Bluebell Part 37

"Not all the year round," with a smile; "and, besides, I can't ride! Now, Miss Leigh, if you were an English girl, you would never speak to me again! I don't fear the obstacle, and would ride anything anybody likes to trust me with; but I know, and the _horse_ knows, he could get rid of me at any minute. I hunt sometimes, and go straight if the quad. I am on is fond of jumping; but I cut a voluntary as often as not, and then some fool is sure to come up and say,--'You had no business to have parted at that fence, Dutton; the horse took it well enough!' Then I have no 'hands,' I am told. Certainly, whenever I take up the rudder-lines to put his head for any particular course the brute takes it as a personal affront, and begins to fret, go sideways, and bore and all but tell me what a duffer he thinks me. There's my cousin Kate, who will spoon with me by the hour in a greenhouse, and dance as often as I like to ask her, but at the cover-side she is so ashamed of me she shuns me like the plague; and then, of course, next ball it is, 'Dear Harry, _do_ introduce me to Major Rattletrap,' or some such soldier officer, 'I like the look of him _so_ much.'--'I just offered to,' says I, 'but he didn't seem to rise; said his card was full. Seems sweet on that girl in pink, with black eyes.' That's a school friend of Kate's, whom she is mortal jealous of."

"As if she believed a word of it!"

"Oh, didn't she, though! She bit her lip, and looked shut up. I have great moral influence over Kate that way."

"There's a grand iceberg!" cried Bluebell, after an amused pause, in which she had been trying to picture Cousin Kate: "What a strange shape; it must be hundreds of feet high. How cold it makes the air, though."

"And you are shivering; I'll run and fetch another rug. It is warmer by the funnel, only there are a lot of fellows smoking there."

"But, Mr. Dutton," said she, hesitatingly, "why don't you join them? You have given me all your warm things, and must be cold yourself."

"I'll go if you tell me to," said the lieutenant, looking full into Bluebell's eyes. She was silent, and the long eye-lashes came into play while she considered. She had promised Mrs. Rolleston not to flirt, but there had been no question of that hitherto. Why should she throw away a little pleasant companionship when she was so lonely? "I only spoke on your account." But she had flirting eyes, which said, only too plainly, "Go, if you can."

"I don't think any one could feel cold near you," he whispered,--and then they both blushed. A minute after he ran off for the rug, and Bluebell was left--to repent. "Oh, dear!" thought she, with very hot cheeks, "we must _not_ begin this sort of thing already, or there will be an end to all comfort--and as if I could ever forget!"

She received the rug with matter-of-course indifference, and looked up at him with the serenity of a nun; the young lieutenant was quick to perceive the change. He thought it wiser to follow suit, and they were at ease again, though each remembered the other's blush.

"I came upon a very touching tableau in the saloon," said he; "the bride was reluctantly pecking at some chicken, and that a.s.s, Butler, feeding her with a fork."

"Ah! those are your nationalities," laughed Bluebell; "we don't do such silly things in Canada."

"No, you are very stiff and stand-offish there, I know; that is why you don't require chaperones."

"What are the duties of a chaperone in England, beyond sitting up against a wall all night, like an old barn-door hen?"

"But they mustn't roost," said Mr. Dutton; "they have to guard their charges from the insidious approaches of ineligible youths, and a.s.sist them to entwine in their meshes the sons of Mammon."

"But it must be rather difficult at a ball to distinguish who are eligible as you call them."

"Oh, an astute and practised chaperone knows pretty well who everybody is. They have books of reference, too,--the 'Peerage' and 'Landed Gentry.' I believe now, though, a good deal of matrimonial business is done in the city."

"And men have no objection to heiresses either," said Bluebell, darkly, as a memory came over her. "There's the dinner bell." He collected her rugs, and helped her down to the saloon, where they were betting how many knots the steamer had made that day, and raffling for the successful number. Mrs. Oliphant was present, almost as brisk as usual, for the wind had moderated, and the steamer laboured far less. After dinner some of the ladies joined in a game of shovel-board on deck. The bride, now quite bright again, insisted upon being instructed by Mr. Dutton, and became, with a view to his fascination, more helpless and infantine than ever, for she was one of those women who cannot bear any one to be an object of attention but themselves.

However, as she was not successful in detaching him entirely from Bluebell, she conceived a dislike to her, in which Mrs. Oliphant cordially partic.i.p.ated, and they afterwards whiled away many an hour in the dear delight of detraction. Bluebell was p.r.o.nounced an unprincipled adventuress, determined to use every art to entrap this unsophisticated young man, and each act and look on her part was treasured up by the two censors for private a.n.a.lysis and discussion.

Mrs. Butler, it is true, had less provocation to be spiteful than the elder lady; for being young and silly, she _was_ a certain object of attraction to some of the officers; but the very indifference of Mr.

Dutton gave a value to his admiration, and made her more eager to obtain it than that of the rest. Besides, the vacuity of mind and employment at sea, a brisk flirtation is sure to attract lookers-on, and become a fruitful incentive to malice and envy. Bluebell could not account for the unfriendly interest she excited, as her Canadian education had taught her to regard fraternizing _pro tem_. with any sympathetic masculinity a very unimportant matter, and about as much a precursor to matrimony as if her companion were of the same s.e.x; and she had been far too hard hit to bear any down-right love-making from another man so soon after. Mr. Dutton was, perhaps, as inflammable as most sailors, but he could not make Bluebell out. She evidently liked his society, and became pleasant and animated when they were together, which they were pretty constantly; yet if ever he ventured on anything tender she had a way of putting it by in the most unembarra.s.sed manner possible, which piqued while it perplexed him.

On one occasion, when she had let some warmer speech than usual glance off, he chose to take it as a snub, and, pretending to be offended, betook himself to masculine society and smoking. Bluebell was alone all day, a prey to the ill-natured watchfulness of her two enemies, whose quickened observation and exultant faces proved they had noticed the cessation of his attentions. Once or twice he pa.s.sed her without a word or look, regardless of the innocent surprise in her eyes. "Perhaps he is trying to gain 'moral influence over me,' as well as his cousin Kate,"

thought she, with a little laugh. At dinner he dropped into a seat next Mrs. Butler instead of his usual one by herself, and, from the bride's incessant giggle, was apparently devoting himself to her entertainment.

Bluebell had no one to speak to except the kind old captain, with whom she was rather a favourite, and who chatted away willingly enough, till she ceased to hear that disagreeable and affected laughter.

"Miss Leigh," said a penitent voice in her ear, "will you come on deck?

There's a little land bird in the rigging."

"No, no," said the captain. "I won't have this young lady disturbed; it is very cold on deck, and she is better here."

"I thought you would like to see it," said the lieutenant, gloomily. "It is very tired--blown off sh.o.r.e, I should think."

"Indeed, I'd like to give it some crumbs," said she, hesitatingly. "Will you take it some, Mr. Dutton?"

"Certainly not," seeing his advantage, "unless you come too--in fact, I thought of shooting it. It would be pretty in your hat--or Mrs.

Butler's."

"That would be, indeed, a feather in your cap," said Mrs. Oliphant with an unpleasant sneer.

"Quite right, my dear," said the captain, as Mr. Dutton walked away, "not to do everything a young man asks you;" and he a.s.sured Bluebell, who was still solicitous about the bird, that it would not venture down for crumbs.

Our heroine was vexed at Mr. Dutton's disagreeable manner, and began moralizing on the inevitable way in which she succeeded in estranging her female companions, and offending those of the other s.e.x.

The old captain was just going off to his bridge, when by some afterthought, he stepped back, and asked Miss Leigh if she would like to sit awhile in his cabin. "You'll find no one there but the cat and the parrot," he said; and, on her gratefully a.s.senting, led the way to a small oasis of comfort.

The cat, a great brindled Tom, arched his back a yard high, and made a sort of back jump up to his Master's hand, where he rubbed his head with a sociable miaw. Bluebell soon had him on her lap in a cozy arm-chair.

"I think Master Dutton will be rather puzzled where to find you,"

observed the old skipper, with a twinkle, as he was leaving the cabin.

"Dear me," said Bluebell, with a conscious blush, "I hope you don't think--that there's anything--of that sort--"

"I think you have been letting that young man keep you all to himself up in a corner quite long enough," retorted he, "and you may as well show him you can do without him;" with which he left her to her meditations.

"How disagreeable good advice is!" thought the girl. "Dear old thing! But it is so dull at sea--one must do something. I do wish though Mr. Dutton wouldn't try to spoon--he was awfully nice before he thought of it."

Of course these two drew together again next day, and, though Bluebell still evaded with Madonna eyes all approach to love-making, the lieutenant accepted the situation, and contented himself with flirting _sous le nom d'amitie_.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

ROUGH WEATHER.

I would be a mermaid fair, I would sing to myself the whole of the day; With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair, And still as I comb'd, I would sing and say, "Who is it loves me? who loves not me?"

--Tennyson.

One day there was a gale. It came up suddenly, and some ladies sitting on a bench were swept off by a roll and sudden lurch. The deck was soon cleared of the feminine element, with the exception of Bluebell, who enjoyed an immunity from _malheur de mer_, and knew she would not be much better off in her cabin, where Mrs. Oliphant had gradually ousted her from everything but sleeping accommodation.

A huge roller had hurled itself over the steerage, and broken a man's arm; but the part of the vessel she was on kept pretty dry. Stormy petrels were hovering in flocks; the ship, plunging head foremost into deep troughs, seemed as if it must break its back or be swallowed up, but always borne on the crest of a wave only to repeat the header next minute.

Bluebell was lying (for no other position could be preserved) on some rigs by the wheel, and holding on by a rope to prevent sliding about. She felt excited by the grandeur of the situation, and, in the pauses of the wind, sang low some wild German Volkslied.

"Are you a Lorelei?" asked Mr. Dutton, who was never far off. "What do you intend to do with the steamer?"

"I don't mean any harm to the ship, but I shan't lull the winds yet. How delightful and magnificent it is!"

"If you really don't mean to engulf us, and won't comb your golden hair, pray go on singing. I'll risk it."

Bluebell nodded, and gave full play to her magnificent voice in the wildest Lieder she could remember. The man at the wheel, if he had ever heard of a Lorelei, might have been excused for mistaking her for one. A lady to sit and sing in such a gale was not an every-day experience. Her bright hair was only covered by the hood of a deep-blue cloak, from which her large eyes seemed to have caught a reflection, so dark were the pupils dilated with enthusiasm.