The Gipsy Part 13

repeated Marian, contriving to increase her fears most wonderfully by thinking over them: "they have evidently some greater knowledge of our situation, and some deeper motive for their conduct, than is apparent; and may they not wish to entrap you for some purpose of revenge?"

"I never injured one of them by word or deed, Marian," replied De Vaux; "and if you will consider for a moment, dearest, you will see that they can have no evil intention, at least, towards my person. In the first place, they sent the letter by Manners, and therefore must feel a.s.sured that other people will know of my visiting their encampment; and in the next place, this man, this Pharold, leaves the matter open to me to come to him, or to speak with my father on the subject. Had they any design against me, they would have contrived to convey the letter to me secretly, and would have taken care to tell me that I could get the information they offer nowhere but from themselves. Besides, they cannot be sure that I may not make the whole matter public, and come up with half a dozen companions."

This reasoning calmed Marian de Vaux not a little; but still she was fearful, and could not banish from her mind a kind of foreboding that evil would come of Edward's visit to the gipsy. She knew, however, what absurd things forebodings are; and she felt how natural it was to be anxious and apprehensive for an object in which all her affections centred, the moment that a situation of danger presented itself, without seeking for any supernatural inspirations to justify her fears. At every reported movement of the armies during her lover's absence, she had too often felt the same alarm to give any great weight now to the fear she experienced, against the voice of reason and conviction; and seeing that De Vaux had every probability on his side of the argument, she ceased to oppose him by a word.

"At all events, Edward," she said, "for my sake, do not go unarmed: that precaution cannot be very burdensome."

"Certainly not," replied he, "and I will take my pistols with me, with all my heart, as well as my sword, if it will give you the slightest pleasure, Marian; though I am sure, my beloved, I shall have to use neither."

"Well, you shall do it for my sake, Edward," said Marian; "and I think that to know it is so will lighten the weight upon you."

De Vaux's answer was the precise one which any other man would have made in the same situation; and some further conversation ensued of no great import, in the course of which Marian proposed to her cousin to make Colonel Manners the companion of his expedition. She understood fully, however, the objections which, in reply, he urged against imparting to any one but herself a suspicion which so materially affected his station in society, his fortune, and even his happiness; and those objections having been stated to the reader before, it may be unnecessary to repeat them here. Suffice it to say, that their conversation continued so long that Marian's toilet for the dinner-table was far more hurried than her maid approved. Marian, however, safe in beauty and secure in love, felt that she could go down to dinner, even if a curl or two did stray from its right place; and there was something in her heart that made her never regret the moments given to Edward de Vaux.

CHAPTER X.

We left Colonel Charles Manners standing at the library door, with his hand upon the great brazen ball, embossed with sundry figures, which served as the handle to the lock. It may be remembered that Colonel Manners, being somewhat troubled with the internal contention between feeling for his friend's uneasiness and wonder for its cause, was seeking an empty room to let those two emotions calm themselves; but when he turned the above brazen ball, and the door opened to his will, he found that he had been mistaken in looking for solitude there; for the first things he saw were, a very beautiful face and a pair of bright gay eyes looking up at him from the other side of the little table on the left hand, with the hat and feathers, which it was then customary for ladies to wear in riding, thrown somewhat back from the forehead, so as to show the whole countenance of Isadore Falkland, raising her face with a look of half-laughing vexation, as if asking, "Who is about to disturb me now, when I came here in search of solitude?"

The interpretation of the expression was so self-evident that Colonel Manners paused with a smile; and Isadore, finding that her face had told the truth somewhat too plainly, laughed, and begged him to come in. "Nay, Miss Falkland," said Manners, "I will not disturb you. Your look, I can a.s.sure you, said, _Not at home!_ as plain as those words ever were spoken." And he took a step back, as if to withdraw.

"The servant made a mistake, then," replied Isadore; "I did not bid him say, 'Not at home' to Colonel Manners. But the truth is, I am endeavouring to compose my mind."

"Indeed!" he exclaimed, in some surprise; "I am very sorry to hear that any thing has occurred to agitate it."

"And can you say so, Colonel Manners?" asked Isadore laughing, "when you, yourself, were art and part in the deed?"

Manners was still more surprised; but, as he saw that the agitation of which Miss Falkland complained was of no very serious nature, it only affected him so far as to bring him two steps farther into the room.

"If I am one of the culprits," he said, approaching nearer the table, where Isadore sat enjoying his astonishment,--for hers was one of those light and happy hearts that can win a drop of honey from every flower, however small,--"if I am one of the culprits, I claim the right of an Englishman to hear the charge fairly read, Miss Falkland.

Otherwise I refuse to plead."

"Well, then, Colonel Manners," she replied, "you stand arraigned of having galloped as fast, when riding with two ladies, as if you had been at the head of your regiment; and of being art and part with Edward de Vaux in shaking the little brains possessed by one Isadore Falkland out of their proper place. The truth is," she added more seriously, "that after riding very fast, my ideas, which are never in a very composed and tranquil state, get into such a whirl, that I am always obliged to come and read some good book for a quarter of an hour ere I dare venture into rational society. Do you feel the same, Colonel Manners?"

"Not exactly," answered Manners smiling, "but I rather fancy that I am more accustomed to galloping than you are, Miss Falkland; and that had you been as much used to that exercise as I have been, during eighteen years' service, you would find your ideas quite as clear, after the longest gallop that ever was ridden, as they were before you set out."

By this time Colonel Manners had so far carried on his approaches that he was in the midst of the library, the door shut behind him; and a sofa in the window--not very far from Miss Falkland's left hand, with two or three books upon a console hard by--within one step of his position. What Isadore rejoined to his reply matters little. It was just sufficient to seat him on the sofa, with a book in his hand, which he had not the slightest intention of reading; and a conversation began, which, though it had no particular tendency, and was of no particular import, stretched itself over full three quarters of an hour. It was, however, one of those conversations which are the most pleasant that it is possible to imagine--one of those conversations, when an intelligent man and an intelligent woman sit down, without the intention of talking about any thing in particular, and end by talking of every thing under the sun. They must, however, feel convinced, like Isadore and Colonel Manners, that there is not the slightest chance on earth of their falling in love with each other; for the least drop of love, or any thing like it, changes the whole essence of the thing, and it is no longer conversation. But Isadore and Colonel Manners never dreamt of such a thing; and went on, letting subject run into subject, and thought follow thought, as they liked--not like a regiment of infantry, indeed, advancing in single file, one behind the other, with measured step and stiff demeanour, but like a bevy of rosy children rushing from a school-room door, sometimes one at a time, sometimes two or three linked hand in hand together, sometimes half a dozen in a crowd tumbling over one another's shoulders. Thus ran on their ideas, gaily, lightly, of every variety of face and complexion, without ceremony and without restraint. It is true it required some activity to keep up the game with spirit, for both were rapid; and Isadore, when she could not easily express herself in one way, often took another, more fanciful and flowery, so that had not Manners's wit been as agile as her own he might often have been left behind.

The moments flew rapidly till, as we have said, three quarters of an hour had pa.s.sed, as it were a minute; and neither Colonel Manners nor Isadore Falkland would have known that it had pa.s.sed at all, had not a clock struck in the hall hard by, and Isadore suddenly thought that _somebody_--that great bugbear _somebody_--might deem it strange that she sat talking to Colonel Manners alone in the library, while the rest of the family were probably in the drawing-room. She now remembered, also, that she had still her riding-habit to change; and having by this time quite forgotten that Colonel Manners was an ugly man, she made the alteration of her dress an excuse to leave him, though, to speak truth, she broke off their conversation with regret, and felt inclined to look upon the moments she had thus spent as one of the pleasantest things she had yet met with in the garland of time--that garland which begins in buds and blossoms, and ends in blighted flowers and withered leaves.

Manners, for his part,--though he had from the first thought her a very beautiful girl, and a very charming one, too,--had by this time determined that she was possessed of many a more admirable quality of mind and grace of person than he had even believed before; and an involuntary sigh, which broke from his lips when she left him taught him, to feel that it was as well, upon the whole, that he was so soon to take his departure. It was a part of his policy never to encourage regrets in regard to a state of life which he had made up his mind could not be his; and he found that to live long in the same house with Isadore Falkland might cultivate those regrets much more than was desirable.

When she was gone, he thought for a moment over what had just pa.s.sed, gave another moment to memories of the long gone, spent two or three more in trifling with the book he held in his hand, and then, after changing his boots in his own room, proceeded to the drawing-room.

Mrs. Falkland was now there alone, but it was not long before Isadore again appeared; and, in a few minutes after, De Vaux, as we have before shown, entered the room for a single instant to enquire for Marian. Neither his aunt nor his cousin perceived that any thing had occurred to disturb his equanimity; but the eyes of his friend, quickened perhaps by what he already knew, discovered without difficulty that the pain which had been given him by the letter he had himself delivered was not at all diminished by reflection; and although he felt that he could ask no questions, he was not a little anxious for the result.

Some time pa.s.sed, ere it was necessary to dress for dinner, Without any thing of importance, either in word or deed, occurring in the drawing-room, except inasmuch as Mrs. Falkland informed Colonel Manners that a lady was to dine with them on that day who had also enjoyed the advantage of his mother's acquaintance in her youth.

Isadore p.r.o.nounced her a foolish, tiresome woman; and Manners, on hearing her name, said he had met her some years before, but did not venture to dissent from Miss Falkland's opinion.

Mrs. Falkland smiled, and tacitly acknowledged that her own judgment of the good lady's qualities was not very different, by saying that she had merely invited her because she knew that she would feel hurt were she to hear that Colonel Manners had been long at Morley House without her having seen him. "And I never wish to hurt people's feelings, Colonel Manners," she added, "unless when it is very necessary indeed."

"It is never worth while, my dear madam," replied Manners; "and I believe that, with a little sacrifice of our comfort, without any sacrifice of sincerity, we can always avoid it, however disagreeable people may be."

Manners was in the drawing-room amongst the first after dressing, and he looked with some degree of anxiety for the appearance of De Vaux, in order to see whether the tidings he had received still continued to affect him so strongly. But when De Vaux came in his manner had wholly changed. His conversation with Marian had had the effect which such a conversation might be expected to have. The recollection of it, too, as a whole, while he had been dressing, had done as much as the conversation itself. It had shown him a sweet and consoling result, unmingled with any of the painful feelings, to which all he had himself been called upon to communicate, had given rise in his own breast. The gipsy's letter, and the suspicions which it called up, had shaken and agitated him, had taken away the foundations from the hopes and expectations of his whole life; but that which had past between him and her he loved had re-established all, and fixed the hopes of future happiness on a surer and a n.o.bler basis than ever. He trod with a firmer, ay, and with a prouder, step, than when he had fancied himself the heir of broad lands and lordships; and when Marian herself soon after entered the room, his face lighted up with a happy glow, like the top of some high hill when it receives the first rays of the morning sun. Marian herself, too, blushed as she appeared, for all the display of her heart's inmost feelings, which she had that morning made to her lover's eyes, had left a consciousness about her heart--a slight but tremulous agitation, which brought the warm blood glowing into her cheek. There was nothing like unhappiness, however, left in the countenance of either; and Manners became satisfied, that whatever had been the contents of the gipsy's letter, the evil effects thereof were pa.s.sing away.

The Lady Barbara Simpson at length arrived with her husband in her train, and was most tiresomely pleased to see Colonel Manners. She was a worthy dame in the plenitude of ten l.u.s.tres, in corporeal qualities heavy, and in intellectual ones certainly not light. Vulgarity is, unfortunately, to be found in every rank,--_unfortunately_, because, where found in high rank, in which every means and appliance is at hand to remedy it, its appearance argues vulgarity of mind, to which the coa.r.s.eness of the peasant is comparatively grace. Now Lady Barbara Simpson was of the vulgar great; and, though the blood of all the Howards might have flowed in her veins, the pure and honourable stream would have been choked up by the mental mud of her nature. In her youth, no sum or labour had been spared to ornament her mind with those accomplishments and graces which are common in her cla.s.s; and as music and drawing, and a knowledge of languages, are things which, to a certain degree, may be hung on like a necklace or a bracelet, the mind of Lady Barbara was perfectly well dressed before her parents had done with her education. But nothing could make the mind itself any thing but what it was; and the load of accomplishments, which masters of all kinds strove hard to bestow, rested upon it, like jewels on an ugly person, fine things seen to a disadvantage. The want of consideration for other people's feelings, or rather the want of that peculiar delicacy of sensation called _tact_, which teaches rapidly to understand what other people's feelings are, she fancied a positive, instead of a negative, quality, and called it in her own mind ease and good-humour; and thus, though she certainly was a good-tempered woman, her coa.r.s.eness of feeling and comprehension rendered her ten times more annoying to every one near her than if she had been as malevolent as Tisiphone.

During dinner, Manners felt as if he were sitting next to somebody clothed in hair-cloth, which caught his dress at every turn, and scrubbed him whenever he touched it; and his comfort was not greatly increased by finding himself an object of great attention and patronage to Lady Barbara. Opposite to him sat Isadore Falkland; and, though it was certainly a great relief to look in so fair a face, yet there was in it an expression of amused pity for Lady Barbara's martyr that was a little teasing. Her Ladyship first descanted enthusiastically upon the beauty of Colonel Manners's mother and called upon Mrs. Falkland to vouch how very lovely she was. Mrs.

Falkland a.s.sented as briefly as possible; and Lady Barbara then took wine with Colonel Manners, and declared that there was not the slightest resemblance between him and his mother, examining every feature in his face as she did so to make herself sure of the fact.

At this point of the proceedings Manners was more amused than annoyed; for his own ugliness was no secret to himself, and he therefore knew well that it could be no secret to others. He laughed then at her Ladyship's scrutiny, and replied, "I was once considered very like my mother, Lady Barbara; but whatever resemblance I did possess was carried away by my enemy the small-pox."

"Oh yes," she cried in return, "a dreadful disease that! Shocking the ravages it sometimes makes! I see you must have had it very bad."

"Very bad, indeed, Lady Barbara," replied Colonel Manners with a laughing glance towards Miss Falkland; "and, what is worse, I had it at that period of life when one has just learned to value good looks, without having learned to despise them."

"Oh, terrible!" exclaimed Lady Barbara, really commiserating him; "it must have made a terrible change in you, indeed. Dear me, what a pity!"

Marian de Vaux was pained for Colonel Manners, and she now interposed with a few words, endeavouring to change the subject; but Lady Barbara was like a hollow square of infantry, and could _faire face partout_, so that poor Marian only drew the fire on herself. Lady Barbara answered her question, and then added, "And so I hear you are going to be married in a fortnight, Miss De Vaux. Well, I wish you happy, with all my heart; though marriage is always a great risk, G.o.d knows; is it not, Mr. Simpson?"

"It is, indeed, my dear," replied Mr. Simpson, a quiet little man with much sterling good sense concealed under an insignificant exterior, and with a certain degree of subacid fun in his nature, which was habitually brought forth by the absurdities of his wife,--"it is, indeed, my dear;" and he finished with an audible and perhaps not unintentional sigh, which gave point to his reply.

"But, for all that, it is a very good, and a very proper state, too,"

rejoined Lady Barbara, "and a very happy one, after all."

"I am glad you find it so, my dear," said Mr. Simpson; but Lady Barbara went on, as usual, without attending to her husband.

"I would advise all young people to marry," she said, "but not too young though,"--she herself had married at thirty-five--"not too young though, for then they only have such large families they do not know what to do with them. But now at a proper age every one ought to marry. Now, Colonel Manners, why are not you married? You ought to have been married before this."

The reader knows that she was upon dangerous ground: but Manners was too good a politician to show that he was touched; and therefore he determined in reply to put that as a jest which had a good deal of serious earnest in it. "Oh, my dear madam," he answered, "you forget I am too ugly; I should never find a wife now."

"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" she answered; "ugliness has nothing to do with it; many a woman will marry the ugliest man in the world sooner than not marry at all; and besides, you ought to have a good fortune, Colonel Manners; and that is a great thing. But, I can tell you, you will certainly never find a wife, as you say, unless you ask some one."

The draught was bitter enough; but Manners was indomitable, and answered still gayly, "Nay, nay, Lady Barbara, I am so diffident of my own merits, and so completely convinced that no one will ever fall in love with my beautiful countenance, that I shall certainly never marry till some lady asks me. It would require that proof, at least, to convince me that I had any chance of being loved."

"And if any lady were to ask you," continued the unmerciful Lady Barbara, "would you really marry her after all, Colonel Manners?"

"I believe I may answer that it would depend upon circ.u.mstances,"

replied Colonel Manners, with a grave smile; "as, unfortunately for my happiness, your ladyship's marriage has put you out of the question."

"Oh, do not let me be in the way in the least degree," rejoined Mr.

Simpson from the other side of the table.

De Vaux was fairly driven to a laugh; and Lady Barbara, beginning to find out that there was an error somewhere, paused for a moment, and went on with her dinner.

However skilfully and courageously a man may struggle against his own feelings on those points where they have intrenched themselves by long habit and possession, yet, when forced by circ.u.mstance to treat as a matter of common conversation subjects that are habitually painful to him, there are slight traits--each almost imperceptible, but making something in the aggregate--which will betray what is going on within; sometimes to the eyes of another man, and almost always to those of a woman. A degree of bitterness will mingle with his gaiety; a sigh will sometimes tread upon the heels of a smile; and a deeper gravity will follow the transient, superficial laugh, and distinguish the true from the a.s.sumed. Women, by a more refined nature, by a necessity of concealing their own feelings under various disguises, and by the habit of judging others by slight indications, are rendered infinitely more capable of penetrating the veil with which we are often obliged to cover our deeper sentiments. Both Marian de Vaux and Isadore Falkland were at once in Colonel Manners's secret, and comprehended, without difficulty, how much was jest and how much was earnest in his replies to Lady Barbara. Both felt for him, too, and both were sorry for him; and as Marian, in consequence of her generous interposition in his favour, already suffered somewhat too much by her Ladyship's answers touching matrimony, to dare the field again, Isadore entered upon the campaign with greater power, and did her best to effect a diversion. In this she was tolerably successful, though Colonel Manners did not entirely escape; and the ladies retired sooner than usual, in consequence of Mrs. Falkland's desire to support her daughter.

De Vaux, anxious for the following morning, in order that all his doubts might be brought to a conclusion, would willingly have followed the ladies as soon as possible: but, alas! those were days of hard drinking; and Mr. Simpson, though by no means given to excess any more than Manners or De Vaux, had his own peculiar method of consoling himself for his lady's tiresomeness during the day, by sitting long in the evening, with the sparkling decanters and the social biscuits, by which he was sure neither to be annoyed nor contradicted. He drank his wine slowly, and with real enjoyment, pausing over every sip as a miser over every guinea, playing with the stalk of his winegla.s.s, saying little smart things, if he had any one to hear him, and if he had not, gazing in the fire and diversifying pleasant thoughts by discovering landscapes and faces therein.