Читать книгу The Compleat Bachelor - Oliver Onions - Страница 5

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I had feigned to change my mind several times with regard to Bassishaw’s garden-party, but Carrie had suddenly developed accentuated ideas on the subject of engagement-keeping.

“We promised, you know, Rol,” she said, “and it would look so bad to run off. I don’t suppose it will be much fun,” she added candidly.

She was mistaken. It would be great fun.

On the way thither I entertained her blandly on the subject of unmarried life. I pointed out to her the advantages of a brother and sister living happily together, as, say, in our own case. I argued on the holy bonds of kinship, and congratulated her on having a brother who would devote the whole of his life to making her comfortable. How happy we were!

Carrie moved uneasily in her seat. She endeavoured to change the subject. Her conscience wrought within her—she was a guilty traitor, and deceiving the kindest of brothers. Had she been less in love, she might have suspected something, as I continued in the same strain; but such is not the way of youth. Her arts might have been transparent to me for months and months, yet she would at last break the great secret with most delicious gentleness, in stammers and blushes, and I would show a dramatic surprise and shock. We see other people’s progress, but our own love affairs are always unguessed.

It was a great relief to Carrie when we arrived at the Bassishaws’. The strain was getting embarrassing. A straight military young figure had evidently been on the look-out for our conveyance, for he made several false starts, and almost supplanted the more ceremonious reception due from his mother. This little formality through, he pounced on us at once.

“How d’ye do, Miss Butterfield? Do, Butterfield?” he said warmly. “So glad you’ve come.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “I was rather afraid I’d have to let Carrie come alone, but I managed to arrange it.”

A shade of regret was visible in his eyes, but he bore it nicely. He is “white,” as Carmichael would have said.

“Of course,” he said, “Miss Butterfield would have been all right, you know, but I’m glad you came too.”

I believe he was. Saying so seemed to make him so.

We walked up the garden, I in the middle. Carrie received an occasional bow, but we didn’t know many people there. This was young Bassishaw’s excuse for conducting us personally, and he pointed out various people as “men you ought to know, you know, Butterfield.” I betrayed no great desire for the acquaintanceship. I was not to be shaken off.

Bassishaw was piloting us into the most frequented parts. This young man was manœuvring, with more skill than I had given him credit for, to drop me. Carrie had my arm, and as Bassishaw stopped at the various groups I made surer of it by a little closing in of my elbow. He had the advantage of a tactician’s knowledge, but I had the larger experience. He led us towards the base of operations, the refreshment tent, where he calculated to play on the natural interest I should take in the commissariat department. He gave me a hint of a private canteen—it was good strategy, I was very thirsty—but I held out. He showed a great desire to introduce me to personages, but I replied to his big guns with a harassing fire of conversational small-arms. He really did very well, and my respect for him increased. Personal strategy was his line, but I held him in the field of mental manœuvres.

He had pointed out some snowy-whiskered old general, and had held forth in his redundant way on the fascinating personality of the man. I made him a text for an army discourse.

“Do you know, Bassishaw,” I said, “I cannot sufficiently admire you military men. You are the outposts of a nation, who make all that is happy and peaceful at home possible. You sacrifice yourselves on inaccessible Indian hills, you scorch under African suns, while all you love is left behind you in England. You do not marry—that is, the true soldier thinks it inconsistent with his duty—and you leave all you care for to fight the battles of a less devoted society. It is self-sacrificing; and when you return, it is to a bachelor’s old age, like the general there.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Butterfield,” he replied. “Lots of our soldiers marry, you know.”

I could feel Carrie’s arm trembling on mine. I continued:

“That is another instance of their nobility. It makes their duty all the harder. They have to leave their wives, and worship them only in the ideal sense. They see them, perhaps, only once in ten years, unless they have risen to responsible posts. It is a great devotion.”

“But, Rol,” said Carrie timidly, “lots of women are glad to go abroad with their husbands, and—and nurse, and that kind of thing.”

“Then,” I replied, “they but unnerve the warrior in the hour of his trial. He does not fight for his country, but for his wife. No. It is the bachelor soldier who has my veneration.”

“That’s all very well, you know, Butterfield,” protested the bachelor soldier uneasily, “but, confound it, it’s hard enough without that. Hang it all,” he broke out, “if you’ve got that fancy sort of thing in your head, why didn’t you join the army yourself? You’re a bachelor, you know, and it would be a jolly lot easier for you to be a hero than—the other poor beggars.”

I smiled. “It is just as necessary that the soldier should have worthy people to defend,” I replied. “No, Bassishaw, the soldier’s watchword is singleness. He is as great a solitary as that other one, who devotes his life to writing. The soldier knows he is doing some good—the writer takes the risk.”

“But writers often——” began Bassishaw.

“And soldiers——” said Carrie at the same time.

“Both cut themselves off in a voluntary abnegation,” I replied. “They scorn the smaller comforts; the one worships his art, the other his duty. Look at Loring and his wife, there. They look happy, and comfortable, and pretty; they have gentle, domestic pleasures. But they have no conception of the grandeur of duty. They do not know the stern joys of the warrior, they——”

I had been so rapt in my idea that for the moment my guard was down. The watchful foe took instant advantage of it. Unseen by me, he had quietly beckoned to Loring, who crossed over to us.

“Rollo,” he said, “my wife wants to speak to you a moment most particularly. She is waiting there.”

I was out-manœuvred—the ally had taken me in the flank. I couldn’t resist. I looked at them, and then at Mrs. Loring, who was waiting, tapping her toe with her parasol. There was no way out. I turned away, and, looking over my shoulder, saw the triumphant foe turn the corner of the greenhouse into the shrubbery, a road of the third class, impassable for artillery.

“Now, Mrs. Loring,” I said, smarting under my defeat; “I am glad to see you. What do you want?”

“Oh, Mr. Butterfield,” she returned effusively, “I’ve been wanting to speak to you all the afternoon. Isn’t it a lovely day?”

“It is a lovely day; a lovely day,” I replied. “I have been greatly struck by the beauty of the day.”

“It is perfect,” she said, endeavouring to gain time. “Oh, how nice it is to be young, Mr. Butterfield!”

“Mrs. Loring,” I answered severely, “did you send for me to tell me it was a lovely day, and that it was nice to be young?”

“Of course not,” she replied, much embarrassed. “I wanted—I wanted to talk to you. I wanted—oh, do help me, Loring.”

“Molly wanted to tell you, Rollo——” began Chatterton.

I silenced him with a peremptory wave of the hand.

“Molly wanted to tell me something I didn’t know,” I replied. “Molly wanted to tell me that I was blind and deaf and stupid, and that I couldn’t see what was under my nose. She wanted to tell me of afternoon appointments at her house, and Heaven knows what sort of carrying on. She wanted——”

“Well, you shouldn’t tease them so,” replied Mrs. Loring, illogical, after the manner of women, but staunch.

“Madam,” I said, “I am not so fatuous as to suppose that if two young persons intend to practise idolatry on one another, my wisdom and experience will stop them. But I have been plotted against, have been told nothing; and I am entitled to get what melancholy amusement I can out of the affair. You have spoiled my entertainment.”

I adjusted my hat to an angle suggestive of rectitude, and bowed myself away. I made for my hostess, and had myself presented to the general.

“You have a promising young strategist in our young friend Bassishaw,” I remarked.

“In what way?” he inquired.

“He has turned the flank of a superior force, and is in retreat with a hostage,” I replied.

When, half an hour afterwards, I again encountered the victorious enemy, they made straight for me. I received them with dignity.

“Rollo, dear,” began my sister, laying her hand affectionately on my sleeve, and coming very close to me, “we have something to say to you.”

Her voice was almost a whisper.

“Yes,” said Bassishaw. “You see it’s this way, Butterfield, I’ve asked Caroline to be my wife. I know it’s too bad not to have let you into it, but, hang it all, you don’t encourage a chap much, you know. You’re so deuced quizzy, you know. And, I say, Butterfield. That was all rot about soldiers not marrying, now, wasn’t it? I know you’re a good chap, Butterfield, and you’ll let me have Carrie, won’t you?”

I was afraid he was going to say I should not lose a sister but gain a brother; but he didn’t. My spirit was broken; I had no dramatic surprise left in me. Carrie looked up pleadingly, with a tiny little tear in one eye.

“It’s 'yes,’ isn’t it, Butterfield?” said Bassishaw. “You’re the only one to ask, you know. And if it isn’t 'yes,’ you know——”

Talented young man! He knew when to press a yielding foe. I sighed, and took an arm of each. I feebly tried to recover my old authority, but they talked laughingly across me, and I knew what sort of glances were passing behind my head. I was led captive to Chatterton and his wife. Action was better than insight after all.