Beatrice Boville and Other Stories Part 12

"Stuff! An attractive girl can't make herself ugly or disagreeable, or erect a brick wall round herself, with iron spikes on the top, for fear, through looking at her, any fellow might come to grief. The men followed her, and she couldn't help that."

"And she encouraged them, and she _could_ help that. However, I don't wish to speak against her; it's nothing to me how she kills and slays, provided I'm not among the bag. Take care you don't get shot yourself, Ned."

"Keep your counsel for your own use, Syd. You put me in mind of the philanthropist, who ran to warn his neighbor of the dangers of soot while his own chimney was on fire."

"As how? I don't quite see the point of your parable," said Vivian, with an expression of such innocent impa.s.siveness that one would have thought he had never seen her fair face out of her furs in her sledge, or admired her small ankles when she was skating on the Ontario.

The winter before, a brother of mine, who was out there in the Rifles, wrote and asked me to go and have some buffalo-hunting, and Vivian went out with me for a couple of months. We had some very good sport in the western woods and plains, and his elk and bison horns are still stuck up in Vivian's rooms at Uxbridge, with many another trophy of both hemispheres. We had sport of another kind, too, to the merry music of the silvery sledge-bells, over the crisp snow and the gleaming ice, while bright eyes shone on us under delicate lace veils, and little feet peeped from under heaps of sable and bearskin, and gay voices rang out in would-be fear when the horses s.h.i.+ed at the shadow of themselves, or at the moon s.h.i.+ning on the ice. Who thinks of Canada without in fancy hearing the ringing chimes of the gay sledge bells swinging joyous measure into the clear suns.h.i.+ne or the white moonlight, in tune with light laughter, and soft whispers, and careless hearts?

There we saw Cecil St. Aubyn, one of the prettiest girls in Toronto, then about nineteen. My brother Harry was mad about her, so were almost all the men in the Canada Rifles, and Engineers, and, 61st that were quartered there; and Vivian admired her too, though in a calmer sort of way. Perhaps if he had been with her more than a fortnight he might have gone further. As it was, he left Toronto liking her long Canadian eyes no more than was pleasant. It was as well so, perhaps, for it would not have been a good match for him, St. Aubyn being a broken-down gambler, who, having lost a princely fortune at Crocky's, and the Bads, married at fifty a widow with a little money, and migrated to Toronto, where he was a torment to himself and to everybody else. Vivian, meanwhile, was a great matrimonial _coup_. Coming of a high county family, and being the only son, of course there was priceless value set on his life, which, equally, of course, he imperilled, after the manner of us all, in every way he could--in charges and skirmishes, yachting, hunting, and steeple-chasing--ever since some two-and-twenty years ago he joined as a cornet of fifteen--a man already in muscle and ideas, pleasures and pursuits.

At the present time he had been tranquilly engaged in the House, as he represented the borough of Cacklebury.

He spoke seldom, but always well, and was thought a very promising member, his speeches being in Bernal Osborne's style; but he himself cared little about his senatorial laurels, and was fervently hoping that there would be a row with Russia, and that we should be allowed to go and stick Croats and make love to Bayaderes, to freshen us up and make us boys again.

Next week, the first in December, he and I drove to Paddington, put ourselves in the express, and whisked through the snow-covered embankments, whitened fields, and holly hedges on the line down to Deerhurst. If the frost broke up we should have magnificent runs, and we looked at the country with a longing eye. Ever since he was six years old, he told me, he had gone out with the Harkaway Hack on Christmas-eve. When the drag met us, with the four bays steaming in the night air, and the groom warming into a smile at the sight of the Colonel, the sleet was coming down heavily, and the wind blew as keen as a sabre's edge. The bays dashed along at a furious gallop under Vivian's hand, the frosty road cracked under the wheel, the leaders' breath was white in the misty night; we soon flew through the park gate--though he didn't forget to throw down a sovereign on the snow for the old porteress--and up the leafless avenue, and bright and cheery the old manor-house, with its score of windows, like so many bright eyes, looked out upon the winter's night.

"By George! we did that four miles quick enough," said Vivian, jumping down, and shaking the snow off his hair and mustaches. "The old place looks cheery, doesn't it? Ah! there are the girls; they're sure to pounce on me."

The two girls in question having warm hearts, not spoilt by the fas.h.i.+onable world they live in, darted across the hall, and, regardless of the snow, welcomed him ardently. They were proud of him, for he is a handsome dog, with haughty, aristocratic features, and a grand air as stately as a n.o.ble about Versailles in the polished "Age dore."

He shook himself free, and went forward to meet his mother, whom he is very fond of; while the governor, a fine-looking, genial old fellow, bade me welcome to Deerhurst. In the library door I caught sight of a figure in white that I recognised as our belle of the sledge drives; she was looking at Vivian as he bent down to his mother. As soon as she saw me though, she disappeared, and he and I went up to our rooms to thaw, and dress for dinner.

By the fire, talking to Blanche Vivian, stood Cecil, when we went down to the drawing-room. She always makes me think of a Sevres or Dresden figure, her coloring is so delicate, and yet brilliant; and if you were to see her Canadian eyes, her waving chestnut hair, and her instantaneous, radiant, coquettish smiles, you would not wonder at the Toronto men losing their heads about her.

"Why, Cecil, you never told me you knew Sydney!" cried Blanche, as Vivian shook hands with the St. Aubyn. "Where did you meet him? how long have you been acquainted? why did you never tell me?"

"How could I tell Colonel Vivian was your brother?" said Cecil, playing with a little silver Cupid driving a barrowful of matches on the mantelpiece till she tumbled all his matches into the fender.

"You might have asked. Never mind the wax-lights," said Blanche, who, not having been long out, had a habit of saying anything that came into her head. "When did you see him? Tell me, Sydney, if she won't."

"Oh, in Canada, dear!" interrupted Cecil, quickly. "But it was for so short a time I should have thought Colonel Vivian would have forgotten my face, and name, and existence."

"Nay, Miss St. Aubyn," said Vivian, smiling. "Pardon me, but I think you must know your own power too well to think that any man who has seen you once could hope for his own peace to forget you."

The words of course were flattering, but his quizzical smile made them doubtful. Cecil evidently took them as satire. "At least, you've forgotten anything we talked about at Toronto," she said, rather impatiently, "for I remember telling you I detested compliments."

"I shouldn't have guessed it," murmured Vivian, stroking his mustaches.

"And you," Cecil went on, regardless of the interruption, "told me you never complimented any woman you respected; so that speech just now doesn't say much for your opinion of me."

"How dare I begin to like you?" laughed Vivian.

"Don't you know Levinge and Castlereagh were great friends of mine? Poor fellows! the sole object of their desires now is six feet of Crimean sod, if we're lucky enough to get out there." Cecil colored. Levinge's and Castlereagh's hard drinking and gloomy aspect at mess were popularly attributed to the witchery of the St. Aubyn. Canada, while she was in it, was as fatal to the Service as the Cape or the cholera.

"If I talked so romantically, Colonel Vivian, with what superb mockery you would curl your mustaches. Surely the Iron Hand (wasn't that your sobriquet in Caffreland?) does not believe in broken hearts?"

"Perhaps not; but I _do_ believe in some people's liking to try and break them."

"So do I. It is a favorite pastime with your s.e.x," said Cecil, beating the hearth-rug impatiently with her little satin shoe.

"I don't think we often attack," laughed Vivian. "We sometimes yield out of amiability, and we sometimes take out the foils in self-defence, though we are no match for those delicate hands that use their Damascus blades so skilfully. We soon learn to cry quarter!"

"To a dozen different conquerors in as many months, then!" cried Cecil, with a defiant toss of her head.

Vivian looked down on her as a Newfoundland might look down on a small and impetuous-minded King Charles, who is hoping to irritate him. Just then three other people staying there came in. A fat old dowager and a thin daughter, who had turquoise eyes, and from whom, being a great pianist, we all fled in mortal terror of a hailstorm of Thalberg and Hertz, and a cousin of Syd's, Cossetting, a young chap, a blondin, with fair curls parted down the centre, whose brains were small, hands like a girl's, and thoughts centred on dew _bouquets_ and his own beauty, but who, having a baronetcy, with much tin, was strongly set upon by the turquoise eyes, but appeared himself to lean more towards the Canadian, as a greater contrast to himself, I suppose.

"How do you do, Cos?" said Vivian, carelessly. The Iron Hand very naturally scorned this effeminate _patte de velours_.

"You here!" lisped the baronet. "Delighted to see you! thought you'd killed yourself over a fence, or something, before this----"

"Why, Horace," burst in energetic little Blanche, "I have told you for the last month that he was coming down for Christmas."

"Did you, my dear child?" said Cos. "'Pon my life I forgot it. Miss St.

Aubyn, my man Cleante (he's the handiest dog--he once belonged to the Duc d'Aumale) has just discovered something quite new--there's no perfume like it; he calls it 'Fleurs des Tilleuls,' and the best of it is, n.o.body can have it. If you'll allow me----"

"Everybody seems to make it their duty to forget Sydney," muttered Blanche, as the Baronet murmured the rest of his speech inaudibly.

"Never mind, pet.i.te; I can bear it," laughed Vivian, leaning against the mantelpiece with that look of quiet strength characteristic of both his mind and body.

Cecil overheard the whisper, and flushed a quick look at him; then turning to Cossetting, talked over the "Fleurs des Tilleuls" as if her whole mind was absorbed in _bouquet_.

When dinner was announced, Vivian troubled himself, however, to give his arm to Cecil, and, tossing his head back in the direction of the turquoise eyes, said to the discomfited Horace, "You sing, don't you, Cosset? Miss Screechington will bore you less than she would me."

"Is it, then, because I 'bore you less' that you do me the honor?" asked Cecil, quickly.

"Yes," said Syd, calmly; "or, rather, to put it more courteously, you amuse me more."

"Monseigneur! je vous remercie," said Cecil, her long almond eyes sparkling dangerously. "You promote me to the same rank with an opera, a hookah, a rat-hunt, and a French novel?"

"And," Vivian went on tranquilly, "I dare say I shall amuse _you_ better than that poor little fool with his lisp and his talk of the toilet, and his hands that never pulled in a thorough-bred or aided a rowing match."

"Oh, we're not in the Iliad and Odyssey days to deify physical strength," said Cecil, who secretly adored it, as all women do; "nor yet among the p.a.w.nees to reverence a man according to his scalps. Though Sir Horace may not have followed your example and jeopardised his life on every possible occasion, he is very handsome, and can be very agreeable."

"Is it possible you can endure that fop?" said Vivian, quickly.

"Certainly. Why not?"

The Colonel stroked his moustache contemptuously. "I should have fancied you more difficile, that is all; but Cos is, as you say, good-looking, and very well off. I wish----"

"What? That you were 'less bored?'"

"That I always wish; but I was thinking of Cos, there--milk-posset, as little Eardley in the troop says they called him at Eton--I was wis.h.i.+ng he could see Levinge and Castlereagh, just as _epouvantails_, to make him turn and flee as the French n.o.blesse did when they saw their cousins and brothers strung up a la lanterne."

"Wasn't it very strange," Blanche was saying to me at the same time, "that Cecil never mentioned Sydney? I've so often spoken of him, told her his troop, and all about him. (He has always been so kind to me, though he is eighteen years older--just twice my age.) Besides, I found her one day looking at his picture in the gallery, so she must have known it was the same Colonel Vivian, mustn't she Captain Thornton?"

"I should say so. Have you known her long?"

"No. We met her at Brighton this August with that silly woman, Mrs.