HECTOR.
The trio in the little breakfast-parlour in Sea-View Cottage,
Fortinbras, was perhaps one of the pleasantest parties that ever met
at so simply furnished a board. The spirit of the immortal Cliquot,
whose vintages have made his widow's name so celebrated, may have
smiled contemptuously at such a breakfast-table, on which the strongest
beverages were tea and coffee; the mighty chiefs of Philippe's and
the Maison Dorée would have held up their hands and shrugged their
shoulders with amazement if told that these benighted insulars could
really enjoy these coarse viands, and feel no national craving for
suicide, or national tendency to spleen, before the barbarous meal
was concluded. And yet there are few _cabinets particuliers_ on the
Boulevards whose gaudily-papered walls have ever echoed to happier
laughter than that of the young Indian hero, as he gave a serio-comic
rendering of his adventures, warding off all praise of great and
gallant deeds by the playful tone which made peril seem a joke, and
desperate valour the most commonplace quality of man.
Mrs. MacClaverhouse would have been pleased to listen all day to the
voice of that charmer of six feet two, but her sharp matronly eye
perceived presently that the stalwart Plunger looked pale and worn,
and was by no means unqualified for the sick-list; so she sent Lady
Cecil to the drawing-room to see to the arrangements of the Venetians,
and then she led her boy to the sofa, which was not nearly long enough
for him, and had to be eked out with chairs. The Captain remonstrated
energetically against this Sybarite treatment, but his aunt was
inflexible; and as he was very familiar with the strength of her will,
he laid himself down at last as meekly as a child.
"And you can read to us, Cecil," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse producing
her knitting-needles, and an uncompromising grey-worsted sock, such
as Robert Burns may have worn when his plough turned up the immortal
daisy. The dowager knitted these worsted instruments of torture for a
Dorcas society, which she honoured with her patronage and a very small
annual subscription.
"Come, Cecil," she said presently, when her niece came softly into the
room after a mysterious visit to the cook. "Hector has been amusing
us all the morning, and the least we can do is to amuse him this
afternoon. Suppose you read him to sleep."
If the Scottish warrior had been any thing like the image she had
made of him in her mind, Cecil Chudleigh would have been very much
disposed to rebel against this command. But there are some people born
to walk upon roses and to inhale the perfumed breath of incense; and
Hector Gordon was one of them. His nurses had idolised him, his father
had worshipped him, his uncle and aunt had spoiled him, his brother
officers of the Plungers loved him, and dressed after him, and talked
after him, and thought after him; and with that feminine admiration,
that subtle and delicious flattery which is the most intoxicating of
all earthly incense, Hector had been almost surfeited. He was very
delightful. The freshness and brightness of an unsullied youth pervaded
every tone of his voice, every thought in his mind, every ringing note
of his genial laugh--so hearty without loudness, so exuberant without
vulgarity. Perhaps his greatest charm lay in the fact that he was
young, and did not consider his youth a thing to be ashamed of. And
there are so few young men nowadays. Much has been said about the
irresistible witchery of a polished Irishman, the delightful vivacity
of a well-born Frenchman. But has any one ever sung the graces of
a high-bred Scotchman? What words can fairly describe the nameless
fascination which has a dash of the Irishman's insidious flattery, a
spice of the Frenchman's brilliant vivacity, but which has a tender
softness possessed by neither, a patrician grace not to be equalled
by any other nationality in the world? In all the history of modern
Europe, the two people who, by manner alone, have exercised the most
powerful influence upon their contemporaries, have been Mary Queen of
Scots, and her great-grandson Charles Stuart. Of all the poets, who has
ever so enthralled the hearts of women as George Gordon, Lord Byron,
whose maternal lineage was Scotch? Of all lovely and fascinating women
whose names will be remembered in the future, is there any fairer or
lovelier than Eugenie Marie de Guzman, Countess of Teba, Empress of the
French, and scion of the Kirkpatricks of Closeburn?
There are flowers that flourish in the sunshine, and flowers that
thrive only in the shade; and as it is in the vegetable, so is it
in the animal kingdom. There are men whom a perpetual atmosphere
of adulation would have transformed into supercilious fops or
selfish profligates. Hector Gordon made no such vile return for the
tenderness which had been so freely lavished upon him. High-minded and
generous-hearted, brave as a Leonidas or a Clyde, he was no bad example
for the young men who formed themselves upon him. It was said that
there was less bill-discounting and card-playing amongst the officers
of the 11th Plungers than in any other cavalry regiment in the service;
for it is your dashing young captain rather than your middle-aged
colonel who gives the tone to the youngsters of a mess. They may obey
their commanding-officer, but they will copy their brilliant companion.
But it must not be supposed that under any circumstance Hector Gordon
could have come under the denomination of "a good young man;" for it
seems an understood thing that the typical good young man must be
nothing but good. Hector was neither evangelical nor Puseyite in his
tendencies; but rather of that good, easy-going broad Church, which
winks good-naturedly at a parson in "pink," and sees no criminality
in a cheerful rubber. He went to church once or twice on a Sunday,
as the case might be; and did his best to join earnestly in the
service, and to listen with sustained attention to the sermon. If
his thoughts wandered now and then to the Highland peaks, amidst
whose lonely grandeurs he had once shot a mighty white eagle, or to
the deer-stalking adventures or grouse-shooting of the last autumn;
if his fancy played him false and brought some bright girlish face
before him, with the memory of one especially delicious waltz, and one
peculiarly intoxicating flirtation--if such small sins as these sullied
his soul now and then when the sermon was duller and longer than it
should have been, it must be remembered that he was very young, and
that the chastening influence of sorrow had not yet shadowed his life,
or lessened his delight in the common pleasures of his age.
Lying on the sofa, in the low-roofed, old-fashioned drawing-room at
Fortinbras, and shrouded by a leopard-skin railway-rug, which Mrs.
MacClaverhouse had insisted on casting over him, the young Captain
looked like an invalid Titan; but a Titan with a nimbus of waving
auburn hair about his head, and the brightest blue eyes that ever
took a fierce light amid the glare of battle, or softened to feminine
tenderness when they looked on a woman's face. Lady Cecil contemplated
her aunt's favourite at her leisure as she sat by an open window, with
her face quite hidden in the shadow of drooping curtains and closed
Venetians. And she had fancied him such a vulgar, clumsy creature--a
freckled, red-haired object,--like a tobacconist's Highlander in modern
costume, a loutish Caledonian Hercules, with a Gaelic sing-song in his
voice, and with no belief in any thing but the grandeur of Princes
Street, Edinburgh, and the immortality of Robert Burns. Cecil Chudleigh
looked at him slily from beneath the shadow of her long lashes, and
smiled at the recollection of her old fancies.
"As if one's idea of a place or person were ever any thing like the
reality," she thought. "I ought to have known that Captain Gordon would
prove the very opposite of the image I had made him."
She took up some books presently from the table near her, and looked at
the titles.
"How can you ask me to read to Captain Gordon, auntie," she demanded,
archly, "when you know we have no books or papers that can interest
him? We have neither _Bell's Life_, nor the _United-Service Gazette_;
nor yet 'Post and Scarlet,' or 'Silk and Paddock,' or whatever those
barbarous books are called that gentlemen are so fond of. I think there
are some odd numbers of _Mr. Sponge's Sporting-Tour_ in a cupboard in
Dorset Square, and I dare say we could get them sent down by post; but
for to-day----"
"Will you read some of Hugo's verses?" asked Captain Gordon. "I mustn't
talk slang to a lady, or I would entreat you not to chaff me while
I'm on the sick-list. I have read as much sporting literature as any
man, I dare say, in my day; and _Post and Paddock_ is a capital book,
I do assure you, Lady Cecil; but I think I know my Tennyson too. I
have recited 'Locksley Hall' from the first line to the last, out
yonder, when we've been dreadfully hard-up for talk. And you should
have seen how scared my _Kitmutghar_ looked! I think he fancied our
great Alfred's masterpiece was a volley of bad language; they're so
unaccustomed to hear any thing _but_ bad language from Englishmen, poor
fellows. If I am really to be treated as an invalid, and dear foolish
auntie here insists upon it, I will exercise my prerogative, and demand
one of Hugo's odes."
Cecil opened the little volume that she had carried to the top of
Fortinbras Keep, and turned the leaves listlessly, with slim white
fingers that sparkled faintly with the gems in quaint old-fashioned
rings.
She paused, with a volume open at those wonderful verses in which the
classic Sybarite bewails the weariness of his felicity; and, pushing
the Venetian shutter a little way open, she began to read, with a
half-smile upon her face. The summer sunlight flooded her face and
figure, and the summer air fluttered one loose tress of her dark-brown
hair, as her head drooped over her book.
"D'implacables faveurs me poursuivent sans cease,
Vous m'avez flétri dans ma fleur,
Dieux! donnez l'espérance à ma froide jeunesse,
Je vous rends tous ces biens pour un pen de bonheur."
When Cecil came to these closing lines of the Sybarite's complaint, the
Scottish Hercules flung off his leopard-skin, and walked across the
little room to the open window by which Lady Cecil was seated.
"It's no use, auntie," he said; "I'm not an invalid. If I loll upon
that sofa, Lady Cecil will take me for a modern Celsus; and, upon
my word, I _have_ felt like that fellow once or twice in my life.
I've never been exactly savage with Providence for giving me so many
blessings; but I have felt as if I should like to have had a little
more of the fun of wishing for things. Look at my position. I'm not
used up, and I don't affect to be used up, like some fellows. I don't
make a howling about having lost the faculty of pleasure, or the
belief in my fellow-men, or any thing of that kind. I'm no disciple
of Alfred de Musset, or Owen Meredith; but I really have run through
the better part of the pleasures that last most men their lifetime.
There's scarcely any thing in the way of adventure that you can propose
to me that I haven't done, from tooling a drag along the Lady's Mile
when the carriages were thickest, to ascending Mont Blanc or scaling a
red-hot brick wall on a fireman's ladder. There's scarcely any route
you can suggest to me for a holiday tour that I'm not as familiar with
as Murray. And yet I'm only seven-and-twenty. So long as we have plenty
to do in India I shall be right enough; but if our fellows should ever
come to be planted in country quarters, without any prospect of work,
what's to become of me? And then I've promised to sell out in a few
years," he added, in a much graver tone.
"Promised to sell out!" screamed Mrs. MacClaverhouse. "That's your
father's doing, I know; but you won't leave the army until you marry, I
suppose?"
"Oh no, not until I marry."
He took up the volume of poems which Cecil had laid down.
"Let me read to you, ladies," he said; "am I not here to minister to
your pleasures and obey your behests? Tell me your favourites, Lady
Cecil."
They discussed the book in his hand, and Cecil discovered that Captain
Gordon was very familiar with the poet. He read well, and good reading
is such a rare accomplishment. His accent was irreproachable; and if
there was a charm in his full rich voice when he spoke English, the
charm was still greater when he spoke French. He spoke French and
German to perfection, for he had been well grounded in both languages,
though not very materially advanced in either at Eton or Oxford; and he
had spent a considerable part of his youth wandering from city to city
with a private tutor, a retired Austrian officer, who was both learned
and accomplished, and who adored his pupil.
When two people, both under the age of thirty, discover that they
admire the same poet, they have gone half-way towards a pleasant
intimacy. After that discussion of Victor Hugo, and the reading
aloud that followed, and the desultory talk about Germany and German
literature, India and Indian politics, London, and common friends and
acquaintances who were to be met there, that succeeded the poetical
lecture, Lady Cecil Chudleigh quite forgot all her old fancies about
Captain Gordon, and resigned herself to the idea of his visit.
And after this they were the best friends in the world, and Mrs.
MacClaverhouse was quite contented to allow Cecil a share in her
boy's society. She was a very sensible woman in her way, and liked
the society of young people when it was to be had cheaply. Hector
and Cecil's animated discussions upon almost all subjects to be
found between earth and heaven amused the widow as she basked in the
sunshine, seated in her pet chair before a window with her favourite
aspect. She astonished the young people very often by the shrewdness
of the remarks with which she cut in upon them, smiting their pretty
fanciful theories into atoms with the sledge-hammer of common-sense.
Altogether she was very well satisfied with the aspect of affairs. If
the motherless lad whom she loved so tenderly, and thought of as a lad
in spite of his seven-and-twenty years--if Hector Gordon had been a
landless younger son, with his fortune to carve out for himself, Mrs.
MacClaverhouse would no doubt have loved him dearly, for the sake of
his blue eyes and his frank handsome face, his generous nature and
gladsome soul; but she would scarcely perhaps have loved him quite so
much, or looked for his coming quite so gladly under such circumstances
as she did now, when all the blessings or pleasures that wealth can
purchase attended his footsteps wherever he went, and created an
atmosphere of luxury around and about the dwelling in which he lived.
A hungry nephew, always hard-up, and in need of pecuniary assistance,
would have been a heavy trial to Mrs. MacClaverhouse.
Nothing could have been more delightful to the dowager than the
Captain's manner of opening the campaign on the morning after his
arrival. They had breakfasted early this time, for Hector insisted that
he was well enough to get up with the birds if necessary, and that
so far as any claim to feminine compassion or to sick-leave went, he
was the veriest impostor in existence. It was after the little party
had dawdled considerably over the breakfast-table, and when Cecil had
departed to hold solemn council with the cook, that Hector addressed
his relative:
"Now, my dear auntie," he said, "it's essentially necessary that
you and I should understand each other. In the first place, I adore
Fortinbras. I think it the most delightful place in the universe; and
if the possessor of that delicious old castle would only be good enough
to conceive an aversion for it, or find himself hopelessly insolvent,
or something of that kind, I'd buy it of him to-morrow--Consols
have risen an eighth since last Tuesday, and it's a good time for
selling out--and restore it. Queen Elizabeth's drawing-room would
make an admirable billiard-room, if it only had those necessary
trifles--a floor and a ceiling. I'd make my hunting-stables out of the
banqueting-hall--imagine a loose box with a wall four feet thick!--and
I'd sleep in the topmost chamber of the great Norman tower, with a
flag-staff swaying close above my head, and a general sensation of
inhabiting a balloon. But all this is beside the question, auntie.
What I want to say is that I have fallen desperately in love with
Fortinbras, and as I am likely to stay here till you become unutterably
weary of my society, I must insist upon your accepting this cheque
which I wrote this morning--for you know of old what an expensive
fellow I am, and I should feel perfectly miserable if I felt myself
sponging on you without the least chance of returning your hospitality."
The Captain crumpled the folded cheque into his aunt's hand. The widow
began some vague protest, but her nephew suffocated her scruples by a
sonorous kiss; and whatever objection she urged against the receipt of
his money were lost in the luxuriance of his beard.
"And now the next question is, how we are to enjoy ourselves?"
exclaimed Hector, while his aunt speculated upon the figures inscribed
on that crumpled scrap of paper, which her fingers so itched to unfold.
"In the first place we must have a carriage; and in an exploration
which I made this morning before you were up, Mrs. MacClaverhouse, I
discovered that the only vehicle we can have is a shabby old fly, which
began life as a britzska, and a shabby old pair of horses, which, in
their early days, I suspect, have been employed in the agricultural
interest; but as the shabby old carriage is clean and roomy, and as
I am told the clumsy old horses are good at going, and as a person
in the position of that proverbial Hobson must not be fastidious, I
have engaged the vehicle for the season. So now, my dearest auntie,
prepare yourself for a chronic state of picnic. I have written to
Fortnum and Mason to send us a cargo of picnic provisions--innumerable
mahogany-coloured hams and tongues, and Strasburg pies, and potted fowl
of all species, and all those wonderful preparations which taste of
grease and pepper so much more than of any thing else. And I have found
the most delightful nurseryman in the world, who will supply us with
hothouse grapes and apricots; and the carriage will be here at twelve,
so pray run away and put on your bonnet, auntie, and let Lady Cecil
know all about our plans."
"You like Cecil?"
"Excessively. I think she is charming."
Mrs. MacClaverhouse shrugged her shoulders.
"You think every thing charming," she said.
She was familiar with his sanguine temperament, and his faculty for
seeing every thing in its sunniest aspect.
"But I think Lady Cecil Chudleigh more charming than most things. I
have seen very few women to compare with her, though she is by no means
a showy beauty. I was struck by her profile as she sat in the sunlight
yesterday. I never saw a more delicate outline, except in the face
of the Empress Eugénie--and she has something of Eugenie's pensive
gravity in her expression,--not pride, but the sort of thing which
common-minded people mistake for pride. I think you have reason to be
proud of such a niece. She ought to marry well."
"I hope she will," answered the widow.
If there was any special significance in her tone, Captain Gordon
was too careless to be conscious of it. He walked to the open window,
humming an Italian air from the last successful opera, and then he
strolled out on the lawn, which was screened from the high road by a
tall old-fashioned privet hedge and a modern bank of showy evergreens,
across which the sea breezes blew fresh and cool. He was very happy,
with an innocent, boyish happiness, as he paced to and fro upon the
elastic turf, which seemed to spring under his light foot. In all
his life he had never known any acute pain, any bitter grief. Of all
possibilities in life the last thing which he could have imagined was
that he had come to meet his first great sorrow here where he was happy
in the planning of such simple pleasures as might have seemed insipid
to a modern schoolboy.
"What an old-fashioned fellow I am!" he thought, as he stopped with his
hand in his pocket, searching for his cigar-case. "If any of my chums
in the Eleventh knew that I was looking forward to a day's ramble in
a rumbling old fly with a couple of women, I think they'd cut me dead
ever afterwards; and yet they're not such a bad lot of fellows, after
all; only there's not one of them has pluck enough to own he can enjoy
himself."
Captain Gordon had smoked out his cigar by the time the fly drove up
to the garden gate. He threw the ash away, and shook the fumes of his
cabana out of his hair and beard, and then went to meet the dowager
and Lady Cecil; the dowager stately in black silk robes, which she
possessed in all stages of splendour and shabbiness, and which she
wore always, because it was "suitable for a person of my age, my dear,
and by far the most economical thing one can wear," as she informed
her confidantes. The Indian shawl--the shawl which the Captain had
brought to Fortinbras in one of his port-manteaus--hung across Mrs.
MacClaverhouse's arm, in compliment to the donor; and behind the widow
came Cecil, in a pale muslin dress and scarf, and looking very lovely
under the shelter of a broad Leghorn hat.
They drove away in the bright summer sunshine, through country-lanes,
where the breath of the sea came to them laden with the perfume of
flowers; where rustic children ran out of cottage-doors to curtsey to
them as they drove by, or even to set up a feeble cheer, as if the fly
had been a triumphal chariot. The drive was a success; as, indeed,
almost all things were on which Hector Gordon set his desire. Mrs.
MacClaverhouse was radiant, for her inspection of the cheque had proved
eminently satisfactory; Hector was delightful, throwing his whole
heart and soul into the task of amusing his companions--gay with the
consciousness of pleasing, and with the _insouciance_ of a man who
has never known trouble; and if Lady Cecil was the most silent of the
little party, it was only because she felt most deeply the delicious
repose of the rustic scenery, the exquisite sweetness of the untainted
atmosphere.
They had many such drives after this, exploring the country for twenty
miles round Fortinbras. They held impromptu picnics on breezy heights
above the level of the sea; picnics in which the rector of Fortinbras
and his two pretty daughters were sometimes invited to join, and which
ended with tea-drinking at Sea-View Villa, and croquet on the lawn; and
then they had lonely drives to distant villages, where there were old
Norman churches to be explored, under convoy of quavery old sextons,
who always had to be fetched from their dinner or their tea; dusky old
churches which Mrs. MacClaverhouse declined to enter, and in whose
solemn gloom Hector and Cecil dawdled together, discussing the dates of
doors and windows, tombs and font, stalls and reading-desk, while the
old sexton hovered respectfully in attendance, and while the dowager
dozed delightfully in her carriage, lulled by the booming of excited
bees. Sometimes Mrs. MacClaverhouse was too lazy to go out at all,
and on those occasions the shabby fly and the shabby horses enjoyed a
holiday, while Hector and Cecil strolled on the sands before the villa,
or dawdled on the lawn.
They were very happy together. All Lady Cecil's proud reserve melted
under the influence of the Scotchman's genial nature.
It was simply impossible not to like him; it was very difficult to
resist his fascination, the indescribable witchery that lurked in
his manner when he wished to please. Lord Aspendell's daughter found
herself forgetting how slight a link bound her to this pleasant
companion, and admitting him to a cousinly intimacy before she had
time to think of what she was doing; and then it was such an easy
brotherly and sisterly friendship, that to draw back from it would
have seemed prudish and ungracious; so Cecil walked and talked with
the young Captain, and read and played to him in the evenings, and
enjoyed to the full that delightful association which can only arise
between two well-bred and highly educated people. If either of them had
been ignorant or shallow, selfish or vain, such close companionship
must have become intolerable at the end of a week. Every body knows
how weary Madame du Doffand and President Heinault grew of themselves
and existence in less than twelve hours, when they met in a friend's
deserted apartment, in order to escape from their visitors for the
enjoyment of each other's society; but then Madame and the President
were middle-aged lovers, and the freshness of youth was wanting to
transform the place of their rendezvous into a paradise.
It was when Hector Gordon had been staying nearly a month at Fortinbras
that the sharp-spoken and worldly dowager suddenly awakened Lady
Cecil from that mental languour which had stolen upon her since his
coming. He seemed to have brought so much sunshine with him, and she
had abandoned herself so entirely to the delight of its warmth and
radiance, lulled by the belief that it was the change from Dorset
Square to Fortinbras that had filled her heart and mind with such
unwonted gladness.
Mrs. MacClaverhouse had a very acute perception of all matters in
which her own interests were in any way implicated, and she had woven
a little scheme in relation to her nephew and niece. The dishonest
steward, who made friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, has many
disciples in our modern day; and the dowager had certain views with
regard to Captain Gordon's settlement in life--views which involved her
enjoyment of a permanent home with the nephew she loved. It was for
the furtherance of this little scheme that she sat at home so often
while Hector and Cecil walked side by side upon the shore, or loitered
in the garden; and this object was in her mind when she let them sing
duets to her in the dusky drawing-room, and sank so often into gentle
slumbers while they sang, or paused to talk in voices that were hushed
in harmony with the still twilight.
"I suppose you will scarcely turn up your nose _now_, Lady Cecil, if
I venture to tell you that my nephew will be a first-rate match,"
exclaimed the dowager one morning, when she found herself alone with
her niece.
Cecil blushed crimson.
"I--I--don't understand you, auntie," she stammered.
"Oh, of course not, Cecil. I hate a sly girl; and I begin to think
you are sly. Do you mean to tell me you don't understand the drift of
Hector's attentions to you?"
"But, dear auntie, he is not attentive; at least, not more attentive
than a man must be to any woman he meets. Pray do not take any absurd
idea into your head. We are almost relations, you know; and we get on
very well together--much better than I ever thought we should; but as
for any thing more than a cousinly kind of friendship----"
"A cousinly kind of fiddlestick!" cried the energetic dowager. "Do you
think I can believe that all that strolling on the beach, and all that
dawdling on the lawn, and all that mumbling by the piano which I hear
in my sleep, means nothing but cousinly friendship?"
"On my honour, auntie, Captain Gordon has never said a word to me which
the most indifferent acquaintance might not have said."
"Then what in Heaven's name does the man mumble about?" demanded Mrs.
MacClaverhouse sharply.
"Oh, we have so much to talk of--our favourite books, and pictures, and
music, places we have both seen, old acquaintances, places that he only
has seen, and people whom he only has known; and then sometimes we get
a little metaphysical--or even mystical. You know how superstitious the
Scotch are, and I really think Captain Gordon is almost inclined to
believe in the spiritualists."
"That will do. Then Hector Gordon has not made you an offer?"
"No, indeed," Cecil answered, blushing more deeply than before; "nor
have I any reason to suppose he has the faintest idea of doing so. Pray
do not mention the subject again, dear aunt. I have such a horror of
any thing at all like husband-hunting."
"As you please, my young lady. It's all very well to ride the high
horse; but I think some day, when you find yourself unpleasantly close
to your thirtieth birthday, and discover some ugly lines under those
beautiful hazel eyes of yours--some day when I am dead and gone, and
your delicate ivory-white complexion has grown as yellow as an old
knife-handle--when you look forward to a dreary life of dependence
upon others, or lonely struggles with a hard, pitiless world--I think
then, Lady Cecil, you'll be inclined to regret that you were so
contemptuously indifferent to Hector Gordon's merits. There, go and
put on your bonnet, child; you may marry whom you please, or remain
unmarried as long as you please, for all I care about it. And yet I
had built quite a castle in the air about you, and I fancied how nice
it would be for you and Hector to settle in Hyde Park Gardens, or
thereabouts, and for me to live with you. I should like to end my days
with my boy; and those second floors in Hyde Park Gardens are very
delightful--especially if you are lucky enough to get a corner house."
Mrs. MacClaverhouse's voice seemed to strike like some sharp instrument
into Cecil Chudleigh's heart as she concluded this tirade. The girl had
listened in proud silence, and retired silently when her aunt came to a
pause. An excursion had been planned for the day; the fly was waiting
before the gate, and Cecil heard Hector's step pacing to and fro on the
gravel-walk below her open window, and smelt the perfume of his cigar
as she put on her hat. But all the girlish joyousness with which she
had been wont to attire herself for such rustic expeditions had fled
from her breast, leaving a heavy dull sense of pain in its stead.
"I dare say Aunt MacClaverhouse is right," she thought sadly; "and I
shall feel a dreary desolate creature when I come to be thirty, and
stand all alone in the world. But it is so horrible to hear her talk
of good matches, just as if every girl must always be on the alert to
entrap a rich husband; when I know too that Captain Gordon does not
care for me----"
She paused, and a vivid blush stole over her thoughtful face--not the
crimson glow of indignation, but the warm brightness which reflects
the roseate hue of a happy thought. Did he not care for her? That
phrase about "caring for her" is the modest euphemism in which a woman
disguises the bold word "love." Was he really so indifferent? Her
protest to Mrs. MacClaverhouse had contained no syllable of untruth or
prevarication. In all their intercourse, throughout all that cousinly
intimacy which had been so sweet a friendship, Hector Gordon had not
uttered a word which the vainest or most conscious coquette could
construe into a confession of any thing warmer than friendship.
"Ah! yet--and yet--and yet!" as Owen Meredith says, there had been
something--yes, surely something! no spoken word, no license of glance,
no daring pressure of a yielding hand--something fifty times less
palpable, and yet a hundred times sweeter than any of these--a lowering
of the voice--a tender tremulous tone now and then, a dreamy softness
in the dark-blue eyes--a silence more eloquent than words--a sudden
break in a sentence, that had a deeper meaning than a hundred sentences.
"Poor auntie!" thought Lady Cecil, "it was silly of me to be so angry
with her; for, after all, I think he does care for me--a little."
Did she think of the contractor's wealth, or remember how high above
poverty and dependence she would be lifted by a marriage with Hector
Gordon? Did any vision of the corner house in Hyde-Park Gardens, the
noble windows overlooking the woods and waters of Kensington, the
elegant equipage and thoroughbred horses, arise before her side by side
with the image of the young soldier? No. Through that most terrible
of ordeals the furnace of genteel poverty--Lady Cecil had passed
unscathed. When the remembrance of Hector Gordon's position flashed
upon her presently, all her pride rose in arms against her weakness.
"I would die rather than he should know that I care for him," she
thought. "He might think me one of those calculating mercenary girls
one reads of."
Thus it was that, when Lady Cecil took her seat in the carriage that
day, there was an air of restraint, a cold reserve in her manner, that
Hector Gordon had never seen before.
He also was changed. He had thrown away his cigar while Cecil
was lingering in her own room, and had gone into the little
breakfast-parlour, where his aunt sat with an unread newspaper in her
hand, brooding over her niece's folly. She looked up as Hector entered,
and began to talk to him. The conversation was a very brief one, and
the Captain had little share in it; but when he went back to the garden
his face was grave and downcast; and when he handed Cecil into the
carriage, she was struck by the gloomy preoccupation of his manner. Of
all the excursions they had enjoyed together, that excursion was the
least agreeable. The September wind was bleak and chilly, penetrating
the warmest folds of Mrs. MacClaverhouse's Indian shawl, and tweaking
the end of her aristocratic nose. The brown moorlands and bare
stubble-fields had a barren look against the cold grey sky; and the
Captain, generally as much _aux petits soins_ with regard to the two
ladies as if he had been the adoring son of the one and the accepted
lover of the other, sat in a gloomy reverie, and seemed to arouse
himself by an effort whenever he uttered some commonplace remark upon
the weather or the scenery. There was very little conversation during
dinner; and Captain Gordon made so poor a pretence of eating that the
dowager became positively alarmed, and declared that her boy was ill.
"It is no use talking, Hector," she exclaimed, though her nephew had
only made a half-articulate murmur to the effect that there was nothing
the matter with him. "You eat no fish, and you only helped yourself to
a wing of that chicken; and you sent your plate away with that almost
untouched--a very extravagant mode of sending your plate away, I should
say, if you were a poor man. You've not been yourself all day, Hector;
so I shall insist on your being nursed this evening. You won't take any
fruit, I know; for fruit is bilious.--Never mind the dessert to-day,
Mowatt," the widow said, addressing her parlour-maid; "and be sure the
fruit is kept in a cool dry place till to-morrow," she added _sotto
voce_, as she cast a sharply-scrutinising glance upon the dishes of
grapes and apricots. The widow insisted that her nephew was ill and
tired; and as the Captain seemed oppressed by a kind of languor which
made him quite unequal to offer any opposition to such an energetic
person as his aunt, he gave way, and suffered himself to be installed
in a reclining attitude on the most comfortable sofa, with an Indian
shawl spread over him like the counterpane of a state bed.
"And now Cecil shall play us both to sleep," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse,
sinking into her own chair.
The piano was as far away from the sofa as it could be in so small a
room; but Cecil heard a faint sigh as she seated herself in the dusk
and laid her hands softly on the keys. How many evenings they two had
sat side by side in the same dusk, talking in hushed voices! how often
she had felt his warm breath admidst her hair as he bent over her while
she sang! But to-day he seemed changed all at once, as he might have
changed on the discovery that the woman in whose companionship he had
been so unrestrainedly happy was only a scheming coquette after all,
and had been spreading an airy net in which to entrap his heart and his
fortune. The thought that some chance word of the dowager's might have
inspired him with such an idea of her was absolute torture to Cecil
Chudleigh.
She felt half inclined to refuse to play or sing for the Captain's
gratification; and yet to do so might be to make a kind of scene which
would seem only a part of her scheme. So after sitting silently for
some minutes she touched the keys softly, and began a little reverie of
Kalkbrenner's; the simplest of melodies, with a flowing movement like
the monotonous plashing of waves rising and falling under the keel of
a boat; and then she wandered into a very sweet arrangement of that
exquisite air of Beethoven's, "Those evening bells," a melody which
Moore has made more exquisite by words whose mournful beauty has never
been surpassed by any lyric in our language.
"Sing the song, Lady Cecil," said Hector, in a low pleading voice. "Let
me hear you sing once more."
There was something in his entreating tone--something that seemed
like humility, and which reassured Cecil as to his opinion of her. It
was not in such a tone that a man would address a woman he had newly
learned to despise. If Hector Gordon had been the suppliant of a queen
his accent could have been no more reverential than it was.
"I am in a very melancholy mood to-night, Lady Cecil," he said, while
she paused with her hands straying listlessly over the keys; "and I
have a fancy for pensive music. Please let me have the song."
"Do you really wish it?"
"Really--and truly."
What common words they were! and yet how thrilling an accent they took
to-night upon _his_ lips!
Cecil sang the tender melancholy words in a voice that conveyed all
their tenderness--she sang that ballad which in the quiet twilight has
so sad a cadence, mournful as the dirge of perished hopes and buried
loves. If her low tremulous voice did not break into tears before the
end of the song, it was only because, in her nervous terror of any
thing like a scene, she exerted all the force of her will to sustain
her tones to the close.
She paused when the song was finished, expecting some acknowledgment
from Captain Gordon; but the silence of the darkening room was only
broken by the slumberous breathing of Mrs. MacClaverhouse. It was a
little ungracious of him to utter no word of thanks, Cecil thought;
and then she began to wonder about the cause of his melancholy of this
evening, and the subject of that moody reverie which had occupied him
all day.
While she was wondering about this, the servant came into the room,
bearing a tea-tray and a monster moderator lamp, that towered like an
obelisk in the centre of the little table on which the dowager was wont
to make tea. That lady was startled from her slumbers by the faint
jingling of the teacups, and looked about her as sharply as if she had
never been asleep at all.
"How quiet you have both been!" she exclaimed, rather impatiently. "I
don't enjoy my nap half so much without the drowsy hum of your voices.
What droning thing was that you were singing just now, Cecil?"
There was no answer. Cecil still bent abstractedly over the piano,
touching the notes softly now and then, but making no sound. Hector
Gordon lay with his face hidden by his folded arms. The fussy dowager
darted across the room and swooped down upon her nephew.
"Hector," she cried, "what in goodness' name has been the matter with
you all day? Why, bless my soul, what's this?--the pillow's wet. You've
been crying!"
Captain Gordon got up from the sofa and laughed pleasantly at his
aunt's scared face.
"It seems very absurd for a man to be nervous or hysterical," he said;
"but I have _not_ been myself to-day, and Lady Cecil's song quite
upset me."
"What, that droning thing?" exclaimed Mrs. MacClaverhouse. "It sounded
to _me_ like Young's _Night-Thoughts_ set to music."
"I think I'll wish you good-night, auntie," said the soldier.
Cecil wondered whether it was the glare of the moderator lamp that made
him look so pale as he bent over his aunt.
"I think you'd better," answered the dowager; "and if you're not
yourself to-night, I only hope you will be yourself to-morrow. I
haven't common patience with such nonsense."
"Good-night, Lady Cecil." He paused by the piano to say this, but he
did not offer Cecil his hand as he had been wont to do at parting, and
he left the room without another word.