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Transcriber’s Note:
Minor errors in punctuation and formatting have been silently corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.
The full-page illustrations are referred to, in the list provided, by a quote from the text, and the page reference is to the quote, rather than the position of the illustration in the text. In some cases, these were re-positioned to fall nearer the scene referenced.
MY LADY PEGGY
GOES TO TOWN
By
FRANCES AYMAR MATHEWS
ILLUSTRATED BY HARRISON FISHER
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS : NEW YORK
Copyright, 1901,
By The Bowen-Merrill Company
THE DECORATIONS DESIGNED BY VIRGINIA KEEP
THE COVER DESIGNED BY FRANCIS HAZENPLUG
ENVOI
When gay postillions cracked their whips,
And gallants gemmed their chat with quips;
When patches nestled o’er sweet lips
At choc’late times; and, ’twixt the sips,
Fair Ladies gave their gossips tips;
Then, in Levantine gown and brooch,
My Lady Peggy took the coach,
For London Town!
In the which My Lady Peggy sends off her
lover broken-hearted and promptly
falls into a swoon.
Kennaston Castle lies in Surrey. The Earl of Exham is master of the picturesque old pile and of the estate, and decidedly the slave of the very considerable number of debts which were up to His Lordship’s ears when he came of age, some four and fifty years ago, and by this time have reached almost to the crown of his head. He is also father to his son and heir, Kennaston of Kennaston, and to the heir’s tall twin, My Lady Peggy.
My Lady Peggy at this particular moment sits a-swinging on the top branch of a plum tree at the foot of the kitchen garden whence she commands a tolerable view of the highway.
“Impertinent sun!” cries Peggy, shading her handsome eyes with her hand as she stares off along the dusty road. “How is’t you dare shine when there’s no fine gentleman a-comin’ from the east; no gallant with disheveled locks, powdered shoulders, disordered mien, distracted looks, spurs a-digging into his beast, lips apart, heart beating like spent rabbit’s, and ‘Peggy, lovely Peggy,’ the clapper to his eager tongue at every jolt of his saddle, every rut of his way? Go cloud yourself, I say! since Sir Percy tarries. I’d have the skies weep, even if I can’t.” A peal of merriest laughter concludes this sally, and an apronful of plums comes tumbling down all over the other young woman who stands under the tree in waiting on her mistress.
“Is His Lordship not yet in sight, My Lady?” asks this one.
“Nay! that is not he, Chockey, and whisk me! but when His Lordship does come, he’ll find a very sorry entertainment. I swear, as dad says, I’ll not see him when he does appear, that will not I. Nay, shake not your head, girl. Is’t not true that Lady Peggy had once a lover?”
“’Twere truer say a dozen of that sort of gentry, Madam,” replies the buxom Chockey, as she sorts the plums, the best in her bonnet, the flaws over the wall where the chickens and hens cackle to the refuse.
“Well, well, twenty if you like! but one more favored than the rest? the properest sort of man at saddle, gun, line, wrestle, toast, song, or dance? honest, straightforward, beautiful, as dad says the angels are he saw painted on the walls at Rome. Speak I truth, eh, Chockey?”
“Madam, that you do.”
“And this paragon so worshiped his Peggy as, when she went off a-three months since to visit her godmother in Kent, he vowed by all the saints in the calendar he’d scarce survive until her return. False or true, eh, Chockey?”
My Lady Peggy punctuated this query by an accurate aim and hit, on the top of her waiting woman’s head, with an especially large plum.
“True, Madam,” dodging the fruit, and still with an eye on the road.
“And then, back comes My Lady Peggy, cutting short her stay in Kent, where she had much pleasure, to tell the truth, in the society of a very fine young nobleman.”
“Lawk, Madam! another?” interrupted the faithful Chockey.
“Another, Chock,” vouchsafes her mistress. “Sweet, sweet Sir Robin McTart!”
“Oh, My Lady!” cries the girl, vainly endeavoring to conceal a smile.
“Aye, Chock,” proceeds Peggy, “I say again, a sweet and most entrapping young man.”
“Madam, a squint eye, a wry nose, an underlip that hangs, a pair of fox-teeth, and a chin that’s gone a-huntin’ for his throat!”
“Tut, tut! Chock,” laughs Lady Peggy, leaning back in her leafy bower, “what’s all that to a nimble wit, a galloping conversation, and a faithful heart?” Lady Peggy’s tone is as light as the May breeze blowing her soft locks about her lovely blooming face, full of mockery, witchery,—and then a bit of a sigh, low as flowers’ whispers, and up with her drooped head higher than before, as in the half mannish tone her twinship and long play-fellowship with her brother have given her, she adds curtly—
“D’ye see aught coming yet, Chock?”
“No, My Lady, not yet,” answers the girl ruefully.
Peggy bites her lips until they hurt.
“As I was a-sayin’, Chock, your mistress cuts short her visit, sends word to her lover she’ll be home o’-Thursday, and, as I live! to-day’s the Monday after, and him still on the way! See him!” Peggy’s white teeth close tight, and her eyes flash, and her little hands clench. “Not I! Let him come now an’ he goes again faster than he ever traveled. The vain coxcomb! the deceitful, cozening, graceless poppet! He’ll ne’er set eyes on her he used to call his Peg again, or I die for’t.” And Peggy jumped to the ground.
“Madam! Madam!” exclaims Chockey, pointing joyfully to a cloud of dust far up the highway. “Look! Yonder comes Sir Percy! Don’t I know? Ain’t I watched his long roan any day this twelve month a-turnin’ by the lodge?”
Lady Peggy seizes Chockey’s arm, and runs breathless to the house; in, a-scrambling up the broad stairs to her chamber; a-pulling out of drawers from their chests; a-hunting of ribbons and fallals, combs, brushes, kerchiefs, perfumes, patches, powder, whatever else besides!
“Hurry, Chock, do my hair as he likes it!” urges Lady Peggy.
“Lawk, Madam! I thought you swore just now you’d never set eyes on Sir Percy again?”
“You thought! Bless you, Chock, never be a-wastin’ your time a-thinking where a woman’s concerned. When her heart steps up and lays hold the reins, the steed gallops to the goal; she’s always time to think after she’s acted.”
“Yes, Madam,” concurs Chockey, with a mental reservation back of her mouthful of pins. “There, My Lady, Your Ladyship’s hair is lovely; your Levantine gown becomes you like a pheasant do its plumage, and your eyes is a-shinin’ with love and—”
“Tut, girl! It’s anger, wrath, temper,—so!” Peggy marches up and down before the mirror, tossing her lovely head. “Thus attired, Chock, a lady can flout, deride, harass, and madden one of the opposite sex, as can she not do in cotton frock and fruit-stained apron. Give me my comfit box, I pray. Tell me how long Sir Percy now hath been cooling his heels in the drawing-room?”
“But little lacking the hour, Madam.”
“Good! I’d keep him there until Thursday, an I could. Now go tell him I’ll be with him presently.”
Chockey went.
Lady Peggy stood at the door ajar; she heard the impatient footsteps of her lover below, but yet she tarried, tapping her high red heel on the sill.
“Lud!” cried she, “an I show no proper spirit, Percy’s uncle’ll have the right of it when he says of one he’s never seen yet, ‘She’s a-hunting your bank-notes, boy! She’s heiress to debts, Sir, and by my life, Sir! I’ll never father-in-law her, so long as I’m above the sod, Sir!’ Despicable old wretch! as if ’twere not Percy I adored, without a care if he have a farthing to his fortune, or a roof to his head!”
And then Chockey, her palm warm with a sovereign, came with a rush.
“My Lady!” cries she, “’f you could see Sir Percy! White as milk, tremblin’, shakin’, chatterin’, a-begging and a-praying as you’ll condescend to go to him inside of another hour!”
“White, said you Chock?”
The girl nods vehemently.
“Shaking?”
“Aye, Madam.”
“Like to faint, think you?”
“Like to die, My Lady!”
Then Lady Peggy, laughing, humming such a gay snatch of a song, comes tripping down the stairs, pulling out her petticoats, stopping her lover’s outstretched arms of eagerness with such a splendid curtsy as any Court lady might have envied.
Still laughing.—“Lud! Sir Percy! is’t you?” amazed.
“Aye!” returns he, more amazed than she, and standing off with dropped arms. “Whom did you think it was?”
“Another. My woman’s stupid, and when she described the gallant that she did, it matched a different sort of him than you, methinks. However, let’s be civil; the crops are good, the game likely to be, later; the King in health,—prithee have a chair.” And Peggy swept a second curtsy, motioning toward a seat.
“Peggy! Sweet lips! Joy of my soul, what’s it? Not one warm word for him who only lives for thee? Who’s counted every hour since he parted from you, eh?” The young man draws nearer to her, and bends upon his knee, venturing, as he does so, to take her hand in his.
“Since you spent your time a-counting the hours, Sir, pray you, how many hours have passed since in this same room we parted, now three months, three weeks, and a few days since?”
Sir Percy sprang to his feet.
“Zounds! Peggy, and you flout me so?”
“Zounds! Sir Percy, did not I write you—and very well you know writing’s not my forte,—that I’d be home o’-Thursday?”
“Aye, but I never got it until this morning; then did I put spurs and leave my uncle in the lurch to fly to you.”
“What, Sir! not get my letter? An idle, silly, and foolish excuse. I sent it by Bickers, and trustier man ne’er breathed. He vowed me he’d put it in your hands.”
“Peggy, believe whichever of the two you like; but, in mercy tell me! What kept you so long away? I’ve heard rumors of another. Eh, Peg, ’tis not true, swear me ’tis not true? Oh, by the hue of my visage must you know what jealous pangs have racked me!”
Lady Peggy nods her head maliciously.
“Jealous pangs, forsooth! and you thought to medicine them, I dare be sworn, with vaulting the country over in the wake of Lady Diana Weston, the greatest heiress in the market! Bah, Sir, and you’ve heard rumors! I’ll match ’em. I’ve seen the minx from afar. She is handsome, Sir; your taste does you credit.”
“Peg, I swear ’twas but to please my uncle!” cries Sir Percy.
“Aye, and so displease me!”
“Nay, you know too well that I’ll never do that of my will; but my uncle, as I’ve told you, must be coaxed, and then when once I gain his consent to seeing you, our battle’s won. To see thee, Peg ’s to worship thee! Lord Gower’ll kneel when he beholds thee!”
“Our me no ours, Sir!” returned Peggy. “Let’s here and now make an end on’t all. You go pound the roads after your new mistress with her acres and notes, and I—”
“Well, you what?” asks the young man impetuously and yet with a certain grave dignity.
“Oh, I’ll acquit myself to a certainty with one that’s faithful as the sun, and gallant from his head to his heels.”
“What’s his name?” inquires Sir Percy in a hard, strained voice. “If he’s a better man, Peg, and you can say you love him—God keep me!”
“His name’s a very honorable and ancient one, he’s Sir Robin McTart, twenty-third Baronet!”
“Peggy!”
If a thunderbolt had fallen betwixt Peggy’s red shoes and his brown ones, Percy could not have been more astounded.
“Well, Sir?” returns she, scarce controlling the twitching of her lips.
“A milk-sop, molly-coddle! Oh Peggy, an you drop me, take a better man! Peg, you’re a-joking. Not that bumpkin! I’ve never seen him, but report has it he’s afeard if one of his own dogs looks him in the eye and bays!”
“Sir Percy, have you finished?” inquires Peggy with dignity.
“No, have I not! By my soul, Peg, an you pitch me to hell for that jackanapes, I’ll go to hell as fast as wine and dice, and cards and brawls, and usurers, and all that sort of crew can carry me! I’ll up to London, and one morning when your brother sends you word he’s found me with a rapier stuck in my throat, my pockets empty, and ‘Peggy’ writ on the scrap o’ paper a-lying over my heart, then you’ll believe Percy loved you!”
“Lud, Sir! Men are apt at such chatter, and a fortnight after, the vicar’s a-publishing their banns with the other lady!”
“Peg!” He takes her kerchief end, as it droops away from her pretty long throat, in his fingers; he looks down deep into her eyes; his voice shakes, so does his hand.
“Whatever betides, my bonny sweetheart, there’s only one that’ll ever have banns read with me, and that’s—” He takes her by surprise and by the shoulders, and squares her to the mirror in its niche.
“Farewell, Peg—since you send me, it’s the devil and dice, for by the Lord! I can’t live a quiet life lacking your smiles.”
In two minutes more Chockey, from the upper window, saw the long roan flying away from Kennaston faster than she ever galloped to it; and went down to find her young mistress a-lying prone in a fine wrinkled heap of silken gown, lace frills and furbelows, on the threadbare carpet of the big drawing-room.
To rush across the wide hall to the dining-room, seize a game-knife, back again; cut her mistress’s stays; pour a glass of cider down Lady Peggy’s throat, willy-nilly; clap her palms; pound her back; set her on her feet; and half carry her to her chamber, occupied not many minutes for stout Chockey.
“Lawk, My Lady,” said she, surveying the prostrate form on the couch, arms a-kimbo, eyes saucer-wide, “who’d ever have thought to see your haughty Ladyship so mauled for the sake of any gentleman as lives!”
Lady Peggy lay still, but presently, from the depths of the pillows she spoke.
“I ain’t mauled, Chock, not I!” Her Ladyship now sat up and stared around the big room. “It’s only for sorrow for havin’ had to disappoint Sir Percy, on account of dear Sir Robin.”
“Oh!” ejaculates the worthy Chockey in a tone of undisguised and sarcastic disbelief.
“Chockey!” exclaimed her mistress in the tone of a drill sergeant, now rising to her feet.
“Lawk! My Lady, I didn’t mean nothin’.”
“Chockey,” echoes Lady Peggy faintly, sinking to her knees, “whatever’ll I do? Oh Chock! Chock! and Sir Percy just the centre of my heart, and me to behave to him like a brute! Out of my sight, away with you! There’s the first bell a-ringin’ for dinner. Say to daddy I’m too deep in my hand-writin’ lessons to eat to-day! Say to him I’m gone out to break the new colt and not got back. Say to him I’m gone to the devil!”
And Lady Peggy fell a-weeping with such violence as Chockey had never seen; and, being a wise damsel, she left her mistress alone and went down to soothe the gouty Earl, tied to his chair, as best she could for the absence of his daughter Peg from dinner.
II
In the which Her Ladyship wheedles her
noble father and makes up her mind.
The Earl forsooth was a testy gentleman, and his girl was his plague and his pride; on her, rather than on his heir, the old man’s fancy was set, for the reason that Kennaston, disclaiming all the country sports, the half wild outdoor life, the lusty joys and racing bumps and cups that had been vastly helpful in reducing the little his parent had started his career with, had elected instead to try his luck at that most inscrutable, vile trade of scribbling!
Peg’s twin, her fellow in height and build, which made a slender youth of him indeed, had gone up to London quill-armed, ink-fingered, brain-possessed with rhymes; empty-pursed, determined to carve with such unlikely weapons as that apt bird, the goose, furnishes, a fame and fortune for himself, that should dazzle the world and recoup the fortunes of his well-nigh fallen house.
While the Earl jeered, Peg, herself scarce able to spell a two-syllabled word, looked up to her brother as nothing short of whatever stood in her mind for Shakespeare; for, low be it spoke, the fair Peggy had small notion of books, their makers or their pleasurable usage. To her they represented waste time almost, and only as a means of communication with Kennaston did she, since his absence began, pore daily over a dictionary, a speller, and a copy-book.
So sat she now, a couple of months after the parting betwixt her and Sir Percy; lips pursed, brows knit, goose-feather in finger, poring over a blank sheet of paper first, and from it turning to the closely-writ page of a letter from her twin.
Chockey sat on a stool hard by,—they were both in the buttery, for Lady Peggy was apt with all the mysteries of housekeeping, and had as fine a churning, as big cheeses, as fat chickens, as nice eggs, as good hams as any other in the county,—had she not, the Earl, her father, had lacked something or all of his comfort. Chockey, then, sat working butter, squeezing all the white milky bubbles back and forth in the wooden bowl, and printing the pats in the trays, while her mistress sighed, swallowed, and at last burst forth in speech.
“Chockey, I shall fall into a fit, an I’ve ever another letter to write in this world. The last I writ was for Sir Robin to introduce him to Lord Kennaston when he should go up to town—and belike, I forgot to give it to him as I promised and have it safe here. It took me a week to finish, and I’ve copied all the words out of it I can, yet do I lack thousands more, methinks, to say what I would to my brother. Lud! Learning’s a wonderful thing! Look at that, Chock!”
Lady Peggy holds up the well covered pages of Kennaston’s letter before the eyes of the Abigail.
“Aye, Madam,” giggles this one, “it has the air to me of where spiders has been a-fightin’! Now, for true, My Lady, do it say words as has a meanin’?”
“Listen,” replies the mistress, reading off quite glibly, since ’tis the one hundredth time since she got it that she’s rehearsed the same to herself.
“Sweet Sister Peggy: I’d have written before but that literature pays ill until a man hath contrived by preference and patronage, the rather than by his wits, to place himself at evens with the Great and the Distinguished. So far I find Fame’s hill hard in the Climbing, but do I not complain, for there’s that spirit reigning in my breast as bids me welcome Poverty, even Starvation, lead it but to the sometime recognition of my Talents. I take up my pen not to riddle your ears with plaints, but on another matter, which is Sir Percy.”
Lady Peggy’s head droops a bit to match her voice, whilst Chockey’s bright little eyes sparkle, and she twists the yellow butter into heart shapes as she pricks her ears and sighs.
“Sir Percy,” continues My Lady Peggy, reading, “as you know came up to town, now these seven weeks agone, straight as a die to my meagre chambers, where welcome was spelled, I can assure thee, all over the bare floor, barer board, and barer master thereof,—for of a truth I love him as should I the brother I had hoped he’d be! Peg, what’s this thou’st done to the lad? Thrown him, a gallant with as big a heart as God ever made, over into the Devil’s own mire, for sake of that little tow-haired sprat, Robin McTart! with his pate full of himself and none other,—so I’ve heard say, for never set I eyes upon the blackguard from Kent! Zounds! twin! What are ye women made of? And I write to say Percy, what with carousals and brawls, and drink and fights, and all night at the gaming-table, and all day God knows where, ’s fast a-throwing himself piecemeal into the grave he’s a-digging daily for your cruel sake. Could you but see him! A ghost! Wan, with eyes full of blood-spots, and hair unkempt! Madam, there’s love for you—and love’s what ladies like. Go match him, Sister, with McTart if you can, but twin me no more ever again an you and I wear black ribbons for Percy de Bohun!”
Lady Peggy’s lip quivers; so does Chockey’s.
“Lawk, My Lady!” cries the girl, splashing tears into the butter, reckless.
“‘Black ribbons,’ Chock! ‘A ghost,’ Chock! ‘McTart,’ Chock! Lord ha’ mercy! What’s to become o’ me?” Peggy’s tears smart her eyes as she flings the goose-quill over to a cheese on the shelf, where it sticks, and one day surprises the Vicar at his supper.
“Get out of my sight!” she flings after it. “I can’t write! Who can write out her heart and soul, when it’s devilish hard even to speak it. Oh! Would I were my brother for one fine half-hour!” cries Peggy, rising and stamping up and down the stone floor of the buttery.
“An’ if you were, Madam?” asks Chockey meekly, “what then?”
“I’d swear! Yea, would I! Such a lot of splendid oaths as’d ease my mind and let me hear from my own lips what a fool’s part I’d played with my own—my adored Percy! Could I but see him! as Kennaston says.” Peggy in her progress now upsets a pan of cream, and has genuine pleasure in splashing it about over her slippers as she speaks.
“But I! What am I? A girl! swaddled in petticoats and fallals; tethered to an apron, and a besom, and a harpsichord, and a needle,—yet can I snap a rapier, fire a pistol, jump a ditch, land a fish, for my brother taught me. Still it’s girl! girl! sit by the fire and spin! dawdle! dally!” The cream now spots up as far as Peggy’s chin and flecks its dimple.
“Stop-at-home, nor stir-abroad! Smile, ogle!” each word emphasized with heel and toe.
“And—” Lady Peggy now flops back into her chair, breathless, “wait on man’s will and whims,—that, Chock, ’s what ’tis to be a woman.”
“Aye, ’tis,” assents the waiting woman. “But yet, My Lady, if I dared make bold, there’s summat Your Ladyship might do, an My Lady, Your Ladyship’s mother, came back home again from her visit to your uncle in York.”
“Out with it!” says Peggy hopelessly, folding up her attempted letter and tucking it in her reticule.
“Mayhap you could persuade, by much weeping and praying, falling into swoons and such like, that Her Ladyship would take you up to London! Once there, Sir Percy couldn’t keep his distance from you.”
Peggy looks at Chockey as if she were a vision sent from on high; then, quickly succeeding derision curls her lip.
“My Lady mother take a squealing chit like me up to town! Never! She’d say my manners weren’t fit, or my figger, or my wardrobe. Lud! Chock! Bethink thee, lass, of my gowns in London town! and me no more acquainted with the ways yonder, than our Brindle is with the family pew!”
Lady Peggy walked out into the paddock, rubbed the cream from her slippers on the turf; caressed the ponies; munched the sweet cake she had in her apron-pocket, felt the keen sweet air blow over her hot forehead, and saw, dancing ever before her mind’s eye, that insidious sweet suggestion of “going up to London.”
How did one go up to London?
In the coach: aye to be sure; and the coach left the “Mermaid” in the village every Tuesday and Thursday at five in the morning. The coach! The splendid coach, a-swinging on its springs like a gigantic cradle; the postillions a-snapping their whips, the coachman a-cracking his long lash and a-shouting “All h’up for London!” and the ladies and gentlemen—well armed, these last, in dread of the highwaymen on the heath—all a-piling in and a-settling themselves; and the guards a-tooting their horns, the landlady and the boots and the maids and the hostlers all a-bowing and a-scraping and—off they go! for London town—where Percy was a-pining and a-dying for her, so her twin writ in his letter.
Well, Lady Peggy went in, clapt on a fresh gown and shoes, and never was daughter more tender and patient with crabbed, gouty, crusty dad than she all through that lovely day. Playing backgammon; spelling out the newspaper; trouncing the cat when it jumped on His Lordship’s leg; blowing the fire; wheeling his chair from hither to yon; stroking the bald head; combing the white whiskers; and finally said she,
“Daddy, London’s a very big sort of a place, now, isn’t it?”
The Earl nods, coddling his leg into the slip of sunshine that’s walking westerly away from him.
“My brother lodges, so he says, at the corner of Holywell Road and Lark Lane; tell me, dad, where should that be now?” Lady Peggy has a careless air, and flecks a buzzing fly out of His Lordship’s bowl of porridge.
“Eh?” pursues she, “is’t for instance, in the city, or nigh London Bridge, or where the quality lives, or toward Southwark, or where?”
“Rot me!” cries His Lordship, looking up at his daughter in surprise, “what’s my poppet got into her pretty head now, forsooth? Tut, tut, girl, what’s town to thee, or its bearings? hey? stick thy eye into thy churn an’ keep thy hand on the dasher,—’twere better’n all the shops in Piccadilly, or all the fops at Court.”
“Slow, dad! I was only askin’ of my twin’s whereabouts. Shops and fops are not dizzyin’ your Peggy, you may swear; ’tis my brother, Sir, of whom I’d learn!”
“’Twere better chase the scoundrel out’n my head, Peg, than hammer him in! A lad with every chance here in the county to raise his house, and make a good match with a nice plump girl, havin’ land joining his own; but no! Up and off to town to starve and scratch!”
The Earl pommels the floor with his stick, causing the cat to leap into the air.
“Let him die in want! Let him freeze, thirst, come to the gallows, say I! For such as leaves plenty to pursue want, gets no sympathy from me!”
“He ain’t begged for’t yet, dad,” says Peggy very mildly. “All I was a-wonderin’ was this: When my brother took the coach at the Mermaid that mornin’ you mind? how far off the inn where he alighted was the lodgin’ at the corner of Holywell Road and Lark Lane?—eh, dad? Surely”—and here Lady Peggy knelt and stroked his lordship’s gouty member, and her voice positively trembled, doubtless with excess of filial zeal and devotion.
“Surely,” resumed she, “you, who were, I dare be sworn”—such arch eyes as Lady Peggy now made!—“a fine gallant not so many years ago, must remember that,—don’t you?”
“Let’s see, let’s see,” responds His Lordship, rubbing his head. “They set ye down at the King’s Arms, nigh the Bridge, Southwark Bridge, yes; Well! Damme! I ought to know! Lark Lane? A devil of a hole; why, girl! it’s not a quarter hour’s trot from the inn, but it’s a beastly environment. Gad! that son of mine chooses pens, ink and writing-paper there, rather than—”
“Lady Belinda here, weight fourteen stone; acres two thousand; guineas, countless; temper, amazin’; years, untold! ha! ha! ha! Oh, daddy!” Lady Peggy springs up and dances about a minute in most genuine gaiety, then she seizes her father’s head between her palms and hugs and kisses him with much grateful warmth; then flops down a-coddling of the gout again; laughing, giggling, pinching puss, and saying,—
“Daddy, drop London! Care I no more for’t. Know I quite enough. Let’s chat of aught else in the world, until you fall a-napping, which will be soon now, guessing by the shadows.”
’Twas very soon.
Then Lady Peggy tiptoed off to her chamber; then she pulled the rope that rang in the kitchen, and presently Chockey came, chopper and bowl in hand, checkered apron over white one; for serving maids were scarce in Kennaston Hall, footmen there were none; butler there was when he was not doing t’other half his duty at the stables.
“Come hither, Chockey,” says her mistress in a whisper, with a beckon. “Shut the door; go on with choppin’ your leeks and carrots, cook’ll want ’em for the soup,—but listen, Chock; unlock your ears Jane Chockey, as never you did before in your life.”
Chockey bobs as she chops, leaning against the headpost, for support of her occupation, and also of her curiosity.
“You know my mother’s box, the small one that was re-covered last spring with the skin of the red calf that died natural? Bickers put it on with a gross of brass nails?”
Chockey again bobs.
“Put into it,” continues Lady Peggy, “a change of linen for yourself and me, two night-rails,” Chockey’s eyes dilate, “my gray taffeta gown with the flowered petticoat, my green hood and kerchief; powder, patch-box, lavender, musk, pins, needles; my red silken hose; your Sunday cap and sleeves”—Chockey’s chopper ceases to work, and the bed-post creaks. “All of which,” continues her mistress, “is but prelude to saying: ‘I’m going up to London by to-morrow’s coach, and I’m takin’ you with me!’”
“Madam!” Down goes the bowl, leeks, carrots, chopper and all a-spilling over the floor.
“Aye,” says Peggy calmly, “gather up thy mess, Chock, and to work with the duds. Lay out my Levantine gown, my blue kerchief, my black silk hose, my brown cloak; and, from my mother’s press, take the thick fall of Brussels lace and the brown bonnet it’s tied to, and bring ’em hither; put them under the bed beside thy trundle so’s my father’ll not see ’em when he stops to bid me good-night. Borrow cook’s hat she bought at the Fair when she was young, and her delaine veil for thyself; for, so appareled as not to be recognized, will you, dear Chock, and my Lady Peggy take the coach on April the twelfth. But, Chock, remember, mum’s the word, an you let your tongue wag to my undoing, but the thousandth part of a syllable, your mistress and you part company forever! Go.”
Chockey picked up Lady Peggy’s waving hand between a pinch of her apron, lest her onion-smelling fingers should foul so dainty a morsel, kissed it, and off and obeyed, speechless from surprise and veneration, both.
At night’s fall,—the Earl, somnolent again from fire’s warmth and the port he would take, despite the surgeon’s orders to the contrary,—Lady Peggy, Chockey in her wake, purse in hand, went scouting through the kitchen-garden, the paddocks, the cowyard to the stable where Bickers’s pipe shone in the gloaming like a fire-gem as he dodged and lurched after a refractory colt.
Bickers, albeit sometimes the slave of beer, was all times Lady Peggy’s abject, and it took no effort nor persuasion to gain him to her will. He took his orders amiably,—they were to secure two places in the London mail for to-morrow morning, and strictly to hold his peace both now and forever about the whole concern.
Peggy gave him the price of the seats and with wise Castle-mistress foresight, she showed Bickers a sovereign beside.
“And Bickers,” said Lady Peggy, “considering that the devil walks abroad often in the Mermaid’s tap-room, I am told, I’ll keep the sovereign for you ’til you come back, lest he rob you of it, eh?”
“Well, My Lady,” said Bickers; “a whole sovereign, My Lady, ain’t often seen out of the quality’s pockets, and the devil might think I’d stole it, My Lady, and try to get it from me. Keep it, My Lady, keep it!”
With which the old man, having conquered the colt, set off for the village by a side-path all too well known to his tread. Presently by the spark in his pipe-bowl the two women saw that he had turned back; that, as he came close to them, he clapped his thumb over the glow, and,
“My Lady Peggy,” mumbled he sheepishly.
“Whatever is’t, Bickers?” cries his mistress in alarm.
“Naught to fright ye, My Lady, only it’s been on my mind these many days to tell you as the letter you sent me with to Sir Percy de Bohun—”
“Well, well?” Lady Peggy’s words came with a gasp, as the old man dead stops.
“Go on Bickers, I say!” the mistress’s foot stamps with a thud on the damp earth.
“Askin’ Your Ladyship’s parding, the devil caught me that time at the Kennaston Arms, My Lady, and he clawed that tight, My Lady, that I couldn’t stir, and—and—”
Peggy now stooped, seized a billet of wood as big as her arm and gave Bickers a sound drub across his hands. The pipe fell in bits, the ash glowed; Bickers jumped, so did Chockey.
“‘And, and’ what?” drubbed Peggy with a will. “Not so much as ha’ penny of the sovereign, unless you out with the whole truth!”
“I will! I will!” cried the old man. “Sir Percy never got the letter, My Lady, until the very day I seen him on the long roan a-ridin’ for’s life away from the Castle yonder,” and Bickers jerked his thumb toward the house as he now made off.
The devil did not catch Bickers that night; he earned his sovereign before the moon rose.
As he sped, Lady Peggy took Chockey’s proffered arm.
“You see, Chock, you see, how we that are born to wear petticoats are no better’n puppets! a-dancin’ and a-cryin’; or a-kneelin’ and a-weepin’, as it happens to suit the whim of what, Chock? Who, Chock? Tell me, Chock!” cries Lady Peggy excitedly.
“Lawk, My Lady, that can I not!”
“A man, Chock, a man! it’s a him that pulls the strings, girl, and all we’ve to do is to simper and jerk this way, that way. To think,” here Peggy’s voice falters, for they’ve gained the house and are clambering the back stairs in the dark. “To think that Bickers, Bickers! should ha’ made me treat my worshiped Percy like a hog! Yes, Chockey, like a hog! even that name ain’t vile enough for me. But, oh, an I reach London in safety, and gain my brother’s chambers, and learn from him that ’tis for very love of me Sir Percy’s canterin’ to perdition, then, Chock, Lady Peggy’ll know how to spell paradise for him she’s riskin’ much to hear the truth about.”
“But, My Lady,” ventures Chockey, who, notwithstanding the blissful prospect of seeing London, still had a practical eye toward the dangers that beset the path, both thereto, and once there.
“But, My Lady, supposin’ we can’t find Lord Kennaston’s lodgin’s; supposin’ he’s away from home when we get there; or, a-havin’ a party, or ain’t got no place for us to sleep; or suppose—”
“Suppose me no supposes, Chock!” Lady Peggy shakes out the Levantine gown from its wrinkles. “If London were the black pit, and an army of Satans a-sittin’ grinnin’ around the brim, still would I go and find out for myself if it’s for me he pines—or, if Lady Diana Weston is up in London too!” With which Her Ladyship gives the petticoat, she takes from its peg against the morrow, a somewhat emphatic, not to say malicious shake.
III
Wherein is recounted how Her Ladyship set
forth, accompanied by her faithful
woman, for London Town.
Whoever knows the rare delights of an English dawn nowadays can figure for himself, to the letter, how ’twas when Lady Peggy and Chockey, after a make-haste toilet in the dark, slipped out into the sweetness that long-ago spring morning. The mists were rolling and creeping slowly back and over from the river-meadows; the brawl of the stream tinkled in their ears; the scents of the flower-garden next the court-yard of the Castle, came potently, lured by the flush that by now was tingeing all the pallid east with rose; the yellow moon hung low to her setting, and two stars for handmaidens still shone, of all her million troupe, at either side the disk; yonder, the steeple of the church pricked up to heaven; hither, the oaks, greening to their full leafage; there a brown rabbit scurried across the road; here the rooks hopped and ha-ha-ed to their fellows. Else, ’twas all a-hush with that recurring fond expectancy of hope, with which every day of every year so waits and wonders for “to-morrow” to be born.
Lady Peggy took the lead, kirtle high upheld, shoes soon bedrabbled in the dust and dew. Chockey, bearing the newly-covered box in her stout arms, followed close at heel. Both women, veiled double, and being wholly unused to such matters, sighting the path much the worse for the covering; in fact Peggy stumbled along like some old crone, and yet laughed under her breath merrily back at floundering Chockey.
“Hist! Chock, had I now but brought dad’s cane and snuff-box, I must sure be taken for some three-score dame come yawning out of bed before her hour, to overtake, mayhap, a recreant grandson! Zounds! as my twin’d say, were he here,” and hauling at the mischievous Brussels veil, down flopped Her Ladyship, on her knees betwixt two villainous ruts.
“Oh, My Lady!” moaned the waiting-woman panting under cook’s delaine and the calf-skin box. “Lord ha’ mercy! an this be the way to London. I’d liefer be sittin’ in the kitchen chimney a-blessin’ my porridge and spoonin’ of’t, than this!” assisting her mistress to her feet.
“Fie upon thee, Chock! Remember you’re waiting-woman now to a lady of fashion, to wit myself, and well used to journeys up to town in coaches every season! Lud!” Here Peggy stood in a puddle to take breath. “I wonder if we’ll ever pass muster at the inn; and yet I’m sure, landlord, or dame, or hostler’d never think o’ me.”
“Haste, Madam,” returns Chockey, “for do not forget the coach starts at five on the stroke, and we’ve still the quarter-mile to go.”
So on they went. My Lady Peggy unable to restrain, from time to time, however, the keen relishful overflow of her spirits. When one’s young and not ailing, a new day whips the blood and brain to such a pinnacle of unquestioning gladness as breaks bonds, be they never so weighty, and, pro tem., sweet few-years comrades him with the happiness of earth and air and sky.
But once the curl of cheerful smoke from the “Mermaid” chimney full in view above the oak-tops, My Lady sobered much, and, clutching Chockey’s arm, both fell a-trembling; stood stock-still, and stared into each other’s eyes, as lace and wool would let.
“Lady Peggy,” cries Chockey, “an it please Your Ladyship,” with tell-tale gasps of throat, “let’s go back home!”
“Jane Chockey!” answered her mistress, only needing this spur to set her a-panting the more to her purpose, “we’ll go on.”
And on they went. Peggy with a measured tread; Chockey plodding after. Into the inn-yard, where even now the great coach with its four bays waited the signal to start.
The passengers were piling on; and, atop already, quipped a trio of college lads in beavers. There stood mine host and hostess, maids, men, boys, cooks, and scullions; tips were tossed, baggage packed in the boot; farewells spoken; candles held high, lashes cracked; prancing, pawing; a rattle, a door-bang, curtsies, bows,—
“All h’up for the London mail!” shouted the coachman merrily.
And Lady Peggy and her woman, neatly sandwiched between a fat, fussy dowager and a swearing, tearing old gentleman who together absorbed the most of the vehicle and all the attention of their fellow passengers, found themselves on the road to town.
No one paid the least heed to them, save that, at the stops, the guard came civilly to ask Chockey if her mistress required any refreshment, to the which Chockey, well prepared, always answered “no”; since, to raise their veils might betray their identity. So ’twas in hunger, silence and oblivion that the momentous journey was taken.
When they crossed the heath, the testy old gentleman did turn toward Peggy, thereby flattening her the more, and, pulling out a brace of pistols, said:
“Have no fears, Madam, I’ve traveled this road these sixty years, probably you have yourself”—thus paying tribute to Peggy’s now trembling agitation, which he pleasantly mistook for age.
“And the damned rascals, Madam, know better’n to attack the coach when I’m aboard. You’re not in fear?” now bending a pair of sharp old eyes on the Brussels lace.
Lady Peggy, smothering her laughter, and recalling how often, half-a-score years ago, she’s sat on this old gentleman’s knee (he was a friend of her father’s), puts hand to ear, and nudges Chockey behind the broad back of the dowager.
The old gentleman nods comprehendingly, turns square to Chockey, and says “deaf?”
And Chockey, divided between terror and mirth, nods back again.
Without other incident, the journey up to the great city is accomplished, and, by three in the afternoon, up pull the four horses before the door of the King’s Arms in the Strand, and Lady Peggy, and her woman, and her box, are set down in the yard, amid the din and bustle incident always to the arrival of travelers.
Not much attention is bestowed on them. A couple of unpretending appearing women, evidently not persons of quality, as the meek little calf-skin box is their sole belonging; coming up to London too without even one man-servant,—bespeak but little consideration in the throng of ladies of fashion, gallants over their coffee, courtiers popping in for the news, sparks intent on ogling a pretty face or noting a trim ankle, that much o’er crowded the yard, ordinary and parlor of the King’s Arms.
Just here once, for an instant, Lady Peggy’s brave heart failed her; most, when she espied at the door, just getting into her silken-curtained chair, a lady, so young and beautiful, so richly girt, so spick and span, with such wonderful patches and such snowy powdered locks, such sparkling eyes, such begemmed fingers glistening through her mitts,—and knew at once that Lady Diana Weston was indeed “in town”!
She faltered a bit, indeed sank down on the box which Chockey had set in a corner of the yard, and, for a brief moment, both mistress and maid bedewed their masking falls with a few splashing tears.
Then spoke Lady Peggy, rising and plucking up her spirits,—“Chock,” said she, “beckon me a boy from yonder group; inquire the path to the corner of Holywell Road and Lark Lane; order him shoulder the box and lead the way. Speak with a swagger, Chock; knock the drops out of your lashes with a laugh, girl! Let ’em think we’re old hands at the town and used to bein’ waited upon!” Lady Peggy straightened herself in her grimy shoes, and gave the Levantine a twitch which she hoped was quite the mode.
Meantime Chockey did her mistress’s bidding, and in less time than it takes to set it down, the two were following the lad, in and out of such a net and mazework of streets and lanes as set their heads a-whirling; now they wheeled around this bend, now across that alley,—foul-smelling as a ditch or a dirty dog; anon up a broader way where knockers shone and chairs waited at the curb; then a cut down here, and at last this was Holywell Road and yonder the opening of Lark Lane.
Well, to be sure, ’twas a sorry spot. As Lady Peggy paid the boy and stood on the step, she ruefully surveyed the environment; the wig-maker’s opposite, with a wig in the window, she half-laughingly noted, the very yellow counterpart of Sir Robin McTart’s round pate; a dingy chocolate-house at t’other end of the row of dark, timbered, nodding houses; and this one of the stretch, taller, grimier even than its forlorn neighbors, was where poor scribbling Kennaston hunted that jade called Fame!
At double-knock, came hobbling the charwoman, loath to be disturbed at her twilight pipe, but brisking at sight of Lady Peggy’s now uncovered face and shilling between fingers.
“Yes, indeed, here His Lordship lodged and ate; was His Lordship at ’ome? Nay, that was he not! but surely might be before cock-crow to-morrow! His Lordship’s sister! Lawk! Would Her Ladyship and Her Ladyship’s woman condescend to come in and mount? What a beautiful surprise for ’is young Lordship when he did get ’ome to be sure! No, he ’adn’t gone out alone, a gay spark, a gentleman of the first quality ’ad come, as often ’e did, and fetched h’off His Lordship with ’im, last night; ’is name? Was it Sir Robin McTart peradventure? No, no, that was a name she ’ad never ’eard! ’Twas no Duke nor Earl neither, but a—Sir, Sir—?”
And as the old woman and Chockey, carrying the calf-skin box between them, reached the last landing and set their burden down in thankfulness, Lady Peggy, feeling the way, said:
“Sir Percy de Bohun, perchance? Methinks my brother has a companion by some such title!”
“Aye, that’s ’im! Ah, My Lady, as splendid a gentleman as ever sang ‘God save the King!’ free with ’is sovereigns, My Lady, as trees is with their nuts; and, to match ’im for oaths! there’s not that Prince o’ the blood as can swear so beautiful when ’e’s dead drunk. These is ‘is Lordship’s your brother’s chambers, My Lady!” throwing open the door and ushering Peggy and her servitor into as dingy, dirty, empty, sad, bare, and unkempt an appearing place as ever mortal and intrepid lady set two tired feet within.
But Lady Peggy, for the nonce, was only eager on one point.
“Drunk, say you, dame? and wherefore should so generous a young gentleman be a-gallopin‘ that silly road, eh?”
“Lawk! Your Ladyship! ‘ow should I know? but His Lordship’s own gentleman, My Lady, what ‘olds ‘im up and steadies His Lordship in ‘is cups, do say”—the old charwoman, whisking the dust of ages from a wooden chair, sets it for Lady Peggy and bends to tidy the hearth and gather together the few shingles and faggots strewn about.
“‘Say’ what?” urges Peggy, with eager eyes and a sixpence shining in her hand (another shilling’s more than she dare hazard of her slender store).
“Do say, My Lady,—God bless Your Ladyship’s sweet face! as it’s h’all on account of a young lady!”
Lady Peggy’s eyes sparkle and all at once the smoky room seems cheerful, and the tardy blaze in the fire-place glows and thaws her chilled bones and blood.
“Ah?” she says, smiling.
“Yes, My Lady, a splendid young lady of fashion, an heiress, a beauty, with half London a-danglin’ after ’er; and ’er that ’aughty, as if she was of the royal family, and ’im a-killin’ ’imself for ’er sake!”
And back again slide Kennaston’s chambers into their original depravity of dirt and dreariness; and down goes the charwoman to her pipe; and Lady Peggy on the wooden chair, Chockey on the box, spread their fingers to the reluctant warmth and are silent; while the clock ticks on the mantel-shelf; while the slit of blue that peers in at the window, grays; while the noises that are all new to these two, come rasping, roaring, shouting up to them through the broken pane—the dizzying, multitudinous, incoherent surge of London town, as it first smites ears not yet wonted to its fascination or its meaning—merely lonely, forlorn, dispirited new-comers who have not yet learned the passion and the melody that lie hidden in its Babel.
The waiting-woman is the first to move; with the homely excellent instincts of her class, she rises, and, after a slow glance around the place, falls “a-reddin’ of it up” as she mentally designated her attempt. She seized the stumpy broom from its corner and swept the floor, brushed the maze of cobwebs from ceiling and walls; beat the mats; wiped the stools and table, the broad window-sills and the shelves; shook out the dingy, ink-stained cloth; straightened the litter of books and papers, quills and horns; and finally went a-peering into the cupboards. A grimy coffee-pot and a well-matching kettle were fished out and rubbed; the kettle filled with water from the tubfull on the landing and straightway hung upon the crane; plates and cups and saucers and spoons brought forth; a paper of coffee, a jug of milk and a bottle of sugar discovered, and presently Chockey handed her mistress a cup of steaming mocha and modestly poured one for herself.
“Oh, Chock!” cries Lady Peggy, setting down the empty cup. “What a fool was I to come! What am I, forsooth, in all this great desert but a grain of sand! And Percy, not,” Lady Peggy stamps her muddy red-heeled shoe fiercely, “a-dyin’ for me in the least! and my twin a-livin’ in such a hole! wherever does he sleep, Chock?” Surveying the barn-like apartment in disgust and dismay, her gaze finally arrested by a ladder slanting in the darkest corner and reaching up to an opening in the ceiling.
“Up there, I dare be sworn! Lud! If this ’tis to be an author,” flouts Peggy, “God ha’ mercy on ’em! I tell you what, Chock. I’ll tarry a little, have a word with Kennaston; then we’ll back, girl, whence we came, quick; I’ll send word to Sir Robin McTart, and then let weddin’-bells ring as soon as ever he sees fit. No more o’ love for me, Chock. I’m done with it forever in this world; I’ll take marriage instead!”
Chockey shakes her head ruefully as her mistress, more to emphasize her latest resolve than from any other motive, flings wide open the cracked doors of the clothes-press next the chimney-piece and gives a tempestuous shake-out to the garments a-hanging on the pegs.
“Lud! look! Kennaston’s suit of gray velvets, not much the worse for wear! Small need has the poor lad for fine clothes, I warrant ye; most like a-keepin’ of ’em for pawn-shop use and bread and butter! Chock, unlock the box, and get out the waistcoat I broidered for my twin, at much expense of temper, against his birthday. So! Smooth it out! it’s brave, eh, Chock? Fit for Court, I should fancy, and, that’s right, the laced cravat! poor duck, I do misdoubt me, if he’s seen a frill on his wrist since quittin’ home! There!”
Lady Peggy surveys the gifts she’s brought, as Chockey takes them out.
“Lawk, Madam, ’twere better, were’t not, I bundle all Your Ladyship’s duds and mine up yonder against His Lordship’s comin’?”
“Right, Chock! up with ’em, and I’ll steady the road while you climb!” Suiting action to word, as Chockey, bearing the calf-skin box, cautiously mounts the rickety ladder.
“What’s it like, Chock?”
“Nothin’ I ever seed afore, My Lady; dark, stuffy; a mattress a-sprawlin’ on the bare boards, and a pair of torn quilts, and a piller no bigger’n my fist, that’s all!”
“Enough, Chock; you and I can sleep our one night in London there as soundly,” Lady Peggy’s proud lip quivers, “as I could on down or ’twixt my mother’s best lamb’s wool! Come down, Chock, by the fire; and list, to-morrow, at first crow, we’ll back to Kennaston. We’ll ’a’ been up to town, Chock! and, savin’ my twin, never will Lady Peggy look again on face of any man who now treads London street. I swear!”
“Hark, Madam!”
Chockey jumps from the ladder, eyes a-popping, while the hubbub in the street below cuts short her mistress’s valiant speech. Such a hullaballoo; such a shouting, echoing from one end of the precinct to t’other, as speeds mistress and maid both to the window, a-craning their necks far out; as sends the charwoman from her ingle-nook under ground, a-hobbling up the steep four flights.
IV
In the which is rehearsed how Her Ladyship
did nimbly slip into man’s
attire and estate.
Through the fast gathering mist, through the smoke that’s London’s own, the two women leaning behold a gay company of gallants rounding the far corner, two hundred feet away; linked arms, swords a-touching, heels a-clattering; one voice high and young, uplifted in a lilt like this: Lady Peggy had heard that voice before.
In years to come when gallants sing,
In praise of ladies fair,
All will allow, I pledge you square,
That brighter eyes n’er banished care,
Than those that bade us do and dare,
When George the Third was King!
Let roof and rafter chime and ring,
Let echo shout it back: we sing
The merry days, My Lords and Sirs!
When George the Third is King!
And at the chorus, a brave dozen more of pairs of lusty lungs to take it up and urge it on with flashing rapiers, knocking points, in the flare of the lights from the coffee-house at hand; and good twelve of plumed hats a-tossing in the air, and catch-again; and laughter loud and long, then dying down as that fresh sweet voice begins its second verse, and just so the old charwoman knocks hastily at the door, calling in Lady Peggy’s head and Chockey’s from the open.
“’H’askin’ Your Ladyship’s parding,” says she, “but I thought it no more’n my duty to acquaint Your Ladyship, as can’t see from this ’eight, that Your Ladyship’s brother, Lord Kennaston’s a-comin’ ’ome, and a-bringin’ with ’im ’is comrades, among ’em, Sir Percy de Bohun, and mayhap ’er Ladyship’d like best,”—now addressing Chockey, as Lady Peggy paced the floor in a too-evident agitation—“like best,” continued the dame, “to ’ide ’erself, and h’if so, the noble gentlemen h’all of ’em, I’m thinkin’, bein’ summat raised with wine, my ’umble bit of a place h’is h’at Her Ladyship’s service for the night or as long as Her Ladyship sees fit, for I am this minute sent for to go down into the country immediate, where, God help us all! my tenth daughter what’s married to her second husband lies at death’s door!”
And all the while the old charwoman is speaking between her bits of broken teeth, Peggy hears that other voice uplifted, ringing, gay, glad, care-free, as it seems to her strained ears, up and down the darkening little street, tapping at the window-panes, tapping at her heart-strings and stretching them to such a tension of anger, outraged pride, and wounded affection as never Lady suffered before.
She thanks the old woman and hastily dismisses her; then facing about from the window whence she has been able to descry the merry group making a rush into the coffee-house, Her Ladyship, seized by a sudden mad impulse, says to her woman:
“Chock, take my purse, tumble as fast as your two legs can carry you down, out, across to the wigmaker’s we laughed at when we came in, buy me the yellow wig, Chock, that adorns the front, an’ come not back without it, an you love me, Chock; wheedle, coax, promise more’n there is here,” sticking the purse in the astounded woman’s hand, “but get me the wig that is the very double of dear Sir Robin’s own sweet pate!” She pushes Chockey out on the landing with an impetus that sends her well on her errand, and then, shutting and buttoning the door, Lady Peggy gets herself out of her furbelows and petticoats, her stays, her bodice, her collar, brooch, kerchief, pocket, hoop and hair pins, and into her brother’s suit of grays, the new waistcoat and cravat she’s brought him for a gift; she tips the coffee-pot and washes her face and pretty throat and hands in the brown liquid; she plaits her long hair and winds it close and tight about her head; she buckles on Kennaston’s Court-rapier, she fetches his gray plumed hat with its paste buckle from the press; she ogles herself in the six-inch mirror; she swaggers, swings, struts; and, says she, dipping her finger in the soot of the old chimney and marking out two black beetling brows over her own slender ones,—
“An I know not how to play at being Sir Robin, Lady Peggy’s chosen sweetheart, boldly and with a loud voice; know not how to swear and prance and pick a pretty quarrel, crying ‘Match me your Lady Diana with my Lady Peggy!’ then never did I dozen times for sport don my twin’s breeches and coat and masquerade at being that sweet creature,—a man! Ha! I have it all at fingers’ ends!” cries Peggy, fumbling in her discarded pocket. “Here’s the very letter I writ for Sir Robin to take and present to my brother. ’Twill stand me in good stead to-night that I forgot to give it to him. If Chockey but succeed in cajoling the man out of his wig, an’ if the gallants come not ere I can fit it to my head!”—opening the door impetuously almost to bump against the returning Chockey’s nose.
“Thou hast it! Oh Chock! ’Tis I! be not afraid. Come in; adjust it to my poll,—so! Lose not a moment; pick up my petticoats, leave not a scrap that bespeaks a woman; there! You’re dropping a hair-pin; now, up with ye to the loft! an’ no matter if rats nibble your toes, Chock, or mice come play bo-peep with your eye-winkers, or spiders weave across your mouth, an you stir, cry out, move an inch to the creaking of a board, I’ll leave you here your lone self to shift as best you may! Up girl!” touching the speechless Chockey with the rapier-tip urgingly, “and ’tis Sir Robin McTart that bids you!”
The obedient and trembling waiting-woman was not much sooner out of sight in the loft, than again the voice echoed up to where Lady Peggy stood in the gruesome ambush of the landing, well back in the darkest corner behind a pile of boards and débris, bricks and dust, and what-not-else tumbled there from the chimney during the last and many previous storms.
Nearer came the song, then the chorus, broken now with more of chat and laughter; the footsteps sound upon the street, the house-door opens, slams, and up they troop, stumbling in the blackness but knowing well the way, it seems; merry, jocund, up, up, with the refrain of the song still lingering amid their talk in snatches, until they gain the top.
“Are we then indeed at your door, Kennaston?” cries the first to reach, as he feels at the latch.
“Split me, Escombe, you’re there if you can go no farther. Egad! Sirs,” cries the young host, “an I never reach to pinnacle of Fame’s ladder, at the least do I lodge as high as I could get:—a roof that suits my empty purse!”
“Nay, Kennaston.” Peggy, in her man’s gear, trembles at sound of that tone, for ’tis Percy who speaks now, whiles they all push pell-mell into her twin’s chambers, strike lights, pull out candles from cupboard, stir the fire.
“Nay, Kennaston,” says this one, “while De Bohun lives there’s ever a full purse lad, t’ exchange for thy empty one,—and well thou know’st it.”
“Tut, tut!” answers the young man of letters, adding as he glances about, “’pon my soul, gentlemen, my Hebe has been outdoing herself. Saw we ever before in this room, stools lacking dust? floor, riff-raff? walls their festoons? hearth its ashes? coffee-pot its rust? and, by my life, the kettle filled and steaming!”
A peal of mirth greets this nimble sally, as the host pulls from the table drawer a pack of cards and his guests from their pockets a dozen bottles of Falernian.
“Dead broke, am I, My Lords and Gentlemen,” says he, “but here’s the whole Court and the deuce,” flinging the pack in the midst of his guests, “play away an ye’ve a shilling left amongst ye. Let it be Commerce or Hazard; I’ll hold the counters; fill the glasses, as long as there’s a drop to pour; keep a lookout for sharpers,” laughing, “and thank God I’ve even a garret wherein to welcome men of vogue like yourselves!”
A burst of applause follows this; plumed hats are tossed aside, wrist-frills upturned; His Grace of Escombe is shuffling the pack; Sir Percy stands with his back to the fire, coat-skirts held from the cheerful blaze he’s made; stools are drawn up; the host takes his silk kerchief from his throat and polishes the mugs. Chockey has her eye glued to a chink in the cover that divides her loft from the scene of revelry below;—when, a bold knock sounds at the door, and the master with a cheery:
“Come along!” throws wide the portal.
The fine gentleman who stands before him makes a profound bow, to which he responds with one not less magnificent.
“Allow me, Lord Kennaston of Kennaston, since it is, I am persuaded, the brother of Lady Peggy Burgoyne whom I have the pleasure of addressing—?” and at her name, Sir Percy lets his brocaded skirts flop and starts forward eagerly—“of addressing, to present to you this note in the hand-writing of Your Lordship’s adorable sister, the which she gave me, wherewith to present and commend me to Your Lordship’s good offices while I am up in town!”
Another salaam given and returned, while Kennaston, with grace, ushers his new acquaintance in, sets him a stool, all the while eye quick-perusing Lady Peggy’s scrawl.
“Gentlemen!” says their host, “allow me to introduce to you, and, Sir, these gentlemen to you, Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent, His Grace of Escombe, Sir Percy de Bohun, the Honorable Jack Chalmers, Sir Wyatt Lovell,” etc., etc., etc. The which ceremony being concluded amid many bows and all due forms of mutual delight, the new-comer was cordially invited to take a hand in the game.
Now, as true ’twas that Lady Peggy had never been in a coach until the morning to which this was evening, so true was it that Her Ladyship had not a farthing to her pocket left, and although a good gamester’s daughter, she hesitated, making pretense of hanging her hat and of settling to its proper place her rapier, and pinching her ruffles. While she did so, the rest chatting, Sir Percy crossed the room, and, in a tone that was not heard save by the one he addressed, said to Kennaston:
“As I live, Sir, now’s my chance; I’ll pick a quarrel with this jackanapes that’s dared to oust me from Peggy’s heart. Aye, will I! the sooner the better; blood’ll spill, Kennaston, or ever that puppet and I are thirty minutes older! Mark me! Your sister shall know and hear I’m willing to die for her sake, or—to kill!”
Peggy, meantime, in this second, got her courage well screwed up, and, with a laugh, fitly disguising her voice, said she, seating herself with her legs well under the table—for, at this particular juncture, Her Ladyship, looking down, had beheld with dismay the womanish and forgotten fashion of her shoes.
“Rot me! Gentlemen, your humble servant’s fresh from Will’s, where, ’pon my life! such an apt company of wits and beaux encountered I, as swept my pockets clean and left me not the jingle of a shilling wherewith to bless myself. Your Grace, My Lords, Sirs, and Gentlemen,” quoth Peggy with a fine inclusive wave of her hand, “will, I’m sure, thus excuse me from the game to-night.”
But she had counted without either host or guests, for all of these save Sir Percy de Bohun on the instant pulled purses out and tendered them, crying, as with a single voice,—
“Fie! Fie! Sir Robin! Are we highwaymen? tricksters? Honor us by using our sovereigns as they were your own, eh, Sir Percy, have we not the right of the matter?” asked Jack Chalmers, turning to the tall young man, who, having crossed the room again, now stood leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, frowning, tapping hearth with heel in too evident impatience of the subject of discussion.
“I humbly ask your pardon, Mr. Chalmers,” he replies, “both for differing with you all, and for expressing the same. To my way of thinking”—adds Sir Percy, with deliberation, ill-matched by the flash of his eyes as they take a scornful measure of the supposed Sir Robin—“to my way of thinking, any gentleman who carries his company into any other gentleman’s chambers without the means of a paltry game of loo or écarté in ’s pocket’s not quite such a proper young man ’s he might be!” And with this, Sir Percy laid his hand upon his sword hilt, and Kennaston laid his upon that, attempting to stay the torrent.
“Tut! tut!” cried this one and that.
“His Lordship’s dead drunk with Cupid, Sir Robin, mind him not,” whispers another.
“De Bohun breaks a joke,” exclaims a third, all at once.
And in the same moment, also, upsprings my Lady Peggy, hand on hilt too, and says she loudly, same time as the rest:
“A pox on ye for a libeler! Sir Percy de Bohun, mayhap it’s the errand Your Lordship’s up in town a-pursuing hath turned Your Lordship’s brain?” Here Lady Peggy laughs in derision and stands full height updrawn upon her girl’s red heels.
“Curse me! but you are impertinent, Sir,” responds Percy, taking a step forward, his anger rising as he beholds his purpose galloping to the goal of its quick fulfilment. “What then, an it please you, is my ‘errand up in town?’ since you are thus familiar with my gaits; tell ’em off, Sir Robin McTart, I give ye leave!”
“With your leave, or without it,” cries Peggy in a voice that causes Chockey to lift the loft-cover an inch higher, and so, kneeling with nose flattened against floor, to behold her mistress’s fine and splendid show of valor. “I’d have you hear, Sir, that to persons of fashion the matter of your suit near Lady Diana Weston’s a jeer and jest of the first flavour,—for ’twere easy seen a lady of her quality, Sir, ’d not be a-wasting her time on you.”
“Damme! Sir!” cries Sir Percy, now thoroughly aroused and far more in earnest than ever he was at the beginning. “You lie! Aye, My Lords, Sirs, and Gentlemen! Nay, ye can not stop my mouth,” unsheathing his rapier; Peggy does likewise, each pushing and warding from them the restraining hands and words of their associates.
“A foul lie! My errand up in town, Sir Robin McTart, is to try to drown my sorrows as I may, because the only lady that ever I loved set me the pace to the devil by a-refusing of my suit come Easter-day, three months to an hour ago.”
Lady Peggy flushes under the coffee stains; her arm trembles; but she is valiantly happy and confident, and her heart goes beating the joyfullest sort of a tune beneath the ’broidered waistcoat she’d made for her twin.
“And her name,” cries Sir Percy with a glance of imperious, aggressive temper shot right into Peggy’s very face,—“her name’s not Lady Diana Weston, but ’tis Lady Peggy Burgoyne!—”
Now Chock’s whole head slips leash, and she bends with bated breath and heaving breast to listen closer.
Lady Peggy starts, but waving her rapier over her head, laughs loud, long and derisively.
“Lady Peggy Burgoyne, Sir,” shaking the hilt of his weapon under Peg’s nose, repeats Sir Percy. “And until you, Sir, with your damnable arts and silly bumpkin ways, when she encountered you in Kent, had turned her from me, she was to me kindest of ladies and of loves. Your servant, Sir Robin McTart,” concludes Percy with a low bow, sticking the floor with his rapier-point, “when and where you please!”
“Here and now!” cries Peg, her heart a-thumping for joy, but so pleasured and alas! so puzzled with the getting out of a scrape, which she has found so little difficulty in getting into, that she is feign on, and make the best cut she can with her cloth.
“Here and now!” repeats Her Ladyship, “for I do throw back into Your Lordship’s teeth the lie”—Peg bows low to her opponent—“you gave me whiles, and affirm that for these many years, or ever you, Sir, set eyes upon her, Lady Peggy Burgoyne’s been mine, heart and soul, Sir!”
“Damn you, Sir!” interrupts Percy hotly, unable to contain his choler,—“to so defame the noblest lady that ever was born!”
“I repeat,” cries Peggy, glowing with suppressed delight at her lover’s fidelity, and eager for as much more as he may have to vent. “Lady Peggy’s eyes are glued fast of this face of mine! Peggy’s hands are my hands! Peggy’s lips are my lips! Peggy’s kisses have ever been my kisses!”
At this, Sir Percy tears off his coat, waistcoat, cravat; flings them into the corner; rolls up his sleeves, while a confused murmur circulates amid the gallants over their cards and Falernian wine.
“Peggy’s heart beats in my breast!” continues Her Ladyship, ranting and swashing up and down the room; upsetting a couple of candles in her path, and now all unrecking of her womanish shoes. “Gentlemen,” panting, smiling, triumphant, saluting her companions with her weapon, “Lady Peggy and I do so adore, love and worship one another that we are not two but one!”
“Here and now!” shouts Sir Percy. “Off with your coat and ruffles, Sir, and choose any two of these gentlemen to your seconds, Sir; I’ll take who’s left!”
Chalmers and Kennaston press forward to Lady Peggy, while His Grace of Escombe and Mr. Wyatt cross to Sir Percy.
“Lord Kennaston, I pray you pace off the distance,” says Lady Peggy, now at the top of her bent and delirious with joy over Percy’s love of her, with no least intention of touching him, good fencer though she be, and willing enough—such a woman is she—to risk a prick at his hands for sake of the after-salve of the mighty gratitude and passion the minx is now sure of.
“Off with your trappings, Sir,” cries Percy.
“That will I not!” cries Peggy, taking the first position on the field of honor in all the bravery of her twin’s suit of gray velvets. “You’ll kill me, an you do’t at all, with my clothes on ready to my burial, and I swear ye all, with my latest breath, Lady Peggy and I’ll lie in the same coffin when it comes to that ceremony.”
Then in the smoky flare from the dying fire and the slovening candles stuck in their bottles; ’mid the murmur and succeeding hush of the gallants, some with cups, some with cards in their hands, Peggy and her lover salute and take their stands.
Says she: “What’s the word, My Lord?”
Says he: “If you like, let Lord Kennaston shake the dice-box; at the third throw, Sir, I’m here, ready food for your steel to flesh in!”
“It suits me well,” answers Peg, as her twin rattles the ivories. “Here’s for Lady Peggy!” cries she.
“Here’s for Lady Peggy Burgoyne!” shouts he, as Kennaston makes the third throw, and Chockey, like to swoon and she a stout heart, never-ail or afeard of even a churchyard on the darkest night, shaking like an aspen-leaf, puts foot on the top rung of the ladder; and Peg and Percy thrust, lunge, withdraw, riposte, hither, yon, keen-eyed, pitched to highest note, nerves strung to cracking—just for a few seconds, shorter time’n it takes to set it down, far.
“A touch, a hit!” cry all at once as a spurt of blood darts up the supposed Sir Robin’s blade, and Percy bows, declaring himself quite satisfied, as he must, though ’tis a state of mind he’s very remote from enjoying.
My Lady Peggy winces under her wound, but she has not been Kennaston’s playfellow for naught, and as ugly pricks as this one have been her portion in the past; Chockey, nevertheless, from her nest, pales and utters a smothered shriek which is quite lost in the loud talking that follows, while Chalmers winds the kerchief Sir Percy tenders about the wrist of the wounded.
“Now to the cards, gentlemen,” cries His Grace of Escombe, pulling out his purse. “To such a gallant as our friend Sir Robin here, my fingers itch to lose ten, twenty, nay as many pounds as his skill can rid me of; for such a pretty play of the steel as his must argue a lucky throw of the dice.”
“Hear! hear! hear!” shout they all, drinking brimming mugs to the two who have lately fought, and settling themselves at the tables with a rattle and a rush of laughter and merry humor.
Lady Peggy sits, gritting her teeth at the slit in her white flesh, with her back to the door and, betwixt the uproar and clinking and shuffling, she hears footsteps coming up the stairs. Some intuition bids her be the one to respond to the rapping that presently sounds out.
“Asking your pardon,” murmurs Her Ladyship to her companions as she quits the table. When, as she opens, a new-caught street urchin speaks sharp, with saucer eyes in-peering at the quality.
“An it please yer Lordships, there’s a fine gentlemen below as his name is Sir Robin McTart.”
Peggy draws in, bangs the door in the boy’s face, squares about, and says:
“By your leave, gentlemen, a most particular messenger awaits me below; for a few moments only, I crave your indulgence for my absence. I’ll be with you in ten minutes.”
“No! no! no!” cry they all, save De Bohun, who is counting his cards, and Sir Wyatt who exclaims:
“Yes, an it be a messenger on business for a fair lady; no, an it be otherwise. Gadzooks! Sir Robin, make a half-clean breast of it. Comes Mercury from Phyllis or from a mere man?”
Peg answers: “I swear to you, Sirs, I go down on business of the gravest import to a lady,” and makes for the door.
“Pledge her! Pledge her! a bumper! a bumper!” cry they all in one voice with much pleasant laughter.
“Here’s to Sir Robin’s nameless fair! Zounds! but for so little yeared a personage to have two strings to his bow!”
V
Wherein Lady Peggy doth encounter her flouted
lover, receiveth a rapier-prick: makes acquaintance
of her hated rival and
of Mr. Brummell.
And much more of a like nature reaches Lady Peggy as she plunges down the stairs and presently finds herself, by the light of the lamp of his chair, a-confronting Sir Robin McTart himself!
“Nay, nay, Sir! I am not Kennaston of Kennaston,” responds Peg, looking grave, and making excellent show of her blood-stained, linen-bound wrist.
“’Tis here he dwells, and, as I know well by reputation, you are a peaceful, law-abiding man, I’d counsel you not to mount. Such a company of cut-throat, cut-purse brawlers, Sir, as would not leave a farthing in your pocket or lace upon your shirt.”
Sir Robin, as Her Ladyship had shrewdly guessed, drew back and shivered at this lively description.
“Trust me, Sir Robin: hist!” Peg’s voice sinks to a mere whisper. “I am Lady Peggy’s best friend and neighbor at home; ’twould be her will, an she stood here, that you should not adventure your precious life in the unseemly crowd with which her brother hath seen fit to surround himself.”
“Lud, Sir! Who are you,” chatters Sir Robin trembling betwixt delight and terror, “that knows so well the temper of Lady Peggy Burgoyne’s disposition? What’s your name, Sir?”
“No matter for my name, Sir, I have Lady Peggy’s best interests at heart, and yours. She bade me, did ever I encounter you in evil neighborhood, tell you, for her sake, eschew it. Hark ye! Sir Robin, out of this hole as fast as your men’s legs can carry you. Above yonder, ’s one who’s sworn to kill you!”
“Who’s he?” demands Sir Robin, one foot now in his sedan, his little eyes twinkling both ways with fright.
“Sir Percy de Bohun,” replies Peg in a hollow whisper. “Look you, Sir,” showing her bloody wrist, “there’s a taste of his quality. I warn you—’tis from Peggy’s own self—get back to Kent, whence you came, and tarry not, for your life’s at yonder desperado’s mercy while you linger up in town.”
“Is My Lady Peggy returned to Kent to her godmother?” quavers Sir Robin, now well inside his chair.
“Nay, Sir; as her brother supposes, she’s at home at Kennaston.”
“I’ll seek her there!” cries Sir Robin, tendering his hand. “And, Sir, my humble duty and gratitude to you for your admirable condescension. I would I knew your name and station.”
“I’m up in town incognito, Sir, for a lady’s sake,” smiles the minx.
“When I return, Sir, I’ll seek you out at White’s or Will’s. I dare be sworn so fine a gentleman must needs be a buck of the first order.”
“Seek me, Sir, and Godspeed you down to Kennaston or Kent!”
At the word, Sir Robin in his chair sets forth a-swinging round the corner, light of heart and bright of hope, while the subject and object of his thoughts and passion stands for a moment leaning, sighing, betwixt laughter and tears, against the door-frame.
My Lady Peggy’s first impulse is to cut and run; indeed her slim legs are so stretched to begin, when the remembrance of poor Chock in her garret cage comes to her mind, and, with a grimace, she turns in, jumps up the stairs, and is in the midst of the group, now well on in their cups and more hilarious than orderly in their conversation.
Peg was not her father’s girl for naught that night. To the tune of three hundred pounds, fourteen and six, was she the richer, and rewarded for the many dreary evenings she had spent at Kennaston, a-watching her father win and lose with the Vicar and the Bishop, whenever the latter came on his visits.
By dint of spilling her wine deftly under the table, she had emptied as many mugs as the best bibber among ’em, and at four in the morning found herself the only one who was sober, or even awake.
’Twas not a beautiful sight thus to behold, in the pale pink of the dawn, a dozen or so of merry gentlemen a-sprawling about on floor, tables, chairs,—a-snoring and a-tossing in their sleep; but ’twas of the fashion of the times when, to be a fine gentleman, one must be drunk, at the least, once in the twenty-four hours.
All save Sir Percy; almost at swords’ points he had quitted the company hours before, a little in his cups, but steady withal, murmuring to himself as he fumbled on the rickety stairs—Peg, leaning over the rail, unseen in the darkness, womanlike to watch lest he trip and fall, heard him:
“’Sdeath! an what that popinjay say be true, I’ll marry Lady Diana out of hand, and show the minx I’m not to be cut out of a wife by such a flea-bitten rotten-rod as Sir Robin McTart!”
“So easy taken then is my loss!” says Peggy, with a renewed fire of jealousy burning at her heart, as she returns to the scene of her winnings.
Sick at heart, for a single instant she surveys the room, and then, finger on lip, it does not take her long to signal up to Chockey, motion her down with the calf-skin box, and to begin, with shamed face, in the darkest corner, to strip off her man’s attire.
Lady Peggy has laid aside the yellow wig; Chockey weeping, praying that they may get away in safety, is spreading out the Levantine fit for her mistress to jump into it, when, for the second time within the twelve hours, Her Ladyship’s heart stands still to the patter and thump of footsteps climbing the last flight.
“Hold, Chock!” cries she, clapping on the wig. “Bundle up my duds, tie ’em tight; so! give me it; pick up the box, put on your cloak and bonnet and a bold face; follow and ape me. An you love me, Chock, an’ I thrust, thrust too! an’ I knock ’em down, follow suit! I’d sooner die, Chock, than be caught now!”
With which, My Lady Peggy flung wide the door, pushed out the Abigail, drew her weapon, and, with a rush, the two of them tumbled down the stairs, taking on their way a giant of a man who struggled and struck out, and dropped fruits and flowers and curses, and yet gave in to the splendid tweeks and pinches which the lusty Chockey dealt him on his arms and legs, and, falling headlong, on the lower stairs, darted up the street crying:
“Watch!” at the top of his lungs, nor getting any answer, for Watch was snoring in the tavern and the sun now shining broad.
“Chock,” said her mistress, “go you on before me to the King’s Arms, where we alighted, engage the seats in the coach, and hark ye, child, an aught betide I come not, get you home without me and tell His Lordship I’m gone to Kent on a sick-call from my godmother. Lud! it’s lies all the way to being a man! I’ll not walk with you, lass; ’tis not seemly, and when I reach the inn I’ll pretend I know you not, hire a room, change my clothes and slip down to you, unseen if I can. Now, off with you, quickly, for I ache to follow. Would to God I could doff these garments and into my petticoats again!” added Lady Peggy ruefully, glancing at her hastily tied up bundle and, at the same moment, with the broad of her sword, pushing Chock into the street with a will that sent her a-spinning on her way.
Indifferent then, as though the outgoing damsel were no concern of hers, presently, with a swagger, yet ill-concealing the anxiety she felt afresh as now sobs and female voices assailed her ears, the mock Sir Robin McTart emerged upon the street.
There halted a chair between the posts. In the chair sat Lady Diana Weston accompanied by her woman. Both wept and trembled, while still afar the stout lungs of the terrified giant shouted:
“Watch!”
Peg stood still and stared; all the jealous blood in her burned in her cheeks. Lady Diana here! and wherefore? and at such an untoward hour; veil displaced, eyes red, but still most undeniably handsome, nay beautiful.
“Oh Sir!” cried Lady Diana beseechingly, raising two imploring hands outside the chair door toward Lady Peggy.
“I pray of your honor!” whimpered the Abigail in concert.
“I implore your protection, Sir, as you are a gentleman and man of honor, as your mien disposes me. I came here but now and sent my footman up to the rooms of a—a friend, who is ill, Sir,—with a token of regard in the shape of fruit and flowers, when the man must have been set upon by thieves and beaten, for he—”
“I heard him,” finishes Peg, stepping nearer to the chair. “And I assure you, Madam, I put the varlet who attacked him to his pace with a prick. If I can serve you further, command me.”
As My Lady bows low, she is conscious that it now behooves her to state concisely her name and station; and, loathing and hating the deception more than she could express, she still adds (her motive not unmixed with the natural curiosity to discover who is the object of Lady Diana’s morning call):
“Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent, at Your Ladyship’s service.”
Diana bows, blushes, almost ogles, minx that she is, noting well the fine eyes and beautiful mouth of the gallant at her side.
“Lady Diana Weston, Sir Robin, daughter to the Earl of Brookwood, at your service.”
Peg bows, hat in hand, bundle under arm. Swift as youth’s impulse ever is, says she, taking lightning-like measure of her chance and determined to probe matters to their core:
“Your Ladyship’s name was on the lips above,” nodding up at Kennaston’s windows. “I drank the toast with a will, I do assure you, and would double it now. Surely, if you’ll allow me to say so, Sir Percy de Bohun’s a gentleman of a rare good taste, likewise Lord Kennaston, Sir Wyatt Lovell, half-a-dozen more a-pledging Your Ladyship to the tune of nonpareil all night long.”
“You flatter, Sir, I do protest!” cried the lady in the chair, blushing like the reddest rose that grows, but who might say for whose sake? since Peg had named so many.
“Oh, Sir,” Lady Diana’s voice now lowered. “Your countenance is one to inspire confidence. I pray you judge me not harshly if I venture to inquire, since you were of their company, how fares poor Sir Percy de Bohun? The fruits and flowers I fetched were for him, since I am informed he pines, eats nothing, droops, mopes, and no longer is to be enticed among the fair. Can you give me news of him?—or of—Lord Kennaston?” adds Lady Diana wilily and with another magnificent accession of color. Thus did Slyboots pursue inquiry on that lame horse which is named Subterfuge.
“Aye, Madam, that can I. ’Tis as you say; but as you yourself, if report speak true, be the cause of his distemper, methinks you should know how to effect the cure. I see Your Ladyship’s man returning; there is no more danger. I take my leave of you, Madam,” hand to heart, bundle sticking out under other arm. “It is to me one of the most fortunate chances of life to have had this encounter,” bending sweet eyes, which Diana returns with a will. “Fear nothing! the cut-throats have long since made off by a rear alley. The shouter is doubtless ere this at his cover. Did you need my further protection, ’twould be yours.”
“From my heart, Sir, I thank you,” cries Lady Diana very sweetly. “May we meet again, and soon!”
Peggy bowing, walks quickly off, her pretty teeth gritted together.
“May we meet again! Never! Fruits and flowers! forsooth! Pines and droops! forsooth! ’Slife! and how the minx reddened at his name. A-seekin’ of him out like that at cock-crow too! Lud! an these be town fashions and morals I’ll be glad to get home! No I won’t! No I won’t!” spake out Lady Peggy’s heart fit to burst bonds. “Percy’s here, and my soul’s here, and ’tain’t no use to talk about having a spirit, and a-stoppin’ lovin’ when you ain’t loved! You can’t do it!”
Peggy, recking not of her path, eyes glued to ground, paced on, having forgot the whole world else, in the misery of her discovery of Lady Diana’s passion for Sir Percy.
There were few abroad at that early hour. Some market wagons leisuring to the city; an occasional chariot full of gallants getting home after the night’s frolic; and just now, at the cross of two streets, a handsome coach thrown open-windowed, with a gentleman, the very pink and model of all elegance, lolling back amid the cushions.
By the lead of his eyes ’twas plainly to be seen he had not slept for forty-eight hours or so, but otherwise his aspect was as if newly out of a perfumed bandbox. Suddenly his gaze caught Peggy at the crossing, fixed itself upon the lace cravat at her throat, and then, with a spring as alert as that of any monkey throwing himself out of tree by his tail, this mirror of fashion thrust his head out at window, jerked his coachman’s arm, said in a voice not loud, but piercing:
“Worthing, run down the young gentleman at the crossing; don’t hurt him, but run him down an’ I’ll give you twenty shillings!” He then sank back again amid the pillows.
No sooner said than done.
Just at the instant when Peggy recalled her position and was bewilderedly wondering where she had wandered to, clutching her bundle and all of a muddle, click! grazed coach-wheels against her shins, cock went her hat into the puddle, but, heaven be praised! her wig clung, and she clung to her bundle; out of coach the pink brocade gentleman, down from the rumble his footman, pick up Lady Peggy, hat and all, rubbing the mud out of her silk stockings, clapping her hands; yet relented she not from the bundle, and all a-breath the loller cries:
“Into my coach, Sir! I do humbly crave pardon, Sir, I do indeed. I’ll not take no for an answer, Sir, not by my oath! Such a damage from one gentleman to another, Sir, demands all the reparation possible, Sir,” and forthwith Peggy is lifted into the splendid coach and the splendid gentleman springs in after her, and the footmen jump up and the whip cracks, and off they whirl before she can open her mouth.
“Mr. Brummell at your service, Sir,” continues he, feeling of Peg’s palm, noting the wound at her wrist, and the pallor of her face which shines even though the coffee stains. “We’re en route to Peter’s Court where my surgeon shall attend you. ’Slife! Sir, you’re not hurt, I’m sure. I told Worthing not to endanger a hair of your head and it’s impossible he should have disobeyed me!”
Peggy hears this singular string of speeches and, although stunned a bit and not a little alarmed in her mind, she has country breeding at her back and such a robust constitution as rallies on the spot.
“I’d be obliged, Mr. Brummell, if you’d set me down at once, Sir! I’m none the worse, and I’ve business of import calling me far hence, and with dispatch.”
“Never, Sir, never!” returns Beau Brummell, with an impressive wave of his jeweled hand. “Zounds! Sir, I had you spilled to get me the pattern and fashion of tying your cravat from you! and split me! if I let you go until I’ve mastered that adorable knot! I’ve my reputation at stake, Sir, for the tying of ’em. You’ve outdone me at your throat, Sir, and ’tis Beau Brummell, the best dressed and worst imitated man in Europe, that has the honor of telling you so. Come, come, Sir,” continues this nonesuch, famed alike at Court and brawl for his finery and drollery, “out with your name, Sir, I beg, and render me your eternally grateful.”
Lady Peggy’s gaze falls inadvertently on the bundle across her knees; it begins to bulge and burst the paper and string, indeed a tape of her petticoat is oozing out even now as she pokes it back, hiding its tell-tale under the skirt of her coat.
“’Slife!” says Peggy to herself in a terrible heat. “An I must stop a man, I must. God’s will—or the Devil’s, as dad says—be done!” and forthwith she tucks up her knee, lays hand on sword-hilt, laughs quite merrily and answers:
“Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent, at your service, Mr. Brummell. I do protest, upon my oath! ’twas a marvelous device to spill me to borrow my tie. ’Tis yours, Sir, and the fashion of it, an you’ll do me the honor to accept a lesson.”
“Sir Robin McTart!” echoes the Beau delightedly, “my old friend Sir Hector’s son and heir? I swear, boy, you favor not your sire. Peace to his soul, ’twas an ugly gentleman, while you, Sir,—Zounds! The ladies’ll make hay for you, I promise you. Where do you stop? Are you up in town long? What letters do you bring?”
“The King’s Arms, Sir, in the Strand,” replies Peg glibly, while the Beau frowns. “I’m arrived but yesterday. I brought not a letter, Sir. There you have my history.”
“No King’s Arms for Sir Hector’s son. You’ll home with me, lad; and I’ll show you what town life is. I’ll put you up at the best clubs, introduce you to the Prince; present you at Court; dine, wine, mount you,—Gadzooks, Sir Robin, the man that invented that tie of the lace!” tipping his finger at Lady Peggy’s home-made cravat, “deserves all and more than Brummell can do for him!”
At which Peggy laughed the more heartily, as that she felt the paper beneath her coat skirts crack wider, and was spent wondering what she should do when they should reach Peter’s Court, and when she might be able to get into her Levantine once again.
VI
In the which Sir Percy de Bohun’s own man
goes on his master’s errand to Kennaston
Castle, crossing Sir Robin
McTart on the road.
Somewhat later in the day, as the sun peeped in at the narrow windows of Kennaston’s garret in Lark Lane, it shone straight down upon the face of Peg’s twin, and also upon that of Sir Percy de Bohun, just returned, after a tub and a grooming at the hands of his faithful man Grigson, who even now was performing like offices for the young host. The other gentlemen had long since been set upon their legs and fetched off to their homes by their men.
Percy held his chin between his palms, his elbows resting upon the table where cards and glasses still littered.
“’Sdeath, Kennaston,” cries he, without moving. “I can live this fashion no longer! To be shot like a partridge would be better. Flouted by Peggy, derided by this upstart Sir Robin, who, by my life! is a pretty fellow all said and done, is past endurance! Give me a pistol, Grigson, and I’ll put an end of myself now and here.”
To this passionate declaration, Kennaston merely makes answer by lifting an arm above the tub, waving it in the air, and, as Grigson scrubs him down, wagging his wet head and remarking:
“Don’t be damned ridiculous, Percy, and pray hold your peace, since I am at this moment composing an ode to my mistress’s smile.”
“Your mistress be hanged, Sir! What know you of love to sit in a tub and make verses to her?”
“I know enough of’t,” sighs the host, “to have been in like case with yourself any time this twelve-month! and ’tis a monstrous thing for you to thus impeach me, when ’tis you whom My Lady Diana favors rather than myself.”
“Lady Diana be damned!” cries Percy rising. “She’s a coquette, Sir, and at bottom adores you, as does the fish the bait the while she plays and sidles ’round it, being sure in th’ end she’ll swallow it, hook and all.”
“Very fine, i’ faith, yet while I sigh, you’re the one she smiles upon. Oh, Percy! Had I but a fortune! Could I but make my name in letters! Then perchance I’d stand my chance; but as ’tis,”—Peg’s twin fetches a sigh that sends the water splashing about the wine-stained floor.
“As ’tis, Sir, counsel me, an you love me. Shall I hie me to Kennaston and wait upon your sister?”
“Write her a letter of fire and sword, and blood and famine; stuff it full of oaths, protests, suicides, murders, as is a Christmas pudding of plums! There’s quill, ink and paper to your hand.”
“I’ll do it and send it by Grigson on my fastest horse this day. I should have the answer before Friday?”
“Aye, you should,” allows the host with an evident reservation. “Now, for God’s sake, Sir, stop cackling and let me finish my ode.”
Which he did a-sitting in his bath, while Grigson dressed his wig.
The toilet, and the letter, and the poem, were all three finished at once, and, without more ado, Sir Percy dispatched his man with the missive to Lady Peggy.
“Come not back until you deliver it in person,” quoth the lover; “an you show yourself minus an answer, I’ll ship you to the Colonies by the next packet.”
After seeing him off the two young men repaired to the coffee-house they frequented, and there the first news that greeted them was an account, exaggerated to the last degree, as was the fashion of those times as well as these, of “Lady D—— W——’s adventure with footpads in Lark Lane, where her chair crossed en route to her mantua-maker’s; of how Sir R——n McT——t had rescued Her Ladyship and Her Ladyship’s Abigail from the clutches of these villains at the hazard of his own life; had, single-handed, put the whole gang to flight; and this, although suffering from a severe wound in the right wrist, the which this gallant young scion of a noble name had received in an affair of honor with Sir P——y de B——n only that very night previous.” In point of fact gossip cried, and print set forth, that “the town was ringing with the valor of Sir R——n McT——t, whose fame as a buck and man of fashion was no less than his expertness at the saving of Beauty in distress. For be it known that no other personage than the renowned Beau B——l had set his seal upon Sir R——n’s mould by begging from him the pattern of his cravat and the mode of his knot. That Sir R——n was now a guest at Mr. B——l’s home, and, being up in town for the season, let ladies fair beware and set their most adorable caps, for ’twas well understood so fine a young gentleman was nowhere else to be met with, nor one of such courage and skill at cards, saddle, or the dance.”
The which as he read it gave Sir Percy no great food for congratulation, but the rather caused him to sink into a kind of melancholy from which no effort of his companion could arouse him. Like a dullard he sat, staring at the print or the walls, the livelong day, and far into the night, waiting for Grigson’s return, and beside himself with a silent jealous fury as each new entrance to the coffee-room gave his own particular version of Sir Robin’s vogue.
The real little Sir Robin, meanwhile, on his journey down to Kennaston in search of My Lady Peggy, had got some three hours’ start of the faithful Grigson, and even now, he, for the first time in his life, stood in the long, bare drawing-room of Kennaston Castle, tip-toeing to the mirror, pulling his wig this way and that in instant expectation of beholding the object of his passion, and rewarding her for her devotion to him, so manifested in the person of the gentlemanly “Incognito” of his last night’s experience.
Hark! Yes, her footstep on the stair, the swish of female garments, a halt at the door. Sir Robin minced the length of the room and, reaching the entrance, found himself face to face with Chockey!
“Your mistress, bud, your mistress! Here!” thriftily pressing a shilling into Chock’s palm. “Go tell her I am consumed with impatience, and eaten up with desire for a glimpse of Her Ladyship’s form, and figure, and face. Go! Go!”
But Chockey does not budge.
“What ails the wench? Deaf?” cries Sir Robin, pinching her arm, for which he gets back a smart slap on his cheek.
“Tut! tut! What manners is that, and you handsome enough to kiss,” adds the little Baronet diplomatically. “Come now, off and implore Lady Peggy to hasten.”
“Her Ladyship’s from home,” finally Chockey says.
“What! Not at Kennaston?” Sir Robin’s sharp eye can not help peering regretfully at the shilling Chockey twirls in her fingers.
“In Kent, doubtless, a-visiting her godmother, and a-hoping to see me there! eh, in Kent?”
“I don’t know, Sir,” replies the girl with a hint of tears in her voice.
“Don’t know! What do you mean?” exclaims Sir Robin suspiciously.
“I means, Sir,” fires up Chock, “that My Lady ain’t by way of telling me her matters. His Lordship, her father’s down with his leg; Her Ladyship’s mother is a-visitin’ the sick in York. As they supposes, Sir, Lady Peggy is in Kent, also, a-visitin’ the sick, Her Ladyship’s godmother.”
Chockey curtsies and turns to the door, out of which Sir Robin reluctantly goes, putting spurs to his horse, dining at the Mermaid and then chartering a post-chaise to take him, sans delay, to Kent.
He crossed but one traveler on his way from Kennaston Castle to the village inn; a man of stout and comely build on a steed that took even Sir Robin’s dull eye, so was its blood and lineage marked in its long splendid gait.
This horseman too pulled rein at Kennaston, sprang from his saddle, and, as Bickers hobbled up to take his beast, Mr. Grigson, for ’twas he, jumped up on the steps and caught Chockey’s apron-string just as it was fluttering in the closing door.
“Hey, missus!” cried he, twirling Chock about and chucking her under the chin, which was rewarded by as smart a slap as that which had erstwhile burned Sir Robin’s cheek.
“I must see Lady Peggy Burgoyne on the spot, without ceremony or a-waitin’ ’ere coolin’ my heels. I’ve a letter for Her Ladyship meanin’ life and death to my master, Sir Percy de Bohun.”
“Have you?” says Chock, looking with admiring eyes upon the smart livery of Mr. Grigson, dust and mud-stained though it was.
“Yes, straight from London town, where ’pon my life, there’s no sweeter mug than hers I sees before me now!”
“Lawk!” cries Chock, appeased. “But my mistress is from home.”
“Not here! where is she then? A-visiting in the neighborhood?” Mr. Grigson turns on his heel and chirrups for his mount.
“No,” returns Chockey. “She ain’t.”
“Well, whereabouts is she? For if it’s as far as the Injies, Grigson’s bound to find her and deliver this love-letter!”
“I don’t know where she is, Sir,” whimpers Chock.
“There, there! Don’t be a-cryin’ and a-sobbin’, Duckie, I ain’t gone, yet! Go ask His Lordship the address; bring me a mug of ale, and I’ll give you a kiss.”
“Drat you, Sir,” cries Chockey. “Don’t you be talkin’ like that!” Yet sidles she quite cozily in the encircling arm of the admirable Grigson.
“His Lordship, nor Her Ladyship, nor no one else knows where my mistress is.”
“What! eloped? Scuttled! Flown the nest! When? How? Where?” cries Sir Percy’s man thunder-struck. “She ain’t gone with Sir Percy! Can it be with Sir Robin McTart?”
Chockey shook her head vigorously.
“Look a-here,” says Mr. Grigson, now regarding the girl attentively. “Damme, but you knows where she is. Tell me and I’ll give you two kisses and ten pounds to boot.”
“Oh, Sir!” cries Chock, pushing away both kisses and pounds with one and the same hand. “I does know; leastways I knows my young lady’s up in London, but whereabouts in that pit of sin and willainy, I can’t say, nor who she’s with, nor how long she’s goin’ to stop; only she charged me make His Lordship and Her Lady mother believe she was gone to Kent, back again to see her godmother. There! I’ve been bursting to tell some one, and you’ll swear you’ll keep it secret, won’t you, Sir?”
Grigson obligingly nods and caresses Chock’s arm.
“Thank the Lord it’s out o’ me!” adds she.
“Amen,” ejaculates Sir Percy’s man with fervor, at the same time fixing a contemplative and shrewd eye on his companion.
“Her Ladyship up in town,—where, with whom, you doesn’t know; her father and mother thinks she’s in Kent; and you’re cock-sure she ain’t runned away with Sir Robin McTart?”
“That I am!” cries the girl, warmly. “Little squint-eyed monster!”
“Eh?” exclaims Mr. Grigson, who had beheld the supposed Sir Robin at Kennaston’s rooms the night before last, and clearly recollected that no such description fitted the slim, elegant, handsome young buck who had got a prick in the wrist from his own master’s rapier.
“Monster! I said,” repeats the girl. “Hist, I’ll tell you more,” says she, drawing close, hand over mouth. “You’ve seen the puppy. He was here anon, a-askin’ and a-tearin’ as to where My Lady was!”
Grigson stares.
“Aye, you must have met him on the road not ten rods off the Castle gates, for, as you galloped in, the undersized cockatrice cantered out. Lady Peggy wed with him, indeed!”
Grigson is now (recalling his having crossed a small squint-eyed gentleman as he came) morally certain that Chockey has been well drilled in her part, and that Lady Peggy has indeed run away up to London with Sir Robin McTart. So much for his thoughts; he says:
“I did. Fortunately I beheld the personage what you describes. Your humble servant, missus. I must be off and no time for love-makin’ to-day,” turning quickly on his heel and tossing sixpence to Bickers who holds his bridle at the stone.
“I ain’t ‘missus,’” remarks she plaintively.
“But you will be some day, lass, or my name ain’t James Grigson. Here’s to you and many thanks for putting me on the right track!”
“Tush, Sir! For the love of heaven and of anybody else you thinks a deal of, find my young lady!”
“Trust me,” flings Mr. Grigson from his saddle. “I’ll find her and him as holds her in durance wile!”
Kissing his fingers to Chockey, off puts Sir Percy’s own man to the Mermaid; stables his horse; hires a fresh one; claps spurs, and up to town as fast as four spavined bay legs can carry him, firmly convinced that he has solved the greater portion of the mystery, and that his master’s lady fair is indeed, beyond a doubt, the bride of the gallant Sir Robin, or mayhap his unwilling prisoner.
VII
In which is set down how My Lady is whisked
off to a rout, willy-nilly, at the home
of her hated rival.
Mr. Brummell was a most shrewd and an altogether kindly personage as well; he had easily, on alighting from his carriage and assisting Lady Peggy to do the same, espied the disreputable looking parcel which the supposed son of his dear old friend vainly tried to conceal; and the Beau was not long of putting two and two together, and of concluding that young Sir Robin had lost his all at play, and had even perhaps pawned his wardrobe,—saving the ill-looking bundle—for the price of his last few days’ food. Therefore it was, that, in the most obliging manner, he not only installed Sir Robin in an elegant and spacious apartment, but vowed he would at once send for both his tailor and perruquier to wait upon him, and ended by assuring his guest that his own man Tempers would be up presently to make the young gentleman’s toilet for him.
“Your pardon, Sir, Mr. Brummell,” quoth Peggy, while her maiden heart set off at such a race-horse flutter as it seemed must never quiet down. “But, pray you, remember I am country-bred, unused to town ways, have never had a man to wait upon me in my life” (the solemn truth!) “and should never know how to comport myself in such altered conditions.”
The Beau shrugged his shoulders in the French fashion, lifted his eyebrows, thought ’twas amazing strange that Sir Hector’s son should have been so ill educated; said:
“Your pleasure, Sir, whilst under my roof, shall be mine; nor can I misdoubt but that one who has had the genius to invent that tie is amply able to array and perfume himself, even to the dressing of his own wig.”
“You flatter, Sir, I protest!” answered the guest. “I await with impatience the moment when, in cleaner case, I may have the honor of instructing you in the intricacies of the knot you are good enough to admire.”
With any number of bows, the distinguished host closed the door, and My Lady Peggy was left to herself.
For a moment she stood quite still, her heart yet a-clapping madly in her bosom, her eyes wandering about the princely room in which she found herself, and at last resting on the mirror wherein was reflected her own slim figure, tricked out in Kennaston’s suit of gray velvets, and in the yellow wig, which was indeed the counterpart of the real Sir Robin’s pate. Her countenance?—sure none would recognize it since neither twin nor quondam suitor had—was dark with the coffee-stains; her eyes were ringed with sleeplessness and unaccustomed wine; her general aspect that of a young gentleman very much the worse for whatever his most recent experiences might have been.
Peg laughed, then she cried, then ran to the door and fastened it securely; then untied her bundle when out fell night-rail, green hood and kerchief, powder, patch-box, lavender, musk, pins, needles, red silken hose, Levantine gown, and veil of Brussels lace. She shook the skirt out of its wrinkles, laid off her wig and ’broidered waist-coat; unpinned her long plaited hair from its coil, and was stoutly making up her mind to brave all, get into her petticoats, and confess everything to Mr. Brummell. But, as she was about to wash the dark stains from her face, comes there a “rap-a-tap” at the door, and Peg, dropping the ewer, calls out fiercely:
“Who’s there?”
“An it please you, Sir Robin, Mr. Brummell bids me say to you that Mr. Chalk, the tailor, a person of the best fashion, will have the honor of waiting upon you for your measurements in a quarter of an hour, if you’ll be pleased to see him then, or later?”
Peg hesitated; there was a battle fought within her those sixty seconds wherein all that was noblest and best struggled and strove to know which was the right thing to do; nor could she determine, save that, at second thought of confiding her sex to Mr. Brummell, it appeared to her she could not.
“I shall be ready to see Chalk, I thank you, in fifteen minutes, more or less,” humming a tune with elaborate carelessness, rolling up the Levantine, the hood, veil, and night-rail into a ball, and pitching them into the chest of drawers; disposing the powder and perfumes and pins on the dressing-table; throwing the needles and patches into the fire; untying the kerchief and taking out soap, scissors, brushes.
“’Tis clear as water, I’m to be a man yet awhile,” whispered she. “Heaven grant it may not be long! So!” seizing the scissors and shaking out the locks. “Snip! clip, and away with you! that I was once vain of, because a vile deceiver named Percy vowed he loved you!”
And off came Peg’s hair, the which for silly liking of she stuffed into the drawer beside the Levantine and let fall a tear or two. Then snip, clip again as she had often done for her twin; so that, in no time at all, her head, with its short curly locks brushed back at this side and that of her broad forehead, had all the aspect of a man’s.
“There,” cried she, sweeping the last litter of her black tresses into the flames. “An I be a gentleman, I’ll be a gallant one. I sighed once to taste the sweets of bein’ of t’other sex for only one-half an hour.—Zounds! as daddy’d say, would that I’d never quit my frocks. What hath it bettered me? To behold with mine own eyes the charms of her who’s routed me from his heart; to hear him a-pledgin’ me just to please my brother, and for the sake of spitin’ Sir Robin McTart; to get myself into a position that makes me burstin’ with shame and feelin’ sure I can never hold up my head again in this world. Me, that’s always loathed a hoyden! and even have I the muscle of a lad, and can I stride a horse, and jump any ditch was ever dug,—yet, yet,—oh! How did I ever bring myself to put on these?” And My Lady Peggy slaps her breeches with a whack, and promptly falls upon her knees a-praying for her father and mother, and brother, and Sir Percy, and Chock, and Bickers.
“And, Oh God, high up in Heaven, forgive me for all my wilfulness and jealousy and foolhardiness, and stealin’ my twin’s clothes; and deceit, the which has got me into this foul station, wherein I have told naught but lies—and I do despise lies,—they are most disgustin’ and utterly wicked. Forgive me for all the horrible sins I’ve committed—”
Footsteps now resound in the corridor and the voice of Mr. Brummell’s own man says blandly:
“This way, Mr. Chalk,” as he raps gently at the door.
“—And for all those I shall have to commit!” concludes Her Ladyship, as she springs to her feet and unfastens the door, admitting the tailor a la mode.
That night, the suit of grays well brushed, her wig re-curled, and her pocket-napkin richly perfumed, her mother’s Brussels veil stripped up and made into a cravat of so ravishing a device as caused her host almost a spasm when he beheld it, Sir Robin McTart sat at honor-place at dinner, and was, to make a long story short, the cynosure and toast of the occasion.
The duel with Sir Percy, the rescue of My Lady Diana, the invention of a cravat, the nimble wit, the handsome face, soon bespoke Peggy into a favor, that, considering all other things, was well-nigh incredible; and when, the following day; she appeared in one of the suits Mr. Chalk had made, with a dash of powder on her wig and a bronzed complexion due to surreptitious purchase at the players’ cosmetic shop in Drury Lane, of sundry brown, red, and black pastes while making feint of being a comedian, the satisfaction of her host was unbounded.
“Robin, my boy,” said this one, with a side-glance at his guest, “an you’re a bit short of money, I’ll put a few hundreds to your account at my banker’s. Young gentlemen will be wild and spendthrift at times; London’s new to you I fancy, and—”
“I thank you, Mr. Brummell, from my heart,” returned Peg, “but I’ve three hundred pounds now idle in my pocket. That will last me, I’m confident, until I reach home, and, by your leave, I’m thinking I’ll quit town this evening.”
But Mr. Brummell has no ears for any such scheme. The Beau’s erratic fancy has not been caught by a new object for the mere sake of losing it; his joy in the dash and buoyancy, the originality and naïvete of his latest discovery is genuine, and no argument, of the very few Lady Peggy can offer, but he breaks down at once.
“Zounds, Sir! Are you a fool, Sir? Your sire was not one before you. To have half London a-talkin’ about you; all the prints a-chronicling your movements; all the ladies a-dying for a glimpse of you, and you only up in town these few days; and a-proposing to go back and bury your talents for tying Brussels, in Kent! Fie upon you, Sir! I listen to no such whims. Here’s my basket loaded with invitations for you already. Lady Brookwood’s rout to-night!” with a sly glance at Peg’s really blushing face; “Lady Diana Weston’s mother, as you are doubtless aware? The Charity Bazaar at Selwyn’s to-morrow; dinner at Holland House; Almacks’s, and my own little plan for next Thursday which is an outing to my seat in Surrey a-horseback; dinner, bowls, a look over the stables, and home by the light o’ the moon. ‘Back to Kent,’ forsooth! No, Sir, not yet.”
A few hours later, as Lady Peggy got into her magnificent suit of crimson satin, gold embroidered; as she beheld her image in the glass and caught the hilt of her sword in her hand, the blood that surged over her face and throat was ruby-red; and, at her wits’ ends for what to do, the girl’s tears forced themselves to her eyes once again.
She was to be off soon to Lady Brookwood’s; here she should encounter not only Lady Diana, but doubtless Percy himself; mayhap Kennaston, if he had been able to get him a decent coat to wear in place of the gray velvets! Doubtless, too, all those others she had met in Lark Lane.
For the hundredth time she cast wildly about in her mind as to how she could, now at this present moment, rid herself of the hated disguise, get into her Levantine, get home to her mother’s arms, hide her head forever, and never, no never! look into face of man again!
But Peggy saw no road. Every path seemed barred, save those that would forever damn her in the eyes of foes and friends alike.
“Oh,” cried she in desperation. “How easy ’tis to get into breeches, a coat, a waist-coat, and a wig, but God ha’ mercy! will I ever be able to get out of ’em?”
It is to be put down to the credit of My Lady Peggy’s up-bringing in the country with most times only a lad for her playmate, that now she bore herself with not only a fine ease and grace, but also with as splendid a swagger and daring as any young macaroni that carried a sword.
“An I’m to be a man, I’ll be one!” cried she, “and if Lady Diana ogles, lud! I’ll give as good as she sends. Little him as I love’ll know, ’tis of his sometime Peggy he’ll be jealous!”
So it was with a prodigious fine flutter of her napkin and a mightily impudent twirl of her eye-glass (purchased not two hours since), that Her Ladyship made her bows and kissed the finger-tips of Lady Brookwood’s handsome daughter.
“I am your most grateful, Sir Robin!” cried this one, “and more pleased than I can express to welcome you. I only regret that Lord Brookwood is at Brookwood Hall, and not here to thank you for rescuing his daughter.” And so forth and on, with presentations to a dozen of fine ladies, dowagers and damsels, and a precious lot of fine gentlemen; and it seemed to Peggy, in her simplicity, as if the whole of Mayfair were a-bowing and scraping and making her out a hero,—which indeed was not far off the fact.
Two watched her as she came in on Beau Brummell’s arm. These were Sir Percy and Kennaston; one green with anxiety for Grigson’s return from his errand, jumping at every sound; having left word both at Lark Lane, his coffee-house, as well as at home where he had gone, that Grigson should report to him at once he arrived; the other green with envy of Peggy and any other who neared his divinity, yet afraid and too diffident to approach her closer than with the devouring gaze of his eyes.
“That damned puppy again!” cries Percy, under his breath, as he surveys Peg in her satins. “By Gad, Sir, every lady in the room’s turning spite eyes on t’other, your incomparable Diana included, for fear he won’t stop and pay her a compliment.”
“Ah,” sighs the young poet. “Percy, an you loved like me ’twould be bliss to even gaze upon your fair. Think you I dare make bold now to cross and make my bow?”
“Why not?” returns the other gloomily. “Forgive my humor, Kennaston. Truth is, Sir, I’m mad, mad for Peg, and my ears are cracking and my brain splitting until that rascal, Grigson, gets back with answer to my letter. He’s been gone long enough to have made the journey four times over!”
“Oh, Percy,” returns Peg’s twin. “I love you as a brother, an could I but physic Your Lady into complaisance, I’d give my life for it. What owe I not to you?” adds the young man with deep feeling. “You’ve fed me, and zooks! Sir, to-night you’ve clothed me, for since the scurvy knaves that frightened Lady Di stole my suit of grays and my sword and hat, what had I left? Where would I be now, were’t not for you?”
“Tush, Ken, lad, I love you for yourself,—and ten thousand times more for her sake. Ken, I love her so that as I told her, if Sir Robin were a better man I’d cry off, an she said she loved him.”
“What said she?”
“Not that she loved him, but that she might,” he continues with sadness, as his eyes follow Peg on her almost royal progress about the drawing-rooms. “’Tis a proper fellow, enough, and I’d always heard he was a fright and a coward.”
Kennaston presently took heart of grace and crossed to pay his duty to Lady Diana, who, ’twas plain to be seen by every other than this bashful swain, was by no means the indifferent to him she would feign play off. Her color came and went as Kennaston, blushing to match his lady, ventured to spout his ode to her; and, leaving the pair to gallop on this pleasant path, Sir Percy at a distance unconsciously followed Lady Peggy, at least with his gaze.
Peggy meantime, denying right and left the story of her prowess, with quips and jests and ogles of the fair, still kept her eye on Percy. Not yet had she seen him approach Lady Diana; yet hold! even now, catching her own gaze fixed upon him, he turned and was presently bending over the little beauty’s fingers.
A pang shot through Peg’s heart, and the tears were like to force their way; she made an excuse and left the long drawing-room, taking refuge in a small apartment where the tables were ready for cards. She sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands. The candles were not yet lighted and she was totally unobserved. Dashing the salt drops from her lashes with her hand,—
“What am I!” she cried in her bitterness, “that I can not abide to even see him a-bending over her hand! Ain’t you no spirit, Peg? No pride? He’s not thinking of you, my dear; didn’t he say plain, if Sir Robin was the better man he’d give up to him! What kind of a suitor’s that, Peg? Lud! I’d not give up him to any one, whether they were my betters or no!”
Could My Lady but have postponed her exit for a few brief moments she would have beheld Sir Percy, at a word in his ear from a footman, quit Lady Diana’s side with but the smallest ceremony, dash out into the vestibule, seize with a vice-like grip the man who stood there pale and trembling, and gasp out:
“At last! the letter, the letter?”
Grigson shook his head and got even whiter.
“No letter?” Percy says in a dazed way.
“Only your own, Sir Percy,” handing back the missive. “Her Ladyship was from home, Sir.”
“Well, what of that! you infernal, damned rascal, did I not command you seek her, if ’twere at the other end of the world!”
“Aye, Sir, and the quickest way of settin’ about findin’ Her Ladyship was for me to get back to town, Sir, as fast as the cursed beast I was cheated into hirin’, Sir, would fetch me.”
“Speak out, for God’s sake! Is Her Ladyship up in London?” asked Sir Percy, actually shaking with impatience and astonishment.
Grigson nods and without more ado proceeds to give an exact if somewhat rambling account of his entire experiences, from the moment he had quitted his master until the present.
’Twere idle to attempt to describe Sir Percy’s state of mind. Up to now there had ever lingered in his heart the hope, nay, one of those unconscious beliefs men have, that in the end Peggy would be his. This news that Grigson brought crushed every such thought from his brain, but put in its place such a hatred of the young man now tasting the sweets of hero-worship (in little), in the adjoining room, as caused his fingers to itch for his steel and t’other’s flesh to meet once more, and to the death.
He drew Grigson in from the vestibule and, unobserved in the crush, down the corridor to the darkness of the card-room where Peggy still sat disconsolate in her far-off corner.
She, for the moment, is even unconscious that any one has entered until the voices arrest her attention.
“By Gad!” Sir Percy cries in a low tone, falling into a seat and clapping his brow. “Up in London! The woman, vowing Sir Robin had crossed your entrance, inquiring for Her Ladyship! Your meeting, not Sir Robin, but an ill-conditioned little popinjay with squint eyes and of the height of the dwarf that waits upon my Lady Brookwood?”
“Aye, Sir Percy,” returns Grigson. “No more like Sir Robin, which, Sir, begging your honor’s parding, is a very pretty young nobleman, with a good eye and a proper height.”
Sir Percy nods.
“Then,” speaking as if to himself and motioning the man away, “since she’s up in town without her parents’ knowledge and with a cock-and-bull story stuck into her Abigail’s mouth, it must be she’s eloped with the scoundrel out of Kent!”
Grigson going, ventures to ask: “Any more h’orders, Sir Percy? Will I cover the town, all the inns and taverns, Sir?”
The young man shakes his head and the servant bows himself away.