Triumph, indeed!—was that poor pale face one of triumph? Were those deep eyes, hollowing day by day; that sad brow, on which care seemed visibly to rest, as a cloud rests upon the hill, and softens even while it darkens—were these the outward signs of satisfied affection and triumphant love? Blanche, Blanche, you think yourself very unhappy; but little do you know the struggle going on in the bosom of that faithful friend with whom you are now so unjustly at variance. Little do you guess that she has torn the one only image, the fulfilment of the ideal of a lifetime, from her heart, and vowed to worship it no more; and prayed that the very thought which made the sunshine of her existence might pass away; and all for you. So it is in life: we make a sacrifice which costs us nothing; we give that which perhaps we are all well satisfied to get rid of; and the world says, “How noble! how generous! how disinterested!” or we yield up the one dear hope that has cheered us all our journey; we consent to travel the rest of the way in darkness and dreariness and listless despair, and the world thinks us only stupid and disagreeable; those who look below the surface perhaps suggest that we are bilious; and the one for whom we have made all this ruin, for whose well-being and security we are stretched helpless, exhausted, bleeding by the way, thanks us blandly at the most, and takes it much as a matter of course, and passes by, very likely, on the other side.
But “fight who will and die who may,” the outward world goes on much the same notwithstanding. The clock goes round, and dinner-time arrives; and whatever may be the sorrow brooded over and locked up in the inner life, we dress for dinner when the time comes, and look in the glass and dry our eyes, and have a glass of sherry after our soup; and the tyrant Custom, and the motley jester Society, bid us sit between them; and this woos from us a vapid smile, and that lays his iron hand upon our brow and dares us to stir; and we are all the better for the hypocrisy and the restraint.
Thus, although the ringing of the door-bell that announced the long-expected arrival of the guests from Africa vibrated through the very hearts of the ladies in their dressing-rooms, even as it vibrated through the ground-floors and offices of Newton-Hollows, we are not to suppose that it crumpled a fold of muslin or moved a single ringlet out of its place with its agitating summons. Below-stairs, indeed, the old butler settled himself hastily into his coat, and rushed to the door with as hearty a welcome for the travellers as if it had been his own house; whilst from a gallery that overlooked the hall divers lighted candles might be seen glancing, and pretty faces looking down from beneath smart caps, all eager to get a glimpse at Cousin Charlie, whose wounds and exploits had made him a second Roland in the estimation of these admiring damsels; while sundry exclamations might have been overheard, as, “Which is him?” “That’s Master Charles, him in the pea-jacket.” “Lor’, how thin he’s growed!” and, “Well, he’s a genteel figure, let alone those ’orrid moustaches,” from the upper housemaid, who was a new acquisition since Charlie’s departure, and having once been engaged to a journeyman glazier, thought herself a judge of young men. But the General had rushed from his den in the meantime, half-dressed as he was, and had pulled Charlie into the well-lighted drawing-room, and had shaken Frank Hardingstone a hundred times by the hand, and was never tired of reiterating his welcome, and his delight at seeing them both once more.
“God bless you, Frank!” exclaimed the General for the twelfth time, as he fidgeted about the room in braces and shirt-sleeves. “What! you’ve brought him back safe and well? D—n me, sir (God forgive me for swearing), I tell you I’ll never forget it. Zounds, don’t tell me! Brought him back, sir, like a resurrectionist! I never thought to see this day, sir—I tell ye—Gratitude! how d’ye mean? And you, Charlie, my trump of a boy—thanked in Orders—General Orders, by all the gods of war! Ah, I hadn’t lectured you over the old port for nothing. You took ’em in flank, the rascals. In flank, or I’ll eat ’em. Don’t tell me; couldn’t be done otherwise. Lads! lads! it’s too much: you make me feel like a child again. What?” and the old General’s eyes began to overflow with the fulness at his heart; so he relapsed into a state of unusual gruffness, and stirred the fire fiercely to conceal his emotion; and finally hurried them off to dress. “None of your licentious camp habits here, Charlie. Dine to a minute, you dog! I trust you’ll find your room comfortable, Frank, my boy. I saw to the fire myself not half-an-hour ago. What? Ring for what you want, and my servants will bring you what they have.” So the old gentleman toddled off to finish his own personal adornment, and the guests, with beating hearts, well concealed from each other, proceeded to dispatch theirs as quickly as might be.
If ever there was a banquet that to all appearance should have been one of triumphant hilarity, it was the sumptuous dinner to which our party sat down that day in the bright, warm, cheerful dining-room at Newton-Hollows. Notwithstanding Lady Mount Helicon’s sneers, no man understood better than the General that process which is conventionally called “doing things well.” The servants glided about noiselessly as if shod with velvet—the doors were never left open, still less closed with a bang—no bumps and thumps of tray-corners against projecting wood-work disturbed the conversation, to irritate the host while they alarmed his guests. Nor as the different courses made their appearance, did a gush of cold air accompany them from below-stairs, tainted but not warmed by the odours borne with it from the kitchen. The soup was as hot as the plates, the champagne iced to a turn, even as the haunch was roasted. Glasses were filled noiselessly by the butler, as a matter of course (by the way, an immense pull for the ladies), and everything was handed to everybody at the instant it was wanted, and this, to our humble ideas, is no mean auxiliary to the general success of an entertainment. The old Roman bon vivant evidently knew a thing or two about dinner-giving (he called them suppers), or he would not have so dilated on the necessity of attention to trifles, vilibus in scopis, in mappis, etc. The General, too, understood these details thoroughly, and therefore it was disrespectful youth voted nem. con. that Newton-Hollows was “a rare shop at feeding time,” and that “old Bounce, if he was rather a bore out hunting, was nevertheless the boy to dine with, and no mistake!”
“The boy,” however, on this occasion seemed to have all the hilarity of the meeting to himself. Of the four individuals that constituted his party, each was acting a part, each had set a guard upon his and her lips, and was originating broken, disjointed sentences, vainly endeavouring to form a matter-of-course unrestrained conversation. The ladies were even more reserved than the gentlemen. Blanche was thinking how brown and handsome Frank looked after his voyage—so much more manly than her cousin—and wondering why he should say so little to her, and yet pay no attention whatever to Mary. That lady again was full of tender alarms and anxieties about Cousin Charlie, his wasted figure, and his frequent cough, and gulping down the tears she could scarcely repress, as she glanced ever and anon at his glittering eye and emaciated face. “Perhaps,” she thought, “he will never live after all to be Blanche’s husband.” A thrill shot through her at the thought that then he would indeed be all her own: but if this was joy, good faith! it was a joy near akin to tears. As for Frank, he was more in love than ever. Nor indeed is this to be wondered at. If a gentleman having voluntarily surrendered himself to that epidemic, which, like the measles, we must all go through sooner or later, and which, like that indisposition of childhood, is prone to cure itself by its own progress—if a gentleman, then, having undergone a favourable eruption, and, at the very crisis of his disorder, shall voluntarily absent himself from his charmer, to return from a sea-voyage amongst rough companions, and contemplate her for the first time, attired in all the brilliancy of dinner costume, and further embellished by the favourable disposition of light, which sets off such entertainments, and which is generally considered highly conducive to female beauty, he need not be surprised to find that he is less a rational being than ever, or that the disease for which absence is considered so unfailing a cure should come out with redoubled virulence under such an interruption of that salutary course. But Frank, though in love, was also disappointed. His hopes had risen most unreasonably since Charlie’s disclosures on the evening preceding their memorable shipwreck. He had indulged in such day-dreams as, for a sensible man—which, to do him justice, he generally was—were the acme of absurdity; and now because Blanche had neither thrown herself into his arms when they met—a feat, indeed, she could hardly have conveniently accomplished, “dinner” being announced at that interesting moment—nor had spoken to him more than she could possibly help—for which reserve she likewise had excellent reasons, the principal one being that she could by no means trust her voice—our philosophic gentleman was disappointed, forsooth, and consequently hurt, and the least thing sulky. Charlie, again, though more at ease in his mind than the others, was tired and exhausted: he was always tired now towards the evening; and although rejoiced to be once more at home, once more gazing his fill on the only face he had ever much cared to look at—an indulgence that partook, he knew not why, of the nature of a stolen pleasure—yet his satisfaction was of that inward kind which does not betray itself by outward signs of mirth, but which, more particularly in failing health, flows on in a deep silent current, that to the superficial observer has all the appearance of apathy and cold, selfish carelessness.
But the General was in his glory. Fond of eating and drinking himself, his delight was to see his friends eat and drink too; and as he urged on his guests the different good things for both purposes that smoked on the table or sparkled on the sideboard, he monopolised the conversation with the same zest that he demolished a considerable share of the entertainment.
“Charlie, you eat nothing, my boy,” said the General: “that haunch was roasted a turn too much; let me give you a bit of the grouse. Zounds! we must fatten you up here—what? commissariat disgraceful at the Cape! ’Gad, sir, we wouldn’t stand it in India. I broke three commissaries myself in the Deccan, because there was no soda-water in camp—fact, I pledge you my honour, Mrs. Delaval. I don’t believe Charlie’s had a morsel to eat since he went into training for the steeple-chase.”
“You wouldn’t have said so if you’d seen him getting well at Fort Beaufort,” remarked Frank, rousing himself from his fit of abstraction; “his voracity was perfectly frightful! I wish you could have seen him, Miss Kettering, in a black skull-cap, as thin as a thread-paper, on crutches, asking every ten minutes what o’clock it was, dreading to die of starvation between two o’clock dinner and five o’clock tea; you never beheld anything so thin and so hungry.”
Blanche laughed her old merry laugh; and Charlie, stealing a look at Mary Delaval, saw her eyes were full of tears. How his heart leapt within him, and how a chill seemed to gather round it the moment after, and curdle his very life-blood, as the possibility flashed across him, that even now it might be too late. Too late!—he was but twenty-one, yet something warned him that his was no secure tenure, that there might be truth in the startling suspicion that had of late obtruded itself like a death’s head on his moments of enjoyment—that the world might be no world for him when autumn again shed her leaves, and the browning copses and cleared fields brought back the merry field-sports he loved so well. No more football—no more cricket—no more panting excitement and rosy out-of-doors exertion—no more sharp gun-shot ringing through the woodland, nor hound making music in the dale, nor airy steed careering after the pack, fleeting noiselessly o’er the upland. And though these were hard, bitter hard to leave, ’twas harder still to give up the opening dream of ambition, the budding promise of manhood; and harder, harder than all, the first glowing reality of woman’s love. It is well to perish with trust unshaken in that glorious myth; to sleep before that too is discovered to be a dream. But Charlie shook off these moments of despondency with the elasticity of his age and character. In that bright, luxurious room, with those friendly faces around him, encircled by beauty, wealth, and refinement, death seemed impossible. Have we never felt thus wrapped in security ourselves; and when some “silver cord has been loosed—some golden bowl broken” from amongst our own immediate associates, have we not felt almost angry at the unmannerly visitor who intrudes thus without knocking, and pauses not to wipe his shoes for Turkey carpet more than sanded floor? “Pauperum tabernas regumque turres,” he has the entrée of them all.