CHAPTER XX

TAKING THE COLLAR

The General thought he had never been so happy in his life. His voice, his bearing, his very dress seemed to partake of the delusion that gilded existence. Springing down the steps of his club, with more waist in his coat, more pretension in his hat, more agility in his gait, than was considered usual, or even decorous, amongst its frequenters, no wonder they passed their comments freely enough on their old comrade, ridiculing or deploring his fate, according to the various opinions and temper of the conclave.

"What's up with St. Josephs now?" asked a white-whiskered veteran of his neighbour, whose bluff, weather-beaten face proclaimed him an Admiral of the Red. "He's turned quite flighty and queer of late. Nothing wrong _here_, is there?" and the speaker pointed a shaking finger to the apex of his own bald head.

"Not _there_, but _here_," answered the sailor, laying his remaining arm across his breast. "Going to be spliced, they tell me. Sorry for it. He's not a bad sort; and a smartish officer, as I've heard, in _your_ service."

"Pretty well--so, so. Nothing extraordinary for _that_," answered the first speaker, commonly called by irreverent juniors "Old Straps." "He hadn't much to do in India, I fancy; but he's been lucky, sir, lucky, and luck's the thing! Luck against the world, Admiral, by sea or land!"

"Well, his luck's over now, it seems," grunted the Admiral, whose views on matrimony appeared to differ from those of his profession in general. "I'm told he's been fairly hooked by that Miss Douglas. Black-eyed girl, with black hair--black, and all black, d-- me!--and rides a black mare in the park. Hey! Why she might be his daughter. How d'ye mean?"

"More fool he," replied Straps, with a leer and a grin that disclosed his yellow tusks. "A fellow like St. Josephs ought to know better."

"I'm not so sure of that," growled the Admiral. "Gad, sir, if I was idiot enough to do the same thing, d'ye think I'd take a d--d old catamaran, that knew every move in the game? No, no, sir; youth and innocence, hey? A clean bill of health, a fair wind, and a pleasant voyage, you know!"

"In my opinion, there's devilish little youth left, and no innocence," answered "Straps." "If that's the girl, she's been hawked about, to my certain knowledge, for the last three seasons; and I suppose our friend is the only chance left--what we used to call a 'forlorn hope' when I was an ensign. He's got a little money, and they might give him a command. You never know what this Government will do. It's my belief they'd give that crossing-sweeper a command if they were only sure he was quite unfit for it."

"Command be d--d!" swore the Admiral. "He'll have enough to do to command his young wife. What? She's a lively craft, I'll be bound, with her black eyes. Carries a weather-helm, and steers as wild as you please in a sea-way. I'll tell you what it is--Here, waiter! bring me the _Globe_. Why the --- are the evening papers so late?"

In the rush for those welcome journals, so long expected, so eagerly seized, all other topics were instantaneously submerged. Long before he could reach the end of the street, General St. Josephs was utterly forgotten by his brother officers and friends.

Still he _thought_ he had never been so happy in his life. The word is used advisedly, for surely experience teaches us that real happiness consists in tranquillity and repose, in the slumber rather than the dream, in the lassitude that soothes the patient, not the fever-fit of which it is the result. Can a man be considered happy who is not comfortable? and how is comfort compatible with anxiety, loss of appetite, nervous tremors, giddiness, involuntary blushing, and the many symptoms of disorder, who could be cured heretofore by advertisement, and which are the invariable accompaniments of an epidemic, invincible by pill or potion, and yielding only to the homoeopathic treatment of marriage.

In this desperate remedy St. Josephs was anxious to experimentalise, and without delay. Yet his tact was supreme. Since the memorable walk in Kensington Gardens, when he laid her under such heavy obligations, his demeanour had been more that of a friend than a lover--more, perhaps, that of a loyal and devoted subject to his sovereign mistress, than either. She wondered why he never asked her, what she had done with all that money? Why, when she alluded to the subject, he winced and started, as from a touch on a raw wound. Once she very nearly told him all. They were in a box at the Opera, so far unobserved that the couple who had accompanied them seemed wholly engrossed with each other. Satanella longed to make her confession--ease her conscience of its burden, perhaps, though such a thought was cruel and unjust--shake the yoke from off his neck. She had even got as far as, "I've never half thanked you, General--" when there came a tap at the box-door. Enter an irreproachable dandy, then a confusion of tongues, a laugh, a solo, injunctions to silence, and the opportunity was gone. Could she ever find courage to seek for it again?

Nevertheless, day by day she dwelt more on her admirer's forbearance, his care, his tenderness, his chivalrous devotion. Though he never pressed the point, it seemed an understood thing that they were engaged. She had forbidden him to visit her before luncheon, but he spent his afternoons in her drawing-room; and, on rare occasions, was admitted in the evening, when an elderly lady, supposed to be Blanche's cousin, came to act chaperone. The walks in Kensington Gardens had been discontinued. Her heart could not but smite her sometimes, to think that she never gave him but one, when she wanted him to do her a favour.

Had he been more exacting, she would have felt less self-reproach, but his patience and good humour cut her to the quick.

"You brute!" she would say, pushing her hair back, and frowning at her own handsome face in the glass. "You _worse_ than brute! Unfeeling, unfeminine, I wish you were dead!--I wish you were dead!"

She had lost her rich colour now, and the hollow eyes were beginning to look very large and sad, under their black arching brows.

Perhaps it was the General's greatest delight to hear her sing. This indulgence she accorded him only of an evening, when the cousin invariably went to sleep, and her admirer sat in an armchair with the daily paper before his face. She insisted on this screen, and this attitude, never permitting him to stand by the pianoforte, nor turn over the leaves, nor undergo any exertion of mind or body that should break the charm. Who knows what golden visions gladdened the war-worn soldier's heart while he leaned back and listened, spellbound by the tones he loved? Dreams of domestic happiness and peaceful joys, and a calm untroubled future, when doubts and fears should be over, and he could make this glorious creature wholly and exclusively his own.

Did he ever wonder why in certain songs the dear voice thrilled with a sweetness almost akin to pain ere it was drowned in a loud and brilliant accompaniment, that foiled the possibility of remonstrance, while the ditty was thrown aside to be replaced by another, less fraught, perhaps, with painful memories and associations? If so, he hazarded no remark nor conjecture, satisfied, as it seemed, to wait her pleasure, and in all things bow his will to hers, sacrificing his desires, his pride, his very self-respect to the woman he adored.

For a time nothing occurred to disturb the General's enforced tranquillity, and he pursued the course he seemed to have marked out for himself with a calm perseverance that deserved success. In public, people glanced and whispered when they saw Miss Douglas on his arm; in private, he called daily at her house, talked much small-talk and drank a great deal of weak tea; while in solitude he asked himself how long this probation was to last, resolving nevertheless to curb his impatience, control his temper, and if the prize was only to be won by waiting, wait for it to the end!

Leaving his club, then, unconscious of the Admiral's pity and the sarcasms of "Old Straps," St. Josephs walked jauntily through Mayfair, till he came to the well-known street, which seemed to him now even as a glade in Paradise. The crossing-sweeper blessed him with considerable emphasis, brushing energetically in his path; for when going the General was invariably good for sixpence, and on propitious days would add thereto a shilling as he returned.

On the present occasion, though his hand was in his pocket, it remained there with the coin in its finger and thumb; for the wayfarer stopped petrified in the middle of the street; the sweeper held his tattered hat at arm's-length, motionless as a statue; and a bare-headed butcher's-boy, standing erect in a light cart, pulled his horse on its haunches, and called out--

"Now then, stoopid! D'ye want all the road to yerself?" grazing the old officer's coat-tails as he drove by with a brutal laugh.

But neither irreverence nor outrage served to divert the General's attention from the sight that so disturbed his equanimity.

"There's that d--d black mare again!" he muttered, while he clenched his teeth, and his cheek turned pale. "I'll put a stop to this one way or the other. Steady, steady! No; my game is to be won by pluck and patience. It's very near the end now. Shall I lose it by failing in both?"

The black mare, looking but little the worse for training, was indeed in the act of leaving Blanche's door. Miss Douglas had evidently ridden her that morning in the Park. She might have told the General, he thought. She might have asked him to accompany her as he used. She ought to have no secrets from him now; but was he in truth any nearer her inner life, any more familiar with her dearest thoughts and wishes than he had been months ago? Surely she was not treating him well! Surely he deserved more confidence than this. The General felt very sore and angry; but summoning all his self-command, walked upstairs,--and for this he deserves no little credit,--with an assured step, and a calm, unruffled brow.

"Miss Douglas was dressing," the servant said. "Miss Douglas had been out for a ride. Would the General take a seat, and look at to-day's paper? Miss Douglas had said '_partic'lar_' she would be at home."

It was irritating to wait, but it was soothing to know she was at home "_partic'lar_" when _he_ called. The General sat down to peruse the advertisement sheet of the paper, reading absently a long and laudatory description of the trousseaux and other articles for family use supplied by a certain house in the city at less than cost price!