Chapter XIX: Sir Carnaby's Gratitude

Save that he had got a terrible shaking, a few blows, and considerable fright, Sir Carnaby Collingwood, thanks to Trevor Chute and his servant, was not much the worse and between his draughts of iced seltzer and brandy, he sputtered and threatened the whole city of Lubeck with our ambassador at Berlin, and to have the outrage of the night brought 'before the House' as soon as he returned to town; while Lady Evelyn, filled with genuine admiration of the pluck shown by Chute, his manly and generous bearing, and with gratitude for the manner in which he had assuredly saved the life of her _caro sposo_, became his most ardent ally; but as he and Sir Carnaby lingered over their wine that night he felt--and still more next day--the weight of the many blows and buffets of which he had been quite unconscious at the time they were so freely bestowed upon him.

'Egad, Chute,' chuckled Sir Carnaby, 'didn't think you and I should ever figure like two heroes in a melodrama; by Jove--absurd, don't you know--but those Germans _are_ beastly fellows. The moselle stands with you. We have had nothing here,' he continued, laughing with more genuine heartiness than was usual to him, for his feelings had undergone a revulsion--'we have had nothing here but mistakes and scenes--actually scenes. I refused you Clare, and you make off, per train, with Lady Evelyn. I was most unkind to you, and you act generously by returning good for exceeding evil.'

Trevor was so unused to this tone from Sir Carnaby that his heart swelled with mingled hope and anticipation, joy and sadness, as he said:

'I am only thankful to Heaven that I was here to-night, and able to be of service to you.'

'Service--egad, my dear fellow, you have saved my life!'

'The consciousness of that rewards me for more than one past misfortune.'

'Ah, you mean those which caused you to leave the Guards?'

'To leave England, and--lost me Clare!' said Chute, falteringly.

'Ah, well, it was all no fault of yours. It was a thousand pities that your father, the old General--an extravagant dog he was--could touch the entail. That is all over now; and believe me, Trevor Chute, if you forgive me the past, you shall not go without your _reward_.'

And the two shook hands in silence. The heart of the younger man beat tumultuously, for well did he know the glorious 'reward' that was referred to. He knew that Sir Carnaby would keep to his word, and he had, we have said, an ardent admirer and adherent in Lady Evelyn.

'Captain Chute,' said she, 'do give up this peregrimania of yours, and spend Christmas with us at Carnaby Court. Promise me,' she added, taking his hands in hers; 'I will take no denial, and am always used to have my way in everything.'

So Chute, without much difficulty, accepted an invitation in which kindness was perhaps mingled with some desire to get Clare off her hands.

Chute, with Sir Carnaby's permission, wrote to Clare next day, saying that he had been so happy as to be of service to her father, and had saved him--'saved his life, in fact'--during a row among the Germans; that they were the best of friends now that all barriers were removed, and how happy he and she would yet be in the time to come.

Poor Clare was extremely bewildered by all this, till the letter was supplemented by a more descriptive and effusive epistle from the, sometime to her, obnoxious Lady Evelyn, describing in glowing colours the terrors of the affair at Lubeck, Chute's bravery, and Sir Carnaby's rescue, and the heart of the girl leaped in her breast with gratitude to Heaven for this sudden change in the feelings of her father, and gratitude to Trevor for saving the selfish old man from injury, insult, and, too probably, a sudden and dreadful death; and amid this new-born happiness grew a longing to behold that of her sister and Jerry Vane.

The latter, when in London, more than once, when with Desmond; contrived to draw on the subject of the male figure he had seen in the arbour with Ida, and found that he still adhered to it in all its somewhat vague details.

On the other hand, he had a long private letter from Clare, impressing upon him that it must have been a delusion; that no such person had been seen by Ida; and dwelling delicately on the health of the latter, and the strange fancies which haunted her. Perplexed, he knew not what to think, and would mutter:

'Delusion! Were Colonel Rakes, Desmond, and I all deluded alike? It is an impossibility!'

He actually doubted her, and bitter as the doubt must be of that one loves, deep must be the love that struggles against it, and his was of that kind. Clare reminded him of his promised visit at Christmas-time.

'Shall I go, to be snared again by the witchery of Ida's violet eyes and the golden gleam of her auburn hair?'

The most rankling and bitter wounds are those of the heart; because they are unseen, and, too often, untellable; so Vane, amid the bitterness of his doubt, consoled, or strove to console himself with the remark of a Scottish writer, who says, 'How humbling it is to think that the strongest affections which have perplexed, or agitated, or delighted us from our birth, will, in a few years, cease to have an existence on the earth; and that all the ardour which they have kindled will be as completely extinguished and forgotten as if they had never been!'

Love for him certainly seemed to have been dawning in her heart again; else whence that kiss--somewhat too sisterly, perhaps--which she accorded to him so frankly in the oriel window, filling his bosom with the old joy? Across the sunshine that was brightening his path why should this marring shadow have fallen, giving a pain that was only equalled in intensity by his love? hence it was simply horrid to hear a man like Desmond say, mockingly:

'You ask me about that fellow in the arbour so often that, by Jove, Vane, you are becoming spoony on her again--heard you were so once, don't you know--threw you over for Beverley, and all that sort of thing. Fact is, my dear fellow, women always betray those who love them too much. Never throw your heart further away than just so far that you can easily recover it.'

And with his thoughts elsewhere, Jerry, spoiled as women of the world will spoil a drawing-room pet, lingered on amid a gay circle in London, endowed with a vague flirting commission, and coquetted a little with the languid, the soft, and the lovely, to hide or heal the wound that Ida had inflicted; while it was with regret, and a sense of as much irritation and hauteur as her gentle nature was capable of feeling, Ida heard that Vane was to accompany Chute (after all that had passed between them, and his suspicions) to Carnaby Court, where now the beeches and elms were all yellow or brown with the last tints of autumn, and the tall trees in the chase showed flushes of crimson, purple, and orange when the sun was sinking beyond the uplands in the west.

On very different terms were Clare and _her_ lover; and in their letters they wrote freely and confidently of their future--a happy time that seemed certain now--the future that had once been but as the mirage that Chute had often beheld on the march in the sandy deserts of Aijmere.

'Clare--I shall see her again!' he muttered to himself; it was a great thought, a bright conviction, that to him she was no longer a dream but a reality; thus in his heart he felt 'that riot of hope, joy, and belief which is too tumultuous and impatient for happiness, but yet _is_ happy beyond all that the world holds.'

Objectless till he saw her again, after Sir Carnaby and Lady Evelyn had left him for England, he lingered in Northern Germany; but Jerry Vane had accepted Lady Evelyn's written and actually reiterated invitation for Christmas with very mingled feelings indeed.

Since the day he had left Carnaby Court so abruptly he had never exchanged a word, verbally or in writing, with Ida.

In going there now he would do so with a deadened sense of sorrow, disappointment, and bitterness in his heart and the wretched doubt as to whether he was wise to throw himself into the lure--was it snare?--of her society again; even with the intention of showing, as he thought, poor goose, how bravely he could resist it, and seek to convince her that he had effaced the past and forgotten to view her amid the halo in which he had once enshrined her. Were they, then, to meet in a state of antagonism?

Trevor Chute's brave rescue of Sir Carnaby Collingwood had, as a story, preceded his return to town, with many exaggerations; the clubs rang with it, and it actually stirred the blood in what 'Ouida' calls 'the languid, _nil admirari_, egotistic, listless pulses of high-bred society.'

But time was creeping on now, and the Christmas of the year drew near at hand.