II.
THE CANADIAN'S COLD BATH WARMS UP THE COLONEL.
Deerhurst was a capital house to spend a Christmas in. It was the house of an English gentleman, with even the dens called bachelors' rooms comfortable and luxurious to the last extent: a first-rate stud, a capital billiard table, a good sporting country, pretty girls to amuse one with when tired of the pink, the best Chablis and Château Margaux to be had anywhere, and a host who would have liked a hundred people at his dinner-table the whole year round. The snow, confound it! prevented our taking the hounds out for the first few days; but we were not bored as one might have expected, and our misery was the girls' delight, who were fervently hoping that the ice might come thick enough for them to skate. Cecil was invaluable in a country-house; her resources were as unlimited as Houdin's inexhaustible bottle. She played in French vaudevilles and Sheridan Knowles's comedies, acted charades, planned tableaux vivants, sang gay wild chansons peculiar to herself, that made the Screechington bravuras and themes more insupportable than ever; and, what was more, managed to infuse into everybody else some of her own energy and spirit. She made every one do as she liked; but she tyrannised over us so charmingly that we never chafed at the bit; and to the other girls she was so good-natured in giving them the rôles they liked, in praising, and in aiding them, that it was difficult for feminine malice, though its limits are boundless, to find fault with her. Vivian, though he did not relax his criticism of her, was agreeable to her, as he had been in Canada, and as he is always to women when he is not too lazy. He consented to stand for Rienzi in a tableau, though he hates doing all those things, and played in the Proverbs with such a flashing fire of wit in answer to Cecil that we told him he beat Mathews.
"I'm inspired," he said, with a laughing bend of his head to Cecil, when somebody complimented him.
She gave an impatient movement—she was accustomed to have such things whispered in earnest, not in jest. She laughed, however. "Are you inspired, then, to take Huon's part? All the characters are cast but that."
"I'm afraid I can't play well enough."
"Nonsense. You cannot think that. Say you would rather not at once."
Vivian stroked his mustaches thoughtfully. "Well, you see, it bores me rather; and I'm not Christian enough to suffer ennui cheerfully to please other people."
"Very well, then, I will give the part to Sir Horace," said Cecil, looking through the window at the church spire, covered with the confounded snow.
Vivian stroked away at his mustaches rather fiercely this time. "Cos! he'll ruin the play. Dress him up as a lord in waiting, he'll be a dainty lay figure, but for anything more he's not as fit as this setter! Fancy that essenced, fair-haired young idiot taking Huon—his lisp would be so effective!"
She looked up in his face with one of her mischievous, dangerous smiles, and put up her hands in an attitude of petition. "He must have the part if you won't. Be good, and don't spoil the play. I have set my mind on its being perfect, and—I will have such a dress as the Countess if you will only do as I tell you."
Cecil, in her soft, childlike moods, could finish any man. Of course Vivian rehearsed "Love" with her that afternoon, a play that was to come off on the 23rd. Cos sulked slightly at being commanded by her to dress himself beautifully and play the Prince of Milan.
"To be refused by you," lisped Horace. "Oh, I dare say! No! 'pon my life——"
"My dear Cos, you'll have plenty of fellow-sufferers," whispered Syd, mischievously.
"Do you dare to disobey me, Sir Horace?" cried Cecil. "For shame! I should have thought you more of a preux chevalier. If you don't order over from Boxwood that suit of Milan armor you say one of your ancestors wore at Flodden, and wear it on Tuesday, you shall never waltz with me again. Now what do you say?"
"Nobody can rethitht you," murmured Cos. "You do anything with a fellow that you chooth."
Vivian glanced down at him with superb scorn, and turned to me. "What a confounded frost this is. The weathercock sticks at the north, and old Ben says there's not a chance of a change till the new moon. Qui Vive might as well have kept at Hounslow. To waste all the season like this would make a parson swear! If I'd foreseen it I would have gone to Paris with Lovell, as he wanted me to do."
I suppose the Colonel was piqued to find he was not the only one persuaded into his rôle. He bent over Laura Caldecott's chair, a pretty girl, but with nothing to say for herself, admired her embroidery, and talked with great empressement about it, till Laura, much flattered at such unusual attention, after lisping a good deal of nonsense, finally promised to embroider a note-case for him, "if you'll be good and use it, and not throw it away, as you naughty men always do the pretty things we give you," simpered Miss Laura.
"Hearts included," said Syd, smiling. "I assure you if you give me yours, I will prize it with Turkish jealousy."
The fair brodeuse gave a silly laugh; and Vivian, whose especial detestation is this sort of love-making nonsense, went on flirting with her, talking the persiflage that one whispers leaning over the back of a phaeton after a dinner at the Castle or a day at Ascot, but never expects to be called to remember the next morning, when one bows to the object thereof in the Ring, and the flavor of the claret-cup and the scent of the cigar are both fled with the moonbeams and forgotten.
Cecil gave the Colonel and his flirtation a glance, and let Cossetting lean over the back of her chair and deliver himself of some lackadaisical sentiment (taken second-hand out of "Isidora" or the "Amant de la Lune," and diluted to be suitable for presentation to her), looking up at him with her large velvet eyes, or flashing on him her radiant smile, till Horace pulled up his little stiff collar, coaxed his flaxen whiskers, looked at her with his half-closed light eyes—and thought himself irresistible—and Miss Screechington broke the string of the purse she was making, and scattered all the steel beads about the floor in the futile hope of gaining his attention. Blanche went down on her knees and spent twenty minutes hunting them all up; but as I helped her I saw the turquoise eyes looked anything but grateful for our efforts, though if Blanche had done anything for me with that ready kindness and those soft little white hands, I should have repaid her very warmly. But oh, these women! these women! Do they ever love one another in their hearts? Does not Chloris always swear that Lelia's gazelle eyes have a squint in them and Delia hint that Daphne, who is innocent as a dove, is bad style, and horridly bold?
At last Cecil got tired of Cos's drawling platitudes, and walked up to one of the windows. "How is the ice, will anybody tell me? I am wild to try it, ain't you, Blanche? If we are kept waiting much longer, we will have the carpets up and skate on the oak floors."
I told her I thought they might try it safely. "Then let us go after luncheon, shall we?" said Cecil. "It is quite sunny now. You skate, of course, Sir Horace?"
"Oh! to be sure—certainly," murmured Cos. "We'd a quadrille on the Serpentine last February, Talbot, and I, and some other men—lots of people said they never saw it better done. But it's rather cold—don't you think so?"
"Do you expect to find ice in warm weather?" said Vivian, curtly, from the fire, where he was standing watching the commencement of the note-case.
"No. But I hate cold," said Horace, looking at his snowy fingers. "One looks such a figure—blue, and wet, and shivering; the house is much the best place in a frost."
"Poor fellow!" said Vivian, with a contemptuous twist of his mustaches. "I fear, however fêté you may be in every other quarter, the seasons won't change to accommodate you."
"Oh! you are a dreadful man," drawled Cos. "You don't a bit mind tanning yourself, nor getting drenched through, nor soiling your hands——"
"Thank Heaven, no!" responded Syd. "I'm neither a school-girl, nor—a fop."
"Would you believe it, Miss St. Aubyn?" said the baronet, appealingly. "That man'll get up before daylight and let himself be drenched to the skin for the chance of playing a pike; and will turn out of a comfortable arm-chair on a winter's night just to go after poachers and knock a couple of men over, and think it the primest fun in life. I don't understand it myself, do you?"
"Yes," said Cecil, fervently. "I delight in a man's love for sport, for I idolise horses, and there is nothing that can beat a canter on a fine fresh morning over a grass country; and I believe that a man who has the strength, and nerve, and energy to go thoroughly into fishing, or shooting, or whatever it be, will carry the same will and warmth into the rest of his life; and the hand that is strong in the field and firm in righteous wrath, will be the truer in friendship and the gentler in pity."
Cecil spoke with energetic enthusiasm. Horace stared, the Screechington sneered, Laura gave an affected little laugh. The Colonel swung round from his study of the fire, his face lighting up. I've seen Syd on occasion look as soft as a woman. However, he said nothing; he only took her in to luncheon, and was exceedingly kind to her and oblivious of Laura Caldecott's existence throughout that meal, which, at Deerhurst, was of unusual splendor and duration. And afterwards, when she had arrayed herself in a hat with soft curling feathers, and looped up her dress in some inexplicable manner that showed her dainty high heels artistically, he took her little skates in his hand and walked down by her side to the pond. It was some way to the pond—a good sized piece of water, that snobs would have called the Lake, by way of dignifying their possessions, with willows on its banks (where in summer the sentimental Screechington would have reclined, Tennyson à la main), and boats and punts beside it, among which was a tub, in which Blanche confessed to me she had paddled herself across to the saturation of a darling blue muslin, and the agonised feelings of her governess, only twelve months before.
"A dreadful stiff old thing that governess was," said Blanche, looking affectionately at the tub. "Do you know, Captain Thornton, when she went away, and I saw her boxes actually on the carriage-top, I waltzed round the schoolroom seven times, and burnt 'Noel et Chapsal' in the fire—I did, indeed!"
The way, as I say, was long to the pond; and as Cecil's dainty high heels and Syd's swinging cavalry strides kept pace over the snow together, they had plenty of time for conversation.
"Miss Caldecott is looking for you," said Cecil, with a contemptuous glance at the fair Laura, who, between two young dandies, was picking her route over the snow holding her things very high indeed, and casting back looks at the Colonel.
"Is she? It is very kind of her."
"If you feel the kindness so deeply, you had better repay it by joining her."
Vivian laughed. "Not just now, thank you. We are close to the kennels—hark at their bay! Would you like to come and see them? By-the-by, how is your wolf-dog—Leatherstockings, didn't you call him?"
"Do you remember him?" said Cecil, her eyes beaming and her lips quivering. "Dear old dog, I loved him so much, and he loved me. He was bitten by an asp just before I left, and papa would have him shot. Good gracious! what is the matter?—she is actually frightened at that setter!"
The "she" of whom Cecil so disdainfully spoke was Miss Caldecott, who, on seeing a large setter leap upon her with muddy paws and much sudden affection, began to scream, and rushed to Vivian with a beseeching cry of "Save me, save me!" Cecil stood and laughed, and called the setter to her.
"Here, Don—Dash—what is your name? Come here, good dog. That poor young lady has nerves, and you must not try them, or you will cause her endless expenses in sal volatile and ether; But I have no such interesting weaknesses, and you may lavish any demonstrations you please on me!"
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 sex 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—voilà tout. There is no great harm in it."
A shadow of disappointment passed 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 passionless 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 compassion 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 shore.
"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 astonishing 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 glass. "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 shining 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, Halévy'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 passion 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 sex, 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.