General Bounce; Or, The Lady and the Locusts. G. J. Whyte-Melville
knees and thighs ached with the long, convulsive springs that shot him forward! Charlie never knew before what hard work swimming might be; and now he has reached the spot he aimed at—he raises himself in the water—what is this? Merciful Heaven! Hardingstone is down! but there is a swirling circle of green and white not ten yards before him, and the lad dives deep below the surface and comes up holding his friend’s motionless body by the hair; and now they are both down again, for Charlie is blown, and has not before practised the difficult feat of rescuing a man from drowning. But he comes up once more, and shakes his head, and coughs and clutches tightly to the twining hair, that even in the water has a death-like clamminess in his fingers. He is frightfully blown now, and a wave takes him sideways and turns him over—he is under Hardingstone, and this time he only comes up for an instant to go under again, with a suffocating feeling at his chest, and a painful pressure on his ears. Now he gulps at the salt water that appears to fill body, and lungs, and head; and now he seems to be whirling round and round; everything is green and giddy—there is something crooked before his face—and a feeling of pleasing languor forbids him to grasp it. The Great Uncertainty is very near—a glare of white light dazzles his eyes, and the waters settle over him, as he holds on to Hardingstone’s hair with the clutch of a drowning man.
CHAPTER III
THE HANDSOME GOVERNESS
BLIND-MAN’S BUFF—AN UNCEREMONIOUS INTRODUCTION—THE MUSIC-MISTRESS—A CATHEDRAL TOWN—THE YOUNG LADIES’ SEMINARY—MARY DELAVAL AND HER ADMIRER—AN ATTACK REPULSED—THE MILITARY ROUTED—A PRECARIOUS LIVELIHOOD
Little, indeed, do one half the world know how the other half live. Fortunate is it for us all, that we have neither the invisible cap, nor the shoes of swiftness, that did their owner such good service in the fairy tale. We might be astonished, not to say disgusted, could we follow our nearest and dearest for one short half-hour after they have left our sight; could we see them, when they think no mortal eye is upon their actions, we might smile or we might weep, according as our temperament bordered upon the sentimental or the cynical. Yet is there One that always watches. How comes it that when we hide ourselves from man, we think no shame to expose our follies to man’s Creator? Will a day come when everything shall be made known? when there will be no more hypocrisy—no more respectability—no more difference between vice on the house-top and vice in the corner? There will be some strange shifting of places when that day does come—much shrinking and wincing from the general Show-up—much scarlet shame, and livid remorse, when the brow can no more be covered, nor the past undone. ’Tis a pity we should think so little of payment till the bill comes due;—in the meantime we go blindly on, deceiving and deceived—we know but little of our neighbour, and we trust in heaven our neighbour knows nothing whatever about us; so we grope about in the dark, and call it Life.
Mrs. Kettering, on the sofa, knew nothing of what Blanche was thinking about, not six feet from her—knew nothing about Charlie, struggling convulsively for life half-a-mile out at sea—knew nothing about the woman she had left to take charge of her town-house—a pattern of respectability, sobriety, and trustworthiness, then reeling out of “The Feathers,” as drunk as Chloë, to use an old Eton expression, highly derogatory to the character of Horace’s young and tender love, she who bounded from the bard’s classical advances like a frightened kid. Our Chloë, meanwhile, was grasping a door-key, and calling for gin, regardless that she had left a tallow-candle flaring close to a heap of shavings in the back scullery, that “the airy-gate,” as she called it, was “on the latch,” and there was nobody to answer the front door. This last piece of carelessness was the means of inflicting an additional disappointment on one who had already in her short life known troubles and disappointments more than enough. Mary Delaval had walked up to the grim lion-headed knocker with a weary step and heavy heart; but when her summons was again and again unheeded, and the chance of finding out even Mrs. Kettering’s address became hopeless, she moved away with the heavy, listless air of one who has shot the last arrow from the quiver without attaining the mark, and begins to doubt if courage and energy are indeed qualities of the slightest advantage to our welfare, and whether blind fortune is not the controller of all here below.
The sun beat fiercely upon the pavement, and there was not a breath of air to refresh those arid gardens in the parched and dusty square—yet Mary put her thick, suffocating veil down before her face and quickened her pace as she went home from her hopeless errand; for to these inconveniences she was obliged to submit, because in the freest country in the world, and the most civilised capital in Europe, she was walking on foot, without a companion or a man-servant.
“Gad, that’s a good-looking woman!” said Captain Lacquers to his friend, Sir Ascot Uppercrust; “fine-ish goer, too, but tires over the pavement. If it was not so cursedly hot, ‘Uppy,’ we might cross over and get a look at her.”
“Women rather bore me,” replied Sir Ascot, who, being very young and a Body-guardsman, was of course blasé; “but I don’t mind, to oblige you—only promise you won’t let her speak to me.” So, as Captain Lacquers turned up his moustaches, Sir Ascot went through the same pantomime, for practice against the time when his own should grow; and the couple sauntered carelessly on, and, by a dexterous manœuvre, came “right across the bows” of Mary Delaval.
We may be asked what two such undeniable dandies as good-looking Lacquers, of the Lancers, and Sir Ascot Uppercrust, of the Body-guard, should be doing in London at this time of the year. We cannot tell; for love or money probably—a redundancy of the one and a deficiency of the other being the two causes that generally drive young gentlemen to the metropolis, when their confiding companions are all “faded and gone.” Be it how it may, there they were, and Mary Delaval wished them anywhere else, as, following in her wake, they made sundry complimentary remarks upon her figure, ankles, and general appearance, which might have been gratifying if overheard casually, but which, under the circumstances, were doubtless extremely impertinent and reprehensible.
“I think I’ll get forward, and ask her if she’s going home,” said Lacquers; and, curling his great black moustaches, he quickened his pace to add this crowning insult to an unprotected woman.
Mary’s blood boiled in her veins—she was a soldier’s daughter, and her father’s spirit swelled her heart till it felt as if it would choke her—she clenched her long slender hand, and thought, almost aloud: “Oh, if I were but a man to strike the coward to the earth!—oh, if I were but a man to shoot him as he stands!” In such a mood women have shed blood ere now, but the excitement cannot last—the reaction too surely arrives; and, alas for woman’s pride and woman’s weakness! Mary returned the bold insolent stare with the defiant glance and the lofty carriage of a queen, and then—she burst into tears. It was too much; fatigue, anxiety, and disappointment had overcome her nerves, and she could have killed herself for the weakness, but she sobbed like a child.
Lacquers was a good-natured man, and a good fellow, as it is called, at heart—he was pained and thoroughly ashamed of himself. He took his hat off as if she had been a duchess, and with a readiness that argued this was not a first offence, and did more credit to his ingenuity than his candour, he begged her pardon, and assured her he thought she was “his cousin”—“Quite a mistake, ma’am, I assure you—pray forgive me—good-morning;” and so bowed himself off arm-in-arm with his companion, who had preserved an immovable stoicism, almost preternatural in one so young, during the whole interview.
As Mary Delaval walked on, and gradually recovered her composure, she reflected somewhat bitterly on her lot, and looked back upon her life with a feeling of discontent, that for a moment seemed almost to upbraid Providence that she had not had a fair chance. It was but for a moment—Mary had been schooled in adversity, and had profited by its lessons. In some situations of life such a temperament as hers might have been prone to grow fastidious and uncharitable. Her ideal of good would have been very high, and she would have looked down with contempt upon the grovelling spirits that constituted the mass of her fellow-creatures. But poverty and dependence had taught her many a lesson, hard to learn, but harder