"And I would I were back in Cauca-land,To hear my herdsmen's horn;And to watch the waggons and brown brood mares,And the tents where I was born!"
"And I would I were back in Cauca-land,To hear my herdsmen's horn;And to watch the waggons and brown brood mares,And the tents where I was born!"
Picard had never read Kingsley's stirring verses. "This old chap's very drunk!" he thought; but having his own reasons for wishing to stand well with Miss Hallaton's father, he "hardened him on," as he would have called it, without remorse. "I don't thinkyoucan complain, Sir Henry," said he. "You've had the best of everything all your time, and can give pounds of weight to most of the young ones still. You might marry any woman in London to-morrow if you liked. I wonder you don't."
Sir Henry looked pleased.
"Marry!" he repeated. "Marry! I'm not sure that I wouldn't, only, between you and me, my dear fellow, women in general are a very inferior lot. They're delightful, I grant you, wholesale; but when you come to the retail business, as the tradesmen say, there's great risk and very little profit about the article. They don't wear well when you buy, and if you want to sell, there's no market that I know of nearer than Constantinople. I fancy the Turks understand the business; but I amnota Turk. Heaven forbid! Fancy a plurality of wives!"
"I'm not sure I should mind it!" laughed Picard—"with the Bosphorus at one's door, of course."
"The Bosphorus wouldn't help you," said Sir Henry. "She'd come up again if she wanted, you may depend, though you sank her forty fathom deep, with a round-shot tied to her ankles. No; I think I understand the sex thoroughly. In my own experience, I've found them perverse, wilful, obstinate."
"Unselfish, at least," put in Picard.
"Unselfish!" exclaimed the other. "Not a bit of it! They're twice as selfish as we are, and that's saying a good deal. A tyrant, indeed, keeps them down, and so long as he remains perfectly unfeeling, the thing works moderately well. But if they can get what you and I call a good fellow to marry them, why he leads the life of a galley slave! There was my poor brother Ralph—I do believe, sir, he died of it—married a pig-headed idiot without two ideas, and she traded on his kind heart till she wore it clean away. I argued the point with her once. Fancyarguingwith a woman, and an ignorant one! 'What shouldyousay,' I asked, 'if Ralph took you out partridge-shooting, we'll suppose, and kept you for hours standing in wet turnips to load for him, or carry a spare gun? Yet you have no scruple in making him accompany you to parties, which he hates far more than you would the wet turnips, and are not ashamed to speak very unkindly to him even if helooksbored.' 'That's nothing to do with it,' she answered.—Such is a woman's logic.—'I dare sayyouwouldn't stand it; but then you've more character than Ralph!' She's married a stock-jobber since. I'm happy to say he bullies her like the devil, yet I do believe she likes him twice as well as Ralph."
"Butyoutook warning, I hope, Sir Henry," said Picard, laughing in his sleeve.
"They never tried that sort of thing withme," answered the baronet. "Still, there's no certainty about the thing, and I fancy it's better to let it alone. Besides, one's ideas vary about women in a regular procession of decades. Up to ten, we're dependent on them; from ten to twenty, we despise them; from twenty to thirty, we adore them; from thirty to forty, we believe in them; from forty to fifty, we mistrust them; from fifty to sixty, we avoid them; from sixty to seventy, we tolerate them; and if we live any longer after that, why we become dependent on them again."
Picard burst out laughing.
"A moral lesson!" he exclaimed, "and from one who has not neglected practice in theory. Here we are at your own door, Sir Henry. I shall not forget your maxims. Good night."
The other feeling for his latch-key, looked up where the blinds were drawn over the windows of Helen's bed-chamber.
"There are exceptions," said he musingly, "and one good one is worth all the others put together; and yet nine-tenths of our annoyances, and all our sorrows, can generally be traced to a woman."
Picard sighed as he turned away. Men may rail as they will, but each has a secret image of his own that he esteems a pearl of exceptional price, an angel far above the common short-comings of humanity. Like the negro with his fetish, he takes it out sometimes to blame and scold, no less than plead with and adore, but he always puts it back reverently in its place, to nestle in the warmest and most sacred corner of his heart.
Mrs. Lascelles, retiring for the night, or rather morning, on her return from the Opera, found herself beset with troubles and perplexities of unusual gravity. Taking off her ornaments, and laying them one by one on the dressing-table, she reflected sadly on the relative positions of her two greatest friends, Jin Ross and Helen Hallaton. The longer she looked at the complication the less she liked it. For a woman to entertain two lovers, as a game-keeper hunts a brace of pointers, she considered natural enough. They should be made to range in different directions at her bidding, back each other without hesitation on her behalf, and, above all, come meekly to heel at the shortest notice when desired. This seemed only the normal condition of humanity, and, in her own case, she had hitherto found such amicable arrangements answer remarkably well. Sir Henry, indeed, proved wilder than any she had hitherto endeavoured to train; but Goldthred, again, if not the most sagacious, was by far the meekest and most docile she had ever taken in hand. For a moment, she laid down her brushes, smiled at her own comely face in the glass, and by some unaccountable association of ideas, found herself wishing this last admirer would show a little more self-assertion, more enterprise, altogether borrow a leaf or two out of the black books studied over-diligently by the former.
Then she reproached herself for giving a thought to her own concerns, while Helen Hallaton looked so pale and sad, resuming the thread of her regrets with the use of her hair-brushes, and cherishing a certain impulse of womanly indignation at the idea of two young ladies being in love with one man.
The proverb affirming that "What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," cannot assuredly be of feminine invention. The code of our fair aggressors seems framed by a justice whose scales are not duly registered, and whose bandage does not entirely cover both eyes. "If I killyou," seems the ladies' verdict, "justifiable homicide, and it serves you right! But if you killme, it's premeditated woman-slaughter, and penal servitude for life!"
How many of us are thus transported, without really deserving it, I refrain from speculating; but I am informed by convicts themselves that good conduct is powerless to obtain any remission of sentence, and that there is no such thing as a ticket-of-leave.
Before Mrs. Lascelles got into bed, she resolved to make a touching appeal to Jin's generosity directly after breakfast, and if need were, to back it with all the force of her own authority and moral influence.
"Moral influence!" the phrase carried with it a weight and dignity of which she herself felt conscious, even in bed; and must be overwhelming, she thought, to "dear Jin," who owed so much to their friendship, and who had not a bad disposition after all, though too reckless, and dreadfully wedded to her own opinion, right or wrong.
Turning her back on a ridiculous little night-light, utterly useless now that morning was already streaming through heavy curtains and close-drawn window-blinds, she became more and more impressed with the difficulty of her task, as she courted sleep in vain. So many instances recurred to her of Jin's superiority in argument, of Jin's readiness in repartee, of Jin's independence of spirit and inflexible persistency in taking her own line, that she was fain to dismiss the subject from her mind, and let her thoughts wander at will through more congenial topics—her dresses, her beauty, her widowhood, her rich brown hair, the Opera, the fiddles, the conductor's gloves, the tenor's eye-brows, Goldthred's good night, Sir Henry's back, a haze of lights, music, attentions, admiration, whiskers, boots and broadcloth, fading dimly into chaos, till they left Mrs. Lascelles fast asleep.
Miss Ross, too, laid her black head on the pillow with a sensation at her heart, so new, so strange, that it took away her breath—not triumph, for it was mingled with apprehension, misgivings, and a sense of unworthiness, as humiliating as it was unexpected;—not content, for everything seemed still to gain, except the one step made to-night, that yet to lose would be simply destruction and despair;—not happiness, surely, the uncertainty was even now too painful, the rush of joy too wild and keen. How useless, how idiotic it seemed, above all, how contemptible and unlike herself, to lock the door when she reached her room, rest her brow against the window frame, and cry for two whole minutes like a child!
"Not for sorrow, though. Certainly not for sorrow," she murmured, recovering herself with a great sob, while she resolved to yield to such absurdity no longer.
She could hardly bring herself to believe in the reality of the last few hours. The whole thing seemed wild and improbable as a dream. It was dreadful to think she might wake up at any moment, to discover that she hadnotknown Captain Vanguard for a few weeks; that she hadnotset her heart on him, during the last few days, till he had become the one necessity of her existence; that she hadnotsat by his side this very evening in the gloomy back of an opera-box, and leant on his arm in the crush-room, and gathered from his looks, his gestures, nay, from his very words, that he loved her.Her, the outcast, the adventurer, the woman warring and warred against, who had vowed vengeance for her wrongs, on the whole of his base and treacherous sex. Ah! if she were indeed to wake and find so cold a reality awaiting her, would it not be better to end it all and go to sleep for ever? No; like a ray of light through a cloud, like a breath of air in the noon-day heat, like the song of a bird in a desert-place, came the recollection of her boy. What had she done to be so blessed? To have found her child, to have found her heart, to have found, even at the same moment, the love that makes a woman humble, and the love that makes a woman proud! It seemed too much, and, for a space, Jin was so happy that she felt almost good.
In such a frame of mind people's slumbers are light and easily disturbed. Long before the maid came in to call her, Miss Ross was wide awake, and shaping for herself a plan, to be facilitated, and even rendered necessary, by subsequent events.
Breakfast at No. 40 was a late and unpunctual meal. It was laid in the boudoir, and each lady dawdling into that apartment at her own time, rang independently for the strip of dry toast and cup of coffee that constituted her repast. Miss Ross, earlier than usual, was surprised to find her hostess already down, making pretence of breakfasting, with obvious want of appetite, and a restlessness of manner denoting that uncomfortable state of mind which the sufferer calls "worry," and the bystander "fuss."
Jin entered radiant. Fresh from her bath and morning toilet, she had even a tinge of colour in her cheek, the one thing usually wanting to complete her beauty. There was a light, too, dancing in her eyes, a buoyancy in her step and gesture, a sparkle, as it were, of joy and triumph in her whole bearing, that did not escape the notice of her friend.
"Late hours seem to suit you, my dear," said Mrs. Lascelles languidly. "I never saw you looking so well."
"I am a fool about music," answered the other demurely, "and I did enjoy the opera last night more than I can describe."
"The opera," asked Mrs. Lascelles quietly, "or the company?"
Jin must have been hard hit, for she actually blushed.
"Both, of course," was her reply. "Everything is pleasanter, I suppose, when it's done with pleasant people."
The tone was rather too careless, and her hand shook while she poured out a cup of coffee. Mrs. Lascelles, noticing this trepidation, felt her heart sink within her.
"The company was pleasant enough last night," said she, "as far asourbox was concerned; but I don't think people all amused themselves equally. Helen, for instance, seemed bored to death. She doesnotlook well, and I am sure she is not happy. I'm very fond of her, Jin, and so are you. Whatisit, do you think? and how can we do her good?"
These ladies were not fairly matched. Mrs. Lascelles became flurried and nervous as she neared the point of collision. Miss Ross, on the contrary, grew steadier and cooler with the immediate approach of danger.
"I don't think Helen knows her own mind," she replied; "girls very seldom do. You must surely have observed in your personal experience, Rose, that
"Too many lovers will puzzle a maid."
"Too many lovers will puzzle a maid."
Mrs. Lascelles accepted the implied compliment with a forced smile, but it did not turn her from her object.
"Helen is unlike most girls," she answered; "and I don't fancy any number of lovers would make amends to her for losing the one she has set her heart on. People are so different, you know, and Helen's is one of those deep, quiet, reserved natures that suffer awfully, though they suffer in silence. I think, Jin, between you and me, that Helen likes Somebody, and that Somebody would like her if it wasn't for Somebody else!"
Though almost sublime in its ambiguity, Miss Ross understood this "dark sentence" perfectly, and scorned to affect misconception of its purport.
"You mean Captain Vanguard!" She came out with his name in a burst of defiance. "Well, how can I helpthat?"
"Oh, Jin, as you are strong be merciful!" pleaded Mrs. Lascelles. "You know your own power. You know you are one of the most taking creatures in the world if you only try. Look at Uncle Joseph, look at even Mr. Goldthred, though I consider him the truest of the true. Look at Sir Henry. To be sure, it's no compliment fromhim, for he's the same to everybody. Look at all the men who come near us. You needn't even take the trouble of shooting, like Mr. Picard's American colonel and his squirrel—down they come at once. Can't you let this squirrel alone? Can't you leave him to Helen, dear? Everybody will be so pleased, and I should besomuch obliged to you, Jin, if you would!"
Miss Ross laughed. "The last is certainly a strong inducement," said she; "but it seems to me you are leaving the squirrel's own inclinations out of the question. Because he comes down for Colonel Crockett, does it follow he'll be so obliging to everybody else? I suppose Frank—I mean Captain Vanguard—has a perfect right to talk to me instead of Miss Hallaton, if he is more amused in my society than in hers."
"Amused!" repeated Mrs. Lascelles, growing warm. "This is no question of amusement. It is a life's happiness or misery for two people who ought never to have been interfered with. You have no right to supplant her; you have no right to trifle withhim!"
"Suppose I amnottrifling," retorted the other. "Suppose I am in earnest, just for once, by way of change. You have complimented me on my powers, in sport. Do you think I should be a less dangerous enemy, Rose, if I were fighting for my life?"
"You remember our agreement," exclaimed Mrs. Lascelles with rising colour, and a shake in her voice, denoting wrath no less than a nervous dread of its indulgence. "You are not acting fairly by me; you're not acting fairly by any of us. If you turn round now, after what you've told me, after what we agreed, I can never trust you again, Jin. I shall think you've been sailing under false colours all through."
"Explain yourself, Rose," said Miss Ross, very quietly, but with an ominously steady expression about the lower part of her face, in strong contrast with the quivering lips and tremulous chin of her companion.
"You ought to see it yourself," whimpered the latter, now in a sore predicament between her feelings of friendship and generosity. "I shall say something to be sorry for afterwards. I know I shall. You'll drive me to it, Jin! and when I am driven, I can't and won't stop!"
"You seem to expect that my thoughts, feelings, and opinions are to be under your control, as you would have my actions and conversation," was the grave and rather stern rejoinder. "This is not dependence, Mrs. Lascelles, but slavery. You are not only unkind, but unreasonable and unjust."
Mrs. Lascelles turned very red. She was now obviously "driven," as she called it, and not likely to stop.
"What I expect," she retorted, "is nothing to the purpose; for there seems little chance of my obtaining it. What Iinsiston is common propriety of demeanour and the merest fair-play. You would never have met these people at all—you would never have been in a position to know any one of them, but forme. You are received amongst them as—as—like anybody else, and you throw down the apple of discord to set us all at sixes and sevens. You seem to forget, Miss Ross, that your victims are my personal friends."
"And what am I?" retorted Jin, with an angry flash from her black eyes. "Something between a companion and a servant! A piece of furniture good enough for the drawing-room, though occasionally useful in the kitchen! The obligations are not perhaps so entirely on one side as you would like to make out. When people hunt in couples, a good deal may be done that it would be madness to attempt singly. It cannot but be convenient for an independent lady to have a friend at her elbow who is always well disposed, always ready to go anywhere, or do anything, generally good-tempered, and, above all, afflicted with an intermittent defect of sight or hearing as required. I think I have earned my wages, and returned adequate value in kind for board and lodging—both, I must admit of the best—and treatment, I am happy to think, of the kindest and most considerate, till to-day!"
Touched to the quick by this last reproach, Mrs. Lascelles was already crying vehemently.
"It's not that!" she sobbed out. "It's not that! I don't want to remind you of anything that's past and gone. But you ought to do what I ask you in common gratitude because—because—you know you ought!"
Seeing the adversary wavering, Miss Ross stood firm to her guns.
"Gratitude," said she, "is one thing, and obedience another. I admit that I owe the first, and hoped I had shown some consciousness of the debt. The last is a different question, and I am not naturally very submissive. But, come. Let us have a clear understanding. I am ready to receive your orders!"
"Orders!" Mrs. Lascelles fired up once more. "You've no right to put it in that way. But it's no use talking the thing over backwards and forwards. You've barely known him a fortnight. In plain English, will you or will younotgive Frank Vanguard up?"
Jin laughed scornfully.
"Suppose he won't givemeup?"
"That's nothing to do with it," retorted the other. "Once for all, Miss Ross, will you or will younot?"
"No, I won't! There!"
Jin looked very handsome while she thus raised the standard of revolt, with her head up, her eyes flashing, and a little spot of colour in each cheek.
Mrs. Lascelles now lost all control over her temper. Totally unused to anger, she trembled violently under its influence, and felt, indeed, that no victory, however triumphant, could repay her for the tumult of such a contest.
"Under these circumstances," said she, vainly endeavouring to steady her voice, and assume that dignity of bearing to which only last night her "moral influence" had seemed to entitle her, "it is impossible that you and I can continue on the same terms. It is impossible that we can remain under the same roof. You will see the propriety, Miss Ross, at your earliest convenience of making arrangements to reside elsewhere."
"The sooner the better," answered Jin calmly. "I'll go directly. My things are packed. We won't part in anger, Mrs. Lascelles. Rose, you've been very,verygood to me, and I shall think kindly of you as long as I live!"
The tide of battle was now completely turned. It may be that the conqueror was eagerly looking for an opportunity to lay down her arms—it may be that Mrs. Lascelles had only meant to threaten, and hated herself for the menace even while it crossed her lips. She was, at any rate, quite incapable of hitting an adversary when down, and far more inclined to set a fallen foe upright, and make friends, than, like some Amazons, to crush and trample the unfortunate into the dust. She literally fell on Miss Ross's neck, and wept.
"I didn't mean it!" she sobbed. "I didn't mean it! Jin, dear Jin, I was angry, and didn't know what I was saying! I am a wretch and a heathen and a beast! Think no more of it, dear, I implore you! And promise me that you won't dream of packing up your things and leaving me. What should I do without you, Jin? Indeed—indeed—I should be perfectly miserable, dear, if you were to go away!"
So the ladies embraced, and cried, and laughed, and cried again, as is the manner of their sex in the ratification of all treaties, permanent or otherwise, arriving at the conclusion that their friendship was imperishable, that they were all in all to each other, and that henceforth nothing should part them but the grave. None the less, however, did Miss Ross determine that she would subject herself no more to such scenes of reproach and recrimination; that she would take a certain step, only, after all, a little sooner than expected, which she had already vaguely contemplated as a possibility, a probability, nay, a positive necessity, for her happiness; and, if he would only open them to receive her, throw herself, without delay, into the arms of Frank Vanguard.
Violent tempests like that described in the last chapter do not pass away without leaving a "ground swell" as it were, on the domestic surface. Neither Mrs. Lascelles nor Miss Ross felt disposed to take their usual drive in the open carriage for the purpose of shopping and "leaving cards;" two functions that constitute the whole duty of women, from three to sixP.M.of every week-day, during the London season. The principle of acquisitiveness inherent in the female breast, together with an insatiable desire to see and to be seen, may account for the shopping; but why society enjoins the penance of leaving cards surpasses my comprehension altogether. Unmeaning, endless, and exceedingly troublesome, this custom seems to produce no definite result, but to fill the waste-paper basket with a multitude of other cards left in return. To-day, however, the ladies at No. 40 resolved they would devote their afternoon to refreshment and repose: a good luncheon, a comfortable arm-chair, the newest novel, and a casual dropping in of visitors to tea.
The luncheon was heavy, the arm-chair provocative of slumbers; so was the novel; and Mrs. Lascelles, I am bound to admit, went fast asleep over its pages; while Miss Ross stole softly up-stairs to read one important little note, write another, and otherwise bring her schemes to maturity.
In the mean time, a considerable bustle was going on in Messrs. Tattersalls' celebrated emporium for the sale of horses—good, bad, and indifferent. To use correct language, "The entire stud of a nobleman, well known in Leicestershire," was being brought to the hammer; and a very motley crowd of sportsmen, dandies, horse-dealers, lords, louts, yeomen, yokels, and nondescripts were gathered round the auctioneer's box in consequence. A well-bred chestnut horse, with magnificent shoulders, and a white fore-leg, was the object of competition at the moment Sir Henry Hallaton entered the yard; and, although he neither wanted a hunter, nor could have afforded to buy this one even at its reserved price, it was not in his power to refrain from elbowing his way through the crowd, and stationing himself in perilous vicinity to the hind-legs of the animal.
"Handsome—fast—up to great weight—with an European reputation! And only two hundred bid for him!" said the voice of Fate from under an exceedingly well-brushed and rather curly-brimmed hat; while the object of these encomiums, whose restless eye and ear denoted excitement, if not alarm, gave a stamp of his foot and a whisk of his tail that caused considerable swaying, surging, and treading on toes in the encircling crowd.
"Ten! Twenty!" continued the voice of Fate. "Thirty! Thank you, my lord. Fifty! Two hundred and fifty bid for him. Run him down once more. Take care!" And Sir Henry found himself jostled against his new friend Picard, who, having made the last bid with an assumption of great carelessness, seemed in danger of becoming the actual proprietor of this desirable purchase.
"Make me a wheeler, I think," said he, as the horse was led back to the stable, and another brought out to elicit a fresh burst of competition, all the more lively, perhaps, that the Leicestershire nobleman had put such a reserve price on his stud as precluded the sale of anything but a hack he didn't like.
"Rather light for harness," observed Sir Henry, with a certain covert approval of his friend's extravagance. "I suppose theyareto be sold?" he added, on further reflection.
"I conclude so, of course," replied the other, though he well knew they werenot, and had been bidding pompously for some half-dozen with the comfortable conviction that there was nothing to pay for his whistle.
"It's a long price," resumed the baronet, as he took Picard's arm to saunter leisurely in the direction of Belgravia. "At least, it makes them very dear when you come to match them. That's the worst of having too good a team."
"Oh! I don't know," said Picard loftily. "I always find it cheapest, in the long run, to drive the best horses, though I do have to give thundering prices now and then, I admit. Still, things must begin to look up for us soon. We Southern proprietors can't be always on the shady side of the hedge; and we've had a rough time of it enough, in all conscience."
They were already at the gate, and it appeared this "Southern proprietor" had no intention of buying any more horses to-day.
Sir Henry hazarded a pertinent, or, as he himself considered it, animpertinent, inquiry.
"Have you much property," said he, "in the South? And do you get anything from it?"
"Not, perhaps, whatyouwould call much, in actual value," answered his companion; "but for extent, of course, unlimited." He waved his arm as Robinson Crusoe might, while describing his circle:
"From the centre all round to the sea."
"From the centre all round to the sea."
"But American property," he added, "is so difficult to define. Halloo! here's our friend Vanguard."
That gentleman was indeed strolling leisurely into the yard, apparently with no particular object, for he strolled out again willingly enough at the invitation of his two friends.
"It's rather early for the park," observed Picard, as the three crossed to the shady side of the street, "and too late for St. James's Street. What shall we do with ourselves for the next half-hour?"
"Go and look at the Serpentine—see if it's still there," said Frank, who seemed in unusually high spirits, though his manner was somewhat restless. "If that bores you, there's always the British Museum. It's cool, and, I've been told, very solitary."
"Too far off," answered Sir Henry, in perfect good faith. "No. I'll tell you what. Let's go and ask Mrs. Lascelles to give us a cup of tea."
Frank started, and his heart thumped against a little note lying in his waistcoat-pocket; but, though the thump was for Helen, the note was from some one very different to that well-conducted young lady. Was he disloyal enough, even now, to leap at the chance of seeing Miss Hallaton just once more, and for the last time? If so, he was doomed to be disappointed, and it served him right.
Picard, who carried no notes of any description in his pockets, and whose heart seldom beat unless he walked fast up-hill, agreed willingly to the baronet's proposition. He, too, entertained a vague sentiment of admiration for Helen, capable of soon ripening into something warmer if she had any fortune, and under such circumstances his game now was to see as much of her as he could.
Thus it fell out, that these three gentlemen, arriving at Mrs. Lascelles's door, found themselves face to face with Uncle Joseph, fresh from the City, who had just rung the bell, and was utilising his time by grinding a pair of thick soles fiercely against the scraper.
It would have amused a bystander to observe the effect produced on each visitor by the footman's appearance and the information he tendered.
"Has Miss Hallaton been here?" said Sir Henry, whose position on the top step gave him priority of speech with the doorkeeper.
"Called to leave a note after luncheon, Sir Henry, and I was to say she'd a-gone out driving with Lady Sycamore, and wouldn't be home till seven, if you came for her here."
Picard, pulling out a memorandum-book, muttered that "he had forgotten an appointment at his Club," while Frank's face darkened, and he smothered something between an oath and a sigh.
"Is Miss Ross at home?" then demanded Uncle Joseph, with the air of a man who submits to an unnecessary formality in compliance with the usages of society.
"Miss Ross had stepped out—oh!notfive minutes ago—the gentlemen might almost have met her at the corner of the street."
Frank now seemed uneasy, looked at his watch, observed it was "rather too late to call," and disappeared.
Uncle Joseph gasped. Did Miss Ross leave no message? Forhim, Mr. Groves? Was the man quite sure?
The manwasquite sure, so far as he knew; should he ask the maid?
"D——n the maid!" I am sorry to say, was Uncle Joseph's reply, and without further leave-taking he bustled off in a towering passion, while Sir Henry and the footman, on the door-step, contemplated each other in some amusement and no little surprise.
The baronet broke into a laugh.
"You soon clear off your visitors, James. Is Mrs. Lascelles at home tome!"
"Certainly, sir! Yes, sir! In the boodore, sir!" answered James. "I'd just taken in tea when you rang."
So Sir Henry found himselftête-à-têtewith the lady for whom, during the foregoing winter, he had half-felt and half-professed a spurious kind of attachment, and was conscious of an uncomfortable wish that he, too, had made his escape with the others, or that it had never entered his head to come to tea at all.
She was always gracious, just as she was always well-dressed. There is a dignity and a decency of beauty, which nothing will induce a beautiful woman to forego. It was a very cool and steady hand that Mrs. Lascelles tendered to her vacillating admirer, while she bade him sit down, and poured him out a cup of tea.
"I was on the point of writing to you," said she; "but you have saved me the trouble. I wanted to see you, Sir Henry, very much. I have something particular to say."
He bowed, and settled himself in a low easy-chair with his back to the windows. No faded beauty of the other sex could have entertained a greater objection than Sir Henry to flourishing "crow's-feet" and wrinkles in the light of day.
"It's no wonder I'm here," was the smiling reply, "for I always want to see you!"
"And without anything particular to say," she retorted, adding hurriedly—"However, that's not the point. Sir Henry, you care for your daughter?"
"More than for anything in the world!" was his grave rejoinder.
"I know it—I know it," she answered, and the colour deepened in her cheek. "Well, now, men are blind as bats, I think, in all matters of affection; but have you not lately noticed an alteration in Helen's manner, spirits, in her very looks? Can't you see there's something wrong with the girl? Can't you guess what it is?"
He looked startled, disturbed, distressed.
"Not the lungs, Mrs. Lascelles!" he exclaimed. "She runs up-stairs like a lap-wing, and will waltz for twenty minutes together at a spin. There can't be much amiss. Not her lungs, surely; nor her heart!"
Mrs. Lascelles laughed.
"Yes, her heart," she repeated, "though not in the senseyoumean. Not anatomically, but sentimentally, I fear; which is sometimes almost as bad."
He looked immensely relieved.
"Oh! she'll get over that," said he, putting more sugar in his tea. "She's a sensible girl, Helen, with a good deal of self-respect, and what I should call 'mind.' No whims, no fancies, in any way, and not the least romantic."
"Like her papa," observed Mrs. Lascelles maliciously.
"I trust in heavennot!" he replied, with unusual energy. "Helen is as much my superior in intellect as she is in moral qualities. She has talent, energy, self-control, and self-denial; none of which, I fear, can she inherit fromme. Her sincerity, too, and trustfulness are like a child's, and she is as fond of me now as she was at two years old. You don't think shereallycares for anybody, do you, Mrs. Lascelles? It might be a serious thing for her if she did, and I had rather everything I have in the world went to ruin than that Helen should be made unhappy."
"I do," answered Mrs. Lascelles. "I think she cares for Frank Vanguard."
"Confound him!" ejaculated Sir Henry, upsetting his tea-cup. "A presuming young jackass! And not over steady, I'm afraid," he added, reverting in his own mind to certain memories connected with supper, cigarettes, champagne, three o'clock in the morning, and Kate Cremorne.
"Now that's so like aman!" said his hostess. "You want to keep your treasure all to yourself, and are furious with everybody who agrees with you in appreciating its value. Captain Vanguard is young, good-looking, a gentleman, and not badly off. Why shouldn't your daughter like him, and why shouldn't he like your daughter? Sir Henry, I needn't ask if you believe in my inclination, do you also believe in my ability to serve you?"
"Certainly," was the polite reply. "Nobody is half so clever, and, besides, you are a perfect woman of the world."
"Will you be guided by my advice?"
"What do you propose?" was the natural answer to so comprehensive a question.
"Get Helen out of town at once. Carry her off to Windsor. I can take upon myself to offer you The Lilies. Uncle Joseph will lend the cottage to me, or any of my friends, for as long as I like. Give her plenty of amusement, but no dissipation. Early hours, a glass of port wine and a biscuit every day at twelve, and don't let her stay out after sun-down. In three weeks the girl will be in rude health, or I know nothing of a woman's constitution and ailments."
"But what has all this to do with Captain Vanguard?" asked Sir Henry, fixing in his mind, not without effort, the whole regimen, particularly the port wine at twelve o'clock.
"Oh! blindest of baronets!" laughed Mrs. Lascelles. "Lady Sycamore, or any other chaperon, would have seen it at once. Captain Vanguard is quartered at Windsor. Helen is staying at The Lilies. The young people meet every day. A mutual attachment, already, I firmly believe, in the bud, comes to maturity. Generaltableau! You give your blessing, and will become, I hope, more respectable as a father-in-law than you have hitherto been in other relations of life."
"I'll do anything for Helen—anything!" said Sir Henry vehemently. "And how can I thank you enough, Mrs. Lascelles, for your kindness and the interest you take in my girl? You'll come down every Saturday, and stay till Monday, to see how your prescription answers, of course?"
"Not the least of course," she replied. "Jin and I mean to take ourselves off to Brighton by the end of the week. If the fine weather lasts, we shall very likely go on to Dieppe."
This, then, was her kindly scheme: to get Miss Ross out of Frank Vanguard's way to leave the coast clear for Helen; and then, having settled matters to her own satisfaction, weigh Sir Henry deliberately against Goldthred, and take whichever she considered most deserving of herself.
Mrs. Lascelles never doubted her power over any one on whom she chose to exert it, and believed that, like a spider, she need only spin her web in order to surround the desired bluebottle inextricably with its toils.
In hers, as in similar cases, I imagine that to break boldly through the meshes was the insect's best chance of turning the tables, and taking the custodian herself into custody.
"Miss Ross goes with you?" asked Sir Henry meditatively, though I believe he was thinking less of that black-eyed syren than of his daughter.
"Miss Ross goes with me, undoubtedly," was the answer, spoken rather sharply, and in some little displeasure. "Have you any objection? Can't you bear to part with her even for so short a period? You see, I know all aboutthat, too."
Sir Henry never seemed to have any sense of shame. He couldn't have blushed to save his life. To this callousness he owed many of his successes, and almost all his scrapes.
He smiled pleasantly. "You know all about everything, I believe," said he; "and youthinkyou know all aboutme. But you don't, and I don't; and nobody does, I fancy. I'm so different from what I feel sure I was intended to be, that I sometimes suspect, like the Irishman, they 'changed me at nurse.' Only, if Iweresomebody else, that wouldn't account for it, after all, would it? These are puzzling speculations; but I know Icouldhave been a better and a very different man. It's not my fault."
"Whose, then?" she asked, bending her blue eyes on him with an expression of interest extremely dangerous for a man at any age.
He scarcely marked it. He was searching out the truth for once from the depths—not very profound—of his world-worn heart, and had forgotten during the moment that false and fleeting woman-worship which had so weakened and deteriorated his nature. Looking back along the path of life on which, as in some idolatrous grove, his every step had been marked by a soulless image of brass, or stucco, or marble, reared only to be defaced and overthrown, he was scarcely conscious of that lovely living companion, listening with all the attention of curiosity and self-interest to his retrospections.
"Yours!" he answered—("Now it's coming," she thought)—"Yours! Not individually, but collectively, as of that sex which seems to be the natural bane of ours. If I could begin again, I would forswear female society altogether. I should be a better, and certainly a happier man. As it is, my life has been wasted in looking for something I always failed to find. Did you ever see Grantley Berkeley's book? There it is on the table. I dare say you've never looked into it. Read it, if you want to find poetry in sport. He seems to entertain a gentle, kindly feeling for every living creature, wild or tame. He tells a story of one of his hounds—Champion or Challenger, if I remember right—that used to detach itself from the pack on hunting mornings, and come to its mistress's pony-chaise for a morsel of biscuit and a caress. Ever afterwards, when drafted into another county, the faithful, true-hearted dog would break away, and gallop up to every open carriage that arrived at the meet, returning from each succeeding disappointment with a sadder expression on his wise, honest face—a more piteous look in his meek, brown, wistful eyes. I've been like poor Champion or Challenger. So often, I've thought I had found my heart's desire at last! Then I strained every nerve to win, anddidwin, too; only to learn, over and over again, that she had not deceived me half so deeply as I had deceived myself. Shall I confess that the woman who, in my whole life, has approached nearest the ideal of my heart, was one whom my reason, my experience, and my moral sense, deteriorated though it is, convicted as the vilest and the worst?"
Few people had ever seen Sir Henry in earnest. Certainly not Mrs. Lascelles; and she was almost frightened.
"Good gracious!" she exclaimed. "After such an experience, you'll surely never try again?"
He seemed to wake up from a dream. The ruling passion was not to be controlled; and habit, stronger than nature, impelled him, though for the hundredth time, to recommence the old story in the old familiar strain.
"Just once more," he said, drawing his chair nearer the frail spider-legged tea-table that constituted the only barrier between them. "It's hard if a man seeks all his life without finding his object at last. Mrs. Lascelles, may I not say——"
In another moment she might have had the satisfaction of hearing, and perhaps repelling, a fervent declaration of attachment; but, at this juncture, the door of the boudoir was thrown open, and the announcement of "Lady Clearwell!" by James in person, ushered in an exceedingly courteous and sprightly personage, all smiles and rustle, who called Mrs. Lascelles "Rose," took her by both hands, and, with a distant bow to Sir Henry, dropped on the sofa as if she meant to make herself perfectly at home.
Such interruptions are almost a matter of course. There was nothing for it but to take up his hat and make his bow.
It may be that Sir Henry, walking soberly down-stairs, reflected, not without gratitude, how such littlecontretempsconstitute the great charm and safeguard of society in general.
Lady Clearwell stayed till nearly seven. As her carriage rolled away, Mrs. Lascelles looked wistfully at the clock, and called over the banisters to James:
"I'm not at home to anybodynow, except Mr. Goldthred."
But Mr. Goldthred never came.
Frank Vanguard, leaving the threshold of No. 40 with unusual alacrity, lost no time in securing one of the many Hansom cabs that are to be found crawling about Belgravia, plentiful as wasps on wall-fruit, every summer's afternoon. "Soho Bazaar," said he. "Don't go to sleep over it!" And so found himself, in less than a quarter of an hour, at the door of that heterogeneous emporium. It did not seem to surprise him in the least, that, while he paid his driver, the well-known figure of Miss Ross should precede him into the building, nor that he should come upon her, minutely examining ornaments of bog-oak, at the very first counter which offered a secluded corner for confidential communication. The place seemed well adapted for secrecy; purchasers, it appeared, there were none, while the sellers, women of various ages and costumes, were mostly nodding drowsily behind their wares.
Jin looked up from a clumsy black cross set in Irish diamonds, and her eyes flashed brighter than the spurious gems while, putting her hand in Frank's arm, she nestled to his side, as though henceforth her refuge was there alone.
"You got my note?" she whispered. "I didn't know what to do. My only chance was to see you at once, and I could think of no place so good as this."
"Dearest!" he murmured, pressing the arm that clung so fondly to his own, looking about him, nevertheless, in uncomfortable apprehension of observant bystanders, or sharp-sighted acquaintance.
"I have had such a battle to fight," she continued, leading him into a grove of waving drapery, consisting chiefly of clothing for young people. "If I hadn'tfeltI could depend upon you, I think I must have given way. I've behaved so badly to Mrs. Lascelles, so cruelly to Mr. Groves. I've done so wrong, by everybody butyou."
"Dearest!" he repeated, with another squeeze. His ideas were gradually deserting him, nor did he know exactly what he was expected to say in reply.
"They all wanted to persuade me," she continued. "They all wanted to talk me into it; and in my position, so completely friendless and forlorn, it would have been an excellent arrangement, of course—far the wisest thing to do. But I couldn't. No, I couldn't, when I thought ofyou."
"I didn't quite make out from your note," said Frank, collecting his wits with some difficulty. "You wrote it in a hurry, I dare say. You mentioned something about old Groves. Had he—had he the impudence to ask you to marry him?"
She turned round with a comical expression of mingled pain and amusement in her face.
"Do you think it requires so much effrontery?" she demanded. "Recollect my position, or rather total want of it. Recollect that Mr. Groves is rich, amiable, kind-hearted, and, after all, not soveryold, that is, for aman. Just the sort of person to make a good, trustworthy, affectionate husband."
"Then why didn't you take him?" said Frank; but the tone of pique in which he spoke, told Miss Ross the game was in her own hand.
She let go his arm, looking reproachfully into his very eyes.
"Canyouask me, Captain Vanguard?" she exclaimed, in sorrowful accents, stopping short under a pair of elaborate blue knickerbockers, ticketed seven-and-nine. "If so, I have indeed acted madly in meeting you here to-day. No; let go my hand. Before I walk a step farther tell me if you really mean what you say!"
"You know what I mean," he answered, in an agitated whisper. "You know that you are everything in the world tome. That if you took up with any other fellow you would drive me mad, and that I would rather we were both in our graves than you should marry such a 'guy' as old Groves!"
They were pacing on through the bazaar once more, Frank having repossessed himself of his companion's arm, while he made the foregoing statement, with every appearance of earnestness and truth.
Jin stopped short at a counter, on which were displayed a variety of children's toys in gaudy profusion.
"What a love!" she exclaimed, pouncing on a parti-coloured little figure-of-fun with bells at all its angles. "Twelve-and-sixpence? Put it up for me, please, Captain Vanguard; don't look so astonished. It's only a plaything for my boy!"
Frank's eyes opened wide; perhaps for that reason his ears failed to detect something forced and embarrassed in the laugh with which Miss Ross greeted his surprise.
"I have no secrets from younow," she continued. "You and I must trust each other entirely, or not at all. I have never told you about my boy, but I cannot and will not give him up, even for you, Frank. Take me with my encumbrances, or not at all.C'est tout simple!" Watching his looks as the steersman watches a coming wave, something warned her to avoid the imminent shock. Like a skilful pilot, she luffed, so to speak, several points to the windward of truth.
"He has nobody else to depend on in the world," she said, eyeing Frank's face with a touching and plaintive gaze. "People blame me, I dare say, but I know I'm doing right, for after all, is he not my own sister's child?"
Frank drew a long breath, looking immensely relieved, yet conscious the while of a vague perception, not entirely agreeable, that the last link in his fetters was about to be riveted for good and all.
"You're an angel," said he—"a real angel, I do believe. I begin to see it more every day. At first, I used to think you could be very wicked if you chose. Tell me all about it. I know you will tell me the——"
He could not have believed those slender fingers were strong enough to inflict such a grip as at this moment interrupted his sentence, and hurried him on to a different part of the bazaar so rapidly as to entail no small risk of upsetting many fragile articles exposed for sale at the corners of the different stalls; not, however, before he was aware of an exceedingly frigid bow from Lady Shuttlecock, a stare of unbounded astonishment from at least two of her daughters, and a wink of intense amusement from Kilgarron, who, surrounded by children of all sizes, was obviously in attendance on aunt, cousins, and relations of every degree.
This numerous family-party did not affect to conceal their surprise at Frank's appearance in such an unlikely place and with so charming a companion. Had the pair walked boldly up to Lady Shuttlecock to exchange with these new arrivals the customary greetings of people who see each other much oftener than they desire, it would probably have been inferred that Mrs. Lascelles was shopping in some other part of the building, and no further notice would have been taken of the circumstance; but Jin's sudden flight, the result perhaps of studied calculation, was compromising in the last degree, and her ladyship, gathering her brood around her, began to fan herself with a vigour of disapproval not calculated to cool an exuberant matron in the dog-days. As her head, rising inch by inch, attained the level from which propriety looks down on indiscretion, she turned fiercely to Kilgarron, and observed, as if it washisfault:
"Most extraordinary!Yourfriend Captain Vanguard, and, of all people in the world, Miss Ross!"
"It couldn't have been Miss Ross, mamma," interposed Lady Selina in sprightly innocence. "She never would have run away from us as if we'd got the plague."
"Nonsense, Selina," said her sister. "She was ashamed of herself, and well she might be. I always thought her an odious person; and as foryourfriend, Kil, I don't believe he's much better."
"Bother!" replied Kilgarron. "She's his cousin, sure! Mayn't a man take his cousin to the Soho Bazaar, and buy fairings for her? Never say it! I'll be emptying the counter here for mine this minute!"
So popular a declaration was received by the young fry with acclamations that reached the ears of Frank and Jin, who had retired for sanctuary to the loneliness of the picture-room.
"I am lostnow!" exclaimed the latter, really out of breath from the pace at which they fled. "It will be all over London to-night. The girls hate me like poison. The mother's the greatest gossip in Europe. Lord Kilgarron will make a joke of it at the mess-table! Captain Vanguard—Frank—what is to become of me? Don't look so cross! What am I to do?"
He pondered. His face was very grave—almost, as she said, cross. Suddenly it lighted up, smiling fondly down into her own.
"There is a very easy way out of it," he said—"a way to stop all their mouths; but perhaps you wouldn't like it!"
"To marry Mr. Groves?" said she, with one of her most mischievous glances and her merriest laugh.
He laughed in concert.
"If you like, darling," he answered, "at some future time; but not whilst I'm alive. It's my turn first."
"Oh, Frank!" was all she said; and for a moment she felt she loved him too dearly to sacrifice him to such a fate.
But the temptation was overwhelming. So many considerations crowded on her brain: her state of dependence, now more than ever irksome since the late difference with Mrs. Lascelles; the awkwardness of meeting Uncle Joseph daily, and the impossibility of refusing to give him a decided answer; the equal impossibility, after all she had led him to expect, of saying anything but Yes; the delight—and this to one of her temperament and antecedents was not without considerable charm—of anything like an elopement or a clandestine marriage, not counting the triumph of carrying off such a prize as Frank Vanguard from the many women who would be too happy to make him their lawful prey; the impression—vague, unreasoning, and essentially feminine—that such a step would free her at once and for ever from any claim Picard might advance on her person, her belongings, or her child; finally, and it is only justice to insist that this was the strongest inducement of all—the undisturbed possession of that child, whom she resolved to carry off with her in her flight, but whose relationship to herself, it pained her to think, she must now disguise for evermore.
Vanguard, drawing her towards him, was surprised to find the tears running down her cheeks.
He didn't care if a hundred Lady Shuttlecocks were watching: he wound his arm round her waist, and she buried her face impulsively in his breast. For half a minute or so, they were both very much in earnest and very happy.
Then she looked up, and adjusted her bonnet with a smile.
"How shocked St. Sebastian will be!" she observed; that sparingly-clothed martyr, execrably painted, having indeed been the only witness of this improper ebullition.
"It must be done at once," said Frank; now that he was fairly in for it, characteristically keen and impatient of inaction. "You can't go back to No. 40. I won't have you persecuted by that old idiot, Groves. We ought to start from here, you and I, just as we are—swagger into the first church that we see—they're always open—and get it over."
She smiled very sweetly now on his impatience.
"You rash, inconsiderate darling!" she said. "That's impossible. I wish it wasn't. No. You shall be guided by me, and let me have my own way. In the first place, I must go back to No. 40 for many reasons. Well, if you insist on knowing, I must get some more things. I am very glad you like this dress; but it wouldn't do for one's whole outfit. Don't look so alarmed: my wardrobe is not very large, and I know where I can have it taken care of without dragging about with me more than I require. To-morrow I shall be free."
"And to-morrow I must be at Windsor—at least in the afternoon," observed Frank in an injured tone. "Why the Colonel can't inspect my young horses withoutmeI don't know. The whole lot are not worth five pounds. But I can get away by six o'clock."
"At Windsor!" repeated Jin. "The very thing! Now listen, Frank, and I will arrange it all in a way that will disarm suspicion, and leave no trace of us after we have made our escape. You shall go down to your barracks and attend to your duties, like a good boy. I mean you to be always subservient to discipline. When your colonel has done with you, it will be my turn. You will get into a skiff, or whatever you call it—a boat that has room enough for two people, and cushions, and all that—you shall row it to the very place I got in at—don't you remember—the day you saved my life? and—and you will find me waiting there. Take me or leave me; as I said before, Frank, I have nobody in the world now but you."
He lifted her hand passionately to his lips. "Take you!" he repeated, "I should think Iwould! But how are you to get out of London? What excuse can you make to Mrs. Lascelles?"
She hated herself that she could lie tohim, and yet such is the force of habit, such are the exigencies of a life like hers, the ready falsehood came glib to her tongue.
"We are all going to The Lilies for a day or two," she said. "Miss Hallaton is to be there, with Mrs. Lascelles, on a visit."
Even now he winced as if he was stung, at the bare mention of Helen's name. The sensation was painful in the extreme, though qualified by gratified vanity, and a certain bitter satisfaction in the justice of his reprisals.
She read him like a book. If she had ever wavered for a moment, if her better nature had ever warned her to spare the man's future because she loved him, all such considerations were utterly set aside in that passion for rivalry which has driven so many women to destruction, and by which Miss Ross was certainly not less affected than the rest of her sex.
In all matters of love, war, pleasure, or business, Frank had a great idea of sailing with the tide. So long as things went smoothly, his maxim was to "let the ship steer herself," a method of navigation both safer and more successful than people generally imagine. He assented with the utmost devotion to all Jin's arrangements, even in their most trifling details, and did not even protest against her cruelty in cutting short their interview, and imperatively forbidding him to accompany her any part of the way home.
"You see I trust you in everything," said he, as he bade her "good-bye" at the door of the cab to which he consigned her.
"And do not I trustyou?" was her answer, with a look that spoke volumes, rousing all the manly impulses of his nature, appealing to all the generous instincts of his heart.
She knew exactly how to manage him. As she drove away, Frank felt that to deceive this simple, confiding girl, who had placed herself so completely at his mercy, trusted so implicitly in his honour, would be, of all villanies, the blackest and most disgraceful. "If I'm going to make a fool of myself," he muttered, while the rattle of her cab was lost in the roar of an adjacent thoroughfare, "at least you shall never find out I think so; and, come what may, my darling, hang me if I'll ever be such a rogue as to make a fool ofyou!"
Miss Ross, returning to No. 40, experienced much the same feelings as a whist-player, who, with unexpectedly good cards, has yet made the most of them by science, skill, and studious attention to the game. Perhaps, also, she felt conscious of a certain fatigue and depression, such as generally succeeds brain-work accompanied by excitement. During hertête-à-têtedinner with Mrs. Lascelles she was more silent than usual, whereas the other lady was more talkative. It did not escape the latter, however, that Jin's manner had acquired a softness and a wistful kindness towards herself she had never observed before. Uncle Joseph, too, coming to spend the evening, boiling with indignation, thought his ladye-love tenderer, more womanly, more attractive than ever. She had coaxed him into good-humour with his first cup of tea, and in less than ten minutes had him in perfect subjection once more. Whether it was compunction or remorse, or only the innate coquetry inseparable from the woman, I cannot explain, but a charm seemed to hang about Jin to-night irresistible as the spells of a sorceress. Uncle Joseph, though the least sensitive of subjects, was completely subdued.
He took an early opportunity, however, of asking his enchantress, not without irritation, why she had been out when he called? Her answer disarmed him completely.
"I waited till past five, and then the pain got so much worse, I could bear it no longer."
His heart leaped and his face brightened. "You—you don't mean you couldn't endure the anxiety! Miss Ross!—Jin! How I wish I'd known! How I wish I'd seen you! What! You—you actually started to look for me?"
"Not so bad as that," she answered, with a smile. "I went out to get a tooth stopped."
"First for Windsor?—Second to Slough? which is it to be? I wish these young women knew their own minds!" muttered an irritated railway official at Paddington, as Miss Ross, changing her directions with inconvenient suddenness, blocked the stream of passengers defiling past his window to take their tickets for the train. She reinstated herself, however, in his good opinion, by unusual alacrity in paying her money, ere she entered the ladies' waiting-room, from which, after a couple of minutes, she reappeared, completely disguised in figure, face, and bearing.
She had gone in, a shapely, upright, good-looking young woman, on whom masculine eyes could not but turn with unqualified approval. She came out, wearing a double veil, a pair of blue spectacles, and a respirator, bent crooked, with one leg shorter than the other. Thus metamorphosed, she limped to her second-class carriage under the very noses of two men, to have been discovered by whom would have entailed ruin, disgrace, and instantaneous explosion of her grand scheme.
Picard and Frank, setting the bye-laws of the company at defiance, by smoking on its platform, were making indiscreet remarks on the appearance of the different passengers hurrying to take their places in the same train. Little did they think, how the heart was beating, of that dowdy, dumpy figure they glanced at half in pity, half in scorn; nor how a thrill of triumph pervaded her from top to toe, while Miss Ross reflected, with what transparent devices these lords of the creation were to be duped, with what facility she could turn and twist two great stupid men round her dainty little finger. She did not so much mind Frank. Had he been alone, they might have journeyed amicably down together, but she dreaded recognition by his companion; above all she dreaded that Picard might have the same object as herself, might be going out of town for the express purpose of visiting the child. Even in this case, however, she felt a proud confidence in her own powers of outwitting them all; conscious, that like an Indian amongst the rapids, she could steer to an inch, undismayed by any danger, however imminent, that did not actually overwhelm her bark, taking a keen wild pleasure in the very destruction she invited only to elude. Sitting opposite a motherly woman, with a basket, who sucked peppermint as a sailor "turns his quid," she found herself almost wishing she had taken her place boldly in the next carriage, which a strong odour of tobacco-smoke bade her infer was occupied by two men, both of whom she had successively fancied she loved.
Their conversation would have interested her no doubt. Having taken a great liking to Frank, ever since the opportune appearance of that champion on the night he was assailed, Picard had confided to him the whole history of a certain attraction that drew him so often to Windsor, and was now deep in a dissertation on the trustworthiness of Mrs. Mole, and the endearing qualities of her charge.
"Such a little brick, Captain," said the Confederate officer, between the puffs of an enormous cigar. "Such quality, such gumption, such grit, I wouldn't have believed could be found in a child, not if you raised 'em by steam! To see the critter's face when he lifts the latch, to let me in—he can just reach it, and very proud he is to be so tall. To hear him crow, and halloo, and sing 'Hail, Columbia!' 'God save the Queen' 'Rule Britannia' and 'Yankee Doodle.' He's got 'em all as ready as sharp-shooting, and as correct—as correct, as a barrel organ! It's my belief that child is destined to be a great man, Captain. He's gifted with adaptability, sir, and is what we callcapable. That old woman I've trusted with him seems honest as the day, and does her duty by the varmentwell. Health, of course, at present, is the first consideration; butyousee, when he gets a little older, if I don't give that boy an education, to fit him for any profession or position on earth—from stoker on this broad gauge railway to President of the United States! that's what I call bringing up a child in the way it should go."
Frank tried to appear more interested than he really felt.
"Exactly," said he; "and so whichever way he goes afterwards, must be the right one. It's an excellent plan, no doubt; but, I confess, I shouldn't have thought of it myself."
"They understand the question of education better on the other side of the Atlantic," continued Picard, in perfect good faith; "they go ahead there to some purpose in most things, but when they're working 'social science,' as they call it, the way they get the steam up is a caution! Well, I've concluded to take my own plan with the young one—I feel I've a right, for I couldn't love the boy better if he was my son ten times over. Ah! I sometimes think, Captain, I should have been a happier man if I had been a better one. Loafing is like smuggling, it don't pay in the long run. A contraband cargo is an awful risk, and a very uncertain profit; and yet, I doubt if it's a good thing, either, for a man to marry too early in life."
"Premature, eh?" answered Frank, not much encouraged, while conscious of feeling unpleasantly nervous, as he approached alike the termination of his journey and his bachelorhood. "Of course—certainly—thanks—yes, I will have another cigar—it brings him up short, I take it—settles him, as you may say, once for all."
Picard laughed. "Womenunsettle a chap sometimes," said he, "and bring him up short enough too, for that matter. I've tried it every way, and I only know I've always been wrong; but I sometimes think I could do better if I'd another chance. That's an uncommon likely girl now, that Miss Hallaton, as they call her. I wonder if I could do any good in those diggings. You know the family well, Captain; what do you think?"
Frank could hardly conceal his annoyance, though it was sad to reflect that after all he had no right to be angry. Loyal enough still to revere the flag he had deserted, he answered somewhat stiffly.
"Sir Henry looks very high for his daughter, and I should think Miss Hallaton herself would be more fastidious, more difficult to please, than most people."
Picard seemed in no way disconcerted. A life of adventure soon produces a habit of underrating difficulties, and a tendency to risk all for the chance of winning a part. I am not sure but that a spice of this kind of recklessness is appreciated by women, and that "nothing venture, nothing have," is a maxim which holds good in love, quite as much as in other affairs of life.
"Oh! I could get on well enough with the old man," said he; "there's a freemasonry amongst fellows of his stamp and mine. I consider Sir Henry quite one of my own sort, and, indeed, I've sounded him. Well, perhaps I can hardly saysoundedhim on the subject, but hinted to him that he and I might do a smartish stroke of business if we put our money and our brains together, and played a little into each other's hands. It's the girl that beatsme, Captain; that's where I'm at sea. She's got a high-handed way with her that I can't make head against at all, and I'm not easily dashed, far from it. The young woman's uneasy in herself, too. There's something on her mind. I saw it from the first. The best thing she can do, in my opinion, would be to marry some smart, likely young chap, who would take her abroad for a spell till her colour came back, and the nonsense was driven out of her head. I should like to behimuncommon! But I don't see my way."
There was much of bitter to Frank in this simple, confidential talk, dashed, nevertheless, with a something of sweet and subtle poison, that ought to have warned him he had no right to pledge himself to one woman while he could thus be affected by the mere name of another. Strange to say, he felt that Picard now constituted a link between himself and that past life which after to-day must be put out of sight for ever, and he clung to the Confederate officer accordingly.
"You'll come to luncheon at the barracks, of course," said he, throwing the end of his cigar out at the window. "I must be there till five or six o'clock to parade my young horses for the Colonel. Why he wants to see them to-day I don't know, considering he bought them all himself, and a very moderate lot they are. But, anyhow,thereI shall be till five at the earliest."
"Luncheon," repeated Picard reflectively; "I don't care if I do. I'm generally peckish about two o'clock, and Britishersdodine unnaturally late. I'll go and see the boy first, come back to feed with you, and take a look at the young horses afterwards. How long now, Captain, do you estimate that it takes to get a trooper fit for duty?"
"How long?" repeated the other, who could be eloquent on this congenial theme. "Why, two years at the very least. And even then half of them are not properly mouthed for common field movements, certainly not for parade. Why, I've seen a squadron of Austrian cuirassiers march off at a walk, every horse beginning like a foot soldier with his near leg, and I don't know why our cavalry should be worse drilled than theirs. One of my troop was actually run away with last year at a review, and I felt as much ashamed as if he had run away in action! No; what I want is to see more rides and fewer foot-parades, the men less bothered and the horses better broke."
"Well, youdotake an unconscionable time over everything in this old, slow, and sure country," answered Picard. "Why, if we'd wanted two years, or two months either, to get our cattle fit for service, none of Stuart's best things would have come off at all. In ten days, Captain, ten days at most, I'd every horse in my squadron as steady as a time-piece, and as handy as a cotton-picker. I wish I could have shown you 'Stonewall.' I called him 'Stonewall' after Jackson, you may be sure. A great, slapping chestnut, sixteen hands high, and up to carrying two hundred pounds weight. Before I'd ridden him a week he'd lift a glove like a retriever, and walk on his hind legs like a poodle. I could tell you things of that horse that I'll defyyou, or any man to believe! I was riding him on the twenty-first of——Halloo! here we are at Slough. What a queer old woman, hobbling along the platform! Now, that's the sort of figure you wouldn't see from one end of the States to the other. Where do you suppose they raised her, and what do you think she is?"
"Somebody's aunt, I should say," answered Frank carelessly, hardly vouchsafing a glance, as the train moved on; and Miss Ross drew a long breath of relief to find herself safe and undiscovered at Slough Station, within a few miles of her boy.
She thought well, however, to retain her disguise for the present, feeling such confidence in its efficiency that she regretted the first impulse of panic when she saw Picard should have prompted her to alter her destination. She reflected that, had she gone on to Windsor, she could have made sure of his proceedings, while remaining herself unrecognised, and that it would have been simpler and less trouble to watch the hawk than the nest. She must hover round the latter now, and so baffle this bird of prey, even in the very neighbourhood of its quarry.
So Miss Ross, putting more deformity into her figure, more limp into her gait, shrouding herself more sedulously in her veils, her spectacles, and her respirator, seized on a job-carriage she found unoccupied, and ordered its driver to proceed leisurely in the direction of The Lilies. She was glad to have half-an-hour's quiet, in which to think over her plans, undisturbed by the jingling of this unassuming conveyance, and felt her courage rising, her wits growing brighter, as the moments drew near to test the steadiness of the one and the quickness of the other.