Contraband Part 14

Still dissembling, though I'm trembling, Thus you know we're trained and taught.

For I like you, doesn't it strike you?

Like you more than p'raps I ought!

Yes--I like you, doesn't it strike you?

Like you more than p'raps I ought!

When I meet you, must I treat you As a stranger, calm and cold, Softer feeling, half revealing,-- Are you _waiting_ to be told?

D' you suppose, sir, that a rose, sir, Picks _itself_ to reach your breast?

And I like you, doesn't it strike you?

Like you more than all the rest.

Yes--I like you, &c.

When I meet you, I could eat you, Dining with my Uncle John; Sitting next you, so perplexed, you Ought to guess my heart is gone.

While I'm choking, 'tis provoking You can munch, and talk, and drink, Though I like you, doesn't it strike you?

Like you more than you may think!

Yes--I like you, &c.

When I meet you, I could beat you, For your solemn face and glum.

Don't you see, sir, _you_ are free, sir, I have all the worst to come!

Mother's warning, sisters' scorning-- Qualms of prudence, pride and pelf.

Oh! I like you--doesn't it strike you?

Like you more than life itself!

Yes--I like you, &c.

There was no mistaking the hint conveyed in this touching ditty; but whether he accepted it or not, the song was hardly concluded ere Frank took leave of the company. Certain regimental duties, he said, looking hard at Helen, required his presence in barracks, and therefore he had come on horseback, so as to return at his own time. He regretted it extremely, of course. He had spent a delightful day, and could not thank his entertainers enough. This civil little speech he addressed indeed to Uncle Joseph and Mrs. Lascelles, but his eyes sought Miss Hallaton's the while, and their imploring expression cut her to the heart.

There is a code of signals in use amongst young people situated as these were, far more intelligible than that employed by her Majesty's Navy or the Royal Yacht Squadron. They never shook hands, they exchanged no good-bye, but Helen hoisted something in reply to his flag of distress that appeared perfectly satisfactory to both. Though Miss Ross looked longingly after him as he went away, Frank never turned to meet her glance; and Helen, thoroughly enjoying the homeward trip at sunset, seemed in better spirits and more like herself than she had been all day.

Mrs. Lascelles was puzzled. She had missed the exchange of signals, and could not make it out.

CHAPTER XIII.

SUNDAY IN LONDON.

There is a late train from Maidenhead to Paddington that always reminds me of Charon's bark chartered to carry deceased pa.s.sengers across the Styx. It seems, like that fatal ferry-boat, to fix a limit between two separate stages of existence,--the river, the flowers, the cup, the pleasant friends, the tender well-wisher, in short, "the bright precincts of the cheerful day," and that dark region, forbidding though unavoidable, where we meet our fellow-creatures on more equal, more practical, more distant, and more uncomfortable terms.

Goldthred, who was obliged to be in London the same night, sank into the lowest depths of despondency while bidding adieu to Mrs. Lascelles and her party, as they embarked under a purple sunset for their homeward voyage. He felt sadly alone in the world, even at the station, and getting into a vast and gloomy compartment, of which he was sole occupant, under a dim lamp, began to reflect seriously on life and its vexations. His cigars were done, his boots were wet, he suffered from headache, heartache, and premonitory symptoms of a dreadful disorder called the fidgets. Had he only known that Frank Vanguard, who got in at Slough, was in the very next carriage, how gladly would he have communicated with that migratory young officer, by knocking, shouting, or any other riotous mode of attracting attention; but, for aught he could tell, there was no pa.s.senger in the train but himself, and the sense of solitude became nearly insupportable. Pa.s.sing Hanwell, he found himself envying the unfortunate inmates their varied society, and the liveliness of their manners. Goaded at last by his reflections, and summoning that most daring of all courage which is furnished by despair, he resolved to turn over a new leaf, to a.s.sert himself and his own value, to push the siege briskly, and asking Mrs. Lascelles an important question point-blank, stand or fall by her answer like a man. _Se faire valoir_, he well knew, was the winning game; but, alas! the more precious the heart the lower the price it seems to place on itself, and Goldthred, with all his short-comings, possessed in his character a vein of the true metal, which makes men honest servants if not successful masters. Taking counsel, then, of his very fears, he determined to open the trenches by organising another pic-nic, somewhere lower down the river, to which he would invite all the party of to-day, and such other additions from London as he considered worthy of the honour. Miss Hallaton, of course. Nice girl, Miss Hallaton, and civil to _him_!

Distant, but that was manner. Ah! she would make a charming wife to a fellow who admired that kind of beauty. It was not _his_ style, of course; and with this reflection, the image of a lovely laughing face, and a pair of kind blue eyes, seemed to brighten even the gloom of his dismal railway carriage.

Thinking of Mrs. Lascelles somehow called Sir Henry unpleasantly to mind. And he bethought him how that easy-going personage had expressed certain vague intentions of starting on an expedition of his own, to see some yearlings, leaving his daughter at The Lilies. "Then I'll write to Miss Hallaton herself," thought Goldthred. "Why shouldn't I? That will prevent the possibility of a mistake, and perhaps Mrs. Lascelles won't quite like it. I wonder if she would care. I _couldn't_ make her unhappy, the angel, to save my life, but I wish I was sure I had the power."

By the time he reached Paddington, Goldthred's spirits had risen considerably, as is usually the case with a man who has resolved to take his own part; and, after extricating an overblown rose from his b.u.t.ton-hole, and planting it carefully in the neck of his water-bottle, he went to bed, feeling keenly that the time was fast approaching to decide his fate, and that the next week, or say, perhaps, ten days, must settle his business and make him "a man or a mouse."

In pursuance of this desperate resolution he rose the following morning in time for church, and betook himself after service to his usual Sunday resort, the Cauliflower Club. Here, seated at a desert of writing-table, in a vast and dismal library, he had an opportunity of comparing the gloom that reigned within and without this sanctuary of his s.e.x.

Foreigners can seldom recall unmoved the memories of a Sunday in London.

Whether it is because the shops are shut, or the streets unwatered, or the upper cla.s.ses invisible, I know not, but certainly on that holy day of rest and rejoicing, our bustling metropolis looks grim and deserted as a city of the dead. Doubtless, everybody goes out of town that can.

Those who remain, thinking it, I presume, either eccentric or wicked to be seen abroad, hide themselves with extraordinary caution and success.

The same dulness seems to pervade all parts of the town, except, perhaps, those very poor districts in which vice and want allow their va.s.sals no change, no relaxation from the daily round of dirt, discomfort, and sin. You may traverse Tyburnia and scarce meet a human creature. Belgrave Square is sombre and noiseless as the catacombs. A single Hansom represents traffic, vitality, and commercial prosperity throughout Mayfair, Piccadilly, and St. James's Street. Go into Hyde Park, you will observe one solitary soldier, and his inevitable maid-servant, carrying her prayer-book wrapped in a cotton pocket-handkerchief. Search Kensington Gardens, you will find that beautiful woodland occupied by a sleeping ragam.u.f.fin, a child with its sister, and a wandering female of weak intellect. From Brompton to Billingsgate, from Mary-le-bone to the Minories, you will discover as few pa.s.sengers as you would see flies on a pane of gla.s.s at Christmas.

What becomes of the winter bluebottles I do not pretend to say, but of the two-legged insects pervading our earth, I imagine that on Sundays the males retire, like Goldthred, in countless swarms to their clubs.

Nevertheless, while he wrote the invitations, particularly Miss Hallaton's, with exceeding care and a hard-nibbed pen, he found himself the only occupant but one of the magnificent apartment, devoted to literary labour by a judicious committee presiding over the economy of the Cauliflower. Of the student thus sharing his solitude, and who might or might not be an intimate acquaintance, nothing was visible but the back of a curly brown head, as its wearer lay buried in an enormous sofa, reading, or more probably, asleep. Club-manners, except in certain professional circles where members are bound by their trade in a common brotherhood, forbidding such outrages, Goldthred, even had he been inclined, must have forborne from hurling books across the room, stealing behind to flirt ink on his face, or adopting other such playful modes of attracting notice, and a.s.suring himself of the gentleman's ident.i.ty, so he continued to write with precision and perseverance, leaving the room when he had finished, without discovering that its other occupant was Frank Vanguard.

The two men were scarcely twenty feet apart, they could have a.s.sisted each other considerably in their respective objects, they were thinking at the same moment of the same person, yet for all practical purposes they might as well have been in different counties.

Frank was not asleep--far from it; neither was he reading, though wrapped in a train of thought produced by a novel he had been perusing with unusual avidity and attention. His duties at the barracks had detained him all the previous evening, and catching the last train, not without difficulty, he succeeded in spending his Sunday in London, to find himself with nothing to do when he got there. Truth to tell, Frank was unsettled and unlike himself. He breakfasted without appet.i.te at his cheerful little bachelor lodgings, which were always kept ready, even when the regiment was in London, and in which he slept perhaps half a dozen times in a month. He dressed in unseemly haste, he sallied out tumultuously, with no definite object, and took refuge at last in the library of the Cauliflower, from sheer weariness of body and vacuity of mind. He was so unaccustomed to weigh matters seriously, as affecting the course of a whole lifetime, so unused to reflection on anything less obvious than the front of a squadron or the speed of a horse, that he felt really oppressed by the great argument going on in his own mind, as to whether he could, or could not, struggle through existence without asking Miss Hallaton to be his wife.

Young gentlemen of the present day are not an uxorious race, and Frank was like his fellows. He appreciated, n.o.body more, the liberty of a single man, and had imbibed from his elders, by precept, example, and warning, a certain dread of restraints and monotony that must accompany married life. But then, to sit opposite such a woman as Helen every morning at breakfast, to have her all to himself, without scheming for invitations, and watching for carriages; without necessity for being civil to a chaperon, or making up to a father, why it seemed a heaven upon earth, to attain which he would--yes, hang him if he wouldn't--give up even the regiment itself.

Such being the frame of mind in which he sat down to read his novel, it was but natural that the progress of his studies should have confirmed any previous tendency to sentiment and domestic subjugation. This eloquent work, in three volumes, purporting to furnish a picture of real life, painted up a little, but not overdrawn, represented, of course, an impossible heroine, a combination of circ.u.mstances that never could have taken place, and a _jeune premier_ beautiful as Endymion; nor, judging from his vagaries, apparently much less under the influence of the moon.

To use Frank's own expression, the scene that "fetched him," somewhere about the middle of the third volume, ran as follows:

"A sunset of the tropics, or of paradise, crimson, orange, gold, the plumage of the flamingo, the tints of the dying dolphin, were all reflected in the deep pure eyes of that fair girl, as she leaned one snowy arm on the bal.u.s.trade, and peered out over the lake, herself radiant as the sunset, loving as the flamingo, stern and resolved as the dolphin in his death-pangs. 'He cometh not,' she muttered, 'he cometh not!' and her fairy fingers, closing on the parapet, broke off a morsel of the stonework with the grip and energy of a blacksmith. It fell with a splash in the lake. Could this be the expected signal? Was that important splash but the result of blind accident? Nay, was it not rather the summons of a relentless Fate? Ere the circles that it made in the limpid element had wholly disappeared, a boat was heard to grate upon the shingle beneath the castle. A cloaked figure stood in the prow, masked, booted, belted, and armed to the teeth. But when was true love yet deceived by belts, boots, masks, or pistols? "Tis he!' she exclaimed, "tis he!' and in another moment Lady Clara was in Roland's arms, sailing, sailing on towards the sunset, never to part on earth, never to part perhaps in----"

"Quite right too!" said Frank, closing the book with a bang. "Good fellow! plucky girl! I'll be hanged if I won't have a shy! She can but say 'No.' And if worst comes to worst, there's always the other to fall back upon!"

So with this exceedingly disloyal and uncomplimentary adaptation of Miss Ross as a _pis-aller_, Frank sat himself down at the table lately occupied by Goldthred, to concoct a letter in which, with as little circ.u.mlocution as possible, he should ask Miss Hallaton to be his wife.

Much mutual surprise was expressed by these two gentlemen, when, meeting an hour later in Pall Mall, they discovered that they had been fellow-travellers the night before, each in his own mind having envied the good fortune of the other in remaining at Windsor. With such a topic as their past pic-nic to discuss, and a certain indefinable instinct that they had some mysterious interests in common, they soon merged out of mere acquaintance into friendship, or that which the world calls friendship--an alliance for mutual support and convenience, originating in discreet regard for self. Further to cement this bond of brotherhood, they dined together solemnly at their club, and parted heartily tired of each other before eleven o'clock, going straight to bed, I verily believe, in sheer despair. And thus it was that these unfortunates, ardent lovers in their way, spent their Sunday in London.

CHAPTER XIV.

POST-TIME.

Sunday at The Lilies was far pleasanter to everybody concerned. Indeed, notwithstanding the proverbial dulness of the day that succeeds a festival, the female inmates of that charming little retreat were more inclined to be frolicsome than usual. Their hilarity might partly be accounted for by that principle of contradiction which prompts us all to merriment on such occasions as demand unusual sobriety of demeanour. You will observe children invariably predisposed to a romp on Sunday morning. I think also that each lady had reason to be satisfied in reviewing her afternoon's work of the day before. Mrs. Lascelles, if she did not succeed in adding one single brick to the superstructure of her castle in the air, believed she had, at least, consolidated its foundations, and that Sir Henry became day by day more malleable, though she felt constrained to admit the process of softening was exceedingly gradual, and perceptible only to herself. Miss Ross had sundry topics for reflection, all tending to self-gratulation. With Uncle Joseph, whom we may call her "bird-in-the-hand," she had effected a thorough reconciliation. She could perceive, by the unusual splendour of his Sunday plumage, that he was more than ever enchanted with his captivity, and meditated, at no distant period, some decided effort to render it irrevocable. She felt confidence enough in her own tact to be sure she could postpone such a catastrophe till it suited her convenience to bring it about, and this delay, she decided, should depend entirely on her progress in bagging her "bird-in-the-bush." That Frank Vanguard was. .h.i.t severely, and "under the wing," she did not doubt, nor, though visited by painful misgivings, while she dwelt on the value of her prey, was she without strong hopes that by watching a timely opportunity, and making a brilliant "snapshot," she might prove too quick for her rival, and pull him down like "a rocketer" over Miss Hallaton's head. This was a pleasant dream for the future. She had, besides, a keen enjoyment to look forward to in the immediate present. She was about to see her boy--that alone would be happiness enough for a week! Nothing could be easier than to steal away, as if for afternoon church, and speed to Mrs.

Mole's. From that garrulous old woman, too, she hoped to learn something definite about Achille. Why he was in England? what were his relations with the child? whether--and her heart bounded at the thought--it might not be possible, through the agency of this humble old peasant-woman, to obtain uncontrolled possession of her treasure? For such an object she felt she would willingly forego the patronage of Mrs. Lascelles, the va.s.salage of Uncle Joseph, home, position, prospects! Even Frank Vanguard himself? On the last point she could not quite make up her mind, so left it for future consideration.

With all these interests and occupations, Jin had yet found time to knit a tiny pair of socks for her Gustave. Tears filled her eyes while she pictured the delight of fitting them to his chubby little feet, that very afternoon as he sat on her knee. Though she had many faults she was yet a mother, and in mothers, even the most depraved, a well-spring of natural affection is to be found as surely as milk in a cow.

Helen, too, returning radiant from morning church, looked, to use Sir Henry's expression, "seven pound better" than the day before. Something seemed to have infused fresh vitality into the girl's existence; but of Helen's sentiments I cannot take upon me to furnish an a.n.a.lysis. In the pure unsullied heart of a young and loving woman there are depths it is desecration to fathom, feelings it is impossible to describe, and it would be sacrilege to caricature. None are so thoroughly aware of this as those who know what the bad can be in that s.e.x, of which the good are so excellent. Well for him, whose experience has lain amongst these last, and who goes to his grave with trust unshaken in the most elevating of earthly creeds--a belief in woman's love and woman's truth--whose worship of her outward beauty is founded on implicit confidence in the purity and fidelity of her heart! Such privileged spirits walk lightly over the troubles of their journey through life, as if they were indeed borne up by angels, "lest at any time they dash their foot against a stone."

Sunday luncheon, then, at The Lilies was a pleasant and sociable meal enough. Mrs. Lascelles, though surprised to find she _did_ miss Goldthred a little, seemed in exuberant spirits, perhaps for that very reason. The rest took their tone from her whom they considered their hostess, and the repast, which differed only from dinner in the absence of soup and fish, being excellent and elaborate, no wonder everybody was in high good humour, and more disposed to talk than to listen.

The conversation at first turned upon yesterday's doings, and it is not to be supposed that the dress, manners, looks, character, and presumptive age of every other woman at the pic-nic escaped comment, criticism, or final condemnation. Sir Henry, indeed, true to his traditions, made a gallant stand in favour of one lady, the youngest of the party, "a miss in her teens," as she was contemptuously designated by his listeners, but found himself coughed down with great severity and contempt. He couldn't mean that odious girl in green ribbons! She was forward--she was noisy--she had freckles--she romped with Captain Roe--she flirted with Mr. Driver--she was ugly, unlady-like, bad style.

Even Helen wondered quietly, "What papa could see in her? Though, to be sure, he always admired red hair!"

Their friends thus summarily disposed of, with the first course, they began talking about what they called "their plans." It seemed there was to be an unavoidable break up on the morrow, mitigated, however, by faithful promises from the absentees to return before the end of the week.

"I won't ask you to stay here and lose your ball to-morrow night," said Uncle Joseph, filling Helen's gla.s.s, with a kindly, half-protective air affected by an elderly gentleman towards a young lady when he is not fool enough to be in love with her. "I know what these things are at your time of life, my dear. I used to like them myself, and danced, too, I can tell you! We danced much harder in my day. But why shouldn't you come back on Tuesday or Wednesday? See now, I'll arrange it all. You're obliged to go to London to-morrow, you said, Rose, didn't you?"

"No help for it!" Mrs. Lascelles admitted. "I shall take my maid, sleep at No. 40, and come down again next day."

"Then why shouldn't you take care of Miss Hallaton, and bring her back with you?"