Part 1 (2/2)
R. I. P.
There was silence for some minutes after the few words that opened this story; and then Royston Keene spoke again.
”Hal, do you remember that miserable impostor in Paris being enthusiastic about Dorade and its advantages, describing it as a sort of happy hunting-ground, and so deciding us on choosing it in preference to Nice?”
”Ah! he _did_ drivel a good deal. I think he had been drinking,” the other answered.
”No; I understand him now. He had been bored here into a sullen, vicious misanthropy; and he wanted to take it out on the human race by getting others in the same mess. It's just like that jealous old Heathfield, who, when he is up to his girths in a squire-trap, never halloos ''ware bog,' till five or six more are in it. I can fancy the h.o.a.ry-headed villain gloating hideously over us now. I wish I had him here. I could be _so_ unkind to him! He talked about the shooting and the society. Bah! there's about one c.o.c.k to every thousand acres of forest; and as for women fair to look upon, I've not flushed one since we came. I don't think I can stand it much longer.”
”I am very sorry,” Harry said; ”I knew you were being bored to death, and it's all on my account; but I didn't like to ask you about it. I'm so horribly selfis.h.!.+” The shadow of an imminent penitence began to steal over him, when Royston broke in--
”Don't be childish. I liked to stay--never mind why--or I should not have done so. Only now--you are getting better, and I realize the situation more. I hardly know where to go. Not back to England, certainly, yet. Besides the nuisance and chance work of picking up a stud in the middle of the season, it isn't pleasant to be consoled for a blank day by, 'you should have been here last month. Never was such scent; and heaps of straight-running foxes!' And then they indulge themselves in an imaginative 'cracker,' knowing you can't contradict them. Shall I go to Albania? I should like to kill _something_ before I turn homeward.”
Harry seemed musing. Suddenly he half started up, clapping his hands. ”I knew I had forgotten!”
”Not such a singular circ.u.mstance as to warrant all that indecent exultation,” was the reply. ”Well, out with it.”
”I never told you that Fan had a letter this morning from Cecil Tresilyan (they're immense friends, you know) to ask her to engage rooms for them. They are in Paris now, and will be here in three days.”
Keene raised himself on his arm, regarding his comrade with a sort of admiration. ”You're a natural curiosity, _mon cher_. None of us ever quite appreciated you. I don't believe there's another man in existence, situated as we are, who would have kept that intelligence at the back of his head so long. _The_ Tresilyan, of course? I remember hearing about her in India. Annesley came back from sick leave perfectly insane on the subject. She _must_ be something extraordinary, for the recollection of her made even him poetical--when he was sober. I asked about her when I got to England, but her mother was taken very ill, or did something equally unjustifiable, so she left town before I saw her.”
”The mother really _was_ ill,” Molyneux said, apologetically; ”at least she died soon after that. Miss Tresilyan has never shown much since. But you've no idea of the sensation she made during her season and a half.
They called her The Refuser, she had such a fabulous number of offers, and wouldn't look at any of them. By-the-by, there's rather a good story about that. You know Margate? He's going to the bad very fast now, but he was the crack puppy of that year's entry; good-looking, long minority, careful guardians, leases falling in, mother one of the best Christians in England, and all that sort of thing. Well, Tom Cary took him in hand, and brought him out in great form before long. They were talking over their preparations for the moors, for they were going to start the next day. 'I believe that's all,' Margate asked, 'or have we forgotten any thing?' 'Wait a minute,' said Tom, and reflected (provident man, Tom; fond of his comforts, and proud of it)--'Ah! I thought there was something. You haven't proposed to The Tresilyan.'
They say Margate's face was a study. He never disputed the orders of his private trainer, so he only said, piteously, 'But I don't want to marry any one,' and looked as if he was going to cry. 'You _are_ ”ower young,”' Cary said, encouragingly, 'and it's about the last thing I should press upon you. It wouldn't suit my book at all. But I don't see how that affects the question. I can lay ten ponies to one she won't have you. It's the thing to do, depend upon it. All the other good men have had a turn, and you have no right to be singular; it's bad taste.
Rank has its duties, my lord. _n.o.blesse oblige_, and so forth. You understand?' Margate _didn't_ in the least, but he went and proposed quite properly, and was rejected rather more decidedly than his fellows.
Then he went down into Perths.h.i.+re, and missed his grouse, and lost his salmon, with a comfortable consciousness of having discharged his obligations to society.”
Royston Keene actually groaned, ”Why didn't she come sooner?” he said.
”What a luxury, in this G.o.d-forgotten place, to talk to a clever handsome woman, who tramples on strawberry-leaves!”
”Perhaps she would have come if she had known how much we wanted her,”
replied Harry. ”They say she is a model of charity, and several other virtues too. She is coming here for the health of some companion, or governess, who lives with her. Yet she flirts outrageously at times, in her own imperial way. Better late than never. I'm certain you'll like her, and perhaps she'll like you.”
”_Qui vivra verra_,” Keene said, rising slowly. ”Let us go home now.
Draw your plaid closer round you, it's getting chilly.”
CHAPTER III.
There is a terrace in Dorade, fenced in from every wind that blows, except the south, and even that has to creep cautiously and cunningly round a sharp corner to make its entrance good. Four small stunted palms grow there; they look painfully out of place, and conscious of it; for they are always bowing their heads in a meek humiliation, and s.h.i.+ver in a strange unhealthy way at the slightest breeze, just as you may see Asiatics doing in our ”land of mist and snow.” But the natives regard those unhappy exotics with a fanatical pride, pointing them out to all comers as living witnesses to the perfection of the climate; they would gladly stone any irreverent stranger who should suggest a comparison between their sacred shrubs and the giants of Indian seas. The only inhabitant of the place who ever attained any eminence any where (he really _was_ a good tailor), bequeathed a certain sum for the beautifying of the renowned _allee_, instead of endowing charitable inst.i.tutions, and his townsmen endorsed the act by erecting a little mural tablet to commemorate his public spirit.
The view is rather pretty, stretching over vineyards, and gardens, and olive-grounds down to the sh.o.r.e, with the islands in the far foreground rearing themselves against the sky, clear and blue, or if the weather is misty to seaward, sleeping in an aureole of golden haze, so that the whole effect would be cheerful if it were not for the melancholy invalids who haunt the spot perpetually. Faces and figures are to be seen sometimes that would send an uncomfortable s.h.i.+ver of revulsion through you if you met them on the Boulevard des Italiens, strengthened by your ante-prandian _absinthe_. Here, the place belonged to them so completely, that a man in rude health felt like an unwarrantable intruder, in which light I am sure the hypochondriacs always regarded him. As such a one pa.s.sed, you might see a glare, half-envious, half-resentful, light up some hollow eyes, and thin parched lips worked nervously, as though they were uttering a very equivocal blessing.
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