DESVOEUX MAKES THE RUNNING.
Free love, free field--we love but while we may:
The woods are hushed, their music is no more;
The leaf is dead, the yearning past away,
New leaf, new life--the days of frost are o'er.
New life, new love, to suit the newer day:
New loves are sweet as those that went before,
Free love, free field--we love but while we may.
Felicia was beginning to find Maud a serious charge, and to be weighed
down in spirit by the responsibility involved in her protection. It
would have been easy enough to tell her not to flirt; but it was when
Maud was unconscious and self-forgetful that she fascinated the most;
and how warn her against the exercise of attractions of which she never
thought and the existence of which would have been a surprise to her?
When, on the lawn, Maud's hat blew off and all her wealth of soft brown
hair tumbled about her shoulders in picturesque disarray, and she stood,
bright and eager and careless of the disaster, thinking only of the
fortunes of the game, but beautiful, as every creature who came near her
seemed to feel--when she was merriest in the midst of merry talk, and
made some saucy speech and then blushed scarlet at her own
audacity--when her intensity of enjoyment in things around her bespoke
itself in every look and gesture--when the pleasure she gave seemed to
infect her being and she charmed others because she was herself in love
with life, how warn her against all this? You might as well have
preached to an April shower!
Desvoeux, too, was not a lover likely to be easily discouraged or to let
the grass grow beneath his feet. Both from temperament and policy he
pressed upon a position where advantages seemed likely to be gained.
Despite the very coolest welcomes Felicia began to find him an
inconveniently frequent visitor. An avowed foe to croquet, he appeared
with provoking regularity at her Thursday afternoons, when the Dustypore
world was collected to enjoy that innocent recreation on the lawn, and
somehow he always contrived to be playing in Maud's game. Even at church
he put in an unexpected appearance, and sate through a discourse of
three-quarters of an hour with a patience that was almost ostentatiously
hypocritical. Then he would come and be so bright, natural and amusing,
and such good company, that Felicia was frequently not near as chilling
to him as she wished and as she felt that the occasion demanded. He was
unlike anybody that Maud had ever met before. He seemed to take for
granted that all existing institutions and customs were radically wrong
and that everybody knew it. 'Make love to married women? Of course; why
not--what are pretty married women for? Hard upon the husbands? Not a
bit; all the unfairness was the other way: the husbands have such
tremendous advantages, that it is quite disheartening to fight against
such odds: tradition and convention and the natural feminine
conservatism all in favour of the husbands; and then the Churchmen, as
they always do, taking their part too: it was so mean! No, no; if the
husbands cannot take care of themselves they deserve the worst that can
befall them.' Or he would say, 'Go to church! Thank you, if Miss Vernon
sings in the choir and will say "How d'ye do?" to me as she comes out, I
will go and welcome; but otherwise, _ça m'embête_, as the Frenchman
said. I always was a fidget, Miss Vernon, and feel the most burning
desire to chatter directly any one tells me to hold my tongue; and then
I'm argumentative and hate all the speaking being on one side; and
then--and then,--well, on the whole, I rather agree with a friend of
mine, who said that he had only three reasons for not going to
church--he disbelieved the history, disapproved the morality and
disliked the art.'
Maud used to laugh at these speeches; and though she did not like them
nor the man who made them, and understood what Felicia meant by saying
that Desvoeux's fun had about it something which hurt one, it seemed
quite natural to laugh at them. She observed too, before long, that they
were seldom made when Felicia was by, and that Desvoeux, if in higher
spirits at Mrs. Vereker's than at the Vernons' house, was also several
shades less circumspect in what he said, and divulged tastes and
opinions which were concealed before her cousin. More than once, as
Felicia came up Desvoeux had adroitly turned the conversation from some
topic which he knew she would dislike; and Maud, who was guilelessness
itself, had betrayed by flushing cheeks and embarrassed manner the fact
of something having been concealed.
On the whole, Felicia had never found the world harder to manage or the
little empire of her drawing-room less amenable to her sway. Her guests
somehow would not be what she wished. Desvoeux, though behaving with
marked deference to her wishes and always sedulously polite, pleased her
less and less, Maud's innocence and impulsiveness, however attractive,
frequently produced embarrassments which it required all Felicia's tact
to overcome. Her husband, laconic and indolent, gave not the slightest
help. Another ground on which she distressed herself (very
unnecessarily, could she only have known) was, that Sutton, among other
performers on Felicia's little stage, played not at all the brilliant
part which she had mentally assigned him. The slightly contemptuous
dislike for Desvoeux which Felicia had often heard him express, and in
which she greatly sympathised, though veiled under a rigid courtesy, was
yet incompatible with cordiality, or good cheer; and Desvoeux, whose
high spirits nothing could put down, often appeared the pleasanter
companion of the two. Sutton, in fact, had on more occasions than one
come into collision with Desvoeux in a manner which a less easy-going
and light-hearted man would have found it difficult to forgive. Once, at
mess, on a Guest-night, Desvoeux had rattled out some offensive nonsense
about women, and Sutton had got up and, pushing his chair back
unceremoniously, had marched silently away to the billiard-room in a
manner which in him, the most chivalrous of hosts, implied a more than
ordinarily vehement condemnation. Afterwards Desvoeux had been given to
understand that, if he came to the mess, he must not, in the Major's
presence at any rate, outrage good taste and good morals by any such
displays. Then, at another time, there was a pretty young woman--a
sergeant's wife--to whom Desvoeux showed an inclination to be polite.
Sutton had told Desvoeux that it must not be, in a quietly decisive way
which he felt there was no disputing, though there was something in the
other's authoritative air which was extremely galling. He could not be
impertinent to Sutton, and he bore him no deep resentment; but he
revenged himself by affecting to regard him as the ordinary 'plunger' of
the period--necessary for purposes of defence and a first-rate leader of
native cavalry, but socially dull, and a fair object for an occasional
irreverence. Sutton's tendency was to be more silent than usual when
Desvoeux was of the party. Desvoeux, on the other hand, would not have
let Sutton's or the prophet Jeremiah's presence act as a damper on
spirits which were always at boiling-point and a temperament which was
for ever effervescing into some more or less indiscreet form of mirth.
The result was that the one man quite eclipsed the other and tossed the
ball of talk about with an ease and dexterity not always quite
respectful to his less agile senior. One night, for instance, Maud, in a
sudden freak of fancy, had set her heart upon a round of story-telling.
'I shall come last of course,' she said, 'as I propose it, and by that
time it will be bedtime; but, Major Sutton, you must tell us something
about some of your battles, please, something very romantic and
exciting.'
Sutton was the victim of a morbid modesty as to all his soldiering
exploits and would far rather have fought a battle than described it.
'Ah,' he said, 'but our fighting out here is not at all romantic; it is
mostly routine, you know, and not picturesque or amusing.'
'Yes, but,' said Maud, 'tell us something that is picturesque or
amusing: a hairbreadth escape, or a forlorn hope, or a mine. I love
accounts of mines. You dig and dig for weeks, you know, and then you're
countermined and hear the enemy digging near you; and then you put the
powder in and light the match, and run away, and then--now you go on!'
'And then there is a smash, I suppose,' laughed Sutton; 'but you know
all about it better than I. I'm not a gunner--all my work is
above-ground.'
'Well, then,' cried Maud, with the eager air of a child longing for a
story, 'tell us something above ground. How did you get your Victoria
Cross, now?'
Maud, however, was not destined to get a story out of Sutton.
'There was nothing romantic about _that_, at any rate,' he said. 'It was
at Mírabad. There was a cannon down at the end of the lane which was
likely to be troublesome, and some of our fellows went down with me and
spiked it. That was all!'
'Excuse me, Miss Vernon,' said Desvoeux; 'Sutton's modesty spoils an
excellent story. Let me tell it as it deserves.' And then he threw
himself into a mock-tragical attitude.
'Go on,' said Maud, eagerly.
'The street-fighting at Mírabad,' said Desvoeux, with a declamatory air,
'was the fiercest of the whole campaign----'
'What campaign?' asked Sutton.
'The Mírabad campaign,' replied the other, with great presence of mind,
'in eighteen hundred and--, I forget the year--but never mind.'
'Yes, never mind the year,' said Maud; 'go on.'
'The enemy fought us inch by inch, and lane by lane; from every window
poured a little volley; every house had to be stormed, hand-to-hand we
fought our way, and so on. You know the sort of thing. Then, as we
turned into the main street, puff! a great blaze and a roar, and a dense
cloud of smoke, and smash came a cannon-ball into the midst of us--five
or six men were knocked over--Tomkin's horse lost a tail, Brown had his
nose put out of joint, Smith was blown up to a second-storey
window--something must be done. But I am tiring you?'
'No, no,' cried Maud, 'I like it--go on.'
'Well, let me see. Oh yes, something must be done. To put spurs to my
Arab's sides, to cut my way down through the astonished mob, to leap the
barricade (it was only eight feet high, and armed with a _chevaux de
frise_), to sabre the six gunners who were working the battery, was, I
need hardly say, the work of a moment. Then--a crushing blow from
behind, and I remember nothing more, till, a month later, I found
myself, weak and wounded, in bed; and a lovely nun gave me some gruel,
and told me that Mírabad was ours! "Where am I?" I exclaimed, for I felt
so confused, and the nun looked so angelic, that I fancied I must have
gone to heaven. My companion, however, soon brought me to earth by--_et
cætera et cætera et cætera_.'
'That is the sort of thing which happens in "Charles O'Malley,"' said
Sutton; 'only Lever would have put Tippoo Sahib or Tantia Topee on the
other side of the barricade, and I should have had to cut his head off
and slaughter all his bodyguard before I got out again.'
'And then,' said Maud, 'the nun would have turned out to be some one.'
'But,' said Desvoeux, 'how do you know that the nun did _not_ turn out
to be some one, if only I had chosen to fill up those _et cæteras?_'
'Well,' said Sutton, who apparently had had enough of the joke 'that
part of the story I will tell you myself. The nun was a male one--my
good friend Boldero, who took me into his quarters, looked after me for
six weeks, till I got about again, and was as good a nurse as any one
could wish for.'
'I should have liked to be the nun,' Maud cried, moved by a sudden
impulse which brought the words out as the thought flashed into her
mind, and turning crimson, as was her wont, before they were out of her
mouth.
'That is very kind of you,' said Sutton, standing up, and defending her,
as Maud felt, from all eyes but his own; 'and you would have been a very
charming nurse and cured me, I dare say, even faster than Boldero. And
now, Desvoeux, go and sing us a song as a _finale_ to your story.
Maud knew perfectly well that this was a mere diversion to save her from
the confusion of a thoughtless speech and turn Desvoeux's attention from
her. It seemed quite natural and of a piece with Sutton's watchful,
sympathetic care to give her all possible pleasure and to shield her
from every shade of annoyance. A thrill of gratitude shot through her.
There was a charm, a fascination, in protection so prompt, so delicate,
so kind, compared with which all other attractions seemed faint indeed.
That evening Maud went to bed with her heart in a tumult, and wept, she
knew not wherefore, far into the night--only again and again the tears
streamed out--the outcome, though as yet she knew it not, of that purest
of all pure fountains, an innocent first love.