_In the which Her Ladyship wheedles her
noble father and makes up her mind._
The Earl forsooth was a testy gentleman, and his girl was his plague and
his pride; on her, rather than on his heir, the old man’s fancy was set,
for the reason that Kennaston, disclaiming all the country sports, the
half wild outdoor life, the lusty joys and racing bumps and cups that
had been vastly helpful in reducing the little his parent had started
his career with, had elected instead to try his luck at that most
inscrutable, vile trade of scribbling!
Peg’s twin, her fellow in height and build, which made a slender youth
of him indeed, had gone up to London quill-armed, ink-fingered,
brain-possessed with rhymes; empty-pursed, determined to carve with such
unlikely weapons as that apt bird, the goose, furnishes, a fame and
fortune for himself, that should dazzle the world and recoup the
fortunes of his well-nigh fallen house.
While the Earl jeered, Peg, herself scarce able to spell a two-syllabled
word, looked up to her brother as nothing short of whatever stood in her
mind for Shakespeare; for, low be it spoke, the fair Peggy had small
notion of books, their makers or their pleasurable usage. To her they
represented waste time almost, and only as a means of communication with
Kennaston did she, since his absence began, pore daily over a
dictionary, a speller, and a copy-book.
So sat she now, a couple of months after the parting betwixt her and Sir
Percy; lips pursed, brows knit, goose-feather in finger, poring over a
blank sheet of paper first, and from it turning to the closely-writ page
of a letter from her twin.
Chockey sat on a stool hard by,—they were both in the buttery, for Lady
Peggy was apt with all the mysteries of housekeeping, and had as fine a
churning, as big cheeses, as fat chickens, as nice eggs, as good hams as
any other in the county,—had she not, the Earl, her father, had lacked
something or all of his comfort. Chockey, then, sat working butter,
squeezing all the white milky bubbles back and forth in the wooden bowl,
and printing the pats in the trays, while her mistress sighed,
swallowed, and at last burst forth in speech.
“Chockey, I shall fall into a fit, an I’ve ever another letter to write
in this world. The last I writ was for Sir Robin to introduce him to
Lord Kennaston when he should go up to town—and belike, I forgot to give
it to him as I promised and have it safe here. It took me a week to
finish, and I’ve copied all the words out of it I can, yet do I lack
thousands more, methinks, to say what I would to my brother. Lud!
Learning’s a wonderful thing! Look at that, Chock!”
Lady Peggy holds up the well covered pages of Kennaston’s letter before
the eyes of the Abigail.
“Aye, Madam,” giggles this one, “it has the air to me of where spiders
has been a-fightin’! Now, for true, My Lady, do it say words as has a
meanin’?”
“Listen,” replies the mistress, reading off quite glibly, since ’tis the
one hundredth time since she got it that she’s rehearsed the same to
herself.
“SWEET SISTER PEGGY: I’d have written before but that literature pays
ill until a man hath contrived by preference and patronage, the rather
than by his wits, to place himself at evens with the Great and the
Distinguished. So far I find Fame’s hill hard in the Climbing, but do I
not complain, for there’s that spirit reigning in my breast as bids me
welcome Poverty, even Starvation, lead it but to the sometime
recognition of my Talents. I take up my pen not to riddle your ears with
plaints, but on another matter, which is Sir Percy.”
Lady Peggy’s head droops a bit to match her voice, whilst Chockey’s
bright little eyes sparkle, and she twists the yellow butter into heart
shapes as she pricks her ears and sighs.
“Sir Percy,” continues My Lady Peggy, reading, “as you know came up to
town, now these seven weeks agone, straight as a die to my meagre
chambers, where welcome was spelled, I can assure thee, all over the
bare floor, barer board, and barer master thereof,—for of a truth I love
him as should I the brother I had hoped he’d be! Peg, what’s this
thou’st done to the lad? Thrown him, a gallant with as big a heart as
God ever made, over into the Devil’s own mire, for sake of that little
tow-haired sprat, Robin McTart! with his pate full of himself and none
other,—so I’ve heard say, for never set I eyes upon the blackguard from
Kent! Zounds! twin! What are ye women made of? And I write to say Percy,
what with carousals and brawls, and drink and fights, and all night at
the gaming-table, and all day God knows where, ’s fast a-throwing
himself piecemeal into the grave he’s a-digging daily for your cruel
sake. Could you but see him! A ghost! Wan, with eyes full of
blood-spots, and hair unkempt! Madam, there’s love for you—and love’s
what ladies like. Go match him, Sister, with McTart if you can, but twin
me no more ever again an you and I wear black ribbons for Percy de
Bohun!”
Lady Peggy’s lip quivers; so does Chockey’s.
“Lawk, My Lady!” cries the girl, splashing tears into the butter,
reckless.
“‘Black ribbons,’ Chock! ‘A ghost,’ Chock! ‘McTart,’ Chock! Lord ha’
mercy! What’s to become o’ me?” Peggy’s tears smart her eyes as she
flings the goose-quill over to a cheese on the shelf, where it sticks,
and one day surprises the Vicar at his supper.
“Get out of my sight!” she flings after it. “I can’t write! Who can
write out her heart and soul, when it’s devilish hard even to speak it.
Oh! Would I were my brother for one fine half-hour!” cries Peggy, rising
and stamping up and down the stone floor of the buttery.
“An’ if you were, Madam?” asks Chockey meekly, “what then?”
“I’d swear! Yea, would I! Such a lot of splendid oaths as’d ease my mind
and let me hear from my own lips what a fool’s part I’d played with my
own—my adored Percy! Could I but see him! as Kennaston says.” Peggy in
her progress now upsets a pan of cream, and has genuine pleasure in
splashing it about over her slippers as she speaks.
“But I! What am I? A girl! swaddled in petticoats and fallals; tethered
to an apron, and a besom, and a harpsichord, and a needle,—yet can I
snap a rapier, fire a pistol, jump a ditch, land a fish, for my brother
taught me. Still it’s girl! girl! sit by the fire and spin! dawdle!
dally!” The cream now spots up as far as Peggy’s chin and flecks its
dimple.
“Stop-at-home, nor stir-abroad! Smile, ogle!” each word emphasized with
heel and toe.
“And—” Lady Peggy now flops back into her chair, breathless, “wait on
man’s will and whims,—that, Chock, ’s what ’tis to be a woman.”
“Aye, ’tis,” assents the waiting woman. “But yet, My Lady, if I dared
make bold, there’s summat Your Ladyship might do, an My Lady, Your
Ladyship’s mother, came back home again from her visit to your uncle in
York.”
“Out with it!” says Peggy hopelessly, folding up her attempted letter
and tucking it in her reticule.
“Mayhap you could persuade, by much weeping and praying, falling into
swoons and such like, that Her Ladyship would take you up to London!
Once there, Sir Percy couldn’t keep his distance from you.”
Peggy looks at Chockey as if she were a vision sent from on high; then,
quickly succeeding derision curls her lip.
“My Lady mother take a squealing chit like me up to town! Never! She’d
say my manners weren’t fit, or my figger, or my wardrobe. Lud! Chock!
Bethink thee, lass, of my gowns in London town! and me no more
acquainted with the ways yonder, than our Brindle is with the family
pew!”
Lady Peggy walked out into the paddock, rubbed the cream from her
slippers on the turf; caressed the ponies; munched the sweet cake she
had in her apron-pocket, felt the keen sweet air blow over her hot
forehead, and saw, dancing ever before her mind’s eye, that insidious
sweet suggestion of “going up to London.”
How did one go up to London?
In the coach: aye to be sure; and the coach left the “Mermaid” in the
village every Tuesday and Thursday at five in the morning. The coach!
The splendid coach, a-swinging on its springs like a gigantic cradle;
the postillions a-snapping their whips, the coachman a-cracking his long
lash and a-shouting “All h’up for London!” and the ladies and
gentlemen—well armed, these last, in dread of the highwaymen on the
heath—all a-piling in and a-settling themselves; and the guards
a-tooting their horns, the landlady and the boots and the maids and the
hostlers all a-bowing and a-scraping and—off they go! for London
town—where Percy was a-pining and a-dying for her, so her twin writ in
his letter.
Well, Lady Peggy went in, clapt on a fresh gown and shoes, and never was
daughter more tender and patient with crabbed, gouty, crusty dad than
she all through that lovely day. Playing backgammon; spelling out the
newspaper; trouncing the cat when it jumped on His Lordship’s leg;
blowing the fire; wheeling his chair from hither to yon; stroking the
bald head; combing the white whiskers; and finally said she,
“Daddy, London’s a very big sort of a place, now, isn’t it?”
The Earl nods, coddling his leg into the slip of sunshine that’s walking
westerly away from him.
“My brother lodges, so he says, at the corner of Holywell Road and Lark
Lane; tell me, dad, where should that be now?” Lady Peggy has a careless
air, and flecks a buzzing fly out of His Lordship’s bowl of porridge.
“Eh?” pursues she, “is’t for instance, in the city, or nigh London
Bridge, or where the quality lives, or toward Southwark, or where?”
“Rot me!” cries His Lordship, looking up at his daughter in surprise,
“what’s my poppet got into her pretty head now, forsooth? Tut, tut,
girl, what’s town to thee, or its bearings? hey? stick thy eye into thy
churn an’ keep thy hand on the dasher,—’twere better’n all the shops in
Piccadilly, or all the fops at Court.”
“Slow, dad! I was only askin’ of my twin’s whereabouts. Shops and fops
are not dizzyin’ your Peggy, you may swear; ’tis my brother, Sir, of
whom I’d learn!”
“’Twere better chase the scoundrel out’n my head, Peg, than hammer him
in! A lad with every chance here in the county to raise his house, and
make a good match with a nice plump girl, havin’ land joining his own;
but no! Up and off to town to starve and scratch!”
The Earl pommels the floor with his stick, causing the cat to leap into
the air.
“Let him die in want! Let him freeze, thirst, come to the gallows, say
I! For such as leaves plenty to pursue want, gets no sympathy from me!”
“He ain’t begged for’t yet, dad,” says Peggy very mildly. “All I was
a-wonderin’ was this: When my brother took the coach at the Mermaid that
mornin’ you mind? how far off the inn where he alighted was the lodgin’
at the corner of Holywell Road and Lark Lane?—eh, dad? Surely”—and here
Lady Peggy knelt and stroked his lordship’s gouty member, and her voice
positively trembled, doubtless with excess of filial zeal and devotion.
“Surely,” resumed she, “you, who were, I dare be sworn”—such arch eyes
as Lady Peggy now made!—“a fine gallant not so many years ago, must
remember that,—don’t you?”
“Let’s see, let’s see,” responds His Lordship, rubbing his head. “They
set ye down at the King’s Arms, nigh the Bridge, Southwark Bridge, yes;
Well! Damme! I ought to know! Lark Lane? A devil of a hole; why, girl!
it’s not a quarter hour’s trot from the inn, but it’s a beastly
environment. Gad! that son of mine chooses pens, ink and writing-paper
there, rather than—”
“Lady Belinda here, weight fourteen stone; acres two thousand; guineas,
countless; temper, amazin’; years, untold! ha! ha! ha! Oh, daddy!” Lady
Peggy springs up and dances about a minute in most genuine gaiety, then
she seizes her father’s head between her palms and hugs and kisses him
with much grateful warmth; then flops down a-coddling of the gout again;
laughing, giggling, pinching puss, and saying,—
“Daddy, drop London! Care I no more for’t. Know I quite enough. Let’s
chat of aught else in the world, until you fall a-napping, which will be
soon now, guessing by the shadows.”
’Twas very soon.
Then Lady Peggy tiptoed off to her chamber; then she pulled the rope
that rang in the kitchen, and presently Chockey came, chopper and bowl
in hand, checkered apron over white one; for serving maids were scarce
in Kennaston Hall, footmen there were none; butler there was when he was
not doing t’other half his duty at the stables.
“Come hither, Chockey,” says her mistress in a whisper, with a beckon.
“Shut the door; go on with choppin’ your leeks and carrots, cook’ll want
’em for the soup,—but listen, Chock; unlock your ears Jane Chockey, as
never you did before in your life.”
Chockey bobs as she chops, leaning against the headpost, for support of
her occupation, and also of her curiosity.
“You know my mother’s box, the small one that was re-covered last spring
with the skin of the red calf that died natural? Bickers put it on with
a gross of brass nails?”
Chockey again bobs.
“Put into it,” continues Lady Peggy, “a change of linen for yourself and
me, two night-rails,” Chockey’s eyes dilate, “my gray taffeta gown with
the flowered petticoat, my green hood and kerchief; powder, patch-box,
lavender, musk, pins, needles; my red silken hose; your Sunday cap and
sleeves”—Chockey’s chopper ceases to work, and the bed-post creaks. “All
of which,” continues her mistress, “is but prelude to saying: ‘I’m going
up to London by to-morrow’s coach, and I’m takin’ you with me!’”
“Madam!” Down goes the bowl, leeks, carrots, chopper and all a-spilling
over the floor.
“Aye,” says Peggy calmly, “gather up thy mess, Chock, and to work with
the duds. Lay out my Levantine gown, my blue kerchief, my black silk
hose, my brown cloak; and, from my mother’s press, take the thick fall
of Brussels lace and the brown bonnet it’s tied to, and bring ’em
hither; put them under the bed beside thy trundle so’s my father’ll not
see ’em when he stops to bid me good-night. Borrow cook’s hat she bought
at the Fair when she was young, and her delaine veil for thyself; for,
so appareled as not to be recognized, will you, dear Chock, and my Lady
Peggy take the coach on April the twelfth. But, Chock, remember, mum’s
the word, an you let your tongue wag to my undoing, but the thousandth
part of a syllable, your mistress and you part company forever! Go.”
Chockey picked up Lady Peggy’s waving hand between a pinch of her apron,
lest her onion-smelling fingers should foul so dainty a morsel, kissed
it, and off and obeyed, speechless from surprise and veneration, both.
At night’s fall,—the Earl, somnolent again from fire’s warmth and the
port he would take, despite the surgeon’s orders to the contrary,—Lady
Peggy, Chockey in her wake, purse in hand, went scouting through the
kitchen-garden, the paddocks, the cowyard to the stable where Bickers’s
pipe shone in the gloaming like a fire-gem as he dodged and lurched
after a refractory colt.
Bickers, albeit sometimes the slave of beer, was all times Lady Peggy’s
abject, and it took no effort nor persuasion to gain him to her will. He
took his orders amiably,—they were to secure two places in the London
mail for to-morrow morning, and strictly to hold his peace both now and
forever about the whole concern.
Peggy gave him the price of the seats and with wise Castle-mistress
foresight, she showed Bickers a sovereign beside.
“And Bickers,” said Lady Peggy, “considering that the devil walks abroad
often in the Mermaid’s tap-room, I am told, I’ll keep the sovereign for
you ’til you come back, lest he rob you of it, eh?”
“Well, My Lady,” said Bickers; “a whole sovereign, My Lady, ain’t often
seen out of the quality’s pockets, and the devil might think I’d stole
it, My Lady, and try to get it from me. Keep it, My Lady, keep it!”
With which the old man, having conquered the colt, set off for the
village by a side-path all too well known to his tread. Presently by the
spark in his pipe-bowl the two women saw that he had turned back; that,
as he came close to them, he clapped his thumb over the glow, and,
“My Lady Peggy,” mumbled he sheepishly.
“Whatever is’t, Bickers?” cries his mistress in alarm.
“Naught to fright ye, My Lady, only it’s been on my mind these many days
to tell you as the letter you sent me with to Sir Percy de Bohun—”
“Well, well?” Lady Peggy’s words came with a gasp, as the old man dead
stops.
“Go on Bickers, I say!” the mistress’s foot stamps with a thud on the
damp earth.
“Askin’ Your Ladyship’s parding, the devil caught me that time at the
Kennaston Arms, My Lady, and he clawed that tight, My Lady, that I
couldn’t stir, and—and—”
Peggy now stooped, seized a billet of wood as big as her arm and gave
Bickers a sound drub across his hands. The pipe fell in bits, the ash
glowed; Bickers jumped, so did Chockey.
“‘And, and’ what?” drubbed Peggy with a will. “Not so much as ha’ penny
of the sovereign, unless you out with the whole truth!”
“I will! I will!” cried the old man. “Sir Percy never got the letter, My
Lady, until the very day I seen him on the long roan a-ridin’ for’s life
away from the Castle yonder,” and Bickers jerked his thumb toward the
house as he now made off.
The devil did not catch Bickers that night; he earned his sovereign
before the moon rose.
As he sped, Lady Peggy took Chockey’s proffered arm.
“You see, Chock, you see, how we that are born to wear petticoats are no
better’n puppets! a-dancin’ and a-cryin’; or a-kneelin’ and a-weepin’,
as it happens to suit the whim of what, Chock? Who, Chock? Tell me,
Chock!” cries Lady Peggy excitedly.
“Lawk, My Lady, that can I not!”
“A man, Chock, a man! it’s a him that pulls the strings, girl, and all
we’ve to do is to simper and jerk this way, that way. To think,” here
Peggy’s voice falters, for they’ve gained the house and are clambering
the back stairs in the dark. “To think that Bickers, Bickers! should ha’
made me treat my worshiped Percy like a hog! Yes, Chockey, like a hog!
even that name ain’t vile enough for me. But, oh, an I reach London in
safety, and gain my brother’s chambers, and learn from him that ’tis for
very love of me Sir Percy’s canterin’ to perdition, then, Chock, Lady
Peggy’ll know how to spell paradise for him she’s riskin’ much to hear
the truth about.”
“But, My Lady,” ventures Chockey, who, notwithstanding the blissful
prospect of seeing London, still had a practical eye toward the dangers
that beset the path, both thereto, and once there.
“But, My Lady, supposin’ we can’t find Lord Kennaston’s lodgin’s;
supposin’ he’s away from home when we get there; or, a-havin’ a party,
or ain’t got no place for us to sleep; or suppose—”
“Suppose me no supposes, Chock!” Lady Peggy shakes out the Levantine
gown from its wrinkles. “If London were the black pit, and an army of
Satans a-sittin’ grinnin’ around the brim, still would I go and find out
for myself if it’s for me he pines—or, if Lady Diana Weston is up in
London too!” With which Her Ladyship gives the petticoat, she takes from
its peg against the morrow, a somewhat emphatic, not to say malicious
shake.
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]