George Fenn - By Birth a Lady

Charley patted and soothed his fiery curveting steed into a walk, which was quite sufficient to keep it abreast of Maximilian Bray’s ambling jennet, which kept up a dancing, circus-horse motion, one evidently approved by its owner for its aid in displaying his graceful horsemanship.

“Nice day,” said Charley, scanning with a side glance his companion’s “get-up,” and evidently with a laughing contempt.

“Ya-a-s, nice day,” drawled Bray, “but confoundedly dusty!”

“Rain soon,” said Charley maliciously. “Lay it well.”

“Bai Jove, no – surely not!” exclaimed the other, displaying a great deal of trepidation. “You don’t think so, do you?”

“Black cloud coming up behind,” said Charley coolly.

“Bai Jove, mai dear fellow, let’s push on and get home! You’ll come and lunch, won’t you?”

“No, not to-day,” said Charley. “But I’m going into the town to see the saddler. I’ll ride with you.”

“Tha-a-anks!” drawled Bray, with a grin of misery. “But, mai dear fellow, hadn’t you better go on the grass? You’re covering me with dust!”

“Confounded puppy! Nice brother-in-law! Wring his neck!” muttered Charley, as he turned his mare on to the grass which skirted the side of the road, as did Bray on the other, when, the horses’ paces being muffled by the soft turf, conversation was renewed.

“Bai Jove, Vining, you’ll come over to the flower-show to-morrow, won’t you? There’ll be some splendid girls there! Good show too, for the country. You send a lot of things, don’t you? – Covent-garden stuff and cabbages, eh?”

“Humph!” growled Charley. “The governor’s going to have some sent, I s’pose; our gardener’s fond of that sort of thing. Think perhaps I shall go.”

“Ya-a-s, I should go if I were you. It does you country fellows a deal of good, I always think, to get into society.”

“Does it?” said Charley, raising his eyebrows a little.

“Bai Jove, ya-a-s! You’d better go. Laura’s going, and the Lingon’s girls are coming to lunch. You’d better come over to lunch and go with us,” drawled the exquisite.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Charley, hesitating; for he was thinking whether it would not be better than going quite alone – “I don’t know what to say.”

“Sa-a-ay? Sa-a-ay ya-a-s,” drawled Bray. “Come in good time and have a weed first in my room; and then we’ll taste some sherry the governor has got da-awn. He always leaves it till I come da-awn from ta-awn. Orders execrable stuff himself, as I often tell him. Wouldn’t have a drop fit to drink if it weren’t for me. You’d better come.”

“Well, really,” said Charley again, half mockingly, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Why, sa-a-ay ya-a-as, and come.”

“Well, then, ‘ya-a-as’!” drawled Charley, in imitation of the other’s tone.

But Maximilian Bray’s skin was too thick for the little barb to penetrate; and he rode gingerly on, petting his whiskers, and altering the sit of his hat; when, being thoroughly occupied with his costume, horse and man nearly came headlong to the ground, in consequence of the mare stumbling over a small heap of road-scrapings. But the little animal saved herself, though only by a violent effort, which completely unseated Maximilian Bray, who was thrown forward upon her neck, his hat being dislodged and falling with a sharp bang into the dusty road.

“All right! No bones broken! You’ve better luck than I have!” laughed Charley, as he fished up the fallen hat with his hunting-whip. “Nip her well with your knees, man, and then you won’t be unseated again in that fashion. Here, take your hat.”

“Bai Jove!” ejaculated the breathless dandy, “it’s too bad! That fellow who left the sweepings by the roadside ought to be shot! Mai dear fellow, your governor, as a magistrate, ought to see to it! Tha-a-anks!”

He took his hat, and began ruefully to wipe off the dust with a scented handkerchief before again covering his head; but though he endeavoured to preserve an outward appearance of calm, there was wrath in his breast as he gazed down at one lemon-coloured tight glove split to ribbons, and a button burst away from his surtout coat. He could feel too that his moustache was coming out of curl, and it only wanted the sharp shower which now came pattering down to destroy the last remains of his equanimity.

“Bai Jove, how beastly unfortunate!” he exclaimed, urging his steed into a smart canter.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Charley coolly, in his rough tweed suit that no amount of rain would have injured. “Better to-day than to-morrow. Do no end of good, and bring on the hay.”

“Ya-a-as, I suppose so,” drawled Bray; “but do a confounded deal of harm!” and he gazed at the sleeves of his glossy Saville-row surtout.

“O, never mind your coat, man!” laughed Charley. “See how it lays the dust!”

“Ya-a-as, just so,” drawled Bray. “I shall take this short cut and get home. Only a shower! Bye-bye! See you to-morrow! Come to lunch.”

The ragged lemon glove was waved to Charley as its owner turned down a side lane; and now that his costume was completely disordered and wet, he made no scruple about digging his spurs into his mare’s flanks, and galloping homewards; while, heedless of the sharply-falling rain, Charley gently cantered on towards the town.

“Damsels in distress!” exclaimed the young man suddenly. “‘Bai Jove!’ as Long-ears says. Taken refuge from the rain beneath a tree! Leaves, young and weak, completely saturated – impromptu shower – bath! What shall I do? Lend them my horse? No good. They would not ride double, like Knight Templars. Ride off, then, for umbrellas, I suppose. Why didn’t that donkey stop a little longer? and then he could have done it.”

So mused Charley Vining as he cantered up to where, beneath a spreading elm by the roadside, two ladies were waiting the cessation of the rain – faring, though, very little better than if they had stood in the open. One was a fashionably-dressed, tall, dark, bold beauty, black of eye and tress, and evidently in anything but the best of tempers with the weather; the other a fair pale girl, in half-mourning, whose yellow hair was plainly braided across her white forehead, but only to be knotted together at the back in a massive cluster of plaits, which told of what a glorious golden mantle it could have shed over its owner, rippling down far below the waist, and ready, it seemed, to burst from prisoning comb and pin. There was something ineffably sweet in her countenance, albeit there was a subdued, even sorrowful look as her shapely little head was bent towards her companion, and she was evidently speaking as Charley cantered up.

“Sorry to see you out in this, Miss Bray,” he cried, raising his low-crowned hat. “What can I do? – Fetch umbrellas and shawls? Speak the word.”

“O, how kind of you, Mr Vining!” exclaimed the dark maiden, with brightening eyes and flushing cheeks. “But really I should not like to trouble you.”

“Trouble? Nonsense!” cried Charley. “Only speak before you get wet through.”

“Well, if you really – really, you know – would not mind,” hesitated Laura Bray, who, in spite of the rain, was in no hurry to bring the interview to a close.

“Wouldn’t mind? Of course not!” echoed Charley, whose bold eyes were fixed upon Laura Bray’s companion, who timidly returned his salute, and then shrank back, as he again raised his little deer-stalker hat from its curly throne. “Now, then,” he exclaimed, “what’s it to be? – shawls and Sairey Gamps of gingham and tape?”

“No, no, Mr Vining! How droll you are!” laughed the beauty. “But if you really wouldn’t mind – really, you know – ”