She sighed at this, and wept again, and said there was something yet which she had not told him. Some day he should know all. Meanwhile she was so good, so kind, so affectionate. Mrs. Dibble even went so far as to say that if she had not been brought up at a boarding-school, she ought to have been, for her manners were quite boarding-school, and her disposition was heavenly.
Paul sent her books of poems, and novels, and all sorts of works, to read, that she might be amused and improve her mind; and it was astonishing how rapidly the young lady mastered their contents, and how ably she used the sentiments of some of those poems that were full of love and tenderness. It was surely native inborn tact this. The cynic would say that all women have it; that nature has given them cunning instead of physical strength. What a woman this would have been with a good education! What a woman with the French language on her tongue! The judgment of Shuffleton Gibbs when he sat in the show and thought he could make a fortune by her cleverness at cards, was that of a shrewd observer, though he had been disappointed.
What happy days these were to the Lieutenant, what happy hours, these stolen intervals, as Chrissy got better. Chrissy she had always been called she said, and that was nearer the truth than any other word she had spoken; for that old clown who taught her to read and write, had called her Chris in those wild days of her childhood. With good treatment and comfort, she had soon recovered her strength, and the roses came back to her cheeks, the roundness to her arms, and the brightness to her eyes. There was a little vulgarity in her appearance, and in her manners. The red in her cheeks was not of a delicate rosy hue, and her voice could not be called musical. Her nose was anything but classical,—not that we care for classical noses; no, nor for classical foreheads either for that matter. To Paul Somerton Chrissy was beautiful, and that which you would call vulgar he looked upon as frankness and innocence, which charmed him all the more on that account.
Mr. Williamson soon had a surfeit of all this. The Lieutenant became quite a bore to him, and as obstinate as a mule. He would take no advice, and listen to no arguments that in any way interfered with his wild idea of living with this woman in some distant land. That special feature of interest in the woman’s history which had, as you will remember, brought up the name of Shuffleton Gibbs, soon disappeared; for Chrissy had described to Paul a young and dashing fellow as her husband, and they had both taken the description as true of course. The Lieutenant might have asked Macshawser what sort of a fellow Crawley was; but neither he nor the clever barrister thought of this, or if they had, perhaps the Lieutenant would have put his veto upon such a course, seeing that it might in some way have led to the detection of Paul as Chrissy’s protector.
Now, Mr. Arundel Williamson had been hit in some escapade of his youth in which a married woman was concerned; and it was this you know which excited his sympathy so much for Paul, or he would long since have shunned that young gentleman’s society, though the fellows at the club to which the barrister belonged liked the Lieutenant for his pleasant, outspoken, honest manners, his free and easy and unsophisticated ways, and the perfect absence of military snobbism which was characteristic of him. But a good deal of this was assumed as a sort of standing argument against the barrister’s advice to Paul to give up his schemes with regard to the lady whom he loved so much, and remember that his duty to his family, to himself, aye, and to the army, was to avoid a disgraceful liaison.
Paul had once or twice become quite eloquent on this point, reminded the barrister of his philosophy, quoted some of those very broad maxims which Mr. Williamson had repeated in that little room in the Temple, talked of equality, and raved against all aristocratic assumption on the score of birth and position. When the barrister replied, and endeavoured to show that the Lieutenant was making use of arguments which did not apply to the present case, Paul would hurl at him all kinds of absurd aphorisms about love equalising all ranks, and then rave about his own birth—a bailiff’s son, sir!
The only point upon which the barrister got the better of his friend, was when he quietly rehearsed the penalties attendant upon the crime of abduction, and more particularly the severity of the punishment which the law awarded to bigamy. Paul certainly retaliated with the Divorce Court, but he found himself weak in the combat, very weak when the barrister talked of bigamy. The time came however when that difficulty was at an end.
Three months of this feverish and wicked dream of love had passed, and Paul had worshipped the idol which the fickle, cynical god, whom the classics supposed to reign supreme in affairs of the heart, had set up. How the rosy youth must have laughed (not in his sleeve, for he never had any sleeves according to the painters) at the simplicity of this young fellow who wore Her Majesty’s uniform! Perhaps Asmodeo was the true god after all; the lame monster with his goat legs, his long visage, his sharp chin, and his demoniacal eyes and mouth, is certainly a more fitting spirit to preside over some of Love’s entanglements than he of the gilded wings and the quiver full of arrows. But he boasted of assuming whatever shape he willed, and confessed that it was necessary to look well sometimes; Vice never pleased half so well unless it had a fair appearance.
Lieutenant Somerton did not dream of gods at all in the matter, and he would not have indulged his fancy upon such a cynical fellow as Asmodeo for a moment; he was in love, over head and ears, madly in love with this woman, who thrust that wooden spoon into the bowl at the roadside inn, and ate her share of the repast like—well, like a vagabond, as she was, you know, in the eyes of the law—like a rogue and vagabond; for the law combines the two in its harsh description of the poor stroller. The Lieutenant would surely have been disenchanted if Signor Asmodeo had taken the bandage from his eyes and shown him that incident in the past; or that little scene in the show when Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, his dire enemy, had made love to her, and succeeded in his suit.
What a clever girl she was! The god “so gloriously celebrated by Agrippa and the Clavicula Salomonis,” and his friend Don Cleofas would have been delighted with her. His Spanish majesty would surely have painted her image on his cloak, and illustrated her curious and brilliant career!