Fortune's My Foe. John Bloundelle-Burton
fee of half-a-crown was distributed to guard and coachman, the landlady nodded to (she staring somewhat amazed at Bufton's finery all the time, and more particularly at his chin, which, she told her gossips later, gave her "a mort o' fear"), and the visitor entered the low-roofed passage. Then, as he did so, he felt his sleeve pulled gently by a woman standing in the doorway, who, on having attracted his attention, curtsied two or three times.
"Ha!" he said, glancing at her and noticing that, though plainly but comfortably dressed, she had a strangely worn and seamed face, such as those who have led an existence much exposed to the elements often possess. "Ha! It should be the good woman Mr. Granger told me of. Mrs. – Mrs. – ?"
"Pottle, your worship's honour. Miss Ariadne's nurse from the first."
"Ay, Mrs. Pottle. Well, you would speak with me? You have some news?"
"If it pleases your honour. Will your honour step this way?"
It was indeed Mrs. Pottle, one of those women who in past days had assisted at Ariadne's birth. Yet with now but little of the comeliness left for which she had once been distinguished, the rumbullion, or its substitutes in England, usquebaugh and gin, having done their work. Time also had made her grey, and in some places bald. Otherwise, she was not much changed. As for her whilom companion in the Ariadne, she was gone. She lay now within the common grave at Gibraltar.
"I shall see her to-night?" Beau Bufton asked, somewhat impatiently-eagerly-as he stepped into a side room after her. "She will be there?"
"In truth she will, the pretty thing," the woman answered, roving an eye, and that a somewhat watery one, on him, "in very truth. At eight, in the lime-tree avenue. Your worship can find it?"
"Doubtless. I may therefore rely on seeing her?"
"It is to tell you so that I'm here. Oh! sir, you will be good to her. She loves you fondly."
"Tush! What do I seek her for except to be kind?" Then he said, "Will she consent, think you, to what I desire-to-to-a speedy marriage?"
"She loves you," Mrs. Pottle replied, with a gleam in her eye, "while, as for the marriage-well! young, tender though she is, and full of a maiden's fears, she longs for it."
"She shall be gratified," Beau Bufton said, smirking and pulling at his chin so that Mrs. Pottle stared at him, wondering in her own mind if he were trying to pull it off. "I do avow she shall as soon as may be. I will go seek your parson here-"
"Not here," Mrs. Pottle said, laying on his arm a finger, which he noticed had lost the top joint-it had, in truth, been shot off by a spent bullet in an attack made by the Ariadne and Kingston on five Spanish galleys, the shot coming through the scuttle of a cabin in which she was calmly cooking-"not here. You must do that in London town. She is a maiden averse to talk and gossip. She would not suffer-"
"I will do it wher'er she pleases, so that she is mine. Now go, good woman, and tell her I shall be there. I must make a meal first and also remove the dust from off my clothes. Go now."
"There was a promise," Mrs. Pottle said, with an appearance of hesitation, of modesty, which sat strangely on her rough face. "The gentleman, your friend, he gave a promise of reward-"
"Curse me!" replied the Beau; "you waiting-women, you go-betweens, are all alike. Damme! I know there was a promise of five hundred guineas. But-when we leave the church-when all is over. Do you think I have such a sum on me now?"
"Not now, dear gentleman. Oh! no. Not now. But a little earnest. A little-"
"How much?" asked Bufton, looking at her and recognising that here was a cormorant who would do nothing for nothing. "How much?"
"A little. Just a little. A trifle. Ten guineas will not hurt a pretty man like you."
"Five," said Bufton. "Five, now. Five." Then, seeing a strange look in Mrs. Pottle's eyes, which his wonderful knowledge of human nature, whereon he so congratulated himself, did not assist him in fathoming, he said, "Well, ten, then. Here," and slowly drawing forth some loose guineas from his waistcoat, he put them in her open palm.
"A noble gentleman," said Mrs. Pottle, pocketing them in an instant, "a real gentleman. Now, sir, I go. To-night," she repeated, "in the lime avenue, at eight," and so withdrew.
Yet, doubtless because of the rough life she had led for years, her gratitude evaporated swiftly the moment she was outside the door of the room and had closed it on him; while her face assumed an expression strangely unlike that which it had worn when she thanked him for his gift.
"Curse you," she muttered to herself. "Curse you. May joy go with you," and she shook her fist and mumbled to herself.
Two hours later Beau Bufton had entered the long lime avenue, and was making his way up to where the lady of his heart was to await him. He had added somewhat to his appearance, smart as it had been before-had combed and dusted his peruke, perfumed his hands and lace, and supplemented his other adornments with a new sword, which he had brought down from London wrapped in silver paper. Now, it lay against his thigh, its ivory handle decorated with a gold sword knot, and once, as the Beau came to a portion of the avenue where it was almost dark, so thickly did the trees interlace overhead, he told himself he had done wisely to bring it. Ariadne might have other admirers-country clowns, 'tis true, yet fellows, who, nevertheless, were capable of feeling pangs of jealousy at the sight of so aristocratic a wooer as he. And-and-he thought they might attack him with clubs, or even with plebeian fists-when-well-damme! – he would run them through. A little blood-letting-the reputation of being a swordsman-would not hurt him. To win an heiress after having slain a yokel lover would make him-well! perhaps even make him the more sought after. Therefore he went on, wishing, however, that his Ariadne had not selected a part of the avenue so distant from the main road-and so near to her house; and then-then-he knew she was there and had kept the appointed meeting.
A girl came towards him from beneath the trees, shyly, almost hesitatingly; while over her fair hair she had drawn a riding-hood. And a moment later Beau Bufton had taken her hand and was impressing kisses on it, and muttering phrases such as were in use in the highest London circles, and, consequently, must be irresistible to this provincial heiress.
"I am enraptured," he murmured now, "that one so fair should deign to receive her admirer. Ah, madam, if you but knew how my thoughts have dwelt on you since you let me claim you at the Wells-"
"And stole my fan, bad man. Ah, sir, you should not have trifled thus-"
"Love, madam, knows no law. But-but-fair Ariadne-almost had I said fair and chaste Diana-may I not gaze once more in rapture on those lovely orbs, those features ever present in my memory? Will you not remove your hood?"
With no more than a brief assumption of coyness, the fair one did as her gallant desired, showing a mass of light hair beneath the hood, and, beneath that, a pair of bright eyes which glistened in the evening dusk. She had too a fresh red-and-white complexion, the whole being a very satisfactory proof of the benefits of country air and living, as opposed to the effects of what an earlier poet had rapturously spoken of as "the stench of the London flambeaux."
"Ah! I protest," Beau Bufton exclaimed now as the maiden yielded to his request, and displayed her loveliness, "once more I tremble at the sight of those charms which won my heart at Tunbridge. Ariadne, you know by my letters all that I desire-all I wish. To call you mine. To be your husband. You cannot doubt my love."
"So soon?" she said. "Oh, fie! Not yet-not for years, I vow. I am too young."
"Young! Is the heart ever too young for love? And, Ariadne, dearest one, now is the time. I protest I cannot wait."
"But there are my guardians, the lawyers. What will they say?"
"What can they say? I am of ancient family, sweet one, and allied to some of the most distinguished houses in the land. They can make no dissent."
"If 'tis to be done," the girl said, "it must not be here. Oh! I could not. Instead, in London. We go to London two weeks hence. Yet-yet-I fear," and she gazed up into his face with a look of alarm that fascinated him. For now he knew that the hundred thousand guineas were almost in his grasp.
Yet as those clear eyes met his, they also