The Certain Hour (Dizain des Poëtes)

by James Branch Cabell

  OLIVIA'S POTTAGE

  It was in the May of 1680 that Mr. William Wycherley went into thecountry to marry the famed heiress, Mistress Araminta Vining, as he hadpreviously settled with her father, and found her to his vast relief avery personable girl. She had in consequence a host of admirers,pre-eminent among whom was young Robert Minifie of Milanor. Mr.Wycherley, a noted stickler for etiquette, decorously made bold toquestion Mr. Minifie's taste in a dispute concerning waistcoats. Aduel was decorously arranged and these two met upon the narrow beach ofTeviot Bay.

  Theirs was a spirited encounter, lasting for ten energetic minutes.Then Wycherley pinked Mr. Minifie in the shoulder, just as thedramatist, a favorite pupil of Gerard's, had planned to do; and thefour gentlemen parted with every imaginable courtesy, since the woundedman and the two seconds were to return by boat to Mr. Minifie's houseat Milanor.

  More lately Wycherley walked in the direction of Ouseley Manor,whistling _Love's a Toy_. Honor was satisfied, and, happily, as hereflected, at no expense of life. He was a kindly hearted fop, andmore than once had killed his man with perfectly sincere regret. Butin putting on his coat--it was the black camlet coat with silverbuttons--he had overlooked his sleevelinks; and he did not recognize,for twenty-four eventful hours, the full importance of his carelessness.

  In the heart of Figgis Wood, the incomparable Countess of Drogheda,aunt to Mr. Wycherley's betrothed, and a noted leader of fashion, hadpresently paused at sight of him--laughing a little--and with one tinyhand had made as though to thrust back the staghound which accompaniedher. "Your humble servant, Mr. Swashbuckler," she said; and then: "Butoh! you have not hurt the lad?" she demanded, with a tincture ofanxiety.

  "Nay, after a short but brilliant engagement," Wycherley returned, "Mr.Minifie was very harmlessly perforated; and in consequence I look to bemarried on Thursday, after all."

  "Let me die but Cupid never meets with anything save inhospitality inthis gross world!" cried Lady Drogheda. "For the boy is heels overhead in love with Araminta,--oh, a second Almanzor! And my niece doesnot precisely hate him either, let me tell you, William, for all yourmonth's assault of essences and perfumed gloves and apricot paste andother small artillery of courtship. La, my dear, was it only a monthago we settled your future over a couple of Naples biscuit and a bottleof Rhenish?" She walked beside him now, and the progress of theseexquisites was leisurely. There were many trees at hand so huge as tonecessitate a considerable detour.

  "Egad, it is a month and three days over," Wycherley retorted, "sinceyou suggested your respected brother-in-law was ready to pay my debtsin full, upon condition I retaliated by making your adorable nieceMistress Wycherley. Well, I stand to-day indebted to him for anadvance of L1500 and am no more afraid of bailiffs. We have performeda very creditable stroke of business; and the day after to-morrow youwill have fairly earned your L500 for arranging the marriage. Faith,and in earnest of this, I already begin to view you through appropriatelenses as undoubtedly the most desirable aunt in the universe."

  Nor was there any unconscionable stretching of the phrase. Through thequiet forest, untouched as yet by any fidgeting culture, and much as itwas when John Lackland wooed Hawisa under, its venerable oaks, old eventhen, the little widow moved like a light flame. She was clothedthroughout in scarlet, after her high-hearted style of dress, andcarried a tall staff of ebony; and the gold head of it was farther fromthe dead leaves than was her mischievous countenance. The bigstaghound lounged beside her. She pleased the eye, at least, did thisheartless, merry and selfish Olivia, whom Wycherley had so ruthlesslydepicted in his _Plain Dealer_. To the last detail Wycherley foundher, as he phrased it, "_mignonne et piquante_," and he told her so.

  Lady Drogheda observed, "Fiddle-de-dee!" Lady Drogheda continued:"Yes, I am a fool, of course, but then I still remember Bessington, andthe boy that went mad there----"

  "Because of a surfeit of those dreams 'such as the poets know when theyare young.' Sweet chuck, beat not the bones of the buried; when hebreathed he was a likely lad," Mr. Wycherley declared, with signalgravity.

  "Oh, la, la!" she flouted him. "Well, in any event you were the firstgentleman in England to wear a neckcloth of Flanders lace."

  "And you were the first person of quality to eat cheesecakes in SpringGarden," he not half so mirthfully retorted. "So we have not entirelyfailed in life, it may be, after all."

  She made of him a quite irrelevant demand: "D'ye fancy Esau wascontented, William?"

  "I fancy he was fond of pottage, madam; and that, as I remember, he gothis pottage. Come, now, a tangible bowl of pottage, piping hot, is notto be despised in such a hazardous world as ours is."

  She was silent for a lengthy while. "Lord, Lord, how musty all thatbrave, sweet nonsense seems!" she said, and almost sighed. "Eh, well!_le vin est tire, et il faut le boire_."

  "My adorable aunt! Let us put it a thought less dumpishly; and renderthanks because our pottage smokes upon the table, and we are blessedwith excellent appetites."

  "So that in a month we will be back again in the playhouses and HydePark and Mulberry Garden, or nodding to each other in the NewExchange,--you with your debts paid, and I with my L500----?" Shepaused to pat the staghound's head. "Lord Remon came this afternoon,"said Lady Drogheda, and with averted eyes.

  "I do not approve of Remon," he announced. "Nay, madam, even a Sirenought to spare her kin and show some mercy toward the morestagnant-blooded fish."

  And Lady Drogheda shrugged. "He is very wealthy, and I am lamentablypoor. One must not seek noon at fourteen o'clock or clamor for betterbread than was ever made from wheat."

  Mr. Wycherley laughed, after a pregnant silence.

  "By heavens, madam, you are in the right! So I shall walk no more inFiggis Wood, for its old magic breeds too many day-dreams. Besides, wehave been serious for half-an-hour. Now, then, let us discusstheology, dear aunt, or millinery, or metaphysics, or the King's newstatue at Windsor, or, if you will, the last Spring Garden scandal. Orlet us count the leaves upon this tree; and afterward I will enumeratemy reasons for believing yonder crescent moon to be the paring of theAngel Gabriel's left thumb-nail."

  She was a woman of eloquent silences when there was any need of them;and thus the fop and the coquette traversed the remainder of thatsolemn wood without any further speech. Modish people would haveesteemed them unwontedly glum.

  Wycherley discovered in a while the absence of his sleeve-links, andwas properly vexed by the loss of these not unhandsome trinkets, thegifts of Lady Castlemaine in the old days when Mr. Wycherley was theKing's successful rival for her favors. But Wycherley knew the tidefilled Teviot Bay and wondering fishes were at liberty to muzzle thetoys, by this, and merely shrugged at his mishap, midcourse in toilet.

  Mr. Wycherley, upon mature deliberation, wore the green suit withyellow ribbons, since there was a ball that night in honor of hisnearing marriage, and a confluence of gentry to attend it. Miss Viningand he walked through a minuet to some applause; the two were heartilyacclaimed a striking couple, and congratulations beat about their earsas thick as sugar-plums in a carnival. And at nine you might havefound the handsome dramatist alone upon the East Terrace of Ouseley,pacing to and fro in the moonlight, and complacently reflecting uponhis quite indisputable and, past doubt, unmerited good fortune.

  There was never any night in June which nature planned the moreadroitly. Soft and warm and windless, lit by a vainglorious moon andevery star that ever shone, the beauty of this world caressed andheartened its beholder like a gallant music. Our universe, Mr.Wycherley conceded willingly, was excellent and kindly, and the Arbiterof it too generous; for here was he, the wastrel, like the third princeat the end of a fairy-tale, the master of a handsome wife, and a finehouse and fortune. Somewhere, he knew, young Minifie, with his arm ina sling, was pleading with Mistress Araminta for the last time; andthis reflection did not greatly trouble Mr. Wycherley, sinceincommunicably it tickled his vanity. He was chuckling when he came toth
e open window.

  Within a woman was singing, to the tinkling accompaniment of a spinet,for the delectation of Lord Remon. She was not uncomely, and the hard,lean, stingy countenance of the attendant nobleman was almost genial.Wycherley understood with a great rending shock, as though the thoughtwere novel, that Olivia, Lady Drogheda, designed to marry this man, whogrinned within finger's reach--or, rather, to ally herself with Remon'sinordinate wealth,--and without any heralding a brutal rage and hatredof all created things possessed the involuntary eavesdropper.

  She looked up into Remon's face and, laughing with such bright andelfin mirth as never any other woman showed, thought Wycherley, shebroke into another song. She would have spared Mr. Wycherley that hadshe but known him to be within earshot. . . . Oh, it was only LadyDrogheda who sang, he knew,--the seasoned gamester and coquette, theveteran of London and of Cheltenham,--but the woman had no right tocharm this haggler with a voice that was not hers. For it was thevoice of another Olivia, who was not a fine and urban lady, and wholived nowhere any longer; it was the voice of a soft-handed, tender,jeering girl, whom he alone remembered; and a sick, illimitable ragegrilled in each vein of him as liltingly she sang, for Remon, the oldand foolish song which Wycherley had made in her praise very long ago,and of which he might not ever forget the most trivial word.

  Men, even beaux, are strangely constituted; and so it needed onlythis--the sudden stark brute jealousy of one male animal for another.That was the clumsy hand which now unlocked the dyke; and like a flood,tall and resistless, came the recollection of their far-off past and ofits least dear trifle, of all the aspirations and absurdities andsplendors of their common youth, and found him in its path, a paintedfellow, a spendthrift king of the mode, a most notable authority uponthe set of a peruke, a penniless, spent connoisseur of stockings,essences and cosmetics.

  He got but little rest this night.

  There were too many plaintive memories which tediously plucked himback, with feeble and innumerable hands, as often as he trod upon thethreshold of sleep. Then too, there were so many dreams, half-waking,and not only of Olivia Chichele, naive and frank in divers ruralcircumstances, but rather of Olivia, Lady Drogheda, that perfect pieceof artifice; of how exquisite she was! how swift and volatile in everymovement! how airily indomitable, and how mendacious to the tips of herpolished finger-nails! and how she always seemed to flit about thisworld as joyously, alertly, and as colorfully as some ornate and tinybird of the tropics!

  But presently parochial birds were wrangling underneath the dramatist'swindow, while he tossed and assured himself that he was sleepier thanany saint who ever snored in Ephesus; and presently one hand ofMoncrieff was drawing the bed-curtains, while the other carefullybalanced a mug of shaving-water.

  Wycherley did not see her all that morning, for Lady Drogheda wasfatigued, or so a lackey informed him, and as yet kept her chamber.His Araminta he found deplorably sullen. So the dramatist devoted thebetter part of this day to a refitting of his wedding-suit, just comefrom London; for Moncrieff, an invaluable man, had adjudged the pocketsto be placed too high; and, be the punishment deserved or no, Mr.Wycherley had never heard that any victim of law appeared the moreadmirable upon his scaffold for being slovenly in his attire.

  Thus it was as late as five in the afternoon that, wearing thepeach-colored suit trimmed with scarlet ribbon, and a new Frenchbeaver, the exquisite came upon Lady Drogheda walking in the gardenswith only an appropriate peacock for company. She was so beautiful andbrilliant and so little--so like a famous gem too suddenly disclosed,and therefore oddly disparate in all these qualities, that his decorouspleasant voice might quite permissibly have shaken a trifle (as indeedit did), when Mr. Wycherley implored Lady Drogheda to walk with him toTeviot Bay, on the off-chance of recovering his sleeve-links.

  And there they did find one of the trinkets, but the tide had sweptaway the other, or else the sand had buried it. So they rested thereupon the rocks, after an unavailing search, and talked of many trifles,amid surroundings oddly incongruous.

  For this Teviot Bay is a primeval place, a deep-cut, narrow notch inthe tip of Carnrick, and is walled by cliffs so high and so precipitousthat they exclude a view of anything except the ocean. The bay opensdue west; and its white barriers were now developing a violet tinge,for this was on a sullen afternoon, and the sea was ruffled by spitefulgusts. Wycherley could find no color anywhere save in this glowing,tiny and exquisite woman; and everywhere was a gigantic peace, vexedonly when high overhead a sea-fowl jeered at these modish persons, ashe flapped toward an impregnable nest.

  "And by this hour to-morrow," thought Mr. Wycherley, "I shall bechained to that good, strapping, wholesome Juno of a girl!"

  So he fell presently into a silence, staring at the vacant west, whichwas like a huge and sickly pearl, not thinking of anything at all, butlonging poignantly for something which was very beautiful and strangeand quite unattainable, with precisely that anguish he had sometimesknown in awaking from a dream of which he could remember nothing saveits piercing loveliness.

  "And thus ends the last day of our bachelorhood!" said Lady Drogheda,upon a sudden. "You have played long enough--La, William, you have ledthe fashion for ten years, you have written four merry comedies, andyou have laughed as much as any man alive, but you have pulled down allthat nature raised in you, I think. Was it worth while?"

  "Faith, but nature's monuments are no longer the last cry inarchitecture," he replied; "and I believe that _The Plain Dealer_ and_The Country Wife_ will hold their own."

  "And you wrote them when you were just a boy! Ah, yes, you might havebeen our English Moliere, my dear. And, instead, you have elected tobecome an authority upon cravats and waistcoats."

  "Eh, madam"--he smiled--"there was a time when I too was foolishlyintent to divert the leisure hours of posterity. But reflectionassured me that posterity had, thus far, done very little to place meunder that or any other obligation. Ah, no! Youth, health and--thoughI say it--a modicum of intelligence are loaned to most of us for awhile, and for a terribly brief while. They are but loans, and Time iswaiting greedily to snatch them from us. For the perturbed usurerknows that he is lending us, perforce, three priceless possessions, andthat till our lease runs out we are free to dispose of them as weelect. Now, had I jealously devoted my allotment of these treasurestoward securing for my impressions of the universe a place in yetunprinted libraries, I would have made an investment from which I couldnot possibly have derived any pleasure, and which would have been toother people of rather dubious benefit. In consequence, I chose awiser and devouter course."

  This statement Lady Drogheda afforded the commentary of a grimace.

  "Why, look you," Wycherley philosophized, "have you never thought whata vast deal of loving and painstaking labor must have gone to make theworld we inhabit so beautiful and so complete? For it was not enoughto evolve and set a glaring sun in heaven, to marshal the big starsabout the summer sky, but even in the least frequented meadow everybutterfly must have his pinions jeweled, very carefully, and everylovely blade of grass be fashioned separately. The hand that yesterdayarranged the Himalayas found time to glaze the wings of a midge! Now,most of us could design a striking Flood, or even a Last judgment,since the canvas is so big and the colors used so virulent; but topaint a snuff-box perfectly you must love the labor for its own sake,and pursue it without even an underthought of the performance'sultimate appraisement. People do not often consider the simple factthat it is enough to bait, and quite superfluous to veneer, a trap;indeed, those generally acclaimed the best of persons insist this worldis but an antechamber, full of gins and pitfalls, which must bescurried through with shut eyes. And the more fools they, as all wepoets know! for to enjoy a sunset, or a glass of wine, or even toadmire the charms of a handsome woman, is to render the Artificer ofall at least the tribute of appreciation."

  But she said, in a sharp voice: "William, William----!" And he sawthat there was no beach now in Teviot Bay except
the dwindling crescentat its farthest indentation on which they sat.

  Yet his watch, on consultation, recorded only five o'clock; andpresently Mr. Wycherley laughed, not very loudly. The two had risen,and her face was a tiny snowdrift where every touch of rouge andgrease-pencils showed crudely.

  "Look now," said Wycherley, "upon what trifles our lives hinge! Lastnight I heard you singing, and the song brought back so many thingsdone long ago, and made me so unhappy that--ridiculous conclusion!--Iforgot to wind my watch. Well! the tide is buffeting at either side ofCarnrick; within the hour this place will be submerged; and, in aphrase, we are as dead as Hannibal or Hector."

  She said, very quiet: "Could you not gain the mainland if you strippedand swam for it?"

  "Why, possibly," the beau conceded. "Meanwhile you would have drowned.Faith, we had as well make the best of it."

  Little Lady Drogheda touched his sleeve, and her hand (as the mannoted) did not shake at all, nor did her delicious piping voice shakeeither. "You cannot save me. I know it. I am not frightened. I bidyou save yourself."

  "Permit me to assist you to that ledge of rock," Mr. Wycherleyanswered, "which is a trifle higher than the beach; and I pray you,Olivia, do not mar the dignity of these last passages by talkingnonsense."

  For he had spied a ledge, not inaccessible, some four feet higher thanthe sands, and it offered them at least a respite. And within themoment they had secured this niggardly concession, intent to die, asWycherley observed, like hurt mice upon a pantry-shelf. The businesssmacked of disproportion, he considered, although too well-bred to sayas much; for here was a big ruthless league betwixt earth and sea, andwith no loftier end than to crush a fop and a coquette, whose speedierextinction had been dear at the expense of a shilling's worth ofarsenic!

  Then the sun came out, to peep at these trapped, comely people, anddoubtless to get appropriate mirth at the spectacle. He hung lowagainst the misty sky, a clearly-rounded orb that did not dazzle, butmerely shone with the cold glitter of new snow upon a fair Decemberday; and for the rest, the rocks, and watery heavens, and all thesetreacherous and lapping waves, were very like a crude draught of theworld, dashed off conceivably upon the day before creation.

  These arbiters of social London did not speak at all; and the bleakwaters crowded toward them as in a fretful dispute of precedence.

  Then the woman said: "Last night Lord Remon asked me to marry him, andI declined the honor. For this place is too like Bessington--and, Ithink, the past month has changed everything----"

  "I thought you had forgotten Bessington," he said, "long, long ago."

  "I did not ever quite forget--Oh, the garish years," she wailed, "sincethen! And how I hated you, William--and yet liked you, too,--becauseyou were never the boy that I remembered, and people would not let yoube! And how I hated them--the huzzies! For I had to see you almostevery day, and it was never you I saw--Ah, William, come back for justa little, little while, and be an honest boy for just the moment thatwe are dying, and not an elegant fine gentleman!"

  "Nay, my dear," the dramatist composedly answered, "an hour of nakedcandor is at hand. Life is a masquerade where Death, it would appear,is master of the ceremonies. Now he sounds his whistle; and we whowent about the world so long as harlequins must unmask, and for alltime put aside our abhorrence of the disheveled. For in sober verity,this is Death who comes, Olivia,--though I had thought that at hisadvent one would be afraid."

  Yet apprehension of this gross and unavoidable adventure, so soon to beendured, thrilled him, and none too lightly. It seemed unfair thatdeath should draw near thus sensibly, with never a twinge or ache toherald its arrival. Why, there were fifty years of life in this fine,nimble body but for any contretemps like that of the deplorablepresent! Thus his meditations stumbled.

  "Oh, William," Lady Drogheda bewailed, "it is all so big--the incuriouswest, and the sea, and these rocks that were old in Noah's youth,--andwe are so little----!"

  "Yes," he returned, and took her hand, because their feet were wettednow; "the trap and its small prey are not commensurate. The stage isset for a Homeric death-scene, and we two profane an over-ambitiousbackground. For who are we that Heaven should have rived the worldbefore time was, to trap us, and should make of the old sea afowling-net?" Their eyes encountered, and he said, with a strange gushof manliness: "Yet Heaven is kind. I am bound even in honor now tomarry Mistress Araminta; and you would marry Remon in the end,Olivia,--ah, yes! for we are merely moths, my dear, and luxury is adisastrously brilliant lamp. But here are only you and I and themaster of all ceremony. And yet--I would we were a little worthier,Olivia!"

  "You have written four merry comedies and you were the first gentlemanin England to wear a neckcloth of Flanders lace," she answered, and hersmile was sadder than weeping.

  "And you were the first person of quality to eat cheese-cakes in SpringGarden. There you have our epitaphs, if we in truth have earned anepitaph who have not ever lived."

  "No, we have only laughed--Laugh now, for the last time, and heartenme, my handsome William! And yet could I but come to God," the womansaid, with a new voice, "and make it clear to Him just how it all fellout, and beg for one more chance! How heartily I would pray then!"

  "And I would cry Amen to all that prayer must of necessity contain," heanswered. "Oh!" said Wycherley, "just for applause and bodily comfortand the envy of innumerable other fools we two have bartered a greatheritage! I think our corner of the world will lament us for as muchas a week; but I fear lest Heaven may not condescend to set apart theneedful time wherein to frame a suitable chastisement for such poorimbeciles. Olivia, I have loved you all my life, and I have beenfaithful neither to you nor to myself! I love you so that I am notafraid even now, since you are here, and so entirely that I haveforgotten how to plead my cause convincingly. And I have had practice,let me tell you. . . . !" Then he shook his head and smiled. "Butcandor is not _a la mode_. See, now, to what outmoded and bucolicfrenzies nature brings even us at last."

  She answered only, as she motioned seaward, "Look!"

  And what Mr. Wycherley saw was a substantial boat rowed by four of Mr.Minifie's attendants; and in the bow of the vessel sat that woundedgentleman himself, regarding Wycherley and Lady Drogheda with somedisfavor; and beside the younger man was Mistress Araminta Vining.

  It was a perturbed Minifie who broke the silence. "This is veryawkward," he said, "because Araminta and I are eloping. We mean to bemarried this same night at Milanor. And deuce take it, Mr. Wycherley!I can't leave you there to drown, any more than in the circumstances Ican ask you to make one of the party."

  "Mr. Wycherley," said his companion, with far more asperity, "thevanity and obduracy of a cruel father have forced me to the adoption ofthis desperate measure. Toward yourself I entertain no ill-feeling,nor indeed any sentiment at all except the most profound contempt. Myaunt will, of course, accompany us; for yourself, you will do as youplease; but in any event I solemnly protest that I spurn your odiouspretensions, release myself hereby from an enforced and hideousobligation, and in a phrase would not marry you in order to be Queen ofEngland."

  "Miss Vining, I had hitherto admired you," the beau replied, withfervor, "but now esteem is changed to adoration."

  Then he turned to his Olivia. "Madam, you will pardon the awkward butunavoidable publicity of my proceeding. I am a ruined man. I owe yourbrother-in-law some L1500, and, oddly enough, I mean to pay him. Imust sell Jephcot and Skene Minor, but while life lasts I shall keepBessington and all its memories. Meanwhile there is a clergymanwaiting at Milanor. So marry me to-night, Olivia; and we will go backto Bessington to-morrow."

  "To Bessington----!" she said. It was as though she spoke of somethingvery sacred. Then very musically Lady Drogheda laughed, and to the eyeshe was all flippancy. "La, William, I can't bury myself in thecountry until the end of time," she said, "and make interminablecustards," she added, "and superintend the poultry," she said, "and forrecreation pl
ay short whist with the vicar."

  And it seemed to Mr. Wycherley that he had gone divinely mad. "Don'tlie to me, Olivia. You are thinking there are yet a host of heiresseswho would be glad to be a famous beau's wife at however dear a cost.But don't lie to me. Don't even try to seem the airy and bedizenedwoman I have known so long. All that is over now. Death tapped us onthe shoulder, and, if only for a moment, the masks were dropped. Andlife is changed now, oh, everything is changed! Then, come, my dear!let us be wise and very honest. Let us concede it is still possiblefor me to find another heiress, and for you to marry Remon; let usgrant it the only outcome of our common-sense! and for all that, laugh,and fling away the pottage, and be more wise than reason."

  She irresolutely said: "I cannot. Matters are altered now. It wouldbe madness----"

  "It would undoubtedly be madness," Mr. Wycherley assented. "But then Iam so tired of being rational! Oh, Olivia," this former arbiter oftaste absurdly babbled, "if I lose you now it is forever! and there isno health in me save when I am with you. Then alone I wish to dopraiseworthy things, to be all which the boy we know of should havegrown to. . . . See how profoundly shameless I am become when, withsuch an audience, I take refuge in the pitiful base argument of my ownweakness! But, my dear, I want you so that nothing else in the worldmeans anything to me. I want you! and all my life I have wanted you."

  "Boy, boy----!" she answered, and her fine hands had come to Wycherley,as white birds flutter homeward. But even then she had to deliberatethe matter--since the habits of many years are not put aside likeoutworn gloves,--and for innumerable centuries, it seemed to him, herfoot tapped on that wetted ledge.

  Presently her lashes lifted. "I suppose it would be lacking inreverence to keep a clergyman waiting longer than was absolutelynecessary?" she hazarded.