Beatrice Boville and Other Stories Part 13

Coverdale. All her artifices and falsehoods annoy Cecil so; Cecil doesn't mind saying she's not rich, she knows it's no crime."

"C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute," said I.

"Don't talk in that way," laughed Blanche. "That's bitter and sarcastic, like Sydney in his grand moods, when I'm half afraid of him. I am sure Cecil couldn't be nicer, if she were ever such an heiress. Mamma asked her for Christmas because she once knew Mr. St. Aubyn well, and Cecil is not happy with Mrs. Coverdale. False and true don't suit each other. I hope Sydney will like her--do you think he does?"

That was a question I could not answer. He admired her, of course, because he could not well have helped it, and had done so in Canada; and he was talking to her now, I dare say, to force her to acknowledge that he _was_ more amusing than Horace Cos. But he seemed to me to weigh her in a criticising balance, as if he expected to find her wanting--as if it pleased him to provoke and correct her, as one p.r.i.c.ks and curbs a beautiful two-year old, just to see its graceful impatience at the check and the glance of its wild eye.

II.

THE CANADIAN'S COLD BATH WARMS UP THE COLONEL.

Deerhurst was a capital house to spend a Christmas in. It was the house of an English gentleman, with even the dens called bachelors' rooms comfortable and luxurious to the last extent: a first-rate stud, a capital billiard table, a good sporting country, pretty girls to amuse one with when tired of the pink, the best Chablis and Chateau Margaux to be had anywhere, and a host who would have liked a hundred people at his dinner-table the whole year round. The snow, confound it! prevented our taking the hounds out for the first few days; but we were not bored as one might have expected, and our misery was the girls' delight, who were fervently hoping that the ice might come thick enough for them to skate.

Cecil was invaluable in a country-house; her resources were as unlimited as Houdin's inexhaustible bottle. She played in French vaudevilles and Sheridan Knowles's comedies, acted charades, planned tableaux vivants, sang gay wild chansons peculiar to herself, that made the Screechington bravuras and themes more insupportable than ever; and, what was more, managed to infuse into everybody else some of her own energy and spirit.

She made every one do as she liked; but she tyrannised over us so charmingly that we never chafed at the bit; and to the other girls she was so good-natured in giving them the roles they liked, in praising, and in aiding them, that it was difficult for feminine malice, though its limits are boundless, to find fault with her. Vivian, though he did not relax his criticism of her, was agreeable to her, as he had been in Canada, and as he is always to women when he is not too lazy. He consented to stand for Rienzi in a tableau, though he hates doing all those things, and played in the Proverbs with such a flashing fire of wit in answer to Cecil that we told him he beat Mathews.

"I'm inspired," he said, with a laughing bend of his head to Cecil, when somebody complimented him.

She gave an impatient movement--she was accustomed to have such things whispered in earnest, not in jest. She laughed, however. "Are you inspired, then, to take _Huon's_ part? All the characters are cast but that."

"I'm afraid I can't play well enough."

"Nonsense. You cannot think that. Say you would rather not at once."

Vivian stroked his mustaches thoughtfully. "Well, you see, it bores me rather; and I'm not Christian enough to suffer ennui cheerfully to please other people."

"Very well, then, I will give the part to Sir Horace," said Cecil, looking through the window at the church spire, covered with the confounded snow.

Vivian stroked away at his mustaches rather fiercely this time. "Cos!

he'll ruin the play. Dress him up as a lord in waiting, he'll be a dainty lay figure, but for anything more he's not as fit as this setter!

Fancy that essenced, fair-haired young idiot taking _Huon_--his lisp would be so effective!"

She looked up in his face with one of her mischievous, dangerous smiles, and put up her hands in an att.i.tude of pet.i.tion. "He must have the part if you won't. Be good, and don't spoil the play. I have set my mind on its being perfect, and--I will have _such_ a dress as the _Countess_ if you will only do as I tell you."

Cecil, in her soft, childlike moods, could finish any man. Of course Vivian rehea.r.s.ed "Love" with her that afternoon, a play that was to come off on the 23rd. Cos sulked slightly at being commanded by her to dress himself beautifully and play the _Prince of Milan_.

"To be refused by you," lisped Horace. "Oh, I dare say! No! 'pon my life----"

"My dear Cos, you'll have plenty of fellow-sufferers," whispered Syd, mischievously.

"Do you dare to disobey me, Sir Horace?" cried Cecil. "For shame! I should have thought you more of a preux chevalier. If you don't order over from Boxwood that suit of Milan armor you say one of your ancestors wore at Flodden, and wear it on Tuesday, you shall never waltz with me again. Now what do you say?"

"n.o.body can rethitht you," murmured Cos. "You do anything with a fellow that you chooth."

Vivian glanced down at him with superb scorn, and turned to me. "What a confounded frost this is. The weatherc.o.c.k sticks at the north, and old Ben says there's not a chance of a change till the new moon. Qui Vive might as well have kept at Hounslow. To waste all the season like this would make a parson swear! If I'd foreseen it I would have gone to Paris with Lovell, as he wanted me to do."

I suppose the Colonel was piqued to find he was not the only one persuaded into his role. He bent over Laura Caldecott's chair, a pretty girl, but with nothing to say for herself, admired her embroidery, and talked with great empress.e.m.e.nt about it, till Laura, much flattered at such unusual attention, after lisping a good deal of nonsense, finally promised to embroider a note-case for him, "if you'll be good and use it, and not throw it away, as you naughty men always do the pretty things we give you," simpered Miss Laura.

"Hearts included," said Syd, smiling. "I a.s.sure you if you give me yours, I will prize it with Turkish jealousy."

The fair brodeuse gave a silly laugh; and Vivian, whose especial detestation is this sort of love-making nonsense, went on flirting with her, talking the persiflage that one whispers leaning over the back of a phaeton after a dinner at the Castle or a day at Ascot, but never expects to be called to remember the next morning, when one bows to the object thereof in the Ring, and the flavor of the claret-cup and the scent of the cigar are both fled with the moonbeams and forgotten.

Cecil gave the Colonel and his flirtation a glance, and let Cossetting lean over the back of her chair and deliver himself of some lackadaisical sentiment (taken second-hand out of "Isidora" or the "Amant de la Lune," and diluted to be suitable for presentation to her), looking up at him with her large velvet eyes, or flashing on him her radiant smile, till Horace pulled up his little stiff collar, coaxed his flaxen whiskers, looked at her with his half-closed light eyes--and thought himself irresistible--and Miss Screechington broke the string of the purse she was making, and scattered all the steel beads about the floor in the futile hope of gaining his attention. Blanche went down on her knees and spent twenty minutes hunting them all up; but as I helped her I saw the turquoise eyes looked anything but grateful for our efforts, though if Blanche had done anything for me with that ready kindness and those soft little white hands, I should have repaid her very warmly. But oh, these women! these women! Do they ever love one another in their hearts? Does not Chloris always swear that Lelia's gazelle eyes have a squint in them and Delia hint that Daphne, who is innocent as a dove, is bad style, and horridly bold?

At last Cecil got tired of Cos's drawling plat.i.tudes, and walked up to one of the windows. "How is the ice, will anybody tell me? I am wild to try it, ain't you, Blanche? If we are kept waiting much longer, we will have the carpets up and skate on the oak floors."

I told her I thought they might try it safely. "Then let us go after luncheon, shall we?" said Cecil. "It is quite sunny now. You skate, of course, Sir Horace?"

"Oh! to be sure--certainly," murmured Cos. "We'd a quadrille on the Serpentine last February, Talbot, and I, and some other men--lots of people said they never saw it better done. But it's rather cold--don't you think so?"

"Do you expect to find ice in warm weather?" said Vivian, curtly, from the fire, where he was standing watching the commencement of the note-case.

"No. But I hate cold," said Horace, looking at his snowy fingers. "One looks such a figure--blue, and wet, and shivering; the house is much the best place in a frost."

"Poor fellow!" said Vivian, with a contemptuous twist of his mustaches.

"I fear, however fete you may be in every other quarter, the seasons won't change to accommodate you."

"Oh! you are a dreadful man," drawled Cos. "You don't a bit mind tanning yourself, nor getting drenched through, nor soiling your hands----"

"Thank Heaven, no!" responded Syd. "I'm neither a school-girl, nor--a fop."

"Would you believe it, Miss St. Aubyn?" said the baronet, appealingly.

"That man'll get up before daylight and let himself be drenched to the skin for the chance of playing a pike; and will turn out of a comfortable arm-chair on a winter's night just to go after poachers and knock a couple of men over, and think it the primest fun in life. I don't understand it myself, do you?"

"Yes," said Cecil, fervently. "I delight in a man's love for sport, for I idolise horses, and there is nothing that can beat a canter on a fine fresh morning over a gra.s.s country; and I believe that a man who has the strength, and nerve, and energy to go thoroughly into fishing, or shooting, or whatever it be, will carry the same will and warmth into the rest of his life; and the hand that is strong in the field and firm in righteous wrath, will be the truer in friendship and the gentler in pity."

Cecil spoke with energetic enthusiasm. Horace stared, the Screechington sneered, Laura gave an affected little laugh. The Colonel swung round from his study of the fire, his face lighting up. I've seen Syd on occasion look as soft as a woman. However, he said nothing; he only took her in to luncheon, and was exceedingly kind to her and oblivious of Laura Caldecott's existence throughout that meal, which, at Deerhurst, was of unusual splendor and duration. And afterwards, when she had arrayed herself in a hat with soft curling feathers, and looped up her dress in some inexplicable manner that showed her dainty high heels artistically, he took her little skates in his hand and walked down by her side to the pond. It was some way to the pond--a good sized piece of water, that sn.o.bs would have called the Lake, by way of dignifying their possessions, with willows on its banks (where in summer the sentimental Screechington would have reclined, Tennyson _a la main_), and boats and punts beside it, among which was a tub, in which Blanche confessed to me she had paddled herself across to the saturation of a darling blue muslin, and the agonised feelings of her governess, only twelve months before.

"A dreadful stiff old thing that governess was," said Blanche, looking affectionately at the tub. "Do you know, Captain Thornton, when she went away, and I saw her boxes actually on the carriage-top, I waltzed round the schoolroom seven times, and burnt 'Noel et Chapsal' in the fire--I did, indeed!"

The way, as I say, was long to the pond; and as Cecil's dainty high heels and Syd's swinging cavalry strides kept pace over the snow together, they had plenty of time for conversation.

"Miss Caldecott is looking for you," said Cecil, with a contemptuous glance at the fair Laura, who, between two young dandies, was picking her route over the snow holding her things very high indeed, and casting back looks at the Colonel.

"Is she? It is very kind of her."

"If you feel the kindness so deeply, you had better repay it by joining her."

Vivian laughed. "Not just now, thank you. We are close to the kennels--hark at their bay! Would you like to come and see them?

By-the-by, how is your wolf-dog--Leatherstockings, didn't you call him?"

"Do you remember him?" said Cecil, her eyes beaming and her lips quivering. "Dear old dog, I loved him so much, and he loved me. He was bitten by an asp just before I left, and papa would have him shot. Good gracious! what is the matter?--she is actually frightened at that setter!"

The "she" of whom Cecil so disdainfully spoke was Miss Caldecott, who, on seeing a large setter leap upon her with muddy paws and much sudden affection, began to scream, and rushed to Vivian with a beseeching cry of "Save me, save me!" Cecil stood and laughed, and called the setter to her.

"Here, Don--Dash--what is your name? Come here, good dog. That poor young lady has nerves, and you must not try them, or you will cause her endless expenses in sal volatile and ether; But I have no such interesting weaknesses, and you may lavish any demonstrations you please on me!"