Читать книгу Broken to Harness - Edmund Yates - Страница 5

"Halloa!" suddenly shouted Sir Marmaduke from his vantage-ground on the rug.

Every body looked up.

"Halloo!" shouted the old gentleman again, plunging his hands over the wrists in his trousers-pockets, and bringing to the surface a couple of letters. "By Jove! I forgot to tell Mrs. Mason or any of them that more people were coming down! Here, Stone--somebody--just ring that bell, will you? Here are two men coming down to-day--be here by dinner, they say; and I forgot to order rooms and things for them!"

"Who are they, Sir Marmaduke?" asked Lyster languidly.

"What the deuce is that to you, sir?" roared the old gentleman. "Friends of mine, sir! That's enough, isn't it? Have you finished lunch."

"I haven't had any," said Lyster. "I never eat it. I hate lunch."

"Great mistake that," said Mr. Vincent, wiping his mouth. "Ought always to eat whenever you can. 'Gad, for such an omelette as that I'd get up in the middle of the night."

"Perhaps, Lyster," said Major Stone, coming back from ringing the bell, "you're of the opinion of the man who said that lunch was an insult to your breakfast and an injury to your dinner?"

"He was a confounded fool, whoever he was," broke in Sir Marmaduke. "I hate those fellows who talk epigrams. Halloa, Gumble, is that you? Tell Mrs. Mason two gentlemen are coming down to stop. She must get rooms ready for them, and that sort of thing."

"Yes, Sir Marmaduke," said Gumble. "In the Barracks, Sir Marmaduke?"

"God bless my soul, sir! how should I know?" said his master testily. "What do I keep a housekeeper for, and a pack of lazy servants, who do nothing but eat, if I'm to be worried about things like this? Tell Mrs. Mason, sir! Do as you're told!"

And exit Gumble, whose admirable training and long experience only prevented him from bursting into a guffaw.

"Though you refused Captain Lyster, I don't think you'll mind telling me who these gentlemen are, Sir Marmaduke?" said Barbara, leaving the table, and advancing to the rug.

"No, my dear; I'll tell you any thing. Besides, they'll be here to-night. One is Mr. Beresford, and the other a learned professor. There, I've thrown them among you to worry their reputations before they arrive; and now I'll be off to my study. And don't any of you come and bother me; do you hear? If you want any thing, ask Stone for it. Come, Russell."

And, followed by the lawyer, the old gentleman left the room, after patting Barbara's head with one hand, and shaking his clenched fist, in a serio-comic manner, at the rest of the company.

"What very strange people my cousin does get hold of!" said Miss Lexden, commencing the onslaught directly the door was closed. "Which Mr. Beresford is it, do you suppose?"

The question was general, but Mr. Townshend answered it, by saying pompously,

"Perhaps it's Mr. Beresford, one of the Directors of the Bank of England, who--"

"God forbid!" broke in Lyster, suddenly.

"Amen to that sweet prayer," said Barbara, in a low voice. Then louder: "Oh, dear, let's hope it's not an old gentleman from the City."

"No, no; don't fear," said Major Stone, laughing. "You all know him. It's Charley Beresford, from the Tin-Tax Office."

"What! the Commissioner?" exclaimed little Miss Townshend, clapping her hands. "Oh, I am so glad! He is such fun!"

"Oh, every body knows Mr. Beresford," said Vincent; "capital judge of cooking; on the committee of the Beauclerk."

"I'm afraid I'm nobody, then," said old Miss Lexden; "what age is he?"

"Oh, same age as every body else," drawled Lyster. "I find every body's the same age,--seven-and-twenty. Nobody ever goes beyond that."

"You know Mr. Beresford, aunt," said Barbara. "He's a favourite horror of yours. You recollect him at Hawley last year?"

"Oh, the odious man who carried on so shamefully with that rich woman,--the grocer's widow!" said the old lady. "Well, wasn't it a grocer?--merchant, then, if you like,--something to do with the City and the West Indies, I know. Oh, a dreadful person!"

"Charley Beresford's not a bad fellow, though," said Lyster. "Who did Sir Marmaduke say the other man was? Professor something."

"Perhaps Major Stone knows him," chimed in Mrs. Townshend.

"Who's the Professor that's coming down, Stone?" asked Lyster.

"I don't know. I only know two professors: Jackman the conjuror,--Jacquinto he calls himself,--and Holloway the ointment-man; and it's neither of them. This is some scientific or literary great gun that Sir Marmaduke was introduced to lately."

"Oh, dear!" said Barbara, plaintively, "what a dreadful idea! Probably an old gentleman, with gold spectacles and a bald head, covered all over with the dust of the British Museum, and carrying dead beetles and things in his pockets!"

"A professor!" said Miss Townshend; "we had one at Gimp House--a French one! I'm sure he'll take snuff and have silk pocket-handkerchiefs."

"And choke at his meals," added Barbara. "This is too horrible."

"I trust he won't come from any low neighbourhood," said Mrs. Vincent; "the small-pox is very bad in some districts in London."

"The deuce! I hope he won't bring it down here," drawled Lyster.

"There's not the slightest fear of infection, if you've been vaccinated," said Mr. Townshend.

"Oh, but I haven't," replied Lyster. "I wouldn't be--at least without chloroform; it hurts one so."

"What nonsense, Captain Lyster!" laughed Barbara. "Why, I was vaccinated, and it didn't hurt me the least."

"Did it hurt as much as sitting for your photograph?" asked the Captain, rising. "Because I'll never sit for my photograph again, except under chloroform."

"Well, small-pox or not, you'll see the old gentleman at dinner," said Stone; "and you mustn't chaff him, mind, Lyster; for he's a favourite of Sir Marmaduke's."

And so the luncheon-party broke up. Old Miss Lexden and Miss Townshend drove out in a pony-phaeton, with the intention of falling in with the shooting party; Mrs. Vincent retired to her room, to allow the process of digestion to take place during her afternoon nap; Mr. Vincent walked leisurely across the fields to the neighbouring village, and had an interview with a fisherman's wife, who had a new method of dressing mackerel; Mr. Townshend took out a pamphlet on the Bank Charter, and, having placed it before him, went straight off to sleep; Major Stone mounted his sure-footed cob and rode round the farm, looking after broken fences, and dropping hints as to the expediency of all being ready with the Michaelmas rent; and Barbara and Captain Lyster wandered into the Paddock, with the intention of playing croquet.

But they had played only very few strokes, when Lyster, leaning on his mallet, looked across at his companion, and said gravely,

"I assure you, Miss Lexden, I pity you from the bottom of my soul."

As she stood there, her complexion heightened by the exercise, the little round hat admirably suiting the classic shape of her head, and the neatest little foot tapping the mallet, she didn't look much to be pitied; and she tossed her head rather disdainfully, as she asked,

"Pity me, Captain Lyster! and why?"

"Because you are so horribly bored here! I've been such a terrible sufferer from ennui myself, that I know every expression on those who have it; and you're very far advanced indeed. I know what it is that beats you, and I can't help you."

"And what is it, pray?"

"You know what Cleopatra says in the Dream of Fair Women: 'I have no men to govern in this wood!' Pardon me; I'm a singular person; not clever, you know, but always saying what I think, and that sort of thing; and you're dying for a flirtation."

"Surely you have no cause to complain. I've never tried to make you my 'Hercules, my Roman Antony,' Captain Lyster."

"No; you've been good enough to spare me. You've known me too long, and think of me, rightly enough perhaps, as the 'dull, cold-blooded Cæsar;' and there's no one here that's at all available except Stone, and his berth with Sir Marmaduke is like a college-fellowship--he'd have to resign all income if he married. It's an awful position for you! Oh, by Jove, I forgot the two men coming! I'm afraid Charley Beresford's no go; but you might make great running with the Professor."

"Que d'honneur!" said Barbara, laughing at his serious face. "That is a compliment, especially after our notions of what he will be like;" and then, after a minute's reflection, she added, with a proud gesture, "It would be a new field, at all events, and not a bad triumph, to win a steady sage from his books and--"

"Vivien over again, by Jove!" said Lyster, in the nearest approach he had ever made to a shout; "Vivien divested of all impropriety; only look out that Merlin does not get you into the charm. They've no end of talk, these clever fellows. I knew a professor at Addiscombe--deuced ugly bird too--who ran off with an earl's daughter, all through his gab--I beg pardon, his tongue."

"Gare aux corbeaux! I flatter myself I can hold my own with the old crows," said Barbara; "however, this is mere nonsense. No more croquet, thank you, Captain Lyster. I must go in and reflect on your words of wisdom."

And dropping him a little curtsey of mock humility, she moved off towards the house.

"I'd lay long odds she follows up the idea," said Lyster to himself, as he sat down on the twisted roots of an old elm and lit a cheroot. "She's a fine creature," he added, looking after her; "something in the Cheetah line,--fine and swervy and supple, and as clever as--as old boots. How awfully old I'm growing! I should have gone mad after such a girl as that once; and now--she doesn't cause me the slightest emotion. There's that little Townshend, now,--ah, that's quite another matter!"

Had Barbara really any notion of following out Lyster's sportive notion, and of playing Vivien to an aged Merlin? of winning from his goddess Study a man whose whole life had been passed at her shrine, and of lighting with as much fire as yet remained to him eyes dimmed with midnight researches? I know not. But I do know that she spent more time that evening over her toilet than she had done during her stay at the Grange, and that she never looked lovelier than in her rich blue dinner-dress, trimmed with black lace, and with a piece of velvet passing through her hair, and coquettishly fastened at one side by a single splendid turquoise. Perhaps some thought of her conversation with Lyster flitted across her brain; for she smiled saucily as she stepped down the wide old staircase, and she had hardly composed her countenance by the time she had passed into the drawing-room, where the party was assembled. The room was lighted only by the flickering blaze of a wood-fire (for the evenings were already chilly), and she could only indistinctly make out that the gentleman whom Sir Marmaduke introduced as "Professor Churchill," and who was to take her in to dinner, was tall, had no spectacles, and was apparently not so old as she had anticipated. But when she looked at him in the full light of the dining-room, she nearly uttered an exclamation of surprise when she saw, as the embodiment of her intended Merlin, a man of six feet in height, about thirty years of age, with short wavy brown hair, hazel eyes, a crisp dark beard, and a genial, good-humoured, sensible expression. All this she took in in covert glances; and so astonished was she, that after a few commonplaces she could not resist saying,

"And are you really a professor, Mr. Churchill?"

He laughed heartily--a clear, ringing, jolly laugh--as he replied, "Well, I am,--at least I stand so honoured on the books of old Leipzig University, and our good host here always will insist on dubbing me with my full title. But I don't generally sport it. I always think of dancing, or calisthenics, or deportment,--Turveydrop, you know,--in connexion with the professorship. I can't help noticing that you look astonished, Miss Lexden; I trust I haven't rudely put to flight any preconceived notions of yours as to my dignity?"

"No--at least--well, I will frankly own my notions were different."

"There, you see, I had the advantage; with the exception of flatly contradicting the late Mr. Campbell in his assertion about distance lending enchantment, &c., my ideas of you are thoroughly realised. But--I had seen you before."

"You had!" said Barbara, feeling a pleasurable glow pass over her cheek at something in his tone.

"Oh, yes; several times. The first time ten years ago, when I saw you in company with your father--"

"My father! Where?" interrupted Barbara.

"Where? oh, at an hotel,--Burdon's Hotel. You won't remember it, of course." (Barbara never knew why Major Stone, who was sitting near them, grinned broadly when Mr. Churchill said this.) "You were a little child then. And recently I have seen you at the Opera, and ridden past you in the Row."

At this juncture Sir Marmaduke called out to Churchill from the other end of the table, and the conversation became general. Barbara watched Mr. Churchill as he took a leading part in it, his earnest face lit up, and all listening attentively to his remarks. What a clever, sensible face it was! And he went to the Opera, and rode in the Park! What about Vivien and Merlin now?