Ho! bring me some _lovers_, fat or lean,
That I may crunch ’em my teeth between!
I could eat so many, so many, so many,
That in the wide world there would not be left any.
Ho! Here is Avenant to be seen,
Who comes to draw your teeth so keen;
He’s not the greatest man to view,
But he’s big enough to conquer you.
Planché’s “D’Aulnoy,” slightly misquoted.
Sir Richard Avenant came home from Abyssinia to an interesting
notoriety. He had been associated—a sort of explorative
free-lance—with the expedition of Mr. Bruce, who was not yet returned
from his adventures up the Nile in quest of the sources of that
bewildering water; and, upon his arrival in London, he found himself
engaged to a romance which was certainly remote from his deserts.
Now he was a strong, saturnine man, but apt to whimsical decisions,
whose consequences, the fruits of whatever odd impulses, he never had
a thought but to hold by; and as the self-reserved must suffer the
character accorded to their appearance (the only side of them
confessed), Sir Richard found himself accredited, by anticipation,
with deeds adapted to the countenance he had always addressed to the
world.
He was strolling, some days after his return, through the streets,
when he was accosted by an acquaintance, a _preux chevalier_ of the
highest _ton_, curled, be-ruffed, and imperturbably self-assured.
“Why, strike me silly, Dick!” cried this exquisite, “what do you,
wandering unsociable in a shag coat, and all London by the ears to
lionize ye?”
“Well, I know not, George. What have I done to be lionized?”
“Done! _Done?_ asks the man that will not devour a steak but ’tis cut
raw from the buttock of the living beast! _Done?_ asks Bluebeard (and
stap me, Dick, but your chin is as blue as a watchman’s!)—_done_, he
says, that brings grass-petticoats in his train enough to furnish the
Paradise of the Grand Turk! Prithee, Dick, where hast stowed ’em all?
O, thou hast a great famous reputation, I assure thee, to justify
thyself of with the women! Such is the report of thy peris—their
teeth, their raven hair, their eyes like stars of the night—there’s
no virtue in town could resist, if asked, to be thy queen and theirs.”
He was chuckling, and taking a delicate pinch of martinique, with his
little finger cocked to display a glittering stone, when his eyes
lighted on a house over against which they were standing.
“Hist!” said he, pointing with his cane; “pan my honour, the single
reservation.”
“Single reservation?” repeated the explorer. “To what? To this London
of frailties?”
“To be sure,” said the other. “The one party, I’ll dare swear, that
would not put her nose in a ring for thy sake.”
“Indeed!” said Avenant. “Then she’s the one I must wed.”
The elegant cocked his head, squinting derisive.
“I lay you a double pony to a tester you don’t, within the decade.”
“Done! Tell me about her.”
“I’ll do more. I’ll carry you in to her, here and at once. Tell me
about her, quotha! She’s the Fair with Golden Hair, and a guinea and a
suitor to every thread of it.”
“Whence comes she?”
“From Arcadia, man, with a fortune of gold and roses. She cuts out
hearts raw, as you do steaks, and devours them by the dozen. O, you
shall know her!”
“But by what name, George, by what name?”
“Have I not told you? It shall suffice for all your needs. Thou shalt
take a pack of Cabriolles, and never hunt her to the death. Come, my
friend!”
He led Sir Richard to the house, and had himself announced. They
ascended a flight of stairs, going up into a heaven of floating
fragrance and melodious sounds. Their feet moved noiseless over silken
carpets. They crossed an anteroom ruffling with lackeys, and were
ushered into the Fair’s boudoir.
She sat at her mirror, in the hands of her perruquier. She was the
most beautiful insolent creature Sir Richard had ever seen. There was
not an inch of her which Nature could have altered to its improvement.
The very patch on her cheek was a theft from perfection. But to so
much loveliness her hair was the glory, a nimbus which, condensing in
the heavy atmosphere of adoration, dropped in a melting flood of gold,
which, short of the ground only, shrank and curled back from its gross
contact.
All round and about her hummed her court—poets, lords,
minstrels—suitors straining their wits and their talents for her
delectation, while they bled internally. Many of them greeted Sir
Richard’s chaperon, many Sir Richard himself—good-humouredly,
jealously, satirically, as the case might be—as the two pushed by. A
stir went round, however, when the rough new-comer’s name was put
about; and some rose in their seats, and all dwelt inquisitively on
the explorer’s reception.
It was condescending enough; as was that of his friend, who loved
himself too well, and too wittily, to show a heart worth the beauty’s
discussing.
“Have you got back your appetite, sir,” said the Fair to Avenant, “for
dressed meats?”
“And ladies?” whispered Sir Richard’s friend.
“O, fie!” said madam.
“I will return the question on you,” said Sir Richard, in a low voice.
The Fair lifted her brows.
“Why, I am told, madam,” said Avenant, “that you feed on raw hearts;
but I am willing to believe that the one lie is as certain as the
other.”
The imperious beauty bit her underlip, and laughed.
“I perceive, Sir Richard,” she said, “that you do not court by
flattery.”
“I do not court at all, madam,” he answered.
“Ah, true!” she replied. “You buy in the open market. It must be
simpler; though, in the plain lodging where I hear you lie at present,
the disposal of so responsible an establishment must exercise your
diplomacy.”
She spoke aloud, evoking a general titter; and so aloud Avenant
answered her.
“By no means, madam. I have in my sleeping-room a closet with three
shelves. On one of these lies Beauty, unspoiled by adulation; on
another lies Virtue, that respects her sex too well to traduce it; on
the third lies feminine Truth, loveliest of her sisters. These are my
whole establishment; and as they are shadows all, existing only in the
imagination, they exercise nothing but my fondness for unattainable
ideals.”
The company broke into much laughter over this Jeremiad; and the girl
joined her young voice to theirs. But a little glow of colour was
showing in her cheek, verily as if Sir Richard had flicked that fair
surface with his glove.
“O!” she said, “this is a sad regale! Sure, sir, does the climate of
Abyssinia breed no hotter than Leicestershire Quakers? Why, I have
heard a lion roar fiercer in a caravan. Now, pray, Sir Richard, put
off your civilities, and give us news instead of lessons. They say
there is a form of lawless possession in the women of the country you
visited.”
“It is very true there is, madam. It is called the _Tigrétier_—a
seizure of uncontrollable vanity, during which the victim is so
self-centred that she is unable to attend to the interests, or even to
distinguish the sexes of those about her. She will, for instance,
surround herself with a circle of male admirers, assuming all the
time, apparently, that they are the gossips of her own sex, with whom,
like a decent woman, she would wont ordinarily, of course, to consort
in private.”
The Fair cried out, “Enough! Your stories are the most intolerable
stuff, sir. I wish Mr. Bruce joy of your return, as I hear you are not
to remain in England.”
Then she turned her shoulder to him, her flush deepening to fire; and
Sir Richard, bowing and moving away, fell into conversation with one
or two of his acquaintances. Presently, looking up, he was surprised
to see the room near empty. Goldenlocks had, in fact, issued her
wilful mandate, and her court was dismissing itself.
The explorer was pressing out after the rest, when a maidservant
touched his sleeve, and begged him to return to her lady, who desired
a word with him. Sir Richard acquiesced immediately. He found the Fair
standing solitary by her dressing-table, frowning, her head bent, her
fingers plucking at a wisp of lace. Her hair, still undressed, hung
down deep over her shoulders, mantling them with heavy gold, like a
priest’s chasuble.
“Did you seek my acquaintance, sir,” she said imperatively, “with the
sole purpose to insult me?”
“Nay, madam,” he answered, as cool as tempered steel; “but because you
was described to me as the one woman in London that I might not marry,
if I had the will to.”
“Why not?” was on the tip of her tongue; he saw it there. But she
caught at herself, and answered, “So, sir, like sour reynard, I
suppose, you would spite what you found it useless to covet.”
“_I_ covet, madam!” he said, in a tone of astonishment. “_I_ aspire to
wrest this wealth and beauty from a hundred worthier candidates!
Believe me, my ambition halted far short of such attainment.”
Her lips smiled, despite herself. What were the value, she suddenly
thought, in a world of suitors that did not include this shagg’d and
rugged Jeremiah? Her speech fell as caressing as the sound of water in
a wood.
“Yet you confess to some ambition?” she murmured.
“True,” he answered; “the virtuoso’s.”
She lifted her beautiful brows.
“I will be candid, madam,” he said. “I have the collector’s itch.
Whithersoever I visit, I lay my toll on the most characteristic
productions of the tribes—robes, carvings, implements of war—even
scalps. Madam, madam, you must surely be of the sun children! Your
hair is the most lovely thing! I would give my soul—more, I would
give a thousand pounds to possess it.”
“I see, sir,” she said; “to carry your conquest at your belt.”
“Nay,” he answered, with feigned eagerness. “Not a soul need know. The
thing is done constantly. You have but to subscribe to the fashion of
powder, and you gain a novel beauty, and I a secret I swear to hold
inviolate.”
“O!” she said softly “This is Samson come with the shears to turn the
tables on poor Delilah!”
And on the instant she flashed out, breaking upon him in a storm of
passion. That he dared, that he dared, on no warrant but his
reputation for inhumanity, so to outrage and insult her.
“Go, sir!” she cried. “Return to your Nubians and Dacoits—to
countries where head-hunting is considered an honourable proof of
manliness!”
He stood, as outwardly insensate as a bull.
“Then you decline to deal?”
Her only answer was to throw herself into a chair, and to abandon
herself to incomprehensible weeping. But even her sobs seemed to make
no soft impression on him. He took a step nearer to her, and spoke in
the same civil and measured tone he had maintained throughout.
“Take care, madam. I never yet set my will upon a capture that in the
long run escaped me.”
She checked her tears, to look up at him with a little furious laugh.
“Poor boaster!” she said. “I think, perhaps, that recounting of your
Tigrétier hath infected you with it.”
“By my beard, madam,” said he, “I will make that hair my own!”
“See,” she cried jeeringly, “how a boaster swears by what he has not!”
Sir Richard felt to his chin.
“That is soon remedied,” said he. “And so, till my oath is redeemed,
to consign my razors to rust!” And with these words, bowing
profoundly, he turned and left the room.
Shortly after this he sailed to rejoin his expedition, and was not
again in England during a period of eighteen months.
At the end of that time, being once more in London, he devoted
himself—his affairs having now been ordered with the view to his
permanent residence in the country—to some guarded inquiries about
the Fair with Golden Hair. For some days, the season of the town being
inauspicious, he was unable to discover anything definite about her.
And then, suddenly, the news which he sought and desired came in a
clap.
He was walking, one day, down a street of poor and genteel houses,
when he saw her before him. He stood transfixed. There was no doubting
his own eyesight. It was she: tall, slender, crowned with her
accustomed glory, the flower of her beauty a little wan, as if seen by
moonlight. But what confounded him was her condition. Her dress was
mean, her gloves mended; every tag of cheap ribbon which hung upon her
seemed the label to a separate tragedy. Thus he saw her again, the
Fair with Golden Hair; but how deposed and fallen from her insolent
estate!
She mounted a step to a shabby door. While she stood there, waiting to
be admitted, an old jaunty cavalier came ruffling it down the street,
accosted her, and accompanied her within. She might have glanced at
Avenant without recognizing him. The rough dark beard he wore was his
sufficient disguise.
Sir Richard made up his mind on the spot, and acted promptly. Having
no intention to procure himself a notoriety in this business, he
rigidly eschewed personal inquiry, and employed an official informer,
at a safe figure, to ferret out the truth for him. This, epitomized,
discovered itself as follows:—
Cytherea—Venus Calva—Madonna of the magic girdle, who had once
reigned supreme between wealth and loveliness, who had once eaten
hearts raw for breakfast, feeding her roses as vampires do, was
desolate and impoverished—and even, perhaps, hungry. A scoundrelly
guardian had eloped with trust funds: the crash had followed at a
blow. Robbed of her recommendation to respect; deposed, at once, from
the world’s idolatry to its vicious solicitation, she had fled, with
her hair and her poor derided virtue, into squalid oblivion; that, at
least, she hoped. But, alas for the fateful recoils on Vanity! She
drives with a tight rein; and woe to her if the rein snap! A certain
libidinous and crafty nobleman, of threescore or so years, had
secured, in the days of the Fair’s prosperity, some little bills of
paper bearing that beauty’s signature. These he had politicly withheld
himself from negotiating, on the mere chance that they might serve him
some day for a means to humiliate one who, in the arrogance of her
power, had scoffed at his amatory, and perfectly honourable,
addresses. That precaution had justified itself. The peer was now come
to woo again, and less scrupulously, with his hand on a paper weapon,
one stroke from which alone was needed to give the Fair’s poor
drabbled fortune its quietus. She was at bay, between ruin and
dishonour.
Sir Richard came immediately to a resolve, and lost no time in giving
it effect. He wrote a formal note to the Fair, recalling himself
courteously to her remembrance, reminding her of his original offer,
and renewing it in so many words. He would do himself the honour, he
said, to wait upon her for her answer on such and such a day.
To this he received no reply; nor, perhaps, expected one. He went,
nevertheless, to his self-made appointment with the imperturbable
confidence of a strong man.
Passing, on his way, by a perruquier’s, he checked himself, and stood
for some moments at gaze in a motionless reverie. Then he entered the
shop, made a purchase, and, going to a barber’s, caused himself to be
shorn, shaved, and restored to the conventional aspect. Thus
conditioned, he knocked at the Fair’s door, and was ushered up—bawled
up, rather, by a slattern landlady—into her presence.
She rose to face him as he entered. She had his letter in her hand.
Her beautiful hair, jealous, it seemed, to withdraw itself from the
curioso’s very appraisement, was gathered into and concealed under a
cap. Her features, thus robbed of their dazzling frame, looked
curiously, sadly childish and forlorn. There were dark marks round her
eyes—the scarce dissipated clouds of recent tears. Who can tell what
emotions, at sight of this piteous, hard-driven loveliness, stirred
the heart of the man opposite, and were repressed by his iron will?
“This letter, sir,” said the Fair, holding out the paper in a hand
which shook a little. “I have tacitly permitted you to presume a right
to a personal answer to that which it proposes, because such a course
appeared to me the least compromising. I cannot write my name, sir,
nowdays—as scandal doubtless hath informed you—but Fortune will be
using it to my discredit.”
Sir Richard bowed.
“There is this difference only, madam: _my_ word is the bond of a
gentleman. I vowed you secrecy.”
“That is to assume, on your part,” she said quietly, “a
confidentialness which, in its insult to misfortune, is at least not
the _act_ of a gentleman. Moreover, a gentleman, surely, had not taken
advantage of circumstances to propose to destitution what affluence
had once refused him.”
“Beware, madam!” said Avenant. “Pride must make some sacrifices to
virtue. If, in renewing a pure business offer, I, a simple instrument
in the hands of Providence, give you an opportunity to maintain that
priceless possession unimpaired, would it not be the truer
self-respect to secure your honour at whatever cost to your
sentiments?”
“I thank you, sir,” she said. “I have not forgotten, nor forgotten to
resent, my self-constituted Mentor. I will assure him that, for the
matter of my virtue, it is safe in my hands, though I have to arm
those against myself.”
“Good heavens, madam!” cried Avenant. “You are not at that resource?”
“Give yourself no concern, sir,” she answered coldly. “The moral I
learned of your insult, was to save myself in its despite.”
His deep eyes glowed upon her.
“You have sold your hair?” he said.
“Yes,” she answered; “to pay my debts. ’Twas your letter decided me.”
“At a thousand pounds?”
“At a hundred.”
Then she added, as if irresistibly, because she was still little more
than a child, “And now, sir, how is the boaster vindicated? But your
oath, I perceive, still goes beardless.”
“Within the hour only,” said he; and, thrusting his hand into his
breast, he drew out the long tresses of the Fair With Golden Hair.
She stared, amazed a moment; then threw herself upon her knees by a
chair, weeping and crying out—
“O, I hate you, I hate you!”
He strode, and stood over her.
“I saw them through a window as I came. How could I mistake them?
There is not their like in the world. But now, my oath redeemed, it is
for you to say if I am to destroy them.”
“O, my hair!” she wept; “my one beauty!”
“I have staked all on this,” he cried. “If your hair was your one
beauty, my beard alone redeemed me from appalling ugliness by so much
as it hid of me. Well, I have lost on both counts, if the net result
is your hatred.”
She looked up, with drowned bewildered eyes, and held out her hand
blindly.
“Give me back my hair,” she said, “and you shall have the hundred
pounds.”
“Nay, sweet Delilah,” quoth he; “for that would be to return you your
strength, and I want you weak.”
Her arm dropped to her side.
“That you may insult me with impunity!” she said bitterly.
“Ah, Delilah!” he cried; “is it so bad, that the offer of my hand and
heart is an insult to a woman?”
She sank back, sitting on her heels. From under her cap, fallen awry,
curled shavings of gold hung out—the residue of a squandered wealth.
Her eyes were wide with amazement.
“So bad?” she whispered. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
He was not a conformable wooer. The love-wise sex shall say if he was
a diplomatic one. He threw himself on his knees beside the Fair,
seized her in his bear-like grip, and kissed her lips.
“Now,” he said, “it is neck or nothing. None but a parson can wipe out
the stain. Hate me now, and put Love to bed for by and by.”
She smiled suddenly—like the rainbow; like an angel.
“Yes,” she said, “if you insist. But the poor thing has slept so long
in my heart, that it would fain wake up at last, and confess itself.”
The peer took his settlement with a very bad grace; but he had to take
it, and there was an end of him.
“Avenant,” whispered the Fair, on the evening of their wedding day, “I
have been vain, spoiled, perhaps untruthful. But I wished to tell
you—you can put me to sleep on the middle shelf of your cupboard.”
“It has been converted into a closet for skeletons,” he said. “I was a
bachelor then.”