CHAPTER XXXIII.
FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNI.
Birds, yet in freedom, shun the net Which love around your haunts hath set.
The pleasant weeks flew by, a round of enjoyments. Maud found herself ingreat request. She and Mrs. Vereker held quite a little levee everymorning. Day after day a never-failing stream of visitors poured alongthe path to the modest but picturesque residence where these twobeauties waited to charm mankind. The grass-plot in front was worn quitebare by a succession of ponies, who waited there while their owners wereworshipping within.
No young officer who arrived for a holiday considered himself at all _enregle_ till he had been to pay his respects to this adorable couple.
Mrs. Vereker was none the less attractive, as she knew very well, forbeing contrasted with another charming woman, whose charms were of adifferent order. 'Blest pair of syrens!' Desvoeux used to say in hisimpudent fashion; 'it is too charming to have you both together--adangerous conspiracy against the peace of mind of one-half of thespecies.'
'Ah!' Mrs. Vereker would answer, turning her violet eyes upon him, witha sweet reproachful smile, which would have melted any heart butDesvoeux's; 'and when one of the syrens is young and lovely, and justarrived from the Plains. There _were_ days, my dear Maud, when Mr.Desvoeux used to want to ride with me and used to run my errands sonicely! Alas! alas! for masculine weathercocks! I am very jealous ofyou, my dear, I'd have you to know, and shall some day tear your prettyeyes out. You do too much execution by half. Meanwhile, here is my dearGeneral Beau coming up the road.'
Maud shrugged her shoulders and arched her pretty brow, and bothDesvoeux and Mrs. Vereker burst out laughing to see the Generalportrayed.
'The General to the life!' cried Desvoeux, '"like a poet or a peer
With his arched eyebrow and Parnassian sneer."'
'I protest against the poet,' cried Mrs. Vereker, laughing; 'we alwaysflirt in the very plainest prose. As for his eyebrows, they areadorable.'
Then the General arrived, as great a dandy as ever Poole turned out, andwas in the drawing-room before Maud's gravity was at all re-established.'And what was the laugh about?' he inquired.
'About a Parnassian sneer,' said Desvoeux with great presence of mind;'and where do you come from, General?'
'I have been calling at the Fotheringhams,' said the General; 'myintimacy with Mrs. Fotheringham does not incline me to wish to be one ofher daughters.'
'Poor girls!' said Mrs. Vereker, 'we were commiserating them the otherday, and saying how cruelly their mother treats them.'
'Ah!' said the General, 'she does indeed; actually makes the poor thingsdo lessons all the morning. A certain gentleman, a friend of mine, Icannot tell you his name, went there the other day with the most seriousintentions towards the little one, the one with yellow hair, andactually found them hard at work at Mill's "Logic."'
'Two women were grinding at the mill,' said Desvoeux, 'and one was takenand the other left, I suppose?'
'I am afraid,' said Mrs. Vereker, 'that both were left. But fancy awoman who was also a logician! For my part, I consider it a greatprivilege to be as unreasonable as I choose.'
'The arguments of beauty,' said the General, 'are always irresistible;but I am quite for female education.'
'And I,' said Mrs. Vereker, 'am dead against it. We know quite as muchas is good for us as it is. What do you say, Maud?'
'I have quite forgotten all I learnt at school already,' said Maud.'General Beau, can you say your Duty to your Neighbour?'
'And your duty to your neighbour's wife?' put in Desvoeux. 'But I objectto all education as revolutionary--part of this horrid radical epoch itwhich we live.'
'Yes,' said Mrs. Vereker, 'one of the nice things about India is itsbeing a military despotism. As for Europe, the mobs have it all theirown way.'
'Horrid mobs!' said Desvoeux, 'as if an unwashed rabble was Nature'slast achievement.
Her 'prentice hand she tried on lords, And then she made the masses O!'
'But you must teach them religion, you know,' said the General, 'theCatechism, and so forth.'
'Of course,' said Maud; their Duty to their Neighbour, for instance.'
'I don't know,' said Mrs. Vereker; 'they only learn it all by rote. WhenI was last in England our clergyman gave us this specimen of one of hisparishioners, to whom he had been detailing the mysteries of faith:
'"_Clergyman._ And now, Sally, how do you expect to be saved?"'
'"_Sally._ Dun'noa; please, sir, tell I."'
'Well,' said Desvoeux, 'theology is a thing I never could understandmyself. Now I must be off to my Agent.'
'When shall we see you again?' said Maud.
'Dun'noa,' said Desvoeux; 'please, ma'am, tell I. What time shall I comeand take you out this afternoon?'
But the ladies had visitors more distinguished even than the General.The Agent himself came in one Sunday after church and asked to beallowed to stay to lunch. Cards flowed in apace from Government House,for the Master of the Ceremonies there knew that no entertainment wouldbe complete where Maud was not.
There were little dances got up expressly in her honour, for which hercard of engagements was filled for days before: at every point homage,the sweetest that woman's ears can listen to, awaited her. A chorus ofworshippers assured her she was beautiful; the incense was for everburning on her shrine, till the very air became drugged with flattery.Yet Maud was not completely happy; her conscience was ill at ease. Thescene around her was pleasant; but, tried by certain standards, she knewthat it would fall short. She remembered, with a sigh, the sort of wayin which her cousin Vernon would have turned up his nose at the peopleamong whom she was living, and she knew that in many ways they deservedit. Felicia, she knew, thought Mrs. Vereker utterly frivolous, fast andslightly vulgar; and she felt that Felicia was right. Her husband,conscience reminded her, disapproved of and despised Desvoeux: and wasthere not something to disapprove and dislike about him? Still Maud feltherself unable to resist the current that was hurrying her along. Theconsequence was that she had fallen out of harmony with those stricterjudges whose tastes just now it was convenient to forget. It gave her nopleasure to think of them. She fancied Jem in a silently reproachfulmood, Felicia daintily contemptuous, Vernon with an outspoken sneer. Herletters to her husband, though they never contained thehundred-thousandth part of one untruth, began to be less faithful andcomplete transcripts of her life than of old. Desvoeux ought, in truth,to have occupied a more prominent place. She felt ashamed to tell herhusband, toiling hard in solitude and heat, of the round of gaiety inwhich her life was passed. On the other hand, her husband's letters gaveher no satisfaction. They were far from amusing; indeed, the life whichhe was leading was hardly susceptible, in livelier hands than his, ofbeing rendered amusing or picturesque. He missed her, of course; butthen he would be with her again in a few weeks, and Maud did not thinkit necessary to be sentimental about it. His pen was far from a readyone, and this Report, Maud knew, would be worse to him than a campaign.In his letters to her his one idea would have been to conceal from heranything that was disagreeable, and she might, if she had chosen, haveaugured ill from his reticence; but life just now was too bright andexciting for such inward monition to get a hearing. Her companions hadinfected her with a passion for pleasure, and duty had faded intoindistinctness. Then, too, her new position as a married lady and asSutton's bride was not without its charm. She was a much grander ladynow than she had been the year before as Miss Vernon, and this access ofdignity was pleasurable. It involved, however, being taken in to dinnerby officials of an age, dignity, and disposition which she foundanything but congenial to her own, though Desvoeux protested that shewas trying to establish a flirtation with the Agent. Once at GovernmentHouse she had the honour of sitting next the Viceroy, an alarming butyet delightful eminence. How kind he seemed, how full of friendly talk,how eager to know about her husband and his doings!
'How is your _preux chevalier_?' he said. 'What would b
ecome ofeverything, I wonder, in that stormy corner that he keeps in such goodorder, but for him? He is one of the people whom I completely trust.'
Maud felt her cheek glowing with pleasure, yet the pleasure was notwithout a sting. Everybody conspired to speak of her husband as some onebeyond the usual flight in goodness, chivalry, nobility of soul. Was shebehaving as became the wife of such a man? Was she loving, honouring,and obeying in the full spirit of her vow? Was it honourable or rightthat half-a-dozen foolish lads should be competing for familiarity withher, and a man like Desvoeux be her habitual companion? Ought herhusband to hear such things of her? This was the little skeleton whichMaud kept locked up, along with many lovely dresses, in her bedroomcloset--this the little prick her conscience gave her--this the drop ofbitter in the glittering, ambrosial draught of pleasure.
She drank it all the same and found it too sweet to put it from herlips.