Guy Livingstone Part 10

An evil smile curled round the old _roue's_ sensual mouth, radiating even to the verge of the forest of his iron-gray whiskers.

"Clanronald not clever?" he replied. "The cleverest man I know. He knew how his wife would be tempted, and he has taken the greatest pains to encourage a counteracting influence--family pride. Don't you know she is a Hautagne? It is a tradition with that race that their women never go wrong--under a prince of the blood. None of these are available just now, so she is still '_Une Madeleine, dans la puissance de son mari, et dans l'impuissance de se repentir_.'"

It was worse than useless to argue with Fallowfield. All your own best hits were turned aside by the target of his cynicism and unbelief, while his sophistries and sarcasms often came home. Like old wounds, they would begin to shoot and rankle in after years, just when it was most important and profitable to forget them.

We separated soon after this. Sir Henry's face wore an expression of placid self-congratulation. He thought the conversation had been rather improving, I believe, and that some of the ideas and ill.u.s.trations had been rather neatly put; so he laid his head down that night with the calm, satisfied feeling of a good man who has done his duty and not lost a day.

He was not more ingenious in overcoming the scruples of others than in silencing his own conscience, though of late years this last had probably ceased to give him much trouble. Finer feelings with him were only "sensations morbidly exaggerated," and he made no sort of allowance for such; among others, utterly ignoring remorse, I doubt if he ever looked forward; I am sure he never looked back. A parody on the "tag" which was given to Cambronne would sum up his terribly simple and consistent creed--_La femme se rend, mais ne meurt pas_.

CHAPTER XIV.

"I hold him but a fool, that would endanger His body for a girl that loves him not."

Fallowfield left us the next morning, the Bellasys later in the same day. They were to pay divers visits, and then return to Kerton. Lady Catharine pressed them to do so; though she liked the daughter less than the mother, she was so anxious Guy should marry some one that I think she would have accepted even Flora with thankfulness.

It is a favorite delusion with the British parent that marriage will work a miracle, and steady their children for life, by casting forth the _lutins_ who beset them. A thousand failures have not convinced the good speculative matrons of the hazard of the experiment, nor will as many more do so; they will go on match-making and blundering to the end of time. For a very brief s.p.a.ce the evil spirits are exorcised; but before the gloss is off the new-married couple's new furniture, one of the band creeps back and opens the door to his fellows. These hardly know their old quarters at first, but they soon begin to like them better than ever--are they not swept and garnished? "So they enter in and dwell there, and"--I need not finish the sentence; a thousand sweet though somewhat shrill voices will save me that trouble--a doleful music--an ancient tale of wrong--the Song of the Brides! They used to say that a man never went so hard to hounds after entering the holy estate. If this be so, I fear it is the only comforting result which follows of course.

What Flora and Guy said to each other at parting I can not guess.

Neither was of the sentimental order, and both might have taken for their motto, "Lightly won and lightly lost." Her hand lingered somewhat long in his as they said farewell, but she was smiling, if any thing, more saucily than ever. So she went, leaving behind her no tangible token, except a tiny pearl-colored glove, which Guy twisted rather pensively between his fingers as he stood on the hall steps, and watched the carriage disappear down the avenue. Mr. Bruce exulted after his saturnine fas.h.i.+on, and Isabel Raymond trembled; the one had lost a strong, unscrupulous ally, the other a formidable enemy.

"Why don't you open those letters, Charley?" Livingstone asked at breakfast, next morning, pointing to a pile that lay unopened by the letters plate.

"My dear boy, I haven't the heart to do it," was the reply. "They are all expressive, I know, of different phases of mercantile despair. I believe these men keep a supplicant, as Moses maintains a poet. The last appeal from my saddler was perfectly heartrending: he could not have written it himself, for he looks as tough as his own pig-skin. If he had, he would be _impayable_ in more ways than one. What can I do? I can't come down on the poor old man who has the misfortune to be my father for more supplies when rents are being reduced fifteen per cent.

The tradesmen must learn to endure. They have a splendid chance of attaining the victory of suffering."

Bruce smiled complacently to himself, and then superciliously at Charley. He had just received a letter from his banker, consulting him as to the disposal of a superfluous thousand or so, and he was hesitating between some dock shares and a promising railway.

"Yes," Forrester went on, "it's very well for you to talk in that hardened way, as you did the other night, about detrimentals and second sons. I wonder how you would like to have an elder brother, a pillar of learned societies, and as tenacious of life as one of his pet zoophytes?

He used to consume quant.i.ties of medicine, which was encouraging; but lately he has taken to h.o.m.oeopathy, which was quite out of the match.

He told me, lately, that 'four hundred a year and my pay was affluence.'

Affluence!"

It is impossible to describe the cadence of plaintive indignation which he gave to the last word. The recollection of his wrongs had made him almost energetic: we listened to his eloquence in respectful surprise.

"It was adding insult to injury," answered Guy. "If Parliament does not do something for you all soon, there will be another exodus of the Parthenidae."

Charley looked at his friend admiringly, as he always did when Guy was cla.s.sical in his allusions; but the unwonted effort had evidently exhausted him, and he lapsed into silence.

We rode out that afternoon to make some calls in the neighborhood, and, in returning, Livingstone proposed a short cut through a line of gates, with a short interval of cross-country work.

His cousin looked delighted, Bruce decidedly uncomfortable, though, of course, he could not refuse. He was riding Kathleen, an Irish mare, one of the quietest in the Kerton stable, where none were very steady. The fences were nothing at first; at last we came to a brook. It was not broad, but evidently deep, with high, rotten banks. However, as we were going at a fair hunting pace, all, including Bella Donna and her mistress, took it in their stride, but pulled up at once, seeing that Bruce was left behind, with the groom who was following us.

The first time he came at it, it was a clear case of "craning." He was hauling nervously at the reins, and would not let the mare have it.

Guy regarded him with intense contempt. "By G--d," he muttered, "I believe the man's afraid!"

Forrester laughed so unrestrainedly that Isabel looked at him beseechingly, in evident dread of the consequences.

"My dear Miss Raymond," he said, answering her frightened glance, "don't alarm yourself. Do you think I am a Quixote, to war with windmills?"

No one could look at Bruce's long arms and legs, all working at once, without owning the aptness of the simile.

For the third time he came down at the brook, and, I really believe, meant going; but Kathleen, unused to such vacillating measures, had got sulky, and swerved on the very brink, almost sliding over it. Her rider lost his seat, rolled over her shoulder, and for an instant disappeared in the water.

Achelous or Tiber, emerging from his native waves, crowned with aquatic plants, presented, I doubt not, an appearance at once dignified and becoming, but I defy any ordinary non-amphibious mortal to look, under similar circ.u.mstances, any thing but supremely ridiculous. The wrathful face framed in dripping hair and plastered whiskers--the movements of the limbs, awkward and constrained--the rivulets distilling from every salient angle, turning the victim into a walking Lauterbrunnen--when we saw all these absurdities exaggerated before us, no wonder that from the whole party, including the groom, there broke "unnumbered laughters."

"Curse the mare!" Bruce hissed out. The words came crushed and broken, as it were, through the white ranges of his grinding teeth.

Livingstone's face hardened directly. "Swear as much as you think the circ.u.mstances require, or as my cousin will allow," he said, "but be just before you're generous: don't anathematize Kathleen. It was no fault of hers. I never saw her refuse before; but she is used to be put straight at her fences. Hold her still, Harry" (to the groom on the farther side, who had caught the mare's rein); "I'll ride her at it myself."

He threw his bridle to Forrester, and, dismounting, cleared the brook at a bound. Then he went up to Kathleen, and began to coax her with voice and hand.

"I'll bet an even fifty he takes her over the first time," said Charley.

Bruce nodded his head, without speaking, to show that he took the bet. I thought he had the best of it, for the mare was so savage and sulky still that a refusal seemed a certainty.

Guy had mounted by this time, and, after taking a wide sweep in the field, came down at the brook. Kathleen was curling her back up, and going short, with the most evident intention of balking; but swerving was next to impossible, for she was fairly held in a vice by her rider's hands and knees. The whip fell heavily twice on either shoulder, and, just at the water's edge, Livingstone drove his heels in and lifted her.

It was almost a standing leap, and, as Kathleen landed, a fragment of the bank went cras.h.i.+ng into the water from under her hind hoofs, and she went down on her head; but Guy recovered her cleverly, and, turning again, sent her over it twice, backward and forward. The first time the mare did not try to refuse again, but rushed at it, snorting wrathfully, with her head in the air; the second she was quite tamed, and took it evenly in her stride.

"Give Mr. Bruce your horse, Harry, and take the Czar," Guy said. "I'll ride Kathleen home. Steady, old lady--don't fret. We are friends again now."

"So you have got your pony back," I remarked to Forrester.

"Yes, and with interest," was the quiet reply. "I don't think he will owe me much when I have done with him."

Though I had nothing on earth to do with it, I felt something like compunction as I guessed what he meant.

Bruce's was a hard, money-loving nature, unromantic to a degree; but I believe he would gladly have waked to find himself a houseless, landless beggar, if he could thus have regained what Charley, with his soft voice, and eyes, and manner, had stolen from him long ago.

Am I right in saying "stolen?" Perhaps he never had it; at all events, he thought he had, which comes to nearly the same thing.

It is true that, unraveling the cord of a man's existence, you will generally find the blackest hank in it twined by a woman's hand, but it is not less common to trace the golden thread to the same spindle.

Great warrior, profound statesman, stanch champion of liberty as he was, without Edith of the Swan's-neck, Harold would scarcely have risen into a hero of romance. We do not quite despise Charles VII. when we think how faithfully, in loneliness and ruin, the Lady of Beauty loved her apathetic, senseless, discrowned king. Others never found it out, but there must have been something precious hid in a dark corner of his wayward heart near which Agnes nestled so long. We look leniently on Otho--parasite and profligate--when we see him lingering on his last march, on the very verge of the death-struggle, in the teeth of Galba's legions, to decorate Popaea's grave. More in pity than in scorn, be sure, did Tacitus, the historic epigrammatist, write "_Ne tum quidem veterum immemor amorum_."

Was it in remorseful consciousness of having inflicted a deep, irreparable wrong, that Isabel rode so constantly by Bruce's side, striving, by all means of timid propitiation, to chase the cloud lowering on his sullen face as we returned slowly home?

CHAPTER XV.

_"To de prokluein, Epei genoit' an elusis, prochaireto; Ison de to prostenein, Toron gar exei sunorthron augais."_