Still it was pleasant, very pleasant. She looked so beautiful, she smiled so kindly, always with her eyes, sometimes with the perfect, high-bred mouth; she entered so gaily into his gossip, his fancies, his jokes, allowing him to hold her parasol and arrange her shawls with such sweetness and good-humour, that d.i.c.k felt quite sorry to reach the Portugal laurels and trim lawns of their destination, when the drive was over from which he had derived this new and unforeseen gratification. Something warned him that, in accordance with that rule of compensation which governs all terrestrial matters, these delights were too keen to last, and there must surely be annoyance and vexation in store to complete the afternoon.
His first twinge originated in the marked admiration called forth by Miss Bruce"s appearance at the very outset. She had scarcely made her salaam to Lady Goldthred, and pa.s.sed on through billiard-room, library, and verandah, to the two dwarfed larches and half-acre of mown gra.s.s which const.i.tute the wilderness of a suburban villa, ere d.i.c.k felt conscious that his could be no monopoly of adoration. Free trade was at once declared by glances, whispers and inquiries from a succession of well-dressed young gentlemen, wise doubtless in their own conceit, yet not wanting in that worldly temerity which impels fools to rush in where angels fear to tread, and gives the former cla.s.s of beings, in their dealings with that s.e.x which is compounded of both, an immeasurable advantage over the latter.
Miss Bruce had not traversed the archery-ground twenty-five feet, from target to target, on her way to the refreshment-tent, ere half-a-dozen of the household troops, a bachelor baronet, and the richest young commoner of his year were presented by her host, at their own earnest request. d.i.c.k"s high spirits went down like the froth in a gla.s.s of soda-water, and he fell back discouraged, to exchange civilities with Lady Goldthred.
That excellent woman, dressed, painted, and wound-up for the occasion, was volubly delighted with everybody; and being by no means sure of d.i.c.k"s ident.i.ty, dashed the more cordiality into her manner, while careful not to commit herself by venturing on his name.
"_So_ good of you to come," she fired it at him as she had fired it at fifty others, "all this distance from town, and such a hot day, to see my poor little place. But isn"t it pretty now? And are we not lucky in the weather? And weren"t you smothered in dust coming down? And you"ve brought _the_ beauty with you too. I declare Sir Moses is positively smitten. I"m getting quite jealous. Just look at him now. But he"s not the only one, that"s a comfort."
d.i.c.k _did_ look, wondering vaguely why the sunshine should have faded all at once. Sir Moses, a little bald personage, in a good-humoured fuss, whom no amount of inexperience could have taken for anything but the "man of the house," was paying the utmost attention to Miss Bruce, bringing her tea, placing a camp-stool for her that she might see the archery, and rendering her generally those hospitable services which it had been his lot to waste on many less attractive objects during that long sunny afternoon.
"Sir Moses is always so kind," answered d.i.c.k vaguely, "and n.o.body"s breakfasts are so pleasant as yours, Lady Goldthred."
"I"m _too_ glad you think so," answered his hostess, who, like a good-hearted woman as she was, took enormous pains with these festivities, congratulating herself, when she washed off her rouge, and doffed her robes of ceremony at night, that she had got through the great penance of her year. "You"re always so good-natured. But I _do_ think men like to come here. The country air, you know, and the scenery, and plenty of pretty people. Now, there"s Lord Bearwarden--look, he"s talking to Miss Bruce, under the cedar--he"s actually driven over from Windsor, and though he"s a way of being so fine and _blase_ and all that, he don"t look much bored at this moment, does he? Twenty thousand a year, they say, and been everywhere and done everything. Now, I fancy, he wants to marry, for he"s much older, you know, than he looks. To hear him talk, you"d think he was a hundred, and broken-hearted into the bargain. For my part, I"ve no patience with a melancholy man; but then I"m not a young lady. You know him, though, of course?"
d.i.c.k"s reply, if he made one, was drowned in a burst of bra.s.s music that deafened people at intervals throughout the afternoon, and Lady Goldthred"s attention wandered to fresh arrivals, for whom, with fresh smiles and untiring energy, she elaborated many more remarks of a similar tendency.
d.i.c.k Stanmore _did_ know Lord Bearwarden, as every man about London knows every other man leading the same profitable life. There were many whom he would have preferred as rivals; but thinking he detected signs of weariness on Maud"s face (it had already come to this, that he studied her countenance, and winced to see it smile on any one else), he crossed the lawn, that he might fill the place by her side, to which he considered himself as well ent.i.tled as another.
His progress took some little time, what, with bowing to one lady, treading on the dress of another, and parrying the attack of a third who wanted him to give her daughter a cup of tea; so that by the time d.i.c.k reached her Lord Bearwarden had left Miss Bruce to the attentions of another guest, more smart than gentlemanlike, in whose appearance there was something indefinably out of keeping with the rest. d.i.c.k started. It was the man with whom he had seen Maud walking before luncheon in the Square.
People were pairing for a dance on the lawn, and Mr. Stanmore, wedged in by blocks of beauty and mountains of muslin, could neither advance nor retreat. It was no fault of his that he overheard Miss Bruce"s conversation with the stranger.
"_Will_ you dance with me?" said the latter, in a whisper of suppressed anger, rather than the tone of loving entreaty with which it is customary to urge this pleasant request.
"Impossible!" answered Maud energetically. "I"m engaged to Lord Bearwarden--it"s the Lancers, and he"s only gone to make up the set."
The man ground his teeth and knit his brows.
"You seem to forget," he muttered--"you carry it off with too high a hand. I have a right to bid you dance with me. I have a right, if I chose, to order you down to the river there and row you back to Putney with the tide; and I _will_, I swear, if you provoke me too far."
She seemed to keep her temper with an effort.
"_Do_ be patient," she whispered, glancing round at the bystanders.
"Surely you can trust me. Hush! here comes Lord Bearwarden."
And taking that n.o.bleman"s arm, she walked off with a mournful pleading look at her late companion, which poor d.i.c.k Stanmore would have given worlds to have seen directed to himself.
There was no more pleasure for him now during the rest of the entertainment. He did indeed obtain a momentary distraction from his resolution to ascertain the name of the person who had so spoilt his afternoon. It helped him very little to be told the gentleman was "a Mr. Ryfe." n.o.body seemed to know any more, and even this information he extracted with difficulty from Lady Goldthred, who added, in a tone of astonishment--
"Why, you brought him, didn"t you?"
d.i.c.k was mystified--worse, he was unhappy. For a few minutes he wandered about behind the dancers, watching Maud and her partner as they threaded the intricacies of those exceedingly puzzling evolutions which const.i.tute the Lancer quadrilles. Lord Bearwarden was obviously delighted with Maud, and that young lady seemed by no means unconscious or careless of her partner"s approval. I do not myself consider the measure they were engaged in threading as particularly conducive to the interchange of sentiment. If my memory serves me right, this complicated dance demands as close an attention as whist, and affords almost as few opportunities of communicating with a partner. Nevertheless, there is a language of the eyes, as of the lips; and it was not Lord Bearwarden"s fault if his looks were misunderstood by their object. All this d.i.c.k saw, and seeing, grew more and more disgusted with life in general, with Lady Goldthred"s breakfast in particular. When the dance ended, and d.i.c.k Stanmore--hovering about his flame, like the poor moth to which I have compared him, once singed and eager to be singed again--was hesitating as to whether he, too, should not go boldly in and try his chance, behold Mr. Ryfe, with an offensive air of appropriation, walks off with Miss Bruce arm-in-arm, towards the sequestered path that leads to the garden-gate, that leads to the shady lane, that leads to the shining river!
It was all labour and sorrow now. People who called this sort of thing amus.e.m.e.nt, thought d.i.c.k, would go to purgatory for pastime, and a stage farther for diversion. When he broke poor Redwing"s back three fields from home in the Melton steeplechase he was grieved, annoyed, distressed. When he lost that eleven-pounder in the shallows below Melrose, because "Aundry," his Scottish henchman, was too drunk to keep his legs in a running stream, he was angry, vexed, disgusted; but never before, in his whole life of amus.e.m.e.nt and adventure, had he experienced anything like the combination of uncomfortable feelings that oppressed him now. He was ashamed of his own weakness, too, all the time, which only made matters worse.
"Hang it!" thought d.i.c.k, "I don"t see why I should punish myself by staying here any longer. I"ll tell my mother I must be back in London to dinner, make my bow, jump into a boat, and scull down to Chelsea.
So I will. The scull will do me good, and if--if she _has_ gone on the water with that sn.o.b, why I shall know the worst. What a strange, odd girl she is! And O, how I wish she wasn"t!"
But it takes time to find a lady, even of Mrs. Stanmore"s presence, amongst five hundred of her kind jostled up in half-an-acre of ground; neither will the present code of good manners, liberal as it is, bear a guest out in walking up to his hostess _a bout portant_, to interrupt her in an interesting conversation, by bidding her a solemn good-bye hours before anybody else has begun to move. Twenty minutes at least must have elapsed ere d.i.c.k found himself in a dainty outrigger with a long pair of sculls, fairly launched on the bosom of the Thames--more than time for the corsair, if corsair he should be, to have sailed far out of sight with false, consenting Maud in the direction of London Bridge.
d.i.c.k was no mean waterman. The exercise of a favourite art, combining skill with muscular effort, is conducive to peace of mind. A swim, a row, a gallop over a country, a fencing-bout or a rattling set-to with "the gloves" bring a man to his senses more effectually than whole hours of quiescent reflection. Ere the perspiration stood on d.i.c.k Stanmore"s brow, he suspected he had been hasty and unjust; by the time he caught his second wind, and had got fairly into swing, he was in charity with all the world, reflecting, not without toleration and self-excuse, that he had been an a.s.s.
So he sculled on, like a jolly young waterman, making capital way with the tide, and calculating that if the fugitive pair should have done anything so improbable as to take the water in company, he must have overhauled, or at least sighted them, ere now.
His spirits rose. He wondered why he should have been so desponding an hour ago. He had made excuses for himself--he began to make them for Maud, nay, he was fast returning to his allegiance, the allegiance of a day, thrown off in five minutes, when he sustained another damper, such as the total reversal of his outrigger and his own immersion, head uppermost, in the Thames, could not have surpa.s.sed.
At a bend of the river near Putney he came suddenly on one of those lovely little retreats which fringe its banks--a red-brick house, a pretty flower-garden, a trim lawn, shaded by weeping-willows, kissing the water"s edge. On that lawn, under those weeping-willows, he descried the graceful, pliant figure, the raven hair, the imperious gestures that had made such havoc with his heart, and muttering the dear name, never before coupled with a curse, he knew for the first time, by the pain, how fondly he already loved this wild, heedless, heartless girl, who had come to live in his mother"s house. Swinging steadily along in mid-stream, he must have been too far off, he thought, for her to recognise his features; yet why should she have taken refuge in the house with such haste, at an open window, through which a pair of legs clad in trousers denoted the presence of some male companion? For a moment he turned sick and faint, as he resigned himself to the torturing truth. This Mr. Ryfe, then, had been as good as his word, and she, his own proud, refined, beautiful idol, had committed the enormity of accompanying that imperious admirer down here. What could be the secret of such a man"s influence over such a girl? Whatever it was, she must be d.i.c.k"s idol no longer. And he would have loved her so dearly!--so dearly!
There were tears in the eyes of this jolly young waterman as he pulled on. These things hurt, you see, while the heart is fresh and honest, and has been hitherto untouched. Those should expect rubbers who play at bowls; if people pull their own chestnuts out of the fire they must compound for burnt fingers; and when you wager a living, loving, trustful heart against an organ of wax, gutta-percha, or Aberdeen granite, don"t be surprised if you get the worst of the game all through.
He had quite given her up by the time he arrived at Chelsea, and had settled in his own mind that henceforward there must be no more sentiment, no more sunshine, no more romance. He had dreamt his dream.
Well for him it was so soon over. _Semel insanivimus omnes_. Fellows had all been fools once, but no woman should ever make a fool of him again! No woman ever _could_. He should never see another like _her_!
Perhaps this was the reason he walked half-a-mile out of his homeward way, through Belgrave Square, to haunt the street in which she lived, looking wistfully into those gardens whence he had seen her emerge that very day with her mysterious companion--gazing with plaintive interest on the bell-handle and door-sc.r.a.per of his mother"s house--vaguely pondering how he could ever bear to enter that house again--and going through the whole series of those imaginary throes, which are indeed real sufferings with people who have been foolish enough to exchange the dignity and reality of existence for a dream.
What he expected I am at a loss to explain; but although, while pacing up and down the street, he vowed every turn should be the last, he had completed his nineteenth, and was on the eve of commencing his twentieth, when Mrs. Stanmore"s carriage rolled up to the door, stopping with a jerk, to discharge itself of that lady and Maud, looking cool, fresh, and unrumpled as when they started. The revulsion of feeling was almost too much for d.i.c.k. By instinct, rather than with intention, he came forward to help them out, so confused in his ideas that he failed to remark how entirely his rapid retreat from the breakfast had been overlooked. Mrs. Stanmore seemed never to have missed him. Maud greeted him with a merry laugh, denoting more of good-humour and satisfaction than should have been compatible with keen interest in his movements or justifiable pique at his desertion.
"Why, here you are!" she exclaimed gaily. "Actually home before us, like a dog that one takes out walking to try and lose. Poor thing! did it run all the way under the carriage with its tongue out? and wasn"t it choked with dust, and isn"t it tired and thirsty? and won"t it come in and have some tea?"
What could d.i.c.k say or do? He followed her up-stairs to the back drawing-room, meek and submissive as the dog to which she had likened him, waiting for her there with a dry mouth and a beating heart while she went to "take off her things"; and when she reappeared smiling and beautiful, able only to propound the following ridiculous question with a gasp--
"Didn"t you go on the water then, after all?"
"On the water!" she repeated. "Not I. Nothing half so pleasant, I a.s.sure you. I wish we had! for anything so slow as the whole performance on dry land, I never yet experienced. I danced five dances, none of them nice ones--I hate dancing on turf--and I had a warm-water ice and some jelly that tasted of bees"-wax. What became of you? We couldn"t find you anywhere to get the carriage. However, I asked Aunt Agatha to come away directly somebody made a move, because I was cross and tired and bored with the whole business. I think she liked it much better than I did; but here she is to answer for herself."
d.i.c.k had no dinner that day, yet what a pleasant cigar it was he smoked as he coasted Belgrave Square once more in the sweet spring evening under the gas-lamps! He had been very unhappy in the afternoon, but that was all over now. Anxiety, suspicion, jealousy, and the worst ingredient of the latter, a sense of humiliation, had made wild work with his spirits, his temper, and indeed his appet.i.te; yet twenty minutes in a dusky back drawing-room, a cup of weak tea and a slice of inferior bread-and-b.u.t.ter, were enough to restore self-respect, peace of mind, and vigour of digestion. He could not recall one word that bore an unusually favourable meaning, one look that might not have been directed to a brother or an intimate friend, and still he felt buoyed up with hope, restored to happiness. The reaction had come on, and he was more in love with her than ever.
CHAPTER VIII
NINA
It might have spared Mr. Stanmore a deal of unnecessary discomfort had the owner of those legs which he saw through the open window at Putney thought fit to show the rest of his person to voyagers on the river.
d.i.c.k would then have recognised an old college friend, would have landed to greet him with the old college heartiness, and in the natural course of events would have satisfied himself that his suspicions of Maud were unfounded and absurd.
Simon Perkins is not a romantic name, nor did the exterior of Simon Perkins, as seen either within or without the Putney cottage, correspond with that which fiction a.s.signs to a hero of romance. His frame was small and slight, his complexion pale, his hair weak and thin, his manner diffident, awkward, almost ungainly, but that its thorough courtesy and good-nature were so obvious and unaffected. In general society people pa.s.sed him over as a shy, harmless, unmeaning little man; but those who really knew him affirmed that his courage was not to be damped, nor his nerve shaken, by extremity of danger--that he was always ready with succour for the needy, with sympathy for the sorrowful. In short, as they tersely put it, that "his heart was in the right place."
For half-a-dozen terms at Oxford he and d.i.c.k had been inseparable.
Their intimacy, none the less close for dissimilarity of tastes and pursuits, since Perkins was a reading man, and d.i.c.k a "fast" one, had been still more firmly soldered by a long vacation spent together in Norway, and a "thrilling tableau," as d.i.c.k called it, to which their expedition gave rise. Had Simon Perkins"s heart been no stouter than his slender person, his companion must have died a damp death, and this story would never have been told.
The young men were in one of the most picturesque parts of that wild and beautiful country, created, as it would seem, for the express gratification of the fisherman and the landscape painter; Simon Perkins, an artist in his very soul, wholly engrossed by the sketch of a mountain, d.i.c.k Stanmore equally absorbed in fishing a pool. Scarce twenty yards apart, neither was conscious, for the moment, of the other"s existence; Simon, indeed, being in spirit some seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, putting more ochre into the virgin snow that crested his topmost peak, and d.i.c.k deftly dropping a fly, the size of a pen-wiper, over the nose of a fifteen-pounder that had already once risen to the gaudy lure.
Poising himself, like a Mercury, on a rock in mid-stream, the angler had just thrown eighteen yards of line lightly as a silken thread to an inch, when his foot slipped, and a loud splash, bringing the painter, like Icarus, out of the clouds with a run, startled his attention to the place where his companion was not. In another second Simon had his grip on d.i.c.k"s collar, and both men were struggling for dear life in the pool. Stanmore could swim, of course, but it takes a good swimmer to hold his own in fisherman"s boots, enc.u.mbered, moreover, with sundry paraphernalia of his art. Simon was a very mild performer in the water, but he had coolness, presence of mind, and inflexible tenacity of purpose. To these qualities the friends owed it that they ever reached the sh.o.r.e alive. It was a very near thing, and when they found their legs and looked into each other"s faces, gasping, dripping, spouting water from ears, nose, and mouth, d.i.c.k gathered breath to exclaim, "You trump! I should have been drowned, to a moral!" Whereat the other, choking, coughing, and sputtering, answered faintly, "You old m.u.f.f! I believe we were never out of our depth the whole time!"