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Gallantry: Dizain des Fetes Galantes

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Title: Gallantry: Dizain des Fetes Galantes

Author: James Branch Cabell


        
Release date: August 1, 2005 [eBook #8715]
                Most recently updated: April 20, 2013

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GALLANTRY: DIZAIN DES FETES GALANTES ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.










GALLANTRY

_Dizain des Fêtes Galantes_

By

JAMES BRANCH CABELL


WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER


"_Half in masquerade, playing the drawing-room or garden comedy of life,
these persons have upon them, not less than the landscape among the
accidents of which they group themselves with fittingness, a certain light
that we should seek for in vain upon anything real._"




TO

JAMES ROBINSON BRANCH

THIS VOLUME, SINCE IT TREATS OF GALLANTRY, IS DEDICATED, AS BOTH IN LIFE
AND DEATH AN EXPONENT OF THE WORD'S HIGHEST MEANING

"_A brutish man knoweth not, neither doth a fool understand this.... Shall
the throne of iniquity have fellowship with Thee, which frameth mischief by
a law?_"




INTRODUCTION


These paragraphs, dignified by the revised edition of _Gallantry_ and
spuriously designated An Introduction, are nothing more than a series of
notes and haphazard discoveries in preparation of a thesis. That thesis,
if it is ever written, will bear a title something academically like _The
Psychogenesis of a Poet; or Cabell the Masquerader_. For it is in this
guise--sometimes self-declared, sometimes self-concealed, but always as the
persistent visionary--that the author of some of the finest prose of our
day has given us the key with which (to lapse into the jargon of verse) he
has unlocked his heart.

On the technical side alone, it is easy to establish Cabell's poetic
standing. There are, first of all, the quantity of original rhymes that
are scattered through the dozen volumes which Cabell has latterly (and
significantly) classified as Biography. Besides these interjections which
do duty as mottoes, chapter-headings, tailpieces, dedications, interludes
and sometimes relevant songs, there is the volume of seventy-five
"adaptations" in verse, _From the Hidden Way_, published in 1916. Here
Cabell, even in his most natural rôle, declines to show his face and amuses
himself with a new set of masks labelled Alessandro de Medici, Antoine
Riczi, Nicolas de Caen, Theodore Passerat and other fabulous minnesingers
whose verses were created only in the mind of Cabell. It has pleased him to
confuse others besides the erudite reviewer of the _Boston Transcript_ by
quoting the first lines of the non-existent originals in Latin, Italian,
Provençal--thus making his skilful ballades, sestinas and the less mediæval
narratives part of a remarkably elaborate and altogether successful hoax.

And, as this masquerade of obscure Parnassians betrayed its creator,
Cabell--impelled by some fantastic reticence--sought for more subtle
makeshifts to hide the poet. The unwritten thesis, plunging abruptly into
the realm of analytical psychology, will detail the steps Cabell has taken,
as a result of early associative disappointments, to repress or at least
to disguise, the poet in himself--and it will disclose how he has failed.
It will burrow through the latest of his works and exhume his half-buried
experiments in rhyme, assonance and polyphony. This part of the paper will
examine _Jurgen_ and call attention to the distorted sonnet printed as a
prose soliloquy on page 97 of that exquisite and ironic volume. It will
pass to the subsequent _Figures of Earth_ and, after showing how the
greater gravity of this volume is accompanied by a greater profusion of
poetry _per se_ it will unravel the scheme of Cabell's fifteen essays in
what might be called contrapuntal prose. It will unscramble all the rhymes
screened in Manuel's monologue beginning on page 294, quote the metrical
innovations with rhymed vowels on page 60, tabulate the hexameters that
leap from the solidly set paragraphs and rearrange the brilliant fooling
that opens the chapter "Magic of the Image Makers." This last is in itself
so felicitous a composite of verse and criticism--a passage incredibly
overlooked by the most meticulous of Cabell's glossarians--that it deserves
a paper for itself. For here, set down prosaically as "the unfinished Rune
of the Blackbirds" are four distinct parodies--including two insidious
burlesques of Browning and Swinburne--on a theme which is familiar to us
to-day in _les mots justes_ of Mother Goose. "It is," explains Freydis,
after the thaumaturgists have finished, "an experimental incantation in
that it is a bit of unfinished magic for which the proper words have not
yet been found: but between now and a while they will be stumbled on, and
then this rune will live perpetually." And thus the poet, speaking through
the mouth-piece of Freydis, discourses on the power of words and, in one of
Cabell's most eloquent chapters, crystallizes that high mood, presenting
the case for poetry as it has been pleaded by few of her most fervid
advocates.

Here the thesis will stop quoting and argue its main contention from
another angle. It will consider the author in a larger and less technical
sense: disclosing his characters, his settings, his plots, even the entire
genealogical plan of his works, to be the design of a poet rather than a
novelist. The persons of Cabell's imagination move to no haphazard strains;
they create their own music. And, like a set of modulated _motifs_, they
combine to form a richer and more sonorous pattern. With its interrelation
of figures and interweaving of themes, the Cabellian "Biography" assumes
the solidity and shapeliness of a fugue, a composition in which all the
voices speak with equal precision and recurring clarity.

And what, the diagnostician may inquire, of the characters themselves? They
are, it will be answered, motivated by pity and irony; the tolerant humor,
the sympathetic and not too distant regard of their Olympian designer
agitate them so sensitively that we seldom see what strings are twitched.
These puppets seem to act of their own conviction--possibly because their
director is careful not to have too many convictions of his own. It may
have been pointed out before this that there are no undeviating villains
in his masques and, as many an indignant reviewer has expostulated, few
untarnished heroes. Cabell's, it will be perceived, is a frankly pagan
poetry. It has no texts with which to discipline beauty; it lacks moral
fervor; it pretends to no divinity of dogmatism. The image-maker is willing
to let his creatures ape their living models by fluctuating between
shifting conventions and contradictory ideals; he leaves to a more positive
Author the dubious pleasure of drawing a daily line between vice and
virtue. If Cabell pleads at all, he pleads with us not to repudiate a
Villon or a Marlowe while we are reviling the imperfect man in a perfect
poet. "What is man, that his welfare be considered?" questions Cabell,
paraphrasing Scripture, "an ape who chatters to himself of kinship with the
archangels while filthily he digs for groundnuts.... Yet do I perceive that
this same man is a maimed god.... He is under penalty condemned to compute
eternity with false weights and to estimate infinity with a yardstick--and
he very often does it."

This, the thesis will contend, is the only possible attitude to the mingled
apathy and abandon of existence--and it is, in fine, the poetic attitude.
Romantic it is, without question, and I imagine Cabell would be the last
to cavil at the implication. For, mocked by a contemptuous silence gnawing
beneath the howling energy of life, what else is there for the poet but the
search for some miracle of belief, some assurance in a world of illimitable
perplexities? It is the wish to attain this dream which is more real than
reality that guides the entire Cabell _epos_--"and it is this will that
stirs in us to have the creatures of earth and the affairs of earth, not as
they are, but as 'they ought to be.'"

Such a romantic vision, which concludes that glowing testament, _Beyond
Life_, is the shining thread that binds the latest of Cabell's novels
with the earliest of his short stories. It is, in effect, one tale he is
telling, a tale in which Poictesme and the more local Lichfield are, for
all their topographical dissimilarities, the same place, and all his people
interchangeable symbols of the changeless desires of men. Whether the
allegory is told in the terms of _Gallantry_ with its perfumed lights, its
deliberate artifice and its technique of badinage, or presented in the
more high-flying mood of _Chivalry_ with its ready passions and readier
rhetoric, it prefigures the subsequent pageant in which the victories might
so easily be mistaken for defeats. In this procession, amid a singularly
ordered riot of color, the figure of man moves, none too confidently but
with stirring fortitude, to an unrealized end. Here, stumbling through the
mazes of a code, in the habiliments of Ormskirk or de Soyecourt, he passes
from the adventures of the mind (Kennaston in _The Cream of the Jest_,
Charteris in _Beyond Life_) through the adventures of the flesh (_Jurgen_)
to the darker adventures of the spirit (Manuel in _Figures of Earth_).
Even this _Gallantry_, the most candidly superficial of Cabell's works, is
alive with a vigor of imagination and irony. It is not without significance
that the motto on the new title-page is: "Half in masquerade, playing the
drawing-room or garden comedy of life, these persons have upon them, not
less than the landscape among the accidents of which they group themselves,
a certain light that we should seek for in vain upon anything real."

The genealogically inclined will be happy to discover that _Gallantry_,
for all its revulsion from reality, deals with the perpetuated life of
Manuel in a strangely altered _milieu_. The rest of us will be quicker to
comprehend how subtly this volume takes its peculiar place in its author's
record of struggling dreams, how, beneath, a surface covered with political
finery and sentimental bric-à-brac, the quest goes on, stubbornly and often
stupidly, in a forgotten world made suddenly animate and as real as our
own.

And this, the thesis will conclude, is because Cabell is not as much a
masquerader as he imagines himself to be. None but a visionary could wear
so constantly upon his sleeve the desire "to write perfectly of beautiful
happenings." None but the poet, shaken with the strength of his vision,
could cry to-day, "It is only by preserving faith in human dreams that
we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true." For poetry, to
which all literature aspires, is not the shadow of reality but the image of
perfection, the light of disembodied beauty toward which creation gropes.
And that poetic consciousness is the key to the complex and half-concealed
art of James Branch Cabell.

LOUIS UNTERMEYER.

New York City,
_April, 1922._




CONTENTS


THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY

THE PROLOGUE

I SIMON'S HOUR

II LOVE AT MARTINMAS

III THE CASUAL HONEYMOON

IV THE RHYME TO PORRINGER

V ACTORS ALL

VI APRIL'S MESSAGE

VII IN THE SECOND APRIL

VIII HEART OF GOLD

IX THE SCAPEGOATS

X THE DUCAL AUDIENCE

LOVE'S ALUMNI: THE AFTERPIECE

THE EPILOGUE




THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY

_TO MRS. GRUNDY_


Madam,--It is surely fitting that a book which harks back to the manners
of the second George should have its dedication and its patron. And these
comedies claim naturally your protection, since it likewise appears
a custom of that era for the poet to dedicate his book to his most
influential acquaintance and the one least likely to value it.

Indeed, it is as proper that the plaudits of great persons be reserved for
great performances as it is undeniable these

      tiny pictures of that tiny time
  Aim little at the lofty and sublime.

Yet cognoscenti still esteem it an error in the accomplished Shakespeare
that he introduced a game of billiards into his portrayal of Queen
Cleopatra's court; and the impropriety had been equal had I linked the
extreme of any passion with an age and circle wherein abandonment to
the emotions was adjudged bucolic, nay, Madam, the Eumenides were very
terrifying at Delphi, no doubt, but deck them with paint, patch, and
panniers, send them howling among the _beau monde_ on the Pantiles, and
they are only figures of fun; nor may, in reason, the high woes of a second
Lear, or of a new Prometheus, be adequately lighted by the flambeaux of
Louis Quinze.

Conceive, then, the overture begun, and fear not, if the action of the play
demand a lion, but that he shall be a beast of Peter Quince's picking. The
ladies shall not be frighted, for our chief comedians will enact modish
people of a time when gallantry prevailed.

Now the essence of gallantry, I take it, was to accept the pleasures of
life leisurely and its inconveniences with a shrug. As requisites, a
gallant person will, of course, be "amorous, but not too constant, have
a pleasant voice, and possess a talent for love-letters." He will always
bear in mind that in love-affairs success is less the Ultima Thule of
desire than its _coup de grâce_, and he will be careful never to admit the
fact, especially to himself. He will value ceremony, but rather for its
comeliness than for its utility, as one esteeming the lily, say, to be a
more applaudable bulb than the onion. He will prink; and he will be at his
best after sunset. He will dare to acknowledge the shapeliness of a thief's
leg, to contend that the commission of murder does not necessarily impair
the agreeableness of the assassin's conversation; and to insist that at
bottom God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational. He will,
in fine, sin on sufficient provocation, and repent within the moment,
quite sincerely, and be not unconscionably surprised when he repeats the
progression: and he will consider the world with a smile of toleration, and
his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile
that is not distrustful.

This particular attitude toward life may have its merits, but it is not
conducive to meticulous morality; therefore, in advance, I warn you that my
_Dramatis Personæ_ will in their display of the cardinal virtues evince a
certain parsimony. Theirs were, in effect, not virtuous days. And the great
man who knew these times _au fond_, and loved them, and wrote of them as no
other man may ever hope to do, has said of these same times, with perfect
truth:

"Fiddles sing all through them; wax-lights, fine dresses, fine jokes,
fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and sparkle: never was there such
a brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair. But wandering through that
city of the dead, that dreadfully selfish time, through those godless
intrigues and feasts, through those crowds, pushing, and eager, and
struggling,--rouged, and lying, and fawning,--I have wanted some one to be
friends with. I have said, _Show me some good person about that Court; find
me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute gay people, some one
being that I can love and regard._" And Thackeray confesses that, for all
his research, he could not find anybody living irreproachably, at this
especial period....

Where a giant fails one may in reason hesitate to essay. I present, then,
people who, as people normally do, accepted their times and made the best
of them, since the most estimable needs conform a little to the custom of
his day, whether it be Caractacus painting himself sky-blue or Galileo on
his knees at Santa Maria. And accordingly, many of my comedians will lie
when it seems advisable, and will not haggle over a misdemeanor when there
is anything to be gained by it; at times their virtues will get them
what they want, and at times their vices, and at other times they will
be neither punished nor rewarded; in fine, Madam, they will be just human
beings stumbling through illogical lives with precisely that lack of
common-sense which so pre-eminently distinguishes all our neighbors from
ourselves.

For the life that moved in old Manuel of Poictesme finds hereinafter in his
descendants, in these later Allonbys and Bulmers and Heleighs and Floyers,
a new _milieu_ to conform and curb that life in externes rather than in
essentials. What this life made of chivalrous conditions has elsewhere
been recorded: with its renewal in gallant circumstances, the stage is
differently furnished and lighted, the costumes are dissimilar; but the
comedy, I think, works toward the same _dénouement_, and certainly the
protagonist remains unchanged. My protagonist is still the life of Manuel,
as this life was perpetuated in his descendants; and my endeavor is (still)
to show you what this life made (and omitted to make) of its tenancy of
earth. 'Tis a drama enactable in any setting.

Yet the comedy of gallantry has its conventions. There must be quite
invaluable papers to be stolen and juggled with; an involuntary
marriage either threatened or consummated; elopements, highwaymen, and
despatch-boxes; and a continual indulgence in soliloquy and eavesdropping.
Everybody must pretend to be somebody else, and young girls, in particular,
must go disguised as boys, amid much cut-and-thrust work, both ferric and
verbal. For upon the whole, the comedy of gallantry tends to unfold itself
in dialogue, and yet more dialogue, with just the notice of a change
of scene or a brief stage direction inserted here and there. All these
conventions, Madam, I observe.

A word more: the progress of an author who alternates, in turn, between
fact and his private fancies (like unequal crutches) cannot in reason be
undisfigured by false steps. Therefore it is judicious to confess, Madam,
that more than once I have pieced the opulence of my subject with the
poverty of my inventions. Indisputably, to thrust words into a dead man's
mouth is in the ultimate as unpardonable as the axiomatic offence of
stealing the pennies from his eyes; yet if I have sometimes erred in my
surmise at what Ormskirk or de Puysange or Louis de Soyecourt really said
at certain moments of their lives, the misstep was due, Madam, less to
malevolence than to inability to replevin their superior utterance; and the
accomplished shade of Garendon, at least, I have not travestied, unless it
were through some too prudent item of excision.

Remains but to subscribe myself--in the approved formula of dedicators--as,

  MADAM,

    Your ladyship's most humble and most obedient servant,

                                            THE AUTHOR.




THE PROLOGUE

SPOKEN BY LADY ALLONBY, WHO ENTERS IN A FLURRY


    _The author bade we come_--Lud, I protest!--
  _He bade me come_--and I forget the rest.
  But 'tis no matter; he's an arrant fool
  That ever bade a woman speak by rule.

    Besides, his Prologue was, at best, dull stuff,
  And of dull writing we have, sure, enough.
  A book will do when you've a vacant minute,
  But, la! who cares what is, and isn't, in it?

    And since I'm but the Prologue of a book,
  What I've omitted all will overlook,
  And owe me for it, too, some gratitude,
  Seeing in reason it cannot be good
  Whose author has as much but now confessed,--
  For, _Who'd excel when few can make a test
  Betwixt indifferent writing and the best?_
  He said but now.

                           And I:--_La, why excel,
  When mediocrity does quite as well?
  'Tis women buy the books,--and read 'em, say,
  What time a person nods, en négligée,
  And in default of gossip, cards, or dance,
  Resolves t' incite a nap with some romance._

  The fool replied in verse,--I think he said
  'Twas verses the ingenious Dryden made,
  And trust 'twill save me from entire disgrace
  To cite 'em in his foolish Prologue's place.
    _Yet, scattered here and there, I some behold,
  Who can discern the tinsel from the gold;
  To these he writes; and if by them allowed,
  'Tis their prerogative to rule the crowd,
  For he more fears, like, a presuming man,
  Their votes who cannot judge, than theirs can._




I

SIMON'S HOUR


_As Played at Stornoway Crag, March 25, 1750_

"_You're a woman--one to whom Heaven gave beauty, when it grafted roses on
a briar. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond, and he that leaps at
you is sunk. You were all white, a sheet of lovely spotless paper, when you
first were born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's
quill._"


DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

LORD ROKESLE, a loose-living, Impoverished nobleman, and loves Lady
Allonby.

SIMON ORTS, Vicar of Heriz Magna, a debauched fellow, and Rokesle's
creature.

PUNSHON, servant to Rokesle.

LADY ALLONBY, a pleasure-loving, luxurious woman, a widow, and rich.


SCENE

The Mancini Chamber at Stornoway Crag, on Usk.


SIMON'S HOUR


_PROEM:--The Age and a Product of It_

We begin at a time when George the Second was permitting Ormskirk and the
Pelhams to govern England, and the Jacobites had not yet ceased to hope
for another Stuart Restoration, and Mr. Washington was a promising young
surveyor in the most loyal colony of Virginia; when abroad the Marquise de
Pompadour ruled France and all its appurtenances, and the King of Prussia
and the Empress Maria Theresa had, between them, set entire Europe by
the ears; when at home the ladies, if rumor may be credited, were less
unapproachable than their hoop-petticoats caused them to appear,
[Footnote: "Oft have we known that sevenfold fence to fail,
Though stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs of whale."]
and gentlemen wore swords, and some of the more reckless bloods were
daringly beginning to discard the Ramillie-tie and the pigtail for their
own hair; when politeness was obligatory, and morality a matter of taste,
and when well-bred people went about the day's work with an ample leisure
and very few scruples. In fine, we begin toward the end of March, in
the year 1750, when Lady Allonby and her brother, Mr. Henry Heleigh, of
Trevor's Folly, were the guests of Lord Rokesle, at Stornoway Crag, on Usk.

As any person of _ton_ could have informed you, Anastasia Allonby was the
widow (by his second marriage) of Lord Stephen Allonby, the Marquis of
Falmouth's younger brother; and it was conceded by the most sedate that
Lord Stephen's widow, in consideration of her liberal jointure, possessed
inordinate comeliness.

She was tall for a woman. Her hair, to-night unpowdered, had the color of
amber and something, too, of its glow; her eyes, though not profound, were
large and in hue varied, as the light fell or her emotions shifted, through
a wide gamut of blue shades. But it was her mouth you remembered: the
fulness and brevity of it, the deep indentation of its upper lip, the
curves of it and its vivid crimson--these roused you to wildish speculation
as to its probable softness when Lady Allonby and Fate were beyond ordinary
lenient. Pink was the color most favorable to her complexion, and this
she wore to-night; the gown was voluminous, with a profusion of lace, and
afforded everybody an ample opportunity to appraise her neck and bosom.
Lady Allonby had no reason to be ashamed of either, and the last mode in
these matters was not prudish.

To such a person, enters Simon Orts, chaplain in ordinary to Lord Rokesle,
and Vicar of Heriz Magna, one of Lord Rokesle's livings.


I

"Now of a truth," said Simon Orts, "that is curious--undeniably that is
curious."

He stayed at the door for a moment staring back into the ill-lit corridor.
Presently he shut the door, and came forward toward the fireplace.

Lady Allonby, half-hidden in the depths of the big chair beside the
chimney-piece, a book in her lap, looked up inquiringly. "What is curious,
Mr. Orts?"

The clergyman stood upon the hearth, warming his hands, and diffusing an
odor of tobacco and stale alcohol. "Faith, that damned rascal--I beg your
pardon, Anastasia; our life upon Usk is not conducive to a mincing nicety
of speech. That rascal Punshon made some difficulty over admitting me; you
might have taken him for a sentinel, with Stornoway in a state of siege. He
ruffled me,--and I don't like it," Simon Orts said, reflectively, looking
down upon her. "No, I don't like it. Where's your brother?" he demanded on
a sudden.

"Harry and Lord Rokesle are at cards, I believe. And Mrs. Morfit has
retired to her apartments with one of her usual headaches, so that I have
been alone these two hours. You visit Stornoway somewhat late, Mr. Orts,"
Anastasia Allonby added, without any particular concealment of the fact
that she considered his doing so a nuisance.

He jerked his thumb ceilingward. "The cloth is at any rascal's beck and
call. Old Holles, my Lord's man, is dying up yonder, and the whim seized
him to have a clergyman in. God knows why, for it appears to me that one
knave might very easily make his way to hell without having another knave
to help him. And Holles?--eh, well, from what I myself know of him, the
rogue is triply damned." His mouth puckered as he set about unbuttoning his
long, rain-spattered cloak, which, with his big hat, he flung aside upon a
table. "Gad!" said Simon Orts, "we are most of us damned on Usk; and that
is why I don't like it--" He struck his hand against his thigh. "I don't
like it, Anastasia."

"You must pardon me," she languidly retorted, "but I was never good at
riddles."

He turned and glanced about the hall, debating. Lady Allonby meanwhile
regarded him, as she might have looked at a frog or a hurtless snake. A
small, slim, anxious man, she found him; always fidgeting, always placating
some one, but never without a covert sneer. The fellow was venomous; his
eyes only were honest, for even while his lips were about their wheedling,
these eyes flashed malice at you; and their shifting was so unremittent
that afterward you recalled them as an absolute shining which had not any
color. On Usk and thereabouts they said it was the glare from within of his
damned soul, already at white heat; but they were a plain-spoken lot on
Usk. To-night Simon Orts was all in black; and his hair, too, and his gross
eyebrows were black, and well-nigh to the cheek-bones of his clean-shaven
countenance the thick beard, showed black through the skin.

Now he kept silence for a lengthy interval, his arms crossed on his breast,
gnawing meanwhile at the fingernails of his left hand in an unattractive
fashion he had of meditating. When words came it was in a torrent.

"I will read you my riddle, then. You are a widow, rich; as women go, you
are not so unpleasant to look at as most of 'em. If it became a clergyman
to dwell upon such matters, I would say that your fleshly habitation is
too fine for its tenant, since I know you to be a good-for-nothing jilt.
However, you are God's handiwork, and doubtless He had His reasons for
constructing you. My Lord is poor; last summer at Tunbridge you declined to
marry him. I am in his confidence, you observe. He took your decision in
silence--'ware Rokesle when he is quiet! Eh, I know the man,--'tisn't for
nothing that these ten years past I have studied his whims, pampered his
vanity, lied to him, toadied him! You admire my candor?--faith, yes, I
am very candid. I am Rokesle's hanger-on; he took me out of the gutter,
and in my fashion I am grateful. And you?--Anastasia, had you treated me
more equitably fifteen years ago, I would have gone to the stake for you,
singing; now I don't value you the flip of a farthing. But, for old time's
sake, I warn you. You and your brother are Rokesle's guests--on Usk!
Harry Heleigh [Footnote: Henry Heleigh, thirteenth Earl of Brudenel, who
succeeded his cousin the twelfth Earl in 1759, and lived to a great age.
Bavois, writing in 1797, calls him "a very fine, strong old gentleman."]
can handle a sword, I grant you,--but you are on Usk! And Mrs. Morfit is
here to play propriety--propriety on Usk, God save the mark! And besides,
Rokesle can twist his sister about his little finger, as the phrase runs.
And I find sentinels at the door! I don't like it, Anastasia. In his way
Rokesle loves you; more than that, you are an ideal match to retrieve his
battered fortunes; and the name of my worthy patron, I regret to say, is
not likely ever to embellish the Calendar of Saints."

Simon Orts paused with a short laugh. The woman had risen to her feet,
her eyes widening and a thought troubled, though her lips smiled
contemptuously.

"La, I should have comprehended that this late in the evening you would be
in no condition to converse with ladies. Believe me, though, Mr. Orts, I
would be glad to credit your warning to officious friendliness, were it not
that the odor about your person compels me to attribute it to gin."

"Oh, I have been drinking," he conceded; "I have been drinking with a
most commendable perseverance for these fifteen years. But at present I am
far from drunk." Simon Orts took a turn about the hall; in an instant he
faced her with an odd, almost tender smile, "You adorable, empty-headed,
pink-and-white fool," said Simon Orts, "what madness induced you to come to
Usk? You know that Rokesle wants you; you know that you don't mean to marry
him. Then why come to Usk? Do you know who is king in this sea-washed scrap
of earth?--Rokesle. German George reigns yonder in England, but here, in
the Isle of Usk, Vincent Floyer is king. And it is not precisely a convent
that he directs. The men of Usk, I gather, after ten years' experience in
the administering of spiritual consolation hereabouts"--and his teeth made
their appearance in honor of the jest,--"are part fisherman, part smuggler,
part pirate, and part devil. Since the last ingredient predominates, they
have no very unreasonable apprehension of hell, and would cheerfully invade
it if Rokesle bade 'em do so. As I have pointed out, my worthy patron is
subject to the frailties of the flesh. Oh, I am candid, for if you report
me to his Lordship I shall lie out of it. I have had practice enough to do
it handsomely. But Rokesle--do you not know what Rokesle is--?"

The Vicar of Heriz Magna would have gone on, but Lady Allonby had
interrupted, her cheeks flaming. "Yes, yes," she cried;' "I know him to
be a worthy gentleman. 'Tis true I could not find it in my heart to marry
him, yet I am proud to rank Lord Rokesle among my friends." She waved her
hand toward the chimney-piece, where hung--and hangs to-day,--the sword of
Aluric Floyer, the founder of the house of Rokesle. "Do you see that old
sword, Mr. Orts? The man who wielded it long ago was a gallant gentleman
and a stalwart captain. And my Lord, as he told me but on Thursday
afternoon, hung it there that he might always have in mind the fact that
he bore the name of this man, and must bear it meritoriously. My Lord is
a gentleman. La, believe me, if you, too, were a gentleman, Mr. Orts, you
would understand! But a gentleman is not a talebearer; a gentleman does not
defame any person behind his back, far less the person to whom he owes his
daily bread."

"So he has been gulling you?" said Simon Orts; then he added quite
inconsequently: "I had not thought anything you could say would hurt me. I
discover I was wrong. Perhaps I am not a gentleman. Faith, no; I am only a
shabby drunkard, a disgrace to my cloth, am I not, Anastasia? Accordingly,
I fail to perceive what old Aluric Floyer has to do with the matter in
hand. He was reasonably virtuous, I suppose; putting aside a disastrous
appetite for fruit, so was Adam: but, viewing their descendants, I ruefully
admit that in each case the strain has deteriorated."

There was a brief silence; then Lady Allonby observed: "Perhaps I was
discourteous. I ask your forgiveness, Mr. Orts. And now, if you will pardon
the suggestion, I think you had better go to your dying parishioner."

But she had touched the man to the quick. "I am a drunkard; who made me
so? Who was it used to cuddle me with so many soft words and kisses--yes,
kisses, my Lady!--till a wealthier man came a-wooing, and then flung me
aside like an old shoe?"

This drenched her cheeks with crimson, "I think we had better not refer to
that boy-and-girl affair. You cannot blame me for your debauched manner
of living. I found before it was too late that I did not love you. I was
only a girl, and 'twas natural that at first I should be mistaken in my
fancies."

The Vicar had caught her by each wrist. "You don't understand, of course.
You never understood, for you have no more heart than one of those
pink-and-white bisque figures that you resemble. You don't love me, and
therefore I will go to the devil' may not be an all-rational deduction, but
'tis very human logic. You don't understand that, do you, Anastasia? You
don't understand how when one is acutely miserable one remembers that at
the bottom of a wineglass--or even at the bottom of a tumbler of gin,--one
may come upon happiness, or at least upon acquiescence to whatever the
niggling gods may send. You don't understand how one remembers, when the
desired woman is lost, that there are other women whose lips are equally
red and whose hearts are tenderer and--yes, whose virtue is less exigent.
No; women never understand these things: and in any event, you would not
understand, because you are only an adorable pink-and-white fool."

"Oh, oh!" she cried, struggling, "How dare you? You insult me, you coward!"

"Well, you can always comfort yourself with the reflection that it scarcely
matters what a sot like me may elect to say. And, since you understand me
now no more than formerly, Anastasia, I tell you that the lover turned
adrift may well profit by the example of his predecessors. Other lovers
have been left forsaken, both in trousers and in ripped petticoats; and
I have heard that when Chryseis was reft away from Agamemnon, the _cnax
andrôn_ made himself tolerably comfortable with Briseis; and that, when
Theseus sneaked off in the night, Ariadne, after having wept for a
decent period, managed in the ultimate to console herself with Theban
Bacchus,--which I suppose to be a courteous method of stating that the
daughter of Minos took to drink. So the forsaken lover has his choice of
consolation--in wine or in that dearer danger, woman. I have tried both,
Anastasia. And I tell you--"

He dropped her hands as though they had been embers. Lord Rokesle had come
quietly into the hall.

"Why, what's this?" Lord Rokesle demanded. "Simon, you aren't making love
to Lady Allonby, I hope? Fie, man! remember your cloth."

Simon Orts wheeled--a different being, servile and cringing. "Your Lordship
is pleased to be pleasant. Indeed, though, I fear that your ears must
burn, sir, for I was but now expatiating upon the manifold kindnesses your
Lordship has been so generous as to confer upon your unworthy friend. I was
admiring Lady Allonby's ruffle, sir,--Valenciennes, I take it, and very
choice."

Lord Rokesle laughed. "So I am to thank you for blowing my trumpet, am I?"
said Lord Rokesle. "Well, you are not a bad fellow, Simon, so long as you
are sober. And now be off with you to Holles--the rascal is dying, they
tell me. My luck, Simon! He made up a cravat better than any one in the
kingdom."

"The ways of Providence are inscrutable," Simon Orts considered; "and
if Providence has in verity elected to chasten your Lordship, doubtless
it shall be, as anciently in the case of Job the Patriarch, repaid by a
recompense, by a thousandfold recompense." And after a meaning glance
toward Lady Allonby,--a glance that said: "I, too, have a tongue,"--he was
mounting the stairway to the upper corridor when Lord Rokesle called to
him.

"By my conscience! I forgot," said Lord Rokesle; "don't leave Stornoway
without seeing me again, I shall want you by and by."


II

Lord Rokesle sat down upon the long, high-backed bench, beside the fire,
and facing Lady Allonby's arm-chair.

Neither he nor Lady Allonby spoke for a while.

In a sombre way Lord Rokesle was a handsome man, and to-night, in brown
and gold, very stately. His bearing savored faintly of the hidalgo; indeed,
his mother was a foreign woman, cast ashore on Usk, from a wrecked Spanish
vessel, and incontinently married by the despot of the island. For her,
Death had delayed his advent unmercifully; but her reason survived the
marriage by two years only, and there were those familiar with the late
Lord Rokesle's [Footnote: Born 1685, and accidentally killed by Sir
Piers Sabiston in 1738; an accurate account of this notorious duellist,
profligate, charlatan, and playwright is given in Ireson's _Letters_.]
peculiarities who considered that in this, at least, the crazed lady was
fortunate. Among these gossips it was also esteemed a matter deserving
comment that in the shipwrecks not infrequent about Usk the women sometimes
survived, but the men never.

Now Lord Rokesle regarded Lady Allonby, the while that she displayed
conspicuous interest in the play of the flames. But by and by, "O
vulgarity!" said Lady Allonby. "Pray endeavor to look a little more
cheerful. Positively, you are glaring at me like one of those disagreeable
beggars one so often sees staring at bakery windows."

He smiled. "Do you remember what the Frenchman wrote--_et pain ne voyent
qu'aux fenêtres?_ There is not an enormous difference between me and the
tattered rascal of Chepe, for we both stare longingly at what we most
desire. And were I minded to hunt the simile to the foot of the letter,
I would liken your coquetry to the intervening window-pane,--not easily
broken through, but very, very transparent, Anastasia."

"You are not overwhelmingly polite," she said, reflectively; "but, then, I
suppose, living in the country is sure to damage a man's manners. Still, my
dear Orson, you smack too much of the forest."

"Anastasia," said Lord Rokesle, bending toward her, "will you always be
thus cruel? Do you not understand that in this world you are the only thing
I care for? You think me a boor; perhaps I am,--and yet it rests with you,
my Lady, to make me what you will. For I love you, Anastasia--"

"Why, how delightful of you!" said she, languidly.

"It is not a matter for jesting. I tell you that I love you." My Lord's
color was rising.

But Lady Allonby yawned. "Your honor's most devoted," she declared herself;
"still, you need not boast of your affection as if falling in love with me
were an uncommonly difficult achievement. That, too, is scarcely polite."

"For the tenth time I ask you will you marry me?" said Lord Rokesle.

"Is't only the tenth time? Dear me, it seems like the thousandth. Of
course, I couldn't think of it. Heavens, my Lord, how can you expect me to
marry a man who glares at me like that? Positively you look as ferocious as
the blackamoor in the tragedy,--the fellow who smothered his wife because
she misplaced a handkerchief, you remember."

Lord Rokesle had risen, and he paced the hall, as if fighting down
resentment. "I am no Othello," he said at last; "though, indeed, I think
that the love I bear you is of a sort which rarely stirs our English blood.
'Tis not for nothing I am half-Spaniard, I warn you, Anastasia, my love is
a consuming blaze that will not pause for considerations of policy nor even
of honor. And you madden me, Anastasia! To-day you hear my protestations
with sighs and glances and faint denials; to-morrow you have only taunts
for me. Sometimes, I think, 'tis hatred rather than love I bear you.
Sometimes--" He clutched at his breast with a wild gesture. "I burn!" he
said. "Woman, give me back a human heart in place of this flame you have
kindled here, or I shall go mad! Last night I dreamed of hell, and of souls
toasted on burning forks and fed with sops of bale-fire,--and you were
there, Anastasia, where the flames leaped and curled like red-blazoned
snakes about the poor damned. And I, too, was there. And through eternity I
heard you cry to God in vain, O dear, wonderful, golden-haired woman! and
we could see Him, somehow,--see Him, a great way off, with straight, white
brows that frowned upon you pitilessly. And I was glad. For I knew then
that I hated you. And even now, when I think I must go mad for love of you,
I yet hate you with a fervor that shakes and thrills in every fibre of
me. Oh, I burn, I burn!" he cried, with the same frantic clutching at his
breast.

Lady Allonby had risen.

"Positively, I must ask you to open a window if you intend to continue in
this strain. D'ye mean to suffocate me, my Lord, with your flames and your
blazes and your brimstone and so on? You breathe conflagrations, like a
devil in a pantomime. I had as soon converse with a piece of fireworks. So,
if you'll pardon me, I will go to my brother."

At the sound of her high, crisp speech his frenzy fell from him like a
mantle. "And you let me kiss you yesterday! Oh, I know you struggled, but
you did not struggle very hard, did you, Anastasia?"

"Why, what a notion!" cried Lady Allonby; "as if a person should bother
seriously one way or the other about the antics of an amorous clodhopper!
Meanwhile, I repeat, my Lord, I wish to go to my brother."

"Egad!" Lord Rokesle retorted, "that reminds me I have been notably remiss.
I bear you a message from Harry. He had to-night a letter from Job Nangle,
who, it seems, has a purchaser for Trevor's Folly at last. The fellow is
with our excellent Nangle at Peniston Friars, and offers liberal terms if
the sale be instant. The chance was too promising to let slip, so Harry
left the island an hour ago. It happened by a rare chance that some of my
fellows were on the point of setting out for the mainland,--and he knew
that he could safely entrust you to Mrs. Morfit's duennaship, he said."

"He should not have done so," Lady Allonby observed, as if in a contention
of mind. "He--I will go to Mrs. Morfit, then, to confess to her in
frankness that, after all these rockets and bonfires--"

"Why, that's the unfortunate part of the whole affair," said Lord Rokesle.
"The same boat brought Sabina a letter which summoned her to the bedside
of her husband, [Footnote: Archibald Morfit, M.P. for Salop, and in 1753
elected Speaker, which office he declined on account of ill-health. He was
created a baronet in 1758 through the Duke of Ormskirk's influence.] who,
it appears, lies desperately ill at Kuyper Manor. It happened by a rare
chance that some of my fellows were on the point of setting out for the
mainland--from Heriz pier yonder, not from the end of the island whence
Harry sailed,--so she and her maid embarked instanter. Of course, there was
your brother here to play propriety, she said. And by the oddest misfortune
in the world," Lord Rokesle sighed, "I forgot to tell her that Harry
Heleigh had left Usk a half-hour earlier. My memory is lamentably
treacherous."

But Lady Allonby had dropped all affectation. "You coward! You planned
this!"

"Candidly, yes. Nangle is my agent as well as Harry's, you may remember.
I have any quantity of his letters, and of course an equal number
of Archibald's. So I spent the morning in my own apartments,
Anastasia,--tracing letters against the window-pane, which was, I suppose,
a childish recreation, but then what would you have? As you very justly
observe, country life invariably coarsens a man's tastes; and accordingly,
as you may now recall, I actually declined a game of _écarté_ with you in
order to indulge in these little forgeries. Decidedly, my dear, you must
train your husband's imagination for superior flights--when you are Lady
Rokesle."

She was staring at him as though he had been a portent. "I am alone," she
said. "Alone--in this place--with you! Alone! you devil!"

"Your epithets increase in vigor. Just now I was only a clodhopper. Well,
I can but repeat that it rests with you to make me what you will. Though,
indeed, you are to all intent alone upon Usk, and upon Usk there are many
devils. There are ten of them on guard yonder, by the way, in case your
brother should return inopportunely, though that's scarcely probable.
Obedient devils, you observe, Anastasia,--devils who exert and check their
deviltry as I bid 'em, for they esteem me Lucifer's lieutenant. And I grant
the present situation is an outrage to propriety, yet the evil is not
incurable. Lady Allonby may not, if she value her reputation, pass to-night
at Stornoway; but here am I, all willingness, and upstairs is the parson.
Believe me, Anastasia, the most vinegarish prude could never object to Lady
Rokesle's spending to-night at Stornoway."

"Let me think, let me think!" Lady Allonby said, and her hands plucked now
at her hair, now at her dress. She appeared dazed. "I can't think!" she
wailed on a sudden. "I am afraid. I--O Vincent, Vincent, you cannot do
this thing! I trusted you, Vincent. I know I let you make love to me, and
I relished having you make love to me. Women are like that. But I cannot
marry you, Vincent. There is a man, yonder in England, whom I love. He does
not care for me any more,--he is in love with my step-daughter. That is
very amusing, is it not, Vincent? Some day I may be his mother-in-law. Why
don't you laugh, Vincent? Come, let us both laugh--first at this and then
at the jest you have just played on me. Do you know, for an instant, I
believed you were in earnest? But Harry went to sleep over the cards,
didn't he? And Mrs. Morfit has gone to bed with one of her usual headaches?
Of course; and you thought you would retaliate upon me for teasing you. You
were quite right, 'Twas an excellent jest. Now let us laugh at it. Laugh,
Vincent! Oh!" she said now, more shrilly, "for the love of God, laugh,
laugh!--or I shall go mad!"

But Lord Rokesle was a man of ice, "Matrimony is a serious matter,
Anastasia; 'tis not becoming in those who are about to enter it to exhibit
undue levity. I wonder what's keeping Simon?"

"Simon Orts!" she said, in a half-whisper. Then she came toward Lord
Rokesle, smiling. "Why, of course, I teased you, Vincent, but there was
never any hard feeling, was there? And you really wish me to marry you?
Well, we must see, Vincent. But, as you say, matrimony is a serious matter.
D'ye know you say very sensible things, Vincent?--not at all like those
silly fops yonder in London. I dare say you and I would be very happy
together. But you wouldn't have any respect for me if I married you on a
sudden like this, would you? Of course not. So you will let me consider it.
Come to me a month from now, say,--is that too long to wait? Well, I think
'tis too long myself. Say a week, then. I must have my wedding-finery,
you comprehend. We women are such vain creatures--not big and brave and
sensible like you men. See, for example, how much bigger your hand is
than mine--mine's quite lost in it, isn't it? So--since I am only a vain,
chattering, helpless female thing,--you are going to indulge me and let me
go up to London for some new clothes, aren't you, Vincent? Of course you
will; and we will be married in a week. But you will let me go to London
first, won't you?--away from this dreadful place, away--I didn't mean that.
I suppose it is a very agreeable place when you get accustomed to it. And
'tis only for clothes--Oh, I swear it is only for clothes, Vincent! And you
said you would--yes, only a moment ago you distinctly said you would let me
go. 'Tis not as if I were not coming back--who said I would not come back?
Of course I will. But you must give me time, Vincent dear,--you must, you
must, I tell you! O God!" she sobbed, and flung from her the loathed hand
she was fondling, "it's no use!"

"No," said Lord Rokesle, rather sadly. "I am not Samson, nor are you
Delilah to cajole me. It's of no use, Anastasia. I would have preferred
that you came to me voluntarily, but since you cannot, I mean to take you
unwilling. Simon," he called, loudly, "does that rascal intend to spin out
his dying interminably? Charon's waiting, man."

From above, "Coming, my Lord," said Simon Orts.


III

The Vicar of Heriz Magna descended the stairway with deliberation. His
eyes twitched from the sobbing woman to Lord Rokesle, and then back again,
in that furtive way Orts had of glancing about a room, without moving his
head; he seemed to lie in ambush under his gross brows; and whatever his
thoughts may have been, he gave them no utterance.

"Simon," said Lord Rokesle, "Lady Allonby is about to make me the happiest
of men. Have you a prayer-book about you, Master Parson?--for here's a
loving couple desirous of entering the blessed state of matrimony."

"The match is somewhat of the suddenest," said Simon Orts. "But I have
known these impromptu marriages to turn out very happily--very happily,
indeed." he repeated, rubbing his hands together, and smiling horribly. "I
gather that Mr. Heleigh will not grace the ceremony with his presence?"

They understood each other, these two. Lord Rokesle grinned, and in a few
words told the ecclesiastic of the trick which had insured the absence of
the other guests; and Simon Orts also grinned, but respectfully,--the grin,
of the true lackey wearing his master's emotions like his master's clothes,
at second-hand.

"A very pretty stratagem," said Simon Orts; "unconventional, I must
confess, but it is proverbially known that all's fair in love."

At this Lady Allonby came to him, catching his hand. "There is only you,
Simon. Oh, there is no hope in that lustful devil yonder. But you are not
all base, Simon. You are a man,--ah, God! if I were a man I would rip out
that devil's heart--his defiled and infamous heart! I would trample upon
it, I would feed it to dogs--!" She paused. Her impotent fury was jerking
at every muscle, was choking her. "But I am only a woman. Simon, you used
to love me. You cannot have forgotten, Simon. Oh, haven't you any pity on a
woman? Remember, Simon--remember how happy we were! Don't you remember how
the night-jars used to call to one another when we sat on moonlit evenings
under the elm-tree? And d'ye remember the cottage we planned, Simon?--where
we were going to live on bread and cheese and kisses? And how we quarrelled
because I wanted to train vines over it? You said the rooms would be too
dark. You said--oh, Simon, Simon! if only I had gone to live with you in
that little cottage we planned and never builded!" Lady Allonby was at his
feet now. She fawned upon him in somewhat the manner of a spaniel expectant
of a thrashing.

The Vicar of Heriz Magna dispassionately ran over the leaves of his
prayer-book, till he had found the marriage service, and then closed the
book, his forefinger marking the place. Lord Rokesle stood apart, and with
a sly and meditative smile observed them.

"Your plea is a remarkable one," said Simon Orts. "As I understand it, you
appeal to me to meddle in your affairs on the ground that you once made
a fool of me. I think the obligation is largely optional. I remember
quite clearly the incidents to which you refer; and it shames even an
old sot like me to think that I was ever so utterly at the mercy of a
good-for-nothing jilt. I remember every vow you ever made to me, Anastasia,
and I know they were all lies. I remember every kiss, every glance, every
caress--all lies, Anastasia! And gad! the only emotion it rouses in me is
wonder as to why my worthy patron here should want to marry you. Of course
you are wealthy, but, personally, I would not have you for double the
money. I must ask you to rise, Lady Rokesle.--Pardon me if I somewhat
anticipate your title."

Lady Allonby stumbled to her feet. "Is there no manhood in the world?" she
asked, with a puzzled voice. "Has neither of you ever heard of manhood,
though but as distantly as men hear summer thunder? Had neither of you a
woman for a mother--a woman, as I am--or a father who was not--O God!--not
as you are?"

"These rhetorical passages," said Lord Rokesle, "while very elegantly
expressed, are scarcely to the point. So you and Simon went a-philandering
once? Egad, that lends quite a touch of romance to the affair. But
despatch, Parson Simon,--your lady's for your betters now."

"Dearly beloved,--" said Simon Orts.

"Simon, you are not all base. I am helpless, Simon, utterly helpless. There
was a Simon once would not have seen me weep. There was a Simon--"

"--we are gathered together here in the sight of God--"

"You cannot do it, Simon,--do I not know you to the marrow? Remember--not
me--not the vain folly of my girlhood!--but do you remember the man you
have been, Simon Orts!" Fiercely Lady Allonby caught him by the shoulder.
"For you do remember! You do remember, don't you, Simon?"

The Vicar stared at her. "The man I have been," said Simon Orts, "yes!--the
man I have been!" Something clicked in his throat with sharp distinctness.

"Upon my word," said Lord Rokesle, yawning, "this getting married appears
to be an uncommonly tedious business."

Then Simon Orts laid aside his prayer-book and said: "I cannot do it, my
Lord. The woman's right."

She clapped her hands to her breast, and stood thus, reeling upon her
feet. You would have thought her in the crisis of some physical agony;
immediately she breathed again, deeply but with a flinching inhalation, as
though the contact of the air scorched her lungs, and, swaying, fell. It
was the Vicar who caught her as she fell.

"I entreat your pardon?" said Lord Rokesle, and without study of Lady
Allonby's condition. This was men's business now, and over it Rokesle's
brow began to pucker.

Simon Orts bore Lady Allonby to the settie. He passed behind it to arrange
a cushion under her head, with an awkward, grudging tenderness; and then
rose to face Lord Rokesle across the disordered pink fripperies.

"The woman's right, my Lord. There is such a thing as manhood. Manhood!"
Simon Orts repeated, with a sort of wonder; "why, I might have boasted it
once. Then came this cuddling bitch to trick me into a fool's paradise--to
trick me into utter happiness, till Stephen Allonby, a marquis' son,
clapped eyes on her and whistled,--and within the moment she had flung me
aside. May God forgive me, I forgot I was His servant then! I set out to go
to the devil, but I went farther; for I went to you, Vincent Floyer. You
gave me bread when I was starving,--but 'twas at a price. Ay, the price was
that I dance attendance on you, to aid and applaud your knaveries, to be
your pander, your lackey, your confederate,--that I puff out, in effect,
the last spark of manhood in my sot's body. Oh, I am indeed beholden to you
two! to her for making me a sot, and to you for making me a lackey. But I
will save her from you, Vincent Floyer. Not for her sake"--Orts looked down
upon the prostrate woman and snarled. "Christ, no! But I'll do it for the
sake of the boy I have been, since I owe that boy some reparation. I have
ruined his nimble body, I have dulled the wits he gloried in, I have made
his name a foul thing that honesty spits out of her mouth; but, if God yet
reigns in heaven, I cleanse that name to-night!"

"Oh, bless me," Lord Rokesle observed; "I begin to fear these heroics are
contagious. Possibly I, too, shall begin to rant in a moment. Meanwhile, as
I understand it, you decline to perform the ceremony. I have had to warn
you before this, Simon, that you mustn't take too much gin when I am apt
to need you. You are very pitifully drunk, man. So you defy me and my evil
courses! You defy me!" Rokesle laughed, genially, for the notion amused
him. "Wine is a mocker, Simon. But come, despatch, Parson Tosspot, and
let's have no more of these lofty sentiments."

"I cannot do it. I--O my Lord, my Lord! You wouldn't kill an unarmed man!"
Simon Orts whined, with a sudden alteration of tone; for Lord Rokesle had
composedly drawn his sword, and its point was now not far from the Vicar's
breast.

"I trust that I shall not be compelled to. Egad, it is a very ludicrous
business when the bridegroom is forced to hold a sword to the parson's
bosom all during the ceremony; but a ceremony we must have, Simon, for Lady
Allonby's jointure is considerable. Otherwise--Harkee, my man, don't play
the fool! there are my fellows yonder, any one of whom would twist your
neck at a word from me. And do you think I would boggle at a word? Gad,
Simon, I believed you knew me better!"

The Vicar of Heriz Magna kept silence for an instant; his eyes were
twitching about the hall, in that stealthy way of his. Finally, "It is
no use," said he. "A poor knave cannot afford the luxury of honesty. My
life is not a valuable one, perhaps, but even vermin have an aversion to
death. I resume my lackeyship, Lord Rokesle. Perhaps 'twas only the gin.
Perhaps--In any event, I am once more at your service. And as guaranty of
this I warn you that you are exhibiting in the affair scant forethought.
Mr. Heleigh is but three miles distant. If he, by any chance, get wind of
this business, Denstroude will find a boat for him readily enough--ay, and
men, too, now that the Colonel is at feud with you. Many of your people
visit the mainland every night, and in their cups the inhabitants of Usk
are not taciturn. An idle word spoken over an inn-table may bring an armed
company thundering about your gates. You should have set sentinels, my
Lord."

"I have already done so," Rokesle said; "there are ten of 'em yonder. Still
there is something in what you say. We will make this affair certain."

Lord Rokesle crossed the hall to the foot of the stairway and struck thrice
upon the gong hanging there. Presently the door leading to the corridor was
opened, and a man came into the hall.

"Punshon," said Lord Rokesle, "have any boats left the island to-night?"

"No, my Lord."

"You will see that none do. Also, no man is to leave Stornoway to-night,
either for Heriz Magna or the mainland; and nobody is to enter Stornoway.
Do you understand, Punshon?"

"Yes, my Lord."

"If you will pardon me," said Simon Orts, with a grin, "I have an
appointment to-night. You'd not have me break faith with a lady?"

"You are a lecherous rascal, Simon. But do as you are bid and I indulge
you. I am not afraid of your going to Harry Heleigh--after performing the
ceremony. Nay, my lad, for you are thereby _particeps criminis_. You will
pass Mr. Orts, Punshon, to the embraces of his whore. Nobody else."

Simon Orts waved his hand toward Lady Allonby. "'Twere only kindness to
warn Mr. Punshon there may be some disturbance shortly. A lamentation or
so."

At this Lord Rokesle clapped him upon the shoulder and heartily laughed.
"That's the old Simon--always on the alert. Punshon, no one is to enter
this wing of the castle, on any pretext--no one, you understand. Whatever
noises you may hear, you will pay no attention. Now go."

He went toward Lady Allonby and took her hand. "Come, Anastasia!" said he.
"Hold, she has really swooned! Why, what the devil, Simon--!"

Simon Orts had flung the gong into the fire. "She will be sounding that
when she comes to," said Simon Orts. "You don't want a rumpus fit to vex
the dead yonder in the Chapel." Simon Orts stood before the fire, turning
the leaves of his prayer-book. He seemed to have difficulty in finding
again the marriage service. You heard the outer door of the corridor
closing, heard chains dragged ponderously, the heavy falling of a bolt.
Orts dropped the book and, springing into the arm-chair, wrested Aluric
Floyer's sword from its fastening. "Tricked, tricked!" said Simon Orts.
"You were always a fool, Vincent Floyer."

Lord Rokesle blinked at him, as if dazzled by unexpected light. "What d'ye
mean?"

"I have the honor to repeat--you are a fool, I did not know the place was
guarded--you told me. I needed privacy; by your orders no one is to enter
here to-night. I needed a sword--you had it hanging here, ready for the
first comer. Oh, beyond doubt, you are a fool, Vincent Floyer!" Standing
in the arm-chair, Simon Orts bowed fantastically, and then leaped to the
ground with the agility of an imp.

"You have tricked me neatly," Lord Rokesle conceded, and his tone did not
lack honest admiration. "By gad, I have even given them orders to pass
you--after you have murdered me! Exceedingly clever, Simon,--but one thing
you overlooked. You are very far from my match at fencing. So I shall
presently kill you. And afterward, ceremony or no ceremony, the woman's
mine."

"I am not convinced of that," the Vicar observed. "'Tis true I am no
swordsman; but there are behind my sword forces superior to any which
skill might muster. The sword of your fathers fights against you, my
Lord--against you that are their disgrace. They loved honor and truth; you
betrayed honor, you knew not truth. They revered womanhood; you reverence
nothing, and your life smirches your mother's memory. Ah, believe me,
they all fight against you! Can you not see them, my Lord?--yonder at my
back?--old Aluric Floyer and all those honest gentlemen, whose blood now
blushes in your body--ay, blushes to be confined in a vessel so ignoble!
Their armament fights against you, a host of gallant phantoms. And my
hatred, too, fights against you--the cur's bitter hatred for the mastering
hand it dares not bite. I dare now. You made me your pander, you slew my
manhood; in return, body and soul, I demolish you. Even my hatred for that
woman fights against you; she robbed me of my honor--is it not a tragical
revenge to save her honor, to hold it in my hand, mine, to dispose of as
I elect,--and then fling it to her as a thing contemptible? Between you,
you have ruined me; but it is Simon's hour to-night. I shame you both, and
past the reach of thought, for presently I shall take your life--in the
high-tide of your iniquity, praise God!--and presently I shall give my life
for hers. Ah, I a fey, my Lord! You are a dead man, Vincent Floyer, for the
powers of good and the powers of evil alike contend against you."

He spoke rather sadly than otherwise; and there was a vague trouble in Lord
Rokesle's face, though he shook his head impatiently. "These are fine words
to come from the dirtiest knave unhanged in England."

"Great ends may be attained by petty instruments, my Lord; a filthy turtle
quenched the genius of Æschylus, and they were only common soldiers who
shed the blood that redeemed the world."

Lord Rokesle pished at this. Yet he was strangely unruffled. He saluted
with quietude, as equal to equal, and the two crossed blades.

Simon Orts fought clumsily, but his encroachment was unwavering. From the
first he pressed his opponent with a contained resolution. The Vicar was
as a man fighting in a dream--with a drugged obstinacy, unswerving. Lord
Rokesle had wounded him in the arm, but Orts did not seem aware of this.
He crowded upon his master. Now there were little beads of sweat on Lord
Rokesle's brow, and his tongue protruded from his mouth, licking at it
ravenously. Step by step Lord Rokesle drew back; there was no withstanding
this dumb fanatic, who did not know when he was wounded, who scarcely
parried attack.

"Even on earth you shall have a taste of hell," said Simon Orts. "There is
terror in your eyes, my worthy patron."

Lord Rokesle flung up his arms as the sword dug into his breast. "I am
afraid! I am afraid!" he wailed. Then he coughed, and seemed with his
straining hands to push a great weight from him as the blood frothed about
his lips and nostrils. "O Simon, I am afraid! Help me, Simon!"

Old custom spoke there. Followed silence, and presently the empty body
sprawled upon the floor. Vincent Floyer had done with it.


IV

Simon Orts knelt, abstractedly wiping Aluric Floyer's sword upon the corner
of a rug. It may be that he derived comfort from this manual employment
which necessitated attention without demanding that it concentrate his
mind; it may have enabled him to forget how solitary the place was, how
viciously his garments rustled when he moved: the fact is certain that he
cleaned the sword, over and over again.

Then a scraping of silks made him wince. Turning, he found Lady Allonby
half-erect upon the settle. She stared about her with a kind of Infantile
wonder; her glance swept, over Lord Rokesle's body, without to all
appearance finding it an object of remarkable interest. "Is he dead?"

"Yes," said Simon Orts; "get up!" His voice had a rasp; she might from his
tone have been a refractory dog. But Lady Allonby obeyed him.

"We are in a devil of a mess," said Simon Orts; "yet I see a way out of
it--if you can keep your head. Can you?"

"I am past fear," she said, dully. "I drown, Simon, in a sea of feathers. I
can get no foothold, I clutch nothing that is steadfast, and I smother. I
have been like this in dreams. I am very tired, Simon."

He took her hand, collectedly appraising her pulse. He put his own hand
upon her bared bosom, and felt the beat of her heart. "No," said Simon
Orts, "you are not afraid. Now, listen: You lack time to drown in a sea of
feathers. You are upon Usk, among men who differ from beasts by being a
thought more devilish, and from devils by being a little more bestial; it
is my opinion that the earlier you get away the better. Punshon has orders
to pass Simon Orts. Very well; put on this."

He caught up his long cloak and wrapped it about her. Lady Allonby stood
rigid. But immediately he frowned and removed the garment from her
shoulders.

"That won't do. Your skirts are too big. Take 'em off."

Submissively she did so, and presently stood before him in her
under-petticoat.

"You cut just now a very ludicrous figure, Anastasia. I dare assert that
the nobleman who formerly inhabited yonder carcass would still be its
tenant if he had known how greatly the beauty he went mad for was beholden
to the haberdasher and the mantua-maker, and quite possibly the chemist.
_Persicos odi_, Anastasia; 'tis a humiliating reflection that the hair of a
dead woman artfully disposed about a living head should have the power
to set men squabbling, and murder be at times engendered in a paint-pot.
However, wrap yourself in the cloak. Now turn up the collar,--so. Now pull
down the hatbrim. Um--a--pretty well. Chance favors us unblushingly. You
may thank your stars it is a rainy night and that I am a little man. You
detest little men, don't you? Yes, I remember." Simon Orts now gave his
orders, emphasizing each with a not over-clean forefinger. "When I open
this door you will go out into the corridor. Punshon or one of the others
will be on guard at the farther end. Pay no attention to him. There is
only one light--on the left. Keep to the right, in the shadow. Stagger as
you go; if you can manage a hiccough, the imitation will be all the more
lifelike. Punshon will expect something of the sort, and he will not
trouble you, for he knows that when I am fuddled I am quarrelsome. 'Tis a
diverting world, Anastasia, wherein, you now perceive, habitual drunkenness
and an unbridled temper may sometimes prove commendable,--as they do
to-night, when they aid persecuted innocence!" Here Simon Orts gave an
unpleasant laugh.

"But I do not understand--"

"You understand very little except coquetry and the proper disposition
of a ruffle. Yet this is simple. My horse is tied at the postern.
Mount--astride, mind. You know the way to the Vicarage, so does the horse;
you will find that posturing half-brother of mine at the Vicarage. Tell
Frank what has happened. Tell him to row you to the mainland; tell him to
conduct you to Colonel Denstroude's. Then you must shift for yourself; but
Denstroude is a gentleman, and Denstroude would protect Beelzebub if he
came to him a fugitive from Vincent Floyer. Now do you understand?"

"Yes," said Lady Allonby, and seated herself before the fire,--"yes, I
understand. I am to slip away in the darkness and leave you here to answer
for Lord Rokesle's death--to those devils. La, do you really think me as
base as that?"

Now Simon Orts was kneeling at her side. The black cloak enveloped her from
head to foot, and the turned-up collar screened her sunny hair; in the
shadow of the broad hatbrim you could see only her eyes, resplendent and
defiant, and in them the reflection of the vaulting flames. "You would
stay, Anastasia?"

"I will not purchase my life at the cost of yours. I will be indebted to
you for nothing, Simon Orts."

The Vicar chuckled. "Nor appeared Less than archangel ruined," he said.
"No, faith, not a whit less! We are much of a piece, Anastasia. Do you
know--if affairs had fallen out differently--I think I might have been a
man and you a woman? As it is--" Kneeling still, his glance devoured her.
"Yes, you would stay. And you comprehend what staying signifies. 'Tis
pride, your damnable pride, that moves you,--but I rejoice, for it proves
you a brave woman. Courage, at least, you possess, and this is the first
virtue I have discovered in you for a long while. However, there is no
necessity for your staying. The men of Usk will not hurt Simon Orts."

She was very eager to believe this. Lady Allonby had found the world a
pleasant place since her widowhood. "They will not kill you? You swear it,
Simon?"

"Why, the man was their tyrant. They obeyed him--yes, through fear. I am
their deliverer, Anastasia. But if they found a woman here--a woman not
ill-looking--" Simon Orts snapped his fingers. "Faith, I leave you to
conjecture," said he.

They had both risen, he smiling, the woman in a turbulence of hope and
terror. "Swear to it, Simon!"

"Anastasia, were affairs as you suppose them, I would have a curt while to
live. Were affairs as you suppose them, I would stand now at the threshold
of eternity. And I swear to you, upon my soul's salvation, that I have
nothing to fear. Nothing will ever hurt me any more."

"No, you would not dare to lie in the moment of death," she said, after
a considerable pause. "I believe you. I will go. Good-bye, Simon." Lady
Allonby went toward the door opening into the corridor, but turned there
and came back to him. "I shall never see you again. And, la, I think that
I rather hate you than otherwise, for you remind me of things I would
willingly forget. But, Simon, I wish we had gone to live in that little
cottage we planned, and quarrelled over, and never built! I think we would
have been happy."

Simon Orts raised her hand to his lips. "Yes," said he, "we would have been
happy. I would have been by this a man doing a man's work in the world, and
you a matron, grizzling, perhaps, but rich in content, and in love opulent.
As it is, you have your flatterers, your gossip, and your cards; I have my
gin. Good-bye, Anastasia."

"Simon, why have you done--this?"

The Vicar of Heriz Magna flung out his hands in a gesture of impotence. "I
dare confess now that which even to myself I have never dared confess. I
suppose the truth of it is that I have loved you all my life."

"I am sorry. I am not worth it, Simon."

"No; you are immeasurably far from being worth it. But one does not justify
these fancies by mathematics. Good-bye, Anastasia."


V

Holding the door ajar, the Vicar of Heriz Magna heard a horse's hoofs slap
their leisurely way down the hillside. Presently the sound died and he
turned back into the hall.

"A brave woman, that! Oh, a trifling, shallow-hearted jilt, but a brave
creature!

"I had to lie to her. She would have stayed else. And perhaps it is true
that, in reality, I have loved her all my life,--or in any event, have
hankered after the pink-and-white flesh of her as any gentleman might.
Pschutt! a pox on all lechery says the dying man,--since it is now
necessary to put that strapping yellow-haired trollop out of your mind,
Simon Orts--yes, after all these years, to put her quite out of your mind.
Faith, she might wheedle me now to her heart's content, and my pulse would
never budge; for I must devote what trivial time there is to hoping they
will kill me quickly. He was their god, that man!"

Simon Orts went toward the dead body, looking down into the distorted face.
"And I, too, loved him. Yes, such as he was, he was the only friend I
had. And I think he liked me," Simon Orts said aloud, with a touch of shy
pride. "Yes, and you trusted me, didn't you, Vincent? Wait for me, then,
my Lord,--I shall not be long. And now I'll serve you faithfully. I had to
play the man's part, you know,--you mustn't grudge old Simon his one hour
of manhood. You wouldn't, I think. And in any event, I shall be with you
presently, and you can cuff me for it if you like--just as you used to do."

He covered the dead face with his handkerchief, but in the instant he drew
it away. "No, not this coarse cambric. You were too much of a fop, Vincent.
I will use yours--the finest linen, my Lord. You see old Simon knows your
tastes."

He drew himself erect exultantly.

"They will come at dawn to kill me; but I have had my hour. God, the man I
might have been! And now--well, perhaps He would not be offended if I said
a bit of a prayer for Vincent."

So the Vicar of Heriz Magna knelt beside the flesh that had been Lord
Rokesle, and there they found him in the morning.




II

LOVE AT MARTINMAS
_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 1, 1750_

    "_He to love an altar built
  Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt.
  There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves,
  And all the trophies of his former loves;
  With tender billet-doux he lights the pyre,
  And breathes three amorous sighs to raise the fire;
  Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes
  Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize._"


DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

MR. ERWYN, a gentleman of the town, ceremonious and a
    coxcomb, but a man of honor.
LADY ALLONBY, a woman of fashion, and widow to
    Lord Stephen Allonby.
MISS ALLONBY, daughter to Lord Stephen by a former
    marriage, of a considerable fortune in her own hands.
FOOTMEN to Lady Allonby; and in the Proem FRANCIS
    ORTS, commonly know as FRANCIS VANBINGHAM, a
    dissolute play-actor.


SCENE

A drawing-room In Lady Allonby's villa at Tunbridge Wells.


LOVE AT MARTINMAS


_PROEM:--To be Filed for Reference Hereafter_

Lady Allonby followed in all respects the Vicar's instructions; and
midnight found her upon the pier of Bishops Onslow, Colonel Denstroude's
big and dilapidated country-residence. Frank Orts had assisted her from the
rowboat without speaking; indeed, he had uttered scarcely a word, save to
issue some necessary direction, since the woman first came to him at the
Vicarage with her news of the night's events. Now he composedly stepped
back into the boat.

"You've only to go forward," said Frank Orts. "I regret that for my own
part I'm no longer an acceptable visitor here, since the Colonel and I
fought last summer over one Molly Yates. Nay, I beseech you, put up your
purse, my Lady."

"Then I can but render you my heartfelt thanks," replied Lady Allonby, "and
incessantly remember you in daily prayers for the two gallant men who have
this night saved a woman from great misery. Yet there is that in your voice
which is curiously familiar, Mr. Orts, and I think that somewhere you and I
have met before this."

"Ay," he responded, "you have squandered many a shilling on me here in
England, where Francis Vanringham bellows and makes faces with the rest of
the Globe Company. On Usk, you understand, I'm still Frank Orts, just as I
was christened; but elsewhere the name of Vanringham was long ago esteemed
more apt to embellish and adorn the bill of a heroic play. Ay, you've been
pleased to applaud my grimaces behind the footlights, more than once; your
mother-in-law, indeed, the revered Marchioness-Dowager of Falmouth, is
among my staunchest patrons."

"Heavens! then we shall all again see one another at Tunbridge!" said Lady
Allonby, who was recovering her spirits; "and I shall have a Heaven-sent
opportunity, to confirm my protestations that I am not ungrateful. Mr.
Vanringham, I explicitly command you to open in _The Orphan_, since: as
Castalio in that piece you are the most elegant and moving thing in the
universal world." [Footnote: This was the opinion of others as well.
Thorsby (_Roscius Anglicanus_) says, "Mr. Vanringham was good in tragedy,
as well as in comedy, especially as Castalio in Otway's _Orphan_, and the
more famous Garrick came, in that part, far short of him." Vanringham was
also noted for his Valentine in _Love for Love_ and for his Beaugard in
_The Soldier's Fortune_.]

"Your command shall be obeyed," said the actor. "And meantime, my Lady,
I bid you an _au revoir_, with many millions of regrets for the
inconveniences to which you've been subjected this evening, Oho, we are
lamentably rustic hereabout."

And afterward as he rowed through the dark the man gave a grunt of
dissatisfaction.

"I was too abrupt with her. But it vexes me to have Brother Simon butchered
like this.... These natural instincts are damnably inconvenient,--and
expensive, at times, Mr. Vanringham,--beside being ruinous to one's sense
of humor, Mr. Vanringham. Why, to think that she alone should go scot-free!
and of her ordering a stage-box within the hour of two men's destruction
on her account! Upon reflection, I admire the woman to the very tips of my
toes. Eh, well! I trust to have need of her gratitude before the month is
up."


I

Since Colonel Denstroude proved a profane and dissolute and helpful person,
Lady Allonby was shortly re-established in her villa at Tunbridge Wells, on
the Sussex side, where she had resolved to find a breathing-space prior to
the full season in London. And thereupon she put all thoughts of Usk quite
out of her mind: it had been an unhappy business, but it was over. In the
meanwhile her wardrobe needed replenishing now that spring was coming
in; the company at the Wells was gay enough; and Lady Allonby had always
sedulously avoided anything that was disagreeable.

Mr. Erwyn Lady Allonby was far from cataloguing under that head. Mr. George
Erwyn had been for years a major-general, at the very least, in Fashion's
army, and was concededly a connoisseur of all the elegancies.

Mr. Erwyn sighed as he ended his recital--half for pity of the misguided
folk who had afforded Tunbridge its latest scandal, half for relief that,
in spite of many difficulties, the story had been set forth in discreet
language which veiled, without at all causing you to miss, the more
unsavory details.

"And so," said he, "poor Harry is run through the lungs, and Mrs.
Anstruther has recovered her shape and is to be allowed a separate
maintenance."

"'Tis shocking!" said Lady Allonby.

"'Tis incredible," said Mr. Erwyn, "to my mind, at least, that the bonds of
matrimony should be slipped thus lightly. But the age is somewhat lax and
the world now views with complaisance the mad antics of half-grown lads and
wenches who trip toward the altar as carelessly as if the partnership were
for a country-dance."

Lady Allonby stirred her tea and said nothing. Notoriously her marriage had
been unhappy; and her two years of widowhood (dating from the unlamented
seizure, brought on by an inherited tendency to apoplexy and French
brandy, which carried off Lord Stephen Allonby of Prestonwoode) had to all
appearance never tempered her distrust of the matrimonial state. Certain it
was that she had refused many advantageous offers during this period, for
her jointure was considerable, and, though in candid moments she confessed
to thirty-three, her dearest friends could not question Lady Allonby's
good looks. She was used to say that she would never re-marry, because she
desired to devote herself to her step-daughter, but, as gossip had it at
Tunbridge, she was soon to be deprived of this subterfuge; for Miss Allonby
had reached her twentieth year, and was nowadays rarely seen in public save
in the company of Mr. Erwyn, who, it was generally conceded, stood high in
the girl's favor and was desirous of rounding off his career as a leader of
fashion with the approved comoedic _dénouement_ of marriage with a young
heiress.

For these reasons Lady Allonby heard with interest his feeling allusion to
the laxity of the age, and through a moment pondered thereon, for it seemed
now tolerably apparent that Mr. Erwyn had lingered, after the departure of
her other guests, in order to make a disclosure which Tunbridge had for
many months expected.

"I had not thought," said she, at length, "that you, of all men, would ever
cast a serious eye toward marriage. Indeed, Mr. Erwyn, you have loved women
so long that I must dispute your ability to love a woman--and your amours
have been a byword these twenty years."

"Dear lady," said Mr. Erwyn, "surely you would not confound amour with
love? Believe me, the translation is inadequate. Amour is but the summer
wave that lifts and glitters and laughs in the sunlight, and within the
instant disappears; but love is the unfathomed eternal sea itself. Or--to
shift the metaphor--Amour is a general under whom youth must serve:
Curiosity and Lustiness are his recruiting officers, and it is well to
fight under his colors, for it is against Ennui that he marshals his
forces. 'Tis a resplendent conflict, and young blood cannot but stir and
exult as paradoxes, marching and countermarching at the command of their
gay generalissimo, make way for one another in iridescent squadrons, while
through the steady musketry of epigram one hears the clash of contending
repartees, or the cry of a wailing sonnet. But this lord of laughter may be
served by the young alone; and by and by each veteran--scarred, it may be,
but not maimed, dear lady--is well content to relinquish the glory and
adventure of such colorful campaigns for some quiet inglenook, where, with
love to make a third, he prattles of past days and deeds with one that goes
hand in hand with him toward the tomb."

Lady Allonby accorded this conceit the tribute of a sigh; then glanced,
in the direction of four impassive footmen to make sure they were out of
earshot.

"And so--?" said she.

"Split me!" said Mr. Erwyn, "I thought you had noted it long ago."

"Indeed," she observed, reflectively, "I suppose it is quite time."

"I am not," said Mr. Erwyn, "in the heyday of my youth, I grant you; but
I am not for that reason necessarily unmoved by the attractions of an
advantageous person, a fine sensibility and all the graces."

He sipped his tea with an air of resentment; and Lady Allonby, in view of
the disparity of age which existed between Mr. Erwyn and her step-daughter,
had cause to feel that she had blundered into _gaucherie_; and to await
with contrition the proposal for her step-daughter's hand that the man was
(at last) about to broach to her, as the head of the family.

"Who is she?" said Lady Allonby, all friendly interest.

"An angel," said Mr. Erwyn, fencing.

"Beware," Lady Allonby exhorted, "lest she prove a recording angel; a wife
who takes too deep an interest in your movements will scarcely suit you."

"Oh, I am assured," said Mr. Erwyn, smiling, "that on Saturdays she will
allow me the customary half-holiday."

Lady Allonby, rebuffed, sought consolation among the conserves.

"Yet, as postscript," said Mr. Erwyn, "I do not desire a wife who will
take her morning chocolate with me and sup with Heaven knows whom. I have
seen, too much of _mariage à la mode_, and I come to her, if not with the
transports of an Amadis, at least with an entire affection and respect."

"Then," said Lady Allonby, "you love this woman?"

"Very tenderly," said Mr. Erwyn; "and, indeed, I would, for her sake, that
the errors of my past life were not so numerous, nor the frailty of my
aspiring resolutions rendered apparent--ah, so many times!--to a gaping
and censorious world. For, as you are aware, I cannot offer her an untried
heart; 'tis somewhat worn by many barterings. But I know that this heart
beats with accentuation in her presence; and when I come to her some day
and clasp her in my arms, as I aspire to do, I trust that her lips may not
turn away from mine and that she may be more glad because I am so near and
that her stainless heart may sound an echoing chime. For, with a great and
troubled adoration, I love her as I have loved no other woman; and this
much, I submit, you cannot doubt."

"I?" said Lady Allonby, with extreme innocence. "La, how should I know?"

"Unless you are blind," Mr. Erwyn observed--"and I apprehend those spacious
shining eyes to be more keen than the tongue of a dowager,--you must have
seen of late that I have presumed to hope--to think--that she whom I love
so tenderly might deign to be the affectionate, the condescending friend
who would assist me to retrieve the indiscretions of my youth--"

The confusion of his utterance, his approach to positive agitation as he
waved his teaspoon, moved Lady Allonby. "It is true," she said, "that I
have not been wholly blind--"

"Anastasia," said Mr. Erwyn, with yet more feeling, "is not our friendship
of an age to justify sincerity?"

"Oh, bless me, you toad! but let us not talk of things that happened
under the Tudors. Well, I have not been unreasonably blind,--and I do not
object,--and I do not believe that Dorothy will prove obdurate."

"You render me the happiest of men," Mr. Erwyn stated, rapturously. "You
have, then, already discussed this matter with Miss Allonby?"

"Not precisely," said she, laughing; "since I had thought it apparent to
the most timid lover that the first announcement came with best grace from
him."

"O' my conscience, then, I shall be a veritable Demosthenes," said Mr.
Erwyn, laughing likewise; "and in common decency she will consent."

"Your conceit." said Lady Allonby, "is appalling."

"'Tis beyond conception," Mr. Erwyn admitted; "and I propose to try
marriage as a remedy. I have heard that nothing so takes down a man."

"Impertinent!" cried Lady Allonby; "now of whatever can the creature be
talking!"

"I mean that, as your widowship well knows, marrying puts a man in his
proper place. And that the outcome is salutary for proud, puffed-up fellows
I would be the last to dispute. Indeed, I incline to dispute nothing, for I
find that perfect felicity is more potent than wine. I am now all pastoral
raptures, and were it not for the footmen there, I do not know to what
lengths I might go."

"In that event," Lady Allonby decided, "I shall fetch Dorothy, that the
crown may be set upon your well-being. And previously I will dismiss the
footmen." She did so with a sign toward those lordly beings.

"Believe me," said Mr. Erwyn, "'tis what I have long wished for. And
when Miss Allonby honors me with her attention I shall, since my life's
happiness depends upon the issue, plead with all the eloquence of a
starveling barrister, big with the import of his first case. May I, indeed,
rest assured that any triumph over her possible objections may be viewed
with not unfavorable eyes?"

"O sir," said Lady Allonby, "believe me, there is nothing I more earnestly
desire than that you may obtain all which is necessary for your welfare. I
will fetch Dorothy."

The largest footman but one removed Mr. Erwyn's cup.


II

Mr. Erwyn, left alone, smiled at his own reflection in the mirror;
rearranged his ruffles with a deft and shapely hand; consulted his watch;
made sure that the padding which enhanced the calves of his most notable
legs was all as it should be; seated himself and hummed a merry air, in
meditative wise; and was in such posture when the crimson hangings that
shielded the hall-door quivered and broke into tumultuous waves and yielded
up Miss Dorothy Allonby.

Being an heiress, Miss Allonby was by an ancient custom brevetted a great
beauty; and it is equitable to add that the sourest misogynist could hardly
have refused, pointblank, to countersign the commission. They said of
Dorothy Allonby that her eyes were as large as her bank account, and nearly
as formidable as her tongue; and it is undeniable that on provocation there
was in her speech a tang of acidity, such (let us say) as renders a salad
none the less palatable. In a word, Miss Allonby pitied the limitations of
masculine humanity more readily than its amorous pangs, and cuddled her
women friends as she did kittens, with a wary and candid apprehension of
their power to scratch; and decision was her key-note; continually she knew
to the quarter-width of a cobweb what she wanted, and invariably she got
it.

Such was the person who, with a habitual emphasis which dowagers found
hoydenish and all young men adorable, demanded without prelude:

"Heavens! What can it be, Mr. Erwyn, that has cast Mother into this
unprecedented state of excitement?"

"What, indeed?" said he, and bowed above her proffered hand.

"For like a hurricane, she burst into my room and cried, 'Mr. Erwyn
has something of importance to declare to you--why did you put on that
gown?--bless you, my child--' all in one eager breath; then kissed me, and
powdered my nose, and despatched me to you without any explanation. And
why?" said Miss Allonby.

"Why, indeed?" said Mr. Erwyn.

"It is very annoying," said she, decisively.

"Sending you to me?" said Mr. Erwyn, a magnitude of reproach in his voice.

"That," said Miss Allonby, "I can pardon--and easily. But I dislike all
mysteries, and being termed a child, and being--"

"Yes?" said Mr. Erwyn.

"--and being powdered on the nose," said Miss Allonby, with firmness. She
went to the mirror, and, standing on the tips of her toes, peered anxiously
into its depths. She rubbed her nose, as if in disapproval, and frowned,
perhaps involuntarily pursing up her lips,--which Mr. Erwyn intently
regarded, and then wandered to the extreme end of the apartment, where he
evinced a sudden interest in bric-à-brac.

"Is there any powder on my nose?" said Miss Allonby.

"I fail to perceive any," said Mr. Erwyn.

"Come closer," said she.

"I dare not," said he.

Miss Allonby wheeled about. "Fie!" she cried; "one who has served against
the French, [Footnote: This was not absolutely so. Mr. Erwyn had, however,
in an outburst of patriotism, embarked, as a sort of cabin passenger, with
his friend Sir John Morris, and possessed in consequence some claim to
share such honor as was won by the glorious fiasco of Dungeness.] and
afraid of powder!"

"It is not the powder that I fear."

"What, then?" said she, in sinking to the divan beside the disordered
tea-table.

"There are two of them," said Mr. Erwyn, "and they are so red--"

"Nonsense!" cried Miss Allonby, with heightened color.

"'Tis best to avoid temptation," said Mr. Erwyn, virtuously.

"Undoubtedly," she assented, "it is best to avoid having your ears boxed."

Mr. Erwyn sighed as if in the relinquishment of an empire. Miss Allonby
moved to the farther end of the divan.

"What was it," she demanded, "that you had to tell me?"

"'Tis a matter of some importance--" said Mr. Erwyn.

"Heavens!" said Miss Allonby, and absent-mindedly drew aside her skirts;
"one would think you about to make a declaration."

Mr. Erwyn sat down beside her, "I have been known," said he, "to do such
things."

The divan was strewn with cushions in the Oriental fashion. Miss Allonby,
with some adroitness, slipped one of them between her person and the
locality of her neighbor. "Oh!" said Miss Allonby.

"Yes," said he, smiling over the dragon-embroidered barrier; "I admit that
I am even now shuddering upon the verge of matrimony."

"Indeed!" she marvelled, secure in her fortress. "Have you selected an
accomplice?"

"Split me, yes!" said Mr. Erwyn.

"And have I the honor of her acquaintance?" said Miss Allonby.

"Provoking!" said Mr. Erwyn; "no woman knows her better."

Miss Allonby smiled. "Dear Mr. Erwyn," she stated, "this is a disclosure I
have looked for these six months."

"Split me!" said Mr. Erwyn.

"Heavens, yes!" said she. "You have been a rather dilatory lover--"

"I am inexpressibly grieved, that I should have kept you waiting--"

"--and in fact, I had frequently thought of reproaching you for your
tardiness--"

"Nay, in that case," said Mr. Erwyn, "the matter could, no doubt, have been
more expeditiously arranged."

"--since your intentions have been quite apparent."

Mr. Erwyn removed the cushion. "You do not, then, disapprove," said he, "of
my intentions?"

"Indeed, no," said Miss Allonby; "I think you will make an excellent
step-father."

The cushion fell to the floor. Mr. Erwyn replaced it and smiled.

"And so," Miss Allonby continued, "Mother, believing me in ignorance, has
deputed you to inform me of this most transparent secret? How strange is
the blindness of lovers! But I suppose," sighed Miss Allonby, "we are all
much alike."

"We?" said Mr. Erwyn, softly.

"I meant--" said Miss Allonby, flushing somewhat.

"Yes?" said Mr. Erwyn. His voice sank to a pleading cadence. "Dear child,
am I not worthy of trust?"

There was a microscopic pause.

"I am going to the Pantiles this afternoon," declared Miss Allonby, at
length, "to feed the swans."

"Ah," said Mr. Erwyn, and with comprehension; "surely, he, too, is rather
tardy."

"Oh," said she, "then you know?"

"I know," he announced, "that there is a tasteful and secluded summer-house
near the Fountain of Neptune."

"I was never allowed," said Miss Allonby, unconvincingly, "to go into
secluded summer-houses with any one; and, besides, the gardeners keep their
beer jugs there--under the biggest bench."

Mr. Erwyn beamed upon her paternally. "I was not, till this, aware," said
he, "that Captain Audaine was so much interested in ornithology. Yet what
if, even when he is seated upon that biggest bench, your Captain does not
utterly lose the head he is contributing to the _tête-à-tête_?"

"Oh, but he will," said Miss Allonby, with confidence; then she
reflectively added: "I shall have again to be painfully surprised by his
declaration, for, after all, it will only be his seventh."

"Doubtless," Mr. Erwyn considered, "your astonishment will be extreme when
you rebuke him, there above hortensial beer jugs--"

"And I shall be deeply grieved that he has so utterly misunderstood my
friendly interest in his welfare; and I shall be highly indignant after he
has--in effect, after he has--"

"But not until afterward?" said Mr. Erwyn, holding up a forefinger. "Well,
I have told you their redness is fatal to good resolutions."

"--after he has astounded me by his seventh avowal. And I shall behave
in precisely the same manner the eighth time he recurs to the repugnant
subject."

"But the ninth time?" said Mr. Erwyn.

"He has remarkably expressive eyes," Miss Allonby stated, "and really,
Mr. Erwyn, it is the most lovable creature when it raves about my
flint-heartedness and cutting its poor throat and murdering every man I
ever nodded to!"

"Ah, youth, youth!" sighed Mr. Erwyn. "Dear child, I pray you, do not
trifle with the happiness that is within your grasp! _Si jeunesse
savait_--the proverb is somewhat musty. But we who have attained the St.
Martin's summer of our lives and have grown capable of but a calm and
tempered affection at the utmost--we cannot but look wistfully upon the
raptures and ignorance of youth, and we would warn you, were it possible,
of the many dangers whereby you are encompassed. For Love is a deity that
must not be trifled with; his voice may chaunt the requiem of all which
is bravest in our mingled natures, or sound a stave of such nobility as
heartens us through life. He is kindly, but implacable; beneficent, a
bestower of all gifts upon the faithful, a bestower of very terrible
gifts upon those that flout him; and I who speak to you have seen my
own contentment blighted, by just such flippant jesting with Love's
omnipotence, before the edge of my first razor had been dulled. 'Tis true,
I have lived since in indifferent comfort; yet it is but a dreary banquet
where there is no platter laid for Love, and within the chambers of my
heart--dust-gathering now, my dear!--he has gone unfed these fifteen years
or more."

"Ah, goodness!" sighed Miss Allonby, touched by the ardor of his speech.
"And so, you have loved Mother all of fifteen years?"

"Nay, split me--!" said Mr. Erwyn.

"Your servant, sir," said the voice of Lady Allonby; "I trust you young
people have adjusted matters to your satisfaction?"


III

"Dear madam," cried Miss Allonby, "I am overjoyed!" then kissed her
step-mother vigorously and left the room, casting in passage an arch glance
at Mr. Erwyn.

"O vulgarity!" said Lady Allonby, recovering her somewhat rumpled dignity,
"the sweet child is yet unpolished. But, I suppose, we may regard the
matter as settled?"

"Yes," said Mr. Erwyn, "I think, dear lady, we may with safety regard the
matter as settled."

"Dorothy is of an excitable nature," she observed, and seated herself upon
the divan; "and you, dear Mr. Erwyn, who know women so thoroughly, will
overlook the agitation of an artless girl placed in quite unaccustomed
circumstances. Nay, I myself was affected by my first declaration,"'

"Doubtless," said Mr. Erwyn, and sank beside her. "Lord Stephen was very
moving."

"I can assure you," said she, smiling, "that he was not the first."

"I' gad," said he, "I remember perfectly, in the old days, when you were
betrothed to that black-visaged young parson--"

"Well, I do not remember anything of the sort," Lady Allonby stated; and
she flushed.

"You wore a blue gown," he said.

"Indeed?" said she.

"And--"

"La, if I did," said Lady Allonby, "I have quite forgotten it, and it is
now your manifest duty to do likewise."

"Never in all these years," said Mr. Erwyn, sighing, "have I been able to
forget it."

"I was but a girl, and 'twas natural that at first I should be mistaken in
my fancies," Lady Allonby told him, precisely as she had told Simon Orts:
"and at all events, there is nothing less well-bred than a good memory. I
would decline to remain in the same room with one were it not that Dorothy
has deserted you in this strange fashion. Whither, pray, has she gone?"

Mr. Erwyn smiled. "Her tender heart," said Mr. Erwyn, "is affected by the
pathetic and moving spectacle of the poor hungry swans, pining for their
native land and made a raree-show for visitors in the Pantiles; and she has
gone to stay them with biscuits and to comfort them with cakes."

"Really!" said Lady Allonby.

"And," Mr. Erwyn continued, "to defend her from the possible ferocity
of the gold-fish, Captain Audaine had obligingly afforded service as an
escort."

"Oh," said Lady Allonby; then added, "in the circumstances she might
permissibly have broken the engagement."


"But there is no engagement," said Mr. Erwyn--"as yet."

"Indeed?" said she.

"Harkee," said he; "should he make a declaration this afternoon she will
refuse him."

"Why, but of course!" Lady Allonby marveled.

"And the eighth time," said he.

"Undoubtedly," said she; "but at whatever are you hinting?"

"Yet the ninth time--"

"Well, what is it, you grinning monster?"

Mr. Erwyn allowed himself a noiseless chuckle. "After the ninth time," Mr.
Erwyn declared, "there will be an engagement."

"Mr. Erwyn!" cried Lady Allonby, with widened eyes, "I had understood that
Dorothy looked favorably upon your suit."

"Anastasia!" cried he; and then his finger-tips lightly caressed his brow.
"'Tis the first I had heard of it," said Mr. Erwyn.

"Surely--" she began.

"Nay, but far more surely," said he, "in consideration of the fact that,
not a half-hour since, you deigned to promise me your hand in marriage--"

"O la now!" cried Lady Allonby; and, recovering herself, smiled
courteously. "'Tis the first I had heard of it," said she.

They stared at each other in wonderment. Then Lady Allonby burst into
laughter.

"D'ye mean--?" said she.

"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "so unintentional was I of aspiring to Miss
Allonby's affections that all my soul was set upon possessing the heart and
person of a lady, in my humble opinion, far more desirable."

"I had not dreamed--" she commenced.

"Behold," said Mr. Erwyn, bitterly, "how rightly is my presumption
punished. For I, with a fop's audacity, had thought my love for you of
sufficient moment to have been long since observed; and, strong in my
conceit, had scorned a pleasing declaration made up of faint phrases and
whining ballad-endings. I spoke as my heart prompted me; but the heart has
proven a poor counsellor, dear lady, and now am I rewarded. For you had
not even known of my passion, and that which my presumption had taken for
a reciprocal tenderness proves in the ultimate but a kindly aspiration to
further my union with another."

"D'ye love me, toad?" said Lady Allonby, and very softly.

"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "I have loved you all my life, first with a
boyish inclination that I scarce knew was love, and, after your marriage
with an honorable man had severed us, as I thought, irrevocably, with such
lore as an ingenuous person may bear a woman whom both circumstances and
the respect in which he holds her have placed beyond his reach,--a love
that might not be spoken, but of which I had considered you could never be
ignorant."

"Mr. Erwyn," said she, "at least I have not been ignorant--"

"They had each one of them some feature that reminded me of you. That was
the truth of it, a truth so patent that we will not discuss it. Instead,
dear madam, do you for the moment grant a losing gamester the right to rail
at adverse fate! for I shall trouble you no more. Since your widowhood I
have pursued you with attentions which, I now perceive, must at many times
have proven distasteful. But my adoration had blinded me; and I shall
trouble you no more. I have been too serious, I did not know that our
affair was but a comedy of the eternal duel between man and woman; nor am
I sorry, dear opponent, that you have conquered. For how valorously you
fought! Eh, let it be! for you have triumphed in this duel, O puissant
lady, and I yield the victor--a devoted and, it may be, a rather heavy
heart; and I shall trouble you no more."

"Ah, sir," said Lady Allonby, "you are aware that once--"

"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "'twas the sand on which I builded. But I am
wiser now, and I perceive that the feeling you entertain toward me is but
the pallid shadow of a youthful inclination. I shall not presume upon it.
Oh, I am somewhat proud, dear Anastasia; I have freely given you my heart,
such as it is; and were you minded to accept it, even at the eleventh hour,
through friendship or through pity only, I would refuse. For my love of you
has been the one pure and quite unselfish, emotion of my life, and I may
not barter it for an affection of lesser magnitude either in kind or in
degree. And so, farewell!"

"Yet hold, dear sir--" said Lady Allonby. "Lord, but will you never let me
have the woman's privilege of talking!"

"Nay, but I am, as ever, at your service," said Mr. Erwyn, and he paused in
transit for the door.

"--since, as this betokens--"

"'Tis a tasteful handkerchief," said Mr. Erwyn--"but somewhat moist!"

"And--my eyes?"

"Red," said Mr. Erwyn.

"I have been weeping, toad, with my head on the pin-cushion, and the maid
trying to tipsify me with brandy."

"Why?" said Mr. Erwyn.

"I thought you were to marry Dorothy."

Mr. Erwyn resumed his seat. "You objected?" he said.

"I think, old monster," Lady Allonby replied, "that I would entertain the
same objection to seeing any woman thus sacrificed--"

"Well?" said Mr. Erwyn.

"--except--"

"Incomparable Anastasia!" said Mr. Erwyn.


IV

Afterward these two sat long in the twilight, talking very little, and with
their eyes rarely meeting, although their hands met frequently at quite
irrelevant intervals. Just the graze of a butterfly to make it certain that
the other was there: but all the while they both regarded the tiny fire
which had set each content of the room a-dancing in the companionable
darkness. For each, I take it, preferred to think of the other as being
still the naïve young person each remembered; and the firelight made such
thinking easier.

"D'ye remember--?" was woven like a refrain through their placid duo....

It was, one estimates, their highest hour. Frivolous and trivial persons
you might have called them and have justified the accusation; but even to
the fop and the coquette was granted an hour wherein all human happenings
seemed to be ordered by supernal wisdom lovingly. Very soon they would
forget this hour; meanwhile there was a wonderful sense of dreams come
true.




III

THE CASUAL HONEYMOON

_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 1, 1750_

"_But this is the most cruel thing, to marry one does not know how, nor
why, nor wherefore.--Gad, I never liked anybody less in my life. Poor
woman!--Gad, I'm sorry for her, too; for I have no reason to hate her
neither; but I wish we could keep it secret! why, I don't believe any of
this company would speak of it._"


DRAMATIS PERSONÆ


CAPTAIN AUDAINE, of a pompous and handsome person, and loves Miss Allonby.

LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, younger son to the Marquis of Venour, makes love to
Miss Allonby.

GERALD ALLONBY, brother to Miss Allonby, a true raw Squire.

MR. ERWYN, betrothed to Lady Allonby.

VANRINGHAM, an impudent tragedian of the Globe Company.

QUARMBY, Vanringham's associate.

Miss ALLONBY, an heiress, of a petulant humor, in love with Audaine.

MARCHIONESS OF FALMOUTH, an impertinent affected dowager, and grandmother
to Miss Allonby.

LADY ALLONBY, step-mother to Miss Allonby and Gerald.

POSTILIONS, SERVANTS, Etc.


SCENE

Tunbridge Wells, thence shifting to Chetwode Lodge, Mr. Babington-Herle's
house, on Rusthall Common, within two miles of the town.


THE CASUAL HONEYMOON


_PROEM:--Introductive of Captain Francis Audaine_

It appears convenient here to pursue Miss Allonby on her stroll about the
Pantiles in company with Captain Audaine. The latter has been at pains to
record the events of the afternoon and evening, so that I give you his own
account of them, though I abridge in consideration of his leisured style.
Pompous and verbose I grant the Captain, even in curtailment; but you are
to remember these were the faults of his age, ingrained and defiant of
deletion; and should you elect to peruse his memoirs [Footnote: There
appears to have been no American edition since that, in 1836, printed in
Philadelphia, "for Thomas Wardle, No. 15 Minor Street." In England the
memoirs of Lord Garendon are to all appearance equally hard to come by,
and seem to have been out of print since 1907.] you will find that I have
considerately spared you a majority of the digressions to which the future
Earl of Garendon was lamentably addicted.

For the purpose of my tale you are to view him as Tunbridge did at this
particular time: as a handsome and formal person, twenty-eight years old
or thereabouts, of whom nobody knew anything quite definite--beyond the
genealogic inference to be drawn from a smatch of the brogue--save that
after a correspondence of gallantries, of some three weeks' duration, he
was the manifest slave of Miss Dorothy Allonby, and had already fought
three duels behind Ormerod House,--with Will Pratchet, Lord Humphrey Degge,
and Sir Eugene Harrabie, respectively, each one of whom was a declared
suitor for her hand.

And with this prelude I begin on my transcription.


I

Miss Allonby (says Captain Audaine) was that afternoon in a mighty cruel
humor. Though I had omitted no reasonable method to convince her of the
immensity of my passion, 'twas without the twitch of an eyelash she endured
the volley of my sighs and the fusillade of my respectful protestations;
and candor compels me to admit that toward the end her silvery laughter
disrupted the periods of a most elegant and sensible peroration. And when
the affair was concluded, and for the seventh time I had implored her to
make me the happiest of men, the rogue merely observed: "But I don't want
to marry you. Why on earth should I?"

"For the sake of peace," I replied, "and in self-protection, since as long
as you stay obdurate I shall continue to importune, and by and by I shall
pester you to death."

"Indeed, I think it more than probable," she returned; "for you dog me
like a bailiff. I am cordially a-weary, Captain Audaine, of your incessant
persecutions; and, after all, marrying you is perhaps the civilest way to
be rid of both them and you."

But by this I held each velvet-soft and tiny hand. "Nay," I dissented; "the
subject is somewhat too sacred for jest. I am no modish lover, dearest and
best of creatures, to regard marriage as the thrifty purchase of an estate,
and the lady as so much bed-furniture thrown in with the mansion. I love
you with completeness: and give me leave to assure you, madam, with a
freedom which I think permissible on so serious an occasion that, even as
beautiful as you are, I could never be contented with your person without
your heart."

She sat with eyes downcast, all one blush. Miss Dorothy Allonby was in the
bloom of nineteen, and shone with every charm peculiar to her sex. But I
have no mind to weary you with poetical rhodomontades till, as most lovers
do, I have proven her a paragon and myself an imbecile: it suffices to say
that her face, and shape, and mien, and wit, alike astounded and engaged
all those who had the happiness to know her; and had long ago rendered her
the object of my entire adoration and the target of my daily rhapsodies.
Now I viewed her with a dissension of the liveliest hopes and fears; for
she had hesitated, and had by this hesitation conceded my addresses to be
not irretrievably repugnant; and within the instant I knew that any life
undevoted to her service and protection could be but a lingering disease.

But by and by, "You shall have your answer this evening," she said, and so
left me.

I fathomed the meaning of "this evening" well enough. For my adored Dorothy
was all romance, and by preference granted me rendezvous in the back
garden, where she would tantalize me nightly, from her balcony, after the
example of the Veronese lady in Shakespeare's spirited tragedy, which she
prodigiously admired. As concerns myself, a reasonable liking for romance
had been of late somewhat tempered by the inclemency of the weather and
the obvious unfriendliness of the dog; but there is no resisting a lady's
commands; and clear or foul, you might at any twilight's death have found
me under her window, where a host of lyric phrases asserted the devotion
which a cold in the head confirmed.

This night was black as a coal-pit. Strolling beneath the casement, well
wrapt in my cloak (for it drizzled), I meditated impartially upon the
perfections of my dear mistress and the tyrannic despotism of love. Being
the source of our existence, 'tis not unreasonably, perhaps, that this
passion assumes the proprietorship of our destinies and exacts of all
mankind a common tribute. To-night, at least, I viewed the world as a brave
pavilion, lighted by the stars and swept by the clean winds of heaven,
wherein we enacted varied rôles with God as audience; where, in turn, we
strutted or cringed about the stage, where, in turn, we were beset and
rent by an infinity of passions; but where every man must play the part
of lover. That passion alone, I said, is universal; it set wise Solomon
a-jigging in criminal byways, and sinewy Hercules himself was no stranger
to its inquietudes and joys. And I cried aloud with the Roman, _Parce
precor!_ and afterward upon high Heaven to make me a little worthier of
Dorothy.


II

Engrossed in meditations such as these, I was fetched earthward by the
clicking of a lock, and, turning, saw the door beneath her balcony unclose
and afford egress to a slender and hooded figure. My amazement was
considerable and my felicity beyond rhetoric.

"Dorothy--!" I whispered.

"Come!" was her response; and her finger-tips rested upon my arm the while
that she guided me toward the gateway opening into Jervis Lane. I followed
with a trepidation you may not easily conceive; nor was this diminished
when I found awaiting us a post-chaise, into which my angel hastily
tripped.

I babbled I know not what inarticulate nonsense. But, "Heavens!" she
retorted, "d'ye mean to keep the parson waiting all night?"

This was her answer, then. Well, 'twas more than I could have hoped for,
though to a man of any sensibility this summary disposal of our love-affair
could not but vaguely smack of the distasteful. Say what you will, every
gentleman has about him somewhere a tincture of that venerable and artless
age when wives were taken by capture and were retained by force; he
prefers to have the lady hold off until the very last; and properly, her
tongue must sound defiance long after melting eyes have signalled that the
traitorous heart of her, like an anatomical Tarpeia, is ready to betray the
citadel and yield the treasury of her charms.

Nevertheless, I stepped into the vehicle. The postilion was off in
a twinkling, as the saying is, over the roughest road in England.
Conversation was impossible, for Dorothy and I were jostling like two pills
in a box; and as the first observation I attempted resulted in a badly
bitten tongue, I prudently held my peace.

This endured for, perhaps, a quarter of an hour, at the end of which period
the post-chaise on a sudden stopped, and I assisted my companion to alight.
Before us was a villa of considerable dimension, and situate, so far as I
could immediately detect, in the midst of a vast and desolate moor; there
was no trace of human habitation within the radius of the eye; and the
house itself presented not a glimpse of tenancy or illumination.

"O Lord, madam--" I began.

"Hasten!" spoke a voice from within the Parsonage. And Dorothy drew me
toward a side door, overhung with ivy, where, sure enough, a dim light
burned, 'Twas but a solitary candle stuck upon a dresser at the remoter end
of a large and low-ceiled apartment; and in this flickering obscurity we
found a tremulous parson in full canonicals, who had united our hands and
gabbled half-way through the marriage service before I had the slightest
notion of what was befalling me.

And such is the unreasonable disposition of mankind that the attainment
of my most ardent desires aroused a feeling not altogether unakin to
irritation. This skulking celerity, this hole-and-corner business, I
thought, was in ill-accord with the respect due to a sacrament; and I could
have wished my marriage to have borne a less striking resemblance to the
conference of three thieves in a cellar. But 'twas over in two twos. Within
scantier time than it takes to tell of it, Francis and Dorothy were made
one, and I had turned to salute my wife.

She gave a shriek of intolerable anguish. "Heavens!" said she, "I have
married the wrong man!"


III

Without delay I snatched up the guttering candle and held it to my wife's
countenance. You can conceive that 'twas with no pleasurable emotion
I discovered I had inadvertently espoused the Dowager Marchioness of
Falmouth, my adored Dorothy's grandmother; and in frankness I can't deny
that the lady seemed equally dissatisfied: words failed us; and the newly
wedded couple stared at each other in silence.

"Captain Audaine," said she, at last, "the situation is awkward."

"Sure, madam," I returned, "and that is the precise thought which has just
occurred to me."

"And I am of the opinion," she continued, "that you owe me some sort of
explanation. For I had planned to elope with Mr. Vanringham--"

"Do I understand your Ladyship to allude to Mr. Francis Vanringham, the
play-actor, at present the talk of Tunbridge?"

She bowed a grave response.

"This is surprising news," said I. "And grant me leave to tell you that a
woman of mature years, possessed of an abundant fortune and unassailable
gentility, does not by ordinary sneak out of the kitchen door to meet a
raddle-faced actor in the middle of the night. 'Tis, indeed, a circumstance
to stagger human credulity. Oh, believe me, madam, for a virtuous woman the
back garden is not a fitting approach to the altar, nor is a comedian an
appropriate companion there at eleven o'clock in the evening."

"Hey, my fine fellow," says my wife, "and what were you doing in the back
garden?"

"Among all true lovers," I returned, "it is an immemorial custom to prowl
like sentinels beneath the windows of the beauteous adored. And I,
madam, had the temerity to aspire toward an honorable union with your
granddaughter."

She wrung her withered hands. "That any reputable woman should have
nocturnal appointments with gentlemen in the back garden, and beguile her
own grandmother into an odious marriage! I protest, Captain Audaine, the
degenerate world of to-day is no longer a suitable residence for a lady!"

"Look you, sir, this is a cruel bad business," the Parson here put in.
He was pacing the apartment in an altercation of dubiety and amaze. "Mr.
Vanringham will be vexed."

"You will pardon me," I retorted, "if I lack pity to waste upon your Mr.
Vanringham. At present I devote all funds of compassion to my own affairs.
Am I, indeed, to understand that this lady and I are legally married?"

He rubbed his chin. "By the Lord Harry," says he, "'tis a case that lacks
precedents! But the coincidence of the Christian names is devilish awkward;
the service takes no cognizance of surnames; and I have merely united a
Francis and a Dorothy."

"O Lord, Mr. What-d'ye-call-um," said I, "then there is but one remedy and
that is an immediate divorce."

My wife shrieked. "Have you no sense of decency, Captain Audaine? Never has
there been a divorce in my family. And shall I be the first to drag that
honored name into a public court,--to have my reputation worried at the bar
by a parcel of sniggering lawyers, while the town wits buzz about it like
flies around carrion? I pray you, do not suggest any such hideous thing."

"Here's the other Francis," says the Parson, at this point. And it was,--a
raffish, handsome, slender, red-haired fellow, somewhat suggestive of the
royal duke, yet rather more like a sneak-thief, and with a whiff somewhere
of the dancing-master. At first glance you recognized in the actor a
personage, for he compelled the eye with a monstrous vividness of color and
gesture. To-night he had missed his lady at their rendezvous, owing to my
premature appearance, and had followed us post-haste.

"My Castalio!" she screamed. "My Beaugard!" [Footnote: I never saw the
rascal act, thank Heaven, since in that event, report assures me, I might
conceivably have accredited him with the possession of some meritorious
qualities, however trivial; but, it appears, these two above-mentioned
rôles were the especial puppetry in which Mr. Vanringham was most
successful in wringing tears and laughter from the injudicious.--F.A.] She
ran to him, and with disjointed talk and quavering utterance disclosed the
present lamentable posture of affairs.

And I found the tableau they presented singular. My wife had been a toast,
they tell me, in Queen Anne's time, and even now the lean and restless
gentlewoman showed as the abandoned house of youth and wit and beauty, with
here and there a trace of the old occupancy; always her furtive eyes shone
with a cold and shifting glitter, as though a frightened imp peeped through
a mask of Hecuba; and in every movement there was an ineffable touch of
something loosely hinged and fantastic. In a word, the Marchioness was
not unconscionably sane, and was known far and wide as a gallant woman
resolutely oblivious to the batterings of time, and so avid of flattery
that she was ready to smile on any man who durst give the lie to her
looking-glass. Demented landlady of her heart, she would sublet that
antiquated chamber to the first adventurer who came prepared to pay his
scot in the false coin of compliment; and 'twas not difficult to comprehend
how this young Thespian had acquired its tenancy.

But now the face of Mr. Vanringham was attenuated by her revelations, and
the wried mouth of Mr. Vanringham suggested that the party be seated, in
order to consider more at ease the unfortunate _contretemps_. Fresh lights
were kindled, as one and all were past fear of discovery by this; and we
four assembled about a table which occupied the centre of the apartment.


IV

"The situation," Mr. Vanringham, began, "may reasonably be described as
desperate. Here we sit, four ruined beings. For Dr. Quarmby has betrayed
an unoffending couple into involuntary matrimony, an act of which his
Bishop can scarcely fail to take official notice; Captain Audaine and
the Marchioness are entrapped into a loveless marriage, than which there
mayn't be a greater misery in life; and my own future, I needn't add, is
irrevocably blighted by the loss of my respected Dorothy, without whom
continued animation must necessarily be a hideous and hollow mockery. Yet
there occurs to me a panacea for these disasters."

"Then, indeed, Mr. Vanringham," said I, "there is one of us who will be
uncommonly glad to know the name of it."

He faced me with a kind of compassion in his wide-set brown eyes, "You,
sir, have caused a sweet and innocent lady to marry you against her
will--Oho, beyond doubt, your intentions were immaculate; but the outcome
remains in its stark enormity, and the hand of an inquisitive child is not
ordinarily salved by its previous ignorance as to the corrosive properties
of fire. You have betrayed confiding womanhood, an act abhorrent to
all notions of gentility. There is but one conclusive proof of your
repentance.--Need I mention that I allude to self-destruction?"

"O Lord, sir," I observed, "suicide is a deadly sin, and I would not
willingly insult any gentlewoman by evincing so marked a desire for the
devil's company in preference to hers."

"Your argument is sophistry," he returned, "since 'tis your death alone
that can endear you to your bride. Death is the ultimate and skilled
assayer of alloyed humanity: and by his art our gross constituents--our
foibles, our pettinesses, nay, our very crimes--are precipitated into the
coffin, the while that his crucible sets free the volatile pure essence,
and shows as undefiled by all life's accidents that part of divinity which
harbors in the vilest bosom. This only is remembered: this only mounts,
like an ethereal spirit, to hallow the finished-with blunderer's renown,
and reverently to enshrine his body's resting-place. Ah, no, Captain
Audaine! death alone may canonize the husband. Once you're dead, your wife
will adore you; once you're dead, your wife and I have before us an open
road to connubial felicity, a road which, living, you sadly encumber; and
only when he has delivered your funeral oration may Dr. Quarmby be exempt
from apprehension lest his part in your marriage ceremony bring about his
defrockment. I urge the greatest good for the greatest number, Captain;
living, you plunge all four of us into suffering; whereas the nobility of
an immediate _felo-de-se_ will in common decency exalt your soul to Heaven
accompanied and endorsed by the fervent prayers of three grateful hearts."

"And by the Lord Harry," says the Parson, "while no clergyman extant has
a more cordial aversion to suicide, I cannot understand why a prolonged
existence should tempt you. You love Miss Dorothy Allonby, as all Tunbridge
knows; and to a person of sensibility, what can be more awkward than
to have thrust upon him grandfathership of the adored one? You must in
this position necessarily be exposed to the committal of a thousand
_gaucheries_; and if you insist upon your irreligious project of procuring
a divorce, what, I ask, can be your standing with the lady? Can she smile
upon the suit of an individual who has publicly cast aside the sworn love
and obedience of the being to whom she owes her very existence? or will
any clergyman in England participate in the union of a woman to her
ex-grandfather? Nay, believe me, sir, 'tis less the selfishness than the
folly of your clinging to this vale of tears which I deplore. And I protest
that this rope"--he fished up a coil from the corner--"appears to have
been deposited here by a benign and all-seeing Providence to Suggest
the manifold advantages of hanging yourself as compared with the untidy
operation of cutting one's throat."

"And conceive, sir," says my wife, "what must be the universal grief
for the bridegroom so untimelily taken off in the primal crescence of
his honeymoon! Your funeral will be unparalleled both for sympathy and
splendor; all Tunbridge will attend in tears; and 'twill afford me a
melancholy but sincere pleasure to extend to you the hospitality of the
Allonby mausoleum, which many connoisseurs have accounted the finest in the
three kingdoms."

"I must venture," said I, "to terminate this very singular conversation.
You have, one and all, set forth the advantages of my immediate demise;
your logic is unassailable and has proven suicide my plain duty; and my
rebuttal is confined to the statement that I will see every one of you
damned before I'll do it."

Mr. Francis Vanringham rose with a little bow. "You have insulted both
womanhood and the Established Church by the spitting out of that ribald
oath; and me you have with equal levity wronged by the theft of my
affianced bride. I am only a play-actor, but in inflicting an insult a
gentleman must either lift his inferior to his own station or else forfeit
his gentility. I wear a sword, Captain Audaine. Heyho, will you grant me
the usual satisfaction?"

"My fascinating comedian," said I, "if 'tis a fight you are desirous of,
I can assure you that in my present state I would cross swords with a
costermonger, or the devil, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, with equal
impartiality. But scarcely in the view of a lady, and, therefore, as you
boast the greater influence in that quarter, will you kindly advise the
withdrawal of yonder unexpected addition to my family?"

"There's an inner room," says he, pointing to the door behind me; and I
held it open as my wife swept through.

"You are the epitome of selfishness," she flung out, in passing; "for had
you possessed an ounce of gallantry, you would long ago have freed me from
this odious marriage."

"Sure, madam," I returned, with a _congée_; "and is it not rather a
compliment that I so willingly forfeit a superlunar bliss in order to
retain the pleasure of your society?"

She sniffed, and I closed the door; and within the moment the two men fell
upon me, from the rear, and presently had me trussed like a fowl and bound
with that abominable Parson's coil of rope.


V

"Believe me," says Mr. Vanringham, now seated upon the table and indolently
dangling his heels,--the ecclesiastical monstrosity, having locked the
door upon Mrs. Audaine, had occupied a chair and was composedly smoking
a churchwarden,--"believe me, I lament the necessity of this uncouth
proceeding. But heyho! man is a selfish animal. You take me, sir, my
affection for yonder venerable lady does not keep me awake o' nights; yet
is a rich marriage the only method to amend my threadbare fortunes, so that
I cheerfully avail myself of her credulity. By God!" cried he, with a quick
raising of the voice, "to-morrow I had been a landed gentleman but for you,
you blundering omadhaun! And is a shabby merry-andrew from the devil knows
where to pop in and spoil the prettiest plot was ever hatched?"

'Twas like a flare of lightning, this sudden outburst of malignity; for
you saw in it, quintessentialized, the man's stark and venomous hatred of
a world which had ill-used him; and 'twas over with too as quickly as the
lightning, yielding to the pleasantest smile imaginable. Meanwhile you are
to picture me, and my emotions, as I lay beneath his oscillating toes,
entirely helpless. "'Twas not that I lacked the courage to fight you," he
continues, "nor the skill, either. But there is always the possibility
that by some awkward thrust or other you might deprive the stage of a
distinguished ornament; and as a sincere admirer of my genius, I must,
in decency, avoid such risks. 'Twas necessary to me, of course, that you
be got out of this world speedily, since a further continuance of your
blunderings would interfere with my plans for the future; having gone thus
far, I cannot reasonably be expected to cede my interest in the Marchioness
and her estate. Accordingly I decide upon the handiest method and tip the
wink to Quarmby here; the lady quits the apartment in order to afford us
opportunity to settle our pretensions, with cutlery as arbiter; and she
will return to find your perforated carcass artistically displayed in
yonder extremity of the room. Slain in an affair of honor, my dear Captain!
The disputed damsel will think none the worse of me, a man of demonstrated
valor and affection; Quarmby and I'll bury you in the cellar; and being
freed from her recent and unfortunate alliance, my esteemed Dorothy will
seek consolation in the embraces of a more acceptable spouse. Confess, sir,
is it not a scheme of Arcadian simplicity?"

'Twas the most extraordinary sensation to note the utterly urbane and
cheerful countenance with which Mr. Vanringham disclosed the meditated
atrocity. This unprincipled young man was about to run me through with no
more compunction than a naturalist in the act of pinning a new beetle among
his collection may momentarily be aware of.

Then my quickened faculties were stirred on a sudden, and for the first
time I opened my mouth. Whatever claim I had upon Vanringham, there was no
need to advance it now.

"You were about to say--?" he queried.

"I was about to relieve a certain surplusage of emotion," I retorted, "by
observing that I regret to find you, sir, a chattering, lean-witted fool--a
vain and improvident fool!"

"Harsh words, my Captain," says he, with lifted eyebrows.

"O Lord, sir, but not of an undeserved asperity!" I returned, "D'ye think
the Marchioness, her flighty head crammed with scraps of idiotic romance,
would elope without regard for the canons of romance? Not so; depend upon
it, a letter was left upon her pin-cushion announcing her removal with
you, and in the most approved heroic style arraigning the obduracy of her
unsympathetic grandchildren. D'ye think Gerald Allonby will not follow
her? Sure, and he will; and the proof is," I added, "that you may hear his
horses yonder on the heath, as I heard them some moments ago."

Vanringham leaped to the floor and stood thus, all tension. He raised
clenched, quivering hands toward the ceiling. "O King of Jesters!" he
cried, in horrid blasphemy; and then again, "O King of Jesters!"

And by this time men were shouting without, and at the door there was a
prodigious and augmenting hammering. And the Parson wrung his hands and
began to shake like a dish of jelly in a thunder-storm.

"Captain Audaine," Mr. Vanringham resumed, with more tranquillity, "you are
correct. Clidamira and Parthenissa would never have fled into the night
without leaving a note upon the pin-cushion. The folly I kindled in your
wife's addled pate has proven my ruin. Remains to make the best of Hobson's
choice." He unlocked the door. "Gentlemen, gentlemen!" says he, with
deprecating hand, "surely this disturbance is somewhat _outré_, a trifle
misplaced, upon the threshold of a bridal-chamber?"

Then Gerald Allonby thrust into the room, followed by Lord Humphrey Degge,
[Footnote: I must in this place entreat my reader's profound discredit of
any aspersions I may rashly seem to cast upon this honest gentleman, whose
friendship I to-day esteem as invaluable; but I wrote, as always, _currente
calamo_, and the above was penned in an amorous misery, _sub Venire_, be
it remembered; and in such cases a wrong bias is easily hung upon the
mind.--F.A.] my abhorred rival for Dorothy's affection, and two attendants.

"My grandmother!" shrieks Gerald. "Villain, what have you done with my
grandmother?"

"The query were more fitly put," Vanringham retorts, "to the lady's
husband." And he waves his hand toward me.

Thereupon the new-comers unbound me with various exclamations of wonder.
"And now," I observed, "I would suggest that you bestow upon Mr. Vanringham
and yonder blot upon the Church of England the bonds from which I have been
recently manumitted, or, at the very least, keep a vigilant watch upon
those more than suspicious characters, the while that I narrate the
surprising events of this evening."


VI

Subsequently I made a clean breast of affairs to Gerald and Lord Humphrey
Degge. They heard me with attentive, even sympathetic, countenances; but by
and by the face of Lord Humphrey brightened as he saw a not unformidable
rival thus jockeyed from the field; and when I had ended, Gerald rose and
with an oath struck his open palm upon the table.

"This is the most fortunate coincidence," he swears, "that I have ever
known of. I come prepared to find my grandmother the wife of a beggarly
play-actor, and I discover that, to the contrary, she has contracted an
alliance with a gentleman for whom I entertain sincere affection."

"Surely," I cried, aghast, "you cannot deliberate acceptance of this
iniquitous and inadvertent match!"

"What is your meaning, Captain Audaine?" says the boy, sharply. "What other
course is possible?"'

"O Lord!" said I, "after to-night's imbroglio I have nothing to observe
concerning the possibility of anything; but if this marriage prove a legal
one, I am most indissuadably resolved to rectify matters without delay in
the divorce court."

Now Gerald's brows were uglily compressed. "A divorce," said he, with an
extreme of deliberation, "means the airing of to-night's doings in the
open. I take it, 'tis the duty of a man of honor to preserve the reputation
of his grandmother stainless; whether she be a housemaid or the Queen
of Portugal, her frailties are equally entitled to endurance, her
eccentricities to toleration: can a gentleman, then, sanction any
proceeding of a nature calculated to make his grandmother the
laughing-stock of England? The point is a nice one."

"For, conceive," said Lord Humphrey, with the most knavish grin I ever knew
a human countenance to pollute itself with, "that the entire matter will be
convoyed by the short-hand writers to the public press, and after this will
be hawked about the streets; and that the venders will yell particulars of
your grandmother's folly under your very windows; and that you must hear
them in impotence, and that for some months the three kingdoms will hear of
nothing else. Gad, I quite feel for you, my dear."

"I have fallen into a nest of madmen," I cried. "You know, both of you, how
profoundly I adore Mr. Gerald's sister, the accomplished and bewitching
Miss Allonby; and in any event, I demand of you, as rational beings, is
it equitable that I be fettered for life to an old woman's apron-strings
because a doctor of divinity is parsimonious of his candles?"

But Gerald had drawn with a flourish. "You have repudiated my kinswoman,"
says he, "and you cannot deny me the customary satisfaction. Harkee, my
fine fellow, Dorothy will marry my friend Lord Humphrey if she will be
advised by me; or if she prefer it, she may marry the Man in the Iron Mask
or the piper that played before Moses, so far as I am concerned: but as for
you, I hereby offer you your choice between quitting this apartment as my
grandfather or as a corpse."

"I won't fight you!" I shouted. "Keep the boy off, Degge!" But when the
infuriate lad rushed upon me, I was forced, in self-protection, to draw,
and after a brief engagement to knock his sword across the room.

"Gerald," I pleaded, "for the love of reason, consider! I cannot fight you.
Heaven knows this tragic farce hath robbed me of all pretension toward your
sister, and that I am just now but little better than a madman; yet 'tis
her blood which exhilarates your veins, and with such dear and precious
fluid I cannot willingly imbrue my hands. Nay, you are no swordsman,
lad,--keep off!"

And there I had blundered irretrievably.

"No swordsman! By God, I fling the words in your face, Frank Audaine! must
I send the candlestick after them?" And within the instant he had caught
up his weapon and had hurled himself upon me, in an abandoned fury. I had
not moved. The boy spitted himself upon my sword and fell with a horrid
gasping.

"You will bear me witness, Lord Humphrey," said I, "that the quarrel was
not of my provokement."

But at this juncture the outer door reopened and Dorothy tripped into the
room, preceding Lady Allonby and Mr. George Erwyn. They had followed in the
family coach to dissuade the Marchioness from her contemplated match by
force or by argument, as the cat might jump; and so it came about that my
dear mistress and I stared at each other across her brother's lifeless
body.

And 'twas in this poignant moment I first saw her truly. In a storm you
have doubtless had some utterly familiar scene leap from the darkness,
under the lash of lightning, and be for the instant made visible and
strange; and I beheld her with much that awful clarity. Formerly 'twas her
beauty had ensnared me, and this I now perceived to be a fortuitous and
happy medley of color and glow and curve, indeed, yet nothing more. 'Twas
the woman I loved, not her trappings; and her eyes were no more part of her
than were the jewels in her ears. But the sweet mirth of her, the brave
heart, the clean soul, the girl herself, how good and generous and kind
and tender,--'twas this that I now beheld, and knew that this, too, was
lost;--and, in beholding, the little love of yesterday fled whimpering
before the sacred passion which had possessed my being. And I began to
laugh.

"My dear," said I, "'twas to-night that you promised me your answer, and
to-night you observe in me alike your grandfather and your brother's
murderer."


VII

Lady Allonby fell to wringing her hands, but Dorothy had knelt beside the
prostrate form and was inspecting the ravages of my fratricidal sword. "Oh,
fy! fy!" says she immediately, and wrinkles her saucy nose; "had none of
you the sense to perceive that Gerald was tipsy? And as for the wound, 'tis
only a scratch here on the left shoulder. Get water, somebody." And her
command being obeyed, she cleansed the hurt composedly and bandaged it with
the ruffle of her petticoat.

Meanwhile we hulking men stood thick about her, fidgeting and foolishly
gaping like a basket of fish; and presently a sibilance of relief went
about our circle as Gerald opened his eyes. "Sister," says he, with a
profoundly tragic face, "remember--remember that I perished to preserve the
honor of our family."

"To preserve a fiddlestick!" said my adored Dorothy. And, rising, she
confronted me, a tinted statuette of decision. "Now, Frank," says she, "I
would like to know the meaning of this nonsense."

And thereupon, for the second time, I recounted the dreadful and huddled
action of the night.

When I had ended, "The first thing," says she, "is to let Grandmother out
of that room. And the second is to show me the Parson." This was done; the
Dowager entered in an extremity of sulkiness, and the Parson, on being
pointed out, lowered his eyes and intensified his complexion.

"As I anticipated," says my charmer, "you are, one and all, a parcel of
credulous infants. 'Tis a parson, indeed, but merely the parson out of
Vanbrugh's _Relapse_; only last Friday, sir, we heartily commended your
fine performance. Why, Frank, the man is one of the play-actors."

"I fancy," Mr. Vanringham here interpolates, "that I owe the assembled
company some modicum of explanation. 'Tis true that at the beginning of
our friendship I had contemplated matrimony with our amiable Marchioness,
but, I confess, 'twas the lady's property rather than her person which was
the allure. And reflection dissuaded me; a legal union left me, a young
and not unhandsome man, irrevocably fettered to an old woman; whereas a
mock-marriage afforded an eternal option to compound the match--for a
consideration--with the lady's relatives, to whom, I had instinctively
divined, her alliance with me would prove distasteful. Accordingly I
had availed myself of my colleague's skill [Footnote: I witnessed this
same Quarmby's hanging in 1754, and for a burglary, I think, with an
extraordinary relish.--F.A.] in the portrayal of clerical parts rather than
resort to any parson whose authority was unrestricted by the footlights.
And accordingly--"

"And accordingly my marriage," I interrupted, "is not binding?"

"I can assure you," he replied, "that you might trade your lawful right in
the lady for a twopenny whistle and not lose by the bargain."

"And what about my marriage?" says the Marchioness--"the marriage which was
never to be legalized?--'twas merely that you might sell me afterward, like
so much mutton, was it, you jumping-jack--!"

But I spare you her ensuing gloss upon this text.

The man heard her through, without a muscle twitching. "It is more than
probable," he conceded, "that I have merited each and every fate your
Ladyship is pleased to invoke. Indeed, I consider the extent of your
distresses to be equaled only by that of your vocabulary. Yet by ordinary
the heart of woman is not obdurate, and upon one lady here I have some
claim--"

Dorothy had drawn away from him, with an odd and frightened cry. "Not upon
me, sir! I never saw you except across the footlights. You know I never saw
you except across the footlights, Mr. Vanringham!"

Fixedly he regarded her, with a curious yet not unpleasing smile. "I am
the more unfortunate," he said, at last. "Nay, 'twas to Lady Allonby I
addressed my appeal."

The person he named had been whispering with George Erwyn, but now she
turned toward the actor. "Heavens!" said Lady Allonby, "to think I should
be able to repay you this soon! La, of course, you are at liberty, Mr.
Vanringham, and we may treat the whole series of events as a frolic
suited to the day. For I am under obligations to you, and, besides, your
punishment would breed a scandal, and, above all, anything is preferable to
being talked about in the wrong way."

Having reasons of my own, I was elated by the upshot of this rather
remarkable affair. Yet in justice to my own perspicacity, I must declare
that it occurred to me, at this very time, that Mr. Vanringham had proven
himself not entirely worthy of unlimited confidence, I reflected, however,
that I had my instructions, and that, if a bad king may prove a good
husband, a knave may surely carry a letter with fidelity, the more so if it
be to his interest to do it.


VIII

I rode back to Tunbridge in the coach, with Dorothy at my side and with
Gerald recumbent upon the front seat,--where, after ten minutes' driving
the boy very philanthropically fell asleep.

"And you have not," I immediately asserted--"after all, you have not given
me the answer which was to-night to decide whether I be of all mankind the
most fortunate or the most miserable. And 'tis nearing twelve."

"What choice have I?" she murmured; "after to-night is it not doubly
apparent that you need some one to take care of you? And, besides, this is
your eighth proposal, and the ninth I had always rather meant to accept,
because I have been in love with you for two whole weeks."

My heart stood still. And shall I confess that for an instant my wits,
too, paused to play the gourmet with my emotions? She sat beside me in the
darkness, you understand, waiting, mine to touch. And everywhere the world
was filled with beautiful, kind people, and overhead God smiled down upon
His world, and a careless seraph had left open the door of Heaven, so that
quite a deal of its splendor flooded the world about us. And the snoring
of Gerald was now inaudible because of a stately music which was playing
somewhere.

"Frank--!" she breathed. And I noted that her voice was no less tender than
her lips.




IV

THE RHYME TO PORRINGER


_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 2, 1750_

    "_Ye gods, why are not hearts first paired above,
  But still some interfere in others' love,
  Ere each for each by certain marks are known?
  You mould them up in haste, and drop them down,
  And while we seek what carelessly you sort,
  You sit in state, and make our pains your sport._"


DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

CAPTAIN AUDAINE, an ingenious, well-accomplished gentleman.
LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, an airy young gentleman, loves Miss Allonby for her
money.
VANRINGHAM, emissary and confederate of Audaine.
MISS ALLONBY, a young lady of wit and fortune.

ATTENDANTS to Lord Humphrey, Etc.


SCENE

Tunbridge Wells, first in and about Lord Humphrey's lodgings, then shifting
to a drawing-room in Lady Allonby's villa.


THE RHYME TO PORRINGER


PROEM:--_Merely to Serve as Intermezzo_

Next morning Captain Audaine was closeted with Mr. Vanringham in the
latter's apartments at the _Three Gudgeons_. I abridge the Captain's
relation of their interview, and merely tell you that it ended in the
actor's looking up, with a puzzled face, from a certain document.

"You might have let me have a whiff of this," Mr. Vanringham began. "You
might have breathed, say, a syllable or two last night--"

"I had my instructions, sir, but yesterday," replied the Captain; "and
surely, Mr. Vanringham, to have presumed last night upon my possession of
this paper, so far as to have demanded any favor of you, were unreasonable,
even had it not savored of cowardice. For, as it has been very finely
observed, it is the nicest part of commerce in the world, that of doing and
receiving benefits. O Lord, sir! there are so many thousand circumstances,
with respect to time, person, and place, which either heighten or allay the
value of the obligation--"

"I take your point," said the other, with some haste, "and concede that you
are, beyond any reasonable doubt, in the right. Within the hour I am off."

"Then all is well," said Captain Audaine.

But he was wrong in this opinion, so wrong that I confute him by subjoining
his own account of what befell, somewhat later in the day.


I

'Twas hard upon ten in the evening (the Captain estimates) when I left
Lady Culcheth's, [Footnote: Sir Henry Muskerry's daughter, of whom I have
already spoken, and by common consent an estimable lady and a person of
fine wit; but my infatuation for Lady Betty had by this time, after three
nights with her, been puffed out; and this fortunate extinction, through
the affair of the broken snuffbox, had left me now entirely indifferent to
all her raptures, panegyrics, and premeditated artlessnesses.--F. A.] and I
protest that at the time there was not a happier man in all Tunbridge than
Francis Audaine.

"You haven't the king?" Miss Allonby was saying, as I made my adieus to the
company. "Then I play queen, knave, and ace, which gives me the game, Lord
Humphrey."

And afterward she shuffled the cards and flashed across the room a glance
whose brilliance shamed the tawdry candles about her, and, as you can
readily conceive, roused a prodigious trepidation in my adoring breast.

"Dorothy!--O Dorothy!" I said over and over again when I had reached the
street; and so went homeward with constant repetitions of her dear name.

I suppose it was an idiotic piece of business; but you are to remember
that I loved her with an entire heart, and that, as yet, I could scarcely
believe the confession of a reciprocal attachment, which I had wrung from
her overnight, to the accompaniment of Gerald's snoring, had been other
than an unusually delectable and audacious dream upon the part of Frank
Audaine.

I found it, then, as I went homeward, a heady joy to ponder on her
loveliness. Oh, the wonder of her voice, that is a love-song! cried my
heart. Oh, the candid eyes of her, more beautiful than the June heavens,
more blue than the very bluest speedwell-flower! Oh, the tilt of her tiny
chin, and the incredible gold of her hair, and the quite unbelievable
pink-and-white of her little flower-soft face! And, oh, the scrap of
crimson that is her mouth.

In a word, my pulses throbbed with a sort of divine insanity, and Frank
Audaine was as much out of his senses as any madman now in Bedlam, and as
deliriously perturbed as any lover is by ordinary when he meditates upon
the object of his affections.

But there was other work than sonneting afoot that night, and shortly I
set about it. Yet such was my felicity that I went to my nocturnal labors
singing. Yes, it rang in my ears, somehow, that silly old Scotch song, and
under my breath I hummed odd snatches of it as I went about the night's
business.

Sang I:

    "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
  Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
  King James the Seventh had ae daughter,
  And he gave her to an Oranger.

    "Ken ye how he requited him?
  Ken ye how he requited him?
  The dog has into England come,
  And ta'en the crown in spite of him!

    "The rogue he salna keep it lang,
  To budge we'll make him fain again;
  We'll hang him high upon a tree,
  And King James shall hae his ain again!"


II

Well! matters went smoothly enough at the start. With a diamond Vanringham
dexterously cut out a pane of glass, so that we had little difficulty in
opening the window; and I climbed into a room black as a pocket, leaving
him without to act as a sentinel, since, so far as I could detect, the
house was now untenanted.

But some twenty minutes later, when I had finally succeeded in forcing the
escritoire I found in the back room upon the second story, I heard the
street door unclose. And I had my candle extinguished in that self same
instant. You can conceive that 'twas with no pleasurable anticipation I
peered into the hall, for I was fairly trapped. I saw some five or six men
of an ugly aspect, who carried among them a burden, the nature of which I
could not determine in the uncertain light. But I heaved a sigh of relief
as they bore their cargo past me, to the front room, (which opened on the
one I occupied), without apparent recognition of my presence.

"Now," thinks I, "is the time for my departure." And having already
selected the papers I had need of from the rifled desk, I was about to run
for it, when I heard a well-known voice.

"Rat the parson!" it cried; "he should have been here an hour ago. Here's
the door left open for him, endangering the whole venture, and whey-face
han't plucked up heart to come! Do some of you rogues fetch him without
delay; and do all of you meet me to-morrow at the _Mitre_, to be paid in
full for this business, before reporting to his Grace."

"Here," thinks I, "is beyond doubt a romance." And as the men tumbled
down-stairs and into the street, I resolved to see the adventure through,
by the light of those candles which were now burning in the next room.

I waited for perhaps ten minutes, during which period I was aware of divers
movements near at hand; and, judging that in any case there was but one
man's anger to be apprehended, I crept toward the intervening door and
found it luckily ajar.

So I peered through the crack into the adjoining room, and there, as I had
anticipated, discovered Lord Humphrey Degge, whom I had last seen at Lady
Culcheth's wrangling over a game of _écarté_ with the fairest antagonist
the universe could afford.

Just now my Lord was in a state of high emotion, and the cause of it was
evident when I perceived his ruffians had borne into the house a swooning
lady, whom merciful unconsciousness had rendered oblivious to her present
surroundings, and whose wrists his Lordship was vigorously slapping in the
intervals between his frequent applications to her nostrils of a flask,
which, as I more lately learned, contained sal volatile.

Here was an unlucky turn, since I had no desire to announce my whereabouts,
my business in the house being of a sort that necessitated secrecy;
whereas, upon the other hand, I could not but misdoubt my Lord's intention
toward the unknown fair was of discreditable kinship, and such as a
gentleman might not countenance with self-esteem.

Accordingly I devoted the moments during which the lady was recovering
from her swoon, to serious reflection concerning the course that I should
preferably adopt. But now, Miss came to, and, as is the custom of all
females similarly situated, rubbed her eyes and said, "Where am I?"

And when she rose from the divan I saw that 'twas my adored Dorothy.

"In the presence of your infatuated slave," says my Lord. "Ah, divine Miss
Allonby--!"

But being now aware of her deplorable circumstances, she began to weep,
and, in spite of the amorous rhetoric with which his Lordship was prompt to
comfort her, rebuked him for unmanly conduct, with sublimity and fire, and
depicted the horrors of her present predicament in terms that were both
just and elegant.

From their disjointed talk I soon determined that, Lord Humphrey's suit
being rejected by my angel, he had laid a trap for her (by bribing her
coachman, as I subsequently learned), and had so far succeeded in his
nefarious scheme that she, on leaving Lady Culcheth's, had been driven
to this house, in the conviction she rode homeward; and this course my
Lord endeavored to justify, with a certain eloquence, and attributed the
irregularity of his behavior solely to the colossal vehemence of his
affection.

His oratory, however, was of little avail, for Dorothy told him plainly
that she had rather hear the protestations of a toad than listen to his far
more nauseous flattery; and bade him at once restore her to her natural
guardians.

"_Ma charmante_," said he, "to-morrow your good step-mother may, if you
will, share with your husband the privilege of saluting Lady Humphrey
Degge; but as for Miss Allonby, I question if in the future her dearest
friends are likely to see much of her."

"What do you mean?" cries she.

"That the parson will be here directly," said he.

"Infamous!" she observes; "and is the world run mad, that these extempore
weddings should be foisted upon every woman in the Allonby connection!"

"Ah, but, my dear," he answered airily, "'twas those two fiascos which
begot my notion, and yet hearten me. For in every approved romance the
third adventurer gets the victory; so that I am, I take it, predestinate to
win where Vanringham and Rokesle failed."

She did not chop logic with him, but instead retorted in a more primitive
fashion by beginning to scream at the top of her voice.

I doubt if any man of honor was ever placed under a more great embarrass.
Yonder was the object of my devotion, exposed to all the diabolical
machinations of a heartless villain; and here was I concealed in my Lord's
bedroom, his desk broken open, and his papers in my pocket. To remain quiet
was impossible, since 'twas to expose her to a fate worse than death; yet
to reveal myself was to confess Frank Audaine a thief, and to lose her
perhaps beyond redemption.

Then I thought of the mask which I had brought in case of emergency; and,
clapping it on, resolved to brazen out the affair. Meanwhile I saw all
notions of gallantry turned topsy-turvy, for my Lord was laughing quietly,
while my adored Dorothy called aloud upon the name of her Maker.

"The neighborhood is not unaccustomed to such sounds," said he, "and I
hardly think we need fear any interruption. I must tell you, my dear
creature, you have, by an evil chance, arrived in a most evil locality, for
this quarter of the town is the devil's own country, and he is scarcely
like to make you free of it."

"O Lord, sir!" said I, and pushed the door wide open, "surely you forget
that the devil is a gentleman?"


III

Had I dropped a hand-grenade into the apartment the astonishment of its
occupants would not have been excessive. My Lord's face, as he clapped
his hand to his sword, was neither tranquil nor altogether agreeable to
contemplate; but as for Dorothy, she gave a frightened little cry, and ran
toward the masked intruder with a piteous confidence which wrung my heart.

"The devil!" says my Lord.

"Not precisely," I amended, and bowed in my best manner, "though 'tis
undeniable I come to act as his representative."

"Oh, joy to your success!" his Lordship sneered.

"Harkee, sir," said I, "as you, with perfect justice, have stated, this is
the devil's stronghold, and hereabouts his will is paramount; and, as I
have had the honor to add, the devil is a gentleman. Sure, and as such, he
cannot be expected to countenance your present behavior? Nay, never fear!
Lucifer, already up to the ears in the affairs of this mundane sphere,
lacks leisure to express his disapproval in sulphuric person. He tenders
his apologies, sir, and sends in his stead your servant, with whose
capabilities he is indifferently acquainted."

"To drop this mummery," says Lord Humphrey, "what are you doing in my
lodgings?"

"O Lord, sir!" I responded, "I came thither, I confess, without invitation.
And with equal candor I will admit that my present need is of your
Lordship's banknotes and jewels, and such-like trifles, rather than--you
force me, sir, to say it,--rather than of your company."

Thus speaking, I drew and placed myself on guard, while my Lord gasped.

"You're the most impudent rogue," says he, after he had recovered himself a
little, "that I have had the privilege of meeting--"

"Your Lordship is all kindness," I protested.

"--but your impudence is worth the price of whatever you may have pilfered.
Go, my good man--or devil, if you so prefer to style yourself! Tell Lucifer
that he is well served; and obligingly return to the infernal regions
without delay. For, as you have doubtless learned, Miss and I have many
private matters to discuss. And, gad, Mr. Moloch, [Footnote: A deity of,
I believe, Ammonitish origin. His traditional character as represented
by our immortal Milton is both taking to the fancy and finely romantic;
and is, I am informed, no less remarkable for many happy turns of speech
than for conformity throughout to the most famous legends of Talmudic
fabrication.--F.A.] pleasant as is your conversation, you must acknowledge
I can't allow evil spirits about the house without getting it an ill
reputation. So pardon me if I exorcise you with this."

He spoke boldly, and, as he ended, tossed me a purse. I let it lie where it
fell, for I had by no means ended my argument.

"Yet, sir," said I, "my errand, which began with the acquisition of your
pins, studs and other jewelry, now reaches toward treasure far more
precious--"

"Enough!" he cried, impatiently, "Begone! and do you render thanks--that my
present business is so urgent as to prevent my furnishing the rope which
will one day adorn your neck."

"That's as may be," quoth I; "and, indeed, I doubt if I could abide
drowning, for 'tis a damp, unwholesome, and very permanent sort of death.
But my fixed purpose, to cut short all debate, is to escort Miss Allonby
homeward."

"Come," sneers my Lord,--"come, Mr. Moloch, I have borne with your
insolence for a quarter of an hour--"

"Twenty minutes," said I, after consulting my watch.

"--but I mean to put up with it no longer; and in consequence I take the
boorish liberty of suggesting that this is none of your affair."

"Good sir," I conceded, "your Lordship speaks with considerable justice,
and we must leave the final decision to Miss here."

I bowed toward her. In her face there was a curious bewilderment that
made me fear lest, for all my mask, for all my unnatural intonations, and
for all the room's half-light, my worshipped mistress had come near to
recognizing this caught thief.

"Miss Allonby," said I, in a falsetto voice which trembled, "since I am
unknown to you, may I trust you will permit me to present myself? My
name--though, indeed, I have a multitude of names--is for the occasion
Frederick Thomasson. With my father's appellation and estates I cannot
accommodate you, for the reason that a mystery attaches to his identity.
As for my mother, let it suffice to say that she was a vivacious brunette
of a large acquaintance, and generally known to the public as Black Moll
O'Reilly. I began life as a pickpocket. Since then I have so far improved
my natural gifts that the police are flattering enough to value my person
at several hundred pounds. My rank in society, as you perceive, is not
exalted; yet, if my luck by any chance should fail, I do not question that
I shall, upon some subsequent Friday, move in loftier circles than any
nobleman who happens at the time to be on Tyburn Hill.--So much for my poor
self. And since by this late hour Lady Allonby is beyond doubt beginning to
grow uneasy, let us have done with further exposition, and remember that
'tis high time you selected an escort to her residence. May I implore that
you choose between the son of the Marquis of Venour and Black Molly's
bastard?"

She looked us over,--first one, then the other. More lately she laughed;
and if I had never seen her before, I could have found it in my heart to
love her for the sweet insolence of her demeanor.

"After all," said my adored Dorothy, "I prefer the rogue who when he goes
about his knaveries has at least the decency to wear a mask."

"That, my Lord," said I, "is fairly conclusive; and so we will be
journeying."

"Over my dead body!" says he.

"Sure, and what's beneath the feet," I protested, "is equally beneath
consideration."

The witticism stung him like a wasp, and, with an oath, he drew, as I was
heartily glad to observe, for I cannot help thinking that when it comes to
the last pinch, and one gentleman is excessively annoyed by the existence
of another, steel is your only arbiter, and charitable allowances for the
dead make the one rational peroration. So we crossed blades; and, pursuing
my usual tactics, I began upon a flow of words, which course, as I have
learned by old experience, is apt to disconcert an adversary far more than
any trick of the sword can do.

I pressed him sorely, and he continued to give way, but clearly for
tactical purposes, and without permitting the bright flash of steel that
protected him to swerve an instant from the proper line.

"Miss Allonby," said I, growing impatient, "have you never seen a venomous
insect pinned to the wall? In that case, I pray you to attend more closely.
For one has only to parry--thus! And to thrust--in this fashion! And
behold, the thing is done!"

In fact, having been run through the chest, my Lord was for the moment
affixed to the panelling at the extreme end of the apartment, where he
writhed, much in the manner of a cockchafer which mischievous urchins have
pinned to a card,--his mien and his gesticulations, however, being rather
more suggestive of the torments of the damned, as they are so strikingly
depicted by the Italian Dante. [Footnote: I allude, of course, to the
famous Florentine, who excels no less in his detailed depictions of
infernal anguish than in his eloquent portrayal of the graduated and
equitable emoluments of an eternal glorification.--F.A.] He tumbled in a
heap, though, when I sheathed my sword and bowed toward my charmer.

"Miss Allonby," said I, "thus quickly ends this evil quarter of an hour;
and with, equal expedition, I think, should we be leaving this evil quarter
of the town."

She had watched the combat with staring and frightened eyes. Now she had
drawn nearer, and she looked curiously at her over-presumptuous lover where
he had fallen.

"Have you killed him?" she asked, in a hushed voice.

"O Lord, no!" I protested. "The life of a peer's son is too valuable a
matter; he will be little the worse for it in a week."

"The dog!" cries she, overcome with pardonable indignation at the affront
which the misguided nobleman had put upon her; and afterward, with a
ferocity the more astounding in an individual whose demeanor was by
ordinary of an aspect so amiable and so engaging, she said, "Oh, the lewd
thieving dog!"

"My adorable Miss Allonby," said I, "do not, I pray you, thus slander the
canine species! Meanwhile, permit me to remind you that 'tis inexpedient
to loiter in these parts, for the parson will presently be at hand; and if
it be to inter rather than to marry Lord Humphrey--well, after all, the
peerage is a populous estate! But, either way, time presses."

"Come!" said she, and took my arm; and together we went down-stairs and
into the street.


IV

On the way homeward she spoke never a word. Vanringham had made a hasty
flitting when my Lord's people arrived, so that we saw nothing of him. But
when we had come safely to Lady Allonby's villa, Dorothy began to laugh.

"Captain Audaine," says she, in a wearied and scornful voice, "I know that
the hour is very late, yet there are certain matters to be settled between
as which will, I think, scarcely admit of delay. I pray you, then, grant me
ten minutes' conversation."

She had known me all along, you see. Trust the dullest woman to play
Oedipus when love sets the riddle. So there was nothing to do save clap my
mask into my pocket and follow her, sheepishly enough, toward one of the
salons, where at Dorothy's solicitation a gaping footman made a light for
us.

She left me there to kick my heels through a solitude of some moments'
extent. But in a while my dear mistress came into the room, with her arms
full of trinkets and knick-knacks, which she flung upon a table.

"Here's your ring, Captain Audaine," says she, and drew it from her finger.
"I did not wear it long, did I? And here's the miniature you gave me, too.
I used to kiss it every night, you know. And here's a flower you dropped at
Lady Pevensey's. I picked it up--oh, very secretly!--because you had worn
it, you understand. And here's--"

But at this point she fairly broke down; and she cast her round white arms
about the heap of trinkets, and strained them close to her, and bowed her
imperious golden head above them in anguish.

"Oh, how I loved you--how I loved you!" she sobbed. "And all the while you
were only a common thief!"

"Dorothy--!" I pleaded.

"You shame me--you shame me past utterance!" she cried, in a storm of
mingled tears and laughter. "Here's this bold Captain Audaine, who comes to
Tunbridge from nobody knows where, and wins a maid's love, and proves in
the end a beggarly house-breaker! Mr. Garrick might make a mirthful comedy
of this, might he not?" Then she rose to her feet very stiffly. "Take your
gifts, Mr. Thief," says she, pointing,--"take them. And for God's sake let
me not see you again!"

So I was forced to make a clean breast of it.

"Dorothy," said I, "ken ye the rhyme to porringer?" But she only stared at
me through unshed tears.

Presently, though, I hummed over the old song:

    "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
  Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
  King James the Seventh had ae daughter,
  And he gave her to an Oranger.

"And the Oranger filched his crown," said I, "and drove King James--God
bless him!--out of his kingdom. This was a while and a half ago, my dear;
but Dutch William left the stolen crown to Anne, and Anne, in turn, left it
to German George. So that now the Elector of Hanover reigns at St. James's,
while the true King's son must skulk in France, with never a roof to
shelter him. And there are certain gentlemen, Dorothy, who do not consider
that this is right."

"You are a Jacobite?" said she. "Well! and what have your politics to do
with the matter?"

"Simply that Lord Humphrey is not of my way of thinking, my dearest dear.
Lord Humphrey--pah!--this Degge is Ormskirk's spy, I tell you! He followed
Vanringham to Tunbridge on account of our business. And to-day, when
Vanringham set out for Avignon, he was stopped a mile from the Wells by
some six of Lord Humphrey's fellows, disguised as highwaymen, and all his
papers were stolen. Oho, but Lord Humphrey is a thrifty fellow: so when
Ormskirk puts six bandits at his disposal he employs them in double infamy,
to steal you as well as Vanringham's despatches. To-morrow they would have
been in Ormskirk's hands. And then--" I paused to allow myself a whistle.

She came a little toward me, in the prettiest possible glow of
bewilderment, "I do not understand," she murmured. "Oh, Frank, Frank, for
the love of God, beware of trusting Vanringham in anything! And you are not
a thief, after all? Are you really not named Thomasson?"

"I am most assuredly not Frederick Thomasson," said I, "nor do I know if
any such person exists, for I never heard the name before to-night. Yet, in
spite of this, I am an unmitigated thief. Why, d'ye not understand? What
Vanringham carried was a petition from some two hundred Scotch and English
gentlemen that our gracious Prince Charlie be pleased to come over and
take back his own from the Elector. 'Twas rebellion, flat rebellion, and
the very highest treason! Had Ormskirk seen the paper, within a month our
heads had all been blackening over Temple Bar. So I stole it,--I, Francis
Audaine, stole it in the King's cause, God bless him! 'Twas burglary, no
less, but it saved two hundred lives, my own included; and I look to be a
deal older than I am before I regret the deed with any sincerity."

Afterward I showed her the papers, and then burned them one by one over a
candle. She said nothing. So by and by I turned toward her with a little
bow.

"Madam," said I, "you have forced my secret from me. I know that your
family is staunch on the Whig side; and yet, ere the thief goes, may he not
trust you will ne'er betray him?"

And now she came to me, all penitence and dimples.

"But it was you who said you were a thief," my dear mistress pointed out.

"O Lord, madam!" said I, "'twas very necessary that Degge should think me
so. A house-breaker they would have only hanged, but a Jacobite they would
have hanged and quartered afterward."

"Ah, Frank, do not speak of such fearful matters, but forgive me
instantly!" she wailed.

And I was about to do so in what I considered the most agreeable and
appropriate manner when the madcap broke away from me, and sprang upon a
footstool and waved her fan defiantly.

"Down with the Elector!" she cried, in her high, sweet voice. "Long live
King James!"

And then, with a most lovely wildness of mien, she began to sing:

    "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
  Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
  King James the Seventh had ae daughter--"

until I interrupted her. For, "Extraordinary creature!" I pleaded, "you
will rouse the house."

"I don't care! I intend to be a Jacobite if you are one!"

"Eh, well," said I, "Frank Audaine is not the man to coerce his wife in a
political matter. Nevertheless, I know of a certain Jacobite who is not
unlikely to have a bad time of it if by any chance Lord Humphrey recognized
him to-night. Nay, Miss, you may live to be a widow yet."

"But he didn't recognize you. And if he did"--she snapped her
fingers,--"why, we'll fight him again, you and I. Won't we, my dear? For
he stole our secret, you know. And he stole me, too. Very pretty behavior,
wasn't it?" And here Miss, Allonby stamped the tiniest, the most
infinitesimal of red-heeled slippers.

  "The rogue he didna keep me lang,
  To budge we made him fain again--

"that's you, Frank, and your great, long sword. And now:

  "We'll hang him high, upon a tree,
  And King Frank shall hae his ain again!"

Afterward my adored Dorothy jumped from the footstool, and came toward me,
lifting up the crimson trifle that she calls her mouth, "So take your own,
my king," she breathed, with a wonderful gesture of surrender.

And a gentleman could do no less.




V

ACTORS ALL


_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 3, 1750_

"_I am thinking if some little, filching, inquisitive poet should get my
story, and represent it to the stage, what those ladies who are never
precise but at a play would say of me now,--that I were a confident, coming
piece, I warrant, and they would damn the poor poet for libelling the
sex._"


DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

DUKE OF ORMSKIRK.

COLONEL DENSTROUDE,  }
SIR GRESLEY CARNE,   } Gentlemen of the town.
MR. BABINGTON-HERLE, }

VANRINGHAM, a play-actor and a Jacobite emissary.

MR. LANGTON, secretary to Ormskirk.

MISS ALLONBY, an heiress, loves Captain Audaine.

LOTTRUM, maid to Miss Allonby.

BENYON, MINCHIN, and OTHER SERVANTS to Ormskirk.


SCENE

Tunbridge Wells, shifting from Ormskirk's lodgings at the _Mitre_ to
Vanringham's apartments in the _Three Gudgeons_.




ACTORS ALL


_PROEM.--To Explain Why the Heroine of This Comedy Must Wear Her Best_

I quit pilfering from the writings of Francis Audaine, since in the
happenings which now concern us he plays but a subsidiary part. The Captain
had an utter faith in decorum, and therefore it was, as he records, an
earth-staggering shock when the following day, on the Pantiles, in full
sight of the best company at the Wells, Captain Audaine was apprehended. He
met disaster like an old acquaintance, and hummed a scrap of song--"_O, gin
I were a bonny bird_,"--and shrugged; but when Miss Allonby, with whom he
had been chatting, swayed and fell, the Captain caught her in his arms, and
standing thus, turned angrily upon the emissaries of the law.

"Look you, you rascals," said he, "you have spoiled a lady's afternoon with
your foolish warrant!"

He then relinquished the unconscious girl to her brother's keeping,
tenderly kissed one insensate hand, and afterward strolled off to jail
_en route_ for a perfunctory trial and a subsequent traffic with the
executioner that Audaine did not care to think of.

Tunbridge buzzed like a fly-trap with the ensuing rumors. The Captain
was at the head of a most heinous Jacobitical uprising. The great Duke
of Ormskirk was come hastily from London on the business. Highlanders
were swarming over the Border, ten thousand French troops had landed at
Pevensey, commanded by the Chevalier St. George in person, and twenty
thousand friars and pilgrims from Coruña had sailed for Milford Haven,
under the admiralty of young Henry Stuart. The King was locked in the
Tower; the King had been assassinated that morning by a Spanish monk, with
horse-pistols and a cast in his left eye; and the King and the Countess of
Yarmouth had escaped three days ago, in disguise, and were now on their way
to Hanover.

These were the reports which went about Tunbridge, while Dorothy Allonby
wept a little and presently called for cold water and a powder-puff, and
afterward for a sedan chair.


I

Miss Allonby found my Lord Duke of Ormskirk deep in an infinity of papers.
But at her entrance he rose and with a sign dismissed his secretary.

It appears appropriate here to afford you some notion of Ormskirk's
exterior. I pilfer from Löwe's memoir of him, where Horace Calverley, who
first saw Ormskirk at about this time, is quoted:

"His Grace was in blue-and-silver, which became him, though he is somewhat
stomachy for such conspicuous colors. A handsome man, I would have said,
honest but not particularly intelligent.... Walpole, in a fit of spleen,
once called him 'a porcelain sphinx,' and the phrase sticks; but,
indeed, there is more of the china-doll about him. He possesses the
same too-perfect complexion, his blue eyes have the same spick-and-span
vacuity; and the fact that the right orb is a trifle larger than its fellow
gives his countenance, in repose, much the same expression of placid
astonishment.... Very plump, very sleepy-looking, immaculate as a cat, you
would never have accorded him a second glance: covert whisperings that the
stout gentleman yonder is the great Duke of Ormskirk have, I think, taxed
human belief more than once during these ten years past."

They said of Ormskirk that he manifested a certain excitement on the
day after Culloden, when he had seventy-two prisoners shot _en masse_,
[Footnote: But for all that, when, near Rossinish (see Löwe), he captured
Flora Macdonald and her ostensibly female companion, Ormskirk flatly
declined to recognize Prince Charles. "They may well call you the
Pretender, madam," he observed to "Bettie Burke,"--"since as concerns my
party you are the most desirable Pretender we could possibly imagine." And
thereupon he gave the Prince a pass out of Scotland.] but this was doubted;
and in any event, such _battues_ being comparatively rare, he by ordinary
appeared to regard the universe with a composed and feline indifference.


II

"Child, child!" Ormskirk began, and made a tiny gesture of deprecation, "I
perceive you are about to appeal to my better nature, and so I warn you in
advance that the idiotic business has worked me into a temper absolutely
ogreish."

"The Jacobite conspiracy, you mean?" said Miss Allonby. "Oh, I suppose
so. I am not particularly interested in such matters, though; I came, you
understand, for a warrant, or an order, or whatever you call it, for them
to let Frank out of that horrid filthy gaol."

The Duke's face was gravely humorous as he gazed at her for a moment or two
in silence, "You know quite well," he said at last, "that I can give you
nothing of the sort."

Miss Allonby said: "Upon my word, I never heard of such nonsense! How else
is he to take me to Lady Mackworth's ball to-night?"

"It is deplorable," his Grace of Ormskirk conceded, "that Captain Audaine
should be thus snatched from circles which he, no doubt, adorns. Still, I
fear you must look for another escort; and frankly, child, if you will be
advised by me, you will permit us to follow out our present intentions and
take off his head--not a great deprivation when you consider he has so
plainly demonstrated its contents to be of such inferior quality."

She had drawn close to him, with widening, pitiable eyes. "You mean, then,"
she demanded, "that Frank's very life is in danger?"

"This is unfair," the Duke complained. "You are about to go into hysterics
forthwith and thus bully me into letting the man escape. You are a minx.
You presume upon the fact that in the autumn I am to wed your kinswoman and
bosom companion, and that my affection for her is widely known to go well
past the frontier of common-sense; and also upon the fact that Marian will
give me the devil if I don't do exactly as you ask. I consider you to abuse
your power unconscionably, I consider you to be a second Delilah. However,
since you insist upon it, this Captain Audaine must, of course, be spared
the fate he very richly merits."

Miss Allonby had seated herself beside a table and was pensively looking
up at him. "Naturally," she said, "Marian and I, between us, will badger
you into saving Frank. I shall not worry, therefore, and I must trust to
Providence, I suppose, to arrange matters so that the poor boy will not
catch his death of cold in your leaky gaol yonder. And now I would like to
be informed of what he has been most unjustly accused."

"His crime," the Duke retorted, "is the not unusual one of being a fool.
Oh, I am candid! All Jacobites are fools. We gave the Stuarts a fair trial,
Heaven knows, and nobody but a fool would want them back."

"I am not here to discuss politics," a dignified Miss Allonby stated, "but
simply to find out in what way Frank has been slandered."

Ormskirk lifted one eyebrow. "It is not altogether a matter of politics.
Rather, as I see it, it is a matter of common-sense. Under the Stuarts
England was a prostitute among the nations, lackey in turn to Spain and
France and Italy; under the Guelph the Three-per-cents. are to-day at par.
The question as to which is preferable thus resolves itself into a choice
between common-sense and bedlamite folly. But, unhappily, you cannot argue
with a Jacobite: only four years ago Cumberland and Hawley and I rode from
Aberdeen to the Highlands and left all the intervening country bare as the
palm of your hand; I forget how many Jacobites we killed, but evidently not
enough to convince the others. Very well: we intend to have no more such
nonsense, and we must settle this particular affair by the simple device
of hanging or beheading every man-Jack concerned in it." He spoke without
vehemence--rather regretfully than otherwise.

Miss Allonby was patient, yet resolute to keep to the one really important
point. "But what has Frank been accused of doing when it never even entered
his head?"

"He has been conspiring," said the Duke, "and with conspicuous clumsiness.
It appears, child, that it was their common idiocy which of late brought
together some two hundred gentlemen in Lancashire. Being every one of them
most unmitigated fools, they desired that sot at Avignon to come over once
more and 'take back his own,' as the saying is. He would not stir without
definite assurances. So these men drew up a petition pledging their all to
the Chevalier's cause and--God help us!--signed it. I protest," the Duke
sighed, "I cannot understand these people! A couple of penstrokes, you
observe, and there is your life at the mercy of chance, at the disposal of
a puff of wind or the first blunderer who stumbles on the paper."

"Doubtless that is entirely true," said Miss Allonby, "but what about
Frank?"

Ormskirk shrugged his shoulders and began to laugh. "You are an
incomparable actress, you rogue you. But let us be candid, for all that,
since as it happens Lord Humphrey is not the only person in my employ. What
occurred last night I now partly know, and in part guess, Degge played a
bold game, and your Captain gambled even more impudently,--only the stakes,
as it to-day transpires, were of somewhat less importance than either of
them surmised. For years Mr. Vanringham has been a Jacobite emissary; now
he tires of it; and so he devoted the entire morning, yesterday to making a
copy of this absurd petition."

"I do not understand," said Miss Allonby; and in appearance, at least, she
was no whit disconcerted.

"He carried only the copy. You burned only the copy. Mr. Vanringham, it
develops, knew well enough what that bungling Degge had been deputed to
do, and he preferred to treat directly with Lord Humphrey's principal. Mr.
Vanringham is an intelligent fellow. I dare make this assertion, because
I am fresh from an interview with Mr. Vanringham," his Grace of Ormskirk
ended, and allowed himself a reminiscent chuckle.

She had risen. "O ungenerous! this Vanringham has been bribed!"

"I pray you," said the Duke, "give vent to no such scandal. Vanringham's
life would not be worth a farthing if he had done such a thing, and he
knows it. Nay, I have planned it more neatly. To-night Mr. Vanringham will
be arrested--merely on suspicion, mind you,--and all his papers will be
brought to me; and it is possible that among them we may find the petition.
And it is possible that, somehow, when he is tried with the others, Mr.
Vanringham alone may be acquitted. And it is possible that an aunt--in
Wales, say,--may die about this time and leave him a legacy of some five
thousand pounds. Oh, yes, all this is quite possible," said the Duke;
"but should we therefore shriek _Bribery_? For my own part, I esteem Mr.
Vanringham, as the one sensible man in the two hundred."

"He has turned King's evidence," she said, "and his papers will be brought
to you--" Miss Allonby paused. "All his papers!" said Miss Allonby.

"And very curious they will prove, no doubt," said his Grace. "So many
love-sick misses write to actors. I can assure you, child, I look
forward with a deal of interest to my inspection of Mr. Vanringham's
correspondence."

"Eh?--Oh, yes!" Miss Allonby assented--"all his papers! Yes, they should be
diverting, I must be going home though, to make ready for Lady Mackworth's
ball. And if I have nobody to dance with me, I shall know quite well whose
fault it is. How soon will Frank be freed, you odious tyrant?"

"My child, but in these matters we are all slaves to red tape! I can
promise you, however, that your Captain will be released from prison before
this month is out, so you are not to worry."


III

When she had left him the Duke sat for a while in meditation.

"That is an admirable girl, I would I could oblige her in the matter and
let this Audaine live. But such folly is out of the question. The man is
the heart of the conspiracy.

"No, Captain Audaine, I am afraid we must have that handsome head of yours,
and set your spirit free before this month is out. And your head also, Mr.
Vanringham, when we are done with using your evidence. This affair must be
the last; hitherto we have tried leniency, and it has failed; now we will
try extermination. Not one of these men must escape.

"I shall have trouble with Marian, since the two girls are inseparable.
Yes, this Audaine will cause me some trouble with Marian. I heartily wish
the fellow had never been born."

Ormskirk took a miniature from his pocket and sat thus in the dusk
regarding it. It was the portrait of a young girl with hazel eyes and
abundant hair the color of a dead oak-leaf. And now his sleepy face was
curiously moved.

"I shall have to lie to you. And you will believe me, for you are not
disastrously clever. But I wish it were not necessary, my dear. I wish it
were possible to make you understand that my concern is to save England
rather than a twopenny captain. As it is, I shall lie to you, and you will
believe. And Dorothy will get over it in time, as one gets over everything
in time. But I wish it were not necessary, sweetheart.

"I wish.... I wish that I were not so happy when I think of you. I become
so happy that I grow afraid. It is not right that anyone should be so
happy.

"Bah! I am probably falling into my dotage."

Ormskirk struck upon the gong. "And now, Mr. Langton, let us get back to
business."


IV

Later in the afternoon Miss Allonby demanded of her maid if Gerald Allonby
were within, and received a negative response. "Nothing could be better,"
said Miss Allonby. "You know that new suit of Master Gerald's, Lottrum--the
pink-and-silver? Very well; then you will do thus, and thus, and thus--"
And she poured forth a series of directions that astonished her maid not a
little.

"Law you now!" said Lottrum, "whatever--?"

"If you ask me any questions," said Dorothy, "I will discharge you on the
spot. And if you betray me, I shall probably kill you."

Lottrum said, "O Gemini!" and did as her mistress ordered.

Miss Allonby made a handsome boy, and such was her one comfort. Her mirror
showed an epicene denizen of romance,--Rosalind or Bellario, a frail
and lovely travesty of boyhood; but it is likely that the girl's heart
showed stark terror. Here was imminent no jaunt into Arden, but into the
gross jaws of even bodily destruction. Here was probable dishonor, a
guaranteeable death. She could fence well enough, thanks to many bouts with
Gerald; but when the foils were unbuttoned, there was a difference which
the girl could appreciate.

"In consequence," said Dorothy, "I had better hurry before I am still more
afraid."


V

So there came that evening, after dusk, to Mr. Francis Vanringham's
apartments, at the _Three Gudgeons_, a young spark in pink-and-silver. He
appeared startled at the sight of so much company, recovered his composure
with a gulp, and presented himself to the assembled gentlemen as Mr.
Osric Allonby, unexpectedly summoned from Cambridge, and in search of
his brother, Squire Gerald. At his step-mother's villa they had imagined
Gerald might be spending the evening with Mr. Vanringham. Mr. Osric
Allonby apologized for the intrusion; was their humble servant; and with a
profusion of _congées_ made as though to withdraw.

Mr. Vanringham lounged forward. The comedian had a vogue among the younger
men, since at all games of chance they found him untiring and tolerably
honest; and his apartments were, in effect, a gambling parlor.

Vanringham now took the boy's hand very genially. "You have somewhat the
look of your sister," he observed, after a prolonged appraisal; "though, in
nature, 'tis not expected of us trousered folk to be so beautiful. And by
your leave, you'll not quit us thus unceremoniously, Master Osric. I am by
way of being a friend of your brother's, and 'tis more than possible that
he may during the evening honor us with his presence. Will you not linger
awhile on the off-chance?" And Osric Allonby admitted he had no other
engagements.

He was in due form made known to the three gentlemen--Colonel Denstroude,
[Footnote: He and Vanringham had just been reconciled by Molly Yates'
elopement with Tom Stoach, the Colonel's footman. Garendon has a curious
anecdote concerning this lady, apropos of his notorious duel with
Denstroude, in '61.] Mr. Babington-Herle, and Sir Gresley Carne--who sat
over a bowl of punch. Sir Gresley was then permitted to conclude the
narrative which Mr. Allonby's entrance had interrupted: the evening
previous, being a little tipsy, Sir Gresley had strolled about Tunbridge in
search of recreation and, with perhaps excessive playfulness, had slapped
a passer-by, broken the fellow's nose, and gouged both thumbs into the
rascal's eyes. The young baronet conceded the introduction of these London
pastimes into the rural quiet of Tunbridge to have been an error in taste,
especially as the man proved upon inquiry to be a respectable haberdasher
and the sole dependence of four children; and having thus unfortunately
blinded the little tradesman, Sir Gresley wished to ask of the assembled
company what in their opinion was a reasonable reparation. "For I sincerely
regret the entire affair," Sir Gresley concluded, "and am desirous to
follow a course approvable by all men of honor."

"Heyho!" said Mr. Vanringham, "I'm afraid the rape of both eyes was a
trifle extreme; for by ordinary a haberdasher is neither a potato nor an
Argus, and, remembering that, even the high frivolity of brandy-and-water
should have respected his limitations."

The hands of Mr. Allonby had screened his face during the recital, "Oh, the
poor man!" he said, "I cannot bear--" And then, with swift alteration,
he tossed back his head, and laughed. "Are we gentlemen to be denied all
amusement? Sir Gresley acted quite within his privilege, and in terming him
severe you have lied, Mr. Vanringham. I repeat, sir, you have lied!"

Vanringham was on his feet within the instant, but Colonel Denstroude, who
sat beside him, laid a heavy hand upon Vanringham's arm. "'Oons, man," says
the Colonel, "infanticide is a crime."

The actor shrugged his shoulders, "Doubtless you are in the right, Mr.
Allonby," he said; "though, as you were of course going on to remark, you
express yourself somewhat obscurely. Your meaning, I take it, is that I
mayn't criticise the doings, of my guests? I stand corrected, and concede
Sir Gresley acted with commendable moderation, and that Cambridge is,
beyond question, the paramount expositor of morals and manners."

The lad stared about him: with a bewildered face. "La, will he not fight me
now?" he demanded of Colonel Denstroude,--"now, after I have called him a
liar?"

"My dear," the Colonel retorted, "he may possibly deprive you of your
nursing-bottle, or he may even birch you, but he will most assuredly not
fight you, so long as I have any say in the affair. I' cod, we are all
friends here, I hope. D'ye think Mr. Vanringham has so often enacted
Richard III. that to strangle infants is habitual with him? Fight you,
indeed! 'Sdeath and devils!" roared the Colonel, "I will cut the throat of
any man who dares to speak of fighting in this amicable company! Gi'me some
more punch," said the Colonel.

And thereupon in silence Mr. Allonby resumed his seat.

Now, to relieve the somewhat awkward tension, Mr. Vanringham cried: "So
being neighborly again, let us think no more of the recent difference in
opinion. Pay your damned haberdasher what you like, Gresley; or, rather,
let Osric here fix the remuneration. I confess to all and sundry," he
added, with a smile, "that I daren't say another word in the matter.
Frankly, I'm afraid of this youngster. He breathes fire like Ætna."

"He is a lad of spirit," said Mr. Babington-Herle, with an extreme
sobriety. "He's a lad eshtrornary spirit. Let's have game hazard."

"Agreed, good sir," said Vanringham, "and I warn you, you will find me a
daring antagonist. I had to-day an extraordinary--the usual prejudice,
my dear Herle, is, I believe, somewhat inclined to that pronunciation of
the word,--the most extraordinary windfall. I am rich, and I protest King
Croesus himself sha'n't intimidate me to-night. Come!" he cried, and he
drew from his pocket a plump purse and emptied its contents upon the table;
"come, lay your wager!"

"Hell and furies," the Colonel groaned, "there's that tomfool boy again!
Gi'me some more punch."

For Osric Allonby had risen to his feet and had swept the littered gold
and notes toward him. He stood thus, his pink-tipped fingers caressing
the money, while his eyes fixed those of Mr. Vanringham. "And the chief
priests," observed Osric Allonby, "took the silver pieces and said, 'It is
not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of
blood.' Are they, then, fit to be touched by gentlemen, Mr.--ah, but I
forget your given name?"

Vanringham, too, had risen, his face changed. "My sponsors in baptism were
pleased to christen me Francis."

"I entreat your pardon," the boy drawled, "but I have the oddest fancies.
I had thought it was Judas." And so they stood, warily regarding each the
other, very much as strange dogs are wont to do at meeting.

"Boy is drunk," Mr. Babington-Herle explained at large, "and presents to
pitying eye of disinterested spectator most deplorable results incidental
to combination of immaturity and brandy. As to money, now, in Suetonius--"
And he launched upon a hiccough-punctuated anecdote of Vespasian, which to
record here is not convenient. "And moral of it is," Mr. Babington-Herle
perorated, "that all money is always fine thing to have. _Non olet!_
Classical scholar, by Jove! Now let's have game hazard."

Meanwhile those two had stood like statues. Vanringham seemed
half-frightened, half persuaded that this unaccountable boy spoke at
random. Talk, either way, the actor knew, was dangerous....

"I ask your forgiveness, gentlemen," said Francis Vanringham, "but I'm
suddenly ill. If you'll permit me to retire--"

"Not at all," said. Mr. Babington-Herle; "late in evening, as it is. We
will go,--Colonel and old Carne and I will go kill watchman. Persevorate
him, by Jove,--like sieve."

"I thank you," said Mr. Vanringham, withdrawing up the stairway toward his
bedroom. "I thank you. Mr. Allonby," he called, in a firmer tone, "you and
I have had some words together and you were the aggressor. Oho, I think we
may pass it over. I think--"

Below, the four gentlemen were unhooking their swords from the wall. Mr.
Allonby now smiled with cherubic sweetness. "I, too," said he, "think that
all our differences might be arranged by ten minutes' private talk." He
came back, came up the stairs. "You had left your sword," he said to Mr.
Vanringham, "but I fetched it, you see."

Vanringham stared, his lips working oddly. "I am no Siegfried," said he,
"and ordinarily my bedfellow is not cold and--deplorable defect in such
capacity!--somewhat unsympathetic steel."

"But you forget," the boy urged, "that the room is public. And see, the
hilt is set with jewels. Ah, Mr. Vanringham, let us beware how we lead
others into temptation--" The door closed behind them.


VI

Said Mr. Babington-Herle, judicially, "That's eshtrornary boy--most
eshtrornary boy, and precisely unlike brother."

"You must remember," the Colonel pointed out, "that since his marriage
Gerald is a reformed man; he has quite given up punks and hazard, they say,
for beer and cattle-raising."

"Well, but it is a sad thing to have a spirited tall rogue turn pimp to
balls and rams, and Mrs. Lascelles will be inconsolable," Sir Gresley
considered.--"Hey, what's that? Did you not hear a noise up-stairs?"

"I do not think," said the Colonel, "that Mallison finds her so.--Yes,
i'cod! I suppose that tipsy boy has turned over a table."

"But you astound me," Sir Gresley interrupted. "The constant Mallison, of
all persons!"

"Nevertheless, my dear, they assure me that he has made over to her the
heart and lodgings until lately occupied by Mrs. Roydon--Oh, the devil!"
cried Colonel Denstroude, "they are fighting above!"

"Good for Frank!" observed Mr. Babington-Herle. "Hip-hip! Stick young
rascal! Persevorate him, by Jove!"

But the other men had run hastily up the stairway and were battering at
the door of Vanringham's chamber. "Locked!" said the Colonel. "Oh, the
unutterable cur! Open, open, I tell you, Vanringham! By God, I'll have your
blood for this if you have hurt the boy!"

"Break in the door!" said a voice from below. The Colonel paused in his
objurgations, and found that the Duke of Ormskirk, followed by four
attendants, had entered the hallway of the _Three Gudgeons_. "Benyon," said
the Duke, more sharply, and wheeled upon his men, "you have had my orders,
I believe. Break in yonder door!"

This was done. They found Mr. Francis Vanringham upon the hearthrug a
tousled heap of flesh and finery, insensible, with his mouth gaping,
in a great puddle of blood. To the rear of the room was a boy in
pink-and-silver, beside the writing-desk he had just got into with the
co-operation of a poker. Hugged to his breast he held a brown despatch-box.

Ormskirk strode toward the boy and with an inhalation paused. The Duke
stood tense for a moment. Then silently he knelt beside the prostrate actor
and inspected Vanringham's injury. "You have killed him," the Duke said at
last.

"I think so," said the boy. "But 'twas in fair fight."

The Duke rose. "Benyon," he rapped out, "do you and Minchin take this body
to the room below. Let a surgeon be sent for. Bring word if he find any
sign of life. Gentlemen, I must ask you to avoid the chamber. This is a
state matter. I am responsible for yonder person."

"Then your Grace is responsible for perfectly irresponsible young villain!"
said Mr. Babington-Herle. "He's murderer Frank Vanringham, of poor dear
Frank, like a brother to me, by Jove! Hang him high's Haman, your Grace,
and then we'll have another bottle."

"Colonel Denstroude," said the Duke, "I will ask you to assist your friend
in retiring. The stairs are steep, and his conviviality, I fear, has by a
pint or so exceeded his capacity. And in fine--I wish you a good-evening,
gentlemen."


VII

Ormskirk closed the door; then he turned, "I lack words," the Duke said.
"Oh, believe me, speech fails before this spectacle. To find you, here,
at this hour! To find you--my betrothed wife's kinswoman and life-long
associate,--here, in this garb! A slain man at your feet, his blood yet
reeking upon that stolen sword! His papers--pardon me!"

Ormskirk sprang forward and caught the despatch-box from her grasp as she
strove to empty its contents into the fire. "Pardon me," he repeated;
"you have unsexed yourself; do not add high treason to the list of your
misdemeanors. Mr. Vanringham's papers, as I have previously had the honor
to inform you, are the state's property."

She stood with void and inefficient hands that groped vaguely. "I could
trust no one," she said. "I have fenced so often with Gerald. I was not
afraid--at least, I was not very much afraid.. And 'twas so difficult to
draw him into a quarrel,--he wanted to live, because at last he had the
money his dirty little soul had craved. Ah, I had sacrificed so many things
to get these papers, my Lord Duke,--and now you rob me of them. You!"

The Duke bent pitiless brows upon her. "I rob you of them," he said,--"ay,
I am discourteous and I rob, but not for myself alone. For your confusion
tells me that I hold here between my hands the salvation of England. Child,
child!" he cried, in sudden tenderness, "I trusted you to-day, and could
you not trust me? I promised you the life of the man you love. I promised
you--" He broke off, as if in a rivalry of rage and horror. "And you
betrayed me! You came hither, trousered and shameless, to save these
hare-brained traitors! Well, but at worst your treachery has very h

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