The Coffee-room of the _Blue Boar_ wore a remarkably cheerful aspect on
the evening of the day on which we have seen something of Beau Ripple's
methods. There had been a splendid run from Oaktree Common across the
downs to Deadman's Coppice, where a short check only lent a spice to
that glorious final run across Baverstock Ridge until they killed just
outside Farmer Hogbin's famous barn. And after the death what delicious
musick acclaimed the deed--the baying of hounds, the chatter of maids,
the clatter of horses' hoofs, the guffaws of Lieutenant Blewforth, the
still louder guffaws of Farmer Hogbin mounted on his raw-boned hunter of
sixteen hands, the blasts of the horns, the chink of glasses and the
wind getting up in the South-west, all combined in harmonious delight.
What a splendid ride home it was and how the riders went over each
renowned minute of that for-ever-to-be-famous day. Lieutenant Blewforth
swore he would forsake the sea for the life of a country gentleman, and
everybody laughed when H.M.S. _Centaur_ (so they had named Blewforth and
his steed) shied at a belated calf.
"Egad! B-b-Blewforth," stammered little Peter Wingfield, "'tis lucky
your stomach was trained on the roaring d-d-deep, for you pitch and roll
like a sloop making Ushant."
"Ah! my boy," shouted Blewforth, "my pretty sloop don't shy like this
d----d bum-boat I'm pulling."
How Mr. Golightly of Campbell's Grey Dragoons swore such a run was
better than a frontal charge at the enemy's guns and how young Tom
Chalkley of the Foot stiffened all over and muttered something about the
Cavalry. Indeed the only person to look glum was Mr. Anthony Clare who,
though he rode better than any of them and had shown them his horse's
heels all the way, missed Charles Lovely.
As they walked along the road, fading into early dusk, and heard the
wind sighing in the trim hedges and saw the lights of Curtain Wells
seven miles away, Clare cursed that passion for cards which made a man
forsake the bleak Spring fallows for pastures of green baize.
But later when the huge cold sirloin that sailed in so sleek, sailed out
like a battered wreck, and when pints of generous Burgundy had coloured
life to its own rich hue, and when Mr. Daish himself had coaxed the fire
to roar and blaze up the chimney, and set out the walnuts and put half a
dozen ample chairs round the fire, Mr. Clare could not resist the
universal content, but must laugh and make merry and relate the events
of the day for the seventh time, with as much zest as any of the
returned heroes.
Charles had surely been winning: he was so flushed and talked so loudly.
Actually he did not possess a penny, and what was worse, owed Mr. Vernon
a couple of hundred guineas. Not much, but enough when you have only
cloaths to sell, and not a prospect in the world.
Presently one by one the hunters dropped off to sleep with legs
outstretched and doffed wigs and long church-wardens' pipes, that one by
one dropped from slowly opening mouths, slid along unbuttoned waistcoats
and snapped their slender stems upon the floor, until everybody except
Mr. Vernon and our hero was snoring the eighth repetition of the events
of that famous day.
The room was hot; the drawing of many breaths thick with fatigue, beef
and Burgundy induced a meditative atmosphere; the fire no longer blazed,
but sank to an intense crimson glow. Mr. Vernon counted up his gains,
while Mr. Lovely pondered his losses in silence.
At last the latter got up suddenly.
"The cards?" inquired Mr. Vernon.
"Not to-night. I think I'll take the air," Charles replied.
"As you will," said the other and betook himself once more to his
tablets.
Charles paused for a moment outside the Coffee-Room to take down his
full black cloak and three-cornered hat. The night wind had brought in
its track a melancholy drizzle of rain that suited his own melancholy
mood. He wandered rather vaguely across the wide inn-yard, passed under
the arch and sauntered along the deserted High Street.
To tell the truth, Mr. Lovely was very unpleasantly situated at this
period. His father had been the ne'er-do-weel survivor of a long line of
country squires away down in Devonshire. When he had eloped with Miss
Joan Repington, to the eternal chagrin of the young lady's brother, a
rich banker knighted for his loyal support of the Protestant Succession,
Valentine Lovely ran through his own and his wife's fortune in the first
six years of matrimony. Thence onwards they lived a hand-to-mouth
existence, dependent on Valentine's luck at the tables and the
inviolableness of an aunt's legacy of five thousand guineas.
Mrs. Lovely died, prematurely aged, in the birth of a still-born child,
and Mr. Valentine Lovely and his young son continued to live the same
haphazard existence for another ten years. Charles spent all his time
with his father who in the intervals of drink and play taught his heir
to step a minuet, sing a merry song, and indite a witty epigram; also he
gave him a case of pistols, heavily chased with the Lovely arms, and
lent him the family tree for target. Finally he made him proficient in
the polite use of the smallsword and the dice-box.
Once, when an early summer made the Bath intolerably hot, Mr. Lovely and
his heir posted down to Devonshire in a crimson chariot putting up at
the _Prior's Head_, in Danver Monachorum. He spent a week paying
unwelcome visits to the neighbouring gentry who looked askance at the
crimson chariot and still more askance at the degenerate heir of the
Lovelys. Valentine soon tired of so much pastoral exercise and departed
to St. Germain's, leaving young Charles in the care of an old stillroom
maid, now a prosperous farmer's wife. The boy spent placid hours in rich
meadows, ate a quantity of scalded cream, and grew out of knowledge in
the six months of his stay. He used to wander down to the park
gates--gloriously wrought-iron gates between massive stone pillars that
bore on each summit a quintett of cannon balls, the reputed trophy of
some seafaring Elizabethan Lovely. There was a picture in the great
hall, of curiously inferior execution, portraying numbers of Devon
sailormen led by a huge-ruffed gentleman with a long peaked beard,
swarming up the towering sides of the galleon _Jesu Maria_. Charles was
taken to see it when the new family was gone up to London town. He also
saw the great stone swan over the vast fireplace, with the motto of his
house, _Sum decorus_.
Later in the autumn his father returned and the old life of lodgings,
inland Spas and long posting journeys was resumed. He had never again
visited that remote Devon village, with its cows and pastures and
dairymaids and famous chronicles.
Then, just after Charles reached his majority, Mr. Lovely Senior died
quite suddenly, and our hero found himself in undisputed possession of
the interest on five thousand guineas and as much more in cash, owing to
a lucky run by his father in the week before his death.
Charles now indulged the family vice of throwing money to the dogs and,
having lost the earnings of his father, set about realizing a trifle of
ready money on the five thousand guineas left him by his mother's aunt.
This step brought him into pen-and-ink contact with old Sir George
Repington who wrote him a stern letter of advice, with a postscript
offering him a stool in the Repington bank. Charles was furious and did
not reply.
About that time he renewed the friendship with Mr. Anthony Clare begun
in that far-off summer away down in Devonshire. The latter persuaded him
to leave London and come to Curtain Wells where for a time he lived
happily enough on his small annuity. However, just before our story
opened, he had been hard hit at loo and had raised a thousand guineas by
making over the interest on his inheritance to the friendly moneylender
who advanced the needed sum. On the top of this came his losses to
Vernon, and now he was stranded indeed.
Therefore the melancholy drizzle of rain suited his melancholy mood. Of
course he could borrow, play again and perhaps win, but if he should
lose he would be in debt to a friend, a position which he disliked. His
father, less scrupulous in this respect, was always content to lay
himself under fresh obligations. To Charles, however, something of the
pride which sustains a great financial house had descended through his
mother and, prodigal though he was, he would never borrow money from a
friend. Of course a moneylender was different, but what security could
he offer? It looked as if he would have to appeal to his uncle after
all. This alternative was thoroughly odious, and Charles racked his
brains to discover a way out of the difficulties into which he was
plunged.
In such despondent meditation he wandered on until the dancing glare of
two large flambeaux, stuck in iron sockets, caught his attention. He
found himself outside the Great House.
The project of consulting with the Beau entered his mind, but St.
Simon's struck the hour of ten, and he knew Mr. Ripple would be retiring
to rest, since he was accustomed to preserve his energy on those nights
when he was not called out to preside over an assembly, rout, or
masquerade. At that moment the two flambeaux, as if to proclaim their
owner's withdrawal from the claims of society, simultaneously collapsed
and strewed Mr. Ripple's fair white steps with ashes.
The sudden darkness betrayed the opalescent windows of the Beau's
bed-chamber. He had neglected to draw the curtains, and on the blind his
suave shadow disported itself in preparation for the night and the next
morning.
Charles watched the shadow dip giant fingers into monstrous pomade pots.
Now those fast deepening crowsfeet were being vigorously rubbed. Now
that swift creasing neck was being smoothed with slow caressing
movements. The wig-block displayed itself in generous shadowy curves.
Now, surely, the shadow's sudden inaction betokened a contemplation of
creeping age.
"And this," thought Charles, "is the destiny marked out for me by
Ripple."
He knew if he waited upon him on the morrow, explained his reverses, and
promised amendment, the Beau would one day procure for him the monarchy
of the Wells, but Charles was not inclined to manipulate the strings of
marionettes, himself suspended from a longer cord and dancing for the
amusement of a higher power.
The incongruity of the situation, disclosed by the Beau's window,
tickled his sense of humour. There was the monarch of an artificial
kingdom caulking his wrinkles like a beldame in search of her youth;
there he was, that despotick king who prescribed Chalybeate as the
Panacea for all earthly ills, in ludicrous terror at the swift flight of
his complexion.
There he was, no better than the chief eunuch of a Persian harem with
authority over women and the power of lock and key against intrusive
fops.
Yet he was a kindly man and a gentleman. He was feared and loved, a man
whom the world called successful. Charles himself liked fine cloaths,
found talking pleasant, enjoyed the organization of splendid
entertainments, yet he could not condemn himself to eternal celibacy and
the preservation of his figure. The restriction of such an existence
would be unendurable.
You will remember perhaps that in our first Chapter we caught Beau
Ripple in undignified pursuit of a button. We agreed how rash it was for
Gods and Goddesses to discover their anatomy to mortals, and here is the
very fact being forced home to Mr. Charles Lovely, an understudy to
divinity.
Our hero went on his way, fortified against one ambition.
Presently he passed by the lodgings of Mrs. Courteen as the door was
being opened to let out the satellite Moon and the appropriately named
Tarry. The pair of them paused on the steps to ascertain the state of
the weather and discuss the several games of ombre which they had played
for mother-o'-pearl counters.
"Gadslife!" murmured Charles, "Ombre for counters! Then is great Anna
really dead?"
The expensive lodgings of the Earl of Vanity towered above him and he
heard my Lord, with a flowered dressing-gown wrapped about his skinny
shanks, d----g his daughter's eyes for being so late at old Mrs.
Frillface's quadrille party. Farther down the Crescent was old Mrs.
Frillface's house, and outside stood two handsome chairs with the
chairmen fast asleep on the cushions, soon to be wakened from the frowsy
damask by Mrs. Frillface's bloated footman.
And so on past all the lodgings of Curtain Wells.
There was young Miss Kitcat who was really twenty-nine and single only
because, so they said, no one would marry her since that affair with Sir
Hector Macwrath, the young, Nova Scotia Baronet, more than ten years
ago. To be sure, the matter was never rightly explained, and everybody
excused the poor child because her mother never set her the best of
examples, and as for her father, everybody knew that he thought of
nothing but Mdlle. Dancaboute who had such trim ankles and spent so many
guineas and even wore the Kitcat rubies at a Ranelagh supper-party. So
Sir Hector married the lean heiress of Lord Glew, the chief of the
MacStikkeys, and Miss Kitcat remained young Miss Kitcat for many a long
day. There she was, swaying sleepily to the motion of the chair while
now and then her hair would catch in a splinter of wood as the first
chairman stumbled over a loose cobble.
There was little Pinhorn whose father was a ship's chandler at Rye, but
had made money as fast as money could be made over the War commissariat;
there he was, strutting home from my Lady Bunbutter's, quite inlaid with
diamonds, and with a swinging fob near as big as his own bullet head.
Charles gave him a curt good-night as he passed, and wondered to
himself how little Pinhorn ever dared challenge Captain Lagge to walk
with him in Curtain Meads. Unluckily the Beau had heard of the meeting
and went to remonstrate with the gallant Captain.
"What did you say?" asked the Beau.
"I said I would gladly cut the claws of every harpy on the transport,"
answered the sailor.
"Well, so you may, sir," said Mr. Ripple, "but by Heaven! you shan't do
so here."
Next morning the Captain had his orders and was shot through the heart
in the Carthagena business. Poor Captain Lagge, he had a wife and a
little maid waiting for him in the prettiest cottage between Pevensey
and Brighthelmstone.
Charles passed many others whose small histories, could I recount them,
would fill this book to overflowing. For each one he could recall some
unsavoury episode, some mean adventure that made its hero contemptible.
"Oddslife," thought Charles, "was ever Society so corrupt, so insincere,
so entirely damnable?"
By this time he was back in the High Street after a long circuit, and
just as he was thinking of crossing the road to reach the _Blue Boar_
and bed, he noticed a candle was burning in his bookseller's little back
parlour.
"I'll inquire after the sale of my poems," he decided, and without more
ado hammered loudly on the door of the shop. Presently in answer to his
continuous rappings, a foxy-faced old young man with a premature stoop
and cloaths both squalid and ill-cut, shuffled through the shop and
asked who was there.
"A mendicant poet," cried Charles.
"Be d----d," muttered the foxy-faced man, preparing to go back.
"Come, Mr. Virgin, you'll open to me, Charles Lovely?"
"Go away, Mr. Lovely, go away. I'm very busy--very busy indeed. I never
remember when I was so busy before, so full of business."
"So much the better," cried Charles jumping up to smite the signboard
that hung over the door till it swung round on its hinges with a rattle
and a squeak.
"Now don't be rough, Mr. Lovely. I've had the lady's face repainted.
'Tis beautifully done, Mr. Lovely. Do look. Can you see? 'Mr. Paul
Virgin. Bookseller and Publisher. At the Sign of the _Woman_.'"
"Pshaw!" said Charles. "Will you open to me, or I'll turn the woman into
a w----!"
"I suppose you must have your way, but oddscods, indeed I'm monstrous
busy. Oh! Mr. Lovely, I am so busy, you wouldn't believe."
With this final protest, the old young man slowly drew the bolts of the
door and allowed Mr. Lovely to step inside.
There was a musty smell in the shop and the shelves of calf-bound
volumes seemed alive in the uncertain flame of the candle. The counter
was heaped high with volumes and on the floor lay gigantick tomes bound
in jaundiced vellum covers.
Lovely followed the foxy-faced man into the back parlour which in
addition to the general mustiness of the premises had a rank odour of
printer's ink and newly struck proofs.
"I am so busy, Mr. Lovely. Mr. Antique Burrowes' great work on the
Abbeys of England and Wales must positively appear before the publick
next week; the subscription lists are filled up, and we expect a very
favourable reception, and so we ought, for the woodcuts are beautiful.
Look at this one, Mr. Lovely--this is Glastonbury--the Abbot's Kitchen.
What a place just for one man! Ah! those monks: what bellies they had."
Charles scarcely glanced at the proof.
"Very proper," he said, "and what about my poems?"
"Ah! you always have your joke, Mr. Lovely. That's always the way with
poets--they will have their jokes just when I'm so busy too," said Mr.
Virgin sidling across the room to a shelf full of ledgers bound in
hideous marble boards.
"How many sold, these three months?"
"One, Mr. Lovely. One copy. You see it entered."
"Who was the purchaser," said Charles with affectation of great
indifference. "Not a lady, I presume?"
"Ha, ha, you poets--so fond of the women. Singers and poets always like
the women. There was Signor Amoroso, d'ye know him? The famous Tenore,
now singing every night at Vauxhall--he used to buy all my books about
the ladies. But, pray excuse my chatter, Mr. Lovely. I'm sure I oughtn't
to be talking, just when I'm so busy too. Let me see, who was the
purchaser--ah! here it is--it was Miss----"
"Courteen?" Charles let slip in his eagerness.
"Ha-ha! ha-ha!" laughed the foxy-faced bookseller, "Ha-ha! You must keep
your love-secrets better than that. No, it wasn't Miss----" he pursued.
"Oh!" said Charles coldly.
"It was Sir George Repington--I remember now--he wrote from the North."
"Sir George Repington?" exclaimed Charles, completely surprized. "Humph!
I wish him joy of my effusions."
"Oh, no doubt he'll like them or he wouldn't have sent all that way for
them. Well! well! some men are mighty whimsical in their tastes, and
there's no denying that people do read verses."
"However," said Charles, "I take it the taste is not an extended one?"
"Well! you mustn't complain. You had two hundred taken by subscription
and half a dozen copies sold to casual purchasers. You won't lose a vast
deal over the publication."
"No," said Charles, "you wouldn't like that?"
"No, indeed I shouldn't, sir, I take a pride in the success of my
clients. So did my father, sir, and he became an alderman of this town,
though he was a native of Exeter."
"I take it, then, you are not prepared to offer a sum of money on
account of a new volume?"
"Ho-ho!" laughed Mr. Virgin, "what a droll gentleman you are to be sure.
You will have your joke, and don't seem to regard how busy I am."
"Very well, sir," said Charles, "I'll wish you a good night."
"_Good_ night, Mr. Lovely, good night, sir. When I'm not so busy
perhaps, another time, I'll be most happy to talk over your--ahem--literary
projects."
Mr. Virgin held up the candle to light Mr. Lovely through the shop. The
rays happened to fall on a pile of slim volumes reposing on the counter.
"What are those?" Charles asked.
"Ah, 'tis a great pity you can't write verse like that."
"Poems?" said Mr. Lovely in accents of incredulity.
"To be sure--poems, but such poems,--lampoons, squibs, and pasquinades.
'Tis a Satire on the characters of the Bath--very scandalous, they tell
me, but oddscods, 'tas run through nine editions in as many weeks. Now,
if your name was Lively, sir, instead of Lovely."
"Mr. Virgin!"
"No offence. What I mean is, if you could write something similar about
the visitors to Curtain Wells."
"You'd publish it?"
"Well, perhaps that's going too far, but I would give it my very best
attention."
"Humph! Good night," and Charles went out into the drizzle.
On his way home, he saw the Exquisite Mob and the Exquisite Mob-master
grouped before a satirist; and very soon he saw them performing their
anticks thinly disguised by initials and asterisks.