To this pale loveliness was added a bearing alternately haughty and playful, but at all times completely self-possessed; an exquisite taste in dress and jewellery; a very alluring voice; a power of investing even trifles with interest, and of conversing fluently and gracefully on any subject--whether she was mistress of it or not mattered little to Lady Louisa.
She was about my own age, perhaps a few months younger; but in experience of the fashionable world, and in knowledge of the manners and ideas of the upper ten thousand, she was a hundred years my senior.
Suffice it to say that I had lost my heart to her--that I thought she knew it well, but feared or disdained to acknowledge a triumph so small as the conquest of a lieutenant of lancers among the many others she had won. So thought I, in the angry humility and jealous bitterness of my heart.
For a minute I felt as one in a dream. I was sensible that my uncle had said something about changing his costume, and, suggesting some change in mine, had apologised, and left me to linger in the corridor, or in the drawing-room, as I chose; but now a personage, who had been lounging on a _fauteuil_ in the latter, intent on a volume of _Punch_, and the soles of whose glazed boots had been towards me, suddenly rose and approached, in full evening costume.
He proved to be no other than Berkeley of ours, who had been in the room alone, or, at least, alone with Lady Louisa Loftus. He came slowly forward, with his sauntering air, as if the exertion of walking was a bore, and with his eyeglass retained in its place by a muscular contraction of the right eyebrow. His whole air had the "used-up" bearing of those miserable Dundrearys who affect to act as if youth, wealth, and luxury were the greatest calamities that flesh is heir to, and that life itself was a bore.
"Ah, Norcliff--haw--glad to see you here, old fellow. Haw--heard you were coming. How goes it with you, and how are all at Maidstone?"
"Preparing for foreign service," said I, curtly, as the tip of his gloved hand touched mine.
"Horrid bore! Too late to send in one's papers now, or, by Jove, I'd hook the service. Don't think I was ever meant for it."
"Ere long many more will be of your way of thinking," said I, coolly.
Berkeley had a cold and cunning eye, which never smiled, whatever his mouth might do. His face was, nevertheless, decidedly handsome, and a thick, dark moustache concealed a form of lip which, if seen, would have indicated a thorough sensualist. His head was well shaped; but the accurate division of his well-oiled head over the centre of the caput gave him an air of intense insipidity. Mr. De Warr Berkeley never was a favourite of mine, though we had both joined the lancers on the same day, and it was with very ill-concealed annoyance I found myself compelled, with some apparent cordiality, to greet him as a brother officer and an inmate of my uncle's mansion.
"And--haw--what news from the regiment?" he resumed.
"I really have no news, Berkeley," said I.
"Indeed. You have got a month's leave?"
"Between returns, yes."
"Is the route come?"
"A strange question, when you and I are here."
"Haw--yes, of course--how devilish good."
"It has _not_," said I, coldly; "but we are under orders for foreign service, and may look to have our leaves cancelled by a telegram any day or hour."
"The devil--really!"
"Fact, though, however unpleasant it may be. So my uncle, Sir Nigel, met you at--where was it?"
"Chillingham's shooting-box, in the Highlands."
"I was not aware that you knew the earl."
"Losing my gillies--I think you call them in Scotland--one evening in the dark, I lost my way, and luckily stumbled on his lordship's shooting quarters, in a wild and savage place, with one of your infernally unpronounceable Scotch names."
"Oh, you think changes more euphonious at times; but I suppose your father, honest man, could have pronounced it with ease," said I, quietly, for Berkeley's, or Barclay's affectation of being an Englishman was to me always a source of amusement. "You have to learn Russ yet, and it will prove, doubtless, more unpalatable than the tongue your father spoke. In the north, did you appear _en montagnad_?"
"Hey--haw, the devil! no; as the Irish Gil Blas says, 'Every one's legs can't afford publicity,' and mine are among the number. Leather breeches, when I don the pink, must be all the length. I don't care about going, though Lady Louisa pressed me hard to join the Mac Quaig, the Laird of Mac Gooligan, and other natives in tartan at a gathering. I had a letter from Wilford yesterday. He writes of a famous match between Jack Studhome and Craven, on which the whole mess had a heavy book, that great stakes were pending, and that Craven won, scoring forty-two running off the red ball; and considering that the pockets of the table were not bigger than an egg-cup, I think Craven a trump."
"I heard something of this match at morning parade on the day I left; but being a bad stroke, you know, I seldom play billiards."
"Why was Howard's bay mare scratched at the last regimental race?"
"Don't know," said I, so dryly that he bit his nether lip.
"Some nice people visiting here," said he, staring at me steadily, so that his eyeglass glared in the light of the lustre, which was now lit; "and some very odd ones too. Lady Loftus is here, you see, in all her glory, and with her usual come-kiss-me-if-you-dare kind of look."
"Berkeley, how can you speak thus of one in her position?"
"Well, you-don't-dare-to-do-so-again sort of expression."
"She is my uncle's guest; not a girl in a cigar-shop or a casino!" said I, with growing _hauteur_.
"Sir Nigel's guest--haw--so am I, and I mean to make the best use of my time as such. Nice girl, Miss Wilford, from York--cousin of Wilford of ours--a doocid good style of girl; but have no intentions in that quarter--can't afford to chuck myself away, as I once heard my groom observe."
"You must learn to quote another style of people to make yourself understood here. You don't mean to infer that you have any intentions concerning Lady Louisa!" said I, with an air which was really impertinent.
"Why not?" he asked, failing completely to see it. "I have often such attacks, or affections of the heart, as she has given me."
"How?"
"Just as I had the measles or the chicken-pox in childhood--a little increase of the pulse, a little restlessness at night, and then one gets over it."
"Take care how you address her in this bantering fashion," said I, turning sharply away; "excuse me, but now I must dress for dinner."
And preceded by old Mr. Binns, the white-headed old butler, who many a time in days of yore had carried me on his back, and who now welcomed me home with a hearty shake of the hand, in which there was nothing derogatory to me, though Berkeley's eyes opened very wide when he saw our greeting, I was conducted to my old room in the north wing, where a cheerful fire was blazing, with two lights on each side of the toilette-table (the manor-house was amply lit with gas from the village), and there was Willie Pitblado arranging all my traps and clothes. But dismissing him to visit his family (to his no small joy), I was left to my own reflections and proceeded to dress. A subtle and subdued tone of insolence and jealousy that pervaded the few remarks made by Berkeley irritated and chafed me; yet he had said nothing with which I could grapple, or with which I could openly find fault. I was conscious, too, that my own bearing had been the reverse of courteous and friendly, and that, if I showed my hand thus, I might as well give up the cards. Suspicion of his native character, and a foreknowledge of the man, had doubtless much to do with all this; and while making my toilet with more than my usual care--conscious that Lady Louisa was making hers in the next room--I resolved to keep a lynx-like eye upon Mr. De Warr Berkeley during our short sojourn at Calderwood Glen. My irritation was no way soothed, or my pique lessened, by the information that for some time past, and quite unknown to me, he had been residing here with Lady Louisa, enjoying all the facilities afforded by hourly propinquity and the seclusion of a country house.
Had he already declared himself? Had he already proposed? The deuce! I thrust aside the thought, and angrily gave my hair a finishing rasp with a pair of huge ivory-handled hair-brushes.
*CHAPTER IV.*
And, oh! the memories that cling Around this old oak-panelled room! The pine logs flashing through the gloom, Sun sparkles from life's early spring.
After long years I rest again; This ancient home it seems to me, Wearied with travel o'er the sea. Holds anodyne for carking pain.
As I surveyed my old apartment the memories of other years stole over me with somewhat of a soothing influence, for when I thought of the past, the littleness of the present, the evanescent nature of all things could not fail to impress me.
It was in that room I had the last vivid recollection of my dear mother's face, on that farewell morning, when with early dawn she stole in on tiptoe to look for the last time upon her boy as he slept, and before he went forth into the world beyond her maternal care for ever.