there must have been a curious magic in the words, "my future wife," for no sooner had he pronounced them than lord verney became several inches taller, a distinct span broader and quite unreasonably older. in fact, from boyhood he had stepped to man's estate. he looked down protectingly at the little woman hanging on his arm. the seriousness of responsibility settled upon his brow.
"ah! verney," quoth mr. stafford, flicking a hot brow, as he dashed in out of the sunshine, powdered with white dust from his walk and still bubbling with laughter. "ah, verney, playing butterfly in the golden hours while other fellows toil in the sweat of their brow! jingo! lad, but you've lit on the very rose of the garden.—mistress kitty bellairs, i kiss your hand."
at this mistress kitty felt her future lord's arm press her fingers to his ribs, while he straightened his youthful back.
"mr. stafford," began he in solemn tones, "this lady——"
but she, knowing what was coming, interrupted ruthlessly.
"and pray, mr. stafford," quoth she, cocking her head at him with those birdlike airs and graces that were as natural to her as to any mincing dove—mistress kitty being of those that begin by making eyes in their nurses' arms, before they can speak, and end in a modish lace nightcap for the benefit of the doctor—"and whence may you come so late, and thus heated?"
"whence?" cried mr. stafford, and overcome by the humour of his recollections, roused the solemn echoes of the pump room by his jovial laugh. "ah, you may well ask! from the merriest meeting it has ever been my fate to attend. oh, the face of him in his chair, between his gout and his temper! and fire-eating jasper all for bullets; and old foulks' teeth ready to drop out of his head at the indecorousness of it all!—spicer, man, aha! hold me up.—oh, madam," cried mr. stafford, wiping tears of ecstasy from his eyes and leaning as unceremoniously against spicer as if the latter's lank figure were a pilaster specially intended for his support—"oh, madam, i could make you laugh had i the breath left for it."
"indeed," cried mistress kitty, plunging in again, as it became evident to her that lord verney, with the gentle obstinacy that was part of his character, was once more preparing to make his nuptial statement. "mr. stafford, please speak then, for in sooth it seems to me a vastly long time since i have laughed."
"gad! you actually make me curious," put in mr. stafford's prop.
"oh dear, oh dear!" sighed mr. stafford, in a fresh fit, "ha, ha! by the way, verney, weren't you also to have walked with the jealous husband this morning!—ah, by the same token, and you too, spicer? gad. i'm glad you didn't, for if either of you had put lead in him i'd have missed the best joke of the season. gad, i may say so. he, he, aha-ha, ho, ho!"
"mr. stafford," said my lord verney, as solemn as any owl, while mistress kitty, caught by the infection of the genial stafford's mirth, tittered upon his arm, "i have deeper reason than you think of to rejoice that the absurd misunderstanding was cleared up between sir jasper and myself. this lady and i——"
"oh dear, the joke, the joke!" cried mistress bellairs, with loud impatience, and stamped her little foot.
"oh, my fair bellairs," gasped mr. stafford, "had you but been there to share it with me!"
"this lady——" quoth lord verney.
"i wish indeed i had been!" cried she. and in very truth she did.
"mrs. bellairs," said the determined lover, "has consented to make me the happiest of men."
"eh?" cried mr. stafford, and stopped on the edge of another guffaw.
mistress kitty cast down her eyelids. she felt she looked demure and almost bashful, and she hated herself in this character.
mr. stafford was one of the thirty-seven lovers of whom the lady had spoken so confidently, and as such was far from realising the solemn meaning of lord verney's announcement.
"ah, madam," cried he reproachfully, "is't not enough to keep me for ever in hades, must you needs add to my torture by showing me another in paradise? but, my little verney," he went on, turning good-naturedly to his young rival, "it is but fair to warn you that you will be wise to pause before getting yourself measured for your halo: the paradise of this lady's favour is (alack, do i not know it?) of most precarious tenure."
"this lady, sir," said lord verney, with rigid lips, "has promised to be my wife."
it was fortunate that mr. stafford had a prop: under the shock he staggered. man of the world as he was, the most guileless astonishment was stamped on his countenance.
oh, how demure looked mistress kitty!
spicer, a trifle yellow, became effusive in congratulations which were but coldly received by his patron.
"ah, kitty," whispered mr. stafford in mistress bellairs' shell-like ear, "do you like them so tender-green? why, my dear, the lad's chin is as smooth as your own. what pleasantry is this?"
kitty scraped her little foot and hung her head. mistress kitty coy! and yon poor innocent with his air of proprietorship—'twas a most humorous spectacle!
"i'm sure, verney," cried mr. stafford, "i wish you joy, ha, ha! with all my heart! and you madam, he, he!—forgive me, friends—the thought of sir jasper's duel is still too much for me. ha, ha! support me, spicer."
"she'll marry him, she'll marry him," cried spicer with bilious vindictiveness, looking over his shoulder at the couple, as they moved away.
"marry him!—never she!" cried stafford. "kitty's no fool. why, man, the little demon wouldn't have me! she loves her liberty and her pleasures too well. did you not see? she could not look up for fear of showing the devilment in her eye. cheerily, cheerily, my gallant captain!" cried the spark, and struck the reedy shoulders that had buttressed him, in contemptuous good-natured valediction. "you need not yet cast about for a new greenhorn to subsist upon."
*****
mistress kitty, glancing up at her calf, found, something to her astonishment and further displeasure, a new expression in his eyes. ardour had been superseded by an unseasonable gravity.
"the creature is a complete menagerie!" she thought to herself, indignantly. "i vow he looks like nothing but an owl in the twilight!"
they wandered together from the pump room on to the abbey flags, and so, slowly, into the cool and shady orange grove; and in a sequestered spot they sat them down on a stone bench.
"when a man," said he, "has been, as i have, brought face to face, within the space of one short morning, with the great events of existence, death and love, how hollow and how unworthy do the mock joys and griefs of society appear to him!"
"oh la!" said she. "you alarm me. and when did you see death, my lord?"
"why," said he, with his innocent gravity, "had you not intervened, my dearest dear, between sir jasper and me, this morning, who knows what might have happened?"
"oh, that!" said she, and her lip curled.
"ay," said he, "where should i be now, kitty? the thought haunts me in the midst of my great happiness. had i killed sir jasper, could i have looked upon myself other than as a murderer?"
"oh, fie, fie," interpolated his mistress impatiently, "who ever thinks of such things in little matters of honour!"
in her heart she told herself that the young man showed a prodigious want of savoir-vivre. in all candour he proceeded to display a still greater lack of that convenient quality.
"on the other hand, had i fallen, and that indeed was the more likely contingency, it being my first affair of the kind, i tremble to think in what state my soul would have appeared before its maker." his voice quivered a moment.
"my lord verney," cried kitty, turning upon him a most distressed countenance, "you have no idea how you shock me!"
and indeed he had not.
he took her distress for the sweetest womanly sympathy, and was emboldened to further confidence.
"i blush to tell you," he said, "that since i came to this gay society of bath, my life has not been all my conscience could approve of. the pious practices, the earnest principles of life so sedulously inculcated in me by my dear mother, have been but too easily cast aside."
"oh dear!" cried kitty in accents of yet greater pain.
"when we are married, my dear love," pursued lord verney, quietly encircling his mistress's little waist with his arm as he spoke, but, absorbed as he was in his virtuous reflections, omitting to infuse any ardour into his embrace, "we shall not seek the brilliant world. we shall find all our happiness with each other, shall we not? oh, how welcome my dear mother will make you at verney hall! it has always been her dream that i should marry early and settle on the estate."
little shivers ran down kitty's spine. "is it your intention to live with your mother when you are married?" she faltered, and leaned weakly against the inert arm.
enthusiastically he cried that the best of mothers and he could never be parted long.
"oh, how you will love her!" he said, looking fondly at the kitty of his imagination.
"from your tenderest years she sedulously inculcated in you earnest principles and pious practices, did she not?" murmured the kitty of reality, with what was almost a moan.
"she did indeed," cried the youth.
mistress kitty closed her eyes and let her head droop upon his shoulder.
"i fear i am going to have the vapours," said she.
"'tis, maybe, the spring heats," said he, and made as if he would rise.
"maybe," said mistress kitty, becoming so limp all at once that he was forced to tighten his clasp. he glanced at her now in some alarm. she half opened bright eyes, and glimmered a languid little smile at him.
"at least," thought the widow, "if we must part (and part we must, my calf and i) we shall part on a sweet moment. what—in a bower, every scent, every secret bird and leaf and sunbeam of which calls on thought of love, and i by his side—he to prate of his mother! an at least he does not bleat of my beauty again, my name is not kitty!"
she sighed and closed her eyes. the delicate face lay but a span from his lips.
"i fear indeed you are faint," said he with solicitude. "my mother has a sovereign cordial against such weakness."
mistress bellairs sat up very energetically for a fainting lady.
"your mother..." she began with a flash of her eye, then checked herself abruptly. "adieu, verney," said she, and stretched out her hand to him.
"adieu!" he repeated, all bewilderment.
"ay," said she, "there chimes the abbey its silly old air. how long have i been with you, sir, alone? fie, fie, and must i not think of my reputation?"
"surely, as my future wife..." said he.
"why then the more reason," she said, cutting him short; "must i not show myself duly discreet? think of your lady mother! come, sir, take your leave."
a moment she was taunting; a moment all delicious smiles.
"i'll make him bleat!" she thought, and stamped her foot upon it.
"as far as your door?" said he.
"not a step," she vowed. "come, sir, adieu."
he took her hand; bent and kissed her sedately.
"i will," said he, "go write the news to my mother."
"oh go!" said she, and turned on her heel with a flounce and was out of his sight, round the corner of an ally, with a whisk and flutter of tempestuous petticoats, before his slow boy's wits had time to claim the moment for the next meeting.
there were actually tears in mistress kitty's eyes as she struck the gravel with her cane. she rubbed her cherry lips where his kiss had rested with a furious hand.
"'twas positively matrimonial," she cried within herself, with angry double-threaded reminiscence—"the calf! did ever woman spend a more ridiculous hour—and in heaven's name, what's to be done?"
