PROPER PRIDE.CHAPTER I.MALTA.
PROPER PRIDE.
December in Malta is very different from that month in England. There is no snow, no black frost, no fog; a bright, turquoise-blue sky, and deep indigo sea, smooth as glass, and dotted here and there with the white sails of fishing-boats, make a becoming background for this buff-coloured island. The air is soft, yet exhilarating; a perfume of oranges, cheroots, and flowers pervades the atmosphere. Little boys, with superb dark eyes, arethrusting delicious bunches of roses and heliotrope into the hands of passers-by, and demanding “sixpence.” The new piano-organs are grinding away mercilessly at the corner of every street. A trooper, a Peninsular and Oriental, and a vicious-looking ironclad are all in simultaneously, and Valetta is crammed. Such, at least, was the scene one December afternoon, not many years ago. It was the fashionable hour; the Strada Reale was full of shoppers, sightseers, and loungers; half the garrison were strolling up and down. Fat monks in brown, thin nuns in black, fruitsellers, Maltese women in their picturesque faldettas, soldiers, sailors, rich men, poor men, beggar men, and no doubt thieves, thronged the hot white pavement.
Outside Marîche’s, the well-known tobacconist, two young men, bearing theunmistakable stamp of the British warrior of the period, were smoking the inevitable weed.
Cox, “the horsey,” with hands in pockets, was holding forth at intervals, to Brown, “theblasé,” and ladies’ manpar excellence, of the gallant smashers.
“Never saw such a hole as this is in my life—never! No hunting, no shooting, no sport of any kind. Think of all the tiptop runs they are having at home now! IfThe Fieldis to be believed, there never was such going; nor, for the matter of that, such grief. Here we are—stuck on an island; water wherever you look; not a horse worth twenty pounds in the place!”
“Oh come, my dear fellow,” remonstrated his friend, “what about the Colonel’s barb, and half-a-dozen others I could mention?”
“Well, not ahunter, at any rate, and that’s all the same. If we are left here another year, I believe I shall cut my throat—or getmarried.”
Looking at his companion with critical gravity, to see how he took this tremendous alternative, but observing no wonderful expression of alarm or anxiety depicted on his face, he continued to puff furiously at the cigar, which he held almost savagely between his set teeth. Suddenly he exclaimed:
“By Jove, there’s that Miss Saville that all the fellows are talking about! Why she’s nothing but a schoolgirl after all.”
“Nevertheless, she is the prettiest girl in Valetta,” replied Mr. Brown, taking his cheroot out of his mouth and gazing with an air of languid approval after a tall slight figure, in a well-cut blueserge costume, that, in company with an elderly lady, was crossing the Palace Square.
“By the way, Brown, whoisthis Miss Saville when she is at home?”
“Miss Saville,” replied Brown, propping himself against the doorway, and evidently preparing for a narrative, “is——In the first place, an heiress, four thousand a-year, my dear boy—think of that.”
Encouraged by a nod from Cox, he proceeded:
“She is also an orphan.”
“Good!” quoth Cox emphatically.
“But you need not run away with the idea that she is an unprotected female. She has a guardian,” continued his friend impressively.
“It seems that her father, General Saville, saved or made a lot of money outin India, and this girl was his only child. Her mother died when she was a baby, and she was sent home and received a first-class education, includingallthe extras. Are you listening?”
“Of course I am; get on with the story.”
“Well, old Saville, who had always meant to come home and live on his fortune and repose on his laurels, trusted too long to the climate, and left his bones in the cemetery at Lahore, and his daughter to his great chum, Sir Greville Fairfax, with her fortune and her hand, both tightly tied up, not to marry without his full consent, not to come of age till she was five-and-twenty, and all that sort of thing, you know.”
“Yes, yes; go on.”
“Hurry no man’s cattle, the day is young,” said Brown, removing his cherootafter two or three puffs, and contemplating it with apparent interest.
“About six months later,” he proceeded oracularly, “Sir Greville died suddenly of heart disease, and it was found by his will that he had passed on the guardianship of the fair Alice to his son—to hisson, a young fellow of four-and-twenty, a captain in the Fifth Hussars, and now with his regiment in India. What do you think of that?”
“Think!” returned his friend, with emphasis; “I think it was meant as an uncommonly strong hint for the son to marry her.”
“And so he will, be sure. A pretty girl, with four thousand pounds a-year and no relations, is not to be had every day. I only wish I had such a chance. But I am afraid that a sub in a marching regiment, with a pittance of a hundredpounds a year and his pay, would be rather out of the running.”
“You may say so,” replied Cox candidly, plunging his hands still deeper into his pockets. “That old dowager would make short work of ‘the likes of you,’ as they say in the Green Isle.”
“No doubt she would. She is a Miss Fane, an aunt of Fairfax’s, and has been all autumn at Nice; and is now here on a visit to the Lee-Dormers. Of course she will keep the fair Alice for her nephew.”
“How do you know all this? How do you know her name is Alice?” inquired Captain Cox.
“Oh, I know a good many things,” returned his friend, with careless complacency, resuming his cheroot and a critical inspection of all passers-by.
His companion gazed at him for somemoments with a kind of sleepy admiration, and then suddenly burst out:
“Is this Fairfax a dark, slim, good-looking fellow? for I recollect a Fairfax, an A1 rider, winning the Grand Military at Punchestown some three years ago; he was in the cavalry, I know.”
“Yes, that’s he—Reginald Fairfax. Since then he has been improving the shining hour in the gorgeous East, tiger-shooting, pig-sticking, polo-playing, and so on. His regiment is in this season’s reliefs, and, very likely, on its way home now.”
“But the Fairfax I knew had lots of coin, never went near a lady, and would be the last man in the world to settle down and get married. He cared for nothing but sport of all kinds—hunting, racing, shooting, and so on; and if he is the identical guardian, Miss Saville islikely to remain Miss Saville as far as he is concerned. Money would be no temptation to him,” he concluded triumphantly.
“Well,” rejoined Mr. Brown, “if he won’t marry her, someone else will; it will be all the same to you and me. Here, my cheroot is out; come along and take a turn in the Strada, and give the natives a treat.”Exeunt, arm-in-arm.