“The same: three days later.” So, in theatrical parlance, we lift
the curtain on a scene the replica of that introduced in the second
chapter of this Comedy of Errors. It was all as before, even to the
parted figures--only with this difference: somewhat equidistant
between the two sat Mrs. Davis.
That, though an addition seeming insignificant, had all the latent
force in it of a barrel of gunpowder with an unlighted fuse attached.
The moment might come when, the match being applied, the whole of that
artificial stuff of obmutescence would be blown in a flash to the
winds.
Mrs. Moll was perhaps herself a little conscious of the volcano on
which she was perched. Yet it would be doing her an injustice to hint
that she either felt or showed any perturbation. While fully realizing
that her position was in the last degree precarious, the thrill of the
thing, the exercise of the mental agility needed to prevent, or at
least postpone, that final catastrophe, was compensation enough, while
it lasted, to reconcile her to her utmost danger. And in the meanwhile
she was having, in the slang of to-day, the time of her life. Lapt in
a perfumed luxury, which was as foreign as it was agreeable to her
nature, and enjoying it none the less because it was stolen fruit,
soon to be consumed; like a born actress living in her part, but like
an astute woman keeping an unsleeping eye to the business side of her
engagement, she gave herself wholly to the situation, and endeavoured
to extract from it the best that mischief and ingenuity could devise.
Morally, she was in her own eyes merely the naughty little _tertium
quid_ needed in a drama of love and jealousy to effect a certain
purpose of separation.
And, incidentally, she regarded the feelings of no one. The play was
the thing, and nothing outside it mattered. She was not, personally,
taken with his lordship, while, professionally, she coquetted with,
and, as she supposed, captivated him. If, in the course of those
antics, he should be so obsessed as to propose to make her his
mistress in actual fact, she might possibly, for reasons of
self-interest, be induced to accept. But she was quite contented
without. The entertainment to her lay in the successful management of
the double deception which was to end by procuring Hamilton the fruit
of his elaborate intrigue. She was not jealous of him, though he was
the man, handsome and daring, for her fancy. They were small souls
akin, and she would like to please him, if only to hear his praise.
My lord read, my lady worked, and Mrs. Davis sat with her hands on her
lap and yawned. When she addressed either, it had to be with a careful
view to maintaining with each the fiction that she was the other’s
friend--a task not to be under-estimated for its difficulty, and,
indeed, only rendered possible by the stubborn avoidance by the two,
in replying to her, of any reference to her position in the house as
the guest of one of them. But their mutual pride was in that her
safety. For any self-betrayal they invited, designedly or
undesignedly, she might actually have been their known and accepted
visitor. They spoke not so much to her as through her--shafts designed
by each to gall the other. It was for her usefulness in that respect
that my lady had condescended to condone her presence, and even to the
extent of some verbal interchanges. As a medium, transmitting the
bitter intercourse of soul with soul, she had her negative virtues.
It was evening, and the girandoles were all a sparkling haze of light.
There was no company but these three; for his lordship had of late
shown a peevish avoidance of his friends, and his implied intimation
of a desire for solitude had been generally respected--infinitely to
the disgust of his young Countess, who, never wedded to domestic
dullness, found in this infliction of it, under the circumstances, an
intolerably aggravated grievance. She sat like a figure of fate,
distilling frost.
Moll, leaning back in her chair, linked her hands behind her head,
stretched deliciously, gave a prodigious yawn, and rattling her little
heels on the floor, came erect again, and looked in a collapsed way at
her ladyship.
“Sure, you’d find stitching easier, wouldn’t you,” she said, “if you
took off that black sling of a thing.” (The injured wife still
advertised her hurt on occasion.)
“No,” answered the lady shortly, pursing her lips. “I shouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t you, now?” said the slut, and settled herself down for a
tease. She was a born chatterer, as glib at retort as she was
garrulous, and the bump of reverence had been wholly denied her. She
looked very pretty, nevertheless, in her evening frock of flowered
lutestring, with her bright hair tumbling over her bright cheeks, and
dressed at each temple with a knot of pink ribbon. “Well, there’s no
accounting for tastes. If I’d hurt my arm, I should either forget the
bruise or forget my work. They don’t pull together.”
“I haven’t hurt my arm.”
“Not?”
“It was bitten by a dog.”
“Sakes, now! What made him do it?”
“What makes any dog bite? An evil disposition, I suppose.”
“You weren’t taking his bone away from him, by chance?”
“Not I. He’s welcome to a whole skeleton of bones for me.”
“All except the spare-rib, maybe.”
His lordship, from his place apart, went “Ha-ha!”--and immediately
looked furiously solemn. My lady, beyond a slight flushing of the
cheek, showed no consciousness of the interruption. Moll turned in her
chair, leaning her arms on the back and her chin on her crossed hands.
“That’s you,” she said. “Is your book so funny?”
“Killing,” answered Chesterfield. “’Tis--’tis a tract on drainage.”
“Lord, now--how humoursome! No wonder it makes you roar. But, sure,
there’s no laughter in your face. You look as cross as a Good Friday
bun.”
“Zounds! I’m amused, I tell you,” he said; “as amused as a dog when a
cat arches her back at him.”
“I’ve seen more amused things than that. Come, prithee, leave your
book and let us talk. What do you want to read for when a guest is
by?”
“O! just to occupy my mind.”
“Put something into nothing, do you mean? Well, ’tis better empty than
filled with drainage.”
He laughed, without hilarity, but laid aside his reading.
“Well,” said he; “I am at your service.”
“That’s right,” she said. “And so we’ll make a merry company, we
three--the best in the middle and the bread on each side, like a duck
sandwich.”
“Little merriment in a sandwich, to my thinking.”
“Why, so there isn’t. ’Tis a poor substitute for the stomach.”
“A very poor substitute. A man might better own a bread-basket.”
But that was too much for Mrs. Davis. She bridled, instantly offended.
“You vulgar beast! I’ll have you know I’m not to be spoken to like
that, curse you!”
There is nothing more incommensurable, to be sure, than the particular
standards of decorum which obtain with people of Mrs. Moll’s
station--now as then.
Chesterfield’s eyebrows went up; he shook with a little inward
laughter.
“Why,” says he, “I’m all amazement! ’Twas but a _façon de parler_;
or, as we call it, a figure of speech.”
“Well, you can keep that part of speech’s figure to yourself.”
“I will; though I’ve got enough of my own. Come--forgive my offence.
What were we discussing? Sandwiches?”
“Well, I say they’re a poor manner of food. The man that invented them
meant well, but he went the wrong way about with it. They should be a
slice of bread between two slices of meat, to my taste. He must ha’
been like Kit’s friend, who always did the right thing and did it
wrong.”
She was constantly referring to this “Kit.” Neither of her hearers had
a notion as to who was the individual alluded to, though each supposed
it to be some one familiar to the other’s knowledge. The lady, of
course, thought it a woman, the gentleman a man. The name, you see, as
applicable to a member of either sex, was one very well chosen for
abstract purposes. It enabled her to keep up an assumption of
understood references, while avoiding the danger of specific
instances. “Kit” was made the mouthpiece of quite a number of
imaginary characters. He--or she--might or might not have had some
existence in fact--even to a certain association with that mythical
personage her husband (in whom, by the by, Hamilton had scant belief);
but for oracular purposes it mattered nothing whether “Kit” were a
derivation or a creation. The enigma, however, had this whimsical
effect--both husband and wife became presently consumed with such an
insatiable curiosity to penetrate the secret of “Kit’s” identity, that
they felt like to burst under the weight of silence which the irony of
circumstance had imposed on them.
“What friend of Kit’s was that?” inquired his lordship.
“He was a plumber,” answered Moll--and turned on her hostess. “Have
you ever had a friend a plumber?”
It was as though she had suddenly shot a jet of iced water over the
daughter of the Duke of Ormonde. Kate started, quivered, and sat
rigid.
“Never!” she gasped out.
“Well,” said Moll, “I don’t blame you. They’ve a smell about them of
putty and warm tallow that isn’t appetizing. But this friend of Kit’s
was worse than most. He never mended a broken pipe but what he shut up
some of his tools in it first, or stopped one leak without opening
two. Aren’t you feeling well?”
“Never mind my feelings,”--the response came Arctic. “I’m not
accustomed to having them considered”--“by the friends of plumbers,”
was implied.
“What a shame, now! If ’tis your arm that’s hurting you, don’t stand
on ceremony, but get to bed. We can manage alone somehow.”
The Earl raised his eyebrows, positively petrified. How dared the
baggage mock the other thus, however much her friend? It could be
nothing but her obsession about himself and his fatal attraction which
emboldened her so to range herself, as it were, under the protection
of his guns.
Lady Chesterfield, her cheek aglow, rose to her feet.
“This is becoming insufferable,” she began; and stopped, biting her
lip.
“You’ve forgotten your sling,” said Moll.
“You’ve forgotten _yourself_,” said Kate disdainfully; and, with a
shrug, resumed her seat. “But perhaps that is an advantage.”
Mrs. Davis jumped up, with a ringing laugh.
“What a company of crosspatches!” she cried. “The sandwich doesn’t
seem to be a success. You come in the middle, Phil, and be the duck.”
He grinned, but in a half-scared way. She had never yet ventured so
far as to call him by his Christian name. He was feeling suddenly
rather helpless--taken off his feet by the excess of the storm he had
himself invited. When she ran to him and pulled at his coat, he
resisted feebly.
“Come and be the duck.” She chirped with laughter. “What a face to
grin through a horse collar! O! look intelligent!” She shook him.
“What shall we do--play games? Hot cockles, say, or----” she released
him, and stood with deliberating finger on lip. “No, that would never
do. Dumb-crambo--what do you say to that?” She glanced with comical
plaintiveness from one mute figure to the other. “But you don’t look
very playful, either of you. I wish Kit was here. You’d never be able
to resist Kit, whatever you do me.”
Chesterfield cleared his throat, fingering the cravat at it.
“Is Kit such a wag?” said he.
“Just,” was the answer.
“And good at games?”
“There was never such a one for make-believe.”
“A happy disposition. But then, as to happiness--Kit isn’t married, of
course.”
Her ladyship, in an uncontrollable spasm, whisked about.
“Kit, Mrs. Davis, has never suffered that most cruel of
disillusionments.”
And then they went at it alternately, each pointedly addressing _not_
the other, and tossing the hypothetical Kit between them, as if that
epicene individual were the most familiar of shuttlecocks.
“Kit is to be congratulated, Mrs. Davis,” said his lordship.
“Kit has chosen the better course, Mrs. Davis,” said her ladyship.
“Matrimony is the shadow of felicity, Mrs. Davis, for which men, like
the dog in the fable, drop the substance.”
“Men, you see, are beasts, Mrs. Davis; and not only beasts, but silly
beasts.”
“They don’t know when they are well off, Mrs. Davis.”
“But women do, Mrs. Davis, when men insist on remaining single.”
“A pity for them, then, Mrs. Davis, that they don’t insist on
remaining single too.”
“A great pity, Mrs. Davis; but women are in everything
self-sacrificing.”
“They know how to take consolation for their injuries, Mrs. Davis.”
“The one lesson for which they are thankfully indebted to men, Mrs.
Davis.”
“Take care what you’re confessing to, Mrs. Davis!”
“Or what calumnies you are making poor Kit responsible for, Mrs.
Davis,” said her ladyship, with a little contemptuous laugh.
“O, Kit is the devil!” shouted the Earl, his wrath, till then steadily
crescendo, exploding in a clap.
Moll, with a shriek of laughter, put her little hands to her ears.
“Lud!” she cried. “I’ve never confessed to so much before without
knowing it! And to think Kit is come to be the devil after all!”
She lowered her hands to clap them; and at that moment the doors were
flung open and Mr. Hamilton was announced. He came in from attending
the Court, a brilliant figure all silk and velvet, with bows to his
shoes a foot wide, and deep ruffles of lace falling from his knees
over his calves. His teeth showed in a little tentative smile, their
whiteness emphasized by the thread of moustache, no thicker than an
eyebrow, which adorned his upper lip; while his glance, swift and
comprehensive, took in the essentials of the situation on which he had
alighted. His young kinswoman sprang to greet him with a cry of
gladness.
“_Oh, bien rencontré, mon beau cousin!_ You are welcome as health
after sickness!”
She positively seemed to fawn on him, while Chesterfield, black and
splenetic, scowled from his place across the room.
Hamilton was hugely gratified; but prudence necessitated his
discounting this demonstration in the kindest way possible. He
laughed, and very gently putting aside the caressing hands, answered,
sufficiently audibly--
“Troth, Kate, if this is your malady, it appears in a more attractive
form than most.” And then, lowering his voice, he spoke her aside:
“Who is this stranger?”
“You should know,” she replied, hardly deigning to respond in kind.
“Was it not you that warned me of her coming?”
“Ah!” he said, seeming enlightened, and just perceptibly shrugged his
shoulders. “Is that so? Well, make us known to one another, child; for
there’s no situation possible here without.”
“You said you had seen her.”
“Never to be remembered by her. I prithee, Kate.”
She could not; it stuck in her throat; but she conceded this much--she
waved him with her hand towards the other two, where they stood
together. Hamilton made the best of it.
“Will you, Phil?” says he, skipping up before, with a killing smile
for the lady.
Chesterfield had no choice but to respond.
“Mrs. Davis,” he said, in a voice that seemed to carry an oath behind
it; “this is my friend, Mr. George Hamilton.”
Moll curtsied, “a wicked little winkle” in her eye; and the gentleman,
left hand on chest, right extended, and right toe advanced and
pointed, swept a bow the very exaggeration of courtly.
“Charmed,” said he.
“Sure,” said Moll.
“You were speaking,” said he, “when it was my misfortune to interrupt
you.”
“Was I?” said she. “Now I remember--it was about Kit.”
“Was it, faith? And who’s Kit?”
“Kit’s the devil.”
“The devil he is!”
“I never said _he_, now.”
“She, then.”
“Nor _she_. Kit’s Kit.”
“Zounds! Neither man nor woman?”
“Zounds! Why not? Doesn’t something come between man and woman?”
“What comes?”
“Why, the devil, sure.”
“Ah! Then Kit _is_ the devil.”
“Indeed, Kit is not. Kit is what the devil comes between.”
“Wait, now. I scent a quibble. Kit stands for Christopher, and Kit
stands for Katherine--both man and woman. They go arm in arm.”
“Not they. Why, Chris could never look at a woman without blushing.”
“And how about Kate?”
“O, _she_! _She’d_ go arm in arm with a pair of breeches.”
My lord laughed, half vexedly: “She never could, you know.”
Moll turned on him.
“’Twas you, not me, called Kit the devil. Why don’t you answer for
your own?” and, with a manner of playful fretfulness, she began to
tease and rally him _sotto voce_.
Hamilton looked, with a grin, at his cousin, then moved to rejoin her.
She stood with set lips and a disdainful frown on her brow.
“How can you encourage such intolerable stuff?” she said, in an
undertone, as he approached.
“Come with me into the window,” he answered low; and, rebelling a
moment, she succumbed. It was a large room, and the movement secured
them a relative privacy.
“Stuff it may be,” said he; “but ’tis the sort of ready flippancy
which leads your Philip Stanhopes by the nose. Is there any truth in
this Kit?”
“How should I know or care? Some former flame of his, belike, with
whom they play to perplex and insult me. It is no concern of mine. I
am done with him.”
“Is that true, cousin?” He looked at her very earnestly. “Nay, I can
see you are not speaking the truth.”
“Can you see? What true masculine eyes! I tell you that, having formed
my resolve, I am quite unconcerned and happy!”
“Ah! Women think themselves what they want to be. That is why they
never understand when they are accused of being what they are.”
“Indeed! And pray what am I that I do not think myself?”
“Jealous.”
“Never!”
“Jealous, I say--or you were not still so obsessed that you could fail
to play the game I set you.”
“What game?”
“O! ‘What game?’ says she. Why, _his_ game--or fatuity. Make _him_
jealous; hoist him with his own petard, and see this common jade
deposed.”
Affecting, while he spoke, the simplest conversational manner, he had
an acute eye all the time for the two across the room. He observed the
little attention the Earl was paying to the wiles besieging him, his
disturbed glances his way, the morose suspicion of his expression; and
he knew that the man was still too corroded with jealousy to play
adequately the part assigned him. And in so far the decoy had failed,
it seemed, to justify her uses. It was evident that, as Chesterfield
had stated, she had begun to weary him--a perilous situation, which
must be stopped from developing itself at whatever cost. But this
mischief had reserves of fascination not yet brought into action.
Kate’s own guitar--the famous instrument--lay on a table hard by. The
sight of it brought one of these reserves most opportunely into his
mind. If he dared--but he _must_ dare.
Kate looked at her beguiler queerly. “I had forgotten,” she said.
“Thank you, cousin. Is your advice very disinterested?”
“To that extreme,” said he, “that I offer myself, if you will, the
fond instrument to this provocation. Purely to serve you, believe me.
Why, watch him now, and judge if, for all his misbehaviour, he would
relish that sort of retort on his infidelity.”
“I will not watch him,” she said, “or even look at him. You are very
kind to me, cousin. I will think on what you say.”
He was so elated that he decided on the venture. Lifting the guitar,
he ran his fingers over the strings.
“This, Mrs. Davis,” said he, advancing a few steps, “is thought, as no
doubt you have been informed, the finest instrument of its kind in
London. Do you play?”
The girl’s eyes sparkled. If she had a soul, it was to be evoked,
small and indefinite, through music. Hamilton had calculated on that
effect.
“I play,” she said. “Give it me.”
Her ladyship exclaimed angrily--
“No! Put it away, cousin. I will not have it so misused.”
He laughed.
“O, Kate! Never so churlish. Those fingers, I’ll go bail, were not
made for hurt or discord. I prithee, sweet Kate.”
“Give it me,” said Moll entreatingly. “I’ll use it so I’ll make you
all love me.”
Too indignant and too proud to protest further, the young Countess
contented herself by flinging into a chair, where she sat with her
back turned obstinately on the performer.
And Moll played, her fingers fluttering over the strings like
butterflies, and drawing honey wheresoever they alighted. It was not
great music, accomplished, soul-stirring; but it was very natural and
very moving, quite true, quite simple, welling from the little spring
that was her one pure sincerity. And presently--just as,
sympathetically, when notes and chords are struck you may see a caged
bird’s throat swell and throb, until the responsive rapture comes
irresistibly bubbling forth and overflowing--her voice melted into, or
took up, the melodious refrain her hands were shaping; and in a moment
she was singing a little song, as sweet as a thrush upon a tree--
When my love comes, O, I will not upbraid him!
He meant but for kindness the gift that he gave.
Is he to blame for the Heaven that made him
A heart full of tenderness meet to enslave?
When my love comes I will promise him roses,
Gift for the gift that he laid in my breast.
O, for that promise his kindness discloses,
Will he not kiss me and make me his blest?
There’s a cry in the air of the cuckoo, sweet comer;
The daffodils blow and there’s green on the tree;
There’s a nest in the roof that is empty since summer--
When my love comes will he warm it for me?
It took her hearers by surprise, Hamilton not least. He was so moved,
indeed, for the moment, that he failed to observe its effect on
Chesterfield. They all dwelt silent for a little, while the girl,
conscious of the impression she had made, looked down, still softly
touching the strings. And then in a twinkle her mood changed. She
shook her curls, laughed, touched out a lively air, and began to
dance.
Her dancing was like her playing, her singing--native, unaffected,
captivating, a rhythm of lightness, seeming to mock gravitation. It
was to help to make her famous by and by--in days when the susceptible
Mr. Pepys was to go into raptures over seeing “little Miss Davis”
jigging at the play-end; and, indeed, it was very pretty, so elf-like,
so unforced. It roused the enthusiasm of at least two of her company.
When, laughing and rosy, she ceased, Chesterfield came to her all in a
glow.
“It was prettier than the frisking of your own lambs,” said he. “Did
you learn it of a shepherd’s piping, and your song of the nightingale?
I vow I envy the country its possession of such a Corisande.”
My lady rose from her chair, and, without turning her head, walked
erect from the room. Hamilton, watching the Earl with a furtive smile,
heard her go, and breathed a silent benediction on his own success.