Читать книгу Hard Cash - Charles Reade Reade - Страница 23

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HE did follow her, and, convinced that she would be engaged ten deep in five minutes, hustled up to the master of the ceremonies and begged an introduction. The great banker's son was attended to at once. Julia saw them coming, as her sex can see, without looking. Her eyes were on fire, and a delicious blush on her cheeks, when the M. C. introduced Mr. Alfred Hardie with due pomp. He asked her to dance.

“I am engaged for this dance, sir,” said she softly.

“The next?” asked Hardie timidly.

“With pleasure.”

But when they had got so far they were both seized with bashful silence; and just as Alfred was going to try and break it, Cornet Bosanquet, aged 18, height 5 feet 4 inches, strutted up with clanking heel, and, glancing haughtily up at him, carried Julia off, like a steam-tug towing away some fair schooner. To these little thorns society treats all anxious lovers, but the incident was new to Alfred, and discomposed him; and, besides, he had nosed a rival in Sampson's prescription. So now he thought to himself, “that little ensign is 'his puppy.'”

To get rid of Mrs. Dodd he offered to conduct her to a seat. She thanked him; she would rather stand where she could see her daughter dance: on this he took her to the embrasure of a window opposite where Julia and her partner stood, and they entered a circle of spectators. The band struck up, and the solemn skating began.

“Who is this lovely creature in white?” asked a middle-aged solicitor. “In white? I did not see any beauty in white,” replied his daughter. “Why there, before your eyes,” said the gentleman, loudly.

“What, that girl dancing with the little captain? I don't see much beauty in her. And what a rubbishing dress.”

“It never cost a pound, making and all,” suggested another Barkingtonian nymph.

“But what splendid pearls!” said a third: “can they be real?”

“Real! what an idea!” ejaculated a fourth: “who puts on real pearls as big as peas with muslin at twenty pence the yard?”

“Weasels!” muttered Alfred, and quivered all over: and he felt to Mrs. Dodd so like a savage going to spring, that she laid her hand upon his wrist, and said gently, but with authority, “Be calm, sir! and oblige me by not noticing these people.”

Then they threw dirt on her bouquet, and then on her shoes, while she was winding in and out before their eyes a Grace, and her soft muslin drifting and flowing like an appropriate cloud round a young goddess.

“A little starch would make it set out better. It's as limp as a towel on the line.”

“I'll be sworn it was washed at home.”

“Where it was made.”

“I call it a rag, not a gown.”

“Do let us move,” whispered Alfred.

“I am very comfortable here,” whispered Mrs. Dodd. “How can these things annoy my ears while I have eyes? Look at her: she is the best-dressed lady in the room; her muslin is Indian, and of a quality unknown to these provincial shopkeepers; a rajah gave it us: her pearls were my mother's, and have been in every court in Europe; and she herself is beautiful, would be beautiful dressed like the dowdies who are criticising her: and I think, sir, she dances as well as any lady can encumbered with an Atom that does not know the figure.” All this with the utmost placidity.

Then, as if to extinguish all doubt, Julia flung them a heavenly smile; she had been furtively watching them all the time, and she saw they were talking about her.

The other Oxonian squeezed up to Hardie. “Do you know the beauty? She smiled your way.

“Ah!” said Hardie, deliberately, “you mean that young lady with the court pearls, in that exquisite Indian muslin, which floats so gracefully, while the other muslin girls are all crimp and stiff; like little pigs clad in crackling.”

“Ha! ha! ha! Yes. Introduce me.”

“I could not take such a liberty with the queen of the ball.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled, but felt nervous and ill at ease. She thought to herself, “Now here is a generous, impetuous thing.” As for the hostile party, staggered at first by the masculine insolence of young Hardy, it soon recovered, and, true to its sex, attacked him obliquely, through his white ladye.

“Who is the beauty of the ball?” asked one, haughtily.

“I don't know, but not that mawkish thing in limp muslin.”

“I should say Miss Hetherington is the belle,” suggested a third.

“Which is Miss Hetherington?” asked the Oxonian coolly of Alfred.

“Oh, she won't do for us. It is that little chalk-faced girl, dressed in pink with red roses; the pink of vulgarity and bad taste.”

At this both Oxonians laughed arrogantly, and Mrs. Dodd withdrew her hand from the speaker's arm and glided away behind the throng. Julia looked at him with marked anxiety. He returned her look, and was sore puzzled what it meant, till he found Mrs. Dodd had withdrawn softly from him; then he stood confused, regretting too late he had not obeyed her positive request, and tried to imitate her dignified forbearance.

The quadrille ended. He instantly stepped forward, and bowing politely to the cornet, said authoritatively, “Mrs. Dodd sends me to conduct you to her. With your permission, sir.” His arm was offered and taken before the little warrior knew where he was.

He had her on his arm, soft, light, and fragrant as zephyr, and her cool breath wooing his neck; oh, the thrill of that moment! but her first word was to ask him, with considerable anxiety, “Why did mamma leave you?”

“Miss Dodd, I am the most unhappy of men.”

“No doubt! no doubt!” said she, a little crossly. She added with one of her gushes of naivete, “and I shall be unhappy too if you go and displease mamma.”

“What could I do? A gang of snobbesses were detracting from—somebody. To speak plainly, they were running down the loveliest of her sex. Your mamma told me to keep quiet. And so I did till I got a fair chance, and then I gave it them in their teeth.” He ground his own, and added, “I think I was very good not to kick them.”

Julia coloured with pleasure, and proceeded to turn it off. “Oh! most forbearing and considerate,” said she. “Ah! by the way, I think I did hear some ladies express a misgiving as to the pecuniary value of my costume; ha! ha! Oh—you—foolish!—Fancy noticing that! Why it is in little sneers that the approval of the ladies shows itself at a ball, and it is a much sincerer compliment than the gentlemen's bombastical praises: 'the fairest of her sex,' and so on; that none but the 'silliest of her sex' believe.”

“Miss Dodd, I never said the fairest of her sex. I said the loveliest.”

“Oh, that alters the case entirely,” said Julia, whose spirits were mounting with the lights and music, and Alfred's company; “so now come and be reconciled to the best and wisest of her sex; ay, and the beautifullest, if you but knew her sweet, dear, darling face as I do. There she is; let us fly.”

“Mamma, here is a penitent for you, real or feigned, I don't know which.”

“Real, Mrs. Dodd,” said Alfred. “I had no right to disobey you and risk a scene. You served me right by abandoning me; I feel the rebuke and its justice. Let me hope your vengeance will go no further.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled at the grandiloquence of youth, and told him he had mistaken her character. “I saw I had acquired a generous, hot-headed ally, who was bent on doing battle with insects; so I withdrew; but so I should at Waterloo, or anywhere else where people put themselves in a passion.”

The band struck up again.

“Ah!” said Julia, “and I promised you this dance; but it is a waltz and my guardian angel objects to the valse a deux temps.”

“Decidedly. Should all the mothers in England permit their daughters to romp and wrestle in public, and call it waltzing, I must stand firm till they return to their senses.”

Julia looked at Alfred despondently. He took his cue and said with a smile, “Well, perhaps it is a little rompy; a donkey's gallop and then twirl her like a mop.”

“Since you admit that, perhaps you can waltz properly?” said Mrs. Dodd.

Alfred said he ought; he had given his whole soul to it in Germany last Long.

“Then I can have the pleasure of dropping the tyrant. Away with you both while there is room to circulate.”

Alfred took his partner delicately; they made just two catlike steps forward, and melted into the old-fashioned waltz.

It was an exquisite moment. To most young people Love comes after a great deal of waltzing. But this pair brought the awakened tenderness and trembling sensibilities of two burning hearts to this their first intoxicating whirl. To them, therefore, everything was an event, everything was a thrill—the first meeting and timid pressure of their hands, the first delicate enfolding of her supple waist by his strong arm but trembling hand, the delightful unison of their unerring feet, the movement, the music, the soft delicious whirl, her cool breath saluting his neck, his ardent but now liquid eyes seeking hers tenderly, and drinking them deep, hers that now and then sipped his so sweetly—all these were new and separate joys, that linked themselves in one soft delirium of bliss. It was not a waltz it was an Ecstasy.

Starting almost alone, this peerless pair danced a gauntlet. On each side admiration and detraction buzzed all the time.

“Beautiful! They are turning in the air.”

“Quite gone by. That's how the old fogies dance.”

Chorus of shallow males: “How well she waltzes.”

Chorus of shallow females: “How well he waltzes.”

But they noted neither praise nor detraction: they saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing, but themselves and the other music, till two valsers a deux temps plunged into them. Thus smartly reminded they had not earth all to themselves, they laughed good-humouredly and paused.

“Ah! I am happy!” gushed from Julia. She hushed at herself, and said severely, “You dance very well, sir.” This was said to justify her unguarded admission, and did, after a fashion. “I think it is time to go to mamma,” said she demurely.

“So soon? And I had so much to say to you.”

“Oh, very well. I am all attention.”

The sudden facility offered set Alfred stammering a little. “I wanted to apologise to you for something—you are so good you seem to have forgotten it—but I dare not hope that—I mean at Henley—when the beauty of your character, and your goodness, so overpowered me, that a fatal impulse——”

“What do you mean, sir?” said Julia, looking him full in the face, like an offended lion, while, with true feminine and Julian inconsistency her bosom fluttered like a dove. “I never exchanged one word with you in my life before to-day; and I never shall again if you pretend the contrary.”

Alfred stood stupified, and looked at her in piteous amazement.

“I value your acquaintance highly, Mr. Hardie, now I have made it, as acquaintances are made; but please to observe, I never saw you before—scarcely; not even in church.”

“As you please,” said he, recovering his wits in part. “What you say I'll swear to.”

“Then I say, never remind a lady of what you ought to wish her to forget.”

“I was a fool, and you are an angel of tact and goodness.”

“Oh, now I am sure it is time to join mamma,” said she in the driest, drollest way. “Valsons.”

They waltzed down to Mrs. Dodd, exchanging hearts at every turn, and they took a good many in the space of a round table, for in truth both were equally loth to part.

At two o'clock Mrs. Dodd resumed common-place views of a daughter's health, and rose to go.

Her fly had played her false, and, being our island home, it rained buckets. Alfred ran, before they could stop him, and caught a fly. He was dripping. Mrs. Dodd expressed her regrets; he told her it did not matter; for him the ball was now over, the flowers faded, and the lights darkness visible.

“The extravagance of these children!” said Mrs. Dodd to Julia, with a smile, as soon as he was out of hearing. Julia made no reply.

Next day she was at evening church: the congregation was very sparse. The first glance revealed Alfred Hardie standing in the very next pew. He wore a calm front of conscious rectitude; under which peeped sheep-faced misgivings as to the result of this advance; for, like all true lovers, he was half impudence, half timidity; and both on the grand scale.

Now Julia in a ball-room was one creature, another in church. After the first surprise, which sent the blood for a moment to her cheek, she found he had come without a prayer-book. She looked sadly and half reproachfully at him; then put her white hand calmly over the wooden partition, and made him read with her out of her book. She shared her hymn-book with him, too, and sang her Maker's praise modestly and soberly, but earnestly, and quite undisturbed by her lover's presence. It seemed as if this pure creature was drawing him to heaven holding by that good book, and by her touching voice. He felt good all over. To be like her, he tried to bend his whole mind on the prayers of the church, and for the first time realised how beautiful they are.

After service he followed her to the door. Island home again, by the pailful; and she had a thick shawl but no umbrella. He had brought a large one on the chance; he would see her home.

“Quite unnecessary; it is so near.”

He insisted; she persisted; and, persisting, yielded. They said but little; yet they seemed to interchange volumes; and, at each gaslight they passed, they stole a look and treasured it to feed on.

That night was one broad step more towards the great happiness, or great misery, which awaits a noble love. Such loves, somewhat rare in Nature, have lately become so very rare in Fiction that I have ventured, with many misgivings, to detail the peculiarities of its rise and progress. But now for a time it advanced on beaten tracks. Alfred had the right to call at Albion Villa, and he came twice; once when Mrs. Dodd was out. This was the time he stayed the two hours. A Mrs. James invited Jane and him to tea and exposition. There he met Julia and Edward, who had just returned. Edward was taken with Jane Hardie's face and dovelike eyes; eyes that dwelt with a soft and chastened admiration on his masculine face and his model form, and their owner felt she had received “a call” to watch over his spiritual weal. So they paired off.

Julia's fluctuating spirits settled now into a calm, demure, complacency. Her mother, finding this strange remedial virtue in youthful society, gave young parties, inviting Jane and Alfred in their turn. Jane hesitated, but, as she could no longer keep Julia from knowing her worldly brother, and hoped a way might be opened for her to rescue Edward, she relaxed her general rule, which was to go into no company unless some religious service formed part of the entertainment. Yet her conscience was ill at ease; and, to set them an example, she took care, when she asked the Dodds in return, to have a clergyman there of her own party, who could pray and expound with unction.

Mrs. Dodd, not to throw cold water on what seemed to gratify her children, accepted Miss Hardie's invitation; but she never intended to go, and at the last moment wrote to say she was slightly indisposed. The nature of her indisposition she revealed to Julia alone. “That young lady keeps me on thorns. I never feel secure she will not say or do something extravagant or unusual: she seems to suspect sobriety and good taste of being in league with impiety. Here I succeed in bridling her a little; but encounter a female enthusiast in her own house? merci! After all, there must be something good in her, since she is your friend, and you are hers. But I have something more serious to say before you go there: it is about her brother. He is a flirt: in fact, a notorious one, more than one lady tells me.”

Julia was silent, but began to be very uneasy; they were sitting and talking after sunset, yet without candles. She profited for once by that prodigious gap in the intelligence of “the sex.”

“I hear he pays you compliments, and I have seen a disposition to single you out. Now, my love, you have the good sense to know that, whatever a young gentleman of that age says to you, he says to many other ladies; but your experience is not equal to your sense; so profit by mine. A girl of your age must never be talked of with a person of the other sex: it is fatal; fatal! but if you permit yourself to be singled out, you will be talked of, and distress those who love you. It is easy to avoid injudicious duets in society; oblige me by doing so to-night.” To show how much she was in earnest, Mrs. Dodd hinted that, were her admonition neglected, she should regret for once having kept clear of an enthusiast.

Julia had no alternative; she assented in a faint voice. After a pause she faltered out, “And suppose he should esteem me seriously?”

Mrs. Dodd replied quickly, “Then that would be much worse. But,” said she, “I have no apprehensions on that score; you are a child, and he is a precocious boy, and rather a flirt. But forewarned is forearmed. So now run away and dress, sweet one: my lecture is quite ended.”

The sensitive girl went up to her room with a heavy heart. All the fears she had lulled of late revived. She saw plainly now that Mrs. Dodd only accepted Alfred as a pleasant acquaintance: as a son-in-law he was out of the question. “Oh, what will she say when she knows all?” thought Julia.

Next day, sitting near the window, she saw him coming up the road. After the first movement of pleasure at the bare sight of him, she was sorry he had come. Mamma's suspicions awake at last, and here he was again; the third call in one fortnight! She dared not risk an interview with him, ardent and unguarded, under that penetrating eye, which she felt would now be on the watch. She rose hurriedly, said as carelessly as she could, “I am going to the school,” and tying her bonnet on all in a flurry, whipped out at the back-door with her shawl in her hand just as Sarah opened the front door to Alfred. She then shuffled on her shawl, and whisked through the little shrubbery into the open field, and reached a path that led to the school, and so gratified was she at her dexterity in evading her favourite, that she hung her head, and went murmuring, “Cruel, cruel, cruel!”

Alfred entered the drawing-room gaily, with a good-sized card and a prepared speech. His was not the visit of a friend, but a functionary; the treasurer of the cricket-ground come to book two of his eighteen to play against the All-England Eleven next month. “As for you, my worthy sir (turning to Edward), I shall just put you down without ceremony. But I must ask leave to book Captain Dodd. Mrs. Dodd, I come at the universal desire of the club; they say it is sure to be a dull match without Captain Dodd. Besides, he is a capital player.”

“Mamma, don't you be caught by his chaff,” said Edward, quietly. “Papa is no player at all. Anything more unlike cricket than his way of making runs!”

“But he makes them, old fellow; now you and I, at Lord's the other day, played in first-rate form, left shoulder well up, and achieved—with neatness, precision, dexterity, and despatch—the British duck's-egg.

“Misericorde! What is that?” inquired Mrs. Dodd.

“Why, a round O,” said the other Oxonian, coming to his friend's aid.

“And what is that, pray?”

Alfred told her “the round O,” which had yielded to “the duck's egg,” and was becoming obsolete, meant the cypher set by the scorer against a player's name who is out without making a run.

“I see,” sighed Mrs. Dodd. “The jargon of the day penetrates to your very sports and games. And why British?”

“Oh, 'British' is redundant: thrown in by the universities.”

“But what does it mean?”

“It means nothing. That is the beauty of it. British is inserted in imitation of our idols, the Greeks; they adored redundancy.”

In short, poor Alfred, though not an M. P., was talking to put off time, till Julia should come in: so he now favoured Mrs. Dodd, of all people, with a flowery description of her husband's play, which I, who have not his motive for volubility, suppress. However, he wound up with the captains “moral influence.” “Last match,” said he, “Barkington did not do itself justice. Several, that could have made a stand, were frightened out, rather than bowled, by the London professionals. Then Captain Dodd went in, and treated those artists with the same good-humoured contempt he would a parish bowler, and, in particular, sent Mynne's over-tossed balls flying over his head for five, or to square leg for four, and, on his retiring with twenty-five, scored in eight minutes, the remaining Barkingtonians were less funky, and made some fair scores.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled a little ironically at this tirade, but said she thought she might venture to promise Mr. Dodd's co-operation, should he reach home in time. Then, to get rid of Alfred before Julia's return, the amiable worldling turned to Edward. “Your sister will not be back, so you may as well ring the bell for luncheon at once. Perhaps Mr. Hardie will join us.”

Alfred declined, and took his leave with far less alacrity than he had entered; Edward went down-stairs with him.

“Miss Dodd gone on a visit?” asked Alfred, affecting carelessness.

“Only to the school. By-the-bye, I will go and fetch her.”

“No, don't do that; call on my sister instead, and then you will pull me out of a scrape. I promised to bring her here; but her saintship was so long adorning 'the poor perishable body,' that I came alone.”

“I don't understand you,” said Edward. “I am not the attraction here; it is Julia.”

“How do you know that? When a young lady interests herself in an undergraduate's soul, it is a pretty sure sign she likes the looks of him. But perhaps you don't want to be converted; if so, keep clear of her. 'Bar the fell dragon's blighting way; but shun that lovely snare.'”

“On the contrary,” said Edward calmly, “I only wish she could make me as good as she is, or half as good.”

“Give her the chance, old fellow, and then it won't be your fault if she makes a mess of it. Call at two, and Jenny will receive you very kindly, and will show you you are in the 'gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.' Now, won't that be nice?”

“I will go,” said Edward gravely.

They parted. Where Alfred went the reader can perhaps guess; Edward to luncheon.

“Mamma,” said he, with that tranquillity which sat so well on him, “don't you think Alfred Hardie is spoony upon our Julia?”

Mrs. Dodd suppressed a start, and (perhaps to gain time before replying sincerely) said she had not the honour of knowing what “spoony” meant.

“Why, sighs for her, and dies for her, and fancies she is prettier than Miss Hardie. He must be over head and ears to think that.”

“Fie, child!” was the answer. “If I thought so, I should withdraw from their acquaintance. Excuse me; I must put on my bonnet at once, not to lose this fine afternoon.”

Edward did not relish her remark: it menaced more Spoons than one. However, he was not the man to be cast down at a word: he lighted a cigar, and strolled towards Hardie's house. Mr. Hardie, senior, had left three days ago on a visit to London; Miss Hardie received him; he passed the afternoon in calm complacency, listening reverently to her admonitions, and looking her softly out of countenance, and into earthly affections, with his lion eyes.

Meantime his remark, so far from really seeming foolish to Mrs. Dodd, was the true reason for her leaving him so abruptly “Even this dear slow Thing sees it,” thought she. She must talk to Julia more seriously, and would go to the school at once. She went up-stairs, and put on her bonnet and shawl before the glass; then moulded on her gloves, and came down equipped. On the stairs was a large window, looking upon the open field; she naturally cast her eyes through it in the direction she was going, and what did she see but a young lady and gentleman coming slowly down the path towards the villa. Mrs. Dodd bit her lip with vexation, and looked keenly at them, to divine on what terms they were. And the more she looked the more uneasy she grew.

The head, the hand, the whole body of a sensitive young woman walking beside him she loves, betray her heart to experienced eyes watching unseen; and especially to female eyes. And why did Julia move so slowly, especially after that warning? Why was her head averted from that encroaching boy, and herself so near him? Why not keep her distance, and look him full in the face? Mrs. Dodd's first impulse was that of leopardesses, lionesses, hens, and all the mothers in nature; to dart from her ambush and protect her young; but she controlled it by a strong effort; it seemed wiser to descry the truth, and then act with resolution: besides, the young people were now almost at the shrubbery; so the mischief if any, was done.

They entered the shrubbery.

To Mrs. Dodd's surprise and dismay, they did not come out this side so quickly. She darted her eye into the plantation; and lo! Alfred had seized the fatal opportunity foliage offers, even when thinnish: he held Julia's hand, and was pleading eagerly for something she seemed not disposed to grant; for she turned away and made an effort to leave him. But Mrs. Dodd, standing there quivering with maternal anxiety, and hot with shame, could not but doubt the sincerity of that graceful resistance. If she had been quite in earnest, Julia had fire enough in her to box the little wretch's ears. She ceased even to doubt, when she saw that her daughter's opposition ended in his getting hold of two hands instead of one, and devouring them with kisses, while Julia still drew her head and neck away, but the rest of her supple frame seemed to yield and incline, and draw softly towards her besieger by some irresistible spell.

“I can bear no more!” gasped Mrs. Dodd aloud, and turned to hasten and part them; but even as she curved her stately neck to go, she caught the lovers' parting; and a very pretty one too, if she could but have looked at it, as these things ought always to be looked at: artistically.

Julia's head and lovely throat, unable to draw the rest of her away, compromised: they turned, declined, drooped, and rested one half moment on her captor's shoulder, like a settling dove: the next, she scudded from him, and made for the house alone.

Mrs. Dodd, deeply indignant, but too wise to court a painful interview, with her own heart beating high, went into the drawing-room, and there sat down, to recover some little composure. But she was hardly seated when Julia's innocent voice was heard calling “Mamma, mamma!” and soon she came bounding into the drawing-room, brimful of good news, her cheeks as red as fire and her eyes wet with happy tears; and there confronted her mother, who had started up at her footstep, and now, with one hand nipping the back of the chair convulsively, stood lofty, looking strangely agitated and hostile.

The two ladies eyed one another, silent, yet expressive, like a picture facing a statue; but soon the colour died out of Julia's face as well, and she began to cower with vague fears before that stately figure, so gentle and placid usually, but now so discomposed and stern.

“Where have you been, Julia?”