The Chinese Masquerade was the outstanding event of early Spring at
Curtain Wells. It was the quintessence of refined affectation, the great
fount in which many tributary delights found their source. Moreover, in
its character there was a national significance. It was not held merely
to emphasize the importance of being seriously amused; it was not one of
many entertainments sacred to Epicurus; it did not serve to commemorate
the fleetingness of life; it was no Burial Service with a ritual of
flung roseleaves and spilt wine. The Chinese Masquerade of Curtain Wells
was something far more grand than any of these, being a great national
act of homage to the beverage of Tea. Of old, Bacchus was saluted in
Samothrace, and the festival of wine was celebrated with all the absence
of restraint that might be expected from the past. Nymphs raved, Satyrs
danced, and garlanded leopards jigged to one wild inspiration. Phrenzy
footed it; troop followed troop, broke and dissolved in flashes of white
limbs when Dionysus of the sly smile and rosy cheeks bewitched thousands
with his strange madness. In fact, the whole affair was an intolerable
concession to Nature. At Curtain Wells you saw the centuries at work.
There the Bacchantes were corseted and hooped to primness; the Satyrs
had high red heels for hoofs, silken breeches for the fur of goats.
Instead of velvety leopards that used to amble over tuffets of fragrant
thyme, each with a hussy astride his supple back, went greasy chairmen
in lurching escort of dowagers and misses. Dionysus himself was changed.
He had kept his sly smile and rosy cheeks, but his vine wreaths were
become ruffles and ties, while his body glittered, not with youth and
health and immortality, but with paste buckles and brooches and
solitaires. The crashing cymbals of Thrace found a thin echo in the
delicate tinkle of tea-spoons and frail sounds of porcelain. To be sure,
the whole of the difference between the worship of Wine and the worship
of Tea was expressed by the fact that to honour the former, society took
off its cloaths, whereas in order to celebrate the latter, all the world
dressed itself up.
Mr. Ripple wore above his suit of amber a robe resembling a golden
dressing-gown. He was the Gold Mandarin, decorated with dragons, tall
pagodas, flowers and fireworks. The Blue Mandarin, whose robe concealed
the pearl-grey suit of Mr. Charles Lovely, seemed as he moved across the
room like a blue garden, so many small landskips wrought in azure silks
trembled in the folds of his garment. Only these two officers of the
Pageant were privileged to remain unmasked. The rest of the company wore
yellow vizards whose painted eyebrows soared at a celestial angle over
eyeslits, cut almondwise. The general effect was of animated Ming
laughing, jesting, talking, and dancing with the lacker cabinets that
were used to contain it.
The ballroom had pagodas in each of the corners where the children of
the Exquisite Mob dressed to a more exact replica[1] of the farthest
Orientals, nodded and peeped and chirped the austere maxims of Confucius
without the slightest idea of their meaning, but all convinced that it
was extremely diverting to partake of a grown-up entertainment, and far
better to drink real tea out of real cups in a delightful palace of
their own, than to play with acorns and ditchwater in the mildewed
Dorick summer-house at the head of the Park avenue.
[1] They wore pigtails, which were considered unbecoming by the
older Follies. Besides, head-dresses were too elaborate to be ruined
for the sake of one entertainment.
Chinese lanterns bobbed on golden wires slung from wall to wall whence
the gilt mirrours with the wax candles of the West had all been removed.
This Eastern light softened the mingled hues of blue and gold to a
gorgeous moving twilight stained by the afterglow of sunset. All along
the sides of the ballroom were placed for seats queer twisted animals,
winged dragons, squat bronzes, Chinese geese, monkeys and parrots in
crude shades of green and vermilion, while at suitable intervals were
set little houses to contain two persons. These were intended to
encourage the intimate amenities of polite conversation.
Outside in the Rococo cloister unknown flowers expanded and curious
fruits ripened by lanternlight; and though the flowers were made of
linen dipped in scent, they served very well to pluck and offer to a
masked fair and as for the fruits, they were all filled with comfits.
Finally, here and there, smoking sandal-wood torches lent a remote
perfume to the Mise en Scene, and curled in scented wreaths about the
motley forms of the masqueraders. To say truth, the Eastern veneer was
more than usually superficial, even for a veneer. The result of the
attempt to secure reality only accentuated the difference between East
and West: still the latter enjoyed making believe so far as it consorted
with true gentility, and it may very easily be understood that nothing
low was permitted by the British Nation in the eighteenth glorious
century of Christian civilization.
Thia was the first masked ball that had been held since Phyllida grew
enamoured of Mr. Francis Vernon, so she made no doubt he would avail
himself of the opportunity to be present. As soon as the Exquisite Mob
was assembled (at half-past seven o'clock precisely, because it was
considered vulgar to be late) there was a solemn drinking of tea, no
mere handing round of teacups and saucers, but a far more impressive
ritual, invented to mark the occasion with due importance.
The Gold Mandarin seated himself on an ivory stool whose claw legs were
fretted with diminutive foliage, temples and flying birds. This was set
on a small platform draped with broideries at the foot of which was an
azure velvet cushion where, with crossed legs, sat the Blue Mandarin.
Mr. Ripple clapped his hands twice to command the entrance of the
Procession of Tea. First walked two musicians slowly tapping gongs
shaped like saucers with large spoons. These were followed by six
children with nodding porcelain Mandarins whose tongues trembled in and
out of their surprized mouths. Then came the bearer of the Caddy--a
magnificently decorated specimen of lackerwork. On either side of the
Caddy was borne a Nankin jar full of milk. Finally, a lacker table on
wheels, overhung by a fringed canopy that protected an enormous bowl of
rarest Ming whither odorous vapours ascended from the flowery liquid,
was pushed along in slow and reverend state.
The company opened its ranks to allow the procession a way until it
stopped before the Gold Mandarin's ivory throne. The Beau at once
descended, dipped a diminutive teacup into the bowl, took three sips and
sighed rapturously. The six porcelain Mandarins were set nodding with
redoubled vigour, gongs boomed from the topmost windows of the pagodas,
and the procession re-formed and passed into the upper room, whither the
assembled company followed it in order to drink in turn from teacups
filled at the sacred fountain.
In the crush, Phyllida, who was wearing a gown faint blue like the March
sky, felt her sleeve pulled gently by a tall mask in tawny raiment. She
recognized the pointed white fingers and whispered 'Amor.'
The mask shook his head to indicate silence, but presently Phyllida
succeeded in conveying her cup of tea to the outskirts of the crowd and
hurried through a corridor to a side-door opening into the cloister
where she waited for her lover's approach. In a minute he was sitting
beside her.
She turned to him delightedly.
"Dear Amor! This will be the first ball that I shall have truly
enjoyed."
This statement scarcely did justice to the many pleasant hours she had
spent to the sound of fiddles, horns, and clarinets.
"Why was my charmer absent yesterday? The Maze was prodigiously dull
without the sweet Nymph who loves to haunt its verdurous ways."
"Oh! Amor, we are discovered."
"Faith, is that so?" remarked Vernon, without any apparent concern.
"Mr. Ripple told my mother I was conversing with a gentleman for one
hour and a half by the clock."
"Interfering dancing-master!"
"And yesterday I was sent to match a ribband quite impossible to match;
I'm sure 'twas done to keep me employed and when I heard eleven chime, I
could bear it no longer, but almost ran towards Curtain Garden, and on
my way the Beau beckoned me to come in and, pray don't be angry, dear
Amor, he was so vastly kind that I told him your name."
"Here's a pretty state of affairs," muttered Vernon.
"He asked me to present you to him to-night, and vowed we should be wed
in June."
"Gadslife! I hope you sent him about his business?"
"Not exactly," said Phyllida, "indeed he was so good-natured that I
promised--at least I half promised to do so."
"Confusion take him," swore Vernon, "for a prating, meddlesome,
tailor-made gentleman. Harkee! I'll not have myself discussed by Mr.
Horace Ripple. I dare swear he patted your hands, eh? called you his
pretty dear, made old man's love, eh? A plague on his impudence!"
Phyllida shrank from her lover's wrath.
"Indeed, sir, I vow he did nothing of the kind. He behaved with some of
that propriety for which I could wish in my Amor." Phyllida remembered a
young woman talking something like this in the first volume of _The Fair
Inconstant_. Vernon could not keep back a smile. "I doubt I'm not
inclined to hear you farther."
Vernon began to chuckle.
"And let me tell you, sir, your behaviour becomes you very ill, and
moreover I told him your name, and the milk's spilt, and 'tis useless to
cry over spilt milk as all the world knows."
A tear-drop trembled in each corner of Phyllida's eyes, making them seem
more clearly blue, as crystals that surround great sapphires enhance
their beauty.
"Sweet indiscretion," began Vernon, who having been politick enough to
conceal his true name, could afford to be generous.
A very faint sob was the sole response.
"Nay, prithee, dear one," he continued, catching hold of a tremulous
hand, "let's have no quarrels at our first ball; I bear you no malice."
"I should never have told him, had I been ashamed of you," she
interrupted.
"Just so, adorable creature, but since we had resolved to keep our
affair secret, and since we were agreed that stolen meetings, like
stolen fruit, taste the sweetest, I was surprized to hear you had told
every one."
"I did not tell any one."
"But, my angel, you did."
"Not until I was forced. 'Tis very well for you. You're a man of fashion
and independence, and I'm a young woman."
"Incontestable truth!"
"Now you're being satirical, and I vow I detest sarcasm. Indeed, I think
it has all been a mistake, and I'll go back to Hampshire to-morrow, and
you may go back to your Haymarket."
"Very well, madam, since you dismiss my suit, I will go back to my
Haymarket. It may be vastly diverting for you, madam, to break a man's
heart. You, secure in the verdant meads and--er--meadows of the county
of Hampshire, you, wandering among fields of daffadillies, at peace,
beneath a summer sun."
"Daffadillies don't grow in the summer."
"Alas! madam, I am ignorant of these pastoral delights."
This was perfectly true since Mr. Vernon's mother was a lady who thought
a bough-pot in Air Street worth the finest estate in the Kingdom.
"I," he continued, "have lived my life in cities, and though I have
often hoped to hear the cuckoo wake me at dawn, 'tis very evident I must
for ever bid farewell to such vain dreams."
Here, Mr. Vernon, who had inherited considerable histrionick ability on
the female side, contrived to get an effective break into his usually
smooth enunciation.
"But I don't want to quarrel for ever," protested Phyllida.
Mr. Vernon turned his head away, probably to hide a tear.
"For my part," she went on, "I should be very willing to live always as
we are living now."
"My angel!"
"But since the world is so censorious and seems to concern itself with
every unimportant young woman's affairs, I thought--I thought----"
"You thought a wedding would put a stop to scandal. How little you know
the world. Why! madam, a hasty wedding would set people's tongues
wagging at once. Come, come, pay no attention to old Ripple. He knows my
name. If he chuse, he can seek me out. I warrant I shall hear no more
about it."
"But we shall be watched."
"Then we'll change our trysting-place. At any rate, prithee, let us
enjoy to-night." Here Mr. Vernon put on his mask and taking off his gown
resumed it inside out. "Do you see, dear charmer, I am both porcelain
and lacker, so that no one will be able to say you prefer the one to the
other. Hark! the fiddles have begun--let's go and step our first gavotte
together."
Phyllida took his arm and they returned to the ballroom. The vizards
made all the faces appear fixed and wooden and Miss Courteen could not
help looking very often at Mr. Charles Lovely who was sitting
cross-legged on his azure cushion and, in contrast to the rest of the
masquerade, was plainly a man. Once she fancied she caught his eye, and
when he came up and asked her to honour his arm for the third gavotte,
she knew she had not been mistaken. Mr. Vernon silently relinquished his
partner.
"Who was your late Vis a Vis?" Charles inquired. "I beg your pardon," he
added as he saw Phyllida hesitate, "my manners grow as barbarick as my
costume."
He had noticed with devout jealousy that Miss Courteen's fingers reposed
a moment longer than was necessary upon that sattin forearm.
"How did you discover me?" she asked with frank interest.
"'Twas not difficult."
"But masked as I am?"
"I did not regard your mask--I saw your eyes."
Phyllida was conscious of a blush and a faint quickening of the pulses,
all over her body. There was certainly something very satisfactory in
such a compliment. It was genuine moreover, for indeed he had discovered
her through the distorted yellow vizard which concealed her roses.
Presently the dance began, and, though Phyllida liked every moment of
it, she could not help observing Amor, half buried in the greenery of an
alcove and, as it seemed to her, forbidding too keen a pleasure.
Charles found it difficult to extract from his partner more than the
ordinary small talk of ballrooms, and as she became more and more
absent-minded during the progress of the dance, he let her go at the end
of it without a very valiant attempt to detain her for the next.
Presently he saw her join a blue mask and lose herself in the flickering
throng. Last time he had remarked particularly that her Vis a Vis wore
brown and gold, yet the two figures were alike in movement and gesture
and he could swear the hands were identical. It was the same without a
doubt. Charles bit his nails with vexation, and fretted confoundedly.
"My dear boy, my dear Charles, pray do not gnaw your fingers. Narcissus
admired himself, 'tis true, but without carrying his devotion to
cannibality."
Charles turned to the well-known voice of Mr. Ripple.
"A thousand pardons, dear Beau, I was vexed by a trifle. The masquerade
comports itself with tolerable success."
"I think so," the Beau replied, adjusting his monocle and gazing
critically at his subjects. "I certainly think so, but I am never easy
in my mind until the Grand Minuet has concluded the entertainment, yet
even so, I do not think you will ever find me preying upon my
extremities."
Charles laughed.
"They take their pleasures very easily, sir." Again the Beau examined
his puppets.
"The burden of amusement certainly weighs very lightly on them, and yet,
Charles, I sometimes fancy I detect a shade too much of
self-consciousness in their movements. I could wish for a less anxious
grace, a less ordered abandon. My monocle which diminishes their size,
diminishes their importance; and I must confess that the motion of
dancing, if one regards the Ensemble, appears to me nothing less than
idiotical. However, do not let my cynical attitude prove contagious--I
have watched so many dances."
"Yet you are willing for me to succeed you," said Charles. "Foregad, Mr.
Ripple, I was never intended for a spectator."
"I have energy to keep me in office long enough to let you grow older.
Come, come, Charles, admit the career I offer would tempt many more
deserving young men."
"But I have passions, feelings, desires, ambitions."
"All very suitable," commented the Beau, "till you grow tired of
versifying life. We write poetry, Charles, in order to improve our
prose."
"Some men write poetry to the end."
"Usually a bitter end; but, indeed, I would not goad you into accepting
my offer. Have your dramas, lose your money, expose your heart to Cupid,
commit the thousand and one foolish actions that will afford you a moral
occupation for your middle age."
"What would that be?"
"A leisurely repentance."
"Sir, I think you spin the natural functions into silk like the
silkworm."
"Well, Charles, and isn't silk a more durable excrement than most? You
are still devouring the tender shoots of the mulberry tree; I am
already in the cocoon and shall go down to posterity as a very reputable
moth vouched for by a cenotaph in St. Simon's Church, Curtain Wells."
"Sir, I doubt they will never say of me 'Vive le roi!'"
"We shall see, we shall see. By the way, do you know a Miss Phyllida
Courteen? Her mother, a widow whose charms are as ample as her dowry, is
lodging in the Crescent."
Charles was taken aback for a moment.
"I believe I have met her once or twice at Assemblies."
"At any rate, you know her by sight."
"Oh yes!" replied our hero.
"Now, I wonder whether you could pick her out from this multitude of
masks."
Charles at once perceived the subject of the question.
"She is standing over there by the second pillar and talking to a mask
in porcel--no, in lacker. That's strange."
"What is strange?" inquired Mr. Ripple mildly.
"Nothing--a lantern effect," Charles explained.
Surely he could not be mistaken in those taper fingers. Moreover, they
were familiar to him. Where could he have seen them?
"So that is Miss Courteen," said the Beau, looking at her very intently.
"Yes, now that you have pointed her out, I certainly seem to recognize
her. Who is her Vis a Vis?"
"That I do not know," said Charles rather gloomily.
"Then, pray, be so good-natured as to make an attempt to ascertain and
you'll oblige me monstrously. Or stay--perhaps I had better inquire
myself."
Mr. Ripple, observing that Mr. Lovely looked somewhat melancholy, patted
him on the shoulder.
"Don't look so full of disapprobation, Charles. Inquisitiveness, with
ordinary men and women, is a breach of good manners: with kings, it is a
condescension. Dear me! how time runs!" the Beau continued, tripping
from an epigram to a truism. "I will leave you to superintend the
Country Dances. Let them be as Oriental as possible, I beg."
With this admonition the Great little Man threaded his way through the
Exquisite Mob.
Charles d----d the country dances very devoutly. He was not enjoying
the evening at all, and wished he were sitting in the cosy firelight of
the _Blue Boar_, lulled by the whispers of playing cards, shuffled and
dealt. Where could he raise that two hundred pounds he owed Vernon?
Vernon--by G...! now he recognized those taper fingers. Vernon! they
belonged to Vernon, he could swear to them. Too often had he watched
their delicate harvesting of his guineas. He began to fret more than
ever. Suddenly he noticed that everybody was looking in his direction,
and became aware that time was indeed running and the moment for the
Country Dances had arrived.
Meanwhile Mr. Ripple searched in vain for Phyllida and a Vis a Vis in
brown and gold.
_Chapter the Seventeenth_