile as a sea-shell, lost her head, which rolled into the grate with a tinkle of dismay.
"Leave my house," said the Beau.
"Ay! and you dislike to be told that your show will presently appear ludicrous."
"Leave my house."
"Good G——! Ripple. I know I have been to blame; I know my story seems to you absurd; but, by Heaven! I swear those cursed lines were never writ by me, and since Vernon wrote them, why, z——ds, man! Can't you see his intention?"
"Leave my house."
"Very well, sir, your obedient servant."
With a very grand bow, Mr. Lovely took his leave of the Great little Man.
When he was gone, the Beau stooped to pick up the head of the diminutive Dresden shepherdess.
"Tut-tut, I doubt the join will be plainly visible," he murmured to himself.
MR. LOVELY left the Great House enraged with the owner, with Society and, to say truth, with his own heroick self.
I do not think he was very wildly in love with Miss Courteen, but I do believe he was sincerely vexed with himself for letting her fall into Vernon's power. For a moment he seriously pondered the wisdom of warning her mother of the lengths to which the affair had gone, but upon reflection shrank from a step which would savour, in the eyes of the world, of ill-bred intrusion. After all, the girl was nothing to him, and her reputation—plague on her reputation! I trust you observe the unheroick aftermath of heroick Burgundy. Such bathos of indifference would have sounded strange in the days preceding this forenoon.
Just then my lady Bunbutter went by in her capacious chair and Charles prepared to make an elaborate bow, but her ladyship merely stared at him in cold disdain, and he was forced to buckle his shoe to save his countenance.
"So everybody knows," said Charles to himself, "Well! I shall always regard Curtain Wells with affection and remember it with regret."
He walked down the Colonnade where Miss Morton lived and, as he passed the house, thought with half a smile of Valentine Day. It seemed a century ago—that merry morning. Soon he was in the fields, where the hedges were splashed with the silver of blackthorn in profuse bloom.
He crossed a winding path, begun and ended with a notched and scrabbled kissing-gate, and, passing through a small plantation where the daffodils grew tall, went up arounded hillside along whose clear-cut horizon great fleecy clouds moved solemnly. He stopped for a moment to glance back at Curtain Wells with the March sun spangling the rain-wet roofs before he dipped with a sigh into one of those serene valleys that are only found in England—valleys whose slopes are often darkened by the long shadows of sheep and cattle, whose hollows are bright with moist grass and in summer fragrant with spearmint and creamy meadowsweet.
He took the devious course of a narrow stream and knew the grave delights of rural meditation; yet somehow the image of Phyllida danced before him all the time and whenever he paused, the wind far away over the hillside had a melancholy and foreboding sound.
He met an elderly gentleman—a parson by the colour of his cloth—who was poking some decayed herbage with a long cane. The elderly gentleman looked up as Charles went by, gave him a 'very good morning,' and said he believed he had seen an adder enter the herbage.
"Indeed," said Charles, who thought the information given demanded an attitude of respectful surprize.
"But nothing amazes me after that wonderful February. When I tell you that half an hour ago I saw an Orange Tip butterfly, you will understand that nothing amazes me."
Charles left the Elderly Gentleman still investigating the decayed herbage reputed to contain an adder, and found himself envying a mind that could invest a day with such easy fame. He had seen an Orange Tip butterfly. Had he met grey-eyed Athene, or beheld the roses and doves of Cytherea, the day would scarcely have held a more splendid memory.
He envied the Elderly Gentleman. To be sure, with a Stoick complacency, he had announced that nothing strange in the natural order could startle him after that wonderful February, but his tone of triumphant excitement foretold an entry in his diary that very night, perhaps was the prelude to a paragraph in theGentleman's Magazine.
He began to imagine the Elderly Gentleman sipping hisPort before the Rectory fire, on his knees an open Concordance whose pages were illuminated by dancing butterflies, precocious heralds of the scented spring. He heard the dignified butler told of his reverend master's lucky discovery, heard him asked to hand down the calf-bound diary of such and such a faded year, heard the Elderly Gentleman's chuckle when he found, as he suspected, that the date in his own experience was unprecedented and finally heard him order a bottle of the Port in bin twelve, the first-fruits of the Assiento Agreement.
Charles fell to comparing himself to the Elderly Gentleman, greatly to his own disadvantage.
Certainly the image of Phyllida danced before him in the water meadows, eluded him at every turn and twist of the little stream, and beckoned him along this secluded valley; but his own heart did not beat with the proper amount of answering fervour.
Six weeks ago when he saw her first, all swansdown and blushes, he had been duly elated. She had occupied much of his meditations ever since, but he had no sensation of triumph, no delight in the great fact of her existence. Perhaps that was because she belonged to the world. The butterfly had belonged, as a phenomenon, to the Elderly Gentleman alone. To the rest of mankind it was a legend. The discovery would be recorded in print, but the discovery itself would flutter in secret pale wings powdered with vivid gold, and this March morning would remain a permanent fact in that Elderly Gentleman's heart. He would suffer no disillusion. If others saw that butterfly, why, then, he would enjoy the discussion of it, whether in theGentleman's Magazinebeneath a learned pseudonym or over two or three glasses of Port, with details long drawn out to protract the delicious memory.
The ink is faded on the pages of those calf-bound diaries, the Latin epitaph on the Elderly Gentleman's tombstone is now nearly illegible, but since he went down to Elysium alert and heedful of the changing seasons, I believe that his spirit still listens on summer eves to the blackbirds in hisbeloved orchard and observes with interest and curiosity each separate harebell that blossoms above his mortal remains.
Charles went on his way with much the same thoughts about the Elderly Gentleman as I have set down for my own, and continued to envy his gift of youth.
Presently he met Margery of Baverstock Farm.
Let me remind you, she was the wench to whom Mr. Anthony Clare had paid light court back in the winter. Charles reproved him for his behaviour and apparently his friend had given up his addresses, for the milkmaid looked happy and blooming and seemed not at all displeased to giggle over a hazel wand at Mr. Charles Lovely.
"Good morning, Margery."
"Oh, good morning, zur," said Margery.
"No longer with Farmer Hogbin?"
"I be with Farmer Hogbin's brother Jahn to High Corner Farm."
"And happy?"
"Oh, 'ess, proud and happy."
"Seen Mr. Clare lately?"
Margery blushed expansively.
"Oh! naw! I an't seen him since Baverstock Barn. I be courting."
"Eh, indeed," said Charles, "and who is the shepherd?"
"Wully Pearce."
"And you'll be married soon?"
"Come barley harvest—'ess."
"I will dance at your wedding, Margery."
"We shaänt have daäncing, because Wully says it leads to what oughtn't to happen."
Charles made a wry face.
"Going to wed a Puritan, eh?"
"Nay," said the buxom maid. "He's carter to Farmer Jahn Hogbin."
"Then, surely, he will let you have a merry junketing at the bride-ale."
"Naw, indeed an' he wawnt, because his sister Mollywhen they were thrawing the stocking last year fell on her back, and Wully's fam'ly is a proud and proper fam'ly and Wully says we mun be married wi' no such nonsense."
This long proclamation of propriety made Margery quite breathless, so Charles, with a bow and the present of a crown, passed on his way. Margery's case gave him more food for meditation. There was a buxom hale wench with the bloom of a peach, throwing away her ample charms upon a puritanical clod whose only ambition seemed to be the preservation of a mealy-mouthed decorum. Pshaw! such prime beauty deserved a better fate. Such a wedding as hers should have made old wives' fireside gossip for a score of years and the tale of it quickened the hearts of every lover and his lass that listened beneath the golden summer moon. Had he the control of the ceremony, by Heaven! they should have danced the dawn in, and every man and every maid should have gone to sleep with a face as pale as the morning sky. It was ridiculous that young Cupid should be breeched for the bidding of a lubberly half-baked ploughboy.
And yet, to be honest with himself, was not he behaving in much the same way as the despised Wully Pearce? Was not his chief objection to Vernon based on the latter's reputation as a man of intrigue? It was Phyllida's attraction to Vernon that made him indignant. Had she chosen to bestow herself on a middle-aged squire with acres and a gaunt square hall and a pack of hounds, would he have been at all seriously disconcerted by the prospect? And Vernon could have no honest love for her, because if a man means to wed a young woman, he does not stigmatize her behaviour in scurrilous verses, even to secure an advantage over a supposed rival. Or does he—when he is not quite a gentleman?
Then occurred to him the story he had heard many years ago of a thin unhappy-looking woman who had spoken kindly to him at some crowded Al Fresco entertainment where he and his father and mother had gone one fine July afternoon. He had asked about her as they drove home to the lodgings,and he remembered his mother's warning finger, while his father laughed over Lord B—— and Mrs. D——.
At the end of the tale his mother, a gentle Christian soul, had said it served the baggage right, and bade him never talk to people to whom he had not been presented by his parents. No doubt the circumstances of the two cases were totally different, but he connected them vaguely in his mind.
Moreover, without any doubt, Phyllida had caught his fancy. She disturbed his view. Yet there was nothing that singled her out from a dozen handsome young women with whom he had danced, whose existence save as a bevy he no longer recognized. Still, whatever he thought about the affair, his opinion would never again be invited and, disinherited by Beau Ripple, he must consider his own position with an eye to the future.
He was bracing himself preparatory to this great mental effort, when he perceived round the next bend of the stream Mr. Anthony Clare, pensively leaning against the rugged stem of a pollard willow-tree.
"Tony," said Charles, "Ripple has dismissed me."
"I know," said his friend, "your writ of banishment, signed, sealed and delivered, is pasted on the window of every coffee-house and occupies a large and distinguished space in the vestibule of the Assembly Rooms. What do you propose to do?"
"I might hire myself out to the amiable Hogbin as carter."
"Pshaw," said Tony, "be serious."
"Or I might take to the road."
"Nonsense, man."
"Nay! I vow such a career has many advantages for a poor man, since he may live and, what is more, die at the public charge."
"You are not in earnest, Charles?" said Mr. Clare, laying an anxious hand upon his friend's wrist.
"And why not, i' faith?"
"What would you gain by such an impulse of folly?"
"My livelihood and, as I said, very possibly my funeral expenses."
"Such flippancy is ill-timed," said Mr. Clare, who was a serious young man and spent much of his leisure with the theory of estate-management.
"Nay! I am not treating the matter as a jest, but truly considering the benefit of adopting such a novel method of existence in these hard times."
"Novel!" said Clare, with a scoffing laugh. "Novel! why, every ne'er-do-weel blackguard for the past hundred years has tried this novel method of existence and every one of them has come at last to the same windy death."
"Oh, as to the last scene," interrupted Charles, "indeed I vow 'tis the best in the play, for it never fails to please the populace, and sure in this dull world a man should try to give a little amusement; I hold that the author of a diverting comedy and the thief who makes a brave exit are the truest benefactors of humanity."
"All this is very pretty fooling, but leads nowhere," said Clare, who had a proposal to make and was vexed by Charles' levity.
"But ponder, Tony, the Gothick atmosphere of such an escapade. Imagine the moated grange, the haunted lane, the shadowy coppice, the phantastick oaths and gestures, the pursuit by moonlight, the clatter of hoofs, the jingle of spurs—all this appeals to an aspect of my character too long subdued by the bonds of convention and the trammels of polite society."
"But, you fool, you would be taken at once. You have no cant of the road and, as a Dilettante, would certainly be regarded with odious suspicion by every regular highway-man between Berwick and Dover. Oddslife, I'll not argue with you further, for I do not believe you mean a word of what you say, and, harkee, I have a plan that will suit either of us better than your cut-throat Braggadocio."
As a matter of fact, Charles had once or twice thought quite seriously of taking to the road. After all, it was in accordance with every precedent of outlawry. As soon asa man was banished from Society, he should compensate himself for the discomfort he incurred. Tony, however, now came forward with a project which, while it preserved much of the charm of highway robbery, held none of its dangers or difficulties. He suggested that since neither he nor Charles had very many ties to attach them fast to Curtain Wells, they should spend a year in making the Grand Tour of the British Islands.
Charles objected on the score of money.
"I have three hundred guineas," said Clare. "That will equip us with all that we require as travellers, and I am sure the world will entertain us for our pleasant appearance and company."
"In fact we are to become beggars—in velvet gowns," Charles commented.
"Adventurers, knights at arms, what you will," added Clare.
Charles was enraptured with the idea, so deeply enraptured that he saw no absurdity in grave Mr. Anthony Clare setting out upon such a career of folly. In fact, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for his friend to spend three hundred guineas on a whim. He himself would have spent treble that sum (had he possessed it) in order to the exploitation of such a witty, ingenious and romantick method of wasting time.
"We must equip ourselves for the parts we are about to play. There must be no shilly-shally, and above all no one must think us anything but eccentrick men of fashion, itinerant beaux, fops on pilgrimage, wandering wits."
"The last phrase is unfortunate," said Clare. Charles laughed hugely.
By this time Phyllida had faded like a summer joy, Vernon was forgotten, nothing mattered except this new and exceedingly entertaining project.
"What is the first thing to be done?" inquired Clare.
"Egad, what should always precede any undertaking of importance—a visit to the tailor."
The two young men beneath a sky growing rapidlyovercast, walked quickly through the lush meadows towards Curtain Wells, discussing as they went the merits of rival tailors with infinite vivacity.
Meanwhile in the Crescent, our heroine was engaged upon much the same problem. Possibly the reason that so many timid young women have been brave enough to plunge into an elopement, is the obfuscation of the real issue, the vital stakes, by the need of deciding what they shall leave behind to console their abandoned virtue.
So it was, at any rate, with Phyllida. She was deterred from soft regrets by the desperate necessity of making up her mind between the charms of a muslin frock overlaid with pink rosebuds and a muslin frock sprigged with the palest blue forget-me-nots.
There were a thousand sentiments that might well have restrained her from the wild step she was taking, but everything was forgotten for a trifle; and when finally she slipped out of the door, the only living creature for whom she indulged herself in the luxury of a protracted farewell, was Thomasina the tabby cat, and that was considerably interrupted by the attenuated miaouws of a large family lately arrived. Even Ponto the spaniel had sidled off to a favourite heap of rubbish. Pray do not suppose I am sneering at Phyllida. Heaven forbid that you or I should sneer at a young woman, however impetuous, however foolish. Still, I cannot help observing that the heroism of most heroick actions is to be sought for in the obscure preliminaries to a grand event. Phyllida had known the agony of making up her mind through many a firelit, sleepless night. When the moment arrived for carrying out her resolve, she spent most of the forenoon reading the advertizement of a fashionable mantua-maker. As to her devices for getting rid of her mother and Betty and the landlady and Thomas and Miss Sukey Morton, who called to inquire whether Mrs. Featherbrain's new novel was calledThe Affectionate AuntorThe Disconsolate Uncle,—why, they were as old as the first writer of tales and I will not weary you with their repetition. And why should I delayyou with the narrative of the attempt to open her mother's jewel-case with a bodkin and a silver paper-knife? Like most toilet receptacles, it was very easily broken.
She hurried down the Crescent with a small parcel of cloaths wrapped up in brown paper and tied with a green ribbon. If you are anxious to know what was inside, I will refer you to Miss Howe, Mr. Richardson's Miss Howe, to whom Miss Clarissa Harlowe confided a parcel of much the same dimensions and contents.
She did not forget her swansdown muff nor her swansdown tippet, and altogether she looked just the same as she looked a good many pages ago and was flushed to just the same frail hue of carmine.
Ding-dong went St. Simon's husky clock, ding-dong, ding-dong.
Pitter-pat went Phyllida's heart and pitter-pitter-pitter-pitter-pat went Phyllida's heart when, exactly opposite the toy-shop, she saw a post chariot and four bay horses and two postillions staring very intently at the sky.
It struck Phyllida how clever it was of her dear Amor to chuse such a time and such a place; for all the world was engaged in directing the start of the Invincible Stage Coach that ploughed once a week between Curtain Wells and London.
Tootle-a-tootle-a-tootle went the long brass horn of the guard and plump-plump went two large parcels into his basket and crack-crack went the coachman's long whip, and 'Now then Miss, jump in,' said one of the post-boys, still staring intently at the March sky, and before Phyllida knew where she was, she found herself sitting on a rather damp cushion with a peacock-blue riding hood lined with swansdown on the seat beside her, but no sign of Mr. Francis Amor.
In dismay she put her head out of the window and cried to the nearest postillion.
"Mr. Harmor's followin' on 'orseback," he said, with a thumping thwack on the ribs of his mount and a vicious prod with his rusty spurs.
Phyllida drew back with tears of disappointment starting to her wide blue eyes; but before she could make up her mind to stop the chariot and never elope again, she caught the glance of Thomas in open-mouthed amazement. Instinctively, she pulled the musty curtains close, and, lifting the leather flap at her back, could not help laughing aloud to see dignified Thomas mopping his brow with his right hand and waving his tall cane with the left; and just as the chariot tore round the corner of the street, she saw that Thomas had knocked off Lord Cinderton's grey beaver hat. The Love Chase had begun.
JOHN GILPIN never rode so fast through Edmonton as, on that memorable afternoon in March, Major Constantine Tarry pounded over the cobbles of Curtain High Street. His scarlet uniform was very bright against the huge iron-grey steed on whose broad back he nodded with hat pressed down as far as his fierce prickly eyebrows, with pigtail bobbing to the motion and with sword whose martial clangour recalled every famous battle in the history of the world. He was conversing with the widow when Thomas burst upon them with the news of Phyllida's elopement.
"Gone, gone!" wailed the footman. "Oh Tyre! Oh Sidon! Hittites on horseback and two Amorites in a chariot!"
"What the d——l do you mean, sir?" snapped the Major, "who is gone?"
"Miss Phyllida," groaned Thomas.
"Gone," breathed the widow, and the odour of diffused Sanspareil permeated the room.
"Gone where?" shouted the Major.
"To the desert beyond Jordan," answered the footman.
"With what viper in sheep's clothing?" gasped Mrs. Courteen.
"Which way, which way, sirrah?" interrupted practical Major Tarry.
"Lunnon," ejaculated Thomas, fainting into the arms of a chair.
This was why the inhabitants of the Wells saw a veteran of the Low Countries shaken up like a cherry in a basket. The sedate glories of the town were never more nicelydisplayed than on this famous occasion. From each bow-windowed shop came forth a bland shopkeeper and half a dozen inquisitive customers.
The little Miss Pettitoes trilled in bird-like accents: 'What an adventure!' and returned to a counter spangled with their gay little purchases, for the Miss Pettitoes were twin sisters and to-morrow was their birthday.
"What an adventure!" they trilled to each other over a dish of Hyson and 'What an adventure!' they trilled as they kissed each other 'good-night' and went each to their bed chambers, identical save for the ribbons of their fascinating little spinster night-caps.
"Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted the boys, as they pushed the maids into the puddles the better to follow so surprizing a cavalier.
"Rot me!" said Mr. Golightly of the Grey Dragoons, as he lifted his tortoise-shell rimmed monocle to his supercilious left eye, and 'Rot you!' he ejaculated, as an enthusiastick trio of youth sheltered between his remarkably tight-breeched legs.
"Shall we make such an impressive entrance, d'ye think?" asked Mr. Lovely, as he and Mr. Clare came out of Mr. Canticle's shop, followed by Mr. Canticle himself and Mr. Canticle's apprentice loaded with a huge brown-paper parcel.
"Good day, Canticle," said Charles.
"Good day, Mr. Lovely, good day, sir, and depend on't, grey will be the modish colour for gentlemen of quality; and I beg you not to be uneasy about the light-blue lining. That, sir, I venture to predict, will supply the exact touch of genteel eccentricity that consorts so amiably with the friendly madness of the season. I envy you, gentlemen, I envy you; and I beg to wish you many a pleasant adventure. The cut of that riding-coat, Mr. Lovely, will enthral the most fastidious glance, and as for your breeches, Mr. Clare, I should perhaps be considered boastful if I said that they impart a tone, sir, a very distinguished tone to the landskip. Good day, gentlemen."
The two young gentlemen laughed over Mr. Canticle'sprophecies, and excused his loquacity because he had been a limner till the vogue for foreign painters compelled him to apply his art in another direction.
It was certainly a stroke of irony that the offer of a sartorial uncle should make him, a very tolerable exponent of nudity, take up the occupation of devizing cloaths.
By this time, Major Tarry's coat-tails were flapping to hedge-row winds, and his astonishing course was less universally regarded; although, even in open country, the clamorous transit caused much confusion to itinerant carters, while a pair of blackbirds forsook their hardly built nest and retired in voluble dismay to the densest coppice between Baverstock Regis and Curtain Wells.
Mr. Jeremy Daish met our hero with a very lugubrious expression, as he strolled into the coffee-room.
"What has your honour been doing to enrage Mr. Ripple? Oh, Mr. Lovely, read this."
Charles took the proffered note, and half-smiling, half-sighing, perused his decree of banishment.
THEGREATHOUSE.CURTAINWELLS, PRIDIEKAL. AP.MR. DAISH,—The uncomfortable events of Wednesday evening compel me to announce that I cannot contemplate with equanimity the protracted Sojourn of Mr. Lovely at your hitherto peaceful House. I have no desire to inflict upon you the invidious course of summary Ejection, but at the same time I am bound to invite a trifle less cordiality in your Reception of all young gentlemen unperturbed by the Gout. The town of Curtain Wells exists for the supply of hygiastick Waters; and, since red wine is a notorious antidote to chalybeate, my civick brother the Mayor begs me to point out that we cannot lend our patronage to a house which studiously encourages the circulation of this antipathetick Beverage. In expectation, Mr. Daish, that you will presently reconstruct at once your list of wines and your list of visitors,I am, Mr. Daish, your obligedHORACERIPPLE.
THEGREATHOUSE.CURTAINWELLS, PRIDIEKAL. AP.
MR. DAISH,—The uncomfortable events of Wednesday evening compel me to announce that I cannot contemplate with equanimity the protracted Sojourn of Mr. Lovely at your hitherto peaceful House. I have no desire to inflict upon you the invidious course of summary Ejection, but at the same time I am bound to invite a trifle less cordiality in your Reception of all young gentlemen unperturbed by the Gout. The town of Curtain Wells exists for the supply of hygiastick Waters; and, since red wine is a notorious antidote to chalybeate, my civick brother the Mayor begs me to point out that we cannot lend our patronage to a house which studiously encourages the circulation of this antipathetick Beverage. In expectation, Mr. Daish, that you will presently reconstruct at once your list of wines and your list of visitors,
I am, Mr. Daish, your obligedHORACERIPPLE.
"Console yourself, Daish," said our hero, as he handed back the Beau's exquisitely written epistle, "Mr. Clare and I propose to make a long excursion into the country this very afternoon. Have the goodness to order our horses to be in the yard at six o'clock."
"Certainly, your honour, but I hope that nothing I may have said or done or hinted—or—or—or—" poor Mr. Daish stumbled over the awkwardness of the interview, and was more like a Cremona violin than ever, a violin whose strings were snapping one by one.
"Console yourself, Daish," said our hero with an incredibly magnanimous air, "you are not to blame. You must know, Daish, that for a long time past I have had a curiosity to survey this small green earth, unhampered by anything more serious than the impulse of the moment. To-night, Daish, when you retire to rest, when you gather the curtains of your serene bed, when you hark to the clock in the passage striking the moderate and orderly hour of ten o'clock, when you reflect with a sigh of proprietary contentment that you have offended no one in the course of an innkeeper's promiscuous day, when, in a word, your respectable head sinks into your respectable pillow, dally for a moment in the imagination of Charles Lovely and Anthony Clare mocking society, laughing at convention, seated in the parlour of some remote inn and dozing gratefully before a pile of logs.
"Think of us, Daish, in the cool dusks and azure silences of April, at the top of some gentle hill whence we can regard with exhilaration the prospect of a good dinner, a crimson glass, and genial intercourse with travellers. Behold us in your mind's eye, walking our horses down through the twilight, as one by one in cottage lattices the candles twinkle and, high above, the stars betray the night with silver spears. For my part, already I can hear the evening gossip of housewives, and the babble of children in small gardens, and clear against the green West, I can see the many lovers of a little town moving with slow steps along their customary path.
"Thus, my excellent Daish, each solemn nightfall will discover for us a new world, and, when the sun rises on the merry unknown streets of our pilgrimage, we shall think to ourselves what a vast number of jolly people exist in this remarkably jolly world. Oddslife—"Mr. Lovely broke off—"what a surprizing alliance."
As he looked out of the window, we had better look out of the window too, and I think you will be quite disposed to agree with Charles when I show you that vivid yellow chaise drawn by two fiery chestnut horses, and driven by that extraordinarily diminutive coachman, for inside are seated Beau Ripple and the Widow Courteen, and neither you nor I nor anybody else ever saw both so nearly disconcerted.
"Now what the deuce can be the meaning of that?" continued Mr. Lovely.
"Of what you were saying?" inquired Mr. Daish in a deprecating voice.
"The horses! the horses!" was all that Mr. Lovely saw fit to reply.
Major Tarry's earlier progress might well have been the meteor which heralds a cataclysm, for cataclysm this later apparition certainly was. I vow the noise of conversation it caused far exceeded anything of the sort that was ever known.
The Beau found the publicity of such an exit unendurable to his polite soul. That his sacred chaise, which had once bowled along at a high but decorous speed in order to meet the H—r A—— t of Great Britain, should achieve such a vulgar notoriety nearly upset the sit of his waistcoat.
His contemporaries felt the Great little Man's humiliation.
Yet compassion did not prevent them from forming numberless conjectures as to the cause of this strange affair. Some said 'Debt!'; others boldly affirmed an intrigue; but as usual nobody guessed the true reason, which was that beneath a gorgeous exterior lurked the gentlest, kindliest heart.
When the Widow, with a very noisy tale of seduction, poured forth her tears upon his cushions, Mr. Rippleinstantly reproached himself and nobody else with the disaster, immediately decided he must atone for his negligence by immediately ringing his flowered bell-pull and commanding Magog, who immediately appeared, to run immediately to the stables and command the immediate harnessing of the royal horses to the royal chaise and the immediate buttoning of his diminutive coachman's slender gaiters.
It was with a shudder, if a much polished shudder, that he handed Mrs. Courteen to a place amid the fawn and ivory of the interior of his chaise. With a barely repressed shudder, too, he observed the dabbled rouge of her cheeks, and the open mouths of the cits, and the bobbing of heads at windows, and a horrid bank of black clouds in the extreme South-west that seemed to betoken a night full of rain, and last but perhaps worst of all, the lean sign-post 'To London,' a prologue to G—— knows what unendurable discomfort.
"We have an adventure to hand," said Charles to Clare, as they strolled across the yard of theBlue Boar. "We'll follow Ripple!"
"Ripple?"
"Ay! Which way did Mr. Ripple's chaise go?" demanded Charles of a knot of idlers.
"Lunnon Road," they replied unanimously.
"We must get ready at once," declared Charles.
***
"How pleasant 'twould be," thought Phyllida, "if I were not alone."
Even alone, it was very pleasant to bowl along a level road at an equable rate of speed. It was very pleasant to try on the peacock-blue riding hood that so became her. It was very pleasant to see the cheerful faces of the many wayfarers encountered by the chariot. The backs of the postillions glowed with scarlet, and a gay contrast they made to the flaming gorse of a wild open stretch of country. Every cottage that nestled back from the road with clipped yews to guard the gate seemed to Phyllida a desirable place to liveand love in for ever. It was pleasant to watch the lambs in the meadows, and exciting indeed to count the still sparse primroses starring the hedgerows. It was pleasant to watch the children stand on the topmost rung of a five-barred gate and cheer as they rattled past. Very pleasant it was, though the sight brought a slight lump in her throat, as she thought how often she had done the same thing with Dick Combleton the Squire's youngest son.
Up-hill with many a groan and grunt, and down-hill with a clatter and a dash, and along the level with a ring and a jingle went the post-chariot in the afternoon sunlight. Past farm-house and farm-yard, past villages and churches, and inns with waving signs, past ponds and geese, past many a tired woman trudging home from market and many a jovial carter; past sign-posts and cross-roads and milestones; past smithies with roaring fires and monstrous bellows, past lowing cows and crowing cocks, past journeymen tinkers and journeymen barbers, past a great dancing bear which, had Phyllida but known it, danced not a whit more foolishly for bumpkins than rose-pink Phyllida herself for the malicious eyes of the world of fashion.
After a long climb up a heavy hill, whence a very fair champagne spread before her, the great black and purple cloud caught the westering sun, and suffused the whole landskip with a queer metallick sheen. It made the rooks that swayed in the bare branches of a windy clump of elms take on a strange green lustre over their plumage, and cast a stillness over the world. That view remained with Phyllida all her life, as a pause wherein she had contemplated existence for the briefest moment. Years afterwards, an old woman, sitting in a dim ingle-nook, would see that fair champagne in the clouds of smoke that curled ceaselessly up the wide chimney, and, above the scent of burning logs, would be wafted the perfume of the white March violets that blossomed at the foot of those swaying elms where the rooks cawed and the dead leaves raced round and round.
"Stop, you blackguards," cried a rasping voice above the noise of fast approaching hoofs.
"Crack! crack!" went Dickie Maggs' big pistol.
"'Ighwayman, Miss," he added cheerfully, as the sound of something soft falling was heard, followed by horse-hoofs in mad retreat down the long heavy hill.
In a moment, the chariot was rocking in a wild gallop down the opposite decline.
Raindrops began to fall, deliberately at first, but soon fast enough, while the earth was slowly blotted out by storm and rain and twilight.
On the summit of the hill, Major Constantine Tarry lay face downwards, having paid the extreme penalty of interference with other people's business. Poor Tarry, he was a bore and a braggart, and had not the slightest intention of being killed, yet I for one regret the manner of his death, up there on the top of that wind-swept hill. And for all he told you such very long stories when he asked you to dine with him at Oudenarde Grange and Malplaquet Lodge and Ramilies House, he gave you some capital Port, and Sherry nearly as dry as his own anecdotes. Moreover, he really fought in that bloody fight of Fontenoy, and that was a very great honour and should make us forgive a very great deal.
A flash of lightning illuminated the dead body of the veteran lying face downwards in the mud of an English high-road, and a distant volley of thunder accorded military honours to his somewhat grotesque death.
SOME four-and-twenty miles from Curtain Wells on the Great West Road is a tangle of briers among whose blossoms an old damask rose is sometimes visible. If the curious traveller should pause and examine this fragrant wilderness, he will plainly perceive the remains of an ancient garden, and if he be of an imaginative character of mind will readily recall the legend of the Sleeping Beauty in her mouldering palace; for some enchantment still enthralls the spot, so that he who bravely dares the thorns is well rewarded with pensive dreams and, as he lingers a while gathering the flowers or watching their petals flutter to the green shadows beneath, will haply see elusive Beauty hurry past.
Here at the date of this tale stood theBasket of RosesInn, a mile or so away from a small village. When coaches ceased to run, the house began to lose its custom and, as stone is scarce hereabouts, was presently pulled down in order to provide the Parson with a peculiarly bleak Parochial Hall.
However, this melancholy fate was still distant, and old Simon Tabrum had a fine custom from the coaches and private travellers who delighted to spend a night in so sweet a lodging.
TheBasket of Roseswas the fairest, dearest inn down all that billowy London road. The counter, sheathed in a case of pewter, the glasses all in a row, the sleek barrels and the irregular lines of home-brewed cordials, charmed the casual visitor to a more intimate acquaintance. Behind the tap was the Travellers' Room, and what a room it was—with great open fireplaces and spits and bubbling kettles and blackened ingles. Long-buried ancestors of the village had carved their rude initials over each high-backed bench and battered the bottoms of the great tankards into unexpected dents by many rollicking choruses in the merry dead past. The walls of this room knew the pedigree of every bullock and the legend of every ghost for many miles round. Here was the cleanest floor, the clearest fire in England.
Old Tabrum the landlord was the very man for the house—the very man to bring out all that was most worthy in his guests. He always produced good wine and a piping hot supper, never asked for his money till his guests were satisfied and always wore an apron as white as the foam of his cool deep ale.
He was eighty years old now, with a bloom on his cheeks like an autumn pippin and two limpid blue eyes that looked straight into yours and, if you had any reverence at all, made the tears well involuntarily at the sight of such gentle beauty.
Once he was a famous Basso Profundo, but now his voice was high and thin, and seemed already fraught with faint aerial music. The ancient man was a great gardener as properly became a landlord whose sign was a swinging posy. What a garden there was at the back of this glorious inn. The bowling-green surrounded by four grey walls was the finest ever known, and as for the borders, deep borders twelve feet wide, they were full of every sweet flower. There were Columbines and Canterbury Bells and blue Bells of Coventry and Lilies and Candy Goldilocks with Penny flowers or White Sattin and Fair Maids of France and Fair Maids of Kent and London Pride.
There was Herb of Grace and Rosemary and Lavender to pluck and crush between your fingers, while some one rolled the jack across the level green of the ground. In Spring there were Tulips and Jacynths, Dames' Violets and Primroses, Cowslips of Jerusalem, Daffodils and Pansies, Lupins like spires in the dusk, and Ladies' Smocks in the shadowed corners. As for Summer, why the very heart ofhigh June and hot July dwelt in that fragrant enclosure. Sweet Johns and Sweet Williams with Dragon flowers and crimson Peaseblossom and tumbling Peonies, Blue Moonwort and the Melancholy Gentlemen, Larksheels, Marigolds, Hearts, Hollyhocks and Candy Tufts. There was Venus' Looking Glass and Flower of Bristol and Apple of Love and Blue Helmets and Herb Paris and Campion and Love in a Mist and Ladies' Laces and Sweet Sultans or Turkey Cornflowers, Gillyflower Carnations (Ruffling Rob of Westminster amongst them) with Dittany and Sops in Wine and Floramor, Widow Wail and Bergamot, True Thyme and Gilded Thyme, Good Night at Noon and Flower de Luce, Golden Mouse-ear, Princes' Feathers, Pinks, and deep-red Damask Roses.
It was a very wonderful garden indeed.
And because the old man loved flowers, tending them in the early twilight with water and releasing them from many a small weed which he was fain to destroy, but in the end always replanted in a small clearing on the shady side of his farthest meadow, because he loved flowers, the old man, whose first wife died years and years ago on a long past primrose-tide, married in the hale winter of his life a comfortable wench whom he could trust as he trusted his flowers to be true to their seasons. This second wife, more like a daughter than a wife, he delighted to surprize with fragrant rolls of gaily sprigged cloths; and never a summer morning broke but he was abroad in the dewy grass to gather her such a posy of freshness and beauty as can only be taken in the earliest hours of the morning. Mrs. Tabrum, for all she was so young and rosy, had a great feeling for the importance of her position as mistress of a famous hostelry and ordered about little Polly Patch, newly arrived from Mrs. Margery Severe's select charity school, with a great air of ladyship. Little Polly Patch was a very important young woman too; for theBasket of Roseswas not a large galleried inn full of grooms and hostlers and waiters and chambermaids, but a house of quite another character, where you were never bewildered by superfluous servicebut always received with a quiet dignity. Therefore you paid a great deal of respectful attention to little Polly Patch who had a great deal to do with your night's rest and your morning's breakfast. I think Mr. Vernon was a very wise man to choose a domestick fairyland so apt to soothe the sweet alarms of his Phyllida.
Here they would sup while the horses were being changed, and hence they would set out in the darkness, preserving, as they galloped along, a sense of peace and quiet beauty that should be to her the fortunate prelude of a happy adventure.
Vernon had sent word to the house of their arrival, hinted at the fatigues of a gay bridal, and let it be supposed they desired no intrusion.
To the ancient man such a confidence was enough to set his old brain agog with the gallant scenes of his youth. He chuckled over every tankard of ale he drew, told every one of his daffodils the merry secret and piped away at long forgotten melodies until his wife in despair sat him down in the ingle, put a broken fiddle in his hand and bade him play his fancies to sleep. The storm that rose at sunset shrieked about the inn, and the hollow groaning in the mazes of the huge chimney consorted in fitting harmonies with the old man's eerie tunes.
"March is going out wi' thunder and tempest like a roaring lion," he muttered, as a sudden gust of hail was blown against the lattice which pattered and rattled as if a crowd of elfin drummers were beating a wild tattoo without.
"Aye, 'tis a main ugly night," said Mrs. Dorothy Tabrum, who was laying the shining silver about the snowy tablecloth.
"So 'tis, my peony, so 'tis! A main ugly night for daffodils and young brides. Is her chamber ready?" he went on.
"Aye! Aye!"
"Wi' rosy curtains drawn close?"
Mrs. Tabrum nodded.
"Wi' candlelight and the cracking of logs and green bayleaves in the presses?"
"Why, do'ee think I'm gone daft to forget suchlike?"
"And a vase of daffodils by her mirrour?" the ancient one persisted.
Polly Patch came in at that moment.
"All be ready, mistress," she said in a slow voice, solemnly nodding her enormous mobcap while she spoke.
"Now Polly," said Mrs. Tabrum, "lend a hand wi' this table and lets put 'un a thought nearer to the fire. Ugh! how it blows!" A vivid flash of lightning illuminated the room, and on the heels of a terrifick roar of thunder there was a cry of 'House! House!'
"Hurry, hurry, my daisies, and make who comes there welcome. Jacob! Jacob!" cried the old landlord as, much excited, he rose from his seat in the ingle and quavered towards the taproom.
"You are sure the candles are lighted, Polly?"
"Sarten, mistress."
"And the logs burning brightly?"
"'Ess mistress."
"And the curtains pinned together?"
"'Ess mistress."
"Then stand by the door, curtsey when you're spoken to, and don't put your thumb in the soup."
"No, mistress."
"Is Mary Maria watching the fowls?"
"Wi' both her eyes, mistress."
"Hark!"
"I'm harking away, mistress."
And while the mistress and the maid harked vigilantly the ancient landlord ushered Miss Phyllida Courteen into the Travellers' Room of theBasket of RosesInn.
As he entered, old Tabrum looked very much like a sexton leading a shy maid to the altar. She, flustered, expectant, murmured soft thanks into the farthest recesses of her swansdown muff, stumbled frequently to the voluble distress of her guide, and seemed afraid to look round the well-ordered comfortable room after so many miles of wind and driving rain.
"Dear soul! And where's the bridegroom?" exclaimed Mrs. Tabrum, as she led Phyllida to a high-backed chair right before the heart of the blazing fire.
Phyllida blushed as she explained Mr. Amor was travelling on horseback.
"Indeed, I expected to find him here," she stammered, "Oh! I hope nothing has happened to him."
"Now, don't 'ee fret thyself, sweet marjoram," said the ancient one, humming round her like a bee. "A'most anything might have happened to him on such a dreadful night."
"Don't 'ee hark to the ancient dodderer," interrupted the dodderer's wife.
"Killed by a falling tree, withered to a cinder by bloody lightning."
"You alarm me," exclaimed Phyllida, jumping up.
"Hold thy ancient foolish tongue," commanded Mrs. Tabrum peremptorily, "and go see that Mary Maria keeps the fowls turning a while yet."
"Very well, my gillyflower, very well," piped senility, "but don't 'ee take on, my little blue love-in-a-mist, happen 'tis no more than a broken leg has overtook your husband."
"Polly," said Mrs. Tabrum, who saw that Phyllida was on the verge of tears, "take thy ancient master away. Hark," she finished, with an impressive forefinger.
"What are us to hark to, pretty pink?"
"Ef I doant hear a great tom-cat a-scratching in the tulips, my name be'ant Dorothy Ann Tabrum."
As at this moment the tempest outside was howling with unsurpassed fury, it is extremely doubtful whether the buxom lady spoke the truth, but her husband was alert at once and hastily snatching down a blunderbuss labelled 'Loaded on Tuesday sennight' Simon Tabrum moved stealthily from the room.
"You must pardon my ancient old husband for his flowery manner of speech. 'Tis not disrespect he do mean, but love and charity wi' his neighbour, having as it werebeen sown a power of years ago and being now apt to let his withered branches fall on the heads of all manner of folk."
As this long sentence was evidently considered a full and proper explanation of the dodderer's inconvenient habit of prophecy, Phyllida smiled very charmingly and said she quite understood.
"And now let us gossip of thy wedding," said Mrs. Tabrum in a cosy tone of voice, "or would 'ee rather go to thy chamber, pretty miss?"
"Oh! indeed I will stay here, thank you. Mr. Amor might come at any moment."
"Polly! Polly Patch!"
"'Ess, mistress."
"What for are 'ee standing there, lolloping thy great cap, dollop. Be off, great clockface, be off, pundle, to Mary Maria, and tell her to keep the fowls a-turning and a-turning."
Polly Patch curtseyed solemnly and retreated slowly, murmuring to herself, "and not to put my thumbs in the soup."
"Do you think he will be a very long time?" asked Phyllida, turning suddenly to the landlady and looking indescribably wistful.
"What I can't make out, my lamb, is how he came to leave 'ee on such a night. That's what I can't make out at all. Now at my bride-ale, for all I was wedding a man old enough to be my ancestor, why it was bride-ale, I do warrant. My aged husband being a publican and a sinner, there was a mort of merry-making, I tell 'ee, and ’twas only when Tabrum slipped on the floor and cracked the back of his faded head as we finished, and me forced to use the holland smock as I won at Ascensiontide smock-racing. Oh! his head was so raw as an egg, and running faster than ever I run for the smock."
"How dreadful," murmured Phyllida, not quite sure whether the narrative should offend her maiden sensibility or not.
"But he was out wi' the hens next morning," the talkativelady continued, "out wi' the hens and scratching away in the garden as hard as any of 'em. But, I tell 'ee, I did souse his head wi' vinegar when I got 'un indoors. The house smelt like a jar of pickle for a week o' Sundays after. But there! Tabrum he gets ascited. Don't matter whether 'tis his own or another's wedding, he's all the while jumping around like a Shrovetide pancake. And talk—well, 'tis babble, babble, and all of men and maids as was under yews twenty green years ago. I tell 'ee, we all laffed when he began telling 'ow he kissed my grandmother coming out of Evening Prayer one frosty night. 'The moon was on her back,' he says, 'ay, and ecod! so was she!' Pretty times, pretty times!"
What farther free confessions would have rippled from Mrs. Tabrum's cherry-ripe lips, it would ill become a modest writer or reader to speculate. They were cut short by the lurching entrance of Charlie and Dicky Maggs, the two postillions.
It would have been hard to find a more ill-favoured pair of ruffians in a day's posting. Both of them had dismounted very regularly at every house of call on the road and arrived at theBasket of Roseswith a considerable cargo of bad spirits. The prospect of a long wait, while the horses were changed and their fares supped, encouraged them to farther excesses, and a lucky summons to the drawer to reach down a special cordial gave them an opportunity to finish off the greater part of a bottle of Plymouth Gin.
Fortified by this, annoyed to find that Vernon had not arrived, and half afraid they would lose their wages, they had come in to extract from Miss Courteen as much money as they could, being willing and anxious to drink away every minute of the wait.
"Ve're vet, Miss," said Charles.
"And it vouldn't be amiss if ve could 'ave a little piece of gold as 'ud varm us wiv its shining," said Dicky.
"Mr. Amor will settle your charges," said Phyllida.
"And be off, you ruffians," exclaimed Mrs. Tabrum,enraged by this impudent invasion of the Travellers' Room.
"Shut your mouth, mother Appleface," hiccoughed Charlie.
"And fork out somefink on account, Miss," oozed from his brother.
The latter began to move with uncertain steps after Phyllida, who shrank towards the shelter of the inglenook.
"Jacob! Jacob! Simon Tabrum! Polly Patch! Mary Maria!" screamed the landlady, snatching at the only article of offence in reach, which happened to be a pair of bellows. With these she puffed away furiously, to the enormous delight of the drunken postillions, who continued to advance and indeed probably found the air of the bellows very grateful to their heated brains.
It is unlikely that anything more serious than a volley of oaths would have occurred, if a tall elderly gentleman in a chestnut-brown frogged riding-coat had not come in at that moment; but as he did come in, no doubt the room was the sweeter for the interruption.
"Oh, your honour," said Mrs. Tabrum, "will 'ee please turn out these drunken rogues, seeing as all the house is away at their business and no one near by."
The elderly gentleman clenched his riding-stick a trifle more firmly and directed his steel-grey eyes—equally potent weapons—towards the abashed brothers. They did not wait to be addressed, but hurried as quickly as the fumes of liquor allowed them, to the more congenial atmosphere of the taproom. It is comforting to reflect, while they twisted their way out, that Charlie and Dicky Maggs were hanged at Tyburn for a peculiarly atrocious robbery and brutal assault upon a blind rat-tamer, who, with many clinging rats and mice and a scarlet-frilled dog, was a familiar figure in the villages round London. It is not perhaps so comforting to reflect upon the poor old man lying insensible in a puddle, with his tame rats and mice wandering aimlessly in and out of his innumerable pockets and his scarlet-frilled dog with three broken ribs moaning inthe middle of a quickset bush. Egad! I vow the Tyburn horse never responded so readily to Jack Ketch's whip and never a pair of rogues went so ashen grey at the tide of a mob's execrations in all the livid chronicles of quick and evil ends.
The elderly gentleman in the chestnut Surtout turned from the exit of Charlie and Dickie Maggs to survey the subject of their insolence. It would have puzzled an onlooker to say precisely what effect was produced on the elderly gentleman's countenance by this deliberate inspection of Miss Phyllida Courteen, now melting in tears of apprehension and only barely restrained from hystericks by Mrs. Tabrum's plump hands in extensive motion.
When the iron-grey clouds of a chill December afternoon dissolve for a moment in the scud of a high gale and shed a ray of pallid sunlight on a spent blossom, we are almost glad to see the thin azure thus displayed as quickly veiled, and welcome the sullen twilight that succeeds. The elderly gentleman's countenance took on for a brief moment a strange light, but the frosted smile betrayed so much grim sorrow behind that it was quite a relief to see his face resume a normal frigidity as he muttered a regret and inquired into the chances of a good night's lodging.