Contraband Part 5

Mrs. Lascelles sat at the open window, not quite in the room, not quite on the balcony. Jin, with considerable forethought, had entrenched herself in a corner near the pianoforte, free from draughts. The soft mellow lamp-light threw a very becoming l.u.s.tre on these bewitching individuals. Each knew she was looking well, and it made her look better still. After a bottle of sound claret, it was not to be expected that a man should enact "his grandsire cut in alabaster" in such company.

Goldthred, armed with a flat hat and a coffee-cup, advanced in tolerably good order to the attack.

It was a fine night even in London. The moon sailed broad and bright in a clear, fathomless sky. The very gas-lamps, studding street and square, through the flickering leaves of spring flashed out a diabolical enchantment of their own, half revelry, half romance. The scent of geraniums and mignionette stole with a soft, intoxicating fragrance on the rebellious senses; and a German band, round the corner, was playing a seductive measure of love and languor and lawlessness from the last new opera. Mrs. Lascelles, moving out on the balcony, drank in the soft night-air with a deep-drawn breath that was almost a sigh. Young Goldthred followed as the medium follows the mesmerist, the bird the rattlesnake. His heart beat fast, and the coffee-cup clattered in his hand. Time and scene were adapted, no doubt, for sentiment, especially out of doors.

It is done every day, and all day long. Also, perhaps, more effectually still on nights like these. Pull a man's purse, madam, from his waistcoat-pocket, and although you have Iago's authority for considering it "trash," you may find yourself picking oak.u.m as a first consequence, and may finish, in due course, at the penitentiary; but dive those pretty fingers a thought deeper, take his heart scientifically out of his pericardium, or wherever he keeps it, squeeze it, drain it, rinse it quite dry, return him the shrivelled fragments, with a curtsy, and a "thank you kindly, sir," you will receive applause from the bystanders, and hearty approbation from the world in general for your skill.

So Mrs. Lascelles, stifling all compunction, played out the pretty game.

They leaned over the balcony, side by side; they smelt the mignionette, with their heads very close together; they looked at the moon, and into each other's eyes, and down on the street, where a faded figure, in torn shawl and tawdry bonnet, flitted past, to be lost in the shadow of darkness farther on; sighing, smiling, whispering, till the boy's blood surged madly to his brain; and the woman, despite of craft, science, and experience, felt that she must practise all her self-command not to be softer and kinder, if only for a moment, than she desired.

Her white, cool hand lay on the edge of the mignionette box. He covered it with his own. In another moment he would have seized and pressed it, hungrily, rapturously, to his lips. She rose just in time, and came full into the lamp-light from within.

"What nonsense we have been talking!" she exclaimed, with a laugh; "and what a deal of sentiment! It is nice to talk nonsense sometimes, and sentiment too, but a little goes a long way."

He was hurt, and, not being a woman, showed it.

"I am sorry," said he, gloomily; "I thought you liked it."

She did not want to snub him too much.

"So I do," she answered, stepping back into the drawing-room, "when it's the real thing, sweet and strong, little and good. Come and listen to Jin's song; it's better for you than flirting in the dark on the balcony."

Though mocking and mischievous, there was yet something kind and playful in her tone; he felt quite happy again as he followed her in, meekly, like a lamb to the slaughter.

Miss Ross, although she had taken up a position more adapted to the comfort of an elderly and rheumatic admirer, did not suffer the shining hour to pa.s.s away unimproved. She possessed a full, sweet voice, of rare compa.s.s, and was a thorough mistress of the musical art, accompanying her own or other people's songs with equal taste and skill. Uncle Joseph, in an arm-chair, with a hand on each knee, sat spell-bound by the Syren,--eyes, ears, and mouth wide open, under the influence of her strains.

It was but a simple ditty of which she gave him the benefit, yet neither nature nor art were spared to render it as destructive as she could. He had never heard it before; but, as he expressed entire approval of its rhythm, and asked for it again, I feel justified in giving it here. She called it--

"OVER THE WATER."

I stand on the brink of the river, The river that runs to the sea; The fears of a maid I forgive her, And bid her come over to me.

She knows that her lover is waiting, She's longing his darling to be, And spring is the season of mating, But--she dares not come over to thee!

I have jewels and gold without measure, I have mountain and meadow and sea; I have store of possessions and treasure, All wasting and spoiling for thee.

Her heart is well worthy the winning, But Love is a gift of the free, And she vowed from the very beginning, She'd never come over to thee.

Then lonely I'll wed with my sorrow-- Dead branch on a desolate tree-- My night hath no hope of a morrow, Unless she come over to me.

Love takes no denial, and pity Is love in a second degree, So long ere I'd ended my ditty, The maiden came over to me!

The two guests left No. 40 together, and parted at the end of the street; the junior betaking himself to his cigar, the senior to his whist. Each carried away with him a vague idea that he had spent an evening in Paradise. Which of the two had been made the greater fool of, it is not my province to decide; but I have some recollection of an old couplet in the West of England to the following effect:

"Young man's love soon blazeth and is done, Old man's love burneth to the bone."

CHAPTER VI.

"TERRARUM DOMINOS."

"Near side, man! the near side! Take it up two holes--that'll do. Sit tight behind!"

The leaders cringed and winced against their bars. One wheeler, accepting under protest a wipe with the double thong across his quarters, threw himself widely off the pole; the other, b.u.t.ting like a goat, bounced into his collar; and so, starting the whole coach, the painted, varnished, glittering toy pa.s.sed on, in clouds of dust, through all that wealth of oak and fern, and hill and dale, and gleaming glade and darkling dell, that make a midsummer fairy-land of Windsor Forest on your way to Ascot Races.

The man who had thus pulled up his team for alteration of their harness was a well-dressed, clean-made, good-looking young fellow enough. From the crown of his white hat to the soles of his varnished boots he was a "gentleman" all over; and if the choice little posy in his b.u.t.ton-hole betrayed a suspicion of dandyism, it was redeemed by the frankness of manner, the good-humoured and unaffected _bonhomie_ cultivated by our young warriors of the Household Brigade, horse and foot.

Frank Vanguard, who belonged to the former of these services, was now steering the regimental drag and a roof-ful of brother officers to the great Olympic gathering of modern times on the Cup Day at Ascot.

Good spirits, good humour, banter, repartee, and nonsense, reigned supreme, const.i.tuting a combination called "chaff;" just as light wine, effervescence, and fragrant herbs, in due proportions, become "cup." The driver had enough to do, with a free but not very handy team and a crowded road, to the whole of which every carriage he pa.s.sed a.s.sumed a prescriptive right; yet could he find leisure to answer in corresponding vein a volley of jesting remarks shot freely at him from behind.

"Frank," says a fresh-coloured young warrior, well qualified to enact the part of Achilles, so long as that hero was yet in girl's clothes, "there's a nice bit of galloping ground over the rise. You're not driving a hea.r.s.e! _Do_ spring 'em a bit, and give 'em the silk!"

"I'm not so fond of the silk as _you_ are!" answered Frank, touching his near leader lightly under the bars, as a fly-fisher throws his line.

"You used to get double-thonged pretty handsomely at Eton, I remember, but it hasn't done you much good."

"Rating and flogging," answered the other, puffing out volumes of smoke; "that's the way to spoil your young entry!"

"Waste of whipcord," says a graver youth, desirous, of all things in life, that he should become a Master of Hounds. "They never made you steady from hare!"

"You got that, Charlie!" laughed another; but Charlie, ere this, has found a new interest in spasms of anxiety lest they should be pa.s.sed by a rival drag, coming up in clouds of dust on their quarter, like an enemy's frigate through the smoke of battle.

"Who's this cove?" he exclaimed eagerly. "Sits well on his box--nice short-legged team--keeps his whip quiet, and drives to an inch."

"Sn.o.b!" replies a sententious captain, with long moustaches, "by name, Picard. Wouldn't have him in the Club. Did something abroad. Quite right. Heavy load and a roughish lot. Team, I should say, better bred than the company. Don't let him get by. D--n it all, Frank! that's a close shave!"

It _was_ a close shave! Nothing but the affability with which the near wheeler, having recovered its temper, answered both rein and thong, kept the coach out of a roadside ditch, which would have sent one of the most promising coveys of Her Majesty's peculiar defenders into the thick of Her Majesty's preserves.

In keeping ahead of his rival, Frank Vanguard pa.s.sed a barouche, from the inside of which was turned up to him a fair statue-like face, with dark eyes and hair, that flushed faintly under its white lace veil, as it gave him a little modest nod of recognition. No wonder he looked back; no wonder, thus looking, he brought his wheel so near the edge of a chasm, that one turn more would have turned him over, and that Miss Hallaton, holding her breath, shut both hands tight, while her father exclaimed:

"Nearest thing I ever saw in my life! Who's driving, Helen? He bowed to _you_."

And Helen, answering demurely--"Captain Vanguard, I _think_, papa"--reflected how, had he been upset and hurt, the whole brightness of _her_ day would have darkened into sorrow, and how she wished he wouldn't be quite so reckless, though she liked him for being so bold.

Behind their barouche came a tax-cart, and behind the tax-cart another open carriage, in which drove the party who had a.s.sembled at dinner in No. 40, not very long ago.

Uncle Joseph, with his back to the horses, sat in unusual pomp and magnificence, pointing out the humours, explaining the races, and generally laying down the law, as though he combined in his own person the Mastership of the Buckhounds with the authority of the whole Jockey Club. Owner of a pretty little villa on the Thames, he had invited his kinswoman, the lady of his affections, and Mr. Goldthred to stay with him for Ascot Races. Therefore "The Lilies" smiled gay in chintz and muslin and fresh-cut flowers. Therefore Uncle Joseph, basking in a June sun and the light of Miss Ross's eyes, felt ten, twenty years younger--hopeful, enterprising, volatile as a boy!

Mrs. Lascelles was at all times a person of equable spirits. Perhaps it would be more correct to say, that she possessed that self-command which forbids emotion to appear on the surface. She looked bright, smiling, gracious as usual; her l.u.s.trous eyes, rosy lips, and white teeth, enhanced by bonnet, dress, pink-tinted parasol, general sense of triumph, and flush of the summer's day. Poor Goldthred, sitting over against her, strove to stifle certain misgivings that such a G.o.ddess was too n.o.ble a prize for creatures of common mould, and vaguely wished he had kept away from the flame, round which, like some singed moth, he could not help fluttering in senseless, suicidal infatuation!

Parties of pleasure cannot always be equally pleasant to everybody concerned. Miss Ross, too, seemed out of spirits and pre-occupied; less gracious to Goldthred, less confiding with Mrs. Lascelles, less susceptible to the attentions of Uncle Joseph himself. Jin, as she was now called in her own set, sank back among the cushions, buried in strange, sad memories, that made her unconscious of the noise, the dust, the glare, the confusion of tongues, the crush of carriages, all the charms of the expedition. This, because playing at a cottage door, shouting vigorously as they pa.s.sed, she had caught a glimpse of a ruddy, dark-eyed urchin, who reminded her painfully of her child. It was but one glance, as he sat triumphant in the dust, waving two dirty little hands round a black curly head, yet it was enough. She was back in sunny France once more, with something to trust in, something to work for, something to love. Looking in Uncle Joseph's battered old face and cloudy eyes, rather near her own, she could scarcely repress a movement of abhorrence and disgust; while he, good man, under the impression that he was more delightful than usual, inveighed against the furious driving, the extravagant habits, and general recklessness of the Household Cavalry.

"He's _very_ good-looking!" observed Jin, rousing herself to make a remark that she knew would be unpalatable to her listener; "isn't he, Rose?"

"_Very!_" a.s.sented Mrs. Lascelles; "but you should see him in regimentals, my dear. I think I'll ask him to dinner."

Symptoms of mental disquietude in Uncle Joseph and young Goldthred. Each marvelling that a transitory glimpse, while pa.s.sing at a hand-gallop, should have made so vivid an impression; and the latter wondering whether, if he were to alter the whole tenor of his life, to arm his chest with a cuira.s.s, and plunge his legs into jack-boots, Mrs.

Lascelles would deem him also worth looking at in "regimentals," as an officer's uniform is called by n.o.body but ladies who have never been in a regiment.

No amus.e.m.e.nt, except perhaps cricket, seems so popular as racing, yet out of every hundred people who attend Epsom, Ascot, or Doncaster, do you suppose five know one favourite from another, or, indeed, ever look at the n.o.ble animal, except he shows temper in his canter before the start? Helen Hallaton, though she dearly loved a horse, could not even have told you how many were going for the race about to commence as she took up her station on the Course; and yet the pretty pageant, bright and blooming like a June flower-bed, pa.s.sed under her very nose. But she could have given a clear account of the masterly manner in which Frank Vanguard brought his coach into the enclosure; how he laid it alongside Viscount Jericho's, with as much pomp and little less manoeuvring than moors an iron-clad at regulation distance from her consort; with what easy magnificence he flung his reins to right and left, condescendingly facetious the while with sundry muscular cads, who put their shoulders to the wheels and deftly extracted the pole. She could have told you how he leaped like a Mercury from his box, how carefully he laid aside his whip in its case, how with a silk handkerchief he dusted his white hat, his shirt-front, his curling moustaches, and the places where his whiskers were coming fast; lastly, how he took from the inside of the coach a beautiful little nosegay, daintily tied up, and stuck it into his b.u.t.ton-hole, causing her to admit in her own mind that she wouldn't mind wearing one of those flowers herself, if she could have it without its being given her.