Jack Hinton: The Guardsman. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ view from the top of the staircase was sufficiently amusing: a waving mass of feathers of every shape and hue, a crowd of spangled turbans, bald and powdered heads, seemed wedged inextricably together, swaying backwards and forwards with one impulse, as the crowd at the door of the supper-room advanced or receded. The crash of plates and knives, the jingling of glasses, the popping of champagne corks, told that the attack had begun, had not even the eager faces of those nearer the door indicated as much. Nulli oculi retrorsum, seemed the motto of the day, save when some anxious mother would turn a backward and uneasy glance towards the staircase, where her daughter, preferring a lieutenant to a lobster, was listening with elated look to his tale of love and glory. ‘Eliza, my dear, sit next me.’ – ‘Anna, my love, come down here.’ These brief commands, significantly as they were uttered, would be lost to those for whom intended, and only served to amuse the bystanders, and awaken them to a quicker perception of the passing flirtation. Some philosopher has gravely remarked, that the critical moments of our life are the transitions from one stage or state of our existence to another; and that our fate for the future depends in a great measure upon those hours in which we emerge from infancy to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood, from manhood to maturer years. Perhaps the arguments of time might be applied to place, and we might thus be enabled to show how a staircase is the most dangerous portion of a building. I speak not here of the insecurity of the architecture, nor, indeed, of any staircase whose well-tempered light shines down at noonday through the perfumed foliage of a conservatory; but of the same place, a blaze of lamplight, about two in the morning, crowded, crammed, and creaking by an anxious and elated throng pressing towards a supper-room. Whether it is the supper or the squeeze, the odour of balmy lips, or the savoury smell of roast ducks – whether it be the approach to silk tresses, or sillery mousseux– whatever the provocation, I cannot explain it; but the fact remains: one is tremendously given in such a place, at such a time, to the most barefaced and palpable flirtation. So strongly do I feel on this point, that, were I a lawgiver, I would never award damages for a breach of contract, where the promise was made on a staircase.

      As for me, my acquaintance with Miss Bellew was not of more than an hour’s standing. During that time we had contrived to discuss the ball-room, its guests, its lights, its decorations, the music, the dancers – in a word, all the commonplaces of an evening party; thence we wandered on to Dublin, society in general, to Ireland, and Irish habits, and Irish tastes; quizzed each other a little about our respective peculiarities, and had just begun to discuss the distinctive features which characterise the softer emotions in the two nations, when the announcement of supper brought us on the staircase. À propos, or mal à propos’, this turn of our conversation, let the reader decide by what I have already stated; so it was, however, and in a little nook of the landing I found myself with my fair companion’s arm pressed closely to my side, engaged in a warm controversy on the trite subject of English coldness of manner. Advocating my country, I deemed that no more fitting defence could be entered, than by evidencing in myself the utter absence of the frigidity imputed. Champagne did something for me; Louisa’s bright eyes assisted; but the staircase, the confounded staircase, crowned all. In fact, the undisguised openness of Miss Bellew’s manner, the fearless simplicity with which she had ventured upon topics a hardened coquette would not dare to touch upon, led me into the common error of imputing to flirtation what was only due to the untarnished freshness of happy girlhood.

      Finding my advances well received, I began to feel not a little proud of my success, and disposed to plume myself upon the charm of my eloquence, when, as I concluded a high-flown and inflated phrase of sentimental absurdity, she suddenly turned round, fixed her bright eyes upon me, and burst out into a fit of laughter.

      ‘There, there! pray don’t try that! No one but an Irishman ever succeeds in blarney. It is our national dish, and can never be seasoned by a stranger.’

      This pull-up, for such it most effectually was, completely unmanned me. I tried to stammer out an explanation, endeavoured to laugh, coughed, blundered, and broke down; while, merciless in her triumph, she only laughed the more, and seemed to enjoy my confusion.

      With such a failure hanging over me, I felt happy when we reached the supper-room; and the crash, din, and confusion about us once more broke in upon our conversation. It requires far less nerve for the dismounted jockey, whose gay jacket has been rolled in the mud of a racecourse, resuming his saddle, to ride in amid the jeers and scoffs of ten thousand spectators, than for the gallant who has blundered in the full tide of a flirtation, to recover his lost position, and sustain the current of his courtship. The sarcasm of our sex is severe enough, Heaven knows; but no raillery, no ridicule, cuts half so sharp or half so deep as the bright twinkle of a pretty girl’s eye, when, detecting some exhibition of dramatised passion, some false glitter of pinchbeck sentiment, she exchanges her look of gratified attention for the merry mockery of a hearty laugh. No tact, no savoir faire, no knowledge of the world, no old soldierism that ever I heard of, was proof against this. To go back is bad; to stand still, worse; to go on, impossible.

      The best – for I believe it is the only thing to do – is to turn approver on your own misdeeds, and join in the laughter against yourself. Now this requires no common self-mastery, and an aplomb few young gentlemen under twenty possess – hence both my failure and its punishment.

      That staircase which, but a moment before, I wished might be as long as a journey to Jerusalem, I now escaped from with thankfulness. Concealing my discomfiture as well as I was able, I bustled about, and finally secured a place for my companion at one of the side-tables. We were too far from the head of the table, but the clear ringing of his grace’s laughter informed me of his vicinity; and, as I saw Miss Bellew shrank from approaching that part of the room, I surrendered my curiosity to the far more grateful task of cultivating her acquaintance.

      All the ardour of my attentions – and I had resumed them with nearly as much warmth, although less risk of discomfiture, for I began to feel what before I had only professed – all the preoccupation of my mind, could not prevent my hearing high above the crash and clatter of the tables the rich roundness of Mrs. Rooney’s brogue, as she recounted to the duke some interesting trait of the O’Toole family, or adverted to some classical era in Irish history, when, possibly, Mecænas was mayor of Cork, or Diogenes an alderman of Skinner’s Alley.

      ‘Ah, my dear! – the Lord forgive me! I mean your grace.’

      ‘I shall never forgive you, Mrs. Rooney, if you change the epithet.’

      ‘Ah, your grace’s worship, them was fine times; and the husband of an O’Toole, in them days, spent more of his time harrying the country with his troops at his back, than driving about in an old gig full of writs and latitats, with a process-server behind him.’

      Had Mr. Rooney, who at that moment was carving a hare in total ignorance of his wife’s sarcasm, only heard the speech, the chances are ten to one he would have figured in a steel breastplate and an iron head-piece before the week was over. I was unable to hear more of the conversation, notwithstanding my great wish to do so, as a movement of those next the door implied that a large instalment of the guests who had not supped would wait no longer, but were about to make what Mr. Rooney called a forcible entry on a summary process, and eject the tenant in possession.

      We accordingly rose, and all (save the party around the viceroy) along with us, once more to visit the ball-room, where already dancing had begun. While I was eagerly endeavouring to persuade Miss Bellew that there was no cause or just impediment to prevent her dancing the next set with me, Lord Dudley de Vere lounged affectedly forward, and mumbled out some broken indistinct phrases, in which the word da-ance was alone audible. Miss Bellew coloured slightly, turned her eyes towards me, curtsied, took his arm, and the next moment was lost amid the crowd.

      I am not aware of any readier method of forming a notion of perpetual motion than watching the performance of Sir Roger de Coverley at an evening party in Dublin. It seems to be a point of honour never to give in; and thus the same complicated figures, the same СКАЧАТЬ