Beatrice Boville and Other Stories Part 39

The Tressillian's soft lips curved angrily; she turned away, and began to sing again, at Walsham's entreaty. Telfer got up and lounged over to Virginie, with whom he laughed, talked, waltzed, and played chess for the rest of the evening.

III.

FROM WHICH IT WOULD APPEAR, THAT IT IS SOMETIMES WELL TO BEGIN WITH A LITTLE AVERSION.

After this split, Telfer and the Tressillian were rather further off each other than before; and whenever riding, and driving, at dinner, or in lionizing, they came by chance together, he avoided her silently as much as ever he could, without making a parade of it. Violet could see very well how cordially he hated her, and, woman-like, I dare say mine, and Edenburgh's, and Walsham's, and all her devoted friends' admiration was valueless, as long as her vowed enemy treated her with such careless contempt.

One morning the two foes met by chance. Telfer and I, after a late night over at Pipesandbeersbad, with lansquenet, cheroots, and cognac, had betaken ourselves out to whip the Beersbad, whose fish, for all their boiling by the hot springs, are first-rate, I can a.s.sure you. Telfer tells you he likes fishing, but I never see that he does much more than lie full length under the shadiest tree he can find, with his cap over his eyes and his cigar in his mouth, doing the _dolce_ lazily enough. A three-pound trout had no power to rouse him; and he's lost a salmon before now in the Tweed because it bored him to play it! Shade of old Izaak! is _that_ liking fishing? But few things ever did excite him, except it was a charge, or a Kaffir scrimmage; and then he looked more like a concentrated tempest than anything else, and woe to the turban that his sabre came down upon.

That part of the stream we'd tried first had been whipped before us, or the fish wouldn't bite; and I, who haven't as much patience as I might have, went up higher to try my luck. Telfer declined to come; he was comfortable, he said, and out of the sun; he preferred "Indiana" and his cheroot to catching all the fish in the Beersbad, so I bid him good-bye, and left him smoking and reading at his leisure under the linden-trees.

I went further on than I had meant, up round a bend of the river, and was too absorbed in filling my basket to notice a storm coming up from the west, till I began to find myself getting wet to the skin, and the lightning flying up and down the hills round Essellau. I looked for the Major as I pa.s.sed the lime-trees, but he wasn't there, and I made the best of my way back to the castle, supposing he'd got there before me; but I was mistaken.

"I've seen nothing of him," said Marc. "He's stalking about the woods, I dare say, admiring the lightning. That's more than the poor Tressillian does, I bet. She went out by herself, I believe, just before the storm, to get a water-lily she wanted to paint, and hasn't appeared since. By Jove! if Telfer should have to play knight-errant to his 'pet aversion,'

what fun it would be."

Marc had his fun, for an hour afterwards, when the storm had blown over, up the terrace steps came Violet and the Major. They weren't talking to each other, but they were actually walking together; and the courtesy with which he put a dripping rose-branch out of her path with his stick, was something quite new.

It seems that Telfer, disliking disagreeable sensations, and cla.s.sing getting wet among such, had arisen when the thunder began to growl, and slowly wended his way homewards. But before he was halfway to Essellau the rain began to drip off his moustache, and seeing a little marble temple (the Parthenon turned into a summer-house!) close by, he thought he might as well go in and have another weed till it grew finer. Go in he did; and he'd just smoked half a cigar, and read the last chapter of "Indiana," when he looked up, and saw the Tressillian's pug, looking a bedraggled and miserable object, at his feet, and the Tressillian herself standing within a few yards of him. If Telfer had abstained from a few fierce mental oaths, he would have been of a much more pacific nature than he ever pretended to be; and I don't doubt that he looked hauteur concentrated as he rose at his enemy's entrance. Violet made a movement of retreat, but then thought better of it. It would have seemed too much like flying from the foe. So with a careless bow she sank on one of the seats, took off her hat, shook the rain-drops off her hair, and busied herself in sedulous attentions to the pug. The Major thought it inc.u.mbent on him to speak a few sentences about the thunder that was cracking over their heads; Violet answered him as briefly; and Telfer putting down his cigar with a sigh, sat watching the storm in silence, not troubling himself to talk any more.

As she bent down to pat the pug she caught his eyes on her with a cold, critical glance. He was thinking how pure her profile was and how exquisite her eyes, and--of how cordially he should hate her if his father married her. Her color rose, but she met his look steadily, which is a difficult thing to do if you've anything to conceal, for the Major's eyes are very keen and clear. Her lips curved with a smile half amused, half disdainful. "What a pity, Major Telfer," she said, with a silvery laugh, "that you should be condemned to imprisonment with one who is unfortunately such a _bete noire_ to you as I am! I a.s.sure you, I feel for you; if I were not coward enough to be a little afraid of that lightning, I would really go away to relieve you from your sufferings. I should feel quite honored by the distinction of your hatred if I didn't know, you, on principle, dislike every woman living. Is your judgment always infallible?"

Beyond a little surprise in his eyes, Telfer's features were as impa.s.sive as ever. "Far from it," he answered, quietly "I merely judge people by their actions."

The Tressillian's luminous eyes flashed proudly. "An unsafe guide, Major Telfer; you cannot judge of actions until you know their motives. I know perfectly well why you dislike and avoid me: you listened to a foolish report, and you heard me giving your father permission to write to me.

Those are your grounds, are they not?"

Telfer, for once in his life, _was_ astonished, but he looked at her fixedly. "And were they not just ones?"

"No," said Violet, vehemently,--"no, they were most rankly unjust; and it is hard, indeed, if a girl, who has no friends or advisers that she can trust, may not accept the kindness and ask the counsels of a man fifty-five years older than herself without his being given to her as a lover, and the world's whispering that she is trying to entrap him. You pique yourself on your clear-sightedness, Major Telfer, but for once your judgment failed you when you attributed such mean and mercenary motives to me, and supposed, because, as you so generously stated, I had 'no money and no home,' I must necessarily have no heart or conscience, but be ready to give myself at any moment to the highest bidder, and take advantage of the kindness of your n.o.ble-minded, generous-hearted father to trick him into marriage." She stopped, fairly out of breath with excitement. Telfer was going to speak, but she silenced him with a haughty gesture. "No; now we are started on the subject, hear me to the end. You have done me gross injustice--an offence the Tressillians never forgive--but, for my own sake, I wish to show you how mistaken you were in your hasty condemnation. At the beginning of the season I was introduced to your father. He knew my mother well in her girlhood, and he said I reminded him of her. He was very kind to me, and I, who have no real friend on earth, of course was grateful to him, for I was thankful to have any one on whom I could rely. You know, probably as well as I do, that there is little love lost between the Carterets and myself, though, by my father's will, I must stay with them till I am of age. I have one brother, a boy of eighteen; he is with his regiment serving out in India, and the climate is killing him by inches, though he is too brave to try and get sick leave. Your father has been doing all he can to have him exchanged; the letters I have had from him have been to tell me of his success, and to say that Arthur is gazetted to the Buffs, and coming home overland. There is the head and front of my offending, Major Telfer; a very simple explanation, is it not? Perhaps another time you will be more cautious in your censure."

A faint flush came over the Major's bronzed cheek; he looked out of the portico, and was silent for a minute. The knowledge that he has wronged another is a keen pang to a proud man of an honor almost fastidious in his punctilio of right. He swung quickly round, and held out his hand to her.

"I beg your pardon; I have misjudged you, and I am thoroughly ashamed of myself for it," he said, in a low voice.

When the Major does come down from his hauteur, and let some of his winning cordial nature come out, no woman living, unless she were some animated Medusa, could find it in her heart to say him nay. His frank self-condemnation touched Violet, despite herself, and, without thinking, she laid her small fingers in his proffered hand. Then the Tressillian pride flashed up again; she drew it hastily away, and walked out into the air.

"Pray do not distress yourself," she said, with an effort (not successful) to seem perfectly calm and nonchalant. "It is not of the slightest consequence; we understand each other's sentiments now, and shall in future be courteous in our hate like two of the French _n.o.blesse_, complimenting one another before they draw their swords to slay or to be slain. It has cleared now, so I will leave you to the solitude I disturbed. Come, Floss." And calling the pug after her, Violet very gracefully swept down the steps, but with a stride the Major was at her side.

"Nay, Miss Tressillian," he said, gently, "it is true I've given you cause to think me as rude as Orson or Caliban, but I am not quite such a bear as to let you walk home through these woods alone."

Violet made an impatient movement. "Pray don't trouble yourself. We are close to the castle, and--pardon me, but truth-telling seems the order for the day--I much prefer you in your open enmity to your simulated courtesy. We have been rude to each other for three weeks; in another one you will be gone, so it is scarcely worth while to begin politeness now."

"As you please," said Telfer, coldly.

He'd made great advances and concessions for him, and was far too English when repulsed to go on making any more. But he was astonished--extremely so--for he'd been courted and sought since he was in jackets, and couldn't make out a young girl like the Tressillian treating him so lightly. He walked along beside her in profound silence, but though neither of them spoke a word, he didn't leave her side till she was safe on the terrace at Essellau. The Major was very grave that night at dinner, and occasionally he looked at Violet with a strange, inquiring glance, as the young lady, in the most brilliant of spirits, fired away French repartees with Von Edenburgh and De Tintiniac, her face absolutely _rayonnant_ in the gleam of the wax lights. I thought the spirits were a little too high to be real. Late at night, as he and I and Marc were smoking on the terrace, before turning in, Telfer constrained himself to tell us of the scene in the summer-house. He'd abused her to us. Common honor, he said, obliged him to tell us the truth about her.

"I am sorry," said he, slowly, between the whiffs of his meerschaum. "If there is one thing I hate, it is injustice. I was never guilty of misjudging anybody before in my life, that I know of; and, I give you my word, I experienced a new sensation--I absolutely felt humbled before that girl's great, flashing, truthful eyes, to think that I'd been listening to report and judging from prejudice like any silly, gossiping woman."

"It seems to have made a great impression on you, Telfer," laughed Marc.

"Has your detestation of Violet changed to something as warm, but more gentle? Shall we have to say the love wherewith he loves her is greater than the hate wherewith he hated her?"

"Not exactly," answered the Major, calmly, with a supercilious twist of his moustaches. "But I like pluck wherever I see it, and she's a true Tressillian."

IV.

IN WHICH THE MAJOR PROVOKES A QUARREL IN BEHALF OF THE FAIR TRESSILLIAN.

"Well, Telfer," said I, two mornings after, "if you want to be at the moor by the 12th, we must start soon; this is the 6th. It will be sharp work to get there as it is."

"What, do you think of not going at all?" said Telfer, laying down the _Revue des deux Mondes_ with a yawn. "We are very well here. Marc bothers me tremendously to stay on another month, and the shooting's as good as we shall get at Glenattock. What do you say, Vane?"

"Just as you like," I answered. "The pigs are as good as the grouse, for anything I know. They put me in mind of getting my first spear at Burampootra. I only thought you wanted to be off out of sight of the Tressillian."

He laughed slightly. "Oh! the young lady's no particular eyesore to me now I don't regard her in the light of a _belle-mere_. Well, shall we stop here, then?"

"_Comme vous voulez._ I don't care."

"No philosopher ever moves when he's comfortable," said the Major, laughing. "I'll write and tell Montague he can shoot over Glenattock if he likes. I dare say he can find some men who'll keep him company and fill the box. I say, old fellow, I've won Calceolaria, but I sha'n't have her, because I consider the bet drawn. Our wager was laid on the supposition that the Tressillian wished to marry the governor, but as she never has had the desire, I've neither lost nor won."

"Well, we'll wait and see," said I. "Christmas isn't come yet. Here comes Violet. She looks well, don't she? Confess now, prejudice apart, that you admire her, _nolens volens_."

Telfer looked at her steadily as she came into the billiard-room in her hat and habit, as she'd been riding with Lucy Carteret, Marc, and De Tintiniac. "Yes," he said, slowly, under his breath, "she is very good style, I admit."

Lucy Carteret challenged Telfer to a game; she has a tall, _svelte_ figure, and knows she looks well at billiards. He played lazily, and let her win easily enough, paying as little attention to the _agaceries_ and glances she lavished upon him as if he'd been an automaton. When they'd played it out, he went up to the Tressillian, who was talking to Marc in the window, and, to my supreme astonishment, asked her to have a game.

"Thank you, no," answered Violet, coldly; "it is too warm for billiards."

This was certainly the first time the Major had ever been refused in any of his overtures to her s.e.x, and I believe it surprised him exceedingly.

He bent his head, and soon after he went for a walk in the rosery with Lucy Carteret, whom he hates. We always hate those manoeuvring, _maniere_ girls, who are everlastingly flinging bait after us, whether or no we want to nibble; and just in proportion as they fixatrice, and crinoline, and cosmetique to hook us, will leave us to die in the sun when they've once trapped us into the basket.

That night, when Telfer sat down to ecarte, Violet was singing in another room, out of which her voice came distinctly to us. I noticed he didn't play quite as well as usual. I don't suppose he could be listening, though, for he doesn't care for music, and still less for the Tressillian.

"Mademoiselle," said De Tintiniac, going up to her afterwards, "you can boast of greater conquests than Orpheus. He only charmed rocks, but you have distracted the two most inveterate _joueurs_ in Europe."

Telfer looked annoyed. Violet laughed. "Pardon me if I doubt your compliment. If you were so kind as to listen to me, I have not enough vanity to think that your opponent would yield to what _he_ would think such immeasurable weakness."

"You are not magnanimous, Miss Tressillian," said Telfer, in a low tone, leaning down over the piano. "You are ceaselessly reminding me of a hasty prejudice, unjustly formed, of which I have told you I am heartily ashamed."

"A hasty prejudice!" repeated Violet. "I beg your pardon, Major Telfer; I think ours is a very strong and lasting enmity, as mutual as it is well founded. Don't contradict me; you know you could have shot me with as little remorse as a partridge."

"But can you never forget," continued Telfer, impatiently, "that my enmity, as you please to term it, was grafted on erroneous opinions and false reports, and will you never credit that when I see myself in the wrong, I am too just to others to continue in it?"