Compton MacKenzie

“ It would be most unbecoming."
"If all the world knew, 'twould, but then nobody don't know, and that's the best way for all true lovers."
"Nevertheless, Betty, I feel uneasy."
"'Tis only the stirring of your blood, my dear. Only to think," went on the confidante, "that last sweet Spring time you was building great cowslip balls in the green meadows, and now you are quite grown up with a bow of your own to arm you through the minivets and gawottes, so grand as may be."
"Yes, love makes one grow old, Betty. I've aged very much these weeks." ”

“ With these words the Great little Man descended from his pedestal, and was presently in affable conversation with a number of men and women of rank and fashion.
You will remember that when, it seems an age ago, we first saw Beau Ripple and the Exquisite Mob, we also met Mr. Vernon and Miss Phyllida Courteen. For my own part, I feel that the Pump Room on this morning lacked vitality for all its glitter and stir of elegant movement. I miss the swansdown muff and the blushing, eager face of Phyllida. I miss those little notes that dropped like feathers from the wings of Love. ”

“ I miss the ingenuous artifice and sweet stratagems of Phyllida and Betty and for all it would nearly break my heart to see her misery, I would fain be walking behind them away down in some budding Hampshire lane. They are still in a postchaise, however, and the musty odour is wringing her heart with an agony of regret. In what a world of memories will she live the summer through. The cuckoo will call in the green wood and the nightingale thrill the moonshine with her passionate song, but Phyllida will stare into the sun. ”

“ It was very pleasant to try on the peacock-blue riding hood that so became her. It was very pleasant to see the cheerful faces of the many wayfarers encountered by the chariot. The backs of the postillions glowed with scarlet, and a gay contrast they made to the flaming gorse of a wild open stretch of country. Every cottage that nestled back from the road with clipped yews to guard the gate seemed to Phyllida a desirable place to live and love in for ever. It was pleasant to watch the lambs in the meadows, and exciting indeed to count the still sparse primroses starring the hedgerows. ”

“ There was musick in the clap of horses' hoofs on the wet road. There was musick in the big horse-pistols tapping against the saddle-bows.
They were passing a great barn where a host of yokels were thrashing a stack that had lain too long, and a rare sight these were, knee-deep in the amber corn whence the rats fled ceaselessly.
"Shall we catch them, Tony?" asked Charles.
"I think we shall."
"But in time?" Charles dug his spurs in deep to cover the blush that was flaming over his cheeks.
"And will she turn back? Oh! Tony, Tony, she must, she shall, turn back." ”

“ If you love a young gentleman, make no secret of it, and let the whole world join in your happiness; but if it be necessary to love this young gentleman in Mazes and such clandestine spots, this young gentleman is not worth so much devotion. Who is he?"
"Mr. Amor, Sir," said Phyllida, feeling half inclined to cry.
"Amor? Amor? I don't know the family. Is it by his wish these meetings are kept secret? Yes! yes! I know 'tis very romantick and very rapturous, but, believe me, my dear Miss Courteen, it is not worth the cost. You must think of your reputation." ”

“ The amber liquid sparkled and bubbled and flowed over the many faceted goblet in cream and foam.
The Beau mounted once more upon his pedestal and drank to the pleasure, health, and beauty of the company, while Lord Vanity and my Lady Bunbutter quaffed an answering toast in deputy for the lords, ladies and gentlemen present. Salvoes of well-bred applause pattered round the room, and the Beau's triumph was hailed with acclamations.
And you, beautiful women and fine gentlemen, roses and carnations of an older century, nothing remains of you for us. Your very perfume is but a name. ”

“ Of love I am supposed to know nothing, save in that third person whose company is unwelcome and superfluous. Perhaps my devotion to the Odes has led me to see too many Lalages, too many Lyces. Perhaps I regard women too much as roses that bloom, scatter their sweets and die. In a word, perhaps I am unsympathetick."
"I don't think you are at all, sir," cried Phyllida, surprized by her own boldness.
"Thank you," said the Beau, with the merest hint of a tremour in his equable voice.
"But," he went on, "if I regard women as roses, I never seek to pluck them: most men do. ”

“ Death came suddenly like a clock that strikes in the night, and Sir George was afraid of the grey dawn stealing over the tree tops through the gaunt windows of Repington Hall. When the time came for him to face the vast uneasy realms of immortality, he would like to feel that somewhere on this small green earth, some hand would wave a sorrowful, a last farewell. He would cherish these two lovers; the maid would bring him and Charles together in friendship and charity. ”

“ The implication of a rapid advance is to be understood merely as relative to their usual rate of procedure.
In an instant all was confusion. Miss Courteen wrung her hands and behaved quite as wildly as a grand married lady on the verge of discovery in an ambiguous situation below stairs. Mr. Vernon flicked a number of invisible specks of dust from his purple sattin breeches as though he had been kneeling in devout protestation of honourable love for the past hour, while Betty ran in turn to each of the four alleys leading to their present position, and put a hand to an attentive ear. ”

“ And indeed, George, I think I have been a happy man. You have conjured up the ghost of Belladine to-night and Belladine was and is and will be miserable to the end of his days, but pray dismiss him, vex not his ghost, and take snuff with Horace Ripple of the Great House, Curtain Wells. We are both too old, George, to do anything now. We must depend on young Charles."
"And if he should fail?"
"We are both old men. We should, therefore, both be able to suffer another disillusion."
"I suppose that is true," said Sir George rather sadly. ”

“ Vernon is wondering what on earth will come of his affair with Miss Courteen, and speculating how much she will inherit, and whether matrimony is quite so expensive a joy as his friends make out. The thought of money writes an ugly twisted line across his high smooth forehead, and this line broadens into a hundred little tributary lines as he thinks of his debts. So he brings himself back to the obstacles of life in rather a gloomy frame of mind and faces the necessity of his toilet in such a depression of spirits that he selects a suit to match his mood. ”

“ Francis Vernon sat before his looking glass contemplatively combing his wig. His closely cropped curly hair accentuated the lines of a profile already inclined to sharpness, just as his red lips enhanced the surrounding paleness of his complexion. He combed his wig very much as a man strokes a cat. The caress half-felt loses itself in speculation, and just now Mr. Vernon was gazing at the wrought-iron balcony of the opposite house where Miss Phyllida Courteen, all swansdown and rosy cheeks, was plucking half a dozen snowdrops from a bough-pot. ”

“ The melody to which these marionettes were dancing possessed a strange quality. It was emotion in quintessence, without passion, without abandon. Whatever it had of definite character lay in the half bashful invitation to dance, as if some ghostly puppet master, pale and stately, were beckoning to his performers. As the opening bars of the minuet were repeated at the close only to die away in a poignant farewell, Phyllida felt for the first time, in the swoon of her last courtesy, that she was a doll whose gestures served to amuse a genteel but unearthly audience of monocled Gods. ”

“ What castles men build to the pipes of the morning!
The world was waking up. Outside the talk of hostlers grew so loud that the birds fled from the inn yard to the still deserted bowling green.
Soon he heard the jangle of pails, the swish of mops and from time to time the sound of a horse's hoof striking the cobbles with a clap. In the distance a post-horn endowed the air with silver tongues. Charles followed its course along the London road. He pictured the cumbrous vehicle swinging in its straps between the black February hedgerows. ”

“ But he was wise and, though Cupid had lent him his own wings, he would not play too many aerial pranks, soar too near the sun, fall and break his neck. It was indeed a form of abnegation that prevented him from showing Phyllida his own bad self. It was bitter to hear her murmur, with a white hand on his sleeve.
"I knew you were true, my true love, all the time, all the time."
Nothing tugs at the heart-strings of a man like a young maid's plighting of her troth. Nothing makes his brain reel like her first kiss freely given.
"Oh, Phyllida, Phyllida! I'm not fit for you."
"Foolish Amor." ”

“ Whatever there was of passion in her meadow-born soul fed itself on objective embraces. She was never a maid for a kissing-gate at long shadow time, but when she saw Phyllida's heart flutter with quick emotion before the approach of Mr. Vernon, a primitive phrenzy set her cheeks aglow and fired her eyes to a livelier blue. She adored her mistress with a precocious maternity but, paradoxically enough, without any of the mother's jealousy of a lover near to his possession. ”

“ Curtain Garden! Lads and lasses, ye'll grow old. Fit for maids is Curtain Garden." Thus having droned a warning to Olympus, he would resume his walk.
In two months the broad gravelled path which he guarded would be thronged by the Exquisite Mob, but at present his only audience on fine days was composed of Phyllida and Betty. On wet days, when not even they ventured out, he would sit in a little pagoda whence every few minutes he would pop out his head, and in the same wheezy monotone lament 'Rain! Rain! on the windowpane!' and retire as abruptly as a cuckoo that has told the hour. ”

“ It would have puzzled an onlooker to say precisely what effect was produced on the elderly gentleman's countenance by this deliberate inspection of Miss Phyllida Courteen, now melting in tears of apprehension and only barely restrained from hystericks by Mrs. Tabrum's plump hands in extensive motion.
When the iron-grey clouds of a chill December afternoon dissolve for a moment in the scud of a high gale and shed a ray of pallid sunlight on a spent blossom, we are almost glad to see the thin azure thus displayed as quickly veiled, and welcome the sullen twilight that succeeds. ”

“ What mean Ambitions coiled around every genteel fine hoop!
Yet Mr. Ripple was so suave, Mrs. Courteen and my Lady Bunbutter so full of compliments, Lieutenant Blewforth so jolly and Mr. Lovely so witty, old Lord Vanity so generous of snuff, my Lord Cinderton so distinguished—and as for Miss Phyllida Courteen, she was enchanted to a magical domain where only very slowly did Mr. Francis Vernon blacken a trinket sun with the menace of real passion. ”

“ Whether it was the note of misery in our hero's voice or his drawn face or merely a whim of a great man's naturally eccentrick mind that made the Beau beckon Charles to follow him upstairs to the tall white drawing-room, where even still the fire glowed dully, will never be known. Any way, beckon to him he did, and having set down the taper on the high mantelpiece, seated himself beside the fire and began meditatively to toast his embroidered morocco pumps. ”

“ The ousted yokels held each a soil-stained hand for their genteel rivals to mount from. The maids stood huddled in the flickering light of the open barn-door; Farmer Hogbin bellowed a last farewell which was thunderously echoed by the Lieutenant, as with flushed faces and half-regretful memories, the horsemen cantered towards Curtain Wells under a sailing moon.
Clare rode by Charles to hear the judgment of Paris upon his tatterdemalion Venus.
"I'd liefer for her sake that you were overseas next barley-harvest," said Charles shortly.
"Plague on the man, what a cold stream it is!" ”

“ There was no trace of a woman's hand in its arrangement, and yet one felt that the owner, through long seclusion from the other sex, had softened towards it with the years until, secure at last, he was able to admit a feminine cirrhus into the limpid and rarefied air of his remote celibacy.
Phyllida, as she watched the firelight ripple in orange wavelets across the surface of the blue and white Dutch tiles set on either side of the hob, wondered what the Beau meant by this sudden invitation. ”

“ The simple grace with which Phyllida seated herself held Vernon entranced. He could have sworn that the stone wings of the Cupid trembled faintly as if, animate and inanimate, the whole world stood ready to scale the empyrean. Blinded by an ecstasy of hope, the man forgot himself, discarded the mean ambitions that for so long had guided his actions, and conceived the idea of a fresher existence. Great moments, like great men, have a solitary life, and there was nothing in Phyllida to respond to the fire which he had waked from a pile of ashes. ”

“ Somebody asked her to step a minuet, yet while her body danced, while her feet kept tune to the twinkling rhythm, while her fan fluttered to mortal harmonies, her soul was away with Love—God knows the spot, but ’twas somewhere mighty near the top of this green world. Now she was rocking a wooden cradle while the wind in the wide black chimney crooned an echo to the old nursery song she was singing. Ah! sir or madam, when a young maiden starts to build her house of dreams, I think, if she be a wise maid, she builds the nursery first of all. ”

“ Everything and everybody appeared in a new perspective. Beau Ripple, seen by the firelight of the Travellers' Room, was no longer the exquisite despot of a world in miniature, the impersonal porcelain monarch, the rarest and most valuable piece in an universe of Bric-a-brac. He was in some way connected with the tragedy of his uncle's early life. The sovereign marionette of amber and tortoise-shell, of perfumes and pomades, whom Charles had known hitherto, was only an elegant exterior. Underneath the sattin, it seemed, there lived a man—one Belladine, of whose existence Fashion was ignorant. ”

“ Past farm-house and farm-yard, past villages and churches, and inns with waving signs, past ponds and geese, past many a tired woman trudging home from market and many a jovial carter; past sign-posts and cross-roads and milestones; past smithies with roaring fires and monstrous bellows, past lowing cows and crowing cocks, past journeymen tinkers and journeymen barbers, past a great dancing bear which, had Phyllida but known it, danced not a whit more foolishly for bumpkins than rose-pink Phyllida herself for the malicious eyes of the world of fashion. ”