Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories Part 30

"Fay and I would do a good deal to oblige you, my beloved governor, if we could get up the steam a little, but I'm afraid we really _cannot_.

Love ain't in one's own hands, you see, but a skittish mare, that gets her head, and takes the bit between her teeth, and bolts off with you wherever she likes. Is it possible that two people who broke each other's toys, and teased each other's lives out, and caught the measles of each other, from their cradle upwards, should fall in love with each other when they grow up? Besides, I don't intend to marry for the next twenty years, if I can help it. I couldn't afford a milliner's bill to my tailor's, and I should be ruined for life if I merged my bright particular star of a self into a respectable, lark-shunning, bill-paying, shabby-hatted, family man. Good Heavens, what a train of horrors comes with the bare idea!"

"Do you mean to say, sir, you won't marry your cousin?" shouted the General.

"Bless your dear old heart, _no_, governor--ten times over, _no_! I wouldn't marry anybody, not for half the universe."

"Then I've done with you, sir--I wash my hands of you!" shouted the General, tearing up and down the room in a quick march, more beneficial to his feelings than his carpet. "You are an ungrateful, unprincipled, shameless young man, and are no more worthy of the affection and the interest I've been fool enough to waste on you than a tom-cat. You're an abominably selfish, ungrateful, unnatural boy; and though you _are_ poor Phil's son, I will tell you my mind, sir; and I must say I think your conduct with your cousin, making love to her--desperate love to her--winning her affections, poor unhappy child, and then making a jest of her and treating it with a laugh, is disgraceful, sir--_disgraceful_, do you hear?"

"Yes, I hear, General," cried Sydie, convulsed with laughter; "but Fay cares no more for me than for those geraniums. We are fond of one another, in a cool, cousinly sort of way, but----"

"Hold your tongue!" stormed the General. "Don't dare to say another word to me about it. You know well enough that it has been the one delight of my life, and if you'd had any respect or right feeling in you, you'd marry her to-morrow."

"She wouldn't be a party to that. Few women _are_ blind to my manifold attractions; but Fay's one of 'em. Look here, governor," said Sydie, laying his hand affectionately on the General's shoulder, "did it never occur to you that though the pretty castle's knocked down, there may be much nicer bricks left to build a new one? Can't you see that Fay doesn't care two b.u.t.tons about me, but cares a good many diamond studs about somebody else?"

"Nothing has occurred to me but that you and she are two heartless, selfish, ungrateful chits. Hold your tongue, sir!"

"But, General----"

"Hold your tongue, sir; don't talk to me, I tell you. In love with somebody else? I should like to see him show his face here. Somebody she's talked to for five minutes at a race-ball, and proposed to her in a corner, thinking to get some of my money. Some swindler, or Italian refugee, or blackleg, I'll be bound--taken her in, made her think him an angel, and will persuade her to run away with him. I'll set the police round the house--I'll send her to school in Paris. What fools men are to have anything to do with women at all! You seem in their confidence; who's the fellow?"

"A man very like a swindler or a blackleg--Keane!"

"Keane!" shouted the General, pausing in the middle of his frantic march.

"Keane," responded Sydie.

"Keane!" shouted the General again. "G.o.d bless my soul, she might as well have fallen in love with the man in the moon. Why couldn't she like the person I'd chosen for her?"

"If one can't guide the mare one's self, 'tisn't likely the governors can for one," muttered Sydie.

"Poor dear child! fallen in love with a man who don't care a b.u.t.ton for her, eh? Humph!--that's always the way with women--lose the good chances, and fling themselves at a man's feet who cares no more for their tom-foolery of worship than he cares for the blacking on his boots. Devil take young people, what a torment they are! The ungrateful little jade, how dare she go and smash all my plans like that? and if I ever set my heart on anything, I set it on that match. Keane! he'll no more love anybody than the stone cherubs on the terrace. He's a splendid head, but his heart's every atom as cold as granite. Love her? Not a bit of it. When I told him you were going to marry her (I thought you would, and so you will, too, if you've the slightest particle of grat.i.tude or common sense in either of you), he listened as quietly and as calmly as if he had been one of the men in armor in the hall. Love, indeed! To the devil with love, say I! It's the head and root of everything that's mischievous and bad."

"Wait a bit, uncle," cried Sydie; "you told him all about your previous match-making, eh? And didn't he go off like a shot two days after, when we meant him to stay on a month longer? Can't you put two and two together, my once wide-awake governor? 'Tisn't such a difficult operation."

"No, I can't," shouted the General: "I don't know anything, I don't see anything, I don't believe in anything, I hate everybody and everything, I tell you; and I'm a great fool for having ever set my heart on any plan that wanted a woman's concurrence--

For if she will she will, you may depend on't, And if she won't she won't, and there's an end on't."

Wherewith the General stuck his wide-awake on fiercely, and darted out of the bay-window to cool himself. Half way across the lawn, he turned sharp round, and came back again.

"Sydie, do you fancy Keane cares a straw for that child?"

"I can't say. It's possible."

"Humph! Well, can't you go and see? That's come of those mathematical lessons. What a fool I was to allow her to be so much with him!" growled the General, with many grunts and half-audible oaths, swinging round again, and trotting through the window as hot and peppery as his own idolized curry.

Keane was sitting writing in his rooms at King's some few days after.

The backs looked dismal with their leafless, sepia-colored trees; the streets were full of sloppy mud and dripping under-grads' umbrellas; his own room looked sombre and dark, without any sunshine on its heavy oak bookcases, and ma.s.sive library-table, and dark bronzes. His pen moved quickly, his head was bent over the paper, his mouth sternly set, and his forehead paler and more severe than ever. The gloom in his chambers had gathered round him himself, when his door was burst open, and Sydie dashed in and threw himself down in a green leather arm-chair.

"Well, sir, here am I back again. Just met the V. P. in the quad, and he was so enchanted at seeing me, that he kissed me on both cheeks, flung off his gown, tossed up his cap, and performed a _pas d'extase_ on the spot. Isn't it delightful to be so beloved? Granta looks very delicious to-day, I must say--about as refreshing and lively as an acidulated spinster going district-visiting in a snow-storm. And how are you, most n.o.ble lord?"

"Pretty well."

"Only that? Thought you were all muscle and iron. I say. What _do_ you think the governor has been saying to me?"

"How can I tell?"

"Tell! No, I should not have guessed it if I'd tried for a hundred years! By George! nothing less than that I should marry Fay. What do you think of that, sir?"

Keane traced Greek unconsciously on the margin of his _Times_. For the life of him, with all his self-command, he could not have answered.

"Marry Fay! _I!_" shouted Sydie. "Ye G.o.ds, what an idea! I never was so astonished in all my days. Marry Little Fay!--the governor must be mad, you know."

"You will not marry your cousin?" asked Keane, tranquilly, though the rapid glance and involuntary start did not escape Sydie's quick eyes.

"Marry! I! By George, no! She wouldn't have me, and I'm sure I wouldn't have her. She is a dear little monkey, and I'm very fond of her, but I wouldn't put the halter round my neck for any woman going. I don't like vexing the General, but it would be really too great a sacrifice merely to oblige him."

"She cares nothing for you, then?"

"Nothing? Well, I don't know. Yes, in a measure, she does. If I should be taken home on a hurdle one fine morning, she'd shed some cousinly tears over my inanimate body; but as for _the other thing_, not one bit of it. 'Tisn't likely. We're a great deal too like one another, too full of devilry and carelessness, to a.s.similate. Isn't it the delicious contrast and fiz of the sparkling acid of divine lemons with the contrariety of the fiery spirit of beloved rum that makes the delectable union known and worshipped in our symposia under the blissful name of PUNCH? Marry Little Fay! By Jove, if all the governor's match-making was founded on no better reasons for success, it is a small marvel that he's a bachelor now! By George, it's time for hall!"

And the Cantab took himself off, congratulating himself on the adroit manner in which he had cut the Gordian knot that the General had muddled up so inexplicably in his unpropitious match-making.

Keane lay back in his chair some minutes, very still; then he rose to dine in hall, pushing away his books and papers, as if throwing aside with them a dull and heavy weight. The robins sang in the leafless backs, the sun shone out on the sloppy streets; the youth he thought gone for ever was come back to him. Oh, strange stale story of Hercules and Omphale, old as the hills, and as eternal! Hercules goes on in his strength slaying his hydra and his Laomedon for many years, but he comes at last, whether he like it or not, to his Omphale, at whose feet he is content to sit and spin long golden threads of pleasure and of pa.s.sion, while his lion's skin is motheaten and his club rots away.

Little Fay sat curled up on the study hearth-rug, reading a book her late guest had left behind him--a very light and entertaining volume, being Delolme "On the Const.i.tution," but which she preferred, I suppose, to "What Will He Do With It?" or the "Feuilles d'Automne," for the sake of that clear autograph, "Gerald Keane, King's Coll.," on its fly-leaf.

A pretty picture she made, with her handsome spaniels; and she was so intent on what she was reading--the fly-leaf, by the way--that she never heard the opening of the door, till a hand drew away her book. Then Fay started up, oversetting the puppies one over another, radiant and breathless.

Keane took her hands and drew her near him.

"You do not hate me now, then?"

Fay put her head on one side with her old wilfulness.

"Yes, I do--when you go away without any notice, and hardly bid me good-bye. You would not have left one of your men pupils so unceremoniously."

Keane smiled involuntarily, and drew her closer.

"If you do not hate me, will you go a step farther--and love me? Little Fay, my own darling, will you come and brighten my life? It has been a saddened and a stern one, but it shall never throw a shade on yours."

The wild little filly was conquered--at last, she came to hand docile and subdued, and acknowledged her master. She loved him, and told him so with that frankness and fondness which would have covered faults far more glaring and weighty than Little Fay's.

"But you must never be afraid of me," whispered Keane, some time after.

"Oh, no!"

"And you do not wish Sydie had never brought me here to make you all uncomfortable?"