by Ruskin Bond
With a long face, real or feigned, he held open the door; his late friends attempted to escape on the other side—impossible! They must pass him. She whom he had insulted (Latin for kissed) deposited somewhere at his feet a look of gentle, blushing reproach; the other, whom he had not insulted, darted red-hot daggers at him from her eyes; and so they parted.
It was perhaps fortunate for Dolignan that he had the grace to be a friend of Major Hoskyns of his regiment, a veteran laughed at by the youngsters, for the major was too apt to look coldly upon billiard-balls and cigars; he had seen cannonballs and linstocks. He had also, to tell the truth, swallowed a good bit of the mess-room poker, which made it impossible for Major Hoskyns to descend to an ungentleman-like word or action as to brush his own trousers below the knee.
Captain Dolignan told this gentleman his story in gleeful accents; but Major Hoskyns heard him coldly, and as coldly answered that he had known a man to lose his life for the same thing.
‘That is nothing,’ continued the Major, ‘but unfortunately he deserved to lose it.’
At this, blood mounted to the younger man’s temples; and his senior added, ‘I mean to say he was thirty-five; you, I presume, are twenty-one!’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘That is much the same thing; will you be advised by me?’
‘If you will advise me.’
‘Speak to no one of this, and send White the £3, that he may think you have lost the bet.’
‘That is hard, when I won it.’
‘Do it for all that, sir.’
Let the disbelievers in human perfectibility know that this dragoon capable of a blush, did this virtuous action, albeit with violent reluctance; and this was his first damper. A week after these events he was at a ball. He was in that state of factious discontent which belongs to us amiable English. He was looking in vain for a lady, equal in personal attraction to the idea he had formed of George Dolignan as a man, when suddenly there glided past him a most delightful vision! A lady whose beauty and symmetry took him by the eyes—another look: ‘It can’t be! Yes, it is!’ Miss Haythorn! (not that he knew her name!) but what an apotheosis!
The duck had become a peahen—radiant, dazzling, she looked twice as beautiful and almost twice as large as before. He lost sight of her. He found her again. She was so lovely she made him ill—and he, alone, must not dance with her, speak to her. If he had been content to begin her acquaintance the usual way, it might have ended in kissing; it must end in nothing.
As she danced, sparks of beauty fell from her all around, but him—she did not see him; it was clear she never would see him—one gentleman was particularly assiduous; she smiled on his assiduity; he was ugly, but she smiled on him. Dolignan was surprised at his success, his ill-taste, his ugliness, his impertinence. Dolignan at last found himself injured: ‘Who was this man? And what right had he to go on so? He never kissed her, I suppose,’ said Dolle. Dolignan could not prove it, but he felt that somehow the rights of property were invaded.
He went home and dreamed of Miss Haythorn, and hated all the ugly success. He spent a fortnight trying to find out who his beauty was—he never could encounter her again. At last, he heard of her in this way: A lawyer’s clerk paid him a little visit and commenced a little action against him in the name of Miss Haythorn, for insulting her in a railway-train.
The young gentleman was shocked; endeavoured to soften the lawyer’s clerk; that machine did not thoroughly comprehend the meaning of the term. The lady’s name, however, was at last revealed by this untoward incident; from her name to her address was but a short step; and the same day our crestfallen hero lay in wait at her door, and many a succeeding day, without effect.
But one fine afternoon she issued forth quite naturally, as if she did it every day, and walked briskly on the parade. Dolignan did the same, met and passed her many times on the parade, and searched for pity in her eyes, but found neither look nor recognition, nor any other sentiment; for all this she walked and walked; till all the other promenaders were tired and gone—then her culprit summoned resolution, and taking off his hat, with a voice for the first time tremulous, besought permission to address her.
She stopped, blushed, and neither acknowledged nor disowned his acquaintance. He blushed, stammered out how ashamed he was, how he deserved to be punished, how he was punished, how little she knew how unhappy he was, and concluded by begging her not to let all the world know the disgrace of a man who was already mortified enough by the loss of her acquaintance.
She asked an explanation; he told her of the action that had been commenced in her name; she gently shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘How stupid they are!’ Emboldened by this, he begged to know whether or not a life of distant unpretending devotion would, after a lapse of years, erase the memory of his madness—his crime!
‘She did not know!’
‘She must now bid him adieu, as she had preparations to make for a ball in the Crescent, where everybody was to be.’
They parted, and Dolignan determined to be at the ball, where everybody was to be. He was there, and after some time he obtained an introduction to Miss Haythorn, and he danced with her. Her manner was gracious. With the wonderful tact of her sex, she seemed to have commenced the acquaintance that evening.
That night, for the first time, Dolignan was in love. I will spare the reader all a lover’s arts, by which he succeeded in dining where she dined, in dancing where she danced, in overtaking her by accident when she rode. His devotion followed her to church, where the dragoon was rewarded by learning there is a world where they neither polk nor smoke—the two capital abominations of this one.
He made an acquaintance with her uncle, who liked him, and he saw at last with joy that her eye loved to dwell upon him, when she thought he did not observe her. It was three months after the Box Tunnel that Captain Dolignan called one day upon Captain Haythorn, R.N., whom he had met twice in his life, and slightly propitiated by violently listening to a cutting-out expedition; he called, and in the usual way asked permission to pay his addresses to his daughter.
The worthy captain straightaway began doing quarterdeck, when suddenly he was summoned from the apartment by a mysterious message. On his return he announced, with a total change of voice, that ‘It was all right, and his visitor might run alongside as soon as he chose.’ My reader has divined the truth; this nautical commander was in complete and happy subjugation to his daughter, our heroine.
As he was taking leave, Dolignan saw his divinity glide into the drawing-room. He followed her, observed a sweet consciousness deepen into confusion—she tried to laugh and cried instead, and then she smiled again; when he kissed her hand at the door it was ‘George’ and ‘Marian’ instead of ‘Captain’ this and ‘Miss’ the other.
A reasonable time after this (for my tale is merciful and skips formalities and torturing delays), these two were very happy; they were once more upon the railroad, going to enjoy their honeymoon all by themselves. Marian Dolignan was dressed just as before—duck-like and delicious; all bright except her clothes; but George sat beside her this time instead of opposite; and she drank him in gently from her long eyelashes.
‘Marian,’ said George, ‘married people should tell each other all. Will you ever forgive me if I own to you; no—’
‘Yes! Yes!’
‘Well, then, you remember the Box Tunnel.’ (This was the first allusion he had ventured to it.) ‘I am ashamed to say I had £3 to £10 with White I would kiss one of you two lades.’ And George, pathetic externally, chuckled within.
‘I know that, George; I overheard you,’ was the demure reply.
‘Oh! You overheard me! Impossible.’
‘And did you not hear me whisper to my companion? I made a bet with her.’
‘You made a bet! How singular! What was it’
‘Only a pair of gloves, George.’
‘Yes, I know; but what about it?’
‘That if you did, you should be my husband, deares
t.’
‘Oh! But stay; then you could not have been so very angry with me, love. Why, dearest, then you brought that action against me.’
Mrs Dolignan looked down.
‘I was afraid you were forgetting me! George, you will never forgive me!’
‘Angel! Why, here is the Box Tunnel!’
Now reader—fie! No! No such thing! You can’t expect to be indulged in this way every time we come to a dark place. Besides, it is not the thing. Consider, two sensible married people. No scream in hopeless rivalry of the engine—this time!