AMONGST THE BULRUSHES
It wanted but three days to Christmas, and it had been a frost. Upon
the bare fields and the shivering landscape had fallen a hand of
iron--no gentle hoar-frost, making the fields and country look like a
glittering panorama, but a stern, merciless black frost which had come
in with the east wind, and lay upon the land like a cruel blight.
Agricultural work of all sort was at a standstill, and hunting was
impossible. The only thing to be done out of doors was to skate, and
that every one who owned a pair of skates was doing.
There was a large party at Devereux Court, but I had contrived to see
very little of them. Two of Lady Olive's sisters, some former
schoolfellows of Maud Devereux's, Francis Devereux, and some town
friends, were all stopping there, and Maud was playing hostess while
Sir Francis kept himself partially shut up. Once or twice I had come
across them in the park, a laughing, chattering group, but I had passed
with a bow, and had chosen not to see Lady Olive's mute command to
stop. I had seen him, my cousin, and I hated him. What freak of
nature had made him the brother of such a sister?--this pale,
effeminate-looking man, with leaden eyes and insolent stare, and the
manners of a fop. "What did Sir Francis think of him," I wonder, "as
the future head of the family of Devereux?" Bah! It was a profitless
thought.
Early in the morning I sallied out with Mr. Holdern and Marian for an
hour or two's skating; there was nothing else for me to do. There were
two lakes, and we chose the smaller that we might have it all to
ourselves. No sooner had we our skates on than the inevitable
happened. Hand in hand Marian and Holdern swept away together to the
farther end where the bulrushes were many and the ice was bad, and I
was left alone.
I commenced to make the best of it by selecting a smooth piece of ice
and setting myself an impossible task in figure skating. Far away on
the other lake I could hear the hum of many skates and the sound of
merry voices, and it made me feel lonely and discontented. I would
like to have been with them, skating hand in hand with Maud--Maud whom
I had not spoken a single word to since our last ride home together;
Maud whose face was seldom absent from my thoughts; Maud whom, alas! I
loved.
With an aching heart I left off my futile attempt to cut impossible
figures, and, lighting my pipe, commenced to make the circuit of the
lake, with long, swift strides. There was something exhilarating in
the rapid motion, in the desperate hastening over the smooth black ice,
and as I came round for the second time my cheeks began to glow and my
heart to grow lighter. Then suddenly it bounded with an unthinking
joy, for close above me was a chorus of gay, chattering tongues, and
one amongst them I could distinguish in a moment, although it was the
lowest of all.
I struck away for the middle of the lake, meaning to make my escape,
but I was just a second or two too late. Lady Olive was calling to me,
and I was obliged to turn round.
The whole group was standing on the bank, some carrying chairs, and
some sledges, and all, except Francis Devereux, skates. Lady Olive was
calling to me, so I was obliged to skate up to them.
"Fancy your being here all by yourself, Mr. Arbuthnot! Do you know, we
were coming down to call on you, the whole lot of us, if we hadn't seen
you soon? Is it good ice? And come in closer, do; I want to introduce
you to my sisters."
There was nothing for me to do but obey, and in a moment I found myself
being chatted to by two girls not very unlike Lady Olive herself; and
my hand had touched Maud's for a moment, and my eyes looked into hers.
Then some one introduced me to Mr. Francis Devereux, and I found myself
bowing slightly (I had kept my hands behind me, all the time
anticipating this, for God forbid that I should place the hand of
Rupert Devereux's son within my own) to my cousin, who looked out at me
superciliously from the depths of a fur coat, which had the appearance
of having been made for the Arctic regions. It was too cold to stand
still, and we all trooped on to the ice. There were many more men than
girls in the party, I was pleased to see, and very soon they were
scattered all over the lake in couples, and I, glad enough of it, was
left to myself. Maud alone had delayed putting on her skates, and was
sitting on a stump close to where I was standing filling my pipe, the
centre of a little group of men, amongst whom was Lord Annerley. As I
threw the match down, and turned round to start away again, my eyes met
hers for a moment, and she smiled slightly. Did she expect me, I
wonder, to join the little group of her admirers, and vie with them in
making pretty speeches, and compete with them for the privilege of
putting her skates on? Bah! not I. If she thought that I was her
slave, to be made happy or miserable by a glance from her blue eyes or
a kind word from her lips, I would show her that she was mistaken. If
she was proud, so was I; and drawing on my glove again, I skated over
to the other side of the lake, out of hearing and sight of her little
court.
Soon Lady Olive came skating up to me alone, with her hands stuck
coquettishly into the pockets of her short fur-trimmed jacket, and her
bright little face glowing with pleasure and warmth.
"Mr. Arbuthnot, I think you're the most unsociable man I ever knew!"
she exclaimed. "My sisters are dying to skate with you, but you won't
ask them, and--and--so am I," she added, with a bewitching smile up at
me.
Of course I could do nothing but take her little hands into mine and
skate away with her at once. We passed Maud again and again skating
with Lord Annerley, and the proud cold light in her eyes as she glanced
at us in passing half maddened me. Whenever we met her, Lady Olive,
out of wanton mischief, forced me to look down into her laughing
upturned face and bright eyes, and to do so without an answering smile
was impossible; and yet Lady Olive's brilliant chatter and mocking
speeches were very pleasant to hear and to respond to, reckless little
flirt though she was.
She left me at last to skate with Lord Annerley's brother, who had just
driven up in a dog-cart with some more men, and then I went to look for
Marian and Holdern. Instead, I came face to face round a sharp corner
with Maud leaning back in a sledge and gazing idly into the bulrushes,
where one of her brother's friends was busy with a penknife. She
motioned me languidly to stop, and I obeyed her.
"What have you done with Lady Olive?" she inquired, coldly.
"Resigned her to a more fortunate man," I answered, circling round her
chair.
"More fortunate! You haven't much to grumble at! You've been skating
with her more than an hour, haven't you?"
"Really I don't know," I answered, lightly. "I took little notice of
the time."
"It passed too pleasantly, I suppose?"
"Perhaps so! I so seldom have any one to talk to," I could not help
answering.
"It is your own fault. You have been avoiding us deliberately for the
last three weeks."
I folded my arms and looked steadily away from her.
"And if I have," I said, slowly, "I think you might congratulate me on
my wisdom and strength of mind."
She laughed a little hesitating laugh, and, with her head thrown back
on the cushion of the sledge, fixed her eyes upon me.
"Lady Olive is dangerous, is she?"
I looked at her for a full minute without answering. From underneath
her sealskin turban hat her blue eyes were looking full into mine, and
a mocking smile was playing around her delicate lips. Surely she was
beautiful enough to drive any man mad.
"No, Lady Olive is not dangerous to me," I answered, deliberately; "you
are."
A curious change came over her face as she uttered the word. The
mocking smile became almost a tender one, and a delicate flush tinged
her soft cheeks. But the greatest change was in her eyes. For a
moment they flashed into mine with a light shining out of their blue
depths which I had never dreamt of seeing there, a soft, warm, almost a
loving light.
"You are a silly boy," she said, in a low tone, and the colour
deepening all the while in her cheeks. "How dare you talk to me like
this?"
Ah, how dared I? She might well have asked that if she had only known.
"I don't know," I said, recklessly. "I shall say more if I stay here
any longer."
"You? Ah, Captain Hasleton, how beautiful! However did you manage to
find so many?"
Captain Hasleton shut up his penknife and commenced tying the bundle of
bulrushes together.
"Ah, you may well ask that, Miss Devereux," he said, laughing; "it
would take too long to narrate all the horrors I have faced in
collecting them. First of all, endless frogs resented my intrusion by
jumping up and croaking all round me. Then I stood in constant peril
of a ducking. You should have heard the ice crack! And last, but by
no means least, I've cut my finger. Nothing but half-a-dozen waltzes
to-night will repay me."
Maud laughed gaily.
"Half-a-dozen? How grasping! I'll promise you two. That reminds me,
Mr. Arbuthnot," she added, leaning forward on her muff and looking up
at me, "we're going to dance to-night, and I've persuaded your sister
and Mr. Holdern to come up to dinner. You will come, won't you?"
I said something conventional to the effect that I should be delighted,
and, raising my cap, was about to turn away. But she called me back.
"How dreadfully tall you are, Mr. Arbuthnot! I have a private message
for your sister. Do you think that you could bring yourself within
whispering distance?"
I stooped down till my heart beat to feel her soft breath on my cheek,
and I felt a wild longing to seize hold of the slender, shapely hand
that rested on my coat-sleeve. And these were the words which she
whispered into my ear, half mischievously, half tenderly--
"Faint heart never won--anything, did it? Don't, you silly boy!
Captain Hasleton will see you."
And then she drew herself up and nodded, and with the hot colour
burning my cheeks, and with leaping heart, I watched Captain Hasleton
seize hold of the light hand-sledge and send it flying along the smooth
surface of the lake round the sharp corner and out of sight. Then I
turned and skated away in the opposite direction with those words
ringing in my ears and a wild joy in my heart. The cold east wind
seemed to me like the balmiest summer breeze, and the bare, desolate
landscape stretching away in front seemed bathed in a softening golden
light. For Maud loved me--or she was a flirt. Maud was a flirt--or
she loved me.