SCENE XIX

Mistress Bellairs took her departure early.

Attired in unusually sober colours, floating in an atmosphere of chastened, matronly dignity, she had shown herself this evening, thought Lord Verney, quite worthy to be his mother's daughter-in-law.

"Monstrous dull," Lady Flyte called the pretty widow's demeanour.

Beyond a gavotte with Lord Verney, she had not danced, but sat for half-an-hour on the chair next to Lady Maria, who presented her with the vision of a shoulder-blade which had seen better days, and an impenetrability of hearing which baffled even Kitty's undaunted energy.

When Verney had tucked her up in her sedan she insisted upon the young peer allowing her to proceed home unescorted.

"Indeed," said she, "I pray you, nay, I order you. People talk so in this giddy place, and have you not your aged aunt to wait upon? I am sure," said Mistress Kitty piously, "that your dear mother would wish it thus."

He submitted. He had no doubt that his mother would indeed entirely concur with such sentiments, and blessed his Kitty for her sweet reasonableness.

"Good-night, then," she said, thrusting her pretty face out of the window with a very tender and gentle smile.

"Good-night," he replied, with his young, gracefully-awkward bow.

She fully expected to hear his footstep pursue the chairman, for she had not been able to refrain from throwing her utmost fascination into that parting look. But nothing broke the silence of the parade save the measured slouching tramp of the bearers.

At once disappointed and relieved, she threw herself back in her seat.

"What, not a spark left," said she, "of the fine flame 'twas so easy to kindle this morning! 'Tis the very type of the odious British husband. Let him be but sure of you, and the creature struts as confident of his mastery as the cock among his hens. Lord!" she shuddered, "what an escape I have had! We women are apt to fancy that very young men are like very young peas, the greener, the tenderer, the better; whereas," said the lady, with a sigh, "they are but like young wine, crude where we look for strength, all head and no body, and vastly poor upon the palate."

She sighed again, and closed her eyes, waiting for the moment of the impending catastrophe with a delicate composure.

In truth, Mr. O'Hara conducted the performance with so much brio as to convince Mistress Bellairs that he must have had previous experience of the kind.

At the dark appointed corner the two muffled individuals who, each selecting his own astonished chairman, enlaced him with overwhelming brotherly affection, seemed such thorough-paced ruffians in the dim light, that Mistress Kitty found it quite natural to scream—and even had some difficulty in keeping her distressful note down to the pitch of necessary discretion.

And her heart fluttered with a sensation of fear, convincing enough to produce quite a delightful illusion, when she found herself bodily lifted out of her nest and rapidly carried through the darkness in an irresistibly close and strong embrace.

"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the lady, in a modulated sequence of little shrieks.

"Merciful heavens!" she thought to herself, with a great thump of the heart, astonished at her ravisher's silence, "what if it should be someone else after all?"

But the next instant the rich brogue of a tender whisper in her ear dispelled all doubt.

"You've forgotten the scratches, my darling," said O'Hara, as he laid her preciously upon the cushions of the chaise.

Here Mr. Mahoney and his comrade—which latter bore a curious resemblance in build and gait to one of the sporting Marquis's own celebrated gladiators—came running up to take their seats. In leaped O'Hara—the coachman lifted his whip, and the team that Phoebus might have envied started up the length of Milsom Street in style.

*****

The chairmen, drawing their breath with some difficulty after their spell of strangulation, stared in amazement at the clattering shadow as it retreated up the steep street; and then back, and in fresh amazement, at the yellow guinea which had been pressed, and now glinted, in the palm of their hands.

Presently a simultaneous smile overspread their honest countenances.

"A queer go," said the first, easing and readjusting his necklace. "Lud, the little madam did squeak!"

"I'd let them all squeak at the same price," said the other, pocketing his coin, and resuming his place in rear of the sedan. "But come, Bill, we must go report this 'orrible crime. Rabbit me!—what's that?"

A blood-curdling wail had risen out of the night, from his very elbow it seemed. It circled in frightful cadence, and died away in ghost-like fashion.

"'T—'tis but a sick cat, I hope," stammered the first chairman, and dived for the chair-poles in marked hurry.

"O—o—o—o," moaned the voice, "oh, my mistress!" There was a flutter, a patter, and: "Merciful heavens, you wretches!" cried Mistress Bellairs's devoted woman, emerging like a gust of wind from the blackest shadow of Bond Street and falling upon the nearest chairman with a well-aimed flap of her shawl, followed up by a couple of scratches. "Wretches, monsters, you've let my mistress be carried away! Oh heavens, my unhappy mistress!" cried Lydia, and rent the night with her cries.

*****

Mistress Kitty's chair had no sooner left the precincts of the Assembly Rooms when my Lady Standish's post-chaise came clattering round the corner.

Lord Verney, who was just about to go in again, arrested by curiosity, turned to wonder at a visitor who arrived in so unwonted a conveyance. Recognising Lady Standish he was somewhat abashed and somewhat disconcerted, but felt he could do no less than advance through the crowd of foot and chair men and offer his hand.

"O, pray, Lord Verney," said she in a strenuous whisper, "conduct me to your aunt, for I have great need of her help and counsel. Take me to her at once," said the poor lady, in ever-increasing agitation.

They passed through the elegant throng, she unconscious alike of recognition, comment, or titter, he feeling to his boy's marrow, the sensation created by her travelling gear and distraught appearance.

"Would I were back at Verney Hall," thought he, and found that this wish had been long gathering in his heart.

No need of an ear-trumpet for Lady Maria now. The dowager recovered her powers of hearing with almost miraculous celerity.

"Oh, Lady Maria!" said Lady Standish, holding out both her hands. And incontinently she burst into tears. "Oh, Lady Maria, Sir Jasper has left me, I am in sad trouble! I'm told he has gone to Devizes. I must follow him. You are my mother's oldest friend; will you give me the support of your company and protection?"

There was quite a buzz in the interested circle. Lady Maria nodded round, charmed with the situation; bristling with delighted curiosity, she was more like Mistress Kitty's cockatoo than ever.

"Poor young thing, poor young thing," she said, patting Lady Standish's hand; "your mother's oldest friend, quite so—quite right and proper to come to me. And so Sir Jasper's left you; so Sir Jasper's gone; and with whom, my dear?"

Lady Maria fondly believed that she spoke these last words in a gentle aside; but never had her sepulchral bass resounded more sonorously. Lady Standish's faint cry of shocked disclaimer was, however, completely drowned in the fresh rumour, lacerated by shrill feminine shrieks, which now arose in the vestibule of the Assembly Rooms and rapidly advanced.

"My Lord Verney! My mistress! Where is my Lord Verney?" wailed the distraught Lydia, who thoroughly enjoyed her r?le.

A hundred voices took up the cry; the astounding news passed from group to group: "The pretty widow has been carried off!" "Mistress Bellairs has been abducted!" And then, in counter clamour and antiphone: "and my Lady Standish is looking for Sir Jasper!"

Meanwhile, before Lord Verney, dumb and suffocating under a variety of emotions, Lydia wringing her hands and with the most thrilling notes of tragic woe (as nearly copied from Mistress Susanna Cibber as she could remember), narrated her tristful tale.

"He flung my unhappy mistress, swooning and shrieking, into the chaise. And 'Drive like the devil,' cries he in a voice of thunder to the coachman. 'I'll flay you with your own whip and hang you to your own shaft,' says he, 'if you're not in Devizes before midnight!'"

"Devizes!" cried Lady Standish with a scream. Hanging on Lydia's utterance, every word of which confirmed the awful suspicion that had entered her heart, she now could no longer doubt the real extent of her misfortune.

"Oh, Lord Verney, save my mistress!" Lydia's pipe dominated the universal chorus with piercing iteration.

And now Lady Maria's bass struck in again.

"What did I say?" cried she triumphantly. "Nevvy, you'd better go to bed! you're well out of her. Julia, my dear, don't faint, we can catch them at Devizes yet. Someone tell that wench to stop that screeching! Julia, come! You've got the chay, I understand. Fortunately, my house is near; we shall just call for Burrell and make him ride behind with his blunderbuss. Child, if you faint I wash my hands of the whole affair. We'll nip them, I tell you, if you'll only brisk up."

"I won't faint," said Lady Standish setting her teeth.

*****

Lord Verney suddenly awoke to the fact that he had been grievously injured, and that he was in a towering passion. Spluttering, he demanded vengeance of gods and men. Post-chaise, ho, and pistols, forthwith! "My sword!" cried he, feeling for the blade which, however, according to the regulations enforced by the immortal Master of the Bath Ceremonies, was absent from its natural post on his noble hip in this polite assembly.

"Come with me," cried Captain Spicer, clapping his patron on the shoulder in a burst of excitement. "I'll stand to you, of course, lad! You'll want a witness. Gad!" exclaimed the amiable Captain, "we'll have Sir Jasper's liver on the spit before crow of cock!"