In this instance Mr. Vernon stared Sir George Repington up and down, while the latter, who was not accustomed to such freedom of regard, took snuff very aggressively and looked as if he would like to give the intruder a moment's notice, as indeed he would. Phyllida tried to stem the tide of embarrassment by remarking in a hushed voice that Sir George had been kindly entertaining her in the absence of Mr. Amor.
"Has he?" was the latter's frigid response.
"And oh, Amor," she went on, "those odious postillions pushed their way to the room and wanted money and Sir George kindly came to the rescue and bade them begone."
"Did he?" was all that Vernon would vouchsafe in thanks to this timely assistance.
Phyllida, abashed by her lover's bad manners, seemed inclined to apologize for them with tears. And now Sir George did what most Englishmen would have done under the circumstances--he walked out of the room in a very stately way. No doubt the banker thought the strength of feeling which had led him to reveal his life's tragedy would kindle an equal emotion in the heart of Miss Courteen and that when he returned he would find the raffish intruder gone.
This was in fact the precise result of his withdrawal. When he returned, Mr. Vernon was gone. But neither was Miss Phyllida Courteen anywhere in sight.
_Chapter the Thirty-second_
THE HORRID ADVENTURES OF BEAU RIPPLE AND MRS. COURTEEN
We will, if you please, take for granted the persuasions used by Mr. Vernon to induce Phyllida to continue upon her headlong course. He rode beside her on this second stage of her adventure, and I shall have something to say of that drive together through the darkness of wind and rain. We will take for granted Sir George Repington's indignation, expressed with many a z----ds and many a pinch of snuff, and since there are a number of fine folk abroad on this most atrocious evening, it is only just that we should pay them the compliment of relating their horrid adventures.
You have not forgotten, I hope, the sensation created in Curtain Wells by the sight of Beau Ripple and Mrs. Courteen ensconced in the former's vivid yellow postchaise, driven by the former's diminutive groom Pridgeon. You made one of a host of conjectures, or rather you would have done had you not been in the heart of the secret, thanks to the honest, straightforward way in which I have treated you throughout this story.
They went off with 'Tally-ho' and 'Whoo-whoop, gone away!' They rattled over the cobbles and clattered over the kidney stones and jolted prodigiously over a kerb that protruded too far into the road. They bumped over a log of wood dropped by old Mother Hubbard in her frantick endeavours to gain the protection of the pavement, they ground the face of little Miss Muffet's favourite wax doll to minutest grains of powder. They experienced a second's muffled progress as with two wheels they rolled over little Tommy Trout's Easter coat and with the others made a broad smear over little Sammy Green's satchel and cracked his new Horn Book into a thousand splinters.
As for Mr. Ripple, every time he rose to a wayside obstacle and fell with a genteel plump into Mrs. Courteen's wide lap, he had a sensation of the acutest disgust; with disgust, too, he viewed his cushions of fawn silk and ivory sattin bedabbled with the widow's copious tears--these cushions made salt with a mortal widow's grief that were never intended to be spoiled with anything less ethereal than the glittering milk of the Queen of Heaven.
Extreme dizziness overtook the Great little Man when, in accents hoarse with hysterical sorrow, the wretched woman by his side begged the loan of his handkerchief. Then, indeed, he nearly called to Pridgeon to check their mad course, turn the horses' heads stablewards, brooding for a sensuous second upon the delights of a warm meditative bath, made sweeter with Citron Essence.
Poor Mr. Ripple! As the mile-stones fled past and the chilly March twilight crept over the dusky fallows and peered above the black hedgerows, he thought with unutterable pangs of the cheerful and comfortable town of Curtain Wells. His china shepherds and shepherdesses called to him over the bleak country, and in the distance like elfin bells he heard the reproachful tinkle of his elegant lustres.
At the turnpike Mr. Ripple asked the keeper whether a post-chariot had lately come under his jurisdiction.
"Dick who?" inquired the janitor.
"Have you seen a post-chariot?" said Mr. Ripple, petulantly.
"No, I ain't. Have you seen two bullocks as 'ave lost, stolen and strayed theyselves hereabouts--the red 'un with a----"
"Drive on," said Mr. Ripple.
"That's gentry," commented the gatekeeper as, spitting on the bust of King George which reposed in the palm of his dirty hand, he retired to brood over a well-thumbed pamphlet that set forth with convincing ribaldry, the imminent danger of another Popish plot.
"Drive on," said Mr. Ripple, "we shall have a heavy shower presently."
They were bowling down a broad village street with a merry jingle of harness and rhythmical clatter of hoofs, while the cracking of little Pridgeon's whip, nearly as big as himself, made many inquisitive bodies huddle in the low doorways of the cottages to survey the gallant equipage.
"Reg'lar delooge, your honour," said Pridgeon, turning round on the box.
Mrs. Courteen was already so wet with the tears of outraged motherhood that the addition of rain could scarcely have affected her comfort. Nevertheless she shuddered so expansively that she squeezed her companion closer than ever to the side of the chaise.
"Shall we put up at the _Green Dragon_?--very comfortable Inn, the _Green Dragon_."
"No, no, Pridgeon, drive on. If it rains, it rains."
Such a platitude from Beau Ripple can only have been provoked by the intensest despair. A ploughboy's epigram would not have seemed more out of place. The Nine Muses were certainly waked from their harmonious lethargy, and a small boy, playing _Sally in our Alley_ on a Jew's harp, twanged a discordant echo of their shocked sensibility. A platitude from Beau Ripple! The very chaise collapsed in ignominy. Bump--bang--whooooo! The gay vehicle was on its side and the front off-wheel was whirling madly down the broad slope of the street, to the enormous delight of the boy with the Jew's harp and the immense consternation of a flock of geese in whose company it made a noisy entrance into the village pond.
Pridgeon turned once more on the Jimmy and, having pulled up the horses and gazed at the Tableau, remarked:
"Blow me tight if I didn't think the wheel'd do that afore we started. Blow me right and tight!"
By this time, all the village stood in a circle and supplied an exhaustive commenting upon the sad event.
"She's putt her futt through her petticutt," whooped grandmother.
"So her 'ave and toored 'un proper."
"Blarm 'un if the old buoy's knee ain't streaked like somebody's baad baacon."
"So it be, buoy, so it be," came the delighted rejoinder.
"Look, see the seat of his breeches!" cried a shapely hussy.
"I never saw such a power o' mud, why 'e's like a brown paaper plaster behind. Poor soul!"
"Horse ain't hurt?" asked a sharp-featured, bow-legged individual with professional anxiety.
Four or five hobbledehoys had assisted the Beau to his feet and volunteered to show him the way to the _Green Dragon_. As that hostelry stood exactly opposite the scene of the disaster, the offer savoured of something more than mere friendliness.
Mrs. Courteen was whirling round and round, like a kitten after her tail, trying to ascertain the precise amount of damage close to her train; a good-natured booby stuck his foot on the skirt to steady it for her inspection, and in doing so made the rent more irreparable.
"Better go to the _Green Dragon_, your honour," said Pridgeon, as spruce as when he started.
"Better go to h----, you dunderhead," said the Beau, very white with well-bred passion and the shock of the catastrophe. No fragile vase of Dresden or of azure Sevres, no figure of opalescent Worcester, no violet-flowered teapot of Lowestoft that ever fell from a proud cabinet through the careless sweep of a chambermaid's broom, was to be so deeply commiserated as Mr. Horace Ripple. These painted monuments of care betray their inherent beauty even in the dainty particles that proclaim their wreckage, but a fop with muddied breeches--why, in the very first chapter of this story we trembled to behold the circumference of the least dignified part of the Beau's anatomy protruding from beneath a bedstead; and on that occasion, it was gay with the flowers of a silk dressing-gown.
I do not think that the Great little Man ever recovered from this outrage to his personal attire, for to the very end of his modish days, he would wear a coat cut an inch or two lower than was readily allowed by the least conservative tailor in his employment.
As for Mrs. Courteen, who followed meekly in the wake of her wounded escort, she could not refrain from wishing that the Major and the Justice were at hand to console her with jealous attentions and rival sympathies, and when the first round drop of the swift-approaching storm hit her plump on the nose and washed away in its downward course the last vestige of powder from her face, she regretted also the tributary fingers of Betty.