Mr. Jeremy Daish, as I told you many pages back, was remarkably like a
Cremona violin. Conceive then this elderly instrument of the Muses
making a final inspection of his polished floor, preparatory to the
invasion of my lady Bunbutter's red-heeled rout.
[2] I went into Daish's Rooms the other day, for they still
exist as the storehouse of a prosperous ironmonger who is not above
unbending at Christmas time so far as to display a variety of choice
knick-knacks wrought by the Curtain Wells Amateur Copper-Beaters'
Association. The famous frieze carved by an Italian immigrant still
exists, and makes a suitable background for the exhibition of patent
mouse-traps. Among all the brass gongs and Japanese flower-pots, above
the mowing machines and oil-stoves of varied price and power I was
pleased to detect the old iron hooks whence long ago hung the gilt
mirrors that held the unimpaired reflections of this gay history's
characters. For a moment, amid the bleak utility of the stores, I half
fancied the swish of a broidered petticoat and the whisper of a painted
fan, smelt Eau de Chypre and heard the Minuet in _Ariadne_. I shall not
visit Daish's Rooms again; the ghosts have too much power to wring my
heart with the tears and laughter of spent joys.
"It's a very inconvenient store-room," said the dapper manager, "I think
Mr. Bugloss intends to pull it down next year."
Everything portended a successful evening's entertainment. The hautboys,
the flutes, the fiddles and the harp were drinking hot negus extra
strong in order to spur them to unwonted achievements of melody.
Prudence and Deborah, Mr. Daish's comely daughters, who never appeared
in the galleries of the _Blue Boar_ so that their attendance on
occasions like the present might possess the charm at once of
condescension and novelty, were busily puffing their caps and smoothing
their pinners, and from time to time glancing in the direction of the
gilt mirrours just to see that the wax candles were not forming ominous
shrouds liable to mar the gaiety of my lady Bunbutter's agreeable
entertainment.
Waiters came and peeped through a door which probably led to the
supper-room and the three footmen in black plush laced with silver braid
were engaged in a dignified consultation over the glittering knobs of
their tall Malacca canes.
The wheels of the first coach crackle suddenly above the murmurous quiet
of preparation. Tremendously hooped and highly wigged, my lady Bunbutter
has arrived and is entirely approving of the arrangements made by Mr.
Jeremy Daish for the fitting entertainment of a distinguished and
fashionable company.
Here comes the latter very splendid, prodigiously well-bred and
thoroughly determined to criticize the musick and the supper and my lady
Bunbutter herself with merciless perseverance. Here comes the Most
Honourable the Marquis of Hurricane and his eldest son the Earl of
Squall and his second son Lord Augustus Wind and Lady Mary Wind and Lady
Winifred Wind, and his son-in-law El Conde de Scirocco and the sleepy
Contessa, but lud! my lady, her ladyship was unable to appear and begs
to send her apologies. Her dog, my lady, has developed a quinsy, most
unaccountable.
Here come the Earl of Cinderton and the Honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe,
and the Lady Angela Tongs, his married daughter.
Here comes Mrs. Courteen and Miss Phyllida Courteen with Major
Constantine Tarry and Mr. Gregory Moon close behind.
Here is young Miss Kitcat with Captain Mann who for all he was so
disreputable was nevertheless tantamount to the success of the Cotillon.
Here come old General Morton and Miss Susan Morton.
In fact, here comes everybody of any importance in Curtain Wells; and
the fiddlers are tuning up.
Yet for all the fiddlers are inviting the world to dance, for all the
world declares the whole entertainment promises to be a grand success
(though not so grand as it should be, considering the ample means at the
disposal of my lady Bunbutter whose father was able to leave a large
fortune to a milliner in Soho), her ladyship herself casts many an
anxious glance towards the entrance. The courtiers have arrived but the
King is still absent, and absent he is likely to remain having caught a
slight nasal catarrh from his contact with the night weather, brought
about by Mr. Lovely. For this story his absence was even more important
in its consequences than my Lady Bunbutter dreamed, since if the Beau
had been present on this occasion I doubt he would have persuaded our
heroine to give up all thoughts of elopements, seductions, stratagems
and rope-ladder courtships. As it fell out, there was nobody to
encourage the unromantick side of her, that is to say, nobody whose
opinion she could honestly respect.
Mr. Francis Vernon had hired the old dancing hall for a midnight party
of farewell; and the old dancing hall still possessed an oak door which
opened on a long corridor which in its turn opened into the new and
improved dancing hall of Daish's Rooms. Halfway along this corridor was
a recessed glasshouse now bare of vegetation, bleak and unfriendly in
the chilly moonlight but a very convenient place for the renewal of
true-lovers' vows when one of the lovers had not been invited to my Lady
Bunbutter's rout. So in the press of the opening gavottes, as Phyllida
passed down the side of the room to wait beside her mother's empty
chair, long white fingers plucked at the black silk mittens that netted
her soft little hand. Phyllida started and, looking up, saw the fingers
withdraw themselves through the space left by a half-opened door.
She looked round in affright, but the fiddlers were busy over the gentle
tune and all the world of scandal was dancing or about to dance. The
thrill of his touch gave her strength enough to make up her mind and,
without more than a moment's hesitation, she slipped through the doorway
whose opening was obscured by greenery.
A solitary candle lit the long corridor with fitful draughty light.
"Come," said Vernon; and, taking his arm, she went down the passage
which seemed to stretch far away--to ruin perhaps, but the end was not
perceptible owing to the scarce illumination.
Soon they were alone in the chilly glasshouse with the moon and a star
or two besides.
"To-morrow, my dearest life," he whispered.
"No, no," said Phyllida.
"To-morrow," he went on, "a post-chaise will be waiting by the toyshop,
and on the seat a riding hood of peacock blue that to-day I bought for
my love."
"No! No! Amor, dear Amor, I am afraid."
"Afraid, dear heart, afraid?"
Far off sounded the musick and far off the laughter of the world.
"Afraid that misery will come of it."
"Misery, my beloved? I will cherish you for ever."
"Amor! Amor! I'm afraid. Something, I cannot say what, I cannot explain
my feelings, but something frightens me, I feel--oh! I feel as if I were
walking in a dark wet garden. I feel as if--as if the laurels and the
evergreens held a knife."
Vernon clasped her to him.
"My dear and my dear, they hold no more than an arrow; the arrow that
has pierced our hearts."
Certainly our villain was play-acting, but he was his own audience and
that juxtaposition is as near to sincerity as even your hero attains.
"You won't betray your Phyllida?"
The appeal caught fire from the flaming cheeks of a maid and burned a
way direct, poignant, passionate, right through the lustre and tinsel of
his emotional costume.
"You won't betray your Phyllida?" The question was such an one as
circulating libraries knew very well. It was asked by many a
contemporary Musidora or Clarinda of fiction. Yet so tremulous were the
lips that asked it, lips frail as rose-leaves and, withal, ardent as
wine, that Vernon shuddered. For the first time in his life he had
raised a force. He was at home with Ranelagh romps, with patched
beauties of Vauxhall, mistresses of intrigue whose fans had become a
part of their bodies, or better, whose bodies were no more than the
appendage of their fans, light, airy things where Love danced in a mask
and could be shut up at will.
Now for the first time he stared into eyes which held immortality. He
saw himself Point de Vise but intolerably diminished.
Vernon noticed that the cheek nearer to him flamed more crimson and for
a while he was troubled by the mystery of Love's birth. Elation swung
him to the skies and, catching Phyllida to his heart, he whispered of
constancy, swore that love would endure for ever and hardly knew himself
for a liar.
He never spoke again of pearls, and from that moment truly desired her
for the youth and the mystery of herself.
With a pang of tenderness he let her go, watched her hurry down the
corridor like a crimson Autumn leaf that is blown along by the wind. By
the little door she looked back at him, and from the tips of her fingers
sped elfin kisses which on the wings of the musick of flutes and fiddles
were borne in grace and beauty.
She had promised. With a sigh Mr. Francis Vernon went back to
superintend the arrangements for his farewell party. She had promised,
and, as she slipped unobserved into the glitter and heat of Daish's
famous Rooms, never seemed like one who has stood a long while in
moonlight.
What mattered the censorious world? The softness of his black velvet
sleeve thrilled her, and, forgetting all else, she began to build her
house of dreams. What a house it was, with casements that looked on
every month of the marching years. Now it was December when the
snowflakes were falling. Down the corridor she and her lover moved in
the grey light, but the casements were lined with ferns and stars and
jewels of frost, so they sought Spring in the changing fire-gardens of
burning logs. February went by with her showers and her celandines, her
snowdrops and thrushes that sing on bare branches. That casement in her
house of dreams was gilded round and the sill carved with posies and
true-lovers' knots, for through it she had seen Love for the first time.
March came in by night with a great noise of wind, yet even in the gusty
darkness she could put out her hands to touch a velvet sleeve as black
as the gloom enclosed by the open lattice. Every casement in her house
of dreams was full of delight, even the quaint little window at the very
end of the corridor whose ledge was the haunt of drifted leaves. In the
far-off autumn he would still be by her side.
Somebody asked her to step a minuet, yet while her body danced, while
her feet kept tune to the twinkling rhythm, while her fan fluttered to
mortal harmonies, her soul was away with Love--God knows the spot, but
'twas somewhere mighty near the top of this green world. Now she was
rocking a wooden cradle while the wind in the wide black chimney crooned
an echo to the old nursery song she was singing. Ah! sir or madam, when
a young maiden starts to build her house of dreams, I think, if she be a
wise maid, she builds the nursery first of all.
This wonderful house had a number of clocks, tall clocks, short clocks,
thin clocks, fat clocks, round clocks, square clocks, clocks on the
wall, clocks on the mantelpiece, clocks in the corners; and every clock
was ticking away to a tune of its own, for in the house of dreams there
was never a moment that did not deserve perpetual commemoration.
Somebody asked her to step a gavotte. At the end of the garden of this
wonderful house was a green wicket, and when you had walked through a
coppice of birches and wild raspberries that ripen with the corn, you
found yourself on the London road. It ran straight as a dart over hill
and down dale, through villages whose cottages were only built to stare
at the gay equipages that rattled past, for nothing alive was visible
save a few geese on a blue and white pond beneath a blue and white sky.
Phyllida's mind was a book of old wives' tales and her London was the
golden London of Dick Whittington.
Fled were all the outraged heroines of dog-eared novels in greasy
circulation. The long reproaches, stilted protestations, vows, regrets
and declarations had vanished. The nodding spinsters behind country
counters who selected the literature of their clients and declared how
affecting was this tale, how full of sensibility was that one, had
gradually lost all definite shape like the volumes they doled out so
assiduously. Fled, too, with the vapours of young maidenhood, were some
of the sweets. Nevertheless I doubt there was not a soul to regret the
old Phyllida save perhaps Betty and Dick Combleton, the Squire's
youngest son away down in Hampshire.
Miss Sukey Morton began to talk to her of young Tom Chalkley. She told
how he had passed their house, how he had looked up at the window, and
how by the greatest ill luck she happened to be rather pale that
morning. She babbled on about the imagined progress of an affair which
had never truly existed. To Phyllida who should have been sympathetick,
it was rather wearisome chatter. Suddenly Miss Morton shocked her dear
Courteen very much by asking if she had discovered who was satirized in
those twelve lines beginning ... Phyllida interrupted with a curt
negative, so curt that her darling Morton regarded her with black-eyed
curiosity.
"And how should I know, Sukey, how should I know?"
"My dearest Miss Courteen, there is no need to be angry about a simple
question."
"These discoveries are all so low," complained Phyllida.
"Oh, vastly low, though for my part I think the hussy deserves censure
since she has made every young woman ridiculous."
With this commentary Miss Morton left her friend, and Phyllida,
wondering all the while if she knew the whole affair, was more than ever
firmly determined to elope to-morrow afternoon with her Amor.
_Chapter the Twenty-fifth_