Part 8

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.