Poor little Charles was left standing alone in the big room. He waited a moment, but as the grey gentleman did not turn his head, he edged his way towards the great door. When he reached it, he looked round at his uncle. The latter was still staring out of the window. The child gave a puzzled sigh and with both hands succeeded in turning the handle. The clocks seemed to tick very loudly as he breathlessly closed the door and set out to descend the wide staircase. The canary-coloured gentlemen having vanished he could hold on to the balustrade with both hands without shame. As he crossed the green sunlit lawn, a blackbird flew into the shrubbery with a shrill note of alarm.
Then he was in the chariot with his father, and this time he was really fast asleep.
And now he was boy and man at once. The picture of the girl with roses became his mother as he had known her, pale and sad. Then it would change and become Miss Phyllida Courteen, strangely like his mother; and sometimes the Queen of Diamonds would be mopping and mowing in a frame of golden Georges.
At last these many dancing visions forsook his brain, and he slept a dreamless sleep, not waking until high noon of a wet and gusty day. When he reached the coffee-room, he found Mr. Francis Vernon perusing the latest edition of Mr. Hoyle, and as the weather was dirty, agreed to give Mr. Francis Vernon his revenge.
This favour was accorded in the handsomest manner possible and when, late in the afternoon, the young gentlemen all returned from hunting, Mr. Charles Lovely owed Mr. Francis Vernon rather more than he could very easily pay.
No doubt the latter's success is to be ascribed to his opportune purchase of the latest edition of Mr. Hoyle.
Chapter the Twelfth
WET DAYS
IF cards are the devil's playthings, wet days are certainly his select playtime; and all the days before the Chinese Masquerade were very wet indeed. The Exquisite Mob returned from the Pump Room remarkably depressed in spirit. The forenoons passed away in the coffee-houses and the shops, but in the afternoons when it was wont to exercise itself and air its modes the stuffy parlours of Curtain Wells became vastly tiresome.
The result was that all the young gentlemen played very hard and very deep and very late, and Mr. Charles Lovely hardest, deepest, and latest of all. The old gentlemen all found their gout teazed them more lamentably. Even Beau Ripple grew tired of reading the Epodes of Horace and the Letters of Tully to his grey Angora cat. The ladies played Quadrille and talked scandal, while some of them, I grieve to say, supplied a foundation for much of the gossip.
Candlelight intrigues flourished, and there were not a few tragedies in porcelain, when some Sir John Vulcan, returning too soon from his favourite coffee-house, caught my Lady Venus in too ardent converse with some young Ensign Mars. Very red grew the gallant Ensign—near as red as his coat, while Sir John blustered and swore so loud that he almost cracked the walls with his fox-hunting voice, and my lady Venus fluttered her fan to the pace of her dainty heart, tinkling out exquisite little lies as soulless as unreal, but quite as fascinating as some frail musical box. And the trio acted and declaimed their time-honoured parts to a keyhole audience of lady's maid and gentleman's gentleman.