“Done,” said Drake, and there was general laughter.
The gipsy still held Glory's hand, and looking up at Drake out of the corner of her eyes, she said: “I won't tell you what colour he is, pretty lady, but he is young and tall, and, though he is a gorgio, he is the kind a Romany girl would die for. Much trouble you'll have with him, and because of his foolishness and your own unkindness you'll put seven score miles between you. You like to live your life, lady, and as men drown their sorrows in drink, so do you drown yours in pleasure. But it will all come right at last, lady, and those who envy and hate you now will kiss the ground you walk on.”
“Glo,” said Betty, “I'm surprised at ye, dearest, listenin' to such clipperty clapper.”
Glory did not recover her composure after this incident until they came near the Downs. Meantime the grooms had blown their horns at many villages hidden in the verdure of charming hollows, and the coaches had overtaken the people who had left London earlier in the day to make the journey afoot. Boy tramps, looking tired already—“Wish ye luck, gentlemen”; fat sailors and mutilated colliers playing organs—'Twas in Trafalgar Bay, and Come Whoam to thee Childer and Me; tatterdemalions selling the C'rect Card-“on'y fourpence, and I've slep' out on the Downs last night, s'elp me”—and all the ragged army of the maimed and the miserable who hang on the edge of a carnival.
Among this wreckage, as they skimmed over it on the coach, there was one figure more grotesque than the rest, a Polish Jew in his long kaftan and his worn Sabbath hat, going along alone, triddle-traddle, in his slippers without heels. Lord Robert was at the moment teasing Betty into a pet by christening her “The Elephant,” in allusion to her stoutness. But somebody called his attention to the Jew, and he screwed his glass to his eye and cried, “Father Storm, by Jove!”
The nickname was taken up by other people on the coach, and also by people on other coaches, and “Father Storm!” was thrown at the poor scarecrow as a missile from twenty quarters at once. Glory's colour was rising to her ears, and Drake was humming a tune to cover her confusion. But Betty was asking, “Who was Father Storm, if you please?” and Lord Robert was saying, “Bless my stars, this is something new, don't you know! Here's somebody who doesn't know Father Storm! Father Storm, my dear Elephant, is the prophet, the modern Jonah, who predicts that Nineveh—that is to say, London—is to be destroyed this very day!”
“He must be balmy!” said Betty, and the lady in blue went into fits of laughter.
“Yes,” said Lord Robert, “and all because wicked men like ourselves insist on enjoying ourselves on a day like this with pretty people like you.”
“Well, he is a cough-drop!” said Betty. The lady in blue asked what was “balmy” and a “cough-drop,” and Lord Robert said:
“Betty means that the good Father is crazy—silly—stupid—cracked in the head in short——”