WINNERS AND LOSERS
Dinner that day at the castle seemed less lively than usual. Macormac,
indeed, whose joviality was invincible, ate, drank, laughed, and talked
for a dozen; but Lady Mary's spirits were obviously depressed; and the
guests, perhaps not without private vexation of their own, took their
cue rather from hostess than host. An unaccountable sense of gloom and
disappointment pervaded the whole party. The General having come down
early, in hopes of a few minutes with Miss Douglas in the drawing-room
before the others were dressed, had been disappointed by the protracted
toilette and tardy appearance of that provoking young lady, with whom
he parted an hour before on terms of mutual sympathy and tenderness,
but who now sat pale and silent, while the thunder clouds he knew and
dreaded gathered ominously on her brow. His preoccupation necessarily
affected his neighbour--a budding beauty fresh from the school-room,
full of fun and good humour, that her sense of propriety kept down,
unless judiciously encouraged and drawn out. Most of the gentlemen
had been wet to the skin, many had lost money, all were tired, and
Norah Macormac's eyes filled every now and then with tears. These
discoveries Mrs. Lushington imparted in a whisper to Lord St. Abbs as
he sat between herself and her hostess, whom he had taken in to dinner,
pausing thereafter to mark the effect of her condescension on this
raw youth, lately launched into the great world. The young nobleman,
however, betrayed no symptoms of emotion beyond screwing his eye-glass
tighter in its place, and turning round to look straight in her face,
while it dropped out with a jump. Even Mrs. Lushington felt at a
disadvantage, and took counsel with her own heart whether she should
accost him again.
Why Lord St. Abbs went about at all, or what pleasure he derived
from the society of his fellow-creatures, was a puzzle nobody had
yet been able to find out. Pale, thin, and puny in person, freckled,
sandy-haired, bearing all outward characteristics of Scottish
extraction, except the Caledonian's gaunt and stalwart frame, he
neither rowed, shot, fished, sang, made jokes, nor played whist. He
drank very little, conversed not at all, and was voted by nearly all
who had the advantage of his acquaintance "the dullest young man out!"
Yet was he to be seen everywhere, from Buckingham Palace or Holland
House to Hampton races and the fire-works at Cremorne; always alone,
always silent, with his glass in his eye, observant, imperturbable, and
thinking, no doubt, a great deal.
It was rumoured, indeed, that on one memorable occasion he got drunk
at Cambridge, and kept a supper-party in roars of laughter till four,
A.M. If so, he must have fired all his jokes off at once, so to speak,
and blown the magazine up afterwards; for he never blazed forth in such
lustre again. He came out a Wrangler of his year, notwithstanding,
and the best modern linguist, as well as classical scholar, in the
university. Though the world of ball-goers and diners-out ignores such
distinctions, a strong political party, hungering for office, had its
eye on him already. As his father voted for Government in the Upper
House, a provident director of the Opposition lost no time in sounding
him on his views, should he become a member of the Lower. How little,
to use his own words, the _whip_ "took by his motion" may be gathered
from the opinion he expressed in confidence to his chief, that "St.
Abbs was either as close as wax or the biggest fool (and it's saying a
great deal) who ever came out of Cambridge with a degree!"
Gloomy as a dinner-party may appear at first, if the champagne
circulates freely, people begin to talk long before the repast is half
over. What must children think of their seniors when the dining-room
door opens for an instant, and trailing upstairs unwillingly to bed,
they linger to catch that discordant unintelligible gabble going on
within? During a lull Mrs. Lushington made one more effort to arouse
the attention of Lord St. Abbs.
"We're all getting better by degrees," said she, with a comic little
sigh. "But it has been a disastrous day, and I believe everybody feels
just as I do myself."
"How?" demanded his lordship, while the eye-glass bounced into his
plate.
"Like the man who won a shilling and lost eighteen-pence," she
answered, laughing.
"Why?" he asked, yet more austerely, screwing the instrument into
position the while with a defiant scowl.
She was out of patience--no wonder.
"Good gracious, Lord St. Abbs!" said she. "Haven't we all been on the
wrong horse? Haven't we all been backing Daisy?"
She spoke rather loud, and was amused to observe the effect of her
observation. It was like dropping a squib in a boy's school during
lessons. Everybody must needs join in the excitement.
"A bad job indeed!" said one.
"A great race entirely!" added another. "Run fairly out from end to
end, and only a neck between first and second at the finish!"
"I wish I'd taken old Sullivan's advice," moaned a third; "or backed
the mare for a place, annyhow."
"Ye might have been wrong even then, me boy," interrupted a jolly,
red-faced gentleman, "unless ye squared the ould woman! I wonder would
she take three half-crowns a day to come with me twice a year to the
Curragh?"
"I knew of the mare's trial," drawled one of the London dandies, "and
backed her to win me a monkey. Daisy put me on at once, like a trump.
It was a real good thing and it has boiled over. (Champagne, please.)
Such is life, Miss Douglas. We have no hope of getting home now till
Epsom Spring."
Miss Douglas, not the least to his discomfiture, stared him scornfully
in the face without reply.
"I'm afraid it's a severe blow to young Walters," observed the General.
"They tell me he has lost a good deal more than he can afford."
"Got it, I fancy, very hot!" said the dandy. "Gad, he rode as if he'd
backed his mount. I thought his finish one of the best I ever saw."
Norah Macormac threw him the sweetest of glances, and wondered why she
had considered him so very uninteresting till now.
"They say he hasn't a shilling left," continued the General, but
stopped short when he caught the flash of Satanella's eye, under its
dark, frowning brow.
"I dare say he'll pull through," said she bitterly, "and disappoint his
dearest friends, after all."
"I'll engage he will, Miss Douglas!" exclaimed Macormac's hearty voice
from the end of the table. "It's yourself wouldn't turn your back on a
friend, lose or win. Take a glass of that claret, now. It'll not hurt
ye. Here's the boy's health, and good luck to him! A pleasanter fellow,
to my mind, never emptied a bottle, and a better rider never sat in a
saddle, than he's proved himself this day!"
Norah would have liked to jump up and hug papa's handsome white head
in her embrace on the spot, but Lady Mary had been watching the girl
to-night with a mother's anxiety, and fearful lest her daughter should
betray herself if subjected to further trial, gave the signal rather
prematurely for the ladies to withdraw.
While they trooped gracefully out, the gentlemen were still discussing
Daisy's defeat, and the catastrophe of the Great United Service
Handicap.
Everybody knows what men talk about when left alone after dinner; but
none, at least of the rougher sex, can venture to guess the topics with
which ladies beguile their seclusion in the drawing-room. Whatever
these might be, it seems they had little interest for Mrs. Lushington,
whose habit it was to retire for ten minutes or so to her own chamber,
there, perhaps, to revise and refresh her charms ere she descended once
more upon a world of victims.
Her bedroom was gorgeously furnished, supplied with all the luxuries
to which she was accustomed; but the windows did not shut close, and
a draught beneath the door lifted the hearth-rug at her fire-place;
therefore she made but a short stay in her apartment, stealing softly
down-stairs again, so as to be well settled in the drawing-room before
the gentlemen came in.
Traversing the library, she heard Lady Mary's voice carrying on, as
it seemed, a subdued, yet sustained conversation, in a little recess
adjoining, which could hardly be called a boudoir, but was so far
habitable, that in it there usually stood a lamp, a chess-board and
a card-table. Mrs. Lushington would not have _listened_, be sure, to
save her life, but the _Dublin Evening Mail_ lay close at hand on a
writing-table. She became suddenly interested in a Tipperary election,
and the price of pigs at Belfast.
Lady Mary's accents were low, grave, even sorrowful. It was difficult
to catch more than a sentence here and there; but, judging by the
short, quick sobs that replied to these, they seemed to produce no
slight effect on the other party to the conversation.
Mrs. Lushington smiled behind her paper. What she heard only confirmed
what she suspected. Her eyes shone, her brow cleared. She felt like a
child that has put its puzzle together at last.
Lady Mary warmed with her subject; presently she declared, distinctly
enough, that something was "not like _you_, my dear. In any other girl
I'd have called it bold, forward, unwomanly!"
"Oh, mamma! mamma! don't say that!" pleaded a voice that could only
belong to poor Norah. "If _you_ think so, what must _he_ have thought?
Oh dear! oh dear! what shall I do? What shall I do?"
"It's never too late to remember your duty, my child," answered Lady
Mary, "and I'm sure your father thinks as I do;" but though the words
sounded brave enough, there was a tremble in the mother's voice that
vibrated from the mother's heart.
"And I'll never see him again now, I _know_!" murmured Norah so
piteously that Lady Mary could hardly keep back her tears.
"Well, it's not come to that yet," said she kindly. "Annyways, it's
wise to make ready for the worst. Kiss me, dear, and mind what I've
been telling ye. See now, stay here a bit, till you're more composed.
I'll send in little Ella to keep ye company. The child won't take
notice, and ye can both come back together into the drawing-room, and
no more said."
But long ere Lady Mary could finish her caresses, and get her motherly
person under weigh, Mrs. Lushington had slipped into the billiard-room,
where she was found by the gentlemen practising winning hazards in
solitude, and where, challenging Lord St. Abbs to a game, she was left
discomfited by his very uncivil rejoinder--
"I don't play billiards," said his lordship, and turned on his heels
without further comment or excuse.
It was a new sensation for Mrs. Lushington to find herself thus thrown
on general society, without at least one particular admirer on whose
devotion she could rely. She didn't like it. She longed to have a
finger in that mischief which is proverbially ready for "idle hands to
do." On three people she now resolved to keep close and vigilant watch.
These were Norah, St. Josephs, and Satanella.
The conduct of this last seemed baffling in the extreme. She had
scarce vouchsafed a word to the General during dinner, had scowled at
him more than once with the blackest of her black looks, and comported
herself altogether like the handsome vixen she could be when she chose.
Now, under pretence of setting down her coffee-cup, she had brought
him to her side, and was whispering confidences in his ear, with a
tenderness of tone and bearing he accepted gratefully, and repaid a
hundredfold.
"How tolerant are these _old_ men!" thought Mrs. Lushington, "and how
kind! What lovers they make, if only one can bring oneself not to mind
wrinkles, and rheumatism and grey hair! How gentle and how chivalrous!
What patience and consideration! They don't expect a woman to be an
angel, because they _do_ know a little about us; and perhaps because it
_is_ only a little, they believe there is more than one degree between
absolute perfection and utter depravity. If jealous, they have the
grace to hide it; if snubbed, they do not sulk; if encouraged, they
do not presume. They know when and where to speak, and to hold their
tongues; to act, and to refrain. Besides, if one wants to make them
unhappy, they are so sensitive, yet so quiet. A word or a look stings
them to the quick, but they take their punishment with dignity; and
though the blow be sharp and unprovoked, they never strike again. Let
me see. I don't think I've had an admirer above forty--not one who
owned to it, at least. It's a new experience. I declare, I'll try! This
romantic old General would suit the place exactly, and I couldn't do
a kinder thing for both, than to detach him from Blanche. The man is
regularly wasted and thrown away. My gracious! isn't it ridiculous? If
he could see us as we really are! If he only knew how much more willing
a woman is to be controlled than a violent horse; how much easier to
capture than a Sepoy column, or a Russian gun. And there he sits, a man
who has ridden fearlessly against both, shrinking, hesitating, before a
girl who might be his daughter--afraid, absolutely afraid, the gallant,
heroic coward, to look her in the face! Is she blind? Is she a fool,
not knowing what she throws away? or is she _really_ over head and ears
in love with somebody else? She can't be breaking her heart for Daisy,
surely, or why has she taken the General up again, and put herself so
much _en evidence_ with him to-night? I'm puzzled, I own, but I'm not
going to be beat. I'll watch her narrowly. I've nothing else to do. And
it's an awful temptation, even when people are great friends. Wouldn't
it be fun to cut her out with both?"
Thus reasoned Mrs. Lushington, according to her lights, scrutinising
the couple she had set herself to study, while languidly listening to
Lady Mary's conversation, which consisted, indeed, of speculations on
the weather in the Channel, mingled with hospitable regrets for the
departure of her guest, and the breaking-up of the party, which was to
take place on the morrow.
"But ye'll come again next year," said this kind and courteous
lady, who, anywhere but in her own house, would have disliked Mrs.
Lushington from her heart. "And ye'll bring Miss Douglas with ye--if
Miss Douglas she continues to be (with a significant glance at the
General, holding, clumsily enough, a skein of much tangled silk). But,
annyhow, I'll be lookin' for ye both Punchestown week, if not before,
to give us a good long visit, and we'll teach ye to like Ireland, that
we will, if kind wishes and a warm welcome can do't."
But even while she spoke, Lady Mary looked anxiously towards the
door. Little Ella, a flaxen-haired romp of eleven, had jumped off
long ago with a message for sister Norah, but neither having yet
returned, the mother's heart ached to think of her handsome darling,
smarting, perhaps, even under the mild reproof she had thought it
wise to administer, perhaps weeping bitterly, to her little sister's
consternation, because of the pain that burns so fiercely in a young
unwearied heart--the longing for a happiness that can never be.
Presently, Lady Mary's brow cleared, and she gave a little sigh of
relief, for Miss Ella's voice was heard, as usual, chattering loudly
in the passage; and that young person, much elated at being still out
of bed, came dancing into the room, followed by Norah, from whose
countenance all traces of recent emotion had disappeared, and who
looked, in her mother's eyes, only the prettier, that she was a shade
paler than usual. While the younger child laughed and romped with the
company, fighting shy of Lord St. Abbs, but hovering with great glee
about papa, and entreating not to be sent upstairs for five more
minutes, her sister stole quietly off to a lonely corner, where she
subsided into an unoccupied sofa, with the air of being thoroughly
fatigued.
Mrs. Lushington, covertly watching Satanella, wondered more and more.
Breaking away from her General, her silks, and her unfinished cup of
tea, Miss Douglas walked across the room like a queen, took Norah's
head in both hands, kissed her exactly between her eyebrows, and sat
down composedly by her side.