A Rich Man's Relatives Volume II Part 10

The moon was at the full, and she hung, still tending upwards, high in the transparent vault where all the host of heaven were burning and blinking like tapers in a fitful wind, so brilliant was their scintillating l.u.s.tre seen through that clear dry atmosphere where the moonlight shows the red and the green of brick wall and painted verandah, colours which are but modulated greys where insular moistness thickens and dims the air. It was bright as day over the snow-covered landscape, with even a trace of the yellowness of suns.h.i.+ne in the light, but with an uncertainty in distances, and a liquid idealizing of objects and their shadows, sublimating reality out of commonplace, and lifting it into the likeness of what is seen in dreams.

The thermometer stood at zero, but the air was still, for all the fantastic flicker of the stars overhead; and it was so dry with the frost, which had precipitated all moisture, that it did not feel cold on emerging from heated houses. It was bright and exhilarating to breathe--like something to drink--and sent the blood dancing more briskly than before down to the tips of the thickly-gloved fingers Sounds of laughter and frolic were about, every one who was young and strong was abroad in the intoxicating l.u.s.tre, arrayed in blanket-coat and moccasins, with _toque_ and sash of blue or scarlet.

It was a steep snow-covered bank in the suburbs, with a long meadow spreading out below. Steps and footpaths were worn up the face on either hand, and in the middle was the slide polished into gla.s.s, down which the toboggans, pushed past the brink of the descent, a girl or even two seated in front with a man behind to steer, shot with the celerity of an arrow from above, slackening in speed when the steepest of the declivity was past, and travelling far out across the level meadow on the spending impulse they had gathered on their way. With steering and good luck the crew reach a standstill as they started, the damsel gets up, the swain draws his vehicle by the cord, and both mount again to the summit, once more to precipitate themselves down the slope, and if there be no miscarriage, resulting in s.h.i.+pwreck, with toboggan overturned or broken, and crew shot out promiscuously with ugly cuts and bruises, to repeat the experience a score of times, till at length the weary limbs shall refuse to scale the slippery height again.

"Miss Stanley," said Randolph Jordan, addressing Miss Matilda, "won't you trust yourself to me. I promise to steer carefully, and I can say what every one cannot, that I have never spilled my cargo yet."

"Thanks, Mr. Randolph, I do not mistrust you in the least; but really--it is so long since I got upon a toboggan--that I--I shall just stay here with Mr. Considine, now I have got to the top of the hill, and watch you young people like a sedate chaperon. But here is my cousin, Betsey Bunce; I am sure she will be delighted. They do not toboggan at St. Euphrase, and I am sure she never saw one in Upper Canada. Oh!"--with a little scream--"It really is quite frightful to see them start. And that is Muriel, I declare, and Gerald Herkimer. He will break the child's neck, I do believe; he is so heedless. I wish we were home again."

"Oh, law!" cried Betsey; "are you sure it is quite safe? I used to coast with my hand-sled, like the rest of the kids, when I was little, but it kind of frightens one to see the go-off. Are you quite sure you can protect my bones, Mr. Jordan?"--looking clingingly in his face in search of encouragement--"I feel awful frightened."

"Well, perhaps you are right," said Randolph, impervious to the cling; "it is a good plan to watch the others for a while first, it gives one confidence," and he was gone. He had paid his duty invitation to the head of the party, and, not having bargained for Betsey as a subst.i.tute, availed himself at once of the simulated dread which was intended merely to make him urgent and a.s.siduous. Betsey felt foolish, and turned round to Matilda, but she, supposing she had provided for her charge, had taken Considine's arm and strolled away. Betsey was pretty well able to do for herself, however, and ere long she descried a bachelor, unprovided with a maid, and whom she had danced with the evening before; he, on her recognizing him, was not averse to taking her on his conveyance _faute de mieux_, it being "kind o' lonesome,"

as he told himself, to ride alone, "when every other fellow was provided with his bit of muslin."

Randolph was at Miss Rouget's side in a moment, tendering his respectful services, which she at once accepted with the grave bow of a maiden obedient to her parents, who feels gratified in her conscience with the sense of a duty fulfilled, in doing what she knows they would approve--the superior satisfaction of a well-regulated mind, higher, because a moral pleasure, than the indulgence of mere personal preference, but by no means so gratifying to the gentleman, if he only knew it, which, fortunately, he seldom does. Randolph's feelings, too, might perhaps be considered as of that same higher moral sort, which dispenses with good honest attachment of the natural kind; more exactly to be described as indifference touched with filial piety and flavoured with a pinch of self-interest.

Old Jordan had been immensely impressed by the mining discoveries at La Hache, and although it was a damper to recognize in the desired father-in-law of his son a rapid and an unsuccessful gambler, still, the man's interest in the mine could be saved, he thought, by settling it upon his daughter as _dot_, if the old man were permitted to enjoy the usufruct during his life; besides, was there not a certain inst.i.tution where troublesome old gentlemen had been locked up ere then, at the instance of wives or heirs? and was not monsieur the seignior eccentric enough for any purpose, with skilful counsel to lay it properly before a jury? Randolph was the impediment himself; he was like a badly-ridden colt, whom the horseman, armed with whip and spur, which he has not the judgment to use, vexes into rebellion which he cannot overbear.

It was humiliating, but his sight was clear enough to see that Amelia, in opposition to whom all his dealings with his son hitherto had been taken, must now be called in to use the very influence which had hitherto made the lad so unruly, and render him tractable for once.

Amelia, for a wonder, lent a favourable ear. She recognized it as a tribute, and an admission, in arranging the most important circ.u.mstance in her son's life, that the arrogant block-head, who had attempted to lord it with so high a hand over herself and the boy, had come to see his impotence at last. The sense of victory soothed her, and made her gentle, as a filly has been known to become under coaxings with lump sugar and carrots, when rougher means had failed.

She agreed to take the youth in hand, and she moulded him without his knowledge, as she had done all his life before, like wax between her fingers.

He had as yet--whatever later years might bring him--no very p.r.o.nounced faculty of love for other than himself; his attachment to herself, as she saw full well, being due chiefly to what she could do for him and give him in the way of flattery, sympathy, and help to a.s.sist himself, and so forth. She saw it without much pain, though she was his mother, for she was a practical-minded person who indulged in the affections but sparingly as being too luscious and apt to pall; "it was just," she thought, "the way of the coa.r.s.er s.e.x--brutal, selfish, stupid--overbearing in the rude strength of their muscle, the delicate nerve-power of the women." "But brain-fibre was more than a match in the long run for such fibre as theirs," she told herself; and after all the boy was her own, to be proud of among other women, and to make do in the long run, as she only could make him, by delicately pulling the strings she wot of in his being, pretty much as she would.

She was aware, of course, of his kindness for Muriel, but she divined that its roots did not go deep, and when she now took him in hand to direct his attachments, his own description confessed the truth when he spoke of her as "a jolly little girl, and awfully pretty, whom the fellows were crazy after, and he meant to take the cake from them all."

"I am not so sure that you can, my boy; having been a girl myself I am likely to guess nearer the truth than you can; girls are such goosy little things, and I should say your friend Gerald has the best chance there."

"Gerald!" said the young man, drawing himself up to the full of that one-inch advantage he had over his friend; but then he remembered how Gerald had taken her in to supper the evening or two before, and he felt a doubt; but it only made him angry and more obstinate to win the prize.

"I think, Randolph," his mother went on, reading his thoughts, "your cake, as you call her, you gluttonous boy, is hardly worth the eating; leave it for your friends, and make them welcome. Muriel Stanley is no match for you, and no great catch for anybody. She will get her aunt's money, I suppose--a comfortable little sum--when they die, which is not likely to happen for twenty years; but she has no connections whatever, and a good connection is so very advantageous for a young man. You will realize that more and more as you get on."

"But she is awfully pretty, the prettiest little thing in Montreal, and the nicest."

"I grant you that, if you think so; but she is only fifteen, and her aunts will not let her marry for five years yet. She will be stout at twenty; that kind of girl whose figure forms so early, always gets stout, and you will think her a little coa.r.s.e--men of taste always think that of plump girls, I have observed--but you will sacrifice yourself all the same, like a man of honour, if you are already engaged. That will not be the worst, however; five years more and she will be positively fat! Imagine yourself with a wife like that! You will be about thirty then, just in your prime, with your nice slim figure merely improved from what it is now, the shoulders a little broader, of course, which will be no disadvantage, and your moustache a trifle heavier, but otherwise scarcely changed--in fact, at your very best. How will you like then walking down St. James's Street on the circ.u.mference of a copious wife?--a sprig of lavender tied to a marigold! Does the picture attract you?"

When you drive together or have stalls at the theatre, imagine yourself protruding from among your spouse's cloaks and flounces. The buggy could be built of extra size, to be sure, but all the stall chairs are alike. It is a subject for your own consideration exclusively. Personally, I am fond of Muriel. She is a nice little thing, and I should welcome her as a daughter; but it is not I who should have to appear in public with her for the remainder of my days; and if a man means to go into society, he is wise to choose a wife who will group well with him.

"Now, there are our neighbours at St. Euphrase. Think of an only daughter!--heiress to a seigniory, and connected with all the best people in the province. You will say she has not a good complexion; but how short a time complexion lasts in this climate! and those who have had one, and lost it, always look haggard and older than those who never had any. A man married to an old-looking woman, whether fat or lean, always strikes me as a melancholy spectacle--like a sapling sprouting from a crumbling wall, as the poet says--and the world is seldom respectful. It is apt to look on him as the man who broke the commandments and married his grandmama, because n.o.body of his own age would have him. There is no fear of that with Adeline Rouget; she will improve every year she lives. She is distinguished looking now, though she is not pretty. Every year she will improve, that is the advantage of having plenty of bone. She will look stately in middle life, and be beautiful--the rarest kind of beauty--in old age. Look forward always, my boy, when you think about marrying, it is an experiment which generally can be tried but once, so bought experience can do you no good."

Mother and son had a long conversation, in which she plied him with so many flatteries, that finally of his own free choice he promised to "go in" for Miss Rouget, yet at the same time felt himself magnanimous and dutiful in yielding his own wish to the gratification of his parent; and she encouraged the delusion as likely to hold him to her point. Self-denial is a heroic sort of virtue, and rather above the purchase of most folks; therefore, to be self-denying, and so, admirable to his seldom gratified moral sense, while still pleasing himself, was exaltedly delightful. If a man is not a hero, it pleases him the more to see himself in a heroic light. It is new, and it may not occur again, therefore he will do his best to retain the gallant att.i.tude in which he finds himself; and Randolph set himself to _live up to his ideal_.

It was in ceremonious and most well-behaved fas.h.i.+on that the young lady placed herself on the toboggan, and permitted her cavalier to wrap the outflowing draperies more compactly about her in gracious quietude. The gentleman gave the equipage a push beyond the brink, jumped in behind with a parting kick against the sh.o.r.e, and they were away; swiftly, and with ever-accelerating speed as the hill grew steeper--"shooting Niagara." The _bienseances_ of the convent, with their modest tranquillity, are scarcely maintainable in a toboggan shooting down a gla.s.sy incline of fifty degrees or more, at the rate of miles in a minute, with the certainty that dislodgment from the quarter-inch board one is seated on may hurl one anywhere, bruised or maimed, but a.s.suredly ridiculous.

Adeline caught her breath with a gasp as she found they were off, and, as the pace quickened down hill, she clenched her teeth tightly and closed her eyes; and then there came a jolt as they sped across some swelling in the ice, and she felt herself thrown backwards, and gave a little scream; and Randolph was there behind to support her, with a laugh, as she b.u.mped against his chest, a laugh she could not but join in, though a little hysterically, perhaps, at first. And then the pace began to slacken as they reached the level of the meadow below, and still it slackened, and finally they stopped, and stood up, and shook themselves from adhering snow, and found, the experience was over, that they were both safe, and that it had been a little thrilling, but "_awfully jolly_." The ice was broken between the two young people forthwith, and the Lady Superior with her nuns, who had taken such pains in the formation of Adeline's character and manners, would scarcely have recognized her, or been able to distinguish her from one of those dreadful, fast, heretical English girls, they had been wont to hold up to her and her companions as models to avoid, as she caught Randolph's arm to climb to the top of the bank again, and vowed it had been delightful.

Conventional mannerisms are like mud in a slough, when the animal which has floundered through gets out into the suns.h.i.+ne, it dries and peels off and falls away very quickly. These two were average young people who had been comfortably reared, with warm clothes and nouris.h.i.+ng victuals imagination, sentiment, "yearnings" of any kind had been omitted from their composition, but they were unconscious of the deficiency, so were perfectly content. They were both healthy and strong, and the physical surroundings of the moment were exhilarating in the highest degree--bright clear air and exciting exercise. The quickening of their pulses, caused by their romp upon the snow, was as high a delight as either was capable of knowing, and they clung closer together each time they re-climbed the steep to shoot again from the summit, and laughed more joyously with each succeeding jolt, and persuaded themselves even, perhaps, that they were really falling in love--it is a delusion which often has no more substantial foundation.

And Muriel, too, was careering merrily down the slope, with Gerald for steersman. It was a sport in which they frequently indulged, and many a chilly promenade upon the frozen snow, on the top of the hill, had it cost Aunt Matilda that winter, though she never dropped a complaint which might check or damp her darling's pleasure. Perhaps, too, she may have found the _chaperonage_ not altogether an infliction in every aspect. By some happy concurrence of circ.u.mstances Considine was always of the party. He might have dropped in to visit the ladies before the hour for setting out, or else he would accompany young Gerald when he called to persuade them to go; a.s.suredly he was always there, and freighted with rugs of the thickest and warmest. When the ground was reached, he was curious in his selection of the snuggest nooks and corners sheltered from the wind to rest in; and when his rugs were heaped on the sealskins she already wore, Miss Matilda found she was not one bit cold in the world, and Considine in attendance, who on these occasions was invited to smoke, was perfectly happy, and blessed the inventor of the toboggan.

Muriel and Gerald were experienced voyagers who slid down and clambered up again in calm familiarity with what they were about, without transports of timidity or delight, but in thorough enjoyment.

Muriel sat motionless like a part of the outfit, and Gerald was able to steer their way intricately and securely between others more laggard or awkward who got in the way and would have brought grief to a less skilful pilot. And then it was so pleasant to be together, though neither said so, they were so used to it--had been used to it for three or four winters now--and it had grown on them so quietly that they said and perhaps thought nothing about it. There were no speeches; there was no opportunity for them, for there had been no breaks in their intimacy. A boy and girl companions.h.i.+p at first, it had strengthened and progressed with themselves, till, while it was possible neither might have confessed an attachment to the other, it was certain they could never, now, attach themselves to any one else.

They were comrades, at least in their winter exercises, but without the rough familiarity which sometimes arises in that relation.

Muriel's virginal rearing by those worthy gentlewomen, her aunts, had made that impossible on her side; and Gerald had been his mother Martha's "vineyard," tended and weeded and cared for a.s.siduously as to his moral nature, brought up in manliness to scorn evil and reverence women, as only that quaint daughter of the solitary places in "Noo Hamps.h.i.+re" could have done.

The moon hung in the highest heaven, the snow near by was aglitter in its sheen, the distance was dim with hazy brightness, and many tobogganers had come in from around to join the sport. The place was not inclosed, it was a bare hill-face at other times, and somewhat out of the way; but it suited, and when once a few had used it into shape, all the tobogganing world was glad to avail itself of it. Its out-of-the-way-ness alone preserved it to the use of its quieter frequenters from the gamins and "roughs" of the more densely-peopled streets; but this night was so gloriously still and bright and exhilarating that those who had tasted its brightness could not tear themselves away, and as the shop-lights were extinguished they wandered farther afield instead of creeping under dusky shelter and going to sleep. The snow was dotted with groups of a dozen or a score, streaming out from the town and coming to the snow slide. All were on foot, a few on snow shoes, and many dragging hand-sleds behind them--those devices of the enemy which make the winter street of America so dangerous for an elderly gentleman. He will look around for a policeman to stop urchins coasting in mid-highway, at the hazard of their skulls, from pa.s.sing horse-kicks; he will not find one, but with a roar and a sweep another coaster will rush down the pavement, bruising his s.h.i.+ns, over-turning him, and pa.s.sing on its career of devastation before he can gather himself up to box the audacious ears of the offenders.

"What a crowd of people are gathering down here at the end of the track," observed Muriel, as she stepped off the toboggan at the journey's end to re-climb the hill.

"Yes," said Gerald, "a great many. I do not mind their standing down here, they seem peaceable. They are only looking on, and soon they will find it cold, and go away. But look at the crowd up there at the top! They seem a more unruly crew. I fear there will be a row. Ah!" he added, "there it is! Our pleasure is over for to-night. There is a rowdy with a hand-sled, starting down the course. Hs.h.!.+ what a pace--and another--and a third. The third has upset, however, and rolled down the hill. I could almost wish he would get in front of number four. It would certainly hurt him, and spill number four as well, and both deserve it. It will not be safe to launch a toboggan now. The iron shod runners of the sleds travel as fast again as a flat toboggan board. We shall get run into and smashed. I fear we must knock off for to-night. I am awfully sorry, but really it is not safe, with a parcel of roughs in possession of the slide."

"Don't say so," said Muriel. They were climbing the bank, she leaned on his arm, and she pressed on it just a shade heavier as she said it.

"No doubt," he answered; "they must soon give it up. The ground is too steep for runners. See how they shoot, and how far they are carried beyond where we stopped. And there is a ditch there too. The least thing will upset them coming down at such a bat, and somebody will get hurt. They will all get hurt in time, but we shall have too long to wait for it, I fear."

"Don't you think we might have just one or two more? The evening is only beginning, and it is so lovely. I do not feel one bit afraid, you steer so beautifully."

And what could Gerald do but yield when so appealed to, and so flattered?

They made another descent in safety, and then another, in which Gerald performed prodigies of steering which elicited the lively applause of the onlookers, and filled himself and his companion with confidence and pride. For now the sled-riding invaders were in possession of the field, the tobogganers having withdrawn, all save Gerald, who, in the new position of affairs, appeared as the intruder, and whom the majority in possession now set themselves deliberately to molest and chase from the ground; shooting down after him, and endeavouring to run into him from different sides, when he would suddenly veer out of his course and leave the chasers to run into each other, with bruises and scatterings, and derision from the onlookers.

Each descent they made Gerald begged might be their last, but Muriel more eagerly pleaded they might have yet another. It was so splendid, she thought, to see the rowdies, balked in their malice, run thundering into each other, while Gerald received rounds of applause.

What taskmaster ever drove so hard as does the female partizan, who desires nothing for herself but merely the glory of her champion?

They made the descent again. It was to be really the last time. "Just this once more;" but it proved the once too often. They started immediately behind a sled which shot down like lightning, and insured a clear course at the going off; but presently one slid by on their right, and they had to swerve to avoid it, and then there pa.s.sed one on their left which almost grazed them. They had scarcely escaped when another came thundering down behind them. Gerald veered aside as well as he could, but still as it came on it was only by flinging himself against the foremost pa.s.senger that he avoided being run over, and it cost him his balance. In the instant, while he was still in poise, he was able to lay a goodly stroke with his guiding stick across the head of the steersman of the buccaneer, and then he fell out of his seat and rolled down the steep. The sled had turned cross-wise to the incline, and rolled over with the three who were its crew; and Muriel startled, alarmed, and with the toboggan turned aslant, fell out likewise, and slid downward with the toboggan atop.

Gerald reached the bottom pell-mell among the brawling, kicking, and swearing cargo of the sled, who set on him in concert ere yet he had well reached his feet, when Muriel's falling amidst them, covered by the over-turned toboggan, dispersed the combatants for an instant, and gave Gerald time to recover his guard. Then with a howl the three rushed upon the one, or rather on the two, for they knocked down Muriel, half risen, and trampled the toboggan to pieces in rus.h.i.+ng over her. Gerald was ready with one from the shoulder, delivered squarely in the jaw, to knock down the first, but the other two sprang on him together, and he would have fared ill if one from the crowd had not leaped into the fray with blazing eye, clenched fist, and gnas.h.i.+ng teeth, and a growl of _sssacrrre_ and _chien_, as he felled one ruffian with a blow under the ear and attacked the other. The first was now up again, a.s.saulting Gerald with foot and fist, and calling his fellows in the crowd to come and help him, when the ministers of the law appeared in the persons of two burly constables, who caught Gerald and his succourer by the collar, and stood over the last felled of the a.s.sailants while the other two ran away.

It was a "brache of the pace," they declared, and all must come to the station, stretching out a hand to seize Muriel by the m.u.f.fler--an act which nearly upset Gerald's composure, and brought him into collision with the police; but fortunately at that moment Considine intervened.

He had been spending an enchanted hour near the top of the hill with Miss Matilda, swathed in rugs--all but her head--looking down upon the sports, and chatting pleasantly while he buzzed round her, near enough to hear and answer, but far enough off to let the fumes of his cigar travel elsewhere. Something said in the crowd hard by had drawn their attention to the slide. "Is not that Muriel?" Matilda had exclaimed, jumping to her feet; and then the collision had come, and the upset, and they both hurried down the bank to arrive on the scene at the same moment as the police.

"You need not take the young lady into custody, my man," said Considine, a.s.suming his grand military manner--learned in "the war"--so effective with policemen, who, like other disciplined beings, seem to love being spoken down to. "Here is my card, and I write the lady's address on the back. She will appear before the magistrate whenever he desires."

"Roight, yur haunur!" said the man, coming to "attention," and saluting.

"And this gentleman will give you his card, too, and promise to appear when wanted," a suggestion which was also complied with, and Gerald was liberated from custody.

"And this young fellow, who has behaved like a man, can I do nothing for him?"

"This is Pierre Bruneau," cried Matilda, "our farmer's son at St.

Euphrase. So good of you, Pierre, to come to Miss Muriel's rescue. I did not know you were in Montreal."

Pierre pulled off his _toque_ and made a shame-faced bow, smiling gratification all over his countenance to find his service appreciated.

"The Frinchman must com wid us, sorr. He kin hilp to dhraw the sled wid the chap he knocked down--an' roight nately he did that same--for a Frinchman. We'll thrate him well, sorr, but we'll have to lock him up. Ye kin spake a worrd to his haunor to-morrow maurnin', sorr."

Pierre started, and looked piteously to Miss Matilda, and then his manly heart gave way--he was not very old--he stuffed his fists into his eyes and wept sore. To prison! To be locked up! It was dreadful, and it was shame; and yet, even then, if it had had to be done over again, he would have done it just the same. It was for Muriel he had fought, and for her sake he was content to suffer.