For promptitude, the lady, the gentleman, and the coachman were in such
unison as to make it a reasonable deduction that the flight had been
concerted.
Never did any departure from the Roebuck leave so wide-mouthed a body of
spectators. Mrs. Pagnell's shrieks of 'Stop, oh! stop!' to the backs
of the coachman and Aminta were continued until they were far down
the street. She called to the innkeeper, called to the landlady and to
invisible constables for help. But her pangs were childish compared with
Morsfield's, who, with the rage of a conceited schemer tricked and the
fury of a lover beholding the rape of his beautiful, bellowed impotently
at Weyburn and the coachman out of hearing, 'Stop! you!' He was in the
state of men who believe that there is a virtue in imprecations, and he
shot loud oaths after them, shook his fist, cursed his friend Cumnock,
whose name he vociferated as a summons to him,--generally the baffled
plotter misconducted himself to an extreme degree, that might have
apprised Mrs. Pagnell of a more than legitimate disappointment on his
part.
Pursuit was one of the immediate ideas which rush forward to look
back woefully on impediments and fret to fever over the tardiness of
operations. A glance at the thing of wrinkles receiving orders to
buckle at his horses and pursue convinced them of the hopelessness; and
Morsfield was pricked to intensest hatred of the woman by hearing the
dire exclamation, 'One night, and her character's gone!'
'Be quiet, ma'am, if you please, or nothing can be done,' he cried.
'I tell you, Mr. Morsfield--don't you see?--he has thrown them
together. It is Lord Ormont's wicked conspiracy to rid himself of her. A
secretary! He'll beat any one alive in plots. She can't show her face
in London after this, if you don't overtake her. And she might have seen
Lord Ormont's plot to ruin her. He tired of her, and was ashamed of
her inferior birth to his own, after the first year, except on the
Continent, where she had her rights. Me he never forgave for helping
make him the happy man he might have been in spite of his age. For she
is lovely! But it's worse for a lovely woman with a damaged reputation.
And that 's his cunning. How she could be so silly as to play into it!
She can't have demeaned herself to look on that secretary! I said from
the first he seemed as if thrown into her way for a purpose. But she
has pride: my niece Aminta has pride. She might well have listened to
flatterers--she had every temptation--if it hadn't been for her pride.
It may save her yet. However good-looking, she will remember her
dignity--unless he's a villain. Runnings away! drivings together! inns
oh! the story over London! I do believe she has a true friend in you,
Mr. Morsfield; and I say, as I have said before, the sight of a devoted
admirer would have brought any husband of more than sixty to his senses,
if he hadn't hoped a catastrophe and determined on it. Catch them we
can't, unless she repents and relents; and prayers for that are our only
resource. Now, start, man, do!'
The postillion had his foot in position to spring. Morsfield bawled
Cumnock's name, and bestrode his horse. Captain Cumnock emerged from the
inn-yard with a dubitative step, pressing a handkerchief to his nose,
blinking, and scrutinizing the persistent fresh stains on it.
Stable-boys were at the rear. These, ducking and springing, surcharged
and copious exponents of the play they had seen, related, for the
benefit of the town, how that the two gentlemen had exchanged words in
the yard, which were about beastly pistols, which the slim gentleman
would have none of; and then the big one trips up, like dancing, to the
other one and flicks him a soft clap on the check--quite friendly, you
may say; and before he can square to it, the slim one he steps his hind
leg half a foot back, and he drives a straight left like lightning off
the shoulder slick on to t' other one's nob, and over he rolls, like a
cart with the shafts up down a bank; and he' a been washing his 'chops'
and threatening bullets ever since.
The exact account of the captain's framework in the process of the fall
was graphically portrayed in our blunt and racy vernacular, which a
society nourished upon Norman-English and English-Latin banishes from
print, largely to its impoverishment, some think.
By the time the primary narrative of the encounter in the inn yard had
given ground for fancy and ornament to present it in yet more luscious
dress, Lord Ormont's phaeton was a good mile on the road. Morsfield
and Captain Cumnock--the latter inquisitive of the handkerchief
pressed occasionally at his nose--trotted on tired steeds along dusty
wheel-tracks. Mrs. Pagnell was the solitary of the chariot, having a
horrid couple of loaded pistols to intimidate her for her protection,
and the provoking back view of a regularly jogging mannikin under a big
white hat with blue riband, who played the part of Time in dragging her
along, with worse than no countenance for her anxieties.
News of the fugitives was obtained at the rampant Red Lion in Dudsworth,
nine miles on along the London road, to the extent that the Earl of
Ormont's phaeton, containing a lady and a gentleman, had stopped there a
minute to send back word to Steignton of their comfortable progress,
and expectations of crossing the borders into Hampshire before sunset.
Morsfield and Cumnock shrugged at the bumpkin artifice. They left
their line of route to be communicated to the chariot, and chose,
with practised acumen, that very course, which was the main road, and
rewarded them at the end of half an hour with sight of the Steignton
phaeton.
But it was returning. A nearer view showed it empty of the couple.
Morsfield bade the coachman pull up, and he was readily obeyed. Answers
came briskly.
Although provincial acting is not of the high class which conceals
the art, this man's look beside him and behind him at vacant seats had
incontestable evidence in support of his declaration, that the lady
and gentleman had gone on by themselves: the phaeton was a box of flown
birds.
'Where did you say they got out, you dog?' said Cumnock.
The coachman stood up to spy a point below. 'Down there at the bottom of
the road, to the right, where there's a stile across the meadows,
making a short cut by way of a bridge over the river to Busley and
North Tothill, on the high-road to Hocklebourne. The lady and gentleman
thought they 'd walk for a bit of exercise the remains of the journey.'
'Can't prove the rascal's a liar,' Cumnock said to Morsfield, who
rallied him savagely on his lucky escape from another knock-down blow,
and tossed silver on the seat, and said--
'We 'll see if there is a stile.'
'You'll see the stile, sir,' rejoined the man, and winked at their
backs.
Both cavaliers, being famished besides baffled, were in sour tempers,
expecting to see just the dead wooden stile, and see it as a grin at
them. Cumnock called on Jove to witness that they had been donkeys
enough to forget to ask the driver how far round on the road it was to
the other end of the cross-cut.
Morsfield, entirely objecting to asinine harness with him, mocked at his
invocation and intonation of the name of Jove.
Cumnock was thereupon stung to a keen recollection of the allusion to
his knock-down blow, and he retorted that there were some men whose wit
was the parrot's.
Morsfield complimented him over the exhibition of a vastly superior and
more serviceable wit, in losing sight of his antagonist after one trial
of him.
Cumnock protested that the loss of time was caused by his friend's
dalliance with the Venus in the chariot.
Morsfield's gall seethed at a flying picture of Mrs. Pagnell, coupled
with the retarding reddened handkerchief business, and he recommended
Cumnock to pay court to the old woman, as the only chance he would have
of acquaintanceship with the mother of Love.
Upon that Cumnock confessed in humility to his not being wealthy.
Morsfield looked a willingness to do the deed he might have to pay for
in tenderer places than the pocket, and named the head as a seat of
poverty with him.
Cumnock then yawned a town fop's advice to a hustling street passenger
to apologize for his rudeness before it was too late. Whereat Morsfield,
certain that his parasitic thrasyleon apeing coxcomb would avoid
extremities, mimicked him execrably.
Now this was a second breach of the implied convention existing among
the exquisitely fine-bred silken-slender on the summits of our mundane
sphere, which demands of them all, that they respect one another's
affectations. It is commonly done, and so the costly people of a single
pattern contrive to push forth, flatteringly to themselves, luxuriant
shoots of individuality in their orchidean glass-house. A violation
of the rule is a really deadly personal attack. Captain Cumnock was
particularly sensitive regarding it, inasmuch as he knew himself not
the natural performer he strove to be, and a mimicry affected him as a
haunting check.
He burst out: 'Damned if I don't understand why you're hated by men and
women both!'
Morsfield took a shock. 'Infernal hornet!' he muttered; for his
conquests had their secret history.
'May and his wife have a balance to pay will trip you yet, you 'll
find.'
'Reserve your wrath, sir, for the man who stretched you on your back.'
The batteries of the two continued exchangeing redhot shots, with the
effect, that they had to call to mind they were looking at the stile. A
path across a buttercup meadow was beyond it. They were damped to some
coolness by the sight.
'Upon my word, the trick seems neat!' said Cumnock staring at the
pastoral curtain.
'Whose trick?' he was asked sternly.
'Here or there 's not much matter; they 're off, unless they 're under a
hedge laughing.'
An ache of jealousy and spite was driven through the lover, who groaned,
and presently said--
'I ride on. That old woman can follow. I don't want to hear her
gibberish. We've lost the game--there 's no reckoning the luck. If
there's a chance, it's this way. It smells a trick. He and she--by all
the devils! It has been done in my family--might have been done again.
Tell the men on the plain they can drive home. There's a hundred-pound
weight on your tongue for silence.'
Cumnock cried: 'But we needn't be parting, Dolf! Stick together. Bad
luck's not repeated every day. Keep heart for the good.'
'My heart's shattered, Cumnock. I say it's impossible she can love a
husband twice her age, who treats her--you 've seen. Contempt of that
lady!
By heaven! once in my power, I swear she would have been sacred to me.
But she would have been compelled to face the public and take my hand.
I swear she would have been congratulated on the end of her sufferings.
Worship!--that's what I feel. No woman ever alive had eyes in her head
like that lady's. I repeat her name ten times every night before I go to
sleep. If I had her hand, no, not one kiss would I press on it without
her sanction. I could be in love with her cruelty, if only I had her
near me. I 've lost her--by the Lord, I 've lost her!'
'Pro tem.,' said the captain. 'A plate of red beef and a glass of port
wine alters the view. Too much in the breast, too little in the belly,
capsizes lovers. Old story. Horses that ought to be having a mash
between their ribs make riders despond. Say, shall we back to the town
behind us, or on? Back's the safest, if the chase is up.'
Morsfield declared himself incapable of turning and meeting that
chariot. He sighed heavily. Cumnock offered to cheer him with a song
of Captain Chanter's famous collection, if he liked; but Morsfield
gesticulated abhorrence, and set out at a trot. Song in defeat was a
hiss of derision to him.
He had failed. Having failed, he for the first time perceived the
wildness of a plot that had previously appeared to him as one of the
Yorkshire Morsfields' moves to win an object. Traditionally they stopped
at nothing. There would have been a sunburst of notoriety in the capture
and carrying off of the beautiful Countess of Ormont.
She had eluded him during the downward journey to Steignton. He came on
her track at the village at the junction of the roads above Ashead, and
thence, confiding in the half-connivance or utter stupidity of the
fair one's duenna, despatched a mounted man-servant to his coachman and
footmen, stationed ten miles behind, with orders that they should drive
forthwith to the great plain, and be ready at a point there for two
succeeding days. That was the plot, promptly devised upon receipt of
Mrs. Pagnell's communication; for the wealthy man of pleasure was a
strategist fit to be a soldier, in dexterity not far from rivalling the
man by whom he had been outdone.
An ascetic on the road to success, he dedicated himself to a term of
hard drinking under a reverse; and the question addressed to the chief
towns in the sketch counties his head contained was, which one near
would be likely to supply the port wine for floating him through
garlanding dreams of possession most tastily to blest oblivion.
He was a lover, nevertheless, honest in his fashion, and meant not worse
than to pull his lady through a mire, and wash her with Morsfield soap,
and crown her, and worship. She was in his blood, about him, above
him; he had plunged into her image, as into deeps that broke away in
phosphorescent waves on all sides, reflecting every remembered,
every imagined, aspect of the adored beautiful woman piercing him to
extinction with that last look of her at the moment of flight.
Had he been just a trifle more sincere in the respect he professed for
his lady's duenna, he would have turned on the road to Dornton and a
better fortune. Mrs. Pagnell had now become the ridiculous Paggy of Mrs.
Lawrence Finchley and her circle for the hypocritical gentleman; and
he remarked to Captain Cumnock, when their mutual trot was established:
'Paggy enough for me for a month--good Lord! I can't stand another dose
of her by herself.'
'It's a bird that won't roast or boil or stew,' said the captain.
They were observed trotting along below by Lord Ormont's groom of the
stables on promotion, as he surveyed the country from the chalk-hill
rise and brought the phaeton to a stand, Jonathan Boon, a sharp lad,
whose comprehension was a little muddled by 'the rights of it' in this
adventure. He knew, however, that he did well to follow the directions
of one who was in his lordship's pay, and stretched out the fee with
the air of a shake of the hand, and had a look of the winning side,
moreover. A born countryman could see that.
Boon watched the pair of horsemen trotting to confusion, and clicked in
his cheek. The provincial of the period when coaches were beginning to
be threatened by talk of new-fangled rails was proud to boast of his
outwitting Londoners on material points; and Boon had numerous tales of
how it had been done, to have the laugh of fellows thinking themselves
such razors. They compensated him for the slavish abasement of his whole
neighbourhood under the hectoring of the grand new manufacture of wit in
London:--the inimitable Metropolitan PUN, which came down to the country
by four-in-hand, and stopped all other conversation wherever it was
reported, and would have the roar--there was no resisting it. Indeed,
to be able to see the thing smartly was an entry into community with
the elect of the district; and when the roaring ceased and the thing
was examined, astonishment at the cleverness of it, and the wonderful
shallowness of the seeming deep hole, and the unexhausted bang it had to
go off like a patent cracker, fetched it out for telling over again; and
up went the roar, and up it went at home and in stable-yards, and at the
net puffing of churchwardens on a summer's bench, or in a cricket-booth
after a feast, or round the old inn's taproom fine. The pun, the
wonderful bo-peep of double meanings darting out to surprise and smack
one another from behind words of the same sound, sometimes the same
spelling, overwhelmed the provincial mind with awe of London's occult
and prolific genius.
Yet down yonder you may behold a pair of London gentlemen trotting along
on as fine a fool's errand as ever was undertaken by nincompoops bearing
a scaled letter, marked urgent, to a castle, and the request in it that
the steward would immediately upon perusal down with their you-know-what
and hoist them and birch them a jolly two dozen without parley.
Boon smacked his leg, and then drove ahead merrily.
For this had happened to his knowledge: the gentleman accompanying the
lady had refused to make anything of a halt at the Red Lion, and had
said he was sure there would be a small public-house at the outskirts
of the town, for there always was one; and he proved right, and the lady
and he had descended at the sign of the Jolly Cricketers, and Boon had
driven on for half an hour by order.
This, too, had happened, external to Boon's knowledge: the lady and the
gentleman had witnessed, through the small diamond window-panes of the
Jolly Cricketers' parlour, the passing-by of the two horsemen in pursuit
of them; and the gentleman had stopped the chariot coming on some
fifteen minutes later, but he did not do it at the instigation of the
lady.