“M r. Coverdale, is anything the matter?—why, you are quite out of breath with running!” exclaimed Alice, starting as she beheld him.
“Uncomfortably warm, too, I should say,” drawled D’Almayne, glancing significantly at Harry’s glowing cheeks, which were certainly too red to be romantic; “really now, do you consider it judicious to overheat yourself so?—of course, I merely ask as a matter of curiosity.”
Harry magnanimously repressed a strong inclination to knock him down; but he felt that to answer him coolly was both literally and metaphorically out of his power, so he confined his reply to Alice’s question.
“There is nothing the matter, Miss Hazlehurst,” he said; “but seeing you take this direction, and thinking that Mr. D’Almayne might not be aware a bull was grazing in this meadow, I thought it advisable to follow and put you on your guard, even at the risk of making myself unbecomingly hot;” and as he pronounced the last two words, he looked at D’Almayne as though he wished he had been the bull, and would oblige him by evincing an inclination to attack them.
“How very kind and thoughtful of you!” returned Alice, bestowing on him one of her brightest smiles; “but is there any danger?—what had we better do?”
“Eh, really, danger! not the slightest; am not I with you?” interposed D’Almayne, majestically bending over her. “A bull did you say, Mr. Coverdale?—ar—really, I don’t perceive such a creature.—Are you quite sure he exists anywhere but in your vivid and poetical imagination?”
Harry’s reply, if reply it can be called, to this impertinent question, was made by grasping D’Almayne’s elbow so tightly as to cause that delicate young gentleman to wince under the pressure. Having thus attracted his attention at a moment when Alice’s head was turned in an opposite direction, he pointed towards a group of trees, under the shadow whereof might be discerned a large brindled individual of the bovine species, who stood attentively regarding the trio with a singularly unamiable, not to say vicious expression of countenance. Placing his finger on his lips as a hint to D’Almayne to keep the knowledge thus acquired to himself, Harry answered Alice’s inquiry by saying—
“It is always the safest policy to mistrust a bull; so I would advise you to turn and make the best of your way towards the stile over which I came; walk as quickly as you please, but do not run, as that would only tempt the animal to follow you.”
“Yes, really, Miss Hazlehurst, we must not risk the chance of frightening you merely because we men enjoy the excitement of a little danger—take my arm,” hastily rejoined Horace D’Almayne, and suiting the action to the word, he drew Alice’s arm within his own, and marched her off at a pace with which she found considerable difficulty in keeping up. Harry, ere he followed them, remained stationary for a minute or so, to reconnoitre the movements of the bull. That animal, having apparently satisfied his curiosity in regard to the intruders on his domain, was now assiduously working himself up into a rage, preparatory, no doubt, to instituting vigorous measures for their expulsion. The way in which he signified this intention, was by tossing his head up and down, tearing up the turf with his fore-feet, and uttering from time to time a low angry roar, like the rumbling of distant thunder. When Harry turned to leave the spot, the animal immediately followed him, though only at a walk. As soon as he became aware of this disagreeable fact, Coverdale paused, and faced his undesirable attendant; which manœuvre, as he expected, caused the bull to stop also, though it was evident it had the effect of increasing the creature’s rage. In spite of this discovery, Harry waited till his companions had reached the stile, and D’Almayne had assisted Alice to get over it—a piece of chivalry by which he very materially lessened his own chances of safety, as the bull’s small stock of patience being exhausted, it became evident he was preparing for a rush. Trusting to his swiftness of foot, Harry was about to make an attempt to reach the stile before the bull should overtake him, when suddenly the yelping of a dog was heard, and a terrier belonging to Arthur Hazlehurst, which had followed them unobserved, ran forward and distracted the bull’s attention by barking round him, taking especial care to keep out of the reach of the animal’s horns. This diversion in his favour enabled Coverdale to rejoin his companions unmolested.
“Oh, Mr. Coverdale, what a savage-looking creature! I was so afraid it was going to attack you. I do not know how to thank you properly for having saved me from at least a terrible fright,” exclaimed Alice as Harry ran up to them.
“Ar—from alarm possibly; but really I don’t conceive there was the slightest danger; the animal was a very mild specimen of his class; even a little dog, you see, was sufficient to turn him,” observed D’Almayne slightingly.
“I’ll bet you fifty pounds to one you don’t walk across that field while the bull remains there,” exclaimed Harry eagerly—“Miss Hazlehurst shall be umpire, and I’ll promise to come and do my best to help you if you get into any scrape—what do you say, is it a bet?”
“I never bet, and—ar—never do useless and unreasonable things on a hot day, in order to establish a fast reputation. Such little excitements may be all very well for a sporting character like yourself, my dear Coverdale; but—ar—a man who has shot bison on the American prairies does not need them; so really you must hold me excused. Shall we rejoin the rest of the party, Miss Hazlehurst? they seem assembling for luncheon. Let me recollect, we were talking of that charming soul-creation of Tennyson, Locksley Hall, I think, before this absurd interruption occurred; what an unrivalled picture does it not present of the spirit-torture of a proud despair?”—and chattering on in the same pseudo-romantic and grandiloquent strain, the man of sentiment fairly walked Alice off, leaving Coverdale in the unenviable position popularly ascribed to virtue, viz., that of being its own reward. Having waited till the pair were out of sight, he flung himself down at the foot of an old beech-tree, and indulged in the following mental soliloquy:—
“Well, Master Harry! you’ve been and done something clever—you have, certainly; run like an insane creature more than half-a-mile, on by far the hottest day we’ve had this summer, and placed yourself in a situation where nothing but a lucky accident saved you from being run at, and possibly gored, by rather a mad bull than otherwise, only to be pooh-poohed by an insolent coxcomb, and have a cold-hearted ungrateful girl lisp out a missish inquiry, ‘whether there was any danger,’ forsooth! ’gad, I almost wish I’d left her and her swain to find out for themselves.”
He paused, removed his hat to allow a slight breeze which had sprung up to cool his heated forehead, and then stretching himself resumed:—
“I hope I’m not really becoming morose and ill-tempered, as Arthur hinted the other day. I must take care, or I shall be growing a savage old brute, and have everybody hate me. It’s all that puppy D’Almayne; he keeps me in a constant state of suppressed irritation with his affected airs of superiority;—but puppies will exist on the face of the earth, I suppose, whether I like it or not, and must be endured; so we’ll endeavour to look upon him as an appointed trial, and see if we can turn him to good account in that way. There’s always the possibility of horsewhipping him as a dernier ressort, that’s one consolation. Now I’ll go to luncheon, and try whether I can put some of my good intentions into practice. Heigho! life’s hard work, and no mistake; particularly in warm weather.” Thus cogitating, Harry slowly gathered himself up, and betook himself to join the luncheon party, actuated thereunto, amongst other reasons, by the discovery of a serious attack of appetite. In the meantime, a scene of a very different character was being enacted between two others of our dramatis personæ.
Arthur Hazlehurst, foiled in his attempt to secure a tête-à-tête drive with his cousin, Kate Marsden, having, after his usual habit, bustled about, settled everything for everybody, and made himself very generally useful and agreeable, had contrived on arriving at the ruins to withdraw himself from the rest of the party, and having watched the proceedings of his cousin and Mr. Crane, waited until she separated from that gentleman, when he joined her, and induced her to stroll with him along a shady, serpentine, romantic-looking pathway leading through a wood. Agreeable as were external circumstances, however, neither the lady nor the gentleman appeared to be in a sympathetic frame of mind; for a cloud hung on Arthur’s brow, while his cousin’s features wore a cold, uncompromising look of defiance. They proceeded for some little distance in silence; Hazlehurst was the first to speak.
“You found your companion amusing, I hope; pray what might he be talking about so earnestly?”
“Do you really care to know?” was the reply; “he was making me his confidante in regard to Alice. The poor man is at his wits’ end—if a quality which he does not possess can be said to have an end; at all events, he is au désespoir. Even his obtuseness cannot be blind to the fact that she dislikes him, and the worthy soul is now beginning to grow mildly jealous of D’Almayne.”
“And what advice did you give him?” inquired her cousin, sternly; “tell me the truth.”
As he spoke the girl’s eyes flashed, and a slight colour burned for a moment in her pale cheeks.
“How dare you say such a thing to me!” was her indignant rejoinder; “have I ever attempted to deceive you?—you know I have not; but let it pass. You ask me what advice I gave him: I told him to persevere, reminded him that a faint heart never won a fair lady, which I believe he took to be an entirely original remark on my part, and gently insinuated that no girl in her senses could refuse him.”
Arthur fixed his piercing glance upon her, as he replied—
“And why did you say this? Do you believe, indeed, that Alice will eventually be prevailed upon to marry him?—or did you say it to deceive him for a purpose of your own?”
“I gave him good sound advice,” was the answer; “I do not believe Alice will marry him; but that is no reason why he should not use his best endeavours to obtain what he wishes, or fancies he wishes. I shall advise him to prosecute his suit, and at the right moment to offer to her in person.”
“In order that she may irritate him, and offend my father, by a refusal. Kate, you are playing some deep game in all this, and one of which you know I should disapprove, or else you would not so studiously conceal it from me,” returned Hazlehurst gloomily.
There was a moment’s pause ere the young lady replied—
“Let events unravel themselves, my worthy cousin; the result will appear all in good time.”
They walked on in silence, till a turn in the path brought them before a smooth moss-grown bank, on which the gnarled roots of an old pollard-oak formed a natural rustic seat.
“Let us rest here, and enjoy the sunshine while we may; there is not too much of it in the world,” observed Kate, in a gentler tone than she had hitherto used. There was a touch of sadness in her voice which Arthur could not hear unmoved, and merely waiting till she had seated herself, he placed himself on a root of the tree at her feet. For some minutes neither of them spoke, till as it were unconsciously, Kate allowed her hand to rest on his head, while her fingers played with a lock of his rich chesnut hair. As he felt her soft touch upon his brow, he raised his eyes to her countenance—the stern, hard expression had vanished, and in its place appeared that look which, once seen, the recollection dies only with memory itself—the fond, wistful, tender gaze a loving woman turns on him she loves. For a minute he remained silent and motionless, subdued by the power of her rare beauty; then springing to his feet, he exclaimed—
“You shall trifle with me thus no longer; I am no petulant boy, to be repulsed one hour, and caressed into good humour the next. What is the meaning of this estrangement which you have chosen shall spring up between us? Why do you?—but such questions are useless—this shall decide the point—once and for ever:—Do you love me, or do you not?”
For a moment she was silent; then turning her head to avoid his eager scrutinizing glance, she murmured—
“Have we not known each other from childhood, and loved each other always?”
“That is no answer; you only seek to evade my question,” was the angry reply.
He stood for a moment, his lips quivering with emotion, and his hands clenched so tightly that the blood receded from the points of his fingers, leaving them cold and colourless as marble. His companion did not speak, but continued to regard him with a look half-pitying, half-imploring pity. As their eyes met, his mood appeared suddenly to change, and springing to her side, he exclaimed in a voice tremulous with emotion—
“Kate, dearest, why will you thus torture yourself and me? Hear me, dear one; you know I love you better than any created thing—better than my own soul. You say truly, that I have loved you always—with the tender unconscious love of the child, with the happy romantic love of the boy, and, lastly, with the deep, earnest, absorbing passion of mature manhood; and you, Kate, you must—nay, you do love me!”
As he spoke, he drew her gently towards him, and unrepulsed pressed a kiss upon her soft lips. She did not resist or respond to his caress, but suffered her head to rest passively against his shoulder, as he continued—
“I do not inquire—I heed not—what mad schemes you may have dreamed of; but I ask—nay, I implore you, by all you hold sacred to put them away from you, and to wait patiently for a few, a very few short years, until I can claim you for my beloved, my honoured wife. Kate, you will do as I desire?—speak to me, my own love!”
Unheeding his appeal, she remained for a minute silent, while a few tears stole unchecked down her pale cheeks, then rousing herself by an effort, she wiped away the traces of her late emotion, gently removed her cousin’s arm, which still encircled her waist, and drawing herself up, exclaimed—
“This is weakness—folly; I never intended it should have come to this; but I was taken by surprise—unprepared——”
She paused, struggling to regain self-possession, then in a calmer voice resumed:—
“My poor Arthur! I do, indeed, appreciate your noble, generous self-sacrifice, and were I alone concerned, would desire no happier fate than to share and aid you in your struggle with the world; but it may not be so; others have claims upon me—my father’s health is failing—the cares of that bitter curse, poverty, are wearing out my mother’s little remaining strength, and blighting the talents and crushing the youth and spirits of the children. Dear Arthur, forgive me the pain I cost you when I tell you—I can never be your wife!”
“But, Kate,” interrupted her cousin, eagerly, “listen to me, dear one; you do not suppose that I had forgotten all this; only agree to my proposal, and I will be a son to your mother, a father—if, as you fear, my uncle’s health is breaking—to her children. My practice is increasing every day; I shall soon be in the receipt of a good income; Coverdale is rich, and loves me as a brother; he will advance me money; I will work day and night to repay him.”
“My husband destroy his health to support my family!—is this the prospect of happiness you would offer me?—are these the arguments you would bring forward to induce me to agree?” was the reply. “No, Arthur, I can never be your wife; you must from this moment forget that such an idea has crossed your mind.”
“But, Kate, only hear me!——” he exclaimed passionately.
“I have already heard too much for your happiness, or for my own,” was the mournful reply; then, by a powerful effort resuming her usual manner, she exclaimed, “Come, no more of this folly, our paths in life lie separate; it is inevitable—therefore repining becomes worse than useless; we are not boy and girl, to stand rehearsing romantic love-scenes together; let us rejoin the others.”
For a moment Hazlehurst remained silently gazing on the cold, immovable expression of her features; then, coming close to her, he said in a low, hoarse whisper, “I read your heart, and perceive the wickedness, for such it is, you contemplate. I will give you till to-morrow morning to reflect on what has passed between us; if then you adhere to your determination, I leave you to the fate you have chosen!” and as he uttered the last words, he turned and quitted her.
Kate Marsden gazed after him with the same cold expression of defiance on her features till his retreating figure became no longer visible, then, sinking back upon the rustic bench, she covered her face with her hands and wept bitterly.
The humours of a picnic have been too often described to need repetition; suffice it to say, that the picnic in question was decidedly a favourable specimen of its class. Of course everybody voted it to be the summit of human felicity, to sit in an uncomfortable position upon something never intended for a seat, beside a table-cloth spread upon the grass, which, being elastic and uneven, caused everything that should have remained perpendicular to assume a horizontal attitude. Of course, when the inevitable frog hopped across the table-cloth, and, losing its presence of mind on finding itself so unexpectedly launched into fashionable life, sought refuge in the pigeon-pie, the ladies screamed little picturesque screams, which were increased twentyfold when Tom Hazlehurst fished it out with a table-spoon, and surreptitiously immersed it in the jug of beer, which liquid he artfully incited Mr. Crane to pour out, thereby landing the frog, decidedly inebriated and most uncomfortably sticky, upon the elaborately embroidered shirt-front of Horace D’Almayne. Of course the salt and the sugar had fraternized, and the cayenne had elicited new and striking effects by mingling indiscriminately with things in general, and the sweets in particular; and of course all these shocking disasters irritated the few and delighted the many, and added immensely to the liveliness and hilarity of the party.
“Tom, you’re drinking too much champagne!” exclaimed an elderly maiden sister of Mr. Hazlehurst, decidedly like a hippopotamus in face and figure. “Mr. D’Almayne, may I trouble you to hand me his glass, the boy will make himself poorly.”
Thus appealed to, D’Almayne languidly extended his arm in the necessary direction, but the Etonian was not to be so easily despoiled of his beverage.
“Mille pardons, mounseer!” he exclaimed, mimicking the affected half-foreign accent with which the exquisite Horace usually spoke; “mais c’est tout à fait—out of the question; ne souhaitez-vous pas que vous pouvez l’obtenir?—don’t you wish you may get it? Equally obliged to you, but I’d rather do my own drinking myself. Why, my dear Aunt Betsy, how dreadfully ungrateful of you, just when I was going to propose your health, too! Silence, gentlemen, for a toast! Come, Governor (to his father, who, delighted with the young pickle’s ready wit, was vainly endeavouring to preserve an appearance of majestic disapproval), fill up; D’Almayne, my boy, no heeltaps; are you all charged? ‘My Aunt Betsy, and the rest of her lovely sex!—hip! hip! hip! hurrah!’” So saying, and with a knowing wink at Coverdale, who, if the truth must be told, encouraged him in his inclination to be impertinent to D’Almayne, Master Tom tossed down his glass of champagne amidst a general chorus of laughter. And thus the déjeûner passed off to all appearance merrily enough; though in two, if not more, of the company a smiling exterior hid an aching heart.
“Have you seen the rabbit warren yet, Mr. Coverdale? Do come, there are such a lot of the beggars jumping about! I found my way there before luncheon, and it won’t take long,” exclaimed Tom Hazlehurst, grasping Harry’s arm imploringly.
“It strikes me I shall be considered especially rude if I again absent myself,” was the reply.
“Who by?—the women?” inquired Tom, scornfully. “Never mind them—poor, weak-minded, fickle things; there is nothing I consider a greater nuisance than to have a pack of silly girls dangling about one, that won’t leave a fellow alone; there, you needn’t toss your head and turn up your nose about it, Emily, beneficent Nature’s done that for you sufficiently already. Now will you come, Mr. Coverdale? there are some black rabbits among them, such rum shavers!”
“Are there!” exclaimed Harry, eagerly. “I wonder whether I could contrive to buy a few couples of them; I want to get some black rabbits at the park excessively: come along, for our time is growing short, I expect.” And as he spoke, Coverdale strode off, entirely forgetful of the pretty Emily, with whom, on the strength of her juvenility, he had considered he might safely allow himself to laugh and talk, and to whom he had, therefore, been unconsciously rendering himself very agreeable.
The warren was further than he had expected it would be, and the black rabbits were so long before they chose to show themselves, that Harry began to grew sceptical as to their existence; even when they did appear, a gamekeeper had to be routed out, and terms for the transfer of ten couples to Coverdale Park agreed upon; so that by the time Tom and his companion rejoined the pleasure-seekers, there were but few left to rejoin. These few consisted of the old maiden aunt; a time-honoured female friend of the same—older, uglier, still more like a hippopotamus, and with a double portion of the vinegar of inhuman unkindness in her nature; and, lastly, a plain young lady, the daughter of nobody in particular, who lived with the time-honoured friend as companion, in a state of chronic martyrdom, for which perpetual sacrifice she received thirty pounds a-year, and permission to cry herself to sleep every night, in misty wonderment why so sad a creature as she was, should ever have been born into the world. Besides this uncomfortable trio, who composed the cargo of a brougham, and were rather a tight fit, there remained Mr. Crane and Alice, who, it seemed, were waiting for the phaeton, which had not yet made its appearance.
“Upon my word, Miss Hazlehurst,” began the sour friend, addressing the acidulated aunt, “this is very provoking, ma’am; it’s six o’clock, and it’s growing cold, and it will be quite dusk before we get home; and I really believe Miss Cornetoe was right this morning, and that we shall have a wet night after all.”
“Shall I run down to the inn and see what causes the delay? I must go there to get my horse,” inquired Coverdale, good naturedly.
“If you would be so kind, we really should be extremely obliged to you,” returned Miss Hazlehurst senior, with her most gracious and least hippopotamic smile; and thus urged, Coverdale hurried off.
In the meantime poor Alice, who by no means admired the position of affairs, and had moreover been considerably alarmed in the morning by Mr. Crane’s unskilful driving, whispered a pathetic appeal to her aunt to be allowed to accompany the brougham party,—“she could sit on the box, Wilson, the coachman, was so inconceivably respectable, and she was almost sure it would not rain;”—but her aunt was a strong-minded woman, and a warm advocate of the Crane alliance, and she would not hear of such a change of plan. As soon as Coverdale arrived within sight of the inn, he perceived the missing phaeton standing in front of the doorway, the horses ready harnessed, and the groom seated on the driving-seat; accordingly he made signs to him to come on, of which, for some unaccountable reason, the man took not the slightest notice. Surprised at this, Harry made the best of his way to the spot, and on reaching it discovered, from the swollen, heated look of the fellow’s features, and the stupid, obstinate expression which characterized them, that he had been drinking to excess.
“Why the man is intoxicated!” exclaimed Coverdale, turning to the ostler, who, with one or two hulking village lads, stood staring at the coachman with a grin of amusement on their vacant faces; “why did not you make him get down, and bring the carriage yourself?”
“A did troy, but a woldn’t budge a inch—a be properly drunk to be zure!”
“Oh, he would not, eh?” inquired Coverdale; then, turning to the groom, he continued, “Get down directly, my friend, I want particularly to speak to you.”
To this the groom contrived to stammer out on insolent refusal, accompanied by a recommendation to Coverdale to mind his own business, and give orders to his own servants.
“My business just at present is to make you get down from that phaeton,” returned Harry, his eyes flashing.
“Oh! it is, is it?—I should like to see you do it, that’s all!” rejoined the other, with a gesture of drunken defiance.
“You shall,” was the concise reply, as, directing the ostler to stand by the horses’ heads, Coverdale, ere the fellow was aware of his intention, or could take measures to prevent him, sprang lightly up, forced the reins from his uncertain grasp, twisted him suddenly round, then placing his hands under his arms lifted him by sheer strength, and dropped him to the ground. Having performed this feat with the neatness and celerity of some harlequinade trick, he glanced round to see that the fellow had fallen clear of the wheels, and taking the reins, drove off.
While this little affair had been proceeding, the sky had become overcast, and a few large drops of rain came pattering heavily to the ground; alarmed by these symptoms, the brougham party no sooner perceived the phaeton approaching, than they scrambled into their vehicle and started. As their road lay in a direction opposite to that by which Coverdale was advancing, they were nearly out of sight by the time he reached the spot where Alice and Mr. Crane awaited him. Jumping down with the reins in his hand, he was explaining to the owner of the phaeton the plight in which he had found his servant, when a faint flash of lightning glanced across the sky, followed after an interval by a clap of distant thunder, at which the horses, which were young and spirited, began to prick up their ears, and evince such unmistakable signs of alarm, that their master, fearing they were about to dash off, ran to lay hold of their heads. Misfortune often brings about strange associations. If any one had that morning told Alice Hazlehurst that before the day should be over she would have appealed for protection to, and confided in, “Arthur’s cross, disagreeable friend,” she would have utterly disbelieved the statement—and yet so it was to be. The moment Mr. Crane left her side, she turned to Harry exclaiming—
“Oh, Mr. Coverdale, I am so frightened! He will never be able to manage those horses: he could scarcely hold them in this morning, and the groom was forced to get down to them twice—he does not know how to drive one bit!”
Poor little Alice! she was trembling from head to foot, and looked so pretty and interesting in her alarm, that Harry felt peculiar, he didn’t exactly know how, about it.
“I’ll speak to Mr. Crane, and persuade him to let me drive you home,” he replied eagerly. (He would have knocked him down without the smallest hesitation, if Alice had in the slightest degree preferred it.) “I’ve been accustomed to horses all my life, and have not a doubt of being able to manage these, even if the thunder should startle them; so please don’t look so frightened.”
And as Harry said this with his very brightest, kindest smile,
Alice wondered she had never before noticed how handsome he was, and began to think he could not be so very cross after all.
When Harry urged his request, Mr. Crane was considerably embarrassed as to the nature of his reply. In his secret soul he was delighted to be relieved from the danger and responsibility of driving Alice and himself home through a thunder-storm; but, on the other hand, he could not disguise the fact, that by allowing himself to be so relieved, he should detract from the heroic style of character he wished Alice to impute to him. Had it been D’Almayne instead of Coverdale who sought to become his substitute, he would probably, at the hazard of breaking his own neck and that of his lady-love, have refused to permit him; but he had observed, as indeed he must have been blind if he had not done, Harry’s marked avoidance of the young lady, and trusting to these his mysogynistic principles he, with many excuses and much circumlocution, agreed to Harry’s proposal that he should ride his horse, and allow him to drive the phaeton.
“Ahem!—if the storm should come on violently,” observed the cotton-spinner, as a second growl of thunder became audible, “I shall wait till it has subsided; so don’t let them expect me till they see me: getting wet always gives me cold.”
“All right, sir,” returned Harry, as he wrapped Alice carefully up in his own Macintosh; “take care of yourself by all means—good people are scarce. We shall see nothing more of friend Crane to-night,” he continued, as he drove off; “the old gentleman is very decidedly alarmed—that is, I suppose I ought not to call him an old gentleman,” he stammered, suddenly recollecting with whom he was conversing.
“Why should you not when he is so?” returned Alice, innocently.
Harry turned his head away to conceal a smile which the naïveté of the reply had called forth, muttering to himself as he did so, “Poor Crane!”
After a few minutes’ silence, Alice began abruptly, and apologetically,—
“I’m sure I ought to feel very much obliged to you, Mr. Coverdale—and indeed I do; this is the second really good-natured thing you’ve done by me to-day.”
The tone in which she spoke so completely betrayed that surprise was the feeling uppermost in her mind, that Harry, slightly piqued, could not help replying—
“You did not, then, give me credit for possessing the least particle of good-nature?”
Alice smiled as she answered—
“If I had had a proper degree of faith in Arthur’s representations, I need not have felt surprise.”
The delicate irony of this reply was not lost upon Coverdale; but he knew that he had deserved it, and, with the ready frankness which was one of his best characteristics, he hastened to acknowledge it.
“I certainly have done little towards practically vindicating the character your brother’s partiality has bestowed upon me,” he said; “but I must be allowed to plead in justification, that I am quite aware of my own deficiencies, and told Arthur that I had been roughing it abroad so long, that I was totally unfitted for ladies’ society. He would not admit the excuse; but it was a full, true, and sufficient one, nevertheless.”
As he uttered the last words, a dazzling flash of lightning appeared almost to envelop them, followed instantaneously by a deafening peal of thunder. Half blinded by the blaze of light, the frightened horses stopped abruptly, then, terrified at the prolonged thunder, tried to turn short round; foiled in this attempt by the skill and promptitude of their driver, they began rearing and plunging in a way which threatened every moment to overturn the phaeton. Fortunately the road happened to be unusually wide at this point, and Harry, who never throughout the affair in the slightest degree lost his presence of mind, deciding that whatever might most effectually frighten the horses, would create the impulse they would eventually obey, determined to try the effect of a little judicious discipline. Accordingly, standing up, he began to administer the whip to their sleek sides with an amount of strength and determination which, from the contrast it afforded to the mild and timid driving to which they were accustomed, so astonished the animals, that bounding forward with a snatch which tried the soundness of their harness, they dashed off at a furious gallop; at the same moment, a second peal of thunder, even louder than the preceding one, increased their alarm to such a degree, that Coverdale, despite his utmost efforts, found it completely beyond his power to hold them in.
“M iss Hazlehurst!—Alice! are you mad? Only sit still, don’t go and scream or anything, and all will come right.”
Thus appealed to, or rather commanded—for the tone of the speaker’s voice was unmistakably imperative—Alice, who when the horses bolted had half risen from her seat, and in an agony of terror glanced round, as though she meditated an attempt to jump out, shrank down again, and covering her eyes with her hands, remained perfectly still and motionless, thus enabling Coverdale to devote his whole attention to the horses. The terrified animals, after galloping nearly a mile, their fears being kept alive by repeated flashes of lightning and peals of thunder, while a perfect deluge of rain converted the dusty road beneath their feet into a morass, at length began to relax their speed. As soon as Harry perceived this to be the case, he turned to his companion, saying, “There, Miss Hazlehurst, I have got them in hand again, they’re quite under command now, and the worst of the storm is over too, so you needn’t be frightened any longer; you have behaved like a”—(regular brick was the simile that rose to his lips, but he refrained, and substituted)—“complete heroine, since you overcame that slightly insane impulse to commit suicide by jumping out.”
Reassured by his manner, Alice ventured to open her eyes, and the first use she made of them was to fix them upon the countenance of her companion, striving to read therein whether the hopes with which he sought to inspire her were true or false. But Harry’s was a face about which there could be no mistake; truth and honesty were written in every feature so legibly, that the veriest tyro in physiognomy could not fail at once to perceive them.
“How fortunate it was that you were driving, and not Mr. Crane!” were the first words Alice uttered; “we should have been overturned to a certainty if the horses had behaved so this morning. I’ll take good care not to let him drive me again. How cleverly you managed the creatures when they were plunging and rearing! I should never have dared to whip them while they were in that furious state, but it answered capitally.”
“You observed that, did you?” inquired Harry in a tone of surprise.
Alice favoured him with a quick glance, as she replied, half archly, half petulantly, “Of course I did; what a stupid silly little thing you seem to consider me!”
Harry paused for a minute ere he rejoined, laughingly, “You know nothing about what I consider you, Miss Hazlehurst, and therefore I advise you not to form any theories whatsoever on the subject, as they are tolerably certain to be wrong ones.”
“I dare say you have never given yourself the trouble to reflect at all on so frivolous a topic,” returned Alice; “I know your heterodox notions in regard to our sex; you consider us all simpletons.”
“I’m sure I never told you so,” was all the denial Harry’s conscience permitted him to make.
“Not vivâ voce, perhaps,” replied Alice; “but I have heard it second-hand from Master Tom: the boy was uncomplimentary enough before you came, but he has been fifty times worse since you’ve been here to encourage him in his impertinence.”
“A young cub!” muttered Harry aside, “I’ll twist his neck if he tells tales out of school in this way;” turning to Alice, he continued, “it is never too late to mend, is it? If I confess my sins, promise never to do so any more, and throw myself on the mercy of the court, is there any chance of my obtaining forgiveness?”
“As far as I am concerned, yes,” was the reply; “in consideration of your services this afternoon, I graciously accord you a free pardon for all past offences, and for the future we will try and be friends.” As she spoke she half playfully, half in earnest, held out her hand. Harry took it in his own, and shook it—even in a glove it was a nice, warm, soft little hand, a kind of hand that it was impossible to relinquish without giving it a squeeze, at least such was Harry’s impression, and he acted upon it, although to do so was by no means in accordance with his principles; but he did not happen to be thinking about his principles just then. By this time the storm, which had pretty well exhausted itself by its violence, resigned in favour of a lovely sunset; and the horses having come to the conclusion that they had thoroughly disgraced themselves, and behaved with an equal disregard of principle and propriety, trotted steadily along under Coverdale’s skilful guidance, like a pair of four-legged penitents, anxious to retrieve their character. And Harry and Alice suddenly found a great deal to talk about, and were quite surprised when they perceived themselves to be in sight of the Grange; and the gentleman felt moved by a sudden impulse to declare that, despite its unpropitious commencement, he did not know when he had had such a delightful drive, to which the lady replied that it certainly had been very agreeable, an admission which she endeavoured to qualify by attributing her pleasurable sensations to the influence of the setting sun and the delicious coolness of the evening air—a transparent attempt at deception that only rendered the truth more obvious.
The next morning a groom brought back Sir Lancelot, together with a note from Mr. Crane, saying that he had contrived to get wet through on his way to the inn, that he feared he had taken cold, and therefore considered it most prudent to return home for a day or two; adding that he should hope to be sufficiently convalescent to rejoin the party at the Grange that day week, when a dinner was to be given by Mr. Hazlehurst to some of the county magnates. His note wound up with an elaborate inquiry as to whether Alice had experienced any ill-effects from the “atmospheric inclemency,” as he was pleased to style the thunder-storm, accompanied by an infallible specific against all sore-throats, colds, hoarsenesses, and rheumatic affections, which that young lady straightway committed to the waste-paper basket. There was also a note for Horace D’Almayne, from which dropped an inclosure that, as the exquisite stooped to pick it up, looked marvellously like a cheque.
“A—really I find I must go to town—a—business of importance—can I execute any little commissions for you, Miss Hazlehurst? I’ve excellent taste in ribands, I assure you.”
“There, do you hear that!” observed Tom sotto voce to Coverdale. “I always thought he’d been a counter-jumper!”
“Kate, must I accompany him?” inquired Arthur of his cousin, sotto voce; “remember, if you send me from you now, we meet again as strangers!” There was a moment’s struggle, and her colour went and came—then in a cold, hard voice she answered, “Yes, go!”
Arthur looked at her; her features might have been sculptured in marble, so fixed and immovable was their expression. That look decided him; and with set teeth and lowering brow he rose and quitted the room.
In less than half-an-hour he returned, prepared for a journey; and beckoning Coverdale aside, began, “Harry, I have a favour to ask of you. I am obliged to go to town suddenly, in consequence of an affair which has caused me some annoyance; but I shall come back for the dinner-party on the ——th. Crane will also return then; and from what I can make out, Alice’s affair will be definitely settled one way or other. The more I see of Crane, the more I perceive how thoroughly he and Alice are unsuited; but my father appears obstinately bent on the match: and if Alice is to refuse him, she will require all the support that can be given her. My poor mother’s health is, as you are aware, so delicate, that although she is as much averse to the match as any of us, we cannot expect her to exert herself; indeed, our chief anxiety is to prevent her attempting to do so. The whole thing will, therefore, fall upon me: and your support and assistance will be invaluable. My father has taken a great fancy to you; and your opinion weighs with him more than you will believe. I am sorry to perceive that you are bored to death here; but I trust to your friendship to remain till after my return. Am I taxing your kind feeling too far?”
“My dear boy, don’t make pretty speeches; for I can stand anything but that,” was the reply. “As to staying here, I had no thought of going away till you had done with me. In regard to being bored, I’m getting over that beautifully. Your family are charming people. I’m becoming used to women’s society, and, in fact, find it’s not by any means as bad as imagination painted it; and when D’Almayne is fairly out of the house, I really shall not care how long I remain in it; so will that satisfy you?”
“My dear fellow,” rejoined Hazlehurst, warmly, “there’s nobody like you in the world! I’ve always said so, from the day that I first set eyes on you at Eton, when you thrashed the bully of the form for striking me, and then boxed my ears because I took a blow from a boy less than myself, without returning it. I shall never quite turn misanthrope while I’ve you for a friend.”
“Misanthrope! no, why should you?” was the surprised rejoinder. “What ails you, man?—you look ill and unhappy. It’s nothing in the money way, is it? I’ve got a few odd thousands lying idle at my bankers, that I should really be obliged to you to make use of.”
Hazlehurst shook his friend’s hand heartily. “God bless you, old fellow! I know you would.” he said; “but money can’t help me: I must fight it out alone. I shall be myself again by the time I return—till then, good-by,” and wringing Coverdale’s hand once more, he turned and was gone.
“Alice, here’s a treat! everybody’s going away except that horrid Harry Coverdale!” exclaimed Emily, in a tone of despair; “we shall have him on our hands, talking stable, and wishing we were dogs and horses, for a whole week! What are we to do with the creature?”
Alice turned her head to hide her heightened colour, as she replied, in a tone of voice that was almost cross, “Really, Emily, you should be careful not to carry that absurd habit of yours of laughing at everybody too far. People will begin to call you flippant. Mr. Coverdale is so good-natured that he is the easiest person in the world to entertain. Surely, Arthur has a right to ask his friend to remain here without consulting you or me on the subject.”
“Phew!” whistled Emily, and a droll little parody of a whistle it was; “the wind has changed, has it? I suppose that was the thunder-storm yesterday; not to mention a certain tête-à-tête drive. Take care, Ally: recollect that sweet bird the Crane! what does the song say?” and popping herself down at the pianoforte, she ran her fingers lightly over the keys, as she sang with mischievous archness:
“’Tis good to be merry and wise,
’Tis good to be honest and true,
’Tis good to be off with the old love
Before you are on with the new.”
The party which sat down to dinner at Hazlehurst Grange on that day was a very select one. Mr. Hazlehurst had driven over to the neighbouring town on justice business, and having sentenced certain deer-stealers to undergo divers unpleasantnesses in the way of oakum-picking, solitary confinement, and other such amenities of prison discipline, had stayed to reward virtue by dining with his brother-magistrates upon orthodoxly-slaughtered venison. Accordingly, Mrs. Hazlehurst and the three young ladies, Harry Coverdale and Master Tom, sat down to what Mrs. Malaprop would have termed “quite a tête-à-tête dinner” together;—a tame and docile curate, invited on the spur of the moment to counterbalance Harry, having missed fire, owing to the untimely repentance of a perverse old female parishioner, who being taken poorly and penitent simultaneously, had sent her imperative compliments to the Rev. B. A. A. Lambkin, and she would feel obliged by his coming to convert her at his very earliest possible convenience; to which serious call he felt obliged to respond.
Coverdale had found himself in an unusual and peculiar frame of mind all day; for perhaps the first time in his life he had felt disinclined to active exertion; and had positively gone the length of abstracting from the library a volume of Byron, and spent the afternoon lying under a tree, reading the Bride of Abydos. Now his peculiarity took a new turn; and, freed from his incubus, D’Almayne, a sense of the domestic and sociable suddenly sprang up within him, and throwing off all reserve, he appeared for the first time during his visit in his true colours—that is, unaffected, courteous, kind-hearted, amusing, and well-informed. In consequence possibly of this change, the dinner went off most agreeably; and the absence of the Reverend Lambkin was mentally decreed to be a subject of thanksgiving, by more than one member of the party.
In the evening there were certain wasps’-nests to be destroyed, about which Harry had expressed much interest; but now he discovered that he had blistered his heel on the previous day, by running in a tight boot; and Tom, mightily discontented at his defection, was forced to invade the enemy’s country without the assistance of his ally. When Coverdale rejoined the ladies, Emily was reading Tennyson’s Princess aloud, and the moment he appeared, she declared she was tired, and handed the book to him, begging him to proceed; her mischievous intention being thereby to overwhelm him with confusion, and derive amusement from his consequent mistakes. But she met her match for once, as Harry, coolly replying that he should have much pleasure, took the book and began reading in a deep rich voice, with so much taste and feeling, that her surprise soon changed to admiration. After tea, music was proposed, and the moment Alice began to sing Coverdale, for the first time since he had been in the house, approached the piano, and actually turned over the leaves for her!
“That lovely Là ci darem! Ah, Alice! if we had but a gentleman’s voice to take the second! Why don’t you sing, Mr. Coverdale?” exclaimed Emily, turning over the pages of the duet.
“I’ll try what I can do if you wish it,” was Coverdale’s quiet answer.
Alice, to whom he spoke, glanced at him in speechless surprise; but Emily, at once making up her mind that he was attempting a hoax, and eager to turn the tables upon him, resumed—
“Bravo! give me your seat, Alice, I’ll play the accompaniment for you both.”
Now the truth was, that Harry had been gifted by nature with a rich powerful voice and excellent ear, qualities which the admiration of his “set” at Cambridge had induced him to cultivate. When he first started on his grand tour, he encountered at Florence the mother and sisters of an old college friend, and those being the days before he had foresworn young ladies’ society, he was let in for a mild flirtation with one of the daughters. The “emphatic she” happened to be fanatica per la musica. Accordingly for three months Harry took lessons of the best master in the place, and sang duets morning, noon, and night; at the end of which period the “loved one” bolted with a black-bearded native, who called himself a count, and was a courier. Since which episode, Harry, disgusted with the whole affair, and all connected with it, had chiefly confined his singing to lyrical declarations that he would “not go home till morning.” It will therefore be less a matter of surprise to the reader, than it was to his audience at the Grange, that Coverdale performed his part in the duet with equal taste and skill, and very much better than Alice did hers—that young lady pronouncing her Italian with rather a midland-county accent than otherwise, although her sweet, fresh, young voice, in great measure atoned for this little peculiarity.
“Why, Mr. Coverdale, what a charming voice you have, and how beautifully you sing!” exclaimed Emily, looking at him as if she could not even yet believe that it was possible he should have so distinguished himself. “I thought you were hoaxing us, and I sat down to play the duet for the amiable purpose of exposing your ignorance.”
“How did you acquire such a pure Italian accent?” asked Mrs. Hazlehurst; “it will be of the greatest advantage to my girls to sing with you.”
“I learned of an Italian fellow when I was at Florence, and I suppose he taught me to do the business all right,” was the careless reply.
“And you have been here more than a week,” continued Mrs. Hazlehurst, “and allowed Mr. D’Almayne to monopolise both the reading and singing department, though he cannot fill either one quarter as efficiently as you are able to do. You really are too diffident.”
“I don’t imagine diffidence to have had very much to do with it,” observed Kate Marsden, quietly raising her eyes from her work (a crochet purse with steel beads), and fixing them on Coverdale.
Harry laughed slightly as with heightened colour he replied, “You are too clever, Miss Marsden. I by no means approve of being subjected to such subtle clairvoyance; however, I may as well honestly confess that you are right, and that a feeling more akin to pride than to humility has prevented my seeking to rival Mr. D’Almayne.”
“We have found you out at last though,” returned Emily, “and I for one will do my best to punish you for your idleness, by making you sing every song I can think of. I don’t believe it was either pride or humility which kept you silent—it was nothing but sheer idleness.”
“Judging of her principles from her practice, I can readily believe Miss Emily Hazlehurst must consider silence to result from some reprehensible cause,” replied Coverdale, with a meaning smile.
Of course Emily made a pert rejoinder, and of course Coverdale was forced to sing half-a-dozen more songs, which, as he had by this time got up the steam considerably, he did in a style which won him fresh laurels but it was a remarkable fact, that from the moment in which Harry began to read aloud, Alice, although her attention had never flagged, had scarcely uttered a single word—perhaps it was because she thought the more.