The Passionate Elopement

So, lightly enough, with no appearance of mutual ill-will the rivals passed on. Phyllida was gone home, her face afire beneath her Chinese mask. To her virginal chamber, I shall presently take you in order to hear what Mistress Betty has to say about the ways of lovers. And while we walk in the direction of the Crescent, somewhat overwrought by a plethora of colour, scent, movement and sound, we may be tolerably certain that young Mr. Charles Lovely--no longer Blue Mandarin, but again our admired hero--is seated furiously inditing the most satirical verses on the residents and visitors of Curtain Wells, in order to make money enough to pay Mr. Vernon his guineas, and be able to run him through in Curtain Mead with a clear conscience and a clean smallsword. _Chapter the Eighteenth_ THE CONFIDANTE If Eve had possessed a Confidante, it is probable that the evil wrought by Woman would have been double as great as it is reputed to be. Miss Courteen had stepped into the mud of reality and, not unnaturally, was eager to tell Mistress Betty of the accident and ascertain by candlelight consultation, whether or not her glass slipper was truly lost. As they drove home in the rumbling coach, Phyllida experienced an emotion of futility as she half listened, half dozed, to the conversation of the Major, the Justice and her mother. To this came Youth. Bumpety-bump went the coach, bumpety-bump went the conversation, bumpety-bump went Thomas' broad back on the Jimmy, bumpety-bump went Phyllida's head, while her thoughts and memories kept pace in the darkness like swift sparks that are blown along by the wind. At last the coach drew up before their house in the Crescent: Phyllida and her mother alighted: Betty opened the door and the coach drove off to put down Major Tarry and Mr. Moon at their lodgings. The hall seemed drab and unfamiliar; the bedchamber candle-sticks set out upon the little gate table had an air of reproof about them; they seemed to say as they sat in a prim row: "Look at us, we are quite content. Last night our candles burnt an inch lower, and the candle suffers diminution, but we remain the same. We are quite content." "My pretty one looks pale," said Betty, full of solicitude. "I'm tired," said Phyllida. "Betty," said Mrs. Courteen, "you must help me to undress. The evening has been most enjoyable, and my lady Bunbutter tore her gown on a monkey's tail. Now, Phyllida, do you run quickly to bed, for to-morrow Mr. Moon and the Major have promised to drive with us to see Melton Abbey. You will enjoy the excursion vastly." "What a whimsical place to visit." "Whimsical! How can you be so irreverend, Phyllida?" "But why, mamma, do you suddenly drive to Melton Abbey?" "Why, child! because I wish to train your mind to be sure. Nothing tests deportment so severely as wandering round a Gothick ruin. However, they tell me that Gothick will soon be a la Mode, and who am I to dispute the commands of fashion?" Upon the heels of this humble interrogation, the widow betook herself to bed. "When you have undressed my mamma, Betty, come to my chamber, I have a thousand things to tell you," Phyllida whispered as they went up the narrow stairs. She lighted all the candles in her room and looked round in sudden affright. It was as if some one had trespassed upon those virginal solitudes while she was away. Yet her room was the same as usual; the dimity covers were all in their places: the fire was burning merrily in the hearth: the bed-cloaths were turned back, fresh, cool and lavendered. Her slippers knelt devoutly by the fender: the fire-irons looked just as stilted and apologetick as usual. Everything was perfectly familiar, perfectly ordinary and perfectly safe; yet something in the room was strange, or was it herself who was altered? Was she out of harmony with this palace of amber morning dreams, this treasure-box of twilight hopes and imaginations? Down she sat in the big flowered arm-chair and stared at the crackling logs--a stranger to her own possessions, and, as she untied one by one the ribbands from her glinting chestnut hair, she seemed to smell the jasmine of Courteen Grange and hear her father calling below her casement to come down quickly and count the buds on the York and Lancaster rose, as he was used to call in those sweet dead Junes. Presently came Betty with a soft knock and Phyllida, starting away from the host of childish memories that assailed her, sprang up as the maid came in on tiptoe. "Now, sit down, Betty, and listen with all your ears, for I dearly need your advice." "My sweet one, I'm listening to 'ee," said Betty, pulling forward a fat lop-eared hassock and squeezing herself as close to the fender as possible. "Betty, Mr. Amor kissed me this evening, and what should I do?" "What were 'ee best to do? Why think no more about it, for indeed I dare vow you're not the first maid that was kissed." "But the worst of the matter is that, though I struggled hard to escape, and though I detested him for his persistence, yet, oh! Betty, I don't like to tell you--I did not struggle as hard as I might have done." As she made this confession, Phyllida went carnation red from forehead to pointed dimpled chin. "There's no call for blushes," said Betty emphatically, "for you must learn the love of man soon or late, and Mr. Vernon is a proper enough gentleman for sure." "And he said we should presently elope." "Oh! time enough to be wed come three years or more," commented Betty. "Oh! but you would not have me allow a gentleman to take my hand, and kiss me, and call me his dearest life without being married immediately. It would be most unbecoming." "If all the world knew, 'twould, but then nobody don't know, and that's the best way for all true lovers." "Nevertheless, Betty, I feel uneasy." "'Tis only the stirring of your blood, my dear. Only to think," went on the confidante, "that last sweet Spring time you was building great cowslip balls in the green meadows, and now you are quite grown up with a bow of your own to arm you through the minivets and gawottes, so grand as may be." "Yes, love makes one grow old, Betty. I've aged very much these weeks." "Well, and 'twouldn't be right otherwise, for Life bean't all a long sweet April month, my pretty one." "Then truly, dear Betty, you swear you think there is no harm in what I have done?" "Oh, my dear, harm? Why, what harm could there be with your great fat Betty to watch and guard 'ee?" "Still, I'm not sure, Betty. There's something tells me not to be sure." "Then, do 'ee listen hard to me, my dear, while I tell 'ee what I do think about life. Life! 'Tis a garden and 'tis a wilderness, and between them there's a gaate and 'tis a kissing gaate. The wilderness is fine for children--a great open plaace fit for scampering Jack hares and such like, but bare enough and bleak enough when you do grow old, and then you're too fat to get through that kissing gaate, and then you do wish wi' all your might and main that when you was young you'd gotten into the garden among the sweet flowers." Betty stopped, exhausted by the allegory. "Yes, Betty, that is all very well, but you must go through the gate with the person whom you love for ever and a day." "Nay, you can meet him inside and say Good-day and thank you kindly to the arm you went in on." "I don't believe you give me good advice. If I told you that to-morrow morning I was going to run away with Mr. Amor to Gretna Green, what would you say?" "Oh, God preserve you from the wicked thought, Gretna Green or any other such unlawful heathenish village green!" "There you see," complained Phyllida, "you do not take me seriously, and it was foolish of me ever to tell you about this evening. But now that I have told you, you must never breathe a word to a living soul--never--never--promise! "I do promise," said Betty. "With the old rhyme--till Christmas--you remember?" Betty stood up, while a ritual, sacred to the childhood of Phyllida, was solemnly enacted. In a monotonous whispered chaunt, Betty promised: "_I will not tell at primrose tide, At cherry tide I'll silent be, At barley harvest I'll be dumb Till Christmas come and set me free._" Phyllida was satisfied that her indiscreet confidence was safely locked up in Betty's bosom, capacious, homely, sweet-savoured as an apple-closet. You have seen the confidante in action. Is it not well that we have banished her from society? No longer may she enter stark mad in white muslin, as the play directs. We have put her away in an old chest with hoops and tie-wigs and gibbets and pirates and Newgate ordinaries and rotten boroughs and watchet ribbands. No longer does she play asterisk to a heroine, because nowadays the adventures of our heroines are entirely introspective. But, as upon all time-honoured institutions, let us drop a tear for the confidante; she has helped a thousand perplexed authors to unfold their simple dramas, she has helped many a scene-shifter to leisure. Mr. Sheridan could laugh at Mr. Cumberland through this artful, artless medium, but he too had his Lucy. Mr. Smollett depended upon Miss Williams (a lady of the loosest character) in order to help his Narcissa to reveal herself and you, Mr. Goldsmith whose name, like immortal Madame Blaize, is 'bedizened and brocaded,' you had your dearest Neville. Yet, after all, however much we may regret them, confidantes were very bad for heroines. They would encourage them in all that was most reprehensible. Here you see, is our own confidante encouraging her mistress to play with Love's torch and for all you or she know, get badly scorched by the purple flame. Such temerity is very well for country wenches to whom a green gown is a proper delight for May morning. Betty, with her memories of many barley breaks, junketings and Hallowe'en festivals, where ripe lips are as common as cherries at midsummer, was not the perfect monitor for swansdown misses brought up under Miss Prudence Prim's long rattan, taught to sit up straight and put into corsets almost as soon as they were out of robe-coats. In fact she was a confidante, a match-maker, to whom a wedding-ring was a Post Hoc horse-collar, through which to grin at the censorious world. After all, where's the ultimate difference between sweet sensibility a hundred and fifty years ago and sweet sensibility today? We should consider it _demode_ for the latter to gossip with her maid. Now every schoolboy and schoolgirl knows how to spell psychology, and has been awarded a sub-conscious self to enliven the lonely hours. And this sub-conscious self, what is it, under analysis? Why, nothing more than the old confidante in ghostly guise with as long a tongue and as rich a store of bad advice. So now, having successfully, as I hope, occupied your attention while sweet sensibility gets into bed, let us snuff the candles and leave the room to Phyllida and wavering firelight. _Chapter the Nineteenth_ BLACKHART FARM WITH A COCK-FIGHT About ten miles from Curtain Wells on the Bristol road stood a ruined cottage. With thatch discoloured, torn by gales and sparrows, and with windows made crooked by internal decay, its expression was grotesque and unpleasant. A tangled bed of rotten nettles filled the space before it, and all the vegetation beside was rank and desolate. This cottage served as fitting lodge to a sinister bye-way covered with weeds and almost overhung in summer by hedges dark with masses of black bryony, but in winter and spring sufficiently open to admit the cold grey sky overhead, and the chill Easterly rain, which on the morning after the Chinese Masquerade fell with dreary persistence.