style="font-size:15px;"> “Ya-a-as, just so,” drawled Bray. “I shall take this short cut and get home. Only a shower! Bye-bye! See you to-morrow! Come to lunch.”
The ragged lemon glove was waved to Charley as its owner turned down a side lane; and now that his costume was completely disordered and wet, he made no scruple about digging his spurs into his mare’s flanks, and galloping homewards; while, heedless of the sharply-falling rain, Charley gently cantered on towards the town.
“Damsels in distress!” exclaimed the young man suddenly. “‘Bai Jove!’ as Long-ears says. Taken refuge from the rain beneath a tree! Leaves, young and weak, completely saturated – impromptu shower – bath! What shall I do? Lend them my horse? No good. They would not ride double, like Knight Templars. Ride off, then, for umbrellas, I suppose. Why didn’t that donkey stop a little longer? and then he could have done it.”
So mused Charley Vining as he cantered up to where, beneath a spreading elm by the roadside, two ladies were waiting the cessation of the rain – faring, though, very little better than if they had stood in the open. One was a fashionably-dressed, tall, dark, bold beauty, black of eye and tress, and evidently in anything but the best of tempers with the weather; the other a fair pale girl, in half-mourning, whose yellow hair was plainly braided across her white forehead, but only to be knotted together at the back in a massive cluster of plaits, which told of what a glorious golden mantle it could have shed over its owner, rippling down far below the waist, and ready, it seemed, to burst from prisoning comb and pin. There was something ineffably sweet in her countenance, albeit there was a subdued, even sorrowful look as her shapely little head was bent towards her companion, and she was evidently speaking as Charley cantered up.
“Sorry to see you out in this, Miss Bray,” he cried, raising his low-crowned hat. “What can I do? – Fetch umbrellas and shawls? Speak the word.”
“O, how kind of you, Mr Vining!” exclaimed the dark maiden, with brightening eyes and flushing cheeks. “But really I should not like to trouble you.”
“Trouble? Nonsense!” cried Charley. “Only speak before you get wet through.”
“Well, if you really – really, you know – would not mind,” hesitated Laura Bray, who, in spite of the rain, was in no hurry to bring the interview to a close.
“Wouldn’t mind? Of course not!” echoed Charley, whose bold eyes were fixed upon Laura Bray’s companion, who timidly returned his salute, and then shrank back, as he again raised his little deer-stalker hat from its curly throne. “Now, then,” he exclaimed, “what’s it to be? – shawls and Sairey Gamps of gingham and tape?”
“No, no, Mr Vining! How droll you are!” laughed the beauty. “But if you really wouldn’t mind – really, you know – ”
“I tell, you, Miss, Bray, that, I, shall, only, be, too, happy,” said Charley, in measured tones.
“Then, if you wouldn’t mind riding to the Elms, and asking them to send the brougham, I should be so much obliged!”
“All right!” cried Charley, turning his mare. “Max has only just left me.”
“But it seems such a shame to send you away through all this rain!” said Laura loudly.
“Fudge!” laughed Charley, as, putting his mare at the hedge in front, she skimmed over it like a bird, and her owner galloped across country, to the great disadvantage of several crops of clover.
“What a pity!” sighed Laura to herself, as she watched the retreating form. “And the rain will be over directly. I wonder whether he’ll come back!”
“Do you think we need wait?” said her companion gently. “The rain has ceased now, and the sun is breaking; through the clouds.”
“O, of course, Miss Bedford!” said Laura pettishly. “It would be so absurd if the carriage came and found us gone;” when, seeing that the dark beauty evidently wished to be alone with her thoughts, the other remained silent.
“Who in the world can that be with her?” mused Charley, as he rode along. “Might have had the decency to introduce me, anyhow. Don’t know when I’ve seen a softer or more gentle face. Splendid hair too! No sham there: no fear of her moulting a curl here and a tress there, if her back hair came undone. No, she don’t seem as if there were any sham about her – quiet, ladylike, and nice. ’Pon my word, I believe Laura Bray would make a better man than Max. Seem to like those silver-grey dresses with a black-velvet jacket, they look so – There, what a muff I am, going right out of the way, while that little darling is getting wet as a sponge! Easy, lass! Now, then – over!” he cried to his mare, as she skimmed another hedge. “Wonder what her name is! Some visitor come to the flower-show, I suppose —fiancée of Long-ears probably. Steady, then, Beauty!” he cried again to the mare, who, warming to her work, was beginning to tear furiously over the ground; for, preoccupied by thought, Charley had inadvertently been using his spurs pretty freely.
But he soon reduced his steed to a state of obedience, and rode on, musing upon his late encounter.
“Can’t be!” he thought. “A girl with a head like that would never take up with such a donkey! Ah, there he goes, drenched like a rat! Ha, ha, ha! How miserably disgusted the puppy did look! Patronising me, too – a gnat! Advising me to go into society, etcetera! Well, I can’t help it: I do think him a conceited ass! But perhaps, after all, he thinks the same of me; and I deserve it.
“Dear old dad,” he mused again after awhile. “Like to see me married and settled, would he? What should I be married for? – a regular woman-hater! Why, in the name of all that’s civil, didn’t Laura introduce me to that little blonde? Like to know who she is – not that it matters to me! Over again, my lass!” he cried, patting the mare as she once more bounded over a hedge, this time to drop into a lane straight as a line, and a quarter of a mile down which Maximilian Bray could be seen hurrying along – Charley’s short cut across the fields having enabled him to gain upon the fleeing dandy.
“May as well catch up to him, and tell him what I’ve seen,” said Charley, urging on his mare. “No, I won’t,” he said, checking. “Better too, perhaps. No, I won’t. Why should I send the donkey back to them? Not much fear, though: he’ll be too busy for a couple of hours restoring his damaged plumes – a conceited popinjay!”
He cantered gently on now, seeming to take the shower with him, for he could see, on turning, that it was getting fine and bright. But the rain had quite ceased as he rode up to the door of the Brays’ seat – a fine old red-brick mansion known as the Elms – just as a groom was leading the ambling palfrey to its stable at the King’s Arms – there not being accommodation in the paternal stables – a steed not much more than half the size of the great rawboned hunter favoured by Max’s masculine sister.
“Why, here’s Mr Charley Vining!” cried a shrill loud voice, from an open window. “How de do, Mr Vining – how de do? Come to lunch, haven’t you? So glad! And so sorry Laura isn’t at home! Caught in the shower, I’m afraid.”
The owner of the voice appeared at the window, in the shape of a very big bony lady in black satin – bony not so much in figure as in face, which seemed fitted with too much skull, displaying a great deal of cheek prominence, and a macaw-beaked nose, with the skin stretched over it very tightly, forming on the whole an organ of a most resonant character – one that it was necessary to hear before it could be thoroughly believed in. In fact, with all due reverence to a lady’s nose, it must be stated that the one in question acted as a sort of war-trump, which Mrs Bray blew with masculine force when about to engage in battle with husband or
