Beatrice Boville and Other Stories Part 37

His heart had yearned to him when, in the morning light, he had looked once more upon the face of his son, as the Virginian Horse had swept on to the shock of the charge; and all of wrath, of bitterness, of hatred, of dark, implacable, unforgiving vengeance, were quenched and gone for ever from his soul as he stooped over him where he lay at his feet, stricken and senseless in all the glory of his manhood. He only knew that he loved the man--he only knew that he would have died for him, or died with him.

Bertie stirred faintly, with a heavy sigh, and his left hand moved towards his breast. Old Sir Lion bent over him, while his voice shook terribly, like a woman's.

"Bertie! My G.o.d! don't you know _me_?"

He opened his eyes and looked wearily and dreamily around; he did not know what had pa.s.sed, nor where he was; but a faint light of wonder, of pleasure, of recognition, came into his eyes, and he smiled--a smile that was very gentle and very wistful.

"I am glad of that--before I die! Let us part friends--_now_. They will tell you I have--redeemed--the name."

The words died slowly and with difficulty on his lips, and as his father's hand closed upon his in a strong grasp of tenderness and reconciliation, his lids closed, his head fell back, and a deep-drawn, labored sigh quivered through all his frame; and Lion Winton, bowing down his grand white crest, wept with the pa.s.sion of a woman. For he knew not whether the son he loved was living or dead--he knew not whether he was not at the last too late.

Three months further on, Lady Ida Deloraine sat in her warm bright nest among the exotics, gazing out upon the sunny lawns and the green woodlands of Northamptonshire. Highest names and proudest t.i.tles had been pressed on her through the five years that had gone, but her loveliness had been unwon, and was but something more thoughtful, more brilliant, more exquisite still than of old. The beautiful warmth that had never come there through all these years was in her cheeks now, and the nameless l.u.s.tre was in her eyes, which all those who had wooed her had never wakened in their antelope brilliancy, as she sat looking outward at the sunlight; for in her hands lay a camellia, withered, colorless, and yellow, and eyes gazed down upon the marvellous beauty of her face which had remembered it in the hush of Virginian forests, in the rush of headlong charges, in the glare of bivouac fires, in the silence of night-pickets, and in the din of falling cities.

And Bertie's voice, as he bent over her, was on her ear.

"That flower has been on my heart night and day; and since we parted I have never done that which would have been insult to your memory. I have tried to lead a better and a purer life; I have striven to redeem my name and my honor; I have done all I could to wash out the vice and the vileness of my past. Through all the years we have been severed I have had no thought, no hope, except to die more worthy of you; but now--oh, my G.o.d!--if you knew how I love you, if you knew how my love alone saved me----"

His words broke down in the great pa.s.sion that had been his redemption; and as she lifted her eyes upward to his own, soft with tears that had gathered but did not fall, and l.u.s.trous with the light that had never come there save for him, he bowed his head over her, and, as his lips met hers, he knew that the redeemed life he laid at her feet was dearer to her than lives, more stainless, but less n.o.bly won.

OUR WAGER.

OUR WAGER;

OR,

HOW THE MAJOR LOST AND WON.

I

INTRODUCES MAJOR TELFER OF THE 50TH DASHAWAY HUSSARS.

The softest of lounging-chairs, an unexceptionable hubble-bubble bought at Benares, the last _Bell's Life_, the morning papers, chocolate milled to a T, and a breakfast worthy of Francatelli,--what sensible man can ask more to make him comfortable? All these was my chum, Hamilton Telfer, Major (50th Dashaway Hussars), enjoying, and yet he was in a frame of mind anything but mild and genial.

"The deuce take the whole s.e.x!" said he, stroking his moustache savagely. "They're at the bottom of all the mischief going. The idea of my father at seventy-five, with hair as white as that poodle's, making such a fool of himself, when here am I, at six-and-thirty, unmarried; it's abominable, it's disgusting. A girl of twenty, taking in an old man of his age, for the sake of his money----"

"But are you sure, Telfer," said I, "that the affair's really on the tapis?"

"Sure! Yes," said the Major, with immeasurable disgust. "I never saw her till last night, but the governor wrote no end of rhapsodies about her, and as I came upon them he was taking leave of her, holding her hand in his, and saying, 'I may write to you, may I not?' and the young hypocrite lifted her eyes so bewitchingly, 'Oh yes, I shall long so much to hear from you!' She colored when she saw me--well she might! If she thinks she'll make a fool of my father, and reign paramount at Torwood, give me a mother-in-law sixteen years younger than myself, and fill the house and c.u.mber the estates with a lot of wretched little brats, she'll find herself mistaken, for I'll prevent it, if I live."

"Don't be too sure of that," said I. "From what I know of Violet Tressillian, she's not the sort of girl to lure her quarry in vain."

"Of course she'll try hard," answered Telfer. "She comes of a race that always were poor and proud; she's an orphan, and hasn't a sou, and to catch a man like my father worth 15,000_l._ a year, with the surety of a good dower and jointure house whenever he die, is one of the best things that could chance to her; but I'll be shot if she ever shall manage it."

"_Nous verrons._ I bet you my roan filly Calceolaria against your colt Jockeyclub that before Christmas is out Violet Tressillian will be Violet Telfer."

"Done!" cried the Major, stirring his chocolate fiercely. "You'll lose, Vane; Calceolaria will come to my stables as sure as this mouthpiece is made of amber. Whenever this scheming little actress changes her name, it sha'n't be to the same cognomen as mine. I say, it's getting deuced warm--one must begin to go somewhere. What do you say to going abroad till the 12th? I've got three months' leave--that will give me one away, and two on the moor. Will you go?"

"Yes, if you like; town's emptying gradually, and it is confoundedly hot. Where shall it be?--Naples--Paris----"

"Paris in July! Heaven forbid! Why, it would be worse than London in November. By Jove! I'll tell you where: let's go to Essellau."

"And where may that be? Somewhere in the Arctic regions, I hope, for I've spent half my worldly possessions already in sherry and seltzer and iced punch, and if I go where it's warmer still, I shall be utterly beggared."

"Essellau is in Swabia, as you ought to know by this, you Goth. It's Marc von Edenburgh's place, and a very jolly place, too, I can tell you; the sport's first-rate there, and the pig-sticking really splendid. He's just written to ask me to go, and take any fellows I like, as he's got some English people--some friends of his mother's. (A drawback that--I wonder who they are.) Will you come, Vane? I can promise you some fun, if only at the trente-et-quarante tables in Pipesandbeersbad."

"Oh yes, I'll come," said I. "I hope the English won't be some horrid sn.o.bs he's picked up at some of the b.a.l.l.s, who'll be sc.r.a.ping acquaintance with us when we come back."

"No fear," said Telfer; "Marc's as English as you or I, and knows the good breed when he sees them. He'd keep as clear of the Smith, Brown, and Robinson style as we should. It's settled, then, you'll come. All right! I wish I could settle that confounded Violet, too, first. I hope nothing will happen while I'm in Essellau. I don't think it can. The Tressillian leaves town to-day with the Carterets, and the governor must stick here till parliament closes, and it's sure to be late this year."

With which consolatory reflection the Major rose, stretched himself, yawned, sighed, stroked his moustache, fitted on his lavender gloves, and rang to order his tilbury round.

Telfer was an only son, and when he heard it reported that his father intended to give him a _belle-mere_ in a young lady as attractive as she was poor, who, if she caught him, would probably make a fool of the old gentleman in the widest sense of the word, he naturally swore very heartily, and anything but relished the idea. Hamilton Telfer, senior, had certainly been a good deal with Violet that season, and Violet, a girl poor as a rat and beautiful as Semele, talked to him, and sang to him, and rode with him more than she did with any of us; so people talked and talked, and said the old member would get caught, and the Major, when he heard it, waxed fiercely wroth at the folly his parent had fallen into while he'd been off the scene down at Dover with his troop, but, like a wise man, said nothing, knowing, both by experience and observation, that opposition in such affairs is like a patent Vesta among hayricks. Telfer was a particular chum of mine: we'd lounged about town, and shot on the moors, and campaigned in India together, and I don't believe there was a better soldier, a cooler head, a quicker eye, or a steadier hand in the service than he was. He was six-and-thirty now, and had seen life pretty well, I can tell you, for there was not a get-at-able corner of the globe that he hadn't looked at through his eye-gla.s.s. Tall and muscular, with a stern, handsome face, with the prospect of Torwood (where there's some of the best shooting in England, I give you my word), and 15,000_l._ a year, Telfer was a great card in the matrimonial line, but hadn't let himself be played as yet, for the petty trickery the women used in trying to get him dealt to them disgusted him, and small wonder. Men liked him cordially, women thought him cold and sarcastic; and he was much more genial, I admit, at mess, or at lansquenet, or in the smoking-room of the U. S., than he was in boudoirs and ball-rooms, as the mere knowledge that mammas and their darlings were trying to hook him made him get on his stilts at once.

"I don't feel easy in my mind about the governor," said he, as we drove along to the South-Eastern Station a few days after on our way to Essellau. "As I was bidding him good-bye this morning, Soames brought him a letter in a woman's hand. Heaven knows he may have a score of fair correspondents for anything I care, but if I thought it was the Tressillian, devil take her----"

"And the devil won't have had a prettier prize since Proserpine was stolen," said I.

"No, confound it, I saw she was handsome enough," swore the Major, disgusted; "and a pretty face always did make a fool of my father, according to his own telling. Well, thank G.o.d, I don't take that weakness after him. I never went mad about any woman. You've just as much control over love, if you like, as over a quiet shooting pony; and if it don't suit you to gallop, you can rein up and give over the sport.

Any man who's anything of a philosopher needn't fall in love unless he likes."

"Were you never in love, then, old boy?" I asked.

"Of course I have been. I've made love to no end of women in my time; but when one love was died out I took another, as I take a cigar, and never wept over the quenched ashes. You need never fall in love unless it's convenient, and as to caring for a girl who don't care for you, that's a contemptible weakness, and one I don't sympathize with at all.

Come along, or the train will be off."

He went up to the carriages, opened a door, shut it hastily, and turned away, with the frigid bow with which Telfer, in common with every other Briton, can say, "Go to the devil," as plainly as if he spoke.

"By Jove!" said I, "what's that eccentric move? Did you see the Medusa in that carriage, or a baby?"

"Something quite as bad," said he, curtly. "I saw the Tressillian and her aunt. For Heaven's sake, let's get away from them. I'd rather have a special train, if it cost me a fortune, than travel with that girl, boxed up for four hours in the same compartment with such a little intrigante."

"Calm your mind, old fellow; if she's aiming at your governor she won't hit you. She can't be your wife and your mother-in-law both," laughed Fred Walsham, a good-natured little chap in the Carabiniers, a friend of Von Edenburgh, who was coming with us.

"I'll see her shot before she's either," said Telfer, fiercely stroking his moustache.

"Hush! the deuce! hold your tongue," said Walsham, giving him a push.