And this was Blanche’s first proposal. Nothing so alarming in it, young ladies, after all. We fear you may be disappointed at the blunt manner in which so momentous a question can be put. Here was no language of flowers—no giving of roses and receiving of carnations—no hoarding of locks of hair, or secreting of bracelets, or kidnapping of gloves—none of the petty larceny of courtship—none of the dubious, half-expressed, sentimental flummery which may signify all that mortal heart can bestow, or may be the mere coquetry of conventional gallantry. When he comes to the point, let us hope his meaning may be equally plain, whether it is couched in a wish that he might “be always helping you over stiles,” or a request that you will “give him a right to walk with you by moonlight without being scolded by mamma,” or an inquiry as to whether you “can live in the country, and only come to London for three months during the season,” or any other roundabout method of asking a straightforward question. Let us hope, moreover, that the applicant may be the right one, and that you may experience, to the extent of actual impossibility, the proverbial difficulty of saying—No.
Now, it fell out that Major D’Orville arrived in the nick of time to save Blanche from further embarrassment, in consequence of his inability, in common with the rest of his fellow-creatures, “to know his own mind.” The Major had got up the fête entirely, as he imagined, with the idea of prosecuting his views against the heiress, and hardly allowed to himself that, in his innermost soul, there lurked a hope that Mrs. Delaval might accompany her former charge, and he might see her just once more. Had D’Orville been thoroughly bad, he would have been a successful man; as it was, there gleamed ever and anon upon his worldly heart a ray of that higher nature, that nobler instinct, which spoils the villain, while it makes the hero. Mary had pierced the coat-of-mail in which the roué was encased; probably her very indifference was her most fatal weapon. D’Orville really loved her—yes, though he despised himself for the weakness (since weakness it is deemed in creeds such as his), though he would grind his teeth and stamp his foot in solitude, while he muttered, “Fool! fool! to bow down before a woman!” yet the spell was on him, and the chain was eating into his heart. In the watches of the night her image sank into his brain and tortured him with its calm, indifferent smile. In his dreams she bent over him, and her drooping hair swept across his forehead, till the strong man woke, and yearned like a child for a fellow-mortal’s love. But not for him the childlike trust that can repose on human affection. Gaston had eaten of the tree of knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil; much did the evil predominate over the good, and still the galling thought goaded him almost to madness. “Suppose I should gain this woman’s affections—suppose I should sacrifice my every hope to that sweet face, and find her, after all, like the rest of them! Suppose I, too, should weary, as I have wearied before of faces well-nigh as fair—hearts even far more kind—is there no green branch on earth? Am I to wander for ever seeking rest and finding none? Am I to be cursed, like a lost spirit, with longings for that happiness which my very nature will not permit me to enjoy? Oh that I were wholly good, or wholly bad! that I could loathe the false excitement and the dazzling charms of vice, or steep my better feelings in the petrifying waters of perdition! I will conquer my weakness. What should I care for this stone-cold governess? I will be free, and this Mrs. Delaval shall discover that I too can be as careless, and as faithless, and as hard-hearted as—a woman!” With which laudable and manly resolution our dashing Major proceeded to make the agreeable to his guests, and to lose no opportunity of exchanging glances and mixing in conversation with the very lady he had sworn so stoutly to avoid. But with all his tactics, all his military proficiency in manœuvring, he found it impossible to detach Mary from her party, or to engage her in a tête-à-tête with himself. True-hearted and dignified, with her pure affection fixed upon another, she was not a person to descend to coquetry for the mere pleasure of a conquest, and she clung to the General for the purpose of avoiding the Major, till old Bounce became convinced that she was to add another name to the list of victims who had already succumbed before his many fascinations. The idea had been some time nascent in his mind, and as it now grew and spread, and developed itself into a certainty, his old heart warmed with a thrill he had not felt since the reign of the widow at Cheltenham, and he made the agreeable in his own way by pointing out to Mary all the peculiarities and arrangements of a barrack-yard, interspersed with many abrupt exclamations and voluminous personal anecdotes. Major D’Orville hovered round them the while, and perhaps the very difficulty of addressing his former love enhanced the charm of her presence and the fascination against which he struggled. It is amusing to see a thorough man of the world, one accustomed to conquer and enslave where he is himself indifferent, awkward as the veriest schoolboy, timid and hesitating as a girl, where he is really touched—though woman—
“Born to be controlled,
Stoop to the forward and the bold.”
She thereby gauges with a false measure the devotion for which she pines. Would she know her real power, would she learn where she is truly loved, let her take note of the averted eye, the haunting step, ever hovering near, seldom daring to approach, the commonplace remark that shrinks from the one cherished topic, and above all the quivering voice, which, steady and commanding to the world beside, fails only when it speaks to her. Mary Delaval might have noted this had her heart not been in Kaffirland, or had the General allowed her leisure to attend to anything but himself. “Look ye, my dear Mrs. Delaval, our stables in India were ventilated quite differently. Climate? how d’ye mean? climate makes no difference—why, I’ve had the Kedjerees picketed in thousands round my tent. What? D’Orville, you’ve been on the Sutlej—’gad, sir, your fellows would have been astonished if I’d dropped among you there.”
“And justly so,” quietly remarked the Major; “if I remember right, you were in cantonments more than three thousand miles off.”
“Well, at any rate, I taught those black fellows how to look after their nags,” replied the General. “I left them the best-mounted corps in the Presidency, and six weeks after my back was turned they weren’t worth a row of pins. Zounds, don’t tell me! jobbing—jobbing—nothing but jobbing! What? No sore backs whilst I commanded them—at least among the horses,” added our disciplinarian, reflectively; “can’t say as much with regard to the men. But there is nothing like a big stick for a nigger—so let’s go and see the riding-school.”
“I have still got the grey charger, Mrs. Delaval,” interposed the Major, wishing old Bounce and his Kedjerees in a hotter climate than India; “poor fellow, he’s quite white now, but as great a favourite still as he was in ‘the merry days,’” and the Major’s voice shook a little. “Would you like to see him?”
Mary understood the allusion, but her calm affirmative was as indifferent as ever, and the trio were proceeding to the Major’s stables, that officer going on before to find his groom, when he met Blanche, as we have already said, and divining intuitively what had taken place by her flushed countenance and embarrassed manner, offered his arm to conduct her back to her party, thereby earning her eternal gratitude, no less than that of Sir Ascot, who, as he afterwards confided to an intimate friend, “was completely in the hole, and didn’t the least know what the devil to do next.”