The splendid equipage of a coach and six, with footmen in scarlet and
green, carried Beau Beamish five miles along the road on a sunny day to
meet the young duchess at the boundary of his territory, and conduct her
in state to the Wells. Chloe sat beside him, receiving counsel with
regard to her prospective duties. He was this day the consummate beau,
suave, but monarchical, and his manner of speech partook of his external
grandeur. 'Spy me the horizon, and apprise me if somewhere you
distinguish a chariot,' he said, as they drew up on the rise of a hill
of long descent, where the dusty roadway sank between its brown hedges,
and crawled mounting from dry rush-spotted hollows to corn fields on a
companion height directly facing them, at a remove of about three-
quarters of a mile. Chloe looked forth, while the beau passingly raised
his hat for coolness, and murmured, with a glance down the sultry track:
'It sweats the eye to see!'
Presently Chloe said, 'Now a dust blows. Something approaches. Now I
discern horses, now a vehicle; and it is a chariot!'
Orders were issued to the outriders for horns to be sounded.
Both Chloe and Beau Beamish wrinkled their foreheads at the disorderly
notes of triple horns, whose pealing made an acid in the air instead of
sweetness.
'You would say, kennel dogs that bay the moon!' said the wincing beau.
'Yet, as you know, these fellows have been exercised. I have had them
out in a meadow for hours, baked and drenched, to get them rid of their
native cacophony. But they love it, as they love bacon and beans. The
musical taste of our people is in the stage of the primitive appetite for
noise, and for that they are gluttons.'
'It will be pleasant to hear in the distance,' Chloe replied.
'Ay, the extremer the distance, the pleasanter to hear. Are they
advancing?'
'They stop. There is a cavalier at the window. Now he doffs his hat.'
'Sweepingly?'
Chloe described a semicircle in the grand manner.
The beau's eyebrows rose. 'Powers divine !' he muttered. 'She is let
loose from hand to hand, and midway comes a cavalier. We did not count
on the hawks. So I have to deal with a cavalier! It signifies, my dear
Chloe, that I must incontinently affect the passion if I am to be his
match: nothing less.'
'He has flown,' said Chloe.
'Whom she encounters after meeting me, I care not,' quoth the beau,
snapping a finger. 'But there has been an interval for damage with a
lady innocent as Eve. Is she advancing?'
'The chariot is trotting down the hill. He has ridden back. She has no
attendant horseman.'
'They were dismissed at my injunction ten miles off particularly to the
benefit of the cavaliering horde, it would appear. In the case of a
woman, Chloe, one blink of the eyelids is an omission of watchfulness.'
'That is an axiom fit for the harem of the Grand Signior.'
'The Grand Signior might give us profitable lessons for dealing with the
sex.'
'Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war!'
'Trust you, and the stopper is out of the smelling-bottle.'
'Mr. Beamish, we are women, but we have souls.'
'The pip in the apple whose ruddy cheek allures little Tommy to rob the
orchard is as good a preservative.'
'You admit that men are our enemies?'
'I maintain that they carry the banner of virtue.'
'Oh, Mr. Beamish, I shall expire.'
'I forbid it in my lifetime, Chloe, for I wish to die believing in one
woman.'
'No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters!'
'Then fly to a hermitage; for all flattery is at somebody's expense,
child. 'Tis an essence-extract of humanity! To live on it, in the
fashion of some people, is bad--it is downright cannibal. But we may
sprinkle our handkerchiefs with it, and we should, if we would caress our
noses with an air. Society, my Chloe, is a recommencement upon an upper
level of the savage system; we must have our sacrifices. As, for
instance, what say you of myself beside our booted bumpkin squires?'
'Hundreds of them, Mr. Beamish !'
'That is a holocaust of squires reduced to make an incense for me, though
you have not performed Druid rites and packed them in gigantic osier
ribs. Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues. Grant us ours
too. I have a serious intention to preserve this young duchess, and I
expect my task to be severe. I carry the banner aforesaid; verily and
penitentially I do. It is an error of the vulgar to suppose that all is
dragon in the dragon's jaws.'
'Men are his fangs and claws.'
'Ay, but the passion for his fiery breath is in woman. She will take her
leap and have her jump, will and will! And at the point where she will
and she won't, the dragon gulps and down she goes! However, the business
is to keep our buttercup duchess from that same point. Is she near?'
'I can see her,' said Chloe.
Beau Beamish requested a sketch of her, and Chloe began: 'She is
ravishing.'
Upon which he commented, 'Every woman is ravishing at forty paces, and
still more so in imagination.'
'Beautiful auburn hair, and a dazzling red and white complexion, set in a
blue coif.'
'Her eyes?'
'Melting blue.'
''Tis an English witch!' exclaimed the beau, and he compassionately
invoked her absent lord.
Chloe's optics were no longer tasked to discern the fair lady's
lineaments, for the chariot windows came flush with those of the beau on
the broad plateau of the hill. His coach door was opened. He sat
upright, levelling his privileged stare at Duchess Susan until she
blushed.
'Ay, madam,' quoth he, 'I am not the first.'
'La, sir!' said she; 'who are you?'
The beau deliberately raised his hat and bowed. 'He, madam, of whose
approach the gentleman who took his leave of you on yonder elevation
informed you.'
She looked artlessly over her shoulder, and at the beau alighting from
his carriage. 'A gentleman?'
'On horseback.'
The duchess popped her head through the window on an impulse to measure
the distance between the two hills.
'Never!' she cried.
'Why, madam, did he deliver no message to announce me?' said the beau,
ruffling.
'Goodness gracious! You must be Mr. Beamish,' she replied.
He laid his hat on his bosom, and invited her to quit her carriage for a
seat beside him. She stipulated, 'If you are really Mr. Beamish?' He
frowned, and raised his head to convince her; but she would not be
impressed, and he applied to Chloe to establish his identity. Hearing
Chloe's name, the duchess called out, 'Oh! there, now, that's enough, for
Chloe's my maid here, and I know she's a lady born, and we're going to be
friends. Hand me to Chloe. And you are Chloe?' she said, after a frank
stride from step to step of the carriages. 'And don't mind being my
maid? You do look a nice, kind creature. And I see you're a lady born;
I know in a minute. You're dark, I'm fair; we shall suit. And tell me--
hush!--what dreadful long eyes he has! I shall ask you presently what
you think of me. I was never at the Wells before. Dear me! the coach
has turned. How far off shall we hear the bells to say I'm coming? I
know I'm to have bells. Mr. Beamish, Mr. Beamish! I must have a chatter
with a woman, and I'm in awe of you, sir, that I am, but men and men I
see to talk to for a lift of my finger, by the dozen, in my duke's
palace--though they're old ones, that's true--but a woman who's a lady,
and kind enough to be my maid, I haven't met yet since I had the right to
wear a coronet. There, I'll hold Chloe's hand, and that'll do. You
would tell me at once, Chloe, if I was not dressed to your taste; now,
wouldn't you? As for talkative, that's a sign with me of my liking
people. I really don't know what to say to my duke sometimes. I sit and
think it so funny to be having a duke instead of a husband. You're off!'
The duchess laughed at Chloe's laughter. Chloe excused herself, but was
informed by her mistress that it was what she liked.
'For the first two years,' she resumed, 'I could hardly speak a syllable.
I stammered, I reddened, I longed to be up in my room brushing and
curling my hair, and was ready to curtsey to everybody. Now I'm quite at
home, for I've plenty of courage--except about death, and I'm worse about
death than I was when I was a simple body with a gawk's "lawks!" in her
round eyes and mouth for an egg. I wonder why that is? But isn't death
horrible? And skeletons!' The duchess shuddered.
'It depends upon the skeleton,' said Beau Beamish, who had joined the
conversation. 'Yours, madam, I would rather not meet, because she would
precipitate me into transports of regret for the loss of the flesh. I
have, however, met mine own and had reason for satisfaction with the
interview.'
'Your own skeleton, sir!' said the duchess wonderingly and appalled.
'Unmistakably mine. I will call you to witness by an account of him.'
Duchess Susan gaped, and, 'Oh, don't!' she cried out; but added, 'It 's
broad day, and I've got some one to sleep anigh me after dark'; with
which she smiled on Chloe, who promised her there was no matter for
alarm.
'I encountered my gentleman as I was proceeding to my room at night,'
said the beau, 'along a narrow corridor, where it was imperative that one
of us should yield the 'pas;' and, I must confess it, we are all so
amazingly alike in our bones, that I stood prepared to demand place of
him. For indubitably the fellow was an obstruction, and at the first
glance repulsive. I took him for anybody's skeleton, Death's ensign,
with his cachinnatory skull, and the numbered ribs, and the extraordinary
splay feet--in fact, the whole ungainly and shaky hobbledehoy which man
is built on, and by whose image in his weaker moments he is haunted. I
had, to be frank, been dancing on a supper with certain of our choicest
Wits and Beauties. It is a recipe for conjuring apparitions. Now, then,
thinks I, my fine fellow, I will bounce you; and without a salutation I
pressed forward. Madam, I give you my word, he behaved to the full pitch
as I myself should have done under similar circumstances. Retiring upon
an inclination of his structure, he draws up and fetches me a bow of the
exact middle nick between dignity and service. I advance, he withdraws,
and again the bow, devoid of obsequiousness, majestically condescending.
These, thinks I, be royal manners. I could have taken him for the Sable
King in person, stripped of his mantle. On my soul, he put me to the
blush.'
'And is that all?' asked the duchess, relieving herself with a sigh.
'Why, madam,' quoth the beau, 'do you not see that he could have been
none other than mine own, who could comport himself with that grand air
and gracefulness when wounded by his closest relative? Upon his opening
my door for me, and accepting the 'pas,' which I now right heartily
accorded him, I recognized at once both him and the reproof he had
designedly dealt me--or the wine supper I had danced on, perhaps I should
say' and I protest that by such a display of supreme good breeding he
managed to convey the highest compliment ever received by man, namely the
assurance, that after the withering away of this mortal garb, I shall
still be noted for urbanity and elegancy. Nay, and more, immortally,
without the slip I was guilty of when I carried the bag of wine.'
Duchess Susan fanned herself to assist her digestion of the anecdote.
'Well, it's not so frightful a story, and I know you are the great Mr.
Beamish;' she said.
He questioned her whether the gentleman had signalled him to her on the
hill.
'What can he mean about a gentleman?' she turned to Chloe. 'My duke told
me you would meet me, sir. And you are to protect me. And if anything
happens, it is to be your fault.'
'Entirely,' said the beau. 'I shall therefore maintain a vigilant
guard.'
'Except leaving me free. Oof! I've been boxed up so long. I declare,
Chloe, I feel like a best dress out for a holiday, and a bit afraid of
spoiling. I'm a real child, more than I was when my duke married me.
I seemed to go in and grow up again, after I was raised to fortune. And
nobody to tell of it! Fancy that! For you can't talk to old gentlemen
about what's going on in your heart.'
'How of young gentlemen?' she was asked by the beau.
And she replied, 'They find it out.'
'Not if you do not assist them,' said he.
Duchess Susan let her eyelids and her underlie half drop, as she looked
at him with the simple shyness of one of nature's thoughts in her head at
peep on the pastures of the world. The melting blue eyes and the cherry
lip made an exceedingly quickening picture. 'Now, I wonder if that is
true?' she transferred her slyness to speech.
'Beware the middle-aged!' he exclaimed.
She appealed to Chloe. 'And I'm sure they're the nicest.'
Chloe agreed that they were.
The duchess measured Chloe and the beau together, with a mind swift in
apprehending all that it hungered for.
She would have pursued the pleasing theme had she not been directed to
gaze below upon the towers and roofs of the Wells, shining sleepily in a
siesta of afternoon Summer sunlight.
With a spread of her silken robe, she touched the edifice of her hair,
murmuring to Chloe, 'I can't abide that powder. You shall see me walk in
a hoop. I can. I've done it to slow music till my duke clapped hands.
I'm nothing sitting to what I am on my feet. That's because I haven't
got fine language yet. I shall. It seems to come last. So, there 's
the place. And whereabouts do all the great people meet and prommy--?'
'They promenade where you see the trees, madam,' said Chloe.
'And where is it where the ladies sit and eat jam tarts with whipped
cream on 'em, while the gentlemen stand and pay compliments?'
Chloe said it was at a shop near the pump room.
Duchess Susan looked out over the house-tops, beyond the dusty hedges.
'Oh, and that powder!' she cried. 'I hate to be out of the fashion and a
spectacle. But I do love my own hair, and I have such a lot, and I like
the colour, and so does my duke. Only, don't let me be fingered at. If
once I begin to blush before people, my courage is gone; my singing
inside me is choked; and I've a real lark going on in me all day long,
rain or sunshine--hush, all about love and amusement.'
Chloe smiled, and Duchess Susan said, 'Just like a bird, for I don't know
what it is.'
She looked for Chloe to say that she did.
At the moment a pair of mounted squires rode up, and the coach stopped,
while Beau Beamish gave orders for the church bells to be set ringing,
and the band to meet and precede his equipage at the head of the bath
avenue: 'in honour of the arrival of her Grace the Duchess of Dewlap.'
He delivered these words loudly to his men, and turned an effulgent gaze
upon the duchess, so that for a minute she was fascinated and did not
consult her hearing; but presently she fell into an uneasiness; the signs
increased, she bit her lip, and after breathing short once or twice, 'Was
it meaning me, Mr. Beamish?' she said.
'You, madam, are the person whom we 'delight to honour,' he replied.
'Duchess of what?' she screwed uneasy features to hear.
'Duchess of Dewlap,' said he.
'It's not my title, sir.'
'It is your title on my territory, madam.'
She made her pretty nose and upper lip ugly with a sneer of 'Dew--! And
enter that town before all those people as Duchess of . . . Oh, no, I
won't; I just won't! Call back those men now, please; now, if you
please. Pray, Mr. Beamish! You'll offend me, sir. I'm not going to be
a mock. You'll offend my duke, sir. He'd die rather than have my
feelings hurt. Here's all my pleasure spoilt. I won't and I sha'n't
enter the town as duchess of that stupid name, so call 'em back, call 'em
back this instant. I know who I am and what I am, and I know what's due
to me, I do.'
Beau Beamish rejoined, 'I too. Chloe will tell you I am lord here.'
'Then I'll go home, I will. I won't be laughed at for a great lady
ninny. I'm a real lady of high rank, and such I'll appear. What 's a
Duchess of Dewlap? One might as well be Duchess of Cowstail, Duchess of
Mopsend. And those people! But I won't be that. I won't be played
with. I see them staring! No, I can make up my mind, and I beg you to
call back your men, or I'll go back home.' She muttered, 'Be made fun of
--made a fool of!'
'Your Grace's chariot is behind,' said the beau.
His despotic coolness provoked her to an outcry and weeping: she
repeated, 'Dewlap! Dewlap!' in sobs; she shook her shoulders and hid her
face.
'You are proud of your title, are you, madam?' said he.
'I am.' She came out of her hands to answer him proudly. 'That I am!'
she meant for a stronger affirmation.
'Then mark me,' he said impressively; 'I am your duke's friend, and you
are under my charge here. I am your guardian and you are my ward, and
you can enter the town only on the condition of obedience to me. Now,
mark me, madam; no one can rob you of your real name and title saving
yourself. But you are entering a place where you will encounter a
thousand temptations to tarnish, and haply forfeit it. Be warned do
nothing that will.'
'Then I'm to have my own title?' said she, clearing up.
'For the month of your visit you are Duchess of Dewlap.'
'I say I sha'n't!'
'You shall.'
'Never, sir!'
'I command it.'
She flung herself forward, with a wail, upon Chloe's bosom. 'Can't you
do something for me?' she whimpered.
'It is impossible to move Mr. Beamish,' Chloe said.
Out of a pause, composed of sobs and sighs, the duchess let loose in a
broken voice: 'Then I 'm sure I think--I think I'd rather have met--have
met his skeleton!'
Her sincerity was equal to wit.
Beau Beamish shouted. He cordially applauded her, and in the genuine
kindness of an admiration that surprised him, he permitted himself the
liberty of taking and saluting her fingers. She fancied there was
another chance for her, but he frowned at the mention of it.
Upon these proceedings the exhilarating sound of the band was heard;
simultaneously a festival peal of bells burst forth; and an admonishment
of the necessity for concealing her chagrin and exhibiting both station
and a countenance to the people, combined with the excitement of the
new scenes and the marching music to banish the acuter sense of
disappointment from Duchess Susan's mind; so she very soon held herself
erect, and wore a face open to every wonder, impressionable as the blue
lake-surface, crisped here and there by fitful breezes against a level
sun.