"How would it be, ma'am, if you was to wear your most elegant and truly genteel green sattin seeing that it do be Saint Valentine with a smell of green leaves in the air?"
This provokes a new decision, and causes a great rummaging in drawers and presses and closets until the gown, fragrant with last year's lavender, is discovered, when the toilet too long neglected starts afresh.
"What patches, ma'am?" says Betty.
"My Cupid's bow and the two tears of widowhood."
"What scents, mamma?" asks Phyllida.
"My Citron Essence, child."
Then shoes are buckled, stockings are gartered, and a black mantua placed gently round her shoulders. One more touch of powder, one more brush from the rouge pot, one more flounce and one more flirt while the watchet ribbands in the cap are hastily changed to ribbands of palest apple-green, and a pair of emerald snaps are quickly fastened.
"Does my hoop sit straight? Oh! Lud! I vow I shall be late."
A breathless moment and, in place of the mantua, a tippet of pheasants' feathers is adjusted. Down the Crescent is heard the opening of many doors. Phyllida runs to the window, draws back the curtains so that the sun streams in upon the sicklied candles.
"Has the Beau appeared yet?" asks Mrs. Courteen.
"Here he comes, and oh! mamma, he is wearing a suit of olive-green."
"What great good fortune! what taste I shall display. Green is certainly the fashionable colour," and Mrs. Courteen began to trill to a tune of her own invention....
"I shall be _a la mode_, I shall be _a la mode_ and very _bon ton_ and _tres bon ton_."
Radiant, she descends the stairs followed by Betty carrying an enormous glass goblet. Outside, rubicund Thomas with heavily knobbed cane awaits her. The widow glances over her shoulder at the crowds swinging down the street, all equipped with glass goblets of various sizes and shapes. She throws an anxious glance towards the head of the procession. The Beau is certainly in green of a shade slightly darker than her own but, nevertheless, distinctly comparable. She tosses her cap in anticipation of the envied triumph and sails in the general direction.
And you, Achates, who have accompanied me so early in the morning to the toilets of some of our principal characters, pray give yourself the additional trouble of thinking what a Great Man he must be to induce these butterflies and moths of fashion to sally forth Cap a Pie perfect at half-past eight o'clock of a February morning.
"Let Bath be true to her bedgowns," he wrote, "in Curtain Wells we are ignorant that men and women undress."
When we think of that apoplectick Circumference which so lately protruded, we can heartily assent to his opinion.
_Chapter the Second_
THE PUMP ROOM
As all roads are commonly reputed to lead to Earls Court, so here at Curtain Wells all roads led to the Pump Room. It dominated the city from the summit of a moderately steep hill as the Acropolis dominates the almost equally famous city of Athens. In certain aspects it bore a remarkable likeness to a Greek temple with its fluted columns and portico haunted by many white pigeons. It was even more like a gigantick summer-house whose interior was always open to the four winds. Any reasonable explanation of a spring that gushed forth at the very top of a hill always eluded those who toiled laboriously up the slope; but, as a more religious butterfly once remarked, Providence plainly designed it to serve some useful purpose by allowing it to gush forth at such an unexpected elevation. The same lady used to regard volcanoes as an uncomfortable if divine method of destroying large numbers of Papists together, and would pertinently observe that if England had admitted the claims of the Pretender, she was convinced what was now a cool, health-giving fountain would have boiled over to the horrid accompaniment of flames and lava. At precisely a quarter to nine o'clock, Beau Ripple paused at the foot of the hill to survey through a monocle his flurried followers. A wag once said that Ripple liked to gaze at life through the wrong end of a spy-glass, because he himself was of so small a stature. Whether this monocle actually diminished his world to the size of an ant-heap, I do not know, but certainly the whole assemblage stopped to recover their breath as if conscious of their utter lack of importance in the eyes of the Great little Man. The Physician-in-chief was solemnly beckoned into hearing.
"Two minutes," said the Beau.
Mr. Oboe the Physician opened the lid of an enormous watch attached to a red silk fob and regarded the dial with an expression of great intentness. He might, so complete was his abstraction, have been feeling the pulse of the Exquisite Mob behind him.
Slowly the minutes rolled by while the Beau took several possessive sniffs of the young spring air. Not an unseemly whisper disturbed the silence. So still was it that above the cooing of the sacred pigeons on the roof of the Pump Room, far down in the valley could be heard the lowing of cows. At thirteen minutes to nine Mr. Ripple let his monocle drop; Mr. Oboe replaced his watch; the Pump Room bell began to clang very fast; the Exquisite Mob started to climb the hill and innumerable glass goblets glittered in the sun. When the summit was reached the Beau called in a loud voice:
"Oboe!"
"Mr. Ripple?" bowed the Physician.
"I allow two more minutes for panting."
"Certainly, Mr. Ripple. Very just, sir."
So the Exquisite Mob like the Hart panted after the Waters or perhaps more accurately before them.
At the expiration of the breathing-space, a diminutive negro known as Gog advanced towards Mr. Ripple, bearing a fluted goblet upon a tray of Chinese lacker. An equally diminutive negro called Magog presented the goblet to Mr. Ripple who turned slightly in the direction of the company and slowly sipped his portion with consummate meditation. When almost half-way towards the bottom of the glass the Beau looked up as if surprized to see his adherents still thirsty. This was understood to be the signal for approach, and the Exquisite Mob advanced to drink while the children, miniatures of foppery, played Hide and Seek or Touchlast round the pillars.
Mrs. Courteen sailed towards a thin little military man with a very long and very crisp pigtail, whose outstanding feature in front was an extremely conical Adam's Apple that bobbed up and down as if his throat were a bowl of water and, rising with his choler, at boiling-point invariably choked him into incoherence.
The Major would have passed for one of those half-pay officers who frequent watering-places and rely for many of their meals upon an acquaintance with the tacticks and strategy of the late Duke of Marlborough, with the miserable failure of Carthagena and the already forgotten personality of his Highness the Duke of C---- d.
As a matter of fact, he had followed Mrs. Courteen to Curtain Wells from Hampshire where he owned a small hunting lodge known as Ramilies House, Oudenarde Grange, and Malplaquet Place according to his humour, but for no discoverable reason besides. He had a painted board for each designation, but nobody ever extracted from him the principle on which, from time to time, they were changed. When asked on one occasion why he omitted the famous victory of Blenheim from his titular commemoration, he replied that the omission saved the expense of continually forwarding letters to Oxfordshire. The Major was inclined to resent the homage paid to Beau Ripple.
"A d----d civilian, ma'am," he muttered to Mrs. Courteen.
"Oh! you soldiers! I protest you have no reverence for anybody."
"Not I, ma'am. I don't bow the knee to a living soul. Not at all. 'Sblood, ma'am, the fellow's no better than a low adventurer. Would he fight? Not he. So he forbids us to wear swords. D---- n it, ma'am, a soldier without his hanger is like a monkey without his tail. That's what I say."
"So do I, Major, so do I," echoed a suave voice over his shoulder and the Major turning round, encountered the bland half-bored, half-tolerant smile of the Great little Man.
"Your similes are uncommon happy, Major."
Tarry's Apple throbbed and bubbled and rose and sank, but the Beau passed on contemptuously, and a large flabby man in a suit of snuff-coloured frieze treading upon the Major's toe at this moment, the latter's wrath flowed into another channel.
"My toe, Mr. Moon!" he said furiously.
"Your toe?" inquired the other with great earnestness. The question of disputed property which seemed imminent was quashed by the widow's interruption:
"'Tis too early for argument. Come, neighbours, let us make our promenade. Where is Phyllida?"
But Phyllida was making her promenade at a careful distance behind her mother. Phyllida was taking the demurest little steps with an arm in her beloved Betty's arm and with a swansdown muff held against her cheek to ward off the shrewd Easterly wind, while almost level with the two maids walked a stately gentleman of a pale complexion. And every time the gentleman stopped to survey the promenaders over the tortoise-shell handle of his ebony walking-stick, Phyllida and Betty stopped to see if it was truly a quarter-past nine o'clock by St. Simon's church tower. And every time the gentleman stopped to flick a speck of dust from his purple sattin sleeve, by a very odd coincidence Miss Courteen always stopped to see if her shoe had really become unbuckled. This tends to show that in spite of all the precautions of Beau Ripple, the innermost fane of AEsculapius had been invaded by a strange god. I doubt Miss Courteen, considered by her mother too young for Chalybeate, was learning to drink of that deep well whose waters will never run dry so long as maids and men frequent its precincts.