A KISS.
As she sped fast through sun and shade
The happy winds upon her played,
Blowing the ringlets from the braid;
She looked so lovely as she swayed
The rein with dainty finger-tips.
A man had given all other bliss
And all his worldly worth for this:
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.
When Mrs. Vereker suggested Desvœux's temporary deposition, she overlooked two obstacles which proved fatal to the scheme's success: in the first place, Maud did not quite wish to depose him; in the next, Desvœux had not the slightest intention of being deposed. Despite all hints to stay away, he presented himself with provoking regularity at Mrs. Vereker's cottage-porch, outstayed later callers without the least compunction, and evidently felt himself quite master of the situation.
At Maud's first symptom of neglect he was more devoted, more assiduous, more amusing than ever. Both ladies were constrained in their hearts to admit that his presence was a great enlivenment. Maud, though she would not have admitted it to herself, felt sometimes impatient for his arrival. She had given Desvœux to understand that his attentions were unwelcome, but she had not the least wish that he should become inattentive. As the French song says—
Lorsque l'on dit, 'Ne m'aimez plus jamais,'
On prétend bien qu'on obéira, mais
On compte un peu sur des révoltes.
So Maud, when she tried to keep Desvœux at a distance, probably only made it apparent how much she liked him to be near; at any rate, the attempt at a little quarrel had only the result of making them better friends than before. Then there was a sort of familiarity about him which Maud was conscious of only half-disliking. Mrs. Vereker declared she had not breathed a word; but something in his look, when he spoke of Mrs. Fotheringham, convinced Maud that he had heard of her unlucky speech to that lady. When she rode with some one else she was sure to meet him, looking the picture of dulness. She knew that if they had been together they would be both having the greatest fun. And then how flat and what a bore her own companion seemed! One day she did actually go for a ride with General Beau. Mrs. Vereker asked him afterwards how they had got on, and the General arched his brow and said, 'Ah!' in a manner which suggested that he had not altogether liked it. Then, one day, in a pet, Maud went out alone, saying, 'No one can find fault with me for this.' Alas! alas! she was sauntering along in the most disconsolate manner, when, round a corner of the hill, who should come sauntering along but Desvœux, also alone and disconsolate and in the direst need of a companion! Of course under such circumstances there was nothing to be done but for Desvœux to turn his pony round and accompany her for the rest of the expedition; and then, no sooner had they done this, than, as bad luck would have it, they came upon all the people whom they particularly did not wish to meet—first the Fotheringhams, the mamma and two young ladies in palanquins, a nice young civilian escorting each; Fotheringham père on his pony, bringing up the rear—in order, as Desvœux said scornfully, to cut off retreat if the young men's hearts failed them.
'If that is courtship à la mode,' he said, 'Heaven preserve us! Fancy four parental eyes glaring at every act! My love is a sensitive plant and would shrink up at every look.'
Maud, however, felt that it was no joke, and was very much provoked with Desvœux. She was in the act of turning back to join the Fotheringhams.
'Don't, pray don't,' said Desvœux; 'qui s'excuse s'accuse. Why don't the two young gentlemen come and ask to be allowed to walk with us and be taken care of? If only we could afficher
"MET BY ACCIDENT,
UPON OUR HONOUR"
on our backs, and let all the world know how innocent we really are!'
And next, before Maud had at all recovered her equanimity, a turn in the road brought them face to face with all the Government House party—ladies and ponies and aides-de-camp in attendance, and, last of all, the Viceroy himself, with a big stick and wide-awake hat. 'Ah! how d'ye do, Mrs. Sutton?' he said, looking, Maud fancied, not near so good-humoured as of old and taking no notice of Desvœux; 'I hope you have good accounts of your husband?'
'Yes, very good, thank you, Lord Clare,' Maud said, blushing at a question which seemed to convey a reproach to her guilty conscience, and at the thought of how little her husband had been present to her mind of late. Altogether, Maud's attempt at a solitary ride turned out a thorough failure.
Then came the picnic, and Maud, it must be confessed, behaved like a little idiot.
'The best way to treat gossip,' Desvœux suggested, 'is to ignore it and show the world that you have nothing to be ashamed of.' By way of enforcing his doctrine he proceeded to monopolise her in the most outrageous manner; nor did she refuse to be monopolised. When other people came and tried to talk to her Desvœux stood by and contrived to make them feel themselves de trop. He put poor Boldero, who flattered himself that his afternoon's sermon was to bear good fruit, utterly to the rout; insulted General Beau by some absurd question about the Carraway Islands; put all the aides-de-camp to flight; and, even when the Viceroy came by and stopped to speak to Maud, seemed to consider it a very great intrusion.
'Really, Mr. Desvœux,' Maud said, with a laugh, 'you give yourself all the airs of a jealous husband.'
'I only wish,' said her companion, 'you had ever given me the chance of being one. But don't these people bore one? I don't feel a bit inclined to-day to be bored.'
'No more do I,' said Maud, 'but I feel very cross with you all the same. Let us go and sit by the Fotheringhams.'
'Please do not,' said Desvœux; 'here is a delightful nook, with a smooth stone for your table, and the stream making too much noise for any one to overhear us. It was evidently intended for you and me.'
So all the world had the opportunity, at lunch, of witnessing Desvœux in the act of adoration; and Desvœux, if he would let no one else have a chance of talking, had, Maud felt, plenty to say himself. It was indiscreet, but very pleasant. Even Mrs. Vereker grew alarmed, and making an excuse to pass close by them, came and whispered in Maud's ear a solemn 'Don't!'
'Don't what?' said Maud in ill-affected wonderment.
'Don't be a goose,' said her companion; 'Mr. Desvœux, would you be good-natured and go and fetch me some ice-pudding, while I sit and talk to Mrs. Sutton?'
'With pleasure,' said Desvœux, smothering his resentment as best he could; 'but where am I to sit when I come back?'
'You need not come back for half-an-hour,' said Mrs. Vereker quietly; 'go and talk with some one else. I see I must keep you young people both in order.'
Desvœux went off in dudgeon, and Mrs. Vereker lost no time in supplying his place. 'Ah, Mr. Boldero!' she said, 'come and be amusing, please, and give us the latest news from Dustypore.'
For once in his life Boldero thought Mrs. Vereker very nice.
'Be amusing!' thought Maud; 'why does not she ask him to fly to the moon at once? Only Mr. Desvœux can be that.'
And so it proved. Even Mrs. Vereker could not make conversation go. Boldero was stiff, uncordial and ill at ease. Maud was vexed, and did not care to conceal it. It was a relief when General Beau appeared, and Maud, in a pet, asked him to take her to the waterfall.
The General, who had been intending to perform the pilgrimage with Mrs. Vereker, did not betray that he was disconcerted, and professed his delight at the suggestion.
'But,' said Maud, 'can we trust those two naughty people together? My dear Mrs. Vereker, "Don't!"'
'Is not she growing saucy?' Mrs. Vereker said to Boldero; 'it is all your fault; all you gentlemen conspire to spoil her.'
'No,' said Boldero,'begging your pardon, it is all your fault. You let one of us have it all his own way. You encourage him to flirt, and encourage her to encourage him. It is a shame, Mrs. Vereker; in another fortnight her reputation will be gone.'
'Fiddlededee!' cried Mrs. Vereker. 'See what jealousy will do! You might as well accuse me of flirting with you, and every one knows that I am a saint.'
'A very pretty one and in a very pretty dress,' said Boldero, whom Mrs. Vereker's violet eyes always threw off his balance in about two minutes.
'No, thank you,' she said, tossing her shapely head in pretty scorn, 'I don't want any flattery; we are too old friends. My dress is lovely, I am well aware, and it has pleased God to make me not quite a fright. But about Maud, now: don't you know that all the gossip is simple envy; some horrid unkind old woman like Mrs. Fotheringham, with about as much heart as one of these rocks, and her two hoydens of girls? But here comes Major Fenton, who has, I consider, quite neglected me to-day.'
Major Fenton was one of the hosts, and the most eligible of the trio.
'Impossible!' he said, melting under the sweet smile from a stern, languid air which he wore to all the world; 'the duties of my day performed, its pleasures are now, I hope, about to begin. Will you come with me to the waterfall?'
Mrs. Vereker bent two soft orbs on Boldero with a reproachful look, as if to say, 'Why did you not ask me sooner?' and went off in glee with the Major; and Boldero, left in solitude to his own meditations, mentally voted this the dullest, flattest, and most unsuccessful picnic at which it had ever been his ill-luck to be a guest.
When Maud and General Beau arrived at the waterfall, there, of course, was Desvœux, trying to encourage the Miss Fotheringhams to cross the stream and so ascend to the finest point of view. This was a little more than the Miss Fotheringhams' nerves were equal to: the stream was full and foamed and tossed itself into an angry crest; the water looked black and swift and treacherous. You had to jump on to one boulder, then balance yourself on three stepping-stones through the shallows, then make one good spring to the rock opposite, and the feat was done! This, however, was just too much for the Miss Fotheringhams, who had not been trained in athletics and were not naturally what the Irishmen call 'leppers.' As they were hesitating and refusing, Maud and the General came up, looking very much bored. Maud had been finding her companion almost intolerable, and would have jumped anywhere to be free of him. There was nothing in it: Desvœux had been skipping across half-a-dozen times. 'Look,' he said, 'a skip, two hops and a jump, and there you are! Do try. Don't you see?'
'I see, exactly,' said Maud, gathering up her petticoats and giving her parasol to General Beau.
'Stop! it is not safe,' he cried; 'stop, I implore; the rocks are slippery, the water is deep. I implore, I beseech, I command!'
But the General might as well have commanded the stream to stop, for Maud was gone, and in about two seconds was standing, flushed, beautiful and triumphant, on the opposite side.
'If you will not come with us,' said Desvœux, calling to the people on the other side, 'we must go up to the Point without you. General Beau will, I am sure, take care of the Miss Fotheringhams.'
'A most wilful girl,' thought the General, 'and dull, but a fine jumper, and feet and ankles quite perfection.'
Maud, when she got across the stream, had passed a moral Rubicon; she left propriety, prudence, and prudishness on the other side with the General and the Miss Fotheringhams.
Desvœux was in the greatest glee at the result which had come about. 'I wish the General had tried and tumbled in,' he said, 'and got a ducking.'
'Oh,' cried Maud, 'what a dreadful man he is, with his shrugs and his "Ahs!" How lucky that you came to save me!'
'And you to save me,' said her companion; 'I was having a sad time of it with the Fotheringham girls. What a thing it is to have a deliverer!'
'But,' said Maud, 'I think the younger one is looking very pretty. You know you used to love her. What lovely hair!'
'Yes,' said the other. 'Hair
So young and yellow, crowning sanctity,
And claiming solitude: can hair be false?'
'It can,' exclaimed Maud; 'Mrs. Blunt showed me two large coils, which had arrived from Douglas' in her last box from Europe. When one has a diamond tiara I suppose one must have hair to put it in, coûte qui coûte.'
'Mrs. Blunt and her eternal tiara!' cried Desvœux; 'like the toad and adversity, ugly and venemous, she wears a precious jewel in her head. But is not this lovely? Look at the rainbow in the foam and the deep green of the ferns beside it. Was it not worth a jump?'
'Was not what worth a jump?' said Maud, with one of her pretty blushes.
'If only,' cried Desvœux, 'there was somewhere we could jump to, where I could have you all for my very own! But see, here is the Speaking Rock; call out something now and see how it will answer you.'
'Hoop!' cried Maud, and 'Hoop!' answered the steep crag opposite, and Maud, in a mood to be pleased with everything, was quite delighted. 'Hoop, hie!' she cried again, and all the hillside seemed to echo to her joyful tones.
'See,' cried Desvœux, 'you have waked the Genius of the Mountain. If you called long enough the nymphs would come and dance and crown you for a rural queen, the fairest that Arcadia ever saw!'
'Now,' said Maud, quite breathless with her calls, 'shout out something, Mr. Desvœux, and see what the mountain nymphs will have to say to you.'
'No,' Desvœux said sentimentally, 'the nymphs would answer nothing: my voice is too rough to please them. Besides I know by experience it is my fate to call and call, and rocks and other things just as hard will give me no response.'
'Indeed,' said Maud, 'I think they answer quite as much as is good for you.'
'Our echoes,' cried Desvœux, turning suddenly upon her and speaking with a vehemence that was only half in play—
'Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever——'
'And ever and ever,' laughed Maud. 'Well, now, it is high time that they stopped growing for the present. Come, Mr. Desvœux, let us get back before our dear friends have torn us quite to pieces.'
Maud came back in great spirits and made a public laugh at General Beau for his desertion of her.
'"The rocks are slippery, the water is deep!"' she cried, taking him off to his face with great success, '"I implore, I entreat, I command"; but I don't jump! O faithless, faithless General Beau!'
The General was not in the least disconcerted. 'Ah!' he said, in his usual mysterious way; and everybody felt that he could have jumped if he had chosen, but that he had some particular reason for not choosing to do so.
Then the party reassembled for tea and they played at games. Some one proposed 'What is my thought like?'
'Delightful!' cried Maud. 'General Beau, what is my thought like, pray?'
'Like?' said the General, quite unprepared for such sudden demands on his conversational powers, 'it is like yourself, no doubt.'
'Enough, enough!' cried Maud. 'Now, then, please say how wit, which is my word, and I are like each other?'
'Ah!' said the General, as if to imply that he mentally perceived the resemblance; 'because, because'——
'Because,' said Mrs. Vereker, 'you are both to "madness near allied."'
'Or because,' said Desvœux, cutting in with great promptitude, '"true wit is nature to advantage dressed;" and so, I am sure, is Mrs. Sutton.'
'Very nice!' cried Maud, glowing with pleasure; 'now, General Beau, you must pay forfeit, you know. I will give you a bad one for deserting me so cruelly.'
'Forfeits!' said Desvœux, 'spare us, spare us—they are too fatiguing.'
'Not a bit,' said Maud, 'you bow to what is wisest, and kneel to what is prettiest, and kiss what you love best.'
'Well, then,' said Desvœux, kissing his hand sentimentally and blowing it into the air, 'there is a kiss for what I love best, wherever it may be.'
'Dear me,' said Mrs. Vereker, 'what a touching idea! There goes my kiss.'
'And,' cried Maud, laughing and kissing the tips of her pretty fingers, 'there goes mine! What a state the air will be in! But here comes Major Fenton with a plate of plumcake, which is what I love best; so my kiss is for that!'
'Happy plumcake!' said the Major, gallantly, 'to be loved, eaten and kissed by a mouth so fair.'
'Give me a bit too, Fenton,' said Desvœux; 'I must eat some for sympathy, though it is not what I love best.'
Then the quiet valley shadows crept about them, and it grew sad and sombre; and while they sat and talked and laughed, the day was done and all steps were turned towards home.
So Maud and Desvœux found themselves travelling home together in the moonlight and falling behind the crowd of riders, to enjoy, undisturbed, the pleasure of a tête-à-tête. One of the great dangers of the Hills is that the paths admit only of two people riding abreast; the terzo incomodo must ride behind, and might, so far as prudence is concerned, just as well not be there at all. No such inconvenient intruder, however, threatened Desvœux's enjoyment of the present occasion or aided the faltering monitions which Maud's half-silenced conscience whispered to her. Her nerves were overstrung, and the excessive loveliness of the scene seemed only to add to her excitement. Along the winding path which crept up the mountain-side, and through the dark green forest-trees towering sublimely over them and all ablaze in moonlit patches with silver floods of light, their journey took them. Far away, miles below, a hundred tiny sparks showed where the villagers were cooking the evening meal; across the valley, on the opposite side, a great streak of woodland was blazing, scarcely seen by day, but now a ruddy lurid glow in the white light that lit up all the scene around. In the horizon was the great, cold, snowy range, standing out hard and clear in the moonlight—still, majestic, awful. How sweet, how bright, how exhilarating to a heart so prompt for enjoyment, senses so quickly impressible, nerves so alive to every surrounding influence as Maud's! Again and again she burst into exclamations of pleasure as each turn in the road brought them to some new scene of enchantment.
'Let us stop,' she cried, 'I must get off and sit down here and enjoy this in peace.'
'Let us walk a little,' said Desvœux, 'and send our ponies on to await us at the half-way point. Are you too tired?'
'I am not a bit tired,' Maud said, glowing with pleasure; 'it is too lovely to think of it. This is the best of all the day's pleasures.'
'It is lovely,' said her companion, 'but to me its greatest charm is that I have you to myself.'
'Well,' said Maud, who was accustomed to pulling up Desvœux when he became inconveniently sentimental, 'we have had a delightful day and great fun. I wish we had had the forfeits all the same and made General Beau do something nice. You stopped it all, Mr. Desvœux, by being so idle. Why did you blow your kiss into the air?'
'It was the only thing I could do with it,' said Desvœux, 'and see—it has alighted on your cheek!'
'And that on your arm,' cried Maud, wielding her whip with a sudden vehemence which made Desvœux feel that his kiss had been, at any rate, well paid for; 'when I want to be kissed I will tell you; but no robberies!'
'You little spitfire!' said Desvœux, rubbing his shoulder with a comic air.
'Well,' said Maud, suddenly repentant, and trying her whip across her knee, 'it does hurt, I confess. I beg your pardon. You deserved it, however, and I was in a passion at the moment. Do you forgive me?'
She gave him her hand—that little, delicate, exquisitely-fashioned piece of Nature's workmanship, which Desvœux had often vowed was the most beautiful thing in India. Its very touch electrified him.
'Forgive you?' he said, with a sudden sadness in his voice; 'you hurt me once in good earnest, and I forgave you that, and do forgive it, but it hurts me still.'
Desvœux's voice trembled with feeling. Something in his look struck Maud with a sudden pang of pity, sympathy, remorse. Was Desvœux then really suffering, and his life darkened on account of her? A sudden rush of sentiment streamed across her soul, carrying everything before it. A passionate, irresistible impulse possessed her. She stooped towards him, bent her cheek, flushed with excitement, to his, pressed to his the lips on which Desvœux's thoughts had dwelt a hundred times in impassioned reverie, and kissed him with a long, sweet, earnest caress, the sudden outburst of gratitude, tenderness, regret.
Desvœux said not a word, but he still kept possession of her hand, and the two stood looking silently across the misty valley and the precipice that fell away at their feet into solemn gloom below. The tramp of a horse's feet was heard behind them and Boldero came trotting innocently up the path.
'We are walking home,' Maud said, 'the night is so delicious. You may get off and come with us, if you please.'
Boldero, who would have jumped over the mountain-side if Maud had bidden him, at once dismounted. Desvœux fell behind, and said not one word during the rest of the homeward journey.