She hurried down the Crescent with a small parcel of cloaths wrapped up in brown paper and tied with a green ribbon. If you are anxious to know what was inside, I will refer you to Miss Howe, Mr. Richardson's Miss Howe, to whom Miss Clarissa Harlowe confided a parcel of much the same dimensions and contents.
She did not forget her swansdown muff nor her swansdown tippet, and altogether she looked just the same as she looked a good many pages ago and was flushed to just the same frail hue of carmine.
Ding-dong went St. Simon's husky clock, ding-dong, ding-dong.
Pitter-pat went Phyllida's heart and pitter-pitter-pitter-pitter-pat went Phyllida's heart when, exactly opposite the toy-shop, she saw a post chariot and four bay horses and two postillions staring very intently at the sky.
It struck Phyllida how clever it was of her dear Amor to chuse such a time and such a place; for all the world was engaged in directing the start of the Invincible Stage Coach that ploughed once a week between Curtain Wells and London.
Tootle-a-tootle-a-tootle went the long brass horn of the guard and plump-plump went two large parcels into his basket and crack-crack went the coachman's long whip, and 'Now then Miss, jump in,' said one of the post-boys, still staring intently at the March sky, and before Phyllida knew where she was, she found herself sitting on a rather damp cushion with a peacock-blue riding hood lined with swansdown on the seat beside her, but no sign of Mr. Francis Amor.
In dismay she put her head out of the window and cried to the nearest postillion.
"Mr. Harmor's followin' on 'orseback," he said, with a thumping thwack on the ribs of his mount and a vicious prod with his rusty spurs.
Phyllida drew back with tears of disappointment starting to her wide blue eyes; but before she could make up her mind to stop the chariot and never elope again, she caught the glance of Thomas in open-mouthed amazement. Instinctively, she pulled the musty curtains close, and, lifting the leather flap at her back, could not help laughing aloud to see dignified Thomas mopping his brow with his right hand and waving his tall cane with the left; and just as the chariot tore round the corner of the street, she saw that Thomas had knocked off Lord Cinderton's grey beaver hat. The Love Chase had begun.
_Chapter the Twenty-eighth_
THE LOVE CHASE
John Gilpin never rode so fast through Edmonton as, on that memorable afternoon in March, Major Constantine Tarry pounded over the cobbles of Curtain High Street. His scarlet uniform was very bright against the huge iron-grey steed on whose broad back he nodded with hat pressed down as far as his fierce prickly eyebrows, with pigtail bobbing to the motion and with sword whose martial clangour recalled every famous battle in the history of the world. He was conversing with the widow when Thomas burst upon them with the news of Phyllida's elopement.
"Gone, gone!" wailed the footman. "Oh Tyre! Oh Sidon! Hittites on horseback and two Amorites in a chariot!"
"What the d----l do you mean, sir?" snapped the Major, "who is gone?"
"Miss Phyllida," groaned Thomas.
"Gone," breathed the widow, and the odour of diffused Sanspareil permeated the room.
"Gone where?" shouted the Major.
"To the desert beyond Jordan," answered the footman.
"With what viper in sheep's clothing?" gasped Mrs. Courteen.
"Which way, which way, sirrah?" interrupted practical Major Tarry.
"Lunnon," ejaculated Thomas, fainting into the arms of a chair.
This was why the inhabitants of the Wells saw a veteran of the Low Countries shaken up like a cherry in a basket. The sedate glories of the town were never more nicely displayed than on this famous occasion. From each bow-windowed shop came forth a bland shopkeeper and half a dozen inquisitive customers.
The little Miss Pettitoes trilled in bird-like accents: 'What an adventure!' and returned to a counter spangled with their gay little purchases, for the Miss Pettitoes were twin sisters and to-morrow was their birthday.
"What an adventure!" they trilled to each other over a dish of Hyson and 'What an adventure!' they trilled as they kissed each other 'good-night' and went each to their bed chambers, identical save for the ribbons of their fascinating little spinster night-caps.
"Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted the boys, as they pushed the maids into the puddles the better to follow so surprizing a cavalier.
"Rot me!" said Mr. Golightly of the Grey Dragoons, as he lifted his tortoise-shell rimmed monocle to his supercilious left eye, and 'Rot you!' he ejaculated, as an enthusiastick trio of youth sheltered between his remarkably tight-breeched legs.
"Shall we make such an impressive entrance, d'ye think?" asked Mr. Lovely, as he and Mr. Clare came out of Mr. Canticle's shop, followed by Mr. Canticle himself and Mr. Canticle's apprentice loaded with a huge brown-paper parcel.
"Good day, Canticle," said Charles.
"Good day, Mr. Lovely, good day, sir, and depend on't, grey will be the modish colour for gentlemen of quality; and I beg you not to be uneasy about the light-blue lining. That, sir, I venture to predict, will supply the exact touch of genteel eccentricity that consorts so amiably with the friendly madness of the season. I envy you, gentlemen, I envy you; and I beg to wish you many a pleasant adventure. The cut of that riding-coat, Mr. Lovely, will enthral the most fastidious glance, and as for your breeches, Mr. Clare, I should perhaps be considered boastful if I said that they impart a tone, sir, a very distinguished tone to the landskip. Good day, gentlemen."
The two young gentlemen laughed over Mr. Canticle's prophecies, and excused his loquacity because he had been a limner till the vogue for foreign painters compelled him to apply his art in another direction.
It was certainly a stroke of irony that the offer of a sartorial uncle should make him, a very tolerable exponent of nudity, take up the occupation of devizing cloaths.
By this time, Major Tarry's coat-tails were flapping to hedge-row winds, and his astonishing course was less universally regarded; although, even in open country, the clamorous transit caused much confusion to itinerant carters, while a pair of blackbirds forsook their hardly built nest and retired in voluble dismay to the densest coppice between Baverstock Regis and Curtain Wells.
Mr. Jeremy Daish met our hero with a very lugubrious expression, as he strolled into the coffee-room.
"What has your honour been doing to enrage Mr. Ripple? Oh, Mr. Lovely, read this."
Charles took the proffered note, and half-smiling, half-sighing, perused his decree of banishment.
THE GREAT HOUSE.
CURTAIN WELLS, PRIDIE KAL. AP.
MR. DAISH,--_The uncomfortable events of Wednesday evening compel me to announce that I cannot contemplate with equanimity the protracted Sojourn of Mr. Lovely at your hitherto peaceful House. I have no desire to inflict upon you the invidious course of summary Ejection, but at the same time I am bound to invite a trifle less cordiality in your Reception of all young gentlemen unperturbed by the Gout. The town of Curtain Wells exists for the supply of hygiastick Waters; and, since red wine is a notorious antidote to chalybeate, my civick brother the Mayor begs me to point out that we cannot lend our patronage to a house which studiously encourages the circulation of this antipathetick Beverage. In expectation, Mr. Daish, that you will presently reconstruct at once your list of wines and your list of visitors,_
_I am, Mr. Daish, your obliged_
HORACE RIPPLE.
"Console yourself, Daish," said our hero, as he handed back the Beau's exquisitely written epistle, "Mr. Clare and I propose to make a long excursion into the country this very afternoon. Have the goodness to order our horses to be in the yard at six o'clock."
"Certainly, your honour, but I hope that nothing I may have said or done or hinted--or--or--or--" poor Mr. Daish stumbled over the awkwardness of the interview, and was more like a Cremona violin than ever, a violin whose strings were snapping one by one.
"Console yourself, Daish," said our hero with an incredibly magnanimous air, "you are not to blame. You must know, Daish, that for a long time past I have had a curiosity to survey this small green earth, unhampered by anything more serious than the impulse of the moment. To-night, Daish, when you retire to rest, when you gather the curtains of your serene bed, when you hark to the clock in the passage striking the moderate and orderly hour of ten o'clock, when you reflect with a sigh of proprietary contentment that you have offended no one in the course of an innkeeper's promiscuous day, when, in a word, your respectable head sinks into your respectable pillow, dally for a moment in the imagination of Charles Lovely and Anthony Clare mocking society, laughing at convention, seated in the parlour of some remote inn and dozing gratefully before a pile of logs.
"Think of us, Daish, in the cool dusks and azure silences of April, at the top of some gentle hill whence we can regard with exhilaration the prospect of a good dinner, a crimson glass, and genial intercourse with travellers. Behold us in your mind's eye, walking our horses down through the twilight, as one by one in cottage lattices the candles twinkle and, high above, the stars betray the night with silver spears. For my part, already I can hear the evening gossip of housewives, and the babble of children in small gardens, and clear against the green West, I can see the many lovers of a little town moving with slow steps along their customary path.