Chapter 32

THE SPRING WOODS.

But, Tom, you'll soon find, for I happen to know, That such walks often lead into straying; And the voices of cousins are sometimes so low, Heaven only knows what you'll be saying. And long ere the walk is half over those strings Of your heart are all put into play By the voice of those fair demi-sisterly things, In not quite the most brotherly way. --Hon. Mrs. Norton.

More snow fell that night, and Lord Bromley's gardeners were sweeping the walks from an early hour next morning. Robins lingered about with bright eyes, soliciting crumbs, and shaking off showers of snow as they flew from yew-hedge to holly-bush. Breakfast was over at "The Towers," except for a few late individuals; and Harry Dutton, in a pair of long boots, and, I am afraid, a pipe in his mouth, was taking a quarter-deck walk in front of the ball-room windows. He was thinking pretty hard, and the subject was evidently not pleasing, as it was with a sensation of relief he observed a deft figure crossing the ball-room, in a fur-trimmed cloth costume, remarkably well kilted up over a resolute-looking pair of small boots. She signed to him to open the windows and let her out. Harry made a feint of emptying his pipe, but received gracious permission to "puff away."

"That killing get-up can't be for me," thought he. "I'll give her the tip she wants."

"A certain good-looking Colonel of Hussars has gone to play a match at billiards till luncheon."

"Why that blunt and abrupt observation, _à propos_ to nothing?"

"You must excuse my sea manners. I should have used more circumlocution, but they don't put much polish on us on board."

"No, they don't, and you boast of it, hence that phrase. You never hear a soldier apologizing for his 'army manners'!"

"Speaks well for their modesty! Well, Kate, where are you bound for? You are not rigged up in that way merely to coast about here."

"I meant to walk round the spring woods."

"And as Dashwood has sloped perhaps I may sail in consort. The walks won't be swept, of course, and that dainty scarlet petticoat will look like an old hunting-coat."

But a gardener asserting that the men had been at work since daylight, the cousins departed on their ramble.

A gravel walk a mile round encircled the inner ring of a wood left wild, except where rides were cut, showing vistas into the park beyond. Here and there it was cleared into a rosary, with a summer-house, a Dutch garden with a fountain, a glade with a fish-pond, etc. The trees were magnificent, and many a foreign specimen was represented, while the shimmering tints of grey-green, from their great variety, were of shades innumerable. Sometimes the bordering turf became wider, and flowering shrubs grew each side of the walk,--an intoxicating spot in spring, when the wild flowers carpeted the woods, and the bird _artistes_, returning from starring in other lands, recommenced their "popular concerts."

Even now, in winter dress, its attractions were but changed. The lichen-covered kings of the forest revealed their bold limbs undisguised by foliage, the feathery birch showed its delicate tracery against the clear winter sky, and Dutton sighed as he gazed on that fair demesne, and thought how hard it would be to give it up.

Kate's thoughts had apparently wandered in the same direction, for she said abruptly,--"What a happy fellow you are, Harry, to be heir to all this!" But she was thinking more of the first-rate style in which it was kept up, and the magnificent, comfortable house, than of its picturesque features.

"There's many a slip," said Harry, moodily, between the whiffs of his pipe. "We all know Uncle Bromley, Kate."

"Do you know," said she, mysteriously, "I hear he actually keeps his eyes, so to speak, on that grand-daughter in Canada. The agent who pays the annuity reports to him."

"The deuce!--you make me quite hot, Kate. Are you inventing just out of chaff?"

"No, honour bright. Mamma was talking about it; and seems he heard rather an unpleasant rumour the other day."

"Come, that's better. What has the young woman been a-doing of?"

"Run away, or something. I overheard mamma telling old Lady Calvert; but they nodded and winked and interjected I couldn't clearly make it out. I was writing a letter at the davenport, and in the glass opposite observed them. I don't generally burden my mind much with the conversation of my elders, but something in the alertness of their attitudes and flutter of their caps made me contemplatively bite my pen and--attend. A breach of confidence on the maternal side, I should surmise, for she declined satisfying my laudable curiosity when I pumped her afterwards, and seemed alarmed at my having heard anything."

"I had no idea," exclaimed Harry, "that he took the slightest interest in that girl; and, hang it all, Kate, she _is_ the rightful heir. Perhaps he looks on her as a second string in case I don't carry out all his arbitrary wishes."

"Yes, I shouldn't recommend your running counter to him gratuitously. To tell you the truth, I thought you rather a lunatic keeping away so long after coming on shore,"--and Kate gazed searchingly into Harry's face, who blushed, and then frowned under the scrutiny.

"Ah!" murmured the fair inquisitor, "then there _was_ something--a woman in the case, of course: there always is."

"I tell you what," cried Dutton, recovering himself, "if you begin supposing improbabilities about me, I'll turn detective on you and Dashwood."

"Sea manners again! and when I was so kind--putting you on your guard. But, never mind, Harry, though I _think_ what I please, I shan't peach _if you don't_."

"Let us seal the treaty," passing one arm round her waist. "Give me a kiss, Kate--you haven't yet."

"Anything in reason, which sealing treaties in a vista opposite Uncle Bromley's study windows is _not_."

A few paces rectified that objection; but Dutton relapsed into a brown study, and Kate fell to thinking of Colonel Dashwood; and so they wandered on till the girl spoke again.

"What port have you left your heart in, Harry?"

"My dear, I have none. I left it in your charge when I went to sea, and have never asked for it back again."

"I expect I shall have to return it now, as I think my uncle has some views as to its disposal, and may inquire for it."

"He always has chimeras of that sort. I say, Kate, how perilously plain Geraldine has grown up."

"You discern the finger of Fate there. She has, indeed. I wonder she is not ashamed of herself."

"Speak not thus harshly of a misfortune."

"It's just as much a fault. Do you think _I'd_ submit to be plain? Never. Give me only one good feature, I'd pose up to it, and make it beautify the rest. Large goggle eyes like hers might be thrown up with a heavenly expression--so--(but I am afraid mine are rather earthly). A bad figure even could be rectified. She need not indulge much in the poetry of motion. _I_ am not pretty, but I dare say you never found it out. No, you haven't, so you needn't assume that look of regretful dissent; and I repeat, that any girl so spiritless as to give in to being ugly _deserves_ to be left out in the cold."

"That, my dear, you can never be. You carry brimstone enough to set every one in flames about you. But to return to our--sheep. Don't say, Kate, I am expected to range alongside such a figure-head as that!"

"She will have a very valuable consignment of--timber, however, when she comes into Forest Hill."

"Which adjoins 'The Towers!' The Avuncular will be death on it! What an unfortunate idea to take up!"

"Can't you do it?" asked the girl, looking askance.

"I don't want to offend his Lordship. I'd ride for a _fall_. Any chance of a refusal, Kate?"

"That wouldn't satisfy him. He thinks a man ought never to be beat; and that

'It isn't so much the gallant who woos As the gallant's way of wooing.'

But I do hope, Harry, you won't have to marry Geraldine. Fancy _her_ mistress of 'The Towers!'--no go!--no fun! and she would collect the stupidest people in the county."

"What a brilliant little chatelaine some one else would make!" quoth wicked Harry.

A glance--one of Kate's own--which few men could stand and feel perfectly cool. With all her flirtations,--and at present she was most in love with Colonel Dashwood,--she never forgot that if bereaved of their uncle by an opportune fit of the gout, few better matches could fall in her way than cousin Harry; so that a little quiet love-making with him was a useful investment in view of such a contingency; though, of course, she could not wait, if this dear uncle, as, indeed, was sadly probable, lived on indefinitely with Harry's future still unassured.

Dutton blushed a little under Kate's gaze, which affixed a serious meaning to his insincere words; but his eyes returned the challenge in hers, though the girl saw in an instant that the expression was not spontaneous, and Harry felt equally sure that the passion latent in his cousin's was more for "The Towers" than himself; and then he laughed inwardly as he thought how different it would be if she knew he was married.

Several days passed, and the object of Harry's visit was still unfulfilled. Indeed, a good opportunity for the disclosure seemed more remote than ever. Kate monopolized all the men in the house, and, being at home, Dutton, in common decency, could not suffer Lady Geraldine to be neglected. There were only those two girls staying at "The Towers." Others sometimes came to dinner with their parents, and an _impromptu_ dance was often got up. Geraldine had begun to listen for Harry's step, seat herself near a vacant chair, and thrill with delight when he took it. No man dislikes such unconscious flattery, and Dutton, ill at ease in mind, felt himself soothed by her kindness.

On these occasions, Lord Bromley appeared bland and agreeable, Lady Calvert voluble and unobserving, and there was a sense of _bien-être_ over every one, Kate, perhaps, excepted.

Dutton had received one letter from his wife. He had had a five mile-walk to get it from the post town he had bidden her address to, and opened it with a strange mixture of curiosity and yearning. It was a very bright letter, made no complaints of loneliness, and was rather divertingly written, considering the limited topics at her command; and yet Harry crunched it up in his hand with a sensation of half anger and whole disappointment. It was their first separation,--they had not been married seven weeks,--and there was scarcely an expression of affection in it!

He felt like a schoolboy who has coveted and caught some pretty wild animal for a pet, yet cannot succeed in making it fond of him.

He laughed rather bitterly as he retraced his steps. It was scarcely worth the cold, companionless walk, or the pains he had taken to evade the rest.

Why should he risk offending his uncle to please her? If that, indeed, were all, he did not know that he should. But new considerations came in. We were on the eve of drifting into the Crimean War; the papers were getting more and more threatening; and, in the event of hostilities being declared, he had applied for a ship on active service.

Could he, then, when he might never return, leave Bluebell with their marriage unacknowledged? "Though," thought he, in his moody reverie, "if _that_ were all right, I don't believe she would care a pin if _I_ were knocked over by a round shot."

Some curiosity and a good deal of chaff greeted Dutton on his return; but Kate did not fail to remark how little he entered into, and how quickly turned it off. That cousin Harry had some mystery of his own, the astute damsel was pretty well convinced, though to the rest he appeared light-hearted and hilarious, and enjoying to the full his enviable position.

"What a lucky young fellow that is?" had been remarked at different times by nearly every guest in the house. And the days slipped by, Harry very much "made of" by Lady Calvert, while Lady Geraldine's preference was of an unobtrusive and reticent nature--impalpable, yet grateful to the senses as the fragrance of an invisible, leaf-hidden violet.

And Bluebell, all alone in her retreat, and each day passing without tidings, began to think she had over-estimated Harry's once troublesome adoration, and almost to doubt if he would ever return.

In truth, he was ashamed to write. The longer the confession was deferred, the harder it became; and he had now assigned himself a date. On receiving sailing orders to the Baltic, he would tell all, and make it, perhaps, a last request to his uncle to acknowledge his wife. In the mean time why plague himself about it? Things must take their course.

They were sitting one day in a pretty breakfast-room. Kate rather angry with her Colonel, who lingered on, always apparently at boiling point, yet never so far bubbling over as to commit himself in words. Harry, too, was looking actually interested in Geraldine, whose large, honest eyes were beaming with a sort of tender happiness. Lord Bromley was not in the room. Clearly he must be detached.

"Doesn't this dear old room remind you of childish days?" cried the artless damsel. "It used always to be summer or Christmas then; and we had tea here in such beautiful china, so different from the horrid school-room crockery."

"And sometimes we were so long over it, they couldn't clear away before the company passed through to dinner, and we got under the table to watch them," said Harry.

"And we used to put out the little sofas and jump over them, King Charles's beauties looking down on us from the wall so grand and gracious. And there was always mignonette and nemophila in window-boxes, so sweet in the evening air? And the honey? Oh, Harry, do you remember the honey?"

Her reminiscences succeeded in breaking up the _tête-à-tête_, and, lo! the wicked little dominant spirit who pulled the wires had indirectly influenced every one in the room. Harry, mesmerized by eye artillery, had dropped into confidential converse with Kate; Geraldine was suffering a _serrement de coeur_ at being so lightly left; and the Colonel, his occupation gone, was reduced to twisting those tried friends in perplexity--his pendulous whiskers and moustache.

"How silly a hairy man looks drinking tea," Kate had whispered; "like a thirsty rat dipping its whiskers and tail in!"

A rather pleased expression pervaded Harry's countenance, which was as smooth as a billiard-ball. His cousin soon had him beautifully in hand, and then extorted a promise to do the thing he hated most, _i.e._, to escort her out hunting the following Friday. She hadn't the smallest intention of remaining with him after they found. Then she would ride with her Colonel, who acquitted himself more creditably in a hunting-field; but, as she was not allowed to start with him alone, it was necessary to impress Harry into her service.

"That's all settled," cried she, rising. "Remember, honour bright! And now go and talk to dear Geraldine, who looks as if she were going to cry." For Kate had heard Lord Bromley's step in the passage. He came in with Mr. Hobart, who had just returned from London. "Have you heard the news?" said the latter; "war is declared; the army, Guards and all, are ordered to the East, and the fleet is to go to the Baltic."

How these few words went straight to their mark, contrasting with the frivolities that had amused them all day! It had come at last. Chances of distinction, redemption from stagnation, the much-coveted active service. They were all brave men in that house--soldiers or sailors, most of them; but the "bitter sweet first shock" and rush of new ideas kept them, at first, rather pale and silent.

After dinner though, when the wine had circulated and the first strangeness worn off, chaff and jest flew lightly about, for a general excitement pervaded the whole party.

"Shall you order those new clothes now Dashwood, you had so many patterns for this morning?"

"No! they would be out of fashion, perhaps, when we return. I was just going to order a new tunic, too! That sinful extravagance may be cut off."

Harry, who, perhaps, had most cause for anxious thoughts, was foremost in the fun. If his spirits were forced, that was his own affair; and, to avoid Kate's over-keen eyes, he (the last thing he ought to have done) devoted himself the whole evening to the more restful society of Geraldine.

Pre-occupied as he was, he began to be sensible of a change in her manner--she seemed struggling with some indefinable agitation; her voice shook, and sounded strange when she spoke.

And when he laughingly hoped "he should be covered with medals next time they met," uncoquettish Lady Geraldine looked a moment in his face with a glance he could not misunderstand, while a large, unavoidable tear fell on her hand. To capture and press it tenderly was but obeying a remorseful impulse. Geraldine immediately became composed, and her sensitive face brightened. The embarrassment that had left her seemed to have passed into Harry, who felt the greatest relief when a flutter of skirts and general rising betokened that the ladies were about to retire.

But the little incident had forced resolution on Dutton's vacillating mind. "That settles it," he soliloquised. "She is far too nice to be deceived. I know Kate won't let me off to-morrow, but I will have it out with my uncle directly I come back, and go to London by the 8.30."