_In the which Sir Percy de Bohun’s own man
goes on his master’s errand to Kennaston
Castle, crossing Sir Robin
McTart on the road._
Somewhat later in the day, as the sun peeped in at the narrow windows of
Kennaston’s garret in Lark Lane, it shone straight down upon the face of
Peg’s twin, and also upon that of Sir Percy de Bohun, just returned,
after a tub and a grooming at the hands of his faithful man Grigson, who
even now was performing like offices for the young host. The other
gentlemen had long since been set upon their legs and fetched off to
their homes by their men.
Percy held his chin between his palms, his elbows resting upon the table
where cards and glasses still littered.
“’Sdeath, Kennaston,” cries he, without moving. “I can live this fashion
no longer! To be shot like a partridge would be better. Flouted by
Peggy, derided by this upstart Sir Robin, who, by my life! is a pretty
fellow all said and done, is past endurance! Give me a pistol, Grigson,
and I’ll put an end of myself now and here.”
To this passionate declaration, Kennaston merely makes answer by lifting
an arm above the tub, waving it in the air, and, as Grigson scrubs him
down, wagging his wet head and remarking:
“Don’t be damned ridiculous, Percy, and pray hold your peace, since I am
at this moment composing an ode to my mistress’s smile.”
“Your mistress be hanged, Sir! What know you of love to sit in a tub and
make verses to her?”
“I know enough of’t,” sighs the host, “to have been in like case with
yourself any time this twelve-month! and ’tis a monstrous thing for you
to thus impeach me, when ’tis you whom My Lady Diana favors rather than
myself.”
“Lady Diana be damned!” cries Percy rising. “She’s a coquette, Sir, and
at bottom adores you, as does the fish the bait the while she plays and
sidles ’round it, being sure in th’ end she’ll swallow it, hook and
all.”
“Very fine, i’ faith, yet while I sigh, you’re the one she smiles upon.
Oh, Percy! Had I but a fortune! Could I but make my name in letters!
Then perchance I’d stand my chance; but as ’tis,”—Peg’s twin fetches a
sigh that sends the water splashing about the wine-stained floor.
“As ’tis, Sir, counsel me, an you love me. Shall I hie me to Kennaston
and wait upon your sister?”
“Write her a letter of fire and sword, and blood and famine; stuff it
full of oaths, protests, suicides, murders, as is a Christmas pudding of
plums! There’s quill, ink and paper to your hand.”
“I’ll do it and send it by Grigson on my fastest horse this day. I
should have the answer before Friday?”
“Aye, you should,” allows the host with an evident reservation. “Now,
for God’s sake, Sir, stop cackling and let me finish my ode.”
Which he did a-sitting in his bath, while Grigson dressed his wig.
The toilet, and the letter, and the poem, were all three finished at
once, and, without more ado, Sir Percy dispatched his man with the
missive to Lady Peggy.
“Come not back until you deliver it in person,” quoth the lover; “an you
show yourself minus an answer, I’ll ship you to the Colonies by the next
packet.”
After seeing him off the two young men repaired to the coffee-house they
frequented, and there the first news that greeted them was an account,
exaggerated to the last degree, as was the fashion of those times as
well as these, of “Lady D—— W——’s adventure with footpads in Lark Lane,
where her chair crossed en route to her mantua-maker’s; of how Sir R——n
McT——t had rescued Her Ladyship and Her Ladyship’s Abigail from the
clutches of these villains at the hazard of his own life; had,
single-handed, put the whole gang to flight; and this, although
suffering from a severe wound in the right wrist, the which this gallant
young scion of a noble name had received in an affair of honor with Sir
P——y de B——n only that very night previous.” In point of fact gossip
cried, and print set forth, that “the town was ringing with the valor of
Sir R——n McT——t, whose fame as a buck and man of fashion was no less
than his expertness at the saving of Beauty in distress. For be it known
that no other personage than the renowned Beau B——l had set his seal
upon Sir R——n’s mould by begging from him the pattern of his cravat and
the mode of his knot. That Sir R——n was now a guest at Mr. B——l’s home,
and, being up in town for the season, let ladies fair beware and set
their most adorable caps, for ’twas well understood so fine a young
gentleman was nowhere else to be met with, nor one of such courage and
skill at cards, saddle, or the dance.”
The which as he read it gave Sir Percy no great food for congratulation,
but the rather caused him to sink into a kind of melancholy from which
no effort of his companion could arouse him. Like a dullard he sat,
staring at the print or the walls, the livelong day, and far into the
night, waiting for Grigson’s return, and beside himself with a silent
jealous fury as each new entrance to the coffee-room gave his own
particular version of Sir Robin’s vogue.
The real little Sir Robin, meanwhile, on his journey down to Kennaston
in search of My Lady Peggy, had got some three hours’ start of the
faithful Grigson, and even now, he, for the first time in his life,
stood in the long, bare drawing-room of Kennaston Castle, tip-toeing to
the mirror, pulling his wig this way and that in instant expectation of
beholding the object of his passion, and rewarding her for her devotion
to him, so manifested in the person of the gentlemanly “Incognito” of
his last night’s experience.
Hark! Yes, her footstep on the stair, the swish of female garments, a
halt at the door. Sir Robin minced the length of the room and, reaching
the entrance, found himself face to face with Chockey!
“Your mistress, bud, your mistress! Here!” thriftily pressing a shilling
into Chock’s palm. “Go tell her I am consumed with impatience, and eaten
up with desire for a glimpse of Her Ladyship’s form, and figure, and
face. Go! Go!”
But Chockey does not budge.
“What ails the wench? Deaf?” cries Sir Robin, pinching her arm, for
which he gets back a smart slap on his cheek.
“Tut! tut! What manners is that, and you handsome enough to kiss,” adds
the little Baronet diplomatically. “Come now, off and implore Lady Peggy
to hasten.”
“Her Ladyship’s from home,” finally Chockey says.
“What! Not at Kennaston?” Sir Robin’s sharp eye can not help peering
regretfully at the shilling Chockey twirls in her fingers.
“In Kent, doubtless, a-visiting her godmother, and a-hoping to see me
there! eh, in Kent?”
“I don’t know, Sir,” replies the girl with a hint of tears in her voice.
“Don’t know! What do you mean?” exclaims Sir Robin suspiciously.
“I means, Sir,” fires up Chock, “that My Lady ain’t by way of telling me
her matters. His Lordship, her father’s down with his leg; Her
Ladyship’s mother is a-visitin’ the sick in York. As they supposes, Sir,
Lady Peggy is in Kent, also, a-visitin’ the sick, Her Ladyship’s
godmother.”
Chockey curtsies and turns to the door, out of which Sir Robin
reluctantly goes, putting spurs to his horse, dining at the Mermaid and
then chartering a post-chaise to take him, sans delay, to Kent.
He crossed but one traveler on his way from Kennaston Castle to the
village inn; a man of stout and comely build on a steed that took even
Sir Robin’s dull eye, so was its blood and lineage marked in its long
splendid gait.
This horseman too pulled rein at Kennaston, sprang from his saddle, and,
as Bickers hobbled up to take his beast, Mr. Grigson, for ’twas he,
jumped up on the steps and caught Chockey’s apron-string just as it was
fluttering in the closing door.
“Hey, missus!” cried he, twirling Chock about and chucking her under the
chin, which was rewarded by as smart a slap as that which had erstwhile
burned Sir Robin’s cheek.
“I must see Lady Peggy Burgoyne on the spot, without ceremony or
a-waitin’ ’ere coolin’ my heels. I’ve a letter for Her Ladyship meanin’
life and death to my master, Sir Percy de Bohun.”
“Have you?” says Chock, looking with admiring eyes upon the smart livery
of Mr. Grigson, dust and mud-stained though it was.
“Yes, straight from London town, where ’pon my life, there’s no sweeter
mug than hers I sees before me now!”
“Lawk!” cries Chock, appeased. “But my mistress is from home.”
“Not here! where is she then? A-visiting in the neighborhood?” Mr.
Grigson turns on his heel and chirrups for his mount.
“No,” returns Chockey. “She ain’t.”
“Well, whereabouts is she? For if it’s as far as the Injies, Grigson’s
bound to find her and deliver this love-letter!”
“I don’t know where she is, Sir,” whimpers Chock.
“There, there! Don’t be a-cryin’ and a-sobbin’, Duckie, I ain’t gone,
yet! Go ask His Lordship the address; bring me a mug of ale, and I’ll
give you a kiss.”
“Drat you, Sir,” cries Chockey. “Don’t you be talkin’ like that!” Yet
sidles she quite cozily in the encircling arm of the admirable Grigson.
“His Lordship, nor Her Ladyship, nor no one else knows where my mistress
is.”
“What! eloped? Scuttled! Flown the nest! When? How? Where?” cries Sir
Percy’s man thunder-struck. “She ain’t gone with Sir Percy! Can it be
with Sir Robin McTart?”
Chockey shook her head vigorously.
“Look a-here,” says Mr. Grigson, now regarding the girl attentively.
“Damme, but you knows where she is. Tell me and I’ll give you two kisses
and ten pounds to boot.”
“Oh, Sir!” cries Chock, pushing away both kisses and pounds with one and
the same hand. “I does know; leastways I knows my young lady’s up in
London, but whereabouts in that pit of sin and willainy, I can’t say,
nor who she’s with, nor how long she’s goin’ to stop; only she charged
me make His Lordship and Her Lady mother believe she was gone to Kent,
back again to see her godmother. There! I’ve been bursting to tell some
one, and you’ll swear you’ll keep it secret, won’t you, Sir?”
Grigson obligingly nods and caresses Chock’s arm.
“Thank the Lord it’s out o’ me!” adds she.
“Amen,” ejaculates Sir Percy’s man with fervor, at the same time fixing
a contemplative and shrewd eye on his companion.
“Her Ladyship up in town,—where, with whom, you doesn’t know; her father
and mother thinks she’s in Kent; and you’re cock-sure she ain’t runned
away with Sir Robin McTart?”
“That I am!” cries the girl, warmly. “Little squint-eyed monster!”
“Eh?” exclaims Mr. Grigson, who had beheld the supposed Sir Robin at
Kennaston’s rooms the night before last, and clearly recollected that no
such description fitted the slim, elegant, handsome young buck who had
got a prick in the wrist from his own master’s rapier.
“Monster! I said,” repeats the girl. “Hist, I’ll tell you more,” says
she, drawing close, hand over mouth. “You’ve seen the puppy. He was here
anon, a-askin’ and a-tearin’ as to where My Lady was!”
Grigson stares.
“Aye, you must have met him on the road not ten rods off the Castle
gates, for, as you galloped in, the undersized cockatrice cantered out.
Lady Peggy wed with him, indeed!”
Grigson is now (recalling his having crossed a small squint-eyed
gentleman as he came) morally certain that Chockey has been well drilled
in her part, and that Lady Peggy has indeed run away up to London with
Sir Robin McTart. So much for his thoughts; he says:
“I did. Fortunately I beheld the personage what you describes. Your
humble servant, missus. I must be off and no time for love-makin’
to-day,” turning quickly on his heel and tossing sixpence to Bickers who
holds his bridle at the stone.
“I ain’t ‘missus,’” remarks she plaintively.
“But you will be some day, lass, or my name ain’t James Grigson. Here’s
to you and many thanks for putting me on the right track!”
“Tush, Sir! For the love of heaven and of anybody else you thinks a deal
of, find my young lady!”
“Trust me,” flings Mr. Grigson from his saddle. “I’ll find her and him
as holds her in durance wile!”
Kissing his fingers to Chockey, off puts Sir Percy’s own man to the
Mermaid; stables his horse; hires a fresh one; claps spurs, and up to
town as fast as four spavined bay legs can carry him, firmly convinced
that he has solved the greater portion of the mystery, and that his
master’s lady fair is indeed, beyond a doubt, the bride of the gallant
Sir Robin, or mayhap his unwilling prisoner.
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