The master of Drumgool, genial and cosey, and the very personification
of welcome, had scarcely taken in with a glance the two pleasant-looking
young people who had invaded his drawing-room when the explainer of
situations rushed into the breach.
"I'm awfully sorry," said he, "but I've made a mistake. I met this young
lady at the inn at Cloyne, and as she was coming here I came on the same
car, for I thought you were a Mr. Michael French I'd met in London. I've
been fishing down here."
"You expected me last night," said Miss Grimshaw. "My name is Grimshaw."
"Faith," said Mr. French, "this is a pleasant surprise. Sit down, sit
down."
"I ought to say my name is Dashwood," put in the explainer.
"Sit down, sit down. I'm delighted to see you both. Staying at the inn,
are you? And how do you like Mrs. Sheelan? And you met at the inn? Of
course you did. Miss Grimshaw, I don't know how, in the name of wonder,
I'm going to apologise to you for driving you all over the country. Is
that chair easy? No, it's not--take this one. Look at it before you sit
in it. Dan O'Connell took his seat in that chair when he was here for
the elections, in my grandfather's time, and I have the bed upstairs he
slept in. Which Michael French, I wonder, was it you met? Was it a man
with a big, black beard?"
"Yes," replied Mr. Dashwood.
"And gold-rimmed spectacles?"
"Yes."
"Did he bawl like a bull?"
"He had rather a loud voice."
"That's him. He's my cousin, bad luck to him! No matter. I'll be even
with him some day yet. He's the biggest black--I mean, we have never
been friends; but that's always the way between relations. And that
reminds me--I've never bid you welcome to Drumgool, Miss Grimshaw.
Welcome you are to the house and all it holds, and make yourself at
home! And here we are sitting in the old drawing-room that's only used
for company once in a twelvemonth. Come down to the sitting-room, both
of you. There's a fire there, and Effie will be in in a minute. She's
out driving in the donkey-carriage. This isn't a bad bit of an old hall,
is it?" continued he as they passed through the hall. "It's the oldest
part of the house. Do you see that split in the panelling up there?
That's where a bullet went in the duel between Counsellor Kinsella and
Colonel White. 'Black White' was his nickname, and well he deserved it.
They fought here, for it was snowing so thick outside you couldn't see a
man at ten paces. Eighteen hundred and one, that was, and they in their
graves all these years! No, no one was killed. Only a tenant that had
come in to see the fun, and he got in the line of fire. He recovered, I
believe, though they say he carried the bullet in his head to the end
of his days. This is the sitting-room. It's the warmest room in winter.
The old house is as full of holes as a colander, but you'll never get a
draught here. Norah!"--putting his head out of the door.
"Yes, sir."
"Bring the decanters. You don't mind smoking, Miss Grimshaw? That's a
good job. Are you fond of horses, Mr. Dashwood?"
"Rather."
"Well, there's the hoof of the Shaughraun. He carried everything before
him in Ireland. He was my grandfather's, and he was entered for the
Derby, and some blackguards poisoned him. It would be before your time,
and his death made more stir than the death of anything that ever went
on four legs, except, maybe, old Nebuchadnezzar. They made songs about
it, and I have a ballad upstairs in my desk a yard long my father bought
from an old woman in Abbey-street. Here's the whisky. Sure, Norah, what
have you been dreaming about, and why didn't you bring the wine for the
young lady? Not drink wine! Well, now, just say the word, and I'll get
you some tea. Or would you like coffee? Well, well. Say 'when,' Mr.
Dashwood."
"I like this room," said Miss Grimshaw, looking round at the books and
the oak panelling. "It's so cosey, and yet so ghosty. Have you a ghost?"
"A which? I beg your pardon," said Mr. French, pausing in his operations
with a soda-water siphon.
"A ghost."
"I believe there's an old woman without a head walks in the top
corridor by the servants' bedrooms. At least, that's the story; but it's
all nonsense, though it does to frighten the girls with, and get them to
bed early. Who's that?"
"If you plaze, sir," said Norah, speaking through the half-open door,
"Miss Effie's back from her drive and upstairs, and she's wild to see
the young lady."
"That's me, I suppose," said Miss Grimshaw. "I'll go up, if I may."
"Sure, with pleasure," said Mr. French, holding the door open for her
with all the grace of a Brummell, while the girl passed out.
Then he closed the door, waited till she was well out of earshot, and
then, sitting down in an armchair, he "rocked and roared" with laughter.
"Don't speak to me," said he, though Mr. Dashwood had not said a word.
"Did you ever see me trying to keep my face? Sure, man, she's the
governess, and I thought it was an old lady in spectacles that would be
coming. Faith, and I'll have to get a chaperon. You might have blown me
away with a fan when she said who she was. But I didn't let on, did I? I
didn't show the start she's given me? Are you sure?"
Assured on this point, Mr. French poured himself out another glass of
whisky. He explained that he'd got Miss Grimshaw "out of an
advertisement." Then, much to the edification of Mr. Dashwood, he went
into the bailiff business, the beauty of Nip and Tuck, the price
Colonel Sherbourne had paid, explaining that it was not the money he
cared about so much as the injury it would have done him in Sherbourne's
estimation if the horses had not been delivered.
It was an adventure after the heart of Bobby Dashwood, who, in his short
life, had dealt freely and been dealt with by money-lenders. Mr.
Dashwood was what women call a "nice-looking boy," but he was not
particularly intellectual when you got him off the subjects he had made
particularly his own. He had failed for Sandhurst. If a proficiency in
cricket and fives had been allowed to count, he would have got high
marks; but they wanted mathematics, and Mr. Dashwood could not supply
this requirement; in French, too, he was singularly deficient. The
deficiencies of Mr. Dashwood would have furnished out half a dozen young
men well equipped for failure in business, and that is why, I suppose,
he managed to make such a success of life.
The joy Mr. Dashwood managed to extract from that usually unjoyful thing
called life hinted at alchemy rather than chemistry. Joy, too, without
any by-products in the way of headaches or heartaches. Utterly
irresponsible, but without a serious vice, always bright, clean, and
healthy, and alert for any sort of sport as a terrier, he was as good to
meet and have around one as a spring morning--that is to say, when one
was in tune for him.
He had five hundred a year of his own, with prospects of great wealth on
the death of an uncle, and even out of this poverty he managed to
extract pleasure of a sort in the excitement of settling with creditors
and trying to make both ends meet--which they never did.
"What a joke!" said Mr. Dashwood. "And she never split. She said she'd
been leaving a gentleman at an old castle--and she never grumbled,
though she was nearly dropping off the car. I say, isn't she a ripper?"
"Here's to her," said French. "And now, come out and have a look at the
stables and grounds. Lunch is at one, and we have an hour."
The youth and prettiness of Miss Grimshaw after the first pleasing shock
did not trouble him in the least. A straight-minded man and a soul of
honour in everything not appertaining to bill discounters, the propriety
or impropriety of the situation did not cause him a moment's thought.
The only thing that worried him for a second or two was the remembrance
of Mr. Giveen. How would that gentleman act under the intoxication sure
to be produced by the newcomer's youth and prettiness?
"She'd have been down herself to see you, miss," said Norah as she led
the way upstairs, "only she's gone in the legs. This way, miss, along
the passidge; this is the door."
A scuffling noise made itself evident as Norah turned the door-handle,
and Miss Grimshaw, entering a brightly and pleasantly furnished room,
found herself face to face with Miss French, who was sitting up on a
sofa, flushed and bright-eyed and with the appearance of having suddenly
returned to her invalidhood and position on the couch after an
excursion about the apartment.
"Hullo!" said the child.
"Hullo!" said Miss Grimshaw.
"Oh, will you look at her?" cried Norah. "And the rug I put round her
legs all over the place! You've been off the couch, Miss Effie!"
"I only put my feet on the ground," protested the child. "You needn't be
going on at me. Bother my old legs! I wish they was cut off!"
"And so you are Effie?" said Miss Grimshaw, taking her seat on the edge
of the couch. "Do you know who I am?"
"Rather," replied Miss French. "You're Miss Grimshaw."
There was a subdued chuckle in the tone of her voice, as though Miss
Grimshaw was a joke that had just come off, rather than a governess who
had just arrived--a chuckle hinting at the fact that Miss Grimshaw had
been the subject of humorous discussion and speculation in the French
household for some time past.
"You'll ring, miss, when you want me to show you your room?" said Norah.
Then she withdrew, and Miss Grimshaw found herself alone with her
charge.
The room was half nursery, half sitting-room, papered with a sprightly
green-sprigged and rose-patterned paper. Pictures from Christmas numbers
of the _Graphic_ and pictures of cats by Louis Wain adorned the walls;
there were a number of yellow-backed books on the book-shelf, and in one
corner a pile of old comic papers--_Punches_, _Judys_, and _Funs_--all
of an ancient date.
All the light literature in Drumgool House found its way here--and
remained. The yellow-backed books were the works of Arthur Sketchley, a
most pleasing humourist whose name has faded almost from our memories.
"Mrs. Brown's 'Oliday Outings," "Mrs. Brown in Paris," "Mrs. Brown at
the Seaside"--all were here. They had been bought by some member of the
French family with a taste for humour, as had also the comic papers.
To Miss French in her captivity the dead-and-gone artists, the
dead-and-gone jokes, the fashions and manners of the eighties, which are
as Thebes to us, were fresh and vigorous. Up-to-date papers and books
came little in her way, for French was not a reading man.