Читать книгу Contraband, or A Losing Hazard - George J. Whyte-Melville - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Warriors of long standing, who, like the Latin poet, have "militated," not without success, in many campaigns against the Fair, accept reverses, scars, and even knock-down blows, with a wondrous affectation, at least, of stoicism and unconcern. I have my own opinion on these matters, and hold that the raw recruit, though he may bleed more freely, may make wryer faces over his gashes, thrusts, and gun-shot wounds, yet recovers their effects sooner and more completely than the drier and tougher veteran. The heart, I think, is mended less and less easily after each successive breakage. At last, like an old boot that has been patched and cobbled over and over again, it lets in the enemy with a sadly wasteful facility, and the careless Don Juan of twenty finds himself a jealous, fretful, unhappy, yet dotingly devoted Don Alfonso at fifty. There is retribution perhaps even here. A man who lavishes his money in youth, becomes the slave of a guinea in old age. There must be a day of reckoning for waste of time, health, intellect—why not also for a reckless squandering of the affections? Whatever may have been its practice, the moral code of chivalry was, doubtless, of the noblest and the best. Men little know what they throw away in that thoughtless prostitution of the heart which they are never taught to consider weak, unmanly, and dishonourable. They abandon the brightest beacon to renown, the surest guide to success, nay, one of the nearest paths to heaven. All these are to be found in an honest love for a pure woman, and all these are bartered every day for the smile of a coquette, or the empty vanity of an hour.

When it is too late, there is something very piteous in that longing of human nature for the good and the true, which causes it to accept, with its eyes open, the false and the bad. A second marriage, when the first had been a failure, was described by a well-known wit as "the triumph of hope over experience;" surely the grasping at a shadow, when the substance has proved unattainable, may be called the anodyne of illusion for despair. "I only ask to be happy and to have every thing my own way," is the unreasonable outcry of youth, embarking on a summer-sea with fair wind and hopeful promise, though the golden islands are yet, as they ever will be throughout the voyage, below the horizon, and the safe anchorage of thoughtless childhood is already far on the lee.

"I have a right to be happy!" shouts manhood in stern defiance and rebellion, when the waves are rising and the storm darkens around, while he ploughs his way towards his aim by dint of ceaseless toil and weary watches, and heart-breaking efforts that are in themselves unhappiness and pain.

"I deserve to have been happy!" grumbles old age, though the haven is at last in sight,—sorrowful but not penitent, regretting with revilings and maledictions, not with remorse and self-reproach, the fair opportunities neglected, the chances lost or thrown away,—ready on the vaguest and wildest encouragement to 'boutship even now, and, reckless of shrivelled sails and used-up stores, to put out into that dark, dreary, disheartening sea once more.

It is well for man and woman too to have known a deep, engrossing, and sincere affection; so elevating as to have ennobled their existence with its lustre, so strong as to have swept all rivalry from its path, so prosperous that they have never been driven to seek in paltry imitations some fictitious solace for its loss.

Sir Henry Hallaton had been twice married; first, in his early youth, when he became the victim of one of those women happily rare in our English society, who literally go about seeking whom they may devour. She accepted him after a week's acquaintance, and was tired of him in less than a year. Then she ran away with a foreign Count, physically, mentally, and socially, far inferior to her husband; and in moral qualities, at least, then, not fit to black his boots. Who shall explain these things? Sir Henry had a shot at the Count, and winged him; but so madly was he in love with the woman by whom he had been thus outraged, that he refused to try for a divorce. Had she not died a few months later, he believed she might have returned to him—and he would have taken her back! This consideration somewhat softened the pain he was weak enough to feel in her loss. Then he married again a lady who was devoted to him, this time, and who bore him a family, of which his daughter Helen was the eldest. That he proved a faithful husband to this true and affectionate wife, I cannot take upon myself to affirm, but he was good to the children, and especially fond of his eldest. After a few short years he lost his second wife too, and now began the least excusable part of Sir Henry's life.

He was still handsome, with all the energy and most of the tastes of youth. He was gay, popular, somewhat unscrupulous, and a great favourite with women. The married ones liked him well enough, in all honour; and of such he used to say, that "they could take care of themselves;" but amongst the unmarried, many aspired to legal possession of himself and his home; with these, unless he was much belied, he took cruel advantage of feelings he ought never to have awakened, and hopes he never intended to fulfil.

There were strange stories of Sir Henry's rides with Miss Fanny, and his walks with Miss Violet, of the pic-nic that got Lady Jane into such a scrape with her aunt, and the disappearance for several more hours than was decorous of a young beauty, once the pride of half a dozen parishes, subsequently ostracised for misdemeanours, in which she was far the least erring culprit of the two. Scandals like these, however, neither caused people to shut their doors against the reckless baronet, nor, indeed, brought him into such disrepute as might have been expected with that jury of matrons who constitute the court of appeal for county society, and whose verdict in defiance of all evidence is almost always given in condemnation of the accused. Had it not been for Helen, perhaps Sir Henry, in an unguarded moment, would have surrendered himself once for all, to recommence his search after happiness in matrimonial fetters, calculated not only to impede his activity but creating much untoward noise and jingle in his pursuit. The image of his child, I believe, saved him many times from folly, more than once from guilt. The temptation must have been very great, the seductions more than ordinarily powerful, that could have induced Sir Henry either to abandon his daughter and his home, or to place another in that home, over that daughter's head. His last, and one of his most foolish escapades, had been a sudden infatuation for Miss Ross. He was also not a little ashamed of his discomfiture, at her cavalier rejection of his addresses, and masterly retreat from his house.

The morning after her departure Sir Henry sat at breakfast, revolving in his mind many matters of affection and sentiment, which did not, however, seem to affect his spirits or his appetite. He was a late man, and his family, consisting of three daughters, for the only son was abroad with his regiment, generally dispersed to their several occupations before he came down. Only Helen, after she had ordered dinner and set the domestic works of the establishment in motion, habitually paid him a visit to pour out his tea and chat with her papa while he ate. To-day, she was later than usual, and her absence gave him time to reflect on his demonstration and its repulse. Strange to say, while he saw the folly of which he would fain have been guilty, and laughed indulgently at his own infatuation, there was a degree of soreness about his failure, more galling than that of disappointed fantasy, or mere wounded self-love.

"Can it be that I really care for this girl?" thought Sir Henry; "and if so, that I of all men in the world am likely to be baffled in my pursuit? Have I quite lost the art in which I was tolerably perfect twenty, ten, ay, five years ago? and even if I have, is it not worth anything to know that I can feel as I used, and am young in heart and affections still?"

He would have got up and stared in the glass, deploring, as he often did, the wrinkles about his eyes, the grey hairs in his whiskers, but that Helen coming into the room began to pour out his tea and look after the comforts of his repast.

She was a girl to be proud of, ay, and fond of too. Miss Ross described her beauty graphically enough when she said it was that of an old Greek bas-relief. The features were as regular, the brow as low and wide, the under part of the face slightly prominent, and the mouth, when seen in front, forming that beautiful curve so rarely modelled but in the antique—such a mouth as denotes sensibility, firmness, courage, sympathy, and other noble characteristics of womankind.

In addition to these advantages, Helen possessed what are called "Irish eyes"—deep, soft, and winning, frank, modest, and full of intellect. I can think of no other epithet to convey their lustre and their charm. They were, probably, blue-grey, like Minerva's, but you never thought of their colour, fringed as they were by curling eye-lashes darker than her hair, and surmounted by firm, well-defined eye-brows of a yet deeper shade than either. She was rather tall, too, and handsomely formed, with shapely hands and feet; but the graceful figure suggested a fair amount of strength and energy, nor were you surprised to learn that she could ride, walk, garden, and milk a cow. There were few better waltzers anywhere, and no such skater in the shire. Moreover, though she never confessed to it, I believe she used to play cricket with her brother, and was an undeniable long-stop.

Sir Henry looked fondly in her face, and his heart smote him to think that he should ever have contemplated the possibility of setting any other woman over his daughter's head.

"Letters, Nelly," said he, tossing her over a packet of them to open, while he proceeded with his breakfast. "The old story, of course, county meetings, advertisements for wire-fences, curse them! cheap wines; nothing from Harry—he never writes but when he wants money—to be sure that's nearly every mail—and two or three tradesmen's bills, which you may put in the fire without opening."

"Why don't you pay your bills?" said Miss Helen, who was rather fond of lecturing her papa; it was her favourite way of petting him. "You let them run up, and forget all about it; and then, when you want to buy a horse, the money is required for something else. Now, look at me; I keep the house accounts to a fraction, and pay them the first Monday in every month to a minute."

Sir Henry laughed.

"How can I pay your debts and my own too? You spend all my money in soap and sand-paper, you little tyrant, and expect me to find myself in boots, gloves, saddlery, and the common necessaries of life. Nelly, you're the plague of my existence!"

"I wish you would let me manage all these things for you," insisted Miss Nelly, with great solemnity; "I'm sure you're cheated, papa, and you're far too generous and open-hearted. Besides, you hate accounts, and I knowyou pay them often without adding them up. How I like figures! I like managing—I like looking into things—I like having plenty to do."

"You'll have a house of your own to manage some day," answered her father gaily, "and a husband too, you little witch. I'm sure I don't envy him!"

But his face fell while he spoke; for he was thinking, when the fatal time came, what should he do without his darling, the light, and joy, and comfort of his home?

Miss Helen blushed. Perhaps she too had not been without her maiden dreams of some such contingency hereafter. Perhaps she had foreshadowed to herself the semblance of a future lord, whom she would tend as fondly and love even more devotedly than papa. Perhaps already that phantom shape had been filled in and coloured, and appeared visibly in the flesh.

"Halloo, young woman!" exclaimed Sir Henry, tossing another letter across the table, "here's something for you! An enormous envelope, stamped with the arms of the Household Cavalry. Bravo, Nell! Have they offered you a cornetcy, or a situation as bandmaster, or what?"

The blush deepened on Helen's face till it spread to the roots of her thick dark hair; but she put back the unopened letter in her father's hand, and, stealing round his chair, leaned on his shoulder, while she stood behind him.

"Read it, papa," said she; "nobody in the world can have anything to say to me that ought not to come to you first."

Again that pang of remorse shot through him, as he remembered his own unworthiness. "What a good girl I have got!" he thought; "and what a poor, irresolute wretch I am! I cannot trust myself for a day! I ought to be better; I wish I could try to be better! Here have I been, ready to gamble away my child's position and her every-day comfort for the sake of a pair of black eyes and lanthorn jaws that I had never seen a month ago, that I don't care for half as I do for Nell!—that don't care a brass farthing for me! And I'd do it again, I know, under temptation—that's the worst of it! Ah! I wish I had led a different life, for Nelly's sake. I wonder if it's too late to begin now?"

Then he read his daughter's letter, a correct and harmless production as could possibly be addressed to a young lady under the immediate supervision of her papa, consisting indeed but of a few choice lines, to express, with much politeness, the writer's intention of "availing himself of Sir Henry's kindness, and of trespassing on his hospitality for a couple of days' hunting the following week," with a studied apology for addressing the daughter of the house, according to her father's express directions, who had feared he might be away from home when the letter arrived; the whole concluding with a vague allusion to a ball of the previous season, which might mean anything, or might not.

"I told him to write to you, Nelly," said Sir Henry, tearing the letter across and throwing it into the waste-paper basket; "it's lucky I did, for I had forgotten all about it. And now I'm not quite sure which of these fellows it is, they're all so alike, and they all ride chestnut horses with great liberality, I must admit. Vanguard, Vanguard—which was Vanguard? The little fellow with light hair, or the stout man who spilt sherry over your dress? I believe I asked them all here next week."

"Nonsense, papa!" replied Helen; "you're thinking of Sir Charles Carter and Mr. Peacock. Captain Vanguard is the gentleman we met at Lady Clearwell's, and who was so civil about his brougham when our carriage got smashed."

"I remember!" exclaimed Sir Henry, suddenly enlightened, "a man with a squint—"

"A squint!" returned Helen, indignantly. "Oh, papa! how can you say so? He's got beautiful eyes; at least—I mean—" she added, picking herself up with some confusion, "he hasn't the slightest vestige of a squint! And you thought him good-looking."

"Did you think him good-looking, Nelly?" said her father; "that's more to the purpose."

"I never thought about it," answered the girl, tossing her head, yet smiling a little with her deep expressive eyes. "He seemed gentleman-like and good-natured, and you said you wanted to be civil to him; so he'd better come here, I suppose, and I'll see that his room is comfortable and his fire lit—that's my department. Now, papa, if you mean to be provoking, I'll go and attend to my own business: I've plenty to do, and you're not to have any more tea. What an hour to have just finished breakfast! Shall I ring?"

"Ring away, Nelly," said her father, putting a cigar in his mouth, and sauntering off for his usual visit to the stables.

But Helen dipped into the waste-paper basket, and extracted therefrom the two torn halves of Frank Vanguard's letter, which she pieced together and perused attentively. Then she folded them carefully in their envelope, also torn, and placed the whole in her apron pocket, ere she rang the bell and sailed off on her daily avocations; from all which I infer that, notwithstanding her denial, she had thought about the writer's good looks, and was, at least, perfectly satisfied that his eyes had not the remotest tendency to a squint!