Chapter VIII: The Game That Two Can Play

Goring and Dalton had gone to a meet of the Royal Buckhounds, as we have stated in the preceding chapter, and the day's run had been a brilliant one. The gathering took place at Salt Hill again, and there was a large field, comprising the Master of the Hounds, the usual followers of the latter, and a vast assemblage of spectators, on whom the two officers looked with some interest, as it might be the last time they might see such a sight again--together at least.

The hounds ran the deer by Stoke Park to Farnham village, near which he got hung up in a wire fence, but broke away to the left and got shelter in Brocas Wood, but only for a time. Driven out by the dogs, and followed by a vast field, including many men in pink with faultless tops, and not a few ladies, he was taken at last in Hedgerley Park.

Somewhere thereabout, at the close of the run, Goring lost sight of Dalton, who, when leaping his horse over a hedge into a lane, nearly came in contact with Mrs. Trelawney, who had also been at the meet, but by him unseen hitherto. The animal she rode reared wildly, but she soothed it, and Dalton caught it by the bridle.

'Pray pardon me,' he exclaimed; 'had I been a little nearer----'

'You might have unhorsed me,' said she, laughing.

She looked very bright and handsome in her riding-habit; the _chef-d'œuvre_ of some London tailor, it fitted her to perfection, and, being of a bright blue colour, suited her brilliant complexion and blond style of beauty. A French writer says, 'There is but one way in which a woman can be handsome, but a hundred thousand in which she can be pretty;' and Mrs. Trelawney had those ways in perfection.

Since his last visit Dalton had not seen her, and many of the speeches she had in her petulance or pride permitted herself to say rankled in his memory, exciting anger, sorrow, and surprise; while she, on her part, had been thinking that she had gone quite far enough in the game she was playing with him--for that she was playing a game we shall ere long show--and had been anxiously hoping he would come to Chilcote Grange at least once more ere the departure of his regiment, of which event she had heard a rumour, but he never came.

There was a little constraint in the manner of both, but being too natural to act, it soon passed off.

'I was just thinking of you, curious to say, when you came flying over that hedge,' said Mrs. Trelawney, with a smile in her bright, bewitching hazel eyes, while the dark lashes that fringed their white lids seemed to flicker. Oh, those wonderful hazel eyes! thought Dalton, as he replied.

'Well, it is said to be always a good point in a man's favour when a pretty woman thinks about him in any way. And what were you thinking?'

'That I was certain we had not seen the last of each other--you remember I said so.'

'It is my last day with the hounds. To-morrow my horses go to Tattersall's. And you have done us the honour of following the field to-day?' he added, as they rode slowly side by side.

'No--I only came to see them throw off, and am now riding home.'

'A pretty mare that of yours, and takes her fences like a bird, Goring told me.'

'I never engage in these sports that way now.'

'Why?'

'Because I am getting too old,' she replied, with a pretty demure expression.

'Old--is this a joke!'

'Besides, I must be careful of myself for little Nettie's sake. If aught happened to me----'

'You are an expert whip--here is a low hedge, and I shall be charmed to give you a lead.'

'Thanks--no; I would rather not.'

How soldierly Tony Dalton looked, she was thinking, with his bronzed complexion, thoughtful, dark eyes, his dark shorn hair, and long moustache a shade darker, his erect and well-knit figure sitting well down in his saddle, his hunting-coat soiled and stained by service and exposure to the weather.

'Then you have seen enough of the sport?' said he.

'Quite, and am now taking the road homeward.'

'Permit me to escort you.'

She bowed her assent. There was no reason why he should not do so, and an expression of triumph made her eyes sparkle, and then she asked--

'Has Captain Goring utterly failed as yet to discover a trace of where Miss Cheyne has sailed to, or rather of where her father has taken her?'

'Yes--quite.'

'It is very singular--people don't disappear in that way now-a-days. Poor Goring; he is, I know, so passionately attached to her, but her father's opposition is so resolute that I think he should school himself----'

'To relinquish her? oh, no--we cannot control our love, Mrs. Trelawney--can we?'

'I think not.'

'If we could--if we could----'

'What a deal of trouble would be spared us in this world,' said she, laughing; 'but Sir Ranald Cheyne is, no doubt, still unaware that Captain Goring is now a very rich man, and will, I hear, remain in England for a little time yet.'

'A little time only; the transport awaits us at Southampton; we are all in readiness, and the order to march may come at any hour. This is the last time we may see each other,' he said, in a suddenly somewhat broken voice; 'and perhaps it is as well, Laura--I have seen too much of you--too much for my own peace.'

'Captain Dalton,' said she, looking him direct in the eyes, 'you have tried to woo me. I need not mince words or matters with you, but I have one question to ask.'

'Ask it,' said he, huskily.

'Are you at liberty to woo any woman honestly, honourably?'

Dalton grew very pale, but he replied, evasively,

'I have loved against my will--against my conscience--though your very name should have repressed that love.'

'My name!'

'Your name of Laura.'

The name left his lips, as she remarked it had done before, in an unwilling manner, as if it were familiar, yet most distasteful.

'Why?' she asked.

'I knew _another_ Laura, and she--but let me not think of her at this moment when I feel that I love you with a passion that I have sought in vain to overcome.'

'Why?' she asked, impetuously.

'Because there are hopeless obstacles between us.'

'_I_ have none,' was her somewhat pointed reply.

'But I have,' said he, while bead-drops coursed from his temples; and she regarded him curiously through her veil, and said,

'Then you should never have addressed me at all in the language of a lover. I had good reason to suspect something of this kind,' she continued, in a tone of severity.

'And hence it was that you always spoke so enigmatically to me.'

'Perhaps.'

'As one who would judge of a man by his past history rather than by his capacity for good in the future, and so judged me harshly.'

He stooped from his saddle, and suddenly kissed her gloved hand. As he did so she heard him whisper, as if to himself,

'My darling--my darling--without destroying your honour and my own, I can hope for no nearer caress. Pardon me,' he added, aloud.

When he raised his head, she saw that his face was deadly pale; but again the smile of triumph glittered in her half-closed hazel eyes as she merely said,

'Captain Dalton, you have all the gallantry of a Spaniard, and seem inclined to pass the _rôle_ of Platonic affection I accorded to you; but you must pardon me if I mean resolutely to live in my past.'

'We cannot--ought not to live for the dead alone,' said Dalton.

'It is said that we bury our dead out of our sight, and may try to forget them, otherwise the world would not go on as it does. We may bury our dead--true, but memory remains.'

'How she must have loved that fellow Trelawney,' thought Dalton, with jealousy and sorrow.

'May there not be kindred souls that often meet too late?' she asked.

'And you apply this to yourself and me?'

'Yes.'

'I always thought that such ideas of kindred thought and passionate enthusiasm occurred only in youth, and were the result of propinquity and daily intercourse.'

'How coldly you respond to me!'

'After the mysterious _obstacle_ you so openly referred to, what would you have me do or say?' she asked, with a certain hauteur of tone, and then gave one of her merry little laughs.

Dalton could not help thinking that the alternate hauteur and mirth of the handsome widow at his grave, solemn, and earnest love-making were--to say the least of them--exceedingly ill-timed, while her pretty apparent indifference to the strength of the passion that filled his soul, especially when on the eve of his departure to a distant land, piqued and exasperated him.

'Can the woman be a "free-lance," though still in society?' he surmised, with pain in his heart, for, 'free-lance' or not, he felt that he loved her--yea, madly--as only men at his age often do love a woman. He knew that she was deemed by some what they termed rather a 'debatable widow,' whom the social police in the vicinity of Aldershot, where she had rather suddenly appeared--police who consist of embittered spinsters, inquisitive matrons with unmarried daughters, whom her dazzling beauty eclipsed, were rather addicted to 'tearing to pieces,' a process which Mrs. Trelawney treated with profound indifference or disdain. There was a bold, gay _bonhomie_ about her that might be no more than a mere delight in the things of this life, a pretty playfulness and recklessness of spirit that passed in a handsome young matron, and which the 'social police' resented, adding 'that admiration was food and drink to her.' '"Free-lance" or not,' he thought again; 'to see is to admire, to know her is to love her; but she laughs at my passion as if it were that of a love-sick boy.'

'Would to God I had never met you!' said he, 'for the meeting has ruined a life that, but for you, if not a happy, was at least a contented one.'

'Ruined _your_ life!' she exclaimed, as if with surprise.

'Yes; and I shall cross your path no more. Our lives are shaped out for us to a great extent, and mine was planned out for me by others. Oh, by what infernal fatality have you, too, the name of Laura!'

'It was, I suppose, given me by my godfathers and godmothers. You seem to be familiar with it,' she added, with one of her merriest laughs.

Dalton knew that a lover laughed at has a lost cause; he knew too--fatally for his own peace--that the love he had for weeks upon weeks past been striving to stifle in his breast, was a love that he had no right to offer; but her reception of it stung him deeply, and in reply to her laughter he said, gravely and steadily,

'Then I am to understand that you have been amusing yourself with me--simply flirting to keep your hand in, Mrs. Trelawney?' he asked, in a voice that was intensely low and clear.

'Precisely so,' she said, with a nod and a saucy smile; 'playing the game that always requires two to play it.'

'What game?'

'Love-making.'

'Cruel--cruel! God may forgive you, but I never will!' he exclaimed, and wheeling round his horse, galloped furiously away.

How astonished Dalton would have been could he have seen the change that came over the face and manner of the lady he had just left so abruptly.

Her eyes flashed with joyous triumph, yet they were full of welling tears; her lip quivered; her cheeks were deeply flushed; an agitation beyond her control made her whole form to vibrate; and as she struck her gloved hands together she exclaimed, in a low and fervent voice, with almost a sob in it, 'At last--at last I have completely triumphed--have ground him to the dust! At last he loves me, and I have conquered his cold, proud heart!'

Then leaping lightly as a girl from her horse, on reaching her own gate, she passionately embraced and kissed little Netty again and again, greatly to the bewilderment of the child, who had never seen her mother so agitated before.

That night she despatched a note to the camp requesting Captain Dalton to visit her again.

All the next day passed, and no answer came.

Her excitement became intense; she sent a messenger to the North Camp to make inquiries, and he returned with the, to her, now most startling tidings that the Rifles had marched that morning for embarkation, and that her note was lying undelivered in the empty hut of Captain Dalton, who had left the lines for Southampton.

She had boasted to him laughingly and with affected pride and bitterness of the game she had been playing. She had held a trump card in her hand, and now it seemed that she had played and lost it.

'I have gone too far, too far, and now may lose him altogether, and after all--after all!' she exclaimed, with genuine dismay.