Cecil came down the next morning looking very pretty after her ducking. Vivian asked her how she was with his general air of calm courtesy, helped her to some cold pheasant, and applied himself to his breakfast and some talk with a sporting man about the chances of the frost breaking up.
Horace, who looked upon himself as a preux chevalier, had had his left arm put in a sling on the strength of a bruise as big as a fourpenny-piece, and appeared to consider himself entitled to Cecil's eternal gratitude andadmiration for having gone the length of wetting his coat sleeves for her.
"Do you like music by starlight?" he whispered, with a self-conscious smile, after a course of delicate attentions throughout breakfast.
Syd fixed his eyes on Cecil's, steadily but impassively. The color rose into her face, and she turned to Cos with a mischievous laugh.
"Very much, if—I am not too sleepy to hear it; and it isn't a cornet out of tune."
"How cruel!" murmured Horace, as he passed her coffee. "You shouldn't criticise so severely when a fellow tries to please you."
"That poor dear girl really thinks I turned out into the snow last night to give her that serenade," observed Cos, with a languid laugh, when we were alone in the billiard-room. "Good, isn't it, the idea ofmytroubling myself?"
"Whose cracked cornet was it, then, that made that confounded row last night?" I asked.
Horace laughed again; it was rarely he was so highly amused at anything: "It was Cléante's, to be sure. He don't play badly when his hands are not numbed, poor devil! Of course he made no end of a row about going out into the snow, but I made him do it. I knew Cecil would think it was I. Women are so vain, poor things!"
It was lucky I alone was the repository of his confidence, for if Vivian had chanced to have been in the billiard-room, it is highly probable he would then and there have brained his cousin with one of the cues.
Happily he was out of the reach of temptation, in the stables, looking after Qui Vive, who had to "bide in stall," as much to that gallant bay's disquiet as to herowner's; for I don't know which of the two best loves a burst over a stiff country, or a fast twenty minutes up wind alone with the hounds when they throw up their heads.
To the stables, by an odd coincidence, Cecil, putting the irresistible black hat on the top of her chestnut braids, prevailed on Blanche to escort her, vowing (which was nearly, but not quite, the truth) that she loved the sweet pets of horses better than anything on earth. Where Cecil went, Laura made a point of going too, to keep her enemy in sight, I suppose; though Cecil, liking a fast walk on the frosty roads, a game of battledore and shuttlecock with Blanche (when we were out of the house), or anything, in short, better than working with her feet on the fender, and the Caldecott inanities or Screechington scandals in her ear, often led Laura many an unwelcome dance, and brought that luckless young lady to try at things which did not sit well upon her as they did upon the St. Aubyn, who had a knack of doing, and doing charmingly, a thousand things no other woman could have attempted. So, as Vivian and I, and some of the other men, stood in the stable-doors, smoking, and talking over the studs accommodated in the spacious stalls, a strong party of four young ladies came across the yard.
"I'm come to look at Qui Vive; will you show him to me?" said Cecil, softly. Her gentle, childlike way was the most telling of all her changing moods, but I must do her the justice to say that it was perfectly natural, she was no actress.
"With great pleasure," said Syd, very courteously, if not over-cordially; and to Qui Vive's stall Cecil went, alone in her glory, for Laura was infinitely too terrified at the sight of the bay's strong black hind legs to risk akick from them, even to follow Syd. Helena Vivian stayed with her, and Blanche came with me to visit my hunters.
Cecil is a tolerable judge of a horse; she praised Qui Vive's lean head, full eye, and silky coat with discrimination, and Qui Vive, though not the best-tempered of thorough-breds, let her pat his smooth sides and kiss his strong neck without any hostile demonstration.
Vivian watched her as if she were a spoilt child who bewitched him, but whom he knew to be naughty; he could not resist the fascination of her ways, but he never altered his calm, courteous tone to her—the tone Cecil longed to hear change, were it even into invectives against her, to testify some deeper interest.
"Now show me the mount you will give me when the frost breaks up and we take out the hounds," said Cecil, with a farewell caress of Qui Vive.
"You shall have the grey four-year-old; Billiard-ball, and he will suit you exactly, for he is as light as a bird, checks at nothing, and will take you safe over the stiffest bullfinch. I know you may trust him, for he has carried Blanche."
Cecil threw back her head. "Oh, I would ride anything, Qui Vive himself, if he would bear a habit. I am not like Miss Caldecott, who, catching sight of his dear brown legs, vanished as rapidly as if she had seen Muriel's ghost on Christmas-eve."
The Colonel smiled. "You are very unmerciful to poor Miss Caldecott. What has she done to offend you?"
"Offend me! Nothing in the world. Though I heard her lament with Miss Screechington in the music-room, that I was 'so fast,' and 'such slang style;' I consider that rather a compliment, for I never knew any lady pullto pieces my bonnet, or my bouquet, or my hat, unless it was a prettier one than their own. That sounds a vain speech, but I don't mean it so."
The Colonel looked down into her velvet eyes; she was most dangerous to him in this mood. "No," he said, briefly, "no one would accuse you of vanity, though they might, pardon me, of love of admiration."
Cecil laughed merrily. "Yes, perhaps so; it is pleasant, you know. Yet sometimes I am tired of it all, and I want——"
"A more difficult conquest? To find a diamond, merely, like Cleopatra, to show your estimate of its value by throwing it away."
A flush of vexation came into her cheeks. "Do you think me utterly heartless?" she said impetuously. "No. I mean that I often tire of the fulsome compliments, the flattery, the attention, the whirl of society! I do like admiration. I tell you candidly what every other woman acknowledges to herself but denies to the world; but often it is nothing to me—mere Dead Sea fruit. I care nothing for the voices that whisper it; the eyes that express it wake no response in mine, and I would give it all for one word of true interest, one glance of real——"
Vivian looked down on her steadily with his searching eagle eyes, out of which, when he chose, nothing could be read. "If I dare believe you——" he said, half aloud.
Gentle as his tone was, the mere doubt stung Cecil to the quick. Something of the wild, desperate feeling of the day previous rose in her heart. The same feeling that makes men brave heaven and hell to win their desires worked up in her. If she had been one of us, just at that moment, she would have flinched at nothing; being a young lady, her hands were tied. She could only go to Cos's stalls with him (Cos knows as muchabout horseflesh as I do about the profound female mystery they call "shopping"), and flirt with him to desperation, while Horace got the steam up faster than he, with his very languid motor powers, often did, being accustomed to be spared the trouble and have all the love made to him—an indolence in which the St. Aubyn, who knows how to keep a man well up to hand, never indulged him.
"Do have some pity on me," I heard Cos murmuring, as she stroked a great brute of his, with a head like a fiddle-case, and no action at all. "I assure you, Miss St. Aubyn, you make me wretched. I'd die for you to-morrow if I only saw how, and yet you take no more notice of me sometimes than if I were that colt."
Cecil glanced at him with a smile that would have driven Cos distracted if he'd been in for it as deep as he pretended.
"I don't see that you are much out of condition, Sir Horace, but if you have any particular fancy to suicide, the horse-pond will accommodate you at a moment's notice; only don't do it till after our play, because I have set my heart on that suit of Milan armor. Pray don't look so plaintive. If it will make you any happier, I am going for a walk, and you may come too. Blanche, dear, which way is it to the plantations?"
Now poor Horace hated a walk on a frosty morning as cordially as anything, being altogether averse to any natural exercise: but he was sworn to the St. Aubyn, and Blanche and I, dropping behind them, he had a good hour of her fascinations to himself. I do not know whether he improved the occasion, but Cecil at luncheon looked tired and teased. I should think, after Syd's graphic epigrammatic talk, the baronet's lisped nonsense must have been rather trying, especially as Cecil has a strong leaning to intellect.
Vivian didn't appear at luncheon; he was gone rabbit-shooting with the other fellows, and I should have been with them if I had not thought lounging in the drawing-room, reading "Clytemnestra" to Blanche, with many pauses, the greater fun of the two. I am keen about sport, too; but ever since, at the age of ten, I conceived a romantic passion for my mother's lady's-maid—a tall and stately young lady, who eventually married a retail tea-dealer—I have thought the beaux yeux the best of all games.
"Mrs. Vivian, Blanche and Helena and I want to be very useful, if you will let us," said Cecil, one morning. She was always soft and playful with that gentlest of all women, Syd's mother. "What do you smile in that incredulous way for? Wecanbe extraordinarily industrious: the steam sewing-machine is nothing to us when we choose! What do you think we are going to do? We are going to decorate the church for Christmas. To leave it to that poor little old clerk, who would only stick two holly twigs in the pulpit candlesticks, and fancy he had done a work of high art, would be madness. And, besides, it will be such fun."
"If you think it so, pray do it, dear," laughed Mrs. Vivian. "I can't say I should, but your tastes and mine are probably rather different. The servants will do as you direct them."
"Oh no," said Cecil; "we mean to do it all ourselves. The gentlemen may help us if they like—those, at least, who prefer our society to that of smaller animals, with lop-ears and little bushy tails, who have a fascination superior sometimes to any of our attractions." She flashed a glance at the Colonel, who was watching her over the top ofPunch, as, when I was a boy, I have watched the sun, though it pained my eyes to do it."You're the grand seigneur of Deerhurst," said Cecil, turning to him; "will you be good, and order cart-loads of holly and evergreens (and plenty of the Portugal laurel, please, because it's so pretty) down to the church; and will you come and do all the hard work for me? The rabbits wouldsoenjoy a little peace to-day, poor things!"
He smiled in spite of himself, and did her bidding, with a flush of pleasure on his face. I believe at that moment, to please her, he would have cut down the best timber on the estates—even the old oaks, in whose shadow in the midsummer of centuries before Guy Vivian and Muriel had plighted their troth.
The way to the church was through a winding walk, between high walls of yew, and the sanctuary itself was a find old Norman place, whosetout ensembleI admired, though I could not pick it to pieces architecturally.
To the church we all went, of course, with more readiness than we probably ever did in our lives, regardless of the rose chains with which we were very likely to become entangled, while white hands weaved the holly wreaths.
Vivian had ordered evergreens enough to decorate fifty churches, and had sent over to the neighboring town for no end of ribbon emblazonments and illuminated scrolls, on which Cecil looked with delight. She seemed to know by instinct it was done forher, and not for his sisters.
"How kind that is of you," she said, softly. "That is like what you were in Toronto. Why are you not always the same?"
For a moment she saw passion enough in his eye to satisfy her, but he soon mastered it, and answered her courteously:
"I am very glad they please you. Shall we go to workat once, for fear it grow dusk before we get through with it?"
"Can I do anything to help you?" murmured Cos in her ear.
She did not want him, and laughed mischievously. "You can cut some holly if you like. Begin on those large boughs."
"Better not, Cos," said the Colonel. "You will certainly soil your hands, and you might chance to scratch them."
"And if you did you would never forgive me, so I will let you off duty. You may go back to the dormeuse and the 'Lys de la Vallée' if you wish," laughed Cecil.
Horace looked sulky, and curled his blond whiskers in dudgeon, while Cecil, with half a dozen satellites about her, proceeded to work with vigorous energy, keeping Syd, however, as her head workman; and the Colonel twisted pillars, nailed up crosses, hung wreaths, and put up illuminated texts, as if he had been a carpenter all his life, and his future subsistence entirely depended on his adorning Deerhurst church in good taste. It was amusing to me to see him, whom the highest London society, the gayest Paris life bored—who pronounced the most dashing opera supper and the most vigorous debates alike slow—taking the deepest interest in decorating a little village church! I question if Eros did not lurk under the shiny leaves and the scarlet berries of those holly boughs quite as dangerously as ever he did under the rose petals consecrated to him.
I had my own affairs to attend to, sitting on the pulpit stairs at Blanche's feet, twisting the refractory evergreens at her direction; but I kept an occasional look-out at the Colonel and his dangerous Canadian for all that. They found time (as we did) for plenty of conversationover the Christmas decorations, and Cecil talked softly and earnestly for once without any "mischief." She talked of her father's embarrassments, her mother's trials, of Mrs. Coverdale, with honest detestation of that widow's arts and artifices, and of her own tastes, and ideas, and feelings, showing the Colonel (what she did not show generally to her numerous worshippers) her heart as well as her mind. As she knelt on the altar steps, twisting green leaves round the communion rails, Syd standing beside her, his pale bronze cheek flushed, and his eyes never left their study of her face as she bent over her work, looking up every minute to ask him for another branch, or another strip of blue ribbon.
When it had grown dusk, and the church was finished, looking certainly very pretty, with the dark leaves against its white pillars, and the scarlet berries kissing the stained windows, Cecil went noiselessly up into the organ-loft, and played the Christmas anthem. Vivian followed her, and, leaning against the organ, watched her, shading his eyes with his hand. She went on playing—first a Miserere, then Mozart's Symphony in E, and then improvisations of her own—the sort of music that, when one stands calmly to listen to it, makes one feel it whether one likes or not. As she played, tears rose to her lashes, and she looked up at Vivian's face, bending over her in the gloaming. Love was in her eyes, and Syd knew it, but feared to trust to it. His pulses beat fast, he leaned towards her, till his mustaches touched her soft perfumy hair. Words hung on his lips. But the door of the organ-loft opened.
"'Pon my life, Miss St. Aubyn, that's divine, delicious!" cried Cos. "We always thought that you were divine, but we never knew till now that you brought the angels' harmony with you to earth. For Heaven's sake, play that last thing again!"
"I never play what I compose twice," said Cecil, hurriedly, stooping down for her hat.
Vivian cursed him inwardly for his untimely interruption, but cooler 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,notliterally, 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, withthe 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 littleCatherinethat ever dressed herself up in blue and silver, and when she drewher toy-rapier in the green-room, asked me if I could not get her a cornetcy in ours. As for Cecil, she playedà raviras 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 impassionedCountess. 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 forgiveThe scornful maid? for the devoted wifeHad cleaved to thee, though ne'er she owned thee lord,
Huon—my husband—lord—canst thou forgiveThe scornful maid? for the devoted wifeHad 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 beingDe 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 playedUlric. "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.Howshe 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. AsHuon, he was obliged to dance the first dance with theCountess, but he spoke little to her, and indeed, Cecil did not give him much opportunity, for she talkedfast, 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.
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 toher 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 neverdothink 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, tothe 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 topresent, 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 Moët'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.
"Letme," 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 inmyhouse."
"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 troopingdeer, 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 beenyours, 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 bidhergood-by."
Idid notview the Crimea with the unmingled, devil-me-care delight with which I had gone out under "fightingNapier" 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 thatfatal 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 HorseGuards 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. Anotherminute, 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 tête-à-tête. 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 whistledamong the frozen ferns, but Christmas-eve passed brightly enough to us at home within the strong walls of Deerhurst.
I am sure that all Moore's pictures of Paradise seemed to me tame compared to that drawing-room, with its warmth, and coziness, and luxuries; with the waxlights shining on the silver of the English tea equipage (pleasant to eye and taste, let one love campaigning ever so well, after the roast beans of the Commissariat), and the fire-gleams dancing on the soft brow and shining hair of the face beside me. I doubt if Vivian either ever spent a happier Christmas-eve as he lay on the sofa in the back drawing-room, with Cecil sitting on a low seat by him, her hand in his, and the Canadian eyes telling him eloquently of love and reconciliation. They had such volumes to say! As soon as she knew that wild farewell of his preceded his departure to the Crimea, Cecil, always impulsive, had written to him on the instant, telling him how she loved him, detailing what she had heard in the green-room, confessing that, in desperation, she had done everything she could to rouse his jealousy, assuring him that that same evening she had refused Cos's proposals, and beseeching him to forgive her and come back to her. That letter Vivian had never had (six months from that time, by the way, it turned up, after a journey to India and Melbourne, following a cousin of his, colonel of a line regiment, she in her haste having omitted to put his troop on the address), and Cecil, whose feeling was too deep to let her mention the subject to Blanche or Helena, made up her mind that he would never forgive her, and being an impressionable young lady, had, on the anniversary of Christmas-eve, been comparing her fate with that of Muriel in the ghost legend, and, on seeing the Colonel's unexpected apparition, had fainted straight away in the over-excitement and sudden joy of the moment.
Such was Cecil's story, and Vivian was content with it and gladly took occasion to practise the Christmas duties of peace, and love, and pardon. He had the best anodyne for his wounds now, and there was no danger for him, since Cecil had taken the place of the Scutari nurses. No "Crimean heroes," as they call us in the papers, were ever more fêted and petted than were the Colonel and I.
Christmas morning dawned, the sun shining bright on the snow-covered trees, and the Christmas bells chiming merrily; and as we stood on the terrace to see the whole village trooping up through the avenue to receive the gifts left to them by some old Vivian long gone to his rest with his forefathers under the churchyard cedars, Syd looked down with a smile into Cecil's eyes as she hung on his arm, and whispered,
"I will double those alms, love, in memory of the priceless gift this Christmas has given me. Ah! Thornton and I little knew, when we came down for the hunting, how fast you and Blanche would capture us with your—Holly Wreaths and Rose Chains."