At that I remember that I cried out in overwhelming excitement and
amazement; cried out that I knew the man and his story, and the place
whence she had been taken; that I had heard the tale from my father
years before. "It was Colonel Porter who picked you up--Colonel
Porter, and he saved his life by it!" I cried, quite beside myself at
the wonderful discovery I had made. "It was Colonel Porter, in the
great riot at Norwich."
"Ah?" she said, slowly; looking away from me, and speaking so coolly
and strangely as both to surprise and damp me.
Yet I persisted. "Yes," I said, "the story is well known; at least
that part of it. But----" and there and at that word I stopped,
dumbfounded and gaping.
"But what?" she asked sharply, and looked at me again; the colour
risen in her face.
"But--you are only eighteen," I hazarded timidly, "and the Norwich
riot was in the War time. I dare say, thirty years ago."
She turned on me in a sort of passion.
"Well, sir, and what of that?" she cried. "Do you think me thirty?"
"No, indeed," I answered. And at the most she was nineteen.
"Then don't you believe me?"
I cried out too at that; but, boy-like, I was so proud of my knowledge
and acuteness that I could not let the point lie. "All I mean," I
explained, "is that to have been alive then, and at Norwich, you must
be thirty now. And----"
"And was it I?" she answered, flying out at me in a fine fury. "Who
said anything about Norwich? Or your dirty riots? Or your Porter,
whose name I never heard before! Go away! I hate you! I hate you!" she
continued, passionately, waving me off. "You make up things and then
put them on me! I never said a word about Norwich."
"I know you did not," I protested.
"Then why did you say I did?" she wailed. "Why did you say I did? You
are a wretch! I hate you!"
And with that, dissolving in tears and sobs she at one and the same
time showed me another side of love, and reduced me to the utmost
depths of despair; whence I was not permitted to emerge, nor
reinstated in the least degree of favour until I had a hundred times
abased myself before her, and was ready to curse the day when I first
heard the name of Porter. Still peace was at last, and with infinite
difficulty restored; and so complete was our _redintegratio amoris_
that we presently ventured to recur to her tale and to the strange
coincidence that had divided us; which did not seem so very
remarkable, on second thought, seeing that she could not now remember
that she had said a word about booths or stalls, but would have it I
had inserted those particulars; the man in her case having taken
refuge--she fancied, but could not at this distance of time remember
very clearly--among the seats of a kind of bull-ring or circus erected
in the marketplace. Which of course made a good deal of difference.
Notwithstanding this discrepancy, however, and though, taught by
experience, I hastened to agree with her that the secret of her birth
was not likely to be discovered in a moment, nor by so simple a
process as the journey to Norwich, which I had been going to suggest,
it was natural that we should often revert to the subject, and to her
pretensions, and the hardship of her lot: and my curiosity and
questions giving a fillip to her memory, scarcely a day passed but she
recovered some new detail from the past; as at one time a service of
gold-plate which she perfectly remembered she had seen on her father's
sideboard; and at another time an accident that had befell her in her
childhood, through her father's coach and six horses being overturned
in a slough. Such particulars (and many others as pertinent and
romantic, on which I will not linger) gave us a certainty of her past
consequence and her future fortune were her parents once known; and
while they served to augment the respect in which my love held her,
gradually and almost imperceptibly led her to take a higher tone with
me, and even on occasions to carry herself towards me with an air of
mystery, as if there were still some things which she had not confided
to me.
This attitude on her part--which in itself pained me extremely--and
still more the fear naturally arising from it, that if she came by her
own I should immediately lose her, forced me to make the acquaintance
of yet another side of love; by throwing me, I mean, into such a fever
of suspicion and jealousy as made me for a period the most unhappy of
men. From this plight my mistress, exercising the privilege of her
sex, made no haste to relieve me. On the contrary, by affecting an
increased reserve and asserting that her movements were watched, she
prolonged my doubts; nor when this treatment had wrought the desired
end of reducing me to the lowest depths, and she at length consented
to meet me, did she entirely relent or abandon her reserve; or if she
did so, on rare occasions, it was only to set me some task as the
price of her complaisance, or expose me to some trial by which she
might prove my devotion.
In a word, while I became hopelessly enslaved, even to the flogging a
boy at her word, or procuring a dress far above my station--merely
that she might see me by stealth in it, and judge of my air!--which
were two of her caprices, she appeared to be farther removed from me
every day, and at each meeting granted me fewer privileges. Whether
this treatment had its origin in the natural instinct of a woman, or
was deliberately chosen as better calculated to increase my
subservience, it had the latter effect; and to such an extent that
when, after a long absence, she condescended to meet me, and broached
a plan that earlier would have raised my hair, I asked no better than
to do her bidding, and, instead of pointing out the folly of her
proposal, fell in with it with scarcely a murmur.
Her plan, when she communicated it to me, which she did with an air of
mystery and the same assumption of a secret withheld that had
tormented me before, amounted to nothing less than an evening sally
into the town on the occasion of the approaching visit of the Duke of
York, who was to lie one night at the Rose at Ware on his way to
Newmarket. Mr. D---- had issued the strictest orders that all should
keep the house during this visit; not so much out of a proper care for
the boys' morality (though the gay crowd that followed the Court
served for a pretext) as because, in his character of fanatic and
Exclusionist, he held His Highness's religion and person in equal
abhorrence. Such a restriction weighed little in the scale against
love; but, infatuated as I was, I found something that sensibly
shocked me in the proposal coming from Dorinda's lips; nor could I
fail to foresee many dangers to which a young girl must expose herself
on such an expedition in the town, and at night. But as to a youth in
love nothing that his mistress chooses to do seems long amiss, so this
proposal scared me for a moment only; after which it cost my mistress
no more than a little rallying on my crop-eared manners, and some
scolding, to make me see it in its true aspect of an innocent frolic,
fraught with as much pleasure to the cavalier as novelty to the
escorted.
"You will don your new suit," she said, merrily, "and I shall meet you
in the garden at half past nine."
"And if the boys may miss me?" I protested feebly.
"The boys have missed you before!" she answered, mocking my tone.
"Were you not here last night? And for a whole hour, sir?"
I confessed with hot cheeks that I had been there; humbly and tamely
awaiting her pleasure.
"And did they tell then?" she asked scornfully. "Or are they less
afraid of the birch now? But of course--if you don't care to come with
me--or are afraid, sir----?"
"I am neither," I said warmly. "Only I do not quite understand, sweet,
what you wish."
"They lie at the Rose," she said. "And amongst them, I am told, are
the prettiest men and the most lovely women in the world. And jewels,
and laces, and such dresses! Oh, I am mad to see them! And music and
gaming and dancing! And dishes and plates of gold! And a Popish
priest, which is a thing I have never seen, though I have heard of it.
And----"
"And do you expect to see all these things through the windows?" I
cried in my superior knowledge.
She did not answer at once, but with her hands on my shoulders, swayed
to and fro sideways as if she already heard the music; while her gipsy
face looked archly into mine, first on this side and then on that, and
her hair swung to and fro on her shoulders in a beautiful abandonment
which I found it impossible to resist. At last she stopped, and,
"Yes," she said demurely, "through the windows, Master Richard
Longface! Do you meet me here at half past nine--in your new suit,
sir--and you shall see them too--through the windows."
[Illustration: STOLE DOWN THE STAIRS AND INTO THE GARDEN]
After that, though I made a last effort to dissuade her, there was
nothing more to be said. Obedient to her behest, I made my
preparations, and at the appointed hour next evening rose softly from
the miserable pallet on which I had just laid down; and dressing
myself with shaking fingers and in the dark--that my bed-fellows might
know as little as possible of my movements--stole down the stairs and
into the garden.
Here I found myself first at the rendezvous. The night was dark, but
an unusual light hung over the town, and the wind that stirred the
poplars brought scraps and sounds of music to the ear. I had some time
to wait, and time too to think what I was about to do; to weigh the
chances of detection and dismissal, and even to taste the qualms that
rawness and timidity mingled with my anticipations of pleasure. But,
though I had my fears, no vision of the real future obtruded itself on
my mind as I stood there listening: nor any forewarning of the plunge
I was about to take. And before I had come to the end of my patience
Dorinda stood beside me.
Dark as it was, I fancied that I discerned something strange in her
appearance, and I would have investigated it; but she whispered that
we were late, and evading as well my questions as the caress I
offered, she bade me help her as quickly as I could over the fence. I
did so; we crossed a neighbouring garden, and in a twinkling and with
the least possible difficulty stood in the road. Here the strains of
music came more plainly to the ear, and the glare of light hung lower
and shone more brightly. This seemed enough for my mistress; she
turned that way without hesitation, and set forward, the outskirts of
the town being quickly passed. Between the late hour and the flux of
people towards the centre of interest, the streets were vacant; and we
met no one until we reached the main thoroughfare, and came upon the
edge of the great crowd that moved to and fro before the Rose Inn.
Here all the windows, in one of which a band of music was playing some
new air, were brilliantly lighted; while below and round the door was
such a throng of hurrying waiters and drawers, and such a carrying of
meals and drinks, and a shouting of orders as almost turned the brain.
A carriage and six that had just set down a grandee, come to pay his
devoirs to the Prince, was moving off as we came up, the horses
smoking, the footmen panting, and the postilions stooping in their
saddles. A little to one side a cask was being staved for the troopers
who had come with the Duke; and on all the noisy, moving scene and the
flags that streamed from the roofs and windows, and the shifting
crowd, poured the ruddy light of a great _bon-feu_ that burned on the
farther side of the way.
Nor, rare as were these things, were they the most pertinent or the
strangest that the fire revealed to me. I had come for nothing else
but to see, _clam et furtim_, as the classics say, what was to be
seen; with no thought of passing beyond the uttermost ring of
spectators. But as I hung back shamefacedly my companion seized my
wrist and drew me on; and when I turned to her to remonstrate, as
Heaven lives, I did not know her! I conceived for a moment that some
madam of the court had seized me in a frolic; nor for a perceptible
space could I imagine that the fine cloaked lady, whose eyes shone
bright as stars through the holes in her mask, and whose raven hair,
so cunningly dressed, failed to hide the brilliance of her neck, where
the cloak fell loose, was my Dorinda, my mistress, the cook-maid whom
I had kissed in the garden! Honestly, for an instant, I recoiled and
hung back, afraid of her; nor was I quite assured of the truth, so
unprepared was I for the change, until she whispered me sharply to
come on.
"Whither?" I said, still hanging back in dismay. The bystanders were
beginning to turn and stare, and in a moment would have jeered us.
"Within doors," she urged.
"They will not admit us!"
"They will admit me," she answered proudly, and made as if she would
throw my hand from her.
Still I did not believe her, and it was that, and that only, that
emboldened me; though, to be sure, I was in love and her slave.
Reluctantly, and almost sulkily, I gave way, and sneaked behind her to
the door. A man who stood on the steps seemed, at the first glance,
minded to stop her; but, looking again, smiled and let us pass; and in
a twinkling we stood in the hall among hurrying waiters, and shouting
call-boys, and bloods in silk coats, whose scabbards rang as they came
down the stairs, and a fair turmoil of pages, and footboys, and
gentlemen, and gentlemen's gentlemen.
[Illustration: MY COMPANION SEIZED MY WRIST]
In such a company, elbowed this way and that by my betters, I knew
neither how to carry myself, nor where to look; but Dorinda, with
barely a pause, and as if she knew the house, thrust open the nearest
door, and led the way into a great room that stood on the right of the
hall.
Here, down the spacious floor, and lighted by shaded candles, were
ranged several tables, at which a number of persons had seats, while
others again stood or moved about the room. The majority of those
present were men. I noticed, however, three or four women masked after
the fashion of my companion, but more gorgeously dressed, and in my
simplicity did not doubt that these were duchesses, the more as they
talked and laughed loudly; whereas the general company--save those who
sat at one table where the game was at a standstill, and all were
crying persistently for a Tallier--spoke low, the rattle of dice and
chink of coin, and an occasional oath, taking the place of
conversation. I saw piles of guineas and half-guineas on the tables,
and gold lace on the men's coats, and the women a dream of silks and
furbelows, and gleaming shoulders and flashing eyes; and between awe
of my company, and horror at finding myself in such a place, I took
all for real that glittered. Where, therefore, a man of experience
would have discerned a crowd of dubious rakes and rustic squires
tempting fortune for the benefit of the Groom-Porter, whose privilege
was ambulatory, I fancied I gazed on earls and barons; saw a garter on
every leg, and, blind to the stained walls of the common inn-room,
supplied every bully who cried the main or called the trumps with the
pedigree of a Howard.
This was a delusion not unnatural, and a prey to it, I expected each
moment to be my last in that company. But the fringe of spectators
that stood behind the players favouring us, we fell easily into line
at one of the tables, and nothing happening, and no one saying us nay,
I presently breathed more freely. I could see that my companion's
beauty, though hidden in the main by her mask, was the subject of
general remark; and that it drew on her looks and regards more or less
insolent. But as she took no heed of these, but on the contrary gazed
about her unmoved and with indifference, I hoped for the best; and
excited by the brilliance and movement of a scene so far above my
wildest dreams, that I already anticipated the pride with which I
should hereafter describe it, I began to draw a fearful joy from our
escapade. Like AEneas and Ulysses, I had seen men and cities! And stood
among heroes! And seen the sirens! To which thoughts I was proceeding
to add others equally classical, when a gentleman behind me diverted
my thoughts by touching my companion on the arm, and very politely
requesting, her to lay on the table a guinea which he handed to her.
She did so, and he thanked her with a low-spoken compliment; then
added with bent head, but bold eyes, "Fortune, my pretty lady, cannot
surely have been unkind to one so fair!"
"I do not play," Dorinda answered, with all the bluntness I could
desire.
"And yet I think I have seen you play?" he replied. And affecting to
be engaged in identifying her, he let his eyes rove over her figure.
Doubtless Dorinda's mask gave her courage; yet, even this taken into
the count, her wit and resource astonished me. "You do not know me, my
pretty gentleman," she said, coolly, and with a proud air.
"I know that you have cost me a guinea!" he answered. "See, they have
swept it off. And as I staked it for nothing else but to have an
excuse to address the handsomest woman in the room----"
"You do not know what I am--behind my mask," she retorted.
"No," he replied, hardily, "and therefore I am going--I am going----"
"So am I!" my mistress answered, with a quickness that both surprised
and delighted me. "Good night, good spendthrift! You are going; and I
am going."
"Well hit!" he replied, with a grin. "And well content if we go
together! Yet I think I know how I could keep you!"
"Yes?" she said, indifferently.
"By deserving the name," he answered. "You called me spendthrift."
On that I do not know whether she thought him too forward, or saw that
I was nearly at the end of my patience--which it may be imagined was
no little tried by this badinage--but she turned her shoulder to him
outright, and spoke a word to me in a low tone. Then: "Give me a
guinea, Dick!" she said, pretty loudly. "I think I'll play."