Volume I Part 8 (2/2)
”I admire it intensely, and I'm deeply grateful. But I feel inexpressibly sold, all the same. And I am to go about the world with Argus dangling at my breast. Well, for your sake, Vixen, I'll submit even to that degradation.”
Here came the cart, with two flaming lamps, like angry eyes flas.h.i.+ng through the shrubberies. It pulled up at the steps. Rorie and Vixen clasped hands and bade good-night, and then the young man swung himself lightly into the seat beside the driver, and away went Starlight Bess making just that soft of das.h.i.+ng and spirited start which inspires the timorous beholder with the idea that the next proceeding will be the bringing home of the driver and his companion upon a brace of shutters.
CHAPTER V.
Rorie makes a Speech.
Somewhat to his surprise, and much to his delight, Roderick Vawdrey escaped that maternal lecture which he was wont undutifully to describe as a ”wigging.” When he entered the drawing-room in full dress just about ten minutes before the first of the guests was announced, Lady Jane received him with a calm affectionateness, and asked him no questions about his disposal of the afternoon. Perhaps this unusual clemency was in honour of his twenty-first birthday, Rorie thought. A man could not come of age more than once in his life. He was ent.i.tled to some favour.
The dinner-party was as other dinners at Briarwood; all the arrangements perfect; the _menu_ commendable, if not new; the general result a little dull.
The Ashbourne party were among the first to arrive; the Duke portly and affable; the d.u.c.h.ess delighted to welcome her favourite nephew; Lady Mabel looking very fragile, flower-like, and graceful, in her pale blue gauze dinner-dress. Lady Mabel affected the palest tints, half-colours, which were more like the shadows in a sunset sky than any earthly hues.
She took possession of Rorie at once, treating him with a calm superiority, as if he had been a younger brother.
”Tell me all about Switzerland,” she said, as they sat side by side on one of the amber ottomans. ”What was it that you liked best?”
”The climbing, of course,” he answered.
”But which of all the landscapes? What struck you most? What impressed you most vividly? Your first view of Mont Blanc, or that marvellous gorge below the Tete Noire,--or----?”
”It was all uncommonly jolly. But there's a family resemblance in Swiss mountains, don't you know? They're all white--and they're all peaky.
There's a likeness in Swiss lakes, too, if you come to think of it.
They're all blue, and they're all wet. And Swiss villages, now--don't you think they are rather disappointing?--such a cruel plagiarism of those plaster chalets the image-men carry about the London streets, and no candle-ends burning inside to make 'em look pretty. But I liked Lucerne uncommonly, there was such a capital billiard-table at the hotel.”
”Roderick!” cried Lady Mabel, with a disgusted look. ”I don't think you have a vestige of poetry in your nature.”
”I hope I haven't,” replied Rorie devoutly.
”You could see those sublime scenes, and never once feel your heart thrilled or your mind exalted--you can come home from your first Swiss tour and talk about billiard-tables!”
”The scenery was very nice,” said Rorie thoughtfully. ”Yes; there were times, perhaps, when I was a trifle stunned by all that grand calm beauty, the silence, the solitude, the awfulness of it all; but I have hardly tune to feel the thrill when I came b.u.mp up against a party of tourists, English or American, all talking the same twaddle, and all patronising the scenery. That took the charm out of the landscape somehow, and I coiled up, as the Yankees say. And now you want me to go into second-hand raptures, and repeat my emotions, as if I were writing a tourist's article for a magazine. I can't do it, Mabel.”
”Well, I won't bore you any more about it,” said Lady Mabel, ”but I confess my disappointment. I thought we should have such nice long talks about Switzerland.”
”What's the use of talking of a place? If it's so lovely that one can't live without it, one had better go back there.”
This was a practical way of putting things which was too much for Lady Mabel. She fanned herself gently with a great fan of cloudy looking feathers, such as t.i.tania might have used that midsummer night near Athens. She relapsed into a placid silence, looking at Rorie thoughtfully with her calm blue eyes.
His travels had improved him. That bronze hue suited him wonderfully well. He looked more manly. He was no longer a beardless boy, to be patronised with that gracious elder-sister air of Lady Mabel's. She felt that he was further off from her than he had been last season in London.
”How late you arrived this evening,” she said, after a pause. ”I came to five-o'clock with my aunt, and found her quite anxious about you. If it hadn't been for your telegram from Southampton, she would have fancied there was something wrong.”
”She needn't have fidgeted herself after three o'clock,” answered Rorie coolly; ”my luggage must have come home by that time.”
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