part I

shall ever protest that those who have eyes to see, let them see,

and people who accuse us of wasting our time forget how persistently they look for the arrival of the carrier."

Whether or not Major Tarry and Mr. Moon understood this remark of Mrs. Courteen's, they certainly both agreed with her.

"To-day is Session day," muttered the Justice rather gloomily.

"Well, sir, the magistrates will do their business without you," snapped his rival.

"Not unlikely, sir, not unlikely."

"Well, sir, what the deuce are you grumbling at?"

Mr. Moon replied that he was not grumbling, he was merely commenting; and the two gentlemen bickered on across placid Mrs. Courteen like two children over a hedge.

Meanwhile on the farther side of the Course, as the broad path round the Pump Room was called, Mr. Vernon was still keeping step with Phyllida and Betty, but so delicately did the former tread and so far aloof did he appear that no one suspected him of anything so low as ogling pretty Miss Courteen or her maid. Sometimes he would murmur "When will my charmer be there?" and every time he asked this question, the charmer would send a rippling little laugh into her swansdown muff, and flash a glance over the top towards Betty who would toss her head and imply that such curiosity was worth a long-delayed gratification.

At last Mr. Vernon would take out his laced handkerchief and flick presumably at a ghostly Despair. Phyllida would be prodigiously afraid that her dear Amor (by that name only did she know her lover) was growing unhappy at her hard-hearted treatment and, feeling she had tormented his patience long enough, would gently shake her muff until a piece of paper fluttered slowly to the ground. Mr. Vernon would stoop with indescribable grace and distinction of manner, and while Miss Courteen looked very demure indeed and quite innocent of anything or anybody in the world, he would put the piece of paper in his handkerchief and press the handkerchief to his lips and look round the corner of his eyes at Phyllida, who would just by chance be looking round the corner of her eyes to ascertain if her Mamma were beckoning to her. And this used to happen every fine morning during the promenade, and continued to happen for many days afterwards.

Half-past nine o'clock struck, and the promenaders all turned on their heels to hear Mr. Ripple divulge the gaiety of the day.

It is not to be supposed that Curtain Wells was careless of her pilgrims' pleasure. On the contrary every hour of their visit was wreathed in delightful possibilities of enjoyment. At present it was Winter so that naturally most of the entertainments occurred indoors, but in late Spring and Summer a series of Fetes Champetres and Fetes Aqueuses, of moonlight Concertos, harlequin Ridottos, and lantern Masquerades made Curtain Wells a tolerably attractive stage for the marionettes who postured and declaimed upon its boards.

There was much tiptoe attention for the Beau as he ascended a marble pedestal and slowly turned the pages of a notebook bound in tooled Morocco leather, gilt-edged, and of impeccable finish and design.

"My Lords," Mr. Ripple began, whereupon old Lord Vanity, blinking several times at his daughter Lady Jane Vane, took an extra large pinch of Rappee.

"My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the extreme honour to inform you that the Publick Breakfast given to Sir Jeremy Dummer for the purpose of commemorating his twenty-first consecutive winter at Curtain Wells will be held (_Deo volente_) at the Town Hall to-morrow the fifteenth instant."

A murmur of delighted anticipation ran round the Exquisite Mob while Sir Jeremy Dummer who was verging on nonagenarian antiquity drew himself up very erect, quivering and doddering with senile pride. "There will be the usual loyal and personal toasts," continued the Beau, "and at the conclusion of the entertainment the Company will adjourn to the Civic Chamber, where I hope the ladies will be already arrived, in order to partake of a dish of tea. I may add that the tea, duty paid, has been generously presented by Mr. Hopkins of the High Street, well known to many of you as the incomparable provider of the rarer dried delicacies which have traced prodigal patterns over so many of your mahogany tables."

The Exquisite Mob murmured its gratitude for the tea and the compliment with much condescension and affableness, while the publick spirit of the tradesman was generally extolled.

"To-night at precisely half-past six o'clock, Mrs. Dudding's Conversazione. Quadrille tables for ninety-six players, Pope Joan for the young and sprightly and--ahem--a Pharaoh table in order that our gentlemen, Mrs. Dudding informs me, may have no valid excuse for absenting themselves on the score of dullness. Chairs at precisely half-past ten o'clock and I must request you, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, to warn your chairmen that quarterstaff play with the poles will be visited with your acutest displeasure. I am sorry to complain of an abuse on a morning when the prospect of Nature is so vastly pleasant, but last week the whooping and halloaing of the partizans caused me to place Basto upon the Ponto of my Vis a Vis."

The Exquisite Mob sighed in sympathetick consternation as, with a perceptible break in his voice, Mr. Ripple made this confession.

"And since I am temporarily launched upon unpleasant topicks, I must beg for earlier and less riotous hours at the _Blue Boar_. It is exceedingly ungenteel to throw quart bottles of Burgundy at the watch. The latter is a fine body of men devoted to the service of an orderly and decent society, and does not deserve a crown of plaisters as the result of publishing the hour of the night and the state of the weather. However, I will mention no names, gentlemen."

Lord Vanity, not feeling himself included in the last vocative, took a pinch of Rappee and gazed very fiercely at my Lady Bunbutter through the rheum and water of his ancient eyes. As her ladyship showed no signs of a guilty conscience, the Earl took a second pinch and muttered "devilish young cubs" under his breath.

"On Sunday," the Beau resumed with his old suavity of enunciation, "the waters will not be drunk until the fulfilment of Divine Service. On Monday the usual Assembly will be held, and a Cotillon will be danced at twelve o'clock precisely. Chairs at half-past twelve o'clock precisely. And now, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, nothing remains for me but to wish you a vastly enjoyable breakfast, a happy issue from your divers infirmities and a very good morning."

This benediction was the recognized sign of dismissal; the Beau descended from his pedestal and the Exquisite Mob betook itself down hill, although a few individuals waited behind in order to consult with the former on matters of etiquette, fashion and gentility, his advice being considered the most refined in the country.

Mrs. Courteen sailed down upon Mr. Ripple and asked whether she was right in thinking that the moment when green should be worn was arrived.

"I think so, ma'am," the Beau assured her. "I think so: to be sure, a few of our more conservative fops hold that green should never appear before the Queen's birthday. But I differ from them, ma'am, I differ. You will observe madam, that I differ."

Phyllida had rejoined her mother by this time, and Mr. Ripple saluted her freshness with a courtly bow.

"Many Valentines?" he inquired with a quizzical droop of his left eyelid.

Phyllida blushed, protesting,

"No, indeed, sir."

The Widow hastily assured Mr. Ripple that her daughter was not near old enough to dream of such follies, while Major Tarry and Mr. Moon, whose skirts were stiff with Valentines intended for Mrs. Courteen herself, looked very severely at the sun as if he were in some way responsible for the madness of love in the air.

"Tut-tut! Youth's the time for love, as Mr. Gay sings, and though I do not encourage the interchange of passionate sentiments among those who are seeking to recover their health, I regard St. Valentine's Day as a very proper festival for young men and maidens in whose hearts no degeneration is yet apparent." With these words Mr. Ripple drooped his left eyelid lower than ever.

"Fie! sir, we shall have the child vapoured like any woman of fashion, if you put such inflammable ideas into her head," complained Mrs. Courteen, who was just beginning to be more than a little jealous of her daughter.

"Not at all, ma'am," said the Beau, "I swear I saw an agreeable spark toast Miss Phyllida in Chalybeate--the irreverent dog--but I forgave him; upon my honour, I was near doing the same thing myself."

Now Phyllida was not at all anxious for her mother to think she had an admirer, and yet with youth's vanity, she could not resist a half-acknowledgment of the Beau's rally. Luckily for her, Major Tarry, who always resented his removal from the centre of attraction, thought it was time to assert his existence by demanding rather pompously if the Beau saw anything unusual in the sky.

"Yes, sir," the latter agreed. "I see the sun, which is very unusual at this season of the year."

Mr. Moon gaped a smile, and Tarry's Apple began to rise. He had anticipated a surprized negative from the Beau, whereupon he intended to look very mysterious and say that after all perhaps he was mistaken. Thus, having impressed the bystanders with the notion that they were talking to a man of superhuman vision, he would offer an arm to Mrs. Courteen.

"Run, Betty," exclaimed the latter, "and tell Mr. Thomas we await his escort."

Thomas was at the footman's Pump Room, a hundred yards down the hill. Here, every morning he mused regretfully upon the decline of beer-drinking. Chalybeate to him was a sort of Jacobite liquor which was slowly supplanting the honest Esau ale. As for streams that spouted inexplicably from solid rocks, these he held to be an infringement of Moses' prerogative. He would unscrew the knob of his footman's cane for a morsel of Parmesan cheese and chew the cud of bitter reflection, while with the butt of his nose he would polish the silver ball till it shone with equal splendour.

Betty found him thus occupied and, as he stalked after her in obedience to his summoning, she heard him mutter several times in quick succession, "Wells of Sodom! Waters of Gomorrah! Pillars of Salt!"

Mrs. Courteen as she curtseyed her farewells to the Beau sank to the ground like a deflated balloon. This done she gathered her party into hearing and occupied their outward attention as they walked in the direction of the Crescent with a long and disjointed account of her health.

"Why will you shake your muff so vehemently?" complained the Widow.

"'Tis full of dust," said Phyllida.

If it was, I am afraid Miss Courteen was trying to throw some of it into her mamma's eyes.

_Chapter the Third_

THE BLUE BOAR

While the Exquisite Mob circled round the central fane of AEsculapius, Mr. Charles Lovely had enough lack of taste and orthodoxy to make a heretick promenade in the low-lying water-meadows at the foot of the town.

He had knocked three times at old General Morton's house in the Western Colonnade and delivered Miss Courteen's Valentine into the hands of Miss Sukey Morton's maid. She, poor soul, wore round her neck a brass button attached to a piece of string still reminiscent in tarred perfume of the Dorsetshire jetty down which she had wandered a year ago. It was streaking her breast with verdigris as if in some way prophetick of a heart that all too soon would be tarnished more irreparably by that faithless lover beyond the seas.

Consequently Miss Morton's maid received the paquet with a sympathetick reverence learnt in long morning dreams when the sunlight splashed the walls of her garret in waves and ripples of faint gold.

"Any name, your honour?" she asked.

"I believe not."

"And no message?" she paused in bright-eyed hope of an assignation which was to be the first step in the softening of her mistress' hard and imperious little heart.

"None at all so far as I know, my dear," and Mr. Lovely passed on down the deserted street towards the meadows.

The little maid stood on the steps regarding him.

"Tes a Valentoine surely," she thought, and held the envelope between her and the discoverer sun. A red heart glowed through the paper, a red heart pierced by a flaming arrow.

"And who'd ha' thought she had a bow and her be so spoitful."

She sighed as she gazed after Mr. Lovely.

"He do look proper and happy surely."

The elegant young gentlemen had, in fact caught some of the harlequin grace of a fine morning in the prime of the year as he avoided the cracks in the paving stones to bring the meadows closer and make the Colonnade less intolerably long.

"Wi' sech a rosy spark, for sure, she've no call to be jealous of me," thought the little maid, as her soul went winging over the great Atlantick whose roar filled the silence of her mind, to meet the soul of her sailor-lover who was at the moment sitting upon an alien beach in the company of two dusky wantons and a bottle of Jamaica rum.

Mr. Lovely turned the corner and the little maid vanished at the sound of a bell summoning her to tie one of her mistress' pink bows to a more modish angle.

Our hero, for since perfect confidence should exist between us, I will no longer attempt to conceal his identity, continued to walk to the tune of a lyrick always provided the measure did not compel him to step upon one of the fatal cracks. Soon he came to a road which ended in green fields sodden with winter rains, but soft and grateful after the arid pavement.

Face to face with the pale blue February sky, he took up more earnestly the intention of the half-fledged songs that occupied his brain. Strange songs they were, fanciful and unrestrained in the eyes of their author and his contemporaries who did not recognize in them an echo of one Mr. Herrick, dead, and now forgotten by the world of literature. His mother had read the poems to him as a child. The _Hesperides_ of 1648 was the only book owned by the lodging-house in Westminster where a dingy year of childhood had dragged out its course. In his youth, he had loved their sharp, elusive harmonies, and when he attained years of composition, could never free his own lyricks from extravagance so acquired, however assiduously he attempted to follow Augustan models. To his credit, be it added, he was always sincerely ashamed of his barbarick numbers and, as he grew older, was often successful in expressing the heart of a riotous evening in a clear-cut drinking song. Perhaps this vain pursuit of formalism in words made him neglect his private life, which ran a wild career checked by nothing stronger than the strings of his purse.

As he leaned over a stile and watched the cattle in the meadows, out of the past there came like an arrow of song shot from the gloomy depths of London,

_Ye have been fresh and green, Ye have been filled with flowers, And ye the walks have been Where maids have spent their hours._

But Mr. Lovely was dissatisfied. He felt the sentiment would have reached a larger dignity, a more epigrammatick crispness, a more trenchant elusiveness, if it had never strayed beyond the bonds of an heroick couplet. He deplored his ineradicable early impressions and vowed to study the classick models with a still more fierce ardour of imitation.

But having formed this resolution, our hero was just as discontented as before. The sun shining into his heart, found no reflection there.

"These d--d late nights are killing me," he complained, ascribing his discontent to fatiguing sessions of play. He bent down to pluck a starry celandine and wasted a few minutes in trying to find out whether he liked butter. The little golden oracle told him he did, but as he was well aware of this fact already, only the flower benefited by an enhanced reputation for infallibility. Nevertheless it was flicked carelessly over the hedge where it lay stalk upwards in the shade like many another prophet before it. To confess the truth at once, Mr. Lovely had only used the butter to deceive himself, for round about his red-heeled shoes were eight golden petals which seem to prove that a more intimate question had been asked, and answered unfavourably if we may judge by the banishment of the flower. To console his wounded susceptibleness, he determined to smoke a pipe and, having made up his mind, found the long clay stem was broken. With a pithy condemnation of things in general, he tried to establish the reason of his depressed spirits. Then he discovered his spirits were not depressed, merely unsettled. Burgundy of course. Hazard without a doubt. Should he try Chalybeate? The d--l! not if he knew it. Should he try Chalybeate? She wore a very engaging swansdown tippet. What a fool he had been to come to these meadows! Should he try Chalybeate? The half-fledged lyrick was strangled: the landskip seemed pretentiously bright in proportion to the wintry air which was still abroad and, to crown all, he felt an extraordinary desire to drink a tankard of ale with Mr. Anthony Clare at the _Blue Boar_. The latter might know who wore swansdown in the Crescent. With a sigh of relief, he wrung this admission out of himself, shivered and turned his face towards Curtain Wells, whose houses clustered like a swarm of bees around the sacred hill.

The _Blue Boar_, whither Mr. Charles Lovely was bound, was a hostelry of the conventionally ample type. The rooms with exterior rows of galleries were built round a large quadrangle to which coaches and stage waggons were admitted through an arch that was only just high enough for the vehicles of a more recent pattern. The fixed population consisted of innumerable plump and shapely chambermaids, innumerable dried-up hostlers and grooms, and a certain number of sedate waiters who were all clothed in the same shade of rusty black, and all of whom wished they had settled earlier in life to become footmen. However this canker of thwarted ambition never prevented them from handling anything from a soup-tureen to a guinea-piece with reverence and precision.

The host, Jeremy Daish, was neither round nor rubicund. On the contrary he was remarkably sallow and, in his suit of cinnamon cloth, bore a vague likeness to a well-seasoned Cremona violin. He was the builder, owner, and inventor of the famous _Daish's Rooms_ adjoining the Inn and, as the latter served for a recognized adjunct to the more official _Assembly Rooms_, Mr. Daish became a somewhat mildewed counterpart of the great Beau himself, a mezzotint ill-executed of a famous painting in oils. His back was so often crouched in servility that it had acquired a permanent stoop. Rumour said that years ago Mr. Daish was often seen fiddle in hand at West-country fairs and wakes, and supported the legend by pointing out when a lady of the extremist fashion and quality graced his dancing floor with a pair of very high red heels, the solemn innkeeper would steal to the Dais of the musicians and, taking an instrument, would himself bob and play my lady through a minuet with considerable Gusto and Bravura.

The _Blue Boar_ was patronized by a select company of fashionable young gentlemen who lent the old hostelry something of the tone of White's or Almack's. Bagmen were excluded from the wing occupied by these elegant patrons, and though from time to time one of the former, with a merry reputation, would be invited to take wine with the quality in return for the tale of a famous and gross adventure, it was distinctly understood that nothing low or vulgar was allowed to penetrate beyond a certain doorway.

Beau Ripple himself would saunter down towards twilight and exhort his youthful subjects on the folly of vice, the futility of play and the obligation to drink the waters at half-past eight o'clock. Mr. Ripple was esteemed a Puritan, but such a genteel Puritan that the young gentlemen, subdued by the length of his waistcoats and his irreproachable ties and solitaires, listened to him willingly enough, and overpowered by the orthodoxy of his wigs and buckles, the fullness of his shirts and the size of his cuffs, heeded his warnings sometimes.

Mr. Lovely strolled through the archway into the yard all fresh and shining after the morning swill. Along the galleries, the chambermaids were hurrying about their work, and the figure of Mrs. Grindle, the housekeeper, glittering and jingling with keys, warned him no loitering in the galleries would be tolerated at that hour of the day. Two horses were being groomed in the courtyard, but as he had discussed all their points both with their owners and the hostlers at least half a dozen times before, he was not inclined to pursue the outworn theme farther.

"Mr. Clare about?" he inquired.

"Han't seen him, y'r honour," answered one of the workers.

"'Es that Mr. Clare?" asked the other.

"Yes, my good fellow, have you seen him?"

"Rode over to Baverstock Regis to see a maiden aunt," the man replied.

"Ho! ho! ho!" roared the first, "dang me if that bean't the best I ever hard. Ho! Ho! ho!" and convulsed with merriment, the man slapped his tight-breeched thighs with frequency and vigour.

"You make the very d--l of a noise, Sirrah," said Mr. Lovely fretfully.

"I axe y'r honour's pardon, but when I hard Jock there talking of maiden aunts--ho--ho--ho! and when I minds that shaapely--ah! well it doan't do to mention no naames, but it come over me sudden to laugh," and with this apology, the humorous hostler picked up his mare's near fore-leg, and continued to chuckle at intervals for the rest of the day.

Mr. Lovely began to think Tony Clare was confoundedly young, and when one young man begins to think another young man confoundedly young, it is usually a convincing proof that the pensive young man is deep in love.

"What's a fellow to do?" he sighed as he turned into the coffee-room. It was empty, so he called for a draught of ale, put his feet on the window seat and surveyed the passers-by. He wondered what had become of his friends, and why the d----l all the world was gone mad because the sun shone with unwonted brilliance for the middle of February. Then he remembered it was Valentine day and amused himself with the manufacture of paper darts which he shot at the prettiest young women in range. Unluckily, in an attempt to pierce the ripe heart of buxom Miss Page who assisted at the cook-shop, he wounded the Rector on the nose. This set him moralizing on the fortune of Love. Could anything be more incongruous than Love and the Rector. Yet why not? We are all targets of a dimpled nudity. The phrase caught his fancy. Numberless Cupids in attitudes of attack floated before his mind's eye. "Demme!" thought Mr. Lovely, "my brain is like an Italian ceiling. Targets of a dimpled nudity!" He flung back the lattice to its utmost extent and leaned out to the morning whence the chatter of the world without floated into the sunny room.

"Everybody is monstrous good-humoured," he concluded. But somehow it was no longer amusing to quiz the young woman in Mrs. Tabby's ribband-shop through his ivory rimmed perspective. Somehow since yesterday her forearm had grown coarser.

"All the world's growing old," he grumbled disconsolately. But the world would not be vapoured, and laughed and chattered and bobbed and flirted and chirped with all the selfishness of a world that is always young in defiance of the moods of her individuals.

Suddenly the mob of Cupids faded from his mind and the World at which he was scoffing ceased to exist. Surely at the very end of the High Street, he could discern something which was slowly assuming the magic shape of a swansdown tippet. His heart began to beat very fast and he felt the rushing crimson flood his cheeks. Life was wrapped in swansdown, as, through clouds of the airy texture, his soul soared to unimaginable heights. Then came the descent and, waking as from a dream, he found himself staring down into a pair of wide blue eyes. In his embarrassment he knocked over a pot of jacynths and, above the noise of the fall, heard himself telling a Swansdown Muff he had delivered the paquet. Could anything be more enchanting than the warning fore-finger, save the lips to which it was lifted? Could anything better console his enforced silence than the knowledge that between him and her existed a secret? The swansdown tippet and swansdown muff had vanished, but fragments of broken Terra Cotta strewed the pavement. The swansdown tippet and swansdown muff had floated away to some fairyland of their own, but a blue jacynth perfumed the air.

Certainly the idlers of Curtain Wells had a fruitful subject for an afternoon's debate in the sight of young Mr. Lovely climbing out of the coffee-room window. Besides, if that were not amazing enough, the idlers were immediately diverted by the aspect of young Mr. Lovely gathering up the remains of a shattered flower-pot and clasping a bruised jacynth to his silk waistcoat. They all agreed the incident had no explanation, and were even stirred out of their perpetual lethargy to muster round the entrance of the _Blue Boar_ in order to verify a daring speculation that he was going to carry the fragments within.

"Good G----!" said Mr. Ripple who was approaching the archway from the other side. "Good G----, sir, are you mad?" To Mr. Ripple the shock was great. He had aspirations for Mr. Lovely. To be sure, he was wild, an extravagant young dog, but then he possessed an inimitable assurance of manner, a pretty talent for polite verse-making, and a consummate taste in brocades. The Beau of late had often pondered the choice of his successor. He had aspirations for Mr. Lovely and now he saw his favourite positively panting (the most ungenteel motion and fatal to the fall of a waistcoat), not merely panting but smeared with mould, hugging potsherds, and apparently quite unmoved by his degradation. Is it wonderful that Mr. Ripple cried,

"Good G----, sir, are you mad?"

"Yes," shouted Mr. Lovely.

"Or drunk?"

"Yes," shouted Mr. Lovely.

As he seemed inclined to answer every question in the affirmative, the Beau remarked he wished to see a representative group of the young gentlemen at the Blue Boar upon a matter of the gravest social and civick importance.

Our hero ejaculated, "With you in the twinkling of a bedpost," and raced across the yard, up the first staircase, along the first gallery and into the last room.

A light broke upon Mr. Ripple's bewilderment.

"He has discovered some prehistorick relicks. Probably Cinerary Urn, a Lunette or possibly a gold coin of Rome."

In pleasant anticipation, the Beau who was an intimate friend of Mr. Sylvanus Urban, beheld the folded copper-plate illustrating the discovery and the rounded sentences on the opposite page of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ in which the excavations would be carefully recorded by Horace Ripple.

"This must assuage my wrath," he decided by the door of the coffee-room.

To tell the truth, the Beau was on censure bent when he met our hero outside the _Blue Boar_.

Already, that morning, he had alluded to the riotous nocturnal behaviour, the assaults upon the watch, the fusilade of empty bottles, but not being able to descry a single offender, he determined that personal and individual remonstrance would be more efficacious. To the _Blue Boar_ therefore, he went having first exchanged his suit of olive green for one of black sattin unrelieved by silver and terminated by ruffles whose cambrick fell in severe folds and condemnatory lines.

As he stepped from the Great House round the Crescent and along the High Street, he passed in sombre eclipse upon the gaiety of subjects shining with the reflection of his genteel rays.

Presently Mr. Lovely came back still bearing the marks of the potted soil.

"Was it an Urn?"

Mr. Lovely looked surprized.

"A Lachrymatory perhaps? Or a Lunette? Or," Mr. Ripple grew breathless with excitement, "not an Image of AEsculapius?"

"Pray, sir, are you trying to humour a madman? Because on my soul, I don't know what you are driving at."

"So, sir, your late phrenzy was nothing more than the unbridled haste and inconsiderate volition of youthful folly?" sternly demanded the Beau.

"I 'faith, I knocked over one of old Daish's precious pots, and was making haste to remove it from the region of his laments. That's all, and there's my hand on't."

"You will pardon me," replied the Beau drawing back, "I have no objection to shaking a hand stained by honest toil, but I have never shaken a hand sullied by mere zest for uncleanliness."

"As you will, dear Beau," laughed Mr. Lovely.

The Beau was about to point an example to adorn his statement when he was interrupted by the entrance of severe Mrs. Grindle clasping her nose with one hand, and with the other holding at arm's length the offending jacynth by a shred of its roots.

"Mr. Lovely, sir," she began and as our hero pulled forward a chair and the Beau leaned back to listen, she continued, "I have known a cat kitten in one of the maids' beds."

"How very distressing," murmured the Beau letting the firelight play in the diamonds of his rings.

"But never, never," proclaimed Mrs. Grindle swelling like Mr. Handel's _Largo_, "have I known a young gentleman want to turn his bachelor bed into a ploughed field. Mr. Lovely, sir, I'll trouble you to say if this is your planting or did you wish to insinuate that your bed was not made this morning?"

"Mrs. Grindle, madam," replied the accused, "you have heard of beds and you have heard of garden-beds. Mine is a garden-bed. A Parterre impromptu, a Landskip in miniature, a Bucolick of slumber, a dimity Eclogue. In a word--but pray, Mrs. Grindle, my dear Mrs. Grindle, out of regard for me rehabilitate that jacynth without a word to Mr. Daish, and I, out of regard for you, will certainly pay for the washing of the bedspread."

Mr. Lovely smiled so very engagingly and looked so completely innocent of any desire to insinuate anything except Mrs. Grindle's good-nature that the housekeeper gave way, condescended to smile and, as she retired, threw a quick glance in the direction of a mirrour to notice the angle of her snowy cap.

Having reduced Mrs. Grindle to affableness, Mr. Lovely turned his smile towards the Beau. The latter had watched with much satisfaction the progress of his favourite's negociations, thinking to himself that a man who could circumvent such a dragon as the housekeeper would be very well able to keep in order the most self-assertive of Duchesses. He began to relent his indignation and, as Lovely smiled at him, to see in his late impetuousness no more than the natural activity of a jolly young man. Moreover, for a certain reason, he had a genuine affection for the rogue, and was glad to perceive his high spirits.

"I came here this morning in the hope of a serious conversation with some of your friends. Are they--are they in the--er--taproom?"

"They're all gone after maids."

"Tut, tut, I wish I could make it plain that Curtain Wells exists for the continence, not the encouragement of appetites."

"You must blame the sun, dear Beau."

"In view of the many pleasant hours I have spent basking in the warmth, I should not presume to do anything so ungrateful. But I will remark that the Sun in his human guises is not to be considered a beneficial example to young men at a stage in the history of mankind when maidens are no longer able to transform themselves into umbrageous laurels, thus rendering impertinent and inconvenient what at first seemed appropriate and inevitable. I allude, sir, to the legend of Apollo and Madam Daphne. However, my dear Charles--" here the Beau laid three tapered jewelled fingers upon the extremity of Mr. Lovely's left shoulder.

"You overwhelm me, sir, with your condescension. The omission of the surname by Beau Ripple, is the bestowal of a title."

"Very well put, Charles," said the older man contentedly. "'Fore Gad! you do me credit. Snuff, sir?"

Charles (we may follow the lead of Mr. Ripple) was now veritably astonished. Never could he recall such an instance of the Beau's condescension towards a man of his years; and he dipped his fingers into the proffered snuff-box with greater bashfulness than he would have displayed towards the powder-box of Titania.

"However, though the rest of our young gentlemen are--after maids," the Beau stumbled over the crudity of the phrase, "I am happy to see that you are engrossed by the seemlier pastime of horticulture." Was it fancy or did Charles really see his mentor blow a tuft of swansdown from his cuff? "I wish," the latter went on, "to remonstrate with you on the indecorous character of your midnight entertainments. Owls, under providence, are allowed to shriek and hoot after sundown, but there seems no reason for extending to men the privilege accorded by a Divine Creator to owls. In short, Mr. Lovely, there has been the--there has been an atrocious hurly-burly in this house every night of late. Pray do not interrupt me," he added as Charles made a protesting movement. "I have the fullest Data for my general observations."

"Youth, dear Beau, hot-headed, open-handed Youth."

"Yes, yes, I know something of Youth's anatomy from a personal experience of the happy state, but Youth, Mr. Lovely, is a mighty inadequate justification for a circular scar on the forehead of one of our most respected and silver-tongued watchmen--a scar inflicted by the unconsumed but necessary concomitant of a quart of Burgundy."

"It was an accident, sir, young Tom Chalkley of the Foot----"

"I have observed, Mr. Lovely, that if one of these missiles happens to strike the body against which it is aimed the result is invariably an accident whereas if the missile goes wide of the mark it is a d----d poor shot. But it cannot go on, Mr. Lovely. It shall not go on. The residents acting in conjunction with the visitors reserve the right to expel summarily any person who causes publick offence, and I, as their accredited representative, should be in the highest degree culpable if I allowed it to go on. Consequently, my dear Charles, I appeal to you as to one possessed of some influence over the more violent spirits, to do all in your power of persuasion to prevent it from going on."

Now as the successful quart bottle had been thrown by our hero, and as he was usually the chief agent in promoting a disturbance, it is evident that Mr. Ripple secured his unparalleled authority as much by tact as by severity.

"Dear Beau, you shall be obliged," said Charles, "and now pray tell me who wears a white swansdown tippet and lives hard by the Great House."

"I am not accustomed to observe the minor variations in feminine costume," answered Mr. Ripple with some austerity.

"Nay! But a hermit froze to his psalter must have noticed her," protested the younger man.

"The analogy is incomplete."

"I shall be at the Assembly on Monday night."

"You could not be more worthily employed."

"And I shall effect an introduction under your patronage."

"That very much depends."

"On my good behaviour?" asked Charles.

"On the immunity of my watchmen from further assaults."

"Dear Beau, we are all targets of a--" he hesitated, "of a dimpled nudity or an empty bottle. Love and a bottle, there's the world."

"The flesh, I think, sir."

"I 'faith, Satan must have a fine sieve if he can separate the pair."

"I am no theologian."

"Then you'll present me?" persisted Charles.

"You will protect my watchmen?" demanded the Beau.

"On Monday night?" urged Charles.

"Every night," added the Beau. "Unconditional surrender is my ultimatum. But I hope I know how to display generosity towards a vanquished enemy. You will attend the Publick Breakfast awarded to Sir Jeremy Dummer?"

"Truly I----"

"Tut, tut, I insist. My old friend Lord Cinderton arrives to-day with his invalid son, George Harthe-Brusshe. I should like the young man to see your cherry and trout-pink cuffs."

"Too unseasonable a combination of colours for breakfast."

"Pshaw! your appearance will give a fillip to his impoverished appetite."

"I 'faith, I believe I know how to flavour my conversation with Attick salt, but I swear I never dressed myself for the Role of condiment."

The conversation was soon entirely of sauces.

_Chapter the Fourth_

CURTAIN MAZE

The Maze at Curtain Wells was always considered one of the principal sights of the place. Holding this reputation, it was naturally the least frequented. Visitors either went there the second day after their arrival or scuttled round it with a competent escort in the twenty-four hours that preceded their departure. But since no one went there twice and since all the visitors and residents of the Wells were perfectly familiar with the various shrines, its invariable emptiness may easily be apprehended. In summer the gardens of which it was a feature were thronged at the fashionable hours. There was also a Rotunda similar to if less grandiose than the famous Rotunda at Ranelagh Garden. This had not long been in existence, and was only used for balls and masquerades through May and June, when the Maze was spangled with lamps for the delight of the dancers. Even so, very few availed themselves of the shelter of its yew-hedges and always spent the rest of the evening in trying to find their way out, being lucky if they succeeded in making a somewhat ruffled appearance during the last Cotillon.

To Curtain Garden went Miss Phyllida Courteen and Madam Betty her maid: to Curtain Garden they were going when they passed Mr. Charles Lovely at the coffee-room window.

Betty belonged to a type of womanhood that grows with age, increased fat and pursiness, into a nurse such as Mr. Shakespeare drew in _Romeo and Juliet_. If she had been brought up in a disreputable purlieu of the town, she would have become a personally chaste procuress but, nurtured among the buttercups, she merely had a perpetual desire to see her pretty young mistress aflame through the careless progress of some gay spark or other. Whatever there was of passion in her meadow-born soul fed itself on objective embraces. She was never a maid for a kissing-gate at long shadow time, but when she saw Phyllida's heart flutter with quick emotion before the approach of Mr. Vernon, a primitive phrenzy set her cheeks aglow and fired her eyes to a livelier blue. She adored her mistress with a precocious maternity but, paradoxically enough, without any of the mother's jealousy of a lover near to his possession. Vernon with his pale face and slightly sinister demeanour had caught her fancy. 'Let him mate with my pretty one,' she would say to herself, 'blossom of apple looks most rare and sweet under a grey sky of clouds.' It was this anxiety to provide a physical match for Phyllida which had led her to encourage Vernon's addresses, and her mistress to pay heed to his vows. Her greatest delight was to stand, watching against interruption, in the next alley to the lovers. Here she would thrill her imagination with the thought of frail and timid fingers in the clasp of a strong white hand. The sudden interposition of Mr. Lovely vexed her. Certainly he was handsome enough, but too much of a piece with Phyllida; they might have been brother and sister. Moreover, he was always laughing.

"A man who always laughs is as bad as a dog who always wags his tail. Neither is fit for a maid," she grumbled to Phyllida as they stepped briskly along beneath the tall poplars that fringed the road leading to the entrance of Curtain Garden.

"Truly I vow he has a romantick air," protested Phyllida.

"La! what's romantick? 'Tis no more than reading a book on the shady side of the street." Betty tossed a contemptuous head.

"Indeed, Betty, I think 'tis a great deal more than that. To be romantick, child, is to have a noble heart, and to have a noble heart----"

"'Is to lead the Venite on a Sunday morning," interrupted the maid.

"No! 'tis not."

"Well! 'tes to kneel very obstreperous."

"'Tis no such a thing," said Phyllida, stamping on the pavement.

By this time, they had reached the famous wrought-iron gates of the principal entrance, where an old man in an enormous three-cornered hat and long heavily laced surtout walked up and down. Sometimes he would stop and, over gnarled hands twisted round the ivory crook of his cane, stare fiercely at the stamped effigies of AEsculapius and Flora while he addressed the presiding deities in a wheezy monotone.

"Curtain Garden! Curtain Garden! Lads and lasses, ye'll grow old. Fit for maids is Curtain Garden." Thus having droned a warning to Olympus, he would resume his walk.

In two months the broad gravelled path which he guarded would be thronged by the Exquisite Mob, but at present his only audience on fine days was composed of Phyllida and Betty. On wet days, when not even they ventured out, he would sit in a little pagoda whence every few minutes he would pop out his head, and in the same wheezy monotone lament 'Rain! Rain! on the windowpane!' and retire as abruptly as a cuckoo that has told the hour.

With this aged janitor Phyllida used to have a daily conversation which never varied by a single letter.

"Nobody in the garden this morning?"

"Not a soul nor a body, young miss."

"Are you better of your cold?"

"Very much worse."

As Phyllida used to tell Betty when they had left the gateway behind them, 'he must be very ill indeed because he has been very much worse every day.'

This customary conversation interrupted the argument over Mr. Lovely's romantick character of mind, and when they turned down the path which led to the Maze all discussion went to the wind at the prospect of again seeing her dear Amor.

Vernon had met Phyllida in the Maze but a bare two weeks ago. It happened to be his first visit to the Wells, and he was in the act of being solemnly lost when he accosted her for direction. Betty had encouraged the chance acquaintanceship and Mr. Vernon, who was tired of the mechanick Dryads of Vauxhall, embarked upon a new pleasure. The natural secretiveness of his disposition led him to adopt Amor as a fantastick pseudonym, and neither Betty nor Phyllida had troubled themselves to inquire farther into his antecedents. Indeed, it would have puzzled them to do so, for he had but lately appeared at the Pump Room in response to Phyllida's earnest entreaty, and absolutely refused to meet her at the Assembly Rooms. Consequently, had she felt inclined to indulge a suspicion, there was no one to whom she could appeal except perhaps Beau Ripple: and he, of course, was not to be thought of in connection with so trivial a matter.

You will recollect that Vernon's toilet of this morning was considerably perturbed by the image of Phyllida. Over his coffee he had reviewed the situation with great contempt for himself.

To begin with, he had moved into lodgings opposite his charmer's abode. What foolish enthusiasm! worthy of a stripling of sixteen, as he told himself. Then he had seriously contemplated matrimony. To be sure, he had made a few cautious inquiries and heard it stated on good authority that she was an heiress, but odds his life! was that enough to make him commit himself irreparably. He was jaded, and the rustick seclusion (so he characterized the Wells!) had affected his head. A boarding-school miss with gawky tendencies--a boarding-school miss with the smile of a young nymph--a boarding-school miss with little fingers that tugged the manhood--the weariness--out of his heart! It was impossible. His friends would sneer unmercifully, and he would settle in the country as he had often wished, and by heavens! he would seek her mother's consent. Pshaw! the chit would become more insipid than ever, more delightful, more enthralling, more utterly subjugating. Z----ds! what an impetuous fool he would be considered. No! No! country misses were very well in the country, and might bear transplantation for a season, but London bough-pots should be renewed every Spring. Meanwhile the affair was progressing very well, and if he could pluck a pigeon or two--there were always pigeons in the country--why a Summer in town--and after that--why after that--meanwhile his coffee was growing cold.

But when he saw her radiance among the dark hedges of yew, all his cynical plans withered away, and it would have taken mighty little to transform the libertine into as honest a lover as ever galloped across the horizon of a romantick imagination. What grace! What charm! What movement! What colour! It was incredible she would ever grow old. He rose from the stone seat in the heart of the Maze and saluted her with a sculptured bow.

"That's true romantick," whispered Betty. "See him bow, see him stand up tall and white like a great wax candle."

The swansdown tippet rose and fell to the beating of the eager heart beneath.

"My charmer takes the sun like a flower," said Mr. Vernon, bending over her hand.

Betty's eyes were a very quick and fiery blue as she turned away to her post, and, indeed, the scene would have ravished a block.

Never were yews so dark and velvety, so full of whispered secrets, as the gentle wind stirred their crisped leaves continually. In a silence made by cushions of moss set with many green stars that muffled every footstep, the stone image of Cupid, poised upon his damp-stained pedestal caught from the February sunlight the veritable bloom and semblance of divinity.

Vernon, as he led Phyllida to the seat and saw her eyes flash over the swansdown muff, was sure that such beauty must capture something of the permanence expressed by the statue and remain for ever young, for ever provocative of desire.

High over their heads a flight of pigeons circled against the azure, gathered and broke into a scattered multitude of snowy wings whose fluttering echoes travelled along the sunlight to the sombre heart of the Maze.

The simple grace with which Phyllida seated herself held Vernon entranced. He could have sworn that the stone wings of the Cupid trembled faintly as if, animate and inanimate, the whole world stood ready to scale the empyrean. Blinded by an ecstasy of hope, the man forgot himself, discarded the mean ambitions that for so long had guided his actions, and conceived the idea of a fresher existence. Great moments, like great men, have a solitary life, and there was nothing in Phyllida to respond to the fire which he had waked from a pile of ashes. Actually she was wondering whether her dear Amor had remembered Valentine day, whether, indeed, his burning gaze was a prelude to the offer of a trinket.

"'Tis surely a pleasant Valentine morning," she murmured screwing up her eyes to the sun.

Vernon cursed the want of practice with young misses which had let him forget what every fair esteemed a man's sacred duty. However, he was a resourceful gentleman and, without any perceptible hesitation, produced from his pocket a paste brooch cut to the likeness of a basket of twinkling blue forget-me-nots.

The history of this little ornament possesses enough irony to warrant a short digression. It used to hang in the window of a Midland toy-shop, and had made a pretty birthday gift from a young man deep in love to his betrothed. She wore it in her kerchief for ten years and sent it at last to her lover in London with some other trinkets not very valuable, but all of the same fresh beauty. At the bottom of the packet was a faded sprig of whitethorn. The young gentleman--not quite so young now--opened it as a London dawn empearled the city smoke. It had lain all day in his room neglected while the dice-box rattled like a skeleton at the feast of Love--a feast of pimps and blowsy carmine furies. The contents of the packet went with the last of his guineas, and at the division of the stake Mr. Vernon contemptuously accepted the brooch. The latter never troubled himself to take the ornament out of his pocket. Now once more it came back to Youth and Beauty.

As she pinned it to her kerchief, Phyllida thanked him for his sweet thoughtfulness, and wondered if he would always remember this morning.

By this time, Vernon had clambered down from his mountain top. Perhaps the brooch made his descent more easy. Yet I think he was sincere when he swore he would never forget.

Anyway Phyllida believed him and so there is nothing more to be said.

"When we are wed," she began, and startled him with such an abrupt disclosure of her dreams. "When we are wed, I think we will live in Hyde Park. Where is Hyde Park?"

"On the confines of Kensington, my dear."

"Yes, but where is Kensington?"

"A mile or so Westward of Temple Bar."

"I think we will live in Kensington."

"Nay, prithee! would you have us die of dullness."

"Is Kensington dull?"

"'Tis very rustick. No! my charmer shall lodge in the Haymarket."

Phyllida pouted. There was a Haymarket in the country town to which she made an occasional visit from the little village of Newton Candover, and she remembered it as a dusty spot not fit for a new pair of shoes.

"I vow I should detest the Haymarket."

"Nay, 'tis the gayest place, with hackney coaches passing to and fro all day. You shall sit at your window and all the fine ladies of rank and fashion will envy you."

"And what will my Amor be doing?"

"He will be looking over his angel's shoulder."

"Then they'll envy me more than ever," said Phyllida with a contented laugh. Vernon pressed her hand and looked round quickly as a man will before he attempts the first kiss. But Phyllida drew back.

"What shall we do when we are tired of sitting at the windows--if one could ever tire of anything so pleasant," she added with a sigh.

"We'll call a hackney-coach and drive to Westminster Steps, to the river."

"To the river? Now that will be most diverting."

"And we'll hail the waterman with the most elegant wherry, and row up through the dusk to Vauxhall."

Phyllida was staring at him with the round eyes of a child who listens to an old fairy-tale.

"Then what should we do?" she asked earnestly.

"We should choose a box for two and sit with our elbows over a very small table and look at each other just as we are looking now."

"Yes! go on," cried Phyllida clapping her hands.

"Then we should call for chicken-wings and eat our supper and listen to the new song and the musick of the orchestra playing the finest tunes high up among a thousand sparkling coloured lamps and watch the masqueraders and row back to Westminster under a great moon."

Mr. Vernon was so much inspired by the interest of his listener that he began to believe in the reality of this proposed idyll, quite forgetting that it was a chastened account of a hundred similar adventures enjoyed with the domino passion of a night.

"Vauxhall must be the properest place in the world," sighed Phyllida, "I doubt everybody wears their jewels."

"Everybody," replied her lover with a quick glance.

"I should wear my pearls."

"Your pearls?"

"My necklace that was left by Grandmother Courteen. Mamma won't let me wear it till I'm one-and-twenty."

"But supposing you ran away?"

"Oh I should never dare. I should be frightened."

Vernon changed the subject, perceiving at present the courtship was nothing more serious than a Springtime diversion.

He told himself if the child surrendered to his blandishments, it would be an easy matter to induce her to run away. He must weave a strong web of personal attraction round her, and if her prudence sustained her to the end, why perhaps he might commit himself to a serious offer of marriage. He must inquire further into her fortune. He wished it were not so difficult to put an arm round her waist. Innocence was very well and the prospect of a siege amusing enough at first, but a long deferred capitulation would be immensely fatiguing; and yet how charming she was. Not for anything would he have her different.

"When we are wed," he began and for the first time echoed her lately expressed hopes. In some way he felt that she would be to blame, if harm came of it. She had given the cue.

"When we are wed, we shall go to routs."

"But we shall be old and wise and able to go then. It won't be near so diverting then as 'twould be now--if you came to the Assemblies."

"My angel forgets the risque of discovery."

"There could be no more danger in that than there is in sitting here in the Maze."

"Come!"

"I'm sure if we were prudent nobody would suspect us of a love-affair."

"But consider my ardour. 'Twould illuminate the whole matter."

"Well! and if the old maids did talk, they would only talk into their teacups and every one knows that to be monstrous ungenteel behaviour. Lud! I've been censured before. Why, when I was but sixteen I was the talk of the ballroom because I stepped four gavottes with Dicky Combleton, Squire Combleton's youngest son. Every one said I was a forward minx, and he's only a year older than me and that's only last year." Phyllida became very indignant, and Mr. Vernon who lacked humour became very indignant too at being compared to a bumpkin.

"Surely my angel sees the circumstances are slightly altered?"

He clasped her hand, and stroked it slowly, but she was not to be pacified and drew it away.

"For my part, I don't know how you dare say you care for my reputation and sit here holding my hand. Walls have ears and hedges have eyes."

"You would not withdraw your hand if you were sure we were not observed?"

She made no reply.

"Possibly," he went on, "you would let me kiss those sweet lips to a smile--if we were not observed?"

"Indeed, I vow you should never do anything so indelicate."

"Z----ds! my pretty Puritan----" he stopped because Phyllida's eyes were very wide open indeed.

"Oh Sir! no one but a father or a very old man has the right to swear so dreadfully before a maid."

He laughed.

"So oaths depend on age for their propriety? I 'faith that's a new maxim I've learned this morning. After all, my Phyllida, I am fifteen years older than you."

"That may be," she retorted primly, "and I have often wondered whether I should allow a man of middle-age to make love to me."

Vernon wrinkled with annoyance at such a description. He certainly lacked humour.

"But then, you see, I am in love with you, and not marrying you because our estates join like my cousin Clarice who, we all agreed, was old enough to know better."

"Young enough, you mean. Morality rusts with the years."

"I don't know what you are talking about, but it sounds like a text."

"It is a text, my dear, the text of the man of the world."

"I hate texts, but I don't hate goodness and you must promise never, never to swear again, and--never, never to try to kiss me."

"Not even when we are wed?"

"That's another matter."

"Perhaps when you are old and wise and able to kiss you won't like kissing."

"Oh! I protest, I should like it vastly," said Phyllida with great decision.

"But if you have never made the attempt?"

"A young woman knows by instinct."

"But why won't you make sure in advance?"

"Because 'tis imprudent and wicked."

"For my part, I believe you are playing with me."

And then began a long argument which settled nothing at all and, after ten minutes, left matters precisely where they started.

What Vernon said in jest was in essence perfectly true but unfortunately he was too vain and she was too young to believe it; for if potential Phyllida knew very well she would not expire if her dear Amor vanished for ever, actual Phyllida who was much younger and far more obstinate was equally sure that a gradual decline into an interesting consumption would be the natural result of such a calamity; while potential Vernon who was anxious to prove himself a very fine fellow was very contemptuous of actual Vernon and not at all willing to admit he would find more than sufficient compensation for the loss of his Phyllida in the ample charms of Miss Diana Flashington of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

And this is the way a large number of world-shaking passions begin, since at first we seldom apprehend our potentiality.

The quarrel was interrupted by the sound of approaching voices just as Betty came flying round the corner with the news that "Mr. Thomas and your mamma be coming as fast as legs can carry 'em this way as ever is."

The implication of a rapid advance is to be understood merely as relative to their usual rate of procedure.

In an instant all was confusion. Miss Courteen wrung her hands and behaved quite as wildly as a grand married lady on the verge of discovery in an ambiguous situation below stairs. Mr. Vernon flicked a number of invisible specks of dust from his purple sattin breeches as though he had been kneeling in devout protestation of honourable love for the past hour, while Betty ran in turn to each of the four alleys leading to their present position, and put a hand to an attentive ear. She quickly ascertained by which path the enemy was advancing and without more ado pushed Mr. Vernon hastily in the opposite direction, thrust a tambour frame into her mistress's hands and composed herself to spell aloud the Agricultural Calendar and Farmer's Assistant for the current year. She was in the middle of some astonishing statisticks of the comparative productiveness per acre of turnips and mangel-wurzels when Mrs. Courteen followed by the majestick Thomas appeared upon the scene. On perceiving her daughter, the latter gave a faint scream and declared the meeting would certainly produce palpitations.

At the utterance of this fatal word, Thomas immediately unscrewed the knob of his cane and drew forth a bottle of salts, Phyllida performed the same conjuring trick with her bag, while Betty after some lace-involved rites in which a crimson garter played a prominent part offered a third bottle not more than a moment later. By the tonick influence of several sniffs Mrs. Courteen was sufficiently revived to ask in a stern voice what Phyllida was doing in this ungodly place. Thomas accompanied the query by muttering 'Canaanites' several times in quick succession under his breath. What the commentary was intended to imply no one knew; but there was a general belief that the footman symbolized states of mind, people and actions of which he disapproved, by the various hostile tribes encountered by the Israelites during their wanderings.

Phyllida assured her mother she was working a peacock in blue and scarlet wool for the seat of a chair, and when Mrs. Courteen demanded why she was not sitting on her own balcony, for the privilege of possessing which she paid an additional five-and-sixpence a week in rent, the daughter protested the East wind chapped her ankles.

"Chaps your ankles, miss? What d'ye mean by chaps your ankles? At your age, I didn't know I had ankles. Woollen hose was what I wore, and I should have been whipped if I had ever dared to think my ankles were not as thick as marrowbones."

Phyllida begged her dear mamma's pardon and hoped to be forgiven, but could not help remarking the sun was so warm that she had felt quite positive her dear mamma would be pleased to see her take the air.

"Twas very unkind of you," complained the widow, "to presume so far on my acknowledged indulgence of your whims. You know the miserable state of my health compels me to sip several glasses of the waters after breakfast, and seize the lamentable opportunity to deceive your too confiding parent. How am I to know you have not been sitting in this heathen nook for days in succession?"

Again the footman muttered 'Canaanites! Canaanites!' As this was exactly where Phyllida had been sitting for days in succession, she looked immensely shocked by the question.

"Well! well," said Mrs. Courteen as if resigned to her daughter's iniquity, "go home and pray that you may become a more dutiful child."

Thomas murmured a low Amen and earned for his devotion a derisive and ribald gesture from Betty.

"Aren't you coming too, mamma?"

"No, miss, I am not coming; I must rest myself and compose my mind and soothe my feelings. Thomas, will you arrange my cushion."

Thomas produced it from under the seven capes of his surtout without perceptibly diminishing his girth.

Said Phyllida to Betty as they stepped out of the Maze, "For my part, I believe she only wanted to be rid of us in order to meet puffy old Moon or skimpy little Tarry."

And this supposition was perfectly true.

_Chapter the Fifth_

THE PUBLICK BREAKFAST

At half-past twelve o'clock of the following day, masculine Curtain Wells began to arrive at the Town Hall determined to eat the health of General Sir Jeremy Dummer with all the vigour of an appetite unspoiled by a morsel of food since yesterday's supper. No procession was arranged by those responsible for the entertainment, but the habit of punctuality instilled by the Great little Beau secured an unrehearsed pageant. There was no marshalled order, but since everybody set out from his abode at the same time, the component populations of the place were compelled to affect a military method of progress.

It was quite unpremeditated and, therefore, the more impressive. The Town Hall designed by Sir John Vanbrugh had been erected by publick subscription to serve as a memorial to those gallant natives of Curtain Wells who fought and died under the Duke of Marlborough. That the aforesaid gallant natives were only three in number and in no case killed in action was no cooler to the furnace of civick gratitude kindled by the signing of the Peace of Utrecht. In their delight at the discomfiture of the quarrelsome Whigs, the citizens expressly stipulated there should be no hint of War and War's alarms in the construction of their Hall. There were to be no cannon eternally belching forth stony smoke, no image or superscription of Mars or Bellona. Greaves, bucklers, spears, culverins, swords, scimitars and grenades were forbidden by name. The central medallion of the pediment should enshrine Civick Unity.

So the reigning Mayor was represented in all the pomp of office grasping the hands of two equally, befurred and bechained Aldermen. It was an affecting combination of the real and the allegorical. A second medallion contained a voluminously draped and very substantial lady who with absent gaze spilled from a heavy Etruscan vase a large stream of petrified Chalybeate. Her far-away look might be attributed to an effort at ascertaining what a small AEsculapius was doing to a serpent on the summit of a diminutive Pelion. This was Health. Finally a third medallion held a peer in coronation robes thoughtfully regarding the front of St. James' Palace. A curved scroll announced this pensive aristocrat to be the representative of Society.

Civick Unity, Health, and Society--could any other personifications so justly convey the essential quality of Curtain Wells? And not a pike or arquebus to frighten them out of a rigid serenity.

Upon this sermon in stone, three streets converged, which at half-past twelve o'clock were all thronged. Since the breakfast was essentially a male function, the civick band by a happy inspiration of the band-master thundered out _The Girl I left Behind Me_, as in its wake a number of prosperous tradesmen tripped to the measure of the tune. Haberdashers and cheesemongers, drygoodsmen and fishmongers, butchers, tailors, saddlers, cooks and silversmiths all marched along with a pleasant emotion of relief. Fortified by preliminary tankards of ale and unhampered by prosaick wives and daughters, they retreated from nothing save the business of serving customers. Vapours were dispelled by the breeze of trumpets, and the thoughts aroused by the musick of the song only added a pungent spice to their dreams of food and confirmed their faith in the superiority of breeches over petticoats--at any rate when walking away from the latter.

Meanwhile down the central street came another crowd not marching with the precision of movement inspired by the escort of the band, but still urged to a certain unanimity of gait by the common object of their advance. Mr. Mayor, preceded by his mace, set the time, and a line of Aldermen carefully ordered their pace to his. Behind the Aldermen came the Watch. This was a mistake. The latter should have led the dignitaries, but had spent so much time in buttoning and unbuttoning its capes and belts, in brushing its hats and polishing its staves that it was late, thereby belying its name. So the Watch followed behind and vented its contrition on a mob of boys in occasional backhanded cuffs and current imprecations. Behind the boys marched three small girls--Amazons heedless of the embargoe laid upon their sex.

However both these processions were overshadowed by the prodigious pageant that emanated from the street facing the medallion of Society. The last deserves a chapter to itself since no appendix could do justice to its importance. Let me therefore, without being held to have violated the decency of orderly narration, insert at this point a supplementary chapter which may serve as a programme to the entertainment I hope worthily to recount.

_Chapter V a_

THE ORDER OF THE EXQUISITE MOB

_General Sir Jeremy Dummer in a sedan chair borne by two veterans of the Militia. Beau Ripple in damson-coloured velvet coat and breeches, with waistcoat of old rose sattin trimmed with silver and rose silk stockings clocked with the same._

Mr. Ripple with admirable condescension occasionally arrested the progress of the march in order to address a word of encouragement to Sir Jeremy Dummer who was inclined to be querulous from want of food and the

## action of the chalybeate.

_The Earl of Cinderton in smoke-grey silk with cuffs of clouded blue._

_The Honourable George Harthe-Brusshe, his son, in a lighter shade of the same._

_The Earl of Vanity looking like a fly, in amber._

_Five baronets in various degrees of_ FEUILLE MORTE.

_Four Knights of the Shire trying to look like Baronets and horridly bruised by the palings in their attempts._

_Seventeen exquisite young gentlemen all exactly alike and only to be distinguished by the various shapes and sizes of their patches._

_Major Constantine Tarry who had devoted the sleep of the preceding night to the preservation of his pigtail's rigour and appeared very pale beside his red coat in consequence._

_Justice Gregory Moon looking much the same as usual save for a sprig of yew in his buttonhole._

_Mr. Charles Lovely and Mr. Anthony Clare arm in arm. The former wearing a cherry-coloured velvet coat with waistcoat and breeches of trout-coloured silk, the latter in uniform cucumber green. Both laughed very loudly and cheerfully from time to time._

_Five elegant young gentlemen including a Lieutenant of his Majesty's Navy, a Cornet of the Grey Dragoons and an Ensign of the Foot._

_Twenty-three old men suffering from various diseases._

_Thirty-eight old men all firmly convinced that they were suffering from gout but all perfectly healthy in truth._

_Forty-five old men equally firmly convinced that they were suffering from other and various diseases, and all equally healthy in truth._

_Mr. Oboe the Physician watchful of his patients' demeanour and quick to confirm the slightest suspicion of ill-health._

_Mr. Francis Vernon in a tawny suit of figured Manchester velvet._

_Fifteen or sixteen gentlemen of various ages, sizes, ranks, costumes, complexions, and states of health._

_Chapter V (resumed)_

Beau Ripple mounted the steps that, in diminishing semi-circles, reached the entrance of the Civick Hall and, turning his head, froze into silence with a cold stare of surprize the concluding Crescendo of _The Girl I left Behind Me_, as if the half-drawn breaths of the musicians were suddenly changed to icicles.

The good-natured band was not at all put out by Mr. Ripple's lack of appreciation. His objection to panting was universally known, so the band bore him no malice, but continued to pant.

As the musick stopped, Mr. Mayor began to walk up the steps also. No doubt his ascent would have been as active as the Beau's if he had not been hampered by the civick robes on which he trod at every alternate step. Possibly the freezing disdain of Mr. Ripple had made the steps more glacial than their wont. At any rate, the Mayor whenever he avoided the hem of his robes, always slipped and stumbled, but he achieved the summit at last and greeted the Beau with such fervour that he effected a perceptible thaw.

On these occasions of supreme civick importance, it was customary for the latter to relax his rule of never taking snuff with any one below the rank of Viscount in the Peerage of England, so he offered his box to the Mayor. That functionary with a reverence he had acquired over the counter, inserted two fleshy fingers into the dainty receptacle, withdrew them smeared with Rappee, sniffed the powder with avidity, sneezed four times, and said he saw Sir Jeremy alighting from his chair.

The Beau regarded the Mayor's invasion of the delicate touchstone of quality with a smile of amused apprehension. He explained afterwards that he felt as if he were carrying a sirloin of beef into a queen's parlour. When the convulsions set up by the snuff had outworn their first violence, he fixed his monocle upon the guest's chair. Sure enough, Sir Jeremy was alighting. Mr. Ripple and the Mayor simultaneously descended the steps, and while the former started back with an affectation of surprise, the latter charged forward with eager hospitality.

"Gadslife! Sir Jeremy! You are vastly welcome, Sir. This is a great occasion. Twenty-one years. Tet-tet." Thus Mr. Ripple.

"How are you, Sir Jermy Dummer, Sir? Come along o' me, Sir Jermy, and I hope yaul heat very hearty," said or rather shouted the Mayor.

"_Eheu fugaces!_" murmured Mr. Ripple.

"Heh?" asked the Mayor.

"_Postume, Postume._"

"Hoh!" said the Mayor. "I beg yaw pardon, Mr. Ripple. Will you take a harm, Sir Jermy?"

The poor old knight clutched at the fur of the Mayor's robe as the two of them stumbled up the steps behind Mr. Ripple.

In passing through the antechamber, the old man dropped his hat and cane.

"I shouldn't leave my hat an' cane here if I was you, Sir Jermy," said the Mayor. "While some's heating, some'll be thieving."

"I have not the slightest intention of doing anything so insane," quavered the ancient soldier, "can't you see that I dropped 'em by accident?"

The good-natured Mayor stooped to recover the accessories. "I beg yaw pardon, Sir Jermy. Follow me. The banquet's in here."

The huge folding doors were flung back, and the sight of so much food kindled a gleam in Sir Jeremy's rheumy eyes and waked a cackle from his lean throat.

"Glad to hear such a jovial laugh. Wittles is wittles when hall's said an' done. Hain't that true, Mr. Ripple," said the Mayor turning to the Beau for confirmation of this statement.

"Victuals are victuals, sir, as you very justly observe."

Upon these three celebrated figures broke the buzz of the excited crowd from the centre of which Lord Cinderton and Lord Vanity withdrew themselves.

"Let me present Sir Jeremy Dummer, the Earl of Cinderton. Sir Jeremy Dummer, the Earl of Vanity." The latter offered his snuff-box to the old votary of Health who declined it saying,

"No! thankee, my lord, not before I eat. D---- e if ever I took snuff before I ate."

His worship the Mayor was then presented to the two noblemen and, discoursing amicably of the outlook on European politicks, the five great men threaded their way towards the principal table.

There was a tremendous shuffling among the innumerable waiters as Mr. Daish urged them to unparalleled exertion. They ran hither and thither like recently fertile hens. One half of them pulled out chairs from the tables and the other half pushed them back again. Some fled bawling for the soup. Others conversed in excited whispers. At last the assembled company to the number of three hundred persons stood each member in the place he had selected.

What caused a further delay? Why did Mr. Daish hurriedly wave back the white-capped cook bearing the first tureen?

Through the doorway pattered little Mr. Archdeacon Conybeare. "I'm late," he muttered, "I know it, I'm aware of it. I'm late. Maria, my love, I'm late, I'm very late."

The Beau was looking at the large clock below the gallery at the far end of the hall.

"Will you ask a grace, Mr. Archdeacon," he said.

The Mayor smote the table with a silver hammer as the parson slipped into his place.

"For what we are going to receive ... my dear Mr. Ripple, 'tis no use to tell me the contrary, I know I am very late."

The Publick Breakfast had begun.

I think it was the great Dr. Johnson whose forehead while he ate was dabbled with perspiration and the veins of it red and swollen. At any rate the Mayor had a similar appearance. He devoured his food as if he feared the cherubs sporting in the gilded panels of the ceiling would descend and snatch it from his plate.

Mr. Ripple ate very modishly. One would have said he had watched the honied meals of many butterflies. For all his fork's fastidious action, it managed to pick the best of a Fricassee. Rounds, ribs, and sirloins, he deplored.

Sir Jeremy Dummer evidently felt that his sensibility to the honour awarded to him deserved practical gratitude. He eat voraciously. The old fighting spirit abode in him for a space and he handled his knife like his hanger. He slashed at every course that came along, but, accuracy being impaired by muscular fatigue, he was content to swallow much of his food whole.

Sir Jeremy Dummer ate:

Two plates of turtle soup.

The better part of a codfish.

The wing of a capon.

The wing of a duck.

The breast of a pullet.

A hot buttered apple dumpling and two or three slices of ham which he had not noticed before.

Sir Jeremy Dummer drank:

Two tankards of old ale.

One bottle of Madeira.

Two bottles of Port.

And on the following day, Sir Jeremy Dummer died. He had always been famous for trencher-play until condemned by Oboe to milky sustenance to which through twenty-one winter seasons he never willingly yielded. This commemoration of his abstinence was his opportunity and his revenge. Could he have made a worthier end? For my own part, I should not presume to say so.

Meanwhile, unconscious of this premature obituary, Sir Jeremy Dummer enjoyed the breakfast amazingly. At first he was inclined to peevishness through not being seated upon a sufficiently high chair. Mr. Daish, however, with ready tact secured one of the Civick cushions and so enabled Sir Jeremy, comfortably ensconced in crimson velvet, to eat his last breakfast at ease.

Mr. Lovely having made the acquaintance of the Honourable George Harthe-Brusshe, by whom he had seated himself at the particular request of Mr. Ripple, discussed with animation the food on his plate and the last foppery of the town. Mr. Harthe-Brusshe, a lantern jawed young gentleman with a sincere devotion to turtle-soup, observing that Mr. Lovely was about to leave his portion, begged him to hand it over. Charles who invariably encouraged every man's idiosyncrasy sent the word down the table to pass up every neglected plateful. This request was readily granted and presently Mr. Harthe-Brusshe found himself surrounded by half-a-dozen portions. Thereupon he declined all other dishes and was faithful to soup for the rest of the meal.

"I suppose you find the difference in temperature sufficient variety?" asked Mr. Lovely in a tone of great interest.

"That's so, Sir," replied the other as he refused beef and veal for the sake of a moderately warm fifth plate of soup.

"I doubt you keep a bottle of it always to hand," remarked Lovely.

"It would tire me too much. It tires me to keep things to hand."

Here the Honourable George Harthe-Brusshe sighed with exhaustion and seemed to desire silence.

Charles turned to his other neighbour who happened to be Mr. Francis Vernon.

"Are you making a sojourn here, Sir?"

Vernon noticed the richness of Mr. Lovely's attire, made a rough calculation of the value of his buckles, brooches and solitaire, and answered very politely he hoped so indeed.

"I've not yet seen you at the _Blue Boar_, Sir. We make up a pleasant party in the old Coffee-Room every night. There's young Tom Chalkley of the Foot, Tony Clare, Peter Wingfield, Jack Winnington, Harry Golightly of Campbell's Grey Dragoons, Blewforth of the _Lively_, and as many more of us pass the time very pleasantly over some tolerable Port and very excellent Burgundy."

"I doubt the company is delightful."

"'I faith, that's very true for when the wine makes us loquacious, d---- e, we sing, and when it makes us mum, why, d----e, the dice-box talks for us. You'll join us, Sir?" he added, turning to Mr. Harthe-Brusshe.

"Proud," murmured that gentleman pensively regarding the rich scum slowly hardening over the plate of soup to be attacked next.

"Let me see," said Charles, "to-night we must positively keep quiet in deference to the Beau. Monday night I've promised to go to the Assembly."

"What's that?" said Mr. Anthony Clare, a florid young gentleman on the opposite side of the table. "Blewforth!" he called out to a naval officer farther along. "Charles has forsook letters and is going to try life for a change."

"Good G----," said the Lieutenant solemnly. "Charles crowding all canvas after a petticoat?"

Charles looked somewhat disconcerted by this immediate perception of his motives.

"I 'faith, you're in the wrong, Blewforth," he protested, "'tis to please Ripple and that's the whole truth of the matter."

A roar of laughter greeted this excuse, and every young gentleman in hearing vowed to exchange dice for dancing on Monday night.

"I saw Charles leave a note at a house in the Western Colonnade," remarked Ensign Chalkley of the Foot.

"A Valentine for a hundred guineas," said Clare.

"Name the charmer," shouted Blewforth, "name her, and egad, she shall be the toast of the afternoon."

Mr. Vernon felt relieved. Somehow he had half suspected Lovely was in pursuit of Miss Courteen. If he had not decided to wear purple sattin on the day before and buried himself in the closet to extricate the suit, he would have been still more suspicious of Lovely. The latter ignored the friendly jeers.

"Shall we say Wednesday night, Sir?"

"I shall be honoured."

"May I beg the favour of your name, Sir? 'Tis customary with us to elect our associates.'

"My name is Vernon. Francis Vernon of the Crescent, Curtain Wells--and London."

It was Charles' turn to display apprehension. Here was a man well dressed, of genteel appearance, living in the Crescent.

"Ah! the Crescent! I once had a notion to lodge there myself."

"'Tis a quiet position," said Vernon.

"So much the better for my Muse."

"You are a poet, Sir?"

"I have a metrical fancy."

"Try the Colonnade, Charles," bellowed the Lieutenant, "and your Muse'll speedily become the most famous Toast of the time."

"Blewforth owns a spy-glass," said some one.

"I wish he would own a mirrour," said Charles, "his wig is infamous."

"His head is swollen since the w-war," stammered little Peter Wingfield, "or else he was w-wounded in the wig." Blewforth, impervious to smoaking, gave a loud guffaw.

Lovely and Vernon agreed to meet on the following Wednesday and the conversation moved on general lines till the silver hammer of the Mayor summoned the company to attend to the toasts. The eyes of the room were on him as away up at the high table, he rose burly and majestick.

"Mr. Alderman Jobbins," he proclaimed, "the King!" Mr. Jobbins, the youngest of the city fathers, blessed his sovereign with unctuous pride, and the toast was drunk amid acclamations whose echo was drowned in broken glass. Curtain Wells knew when to borrow from military manners.

Then the assembly tilted on its chairs after filling new glasses, and composed itself to listen to Beau Ripple who had risen, monocle in hand.

When the murmur of delighted anticipation had sighed itself out on the wings of a loud 'Hush,' the Great little Man with indescribable suavity begged the company's permission to say a few words.

"Mr. Mayor, my lords, and gentlemen, may I say citizens? (a voice, 'You may') for I think I am giving utterance to the sentiments of this salubrious town when I protest that upon an occasion of such unique interest and such immense significance, we no longer recognize any distinction between visitors and residents (loud applause). We are assembled this morning in order to honour a man for whom no honour is sufficient. We are celebrating the twenty-first consecutive winter at Curtain Wells of Sir Jeremy Dummer (loud cheers). He has been faithful to us, gentlemen. Each year towards the close of the equinoctial gales, his coach has clattered over the cobbles of Curtain Wells. Each year he has alighted at the door of Number Seventeen, the Crescent. Each year he has torn himself away from the gaiety of London in order to set us an example of perseverance. Each year his arrival has encouraged other gentlemen of grave address to put their faith in the cleansing springs of Chalybeate. To be sure, his gout is as virulent as ever, but has he despaired? No (cheers). Has he tried other remedies? No (cheers). He has only been the more firmly convinced of the profound malignity of his disorder and the more resolutely determined to annoy it by any and every means in his power (continued applause). Twenty-one years ago Curtain Wells was a different place. We had, it is true, this Civick Hall. We had Crescent and Colonnade, Curtain Garden and Curtain Rotunda, Curtain Wells and Curtain Pump Room, Curtain Hill and Curtain Dale. But we had not your respected Mayor. In those days he was a younger, shall I add, a more foolish man? I myself was still overshadowed by the reputation of my great predecessor Beau Melon whose alabaster bust consecrates the Assembly Rooms.

"In those days, gentlemen, coaches very rarely exceeded the rate of four miles an hour, and as you have heard, the new Machine proposes to travel at an uniform speed of six. Twenty-one years! This valetudinarian majority should make the youngest of us pause and reflect. Twenty-one years of Chalybeate (a groan from the back of the room).

"Mr. Mayor, my lords and gentleman, I propose the health of Sir Jeremy Dummer and venture to assert that the time-honoured toast was never before fraught with such significance. The health of Sir Jeremy Dummer! It is in order to commemorate his health that we are assembled. Gout has done many ill deeds, ruined many tempers, spoiled many legs, but for this at least we should be grateful---- it has afforded us the spectacle of a gallant gentleman faithful to his earliest prescription, hopeful of an ultimate cure and charitable to the town of his adoption. (Loud and prolonged applause.) One moment, gentlemen: let me add that the guest of this entertainment has expressed a desire to present the town with a new set of mugs for the publick fountains." (Volleys of applause.)

Beau Ripple after leading the toast with three very urbane Huzzas resumed his seat, and Sir Jeremy Dummer doddered up to make his reply. As it consisted chiefly of a long and detailed account of his symptoms and extended over half an hour, and as you, with knowledge of his speedy death, will not bear it with the slumberous equanimity of his contemporaries, I shall not recount it. It is enough to say that when it was concluded, everybody woke with a start and cheered vociferously. Then the Mayor proposed the health of Mr. Ripple, and somebody else proposed the health of the Mayor, and so on until all the dignitaries had had enough wine drunk to their long life to ensure for every one of them an undiseased immortality.

When the toasts were finished, the quality adjourned to the Civick Chamber to meet the ladies over a dish of tea, while the quantity marched off to put the seal on a great occasion by talking it over in the various taprooms round the town.

Vernon was not inclined to brave the extension of the affair when he perceived his new friends cautiously escaping from the Beau. He hated to be conspicuous, and it was a small pleasure to meet his Phyllida among the dowagers. Indeed, he was beginning to wish he had been less hasty in taking lodgings in the Crescent, and the prospect of the _Blue Boar_ was already alluring enough to make him inquire the price of a room in that merry house. So he asked if he might take Mr. Lovely's arm.

In the square, the elegant young gentlemen made a bright knot.

"What's to be done?" cried the Lieutenant.

"L-l-let's ride over to B-Baverstock Regis and s-see T-Tony's m-maiden aunt," stammered little Peter Wingfield.

"Bravo!" shouted Charles.

Clare looked up in surprize. Charles was seldom willing to play the game of light love. Could that chatter of Blewforth's have gone deeper than he thought? There was a strange excitement about him--an excitement that was aroused by something stronger than the civick wine. Was he in love? Mr. Anthony Clare was puzzled.

"You must know, gentlemen," said Mr. Lovely, "that this maiden aunt is of a very singular complexion. 'Tis usual, as we are all aware, to look to maiden aunts for legacies and presents, but this lady, as I know by the state of Tony's purse, gets more than she gives."

"Fie! Charles," protested his friend, "I vow your point of view deteriorates." What could be the matter with him?

"Well, gentlemen," he continued, "since you are so set on meeting my relatives, egad! you shall. We'll ride over to Baverstock to-night; there are dances in Baverstock Barn, and the maids--maiden-aunts will all be there. You'll come Charles?"

"Not another word. I'll lead the love-chase or, shall we say, the legacy hunt."

"And you, sir?" Clare continued with a bow to Vernon.

After a moment's hesitation due, no doubt, to bashfulness, the latter assented, and in a trice the whole party went whooping and holloaing in the direction of the _Blue Boar_.

And all this time, Phyllida was counting the kisses in her teacup while she watched Miss Sukey Morton search energetically for strangers.

_Chapter the Sixth_

BAVERSTOCK BARN

Vernon left his companions at the door of his lodgings in order to adapt his dress to the road, having settled with them to meet presently at the _Blue Boar_ where a horse was to be saddled in readiness. He wondered while pulling on his riding-boots what was the monetary value of his new friends. They talked of play; but was it high enough to make their fellowship worth joining? They were all apparently expensive in their tastes and habits, but seemed so young and irresponsible. That however was rather an advantage. They belonged to the World, the World that is of St. James' Street; yet if they were callow pigeons, why were they learning to fly to far from the nest which bred them?

Now Mr. Vernon had got hold of a wrong analysis. These young men of Curtain Wells in spite of their outward freshness were not at all fit for the table. They had tough breasts beneath an array of fine feathers. This society of theirs, so remote from the larger society of London, with a toleration of good and bad alike, was in its essence eclectick, like a regiment or a college. An air of genial self-satisfaction clung to it nourished by rules and opinions and traditions which had never been proved to be false or harmful. The members were all clipped to a pattern and displayed a wealth of blooms in a prim setting. Even Lovely straggled too much, and was only allowed to disturb the fellowship on account of his decorative qualities and because he was evidently only a strong sport from the conventional habit of growth.

Vernon in making up his mind to join this elegant association was quite unaware that the condescension was on the side of youth. He was willing to instruct them in the ways of the great world, but found what he had been compelled to learn, they knew by inherited instinct. He was ignorant of their existence: they on the other hand had experienced many Mr. Vernons. Still he was endowed with too much insight not to understand almost immediately that he must imitate their standards, and soon caught the tone of his companions well enough to be voted an acquisition.

However, as he wrestled with his riding-boots, he was distinctly at a loss. This ride to Baverstock was presumably an expedition of gallantry, and yet he had felt it unwise to obtrude a jest appropriate to the occasion. The conversation had possessed a certain elusive ribaldry; women were discussed with frankness, and yet he had not ventured to boast of his own conquests. These young men chattered of love, much as they would have talked of fox-hunting. Love was a theory, a philosophy with a cant terminology of its own. And yet the analogy was incomplete. No man would hesitate to chronicle his leaps, but then no man would confess to having shot a fox. There was the rub. He was a fox shooter; these were hunters. Gadslife! How absurdly young they all were. And this Lovely? He was evidently more prudish than the rest of them--a man of sentiment who objected to either mode of death. He would like to see this paragon of virtue who had stared so coldly at the tale of old Sir John Columbine and his frail exquisite consort, put to the test. From that moment he began to hate Charles, and stamped the wrinkles out of his boots with considerable feeling. He would devote himself to emptying Lovely's purse before he tried the rest of them.

Vernon in a very pleasant frame of mind strolled through the chill of approaching twilight. The humiliation of Lovely was in a way achieved as soon as conceived. This was how Vernon always escaped from awkward situations. He so seldom faced facts.

An outraged husband once threatened him with a riding whip, and Vernon promptly climbed out by the window. In the street he only remembered he had successfully seduced the wife, and forgot the uncomfortable epilogue. He behaved to futurity in the same generous way as he treated the past.

Presently he found the company assembled in the yard of the inn, with a dozen horses pawing the cobbles impatient of the cold. They were soon mounted and the arched entry rang again with the sound of hoofs as they trotted through the High Street.

"Which way?" shouted Vernon who was in front.

"Straight ahead and turn to the right," answered Clare. "We've eight miles to go and a good road to go on."

"Huzza!" shouted Vernon who felt that extreme heartiness was the correct attitude.

In the clap and clack of the horses' hoofs, the affectation passed unnoticed.

How the fat shopkeepers stared to see these young gentlemen cantering away in the late afternoon, 'Some wild frolick,' they thought and turned half-regretfully to attend to their customers who were just as much interested in the jolly troop as themselves. Children scrambled from the gutters on to the pavement with yells of dismay as the horsemen scattered their mud pies. Little girls effected heroick rescues of favourite dolls from the very gate of death and little boys bowled their hoops between the legs of wayfarers with more assiduity than usual, in their struggles to avoid the legs of the horses.

Lieutenant Blewforth like most sailors was an inferior rider, but on this occasion he surpassed himself, and sat his horse like a Bedouin. He only wished buxom Miss Page would step to the door of the cook-shop and behold his prowess. Unluckily at the very moment when his ambition was in process of achievement, his mount swerved, and the gay Lieutenant found himself at his charmer's feet. The inevitable idler secured the horse, and Blewforth, having no small change, was obliged to reward him with a crown, and what is more look as if he enjoyed the expense. To give him credit, he certainly succeeded.

"Do you always propose yourself in that precipitous manner?" Charles inquired as they cantered past the last house and gained the hedgerows. "You pay very little heed to her corns."

The Lieutenant uttered an enormous guffaw that made his mount swerve again.

"The Royal Navy is always so d-devilish romantick," stammered little Peter Wingfield who looked like a precocious boy beside the burly officer.

"By G--," puffed Blewforth, "that reminds me of a good story I heard of an ensign in Bolt's. He was a d--d bashful man, and couldn't abide the women. One day he was making his compliments to the Colonel's daughter--a gaunt hussy of thirty-five summers or winters. He hung back outside the parlour-door for some time, mustered up courage to enter at last, dashed into the room and, tripping over his hanger, found himself kneeling at her feet. This was a bad beginning truly, but in trying to retrieve the position, he clutched the air and caught hold of her skinny hand. They were married in the spring, and the garrison said he badly wanted her money."

In the outburst of laughter which hailed the climax of the story, Vernon asked with much interest what the young woman's dowry was worth. The subject fascinated him.

"Don't know, sir," replied Blewforth, "but I saw the jade at Portsmouth last year, and I'm d--d if L50,000 would have made her endurable."

They were riding through a pleasant country of meadows and small streams; so Charles walked his mare to admire the willows empurpled by the fast gathering dusk. Vernon seized the opportunity for conversation.

"A fine landskip," he remarked.

Charles looked up half-angry. He disliked a man who suited his words to his own supposed tastes.

"It might be finer," he said shortly.

"Without a doubt," replied the other. "You'll pardon my ignorance, Mr. Lovely, but of what does the entertainment before us consist?"

Charles' face grew clear again at once--at any rate, the man did not claim omniscience.

"The entertainment, sir, is composed of fiddles and country dances enjoyed by the light of tallow-dips in an old barn. There will be some ploughboys, shepherds and farmers, with a few milkmaids and farm wenches, and the whole will resemble a painted Dutch interior."

"And you propose to join the merrymaking?"

"We do."

"It should be a diverting experience."

"I hope so indeed. My friend Clare vows he has discovered a Venus masquerading in fustian."

"His maiden-aunt in short?"

"The same. Like all small societies, sir, we have our intimate jests which to a stranger must seem excessively threadbare."

"On the contrary," said Vernon, "they possess an engaging spontaneity which flatters me with the suggestion that my own youth has not vanished irreclaimably. And yet," he sighed, "I am a man whom the world insults by claiming as its own."

"You have travelled?" inquired Charles.

"I have made the Grand Tour."

"That is a pleasure which I still owe to myself and to my country."

"You lack energy?"

"Of the kind expressed in gold."

"An hour's good luck at the tables."

"I've enjoyed some dozens," interrupted Lovely. "Almost enough to pay for twice as many less fortunate periods."

"Then why continue to play?"

"Why fall in love? Why die in a consumption? Why live this life of ours at all? Your question, sir, takes little account of mankind's innate perversity, and no account at all of his tastes and disposition of mind."

"On the contrary," argued Vernon, "I esteem all these at their greatest effect, but regard with equal reverence the doctrine of free will. I myself--but why should I fatigue you with personal anecdotes?"

"Pray continue," said Charles eagerly. He was always alert at a confidence and plumed himself on his ability to read human character. In this case curiosity outran discernment, and he failed to see the improbability of a man like Vernon exposing his temperament without securing a compensatory advantage.

"I myself, Mr. Lovely, was once addicted to the equally expensive habit of intrigue, but I found it led me into so many cursed situations that I forced myself to enjoy less compromising pastimes. I chose cards."

"Ah! cards!" commented Charles.

"But here again," Vernon continued, "I found the introduction of a passionate element ruined at once my pleasure and my skill. I was confounded. To be sure there remained wine, but whoever heard of a man's will exercised by wine? To be frank, Mr. Lovely, I was unwilling to take the risque of defeat."

"So I am to regard you as a disappointed voluptuary, a hedonist philosopher whose premisses induced him to a false conclusion. No, no, sir, keep your logick for speculations upon the soul, not the body."

"Sir," answered Vernon, "I found, indeed, that pleasure tormented by passion was no pleasure at all, but pleasure divorced from any ulterior emotion I soon discovered to be the highest good."

"So you would persuade me that you're an Epicurean who flings withered rose leaves and drinks sour wine. Come, come, sir, I wager your fingers would twitch and your lips quiver if one of us held a dice-box with a deep stake on the main."

"I deny that."

"We shall see."

"I hope we may."

"Ay, sir, and I wager this affectation of indifference will not outlast a week's ill luck, and as for woman, why the very dairymaids to-night will kindle a spark in your eyes."

"My life on't, they will not," cried Vernon.

"Foregad! you wear too stolid a mask to convince me it is your natural countenance."

This duologue, which seems to show that Mr. Lovely was younger and less wise than we might have thought, was interrupted by the shouts of the riders in front who wanted to know whether Charles imagined they were part of a funeral pomp.

"For d----e!" shouted Mr. Golightly, "we are all nodding like plumes and the twilight obscures the undeniable charms of the prospect."

Baverstock Barn, like a great cathedral, loomed upon them at last. As they dismounted, revelry and the drawling chatter of rustick voices, mingled with the tuning of fiddles, came from within, while the flickering light from the open door enchanted a heap of roots to the appearance of huge gems.

Clare approached the entrance while the rest stood by their horses.

"Farmer Hogbin!" he sang out.

"Who be caaling?"

"Mr. Anthony Clare!"

"Come in now, do 'ee come in."

"I've brought over a party with me, farmer?"

"Maids, do 'ee hear that? Maister Clare have brought wi'un a passel o' gallantry."

There was much jingling merriment from the maids.

"Now then Jock, Tommas, William, Jarge, Joe, Sam, Peter, Ern, move your shanks and stable they hosses."

The farmer, a huge Falstaff of a man quite in proportion to his barn, towered in the doorway obscuring the light, while the farm hands clumped with heavy legs towards the horses.

"Gi' they pleanty o' oats, my lads."

"A' right," mumbled the lads in chorus.

"Come in, my gentlemen, come in. Never mind for a speck of mud; the maids'll dust 'ee."

This sally provoked a ripple of laughter from the maids, and a chuckle from the young gentlemen.

The farmer surveyed them solemnly as they stepped into the barn.

"Why, you be all in top-boots?" he shouted. "Ho! ho! my maids, ye'll get thy twinkling toes rarely trod on, or shall I lend 'em my slippers to each in turn?"

This was considered splendid fooling, and laughter again resounded.

"Nay, farmer, you're in the wrong," said Charles producing a pair of pumps from the pockets of his riding coat.

"Why! dang me, if they han't brought a King's wardrobe wi'en. Eh! maids, you must mind your modesties to-night."

The maids, huddled together like a bunch of red apples, were set shaking with laughter at this warning--as if by a boisterous wind.

"Who will help us with our boots?" asked Clare as he subsided upon a truss of straw and flung his legs wide apart.

There was considerable whispering from the heart of the bunch till one of the maids was pushed by her companions out into the open with ejaculations of "Go on, stoopid."

"Thee needst not let on to be so backward." "Thee wast forthy enough behind the kitchen door yester'een." "Eh! bustle thyself, great gowk," and others of like freedom of opinion.

The maid selected for Mr. Clare was blooming indeed.

"Cream and claret," murmured Charles.

"Gad! a Venus by a Dutch master truly," commented Vernon.

"She's no g-ghost," stammered little Peter Wingfield.

_"Farewell and adieu to you, gay Spanish ladies, Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain."_

sang or rather bellowed Mr. Blewforth, slapping his thigh with a nautical zest.

_"Our Blewforth, careening far nearer than Cadiz Will give to green fields what was meant for the Main."_

continued Charles to the same tune.

"Give what?" asked Tom Chalkley.

"The breezy charm of his manner," replied Charles.

Now ensued jests, giggles, laughter, pranks, and struggles, as each gentleman persuaded a fair to wrestle with his riding-boots. Vernon who had forgotten to provide himself with pumps remained aloof from the merriment not sorry for an opportunity to convince Mr. Lovely of his remoteness from anything so vulgar as excitement.

Great was the mirth of everybody when the Lieutenant produced an enormous Valentine that depicted a peculiarly fat Cupid winking at a dairymaid over a brimming bowl of milk. Greater still was the mirth when he presented the token with much earnestness to the bashful lass they called Margery, and it became uproarious indeed when he explained he had wished to offer it on the preceding night, but had been deterred by Mr. Clare's reputed jealousy.

"Whoever heard tell of such a thing in the milk before?"

"Tis a Cupid, Margery," said Mr. Clare.

"There now and if I didn't go for to think it were a baby," declared Margery.

Farmer Hogbin coming back from attending to the horses in time to hear this remark called out in his great voice:

"Don't 'ee fret thyself, my lass, what thee wants'll come soon enough, I warrant. Now my gentlemen, take your partners, we was just a-going to begin a round dance. Tune up your squeaking boxes, fiddlers, and tip us _Come lasses and lads_."

The fiddlers smiled encouragement at the dancers as they struck off with the gallant old tune. Even Mr. Vernon, boots and all, was made to give an arm to buxom Mrs. Crumplehorn, the cowman's wife. The sanded floor of the barn resounded with the perpetual tripping of toes and heels.

_"Come, lasses and lads, Take leave of your dads."_

The waist of every fair was encircled by a neat arm that tapered to a fine wrist as the dancers swung down to their places. Little Peter Wingfield unable to enfold the ample Polly was given her pinner as if he were indeed the child his appearance and behaviour proclaimed him.

Every one admired the first two couples that took the middle. Mr. Lovely was so graceful and Mr. Clare was so thorough. Round they went and down they went and across and through and over and under while the rest of the dancers clapped and tapped their appreciation. Faster and faster went the fiddles, faster and faster went the shoes. Thicker and thicker rose the sand and saw-dust from the floor until the barn seemed to be the centre of a raging storm, such a wind the petticoats made and so dense became the atmosphere. Thunder was added when the gigantick farmer and the burly Lieutenant, whom merry chance had thrown into the arena together, charged through their Pas Seul, bellowing the while with Gargantuan laughter.

At last the fiddles stopped and, panting mutual congratulations, the exhausted couples subsided upon the various trusses of straw laid along the side of the barn. Even the ivory paleness of Mr. Vernon's cheeks wore a faint tinge of carmine, and some curls of his modish wig were very slightly ruffled.

Jock, Tommas, William, Jarge, Joe, Samuel, Peter, and Ern, who had gathered into a critical knot, feeling themselves eclipsed by these

## active visitors, were released from their sheepishness by a demand for

the bowls of spiced ale.

After this, they played Kiss in the Ring; and it was truly a most exhilarating sight to see Mr. Anthony Clare with flapping coat-tails in pursuit of the blooming Margery who was soon caught not very unwillingly as we may suppose. It was ludicrous in the extreme to see little Peter Wingfield darting hither and thither like a little brown rabbit. His little white wig seemed to twinkle like a tail set too high on his little brown body. But he let himself be caught by Polly beneath a lingering spray of mistletoe, and how all the world laughed when she lifted him up and gave him a resonant kiss on his little red lips. As for the large farmer and the burly Lieutenant they thundered after every maid in the barn quite regardless of any rules and, as I think, kissed the most of them very heartily indeed.

But the chief excitement of all was caused by a great white owl that came flapping down from the rafters and put out half the candles with his great sweeping wings. How all the lasses screamed and how earnestly the lads reassured them, and though the former were repeatedly told that owls while feeding on mice had not yet imbibed their habits, they persistently held their skirts a little higher than usual and nestled very close and comfortable to the exquisite young gentlemen from the _Blue Boar_.

Then, of course, they all danced _Sir Roger de Coverley_, and drank more spiced ale while they rested. Somebody called on Charles for a song and he gave them one of his own which everybody agreed was much too serious for so jolly an occasion. Charles swore he had composed the tune himself, but everybody else vowed they had heard it before, and as for the words, there was not a trace of originality about them. However, his voice was pleasant enough as he sang:

_"When in the dews of early morn My Chloe trips for may, Across the fields of springing corn I watch her pass, The fairest lass, That e'er was won with vows of love Upon a summer's day._

_"Ah! shame that I should leave thee, dear, And cross the roaring sea, That I should leave thee lonely here: Think not, sweetheart, Because we part And I to foreign lands do rove, Thou art less dear to me."_

Blewforth protested he had said good-bye with almost identical rhymes in every port of the two hemispheres, and moreover was not ashamed to confess as much. All the maids, however, grew quite tearful and vowed the evening was spoiled; indeed, they made such ado that Charles sang one of Mr. d'Urfey's ballads to cheer their spirits and succeeded in providing such a burst of laughter that the echo of it never died away during the rest of the evening.

Of course, it was decided they must dance _Sir Roger_ once more and, that duty accomplished, it was discovered that Anthony Clare and Margery had vanished. Of course everybody wondered where they could have gone, and when they returned in time to take a last sip at the spiced ale, it was noticed that Margery hung back in the shadows with a melancholy expression of countenance that made her companions nudge each other with wise looks.

Soon word came that the horses were saddled and waiting. Good-byes were murmured, and many a promise to come again was faithfully sworn and many a kiss given and taken. The ousted yokels held each a soil-stained hand for their genteel rivals to mount from. The maids stood huddled in the flickering light of the open barn-door; Farmer Hogbin bellowed a last farewell which was thunderously echoed by the Lieutenant, as with flushed faces and half-regretful memories, the horsemen cantered towards Curtain Wells under a sailing moon.

Clare rode by Charles to hear the judgment of Paris upon his tatterdemalion Venus.

"I'd liefer for her sake that you were overseas next barley-harvest," said Charles shortly.

"Plague on the man, what a cold stream it is!"

"My excellent Tony, your Blowzabella will be happier mating on a straw pallet with Hodge than living under your protection in London."

"She would see the world."

"Pshaw! her world is a garden of gillyflowers. She was never meant to be pushed out of sight for an importunate visitor."

"She would return."

"Like a spent primrose fit only for the bonfire."

"I could secure an annuity for her."

"You'll tire of her in London. Drain the claret from her cheeks, smear the downy bloom, and you'll find rank lees and rotten core. Hodge never would. No, no, the thought of so much comely maidenhood languishing for your velvet-sleeved caresses is merely droll."

Clare loved and admired Charles too much to despise his tirades however self-consciously virtuous they might appear. He felt more than ever convinced that his friend was in love, in love too with some one the very antithesis of the dairymaid. He would try one more test.

"But if I told I was in mind to wed my Venus?"

Charles jerked his reins in astonishment.

"Z----ds, Tony look round you. There are maids more fit I say. Why wed a mountain, however rich in pasture when you can wed a mountain-nymph?"

Clare decided his suspicion was confirmed. Lovely objected to milkmaids on the score of a taste sharpened to an exquisite point of refinement by an ideal passion. He was postulating mere theories of life on account of the charms of one dear She. Who was the witch? She had not withdrawn him from their late junketing whatever her spells.

"Your morality, Charles, did not prevent you from entering very heartily into the spirit of our pastoral piece."

They had fallen behind the others, and through the silent night Charles' voice caught a melody from the wakening year as he rhapsodized.

"Fore Heaven! I love the country, I love these creamy hussies. I love their swains with the sweet earth all about them. I was happy to-night! I was happy with those dear people. I could lose my tricked-out self in that twinkling barn. I bowed to merriment as a tree bows to the wind. I wanted to hear the singing hopes and joys and desires of humble people. There we were, all of us populating a frieze for some merry artist god. We were as wax moulded to some fantastick dancing shape. On these occasions, I can surmize at immortality and imagine the heart of the universe. I doubt you think I'm babbling nonsense, but I'm trying to tell you I was entirely disinterested in our merry-making of to-night."

Clare stretched out to touch the poet's arm.

"Try to think that I, chattering of Margery, am not more personal than you. 'Tis true, I piped a love-ditty, but though it may trouble the bush and brake of a small wood, it would seem thin fluting----"

"To any but her," Charles interrupted. "The thinnest tune will charm one who is nearer than you to the primitive animal too easily quelled by sweet songs. Pipe to a crowd, Tony, but musick dedicated to a solitary shepherdess at the sight of whom your mouth will be awry in a year's time is ill work for her."

"I doubt you're right," said Clare softly. "You are compassionate to poor nymphs to-night, Charles. Have you met a goddess?"

"Tony, I have."

"May you prosper!"

"Thank'ee. I'll tell you more of her when I know more myself."

They urged their horses to a trot and were silent for a while. Then Clare asked Charles what he thought of Vernon.

"Oh! a statue positively. I doubt the whole affair was to him vastly low.

"Umph! there was a permanent leer carved on his lips. I dislike the fellow."

"Nay! you're too stern in your judgments. He has promised me an evening for Hazard."

Clare smiled. It was useless to remonstrate with a man whom the thought of two dice transformed into a machine with glassy eyes and curiously sensitive fingers.

So they rode silently.

Charles could see Phyllida in the moon-enchanted clouds, sometimes with the trim waist of a dice-box.

_Chapter the Seventh_

SUNDAY MORNING

Sunday morning at Curtain Wells was eminently a day of rest. A stroke of organizing genius on the part of Beau Ripple had abolished the fatigues of early Chalybeate by transferring the corporeal obligations of fashionable humanity to an hour which would not interfere with the respect owed to the spirit.

"A glass of Chalybeate," he had remarked, "will promote the proper digestion of the homily. Moreover, the vanity of post-religious promenades will be considerably mitigated by the discipline of the Pump."

At Curtain Wells, therefore, soon arose the pleasant custom of inviting one's friends and neighbours to partake of a substantial breakfast before setting out to St. Simon's parish church. The neighbours, if gentlemen, were expected to provide a suitable escort for their lady-hosts, and there was not a dame in the town who did not make it a point of honour to be armed in at the great West door on fine mornings or handed out of her chair with cautious ceremony if the weather was unsettled.

The Widow Courteen was not the woman to neglect or despise any prescriptive right conferred upon her sex. It was not surprizing, therefore, to see Major Constantine Tarry and Mr. Gregory Moon turning solemnly into the Crescent on the first Sunday morning whose events I am privileged to chronicle. The demeanour of neither gentleman would have allowed us even a momentary hesitation as to the day. The Sabbath wrote itself in the devout wrinkles of Mr. Moon's domed forehead and expressed itself in the stiff curls of the Major's military wig. As they drew near to Mrs. Courteen's house the latter voiced a desire to see eggs and bacon upon the breakfast table, and the former encouraged his ambition by repeating a legend of a fecundity among hens unusual at this season of the year. The meditation carried the two gentlemen to Mrs. Courteen's door in silence.

"Your turn to knock, Tarry," said Mr. Moon, in a rather depressed voice, as he fumbled with the steps from which the Major assaulted the door with military abruptness.

To them after a decent interval appeared Thomas in resplendent waistcoat of Sunday and with nose polished to the limit of a nose's power of brightness.

"Is your mistress within?" inquired the Major.

"Within and awaiting you," said solemn Mr. Thomas.

"Then I think, Mr. Moon," said the Major with half a turn, "we will step inside immediately."

"I think we may venture," replied the latter.

They were ushered into the passage where Thomas received their hats and canes. Thomas had such a sober effect on his fellow men that the slightest action in which he took part was conducted with a ritual at once austere and grand. One felt that the delivery of a hat, smallsword, cane, or message possessed at least the dignity, the entire absence of all worldly considerations that belong to the Sunday alms.

"Will your mistress receive us in the front parlour or the back parlour this morning?" inquired Tarry whose legs were prepared for either emergency.

"In the front parlour," said Thomas. "Miss Thomasina was ill this morning."

"In the back parlour, I presume?" said Moon.

"Very ill with retching and divers pains," continued Thomas.

"Poor Thomasina," said the Major with an attempt at jocularity.

"A feeble animal," said the footman, "and too fond of grass; and the grass of this city is fit only for Nebuchadnezzar."

A bright fire was crackling in the grate, and on each hob a kettle of burnished copper sang with considerable sentiment.

Thomas withdrew, and the Major and Mr. Moon took up the Englishman's position on the hearthrug with coat-tails wide apart to allow the grateful warmth free access to whatever chillness of morning air still clung about their bodies. So they remained, silent, wrapped in the dignified contemplation of an inferior painting in oils on the opposite wall. No doubt in reality their thoughts were far away, possibly in the chaste seclusion of the Widow's own room or possibly in the kitchen whence from time to time ascended the pleasant jingle and chink that heralds food's approach.

No doubt they would both have stood there long enough for us to moralize on England and the greatness of England, had not Mrs. Courteen come into the room just then.

Ponto, Phyllida's black spaniel, sidled in with the breakfast and Phyllida herself followed, and the freshness of her in the morning was strewn about the room like petals of roses.

Conversation at breakfast suited itself to the solemnity of the day. The widow sighed at every remark that was made, and in the gentle pathos of her manner indicated placidly her conviction of fleeting time and sorrow, and all those melancholy reflexions which are considered proper to the Sabbath. However, at all times she was accustomed to preserve a cloistral rigour of speech before her daughter. No one loved better to gather the easier blooms on the safe side of the garden-god's perfumed hedge, but they could only be plucked in numerous corners of ballrooms and during secluded promenades. The presence of Phyllida made her mother's blood so much rennet. Conversation became mere verbal curds and whey.

However, the Justice talked into his cup of the swift approach of Spring, of the benefit of sun, the intolerable increase in vagrancy, the need for repressing poachers. If platitudes were esteemed as high as rolling hexameters, Moon would have been among the epical poets. As for Major Tarry, he thrashed each topick at if his tongue were a little rattan cane. One felt that any observation was regarded by that gallant gentleman as an awkward recruit. He had an air of drilling the conversation. After breakfast, the various members dispersed to acquire a seemly attitude towards matters of religion.

Since the search for attitudes occupies a vast deal of human energy, it may not be out of place to inform my reader where the half-dozen required for Morning Prayer at St. Simon's were found.

The Widow Courteen found hers hidden between powder puff and patch-box.

Miss Courteen found hers between the lines of a three-cornered note.

Madam Betty found hers in the coral secrets of Miss Courteen's left ear.

Mr. Thomas found his in a Bible as large and heavy as a Bible should be.

Major Tarry found his in the stem of a churchwarden pipe.

Mr. Moon found his in the best attitude that exists.

Soon Mrs. Courteen's chairmen were knocking at the door and the whole party prepared to set out. The widow seated in her chair, hummed a hymn _tempo di minuetto_. The Major marched upon her left and the Justice upon her right, and Thomas marched in front. Phyllida and Betty kept to the pavement and had scarcely time to wonder if all the world would be at church, when they arrived at the porch and found that all the world certainly was.

As the Major had handed the widow into her chair, Mr. Moon handed her out, and the party of Mrs. Courteen proceeded to Mrs. Courteen's pew, while Mrs. Courteen's chairmen carried the chair to an alley beloved of chairmen and proceeded to doze away the Sabbath morning in its damask recesses and were no doubt as comfortable as their mistress in the musty cushions of St. Simon's pews. In the Western gallery, three fiddles, two hautboys, and a bass viol squeaked and groaned with much fervour. In the pulpit the parson squeaked and groaned with equal fervour and in the desk below the clerk squeaked and groaned with most fervour of all. When the parson threatened damnation, the ladies fanned themselves rapidly and when he spoke of alms and oblations, they consoled themselves with carraway comfits.

The service was rather worldly and seemed remote enough from anything at all spiritual, but nevertheless in so far as it was indigenous to fair King Richard's land, it should exact from us as much respect as we owe to a Chippendale chair and that is or ought to be very great indeed. If so much condemnatory fervour was equivalent to breaking these butterflies of fashion upon a religious wheel, it cannot be denied that the exquisite bloom of their ruined wings was a great deal more pleasant to regard than the spattered blood and bones of earlier and more tangible martyrs to an extreme mode.

The parson continued to prophesy hell-fire. But hell-fire means so many kinds of illumination--certainly it had an invincible attraction for these gay moths and butterflies. Perhaps they thought of it merely as a huge aggregation of wax candles by which most of them had more than once been morally singed. If any permanency of emotion was desirable, it would certainty be more endurable in heat and gaiety than in chill aerial solitudes. And, thanks to chickens, there would always be painted fans. This was the sum of the congregation's united reflection during the sermon; individually, no doubt, each soul played with more

## particular premisses, but the ultimate conclusion was the same for all.

After so much damnation, the blessing was a rhetorical anti-climax. Clouds had gathered during the homily due, no doubt, to the violence of the preacher and, as the worshippers tripped out through the great West door, the clouds burst and the streaming rain inclined them more favourably than ever to the prospect of eternal warmth.

The morning's fair promise had been utterly belied, and many appealing glances were launched at Mr. Ripple as he beckoned to his chairman. Surely he would not be so barbarous as to force so much accumulated fine raiment through mud and water, to drink the latter element in a less pleasing form. But Mr. Ripple was inexorable: he stepped into his gilded chair, regardless of appeal: the chairmen tightened their muscles for the long pull uphill, and Gog and Magog, the diminutive negroes balanced one on each step, guarded their master from interruption. Now ensued shouts, whistles, cockcrows and screams. Hats were waved, canes flourished, and lily-white hands shaken. All this uproar was due to the fact that there were just half as many coaches and chairs as were required, and when these were filled, and on their way to the Pump Room, there remained in the church too many foolish virgins, too many improvident dowagers, too many thoughtless beaux.

The rain fell in torrents, and the last vehicle had turned the corner.

A desolate remnant surveyed the situation. It was wet enough.

Now arose one of those crises which are inseparable from a despotism. Somebody, for his presumption will always remain anonymous, somebody suggested that the idea of climbing the hill of health in such a downpour was unimaginable.

The stranded exquisites depended for the moment entirely on their rouge for colour.

"Rebellion," they muttered and the ominous word flapped over their heads and darkened the gloom more profoundly.

"The Beau will be furious."

"He will never forgive us."

"We shall be banished."

"Curtain Wells will no longer know us."

Again the daring voice was upraised:

"We are strong enough to defy Ripple. He has no right to make us wade through mud for a whim of his own. If we do so, we'll do so in shifts and shirts." The unknown voice gathered force with each new proposition, and the startled exquisites huddled closer in a very ecstasy of perturbation.

"Shall damask flowers lose their beauty, shall silver lace be tarnished and broideries lack lustre because Ripple has commanded the impossible? Silk is the fashion, ay! and watered silk, but not sodden silk. Well was it named the Pump Room, for such shall we become, mere pumps exuding moisture at the propulsion of a tyrant!"

The apparent carelessness of the unknown tyrannicide had its effect; a suspicion began to creep in that Mr. Ripple's domination was based on insecurity. The thin end of this destructive wedge was enough to break open the fortress of their duty and, the rain stopping for a moment, the stranded exquisites hurried home to discuss the probable result of their revolt over hot rum and lemon. Up at the Pump Room Mr. Ripple missed many a well-known face that Sunday, and his urbane countenance lost some of its smoothness as the minutes rolled by without the arrival of a single person on foot.

At the expiration of the quarter of an hour, he despatched Gog to see what had happened and when Gog came back with the news that the stranded exquisites had one and all departed to their own lodgings, Mr. Ripple ascended his marble pedestal with an air of determination.

"My lords, ladies and gentlemen," he began, and just then Magog hurried up with the Beau's glass of chalybeate. The latter looked at it for a moment. Pity and anger fought visibly for the mastery. Anger won, and the remorseless Beau dashed the glass into a thousand sparkling fragments.

"The Pump Room will be closed until--until this--," he faltered over the description of such ingratitude, "until the extraordinary behaviour of certain visitors has been justified, if it can be justified. There will be no Assembly to-morrow night."

The company shivered unanimously and the Beau, dismissing his chairmen, walked forth into the rain with all the dignity in the world. It is said he ruined three suits of unparagoned cut that fatal day by walking about the principal thoroughfares of Curtain Wells for the remainder of a very wet afternoon.

_Chapter the Eighth_

THE GREAT REBELLION

Not unnaturally, the only topick of that memorable Sunday was the rebellion. The excitement it raised far exceeded anything of the sort not excepting the Jacobite rising, and the oldest inhabitant of the Wells positively asserted that the landing of the Duke of Monmouth was altogether inferior in the quality of emotional interest.

Sirloins of beef were allowed to freeze into glaciers of fat, horse radish lost its sting, and the most frothy ale was flat in the presence of such an absorbing topick of conversation. When at last everybody, momentarily exhausted, sought recuperation in the Sunday dinner, everybody ate so fast to be the sooner at the coffee-house or the Town Hall or the Assembly Rooms or some such equally renowned haunt of gossip that everybody had a remarkably bad attack of indigestion.

From every doorway the crowds hurried forth after dinner, scorning the sacred forty winks. But coffee-house, Town Hall, and Assembly Rooms were closed, bolted, barred and shuttered, and for a sign over each was a scroll of parchment on which was inscribed in the finest gold leaf:

_Closed till further notice. By order. Horace Ripple._

Disconsolately the ladies trooped home again to discuss developments over a dish of Bohea; eagerly the gentlemen trotted to the _Blue Boar_ only to be told that nobody save lodgers could be admitted.

Most of them admired the decision of the Great little Man, but the rebels who, having once started, felt bound to hold out if only against the censure of the faithful, laughed very loudly and boldly and said it was all very well to close the places of publick entertainment on Sunday, that was only a loss of two hours custom to the proprietors, but on the next day, a very different tale would be told. So they prophesied as they tripped home to their pipes and hot rum, with a twirl of their elegant canes, a shake of their exquisite heads, and a _Whack row-de-dow_ from their irreverent lips.

The faithful who had seen the Beau in the first flood of his wrath were not so sanguine. They knew that like the late King of France he could say _L'etat, c'est moi_, and what shopkeeper, innkeeper, or porter, would be brave enough to defy him?

The sun set on a gloomy town and everybody went to bed at half-past eight o'clock having nothing better to do.

Mr. Ripple had earlier in the afternoon assured himself of Mr. Lovely's fidelity, and in the company of the young gentlemen of the _Blue Boar_, passed a very pleasant evening over some capital Burgundy opened at his expense. He sent down messages to my Lord Cinderton and my Lord Vanity begging the favour of their company, and both my lords hurried back as fast as their dignified legs would carry them. Of course, they quite agreed with Mr. Ripple that the outbreak was scandalous and were determined to support his decrees against the whole of society provided they were not included in the excommunication. The news of Sir Jeremy Dummer's sudden decease was brought in, and Mr. Ripple, deeply moved by the melancholy event, ascribed it to the horror with which the old baronet was overwhelmed at the defiance of himself. It was soon announced in every drawing-room that Sir Jeremy Dummer had died of an apoplexy brought on by the sight of the rebel abstainers from morning Chalybeate.

It was arranged, almost in silence, that everybody faithful to the great Beau, should repair to the Pump Room on the following morning, dressed in funereal black, a quarter of an hour earlier than usual. They might not be admitted, but their devotion would carry its own reward, and would certainly afford the Beau confidence in the loyalty of the most of his subjects. It was farther arranged that a deputation of the leading visitors and residents should wait upon him at his lodgings with an address black-edged, assuring him of their sorrow and fidelity. As for the rebels, they must make what terms they could.

At eleven o'clock of Monday forenoon the deputation waited upon the Beau and was ushered over the Turkey carpet into his urbane presence. Apparently he was quite untouched by the almost servile assurance of loyalty contained in the address. He begged leave to inform the company that, while sensible of their compliment, he could not permit any publick amusement until the ringleaders of the revolt had, hat in hand, implored his forgiveness. He added he had reluctantly despatched mounted messengers to Leamington, Cheltenham, Bristol Well, Brighthelmstone, Harrowgate, Scarborough, Tunbridge and the Bath, begging his brethren to refuse admittance to any new arrivals until farther warning. He was confident that his appeal would not be disregarded. The abashed deputation withdrew, having effected nothing. Monday passed gloomily enough. There were no chairmen, there were no chairs, there were no coaches, there was no Assembly. The shops were all closed: the Pump Room was closed: coffee-houses, chocolate-houses and taverns were all closed.

The rebels were now merged almost imperceptibly into loyalists but a few still held out, and two of the more callous--I will not affront the living world with their names--went so far as to send out invitations to a party of Quadrille. Six equally hardened rebels arrived at the time appointed. Two tables were formed, the candles were lighted, the guineas stood piled in glittering dozens, the cards were dealt, when suddenly the door was flung open and Mr. Ripple in black sattin, armed with a spade, marched into the room.

"I think, ladies and gentlemen, that I am Spadille this evening," he proclaimed in a voice of ice.

The eight rebels dropped their cards. It was impossible to play with any calmness in the presence of that menacing figure whose contempt was so sublime. The ladies fluttered from the room in dismay.

"Gentlemen," said the Beau, "you will call at my house to-morrow with the humblest apologies for this evening's outrage."

Then he vanished from the room. It only remains to add that the gentlemen did call at the Great House on the following morning where their humiliation was complete if we may judge by an alabaster tablet set up in the portico of the Assembly Rooms where it remained until the other day, when, alas! the famous old rooms, so long the most frequented shrine of wit and beauty in England, were pulled down to make way for a publick library.

The tablet which was in the likeness of the Ace of Spades bore the following inscription:

Sacred to the Memory of Justice, Decency, and Order, This Tablet was erected by four Gentlemen In Token of their sincere Penitence and resolute Amendment. Also in the profoundest Admiration and deepest Respect for Beau Ripple, King of Curtain Wells, for many years Arbiter of Fashion and Oracle of Wit. The Great and Only Spadille.

_Chapter the Ninth_

THE ASSEMBLY

The submission of the recalcitrants secured once more to Curtain Wells her publick amusements, and the Monday Assembly was announced for Wednesday evening. Everybody determined that it should make up in brilliance what it lacked in punctuality, and all private conversaziones, routs, and Quadrille parties were, by general consent, postponed.

We have temporarily got out of touch with the lesser intrigues of this history, but truly all such were eclipsed by the great Rebellion whose echoes drowned the whispered vows of lovers and the murmur of scandalous small talk. The prospect of peace set everybody at amusement, with vigour refreshed by the momentary lull in the gay tempest of their lives.

An additional excitement surrounded this Assembly because it was everywhere reported that the young gentlemen of the _Blue Boar_ would be present in force. This rumour was, indeed, likely to prove true, for the young gentlemen, already determined to discover Mr. Lovely's charmer, were confirmed in their resolve by a desire to reciprocate the Beau's lately implied confidence in a way more likely to gratify him than any other.

The prospect of dancing with young Tom Chalkley of the Foot, Tony Clare, and Peter Wingfield, or Lieutenant Blewforth of the _Lively_ fluttered all the young ladies' hearts and very many of the old ones'. Moreover, there were the Honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe and Mr. Golightly, and above all, there was Mr. Charles Lovely who, if he were a poet, was also a man of the extremest fashion and finest taste, and so at once genteel and romantick. Altogether the postponed Assembly promised to be a great success.

Miss Phyllida Courteen hoped that her dear Amor would make an exception for once, but Mr. Vernon declared he would by no means commit himself to such publick adoration of his fair; so she was forced to content herself with the prospect of teasing Miss Sukey Morton about the anonymous Valentine. She knew that her dear Morton would suspect Mr. Chalkley who, with the politeness for which the British Army has always been famous, had once recovered her dropped fan. This somewhat ordinary event had led Miss Morton to colour the whole world to the hue of a red coat. All the dearest confidences exchanged with her beloved Courteen referred to young Mr. Chalkley who was quite unconscious of the amount of room he occupied in Miss Morton's heart, and was used to regard women as musquets for the presenting of arms, but nothing more.

The whole of Wednesday had been spent by the ladies of the Wells in refreshing their bodies with sleep and rouge alternately, and the sickle moon in the frore February sky looked pale and ghostly beside the sleek tapers that twinkled in every window pane and the ruddy flambeaux of the lackeys as they stamped up and down in waiting to escort their mistresses to the ball.

Phyllida was not long in putting on her white muslin nightgown with flowered sack; and as her curls had neither to be subdued by Powder and Pomatum, nor frizzled to a mock vivacity by restorative Tongs, she sat in the bow-window of her bedchamber and stared at the young moon. The curtains were drawn back, but, even so, she could still see innumerable shepherds arming as many shepherdesses through the pattern and, as the fire-light flickered over them, they seemed, indeed, to be stepping a forgotten dance.

"I should like to live in a curtain," thought Phyllida, "and be always young and always happy and always hand in hand with--but after all nothing could be less like a shepherd than Amor," and just then the little flame that had been urging all the figures into motion turned to a noisy puff of smoke; the picture faded from her mind and the voice of her mother destroyed the last gossamer fancy that floated through her brain.

The widow's room was billowy with rejected petticoats on which, like sea-wrack, floated garters, stockings, and gloves; while a large constellation of paste gleamed fitfully through the mirk of a Paris net. In the midst of the delicate havock sat the widow uncertain as ever what colour and stuff would most become the evening.

"The Major spoils my rose lustring and my orange sack makes the Justice look----"

"Like suet," said Betty.

The widow was about to reprimand her for the simile, but as it perfectly expressed what the Justice would look like, she refrained.

"Sure, madam," said Phyllida, who was impatient to set out, "you had best wear your blue brocade."

"The child is right," said the widow emphatically. "Betty! my blue brocade."

Betty did not protest she had already tried on the blue brocade four times because, if she had, the widow would instantly have thought that green would be better, and the argument would have begun all over again.

At last the widow was dressed; the coach was at the door; and in a very short time made one of a long row of equally cumbersome vehicles that extended far down the High Street. Mrs. Courteen peering from the window announced she had caught a glimpse of Lady Bunbutter stepping out of her coach in blue brocade. This dreadful anticipation of her own entrance was extremely disconcerting, and if there had been the slightest prospect of turning round in the crush of coaches, chairs, footmen, linkboys and gaping cits, she would have instantly driven home to exchange blue for any other colour in her trunk-mail or closet. However, as she could not change her attire, she did the next best thing possible, by blaming Phyllida for her suggestion. As this was the prologue to every assembly, the latter was not much troubled by her mother's annoyance and soon the coach arrived at the very steps leading up to the Rooms. At the moment it drew up, Major Tarry and Mr. Moon stepped forward and flung open the door and handed the widow out and armed her up the steps and gave her name to Mr. Ripple's confidential Secretary who passed it on to another equally confidential footman who bawled it out at the top of his voice just as Mrs. Courteen sailed into the ballroom where Mr. Ripple, with the rosy bloom of triumph on his cheeks, advanced to offer two fingers vailed in gloves of diaphanous chicken-skin.

Curtseys, bows, and compliments lasted until the arrival of the next guest, when the widow with her faithful Ancients surveyed the room in a grand promenade. Phyllida made off to greet her dear Morton with half a glance in the direction of the young gentlemen from the _Blue Boar_, who were grouped rather stiffly at the other end of the ballroom.

The babble of conversation and the swish of fans, the colour all compact of movement, the innumerable tapers, the glitter of many brooches, pins, and buckles, the mirrours, the preliminary notes of the musicians, the shuffling feet, and the tap of the opened snuff-boxes combined in that glorious whole--a ball at the Assembly Rooms, Curtain Wells.

Soon the Minuets would begin, and after the Minuets, the Gavottes, and so on to the Country Dances and the last great Cotillon. The passionate history of the world is writ in crowquill letters on the programs of dances. What Jealousies and yellow-winged Envies hovered on the cool air of waving fans, what vows would be made and broken in those alcoves, now serene and empty, before the last flambeau expired in the gutter outside. What mean Ambitions coiled around every genteel fine hoop!

Yet Mr. Ripple was so suave, Mrs. Courteen and my Lady Bunbutter so full of compliments, Lieutenant Blewforth so jolly and Mr. Lovely so witty, old Lord Vanity so generous of snuff, my Lord Cinderton so distinguished--and as for Miss Phyllida Courteen, she was enchanted to a magical domain where only very slowly did Mr. Francis Vernon blacken a trinket sun with the menace of real passion.

Suddenly her heart began to beat so fast that she feared all her friends would observe her agitation. Surely that young gentleman in primrose sattin and flesh-coloured brocaded waistcoat, who took the polished floor so easily, was the poet of Valentine Day to whom she had confided her note. Surely too, for all he stared at everybody else from time to time, his eyes were really fixed on hers. Perhaps he was a friend of Amor's with a message to deliver--and yet it would be more interesting, she decided, if he were not. Presently Mr. Lovely was bowing over her chair and asking in the politest manner possible for the honour of the next two dances.

She looked round at Miss Morton as if to say she could not leave her without a partner.

"Madam," said Mr. Lovely bowing very low indeed, "if I might be so presumptuous, does the young lady wish for a Vis a Vis, for in that case I shall certainly present my friend Mr. Chalkley of the Foot."

Miss Morton, amid a deal of simpering, confessed she favoured a minuet on occasions, so Mr. Lovely hurried off to fetch Mr. Chalkley before the musicians began to play the opening bars of the dance.

Phyllida was astonished at the coincidence and not sure whether, after all, Mr. Chalkley had not employed Mr. Lovely's offices on his behalf. However, as she had little enough envy in her and was romantically attached to Mr. Amor, she could scarcely refuse to help her dear Morton into the arms of an expectant lover, and if Mr. Lovely had no real inclination to dance with her, that was no great matter, since he was a vastly agreeable young gentleman and would pass the time very pleasantly in the absence of another.

Mr. Chalkley, when summoned by Charles, was extremely indignant and swore he was not come to dance with any jade in the room.

"Pshaw," replied his friend, "you can't stand there gaping all the evening."

"Why don't you make Blewforth dance with the hussy?"

"Odds my life, Tom, why won't you tread a minuet with a handsome young woman?"

"You're too devilish fond of arranging matters for other people to suit your own whims. I'll be hanged if I dance a step to-night!" But all the other young gentlemen vowed so earnestly that Mr. Chalkley was a surly fellow, that he gave way at last and suffered himself to be dragged to the feet of attractive Miss Sukey Morton, whose black eyes flashed very brightly at the sight of Mr. Chalkley's red coat.

Charles, having disposed her friend, offered his hand to Phyllida and soon they were stepping the minuet with infinite grace, admired by every one who saw them.

For her the room sank into unreality and she lived in a rainbow whose colours moved and changed to the slow dignity of far-heard Pizzicato.

The melody to which these marionettes were dancing possessed a strange quality. It was emotion in quintessence, without passion, without abandon. Whatever it had of definite character lay in the half bashful invitation to dance, as if some ghostly puppet master, pale and stately, were beckoning to his performers. As the opening bars of the minuet were repeated at the close only to die away in a poignant farewell, Phyllida felt for the first time, in the swoon of her last courtesy, that she was a doll whose gestures served to amuse a genteel but unearthly audience of monocled Gods.

Actually it was a mere momentary dizziness, a sudden loss of volition on which Charles hung a score of fancies.

"You are feeling faint?" he inquired.

"No, no."

"The heat is overpowering. Shall we sit for a while in an alcove, or shall we saunter in Curtain Garden?" They passed through the crowded room and down a cool passage into a Baroc cloister where stone Satyrs took the place of Angels, and the Cherubim were not easily to be distinguished from Loves.

The young moon was setting behind Curtain Hill larger and more golden than before.

The cloister was hung with amber lights and held innumerable whispers. Somewhere close at hand was a sound of running water.

"You are fond of dancing, madam?"

"Oh, sir, 'tis a very delicate motion truly."

"I fear you thought I was presumptuous in offering my hand for the minuet."

"No, indeed, sir," Phyllida answered quite naturally.

Lovely was rather surprized. He had expected the customary play of a fan.

"You are making a long stay here?" he asked.

"Oh, sir, I do not know, 'tis for so long as my mamma thinks proper."

"I have not had the honour of an introduction."

"No," said Phyllida doubtfully. She was not at all anxious to present Mr. Lovely, and willing enough to take advantage of the Assembly rule that the offer and acceptance of a dance was not necessarily a passport to intimacy on the next day. She did not wish to be treated like a child before the gallant Mr. Lovely who treated her with such deference.

"Did you hear anything more of the Valentine?" said Phyllida with a ripple of laughter.

"Not a word."

"You remember the young woman by whom I was seated?"

"Perfectly."

"'Twas for her," said Phyllida with more laughter.

"Nonsense."

"Oh, yes! indeed, 'tis true, and the best of it is she thinks the Valentine was sent by Mr. Chalkley."

"Never!"

"Oh! yes, yes, yes."

"But he has never set eyes on her."

"No! But she thinks he has--often, just because he picked up her fan once."

"Truly then I did a very politick action in effecting the introduction."

"Oh, sir, she was ravished, you may be sure."

"Gad! I'll send her a Valentine every day of the week, and put one in her Prayer Book on Sundays."

"Oh, sir! but sure, it might end in a wedding, and that's a very serious matter as all the world knows."

"Not more serious than love," said Charles.

"Well, no, perhaps not more than love; but then neither of 'em is in love with t'other."

"I swear they shall be."

"You can't force people to fall in love."

"Can't you?" said Charles very earnestly, so earnestly that Phyllida thought the air was turning chill and that they ought to go back to the ballroom.

"Not yet," pleaded Mr. Lovely. "I thought we might walk towards the Maze."

"The Maze?" said she quickly.

"Why, yes! the entrance is but a few yards from where we are."

"I had forgot," she answered, and then with a sudden determination, "I think we had better go back."

"You're not frightened of the Maze?"

"Oh, no, truly I'm not," Phyllida affirmed. "But I think I heard my mamma's voice and if she sees me here, I shall not be allowed to come to the next Assembly."

Phyllida was feeling a vague emotion of infidelity to her dear Amor and almost dreaded to see his tall shadow in the amber light.

"As you will," he said in some disappointment, "but we han't had a deal of conversation yet."

"That's true," she replied, "but this is only our second meeting. Oh! Gemini!" she went on, "you'll think me forward and bold, but I vow I never meant it in that way."

"Madam," said Charles with a bow, "I should never presume to put upon it an interpretation so complimentary to myself, but, seriously, you will give me two more dances to-night?"

"It would be indiscreet."

"Nay, I do not think so."

"Your friends would laugh."

"I do not _think_ so."

Mr. Lovely looked so fierce that Phyllida hurriedly promised two gavottes, and Charles who was something of a Gascon could not help congratulating himself on his speedy success.

They walked back to the ballroom almost in silence, and above the chatter of folk in the lobby, heard the opening of a plaintive minuet.

Lovely, when he had left his partner, walked over to his friends of the _Blue Boar_ and was greeted with a shower of sallies.

"How now, Charles, have you been smuggling rare spirits in the cloister?" cried Blewforth.

"Snuggling would be b-b-better!" stammered little Peter Wingfield.

Charles glared at both the young gentlemen, who laughed very heartily indeed, and were not at all put about by his frowns.

"Oddslife, Charles," said Mr. Chalkley, "where have been your eyes these past six weeks to have so lately discovered the fair Courteen?"

"Charles looks at women through dice-boxes," said Blewforth.

"And what's worse, sees double wherever he looks," added Mr. Chalkley.

"Charles," added Mr. Antony Clare, "be wise. Some knave of Clubs will trump your Queen."

"Mr. Clare," said Charles drawing himself up very straight and looking as grand as possible, "I'll trouble you to croak when I ask for your noise; as for you, gentlemen, you're too free with your words, be d--d to the lot of you."

Thereupon Mr. Charles Lovely swung himself out of the room with such an air that the young gentlemen looked after him in some apprehension.

"Egad!" commented Chalkley, "the man must be madly in love for he's lost his wit."

"And his humour too," said Blewforth.

"Don't rally him too hard, boys," said Tony.

"We can't all turn parsons because Charles is bewitched by two blue eyes," grumbled Chalkley.

This was the opinion of the company, and though in their hearts they excused Mr. Lovely, they were loud in their condemnation of his churlish behaviour.

Clare, afraid he was gone to work off his injured feelings by reckless play, soon followed him out of the ballroom, but could not find him at the tables.

Charles had, in fact, turned into the garden. Cupid had pierced him with a long sharp arrow, and he was not yet able to bear a rough hand on the wound. The night air came over him fresh and cool. In the darkness he was more than ever enthralled by the image and pale fancies of an ideal passion. Yet for all he was a poet, or perhaps just because he was a poet, his love was tinted with the hues of convention. She was like those Madonnas who appear to peasant children, Madonnas in crude croelean robes sown with tinsel stars. One feels that much of the apparition is due to preconceived opinion. So with Charles, his love made one of a list of women dating to the Queens of Babylon. There was too much bob-a-cherry about her and too much cream. She stood, too, on such a high pedestal that if she owned feet of cracked clay not a soul could have seen them.

Charles felt very angry with his bachelor friends, and when Clare joined him at the end of an alley was in no mood to be pleasant company.

"Sure, Charles," the latter remonstrated, "you're the last man to tie yourself to the skirts of a goddess."

"There's a medium between an angel and a woman of the town," said Charles sententiously.

"But the woman was once an angel to somebody, and 'foregad! I believe you do your charmer an injury to make her such a paragon of air. I swear those eyes can flash with more than saintly ecstasy."

"Z----ds! Tony, you are bent on a quarrel. I tell you the child's name shall not be a toast for my profligate friends."

"You are not better than any of them."

"But at least I can reverence purity."

"Aye, and so can Blewforth."

"D---- e!" swore Charles, "'tis a pity he don't exercise his talent more openly."

The argument would doubtless have continued, if the sound of voices approaching had not made the two young men pause involuntarily. Two people were passing down the adjoining alley, and it was impossible not to overhear some of the conversation, which was sufficiently ridiculous. A feminine voice declared that soldiers were romantick, and a voice of opposite sex replied that as an attribute of class, it was an undeniable quality, but not for that reason universally applicable to individual members of that class.

"But a scarlet coat is so dazzling," argued Treble.

"Madam," said Bass, "I cannot claim that my profession is romantick. The Law, Madam, has no time for romance except perhaps in the examination of an unwilling witness, but what my profession lacks, my name possesses. Moon, madam, I venture to affirm, is a singularly romantick name."

"It is," murmured the widow, for, of course, it was she.

"The moon is the method of illumination adopted by every poet of distinction."

"How true that is," she sighed.

"I might add that so far as dazzling goes my name is as capable of extreme refraction as the red coat of a soldier. Moreover, madam, the latter is very antipathetick to the complexion of a woman of quality."

"But the coat need not be worn, Mr. Moon. It could exist in a bottom drawer, I should feel it was there, and I could sometimes brush it even."

"Good heavens! ma'am, has not the Law an equal fascination? Do you know that my house is full of legal cases?"

"How untidy!" said the widow reprovingly.

"Arguments _Pro_ and _Contra_, trials!"

"But I dislike arguments, they put my hair out of curl and we have so many trials to bear already."

"They need never be used, but they can exist, madam, they can exist in calf on a bottom shelf, and they could be dusted sometimes," declared the Justice. Then in softer accents he began to plead:

"Think, my dear Mrs. Courteen, of Mrs. Moon. Mrs. Moon! I often murmur that short sentence over to myself."

"Do you, Mr. Moon? When?" said the widow, who seemed touched by his devotion.

"Oh! after dinner--or getting into bed, or--" but the third occasion was never revealed, for Major Tarry charged round the corner and carried off the dear questioner to adorn a gavotte.

Somehow the hedges no longer seemed so mysterious and the night not quite so large.

"Gad! what follies!" laughed Charles.

"D'ye know who the lady was?" inquired the other.

"Venus grown fat by the sound of her voice."

"That was Mrs. Courteen."

"Eh?"

"Your charmer's mother."

"Then she must have had a very delightful father."

"That's neither here nor there," said Clare. "Your angel's wings may moult, and she who now goes tiptoe for very lightness will one day--but, pshaw! if you love her, she will always skim the ground."

"Tony!" said Charles, "I've made a fool of myself."

"In the best way of folly."

It may seem odd that Charles should have been so ready to admit the mortality of his goddess, but after all as yet his love was an apparition. No miracles had been worked at the shrine, and she had a mother.

Also Charles began to smell romance, of which he pretended to an exaggerated horror. Like mother, like daughter. He made up his mind to neglect Miss Phyllida Courteen, and having done so, went back to the ballroom with the temerity of a successful anchorite. Yet when he saw her again she was young and adorable, and he was as madly in love with her as ever; all the more perhaps because he realized that one day she would fade. However, he was no longer so full of heroick rebukes for his friends. Perhaps, like the Greeks, he was beginning to understand that romantick Troy was a menace to the common sense of the world.

Charles found the young men in precisely the same position as that in which he left them.

"Oddslife," cried Blewforth, "there's Charles come back. What, man! have you been languishing under the sky? Your mistress has been dancing merrily with Ripple himself, while you were star-gazing."

"'Tis a pity that none of you have enough impudence to follow his example," retorted Charles, "for on my soul you all stand stiff and awkward as the figures on a Gothick tombstone. Gad! I've a mind to tell the ladies how nimbly you tripped it at Baverstock, Blewforth, and as for you, Tom, I'm hanged if I'd be cut out by a beggarly half-pay militia captain," continued Charles pointing to the disreputable Captain Mann who was handing Miss Morton through the gavotte.

"Well said!" Clare joined in, "we shall find it more difficult than ever to believe Blewforth's tales of conquest in the ports of civilization."

"Unless," added Charles, "like a picture by a great master he possesses an immovable reputation and attracts by beauty in repose."

"Ha--ha--ha," bellowed the Lieutenant, "you should have seen me at Minorca. These finicking hussies aren't worth the shoe leather one uses in dragging them round the room." But just as Mr. Blewforth was about to give a discourse on the beauty, grace, and agility of feminine Spain, Mr. Ripple scaled the rigid group:

"Now, gentlemen, you are not dancing. Come, come this won't do. I've let you off the Minuets and Gavottes, but I insist on the Country Dances. Let me see, Lieutenant Blewforth, I have the very Vis a Vis you are looking for--Mrs. Georgina Bean, widow of the late Captain Bean, of your own Service. She will like to hear the latest Marine Information."

Blewforth struck his colours with an almost humble salute.

"Mr. Chalkley," the Beau continued, "Miss Margery Mansel a young lady fresh from boarding-school, will certainly suit your accomplishments. Treat her kindly, sir. Mr. Golightly, I insist on your dancing with Lady Jane Vane--your father and hers were intimate friends. Mr. Harthe-Brusshe, your respected father tells me that he has a particular desire you should dance with Miss Mimsy; she's an heiress, sir, and as good as she is wealthy. Come, come, gentlemen, make no doubt that I shall find a partner for every one of you."

The young gentlemen, a little stiffer, a little more awkward, followed Mr. Ripple very mildly across the room. The rest of the Assembly fluttered quite perceptibly at their approach.

Lovely had no opportunity of asking Phyllida to dance with him as by the time he had crossed the room, she was standing opposite Mr. Moon. So he hurried up to Miss Sukey Morton who flashed her black eyes and took his arm with all the grace in the world and discussed the attraction of the British Army with much fan-play and volubility. He met Phyllida in the course of the dance and begged her hand for the Cotillon, but she shook her head gravely with a glance in the direction of old General Morton, and Charles passed on to less interesting encounters much exasperated by the impertinence of old age.

"Why aren't you a soldier, Mr. Lovely?" asked Miss Morton in a wondering voice.

"I like to pull the sheets over my head when I sleep," said Charles very solemnly, "but soldiers always have to put them on top of a pole."

"Oh! but think of war and fortresses and sieges and bivouacks."

"I dislike war, I object to fortresses. For sieges I lack the patience and I abominate bivouacks."

"But the uniform is so gay," persisted Miss Morton, "and so martial."

"A footman's, ma'am, is twice as gay and three times as martial."

"Nay, I vow you're jealous of the Army."

"Madam, is that surprizing, when Miss Morton inclines so much to scarlet?"

"Nay, now you are laughing at me,", she pouted, "and I hate to be laughed at. Are you a friend of Mr. Chalkley?"

"Indeed, I hope I may describe myself as such," said Charles.

"Does he paint landskips as an Amateur?" inquired cunning Miss Sukey Morton.

"Not that I am aware of."

The disappointment visible on her countenance recalled the incident of the Valentine, and he made haste to add:

"Though now I come to think of it, I found him cutting out an ace of hearts one day last week."

"An ace of hearts?" said Miss Morton very innocently, "why what would he do that for?"

"I asked him as much, and he muttered something about a torn velvet patch. But his behaviour that day was monstrous odd altogether, for I remember I found him later on the bowling green of the _Blue Boar_ picking snowdrops, and when I rallied him, he asked me for a rhyme to 'white.'"

Miss Morton danced for the rest of the evening as though her scarlet heels were little flames.

The hands of the clock were nearing the magick hour of the last Cotillon, and everybody was hurrying in search of partners and places; when the appearance of Gog and Magog, with Mr. Ripple's marble pedestal, warned everybody that the Great little Man was about to make an announcement. Everybody waited with extreme deference and not a whisper disturbed the religious peace. The room was quite still save for the tinkle of jewellery and the slow sighing of the fans.

The Beau ascended his pedestal, calm and majestick while the listeners craned their necks to attention.

"My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. You are doubtless all aware that we have to lament the sudden death of that respected model of fortitude and perseverance, Sir Jeremy Dummer."

A sympathetick murmur floated along the wind of the fans.

"I am happy to tell you that he died as he lived, fighting. He died, if I may use so vulgar a metaphor, in harness--the harness of an old war-horse who, having fought the foes of England during his prime, continued to fight the greatest foe of England during his decay. That energy which erstwhile displayed itself in the trenches of War enabled him for twenty-one years to persecute by every means in his power that enemy of all of us--the Gout.

"He sought to starve it into capitulation by restricted diet, he tried to storm it by sudden charges of chalybeate. My lords, ladies and gentlemen, it was in the middle of one of these gallant sallies that he died. In a word, he was half-way through a glass of the cleansing liquid when death overtook him. There it stood, that partially empty glass beside the dead form of the veteran. May we not regard this relick as the tears of AEsculapius? Shall we not enshrine these sparkling drops in a lachrymatory and, having sealed the sacred fluid with the city seal, shall we not set it in a prominent part of our civick museum? My lords, ladies and gentlemen, we shall. I have consulted with my brother the Mayor of this town, and he has agreed.

"Moreover, let me remind you of the last words of the great Socrates, his last injunction to his friend to sacrifice a cock to AEsculapius. Let us also, in memory of our deceased exemplar, present a new tap to our publick fountain and so sacrifice, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, not a cock, but a turncock to AEsculapius."

The Great little Man here paused to wipe away the tears of sorrow and the heat of the atmosphere. "It seems," he continued, "out of place to make any announcement of a new diversion, but pleasure is as inexorable as death."

Here the audience seemed to murmur a mournful assent.

"Next Tuesday at 7 o'clock precisely will be held the Chinese Masquerade. This, as you are aware, limits our costumes to those authorized by gold-lackered cabinets and teacups of blue china. I myself shall act as Gold Mandarin and my young friend Mr. Charles Lovely will be the Blue Mandarin. There will be a grand minuet of Cathay, but I will not detain you now with farther particulars of this entertainment. I hope that we shall hold masquerades of assorted characters until May, when we shall make an attempt to start the Fetes Champetres which were so successful last year.

"Finally, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, you are aware that an incident of an unpleasantly obtrusive habit deterred us from Terpsichore on Monday night. I am, indeed, happy to say that the curtain has fallen upon the whole affair without a dissentient voice. I should have been inexpressibly grieved if the gloom consequent upon the defiance of my authority, had been at all lasting. May I add that the rebels--if I may call them so without offence--have acted in the handsomest manner and have offered to set up in the portico of these rooms a tablet commemorating the temporary cloud upon your delight. I should be more than mortal if I were not proud of such a token of confidence in my despotism.

"My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am your very grateful, humble, and obliged servant to command."

The Beau's descent from his pedestal was the signal for much waving of lace handkerchiefs and fans. There were cries of 'Bravo, Beau,' 'Viva, Ripple!'

Finally when old Lord Vanity stepped up to the dignified lord of ceremonies and solemnly offered him his noted jade snuffbox full to overflowing of the richest brown Rappee, and when the Beau, having dropped his jewelled fingers into the modish soil, drew them forth and raised them to his aquiline nose, a stillness fell upon the room, and above the silence the sniffs of the great Beau, three in number, were distinctly heard by all. It was as if he wished them Good Health. But this was not enough for the Exquisite Mob. Somebody--it may have been our hero--ran post haste for a bottle of champagne, and somebody else rushed off for goblets. Presently, the prettiest Impromptu in the world was enacted, and very proud indeed were the spectators of a scene memorable for many years in the chronicles of fashion.

Delicately veined hands untwisted the silver wire and tore off the gold cap. Somebody fetched a corkscrew, somebody clenched the sombre green bottle between his brocaded knees. An arm tapering to snowy peaks pulled at the unwilling cork. A fairy explosion was followed by the dewy vapours of long imprisoned sunshine. The amber liquid sparkled and bubbled and flowed over the many faceted goblet in cream and foam.

The Beau mounted once more upon his pedestal and drank to the pleasure, health, and beauty of the company, while Lord Vanity and my Lady Bunbutter quaffed an answering toast in deputy for the lords, ladies and gentlemen present. Salvoes of well-bred applause pattered round the room, and the Beau's triumph was hailed with acclamations.

And you, beautiful women and fine gentlemen, roses and carnations of an older century, nothing remains of you for us. Your very perfume is but a name. You are no more to the world of to-day than those glossy candles that spluttered to death in gilt sockets. And yet, from the ruin of elegance, one relick of that famous evening remains; for the silver wire of the bottle of champagne, flung heedless to the ground, caught in a flounce of some Beauty's petticoat. Long ago the gossamer stuff mouldered, long ago was Beauty herself a skeleton, but the wire cherished by Beauty's family may still be seen in a glass-topped table in the corner of a quiet library somewhere in the broad Midlands. O insignificant wire, you are more durable than the flowers who despised you!

And now another famous ball waned to a close, and all the world of taste and fashion went home to bed.

_Chapter the Tenth_

AFTER THE ASSEMBLY

Mr. Charles Lovely walked back with Mr. Antony Clare to the _Blue Boar_, and joined Mr. Francis Vernon in the Coffee Room.

The latter noticed that Clare frowned slightly when he saw him, and explained, almost apologetically, that he had moved thither from his lodgings in the Crescent. Charles was delighted and immediately proposed a game of hazard.

"You'll play, Tony?" he said eagerly.

"Not I," his friend answered. "I'm too sleepy, for 'tis confoundedly fatiguing to be on such polite behaviour for so long."

"That's true indeed," cried Charles, "and therefore we need recreation the more." With this he gave a tug at the bell-pull of flowery chintz, and presently Mr. Daish who had sent the waiters to bed, came yawning to answer the summons.

"Daish, bring two bottles of Burgundy like the fine fellow and good landlord that you are."

"Yes, Mr. Lovely, certainly, your honour, but I hope your honour will be careful with the bottles; it would be a terrible thing for the house if the watch was murdered as they nearly was twice over last week," said Mr. Daish, crumpling into obsequiousness at the impudence of his request, and retreating sidelong from the room.

Mr. Clare, seeing that it was useless to argue Charles out of his determination, took a seat by the fire.

"Egad," said Lovely, "what a jealous dog it is, he won't play, but can't bear to go to bed." Clare gave the fire a meditative poke.

"What shall it be, Mr. Vernon? Ecarte?"

"With pleasure."

"Or picket?"

"As you will."

"Why, then, picket, and if we find we grow too sleepy to count our sequences, we shall, at any rate, not be too sleepy to trickle dice out of a box, eh?"

Charles turned with these words to take some unbroken paquets of playing cards from a small mahogany cabinet hanging against the wall. The picture presented was a friendly one as the two men seated themselves at the card table. The fire was burning brightly and rosy shadows flickered over the ceiling. The curtains were close drawn and the ample flowers of their pattern seemed to retain somehow the warmth and the light. By the side of the grate sat Tony in a high grandfather's chair. He had taken off his wig and was staring meditatively at the crisp curls, as it reposed on his knee. The buckles of his shoes spat tiny glints of flame--red, blue and green. Presently he leaned across to a small bookshelf and took down some dry inn volume, but the print danced in the fire-light and very soon he was dozing peacefully, while his wig slipped to the ground and became a pleasant couch for a large tabby cat to purr away comfortable hours.

At the table sat Vernon and Lovely face to face, and the green baize made a prim battlefield for the debonair antagonists. It was a meadow-fight viewed from towering Olympus. Here was pasture profitable enough to some: to others barren as the unharvested sea. No crescent moon lighted it, no sun parched the fresh greenery whose four tall candles flickered only to chamber tempests, storms of tapestry, keyhole zephyrs. At either end were ranged round guineas in wicked little heaps, and along the borders stood serried packs of cards, shorn of their meaner numbers as becomes the apparelled duel of picket. These had been flung contemptuously on to the floor and the survivors lay face downwards on the table with a new and alluring slimness. Their backs were so innocent--mere festoons of flowers and bouquets of rosebuds; yet their very innocence only served to enhance the red and black determination of their faces. How the royal cards reflected in their appearance the temper of their courts. How sombre-suited went the Queen of Spades, how pensive seemed her consort, while the savage Ace was hung with garlands of mourning and sable flowers of Proserpine. The Queen of Diamonds looked harassed; the Knave had a lean eye and the King himself seemed peaked and careworn. The Club Court was a swarthy and more brutal counterpart of the gay Hearts, and the gay Hearts, with ripe dewy mouths, had yet a certain sly sensuality that bred distrust.

Then the tournament began. The stacked guineas sprawled in golden disarray and dwindled and swelled and tinkled to the tune of the game.

Charles was winning. Five times he had made the grand Repique, five times the gallant Pique, thrice Capote had taken captive twelve hostile cards to be redeemed with rippling guineas. Ace, King, Queen, Knave, Ten came in sequences as month succeeds to month. His hands were palaces for the abode of many courtiers. They were picture galleries of the oldest kings and queens in Europe. If he threw away Spades, he took up the red Hearts for which he longed. If he discarded Diamonds, he gained a lusty host of Clubs to serve his purpose.

At last Vernon, who had lost steadily for a pair of hours--six games at an average price of thirty guineas a game--declared he would fight no longer against his adversary's good fortune. "Moreover," he added, "so much counting has set my brain in a whirl."

"As you will," said Charles, who would have liked to continue with picket, but could not refuse to give his opponent an opportunity to avenge himself at another game.

So they turned to Ecarte.

And now his fortune deserted him. Each time Vernon dealt he turned up a King, and Charles began to dread their florid appearance, as some ambitious minister dreads the veering of his master's favour. Those kings who had hitherto been numbered in his hands in fours and threes, those puppet kings, had won a new dignity from the only game which accords them their rightful place at the head of the pack; each one had acquired, it seemed, a personality that threatened him. Time after time were his Jeux de Regle defeated by the most astonishing combinations of ill luck.

So many times did those confounded monarchs affront him face upwards on the serene baize that he began to suspect Vernon of being a sort of gamester Warwick, a maker and unmaker of kings. Indeed, he went so far as to watch his deals rather narrowly and, being unable to detect anything amiss, became heartily ashamed of his suspicions.

It was now five o'clock of a chill morning; the fire had sunk into ashes, and dawn would soon shoot her icy arrows into the slow-flying bulk of night.

Clare was still asleep in the armchair, but presently the stealthy cold waked him and he jumped up; the candles were guttering away; the burgundy was drunk; the room smelt stale.

"Come to bed, Charles," he cried out.

Lovely, who had lost at Ecarte considerably more than he had won at Picket, drew back the curtains for answer. The dawn was in the East.

He blew out the candles one after another, and in the unreal morning twilight, the aftermath of smoke curled like an outworn pleasure into extinction save of a foul odour.

"We have still a grey hour for the dice," said Charles.

"As you will," replied Vernon.

The dice boxes were brought out, and the ivory cubes began to dance; strange fancies assailed Clare as he watched the gamesters; morbid imaginations, caught from the chilly atmosphere, froze his reason, and the rattle of the dice acquired a macabre significance. They clicked like the hoofs of horses on an iron-bound road. Then they were the castanets of a sinister dance. Soon they were the shaken ribs of Death, the king of dancers, and at the end no more than a baby's rattle, insistent, importunate, maddening.

Charles was winning again.

The various faces of the cubes took fantastick likenesses. _Two_ was a patched beauty, leaden-eyed, pallid, pleasure-doomed. _Five_ was a skewbald cat and _four_ a plum cake. Six was a ladder to some evil house. _Three_ was a necklace of jet, _one_ a Pierrot's velvet eye.

Charles was still winning.

The irresponsibleness of the dice annoyed Clare. They tumbled and rolled so gaily and it was mortifying to see a man enslaved by acrobats of ivory. The bodies, too, with their absurd waists were like women whom extravagant stays had driven to vomit sweetmeats.

Charles had won. The casement swung open in the sudden winds of dawn; the room was tinted with the cold colours of sunrise. The three men stumbled upstairs disdainful of the morning's gold. A guinea slipped from Lovely's pocket and tinkled down to the foot of the stairs to reward the little scullery-maid who was even now yawning on her pallet upstairs.

A thrush tuned his melodies against the swift coming of spring, and the purple leaf-buds welcomed the sun.

_Chapter the Eleventh_

NOX ALBA

Charles was tempted to deprive himself of sleep for the pleasure of bedabbling his pale silk stockings with dew, but vanity killed romance and the fresh light enchanted a still unruffled couch. So he flung his coat over a chair, and the heavy pockets chinked as they fell back against the taper legs. His prayers were all to rosy Aurora when the fragrant linen sheets flowed like water over his parched brows.

Sleep could not pass the melodious batteries of many birds, and Lovely's brain had captured something of the time's clarity. The clock has many secret hours, but those who would know them must follow their slow pilgrimage wide awake. What castles men build to the pipes of the morning!

The world was waking up. Outside the talk of hostlers grew so loud that the birds fled from the inn yard to the still deserted bowling green.

Soon he heard the jangle of pails, the swish of mops and from time to time the sound of a horse's hoof striking the cobbles with a clap. In the distance a post-horn endowed the air with silver tongues. Charles followed its course along the London road. He pictured the cumbrous vehicle swinging in its straps between the black February hedgerows. He saw the postillions blinking sleepy eyes to the Eastern sun. He saw the great London road like a tape-measure unfolded from the gilded case that was London. Already he was at Knightsbridge watching some townbred maid gathering cresses in the little stream. Now he was spurring the horses to a fine lather, for he could see the grooms in a black knot by the _White Horse_ cellars. In a trice he was taking the air in St. James' Street, and then suddenly he was a little boy picking his way through Westminster mud beside his mother who was carrying a bouquet of violets to their narrow house near St. John's Church. And now it was winter, and the sea-coal was burning sullenly: there were no violets, and heavy on the leaden afternoon he heard the bell tolling in Millbank Gaol. "God save the poor soul, the marshes will be icy cold to-night," said his mother, and he knew that some prisoner had escaped.

"How late your father is," she went on as she opened a cupboard, set in the panelled wall, to reach for plates and dishes. Then she told him to get out the candlesticks--beautiful silver candlesticks with swan-like necks and curious mazy lines around their bases. The candlesticks were nowhere to be found.

"Where can they be?" exclaimed his mother, pausing to help in the search. Then he heard a sigh and was told to ask Mrs. Gruffle, the landlady, for the brass bed-chamber candlesticks. He rather liked these: there was always a delightful quagmire of grease in the little plate where the socket rested--grease that could be moulded into queer little pliable shapes, with shreds of tobacco stuck around for fur. When he came back to the parlour, he saw his father with his legs on the bars of the grate.

"They had to go, my dear, they had to go," the latter was saying.

"They were my mother's."

"I know, I know, but z----ds' You wouldn't have me fail Dicky Claribut?"

"But sure they were not worth----"

"Oons! I pledged my best buckles to him; the candlesticks were for his gentleman. I'm devilish sorry, my dear, but, 'faith, 'twas not to be avoided, and here's young Charles! Charles, my boy, never play, or, if you do, play deep and win."

"Don't put such ideas into the boy's mind," said his mother anxiously.

"Oddslife, my dear, be very sure the ideas are there already."

"How can you have the heart to persist when you know...."

"The heart, madam?" interrupted his father. "Let me tell you that the hearts of the Lovelys are all of a piece--and 'tis cardboard."

Our hero came to his elegant self with a start and was back in Curtain Wells with hot eyelids, and thoughts continually racing over the flowery wall-paper.

It was not long, however, before he was once more in pursuit of the past.

And now he was seated beside his handsome father in a chariot. They were both in mourning and he thought how well the black frogged riding-coat became his parent. As for himself, his black sattin breeches set his teeth on edge as he tried to scratch his knee.

"Where are we going?" he was asking.

"To your mother's brother, Sir George Repington of Repington Hall."

"That's the man whose letters made her cry?"

"The same, young Charles," said Mr. Lovely, ogling a dairymaid through his black-rimmed perspective, as the object of his glances shrank into a hedge, powdered with cow-parsley, and closed her eyes against the dust of their chariot.

Then, without any warning, they were driving through a stately park, and as they turned a corner, Mr. Lovely senior exclaimed "Good G...! A cemetery indeed!" Charles looked up and saw a field full of small cypresses with rank grass growing between them.

His father, who was looking rather pale, signed to the postboy to stop, and "Charles," said he, "do you go on up to the Hall, knock at the door and ask for your uncle, Sir George Repington. I'll wait for you here."

As he set out in obedience to his father he heard him mutter. "This was the very place. I swear this was the place, and not an apple tree left." And then Charles diminutive enough in his black suit with miniature small-sword of cut steel, was asking two enormous footmen in canary-coloured velvet for Sir George Repington. They looked at him and laughed.

"My uncle," said Charles solemnly.

And they laughed again, but one of them murmured, 'This way,' and walked up a very wide and very slippery staircase, while Charles stumped up behind him. Half way, his sword belt came undone, and the sword clattered down upon the polished oak stairs with a noise that seemed to resound a dozen times through the quiet house. As he did not dare to keep the canary-coloured gentleman waiting, he picked up the toy weapon, clutched it tight in his left hand and entered a big dark room where a gentleman with iron grey close cropped hair sat reading in a chair with a very tall back, his wig balanced upon his toes.

"What the d----l's this?" asked the grey gentleman jumping up.

"Your honour's nephew," said the yellow gentleman.

"Eh! what! leave us, sirrah," and "What do you want?" he said, turning to Charles.

Charles could only watch the long furrow over his nose and wonder how deep it was, when the grey gentleman caught sight of the small sword.

"Eh! what the d----l! give me that," and snatching the weapon, he broke it over his knee and flung it into the grate.

"Please, sir, my father sent me to see you."

"Who's he?"

"Valentine Lovely, sir."

"Good G----! Good G----!" muttered the old gentleman. "And Mrs. Lovely? Did she send you too?"

"Mrs. Lovely's dead, sir."

The grey gentleman looked across the room at a large painting of a girl in a white dress skipping with a rope of roses.

"Please, sir," said young Charles, "I think that is Mrs. Lovely."

"It was, boy; it was."

"I wish I had known her then," said Charles.

"Is your name George, boy?" inquired the grey gentleman in a tone that was half eager.

"No, sir, 'tis Charles--after the Prince of Wales."

"A Papist, eh?" said the grey gentleman bitterly.

"George was too honest a name for that scoundrel. Well, boy, you can stay."

"Please, sir, I'd rather go back to my father," said the boy. "He's waiting for me."

"Then go and be d----d," said the grey gentleman, and he walked over to the window.

Poor little Charles was left standing alone in the big room. He waited a moment, but as the grey gentleman did not turn his head, he edged his way towards the great door. When he reached it, he looked round at his uncle. The latter was still staring out of the window. The child gave a puzzled sigh and with both hands succeeded in turning the handle. The clocks seemed to tick very loudly as he breathlessly closed the door and set out to descend the wide staircase. The canary-coloured gentlemen having vanished he could hold on to the balustrade with both hands without shame. As he crossed the green sunlit lawn, a blackbird flew into the shrubbery with a shrill note of alarm.

Then he was in the chariot with his father, and this time he was really fast asleep.

And now he was boy and man at once. The picture of the girl with roses became his mother as he had known her, pale and sad. Then it would change and become Miss Phyllida Courteen, strangely like his mother; and sometimes the Queen of Diamonds would be mopping and mowing in a frame of golden Georges.

At last these many dancing visions forsook his brain, and he slept a dreamless sleep, not waking until high noon of a wet and gusty day. When he reached the coffee-room, he found Mr. Francis Vernon perusing the latest edition of Mr. Hoyle, and as the weather was dirty, agreed to give Mr. Francis Vernon his revenge.

This favour was accorded in the handsomest manner possible and when, late in the afternoon, the young gentlemen all returned from hunting, Mr. Charles Lovely owed Mr. Francis Vernon rather more than he could very easily pay.

No doubt the latter's success is to be ascribed to his opportune purchase of the latest edition of Mr. Hoyle.

_Chapter the Twelfth_

WET DAYS

If cards are the devil's playthings, wet days are certainly his select playtime; and all the days before the Chinese Masquerade were very wet indeed. The Exquisite Mob returned from the Pump Room remarkably depressed in spirit. The forenoons passed away in the coffee-houses and the shops, but in the afternoons when it was wont to exercise itself and air its modes the stuffy parlours of Curtain Wells became vastly tiresome.

The result was that all the young gentlemen played very hard and very deep and very late, and Mr. Charles Lovely hardest, deepest, and latest of all. The old gentlemen all found their gout teazed them more lamentably. Even Beau Ripple grew tired of reading the Epodes of Horace and the Letters of Tully to his grey Angora cat. The ladies played Quadrille and talked scandal, while some of them, I grieve to say, supplied a foundation for much of the gossip.

Candlelight intrigues flourished, and there were not a few tragedies in porcelain, when some Sir John Vulcan, returning too soon from his favourite coffee-house, caught my Lady Venus in too ardent converse with some young Ensign Mars. Very red grew the gallant Ensign--near as red as his coat, while Sir John blustered and swore so loud that he almost cracked the walls with his fox-hunting voice, and my lady Venus fluttered her fan to the pace of her dainty heart, tinkling out exquisite little lies as soulless as unreal, but quite as fascinating as some frail musical box. And the trio acted and declaimed their time-honoured parts to a keyhole audience of lady's maid and gentleman's gentleman.

Very diverting the footmen of Curtain Wells found the story that evening, and very savoury it was voted below stairs--nearly as savoury as the stewed trotters over which it was related.

And so the days went by.

Pitter-pat went the rain on the window-panes, pitter-pat went the cards on the card tables, pitter-pat went the spoons in the coffee-cups, pitter-pat went my lady's shoes across the floor to watch for the third person, pitter-pat went many fans and many hearts.

Mrs. Courteen decked herself in the rosiest sattins, bade Betty close the shutters, draw the curtains and light the candles. Then she composed herself to read the last number of the _Prattler_ until a knock at the door announced the arrival of Mr. Gregory Moon and Major Constantine Tarry. Both vowed that their enchantress looked vastly well, and nodded agreement with her assertion that she believed she had a very fresh colour, no doubt due to the tonick air of the Wells.

"It flushes one merely to go upstairs," she declared. "I vow I take as much exercise in going up and down stairs as I do in taking my morning saunter to the Pump Room." The climb was euphemistically known as the Saunter. "Lud, lud," continued the widow, "complexions are droll things."

"Monstrous elusive, ma'am," said the Justice rather gloomily.

"Ha, ha," yapped the Major, "I pickled my skin in the Low Countries."

"That would be injudicious for a delicate surface. Height, Major," sighed Mrs. Courteen, "height! How we pine for it. Mortals! Dear! Dear!"

"I remember I once examined a vagabond who claimed to have been there," remarked Mr. Moon. "We ordered him a whipping."

"What became of him?" asked Mrs. Courteen.

"I believe he died shortly afterwards. Well! well! Kill or cure! Kill or cure!"

The widow flashed her white shoulders in an elaborate shudder.

"Talking of kill or cure," exclaimed the Major, jumping up, "did I ever repeat my tale of the Hessian captain?"

"Probably," said Mr. Moon mildly.

"What do you mean, sir?"

"You are somewhat inclined to repetition, sir."

Mrs. Courteen hurriedly assured Major Tarry that she for one had positively never heard it.

"He did not say 'have you heard my story, ma'am,' the Justice went on in the calm voice of despair. "He said 'have I repeated it?' I merely remarked that he probably has--dozens of times!"--Mr. Moon burst out in the nearest approach to a passionate enunciation that he ever attained.

"I vow you do him an injustice. Pray tell us the story, Major," and the widow tapped the sword-arm of the infuriated soldier three times. The painted chicken-skin fell with so persuasive a touch that the Apple sank to its normal position and, having turned his back on Mr. Moon, the Major began his tale.

"Well, Madam, you must know that in the year ... but before I tell this story, I should like to give you some idea of the disposition of his Majesty's forces."

Mrs. Courteen sighed. She knew what giving an idea of the disposition of the forces meant. It was useless to protest however, for the Major was already marching round the room in search of appropriate furniture.

He instantly declared that Mr. Moon's chair was necessary to the illustration.

"Pray excuse me, sir!" he rapped out.

The Justice, with a reproachful glance at Mrs. Courteen, moved ponderously to the couch.

"Well, Madam, here are Thistleton's Dragoons," and he gave a twist to the chair as he spoke.

"Oh, yes! Very droll!" said Mrs. Courteen.

"Here," the Major continued, seizing another chair and planting it vigorously down by the couch, "here is Buckley's Foot."

"Mine, sir," said the Justice.

"Your what, sir?"

"My foot, sir, not Buckfeast's."

The Major withered his rival with an eloquent silence.

"Here am I," he said, snatching from the mantelpiece a diminutive Worcester shepherdess and placing it between the two chairs.

The widow gazed anxiously at the pastoral soldier. It belonged to the owner of the house.

"Here is Tournai. You'll pardon me, sir, but I should be obliged if you would hand me the couch," said the Major fiercely.

The Justice moved wearily to the window-seat. That, at all events, was a fixture, he reflected gratefully.

After much exertion Tarry succeeded in moving the couch in front of the door, so that if the piece of furniture in question was a poor representation of what it was intended to convey, it certainly made of Mrs. Courteen's front parlour something very like an impregnable fortress.

"I should be glad to give you some idea of the enemy's earthworks," said the Major with a covetous glance in the direction of the chintz window-curtains.

Mrs. Courteen's fleeting expression of dismay warned him to prune the luxuriance of his examples, and as at that moment a tap at the door necessitated the instant surrender of Tournai to admit Mrs. Betty farther operations were stopped. Moreover the sudden capitulation involved the fracture of the Worcester shepherdess which, as Mr. Moon sardonically supposed, served to illustrate the point of the story.

"You're killed, Tarry; you're dead as mutton. I doubt a cure is inconceivable."

Betty held a note in her hands.

"From Bow Ripple," she whispered excitedly.

_Chapter the Thirteenth_

MONARCHY IN ACTION

Mrs. Courteen scarcely believed Betty spoke the truth. Never could she remember such a gigantick wave of elation as swept over her on receipt of the Beau's letter. Yet, without a doubt, it was true. There was the royal notepaper and, as she reverently examined the outside, there was the river of the house of Ripple meandering in regular curves through meadows of sealing-wax. She marked the colour--lilac--as if faintly to adumbrate the imperial purple of Rome. Moreover, the sprinkled sand, a few particles of which still adhered to the surface, smelt of Courts. There were years of authority between the lines of the graceful superscription; the very "C" of the Crescent bellied in the breeze of Royal favour. Major Tarry and Mr. Moon regarded her with an expression compounded of jealousy and respect. Who was this woman, this correspondent with monarchs?

"Pray excuse me, neighbours," murmured the widow, sinking into a chair. The seal crackled musically as with smooth forefinger and shapely thumb she gently withdrew the diaphanous paper from its waxen prison; so must the golden bough have sounded to the touch of AEneas.

THE GREAT HOUSE, CURTAIN WELLS,

_February_,

MADAM--_I shall do myself the honour of waiting upon you this afternoon at half-past Four o'clock in order to the discussion of an Affair of the gravest moral Importance._

_In expectation, Madam, I subscribe myself,_

_Your obliged Servant,_

HORACE RIPPLE.

"Gemini!" cried Betty, "the Bow will be here in fourteen ticks."

"Gentlemen," said Mrs. Courteen with that stateliness which follows from intercourse with Princes, "gentlemen, I must beg to be excused."

The Major and the Justice solemnly advanced and, having kissed the outstretched hand, moved sadly from the room. As they went downstairs the former mused on the unrepeated story of the Hessian Captain, while the latter vowed to insert a supplementary chapter to his great Essay on Peace which should deal with the self-esteem of retired Majors. With similar thoughts no doubt Mr. Oliver Goldsmith went home from that famous dinner when General Oglethorpe, at the instigation of Dr. Samuel Johnson, spilled the Port on the bare mahogany board in order to draw a plan of the Siege of Belgrade. At any rate, old Mr. Hardcastle talks a great deal about that famous beleaguerment in the witty and diverting farce of _She Stoops to Conquer_. Mrs. Courteen tremulously sought her toilet-glass. 'An affair of the gravest moral importance.' Powder judiciously distributed removed any implied indifference in the freshness of her widowed cheeks. Paleness and morality were certainly akin. As for her lemon sack, Betty vowed she would find nothing more becoming to the unique occasion.

A dignified knock at the front door put an end to any longer hesitation, and Mrs. Courteen, like the Queen of Sheba, presented herself immediately.

The Great little Man was pacing the carpet of the front parlour, but at the widow's entrance he turned on his heels with a low bow.

"We are quite alone?" he inquired.

"Solitary indeed," replied the lady. Surely, surely he could not be contemplating an offer of marriage. Yet certainly such might well be described as an affair of the gravest moral importance. If weddings were not moral, what would become of our weak humanity?

"Madam," said the Beau. "'Tis only after long thought and exhaustive research among the social archives of Curtain Wells: 'tis only after a complete examination of my glorious predecessor, Beau Melon's notes on the amenities of Polite Cures in which he calls attention with a red cross to the special difficulty of tendering advice to perplexed visitors, that I am resolved to inform you of a fact which may distress your maternal heart, complicate your domestick arrangements, disturb your apprehensive piety and not inconceivably lend to-morrow's goblet a very wry flavour. Madam, your daughter is in love."

The widow raised two anguished hands, but Mr. Ripple continued:

"When I say in love, madam, I say so because I am not so cynical of maiden humanity as to suppose that she would sit in vivacious discourse with a young gentleman for the space of one hour and a half measured by the frequent chimes of the publick clock unless she were in love."

"You cannot mean this," palpitated the unhappy mother. "Say you cannot mean it!"

"Madam, I am not used to devoting so much valuable time to the preparation of circumstantial falsehoods. Your daughter is in love."

"But she is so young," protested the widow. "Not more than fifteen or at the most seventeen."

"To you, madam, deaf to Love's alarms, for evermore protected against his showered darts, such precocious ardour must appear improbable, but I have proof of its existence."

"Malicious tongues! The world is so censorious. It would destroy the reputation of the mother by insinuations against the virtue of the child."

"Madam, pray allow me to narrate the unhappy but indisputable facts of the affair. You must know that it is a part of my duties--a pleasant part, if I may say so without undue want of reserve--to inspect Curtain Garden from time to time. You will recollect that this forenoon we enjoyed for two hours a glimpse of the sun. Having been kept indoors during the last two or three days, I determined to seize the balmy occasion and perform my rural duties. I observed that the spring bulbs were remarkably forward. I noticed with pleasant anticipation of summer saunters that the paths were in good order, the gravel free from weeds. From the main Promenade I turned into the Maze."

The widow started.

"The yew hedges were neatly trimmed and I noticed some very good examples of topiary; I may mention in particular the transformation of the old Noah into a peacock whose tail will doubtless gain a more vigorous plumage from the warm weather. I wandered along contemplating the various greens of the mosses that adorn the path and muffle the footsteps in a manner extremely suitable to the decorous quiet of the surroundings. During my saunters, I delight to rest my mind with the recitation of the Odes and Epodes of my poetick and pre-Christian namesake. I was embarked upon the apostrophe to Lyce:

_Nec Coae referunt jam tibi purpurae Nec clari lapides tempora, quae semel Notis condita fastis Inclusit volucris dies._

"I had got so far, but egad! I could get no farther for the life of me. I repeated the last four lines, and in my attempts to catch the fugitive--Ah!" cried the Beau, "I have it!"

_Quo fugit Venus? Heu quove color? decens_ _Quo motus?_

or to paraphrase with an extempore couplet,

_Where now is fled thy beauty? Where thy bloom,_ _Those airy steps that charmed th' expectant room?_

"To continue, however--this elusive sentence made me lose my direction and I found myself removed from the centre of the Maze by an impenetrable hedge of yew. I was about to retrace my steps when I heard voices on the other side of the hedge. It was a duet, madam--man and maid, flute and bass viol, fife and drum, describe it how you will."

"Did you recognize the voices?"

"Madam, I did not."

"Then how--since you were not able to see over the tops of the hedges without----"

The Great little Man drew himself up.

"Madam," he said, "I regard the physical exertion of bobbing up and down as ungenteel."

"Then how do you----?"

"Because on retracing my steps I passed your maid in an attitude of vigilance and exactly one hour and a half later I saw Miss Courteen and the aforesaid maid leave the Garden; and vastly well she looked, madam."

Mrs. Courteen asked why Mr. Ripple did not interrupt them. "'Twould surely have frightened them out of love-making for ever."

"Madam, if I am a king, I hope I am also a gentleman."

"I will call the hussy and you shall reproach her, Mr. Ripple."

"Madam, that is precisely what I am anxious to avoid. On former occasions my interference has proved futile and I cannot allow my counsel to be exposed to contempt. In confidence let me tell you that the last three elopements which I tried to stop were all successfully carried through, and I hear that the parties have lived very happily together ever since. I have vowed not to accept again the responsibleness of a prophet. My glorious predecessor, Beau Melon, mentions several instances of his advice being neglected without any ill effects and notes that it is probably injudicious to interfere unless compelled by the prospect of a duel. Let me read you his comments. '_Elopements. Tell the father. D---- n Miss. She won't listen. Fool for your pains. Fifteen times bitten--shy for evermore. Bodies more important than souls in Curtain Wells._' An ill-constructed sentence, madam, but nevertheless full of truth."

"Then what do you advise me to do?"

"Madam, I should recommend you to pay less attention to your own heart, and give the most of your care to your daughter's."

The widow rose in a state of extreme agitation and rustled about the room to the hazard of all ware under a certain stability. Such a reproach from Mr. Ripple was more than she could bear politely.

However, presently she caught her placket in the wanton arm of a chair and after a short struggle capitulated to stillness.

She began the catalogue of her natural virtues. "I vow the child has been reared on the Church Catechism, she was for ever learning collects, texts, parables, miracles, question and answer, sermons, homilies, and aspirations. If I had been allowed my own way with her education, she would have led a life of Sundays; but the late Mr. Nicholas Courteen her father and my husband swore the child's intelligence was become like a Crusader's tomb, scrabbled over with pious nonsense ill-digested and ill-writ. Have I not warned her a hundred times that gentlemen do not love the gawky charms of a hoyden? Have I not repeated to her the history of half a score seductions? Am I to blame? Don't I keep a maid to look after her? What else has that hussy to do? I ask you, Mr. Ripple, what else?"

"Upon my soul, ma'am, I don't very well know," murmured Mr. Ripple.

"Nothing, sir, nothing, save to dress and undress me twice a day, give an eye to my gowns and arrange my toilet table. Apparently they think that I should--" The widow broke off to ring violently for Betty in order to reproach her with a careless supervision of Phyllida.

Mr. Ripple seized the opportunity to make his farewells. He swore to himself that nothing should induce him to remonstrate again with a careless mother. He would say a friendly word to the child herself.

The widow thanked the Beau for his advice and promised to be mighty severe with Phyllida.

"Not if you will be warned by me, madam. No, no, I beg you will not think it was to urge severity that I made you this visit. No, no, it was merely to suggest prudence. Your humble servant, madam."

"Your very devoted, sir."

The widow curtsied the Beau out of the room, and, having heard the front door closed, she watched in prim disgust for the entrance of Betty.

That young woman presently came into the room.

"Well, vixen!" said the widow.

"La! ma'am, what is it?"

"Well, gypsy!"

"Not a drop in my family, ma'am, and that's more than some of the cottage-folk near by can say."

"Well, little Impropriety, what excuse have you to hand?"

Betty asked what Impropriety meant.

"Would it be stealing you mean, ma'am?"

"Well, Madam Indecency!"

Betty suddenly saw the widow's amber petticoat gleaming through the unfastened placket.

"Dear love and barley breaks! However did I come to leave that undone! Never mind, ma'am. 'Tis not as if he'd caught a sight of your smock, though for my