At Loves Cost | Page 3

devil fills me with perpetual and ever-freshening wonder."
Stafford yawned and shrugged his shoulders with cheerful acquiescence.
"Should have gone a mucker ever so many times, old man, if it hadn't been for you," he said; "but you've always been at hand just at the critical moment to point out to me that I was playing the giddy goat and going to smash. That's why I like to have you with me as a kind of guide, monitor, and friend, you know."
Howard groaned and attempted to get rid of another miniature pool of water, and succeeded--as before.
"I know," he assented. "My virtue has been its own reward--and punishment. If I had allowed you to go your way to the proverbial dogs, after whose society gilded youths like yourself appear to be always hankering, I should not be sitting here with cold water running down my back and surrounded by Nature in her gloomiest and dampest aspects. Only once have I deviated from the life of consistent selfishness at which every sensible man should aim, and see how I am punished! I do not wish to be unduly inquisitive, but I should like to know where the blazes we are going, and why we do not make for a decent hotel--if there is such a thing in these desolate wilds."
Stafford handed him the reins so that he himself might get out his cigar-case, and with some little difficulty, and assisted by Pottinger's soaked hat, the two gentlemen got their cigars alight.
"There isn't a decent hotel for miles," explained Stafford. "There is only a small inn at a little place called Carysford. I looked it out on the map. I thought we'd drive there today, put up for the night to give the horses a rest, and go on to this place of my governor's the next day. It's on the opposite side of the lake."
He jerked his whip to the right.
"Which side, what lake?" asked Howard, hopelessly. "I see nothing of the lake, nothing but mist and sodden hills. No wonder the word 'poet' instinctively arouses one's animosity. When I think of the number of well-meaning and inspired idiots who have written reams of poetry about this place, I feel at this present moment as if I could cheerfully rend even a Wordsworth, a Southey, or a Coleridge; and I look back with remorse upon the hours, the throbs of admiration, I have expended upon what I once deemed their inspired pages. If I remember rightly, most of the lake poets went off their heads; when I gaze around me I must admit that I am not surprised."
Stafford laughed absently; he was quite accustomed to Howard's cynical vein.
"They're all right enough," he said. "That is, I suppose they are, for I never read any of 'em since I left school. Oh, yes, they're right enough about the beauty of the place; you should see it on a fine day."
"Has anyone seen it on a fine day?" inquired Howard, with the innocent air of one simply seeking information. "I asked a countryman in the train if it always rained here, and he replied, 'No; it sometimes snows.'"
"That's a chestnut," remarked Stafford, with a laugh. "But it's all nonsense about its always being wet here; they tell me it's fine for weeks together; that you can never tell any instant whether it's going to clear up or not; that the weather will change like a woman--Good heavens, look at that!"
He nodded to the east as he spoke.
Unnoticed by them, the sky had been clearing gradually, the mists sweeping, dissolving, away; a breath of wind now wafted them, like a veil thrown aside, from hill and valley and lake, and a scene of unparalleled beauty lay revealed beneath them. The great lake shone like a sapphire; meadows of emerald, woods of darker green, hills of purple and grey, silver and gold, rose from the bosom and the edge of the great liquid jewel; the hills towering tier on tier into the heavens of azure blue swept by clouds like drifting snow.
The two men gazed in silence; even Pottinger, to whom his 'osses generally represented all that was beautiful in nature, gaped with wide-open mouth.
"How's that for lofty, you unbeliever?" demanded Stafford. "Ever seen anything like that before?"
Howard had been considerably startled, but, of course, he concealed his amazed admiration behind a mask of cynicism.
"Rather a crib from Val Prinsep, isn't it, with a suggestion of a Drury Lane pantomime about it? Good heavens! And there's the Fairy Palace all complete," he added, as, the mists still rising, was discovered on the slope of the other side a long and extremely ornate building, the pure whiteness of which was reflected in the marvellous blue and opal of the lake. "Can that be Sir Stephen's 'little place'?"
"I'm afraid