Chapter II.

Otago Witness, Issue 1191, 26 September 1874, Page 19

Chapter II.

CAPTAIN AND MISS HALL OF THE "PLUNGERS."

"By Jove ! old Sam Hall, as I live !" Edwin half rose from his great easy-chair in the verandah — he was convalescent now —as a tall, brown-faced dragoon swung across the bottom of the flower-

dotted lawn on the way up from the beach, " Sam ! hallo, Sam !" he called ; the dragoon paused to look up. With him there walked a fine stately girl, also a dragoon, as you could see by her unmistakable barrack walk, and that noli me tancjere air that generally appertains to the female soldier. The brother and sister came slowly across the grass towards the verandah. " Can't think who the deuce the fellow is — do you know him, Car I" " N-no, unless he's young Partlett of the ' Crashers ' — at Fyzabad, you know, Sam." " Not he — dead long ago — 'yellowback ' at Bermuda. Why— it's old Eddie Keiller !" Hand-shaking, " dear old boying," <fee, &c, ad libitum. Then introductions ; for these men had been public school chums together, therefore of the same caste, and therefore at liberty to bring their womenkind together. Tottie and Carrie Hall set about " reckoning up " one another with that marvellous, instantaneous grasp of character instinctive with the keener sex. The sum total in either case was a compromise. It was not to be a sudden, gushing, deathless friendship ; nor yet a sharp mutual dislike scarce veiled decently over with Judas-kisses and plenteous "my dears" and "my darlings." They felt at once that their present position must be a dignified one of non-interven-tion, an armed neutrality, capable of transformation should policy so demand. The Halls had just come home from India, down to the "Royal" at Seasurf to recruit. " Like it ? oh, it is so jolly !" answered Carry, as she lay out under the tree-shade with Eddie a fortnight or so after her arrival — her brother and the Wyldes having gone oft" on a rough-and-ready picnic some twenty miles away. Carry Hall would not join them, she was unwell, she said ; and Edwin couldn't — on account of his arm. " Jolly as Mentone, and without the gambling," he added to her description. " Without the gambling ! Don't you ever play, Mr. Keiller ?" "Hate it, Besides, I have no money, so I couldn't if I would." Just a trifling shade passed over her face, he thought, as he explained his absence of wealth. Then she laughed uneasily. "Some people play without much money of their own — Sam does for one — and as for me, I am a regular gambler — a professed one ; I gamble with everything. Even with-"" "Your affec — " Eddie was insinuating, but she pretended not to hear the interruption, and went on — "My neck, Sam says, when oxit pigsticking !" "And have you actually — stuck pigs ?" he asked, maliciously, half rolling over on his sound arm to have a better look at her face. "Don't be absurd, Mr. Keiller. I have been out and ridden hard to see men do it, though — there, don't say it's unladylike, for it isn't ; besides, your Tot — Miss Wylde, I mean — would do the same, if she had the chance." "How do you know?" he asked curiously, wreathing his cigar smoke in circles from his nostrils. " Oh, I know she would," was the inconsequent answer. Carry Hall was rapidly plucking daisy-heads and aiming them at the very elegant bottine that peeped out at the foot of her dress : " I know she would ; she is just what Sam calls a little d (don't be shocked, I'm a soldier, you know) at anything !" Eddie Keiller was not shocked ; in fact he rather liked a straightforward bit of slang in a regular girl of the world— more particularly when she happened to be a remarkably handsome one, with brains and a reserve power of being ladylike to the extreme when she chose. " Fancy poor Tot a little devil !" he murmured softly, and half to himself. Carry Hall blushed up a bright passion colour. " You know I didn't mean anything of the sort," she deprecated; "besides, if I did, it's not likely I should have said it, knowing how fond Mr. Keiller is of her — though she did break his arm !" " But she didn't, Miss Hall !" retorted the other warmly, for he had not yet entirely forgotten the old love, though, indeed, he chose to regard it now as a mere brother-and-sisterly affection . "But she did, Mr. Keiller — young Jack Wylde told me all about the race — it's well she did not break your neck, as well as — your heart !" She whispered the last two words, and looked half up at him over her shoulder, to see how he would take them. The girl had marked down this handsome Eddie Keiller for her own, and determined to spare no effort to " bring him to bay," poor as he was. "I'm very fond of Tottie," he said gravely, yet with a half sigh, as he shifted restlessly on the soft grass ; " very fond of her— she's my cousin, you know." "Soam I fond of her ; she is a dear little thing ; but I don't believe in cousins !" " Let us crawl down to the beach, and hear the band play," he said, pretending to yawn as he turned away to rise. It was a good move to conceal a little inevitable confusion that came over him just at that moment. Miss Hall quite appreciated it. So they went down by the "much-resounding sea;" dawdled about the band-stand ; strolled ; lay down on the shingle ; strolled again ; and were finally lost to view round a promontory leading to ferny dells and shady heatherscented nooks, where omnipresent Mother Gossip was in the habit of' saying most of the flirting of Seaaurf was carried on. '

" Decided case for St. George's, 'Anover Square !" remarked a vulgar cockney snob (so Eddie Keiller called him) to his comrade as they passed the pair. " 'Ang it all — ain't she a clipper !" was the undisguised note of admiration of No. 2 for Carry Hall's attractions ; and the cads continued their walk. From that day she seemed to grow on Edwin Keiller, as it were, and to become more and more a necessary of his life. There was fascination about the girl ; about her really fine beauty ; about the play of hor warm dark eyes, and the waving of her voluptuous hair; about her manner ; about her deep rich voice ; and about her knowledge even of men and things, amply illustrated as it was with a fund of personal anecdote. She was brilliant and spirituelle as the Frenchwoman, stately as the Spaniard, luxurious in repose as the Italian, handsome as the Greek, and "jolly" as the frank, open English girl. Edwin Keiller fell under the influence ; he was charmed ; he loved a living poem, a fine picture, a stately statue, and he very much admired Carry Hall. Poor Tottie Wylde was in tribulation. Since the accident her sisterly affection for Eddie seemed somehow to change its nature. At times she reproached herself bitterly .with not feeling towards him in those days of pain as she had felt before ; she could not regard him as Harry or Jack now ; there seemed a difference — a something between them that was as strange as it was unpleasant. Could it be that his silence on the marriage question (upon which he had been so worrying before) was really annoying her? Absurd — she flung the thought from her. But then this showy Carry Hall, with her airs and graces, and knowledge of the world, and lascinating, clever talk—was not Eddie (Tottie's own Eddie) struck with her I was he not almost openly flirting with her I Horrible thought ! Might he not be actually in love with her i It looked very like it ; and though she (Tottie) did not, would not, could not care one atom for him that way, still itwas a pity to see him entrapped by this brazen she-dragoon; and poor Tottie burst into bitter tears as, after numberless sleepless nights and endless mental discussion of all the ins and outs of the matter, she at length came to the inevitable conclusion that it must be so, and that she herself was really in love with this man, who, shocked doubtless, and disgusted with her girlishness, her levity, and her share in his accident, had given up all thoughts of her, all love for her, in favour of the odious Carry Hall. This conclusion came to the young girl with a cruel pang, none the less severe that she felt she had almost forced events to take the course they had done, and her self-inflicted punishment was constant and sharp. But she had plenty of pluck, had this mountain maiden, together with a soupqon of natural feminine revenge in her mental constitution, and she soon made up her mind that if Eddie had really thrown her over (for, of course, the race to decide the question was all nonsense), he should not, in addition, have the satisfaction of seeing that she cared for the act, or missed him in the least. If he openly flirted, so could she ; if he was playing false, why should she appear to mind ? Captain Sam Hall (why, by the way, are the swarms of Halls that adorn the British service each and everyone dubbed " Sam," as if there were no other nickname possible ?) — Captain Hall was a terrible flirt, of the most dangerous sort — not your namby-pamby "ladies' man," who is tolerated by the sex, much as wise kings in the days of yore tolerated their court-fools — but a real, slap-dash, goahead admirer, who could not help making love to every " pretty woman he saw, whether she liked it or not, and was in consequence very successful in his love forays. In Captain Sam's eyes Tottie Wylde was simply adorable, and from the first day he saw her established at the "Royal" by Eddie's sofa, he determined on a flirtation. He tried it, and got well laughed at by her for his pains ; but he, n6thing daunted, resumed operations day by day, until at last — somewhat suddenly, and a good deal to his surprise — his new charmer appeared to appreciate his efforts, and he made rapid progress in his suit. In fact, Tottie Wylde, when once she began to favour him, became almost too exigeante, and (whether it was his face, his heroism, his jovial manner, or a combination of all, he could not tell) she sat with him, walked with him, danced with him, and acted towards him altogether more like an engaged bride than anything else, once the ice between them had been broken. For some reason or other, Sam Hall was very anxious to keep things of this sort a little dark before his sister : he seemed (absurd as it was) to be afraid of her laiaghing at him for spooning on such a chit as Miss Wylde ; while Tottie was just as desirous to preserve appearances before her brothers (her parents did not care much what she did) — boys will be so annoying about these affairs — so that eventually it came to pass that an understanding was established between the two as to their walks, rides, moonlight strolls, &c, that was very pleasant, even if a little deceitful. But somehow Sam discovered, to his great chagrin at first (afterwards he did not mind it a bit), that they seldom or never deceived Eddie, who not unfrequently turned up unexpectedly in their most enjoyable tetes-ci-tete, to their manifest confusion and his very evident annoyance. " Gad, Miss Carr must have a hand in this !" Sam said one day to Tottie as they met Eddie face to face in a secluded part of the promontory walk. " Why your sister V aaked Tottie, when

he had passed on ; " surely you don't leave my notes lying about I' 1 \ Captain Hall muttered apologetically something about his d — d carelessness, which he excused on the ground that Carry took care of everything for him. Tottie would put a stop to that easily, so (rejoicing to notice that Eddie could see them from the position he had taken up on the hill) she made Master Sam sit down, and there and then she inducted him into the mystery of the characters of a system of short-hand her brother Jack had somehow picked up : " There," sho said, handing him a copy of the character to put in his card-case, " I'll always write to you in that — " *Gad!" he broke in; "Cany will think it's some of my old- Arabic writing ! It's not unlike it at all." "All the better," said Tottie, and the arrangement for secret correspondence was completed. • *»- —