Vassall Morton Part 7

"If he sometimes wrote like an angel," pursued f.a.n.n.y Euston, "I should find no patience to see it in a man who could put upon paper such parrot rhymes as these:--

'Not a whit of thy tuwhoo, Thee to woo to thy tuwhit, Thee to woo to thy tuwhit, With a lengthened loud halloo, Tuwhoo, tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o!'

Bah! it puts one in a pa.s.sion to hear such twaddle."

"I see," said her friend, "that nothing less than your own music will calm your indignation. Pray let us hear the ballad which you set to music this morning."

"I will sing, if you wish it; but not that ballad."

And she seated herself before the open piano.

"What do you choose, Mr. Morton?"

"The Ma.r.s.eillaise. That, I think, is in your vein."

"Ah! you can choose well!"

And, running her fingers over the keys, she launched at once into the warlike strains of the hymn of revolution. Her voice and execution were admirable; and though by no means unconscious that she was producing an effect, she sang with a fire, energy, and seeming recklessness that thrilled like lightning through her auditor's veins.

He rose involuntarily from his seat. For that evening his study of character was ended, and philosophy dislodged from her last stronghold.

Half an hour later he was riding homeward in a mood quite novel to his experience. He pushed his horse to a keen trot, as if by fierceness of motion to keep pace with the fiery influence that was kindling all his nerves.

"I have had my fancies before this," he thought,--"in fact I have almost been in love; but that feeling was no more like this than a draught from a clear spring is like a draught of spiced wine."

That night he fully expected to be haunted by a vision of f.a.n.n.y Euston; but his slumbers were unromantically dreamless.

Three days later, he ventured another visit; but his cousin had returned to her home in the country. By this time he was conscious of a great abatement of ardor; and his equanimity was little moved by the disappointment. In a week he had learned to look back on his transient emotion as an effervescence of the moment, and to regard his relative with no slight interest, indeed, yet by no means in a light which could blind him to her glaring faults. He summoned up all that he could recall of herself and her family, and chiefly of her father, whom he remembered in his boyhood as a rough, athletic man, whose black and bushy eyebrows were usually contracted into something which seemed like a frown. These boyish recollections were far from doing Euston justice. He was a man of masculine and determined character.

His will was strong, his pa.s.sions violent; he was full of prejudices, and when thwarted or contradicted, his rage was formidable. His honor was unquestioned; he was most bluntly and unmanageably honest. Yet through the rock and iron of his character, there ran, known to but few, a delicate vein of poetic feeling. The music of his daughter, or the verses of his favorite Burns, could often bring tears to his stern gray eyes. For his wife, whom he had married in a fit of pique and disappointment, when little more than a boy, he cared nothing; but his fondness for his daughter was unbounded. He alone could control her; for she loved him ardently, and he was the only living thing of which she stood in awe.

CHAPTER IX.

Elle ne manque jamais de saisir promptement L'apparente lueur du moindre attachement, D'en semer la nouvelle avec beaucoup de joie,--_Le Tartufe_.

Among Morton's acquaintance was a certain Miss Blanche Blondel. They had been schoolmates when children; and as, at a later date, Miss Blanche had been fond of making long visits to a friend in Cambridge, during term time, Morton, in common with many others, had a college acquaintance with her, so that they were now on a footing of easy intercourse. Not that he liked her. On the contrary, she had inspired him with a very emphatic aversion; but being rather a skirmisher on the outposts of society, than enrolled in the main battalion, she was anxious to make the most of the acquaintance she had. She had the eyes of an Argus, and was as sly, smooth, watchful, and _rusee_ as a tortoise sh.e.l.l cat; wonderfully dexterous at finding or making gossip, and unwearied in sowing it, broadcast, to the right and left.

One evening Morton was at a ball, crowded to the verge of suffocation.

At length he found himself in a corner from which there was no retreat, while the stately proportions of Mrs. Frederic Goldenberg barred his onward progress. But when that distinguished lady chanced to move aside, she revealed the countenance of Miss Blondel, beaming on him like the moon after an eclipse. She nodded and smiled. There was no escape. Morton smiled hypocritically, and said, "Good evening."

Blanche, as usual, was eager for conversation, and, after a few commonplaces, she said, turning up her eyes at him with an arch expression,--

"I have a piece of news to tell you, Mr. Morton."

"Ah!" replied Morton, expecting something disagreeable.

"A piece of news that you will be charmed to hear."

"Indeed."

"Why, how cold you are! And I know that, in your heart, you are burning to hear it."

"If you think so, you are determined to give my patience a hard schooling."

"Well, I will not tantalize you any more. Miss Edith Leslie sailed from Liverpool for home last Wednesday."

"Ah!"

"How cold you are again! Are you not glad to hear it?"

"Certainly--all her friends will be glad to hear it."

"Upon my word, Mr. Morton, you are worse and worse. When a gentleman dances twice with a young lady on cla.s.s day, and twice at Mrs.

Fanfaron's ball, and joins her in the street besides, has she not a right to feel hurt when he hears with such profound indifference of her coming home after a year's absence?"

Morton could hardly restrain the extremity of his distaste and impatience.

"Miss Leslie, I imagine, would spend very little thought upon the matter." And he hastened, first to change the conversation, and then to close it altogether.

Having escaped from his fair informant, he remained divided between pleasure at the tidings, and annoyance at the manner in which they had been told.

In a few days Miss Leslie arrived. Her beauty had matured during her absence. She was conspicuously and brilliantly handsome, and was admired accordingly,--a fact which, though she could not but be conscious of it, seemed to affect her very little. Morton found her but slightly changed, with the same polished and quiet frankness, the same lively conversation, not without a tinge of sarcasm, and the same enthusiasm of character, betraying itself by an earnestness of manner, and never by any extravagance of expression. He had many opportunities of seeing her, Miss Blanche Blondel being but rarely present, and, in his growing admiration of her, the charms of his unbridled cousin faded more and more from his memory.

CHAPTER X.

For three whole days you thus may rest From office business, news, and strife.--_Pope_.

When the summer heats set in, Meredith, one evening, drove to Morton's house, and, arrayed in linen and gra.s.s-cloth, smoked his cigar under his friend's veranda with as much contentment as the thermometer at ninety would permit. The window at his side was that of the room which Morton used as his study, and the table was covered with books.

"Colonel," said Meredith, "what a painstaking fellow you are! Ever since you left college--except when you were off on that journey, which was one of the most rational things you ever did in your life--you have been digging here among your books, as if you were some half-starved law student, with a prospect of matrimony."

"I've done digging for the present. It's against my principles to work much in July and August."

"What do you mean to do?"

"Set out on a journey."

"I suppose so. You are a lucky fellow."

"Give yourself a vacation, and come with me."

"No, I'm in for it for the next two months; but I will have my revenge before long."

"Three days from your office will never ruin you or your family. Come with me to New Baden, if you can't do better."