The Fate of Fenella. Various Authors
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gone out of her eyes and lips.
"Frank," she said, "never, never will I submit to be made ridiculous. By to-morrow this time, the story will be all over the London clubs. Drive back to Harrogate with you I will not, and either you get down, or I will."
Frank never moved.
"George!"
"Yes, my lady."
She stamped her little foot.
"How dare you call me that?" she said, in a furious underbreath. "Put me down!"
George never budged an inch. The trot-trot of the horses' feet maddened her, and she sprang up.
"Fenella," said Frank, winding his arm round her waist, "if you don't sit tight, I'll put you on my knee, and keep you there, and then I'll kiss you."
CHAPTER II.
BY JUSTIN H. McCARTHY, M. P.
KISMET.
But, ah, that Spring should vanish with the rose.
That youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close.
Omar Khayyam.
"Hulloa, Jacynth!"
Jacynth awoke from his reverie with a start and stared at the speaker. He had quite forgotten where he was. Through the gray smoke of his cigarette he had conjured, as from some magic vapor, an enchanting face—a girl's face—with hazel eyes and wonderful tan-colored hair. He had been in dreamland, and now he was only in the gardens of the hotel, and instead of his exquisite vision he found facing him a fat little man in white linen, who looked very hot and very jolly.
"I say, Jacynth, don't you remember me?"
Jacynth did not remember, at least fully. He had a dim consciousness that the fat little figure ought to be familiar to him, but he could not remember where or why. He had not quite collected himself yet, and he was slightly annoyed at the interruption to his day-dream. Also he was annoyed at being annoyed and being discomposed by anything. No perplexing witness, no hostile counsel, no antagonistic judge had ever been known to ruffle Clitheroe Jacynth's imperturbability. But then no vision with tan-colored hair and hazel eyes had ever come into court with him. He looked at the fat white figure, and shook his head gravely.
"But I say, hang it all, Jacynth, don't you remember that night in Cairo, and the dancing girls and the hasheesh den, and the row and all the rest of it?"
Memory asserted herself in Jacynth's mind. He did remember a night in Cairo when a party of young fellows from Shepheard's set out to see something of the queer Cairene slums. The fat little man was of the party; he was in white then, too, Jacynth remembered. He remembered, too, how hugely the little man had enjoyed everything, from the—well, the eccentricities of the dancing girls to the fumes in the hasheesh den, and even to the final scrimmage in the gambling hell, when Jacynth by a timely stroke saved his fat companion from being knifed by a Levantine rogue who had been detected in cheating. There was an awful row afterward; he remembered that, too, and an awkward business before the authorities next morning, but the names of his friends and his own legal reputation settled the matter. Yes, he remembered the fat little man now. He got up with a smile on his dark, clean-shaven face and held out his hand.
"How are you, Lord Castleton?"
Lord Castleton laughed. That was his way. He went through life laughing, as if everything were the best joke in the world.
"I'm glad you haven't forgotten me," he said. "By Jove! I haven't forgotten you, and that turn of the wrist which sent that Levantine devil's toothpick spinning. Well, and how are you?"
The men had sat down beside each other on the garden chair. Castleton produced a cigarette-case almost as fat as himself, on which a daintily-painted ballet girl disported.
"Try one!" he said; "they are ripping. Bingham Pasha sent them to me himself. He got them from the Sultan."
Jacynth took a cigarette, lit it from the end of his own, Castleton watching him all the time with the most jocular expression.
"You're not looking very fit," he said. "Those confounded courts, I suppose. By Jove! I shouldn't like to be a lawyer."
"Oh, I'm all right," Jacynth said; "I'm not taking the waters here. My sister lives here, and I've a festive little nephew. I only came here for a rest. I don't quite know why I came here just now though. Kismet, I suppose."
As he spoke that same vision of face and hair and eyes floated up before him.
Castleton laughed more boisterously than ever.
"Ah! Kismet, the dear old word. Yes, I suppose it's fate that makes us do most of the things which we seem to do for no particular reason."
"Has Kismet brought you here?" Jacynth inquired. "You seem fit enough at all events."
"Fit, my dear fellow? not at all."
It was one of Castleton's little jocularities with life to consider himself likely at any moment to become a confirmed invalid. "I was up in Bagdad, and I picked up an English paper which said that Harrogate was looking lovely, and somehow I felt homesick and seedy, and all that sort of thing, so I just cut the East and came slap on here."
"Do you know," said Jacynth gravely, " that there are moments when I feel much more inclined to cut the West and go, as you say, 'slap on' to some sleepy Eastern place—Bagdad perhaps, or Japan—and dream away the rest of my life."
"The rest of your life? You talk as if you were ninety!" And Castleton slapped his fat little leg merrily.
"Don't you know what the man-at-arms says in Thackeray's ballad?" Jacynth replied. "'Wait till you come to forty year.' Well, I have come to forty year, pretty nearly. I was thirty-nine three weeks ago—and do you know, Castleton, there are times when I'm tired of the whole business."
"By Jove! what would the judges say if they heard the famous Clitheroe Jacynth talking like this?"
"My dear fellow, I'm not famous, and if I were, what's the good of being famous at the price of becoming a fossil?"
"Do you know," said Castleton, with a grin, "I believe you must be mashed on somebody or other, by Jove, I do. If you talk——"
Before Castleton had finished his sentence he became aware that Jacynth was not paying him much attention. In fact, Jacynth's gaze seemed to be directed very intently toward the end of the garden, and Jacynth's mind appeared to be giving no heed whatever to Castleton's amiable garrulity. So Castleton, following the direction of his friend's glance, saw in the distance a woman's form, a form that was familiar to him, a form that he had already seen that day.
"By Jove!" said Castleton to himself softly. He had no time to say more, even to himself, for Jacynth had jumped to his feet and was bidding him good-by.
"Glad to have met you, hope to see you soon again." These were the words Jacynth was saying, with a confusion curiously at variation with his habitual composure. He shook Castleton warmly by the hand, and moved away so rapidly that Castleton's, "Why, my dear boy, of course you will; I shall stop here for ever so long," was delivered to the empty air.
"By Jove!" Castleton said again, this time aloud, as he watched Jacynth's rapid advance in the direction of the girl. "By Jove, he's struck, like all the lot. Poor devil! I'll stay here and give him a hint presently. Oh, poor devil, poor devil!" And Castleton's jolly face expressed as much honest commiseration as its ruddy plumpness permitted.
In the