Great Britain -- History -- Regency, 1800-1837 -- Fiction
Courtly acceptance of Lord Brookwood’s abject attempts at amends;
gracious bows, hands, words, laughter at last; and My Lady in a hastily
procured post-chaise bids the gibbet at Brook-Armsleigh Village
farewell, and starts for London, where she swears she’s due and must not
fail of being, for to-morrow, Sunday.
Sir Percy, too, affirms, he must up to town without delay, to have the
honor and pleasure of himself rehearsing at Will’s the splendid courage
of Sir Robin, and his almost miraculous escape from a horrible and
ignominious death.
In truth Percy longed, after the excitements of the past four-and-twenty
hours, to be alone; to seek, as was his wont of late, in some
unfrequented, obscure part of the town, such as the desolate
neighborhood of the Dove Pier, an opportunity to ponder upon Lady Peggy;
to guess fruitlessly of her whereabouts; to curse himself, and Sir Robin
who had, with a good cause, he generously allowed, so known how to win
her from him; to marvel how, at ev’ry turn, this same Baronet appeared
to become entangled in his own matters; to question if Peggy were indeed
now the lawful wedded wife of this gentleman from Kent. In brief, to
pester Fate with queries and surmises far too numerous and intricate to
set down.
Thus upon reflection, he purposely absented himself, after his first
visit to Will’s on reaching London, from either of the chocolate or
coffee-houses, which he was accustomed to patronize, knowing full well
that the most pressing and absorbing things he should hear would all
have Sir Robin McTart for text. He did not even repair to Mr. Brummell’s
house to give an account of the rescue of the Beau’s protégé from the
hangman, feeling unwilling to recount his own part in the affair and but
too certain that long since the whole matter would have traveled to
Peter’s Court and into every other precinct of the town. Having, also,
learned from Lady Diana that Kennaston had quitted Brookwood Castle in a
dense of a melancholy humor, he did not either go to Lark Lane, (not
finding Peg’s twin at the house in Charlotte Street), but moped the
Sunday through, thankful that his uncle was gone down into the country;
listening to the church-bells; thumbing a prayer-book Lady Peggy had
given him one Easter-day, now five years since; finally flinging it from
him; pacing up and down the hall; side-curls awry, waistcoat unbuttoned;
ruffles tumbled; breeches wrinkled; mind distract, and altogether as
valiant a young gentleman as ever made a wager or a toast, unsheathed a
blade, or mounted a horse, rendered all of a-muddle by not knowing which
way to turn to find the whereabouts and wherefores of a certain fair
lady; which has been a state of affairs not uncommon to young gentlemen
before this one’s day, and like to occur until the species is extinct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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