Bluebell Part 27

But the ultimate fate of the bewitched Princess was never known, the story being arrested by a shout from the children as they caught sight of a tall, dark figure, half-concealed by a carved screen, and even in the dusk Bluebell discerned the expression of amused attention and half-satirical smile on his lips.

"I saw him first!" cried Lola, jumping up exultingly. "He has been standing there ever so long, but he made me a sign not to tell."

"I wanted to hear Miss Leigh's story," interposed Bertie; "but it is only the plain Princesses _that_ Giant gets hold of, and then the fairy Princes are too busy with the beauties ever to come and rescue them!"

Bluebell was almost unnerved by the surprise of his unlooked-for appearance. A real Prince Philander had come at her invocation; whether he was to overthrow the Giant, or strengthen his hands, remained to be proved.

She had a dim impression of presenting him to the Misses Palmer with a mortified recollection of her own absurd "make-up," and then sat down, quite faint from the uncontrollable beating of her heart.

Perhaps it was to relieve her he was so amiably making conversation with Coey and Crickey; and exceedingly well they were getting on, she began to think, recovering rather rapidly when not the object of any particular attention.

"And you have been shut up here all day without any exercise?" she heard him say. "That's very bad. Suppose we play hide-and-seek and run about all over the house;" and, clamorously supported by the children, the motion was carried, and the game commenced.

Bluebell, who was under the influence of strong feeling, thought it most sickening folly, and wished that Mrs. Rolleston would come in and stop it; but she was charitably reading to a sick fisherman close by, and, perhaps, weather bound. Miss Prosody was taking a peaceful afternoon snooze; and if she did hear the scampering about the house, they were not unaccustomed sounds on a wet day.

It had struck Bluebell that the game might have been a _ruse_ of Du Meresq's to get a word with her in private; but Estelle came up in fits of laughing, to tell her that Bertie and Crickey were hid together in the cupboard. This was too much, and she walked coldly downstairs and out of the game.

Coey went in search of her sister, who bounded down directly after with a very red face; and soon Mrs. Rolleston came in, full of exclamations and inquiries.

Du Meresq said,--"He and Lascelles had got a week's leave, and had come to the hotel for some duck-shooting."

"And Cecil won't be back till Thursday," said Mrs. Rolleston, regretfully.

The significance of this remark was not lost upon Bluebell, who stole a furtive glance at Bertie's face.

"I thought I had got to an enchanted hall," said he. "I daren't wind the horn lest I should fall under the spell. The portal yielded to my touch, and I entered the first room, where conceive my surprise to see, fantastically dressed, and reclining in Eastern fashion on skins and cushions, a galaxy of beauty. They were silent, too, except one, who, in a hushed, mysterious, voice, was improvising an allegory."

"In short," said Mrs. Rolleston, in a matter-of-fact tone, "the children were dressed up and telling stories." She began to wonder where Miss Prosody could be. It was no use Bertie prejudicing his chance with Cecil by getting up an idle flirtation with these Lake young ladies, who were already blushing so ridiculously at him; and would have been further confirmed in this conviction had she guessed that ten minutes ago he had tried to kiss one of them in a cupboard.

She offered him a bed, but willingly accepted his excuse that Lascelles was all alone, and he had promised to go back, but would bring him to dinner next night. And then he went away through the rain, and Bluebell was left with her thoughts.

Well she had never pictured such a meeting as that! And how disagreeable it had all been. Of course she did not mind his not having paid her much attention before the children, who repeated everything, but to go on in that silly romping away with Crickey was ineffably disgusting. She did not at all recognise it as a poetical justice on her for tampering with other people's lovers a few days before, but mentally denounced that young person as bold and unlady like to the last degree.

The evening continued so stormy, that Mrs. Rolleston kept the girls all night, and Bluebell, much against her will, had to entertain them, which was the more irksome as they were both expiring with curiosity about Bertie, and could talk of nothing but his extraordinary behaviour.

Crickey hadn't even the sense to keep his impertinence in the cupboard to herself, and Bluebell, who had only suspected before, was provoked into the most trenchant expressions of condemnation.

"How could I help it?" asked Crickey, indignantly. "How should I know he would be so impudent?"

"Why need you have got into the cupboard with him?" said Bluebell. "It is just what you might have expected, in fact, it was inviting it."

"It wasn't," said Crickey, almost crying, for she had previously been inclined to take it as a tribute to her charms. "Freddy and Estelle had hid there before, and Captain Du Meresq said it was the best place in the house."

"For that, no doubt," began the other. But Coey came to her sister's a.s.sistance with a Biblical allusion to the mote and the beam, and Bluebell saw that if personalities were to be avoided, they had better go downstairs at once. So the party of ladies pa.s.sed a quiet sleepy evening,--Mrs. Rolleston mentally resolving not to encourage those girls about the house while Du Meresq was at the lake, and wishing she could expedite Cecil's return. How much more danger there was from Bluebell she never suspected, Bertie had been so very cautious.

As they went up to bed, Crickey, who had become rather sobered by the dull evening, entreated Bluebell not to mention the cupboard scene in hide-and-seek, which was impatiently promised. To think that she should be asked to keep any girl's secret about Bertie! "And now," thought the poor bewildered child, "it will be almost more difficult than ever to see him alone, and I must ask him if there _is_ anything between him and Cecil." For that seed of bitterness sown by Lilla had borne "Dead Sea fruit"; and, much as she struggled against the hateful idea, it really seemed the only clue to Bertie's inconsistencies.

The next day Mrs. Rolleston had some letters, and reading one attentively, she threw it over to Bluebell. "You didn't seem to care for this some weeks ago, but you see you can think twice of it. I _did_ write rather enthusiastically about your music, which, really, is too good to be wasted on my children, and the result is Mrs. Leighton is quite wild to have you."

A singular expression flitted over the girl's face as she mechanically took the letter--it was only to gain time, she wasn't reading it; and the large salary and kind promises of a happy home took no effect on her mind.

She was thinking of Du Meresq. Suppose he was only trifling with her, and all those warm protestations of affection were really to end in nothing!

She might even have to see him married to Cecil! The thought was unendurable, yet it was possible; and, if so, how could she remain with the Rollestons? And it would be almost as bad as returning to the cottage, once "so rich with thoughts of him." Chance had thrown Du Meresq again in her path, and she was determined to find out the truth. Chance also offered her this retreat, which would put the ocean between them if he failed her, and then no distance could be too great for her wishes.

"Can you give me till the mail after next to decide?" said she, as she arrived at this point of decision.

"Oh, of course," said Mrs. Rolleston, smiling at the almost tragic tone of resolution in which it was uttered. "You will have to consult your mother, and she might not wish you to go to England. Why child, how pale you are!"

Bluebell forced a wintry smile and escaped, for a lump was rising in her throat, and she could not but remember that she must expect no sympathy or support from Mrs. Rolleston, who had once said, "It would be a most unsuitable connection." She pa.s.sed the day in reviewing the situation.

This was the first time she had ever been called on to think seriously and painfully, and act for herself without a friendly word to support her. Perhaps Du Meresq's behaviour the day before had not a little braced her to the energetic course she had determined on. It was, indeed, no easy task to extort from a man who professed so much the simple question in black and white which could alone give value to his addresses. With no witnesses present, she had little doubt that he would be as ardent a lover as ever; but that would no longer satisfy her. She had arranged her plan, and relied on two feelers to settle the matter one way or the other.

The first was to repeat to Bertie what Lilla had said about himself and Cecil, and then judge of the effect of her words. If unsatisfactory, she might tell him she was going to take a situation in England, "and if he makes no effort to stop _that_, it will, indeed, be over, and I will go,"

was the necessary conclusion.

Du Meresq and his friend, Captain Lascelles, came to dinner. Were either to die, exchange, or marry, the other would doubtless feel much inconvenienced, not to say injured. In England, their hunters, rooms at Newmarket, stall at the Opera, or whatever would bear division, were all joint-stock affairs; and either would, with perfect cordiality, have lent the other money, which a long unpaid tradesman would have found exceedingly hard to extract from him.

Both were unquiet spirits in the regiment, abhorring the monotony of drill and stables, and insatiable for leave. Yet on field-days, even their most pipe clay of colonels admitted that there was no smarter turned out troop than Lascelles', and no better squadron leader than Du Meresq.

The party was so small at dinner that conversation became pretty general.

Captain Lascelles at first tried to be _au mieux_ with the only young lady present; but he didn't make much way, and began to think her rather stupid, and to wish that those lively girls his friend Bertie had told him of would swim or paddle themselves across. To Bluebell the evening was little short of purgatory. Never had she known Du Meresq so altered.

Scarcely a sentence had pa.s.sed between them, and his manner was conventional and guarded. Formerly he had been equally cautious in public, yet they were always _en rapport_, and some slight glance was certain to be exchanged in a.s.surance of it.

This night she knew from internal consciousness that they were not, and that a palpable change had taken place. Her heroic resolutions of the morning pa.s.sed away in inconsistent and impotent longing for one word or gesture to break down this impenetrable wall that seemed to have arisen between them, and to recall the old happy love-making days. Mrs.

Rolleston asked her to sing. A bird robbed of its nest could not have felt more disinclined, yet she would try, though her voice sounded strange to herself, and was harsh and wiry.

Du Meresq wondered what had jarred those silvery tones, and stolen the melody from the voice he had once thought almost seraphic. Music, and especially Bluebell's, had ever a potent charm for him. She had abandoned the song at the end of the verse, and glided without stopping, into an instrumental piece. There was a subdued hum of voices, but Bertie's was not among them, and Bluebell knew he was listening as of old. She had arranged some variations to their favourite valse, and some impulse made her select that. Keeping the subject cautiously back, and only allowing suggestions of it to steal into the modulations, it seemed like fugitive s.n.a.t.c.hes of an air borne on a gust of wind, and overcome by nearer sounds,--the breeze in the trees, the tinkle of sheep-bells, the brawling of a brook.

Bertie listened curiously, thought he had caught the air, lost it, and doubted, till he recognised, in the mocking melody that continually eluded him, the valse he had so often danced with Bluebell. He shot one glance of intelligence at her as she finished, but Lascelles, who could not bear the piece, was so loud in admiration, and found so much to say about it, that Du Meresq could not have got in a word had he wished it.

Bluebell turned impatiently away, and s.n.a.t.c.hing up some work, went to a secluded part of the room, under cover of requiring a shaded lamp there.

"If there is any truth in magnetic attraction," thought she, "Captain Lascelles shall not come near me, and Bertie shall." She excluded every other thought from her mind, and _willed_ steadily. Du Meresq became restless, rose from his chair, and stood aimlessly looking at something on a table. Bluebell continued her mesmeric efforts, every fibre quivering. He was coasting in her direction; in another instant he would be close, and have sat down on the sofa by her. Then she looked up, and their eyes met and mingled. It might have been for half-an-hour to her overwrought sensations; the past was forgotten,--she was gazing in a trance. What impelled Mrs. Rolleston at that moment to say,--"I heard from Cecil this afternoon, Bertie, and if they catch the boat at ----, they will be here to-morrow evening?"

The pa.s.sionate eyes drowning themselves in the love light of Bluebell's became thoughtful and colder. The spell was broken. Du Meresq turned away, and began talking to his sister about the expected travellers.

The reaction was painful as the killing of a nerve, and the cause of it so cruel, that she made no attempt to endure it. A swift glance round showed her she was un.o.bserved, and springing to the door, she fled from the room, to weep out her blue eyes in senseless, hopeless repining.

No one noticed her exit but Lascelles, who, going through his social _devoirs_ with mechanical propriety, had his powers of observation quite disengaged.

"I can't make the girl out," he soliloquized. "She is aggravatingly pretty, plays very uncanny, unpleasant music, and looks at me with about as much interest as if I had called to tune the piano or regulate the clocks. I wonder if she is expected to go to bed at ten! I fancy there is a very stringent code of rules for a companion. She was sitting in such a nice inviting corner, to. Du Meresq seemed sloping off for a spoon; but when he doubled back, and I was just ready to bear down, she shot out of the room, like Cinderella when she had 'exceeded her pa.s.s.'"

The two friends looked in next morning. They were going in a yacht as far as the Indian village, and Bertie said if the Colonel and Cecil would be likely to have arrived, he would come in on his way back. There was some discussion about trains and connecting boats, and a guide-book was fruitlessly hunted for.

"Oh, I recollect," said Mrs. Rolleston, suddenly; "I put it in the table-drawer in the next room,--right-hand drawer, Bertie," as he went to fetch it. He found a little more than he sought, for there, alone, with every appearance of being caught, was Bluebell. Du Meresq would, perhaps, have avoided the _contretemps_, had he been prepared for it. As it was he advanced towards her, and, clasping her in his arms, kissed the cheek from which every ray of colour had vanished, and said, tenderly,--"What has turned my Bluebell into a Lily?"

"I have heard something. I want to ask you a question," came out almost mechanically.

Du Meresq had not expected so serious an answer to a _ba.n.a.lite_, and his countenance altered.

"Why are you so grave, Bluebell? You take life too seriously, my child.

A young beauty like you need never be unhappy--only make other people so."