Chapter XXXV

"When the days begin to lengthen,
Then the cold begins to strengthen."

This ancient distich proves true in the year I am speaking of. Not later than Christmas does the moist mild weather last. With January the frost comes hurrying back; hanging great icicles on the house-eaves, throwing men out of work, and pressing with its iron finger the thin faint life out of half-a-dozen old almsmen and almswomen. The foxes have a little breathing-time--a little space in which to steal and eat three or four more fat capons and stubble-fed geese--before that evil day when their dappled foes shall tear their poor little red bodies limb from limb. Hunting is stopped, and men are hurrying up from the shires to London. St. James's Street and its hundred clubs are crowded. At Blessington everybody is pirouetting on the ice. St. John, passionately fond of all out-of-door sports, spends the whole day on the mere. One afternoon a large party comes over from Lord Linley's place, five miles away. Not in all Lord Linley's grounds is there such a stretch of smooth ice as the Blessington pool affords; and so they are all come to show their prowess on its hard flat face.

Esther keeps well out of their way. From her post of observation--the deep window-seat in the China gallery--she has watched their arrival, heard their gay voices in the hall, and then, unnoticed, unmissed, she has stolen out upon one of her long, dawdling, cold-giving strolls in the park: over the frost-crisped grass, under the branchy trees, whose staglike crowns cut the pale sky--up little knolls and down into dips where, in summer time, the fern stands neck high. At last she comes in sight of the mere; and, impelled by curiosity, trusting in her own insignificance to escape notice, sits down on a bank that slopes gently down towards the sheet of water, and looks upon the unwonted brilliance of the scene. Girls in velvet short costumes; bright petticoats, furs, hats with humming birds on them, curls, fair chignons, glancing in the cheerful winter sun. Fashion in all its folly and extravagance, but picturesque withal; it is as if a company of Dresden shepherdesses had stepped off the mantelshelf, and come tripping, dainty-footed, over the frozen water. Her eyes follow the shepherdess figures with eager interest--so seldom in her simple country-bred life has she been brought into contact with any of Fashion's bright daughters. The men have less attraction for her. Under no most prosperous conjunction of circumstances could she ever have been a man; but under happier auspices she might have been one of these fluttering butterflies--a prettier butterfly than any there, her heart tells her. Shylock's words recur to her: "Am not I 'fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer?' Why, then, are they frisking about in purple and fine linen upon the ice, with half-a-dozen young patricians (in trousers of surprising tightness and coats of unequalled brevity) in their train, while I am perched here upon the all-alone stone, among these stiff cold sedges, with only the Canada geese, with their long necks craned out, screeching above my head?"

Meanwhile, Miss Craven is the subject of more remark than she is at all aware of.

"I say, Gerard," says Lord Linley's heir--a goodnatured ugly little prodigal, who is one of the shining lights of Her Majesty's Household, and goes among men by the _sobriquet_ of "Gaolbird," for which he has to thank the unexampled brevity of his locks--"I say, Gerard, you ought to know all the remarkable objects about here: tell us, who is the _mourner_ in the distance?"

St. John's eyes follow the direction indicated by his friend, and a shade of annoyance crosses his face. "Her name is Miss Craven, I believe," he answers, shortly.

"Uncommon good-looking girl, whoever she is!" says a second man, who has just stopped to adjust his skates; "I have been perilling my life among those d----d rushes by the edge, to get a good look at her!"

"Deuced good legs!" subjoins a third, remarkable for his laconism; taking his pipe out of his mouth to make room for his criticism, and fixing upon that part of a woman's charms which is always the first to enchain the masculine attention.

"She is vewy like a girl I used to know at the Cape," says a "Heavy," who has been vanquished in single combat by the letter R. "The _Fly_ we used to call her, because when she settled on a f'la, it was mowally impossible to dwive her off."

St. John, who has been listening with ill-concealed anger and disgust to these comments--free as if they had been upon the points of a horse--on the charms of the woman for whom he has been trying to persuade himself that he feels inveterate aversion, turns to move away; but Linley's voice recalls him.

"I say, Gerard!--Gerard!"

"Well?"

"Do you know her?"

"Slightly."

"Introduce me, then--there's a good fellow!"

"And me!"

"And me!"

"My acquaintance with Miss Craven is not such as to justify my introducing any one to her," answers Gerard, stiffly, and so walks resolutely off.

"Sly dog!" cries Linley, laughing; "means to keep her all to himself--a nice quiet little game of his own."

"Means to drive a pair then--eh?" asks the laconic youth.

"Vewy seldom pays," says the "Heavy," sagely; "one or other invawiably jibs."

But Mr. Linley, being more in earnest than he usually is about most things, is not so easily balked. After many fruitless inquiries among the company, he at length appeals to Miss Blessington.

"Do you know, Miss Blessington," he says, peering up at her with his quick terrier-face (for her stately height exceeds his), "I have actually been putting the same question to twenty people running, and never yet succeeded in getting an answer? You are my last hope: who _is_ that lady in black?"

"The lady in black!" repeats Constance, amiably--following, as her lover had done, the direction of his gaze. "Oh!" (with a little, slighting laugh), "nobody very particular; only poor Miss Craven, my aunt's companion!"

"Poor girl!" he says--his eyes still riveted upon the pensive oval face, and his interest in her not the least lessened by the information as to her social status, that Constance had thought so damning. He does not want to _marry_ her; and for any other purpose a pretty woman is a pretty woman, be she duchess or fishwife. "It must be very slow for her, mustn't it? I always hate looking on--don't you? I always like to have a hand in everything, whatever it may be; it would really be a charity to go and speak to her, only I'm afraid she would take it as an insult if I went up and introduced myself."

"I assure you she is quite happy watching us," replies Constance, sweetly; being, for the most part, not fond of going shares with a sister fair one in any of the proper men and tall that are wont to gather about her.

But he is persevering. "Don't you think that a little improving conversation with me would tend to make her happier still?" he asks, banteringly, yet in earnest. "I tried to get Gerard to introduce me, but I could not make out exactly what was up; he seemed to take it as a personal insult. You won't mind doing me that good turn, I'm sure?"

"I shall be most happy, of course," she answers, hiding her displeasure under the calm smile which covers all her emotions, or approximations to emotion. And with apparent readiness she leads the way to the spot where, couched in her rushy lair, the subject of their talk sits unconscious, with her eyes riveted on the darting forms beneath her.

"Miss Craven, Mr. Linley wishes to be introduced to you."

"To _me!_" she says, starting; her eyes opening wide, and cheeks flushing with surprise.

Then two bows are executed, and the thing is done. Esther is not longer upon the all-alone stone; she has other occupation for her ears than to listen to the screeching of the Canada geese; she, too, like the other butterflies, has got a tight-trousered, short-coated patrician in tow.

"Linley has succeeded, do you see?" says the man to whom Esther's legs have had the happiness to appear "very good."

"Mostly does; it is a little way he has!"

"Who did they say she was?"

"Somebody's companion; old Blessington's, I think."

"Cunning old beggar! He knows what he is about, though he does pretend to be stone-blind."

"Old Blessington's companion, eh? I'm sure I wish she were mine."

"A sort of 'Abishag the Shunammite,' I suppose?"

These are some of the comments that the unknown beauty draws forth. Five minutes later, Miss Craven's scruples--such as never having skated before, having no skates, &c.--being overruled by her new acquaintance, she is sitting on the bank; and he, kneeling before her, is fastening some one else's unused skates on her little feet. A great desire for pleasure has come over her--a great longing for warmth and colour in her grey life, that looks all the greyer now in the contrast to the brilliant reds and purples of these strange lives with which it is brought into sudden contact. A great delight in the wintry brightness fills her--in the shifting, varying hues--in the bubbling laughter; a great impulse to laugh too, the spirit of youth rising up in arms against the tyranny of grief.

The low sun shoots down dazzling crimson rays on the mere's dirty white face. The swans and Solan geese are exiled to a little corner, where the ice has been broken for them, and where they have to keep swimming round and round to prevent the invasion of their little territory by the grasping frost. Girls that cannot skate being pushed about in chairs; "Whirr! whirr!" they rush along the smooth surface at a headlong pace. Men, with their arms stretched out like the sails of a windmill, advancing cautiously--first one foot, then the other--just managing to keep on their feet, and thinking themselves extremely clever for so managing. Other men and women flying hand-in-hand, from one end of the pool to the other, in long, smooth slides--as safe and secure as if running upon their own feet on the grass. Others, cutting eights, and all manner of figures, whirling round upon one leg, and making themselves altogether remarkable. One poor gentleman with his skates in the air, and head starring the ice; brother men laughing and jeering; pretty girls pitying--light laughter mixed with their condolences also. Eight people dancing a quadrille, _chaîne des dames:_ in and out, in and out--right, left--go the moving figures, the cerise petticoats, the glancing feet. It is all so pretty and gay. When one has spent the best part of three months in weeping, when one has the quick blood of seventeen in one's veins, one longs to get up and run, and dance, and jump about too.

"There's no wind to-day," says Linley, turning his face to the north-east, whence a bitter breath comes most faintly; "when there is, it is the best fun in the world to get a very light cane chair and a big umbrella--to sit on the one and hold the other up; you can have no conception of the terrific rate that one gets along at."

"I should think it sometimes happened that the cane chair and the big umbrella went on by themselves and left you behind?" says Esther archly.

"Frequently, but that makes it all the more exciting."

"Does it?"

"Keep hold of the chair, push it gently before you, and try to balance yourself as well as you can," continues he, giving grave instructions to his new pupil.

"How _can_ one balance oneself on things no bigger than knife-blades?" she asks, grasping desperately the chair-back.

"Rome was not built in a day," he answers, with a cheery laugh; "try!"

She obeys, and moves forward two or three timid inches; then stops again.

"I have that poor gentleman's fate before my mind's eye," she says, nervously. "I feel as if, by some natural attraction, one's feet must go up sky-wards, and one's head make acquaintance with the ice."

"No necessity at all," replies the young man, encouragingly. "That fellow is a duffer at everything; he is the very worst rider I ever set eyes on--holds his whip like a fishing-rod."

"Does he?"

"Look at that girl, now, with the purple feather! She skims along like a bird; she is as much at her ease as if she were in her arm-chair at home. By Jove! no, she ain't though!" For, as he speaks, "Thud!" comes the girl with the purple feather down in a sitting posture on the ice: men crowd round, inquire into casualties, pick her up again: off she goes!

"You must be more careful next time in your selection of examples," Esther says, smiling mischievously; "_that_ one was not encouraging, you must allow."

Constitutionally timid, she stands hesitating, in half-shyness, half-fear, and whole dread of being ridiculous; laughing, reddening, dimpling in the happy sunlight--as pretty a picture as ever little terrier-faced member of the Household has seen.

"Perhaps you'd get on better if you tried walking between two people," he says, suggestively; "it is easier than with a chair. That is the way my sister began--I on one side, don't you know, and another fellow on the other. Here, Gerard, come and make yourself useful; give Miss Craven your arm!"

Gerard looks--has been looking all the while; sees the face, that had met him so pale and dejected three hours ago, transformed by the keen January air, and the excitement of the moment, into more than its old loveliness; sees the soft splendour of languishing almond eyes, the guileless baby-smile. It is the transient happiness of a moment that has wrought the change, and he, in his rough anger, attributes it to the insatiate rabid desire for admiration.

"She would flirt in her coffin," he says to himself, bitterly; and so answers, coldly, "I cannot--I have taken my skates off!"

"All right," says Mr. Linley, gaily, and then, in an aside to Esther, "On duty, evidently!"

"Evidently!" She assents with a faint smile, but her lips quiver with a dumb pain. "He need not have slighted me so openly," she thinks, in cruel mortification. "Perhaps if you gave me your hand I might manage to steady myself gradually," she says naïvely.

Mr. Linley has no objection whatever to having his hand convulsively clutched by a very pretty woman, even though it is so clutched, not in affection to himself, but in the spasmodic effort to maintain the perpendicular--in the desperate endeavour to hinder her feet from outrunning body and head. And so she totters along--amused, flattered, frightened; and far too much absorbed in considerations of her own safety, to be at all aware of the condescending notice that several of the more worthy gender are good enough to bestow upon her, though the conceit inborn in the male mind would have made them completely sceptical of that fact, had they been told it.

Meanwhile Miss Blessington, a little out of breath with her exertions, is resting on a chair, in bright blue velvet and a more delicate pink-and-white porcelain face than any of the other shepherdesses. Over her Gerard is leaning--frowning, sad, and heavy-hearted. Over and over again he has tried to turn his eyes to other groups, but again and again, contrary to his will, they return and fix themselves upon that slender staggering figure in black. Once he sees her on the point of falling--saved only by being caught with quick adroitness in her companion's arms. He draws his breath involuntarily hard. How dare any man but he touch her--lay a finger upon her fair person? One of the old simple instincts, stronger--oh, how far stronger!--than any of the restrictions with which our civilisation has sought to bind them--a great lust of raging jealousy--is upon him.

"I _hate_ her!" he says to himself, fiercely; "she is a vile unprincipled coquette. Thank God, I found her out in time! Thank God, I washed my hands of her before it was too late! And yet--and yet--if I could but pick a quarrel with that fellow!"

What right has Gerard to object if every man upon the ground catch her in big arms, and hold her there under his very eyes? He has washed his hands of her, thank God! All his rights of proprietorship in womankind centre in the calm blue statue, smiling with even placidness on himself, on his poodle, on all the world--his Constance, whom no one is thinking of taking from him; his own--oh, blissful thought!--in life, in death, and in eternity!

In the meantime the remarks upon Esther vary from the wildly laudatory to the discriminatingly censuring.

"She is extwemely dark," says the _dwagoon_, as he would have called himself; "a thowough bwunette; must have a touch of the tar-bwush, I fancy!"

The stable-clock strikes four. Esther starts, as much as scullion Cinderella started at the chiming midnight. "I must go" she says, hastily; "I shall be wanted."

"Wanted?" he repeats, inquiringly. "And are not you wanted here? You cannot be in two places at once, like a bird."

"Mrs. Blessington will want me--I am her companion," she answers, colouring slightly. "I daresay you did not know it." ("He would not have been so civil to me if he had, I daresay," is her mental reflection.)

"Yes, I did."

"Who told you?--or have all 'companions' such a family likeness that you detected me at a glance?"

"Miss Blessington told me; and for the first time in my life I wished myself an old woman," he replies, sentimentally.

She laughs, a little embarrassed. She knows as well as he does that he does _not_ wish to be an old woman, even for the pleasure of having her to carry his air-cushion and spectacle-case. But civil speeches are always more or less untrue, and none the less pleasant for that.

"If the frost holds," says the young man, suggestively--taking the small black hand which she has timidly proffered, not being by any means sure that it is etiquette for a "companion" to shake hands with lords' eldest sons--"If the frost holds, will you be inclined for another lesson or two? There is nothing like making hay when the sun shines--say _to-morrow?_"

Her face brightens for a moment; it is so pleasant to talk gaily, and be admired, and made much of, and reminded that there are other things besides death and poverty and servitude; then her countenance falls.

"To-day has been very pleasant," she says, naïvely, "but I cannot answer for to-morrow."

"Are you so changeable," he asks, with a laudable though unsuccessful endeavour to fashion his jolly little dog-face into an expression of reproachful sentiment, "as not to know to-day what you will like or not like to-morrow?"

"I know what _I_ shall like," she answers, gently, "but I don't know what other people will. Would not you think it very odd if your valet were to make engagements without consulting you? _I_ am Mrs. Blessington's valet."

She evidently thinks this argument so conclusive, and that it so decidedly closes the question, that he has no choice but to loose her hand; and she, having no other farewells to make, turns and passes homewards through the crisply rustling sedges.

"_Very_ clean about the fetlock!" ejaculates the laconic youth, unable to raise his mind from her legs; following them with his eyes, as she climbs the grassy slope.

"Yes, but what howible boots! Whoever could have had the atwocity to fwame such beetle-cwushers?"