The Beautiful Wretch, William Black [digital ebook reader .TXT] 📗

/> Here, however, a strange thing happened. Frank King's ball was yellow, Madge's green, Mr. Tom's brown. Now, by some mysterious process, that yellow ball was always in a commanding position near the middle of the table, while, when Mr. Tom came to play, the green ball was as invariably under a cushion.

'Well, you are a sniggler, Madge,' said her brother, becoming very angry. 'You play for not a single thing but the cushion. I didn't think you cared so much for twopence-halfpenny in coppers.'

'How can I play out when you follow?' said Madge; but even that flattery of his skill was unavailing.

'Wait a bit,' said he; 'I'll catch you. You can't always sniggle successfully. Even Roberts himself--I beg your pardon Mr. Roberts, it was the other Roberts I meant--couldn't always get under the cushion. Wait a bit.'

There was no doubt that Madge was a most provoking and persistent sniggler. She would play for nothing, and the consequence was that Frank King, to his own intense astonishment, found himself possessed of his original three lives, while everybody else's lives were slowly dwindling down. She played with such judgment, indeed, that Mr. Tom at length got seriously angry, and began to hit wildly at the green ball in the savage hope of fluking it, the inevitable result being that he ran in himself twice, and departed from the game, and from the room too, saying he was going to smoke a cigar.

Then these four diverged into various varieties of the game, in all of which Madge was Frank King's champion and instructress; and he was very grateful to her, and tried to do his best, though he was chiefly engaged in thinking that her clear blue-gray eyes were so singularly like Nan's eyes. Indeed, Madge had now to put forth all her skill, for he and she were playing partners against the other two, and it was but little help she got from him.

'I am very sorry,' he said to her, after making a fearfully bad shot. 'I ought to apologise.'

'At all events, don't always leave the red ball over a pocket,' she said, sharply; but that may have been less temper than an evidence that she was really in earnest about the game.

Moreover, they came out victors after all, and she was greatly pleased; and she modestly disclaimed what he said about her having done all the scoring, and said she thought he played very well considering how few opportunities he must have had of practising. As she said so--looking frankly towards him--he thought that was just the way Nan would have spoken. The pleasant and refined expression of the mouth was just the same, and there was the same careless grace of the fair hair that escaped from its bonds in fascinating tangles. He thought her face was a little less freckled than Nan's--perhaps she did not brave the sunlight and the sea air so much.

The evening passed with a wonderful rapidity; when Mr. Tom came back again into the room, followed by a servant bringing seltzer-water and things, they found it was nearly eleven.

'I must bid your mamma good-night and be off,' said Frank King to Madge.

'Oh,' she said, 'it is unnecessary; mamma goes to her room early. She will make her excuses to you to-morrow.'

In an instant the pale, pretty face had flushed up.

'I mean when you call again, if you are not going back to London at once,' she stammered.

'Oh no,' he said quite eagerly, 'I am not going back to London at once; I may stay here some little time. And, of course, I shall call and see your mamma again if I may--perhaps to-morrow.'

'Then we may see you again,' she said pleasantly, as she offered him her hand. 'Good-night; Edith and I will leave you to your billiards and cigars. And I hope your prophecies are not going to interfere with our morning walk to-morrow. When there is a heavy sea coming in you see it very well from the New Pier. Good-night.'

Miss Madge went upstairs to her room, but instead of composing her mind to sleep, she took out writing materials and wrote this letter:

'Dear old Mother Nan--You won't guess who is below at this moment--11 p.m.--playing billiards with Tom and Mr. Roberts. Captain King. If I were he I would call myself Holford King, for that sounds better. Edith says he is greatly improved, and she always said he was nice-looking. I think he is improved. He was not in uniform, of course, which was a pity, for I remember him before; but at all events he wore neat, plain gold studs, and not a great big diamond or opal. I can't bear men wearing jewels like that; why don't they wear a string of pearls round their neck? I have been in such a fright. H. sent me a letter--not in his own handwriting. Isn't it silly? I don't want my name in the papers. Tom says they will put him in prison "like winking" if he is not careful. It is stupid; and of course I shall not answer it, or have anything to do with him. Mr. Roberts dined here this evening. I think he has too much to say for himself. I like quiet and gentlemanly men. Captain King and his party got 135 pheasants last Thursday, to say nothing of hares and rabbits; so I suppose they have good shooting. I wish they would ask Tom. _C. J._ has disappeared from Brighton, so far as I can make out; and I beleive (_sic_) he is haunting the neighbourhood of Lewes, looking out for a certain old Mother Hubbard. Happily he has got nothing to fear from the Chancery people: I suppose they daren't interfere with the Church. My sealskin coat has come back; it is beautiful now, and I have got a hat and feather exactly the same colour as my Indian red skirt, so I think they will go very well together. The sealskin looks blacker than it was. The sea is rough to-night, but I hope to get down the Pier to-morrow morning. Brighton is fearfully crowded just now, and you should come away from that sleepy old Lewes, and have a look at your friends. Good-night, dear Nan. MADGE.'


CHAPTER XIII.


ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN.

The woman is not born who can quite forget the man who has once asked her to become his wife, even though at the moment she may have rejected the offer without a thought of hesitation. Life with her, as with all of us, is so much a matter of experiment, and so rarely turns out to be what one anticipated, that even when she is married, and surrounded with children, husband, and friends, she cannot but at times bethink herself of that proposal, and wonder what would have happened if she had accepted it. Would her own life have been fuller, happier, less occupied with trivial and sordid cares? Would he have become as great and famous if she had married him, and hampered him with early ties? Might not she--supposing things to have gone the other way--have saved him from utter ruin, and have given him courage and hope? After all, there is nothing more important in the world than human happiness; and as the simple 'Yes' or 'No' of maidenhood may decide the happiness of not one but two lives, that is why it is a matter of universal interest in song and story; and that is why quite elderly people, removed by half a century from such frivolities themselves, but nevertheless possessed of memory and a little imagination, and still conscious that life has been throughout a puzzle and a game of chance, and that even in their case it might have turned out very differently, find themselves awaiting with a strange curiosity and anxiety the decision of some child of seventeen, knowing no more of the world than a baby dormouse.

On the other hand, the woman who does not marry is still less likely to forget such an offer. Here, plainly enough, was a turning-point in her life; what has happened since she owes to her decision then. And as an unmarried life is naturally and necessarily an unfulfilled life, where no great duty or purpose steps in to stop the gap, it is but little wonder if in moments of disquietude or unrest the mind should travel away in strange speculations, and if the memory of a particular person should be kept very green indeed. Nan Beresford, at the age of twenty, would have been greatly shocked if you had told her that during the past three years she had been almost continually thinking about the young sailor whom she had rejected at Bellagio. Had she not been most explicit--even eagerly explicit? Had she not experienced an extraordinary sense of relief when he was well away from the place, and when she could prove to herself in close self-examination that she was in no way to blame for what had occurred? She was a little sorry for him, it is true; but she could not believe that it was a very serious matter. He would soon forget that idle dream in the brisk realities of his profession, and he would show that he was not like those other young men who came fluttering round her sisters with their simmering sentimentalities and vain flirtations. Above all, she had been explicit. That episode was over and closed. It was attached to Bellagio; leaving Bellagio, they would leave it also behind. And she was glad to get away from Bellagio.

Yes; Nan would have been greatly shocked if you had told her that during these three years she had been frequently thinking of Frank King--except, of course, in the way any one may think of an officer in Her Majesty's Navy, whose name sometimes appears in the Admiralty appointments in the newspapers. Her mind was set on far other and higher things. It was the churches and pictures of Italy that began it--the frescoes in the cloisters, the patient sculpture, telling of the devotion of lives, even the patient needlework on the altars. She seemed to breathe the atmosphere of an Age of Faith. And when, after a long period of delightful reverie abroad, and mystical enjoyment of music and architecture and painting, all combining to place their noblest gifts at the service of religion, she returned to her familiar home in Brighton, some vague desire still remained her heart that she might be able to make something beautiful of her life, something less selfish and worldly than the lives of most she saw around her. And it so happened that among her friends those who seemed to her most earnest in their faith and most ready to help the poor and the suffering--those who had the highest ideals of existence and strove faithfully to reach these--were mainly among the High Church folk. Insensibly she drew nearer and nearer to them. She took no interest at all in any of the controversies then raging about the position of the Ritualists in the Church of England; it was persons, not principles, that claimed her regard; and when she saw that So-and-so and So-and-so in her own small circle of friends were living, or striving to live, pure and noble and self-sacrificing lives,