SIR CARNABY'S GRATITUDE.
Save that he had got a terrible shaking, a few blows, and
considerable fright, Sir Carnaby Collingwood, thanks to Trevor Chute
and his servant, was not much the worse and between his draughts of
iced seltzer and brandy, he sputtered and threatened the whole city
of Lubeck with our ambassador at Berlin, and to have the outrage of
the night brought 'before the House' as soon as he returned to town;
while Lady Evelyn, filled with genuine admiration of the pluck shown
by Chute, his manly and generous bearing, and with gratitude for the
manner in which he had assuredly saved the life of her _caro sposo_,
became his most ardent ally; but as he and Sir Carnaby lingered over
their wine that night he felt--and still more next day--the weight of
the many blows and buffets of which he had been quite unconscious at
the time they were so freely bestowed upon him.
'Egad, Chute,' chuckled Sir Carnaby, 'didn't think you and I should
ever figure like two heroes in a melodrama; by Jove--absurd, don't
you know--but those Germans _are_ beastly fellows. The moselle
stands with you. We have had nothing here,' he continued, laughing
with more genuine heartiness than was usual to him, for his feelings
had undergone a revulsion--'we have had nothing here but mistakes and
scenes--actually scenes. I refused you Clare, and you make off, per
train, with Lady Evelyn. I was most unkind to you, and you act
generously by returning good for exceeding evil.'
Trevor was so unused to this tone from Sir Carnaby that his heart
swelled with mingled hope and anticipation, joy and sadness, as he
said:
'I am only thankful to Heaven that I was here to-night, and able to
be of service to you.'
'Service--egad, my dear fellow, you have saved my life!'
'The consciousness of that rewards me for more than one past
misfortune.'
'Ah, you mean those which caused you to leave the Guards?'
'To leave England, and--lost me Clare!' said Chute, falteringly.
'Ah, well, it was all no fault of yours. It was a thousand pities
that your father, the old General--an extravagant dog he was--could
touch the entail. That is all over now; and believe me, Trevor
Chute, if you forgive me the past, you shall not go without your
_reward_.'
And the two shook hands in silence. The heart of the younger man
beat tumultuously, for well did he know the glorious 'reward' that
was referred to. He knew that Sir Carnaby would keep to his word,
and he had, we have said, an ardent admirer and adherent in Lady
Evelyn.
'Captain Chute,' said she, 'do give up this peregrimania of yours,
and spend Christmas with us at Carnaby Court. Promise me,' she
added, taking his hands in hers; 'I will take no denial, and am
always used to have my way in everything.'
So Chute, without much difficulty, accepted an invitation in which
kindness was perhaps mingled with some desire to get Clare off her
hands.
Chute, with Sir Carnaby's permission, wrote to Clare next day, saying
that he had been so happy as to be of service to her father, and had
saved him--'saved his life, in fact'--during a row among the Germans;
that they were the best of friends now that all barriers were
removed, and how happy he and she would yet be in the time to come.
Poor Clare was extremely bewildered by all this, till the letter was
supplemented by a more descriptive and effusive epistle from the,
sometime to her, obnoxious Lady Evelyn, describing in glowing colours
the terrors of the affair at Lubeck, Chute's bravery, and Sir
Carnaby's rescue, and the heart of the girl leaped in her breast with
gratitude to Heaven for this sudden change in the feelings of her
father, and gratitude to Trevor for saving the selfish old man from
injury, insult, and, too probably, a sudden and dreadful death; and
amid this new-born happiness grew a longing to behold that of her
sister and Jerry Vane.
The latter, when in London, more than once, when with Desmond;
contrived to draw on the subject of the male figure he had seen in
the arbour with Ida, and found that he still adhered to it in all its
somewhat vague details.
On the other hand, he had a long private letter from Clare,
impressing upon him that it must have been a delusion; that no such
person had been seen by Ida; and dwelling delicately on the health of
the latter, and the strange fancies which haunted her. Perplexed, he
knew not what to think, and would mutter:
'Delusion! Were Colonel Rakes, Desmond, and I all deluded alike? It
is an impossibility!'
He actually doubted her, and bitter as the doubt must be of that one
loves, deep must be the love that struggles against it, and his was
of that kind. Clare reminded him of his promised visit at
Christmas-time.
'Shall I go, to be snared again by the witchery of Ida's violet eyes
and the golden gleam of her auburn hair?'
The most rankling and bitter wounds are those of the heart; because
they are unseen, and, too often, untellable; so Vane, amid the
bitterness of his doubt, consoled, or strove to console himself with
the remark of a Scottish writer, who says, 'How humbling it is to
think that the strongest affections which have perplexed, or
agitated, or delighted us from our birth, will, in a few years, cease
to have an existence on the earth; and that all the ardour which they
have kindled will be as completely extinguished and forgotten as if
they had never been!'
Love for him certainly seemed to have been dawning in her heart
again; else whence that kiss--somewhat too sisterly, perhaps--which
she accorded to him so frankly in the oriel window, filling his bosom
with the old joy? Across the sunshine that was brightening his path
why should this marring shadow have fallen, giving a pain that was
only equalled in intensity by his love? hence it was simply horrid to
hear a man like Desmond say, mockingly:
'You ask me about that fellow in the arbour so often that, by Jove,
Vane, you are becoming spoony on her again--heard you were so once,
don't you know--threw you over for Beverley, and all that sort of
thing. Fact is, my dear fellow, women always betray those who love
them too much. Never throw your heart further away than just so far
that you can easily recover it.'
And with his thoughts elsewhere, Jerry, spoiled as women of the world
will spoil a drawing-room pet, lingered on amid a gay circle in
London, endowed with a vague flirting commission, and coquetted a
little with the languid, the soft, and the lovely, to hide or heal
the wound that Ida had inflicted; while it was with regret, and a
sense of as much irritation and hauteur as her gentle nature was
capable of feeling, Ida heard that Vane was to accompany Chute (after
all that had passed between them, and his suspicions) to Carnaby
Court, where now the beeches and elms were all yellow or brown with
the last tints of autumn, and the tall trees in the chase showed
flushes of crimson, purple, and orange when the sun was sinking
beyond the uplands in the west.
On very different terms were Clare and _her_ lover; and in their
letters they wrote freely and confidently of their future--a happy
time that seemed certain now--the future that had once been but as
the mirage that Chute had often beheld on the march in the sandy
deserts of Aijmere.
'Clare--I shall see her again!' he muttered to himself; it was a
great thought, a bright conviction, that to him she was no longer a
dream but a reality; thus in his heart he felt 'that riot of hope,
joy, and belief which is too tumultuous and impatient for happiness,
but yet _is_ happy beyond all that the world holds.'
Objectless till he saw her again, after Sir Carnaby and Lady Evelyn
had left him for England, he lingered in Northern Germany; but Jerry
Vane had accepted Lady Evelyn's written and actually reiterated
invitation for Christmas with very mingled feelings indeed.
Since the day he had left Carnaby Court so abruptly he had never
exchanged a word, verbally or in writing, with Ida.
In going there now he would do so with a deadened sense of sorrow,
disappointment, and bitterness in his heart and the wretched doubt as
to whether he was wise to throw himself into the lure--was it
snare?--of her society again; even with the intention of showing, as
he thought, poor goose, how bravely he could resist it, and seek to
convince her that he had effaced the past and forgotten to view her
amid the halo in which he had once enshrined her. Were they, then,
to meet in a state of antagonism?
Trevor Chute's brave rescue of Sir Carnaby Collingwood had, as a
story, preceded his return to town, with many exaggerations; the
clubs rang with it, and it actually stirred the blood in what 'Ouida'
calls 'the languid, _nil admirari_, egotistic, listless pulses of
high-bred society.'
But time was creeping on now, and the Christmas of the year drew near
at hand.