The broad limestone steps at Bruff looked across the lawn to the lake,
and to the south. They were flanked on either hand by stone balustrades
which began and ended in a pot of blazing scarlet geraniums, and on
their topmost plateau on this brilliant 1st of July, the four Bruff dogs
sat on their haunches and gazed with anxious despondency in at the open
hall-door. For the last half-hour Max and Dinah, the indoor dogs, had
known that an expedition was toward. They had seen Pamela put on a hat
that certainly was not her garden one, and as certainly lacked the veil
that betokened the abhorred ceremony of church-going. They knew this hat
well, and at the worst it usually meant a choir practice; but taken in
connection with a blue serge skirt and the packing of a luncheon basket,
they almost ventured to hope it portended a picnic on the lake. They
adored picnics. In the first place, the outdoor dogs were always left at
home, which alone would have imparted a delicious flavour to any
entertainment, and in the second, all dietary rules were remitted for
the occasion, and they were permitted to raven unchecked upon chicken
bones, fat slices of ham, and luscious leavings of cream when the
packing-up time came. There was, however, mingled with this enchanting
prospect, the fear that they might be left behind, and from the sounding
of the first note of preparation they had never let Pamela out of their
sight. Whenever her step was heard through the long passages, there had
gone with it the scurrying gallop of the two little waiters on
providence, and when her arrangements had culminated in the luncheon
basket, their agitation had become so poignant that a growling game of
play under the table, got up merely to pass the time, turned into an
acrimonious squabble, and caused their ejection to the hall-door steps
by Lady Dysart. Now, sitting outside the door, they listened with
trembling to the discussion that was going on in the hall, and with the
self-consciousness of dogs, were convinced that it was all about
themselves.
“No, I cannot allow Garry to go,” exclaimed Lady Dysart, her eyes raised
to the ceiling as if to show her remoteness from all human entreaty; “he
is _not_ over the whooping-cough; I heard him whooping this morning in
his bedroom.”
The person mentioned ceased from a game of fives with a tennis-ball that
threatened momentarily to break the windows, and said indignantly, “Oh,
I say, mother, that was only the men in the yard pumping. That old pump
makes a row just like whooping-cough.”
Lady Dysart faltered for a moment before this ingenious falsehood, but
soon recovered herself.
“I don’t care whether it was you or the pump that whooped, it does not
alter the fact of your superfluity at a picnic.”
“I think Captain Cursiter and Mr. Hawkins wanted him to stoke,” said
Pamela from the luncheon basket.
“I have no doubt they do, but they shall not have him,” said Lady Dysart
with the blandness of entire decision, though her eyes wavered from her
daughter’s face to her son’s; “they’re very glad indeed to save their
own clothes and spoil his.”
“Well, then, I’ll go with Lambert,” said Garry rebelliously.
“You will do nothing of the sort!” exclaimed Lady Dysart, “whatever I
may do about allowing you to go with Captain Cursiter, nothing shall
induce me to sanction any plan that involves your going in that most
dangerous yacht. Christopher himself says she is over-sparred.” Lady
Dysart had no idea of the meaning of the accusation, but she felt the
term to be good and telling. “Now, Pamela, will you promise me to stay
with Captain Cursiter all the time?”
“Oh, yes, I will,” said Pamela, laughing; “but you know in your heart
that he would much rather have Garry.”
“I don’t care what my heart knows,” replied Lady Dysart magnificently,
“I know what my mouth says, and that is that you must neither of you
stir out of the steam-launch.”
At this descent of his mother into the pit so artfully dug for her,
Garry withdrew to attire himself for the position of stoker, and Pamela
discreetly changed the conversation.
It seemed a long time to Max and Dinah before their fate was decided,
but after some last moments of anguish on the pier they found
themselves, the one coiled determinedly on Pamela’s lap, and the other
smirking in the bow in Garry’s arms, as Mr. Hawkins sculled the second
relay of the Bruff party out to the launch. The first relay, consisting
of Christopher and Miss Hope-Drummond, was already on its way down the
lake in Mr. Lambert’s 5-ton boat, with every inch of canvas set to catch
the light and shifty breeze that blew petulantly down from the
mountains, and ruffled the glitter of the lake with dark blue smears.
The air quivered hotly over the great stones on the shore, drawing out
the strong aromatic smell of the damp weeds and the bog-myrtle, and Lady
Dysart stood on the end of the pier, and wrung her hands as she thought
of Pamela’s complexion.
Captain Cursiter was one of the anomalous soldiers whose happiness it is
to spend as much time as possible in a boat, dressed in disreputable
clothes, with hands begrimed and blistered with oil or ropes as the case
may be, and steaming or sailing to nowhere and back again with undying
enthusiasm. He was a thin, brown man, with a moustache rather lighter in
colour than the tan of his face, and his beaky nose, combined with his
disposition to flee from the haunts of men, had inspired his friends to
bestow on him the pet name of “Snipey.” The festivity on which he was at
present embarked was none of his seeking, and it had been only by
strenuous argument, fortified by the artful suggestion that no one else
was really competent to work the boat, that Mr. Hawkins had got him into
clean flannels and the conduct of the expedition. He knew neither Miss
Mullen nor Francie, and his acquaintance with the Dysarts, as with other
dwellers in the neighbourhood, was of a slight and unprogressive
character, and in strong contrast to the manner in which Mr, Hawkins had
become at Bruff and elsewhere what that young gentleman was pleased to
term “the gated infant.” During the run from Lismoyle to Bruff he had
been able to occupy himself with the affairs of the steam-launch; but
when Hawkins, his prop and stay, had rowed ashore for the Dysart party,
the iron had entered into his soul.
As the punt neared the launch, Mr. Hawkins looked round to take his
distance in bringing her alongside, and recognised with one delighted
glance the set smile of suffering politeness that denoted that Captain
Cursiter was making himself agreeable to the ladies. Charlotte was
sitting in the stern with a depressing air of Sunday-outness about her,
and a stout umbrella over her head. It was not in her nature to feel
shy; the grain of it was too coarse and strong to harbour such a thing
as diffidence, but she knew well enough when she was socially
unsuccessful, and she was already aware that she was going to be out of
her element on this expedition. Lambert, who would have been a kind of
connecting link, was already far in the offing. Captain Cursiter she
mentally characterised as a poor stick. Hawkins, whom she had begun by
liking, was daily--almost hourly--gaining in her disfavour, and from
neither Pamela, Francie, or Garry did she expect much entertainment.
Charlotte had a vigorous taste in conversation, and her idea of a
pleasure party was not to talk to Pamela Dysart about the choir and the
machinery of a school feast for an hour and a half, and from time to
time to repulse with ill-assumed politeness the bird-like flights of
Dinah on to her lap. Francie and Mr. Hawkins sat forward on the roof of
the little cabin, and apparently entertained one another vastly, judging
by their appearance and the fragments of conversation that from time to
time made their way aft in the environment of a cloud of smuts. Captain
Cursiter, revelling in the well-known restrictions that encompass the
man at the wheel, stood serenely aloof, steering among the hump-backed
green islands and treacherous shallows, and thinking to himself that
Hawkins was going ahead pretty fast with that Dublin girl.
Mr. Hawkins had been for some time a source of anxiety to his brother
officers, who disapproved of matrimony for the young of their regiment.
Things had looked so serious when he was quartered at Limerick that he
had been hurriedly sent on detachment to Lismoyle before he had time to
“make an example of himself,” as one of the most unmarried of the majors
observed, and into Captain Cursiter’s trusted hands he had been
committed, with urgent instructions to keep an eye on him. Cursiter’s
eye was renowned for its blighting qualities on occasions such as these,
and his jibes at matrimony were looked on by his brother officers as the
most finished and scathing expressions of proper feeling on the subject
that could be desired; but it was agreed that he would have his hands
full.
The launch slid smoothly along with a low clicking of the machinery,
cutting her way across the reflections of the mountains in pursuit of
the tall, white sail of the _Daphne_, that seemed each moment to grow
taller, as the yacht was steadily overhauled by her more practical
comrade. The lake was narrower here, where it neared the end of its
twenty-mile span, and so calm that the sheep and cattle grazing on the
brown mountains were reflected in its depths, and the yacht seemed as
incongruous in the midst of them as the ark on Mount Ararat. The last
bend of the lake was before them; the _Daphne_ crept round it, moved
mysteriously by a wind that was imperceptible to the baking company on
the steam-launch, and by the time the latter had churned her way round
the fir-clad point, the yacht was letting go her anchor near the
landing-place of a large wooded island.
At a picnic nothing is of much account before luncheon, and the gloom of
hunger hung like a pall over the party that took ashore luncheon
baskets, unpacked knives and forks, and gathered stones to put on the
corners of the table-cloth. But such a hunger is Nature’s salve for the
inadequacy of human beings to amuse themselves; the body comes to the
relief of the mind with the compassionate superiority of a good servant,
and confers inward festivity upon many a dull dinner party. Max and
Dinah were quite of this opinion. They had behaved with commendable
fortitude during the voyage, though in the earlier part of it a
shuddering dejection on Max’s part had seemed to Pamela’s trained eye to
forebode sea-sickness, but at the lifting of the luncheon basket into
the punt their self-control deserted them. The succulent trail left upon
the air, palpable to the dog-nose as the smoke of the steam-launch to
the human eye, beguiled them into efforts to follow, which were only
suppressed by their being secretly immured in the cabin by Garry. No one
but he saw the two wan faces that yearned at the tiny cabin windows, as
the last punt load left for the land, and when at last the wails of the
captives streamed across the water, anyone but Garry would have repented
of the cruelty. The dogs will never forget it to Captain Cursiter that
it was he who rowed out to the launch and brought them ashore to enjoy
their fair share of the picnic, and their gratitude will never be
tempered by the knowledge that he had caught at the excuse to escape
from the conversation which Miss Hope-Drummond, notwithstanding even the
pangs of hunger, was proffering to him.
There is something unavoidably vulgar in the aspect of a picnic party
when engaged in the culminating rite of eating on the grass. They may
feel themselves to be picturesque, gipsy-like, even romantic, but to the
unparticipating looker-on, not even the gilded dignity of champagne can
redeem them from being a mere group of greedy, huddled backs, with ugly
trimmings of paper, dirty plates, and empty bottles. But at Innishochery
the only passers-by were straight-flying wild-duck or wood-pigeons, or
an occasional sea-gull lounging up from the distant Atlantic, all
observant enough in their way, but not critical. It is probable they did
not notice even the singular ungracefulness of Miss Mullen’s attitude,
as she sat with her short legs uncomfortably tucked away, and her large
jaws moving steadily as she indemnified herself for the stupidity of the
recent trip. The champagne at length had its usual beneficent effect
upon the conversation. Charlotte began to tell stories about her cats
and her servants to Christopher and Pamela, with admirable dramatic
effect and a sense of humour that made her almost attractive. Miss
Hope-Drummond had discovered that Cursiter was one of the Lincolnshire
Cursiters, and, with mutual friends as stepping-stones, was working her
way on with much ability; and Francie was sitting on a mossy rock, a
little away from the table-cloth, with a plate of cherry-pie on her lap,
Mr. Hawkins at her feet, and unlimited opportunities for practical
jestings with the cherry-stones. Garry and the dogs were engaged in
scraping out dishes and polishing plates in a silence more eloquent than
words; Lambert alone, of all the party, remained impervious to the
influences of luncheon, and lay on his side with his eyes moodily fixed
upon his plate, only responding to Miss Mullen’s frequent references to
him by a sarcastic grunt.
“Now I assure you, Miss Dysart, it’s perfectly true,” said Charlotte,
after one of these polite rejoinders. “He’s too lazy to say so, but he
knows right well that when I complained of my kitchen-maid to her
mother, all the good I got from her was that she said, ‘Would ye be agin
havin’ a switch and to be switchin’ her!’ That was a pretty way for me
to spend my valuable time.” Her audience laughed; and inspired by
another half glass of champagne, Miss Mullen continued, “But big a fool
as Bid Sal is, she’s a Solon beside Donovan. He came to me th’ other day
and said he wanted ‘little Johanna for the garden.’ ‘Little _who?_’ says
I; ‘Little Johanna,’ says he. ‘Ye great, lazy fool,’ says I, ‘aren’t ye
big enough and ugly enough to do that little pick of work by yerself
without wanting a girl to help ye?’ And after all,” said Charlotte,
dropping from the tones of fury in which she had rendered her own part
in the interview, “all he wanted was some guano for my early potatoes!”
Lambert got up without a smile, and sauntering down to the lake, sat
down on a rock and began to smoke a cigar. He could not laugh as
Christopher and even Captain Cursiter did, at Charlotte’s dramatisation
of her scene with her gardener. At an earlier period of his career he
had found her conversation amusing, and he had not thought her vulgar.
Since then he had raised himself just high enough from the sloughs of
Irish middle-class society to see its vulgarity, but he did not stand
sufficiently apart from it to be able to appreciate the humorous side,
and in any case he was at present little disposed to laugh at anything.
He sat and smoked morosely for some time, feeling that he was making his
dissatisfaction with the entertainment imposingly conspicuous; but his
cigar was a failure, the rock was far from comfortable, and his bereaved
friends seemed to be enjoying themselves rather more than when he left
them. He threw the cigar into the water in front of him, to the
consternation of a number of minnows, who had hung in the warm shallow
as if listening, and now vanished in a twinkling to spread among the
dark resorts of the elder fishes the tale of the thunderbolt that fell
in their midst, while Lambert stalked back to the party under the
trees.
Its component parts were little altered, saving that Miss Hope-Drummond
had, by the ingenious erection of a parasol, isolated herself and
Christopher from the others, and that Garry had joined himself to
Francie and Hawkins, and was, in company with the latter, engaged in
weaving stalks of grass across the insteps of Miss Fitzpatrick’s
open-worked stockings.
“Just look at them, Mr. Lambert,” Francie called out in cheerful
complaint. “They’re having a race to see which of them will finish their
bit of grass first, and they won’t let me stir, though I’m nearly mad
with the flies!”
She had a waving branch of mountain-ash in her hand; the big straw hat
that she had trimmed for herself with dog-roses the night before was on
the back of her head; her hair clustered about her white temples, and
the colour that fighting the flies had brought to her face lent a lovely
depth to eyes that had the gaiety and the soullessness of a child.
Lambert had forgotten most of his classics since he had left school, and
it is probable that even had he remembered them it would not have
occurred to him to regard anything in them as applicable to modern
times. At all events Francie’s dryad-like fitness to her surroundings
did not strike him, as it struck another more dispassionate onlooker,
when an occasional lift of the Hope-Drummond parasol revealed the
white-clad figure, with its woody background, to Christopher.
“It seems to me you’re well able to take care of yourself,” was
Lambert’s reply to Miss Fitzpatrick’s appeal. He turned his back upon
her, and interrupted Charlotte in the middle of a story by asking her if
she would walk with him across the island and have a look at the ruins
of Ochery Chapel.
One habit at least of Mr. Lambert’s school life remained with him. He
was still a proficient at telling tales.