Chapter Six.
“Ecstasy!”
”...From thy rose-red lips my name
Floweth; and then, as in a swoon,
With dinning sound my ears are rife,
My tremulous tongue faltereth,
I lose my colour, I lose my breath,
I drink the cup of a costly death,
Brimm’d with delirious draughts of warmest life!”
Some few days after Christmas, little Miss Pimpernell gave a small evening party for the especial delectation of those who had so meritoriously assisted in the decoration of the church.
Of course, it was not at all like the “barty” the celebrated Hans Breitman “giv’d” to his friends for the imbibition of “lager beer” ad libitum; but still, one may feel inclined to exclaim, in the exquisite broken words of that worthy, “Where am dat barty now?” For, time has worked its usual changes; and all of us have long since been divided, separated, scattered, and dispersed to the four winds of heaven, so to speak, to the severance of old ties, and all kindred associations.
I had not had the slightest inkling that the “little affair” was about to “come off” beforehand. I had met Miss Pimpernell out the very morning of the day on which it took place; yet—sly old lady that she was—she hardly gave me a hint of her social intent.
She certainly said that she had a little surprise in store for me; but when I pressed her to learn what that “something” was, she preserved a provoking reticence, declining to enlighten me any further. “No, Frank,” she said in her cheery way, “it is of no use your trying to coax me with your ‘dear Miss Pimpernell,’ or think to flatter me into divulging my news by false compliments paid to my shabby old bonnet! No, you shall hear it all in good time, so don’t be impatient. I won’t tell you another word now, my boy, there!” she added finally, trotting off on her parochial rounds and leaving me in suspense until the evening, to exercise my imagination regarding her contemplated “surprise.”
Then, however, I was let into the secret; and the party was all the more pleasurable from coming quite unexpectedly. I always like doing things on the spur of the moment, without premeditation. If you look out for anything long beforehand, it is apt to pall on the palate when it arrives within your reach. “Unlooked-for blessings” are generally twice as grateful as those which you are led to expect—so, at least, I have found them.
On my return home from a walk in the evening, I found a little note of invitation awaiting me, in which Miss Pimpernell requested me to come round to the vicarage precisely at eight, “dressed all in my best,” like the impassioned lover of “Sally in our Alley,” as she “expected a few friends.” She added in a postscript, underlined with one of her characteristic dashes, that Miss Clyde would be there, if that would be any further inducement for me.
Oh Miss Pimpernell, you machiavellian old lady! I would not have thought you could have practised such great dissimulation. Would Min’s presence be any further inducement to me! Wouldn’t it? Oh, dear no, certainly not!
In ten minutes’ time I was dressed en règle and at the vicarage.
It was quite a nice little party. Not one too many, and not a single discordant element. Old ladies and gentlemen seemed to have been rigidly tabooed, with the exception, naturally, of our host and hostess, the vicar and his sister; for Lady Dasher, owing to some fortunate conjuncture of circumstances, was unable to come: Miss Spight was busy at home, entertaining an elderly relative who had suddenly thrown herself on her hospitality; while Mr Mawley was at Oxford enjoying the season with sundry dogmatic Fellows of his own calibre. Minus these charmers, our gathering was pretty much what it had been down in the old school-room at the decorations. There were the Dasher girls, two young collegians from Cambridge—ex-pupils of the vicar—to entertain Bessie and Seraphine, Lizzie Dangler, Horner with his inseparable eye-glass and faultless toilet, Baby Blake for his entertainment—Miss Pimpernell was a wise caterer—Min, and myself.
Our hostess had so planned that we should all pair off, each lady having her cavalier, as she said, in the good old-fashioned way. She planned very ably, as we had one of the pleasantest evenings imaginable, without any stiffness or formality or being forced to make a toil of enjoyment, in the customary manner of most fashionable reunions: we were not “fashionable,” thank goodness. But we had “a good time” of it, as young America says, all the same.
What did we do?
Well, then, there were none of those abominable “round games,” which, unless they descend to vulgar romping, are the dreariest attempts at conviviality possible to conceive; none of those dreadful and much-to-be-avoided exactions and remissions of “forfeits,” that plunge everybody into embarrassing situations, and destroy, instead of creating, sociability; none of those stock—so-called—“drawing-room entertainments;” in fact, which always result in hopeless boredom. But, we had a little music and part-singing: a little lively, general chit-chat, in which all could join and each take a share: a few anecdotes well told—a complete success, to be brief, in making us all feel perfectly natural and at ease, for we were allowed to do and say exactly what we pleased in moderation.
Each of us was made to feel that his or her absence would have detracted from the happiness of the rest; and that is the true art of treating one’s guests—an art which both the vicar and Miss Pimpernell had apparently studied to perfection, although it really proceeded from their natural good-heartedness.
But, amongst our company I had almost forgotten to enumerate the name of Monsieur Parole d’Honneur, one of the nicest of French emigrés and a dear friend of the vicar’s; one known to most of us, also, for many years.
Perhaps you may chance to remember the noise that the great Barnard extradition case made in the newspapers—and, indeed, all over England too, for that matter—in the year 1859?
You don’t? Why, it nearly led to a war between France and Britain! Did you never hear how the fiercely-moustachioed Gallic colonels swaggered about the Boulogne cafés, loud in their denunciations of perfidious Albion, while smoking their endless cigarettes and sipping their poisonous absinthe; and how, but for the staunch fidelity of the ill-fated Emperor Napoleon—since deserted by his quondam ally—and the jaunty pluck of our then gallant premier, brave “old Pam”—whose loss we have had ample reason, oftentimes of late, to deplore—there might have been a sudden rupture of that “entente cordiale” between the two nations, which was cemented in the Crimea, and expired but a couple of years ago under the besieged walls of Paris?
Ah! that was a time when the whilom “Cupid’s” boast, “Civis Anglicanus sum,” was not an empty claim, as it is in these days of poverty-stricken “retrenchments,” and senile forfeitures of all that made England great and grand through five hundred years of history!
But the Barnard case—you must have heard of that, surely? It was just about the period when the wonderful volunteer fever commenced to rage with such intense earnestness over here; and when our “valuable auxiliary forces”—as amateur military critics in the House are so fond of repeating—were first instituted, in the fear of a second invasion of this sacred realm of liberty. We did not then place much reliance on the “streak of silver sea,” when in the direct face of danger, as a great “statesman” would have us do now that it no longer confronts us! Ha, at last you recollect, eh? I need not prompt your memory any further.
Bien. It was at this period that Monsieur Parole d’Honneur was advised in high official circles that it would be for the benefit of his health if he quitted French soil for awhile. He had been known to have once been intimately associated with Mazzini, and that gentleman was supposed to be implicated in the Orsini affair—when an attempt was made against Napoleon’s life in the Place d’Opera; so, as Parole d’Honneur had likewise been heard to speak rather unguardedly at a political club of patriots to which he belonged, the prefectorial mind “putting that and that together,” very reasonably presumed that our friend must have some connection with the bomb conspirators. The consequences were, that Parole d’Honneur was told to quit Paris instantly, and leave France itself within four-and-twenty hours,—although he was innocent of the slightest knowledge concerning the plot.
However, there was no help for it. Prefects are not in the habit of discussing their suspicions with suspected persons; and thus he had to bid adieu to his country in a hurry. He thereupon shook off its dust from his papier-maché-soled boots, coming to England, in the manner of his compatriots, to earn his livelihood as a teacher of languages.
Having the highest recommendations, he easily obtained as much employment as he wanted, and devoted himself to giving conversational lectures to a circle of collegiate establishments lying in different parts of London, which he visited bi-weekly, or so, in turn. Amongst these was one in our suburb; hence, first an acquaintance and then a lasting friendship sprung up between him and the vicar, both taking to each other immensely through their large-hearted philosophy; thus, too, I also got acquainted with one of the brightest, cheeriest, kindest Gauls of many that I have had the happiness of knowing.
At the time of which I write, Parole d’Honneur was a very happy emigré, despite his enforced exile in the land of fogs. Indeed, he was an exile no longer in the strict sense of the word, as he had received permission to go back to France whenever he pleased; a permission of which he had already availed himself, having paid a visit, in company with me, to Paris, the previous month, at the time when I had been so miserable and despondent about not meeting Min again. However, he had become so fond of England and things English, from his long enforced residence here, that he avowed his determination of living and dying amongst us—that is, unless his country and “the cause” should have need of his services.
On the evening of Miss Pimpernell’s little party, this patriotic gentleman, in the presence of ladies, whom he reverenced with a knight-errant’s devotion and homage, was the life of our circle. He carried an aroma of fun and light-heartedness about him that was simply contagious. He sang Beranger’s ditties with a verve and élan that brought back bonny Paris and student days to those of us who were acquainted with them. One moment he played exquisite bits from Mozart on his violin, to the accompaniment of the vicar’s violoncello, that were most entrancing; the next, scraped away at some provoking tarantella that almost set the whole of us dancing, in defiance of the proprieties generally observed at the vicarage.
We were asking each other riddles and conundrums. Monsieur Parole suddenly bethought him of one. “Ah, ha!” he said, “I heard one good reedel ze ozer day. A leetle mees at one of my academies told it me. Young ladies, why is ze old gentlemans, le diable, zat is—”
“O–oh! Monsieur Parole!” ejaculated Miss Pimpernell.
“Your pardon, Mees Peemple,” said Monsieur Parole—he never could give her the additional syllable to her name—“Your pardon, Mees Peemple; but we wiz call hims somesing else. Why is—ah, ha! I have got hims. Why is Lucifers like, when riding sur un souris, on a mouse, like the very same tings? You gives him up? Ah, ha! I t’ought you would never guess him!” he continued, on our professing our ignorance of the solution. “Because he is synonime!—vat you calls sin-on-a-mouse! Ha, ha, ha!” and he burst into a chuckle of his merry laughter.
This reminded Horner of one. “Bai-ey Je-ove!” he said, after a long pause. “I—ah, came akwass a vewy good one the othah day—ah. A blind beggah had a bwoth-ah, and the bwoth-ah died; now, what welation was—ah, the blind beggah to the—ah, dead beggah?”
“His sister, of course,” said Bessie Dasher, promptly.
“Weally,” said Horner, who usually put on most of his w and r ish airs when in the presence of ladies in evening costume: in the day he sometimes spoke more plainly. “Weally, how clevah you ah! I asshaw you, I didn’t gwess it for neawy a week—ah!”
“I can quite believe that!” said Seraphine, wickedly.
“Did you ever hear any of Praed’s charades?” I asked Min.
“No,” she said. “Do you recollect some?”
“Ah,” put in the vicar, “Praed was a clever fellow; and a true poet, too.”
“Indeed?” said Min. “I have heard his name, but I’ve never seen anything that he wrote. Do you recollect any of his charades, Mr Lorton?” she asked again, turning to me.
“I think I remember one,” I said, repeating those three spirited verses which are well-known, beginning “Come from my First, ay, come!”
“How beautiful the lines are!” said Min; “but it seems a pity that they should be thrown away on a mere charade.”
“That was exactly Praed’s way,” said the vicar. “I remember well, when I was a young man at college, what a stir his name made, and what great things were predicted of him, that he never lived to realise.”
“He died young, did he not?” asked Min.
“Yes,” said the vicar, “in his thirty-second year. If he had lived, he would probably have been one of the foremost men in England to-day.”
“‘Whom the gods love, die young,’” quoted I grandiloquently, like Mawley.
“True,” said the vicar. “There is more philosophy in that, than in most of those old Pagan beliefs: there is a glimmering of Christianity about the saying.”
“I wonder,” said Miss Pimpernell, “whether there is any connection between it and the text, ‘Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth’?”
“I can’t say, my dear,” said the vicar, “if you are right in this instance; but there is often a great similarity between different parts of the Bible and the utterances of profane writers.”
“Have you ever noticed, sir,” said Min, “how David says in the Psalms that ‘all the foundations of the world are out of course;’ while Shakespeare makes Hamlet observe that ‘the world is out of joint’?”
“Yes,” said the vicar, “and there are many other parallels that could be drawn from Shakespeare. He was frequently indebted to the inspired volume for his reflections; whether wittingly or unknowingly, I cannot say.”
“I think,” said I, “that Douglas Jerrold’s celebrated bon mot about Australia must be put down to the same source. He said, if you remember, speaking of the prolific nature of the soil of the new continent, ‘Tickle her with a hoe, and she will laugh with a harvest;’ and in the Psalms we have the verse, ‘The valleys also shall stand so thick with corn, that they shall laugh and sing.’”
“It is debatable,” said the vicar, “whether we should ascribe these striking resemblances to unconscious plagiarism or to similarity of thought.”
“We will have to agree with Solomon,” said I, “that there is nothing new under the sun!”
“True enough, Frank,” said the vicar. “From the explorations at Nineveh and at Pompeii, we have already learnt that the ancients well knew of what we in our pride long ascribed to modern inquiry and research.”
Miss Pimpernell here calling upon her brother and Monsieur Parole for some more of their concerted music, they sat down to a sonata of Beethoven. The remainder of us broke up into little coteries; Min and I having a long quiet talk, under cover of the deep tones of the vicar’s violoncello, in a corner by the piano, where we entrenched ourselves for some time undisturbed.
What did we say?
I’m sure I can’t tell you. Probably we talked about the weather and the crops; the prospects of the coming season; the expected new tenor at the opera, who was said to rival Orpheus and put Mario into the shade; or, peradventure, we discussed political economy, grumbling over the high price of meat and the general expenses of housekeeping! But, please put yourself in our place, and you will be able, I have no doubt, to imagine all we could possibly have found to chat about, much better, probably, than I can describe it. I will merely say for your guidance, without entering into details, that it was happiness, rapture to me, to be only beside her—will that enlighten you at all?
Later on, came supper.
After that we had some part-singing of good old glees, like “The Chough and Crow,” “Here in cool Grot,” and the ever-beautiful “Dawn of Day.” We then separated, after the pleasantest of evenings, when it was close on midnight:—Miss Pimpernell’s party had been emphatically a social success.
Of course I walked home with Min. I had been so much with her of late, that I somehow or other began to look upon her as my own property; and was jealous of the interference of anyone else. You should have seen how I glared at Horner when he suggested, good-naturedly enough, that Min should go round, by the way that the Dasher girls and the others went, under his escort! How overjoyed I was when she politely declined the offer, saying that, as her mamma was sitting up for her, she must hurry home by the shortest way!
She looked like a little fairy, tripping along beside me through the fresh-looking frozen snow, her dark dress and scarlet petticoat showing out in strong relief against the glittering white of the roadway. The moon was shining brightly, so that it was as light as day; and I could see her face distinctly as she looked up into mine every now and then to answer some remark. Her honest, lustrous, grey eyes sparkled with fun, while a little ripple of silvery laughter came occasionally from the rosebud-parted coral lips! We chatted merrily, exchanging notes touching the enjoyments of the evening.
We gradually approached her door. I was telling her that, instead of mere days, I seemed to have known her for years and could not affect to treat her as a stranger.
She said that she looked upon me almost as an old friend already.
I asked her if she would let me abandon the formal appellation of “Miss Clyde,” and call her “Min?”
She said, “Yes.”
I asked her then, ere the door opened, on wishing her “good-bye,” with a lingering hand-clasp, whether she would not call me by my Christian name, too?
She gently whispered, “Frank”—so softly, so faintly, that the night-wind, sighing by, could not catch the accents and bear the sound to alien ears; but I heard it, and my heart throbbed in a delirious tempest of happiness; I lost my senses almost: my head swam in a whirlwind of tumultuous joy: I was intoxicated with ecstasy!
“Good-night, Frank!” I heard her dear, sweet voice whispering, like strains of music in my heart, as I went homewards. I seemed to feel her warm violet breath still on my cheek. I could fancy I yet gazed into the star-depths of her soul-speaking, deep, grey eyes.
“Good-night, Frank!” The words sang in my ears all night, and I slept in fairyland.