A discouraging fact for the Persii of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, is that, however needle-sharp their thrusted rapiers, however thorough their castigations, Society never shows weal or scar at the end of it all.
Here was profligate, card-playing, snobbish, vapoured Society, quite recovered of its whipping and, by candletime, setting out to perform, just those very actions Persius most bitterly abuses.
My lady Bunbutter continued to observe every Matador in her opponents' hands, continued to rake in ill-gotten guineas, continued to use a quadrille pack with Manille stained, Spadille nicked, Basto dog-eared, and Ponto scratched. The Most Honble. the Marchioness of Hurricane continued to help herself five times to the richest Fricassées; continued to allow her lap-dog liberty of vomit in alien drawing-rooms, continued to breathe stertorous bawdry into the prominent ears of her Italian son-in-law—el Conde di Scirocco—while her daughter the Contessa snored in a corner.
Young Miss Kitcat continued to encourage the addresses of the disreputable Captain Mann, and even went so far as to tap that military scoundrel three times with her fan in coy avowal of his charming naughtiness.
The Earl of Cinderton drank five bottles of Port that very night in order to emphasize his indifference to satire, and slept under his own mahogany table because his lackeys below stairs were too drunk to carry him to bed.
In fact, nobody save the publisher of Curtain Polls displayed sign or sense of injury.
Our heroine indeed was vastly affected, but her misfortunes were due to a gloss upon the original.
As it happened, Mrs. Courteen did not discover the reference to her daughter's indiscretion, until she was asked by an inquisitive dowager to explain the allusion in the twelve lines. She managed to conceal her agitation, thanks to the permanency of the newest rouge, but presently called for her chair and arrived home a full two hours before she was expected.
When she sailed into the parlour Phyllida was languishingly occupied with a blue vase of pot-pourri, and the parlour fire was trying to burn up beneath a weight of blackened notepaper.
The suddenness of the widow's entrance alarmed her daughter so much that she dropped the vase, and the contents were strewn over the carpet. The faint perfume that slowly permeated the stuffy atmosphere of the lodgings, should have reminded Mrs. Courteen of her youth, of long June eves and blossoms plucked awhile ago by fingers now wrinkled and stained with years of snuff.
Mrs. Courteen also neglected to remember that so far as ridicule went, she had brought enough of that upon her own head.
However, she recalled neither memory nor fact, and was properly enraged with her daughter's light behaviour.
"You have ruined my good name, child. I can never again look the world in the face. How we shall be laughed at in Hampshire, for be sure that odious Miss Talker whose sister married the Rector of Slumber, has already despatched a copy to her brother-in-law, and you know what chatterboxes parsons always are: I suppose because they preach, though I should have thought, lud! that with so much breath used on Sunday, they might be as dumb as dumb for the rest of the week, and hurt nobody, least of all their own wives and neighbours. But there! what goodis it to educate a young woman in the way she should go? I might better have set an example to the village clock. At all events that does possess a face. Put down your handkerchief, hussy."
"Dear mamma——"
"Don't excuse yourself, pray do not excuse yourself, I doubt 'tis all my fault. I doubt I han't looked after you, taken you to Melton Abbey, and prayed for you, minx, yes, prayed for you. And have you got any good from learning the collects for Sunday and the Benedicite and the Athanasian Creed and the thirty-nine Articles? None! A pretty thing, truly, that after so much honourable religion, I should have my daughter pointed out as a—as what no respectable young woman is. Pointed at! And I, your mother, am to be laughed at, mocked at, jeered at, because you suffer every down-at-heel fop to make gross love to you, sheltered from the eye of men—yes! vastly well—but you forget the eye of one above and the tongue of scandal."
"Madam, I am truly, deeply ashamed. If I promise never, never again to cause you the slightest uneasiness, will you forgive me for once, and take me away from this odious town?"
"Take you away? A pretty request truly; and give every old maid in Curtain Wells the opportunity of saying I was afraid to show my face and your figure. Take you away, miss? No, indeed, I shall take you around. I shall try by exhibiting you beneath your mother's protection, to give the lie to these atrocious reports and, next year, miss, next year, we will pay a visit to Tunbridge Wells in order to provide a husband whom you may kiss in the privacy of your own estate, with no one but a wandering gamekeeper any the wiser."
"I never kissed Mr. Amor," protested Phyllida.
"Amor? Amor? And who is Mr. Amor?"
"He is my true love, ma'am, whom I love with all my might and main."
"There's indecency! there's impropriety! Lud! Ivow, vixen, you are as wanton as a goddess. You love him, eh?"
"That is my only excuse, ma'am, for having behaved so ill."
"What business, I should like to know, has a child of fifteen——"
"Seventeen, ma'am."
"Fifteen, girl."
"Then, sure, you are reckoning by leap years, ma'am."
"Do not be impudent. I repeat, Phyllida, I will not have impudence. You know dear Doctor Makewell particularly enjoined me not to allow impudence. 'Your heart won't stand it, ma'am.' Cruel Phyllida, not content with deceiving your mother, you are willing to injure her health by impudence."
"You think only of yourself," said Phyllida bitterly.
"Only of myself! Oh! Phyllida, how dare you accuse me of selfishness? My whole life since the death of your father who was a most exacting man and would ride Pegasus, though I told him a hundred times if I told him once that the brute would murder him. Now I've forgotten what I was saying, and 'tis all your fault, ungrateful child. Go to bed instantly and to-morrow I will have all your dresses starched as stiff as leather, so that nobody, not even that spiteful Lady Jane Vane, can say I don't take care that whatever your mind may be, your dresses leave nothing to be desired. Go to bed, go to bed. I can't listen to you any longer. I feel humiliated by your abominable behaviour. Judge of my feelings when I tell you I did not dare invite either Mr. Moon or Major Tarry to escort me home for fear the world would say I was setting you a bad example. Now, perhaps you'll accuse me of not possessing a conscience. Indeed, my conscience is too tender. 'Tis the tenderest part of me, though I have one of the most delicate skins—a skin that bruises if I ring a bell with unwonted celerity."
"Mamma, I——" Phyllida began.
"Pray do not say another word, you have said enough to-night to last a lifetime. Send Betty with my bedgown worked in crimson hollyhocks and I will try to forget this wretched experience by attempting to ascertain—please get the playing cards—how Miss Trumper managed to secure codille in the last hand but four of this extremely unpleasant and unprofitable evening. Go to bed, Phyllida, don't dally. Here is Betty. Go to bed, Phyllida."
So Phyllida went to bedew her lavendered pillow. Anything was better than listening to her mother's perpetual reproaches. Anything, anything was better. Even to be betrayed. Ha! ha! now I think for the first time you will admit Miss Phyllida to be a true heroine. Poor Clarie Harlowe! How Phyllida had wept over her adventures and, even in the midst of tears, how quick she had always been to thrust the forbidden volumes out of sight when she heard her mother's step on the stairs.
Poor Clarie Harlowe! She began to sign her name to innumerable nobly penitent epistles.
Oh, dear! Oh, dear! what a muddle fine language was to be sure!
I have not yet apologized for my very ancient story, but faith! you must blame the period and the intolerablesystem of female education. Amor had either to be a Lovelace or a Joseph at a time when young maidenhood fainted before an ardent glance.
After all we do not now apologize for our strong silent men and hysterical girls. Why should we? And yet for my own part I love better your talkative blackguard; I have known so many strong silent men, and they were all fools or Scotsmen.
During this digression, Phyllida has fallen asleep, her face flushed and dabbled with spent tears, her chestnut hair in golden filigree upon the pillow and, where the sleeve of her bedgown has retreated, a rosy arm whose little fist is clenched in maiden despair.
Poor foolish child! Why would you fall in love? Untenanted, your dearest gate swings in the wind to-night, but you will not mount again upon its topmost mossy bar. You will never again view with the same excitement the huntsmen over the hill-top; they will mean less to you; their pink coats will be quite dingy when next you say good morning to old Nick Runnalls the Whip. For my part, I do not believe that hot buttered apple-pies will taste so sweet when next you eat them in the long cool kitchen with its pot of marjoram and shaded sunlight.
And as for your bed-chamber with casements abob with peering rosebuds, I doubt the shelves will not soon be disturbed to make a place for new trophies. Once you thought it a day of days when you found the thigh-bone of a horse or the skull of a badger. They hang on the walls now, poor relicks of an outworn delight.
All this shall go for a balcony in the Haymarket and a goldfinch in a gilt cage. Foolish child! Away down in Hampshire the goldfinches build green nests in the orchard. Phyllida! sweet, headlong, heedless Phyllida!
***
"I blame you, Betty. I blame you, vixen. Why you cannot model yourself on Thomas passes my comprehension." Thus the widow.
"She meant no harm, poor pretty lamb," protested the maid.
"'Tis not what we mean, but what we do that counts in this world."
"Ah! 'tis fine for thee to talk, ma'am, you take good care to amuse yourself, but, little miss, she must dingle-dangle all day long wi' nought to do but dream of doing nought."
"She has her friend, Miss Morton."
"Ay! that black-eyed hussy what pinches the maiden who dresses her lean skimpy rat's hair. I don't take much account o' she."
They continued in this strain for quite two hours, and would never have stopped if the candles had endured.
They went up to bed just as Charles, having finished his third bottle of Burgundy, knocked with vinous assurance at the door of the Great House.
I am not at all certain whether this adventurous action should have been included in this chapter, for I doubt nothing more heroick was ever done even by Hercules at the zenith of his laborious career. It was considered rash enough to wait upon Mr. Ripple in the middle of his siesta. A royal Duke once succeeded in gaining admittance, if very little else; but to wait upon Mr. Ripple when his flambeaux strewed the steps, when the orange light in his porch was winking on its way to annihilation, when the grey Angora cat had settled herself for repose, when not even a mouse dared scamper in the wainscot, and when Mr. Ripple himself sat amid the ruins of his complexion—this was defying the lightning and inviting Jove's revenge indeed.
Nevertheless, fortified by three bottles of a vintage that held the heart of France in its crimson depths, Charles recklessly knocked at the front door of the Great House, not once, but twice or thrice, with added vigour in the repetition. The sound sent the Beau's taper fingers a full two inches deep into a pomade compounded of some particularly fine Provençal almonds and the fat of foxes, the whole famous for removing those pectinated wrinkles thatcluster at the edge of middle-aged lips. The fragrant grease, wedged beneath his nails, caused him to press thumb to fingers with an exclamation of fastidious displeasure.
The clatter of the second and third assault froze him to his chair with a sense of impending calamity.
Gog and Magog were fast asleep dreaming their gaudy dreams of Africa. Mrs. Binn, Mr. Ripple's intelligent cook, was snoring in the starlight of an upper chamber; Polly and Molly, Mr. Ripple's equally intelligent maids, were dreaming discreet dreams also in an upper chamber. Mr. Mink alone of the royal household was awake, engaged upon the overwhelmingly tricky job of frizzling his master's newest wig, and therefore quite unable, during this capillary crisis, to attend to the affairs of the world or the devil, knocked either never so loudly.
Consequently Mr. Ripple had to open the door himself, for if the knocking were to continue, many heads might peer from the Crescent windows, and the morning's rumour of the occurrence damage his authority.
It is characteristick of the Beau that in this critical juncture of affairs, he preserved his faculties so intact, that he was able without affectation to choose deliberately between a dressing-gown of flowered damask and a more diaphanous wrapper of dove-grey China silk. In deference to the season he selected the latter.
As he passed the door of his third dressing-room, he could see Mr. Mink, apparently unconscious of anything untoward in the air, blowing with steady breaths upon a remarkably hot pair of curling-tongs. The calm demeanour of his gentleman restored whatever was still lacking to Mr. Ripple's perfect equilibrium of mind.
With gentle steps, he descended the quiet stairs and, candlestick in hand, proceeded to draw back the cunningly wrought bolts of the front door.
"Mr. Ripple, I must speak to you," said Charles.
"Charles," said the Beau, "this visit is either vastly important or—it is vastly impertinent. Pray, what is your business, sir?"
"Business?" repeated Charles, on whom the effort of concentration was beginning to tell slightly. "Business?"
"Yes, business, sir, business; for I presume you are not situated on my doorstep for pleasure."
"I want to speak to you."
"Come to-morrow."
"Nay, sir, I must speak with you now. I'm in a devilish mess and need the advice of a man who has seen—who has seen——"
"Well, sir?" said the Beau, shading his candle in such a way that the pallid flickering rays lit up the young man's countenance.
"D——! I don't know, Ripple, but for God's sake don't stand there with that infernal candle dancing all over my face. Let me come in."
Whether it was the note of misery in our hero's voice or his drawn face or merely a whim of a great man's naturally eccentrick mind that made the Beau beckon Charles to follow him upstairs to the tall white drawing-room, where even still the fire glowed dully, will never be known. Any way, beckon to him he did, and having set down the taper on the high mantelpiece, seated himself beside the fire and began meditatively to toast his embroidered morocco pumps.
There they sat in the great drawing-room, the King and his Heir Presumptive, and very ghostly they looked in the wan light, and very unreal the whole experience seemed to Charles in after life.
"'Tis about this book."
"What book?"
"This satire."
"You wrote it?"
"Aye," with great weariness.
"Youwrote it? 'Foregad, Charles, I should never have believed that."
"But I never—I never wrote those lines."
"What lines?" Mr. Ripple, having admitted much, would admit no more.
"About Miss Courteen and the Maze, and the whole d——d, d——d, d—— d——"
No substantive was strong enough to suit the emphatick epithets thrice repeated.
"And who, may I ask, was the author of those graceful stanzas?"
"I know, but—but, Ripple—I owed the blackguard money—the Chinese Masquerade—I knew his name all the while—if harm comes of this affair, 'tis my fault—but by G——, I'll call him out, yes, I'll call him out, I'll call him out, I'll call him out, and I'll——"
"Go to bed," said Mr. Ripple peremptorily.
"What d'ye mean?"
"You fool, you're drunk. We'll talk of this to-morrow. Good night, Mr. Lovely. By the way, who was the author of those graceful stanzas?"
"Oh! h——! Amor. Vernor—Vernon. Anon! Oh, h——!"
"What proof have you of this?"
"Proof, eh? what d'ye say—proof—ha-ha-ha! proof! Why the proof of the pudding's in the eating. Isn't that so? But I've found, I've found the author, and I'll walk with him in Curtain Mead—in Curtain Mead by moonlight, eh? and by the powers, you shall act for me."
"Sir, this flippancy is intolerable."
"Who's flippant—who's intol—erol—erable, sir? I say I'll pay him with six inches of smallsword."
"You forget my rules, Mr. Lovely."
"Rules? Rules? What's the good of rules? He has insulted me and her."
I think you will agree with me that Charles was drunk enough to be very undignified. Mr. Lovely Senior appeared again, maudlin and quarrelsome. The Beau, who remembered him, winced at the resemblance.
"This interview is very repugnant to my sense of decorum," he protested. "I beg you will take your leave, sir. The whole affair needs the elucidation of the morning; this candle is insufficient. Moreover, the hour is late; thefire is low; I make it a rule to be asleep by midnight whenever possible."
"There you go again!" cried Charles, jumping up and walking with feverish gestures and unsteady legs round about the room. "Rules! Rules! Rules! 'Foregad, Sir, I tell you, you cannot make rules for life and death."
"But you can make many excellent rules for living and dying. One of the best of these is moderation in liquor."
Charles went back to theBlue Boarnot quite sure whether he had told Beau Ripple a very great deal or nothing at all. He remembered so little of what he had said that next morning he came to the conclusion that it was nothing at all. He was glad of this, for somehow when the effects of the Burgundy wore off, he did not feel disposed to attempt the barricade of the Great little Man's modish prejudice. Anything in the nature of an intrigue would be distasteful to such an emotional ascetick.
So Charles stayed late in bed on Tuesday morning and took no advantage of the invitation grimly issued the night before.
In the afternoon, being dejected in spirits, and finding all the world gone a-hunting, or a-fishing, or a-wenching, he betook himself to theWorld Turned Upside Down, a noted house for old red wines. While he sat in the taproom discussing life with an elderly bagman, one of the hostlers of theBlue Boarto whom he had confided his destination brought him a note.
"D—— his eyes," said Charles, crumpling the paper to a perfumed ball, and flicking it towards the undulating surface of the elderly bagman's rubied nose.
"D—— his eyes," and, turning to his target, he inquired whether the latter would drink Port or Burgundy.
MR. JEREMY DAISH, as I told you many pages back, was remarkably like a Cremona violin. Conceive then this elderly instrument of the Muses making a final inspection of his polished floor, preparatory to the invasion of my lady Bunbutter's red-heeled rout.
[2]I went into Daish's Rooms the other day, for they still exist as the storehouse of a prosperous ironmonger who is not above unbending at Christmas time so far as to display a variety of choice knick-knacks wrought by the Curtain Wells Amateur Copper-Beaters' Association. The famous frieze carved by an Italian immigrant still exists, and makes a suitable background for the exhibition of patent mouse-traps. Among all the brass gongs and Japanese flower-pots, above the mowing machines and oil-stoves of varied price and power I was pleased to detect the old iron hooks whence long ago hung the gilt mirrors that held the unimpaired reflections of this gay history's characters. For a moment, amid the bleak utility of the stores, I half fancied the swish of a broidered petticoat and the whisper of a painted fan, smelt Eau de Chypre and heard the Minuet inAriadne. I shall not visit Daish's Rooms again; the ghosts have too much power to wring my heart with the tears and laughter of spent joys."It's a very inconvenient store-room," said the dapper manager, "I think Mr. Bugloss intends to pull it down next year."
[2]I went into Daish's Rooms the other day, for they still exist as the storehouse of a prosperous ironmonger who is not above unbending at Christmas time so far as to display a variety of choice knick-knacks wrought by the Curtain Wells Amateur Copper-Beaters' Association. The famous frieze carved by an Italian immigrant still exists, and makes a suitable background for the exhibition of patent mouse-traps. Among all the brass gongs and Japanese flower-pots, above the mowing machines and oil-stoves of varied price and power I was pleased to detect the old iron hooks whence long ago hung the gilt mirrors that held the unimpaired reflections of this gay history's characters. For a moment, amid the bleak utility of the stores, I half fancied the swish of a broidered petticoat and the whisper of a painted fan, smelt Eau de Chypre and heard the Minuet inAriadne. I shall not visit Daish's Rooms again; the ghosts have too much power to wring my heart with the tears and laughter of spent joys.
"It's a very inconvenient store-room," said the dapper manager, "I think Mr. Bugloss intends to pull it down next year."
Everything portended a successful evening's entertainment. The hautboys, the flutes, the fiddles and the harp were drinking hot negus extra strong in order to spur them to unwonted achievements of melody. Prudence and Deborah, Mr. Daish's comely daughters, who never appeared in the galleries of theBlue Boarso that their attendance on occasions like the present might possess the charm at once of condescension and novelty, were busily puffing their caps and smoothing their pinners, and from time to time glancing in the direction of the gilt mirrours just to see that the wax candles were not forming ominous shrouds liable to mar the gaiety of my lady Bunbutter's agreeable entertainment.
Waiters came and peeped through a door which probably led to the supper-room and the three footmen in black plush laced with silver braid were engaged in a dignified consultation over the glittering knobs of their tall Malacca canes.
The wheels of the first coach crackle suddenly above the murmurous quiet of preparation. Tremendously hooped and highly wigged, my lady Bunbutter has arrived and is entirely approving of the arrangements made by Mr. Jeremy Daish for the fitting entertainment of a distinguished and fashionable company.
Here comes the latter very splendid, prodigiously well-bred and thoroughly determined to criticize the musick and the supper and my lady Bunbutter herself with merciless perseverance. Here comes the Most Honourable the Marquis of Hurricane and his eldest son the Earl of Squall and his second son Lord Augustus Wind and Lady Mary Wind and Lady Winifred Wind, and his son-in-law El Conde de Scirocco and the sleepy Contessa, but lud! my lady, her ladyship was unable to appear and begs to send her apologies. Her dog, my lady, has developed a quinsy, most unaccountable.
Here come the Earl of Cinderton and the Honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe, and the Lady Angela Tongs, his married daughter.
Here comes Mrs. Courteen and Miss Phyllida Courteen with Major Constantine Tarry and Mr. Gregory Moon close behind.
Here is young Miss Kitcat with Captain Mann who for all he was so disreputable was nevertheless tantamount to the success of the Cotillon.
Here come old General Morton and Miss Susan Morton.
In fact, here comes everybody of any importance in Curtain Wells; and the fiddlers are tuning up.
Yet for all the fiddlers are inviting the world to dance, for all the world declares the whole entertainment promises to be a grand success (though not so grand as it should be, considering the ample means at the disposal of my lady Bunbutter whose father was able to leave a large fortune to a milliner in Soho), her ladyship herself casts many an anxious glance towards the entrance. The courtiers have arrived but the King is still absent, and absent he is likely to remain having caught a slight nasal catarrh from his contact with the night weather, brought about by Mr. Lovely. For this story his absence was even more important in its consequences than my Lady Bunbutter dreamed, since if the Beau had been present on this occasion I doubt he would have persuaded our heroine to give up all thoughts of elopements, seductions, stratagems and rope-ladder courtships. As it fell out, there was nobody to encourage the unromantick side of her, that is to say, nobody whose opinion she could honestly respect.
Mr. Francis Vernon had hired the old dancing hall for a midnight party of farewell; and the old dancing hall still possessed an oak door which opened on a long corridor which in its turn opened into the new and improved dancing hall of Daish's Rooms. Halfway along this corridor was a recessed glasshouse now bare of vegetation, bleak and unfriendly in the chilly moonlight but a very convenient place for the renewal of true-lovers' vows when one of the lovers had not been invited to my Lady Bunbutter's rout. So in the press of the opening gavottes, as Phyllida passed down the side of the room to wait beside her mother's empty chair, long white fingers plucked at the black silk mittens that netted her soft little hand. Phyllida started and, looking up, saw the fingers withdraw themselves through the space left by a half-opened door.
She looked round in affright, but the fiddlers were busy over the gentle tune and all the world of scandal was dancing or about to dance. The thrill of his touch gave her strength enough to make up her mind and, without more than a moment's hesitation, she slipped through the doorway whose opening was obscured by greenery.
A solitary candle lit the long corridor with fitful draughty light.
"Come," said Vernon; and, taking his arm, she went down the passage which seemed to stretch far away—to ruin perhaps, but the end was not perceptible owing to the scarce illumination.
Soon they were alone in the chilly glasshouse with the moon and a star or two besides.
"To-morrow, my dearest life," he whispered.
"No, no," said Phyllida.
"To-morrow," he went on, "a post-chaise will be waiting by the toyshop, and on the seat a riding hood of peacock blue that to-day I bought for my love."
"No! No! Amor, dear Amor, I am afraid."
"Afraid, dear heart, afraid?"
Far off sounded the musick and far off the laughter of the world.
"Afraid that misery will come of it."
"Misery, my beloved? I will cherish you for ever."
"Amor! Amor! I'm afraid. Something, I cannot say what, I cannot explain my feelings, but something frightens me, I feel—oh! I feel as if I were walking in a dark wet garden. I feel as if—as if the laurels and the evergreens held a knife."
Vernon clasped her to him.
"My dear and my dear, they hold no more than an arrow; the arrow that has pierced our hearts."
Certainly our villain was play-acting, but he was his own audience and that juxtaposition is as near to sincerity as even your hero attains.
"You won't betray your Phyllida?"
The appeal caught fire from the flaming cheeks of a maid and burned a way direct, poignant, passionate, right through the lustre and tinsel of his emotional costume.
"You won't betray your Phyllida?" The question was such an one as circulating libraries knew very well. It was asked by many a contemporary Musidora or Clarinda of fiction. Yet so tremulous were the lips that asked it, lipsfrail as rose-leaves and, withal, ardent as wine, that Vernon shuddered. For the first time in his life he had raised a force. He was at home with Ranelagh romps, with patched beauties of Vauxhall, mistresses of intrigue whose fans had become a part of their bodies, or better, whose bodies were no more than the appendage of their fans, light, airy things where Love danced in a mask and could be shut up at will.
Now for the first time he stared into eyes which held immortality. He saw himself Point de Vise but intolerably diminished.
Vernon noticed that the cheek nearer to him flamed more crimson and for a while he was troubled by the mystery of Love's birth. Elation swung him to the skies and, catching Phyllida to his heart, he whispered of constancy, swore that love would endure for ever and hardly knew himself for a liar.
He never spoke again of pearls, and from that moment truly desired her for the youth and the mystery of herself.
With a pang of tenderness he let her go, watched her hurry down the corridor like a crimson Autumn leaf that is blown along by the wind. By the little door she looked back at him, and from the tips of her fingers sped elfin kisses which on the wings of the musick of flutes and fiddles were borne in grace and beauty.
She had promised. With a sigh Mr. Francis Vernon went back to superintend the arrangements for his farewell party. She had promised, and, as she slipped unobserved into the glitter and heat of Daish's famous Rooms, never seemed like one who has stood a long while in moonlight.
What mattered the censorious world? The softness of his black velvet sleeve thrilled her, and, forgetting all else, she began to build her house of dreams. What a house it was, with casements that looked on every month of the marching years. Now it was December when the snowflakes were falling. Down the corridor she and her lover moved in the grey light, but the casements were lined with ferns and stars and jewels of frost, so they sought Spring in the changing fire-gardens of burning logs. February went bywith her showers and her celandines, her snowdrops and thrushes that sing on bare branches. That casement in her house of dreams was gilded round and the sill carved with posies and true-lovers' knots, for through it she had seen Love for the first time. March came in by night with a great noise of wind, yet even in the gusty darkness she could put out her hands to touch a velvet sleeve as black as the gloom enclosed by the open lattice. Every casement in her house of dreams was full of delight, even the quaint little window at the very end of the corridor whose ledge was the haunt of drifted leaves. In the far-off autumn he would still be by her side.
Somebody asked her to step a minuet, yet while her body danced, while her feet kept tune to the twinkling rhythm, while her fan fluttered to mortal harmonies, her soul was away with Love—God knows the spot, but ’twas somewhere mighty near the top of this green world. Now she was rocking a wooden cradle while the wind in the wide black chimney crooned an echo to the old nursery song she was singing. Ah! sir or madam, when a young maiden starts to build her house of dreams, I think, if she be a wise maid, she builds the nursery first of all.
This wonderful house had a number of clocks, tall clocks, short clocks, thin clocks, fat clocks, round clocks, square clocks, clocks on the wall, clocks on the mantelpiece, clocks in the corners; and every clock was ticking away to a tune of its own, for in the house of dreams there was never a moment that did not deserve perpetual commemoration.
Somebody asked her to step a gavotte. At the end of the garden of this wonderful house was a green wicket, and when you had walked through a coppice of birches and wild raspberries that ripen with the corn, you found yourself on the London road. It ran straight as a dart over hill and down dale, through villages whose cottages were only built to stare at the gay equipages that rattled past, for nothing alive was visible save a few geese on a blue and white pond beneath a blue and white sky. Phyllida's mind was a book of old wives'tales and her London was the golden London of Dick Whittington.
Fled were all the outraged heroines of dog-eared novels in greasy circulation. The long reproaches, stilted protestations, vows, regrets and declarations had vanished. The nodding spinsters behind country counters who selected the literature of their clients and declared how affecting was this tale, how full of sensibility was that one, had gradually lost all definite shape like the volumes they doled out so assiduously. Fled, too, with the vapours of young maidenhood, were some of the sweets. Nevertheless I doubt there was not a soul to regret the old Phyllida save perhaps Betty and Dick Combleton, the Squire's youngest son away down in Hampshire.
Miss Sukey Morton began to talk to her of young Tom Chalkley. She told how he had passed their house, how he had looked up at the window, and how by the greatest ill luck she happened to be rather pale that morning. She babbled on about the imagined progress of an affair which had never truly existed. To Phyllida who should have been sympathetick, it was rather wearisome chatter. Suddenly Miss Morton shocked her dear Courteen very much by asking if she had discovered who was satirized in those twelve lines beginning ... Phyllida interrupted with a curt negative, so curt that her darling Morton regarded her with black-eyed curiosity.
"And how should I know, Sukey, how should I know?"
"My dearest Miss Courteen, there is no need to be angry about a simple question."
"These discoveries are all so low," complained Phyllida.
"Oh, vastly low, though for my part I think the hussy deserves censure since she has made every young woman ridiculous."
With this commentary Miss Morton left her friend, and Phyllida, wondering all the while if she knew the whole affair, was more than ever firmly determined to elope to-morrow afternoon with her Amor.
THE old ballroom of the famous Daish's Rooms looked mighty cheerful on the evening of my Lady Bunbutter's rout and Mr. Francis Vernon's farewell entertainment.
The circular mahogany table with finely carved claw legs shone like the fine old piece of Spanish wood it was, that is to say, wherever it could secure a clear space for shining, being almost entirely clouded over by innumerable dishes of gruit and nuts, plates, silver knives and silver forks, two large horns of snuff and half-dozen pairs of branched candlesticks, while in the very centre surrounded by lesser fruits stood a magnificent pineapple.
Round the table stood a dozen or more solid Windsor wheelback chairs that were warranted to stand firm, though the fattest gentleman that ever sat down to dessert tipped perpetually back on them to the utmost limit of his balance. A magnificent fire blazed and roared in the hearth, and round the walls were hung prints of racehorses, cock-fights, steeplechases, prize bullocks, and fat sheep, with bills of sale beneath them and announcements of forthcoming diversions for the young gentlemen of theBlue Boarand the more wealthy agriculturalists of the neighbourhood.
It was ten o'clock of a wet windy night and the chairmen were growing quarrelsome as they stamped up and down in the street below.
Mr. Jeremy Daish had been rather unwilling for Mr. Vernon to give his party on a night when he himself would be unable to superintend the commissariat owing to his services being required for my Lady Bunbutter's rout closeat hand. However, he had left the strictest injunctions with John the senior waiter to carry off at once all empty bottles in order to the protection of the Curtain Wells watch, which was wont to suffer considerably in their persons on such an hilarious occasion as a party in the old ballroom of Daish's Rooms.
The host stood with his back to the fire complacently surveying the preparations. Vernon's extraction was somewhat ambiguous, and his father may or may not have been the fine gentleman that his mother swore he was. So, as he stood regarding the well-covered table and the tall armchair at the head of it where he would presently take his seat, a distinct feeling of elation seized him at the prospect of being in a position to pass the decanter round a circle of such undeniable breeding. He went over their names—names famous on many a battlefield and many a hunting field. They belonged to a world of broad acres and park gates and double lodges and Corinthian hunting-boxes. They were revered at home by many peasants and wore the mantle of life with an air of easy proprietorship. They possessed something like the dignified stability of the Church of England. They were a force, an institution, a product of insular civilization. In fact, they were English Gentlemen, and Mr. Vernon contemplated their existence with great self-satisfaction. He, too, was an English Gentleman, he reassured himself. It was the consciousness of being one which gave him that pleasant sense of superiority to the rest of the world when he found himself in the congenial company of his peers.
Yet poor Mr. Vernon (I am rather sorry for poor Mr. Vernon) could not conceal from his shrewd self that he had no business to be at all unduly elated at the prospect of entertaining young Tom Chalkley of the Foot, Lieutenant Blewforth of theLively, Mr. Harry Golightly of Campbell's Grey Dragoons, Mr. Anthony Clare, little Peter Wingfield, Jack Winnington, the Honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe, my Lord Squall, Lord Augustus Wind and Mr. Charles Lovely.
It was Mr. Vernon's note of invitation to the last whichhad caused him to d—— Vernon's hazel eyes, in the taproom of theWorld turned Upside Down. Presently came a sound of laughter and careless talk as the young gentlemen of theBlue Boarcame swaggering in. Was it merely a sense of eccentricity that made the host fancy he detected a note of condescension in their loud and jovial greeting to himself? Probably.
The early guests talked, as early guests always will, with half an eye on the clock and the other half on the table.
"Squall is late," said Vernon.
"Squall coming?" inquired Blewforth.
"L-l-ook out for squalls," stammered little Peter Wingfield.
"Squall's an ass," said Mr. Golightly.
"So is his brother," said Chalkley.
"Always was," said Clare.
"Wind is coming too," said Vernon. "Augustus, that is, and Harthe-Brusshe."
The young gentlemen of theBlue Boarlooked peevish; it was tactless of that fellow Vernon to keep them waiting for three such asses as these.
"They are late," said Blewforth very emphatically.
"I'm expecting Lovely, too," said Vernon almost humbly. Somehow or other he felt the slightest inclination to apologize, exactly what for he did not know.
"Charles is always late. He's a d——d careless fellow," said Mr. Golightly, and one felt the final judgment upon Charles had been passed.
"Charles is not jigging with old Butterbun, is he?" asked little Peter Wingfield.
"Oh! the d——l! not he," said Blewforth. "He's found a red-cheeked hussy with whom he's carrying on an intrigue."
"Eh, what! Never?" exclaimed a chorus.
"What's his charmer's name?" said Chalkley.
"Burgundy," replied Blewforth with a great guffaw that made all the glasses and goblets and decanters on the big oak dresser ring an echo.
"I never thought Charles cared much for wine or women," said Golightly.
"Nor he don't," Blewforth put in. "Nor he don't. That's what beats me. But I tell you I saw Charles Lovely sitting in the taproom of theWorld Turned Upside Down. Nobody goes there unless he wishes to be drunk by nightfall. Eh, boys? So depend on't when Charles does arrive, he'll arrive drunk. But why? That's the riddle."
"Perhaps the fair Courteen has slighted him," said Chalkley. "Serve him right. He had no business to take himself so seriously. 'Tis very fashionable to be a poet, but egad! 'tis devilish low to behave like one."
"Is that Miss Phyllida Courteen?" said Vernon, trying to speak as though he had read her name in the list of visitors published every week by the proprietors of theCurtain Wells Chronicle and Pump Room Intelligencer.
"Aye! d'ye know her? Blooming seventeen with a short upper lip, blue eyes and hair the colour of that chestnut gelding, What's His Name sold 'tother day."
"Very poor animal," said Golightly.
"Not at all. I disagree with you."
"Very poor animal indeed," said Golightly.
"It fetched a very pretty price."
"Oh," said Mr. Golightly and the argument was over.
"Does she carry a white swansdown muff?" asked Vernon.
"Who?"
"Miss Courteen."
"Eh? Oh! I don't know," and since Mr. Chalkley's tone of voice implied a lack of further interest on the subject, the subject was dropped.
"My belief is," said Lieutenant Blewforth loudly, and moving as he spoke in the direction of the fireplace. "Egad, Vernon would you take it unkind if I rang for a tankard of ale? I'm as dry as a gunner in action. My belief is," he went on spreading his coat-tails to the genial warmth, "my belief is——"
"Gadslife! B-B-lewforth," interrupted Peter Wingfield, "pray get on with the recitation of your c-creed."
"Don't get excited, little man," said Blewforth. "My belief is Charles wrote that book."
"What book?" said Chalkley, whose acquaintance with the literature of the day was remarkably small.
"Curtain Polls."
"Never heard of it," said Mr. Chalkley.
"Rubbish!" said Clare, entering suddenly into the conversation. "Rubbish!" and yet Mr. Anthony Clare was one of the two people in the room who knew for certain that Charles was, indeed, the author of that satirical trifle.
"It has caused a terrible amount of talk," Blewforth went on. "My old aunt Seaworthy to whom I paid my annual visit yesterday tells me that all the world is very much hurt at being treated with such freedom."
"I d-don't see why Charles should take to drink because he's wrote a book." This was from Peter Wingfield.
"Ripple may have been annoyed. He's confoundedly touchy about a little matter like that and Charles thinks Ripple is a demigod."
The Earl of Squall, Lord Augustus Wind and the Honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe came into the room at that moment, and Mr. Vernon, who had been feeling a little outside the intimacy of the company, made haste to propose that, everybody save Charles being present, the wine should be brought in.
Everybody agreed that nothing fitted in more exactly with their wishes than Mr. Vernon's timely suggestion and everybody selected his chair with that preciseness which stamps the beginning of an entertainment. Everybody sat down and the nuts were circulated.
Presently John entered with twelve quart-bottles of Burgundy on a huge tray. All of them had been gently warmed before a slow fire, and all of them were wiped clean of the cobwebs and dust of the several years spent in the ample cellars of theBlue Boar.
Vernon had prepared a short oration for the entrance of the liquor and while John reverently stationed a bottle ateverybody's right hand, he made haste to deliver it. Perhaps his utterance was a shade too reminiscent of one of the many prologues spoken by his mother at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but that did not matter since nobody in the room was old enough to remember that lady's inimitable delivery of Mr. Dryden's rhymed Alexandrines.
"The life of Burgundy," said Mr. Vernon, "is very like the life of a butterfly. At first the grape or caterpillar-grub, feeding upon the richness of the soil, then the cocoon or bottle stage when it languishes for many years in darkness below the earth until—until it emerges glowing with a thousand varied tints of crimson—and, like a butterfly, wings its airy way into the brain of mankind."
The company, with the exception of my Lord Squall who was sometimes taken in the old family coach of the Winds to hear his father speak in the House of Lords, were not accustomed to lengthy speeches and looked at each other bashfully.
Lieutenant Blewforth with nautical tact saved the situation by drinking Mr. Vernon's health in a very large and brimming pint bumper which he emptied in two sonorous gulps.
As everybody else proceeded to follow this good example, everybody was soon very cheerful, and the advent of the second dozen of bottles was mightily applauded.
However, the master mind was still absent and the drinking, though steady, had not yet enlivened the company to uproarious spirits.
"Where's Charles?" bellowed Blewforth munching a devilled biscuit. "Where's that fellow Charles. Demme! He'll never catch us up at this rate and we shall have him sober as a post-captain when we are beginning to amuse ourselves."
"What, you rogue," cried our hero entering just as the Lieutenant bellowed his inquiry. "I wager five guineas, I am two bottles ahead of any gentleman present." In order to clinch the bet he flung his purse in the direction of the table. The gauntlet snuffed in its course two of the candlesand fell with a plump into a piping bowl of punch splashing Tom Chalkley as high as his stock and imparting to His Majesty's uniform an odour of hot squeezed lemons that lasted for quite a couple of weeks.
"Charles! Charles!" bellowed the burly Lieutenant, "Huzza for Charles!"
The latter lurched into the vacant chair next to his friend Tony without a word to the host. However, nobody observed this breach of good manners, because everybody was anxiously leaning over to fill every glass in reach of the newcomer as a preliminary to drinking his very good health a score of times, without a heeltap to any one of them.
"Z—ds! Charles. Where have you been?" said Chalkley.
"Drinking old Burgundy with a rogue of a bagman who looked like Ranelagh Garden en Fête, for his face was illuminated with every hue of crimson lamp and I stake my wig his nose was as large and round as the Rotunda."
With the arrival of Charles, everybody woke up and there were calls for a song. The gallant Lieutenant was the first to respond with my Lord Dorset'sTo you fair ladies now at Land.
Let me remind you of that fine old ballad:
"Not at all," cried Charles.
"and chorus, gentlemen, please,"
and so on to the last
And a proper noise everybody made with theFa la-la-la-laaccentuating everyFawith a bottle and everyLawith one of Mr. Jeremy Daish's handsome silver spoons.
The song being a very lengthy one allowed everybody plenty of time to drink another quart of Burgundy before its rousing conclusion, and if the company cheered loudly at the beginning, by heavens, they cheered so loudly at the end that the noise was heard above the fiddlers in the new ballroom of Daish's famous Rooms and put everybody out of step in the last Cotillon notwithstanding the heroick efforts of the disreputable, but nimble-footed Captain Mann.
Then Charles gave a new ballad (new that is in the reign of Queen Anne) sung first at Messieurs Brook and Hellier's Club at the Temple Tavern in Fleet Street, but slightly altered by him to suit present company,
(with chorus of last two lines repeated).
and so on until
"Ah!" said Mr. Antony Clare whose father had been a Jacobite, "you've spoilt more than the rhyme by the last word."
This treasonable remark was the signal for more noise than ever because all the young gentlemen of theBlue Boarwho held His Majesty King George's commission felt bound to uphold the honour of the Royal Navy and the British Army by flinging a large number of Spanish nuts at the head of the disloyal Clare who retorted by emptying a whole ram's horn of snuff over Mr. Golightly so that for a while nothing was to be heard but vollies of gigantick sneezes. Exhaustion reigned for a moment, but presently the sound of hustling and bustling in the street outside roused everybody to fresh vigour of mischief.
My Lady Bunbutter's rout was over, and those of the Exquisite Mob who had been invited were standing on tiptoe on the steps of Daish's Rooms peering into the darkness and blinking in the glare of waving flambeaux. The chairmen were so busy quarrelling over their positions that they paid no attention to their fares and everything was in a very great state of confusion indeed; nor was the clamour abated by Mr. Lovely cleverly hitting the long red ear of the nearest chairmen with a Barcelona nut because the injured chairman instantly floored a linkboy who was standing by his side and the linkboy's torch severely burnt the legs of Lord Cinderton's tall footman in his ash-grey livery and the tall footman with a yell of dismay punched a flat-footed waiter on the nose and the flat-footed waiter butted an inoffensive fop in the middle of his sprigged silk waistcoat and the inoffensivefop struck out with his tasselled cane left and right with such force that presently everybody in the street below was fighting with his next door neighbour to the entire delight of the young gentlemen from theBlue Boar. Their next diversion was to empty the dregs of the Burgundy bottles upon the heads of the crowd, whereupon all the ladies of Curtain Wells screamed very loud to see such a number of bloody polls and faces.
Then Charles snatched off little Peter Wingfield's tie-wig and, having set fire to it, began to drop tufts of burning hair out of the window, which tufts made an immense smell and blew round and round in the gusty March air in a very alarming manner.
Little Peter Wingfield, having lost his own wig and being too little to snatch Lovely's wig, mounted one of the stout Windsor wheelback chairs and, taking down the print of a famous cock-fight extracted the hook from the wall and laid an embargo on the black silk ties of three of his friends in order to fish from the window for another wig. He succeeded in catching the Marquis of Hurricane's to the intense delight of his undutiful sons the Earl of Squall and Lord Augustus Wind. Of course after such a successful display of angling, everybody else had to try his hand with the picture hook and two more wigs were captured but proved so frowsy that they were burnt immediately. However, Mr. Chalkley caught the hem of Lady Jane Vane's petticoat just as she was stepping into her chair and would without doubt have injured that virgin's modest reputation for ever, had the garment been made of more durable stuff; as it was, the hook would not hold and nothing was disclosed beyond what is allowed by any wet day.
Then Mr. Daish came hurrying in and begged their honours to desist because the watch was coming, and what Mr. Ripple would say when he heard of the riot he did not dare surmize.
Poor Mr. Daish bowed and scraped and was so full of excuses that all the young gentlemen felt quite sorry for him and put ham seat foremost into the biggest bowl of punch inorder to drown his troubles, whereupon Mr. Daish grew quite cholerick and vowed he would never let one of 'em enter his inn again and made such ado that the culprits all protested he was more noisy than anybody else, and offered to fetch in the watch and have him arrested in his own bowl of punch.
But presently they lifted him out and subscribed ten guineas by sending round Mr. Golightly's hat; and poor Mr. Daish was more full of excuses than ever and hoped that anything he had said that could by the most spirited gentleman be considered derogatory would be forgiven and ascribed to the dismay caused by the hot punch scalding his hinder parts and goading him beyond the bounds of polite remonstrance.
Everybody vowed that withered little Daish was a prince of good fellows and begged him to buy himself a new pair of cinnamon cloth breeches as soon as possible, while Thomas Chalkley of the Foot created much amusement by shouting that he was holding Dunquerque against the French. In order to hold Dunquerque against the French, it was very necessary that Mr. Chalkley should fling out of the window nineteen quart-bottles of Burgundy in quick succession, whereupon Lieutenant Blewforth of theLivelynot to be outdone vowed Portobello must be taken and proceeded to take it by climbing with amazing dexterity on to the mantelpiece armed only with a long Churchwarden's pipe. Yet notwithstanding all the efforts of Ensign Chalkley to hold Dunquerque against the French, notwithstanding that he was valiantly assisted by Cornet Golightly of the Grey Dragoons, who led a desperate cavalry charge round the whole room mounted upon one of the stout Windsor chairs, Dunquerque capitulated. In other words the dignified Curtain Wells watch marched upstairs with their lanterns and their staves and, standing in a knot by the doorway, demanded the reason for such a riotous breach of the King's peace, not to mention Mr. Ripple's and the Mayor's. But the young gentlemen were all so merry and the watch was so cold that it consented to taste the punch and presentlyleft Dunquerque in the hands of the Allies and marched off warmer in mind and body to a quieter quarter of the ancient borough of Curtain Wells. I am sorry to add that, in passing the door of the Great House, they so far forgot their standing orders as to cry with enormous fervour the hour and the weather exactly underneath Mr. Ripple's window.
With the departure of the watch, peace fell upon the company for a while; a dice box was produced and some packs of cards, but play lasted a very short time and was voted too confoundedly dull for so joyful an evening. So more songs were sung, and it was exceedingly pleasant to hear these young gentlemen shouting the refrains and hammering Encores upon the polished mahogany table. It was exceedingly pleasant to see the wigs on their knees and the long clay pipes keeping time to the tune; but perhaps the pleasantest sight of all was the two sleepy waiters who leaned against the jambs of the door and, with kindly grins on their tired faces, tapped their flat feet to the more alluring measures.
The night was wearing away when somebody called 'Vernon for a song!'
The latter, to tell the truth, had felt out of his element, except during the brief interval of play, but on being called upon to occupy the centre of the room, he cheered up and announced his very great pleasure in acceding to the gentlemen's request.
I wonder if you are at all sorry for Mr. Vernon.
He was very lonely sitting in his high armchair at the head of the table. I wonder if you will forgive him for singing this song, which you will find in Mr. D'Urfey'sPills to Purge Melancholy.
The words were poor, as you will allow, and the tune a mere tinkle, but it had the effect of rousing our hero from the half-sleep into which he had fallen.
"Sing that song again, will you."
"G—— forbid," whispered little Peter Wingfield.
"Nay, sir," said Mr. Vernon, "'Tis too long to sing over again, but I'll toast the heroine if that will please your zest."
"No, sir," said Charles, "it will not please me at all."
The rest of the company began to wake up to the fact that something was happening.
"I should have thought," Vernon replied, "that Mr. Lovely would have cordially welcomed such a toast, for we all know his partiality to the name."
"Gentlemen," said our hero. Did I not promise you some pretty heroicks a score of pages back? "Gentlemen, I have a tale to tell you."
Charles looked very stiff and very fierce as, clapping on his wig, he began:
"A short while ago I perpetrated an indiscretion in mistaking Mr. Francis Vernon for a gentleman, for which I beg the pardon of everybody present. Mr. Vernon for some reason best known to himself saw fit to bribe my bookseller to insert in a volume I have just published twelve scurrilous lines reflecting upon the character of a young lady whom I—whom I——"
"Admire," suggested our villain.
"No, sir, respect."
"Sir, your virtue should make us all blush," sneered Vernon, cold and contemptuous.
"D—— n you and your blushes; blush deeper, then," shouted Charles, slinging the contents of a wineglass into Mr. Vernon's pallid face.
There was silence for a moment until the honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe proclaimed——
"The affair should be settled at once."
And this was the only remark that the Honourable gentleman uttered in the whole of the evening.
"With all my heart," cried Charles. "Tony, you'll act for me?"
Mr. Vernon had delicately wiped his face with a handkerchief of Mechlin lace. A single drop of the wine lingered above his left cheekbone. There, it was not unbecoming.
"I shall be proud to walk with Mr. Lovely in a month's time," said our villain, "but for the present my honour is pledged to a lady."
"Sure, you borrow on mighty small security, sir," said Charles.
The lingering drop of wine that stained Mr. Vernon's cheek seemed to expand for a brief moment.
"I have named my day," was all he answered.
"Mr. Vernon is within his rights, Charles," said Mr.Golightly, "and moreover the weather will be finer next month and we can make up a jovial party."
"'Tis hardly fair to poor Daish to fight in his rooms," said Blewforth. "Ripple would put his shutters up at once."
"H—— take you all," cried Charles, in an access of fury, as he sprang to strike Vernon.
The latter stepped back and with a well-aimed blow sent Charles flying backwards over two chairs.
"'Slife, Charles," said Mr. Golightly very stiffly. "Your conduct is d——d irregular, Sir."
"Most improper," said Mr. Chalkley.
"Devilish unrestrained," said little Peter Wingfield.
"Charles was two bottles ahead of us, gentlemen," said Blewforth who held a broad mind in a broad body.
Our hero was still lying where Vernon had sent him among cards and broken glass.
"D—— n you all," cried Clare. "Charles is worth the rest of you puppies in red and blue coats put together, and by G——, Mr. Vernon, he shall kill you for that blow."
Everybody was so surprized to hear Mr. Anthony Clare, cool and placid Tony Clare, break out like this that a wave of embarrassment swept over the room. One by one they hurried from the scene of such an irregular quarrel.
It was very entertaining to see them march out so stiff and straight, with nutshells crackling underneath their feet.