CHAPTER X.
Luncheon comes, but no St. John. After luncheon Sir Thomas, MissBlessington, and Miss Craven go out riding. Miss Craven's knowledgeof horsemanship is confined to her exploits on a small, shaggy,down-hearted Welsh pony, concerning whom it would be difficult topredicate which he was fullest of, years or grass. Miss Blessington haslent her an old habit; it is much too big in the waist and shouldersfor her, but a well-made garment always manages to adapt itself more orless to any figure, and she does not look amiss in it. It is a matterof very little consequence to her at the present moment how she looks;she is the arrantest coward in Christendom, and her heart sinks down tothe bottom of her boots as she sees three horses that look unnaturallytall and depressingly cheerful issue through the great folding-doorsthat open into the stable-yard.
"Oh, Sir Thomas! it is a chesnut, is it? Don't they say that chesnutsalways have very uncertain tempers? Oh! please--I'm rather frightened.I think, if you don't mind, I'd almost as soon----"
"Fiddlesticks!" answers Sir Thomas, roughly. "Cannot have my horsessaddled and unsaddled every half-hour because you don't know your ownmind. God bless my soul, child! Don't look as if you were going to behanged! Why, you might ride her with a bit of worsted. Here, Simpson,look sharp, and put Miss Craven up."
After two abortive attempts, in the first of which she springs short,and glides ignobly to earth again, and in the second takes a bound thatgoes near to carrying her clean over her steed, after having givenSimpson a kick in the face, and torn a hole in her borrowed habit, MissCraven is at length settled in her seat.
It is a hot afternoon; after all, I think that miladi has the best ofit, sitting in a garden-chair under a tulip tree, eating apricots.The deer, with dappled sides and heavy-horned heads, are herdingabout the rough, knotted feet of the great trees that stand here andthere in solitary kingship about the park. They spread their ancient,outstretched arms between earth and heaven, and man and beast rejoicein the shade thereof. The dust lies a hand-breadth thick upon the road;the nuts in the hedgerow, the half-ripe blackberries, the rag-wort inthe grass--all merge their distinctive colours in one dirty-white mask.
"Is she going to kick, do you think?" asks Esther, in a mysteriouswhisper of Miss Blessington, across Sir Thomas. "Does not it mean thatwhen they put their ears back?"
"I don't think you need be alarmed," answers Constance, withpolitely-veiled contempt; "it is only the flies that tease her."
The animal that inspires such alarm in Esther's mind, is a slight,showy thing, nearly thoroughbred; a capital lady's park hack. It isquiet enough, only that the quietness of a young, oats-fed mare, andof an antediluvian Welsh pony blown out with grass, are two differentthings. She is sidling along now, half across the road, coquetting withher own shadow.
"Oh, Sir Thomas!" (in an agonised voice) "why does not she walkstraight? Why does she go like a crab?"
"Pooh!" answers Sir Thomas, in his hard, loud voice; "it's only play!"
"If I'm upset, I don't much care whether it is in play or earnest,"rejoins Esther, ruefully.
The glare from the road, the dust and the midges, make people keeptheir eyes closed as nearly as they can: so that it is not till theyare close upon him that they perceive that the man who is dawdlingalong to meet them on a stout, grey cob, with his hat and coat andwhiskers nearly as white as any miller's, is St. John. He looks ratherannoyed at the rencontre.
"I have been over to Melford, Sir Thomas, to see that pointer ofBurleigh's. It will not do at all; it's not half broken."
"You had better turn back with us, St. John," suggests Constance,graciously.
"No, thanks; much too hot!"
"_Au revoir_, then," nodding her head and her tall hat, and about amillion flies that are promenading on it, gracefully.
Esther's fears vanish.
"Three is no company," she says in a low voice, and making rather aplaintive little face as he passes her.
Drawn by the magnet that has succeeded in drawing to itself most thingsthat it wished--viz., a woman's inviting eyes--he turns the cob's headsharp round.
"But four is," he answers, with an eager smile, putting his horsealongside of hers.
She was rather compunctious the moment she had said it. It is reversingthe order of things--the woman after the man; "the haystack after thecow;" as the homely old proverb says.
The road is broad, and for a little while they all four jog on abreast,as in a Roman chariot-race or a city omnibus--rather a dreary squadron.
"This is very dull," thinks Esther. "Oh! if I could lose myhandkerchief, or my veil, or my gloves! Why cannot I drop my whip?"
No sooner said than done.
"Oh! Mr. Gerard, I am so sorry, I have dropped my whip!"
Mr. Gerard, of course, dismounts and picks it up; Sir Thomas and hisward pass on.
"What a happy thought that was of yours!" says St. John, wiping thelittle delicate switch before giving it back to her.
"_Happy thought!_ What do you mean?" (reddening).
"Oh! it was accident, was it? I quite thought you had dropped it onpurpose, and was lost in admiration of your ingenuity."
He looks at her searchingly as he speaks.
"I _did_ drop it on purpose," she answers, blushing painfully. "Why doyou make me tell the truth, when I did not mean to do so?"
"Don't you always tell truth?" (a little anxiously).
"Does anybody?"
"I hope so. A few men do, I think."
"As I have no pretensions to being a man, you cannot be surprised thatmy veracity is not my strongest point."
"You are only joking" (looking at her with uneasy intentness). "Pleasereassure me, by saying that you do not tell any greater number of fibsthan every one is compelled to contribute towards the carrying on ofsociety."
"Perhaps I do, and perhaps I do not."
He looks only half-satisfied with this oracular evasion; but does notpress the point farther.
"It is not often that my papa and I take the air together; we think wehave almost enough of each other's society in-doors."
"He is your father," says Esther, rather snappishly; a little out ofhumour with him for having put her out of conceit with herself.
"I never could see what claim to respect that was," answers he,gravely; "on the contrary I think that one's parents ought to apologiseto one for bringing one, without asking one's leave, into such adisagreeable place as this world is."
"Disagreeable!" cries Esther, turning her eyes, broad open, in childishwonder upon him. "Disagreeable to _you!_ Young and----"
"Beautiful, were you going to say?"
"No, certainly not----and with plenty of money to make it pleasant?"
"But I have not plenty of money. I _shall_ have, probably, when I'm tooold to care about it! _he_ is good for thirty years more, you know,"nodding respectfully at Sir Thomas's broad, blue back.
"It _must_ be tiring, waiting for dead men's shoes," says Esther, alittle sardonically.
"_Tiring!_ I believe you," says St. John, energetically; "it is worsethan tiring--it is degrading. Do you suppose I do not think my own lifequite as contemptible as you can? Take my word for it" (emphasisingevery syllable), "there is no class of men in England so much to bepitied as heirs to properties. We cannot dig; to beg we are ashamed."
"I never was heir to anything, so I cannot tell."
"I should have been a happier fellow, and worth something then,perhaps, if I had been somebody's tenth son, and had had to earn mybread quill-driving, or soap-boiling, or sawbones-ing. I think I seemyself pounding away at a pestle and mortar in the surgery" (laughing)."I should have had a chance, then, of being liked for myself too, evenif I did smell rather of pills and plaister; whereas now, if anybodylooks pleasant at me, or says anything civil to me, I always think itis for love of Felton, not of me."
"You should go about _incognito_, like the Lord of Burleigh."
"He was but a landscape painter, you know. Do you know that once,not a very many years ago, I had a ridi
culous notion in my head thatone ought to try and do some little good in the world? Thanks to SirThomas's assistance and example, I have very nearly succeeded ingetting rid of that chimera. If I am asked at the Last Day how I havespent my life, I can say, I have shot a few bears in Norway, and agood many turkeys and grebe in Albania; I have killed several salmonin Connemara: I have made a fool of myself once, and a beast of myselfmany times."
"How did you make a fool of yourself?" pricking up her ears.
"Oh! never mind; it is a stupid story without any point, and I have notquite come to the pitch of dotage of telling senile anecdotes aboutmyself. Here, let us turn in at this gate, and take a cut across thepark: it is cooler, and we can have a nice gallop under the trees,without coming in for the full legacy of Sir Thomas's and Conny's dust,as we are doing now."
"But--but--is not it rather _dangerous?_" objects Esther, demurring."Don't they sometimes put their feet into rabbit-holes, and tumble downand break their legs?"
"Frequently, I may almost say _invariably_," answers St. John,laughing, and opening the gate with the handle of his whip.
The soft, springy, green turf is certainly pleasanter than the hard,whity-brown turnpike road, and so the horses think as they break into abrisk canter. The quick air freshens the riders' faces--comes to themlike comfortable words from Heaven to a soul in Purgatory--as they dashalong under the trees, stooping their heads every now and then to avoidcoming into contact with the great, low-spreading boughs.
Laughing, flushed, half-fright, half-enjoyment:
"She looked so lovely as she swayed The rein with dainty finger-tips; A man had given all other bliss, And all his worldly worth for this-- To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips."
"Delicious! I'm not a bit afraid now; I bid defiance to therabbit-holes," she cries, with little breathless pauses between thewords.
Let no one shout before they are out of the wood. Hardly have the wordsleft her mouth, when all at once, at their very feet almost, fromamong the seven-foot-high fern, where they have been crouching, risea score of deer with sudden rustling; and, their slender knees bent,spring away with speedy grace through the mimic forest. Esther's mare,frightened at the sudden apparition (many horses are afraid of deer),swerves violently to the left; then gets her head down, and sets tokicking as if she would kick herself out of her skin.
"Mind! Take care! Hold tight! Keep her head up!" shouts St. John, in anagony.
Next moment the chesnut, with head in the air, nostrils extended, andbridle swinging to and fro against her fore legs, tears riderless pasthim. In a second he is off, and at the side of the heap of blue cloththat is lying motionless among the buttercups.
"I'm not dead," says the heap, raising itself, and smiling rather adifficult smile up at him, as he leans over it or her, his burnt facewhitened with extremest fear. "Don't look so frightened!"
"Thank God!" he says, hardly above his breath, and more devoutly thanhe is in the habit of saying his prayers. "When I saw you there, lyingall shapeless, I half thought--Oh!" (with a shudder) "I don't know whatI thought."
"I must be tied on next time, mustn't I?" says Essie, putting up herhand to her head with an uncertain movement, as if she were not quitesure of finding it there. "Oh! Mr. Gerard,"--the colour coming backfaintly to her lips and cheeks--"I _do_ hate riding! it's horriblydangerous! quite as bad as a battle!"
"Quite!" acquiesces St. John, laughing heartily in his intense relief."And you are quite sure you are not hurt?"
"Quite!"
"Really?"
"Really!"
To prove how perfectly intact she is, she jumps up; but, as she doesso, her face grows slightly distorted with a look of pain, and shesinks back on her buttercup bed.
"Not quite sure, either; I seem to have done something stupid to myfoot--turned it or twisted it."
So saying, she thrusts out from under her habit a small foot. It _is_a small--a _very_ small--foot; but the boot in which it is cased iscountry made, and about three times too big for it; so that it mightrattle in it, like a pea in a drum. Even at this affecting moment St.John cannot repress a slight feeling of disappointment.
"I'm awfully sorry! Whereabouts does it hurt? There?" putting hisfingers gently on the slender, rounded ankle.
"Yes, a little."
"I'm awfully sorry!" (You see there is not much variety in hislaments.) "What can I do for it? gallop home as hard as I can, and makethem send the carriage?"
"With a doctor, a lawyer, and a parson in it? No, I think not."
"But you cannot sit here all night. Could you _ride_ home, do youthink?"
"On that dreadful beast?" with a horrified intonation.
"But if I lead her all the way?"
"Very well" (reluctantly); "but (brightening a little) I cannot rideher; she is not here."
"I suppose I must be going to look after her," says St. John, dragginghimself up very unwillingly. "Brute! she is as cunning as Old Nick! Andyou are sure you don't mind being left here by yourself for a minute ortwo?"
"Not if there are no horses within reach," she answers, with aninnocent smile, which he carries away with him through the sunshine andthe fern and the grass.
Essie spends full half an hour pushing out, pinching in, smoothing andstroking Miss Blessington's caved-in hat; full a quarter of an hour inpicking every grass and sedge and oxeye that grew within reach of herdestroying arm; and full another quarter in thinking what a pleasant,manly, straightforward face St. John's is--what a thoroughly terrifiedface it looked when she met it within an inch of her own nose after herdisgraceful _bouleversement_--what a much better height five feet tenis for all practical purposes than six feet four.
At the end of the fourth quarter Mr. Gerard returns, with a fire hardlyinferior to St. Anthony's in his face; with his hair cleaving damply tohis brows, and without the mare.
"Would not let me get within half a mile of her! far too knowing!Brute! and now she'll be sure to go and knock the saddle to pieces, andthen there'll be the devil to pay!"
"I'm so sorry," says Esther, looking up sympathisingly, with her lapfull of decapitated oxeyes.
"So am I, for your sake: you'll have to ride the cob home."
"I shall have to turn into a man, then," she says, glancing ratherdoubtfully at the male saddle.
"No, you won't," (laughing).
He rises, and unfastens the cob from the tree-branch to which he hasbeen tied. He has been indulging a naturally greedy disposition--bitingoff leaves and eating them--until he has made his bit and his mouth asgreen as green peas.
"You must let me put you up, I think," says Gerard bending down andlooking into his companion's great, sweet eyes, under the rim of herbattered, intoxicating-looking hat.
"Must I?" (lowering her eyelids shyly.)
"Yes; do you mind much?"
"No--o."
He stoops and lifts her gently. He is not a Samson or a prize-fighter,and well grown young women of seventeen are not generallyfeather-weights; but yet it seems to him that the second occupied inraising her from the ground and placing her in the saddle was shorterthan other seconds.
A man's arms are not sticks or bits of iron, that they can hold abeautiful woman without feeling it. St. John's blood is giving littlequick throbs of pleasure. His arms seem to feel the pressure of thatpleasant burden long after they have been emptied of it.
"I think you must let me hold you," he says, gently and veryrespectfully passing his arm round her waist.
"No, no!" she cries, hastily, pulling herself away--"no need!--no needat all! I shall not fall."
She feels an overpowering shrinking from the enforced, unavoidablefamiliarity. It does not arise from any distaste for St. Johncertainly, nor yet from any quixotic loyalty to Bob; it springs from anew, unknown, uncomprehended shyness.
"Very well," he answers, quietly, releasing her instantly, and takingthe bridle in his hand. "But I'm afraid you will find that you aremistaken."
Th
ey set forward across the park, at a foot's pace and in silence.Esther twists her hands in the cob's mane, and tries to persuadeherself that pommelless pigskin does not make a slippery seat. Everytwo paces she slides down an inch or so, and then recovers herself withan awkward jerk. The sun is hot. Now and then, as the cob puts his footon a mole-hill, or some other slight inequality in the ground, herankle bumps against the saddle-flap. She feels turning giddy and sickwith the heat and the pain.
"Mr. Gerard! Mr. Gerard! I'm falling!" she calls out loud, stretchingout her arms to him, and clutching hold of his shoulder with a violenceand tenacity that she herself is not in the least aware of.
He is magnanimous. He does not exult over her; he does not say, "Iknew how it would be; I told you so!" He only says, in a kind, anxiousvoice, and plainlier still with kind, anxious eyes, "I'm afraid you arein great pain?" and replaces the rejected arm in its former obnoxiousposition.
As they enter the lodge gate, they see Sir Thomas and his wardadvancing down the avenue towards them. Miss Blessington is a greatfavourite of Sir Thomas's. She is good to look at, and hardly everspeaks; or, if she does, it is only to say, "Yea, yea, and Nay, nay."
"Now for an exchange of civilities," says Gerard, rather bitterly;"even at this distance I can see him getting the steam up."
"Miss Craven has had a fall, Sir Thomas, and hurt herself," he remarks,explanatorily, as soon as the two parties come within speaking distance.
"Broken the mare's knees, I suppose?" cries Sir Thomas, loudly, takingno notice whatever of Miss Craven's casualties. "Some fool's play, ofcourse; larking over the palings, I dare say. Well, sir, what have youdone with her? where have you left her? out with it!" (lashing himselfup into an irrational turkeycock fury.)
"Damn the mare!" answered St. John in a rage, growing rather white, andforgetting his manners.
St. John's rages, when he does get into them, which is not very often,are far worse ones than his papa's, and so the latter knows, and iscowed by the first symptoms of the approach of one.
Miss Blessington looks up shocked. This _jeune personne bien elevee_always is shocked at whatever people ought to be shocked at--Colenso,Swinburne, skittles, &c.
"You are not much hurt, _really_, I hope?" she says, suavely, walkingalong beside Esther, while Sir Thomas and his heir wrangle in thebackground. "Which way did you come, and what _has_ become of yourhorse?"
"We came through the park," answers Esther, holding on by her eyelidsto the cob's slippery back; "so I suppose the horse is there still. Mr.Gerard tried to catch it, and could not."
"Through the park!" repeats Miss Blessington, with a slight smile ofsuperior intelligence. "Oh! I see; a short cut home! Poor St. John hassuch a horror of taking a ride for riding's sake, that he always triesto shorten his penance as much as possible!"