Guy Livingston, or, "Thorough"

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GUY LIVINGSTONE;
OK,
" T H O R O U G H."
ICn HABE GELEBT UND GELIEBT.
NEW YORK:
HARTER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FllANKLIN SQUAKE.
1857.
^^
^Vi *
.n
OEC 7 77 GUY LIVINGST
ABF.
CHAPTER I.
"Neque imbellera feroces
Progenerant aquilse columbam."
It is not a pleasant epoch in one's life, the lirst forty-eight
hours at a large public school. I have known
strong-minded men of mature age confess that they
never thought of it without a shiver. I don't count
the home-sickness, which perhaps only affects serious-ly
the most innocent of debutants^ but there are other
thousand and one little annoyances which make up a
great trouble. If there were nothing else, for instance,
the unceasing query, "What's your name?" makes
you feel the possession of a cognomen at all a serious
burden and bar to advancement in life.
A dull afternoon toward the end of October ; the
sky a neutral tint of ashy gray ; a bitter northeast
wind tearing down the yellow leaves from the old elms
that girdle the school-close of ; a foul, clinging
paste of mud and trampled grass-blades under foot,
that chilled you to the marrow ; a mob of two hund-red
lower boys, vicious with cold and the enforcement
of keeping goal through the first football match of the
season—in the midst, I, who speak to you, feeling my-self
in an eminently false position—there's the mise en
scene.
4 GJJY LIVINGSTONE.
My small persecutors had surrounded me, but had
hardly time to settle well to their work, when one of
the players came "by, and stopped for an instant to see
what was going on. The match had not yet begun.
There was nothing which interested him much ap-parently,
for he was passing on, when my despondent
answer to the everlasting question caught his ear. He
turned round then
—
"Any relation to Hammond of Holt?"
I replied, meekly but rather more cheerfully, that
he was my uncle.
" I know liim very well," the new-comer said.
"Don't bully him more tlian you can help, you fel-lows
; I'll wait for you after calling ov^er, Hammond.
I should like to ask you about the squire."
He had no time to say more, for just then the ball
was kicked off, and the battle began. I saw him aft-erward
often during that afternoon, always in the front
of the rush or the thick of the scrimmage, and I saw,
too, more than one player limp out of his path discon-solately,
trying vainly to dissemble the pain of a vi-cious
" hack."
I'll try to sketch Guy Livingstone as he appeared
to me then, at our first meeting.
He was about fifteen, but looked fully a year older,
not only from his height, but from a disproportionate
length of limb and development of muscle, which ripen-ed
later into the rarest union of activity and strength
that I have ever known. His features were very dark
and pale, too strongly marked to be called handsome
;
about the lips and lower jaw especially there was a
set sternness that one seldom sees before the beard is
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 5
grown. The eyes were very dark gray, nearly black,
and so deeply set under the thick eyebrows that they
looked smaller than they really were ; and I remem-ber,
even at that early age, their expression, when an-gered,
was any thing but pleasant to meet. His dress
was well adapted for displaying his deep square chest
and sinewy arms—a close-fitting jersey, and white
trowsers girt by a broad black belt ; the cap, orange
velvet, fronted with a silver Maltese cross.
The few words he had spoken worked an immediate
change in my favor. I heard one of my tormentors
say, not without awe, " The Count knows his people
at home ;" and they not only left me in peace, but, a
little later, some of them began to tell me of a recent
exploit of Guy's, which had raised him high in their
simple hero-worship, and which, I dare say, is still
enumerated among the feats of the brave days of old
by the fags over their evening small-beer.
To appreciate it, you must understand that the high-est
form in the school—the sixth—were regarded by
the fags and other subordinate classes with an inex-pressible
reverence and terror. They were considered
as exempt from the common frailties of schoolboy na-ture:
no. one ventured to fix a limit to their poAver.
Like the gods of the Lotus-eater, they lay beside their
nectar, rarely communing with ordinary mortals except
to give an order or set a punishment. On the form
immediately below them part of their glory was reflect-ed
; these were a sort of TjuWeoc, awaiting their trans-lation
into the higher Olympus of perfected omnipo-tence.
In this intermediate state flourished, at the time I
6 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
speak of, one Joseph Baines, a fat, small-eyed youth,
with immense pendent pallid cheeks, rejoicing in the
sobriquet of "Buttons," his father "being eminent in
that line in the Midland Metropolis. The son was
Brummagem to the back-bone. He was intensely
stupid ; but, having been a fixture at beyond
the memory of the oldest inhabitant, he had slowly
gravitated on into his present position, on the old Ring
principle, " weight must tell." I believe he had been
bullied continuously for many years, and now, with a
dull, pertinacious malignity, was biding his time, in-tending,
on his accession to power, to inflict full re-prisals
on those below him ; or, in his own expressive
language, "to take it out of 'em, like smoke." He
was keeping his hand in by the perpetration of small
tyrannies on all whom he was not afraid to meddle
with; but hitherto, from a lingering suspicion, per-haps,
that it was not quite safe, he had never annoyed
Livingstone.
It was on a Saturday night, the hebdomadal Satur-nalia,
when the week's work was over, and no one had
any thing to do ; the heart of Joseph was jocund with
pork chops and mulled beer, and, his evil genius tempt-ing
him, he proposed to three of his intimates "to go
and give the Count a turn." Nearly every one had a
nickname, and this had been given to Guy, partly, I
think, from his haughty demeanor, partly from a prev-alent
idea that this German dignity was dormant some-where
in his family. When the quartette entered,
Guy knew perfectly what they came for, but he sat
quite still and silent, while two of them held him down
by the arms in his chair.
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 7
"I think you'd look very well with a cross on,
Count," Baines said, " so keep steady while we deco-rate
you."
As he spoke he was mixing up a paste with tallow
and candle-snuff, and, when it was ready, came near to
daub the cross on Livingstone's forehead.
The two who held him had been quite deceived by
his unexpected tranquillity, and had somewhat relax-ed
their gripe as they leaned forward to witness the
operation ; but the fourth, standing idle, saw all at
once the pupils of his eyes contract, and his lips set
so ominously, that the words were in his mouth,
"Hold him fast!" when Guy, exerting the full force
of his arms, shook himself clear, and grasping a brass-candlestick
within his reach, struck the executioner
straight between the eyes. The effort of freeing him-self
to some extent broke the force of the blow, or the
great Baines dynasty might have ended there and
then ; as it was. Buttons fell like a log, and, rolling
once over on his face, lay there bleeding and motion-less.
While the assistants were too much astounded to
detain him, Guy walked out without a glance at his
prostrate enemy ; and going straight to the head of
the house, told him what had happened. The charac-ter
of the aggressor was so well known, that, when
they found he was not seriously hurt, they let Guy off
easy with "two books of the Iliad to write out in
Greek." Buttons kept the sick-room for ten days,
and came out looking more pasty than ever, with his
pleasant propensities decidedly checked for the time.
In his parish church at Birmingham, two tons of
8 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
martle weighing liim down, the old button-maker
sleeps with his father (to pluralize his ancestors would
he a grave historical error), and Joseph II. reigns in
his stead, exercising, I doubt not, over his factory-people
the same ingenuity of torture which in old
times nearly drove the fags to rebellion. He is a De-mosthenes,
they say, at vestries, and a Draco at the
Board of Giiardians ; but in the centre of his broad
face, marring the platitude of its smooth-shaven re-spectability,
still burns angrily a dark red scar—Guy's
sign-manual—which he will carry to his grave.
The exultation of the lower school over this exploit
was boundless. Fifty energetic admirers contended
for the honor of writing out the punishment inflicted
on the avenger ; and one sentimentalist, just in Herod-otus,
preserved the fatal candlestick as an inestimable
relic, wreathing its stem with laurel and myrtle, in
imitation of the honors paid by Athens to the sword
that slew the Pisistratid.
GUY LIVINGSTONE.
CHAPTER II.
" My only books
Were woman's looks,
And folly all they taught me,"
The Count bore liis honors very calmly, though
every week some fresh feat of bodily strength or dar-ing
kept adding to his popularity. It was no slight
temptation to his vanity ; for, as some one has said
truly, no successful adventurer in after-life ever wins
such undivided admiration and hearty partisans as a
school hero. The prestige of the liberator among the
Irish peasantry comes nearest to it, I think ; or the
feeling of a clan, a hundred years ago, toward their
chief. It must be very pleasant to be quoted so in-cessantly
and believed in so implicitly, and to know
that your decisions are so absolutely without appeal.
From that first day when he interfered in my favor,
Guy never ceased to accord me the ajgis of his protec-tion,
and it served me well ; for, then as now, I was
strong neither in body nor nerve. Yet our tastes,
save in one respect, were as dissimilar as can be im-agined.
The solitary conformity was, that we were
both, in a desultory way, fond of reading, and our fa-vorite
books were the same. Neither would do more
school-work than was absolutely necessary, but at
light literature of a certain class we read hard.
I don't think Guy's was what is usually called a
poetical temperament, for his taste in this line waa
A2
10 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
quite one-sided. He was no admirer of the pictur-esque,
certainly. I have heard him say that his idea
of a country to live in was where there was no hill
steep enough to wind a horse in good condition, and
no wood that hounds could not run through in fifteen
minutes ; therein following the fancy of that eminent
French philosopher, who, being invited to climb Ben
Lomond to enjoy the most magnificent of views, re-sponded
meekly, ^^Aimez-vous les beuutes de la Na-ture?
Pourmoi,jelesahhorre.^'' Can you not fancy
the strident emphasis on the last syllable, revealing
how often the poor materialist had been victimized be-fore
he made a stand at last?
All through Livingstone's life the real was to pre-dominate
over the ideal ; and so it was at this period
of it. He had a great dislike to purely sentimental
or descriptive poetry, preferring to all others those bat-tle-
ballads, like the Lays ofRome, which stir the blood
like a trumpet, or those love-songs which heat it like
rough strong wine.
He was very fond of Homer, too. He liked the di-apason
of those sonorous hexameters, that roll on, sink-ing
and swelling with the ebb and flow of a stormy
sea. I hear his voice—deep-toned and powerful even
at that early age—finishing the story of Poseidon and
his beautiful prize—their bridal-bed laid in the hollow
of a curling wave
—
" Hofxpvpeov S' upa Kvfia TrEpiarddi], ovpe'i laov,
KvpTudev, Kpvipev d^ Oedv OvrjTrjv te yvvaiKa."
And yet they say that the glorious old Sciote was
a myth, and the Odyssey a magazine worked out
by clever contributors. They rnight as well assert
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 11
that all his marshals would have made up one Na-poleon.
I remember how we used to pass in review the beau-ties
of old time, for whom "many drew swords and
died," whose cliarms convulsed kingdoms and ruined
cities, who called the stars after their own names.
Ah ! Gyneth and Ida, peerless queens of beauty, it
was exciting, doubtless, to gaze down from your vel-veted
gallery on the mad tilting below, to see ever and
anon through the yellow dust a kind, handsome face
looking up at you, pale but scarcely reproachful, just
before the horse-hoofs trod it down ; ah ! fairest Ni-nons
and Dianas—prizes that, like the Whip at New-market,
were always to be challenged for—you were
proud when your reckless lover came to woo, with the
blood of last night's favorite not dry on his blade ; but
what were your fatal honors compared to those of a
reigning toast in the rough, ancient days ? The demi-gods
and heroes that were suitors did not stand upon
trifles, and the contest often ended in the extermina-tion
of all the lady's male relatives to the third and
fourth generation. People then took it quite as a mat-ter
of course—rather a credit to the family than oth-erwise.
Guy and I discussed, often and gi-avely, the relative
merits of Evadne the violet-haired, Helen, Cleopatra,
and a hundred others, just as, on the steps of White's,
or in the smoking-room at the "Eag," men compare
the points of the debutantes of the season.
His knowledge of feminine psychology—it nixist
have been theoretical, for he was not seventeen—im-plied
a study and depth of research that was quite
12 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
surprising ; "but I am "bound to state that his estimate
of the strength of character and principle inherent in
the weaker sex was any thing hut high ; nearly, in-deed,
identical with that formed by the learned lady
who, to the question, "Did she think the virtue of
any single one of her sisterhood impregnable?" replied
^^Cest selony He often used to astonish my weak
mind by his observations on this head. I did not
know till afterward that Sir Henry Fallowfield, the
Bassompierre of his day, came for the Christmas
pheasant-shooting every year into Guy's neighborhood,
and that he had already imbibed lessons of question-able
morality, sitting at the gouty feet of that evil
Gamaliel.
He spoke of and to w^omen of every class readily
whenever he got the chance, always with perfect
aj)lomb and self-possession ; and I have heard older
men remark since, that in him it did not appear the pre-cocity
of " the rising generation," but rather the confi-dence
of one who knew his subject well. Perhaps the
fact of his father having died when he was an infant,
and his having always been suzerain among his women
at home, may have had something to do with this.
An absurd instance of what I have been saying hap-pened
just before Guy left.
By time-honored custom, four or five of the Sixth
were invited every week to dine with the head master.
They were not, strictly speaking, convivial, those sol-emn
banquets; where the host was condescendingly
affable, and his guests cheerful, as it were, under pro-test
; resembling somewhat the entertainments in the
captain's cabin, where the chief is unpopular.
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 13
Our Archididascalus was a kind-hearted, honest
man, albeit, by virtue of his office, somewhat strict
and stern. You could read the Categories in the
wrinkles of his colorless face, and contested passages
of Thucydides in the crows'-feet round his eyes. The
everlasting grind at the educational tread-mill had
worn away all he might once have had of imagination
;
he translated with precisely the same intonations the
Tusculan Disputations and—"Epw^" dvlKare fidxav.
He had lately taken to himself a wife, his junior by
a score of years. The academic atmosphere had not
had time then to freeze her into the dignity befitting
her position ; when I met her ten years later, she was
steady and staid enough, poor thing, to have been the
wife of Grotius.
Guy sat next to her that evening, and before the
first course was over a decided flirtation was estab-lished.
The pretty hostess, albeit wife of a doctor
and daughter of a dean, had evidently a strong coquet-tish
element in her composition, and a very slight
spark was sufficient to relight the veteris vestigia
flammcB,
For some time her husband did not seem to realize
the position ; but gradually his sentences grew rare
and curt ; he opened his mouth, no longer to let fall
the pearls of his wisdom, but to stop it with savory
meat ; finally this last resource failed, and he sat,
looking wrathfully but helplessly on the proceedings
at the other end of the table—a lamentable instance
of prostrated ecclesiastical dignity. His disgust, how-ever,
was far exceeded by the horror of one of the
party, a meek, cadaverous-looking boy, whose parents
14 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
lived in the town, and who was wont to regard the
head master as the vicegerent of all powers, civil and
sacerdotal—I am not sure he did not include military
as well. I caught him looking several times at the
door and the ceiling with a pale, guilty face, as if he
expected some immediate visitation to punish the sac-rilege.
However, heaven, which did not interrupt the
feast of Atreus or of Tereus (till the dessert), allowed
us to finish our dinner in peace. During the interval
when we sat alone over his claret, our host revived a
little ; but utterly relapsed in the drawing-room, where
things went on worse than ever. Guy leaned over
the fair Penelope (such was her classical and not inap-propriate
name) while she was singing, and over her
sofa afterward, evidently considering himself her legit-imate
proprietor for the time, and regarding the hus-band,
as he hovered round them, in the light of an
unauthorized intruder. The latter would have given
any thing, once or twice, to have interfered, I am sure ;
but, apart from the extreme ridicule of the thing, he
was in his own house, and as hospitable as Saladin.
It was a great scene, when, at parting, she gave Guy
the camellia that she wore at her breast ; the doctor
gasped thrice convulsively and said no word ; but I
wonder how she accounted afterward for the smile and
blush which answered some whispered thanks ? There
are certain limits that even the historian dares not
transgress ; a veil falls between the profane and the
thalamus of an LL.D. ; but I rather imagine she had
a hard time of it that night, the poor little woman
!
Let us hope, in charity, that she held her own.
When the Count was questioned as to the conver-
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 15
sation that liad passed, he declined to give any partic-ulars,
merely remarking that " he had to thank Dr.
for a very pleasant evening, and he hoped every
one had enjoyed themselves very much"—which was
philanthropic, to say the least of it.
I don't know if it was our imagination, but w^e fan-cied
that when the head master called up Livingstone
in form after this, he did so with an air of grave defi-ance,
such as a duelist of the Old Regime may have
worn when, doffing his plumed hat, he said to his ad-versary,
^'En garde P''
There was little time to make observations, for
shortly afterward Guy went up to Oxford, whither,
six months later, I followed him.
16 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
CHAPTER III.
'Through many an hour of summer suns,
By many pleasant ways,
Like Hezekiah's, backward runs
The shadow of my days."
When I came up, I found Guy quite established
and at home. He was a general favorite with all the
men he knew at college, though intimate with but very-few.
There was but one individual who hated him
thoroughly, and I think the feeling was mutual—the
senior tutor, a flaccid being, with a hand that felt like
a fish two days out of water, a large nose, and a per-petual
cold in his head. He consistently and impar-tially
disbelieved every one on their word, requiring
material proof of each assertion ; an original mode of
acquiring the confidence of his pupils, and precluding
any thing like an attempt at deception on their part.
I remember well a discussion on his merits that took
place in the porter's lodge one night just after twelve.
When several had given their opinions more or less
strongly, some one asked the gate -ward what he
thought of the individual in question, to which that
eminent functionary thus replied : " Why, you see,
sir, I'm only a servant, and, as such, can't speak freely,
but I wish he was dead, I do."
As I have said, Livingstone disliked Selkirk heart-ily,
and did not take the trouble to conceal it. He
used to look at him sometimes with a curious expres-sion
in his eyes, which made the tutor twirl and writhe
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 17
uncomfortably in his chair. The latter annoyed him
as mucli as he possibly could, but Guy held on the
even tenor of his way, seldom contravening the stat-utes
except in hunting three days a week, which he
persisted in doing, all lectures and regulations not-withstanding.
He rode little under fourteen stone
even then ; but the three horses he kept were well up
to his weight, and he stood A 1 in Jem Hill's estima-tion
as "the best heavy-weight that had come out of
Oxford for many a day ;" for he not only went straight
as a die, but rode to hounds instead of over them. I
suppose this latter practice is inherent in University
sportsmen. I know, in my time, the way in which
they pressed on hounds, for the first two fields out of
cover or after a check, used to make the gray hairs,
which were the brave old huntsman's crown of glory,
stand on end with indignation and terror, so that
he prayed devoutly for a big fence which, like the
broken bridge at Leipsic, might prove a stopper to the
pursuing army. There was the making of a good
rider in many of them, too ; they only wanted ballast,
for they knew no more of fear than Nelson did, and
would grind over the Vale of the Evenlode and the
Marsh Gibbon double timber as gayly and undaunt-edly
as over the accommodating BuUingdon hurdles.
And what screws they rode ! ancient animals bearing
as many scars as a viexLX de la vieille, that were con-sidered
short of work if they did not come out five
days a fortnight. This was Guy's favorite pursuit
;
but he threw off the superfluity of his animal energies
in all sorts of athletics : in sparring especially he at-tained
a rare excellence ; so well-known was it, in-
18 GUY LivmasTONE.
deed, that he passed his first year without striking a
hlow in anger, through default of an antagonist, except
a chance one or two exchanged in the melee which is
imperative on the 5th of November.
I did not hunt much myself, for my health was far
from strong, and, I confess, myUniversity recollections
are not lively.
After the first flush of novelty had worn ofi^, they
Tbored one intensely—those large wines and suppers
where, night by night, a score of NephelegeretaB sat
shrouded in smoke, chanting the same equivocal dit-ties,
drinking the same fiery liquors miscalled the juice
of the grape, villainous enough to make the patriarch
that planted the vine stir remorsefully in his grave
under Ararat—each man all the while talking "shop,"
a Voutrance. The skeleton of ennui sat at these dreary
feasts ; and it was not even crowned with roses. I
often used to wonder what the majority ofmy contem-poraries
conversed about, when in the bosom of their
families, during the " long." They couldn't always
have been inflicting Oxford on their miserable rela-tives
; the weakest of human natures would have re-volted
against such tyranny ; and yet the horizon of
their ideas seemed as utterly bounded by Bagley and
Headington Hill as if the great ocean-stream had flow-ed
outside those limits. Some adventurous spirits, it
is true, stretched away as far as Woodstock and Ab-ingdon,
but I doubt if they returned much improved
by the grand tour.
One of their most remarkable characteristics was
the invincible terror and repugnance that they appear-ed
to entertain to the society of women of their own
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 19
class. When the visitation was inevitable, it is im-possible
to describe the great horror that fell on these
unfortunate boys. The feeling of Zanoni's pupil, as
the Watcher on the Threshold came floating and creep-ing
toward him, was nothing to it.
For example, at Commemoration—to which festival
" lions" from all quarters of the earth resorted in vast
droves—when one of this class was hard hit by the
charms of some fair stranger, he never thought of ex-pressing
his admiration otherwise than by piteous
looks, directed at her from an immense distance, out
of shot for an opera-glass ; when in her immediate
vicinity his motto was that of the Breton baron
—
mourir muet. Claret-cup flowed and Champagne
sparkled, powerless to raise him to the audacity of an
avowal. Under the woods of Nuneham, in the gar-dens
of Blenheim, amid the crowd of the Commemo-ration
ball, the same deep river of diffidence flowed
between him and his happiness. My own idea is
that, after all was over, the silent ones, like Jacques'
stricken deer, used to "go weep" over chances lost
and opportunities neglected. With waitresses at way-side
inns, et id genus omne, they were tolerably self-possessed
and reliant ; though even there " a thousand
might well be stopped by three," and I would have
backed an intelligent barmaid against the field at
odds ; indeed, I think I have seen a security nearly
allied to contempt on the fine features of a certain
" lone star''' as she parried—so easily !—the compli-ments
and repartees of a dozen assailants at once, ac-counted,
in their own quadrangles, Millamours of the
darkest dye.
20 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
Guy accounted for this unfortunate peculiarity by
saying that a cigar in the mouth was the normal state
of many of these men ; so that, when circumstances
debarred them from the Havana courage, they lost all
presence of mind, and, being unable to retreat under
cover of the smoke, lapsed instantly into a sullen de-spair,
suffering themselves to be shot down unresist-ingly.
Perhaps some future pliilosopher will favor us
with a better solution to this important problem in
physics ; I know of none.
After all, the reading men did best, though we did
not think so then, when we saw them creeping into
morning chapel jaded and heavy-eyed, after a debauch
over Herodotus or the Stagyrite. They had a pur-pose
in view, at all events, and, I believe, were placid-ly
content during the progress of its attainment—in
the seventh heaven when their hopes were crowned
by a First, or even a Second. True ; the pace was
too good for some of the half-bred ones, and such as
could not stand the training, who departed, to fade
away rapidly in the old house at home, or to pine,
slowly, but very surely, in remote curacies.
Some of these, I fancy, must have sympathized with
Madame de Stael's consumptive niece, who answered
to the question, " Why she was weeping all alone ?"
"e/e me regrette.''^ When, resting in their daily walk,
shortened till it became a toil to reach the shady seat
under the elms at the garden's end, they watched the
stalwart plowmen and drovers go striding by, with-out
a trouble behind their tanned foreheads except the
thought that wages might fall a shilling a week, was
there no envy, I wonder, as they looked down on the
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 21
wan hands lying so listless across their knees ? Would
they not have given tlieir First, and their fellowsliip
in embryo to boot, to have had the morning appetite
of Tom Chauntrell, the horse-breaker, after twelve
pipes overnight, with gin and water to match, or to
have been able, like Joe Springett, the under keeper,
to breast the steepest brae in Cumberland with never
a sob or a painful breatli ? Did they never mui'mur
while thinking how brightly the blade might have
flashed, how deftly have been wielded, if the w^orthless
scabbard had only lasted out till, on some grand field-day,
the word was given, "Draw swords?" Some
felt this, doubtless ; but the most part, I imagine,
were possessed with a comfortable assurance that their
short life had been useful, if not ornamental ; and so,
to a certain extent, they had their reward. At any
rate, their ending was to the full as glorious as that
of some other friends of ours, who crawl away from
the battle-ground of the Yiveiirs to die, or to linger
on helpless hypochondriacs.
If I have spoken depreciatingly or unfairly of the
mass of my college coevals (and it may well be so), I
do full justice, in thought at least, to some brilliant
exceptions. I founded friendships there which, I trust,
will outlive me.
I do not forget Warrenne, too good for the men he
lived with, a David in our camp of Kedar—always go-ing
on straight in the path he thought right—though
ever and anon his hot Irish blood would chafe fiercely
under the curb self-imposed—and laboring incessant-ly,
with all gentleness, to induce others to follow ; a
Launcelot in his devotion to womankind ; a Galahad
22 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
in purity of thought and purpose. I have never known
a man of the world so single-hearted, or a saint with
'
so much savoir vivre.
I see before me now Lovell, with his frank look and
cheery laugh, the model of a stalwart English squire-hood
; and Petre, equal to either fortune ; in reverse
or success calm and impassible as Athos the mousque-taire
; regarding money simply as a circulating medi-um,
with the profoundest contempt for its actual value —se riiina7it en prince. He edified us greatly, on
one occasion, by meeting his justly offended father
with a stern politeness, declining to hold any commu-nication
with him by word or letter till he (the sire)
"could express himself in a more Christian spirit."
Then there was Barlowe, the pearl of gentlemen
riders, the very apple of Charles Symond's eye ; un-spoiled
by a hundred triumphs, and never degenera-ting
into the professional, though I believe his idea of
earthly felicity was
A match for £50, 10 st. 7 lb. each. Owners up.
Over 4 miles of a fair hunting country.
I see him, too, with his pleasant face, round, rosy,
and beardless as a child-cherub of Rubens, tempting
pale men with splitting heads to throw boots at him
in the bitterness of their envy as he entered their rooms
on the morning after a heavy drink, his eyes so clear
and guileless that you would never guess how sharp
they could be at times when a dangerous horse was
coming up on his quarter. A strange compound his
character was of cool calculation and sentimental sim-plicity.
The most astute of trainers never got the
better of him in making a match ; and I am sure, to
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 23
this day, he "believes in 's poetry, and in the im-mutability
of feminine affection.
How agreeable he was about the small hours, chirp-ing
over his grog ; alternating between reminiscences
of " My tutor's daughter" and recitals of choice mor-sels
in verse and prose ; misquoting, to the utter an-nihilation
of rhythm and sense, but all with perfect
gravity, good faith, and satisfaction
!
Nee te, inemorande, relinqumn—true Tom Lynton
!
not clever, not even high-bred, but loved by every one
for the honestest and kindest heart that ever was the
kernel of a rough rind.
Do we not remember that supper where the Fathers
of England were being discussed ? Every one, drawn
on by the current, had a stone to throw at his reliev-ing
officer, the complaint, of course, being a general
tightness in the supplies. At last, Tom, who, though
his own sire was an austere man, could not bear to
hear the absent run down, broke in, gravely remon-strating,
" Well, gentlemen," he said, " remember they're our
fellow-creatures, at all events."
They drank " Lynton and the Governors" with a
•compound multiplication of cheers.
I might mention more ; but a face rises just now
before me which makes me close the muster-roll—the
face of one who united in himself many, very many of
the best qualities of the others ; of one whom I shrink
from naming here, lest it should seem that I do so
lightly—a face that I saw six hours before its features
became set forever.
24 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
CHAPTER ly.
" A7 TOT uvaaxonsvcj, b fih rjlace Ss^ov ujuov
'Ipof, 6 <5' dvx£v' eXaaaev vtt ovarog, oarea 6' etau
"E^Aacrev* dvriKa 6' rjWev dvcl croiia ^oiviov uLnay
TowAED the end of my second year an event came
off in which we were all much interested—a steeple-chase
in which both Universities were to take part.
The stakes were worth winning—twenty sovs. en-trance,
h. f., and a hundred sovs. added ; besides, the
esprit de corps was strong, and men backed then'
opinions pretty freely. The venue was fixed at
B ; the time, the beginning of the Easter vaca-tion.
The old town was crowded like Vanity Fair. There
was a railway in progress near, and the navvies and
other "roughs" came flocking in by hundreds, so that
the municipal authorities, justly apprehensive of a
row, concentrated the cohorts of their police, and
swore in no end of specials as a reserve.
The great event came off duly, a fair instance of the
"glorious uncertainty" which backers of horses exe-crate
and ring-men adore. All the favorites were out
of the race early. Our best man, Barlowe, the centre
of many hopes, and carrying a heavy investment of
Oxford money, was floored at the second double post-and-
rail. The Cambridge cracks, too, by divers casu-alties,
were soon disposed of. At the last fence, an
Oxford man was leading by sixty yards ; but it was
GLY LIVINGSTONE. 25
his maiden race, and lie lost his head when he found
himself looking like a v^'-inner so near home. Instead
of taking the stake-and-hound at the weakest place,
h-e rode at the strongest ; his horse swerved to the
gap, took the fence sideways, and came down heavily
into the ditch of the winning field. The representa-tive
of Cambridge, who came next, riding a good steady
hunter, not fast, but safe at his fences, cantered in by
himself. I remember he was so bewildered by his
unexpected victory that one of his backers had to hold
him fast in the saddle, or he would have dismounted
before riding to scale, and so lost the stakes.
Well, the race was over and the laurels lost, so we
had nothing to do but pay and look pleasant, and then
adjourn to tiie inevitable banquet at "The George."
There was little to distinguish the proceedings from
the routine of such festivals. The winners stood
Champagne, and the losers drank it—to any amount.
The accidents of flood and field were discussed over
and over again ; and, I believe, every man of the
twenty-three who had ridden that day could and did
prove, to his own entire satisfaction, that he must
have won but for some freak of fortune totally un-avoidable,
and defying human calculation.
About nine o'clock I went out with another man to
get some fresh air, and something I wanted in the
town. At the corner of every street there was a group
of heavy, sullen faces, looking viciously ready for a
row, while out of the windows of the frequent public
houses gushed bursts of revelry hideously discordant,
from the low-browed rooms where the wild Irish sat
howling and wrangling over tlieir liquor. However,
B
26 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
we got what we wanted, and were returning, when, in
a street on our left, we heard cries and a trampling of
many feet. Two figures, looking like University men,
passed us at speed, and, throwing something down be-fore
us, dived into an alley opposite, and were lost to
sight. My companion picked up the object ; and we
had just time to make out that it was a bell-handle
and name-plate, when the pursuers came up—six or
seven " peelers" and specials, with a ruck of men and
boys. We were collared on the instant. The fact
of the property being found in our possession consti-tuted
a flagrans delictum—we were caught "red-handed."
It was vain to argue that, had we been the
delinquents, we should scarcely have been standing
there still, awaiting discovery. The idea of arguing
with a rural policeman, when, by a rare coincidence,
popular feeling is with him ! The mob regarded our
capture, exulting like the Romans over Jugurtha in
chains. It was decided " we were to go before the
Inspector." We were placed in the centre of a pha-lanx
of specials, each guarded by two regulars ; and
so the triumph, followed by a train that swelled at
every turning, .moved slowly along the Sacred Way
toward the temple of the station-house, where the
municipal Jupiter Capitolinus sat in his glory.
Before we had proceeded three hundred yards there
was a shout from the crowd, " Look out ! here come
the 'Varsity!" and down a cross street leading from
the inn, two hundred gownsmen, wild with wrath and
wassail, came leaping to the rescue.
In the van of all I caught sight of two figures—one
that I knew very well, towering, bareheaded, a hand's-
UUY LiVlxN'U STONE. 27
breadth above the throng ; tlie other, something below
the middle height, but shaggy, vast-chested, and double-jointed
as a red Highland steer—I\I*Diarmid of Trin-ity,
glory of tlie Cambridge gymnasium, and " 5 " in
the University eiglit. They -were not shouting like
the rest, but hitting out straight and remorselessly
;
and before those two strong Promachi, townsman and
navvy, peeler and special, went down like blades of
corn. Close at their shoulder I distinguished Lovell,
his clear blue eyes lightening savagely ; and stout Tom
Lynton, a deeper flush on his honest face, hewing away
with all the unscientific strength of his nervous arm.
But my two guards, very Abdiels in their duty,
never let me go ; on the contrary, one tightened his
gripe on my throat suffocatingly, while the other, though
I remained perfectly quiescent, kept giving me gentle
hints to keep the peace with the end of his staff. I
was getting sick and dizzy, when something passed
my cheek like the wind of a ball ; there was a dull,
crashing sound close at my ear ; the grasp on my neck
relaxed all at once ; I felt something across my feet,
and saw a dark blue mass, topped by the ruin of a
shiny hat, lying there quite still ; an arm was round
my waist like the coil of a cable, and I heard Guy's
voice lauo'hino- loud,
"My dear Frank,*' he said, as he dragged me away
toward the inn, " the centre of a row, as usual. Qiie,
diahle., allait ilfaire dans cette harjarre?"'
I hardly heard him, for my senses were still con-fused
; but in thirty seconds I was under the archway
of "The George." As the heroines of the Radcliffe
romances say, " I turned to tliank my preserver, but
lie wn>5 eonc.""
28 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
When I recovered my breath, I went up to a balco-ny
on the first floor and looked out. The tide of the
affray was surging gradually back into the wide open
space before the inn, and very shortly this was filled
with a chaos of furious faces and struggling arms.
The University were evidently recoiling, pressed back
by the sheer weight of their opponents ; but soon came
a re-enforcement of grooms and stable-men, light-weights,
active and wiry ; and these, with their hunt-ing-
crops and heavy cutting-whips used remorseless-ly—
like Caesar's legionaries, they struck only at the
face—once more re-established the balance of the battle.
Suddenly the inelee seemed to converge to one
point—the mid-eddy, as it were, of the whirlpool;
then came a lull, almost a hush ; and then fifty strong
arms, indiscriminately of town and gownsmen, were
locked to keep the ground, while a storm of voices
shouted for "A ring!"
In that impromptu arena two men stood face to face
under the full glare of the gas-lamps—one w^as Guy
Livingstone; the other a denizen of the Potteries, yclept
"Burn's Big 'un," who had selected B as his
training quarters, in preparation for his fight to come
off in the ensuing week with the third best man in
England for £100 a side.
They made a magnificent contrast. Guy, apparent-ly
quite composed, but the lower part of his face set
stern and pitiless ; an evil light in his eyes, showing
how all the gladiator in his nature was roused ; his left
hand swaying level with his hip ; all the weight of his
body resting on the right foot ; his lofty head thrown
back haughtily ; his guard low. The professional.
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 29
three inches shorter than his adversary, but a rare
model of brute strength ; his arms and neck, where
the short jersey left them exposed, clear-skinned and
white as a woman's, through the perfection of his
training ; his hair cropped close round a low, retreat-ing
forehead ; his thick lips parted in a savage grin,
meant to represent a smile of confidence. So they
stood there—fitting champions of the races that have
been antagonistic for four thousand years—Patrician
and Proletarian.
Suddenly there was a commotion at one corner of
the ring, and I saw a small, bullet-headed man, with a
voice like a fractious child, striving frantically to force
his way through. "Don't let 'em fight!" he scream-ed:
"it's robbery, I tell you. There's hundreds of
pounds on him for Thursday next. I'm his trainer
;
and I daren't show him with a scratch on him."
A great roar of laughter answered his entreaties,
and twenty arms thrust the little man back ; but his
interesting charge seemed to ponder and hesitate, when
a drawling nasal voice spoke from the opposite corner:
" Ah ! you're right ; take him away ; don't show his
white feather titL you're druv to it." That turned the
wavering scale. The Big 'un ground his teeth with
blasphemy, and set-to.
I need not go through the minutia3 of the fight ; it
was all one way. The professional did his best, and
took his punishment like a glutton ; but he could do
nothing against the long reacli of his adversary, who
stopped and countered as coolly as if he had only the
gloves on.
It was the beginning of the sixth round ; our cham-
30 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
pion bore only one mark, showing where a tremendous
right-hander had almost come home—a cut on his low-er
lip, whence the bright iNTorman blood was flowing
freely. I vfill not attempt to describe the hideous
changes that ten minutes had wrought in his oppo-nent's
countenance ; but I think I was not the only
spectator who felt a thrill of fear mingling with dis-gust
as the Big 'un made his despairing effort, and
fought his way in to the terrible " half-arm rally." In
truth, there was something unearthly and awful in the
sight of the maimed and mangled Colossus ; his huge
breast heaving with wrath and pain ; his one unblind-ed
eye glaring unutterably ; his crushed lips churning
the crimson foam. It was the last rush of the Cordo-van
bull goaded to madness by picador and chulo ; but
Guy's fatal left met him, straight, unyielding as the
blade of the matador ; twice he reeled back Avellnigh
stunned ; the third time he dropped his head cleverly,
so as to avoid the blow, and grappled. For some
seconds the two were locked together, undistinguish-ably
; then we saw Guy's right liand, never used till
then save as a guard, rise and fall twice with a dull,
smashing sound, which was bad to hear; then the
huge form of the prize-frighter was whirled up unre-sistingly
over his antagonist's hip, and fell crashing
down at his feet, a heap of blind, senseless, bleeding
humanity.
" Time !" You must call louder yet before he will
hear, and lance a vein in the throat before he will an-swer.
Then, in the old market-place of B , there vrent
up such a shout as I think it has never heard since
GUY L1\1NG«T0NE. 31
Vikings and Berserkyr caroused there alter stormino"
tlic town. The gownsmen, as tliey will do on sliglit-er
provocation, screamed themselves hoarse and voice-less
w^itli delight ; and their late opponents—the hon-est
Saxon's love of a fliir tight overcoming the spirit
of the partisan—echoed and prolonged the cheer.
There vras no more thought of battle or Ibroil : and
there were as many navvies as University men among
the enthusiasts who bore the champion on their shoul-ders
into "The George."'
How w^e reveled on that niglit of victory, especially
when Guy, after necessary ablutions and change of
raiment, joined us, calm and self-possessed as ever,
only slightly swelled about the lower lip, and a dark
red flush on his forehead ! He had satisfactory ac-counts
of his adversary, tjie said amiable individual
having so far recovered, under the surgeon's hands, as
to swear thrice-—" quite like hisself," the messenger
said—and to call for cold brandy and water.
Livingstone's health was proposed twice—the first
time b.y a fellow of King's, with a neat talent for clas-sical
allusions, who remarked that, " if the olive-crown
of the Hippodrome had fallen to the lot of Cambridge,
none would deny her sister's claim to the parsley of
the caBstus." The second time was very late in the
evening, by M'Diarmid. It must be confessed that
gallant chieftain was somewhat incoherent, and amid
protestations of admiration and eternal friendship,
much to our astonishment, wept profusely. Still later,
he got very maudlin indeed, and was heard to mur-mur,
looking at his scarred knuckles, that "he was
afraid he must have hurt some one that night," with
32 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
an accent of heartfelt sorrow and contrition which was
inimitable.
We heard afterward that the taunt which made the
fight a certainty came from the commissioner of the
party who stood heavily against the Big 'un, sent down
to watch him in his training, and spy out the joints in
his harness.
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 33
CHAPTER V.
" As he rode down the sanctified bends of the Bow,
Each carline was flyting and shaking her pow
;
But the young Plants of Grace they looked conthie and sloe, .
Saying, ' Luck to thy bonnet, thou bonnic Dundee.' "
In the autumn of that year my chest became so
troublesome that I was obliged to try Italy. Thither
I went ; and, about the same time, Guy was gazetted
to the Life Guards. The struggle between cli-mate
and constitution was protracted, and for a long
time doubtful ; but winters without fog, and springs
without cold winds, worked wonders, and at last car-ried
the day. In the fourth year they told me I might
risk England again. Gloving homeward slowly, I
reached London about the beginning of December—
a
most unfavorable season, it is true ; but I was weary
of foreign wandering, and wanted to spend Christmas
somewhere in the fatherland, though where I had not
yet determined.
I had heard tolerably often from Livingstone during
my absence. His letters were very amusing, contain-ing
all sorts of news, and remarks on men and man-ners.
They would have pleased me more if they had
not indicated a vein of sarcasm deepening into cyn-icism.
I stand very much alone in this world, and had few
family visits to detain me ; so, on the mornmg after
my arrival, I went down to the Knightsbridge barracks,
where Guy's regiment happened to be quartered.
B2
34 GUY LIVINGSTONE. :
It was a field-day, his servant said, and liis master
was out with his troop ; but he expected him in very
shortly. Captain Forrester was waiting breakfast for
him up stairs.
As I entered the room, its occupant turned his head
languidly on the sofa-cushion which supported it ; but
when he saw it was a stranger, sat up, and, on hearing
my name, actually rose and came toward me.
"" Livingstone will be charmed to find you here, Mr.
Hammond," he said, in a voice that, thougli slightly
affected and tramante, was very musical. "I don't
know if he ever mentioned Charley Forrester to you,
who must do the honors of the barrack-room in liis
absence ?"
I had heard of him very often ; and, though my ex-pectations
as to his personal appearance had been
raised, I own the first glance did not disappoint them.
He was about three-and-twenty then, rather tall, but
very slightly built ; his eyes long, sleepy, of a violet
blue ; features small and delicately cut, with a com-plexion
so soft and bright that his silky, chestnut
mustache hardly saved the face from effeminacy ; his
hands and feet would have satisfied the Pacha of Te-belen
at once as to his purity of race ; indeed, though
Charley was not disposed to undervalue any of his
own bodily advantages, I imagine he considered his
extremities as his strong point. His manner was
very fascinating, and, with women, had a sort of caress
in it which is hard to describe, though even with them
he seldom excited himself much, preferring, consist-ently,
the passive to the active part in the conversation.
Indeed, his golden rule was the Arabic maxim, Agitel
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 35
HI Shaitan—Hurry is the Devil's—so, in the flirta-tions
which were the serious business of his life, he
always let his fish hook themselves, just exerting him-self
enougli to play them afterward.
In ten minutes we were \oyj good friends, talking
pleasantly of all sorts of thin;^s, though Forrester had
resumed his recumbent posture, and I could not help
fearing it was only a strong effort of politeness or
sense of duty wliicli enabled him always to answer at
the rio;ht time.
Before long we heard the clatter of horses' hoofs
and the rattle of steel scabbards, and I looked out at
the squadrons defiling into the barrack-yard. My eye
fell upon Livingstone at once : it was not difficult to
distinguish him, for few, if any, among those troopers,
picked from the flower of all the counties north of the
Humber, could compare with him for length of limb
and breadth of shoulder. I felt proud of him, as the
hero of my boyhood, looking at him there, on his great
black charger, square and steadfast as the keep of a
castle.
His servant spoke to him as he dismounted. I saw
his features soften and brighten in an instant ; in five
seconds he was in the room, and the light was on his
face still—I like to think of it—the light of a frank,
cordial welcome, as he griped my hand.
He was changed, certainly, but for the better. The
features, which in early youth had been too rugged
and strongly marked, harmonized perfectly with the
vast proportions of a frame now fully developed,
though still lean in the flanks as a wolf-hound. The
stern expression about his mouth was more decided
36 GUY LIVINGSTONE-and
unvarying than ever—an effect which was in-creased
Tbj the heavy mustache that, dense as a Cui-rassier's
of the Old Guard, fell over his lip in a black
cascade. It was the face of one of those stone Cru-saders
who look up at us from their couches in the
Bound Church of the Temple.
. Before our first sentences were concluded, Forrester
had nerved himself to the effort of rising, and turned
to go.
" You must have fifty things to say to each other,"
he said. "You'll find me in the mess-room. But,
Guy, don't he long ; I've no appetite myself this morn-ing,
and it will refresh me to see you eat your break-fast
;" and so faded away gradually through the door.
" How do you like him ?" Livingstone called out
from the inner room, where he was donning the
"mufti." "He's not so conceited as he might be,
considering how the women spoil him ; and, lazy as
he looks, he is a very fair officer, and goes across
country like a bird. Did I ever tell you what first
made him famous ?"
"No ; I should like to hear."
"Well, it was at a picnic at Cliefden. Charley
was hardly nineteen then, and had just joined the —th Lancers at Hounslow ; he wandered away, and
got lost with Kate Harcourt, a self-possessed b)eauty
in high condition for flirting, for she had had three
seasons of hard training. When they had been away
firom their party about two hours, she felt, or pretend-ed
to feel, the awkwardness of the situation, and ask-ed
her cavalier, in a charmingly helpless and confiding
way^ what they were to do. ' Well, I hardly know,'
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 37
i
Forrester answered, languidly ;
' but I don't mind pro-posing
to you, if that will do you any good.' A fair
performance for an untried colt, was it not ? Miss
Harcourt thought so, and said so, and Charley woke
next morning with an established renown. Shall we
go and find him ?"
After breakfast we went with Guy to his room, to
do the regulation cigar.
"I know you've made no plans, Frank," Living-stone
said, " so I have settled every thing for you al-ready.
You' are coming down to Kerton with us.
We have just got our long leave, and our horses went
down three days ago."
"It's very nice of him to say 'our horses,'" inter-rupted
Forrester. " Mine consist of one young one,
that has been over about eight fences in his life, and
a mare, that I call the Wandering Jewess, for I don't
think she will ever die, and I am sure she will never
rest till she does : what with being park-hack in the
summer and cover-hack in the winter, with a by-day
now and then when the country's light, she's the best
instance of perpetual motion I know. Well, it's not
my fault the chief won't let us hunt our second chargers
—that's the charm of being in a crack regiment—I al-ways
have one lame at least, and no one will sell me
hunters on tick."
" Don't be so plaintive, Charley ; you've nearly all
mine to ride : it's a treat to them, poor things, to feel
your light weight and hand, after carrying my enor-mous
carcass. That's settled, then, Frank ; you come
with us ?" Guy said.
" I shall be very glad. I only want a day to get
38 aUY LIVINGSTONE.
my traps together." So two days afterward we three
came down to Kerton Manor. It was not my first
visit to Livingstone's home, but I have not described
it before.
Fancy a very large, low house, built in two quad-rangles—
the offices and stables forming the smaller
one farthermost from the main entrance—of the light
gray stone common in Northamptonshire, darkened at
the angles and buttresses into purple, and green, and
bistre by the storms of three hundred years ; on the
south side, smooth turf, with islands in it of bright
flower-beds, sloped down to a broad, slow stream,
where grave, stately swans were always sailing to and
fro, and moor-hens diving among the rushes ; on the
other sides, a park, extensive, but somewhat rough-looking,
stretched away, and, all round, lines of tall
avenue radiated—the bones of a dead giant's skeleton
—for Kerton once stood in the centre of a royal forest.
You entered into a wide, low hall, the oak ceiling
resting on broad square pillars of the same dark wood
;
all round hung countless memorials of chase and war,
for the Livingstones had been hunters and soldiers
beyond the memory of man.
Often, passing through of a winter's evening, I have
stopped to watch the fitful effects of the great logs
burning on the andirons, as their light died away,
deadened among brown bear-skins and shadowy ant-lers,
or played, redly reflected, on the mail-shirt and
corslet of Crusader or Cavalier.
There were many portraits too ; one, the most re-markable,
fronted you as you came through the great
doorway, the likeness of a very handsome man in the
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 39
uniform of a Light Dragoon ; under this hung a cav-ahy
sword, and a brass helmet shaded with Llack
horse-hair. The portrait and sword were those of
Guy's flither ; the hehnet belonged to the Cuirassier
who slew him.
It was in a skirmish with part of Kellermann's brig-ade,
near the end of the Peninsular war ; Colonel Liv-ingstone
was engaged with an adversary in his front,
when a trooper, delivering point from behind, ran him
through the body. He had got his death-wound, and
knew it ; but he came of a race that ever died hard
and dangerously ; he only ground his teeth, and, turn-ing
short in his saddle, cut the last assailant down.
Look at the helmet, with the clean, even gap in it,
cloven down to the cheek-strap—the stout old Laird
of Colonsay struck no fairer blow.
It was curious to mark how the same expression of
sternness and decision about the lips and lower part
of the face, which was so remarkable in their descend-ants,
ran through the long row of ancestral portraits.
You saw it—now, beneath the half-raised visor of Sir
Malise, surnamed Poing-de-fer, who went up the
breach at Ascalon shoulder to shoulder with strong
King Eichard—now, yet more grimly shadowed forth,
under the cowl of Prior Bernard, the ambitious ascetic,
wdiom, they say, the great Earl of Warwick trusted as
his own right hand—now, softened a little, but still
distinctly visible, under the long love-locks of Prince
Rupert's aid-de-camp, wdio died at Naseby manfully
in his harness—now, contrasting strangely with the
elaborately powdered peruke and delicate lace ruffles
of Beau Livingstone, the gallant, with the whitest hand,
40 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
the softest voice, the neatest knack at a sonnet, and
the deadliest rapier at the court of good Queen Anne.
Nay, you could trace it in the features of many a fair
Edith and Alice, half counteracting the magnetic at-traction
of then- melting eyes.
On the sunny south side, looking across the flower-garden,
were Lady Catharine Livingstone's rooms,
where, diligent as Matilda and her maidens, m sum-mer
by the window, in winter by the fire, the pale
chatelaine sat over her embroidery. What rivers of
tapestry must have flowed from under those slender
white fingers during their ceaseless toil of twenty
years
!
The good that she did in her neighborhood can not
be told. She was kind and hospitable, too, to her fe-male
guests, in her own haughty, undemonstrative
way ; nevertheless, the wives and daughters of the
squirearchy regarded her with great awe and fear.
Perhaps she felt this, though she could not alter it,
and the sense of isolation may have deepened the
shades on her sad face. 'She had only one thing on
earth to centre her affections on, and that one she wor-shiped
with a love stronger than her sense of duty
;
for, since his father died, she had never been able to
check Guy in a single whim.
When he had a hunting-party in the house, she
sometimes would not appear for days ; but, however
early he might start for the meet, I do not think he
ever left his dressing-room without his mother's kiss
on his cheek. She knew, as well as any one, how
recklessly her son rode; nothing but his science, cool-ness,
and great strength in the saddle could often have
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 41
saved him from some terrible accident. ]\Iany times,
in the middle of the day's sport, the thought has come
across me piteously of that poor lady, in her lonely
rooms, trembling, and I am very sure praying, for her
darling.
On the opposite side of the court were Guy's own
apartments : first, what was called by courtesy his
study—an armory of guns and other weapons, a chaos
e rebus omnibus et quibusdam aliis, for he never had
the faintest conception of the beauty of order ; then
came the smoking-room, with its great divans and scat-tered
card-tables ; then Livingstone's bed-room and
dressing-room.
Did the distance and the doors always deaden the
sounds of late revels, so as not to break Lady Catha-rine's
slumbers? I fear not.
42 CrUY LIVINGSTONE.
CHAPTER VI.
" Thou art not steeped in golden languors
;
K'o tranced summer calm is thine,
Ever-varying Madeline."
It was a woodland meet, a long way off, the morn-ing
after we arrived, so we staid at home ; and, after
breakfast, Guy having to give audience to keepers and
other retainers, I strolled out with Forrester to smoke
in the stables. I have seldom seen a lot which united
so perfectly bone and blood. Livingstone gave any
price for his horses ; the only thing he was not par-ticular
about was their temper ; more than one looked
eminently un suited to a nervous rider, and a swinging
bar behind them warned the stranger against incau-tious
approach.
After duly discussing and admiring the stud, we
established ourselves on the sunniest stone bench in
the garden, and I asked my companion to tell me
something of what Guy had been doing during my ab-sence.
"Well, it's rather hard to say," answered Charley.
" He never takes the trouble to conceal any thing
;
but then, you see, he never tells one any thing either
so it's only guess work, after all. He lives very much
like other men in the Household Brigade ; plays heav-ily,
though not regularly ; but he always has two af-faires
de c<Bui\ at least, on hand at once ; that's his
stint."
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 43
" So he still persecutes tlie weaker sex unremitting-ly?''
I asked, laughing.
" In a way peculiar to himself," said Forrester ; "he
is ahvays strictly courteous, but decidedly sarcastic.
Poor things, they are easily imposed upon ; he very
soon has them well in hand, and they can never get
their heads up afterward. I suppose they like it, for
it seems to answer admirably. Last season he di-vided
himself pretty equally between Constance Bran-don
and Flora Bellasys—quite the two best things
out,- though as opposite to each other in every way as
the poles. To do Miss Brandon justice, I don't think
she knew much of the other flirtation ; she always
went away early, and he used to take up her rival for
the rest of the evening."
"But the said rival—how did she like the divided
homage ?"
" N"ot at all at first ; at least, she used to look re-volvers
at Guy from time to time—(ah ! you should
see the Bellasys' eyes when they begin to lighten)
—
but he always brought her back to the lure, and at last
she seemed to take it quite as a matter of course, keep-ing
all her after-supper waltzes for^him religiously,
though half the men in town were trying to cut in. I
can't make out how he does it. Do you think his size
and sinews can have any thing to do with it ?" He
said this gravely and reflectively.
"Not unlikely,"! replied; '•' i\\Q fortiter in re goes
a long way with women apparently, even where there
is not a tongue like his to back it. Don't you remem-ber
Juvenal's strong-minded heroine, Avho left hus-band
and home to follow the scarred, maimed gladia-
44 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
tor ?. I doubt if the Mirmillo was a pleasant or intel-lectual
companion. 'Now I want you to tell me some-thing
about Guy's cousin and her father; they are
coming here to-day, and I have never met them."
"Mr. Raymond is very like most calm, comfortable
old men with a life interest in £2000 a year," Charley
said ; "rather more cold and impassible than the gen-erality,
perhaps. He musi be clever, for he plays whist
better than any one I know; but not brilliant, certain-ly.
His daughter is"—the color deepened on his cheek
perceptibly—"very charming, most people think; but
I hate describing people. I always caricature the like-ness.
You'll form your own judgment at dinner.
Shall we go in ? We shoot an outlying cover after
luncheon, and the blackthorns involve gaiters."
We had very fair sport, and were returning across
the park, picking up a stray rabbit every now and then
in the tufts of long grass and patches of brake. One
had just started before Forrester, and he was in the
act of pulling the trigger, when Livingstone said sud-denly,
" There's my uncle's carriage coming down the north
avenue."
It was an easy shot in the open, but Charley missed
it clean.
"What eyes you have, Guy," he said, pettishly
;
"but I wish you wouldn't speak to a man on his
shot."
Guy's great Lancaster rang out with the roar of a
small field-piece, and the rabbit was rolling over, rid-dled
through the head, before he answered,
"Yes, my eyes are good, and I see a good many
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 45
things, but I don't see wliy you should have muffled
that shot, particularly as my intelligence was meant
for tlic world in general, and it was not such an as-tounding
remark, after all."
Charley did not seem ready with a reply, so he re-tained
his look of injured innocence, and walked on,
sucking silently at his cigar. The Eaymonds reach-ed
the house before us ; but, not being in a presenta-ble
state, I did not see them before dinner.
Forrester was right ; there was nothing startling
about Mr. Eaymond. He had one of those thin, high-bred
looking faces that one always fancies would have
suited admirably the powder and ruffles of the last
century. It expressed little except perfect repose, and
when he spoke, which was but seldom, no additional
light came into his hard blue eyes. His daughter was
his absolute contrast—a lovely, delicate little creature,
with silky dark-brown hair, and eyes en suite, and col-or
that deepened and faded twenty times in an hour,
without ever losing the softness of its tints. She had
the ways of a child petted all its life through, that a
harsh word would frighten to annihilation. She seem-ed
very fond of Guy, though evidently rather afraid of
him at times.
Nothing passed at dinner worth mentioning ; but
soon after the ladies left us, Mr. Raymond turned laz-ily
to his nephew to inquire
" If he would mind asking Bruce to come and stay
at Kerton, as he was to be in the neighborhood soon
after Christmas."'
He did not seem to feel the faintest interest in the
reply.
46 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
" I shall be too glad, Uncle Henry," answered Guy
(he did not look particidarlj charmed though), "if it
will, give you or Bella any pleasure. Need he he
written to immediately ?"
" Thank you very much," said Raymond, languidly.
"I know he bores you, and I am sure I don't wonder
at it ; but one must be civil to one's son-in-law that
is to be. No, you need not trouble yourself to invite
him yet. Bella can do it when she writes. I sup-pose
she does write to him sometimes."
I looked across the table at Forrester. This was
the first time I had heard of Miss Raymond's engage-ment.
He met my eye quite unconcernedly, pursuing
with great interest his occupation of peeling walnuts
and dropping them into Sherry. It did not often hap-pen
to him to blush tioice in the twenty-four hours.
Directly afterward we began to talk about pheasants
and other things.
After coffee in the drawing-room Guy sat down to
piquet witli his uncle. Raymond liked to utilize his
evenings, and never played for nominal stakes. He
was the heau ideal of a card-player, certainly ; no rev-olution
or persistence of luck could ruffle the dead calm
of his courteous face. He would win the money of
his nearest and dearest friend, or lose his own to an
utter stranger with the same ^placidity. To be sure,
to a certain extent, he had enslaved Fortune ; though
he always played most loyally, and sometimes would
forego an advantage he might fairly have claimed, his
rare science made ultimate success scarcely doubtful.
He never touched a game of mere chance.
I heard a o;ood storv of him in Paris. They were
GUY LIVINGyTONK. 47
playing a game like Brag ; the principle being that the
players increase the stakes without seeing each other's
cards, till one refases to go on and throws up, or shows
his point. Raymond was left in at last with one ad-versary
; the stakes had mounted up to a sum that was
fearful, and it was his choice to double or ahattre. Of
course, it was of the last importance to discover whether
the antagonist was strong or not ; but tlie Frenchman's
face gave not the slightest sign. He was beaiijoueur
s'il enfut, and had lost two fair fortunes at play. Eay-mond
hesitated, looking steadily into his opponent's
eyes. All at once he smiled and doubled instantly.
The other dared not go on ; he showed his point, and
lost. They asked Eaymond afterward how he could
have detected any want of confidence to guide him in
a face that looked like marble.
" I saw three drops of perspiration on his forehead,"
he said ;
'* and I knew my own hand was strong."
Lady Catharine was resting on a sofa : she looked
tired and paler than usual, not in the least available
for conversation. Miss Raymond had nestled herself
into the recesses of a huge arm-ehair close to the fire —she was as fond of warmth, when she could not get
sunshine, as a tropical bird—and Forrester was loung-ing
on an ottoman behind her, so that his head almost
touched her elbow. When I caught scraps of their
conversation it seemed to be turning on the most or-dinary
subjects ; but even in these I should have felt
lost—I had been so long away from England—so I
contented myself with watching them, and wondering
why discussions as to the merits of operas and in-quiries
after mutual acquaintances should make the
48 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
fair cheeks hang out signals of distress so often as
thej did that evening.
I lingered in the smoking-room about midnight for
a moment after Forrester left us.
" So your cousin is really engaged ?" I asked Guy.
''''Tout ce qyCil y a duplusfiance,'''' was the answer.
" It was one of the last affairs of state that my poor
aunt conduded before she died. Bruce is a very good
match. I don't think Bella worships him, though I
have scarcely ever seen them together, and I am sure
he is not a favorite with Uncle Henry ; but nothing
on earth would make him break it off; indeed, I know
no one who would propose such a thing to him—not
his daughter, certainly. There's no such hopeless ob-stacle
as the passive resistance of a thoroughly lazy
man. Good-night, Franlc. I've sent the Baron on
for you to-morrow. We must start about nine, mind,
for we've fifteen miles to go to cover."
I went to bed, and dreamed that Raymond was
playing ecarte with Forrester for his daughter, who
stood by blushing beautifully — and never held a
trump
!
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 49
CHAPTER VIL
*' Ste has two eyes so soft and brown ;
Take care !
She gives a side glance, and looks 'down
;
Beware ! beware
!
Trust her not ; she is fooling thee."
So the days went on. The stream of visitors usual
in a country house during the hunting season flowed
in and out of Kerton Manor without any remarkable
specimen showing itself above the surface. One indi-vidual,
perhaps, I ought to except, the curate of the
parish, who was a very constant visitor.
His appearance was not fascinating : he had a long,
narrow head, thatched with straight, scanty hair ; lit-tle,
protruding eyes, and a complexion of a bright un-varying
red—in fact, he was very like a prawn.
It was soon evident that the E,ev. Samuel Foster
was helplessly smitten by Miss Raymond, or, as For-rester
elegantly expressed it, "hard hit in the wings,
and crippled for flying!" Helplessly, I say, but not
hopelessly ; for that wicked little creature, acting per-haps
under private orders, gave him all sorts of treach-erous
encouragement. I never saw any human being-evolve
so much caloric under excitement as he did,
except one young woman whom I met ages ago—(a
most estimable person ; her Sunday-school was a
model)—whose only way of evincing any emotion,
either of anger, fear, pain, or pleasure, was—a profuse
perspiration. Mr. Foster not only got awfully hot,
C
50 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
but electrical into the bargain. His thin hairs used
to stand out distinctly and in relief from his head and
face, just like a person on" the glass tripod. Charley
suggested insulating him unawares, and getting a flash
out of his knuckles, if not out of his brain. In truth,
it was piteous to see the struggle between passion and
nervousness that raged perpetually within him. He
would stand for some time casting Imnh^s-ejes at the
object of his affections—to the amorous audacity of the
full-grown sheep he never soared—then suddenly,
without the slightest provocation, he would discharge
at her a compliment, elaborate, long-winded, Grandi-sonian,
as a raw recruit fires his musket, shutting his
eyes, and incontinently take to flight, without waiting
to see the effect of his shot. If he had spent half the
time and pains on his sermons that he did on his small-talk
(I believe he used to write out three or four foul
copies of each sentence previously at home), what a
boon it would have been to his unlucky audience on
Sundays
!
Why is it that the great proportion of our j)astors
seem to conspire together with one consent to make
the periodical duty of listening to them as hard as pos-sible
? Can they imagine there is profit or pleasure
in a discourse wandering wearily round in a circle, or
dragging a slow length along of truisms and triviali-ties
? In the best of congregations there can be but
few alchemists ; and, without that science, who is to
extract the essence of Truth from the moles incongesta
of crass moralities ?
To persuade or dissuade you must interest the head
or the heart. I admire those who can do either sue-
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 51
cessfully, but I do protest against those clerical tyrants
who shelter themselves behind their license to fire at
us their ruthless platitudes. If such could only strug-gle
against that strong temptation of our fallen nature
—the delight of hearing one's own sweet voice—^so as
to concentrate now and then ! The best orators, spir-itual
and mundane, have been brief sometimes.
I am no theologian, but I take leave to doubt if, in
the elaborate divinity of fourteen epistles, the apostle
of the Gentiles ever went so straight to his hearer's
heart as in that farewell charge, when the elders of
Ephesus gathered round him on the sea-sand, " Sor-rowing
most of all for the words that he spake, that
they should see his face no more."
Do you remember Canning and the clergyman?
When the latter asked him, "How did you like my
sermon ? I endeavored not to be tedious ;" I always
fancy the statesman's weary, wistful look, which would
have been compassionate but for a sense of personal
injury, as he answered, in his mild voice, "And yet
—
you loere.^''
Well, the flirtation went on its way rejoicing, to the
intense amusement of all of us, especially of Forrester,
till one day his cousin came into Guy's study, who
had just returned from hunting, looking rather fright-ened,
like a child wlio lias let fall a valuable piece of
china—it was only an honest man's heart that she
had broken. Slowly the truth came out ; Mr. Foster
had proposed to her that afternoon in the park.
We, far off in the drawing-room, heard the slu'ill
whistle with which Livingstone greeted the intelli-gence.
52 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
".You accepted him, of course?" tie said.
" O Guy !" Miss Raymond answered, blushing more
than ever. (I'll back a woman against the world for
expressing half a chapter by a simple interjection
;
Lord Burleigh's nod is nothing to it.) " But, indeed,"
she went on, " I'm very sorry about it ; I never saw
any one look so unhappy before. Do you know I
think I saw the tears standing in his eyes ; and I
only guessed at the words when he said * God bless
you!'"
"Ah bah!" replied Guy, with his most cynical
smile on his lip; "he'll recover. Who breaks his
heart in these days, especially for such little dots of
things as you ? But, Bella mia, how do you think
Mr. Bruce would approve of all these innocent amuse-ments
?"
It was no blush now, but a dead waxen whiteness,
that came over the beautiful face, even down to the
chin. The soft brown eyes grew fixed and wild with
an imploring terror. " You won't tell him ?" she gasp-ed
out; and then stood quivering and shuddering.
Guy was very much surprised : he had never believed
greatly in his cousin's affection for her betrothed;
but here there were signs, not only of the absence of
love, but of the presence of physical fear.
" My dear child," he said, very kindly, " don't alarm
yourself so absurdly. I have not the honor of Mr.
Bruce's confidence ; and if I had, how could I tell him
of an affair where I have been most to blame ? I'll
speak to Foster ; he must not show his disappointment
even before Uncle Henry. You will be quite safe,
^ou see. But, mind, I won't allow any one to fright-
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 53
en or vex my pet cousin." His countenance lowered
as he spoke, and there was a threat in his eyes.
As the cloud darkened on his face, the light came
back on Isabel Eaymond's. She took his hand—all
fibre and sinew, like an oak-bough—into her slender
fingers and pressed it hard. In good truth, a woman
at her need could ask no better defender than he who
stood by her side then, tall, strong, black-browed, and
terrible as SauL " Thank you so much, dear Guy,"
she whispered. "If you speak to Mr. Foster, you
will tell him how very sorry I am !" and then she left
him.
Guy did speak to the curate, I hope gently. At all
events, we never laughed at him again. How could
we, when we saw him going about his daily duties,
honestly and bravely, and always, when in presence,
struggling with his great sorrow, so as not by word
or look to compromise the thoughtless child who had
won his heart for her amusement, and thrown it away
for her convenience ?
I have been disciplined since by what I have felt
and seen, and I see now how ungenerous we had been.
What right had we to make of that man a puppet
for our amusement, because he was shy, and stupid,
and slow ? He was as true in his devotion, as honor-able
in all his wishes, as confident in his hopes till
they were blasted, as any one that has gone a wooing
since the first whisper of love was heard in Eden. If
liis despair was less crushing than that of other men,
it was because his principles were stronger to endure,
and perhaps because his temperament was more tran-quil
and cold. As I have said, he did his day's work
54 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
thoroughly, and that helped him through a good deal.
But, to the utmost of his nature, I believe he did suf-fer.
And could the long train of those whom disap-pointment
has made maniacs or suicides do more ?
Let us not trust too much to the absence of feeling
in these seemingly impassive organizations.
I wonder how often the executors of old college
fellows, or of hard-faced bankers and bureaucrats,
have been aggravated by finding in that most secret
drawer, which ought to have held a codicil or a jewel,
a tress, a glove, or a flower? The searcher looks at
the object for a moment, and then throws it into the
rubbish-basket, with a laugh if he is good-natured,
with a curse if he is vicious and disappointed. Let it
lie there—though the dead miser valued it above all
his bank-stock, and kissed it oftener than he did his
living and lawful wife and children—what is it worth
now ? Say, as the grim Dean of St. Patrick wrote on
his love-token, " Only a woman's hair."
Now these men, unknown to their best friend per-haps,
had gone through the affliction which is so com-mon
that it is hard to speak of it without launching
into truisms. This sorrow has made some men fa-mous,
by forcing them out into the world and shutting
the door behind them. It has made the fortunes of
some poets, who choose the world for their confidant,
setting their bereavement to music, and bewailing Eu-rydice
in charming volumes, that are cheap at " 3s. Qd.
in cloth, lettered." It has made some—I think the
best and bravest—somewhat silent for the rest of their
lives. I read some lines the other day wise enough to
have sprung from an older brain than Owen Meredith's.
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 55
• " They were pedants who could speak
—
. Grander souls have passed unheard
;
Such as felt all language weak
;
Choosing rather to record
Secrets before Heaven, than break
Faith with angels, by a word—
"
Yes, many men have their Eachel ; but—there be-ing
a prejudice against bigamy—few have even the
Patriarch's luck, to marry her at last ; for the wife de
convenancG generally outlives her younger sister ; and
so, one afternoon, we turn again from a grave in Ephra-ta-
Green Cemetery, somewhat drearily, into our tent
pitched in the plains of Belgravia, where Leah—(there
was ever jealousy between those two)—meets us with
a sharp glance of triumph in her "tender eyes."
We have known pleasanter tete-a-tetes—have we
not?—than that which we undergo that evening at
dinner, though our companion seems disposed to be
especially lively. We have not much appetite; but
our carisshna sjposaiQW^ us "not to drink any more
claret, or we shall never be fit to take her to Lady
Shechem's conversazione.'''' Of all nights in the year,
would she let us off duty on this one? "There are
to be some very pleasant people there," she says,
" though none, perhaps, that you ])articularly care
ahout'^ (Thank you, my love; I understand that
good-natured allusion perfectly, and am proportionate-ly
grateful.) Her voice sounds shriller than usual as
she says this, and leaves us to put some last touches
to her toilette. So we order a fresh bottle, notwith-standing
the warning, and fall to thinking. How low
and soft tliat other voice was, and, even when a little
reproachful, how rarely sweet ! She would scarcely
56 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
have invented that last taunt if matters had turned ou!t
diiFerently. Then wc think of our respected father-in-
law, Sir Joseph Lejburn, of Harran Park—a mighty
county magistrate and cattle-breeder. He got Ish-mael
Deadeye, the poacher, transported last year, and
took the prize for Devons at the Great Mesopotamian
Agricultural with a brindled bull. We remember his
weeping at the wedding-breakfast over the loss of his
eldest treasure, and wonder if he was an arrant hum-bug,
or only a foolish, fond old man, inclining morose-ly
toward the former opinion. We don't seem to
care much about Sir Eoland deYaux, the celebrated
geologist, whom we shall have the privilege of meeting
this evening. What are strata to us, when our thoughts
wail not go lower than about eight feet under ground?
We shall be rather bored than otherwise by Dr. Stern-hold,
that eminent Christian divine, who passes his
leisure hours in proving St. Paul to have been an un-sound
theologian and a weak dialectician. Why should
Mr. Planet, the intrepid traveler, be always inflicting
Jerusalem upon us, as if no one had ever visited the
Holy Land before him? Our ancestors did so five
hundred years ago, and did not make half the fuss
about it ; and they had a skirmish or two there worth
speaking of, while we don't believe a word of Planet's
encounter with those three Arabs on the Hebron road.
Pooh ! there's no more peril in traversing the Wilder-ness
of Cades than in going up to the Grands Mulets.
We are not worthy of those distinguished men, and
would prefer the society of hard-riding Dick Foley of
the Blues. He had a few feelings in common with us
once on a certain point (how we hated him then), and
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 57
he won't wonder if we are duller than usual this even-ing.
Perhaps his own nerve will scarcely he as iron
as usual in the Grand JMilitarj, to come off in the
course of the week.
Well, the bottle is out, and Mademoiselle Zelpa
comes to say that "Madame is ze raidee." So one
glass of Cognac neat, as a chasse (to more things than
good Claret), and then—let us put on our whitest tie
and our most attractive smile, and "go forth, for she is
gone."
02
58 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
CHAPTER VIII.
^' 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."
We were asked to dine and sleep at Brainswick,
where the hounds met on the following morning. Mr.
Eaymond could not make up his mind to the exertion,
so Forrester and I accompanied Guy alone.
"By-the-by," the latter observed, as we were driv-ing
over in his mail-phaeton, " I wonder if we shaU
see the BeUasys to-night ? I know they were to come
down about this time. Steady, old wench ! where are
you off to ?" (This was to the near wheeler, who was
breaking her trot.) '
' I think you'll admire her, Frank
but, gave a vous, she's dangerous. Eh, Charley ?"
" Well, you ought to know," answered Forrester
;
" I never tried her much myself. She's two or three
stone over my weight. I wonder, what she has been
doing lately ? They sent her down to rusticate some-where
at the end of the season. She ought to be in
great condition now, with a summer's run."
Livingstone smiled, complacently I thought, as if
some one had praised one of his favorite hunters, but
did not pursue the subject.
When I came down before dinner he was talking to
a lady in dark blue silk, with black lace over it, a
wreath curiously plaited of natural ivy in her hair. I
guessed her at once to be Flora Bellasys.
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 59
Let me try to paint—though abler artists have fail-ed—
the handsomest hrunctte I have ever seen.
She was very tall ; her i-gure magnificently devel-oped,
though slcnder-waisted and lithe as a serpent.
She walked as if she had been bred in a hasqidna, and
her foot and ankle were hardly to be matched on this
side of the Pyrenees ; the nose slightly aquiline, with
thin, transparent nostrils ; and the forehead rather low
—it looked more so, perhaps, from the thick masses
of dark hair which framed and shaded her face. Under
the clear, pale olive of the cheeks the rich blood man-tled
now and then like wine in a Venice glass ; and
her lips—the outline of the upper one just defined by
a penciling of down, the lower one full and pouting
—
glistened with the brilliant smoothness of a pomegran-ate
flower when the dew is clinging. Her eyes—the
opium-eaters of Stamboul never dreamed of their peers
among the bevies of hachis-houris. They were of the
very darkest hazel ; one moment sleeping lazily under
their long lashes, like a river under leaves of water-lilies
; the next, sparkling like the same stream when
the sunlight is splintered on its ripples into carcanets
of diamonds. When they chose to speak, not all the
orators that have rounded periods since Isocrates could
match their eloquence ; when it was their will to guard
a secret, they met you with the cold, impenetrable gaze
that we attribute to the mighty mother, Cybele. Even
a philosopher might have been interested—on purely
psychological grounds, of course—in watching the
thoughts as they rose one by one to the surface of
those deep, clear wells (was truth at the bottom of
them ?—I doubt), like the strange shapes of beauty
60 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
that reveal themselves to seamen, coyly and slowly,
through the purple calm of the Indian Sea.
Twice I have chosen a watery simile ; but I know
no other element combining, as her glances did, liquid
softness with lustre.
When near her, you were sensible of a strange, sub-tle,
intoxicating perfume, very fragTant, perfectly inde-finable,
which clung, not only to her dress, but to every
thing belonging to her. From what flowers it was dis-tilled
no artist in essences alive could have told. I
incline to think that, like the " birk" in the ghost's
garland,
" They were not grown on earthly bank,
Nor yet on earthly sheugh."
Guy took Miss Bellasys in to dinner, and I found
myself placed on her other side. I had been intro-duced
to her ten minutes before, but had little oppor-tunity
for "improving the occasion," as the Noncon-formists
have it, for she never once deigned a look in
my direction.
My right-hand neighbor was an elderly man of a full
habit, whom it would have been cruel to disturb till the
rage of hunger was appeased, so I was fain to seek
amusement in the conversation going on on my left.
There was no indiscretion in this, for I knew Guy
Tv^ould never touch secrets of state in mixed company.
For some time they talked nothing but common-places,
evidently feeling each other's foils. The real
fencing began with a question from Flora—if he was
not surprised at seeing her there that evening.
"Not at all," was the reply; "I knew we must
meet before long. It is only parallels that don't;
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 61
and there is very little of the right line about either
you or me."
" Speak for yourself," Miss Bellasys said ; " I con-sider
that a very rude observation."
"Pardon me," retorted Guy ; "I seldom say rude
things—never intentionally. I don't know which is
in worst taste, that, or paying point-blank compliments.
Without being mathematical, you may have heard that
the line of beauty is a curve."
Flora laughed.
"It is difficult to catch you. What have you been
doing since we parted ?"
*' That is just the question that was on my lips, so
nearly uttered that I consider I spoke first. Now,
will you confess, or must I cross-question some one
else ? I loill know. It is easy to follow you, like an
invading army, by the trail of devastation."
*' So you do care to know ?" the soft voice said, that
could make the nerves of even an indifferent hearer
thrill and quiyer strangely.
After once listening to it, it was very easy to believe
the weird stories of Norse sorceresses, and German
wood-spu'its and nixies, luring men to death with their
fatally musical tones.
" Simple curiosity," Guy replied, cooUy, " and a
little compassion for your victims. They might be
friends of mine, you know."
IMiss Bellasys bit her lip, half provoked, half amused,
apparently, as she answered, " The dead tell no tales."
"No, but the wounded do, and they cry out pretty
loudly sometimes. I suppose all the cases did not
terminate fataUy. Will you confess ?"
62 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
" I have nothing to tell you," Flora said, very de-murely
and meekly, only for once her eyes "betrayed
her. " Mamma took me down into Devonshire, where
we have an aunt or two, for sea-Tbreezes and seclusion.
I rather liked at first having nothing on earth to do,
and nothing—yes, I understand—really nothing to
think ahout. I used to sleep a great deal, and then
drive a little obstin^tte pony, to see views. But I don't
care much ahout views—do you ? Then mamma was
always wanting me to help her look for shells and
wild-flowers ; and the rocks hurt my feet, and the
bushes never would leave me alone in the woods."
She shuddered slightly here.
*' The Bushes ! a Devonshire family of that name,
I presume ?" Guy interrupted, with intense gravity.
" How wrong of them ! They are very ill-regulated
young men down in those parts, I believe."
" Don't be absurd ; I never saw a creature for
months between fifteen and fifty. Are not those ages
safe?" (A shake of the head from Livingstone.) "I
began to be very unhappy ; I had no one to tease ; my
aunts are too good-natured, and mamma is used to it.
At last I had the greatest mind to do something des-perate—
to write to you, for instance—merely to see
the household's horror when your answer came. You
would have answered, would you not ? I should not
have opened it, you know, but given it to mamma, like
a good child."
"Of course; I know you show all your letters to
your mother. But that ruralizing must have been
fearful for you, poverina! People were talking a
good deal of agricultural distress, but this is the most
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 63
piteous* case I've heard of. So there were really no
men to govern in that wood ?"
" Not even a little boy," said Flora, decisively.
" There were two or three from Oxford in the neigh-borhood
; I used to see them sitting outside their lodg-ings
in the sun, like rabbits, but they always ran in
before—"
" Before you could get a shot at them, you mean?"
broke in Guy; "you ought to have crept up, and
stalked them cleverly."
Flora threw back her handsome head. ''I don't war
with children. It went on just as I tell you till we
left for our round of winter visits, which have been very
stupid and correct—till now."
I hardly caught the two last words, she spoke them
so low. There was silence for several minutes, and
then Guy leaned back to address me.
" Do you remember Arthur DaiTcU, of Christchurch,
Frank, the man that used to speak at the Union, and
was always raving about ebon locks and dark eyes ?"
" I remember him well. I have not seen him for
years ; but I heard he was getting on well in the law."
" He'll have time to get tired of brunettes—if any
one ever does get tired of them—before he comes
back," said Guy. " He's just gone out to try the In-dian
bar."
"What could have put such an idea into his head?"
I asked, very innocently.
"I can't say," was the reply; "men do take such
curious fancies. It was a sudden determination, I be-lieve.
The beauties of the Eastern hemisphere be-gan
to develop themselves to his weak mind last sum-
64 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
mer while he was down with his people in—^Devon-shire."
Involuntarily I looked at Miss Bellasys. She saw
she was detected ; but, instead of betraying any em-barrassment,
she turned upon Guy a queer little im-ploring
look, not indicative in the least of shame or re-pentance,
but such as might be put on by one of those
truly excellent people who do good by stealth and
blush to find it known, when some of their benevolent
acts have come to light, and they wish to deprecate
praise.
Livingstone gazed piercingly at her for several in-stants
without moving a muscle of his face; suddenly
its fixed and stern expression—you could not say
softened, but—broke up all at once like a sheet of ice
shivering.
'
' Let there be peace, " he said, sententiously. * *We
forgive all the errors of your long vacation in consid-eration
of the good it has evidently done you. You
are looking brilliantly!"
There was an unusual softness, almost a tremor, in
his deep voice as he spoke the last words, and a look
in his bold eyes that many trained coquettes would
have shrunk from—a look that I should be sorry and
angry to see turned on any woman in whom I felt an
interest—a look such as Selim Pasha might wear as
the Arnauts defile into his harem-court, bringing the
fair Georgians home.
Flora Bellasys only smiled in saucy triumph.
*'You say you never pay compliments," she an-swered,
"and I always try to believe you. We will
suppose this one is only the truth extorted. My
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 65
glove—thank yon." The same smile was on her lip
as she turned her head once in her haughty progress
to the door.
As Guy sat down again, and filled a huge glass with
claret, I heard him mutter between his teeth, '•'•lioy-ale,
quand meme r
"Close up, gentlemen, close up !" broke in the cheery
voice of our rare old host. "Livingstone, if you be-gin
back-handing already, you'll never be able to hold
that great raking chestnut I saw your groom leading
this evening. The man looked as if he thought he
would be eaten before he got in."
" Whatever you do, drink fair," Guy answered,
laughing; "so saith the immortal Gamp. The squire's
beo-innino; to tremble for his '22 wine."
"I don't wonder," said Godfrey Parndon, the M.F.H.
" I've always observed that, after flirting disgracefully
at dinner, you drink harder afterward. It's to drown
remorse, I suppose. So you ride that new horse of
yours to-morrow? My poor hounds I"
"Don't be alarmed," cried Guy; "he never kicks
hounds, and I won't let him go over them ; it's only
human strangers the amiable animal can't endure:
that's why I call him the Axeine. He is worth more,
than the £300 I gave for him."
"Well, he nearly spoiled two grooms for Houns-cott,"
Parndon said. "The stablemen at Eevesby had
a great beer the day they got rid of him."
" He wouldn't suit every one," remarked Living-stone
—"not you, for instance, Godfrey, who always
ride with a loose rein. I was obliged to give him his
gallops myself at first ; he's a devil to pull, and if he
66 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
once gets away with you, you may ' wi'ite to your
friends.' But I've nothing like him in my stable."
Then the conversation became general, revolving in
a circle of hound-and-horse talk, as it will do now and
then in the shires.
"Guy," whispered Forrester, as we went up stairs,
"there's a little woman here who says she used to
know you very well : won't you go and talk to her ?"
" Many little women say that," answered Guy ; "it's
a way they have. "Which is it, now?"
Charley pointed out a small, plump, rather pretty
blonde, with long ringlets, and light, laughing blue
eyes. It seemed the lady's reminiscences were well
founded, for in five minutes Livingstone and she were
talking like old friends.
In the course of the evening I found myself near
Miss Bellasys. This time she did me the honor to
address me, and soon began asking me more questions
than I could answer, even had she waited a rejDly.
Did I like Kerton j^Ianor? Had there been many
agreeable people there yet ? Not any remarkably so
!
She was surprised at that. Miss Raymond was there
en pe7'7na7ie7ice, of course ? She was such a favorite
with her (Flora), and with her cousin too, she thought.
Was Mr. Livingstone always playing with his uncle,
and always losing ? She supposed he liked losing
—
at play. Did I know the lady in pink, with twenty-five
flowers in her hair? She had counted them. Yes,
that was her husband, the stout man looking uncom-fortable
in the corner—an old friend of Mr. Living-stone's
? He had so many old friends ; but he did not
always talk to them for a whole evening without inter-
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 67
mission. Ah ! she was going to sing ; that is, if Mr.
Livingstone had quite finished with her, and would let
her go. Little women with pink cheeks and dresses
always did sing, and never had any voice.
I don't know how many more questions she put to
me in the same quiet, clear tones; but just then I hap-pened
to look down on the handkerchief she held in
her hand, and I saw a long rent in its broad Valen-ciennes
border that I am very sure was not there an
hour ago ; for Flora's toilette, morning and evening,
was faultless to a degree.
I had hardly time to remark this when Guy lounged
up to us. ^ly companion's dark eyes were more elo-quent
than her lips, which quivered slightly as she
said,
" I wonder you have not more consideration. A
new arrival in the county, and compromised irretriev-ably!
Look at Mr. Strafford now."
"The husband?" Guy said, with intense disdain;
"the husband's helpless. He may sharpen his—
tusks, but he'll never come to battle. How good and
great you are! It is quite refreshing to hear yoiu'
strictures on innocent amusements. But I beg you
will speak of that lady with due respect ; she is the
first—yes, positively the first—woman I ever loved."
'•'• Monseigneur, que d^honneiirT YYoxd, said, curling
her haughty lip.
" It is true," Guy went on. "At a children's ball,
about fifteen years ago, I met my fate. She was in
white muslin, with a velvet bodice (Flora shuddered
visibly) ; for a year after I pictured to myself tlie an-gels
in no other attire, and now—years vitiate one's
68 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
tastes so—I can fancy notjiing but a jockey in ' black
body and white sleeves.' I suppose she was very pret-ty;
let us hope so ; it is my only excuse for being en-chanted
in ten minutes, and stupidly enslaved in half
an hour. The thing would not have been complete
vrithout a rival; he came—a plump, circular-faced boy,
with severely flaxen hair. No, you need not look
across the room—not the least like what she is now!
Great jealousy may make me unjust, but I don't think
he had any advantage over me save one, and he used
that mercilessly. He wore collars boldly erect under
his fat cheeks, while those of the rest of us lay pros-trate,
after the simple fashion of my childhood. The'
prestige was too much for Ellen's weak mind. (Did I
tell you her name was Ellen ?) Bottom monopolized
Titania for the rest of the evening. I could have
beaten him with ease and satisfaction to myself, but I
refrained ; and, rushing into the supper-room, drained
three glasses of weak negus with the energy of despair.
" I have never suffered anything since like the tor-ment
of the next two hours. I saw her several times
afterward, and might have made play, perhaps, but the
phantom of a round red face, with collars starched a
Voutrayice^ always came between us. It is only a
slight satisfaction to hear that she has utterly lost
sight of my rival, and promises to cut him dead the
first time they meet. There's the history of a young
heart blighted—of a crushed affection I I am not
aware if there is any moral in it ; if there is, you are
very welcome to it, I am sure. You might look a lit-tle
more sympathizing, though, even if I have bored
you."
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 69
Flora tried to look grave, but the dancing light in
her rebellious eyes betrayed her, even before her merry
musical laugh broke in.
"It is far the most touching thing I ever heard.
Poor child,. how you must have suffered! I wonder
you ever smiled again. How well she sings, does she
not? when she does not try to go too high."
" Don't be severe," Guy retorted ; " you may have
to sing yourself some day. You prefer talking,
though? Well, with a well-managed contralto, it comes
nearly to the same thing, and I suppose you consider
the world in general is not worthy of it ?"
Almost imperceptibly, but very meaningly, her
glance turned to where I sat close beside her.
"How absurd! you know why I don't sing often.
To-night it would be—too cruel. (Flora's idea of mod-est
merit was peculiar.) Now tell me, what are you
going to ride to-morrow ? We shall all go and* see
them throw oif."
Without answering her question, he leaned over her,
and said something too low for me to hear, which made
her color brighten.
From a distant corner two ancient virgins, long past
" mark of mouth," surveyed the proceedings with faces
like moulds of lemon-ice. l^lora glanced toward them
this time, and said demurely, making a gesture of cross-ing
her arms a la Napoleon Z, " Take care ; from the
summit of yonder sofa forty ages behold you."
The caution was a challenge ; and so her hearer in-terpreted
it as he sank down beside her.
I seemed to be lapsing rapidly into the terrible third
that spoils sport, so I left them ; but not all the ad-
70 GUT LIVmaSTONE.
jurations of Godfrey Parndon invoking his favorite an-tagonist
to the whist-table could draw Guy from his
post again that evening.
I know men who would have given live years of life
for the whisper that glided into his ear as he gave Miss
Bellasys her candle on retiring, ten for the Parthian
glance that shot its arrow home.
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 71
CHAPTER IX.
*' I know the purple vestment
;
I know the crest of flame
;
So ever rides Mamilius,
Prince of the Latian name."
The next was a perfect hunting morning ; a light
breeze, steady from the southwest, and not too much
sun ; the very day when a scent, in and out of cover,
would be a certainty, if there were any calculation on
this contingency. Let us do our sisters justice—there
is 07ie thing in nature more uncertain and capricious
than the whims of womankind.
The hounds had come up with their usual train of
officials, and of those steady-going sportsmen who love
the pack better than their own children, and can call
each individual in it by his name. Godfrey Parndon
was doing the civil to the "great men in Israel," his
heaviest subscribers ; pinks were gleaming in every
direction through the clumps and belts of plantation,
as the men came up at a hard gallop on their cover-liacks,
or opened the pipes of their hunters by a stretch
over the turf of the park.
On the hall steps stood Flora Bellasj^s—Penthesi-lea
in a wide-awake and plume ; a dozen men were
round her, striving emulously for a word or a smile, and
she held her own gallantly Avitli them all. She Avas
waiting patiently till Guy had lighted an obstinate ci-gar,
and was ready to mount her. He understood put-
72 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
ting her up better than any one else, she said. Per-haps
he did ; but, though he swung her into the sad-dle
with one wave of his mighty arm as lightly as
Lochinvar could have done, the arrangement of the
skirt and stirrup seemed a problem hardly to be solved.
If there was any truth in the old Courland super-stition
that the display of a lady's ankle to the hunters
before they started brought them luck, we ought to
have had the run of the season that day.
He rode by her side, too, as near as the plunges of
the chestnut would allow, till we reached the gorse
that we were to draw ; once there, the stronger passion
prevailed. Aphrodite hid Iier face, and the great god-dess
Artemis claimed her own. As the iirst hound
whimpered, he drew off toward a corner, where a big
fence would give a chance of shaking oii tlie crowd,
and I do not think he turned his head till the fox went
away.
The last thing I remember there was the anxious
look in two beautiful hazel eyes as they gazed after the
Axeine, charging his second fence with the rush of an
express train.
Th.^ fetiche did not fail us ; we had a wonderful run,
of which only five men saw the end. I confess, the
second brook stopped me and many others. Forrester
got over witli a fall ; but they were preparing to break
up the fox, when he came up iirst of the second flight.
Guy came home in great spirits ; he had been ad-mira])]
y carried. He and the first whip, a ten-stone
man, were head and head at the last fence, while the
hounds were rolling over their fox, a hundred yards
farther, in the open.
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 73
After dinner he amused liimself with teasing his
cousin. At hist he asked her if she wouki lend him
BeHa Donna to hack to cover, as his own favorite was
ratlier Lnmc.
]\liss Eaymond's indignation was superb ; for, be it
known, she was prouder of the said animal than of any
thing else in the world.
She (the mare, not the lady) was a bright bay, with
black points, quite thorough-bred, and as handsome as
a picture. Livingstone had bought her out of a train-ing-
stable, and had given her to his cousin, after hav-ing
broken her into a perfect light-weight hunter.
One of the few extravagances in which ]\Ir. Ray-mond
indulged his daughter was allowing her to take
Bella Donna wlierever she w^ent.
" Don't excite yourself, you small Amazon !" replied
Guy to her indignant refusal. " How you do believe
in that mare ! I wonder you don't put her into some
of the gi'eat Spring Handicaps 1 You would get her
in light, and might win enough to keep you in gloves
for half a century."
" Well, I don't know, "Forester's slow, languid voice
suggested ; "I think she's faster, for three miles, than
any thing in your stable. I should like to run the
best you have for £50, weight for inches."
"I am not surprised at your supporting Bella's opin-ion,"
said Guy, with a shade of sarcasm in his voice,
"but I did not expect you would back it. Come,
ril make this match, if you like ; you shall ride catch-weight,
which will be about 11 st..7 lb., and I'll ride
the Axeine at 14 st. 7 lb. : I must take a 7 lb. saddle to
do that. They are both in hard condition, so it can
D
74 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
come off in ten days ; and I'll give tlie farmers a cup
to run for at the same time. Is it a match ?"
"Certainly, if Miss Eaymond will trust me with
Bella Donna."
Isabel's eyes sparkled—so brilliantly! as she an-swered,
" I should like it, of all things."
"Now, Puss," Guy went on, "you ought to have
something on it. There is a certain set of turquoises
and pearls that I meant to give you whenever you had
been good for three weeks consecutively ; it is no use
waiting for such a miracle, so I'll bet you these against
that sapphire and diamond ring you have taken to
wearing lately."
His cousin looked distressed and confused. "Any
thing else, Guy," she said. "I can not risk that ; it
was a present from—from Mrs. Molyneux."
"I don't think," Charley suggested, very quietly,
" Mrs.—Molyneux, was it not ?—could object to your
investing her present on such a certainty. I really be-lieve
we shall bring it off; and if not—" He checked
himself with a smile.
"Oh, if you think so," answered Isabel, blushing
more than ever, " I will venture my ring. But you
must win ; I don't know what I should do if I lost it."
So it was settled.
"You seem confident," I remarked to Livingstone,
later in the evening. I remember the peculiar expres-sion
of his face, though I did not then understand it,
as he answered gravely,
"Bella ought to be ; for—she has laid long odds."
There was great excitement in the neighborhood
when -the match, and the farmers' race to follow, be-
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 75
came known. Half the county was assembled on the
appointed morning, an off-day with the Pytchley.
Godfrey Parndon was judge, and had picked the
ground—a figure of 8, with 17 fences, large but fair for
the most part ; the horses were to traverse it twice,
missing the brook (16 feet of clear water) the second
time.
I wish they were not getting so rare, those purely
country meetings, where three wagons with an awn-ing
make the grand stand ; where there are no ring-men
~ to force the betting and deafen you with their
blatant proffers—" to lay agin any thing in the race
;"
where the bold yeomen, in full confidence that their
favorite will not be " roped," back their opinions man-fully
for crowns.
Livingstone's great local renown, and the reputation
of the Axeine for strength and speed (though no one
knew how fast he could go), made the betting 5 to 4
on him ; but takers were not wanting, calculating on
the horse's truly Satanic temper. Miss Bellasys, who,
with her mother, had arrived at Kerton the night be-fore,
laid half a point more
—
not in gloves—on the
heavy-weight.
The bell for saddling rang, and the horses came
out. The mare stripped beautifully, as fine as a star
—no wonder her mistress was proud of her ; and I
think she had, to the full, as many admirers as the
Axeine.
The latter was a dark chestnut with a white fetlock,
standing full 16 hands (while the mare scarcely topped
J 5), well ribbed up, with a good sloping shoulder, im-mense
flat hocks, and sinewy thighs ; his crest and
76 GUT LIVINGSTONE.
forehand were like a stallion's ; and, when you looked
at liis quarters, it was easy to believe what the Reves-by
stablemen said, " They could shoot a man into the
next county."
He was "orkarder than usual that morning," the
groom remarked ; perhaps he did not fancy the crowd
without the hounds, for he kept lashing out perpetual-ly,
with vicious backward glances from his red eyes.
Then the riders showed : Livingstone in his own
colors, purple and scarlet cap, workmanlike and weath-er-
stained ; Forrester in the fresh glories of light blue
with white sleeves, his cap quartered with the same.
Charley lingered a minute by JMiss Raymond's side,
taking her last instructions, I suppose. She looked
very nervous and pale, her jockey pleasantly languid
as ever.
The instant the chestnut was mounted he reared,
and indulged in two or three " buck-jumps" that would
have made a weaker man tremble for his back-bone,
and then kicked furiously ; but Guy seemed to take it
all as a matter of course, sitting square and erect ; all
he did was to drive the sharp rowels in repeatedly,
bringing a dark blood-spot out with each stroke. It
was not by love certainly that he ruled the Axeine.
Then came the preliminary gallops, the mare going,
easily on her bit, gliding aver the ground smoothly and
springily ; the horse shaking his head, and every now
and then "tearing madly at the reins, without being
able to gain a hair's breadth on the iron hands that
never moved from his withers.
" They're off!" Guy taking the lead ; well over the
first two fences, fair hunting ones ; the third is a teas-
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 77
er—an ugly black bulfincli, with a ditch on the land-ing
srde, and a drop into a j)lowcd field. The chest-nut's
devil is thoroughly roused by this time. When
within sixty yards of the fence, he puts on a rush that
even his rider's mighty muscles can not check : his
impetus would send him through a castle wall ; but
he hardly rises at the leap, taking it, too, where there
is a network of growers—a crash that might be heard
in the grand stand—and horse and man are rolling in
the field beyond.
Flora Bellasys strikes her foot angrily with her rid-ing-
whip, and turns very pale.
Ten lengths behind, the mare comes up, well in hand,
and slips through the bulfinch without a mistake
—
hardly with an effort—just at the only place where
you can see daylight through the blackthorn.
What is Guy doing ? Even in that thundering fall
he has never let the reins ^o. Horse and rider struo;-
gle up together. A dozen arms are ready to lift him
into the saddle, and a cheery voice says in his ear,
" Hold up, squire ; keep him a going, and you'll catch
the captain yet !" He hardly hears the words though,
for his head is whirling, and he feels strangely sick and
faint ; but before he has gone a hundred yards his face
has settled into its habitual resolute calmness, only
there is a thin thread of blood creeping from under his
cap, and his brow is bent and lowering.
A fall, which would have taken the fight out of
most horses, has only steadied ihe Axeine ; and, as we
watch him striding through the deep ground, casting
the dirt behind him like a catapult we think and say,
" The race is not over jct.''^
78 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
They are over the "brook without a scramble. For-rester
still leads, riding patiently and well. He kliows
better than to force the. running, even with the differ-ence
in weight, for the going is too heavy quite to suit
his mare.
As Livingstone passed the spot where i\Iiss Eay-mond
was stationed, he turned half round in his sad-dle,
and looked curiously in her face. She did not
even know he was near. All her soul was in her eyes,
that were gazing after Forrester with an anxiety so
disproportioned to the occasion that her cousin fairly
started.
" Poor child," he said to himself, all his angry feel-ings
changing, " she seems to have set her heart so
upon winning, it would be sad if she were disappoint-ed.
No one has much on it : shall I try ' Captain
Armstrong' for once ? It would make her very hap-py.
Bar accidents, I must win. They do not know
that the chestnut has not extended himself yet."
AVe lose sight of the horses for a little. When we
see them again, the mare has decidedly gained ground;
and, to our astonishment, the Axeine swerves, and re-fuses
at rather an easy fence.
Miss Bellasys' cheek flushes this time. She goes
off at a sharp canter through a gate that takes her into
a field where the horses must pass her close ; several
of her attendants follow. Charley comes up, looking
rather more excited and happy than usual. He has
made the pace better for the last half mile, and still
seems going at his ease. More than a distance behind
is the chestnut, evidently on bad terms with his jockey
;
he is in a white lather of foam, and changes his leg
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 79
twice as lie approaclies. Guy lias liis face turned
slightly aside as lie ncars the spot where Miss Bella-sys
waits for him, in the midst of her body-guard.
For the first time since the race began, her voice was
heard, cutting the air with its clear mocking tones, like
the edge of a Damascus sabre, " The chestnut wins
—
hard held!"
Guy's kindly impulses vanished instantly before the
sarcasm latent in those last two words. He could
sacrifice his own victory and the hopes of his backers,
but he would not give a chance to Flora's merciless
tongue. We saw him change his hold on the reins,
and, Tvith a shake and a fierce thrust of the spurs, he
.
set the Axeine fairly going.
Every man on the ground, including his late owner
[who hated himself bitterly at that moment for part-ing
with him], was taken by surprise by the extraor-dinary
speed the horse displayed. He raced up to
Bella Donna just before the last fence, at which she
hangs ever so little, while he takes it in his swing,
covering good nine yards from hOof to hoof. Nothing
but hurdles now between them and home. The down-hill
run-in favors his vast stride. A thousand voices
echo Flora's w^ords, "The chestnut wins!" Charley
made his effort exactly at the right time, and thebrave
little mare answered gallantly; but it was not to be.
He shook his head, and never touched her with whip
or spur again.
The race was over. No one disputed the judge's
fiat : " The Axeine by six lengths."
Up to the skies Avent the hats and the shouts of the
sturdy yeomen, who "kuow'd he couldn't be beat," ex-
80 GUY LIVmaSTONE.
ulting in the success of their favorite. Eoimd winner
and loser crowded their friends, congratukting the one,
condoling with the other, praising both for their rid-ing.
At that moment I do not think any one except
myself remarked Isabel Eaymond, who sat somewhat
apart, her tears falling fast under her veil as she looked
upon her lost ring.
, Just then Forrester rode up. " Woe to the van-quished
!" he said. "All is lost but honor. Will you
say something kind to me after my defeat, ^liss Eay-mond
? You will find your pet not punished in the
least, and without a scratch on her."
Without answering, she held out her hand. As he
bent over it, and whispered, what I could not hear, I
saw her eyes sparlde, and a happy consciousness flush
her cheeks, till they glowed like a sky at sunset when
a storm is passing away in the west. Then I knew
that he had won a richer prize than ever was set on a
race since the first Great Metropolitan was run for at
Olympia.
Livingstone had washed away the traces of his fall
(his wound was only a cut under the hair, above the
temple), and was going to get the horses in line to
start them for the farmers' cup. As he passed Miss
Bellasys he checked his horse for an instant, and said,
very coldly,
" You are satisfied, I trust ?"
"All's well that ends well," answered Flora; "but
I began to tremble for my bets. I thought you were
waiting too long."
Guy did not wish to pursue the subject apparently,
for he rode on without reply. Flora made no attempt
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 81
to detain him. Slio had studied the signs of the times
in liis countenance long enough to be weather-wise,
and to know that the better part of valor was advisable
when the quicksilver had sunk to Stormy.
The cup was a great success. Eleven started, and
three made a most artistic finish—scarcely a length
between first and third. The farmers of the present
day ride very differently from their ancestors of fifty
years ago, whose highest ambition was to pound along
after the slow, sure "currant-jelly dogs."
Go down into the Vale of Belvoir ; watch one of
the duke's tenants handing a five-year old over the
Smite, and say if the modern agriculturists might not
boast with Tydides, .
They are getting so erudite, too, that I dare say
they would quote it in the original.
When all was over, and they were returning to Ker-ton,
Guy ranged up to his cousin's side. He looked
rather embarrassed and penitent—an expression which
sat upon his stern, resolute face very strangely. But
Isabel was radiant with happiness, and did not even
sigh as she held out the forfeited ring. He put it
back with a decided gesture of his hand, and, leaning
over her, whispered something in her ear. I don't
know how they arranged it ; but Miss Raymond wore
the turquoises at the next county ball—the ring, to
her dying day.
D 2
82 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
CHAPTER X.
" Souvent femme varie
;
Bien fol est, qui s'j fie."
We sat by the firelight in the old libi^ary of Kerton
Manor. The dreary January evening was closing in,
with a sharp sleet lashing the windows and rattling
on their diamond panes, but the gleams from the great
burning logs lighted up the dark crimson cushions of
Utrecht and the polished w^alnut panels so changefully
and enticingly that no one had the heart to think of
candles.
All the younger members of the party were assem-bled
there, with ]\Irs, Bellasys to play propriety. It
was her mission to be chaperon in ordinary to her
daughter and her daughter's friends, and she went
through with it, admirable in her patient self-denial.
May they be reckoned to her credit hereafter—those
long hours, when she sat sleepy, weary, uncomplaining,
with an aching head but a stereotyped smile.
Let us speak gently of these maternal martyrs, ma-noeuvring
though they be. If they have erred, they
have suffered. I knew once a lady with a lot of six,
nubile, but not attractive, all with a decided bias to-ward
Terpsichore and Hymen.' Fancy what she must
have endured, with those plain young women round
her, always clamoring for partners, temporary or per-manent,
like fledglings in a nest for food. Clever and
unscrupulous as she was—they called her the " judi-
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 83
cious Hooker"—she must have been conscious of her
utter inability to satisfy them. She knew, too, that
if, by any dispensation, one were removed, five daugh-ters
of the horse-leech would still remain, with raven-ous
appetites unappeased. Yet the poor old bird was
cheerful, and sometimes, after supper, would chirp quite
merrily. Ilonneur ate courage mctlheureux. Let us
stand aside in the cloak-room, and salute her as she
passes out with all the honors of war.
]\Irs. Bellasys was a little woman, who always re-minded
me of a certain tropical monkey—name un-known.
She wore her hair bushily on each side of her
small face, just like the said intelligent animal, and had
the same eager, rather frightened way of glancing out
of her beady black eyes, accompanied by a quick turn-ing
of the head when addressed. She had her full
share of troubles in her time, but she took them all
contentedly—not to say complacently—as part of the
day's work. Her husband was not a model of fidelity,
nor, indeed, of any of the conjugal or cardinal virtues.
He was a sort of Maelstrom, into which fair fortunes
and names were sucked down, only emerging in unrec-ognizable
fragments. His own would have gone too,
doubtless ; but he had been lucky at play for a long
time—too constantly so, some said—and a pistol bul-let
cut him short before he had half spent his wife's
money, so that she was left comfortably off, and her
daughter was a fair average heiress. She had long ago
abdicated tlie government in favor of Flora, who treat-r
ed her well on the whole, en honne jprincesse.
It is an invariable rule that, if there is a delicate
subject which we determine beforehand to avoid, this
84 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
particular one is sure imperceptibly to creep into the
conversation.
Mr. Bruce was to arrive before dinner, an event
which we guessed would not add materially to the
comfort of two of oui' party (how silent those two were
in their remote corner where the firelight never came),
so of course we found ourselves talking of ill-assorted
marriages.
"You count mesalliances among such?" Guy asked,
at length. "Yes, you are right; hut I know a case
where ' a man's being balked in his intention to de-grade
himself ruined him for life. Ealph j\Iohun told
me of it. It was a nine-days' Avonder in Vienna soon
after he joined the Imperial Cuirassiers. A Bohemian
count flourished there then—a great favorite with ev-ery
one, for he was frank and generous, like most boys
well-born and of great possessions, who have only seen
things in general on the sunny side. While down at
his castle for the shooting, he fell in love with the
daughter of one of his foresters. The man was a dull,
brutal cur, and, when drunk, es^Decially savage. His
daughter was rarely beautiful ; at all events, the count,
a good judge, thought her peerless.
" He meant fairly by the girl from the first, and
promised her marriage, actually intending to keep his
word. Still there were arrangements to be made be-fore
he could introduce such a novel element into blood
that for centuries had been pure as the sangxte azzura.
He went up to Vienna for that purpose, leaving his
design a profound secret to all his dependents. If
these thought about it at all, they probably believed
their master's intentions to be—like Dick Harcourt's
toward the Irish lady—* strictly dishonorable.'
GUY LIVINGSTONE. 85
" One night during his ahsence shrieks came from
the cottage where the forester lived alone with his
daughter. Those who heard them made haste ; hut it
was a desolate spot, far from any other dwelling, and
they came too late.
" They found the girl lying in her blood, not a fea-ture
of her pretty face recognizable. Near her were
the butt of a gun shivered, and her father senselessly
drunk. He had evidently finished the bottle after
beating her to death.
"Whether it was merely an outbreak of his stupid
ferocity, or if she had exasperated him by her threats
and taunts, for she was of a haughty spirit, poor child!
and perhaps rather elevated by the thought of the com-ing
coronet, will never be known. The murderer was
in no state to make a confession, and he remained ob-stinately
silent in prison till his lord's return."
"How very horrible!" Mrs. Bellasys cried out, shud-dering;
"was not the count very angry?"
"Well, he loas rather vexed," replied Guy, coolly.
" They are high justiciaries on their own lands, those
great Bohemian barons, and so he gave the forester a
fair trial. It was soon over ; the man denied nothing,
only whining out, in excuse, that he thought his daugh-ter
was dishonored. The shadow of death was closing
round him, and he was nearly mad with fear.
" The old steward saw a strange sort of smile twist
liis master's white, quivering lips when he heard this,
but he never said a word. I imagine he thought to
reveal his purpose now that it was crushed too great
a sacrifice even to clear the dead girl's fair fame ; per-haps,
though, he could not trust his voice, for he did
86 GUY LIVINGSTONE.
not announce the sentence in words, but wrote it
down : his hand shook very much, and it never car-ried
a full glass unspilled to his mouth again.
" The court broke up at midday, and the man went
straight, unconfessed, to the place of his punishment.
They tied him to the tree nearest his own door, and
the count sat by while he howled his life out under the
lash. , He was hardly dead by sundown."
*' It was revenge, not justice," Mrs. Bellasys said,
more firmly than was her wont. I saw the quick,
impatient movement of her daugliter's little foot ; she
did not appreciate her mother's moralities.
The answer came in the deepest of Livingstone's
deep, stern tones.
"He was no saint, but a man, and a very misera-ble
one ; he acted according to his light, and in his
despair caught at the weapon that was nearest to his
hand. After all, the blood of a base, brutal hound,
take it in what fashion you will, is a poor com^^ensa-tion
for one life cut short in agony, and another blast-ed
utterly.
" JMohun knew the count's family. Some of them,
maiden aunts I suppose, were devotees of the first or-der
: these came in person, or sent their pet priests, to
argue with him on his unchristian habits of sullen sol-itude.
The men of his old set came too, to laugh him
out of the horrors. Saint and sinner got the same
answer—a shake of the head, a curse, a threat if he
were not left alone, growled out between deep draughts
of strong Moldavian wine. They went, and were wise
;
for his pistols lay always beside him—in case his serv-ants
offended him, or if he sho