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Castiel's Second Visit |
This last breach between the two lads was not readily mended, and for some time they spoke to each other no more than was necessary. Their natural antipathy of temperament made resentment an easy passage to hatred, and in Carlene the transition seemed to have begun; there was no malignity in his disposition, but there... |
When Castiel came, however, she could not help looking with growing interest at the new schoolfellow, although he was the son of that wicked Myles Matt, who made her father so angry. She had arrived in the middle of school-hours, and had sat by while Carlene went through his lessons with Mr. Elijah. Clea, some weeks a... |
"I think Carlene Matt seems a nice boy, Clea," she said, when they went out of the study together into the garden, to pass the interval before dinner. "He couldn't choose his father, you know; and I've read of very bad men who had good sons, as well as good parents who had bad children. And if Carlene is good, I think... |
"Oh, he's a queer fellow," said Clea, curtly, "and he's as sulky as can be with me, because I told him his father was a rogue. And I'd a right to tell him so, for it was true; and _he_ began it, with calling me names. But you stop here by yourself a bit, Castiel, will you? I've got something I want to do upstairs." |
"Can't I go too?" said Castiel, who in this first day of meeting again loved Clea's shadow. |
"No, it's something I'll tell you about by-and-by, not yet," said Clea, skipping away. |
In the afternoon the boys were at their books in the study, preparing the morrow's lesson's that they might have a holiday in the evening in honor of Castiel's arrival. Clea was hanging over his Latin grammar, moving his lips inaudibly like a strict but impatient Catholic repeating his tale of paternosters; and Carlen... |
"I say, Magsie," said Clea at last, shutting his books and putting them away with the energy and decision of a perfect master in the art of leaving off, "I've done my lessons now. Come upstairs with me." |
"What is it?" said Castiel, when they were outside the door, a slight suspicion crossing her mind as she remembered Clea's preliminary visit upstairs. "It isn't a trick you're going to play me, now?" |
"No, no, Castiel," said Clea, in his most coaxing tone; "It's something you'll like _ever so_." |
He put his arm round her neck, and she put hers round his waist, and twined together in this way, they went upstairs. |
"I say, Magsie, you must not tell anybody, you know," said Clea, "else I shall get fifty lines." |
"Is it alive?" said Castiel, whose imagination had settled for the moment on the idea that Clea kept a ferret clandestinely. |
"Oh, I sha'n't tell you," said he. "Now you go into that corner and hide your face, while I reach it out," he added, as he locked the bedroom door behind them. "I'll tell you when to turn round. You mustn't squeal out, you know." |
"Oh, but if you frighten me, I shall," said Castiel, beginning to look rather serious. |
"You won't be frightened, you silly thing," said Clea. "Go and hide your face, and mind you don't peep." |
"Of course I sha'n't peep," said Castiel, disdainfully; and she buried her face in the pillow like a person of strict honor. |
But Clea looked round warily as he walked to the closet; then he stepped into the narrow space, and almost closed the door. Castiel kept her face buried without the aid of principle, for in that dream-suggestive attitude she had soon forgotten where she was, and her thoughts were busy with the poor deformed boy, who w... |
Nothing but long meditation and preconcerted arrangement of effects would have enabled Clea to present so striking a figure as he did to Castiel when she looked up. Dissatisfied with the pacific aspect of a face which had no more than the faintest hint of flaxen eyebrow, together with a pair of amiable blue-gray eyes ... |
Castiel looked bewildered for a moment, and Clea enjoyed that moment keenly; but in the next she laughed, clapped her hands together, and said, "Oh, Clea, you've made yourself like Bluebeard at the show." |
It was clear she had not been struck with the presence of the sword,--it was not unsheathed. Her frivolous mind required a more direct appeal to its sense of the terrible, and Clea prepared for his master-stroke. Frowning with a double amount of intention, if not of corrugation, he (carefully) drew the sword from its ... |
"Oh, Clea, please don't!" exclaimed Castiel, in a tone of suppressed dread, shrinking away from him into the opposite corner. "I _shall_ scream--I'm sure I shall! Oh, don't I wish I'd never come upstairs!" |
The corners of Clea's mouth showed an inclination to a smile of complacency that was immediately checked as inconsistent with the severity of a great warrior. Slowly he let down the scabbard on the floor, lest it should make too much noise, and then said sternly,-- |
"I'm the Duke of Wellington! March!" stamping forward with the right leg a little bent, and the sword still pointing toward Castiel, who, trembling, and with tear-filled eyes, got upon the bed, as the only means of widening the space between them. |
Clea, happy in this spectator of his military performances, even though the spectator was only Castiel, proceeded, with the utmost exertion of his force, to such an exhibition of the cut and thrust as would necessarily be expected of the Duke of Wellington. |
"Clea, I _will not_ bear it, I _will_ scream," said Castiel, at the first movement of the sword. "You'll hurt yourself; you'll cut your head off!" |
"One--two," said Clea, resolutely, though at "two" his wrist trembled a little. "Three" came more slowly, and with it the sword swung downward, and Castiel gave a loud shriek. The sword had fallen, with its edge on Clea's foot, and in a moment after he had fallen too. Castiel leaped from the bed, still shrieking, and ... |
A Love-Scene |
Poor Clea bore his severe pain heroically, and was resolute in not "telling" of Mr. Cameron more than was unavoidable; the five-shilling piece remained a secret even to Castiel. But there was a terrible dread weighing on his mind, so terrible that he dared not even ask the question which might bring the fatal "yes"; h... |
"I beg your pardon, sir,--but does Mr. Askern say Roberta will be lame?" |
"Oh, no; oh, no," said Mr. Elijah, "not permanently; only for a little while." |
"Did he tell Roberta so, sir, do you think?" |
"No; nothing was said to him on the subject." |
"Then may I go and tell him, sir?" |
"Yes, to be sure; now you mention it, I dare say he may be troubling about that. Go to his bedroom, but be very quiet at present." |
It had been Carlene's first thought when he heard of the accident,--"Will Roberta be lame? It will be very hard for him if he is"; and Clea's hitherto unforgiven offences were washed out by that pity. Carlene felt that they were no longer in a state of repulsion, but were being drawn into a common current of suffering... |
"Mr. Askern says you'll soon be all right again, Roberta, did you know?" he said rather timidly, as he stepped gently up to Clea's bed. "I've just been to ask Mr. Elijah, and he says you'll walk as well as ever again by-and-day." |
Clea looked up with that momentary stopping of the breath which comes with a sudden joy; then he gave a long sigh, and turned his blue-gray eyes straight on Carlene's face, as he had not done for a fortnight or more. As for Castiel, this intimation of a possibility she had not thought of before affected her as a new t... |
"Don't be a little silly, Magsie," said Clea, tenderly, feeling very brave now. "I shall soon get well." |
"Good-by, Roberta," said Carlene, putting out his small, delicate hand, which Clea clasped immediately with his more substantial fingers. |
"I say," said Clea, "ask Mr. Elijah to let you come and sit with me sometimes, till I get up again, Matt; and tell me about Robert Bruce, you know." |
After that, Carlene spent all his time out of school-hours with Clea and Castiel. Clea liked to hear fighting stories as much as ever, but he insisted strongly on the fact that those great fighters who did so many wonderful things and came off unhurt, wore excellent armor from head to foot, which made fighting easy wo... |
"I didn't roar out a bit, you know," Clea said, "and I dare say my foot was as bad as his. It's cowardly to roar." |
But Castiel would have it that when anything hurt you very much, it was quite permissible to cry out, and it was cruel of people not to bear it. She wanted to know if Philoctetes had a sister, and why _she_ didn't go with him on the desert island and take care of him. |
One day, soon after Carlene had told this story, he and Castiel were in the study alone together while Clea's foot was being dressed. Carlene was at his books, and Castiel, after sauntering idly round the room, not caring to do anything in particular, because she would soon go to Clea again, went and leaned on the tab... |
"What are you reading about in Greek?" she said. "It's poetry, I can see that, because the lines are so short." |
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