IN WHICH THE SUN SETS, AND THE MERRY-MAKING IS KEPT UP BY CANDLE-LIGHT
IN THE KING'S HOUSE, AND LILY RECEIVES A WARNING WHICH SHE DOES NOT
COMPREHEND.
Dr. Toole, without whom no jollification of any sort could occur
satisfactorily in Chapelizod or the country round, was this evening at
the 'King's House,' of course, as usual, with his eyes about him and his
tongue busy; and at this moment he was setting Cluffe right about
Devereux's relation to the title and estates of Athenry. His uncle
Roland Lord Athenry was, as everybody knew, a lunatic--Toole used to
call him Orlando Furioso: and Lewis, his first cousin by his father's
elder brother--the heir presumptive--was very little better, and
reported every winter to be dying. He spends all his time--his spine
being made, it is popularly believed, of gristle--stretched on his back
upon a deal board, cutting out paper figures with a pair of scissors.
Toole used to tell them at the club, when alarming letters arrived about
the health of the noble uncle and his hopeful nephew--the heir
apparent--'That's the gentleman who's back-bone's made of jelly--eh,
Puddock? Two letters come, by Jove, announcing that Dick Devereux's
benefit is actually fixed for the Christmas holidays, when his cousin
undertakes to die for positively the last time, and his uncle will play
in the most natural manner conceivable, the last act of "King Lear."' In
fact, this family calamity was rather a cheerful subject among
Devereux's friends; and certainly Devereux had no reason to love that
vicious, selfish old lunatic, Lord Athenry, who in his prodigal and
heartless reign, before straw and darkness swallowed him, never gave the
boy a kind word or gentle look, and owed him a mortal grudge because he
stood near the kingdom, and wrote most damaging reports of him at the
end of the holidays, and despatched those letters of Bellerophon by the
boy's own hand to the schoolmaster, with the natural results.
When Aunt Rebecca rustled into the ring that was gathered round about
the fiddles and tambourine, she passed Miss Magnolia very near, with a
high countenance, and looking straight before her, and with no more
recognition than the tragedy queen bestows upon the painted statue on
the wing by which she enters. And Miss Mag followed her with a titter
and an angry flash of her eyes. So Aunt Rebecca made up to the little
hillock--little bigger than a good tea-cake--on which the dowager was
perched in a high-backed chair, smiling over the dancers with a splendid
benignity, and beating time with her fat short foot. And Aunt Becky told
Mrs. Colonel Stafford, standing by, she had extemporised a living
Watteau, and indeed it _was_ a very pretty picture, or Aunt Becky would
not have said so; and 'craning' from this eminence she saw her niece
coming leisurely round, not in company of Mervyn.
That interesting stranger, on the contrary, had by this time joined
Lilias and Devereux, who had returned toward the dancers, and was
talking again with Miss Walsingham. Gertrude's beau was little Puddock,
who was all radiant and supremely blest. But encountering rather a black
look from Aunt Becky as they drew near, he deferentially surrendered the
young lady to the care of her natural guardian, who forthwith presented
her to the dowager; and Puddock, warned off by another glance, backed
away, and fell, unawares, helplessly into the possession of Miss
Magnolia, a lady whom he never quite understood, and whom he regarded
with a very kind and polite sort of horror.
So the athletic Magnolia instantly impounded the little lieutenant, and
began to rally him, in the sort of slang she delighted in, with plenty
of merriment and malice upon his _tendre_ for Miss Chattesworth, and
made the gallant young gentleman blush and occasionally smile, and bow a
great deal, and take some snuff.
'And here comes the Duchess of Belmont again,' said the saucy Miss
Magnolia, seeing the stately approach of Aunt Becky, as it seemed to
Puddock, through the back of her head. I think the exertion and frolic
of the dance had got her high blood up into a sparkling state, and her
scorn and hate of Aunt Rebecca was more demonstrative than usual. 'Now
you'll see how she'll run against poor little simple me, just because
I'm small. And _this_ is the way they dance it,' cried she, in a louder
tone; and capering backward with a bounce, and an air, and a grace, she
came with a sort of a courtesy, and a smart bump, and a shock against
the stately Miss Rebecca; and whisking round with a little scream and a
look of terrified innocence, and with her fingers to her heart, to
suppress an imaginary palpitation, dropped a low courtesy, crying--
'I'm blest but I thought 'twas tall Burke, the gunner.'
'You might look behind before you spring backward, young gentlewoman,'
said Aunt Becky, with a very bright colour.
'And you might look before you before you spring forward, old
gentlewoman,' replied Miss Mag, just as angry.
'Young ladies used to have a respect to decorum,' Aunt Becky went on.
'So they prayed me to tell you, Madam,' replied the young lady, with a
very meek courtesy, and a very crimson face.
'Yes, Miss Mac--Mag--Madam--it used to be so,' rejoined Aunt Rebecca,
''twas part of my education, at least, to conduct myself in a polite
company like a civilised person.'
'"I wish I could see it," says blind Hugh,' Magnolia retorted; 'but
'twas a good while ago, Madam, and you've had time to forget.'
'I shall acquaint your mother, Mrs.--Mug--Mac--Macnamara, with your
pretty behaviour to-morrow,' said Miss Rebecca.
'To-morrow's a new day, and mother may be well enough then to hear your
genteel lamentation; but I suppose you mean to-morrow come never,'
answered Magnolia, with another of her provoking meek courtesies.
'Oh, this is Lieutenant Puddock,' said Aunt Becky, drawing off in high
disdain, 'the bully of the town. Your present company, Sir, will find
very pretty work, I warrant, for your sword and pistols; Sir Launcelot
and his belle!'
'Do you like a belle or beldame best, Sir Launcelot?' enquired Miss Mag,
with a mild little duck to Puddock.
'You'll have your hands pretty full, Sir, ha, ha, ha!' and with scarlet
cheeks, and a choking laugh, away sailed Aunt Rebecca.
'Choke, chicken, there's more a-hatching,' said Miss Mag, in a sort of
aside, and cutting a flic-flac with a merry devilish laugh, and a wink
to Puddock. That officer, being a gentleman, was a good deal
disconcerted, and scandalised--too literal to see, and too honest to
enjoy, the absurd side of the combat.
'Twas an affair of a few seconds, like two frigates crossing in a gale,
with only opportunity for a broadside or two; and when the Rebecca
Chattesworth sheered off, it can't be denied, her tackling was a good
deal more cut up, and her hull considerably more pierced, than those of
the saucy Magnolia, who sent that whistling shot and provoking cheer in
her majestic wake.
'I see you want to go, Lieutenant Puddock--Lieutenant O'Flaherty, I
promised to dance this country dance with you; don't let me keep _you_,
Ensign Puddock,' said Miss Mag in a huff, observing little Puddock's
wandering eye and thoughts.
'I--a--you see, Miss Macnamara, truly you were so hard upon poor Miss
Rebecca Chattesworth, that I fear I shall get into trouble, unless I go
and make my peace with her,' lisped the little lieutenant, speaking the
truth, as was his wont, with a bow and a polite smile, and a gentle
indication of beginning to move away.
'Oh, is that all? I was afraid you were sick of the mulligrubs, with
eating chopt hay; you had better go back to her at once if she wants
you, for if you don't with a good grace, she'll very likely come and
take you back by the collar,' and Miss Mag and O'Flaherty joined in a
derisive hee-haw, to Puddock's considerable confusion, who bowed and
smiled again, and tried to laugh, till the charming couple relieved him
by taking their places in the dance.
When I read this speech about the 'mulligrubs,' in the old yellow letter
which contains a lively account of the skirmish, my breath was fairly
taken away, and I could see nothing else for more than a minute; and so
soon as I was quite myself again, I struck my revising pen across the
monstrous sentence, with uncompromising decision, referring it to a
clerical blunder, or some unlucky transposition, and I wondered how any
polite person could have made so gross a slip. But see how
authentication waits upon truth! Three years afterwards, I picked up in
the parlour of the 'Cat and Fiddle,' on the Macclesfield Road, in
Derbyshire, a scrubby old duodecimo, which turned out to be an old
volume of Dean Swift's works: well, I opened in the middle of 'Polite
Conversation,' and there, upon my honour, the second sentence I read was
'_Lady Smart_,' (mark _that_--'LADY!') 'What, you are sick of
the mulligrubs, with eating chopt hay?' So my good old yellow
letter-writer ('I.' or 'T.' Tresham, I can't decide what he signs
himself)--_you_ were, no doubt, exact here as in other matters, and _I_
was determining the probable and the impossible, unphilosophically, by
the _rule_ of my own time. And my poor Magnolia, though you spoke some
years--thirty or so--later than my Lady Smart, a countess for aught I
know, you are not so much to blame. Thirty years! what of that? Don't
we, to this hour, more especially in rural districts, encounter among
the old folk, every now and then, one of honest Simon Wagstaff's
pleasantries, which had served merry ladies and gentlemen so long before
that charming compiler, with his 'Large Table Book,' took the matter in
hands. And I feel, I confess, a queer sort of a thrill, not at all
contemptuous--neither altogether sad, nor altogether joyous--but
something pleasantly regretful, whenever one of those quaint and faded
old servants of the mirth of so many dead and buried generations, turns
up in my company.
And now the sun went down behind the tufted trees, and the blue shades
of evening began to deepen, and the merry company flocked into the
King's House, to dance again and drink tea, and make more love, and play
round games, and joke, and sing songs, and eat supper under old Colonel
Stafford's snug and kindly roof-tree.
Dangerfield, who arrived rather late, was now in high chat with Aunt
Becky. She rather liked him and had very graciously accepted a gray
parrot and a monkey, which he had deferentially presented, a step which
called forth, to General Chattesworth's consternation, a cockatoo from
Cluffe, who felt the necessity of maintaining his ground against the
stranger, and wrote off by the next packet to London, in a confounded
passion, for he hated wasting money, about a pelican he had got wind of.
Dangerfield also entered with much apparent interest into a favourite
scheme of Aunt Becky's, for establishing, between Chapelizod and
Knockmaroon, a sort of retreat for discharged gaol-birds of her
selection, a colony, happily for the character and the silver spoons of
the neighbourhood, never eventually established.
It was plain he was playing the frank, good fellow, and aiming at
popularity. He had become one of the club. He played at whist, and only
smiled, after his sort, when his partner revoked, and he lost like a
gentleman. His talk was brisk, and hard, and caustic--that of a
Philistine who had seen the world and knew it. He had the Peerage by
rote, and knew something out-of-the-way, amusing or damnable about every
person of note you could name; and his shrewd gossip had a bouquet its
own, and a fine cynical flavour, which secretly awed and delighted the
young fellows. He smiled a good deal. He was not aware that a smile did
not quite become him. The fact is, he had lost a good many side teeth,
and it was a hollow and sinister disclosure. He would laugh, too,
occasionally; but his laugh was not rich and joyous, like General
Chattesworth's, or even Tom Toole's cozy chuckle, or old Doctor
Walsingham's hilarious ha-ha-ha! He did not know it; but there was a
cold hard ring in it, like the crash and jingle of broken glass. Then
his spectacles, shining like ice in the light, never removed for a
moment--never even pushed up to his forehead--he eat in them, drank in
them, fished in them, joked in them--he prayed in them, and, no doubt,
slept in them, and would, it was believed, be buried in them--heightened
that sense of mystery and mask which seemed to challenge curiosity and
defy scrutiny with a scornful chuckle.
In the meantime, the mirth, and frolic, and flirtation were drawing to a
close. The dowager, in high good humour, was conveyed down stairs to her
carriage, by Colonel Stafford and Lord Castlemallard, and rolled away,
with blazing flambeaux, like a meteor, into town. There was a
breaking-up and leave-taking, and parting jokes on the door-steps; and
as the ladies, old and young, were popping on their mantles in the
little room off the hall, and Aunt Becky and Mrs. Colonel Strafford were
exchanging a little bit of eager farewell gossip beside the cabinet,
Gertrude Chattesworth--by some chance she and Lilias had not had an
opportunity of speaking that evening--drew close to her, and she took
her hand and said 'Good-night, dear Lily,' and glanced over her
shoulder, still holding Lily's hand; and she looked very pale and
earnest, and said quickly, in a whisper:
'Lily, darling, if you knew what I could tell you, if I dare, about Mr.
Mervyn, you would cut your hand off rather than allow him to talk to
you, as, I confess, he _has_ talked to me, as an admirer, and knowing
what I know, and with my eye upon him--Lily--_Lily_--I've been amazed by
him to-night. I can only _warn_ you now, darling, to beware of a great
danger.'
''Tis no danger, however, to me, Gertrude, dear,' said Lily, with a
pleasant little smile. 'And though he's handsome, there's something, is
there not, _funeste_ in his deep eyes and black hair; and the dear old
man knows something strange about him, too; I suppose 'tis all the same
story.'
'And he has not told you,' said Gertrude, looking down with a gloomy
face at her fan.
'No; but I'm so curious, I know he will, though he does not like to
speak of it; but you know, Gerty, I love a horror, and I know the
story's fearful, and I feel uncertain whether he's a man or a ghost; but
see, Aunt Rebecca and Mistress Strafford are kissing.'
'Good-night, dear Lily, and remember!' said pale Gertrude without a
smile, looking at her, for a moment, with a steadfast gaze, and then
kissing her with a hasty and earnest pressure. And Lily kissed her
again, and so they parted.