Beatrice Boville and Other Stories Part 14

We all laughed as she thus talked confidentially to the setter, holding his feathered paws against her waist; while Vivian stood by her with admiration in his glance. Poor Laura looked foolish, and began to caress a great bull-dog, who snapped at her. She hadn't Cecil's ways either with dogs or men.

"What a delightful scene," whispered Cecil to the Colonel, as we left the kennels. "You were not half so touched by it as you were expected to be!"

Vivian laughed. "Didn't you effectually destroy all romantic effect? You can be very mischievous to your enemies."

Cecil colored. "She is no enemy of mine; I know nothing of her, but I do detest that mock sentimentality, that would-be fine ladyism that thinks it looks interesting when it pleads guilty to sal volatile, and screams at an honest dog's bark. Did you see how shocked she and Miss Screechington looked because I let the hounds leap about me?"

"Of course; but though you have not lived very long, you must have learned that you are too dangerous to the peace of our s.e.x to expect much mercy from your own."

A flush came into Cecil's cheeks _not_ brought by the wind. Her feathers gave a little dance as she shook her head with her customary action of annoyance.

"Ah, never compliment me, I am so tired of it."

"I wish I could believe that," said Syd, in a low tone. "Your feelings are warm, your impulses frank and true; it were a pity to mar them by an undue love for the flattering voices of empty-headed fools."

Tears of pleasure started into her eyes, but she would not let him see it. She had not forgotten the Caldecott flirtation of the morning enough to resist revenging it. She looked up with a merry laugh.

"Je m'amuse--voila tout. There is no great harm in it."

A shadow of disappointment pa.s.sed over Syd's haughty face.

"No, if you do not do it once too often. I _have_ known men--and women too--who all their lives through have been haunted by the memory of a slight word, a careless look, with which, unwittingly or in obstinacy, they shut the door of their own happiness. Have you ever heard of the Deerhurst ghost?"

"No," said Cecil, softly. "Tell it me."

"It is a short story. Do you know that picture of Muriel Vivian, the girl with the hawk on her wrist and long hair of your color? She lived in Charles's time, and was a great beauty at the court. There were many who would have lived and died for her, but the one who loved her best was her cousin Guy. The story says that she had plighted herself to him in these very woods; at any rate, he followed her when she went to join the court, and she kept him on, luring him with vague promises, and flirting with Goring, and Francis Egerton, and all the other gay gentlemen. One night his endurance broke down: he asked her whether or no she cared for him? He begged, as a sign, for the rosebud she had in her dress. She laughed at him, and--gave the flower to Harry Carrew, a young fellow in Lunsford's 'Babe-eaters.' Guy said no more, and left her. Before dawn he shot Carrew through the heart, took the rosebud from the boy's doublet, put it in his own breast, and fell upon his sword.

They say Muriel lost her senses. I don't believe it: no coquette ever had so much feeling; but if you ask the old servants they will tell you, and firmly credit the story too, that hers and Guy Vivian's ghosts still are to be seen every midnight at Christmas-eve, the day that he fought and killed little Harry Carrew."

He laughed, but Cecil shuddered.

"What a horrible story! But do you believe that any woman ever possessed such power over a man?"

"I believe it since I have seen it. One of my best friends is now hopelessly insane because a woman as worthless as this dead branch forsook him. Poor fellow! they set it down to a coup de soleil, but it was the falsehood of Emily Rushbrooke that did it. But, for myself, I never should lose my head for any woman. I did once when I was a boy, but I know better now."

A wild, desperate idea came into Cecil's mind. She contrasted the pa.s.sionless calm of his face with the tender gentleness of his tone a few moments ago, and she would have given her life to see him "lose his head for her" as he had done for that other. How she hated her, whoever she had been! Cecil had seen too many men not to know that Syd's cool exterior covered a stormy heart, and in the longing to rouse up the storm at her incantation she resolved to play a dangerous game. The ghost story did not warn her. As Mephistopheles to Faust came Horace Cos to aid the impulse, and Cecil turned to him with one of her radiant smiles. She never looked prettier than in her black hat; the wind had only blown a bright flush into her cheeks--though it had turned Laura blue and the Screechington red--and the Colonel looked up at her as he put her skates on with something of the look Guy might have given Muriel Vivian flirting gaily with the roistering cavaliers.

"Now, Sir Horace, show us some of those wonderful Serpentine figures,"

cried Cecil, balancing herself with the grace of a curlew, and whirling here, there, and everywhere at her will as easily as if she were on a chalked ball-room floor. She hadn't skated and sledged on the Ontario for nothing. More than one man had lost his own balance looking after her. Cos wasn't started yet; one pair of skates were too large, another pair too small; if he'd thought of it he'd have had his own sent over.

He stood on the brink much as Winkle, of Pickwickian memory, trembled in Weller's grasp. Cecil looked at him with laughing eyes, a shrewd suspicion that he had planted her adorer, and that the quadrille on the Serpentine was an offspring of the Cossetting poetic fancy. Thrice did the luckless baronet essay the ice, and thrice did he come to grief with heels in the air, and his dainty apparel disordered. At last, his Canadian sorceress took compa.s.sion upon him, and declaring she was tired, asked him to drive her across the pond. Cos, with an air of languid martyrdom and a heavy sigh as he glanced at his Houbigants, torn and soiled, grasped the back of the chair, and actually contrived to start it. Once started, away went the chair and its Phaeton after it, whether he would or no, its occupant looking up and laughing in the dandy's heated, disconcerted, and anxious face. All at once there was a crash, a plunge, and a shout from Vivian, who was on the opposite bank.

The chair had broken the ice, flung Cecil out into the water with the shock, while her charioteer, by a lucky jump backwards, had saved himself, and stood on the brink of the chasm unharmed. Cecil's crinoline kept her from sinking; she stretched out her little hand with a cry--it sounded like Vivian's name as it came to my ears on the keen north wind--but before Vivian, who came across the ice like a whirlwind, could get to her, Cos, valorously determining to wet his wristbands, stooped down, and, holding by the chair, which was firmly wedged in, put his arm round her and dragged her out. Vivian came up two seconds too late.

"Are you hurt?" he said, bending towards her.

"No," said Cecil, faintly, as her head drooped unconsciously on Cos's shoulder. She had struck her forehead on the ice, which had stunned her slightly. The Colonel saw the chestnut hair resting against Cos's arm; he dropped the hand he had taken, and turned to the sh.o.r.e.

"Bring her to the bank," he said, briefly. "I will go home and send a carriage. Good Heavens! that that fool should have saved her!" I heard him mutter, as he brushed past me.

He drove the carriage down himself, and under pretext of holding on the horses, did not descend from the box while Horace wrapped rugs and cloaks round Cecil, who, having more pluck than strength, declared she was quite well now, but nearly fainted when Horace lifted her out, and she was consigned by Mrs. Vivian to her bedroom for the rest of the day.

"It is astonis.h.i.+ng how we miss Cecil," remarked Blanche, at dinner.

"Isn't it dull without her, Sydney?"

"I didn't perceive it," said the Colonel, calmly; "but I am very sorry for the cause of her absence."

"Well, by Jove! it sounds unfeeling; but I can't say I am," murmured Horace. "It's something to have saved such a deuced pretty girl as that."

"Curse that puppy," muttered Syd to his champagne gla.s.s. "A fool that isn't fit for her to look at----"

Syd's and my room, in the bachelors' wing, adjoin each other; and as our windows both possess the convenience of balconies, we generally smoke in them, and hold a little chat before turning in. When I stepped out into my balcony that night, Syd was already puffing away at his pipe. Perhaps his Cavendish was unusually good, for he did not seem greatly inclined to talk, but leant over the balcony, looking out into the clear frosty night, with the winter stars s.h.i.+ning on the wide white uplands and the leafless glittering trees.

"What's that?" said he sharply, as the notes of a cornet playing, and playing badly, Halevy's air, "Quand de la Nuit," struck on the night air.

"A serenade, I suppose."

"A serenade in the snow. Who is romantic idiot enough for that?" said Vivian contemptuously, nearly pitching himself over to see where the cornet came from. It came from under Cecil's windows, where a light was still burning. The player looked uncommonly like Cossetting wrapped up in a cloak with a wide-awake on, under which the moonlight showed us some fair hair peeping.

Vivian drew back with an oath he did not mean me to hear. He laughed scornfully. "Milk-posset, of course! There is no other fool in the house. His pa.s.sion must be miraculously deep to drag him out of his bed into the snow to play some false notes to his lady-love. It's rather windy, don't you think, Ned. Good night, old fellow--and, I say, don't turn little Blanche's head with your pretty speeches. You and I are bound not to flirt, since we're sworn never to marry; and I don't want the child played with, though possibly (being a woman) she'd very soon recover it."

With which sarcasm on his sister and her s.e.x, the Colonel shut down the window with a clang; and I remained, smoking four pipes and a half, meditating on his last words, for I _had_ been playing with the child, and felt (inhuman brute! the ladies will say) that I should be sorry if she _did_ recover it.

III.

SHOWING THAT LOVE-MAKING ON HOLY GROUND DOESN'T PROSPER.

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 ent.i.tled to Cecil's eternal grat.i.tude and admiration 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 impa.s.sively. 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 pa.s.sed 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 of _my_ troubling 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 Cleante'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.