The Passionate Elopement
"Here's a daisy," he said.
"A daisy," Phyllida cried. "Why, foolish Amor, 'tis a primrose," and
whatever fiend or goblin followed in their wake fled in affright at the
sound of her rippling laughter.
I think nothing shows more conclusively that Mr. Vernon was in love with
Miss Courteen than his indifference to her ridicule.
"Sweetest," he said, "I'm ignorant of the best things like flowers," and
forthwith began to tell Phyllida of his life in London, so that when
presently they stood again upon the bridge, he was raising his voice in
order to describe his first impressions of rustick Marybone, to which he
added a very nice account of the view of the Hampstead Hills.
Under the influence of this narrative, the scene lost some of its
grandeur. An air of grottoes, of stone embellishments, arbours, and
cunning recesses shed itself over the landskip. One heard comparisons
with this or that famous haunt of sight-seeing mobs. In fact both Vernon
and Phyllida, being English, felt their late raptures were unbecoming,
and having excused a lapse into sensibility by the fright they had
suffered, proceeded to declare that the chasm, far from being Titanick,
would make a mighty fine site for an excursion of pleasure. At least
Vernon clothed the opinion in words, Phyllida was too much fatigued to
do more than murmur a weary assent.
They found the chariot just as they had left it and the four horses
browsing upon the grass. He handed her into the vehicle, made her
comfortable with what rugs and cloaks he could collect and left her to
rest with the assurance he would remain close at hand. She gave his hand
a tired clasp and almost immediately fell fast asleep. Vernon tethered
the horses to various stumps in the vicinity, and proceeded to doze and
dream away the cold hours before dawn in the shelter of a particularly
large and overhanging ledge of rock. The sound of the falling water that
deafened him with its roar when first he heard it, now soothed him like
a gentle lullaby.
I cannot do justice to the scene: Rembrandt with his powerful and gloomy
imagination could have etched it. He would have made the two lovers
present themselves to the onlooker in their right proportions to the
scenery. You and I are too near to the candlelight of Curtain Wells to
believe in the romantick desolation wherein they seemed of no more
importance than the ferns that hung down their green tongues to the
limpid pools hollowed from jagged rocks. Vernon, huddled in the shelter
of the crag, with his hat pressed over his eyes, his knees arched as
high as his chin, might well have been a belated herdsman who, having
flung himself into this valley to avoid the upland wind, had been
bewitched by the magick of running water to dream away the night. The
horses in the black shadows and the ruined chariot had an air of Gothick
melancholy; the yellow lamp that glimmered fitfully in the heart of the
abyss served only to throw into more huge relief the neighbouring rocks,
while it lighted the thresholds of gaping caverns that stretched beyond
to unimaginable depths of solitude and gloom. The night wore on and over
the hill the lovers had found so depressing to their spirits, like a
sword in the twilight, lay the first grey streak of dawn. Phyllida and
her lover slept while the features of the landskip began to win again
their own outlines, while the rocks that were wrapped in the warm velvet
of night appeared with a cold sheen. The grey streak widened to a broad
lake whose margin was flecked with the faint hues of lavender and mauve.
Birds began to twitter and chirp in the trees and bushes that overhung
the rocks below, while the winds of dawn fluted in the small withy bed
beside the bridge.
Very wan in the morning twilight, Mr. Charles Lovely and Mr. Anthony
Clare clattered down the deep lane that led to the valley. Their horses'
flanks glistened with the sweat of hard travel and the riders rose
hardly to the jerking downhill motion.
Just as the rose-tipped fingers of Aurora plucked the lavender from the
skies, Charles and Tony caught sight of the chariot and just as they
pulled their horses to a standstill, Mr. Vernon woke up. It is
characteristick of the latter's new-found consideration that his first
action was to warn them with a gesture of Phyllida's presence fast
asleep inside. Charles tapped his holsters in reply and pointed up the
opposite slope. Vernon rose to follow his pursuers with a backward
glance in the direction of the chariot.
When they were over the bridge and out of Phyllida's hearing Charles
reined in his walking horse and inquired if Vernon was willing to give
him satisfaction.
"For what?" said the latter with a sneer.
"For insulting my Muse," said Charles, determined if possible not to
make Phyllida the subject of the quarrel.
"Your muse?" echoed Vernon, with the faintest intonation of surprise,
"but I promised you satisfaction for that a month hence."
Vernon was equally determined that Phyllida should be the direct
occasion of the duel, if duel there must be.
The rosy heavens became a sheet of vivid scarlet intersected with the
golden bars of the fast rising sun. Up he came in a blaze and dazzle of
glory, lustrous and invigorating; still the colour was not quite
effaced, and on the three men that scarlet dawn made an invincible
impression of disaster and woe. A red sky is a warning to shepherds and
sailors, no doubt it was ominous to lovers.
The summit of the hill was reached and involuntarily the three paused in
their wrangling to marvel at the extensive landslip suffused with the
amber haze of earliest morn. The homesteads in sight seemed untenanted:
there was not a single column of curling smoke to mark the presence of
humanity.
Where they were standing, the road was bordered on either side by a wide
stretch of level sward. On the left was a spinney of larches showing as
yet no crimson plumes of Spring, round which numbers of rabbits
gambolled in air that sparkled like golden wine. It seemed indeed more
like July than April, and only the bare trees told the true tale of the
season's youthfulness. Up here on the top of the world the three men
drank in the beauty of the universe and, having as it were performed
their orisons, turned to arrange the details of a bloody encounter.
"I promised I would meet you where you would in a month's time,"
repeated Vernon obstinately.
"But I prefer to meet you now," replied Charles.
"I have no one to act for me."
"Mr. Clare will act for both of us."
"That is an irregular proceeding."
"I don't care."
"And Miss Courteen?" Vernon was resolved to drag Charles to the real
point at issue. "What is to become of Miss Courteen?"
"In either event, Mr. Clare will be able to escort her back to Curtain
Wells."
"D---- n you," said Vernon, roused by his enemy's assumption of
guardianship. "And what if she wishes to stay with me?"
"Mr. Lovely has her mother's authority to conduct her home," interposed
Clare.
"What you two prim busybodies don't appear to understand is that Miss
Courteen prefers to remain with me."
"Miss Courteen is not her own mistress. She is not of age," said Clare.
"And pray how do you propose to make her accompany you?"
"Why, in this way," interrupted Charles, shaking off his friend's arm,
"in this way, Mr. Vernon. If you decline to meet me with pistols, by
G---- I'll thrash you senseless with my crop."
Vernon's hands twitched for a moment, but he had learned a new
restraint, gained a new dignity from the wondrous ride and with scarcely
a perceptible quiver in his voice begged to point out to his friend Mr.
Lovely that if he shot him, he should not scruple to shoot Mr. Clare
were the latter to stand in his way.
"But what if you're shot, Sir?" cried Charles, betraying in his
eagerness the true reason for his desire to force an instant encounter,
"as by G---- you deserve to be for murdering the poor little Major."
Vernon was perplexed.
"The Major? Is he dead? I had nothing to do with his death." The
simplicity of the denial almost convinced his listeners that he was
speaking the truth.
"Come, Sirrah, will you meet me? said Charles, lifting his crop.
"Listen, you pair of puppies," said Vernon between his teeth. "I could
have put a bullet into either of you at any time during the last five
minutes, and by heavens, I don't know why I kept my finger from the
trigger. Yes, I do," he shouted. "I've got a chance of happiness and I'm
not going to throw it away by having your blood on my head. You're an
interfering pair of fools, but I cheated one of you at cards and I
played a low game over the book, and by G----, I believe my father was a
gentleman. I'll meet you, Mr. Lovely, now."
With these words he flung down on the grass at Charles' feet the two
pistols which the skirts of his riding-coat had concealed.
"I'll step fifteen paces," said Mr. Clare, hiding his emotion with a
piece of practical utility. And, as he began to measure the ground, away
down in the broken chariot, Phyllida woke with a start. She was
surprized by the daylight and called to her lover. Only birdsong
answered her voice. In sudden dismay, presentiment hanging over her like
the aftermath of an evil dream, she jumped from the chariot. Intuition,
perhaps the remembrance of last night's fear, made her look towards the
summit of the slope. In silhouette against the golden sky, she saw three
figures. Breathless with horror she ran in their direction. Up the hill
she laboured. It was still cold from the night air and foreboding was
heavy upon her heart. Up the hill she struggled, leaving in her path
many fluttering pieces of muslin where eager feet had torn the frail
flounces. Down the road, she saw them level their weapons. "One, two,
three," came in measured tones along the still air of the morning. There
were two shots, the scud of frightened rabbits to their burrows, a
reeling figure, a cloud across the sun, a mist over life, and she was
kneeling in the dewy grass beside Amor.
"Oh, God!" she screamed, "He's dead. Oh! Oh! Oh!"
That anguished cry wounded Lovely deeper than any leaden bullet, for it
killed his hopes.
At the touch of his dear one, Vernon opened his dark eyes.
"Here's a bunch of primroses," he murmured, "not daisies. I picked them,
Phyllida ... for you ... not daisies ... primroses...."
And so with thoughts of flowers, Mr. Francis Vernon died. Pray let that
sentence be his epitaph.
Charles, watching the maid stare into the sun with eyes whose light
seemed fled with the swift-flying soul of the dead man, wished
passionately--wildly--that he were the quiet body there in the dewy
grass.
"What shall we do?" he murmured brokenly to Clare.
"Leave her alone for a while."
"What a mistake it has been."
They walked away with cautious steps and spoke in whispers as if they
were afraid.
"What right had I to interfere between lovers?"
"You did it for the best."
"I know, I know, but what a d----d number of silly actions are done for
the best."
"To-day is the first of April," said Clare, seeking with a commonplace
to relieve the tension of Charles's distracted mind.
"Is it? What an April fool fortune has made of me."
_Chapter the Thirty-seventh_
APRIL FOOLS
The last ejaculation of Chapter XXXVI will serve as an admirable summary
of the positions in which a number of our characters found themselves on
April the First, in the year whose annals include this small history.
There is a peculiar happiness of choice in making the first day of that
treacherous and feminine month coincide with the humiliation of a large
number of worthy people. We plunge into April with a prodigious
expectation of jollity: we delight in the sound of her name, liquid as