Darden's old white horse, with its double load, plodded along the street
that led to the toy Palace of this toy capital. The Palace, of course, was
not its riders' destination; instead, when they had crossed Nicholson
Street, they drew up before a particularly small white house, so hidden
away behind lilac bushes and trellised grapevines that it gave but here
and there a pale hint of its existence. It was planted in the shadow of a
larger building, and a path led around it to what seemed a pleasant,
shady, and extensive garden.
Mistress Deborah gave a sigh of satisfaction. "Seven years come Martinmas
since I last stayed overnight with Mary Stagg! And we were born in the
same village, and at Bath what mighty friends we were! She was playing
Dorinda,--that's in 'The Beaux' Stratagem,' Audrey,--and her dress was
just an old striped Persian, vastly unbecoming. Her Ladyship's pink
alamode, that Major D---- spilt a dish of chocolate over, she gave to me
for carrying a note; and I gave it to Mary (she was Mary Baker then),--for
I looked hideous in pink,--and she was that grateful, as well she might
be! Mary, Mary!"
A slender woman, with red-brown hair and faded cheeks, came running from
the house to the gate. "At last, my dear Deborah! I vow I had given you
up! Says I to Mirabell an hour ago,--you know that is my name for Charles,
for 'twas when he played Mirabell to my Millamant that we fell in
love,--'Well,' says I, 'I'll lay a gold-furbelowed scarf to a yard of
oznaburg that Mr. Darden, riding home through the night, and in liquor,
perhaps, has fallen and broken his neck, and Deborah can't come.' And says
Mirabell--But la, my dear, there you stand in your safeguard, and I'm
keeping the gate shut on you! Come in. Come in, Audrey. Why, you've grown
to be a woman! You were just a brown slip of a thing, that Lady Day, two
years ago, that I spent with Deborah. Come in the both of you. There are
cakes and a bottle of Madeira."
Audrey fastened the horse against the time that Darden should remember to
send for it, and then followed the ex-waiting-woman and the former queen
of a company of strollers up a grassy path and through a little green door
into a pleasant room, where grape leaves wreathed the windows and cast
their shadows upon a sanded floor. At one end of the room stood a great,
rudely built cabinet, and before it a long table, strewn with an orderly
litter of such slender articles of apparel as silk and tissue scarfs,
gauze hoods, breast knots, silk stockings, and embroidered gloves.
Mistress Deborah must needs run and examine these at once, and Mistress
Mary Stagg, wife of the lessee, manager, and principal actor of the
Williamsburgh theatre, looked complacently over her shoulder. The
minister's wife sighed again, this time with envy.