Beatrice Boville and Other Stories Part 15

Happily he was out of the reach of temptation, in the stables, looking after Qui Vive, who had to "bide in stall," as much to that gallant bay's disquiet as to her owner's; for I don't know which of the two best loves a burst over a stiff country, or a fast twenty minutes up wind alone with the hounds when they throw up their heads.

To the stables, by an odd coincidence, Cecil, putting the irresistible black hat on the top of her chestnut braids, prevailed on Blanche to escort her, vowing (which was nearly, but not quite, the truth) that she loved the sweet pets of horses better than anything on earth. Where Cecil went, Laura made a point of going too, to keep her enemy in sight, I suppose; though Cecil, liking a fast walk on the frosty roads, a game of battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k with Blanche (when we were out of the house), or anything, in short, better than working with her feet on the fender, and the Caldecott inanities or Screechington scandals in her ear, often led Laura many an unwelcome dance, and brought that luckless young lady to try at things which did not sit well upon her as they did upon the St. Aubyn, who had a knack of doing, and doing charmingly, a thousand things no other woman could have attempted. So, as Vivian and I, and some of the other men, stood in the stable-doors, smoking, and talking over the studs accommodated in the s.p.a.cious stalls, a strong party of four young ladies came across the yard.

"I'm come to look at Qui Vive; will you show him to me?" said Cecil, softly. Her gentle, childlike way was the most telling of all her changing moods, but I must do her the justice to say that it was perfectly natural, she was no actress.

"With great pleasure," said Syd, very courteously, if not over-cordially; and to Qui Vive's stall Cecil went, alone in her glory, for Laura was infinitely too terrified at the sight of the bay's strong black hind legs to risk a kick from them, even to follow Syd. Helena Vivian stayed with her, and Blanche came with me to visit my hunters.

Cecil is a tolerable judge of a horse; she praised Qui Vive's lean head, full eye, and silky coat with discrimination, and Qui Vive, though not the best-tempered of thorough-breds, let her pat his smooth sides and kiss his strong neck without any hostile demonstration.

Vivian watched her as if she were a spoilt child who bewitched him, but whom he knew to be naughty; he could not resist the fascination of her ways, but he never altered his calm, courteous tone to her--the tone Cecil longed to hear change, were it even into invectives against her, to testify some deeper interest.

"Now show me the mount you will give me when the frost breaks up and we take out the hounds," said Cecil, with a farewell caress of Qui Vive.

"You shall have the grey four-year-old; Billiard-ball, and he will suit you exactly, for he is as light as a bird, checks at nothing, and will take you safe over the stiffest bullfinch. I know you may trust him, for he has carried Blanche."

Cecil threw back her head. "Oh, I would ride anything, Qui Vive himself, if he would bear a habit. I am not like Miss Caldecott, who, catching sight of his dear brown legs, vanished as rapidly as if she had seen Muriel's ghost on Christmas-eve."

The Colonel smiled. "You are very unmerciful to poor Miss Caldecott.

What has she done to offend you?"

"Offend me! Nothing in the world. Though I heard her lament with Miss Screechington in the music-room, that I was 'so fast,' and 'such slang style;' I consider that rather a compliment, for I never knew any lady pull to pieces my bonnet, or my bouquet, or my hat, unless it was a prettier one than their own. That sounds a vain speech, but I don't mean it so."

The Colonel looked down into her velvet eyes; she was most dangerous to him in this mood. "No," he said, briefly, "no one would accuse you of vanity, though they might, pardon me, of love of admiration."

Cecil laughed merrily. "Yes, perhaps so; it is pleasant, you know. Yet sometimes I am tired of it all, and I want----"

"A more difficult conquest? To find a diamond, merely, like Cleopatra, to show your estimate of its value by throwing it away."

A flush of vexation came into her cheeks. "Do you think me utterly heartless?" she said impetuously. "No. I mean that I often tire of the fulsome compliments, the flattery, the attention, the whirl of society!

I do like admiration. I tell you candidly what every other woman acknowledges to herself but denies to the world; but often it is nothing to me--mere Dead Sea fruit. I care nothing for the voices that whisper it; the eyes that express it wake no response in mine, and I would give it all for one word of true interest, one glance of real----"

Vivian looked down on her steadily with his searching eagle eyes, out of which, when he chose, nothing could be read. "If I dare believe you----"

he said, half aloud.

Gentle as his tone was, the mere doubt stung Cecil to the quick.

Something of the wild, desperate feeling of the day previous rose in her heart. The same feeling that makes men brave heaven and h.e.l.l to win their desires worked up in her. If she had been one of us, just at that moment, she would have flinched at nothing; being a young lady, her hands were tied. She could only go to Cos's stalls with him (Cos knows as much about horseflesh as I do about the profound female mystery they call "shopping"), and flirt with him to desperation, while Horace got the steam up faster than he, with his very languid motor powers, often did, being accustomed to be spared the trouble and have all the love made to him--an indolence in which the St. Aubyn, who knows how to keep a man well up to hand, never indulged him.

"Do have some pity on me," I heard Cos murmuring, as she stroked a great brute of his, with a head like a fiddle-case, and no action at all. "I a.s.sure you, Miss St. Aubyn, you make me wretched. I'd die for you to-morrow if I only saw how, and yet you take no more notice of me sometimes than if I were that colt."

Cecil glanced at him with a smile that would have driven Cos distracted if he'd been in for it as deep as he pretended.

"I don't see that you are much out of condition, Sir Horace, but if you have any particular fancy to suicide, the horse-pond will accommodate you at a moment's notice; only don't do it till after our play, because I have set my heart on that suit of Milan armor. Pray don't look so plaintive. If it will make you any happier, I am going for a walk, and you may come too. Blanche, dear, which way is it to the plantations?"

Now poor Horace hated a walk on a frosty morning as cordially as anything, being altogether averse to any natural exercise: but he was sworn to the St. Aubyn, and Blanche and I, dropping behind them, he had a good hour of her fascinations to himself. I do not know whether he improved the occasion, but Cecil at luncheon looked tired and teased. I should think, after Syd's graphic epigrammatic talk, the baronet's lisped nonsense must have been rather trying, especially as Cecil has a strong leaning to intellect.

Vivian didn't appear at luncheon; he was gone rabbit-shooting with the other fellows, and I should have been with them if I had not thought lounging in the drawing-room, reading "Clytemnestra" to Blanche, with many pauses, the greater fun of the two. I am keen about sport, too; but ever since, at the age of ten, I conceived a romantic pa.s.sion for my mother's lady's-maid--a tall and stately young lady, who eventually married a retail tea-dealer--I have thought the beaux yeux the best of all games.

"Mrs. Vivian, Blanche and Helena and I want to be very useful, if you will let us," said Cecil, one morning. She was always soft and playful with that gentlest of all women, Syd's mother. "What do you smile in that incredulous way for? We _can_ be extraordinarily industrious: the steam sewing-machine is nothing to us when we choose! What do you think we are going to do? We are going to decorate the church for Christmas.

To leave it to that poor little old clerk, who would only stick two holly twigs in the pulpit candlesticks, and fancy he had done a work of high art, would be madness. And, besides, it will be such fun."

"If you think it so, pray do it, dear," laughed Mrs. Vivian. "I can't say I should, but your tastes and mine are probably rather different.

The servants will do as you direct them."

"Oh no," said Cecil; "we mean to do it all ourselves. The gentlemen may help us if they like--those, at least, who prefer our society to that of smaller animals, with lop-ears and little bushy tails, who have a fascination superior sometimes to any of our attractions." She flashed a glance at the Colonel, who was watching her over the top of _Punch_, as, when I was a boy, I have watched the sun, though it pained my eyes to do it. "You're the grand seigneur of Deerhurst," said Cecil, turning to him; "will you be good, and order cart-loads of holly and evergreens (and plenty of the Portugal laurel, please, because it's so pretty) down to the church; and will you come and do all the hard work for me? The rabbits would _so_ enjoy a little peace to-day, poor things!"

He smiled in spite of himself, and did her bidding, with a flush of pleasure on his face. I believe at that moment, to please her, he would have cut down the best timber on the estates--even the old oaks, in whose shadow in the midsummer of centuries before Guy Vivian and Muriel had plighted their troth.

The way to the church was through a winding walk, between high walls of yew, and the sanctuary itself was a find old Norman place, whose _tout ensemble_ I admired, though I could not pick it to pieces architecturally.

To the church we all went, of course, with more readiness than we probably ever did in our lives, regardless of the rose chains with which we were very likely to become entangled, while white hands weaved the holly wreaths.

Vivian had ordered evergreens enough to decorate fifty churches, and had sent over to the neighboring town for no end of ribbon emblazonments and illuminated scrolls, on which Cecil looked with delight. She seemed to know by instinct it was done for _her_, and not for his sisters.

"How kind that is of you," she said, softly. "That is like what you were in Toronto. Why are you not always the same?"

For a moment she saw pa.s.sion enough in his eye to satisfy her, but he soon mastered it, and answered her courteously:

"I am very glad they please you. Shall we go to work at once, for fear it grow dusk before we get through with it?"

"Can I do anything to help you?" murmured Cos in her ear.

She did not want him, and laughed mischievously. "You can cut some holly if you like. Begin on those large boughs."

"Better not, Cos," said the Colonel. "You will certainly soil your hands, and you might chance to scratch them."

"And if you did you would never forgive me, so I will let you off duty.

You may go back to the dormeuse and the 'Lys de la Vallee' if you wish,"

laughed Cecil.

Horace looked sulky, and curled his blond whiskers in dudgeon, while Cecil, with half a dozen satellites about her, proceeded to work with vigorous energy, keeping Syd, however, as her head workman; and the Colonel twisted pillars, nailed up crosses, hung wreaths, and put up illuminated texts, as if he had been a carpenter all his life, and his future subsistence entirely depended on his adorning Deerhurst church in good taste. It was amusing to me to see him, whom the highest London society, the gayest Paris life bored--who p.r.o.nounced the most dashing opera supper and the most vigorous debates alike slow--taking the deepest interest in decorating a little village church! I question if Eros did not lurk under the shiny leaves and the scarlet berries of those holly boughs quite as dangerously as ever he did under the rose petals consecrated to him.

I had my own affairs to attend to, sitting on the pulpit stairs at Blanche's feet, twisting the refractory evergreens at her direction; but I kept an occasional look-out at the Colonel and his dangerous Canadian for all that. They found time (as we did) for plenty of conversation over the Christmas decorations, and Cecil talked softly and earnestly for once without any "mischief." She talked of her father's embarra.s.sments, her mother's trials, of Mrs. Coverdale, with honest detestation of that widow's arts and artifices, and of her own tastes, and ideas, and feelings, showing the Colonel (what she did not show generally to her numerous worshippers) her heart as well as her mind. As she knelt on the altar steps, twisting green leaves round the communion rails, Syd standing beside her, his pale bronze cheek flushed, and his eyes never left their study of her face as she bent over her work, looking up every minute to ask him for another branch, or another strip of blue ribbon.

When it had grown dusk, and the church was finished, looking certainly very pretty, with the dark leaves against its white pillars, and the scarlet berries kissing the stained windows, Cecil went noiselessly up into the organ-loft, and played the Christmas anthem. Vivian followed her, and, leaning against the organ, watched her, shading his eyes with his hand. She went on playing--first a Miserere, then Mozart's Symphony in E, and then improvisations of her own--the sort of music that, when one stands calmly to listen to it, makes one feel it whether one likes or not. As she played, tears rose to her lashes, and she looked up at Vivian's face, bending over her in the gloaming. Love was in her eyes, and Syd knew it, but feared to trust to it. His pulses beat fast, he leaned towards her, till his mustaches touched her soft perfumy hair.

Words hung on his lips. But the door of the organ-loft opened.

"'Pon my life, Miss St. Aubyn, that's divine, delicious!" cried Cos. "We always thought that you were divine, but we never knew till now that you brought the angels' harmony with you to earth. For Heaven's sake, play that last thing again!"

"I never play what I compose twice," said Cecil, hurriedly, stooping down for her hat.

Vivian cursed him inwardly for his untimely interruption, but cooler thought made him doubt if he were not well saved some words, dictates of hasty pa.s.sion, that he might have lived to repent. For Guy Vivian's fate warned him, and he mistrusted the love of a flirt, if flirt, as he feared--from her sudden caprices to him, her alternate impatience with, and encouragement of, his cousin--Cecil St. Aubyn would prove. He gave her his arm down the yew-tree walk. Neither of them spoke all the way, but he sent a servant on for another shawl, and wrapped it round her very tenderly when it came; and when he stood in the lighted hall, I saw by the stern, worn look of his face--the look I have seen him wear after a hard fight--that the fiery pa.s.sions in him had been having a fierce battle.

That evening the St. Aubyn was off her fun, said she was tired, and, disregarding the misery she caused to Cos and four other men, who, figuratively speaking, _not_ literally, for they went into the "dry" and comestibles fast enough, had lived on her smiles for the last month, excused herself to Mrs. Vivian, and departed to her dormitory. Syd gave her her candle, and held her little hand two seconds in his as he bid her softly good night at the foot of the staircase.

I did not get much out of him in the balcony that night, and long after I had turned in, I scented his Cavendish as he smoked, Heaven knows how many pipes, in the chill December air. The next day, the 23rd, was the night of our theatricals, which went off as dashingly as if Mr. Kean, with his eternal "R-r-r-richard," had been there to superintend them.

All the country came; dowagers and beauties, with the odor of Belgravia still strong about them: people not quite so high, who were not the rose, but living near it, toadied that flower with much amusing and undue worship; a detachment of Dragoons from the next town, whom the girls wanted to draw, and the mammas to warn off--Dragoons being ordinarily better waltzers than speculations; all the magnates, custos rotulorum, sheriff, members, and magistrates--the two latter portions of the const.i.tution being chiefly remarkable for keenness about hunting and turnips, and an unchristian and deadly enmity against all poachers and vagrants; rectors, who tossed down the still Ai with Falstaff's keen relish; other rectors, who came against their principles, but preferred fashion to salvation, having daughters to marry and sons to start; hunting men; girls who could waltz in a nutsh.e.l.l; dandies of St.