O lovely earth! O lovely sky!

I was in love with nature, I; And nature was in love with me; O lovely life--when I was free!

Felicia had been surprised, and not altogether pleased, at the unnecessary cordiality with which Maud had bade their visitor farewell.

There was an excitement, an animation, an eagerness in her manner which Felicia had not before perceived, and which she felt at once might be difficult to manage. Desvoeux was exactly the person whom she did _not_ want Maud to like, and the very possibility of her liking him brought out in Felicia's mind a latent hostility of which, under an exterior of politeness and even familiarity, she was always dimly conscious. She did not mind talking to him herself; she was even amused by him; but then it was always with a kind of protest; she knew exactly how far she meant to go and felt no temptation to go any further. But the notion of him in any other capacity but that of a remote member of society, whose function it was to say and do absurd things in an amusing way, was strange and altogether distasteful. Anything like intimacy was not to be thought of for an instant; the merest approach to close contact would bring out some discord, the jar of which, by a sort of instinctive antic.i.p.ation, Felicia seemed to feel already. So long as he moved in quite another plane and belonged to a different world, his eccentricities might be smiled at for their comicality without the application of any rigid canon of taste or morals. But a person who was at once irreligious and over-dressed, who constantly had to be 'put down' for fear he should become offensive, and who was a stranger to all the little Masonic signals by which ladies and gentlemen can find each other out--the very idea of his presuming to cross the pale, and to form any other tie than those of the most indifferent acquaintance, filled Felicia with the strongest repugnance. It was provoking, therefore, that he seemed to take Maud's fancy and impress her more than any other of the many men with whom she was now becoming acquainted. It was more than provoking that she should let her impressions come so lightly to the surface, and be read in signs which Desvoeux's experienced eye would, Felicia knew, have not the least trouble in interpreting.

Suppose--but this was one of the disagreeable suppositions which Felicia's mind put aside at once as too monstrous to be entertained--suppose he should come to stand in the way of the rightful, proper, destined lover? She thrust away the notion as absurd. All the same, it made her uncomfortable, and no doubt justified her to herself in pushing forward Sutton's interests with more eagerness than she might otherwise have thought it right to employ about another person's concerns. When one feels a thing to be _the_ thing that ought to happen, and sees it in danger of being frustrated by some thoroughly objectionable interference, it is but natural to do something more than merely wish for a fortunate result. Felicia, at any rate, could boast of no such pa.s.sivity; and, if praising Sutton would have married him, Felicia's wishes on the subject would have been speedily realised.

The course of love, however, rarely flows exactly in the channels which other people fashion for it, and Maud's inclinations required, her cousin felt, the most judicious handling. There could be no harm, however, in allowing Sutton's visits to go on with their accustomed frequency; and since Maud must forthwith learn to ride and Sutton volunteered to come in the mornings to teach her, no one could blame Felicia if, in the intervals of instruction, the pupil and teacher should become unconsciously proficient in any other art besides that of equitation. Maud used to come in from these rides with such a bright glow on her cheek and in such rapturous spirits, that her cousin might well feel rea.s.sured.

Sutton had found for her the most perfect pony, whose silky coat, lean well-chiselled head and generally aristocratic bearing, p.r.o.nounced it the inheritor of Arab blood. Maud speedily discovered that riding was the most enjoyable of all human occupations. Down by the river's side, or following long woodland paths, where the busy British rule had planted many an acre with the forests of the future, or out across the wide plains of corn stretching for miles, broken only by clumps of palms or villages nestling each in a little grove under the wing of some ancestral peepul-tree, the moon still shining overhead and the sun just above the horizon, still shrouded in the mists of morning--how fresh, how picturesque, how exhilarating everything looked! How pleasant, too, to go through all these pretty scenes with a companion who seemed somehow to know her tastes and wishes, and to have no thought but how to please her! Sutton, though in public a man of few words and unsatisfactorily taciturn on the subject of his own exploits, had, Maud presently discovered, plenty to tell her when they were alone. The power of observation which made him so nice a judge of character extended itself to all the scene about him and revealed a hundred touches of interest or beauty which, to coa.r.s.er or less careful vision, would have lain obscure. Maud felt that she had never known how beautiful Nature was till Sutton told her.

'There,' he would say, 'I brought you round this wood that we might not miss that pretty bend of the river, with Humayoun's Tomb and the palms beyond. See what a beautiful blue background the sky makes to the red dome and that nice old bit of crumbling wall. The bright Indian atmospheres have their own beauty, have they not? And see that little wreath of smoke hanging over the village. This is my pet morning landscape.'

'And those peach-groves,' cried Maud, 'all ablaze with blossom, and those delicious shady mulberries and the great stretch of green beyond.

It is quite enchanting: a sort of dream of peace.'

'We had a fine gallop across here once,' Sutton said, 'when first we took the Sandy Tracts.' And then Maud learnt that they were riding over a battle-field, and that for a long summer's afternoon men had fought and fallen all along the path where now they stood, and that a battery of artillery had been posted at the very corner of the village to which her guide had brought her. 'I remember when they knocked that hole in the old wall yonder and how all the fellows behind it took to their heels. Then, afterwards we stormed the Tomb and had to finish our fighting by moonlight.'

'Was that when you got your Victoria Cross?' asked Maud, who was possessed by a spirit of insatiable curiosity about Sutton's badges, which he was slow to gratify.

'Oh no,' said Sutton, laughing; 'I got nothing then but a bullet through my shoulder and a knock on the head from a musket-stock which very nearly ended my soldiering then and there. Look now how quickly the scene changes as the sun gets up--half its beauty is gone already! Let us have a good canter over this soft ground and get home before it grows too hot.'

Maud, who had never thought of a battle except as one of the afflicting details that had to be remembered at an historical cla.s.s, and if possible to be hooked on to its proper site and date, felt a delicious thrill in actually realising with her own eyes the place where one of the troublesome events took place, and in talking to a person who had actually taken part in it. 'And what became of the bullet in your shoulder?' she asked.

'It was a very troublesome bullet,' said Sutton, 'and a great deal harder to dislodge than the people from the Tomb. But I was unlucky when I was a lad and never came out of action without a _souvenir_ of some sort or other.'

When Maud got home she asked Felicia about this storming of the Tomb, and learnt that Sutton's account was not as truthful as it might have been. He and half-a-dozen others had, Felicia told her, volunteered for the storming-party, had made a rush for the walls through a shower of bullets; and Sutton and two companions, getting separated from the others, had been left for some seconds to hold their own as best they could against the angry, frightened mob within. No one, perhaps scarcely Sutton himself, knew exactly what had happened. The rest of the party, however, when they made their way in, found him standing at bay over a dead comrade's body, and his antagonists too completely taken aback at his audacity to venture, at any odds, within reach of his sword. In the scuffle which ensued Sutton received the wounds of which Maud had been informed; but his exploits on that day were for ever after quoted by his followers as a proof that there is nothing which a man may not do, if only he have pluck and will enough to do it.

Maud felt all this very impressive and Sutton's society more and more delightful. Her enjoyment of it, however--by this time by no means small--began to be seriously qualified by an anxiety, increasingly present to her mind, as to her fitness for the dignified companionship thus thrust upon her. She felt pa.s.sionately anxious to please Sutton, and more and more distrustful of her power to do so. He was good, n.o.ble, chivalrous, everything that Felicia had said, and how hopelessly above herself! What must he think of one who was, as Miss Goodenough had often told her, a mere congeries of defects? True, he never seemed shocked or annoyed at anything she said, and professed to like the rides as much as she did; but might not this be from mere good-nature, or the charm of novelty, or the wish to oblige Felicia, or any transitory or accidental cause? Terrifying thought, if some day he should find her wanting, and banish her from his regards! Meanwhile, happy, happy mornings, and sweet, bright world, in which such pleasure can be found, even if haunted by a doubt as to whether it is really ours or not!

CHAPTER IX.

THE FIRST BALL.

Il est amiable, car on se sent toujours en danger avec lui.

Before Maud had been many weeks with the Vernons there was a Garrison Ball, and at this it was fated that she should make her first public appearance in Dustypore society. That night was certainly the most eventful and exciting one that she had ever pa.s.sed. To wake and find one's self famous is no doubt an agreeable sensation; but to put on for the first time in one's life a lovely ball-dress, bright, cloudlike, ambrosial--to be suddenly elevated to a pinnacle to receive the homage of mankind--to exercise a pleasant little capricious tyranny in the selection of partners--to be seized upon by one anxious adorer after another, all striving to please, each with a little flattering tale of his own--to read in a hundred eyes that one is very pretty--to find at last a partner who, from some mysterious reason, is not like other partners, but just perfection--to know that one's views about him are entirely reciprocated--it was, as Maud, on going to bed, acknowledged to herself with a sigh, which was half fatigue and half the utterance of an over-excited temperament, too much enjoyment for a single human soul to carry!

In the first place, Sutton, all ablaze with medals, tall, majestic, impressive, and as Maud had come to think with Felicia, undeniably handsome, had begged her in the morning to keep several dances for him.

The prospect of this among other things had put her in a flutter. She would have preferred some of the ensigns. It seemed a sort of alarming familiarity. Could such a being valse and bend, as ordinary mortals do, to the commonplace movements of a mere quadrille? It was one thing to go spinning round with another school-girl, under the superintendence of Madame Millville, to the accompaniment of her husband's violin: but to be taken possession of by a being like Sutton--to have to write his name down for two valses and a set of Lancers--to know that in five minutes one will be whirling about under his guidance--the idea was delightful, but not without a touch of awe! Sutton, however, quieted these alarms by dancing in a rather ponderous and old-fashioned manner, and finally tearing her dress with his spur. Maud had accordingly to be carried off, in order that the damage might be repaired; and--her mind somewhat lightened by the sense of responsibility discharged and the ice satisfactorily broken--looked forward to the rest of the evening with ummingled pleasure. While her torn dress was being set to rights she scanned her card, saw Sutton's name duly registered for his promised dances, and made up her mind, as she compared him with the rest, that there was no one in the room she liked one-half as well.

But then she had not danced with Desvoeux; and Desvoeux was now waiting at the door and imploring her not to curtail the rapture of a valse, the first notes of which had already sounded. Desvoeux's dancing, Maud speedily acknowledged to herself, bore about the same relation to Sutton's that her Arab pony's canter did to the imposing movements of the latter gentleman's first charger. His tongue, too, seemed as nimble as his feet. He was in the highest possible spirits, and the careless, joyous extravagance of his talk struck a sympathetic chord in his companion's nature.

'There!' he cried, as the last notes of the music died away and he brought his companion to a standstill at a comfortable sofa, 'Such a valse as that is a joy for ever--a thing to dream of, is it not? Some ladies, you know, Miss Vernon, dance in epic poems, some in the sternest prose--Carlyle, for instance--some in sweet-flowing, undulating, rippling lyrics: Yours is (what shall I say?) an ode of Sh.e.l.ley's or a song from Tennyson, a smile from Paradise! Where can you have learnt it?'

'Monsieur Millville taught us all at my school,' said Maud, prosaically mindful of the many battles she had had in former days with that gentleman: 'a horrid little wizened Frenchman, with a fiddle. We all hated him. He was always going on at me about my toes.'

'Your toes!' cried Desvoeux, with effusion: 'He wanted to adore them, as I do--sweet points where all the concentrated poetry of your being gathers. Put out that fairy little satin shoe and let me adore them too!'

'No, thank you!' cried Maud, greatly taken aback at so unexpected a request, gathering her feet instinctively beneath her; 'it's not the fashion!'

'You will not?' Desvoeux said, with a tone of sincere disappointment.

'Is not that unkind? Suppose it was the fashion to cover up your hands in tulle and satin and never to show them?'

'Then,' Maud said, laughing, 'you would not be able to adore them either; as it is, you see, you may worship them as much as you please!'

'I have been worshipping them all the evening. They are lovely--a little pair of sprites.'

'Stop!' cried Maud, 'and let me see. My shoes are fairies, and my dancing a poem, and my fingers sprites! How very poetical! And, pray, is this the sort of way that people always talk at b.a.l.l.s?'

'Not most people,' said Desvoeux, unabashed, 'because they are geese and talk in grooves--about the weather and the last appointment and the freshest bit of stale gossip; but it is the way _I_ talk, because I only say what I feel and am perfectly natural.'

'Natural!' said Maud, in a tone of some surprise, for her companion's romantic extravagance seemed to her to be the very climax of unreality.

'Yes,' said Desvoeux, coolly, 'and that is one reason why all women like me; partly it is for my good looks, of course, and partly for my dancing, but mostly because I am natural and tell the truth to them.'

'And partly, I suppose,' said Maud, who began to think her companion was in great need of setting down, 'because you are so modest?'

'As to that, I am just as modest as my neighbours, only I speak out. One knows when one is good-looking, does one not? and why pretend to be a simpleton? You know, for instance, how very, very pretty you are looking to-night!'

'We were talking about _you_, if you please,' said Maud, blushing scarlet, and conscious of a truth of which her mirror had informed her.

'Agreeable topic,' said the other gaily; 'let us return to it by all means! Well, now, I pique myself on being natural. When I am bored I yawn or go away; when I dislike people I show my teeth and snarl; and when I lose my heart I don't suffer in silence, but inform the fair purloiner of that valuable organ of the theft without hesitation. That is honest, at any rate. For instance, I pressed your hand to-night, when you came in first, to tell you how delighted I was that you were come to be the belle of the party. You did not mind it, you know!'

'I thought you very impertinent,' said Maud, laughing in spite of herself; 'and so I think you now, and very conceited into the bargain.

Will you take me to have some tea, please?'

'With all my heart,' said the other; 'but we can go on with our talk.

How nice it is that we are such friends, is it not?'

'I did not know that we were friends,' said Maud, 'and I have not even made up my mind if I like you.'

'Hypocrite!' answered her companion; 'you know you took a great fancy to me the first morning I came to call on you, and Mrs. Vernon scolded you for it after my departure.'

'It is not true,' said Maud, with a stammer and a blush, for Desvoeux's shot was, unfortunately, near the mark; 'and anyhow, first impressions are generally wrong.'

'Wrong!' cried the other, 'never, never! always infallible. Mrs. Vernon abused me directly I was gone. She always does; it is her one fault, that prevents her from being absolute perfection. She does not like me, and is always putting me down. It is a great shame, because she has been till now the one lady in India whom I really admire. But let us establish ourselves on this nice ottoman, and I will show you some of our celebrities. Look at that handsome couple talking so mysteriously on the sofa: that is General Beau and Mrs. Vereker, and they are talking about nothing more mysterious than the weather; but it is the General's fancy to look mysterious. Do you see how he is shrugging his shoulders?

Well, to that shrug he owes everything in life. Whatever happens, he either shrugs his shoulders, or arches his eyebrows, or says "Ah!"

Beyond these utterances he never goes; but he knows exactly when to do each, and does it so judiciously that he has become a great man. He is great at nothing, however, but flirtation; and Mrs. Vereker is just now the reigning deity.'

'No wonder,' cried Maud. 'How lovely she is! such beautiful violet eyes!'

'Yes,' said the other, with a most pathetic air, 'most dangerous eyes they are, I a.s.sure you. You don't feel it, not being a man, but they go through and through me. She always has a numerous following, especially of boys, and has broken a host of hearts, which is all the more unfair, as she does not happen to possess one of her own.'