minds, and restoring the dethroned geraniums. Keane read his _Times_ for
ten minutes, then looked up.
"Miss Morton, where is your tongue? I have not heard it for a quarter of
an hour, a miracle that has never happened in the two months I have been
at the Beeches."
"You do not want to hear it."
"What! am I in _mauvais odeur_ again?" smiled Keane. "I thought we were
good friends. Have you found the Q. E. D. to the problem I gave you?"
"To be sure!" cried Fay, exultantly. And kneeling down by him, she went
through the whole thing in exceeding triumph.
"You are a good child," said her tutor, smiling, in himself amazed at
this volatile little thing's capacity for mathematics. "I think you will
be able to take your degree, if you like. Come, do you hate me now,
Fay?"
"No," said Fay, a little shyly. "I never hated you, I always admired
you; but I was afraid of you, though I would never confess it to Sydie."
"Never be afraid of me," said Keane, putting his hand on hers as it lay
on the arm of his chair. "You have no cause. You can do things few girls
can; but they are pretty in you, where they might be--not so pretty in
others. _I_ like them at the least. You are very fond of your cousin,
are you not?"
"Of Sydie? Oh, I love him dearly!"
Keane took his hand away, and rose, as the General trotted in:
"God bless my soul, Keane, how warm it is! Confoundedly hot without
one's hat, I can tell you. Had my walk all for nothing, too. That cursed
little idiot wasn't trespassing after all. Stephen had set him to spud
out the daisies, and I'd thrashed the boy before I'd listen to him.
Devil take him!"
August went out and September came in, and Keane stayed on at the
Beeches. They were pleasant days to them all, knocking over the
partridges right and left, enjoying a cold luncheon under the luxuriant
hedges, and going home for a dinner, full of laughter, and talk, and
good cookery; and Fay's songs afterwards, as wild and sweet in their way
as a goldfinch's on a hawthorn spray.
"You like Little Fay, don't you, Keane?" said the General, as they went
home one evening.
Keane looked startled for a second.
"Of course," he said, rather haughtily. "That Miss Morton is very
charming every one must admit."
"Bless her little heart! She's a wild little filly, Keane, but she'll go
better and truer than your quiet broken-in ones, who wear the harness so
respectably, and are so wicked and vicious in their own minds. And what
do you think of my boy?" asked the General, pointing to Sydie, who was
in front. "How does he stand at Cambridge?"
"Sydie? Oh, he's a nice young fellow. He is a great favorite there, and
he is--the best things he can be--generous, sweet-tempered, and
honorable----"
"To be sure," echoed the General, rubbing his hands. "He's a dear boy--a
very dear boy. They're both exactly all I wished them to be, dear
children; and I must say I am delighted to see 'em carrying out the plan
I had always made for 'em from their childhood."
"Being what, General, may I ask?"
"Why, any one can see, as plain as a pikestaff, that they're in love
with each other," said the General, glowing with satisfaction; "and I
mean them to be married and happy. They dote on each other, Keane, and I
sha'n't put any obstacles in their way. Youth's short enough, Heaven
knows; let 'em enjoy it, say I, it don't come back again. Don't say
anything to him about it; I want to have some fun with him. They've
settled it all, of course, long ago; but he hasn't confided in me, the
sly dog. Trust an old campaigner, though, for twigging an _affaire de
coeur_. Bless them both, they make me feel a boy again. We'll have a gay
wedding, Keane; mind you come down for it. I dare say it'll be at
Christmas."
Keane walked along, drawing his cap over his eyes. The sun was setting
full in his face.
"Well, what sport?" cried Fay, running up to them.
"Pretty fair," said Keane, coldly, as he passed her.
It was an hour before the dinner-bell rang. Then he came down cold and
calm, particularly brilliant in conversation, more courteous, perhaps,
to her than ever, but the frost had gathered round him that the sunny
atmosphere of the Beeches had melted; and Fay, though she tried to
tease, and to coax, and to win him, could not dissipate it. She felt him
an immeasurable distance from her again. He was a learned, haughty,
grave philosopher, and she a little naughty child.
As Keane went up-stairs that night, he heard Sydie talking in the hall.
"Yes, my worshipped Fay, I shall be intensely and utterly miserable away
from the light of your eyes; but, nevertheless, I must go and see
Kingslake from John's next Tuesday, because I've promised; and let one
idolize your divine self ever so much, one can't give up one's larks,
you know."
Keane ground his teeth with a bitter sigh and a fierce oath.
"Little Fay, I would have loved you more tenderly than that!"
He went in and threw himself on his bed, not to sleep. For the first
time for many years he could not summon sleep at his will. He had gone
on petting her and amusing himself, thinking of her only as a winning,
wayward child. Now he woke with a shock to discover, too late, that she
had stolen from him unawares the heart he had so long refused to any
woman. With his high intellect and calm philosophy, after his years
spent in severe science and cold solitude, the hot well-springs of
passion had broken loose again. He longed to take her bright life into
his own grave and cheerless one; he longed to feel her warm young heart
beat with his own, icebound for so many years; but Little Fay was never
to be his.
In the bedroom next to him the General sat, with his feet in his
slippers and his dressing-gown round him, smoking his last cheroot
before a roaring fire, chuckling complacently over his own thoughts.
"To be sure, we'll have a very gay wedding, such as the county hasn't
seen in all its blessed days," he muttered, with supreme satisfaction.
"Sydie shall have this place. What do I want with a great town of a
house like this, big enough for a barrack? I'll take that shooting-box
that's to let four miles off; that'll be plenty large enough for me and
my old chums to smoke in and chat over bygone times, and it will do our
hearts good--freshen us up a bit to see those young things enjoying
themselves. My Little Fay will be the prettiest bride that ever was
seen. Silly young things to suppose I don't see through them. Trust an
old soldier! However, love is blind, they say. How could they have
helped falling in love with one another? and who'd have the heart to
part 'em, I should like to know!"
Keane stayed that day; the next, receiving a letter which afforded a
true though a slight excuse to return to Cambridge, he went, the
General, Fay, and Sydie believing him gone only for a few days, he
knowing that he would never set foot in the Beeches again. He went back
to his rooms, whose dark monastic gloom in the dull October day seemed
to close round him like an iron shroud. Here, with his books, his
papers, his treasures of intellect, science and art, his "mind a
kingdom" to him, he had spent many a happy day, with his brain growing
only clearer and clearer as he followed out a close reasoning or
clenched a subtle analysis. Now, for the sake of a mischievous child but
half his age, he shuddered as he entered.
"Well, my dear boy," began the General one day after dinner, "I've seen
your game, though you thought I didn't. How do you know, you young dog,
that I shall give my consent?"
"Oh, bother, governor, I know you will," cried Sydie, aghast; "because,
you see, if you let me have a few cool hundreds I can give the men such
slap-up wines--and it's my last year, General."
"You sly dog!" chuckled the governor, "I'm not talking of your
wine-merchant, and you know I'm not, Master Sydie. It's no good playing
hide-and-seek with me; I can always see through a milestone when Cupid
is behind it; and there's no need to beat round the bush with me, my
boy. I never gave my assent to anything with greater delight in my life;
I've always meant you to marry Fay, and----"
"Marry Fay!" shouted Sydie. "Good Heavens! governor, what next?" And the
Cantab threw himself back and laughed till he cried, and Snowdrop and
her pups barked furiously in a concert of excited sympathy.
"Why, sir, why?--why, because--devil take you, Sydie--I don't know what
you are laughing at, do you?" cried the General, starting out of his
chair.
"Yes, I do, governor; you're laboring under a most delicious delusion."
"Delusion!--eh?--what? Why, bless my soul, I don't think you know what
you are saying, Sydie," stormed the General.
"Yes I do; you've an idea--how you got it into your head Heaven knows,
but there it is--you've an idea that Fay and I are in love with one
another; and I assure you you were never more mistaken in your life."
Seeing the General standing bolt upright staring at him, and looking
decidedly apocleptic, Sydie made the matter a little clearer.
"Fay and I would do a good deal to oblige you, my beloved governor, if
we could get up the steam a little, but I'm afraid we really _cannot_.
Love ain't in one's own hands, you see, but a skittish mare, that gets
her head, and takes the bit between her teeth, and bolts off with you
wherever she likes. Is it possible that two people who broke each
other's toys, and teased each other's lives out, and caught the measles
of each other, from their cradle upwards, should fall in love with each
other when they grow up? Besides, I don't intend to marry for the next
twenty years, if I can help it. I couldn't afford a milliner's bill to
my tailor's, and I should be ruined for life if I merged my bright
particular star of a self into a respectable, lark-shunning,
bill-paying, shabby-hatted, family man. Good Heavens, what a train of
horrors comes with the bare idea!"
"Do you mean to say, sir, you won't marry your cousin?" shouted the
General.
"Bless your dear old heart, _no_, governor--ten times over, _no_! I
wouldn't marry anybody, not for half the universe."
"Then I've done with you, sir--I wash my hands of you!" shouted the
General, tearing up and down the room in a quick march, more beneficial
to his feelings than his carpet. "You are an ungrateful, unprincipled,
shameless young man, and are no more worthy of the affection and the
interest I've been fool enough to waste on you than a tom-cat. You're an
abominably selfish, ungrateful, unnatural boy; and though you _are_ poor
Phil's son, I will tell you my mind, sir; and I must say I think your
conduct with your cousin, making love to her--desperate love to
her--winning her affections, poor unhappy child, and then making a jest
of her and treating it with a laugh, is disgraceful, sir--_disgraceful_,
do you hear?"
"Yes, I hear, General," cried Sydie, convulsed with laughter; "but Fay
cares no more for me than for those geraniums. We are fond of one
another, in a cool, cousinly sort of way, but----"
"Hold your tongue!" stormed the General. "Don't dare to say another word
to me about it. You know well enough that it has been the one delight of
my life, and if you'd had any respect or right feeling in you, you'd
marry her to-morrow."
"She wouldn't be a party to that. Few women _are_ blind to my manifold
attractions; but Fay's one of 'em. Look here, governor," said Sydie,
laying his hand affectionately on the General's shoulder, "did it never
occur to you that though the pretty castle's knocked down, there may be
much nicer bricks left to build a new one? Can't you see that Fay
doesn't care two buttons about me, but cares a good many diamond studs
about somebody else?"
"Nothing has occurred to me but that you and she are two heartless,
selfish, ungrateful chits. Hold your tongue, sir!"
"But, General----"
"Hold your tongue, sir; don't talk to me, I tell you. In love with
somebody else? I should like to see him show his face here. Somebody
she's talked to for five minutes at a race-ball, and proposed to her in
a corner, thinking to get some of my money. Some swindler, or Italian
refugee, or blackleg, I'll be bound--taken her in, made her think him an
angel, and will persuade her to run away with him. I'll set the police
round the house--I'll send her to school in Paris. What fools men are to
have anything to do with women at all! You seem in their confidence;
who's the fellow?"
"A man very like a swindler or a blackleg--Keane!"
"Keane!" shouted the General, pausing in the middle of his frantic
march.
"Keane," responded Sydie.
"Keane!" shouted the General again. "God bless my soul, she might as
well have fallen in love with the man in the moon. Why couldn't she like
the person I'd chosen for her?"
"If one can't guide the mare one's self, 'tisn't likely the governors
can for one," muttered Sydie.
"Poor dear child! fallen in love with a man who don't care a button for
her, eh? Humph!--that's always the way with women--lose the good
chances, and fling themselves at a man's feet who cares no more for
their tom-foolery of worship than he cares for the blacking on his
boots. Devil take young people, what a torment they are! The ungrateful
little jade, how dare she go and smash all my plans like that? and if I
ever set my heart on anything, I set it on that match. Keane! he'll no
more love anybody than the stone cherubs on the terrace. He's a splendid
head, but his heart's every atom as cold as granite. Love her? Not a bit
of it. When I told him you were going to marry her (I thought you would,
and so you will, too, if you've the slightest particle of gratitude or
common sense in either of you), he listened as quietly and as calmly as
if he had been one of the men in armor in the hall. Love, indeed! To the
devil with love, say I! It's the head and root of everything that's
mischievous and bad."
"Wait a bit, uncle," cried Sydie; "you told him all about your previous
match-making, eh? And didn't he go off like a shot two days after, when
we meant him to stay on a month longer? Can't you put two and two
together, my once wide-awake governor? 'Tisn't such a difficult
operation."
"No, I can't," shouted the General: "I don't know anything, I don't see
anything, I don't believe in anything, I hate everybody and everything,
I tell you; and I'm a great fool for having ever set my heart on any
plan that wanted a woman's concurrence--
For if she will she will, you may depend on't,
And if she won't she won't, and there's an end on't."
Wherewith the General stuck his wide-awake on fiercely, and darted out
of the bay-window to cool himself. Half way across the lawn, he turned
sharp round, and came back again.
"Sydie, do you fancy Keane cares a straw for that child?"
"I can't say. It's possible."
"Humph! Well, can't you go and see? That's come of those mathematical
lessons. What a fool I was to allow her to be so much with him!" growled
the General, with many grunts and half-audible oaths, swinging round
again, and trotting through the window as hot and peppery as his own
idolized curry.
Keane was sitting writing in his rooms at King's some few days after.
The backs looked dismal with their leafless, sepia-colored trees; the
streets were full of sloppy mud and dripping under-grads' umbrellas; his
own room looked sombre and dark, without any sunshine on its heavy oak
bookcases, and massive library-table, and dark bronzes. His pen moved
quickly, his head was bent over the paper, his mouth sternly set, and
his forehead paler and more severe than ever. The gloom in his chambers
had gathered round him himself, when his door was burst open, and Sydie
dashed in and threw himself down in a green leather arm-chair.
"Well, sir, here am I back again. Just met the V. P. in the quad, and he
was so enchanted at seeing me, that he kissed me on both cheeks, flung
off his gown, tossed up his cap, and performed a _pas d'extase_ on the
spot. Isn't it delightful to be so beloved? Granta looks very delicious
to-day, I must say--about as refreshing and lively as an acidulated
spinster going district-visiting in a snow-storm. And how are you, most
noble lord?"
"Pretty well."
"Only that? Thought you were all muscle and iron. I say. What _do_ you
think the governor has been saying to me?"
"How can I tell?"
"Tell! No, I should not have guessed it if I'd tried for a hundred
years! By George! nothing less than that I should marry Fay. What do you
think of that, sir?"
Keane traced Greek unconsciously on the margin of his _Times_. For the
life of him, with all his self-command, he could not have answered.
"Marry Fay! _I!_" shouted Sydie. "Ye gods, what an idea! I never was so
astonished in all my days. Marry Little Fay!--the governor must be mad,
you know."
"You will not marry your cousin?" asked Keane, tranquilly, though the
rapid glance and involuntary start did not escape Sydie's quick eyes.
"Marry! I! By George, no! She wouldn't have me, and I'm sure I wouldn't
have her. She is a dear little monkey, and I'm very fond of her, but I
wouldn't put the halter round my neck for any woman going. I don't like
vexing the General, but it would be really too great a sacrifice merely
to oblige him."
"She cares nothing for you, then?"
"Nothing? Well, I don't know. Yes, in a measure, she does. If I should
be taken home on a hurdle one fine morning, she'd shed some cousinly
tears over my inanimate body; but as for _the other thing_, not one bit
of it. 'Tisn't likely. We're a great deal too like one another, too full
of devilry and carelessness, to assimilate. Isn't it the delicious
contrast and fiz of the sparkling acid of divine lemons with the
contrariety of the fiery spirit of beloved rum that makes the delectable
union known and worshipped in our symposia under the blissful name of
PUNCH? Marry Little Fay! By Jove, if all the governor's match-making was
founded on no better reasons for success, it is a small marvel that he's
a bachelor now! By George, it's time for hall!"
And the Cantab took himself off, congratulating himself on the adroit
manner in which he had cut the Gordian knot that the General had muddled
up so inexplicably in his unpropitious match-making.
Keane lay back in his chair some minutes, very still; then he rose to
dine in hall, pushing away his books and papers, as if throwing aside
with them a dull and heavy weight. The robins sang in the leafless
backs, the sun shone out on the sloppy streets; the youth he thought
gone for ever was come back to him. Oh, strange stale story of Hercules
and Omphale, old as the hills, and as eternal! Hercules goes on in his
strength slaying his hydra and his Laomedon for many years, but he
comes at last, whether he like it or not, to his Omphale, at whose feet
he is content to sit and spin long golden threads of pleasure and of
passion, while his lion's skin is motheaten and his club rots away.
Little Fay sat curled up on the study hearth-rug, reading a book her
late guest had left behind him--a very light and entertaining volume,
being Delolme "On the Constitution," but which she preferred, I suppose,
to "What Will He Do With It?" or the "Feuilles d'Automne," for the sake
of that clear autograph, "Gerald Keane, King's Coll.," on its fly-leaf.
A pretty picture she made, with her handsome spaniels; and she was so
intent on what she was reading--the fly-leaf, by the way--that she never
heard the opening of the door, till a hand drew away her book. Then Fay
started up, oversetting the puppies one over another, radiant and
breathless.
Keane took her hands and drew her near him.
"You do not hate me now, then?"
Fay put her head on one side with her old wilfulness.
"Yes, I do--when you go away without any notice, and hardly bid me
good-bye. You would not have left one of your men pupils so
unceremoniously."
Keane smiled involuntarily, and drew her closer.
"If you do not hate me, will you go a step farther--and love me? Little
Fay, my own darling, will you come and brighten my life? It has been a
saddened and a stern one, but it shall never throw a shade on yours."
The wild little filly was conquered--at last, she came to hand docile
and subdued, and acknowledged her master. She loved him, and told him so
with that frankness and fondness which would have covered faults far
more glaring and weighty than Little Fay's.
"But you must never be afraid of me," whispered Keane, some time after.
"Oh, no!"
"And you do not wish Sydie had never brought me here to make you all
uncomfortable?"
"Oh, please don't!" cried Fay, plaintively. "I was a child then, and I
did not know what I said."
"'Then,' being three months ago, may I ask what you are now?"
"A child still in knowledge, but _your_ child," whispered Fay, lifting
her face to his, "to be petted and spoiled, and never found fault with,
remember!"
"My little darling, who would have the heart to find fault with you,
whatever your sins?"
"God bless my soul, what's this?" cried a voice in the doorway.
There stood the General in wide-awake and shooting-coat, with a spade in
one hand and a watering-pot in the other, too astonished to keep his
amazement to himself. Fay would fain have turned and fled, but Keane
smiled, kept one arm round her, and stretched out his hand to the
governor.
"General, I came once uninvited, and I am come again. Will you forgive
me? I have a great deal to say to you, but I must ask you one question
first of all. Will you give me your treasure?"
"Eh! humph! What? Well--I suppose--yes," ejaculated the General,
breathless from the combined effects of amazement and excessive and
vehement gardening. "But, bless my soul, Keane, I should as soon have
thought of one of the stone cherubs, or that bronze Milton. Never mind,
one lives and learns. Mind? Devil take me, what am I talking about? I
don't mind at all; I'm very happy, only I'd set my heart on--you know
what. More fool I. Fay, you little imp, come here. Are you fairly broken
in by Keane, then?"
"Yes," said Miss Fay, with her old mischief, but a new blush, "as he has
promised never to use the curb."
"God bless you, then, my little pet," cried the General, kissing her
some fifty times. Then he laughed till he cried, and dried his eyes and
laughed again, and grunted, and growled, and shook both Keane's hands
vehemently. "I was a great fool, sir, and I dare say you've managed much
better. I _did_ set my heart on the boy, you know, but it can't be
helped now, and I don't wish it should. Be kind to her, that's all; for
though she mayn't bear the curb, the whip from anybody she cares about
would break her heart. She's a dear child, Keane--a very dear child. Be
kind to her, that's all."
* * * * *
On the evening of January 13th, beginning the Lent Term, Mr. Sydenham
Morton sat in his own rooms with half a dozen spirits like himself, a
delicious aroma surrounding them of Maryland and rum-punch, and a rapid
flow of talk making its way through the dense atmosphere.
"To think of Granite Keane being caught!" shouted one young fellow. "I
should as soon have thought of the Pyramids walking over to the Sphinx,
and marrying her."
"Poor devil! I pity him," sneered Henley of Trinity, aged nineteen.
"He don't require much pity, my dear fellow; I think he's pretty
comfortable," rejoined Sydie. "He did, to be sure, when he was trying to
beat sense into your brain-box, but that's over for the present."
"Come, tell us about the wedding," said Somerset of King's. "I was sorry
I couldn't go down."
"Well," began Sydie, stretching his legs and putting down his pipe,
"she--_the_ she was dressed in white tulle and----"
"Bother the dress. Go ahead!"
"The dress was no bother, it was the one subject in life to the women.
You must listen to the dress, because I asked the prettiest girl there
for the description of it to enlighten your minds, and it was harder to
learn than six books of Horace. The bridesmaids wore tarlatane a la
Princesse Stephanie, trois jupes bouillonnees, jupe desous de soie
glacee, guirlandes couleur dea yeux imperiaux d'Eugenie, corsets
decolletes garnis de ruches de ruban du----"
"For Heaven's sake, hold your tongue!" cried Somerset. "That jargon's
worse than the Yahoos'. The dead languages are bad enough to learn, but
women's living language of fashion is ten hundred times worse. The
twelve girls were dressed in blue and white, and thought themselves
angels--we understand. Cut along."