Music was resumed to confuse the hearing of the eavesdroppers.
They beheld a quaint spectacle: a gentleman, obviously an Englishman, approached, with the evident intention of reminding the Beauty of the night of her engagement to him, and claiming her, as it were, in the lions jaws. He advanced a foot, withdrew it, advanced, withdrew; eager for his prize, not over-enterprising; in awe of the illustrious General she entertainedpresumeably quite unaware of the pretenders presence; whereupon a voice was heard: Oh! if it was minuetting you meant before the lady, Id never have disputed your right to perform, sir. For it seemed that there were two claimants in the field, an Irishman and an Englishman; and the former, having a livelier sense of the situation, hung aloof in waiting for her eye; the latter directed himself to strike bluntly at his prey; and he continued minuetting, now rapidly blinking, flushed, angry, conscious of awkwardness and a tangle, incapable of extrication. He began to blink horribly under the raillery of his rival. The General observed him, but as an object remote and minute, a fly or gnat. The face of the brilliant Diana was entirely devoted to him she amused.
Lady Dunstane had the faint lines of a decorous laugh on her lips, as she said: How odd it is that our men show to such disadvantage in a Ball-room. I have seen them in danger, and there they shine first of any, and one is proud of them. They should always be facing the elements or in action. She glanced at the minuet, which had become a petrified figure, still palpitating, bent forward, an interrogative reminder.
Mr. Redworth reserved his assent to the proclamation of any English disadvantage. A whiff of Celtic hostility in the atmosphere put him on his mettle. Wherever the man is tried, he said.
My lady! the Irish gentleman bowed to Lady Dunstane. I had the honour Sullivan Smith at the castle
She responded to the salute, and Mr. Sullivan Smith proceeded to tell her, half in speech, half in dots most luminous, of a civil contention between the English gentleman and himself, as to the possession of the loveliest of partners for this particular ensuing dance, and that they had simultaneously made a rush from the Lower Courts, namely, their cards, to the Upper, being the lady; and Mr. Sullivan Smith partly founded his preferable claim on her Irish descent, and on his acquaintance with her eminent defunct fatherone of the ever-radiating stars of his quenchless country.
Lady Dunstane sympathized with him for his not intruding his claim when the young lady stood pre-engaged, as well as in humorous appreciation of his imaginative logic.
There will be dancing enough after supper, she said.
If I could score one dance with her, Id go home supperless and feasted, said he. And thats not saying much among the hordes of hungry troopers tip-toe for the signal to the buffet. See, my lady, the gentleman, as we call him; there he is working his gamut perpetually up to da capo. Oh! but its a sheep trying to be wolf; he s sheep-eyed and he s wolf-fanged, pathetic and larcenous! Oh, now! whod believe it!the man has dared Id as soon think of committing sacrilege in a cathedral!
The man was actually; to quote his indignant rival, breaching the fortress, and pointing out to Diana Merion her name on his dirty scrap of paper: a shocking sight when the ladys recollection was the sole point to be aimed at, and the only umpire. As if all of us couldnt have written that, and hadnt done it! Mr. Sullivan Smith groaned disgusted. He hated bad manners, particularly in cases involving ladies; and the bad manners of a Saxon fired his antagonism to the race; individual members of which he boasted of forgiving and embracing, honouring. So the man blackened the race for him, and the race was excused in the man. But his hatred of bad manners was vehement, and would have extended to a fellow-countryman. His own were of the antecedent century, therefore venerable.
Diana turned from her pursuer with a comic woeful lifting of the brows at her friend. Lady Dunstane motioned her fan, and Diana came, bending head.
Are you bound in honour?
I dont think I am. And I do want to go on talking with the General. He is so delightful and modestmy dream of a true soldier!telling me of his last big battle, bit by bit, to my fishing.
Put off this person for a square dance down the list, and take out Mr. RedworthMiss Diana Merlon, Mr. Redworth: he will bring you back to the General, who must not totally absorb you, or he will forfeit his popularity.
Diana instantly struck a treaty with the pertinacious advocate of his claims, to whom, on his relinquishing her, Mr. Sullivan Smith remarked: Oh! sir, the law of it, where a ladys concerned! Youre one for evictions, I should guess, and the anti-human process. Its that letter of the law that stands between you and me and mine and yours. But youve got your congee, and my blessing on ye!
It was a positive engagement, said the enemy.
Mr. Sullivan Smith derided him. And a pretty partner youve pickled for yourself when she keeps her positive engagement!
He besought Lady Dunstane to console him with a turn. She pleaded weariness. He proposed to sit beside her and divert her. She smiled, but warned him that she was English in every vein. He interjected: Irish men and English women! though its putting the cart before the horsethe copper pennies where the gold guineas should be. So heres the gentleman who takes the oyster, like the lawyer of the fable. English is he? But we read, the last shall be first. And English women and Irish men make the finest coupling in the universe.
Well, you must submit to see an Irish woman led out by an English man, said Lady Dunstane, at the same time informing the obedient Diana, then bestowing her hand on Mr. Redworth to please her friend, that he was a schoolfellow of her husbands.
Favour cant help coming by rotation, except in very extraordinary circumstances, and he was ahead of me with you, and takes my due, and twould be hard on me if I werent thoroughly indemnified. Mr. Sullivan Smith bowed. You gave them just the start over the frozen minute for conversation; they were total strangers, and he doesnt appear a bad sort of fellow for a temporary mate, though hes not perfectly sure of his legs. And that well excuse to any man leading out such a fresh young beauty of a Bright Eyeslike the stars of a winters night in the frosty season over Columkill, or where you will, so thats in Ireland, to be sure of the likeness to her.
Her mother was half English.
Of course she was. And what was my observation about the coupling? Dan Merion would make her Irish all over. And she has a vein of Spanish blood in her; for he had; and shes got the colour.But you spoke of their couplingor I did. Oh, a man can hold his own with an English roly-poly mate: hes not stifled! But a woman hasnt his power of resistance to dead weight. Shes volatile, shes frivolous, a rattler and gabblerhavent I heard what they say of Irish girls over there? She marries, and its the end of her sparkling. She must choose at home for a perfect harmonious partner.
Lady Dunstane expressed her opinion that her couple danced excellently together.
Itd be a bitter thing to see, if the fellow couldnt dance, after leading her out! sighed Mr. Sullivan Smith. I heard of her over there. They, call her the Black Pearl, and the Irish Lilybecause shes dark. They rack their poor brains to get the laugh of us.
And I listen to you, said Lady Dunstane.
And I listen to you, said Lady Dunstane.
Ah! if all England, half, a quarter, the smallest piece of the land were like you, my lady, Id be loyal to the finger-nails. Now, is she engaged?when I get a word with her?
She is nineteen, or nearly, and she ought to have five good years of freedom, I think.
And five good years of serfdom Id serve to win her!
A look at him under the eyelids assured Lady Dunstane that there would be small chance for Mr. Sullivan Smith; after a life of bondage, if she knew her Diana, in spite of his tongue, his tact, his lively features, and breadth of shoulders.
Up he sprang. Diana was on Mr. Redworths arm. No refreshments, she said; and this is my refreshment, taking the seat of Mr. Sullivan Smith, who ejaculated,
I must go and have that gentlemans name. He wanted a foe.
You know you are ready to coquette with the General at any moment, Tony, said her friend.
Yes, with the General!
He is a noble old man.
Superb. And dont say old man. With his uniform and his height and his grey head, he is like a glorious October day just before the brown leaves fall.
Diana hummed a little of the air of Planxty Kelly, the favourite of her childhood, as Lady Dunstane well remembered, they smiled together at the scenes and times it recalled.
Do you still write verses, Tony?
I could about him. At one part of the fight he thought he would be beaten. He was overmatched in artillery, and it was a cavalry charge he thundered on them, riding across the field to give the word of command to the couple of regiments, riddled to threads, that gained the day. That is lifewhen we dare death to live! I wonder at men, who are men, being anything but soldiers! I told you, madre, my own Emmy, I forgave you for marrying, because it was a soldier.
Perhaps a soldier is to be the happy man. But you have not told me a word of yourself. What has been done with the old Crossways?
The house, you know, is mine. And its all I have: ten acres and the house, furnished, and let for less than two hundred a year. Oh! how I long to evict the tenants! They cant have my feeling for the place where I was born. Theyre people of tolerably good connections, middling wealthy, I suppose, of the name of Warwick, and, as far as I can understand, they stick there to be near the Sussex Downs, for a nephew, who likes to ride on them. Ive a half engagement, barely legible, to visit them on an indefinite day, and cant bear the idea of strangers masters in the old house. I must be driven there for shelter, for a roof, some month. And I could make a pilgrimage in rain or snow just to doat on the outside of it. Thats your Tony.
Shes my darling.
I hear myself speak! But your voice or mine, madre, its one soul. Be sure I am giving up the ghost when I cease to be one soul with you, dear and dearest! No secrets, never a shadow of a deception, or else I shall feel I am not fit to live. Was I a bad correspondent when you were in India?
Pretty well. Copious letters when you did write.
I was shy. I knew I should be writing, to Emmy and another, and only when I came to the flow could I forget him. He is very finely built; and I dare say he has a head. I read of his deeds in India and quivered. But he was just a bit in the way. Men are the barriers to perfect naturalness, at least, with girls, I think. You wrote to me in the same tone as ever, and at first I had a struggle to reply. And I, who have such pride in being always myself!
Two staring semi-circles had formed, one to front the Hero; the other the Beauty. These half moons imperceptibly dissolved to replenish, and became a fixed obstruction.
Yes, they look, Diana made answer to Lady Dunstanes comment on the curious impertinence. She was getting used to it, and her friend had a gratification in seeing how little this affected her perfect naturalness.
You are often in the worlddinners, dances? she said.
People are kind.
Any proposals?
Nibbles.
Quite heart-free?
Absolutely.
Dianas unshadowed bright face defied all menace of an eclipse.
The block of sturdy gazers began to melt. The General had dispersed his group of satellites by a movement with the Mayoress on his arm, construed as the signal for procession to the supper-table.
CHAPTER III. THE INTERIOR OF MR. REDWORTH, AND THE EXTERIOR OF MR. SULLIVAN SMITH
It may be as well to take Mr. Redworths arm; you will escape the crush for you, said Lady Dunstane to Diana. I dont sup. Yes! go! You must eat, and he is handiest to conduct you.
Diana thought of her chaperon and the lateness of the hour. She murmured, to soften her conscience, Poor Mrs. Pettigrew!
And once more Mr. Redworth, outwardly imperturbable, was in the maelstrom of a happiness resembling tempest. He talked, and knew not what he uttered. To give this matchless girl the best to eat and drink was his business, and he performed it. Oddly, for a man who had no loaded design, marshalling the troops in his active and capacious cranium, he fell upon calculations of his income, present and prospective, while she sat at the table and he stood behind her. Others were wrangling for places, chairs, plates, glasses, game-pie, champagne: she had them; the lady under his charge to a certainty would have them; so far good; and he had seven hundred pounds per annumseven hundred and fifty, in a favourable aspect, at a stretch....
Yes, the pleasantest thing to me after working all day is an opera of Carinis, she said, in full accord with her taste, and Tellio for tenor, certainly.A fair enough sum for a bachelor: four hundred personal income, and a prospect of higher dividends to increase it; three hundred odd from his office, and no immediate prospects of an increase there; no one died there, no elderly martyr for the advancement of his juniors could be persuaded to die; they were too tough to think of retiring. Say, seven hundred and fifty.... eight hundred, if the commerce of the country fortified the Bank his property was embarked in; or eight-fifty or nine ten....
I could call him my poet also, Mr. Redworth agreed with her taste in poets. His letters are among the best ever writtenor ever published: the raciest English I know. Frank, straight out: capital descriptions. The best English letter-writers are as good as the French
You dont think so?in their way, of course. I dare say we dont sufficiently cultivate the art. We require the supple tongue a closer intercourse of society gives.Eight or ten hundred. Comfortable enough for a man in chambers. To dream of entering as a householder on that sum, in these days, would be stark nonsense: and a man two removes from a baronetcy has no right to set his reckoning on deaths:if he does, he becomes a sort of meditative assassin. But what were the Fates about when they planted a man of the ability of Tom Redworth in a Government office! Clearly they intended him to remain a bachelor for life. And they sent him over to Ireland on inspection duty for a month to have sight of an Irish Beauty....
Think war the finest subject for poets? he exclaimed. Flatly no: I dont think it. I think exactly the reverse. It brings out the noblest traits in human character? I wont own that even. It brings out some but under excitement, when you have not always the real man.Pray dont sneer at domestic life. Well, there was a suspicion of disdain.Yes, I can respect the hero, military or civil; with this distinction, that the military hero aims at personal reward