The Tenants of Malory Volume II Part 27

_Gone?_ No; in his wanton cruelty this handsome outlaw had _slain_ his deer--had _shot_ his sweet bird dead, and there she lay in the sylvan solitude she had so beautified--_dead_; and he--heartless archer--went on his way smiling, having darkened the world for harmless Tom Sedley.

Could he like him ever again?

Well, the world brooks no heroics now; there are reserves. Men cultivate a thick skin--nature's buff-coat--in which, with little pain and small loss of blood, the modern man-at-arms rides cheerily through life's battle. When point or edge happen to go a little through, as I have said, there are reserves. There is no good in roaring, grinning, or cursing. The scathless only laugh at you; therefore wipe away the blood quietly and seem all you can like the rest. Better not to let them see even _that_. Is there not sometimes more of curiosity than of sympathy in the scrutiny? Don't you even see, at times, just the suspicion of a smile on your friend's pitying face, as he prescribes wet brown paper or basilicon, or a cob-web, according to his skill?

So Tom and Cleve talked a little--an acquaintance would have said, just as usual--and exchanged newspapers, and even laughed a little now and then; but when at Shillingsworth the last interloper got out, and Tom and Cleve were left to themselves, the ruling idea a.s.serted itself, and Sedley looked hurriedly out of the window, and grew silent for a time, and pretended not to hear Cleve when he asked him whether he had seen the report of Lord Verney's visit to Cardyllian, as displayed in the county paper of that day, which served to amuse him extremely.

"I don't think," said Tom Sedley, at last, abruptly, "that nice, pretty little creature, Agnes Etherage--the nicest little thing, by Jove, I think I ever saw--I say she is not looking well."

"Is not she really?" said Cleve, very coolly cutting open a leaf in his magazine.

"Didn't you observe?" exclaimed Tom, rather fiercely.

"Well, no, I can't say I did; but you know them so much better than I,"

answered Cleve; "it can't be very much; I dare say she's well by this time."

"How _can_ you speak that way, Verney, knowing all you do?"

"Why, _what_ do I know?" exclaimed Cleve, looking up in unaffected wonder.

"You know all about it--_why_ she's out of spirits, _why_ she's looking so delicate, _why_ she's not like herself," said Tom, impatiently.

"Upon my soul I do _not_," said Cleve Verney, with animation.

"That's odd, considering you've half broken her heart," urged Tom.

"I broken her heart?" repeated Cleve. "Now, really, Sedley, do pray think what you're saying."

"I say I think you've broken her heart, and her sister thinks so too; and it's an awful shame," insisted Tom, very grimly.

"I really do think the people want to set me mad," said Cleve, testily.

"If anyone says that I have ever done anything that could have made any of that family, who are in their senses, fancy that I was in love with Miss Agnes Etherage, and that I wished her to suppose so, it is simply an _untruth_. I never did, and I don't intend; and I can't see, for the life of me, Tom Sedley, what business it is of yours. But thus much I do say, upon my honour, it is a lie. Miss Charity Etherage, an old maid, with no more sense than a snipe, living in that barbarous desert, where if a man appears at all, during eight months out of the twelve, he's a prodigy, and if he walks up the street with a Cardyllian lady, he's p.r.o.nounced to be over head and ears in love, and of course meditating marriage--I say she's not the most reliable critic in the world in an affair of that sort; and all I say is, that I've given _no_ grounds for any such idea, and I mean it, upon my honour; and I've seldom been so astonished in my life before."

There was an air of frank and indignant repudiation in Cleve's manner and countenance, which more even than his words convinced Tom Sedley, who certainly was aware how little the Cardyllian people knew of the world, and what an eminently simple maiden in all such matters the homely Miss Charity was. So Tom extended his hand and said--

"Well, Cleve, I'm so glad, and I beg your pardon, and I know you say truth, and pray shake hands; but though you are not to blame--I'm now quite _sure_ you're not--the poor girl is very unhappy, and her sister very angry."

"I can't help _that_. How on earth can _I_ help it? I'm very sorry, though I'm not sure that I ought to care a farthing about other people's nonsense, and huffs, and romances. I could tell you things about myself, lots of things you'd hardly believe--_real dreadful_ annoyances. I tell you Tom, I hate the life I'm leading. You only see the upper surface, and hardly that. I'm worried to death, and only that I owe so much money, and can't get away, I can tell you--I don't care two pins whether you believe it or not--I should have been feeding sheep in Australia a year ago."

"Better where you are, Cleve."

"How the devil do _you_ know? Don't be offended with me, Tom, only make allowances, and if I sometimes talk a bit like a Bedlamite don't repeat my ravings; that's all. Look at that windmill; isn't it pretty?"

CHAPTER XXII.

LADY DORMINSTER'S BALL.

CLEVE VERNEY was in harness again--attending the House with remarkable punctuality; for the eye of the n.o.ble peer, his uncle, was upon him. He had the division lists regularly on his table, and if Cleve's name was missing from any one of even moderate importance, his uncle took leave to ask an explanation. Cleve had also reasons of his own for working diligently at the drudgery of public life. His march was not upon solid ground, but over a quaking bog, every undulation and waver of which was answered by a qualm at his heart.

Still it was only some nice management of time and persons; it was a mere matter of presence of mind, of vigilance, of resource, to which he felt--at least hoped he might be found equal, and all _must_ end well. Was not his uncle sixty-six his last birthday? People might natter and say he looked nothing like it; but the red book so p.r.o.nounced, and there is no gainsaying that sublime record. After all, his uncle was not an everlasting danger. Time and the hour will end the longest day; and then must come the t.i.tle, and estates, and a quiet heart at last.

When the House did not interfere, Cleve was of course seen at all the proper places. On the night of which I am now speaking there was among others Lady Dorminster's ball, and a brilliant muster of distinguished persons.

On that crowded floor, in those celebrated salons, in an atmosphere of light and music, in which moved so much of what is famous, distinguished, splendid, is seen the figure of Cleve Verney. Everyone knew that slight and graceful figure, and the oval face, delicate features, and large, dark, dreamy eyes, that never failed to impress you with the same ambiguous feeling. It was Moorish, it was handsome; but there was a shadow there--something secret and selfish, and smilingly, silently insolent.

This session he had come out a little, and made two speeches of real promise. The minister had complimented his uncle upon them, and had also complimented him. The muse was there; something original and above routine--genius perhaps--and that pa.s.sion for distinction which breaks a poor man's heart, and floats the rich to greatness.

A man of Cleve's years, with his position, with his promise, with London life and Paris life all learned by rote, courted and pursued, wary, contemptuous, sensual, clever, ambitious--is not young. The whole chaperon world, with its wiles, was an open book for him. For him, like the man in the German legend, the earth under which they mined and burrowed had grown to his eyes transparent, and he saw the gnomes at work. For him young ladies' smiles were not light and magic--only marsh fires and tricks. To him old and young came up and simpered or fawned; but they dimpled, or ogled, or grinned, all in the Palace of Truth.

Truth is power, but not always pretty. For common men the surface is best; all beyond is knowledge--an acquisition of sorrow.

Therefore, notwithstanding his years, the clear olive oval of his handsome face, the setting--void of line or colour--of those deep dark eyes, so enthusiastic, yet so cold, the rich wave of his dark hair, and the smooth transparency of temples and forehead, and all the tints and signs of beautiful youth, Cleve Verney was well stricken in years of knowledge; and of that sad gift he would not have surrendered an iota in exchange for the charms and illusions of innocence, so much for the most part do men prefer power to happiness.

"How d'ye do, Miss Oldys?" said this brilliant young man of actualities and expectations.

"Oh, Mr. Verney, _you_ here!"

This Miss Caroline Oldys was just nine-and-twenty. Old, like him, in the world's dismal psychology, but with one foolish romance still at her heart; betrayed into a transient surprise, smiling in genuine gladness, almost forgetting herself, and looking quite country-girlish in the momentary effusion. It is not safe affecting an emotion with men like Cleve, especially when it does not flatter them. He did not care a farthing whether she was surprised or not, or glad or sorry. But her very eye and gesture told him that she had marked him as he stood there, and had chosen the very seat on which her partner had placed her of malice aforethought. Fine acting does it need to succeed with a critic like Cleve.

"Yes, I here--and where's the wonder?"

"Why,--who was it?--_some_ one told me only half an hour ago, you were somewhere in France."

"Well, if it was a man he told a story, and if a lady she made a mistake," said Cleve, coolly but tartly, looking steadily at her. "And the truth is, I wanted a yacht, and I went down to look at her, tried her, liked her, and bought her. Doesn't it sound very like a marriage?"

Caroline laughed.

"That's your theory--we're all for sale, and handed over to the best bidder."

"Pretty waltz," said Cleve, waving his slender hand just the least in the world to the music. "Pretty thing!"

He did not use much ceremony with this young lady--his cousin in some remote way--who, under the able direction of her mother, Lady Wimbledon, had once pursued him in a barefaced way for nearly three years; and who, though as we have seen, her mother had by this time quite despaired, yet liked him with all the romance that remained to her.

"And who are you going to marry, Caroline? There's Sedley--I see him over there. What do you say to Sedley?"

"No, thanks--much obliged--but Sedley, you know, has seen his fate in that mysterious lady in Wales, or somewhere."

"Oh? has he?" He signed to Sedley to come to them.

Looking through the c.h.i.n.ks and chasms that now and then opened in the distinguished mob of which he formed a unit, he occasionally saw the stiff figure and small features of his pompous uncle, Lord Verney, who was talking affably to Lady Wimbledon. Lord Verney did not wear his agreeable simper. He had that starch and dismal expression, rather, which came with grave subjects, and he was tapping the fingers of his right hand upon the back of his left, in time to the cadence of his periods, which he did when delivering matter particularly well worth hearing. It plainly did not displease Lady Wimbledon, whatever his discourse might be. "I'm to be married to Caroline, I suppose. I wish that old woman was at the bottom of the Red Sea."

Cleve looked straight in the eyes of the Honourable Miss Caroline Oldys, and said he, with a smile, "Lady Wimbledon and my uncle are deep in some mystery--is it political? Have you an idea?"

Caroline Oldys had given up blushing very long ago indeed; but there was the confusion, without the tint of a blush in her face, as he said these words.

"I dare say--mamma's a great politician."