The Passionate Elopement
betrayed the latter's partiality for young Mr. Chalkley, compared her
boldness with the more modest behaviour of a certain Miss Jenny West,
who was the third daughter of a parson who lived four--no five miles
from where they lived in Hampshire, jumped from the tale of Miss West to
the tale of Miss West's brother who scandalized the country by stepping
eight consecutive gavottes with his cousin from Hertfordshire; and
ultimately confided to Sir George her profound contempt for Mr. Moon and
her immense distrust of Major Tarry. Yet, at the very moment when she
was telling Sir George of a ludicrous chase of the Major's wig one windy
March morning in the preceding year the furious gale was blowing his
sodden pigtail to and fro without a curse from the little soldier in
whom stern death had begotten a divine and everlasting indifference to
the minor amenities of polite appearance. Sir George Repington was near
to the capture of his fled youth that fire-lit evening. He was back in
the old South Gallery at Repington Hall sitting in the wide window seat
at the West End, and opposite to him with flushed exquisite face sat his
sister Joan, rippling joyfully through the fair meadows of life like a
glittering brook. The musick of Phyllida's conversation revived for the
elderly gentleman many a crimson dusk. He thought with a sigh of the
South Gallery now, with its hollow echoes, its dust and long line of
contemptuous ancestors, and of himself as, with severe tread, he ran the
batteries of many immutable eyes.
Old Tabrum would quaver in from time to time to survey the comfort of
his guests, regaling them with some particularly choice floral anecdote.
His wife too would peep to inquire whether the roasted fowls fulfilled
her expectations, and once little Polly Patch put her cap round the door
and asked if his honour would like the warming-pan left in his bed or
merely whisked three or four times over his already well-aired sheets.
* * * * *
Phyllida made a careless remark about her mother, and Sir George
Repington hoped that Mrs. Courteen (Phyllida had some time ago divulged
her name) would not be alarmed by the strife of the elements. Phyllida
made a very careless reply to this, by reassuring Sir George about her
mother, who, as she pointed out, would be not at all likely to observe
the wildness of the night in her anxiety to secure her hand against the
prying glances of my lady Bunbutter.
"Is that Sir Moffyn Bunbutter's lady?" said Sir George.
"Yes, indeed, sir."
"Sure to be, sure to be," Sir George commented. "Who'd have thought of
seeing poor old Sir Moffyn's lady here of all places?"
"But she's not here, sir. She is at Curtain Wells."
"But your mother?"
Phyllida saw her mistake, but, being unused to falsehoods, made no
attempt to extricate herself from the situation provoked by her own
carelessness. As a happy compromise, she blushed and made queer little
excavations in the salt-cellar.
"You've no brother and your father is dead?" went on Sir George, fixing
the abashed young woman with his sharp eyes. "Then you are alone in this
inn?"
The statement, put so baldly, sounded very dreadful to Miss Courteen.
Moreover, she had an uneasy idea that the elderly gentleman was
beginning to feel himself compromised by her company, so she made
patterns in the salt-cellar more fantastick than ever, blushed till the
shells of her ears seemed veritably to crack in the furnace of outraged
sensibility, and looked very guilty.
"Alone?" the elderly gentleman repeated.
Phyllida's whispered 'yes' was only just audible above the languid
ticking of the Dutch clock.
The antique landlord broke the tension by putting his head round the
door and demanding from Sir George whether he preferred to sleep in the
Dorick Summerhouse with a view of the surrounding country, or in the
Green Vista with a more comfortable bed, if not so wide a view.
Antiquity was followed by his wife, who hustled him fairly into the
candlelight and explained that all their bedchambers were named to suit
the flowery eccentricity of her husband.
"Thus we have the Parterre," said old Simon in support of his wife's
explanation, "the Pleached Alley (though that is more truly a passage).
The Sun Dial (a warm attick), the Quincunx, the Bosquet, the Arbour, the
Green Gallery, the Cascade (or stairway) and for my dear hollyhock and
myself, the Columbary."
"God bless you, sirrah," said Sir George rather testily, "I'm no Dutch
garden-maker that I should fret about such vagaries of taste. Oons!
plant me where you will, I wager I shall not open till daybreak."
This quip pleased the old landlord enormously, and he retired upon a
chuckle prolonged sufficiently to convey him to the farthest ends of the
house, whither he was followed by his anxious wife.
Left alone once more, Phyllida and Sir George looked at each other over
the remains of that genial supper.
Neither broke the silence for a while. The elderly gentleman was the
first to speak.
"Don't you think it is somewhat unwise to travel alone, especially as
your postillions do not seem a very trusty pair?"
"I am not really alone," said Phyllida,
"I'm--I'm--expecting--a--a--companion."
Sir George Repington raised his eyebrows and seemed about to make a
severe comment upon this halting explanation, but, leaning his elbow on
the table and his cheek on his hand, he changed his mind and in cold
deliberate accents, so cold and so deliberate that you would have sworn
a weight of emotion was sunk beneath them, began a tale. Since this tale
must either be told by me or by Sir George himself, inasmuch as it
concerns one or two of our characters, I will let the original author
give it to you in his own words, nay I will give the story the
distinction of a chapter to itself.
_Chapter the Thirty-first_
A TALE WITH AN INTERRUPTED MORAL
Sir George Repington filled up his glass (he was drinking Port wine),
motioned Phyllida to a seat on the right, sat himself down opposite,
and, to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning and wind and rain,
proceeded to entertain her with some vastly interesting details of his
domestick history.
"I have already shown you the portrait of my sister Joan, and you will
remember that I remarked upon the resemblance between you and her--I did
not think at the time that such a coincidence would fulfil itself even
more completely.
"We were left orphans soon after I reached my twenty-fifth birthday, and
I will admit that I experienced a keen sensation of pride in the
responsibleness of a great financial house and a very attractive young
woman. Pray, remember I was still young. We lived when we were in London
at a pleasant house in Soho Square, on the side nearest to the Oxford
Road, but spent much of our leisure at Repington Hall, a fine old family
mansion in the county of Surrey, near enough to the town to make our
visits there very frequent."
Sir George sighed at the pleasant memories as he sipped his glass of
Port wine.
"We spent many golden days at Repington Hall and our friends, carefully
selected, as all young people's friends are, found the long June
evenings on the great sloping lawn not less pleasant than we did. Egad!
I can see them all now and hear over the long silences that invariably
punctuate such intimate conversation the lowing of the cows in the home
farm and the deer crunching the sweet long grass beneath the broad
oak-trees. And in Spring what a choir of nightingales sang in the
gnarled whitethorn trees by the sunk fence, and in late summer what
myriads of grasshoppers chirruped in the twilight. Yes, yes, I can see
them all--young Harbottle Ramsey--he's my Lord Sodor and Man
now--succeeded his uncle who was executed after the rising in
'45--well--well, Harbottle was always a staunch Whig, and by gad, so
were all of us in those evenings at Repington. Then there was Burnet,
Cinderton's eldest son--he is Cinderton now--Burnet was always monstrous
careful about his cloaths and always carried a small Persian rug to sit
upon. I remember we used to call it the hearthrug--Harthe-Brusshe is the
family name--and now they tell me he's a positive martyr to the lumbago.
Yes, yes, Ramsey and Burnet and Belladine, I wonder what's become of
Belladine--he was a famous fop--poor Belladine, poor Belladine--he never
recovered from the blow. And then there was Roger Quain.
"He was my best friend, and the happiest day of my life was that on
which he was betrothed to my sister Joan. I tell you no such rousing
toast was given at Repington since the news of the Boyne victory was
brought in to my father. She and Roger were betrothed in July and should
have been wed in April."
The old man--for, with the progress of his tale, such the elderly
gentleman seemed to become--took a longer sip at his glass of Port as if
to brace himself for the climax of the narrative.
"They should have been wed in April. But that winter was a busy one in
Throgmorton Street, and my sister Joan, having caught a chill, was
ordered to remain in the country--her only companion, a foolish cousin
of my mother's. I was not at home more than twice all the winter. I
never knew of that blackguard's visits till March. He used to come every
day--every day until I forbade him the house--a white cockade papist
crammed with disloyalty--always bragging of some outlandish petty
rebellion on the top of some d----d Scottish mountain or other. He
filled her head with his Jacobite twaddle--a fool who, earning his
livelihood by dice and cards, was willing enough to upset all law and
order for the sake of the plunder which he and his fellows might very
well have acquired at the expense of better and honester and more loyal
men.
"He wound himself round her heart with his false French oaths and cursed
lovemaking.
"I sent for Roger; he came down with Belladine--I shall always believe
that Belladine loved her too--and I told Roger he must keep an eye on
his treasure, or 'twould be stolen from him. The wedding was fixed; the
guests were invited; and one fine morning I went down to the orchard to
see how the apples were setting (there had been a shrewd Easterly wind
for some days)--and--and--I found him dead--Roger Quain--my dearest,
oldest friend--Roger Quain dead. Gadslife! young Madam, if you had seen,
as I saw, the fallen apple-blossoms reddened by his blood, I do not
think you would be making a runaway match; and she, my beloved sister,
eloped with his murderer--with Valentine Lovely, Esq., Jacobite, Papist,
rake, spendthrift, drunkard, gamester, and prodigal!"
Sir George Repington rose from his seat and in the passion of
remembrance broke with his grip the thin stem of his wineglass, so that
the spilt liquid as it trickled over the hearth stones and stained the
ashes conjured up the old scene all too vividly and horribly for poor
Phyllida.
"But why did Belladine let her go with that blackguard--that is what I
never knew--that is what I would like to ask Belladine--what can have
happened to Belladine?" the old man muttered to himself, "and why do I
tell you this?" he went on, "why--because----"
But unfortunately the moral of this story was never properly related,
though 'tis easy enough to guess the import, for at that moment in came
the long-awaited Mr. Francis Vernon, splashed from head to foot in mud
and wearing a deep cut over his left temple. After all, Major
Constantine Tarry did succeed in delaying the elopement if only for an
hour or two because Mr. Vernon's mare had shied at the dead body and
flung her rider over the hedge in her unwillingness to pass so damp and
gloomy an obstacle. If the veteran's ghost was able to spare a moment
from his enthralling conversations with Alexander the Great and other