CHAPTER XXXVIII

IN WHICH I AM ROUNDLY BROUGHT TO TASK

I would have gone to Arlington Street direct, but my friends had no notion of letting me escape.  They carried me off to Brooks’s Club, where a bowl of punch was brewed directly, and my health was drunk to three times three.  Mr. Storer commanded a turtle dinner in my honour.  We were not many, fortunately,—­only Mr. Fox’s little coterie.  And it was none other than Mr. Fox who made the speech of the evening.  “May I be strung as high as Haman,” said he, amid a tempest of laughter, “if ever I saw half so edifying a sight as his Grace pitching into the Serpentine, unless it were his Grace dragged out again.  Mr. Carvel’s advent has been a Godsend to us narrow ignoramuses of this island, gentlemen.  To the Englishmen of our colonies, sirs, and that we may never underrate or misunderstand them more!”

“Nay, Charles,” cried my Lord Comyn.  “Where is our gallantry?  I give you first the Englishwomen of our colonies, and in particular the pride of Maryland, who has brought back to the old country all the graces of the new,—­Miss Manners.”

His voice was drowned by a deafening shout, and we charged our glasses to drain them brimming.  And then we all went to Drury Lane to see Mrs. Clive romp through ‘The Wonder’ in the spirit of the “immortal Peg.”  She spoke an epilogue that Mr. Walpole had writ especial for her, and made some witty and sarcastic remarks directed at the gentlemen in our stagebox.  We topped off a very full day by a supper at the Bedford Arms, where I must draw the certain.

The next morning I was abed at an hour which the sobriety of old age makes me blush abed think of.  Banks had just concluded a discreet discourse upon my accomplishment of the day before, and had left for my newspapers, when he came running back with the information that Miss Manners would see my honour that day.  There was no note.  Between us we made my toilet in a jiffy, and presently I was walking in at the Manners’s door in an amazing hurry, and scarcely waited for a direction.  But as I ran up the stairs, I heard the tinkle of the spinet, and the notes of an old, familiar tune fell upon my ears.  The words rose in my head with the cadence.

          “Love me little, love me long,
          Is the burthen of my song,
          Love that is too hot and strong
          Runneth soon to waste.”

That simple air, already mellowed by an hundred years, had always been her favourite.  She used to sing it softly to herself as we roamed the woods and fields of the Eastern Shore.  Instinctively I paused at the dressing-room door.  Nay, my dears, you need not cry out, such was the custom of the times.  A dainty bower it was, filled with the perfume of flowers, and rosy cupids disporting on the ceiling; and china and silver and gold filigree strewn about, with my tea-cups on the table.  The sunlight fell like a halo round Dorothy’s head, her hands strayed over the keys, and her eyes were far away.  She had not heard me.  I remember her dress,—­a silk with blue cornflowers on a light ground, and the flimsiest of lace caps resting on her hair.  I thought her face paler; but beyond that she did not show her illness.