Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ if I cannot make some one responsible for it! Yes, gentlemen,” added he, shaking his fist at the crowded windows, “it’s not all over yet; we’ll see who laughs last!”

      “Faith, we’re well off, to escape with a little fright, and some frog-spawn,” said Bob; “it might have been worse!”

      “It shall be worse, sir, far worse, depend upon it!” said the other.

      By this time my father had come up to the spot, and endeavored, as well as the absurdity of the scene would permit him, to condole with the angry sufferer. It was not, however, without the greatest difficulty that Curtis could be prevailed upon to enter the house. The very idea of being a laughing-stock was madness to him; and it was only on the strict assurance that no allusion to the event would be tolerated by my father that he at last gave in and accompanied him.

      Insignificant as was this incident in itself, it was the origin of very grave consequences. Curtis was one of those men who are unforgiving to anything like ridicule; and the sense of injury, added to the poignant suffering of a ruined estate and a fallen condition, by no means improved a temper irascible beyond everything. He entered the house swearing every species of vengeance on the innocent cause of his misadventure.

      “Time was, sir, when a lord-lieutenant drove to a gentleman’s door in a style becoming his dignity, and not heralded by half-a-dozen rascals, whip-cracking and caracolling like the clowns in a circus!”

      Such was his angry commentary as he pushed past my father and hastened to his room. Long after, he sat brooding and mourning over his calamity. It was forgotten in the drawing-room, where Polly had now arrived, dividing attention and interest with the Viceroy himself. Indeed, while his Grace was surrounded with courtly and grave figures, discussing the news of the day and the passing topics, Polly was the centre of a far more animated group, whose laughter and raillery rung through the apartment.

      My mother was charmed with her, not only because she possessed considerable personal charms, but, being of her own age, and speaking French with ease and fluency, it was a great happiness to her to unbend once again in all the freedom of her own delightful language. It was to no purpose that my father whispered to her the names and titles of various guests to whom peculiar honor was due; it was in vain that he led her to the seat beside some tiresome old lady, all dulness and diamonds; by some magical attraction she would find herself leaning over Polly’s chair, and listening to her, as she talked, in admiring ecstasy. It was unquestionably true that although most of the company were selected less for personal qualities than their political influence, there were many most agreeable persons in the number. My mother, however, was already fascinated, and she required more self-restraint than she usually imposed upon herself to forego a pleasure which she saw no reason for relinquishing.

      My father exerted himself to the uttermost. Few men, I believe, performed the host more gracefully; but nothing more fatally mars the ease and destroys the charm of that character than anything like over-effort at success. His attentions were too marked and too hurried; he had exaggerated to himself the difficulties of his situation, and he increased them tenfold by his own terrors.

      The Duke was one of those plain, quiet, well-bred persons so frequently met with in the upper classes of England, and whose strongest characteristic is, probably, the excessive simplicity of their manners, and the total absence of everything bordering on pretension. This very quietude, however, is frequently misinterpreted, and, in Ireland especially, often taken for the very excess of pride and haughtiness. Such did it seem on the present occasion; for now that the restraint of a great position was removed, and that he suffered himself to unbend from the cumbrous requirements of a state existence, the ease of his deportment was suspected to be indifference, and the absence of all effort was deemed a contemptuous disregard for the company.

      The moment, too, was not happily chosen to bring men of extreme and opposite opinions into contact. They met with coldness and distrust; they were even suspectful of the motives which had led to their meeting, – in fact, a party whose elements were less suited to each other rarely assembled in an Irish country-house; and by ill luck the weather took one of those wintry turns which are not unfrequent in our so-called summers, and set in to rain with that determined perseverance so common to a July in Ireland.

      Nearly all the resources by which the company were to have been amused were of an outdoor kind, and depended greatly on weather. The shooting, the driving, the picnicing, the visits to remarkable scenes in the neighborhood, which Dan MacNaghten had “programmed” with such care and zeal, must now be abandoned, and supplied by occupation beneath the roof.

      Oh, good reader, has it ever been your lot to have your house filled with a large and incongruous party, weatherbound and “bored”? To see them stealing stealthily about corridors, and peeping into rooms, as if fearful of chancing on something more tiresome than themselves? To watch their silent contemplation of the weather-glass, or their mournful gaze at the lowering and leaden sky? To hear the lazy, drowsy tone of the talk, broken by many a half-suppressed yawn? To know and to feel that they regard themselves as your prisoners, and you as their jailer? – that your very butler is in their eyes but an upper turnkey? Have you witnessed the utter failure of all efforts to amuse them? – have you overheard the criticism that pronounced your piano out of tune, your billiard-table out of level, your claret out of condition? Have you caught mysterious whisperings of conspiracies to get away? and heard the word “post-horses” uttered with an accent of joyful enthusiasm? Have you watched the growing antipathies of those that, in your secret plannings, you had destined to become sworn friends? Have you grieved over the disappointment which your peculiar favorites have been doomed to experience? Have you silently contemplated all the wrong combinations and unhappy conjunctures that have grown up, when you expected but unanimity and good feeling? Have you known all these things? and have you passed through the terrible ordeal of endeavoring to amuse the dissatisfied, to reconcile the incompatible, and to occupy the indolent? Without some such melancholy experience, you can scarcely imagine all that my poor father had to suffer.

      Never was there such discontent as that household exhibited. The Viceregal party saw few of the non-adherents, and perceived that they made no converts amongst the enemy. The Liberals were annoyed at the restraint imposed on them by the presence of the Government people; the ladies were outraged at the distinguished notice conferred by their hostess on one who was not their equal in social position, and whom they saw for the first time admitted into the “set.” In fact, instead of a large party met together to please and be pleased, the society was broken up into small coteries and knots, all busily criticising and condemning their neighbors, and only interrupting their censures by grievous complaints of the ill-fortune that had induced them to come there.

      It was now the third morning of the Duke’s visit, and the weather showed no symptoms of improvement. The dark sky was relieved towards the horizon by that line of treacherous light which to all accustomed to an Irish climate is the signal for continued rain. The most intrepid votary of outdoor amusements had given up the cause in despair, and, as though dreading to augment the common burden of dulness by meeting most of the guests, preferred keeping their rooms, and confining to themselves the gloom that oppressed them.

      The small drawing-room that adjoined my mother’s dressing-room was the only exception to this almost prison discipline; and there she now sat with Polly, MacNaghten, Rutledge, and one or two more, the privileged visitors of that favored spot, – my mother at her embroidery-frame, that pleasant, mock occupation which serves so admirably as an aid to talking or to listening, which every Frenchwoman knows so well how to employ as a conversational fly-wheel. They assuredly gave no evidence in their tone of that depression which the gloomy weather had thrown over the other guests. Laughter and merriment abounded; and a group more amusing and amused it would have been difficult to imagine. Rutledge, perhaps, turned his eyes towards the door occasionally, with the air of one in expectation of something or somebody; but none noticed this anxiety, nor, indeed, was he one to permit his thoughts to sway his outward actions.

      “The СКАЧАТЬ