Bluebell Part 16

Come and sit by me, Cecil. I like a 'gentle hand in mine.'"

Cecil moved as if in a dream, and sat in a low chair near his couch.

"You have always been so kind and true to me," stroking her hair caressingly.

A slight movement of the handle of the door made them involuntarily separate, and Mrs. Rolleston entered.

"Cecil, your father is looking for you. He wants you to drive with him, and call on the Learmonths."

"What an infernal bore!" said Du Meresq, energetically; "and I must lie in this confounded room, with nothing to do the whole afternoon. Can't you get out of it, Cecil?"

"No, no!" said Mrs. Rolleston, hastily meeting her daughter's eye. There was unspoken sympathy between them. Her half eager look of inquiry pa.s.sed into intelligent acquiescence, and, with a regretful glance at Bertie, she left the room.

The next day and the one after the Colonel required his daughter's companions.h.i.+p; the third day, they all went out in the afternoon, as Du Meresq seemed better, and said he had letters to write. No sooner, however, was the house quiet and deserted, than he rang the bell, and sent for a sleigh, hobbling out with the a.s.sistance of a stick and the servant's arm. For the information of that lingering and curious functionary, he ordered the driver to go to the Club, which address, however, was altered after proceeding a short distance.

CHAPTER XII.

THE LAKE Sh.o.r.e ROAD.

But all that I care for, And all that I know, Is that, without wherefore, I wors.h.i.+p thee so.

--Lord Lytton.

"I suppose, Bluebell, you keep all your fine spirits for company?" said Miss Opie, tauntingly; and, indeed, she had some reason to be aggrieved.

Few things are more trying than living with a person in the persistent enjoyment of the blues; and the old, saddened by failing health and the memory of heavy sorrows, are apt to look upon gloom in youth as entrenching on their own prescriptive rights.

Bluebell was always now taking long, aimless walks, bringing home neither news nor gossip, and then sitting silent, absorbed in her own thoughts, or else feverishly expectant; while each evening she sank into deeper despondency after the day's disappointment.

"Spirits can't be made to order," answered she, shortly. "I have got nothing to talk about."

"I am afraid you are ill, my dear," said Mrs. Leigh; "outgrowing your strength, perhaps. You are such a great girl, Bluebell--so different to me; and you scarcely touched the baked mutton at dinner, which was a little frozen and red yesterday, but so nice to-day."

Bluebell s.h.i.+vered. She was not at a very critical age, but the culinary triumphs of the "general servant" made her practice a good deal of enforced abstinence since she had been accustomed to properly prepared cookery at "The Maples."

"People who do nothing all day can't expect to be hungry," said Miss Opie, sententiously. "If a man will not work neither may he eat."

"Then it is all right," retorted Bluebell, "as it seems I do neither."

"Not work!" cried Mrs. Leigh. "Why she has earned already more than I ever did in my life, and brought me ten dollars to get a dress with, only I shan't, for I shall keep it for her. I must say, Aunt Jane, you are always blaming the child; and, if her mother is satisfied, I think you may be."

Aunt Jane was silenced, but she wondered what Bluebell could do that her shortsighted mother would not be satisfied with. Meantime the object of the discussion had escaped from the room. She had no wish to spend the afternoon in the dim parlour, stuffy with stove heat and the lingering aroma of baked mutton; and a fancy had occurred to her to wander through the wood she had last traversed with the sole occupant of her ill-regulated mind.

Trove, now a well-to-do and unabashed dog, rolled and kicked on his back in puppy-like ecstacy as he watched her dress, and officiously brought her her m.u.f.f, which, however, he objected to resigning. Trove was Bluebell's confidant and the repository of her woes, and perhaps as safe a one as young ladies generally choose.

Not a sign of the Rollestons had she seen since her arrival at the cottage ten days ago. Bluebell thought she could not have been more cut off from them if she had crossed the Atlantic instead of the Common.

Going to the Rink would have too much the appearance of seeking Du Meresq, so she rigorously avoided that; but even in King Street, where Cecil's cutter flashed most days, she never caught sight of "Wings'"

owl-decorated head.

There was a great deal of her father's disposition in Bluebell, and she chafed at the monotony of days so grey and eventless, and longed for she knew not what; so that it was life, movement, _pain_ even, to exhaust those new springs of thought and feeling that the awakening touch of a first love had called forth, and would not now be laid.

Bluebell, like most Canadians, had had plenty of early admiration from hobbledehoys, who made honest, though ungainly, love to her; but her heart would as soon have been touched by an amorous Orson as by these youthful tyros in the art. Du Meresq had that deceptive countenance apparently created for the s.h.i.+pwreck of female hearts. Sometimes men called him an ugly fellow, but no woman ever thought so. There was expression enough in those luminous eyes to have set up three beauty men.

They could look both demoniacal and seraphic,--tender often, but scarcely ever true; add to this a magnificent _physique_, a soft manner, a winning voice, and, what gave him an almost superst.i.tious interest to women, that _fey_ look attributed to the Stewarts. He had read and studied hard by fits and starts, for whatever possessed his mind he always pursued with ardour, and to Cecil was fond of inveighing against his useless, unsatisfying life. In spite of her infatuation, though, she judged him more truly than most people, and perceived that his fitful remorse was chiefly occasioned by pressure of money matters, and seldom lasted over pecuniary relief.

In the most secret flights of her imagination, she pictured herself in some new country with Bertie. An adventurous, reckless nature such as his, she thought, turned every gift to evil in the commonplace life where his idiosyncrasy had no play; but detached from his idle mess-room habits, and launched into a new career, when to live at all involved exertion of mind and body, would metamorphosize her hero into all she could wish.

Such was the ideal, in her conventual bringing up, of the rich and well placed Cecil; while Bluebell, to whom luxury was unknown, longed for wealth to take her into a sphere where taste was not starved by economy, nor all her horizon bounded by weekly bills. But in both cases their air castles were to be occupied with Du Meresq.

The girl and the dog sped along on their desolate walk--it was too cold to linger. Bluebell carefully followed the route she had taken with Bertie, that memory might be added by a.s.sociation.

"Ah, Trove," said she to the dog, who bounced up against her, "I am as much a waif and stray as you are--disowned by my grandfather, who might have made us rich, and taken up by people one day and forgotten the next; but you have drifted into harbour now, my dog, and who knows--"

A smothered growl interrupted this monologue, and then a sharp bark.

Bluebell looked round to see what was exciting him; she heard a distant tinkle of bells, and listened keenly; laughing voices were apparently approaching. From an impulse that she could not have explained, Bluebell darted into an empty woodshed, dragging Trove in after her, and holding him firmly by the muzzle to stifle his growling. Through an aperture in the boards she could observe, unseen herself.

The sounds grew louder, and a score of sleighs defiled past her hiding-place. Bluebell scanned each carefully. There were the usual members of the Sleigh Club. She recognized the Tremaines, and several others of her little world. Jack in his tandem; but, faithful Lubin! no "cloud-capped" m.u.f.fin sat by his side; his companion was of the sterner s.e.x, or, as he would have described him, "a dog." But where were the Rollestons? No representative of "The Maples" was present, not even Du Meresq. They had flashed past within a minute; but, like a fresh breeze over still water, the little incident had awakened and roused up Bluebell from her lethargy.

Her thoughts became more lively as she speculated why Bertie and Cecil were absent from the sleighing party. It was some consolation, at any rate, not to see him enjoying himself quite as much without her. The sun was setting redly as she neared the cottage, and a young moon gaining brightness. Bluebell, remembering a childish superst.i.tion, paused to wish. The pa.s.sage was dark as she entered, and her mother's tones, talking with great volubility, struck her ear. "Mamma has her company voice on," thought she, which, being interpreted, meant an increase of nervousness and consequent garrulity.

She opened the door, and her heart gave a sudden leap as she became aware of, rather than saw in the dusk, the tall, broad-shouldered form of Du Meresq. Bluebell came stiffly forward, and offered a cold hand, utterly belying her heart, to Bertie, who bent over it as if sorely tempted, in spite of Mrs. Leigh's presence, to carry it to his lips. But she withdrew it abruptly, and sat down, seized with more overpowering shyness than she had ever experienced.

Miss Opie's keen, attentive eyes were taking in the situation.

"Captain Du Meresq has been kind enough to call," said Mrs. Leigh, "to say there is no immediate hurry for your return, my dear."

Bluebell raised disappointed, questioning eyes; but something in his face conveyed to her that the message was coined as an excuse for his appearance.

"I hope Cecil is well?" said she, trying to speak unconcernedly; "but I saw she was not out with the Club to-day."

"I think she is tired of it. Where did you fall in with them?" asked he.

"In the Humber," very consciously.

"Were you there?" asked Bertie, with a tender inflection in his voice, that Bluebell knew well. But she would not look up, and Miss Opie did, so he proceeded carelessly,--"I suppose they were coming from the Lake Sh.o.r.e Road, up the serpentine drive in the wood?"

"Oh! that is such a pretty walk in summer!" said Mrs. Leigh.

"I dare say," said Bertie, looking straight down his nose. "I went round that way once, and even in winter found it the pleasantest walk I ever took in my life."

"Ah, then," said Mrs. Leigh, knowingly, "I dare say some pretty young lady was with you."

"No such happiness," said Bertie, with an imperceptible glance at Bluebell. "The fact is, Mrs. Leigh, women detest me! I suppose it is my deep respect, making me so fearful of offending, that bores them; but I fear I am a social failure."

"In my day," said Miss Opie, ironically, "young ladies _expected_ to be treated with respect."

"And that could not have been so long ago; yet now they are beyond a bashful man's comprehension," said Bertie, with an air of simplicity, slightly scanning Miss Opie's wakeful face. He had got on so well with the mamma, who was this old maid, who appeared so objectionably on the alert?