Cerise: A Tale of the Last Century

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

But Emerald’s blood was up after his gallop. The seaman’s awkward seat and unskilled hand on the rein irritated him considerably. He fretted, he danced, he sidled, he snatched at his bridle, he tossed his head, he showed symptoms of mutiny from the very beginning.

“I knowed as we should make bad weather of it,” said Slap-Jack, relating his adventure that evening in the servants’ hall, “when we come into open sea. Steer he wouldn’t, and every time I righted him he broached-to, as if he was going down stern foremost. So I lashed the helm amid-ships, and held on by my eyelids to stand by for a capsize.”

In truth the horse soon took the whole affair into his own management, and after one or two long reaching plunges, that would have unseated Slap-jack had he not held on manfully by the mane, started off at a furious gallop, which brought him to his own stable-yard in about five minutes from the time he left the inn door.

Cerise, wandering pale and listless amongst her roses, heard the clatter of hoofs entering at this unusual pace, and rushed to the stables in some alarm. She was relieved to find that no serious casualty had occurred, and that Slap-Jack, very much out of breath, with his legs trembling and powerless from the unwonted exercise, was the only sufferer. He gasped and panted sadly; but she gathered that he had been ordered to bring the horse quietly home, at which she could not forbear smiling, and that Sir George was going to walk back the short way. It was a chance to be seized eagerly. She had been very low and dispirited all the morning, wishing she had spoken out to him before he went, and now here came another opportunity. Cerise was still young, and, to use the graphic expression of her own country, “a woman to the very tips of her fingers.” She ran upstairs, put on her prettiest hat, and changed her breast-knots for fresh ribbons of newer gloss and a more becoming colour. Then she fluttered out through her garden, and crossing the home-park with a rising colour and a more elastic step, as the fresh air told upon her animal spirits, reached one end of the wooden footbridge as the two gentlemen arrived at the other.

She had only expected one. It was a disappointment; more, it was an embarrassment. She coloured violently, and looked, as she felt, both agitated and put out. Sir George could not but observe her distress, and again his heart ached with the dull, wearing, unacknowledged pain.

He jumped to conclusions; a man under such an influence always does. It seemed clear to him that his wife must have chosen this direction for her walk in order to meet the Jesuit. He did not blame Florian, for the priest had himself proposed they should return together, and could not, therefore, have expected her. Stay! Was this a blind? He stole a glance at him, and thought he seemed as much discomposed as her ladyship. All that he could disentangle afterwards. In the meantime one thing alone seemed clear. That Cerise, contrary to her usual habits, had come this distance on foot to meet her lover, and had found—her husband! He laughed to himself fiercely, with a grim savage humour, and felt as once or twice formerly in a duel, when his adversary, taking unfair advantage, had been foiled by his own act. Well, he would fight this battle at least with all the skill of fence he knew; patiently, warily, scientifically, without loss of temper or coolness, neglecting no precaution, overlooking no mistake, and giving no quarter.

He could not help thinking of his old comrade, Bras-de-Fer, as he remembered him, one gloomy morning in Spain, stripped and in silk stockings on the wet turf outside the lines, with the deadliest point in three armies six inches from his throat, and how nothing but perfect self-command and endurance had given his immoveable old comrade the victory. His heart softened when he thought of those merry campaigning days, but not to Lady Hamilton nor to the pale thoughtful Jesuit on the other side.

It was scarcely a pleasant walk home for any one of the three. Florian, though he loved the very ground she trod on, was disconcerted at her ladyship’s inopportune appearance just as he thought he was gaining ground in his canvass, and had prepared the most telling arguments for the conversion of his proselyte. Moreover, he had now passed the stage at which he could converse freely with Cerise in company, and grudged her society even to the man who had a right to it. Alone with her he had plenty to say; but, without approaching forbidden topics, he had acquired a habit of conversing on abstruse and speculative subjects, interesting enough to two persons in the same vein of thought, but which strike even these as exaggerated when submitted to the criticism of a third. Many a pleasant and harmonious duet jangles painfully when played as a trio. He was impatient now of any interference with Lady Hamilton’s opinions. These he considered his own, in defiance of a thousand husbands; and so strangely constituted is the human mind, he could presume to be jealous even of the vague, shadowy, unsubstantial share in her mind that he imagined he possessed.

So he answered in monosyllables, and took nothing off the constraint under which they all laboured. Sir George conversed in a cold formal tone on indifferent matters, and was as unlike himself as possible. He addressed his remarks alternately to Florian and Cerise, scanning the countenance of each narrowly the while. This did not tend to improve their good understanding; and Lady Hamilton, walking with head erect and set face, looking straight before her, dared not trust herself to answer. It was a relief when they reached the house, and most of all to her, for she rushed upstairs and locked herself into her own room, where she could be miserable to her heart’s content.

It was hard for this fair young wife, good, loving, and true, to seek that refuge, so cruelly wounded, twice in one day.