So one autumn evening, as Mr. Stanfield sat poring over his book, and Georgie, her hope day by day dying away within her, was looking out over the darkening landscape, the noise of wheels was heard at the gate; a grave man in black descended from the box of a postchaise, a worn, thin, haggard face peered out of the window; and the next instant, before Mr. Stanfield at all comprehended what had happened, the carriage door was thrown open, and Georgie was hanging round the neck of the carriage occupant; and kiss, kiss, and bless, bless! and thank God! and safe once more! was all the explanation audible.
Dr. Prater was quite right; nature and the patient's native air effected a complete cure. By the end of a month--such a happy month for Georgie!--Sir Charles was able to drive to Redmoor to see the men of business from London; by the end of two months he stood at the altar of the little Fishbourne church, and received his darling from the hands of her father; the ceremony being performed by the old curate, who had learned to love Georgie as his own child, and who wept plentifully as he bestowed on her his blessing.
[CHAPTER VI.]
THE GRAYS.
When Laurence Alsager awoke the next morning, he did not regard life with such weariness, nor London with such detestation, as when he went to bed. He had slept splendidly, as would naturally fall to the lot of a man who for two years had been deprived of that greatest of earthly comforts--an English bed. Laurence had bounded on French spring-mattresses; had sweltered beneath German feather-lined coverlets; had cramped himself up in berths; had swung restlessly in hammocks; had stifled behind mosquito curtains; and had passed many nights with his cloak for his bed, and his saddle-bags for his pillow, with the half-naked forms of dirty Arabs dimly visible in the flickering firelight, and the howls of distant jackals ringing in his ears. He had undergone every description of bed-discomfort; and it is not to be wondered at that he lingered long in that glorious nest of cleanliness and rest provided for him at his hotel. As he lay there at his ease, thoroughly awake, but utterly averse to getting up, he began to think over all that had happened during the previous evening; and first he thought what a charming-looking woman Lady Mitford was.
The Scotch gentleman who had remarked that Colonel Alsager was "a deevil among the sax" had some foundation for his observation; for it was a fact that, from the days when Laurence left Eton and was gazetted to the Coldstreams, until he sold his commission and left England in disgust, his name had always been coupled by the gossips with that of some lady well known either in or out of society. He was a mere boy, slim and whiskerless, when the intense admiration which he excited in the breast of Mdlle. Valentine, combined with what she afterwards termed the "coldly insular" manner in which he treated her, gave that charming danseuse such a migraine as rendered her unable to appear in public for a week, and very nearly caused Mr. Lumley to be favoured with a row equal to the celebrated Tamburini riot in the days of M. Laporte. He was not more than twenty when "Punter" Blair told him that his goings-on with Lady Mary Blair, the Punter's sister-in-law, were the talk of the town; and that if her husband, the Admiral, was blind, he, the Punter, wasn't, as he'd let Alsager pretty soon know. Laurence replied that the Punter had better mind his own business,--which was "legging" young boys at écarté and blind-hookey,--and leave his brother's wife alone; upon which Punter Blair sent O'Dwyer of the 18th with a message; and there must inevitably have been a meeting, had not Blair's colonel got a hint of it, and caused it to be intimated to Mr. Blair that unless this matter with Mr. Alsager were arranged, he, the colonel, should have to take such notice of "other matters" affecting Mr. Blair as would compel that gentleman to send in his papers.
So in a score of cases differing very slightly from each other. It was the old story which was lyrically rendered by Dr. Watts, of Satan being always ready to provide congenial occupation for gentlemen with nothing to do. There is not, I believe, very much martial ardour in the Household Brigade just now. That born of the Crimean war has died out and faded away, and the officers have taken to drive off ennui, some by becoming district visitors, and others by enjoying the honest beer and improving conversation of the firemen in Watling Street. But even now there is infinitely more enthusiasm, more belief in the profession as a profession, more study of strategy as a thing which a military man should know something of, than there was before the Crimean expedition. The metropolitan inhabitants had little care for their gallant defenders in those days. Their acquaintance with them was limited to the knowledge that large red men were perpetually discovered in the kitchens, and on discovery were presented as relatives of the servants; or that serious, and in some cases fatal, brawls occurred in the streets, when the pleasant fellows laid about them with their belts, or ran amuck amongst a crowd with their bayonets. An occasional review took place in the Park, or a field-day at Woolwich; but no cordial relations existed between the majority of the Londoners and the household troops until the news came of the battle of the Alma. Then the public learned that the Guards' officers were to be heard of in other places than ball-rooms and divorce-courts, and that guardsmen could fight with as much untiring energy as they had already displayed in feeding on householders and flirting with cooks.
Not much worse, certainly not much better, than his compeers was Laurence Alsager in those days, always having "something on" in the way of feminine worship, until the great "something" happened, which, according to Jock M'Laren and one or two others, had occasioned the great change in his life, and caused his prolonged absence from England. But in all his experience he had only known women of a certain kind; women of the world, ready to give and take; women, in his relations with whom there had been no spice of romance save that spurious romance of the French-novel school, so attractive at first, so hollow, and bad, and disgusting, when proceeded with. It is not too much to say that, varied as his "affaires" had been, he had not known one quiet, pure-minded, virtuous woman; and that during his long foreign sojourn he had thought over this, and often wondered whether he should ever have a wife of his own, or, failing this, whether he should ever have a female friend whom at the same time he could love and respect.
Yes, that was the sort of woman, he thought to himself as he lay calmly reflecting. What a good face she had! so quiet and calm and self-possessed. Naturally self-possessed; not that firm disgusting imperturbability which your hardened London coquette has, he thought; like that horrible M'Alister, who puts her double eye-glass up to her eyes and coolly surveys women and men alike, as though they were slaves in the Constantinople market, and she the buyer for the Sultan. There certainly was a wonderful charm about Lady Mitford, and, good heavens! think of a man having such a wife as that, and going off to sup with Bligh and Winton, who were simply two empty-headed roué jackasses, and Pontifex, who--Well, it was very lucky that people didn't think alike. Yes, that man Mitford was a lout, a great overgrown-schoolboy sort of fellow, who might be led into any sort of scrapes by--By Jove! that's what Dollamore had said with that horribly cynical grin. And Lady Mitford would have to run the gauntlet of society, as did most women whose husbands went to the bad.
Laurence Alsager was a very different man from the Laurence Alsager of two years ago. He wanted something to fill up his leisure time, and he thought he saw his way to it. Dollamore never spoke at random. From his quietly succulent manner Alsager knew that his lordship meant mischief, probably in his own person, at all events hinted plainly enough that--Ah! he would stop all that. He would pit himself against Dollamore, or any of them, and it would be at least a novelty to have a virtuous instead of a vicious end in view. Mitford might be a fool, his wife weak and silly; but there should be no disastrous consequences. Dollamore's prophecy should be unfulfilled, and he, Laurence Alsager, should be the active agent in the matter.