The Witch's Head. H. Rider Haggard
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When Ernest woke on the morning after the ball it was ten o'clock, and he had a severe headache. This—the headache—was his first impression, but presently his eye fell upon a withering red rose that lay upon the dressing table, and he smiled. Then followed reflections, those confounded reflections that always dog the heels of everything pleasant in life, and he ceased to smile.
In the end he yawned and got up. When he reached the sitting-room, which looked cool and pleasant in contrast to the hot July sunshine that beat upon the little patch of bare turf in front of the house, and the glittering sea beyond, he found that the others had done their breakfast. Jeremy had gone out, but his sister was there, looking a little pale, no doubt from the late hours of the previous night.
“Good-morning, Doll!”
“Good-morning, Ernest,” she answered, rather coldly. “I have been keeping your tea as warm as I can, but I'm afraid it is getting cold.”
“You are a good Samaritan, Doll. I've got such a head! perhaps the tea will make it better.”
She smiled as she gave it to him; had she spoke what was in her mind, she would have answered that she had “such a heart.”
He drank the tea, and apparently felt better for it, for presently he asked her, in comparatively cheerful tones, how she liked the dance.
“O, very well, thank you, Ernest: how did you like it?”
“O, awfully! I say, Doll!”
“Yes, Ernest.”
“Isn't she lovely?”
“Who, Ernest?”
“Who! why, Eva Ceswick, of course.”
“Yes, Ernest, she is very lovely.”
There was something about her tone that was not encouraging; at any rate he did not pursue his subject.
“Where is Jeremy?” he asked next.
“He has gone out.”
Presently, Ernest, having finished his second cup of tea, went out too, and came across Jeremy mooning about the yard.
“Hulloa, my hearty! and how are you after your dissipations?”
“All right, thank you,” answered Jeremy, sulkily.
Ernest glanced up quickly. The voice was the voice of Jeremy, but the tones were not his tones.
“What is up, old chap?” he said, slipping his arm through his friend's.
“Nothing.”
“O yes, there is, though. What is it? Out with it! I am a splendid father confessor.”
Jeremy freed his arm, and remained sulkier than ever. Ernest looked hurt, and the look softened the other.
“Well, of course, if you won't tell me, there is nothing more to be said”; and he prepared to move off.
“As though you didn't know!”
“Upon my honour I don't.”
“Then if you'll come in here, I will tell you”; and Jeremy opened the door of the little outhouse, where he stuffed his birds and kept his gun and collection of eggs and butterflies, and motioned Ernest majestically in.
He entered and seated himself upon the stuffing-table, gazing abstractedly at a bittern that Jeremy had shot about the time that this story opened, and which was now very moth-eaten, and waved one melancholy leg in the air in a way meant to be imposing, but only succeeded in being grotesque.
“Well, what is it?” he interrogated of the glassy eye of the decaying bittern.
Jeremy turned his broad back upon Ernest—he felt that he could speak better on such a subject with his back turned—and, addressing empty space before him, said:
“I think it was precious unkind of you.”
“What was precious unkind?”
“To go and cut me out of the only girl——”
“I ever loved?” suggested Ernest, for he was hesitating.
“I ever loved!” chimed in Jeremy; for the phrase expressed his sentiments exactly.
“Well, old chap, if you would come to the point a little more, and tell me who the deuce you are talking about——”
“Why, who should I be talking about? there is only one girl——”
“You ever loved?”
“I ever loved!”
“Well, in the name of the Holy Roman Empire, who is she?”
“Why, Eva Ceswick.”
Ernest whistled.
“I say, old chap,” he said, after a pause, “why didn't you tell me? I didn't even know that you knew her. Are you engaged to her, then?”
“Engaged! no.”
“Well, then, have you an understanding with her?”
“No, of course not.”
“Look here, old fellow, if you would just slew round a bit and tell me how the matter stands, we might get on a little.”
“It doesn't stand at all, but—I worship the ground she treads on; there!”
“Ah!” said Ernest, “that's awkward, for so do I—at least I think I do.”
Jeremy groaned, and Ernest groaned too, by way of company.
“Look here, old chap,” said the latter, “what is to be done? You should have told me, but you didn't, you see. If you had, I would have kept clear. Fact is, she bowled me over altogether, bowled me clean.”
“So she did me.”
“I'll tell you what, Jeremy, I'll go away and leave you to make the running. Not that I see that there is much good in either of us making the running, for we have nothing to marry on, and no more has she.”
“And we are only twenty-one. We can't marry at twenty-one,” put in Jeremy, “or we should have a large family by the time we're thirty. Fellows who marry at twenty-one always do.”
“She's twenty-one; she told me so.”
“She told me too,” said Jeremy, determined to show that Ernest was not the only person favoured with this exciting fact.
“Well, shall I clear? we can't jaw about it for ever.”
“No,” said Jeremy, slowly, and in a way that showed that it cost him an effort to say it, “that would not be fair; besides, I expect that the mischief is done; everybody gets fond of you, old fellow, men or women. No, you shan't go, and we won't get to loggerheads over it either. I'll tell you what we will do—we will toss up.”
This struck Ernest as a brilliant suggestion.
“Right you are,” he said, at once producing a shilling; “singles or threes?”
“Singles, of course; it's sooner over.”
Ernest poised the coin on his thumb.
“You call. But, I say, what are we tossing for? We can't draw lots for the girl like the fellows in Homer. We haven't captured her yet.”
This was obviously a point that required consideration. Jeremy scratched his head.
“How will this do?” he said. “The winner to have a month to make the running in, the loser not to interfere. If she won't have anything to say to him after a month, then the loser to have his fling. If she will, loser to keep away.”
“That will do. Stand clear; up you go.”
The shilling spun in the air.