thought made him doubt if he were not well saved some words, dictates of
hasty passion, that he might have lived to repent. For Guy Vivian's fate
warned him, and he mistrusted the love of a flirt, if flirt, as he
feared--from her sudden caprices to him, her alternate impatience with,
and encouragement of, his cousin--Cecil St. Aubyn would prove. He gave
her his arm down the yew-tree walk. Neither of them spoke all the way,
but he sent a servant on for another shawl, and wrapped it round her
very tenderly when it came; and when he stood in the lighted hall, I saw
by the stern, worn look of his face--the look I have seen him wear after
a hard fight--that the fiery passions in him had been having a fierce
battle.
That evening the St. Aubyn was off her fun, said she was tired, and,
disregarding the misery she caused to Cos and four other men, who,
figuratively speaking, _not_ literally, for they went into the "dry" and
comestibles fast enough, had lived on her smiles for the last month,
excused herself to Mrs. Vivian, and departed to her dormitory. Syd gave
her her candle, and held her little hand two seconds in his as he bid
her softly good night at the foot of the staircase.
I did not get much out of him in the balcony that night, and long after
I had turned in, I scented his Cavendish as he smoked, Heaven knows how
many pipes, in the chill December air. The next day, the 23rd, was the
night of our theatricals, which went off as dashingly as if Mr. Kean,
with his eternal "R-r-r-richard," had been there to superintend them.
All the country came; dowagers and beauties, with the odor of Belgravia
still strong about them: people not quite so high, who were not the
rose, but living near it, toadied that flower with much amusing and
undue worship; a detachment of Dragoons from the next town, whom the
girls wanted to draw, and the mammas to warn off--Dragoons being
ordinarily better waltzers than speculations; all the magnates, custos
rotulorum, sheriff, members, and magistrates--the two latter portions of
the constitution being chiefly remarkable for keenness about hunting and
turnips, and an unchristian and deadly enmity against all poachers and
vagrants; rectors, who tossed down the still Ai with Falstaff's keen
relish; other rectors, who came against their principles, but preferred
fashion to salvation, having daughters to marry and sons to start;
hunting men; girls who could waltz in a nutshell; dandies of St.
James's, and veterans of Pall-Mall, down for the Christmas; belles
renewing their London acquaintance, and recalling that "pleasant day at
Richmond." But, by Jove! if I describe all the different species
presented to view in that ball-room, I might use as many words as an old
whip giving you the genealogy of a killing pack in a flying county.
Suffice it, there they all were to criticise us, and pretty sharply I
dare say they did it, when they were out of our hearing, in their
respective clarences, broughams, dog-carts, drags, tilburies, and
hansoms. Before our faces, of course, they only clapped their snowy kid
gloves, and murmured "Bravissimo!" with an occasional "Go it, Jack!" and
"Get up the steam, old fellow!" from the young bloods in the background;
and a shower of bouquets at Cecil and Blanche from their especial
worshippers.
Blanche made the dearest little _Catherine_ that ever dressed herself up
in blue and silver, and when she drew her toy-rapier in the green-room,
asked me if I could not get her a cornetcy in ours. As for Cecil, she
played _a ravir_ as Cos, in his Milan armor, whispered with some
difficulty, as the steel gorget pressed his throat uncomfortably.
Vestris herself never made a more brilliant or impassioned _Countess_.
She and Syd really acquitted themselves in a style to qualify them for
London boards, and as she threw herself at his feet--
Huon--my husband--lord--canst thou forgive
The scornful maid? for the devoted wife
Had cleaved to thee, though ne'er she owned thee lord,
I thought the St. Aubyn must be as great an actress as Rachel, if some
of that fervor was not real.
Cecil played in the afterpiece, "The wonderful Woman;" the Colonel
didn't; and Cos being _De Frontignac_, Syd leaned against one of the
scenes, and looked on the whole thing with calm indifference externally,
but much disquietude and annoyance within him. He was not jealous of the
puppy; he would as soon have thought of putting himself on a par with
Blanche's little white terrier, but he'd come to set a price on Cecil's
winning smiles, and to see them given pretty equally to him, and to a
young fool, her inferior in everything save position, whom he knew in
her inmost soul she must ridicule and despise, galled his pride, and
steeled his heart against her. His experience in women made him know
that it was highly probable that Cecil was playing both at once, and
that though, as he guessed, she loved him, she would, if Cos offered
first, accept the title, and wealth, and position his cousin, equally
with himself, could give her; and such love as that was far from the
Colonel's ideal.
"By George! Vivian, that Canadian of yours is a perfect angel," said a
man in the Dragoons, who had played _Ulric_. "She's such a deuced lot
ove pluck, such eyes, such hair, such a voice! 'Pon my life, I quite
envy you. I suppose you mean to act out the play in reality, don't you?"
Vivian lying back in an arm-chair in the green-room crushed up one of
the satin playbills in his hand, and answered simply, "You do me too
much honor, Calvert. Miss St. Aubyn and I have no thought of each
other."
If any man had given Vivian the lie, he would have had him out and shot
him instanter; nevertheless, he told this one with the most unhesitating
defiance of truth. He did not see Cecil, who had just come off the
stage, standing behind him. But she heard his words, went as white as
Muriel's phantom, and brushed past us into her dressing room, whence she
emerged, when her name was called, her cheeks bright with their first
rouge, and her eyes unnaturally brilliant. _How_ she flirted with Horace
that night, when the theatricals were over! Young ladies who wanted to
hook the pet baronet, whispered over their bouquets, "How bold!" and
dowagers, seeing one of their best matrimonial speculations endangered
by the brilliant Canadian, murmured behind their fans to each other
their wonder that Mrs. Vivian should allow any one so fast and so
unblushing a coquette to associate with her young daughters.
Vivian watched her with intense earnestness. He had given her a bouquet
that day, and she had thanked him for it with her soft, fond eyes, and
told him she should use it. Now, as she came into the ball-room, he
looked at the one in her hand; it was not his, but his cousin's.
He set his teeth hard; and swore a bitter oath to himself. As _Huon_, he
was obliged to dance the first dance with the _Countess_, but he spoke
little to her, and indeed, Cecil did not give him much opportunity, for
she talked fast, and at random, on all sorts of indifferent subjects,
with more than even her usual vivacity, and quite unlike the ordinary
soft and winning way she had used of late when with him. He danced no
more with her, but, daring the waltzes with which he was obliged to
favor certain county beauties, and all the time he was doing the honors
of Deerhurst, with his calm, stately, Bayard-like courtesy, his eyes
would fasten on the St. Aubyn, driving the Dragoons to desperation,
waltzing while Horace whispered tender speeches in her ear, or sitting
jesting and laughing, half the men in the room gathered round her--with
a look of passion and hopelessness, tenderness and determination,
strangely combined.
IV.
THE COLONEL KILLS HIS FOX, BUT LOSES HIS HEAD AFTER OTHER GAME.
The next day was Christmas-eve; and on the 24th of December the hounds,
from time immemorial, had been taken out by a Vivian. For the last few
days the frost had been gradually breaking up, thank Heaven, and we
looked forward to a good day's sport The meet was at Deerhurst, and it
proved a strong muster for the Harkaway; though not exactly up to the
Northamptonshire Leicestershire mark, are a clever, steady pack. Cecil
and Blanche were the only two women with us, for the country is cramped
and covered with blind fences, and the fair sex seldom hunt with the
Harkaway. But the St. Aubyn is a first-rate seat, and Blanche has, she
tells me, ridden anything from the day she first stuck on to her
Shetland, when she was three years old. They were both down in time.
Indeed, I question if they went to bed at all, or did any more than
change their ball dresses for their habits. As I lifted Blanche on to
her pet chestnut, I heard Syd telling Cecil that Billiard-ball was
saddled.
"Thank you," said the St. Aubyn, hurriedly. "I need not trouble you.
Sir Horace has promised to mount me."
Vivian bent his head with a strange smile, and sprang on Qui Vive, while
Cecil mounted a showy roan, thorough-bred, the only good horse Cos had
in his stud, despite the thousands he had paid into trainers' and
breeders' pockets.
"Stole away--forward, forward!" screamed Vivian's fellow-member for
Cacklebury; and, holding Qui Vive hard by the head, away went Syd after
the couple or two of hounds that were leading the way over some pasture
land, with an ox-rail at the bottom of it, all the field after him.
Cecil's roan flew over the grass land, and rose at the ox-rail as
steadily as Qui Vive. Blanche's chestnut let himself be kicked along at
no end of a pace, his mistress sitting down in her stirrups as well as
the gallant M. F. H., her father. I never _do_ think of anything but the
hounds flying along in front of me, but I could not help turning my head
over my shoulder to see if she was all right; and I never admired her so
much as when she passed me with a merry laugh: "Five to one I beat you,
monsieur!" Away we went over the dark ploughed lands, and the naked
thorn hedges, the wide straggling briar fences, and the fields covered
with stones and belted with black-looking plantations. Down went Cos
with his horse wallowing helplessly in a ditch, after considerately
throwing him unhurt on the bank. Syd set his teeth as he lifted Qui Vive
over the prostrate baronet, to the imminent danger of that dandy
field-sportsman's life. "Take hold of his head, Miss St. Aubyn," shouted
the M. F. H.; but before the words had passed his lips, Cecil had landed
gallantly a little farther down. Another ten minutes with the hounds
streaming over the country--a ten minutes of wild delight, worth all the
monotonous hours of every-day life--and Qui Vive was alone with the
hounds. We could see him speeding along a quarter of a mile ahead of us,
and Cecil's roan was but half a field behind him. She was "riding
jealous" of one of the best riders in the Queen's; the M. F. H. just in
front of her turned his head once, in admiration of her pluck, to see
her lift her horse at a staken-bound fence; but the Colonel never looked
round. Away they went--they disappeared over the brow of a hill. Blanche
shook her reins and struck her chestnut, and I sawed my hunter's mouth
mercilessly with the snaffle. No use--we were too late by three minutes.
Confound it! they had just killed their fox after twenty minutes' burst
over a stiff country, one of the fastest things I ever saw.
Cecil was pale with over-excitement, and upon my word she looked more
ready to cry than anything when the M. F. H. complimented her with his
genial smile, and his cordial "Well done, my dear. I never saw anybody
ride better. I used to think my little Blanche the best seat in the
country, but she must give place to you--eh, Syd?"
"Miss St. Aubyn does everything well that she attempts," answered the
Colonel, in his calm, courteous tone, looking, nevertheless, as stern as
if he had just slain his deadliest enemy, instead of having seen a fox
killed.
Cecil flushed scarlet, and Cos coming up at that moment, a sadly
bespattered object for such an Adonis to present, his coat possessing
more the appearance of a bricklayer's than any one else's, after its
bath of white mud, she turned to him, and began to laugh and talk with
rather wild gaiety. It so chanced that the fox was killed on Horace's
land, and we, being not more than a mile and a half off his house, the
gallant Cos immediately seized upon the idea of having the object of his
idolatry up there to luncheon; and his uncle, and Cecil, and Blanche
acquiescing in the arrangement, to his house we went, with such of the
field as had ridden up after the finish. Cos trotted forward with the
St. Aubyn to show us the way by a short cut through the park, and the
echoes of Cecil's laughter rang to Vivian in the rear discussing the run
with his father.
A very slap-up place was Cos's baronial hall, for the Cossettings had
combined blood and money far many generations; its style and
appointments were calculated to back him powerfully in the matrimonial
market, and that Cecil might have it all was fully apparent, as he
devoted himself to her at the luncheon, which made its appearance at a
minute's notice, as if Aladdin had called it up. Cecil seemed disposed
to have it too. A deep flush had come up in her cheeks; she smiled her
brightest smiles on Cos; she drank his Moet's, bending her graceful head
with a laughing pledge to her host; she talked so fast, so gaily, such
repartee, such sarcasms, such jeux de mots, that it was well no women
were at table to sit in judgment on her afterwards. A deadly paleness
came over Vivian's face as he listened to her--but he sat at the bottom
of the board where Cecil could not see him. His father, the gayest and
best-tempered of mortals, laughed and applauded her; the other men were
charmed with a style and a wit so new to them; and Cos, of course, was
in the seventh heaven.
The horses were dead beat, and Cos's drag, with its four bays very
fresh, for they were so little worked, was ordered to take us back to
Deerhurst.
"Who'll drive," said Horace. "Will you, Syd?"
"No," said his cousin, more laconically than politely.
"Let _me_," cried Cecil. "I can drive four in hand. Nothing I like
better."
"Give me the ribbons," interposed the Colonel, changing his mind, "if
you can't drive them yourself, Cos, as you ought to do."
"No, no," murmured Cos. "Mith St. Aubyn shall do everything she wishes
in _my_ house."
"Let her drive them," laughed Vivian, senior. "Blanche has tooled my
drag often enough before now."
Before he had finished, Cecil had sprung up on to the box as lightly as
a bird; her cheeks were flushed deeper still, and her gazelle eyes
flashed darker than ever. Cos mounted beside her. Blanche and I in the
back seat. The M. F. H., Syd, and the two other men behind. The bays
shook their harness and started off at a rattling pace, Cecil tooling
them down the avenue with her little gauntleted hands as well as if she
had been Four-in-hand Forester of the Queen's Bays, or any other crack
whip. How she flirted, and jested, and laughed, and shook the ribbons
till the bays tore along the stony road in the dusky winter's
afternoon--even Blanche, though a game little lady herself, looked
anxious.
Cecil asked Horace for a cigar, and struck a fusee, and puffed away into
the frosty air like the wildest young Cantab at Trinity. It didn't make
her sick, for she and Blanche had had two Queens out of Vivian's case,
and smoked them to the last ash for fun only the day before; and she
drove us at a mad gallop into Deerhurst Park, past the dark trees and
the gleaming water and the trooping deer, and pulled up before the hall
door just as the moon came out on Christmas-eve.
We were all rather fast at Deerhurst, so Blanche got no scolding from
her mamma (who, like a sensible woman, never put into their heads that
things done in the glad innocency of the heart were "wrong"); and Cecil,
as soon as she had sprung down, snatched her hand from Cos, and went up
to her own room.
The Colonel's lips were pressed close together, and his forehead had the
dark frown that Guy wears in his portrait.
It had been done with another, so it was all wrong; but oh! Syd, my
friend, if the "dry" that was drunk, and the drag that was tooled, and
the weed that was smoked, had been _yours_, wouldn't it have been the
most charming caprice of the most charming woman!
That night, at dinner, a letter by the afternoon's post came to the
Colonel. It was "On her Majesty's Service," and his mother asked him
anxiously what it was.
"Only to tell me to join soon," said he, carelessly, giving me a sign to
keep the contents of a similar letter I had just received to myself;
which I should have done anyhow, as I had reason to hope that the
disclosure of them would have quenched the light in some bright eyes
beside me.
"Ordered off at last, thank God!" said Syd, handing his father the
letter as soon as the ladies were gone. "There's a train starts at
12.40, isn't there, for town? You and I, Ned, had better go to-night.
You don't look so charmed, old fellow, as you did when you went out to
Scinde. I say, don't tell my sisters; there is no need to make a row in
the house. Governor, you'll prepare my mother; I must bid _her_
good-by."
I _did not_ view the Crimea with the unmingled, devil-me-care delight
with which I had gone out under "fighting Napier" nine years before,
for Blanche's sunshiny face had made life fairer to me; and to obey Syd,
and go without a farewell of her, was really too great a sacrifice to
friendship. But he and I went to the drawing-rooms, chatted, and took
coffee as if nothing had chanced, till he could no longer stand seeing
Cecil, still excited, singing chansons to Cos, who was leaning
enraptured over the instrument, and he went off to his own room. The
other girls and men were busy playing the Race game; Blanche and I were
sitting in the back drawing-room beside the fire, and the words that
decided my destiny were so few, that I cite them as a useful lesson to
those novelists who are in the habit of making their heroes, while
waiting breathless to hear their fate, recite off at a cool canter four
pages of the neatest-turned sentences without a single break-down or a
single pull-up, to see how the lady takes it.
"Blanche, I must bid you good-by to-night." Blanche turned to me in
bewildered anxiety. "I must join my troop: perhaps I may be sent to the
Crimea. I could go happily if I thought you would regret me?"
Brutally selfish that was to be sure, but she did not take it so. She
looked as if she was going to faint, and for fear she should, trusting
to the engrossing nature of the Race game in the further apartment, I
drew nearer to her. "Will you promise to give yourself to nobody else
while I am away, my darling?" Blanche's eyes did promise me through
their tears, and this brief scene, occupying the space of two minutes,
twisted our fates into one on that eventful Christmas-eve.
While I was parting with my poor little Blanche in the library, Vivian
was bidding his mother farewell in her dressing-room. His mother had the
one soft place in his heart, steeled and made skeptical to all others by
that fatal first love of which he had spoken to Cecil. Possibly some of
her son's bitter grief was shown to her on that sad Christmas-eve; at
all events, when he left her dressing-room, he had the tired, haggard
look left by any conflict of passion. As he came down the stairs to come
to the dog-cart that was to take us to the station, the door of
Blanche's boudoir stood open, and in it he saw Cecil. The fierce tide of
his love surged up, subduing all his pride, and he paused to take his
last sight of the face that would haunt him in the long night watches
and the rapid rush of many a charge. She looked up and saw him; that
look overpowered all his calmness and resolve. He turned, and bent
towards her, every feature quivering with the passion she had once
longed to rouse. His hot breath scorched her cheek, and he caught her
fiercely against his heart in an iron embrace, pressing his burning lips
on hers. "God forgive you! I have loved you too well. Women have ever
been fatal to my race!"
He almost threw her from him in the violence of feelings roused after a
long sleep. In another moment he was driving the dog-cart at a mad
gallop past the old church in which we had spent such pleasant hours.
Its clock tolled out twelve strokes as we passed it, and on the quiet
village, and the weird-like trees, and the tall turrets of Deerhurst,
the Christmas morning dawned.
Vivian continued so utterly enfeebled and prostrate that there was but
one chance for him--return homewards. I was going to England with
despatches, and Syd, at his mother's entreaty, let himself be carried
down to a transport, and shipped for England. He was utterly listless
and strengthless, although the voyage did him a little good. He did not
care where he went, so he stayed in town with me while I presented
myself at the Horse Guards and war Office, and then we travelled down
together to Deerhurst.
Oddly enough it was Christmas-eve again when we drove up the old avenue.
The snow was falling heavily, and lay deep on the road and thick on the
hedges and trees. The meadows and woods were white against the dark,
hushed sky, and the old church, and its churchyard cedars, were loaded
too with the clouds' Christmas gift. To me, at least, the English scene
was very pleasant, after the heat, and dirt, and minor worries of
Gallipoli and Constantinople. The wide stretching country, with its
pollards, and holly hedges, and homesteads, the cattle safe housed, the
yule fire burning cheerily on the hearths, the cottages and farms
nestling down among their orchards and pasture-lands, all was so
heartily and thoroughly English. They seemed to bring back days when I
was a boy skating and sliding on the mere at home, or riding out with
the harriers light-hearted and devil-me-care as a boy might be, coming
back to hear the poor governor's cheery voice tell me I was one of the
old stock, and to toss down a bumper of Rhenish with a time-honored
Christmas toast. The crackle of the crisp snow, the snort of the horses
as they plunged on into the darkening night, and the red fire-light
flickering on the lattice windows of the cottages we passed, were so
many welcomes home, and I double-thonged the off-wheeler with a
vengeance as I thought of soft lips that would soon touch mine, and a
soft voice that would soon whisper my best "Io triumphe!"
The lodge-gates flew open. We passed the old oaks and beeches, the deer
trooping away over the snow as we startled them out of their rest. We
were not expected that night, and my man rang such a peal at the bell as
might have been heard all over the quiet park. Another minute, and
Blanche and I were together again, and alone in the library where we had
parted just twelve months before. Of course, for the time being, we
neither knew nor cared what was going on in the other rooms of the
house. The Colonel had gone to rest himself on the sofa in the
dining-room. Half an hour had elapsed, perhaps, when a wild cry rang
through the house, startling even us, absorbed though we were in our
tete-a-tete. Blanche's first thought was of her brother. She ran out
through the hall, and up the staircase, and I followed her. At the top
of the stairs, leaning against the wall, breathing fast, and his face
ashy white, stood Syd, and at his feet, in a dead faint, lay Cecil St.
Aubyn. I caught hold of Blanche's arm and held her back as she was about
to spring forward. I thought their meeting had much best be
uninterrupted; for, if Cecil's had been mere flirtation I fancied the
Colonel's return could scarcely have moved her like this.
Vivian stood looking down on her, all the passion in him breaking
bounds. He could not stand calmly by the woman he loved. He did not wait
to know whether she was his or another's--whether she was worthy or
unworthy of him--but he lifted her up and pressed her unconscious form
against his heart, covering her lips with wild caresses. Waking from her
trance, she opened her eyes with a terrified stare, and gazed up in his
face; then tears came to her relief, and she sank down at his feet again
with a pitiful cry, "Forgive me--forgive me!" Weak as Syd was, he found
strength to raise her in his arms, and whisper, as he bent over her, "If
you love me, I have nothing to forgive."
* * * * *
The snow fell softly without over the woods and fields and the winds
roared through the old oaks and whistled among the frozen ferns, but
Christmas-eve passed brightly enough to us at home within the strong
walls of Deerhurst.