"MINGLE SHADES OF JOY AND WOE."
The long dining-room is in a blaze of light, such as it has not sparkled
with for some considerable time, and only then on rare and special
occasions such as the present one. The polished floor reflects the glow
of numerous candles, and, as Hicks vigorously puts it, the decks are
thoroughly cleared for action. Expectant groups stand about the room or
throng the doorways--for the fun has not yet commenced, and meanwhile
talk and laughter goes on among the jovial spirits there foregathered,
and the graver ones, when not the subjects of rally, are intent on
contemplating the floor, the ceiling, the fireplace, or anything or
nothing. The party might be an English one to all appearances. You may
descry the usual phases in its ingredients. There is shy humanity,
confident humanity, blatant humanity, fussy humanity, even pompous
humanity. There, however, the resemblance ends. Of stiffness there is
none. Everybody knows everybody, or soon will--meanwhile acts as if it
does. Then, in the little matter of attire, many of the "lords of
creation" are arrayed in orthodox evening costume and white-chokered,
others in black coats of the "go-to-meeting" order, while three or four
Dutchmen, bidden to the festivity on neighbourly grounds, sport raiment
fearfully and wonderfully made, whose effect is enhanced by terrific
neckties, varying in shades from scarlet to green. The company is
composed almost entirely of the settler class. Jolly old fellows who
have come to look on at the enjoyment of their extensive and
well-looking families in various stages of adolescence, and who, in
spite of their white hair and sixty or seventy summers, seem more than
half inclined not to remain passive spectators of the fun. One or two
of these, by the way, judging from nasal rubicundity and other signs,
will, I trow, be found more frequently hovering around the charmed
circle where flows the genial dram, than in the immediate neighbourhood
of the giddy rout. Middle-aged men, bronzed and bearded, looking
serious as they contemplate what is expected of them, for assuredly we
English, in whatever part of the world we be, "take our pleasures
sadly." Young settlers are there, stalwart fellows, several of whom
have ridden from far, carrying their gala array in a saddle-bag, and who
by the time they return will have been three days away from home. But
distance is nothing; their horses are strong and hardy, and the roads
are good, and if not, what matters? Life is nothing without its
enjoyments, and accordingly they intend to enjoy themselves, and do.
Of the fair sex there is a goodly muster--though fewer in proportion to
that of the men, as is frequently the case at frontier dances--
consisting of the wives and daughters of the settlers. Some are pretty,
some plain; some are bright and lively, and nicely dressed; others again
are badly attired, and neither bright nor lively; and at present they
are mostly gathered together in the room opening out of the one which is
to be the scene of the fray.
"Now then, Hicks, Armitage, some of you fellows, let's set the ball
rolling," cried the jovial voice of Jim Brathwaite, as a volunteer
pianist (the orchestral department must be worked entirely by volunteer
agency) sat down at the instrument and dashed off a lively galop. "Come
along, Arthur, give these fellows a lead," he went on.
Claverton was standing in the doorway. He turned as Jim addressed him.
"Well, if it's all the same, I think I'll cut in later. Fact is, I'm
not much of a dancer. Besides, it's a ridiculous exercise."
"Aren't you! `England expects,'" said Ethel, maliciously, as she
floated by, a dream-like vision in pink gauziness. Her golden hair,
confined by some cunning device at the back of her head, flowed in
shining ripples below her waist, and the deep blue eyes flashed
laughingly into his as she made her mocking rejoinder.
"Does it? Expectations are notoriously unsafe assets," was the quiet
reply.
"Well, we must make a start or we shall never get these fellows to
begin," said Jim. "Come along, Ethel, you promised me the first dance.
If you didn't you ought to have."
They glided off, and Claverton stood and followed them mechanically with
his glance; but, as a matter of fact, he hardly saw them. He was
wondering what on earth had become of Lilian Strange. The dance wore
on, and then the next, still Claverton stood in the doorway, which coign
of vantage he held conjointly with an uncouth-looking Dutchman and a
burly but bashful compatriot, and still _she_ did not appear. At
length, while crossing the inner room with a vague idea of putting an
artless and roundabout inquiry or two to Mrs Brathwaite as to why
Lilian did not appear, he heard himself hailed by his host. Turning
quickly he perceived the latter sitting in confab with a contemporary in
age, but vastly different in appearance.
"Arthur, this is an old friend of mine, Mr Garrett."
Then arose a queer-looking old fellow, short, rotund of person, and
whose exceeding rubicundity of visage betokened, I fear, anything but
aversion for ardent spirits. Running one stubby hand through his
bristly grey hair, he extended the other to Claverton.
"'Ow do--'ow do? Not been long in the country, have you? My word, but
it's a fine country, this is--fine country for young fellers like you."
Claverton thought the country contained also some advantages for the
speaker; and he was right. Here was old Joe Garrett, who never knew his
father, if he had one, and who, having early in the century deserted
from a two-hundred-ton merchant brig lying in Algoa Bay, had started in
colonial life as a journeyman carpenter. By hook or by crook he had
made his way, and now, by virtue of the four fine farms which he owned,
he deemed himself very much of a landed proprietor, and every whit the
equal of Walter Brathwaite, "whose ancestors wore chain-armour in the
fourteenth century," as some one or other's definition of a gentleman
runs.
"I was jest such a young feller as you once," went on this embodiment of
colonial progress. "I landed in this country in nothin' but the clothes
to my back, and look at me now. Now, I'll tell you what I did," and the
oracle, slapping one finger into the palm of the of her hand, looked up
into his victim's face with would-be impressive gravity, "I worked;
that's what I did--I worked. Now, you may depend upon it, that for a
young feller there's nothin' like a noo country--and work!"
"I suppose so," acquiesced Claverton, horribly sick of this biography.
"Now a noo country," went on the oracle, "a noo country, sez I, ain't an
old one. 'Ere you're free; there," flinging out a stubby hand in the
imaginary direction of Great Britain, "nothing but forms and sticklin'.
Now, 'ere I can sit down to dinner without putting on a
swallow-tail-coat and a white choker, for instance. No; give me a noo
country and freedom, sez I."
"Quite right, Mr Garrett. A swallow-tailed coat plays the mischief
with the digestion, and science has discovered that a white choker
tarnishes the silver. Something in the starch, you know--arsenic, they
say."
"No! You don't say so now?" returned the other, open-mouthed, and not
detecting the fine irony of his banterer's tone.
"Yes, of course. And now excuse me. I must go and find my partner."
"Certainly--certainly. You young fellers! I was a young feller once,
ha, ha, ha!" And old Garrett winked, and contorted his visage in the
direction of his recent interlocutor in such wise as should mean
volumes.
"This is ours, Miss Strange."
Lilian had just come in. She had passed close behind the speaker while
he was talking to old Garrett, and her entrance did not remain long
undiscovered.
"Do you know, I had quite begun to fear you were not going to appear
to-night--that you were tired or unwell," he said, as they made their
way to the dancing-room.
"Bight and wrong. I was tired, and so rested instead of dressing
earlier. Now I am all right again, and never felt so well in my life."
"Nor looked it."
It slipped out. The slightest possible flush came into Lilian's face.
"You must not pay me compliments, Mr Claverton," she said, gravely, but
with a smile lurking in her eyes. "They are what you men call `bad
form.'"
"But consider the provocation."
"Again? What am I to do to you? I know. I shall scold you. This is
the second time to-day that you have reproached me for being late. This
morning and now."
_Certes_ the provocation was excessive. She was looking surpassingly
beautiful this evening, in creamy white, with a velvety rose of deepest
crimson on her breast; another bud, a white one, nestling among the
thick coils of her bronze-tinted dark hair. Many a glance of astonished
admiration greeted her entrance, and followed her about the room; but
the quiet repose of the lovely face was devoid of the least sign of
self-consciousness.
"By Jove!" remarked Armitage to his partner, a chubby little "bunch"
with big blue eyes and a button mouth. "Claverton's a sly dog.
_That's_ why he was in no hurry to begin. Oho, I see now."
"She _is_ pretty. How well they look together!" was the reply, as the
two stood against the wall to watch them.
Ethel, whirling by with the Civil Commissioner's clerk, caught the last
remark. She would have given much to have been able to box poor little
Gertie Wray's ears severely, then and there. That young lady babbled
on, utterly void of offence.
"I say, though," said her partner. "She cut you out. Claverton was
just on his way to ask you when she came in. He was, really."
"Was he? Then he should have asked me before. My programme's full
now."
Meanwhile let us follow the pair under discussion.
"Who was that poor old man you were chaffing so, just now?" Lilian was
saying.
"Only a curious specimen of natural history. But how do you know I was
chaffing anybody?"
"Because I heard you. Who is he?"
"What perception you have got! `He' is old Garrett, hight Joe, who
migrated hither in the year one, to escape the terrible evil of having
to dress for dinner."
Lilian could not speak for laughing.
"Fact, really; he's just been telling me all about it. Bother! This
dance is at an end. We are down for some more together, though."
"Too many."
"I claim priority of right. I claim your sympathy as a fellow sojourner
in a far country. I appeal to your compassion to rescue me from
standing out in the cold, in that you are the only one with whom I can
gravitate round this festal room without peril to my neighbours' elbows
and shins, and they know it, and shunt me accordingly."
"I don't believe a word of it," laughed Lilian. "It is you who shunt
them."
"No, I am telling you solemn truth. And now have I not made it clear to
you that it is your bounden duty to take pity on me and help the
proverbial lame dog over the ditto stile?"
"Well then, I'll see what I can do for you. Now find me a seat--there,
thank you--and go and `victimise' some one else," she added, flashing up
at him a bright, mischievous glance.
"Not yet. Have pity on--the public elbow and shin. I want to rest,
too, after discharging my recent heavy responsibility without disaster;"
and he made a move towards the seat beside her.
"No. You are not to shirk your duty. Go and do as I wish, or I shall
consider it my duty to lose my programme. That means a new one, blank,
and then memory is not a trustworthy guide." And as at that moment some
one came up to ask her for a dance, Claverton was constrained
unwillingly to obey, or rather, partially to obey, for he fell back on
his old position in the convenient doorway, whence his eyes followed her
round and round the room, to the complete exclusion of the other score
of revolving couples.
"Mr Claverton, do prove a friend in need, and save me from the clutches
of that awful Dutchman bearing down upon me from over there," said a
flurried, but familiar voice at his elbow. "I promised him in a weak
moment, and now he's coming. Say you've got me down for this, and
persuade him it's his mistake. Quick! here he comes."
"All right. But you told me once you'd rather go round with a chair,
you know, than with me."
"Did I? Never mind; don't be mean and rake up things," replied Ethel,
and away they went, while the defrauded Boer, thinking his own sluggish
brain was at fault in the reckoning, adjourned to a certain corner of
the other room in order to solace his wounded feelings with a _sopje_
(dram).
"How about England's disappointment?" said Ethel, maliciously, during a
pause.
"That affliction has been indefinitely averted. By the way, I never
thought to see Allen so screwed."
"Er--I'm not screwed," mildly objected that long-suffering youth, who
had pulled up with a swaying jerk alongside of them.
"Aren't you? My good fellow, a man who is capable of mistaking my
substantial and visible means of support for this exceedingly
well-polished floor, must be in a critical condition."
"Oh--ah--er--was that you I trod upon? I didn't know--I'm awfully
sorry."
Half-a-dozen bystanders exploded at this, and the dance over, Claverton
began to think he had done a considerable share of duty, and sought an
opportunity of claiming an instalment of the promised reward; but his
turn had not yet come. Presently he overheard a girl near him say:
"What do you think of that Miss Strange?"
He recognised in the speaker one Jessie Garrett, a daughter of Joe of
that ilk.
"Well, she's very pretty, there's no doubt about that," answered her
partner, a stalwart young ostrich-farmer from the Graaff Reinet
district.
"Should you admire her as much as Ethel Brathwaite?"
"No; I don't think she's a patch on Miss Brathwaite; but there's
something awfully fetching about her, for all that."
"Well, there's no accounting for tastes. I think she's too colourless--
washed-out looking,"--a fault the speaker herself could in no wise plead
guilty to. She was a pretty girl herself, in the florid, barmaid style,
but as different a creature to Lilian Strange as a plump dabchick to an
Arctic tern.
Claverton's lips curled as he looked from the offending couple to the
object of their remarks.
_She_ to be discussed according to the clod-hopping ideas of louts and
scullery-maids. He turned away disgusted. Suddenly he heard himself
hailed in loud and jovial tones, and, looking up, found himself in the
vicinity of the refreshment table, where three or four ancient settlers
were exchanging reminiscences, and occasionally clinking glasses.
Prominent among them was old Garrett, his rubicund visage now nearly
purple.
"I sh-shay, C-Claveringsh!" called out this worthy. "C-come and have a
what-sh-may call a eye-opener--hic!"
"All right."
"Thas righ'sh. Told yer 'ee ain't proud," cried the old fellow, beaming
triumphantly on the rest, and attempting to bestow upon Claverton a
friendly slap on the back, which the latter quietly evaded. He
contemplated the individual before him with vast amusement, and
speculated as to how soon this worthy's early retirement would become
imperative.
The rout went on, and presently Naylor and his violin were pressed into
the service to second the piano. In the passage outside a number of the
Hottentot servants, emulative of their betters, had got up a dance of
their own and waxed merry, and laughed and chattered exceedingly, till
at last Jim Brathwaite, hearing the row, sallied forth and cleared them
all out summarily.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The hours wear on apace. In the silence of the garden the air is
fragrant with the cool breaths of night distilling from the myrtle and
the flowering pomegranate. High in the heavens hangs a gold half-moon
whose lustre pierces a leafy canopy, scattering a network of filmy light
upon the shaded earth. In and out of the gloomy shadows of the orange
trees a firefly or two trails in mid air a floating spark. All is rest.
Now and again a burst of voices and music is borne from the house, yet
here it penetrates but feebly, and Night--silver, moon-pierced,
star-studded Night--is queen amid the mysterious silence of her witching
court.
Two figures wandering down the orange walk in the alternate light, and
gloom, and dimness. Listen! That low, melodious voice can belong to no
other than Lilian Strange.
"I am so glad we came out here for a little. I had no idea there could
be such a night as this except in books."
"Perhaps it strikes you the more, contrasted with the row and junketing
indoors," said her companion.
"No. In any case it would be delicious. And yet there is something of
awe about a night like this--don't laugh at me--it always seems a
mysterious shadow-land connecting us with another world."
"Laugh at you! Why won't you give me credit for a capability of
entering into any of your ideas?"
"But I do. You are more capable of it than any one I know. There."
"Thanks for that, anyway."
"Don't stop my rhapsodies, but listen. Doesn't it seem--standing here
in this stillness--as if the world lay far beneath one's feet; that all
the littlenesses and prosaic worries of every-day life could not enter
such an enchanted realm? Ah-h!"
She uttered a little cry and instinctively drew closer to him as the
sudden, yelping bark of a jackal sounded from the bush apparently within
fifty yards of them, but really much further off, the stillness and a
slight echo adding loudness to the unlooked-for and ill-sounding "bay."
"Don't be afraid," he said, reassuringly. "It's only a jackal. What
would you have done if it had been a wolf?"
"I should have been dreadfully frightened. What a coward I am!"
"At any rate, this time I am not the author of the scare, which is
subject-matter for gratulation," he said.
She laughed. "No; but the interruption came in most opportunely, in
time to stay my flights. Here am I, inveighing against, and thinking to
rise superior to the prosaic commonplaces of life, when a sound, a mere
sound, fills me with an overwhelming impulse to rush headlong back into
the despised prose. What a step from the sublime to the ridiculous!"
"I was thinking something of the kind," replied Claverton, with a half
smile; and his voice grew very soft as he looked at her sweet, serious
face. "But don't be in the least afraid. A jackal is about as
formidable or aggressive as a tabby cat, though he does make a
diabolical row; and as for wolves, they are very scarce, and even more
cowardly; and a yet bolder animal would flee from two such unwonted
apparitions in the South African bush," he added, with a laugh, as he
glanced at the regulation "evening-dress" of his companion and himself.
"Come this way."
He opened a small gate in the high quince hedge, and they passed out
into a narrow bush path which, wound along through the _spekboem_ and
feathery mimosa.
"Don't be in the very least afraid," he repeated, as they wandered on.
"I want you thoroughly to appreciate and enjoy about the most perfect
night I ever knew--and I've seen a good many--and you can't do so if
you're expecting a wolf or a tiger to spring out of every bush."
She laughed. "I'll try and be less of a coward, and keep my too-vivid
imagination under control." Yet the light hand which rested on his arm
seemed to lean there with ever so increased a pressure of trust or
dependence, or both.
Is it the movement of bird or beast in the adjoining brake, or is it the
tread of a stealthy foot, that makes Claverton suddenly turn and gaze
behind him? "I could swear I heard some one," he thinks to himself; but
not a word of this does he say to his companion. Then he laughs at
himself for a fool. But he sees not a tall, shadowy figure standing
back beneath the shelter of a mimosa tree, watching them over the sprays
of the lower scrub. He hears not again that cautious footfall
following--following silently as they wend their way along the moonlit
path. And what should be farther from his thoughts than danger, real or
imaginary?
Presently the plash of falling water is heard, and they emerge from the
path on to a high, open bank. Beneath, the moon is reflected in the
depths of the still, round pool, whose rocky sides throw a black shadow
on the surface, while a small cascade slides from a height of ten or
twelve feet, and, glancing like a silver thread through festoons of
delicate maidenhair fern fringing the polished face of the rock,
plunges, with a bell-like plash, into the glassy depths.
"That's pretty, isn't it?" said Claverton. "In the daytime it isn't
much to look at, but by moonlight it shows up rather well."
"It's lovely! A perfect picture!"
"I thought you'd like it. Sit down there," he continued, pointing to
the smooth, sloping sward, which he has narrowly scrutinised to make
sure that no noxious reptile, whether serpent or centipede, is at hand.
Yet may he have overlooked the presence of deadlier foe than serpent or
centipede, ay, and wolf or leopard, in that peaceful retreat. "How do
you think you'll like being here?"
"Very much. I like it already. It is so different to any kind of life
I have ever known before--so strange, and wild, and interesting. And
then every one here is so kind. Why, I might be a very near relative
instead of only a recent acquaintance! The worst of it is, I fear it
will spoil me by the time I have to go back to my work."
Her listener bit his lip until the blood flowed. His quick perception
had detected the faintest possible sigh of wearyful import which escaped
her.
"It shall be no fault of mine if you do go back to that same miserable
drudgery," he thought. But it was too early yet to utter the thought
aloud, even he felt that. So he only said--and there was a world of
tender sympathy in his tone:
"I'm afraid you have been working much too hard, and I don't believe you
are in the least fitted for it."
"You must not try and make me discontented, Mr Claverton," was the
answer, with a sad little smile. "The fact is, I do feel the change a
great deal more than I ought. Only lately I had a very dear and happy
home, now I am entirely alone in the world."
Again that irresistible impulse came over her auditor. Was it really
too soon? Why, it seemed as though he had known her for ages. Yet
forty-eight hours ago he had not set eyes upon her. For a few moments
he could hardly trust himself to speak. Then he said, gently:
"Tell me about your old home." The bush behind them parts, suddenly,
noiselessly. A head rises; a great grim black head, with distended
eyeballs rolling in the moonlight. Then it sinks again and disappears,
but they have not seen it.
"I suppose I have no right to feel leaving the old place as I did," went
on Lilian. "We were in a way interlopers, for it belonged to my
stepfather, not to our family. I lived there, though, ever since I can
remember, and my mother died there. We were very happy but for one
thing: I had a stepsister about my own age who detested me. In short,
we couldn't get on together, hard though I tried to like her. So when
Mr Dynevard died--"
"Who?"
"Mr Dynevard. My stepfather," repeated Lilian.
"Of Dynevard Chase, near Sandcombe?"
"Yes. Why, you don't mean to say you know it?" cried Lilian, lost in
wonder.
"I wish I did. I'm afraid my utmost acquaintance with it lies in having
driven past the place once or twice. Some distant relatives of mine
lived not far from Sandcombe years ago. So that's where you used to
live?"
"Yes. This is a surprise. I shall make you talk to me such a lot about
it," she cried, gleefully. "You will soon be heartily tired of the
subject, and will wish you had preserved a discreet silence."
Claverton remembered the reluctance to dwell upon home topics which she
had expressed when the two of them were driving up from the town, and it
was with an extraordinary sense of relief that he did so. There was
nothing more behind it than the painfulness of her change of
circumstances to a proud and sensitive nature.
"After my stepfather's death," went on Lilian, "I thought it best to
relieve Eveline Dynevard of my presence, and did so. There you have the
whole of my history."
"And then you struck out a line for yourself, and thought to open that
miserably hard old oyster, the world, with the blade of a miniature
penknife. How enterprising of you!"
"No, not at once--at least--at the first, that is--" and she hesitated
slightly and the colour rose to her face, as at some painful
recollection. Her trepidation was not lost upon her listener, on whom
it threw a momentary chill.
Again that grim head rises from the bushes, ten yards behind the
unsuspecting couple, followed this time by a pair of brawny dark
shoulders bent forward in an attitude of intense watchfulness--the
attitude of a crouching tiger. Again the moonbeams fall upon a fierce
visage and eyes glaring with vengeful hate. They fall on something
more--on the gleaming blade of a great assegai, and then the mighty
frame of a gigantic savage slowly begins to emerge from the covert.
Claverton sees not the baleful stare of his deadly foe, for he is too
intent upon gazing at the lovely preoccupied eyes before him, and
wondering what is their exact colour, changing as it ever does in the
varying light. His companion sees it not, for she is living again in
the past. And no zephyr quivers through the silvered leaves or ruffles
the pool at their feet, no cloud comes over the calm, fair beauty of the
night, no shadow warns of a secret and terrible death hovering over
those two, who sit there beneath the witching influences of restful
calm, of moonlight, and to one of them--of love.
"Confound it!" angrily exclaims Claverton, half rising as the sound of
approaching voices and laughter is borne upon the stillness. The
threatening form of the watcher disappears--but they have not seen it--
and the voices draw nearer. "Our retreat is a retreat no longer. The
whole lot of them are bearing down upon us. Always the way."
"Always the way." So it is. As in small things so in great; we see not
the finger of Providence in fortune's hardest knocks. Yet it must be
admitted that these seldom wear the guise of blessings, and we mortals
are weak--lamentably weak--and our foresight is simply nil. You two,
who resent the intrusion of your fellows into this slumbrous retreat,
you little reck that that intrusion is the saving of the life of at
least one of you.
"But anyhow we must be going back now. As it is they will be wondering
what has become of as," said Lilian, rising.
"I suppose we must," assented her companion, ruefully. He thought he
could have sat for ever in that enchanted glade, gazing into the
beautiful face and listening to the modulation of that low, tuneful
voice. "Ah, well. Now for the madding crowd again."
He wrapped her shawl around her, and they wandered back along the narrow
path and beneath the orange trees again. Then as they gained the last
gate and the sound of music and laughter betokened that they were close
to the house, Lilian lingered a moment to look back towards the moonlit
pool.
"It is a sweet place, and we have had a lovely walk," she said. "I did
enjoy it so. Thanks so much for bringing me."
What did she mean? Was she blind? He paused with his hand on the
half-open gate, and glanced at her with a curious expression.
A small runnel of water coursed along at their feet, shining and glowing
in the moonlight, and she was standing on the single plank that spanned
it. Was she blind, that she failed to read even one-tenth of what that
look expressed? But he made some ordinary remark, and they passed on.
"Why, where in the world have you two been?" said Mrs Brathwaite as
they entered.
"Playing truant. Miss Strange had a slight headache, and I recommended
fresh air as a counteracting influence. Then we discovered that we had
been near neighbours for some years without knowing it, and got talking
English `shop'," answered Claverton. The latter half of his statement
was not strictly historical, but the speaker salved his conscience with
the trite reflection that "all's fair in love and war."
"How curious!" said the old lady, in her interest in the coincidence
losing sight of the delinquency and forgetting mildly to scold him
therefor. "But it's astonishing how small the world is, when one comes
to think of it."
"Mr Claverton," said Lilian, reproachfully, an hour later. "I'm
surprised at you. How could you say we were neighbours for `some years'
when you knew we were not?"
He laughed. "Were we not? Then we ought to have been. It was the
merest accident of time and place that precluded it." He could not make
to her the excuse he had made to his own conscience--at least--not yet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pass we again to the silence of the garden. Who is this leaning against
yonder fence alone and gazing with stony, set face straight in front of
her? Can it be Ethel? Yes, it is. The laughing, saucy lips, so ready
with badinage and repartee, are closed tightly together, and the blue
eyes, erewhile flashing and sparkling with light-hearted mirth, now
start forth with a hard stare. Must we, in the interests of our story,
partially withdraw the curtain from her reflections? Even so, let us do
it as gently as possible.
"He never looked at _me_ like that," she murmured, referring to the two
on the little plank bridge. "Ought I to have betrayed my presence? I
don't know. I couldn't, somehow; and they weren't saying anything. But
that look--how plainly I saw it! O, God! if only it had been given to
me--to _me_," she went on, passionately, "I would cheerfully have died
at this moment."
She paused, and slowly the tears welled to the swimming eyes, and
glistened in the moonlight. "All the walks and rides we've had
together; all the time we have been thrown together! Good God! if I
could but live it over again! Since the very moment I saw him come in,
and he looked me up and down in that calm, searching way of his--it
seems only like yesterday. He never thought of me but as something to
amuse him--a pretty plaything--to be thrown aside for a better. No, I
am wronging him; never by word or look did he deceive me. It is I who
am a fool--an idiot--and must pay the penalty of my folly; but--how
could I help it?"
And the sounds of revelry came ever and anon from the lighted windows;
and, without, all nature slept in a tranquil hush, and the pale stars
gleamed in the sky--gleamed coldly down upon the lonely watcher.
"How I flouted you, and said hard, sharp things to you, darling; every
one of them goes through me like a knife as I remember it. Yet that was
at first, and--how could I tell?" and a great sob shook the delicate
frame. "But help me, my pride! Oh, love, you will never know. The
same roof will cover us, and I must talk and even laugh with you as
before--and see you and her together; but--you will never know. Ah!
what a deal it takes to break one poor little heart! And--how I hate
_her_!"
A voice intrudes upon her reflections, quick, gruff, and horribly
familiar. "Oh, there you are, Miss Brathwaite," it says, "I've been
looking for you everywhere."
The voice acts upon her even as the trumpet blast upon the proverbial
charger. Not a trace of any recent emotion is visible as she turns and
faces her persistent but unwelcome admirer, Will Jeffreys.
"And you've found me. What can I do for you?"
The young fellow is staggered. The fact is that, warmed by the
exhilarating exercise and the yet more exhilarating stimulant which he
has imbibed pretty freely in the course of the evening, he has screwed
up his courage to the sticking point, and intends to throw the dice of
his fate with Ethel before the said exalted quality has time to cool,
which process of refrigeration, it may be remarked, has already begun.
"Well, there _is_ something you can do for me," he says.
"What is it? Do you want a partner for the next dance?--because, I'll
be in directly," she asks, quickly.
The very tones of her voice ought to have brought home to Jeffreys the
inexpediency of pursuing his subject for the present; but some persons
are singularly deficient in a sense of the fitness of things or of
times, and he was one.
"No; it isn't that. I want to say something--something about me--and
about you," he blunders, lamely; but she will give him no help, "and--I
must--say it--to-night--Ethel!" he jerks out.
"For goodness' sake don't say it to-night, or at any other time,"
replies she, decisively, putting out her hand, with a gesture as if to
stop him. It has the desired effect. Even Jeffreys' dull wits are
alive to the conviction that his is not merely a losing game, but a lost
one; and the reflection exasperates him.
"Oh, I might have known," was the sneering reply. "Of course--no one
has been fit to speak to since that fellow Claverton came."
She turned upon him, her face white with wrath in the moonlight.
"Wilfred Jeffreys, you are a brave fellow. You have found me here
alone, and have taken the opportunity of insulting me. Now what do you
think I am going to do?"
"What?"
"I am going in to ask uncle to put away the brandy decanter," said she,
in tones of bitter scorn; and without another word she walked away,
leaving him standing there looking and feeling, from the crown of his
head to the soles of his feet, a thorough fool.
Within doors the fun is kept up with a zest characteristic of such
entertainments. There are no shy ones left now, all are merged in the
ranks of the confident.
Crash!
Down comes Hicks like a felled tree, right in the middle of the room.
Matters are at a momentary standstill, and the unlucky one slowly and
shamefacedly picks himself up, red and wrathful and covered with
confusion. He is muttering maledictions on the head of the guileless
Allen, which ass, he declares, not content with cannoning against him,
tripped him up.
"Never mind, jump up. Lucky it's _before_ supper," laughs jovial Jim
Brathwaite.
"Hicks, old man, I _told_ you to draw the line at that fourth glass,"
says the irrepressible Armitage in a mighty stage whisper as he whirls
by, grinning with malicious delight. The truth being that Hicks is the
most abstemious wight in the world. But the remark does not pass
unheeded, and a laugh, varying in tone from open guffaw to suppressed
titter, further exasperates and discomfits the luckless stumbler, who
vows vengeance on his tormentor.
Then comes supper, which must be attended to in relays, space being
limited. A Dutchman is desperately anxious to make a speech, and is
with difficulty quelled; while Jack Armitage, who has a bet on with some
one that old Garrett being too far gone to detect the fraud, he will
make him drink three tumblers of water under the impression that it is
grog, is using the noble spur, emulation, to induce that worthy to
swallow the third, and winks and grins triumphantly at the loser as he
succeeds. Meanwhile piano and violin never flag, till at length the
waning summer night begins to hint pretty broadly that it is time to
knock off.
Then a great deal of inspanning and saddling up; of hunting for stray
saddle-cloths and bridles which have gone adrift; not a little wrangling
among the coloured stable hands belonging to the place or to the guests,
and finally most of the latter are gone. The residue will tarry for a
shakedown and a rest.
"Good-night--at sunrise!"
A pressure from a soft, taper hand; a sweet glance from a pair of rather
tired eyes, and the door closes on a tall vision in soft creamy
draperies.
The recipient of that pressure of the hand, that playful glance, turns
away like a man in a dream. Half instinctively he makes his way to
Hicks' quarters. Here he is enthusiastically hailed.
"Hallo, Arthur. Come and blow a cloud before you turn in. All these
chaps are asleep already."
"All right," was the reply, and the speaker, picking his way among
several slumbering wights who rolled in blankets had compassed impromptu
shakedowns on the floor of Hicks' room, seated himself at the foot of
the latter's stretcher. "Give us a fill."