Gallantry Part 9

MR. ERWYN, betrothed to Lady Allonby.

VANRINGHAM, an impudent tragedian of the Globe Company.

QUARMBY, Vanringham's a.s.sociate.

Miss ALLONBY, an heiress, of a petulant humor, in love with Audaine.

MARCHIONESS OF FALMOUTH, an impertinent affected dowager, and grandmother to Miss Allonby.

LADY ALLONBY, step-mother to Miss Allonby and Gerald.

POSTILIONS, SERVANTS, Etc.

SCENE

Tunbridge Wells, thence shifting to Chetwode Lodge, Mr. Babington-Herle's house, on Rusthall Common, within two miles of the town.

THE CASUAL HONEYMOON

_PROEM:--Introductive of Captain Francis Audaine_

It appears convenient here to pursue Miss Allonby on her stroll about the Pantiles in company with Captain Audaine. The latter has been at pains to record the events of the afternoon and evening, so that I give you his own account of them, though I abridge in consideration of his leisured style.

Pompous and verbose I grant the Captain, even in curtailment; but you are to remember these were the faults of his age, ingrained and defiant of deletion; and should you elect to peruse his memoirs [Footnote: There appears to have been no American edition since that, in 1836, printed in Philadelphia, "for Thomas Wardle, No. 15 Minor Street." In England the memoirs of Lord Garendon are to all appearance equally hard to come by, and seem to have been out of print since 1907.] you will find that I have considerately spared you a majority of the digressions to which the future Earl of Garendon was lamentably addicted.

For the purpose of my tale you are to view him as Tunbridge did at this particular time: as a handsome and formal person, twenty-eight years old or thereabouts, of whom n.o.body knew anything quite definite--beyond the genealogic inference to be drawn from a smatch of the brogue--save that after a correspondence of gallantries, of some three weeks' duration, he was the manifest slave of Miss Dorothy Allonby, and had already fought three duels behind Ormerod House,--with Will Pratchet, Lord Humphrey Degge, and Sir Eugene Harrabie, respectively, each one of whom was a declared suitor for her hand.

And with this prelude I begin on my transcription.

I

Miss Allonby (says Captain Audaine) was that afternoon in a mighty cruel humor. Though I had omitted no reasonable method to convince her of the immensity of my pa.s.sion, 'twas without the twitch of an eyelash she endured the volley of my sighs and the fusillade of my respectful protestations; and candor compels me to admit that toward the end her silvery laughter disrupted the periods of a most elegant and sensible peroration. And when the affair was concluded, and for the seventh time I had implored her to make me the happiest of men, the rogue merely observed: "But I don't want to marry you. Why on earth should I?"

"For the sake of peace," I replied, "and in self-protection, since as long as you stay obdurate I shall continue to importune, and by and by I shall pester you to death."

"Indeed, I think it more than probable," she returned; "for you dog me like a bailiff. I am cordially a-weary, Captain Audaine, of your incessant persecutions; and, after all, marrying you is perhaps the civilest way to be rid of both them and you."

But by this I held each velvet-soft and tiny hand. "Nay," I dissented; "the subject is somewhat too sacred for jest. I am no modish lover, dearest and best of creatures, to regard marriage as the thrifty purchase of an estate, and the lady as so much bed-furniture thrown in with the mansion. I love you with completeness: and give me leave to a.s.sure you, madam, with a freedom which I think permissible on so serious an occasion that, even as beautiful as you are, I could never be contented with your person without your heart."

She sat with eyes downcast, all one blush. Miss Dorothy Allonby was in the bloom of nineteen, and shone with every charm peculiar to her s.e.x. But I have no mind to weary you with poetical rhodomontades till, as most lovers do, I have proven her a paragon and myself an imbecile: it suffices to say that her face, and shape, and mien, and wit, alike astounded and engaged all those who had the happiness to know her; and had long ago rendered her the object of my entire adoration and the target of my daily rhapsodies.

Now I viewed her with a dissension of the liveliest hopes and fears; for she had hesitated, and had by this hesitation conceded my addresses to be not irretrievably repugnant; and within the instant I knew that any life undevoted to her service and protection could be but a lingering disease.

But by and by, "You shall have your answer this evening," she said, and so left me.

I fathomed the meaning of "this evening" well enough. For my adored Dorothy was all romance, and by preference granted me rendezvous in the back garden, where she would tantalize me nightly, from her balcony, after the example of the Veronese lady in Shakespeare's spirited tragedy, which she prodigiously admired. As concerns myself, a reasonable liking for romance had been of late somewhat tempered by the inclemency of the weather and the obvious unfriendliness of the dog; but there is no resisting a lady's commands; and clear or foul, you might at any twilight's death have found me under her window, where a host of lyric phrases a.s.serted the devotion which a cold in the head confirmed.

This night was black as a coal-pit. Strolling beneath the cas.e.m.e.nt, well wrapt in my cloak (for it drizzled), I meditated impartially upon the perfections of my dear mistress and the tyrannic despotism of love. Being the source of our existence, 'tis not unreasonably, perhaps, that this pa.s.sion a.s.sumes the proprietorship of our destinies and exacts of all mankind a common tribute. To-night, at least, I viewed the world as a brave pavilion, lighted by the stars and swept by the clean winds of heaven, wherein we enacted varied roles with G.o.d as audience; where, in turn, we strutted or cringed about the stage, where, in turn, we were beset and rent by an infinity of pa.s.sions; but where every man must play the part of lover. That pa.s.sion alone, I said, is universal; it set wise Solomon a-jigging in criminal byways, and sinewy Hercules himself was no stranger to its inquietudes and joys. And I cried aloud with the Roman, _Parce precor!_ and afterward upon high Heaven to make me a little worthier of Dorothy.

II

Engrossed in meditations such as these, I was fetched earthward by the clicking of a lock, and, turning, saw the door beneath her balcony unclose and afford egress to a slender and hooded figure. My amazement was considerable and my felicity beyond rhetoric.

"Dorothy--!" I whispered.

"Come!" was her response; and her finger-tips rested upon my arm the while that she guided me toward the gateway opening into Jervis Lane. I followed with a trepidation you may not easily conceive; nor was this diminished when I found awaiting us a post-chaise, into which my angel hastily tripped.

I babbled I know not what inarticulate nonsense. But, "Heavens!" she retorted, "d'ye mean to keep the parson waiting all night?"

This was her answer, then. Well, 'twas more than I could have hoped for, though to a man of any sensibility this summary disposal of our love-affair could not but vaguely smack of the distasteful. Say what you will, every gentleman has about him somewhere a tincture of that venerable and artless age when wives were taken by capture and were retained by force; he prefers to have the lady hold off until the very last; and properly, her tongue must sound defiance long after melting eyes have signalled that the traitorous heart of her, like an anatomical Tarpeia, is ready to betray the citadel and yield the treasury of her charms.

Nevertheless, I stepped into the vehicle. The postilion was off in a twinkling, as the saying is, over the roughest road in England.

Conversation was impossible, for Dorothy and I were jostling like two pills in a box; and as the first observation I attempted resulted in a badly bitten tongue, I prudently held my peace.

This endured for, perhaps, a quarter of an hour, at the end of which period the post-chaise on a sudden stopped, and I a.s.sisted my companion to alight.

Before us was a villa of considerable dimension, and situate, so far as I could immediately detect, in the midst of a vast and desolate moor; there was no trace of human habitation within the radius of the eye; and the house itself presented not a glimpse of tenancy or illumination.

"O Lord, madam--" I began.

"Hasten!" spoke a voice from within the Parsonage. And Dorothy drew me toward a side door, overhung with ivy, where, sure enough, a dim light burned, 'Twas but a solitary candle stuck upon a dresser at the remoter end of a large and low-ceiled apartment; and in this flickering obscurity we found a tremulous parson in full canonicals, who had united our hands and gabbled half-way through the marriage service before I had the slightest notion of what was befalling me.

And such is the unreasonable disposition of mankind that the attainment of my most ardent desires aroused a feeling not altogether unakin to irritation. This skulking celerity, this hole-and-corner business, I thought, was in ill-accord with the respect due to a sacrament; and I could have wished my marriage to have borne a less striking resemblance to the conference of three thieves in a cellar. But 'twas over in two twos. Within scantier time than it takes to tell of it, Francis and Dorothy were made one, and I had turned to salute my wife.

She gave a shriek of intolerable anguish. "Heavens!" said she, "I have married the wrong man!"

III

Without delay I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the guttering candle and held it to my wife's countenance. You can conceive that 'twas with no pleasurable emotion I discovered I had inadvertently espoused the Dowager Marchioness of Falmouth, my adored Dorothy's grandmother; and in frankness I can't deny that the lady seemed equally dissatisfied: words failed us; and the newly wedded couple stared at each other in silence.

"Captain Audaine," said she, at last, "the situation is awkward."

"Sure, madam," I returned, "and that is the precise thought which has just occurred to me."

"And I am of the opinion," she continued, "that you owe me some sort of explanation. For I had planned to elope with Mr. Vanringham--"

"Do I understand your Ladyship to allude to Mr. Francis Vanringham, the play-actor, at present the talk of Tunbridge?"

She bowed a grave response.

"This is surprising news," said I. "And grant me leave to tell you that a woman of mature years, possessed of an abundant fortune and una.s.sailable gentility, does not by ordinary sneak out of the kitchen door to meet a raddle-faced actor in the middle of the night. 'Tis, indeed, a circ.u.mstance to stagger human credulity. Oh, believe me, madam, for a virtuous woman the back garden is not a fitting approach to the altar, nor is a comedian an appropriate companion there at eleven o'clock in the evening."

"Hey, my fine fellow," says my wife, "and what were you doing in the back garden?"

"Among all true lovers," I returned, "it is an immemorial custom to prowl like sentinels beneath the windows of the beauteous adored. And I, madam, had the temerity to aspire toward an honorable union with your granddaughter."