CHAPTER XX AMONGST THE BULRUSHES

It wanted but three days to Christmas, and it had been a frost. Upon the bare fields and the shivering landscape had fallen a hand of iron—no gentle hoar-frost, making the fields and country look like a glittering panorama, but a stern, merciless black frost which had come in with the east wind, and lay upon the land like a cruel blight. Agricultural work of all sort was at a standstill, and hunting was impossible. The only thing to be done out of doors was to skate, and that every one who owned a pair of skates was doing.

There was a large party at Devereux Court, but I had contrived to see very little of them. Two of Lady Olive's sisters, some former schoolfellows of Maud Devereux's, Francis Devereux, and some town friends, were all stopping there, and Maud was playing hostess while Sir Francis kept himself partially shut up. Once or twice I had come across them in the park, a laughing, chattering group, but I had passed with a bow, and had chosen not to see Lady Olive's mute command to stop. I had seen him, my cousin, and I hated him. What freak of nature had made him the brother of such a sister?—this pale, effeminate-looking man, with leaden eyes and insolent stare, and the manners of a fop. "What did Sir Francis think of him," I wonder, "as the future head of the family of Devereux?" Bah! It was a profitless thought.

Early in the morning I sallied out with Mr. Holdern and Marian for an hour or two's skating; there was nothing else for me to do. There were two lakes, and we chose the smaller that we might have it all to ourselves. No sooner had we our skates on than the inevitable happened. Hand in hand Marian and Holdern swept away together to the farther end where the bulrushes were many and the ice was bad, and I was left alone.

I commenced to make the best of it by selecting a smooth piece of ice and setting myself an impossible task in figure skating. Far away on the other lake I could hear the hum of many skates and the sound of merry voices, and it made me feel lonely and discontented. I would like to have been with them, skating hand in hand with Maud—Maud whom I had not spoken a single word to since our last ride home together; Maud whose face was seldom absent from my thoughts; Maud whom, alas! I loved.

With an aching heart I left off my futile attempt to cut impossible figures, and, lighting my pipe, commenced to make the circuit of the lake, with long, swift strides. There was something exhilarating in the rapid motion, in the desperate hastening over the smooth black ice, and as I came round for the second time my cheeks began to glow and my heart to grow lighter. Then suddenly it bounded with an unthinking joy, for close above me was a chorus of gay, chattering tongues, and one amongst them I could distinguish in a moment, although it was the lowest of all.

I struck away for the middle of the lake, meaning to make my escape, but I was just a second or two too late. Lady Olive was calling to me, and I was obliged to turn round.

The whole group was standing on the bank, some carrying chairs, and some sledges, and all, except Francis Devereux, skates. Lady Olive was calling to me, so I was obliged to skate up to them.

"Fancy your being here all by yourself, Mr. Arbuthnot! Do you know, we were coming down to call on you, the whole lot of us, if we hadn't seen you soon? Is it good ice? And come in closer, do; I want to introduce you to my sisters."

There was nothing for me to do but obey, and in a moment I found myself being chatted to by two girls not very unlike Lady Olive herself; and my hand had touched Maud's for a moment, and my eyes looked into hers. Then some one introduced me to Mr. Francis Devereux, and I found myself bowing slightly (I had kept my hands behind me, all the time anticipating this, for God forbid that I should place the hand of Rupert Devereux's son within my own) to my cousin, who looked out at me superciliously from the depths of a fur coat, which had the appearance of having been made for the Arctic regions. It was too cold to stand still, and we all trooped on to the ice. There were many more men than girls in the party, I was pleased to see, and very soon they were scattered all over the lake in couples, and I, glad enough of it, was left to myself. Maud alone had delayed putting on her skates, and was sitting on a stump close to where I was standing filling my pipe, the centre of a little group of men, amongst whom was Lord Annerley. As I threw the match down, and turned round to start away again, my eyes met hers for a moment, and she smiled slightly. Did she expect me, I wonder, to join the little group of her admirers, and vie with them in making pretty speeches, and compete with them for the privilege of putting her skates on? Bah! not I. If she thought that I was her slave, to be made happy or miserable by a glance from her blue eyes or a kind word from her lips, I would show her that she was mistaken. If she was proud, so was I; and drawing on my glove again, I skated over to the other side of the lake, out of hearing and sight of her little court.

Soon Lady Olive came skating up to me alone, with her hands stuck coquettishly into the pockets of her short fur-trimmed jacket, and her bright little face glowing with pleasure and warmth.

"Mr. Arbuthnot, I think you're the most unsociable man I ever knew!" she exclaimed. "My sisters are dying to skate with you, but you won't ask them, and—and—so am I," she added, with a bewitching smile up at me.

Of course I could do nothing but take her little hands into mine and skate away with her at once. We passed Maud again and again skating with Lord Annerley, and the proud cold light in her eyes as she glanced at us in passing half maddened me. Whenever we met her, Lady Olive, out of wanton mischief, forced me to look down into her laughing upturned face and bright eyes, and to do so without an answering smile was impossible; and yet Lady Olive's brilliant chatter and mocking speeches were very pleasant to hear and to respond to, reckless little flirt though she was.

She left me at last to skate with Lord Annerley's brother, who had just driven up in a dog-cart with some more men, and then I went to look for Marian and Holdern. Instead, I came face to face round a sharp corner with Maud leaning back in a sledge and gazing idly into the bulrushes, where one of her brother's friends was busy with a penknife. She motioned me languidly to stop, and I obeyed her.

"What have you done with Lady Olive?" she inquired, coldly.

"Resigned her to a more fortunate man," I answered, circling round her chair.

"More fortunate! You haven't much to grumble at! You've been skating with her more than an hour, haven't you?"

"Really I don't know," I answered, lightly. "I took little notice of the time."

"It passed too pleasantly, I suppose?"

"Perhaps so! I so seldom have any one to talk to," I could not help answering.

"It is your own fault. You have been avoiding us deliberately for the last three weeks."

I folded my arms and looked steadily away from her.

"And if I have," I said, slowly, "I think you might congratulate me on my wisdom and strength of mind."

She laughed a little hesitating laugh, and, with her head thrown back on the cushion of the sledge, fixed her eyes upon me.

"Lady Olive is dangerous, is she?"

I looked at her for a full minute without answering. From underneath her sealskin turban hat her blue eyes were looking full into mine, and a mocking smile was playing around her delicate lips. Surely she was beautiful enough to drive any man mad.

"No, Lady Olive is not dangerous to me," I answered, deliberately; "you are."

A curious change came over her face as she uttered the word. The mocking smile became almost a tender one, and a delicate flush tinged her soft cheeks. But the greatest change was in her eyes. For a moment they flashed into mine with a light shining out of their blue depths which I had never dreamt of seeing there, a soft, warm, almost a loving light.

"You are a silly boy," she said, in a low tone, and the colour deepening all the while in her cheeks. "How dare you talk to me like this?"

Ah, how dared I? She might well have asked that if she had only known.

"I don't know," I said, recklessly. "I shall say more if I stay here any longer."

"You? Ah, Captain Hasleton, how beautiful! However did you manage to find so many?"

Captain Hasleton shut up his penknife and commenced tying the bundle of bulrushes together.

"Ah, you may well ask that, Miss Devereux," he said, laughing; "it would take too long to narrate all the horrors I have faced in collecting them. First of all, endless frogs resented my intrusion by jumping up and croaking all round me. Then I stood in constant peril of a ducking. You should have heard the ice crack! And last, but by no means least, I've cut my finger. Nothing but half-a-dozen waltzes to-night will repay me."

Maud laughed gaily.

"Half-a-dozen? How grasping! I'll promise you two. That reminds me, Mr. Arbuthnot," she added, leaning forward on her muff and looking up at me, "we're going to dance to-night, and I've persuaded your sister and Mr. Holdern to come up to dinner. You will come, won't you?"

I said something conventional to the effect that I should be delighted, and, raising my cap, was about to turn away. But she called me back.

"How dreadfully tall you are, Mr. Arbuthnot! I have a private message for your sister. Do you think that you could bring yourself within whispering distance?"

I stooped down till my heart beat to feel her soft breath on my cheek, and I felt a wild longing to seize hold of the slender, shapely hand that rested on my coat-sleeve. And these were the words which she whispered into my ear, half mischievously, half tenderly—

"Faint heart never won—anything, did it? Don't, you silly boy! Captain Hasleton will see you."

And then she drew herself up and nodded, and with the hot colour burning my cheeks, and with leaping heart, I watched Captain Hasleton seize hold of the light hand-sledge and send it flying along the smooth surface of the lake round the sharp corner and out of sight. Then I turned and skated away in the opposite direction with those words ringing in my ears and a wild joy in my heart. The cold east wind seemed to me like the balmiest summer breeze, and the bare, desolate landscape stretching away in front seemed bathed in a softening golden light. For Maud loved me—or she was a flirt. Maud was a flirt—or she loved me.