That is how Mr. Charles Lovely sat down to indite
_CURTAIN POLLS_ severely lashed by a _Curtain Rod_.
_Chapter the Sixteenth_
THE CHINESE MASQUERADE
The Chinese Masquerade was the outstanding event of early Spring at Curtain Wells. It was the quintessence of refined affectation, the great fount in which many tributary delights found their source. Moreover, in its character there was a national significance. It was not held merely to emphasize the importance of being seriously amused; it was not one of many entertainments sacred to Epicurus; it did not serve to commemorate the fleetingness of life; it was no Burial Service with a ritual of flung roseleaves and spilt wine. The Chinese Masquerade of Curtain Wells was something far more grand than any of these, being a great national act of homage to the beverage of Tea. Of old, Bacchus was saluted in Samothrace, and the festival of wine was celebrated with all the absence of restraint that might be expected from the past. Nymphs raved, Satyrs danced, and garlanded leopards jigged to one wild inspiration. Phrenzy footed it; troop followed troop, broke and dissolved in flashes of white limbs when Dionysus of the sly smile and rosy cheeks bewitched thousands with his strange madness. In fact, the whole affair was an intolerable concession to Nature. At Curtain Wells you saw the centuries at work. There the Bacchantes were corseted and hooped to primness; the Satyrs had high red heels for hoofs, silken breeches for the fur of goats. Instead of velvety leopards that used to amble over tuffets of fragrant thyme, each with a hussy astride his supple back, went greasy chairmen in lurching escort of dowagers and misses. Dionysus himself was changed. He had kept his sly smile and rosy cheeks, but his vine wreaths were become ruffles and ties, while his body glittered, not with youth and health and immortality, but with paste buckles and brooches and solitaires. The crashing cymbals of Thrace found a thin echo in the delicate tinkle of tea-spoons and frail sounds of porcelain. To be sure, the whole of the difference between the worship of Wine and the worship of Tea was expressed by the fact that to honour the former, society took off its cloaths, whereas in order to celebrate the latter, all the world dressed itself up.
Mr. Ripple wore above his suit of amber a robe resembling a golden dressing-gown. He was the Gold Mandarin, decorated with dragons, tall pagodas, flowers and fireworks. The Blue Mandarin, whose robe concealed the pearl-grey suit of Mr. Charles Lovely, seemed as he moved across the room like a blue garden, so many small landskips wrought in azure silks trembled in the folds of his garment. Only these two officers of the Pageant were privileged to remain unmasked. The rest of the company wore yellow vizards whose painted eyebrows soared at a celestial angle over eyeslits, cut almondwise. The general effect was of animated Ming laughing, jesting, talking, and dancing with the lacker cabinets that were used to contain it.
The ballroom had pagodas in each of the corners where the children of the Exquisite Mob dressed to a more exact replica[1] of the farthest Orientals, nodded and peeped and chirped the austere maxims of Confucius without the slightest idea of their meaning, but all convinced that it was extremely diverting to partake of a grown-up entertainment, and far better to drink real tea out of real cups in a delightful palace of their own, than to play with acorns and ditchwater in the mildewed Dorick summer-house at the head of the Park avenue.
[1] They wore pigtails, which were considered unbecoming by the older Follies. Besides, head-dresses were too elaborate to be ruined for the sake of one entertainment.
Chinese lanterns bobbed on golden wires slung from wall to wall whence the gilt mirrours with the wax candles of the West had all been removed. This Eastern light softened the mingled hues of blue and gold to a gorgeous moving twilight stained by the afterglow of sunset. All along the sides of the ballroom were placed for seats queer twisted animals, winged dragons, squat bronzes, Chinese geese, monkeys and parrots in crude shades of green and vermilion, while at suitable intervals were set little houses to contain two persons. These were intended to encourage the intimate amenities of polite conversation.
Outside in the Rococo cloister unknown flowers expanded and curious fruits ripened by lanternlight; and though the flowers were made of linen dipped in scent, they served very well to pluck and offer to a masked fair and as for the fruits, they were all filled with comfits. Finally, here and there, smoking sandal-wood torches lent a remote perfume to the Mise en Scene, and curled in scented wreaths about the motley forms of the masqueraders. To say truth, the Eastern veneer was more than usually superficial, even for a veneer. The result of the attempt to secure reality only accentuated the difference between East and West: still the latter enjoyed making believe so far as it consorted with true gentility, and it may very easily be understood that nothing low was permitted by the British Nation in the eighteenth glorious century of Christian civilization.
Thia was the first masked ball that had been held since Phyllida grew enamoured of Mr. Francis Vernon, so she made no doubt he would avail himself of the opportunity to be present. As soon as the Exquisite Mob was assembled (at half-past seven o'clock precisely, because it was considered vulgar to be late) there was a solemn drinking of tea, no mere handing round of teacups and saucers, but a far more impressive ritual, invented to mark the occasion with due importance.
The Gold Mandarin seated himself on an ivory stool whose claw legs were fretted with diminutive foliage, temples and flying birds. This was set on a small platform draped with broideries at the foot of which was an azure velvet cushion where, with crossed legs, sat the Blue Mandarin.
Mr. Ripple clapped his hands twice to command the entrance of the Procession of Tea. First walked two musicians slowly tapping gongs shaped like saucers with large spoons. These were followed by six children with nodding porcelain Mandarins whose tongues trembled in and out of their surprized mouths. Then came the bearer of the Caddy--a magnificently decorated specimen of lackerwork. On either side of the Caddy was borne a Nankin jar full of milk. Finally, a lacker table on wheels, overhung by a fringed canopy that protected an enormous bowl of rarest Ming whither odorous vapours ascended from the flowery liquid, was pushed along in slow and reverend state.
The company opened its ranks to allow the procession a way until it stopped before the Gold Mandarin's ivory throne. The Beau at once descended, dipped a diminutive teacup into the bowl, took three sips and sighed rapturously. The six porcelain Mandarins were set nodding with redoubled vigour, gongs boomed from the topmost windows of the pagodas, and the procession re-formed and passed into the upper room, whither the assembled company followed it in order to drink in turn from teacups filled at the sacred fountain.
In the crush, Phyllida, who was wearing a gown faint blue like the March sky, felt her sleeve pulled gently by a tall mask in tawny raiment. She recognized the pointed white fingers and whispered 'Amor.'
The mask shook his head to indicate silence, but presently Phyllida succeeded in conveying her cup of tea to the outskirts of the crowd and hurried through a corridor to a side-door opening into the cloister where she waited for her lover's approach. In a minute he was sitting beside her.
She turned to him delightedly.
"Dear Amor! This will be the first ball that I shall have truly enjoyed."
This statement scarcely did justice to the many pleasant hours she had spent to the sound of fiddles, horns, and clarinets.
"Why was my charmer absent yesterday? The Maze was prodigiously dull without the sweet Nymph who loves to haunt its verdurous ways."
"Oh! Amor, we are discovered."
"Faith, is that so?" remarked Vernon, without any apparent concern.
"Mr. Ripple told my mother I was conversing with a gentleman for one hour and a half by the clock."
"Interfering dancing-master!"
"And yesterday I was sent to match a ribband quite impossible to match; I'm sure 'twas done to keep me employed and when I heard eleven chime, I could bear it no longer, but almost ran towards Curtain Garden, and on my way the Beau beckoned me to come in and, pray don't be angry, dear Amor, he was so vastly kind that I told him your name."
"Here's a pretty state of affairs," muttered Vernon.
"He asked me to present you to him to-night, and vowed we should be wed in June."
"Gadslife! I hope you sent him about his business?"
"Not exactly," said Phyllida, "indeed he was so good-natured that I promised--at least I half promised to do so."
"Confusion take him," swore Vernon, "for a prating, meddlesome, tailor-made gentleman. Harkee! I'll not have myself discussed by Mr. Horace Ripple. I dare swear he patted your hands, eh? called you his pretty dear, made old man's love, eh? A plague on his impudence!"