The Clever Woman of the Family by Charlotte M. Yonge (good book recommendations TXT) 📖

in itself?" said Rachel, "or is it the contrary?"

"No one knows less of the particulars than I do," he answered. "I think your version was that it was an hospital tent that the shell came into. It was not that, but a bungalow, which was supposed to be out of range. It stood on a bit of a slope, and I thought I should have been able to kick the shell down before it had time to do mischief."

"But you picked it up, and took it to the door--I mean, did you?" said Rachel, who was beginning to discover that she must ask Alick Keith a direct question, if she wished to get an answer, and she received a gesture of assent.

"I was very blind," she said, humbly, "and now I have gone and insisted to poor Emily Grey that you never did any such thing."

"Thank you," he said; "it was the greatest kindness you could do me."

"Ah! your sister said you had the greatest dislike to hero worship."

"A natural sense of humbug," he said. "I don't know why they gave me this," he added, touching his cross, "unless it was that one of the party in the bungalow had a turn for glorifying whatever happened to himself. Plenty of more really gallant things happened every day, and were never heard of, and I, who absolutely saw next to nothing of the campaign, have little right to be decorated."

"Ah!" said Rachel, thoughtfully, "I have always wondered whether one would be happier for having accomplished an act of heroism."

"I do not know," said Alick, thoughtfully; then, as Rachel looked up with a smile of amazement, "Oh, you mean this; but it was mere self-preservation. I could hardly even have bolted, for I was laid up with fever, and was very shaky on my legs."

"I suppose, however," said Rachel, "that the vision of one's life in entering the army would be to win that sort of distinction, and so young."

"Win it as some have done," said Alick, "and deserve what is far better worth than distinction. That may be the dream, but, after all, it is the discipline and constant duty that make the soldier, and are far more really valuable than exceptional doings."

"People must always be ready for them, though," said Rachel

"And they are," said Alick, with grave exultation in his tone.

Then, after a pause, she led back the conversation to its personal character, by saying. "Do you mean that the reception of this cross was no gratification to you?"

"No, I am not so absurd," he replied, but he added sadly, "That was damped quite otherwise. The news that I was named for it came almost in the same breath with that of my father's death, and he had not heard I was to receive it."

"Ah! I can understand."

"And you can see how intolerable was the fuss my good relations made with me just when the loss was fresh on me, and with that of my two chief friends, among my brother officers, fellows beside whom I was nobody, and there was my uncle's blindness getting confirmed. Was not that enough to sicken one with being stuck up for a lion, and constantly poked up by the showwoman, under pretext of keeping up one's spirits!"

"And you were--I mean were you--too ill to escape?"

"I was less able to help myself than Miss Williams is. There had been a general smash of all the locomotive machinery on this side, and the wretched monster could do nothing but growl at his visitors."

"Should you growl very much if I introduced you to Emily Grey? You see it is a matter of justice and truth to tell her now, after having contradicted her so flatly. I will wait to let you get out of the way first if you like, but I think that would be unkind to her; and if you ever do dance, I wish you would dance with her."

"With all my heart," he answered.

"Oh, thank you," said Rachel, warmly.

He observed with some amusement Rachel's utter absence of small dexterities, and of even the effort to avoid the humiliation of a confession of her error. Miss Grey and a boy partner had wandered into the conservatory, and were rather dismally trying to seem occupied with the camellias when Rachel made her way to them, and though he could not actually hear the words, he knew pretty well what they were. "Emily, you were right after all, and I was mistaken," and then as he drew near, "Miss Grey, Captain Keith wishes to be introduced to you."

It had been a great shock to Rachel's infallibility, and as she slowly began working her way in search of her mother, after observing the felicity of Emily's bright eyes, she fell into a musing on the advantages of early youth in its indiscriminating powers of enthusiasm for anything distinguished for anything, and that sense of self-exaltation in any sort of contact with a person who had been publicly spoken of. "There is genuine heroism in him," thought Rachel, "but it is just in what Emily would never appreciate--it is in the feeling that he could not help doing as he did; the half-grudging his reward to himself because other deeds have passed unspoken. I wonder whether his ironical humour would allow him to see that Mr. Mauleverer is as veritable a hero in yielding hopes of consideration, prospects, honours, to his sense of truth and uprightness. If he would only look with an unprejudiced eye, I know he would be candid."

"Are you looking for Mrs. Curtis?" said Colonel Keith. "I think she is in the other room."

"Not particularly, thank you," said Rachel, and she was surprised to find how glad she was to look up freely at him.

"Would it be contrary to your principles or practice to dance with me?"

"To my practice," she said smilingly, "so let us find my mother. Is Miss Alison Williams here? I never heard whether it was settled that she should come," she added, resolved both to show him her knowledge of his situation, and to let her mother see her at her ease with him.

"No, she was obstinate, though her sister and I did our utmost to persuade her, and the boys were crazy to make her go."

"I can't understand your wishing it."

"Not as an experience of life? Alison never went to anything in her girlhood, but devoted herself solely to her sister, and it would be pleasant to see her begin her youth."

"Not as a mere young lady!" exclaimed Rachel.

"That is happily not possible."

An answer that somewhat puzzled Rachel, whose regard for him was likely to be a good deal dependent upon his contentment with Alison's station in life.

"I must say young ladyhood looks to the greatest advantage there," Rachel could not help exclaiming, as at that moment Elizabeth Keith smiled at them, as she floated past, her airy white draperies looped with scarlet ribbons; her dark hair turned back and fastened by a snood of the same, an eagle's feather clasped in it by a large emerald, a memory of her father's last siege--that of Lucknow.

"She is a very pretty creature," said the Colonel, under the sparkle of her bright eyes.

"I never saw any one make the pursuits of young ladyhood have so much spirit and meaning," added Rachel. "Here you see she has managed to make herself sufficiently like other people, yet full of individual character and meaning."

"That is the theory of dress, I suppose," said the Colonel.

"If one chooses to cultivate it."

"Did you ever see Lady Temple in full dress?"

"No; we were not out when we parted as girls."

"Then you have had a loss. I think it was at our last Melbourne ball, that when she went to the nursery to wish the children good night, one of them--Hubert, I believe--told her to wear that dress when she went to heaven, and dear old Sir Stephen was so delighted that he went straight upstairs to kiss the boy for it."

"Was that Lady Temple?" said Alick Keith, who having found Miss Grey engaged many deep, joined them again, and at his words came back a thrill of Rachel's old fear and doubt as to the possible future.

"Yes," said the Colonel; "I was recollecting the gracious vision she used to be at all our chief's parties."

"Vision, you call her, who lived in the house with her? What do you think she was to us--poor wretches--coming up from barracks where Mrs. O'Shaughnessy was our cynosure? There was not one of us to whom she was not Queen of the East, and more, with that innocent, soft, helpless dignity of hers!"

"And Sir Stephen for the first of her vassals," said the Colonel.

"What a change it has been!" said Alick.

"Yes; but a change that has shown her to have been unspoilable. We were just agreeing on the ball-room perfections of her and your sister in their several lines."

"Very different lines," said Alick, smiling.

"I can't judge of Fanny's," said Rachel, "but your sister is almost enough to make one believe there can be some soul in young lady life."

"I did not bring Bessie here to convert you," was the somewhat perplexing answer.

"Nor has she," said Rachel, "except so far as I see that she can follow ordinary girls' pursuits without being frivolous in them." Alick bowed at the compliment.

"And she has been a sunbeam," added Rachel, "we shall all feel graver and cloudier without her."

"Yes," said Colonel Keith, "and I am glad Mr. Clare has such a sunbeam for his parsonage. What a blessing she will be there!" he added, as he watched Bessie's graceful way of explaining to his brother some little matter in behalf of the shy mother of a shy girl. Thinking he might be wanted, Colonel Keith went forward to assist, and Rachel continued, "I do envy that power of saying the right thing to everybody!"

"Don't--it is the greatest snare," was his answer, much amazing her, for she had her mind full of the two direct personal blunders she had made towards him.

"It prevents many difficulties and embarrassments."

"Very desirable things."

"Yes; for those that like to laugh, but not for those that are laughed at," said Rachel.

"More so; the worst of all misfortunes is to wriggle too smoothly through life."

This was to Rachel the most remarkable part of the evening; as to the rest, it was like all other balls, a weariness: Grace enjoying herself and her universal popularity, always either talking or dancing, and her mother comfortable and dutiful among other mothers; the brilliant figure and ready grace of Bessie Keith being the one vision that perpetually flitted in her dreams, and the one ever-recurring recollection that Captain Keith, the veritable hero of the shell, had been lectured by her on his own deed! In effect Rachel had never felt so beaten down and ashamed of herself; so doubtful of her own most positive convictions, and yet not utterly dissatisfied, and the worst of it was that Emily Grey was after all carried off without dancing with the hero; and Rachel felt as if her own opinionativeness had defrauded the poor girl.

Other balls sent her home in a state of weariness, disgust, and contempt towards every one, but this one had resulted in displeasure with herself, yet in much interest