While the Exquisite Mob circled round the central fane of AEsculapius,
Mr. Charles Lovely had enough lack of taste and orthodoxy to make a
heretick promenade in the low-lying water-meadows at the foot of the
town.
He had knocked three times at old General Morton's house in the Western
Colonnade and delivered Miss Courteen's Valentine into the hands of Miss
Sukey Morton's maid. She, poor soul, wore round her neck a brass button
attached to a piece of string still reminiscent in tarred perfume of the
Dorsetshire jetty down which she had wandered a year ago. It was
streaking her breast with verdigris as if in some way prophetick of a
heart that all too soon would be tarnished more irreparably by that
faithless lover beyond the seas.
Consequently Miss Morton's maid received the paquet with a sympathetick
reverence learnt in long morning dreams when the sunlight splashed the
walls of her garret in waves and ripples of faint gold.
"Any name, your honour?" she asked.
"I believe not."
"And no message?" she paused in bright-eyed hope of an assignation which
was to be the first step in the softening of her mistress' hard and
imperious little heart.
"None at all so far as I know, my dear," and Mr. Lovely passed on down
the deserted street towards the meadows.
The little maid stood on the steps regarding him.
"Tes a Valentoine surely," she thought, and held the envelope between
her and the discoverer sun. A red heart glowed through the paper, a red
heart pierced by a flaming arrow.
"And who'd ha' thought she had a bow and her be so spoitful."
She sighed as she gazed after Mr. Lovely.
"He do look proper and happy surely."
The elegant young gentlemen had, in fact caught some of the harlequin
grace of a fine morning in the prime of the year as he avoided the
cracks in the paving stones to bring the meadows closer and make the
Colonnade less intolerably long.
"Wi' sech a rosy spark, for sure, she've no call to be jealous of me,"
thought the little maid, as her soul went winging over the great
Atlantick whose roar filled the silence of her mind, to meet the soul of
her sailor-lover who was at the moment sitting upon an alien beach in
the company of two dusky wantons and a bottle of Jamaica rum.
Mr. Lovely turned the corner and the little maid vanished at the sound
of a bell summoning her to tie one of her mistress' pink bows to a more
modish angle.
Our hero, for since perfect confidence should exist between us, I will
no longer attempt to conceal his identity, continued to walk to the tune
of a lyrick always provided the measure did not compel him to step upon
one of the fatal cracks. Soon he came to a road which ended in green
fields sodden with winter rains, but soft and grateful after the arid
pavement.
Face to face with the pale blue February sky, he took up more earnestly
the intention of the half-fledged songs that occupied his brain. Strange
songs they were, fanciful and unrestrained in the eyes of their author
and his contemporaries who did not recognize in them an echo of one Mr.
Herrick, dead, and now forgotten by the world of literature. His mother
had read the poems to him as a child. The _Hesperides_ of 1648 was the
only book owned by the lodging-house in Westminster where a dingy year
of childhood had dragged out its course. In his youth, he had loved
their sharp, elusive harmonies, and when he attained years of
composition, could never free his own lyricks from extravagance so
acquired, however assiduously he attempted to follow Augustan models. To
his credit, be it added, he was always sincerely ashamed of his
barbarick numbers and, as he grew older, was often successful in
expressing the heart of a riotous evening in a clear-cut drinking song.
Perhaps this vain pursuit of formalism in words made him neglect his
private life, which ran a wild career checked by nothing stronger than
the strings of his purse.
As he leaned over a stile and watched the cattle in the meadows, out of
the past there came like an arrow of song shot from the gloomy depths of
London,
_Ye have been fresh and green,
Ye have been filled with flowers,
And ye the walks have been
Where maids have spent their hours._
But Mr. Lovely was dissatisfied. He felt the sentiment would have
reached a larger dignity, a more epigrammatick crispness, a more
trenchant elusiveness, if it had never strayed beyond the bonds of an
heroick couplet. He deplored his ineradicable early impressions and
vowed to study the classick models with a still more fierce ardour of
imitation.
But having formed this resolution, our hero was just as discontented as
before. The sun shining into his heart, found no reflection there.
"These d--d late nights are killing me," he complained, ascribing his
discontent to fatiguing sessions of play. He bent down to pluck a starry
celandine and wasted a few minutes in trying to find out whether he
liked butter. The little golden oracle told him he did, but as he was
well aware of this fact already, only the flower benefited by an
enhanced reputation for infallibility. Nevertheless it was flicked
carelessly over the hedge where it lay stalk upwards in the shade like
many another prophet before it. To confess the truth at once, Mr. Lovely
had only used the butter to deceive himself, for round about his
red-heeled shoes were eight golden petals which seem to prove that a
more intimate question had been asked, and answered unfavourably if we
may judge by the banishment of the flower. To console his wounded
susceptibleness, he determined to smoke a pipe and, having made up his
mind, found the long clay stem was broken. With a pithy condemnation of
things in general, he tried to establish the reason of his depressed
spirits. Then he discovered his spirits were not depressed, merely
unsettled. Burgundy of course. Hazard without a doubt. Should he try
Chalybeate? The d--l! not if he knew it. Should he try Chalybeate? She
wore a very engaging swansdown tippet. What a fool he had been to come
to these meadows! Should he try Chalybeate? The half-fledged lyrick was
strangled: the landskip seemed pretentiously bright in proportion to the
wintry air which was still abroad and, to crown all, he felt an
extraordinary desire to drink a tankard of ale with Mr. Anthony Clare at
the _Blue Boar_. The latter might know who wore swansdown in the
Crescent. With a sigh of relief, he wrung this admission out of himself,
shivered and turned his face towards Curtain Wells, whose houses
clustered like a swarm of bees around the sacred hill.
The _Blue Boar_, whither Mr. Charles Lovely was bound, was a hostelry of
the conventionally ample type. The rooms with exterior rows of galleries
were built round a large quadrangle to which coaches and stage waggons
were admitted through an arch that was only just high enough for the
vehicles of a more recent pattern. The fixed population consisted of
innumerable plump and shapely chambermaids, innumerable dried-up
hostlers and grooms, and a certain number of sedate waiters who were all
clothed in the same shade of rusty black, and all of whom wished they
had settled earlier in life to become footmen. However this canker of
thwarted ambition never prevented them from handling anything from a
soup-tureen to a guinea-piece with reverence and precision.
The host, Jeremy Daish, was neither round nor rubicund. On the contrary
he was remarkably sallow and, in his suit of cinnamon cloth, bore a
vague likeness to a well-seasoned Cremona violin. He was the builder,
owner, and inventor of the famous _Daish's Rooms_ adjoining the Inn and,
as the latter served for a recognized adjunct to the more official
_Assembly Rooms_, Mr. Daish became a somewhat mildewed counterpart of
the great Beau himself, a mezzotint ill-executed of a famous painting in
oils. His back was so often crouched in servility that it had acquired a
permanent stoop. Rumour said that years ago Mr. Daish was often seen
fiddle in hand at West-country fairs and wakes, and supported the legend
by pointing out when a lady of the extremist fashion and quality graced
his dancing floor with a pair of very high red heels, the solemn
innkeeper would steal to the Dais of the musicians and, taking an
instrument, would himself bob and play my lady through a minuet with
considerable Gusto and Bravura.
The _Blue Boar_ was patronized by a select company of fashionable young
gentlemen who lent the old hostelry something of the tone of White's or
Almack's. Bagmen were excluded from the wing occupied by these elegant
patrons, and though from time to time one of the former, with a merry
reputation, would be invited to take wine with the quality in return for
the tale of a famous and gross adventure, it was distinctly understood
that nothing low or vulgar was allowed to penetrate beyond a certain
doorway.
Beau Ripple himself would saunter down towards twilight and exhort his
youthful subjects on the folly of vice, the futility of play and the
obligation to drink the waters at half-past eight o'clock. Mr. Ripple
was esteemed a Puritan, but such a genteel Puritan that the young
gentlemen, subdued by the length of his waistcoats and his
irreproachable ties and solitaires, listened to him willingly enough,
and overpowered by the orthodoxy of his wigs and buckles, the fullness
of his shirts and the size of his cuffs, heeded his warnings sometimes.
Mr. Lovely strolled through the archway into the yard all fresh and
shining after the morning swill. Along the galleries, the chambermaids
were hurrying about their work, and the figure of Mrs. Grindle, the
housekeeper, glittering and jingling with keys, warned him no loitering
in the galleries would be tolerated at that hour of the day. Two horses
were being groomed in the courtyard, but as he had discussed all their
points both with their owners and the hostlers at least half a dozen
times before, he was not inclined to pursue the outworn theme farther.
"Mr. Clare about?" he inquired.
"Han't seen him, y'r honour," answered one of the workers.
"'Es that Mr. Clare?" asked the other.
"Yes, my good fellow, have you seen him?"
"Rode over to Baverstock Regis to see a maiden aunt," the man replied.
"Ho! ho! ho!" roared the first, "dang me if that bean't the best I ever
hard. Ho! Ho! ho!" and convulsed with merriment, the man slapped his
tight-breeched thighs with frequency and vigour.
"You make the very d--l of a noise, Sirrah," said Mr. Lovely fretfully.
"I axe y'r honour's pardon, but when I hard Jock there talking of maiden
aunts--ho--ho--ho! and when I minds that shaapely--ah! well it doan't do
to mention no naames, but it come over me sudden to laugh," and with
this apology, the humorous hostler picked up his mare's near fore-leg,
and continued to chuckle at intervals for the rest of the day.
Mr. Lovely began to think Tony Clare was confoundedly young, and when
one young man begins to think another young man confoundedly young, it
is usually a convincing proof that the pensive young man is deep in
love.
"What's a fellow to do?" he sighed as he turned into the coffee-room. It
was empty, so he called for a draught of ale, put his feet on the window
seat and surveyed the passers-by. He wondered what had become of his
friends, and why the d----l all the world was gone mad because the sun
shone with unwonted brilliance for the middle of February. Then he
remembered it was Valentine day and amused himself with the manufacture
of paper darts which he shot at the prettiest young women in range.
Unluckily, in an attempt to pierce the ripe heart of buxom Miss Page who
assisted at the cook-shop, he wounded the Rector on the nose. This set
him moralizing on the fortune of Love. Could anything be more
incongruous than Love and the Rector. Yet why not? We are all targets of
a dimpled nudity. The phrase caught his fancy. Numberless Cupids in
attitudes of attack floated before his mind's eye. "Demme!" thought Mr.
Lovely, "my brain is like an Italian ceiling. Targets of a dimpled
nudity!" He flung back the lattice to its utmost extent and leaned out
to the morning whence the chatter of the world without floated into the
sunny room.
"Everybody is monstrous good-humoured," he concluded. But somehow it was
no longer amusing to quiz the young woman in Mrs. Tabby's ribband-shop
through his ivory rimmed perspective. Somehow since yesterday her
forearm had grown coarser.
"All the world's growing old," he grumbled disconsolately. But the world
would not be vapoured, and laughed and chattered and bobbed and flirted
and chirped with all the selfishness of a world that is always young in
defiance of the moods of her individuals.
Suddenly the mob of Cupids faded from his mind and the World at which he
was scoffing ceased to exist. Surely at the very end of the High Street,
he could discern something which was slowly assuming the magic shape of
a swansdown tippet. His heart began to beat very fast and he felt the
rushing crimson flood his cheeks. Life was wrapped in swansdown, as,
through clouds of the airy texture, his soul soared to unimaginable
heights. Then came the descent and, waking as from a dream, he found
himself staring down into a pair of wide blue eyes. In his embarrassment
he knocked over a pot of jacynths and, above the noise of the fall,
heard himself telling a Swansdown Muff he had delivered the paquet.
Could anything be more enchanting than the warning fore-finger, save
the lips to which it was lifted? Could anything better console his
enforced silence than the knowledge that between him and her existed a
secret? The swansdown tippet and swansdown muff had vanished, but
fragments of broken Terra Cotta strewed the pavement. The swansdown
tippet and swansdown muff had floated away to some fairyland of their
own, but a blue jacynth perfumed the air.
Certainly the idlers of Curtain Wells had a fruitful subject for an
afternoon's debate in the sight of young Mr. Lovely climbing out of the
coffee-room window. Besides, if that were not amazing enough, the idlers
were immediately diverted by the aspect of young Mr. Lovely gathering up
the remains of a shattered flower-pot and clasping a bruised jacynth to
his silk waistcoat. They all agreed the incident had no explanation, and
were even stirred out of their perpetual lethargy to muster round the
entrance of the _Blue Boar_ in order to verify a daring speculation that
he was going to carry the fragments within.
"Good G----!" said Mr. Ripple who was approaching the archway from the
other side. "Good G----, sir, are you mad?" To Mr. Ripple the shock was
great. He had aspirations for Mr. Lovely. To be sure, he was wild, an
extravagant young dog, but then he possessed an inimitable assurance of
manner, a pretty talent for polite verse-making, and a consummate taste
in brocades. The Beau of late had often pondered the choice of his
successor. He had aspirations for Mr. Lovely and now he saw his
favourite positively panting (the most ungenteel motion and fatal to the
fall of a waistcoat), not merely panting but smeared with mould, hugging
potsherds, and apparently quite unmoved by his degradation. Is it
wonderful that Mr. Ripple cried,
"Good G----, sir, are you mad?"
"Yes," shouted Mr. Lovely.
"Or drunk?"
"Yes," shouted Mr. Lovely.
As he seemed inclined to answer every question in the affirmative, the
Beau remarked he wished to see a representative group of the young
gentlemen at the Blue Boar upon a matter of the gravest social and
civick importance.
Our hero ejaculated, "With you in the twinkling of a bedpost," and raced
across the yard, up the first staircase, along the first gallery and
into the last room.
A light broke upon Mr. Ripple's bewilderment.
"He has discovered some prehistorick relicks. Probably Cinerary Urn, a
Lunette or possibly a gold coin of Rome."
In pleasant anticipation, the Beau who was an intimate friend of Mr.
Sylvanus Urban, beheld the folded copper-plate illustrating the
discovery and the rounded sentences on the opposite page of the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ in which the excavations would be carefully
recorded by Horace Ripple.
"This must assuage my wrath," he decided by the door of the coffee-room.
To tell the truth, the Beau was on censure bent when he met our hero
outside the _Blue Boar_.
Already, that morning, he had alluded to the riotous nocturnal
behaviour, the assaults upon the watch, the fusilade of empty bottles,
but not being able to descry a single offender, he determined that
personal and individual remonstrance would be more efficacious. To the
_Blue Boar_ therefore, he went having first exchanged his suit of olive
green for one of black sattin unrelieved by silver and terminated by
ruffles whose cambrick fell in severe folds and condemnatory lines.
As he stepped from the Great House round the Crescent and along the High
Street, he passed in sombre eclipse upon the gaiety of subjects shining
with the reflection of his genteel rays.
Presently Mr. Lovely came back still bearing the marks of the potted
soil.
"Was it an Urn?"
Mr. Lovely looked surprized.
"A Lachrymatory perhaps? Or a Lunette? Or," Mr. Ripple grew breathless
with excitement, "not an Image of AEsculapius?"
"Pray, sir, are you trying to humour a madman? Because on my soul, I
don't know what you are driving at."
"So, sir, your late phrenzy was nothing more than the unbridled haste
and inconsiderate volition of youthful folly?" sternly demanded the
Beau.
"I 'faith, I knocked over one of old Daish's precious pots, and was
making haste to remove it from the region of his laments. That's all,
and there's my hand on't."
"You will pardon me," replied the Beau drawing back, "I have no
objection to shaking a hand stained by honest toil, but I have never
shaken a hand sullied by mere zest for uncleanliness."
"As you will, dear Beau," laughed Mr. Lovely.
The Beau was about to point an example to adorn his statement when he
was interrupted by the entrance of severe Mrs. Grindle clasping her nose
with one hand, and with the other holding at arm's length the offending
jacynth by a shred of its roots.
"Mr. Lovely, sir," she began and as our hero pulled forward a chair and
the Beau leaned back to listen, she continued, "I have known a cat
kitten in one of the maids' beds."
"How very distressing," murmured the Beau letting the firelight play in
the diamonds of his rings.
"But never, never," proclaimed Mrs. Grindle swelling like Mr. Handel's
_Largo_, "have I known a young gentleman want to turn his bachelor bed
into a ploughed field. Mr. Lovely, sir, I'll trouble you to say if this
is your planting or did you wish to insinuate that your bed was not made
this morning?"
"Mrs. Grindle, madam," replied the accused, "you have heard of beds and
you have heard of garden-beds. Mine is a garden-bed. A Parterre
impromptu, a Landskip in miniature, a Bucolick of slumber, a dimity
Eclogue. In a word--but pray, Mrs. Grindle, my dear Mrs. Grindle, out
of regard for me rehabilitate that jacynth without a word to Mr. Daish,
and I, out of regard for you, will certainly pay for the washing of the
bedspread."
Mr. Lovely smiled so very engagingly and looked so completely innocent
of any desire to insinuate anything except Mrs. Grindle's good-nature
that the housekeeper gave way, condescended to smile and, as she
retired, threw a quick glance in the direction of a mirrour to notice
the angle of her snowy cap.
Having reduced Mrs. Grindle to affableness, Mr. Lovely turned his smile
towards the Beau. The latter had watched with much satisfaction the
progress of his favourite's negociations, thinking to himself that a man
who could circumvent such a dragon as the housekeeper would be very well
able to keep in order the most self-assertive of Duchesses. He began to
relent his indignation and, as Lovely smiled at him, to see in his late
impetuousness no more than the natural activity of a jolly young man.
Moreover, for a certain reason, he had a genuine affection for the
rogue, and was glad to perceive his high spirits.
"I came here this morning in the hope of a serious conversation with
some of your friends. Are they--are they in the--er--taproom?"
"They're all gone after maids."
"Tut, tut, I wish I could make it plain that Curtain Wells exists for
the continence, not the encouragement of appetites."
"You must blame the sun, dear Beau."
"In view of the many pleasant hours I have spent basking in the warmth,
I should not presume to do anything so ungrateful. But I will remark
that the Sun in his human guises is not to be considered a beneficial
example to young men at a stage in the history of mankind when maidens
are no longer able to transform themselves into umbrageous laurels, thus
rendering impertinent and inconvenient what at first seemed appropriate
and inevitable. I allude, sir, to the legend of Apollo and Madam Daphne.
However, my dear Charles--" here the Beau laid three tapered jewelled
fingers upon the extremity of Mr. Lovely's left shoulder.
"You overwhelm me, sir, with your condescension. The omission of the
surname by Beau Ripple, is the bestowal of a title."
"Very well put, Charles," said the older man contentedly. "'Fore Gad!
you do me credit. Snuff, sir?"
Charles (we may follow the lead of Mr. Ripple) was now veritably
astonished. Never could he recall such an instance of the Beau's
condescension towards a man of his years; and he dipped his fingers into
the proffered snuff-box with greater bashfulness than he would have
displayed towards the powder-box of Titania.
"However, though the rest of our young gentlemen are--after maids," the
Beau stumbled over the crudity of the phrase, "I am happy to see that
you are engrossed by the seemlier pastime of horticulture." Was it fancy
or did Charles really see his mentor blow a tuft of swansdown from his
cuff? "I wish," the latter went on, "to remonstrate with you on the
indecorous character of your midnight entertainments. Owls, under
providence, are allowed to shriek and hoot after sundown, but there
seems no reason for extending to men the privilege accorded by a Divine
Creator to owls. In short, Mr. Lovely, there has been the--there has
been an atrocious hurly-burly in this house every night of late. Pray do
not interrupt me," he added as Charles made a protesting movement. "I
have the fullest Data for my general observations."
"Youth, dear Beau, hot-headed, open-handed Youth."
"Yes, yes, I know something of Youth's anatomy from a personal
experience of the happy state, but Youth, Mr. Lovely, is a mighty
inadequate justification for a circular scar on the forehead of one of
our most respected and silver-tongued watchmen--a scar inflicted by the
unconsumed but necessary concomitant of a quart of Burgundy."
"It was an accident, sir, young Tom Chalkley of the Foot----"
"I have observed, Mr. Lovely, that if one of these missiles happens to
strike the body against which it is aimed the result is invariably an
accident whereas if the missile goes wide of the mark it is a d----d
poor shot. But it cannot go on, Mr. Lovely. It shall not go on. The
residents acting in conjunction with the visitors reserve the right to
expel summarily any person who causes publick offence, and I, as their
accredited representative, should be in the highest degree culpable if I
allowed it to go on. Consequently, my dear Charles, I appeal to you as
to one possessed of some influence over the more violent spirits, to do
all in your power of persuasion to prevent it from going on."
Now as the successful quart bottle had been thrown by our hero, and as
he was usually the chief agent in promoting a disturbance, it is evident
that Mr. Ripple secured his unparalleled authority as much by tact as by
severity.
"Dear Beau, you shall be obliged," said Charles, "and now pray tell me
who wears a white swansdown tippet and lives hard by the Great House."
"I am not accustomed to observe the minor variations in feminine
costume," answered Mr. Ripple with some austerity.
"Nay! But a hermit froze to his psalter must have noticed her,"
protested the younger man.
"The analogy is incomplete."
"I shall be at the Assembly on Monday night."
"You could not be more worthily employed."
"And I shall effect an introduction under your patronage."
"That very much depends."
"On my good behaviour?" asked Charles.
"On the immunity of my watchmen from further assaults."
"Dear Beau, we are all targets of a--" he hesitated, "of a dimpled
nudity or an empty bottle. Love and a bottle, there's the world."
"The flesh, I think, sir."
"I 'faith, Satan must have a fine sieve if he can separate the pair."
"I am no theologian."
"Then you'll present me?" persisted Charles.
"You will protect my watchmen?" demanded the Beau.
"On Monday night?" urged Charles.
"Every night," added the Beau. "Unconditional surrender is my ultimatum.
But I hope I know how to display generosity towards a vanquished enemy.
You will attend the Publick Breakfast awarded to Sir Jeremy Dummer?"
"Truly I----"
"Tut, tut, I insist. My old friend Lord Cinderton arrives to-day with
his invalid son, George Harthe-Brusshe. I should like the young man to
see your cherry and trout-pink cuffs."
"Too unseasonable a combination of colours for breakfast."
"Pshaw! your appearance will give a fillip to his impoverished
appetite."
"I 'faith, I believe I know how to flavour my conversation with Attick
salt, but I swear I never dressed myself for the Role of condiment."
The conversation was soon entirely of sauces.
_Chapter the Fourth_