CHAPTER VII.--WHEREIN SYMPTOMS OF HARRY’S COURTSHIP BEGIN TO APPEAR ON A

STORMY HORIZON.

The humours of a picnic have been too often described to need repetition; suffice it to say, that the picnic in question was decidedly a favourable specimen of its class. Of course everybody voted it to be the summit of human felicity, to sit in an uncomfortable position upon something never intended for a seat, beside a table-cloth spread upon the grass, which, being elastic and uneven, caused everything that should have remained perpendicular to assume a horizontal attitude. Of course, when the inevitable frog hopped across the table-cloth, and, losing its presence of mind on finding itself so unexpectedly launched into fashionable life, sought refuge in the pigeon-pie, the ladies screamed little picturesque screams, which were increased twentyfold when Tom Hazlehurst fished it out with a table-spoon, and surreptitiously immersed it in the jug of beer, which liquid he artfully incited Mr. Crane to pour out, thereby landing the frog, decidedly inebriated and most uncomfortably sticky, upon the elaborately embroidered shirt-front of Horace D’Almayne. Of course the salt and the sugar had fraternized, and the cayenne had elicited new and striking effects by mingling indiscriminately with things in general, and the sweets in particular; and of course all these shocking disasters irritated the few and delighted the many, and added immensely to the liveliness and hilarity of the party.

“Tom, you’re drinking too much champagne!” exclaimed an elderly maiden sister of Mr. Hazlehurst, decidedly like a hippopotamus in face and figure. “Mr. D’Almayne, may I trouble you to hand me his glass, the boy will make himself poorly.”

Thus appealed to, D’Almayne languidly extended his arm in the necessary direction, but the Etonian was not to be so easily despoiled of his beverage.

“_Mille pardons_, mounseer!” he exclaimed, mimicking the affected half-foreign accent with which the exquisite Horace usually spoke; “_mais c’est tout à fait_--out of the question; _ne souhaitez-vous pas que vous pouvez l’obtenir?_--don’t you wish you may get it? Equally obliged to you, but I’d rather do my own drinking myself. Why, my dear Aunt Betsy, how dreadfully ungrateful of you, just when I was going to propose your health, too! Silence, gentlemen, for a toast! Come, Governor (to his father, who, delighted with the young pickle’s ready wit, was vainly endeavouring to preserve an appearance of majestic disapproval), fill up; D’Almayne, my boy, no heeltaps; are you all charged? ‘My Aunt Betsy, and the rest of her lovely sex!--hip! hip! hip! hurrah!’” So saying, and with a knowing wink at Coverdale, who, if the truth must be told, encouraged him in his inclination to be impertinent to D’Almayne, Master Tom tossed down his glass of champagne amidst a general chorus of laughter. And thus the _déjeûner_ passed off to all appearance merrily enough; though in two, if not more, of the company a smiling exterior hid an aching heart.

“Have you seen the rabbit warren yet, Mr. Coverdale? Do come, there are such a lot of the beggars jumping about! I found my way there before luncheon, and it won’t take long,” exclaimed Tom Hazlehurst, grasping Harry’s arm imploringly.

“It strikes me I shall be considered especially rude if I again absent myself,” was the reply.

“Who by?--the women?” inquired Tom, scornfully. “Never mind them--poor, weak-minded, fickle things; there is nothing I consider a greater nuisance than to have a pack of silly girls dangling about one, that won’t leave a fellow alone; there, you needn’t toss your head and turn up your nose about it, Emily, beneficent Nature’s done that for you sufficiently already. Now will you come, Mr. Coverdale? there are some black rabbits among them, such rum shavers!”

“Are there!” exclaimed Harry, eagerly. “I wonder whether I could contrive to buy a few couples of them; I want to get some black rabbits at the park excessively: come along, for our time is growing short, I expect.” And as he spoke, Coverdale strode off, entirely forgetful of the pretty Emily, with whom, on the strength of her juvenility, he had considered he might safely allow himself to laugh and talk, and to whom he had, therefore, been unconsciously rendering himself very agreeable.

The warren was further than he had expected it would be, and the black rabbits were so long before they chose to show themselves, that Harry began to grew sceptical as to their existence; even when they did appear, a gamekeeper had to be routed out, and terms for the transfer of ten couples to Coverdale Park agreed upon; so that by the time Tom and his companion rejoined the pleasure-seekers, there were but few left to rejoin. These few consisted of the old maiden aunt; a time-honoured female friend of the same--older, uglier, still more like a hippopotamus, and with a double portion of the vinegar of inhuman unkindness in her nature; and, lastly, a plain young lady, the daughter of nobody in particular, who lived with the time-honoured friend as companion, in a state of chronic martyrdom, for which perpetual sacrifice she received thirty pounds a-year, and permission to cry herself to sleep every night, in misty wonderment why so sad a creature as she was, should ever have been born into the world. Besides this uncomfortable trio, who composed the cargo of a brougham, and were rather a tight fit, there remained Mr. Crane and Alice, who, it seemed, were waiting for the phaeton, which had not yet made its appearance.

“Upon my word, Miss Hazlehurst,” began the sour friend, addressing the acidulated aunt, “this is very provoking, ma’am; it’s six o’clock, and it’s growing cold, and it will be quite dusk before we get home; and I really believe Miss Cornetoe was right this morning, and that we shall have a wet night after all.”

“Shall I run down to the inn and see what causes the delay? I must go there to get my horse,” inquired Coverdale, good naturedly.

“If you would be so kind, we really should be extremely obliged to you,” returned Miss Hazlehurst senior, with her most gracious and least hippopotamic smile; and thus urged, Coverdale hurried off.

In the meantime poor Alice, who by no means admired the position of affairs, and had moreover been considerably alarmed in the morning by Mr. Crane’s unskilful driving, whispered a pathetic appeal to her aunt to be allowed to accompany the brougham party,--“she could sit on the box, Wilson, the coachman, was so inconceivably respectable, and she was almost sure it would not rain;”--but her aunt was a strong-minded woman, and a warm advocate of the Crane alliance, and she would not hear of such a change of plan. As soon as Coverdale arrived within sight of the inn, he perceived the missing phaeton standing in front of the doorway, the horses ready harnessed, and the groom seated on the driving-seat; accordingly he made signs to him to come on, of which, for some unaccountable reason, the man took not the slightest notice. Surprised at this, Harry made the best of his way to the spot, and on reaching it discovered, from the swollen, heated look of the fellow’s features, and the stupid, obstinate expression which characterized them, that he had been drinking to excess.

“Why the man is intoxicated!” exclaimed Coverdale, turning to the ostler, who, with one or two hulking village lads, stood staring at the coachman with a grin of amusement on their vacant faces; “why did not you make him get down, and bring the carriage yourself?”

“A did troy, but a woldn’t budge a inch--a be properly drunk to be zure!”

“Oh, he would not, eh?” inquired Coverdale; then, turning to the groom, he continued, “Get down directly, my friend, I want particularly to speak to you.”

To this the groom contrived to stammer out on insolent refusal, accompanied by a recommendation to Coverdale to mind his own business, and give orders to his own servants.

“My business just at present is to make you get down from that phaeton,” returned Harry, his eyes flashing.

“Oh! it is, is it?--I should like to see you do it, that’s all!” rejoined the other, with a gesture of drunken defiance.

“You shall,” was the concise reply, as, directing the ostler to stand by the horses’ heads, Coverdale, ere the fellow was aware of his intention, or could take measures to prevent him, sprang lightly up, forced the reins from his uncertain grasp, twisted him suddenly round, then placing his hands under his arms lifted him by sheer strength, and dropped him to the ground. Having performed this feat with the neatness and celerity of some harlequinade trick, he glanced round to see that the fellow had fallen clear of the wheels, and taking the reins, drove off.

While this little affair had been proceeding, the sky had become overcast, and a few large drops of rain came pattering heavily to the ground; alarmed by these symptoms, the brougham party no sooner perceived the phaeton approaching, than they scrambled into their vehicle and started. As their road lay in a direction opposite to that by which Coverdale was advancing, they were nearly out of sight by the time he reached the spot where Alice and Mr. Crane awaited him. Jumping down with the reins in his hand, he was explaining to the owner of the phaeton the plight in which he had found his servant, when a faint flash of lightning glanced across the sky, followed after an interval by a clap of distant thunder, at which the horses, which were young and spirited, began to prick up their ears, and evince such unmistakable signs of alarm, that their master, fearing they were about to dash off, ran to lay hold of their heads. Misfortune often brings about strange associations. If any one had that morning told Alice Hazlehurst that before the day should be over she would have appealed for protection to, and confided in, “Arthur’s cross, disagreeable friend,” she would have utterly disbelieved the statement--and yet so it was to be. The moment Mr. Crane left her side, she turned to Harry exclaiming--

“Oh, Mr. Coverdale, I am so frightened! He will never be able to manage those horses: he could scarcely hold them in this morning, and the groom was forced to get down to them twice--he does not know how to drive one bit!”

Poor little Alice! she was trembling from head to foot, and looked so pretty and interesting in her alarm, that Harry felt peculiar, he didn’t exactly know how, about it.

“I’ll speak to Mr. Crane, and persuade him to let me drive you home,” he replied eagerly. (He would have knocked him down without the smallest hesitation, if Alice had in the slightest degree preferred it.) “I’ve been accustomed to horses all my life, and have not a doubt of being able to manage these, even if the thunder should startle them; so please don’t look so frightened.”

And as Harry said this with his very brightest, kindest smile,

Alice wondered she had never before noticed how handsome he was, and began to think he could not be so very cross after all.

When Harry urged his request, Mr. Crane was considerably embarrassed as to the nature of his reply. In his secret soul he was delighted to be relieved from the danger and responsibility of driving Alice and himself home through a thunder-storm; but, on the other hand, he could not disguise the fact, that by allowing himself to be so relieved, he should detract from the heroic style of character he wished Alice to impute to him. Had it been D’Almayne instead of Coverdale who sought to become his substitute, he would probably, at the hazard of breaking his own neck and that of his lady-love, have refused to permit him; but he had observed, as indeed he must have been blind if he had not done, Harry’s marked avoidance of the young lady, and trusting to these his mysogynistic principles he, with many excuses and much circumlocution, agreed to Harry’s proposal that he should ride his horse, and allow him to drive the phaeton.

“Ahem!--if the storm should come on violently,” observed the cotton-spinner, as a second growl of thunder became audible, “I shall wait till it has subsided; so don’t let them expect me till they see me: getting wet always gives me cold.”

“All right, sir,” returned Harry, as he wrapped Alice carefully up in his own Macintosh; “take care of yourself by all means--good people are scarce. We shall see nothing more of friend Crane to-night,” he continued, as he drove off; “the old gentleman is very decidedly alarmed--that is, I suppose I ought not to call him an old gentleman,” he stammered, suddenly recollecting with whom he was conversing.

“Why should you not when he is so?” returned Alice, innocently.

Harry turned his head away to conceal a smile which the _naïveté_ of the reply had called forth, muttering to himself as he did so, “Poor Crane!”

After a few minutes’ silence, Alice began abruptly, and apologetically,--

“I’m sure I ought to feel very much obliged to you, Mr. Coverdale--and indeed I do; this is the second really good-natured thing you’ve done by me to-day.”

The tone in which she spoke so completely betrayed that surprise was the feeling uppermost in her mind, that Harry, slightly piqued, could not help replying--

“You did not, then, give me credit for possessing the least particle of good-nature?”

Alice smiled as she answered--

“If I had had a proper degree of faith in Arthur’s representations, I need not have felt surprise.”

The delicate irony of this reply was not lost upon Coverdale; but he knew that he had deserved it, and, with the ready frankness which was one of his best characteristics, he hastened to acknowledge it.

“I certainly have done little towards practically vindicating the character your brother’s partiality has bestowed upon me,” he said; “but I must be allowed to plead in justification, that I am quite aware of my own deficiencies, and told Arthur that I had been roughing it abroad so long, that I was totally unfitted for ladies’ society. He would not admit the excuse; but it was a full, true, and sufficient one, nevertheless.”

As he uttered the last words, a dazzling flash of lightning appeared almost to envelop them, followed instantaneously by a deafening peal of thunder. Half blinded by the blaze of light, the frightened horses stopped abruptly, then, terrified at the prolonged thunder, tried to turn short round; foiled in this attempt by the skill and promptitude of their driver, they began rearing and plunging in a way which threatened every moment to overturn the phaeton. Fortunately the road happened to be unusually wide at this point, and Harry, who never throughout the affair in the slightest degree lost his presence of mind, deciding that whatever might most effectually frighten the horses, would create the impulse they would eventually obey, determined to try the effect of a little judicious discipline. Accordingly, standing up, he began to administer the whip to their sleek sides with an amount of strength and determination which, from the contrast it afforded to the mild and timid driving to which they were accustomed, so astonished the animals, that bounding forward with a snatch which tried the soundness of their harness, they dashed off at a furious gallop; at the same moment, a second peal of thunder, even louder than the preceding one, increased their alarm to such a degree, that Coverdale, despite his utmost efforts, found it completely beyond his power to hold them in.