Part 26

The scene of the catastrophe was peculiarly solemn. The chariot had struck a column of stone that rose suddenly out of the ground as if the finger of a Titan had been frozen into perpetuity to mark some early and gigantick travail of his mother Earth. The lamp with feeble yellow light made monstrous shadows of the huge features it sought vainly to illuminate. So far as he could judge they were nearly at the bottom of a deep ravine along which swept a torrent whose magnitude was impossible to estimate, since the roar of the waterfall gave it in the darkness a dreadful importance.

"It must be close on two o'clock," said Vernon, "let's leave this disastrous vehicle. We may find shelter somewhere over this valley."

Phyllida drew the riding hood round her and, taking her lover's arm, silently acquiesced in this proposal.

As they drew near the waterfall, the thunder of it made her shiver. They crossed the torrent by a stone bridge that seemed to have become a natural feature in the landskip.

On the far side by a common impulse they stopped and Vernon leaned down to kiss her face.

"My Phyllida," he murmured; and held the lamp so that he could see the shimmer and gleam of love in her eyes. They stood silent, enraptured, and the hot yellow lamp away down in the depths of this world-forsaken valley became the very torch of Hymen.

With slow steps they climbed the opposite hill, deserting the waters and the rocks, the ferns, the little bridge, for the grey starshine above the gloom. Yet the awe of that solemn ravine, which they had reached after such peril, enthralled them still and I think both felt as if somehow their love had been consecrated by a divine being. It was quite a relief from the strain of reverence when Vernon informed Phyllida that there was no sign of any human habitation.

"What shall we do with the carriage?" asked the latter.

"Don't fret about that."

"And the horses?"

"They must take their chance. I wish I knew the hour."

"You said it must be two o'clock."

"The sun does not rise till half-past five. Three hours and a half. I wonder why we left the chariot. It would be wiser to go back. You will be cold in this open country."

The wind was blowing shrewdly up there in the starlight, and Phyllida would not deny she was cold and tired.

"We had better go back to the chaise. 'Twas warmer in the valley."

Yet both of them felt a strange disinclination to risk the disillusion of return till, suddenly, up there in the wind and starlight, terror caught them, and the noise of water tumbling over rocks gave them a sense of security from this wide place of silence.

"'Tis a monstrous uneasy country," said Vernon, voicing in common speech the sense of woe that oppressed him.

"I feel frightened," Phyllida agreed, "let us go back to the water."

They stopped to listen as people will whose minds have been much wrought upon. There was nothing but the lisp of the wind in the bents of last year's grass and a melo-dious sighing in the boughs of larches. Yet never throughout that adventurous night had Phyllida's heart pattered at such a pace, never had she been so near to shrieking aloud. Without longer delay they turned back in the direction of the coombe, walking with quick steps as if to avoid an invisible pursuit. Half-way down the hill, Vernon stooped to gather a primrose.

"Here's a daisy," he said.

"A daisy," Phyllida cried. "Why, foolish Amor, 'tis a primrose," and whatever fiend or goblin followed in their wake fled in affright at the sound of her rippling laughter.

I think nothing shows more conclusively that Mr. Vernon was in love with Miss Courteen than his indifference to her ridicule.

"Sweetest," he said, "I'm ignorant of the best things like flowers," and forthwith began to tell Phyllida of his life in London, so that when presently they stood again upon the bridge, he was raising his voice in order to describe his first impressions of rustick Marybone, to which he added a very nice account of the view of the Hampstead Hills.

Under the influence of this narrative, the scene lost some of its grandeur. An air of grottoes, of stone embellishments, arbours, and cunning recesses shed itself over the landskip. One heard comparisons with this or that famous haunt of sight-seeing mobs. In fact both Vernon and Phyllida, being English, felt their late raptures were unbecoming, and having excused a lapse into sensibility by the fright they had suffered, proceeded to declare that the chasm, far from being Titanick, would make a mighty fine site for an excursion of pleasure. At least Vernon clothed the opinion in words, Phyllida was too much fatigued to do more than murmur a weary assent.

They found the chariot just as they had left it and the four horses browsing upon the grass. He handed her into the vehicle, made her comfortable with what rugs and cloaks he could collect and left her to rest with the assurance he would remain close at hand. She gave his hand a tired clasp and almost immediately fell fast asleep. Vernon tethered the horses to various stumps in the vicinity, and proceeded to doze and dream away the cold hours before dawn in the shelter of a particularly large and overhanging ledge of rock. The sound of the falling water that deafened him with its roar when first he heard it, now soothed him like a gentle lullaby.

I cannot do justice to the scene: Rembrandt with his powerful and gloomy imagination could have etched it. He would have made the two lovers present themselves to the onlooker in their right proportions to the scenery. You and I are too near to the candlelight of Curtain Wells to believe in the romantick desolation wherein they seemed of no more importance than the ferns that hung down their green tongues to the limpid pools hollowed from jagged rocks. Vernon, huddled in the shelter of the crag, with his hat pressed over his eyes, his knees arched as high as his chin, might well have been a belated herdsman who, having flung himself into this valley to avoid the upland wind, had been bewitched by the magick of running water to dream away the night. The horses in the black shadows and the ruined chariot had an air of Gothick melancholy; the yellow lamp that glimmered fitfully in the heart of the abyss served only to throw into more huge relief the neighbouring rocks, while it lighted the thresholds of gaping caverns that stretched beyond to unimaginable depths of solitude and gloom. The night wore on and over the hill the lovers had found so depressing to their spirits, like a sword in the twilight, lay the first grey streak of dawn. Phyllida and her lover slept while the features of the landskip began to win again their own outlines, while the rocks that were wrapped in the warm velvet of night appeared with a cold sheen. The grey streak widened to a broad lake whose margin was flecked with the faint hues of lavender and mauve. Birds began to twitter and chirp in the trees and bushes that overhung the rocks below, while the winds of dawn fluted in the small withy bed beside the bridge.

Very wan in the morning twilight, Mr. Charles Lovely and Mr. Anthony Clare clattered down the deep lane that led to the valley. Their horses' flanks glistened with the sweat of hard travel and the riders rose hardly to the jerking downhill motion.

Just as the rose-tipped fingers of Aurora plucked the lavender from the skies, Charles and Tony caught sight of the chariot and just as they pulled their horses to a standstill, Mr. Vernon woke up. It is characteristick of the latter's new-found consideration that his first action was to warn them with a gesture of Phyllida's presence fast asleep inside. Charles tapped his holsters in reply and pointed up the opposite slope. Vernon rose to follow his pursuers with a backward glance in the direction of the chariot.

When they were over the bridge and out of Phyllida's hearing Charles reined in his walking horse and inquired if Vernon was willing to give him satisfaction.

"For what?" said the latter with a sneer.

"For insulting my Muse," said Charles, determined if possible not to make Phyllida the subject of the quarrel.

"Your muse?" echoed Vernon, with the faintest intonation of surprise, "but I promised you satisfaction for that a month hence."

Vernon was equally determined that Phyllida should be the direct occasion of the duel, if duel there must be.

The rosy heavens became a sheet of vivid scarlet intersected with the golden bars of the fast rising sun. Up he came in a blaze and dazzle of glory, lustrous and invigorating; still the colour was not quite effaced, and on the three men that scarlet dawn made an invincible impression of disaster and woe. A red sky is a warning to shepherds and sailors, no doubt it was ominous to lovers.

The summit of the hill was reached and involuntarily the three paused in their wrangling to marvel at the extensive landslip suffused with the amber haze of earliest morn. The homesteads in sight seemed untenanted: there was not a single column of curling smoke to mark the presence of humanity.

Where they were standing, the road was bordered on either side by a wide stretch of level sward. On the left was a spinney of larches showing as yet no crimson plumes of Spring, round which numbers of rabbits gambolled in air that sparkled like golden wine. It seemed indeed more like July than April, and only the bare trees told the true tale of the season's youthfulness. Up here on the top of the world the three men drank in the beauty of the universe and, having as it were performed their orisons, turned to arrange the details of a bloody encounter.

"I promised I would meet you where you would in a month's time," repeated Vernon obstinately.

"But I prefer to meet you now," replied Charles.

"I have no one to act for me."

"Mr. Clare will act for both of us."

"That is an irregular proceeding."

"I don't care."

"And Miss Courteen?" Vernon was resolved to drag Charles to the real point at issue. "What is to become of Miss Courteen?"

"In either event, Mr. Clare will be able to escort her back to Curtain Wells."

"D---- n you," said Vernon, roused by his enemy's assumption of guardianship. "And what if she wishes to stay with me?"

"Mr. Lovely has her mother's authority to conduct her home," interposed Clare.

"What you two prim busybodies don't appear to understand is that Miss Courteen prefers to remain with me."

"Miss Courteen is not her own mistress. She is not of age," said Clare.

"And pray how do you propose to make her accompany you?"

"Why, in this way," interrupted Charles, shaking off his friend's arm, "in this way, Mr. Vernon. If you decline to meet me with pistols, by G---- I'll thrash you senseless with my crop."

Vernon's hands twitched for a moment, but he had learned a new restraint, gained a new dignity from the wondrous ride and with scarcely a perceptible quiver in his voice begged to point out to his friend Mr. Lovely that if he shot him, he should not scruple to shoot Mr. Clare were the latter to stand in his way.

"But what if you're shot, Sir?" cried Charles, betraying in his eagerness the true reason for his desire to force an instant encounter, "as by G---- you deserve to be for murdering the poor little Major."

Vernon was perplexed.

"The Major? Is he dead? I had nothing to do with his death." The simplicity of the denial almost convinced his listeners that he was speaking the truth.

"Come, Sirrah, will you meet me? said Charles, lifting his crop.

"Listen, you pair of puppies," said Vernon between his teeth. "I could have put a bullet into either of you at any time during the last five minutes, and by heavens, I don't know why I kept my finger from the trigger. Yes, I do," he shouted. "I've got a chance of happiness and I'm not going to throw it away by having your blood on my head. You're an interfering pair of fools, but I cheated one of you at cards and I played a low game over the book, and by G----, I believe my father was a gentleman. I'll meet you, Mr. Lovely, now."

With these words he flung down on the grass at Charles' feet the two pistols which the skirts of his riding-coat had concealed.

"I'll step fifteen paces," said Mr. Clare, hiding his emotion with a piece of practical utility. And, as he began to measure the ground, away down in the broken chariot, Phyllida woke with a start. She was surprized by the daylight and called to her lover. Only birdsong answered her voice. In sudden dismay, presentiment hanging over her like the aftermath of an evil dream, she jumped from the chariot. Intuition, perhaps the remembrance of last night's fear, made her look towards the summit of the slope. In silhouette against the golden sky, she saw three figures. Breathless with horror she ran in their direction. Up the hill she laboured. It was still cold from the night air and foreboding was heavy upon her heart. Up the hill she struggled, leaving in her path many fluttering pieces of muslin where eager feet had torn the frail flounces. Down the road, she saw them level their weapons. "One, two, three," came in measured tones along the still air of the morning. There were two shots, the scud of frightened rabbits to their burrows, a reeling figure, a cloud across the sun, a mist over life, and she was kneeling in the dewy grass beside Amor.

"Oh, God!" she screamed, "He's dead. Oh! Oh! Oh!"

That anguished cry wounded Lovely deeper than any leaden bullet, for it killed his hopes.

At the touch of his dear one, Vernon opened his dark eyes.

"Here's a bunch of primroses," he murmured, "not daisies. I picked them, Phyllida ... for you ... not daisies ... primroses...."

And so with thoughts of flowers, Mr. Francis Vernon died. Pray let that sentence be his epitaph.

Charles, watching the maid stare into the sun with eyes whose light seemed fled with the swift-flying soul of the dead man, wished passionately--wildly--that he were the quiet body there in the dewy grass.

"What shall we do?" he murmured brokenly to Clare.

"Leave her alone for a while."

"What a mistake it has been."

They walked away with cautious steps and spoke in whispers as if they were afraid.

"What right had I to interfere between lovers?"

"You did it for the best."

"I know, I know, but what a d----d number of silly actions are done for the best."

"To-day is the first of April," said Clare, seeking with a commonplace to relieve the tension of Charles's distracted mind.

"Is it? What an April fool fortune has made of me."

_Chapter the Thirty-seventh_

APRIL FOOLS

The last ejaculation of Chapter XXXVI will serve as an admirable summary of the positions in which a number of our characters found themselves on April the First, in the year whose annals include this small history.

There is a peculiar happiness of choice in making the first day of that treacherous and feminine month coincide with the humiliation of a large number of worthy people. We plunge into April with a prodigious expectation of jollity: we delight in the sound of her name, liquid as the song of a thrush; we strut in the sunshine, fling off our surtouts, recline on banks where the painted adder lurks and the East wind cuts down from the high pastures, and altogether behave in a very foolish fashion. The heavens have taken a deeper blue; so among the cowslips we contemplate their azure until a black squall blows along, stings our rash necks with perilous hailstones and drives us headlong to the shelter of the pale green hedgerows. There on the drifted leaves of dead Octobers, we are scratched by the crimson thorns of briers and, slowly acquiring an extensive rheumatism, wish very sincerely we had never stirred from the hearth where the wise pages of Montaigne or La Rochefoucauld lie dog-eared through our precipitate adventure.

Yet, after all, it is better to be a fool in April than a wise man in November. Pit and boxes hear the ravings of the mad Ophelia with the sense of superiority secured by plush, but the most of them would be better men and women for having gathered that nosegay of columbines and rue.

So drop a tear for Phyllida. She was the heroine of the piece, the gentlest, tenderest maid. Sorrow has laid his grey fingers upon her heart and, though she may grow old and wise and wed a squire with well-tilled acres and spacious hall, to the end of her life a poignant experience, on which you have been the privileged intruder, will modulate her lightest laugh with a deeper harmony.

At the _Basket of Roses_ there were April fools that day.

"Charles made up his mind and did no good," said Mr. Ripple. "I hesitated, and was in no better case. What is one to do?"

Sir George Repington was quite broken up by the affair. Years ago he had built a bower in April which was destroyed in a morning. In old age, Spring fooled him again.

Like the heavy footnote of a tragedy, Mr. Moon, lately arrived by the Wells waggon, employed himself with practical suggestions. Mr. Lovely must retire over the water for a while, the sooner the better. Mrs. Courteen and Miss Phyllida must return to Hampshire. He would make posting arrangements; their baggage must be sent after them. Tarry must be buried in the parish church at home; he could not allow a neighbour to lie in a strange churchyard. For once in his life, Mr. Moon was of real use to a situation and, in the protracted discussions of expedients for hushing the matter up and conveying the principals safely into seclusion, the grief of many hearts was temporarily allayed.

"You must come back with me to Curtain Wells, George," decided Mr. Ripple, "we must not allow the world to invent any more explanations of the affair. I doubt the wildest rumours are flying round. In a month or two, Charles can return if he will; meanwhile you and I, George, will give ourselves the pleasure of paying his debts."

In the dusk of to-morrow's dawn, the vivid yellow chaise of Beau Ripple rattled over the cobbles of Curtain Wells, and drew up before the Great House. A dexterous and hurried toilet was performed with Mr. Mink's assistance and the watchers from the windows, ignorant whether the Great little Man was returned, were immensely gratified to see him emerge from his front door, goblet in hand, and wearing a new buff suit of unparagoned cut with very full trimming round the skirts.

The Exquisite Mob buzzed around the Beau's pedestal with a scarcely contained curiosity. Mr. Oboe, the Physician, was almost more subservient than usual, and not a single person inquired after his neighbour's health or expatiated upon his own. Gog and Magog exposed their ivory teeth in a permanent smile of welcome, and in the kitchen of the Great House, Mrs. Binn, the Beau's intelligent cook, prepared a breakfast of the most savoury character. His ascent to the rostrum produced an expectant silence.

"My lords, ladies and gentlemen," he began, "I owe you a profound apology. You will, of course, understand that in my capacity as Master of the Ceremonies of Curtain Wells, I am under no obligation to any one, but as Horace Ripple, I feel that my conduct in deserting you yesterday morning without any notice of my intention deserves an explanation. When I inform you that a domestick difficulty not entirely unconnected with my censorious office called for hasty adjustment, you will, I am sure, pardon me for not divulging the details of a very unfortunate affair. If I may trespass to such an extent upon your good nature, I should like to make my late adventure the subject of a short admonition. As you are aware, I am not accustomed to mingle with the practical politicks of my matutinal oration any allusion to your moral welfare: I should esteem it highly impertinent on my part, were I to usurp in such a way the prerogative of our friend the Rector. Nevertheless I am inclined to make an exception to my rule this morning, the more so as I feel it my duty to inform you of my impending resignation."

The Beau raised his monocle in order to regard the consternation of the Exquisite Mob.

"That event may not occur yet a while; at any rate I shall remain in my present position during this season. Next October, however, I hope to present you with a younger, I will not say worthier, successor. Naturally I shall still spend the greater part of my time in Curtain Wells, but with the advance of years, I shall wish to be excused from many of your more nocturnal gaieties. That desire I could not gratify were I still to hold the reins of responsibleness. However, this is not an oration of farewell, so I will not longer emphasize the melancholy topick of mutability.

"The advice I would offer you this morning is, next to the duty of a regular course of chalybeate, the most important item in human happiness. My lords, ladies and gentlemen, never meddle with other people's business when it happens to concern the heart or the soul of a human creature. Do not, because you are older or because you have read more widely or because you have travelled across Europe or because you have dined with a Minister, or because you suffer from any of the numerous delusions of superiority, do not be too sure that you are competent to interfere with somebody who has enjoyed none of these accidental advantages. Admonish the erring child, warn the impetuous young woman, chide the libertine, reproach the gamester, set an example of continence to all the world, but abstain from direct interference; and if an unpleasant doom overwhelms the object of your interest, pray do not suppose that you would have been able to avert it. My lords, ladies and gentlemen, you are one and all the genteelest of companions, but so far as my theology has taken me, you are none of you gods or goddesses, except in the hyperbole of poetick dedications.

"You have already heard the announcement of your forthcoming entertainments; let me add to their number with a very cordial invitation to the Great House, next Tuesday week. Finally, let me add that during my tenure of office, I shall hope to make these personal encounters a very frequent delight to your obliged humble servant Horace Ripple. Oh, and pray let me assure you that my absence yesterday morning was in no way due to any desire on my part to celebrate the festival of the First of April. My lords, ladies and gentlemen, your very obedient."

With these words the Great little Man descended from his pedestal, and was presently in affable conversation with a number of men and women of rank and fashion.

You will remember that when, it seems an age ago, we first saw Beau Ripple and the Exquisite Mob, we also met Mr. Vernon and Miss Phyllida Courteen. For my own part, I feel that the Pump Room on this morning lacked vitality for all its glitter and stir of elegant movement. I miss the swansdown muff and the blushing, eager face of Phyllida. I miss those little notes that dropped like feathers from the wings of Love. I miss the ingenuous artifice and sweet stratagems of Phyllida and Betty and for all it would nearly break my heart to see her misery, I would fain be walking behind them away down in some budding Hampshire lane. They are still in a postchaise, however, and the musty odour is wringing her heart with an agony of regret. In what a world of memories will she live the summer through. The cuckoo will call in the green wood and the nightingale thrill the moonshine with her passionate song, but Phyllida will stare into the sun.

In a dip of the billowy downs, the harebells wave from their fragile stems and ladies' slippers glow with red and orange flames. Far below you can see the flashing wings of kestrels and hear the lapwing's desolate cry. The beech trees rustle and in the long dry grass the wind sighs continually. There she will sit hour after hour in the summer heat, until she can forget.