The General shook with laughter.
"To be sure, to be sure; if prudery's the fashion, they'll wear it, sir,
as they would patches or hair-powder; but they're always uncommonly glad
to leave it off and lock it out of sight when they can. What do you
think of the kennels? I say, Sydie, confound you, why did you bring down
any traps with you? Haven't room for 'em, not for one. Couldn't cram a
tilbury into the coach-house."
"A trap, governor?" said Sydie, straightening his back after examination
of the pups; "can't keep even a wall-eyed cab-horse; wish I could."
"Where's your drag, then?" demanded the General.
"My drag? Don't I just wish I had one, to offer my bosom friend the
V. P. a seat on the box. Calvert, of Trinity, tooled us over in his to
the Spring Meetings, and his grays are the sweetest pair of goers--the
leaders especially--that ever you saw in harness. We came back 'cross
country, to get in time for hall, and a pretty mess we made of it, for
we broke the axle, and lamed the off-wheeler, and----"
"But, God bless my soul," stormed the General, excited beyond measure,
"you wrote me word you were going to bring a drag down with you, and of
course I supposed you meant what you said, and I had Harris in about it,
and he swore the coach-house was as full of traps as ever it could hold,
so I had my tax-cart and Fay's phaeton turned into one of the stalls,
and then, after all, it comes out you've never brought it! Devil take
you, Sydie, why can't you be more thoughtful----"
"But, my dear governor----"
"Nonsense; don't talk to me!" cried the General, trying to work himself
into a passion, and diving into the recesses of six separate pockets one
after another. "Look here, sir, I suppose you'll believe your own words?
Here it is in black and white.--'P. S. I shall bring _my Coach_ down
with me.' There, what do you say now? Confound you, what are you
laughing at? _I_ don't see anything to laugh at. In my day, young
fellows didn't make fools of old men in this way. Bless my soul, why
the devil don't you leave off laughing, and talk a little common sense?
The thing's plain enough.--'P.S. _I shall bring my Coach down with
me_.'"
"So I have," said Sydie, screaming with laughter. "Look at him--he's a
first-rate Coach, too! Wheels always oiled, and ready for any road;
always going up hill, and never caught coming down; started at a devil
of a pace, and now keeps ahead of all other vehicles on all highways. A
first-class Coach, that will tool me through the tortuous lanes and
treacherous pitfalls of the Greats with flying colors. My Coach! Bravo,
General! that's the best bit of fun I've had since I dressed up like
Sophonisba Briggs, and led the V. P. a dance all round the quad, every
hair on his head standing erect in his virtuous indignation at the awful
morals of his college."
"Eh, what?" grunted the General, light beginning to dawn upon him. "Do
you mean Mr. Keane? Hum! how's one to be up to all your confounded
slang? How could I know? Devil take you, Sydie, why can't you write
common English? You young fellows talk as bad jargon as Sepoys. You're
sure I'm delighted to see you, Mr. Keane, though I did make the
mistake."
"Thank you, General," said Keane; "but it's rather cool of you, Master
Sydie, to have forced me on to your uncle's hands without his wish or
his leave."
"Not at all, not at all," swore the General, with vehement cordiality.
"I gave him carte blanche to ask whom he would, and unexpected guests
are always most welcome; _not_ that you were unexpected though, for I'd
told that boy to be sure and bring somebody down here----"
"And have had the tax-cart and my phaeton turned out to make comfortable
quarters for him," said Miss Fay, with a glance at The Coach to see how
he took chaff, "and I only hope Mr. Keane may like his accommodation."
"Perhaps, Miss Morton," said Keane, smiling, "I shall like it so well
that you will have to say to me as poor Voltaire to his troublesome
abbe, 'Don Quichotte prenait les auberges pour les chateaux, mais vous
avez pris les chateaux pour les auberges.'"
"Tiresome man," thought Fay. "I wish Sydie hadn't brought him here; but
I shall do as I always do, however grand and supercilious he may look.
He has lived among all those men and books till he has grown as cold as
granite. What a pity it is people don't enjoy existence as I do!"
"You are thinking, Miss Morton," said Keane, as he walked on beside her,
with an amused glance at her face, which was expressive enough of her
thoughts, "that if your uncle is glad to see me, you are not, and that
Sydie was very stupid not to bring down one of his kindred spirits
instead of----Don't disclaim it now; you should veil your face if you
wish your thoughts not to be read."
"I was not going to disclaim it," said Fay, quickly looking up at him
with a rapid glance, half penitence, half irritation. "I always tell the
truth; but I was _not_ thinking exactly that; I don't want any of
Sydie's friends--I detest boys--but I certainly _was_ thinking that as
you look down on everything that we all delight in, I fancied you and
the Beeches will hardly agree. If I am rude, you must not be angry; you
wanted me to tell you the truth."
Keane smiled again.
"Do I look down on the things you delight in? I hardly know enough of
you, as we have only addressed about six syllables to each other, to be
able to judge what you like and what you don't like; but certainly I
must admit, that caressing the little round heads of those puppies
yonder, which seemed to afford you such extreme rapture, would not be
any source of remarkable gratification to me."
Fay looked up at him and laughed.
"Well, I am fond of animals as you are fond of books. Is it not an open
question whether the live dog or sheepskin is not as good as the dead
Morocco or Russian leather?"
"Is it an open question, whether Macaulay's or Arago's brain weighs no
more than a cat's or a puppy's?"
"Brain!" said impudent little Fay; "are your great men always as honest
and as faithful as my poor little Snowdrop? I have an idea that
Sheridan's brains were often obscured by brandy; that Richelieu had the
weakness to be prouder of his bad poems than his magnificent policies;
and that Pope and Byron had the folly to be more tenacious of a glance
at their physical defect than an onslaught on their noblest works. I
could mention a good many other instances where brain was not always a
voucher for corresponding strength of character."
Keane was surprised to hear a sensible speech from this volatile little
puss, and honored her by answering her seriously.
"Say, rather, Miss Morton, that those to whom many temptations fall
should have many excuses made. Where the brain preponderates, excelling
in creative faculty and rapid thought, there will the sensibilities be
proportionately acute. The vivacity and vigorous life which produced the
rapid flow of Sheridan's eloquence led him into the dissipation which
made him end his days in a spunging-house. Men of cooler minds and
natures must not presume to judge him. They had not his temptation; they
cannot judge of his fault. Richelieu, in all probability, amused himself
with his verses as he amused himself with his white kitten and its cork,
as a _delassement_; had he piqued himself upon his poetry, as they say,
he would have turned poetaster instead of politician. As for the other
two, you must remember that Pope's deformity made him a subject of
ridicule to the woman he was fool enough to worship, and Byron, poor
fellow, was over-susceptible on all points, or he would scarcely have
allowed the venomed arrows from the Scotch Reviewers to wound him, nor
would he have cared for the desertion of a wife who was to him like ice
to fire. When you are older, you will learn that it is very dangerous
and unjust to say this thing is right, that wrong, that feeling wise, or
this foolish; for all temperaments are different, and the same
circumstances may produce very different effects. Your puppies will grow
up with dissimilar characters; how much more so, then, must men?"
Miss Fay was quiet for a minute, then she flashed her mischievous eyes
on him.
"Certainly; but then, by your own admission, you have no right to decide
that your love for mathematics is wise, and my love for Snowdrop
foolish; it may be quite _au contraire_. Perhaps, after all, I may have
'chosen the better part.'"
"Fay, go in and dress for dinner," interrupted the General, trotting up;
"your tongue would run on forever if nobody stopped it; you're no
exception to your sex on that point. Is she?"
Keane laughed.
"Perhaps Miss Morton's fraenum, like Sydie's, was cut too far in her
infancy, and therefore she has been 'unbridled' ever since."
"In all things!" cried little Fay. "Nobody has put the curb on me yet,
and nobody ever shall."
"Don't be too sure, Fay," cried Sydie. "Rarey does wonders with the
wildest fillies. Somebody may bring you down on your knees yet."
"You'll have to see to that, Sydie," laughed the General. "Come, get
along, child, to your toilette. I never have my soup cold and my curry
overdone. To wait for his dinner is a stretch of good nature, and
patience that ought not to be expected of any man."
The soup was not cold nor the curry overdone, and the dinner was
pleasant enough, in the long dining-room, with the June sun streaming in
through its bay-windows from out the brilliant-colored garden, and the
walls echoing with the laughter of Sydie and his cousin, the young lady
keeping true to her avowal of "not caring for Plato's presence."
"Plato," however, listened quietly, peeling his peaches with tranquil
amusement; for if the girl talked nonsense, it was clever nonsense, as
rare, by the way, and quite as refreshing as true wit.
"My gloves are safe; you're too afraid of him, Fay," whispered Sydie,
bending forwards to give her some hautboys.
"Am I?" cried Miss Fay, with a _moue_ of supreme contempt. Neither the
whisper nor the _moue_ escaped Keane, as he talked with the governor on
model drainage.
"Where's my hookah, Fay?" asked the General, after dessert. "Get it,
will you, my pet?"
"Voila!" cried Miss Fay, lifting the narghile from the sideboard. Then
taking some cigars off the mantelpiece, she put one in her own mouth,
struck a fusee, and, handing the case to Keane, said, with a saucy smile
in her soft bright eyes, though, to tell the truth, she was a little bit
afraid of taking liberties with him:
"If you are not above such a sublunary indulgence, will you have a cigar
with me?"
"With the greatest pleasure," said Keane, with a grave bow; "and if you
would like to further rival George Sand, I shall be very happy to give
you the address of my tailor."
"Thank you exceedingly; but as long as crinoline is the type of the sex
that are a little lower than the angels, and ribbon-ties the seal of
those but a trifle better than Mephistopheles, I don't think I will
change it," responded Little Fay, contemptuously, as she threw herself
down on a couch with an indignant defiant glance, and puffed at her
Manilla.
"I _hate_ him, Sydie," said the little lady, vehemently, that night.
"Do you, dear?" answered the Cantab; "you see, you've never had anybody
to be afraid of, or had any man neglect you before."
"He may neglect me if he please, I am sure I do not care," rejoined Fay,
disdainfully; "only I do wish, Sydie, that you had never brought him
here to make us all uncomfortable."
"He don't make me uncomfortable, quite otherwise; nor yet the governor;
you're the only victim, Fay."
Fay saw little enough of Keane for the next week or two. He was out all
day with Sydie trout-fishing, or walking over his farms with the
General, or sitting in the study reading, and writing his articles for
the _Cambridge Journal_, _Leonville's Mathematical Journal_, or the
_Westminster Review_. But when she was with him, there was no mischief
within her reach that Miss Fay did not perpetrate. Keane, to tease her,
would condemn--so seriously that she believed him--all that she loved
the best; he would tell her that he admired quiet, domestic women; that
he thought girls should be very subdued and retiring; that they should
work well, and not care much for society; at all of which, being her
extreme antipodes, Little Fay would be vehemently wrathful. She would
get on her pony without any saddle in her evening dress, and ride him at
the five-bar gate in the stable-yard; she would put on Sydie's
smoking-cap, and look very pretty in it, and take a Queen's on the divan
of the smoking-room, reading _Bell's Life_, and asking Keane how much he
would bet on the October; she would spend all the morning making wreaths
of roses, dressing herself and the puppies up in them, inquiring if it
was not a laudable and industrious occupation. There was no nonsense or
mischief Fay would not imagine and forthwith commit, and anything they
wanted her not to do she would do straightway, even to the imperilling
of her own life and limb. She tried hard to irritate or rouse "Plato,"
as she called him, but Plato was not to be moved, and treated her as a
spoilt child, whom he alone had sense enough to resist.
"It will be great folly for you to attempt it, Miss Morton. Those horses
are not fit to be driven by any one, much less by a woman," said Keane,
quietly, one morning.
They were in the stable-yard, and chanced to be alone when a new
purchase of the governor's--two scarcely broken-in thorough-bred
colts--were brought with a new mail-phaeton into the yard, and Miss Fay
forthwith announced her resolution of driving them round the avenue. The
groom that came with them told her they were almost more than he could
manage, their own coachman begged and implored, Keane reasoned quietly,
all to no purpose. The rosebud had put out its little wilful thorns;
Keane's words added fuel to the fire. Up she sprang, looking the
daintiest morsel imaginable perched up on that very exalted box-seat,
told the horrified groom to mount behind, and started them off, lifting
her hat with a graceful bow to "Plato," who stood watching the phaeton
with his arms folded and his cigar in his mouth.
Soon after, he started in the contrary direction, for the avenue circled
the Beeches in an oval of four miles, and he knew he should meet her
coming back. He strolled along under the pleasant shadow of the great
trees, enjoying the sunset and the fresh air, and capable of enjoying
them still more but for an inward misgiving. His presentiment was not
without its grounds. He had walked about a mile and a half round the
avenue, when a cloud of dust told him what was up, and in the distance
came the thorough-breds, broken away as he had prophesied, tearing along
with the bits between their teeth, Little Fay keeping gallantly hold of
the ribbons, but as powerless over the colts now they had got their
heads as the groom leaning from the back seat.
On came the phaeton, bumping, rattling, oscillating, threatening every
second to be turned over. Keane caught one glance of Fay's face,
resolute and pale, and of her little hands grasping the ribbons, till
they were cut and bleeding with the strain. There was nothing for it but
to stand straight in the animals' path, catch their heads, and throw
them back on their haunches. Luckily, his muscles were like
iron--luckily, too, the colts had come a long way, and were not fresh.
He stood like a rock, and checked them; running a very close risk of
dislocating his arms with the shock, but saving little Fay from
destruction. The colts stood trembling, the groom jumped out and caught
the reins, Keane amused himself silently with the mingled penitence,
vexation, shame, and rebellion visible in the little lady's face.
"Well," said he, quietly, "as you were so desirous of breaking your
neck, will you ever forgive me for defeating your purpose?"
"Pray don't!" cried Fay, passionately. "I do thank you so much for
saving my life; I think it so generous and brave of you to have rescued
me at such risk to yourself. I feel that I can never be grateful enough
to you, but don't talk in that way. I know it was silly and self-willed
of me."
"It was; that fact is obvious."
"Then I shall make it more so," cried Miss Fay, with her old wilfulness.
"I do feel very grateful, and I would tell you so, if you would let me;
but if you think it has made me afraid, you are quite wrong, and so you
shall see."
And before he could interfere, or do more than mechanically spring up
after her, she had caught the reins from the groom, and started the
trembling colts off again. But Keane put his hand on the ribbons.
"Foolish child; are you mad?" he said, so gravely yet so gently that Fay
let them go, and let him drive her back to the stable-yard, where she
sprang out, and rushed away to her own room, terrified the governor with
a few vehement sentences, which gave him a vague idea that Keane was
murdered and both Fay's legs broken, and then had a private cry all to
herself, with her arms round Snowdrop's neck, curled up in one of the
drawing-room windows, where she had not been long when the General and
Keane passed through, not noticing her, hidden as she was, in curtains,
cushions, and flowers.
"She's a little wilful thing, Keane," the General was saying, "but you
mustn't think the worse of her for that."
"I don't. I am sick of those conventional young ladies who agree with
everything one says to them--who keep all the frowns for mothers and
servants, and are as serene as a cloudless sky abroad, smile blandly on
all alike, and haven't an opinion of their own."
"Fay's plenty of opinions of her own," chuckled the General; "and she
tells 'em pretty freely, too. Bless the child, she's not ashamed of any
of her thoughts and never will be."
"I hope not. Your little niece can do things that no other young lady
could and they are so pretty in her that it would be a thousand pities
for her to grow one atom less natural and wilful. Grapes growing wild
are charming--grapes trained to a stake are ruined. I assure you, if I
were you, I would not scold her for driving those colts to-day. High
spirits and love of fun led her on, and the courage and presence of mind
she displayed are too rare among her sex for us to do right in checking
them."
"To be sure, to be sure," assented the governor, gleefully. "God bless
the child, she's one among a thousand, sir. Cognac, not milk and water.
There's the dinner-bell; confound it."
Whereat the General made his exit, and Keane also; and Fay kissed the
spaniel with even more passionate attachment than ordinary.
"Ah, Snowdrop, I don't hate him any more; he is a darling!"
One glowing August morning Keane was in the study pondering whether he
would go to his moor or not. The General had besought him to stay. His
gamekeeper wrote him that it was a horribly bad rainy season in
Invernessshire; the trout and the rabbits were very good sport in a mild
way here. Altogether, Keane felt half disposed to keep where he was,
when a shadow fell across his paper; and, as he looked up, he saw in the
open window the English rosebud.
"Is it not one of the open questions, Mr. Keane," asked Fay, "whether it
is very wise to spend all this glorious morning shut out of the sight of
the sun-rays and the scent of the flowers?"
"How have _you_ been spending it, then?"
"Putting bouquets in all the rooms, cleaning my aviary, talking to the
puppies, and reading Jocelyn under the limes in the shrubberies--all
very puerile, but all very pleasant. Perhaps if you descended to a lazy
day like that now and then, you might be none the worse!"
"Is that a challenge? Will you take me under the limes?"
"No, indeed! I do not admit men who despise them to my gardens of
Armida, any more than you would admit me into your Schools. I have as
great a scorn for a skeptic as you have for a tyro."
"Pardon me. I have no scorn for a tyro. But you would not come to the
Accademe; you dislike 'Plato' too much."
Fay looked up at him half shyly, half mischievously.
"Yes, I do dislike you, when you look down on me as Richelieu might have
looked down on his kitten."
"Liking to see its play?" said Keane, half sadly. "Contrasting its gay
insouciance with his own toil and turmoil, regretting, perhaps, the time
when trifles made his joy as they did his kitten's? If I were to look on
you so, there would not be much to offend you."
"You do not think so of me, or you would speak to me as if I were an
intelligent being, not a silly little thing."
"How do you know I think you silly?"
"Because you think all women so."
"Perhaps; but then you should rather try to redeem me from my error in
doctrine. Come, let us sign a treaty of peace. Take me under the limes.
I want some fresh air after writing all day; and in payment I will teach
you Euclid, as you vainly beseeched your cousin to do yesterday."
"Will you?" cried Fay, eagerly. Then she threw back her head. "I never
am won by bribes."
"Nor yet by threats? What a difficult young lady you are. Come, show me
your shrubbery sanctum now you have invaded mine."
The English rosebud laid aside its wilful thorns, and Fay, a little less
afraid of her Plato, and therefore a little less defiant to him, led him
over the grounds, filled his hands with flowers, showed him her aviary,
read some of Jocelyn to him, to show him, she said, that Lamartine was
better than the Oedipus in Coloneus, and thought, as she dressed for
dinner, "I wonder if he does despise me--he has such a beautiful face,
if he were not so haughty and cold!"
The next day Keane gave her an hour of Euclid in the study. Certainly
The Coach had never had such a pretty pupil; and he wished every dull
head he had to cram was as intelligent as this fair-haired one. Fay was
quick and clever; she was stimulated, moreover, by his decree concerning
the stupidity of all women; she really worked as hard as any young man
studying for degrees when they supposed her fast asleep in bed, and she
got over the Pons Asinorum in a style that fairly astonished her tutor.
The Coach did not dislike his occupation either; it did him good, after
his life of solitude and study, something as the kitten and cork did
Richelieu good after his cabinets and councils; and Little Fay, with her
flowers and fun, mischief and impudence, and that winning wilfulness
which it amused him gradually to tame down, unbent the chillness which
had grown upon him. He was the better for it, as a man after hard study
or practice is the better for some fresh sea-breezes, and some days of
careless dolce.
"Well, Fay, have you had another poor devil flinging himself at your
feet by means of a postage-stamp?" said Sydie one morning at breakfast.
"You can't disguise anything from me, your most interested, anxious, and
near and dear relative. Whenever the governor looks particularly stormy
I see the signs of the times, that if I do not forthwith remove your
dangerously attractive person, all the bricks, spooneys, swells, and
do-nothings in the county will speedily fill the Hanwell wards to
overflowing."
"Don't talk such nonsense, Sydie," said Fay, impatiently, with a glance
at Keane, as she handed him his chocolate.
"Ah! deuce take the fellows," chuckled the General. "Love, devotion,
admiration! What a lot of stuff they do write. I wonder if Fay were a
little beggar, how much of it all would stand the test? But we know a
trick worth two of that. Try those sardines, Keane. House is let,
Fay--eh? House is let; nobody need apply. Ha, ha!"
And the General took some more curry, laughing till he was purple, while
Fay blushed scarlet, a trick of which she was rarely guilty; Sydie
smiled, and Keane picked out his sardines with calm deliberation.
"Hallo! God bless my soul!" burst forth the General again. "Devil take
me! I'll be hanged if I stand it! Confound 'em all! I do call it hard
for a man not to be able to sit at his breakfast in peace. Good Heavens!
what will come to the country, if all those little devils grow up to be
food for Calcraft? He's actually pulling the bark off the trees, as I
live! Excuse me, I _can't_ sit still and see it."
Wherewith the General bolted from his chair, darted through the window,
upsetting three dogs, two kittens, and a stand of flowers in his exit,
and bolted breathlessly across the park with the poker in his hand.
"Bless his old heart! Ain't he a brick?" shouted Sydie. "Do excuse me,
Fay, I must go and hear him blow up that boy sky-high, and give him a
shilling for tuck afterwards; it will be so rich."