OF THE MONSTROUS BEHAVIOUR OF MISS PRUE.
TO begin with, I instructed him in deportment. I put him through his
paces with the exactitude of a dancing-master.
“Tread upon your toes, sir,” lifting up my skirts a little to show him
how; “neater and lighter, my lad. Do not put your foot upon the carpet
like a hundred weight of coals. Tip your chin a shade more upward; set
your head a little backward; shorter strides and one shoe behind the
other--so!”
As a pupil he proved extremely apt, and in a few minutes he was giving
quite a tolerable imitation of the motions of a woman of quality. His
petticoat bothered him exceedingly, but in a little time even these
troubles he overcame. Once he tried a simper, and did it prettily. Then
in a highly successful way he played his shoulders like an arch and
laughing miss. His next attempt was at a curtsey, but here misfortune
came, as his heel caught in his skirt and he fell flat upon his back.
“The penalty of impertinence,” said I. “As though every delicate
accomplishment of Venus is to be obtained in half an hour!”
He rose, however, with fine gravity, and asked me how it should be
done. It was a part of his character to let nothing beat him, and in
this instance he tried a full twenty times rather than a curtsey should
become his master.
There was one subject in which we were much exercised. How were his
coat and vest to be disposed of? The search was to be of the strictest
kind, therefore no risks must be run. It was Emblem who grappled with
the difficulty. Stealing to his lordship’s dressing-room she mingled
them temporarily with his clothing, as masculine attire in that place
was not likely to excite remark.
This had just been done, I was still in the middle of my tutelage, and
making Miss Prudence imitate the cadence of my voice in high falsetto,
when a knock upon the door startled us extremely. Emblem turned white
as any pillow-slip; I began to tremble and could not have spoke a word
that minute for my life; but the disguised fugitive looked at me, and
looked at Emblem, smiled a little, and calmly said “Come in!” in the
identical tone he had been practising.
A terrible being sailed into the room; no less a person than my
Aunt. She paused upon the threshold to gaze at the fair stranger in
both dignity and doubt. Unable to recall the face she screwed her
gold-rimmed glasses on her nose and stared steadily down upon Miss Prue
with that polite impertinence that flourishes most in dowagers. The
time this manœuvre took gave me the necessary moment to recover myself.
I seized it, smiled on my aunt’s bland insolence and said:
“My dear aunt, permit me to present to you Miss Prudence Canticle, that
very familiar and dear friend of mine of whom you have heard me so
often speak. She shares all the secrets of my bosom, and I therefore,
my dear aunt, commend her with the more confidence to yours.”
“I am charmed, I am delighted, I am sure,” says the dowager, sweeping a
stately bow upon the phrase with great majesty.
“Madam,” says the lad, “I am infarnally glad of your acquaintancy.”
My aunt, the dowager, was a person of too much breeding to express or
to otherwise betray any astonishment at this; but I am sure she felt
it, for though she had never seen Prue, my pious friend in _propria
persona_, she had seen her letters, and on the strength of those
epistles had held her image up before me as a paragon of gentlewomen
and a mirror of the Christian virtues. I dare not look at my aunt’s
stern mien lest I broke out in a peal of laughter; but the lad, with a
slight curl at his lips, and a saucy gleam within his eye, met full the
shock of it, and quailed not.
“’Tis strange, my dear Miss Canticle,” says my aunt with that sugared
fluency in which she wrapped her sourest moods, “that I had no
premonition of your coming. Barbara gives me not a word of it; I
have even no hint of your arrival; and so, my dear Miss Canticle, I
must beseech you to take things at Cleeby very much as you may find
them, and accept this for their apology. Let me repeat, my dear Miss
Canticle, that I had not the ghost of an idea that we were about to be
so greatly honoured.”
Now I was in a fever of anxiety and fear, and the face of Emblem
announced similar emotions. We were at such a disadvantage that to
prompt Miss Prudence in the ordering of her speech and conduct was
outside the question utterly. But ’twas little she needed prompting.
For she seemed superbly at her ease, fell into fiction of the
cheerfullest and most high-coloured sort, without one “ahem!” of
hesitation; and contrived from the beginning to treat her majesty, my
aunt, with the most easy familiarity she could possibly employ.
“I am sure the apology should be supplied by me,” Miss Prudence says.
“I never writ Bab a word about it, did I, darling? But t’other morning
my papa orders the chaise for town. I asked him would he pass near
Cleeby on the way? That he would, says he. Then, says I, you shall drop
me down there, and, faith! I’ll spend a week with my ownest Bab. All
this age I have not seen her.”
And I believe the incredible rogue would have kissed me on the spot, as
I could not possibly have said him nay, had I not drawn my face from
the threatening proximity of his mouth.
“Your papa, Miss Prudence?” my aunt echoed in surprise. “I was
informed that he died five years ago at Paris.”
I was horrified at the magnitude of this error he had made, for my aunt
spoke, alas! too truly. I might have been spared my agitation, though.
“Oh!” Miss Prudence laughed, “my dear mamma hath taken another piece of
household furniture unto herself since then.”
“A what?” cries my aunt, fixing her glasses on again to cover her
distress.
You will understand that the dowager--dear lady!--being the product of
an earlier generation, construed this flippant mention of so ornamental
an article as a papa as gross irreverence. Yet I breathed again at the
lad’s ingenuity. However, he had gone astray on another point, and my
aunt was not the one to pass it by.
“But what are you doing in the north, my dear Miss Canticle, if I may
make so bold as to inquire?” says she; “for I have always been told
that your residences were Tunbridge Wells and Mitcham Green.”
“You are not aware then, madam,” replied Miss Prue, “that we bought
quite recently a little place in Fifeshire?”
“Indeed!” says my aunt, with interest, “and a very charming country
to be sure.” Then she turned to me and said: “Barbara, I am come to
speak to you of a particular affair. Captain Grantley has just had
the goodness to inform me that he proposes shortly to have this house
searched from cellar to attic, to discover if that prisoner is hid
anywhere within it. I told him that it was a most monstrous project,
and one more monstrous still to undertake, as by that means our house
and all its contents would be quite exposed to the mercy of his men,
who being of the very scum can no more be trusted with good furniture
than can a cat with a jug of cream.”
“Very true, dear aunt,” says I, “and I trust you will oppose it.”
“I have opposed it,” says my aunt, grimly; “but the Earl, your papa,
and this Captain man are really most unreasonable men.”
“Prisoner!” cried Miss Prue. “Search the house! La! we shall have some
fun, I’m certain.”
“We shall, indeed!” says I, even more grimly than my aunt.
Here it was that the dowager, to my infinite relief, bowed stiffly to
Miss Prudence, and renounced the room in a distinctly disdainful manner.
“Bab,” says the prisoner so soon as she was gone, “I consider that I
have carried this off gallantly. But I fear, dear Bab, that if I stay
here any longer than a day I shall prove a thorn in the flesh of that
old lady. Her icy mien provokes me.”
“Prue,” says I, unable to repress the admiration that I felt for the
agile fashion in which he had crept out of a corner uncomfortably
tight, “you will either attain to the post of Prime Minister of England
or a public death by hanging. There will be no half course in your
career, I’m certain. For your wickedness is as great as is your wit.
But you really must think a trifle more about your pious character, my
dear Miss Canticle.”
Now that my aunt was apprised of Miss Prue’s presence in the house, it
behoved us to wear bold faces and put our trust in impudence and the
good luck that usually attends it. She must be presented to the Earl,
and share our daily life entirely. She must be treated as an equal,
and carry herself with sustained dignity and ease; she must be nothing
less than perfect in the playing of her part, else questions would be
provoked, any one of which might prove fatal to our scheme. Therefore,
I occupied the interval between this and a quarter after four, at
which hour I was due at the tea-table in the dowager’s drawing-room,
in schooling Prue in carriage, etiquette, and family affairs. And I
cannot repeat too often that if this lad was not by birth and training
a person of the mode, his natural instinct for mummery was in itself
so admirably fine that had he been asked to don the royal purple of a
potentate, he would have filled the throne at a moment’s notice and
have looked a king and acted like one. Besides, he had this very great
advantage--he had been bred to no sphere in particular, and there
seemed such a native richness in his character as made him ripe for
any. The keenest observation of man and nature supplied in him a course
of education in the schools. Therefore his mind had no predisposition
towards any avocation. He was neither a physician nor a priest, a fop
nor a vender of penny ballads. He was just (in my idea) an intrepid
young adventurer, a charming vagabond, with enough of sense and courage
in him to become anything he chose.
For the nonce he chose to be a woman of quality. Therefore he was that
woman, plus a dash of native devilry that she was born without. The way
he played his eyes, the archness of his simpering, his ringing laugh,
the sauciness that salted all he said, his smiling rogueries, his
dimpled impudence, his downright, damnable adorableness, he appeared to
put on with his dress, and wore with the elegant propriety of one who
had dwelt in Spring Gardens all her days.
“My lad,” says I, “you step a point beyond me quite. Here have you
picked up Saccharissa’s every trick in twenty minutes. ’Tis a miracle,
I’ll swear.”
“Fudge,” says he, “’tis no miracle. The living model is before me, and
the rest is no more than a painter does when he transfers that model to
a canvas. You twist your lips into a smile, and see--I ape ’em with my
own.” And the very trick I had of sardonically smiling from the corners
of my mouth he immediately copied with marvellous fidelity.
“My Lady Barbara,” says he, “you once disdained me with a glance. Here
is the one you did it with.”
Straight he gathered all his inches up and gazed down upon Emblem and
myself with a severity awful to observe. As for his voice, it was thin
and somewhat treble in its quality. But it was an instrument that had
a singular variety of tone. Its natural note was boyish, fresh, and
piercing; yet that did not prevent it from one moment scorning like an
actress, nor the next from being missish, petulant, and shrill.
Pretty soon the ears of us conspirators were assailed with strange and
reiterated sounds. The soldiers had begun their search. The three of us
looked at one another, and debated what to do. The Honourable Prudence
Canticle turned to me, and said:
“Where’s that pistol, Bab? There might be an accident, you know, and if
there is--well!”
So much was implied by that doleful monosyllable that I handed the
weapon to him without demur. He desired to keep it in the pocket of
his breeches, but it called for a deal of judicious aid on the part of
Emblem and myself ere his enormous hooped petticoat could be supported
while he introduced it. Then a nice point had to be considered.
Should we stay where we were and await the enemy, or repair to the
drawing-room and meet it under the protection of the presence of the
formidable Lady Caroline?
Miss Prue languidly professed that she was quite indifferent, being
perfectly easy in her mind that her skirts, her powder, and her
head-dress would be more than a match for a corporal and five foolish
troopers.
“So long as that Captain remains strapped to his board in the library,”
she assured us, “I snap my fingers at ’em.”
“Then you will confess,” says I, “that Captain Grantley has the power
to disconcert you?”
“Well--yes,” says she reluctantly, “because--well Captain Grantley is
the devil.”
“He _is_ the devil,” says I, triumphantly, “never a doubt about it.
’Tis the only phrase that fits him, and I’ve employed it several times
myself. Prue, do you know that I hate--I detest--that man, and yet, and
yet----”
“And yet,” says Prue, breathing hard, and her vermilion lips studded
with two white teeth, “Bab, I quite agree with you that there is always
a big ‘and yet’ sticking out of the Captain’s character.”
Further discourse was cut off by the unceremonious entry of two
soldiers. The first was Corporal Flickers. His eye fell on three
flaunting petticoats, and three faces of bold brilliancy surmounting
them. Nothing to denote the thin and haggard fugitive in these. It
would be uncharitable to blame the man for permitting himself to be
so beautifully fooled, for the serene interest of Miss Prue and her
innocent wonderment at the Corporal’s appearance would have defied the
majority of his intellectual betters to unmask her. And Miss Prue was
so radiantly calm in the presence of the Corporal that I am sure the
pungent jest delighted her indeed.
Now I hope you will remember that this Mr. Flickers was that very
red-haired wretch who had declaimed so powerfully against my Lady
Barbara Gossiter and all her works, beneath the window of her ladyship
at three o’clock that morning. A deadly feud was thus between us. At
the same time, however, there was a sort of fascination about a man
who was so terrible in opinion. There was defiance of all the things
that were, crapulously shining in his beery orbs. In his nose, short
and thick, and magnificently drunken, was writ the pugilist, and worse,
alas! the pummeller of the classes. A mighty hatred of the aristocracy
was indicated on his honest brow. His mien was so determinedly
aggressive, and so purple in its tint, that it might have been washed
in the bluest blood of dukes and earls. Thus at sight of him, I could
scarce refrain from shivering, as we are said to do when someone walks
across our graves.
To him the searching of my chamber was a pleasing duty. It involved
iconoclasm and a tearing down of gilded luxury. And there was a
sufficient unction in the rude methods he employed. He half tore
the window curtain from the pole in shaking out its folds; he
committed dreadful carnage with the bed, tearing sheets, and flinging
counterpane and bolster to the ground. He wrenched one of the doors
off my wardrobe, such was the vigour with which he opened it, and so
ruthlessly mishandled one of my costliest robes that it was damaged
beyond amendment. He was able to knock a china model of Apollo off
the mantelpiece and shatter it into a hundred pieces on the hearth.
He cracked one of my finest Knellers when he tapped upon the wall to
assure himself it was not hollow. He contrived to tread upon my poodle
and render it permanently lame as he examined the floor and wainscot.
He cut the Turkey carpet in a dozen places by the way he used his
heels; and when he paused to take a little breath, he calculated things
so excellently well that by suddenly dropping fourteen stones of beer
and democratic blackguardism on a frail settee, he smashed it in the
middle, and in the fall he had in consequence had the good luck to put
his elbow through the glass door of a cabinet. And he did all this with
such a pleasant air that I almost wept for rage.
“Mr. Flickers,” says I, mildly, “my compliments to you. In five minutes
you have managed to smash such an astonishing quantity of furniture
that in future, with your kind permission, I shall amend the adage,
and instead of speaking of a bull in a china-shop, shall phrase it a
Corporal in a lady’s chamber.”
“Dooty, my lady,” says the Corporal, simply, but trying to crush a
mirror into fragments by jamming his back against it, “dooty don’t wait
fer duchesses. Dooty must be done.”
To show how completely he was the slave of it, he resumed his happy
occupation at the word: stepped lightly to my clothes closet, and
wreaked such a horrid havoc on my dresses that the tears appeared in
poor Mrs. Polly Emblem’s eyes.
But this catastrophe had another side. And to my mind it was not
unpleasant. It was supplied by the behaviour of Miss Prue. When the
cheerful Corporal was in the midst of his depredations in the closet,
that young lady grew a lively red with rage, and doubled up her not
unsubstantial but mittened fists, and shook them in the Corporal’s
direction.
“Gad!” she whispered, whilst Emblem and myself had to put forth
desperate efforts to restrain her, “I would give a golden guinea to
be Anthony Dare for just two minutes. I’d smash as many bones in his
drunken carcase as he hath smashed these bits of furniture.”
Captain Grantley’s threat was executed to the letter. They sought the
prisoner or evidence of him in every nook and cranny from the cellar to
the skylight, but became none the wiser for their pains. Ruefully they
told this to their commander, fuming in his fetters. I also went and
told the Captain this.
Conducting my friend Miss Prue to the tea-table of my aunt, I was
charmed more than I can express to notice how immediately this young
lady ordered her bearing and her conversation to a harmony that
accorded with the dowager’s personality and her own. Launching these
ladies properly on a topic on which they were both well qualified
to speak, to wit, the relations then existing between the Church of
England and the Church of Rome, I tripped forth to the library to carry
my compliments to its occupant. He was still in the exact posture in
which I had previously seen him. But he was not writing now. Instead,
his fingers were tapping the table in their impotence, and his eyes
were red and fierce. He looked the picture of the tiger caged, and
fretting away his heart in his captivity. His cheeks were wan and
hollow, for the whole affair was a bitter load upon his mind. Indeed,
he made a quite pathetic figure, chafing in a strict confinement at a
time when it was desperately necessary that he should be abroad.
“Captain, how’s the knee?” I began, with sweetness.
“It gives me no trouble I assure you, my dear lady,” he answered,
smoothly, “but it is really very good of you to ask.” He gently smiled,
for he was well aware that I positively knew that it troubled him
exceedingly, and that my inquiry did not spring from any kindly impulse.
“I am here to tell you, sir,” says I, and observed the poor wretch
keenly to catch him wincing, “that those fine troopers of yours have
failed completely in their expedition. Completely failed, sir! And as
you have had the goodness to confer ignominy on this household and
myself by insinuating that we are harbouring a rebel, I am here to
thank you for it.”
“Yes,” he sighed, “I know they’ve failed.” He looked at his knee
reproachfully.
“Captain,” says I, in a voice that was angelical; “how unfortunate it
is that you yourself could not have led this man-hunt. I’ll warrant
that you would have run this fugitive to earth.”
’Twas more than the fellow could endure.
“Curse this knee!” says he, and again, “curse this knee!”
The baited wretch looked so dolefully on the board and the bonds that
detained his damaged limb, that I fell forthwith into laughing at him.
“Pray do not spare your curses, Captain,” I encouraged him, “tear your
hair; conjure all the devils. Call a murrain in blue blazes down upon
your evil state. Prithee, damn your scurvy leg, fair sir! But, dear
Captain, there you are. You cannot move an inch, my friend. And reflect
that your six zanies are as likely to catch this rebel as they are to
catch a bird by putting salt upon its tail. Consider all this, dear
Captain, and tell me what round sum sterling you would pay to be in a
like hale condition to myself.”
To show him what that hale condition was, and to aggravate his woes,
I prettily gathered up my gown and danced him a few corranto steps
daintily and lightly.
Poor fellow! These taunts of mine went right home into his soul. In
spite of himself, he had to writhe; and I, finding him so helpless,
did but prick and gall him more. I do not pride myself on this, for it
was a piece of wanton cruelty, and perhaps a piece of cowardice. But
I will be as honest as I can, and confess that I had an instinct that
this was not the highest style of woman; but then, you see, I never
did set up for a saint. Here was my enemy prostrate, and how could one
resist the joys of trampling on him! Ascribe this an it please you to a
full-blooded female nature!
The Captain bore my exultation for a time with fortitude, but then
said, with a bluntness that I thought refreshing:
“Let us understand one another in this matter, my Lady Barbara. You
play a winning game at present. You have the prisoner successfully
concealed, and up to now the honours are entirely yours. It is the
simplest thing in the world to hoodwink six clumsy fellows, but do not
think, dear madam, that you hoodwink their unlucky officer. He may now
be taken in the leg and tied up to a board, but sooner or later he will
have his liberty, and then, believe me, my dearest madam, that some
persons I might name may perhaps be dancing on another string.”
The Captain’s words were to be respected, for he was indeed a dangerous
foe. None the less I scorned them, and replied, in high derision:
“Perhaps, dear Captain, you will take my arm and make a tour of the
house yourself? You seem to repose very little confidence in your
followers.”
“No, Lady Barbara,” says he, “I will not do that, much as I would
like. But I would fain remind you that since our last interview a day
hath fled. Therefore, six days only now remain ere this is despatched
to London. That is unless the rebel happens to be retaken in the
meantime.”
This was his chance to repay my insolence. You may be sure he took it,
and also that my heart quailed when he held that sinister blue paper
up, and asked me whether I did not think it elegant.
“And again would I venture to suggest, my Lady Barbara,” says he, “that
though the first fall may rest with you, the game is not quite over
yet.” The man smiled with such a malicious affability that I dropped
him a curtsey and swept out in a huff.
That blue paper was my nightmare. It _must_ not go to London, yet how
could I give the prisoner up? I desired to eat my cake and yet to
keep it, and felt like working myself into a passion because this was
impossible. Accordingly, when I repaired to a dish of tea, and to have
an eye upon Miss Prue, my mind was both disordered and perplexed. I
was grieved to discover that the dowager and my dear Miss Canticle had
discarded religious topics for the secular. Miss Prue was pouring into
my aunt’s receptive ear some most surprising details that presumably
adorned the histories of many of the brightest ornaments of our world.
And she was doing this with a vivacity that took my breath away.
“God bless me! yes,” Miss Prue was saying as I entered, “of course I
know my Lady Wensley Michigan. A dreadful woman, madam! Plays at hazard
every night till three, and poor Michigan hath to put a new mortgage on
his property every morning.”
“Never heard anything so monstrous!” cries my aunt in horror, but
very anxious nevertheless to glean as many facts of a similar kind
as possible. “And my dear Miss Canticle, are you acquainted with the
Carews, and the Vortigerns, and those people?”
“Am acquainted with ’em all,” cries my dear Miss Canticle, with a
promptitude and emphasis that made me shudder; “and a pretty company
they are! Shouldn’t tell you a word of this, my dear madam, only it is
as well for persons who know what virtue is to be forewarned against
those who don’t.”
“Exactly,” says my aunt, with a grim and gleaming eye.
“Prue,” says I, sweetly as a song, though I was pale with rage, “I am
going to dress for supper. Come along with me, dear, and I will show
you my new watered-silk. ’Twill make you dream of it to-night.”
“A watered silk!” she cried, and instantly jumped up and followed me
with a wonderful excitement that only a woman could have shown. How
could I be angry with a villain with such a deal of genius?
“Prue,” says I, as we ascended to my chamber, “you are a perfect devil.”
“Perfection,” says she, “is the pinnacle of womanhood. So long as I am
perfect I don’t much care. ’Tis what I aim at. I would rather far be a
complete fiend than an incomplete she-angel! For you know as well as I
do, dear Bab, that every she-angel is of necessity an incomplete one.”
“What I wish to know,” I demanded, being well aware that I could not
argue her out of this position, “is the exact number of my friends
you have slandered. Do you know that my aunt was speaking of the very
flower of the aristocracy? Now tell me instantly, how long has this
gone on?”
“Oh! about a quarter of an hour,” says she, with an intolerable
impudence, “and I spoke with the rapidity of a woman who is scandalous.
Gad! I have played my part remarkably.”
“Oh, you wretch!” cries I, “and what is it that you’ve said?”
“Nay,” says she, “’tis not what I have said. ’Tis what I have not said.
Let me see: the Marchioness of Quorn is bald as a toad when her wig
is taken off; her ladyship of Chickenley is twenty years older than
she looks, and hath a married daughter. The beautiful Miss Brandysnap
drinks whisky-possets on the sly, and got the jumps the other morning.
But that is a family affair, as the venerable rake her father had to be
carried out of the Bodega every evening for a quarter of a century with
nine pints of claret under his shirt. Then good Madam Salamander hath
the fiery temper of old Pluto, and almost committed a manslaughter on
her maid a week last Tuesday. There is a quantity of other things I’ve
said, but I’ll not tarry to retail ’em.”
“Don’t,” I implored her, and took the stopper from my phial of aromatic
vinegar. The Honourable Prudence Canticle was getting on my nerves.