CHAPTER III
Men of pleasure, and of roguery to boot, were not, in King Charles’s time, much concerned as a rule over the logical consequences of their pranks. They took the day improvidently, like the grasshopper—“nicked the glad moments as they passed”—and gave little thought to the reckonings of the morrow. The “unities,” in any comedy they enacted, were of less moment to them than the general spirit of frolic, and so long as the situations afforded entertainment, they bestowed small thought on the dénouement. In the making or the marring of an intrigue the fun was in the process, and they seldom looked beyond to count the costs. So, when Hamilton conceived his plot, he had not, one must understand, foreseen any definite conclusion for it. It was enough that what he was proposing to himself served the immediate purpose of his amiable villainy.
As to that, his business was to make absolute the estrangement between these two; whence his crafty counsel to the Earl, who had not failed to rise to that insidious bait. He knew very well that, in spite of all that had happened, any genuinely contrite advances on the husband’s part would be sure to be met halfway by the wife, who was really a reasonable and forgiving little creature; wherefore it was necessary for him to convince her, timely and by ocular demonstration, of the vanity of any lingering hopes she might be entertaining of remorse and repentance on the part of a delinquent spouse. It was never to be supposed for a moment that she would answer to that test of jealousy in the manner he had professed to predict; it would be certain, on the contrary, to alienate the last of her consideration from one who could so wantonly and callously abuse it. She would turn from the heartless creature in a final disgust—to seek, according to all the rules of intrigue, consolation of the nearest sympathy; whereon it would remain only for him, her cousin and confidant, to reap the fruits of the emotional situation he had so cunningly engineered.
That was his hope and belief; but his plan yet lacked completeness. The deception he had contrived was but half a deception so long as it missed its counterpart. How to provide that must be his next consideration.
As he pondered, he heard a light step behind him, and turned to see the lady herself. She had come in very softly, and now stood before him, a rather piteous expression on her face. Her right arm, ostensibly the maltreated one, rested in a sling—black, that there might be no mistake about it—and, as long as she remembered, she winced when it was touched.
“Cousin,” she said, “I am very unhappy. What have I done to be so abused?”
“I’ faith, I know not,” said he, smiling; “unless it was you spoke before his face of a kissing in which he had no share.”
“I spoke but in play. I am an honest wife.”
“Don’t cry your goods too loud, Kate, or men may question them. The soundest wares need the least recommendation.”
“I am, I say; and if I were not, how should it affect him that hates me so?”
“Nay, you go too far.”
“Indeed, he said as much—that I was distasteful to him.”
“Did he say that?”
She set her teeth.
“And shall unsay it; or I will never speak word to him again?”
“So? I’m sorry, on my word, cousin.”
“Did you not quarrel with him?”
“For what he did to you?”
“Yes. You could not know what he’d said.”
“We had words, I confess.”
“About what? Is he jealous of you?”
“What if he were, Kate?”
She clenched her little left fist in wrathful glee.
“Is he? I could love to believe it.”
“Why?” He looked at her eagerly.
“To make him suffer for me what I’ve suffered for him.”
“Jealousy?”
“He would not hate me then.”
The face of the arch-plotter fell.
“I see you love him through all,” he said sourly.
“Why should I not love him?” she answered. “He is my husband.”
Hamilton pulled himself together. “This faith,” he thought, with an acid thrill, “is worth converting.”
“Why indeed?” said he. “Well, I don’t know if he’s jealous of me or not; but if that’s your recipe for curing him, we two might make a plausible conspiracy of it. Shall we rehearse the business now, Kate?”
He put a persuasive hand on her arm. She bethought herself, and squeaked out.
“You hurt me, cousin”—and she backed a little. “A play like ours is only make-believe.”
“But sure,” said he, “the best actors are those who, even in rehearsal, try to realize their parts to the life.”
He approached her again, offering to put his arm about her, and at that she, forgetting her injury, whipped her little fist out of its sling, and delivered him a sound box of the ear with it.
“There!” she said.
“Emphatically there,” he answered, holding his palm to the suffering auricle. “You cat!”
She bridled like one, her eyes glittering. He pointed a derisive finger at the dangling sling.
“Hadn’t you better put off that pretence?”
“O!” she said, and thrust her hand again into the loop.
“Now,” said he, “you may find another instrument for your purpose. I’m done with you.”
Her brow puckered, and her lip went down.
“You’re never going to abandon me in my trouble?” she said.
She looked so bewitching so forlorn, his heart could not help softening to her.
“If I do not,” he said, “it must be on softer terms than yet.”
“Was my hand so hard?” she pleaded penitently.
“’Tis for the lips, not the ear to decide,” said he. “Give it me, if you would hear kinder news of it.”
She hung back a little, then reluctantly acquiesced. He mouthed the flushed palm, till she snatched it away.
“Be good, please,” she said.
“It blushes for its naughty deed,” he declared. “But it is forgiven.”
“Now,” she said, “will you not be serious and give me good advice?”
“That is not always palatable, you know.”
“It is the way with healing drugs.”
“Ah! If it might only heal!”
He sighed, and shook his head, with a look of commiseration.
“What do you mean?” she asked, alarmed—“that there is no cure possible?”
“I’m sorry for you, in truth I am,” he said despondently, “if you still love him as you admit, and I wish I could think that your policy of silence, or your policy of jealousy, or your policy of anything in the world would bring Philip Stanhope to his senses. But, alack, my dear! I fear ’tis all thrown away upon him, and that his inconstancy is irreclaimable. Why, at this very moment, while you are calculating a means to his reformation, he is, to my knowledge, scheming to have to his house here a country fancy of his, one Molly Davis, whom he calls his cousin.”
She heard and stiffened.
“A country fancy!”
“O! I breathe no wrong of her,” he said; “and she may be his cousin—left-handed—for all I know. A sprightly wench, at least, that somehow met and tickled his humour; and he’ll have her to stay with him on that plea of kinship. But it’s for you to question him, if you will.”
“I!” The white scorn of her! the lifted lip, and wrinkle in the little nose! “Did you not hear me say I had sworn never to speak to him again?”
“Conditionally, that was.”
“No longer. Never, and never, and never. In this house! Before my very face. O, it cannot be true!”
“Well, perhaps he only jested.”
She moved, and, forgetting her sling again, put a fierce young hand on his sleeve. “You called her his fancy.”
“A man may fancy in a woman more or less than she desires. It may be her wit, when she’d give the world it were her face.”
“Is she witty, then?”
“No doubt he thinks so.”
“And ugly?”
“Betwixt and between.”
“You have seen her?”
“More or less.”
“I only asked of her face.”
“It was a bad light. She lies at an inn in the town called ‘The Mischief.’”
“She lies well. Well, thank you, cousin.”
Her features relaxed in a wonderful way. One might have thought her suddenly convinced and at ease. With a sigh that seemed to dissipate all her scruples, she chassé’d a retreating step or two, and twirled, and dropped a little mocking curtsey to the gentleman.
“I must go now,” she said. “You have been very entertaining, Signor George, and—and there is no cure for blindness like——”
“Like what?”
“Like seeing, you know.”
His brows went up, perplexed. “Have I been so whimsical?”
“Infinitely, I assure you—the drollest, most diverting cousin—tra-la-la!”
“But sympathetic, I hope, Kate?”
“O, believe me, that isn’t the word for it—tra-la-la!”
“You know you can always depend upon me for help and advice?”
“O, most disinterestedly!”
His jaw seemed to stick as he opened it to answer. She laughed, as she turned her back on him.
“Ah!” he breathed out. “I see you’ll make it up with Philip yet.”
With a stamp of her foot, she flared round on him in a final spasm of anger.
“You dare to say so! I tell you, once and for all, that from this moment it is eternal silence between us.”
He watched her, from under lowered lids, and with a furtive smile on his lips, sweep from the room, then twitched up his shoulders to a noiseless laugh. To make certain of her fixed resolution—that was why he had provoked her to that last retort. Now at length it should be safe for him to act. If only that dubious manner of hers had left him with more conviction as to his own ultimate profit in the matter! But like enough it had been mere coquetry.
He left Whitehall shortly, and made his way to “The Mischief” Inn, where he found Mrs. Davis bored to death over her confinement to her room, and in a very fractious mood.
“Have you come to take me away?” she said. “You called yourself my friend.”
“Why, so I am,” he answered. “What have I done to disprove it?”
“You’ve done nothing, sure; and that’s what.”
“Didn’t I pay your reckoning?”
“O! it’s true you opened the trap door; but you must go and tie me by the tail first.”
He laughed.
“’Twas to keep my country mouse from the gib-cats. No reflection on her.”
“So to keep her from the cats you set a dog on her. A nice one I owe you for that beast of a landlord.”
“Well, he’s called off, and here am I to redeem my word. Will you come with me?”
“Where to?”
“To the tailor and the haberdasher first of all. Will that suit you?”
“Very well—if another pays.”
“So? That’s settled, then. We must have you dressed to the part.”
“What part?” She affected, perhaps felt, a passing perturbation, but it served for no more than to add a thrill to her voice. And then, suddenly, her eyes brightened. “Have you got me a London engagement, George?” she said—“perhaps in the King’s theatre!”—and she clasped her hands rapturously.
“Why,” said he, “an engagement, true enough; but ’tis on the human stage.”
Her lip fell dolefully.
“O, curse that!”
“Mrs. Moll,” he said, “I shall be obliged if you will study to express your feelings less epigrammatically.”
“What’s that?” she said.
“Why, in your case, ’tis another word for cursing.”
“I only know of one other,” said she; “but I’ll damn it with all my heart, if that likes you better.”
“I like neither one nor t’other: ’tis to turn to ‘bitter-sweets’ those cherry-seeming lips of yours, and make poison of their nectar.”
She was sitting at the table, her elbows propped on it, her chin on her fists, and, so disposed, she put out her tongue at him.
“Gingumbobs!” she said; and that was all.
“And, in short,” said he, rising—for he too was seated—“I think I’ll say good day to you.”
Sobered at once, she jumped to her feet, and intercepted him. “What have I said, sure? Don’t never mind a silly wench. I’ll do what you want of me—there!”
He stood arrested, but as if unwillingly.
“I doubt your capacity, child; or your art to curb your tongue. A fig for that when Moll is Moll; but once she shapes herself to my designs, good speech must go with good looks.”
She seemed as if she would cry.
“George, I’ll curb it. I did but jest with you. Haven’t I learned my speaking parts, and said them to the letter, too, without one extra oath?” She was stroking his arms up and down; her fingers wandered to his hands, and gave themselves softly to that refuge; her lifted eyes were full of azure pain. “Tell me what you desire of me,” she said with pretty wooing.
“Why, discretion first and last,” he answered. “Have you got it?”
“Haven’t I! Why, look how particular I can be in the choice of my friends.”
“You’ll have to play a double part.”
“Twice tenpence is two and sixpence, George. It ought to pay me.”
“It ought and shall, if you’re clever. Help me to bring about a thing I much desire, and your fortunes, as I promised, shall be made my care.”
He questioned the young uplifted face. Her hands were still held in his.
“Was the thing born a girl?” she said. He laughed, but did not answer, and she seemed to muse, her lids lowered. “What a pretty gentleman you are, George!” she said absently, by and by. “I never guessed at first, when you came that unhandsome off the road, what fine clothes could make of you. Why are you going to take me to the haberdasher’s?”
“To prink you out for great company, child.”
She looked up breathlessly.
“Not the King’s!”
“All in good time,” he said—“if you please me.”
“Well,” she said, looking down again, “I’ll do my best—saving my honour. Will that please you?”
“Faith,” says the gentleman coolly, “if you save it at the expense of another’s.”
She drew back a little.
“Not a woman’s?”
“Never fear, Mrs. Moll. ’Tis your pretty rogue’s face and your ready impudence I wish for a bait, and they’d catch no woman, believe me. Come, are you prepared to engage them in my service?”
She primmed her lips, holding up a finger.
“Discretion,” she said. “I’ll answer when I’m told.”
He nodded, and, leading her apart from betraying keyholes, seated himself and pulled her to a chair beside him.
“Now,” said he, “give me your little lovely ear, while I whisper in it.”
She sat at attention like a mouse, while he spoke his low-voiced scheme to her. Mischief, intelligence, secret laughter waited on her lips and eyes as she leaned to listen, sometimes shaking her curls, sometimes whispering the softest little “yes” or “no.” And when at last it was all said, she jumped to her feet with a laugh that was like glass bells, and clapped her hands merrily, while her companion sat, one arm akimbo, regarding her with a pleasant waiting expression.
“Well,” he said; “you’ll do it?”
She strutted, assuming the grand air, and swept a curtsey.
“I am my lord Chesterfield’s most obliged,” she said throatily.
Hamilton rose with a grin.
“You will, I can see,” said he. “It’s really simple if you will only bear in mind this main assurance—they are not on speaking terms, and each will think the other has invited you.”