WE will, if you please, take for granted the persuasions used by Mr. Vernon to induce Phyllida to continue upon her headlong course. He rode beside her on this second stage of her adventure, and I shall have something to say of that drive together through the darkness of wind and rain. We will take for granted Sir George Repington's indignation, expressed with many a z——ds and many a pinch of snuff, and since there are a number of fine folk abroad on this most atrocious evening, it is only just that we should pay them the compliment of relating their horrid adventures.
You have not forgotten, I hope, the sensation created in Curtain Wells by the sight of Beau Ripple and Mrs. Courteen ensconced in the former's vivid yellow postchaise, driven by the former's diminutive groom Pridgeon. You made one of a host of conjectures, or rather you would have done had you not been in the heart of the secret, thanks to the honest, straightforward way in which I have treated you throughout this story.
They went off with 'Tally-ho' and 'Whoo-whoop, gone away!' They rattled over the cobbles and clattered over the kidney stones and jolted prodigiously over a kerb that protruded too far into the road. They bumped over a log of wood dropped by old Mother Hubbard in her frantick endeavours to gain the protection of the pavement, they ground the face of little Miss Muffet's favourite wax doll to minutest grains of powder. They experienced a second's muffled progress as with two wheels they rolled over little Tommy Trout's Easter coat and with the others made a broad smear over little Sammy Green's satchel and cracked his new Horn Book into a thousand splinters.
As for Mr. Ripple, every time he rose to a wayside obstacle and fell with a genteel plump into Mrs. Courteen's wide lap, he had a sensation of the acutest disgust; with disgust, too, he viewed his cushions of fawn silk and ivory sattin bedabbled with the widow's copious tears—these cushions made salt with a mortal widow's grief that were never intended to be spoiled with anything less ethereal than the glittering milk of the Queen of Heaven.
Extreme dizziness overtook the Great little Man when, in accents hoarse with hysterical sorrow, the wretched woman by his side begged the loan of his handkerchief. Then, indeed, he nearly called to Pridgeon to check their mad course, turn the horses' heads stablewards, brooding for a sensuous second upon the delights of a warm meditative bath, made sweeter with Citron Essence.
Poor Mr. Ripple! As the mile-stones fled past and the chilly March twilight crept over the dusky fallows and peered above the black hedgerows, he thought with unutterable pangs of the cheerful and comfortable town of Curtain Wells. His china shepherds and shepherdesses called to him over the bleak country, and in the distance like elfin bells he heard the reproachful tinkle of his elegant lustres.
At the turnpike Mr. Ripple asked the keeper whether a post-chariot had lately come under his jurisdiction.
"Dick who?" inquired the janitor.
"Have you seen a post-chariot?" said Mr. Ripple, petulantly.
"No, I ain't. Have you seen two bullocks as 'ave lost, stolen and strayed theyselves hereabouts—the red 'un with a——"