Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories Part 29

"Well, Fay, have you had another poor devil flinging himself at your feet by means of a postage-stamp?" said Sydie one morning at breakfast.

"You can't disguise anything from me, your most interested, anxious, and near and dear relative. Whenever the governor looks particularly stormy I see the signs of the times, that if I do not forthwith remove your dangerously attractive person, all the bricks, spooneys, swells, and do-nothings in the county will speedily fill the Hanwell wards to overflowing."

"Don't talk such nonsense, Sydie," said Fay, impatiently, with a glance at Keane, as she handed him his chocolate.

"Ah! deuce take the fellows," chuckled the General. "Love, devotion, admiration! What a lot of stuff they do write. I wonder if Fay were a little beggar, how much of it all would stand the test? But we know a trick worth two of that. Try those sardines, Keane. House is let, Fay--eh? House is let; n.o.body need apply. Ha, ha!"

And the General took some more curry, laughing till he was purple, while Fay blushed scarlet, a trick of which she was rarely guilty; Sydie smiled, and Keane picked out his sardines with calm deliberation.

"Hallo! G.o.d bless my soul!" burst forth the General again. "Devil take me! I'll be hanged if I stand it! Confound 'em all! I do call it hard for a man not to be able to sit at his breakfast in peace. Good Heavens!

what will come to the country, if all those little devils grow up to be food for Calcraft? He's actually pulling the bark off the trees, as I live! Excuse me, I _can't_ sit still and see it."

Wherewith the General bolted from his chair, darted through the window, upsetting three dogs, two kittens, and a stand of flowers in his exit, and bolted breathlessly across the park with the poker in his hand.

"Bless his old heart! Ain't he a brick?" shouted Sydie. "Do excuse me, Fay, I must go and hear him blow up that boy sky-high, and give him a shilling for tuck afterwards; it will be so rich."

The Cantab made his exit, and Fay busied herself calming the kittens'

minds, and restoring the dethroned geraniums. Keane read his _Times_ for ten minutes, then looked up.

"Miss Morton, where is your tongue? I have not heard it for a quarter of an hour, a miracle that has never happened in the two months I have been at the Beeches."

"You do not want to hear it."

"What! am I in _mauvais odeur_ again?" smiled Keane. "I thought we were good friends. Have you found the Q. E. D. to the problem I gave you?"

"To be sure!" cried Fay, exultantly. And kneeling down by him, she went through the whole thing in exceeding triumph.

"You are a good child," said her tutor, smiling, in himself amazed at this volatile little thing's capacity for mathematics. "I think you will be able to take your degree, if you like. Come, do you hate me now, Fay?"

"No," said Fay, a little shyly. "I never hated you, I always admired you; but I was afraid of you, though I would never confess it to Sydie."

"Never be afraid of me," said Keane, putting his hand on hers as it lay on the arm of his chair. "You have no cause. You can do things few girls can; but they are pretty in you, where they might be--not so pretty in others. _I_ like them at the least. You are very fond of your cousin, are you not?"

"Of Sydie? Oh, I love him dearly!"

Keane took his hand away, and rose, as the General trotted in:

"G.o.d bless my soul, Keane, how warm it is! Confoundedly hot without one's hat, I can tell you. Had my walk all for nothing, too. That cursed little idiot wasn't trespa.s.sing after all. Stephen had set him to spud out the daisies, and I'd thrashed the boy before I'd listen to him.

Devil take him!"

August went out and September came in, and Keane stayed on at the Beeches. They were pleasant days to them all, knocking over the partridges right and left, enjoying a cold luncheon under the luxuriant hedges, and going home for a dinner, full of laughter, and talk, and good cookery; and Fay's songs afterwards, as wild and sweet in their way as a goldfinch's on a hawthorn spray.

"You like Little Fay, don't you, Keane?" said the General, as they went home one evening.

Keane looked startled for a second.

"Of course," he said, rather haughtily. "That Miss Morton is very charming every one must admit."

"Bless her little heart! She's a wild little filly, Keane, but she'll go better and truer than your quiet broken-in ones, who wear the harness so respectably, and are so wicked and vicious in their own minds. And what do you think of my boy?" asked the General, pointing to Sydie, who was in front. "How does he stand at Cambridge?"

"Sydie? Oh, he's a nice young fellow. He is a great favorite there, and he is--the best things he can be--generous, sweet-tempered, and honorable----"

"To be sure," echoed the General, rubbing his hands. "He's a dear boy--a very dear boy. They're both exactly all I wished them to be, dear children; and I must say I am delighted to see 'em carrying out the plan I had always made for 'em from their childhood."

"Being what, General, may I ask?"

"Why, any one can see, as plain as a pikestaff, that they're in love with each other," said the General, glowing with satisfaction; "and I mean them to be married and happy. They dote on each other, Keane, and I sha'n't put any obstacles in their way. Youth's short enough, Heaven knows; let 'em enjoy it, say I, it don't come back again. Don't say anything to him about it; I want to have some fun with him. They've settled it all, of course, long ago; but he hasn't confided in me, the sly dog. Trust an old campaigner, though, for twigging an _affaire de coeur_. Bless them both, they make me feel a boy again. We'll have a gay wedding, Keane; mind you come down for it. I dare say it'll be at Christmas."

Keane walked along, drawing his cap over his eyes. The sun was setting full in his face.

"Well, what sport?" cried Fay, running up to them.

"Pretty fair," said Keane, coldly, as he pa.s.sed her.

It was an hour before the dinner-bell rang. Then he came down cold and calm, particularly brilliant in conversation, more courteous, perhaps, to her than ever, but the frost had gathered round him that the sunny atmosphere of the Beeches had melted; and Fay, though she tried to tease, and to coax, and to win him, could not dissipate it. She felt him an immeasurable distance from her again. He was a learned, haughty, grave philosopher, and she a little naughty child.

As Keane went up-stairs that night, he heard Sydie talking in the hall.

"Yes, my worshipped Fay, I shall be intensely and utterly miserable away from the light of your eyes; but, nevertheless, I must go and see Kingslake from John's next Tuesday, because I've promised; and let one idolize your divine self ever so much, one can't give up one's larks, you know."

Keane ground his teeth with a bitter sigh and a fierce oath.

"Little Fay, I would have loved you more tenderly than that!"

He went in and threw himself on his bed, not to sleep. For the first time for many years he could not summon sleep at his will. He had gone on petting her and amusing himself, thinking of her only as a winning, wayward child. Now he woke with a shock to discover, too late, that she had stolen from him unawares the heart he had so long refused to any woman. With his high intellect and calm philosophy, after his years spent in severe science and cold solitude, the hot well-springs of pa.s.sion had broken loose again. He longed to take her bright life into his own grave and cheerless one; he longed to feel her warm young heart beat with his own, icebound for so many years; but Little Fay was never to be his.

In the bedroom next to him the General sat, with his feet in his slippers and his dressing-gown round him, smoking his last cheroot before a roaring fire, chuckling complacently over his own thoughts.

"To be sure, we'll have a very gay wedding, such as the county hasn't seen in all its blessed days," he muttered, with supreme satisfaction.

"Sydie shall have this place. What do I want with a great town of a house like this, big enough for a barrack? I'll take that shooting-box that's to let four miles off; that'll be plenty large enough for me and my old chums to smoke in and chat over bygone times, and it will do our hearts good--freshen us up a bit to see those young things enjoying themselves. My Little Fay will be the prettiest bride that ever was seen. Silly young things to suppose I don't see through them. Trust an old soldier! However, love is blind, they say. How could they have helped falling in love with one another? and who'd have the heart to part 'em, I should like to know!"

Keane stayed that day; the next, receiving a letter which afforded a true though a slight excuse to return to Cambridge, he went, the General, Fay, and Sydie believing him gone only for a few days, he knowing that he would never set foot in the Beeches again. He went back to his rooms, whose dark monastic gloom in the dull October day seemed to close round him like an iron shroud. Here, with his books, his papers, his treasures of intellect, science and art, his "mind a kingdom" to him, he had spent many a happy day, with his brain growing only clearer and clearer as he followed out a close reasoning or clenched a subtle a.n.a.lysis. Now, for the sake of a mischievous child but half his age, he shuddered as he entered.

"Well, my dear boy," began the General one day after dinner, "I've seen your game, though you thought I didn't. How do you know, you young dog, that I shall give my consent?"

"Oh, bother, governor, I know you will," cried Sydie, aghast; "because, you see, if you let me have a few cool hundreds I can give the men such slap-up wines--and it's my last year, General."

"You sly dog!" chuckled the governor, "I'm not talking of your wine-merchant, and you know I'm not, Master Sydie. It's no good playing hide-and-seek with me; I can always see through a milestone when Cupid is behind it; and there's no need to beat round the bush with me, my boy. I never gave my a.s.sent to anything with greater delight in my life; I've always meant you to marry Fay, and----"

"Marry Fay!" shouted Sydie. "Good Heavens! governor, what next?" And the Cantab threw himself back and laughed till he cried, and Snowdrop and her pups barked furiously in a concert of excited sympathy.

"Why, sir, why?--why, because--devil take you, Sydie--I don't know what you are laughing at, do you?" cried the General, starting out of his chair.

"Yes, I do, governor; you're laboring under a most delicious delusion."

"Delusion!--eh?--what? Why, bless my soul, I don't think you know what you are saying, Sydie," stormed the General.

"Yes I do; you've an idea--how you got it into your head Heaven knows, but there it is--you've an idea that Fay and I are in love with one another; and I a.s.sure you you were never more mistaken in your life."

Seeing the General standing bolt upright staring at him, and looking decidedly apocleptic, Sydie made the matter a little clearer.