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The Tinted Venus: A Farcical Romance, a novel by F. Anstey |
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Chapter 13. The Last Straw |
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_ CHAPTER XIII. THE LAST STRAW
---MASSINGER, Roman Actor.
At last the moment came when the bell fixed at the door sounded sharply, and he saw the sleek head and chubby red face he had been so anxiously expecting. He was busy with a customer; but that could not detain him then, and he rushed quickly into the outer shop. "Well, William," he said, breathlessly, "a nice time you've been over that message! I gave you the money for your 'bus." "Yusser, but it was this way: you said a green 'bus, and I took a green 'bus with 'Bayswater' on it, and I didn't know nothing was wrong, and when it stopped I sez to the conductor, 'This ain't Kensington Gardings;' and he sez, 'No, it's Archer Street;' and I sez----" "Never mind that now; you got to the shop, didn't you?" "Yes, I got to the shop, sir, and I see the lady; but I sez to that conductor, 'You should ha' told me,' I sez----" "Did she give you anything for me?" interrupted Leander, impatiently. "Yessur," said the boy. "Then where the dooce is it?" "'Ere!" said William, and brought out an envelope, which his master tore open with joy. It contained his own letter! "William," he said unsteadily, "is this all?" "Ain't it enough, sir?" said the young scoundrel, who had guessed the state of affairs, and felt an impish satisfaction at his employer's rejection. "None of that, William; d'ye hear me?" said Leander. "William, I ain't been a bad master to you. Tell me, how did she take it?" "Well, she didn't seem to want to take it nohow at first," said the boy. "I went up to the desk where she was a-sittin' and gave it her, and by-and-by she opened it with the tips of her fingers, as if it would bite, and read it all through very careful, and I could see her nose going up gradual, and her colour coming, and then she sez to me, 'You may go now, boy; there's no answer.' And I sez to her, 'If you please, miss, master said as I was not to go away without a answer.' So she sez, uncommon short and stiff, 'In that case he shall have it!'--like that, she says, as proud as a queen, and she scribbles a line or two on it, and throws it to me, and goes on casting up figgers." "A line or two! where?" cried Leander, and caught up the letter again. Yes, there on the last page was Matilda's delicate commercial handwriting, and the poor man read the cruel words, "_I have nothing to advise; I give you up to your 'goddess'!_" "Very well, William," he said, with a deadly calm; "that's all. You young devil! what are you a-sniggering at?" he added, with a sudden outburst. "On'y something I 'eard a boy say in the street, sir, going along, sir; nothing to do with you, sir." "Oh, youth, youth!" muttered the poor broken man; "boys don't grow feelings, any more than they grow whiskers!" And he went back to his saloon, where he was instantly hailed with reproaches from the abandoned customer. "Look here, sir! what do you mean by this? I told you I wanted to be shaved, and you've soaped the top of my head and left it to cool! What"--and he made use of expletives here--"what are you about?" Leander apologized on the ground of business of a pressing nature, but the customer was not pacified. "Business, sir! your business is _here_: _I'm_ your business! And I come to be shaved, and you soap the top of my head, and leave me all alone to dry! It's scandalous! it's----" "Look here, sir," interrupted Leander, gloomily; "I've a good deal of private trouble to put up with just now, without having _you_ going on at me; so I must ask you not to 'arris me like this, or I don't know what I might do, with a razor so 'andy!" "That'll do!" said the customer, hastily. "I--I don't care about being shaved this morning. Wipe my head, and let me go; no, I'll wipe it myself,--don't you trouble!" and he made for the door. "It's my belief," he said, pausing on the threshold for an instant, "that you're a dangerous lunatic, sir; you ought to be shut up!" "I dessay I shall have a mad doctor down on me after this," thought Leander; "but I shan't wait for _him_. No, it is all over now; the die is fixed! Cruel Tillie! you have spoke the mandrake; you have thrust me into the stony harms of that 'eathen goddess--always supposing the police don't nip in fust, and get the start of her." No more customers came that day, which was fortunate, perhaps, for them. The afternoon passed, and dusk approached, but the hairdresser sat on, motionless, in his darkening saloon, without the energy to light a single gas-jet. At last he roused himself sufficiently to go to the head of the stairs leading to his "labatry," and call for William, who, it appeared, was composing an egg-wash, after one of his employer's formulae, and came up, wondering to find the place in darkness. "Come here, William," said Leander, solemnly. "I just want a few words with you, and then you can go. I can do the shutting-up myself. William, we can none of us foretell the future; and it may so 'appen that you are looking on my face for the last time. If it should so be, William, remember the words I am now about to speak, and lay them to 'art!... This world is full of pitfalls; and some of us walk circumspect and keep out of 'em, and some of us, William--some of us don't. If there's any places more abounding in pitfalls than what others are, it is the noxious localities known under the deceitful appellation of 'pleasure' gardens. And you may take that as the voice of one calling to you from the bottom of about as deep a 'ole as a mortal man ever plumped into. And if ever you find a taste for statuary growing on you, William, keep it down, wrastle with it, and don't encourage it. Farewell, William! Be here at the usual time to-morrow, though whether you will find _me_ here is more than I can say." The boy went away, much impressed by so elaborate and formal a parting, which seemed to him a sign that, in his parlance, "the guv'nor was going to make a bolt of it." Leander busied himself in some melancholy preparations for his impending departure, dissolution, or incarceration; he was not very clear which it might be. He went down and put his "labatry" in order. There he had worked with all the fiery zeal of an inventor at the discoveries which were to confer perpetual youth, in various sized bottles, upon a grateful world. He must leave them all, with his work scarcely begun! Another would step in and perfect what he had left incomplete! He came up again, with a heavy heart, and examined his till. There was not much; enough, however, for William's wages and any small debts. He made a list of these, and left it there with the coin. "They must settle it among themselves," he thought, wearily; "I can't be bothered with business now." He was thinking whether it was worth while to shut the shop up or not; when a clear voice sounded from above-- "Leander, where art thou? Come hither!" And he started as if he had been shot. "I'm coming, madam," he called up, obsequiously. "I'll be with you in one minute!" "Now for it," he thought, as he went up to his sitting-room. "I wish I wasn't all of a twitter. I wish I knew what was coming next!" The room was dark, but when he got a light he saw the statue standing in the centre of the room, her hood thrown back, and the fur-lined mantle hanging loosely about her; the face looked stern and terrible under its brilliant tint. "Have you made your choice?" she demanded. "Choice!" he said. "I haven't any choice left me!" "It is true," she said triumphantly. "Your friends have deserted you; mortals are banded together to seize and disgrace you: you have no refuge but with me. But time is short. Come, then, place yourself within the shelter of these arms, and, while they enfold you tight in their marble embrace, repeat after me the words which complete my power." "There's no partickler hurry," he objected. "I will directly. I--I only want to know what will happen when I've done it. You can't have any objection to a natural curiosity like that." "You will lose consciousness, to recover it in balmy Cyprus, with Aphrodite (no longer cold marble, but the actual goddess, warm and living), by your side! Ah! impervious one, can you linger still? Do you not tremble with haste to feel my breath fanning your cheek, my soft arm around your neck? Are not your eyes already dazzled by the gleam of my golden tresses?" "Well, I can't say they are; not at present," said Leander. "And, you see, it's all very well; but, as I asked you once before, how are you going to _get_ me there? It's a long way, and I'm ten stone, if I'm an ounce!" "Heavy-witted youth, it is not your body that will taste perennial bliss." "And what's to become of that, then?" he asked, anxiously. "That will be left here, clasped to this stone, itself as cold and lifeless." "Oh!" said Leander, "I didn't bargain for that, and I don't like it." "You will know nothing of it; you will be with me, in dreamy grottoes strewn with fragrant rushes and the new-stript leaves of the vine, where the warm air woos to repose with its languorous softness, and the water as it wells murmurs its liquid laughter. Ah! no Greek would have hesitated thus." "Well, I ain't a Greek; and, as a business man, you can't be surprised if I want to make sure it's a genuine thing, and worth the risk, before I commit myself. I think I understand that it's the gold ring which is to bind us two together?" "It is," she said; "by that pure and noble metal are we united." "Well," said Leander, "that being so, I should wish to have it tested, else there might be a hitch somewhere or other." "Tested!" she cried; "what is that?" "Trying it, to see if it's real gold or not," he said. "We can easily have it done." "It is needless," she replied, haughtily. "I will not suffer my power to be thus doubted, nor that of the pure and precious metal through which I have obtained it!" Leander might have objected to this as an example of that obscure feat, "begging the question;" for, whether the metal _was_ pure and precious, was precisely the point he desired to ascertain. And this desire was quite genuine; for, though he saw no other course before him but that upon which the goddess insisted, he did wish to take every reasonable precaution. "For all I know," he reasoned in his own mind, "if there's anything wrong with that ring, I may be left 'igh and dry, halfway to Cyprus; or she may get tired of me, and turn me out of those grottoes of hers! If I must go with her, I should like to make things as safe as I could." "It won't take long," he pleaded; "and if I find the ring's real gold, I promise I won't hold out any longer." "There is no time," she said, "to indulge this whim. Would you mock me, Leander? Ha! did I not say so? Listen!" The private bell was ringing loudly. Leander rushed to the window, but saw no one. Then he heard the clang of the shop bell, as if the person or persons had discovered that an entrance was possible there. "The guards!" said the statue. "Will you wait for them, Leander?" "No!" he cried. "Never mind what I said about the ring; I'll risk that. Only--only, don't go away without me.... Tell me what to say, and I'll say it, and chance the consequences!" "Say, 'Aphrodite, daughter of Olympian Zeus, I yield; I fulfil the pledge; I am thine!'" "Well," he thought, "here goes. Oh, Matilda, you're responsible for this!" And he advanced towards the white extended arms of the goddess. There were hasty steps outside; another moment and the door would be burst open. "Aphrodite, daughter of----" he began, and recoiled suddenly; for he heard his name called from without in a voice familiar and once dear to him. "Leander, where are you? It's all dark! Speak to me; tell me you've done nothing rash! Oh, Leander, it's Matilda!" That voice, which a short while back he would have given the world to hear once more, appalled him now. For if she came in, the goddess would discover who she was, and then--he shuddered to think what might happen then! Matilda's hand was actually on the door. "Stop where you are!" he shouted, in despair; "for mercy's sake, don't come in!" "Ah! you are there, and alive!" she cried. "I am not too late; and I _will_ come in!" And in another instant she burst into the room, and stood there, her tear-stained face convulsed with the horror of finding him in such company. _ |
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