There must have been a curious magic in the words, "My future wife,"
for no sooner had he pronounced them than Lord Verney became several
inches taller, a distinct span broader and quite unreasonably older.
In fact, from boyhood he had stepped to man's estate. He looked down
protectingly at the little woman hanging on his arm. The seriousness
of responsibility settled upon his brow.
"Ah! Verney," quoth Mr. Stafford, flicking a hot brow, as he dashed in
out of the sunshine, powdered with white dust from his walk and still
bubbling with laughter. "Ah, Verney, playing butterfly in the golden
hours while other fellows toil in the sweat of their brow! Jingo! lad,
but you've lit on the very rose of the garden.--Mistress Kitty
Bellairs, I kiss your hand."
At this Mistress Kitty felt her future lord's arm press her fingers to
his ribs, while he straightened his youthful back.
"Mr. Stafford," began he in solemn tones, "this lady----"
But she, knowing what was coming, interrupted ruthlessly.
"And pray, Mr. Stafford," quoth she, cocking her head at him with those
birdlike airs and graces that were as natural to her as to any mincing
dove--Mistress Kitty being of those that begin by making eyes in their
nurses' arms, before they can speak, and end in a modish lace nightcap
for the benefit of the doctor--"and whence may you come so late, and
thus heated?"
"Whence?" cried Mr. Stafford, and overcome by the humour of his
recollections, roused the solemn echoes of the Pump Room by his jovial
laugh. "Ah, you may well ask! from the merriest meeting it has ever
been my fate to attend. Oh, the face of him in his chair, between his
gout and his temper! And fire-eating Jasper all for bullets; and old
Foulks' teeth ready to drop out of his head at the indecorousness of it
all!--Spicer, man, aha! hold me up.--Oh, madam," cried Mr. Stafford,
wiping tears of ecstasy from his eyes and leaning as unceremoniously
against Spicer as if the latter's lank figure were a pilaster specially
intended for his support--"oh, madam, I could make you laugh had I the
breath left for it."
"Indeed," cried Mistress Kitty, plunging in again, as it became evident
to her that Lord Verney, with the gentle obstinacy that was part of his
character, was once more preparing to make his nuptial statement. "Mr.
Stafford, please speak then, for in sooth it seems to me a vastly long
time since I have laughed."
"Gad! you actually make me curious," put in Mr. Stafford's prop.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" sighed Mr. Stafford, in a fresh fit, "ha, ha! By
the way, Verney, weren't you also to have walked with the jealous
husband this morning!--Ah, by the same token, and you too, Spicer?
Gad. I'm glad you didn't, for if either of you had put lead in him I'd
have missed the best joke of the season. Gad, I may say so. He, he,
aha-ha, ho, ho!"
"Mr. Stafford," said my Lord Verney, as solemn as any owl, while
Mistress Kitty, caught by the infection of the genial Stafford's mirth,
tittered upon his arm, "I have deeper reason than you think of to
rejoice that the absurd misunderstanding was cleared up between Sir
Jasper and myself. This lady and I----"
"Oh dear, the joke, the joke!" cried Mistress Bellairs, with loud
impatience, and stamped her little foot.
"Oh, my fair Bellairs," gasped Mr. Stafford, "had you but been there to
share it with me!"
"This lady----" quoth Lord Verney.
"I wish indeed I had been!" cried she. And in very truth she did.
"Mrs. Bellairs," said the determined lover, "has consented to make me
the happiest of men."
"Eh?" cried Mr. Stafford, and stopped on the edge of another guffaw.
Mistress Kitty cast down her eyelids. She felt she looked demure and
almost bashful, and she hated herself in this character.
Mr. Stafford was one of the thirty-seven lovers of whom the lady had
spoken so confidently, and as such was far from realising the solemn
meaning of Lord Verney's announcement.
"Ah, madam," cried he reproachfully, "is't not enough to keep me for
ever in Hades, must you needs add to my torture by showing me another
in Paradise? But, my little Verney," he went on, turning
good-naturedly to his young rival, "it is but fair to warn you that you
will be wise to pause before getting yourself measured for your halo:
the Paradise of this lady's favour is (alack, do I not know it?) of
most precarious tenure."
"This lady, sir," said Lord Verney, with rigid lips, "has promised to
be my wife."
It was fortunate that Mr. Stafford had a prop: under the shock he
staggered. Man of the world as he was, the most guileless astonishment
was stamped on his countenance.
Oh, how demure looked Mistress Kitty!
Spicer, a trifle yellow, became effusive in congratulations which were
but coldly received by his patron.
"Ah, Kitty," whispered Mr. Stafford in Mistress Bellairs' shell-like
ear, "do you like them so tender-green? Why, my dear, the lad's chin
is as smooth as your own. What pleasantry is this?"
Kitty scraped her little foot and hung her head. Mistress Kitty coy!
And yon poor innocent with his air of proprietorship--'twas a most
humorous spectacle!
"I'm sure, Verney," cried Mr. Stafford, "I wish you joy, ha, ha! with
all my heart! And you madam, he, he!--forgive me, friends--the thought
of Sir Jasper's duel is still too much for me. Ha, ha! Support me,
Spicer."
"She'll marry him, she'll marry him," cried Spicer with bilious
vindictiveness, looking over his shoulder at the couple, as they moved
away.
"Marry him!--never she!" cried Stafford. "Kitty's no fool. Why, man,
the little demon wouldn't have _me_! She loves her liberty and her
pleasures too well. Did you not see? She could not look up for fear
of showing the devilment in her eye. Cheerily, cheerily, my gallant
Captain!" cried the spark, and struck the reedy shoulders that had
buttressed him, in contemptuous good-natured valediction. "You need
not yet cast about for a new greenhorn to subsist upon."
* * * * *
Mistress Kitty, glancing up at her Calf, found, something to her
astonishment and further displeasure, a new expression in his eyes.
Ardour had been superseded by an unseasonable gravity.
"The creature is a complete menagerie!" she thought to herself,
indignantly. "I vow he looks like nothing but an owl in the twilight!"
They wandered together from the Pump Room on to the Abbey Flags, and
so, slowly, into the cool and shady Orange Grove; and in a sequestered
spot they sat them down on a stone bench.
"When a man," said he, "has been, as I have, brought face to face,
within the space of one short morning, with the great events of
existence, Death and Love, how hollow and how unworthy do the mock joys
and griefs of Society appear to him!"
"Oh la!" said she. "You alarm me. And when did you see Death, my
lord?"
"Why," said he, with his innocent gravity, "had you not intervened, my
dearest dear, between Sir Jasper and me, this morning, who knows what
might have happened?"
"Oh, that!" said she, and her lip curled.
"Ay," said he, "where should I be now, Kitty? The thought haunts me in
the midst of my great happiness. Had I killed Sir Jasper, could I have
looked upon myself other than as a murderer?"
"Oh, fie, fie," interpolated his mistress impatiently, "who ever thinks
of such things in little matters of honour!"
In her heart she told herself that the young man showed a prodigious
want of _savoir-vivre_. In all candour he proceeded to display a still
greater lack of that convenient quality.
"On the other hand, had I fallen, and that indeed was the more likely
contingency, it being my first affair of the kind, I tremble to think
in what state my soul would have appeared before its Maker." His voice
quivered a moment.
"My Lord Verney," cried Kitty, turning upon him a most distressed
countenance, "you have no idea how you shock me!"
And indeed he had not.
He took her distress for the sweetest womanly sympathy, and was
emboldened to further confidence.
"I blush to tell you," he said, "that since I came to this gay Society
of Bath, my life has not been all my conscience could approve of. The
pious practices, the earnest principles of life so sedulously
inculcated in me by my dear mother, have been but too easily cast
aside."
"Oh dear!" cried Kitty in accents of yet greater pain.
"When we are married, my dear love," pursued Lord Verney, quietly
encircling his mistress's little waist with his arm as he spoke, but,
absorbed as he was in his virtuous reflections, omitting to infuse any
ardour into his embrace, "we shall not seek the brilliant world. We
shall find all our happiness with each other, shall we not? Oh, how
welcome my dear mother will make you at Verney Hall! It has always
been her dream that I should marry early and settle on the estate."
Little shivers ran down Kitty's spine. "Is it your intention to live
with your mother when you are married?" she faltered, and leaned weakly
against the inert arm.
Enthusiastically he cried that the best of mothers and he could never
be parted long.
"Oh, how you will love her!" he said, looking fondly at the Kitty of
his imagination.
"From your tenderest years she sedulously inculcated in you earnest
principles and pious practices, did she not?" murmured the Kitty of
reality, with what was almost a moan.
"She did indeed," cried the youth.
Mistress Kitty closed her eyes and let her head droop upon his shoulder.
"I fear I am going to have the vapours," said she.
"'Tis, maybe, the spring heats," said he, and made as if he would rise.
"Maybe," said Mistress Kitty, becoming so limp all at once that he was
forced to tighten his clasp. He glanced at her now in some alarm. She
half opened bright eyes, and glimmered a languid little smile at him.
"At least," thought the widow, "if we must part (and part we must, my
Calf and I) we shall part on a sweet moment. What--in a bower, every
scent, every secret bird and leaf and sunbeam of which calls on thought
of love, and I by his side--he to prate of his mother! An at least he
does not bleat of my beauty again, my name is not Kitty!"
She sighed and closed her eyes. The delicate face lay but a span from
his lips.
"I fear indeed you are faint," said he with solicitude. "My mother has
a sovereign cordial against such weakness."
Mistress Bellairs sat up very energetically for a fainting lady.
"Your mother..." she began with a flash of her eye, then checked
herself abruptly. "Adieu, Verney," said she, and stretched out her
hand to him.
"Adieu!" he repeated, all bewilderment.
"Ay," said she, "there chimes the Abbey its silly old air. How long
have I been with you, sir, alone? Fie, fie, and must I not think of my
reputation?"
"Surely, as my future wife..." said he.
"Why then the more reason," she said, cutting him short; "must I not
show myself duly discreet? Think of your lady mother! Come, sir, take
your leave."
A moment she was taunting; a moment all delicious smiles.
"I'll make him bleat!" she thought, and stamped her foot upon it.
"As far as your door?" said he.
"Not a step," she vowed. "Come, sir, adieu."
He took her hand; bent and kissed her sedately.
"I will," said he, "go write the news to my mother."
"Oh go!" said she, and turned on her heel with a flounce and was out of
his sight, round the corner of an ally, with a whisk and flutter of
tempestuous petticoats, before his slow boy's wits had time to claim
the moment for the next meeting.
There were actually tears in Mistress Kitty's eyes as she struck the
gravel with her cane. She rubbed her cherry lips where his kiss had
rested with a furious hand.
"'Twas positively matrimonial," she cried within herself, with angry
double-threaded reminiscence--"the Calf! Did ever woman spend a more
ridiculous hour--and in Heaven's name, what's to be done?"