TAKING THE COLLAR
The General thought he had never been so happy in his life. His voice,
his bearing, his very dress seemed to partake of the delusion that
gilded existence. Springing down the steps of his club, with more waist
in his coat, more pretension in his hat, more agility in his gait, than
was considered usual, or even decorous, amongst its frequenters, no
wonder they passed their comments freely enough on their old comrade,
ridiculing or deploring his fate, according to the various opinions and
temper of the conclave.
"What's up with St. Josephs now?" asked a white-whiskered veteran of
his neighbour, whose bluff, weather-beaten face proclaimed him an
Admiral of the Red. "He's turned quite flighty and queer of late.
Nothing wrong _here_, is there?" and the speaker pointed a shaking
finger to the apex of his own bald head.
"Not _there_, but _here_," answered the sailor, laying his remaining
arm across his breast. "Going to be spliced, they tell me. Sorry for
it. He's not a bad sort; and a smartish officer, as I've heard, in
_your_ service."
"Pretty well--so, so. Nothing extraordinary for _that_," answered the
first speaker, commonly called by irreverent juniors "Old Straps." "He
hadn't much to do in India, I fancy; but he's been lucky, sir, lucky,
and luck's the thing! Luck against the world, Admiral, by sea or land!"
"Well, his luck's over now, it seems," grunted the Admiral, whose
views on matrimony appeared to differ from those of his profession
in general. "I'm told he's been fairly hooked by that Miss Douglas.
Black-eyed girl, with black hair--black, and all black, d-- me!--and
rides a black mare in the park. Hey! Why she might be his daughter. How
d'ye mean?"
"More fool he," replied Straps, with a leer and a grin that disclosed
his yellow tusks. "A fellow like St. Josephs ought to know better."
"I'm not so sure of that," growled the Admiral. "Gad, sir, if I was
idiot enough to do the same thing, d'ye think I'd take a d--d old
catamaran, that knew every move in the game? No, no, sir; youth and
innocence, hey? A clean bill of health, a fair wind, and a pleasant
voyage, you know!"
"In my opinion, there's devilish little youth left, and no innocence,"
answered "Straps." "If that's the girl, she's been hawked about, to my
certain knowledge, for the last three seasons; and I suppose our friend
is the only chance left--what we used to call a 'forlorn hope' when
I was an ensign. He's got a little money, and they might give him a
command. You never know what this Government will do. It's my belief
they'd give that crossing-sweeper a command if they were only sure he
was quite unfit for it."
"Command be d--d!" swore the Admiral. "He'll have enough to do to
command his young wife. What? She's a lively craft, I'll be bound,
with her black eyes. Carries a weather-helm, and steers as wild as you
please in a sea-way. I'll tell you what it is--Here, waiter! bring me
the _Globe_. Why the --- are the evening papers so late?"
In the rush for those welcome journals, so long expected, so eagerly
seized, all other topics were instantaneously submerged. Long before
he could reach the end of the street, General St. Josephs was utterly
forgotten by his brother officers and friends.
Still he _thought_ he had never been so happy in his life. The
word is used advisedly, for surely experience teaches us that real
happiness consists in tranquillity and repose, in the slumber rather
than the dream, in the lassitude that soothes the patient, not the
fever-fit of which it is the result. Can a man be considered happy
who is not comfortable? and how is comfort compatible with anxiety,
loss of appetite, nervous tremors, giddiness, involuntary blushing,
and the many symptoms of disorder, who could be cured heretofore by
advertisement, and which are the invariable accompaniments of an
epidemic, invincible by pill or potion, and yielding only to the
homoeopathic treatment of marriage.
In this desperate remedy St. Josephs was anxious to experimentalise,
and without delay. Yet his tact was supreme. Since the memorable walk
in Kensington Gardens, when he laid her under such heavy obligations,
his demeanour had been more that of a friend than a lover--more,
perhaps, that of a loyal and devoted subject to his sovereign mistress,
than either. She wondered why he never asked her, what she had done
with all that money? Why, when she alluded to the subject, he winced
and started, as from a touch on a raw wound. Once she very nearly
told him all. They were in a box at the Opera, so far unobserved that
the couple who had accompanied them seemed wholly engrossed with each
other. Satanella longed to make her confession--ease her conscience of
its burden, perhaps, though such a thought was cruel and unjust--shake
the yoke from off his neck. She had even got as far as, "I've never
half thanked you, General--" when there came a tap at the box-door.
Enter an irreproachable dandy, then a confusion of tongues, a laugh, a
solo, injunctions to silence, and the opportunity was gone. Could she
ever find courage to seek for it again?
Nevertheless, day by day she dwelt more on her admirer's forbearance,
his care, his tenderness, his chivalrous devotion. Though he never
pressed the point, it seemed an understood thing that they were
engaged. She had forbidden him to visit her before luncheon, but he
spent his afternoons in her drawing-room; and, on rare occasions, was
admitted in the evening, when an elderly lady, supposed to be Blanche's
cousin, came to act chaperone. The walks in Kensington Gardens had been
discontinued. Her heart could not but smite her sometimes, to think
that she never gave him but one, when she wanted him to do her a favour.
Had he been more exacting, she would have felt less self-reproach, but
his patience and good humour cut her to the quick.
"You brute!" she would say, pushing her hair back, and frowning at her
own handsome face in the glass. "You _worse_ than brute! Unfeeling,
unfeminine, I wish you were dead!--I wish you were dead!"
She had lost her rich colour now, and the hollow eyes were beginning to
look very large and sad, under their black arching brows.
Perhaps it was the General's greatest delight to hear her sing. This
indulgence she accorded him only of an evening, when the cousin
invariably went to sleep, and her admirer sat in an armchair with the
daily paper before his face. She insisted on this screen, and this
attitude, never permitting him to stand by the pianoforte, nor turn
over the leaves, nor undergo any exertion of mind or body that should
break the charm. Who knows what golden visions gladdened the war-worn
soldier's heart while he leaned back and listened, spellbound by the
tones he loved? Dreams of domestic happiness and peaceful joys, and a
calm untroubled future, when doubts and fears should be over, and he
could make this glorious creature wholly and exclusively his own.
[Illustration: "Perhaps it was the General's greatest delight to hear
her sing."
_Satanella._ _Page 208_]
Did he ever wonder why in certain songs the dear voice thrilled with
a sweetness almost akin to pain ere it was drowned in a loud and
brilliant accompaniment, that foiled the possibility of remonstrance,
while the ditty was thrown aside to be replaced by another, less
fraught, perhaps, with painful memories and associations? If so, he
hazarded no remark nor conjecture, satisfied, as it seemed, to wait
her pleasure, and in all things bow his will to hers, sacrificing his
desires, his pride, his very self-respect to the woman he adored.
For a time nothing occurred to disturb the General's enforced
tranquillity, and he pursued the course he seemed to have marked out
for himself with a calm perseverance that deserved success. In public,
people glanced and whispered when they saw Miss Douglas on his arm;
in private, he called daily at her house, talked much small-talk and
drank a great deal of weak tea; while in solitude he asked himself how
long this probation was to last, resolving nevertheless to curb his
impatience, control his temper, and if the prize was only to be won by
waiting, wait for it to the end!
Leaving his club, then, unconscious of the Admiral's pity and the
sarcasms of "Old Straps," St. Josephs walked jauntily through Mayfair,
till he came to the well-known street, which seemed to him now
even as a glade in Paradise. The crossing-sweeper blessed him with
considerable emphasis, brushing energetically in his path; for when
going the General was invariably good for sixpence, and on propitious
days would add thereto a shilling as he returned.
On the present occasion, though his hand was in his pocket, it remained
there with the coin in its finger and thumb; for the wayfarer stopped
petrified in the middle of the street; the sweeper held his tattered
hat at arm's-length, motionless as a statue; and a bare-headed
butcher's-boy, standing erect in a light cart, pulled his horse on its
haunches, and called out--
"Now then, stoopid! D'ye want all the road to yerself?" grazing the old
officer's coat-tails as he drove by with a brutal laugh.
But neither irreverence nor outrage served to divert the General's
attention from the sight that so disturbed his equanimity.
"There's that d--d black mare again!" he muttered, while he clenched
his teeth, and his cheek turned pale. "I'll put a stop to this one way
or the other. Steady, steady! No; my game is to be won by pluck and
patience. It's very near the end now. Shall I lose it by failing in
both?"
The black mare, looking but little the worse for training, was indeed
in the act of leaving Blanche's door. Miss Douglas had evidently
ridden her that morning in the Park. She might have told the General,
he thought. She might have asked him to accompany her as he used.
She ought to have no secrets from him now; but was he in truth any
nearer her inner life, any more familiar with her dearest thoughts
and wishes than he had been months ago? Surely she was not treating
him well! Surely he deserved more confidence than this. The General
felt very sore and angry; but summoning all his self-command, walked
upstairs,--and for this he deserves no little credit,--with an assured
step, and a calm, unruffled brow.
"Miss Douglas was dressing," the servant said. "Miss Douglas had been
out for a ride. Would the General take a seat, and look at to-day's
paper? Miss Douglas had said '_partic'lar_' she would be at home."
It was irritating to wait, but it was soothing to know she was at home
"_partic'lar_" when _he_ called. The General sat down to peruse the
advertisement sheet of the paper, reading absently a long and laudatory
description of the trousseaux and other articles for family use
supplied by a certain house in the city at less than cost price!