The Passionate Elopement
of her troth. Nothing makes his brain reel like her first kiss freely
given.
"Oh, Phyllida, Phyllida! I'm not fit for you."
"Foolish Amor."
"Are you happy, my dearest?"
"Oh, so happy."
"We shall never be parted again."
"Never!"
"I did not know that life was so wonderful."
"I thought it was," she murmured, as she nestled to his heart, "because
Spring was always so sweet, and now I need never mind the Winter."
"All the years I did not know you, my Phyllida, were wasted years."
"Amor!"
"Phyllida!"
"How I shall always love you."
"Always?"
"To the end."
"Once," she said with a sigh, "I longed to grow old, and now I would
like to be always young."
"Ah! Phyllida, my Phyllida, don't speak of age. I've wasted so much of
my life."
He thought with anguish of the dead Summers he had known and wondered
with a great dread whether they would come again. If, while he could
still feel this splendid passion, they should be grey and dismal, he
would never forgive himself for having revelled in the warmth and gaiety
of those irrevocable seasons.
"You are not sad?" she asked, jealous of his silence.
"I wish that life were not so short."
Our villain was beginning to examine the foundations of his existence
upon this earth, where hitherto he had jogged along, accepting the most
outrageous calamity and good luck with placid superficial mind.
Meditation upon the brevity of a life, which at any moment a tavern
brawl might extinguish, would have seemed to him before this passionate
conversation a lunatick method of spending time. Poor villain! he had
not enjoyed much leisure for meditation. He was born in a hurry, his
mother being under contract to appear as Millamant a long while before
she should. He was brought up in a hurry at Alleyn's School to be
murdered in a hurry by some Richard III. Moreover, in youth he had
assisted at so many tinsel deaths that it was not surprizing he should
regard them lightly. Even his mother's death within sound of the orange
girls outside Drury Lane struck him as nothing more final than a last
appearance.
Now for the first time, there broke upon him the stunning fact of
inevitable decay and, being a self-indulgent man, he had for the moment
nothing more dignified than petulant despair with which to meet this
sudden apprehension of mortality.
"'Tis monstrous," he declared, "a fearful thought that you and I should
ever grow old and die. I cannot bear to think of your brown hair growing
white. Phyllida, you cannot grow old."
Love had made a woman of Phyllida and already, with gentle touch, she
soothed his anguish.
"Dear Amor, I know that if we love each other truly, we shall never grow
old to each other."
"Phyllida, I love you," and clasping her lissome body breathless to his,
he defied the lightning of the Gods.
And now a new fear assailed him. 'We shan't be followed,' he had
contemptuously informed old Mother Mawhood at Blackhart Farm. In sudden
dread he leaned out of the window of the chariot, and strained his eyes
to pierce the darkness. He could see nothing save the shadows of the
postillions against the hedge, hear nothing save the clatter of the
horses. The loneliness and gloom affected his spirits and with a shudder
he sought again the musty interior of the vehicle. He caught his love to
his heart.
"What did you see?" she asked.
"Nothing, but I was afraid, I could not bear to lose you now."
"You saw nothing?"
"Nothing."
"And heard nothing?"
"Nothing. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, Amor, I thought I saw the shadow of a man on horseback."
"Fancy, my sweet, fancy." Then, with a sinking fear, he remembered he
had told Mother Mawhood of the pearls. He called to mind the postboys'
insolence, the look that passed between Charlie and Dickie when he told
them he would ride in the chariot. He sprang in alarm to open the
window, but the carriage pulled up with a jerk which flung him back
against Phyllida. The glass crashed to the heavy butt of a pistol and,
as he stretched out for his own fire-arms, he saw the postboys resting
long barrels on the sill and, by the lamp which one of them held, a
masked face that with thick brutal voice demanded their money.
"Hand 'em over."
"Hand what over?" said Vernon, in a futile attempt to delay his
humiliation.
"The pops first," said one of the Maggs, winking humorously in the
direction of Vernon's pistols that in leathern holsters lay harmless on
the dusty floor of the chariot.
Now occurred one of those astonishing coincidences that have tempted the
speculation of many sages since the beginning. A field-mouse chose that
very moment to cross the road. A large white owl spied the diminutive
pilgrim and, having tasted no food that stormy night, swooped daringly
upon his prey under the heads of the standing horses. Terrified by the
soft white apparition, the leaders plunged forward. In a moment the
chariot was bumping and jolting at a wild pace down the road, having
broken Charlie Maggs' big toe in transit. The blackguard deserved a scar
for his carelessness, if for nothing else, and the limp he earned that
night was some time afterwards the means of proving his complicity in
the affair of the blind mouse-tamer, thereby ridding the world of a very
dirty rascal. Mice were fatal to Charlie Maggs. It is satisfactory to
know that the adventurous animal avoided the owl, and it is also
consoling to learn that the latter never adorned a gamekeeper's pole,
but died a natural death in the hollow trunk where it had spent actually
all the days of its life.
It was a moment or two before Vernon understood that the danger was
averted; then he bent low to reassure Phyllida, who was crouching in the
darkest corner of the chariot.
"My dear," he cried, and for all the swaying motion caught her to him
with a certain grace. "My dear, there is nothing to be afraid of now."
"Oh! Amor!" she sobbed, abandoning herself to the horror of remembrance,
"that face--that black face."
"My sweet, you shall never see it again."
"It will follow us."
"If he should I have something here that will frighten him away fast
enough."
Vernon waved a pistol which he had picked up even as he caught hold of
Phyllida. But the masked face did not pursue them and, after a mile or
so of noisy swaying progress, Vernon began to consider the possibility
of stopping the carriage. He leaned out of the window and nearly had his
eyes put out by a bramble sucker. A survey from the other side, where
the remaining lamp lent a wavering illumination, showed they were
travelling at an alarming pace down a deep rocky lane. Vernon noticed
that the boulders in places trespassed considerably upon the road with
projecting points, and there seemed every likelihood of the chariot
being presently wrecked like a rudderless boat. However, runaway horses
and drunken men share a large amount of the world's luck between them,
and notwithstanding the headlong speed, every boulder in turn was
successfully avoided. Farther along, the surface of the road grew worse
and, every other second, one of the wheels would grate against the side
of a deep rut with a horrid jar. They were going downhill now and Vernon
strained his eyes to discover the lie of the country. The pace was
harder than ever, and it seemed impossible for four horses to survive
the roughness of the road and the steepness of the descent.
Suddenly above the clatter they heard the roar of water: at the same
moment the front wheel struck some permanent obstacle: the chariot
dipped forward: Phyllida and Vernon were flung in a tangled heap on the
floor, while the sudden cessation of movement made the noise of the
water sound very portentous in the gloom. Vernon extricated himself from
the vehicle on the lighted side and, jumping out, splashed his way
through mire and puddles to the horses' heads. The two leaders with that
unexpected philosophy which in horses often succeeds the most fervid
excitement were cropping the young herbage peacefully, while the
wheelers were only slightly more restive through their inability to
reach the same sweet pasture. Vernon snatched the solitary lamp from the
socket and went to help Phyllida alight. As she stood upon the step and
gave him her little hand, he divined with a sense of awe, begotten by
the solitude of the surroundings, that she was truly his. He was Adam
greeting Eve with the mystery of woman all about her in that primaeval
Spring.
The scene of the catastrophe was peculiarly solemn. The chariot had
struck a column of stone that rose suddenly out of the ground as if the
finger of a Titan had been frozen into perpetuity to mark some early and
gigantick travail of his mother Earth. The lamp with feeble yellow light
made monstrous shadows of the huge features it sought vainly to
illuminate. So far as he could judge they were nearly at the bottom of a
deep ravine along which swept a torrent whose magnitude was impossible
to estimate, since the roar of the waterfall gave it in the darkness a
dreadful importance.
"It must be close on two o'clock," said Vernon, "let's leave this
disastrous vehicle. We may find shelter somewhere over this valley."
Phyllida drew the riding hood round her and, taking her lover's arm,
silently acquiesced in this proposal.
As they drew near the waterfall, the thunder of it made her shiver. They
crossed the torrent by a stone bridge that seemed to have become a
natural feature in the landskip.
On the far side by a common impulse they stopped and Vernon leaned down
to kiss her face.
"My Phyllida," he murmured; and held the lamp so that he could see the
shimmer and gleam of love in her eyes. They stood silent, enraptured,
and the hot yellow lamp away down in the depths of this world-forsaken
valley became the very torch of Hymen.
With slow steps they climbed the opposite hill, deserting the waters and
the rocks, the ferns, the little bridge, for the grey starshine above
the gloom. Yet the awe of that solemn ravine, which they had reached
after such peril, enthralled them still and I think both felt as if
somehow their love had been consecrated by a divine being. It was quite
a relief from the strain of reverence when Vernon informed Phyllida that
there was no sign of any human habitation.
"What shall we do with the carriage?" asked the latter.
"Don't fret about that."
"And the horses?"
"They must take their chance. I wish I knew the hour."
"You said it must be two o'clock."
"The sun does not rise till half-past five. Three hours and a half. I
wonder why we left the chariot. It would be wiser to go back. You will
be cold in this open country."
The wind was blowing shrewdly up there in the starlight, and Phyllida
would not deny she was cold and tired.
"We had better go back to the chaise. 'Twas warmer in the valley."
Yet both of them felt a strange disinclination to risk the disillusion
of return till, suddenly, up there in the wind and starlight, terror
caught them, and the noise of water tumbling over rocks gave them a
sense of security from this wide place of silence.
"'Tis a monstrous uneasy country," said Vernon, voicing in common speech
the sense of woe that oppressed him.
"I feel frightened," Phyllida agreed, "let us go back to the water."
They stopped to listen as people will whose minds have been much wrought
upon. There was nothing but the lisp of the wind in the bents of last
year's grass and a melo-dious sighing in the boughs of larches. Yet
never throughout that adventurous night had Phyllida's heart pattered at
such a pace, never had she been so near to shrieking aloud. Without
longer delay they turned back in the direction of the coombe, walking
with quick steps as if to avoid an invisible pursuit. Half-way down the
hill, Vernon stooped to gather a primrose.