Betty stood up, while a ritual, sacred to the childhood of Phyllida, was solemnly enacted. In a monotonous whispered chaunt, Betty promised:
| "I will not tell at primrose tide, |
| At cherry tide I'll silent be, |
| At barley harvest I'll be dumb |
| Till Christmas come and set me free." |
Phyllida was satisfied that her indiscreet confidence was safely locked up in Betty's bosom, capacious, homely, sweet-savoured as an apple-closet.
You have seen the confidante in action. Is it not well that we have banished her from society? No longer may she enter stark mad in white muslin, as the play directs. We have put her away in an old chest with hoops and tie-wigs and gibbets and pirates and Newgate ordinaries and rotten boroughs and watchet ribbands. No longer does she play asterisk to a heroine, because nowadays the adventures of our heroines are entirely introspective. But, as upon all time-honoured institutions, let us drop a tear for the confidante; she has helped a thousand perplexed authors to unfold their simple dramas, she has helped many a scene-shifter to leisure.
Mr. Sheridan could laugh at Mr. Cumberland through this artful, artless medium, but he too had his Lucy. Mr. Smollett depended upon Miss Williams (a lady of the loosest character) in order to help his Narcissa to reveal herself and you, Mr. Goldsmith whose name, like immortal Madame Blaize, is 'bedizened and brocaded,' you had your dearest Neville.
Yet, after all, however much we may regret them, confidantes were very bad for heroines. They would encourage them in all that was most reprehensible. Here you see, is our own confidante encouraging her mistress to play with Love's torch and for all you or she know, get badly scorched by the purple flame. Such temerity is very well for country wenches to whom a green gown is a proper delight for May morning. Betty, with her memories of many barley breaks, junketings and Hallowe'en festivals, where ripe lips are as common as cherries at midsummer, was not the perfect monitor for swansdown misses brought up under Miss Prudence Prim's long rattan, taught to sit up straight and put into corsets almost as soon as they were out of robe-coats. In fact she was a confidante, a match-maker, to whom a wedding-ring was a Post Hoc horse-collar, through which to grin at the censorious world.
After all, where's the ultimate difference between sweet sensibility a hundred and fifty years ago and sweet sensibility today? We should consider it démodé for the latter to gossip with her maid. Now every schoolboy and schoolgirl knows how to spell psychology, and has been awarded a sub-conscious self to enliven the lonely hours. And this sub-conscious self, what is it, under analysis? Why, nothing more than the old confidante in ghostly guise with as long a tongue and as rich a store of bad advice.
So now, having successfully, as I hope, occupied your attention while sweet sensibility gets into bed, let us snuff the candles and leave the room to Phyllida and wavering firelight.
Chapter the Nineteenth
BLACKHART FARM WITH A COCK-FIGHT
ABOUT ten miles from Curtain Wells on the Bristol road stood a ruined cottage. With thatch discoloured, torn by gales and sparrows, and with windows made crooked by internal decay, its expression was grotesque and unpleasant. A tangled bed of rotten nettles filled the space before it, and all the vegetation beside was rank and desolate. This cottage served as fitting lodge to a sinister bye-way covered with weeds and almost overhung in summer by hedges dark with masses of black bryony, but in winter and spring sufficiently open to admit the cold grey sky overhead, and the chill Easterly rain, which on the morning after the Chinese Masquerade fell with dreary persistence.