The Passionate Elopement
"Jacob! Jacob! Simon Tabrum! Polly Patch! Mary Maria!" screamed the
landlady, snatching at the only article of offence in reach, which
happened to be a pair of bellows. With these she puffed away furiously,
to the enormous delight of the drunken postillions, who continued to
advance and indeed probably found the air of the bellows very grateful
to their heated brains.
It is unlikely that anything more serious than a volley of oaths would
have occurred, if a tall elderly gentleman in a chestnut-brown frogged
riding-coat had not come in at that moment; but as he did come in, no
doubt the room was the sweeter for the interruption.
"Oh, your honour," said Mrs. Tabrum, "will 'ee please turn out these
drunken rogues, seeing as all the house is away at their business and no
one near by."
The elderly gentleman clenched his riding-stick a trifle more firmly and
directed his steel-grey eyes--equally potent weapons--towards the
abashed brothers. They did not wait to be addressed, but hurried as
quickly as the fumes of liquor allowed them, to the more congenial
atmosphere of the taproom. It is comforting to reflect, while they
twisted their way out, that Charlie and Dicky Maggs were hanged at
Tyburn for a peculiarly atrocious robbery and brutal assault upon a
blind rat-tamer, who, with many clinging rats and mice and a
scarlet-frilled dog, was a familiar figure in the villages round London.
It is not perhaps so comforting to reflect upon the poor old man lying
insensible in a puddle, with his tame rats and mice wandering aimlessly
in and out of his innumerable pockets and his scarlet-frilled dog with
three broken ribs moaning in the middle of a quickset bush. Egad! I vow
the Tyburn horse never responded so readily to Jack Ketch's whip and
never a pair of rogues went so ashen grey at the tide of a mob's
execrations in all the livid chronicles of quick and evil ends.
The elderly gentleman in the chestnut Surtout turned from the exit of
Charlie and Dickie Maggs to survey the subject of their insolence. It
would have puzzled an onlooker to say precisely what effect was produced
on the elderly gentleman's countenance by this deliberate inspection of
Miss Phyllida Courteen, now melting in tears of apprehension and only
barely restrained from hystericks by Mrs. Tabrum's plump hands in
extensive motion.
When the iron-grey clouds of a chill December afternoon dissolve for a
moment in the scud of a high gale and shed a ray of pallid sunlight on a
spent blossom, we are almost glad to see the thin azure thus displayed
as quickly veiled, and welcome the sullen twilight that succeeds. The
elderly gentleman's countenance took on for a brief moment a strange
light, but the frosted smile betrayed so much grim sorrow behind that it
was quite a relief to see his face resume a normal frigidity as he
muttered a regret and inquired into the chances of a good night's
lodging.
_Chapter the Thirtieth_
SIR GEORGE REPINGTON
"It is now eight o'clock," said the elderly gentleman, "if this young
lady has no objection, I will eat a light supper in this apartment; and
if you, ma'am, have no objection, I will retire to my bedchamber
immediately after the meal. I do not require a heavy supper," he added
as Mrs. Tabrum's jolly face began to pucker with the impatience of a
good housewife to enumerate the plentiful dainties of a well-stocked
larder.
The latter perceiving that Phyllida was recovered of her alarm, and
anxious to prove to the elderly gentleman that his appetite was in the
wrong by producing a flock of savoury dishes as speedily as possible,
hereupon curtseyed, and was soon audible in shrill pursuit of little
Polly Patch.
The Travellers' Room of the _Basket of Roses_ was plunged into rosy
quiet. The Dutch clock swung a languid pendulum to and fro with gentle
tick; the fire whispered and crackled faintly; the lattices occasionally
shook before a more unruly blast; a mouse stood up in a dark corner and
squeaked; the huge oak dresser occasionally tapped; two unknown birds,
screened till morning by chintz foliage, sometimes stirred on their
perches; the elderly gentleman sometimes rapped his mother-o'-pearl
snuff-box; Phyllida sometimes smoothed her forget-me-not flowered
skirts; and away in the taproom was a tinkle and murmur of taproom
sounds muffled by several intervening doors. Yet, however fair the
surroundings, it is impossible for two people, unacquainted, to maintain
a graceful silence for long. The elderly gentleman began to tap his
snuff-box more frequently, while Phyllida would smooth her skirts more
persistently and from time to time cast a sidelong glance in the
direction of the elderly gentleman. The latter felt the undercurrent of
strong emotion so keenly that he was worried by this steady inaction
into a curiosity quite alien to his character, and plunged into a
conversation consisting principally of a large number of direct
questions on his side and a small number of indirect replies on the part
of Phyllida. At last, after a tiresome quarter of an hour in which the
only solid piece of information given and offered was the fact that he
was going to, she departing from the salubrious town of Curtain Wells,
the elderly gentleman produced from the upper left-hand pocket of his
waistcoat an oval case of worn Morocco leather. Phyllida observed that
he rapped this in just the same decided way as he rapped his snuff-box
and felt a certain incongruity in his manner, as he took from it the
miniature of a young girl and offered the portrait for her inspection,
asking whether she detected a likeness.
The girl, depicted with the meticulous art of the worker on a small
scale, recalled at once the features of Mr. Charles Lovely. Phyllida
hesitated for a moment before assigning the likeness to such a man.
"You observe, Madam, the resemblance to yourself?" said the elderly
gentleman.
"To myself?" replied Miss Courteen taken aback.
"For what other reason should I show it to you?"
"To say truth, sir, it reminds me more of a gentleman----"
"Eh! what's that," he interrupted. "Not young Charles Lovely?"
"Indeed, sir--'twas he occurred to my mind."
"You know him?"
"I have stepped a minuet with him," replied Phyllida, now more than ever
on her guard against the steel-grey eyes of the elderly gentleman.
"This was my sister, his mother."
If you had asked the stranger what prompted him to confide so suddenly
in Miss Courteen, I doubt he would have been unable to tell you. If his
clerks could have seen Sir George Repington, head of the great banking
house of Repington, at this moment they would have been indescribably
shocked to hear him announce this piece of personal information. The
clerks in busy Throgmorton Street firmly believed that the great Sir
George Repington lived a desolate and severe life surrounded by
calculating machines of enormous complication; they would have gasped to
imagine his bleak financial solitudes disturbed by a young woman in an
inn-parlour. The chief cashier, indeed, might have emitted one of his
dry hacking little laughs; but then the chief cashier had grown old in
the service of the Repingtons and, having known Sir George as a young
man, enjoyed a privileged cynicism. Moreover, the chief cashier when he
was junior clerk had carried half a score sealed notes to Thistlegrove
Cottage--a diminutive paradise five or six miles along the Hounslow
Road. There, amid the chirping of many linnets, young Master Repington
would swear eternal fidelity while the sun-dyed sleepy air coloured his
dear one's lips as deep as rubies and enchanted with gold her soft brown
hair. No doubt the present scene of this small history would have
awakened a delightful memory from the dusty recesses of the chief
cashier's brain, for all that the end of Thistlegrove Cottage was a
businesslike affair on a level with many other successful monetary
transactions of the great house of Repington and Son.
Phyllida was somewhat embarrassed by the sudden announcement of his
relationship to that dreadful Mr. Lovely, who had lampooned the whole of
the fashionable world. She wondered if the elderly gentleman was aware
of his nephew's late indiscretion, whether she ought to break the news
of his odium, and finally with a maid's inconsequence fell to wishing
she had never eloped since the step had involved her in so awkward an
adventure.
Sir George, noticing her embarrassment, introduced himself,
"My name is Repington, ma'am--Sir George Repington." As he said this he
received the miniature from Phyllida, and having, as it were, fondled
the oval for a second, replaced it in the upper left-hand pocket of his
waistcoat.
The introduction put Phyllida deeper than ever into a quandary. She felt
the genteel movement to be a low curtsey coupled with the graceful
revelation of her name, but this was just the act she could not bring
herself to perform. What a vast number of polite difficulties attached
themselves to an elopement, and how she wished with all her heart she
had never been so foolish as to brave them unaccompanied.
"The resemblance is certainly very remarkable," said Sir George
Repington.
Phyllida clutched this conversational straw.
"I doubt, sir, 'twould ill become me to allow the compliment."
The stilted reply did not seem to offend the elderly gentleman, for he
bowed very gallantly and tapped the lid of his snuff-box with an air.
"And my nephew, ma'am, what does Curtain Wells think of my nephew?"
Luckily for Phyllida who was racking her brains to devize a polite
method of informing Sir George Repington that his nephew had offended
the whole world, that is to say the whole world known to the residents
and visitors of Curtain Wells, Mrs. Tabrum came back to say that a pair
of fowls were on their way.
"A morsel of cheese is all that I require, thank'ee," said Sir George to
this information. "A morsel of cheese, well-aired sheets and----"
"A bit off the breast," murmured Mrs. Tabrum coaxingly.
"Well-aired sheets and----"
"A grilled drumstick," insinuated the landlady.
"Well-aired sheets and----"
"The liver wing."
Sir George Repington capitulated and sat down to supper with Phyllida
opposite and a great bowl of daffadillies between them.
Nobody ever found out what exactly was the elderly gentleman's unspoken
requirement.
Sir George was enjoying himself--a very unusual occupation for that grim
and solid man of business.
Phyllida, on the contrary, was becoming more deeply embarrassed every
moment. She could not help picturing to herself the awkwardness of
greeting her dear Amor in the presence of such a man. Moreover, she
could not understand why the latter preserved such a lack of curiosity.
She, a heroine to herself, was unable to appreciate the point of view
that took her and her adventure for granted. She almost resented Sir
George's acceptation of her as part of the furniture of a wayside inn.
As a matter of fact, the banker was abroad to enjoy himself, and the
discovery of a maid sitting solitary in the firelight of an inn parlour
only struck him as whimsical in so far as she resembled his dead sister.
Having, after a lapse of many grey years, put on once more the mantle of
youth, he was very ready to welcome a face that consorted so perfectly
with his mood.
But as supper went on, and the elderly gentleman inquired no farther
into the well-being of Mr. Charles Lovely, while Mr. Amor did not
arrive, and the drunken postillions remained in the tap-room, and the
Dutch clock ticked on quite unperturbed by the raging of the storm
without, Phyllida began to regain her equanimity, and even to converse
so trippingly with the elderly gentleman that elopements and Gretna
Green marriages floated away while she chattered of her dearest Morton,