Part 40 (2/2)
”Just 'another good woman gone wrong,'” suggests Taffy, mildly.
”Quite so,” says Archibald, ”though she adored him,--she said. Yet he died, some said of fever, others of--Mrs. Boileau; no attention was ever paid to the others. When he _did_ droop and die she planted all sorts of lovely little flowers over his grave, and watered them with her tears for ever so long. Could affection farther go?”
”Horrible woman!” says Miss Chesney, ”it only wanted that to finish my dislike to her. I hope when I am dead no one will plant flowers on _my_ grave: the bare idea would make me turn in it.”
”Then we won't do it,” says Taffy, consolingly.
”I wish we had a few Indian customs in this country,” says Cyril, languidly. ”The Suttee was a capital inst.i.tution. Think what a lot of objectionable widows we should have got rid of by this time; Mrs.
Boileau, for instance.”
”And Mrs. Arlington,” puts in Florence, quietly. An unaccountable silence follows this speech. No one can exactly explain why, but every one knows something awkward has been said. Cyril outwardly is perhaps the least concerned of them all: as he bites languidly a little blade of green gra.s.s, a faint smile flickers at the corners of his lips; Lilian is distinctly angry.
”Poor Mrs. Boileau; all this is rather ill-natured, is it not?” asks Florence, gently, rising as though a dislike to the gossip going on around her compels her to return to the house. In reality it is a dislike to damp gra.s.s that urges her to flight.
”Shall I get you a chair, Florence?” asks Cyril, somewhat irrelevantly as it seems.
”Pray don't leave us, Miss Beauchamp,” says Taffy. ”If you will stay on, we will swear not to make any more ill-natured remarks about any one.”
”Then I expect silence will reign supreme, and that the remainder of the _conversazione_ will be of the deadly-lively order,” says Archibald; and, Cyril at this moment arriving with the offered chair, Miss Beauchamp is kindly pleased to remain.
As the evening declines, the midges muster in great force. Cyril and Taffy, being in the humor for smoking,--and having cheroots,--are comparatively speaking happy; the others grow more and more secretly irritated every moment. Florence is making ladylike dabs at her forehead every two seconds with her cambric handkerchief, and is regretting keenly her folly in not retiring in-doors long ago. Midges sting her and raise uninteresting little marks upon her face, thereby doing irremediable damage for the time being. The very thought of such a catastrophe fills her with horror. Her fair, plump hands are getting spoiled by these blood-thirsty little miscreants; this she notices with dismay, but is ignorant of the fact that a far worse misfortune is happening higher up. A tasteless midge has taken a fancy to her nose, and has inflicted on it a serious bite; it is swelling visibly, and a swelled nose is not becoming, especially when it is set as nearly as nature will permit in the centre of a pale, high-bred, but expressionless face.
Ignorant, I say, of this crowning mishap, she goes on dabbing her brow gently, while all the others lie around her dabbing likewise.
At last Lilian loses all patience.
”Oh! _hang_ these midges!” she says, naturally certainly but rather too forcibly for the times we live in. The petulance of the soft tone, the expression used, makes them all laugh, except Miss Beauchamp, who, true to her training, maintains a demeanor of frigid disapproval, which has the pleasing effect of rendering the swelled nose more ludicrous than it was before.
”Have I said anything very _bizarre_?” demands Lilian, opening her eyes wide at their laughter. ”Oh!”--recollecting--”did I say 'hang them'? It is all Taffy's fault, he will use schoolboy slang. Taffy, you ought to be ashamed of yourself: don't you see how you have shocked Florence?”
”And no wonder,” says Archibald, gravely; ”you know we swore to her not to abuse anything for the remainder of this evening, not even these little winged torments,” viciously squeezing half a dozen to death as he speaks.
”How are we going to the Grange to-morrow evening?” asks Taffy, presently.
The others have broken up and separated; Cyril and Archibald, at a little distance, are apparently convulsed with laughter over some shady story just being related by the former.
”I suppose,” goes on Taffy, ”as Lady Chetwoode won't come, we shall take the open traps, and not mind the carriage, the evenings are so fine. Who is to drive who, is the question.”
”No; who is to drive poor little I, is the question. Sir Guy, will you?”
asks Lilian, plaintively, prompted by some curious impulse, seeing him silent, handsome, moody in the background. A moment later she could have killed herself for putting the question to him.
”Guy always drives me,” says Florence, calmly: ”I never go with any one else, except in the carriage with Aunt Anne. I am nervous, and should be miserable with any one I could not quite trust. Careless driving terrifies me. But Guy is never careless,” turning upon Chetwoode a face she fondly hopes is full of feeling, but which unfortunately is suggestive of nothing but a midge's bite. The nose is still the princ.i.p.al feature in it.
Placed in this awkward dilemma, Guy can only curse his fate and be silent. How can he tell Florence he does not care for her society, how explain to Lilian his wild desire for hers? He bites his moustache, and, with his eyes fixed gloomily upon the ground, maintains a disgusted silence. Truly luck is dead against him.
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