Sword and Gown. George A. Lawrence
line:
Ah, Cecil! hide those eyes of blue.”
“I think I’ve heard something very like that before,” Fanny answered, laughing. “She deserves a prettier compliment than a réchauffé.”
“Have you heard it before? Well, I shouldn’t wonder. You don’t expect one to be original and enthusiastic at the same moment, when both are out of one’s line? I own it, though. Your princess merits all the vassalage she has found—better than she will meet with here—if only for the perfection of her costume. That is a triumph. Honor to the artist who built her hat. I drink to him now, and I wish the Burgundy were worthier of the toast. (Hal, this Corton does not improve.) I should advise you to secure the address of her bottier. You know her well enough to ask for it, perhaps? It must be a secret.”
“Then you have not found out how very clever she is?”
“Pardon me,” was the reply; “I can imagine Miss Tresilyan perfectly well educated; so well, that she might dispense with carrying about a living voucher in the shape of that dreadful ex-institutrice. I never knew what makes very nice women cling so to very disagreeable governesses. Perhaps there is a satisfaction in patronizing where you have been ruled, and in conferring favors where you have only received ‘impositions’—a pleasant consciousness of returning good for evil. There is no other rational way of accounting for it.”
La mignonne was not indignant now, as might have been expected; but she gazed at the speaker long and more searchingly than was her wont, with something very like pity in her kind, earnest eyes.
“I suppose you would not sneer so at every thing if you could help it,” she said. “I am not wise enough to do so; but I don’t envy you.”
Royston’s hard cold face changed for an instant, and the faintest flush lingered there, about as long as your breath would upon polished steel. It was not the first time that one of her random shafts had struck him home. All the sarcasm had died out of his voice as he answered slowly—
“Don’t you envy me? You are right there. And you think you are not wise enough to be cynical? If there was any school to teach us how to turn our talents to the best account, I know which of us two would have most to learn.” When he spoke again it was in his usual manner, but upon another and perfectly indifferent subject.
Harry had taken no part in the discussion. Always languid, toward night he generally felt especially disinclined to any bodily or mental exertion. At such times there was nothing he liked so well as to lie on his sofa and assist at a passage-of-arms between his wife and Keene, encouraging either party occasionally with an approving smile, but preserving a cautious and complete neutrality. On the present occasion he had his own reasons for not being disappointed about the latter’s appreciation of Miss Tresilyan. Had he felt any such misgivings, they would have vanished later in the evening.
The doctor was a stern man; but he must have been more than human to have stood fast against the entreaties and cajolement with which his patient backed up the petition, “to be allowed just one cigar before going to roost.” The prospect of this compensating weed had supported poor Harry through the dullness and privations of many monotonous days. As the appointed time drew nigh, he would freshen up visibly, just like the camels when, staggering fetlock deep through the sand-wastes, they scent the water or sight the clump of palms. Was there more in all this than could be traced to the mere soothing influence of the nicotine and flavor of the tobacco? Might not this one old habit still indulged have been the only link that sensibly connected the invalid with those pleasant days, when he enjoyed life so heartily, with so many cheery comrades to keep him in countenance—when he would have laughed at the idea of any thing short of a sabre-cut, a shot-wound, 17 or a rattling fall over an “oxer,” bringing him down to that state of helpless dependence, when our conception of womankind resolves itself into the ministering angel? Harry certainly could not have told you if this were so; for an inquiry into the precise nature of his sensations would have posed him at any time quite as completely as a question in hydrostatics or plane trigonometry. At any rate, the consumption of The Cigar was a very important ceremony with him; not conducted in the thoughtless and improvident spirit of men who smoke a dozen or so a day, but partaking rather of the character of a sacrifice, at once festal and solemn. There were times, as we have said before, when he would break out of bounds recklessly; but upon such occasions he gave himself no time to reflect; so there was nothing then of calm and deliberate enjoyment; and these escapades grew more and more rare as the warnings of his constitution spoke more imperiously.
Among the very few traits of amiability that Major Keene had ever displayed, were the sacrifices of personal convenience he would make for Harry Molyneux. He had given up a good many engagements to see his comrade through that especial hour; and, if the day had left any available geniality in him, it was sure to come out then. Upon this occasion, however, he was remarkably silent, and answered several times at random as if his thoughts were roving elsewhere: they were not unpleasant ones, apparently, for he smiled twice or thrice to himself, much less icily than usual. At last he spoke abruptly, after a long pause—Miss Tresilyan’s name had not once been mentioned—“Hal, you know that old hackneyed phrase, about ‘a woman to die for?’ I think we have seen one to-day who is worth living for; which is saying a good deal more.”
“You like her, then?” Molyneux asked.
“Yes—I—like—her.” The words came out as if each one had been weighed to a grain; and his lip put on that curious smile once more.
Harry did not feel quite satisfied. He would have preferred hearing more, and inferring less; but acting upon his invariable rose-colored principle, he would not admit any disagreeable surmises, and went to bed under the impression that “it was all right,” and that Royston was in a fair way toward being repaid for the sacrifices he had made to friendship.
CHAPTER VII.
The Saturday night is waning, but Molyneux shows no signs of moving yet from Keene’s apartments. He has been a model of prudence though so far, as to his drinks, and, in good truth, their companion is not amusing, or instructive, or convivial enough, to tempt or to excuse transgression.
Dick Tresilyan looks about twenty-five, strongly and somewhat heavily built; rather over the middle height, even with the decided stoop of his broad, round shoulders. He carries far too much flesh to please a professional eye, and by the time he is fifty will be very unwieldy; but there is more activity in him than might be supposed, and he walks strongly and well, as you would find if you tried to keep pace with him through the turnips on a sultry September day. His face, without a pretension to beauty in itself, suggests it—just the face that makes you say, “that man must have a handsome sister;” indeed, it bears an absurdly strong family likeness to Cecil’s, amounting to a parody. But the outline of feature which in her is so fine and clear, is dull and filled out even to coarseness. It reminded one of looking at the same landscape, first through the medium of a bright blue sky, and then through driving mist, when crag, and cliff, and wood still show themselves, but blurred and dimly. His hair and eyes are, by several shades, the lighter of the two. The great difference is in the mouth. Cecil’s is so delicately chiseled, so apt at all expressions, from tender to provocative, that many consider it one of her best points; her brother’s is so weak and undecided in its character (or rather want of character), that it would make a more intellectual face vacuous and inane.
The “Tresilyan constitution” holds its own gallantly against the inroads of hardish living, and Dick looks the picture of rude health. Men endowed with an invincible obtuseness of intellect and feeling, have no mental wear and tear, and if the machine starts in good order, it seems as if it might last out indefinitely; so it would, I dare say, if it were not for a propensity to drink, and otherwise to abuse their bodily advantages, peculiar to this class. But for this neutralizing