Tea at Mrs. Beattie’s parties was a serious meal, and, as a considerable
time had elapsed since any of the company, except Mr. Hawkins, had
dined, they did full justice to her hospitality. That young gentleman
toyed with a plate of raspberries and cream and a cup of coffee, and
spasmodically devoted himself to Mrs. Rattray in a way that quite repaid
her for occasional lapses of attention. Francie was sitting opposite to
him, not at the table, where, indeed, there was no room for her, but on
a window-sill, where she was sharing a small table with Mr. Lambert.
They were partly screened by the window curtains, but it seemed to
Hawkins that Lambert was talking a great deal and that she was eating
nothing. Whatever was the subject of their conversation they were
looking very serious over it, and, as it progressed, Francie seemed to
get more and more behind her window curtain. The general clamour made it
impossible for him to hear what they were talking about, and Mrs.
Rattray’s demands upon his attention became more intolerable every
moment, as he looked at Francie and saw how wholly another man was
monopolising her.
“And do you like being stationed here, Mr. Hawkins?” said Mrs. Rattray
after a pause.
“Eh? what? Oh yes, of course I do--awfully! you’re all such delightful
people, y’know!”
Mrs. Rattray bridled with pleasure at this audacity.
“Oh, Mr. Hawkins, I’m afraid you’re a terrible flatterer! Do you know
that one of the officers of the Foragers said he thought it was a
beastly spawt!”
“Beastly what? Oh yes, I see. I don’t agree with him at all; I think
it’s a capital good spot.” (Why did that old ass, Mrs. Corkran, stick
her great widow’s cap just between him and the curtain? Francie had
leaned forward and looked at him that very second, and that infernal
white towrow had got in his way.)
Mrs. Rattray thought it was time to play her trump card.
“I suppose you read a great deal, Mr. Hawkins? Dr. Rattray takes
the--a--the _Pink One_ I think he calls it--I know, of course, it’s only
a paper for gentlemen,” she added hurriedly, “but I believe it’s very
comical, and the doctor would be most happy to lend it to you.”
Mr. Hawkins, whose Sunday mornings would have been a blank without the
solace of the _Sporting Times_, explained that the loan was unnecessary,
but Mrs. Rattray felt that she had nevertheless made her point, and
resolved that she would next Sunday study the _Pink One’s_ inscrutable
pages, so that she and Mr. Hawkins might have, at least, one subject in
common.
By this time the younger members of the company had finished their tea,
and those nearest the door began to make a move. The first to leave the
room were Francie and Lambert, and poor Hawkins, who had hoped that his
time of release had at length come, found it difficult to behave as
becomes a gentleman and a soldier, when Mrs. Rattray, with the air of
one who makes a concession, said she thought she could try another
saucer of raspberries. Before they left the table the piano had begun
again upstairs, and a muffled thumping, that shook flakes from the
ceiling down on to the tea-table, told that the realities of the evening
had begun at last.
“I knew the young people would be at that before the evening was out,”
said Mrs. Beattie with an indulgent laugh, “though the girls let on to
me it was only a musical party they wanted.”
“Ah well, they’ll never do it younger!” said Mrs. Baker, leaning back
with her third cup of tea in her hand. “Girls will be girls, as I’ve
just been saying to Miss Mullen.”
“Girls will be tom-fools!” said Miss Mullen with a brow of storm,
thrusting her hands into her gloves, while her eyes followed Hawkins,
who had at length detached Mrs. Rattray from the pleasures of the table,
and was hurrying her out of the room.
“Oh now, Miss Mullen, you mustn’t be so cynical,” said Mrs. Beattie from
behind the tea-urn; “we have six girls, and I declare now Mr. Beattie
and I wouldn’t wish to have one less.”
“Well, they’re a great responsibility,” said Mrs. Corkran with a slow
wag of her obtrusively widowed head, “and no one knows that better than
a mother. I shall never forget the anxiety I went through--it was just
before we came to this parish--when my Bessy had an offer. Poor Mr.
Corkran and I disapproved of the young man, and we were both quite
distracted about it. Indeed we had to make it a subject of prayer, and a
fortnight afterwards the young man died. Oh, doesn’t it show the
wonderful force of prayer?”
“Well now, I think it’s a pity you didn’t let it alone,” said Mr. Lynch,
with something resembling a wink at Miss Mullen.
“I daresay Bessy’s very much of your opinion,” said Charlotte, unable to
refrain from a jibe at Miss Corkran, pre-occupied though she was with
her own wrath. She pushed her chair brusquely back from the table. “I
think, with your kind permission, Mrs. Beattie, I’ll go upstairs and see
what’s going on. Don’t stir, Mr. Lynch, I’m able to get that far by
myself.”
When Miss Mullen arrived at the top of the steep flight of stairs, she
paused on the landing amongst the exiled drawing-room chairs and tables,
and looked in at seven or eight couples revolving in a space so limited
as to make movement a difficulty, if not a danger, and in an atmosphere
already thickened with dust from the carpet. She saw to her surprise
that her cousin was dancing with Lambert, and, after a careful survey of
the room, espied Mr. Hawkins standing partnerless in one of the windows.
“I wonder what she’s at now,” thought Charlotte to herself; “is she
trying to play Roddy off against him? The little cat, I wouldn’t put it
past her!”
As she looked at them wheeling slowly round in the cramped circle she
could see that neither he or Francie spoke to each other, and when, the
dance being over, they sat down together in the corner of the room, they
seemed scarcely more disposed to talk than they had been when dancing.
“Aha! Roddy’s a good fellow,” she thought, “he’s doing his best to help
me by keeping her away from that young scamp.”
At this point the young scamp in question crossed the room and asked
Miss Fitzpatrick for the next dance in a manner that indicated just
displeasure. The heat of the room and the exertion of dancing on a
carpet had endued most of the dancers with the complexions of ripe
plums, but Francie seemed to have been robbed of all colour. She did not
look up at him as he proffered his request.
“I’m engaged for the next dance.”
Hawkins became very red. “Well, the next after that,” he persisted,
trying to catch her eye.
“There isn’t any next,” said Francie, looking suddenly at him with
defiant eyes; “after the next we’re going home.”
Hawkins stared for a brief instant at her with a sparkle of anger in his
eyes. “Oh, very well,” he said with exaggerated politeness of manner, “I
thought I was engaged to you for the first dance after supper, that was
all.”
He turned away at once and walked out of the room, brushing past
Charlotte at the door, and elbowed his way through the uproarious throng
that crowded the staircase. Mrs. Beattie, coming up from the tea-table
with her fellow-matrons, had no idea of permitting her prize guest to
escape so early. Hawkins was captured, his excuses were disregarded, and
he was driven up the stairs again.
“Very well,” he said to himself, “if she chooses to throw me over, I’ll
let her see that I can get on without her.” It did not occur to him that
Francie was only acting in accordance with the theory of the affair that
he had himself presented to Captain Cursiter. His mind was now wholly
given to revenging the snub he had received, and, spurred by this
desire, he advanced to Miss Lynch, who was reposing in an armchair in a
corner of the landing, while her partner played upon her heated face
with the drawing-room bellows, and secured her for the next dance.
When Mr. Hawkins gave his mind to rollicking, there were few who could
do it more thoroughly, and the ensuing polka was stamped through by him
and Miss Lynch with a vigour that scattered all opposing couples like
ninepins. Even his strapping partner appealed for mercy.
“Oh, Mr. Hawkins,” she panted, “wouldn’t you chassy now please? if you
twirl me any more, I think I’ll die!”
But Mr. Hawkins was deaf to entreaty; far from moderating his exertions,
he even snatched the eldest Miss Beattie from her position as on-looker,
and, compelling her to avail herself of the dubious protection of his
other arm, whirled her and Miss Lynch round the room with him in a
many-elbowed triangle. The progress of the other dancers was necessarily
checked by this performance, but it was viewed with the highest favour
by all the matrons, especially those whose daughters had been selected
to take part in it. Francie looked on from the doorway, whither she and
her partner, the Reverend Corkran, had been driven for safety, with a
tearing pain at her heart. Her lips were set in a fixed smile--a smile
that barely kept their quivering in check--and her beautiful eyes shone
upon the dazzled curate through a moisture that was the next thing to
tears.
“I want to find Miss Mullen,” she said at last, dragging Mr. Corkran
towards the stairs, when a fresh burst of applause from the dancing-room
made them both look back. Hawkins’ two partners had, at a critical turn,
perfidiously let him go with such suddenness that he had fallen flat on
the floor, and having pursued them as they polkaed round the room, he
was now encircling both with one arm, and affecting to box their ears
with his other hand, encouraged thereto by cries of “Box them, Mr.
Hawkins!” from Mrs. Beattie. “Box them well!”
Charlotte was in the dining-room, partaking of a gentlemanly glass of
Marsala with Mr. Beattie, and other heads of families.
“Great high jinks they’re having upstairs!” she remarked, as the windows
and tea-cups rattled from the stamping overhead, and Mr. Beattie cast
many an anxious eye towards the ceiling. “I suppose my young lady’s in
the thick of it, whatever it is!” She always assumed the attitude of the
benevolently resigned chaperon when she talked about Francie, and Mr.
Lynch was on the point of replying in an appropriate tone of humorous
condolence, when the young lady herself appeared on Mr. Corkran’s arm,
with an expression that at once struck Charlotte as being very unlike
high jinks.
“Why, child, what do you want down here?” she said. “Are you tired
dancing?”
“I am; awfully tired; would you mind going home, Charlotte?”
“What a question to ask before our good host here! Of course I mind
going home!” eyeing Francie narrowly as she spoke; “but I’ll come if you
like.”
“Why, what people you all are for going home!” protested Mr. Beattie
hospitably; “there was Hawkins that we only stopped by main strength,
and Lambert slipped away ten minutes ago, saying Mrs. Lambert wasn’t
well, and he had to go and look after her! What’s your reverence about
letting her go away now, when they’re having the fun of Cork upstairs?”
Francie smiled a pale smile, but held to her point, and a few minutes
afterwards she and Charlotte had made their way through the knot of
loafers at the garden gate, and were walking through the empty moon-lit
streets of Lismoyle towards Tally Ho. Charlotte did not speak till the
last clanging of the _Bric-à-brac_ polka had been left behind, and then
she turned to Francie with a manner from which the affability had fallen
like a garment.
“And now I’ll thank you to tell me what’s the truth of this I hear from
everyone in the town about you and that young Hawkins being out till all
hours of the night in the steam-launch by yourselves?”
“It wasn’t our fault. We were in by half-past nine.” Francie had hardly
spirit enough to defend herself, and the languor in her voice infuriated
Charlotte.
“Don’t give me any of your fine-lady airs,” she said brutally; “I can
tell ye this, that if ye can’t learn how to behave yourself decently
I’ll pack ye back to Dublin!”
The words passed over Francie like an angry wind, disturbing, but
without much power to injure.
“All right, I’ll go away when you like.”
Charlotte hardly heard her. “I’ll be ashamed to look me old friend, Lady
Dysart, in the face!” She stormed on. “Disgracing her house by such
goings on with an unprincipled blackguard that has no more idea of
marrying you than I have--not that that’s anything to be regretted! An
impudent little upstart without a halfpenny in his pocket, and as for
family--” her contempt stemmed her volubility for a mouthing moment.
“God only knows what gutter he sprang from; I don’t suppose he has a
drop of blood in his whole body!”
“I’m not thinking of marrying him no more than he is of marrying me,”
answered Francie in the same lifeless voice, but this time faltering a
little. “You needn’t bother me about him, Charlotte; he’s engaged.”
“Engaged!” yelled Charlotte, squaring round at her cousin, and standing
stock still in her amazement. “Why didn’t you tell me so before? When
did you hear it?”
“I heard it some time ago from a person whose name I won’t give you,”
said Francie, walking on. “They’re to be married before Christmas.” The
lump rose at last in her throat, and she trod hard on the ground as she
walked, in the effort to keep the tears back.
Charlotte girded her velveteen skirt still higher, and hurried clumsily
after the light, graceful figure.
“Wait, child! Can’t ye wait for me? Are ye sure it’s true?”
Francie nodded.
“The young reprobate! To be making you so remarkable, and to have the
other one up his sleeve all the time! Didn’t I say he had no notion of
marrying ye?”
Francie made no reply, and Charlotte with some difficulty disengaged her
hand from her wrappings and patted her on the back.
“Well, never mind, me child,” she said with noisy cheerfulness; “you’re
not trusting to the likes of that fellow! wait till ye’re me Lady Dysart
of Bruff, and it’s little ye’ll think of him then!”
They had reached the Tally Ho gate by this time; Francie opened it, and
plunged into the pitch-dark tunnel of evergreens without a word.