Part 21

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

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

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

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

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

"Polly! Polly Patch!"

"'Ess, mistress."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Chapter the Thirtieth_

SIR GEORGE REPINGTON

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

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

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

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

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

"To myself?" replied Miss Courteen taken aback.

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

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

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

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

"You know him?"

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

"This was my sister, his mother."

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

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

Sir George, noticing her embarrassment, introduced himself,

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

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

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

Phyllida clutched this conversational straw.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well-aired sheets and----"

"A grilled drumstick," insinuated the landlady.

"Well-aired sheets and----"

"The liver wing."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

"Yes, indeed, sir."

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

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

"But your mother?"

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

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

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

"Alone?" the elderly gentleman repeated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Chapter the Thirty-first_

A TALE WITH AN INTERRUPTED MORAL

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

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

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

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