Chapter X: Part 10

And because the old man loved flowers, tending them in the early twilight with water and releasing them from many a small weed which he was fain to destroy, but in the end always replanted in a small clearing on the shady side of his farthest meadow, because he loved flowers, the old man, whose first wife died years and years ago on a long past primrose-tide, married in the hale winter of his life a comfortable wench whom he could trust as he trusted his flowers to be true to their seasons. This second wife, more like a daughter than a wife, he delighted to surprize with fragrant rolls of gaily sprigged cloths; and never a summer morning broke but he was abroad in the dewy grass to gather her such a posy of freshness and beauty as can only be taken in the earliest hours of the morning. Mrs. Tabrum, for all she was so young and rosy, had a great feeling for the importance of her position as mistress of a famous hostelry and ordered about little Polly Patch, newly arrived from Mrs. Margery Severe's select charity school, with a great air of ladyship. Little Polly Patch was a very important young woman too; for the _Basket of Roses_ was not a large galleried inn full of grooms and hostlers and waiters and chambermaids, but a house of quite another character, where you were never bewildered by superfluous service but always received with a quiet dignity. Therefore you paid a great deal of respectful attention to little Polly Patch who had a great deal to do with your night's rest and your morning's breakfast. I think Mr. Vernon was a very wise man to choose a domestick fairyland so apt to soothe the sweet alarms of his Phyllida.

Here they would sup while the horses were being changed, and hence they would set out in the darkness, preserving, as they galloped along, a sense of peace and quiet beauty that should be to her the fortunate prelude of a happy adventure.

Vernon had sent word to the house of their arrival, hinted at the fatigues of a gay bridal, and let it be supposed they desired no intrusion.

To the ancient man such a confidence was enough to set his old brain agog with the gallant scenes of his youth. He chuckled over every tankard of ale he drew, told every one of his daffodils the merry secret and piped away at long forgotten melodies until his wife in despair sat him down in the ingle, put a broken fiddle in his hand and bade him play his fancies to sleep. The storm that rose at sunset shrieked about the inn, and the hollow groaning in the mazes of the huge chimney consorted in fitting harmonies with the old man's eerie tunes.

"March is going out wi' thunder and tempest like a roaring lion," he muttered, as a sudden gust of hail was blown against the lattice which pattered and rattled as if a crowd of elfin drummers were beating a wild tattoo without.

"Aye, 'tis a main ugly night," said Mrs. Dorothy Tabrum, who was laying the shining silver about the snowy tablecloth.

"So 'tis, my peony, so 'tis! A main ugly night for daffodils and young brides. Is her chamber ready?" he went on.

"Aye! Aye!"

"Wi' rosy curtains drawn close?"

Mrs. Tabrum nodded.

"Wi' candlelight and the cracking of logs and green bayleaves in the presses?"

"Why, do'ee think I'm gone daft to forget suchlike?"

"And a vase of daffodils by her mirrour?" the ancient one persisted.

Polly Patch came in at that moment.

"All be ready, mistress," she said in a slow voice, solemnly nodding her enormous mobcap while she spoke.

"Now Polly," said Mrs. Tabrum, "lend a hand wi' this table and lets put 'un a thought nearer to the fire. Ugh! how it blows!" A vivid flash of lightning illuminated the room, and on the heels of a terrifick roar of thunder there was a cry of 'House! House!'

"Hurry, hurry, my daisies, and make who comes there welcome. Jacob! Jacob!" cried the old landlord as, much excited, he rose from his seat in the ingle and quavered towards the taproom.

"You are sure the candles are lighted, Polly?"

"Sarten, mistress."

"And the logs burning brightly?"

"'Ess mistress."

"And the curtains pinned together?"

"'Ess mistress."

"Then stand by the door, curtsey when you're spoken to, and don't put your thumb in the soup."

"No, mistress."

"Is Mary Maria watching the fowls?"

"Wi' both her eyes, mistress."

"Hark!"

"I'm harking away, mistress."

And while the mistress and the maid harked vigilantly the ancient landlord ushered Miss Phyllida Courteen into the Travellers' Room of the _Basket of Roses_ Inn.

As he entered, old Tabrum looked very much like a sexton leading a shy maid to the altar. She, flustered, expectant, murmured soft thanks into the farthest recesses of her swansdown muff, stumbled frequently to the voluble distress of her guide, and seemed afraid to look round the well-ordered comfortable room after so many miles of wind and driving rain.

"Dear soul! And where's the bridegroom?" exclaimed Mrs. Tabrum, as she led Phyllida to a high-backed chair right before the heart of the blazing fire.

Phyllida blushed as she explained Mr. Amor was travelling on horseback.

"Indeed, I expected to find him here," she stammered, "Oh! I hope nothing has happened to him."

"Now, don't 'ee fret thyself, sweet marjoram," said the ancient one, humming round her like a bee. "A'most anything might have happened to him on such a dreadful night."

"Don't 'ee hark to the ancient dodderer," interrupted the dodderer's wife.

"Killed by a falling tree, withered to a cinder by bloody lightning."

"You alarm me," exclaimed Phyllida, jumping up.

"Hold thy ancient foolish tongue," commanded Mrs. Tabrum peremptorily, "and go see that Mary Maria keeps the fowls turning a while yet."

"Very well, my gillyflower, very well," piped senility, "but don't 'ee take on, my little blue love-in-a-mist, happen 'tis no more than a broken leg has overtook your husband."

"Polly," said Mrs. Tabrum, who saw that Phyllida was on the verge of tears, "take thy ancient master away. Hark," she finished, with an impressive forefinger.

"What are us to hark to, pretty pink?"

"Ef I doant hear a great tom-cat a-scratching in the tulips, my name be'ant Dorothy Ann Tabrum."

As at this moment the tempest outside was howling with unsurpassed fury, it is extremely doubtful whether the buxom lady spoke the truth, but her husband was alert at once and hastily snatching down a blunderbuss labelled 'Loaded on Tuesday sennight' Simon Tabrum moved stealthily from the room.

"You must pardon my ancient old husband for his flowery manner of speech. 'Tis not disrespect he do mean, but love and charity wi' his neighbour, having as it were been sown a power of years ago and being now apt to let his withered branches fall on the heads of all manner of folk."

As this long sentence was evidently considered a full and proper explanation of the dodderer's inconvenient habit of prophecy, Phyllida smiled very charmingly and said she quite understood.

"And now let us gossip of thy wedding," said Mrs. Tabrum in a cosy tone of voice, "or would 'ee rather go to thy chamber, pretty miss?"

"Oh! indeed I will stay here, thank you. Mr. Amor might come at any moment."

"Polly! Polly Patch!"

"'Ess, mistress."

"What for are 'ee standing there, lolloping thy great cap, dollop. Be off, great clockface, be off, pundle, to Mary Maria, and tell her to keep the fowls a-turning and a-turning."

Polly Patch curtseyed solemnly and retreated slowly, murmuring to herself, "and not to put my thumbs in the soup."

"Do you think he will be a very long time?" asked Phyllida, turning suddenly to the landlady and looking indescribably wistful.

"What I can't make out, my lamb, is how he came to leave 'ee on such a night. That's what I can't make out at all. Now at my bride-ale, for all I was wedding a man old enough to be my ancestor, why it was bride-ale, I do warrant. My aged husband being a publican and a sinner, there was a mort of merry-making, I tell 'ee, and 'twas only when Tabrum slipped on the floor and cracked the back of his faded head as we finished, and me forced to use the holland smock as I won at Ascensiontide smock-racing. Oh! his head was so raw as an egg, and running faster than ever I run for the smock."

"How dreadful," murmured Phyllida, not quite sure whether the narrative should offend her maiden sensibility or not.

"But he was out wi' the hens next morning," the talkative lady continued, "out wi' the hens and scratching away in the garden as hard as any of 'em. But, I tell 'ee, I did souse his head wi' vinegar when I got 'un indoors. The house smelt like a jar of pickle for a week o' Sundays after. But there! Tabrum he gets ascited. Don't matter whether 'tis his own or another's wedding, he's all the while jumping around like a Shrovetide pancake. And talk--well, 'tis babble, babble, and all of men and maids as was under yews twenty green years ago. I tell 'ee, we all laffed when he began telling 'ow he kissed my grandmother coming out of Evening Prayer one frosty night. 'The moon was on her back,' he says, 'ay, and ecod! so was she!' Pretty times, pretty times!"

What farther free confessions would have rippled from Mrs. Tabrum's cherry-ripe lips, it would ill become a modest writer or reader to speculate. They were cut short by the lurching entrance of Charlie and Dicky Maggs, the two postillions.

It would have been hard to find a more ill-favoured pair of ruffians in a day's posting. Both of them had dismounted very regularly at every house of call on the road and arrived at the _Basket of Roses_ with a considerable cargo of bad spirits. The prospect of a long wait, while the horses were changed and their fares supped, encouraged them to farther excesses, and a lucky summons to the drawer to reach down a special cordial gave them an opportunity to finish off the greater part of a bottle of Plymouth Gin.

Fortified by this, annoyed to find that Vernon had not arrived, and half afraid they would lose their wages, they had come in to extract from Miss Courteen as much money as they could, being willing and anxious to drink away every minute of the wait.

"Ve're vet, Miss," said Charles.

"And it vouldn't be amiss if ve could 'ave a little piece of gold as 'ud varm us wiv its shining," said Dicky.

"Mr. Amor will settle your charges," said Phyllida.

"And be off, you ruffians," exclaimed Mrs. Tabrum, enraged by this impudent invasion of the Travellers' Room.

"Shut your mouth, mother Appleface," hiccoughed Charlie.

"And fork out somefink on account, Miss," oozed from his brother.

The latter began to move with uncertain steps after Phyllida, who shrank towards the shelter of the inglenook.

"Jacob! Jacob! Simon Tabrum! Polly Patch! Mary Maria!" screamed the landlady, snatching at the only article of offence in reach, which happened to be a pair of bellows. With these she puffed away furiously, to the enormous delight of the drunken postillions, who continued to advance and indeed probably found the air of the bellows very grateful to their heated brains.

It is unlikely that anything more serious than a volley of oaths would have occurred, if a tall elderly gentleman in a chestnut-brown frogged riding-coat had not come in at that moment; but as he did come in, no doubt the room was the sweeter for the interruption.

"Oh, your honour," said Mrs. Tabrum, "will 'ee please turn out these drunken rogues, seeing as all the house is away at their business and no one near by."

The elderly gentleman clenched his riding-stick a trifle more firmly and directed his steel-grey eyes--equally potent weapons--towards the abashed brothers. They did not wait to be addressed, but hurried as quickly as the fumes of liquor allowed them, to the more congenial atmosphere of the taproom. It is comforting to reflect, while they twisted their way out, that Charlie and Dicky Maggs were hanged at Tyburn for a peculiarly atrocious robbery and brutal assault upon a blind rat-tamer, who, with many clinging rats and mice and a scarlet-frilled dog, was a familiar figure in the villages round London. It is not perhaps so comforting to reflect upon the poor old man lying insensible in a puddle, with his tame rats and mice wandering aimlessly in and out of his innumerable pockets and his scarlet-frilled dog with three broken ribs moaning in the middle of a quickset bush. Egad! I vow the Tyburn horse never responded so readily to Jack Ketch's whip and never a pair of rogues went so ashen grey at the tide of a mob's execrations in all the livid chronicles of quick and evil ends.

The elderly gentleman in the chestnut Surtout turned from the exit of Charlie and Dickie Maggs to survey the subject of their insolence. It would have puzzled an onlooker to say precisely what effect was produced on the elderly gentleman's countenance by this deliberate inspection of Miss Phyllida Courteen, now melting in tears of apprehension and only barely restrained from hystericks by Mrs. Tabrum's plump hands in extensive motion.

When the iron-grey clouds of a chill December afternoon dissolve for a moment in the scud of a high gale and shed a ray of pallid sunlight on a spent blossom, we are almost glad to see the thin azure thus displayed as quickly veiled, and welcome the sullen twilight that succeeds. The elderly gentleman's countenance took on for a brief moment a strange light, but the frosted smile betrayed so much grim sorrow behind that it was quite a relief to see his face resume a normal frigidity as he muttered a regret and inquired into the chances of a good night's lodging.

_Chapter the Thirtieth_

SIR GEORGE REPINGTON

"It is now eight o'clock," said the elderly gentleman, "if this young lady has no objection, I will eat a light supper in this apartment; and if you, ma'am, have no objection, I will retire to my bedchamber immediately after the meal. I do not require a heavy supper," he added as Mrs. Tabrum's jolly face began to pucker with the impatience of a good housewife to enumerate the plentiful dainties of a well-stocked larder.

The latter perceiving that Phyllida was recovered of her alarm, and anxious to prove to the elderly gentleman that his appetite was in the wrong by producing a flock of savoury dishes as speedily as possible, hereupon curtseyed, and was soon audible in shrill pursuit of little Polly Patch.

The Travellers' Room of the _Basket of Roses_ was plunged into rosy quiet. The Dutch clock swung a languid pendulum to and fro with gentle tick; the fire whispered and crackled faintly; the lattices occasionally shook before a more unruly blast; a mouse stood up in a dark corner and squeaked; the huge oak dresser occasionally tapped; two unknown birds, screened till morning by chintz foliage, sometimes stirred on their perches; the elderly gentleman sometimes rapped his mother-o'-pearl snuff-box; Phyllida sometimes smoothed her forget-me-not flowered skirts; and away in the taproom was a tinkle and murmur of taproom sounds muffled by several intervening doors. Yet, however fair the surroundings, it is impossible for two people, unacquainted, to maintain a graceful silence for long. The elderly gentleman began to tap his snuff-box more frequently, while Phyllida would smooth her skirts more persistently and from time to time cast a sidelong glance in the direction of the elderly gentleman. The latter felt the undercurrent of strong emotion so keenly that he was worried by this steady inaction into a curiosity quite alien to his character, and plunged into a conversation consisting principally of a large number of direct questions on his side and a small number of indirect replies on the part of Phyllida. At last, after a tiresome quarter of an hour in which the only solid piece of information given and offered was the fact that he was going to, she departing from the salubrious town of Curtain Wells, the elderly gentleman produced from the upper left-hand pocket of his waistcoat an oval case of worn Morocco leather. Phyllida observed that he rapped this in just the same decided way as he rapped his snuff-box and felt a certain incongruity in his manner, as he took from it the miniature of a young girl and offered the portrait for her inspection, asking whether she detected a likeness.

The girl, depicted with the meticulous art of the worker on a small scale, recalled at once the features of Mr. Charles Lovely. Phyllida hesitated for a moment before assigning the likeness to such a man.

"You observe, Madam, the resemblance to yourself?" said the elderly gentleman.

"To myself?" replied Miss Courteen taken aback.

"For what other reason should I show it to you?"

"To say truth, sir, it reminds me more of a gentleman----"

"Eh! what's that," he interrupted. "Not young Charles Lovely?"

"Indeed, sir--'twas he occurred to my mind."

"You know him?"

"I have stepped a minuet with him," replied Phyllida, now more than ever on her guard against the steel-grey eyes of the elderly gentleman.

"This was my sister, his mother."

If you had asked the stranger what prompted him to confide so suddenly in Miss Courteen, I doubt he would have been unable to tell you. If his clerks could have seen Sir George Repington, head of the great banking house of Repington, at this moment they would have been indescribably shocked to hear him announce this piece of personal information. The clerks in busy Throgmorton Street firmly believed that the great Sir George Repington lived a desolate and severe life surrounded by calculating machines of enormous complication; they would have gasped to imagine his bleak financial solitudes disturbed by a young woman in an inn-parlour. The chief cashier, indeed, might have emitted one of his dry hacking little laughs; but then the chief cashier had grown old in the service of the Repingtons and, having known Sir George as a young man, enjoyed a privileged cynicism. Moreover, the chief cashier when he was junior clerk had carried half a score sealed notes to Thistlegrove Cottage--a diminutive paradise five or six miles along the Hounslow Road. There, amid the chirping of many linnets, young Master Repington would swear eternal fidelity while the sun-dyed sleepy air coloured his dear one's lips as deep as rubies and enchanted with gold her soft brown hair. No doubt the present scene of this small history would have awakened a delightful memory from the dusty recesses of the chief cashier's brain, for all that the end of Thistlegrove Cottage was a businesslike affair on a level with many other successful monetary transactions of the great house of Repington and Son.

Phyllida was somewhat embarrassed by the sudden announcement of his relationship to that dreadful Mr. Lovely, who had lampooned the whole of the fashionable world. She wondered if the elderly gentleman was aware of his nephew's late indiscretion, whether she ought to break the news of his odium, and finally with a maid's inconsequence fell to wishing she had never eloped since the step had involved her in so awkward an adventure.

Sir George, noticing her embarrassment, introduced himself,

"My name is Repington, ma'am--Sir George Repington." As he said this he received the miniature from Phyllida, and having, as it were, fondled the oval for a second, replaced it in the upper left-hand pocket of his waistcoat.

The introduction put Phyllida deeper than ever into a quandary. She felt the genteel movement to be a low curtsey coupled with the graceful revelation of her name, but this was just the act she could not bring herself to perform. What a vast number of polite difficulties attached themselves to an elopement, and how she wished with all her heart she had never been so foolish as to brave them unaccompanied.

"The resemblance is certainly very remarkable," said Sir George Repington.

Phyllida clutched this conversational straw.

"I doubt, sir, 'twould ill become me to allow the compliment."

The stilted reply did not seem to offend the elderly gentleman, for he bowed very gallantly and tapped the lid of his snuff-box with an air.

"And my nephew, ma'am, what does Curtain Wells think of my nephew?"

Luckily for Phyllida who was racking her brains to devize a polite method of informing Sir George Repington that his nephew had offended the whole world, that is to say the whole world known to the residents and visitors of Curtain Wells, Mrs. Tabrum came back to say that a pair of fowls were on their way.

"A morsel of cheese is all that I require, thank'ee," said Sir George to this information. "A morsel of cheese, well-aired sheets and----"

"A bit off the breast," murmured Mrs. Tabrum coaxingly.

"Well-aired sheets and----"

"A grilled drumstick," insinuated the landlady.

"Well-aired sheets and----"

"The liver wing."

Sir George Repington capitulated and sat down to supper with Phyllida opposite and a great bowl of daffadillies between them.

Nobody ever found out what exactly was the elderly gentleman's unspoken requirement.

Sir George was enjoying himself--a very unusual occupation for that grim and solid man of business.

Phyllida, on the contrary, was becoming more deeply embarrassed every moment. She could not help picturing to herself the awkwardness of greeting her dear Amor in the presence of such a man. Moreover, she could not understand why the latter preserved such a lack of curiosity. She, a heroine to herself, was unable to appreciate the point of view that took her and her adventure for granted. She almost resented Sir George's acceptation of her as part of the furniture of a wayside inn.

As a matter of fact, the banker was abroad to enjoy himself, and the discovery of a maid sitting solitary in the firelight of an inn parlour only struck him as whimsical in so far as she resembled his dead sister. Having, after a lapse of many grey years, put on once more the mantle of youth, he was very ready to welcome a face that consorted so perfectly with his mood.

But as supper went on, and the elderly gentleman inquired no farther into the well-being of Mr. Charles Lovely, while Mr. Amor did not arrive, and the drunken postillions remained in the tap-room, and the Dutch clock ticked on quite unperturbed by the raging of the storm without, Phyllida began to regain her equanimity, and even to converse so trippingly with the elderly gentleman that elopements and Gretna Green marriages floated away while she chattered of her dearest Morton, betrayed the latter's partiality for young Mr. Chalkley, compared her boldness with the more modest behaviour of a certain Miss Jenny West, who was the third daughter of a parson who lived four--no five miles from where they lived in Hampshire, jumped from the tale of Miss West to the tale of Miss West's brother who scandalized the country by stepping eight consecutive gavottes with his cousin from Hertfordshire; and ultimately confided to Sir George her profound contempt for Mr. Moon and her immense distrust of Major Tarry. Yet, at the very moment when she was telling Sir George of a ludicrous chase of the Major's wig one windy March morning in the preceding year the furious gale was blowing his sodden pigtail to and fro without a curse from the little soldier in whom stern death had begotten a divine and everlasting indifference to the minor amenities of polite appearance. Sir George Repington was near to the capture of his fled youth that fire-lit evening. He was back in the old South Gallery at Repington Hall sitting in the wide window seat at the West End, and opposite to him with flushed exquisite face sat his sister Joan, rippling joyfully through the fair meadows of life like a glittering brook. The musick of Phyllida's conversation revived for the elderly gentleman many a crimson dusk. He thought with a sigh of the South Gallery now, with its hollow echoes, its dust and long line of contemptuous ancestors, and of himself as, with severe tread, he ran the batteries of many immutable eyes.

Old Tabrum would quaver in from time to time to survey the comfort of his guests, regaling them with some particularly choice floral anecdote. His wife too would peep to inquire whether the roasted fowls fulfilled her expectations, and once little Polly Patch put her cap round the door and asked if his honour would like the warming-pan left in his bed or merely whisked three or four times over his already well-aired sheets.

* * * * *

Phyllida made a careless remark about her mother, and Sir George Repington hoped that Mrs. Courteen (Phyllida had some time ago divulged her name) would not be alarmed by the strife of the elements. Phyllida made a very careless reply to this, by reassuring Sir George about her mother, who, as she pointed out, would be not at all likely to observe the wildness of the night in her anxiety to secure her hand against the prying glances of my lady Bunbutter.

"Is that Sir Moffyn Bunbutter's lady?" said Sir George.

"Yes, indeed, sir."

"Sure to be, sure to be," Sir George commented. "Who'd have thought of seeing poor old Sir Moffyn's lady here of all places?"

"But she's not here, sir. She is at Curtain Wells."

"But your mother?"

Phyllida saw her mistake, but, being unused to falsehoods, made no attempt to extricate herself from the situation provoked by her own carelessness. As a happy compromise, she blushed and made queer little excavations in the salt-cellar.

"You've no brother and your father is dead?" went on Sir George, fixing the abashed young woman with his sharp eyes. "Then you are alone in this inn?"

The statement, put so baldly, sounded very dreadful to Miss Courteen. Moreover, she had an uneasy idea that the elderly gentleman was beginning to feel himself compromised by her company, so she made patterns in the salt-cellar more fantastick than ever, blushed till the shells of her ears seemed veritably to crack in the furnace of outraged sensibility, and looked very guilty.

"Alone?" the elderly gentleman repeated.

Phyllida's whispered 'yes' was only just audible above the languid ticking of the Dutch clock.

The antique landlord broke the tension by putting his head round the door and demanding from Sir George whether he preferred to sleep in the Dorick Summerhouse with a view of the surrounding country, or in the Green Vista with a more comfortable bed, if not so wide a view. Antiquity was followed by his wife, who hustled him fairly into the candlelight and explained that all their bedchambers were named to suit the flowery eccentricity of her husband.

"Thus we have the Parterre," said old Simon in support of his wife's explanation, "the Pleached Alley (though that is more truly a passage). The Sun Dial (a warm attick), the Quincunx, the Bosquet, the Arbour, the Green Gallery, the Cascade (or stairway) and for my dear hollyhock and myself, the Columbary."

"God bless you, sirrah," said Sir George rather testily, "I'm no Dutch garden-maker that I should fret about such vagaries of taste. Oons! plant me where you will, I wager I shall not open till daybreak."

This quip pleased the old landlord enormously, and he retired upon a chuckle prolonged sufficiently to convey him to the farthest ends of the house, whither he was followed by his anxious wife.

Left alone once more, Phyllida and Sir George looked at each other over the remains of that genial supper.

Neither broke the silence for a while. The elderly gentleman was the first to speak.

"Don't you think it is somewhat unwise to travel alone, especially as your postillions do not seem a very trusty pair?"

"I am not really alone," said Phyllida, "I'm--I'm--expecting--a--a--companion."

Sir George Repington raised his eyebrows and seemed about to make a severe comment upon this halting explanation, but, leaning his elbow on the table and his cheek on his hand, he changed his mind and in cold deliberate accents, so cold and so deliberate that you would have sworn a weight of emotion was sunk beneath them, began a tale. Since this tale must either be told by me or by Sir George himself, inasmuch as it concerns one or two of our characters, I will let the original author give it to you in his own words, nay I will give the story the distinction of a chapter to itself.

_Chapter the Thirty-first_

A TALE WITH AN INTERRUPTED MORAL

Sir George Repington filled up his glass (he was drinking Port wine), motioned Phyllida to a seat on the right, sat himself down opposite, and, to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning and wind and rain, proceeded to entertain her with some vastly interesting details of his domestick history.

"I have already shown you the portrait of my sister Joan, and you will remember that I remarked upon the resemblance between you and her--I did not think at the time that such a coincidence would fulfil itself even more completely.

"We were left orphans soon after I reached my twenty-fifth birthday, and I will admit that I experienced a keen sensation of pride in the responsibleness of a great financial house and a very attractive young woman. Pray, remember I was still young. We lived when we were in London at a pleasant house in Soho Square, on the side nearest to the Oxford Road, but spent much of our leisure at Repington Hall, a fine old family mansion in the county of Surrey, near enough to the town to make our visits there very frequent."

Sir George sighed at the pleasant memories as he sipped his glass of Port wine.

"We spent many golden days at Repington Hall and our friends, carefully selected, as all young people's friends are, found the long June evenings on the great sloping lawn not less pleasant than we did. Egad! I can see them all now and hear over the long silences that invariably punctuate such intimate conversation the lowing of the cows in the home farm and the deer crunching the sweet long grass beneath the broad oak-trees. And in Spring what a choir of nightingales sang in the gnarled whitethorn trees by the sunk fence, and in late summer what myriads of grasshoppers chirruped in the twilight. Yes, yes, I can see them all--young Harbottle Ramsey--he's my Lord Sodor and Man now--succeeded his uncle who was executed after the rising in '45--well--well, Harbottle was always a staunch Whig, and by gad, so were all of us in those evenings at Repington. Then there was Burnet, Cinderton's eldest son--he is Cinderton now--Burnet was always monstrous careful about his cloaths and always carried a small Persian rug to sit upon. I remember we used to call it the hearthrug--Harthe-Brusshe is the family name--and now they tell me he's a positive martyr to the lumbago. Yes, yes, Ramsey and Burnet and Belladine, I wonder what's become of Belladine--he was a famous fop--poor Belladine, poor Belladine--he never recovered from the blow. And then there was Roger Quain.

"He was my best friend, and the happiest day of my life was that on which he was betrothed to my sister Joan. I tell you no such rousing toast was given at Repington since the news of the Boyne victory was brought in to my father. She and Roger were betrothed in July and should have been wed in April."

The old man--for, with the progress of his tale, such the elderly gentleman seemed to become--took a longer sip at his glass of Port as if to brace himself for the climax of the narrative.

"They should have been wed in April. But that winter was a busy one in Throgmorton Street, and my sister Joan, having caught a chill, was ordered to remain in the country--her only companion, a foolish cousin of my mother's. I was not at home more than twice all the winter. I never knew of that blackguard's visits till March. He used to come every day--every day until I forbade him the house--a white cockade papist crammed with disloyalty--always bragging of some outlandish petty rebellion on the top of some d----d Scottish mountain or other. He filled her head with his Jacobite twaddle--a fool who, earning his livelihood by dice and cards, was willing enough to upset all law and order for the sake of the plunder which he and his fellows might very well have acquired at the expense of better and honester and more loyal men.

"He wound himself round her heart with his false French oaths and cursed lovemaking.

"I sent for Roger; he came down with Belladine--I shall always believe that Belladine loved her too--and I told Roger he must keep an eye on his treasure, or 'twould be stolen from him. The wedding was fixed; the guests were invited; and one fine morning I went down to the orchard to see how the apples were setting (there had been a shrewd Easterly wind for some days)--and--and--I found him dead--Roger Quain--my dearest, oldest friend--Roger Quain dead. Gadslife! young Madam, if you had seen, as I saw, the fallen apple-blossoms reddened by his blood, I do not think you would be making a runaway match; and she, my beloved sister, eloped with his murderer--with Valentine Lovely, Esq., Jacobite, Papist, rake, spendthrift, drunkard, gamester, and prodigal!"

Sir George Repington rose from his seat and in the passion of remembrance broke with his grip the thin stem of his wineglass, so that the spilt liquid as it trickled over the hearth stones and stained the ashes conjured up the old scene all too vividly and horribly for poor Phyllida.

"But why did Belladine let her go with that blackguard--that is what I never knew--that is what I would like to ask Belladine--what can have happened to Belladine?" the old man muttered to himself, "and why do I tell you this?" he went on, "why--because----"

But unfortunately the moral of this story was never properly related, though 'tis easy enough to guess the import, for at that moment in came the long-awaited Mr. Francis Vernon, splashed from head to foot in mud and wearing a deep cut over his left temple. After all, Major Constantine Tarry did succeed in delaying the elopement if only for an hour or two because Mr. Vernon's mare had shied at the dead body and flung her rider over the hedge in her unwillingness to pass so damp and gloomy an obstacle. If the veteran's ghost was able to spare a moment from his enthralling conversations with Alexander the Great and other notable captains in Elysium, I make no doubt at the sight he gave vent to an attenuated cackle of pleasure.

Nothing sets a woman off to such disadvantage as the need to introduce a pair of men whom instinctively she knows to be hostile to each other. They never make the slightest attempt to help her out of the awkward position, and, indeed, add to it by such haughty behaviour, such ruffling of crests and bristling of limbs that under the circumstances the most polished gentlemen become uncouth savages or dogs eager to squabble over a debated bone.

In this instance Mr. Vernon stared Sir George Repington up and down, while the latter, who was not accustomed to such freedom of regard, took snuff very aggressively and looked as if he would like to give the intruder a moment's notice, as indeed he would. Phyllida tried to stem the tide of embarrassment by remarking in a hushed voice that Sir George had been kindly entertaining her in the absence of Mr. Amor.

"Has he?" was the latter's frigid response.

"And oh, Amor," she went on, "those odious postillions pushed their way to the room and wanted money and Sir George kindly came to the rescue and bade them begone."

"Did he?" was all that Vernon would vouchsafe in thanks to this timely assistance.

Phyllida, abashed by her lover's bad manners, seemed inclined to apologize for them with tears. And now Sir George did what most Englishmen would have done under the circumstances--he walked out of the room in a very stately way. No doubt the banker thought the strength of feeling which had led him to reveal his life's tragedy would kindle an equal emotion in the heart of Miss Courteen and that when he returned he would find the raffish intruder gone.

This was in fact the precise result of his withdrawal. When he returned, Mr. Vernon was gone. But neither was Miss Phyllida Courteen anywhere in sight.

_Chapter the Thirty-second_

THE HORRID ADVENTURES OF BEAU RIPPLE AND MRS. COURTEEN

We will, if you please, take for granted the persuasions used by Mr. Vernon to induce Phyllida to continue upon her headlong course. He rode beside her on this second stage of her adventure, and I shall have something to say of that drive together through the darkness of wind and rain. We will take for granted Sir George Repington's indignation, expressed with many a z----ds and many a pinch of snuff, and since there are a number of fine folk abroad on this most atrocious evening, it is only just that we should pay them the compliment of relating their horrid adventures.

You have not forgotten, I hope, the sensation created in Curtain Wells by the sight of Beau Ripple and Mrs. Courteen ensconced in the former's vivid yellow postchaise, driven by the former's diminutive groom Pridgeon. You made one of a host of conjectures, or rather you would have done had you not been in the heart of the secret, thanks to the honest, straightforward way in which I have treated you throughout this story.

They went off with 'Tally-ho' and 'Whoo-whoop, gone away!' They rattled over the cobbles and clattered over the kidney stones and jolted prodigiously over a kerb that protruded too far into the road. They bumped over a log of wood dropped by old Mother Hubbard in her frantick endeavours to gain the protection of the pavement, they ground the face of little Miss Muffet's favourite wax doll to minutest grains of powder. They experienced a second's muffled progress as with two wheels they rolled over little Tommy Trout's Easter coat and with the others made a broad smear over little Sammy Green's satchel and cracked his new Horn Book into a thousand splinters.

As for Mr. Ripple, every time he rose to a wayside obstacle and fell with a genteel plump into Mrs. Courteen's wide lap, he had a sensation of the acutest disgust; with disgust, too, he viewed his cushions of fawn silk and ivory sattin bedabbled with the widow's copious tears--these cushions made salt with a mortal widow's grief that were never intended to be spoiled with anything less ethereal than the glittering milk of the Queen of Heaven.

Extreme dizziness overtook the Great little Man when, in accents hoarse with hysterical sorrow, the wretched woman by his side begged the loan of his handkerchief. Then, indeed, he nearly called to Pridgeon to check their mad course, turn the horses' heads stablewards, brooding for a sensuous second upon the delights of a warm meditative bath, made sweeter with Citron Essence.

Poor Mr. Ripple! As the mile-stones fled past and the chilly March twilight crept over the dusky fallows and peered above the black hedgerows, he thought with unutterable pangs of the cheerful and comfortable town of Curtain Wells. His china shepherds and shepherdesses called to him over the bleak country, and in the distance like elfin bells he heard the reproachful tinkle of his elegant lustres.

At the turnpike Mr. Ripple asked the keeper whether a post-chariot had lately come under his jurisdiction.

"Dick who?" inquired the janitor.

"Have you seen a post-chariot?" said Mr. Ripple, petulantly.

"No, I ain't. Have you seen two bullocks as 'ave lost, stolen and strayed theyselves hereabouts--the red 'un with a----"

"Drive on," said Mr. Ripple.

"That's gentry," commented the gatekeeper as, spitting on the bust of King George which reposed in the palm of his dirty hand, he retired to brood over a well-thumbed pamphlet that set forth with convincing ribaldry, the imminent danger of another Popish plot.

"Drive on," said Mr. Ripple, "we shall have a heavy shower presently."

They were bowling down a broad village street with a merry jingle of harness and rhythmical clatter of hoofs, while the cracking of little Pridgeon's whip, nearly as big as himself, made many inquisitive bodies huddle in the low doorways of the cottages to survey the gallant equipage.

"Reg'lar delooge, your honour," said Pridgeon, turning round on the box.

Mrs. Courteen was already so wet with the tears of outraged motherhood that the addition of rain could scarcely have affected her comfort. Nevertheless she shuddered so expansively that she squeezed her companion closer than ever to the side of the chaise.

"Shall we put up at the _Green Dragon_?--very comfortable Inn, the _Green Dragon_."

"No, no, Pridgeon, drive on. If it rains, it rains."

Such a platitude from Beau Ripple can only have been provoked by the intensest despair. A ploughboy's epigram would not have seemed more out of place. The Nine Muses were certainly waked from their harmonious lethargy, and a small boy, playing _Sally in our Alley_ on a Jew's harp, twanged a discordant echo of their shocked sensibility. A platitude from Beau Ripple! The very chaise collapsed in ignominy. Bump--bang--whooooo! The gay vehicle was on its side and the front off-wheel was whirling madly down the broad slope of the street, to the enormous delight of the boy with the Jew's harp and the immense consternation of a flock of geese in whose company it made a noisy entrance into the village pond.

Pridgeon turned once more on the Jimmy and, having pulled up the horses and gazed at the Tableau, remarked:

"Blow me tight if I didn't think the wheel'd do that afore we started. Blow me right and tight!"

By this time, all the village stood in a circle and supplied an exhaustive commenting upon the sad event.

"She's putt her futt through her petticutt," whooped grandmother.

"So her 'ave and toored 'un proper."

"Blarm 'un if the old buoy's knee ain't streaked like somebody's baad baacon."

"So it be, buoy, so it be," came the delighted rejoinder.

"Look, see the seat of his breeches!" cried a shapely hussy.

"I never saw such a power o' mud, why 'e's like a brown paaper plaster behind. Poor soul!"

"Horse ain't hurt?" asked a sharp-featured, bow-legged individual with professional anxiety.

Four or five hobbledehoys had assisted the Beau to his feet and volunteered to show him the way to the _Green Dragon_. As that hostelry stood exactly opposite the scene of the disaster, the offer savoured of something more than mere friendliness.

Mrs. Courteen was whirling round and round, like a kitten after her tail, trying to ascertain the precise amount of damage close to her train; a good-natured booby stuck his foot on the skirt to steady it for her inspection, and in doing so made the rent more irreparable.

"Better go to the _Green Dragon_, your honour," said Pridgeon, as spruce as when he started.

"Better go to h----, you dunderhead," said the Beau, very white with well-bred passion and the shock of the catastrophe. No fragile vase of Dresden or of azure Sevres, no figure of opalescent Worcester, no violet-flowered teapot of Lowestoft that ever fell from a proud cabinet through the careless sweep of a chambermaid's broom, was to be so deeply commiserated as Mr. Horace Ripple. These painted monuments of care betray their inherent beauty even in the dainty particles that proclaim their wreckage, but a fop with muddied breeches--why, in the very first chapter of this story we trembled to behold the circumference of the least dignified part of the Beau's anatomy protruding from beneath a bedstead; and on that occasion, it was gay with the flowers of a silk dressing-gown.

I do not think that the Great little Man ever recovered from this outrage to his personal attire, for to the very end of his modish days, he would wear a coat cut an inch or two lower than was readily allowed by the least conservative tailor in his employment.

As for Mrs. Courteen, who followed meekly in the wake of her wounded escort, she could not refrain from wishing that the Major and the Justice were at hand to console her with jealous attentions and rival sympathies, and when the first round drop of the swift-approaching storm hit her plump on the nose and washed away in its downward course the last vestige of powder from her face, she regretted also the tributary fingers of Betty.

In the hall of the _Green Dragon_ their reception was almost servile. Great Cobblebury, for all its pompous name, was too near to Curtain Wells to attract the attention of many travellers, and the _Green Dragon_ depended for custom almost entirely on the thirstiness of the surrounding population. Guests, therefore, received very excellent service for their money. The host, one George Upex, had watched the advance of the chaise with sleek arms beneath a protuberant apron and thumbs that twiddled sleepily; but the smash aroused his hospitable instincts, and by the time Mr. Ripple and Mrs. Courteen had reached the doorway of the inn, he was back from the kitchen, where he had hastily ordered the immediate insertion into the capacious oven of several dishes, and was ready to usher the stranded travellers into the parlour.

"And what will your good lady take?" he inquired, with his rubicund face cocked at what he considered a very appetizing angle.

"She is not my good lady, sirrah," rapped out the Beau.

"Not at all, your honour--beg pardon," said Mr. Upex, putting up a gigantick hand to an equally gigantick mouth as if he would force the latter feature to eat the indiscreet question it had so grossly emitted.

"How long will it take to mend the damage to my chaise?" demanded Mr. Ripple.

The landlord made a rough calculation in his mind.

"About an hour to cook the--to mend the--er--chaise," he replied.

"Have you a bed?" asked the Beau.

The landlord beamed. They were going to spend the night under his roof, and mentally he saw himself on the next day obscuring the sunlight of the parlour with a very long bill.

"A bed, your honour? Yes, indeed! Oh! yes." Mr. Upex paused. "A bed?"

"Yes! a bed--a b-e-d--bed."

"For one night?"

"One night--no! now, sirrah, now." Mr. Ripple stamped his little foot, probably to shake off the mud of the humiliating accident.

"Now?" Mr. Upex looked surprized, that is to say the mouth of Mr. Upex remained fixed in a cavernous gape.

"Why not now?" exclaimed the peremptory Beau. "Ain't your beds aired, landlord? Ain't they made yet?"

"Oh, certainly, your honour."

"Then show me upstairs at once. I shall lie down until the wheel of my chaise is mended. And shew this lady another room, and send two or three chambermaids to attend to her."

Mr. Upex looked much relieved.

It was not such a shameless affair as he had been led by wanton ambiguity of phrase to believe.

"What about the duck?"

"What duck? What duck?" asked Mr. Ripple fretfully.

"The duck your honour ordered--that is, was about to order when I interrupted your honour."

"Send up three slices of the breast on a small tray to my chamber, and don't put any stuffing on the plate, the odour of sage upsets my appetite."

"Indeed?" said Mr. Upex, quite frankly interested by such a nasal idiosyncrasy.

"Yes, and send out a woman of taste and discretion to purchase a nightcap."

"I wouldn't say, your honour, as how one of the maids wouldn't oblige your--er--the good lady."

"For myself, landlord, for myself."

"I beg your honour's pardon."

Mr. Upex hurried off to execute his guest's requirement and presently returned to escort them to their rooms.

"When my man comes in," said the Beau, "send him up to me with the nightcap."

Pridgeon had rescued the wheel from the pond and, having successfully directed two bumpkins to trundle it to the blacksmith, arrived at the inn with an admiring retinue of idlers, whom he regaled with quarts of bitter beer. The woman of taste entrusted with the purchase of the nightcap (she was the scullerymaid) returned with the vestment neatly wrapped in paper, and, meeting her master on the stairs, was told to hand it to the diminutive groom, who chucked her under the chin with the parcel and took his bow-legged way upstairs to Mr. Ripple's temporary apartment.

Outside he rapped smartly on the door, which was cautiously opened sufficiently wide to allow the urbane countenance of the Beau to peer round the corner.

"Is that you, Pridgeon?"

"Me, y'r honour, with a present from Great Cobblebury."

The Beau took the nightcap, and in its place handed muddied smallcloaths, smeared coat, and wrinkled waistcoat.

"Have these cloaths thoroughly brushed."

"Yes, y'r honour."

"And bring me three slices of breast in an hour's time."

"Yes, y'r honour."

"And don't get drunk to celebrate your carelessness."

"No, y'r honour."

"Poor clod," murmured the Beau to his polite self, as he closed the door of his chamber and double locked it against intrusion.

I think it would certainly be indiscreet to spy upon Mr. Ripple's retirement. How did he spend his time in bed? The whisper of book-leaves tempts me to suppose that he read several of the bitterest odes, very possibly a whole satire of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, that poet so fierce but withal so urbane. Meanwhile Mrs. Courteen, surrounded by three maids, respectively known as Susan, Joan, and Elizabeth, held forth upon her misfortunes to a sympathetick audience.

She stood in the middle of her chamber, a massive figure pouring forth ludicrous complaint. It was as if a stork should seek to emulate a nightingale.

Susan knelt on the floor and industriously stitched away at the ragged train; Joan knelt with innumerable pins stuck between her pearly teeth and judiciously fastened several gaps in her attire, while Elizabeth, who was being courted by Johnny, the _Green Dragon's_ sibilant hostler, rubbed away at the mud with as near an imitation of the sounds produced by her lover's stringy throat as the softness of her own would allow.