Bluebell Part 15

That individual, who had just scrambled out, was standing rather dazed, ruefully stanching the cuts on his face. Between them they soon dragged out Mr. Tremaine, half suffocated, and puffing and panting like a demented steam-engine, but by the time he had recovered his breath not much the worse.

The toboggining was getting fast and furious, and several casualties occurred. The toiler up the hill, too, had need of all his alertness to dodge the numerous erratic cars tearing down in every direction.

An adventurous group were tying a dozen or more toboggins together, which they called an omnibus; and Jack Vavasour, in the character of conductor, was holding up his hand, and cadging for pa.s.sengers.

"Any more for the Brook or Gore Vale? Room for two still in the 'Lightning' 'bus! No more?--then we are off. Link arms, ladies and gentlemen;" and the unwieldy apparatus was started. The couplings divided half-way down. About seven reached the bottom, the remaining five were upset, and were left there. Cecil was in the latter division, and having extricated herself from the _debris_, slowly ascended the hill.

She was rather tired now, and slightly bored; and began wondering what had become of her escort. He had not been in the coach, nor was he among the noisy, chattering party approaching her.

"Has anyone seen Captain Du Meresq?" asked she.

"Ten minutes ago he was death on the big jump," said Jack. "He took Delamere to start him; and I think Miss Tremaine went too."

A shade pa.s.sed over Cecil's face. "Would you ask him, Mr. Vavasour, to get the sleigh? It is quite time we were going."

Another quarter of an hour pa.s.sed, but no signs of Jack or Bertie.

Cecil kept up a desultory conversation with Mrs. Anderson; but a vague impatience and restlessness came over her. She looked in the direction of the big jump, and it seemed to her a point of attraction that gathered up the stragglers, who all converged towards it. There was quite a crowd there now. Mrs. Anderson's plat.i.tudes became maddening. Then she observed Lilla coming from the same direction, and beckoning. She sprang to meet her.

"Cecil," cried Lilla, "don't be frightened." Why do people always use this agitating formula? "But the fact is poor Bertie has had an awful cropper. Good gracious, Cecil! don't look like that! Are you going to faint! He is not so very much hurt,--stunned a bit at first."

"How was it?" said the other, breathing again, and pressing forward.

"He was going down the drop. Captain Delamere was to push him off, which he did with a vengeance. He didn't mean any harm, though he don't like a bone in poor Bertie's body. However, the toboggin snapped in two from the concussion in landing. Bertie was shot out and rolled to the bottom, which would not have mattered, only he struck his head against some snag or stone hidden by the snow. We looked down, but he didn't seem to move, and we got frightened. I had had nearly enough jumping, but I took Captain Delamere on my toboggin--didn't trust him to steer, I can tell you, my dear--and b.u.mped down quite safe. Bertie was insensible, with a queer cut on his forehead; so I extracted the solitaire out of his s.h.i.+rt-collar, and Captain Delamere gave him a nip out of his pocket-pistol, and then he seemed to pull himself together and sat up. A lot of people had collected round, and Mr. Vavasour asked me to come and tell you. Oh, here he is."

"Miss Rolleston," said Jack, "Du Meresq is nearly all right again. But he has twisted his ankle, and can't walk up the hill; so they are going to pull him up on a toboggin. I'll go and get your sleigh."

"Are you _sure_ it is nothing worse?" said Cecil, who could scarcely abandon her first impression that his neck was broken.

"Quite. There he is, to answer for himself," as Bertie and his bearers crested the hill.

She walked to meet them. Du Meresq looked in pain, but cut short all enquiries. "Wrenched my foot that's all. You want to go, don't you, Cecil?"

"Oh, yes; as soon as possible. Lilla, Mrs. Armstrong is so far off, will you make our adieux?" _Sotto voce._ "She is a tiresome old goose; but I left her so abruptly just now."

"Miss Rolleston," whispered Jack, who had just brought up the cutter, "I think I'll send up the doctor from the barracks. Du Meresq did get a baddish cut on the head, and, if he doesn't stay in a day or two, it might turn to erysipelas in this climate."

"Pray do. Oh, Mr. Vavasour! just tell me honestly, is not that sometimes--fatal when it gets to the head?"

Cecil's eyes, dilated with terror, betrayed her to Jack, over whose honest face came an expression of sympathy and intelligence.

"Of course; but we will take care of that. That's why I am sending up the doctor, to prevent him exposing himself out of doors just yet."

Cecil did not find the drive back so agreeable as the previous one. Du Meresq, chafing at the confinement his fast swelling foot would probably entail, and provoked at coming to grief after Lilla's taunt was in remarkably bad humour.

Cecil saw the state of the case, and drove on fast, philosophically allowing him to grumble and growl without much concerning herself; but it was almost dark before they drew up at "The Maples."

In the meantime, Colonel Rolleston, having heard from Miss Prosody that his daughter and Du Meresq had gone off to a toboggining party, chose to be highly scandalized, and poured into the placid ear of his wife a torrent of disapprobation.

In vain did Mrs. Rolleston represent that they were out sleighing and skating together most days without his objecting.

"This was quite different--this was a public party--people would say they were engaged. He never had seen the good of their being so inseparable, but of course, his opinion on the subject had never been considered,"

etc.,--which last remark was rather uncalled for, as few heads of families have their womankind in better order than Colonel Rolleston.

A straw will show which way the wind blows. His wife listened with some uneasiness, for she had always hoped the Colonel tacitly approved the attachment between their respective relatives, which to her appeared so evident. She could only trust this was but a pettish effusion from their prolonged absence, and determined to guard against such causes of offence for the future.

But still they did not come. It was dark--it was dinner-time--it really was too bad. At last a faint tinkle of sleigh-bells was followed by a slight commotion in the hall. The servant was a.s.sisting Bertie into the smoking-room, for he elected to lie on the sofa there, and thus avoid the worry of questions and alarms.

Colonel Rolleston was too grand and angry to evince any curiosity by coming out, and Mrs. Rolleston, after receiving a hasty explanation from Cecil, sent her back to the drawing-room, and took charge of her brother, who was having his boot cut off, and in considerable pain.

There was not much resemblance in character or sympathy between the brothers-in-law; but they had hitherto avoided clas.h.i.+ng. Now, however, the Colonel's outraged feelings of propriety wound him up to the determination of administering a solemn rebuke to Du Meresq, and he stood on that coign of advantage, the hearthrug, waiting to deliver it.

Cecil came in for the first tide of wrath, somewhat to her surprise; but, dreading her companions.h.i.+p with Bertie being prohibited, exerted considerable tact to smooth her father down, and especially made light of the accident, which she perceived was an aggravation of the offence.

"Not content with making my daughter conspicuous, he hadn't even the sense to keep out of sc.r.a.pes himself," etc.

Mrs. Rolleston glanced interrogatively at Cecil as they met on the stairs. I don't know what answer her countenance conveyed, but they made simultaneously the same suggestion,--"Let us get Miss Prosody to dine down." They both knew that without the addition of an unoffending third the subject would be harped on all the evening.

Mrs. Rolleston was an excellent housekeeper; and the well-served repast, aided by the judicious conversation of the ladies, exercised a most soothing influence on the Colonel, who was rapidly attaining that harmless frame of mind in which, as the saying goes, "a child might play with him."

But a sudden ring at the door-bell, followed by the announcement of the surgeon of the regiment, brought on a relapse. What man does not hate being interrupted at dinner? And the doctor's report was sufficiently vague to re-kindle Cecil's fears, and create uncomfortable misgivings in the mind of her step-mother.

Du Meresq, he said, was suffering intense pain in the head, and a small bone in the ankle was broken, which he had set; but he could not be certain there was no internal injury, etc.

Mrs. Rolleston hastened away to Bertie, and did not return; and poor Cecil, not daring to show her anxiety, remained to entertain her father, or rather to listen to his irritable remarks on this unlucky expedition for the rest of the evening.

Never was there a more fractious patient than Du Meresq as he lay listlessly on the sofa, while the bone reunited. He had speculated on many a stolen walk with Bluebell in that unfrequented wood, where they would be far less liable to interruption than at "The Maples." He thought of his cavalier parting with her,--a bracing tonic,--necessitated by the self-betrayal of her dejected air, but which he expected to have explained away in a most agreeable manner before now. It would never do to write from this house. What a shame it was sending her away--for a mistake, too, for they had got the saddle on the wrong horse. "Still," he thought, "it is a bore when girls take things _au grand serieux_. Lilla Tremaine is quite different, as jolly as possible, but never expects impossibilities. Now Cecil and Bluebell are never satisfied without one's swearing one cares for n.o.body else. At least, Cecil isn't, though I don't think I ever quite said that to her yet. It doesn't matter telling Bluebell so, and she looks so pleased, and believes every word of it. I would marry that child if I could afford it." And then visions of debt, ever pressing, hara.s.sed his mind. "Well, it could not last much longer; there would be something left out of the fire when he sold out, and he could try Australia, or the Gold Coast, or--he didn't care what."

But such subjects were not exhilarating, lying alone in the smoking-room, and at last he rang a hand-bell, and told the servant to ask Miss Rolleston to come and sit with him.

Cecil complied at once, but brought with her a colour-box and sketch-book. Drawing was her great occupation, and she was now filling in from memory a sketch of the toboggining party.

"You never come near me, Cecil, unless I send for you!" said Du Meresq, complainingly.

"Poor Bertie! are you very much bored?" said she, without looking up from her painting.

"Horribly; and my thoughts and occupations are none of the pleasantest."

"Those horrid duns again," glancing at some blue looking envelopes lying near. "But you haven't opened one of them."

"Never do, nor answer them either. They keep up a pretty close correspondence considering it is one-sided."

"Bertie," said Cecil, drawing on diligently, "Can't something be done?

You never seem to look into your affairs. Perhaps they wouldn't be so bad if you did. I shall be of age in August, and," colouring slightly, "I will lend you as much as you want. You can give me an I.O.U. for the amount," continued she, rather proud of her knowledge of business.

"You dear, romantic girl" (Cecil was chilled in a moment), "how could I take your money? I shouldn't have a chance of repaying it. No, I shall last as long as I can, and then try the Colonies. It is only my rascally self, after all, to think of. Thank goodness, I don't draw any delicate, fragile life after me into privation and discomfort."

Cecil bent more closely over her drawing.

"What are you doing?" said Bertie, impatiently. "I can't see your face.