"I hold him but a fool, that would endanger
His body for a girl that loves him not."
Fallowfield left us the next morning, the Bellasys later in the same
day. They were to pay divers visits, and then return to Kerton. Lady
Catharine pressed them to do so; though she liked the daughter less than
the mother, she was so anxious Guy should marry some one that I think
she would have accepted even Flora with thankfulness.
It is a favorite delusion with the British parent that marriage will
work a miracle, and steady their children for life, by casting forth the
_lutins_ who beset them. A thousand failures have not convinced the good
speculative matrons of the hazard of the experiment, nor will as many
more do so; they will go on match-making and blundering to the end of
time. For a very brief space the evil spirits are exorcised; but before
the gloss is off the new-married couple's new furniture, one of the band
creeps back and opens the door to his fellows. These hardly know their
old quarters at first, but they soon begin to like them better than
ever--are they not swept and garnished? "So they enter in and dwell
there, and"--I need not finish the sentence; a thousand sweet though
somewhat shrill voices will save me that trouble--a doleful music--an
ancient tale of wrong--the Song of the Brides! They used to say that a
man never went so hard to hounds after entering the holy estate. If
this be so, I fear it is the only comforting result which follows of
course.
What Flora and Guy said to each other at parting I can not guess.
Neither was of the sentimental order, and both might have taken for
their motto, "Lightly won and lightly lost." Her hand lingered somewhat
long in his as they said farewell, but she was smiling, if any thing,
more saucily than ever. So she went, leaving behind her no tangible
token, except a tiny pearl-colored glove, which Guy twisted rather
pensively between his fingers as he stood on the hall steps, and watched
the carriage disappear down the avenue. Mr. Bruce exulted after his
saturnine fashion, and Isabel Raymond trembled; the one had lost a
strong, unscrupulous ally, the other a formidable enemy.
"Why don't you open those letters, Charley?" Livingstone asked at
breakfast, next morning, pointing to a pile that lay unopened by the
letters plate.
"My dear boy, I haven't the heart to do it," was the reply. "They are
all expressive, I know, of different phases of mercantile despair. I
believe these men keep a supplicant, as Moses maintains a poet. The last
appeal from my saddler was perfectly heartrending: he could not have
written it himself, for he looks as tough as his own pig-skin. If he
had, he would be _impayable_ in more ways than one. What can I do? I
can't come down on the poor old man who has the misfortune to be my
father for more supplies when rents are being reduced fifteen per cent.
The tradesmen must learn to endure. They have a splendid chance of
attaining the victory of suffering."
Bruce smiled complacently to himself, and then superciliously at
Charley. He had just received a letter from his banker, consulting him
as to the disposal of a superfluous thousand or so, and he was
hesitating between some dock shares and a promising railway.
"Yes," Forrester went on, "it's very well for you to talk in that
hardened way, as you did the other night, about detrimentals and second
sons. I wonder how you would like to have an elder brother, a pillar of
learned societies, and as tenacious of life as one of his pet zoophytes?
He used to consume quantities of medicine, which was encouraging; but
lately he has taken to homoeopathy, which was quite out of the match.
He told me, lately, that 'four hundred a year and my pay was affluence.'
Affluence!"
It is impossible to describe the cadence of plaintive indignation which
he gave to the last word. The recollection of his wrongs had made him
almost energetic: we listened to his eloquence in respectful surprise.
"It was adding insult to injury," answered Guy. "If Parliament does not
do something for you all soon, there will be another exodus of the
Parthenidæ."
Charley looked at his friend admiringly, as he always did when Guy was
classical in his allusions; but the unwonted effort had evidently
exhausted him, and he lapsed into silence.
We rode out that afternoon to make some calls in the neighborhood, and,
in returning, Livingstone proposed a short cut through a line of gates,
with a short interval of cross-country work.
His cousin looked delighted, Bruce decidedly uncomfortable, though, of
course, he could not refuse. He was riding Kathleen, an Irish mare, one
of the quietest in the Kerton stable, where none were very steady. The
fences were nothing at first; at last we came to a brook. It was not
broad, but evidently deep, with high, rotten banks. However, as we were
going at a fair hunting pace, all, including Bella Donna and her
mistress, took it in their stride, but pulled up at once, seeing that
Bruce was left behind, with the groom who was following us.
The first time he came at it, it was a clear case of "craning." He was
hauling nervously at the reins, and would not let the mare have it.
Guy regarded him with intense contempt. "By G--d," he muttered, "I
believe the man's afraid!"
Forrester laughed so unrestrainedly that Isabel looked at him
beseechingly, in evident dread of the consequences.
"My dear Miss Raymond," he said, answering her frightened glance, "don't
alarm yourself. Do you think I am a Quixote, to war with windmills?"
No one could look at Bruce's long arms and legs, all working at once,
without owning the aptness of the simile.
For the third time he came down at the brook, and, I really believe,
meant going; but Kathleen, unused to such vacillating measures, had got
sulky, and swerved on the very brink, almost sliding over it. Her rider
lost his seat, rolled over her shoulder, and for an instant disappeared
in the water.
Achelous or Tiber, emerging from his native waves, crowned with aquatic
plants, presented, I doubt not, an appearance at once dignified and
becoming, but I defy any ordinary non-amphibious mortal to look, under
similar circumstances, any thing but supremely ridiculous. The wrathful
face framed in dripping hair and plastered whiskers--the movements of
the limbs, awkward and constrained--the rivulets distilling from every
salient angle, turning the victim into a walking Lauterbrunnen--when we
saw all these absurdities exaggerated before us, no wonder that from the
whole party, including the groom, there broke "unnumbered laughters."
"Curse the mare!" Bruce hissed out. The words came crushed and broken,
as it were, through the white ranges of his grinding teeth.
Livingstone's face hardened directly. "Swear as much as you think the
circumstances require, or as my cousin will allow," he said, "but be
just before you're generous: don't anathematize Kathleen. It was no
fault of hers. I never saw her refuse before; but she is used to be put
straight at her fences. Hold her still, Harry" (to the groom on the
farther side, who had caught the mare's rein); "I'll ride her at it
myself."
He threw his bridle to Forrester, and, dismounting, cleared the brook at
a bound. Then he went up to Kathleen, and began to coax her with voice
and hand.
"I'll bet an even fifty he takes her over the first time," said Charley.
Bruce nodded his head, without speaking, to show that he took the bet. I
thought he had the best of it, for the mare was so savage and sulky
still that a refusal seemed a certainty.
Guy had mounted by this time, and, after taking a wide sweep in the
field, came down at the brook. Kathleen was curling her back up, and
going short, with the most evident intention of balking; but swerving
was next to impossible, for she was fairly held in a vice by her rider's
hands and knees. The whip fell heavily twice on either shoulder, and,
just at the water's edge, Livingstone drove his heels in and lifted her.
It was almost a standing leap, and, as Kathleen landed, a fragment of
the bank went crashing into the water from under her hind hoofs, and she
went down on her head; but Guy recovered her cleverly, and, turning
again, sent her over it twice, backward and forward. The first time the
mare did not try to refuse again, but rushed at it, snorting wrathfully,
with her head in the air; the second she was quite tamed, and took it
evenly in her stride.
"Give Mr. Bruce your horse, Harry, and take the Czar," Guy said. "I'll
ride Kathleen home. Steady, old lady--don't fret. We are friends again
now."
"So you have got your pony back," I remarked to Forrester.
"Yes, and with interest," was the quiet reply. "I don't think he will
owe me much when I have done with him."
Though I had nothing on earth to do with it, I felt something like
compunction as I guessed what he meant.
Bruce's was a hard, money-loving nature, unromantic to a degree; but I
believe he would gladly have waked to find himself a houseless, landless
beggar, if he could thus have regained what Charley, with his soft
voice, and eyes, and manner, had stolen from him long ago.
Am I right in saying "stolen?" Perhaps he never had it; at all events,
he thought he had, which comes to nearly the same thing.
It is true that, unraveling the cord of a man's existence, you will
generally find the blackest hank in it twined by a woman's hand, but it
is not less common to trace the golden thread to the same spindle.
Great warrior, profound statesman, stanch champion of liberty as he was,
without Edith of the Swan's-neck, Harold would scarcely have risen into
a hero of romance. We do not quite despise Charles VII. when we think
how faithfully, in loneliness and ruin, the Lady of Beauty loved her
apathetic, senseless, discrowned king. Others never found it out, but
there must have been something precious hid in a dark corner of his
wayward heart near which Agnes nestled so long. We look leniently on
Otho--parasite and profligate--when we see him lingering on his last
march, on the very verge of the death-struggle, in the teeth of Galba's
legions, to decorate Popæa's grave. More in pity than in scorn, be sure,
did Tacitus, the historic epigrammatist, write "_Ne tum quidem veterum
immemor amorum_."
Was it in remorseful consciousness of having inflicted a deep,
irreparable wrong, that Isabel rode so constantly by Bruce's side,
striving, by all means of timid propitiation, to chase the cloud
lowering on his sullen face as we returned slowly home?