The Passionate Elopement 27 – Mackenzie · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Passionate Elopement 27Space Between an Heroick Couplet
18
Literature · Romance
The Passionate Elopement 27
Space Between an Heroick Couplet
MackenzieEnglish
A discouraging fact for the Persii of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, is that, however needle-sharp their thrusted rapiers, however thorough their castigations, Society never shows weal or scar at the end of it all.
Here was profligate, card-playing, snobbish, vapoured Society, quite recovered of its whipping and, by candletime, setting out to perform, just those very actions Persius most bitterly abuses.
My lady Bunbutter continued to observe every Matador in her opponents' hands, continued to rake in ill-gotten guineas, continued to use a quadrille pack with Manille stained, Spadille nicked, Basto dog-eared, and Ponto scratched. The Most Honble. the Marchioness of Hurricane continued to help herself five times to the richest Fricassees; continued to allow her lap-dog liberty of vomit in alien drawing-rooms, continued to breathe stertorous bawdry into the prominent ears of her Italian son-in-law--el Conde di Scirocco--while her daughter the Contessa snored in a corner.
Young Miss Kitcat continued to encourage the addresses of the disreputable Captain Mann, and even went so far as to tap that military scoundrel three times with her fan in coy avowal of his charming naughtiness.
The Earl of Cinderton drank five bottles of Port that very night in order to emphasize his indifference to satire, and slept under his own mahogany table because his lackeys below stairs were too drunk to carry him to bed.
In fact, nobody save the publisher of Curtain Polls displayed sign or sense of injury.
Our heroine indeed was vastly affected, but her misfortunes were due to a gloss upon the original.
As it happened, Mrs. Courteen did not discover the reference to her daughter's indiscretion, until she was asked by an inquisitive dowager to explain the allusion in the twelve lines. She managed to conceal her agitation, thanks to the permanency of the newest rouge, but presently called for her chair and arrived home a full two hours before she was expected.
When she sailed into the parlour Phyllida was languishingly occupied with a blue vase of pot-pourri, and the parlour fire was trying to burn up beneath a weight of blackened notepaper.
The suddenness of the widow's entrance alarmed her daughter so much that she dropped the vase, and the contents were strewn over the carpet. The faint perfume that slowly permeated the stuffy atmosphere of the lodgings, should have reminded Mrs. Courteen of her youth, of long June eves and blossoms plucked awhile ago by fingers now wrinkled and stained with years of snuff.
Mrs. Courteen also neglected to remember that so far as ridicule went, she had brought enough of that upon her own head.
However, she recalled neither memory nor fact, and was properly enraged with her daughter's light behaviour.
"You have ruined my good name, child. I can never again look the world in the face. How we shall be laughed at in Hampshire, for be sure that odious Miss Talker whose sister married the Rector of Slumber, has already despatched a copy to her brother-in-law, and you know what chatterboxes parsons always are: I suppose because they preach, though I should have thought, lud! that with so much breath used on Sunday, they might be as dumb as dumb for the rest of the week, and hurt nobody, least of all their own wives and neighbours. But there! what good is it to educate a young woman in the way she should go? I might better have set an example to the village clock. At all events that does possess a face. Put down your handkerchief, hussy."
"Dear mamma----"
"Don't excuse yourself, pray do not excuse yourself, I doubt 'tis all my fault. I doubt I han't looked after you, taken you to Melton Abbey, and prayed for you, minx, yes, prayed for you. And have you got any good from learning the collects for Sunday and the Benedicite and the Athanasian Creed and the thirty-nine Articles? None! A pretty thing, truly, that after so much honourable religion, I should have my daughter pointed out as a--as what no respectable young woman is. Pointed at! And I, your mother, am to be laughed at, mocked at, jeered at, because you suffer every down-at-heel fop to make gross love to you, sheltered from the eye of men--yes! vastly well--but you forget the eye of one above and the tongue of scandal."
"Madam, I am truly, deeply ashamed. If I promise never, never again to cause you the slightest uneasiness, will you forgive me for once, and take me away from this odious town?"
"Take you away? A pretty request truly; and give every old maid in Curtain Wells the opportunity of saying I was afraid to show my face and your figure. Take you away, miss? No, indeed, I shall take you around. I shall try by exhibiting you beneath your mother's protection, to give the lie to these atrocious reports and, next year, miss, next year, we will pay a visit to Tunbridge Wells in order to provide a husband whom you may kiss in the privacy of your own estate, with no one but a wandering gamekeeper any the wiser."
"I never kissed Mr. Amor," protested Phyllida.
"Amor? Amor? And who is Mr. Amor?"
"He is my true love, ma'am, whom I love with all my might and main."
"There's indecency! there's impropriety! Lud! I vow, vixen, you are as wanton as a goddess. You love him, eh?"
"That is my only excuse, ma'am, for having behaved so ill."
"What business, I should like to know, has a child of fifteen----"
"Seventeen, ma'am."
"Fifteen, girl."
"Then, sure, you are reckoning by leap years, ma'am."
"Do not be impudent. I repeat, Phyllida, I will not have impudence. You know dear Doctor Makewell particularly enjoined me not to allow impudence. 'Your heart won't stand it, ma'am.' Cruel Phyllida, not content with deceiving your mother, you are willing to injure her health by impudence."
"You think only of yourself," said Phyllida bitterly.
"Only of myself! Oh! Phyllida, how dare you accuse me of selfishness? My whole life since the death of your father who was a most exacting man and would ride Pegasus, though I told him a hundred times if I told him once that the brute would murder him. Now I've forgotten what I was saying, and 'tis all your fault, ungrateful child. Go to bed instantly and to-morrow I will have all your dresses starched as stiff as leather, so that nobody, not even that spiteful Lady Jane Vane, can say I don't take care that whatever your mind may be, your dresses leave nothing to be desired. Go to bed, go to bed. I can't listen to you any longer. I feel humiliated by your abominable behaviour. Judge of my feelings when I tell you I did not dare invite either Mr. Moon or Major Tarry to escort me home for fear the world would say I was setting you a bad example. Now, perhaps you'll accuse me of not possessing a conscience. Indeed, my conscience is too tender. 'Tis the tenderest part of me, though I have one of the most delicate skins--a skin that bruises if I ring a bell with unwonted celerity."
"Mamma, I----" Phyllida began.
"Pray do not say another word, you have said enough to-night to last a lifetime. Send Betty with my bedgown worked in crimson hollyhocks and I will try to forget this wretched experience by attempting to ascertain--please get the playing cards--how Miss Trumper managed to secure codille in the last hand but four of this extremely unpleasant and unprofitable evening. Go to bed, Phyllida, don't dally. Here is Betty. Go to bed, Phyllida."
So Phyllida went to bedew her lavendered pillow. Anything was better than listening to her mother's perpetual reproaches. Anything, anything was better. Even to be betrayed. Ha! ha! now I think for the first time you will admit Miss Phyllida to be a true heroine. Poor Clarie Harlowe! How Phyllida had wept over her adventures and, even in the midst of tears, how quick she had always been to thrust the forbidden volumes out of sight when she heard her mother's step on the stairs.
Poor Clarie Harlowe! She began to sign her name to innumerable nobly penitent epistles.
_Your cruelly abandoned
Phyllida.
Your wretched, but still loving
Phyllida.
Your heartbroken, hopeless
Phyllida.
Your betrayed daughter
Phyllida.
Your forsaken, but affectionate
Phyllida.
Your seduced (or was it seducted, or abduced, or abducted?)
Phyllida_.
Oh, dear! Oh, dear! what a muddle fine language was to be sure!
I have not yet apologized for my very ancient story, but faith! you must blame the period and the intolerable system of female education. Amor had either to be a Lovelace or a Joseph at a time when young maidenhood fainted before an ardent glance.
After all we do not now apologize for our strong silent men and hysterical girls. Why should we? And yet for my own part I love better your talkative blackguard; I have known so many strong silent men, and they were all fools or Scotsmen.
During this digression, Phyllida has fallen asleep, her face flushed and dabbled with spent tears, her chestnut hair in golden filigree upon the pillow and, where the sleeve of her bedgown has retreated, a rosy arm whose little fist is clenched in maiden despair.
Poor foolish child! Why would you fall in love? Untenanted, your dearest gate swings in the wind to-night, but you will not mount again upon its topmost mossy bar. You will never again view with the same excitement the huntsmen over the hill-top; they will mean less to you; their pink coats will be quite dingy when next you say good morning to old Nick Runnalls the Whip. For my part, I do not believe that hot buttered apple-pies will taste so sweet when next you eat them in the long cool kitchen with its pot of marjoram and shaded sunlight.
And as for your bed-chamber with casements abob with peering rosebuds, I doubt the shelves will not soon be disturbed to make a place for new trophies. Once you thought it a day of days when you found the thigh-bone of a horse or the skull of a badger. They hang on the walls now, poor relicks of an outworn delight.
All this shall go for a balcony in the Haymarket and a goldfinch in a gilt cage. Foolish child! Away down in Hampshire the goldfinches build green nests in the orchard. Phyllida! sweet, headlong, heedless Phyllida!
"I blame you, Betty. I blame you, vixen. Why you cannot model yourself on Thomas passes my comprehension." Thus the widow.
"She meant no harm, poor pretty lamb," protested the maid.
"'Tis not what we mean, but what we do that counts in this world."
"Ah! 'tis fine for thee to talk, ma'am, you take good care to amuse yourself, but, little miss, she must dingle-dangle all day long wi' nought to do but dream of doing nought."
"She has her friend, Miss Morton."
"Ay! that black-eyed hussy what pinches the maiden who dresses her lean skimpy rat's hair. I don't take much account o' she."
They continued in this strain for quite two hours, and would never have stopped if the candles had endured.
They went up to bed just as Charles, having finished his third bottle of Burgundy, knocked with vinous assurance at the door of the Great House.
I am not at all certain whether this adventurous action should have been included in this chapter, for I doubt nothing more heroick was ever done even by Hercules at the zenith of his laborious career. It was considered rash enough to wait upon Mr. Ripple in the middle of his siesta. A royal Duke once succeeded in gaining admittance, if very little else; but to wait upon Mr. Ripple when his flambeaux strewed the steps, when the orange light in his porch was winking on its way to annihilation, when the grey Angora cat had settled herself for repose, when not even a mouse dared scamper in the wainscot, and when Mr. Ripple himself sat amid the ruins of his complexion--this was defying the lightning and inviting Jove's revenge indeed.
Nevertheless, fortified by three bottles of a vintage that held the heart of France in its crimson depths, Charles recklessly knocked at the front door of the Great House, not once, but twice or thrice, with added vigour in the repetition. The sound sent the Beau's taper fingers a full two inches deep into a pomade compounded of some particularly fine Provencal almonds and the fat of foxes, the whole famous for removing those pectinated wrinkles that cluster at the edge of middle-aged lips. The fragrant grease, wedged beneath his nails, caused him to press thumb to fingers with an exclamation of fastidious displeasure.
The clatter of the second and third assault froze him to his chair with a sense of impending calamity.
Gog and Magog were fast asleep dreaming their gaudy dreams of Africa. Mrs. Binn, Mr. Ripple's intelligent cook, was snoring in the starlight of an upper chamber; Polly and Molly, Mr. Ripple's equally intelligent maids, were dreaming discreet dreams also in an upper chamber. Mr. Mink alone of the royal household was awake, engaged upon the overwhelmingly tricky job of frizzling his master's newest wig, and therefore quite unable, during this capillary crisis, to attend to the affairs of the world or the devil, knocked either never so loudly.
Consequently Mr. Ripple had to open the door himself, for if the knocking were to continue, many heads might peer from the Crescent windows, and the morning's rumour of the occurrence damage his authority.
It is characteristick of the Beau that in this critical juncture of affairs, he preserved his faculties so intact, that he was able without affectation to choose deliberately between a dressing-gown of flowered damask and a more diaphanous wrapper of dove-grey China silk. In deference to the season he selected the latter.
As he passed the door of his third dressing-room, he could see Mr. Mink, apparently unconscious of anything untoward in the air, blowing with steady breaths upon a remarkably hot pair of curling-tongs. The calm demeanour of his gentleman restored whatever was still lacking to Mr. Ripple's perfect equilibrium of mind.
With gentle steps, he descended the quiet stairs and, candlestick in hand, proceeded to draw back the cunningly wrought bolts of the front door.
"Mr. Ripple, I must speak to you," said Charles.
"Charles," said the Beau, "this visit is either vastly important or--it is vastly impertinent. Pray, what is your business, sir?"
"Business?" repeated Charles, on whom the effort of concentration was beginning to tell slightly. "Business?"
"Yes, business, sir, business; for I presume you are not situated on my doorstep for pleasure."
"I want to speak to you."
"Come to-morrow."
"Nay, sir, I must speak with you now. I'm in a devilish mess and need the advice of a man who has seen--who has seen----"
"Well, sir?" said the Beau, shading his candle in such a way that the pallid flickering rays lit up the young man's countenance.
"D----! I don't know, Ripple, but for God's sake don't stand there with that infernal candle dancing all over my face. Let me come in."
Whether it was the note of misery in our hero's voice or his drawn face or merely a whim of a great man's naturally eccentrick mind that made the Beau beckon Charles to follow him upstairs to the tall white drawing-room, where even still the fire glowed dully, will never be known. Any way, beckon to him he did, and having set down the taper on the high mantelpiece, seated himself beside the fire and began meditatively to toast his embroidered morocco pumps.
There they sat in the great drawing-room, the King and his Heir Presumptive, and very ghostly they looked in the wan light, and very unreal the whole experience seemed to Charles in after life.
"'Tis about this book."
"What book?"
"This satire."
"You wrote it?"
"Aye," with great weariness.
"You wrote it? 'Foregad, Charles, I should never have believed that."
"But I never--I never wrote those lines."
"What lines?" Mr. Ripple, having admitted much, would admit no more.
"About Miss Courteen and the Maze, and the whole d----d, d----d, d---- d----"
No substantive was strong enough to suit the emphatick epithets thrice repeated.
"And who, may I ask, was the author of those graceful stanzas?"
"I know, but--but, Ripple--I owed the blackguard money--the Chinese Masquerade--I knew his name all the while--if harm comes of this affair, 'tis my fault--but by G----, I'll call him out, yes, I'll call him out, I'll call him out, I'll call him out, and I'll----"
"Go to bed," said Mr. Ripple peremptorily.
"What d'ye mean?"
"You fool, you're drunk. We'll talk of this to-morrow. Good night, Mr. Lovely. By the way, who was the author of those graceful stanzas?"
"Proof, eh? what d'ye say--proof--ha-ha-ha! proof! Why the proof of the pudding's in the eating. Isn't that so? But I've found, I've found the author, and I'll walk with him in Curtain Mead--in Curtain Mead by moonlight, eh? and by the powers, you shall act for me."
"Sir, this flippancy is intolerable."
"Who's flippant--who's intol--erol--erable, sir? I say I'll pay him with six inches of smallsword."
"You forget my rules, Mr. Lovely."
"Rules? Rules? What's the good of rules? He has insulted me and her."
I think you will agree with me that Charles was drunk enough to be very undignified. Mr. Lovely Senior appeared again, maudlin and quarrelsome. The Beau, who remembered him, winced at the resemblance.
"This interview is very repugnant to my sense of decorum," he protested. "I beg you will take your leave, sir. The whole affair needs the elucidation of the morning; this candle is insufficient. Moreover, the hour is late; the fire is low; I make it a rule to be asleep by midnight whenever possible."
"There you go again!" cried Charles, jumping up and walking with feverish gestures and unsteady legs round about the room. "Rules! Rules! Rules! 'Foregad, Sir, I tell you, you cannot make rules for life and death."
"But you can make many excellent rules for living and dying. One of the best of these is moderation in liquor."
Charles went back to the Blue Boar not quite sure whether he had told Beau Ripple a very great deal or nothing at all. He remembered so little of what he had said that next morning he came to the conclusion that it was nothing at all. He was glad of this, for somehow when the effects of the Burgundy wore off, he did not feel disposed to attempt the barricade of the Great little Man's modish prejudice. Anything in the nature of an intrigue would be distasteful to such an emotional ascetick.
So Charles stayed late in bed on Tuesday morning and took no advantage of the invitation grimly issued the night before.
In the afternoon, being dejected in spirits, and finding all the world gone a-hunting, or a-fishing, or a-wenching, he betook himself to the World Turned Upside Down, a noted house for old red wines. While he sat in the taproom discussing life with an elderly bagman, one of the hostlers of the Blue Boar to whom he had confided his destination brought him a note.
"D---- his eyes," said Charles, crumpling the paper to a perfumed ball, and flicking it towards the undulating surface of the elderly bagman's rubied nose.
"D---- his eyes," and, turning to his target, he inquired whether the latter would drink Port or Burgundy.
Chapter the Twenty-fourth
DAISH'S ROOMS
Mr. Jeremy Daish, as I told you many pages back, was remarkably like a Cremona violin. Conceive then this elderly instrument of the Muses making a final inspection of his polished floor, preparatory to the invasion of my lady Bunbutter's red-heeled rout.
I went into Daish's Rooms the other day, for they still exist as the storehouse of a prosperous ironmonger who is not above unbending at Christmas time so far as to display a variety of choice knick-knacks wrought by the Curtain Wells Amateur Copper-Beaters' Association. The famous frieze carved by an Italian immigrant still exists, and makes a suitable background for the exhibition of patent mouse-traps. Among all the brass gongs and Japanese flower-pots, above the mowing machines and oil-stoves of varied price and power I was pleased to detect the old iron hooks whence long ago hung the gilt mirrors that held the unimpaired reflections of this gay history's characters. For a moment, amid the bleak utility of the stores, I half fancied the swish of a broidered petticoat and the whisper of a painted fan, smelt Eau de Chypre and heard the Minuet in Ariadne. I shall not visit Daish's Rooms again; the ghosts have too much power to wring my heart with the tears and laughter of spent joys.
"It's a very inconvenient store-room," said the dapper manager, "I think Mr. Bugloss intends to pull it down next year."
Everything portended a successful evening's entertainment. The hautboys, the flutes, the fiddles and the harp were drinking hot negus extra strong in order to spur them to unwonted achievements of melody. Prudence and Deborah, Mr. Daish's comely daughters, who never appeared in the galleries of the Blue Boar so that their attendance on occasions like the present might possess the charm at once of condescension and novelty, were busily puffing their caps and smoothing their pinners, and from time to time glancing in the direction of the gilt mirrours just to see that the wax candles were not forming ominous shrouds liable to mar the gaiety of my lady Bunbutter's agreeable entertainment.
Waiters came and peeped through a door which probably led to the supper-room and the three footmen in black plush laced with silver braid were engaged in a dignified consultation over the glittering knobs of their tall Malacca canes.
The wheels of the first coach crackle suddenly above the murmurous quiet of preparation. Tremendously hooped and highly wigged, my lady Bunbutter has arrived and is entirely approving of the arrangements made by Mr. Jeremy Daish for the fitting entertainment of a distinguished and fashionable company.
Here comes the latter very splendid, prodigiously well-bred and thoroughly determined to criticize the musick and the supper and my lady Bunbutter herself with merciless perseverance. Here comes the Most Honourable the Marquis of Hurricane and his eldest son the Earl of Squall and his second son Lord Augustus Wind and Lady Mary Wind and Lady Winifred Wind, and his son-in-law El Conde de Scirocco and the sleepy Contessa, but lud! my lady, her ladyship was unable to appear and begs to send her apologies. Her dog, my lady, has developed a quinsy, most unaccountable.
Here come the Earl of Cinderton and the Honourable Mr. Harthe-Brusshe, and the Lady Angela Tongs, his married daughter.
Here comes Mrs. Courteen and Miss Phyllida Courteen with Major Constantine Tarry and Mr. Gregory Moon close behind.
Here is young Miss Kitcat with Captain Mann who for all he was so disreputable was nevertheless tantamount to the success of the Cotillon.
Here come old General Morton and Miss Susan Morton.
In fact, here comes everybody of any importance in Curtain Wells; and the fiddlers are tuning up.
Yet for all the fiddlers are inviting the world to dance, for all the world declares the whole entertainment promises to be a grand success (though not so grand as it should be, considering the ample means at the disposal of my lady Bunbutter whose father was able to leave a large fortune to a milliner in Soho), her ladyship herself casts many an anxious glance towards the entrance. The courtiers have arrived but the King is still absent, and absent he is likely to remain having caught a slight nasal catarrh from his contact with the night weather, brought about by Mr. Lovely. For this story his absence was even more important in its consequences than my Lady Bunbutter dreamed, since if the Beau had been present on this occasion I doubt he would have persuaded our heroine to give up all thoughts of elopements, seductions, stratagems and rope-ladder courtships. As it fell out, there was nobody to encourage the unromantick side of her, that is to say, nobody whose opinion she could honestly respect.
Mr. Francis Vernon had hired the old dancing hall for a midnight party of farewell; and the old dancing hall still possessed an oak door which opened on a long corridor which in its turn opened into the new and improved dancing hall of Daish's Rooms. Halfway along this corridor was a recessed glasshouse now bare of vegetation, bleak and unfriendly in the chilly moonlight but a very convenient place for the renewal of true-lovers' vows when one of the lovers had not been invited to my Lady Bunbutter's rout. So in the press of the opening gavottes, as Phyllida passed down the side of the room to wait beside her mother's empty chair, long white fingers plucked at the black silk mittens that netted her soft little hand. Phyllida started and, looking up, saw the fingers withdraw themselves through the space left by a half-opened door.
She looked round in affright, but the fiddlers were busy over the gentle tune and all the world of scandal was dancing or about to dance. The thrill of his touch gave her strength enough to make up her mind and, without more than a moment's hesitation, she slipped through the doorway whose opening was obscured by greenery.
A solitary candle lit the long corridor with fitful draughty light.
"Come," said Vernon; and, taking his arm, she went down the passage which seemed to stretch far away--to ruin perhaps, but the end was not perceptible owing to the scarce illumination.
Soon they were alone in the chilly glasshouse with the moon and a star or two besides.
"To-morrow, my dearest life," he whispered.
"No, no," said Phyllida.
"To-morrow," he went on, "a post-chaise will be waiting by the toyshop, and on the seat a riding hood of peacock blue that to-day I bought for my love."
"No! No! Amor, dear Amor, I am afraid."
"Afraid, dear heart, afraid?"
Far off sounded the musick and far off the laughter of the world.
"Afraid that misery will come of it."
"Misery, my beloved? I will cherish you for ever."
"Amor! Amor! I'm afraid. Something, I cannot say what, I cannot explain my feelings, but something frightens me, I feel--oh! I feel as if I were walking in a dark wet garden. I feel as if--as if the laurels and the evergreens held a knife."
Vernon clasped her to him.
"My dear and my dear, they hold no more than an arrow; the arrow that has pierced our hearts."
Certainly our villain was play-acting, but he was his own audience and that juxtaposition is as near to sincerity as even your hero attains.
"You won't betray your Phyllida?"
The appeal caught fire from the flaming cheeks of a maid and burned a way direct, poignant, passionate, right through the lustre and tinsel of his emotional costume.
"You won't betray your Phyllida?" The question was such an one as circulating libraries knew very well. It was asked by many a contemporary Musidora or Clarinda of fiction. Yet so tremulous were the lips that asked it, lips frail as rose-leaves and, withal, ardent as wine, that Vernon shuddered. For the first time in his life he had raised a force. He was at home with Ranelagh romps, with patched beauties of Vauxhall, mistresses of intrigue whose fans had become a part of their bodies, or better, whose bodies were no more than the appendage of their fans, light, airy things where Love danced in a mask and could be shut up at will.
Now for the first time he stared into eyes which held immortality. He saw himself Point de Vise but intolerably diminished.
Vernon noticed that the cheek nearer to him flamed more crimson and for a while he was troubled by the mystery of Love's birth. Elation swung him to the skies and, catching Phyllida to his heart, he whispered of constancy, swore that love would endure for ever and hardly knew himself for a liar.
He never spoke again of pearls, and from that moment truly desired her for the youth and the mystery of herself.
With a pang of tenderness he let her go, watched her hurry down the corridor like a crimson Autumn leaf that is blown along by the wind. By the little door she looked back at him, and from the tips of her fingers sped elfin kisses which on the wings of the musick of flutes and fiddles were borne in grace and beauty.
She had promised. With a sigh Mr. Francis Vernon went back to superintend the arrangements for his farewell party. She had promised, and, as she slipped unobserved into the glitter and heat of Daish's famous Rooms, never seemed like one who has stood a long while in moonlight.
What mattered the censorious world? The softness of his black velvet sleeve thrilled her, and, forgetting all else, she began to build her house of dreams. What a house it was, with casements that looked on every month of the marching years. Now it was December when the snowflakes were falling. Down the corridor she and her lover moved in the grey light, but the casements were lined with ferns and stars and jewels of frost, so they sought Spring in the changing fire-gardens of burning logs. February went by with her showers and her celandines, her snowdrops and thrushes that sing on bare branches. That casement in her house of dreams was gilded round and the sill carved with posies and true-lovers' knots, for through it she had seen Love for the first time. March came in by night with a great noise of wind, yet even in the gusty darkness she could put out her hands to touch a velvet sleeve as black as the gloom enclosed by the open lattice. Every casement in her house of dreams was full of delight, even the quaint little window at the very end of the corridor whose ledge was the haunt of drifted leaves. In the far-off autumn he would still be by her side.
Somebody asked her to step a minuet, yet while her body danced, while her feet kept tune to the twinkling rhythm, while her fan fluttered to mortal harmonies, her soul was away with Love--God knows the spot, but 'twas somewhere mighty near the top of this green world. Now she was rocking a wooden cradle while the wind in the wide black chimney crooned an echo to the old nursery song she was singing. Ah! sir or madam, when a young maiden starts to build her house of dreams, I think, if she be a wise maid, she builds the nursery first of all.
This wonderful house had a number of clocks, tall clocks, short clocks, thin clocks, fat clocks, round clocks, square clocks, clocks on the wall, clocks on the mantelpiece, clocks in the corners; and every clock was ticking away to a tune of its own, for in the house of dreams there was never a moment that did not deserve perpetual commemoration.
Somebody asked her to step a gavotte. At the end of the garden of this wonderful house was a green wicket, and when you had walked through a coppice of birches and wild raspberries that ripen with the corn, you found yourself on the London road. It ran straight as a dart over hill and down dale, through villages whose cottages were only built to stare at the gay equipages that rattled past, for nothing alive was visible save a few geese on a blue and white pond beneath a blue and white sky. Phyllida's mind was a book of old wives' tales and her London was the golden London of Dick Whittington.
Fled were all the outraged heroines of dog-eared novels in greasy circulation. The long reproaches, stilted protestations, vows, regrets and declarations had vanished. The nodding spinsters behind country counters who selected the literature of their clients and declared how affecting was this tale, how full of sensibility was that one, had gradually lost all definite shape like the volumes they doled out so assiduously. Fled, too, with the vapours of young maidenhood, were some of the sweets. Nevertheless I doubt there was not a soul to regret the old Phyllida save perhaps Betty and Dick Combleton, the Squire's youngest son away down in Hampshire.
Miss Sukey Morton began to talk to her of young Tom Chalkley. She told how he had passed their house, how he had looked up at the window, and how by the greatest ill luck she happened to be rather pale that morning. She babbled on about the imagined progress of an affair which had never truly existed. To Phyllida who should have been sympathetick, it was rather wearisome chatter. Suddenly Miss Morton shocked her dear Courteen very much by asking if she had discovered who was satirized in those twelve lines beginning ... Phyllida interrupted with a curt negative, so curt that her darling Morton regarded her with black-eyed curiosity.
"And how should I know, Sukey, how should I know?"
"My dearest Miss Courteen, there is no need to be angry about a simple question."
"These discoveries are all so low," complained Phyllida.
"Oh, vastly low, though for my part I think the hussy deserves censure since she has made every young woman ridiculous."
With this commentary Miss Morton left her friend, and Phyllida, wondering all the while if she knew the whole affair, was more than ever firmly determined to elope to-morrow afternoon with her Amor.
