Sword and Gown | Page 6

But I don't see how that
affects the question. I can lay ten ponies to one she won't have you. It's
the thing to do, depend upon it. All the other good men have had a turn,
and you have no right to be singular; it's bad taste. Rank has its duties,
my lord. Noblesse oblige, and so forth. You understand?' Margate
didn't in the least, but he went and proposed quite properly, and was
rejected rather more decidedly than his fellows. Then he went down
into Perthshire, and missed his grouse, and lost his salmon, with a
comfortable consciousness of having discharged his obligations to
society."
Royston Keene actually groaned, "Why didn't she come sooner?" he
said. "What a luxury, in this God-forgotten place, to talk to a clever
handsome woman, who tramples on strawberry-leaves!"
"Perhaps she would have come if she had known how much we wanted
her," replied Harry. "They say she is a model of charity, and several
other virtues too. She is coming here for the health of some companion,
or governess, who lives with her. Yet she flirts outrageously at times, in
her own imperial way. Better late than never. I'm certain you'll like her,
and perhaps she'll like you."
"Qui vivra verra," Keene said, rising slowly. "Let us go home now.
Draw your plaid closer round you, it's getting chilly."
CHAPTER III.
There is a terrace in Dorade, fenced in from every wind that blows,
except the south, and even that has to creep cautiously and cunningly
round a sharp corner to make its entrance good. Four small stunted
palms grow there; they look painfully out of place, and conscious of it;
for they are always bowing their heads in a meek humiliation, and
shiver in a strange unhealthy way at the slightest breeze, just as you
may see Asiatics doing in our "land of mist and snow." But the natives
regard those unhappy exotics with a fanatical pride, pointing them out
to all comers as living witnesses to the perfection of the climate; they
would gladly stone any irreverent stranger who should suggest a

comparison between their sacred shrubs and the giants of Indian seas.
The only inhabitant of the place who ever attained any eminence any
where (he really was a good tailor), bequeathed a certain sum for the
beautifying of the renowned allée, instead of endowing charitable
institutions, and his townsmen endorsed the act by erecting a little
mural tablet to commemorate his public spirit.
The view is rather pretty, stretching over vineyards, and gardens, and
olive-grounds down to the shore, with the islands in the far foreground
rearing themselves against the sky, clear and blue, or if the weather is
misty to seaward, sleeping in an aureole of golden haze, so that the
whole effect would be cheerful if it were not for the melancholy
invalids who haunt the spot perpetually. Faces and figures are to be
seen sometimes that would send an uncomfortable shiver of revulsion
through you if you met them on the Boulevard des Italiens,
strengthened by your ante-prandian absinthe. Here, the place belonged
to them so completely, that a man in rude health felt like an
unwarrantable intruder, in which light I am sure the hypochondriacs
always regarded him. As such a one passed, you might see a glare,
half-envious, half-resentful, light up some hollow eyes, and thin
parched lips worked nervously, as though they were uttering a very
equivocal blessing.
Does the character gain much by the extermination of more impulsive
passions, when their place is possessed by the two devils that neither
age nor sickness can exorcise--Avarice and Envy? It is with this last,
perhaps, that we have most to do; and the shadow of it, however
indistinct and distant, makes the landscape near the horizon look
somewhat dreary. The nature of many of us is so faulty and ill
regulated, that it may be doubted if even advancing years will make us
much better or wiser; but, when winter shall have closed in, and our hot
blood is more than cool, is there no chance of an "open season?" Must
it come to this--that the mere sight of the youth, and strength, and
beauty that have left us far behind shall stir our bile, as though it were
an insolent parade--that the choicest delicacies at our neighbor's
wedding-breakfast shall not pique our palate like the baked meats at his
funeral? Not so; if we must give ground let us retreat in good order,

leaving no shield behind us that our enemy may build into his trophy. If
we are rash enough to assail Lady Violet Vavasour with petitions for a
waltz, and see her look doubtfully down her scribbled tablets, till the
"sweetest lips that ever were kissed" can find no gentler answer than