Sir Harry Bracton was already 'chaffing a bit,' as he expressed it, with the young lady who a.s.sisted in dispensing the good things across the supper-table, and was just calling up her blushes by a pretty parallel between her eyes and the sparkling quality of his gla.s.s, and telling her her mamma must have been sweetly pretty.

Now, Sir Harry's rudeness to Lake had not been, I am afraid, altogether accidental. The baronet was sudden and vehement in his affairs of the heart; but curable on short absences, and easily transferable. He had been vehemently enamoured of the heiress of Brandon a year ago and more; but during an absence Mark Wylder's suit grew up and prospered, and Sir Harry Bracton acquiesced; and, to say truth, the matter troubled his manly breast but little.

He had hardly expected to see her here in this rollicking, rustic gathering. She was, he thought, even more lovely than he remembered her.

Beauty sometimes seen again does excel our recollections of it. Wylder had gone off the scene, as Mr. Carlyle says, into infinite s.p.a.ce. Who could tell exactly the cause of his dismissal, and why the young lady had a.s.serted her capricious resolve to be free?

There were pleasant theories adaptable to the circ.u.mstances; and Sir Harry cherished an agreeable opinion of himself; and so, all things favouring; the old flame blazed up wildly, and the young gentleman was more in love then, and for some weeks after the ball, than perhaps he had ever been before.

Now some men--and Sir Harry was of them--are churlish and ferocious over their loves, as certain brutes are over their victuals. In one of these tender paroxysms, when in the presence of his Dulcinea, the young baronet was always hot, short, and saucy with his own s.e.x; and when his jealousy was ever so little touched, positively impertinent.

He perceived what other people did not, that Miss Brandon's eye once on that evening rested for a moment on Captain Lake with a peculiar expression of interest. This look was but once and momentary; but the young gentleman resented it, and brooded over it, every now and then, when the pale face of the captain crossed his eye; and two or three times, when the beautiful young lady's attention seemed unaccountably to wander from his agreeable conversation, he thought he detected her haughty eye moving in the same direction. So he looked that way too; and although he could see nothing noticeable in Stanley's demeanour, he could have felt it in his heart to box his ears.

Therefore, I don't think he was quite so careful as he might have been to spare Lake that jolt upon the elbow, which coming from a rival in a moment of public triumph was not altogether easy to bear like a Christian.

'Some grapes, please,' said Lake, to the young lady behind the table.

'Oh, _uncle_! Is that you, Lake?--beg pardon; but you _are_ so like my poor dear uncle, Langton. I wish you'd let me adopt you for an uncle. He was such a pretty fellow, with his fat white cheeks and long nose, and he looked half asleep. Do, pray, Uncle Lake; I should like it so,' and the baronet, who was, I am afraid, what some people would term, perhaps, vulgar, winked over his gla.s.s at the blooming confectioner, who turned away and t.i.ttered over her shoulder at the handsome baronet's charming banter.

The girl having turned away to t.i.tter, forgot Lake's grapes; so he helped himself, and leaning against the table, looked superciliously upon Sir Harry, who was not to be deterred by the drowsy gaze of contempt with which the captain retorted his angry 'chaff.'

'Poor uncle died of love, or chicken pox, or something, at forty. You're not ailing, Nunkie, are you? You do look wofully sick though; too bad to lose a second uncle at the same early age. You're near forty, eh, Nunkie?

and such a pretty fellow! You'll take care of me in your will, Nunkie, won't you? Come, what will you leave me; not much tin, I'm afraid.'

'No, not much tin,' answered Lake; 'but I'll leave you what you want more, my sense and decency, with a request that you will use them for my sake.'

'You're a devilish witty fellow, Lake; take care your wit don't get you into trouble,' said the baronet, chuckling and growing angrier, for he saw the Hebe laughing; and not being a ready man, though given to banter, he sometimes descended to menace in his jocularity.

'I was just thinking your dulness might do the same for you,' drawled Lake.

'When do you mean to pay Dawlings that bet on the Derby?' demanded Sir Harry, his face very red, and only the ghost of his smile grinning there.

'I think you'd better; of course it is quite easy.'

The baronet was smiling his best, with a very red face, and that unpleasant uncertainty in his contracted eyes which accompanies suppressed rage.

'As easy as that,' said Lake, chucking a little bunch of grapes full into Sir Harry Bracton's handsome face.

Lake recoiled a step; his face blanched as white as the cloth; his left arm lifted, and his right hand grasping the haft of a table-knife.

There was just a second in which the athletic baronet stood, as it were breathless and incredulous, and then his Herculean fist whirled in the air with a most unseemly oath: the girl screamed, and a crash of gla.s.s and crockery, whisked away by their coats, resounded on the ground.

A chair between Lake and Sir Harry impeded the baronet's stride, and his uplifted arm was caught by a gentleman in moustache, who held so fast that there was no chance of shaking it loose.

'D-- it, Bracton; d-- you, what the devil--don't be a--fool' and other soothing expressions escaped this peacemaker, as he clung fast to the young baronet's arm.

'The people--hang it!--you'll have all the people about you.

Quiet--quiet--can't you, I say. Settle it quietly. Here I am.'

'Well, let me go; that will do,' said he, glowering furiously at Lake, who confronted him, in the same att.i.tude, a couple of yards away. 'You'll hear,' and he turned away.

'I am at the "Brandon Arms" till to-morrow,' said Lake, with white lips, very quietly, to the gentleman in moustaches, who bowed slightly, and walked out of the room with Sir Harry.

Lake poured out some sherry in a tumbler, and drank it off. He was a little bit stunned, I think, in his new situation.

Except for the waiters, and the actors in it, it so happened that the supper-room was empty during this sudden fracas. Lake stared at the frightened girl, in his fierce abstraction. Then, with his wild gaze, he followed the line of his adversary's retreat, and shook his ears slightly, like a man at whose hair a wasp has buzzed.

'Thank you,' said he to the maid, suddenly recollecting himself, with a sort of smile; 'that will do. What confounded nonsense! He'll be quite cool again in five minutes. Never mind.'

And Lake pulled on his white glove, glancing down the file of silent waiters-some looking frightened, and some reserved--in white ties and waistcoats, and he glided out of the room--his mind somewhere else--like a somnambulist.

It was not perfectly clear to the gentlemen and ladies in charge of the ices, chickens, and champagne, between which of the three swells who had just left the room the quarrel was--it had come so suddenly, and was over so quickly, like a clap of thunder. Some had not seen any, and others only a bit of it, being busy with plates and ice-tubs; and the few who had seen it all did not clearly comprehend it--only it was certain that the row had originated in jealousy about Miss Jones, the pretty apprentice, who was judiciously withdrawn forthwith by Mrs. Page, the properest of confectioners.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

AFTER THE BALL.

Lake glided from the feast with a sense of a tremendous liability upon him. There was no retreat. The morning--yes, the morning--what then?

Should he live to see the evening? Sir Harry Bracton was the crack shot of Swivel's gallery. He could hit a walking-cane at fifteen yards, at the word. There he was, talking to old Lady Chelford. Very well; and there was that fellow with the twisted moustache--plainly an officer and a gentleman--twisting the end of one of them, and thinking profoundly, with his back to the wall, evidently considering his coming diplomacy with Lake's 'friend.' Aye, by-the-bye, and Lake's eye wandered in bewilderment among village dons and elderly country gentlemen, in search of that inestimable treasure.

These thoughts went whisking and whirling round in Captain Lake's brain, to the roar and clatter of the Joinville Polka, to which fifty pair of dancing feet were hopping and skimming over the floor.

'Monstrous hot, Sir--hey? ha, ha, by Jove!' said Major Jackson, who had just returned from the supper-room, where he had heard several narratives of the occurrence. 'Don't think I was so hot since the ball at Government House, by Jove, Sir, in 1828--awful summer that!'

The major was jerking his handkerchief under his florid nose and chin, by way of ventilation; and eyeing the young man shrewdly the while, to read what he might of the story in his face.

'Been in Calcutta, Lake?'

'No; very hot, indeed. Could I say just a word with you--this way a little. So glad I met you.' And they edged into a little nook of the lobby, where they had a few minutes' confidential talk, during which the major looked grave and consequential, and carried his head high, nodding now and then with military decision.

Major Jackson whispered an abrupt word or two in his ear, and threw back his head, eyeing Lake with grave and sly defiance. Then came another whisper and a wink; and the major shook his hand, briefly but hard, and the gentlemen parted.

Lake strolled into the ball-room, and on to the upper end, where the 'best' people are, and suddenly he was in Miss Brandon's presence.

'I've been very presumptuous, I fear, to-night, Miss Brandon, he said, in his peculiar low tones. 'I've been very importunate--I prized the honour I sought so very much, I forgot how little I deserved it. And I do not think it likely you'll see me for a good while--possibly for a very long time. I've therefore ventured to come, merely to say good-bye--only that, just--good-bye. And--and to beg that flower'--and he plucked it resolutely from her bouquet--'which I will keep while I live. Good-bye, Miss Brandon.'

And Captain Stanley Lake, that pale apparition, was gone.

I do not know at all how Miss Brandon felt at this instant; for I never could quite understand that strange lady. But I believe she looked a little pale as she gravely adjusted the flowers so audaciously violated by the touch of the cool young gentleman.

I can't say whether Miss Brandon deigned to follow him with her dark, dreamy gaze. I rather think not. And three minutes afterwards he had left the Town Hall.

The Brandon party did not stay very late. And they dropped Rachel at her little dwelling. How very silent Dorcas was, thought Rachel, as they drove from Gylingden. Perhaps others were thinking the same of Rachel.

Next morning, at half-past seven o'clock, a dozen or so of rustics, under command of Major Jackson, arrived at the back entrance of Brandon Hall, bearing Stanley Lake upon a shutter, with gla.s.sy eyes, that did not seem to see, sunken face, and a very blue tinge about his mouth.

The major fussed into the house, and saw and talked with Larcom, who was solemn and bland upon the subject, and went out, first, to make personal inspection of the captain, who seemed to him to be dying. He was shot somewhere in the shoulder or breast--they could not see exactly where, nor disturb him as he lay. A good deal of blood had flowed from him, upon the arm and side of one of the men who supported his head.