A discouraging fact for the Persii of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow,
is that, however needle-sharp their thrusted rapiers, however thorough
their castigations, Society never shows weal or scar at the end of it
all.
Here was profligate, card-playing, snobbish, vapoured Society, quite
recovered of its whipping and, by candletime, setting out to perform,
just those very actions Persius most bitterly abuses.
My lady Bunbutter continued to observe every Matador in her opponents'
hands, continued to rake in ill-gotten guineas, continued to use a
quadrille pack with Manille stained, Spadille nicked, Basto dog-eared,
and Ponto scratched. The Most Honble. the Marchioness of Hurricane
continued to help herself five times to the richest Fricassees;
continued to allow her lap-dog liberty of vomit in alien drawing-rooms,
continued to breathe stertorous bawdry into the prominent ears of her
Italian son-in-law--el Conde di Scirocco--while her daughter the
Contessa snored in a corner.
Young Miss Kitcat continued to encourage the addresses of the
disreputable Captain Mann, and even went so far as to tap that military
scoundrel three times with her fan in coy avowal of his charming
naughtiness.
The Earl of Cinderton drank five bottles of Port that very night in
order to emphasize his indifference to satire, and slept under his own
mahogany table because his lackeys below stairs were too drunk to carry
him to bed.
In fact, nobody save the publisher of Curtain Polls displayed sign or
sense of injury.
Our heroine indeed was vastly affected, but her misfortunes were due to
a gloss upon the original.
As it happened, Mrs. Courteen did not discover the reference to her
daughter's indiscretion, until she was asked by an inquisitive dowager
to explain the allusion in the twelve lines. She managed to conceal her
agitation, thanks to the permanency of the newest rouge, but presently
called for her chair and arrived home a full two hours before she was
expected.
When she sailed into the parlour Phyllida was languishingly occupied
with a blue vase of pot-pourri, and the parlour fire was trying to burn
up beneath a weight of blackened notepaper.
The suddenness of the widow's entrance alarmed her daughter so much that
she dropped the vase, and the contents were strewn over the carpet. The
faint perfume that slowly permeated the stuffy atmosphere of the
lodgings, should have reminded Mrs. Courteen of her youth, of long June
eves and blossoms plucked awhile ago by fingers now wrinkled and stained
with years of snuff.
Mrs. Courteen also neglected to remember that so far as ridicule went,
she had brought enough of that upon her own head.
However, she recalled neither memory nor fact, and was properly enraged
with her daughter's light behaviour.
"You have ruined my good name, child. I can never again look the world
in the face. How we shall be laughed at in Hampshire, for be sure that
odious Miss Talker whose sister married the Rector of Slumber, has
already despatched a copy to her brother-in-law, and you know what
chatterboxes parsons always are: I suppose because they preach, though I
should have thought, lud! that with so much breath used on Sunday, they
might be as dumb as dumb for the rest of the week, and hurt nobody,
least of all their own wives and neighbours. But there! what good is it
to educate a young woman in the way she should go? I might better have
set an example to the village clock. At all events that does possess a
face. Put down your handkerchief, hussy."
"Dear mamma----"
"Don't excuse yourself, pray do not excuse yourself, I doubt 'tis all my
fault. I doubt I han't looked after you, taken you to Melton Abbey, and
prayed for you, minx, yes, prayed for you. And have you got any good
from learning the collects for Sunday and the Benedicite and the
Athanasian Creed and the thirty-nine Articles? None! A pretty thing,
truly, that after so much honourable religion, I should have my daughter
pointed out as a--as what no respectable young woman is. Pointed at! And
I, your mother, am to be laughed at, mocked at, jeered at, because you
suffer every down-at-heel fop to make gross love to you, sheltered from
the eye of men--yes! vastly well--but you forget the eye of one above
and the tongue of scandal."
"Madam, I am truly, deeply ashamed. If I promise never, never again to
cause you the slightest uneasiness, will you forgive me for once, and
take me away from this odious town?"
"Take you away? A pretty request truly; and give every old maid in
Curtain Wells the opportunity of saying I was afraid to show my face and
your figure. Take you away, miss? No, indeed, I shall take you around. I
shall try by exhibiting you beneath your mother's protection, to give
the lie to these atrocious reports and, next year, miss, next year, we
will pay a visit to Tunbridge Wells in order to provide a husband whom
you may kiss in the privacy of your own estate, with no one but a
wandering gamekeeper any the wiser."
"I never kissed Mr. Amor," protested Phyllida.
"Amor? Amor? And who is Mr. Amor?"
"He is my true love, ma'am, whom I love with all my might and main."
"There's indecency! there's impropriety! Lud! I vow, vixen, you are as
wanton as a goddess. You love him, eh?"
"That is my only excuse, ma'am, for having behaved so ill."
"What business, I should like to know, has a child of fifteen----"
"Seventeen, ma'am."
"Fifteen, girl."
"Then, sure, you are reckoning by leap years, ma'am."
"Do not be impudent. I repeat, Phyllida, I will not have impudence. You
know dear Doctor Makewell particularly enjoined me not to allow
impudence. 'Your heart won't stand it, ma'am.' Cruel Phyllida, not
content with deceiving your mother, you are willing to injure her health
by impudence."
"You think only of yourself," said Phyllida bitterly.
"Only of myself! Oh! Phyllida, how dare you accuse me of selfishness? My
whole life since the death of your father who was a most exacting man
and would ride Pegasus, though I told him a hundred times if I told him
once that the brute would murder him. Now I've forgotten what I was
saying, and 'tis all your fault, ungrateful child. Go to bed instantly
and to-morrow I will have all your dresses starched as stiff as leather,
so that nobody, not even that spiteful Lady Jane Vane, can say I don't
take care that whatever your mind may be, your dresses leave nothing to
be desired. Go to bed, go to bed. I can't listen to you any longer. I
feel humiliated by your abominable behaviour. Judge of my feelings when
I tell you I did not dare invite either Mr. Moon or Major Tarry to
escort me home for fear the world would say I was setting you a bad
example. Now, perhaps you'll accuse me of not possessing a conscience.
Indeed, my conscience is too tender. 'Tis the tenderest part of me,
though I have one of the most delicate skins--a skin that bruises if I
ring a bell with unwonted celerity."
"Mamma, I----" Phyllida began.
"Pray do not say another word, you have said enough to-night to last a
lifetime. Send Betty with my bedgown worked in crimson hollyhocks and I
will try to forget this wretched experience by attempting to
ascertain--please get the playing cards--how Miss Trumper managed to
secure codille in the last hand but four of this extremely unpleasant
and unprofitable evening. Go to bed, Phyllida, don't dally. Here is
Betty. Go to bed, Phyllida."
So Phyllida went to bedew her lavendered pillow. Anything was better
than listening to her mother's perpetual reproaches. Anything, anything
was better. Even to be betrayed. Ha! ha! now I think for the first time
you will admit Miss Phyllida to be a true heroine. Poor Clarie Harlowe!
How Phyllida had wept over her adventures and, even in the midst of
tears, how quick she had always been to thrust the forbidden volumes out
of sight when she heard her mother's step on the stairs.
Poor Clarie Harlowe! She began to sign her name to innumerable nobly
penitent epistles.
_Your cruelly abandoned
Phyllida.
Your wretched, but still loving
Phyllida.
Your heartbroken, hopeless
Phyllida.
Your betrayed daughter
Phyllida.
Your forsaken, but affectionate
Phyllida.
Your seduced (or was it seducted, or abduced, or abducted?)
Phyllida_.
Oh, dear! Oh, dear! what a muddle fine language was to be sure!
I have not yet apologized for my very ancient story, but faith! you must
blame the period and the intolerable system of female education. Amor
had either to be a Lovelace or a Joseph at a time when young maidenhood
fainted before an ardent glance.
After all we do not now apologize for our strong silent men and
hysterical girls. Why should we? And yet for my own part I love better
your talkative blackguard; I have known so many strong silent men, and
they were all fools or Scotsmen.
During this digression, Phyllida has fallen asleep, her face flushed and
dabbled with spent tears, her chestnut hair in golden filigree upon the
pillow and, where the sleeve of her bedgown has retreated, a rosy arm
whose little fist is clenched in maiden despair.
Poor foolish child! Why would you fall in love? Untenanted, your dearest
gate swings in the wind to-night, but you will not mount again upon its
topmost mossy bar. You will never again view with the same excitement
the huntsmen over the hill-top; they will mean less to you; their pink
coats will be quite dingy when next you say good morning to old Nick
Runnalls the Whip. For my part, I do not believe that hot buttered
apple-pies will taste so sweet when next you eat them in the long cool
kitchen with its pot of marjoram and shaded sunlight.
And as for your bed-chamber with casements abob with peering rosebuds, I
doubt the shelves will not soon be disturbed to make a place for new
trophies. Once you thought it a day of days when you found the
thigh-bone of a horse or the skull of a badger. They hang on the walls
now, poor relicks of an outworn delight.
All this shall go for a balcony in the Haymarket and a goldfinch in a
gilt cage. Foolish child! Away down in Hampshire the goldfinches build
green nests in the orchard. Phyllida! sweet, headlong, heedless
Phyllida!
* * * * *
"I blame you, Betty. I blame you, vixen. Why you cannot model yourself
on Thomas passes my comprehension." Thus the widow.
"She meant no harm, poor pretty lamb," protested the maid.
"'Tis not what we mean, but what we do that counts in this world."
"Ah! 'tis fine for thee to talk, ma'am, you take good care to amuse
yourself, but, little miss, she must dingle-dangle all day long wi'
nought to do but dream of doing nought."
"She has her friend, Miss Morton."
"Ay! that black-eyed hussy what pinches the maiden who dresses her lean
skimpy rat's hair. I don't take much account o' she."
They continued in this strain for quite two hours, and would never have
stopped if the candles had endured.
They went up to bed just as Charles, having finished his third bottle of
Burgundy, knocked with vinous assurance at the door of the Great House.
I am not at all certain whether this adventurous action should have been
included in this chapter, for I doubt nothing more heroick was ever done
even by Hercules at the zenith of his laborious career. It was
considered rash enough to wait upon Mr. Ripple in the middle of his
siesta. A royal Duke once succeeded in gaining admittance, if very
little else; but to wait upon Mr. Ripple when his flambeaux strewed the
steps, when the orange light in his porch was winking on its way to
annihilation, when the grey Angora cat had settled herself for repose,
when not even a mouse dared scamper in the wainscot, and when Mr. Ripple
himself sat amid the ruins of his complexion--this was defying the
lightning and inviting Jove's revenge indeed.
Nevertheless, fortified by three bottles of a vintage that held the
heart of France in its crimson depths, Charles recklessly knocked at the
front door of the Great House, not once, but twice or thrice, with added
vigour in the repetition. The sound sent the Beau's taper fingers a full
two inches deep into a pomade compounded of some particularly fine
Provencal almonds and the fat of foxes, the whole famous for removing
those pectinated wrinkles that cluster at the edge of middle-aged lips.
The fragrant grease, wedged beneath his nails, caused him to press thumb
to fingers with an exclamation of fastidious displeasure.
The clatter of the second and third assault froze him to his chair with
a sense of impending calamity.
Gog and Magog were fast asleep dreaming their gaudy dreams of Africa.
Mrs. Binn, Mr. Ripple's intelligent cook, was snoring in the starlight
of an upper chamber; Polly and Molly, Mr. Ripple's equally intelligent
maids, were dreaming discreet dreams also in an upper chamber. Mr. Mink
alone of the royal household was awake, engaged upon the overwhelmingly
tricky job of frizzling his master's newest wig, and therefore quite
unable, during this capillary crisis, to attend to the affairs of the
world or the devil, knocked either never so loudly.
Consequently Mr. Ripple had to open the door himself, for if the
knocking were to continue, many heads might peer from the Crescent
windows, and the morning's rumour of the occurrence damage his
authority.
It is characteristick of the Beau that in this critical juncture of
affairs, he preserved his faculties so intact, that he was able without
affectation to choose deliberately between a dressing-gown of flowered
damask and a more diaphanous wrapper of dove-grey China silk. In
deference to the season he selected the latter.
As he passed the door of his third dressing-room, he could see Mr. Mink,
apparently unconscious of anything untoward in the air, blowing with
steady breaths upon a remarkably hot pair of curling-tongs. The calm
demeanour of his gentleman restored whatever was still lacking to Mr.
Ripple's perfect equilibrium of mind.
With gentle steps, he descended the quiet stairs and, candlestick in
hand, proceeded to draw back the cunningly wrought bolts of the front
door.
"Mr. Ripple, I must speak to you," said Charles.
"Charles," said the Beau, "this visit is either vastly important or--it
is vastly impertinent. Pray, what is your business, sir?"
"Business?" repeated Charles, on whom the effort of concentration was
beginning to tell slightly. "Business?"
"Yes, business, sir, business; for I presume you are not situated on my
doorstep for pleasure."
"I want to speak to you."
"Come to-morrow."
"Nay, sir, I must speak with you now. I'm in a devilish mess and need
the advice of a man who has seen--who has seen----"
"Well, sir?" said the Beau, shading his candle in such a way that the
pallid flickering rays lit up the young man's countenance.
"D----! I don't know, Ripple, but for God's sake don't stand there with
that infernal candle dancing all over my face. Let me come in."
Whether it was the note of misery in our hero's voice or his drawn face
or merely a whim of a great man's naturally eccentrick mind that made
the Beau beckon Charles to follow him upstairs to the tall white
drawing-room, where even still the fire glowed dully, will never be
known. Any way, beckon to him he did, and having set down the taper on
the high mantelpiece, seated himself beside the fire and began
meditatively to toast his embroidered morocco pumps.
There they sat in the great drawing-room, the King and his Heir
Presumptive, and very ghostly they looked in the wan light, and very
unreal the whole experience seemed to Charles in after life.
"'Tis about this book."
"What book?"
"This satire."
"You wrote it?"
"Aye," with great weariness.
"_You_ wrote it? 'Foregad, Charles, I should never have believed that."
"But I never--I never wrote those lines."
"What lines?" Mr. Ripple, having admitted much, would admit no more.
"About Miss Courteen and the Maze, and the whole d----d, d----d, d----
d----"
No substantive was strong enough to suit the emphatick epithets thrice
repeated.
"And who, may I ask, was the author of those graceful stanzas?"
"I know, but--but, Ripple--I owed the blackguard money--the Chinese
Masquerade--I knew his name all the while--if harm comes of this affair,
'tis my fault--but by G----, I'll call him out, yes, I'll call him out,
I'll call him out, I'll call him out, and I'll----"
"Go to bed," said Mr. Ripple peremptorily.
"What d'ye mean?"
"You fool, you're drunk. We'll talk of this to-morrow. Good night, Mr.
Lovely. By the way, who was the author of those graceful stanzas?"
"Oh! h----! Amor. Vernor--Vernon. Anon! Oh, h----!"
"What proof have you of this?"
"Proof, eh? what d'ye say--proof--ha-ha-ha! proof! Why the proof of the
pudding's in the eating. Isn't that so? But I've found, I've found the
author, and I'll walk with him in Curtain Mead--in Curtain Mead by
moonlight, eh? and by the powers, you shall act for me."
"Sir, this flippancy is intolerable."
"Who's flippant--who's intol--erol--erable, sir? I say I'll pay him with
six inches of smallsword."
"You forget my rules, Mr. Lovely."
"Rules? Rules? What's the good of rules? He has insulted me and her."
I think you will agree with me that Charles was drunk enough to be very
undignified. Mr. Lovely Senior appeared again, maudlin and quarrelsome.
The Beau, who remembered him, winced at the resemblance.
"This interview is very repugnant to my sense of decorum," he protested.
"I beg you will take your leave, sir. The whole affair needs the
elucidation of the morning; this candle is insufficient. Moreover, the
hour is late; the fire is low; I make it a rule to be asleep by
midnight whenever possible."
"There you go again!" cried Charles, jumping up and walking with
feverish gestures and unsteady legs round about the room. "Rules! Rules!
Rules! 'Foregad, Sir, I tell you, you cannot make rules for life and
death."
"But you can make many excellent rules for living and dying. One of the
best of these is moderation in liquor."
Charles went back to the _Blue Boar_ not quite sure whether he had told
Beau Ripple a very great deal or nothing at all. He remembered so little
of what he had said that next morning he came to the conclusion that it
was nothing at all. He was glad of this, for somehow when the effects of
the Burgundy wore off, he did not feel disposed to attempt the barricade
of the Great little Man's modish prejudice. Anything in the nature of an
intrigue would be distasteful to such an emotional ascetick.
So Charles stayed late in bed on Tuesday morning and took no advantage
of the invitation grimly issued the night before.
In the afternoon, being dejected in spirits, and finding all the world
gone a-hunting, or a-fishing, or a-wenching, he betook himself to the
_World Turned Upside Down_, a noted house for old red wines. While he
sat in the taproom discussing life with an elderly bagman, one of the
hostlers of the _Blue Boar_ to whom he had confided his destination
brought him a note.
"D---- his eyes," said Charles, crumpling the paper to a perfumed ball,
and flicking it towards the undulating surface of the elderly bagman's
rubied nose.
"D---- his eyes," and, turning to his target, he inquired whether the
latter would drink Port or Burgundy.
_Chapter the Twenty-fourth_